Recap: September 15, 2021

The day begins in the usual fashion:

With perpetually enraged morons shouting for blood.

Apparently the official Republican Party position this morning is: An unhinged president who lost an election should absolutely be allowed to start a global nuclear war if he wants to and anyone who tries to stop him is a traitor.

I mean, let me get this straight, the Republican position is that a lame duck president should not be allowed to appoint Supreme Court Justices because "the people have spoken..."

...but should be allowed to start a nuclear war?

Yeah, they should totally put that on the 2024 campaign bumper stickers.

"Marshal."

Court Marshal.

Lest you think that a typo and not ignorance:

There it is again, court marshal.

Oh boy, we got us a real military law expert here, don't we?

Greene, or more likely some poor intern on her staff, later deleted the first tweet and reposted it with the correct phrasing. The second one is still up. Goddamn, are these people stupid. A republic is resilient. It can survive a lot of things, but when those elected to run it become an endless parade of blustering angry simpletons cheered by the proudly ignorant shouting mob, well, then the end isn't far away. Lot of these dimwits are throwing around the word "treason" today in the wake of reports General Mark Milley called his counterpart in China and assured him that Trump would not be allowed to start a nuclear war as some sort of petulant revenge for losing the election.

That's not treason.

Treason is giving aid and comfort to the enemy.

First of all, China isn't our enemy.

Second, we're not at war with China.

China is, in point of fact, one of our largest economic trading partners. And assuring the military commanders of a country that we are not at war with that we won't let the raging unhinged madman who just lost an election start a nuclear war isn't treason.

It's sanity.

And maybe this about fixing the utterly insane system that led to this situation in the first place. Right? I mean, goddamn, Folks, when it's the Generals who have to go around the president to prevent nuclear fucking war instead of, you know, trying to start one, maybe that's the wakeup call right there.

The problem wasn't the generals, it was Trump.

Now, don't get me wrong here, I do have a problem with the fact that the general warned China, but didn't tell us.

Think this guy needs to testify. I think he needs to tell America what happened in detail and why he did what he allegedly did.

BUT

But, it was an unhinged, insane, petulant, child-man with his dirty sticky finger on the fucking button, that was the problem.

It was the fact that the Joints Chiefs, those with the inside track and direct observation of the situation on the ground inside the last days of the Trump administration, thought they had to take this action. That's what we should be concerned most about here. That, right there. Because those guys aren't prone to panic, or hyperbole, or even adverse to war. So if they were concerned enough to risk accusations of treason then there has to be a damn good reason.

And it is every American's duty to know what those reasons were.

And if you insist on trying General Milley for treason, then I will expect you to likewise demand the heads of every single Republican who aided and abetted and signed Senator Tom Cotton's letter to Iran undercutting President Obama and five other allied nations during the Iran nuclear talks in direct violation of the Logan Act. And I'll remind you here that Iran is our enemy.

Otherwise, shut the fuck up. 

Heh. Do Mike Flynn next.

Here's the thing:

1. Milley should be neither condemned nor praised for his (alleged) actions.

2. We don't really know if this story about Milley is actually true, and 3. if it is, then the WORLD needs to know the full details of what led Milley to take such action. We need full and complete transparency of the last days of the Trump Administration. All of it.

and 4. We need to sit down and carefully, logically, and rationally figure out how to prevent any such situation in the future. What should happen here is a thorough review and revision of the power and protocols for any president to push that fucking button. Because if the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff thinks the president is about to start a nuclear war because the president is acting insane, we need to address how to handle that.

ONE MAN SHOULD NOT HAVE THE POWER TO ARBITARILY END THE WORLD

Meanwhile...

During a hard hitting interview on steely-eyed Sean Spicer's Newsmax show ... okay, even in jest I can't keep typing that, anyway, Trump was on Newsmax last night predicting the end of the United States.

Trump's brain is like a diseased rat trapped in a hot empty box, going frantically 'round and 'round, faster and faster, little claws scrabbling madly against the bone of his skull. Trump also predicted the stock market would crash if he lost the election and that Mexico would pay for his idiotic wall and that COVID would one day vanish like magic. Trump has made a lot of predictions, none of which panned out.

Maybe this guy doesn't actually know what the fuck he's talking about?

For example: Trump predicted California Governor Gavin Newsom would be unseated in a landslide recall.

And it was a landslide yesterday.

Just not for Republicans.

But honestly, I can't believe famously diverse and liberal California voters didn't totally embrace the guy who said slave owners should get reparations for losing their property after the Civil War, that we should get rid of the Americans With Disabilities Act, who thinks George Zimmerman is a hero and we should have more like him, that sawed-off Henrich Himmler wannabe Stephen Miller should be president, minimum wage should be $0 (which does go hand-in-hand with the idea that slavery was a good thing, so at least he's consistent), and that we should just let the free market sort out who lives and who dies from a completely preventable disease.

I can't believe California didn't elect that guy, right?

(Note; Given the state of this country, the previous comments are only mostly sarcasm)

At this point: Republicans have tried blatant fascism.

They tried cheating, they tried to disenfranchise voters, they tried to limit voting, they tried voter IDs, they tried to cull voting lists.

They tried to frighten voters with "communism" and "socialism" and "Antifa" and the "BLMs" and "They're comin' to take ur gunz!"

They tried audits.

They tried lawsuits.

They tried a recall.

They tried to violently overthrow an election via sedition and armed insurrection.

They failed over and over. 

I dunno, maybe they should try democracy?

Seriously though, well done, California.

But like the man said: Great shot, Kid. Don't get cocky.

Meanwhile...

A Bunch of bumbling dipshits in discount camo who can't even get laid are going to "hunt" people who've been at war for their entire lives?

Yeah, ooookay. Let's see how that goes. And what kind of person would "hunt" those seeking refuge from a murderous regime?

Think about that. Think about how goddamn shitty you have to be, how much like the fucking Taliban itself you have to be, to even joke about something like that. I'm happy to welcome Afghans as my neighbors.

And the Proud Boys can fuck off.

Meanwhile...

A prominent male Republican member of Congress called a congresswoman "young lady" in an attempt to dismiss and belittle her and conservative pundits are losing their shit over the dress that same congresswoman wore to a costume gala to help raise funds for an ... art museum?

Oh, yeah, wow. Boy, we better get on that.

The economy, healthcare, climate change, infrastructure, a global pandemic, forget that stuff. Congress should focus on some junior congresswoman! Seriously, you gotta wonder here because all day, every day, it's Republicans shouting Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez IS A JUST A KID, A YOUNG LADY, A STUPID STINKY GIRL! LOOK SHE DRIVES A FANCY CAR! SHE'S WEARING A FANCY DRESS! SHE'S GOING TO A FANCY BALL! BUT ALSO SHE'S LIKE TAX THE RICH! OOK! OOK!

Yet those same Republicans obsessively follow and comment on everything AOC does, her dress, her car, her tweets, where she goes, her friends, everything. Every day. Not a day goes by they aren't tweeting about her. Sure seems like Republicans got a bit of an obsessive crush, but like every immature socially awkward schoolboy they don't know how to handle their raging hormones. So they pull her hair and call her names.

That dress? Donated by the designer.

The tickets? Paid for by the sponsors.

The gala? The Met Ball? A fundraising event for Metropolitan Museum of Art's Costume Institute in New York City. Lot of famous people show up wearing designer apparel that makes a political statement, that's kind of the whole point.

The political statement? Consistent with AOC's political ideology. And so is the car she drives by the way. And if you think there's some hypocrisy going on here, well, maybe you don't really know what that ideology is.

Maybe you should shut up and go find out.

And while you're at it, maybe grow the fuck up and learn how to talk to women without being an ass.

Meanwhile...

Antivaxxers have taken to gargling ... betadine? 

Betadine. 

