Today is the 20th anniversary of 9/11.
For me, today is a day of silence. Those of us who were alive and old enough to remember may choose to mark this day in our own ways.
Have a peaceful weekend.
Ever feel like you’re waiting…
…for the other shoe to drop?
I’ve been feeling like that for months.
It feels like being a kid waiting for your Father to get home to beat your ass for doing something you shouldn’t have done.
I suppose a more polite way of saying that would be a reference to the sword of Damocles. (If you don’t get that one look it up.) Perhaps a reference to Poe’s Pit & Pendulum would work better?
To be sure, this summer has been a pain in my ass personally. But it’s also been a mess nationally and internationally.
Hurricanes, Floods, Continuing and mutating pandemic, The show trials over the Jan 6th (mostly peaceful protests, hey they didn’t burn the capital down. Just sayin.), Afghanistan (Now we know why Biden has kids, he didn’t know how to withdraw… I couldn’t resist,) Poor economy, Rising Prices, etc. etc. etc.
Tuesday morning there was a report in Breitbart where an epidemiologist reviewed grants associated with St Fauci of the mask, and concluded that in fact some 600K did fund “Gain of function” research in Wuhan. The material was released under the FOIA.
Technically, this information is a smoking gun. Fauci broke the law. Federally, gain of function research is forbidden.
It’s possible, Fauci may have skirted the law, by approving grant money. Then Fauci lied to Congress about it, denying that any funding went to Wuhan for such research. He’d have been better off simply admitting that without his knowledge, the funds were misused and that the grant had been terminated.
Fauci has always been about gain of function research throughout his career.
On the one hand I can kinda see it from the standpoint of learning what may happen, and then doing the research to have countermeasures in place. On the other hand, I think I agree more with folks who say that gain of function is simply too dangerous. If COVID-19 is any indicator, I’d say that we have proof of the latter point.
I hate like hell that I believe Fauci will skate on all of this. I no longer have faith that our Justice system is remotely impartial. It’s been made very clear if you’re a darling of the administration (or a family member) there are no consequences. If, on the other hand you’ve demonstrated any opposition to the administration you’re going to be hunted down like a rabid dog.
Yet, with all this, it still feels like I’m in the corner of my bedroom waiting for Dad to come home. “This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you son…” I knew that was bullshit at 8 years old, it’s no less bullshit now.
In fact my Dad and I had a good healthy laugh over that particular comment as adults sipping scotch. I told him I called bullshit, and he just laughed.
“Yep Son, it was bullshit, but your ass was such a small moving target I’d end up with strap marks on my legs too. You’ve got to nonetheless, concede that you’re the man I’m proud of today in part because of me busting your butt.“
He was right. I admitted it to him right then and there. We poured another drink and talked about all kinds of things as Men, not father and son.
God, how I’d enjoy talking with him now! If only to hear his take on why I’m feeling like I’m waiting for doom.
Thinking about that conversation though, still puts a smile on my face. The hangover the next day was even worth it.
I just wish I could get past this feeling…
As we come up on the 20th anniversary of September 11, I find myself wondering if that’s the thing. Perhaps it’s just that it’s been 20 years.
I’m sure Biden will attempt to make some speech. Sadly, no matter how well written that speech will be, if he goes off the rails, or if some jackasses shoot up a crowd or set off a bomb to mark the date, I wonder if that could simply be the flashpoint of what’s bugging me.
There are just so many division points between so many groups in America today. Those points are in my mind metaphorical powder kegs. Half the country seems to be violently opposed to the other half of the country for one reason or another. Is what I’m feeling a subconscious recognition of how angry, stressed, and ready to blow, we as a people are?
Or is this feeling simply a sign of my frustration at the job search and my worry over paying my bills?
I’ll admit I think we should flatten Afghanistan with carpet bombing.
I’d love to see this administration and much of Congress on trial for corruption and wrongdoing. But I’m not ready to join a militia, white supremacist group, or do anything that is outside of the laws that we’re all supposed to abide by. I keep hearing my Mother, “Two wrongs don’t make a right.“
I keep hearing in the back of my mind, “Everybody Knows” by Leonard Cohen. Although I like the rendition by Sigrid better than the original.
"Everybody Knows" Everybody knows that the dice are loaded Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed Everybody knows that the war is over Everybody knows the good guys lost Everybody knows the fight was fixed The poor stay poor, the rich get rich That's how it goes Everybody knows Everybody knows that the boat is leaking Everybody knows that the captain lied Everybody got this broken feeling Like their father or their dog just died Everybody talking to their pockets Everybody wants a box of chocolates And a long stem rose Everybody knows Everybody knows that you love me baby Everybody knows that you really do Everybody knows that you've been faithful Ah give or take a night or two Everybody knows you've been discreet But there were so many people you just had to meet Without your clothes And everybody knows Everybody knows, everybody knows That's how it goes Everybody knows Everybody knows, everybody knows That's how it goes Everybody knows And everybody knows that it's now or never Everybody knows that it's me or you And everybody knows that you live forever Ah when you've done a line or two Everybody knows the deal is rotten Old Black Joe's still pickin' cotton For your ribbons and bows And everybody knows And everybody knows that the Plague is coming Everybody knows that it's moving fast Everybody knows that the naked man and woman Are just a shining artifact of the past Everybody knows the scene is dead But there's gonna be a meter on your bed That will disclose What everybody knows And everybody knows that you're in trouble Everybody knows what you've been through From the bloody cross on top of Calvary To the beach of Malibu Everybody knows it's coming apart Take one last look at this Sacred Heart Before it blows And everybody knows Everybody knows, everybody knows That's how it goes Everybody knows Oh everybody knows, everybody knows That's how it goes Everybody knows Everybody knows Written By Sharon Robinson & Leonard Cohen
The weird thing is that I haven’t heard that song in a while. Let’s face it, it’s dark and not something that anyone who’s the least bit depressed should listen to. It is however, a good song.
