Aging.

 I was once in a position where I worked with people that were regarded to be very important on subjects that were deemed (by those very same, very important people) to be very important. I had rank, was healthy, strong and could remember what I had for breakfast. Today, I have no position, do not work on anything terribly important to anyone else, and can not remember having breakfast, let alone what it was. The remarkable thing is that my happy/unhappy ratio is just about the same as it was back when I was important. Most of all, I understand how fortunate I am. I am married to a wonderful person, we have our own home, and, so far, at least, we can manage to scrape together enough pennies to take care of day-to-day expenses. I see a lot of other people at all stages of life who can not find happiness and I shake my head (slowly to avoid the disturbing sound of excessive rattling) and take pity on them. My advice to my elderly friends is to adopt my secret approach to aging.

First, you have to take an honest look at yourself as you are today, not back in your glory days. You have to accept your limitations and polish any advantages you might still have from back when you were smoking hot poop. You don’t have to tell others about any of your failings that they might not yet know about, but you have to understand them and accept them. Second, you have to understand that you can not retire. To retire is to die. You may not be able to any longer do what you used to do, but you need to do something that exercises as much of mind and body as is left from the glory days. Anything that retires, rusts and disintegrates more rapidly than would otherwise be the case, and that includes people. Third, you have to be judicious as to how much cutting edge technology you incorporate into your life. In my case, passwords are obviously meant for younger minds. Fourth, you have to be ruthlessly honest with yourself and understand exactly where you are on the inevitable slippery slide to oblivion. Pretending that you are more capable than you are is going to lead to great disappointment when the secret is outed because you crapped in your pants at the church social.

I try to keep up with what is going on around me, and I try to help others. I recommend that you other geezers should consider doing the same thing. Old folks may be weak in mind and body, but every single one of us also have some very valuable life experience that just might help somebody else somewhere along the line as long as it is honestly offered. We may not be any smarter than the next guy or gal, but we have been there and done a lot of that before, and we know where some of the mouse traps are. WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! You can not expect youth to listen to you. Young people know everything by definition, but they are sly little buggers too. As long as you are clever enough, they won’t admit it, but they will hear some of what you try to tell them. (Hear as opposed to listen.) That is the best that you can hope for and it should not discourage you, because you are ministering to yourself as much as you are the guy down the block that you are trying to help. (That is the profound thought here.)

If I could just …, I’d actually enjoy old age, because fewer people fight you for the seat on the bus and physical danger is less frightening because you are going to die day after tomorrow anyway.

Chainsaws, Bloated Bureaucracy and Human Decency.

 I wholeheartedly support the Trump Administration’s desire to reduce the size of the government bureaucracy and I understand the new Administration’s focus on firing large numbers of folks working in government jobs, rather than pursing some sort of slower, more measured, approach to the challenge of government overstaffing. I find it ridiculous that you can stay home and collect a government check for “working.” Having said that, I also feel very sorry for the folks who are being fired. The very nature of the situation ensures that many, if not most, are going to have a very difficult time finding employment, the equal of what they are losing. Private business is often more demanding than is government employment and lacks many of the job descriptions found in government organizations. A person that has worked ten years in an arcane, useless government position will find it very difficult to transfer that work experience to the private sector.

Retaining the benefits attendant on government employment will also be extremely difficult, if not impossible. Insurance, housing, health, education, all become serious challenges for the individual, very few of whom set out to be a problem for society. Long term financial planning, to the extent that there was any, will be seriously damaged if not obliterated. The vast majority of these folks were doing what they were told to do and the system was far more responsible for their inefficiency than were the individuals caught up in the governmental morass. I repeat, I support the reduction in federal employment and believe that it would be good to extend the effort to state and country levels as well, but I also want to take care of the poor slobs caught up in the budgeteers drag net. Not to do so is just plain wrong and I do not now see any thinking about how to handle the challenge. The political leaders that were invested in inefficient government are attempting to stop the purge and the zealots that are trying to fix decades of sloth with a chainsaw are equally misguided.

What is required is a slower, more considered approach to the issue. The problem with that is that the zealots know for a fact that if they don’t get it done right now, they will lose their chance in the very next flip flop that is inevitably coming down the political road at us. My guess is that the chainsaw zealots will continue to dominate for enough time to accomplish major reductions in the size of our bureaucracy and that it will have very little adverse effect on the functioning of our national government. I am also cynical enough to believe that while it will reduce government spending, it will not improve the efficiency of our government. Excessive size is a financial and organizational burden, but not a serious intellectual burden. Smart government is not a function of size. A smaller, leaner bureaucracy may well be less expensive, but it is not necessarily smarter, just as a bigger govvernment is not necessarily smarter. In order to produce smarter government, you have to improve the quality of the people doing the governing and that brings us back to the quality of the general society from which these people are drawn.