Also, I saw an article yesterday about how people are flocking to abandoned uranium mines in the American northwest to breathe in radioactive gas and to soak in radioactive pools of water as some sort of fountain of youth. 

Because radioactivity works like in comic books. I guess.

It's the 2nd decade of the 21st Century and Americans are gargling topical disinfectant, soaking in radioactive hot tubs, consuming horse deworming paste, speed-balling Lupus meds, shoving lightbulbs up their butts, injecting bleach, chugging aquarium cleaner... but won't get vaxxed.

Won't take a safe and effective vaccine. Won't do it.

You know, I'm old enough to remember when conservatives were the clean-shaven serious men in dark suits and brush cuts, the scientists and doctors and engineers and steely-eyed missilemen who took us to the moon and back home again...

...and liberals were a bunch of moony-eyed hippies who smelled of cat piss and burning rope daydreaming about the Age of Aquarius, magic crystals, and Pyramid Power. Peace, love, and drugs, man!

What the fuck happened? 

Anyway, here's a picture of a hummingbird tongue:

Bitter Pill

“We should leave Afghanistan immediately. No more wasted lives. If we have to go back in, we go in hard and quick. Rebuild the US first"
-- Donald Trump, August 2017

Kabul has fallen. 

The Taliban have taken the country.

The US withdrawal from Afghanistan is an unbridled disaster.

The Afghan government we created and propped up has collapsed and the Afghan president has run away to another country. The Afghan military we created and supported didn't hold for even a week, they've thrown down their arms, abandoned their posts and their duty, and are now killed, captured, or fled. And our erstwhile Afghan allies are now going to die, a lot of them anyway. Children are going to die, women are going to be raped, the men are going to be lined up and shot. 

That is inevitable at this point. 

The ragged American forces left in-country are in full retreat, falling back and back to the airplanes that will maybe get them out of the carnage. No time to destroy their equipment. No time to destroy classified materials. No time to save our allies. No time left but to run. And it's the fall of Saigon all over again. All it needs is a sad Billy Joel ballad and some helicopters being pushed into the sea on the Six-O-Clock news. If Joel was still writing ballads and we still had such a thing as the evening news anyway. 

And it's all Joe Biden's fault

Yes it is. 

But that's not surprising, is it?

No, that's not surprising at all. 

Because that was the plan. 

That was the plan. 

Trump ran for president on the idea of pulling American forces out of Afghanistan. He had a lot of fiery rhetoric that appealed to the Isolationists in his party and oh how they cheered him. Get us out! No more war! 

Trump was against the whole thing right from the start -- well, according to Trump, anyway. 

When Obama was president, Trump was on Twitter nearly every day, calling for the withdrawal of American Troops from Iraq and Afghanistan. Take the oil, take the minerals, take the treasure, and get out. 

"Why are we continuing to train these Afghanis who then shoot our soldiers in the back? Afghanistan is a complete waste. Time to come home!"

"We should leave Afghanistan immediately. No more wasted lives. If we have to go back in, we go in hard & quick. Rebuild the US first."

"Let’s get out of Afghanistan. Our troops are being killed by the Afghanis we train and we waste billions there. Nonsense! Rebuild the USA."

"I agree with Pres. Obama on Afghanistan. We should have a speedy withdrawal. Why should we keep wasting our money -- rebuild the U.S.!"

"We have wasted an enormous amount of blood and treasure in Afghanistan. Their government has zero appreciation. Let’s get out!"

"Do not allow our very stupid leaders to sign a deal that keeps us in Afghanistan through 2024-with all costs by U.S.A. MAKE AMERICA GREAT!"

Those are Donald Trump's words, verbatim. 

Donald Trump ran for president on those words, and his followers cheered him. Get us out! No more war! No more blood and treasure, right? Rebuild the USA. 

You remember, don't you? 

Trump never told you how he'd actually do it. 

Trump was never much for details or plans and those who cheered him aren't the kind of people who ask. Just, get out and make America great again … somehow. 

Then Trump was elected President. 

For the first time he had to face the horrible complexity of Afghanistan. 

And he couldn't do it. 

Trump was not equipped in any fashion, not by temperament or training, to manage the terrible, complex reality of Afghanistan. 

In fairness -- though I am loathe to be fair to Donald Trump in any manner whatsoever no matter how small -- the truth is that few presidents actually are equipped to deal with the complexity of war, especially one like the conflict in Afghanistan. 

That's why the decision to go to war, or to abandon one, was supposed be made only with the steady and duly considered advice of Congress and a Presidential Cabinet who base their recommendations on the expertise of professional diplomats, the military, and the intelligence community -- among others.

But over the years, Congress abandoned its Constitutional duty and vested more and more of its power in a single man. 

Until one day that man was ... Donald Trump.

And there are few things Donald Trump despises more than expertise. 

"I know more about courts than any human being on Earth."

"I understand politicians better than anybody."

"Nobody knows more about trade than me."

"I know more about renewables than any human being on Earth."

"I think nobody knows more about taxes than I do, maybe in the history of the world."

"I’m the king of debt. I’m great with debt. Nobody knows debt better than me."

"I understand money better than anybody."

"I think I know more about the other side than almost anybody."

"I think I know about [the economy] better than [the Federal Reserve]."

"Technology, nobody knows more about technology than me."

"I know more about drones than anybody."

That's Trump. He knows it all, better than anyone. 

"I know more about ISIS than the generals do."

Trump claimed he knew more about war than those fighting it. As if war was something that should be left to amateurs. As if war isn't a profession, one that takes decades to master -- and even then, it's an iffy thing.

As if diplomacy isn't the same. 

Trump is a fraud. His alleged knowledge is bravado and bluster. And so there are few things Trump despises more than professionals, more than those who've spent their entire lives becoming experts, those who might show him for what he really is. 

Trump calls expertise "elitism" and his supporters cheer and jeer because they feel diminished and belittled by the idea that there might be those who know more than they do. 

Once in office, Trump did what he always does: surrounded himself with toadies and fops and fools whose primary function was to tell Trump how smart he is instead of offering actual expertise. 

Remember Trump's first cabinet meeting?

It was staged in front of the Press. Trump began by praising himself, "Never has there been a president, with few exceptions . . . who has passed more legislation, done more things. We’ve achieved tremendous success. I think we’ve been about as active as you can possibly be and at a just about record-setting pace." 

And then, Trump demanded each Cabinet member say a few words about how great Trump was, "Start with Mike" he ordered, pointing to Vice President Pence. 

And Pence, of course, obliged, "It is the greatest privilege of my life to serve as the vice president to a president who is keeping his word to the American people!" 

Jeff Sessions went next, "It’s an honor to be able to serve you."

Alex Acosta, “I’m deeply honored and I want to thank you for keeping your commitment to the American workers.” 

Rick Perry, "My hats off to you."

Nikki Haley, “It’s a new day at the United Nations. We now have a very strong voice.”

Mick Mulvaney, “At your direction, we were able to also focus on the forgotten men and women who are paying taxes, so I appreciate your support on pulling that budget together.”

Tom Price, “What an incredible honor it is to lead the Department of Health and Human Services at this pivotal time under your leadership. I can’t thank you enough for the privilege that you’ve given me, and the leadership you’ve shown.”

Elaine Chao, “Thank you for coming over to the Department of Transportation. Hundreds and hundreds of people were so thrilled to hang out, watching the whole ceremony. I want to thank you for getting this country moving again, and also working again.”

Robert Lighthizer, “I apologize for being late for work. For about four months, I got bogged down in that swamp you’ve been trying to drain.

Sonny Perdue: “I just got back from Mississippi. They love you there.”

Steven Mnuchin, “It’s been a great honor traveling with you around the country for the past year, and an even greater honor to be serving you on your Cabinet . . .”