I guess I’ll go back to banging my head against the employment wall and just wait & see what happens next.
When the wheels come off this bus, it will be spectacular.
I am curious to see what happens in the Newsom recall. I have no doubt that he’ll retain office. I’m absolutely sure that we’ll never know if he retains office legally or by nefarious means.
I say that, because these days who do you trust?
Like tears in the rain.
I don’t know if that phrase is from an older work, or if it originated in the script of Blade Runner.
Nonetheless, it’s a great visualization.
Afghanistan has fallen. Apparently President Biden was shocked, according to some reports. This, less than a month after he told America and the world that the Afghanistan Military could handle the country’s defense.
Uh huh.
There are tons of articles all over the net with various takes on this situation.
The most poignant was one I read on Apple News. It’s actually an article that appears in The Guardian here .
We’ve spent 20 years in Afghanistan. In that time we’ve lost troops, had others maimed, still others remain profoundly affected by what they saw and endured in that country. Those men and women did an outstanding job and their duty, of that there is no question.
I’m less certain that we should have remained in Afghanistan after we’d broken the Taliban. But that wasn’t really an option now was it?
The beliefs that allow the Taliban can’t be changed overnight, and apparently they can’t be changed in 20 years. I suspect that even 100 years wouldn’t change the underlying belief structure that creates monstrous ruling bodies like the Taliban.
You’d have to systematically destroy every mosque, kill every Imam, burn every copy of the Quran, wipe all memory of Islam from the internet, and destroy all of that religion’s adherents everywhere.
First of all we don’t have the stomach for that kind of bloodshed. Second of all, it would be wrong for us to try. Third of all, it would be doomed to fail right from the start.
We have historical examples of failure to eliminate beliefs. Rome tried it with the Christians. Hitler wasn’t successful with Jews. Even the Ottoman Empire couldn’t eradicate the Jews in Spain, nor could the Inquisition. The kind of oppression required to attempt something like eliminating a religion would simply drive it underground.
You have to kill not only the practitioners of a religion, you have to kill all memory of it entirely. Which is something that the Taliban understands all too clearly. That is why no world heritage site, or non-islamic archeological dig is safe in Taliban territory. They understand how to destroy “false beliefs”. Their brutality in this is unmatched.
Which brings me to the point I want to make.
We as a nation must enact a non-interference policy. It is not our job to free anyone from their dogma, or give them a democracy by force. Our military is ours. It exists to defend us and our interests from invaders, or conquerors. That’s it. Our allies are by definition in our best interests and they too deserve our protections just as they offer their armies under treaty to our protection.
That being said, when we’ve done the job, we should leave. To do anything else leads to decades of misery and unintended consequences.
Think of the misery the young woman in The Guardian article has to endure now. Had the Taliban remained in force for the past 20 years, she’d still have lived the misery to be sure. But now she knows there’s another way, she knows what she’s lost, she’ll feast on that bitterness for the rest of her life.
Were I in her position…
I’d develop a pretty healthy hatred of the US and all Americans for abandoning her to her fate after showing her how things could be different. I’d be teaching all my children to hate Americans, America is a lie, America cannot be trusted, America deserves to be destroyed.
That’s how the cycle of violence continues.
We MAKE our enemies, and frankly, we do it very well. How many more generations will spring from this one woman and all the others like her, enlightened and abandoned by our actions?
We shouldn’t have long term student visas for any country outside our allies. Short term upper division students perhaps, but not long term college educations.
Long term students simply become contaminated, then return to their countries with knowledge of a very different life. How can one of those folks ever be content returning to cooking over a fire pit or defecating in a hole in the ground, when they’ve lived the convenience and ease that Western civilization enjoys?
I know what I’m saying sounds cruel. But I think it far more cruel to “give” someone 21st century knowledge and then send them back to the 6th century.
President Biden’s legacy will be his Baghdad Bob moment a month ago. But the legacy of hatred and terrorist activities to come, belongs to our government from Bush through Biden, perhaps even further back than that.
I think it is time for us to exit the role of “good guys”, it’s time for us to stop trying to remake the world in our image. It’s time for Americans to be mythical beings in undeveloped parts of the world. Something whispered of, but never seen.
It is well past time for us to stop feeding our enemies, or pumping trillions of dollars, material, and American lives, into a hole that will never never be filled.
People make war on each other, and people die every day, disease and natural disasters happen all the time, these are facts of life. We need to get past our messiah complex and focus on our own problems.
There is no shame or guilt in recognizing that we can’t help everyone. The shame is in telling those people we will help, then breaking that promise.
Close our borders, allow visitors from allied countries only. That way we don’t contaminate and destroy primitive cultures.
We have historical examples of cultural contamination starting with the European conquest of North and South America. (Damage done. There’s no going back) We have examples of other indigenous people having their lives turned upside down in the South Pacific during World War II. (See Cargo Cults.) We even have contemporary examples of possible cultural contamination with all the hubbub surrounding UFOs and Alien contact.
Just the rumors of Aliens causes shockwaves and distractions in our “enlightened” culture. If they actually exist, it would make sense for them to be circumspect. Especially if they’re doing some kind of anthropology study.
We’re advanced compared to some of the folks on our planet, but we’re not superior.
We certainly don’t have enough positive outcomes to be dictating how any one else should be living.
It’s time for us to come to grips with our limitations and recognize that;
“Sometime you have to be cruel to be kind.”