America is well enough educated to produce an acceptable bureaucracy, but our head is all f*cked up with imaginary hogwash. I am here talking about you and me, because we are the pool from which our bureaucracy is drawn. We are mindlessly blue or red, not red, white and blue. We argue with one another about the sign on the bathroom door and you expect us to produce a decent bureaucracy, let alone intelligent leadership? Our bloated bureaucracy is a function of our society, not a given politician and the chainsaw crew is merely a reaction rather than a considered solution. I feel really sorry for the poor slobs that are caught up in the current purge and I am critical of the ardent cost cutters who are not thinking about the lives of the people that are the statistics about which they brag so smugly.

My solution to the bloated bureaucracy remains the solution that I advocated when I was part of the bloat. Every supervisor should be given the task of developing a plan that would reduce his or her unit of government annually by some factor. Say 10%. If the individual supervisor failed to do that, he or she would be removed. The supervisor would also be required to provide a time line for the reduction to take place. That too would be subject to review by that person’s supervisor. Exceptions could be made by superiors. Programs would be developed to assist employees that were let go transition to other employment in the private sector. The overriding policy would recognize that inefficiency is the system’s fault as much as the individual’s fault.

Trump and Ukraine.

 One of my readers recently commented that “The deal Trump is reaching with Moscow represents a complete capitulation and an unprecedented self-humiliation for the United States. Trump of course has no sense of a shared idea of “The West” which would bind us to Western Europe. Rather he sees international relations as transactions, with the goal of self-enrichment. He will lift sanctions on Russia in return for favorable treatment for his -and Musk’s - business interests. The remaining Ukrainian rump state will be given over to be raped by US mining companies.” While much of this comment is unadulterated Trump hate, some of it is valid, particularly the statement that Trump “sees international relations as transactions, with the goal of self-enrichment.” The implication that he is trying to increase his own business interests is overblown anti-Trump rhetoric, but twisting it just slightly from self-enrichment to national enrichment would, I think, be a valid observation.

The vast majority of Americans, I believe, support Ukraine in its effort to be free of undue Russian influence and control. I confess that I share this feeling. I spent thirty years of my life engaged in dealing with Soviet expansionism and aggression. There is absolutely no question in my mind, but that Putin is bent on reestablishing the Soviet Union, and I vehemently oppose that objective. As always, the question before us is how to accomplish our objective without actually triggering a war that would inevitably escalate to the use of massive numbers of accurately targeted nuclear weapons. When I was still in harness, we had a significant military edge in both conventional and nuclear capabilities. WOKE and complacency has badly eroded that edge. Trump is dealing with the result in a radically different way than Biden did, and it is understandably frightening us as well as our European friends. I am not an ardent fan of either of these two people, but when faced with the choice I continue to choose Trump, even as I dislike much of his style of operation.

Much is said about Putin’s evil objectives and Trump haters are quick to charge that our president is accommodating the evil dictator when he should be vigorously standing up to him. These very same people demand that we castrate our military and reduce our financial support for it while systematically avoiding military service themselves. Ladies, gentlemen, and confused, WOKE men pretending to be women will not deter Vladimir Putin, Xi Jin Peng, or the Ayatollahs no mater how loud their whining. Trump is far from a perfect leader, but he is vastly preferable to the people that permitted Ukraine and Russia to kill each other for three long years while simultaneously destroying much of the world economy and stimulating other ridiculously stupid conflicts in other parts of the world.

Vladimir Putin is an evil man. His policies are detrimental to our interests - short term and long term alike. Zelensky is a gutsy Ukrainian leader that leads a country, much of which wants to distance itself from Moscow and move toward Western Europe. It was not in America’s interest to permit this disagreement to tip into a shooting war. Nor is it possible for us to do much about how the basic disagreement plays out in the future. That is going to be determined by Ukrainians and Russians. What is in our interest is to end the shooting and turn the argument back to the negotiating table. Biden did not understand this. Trump does. Now the president is engaged in breaking the eggs for the omelet. If I knew enough, I may not agree with how he is going about it, but I don't, and I am very glad that he is. I wish him well. Having said that, I would caution him against unnecessarily diminishing Zelensky’s leadership at this critical stage of the tragedy and I would also caution him with regard to his personal relationship with Putin. It is a fine line that he is walking and an important one with implications everywhere you look.

What is Trump up to in Ukraine...