Around the table it went, all the while Trump sat there, basking in the praise of his sycophants, grinning hugely for the cameras. 

 But there was one group missing. 

The military. The generals. The experts. 

"I know more about ISIS than the generals do."

It enraged Trump that the military experts and the diplomats wouldn't kiss his ass like the rest of his cabinet. Wouldn't do what he wanted, just get out of Afghanistan, quit the war and bring the troops home. You're so smart, Sir! So handsome and brilliant! 

No, instead the military experts told Trump what would happen if we just pulled out. They told him how it would go, just like it's going right now. He didn't care ... until his handlers, Bannon, Miller, maybe Ivanka, told him how it would look. 

It would be a disaster, it would be Saigon, and it would be all on him.

He couldn't keep his promise. 

Now, all presidents learn this. 

All presidents discover pretty quickly that they aren't going to be able to keep their campaign promises. 

It happened to Obama. He promised to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay. He couldn't. Congress, Republicans and Democrats alike, wouldn't let him. He had to eat it and he did. Obama learned, like the presidents before him, that the political realities of the office are vastly different when you're actually sitting behind the Resolute Desk. 

But not Trump. 

Trump seethed. He wanted it -- not because it was or was not the right thing to do. Not because the experts did or did not advise it. Not because it was, or maybe wasn't, politically expedient. 

No, Trump wanted it. 

He wanted it the way a spoiled selfish child wants.

Trump raged and threw tantrum after tantrum, usually on Twitter, like a child who doesn't get his way.

I know more than the generals! I do! I do!

But he didn't have the guts. 

Trump couldn't get us out of Afghanistan because it would have ended just exactly like it's ending right now and Trump never had the kind of moral courage it takes for that buck to stop at his desk. 

And that's the thing, you see, it was always going to end this way. 

That's how America's war in Vietnam ended. 

Two decades in the jungle, 58,000 American lives, trillions of dollars later and it all ended on 29 April, 1975, on the roof of a building at 22 Gia Long Street, Saigon. 

Many, many others are making that comparison today, and it's a fair one. 

Kabul has fallen just as Saigon did 50 years ago and we have learned not a goddamn thing. 

Why were we there? 

What was the objective? What was victory? 

Those who ran that war, they'll tell you. They'll tell you why we had to go, why the best part of a generation had to die or be damaged forever, haunted by the ghosts of that terrible conflict.

Oh, they'll tell you what victory was. 

Yeah, they'll tell you, all right. The Domino Theory, remember? We had to stop the commies. Fight them over there or we'll have to fight them over here. That's what the politicians said. If South Vietnam falls, the rest of Indochina will follow like dominos and pretty soon they'll be here. Besides, they're just savages. We can win this thing in a month. Don't you believe in America? 

And so we went. 58,000 of us died there. 

And then, we just left. 

April 29th, 1975, the last helicopters flew away and we left. 

And Saigon fell to the communists. 

And same sons bitches who'd told us we had to go, now declared victory at our retreat. Well, maybe not a military victory, but, you know, a moral one. And they washed their hands of it and were never held to account. 

Oh, but it doesn't end there. 

No, it doesn't end there. 

Because, you see, three decades later, the men responsible, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, et al, all the crooked sneaky bastards who'd been lurking in the shadows of that failed war, well, now they were running things. 

Nixon, Cheney, Rumsfeld, 1970
Image by Byron Schumaker, Nixon Library

That's right, the same men who presided over the fall of Saigon, well, by and large they were the very same men who sent America to war in Afghanistan thirty years later. 

And again they had no objective. No definition of victory, despite what Joe Biden said today on Twitter. No, it was the same old same old. The War on Terror! We gotta fight 'em over there, or we'll have to fight 'em over here. If Afghanistan falls to the Taliban, why other countries will fall, one by one, like dominos...

Besides, they're just savages. 

We can win this thing in a month. 

Don't you believe in America? 

Oh, they had a plan for war, yes indeed. They knew how to blow things up. They knew how to kill. After all, they'd killed 58,000 Americans once upon a time. 

But, again, they had no plan for what comes after the killing.

They're great at starting wars, not so good at ending them. 

They're great at destroying a nation, but they have no idea how to build one. 

Bush, Obama, Trump, and now Biden, twenty years, thousands dead, trillions of dollars, there was never any plan or any will to build civilization. You can't bomb people into democracy. You can't kill people into civilization. Hell, we can't even convince our own citizens to stop hating each other, to work together for the greater good, to build a better nation -- I mean, hell, some of them just tried to overthrow our own democracy. How would anyone expect us to do it in Afghanistan? 

There was never going to be any way out but what is happening right now. 

The architects of this war, those who lied us into it, they never had any idea of how to end it. 

And why should they? 

Not only was there never any consequences for their lies and their failures in Vietnam, or their cowardice in avoiding that conflict themselves, they were rewarded with wealth and power. 

What was to stop them from doing the very same thing again? 

It was always going to end this way. 

It was only a matter of when. 

Trump promised to end this war. 

"Blood and Treasure" made a great campaign slogan. 

Like his father and his sons, Trump never served. He has no vested interest, he made no personal sacrifice, it wasn't his life risked. It was easy, just pull out. After all, Trump knew more than the generals, remember? 

And his supporters cheered, blood and treasure! Ironically, these were the very same people, by and large, who demanded war in the first place, back in 2001, and shouted down any who dared oppose it. Of course, a number of those Trump supporters were also Vietnam Veterans, who, again ironically, voted for a draft dodger who told them to their faces that they were suckers and losers. 

But he couldn't make good. 

For four years, Donald Trump could not make good on his promise to pull America out of Afghanistan. And he couldn't do it because Trump was not capable of the kind of moral courage that would have been required to make good on his promise. 

Because it was always going to end this way.

And Trump would never take responsibility for that. 

But then, Trump lost the election.

Joe Biden won.

Trump lost the White House and Republicans lost the Senate. 

And that's when Donald Trump could finally make good on his promise. 

As soon as it became certain that he would have to leave office, Trump ordered American forces out of Afghanistan. Trump and Pompeo invited the Taliban to Camp David -- not the actual government of Afghanistan and our alleged allies, but the Taliban. And he turned thousands of Taliban prisoners loose, one of which is now the de facto president of Afghanistan. 

Trump didn't try to hide it, he bragged about it. 

Here's Donald Trump at a "Save America" rally in Wellington, Ohio, on June 26, 2021, taking credit for pulling US Forces out of Afghanistan and giving Joe Biden no options at all:

(quote starts at 1:19:05) Afghanistan, where, by the way, I started the process. All the troops are coming back home. They couldn’t stop the process. Twenty-one years is enough, don't we think ... twenty-one years. They couldn’t stop the process. They wanted to, but ... it was very tough to stop the process when ... other things were ... Yeah, thank you, thank you ... it's a shame, twenty-one years by a government ... that wouldn't last. The only way they last is if we're there. What are we gonna say? We'll stay for another twenty-one years, then we'll stay for another fifty? The whole thing is ... ridiculous. So we're bringing our troops back home from Iraq! We're bringing the troops back home ... from Afghanistan ... 

Republicans not only bragged about it, they posted the details to the GOP webpage:

For some reason, that entry was scrubbed from the GOP website last night and conservative media pundits have today conveniently forgotten all about it. 

And now, Joe Biden owns this disaster. 

Because that's how it works. 

I didn't say it was right. I didn't say it was fair, because it most assuredly is not.  I said that's how it is. That's how public perception and politics work. The buck stops at the Resolute Desk and America will remember this as Joe Biden's disaster. 

Trump, with the support of the most radical elements of the Republican party, finally made good on his promise and left Joe Biden holding the bag. 

That was the plan. 

