A society in free fall.

 According to press reporting, Trump has once again spoken carelessly about an important matter.  Apparently, the recent ICE data released to the press includes multi-year data that stretches well back in history to include felons and other miscreants that entered the country under previous administrations, including his own.  Trump has apparently massaged the data and presented it as though it was all because of Biden/Harris.  This is classic Trump, and his careless speech is one of my leading tactical criticism’s of him.  It does not change the situation that faces us today, however.  The Biden/Harris Administration has permitted far too many miscreants to enter the country during their administration and Trump, clumsy though he was, did a much better job of slowing the flow.  The adverse impact of the influx of human trash on our country is one of the most serious domestic problems facing us today, whether we admit it or not.

America actually needs immigrants, and not all potential immigrants are bad people, but we must do the very best job that we can in sorting through the applicants and selecting only the best.  Then we have to incorporate them usefully into our economy and society.  I’ve actually tried to do it, and I can tell you, from first hand experience, that it is a very difficult job.  Having said that, when we knowingly release a very bad criminal into our country with a piece of paper asking him or her to report to our court system in a year or two, you and I have a mental problem of severe magnitude.  Here again, I choose Trump’s previous imperfect performance over Harris’s purposely vague promises.

I suggest that we have a very serious, brand new problem facing us domestically - the rise of trans-national criminal organizations that are linked directly to the flow of illegal immigrants.  These gangs are reaching down deeper and deeper in our society in a serious challenge to law and order at precisely the same time that we are knowingly castrating our law enforcement structure from the highest courts down to the street corner.  Foreign antagonists are partnering with the gangs to harm us further, Chinese origin drugs being the premier current example.  Politicians blather about the problem and do absolutely nothing to combat it effectively, while the general populace, the voters, continue to slumber on.  Increasingly powerful transnational criminal gangs inside America is the price that we pay for ignoring what is happening to societies all through Central and South America and knowingly permitting that sickness to flow into our heartland.

Now look at the two contenders for the presidency today.  Trump may not be anywhere near an ideal president, but Harris is firmly committed to continue the ridiculous policies that are permitting the criminal scum to take over our ghettos and will very soon extend their reach into local government, if they have not done so already.  During the recent “Summer of Love” she actually, personally bailed criminal rioters out of jail and supported the mindlessness that was taking our cities apart at the seams.  If we elect her president, I predict accelerated deterioration of our society, nuclear war with one or the other foreign antagonist, and free sex change operations for all incarcerated prisoners that are willing to vote for her inane policies.  Nero played the fiddle, Kamala will just giggle cluelessly.  A mindless American public will joyfully accept her word salad of the day as being leadership, and you and I will swirl down the drain along with the very best effort to live decently in the entire history of humanity.  I see it as being way too bad.

PS:  I have personally helped to bring tens of thousands of good people into this country and integrate them successfully into our society.  Thirty six of them on my own dime.  I honestly believe that I know what I am talking about and I would willingly discuss it further with anyone who honestly wants to find an intelligent way forward.  I won’t, however, be surprised if no one takes me up on my offer.  That is the historic characteristic of a society in free fall.

Israel is definitely not pussy footing around in Lebanon.

 Israel is definitely not pussy footing around in Lebanon.  Their most recent move in the Beirut bombing, took out two very prominent terrorists, one a Lebanese, and one an Iranian.  The primary target appears to have been a Hezbollah leader, Hassan Nasrallah, but, today, we learn that a senior Iranian military leader, General Abbas Nilforushan, was killed as well.  (I suspect that the later may not have been a specific target, but seen from Jerusalem as being serendipitous collateral damage.)  Both of these men were enemies of peace in the region and Nasrallah, in particular, was responsible for the death of many Americans.  I do not bemoan their removal from the battlefield and suspect that the move, along with the pager explosions that took out a lot of middle level Hezbollah leaders, may well be part of Israeli preparations for a major cross border operation into Lebanon.  I presume that the Israeli military leadership is arguing that they must move against their enemies now.  If I were an Israeli, in their shoes, I would undoubtably be making the exact same argument.

The Biden/Harris Administration professes America’s support of Israel’s right to defend itself, but does not want to see the situation escalate into even more intense warfare.  We have sent a token reinforcement  of our own military to the region to make that point, while ensuring that it is not a significant enough reinforcement to confuse Teheran as to our unwillingness to get involved directly.  No matter how the potential Israeli incursion into Lebanon turns out, it will not accomplish any long term strategic objective, even if it does manage to impact the tactical situation somewhat.  The reason being, as I noted in a previous article, we are fighting the wrong enemy.  Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthi’s, and all of the other splinter groups funded by Teheran are nothing more than pawns in a much larger struggle.

Americans tend to judge the importance of a war by the number of people being displaced, killed, and wounded, and, as long as it is foreigners that are doing the dying, we feel that we can get on with our lives in this country as though it is basically irrelevant.  I argue that the introduction of nuclear warfare to the calculation has changed things fundamentally.  We will not resolve any of the existing conflicts in the Middle East until Washington confronts Teheran and convinces it that it must accept Israel and end its attempt to shove Riyadh aside in an effort to dominate the Muslim world.  