 Like. everybody else, I am trying to figure out what Trump is up to in Ukraine. Like everybody else, I am confused by his seemingly unprovoked attack on Zelensky. Joseph Bosch has an article in The Hill today that argues that “Trump finally shows his cards — he’s siding with Russia “ Others argue that he is trying to set the stage for Zelensky to accept a compromise with Moscow that otherwise would be unacceptable. The one consistent in the mix is our president’s focus on Ukraine’s rare minerals. Interestingly, that has generated the only substantive public comment that I have seen out of Moscow - “Trump keep your hands off of Ukraine’s rare minerals.”

My guess is that there are two Americans engaged in negotiating the end of the war in Ukraine - Kellogg and Trump. Nobody else is playing any substantive role and both of them are deeply involved in the actual negotiation. The Lavrov/Rubio meeting in Riyadh was more relevant to Gaza than Ukraine and all of the commentary in the press is pure speculation by people who are totally out of touch with the reality of the negotiation. Trump is carrying the heavier load in as much as he is attempting to craft the essence of the agreement in his telephone calls with Putin. General Kellogg is charged with selling “the deal” to Zelensky. Everybody else is commenting on it for reasons of their own and can be divided into Trump-haters and Trump-lovers. Few in the general public are making any effort to see what is actually happening and that disgusts me even more than the issues involved in the war itself, because it reflects badly on us here in America.

My assumption is that Russia will keep most, if not all, of the territory that it now holds, Ukraine will withdraw from its incursion into Russia proper, and some sort of shared international cost will be announced for the reconstruction of Ukraine’s infrastructure. Our part of that later expenditure will be to some extent moderated by the rare mineral deal that is currently a major detail in the three-way negotiation. An extremely important part of the deal will be Europe’s role in it. Recent blather in Europe and here in this country would seem to indicate that it is a highly contentious subject that spills over into America’s role in Europe more widely. It is not impossible that our future troop levels in Europe will be part of the conversation between Trump and Putin as will Ukraine’s future position vis-a-vis Russian and American interests in European political alignment. My current guess is that Ukraine will not soon be permitted to associate itself with Western Europe - either in NATO or in the European Union, but it is not impossible that some sort of vague language to this effect might be crafted.

My assumption is that Putin will be delighted if we decide to reduce our troop deployment in Europe because Europe is not investing enough in their own defense. Consideration of that issue opens the door to an even wider set of considerations about the future role of America in Europe. This is going to scare the average American and European out of their mind, and there are a plethora of obvious dangers involved, but there is also the opportunity to change the fundamental relationship between Russia (not Putin), Europe, and the United States. I would love to be a part of that negotiation because I believe that it is the only way that we can begin to address the real problems that face humanity.

PS: Compare the content of our current “conversation” out here in the hustings with what I am talking about here, and ask yourself whether we can handle the responsibilities inherent in a democracy.

The type of diversity that we seek can actually destroy us.

 CNN has an article out today discussing President Trump's celebration of Black History month and arguing that his effort to halt the use of diversity as a criteria for employment in the government is inconsistent with a celebration of social progress within the black community. I disagree with CNN and wholeheartedly agree with President Trump. Selecting government officials because they were born men, and now wear lipstick, is not a sensible thing to do. Just as denying a person a position because he or she is black is wrong, hiring a person because he or she is black is equally wrong. Job related qualifications should be the criteria, not diversity for diversity's sake.

This argument is ludicrous, and very unfortunately, a comment on the mindlessness of the American people. There. are literally millions of people in this world that are fighting for enough food to stay alive and you and I are pretending that we are engaged in bettering mankind by increasing the social, cultural and racial diversity of our civil service. What we are is much different. We are a bunch of privileged, wimpish, malcontents that were born into wealth beyond belief and are focused on one or another imaginary world invented out of whole cloth and totally unrelated to what is happening outside of our non-existent borders.

People in the rest of the world are jealous of our wealth, and aware of our weaknesses. They play us in different ways depending on their own strengths and weaknesses. Our current fascination with diversity is well understood by our friends and enemies alike and their policies vis-a-vis America are adjusted accordingly. Trump's efforts to change America are not only disturbing the status quo inside this country but also in virtually all of the rest of the world and it goes well beyond diversity. We are presently involved in a major challenge to the status quo in the entire world. There are opportunities and dangers. It is way too bad that the American people refuse to think about what is happening. If we were unified, we could actually change the world for the better, but if we continue to mindlessly urinate on each other we are going to miss the opportunity and risk further complicating and demeaning our future.

It is infinitely ironic that the type of diversity that we seek can actually destroy us.

Europe's level of participation in NATO

 President Trump, Vice President Vance, Secretary of Defense Hegseth are uniformly critical of Europe's level of participation in NATO and the NATO countries are trying to get their heads around the vigor of the criticism that is presently coming their way from Washington. Now, we have Trump's decision to negotiate the end of the war in Ukraine directly with Putin, without so much as a whisper to any of our European allies about what he has in mind. On top of all of that, the American President is gratuitously maligning the Ukrainian President publicly.