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,

And the women come out to cut up what remains,

Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains

An' go to your Gawd like a soldier
-- Rudyard Kipling                    

 

Combat Fatigue

 

Anxiety does not empty tomorrow of its sorrows, but only empties today of its strength.
—Charles Spurgeon

Well, that's didn't take long, did it? 

Joe Biden has been president for a little over 48 hours and already the Left has started to turn on itself. 

Despite being entirely predictable, it's damn depressing to watch. 

Especially when you're part of the collateral damage.

Many years ago, writer Larry Niven penned a cautionary tale that has stayed with me, vividly, most of my life. 

The story centers around Doug Hooker, who suffered from severe mental illness -- paranoia to be specific. His illness was held in check by an automated medical system, which allowed him to function more or less normally. Along with his business partner, Greg Loeffler, Hooker founded Skyhook Enterprises and began building fusion-powered interstellar ramscoop starships. The business was successful and both men became fabulously wealthy. But, while Loeffler happily married and started a family, Hooker was always afraid of what any potential partner might think of his illness. So he keep it a secret and it was always a wall between himself and others. Despite his success, Hooker was an unhappy and lonely man, Loeffler being his only friend, and Loeffler's family being a surrogate for one of his own.

Loeffler eventually tired of the business, bought one of Skyhook's ships for himself, and decided to emigrate to a colony world, Plateau in the Tau Ceti system, nine years away by ramscoop.

Hooker was left friendless and alone. 

Unfortunately, the computerized doctor in his desk malfunctioned a short time later and stopped delivering the drugs needed to regulate Hooker's mental illness. The safety system that should have alerted him to this situation likewise failed.

And so, Doug Hooker became, over time, murderously insane. 

Hooker came to blame Loeffler for his empty life, believing that his former partner had only befriended him and invited Hooker into his own family so that one day it could all be taken away and Hooker made to suffer. 

Hooker grew to hate Loeffler with an abiding intensity.

So, one day, Doug Hooker stole one his own ships and set out to get revenge. 

Nine years later Hooker arrived in the Tau Ceti system and using intercepted radio broadcasts and welcoming messages from his erstwhile partner, located Loeffler's house on Plateau. Hooker dropped his ship into the world's atmosphere and hovered on his fusion rocket drive over the house, destroying everything in nuclear fire. 

Loeffler himself escaped, but his wife and son were killed in the attack. 

Plateau authorities eventually disabled Hooker's ship and forced him to land. Because of his illness, he wasn't held responsible for the murders. Instead, he was remanded into mental healthcare and eventually years later cured of his illness altogether by the colony's advanced medical technology and mental therapy. Sane at last, Hooker could not face what he had done, could not face Loeffler. And so, he once again took his ship and set out for a new colony world, Wunderland, hoping to start over. 

Loeffler, however, had been waiting for this moment and pursued in his own ship. 

You see, Loeffler had himself been driven insane by the murder of his family and had become consumed with hate for Hooker and the idea of revenge. 

The ships were at first separated by tens of thousands of miles, but the men were able to speak to each other over the radio. Hooker apologized and begged for Loeffler's forgiveness. But Greg Loeffler's rage had driven him to insanity and there would be no absolution for Hooker. The men dueled with powerful lasers across the vast distances. Eventually the terrible light of Loeffler's weapon went out and he stopped responding to Hooker's radio call, but his ship continued to pursue, closing ever so slowly on Hooker's vessel, intending to ram and kill them both. Hooker could not slow down or even turn, without allowing Loeffler to gain on him. 

They passed Wunderland and continued on into the void. 

The ships scooped up hydrogen from the interstellar medium, that's what a Bussard ramscoop is, and used it as fuel for their fusion rockets -- meaning they could travel theoretically forever. With the advanced medical care of their ships, both Hooker and Loeffler might live forever too. Over years, then decades, then centuries, Hooker daily went about his routine, the patterns of his life ingrained deeply into his mind. He could not stop fleeing and Loeffler would never stop pursuing. 

Neither man could ever change. 

The chase went on for thousands of years, driven by hate, madness, and revenge. 

I've been online daily for thirteen months now. 

I used to take a break every few days and spend it with my wife. 

I needed it. 

The insanity of these last few years, you can only stare into that abyss for so long before you start thinking about vaporizing people with your own fusion drive. 

But then the pandemic happened, COVID-19, and the shops and restaurants and all the places my wife and I used to go, closed up. 

Social Distance. 

Stay home. 

Wear a mask. 

But it was more than that. 

You see, we were also full-time caregivers for a family member who suffered from a debilitating mental illness, dementia, and physical degradation. When we took a day off, another family member would take over our duties for a few hours. But with the coming of COVID that was no longer possible because every physical contact increased the risk.

And so, for the last thirteen months, we've been on duty every minute of every day and I've been online every day, because there just wasn't much of anything else we could do. 

It takes a toll. 

This country is so deeply invested in hate and rage and paranoia that it approaches mass mental illness. You stare into that for twelve, sixteen, eighteen hours a day, everyday, and then have to deal with the demands of taking care of somebody suffering from actual mental illness every minute of every day, and it wears on you. 

Now, understand, I'm not looking for sympathy. 

I do what I do because I want to. My wife and I moved here and assumed responsibility because that's what we felt our duty was. And still do. 

But it's tough. 

We've been doing this, my wife and I, for four years now. 

Four years. 

That's the same period America has been going through its own trials. Four years of unending madness and rage and yet more madness. Four years of trying to keep things on track, minimize the damage, while irrational people lost in delusion and paranoia try to burn it all down. 

It grinds at you, it changes you, especially when there's no break. No way out. No relief. 

That's what happens to soldiers, when there's only unending stress. PTSD. Combat Fatigue. Shell shock. That's what happens when you can't get away from it. 

That's America, four years of insanity and relentless grinding pressure. 

We're all damaged from it, some more than others, some less. It has affected -- still affects -- us all in various ways. 

But that's thing, isn't it? 

Stress, rage, the fight or flight reflex, if it goes on long enough it becomes habit. 

More than habit, it becomes an addiction. 

When I came home from war the last time, I had been away a long time. 

Every day, even the good ones, were thirty-five hours of stress and effort and high-strung paranoia. 

And then suddenly -- suddenly just like that -- it was over. 

We came home. My wife picked me up from the base. I changed into civilian clothes. And it was over. 

It was over. 

And it just felt so damn good. 

Then -- then -- the next day, I was standing in the middle of a grocery store in Southern California with my family and it was suddenly just so ... surreal. Clean. Bright. Cheerful. Boring. People going about their business, just mundane everyday things.  

And I wanted to scream at them! GODDAMN, YOU SONS OF BITCHES, DON'T YOU KNOW THERE'S A WAR?! THERE ARE PEOPLE DYING AND WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU EVEN DOING?! For a while, it felt like I was screaming that inside my head all the time. I wanted to punch those people, beat them bloody. I hated those oblivious bastards, every one of them, I did. 

The thing is: those people had a right to their happiness. They have a right to live their lives, to be oblivious to my rage and pain and screaming madness. They did, they do. As furious as it made me, those people were not required to be miserable on my behalf. 

It took a while to get over that. 

But, I did get over it. Mostly, I guess. Eventually. 

Not everyone does. 

And not all of America is going to get over the last four years any time soon either. 

For me, yesterday, at least in the morning, well, it just felt so damn good. 

Four years of this asshole, right? 

Four damn years. For me, the last thirteen months, every damn day, I woke up and trudged out to my office and sat down behind my desk and opened social media, and there he was. That orange asshole. That pompous, self-aggrandizing, ignorant, stupid, bag of dicks, actively making the world a worse place, playing to the worst traits of humanity, like a demented child with a loaded pistol. Twelve, sixteen, eighteen hours a day sometimes, I'd be at it. Every damn day it was something else, something worse, something even more insane. 

He never hit bottom. 

