Gitmo Again

According to de Selby, he saw on national TV a chainlink pen set up in Gitmo that was built to contain Haitians. De Selby did not know if anyone was actually housed there or what plans Uncle Joe Biden has for these people of color.

This makes me a little uneasy. I'm of Irish descent, and while I was working on Long Island for 30 years, I became aware that many young Irish people slipped into the Hamptons each summer to work in the resort areas. I'm wondering if Biden has built a pen for the Irish or pens for the other groups who come to America without proper papers. 

There must be many ethnicities. Has Biden constructed special pens to contain the Finns, the Icelanders, the Aussies, etc? 

A Small Sacrifice to Make

 We sent our young children out of the house and back to crowded schools in the face of a booming pandemic when we knew that vaccinations would be ready for them in two more months. 

Who would do that? (We would.)

You hear a lot of talk about how godawful it is when children miss a few months or a year of elementary school. But what is more terrible is when children die--and some are already dying of covid.

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Gen. Milley

George Washington and the Founders committed treason against their nation, Great Britain. Treason is as American as strawberry shortcake.

As you know, Gen. Milley, who chairs the Joint Chiefs of Staff,  twice contacted the  Chinese military during President Trump's lunatic meltdown. Milley told the Chinese he would warn them of any attack attempted by Trump. Deep political thinkers are pointing out that these contacts amounted to treason. According to Andrew Bacevich, the calls violated "the bedrock principle of civilian control of the military."

But what constitutes bedrock? "The universe exists" is a bedrock statement. Everything we say depends on it, especially the nouns. Civilian control of the military isn't bedrock. It's a preference. 

Did Milley commit treason? Did he do the right thing? What if the answer to both questions is yes? What if you had to decide between starting a war with China (perhaps a nuclear war) and deference to an elected nutter?

The Problem of Evil

Let's say that's you go to a science fiction movie about teenagers, and in the movie the teenagers' beloved grandmothers begin to die. They just explode at random intervals. There is no apparent motive behind the deaths. They just happen. The deaths are inevitable and pointless. The teenagers have no option but to adjust to inexplicable horror. In the film this is part of how they grow to adulthood.  

No one has made that movie, but someone did make  "Spontaneous." In "Spontaneous," it's the teenagers who begin to combust for no reason. Some explode in the classroom. The others have to live with that. No choice. They live with the problem of evil. Why do bad things happen to good people? In the film this is part of how young people  grow to adulthood. 

Booster Shots

MSNBC this morning says there is evidence that covid booster shots increase protection against serious illness by ten fold. My wife and I drove to our local drugstore a month ago and got boosters. But for some reason the Press Democrat, our local California newspaper, pretends that none of this is happening. The newspaper maintains that boosters may be available at some future date. 

Why not report the truth?

Our doctor thought we should get the boosters, but no one at the drugstore checked. A clerk did ask us if our immune systems were compromised. We said yes, and that was that. 

Barbara Lee

Some leaders of America's splintering left are now attempting to drum out Barbara Lee, on the grounds that she has been insufficiently pro-Palestinian.  

The Israel-Palestine issue is, as I see it, toxic. The supporters of both sides demand 100% black-and-white conformity to their party lines. They have nothing to negotiate. Everything this issue touches turns into death. 

This brings to mind something that happened about 65 years ago. Albert Camus, active in the French resistance in World War Two,  wrote that no cause, no matter how good, can justify the killing of civilians. He condemned Joseph Stalin, and much of the French Left banned him. The French Left didn't turn against Stalin until ten years later. Some to this day condemn Camus as a traitor to the cause of social justice.

Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, another icon of the left, takes Camus' position: no cause justifies targeting noncombatants. 

Consider this. The Israelis target civilians. The Palestinians target civilians. We deliberately targeted civilians in World War Two. 

Tar and Feathers

For 30 years, scientists have been telling us that using fossil fuels will bring on climate change and  huge swaths of physical and social destruction. The destruction is here now; we can see it. What should we do about the politicians who lied to us about global warming for 30 years?

Tar and feathers are out. We get tar from fossil fuel, and some would prefer to keep the feathers on live chickens. But what should we do with all those lying political money-grubbers?  They've done enormous damage. Will we shrug and move on? 

Rolling Disasters

It is now obvious to anyone with his or her own brainstem that climate change is on top of us and that climate change is an unending set of rolling disasters. 

California State Senator Mike McGuire and others are attempting to block the shipping by rail of vast bins of coal through Northern California. The coal would then be sold to China, who would burn it and make our life on this planet worse. 

Stopping coal is exactly what is needed. We must stop producing and selling fossil fuels. Few politicians are willing to take this problem on, because there is money to made by the Amerindians on whose reservation the coal will be dug, money to be made by the railroads, money to be made selling coal to China, etc. Money, money, money. For money many humans will sell bullets to their own firing squad. 

Remember McGuire. He and some others are trying to deal realistically with the awkward reality of global warming.

Cultural Genocide as Nation Building

Portugal, Spain, France and Great Britain entered the New World (with its developed civilizations) intent on cultural genocide. They systematically destroyed the indigenous nations they encountered, determined to rebuild them into European systems, something like America more recently attempted to do in Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Cultural genocide was and is the lasting core of European and American foreign policy.

People tend to be deeply attached to the culture that shaped them. Some are willing to die in defense of themselves and their culture. We have been losing wars. 

President Biden recently announced that we were getting out of the nation-building business at the core of our foreign policy. Cultural systems best change at their pace, not at our pace.

I hope that works out. But we have a giant two-party foreign policy caste, one that tames mere presidents. Lasting change in our policies may be hard to come by. 

Moderna

As a low ranking employee in several large organizations, I noticed many decades ago that the leaders at the top often have no clue about what is actually going on.  And today I read in my newspaper that top federal health officials have warned the White House that the plan to offer booster shots would at first have to be limited to people who got Pfizer vaccinations.

Like a constant line of people at my drugstore, I got a Moderna booster a week or two back. I hope it isn't too late to return it.

Spontaneous

"Spontaneous" is a film made just before the pandemic--the movie is known to others, but I just blundered onto it. On EPIX. I recorded the movie and watched it because the critics score was 97 and the audience rating was 67. Those are strange numbers.

I found it compelling, and my wife hated it and ignored it as best she could. Fair warning.

The first half of the film is a very dark rom-com about a class of high school seniors who begin to spontaneously explode, throwing buckets of blood around the classroom. 

The second half is humorless but compelling in its way, a symbolic exploration of the texture of life once you realize how uncertain life is. And no one can change that. Do you remember high school? Not everyone made it out alive. 

Texas

 Texas has become toxic for women. They should  leave. 

A Kafka-like new law in Texas encourages private citizens to punish nearly anyone who encounters a woman seeking an abortion. That puts everyone in danger. It's no longer safe to drive through Texas. 

My assumption is that most Texans can't leave the state immediately. Women and their friends have businesses and homes to sell, new jobs to find in the 49 more welcoming states and Puerto Rico, kith and kin to consider, etc.  For many, leaving Texas will take a lot of planning. Now is time to start the process.