I advocate stopping this very dangerous, very ridiculous war, and have written to that effect since it started three years ago. I advocate bringing Russia back into the family of nations even though I see Putin as being a thug of the worst sort. Having said all of that, I do not like President Trump's unhelpful, over-simplified, ignorant, rhetoric regarding the start of the idiotic war, nor do I approve of his gratuitously maligning President Zelensky. I understand that he is in something of a hurry, but his haste is needlessly working against him. He is once again making enemies of friends needlessly and it will tarnish whatever positive results he will be able to achieve vis-a-vis the stupid war.

I presume that our President feels that he does not have time to pussy foot around, and he wants to cut to the core of all of the problems that afflict this country. The very magnitude of the effort is generating massive amounts of unease, not only here in this country but around the world. My guess is that Trump would agree with me and would argue that his actions are necessary to bring about the change that is required to reverse the trends that are destroying us. I argue that he could accomplish all of the things he wants to do without the extreme rhetoric, but I would have to accept that this particular individual probably can not help himself. He is built differently than the rest of us - for good and for not so good.

PS: All of this jabber is causing heightened concern and intensified hostility within the American public. That too adds to our problems internationally. The world sees a badly confused America in an increasingly dangerous environment. That situation tends to result in poor decisions everywhere we look. Trump badly needs a home run somewhere among the many problems that he is addressing if he is to restore some luster to his presidency in the near term. He has a lot of irons in the fire and that is very impressive, but he needs some obvious success somewhere to keep the support of a majority of the American public and reassure those foreigners that want to continue to believe in American leadership.

Ukraine wasn't invited.

 CNN quotes President Trump today talking about Zelensky's complaint that he is not being included in the negotiations between Russia and the United States to end the war in Ukraine. “Today I heard, ‘Oh well, we weren’t invited,’” the president said, referring to Ukraine’s complaints that it’s not been allowed to take part in the opening talks in the nascent peace process. “Well, you been there for three years. You should’ve ended it after three years. You should’ve never started it. You could’ve made a deal,”

This is classic Trump and is an example of one of my criticisms of our president. He over simplifies the situation and thus needlessly opens himself up to serious criticism. He is, of course, talking about the effort by some Ukrainians to sever their ties with Moscow and Putin's refusal to let that happen. Trump here appears to be of the opinion that Zelensky and those that think the same way that he does, overreached and provoked Putin needlessly.

It is necessary to understand the situation three years ago, if we are to understand where we are today. Zelensky was part of a group that wanted to create more distance between Kiev and Moscow. Putin decided to stage a coup and ordered a blitzkrieg that intended to take Kiev and force Zelenskyy out of office. Putin's military let him down by literally running out of gas on the way to Kiev. Biden jumped in and, over simplistically, provided just enough military support to stop the blitzkrieg and stymie the coup that was planned. Three years later we are where we are today and Trump is trying to stop the killing as well as the destruction of the world's economy.

I agree with Trump that Biden failed to deal with the situation adequately, and Zelenskyy, over the years, came to think that he could not only defeat the current Russian invasion, but could also reverse the earlier loss of Crimea and join NATO and the European Union to boot. The Biden Administration waffled and Western Europe salivated. Were I a Ukrainian I would almost certainly support Zelenskyy, but as an American, I support Trump in what is going to be, at best, a difficult negotiation. It is extremely frustrating to be dependent on biased, over-simplistic "news" reporting to assess the situation, made much worse by a president that oversimplifies, but that is where we are.

I have no idea how the theatrics surrounding the Trump/Putin deal that ends the current round of fighting will play out, but I do believe that the two men will come to some sort of agreement that will stop the fighting and the basic political situation inside Ukraine will remain split between the two factions - one aligned with Kiev and one with Moscow. This outcome will have serious reverberations within Western Europe and there will be much specifying, but little real change in the relationship between America and Europe. Troop levels will fluctuate, defense spending levels will wiggle, and there will be endless meetings, but, in the end, the basic alliance between Western Europe and America will remain exactly as it is now. Firm in theory and weak in practice.

No matter what our leaders tell us, there is no chance that Russia and America can go to war with one another without resorting to the use of nuclear weapons that will utterly destroy both of us. The only way that we can avoid mutual destruction is to somehow create more real understanding between us. I don't like Trump and I really don't like Putin, but I support the two men talking to each other. Those of us that do not understand this fact of life are living in an artificial world and their other worldliness will get us killed if we permit them to continue to dominate our political system. Oh, and everybody stop with the knee jerk repetition of today's talking points. They are embarrassing to those of us who want to be proud of our country.