A relative of ours was stricken with galloping cancer back when we lived in Montana, and I took him to visit doctors in his final days. While doing that he was in an agitated state, and was strident in giving me directions on how to get there, where to turn, where and how to park. It mentioned this to my wife, who is a wise woman despite her spousal choice, and she helped me understand. It was an expression of powerlessness, she said. He could not control the big things in happening to him, so he was taking charge on anything he could. He just needed some validation.

I followed a link this morning from here to here, and that brought me back to our loved one and his galloping cancer. Throughout this post from Douglas Ernst and his wide and varied responses, I am picking up on his sense of powerlessness. He must be validated in some fashion, and for that to happen, his vote has to matter, and if his vote mattered, then having the Neocon fake liberal Obama in office must be having a deleterious effect on foreign policy which must have been prescient before handed over to incompetents in 2008.

Voting matters, elections have consequences, you see. His vote is a wise one, those for Obama messed things up but good.

I left a nugget there but Douglas screens comments, so I don’t imagine it will ever see light of day.

It’s always difficult to judge intentions after the fact. ISIS was birthed and sprung on us as a grown-up and, like all events, our job is to imagine that it is somehow spontaneous and that the largest military force in human history, with scores of bases and billions in armaments in the region, with its own contrived country nearby, is just watching and hoping for the best. Our job too is to imagine all good intentions in Washington, all malevolent intent elsewhere. Our job too is to imagine cold calculated skill from Republican administrations and incompetence from Democrats. (That last job requires imagining that American elections affect changes in foreign policy, itself a job.)

It’s tough being an American. We have to form opinions without knowing anything. We do our best. Mr. Ernst, you’re making the best of it.

[He let it stand! We’ll see how long I last there. He answered me, I answered him, and then suggested he ban me. Just being proactive.]

The usual Monday morning cluttered brain here needing to unload. Instead I sat down to read for an hour or so, and it led me to a revelation that has some explanatory power – people talk about the Stalin purges and Mao’s Cultural Revolution as defining events in those cultures, all with the arrogance of smugly superior civilized people watching others self-destruct.
Continue reading “Monday meanderings” →

Someone called “Just a Guy” dropped a nice little nugget over at 4&20, linked here. Apparently, according to the article by Floyd Brown of Wall Street Daily, Bryan Schweitzer has used the office of governor of Montana for shakedown purposes.

There’s an expression for what he’s done: extortion. He’s used the office and his creds as governor or bully two mining companies.

Just a Guy notes the indignation at Schweitzer’s intemperate (but funny) remarks about Sen Diane Feinstein, who never met a wiretap she didn’t like until she was the object. He wonders why his real crimes pass unnoticed.

Me too.

Big Swede dropped a comment below linking to a Daily Beast article on how a 27-year old sociopath named Hillary D. Rodham got a rapist off, later laughing (her now-trademark cackle?) laugh on tape about how he passed a lie detector test even as she knew he was guilty.

The rape victim, then 12, has had a less-than-charmed life since Hillary Clinton got her assailant off, and now wonders how such a liar is qualified to be president. She obviously does not follow American politics.

In 1914 the German Army marched through Belgium on its way to France, and snipers were shooting at soldiers who had believed the stories of glory and fame. Rather than fighting a noble cause, they were falling in the mud like peasants. The German propaganda arm saw value in this, and so began to fashion a stereotype for their public of Belgians acting as barbarians. All is fair.
Continue reading “The greatest generation” →