He never got better, only more terrible. 

Every damn day. 

It wears on you. 

This last month, America on the verge of civil war, sedition, insurrection, armed goons storming the Capitol Building and threatening to do worse.

I don't know what it's like where you're at, but here in the Deep South, the seat of sedition and treason and those goddamned Confederate flags, the militias were out in the streets. I got death threats nearly every day. Hate. Rage. And endless seething maddess. 

My own personal situation deteriorated. 

I had to have heart surgery. I'm still recovering. 

The person my wife and I care for had to go into managed care. 

And to top it all off, I recently spent most of the evening sitting in a clinic waiting on a COVID test, because in the process of caring for our family member and moving her into care, my wife and I were both directly exposed to the disease. 

And after thirteen fucking months, this asshole of a country still doesn't have any sort of coherent organized response. 

I sat there, waiting on the results of the test, knowing that if I had it, I'd most likely die -- the Cardiologist made that abundantly clear. It wasn't the idea of my own possible death that made my hands shake and made me sick to my stomach, it was the idea of leaving my wife alone in this horrible fucking place and all the things I would need to do in whatever time I had left to made sure she would be okay. 

And then suddenly -- suddenly just like that -- it was over. 

The test came back negative. 

Joe Biden was sworn in as president.

Donald Trump and his miserable goons went down in ignominious pusillanimous defeat. 

And it just felt so damn good. 

Man, it did. 

For the first time in a long time, it just felt so damn good. 

I made some comments, on Twitter, on Facebook. Mocking the insanity of the last few years. It doesn't really matter what I said. My remarks were innocuous, light-hearted jokes. Because that's how I deal with close calls. Because that's how I stay sane. Because that's how I don't end up punching random people in the face and screaming in the middle of a grocery store. 

Because, goddamn, man, we made it.

We made it. 

Yeah, not all of us, that's certainly true, but we made it.  

It was over and for just one day I wanted to have some fun, laugh a little, feel good for a change. 

I should have known better. 

I don't mean that sarcastically. Given my own experience, I really should have known better. 

Those who celebrated in the streets of New York at the end of World War II, those iconic pictures of joy in our history books, those men and women they hadn't forgotten the terrible things that had happened, all those who died, the price they had paid.  

Not everyone made it, but they did. And they had a right to feel good in that moment when it was finally over. 

The work wasn't done, there was still decades of effort ahead, but in that one moment, they had every right to feel good, to laugh, to breathe.

Today, in this moment, so much of America is so utterly traumatized, that they can't -- literally cannot -- even enjoy just one day. 

For them, it's not over. 

It may never be over. 

The patterns of this madness are ingrained so deeply into their minds that it can never be over and the very thought of someone else enjoying the new day, however briefly, sends them into a rage, screaming, GODDAMN, YOU SONS OF BITCHES, DON'T YOU KNOW THERE'S A WAR?! THERE ARE PEOPLE DYING AND WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU EVEN DOING?!

That was my Twitter feed yesterday, where I got called a racist and worse (if there is a worse thing to be called for someone like me, I don't know). 

Now, don't get me wrong, I can see it. 

I can. 

I can see how my moment of frivolity, of joy, of happiness at having made it, lived through it, might enrage those who haven't yet. I can see how the happiness of straight white men might feel like abandonment to those who were marginalized. 

I can indeed see this. 

But, I'm not going to apologize for feeling good, even if for only a brief moment. I can understand why others might not feel the same. 

Nor am I going to apologize for blocking those who came after me, who in their own rage and pain needed a target of opportunity. I maybe understand how they feel and I would be the last one to say their feelings are not valid. But, I'm also responsible for my own precarious mental health and being a punching bag for others isn't healthy for me. And so, for good or ill, right or wrong, I have to block out their rage, because I have my own trauma to deal with. 

That said, I haven't forgotten the oppressed, I haven't dismissed them with a few jokes, I don't think I'm suggesting a "return to the status quo" as my liberal audience accused me of yesterday. Far from it. I know that we have decades of work yet to do. And I'll be there, as best I'm able. An ally if you'll have me. On my own if that's how it has to be. 

But once in while, Folks, you have to breathe. 

You have to let others have a moment of joy, of relief. 

You have to remember how to laugh. 

If you don't, the madness will consume you.

After thousands of years, when the ships were finally close enough, Hooker pointed his telescope at Loeffler's vessel and discovered that the life support system was gone. Burned away by Hooker's own laser canon millenia ago. 

Greg Loeffler had been dead for more than a thousand years.

But, before he died, he programmed his ship to continue the pursuit, to carry out his revenge, to carry on his rage and madness, relentlessly, no matter how long it took. 

Hooker turned off his scope screen and went down to the steam room. His schedule was shot to hell. He was still trying to readjust when, years later, Loeffler's ramscoop field swept across his ship like an invisible wing.

Two empty ships drove furiously toward the edge of the universe, all alone.
-- The Ethics of Madness, Larry Niven, 1967

Siesta

One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.
― George Orwell, 1984

I once lived in the South of Spain.

In the province of Andalucia, in a small sun drenched town on the Atlantic Bay of Cádiz near the Port of Santa María. 

You might recognize those names. Christopher Columbus outfitted his first expedition on the Rio Tinto, which empties into the bay (whether or not the expedition's flagship was named for the port and/or municipality there is subject to much conjecture). Some of the few surviving ships of the first Spanish Armada returned to the bay after their disastrous defeat in the English Channel and later the British invaded Cádiz to prevent a second Armada, sacking the city and leaving it in flames. 

The area is steeped in the history and culture of many nations, of Kings and Queens and castles and wars long gone, and nowadays it is wonderful idyllic tourist destination of sparkling beaches and great food and friendly people. 

I lived there in the 1980s, not all that long after the end of Francoist regime. 

Francisco Franco. 

He was once the nation's youngest general, a monarchist, brash, popular, he commanded Spain's forces in colonial Africa at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War and then through a complicated series of events and a lot of dead people, ended up Generalissimo and Spain's head of state in 1936. 

They called him el Caudillo, which means something like "warlord" or "strongman" or mostly just dictator. 

And he was certainly that. 

With Franco came the "Limpieza Social," the cleansing of society, the purge of liberals and Spanish Republicans. No one is really sure how many died in those early years of the regime. Franco repressed all opposition, making Spain a one party nation, and sent tens of thousand of his political opponents to concentration camps. Forced labor and mass executions killed maybe 200,000 Spaniards. Murders, rapes, and beatings by the military and police under Franco were common. And worse, much, much worse. 

In Spanish history, this time was known as "the White Terror." 

But, then there was the other side of it. 

Franco kept Spain "neutral" during WWII. More or less. 

Franco was sympathetic to Hitler and Mussolini, who had supported him during the Spanish Civil War. He famously met with Hitler in France to negotiate Spain's incorporation into the Axis powers. But Franco demanded too much from Germany and the deal never went through. So Spain mostly sat out the war, though gold and supplies flowed into occupied France via the infamous Canfranc international railway station in the Aragón Valley and the occasional trainload of Jews flowed out -- followed in the final days of the war by fleeing Nazis themselves. But most of Spain was glad to avoid the conflict. 

After the defeat of Germany and Italy and the coming of the Cold War, Franco presided over what would become known as the "Spanish Miracle," a period of rapid economic and social growth. Franco mellowed a bit, allowing for some limited political opposition and increasing ties to the West, particularly the United States. 

It was a time of peace, prosperity, and especially law and order. 

And that's important, because we're going to come back to that. Peace. Prosperity. Law and order. 

In his later years Franco struggled with Parkinson's disease and eventually began divesting himself of the day-to-day management of the nation -- though he remained in power until his death in 1975. 

By the time I got there the Monarchy had been restored under King Juan Carlos and Spain had become a benign democracy governed by a parliamentary system. 

Nowadays, Spain, like any other nation has its problems. The economy ebbs and flows, there are ethnic minorities who sometimes resort to terrorism in a bid for autonomy, there is crime, all the usual things. 

And that's the thing, right there. 

Those usual things didn't exist under Franco. Or not nearly as much. 

When I lived there, I would daily meet people who missed el Caudillo.

It wasn't so much the brutal dictatorship they missed. 

But rather it was the peace, the prosperity, and especially the order Franco imposed on the nation with an iron fist.

Let me give you an example: 

One day, I was robbed by gypsies.

Down in the harbor. Fortunately for me, they weren't interested in the expensive camera equipment I was carrying, just the American dollars in my wallet. Heroin, one of them explained, threatening me with a broken grappling hook taken from a fishing boat. They needed money for drugs. I got roughed up, lost $50, and walked away mostly intact. 

I reported the assault to the Spanish police, they shrugged. Gypsies, not much anyone can do about that. 

I reported the robbery to the American military police on the local base, they took down the information and shrugged. Gypsies. Stay out of the harbor, man. 

I told my landlord about it. She spat on the floor. Gypsies. During Franco's time, she explained, they would have been shot on sight by La Guardia Nacional. Nobody was ever robbed by gypsies under Franco, the streets were safe. 

You can go to Spain today and still find those who miss Francisco Franco. 

Not as much as when I lived there, but some. The older generation. The conservatives. 

The streets were safe. 

Peace. 

Prosperity. 

Law and Order. 

That's what they miss.

They weren't the ones disappeared into the camps. They weren't the ones shot down in the street. They were the ones who built businesses and lives and homes under Franco's Spanish Miracle. And they were decent people, they were. Kind, friendly, hard working. But, they missed the dictator. 

The longer Franco was dead, the more nostalgic they were for that time. 

No one was robbed by gypsies under Franco. 

The streets were safe.

That's how it's going to be for us. 

Oh, Trump isn't any el Caudillo. 

Franco really was a tough guy, Trump is a sack of soggy tissue paper who just pretends to be. 

Still, even though Trump didn't -- as yet -- herd his political enemies into concentration camps, 230,000 Americans are dead by his hand anyway. More will certainly die before he leaves office. And maybe Franco was a piker in comparison. 

And now that Trump's days are numbered, now that a benign government waits to take over in his stead, it's important to remember that there will be those who miss him. 

Peace, they'll say. Trump got us out of Iraq and Afghanistan. He kept us out of Syria. 

Prosperity, they'll point out. Trump was good for the stock market, for bankers, for Wall Street, for rich people. And what's good for the wealthy is good for us. 

Law and Order, they'll tell us, nostalgically. Trump kept the streets safe. 

None of this is true, of course, just as it never really was in Spain. But that's how they'll remember it. With fondness. 

Because it wasn't them. 

Because it wasn't their lives. It wasn't their rights. It wasn't their fathers who died in some foreign land at the orders of an incompetent. It wasn't their children shot down in the streets for the crime of being Black in America. It wasn't their mother who died alone, afraid, in a hospital on a respirator. It wasn't their liberty, their justice, their freedom, that was in peril. 

No, they got a tax break. They turned a profit. They got rich. They got license to exploit America's resources without regard to the future or any responsibility for the consequences. 

And it's more than that, more than just greed and selfishness, it's that Trump told them they were great. 

Trump made it okay to be a racist, a bigot, a sexist. Trump made it so they didn't have to hide who they really are, down there underneath the thin veneer of civilization. Trump let them wave the Nazi flag and said they were good people. The Klan, the Confederates, the Proud Boys, the Incels, and the raggedy-ass militia just spoiling for a limpieza social of their own, Trump was their Jesus -- a white Republican Jesus, who didn't tell them to be better, but instead gave them permission to be who they already were. 

They're gonna miss Trump.

They don't want him to go. 

They don't want to have to go back to pretending to be civilized. 

Most of all they don't want to admit what Trump actually is. 

I mean, they know, but they're terrified of it being out in the open. Of what comes next. Of having to admit they followed a guy who is a monster. 

Trump thought, like any dictator, that he was going to stay in office for life. He joked about it, a third term, maybe a fourth, a dynasty. 

But it wasn't really a joke. He believed it.

He mocked those who lost political elections as "losers" and failures and sissy boys. 

And now, because of that, he can't face his own defeat. 

His supporters -- those wannabe stormtroopers, those revolutionaries -- they can't face his defeat. 

He's shamed, literally ashamed by his defeat. He can't face it. Can't face the public. Can't face his supporters. Can't face himself. 

Because he just can't imagine himself losing. 

And yet he has. 

Every day his defeat grows greater. He's losing one ballot count after another and he'll lose the recounts too. 

Every day he loses another lawsuit, another attempt to win the election by fiat. He'll lose them all, every one of them. 

Every day he loses those he trusted the most. He's lost Fox News, he'll lose the rest of them too. 

And he's ashamed. Mortified. He just can't admit it. He'll never admit it. He'll find some way to claim victory, even as Joe Biden swears the Oath of Office and settles into the White House. 

And so, like a spoiled child, he rages. He's holed up, furiously tweeting, red faced in shame. Grasping at anything, Hannity, Dobbs, OAN, anything and anyone who'll tell him he's not a loser. 

That's Trump, that's who he's always been, a manufactured narrative and a fragile ego inflated by the adulation of others. Even if he's got to buy that attention. 

He says he won't go, but he will. 

He will. 

There might might be violence, but in the end he's going to go. 

Trump is no Franco. And America isn't 1930s Spain. 

In the end, after the counts and recounts, after the lawsuits have been thrown out, after the tantrums and the tweets and the threats to run again in 2024, in the end he'll fold. In the end, Trump will stumble down the steps of the White House for the last time and a helicopter will carry him away into oblivion. 

Because Trump isn't any revolutionary.

He's just a sad broken old man who never grew up.

If this were a dictatorship, it would be a heck of a lot easier. As long as I'm the dictator. Hehehe.
― George W. Bush

Decisions

On Undecided Voters: To put them in perspective, I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. "Can I interest you in the chicken?" she asks. "Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?" 

To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.

— David Sedaris, American humorist 

It's Election Day in America.

The choices have never been more stark.

Rarely, in the history of this nation have the choices been more polar opposites, more obvious.

So, if you're still undecided this morning...

...maybe democracy isn't for you

...seriously, maybe you're just too damn stupid for democracy

...maybe you should be living in a monarchy where government is made up of a hereditary chinless hemophiliac aristocracy and you don't actually have to do anything other than just follow orders like a good little peasant

...or one of those "Democratic Republic of" totalitarian states where you get to vote for whoever the government tells you to vote for and everybody else gets taken out back and shot

...yeah, maybe totalitarianism is more your speed

...maybe you're just a fascist. 

Maybe. 

Because if you're still undecided at this point, you're basically those Germans who pretended they weren't actual Nazis while the ash from the crematoriums fell around them like snow.

The truth of the matter is that you've decided. 

You've decided. 

See, if you're still undecided at this point you've decided on fascism.

If you're still undecided at this point, you've decided that no matter how it shakes out, you'll be okay.

You've decided that you don't give a shit about anybody but yourself. And you? Well, you'll be fine. You're white. You're male. You're straight. You're Christian. You're rich -- or rich enough. You're privileged in some way, in enough ways, that you'll be fine. You're okay. You'll be dead before the bill comes due. It's not you they're coming for. You can afford to be undecided. You can stay home. You can throw your vote away.

You've decided that only profit matters. 

You've decided it's okay for you to pay for the wealthy, and they they shouldn't have to pay their fair share. 

You've decided freedom, liberty, justice, those things are only for those who can afford it.

You've decided you don't give a damn about the poor, the hungry, the sick, the homeless, the disfranchised.  You've decided that those people have it coming. 

You've decided you don't care if American citizens get shot down in the street by militarized police. 

You've decided that you're okay with racism. 

You've decided that seeing the Nazi flag and that of the Confederacy in the streets of America, the very symbols of hate, genocide, and slavery, is something you're comfortable with. 

You've decided that a president who daily lies to your face and calls it patriotism is something you want. 

You've decided you prefer conspiracy theory and hysteria to unpleasant truth and science and reason. 

You've decided that you just don't give a goddamn about the future, about the world you're leaving for your children and mine. If the seas rise and the forests burn and the crops die, you're okay with that. After all, you won't be around to see it and you've decided your profit and your comfort and your politics today are more important to you than a decent future for someone else. 

You've decided that 220,000 dead Americans don't matter. They were just losers anyway. 

You've decided that owning the libs, pissing people off, malice for the sake of malice, is who you are. 

That's you. 

That's who you are. 

You've decided that you want to live in a nation surrounded by walls and barbed wire and machine guns. You've decided that you want to live in a prison of your own making, rather than do one goddamned thing to make the world a better place. 

If you're undecided at this point, you've decided. 

You're just ashamed of your decision and don't have the guts to admit it.

You're not a patriot. 

You're not an idealist. 

You're not standing on principle, because you really don't have any. 

No. You're an arsonist. 

But, see, people die in a fire, and you, you dirty rotten lazy selfish son of bitch, you just want to watch them burn. 

Arson isn't principle, it's terrorism.

And if even if you yourself didn't light the match, if you stand by, undecided, and watch others start the fire, well, you're still a terrorist. 

That's who you've decided to be.

But you can change that. 

You can.

If you truly want a better nation, then you need to be a better citizen. 

Now -- right now -- is that moment. 

You can't blame anyone else. No one but yourself. You have to make your own choices and live every agonizing day with the consequences of those choices.
― Max Brooks, World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War

Oblivion

 

"To add value to others, one must first value others."
--John Maxwell

What can we do to improve morale? 

That was the question a senior officer once asked me.  

What can we do? 

To improve morale. 

He really should have known better than to ask someone like me. 

But they never do. 

I was assigned to a ship homeported out of a major naval station. It doesn't really matter which one, they're all pretty much the same.

This was a year or so into the war. Which one? Doesn't really matter, they're all pretty much the same. As such, it was still popular for elected officials to be seen making the rounds, shaking hands, talking to the troops. Oorah! And so on and so forth. 

The usual patriotic bullshit for the voters back in the flyover states. 

Some Senator or Secretary or some such animal (they're all pretty much the same) had rolled through base a few weeks before and made the mistake of asking how things were going.

Enlisted Sailors and Marines aren't exactly shy and they generally know an opportunity when they see one.

So they told him. 

They told him exactly how things were going a year into an ill-conceived war started on a lie. 

Oh boy, did they tell him. 

He was shocked. But, then they always are. They're always surprised when the guys they send to catch the bullets aren't all that enthusiastic about the project. That's always a surprise, given how popular war always is back in Washington and all. But, if you don't want to know, you shouldn't have asked. Should have just got your wartime reelection picture with the troops and headed back to the cornfields of Iowa or wherever it is these assholes come from. 

But, no, you had to ask. 

Disillusioned, the Senator met with the base Commanding Officer and told him there was a morale problem.

Now, I'm sure the CO demonstrated suitable surprise. What? No way! Why, I'll have to look into that, Senator! We'll certainly get to the bottom of it and have these troops singing God Bless America in no time! Thank you for bringing it to my attention!

Right.

Problem is, Senators tend to have staff, and staff tends to follow up on things like military morale issues because pretending to give a shit is a really easy way to get some votes from military parents in Corn Country. 

So, the Captain had to look like he was actually doing something. 

And thus, a few weeks later a bunch of officers who had far, far better things to do (like, you know prepare our respective units for another wartime deployment), ended up in the base auditorium for Commanding Officers Call. 

What can we do to improve morale?

Stop wasting my time with these idiotic Commanding Officer's Calls, for starters. 

But, naturally you can't say that out loud.

So I did what I usually did in such situations: Sat up straight and fired up my official government issue Palm Pilot (this was before smartphones) and proceeded to see how many rounds of Solitaire I could beat before the senior officers solved the morale problem and we could get back to the business of war. 

And then, they made a mistake. 

They asked me. 

Some smarmy looking ring knocker scanning the audience spotted me seemingly not paying attention and thought he'd score some points with the Captain. Chief Warrant Officer! Do you have any suggestions? 

Me?

Do I have any suggestions? 

Now, if you don't understand the difference between regular Navy officers and Chief Warrant Officers, well, the easiest way to explain it is that when they say "an Officer and a Gentleman" they're talking about the first kind. 

No one -- no one -- would confuse a Chief Warrant Officer with a gentleman. Even in bad light. 

Warrant Officers are former enlisted Chief Petty Officers, as a group they have a reputation for being supremely competent under any circumstance and supremely unpleasant in all of them. 

We're the people you call when it's all gone to hell and a gentleman would have to get his hands dirty. 

Sure, I have some suggestions, I answered. First of all, in 20 years of service, I have never once heard a enlisted Sailor or Marine or Soldier or Airman say they were getting out because they didn't get enough money for college -- or whatever idiotic suggestion it was just floated by the Lieutenant over there.

Troops always say the same thing: I'm getting out because I'm sick and tired of all the bullshit. 

Bullshit? But what do you mean, bullshit? 

Well, said I, lemme give you an example. 

These people, they swore to give their lives for this country. And they will. They'll deploy for a year into the warzone, over and over, leaving their families behind, risking their lives every damned day in a war that nobody even knows what the fuck we're fighting for. 

They'll do that without complaint (mostly). 

But then they come home. 

They come back here, to this base. 

And you know what? 

They have to sit for two hours every single morning, in a line of cars outside the main gate, waiting to get on base. They have give up an hour of precious sleep, because there are only two gates open. And only two lanes per gate. There are a dozen other gates that could be used, but they're not open. Then when they get on base, they have to spend 30 minutes trying to find a parking spot. Why? Because everything on this base is more important than they are. Everything. 

See, I counted. 

That's right, I drove around the base and I counted the number of parking spots down by the waterfront that are taken up with ... potted plants. 

Yes, you heard me correctly. Potted plants. 

Big stone containers with palm trees or flowers. Base beautification. The result of a visit by some other Senator or some such do-gooder. 

A hundred parking spots, taken up by plants.

Plants are more important than the men and woman who crew the ships. Plants get better parking. 

Another couple of dozen parking spots are taken up by dumpsters. That's right, trash dumpsters. 

Dumpsters are more important than Sailors.

Another hundred, or more, spots are reserved for contractors. 

Contractors are more important than Sailors. 

There are entire parking lots reserved for equipment. Can't park there, because tanks and APCs and trucks are more important than Marines. 

You know where enlisted people park? A mile away, on the other side of the fucking highway, and then they have to hike all the way across the base to get to their ships. 

Every day. 

They lose two hours of sleep, of time with their families, just to get on base and find a goddamn parking spot. 

So, said the Captain, puzzled, it's the parking? 

No, it's not goddamned parking. You wanted an example, I gave you one. It's not just the parking, it's everything. 

Everything else is more important than the men and women who are willing to give up their own lives for this country. And everything on this base, every minute of every day, demonstrates that. 

You might not see it, but they sure as shit do. 

When they say they're tired of all the bullshit, that's the kind of bullshit they're talking about. 

Fix that. 

And it's an easy fix. It won't cost you a penny. All you have to do, is show people some respect. That's it. Get rid of the goddamn planters. Make the goddamn contractors park on the other side of the highway, they can afford to run a shuttle bus. Or walk, God knows they're getting paid enough. Park the goddamn equipment over there too. When you're ready to load it on the ships, you can drive it over.

Show these people that they matter more than plants, more than contractors, more than dumpsters, more than tanks. That's just one example, there are hundreds more and you'll have no problem finding ways to show your people you care about them if you go looking for the opportunity. 

It's not about parking, it's about people.

You know what the Captain said? 

Do you? I'll bet the veterans can guess. 

He said, "I don't understand. I don't have any trouble getting on base."

I don't have any trouble getting on base. 

I thought he was joking. 

I really did. 

But he wasn't. He wasn't capable of understanding. He heard "parking" and that's as far as his brain would go. He could not, or would not, see the bigger picture. See the people. 

I couldn't believe he could be that dense or that privileged. 

But he was. 

I don't have any trouble getting on base, he said. I don't have any trouble finding a parking spot. 

No shit? 

You don't have any trouble? 

See, there was a special gate just for senior officers. A special lane, just for them. And a reserved parking spot right in front of their office. This guy showed up every morning, drove past 20,000 enlisted Sailors and Marines in line to get on base, and was waved through the gate without slowing down. 

He didn't have any trouble and he couldn't see what the problem was. 

Note: Not all commanding officers are this dense. Maybe not even a majority. This guy was a special case. 

He waved his hand for me to sit down and they moved on to somebody else. I went back to Solitaire. There wasn't much point in paying any further attention. Eventually they decided the morale problem was solved because Sailors and Marines always bitch and so there really wasn't any problem after all.  

And then we all got back to work, with two hours stolen out of a day that already didn't have enough time in it.  

And they probably bought some more potted plants too. 

I think about that moment every once in a while. Often lately. 

Ask any senior military leader what their most valuable asset is and they'll say people. 

It's the people. That's what's important. 

Maybe they even think they really mean it. Some of them anyway. 

But it's not. 

It's not.

Everything is more important than people. The mission. The equipment. The money. The war. The potted plants. The contractors. The dumpsters. The Senators. That's what matters. 

You can always get more people -- until you can't.

The Command is a reflection of the Commander.

As is the morale of the troops.

Out here in the civilian world, it's the president's job to care about the people. 

It's his job to agonize over the lives lost. 

The president isn't a military general for a damned good reason. 

He's a civilian, because it's his job to actually put people first. 

It's one thing when when it's low morale on a military base because the CO is a self-centered tool. 

It's another thing entirely when it's the guy in charge of the country. 

Trump ignored the pandemic, back when we might have stopped it. 

He called it a hoax, the flu, a plot by his political enemies to make him look bad. 

Everything else was more important than people. Everything. The stock market, profit, business, the job numbers, his popularity, his reelection. Golf. And probably potted plants too, for all I know. 

The Senators asking questions? The Congress People demanding a plan? Trump saw that as an irritation. Just people in way of the mission -- which in Trump's case is profit. 

He repeatedly ignored the advice of experts, deferring again and again to the toadies and sycophants and those who told him what he wanted to hear. He listened to the advice of fringe conspiracy theorists over that of the nation's best scientists. He's still doing it. 

He attacked and mocked the experts, the warnings, the simple basic proven actions we all could have taken to make things better if only we had a real leader who actually cared about people. 

And he refused, utterly refused, to see what was happening right in front of his face.

Because everything -- everything -- is more important to Donald Trump than people.  

And then he got it. 

No. Heh heh. Not a clue. He didn't get a clue. 

The plague. He got that. 

He got it because his own shitty irresponsible behavior made it inevitable that he would. 

He not only got it because his own behavior put him at risk, he quite literally infected dozens of others. Hundreds. Maybe thousands, if you include his rallies and meetings where he repeatedly encouraged the very behavior that led directly to his own infection. 

The numbers are climbing again. The infection rates are going up. 220,000 dead now and more deaths coming. 

The nation and its attitude towards this disease is a reflection of its leaders. Of Trump. 

As is its disorganized, ineffective, fatal response. 

Because underneath it all, Trump just can't see it. Won't see it. Isn't capable of seeing it.

When Trump got it, he was attended by a personal doctor at taxpayer expense. Literally Trump is that doctor's only patient. 

He was flown in a taxpayer funded government helicopter to the best hospital in the country. A government hospital, staffed by government doctors and government scientists and government nurses and government technicians and government staff. Something Trump says is bad, it's socialism if you get it. But, for him, well, it's his right because he deserves it. 

He was installed in a private luxury suite reserved just for him at taxpayer expense and a team of 20 doctors was assigned to his case. That was their only job. Trump was their only patient. Their entire attention was on him. He was given the very best care possible and treated with advanced experimental medications that cost more than a million dollars per dose and are not available to anyone else. Just him. And we paid for it all. 

Not a single penny of Trump's treatment came from his own pocket.

Just like income taxes: You do all the paying, he gets all the reward. 

And then, instead of listening to the experts, he went for a joyride solely in order to stroke his own ego. Putting a dozen more people at risk for no reason whatsoever. People, who if infected by Trump, would not have gotten the same care he got -- indeed Trump and Republicans tell you that you don't deserve the same treatment because it'll cut into profits. 

After which, Trump flew back to the White House while still infectious and went right back to acting like an irresponsible jackass, literally ripping off his mask on the White House steps. 

And now, here he is. 

It's not so bad, he says. 

The flu is worse. This pandemic is a plot to make me look bad. I don't understand what you're talking about. I don't understand why people are worried. Look at me, I beat it all by myself. Heck, everybody should get it. Herd immunity!

He is utterly oblivious. 

He's that captain, driving past 20,000 Sailors trying to get on base and he sees nothing, never looks up, the guards wave him through without stopping and he rolls into his reserved parking spot precisely on time and he just can't understand why anyone else has a problem. 

And now what is he talking about? Profit. The stock market. Reelection. Blaming others. Attacking his political opponents for his own failures. Everything is more important to Donald Trump than people who might be infected because of his failed leadership. 

Everything is more important than the actual citizens who he swore to protect. 

Of course, the analogy isn't a perfect one.

Military Officers are often single minded for a reason. 

They have to put the mission before the people. 

That's what being an officer is. 

In the end, that's the job. As an officer, one day you might have to order your people to give up their lives. You might have to order them forward into fire, knowing they likely won't survive. Even on a good day, you have to order tired people to give more than they want -- or they thought they could.

You can't do that, if people really come first. 

For us, it's duty. Duty comes first. Responsibility comes first. War comes first. Because that's the job. It won't win you any points with the voters back in Iowa, probably why General and Admiral aren't elected positions, but that's the job. And sometimes when you go from doing that to commanding a base back home, you forget to switch gears -- or you can't. And then, sometimes even when you can put people first, you don't. You put the potted plants first, or the contractors, or the dumpsters, or the equipment. 

And that's a failing on your part. 

But the fallout of that failing is limited by design. 

And there are very real consequences for officers who can't balance the requirements of duty against the needs of their people. 

Just as there should be limits on presidential power and consequences for failure. 

Should be. 

That's what our founders intended, that there should be immediate and dire consequences for any president, any elected leader, who fails to put people first. 

As Trump has repeatedly failed to do. 

That is the entire point of the Constitution. 

The Constitution doesn't protect profit, or business, or the stockholder, or even government. It was designed to put the citizen first. People first. We require our elected leaders -- and our military -- to swear allegiance to the Constitution for that very reason. 

When profit and power mean more than people, when political ideology comes first before loyalty to the nation or even to the idea of civilization itself, there can be no liberty, no justice, no freedom.

In the civilian world, people must come first and there must be immediate and dire consequences for those leaders who disregard their duty to the people. 

Or what then is the point of civilization?

If you want a better nation, be a better citizen. 

"You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand." 
--Woodrow Wilson