Our ignorance on this point is fundamental bedrock dominating our current foreign policy.  We must understand that Shia Teheran, and Radical Islam more generally, are incompatible with stability in the Middle East.  Iran does not have to be eradicated, but radical Shia involvement in the Middle East must be dramatically reduced if not eliminated entirely.  That is a huge, long term, expensive task that must, in a democracy, start with an understanding at ground level out here in the neighborhoods.  It is this point that worries me most.  The task itself is humungous, but educating the American people to its necessity, may well be impossible.  We give no indication that we can stretch our minds beyond the age of the fetus, the sign on the bathroom door, the price of gasoline, and our precious feelings.

I am an American. I am not a Ukrainian.

 According to the Financial Times, “Donald Trump said the war in Ukraine would be ‘resolved very quickly’ if he won the US election as he met Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Friday, and touted his “very good relationship” with both the Ukrainian leader and Vladimir Putin, Russia’s president.”  Kamala Harris is critical of Trump on Ukraine, because she believes that he will force Kiev to give up large segments of their country to Moscow.  I support Trump on this point and believe that Harris has absolutely no glimmer of a plan to deal with the war, other than to continue the mindless killing and associated disruption of economies all over the world, including here in this country.

I have held my nose and argued for a negotiated settlement ever since Biden permitted the Russian  invasion to take place.  The time for stopping the idiocy was before it got started and we definitely should have done that.  Biden’s Crimea track record, his failure during Putin’s run up to the invasion, coupled with his ignorance since, is what has brought us to this point in the tragedy.  If elected, Harris will flounder on in Biden’s path, because she is incapable of understanding the complexities of the situation on the ground - even if someone intelligent were to explain it to her, and there are, quite obviously, none in the Department of State or the upper echelons of the military that are capable of doing that.

What America has to understand is that our adversaries around the world are very complex people and some of them possess very powerful weaponry.  Combine this with our internal dissension and you and I have a very serious problem.  We are in the process of completely destroying our unity of purpose here in this country as we attempt to rewrite the most basic rules governing our society - down to and including our sexual identity. This is fundamental stuff and it does no good to ignore it.  In both Ukraine and Gaza we have taken the position that the killing should continue until our opponent accepts our end game, but we refuse to endanger our own necks while we actively encourage the destruction of other societies and squander the funds that could be much better spent in helping people live better lives all over the globe.

I am an American.  I am not a Ukrainian.  If I were a Ukrainian, living in Kiev, I would almost certainly do precisely as Zelensky is doing.  As an American, living in the nuclear age, I have different objectives.  I want to see peace in Ukraine, and I do not want any more war than absolutely necessary to sustain and protect America.  I see Ukraine as a family disagreement between Moscow and Kiev, not a national disagreement between Russia and Ukraine.   There is absolutely no question, but that Putin is attempting to take advantage of the family quarrel to advance his effort to rebuild the Soviet Union, but that does not change things on the ground. This useless war is just another example of us needlessly killing far too many people, destroying far too much badly needed economic infrastructure, and needlessly risking a nuclear exchange.  I would be delighted to see Trump force Putin and Zelensky into a compromise based on the ethnicity of the populace rather than an artificial border.  Granted, it should have been done years ago, but that fact must not block it now.

As to any American that honestly believes that this Ukrainian end game would make us look weak, I suggest that our present policies in all ongoing hostilities everywhere in this messed up world is already doing that in spades.  The world sees us for what we have become - wealthy, naive, self-absorbed, cowards.  Let’s at least engage in some intelligent foreign policy so as to stave off our national demise as long as possible, in the hope that someday, before it is too late, we will dispense with the wishful thinking and grow a pair.

The several Israeli exploding device operations are unhelpful.

 I do not like the several exploding device operations carried out by Israel recently.  I agree that the campaign has been brilliantly executed, but I also believe that the tactical success is just one more stupid barrier to mitigation, let alone resolution, of the conflict between Shia Arab and Orthodox Jew.  As I see the cost/benefit ratio, it is grossly unfavorable to Israel.  Far more hate generated than real adverse, military effect.  I understand that this puts me in opposition to the majority of Americans who are frustrated by the seeming impossibility of reducing the gross inhumanity of the Iranian sponsored attack on Israel.  In their eyes, Hezbollah deserves just about anything that can be thought of to get even with the pain that they have inflicted on Israeli citizens.  I think rightly, that their anger conflates Hezbollah and Hamas and sees the hand of Iran behind the all out attack on Israel.  People who can burn babies in an oven deserve absolutely anything that can be thought of as punishment.

My criticism is that none of us are addressing the ultimate source of all present day Shia Arab attacks on Israel.  We are literally killing the wrong enemy and have been doing so for quite awhile, even before we mistakenly eliminated Saddam Hussein from the equation.  We understand that Teheran is behind all of the present day violence, including October 7, Hezbollah’s constant bombardment of Israel, the Houthi attack on international shipping in the Red Sea, and a plethora of other stupid acts throughout the region, but we are afraid to address that root cause effectively.  Afraid.  Repeat afraid.  I suggest that the Radical Islamic leadership in Teheran and its sycophants throughout the region are encouraged by the way things are going throughout the Middle East, particularly the pause in rapprochement between Riyadh and Jerusalem.  The Israeli’s exploding device gambit actually helps keep their supporters’ anger high enough to wholeheartedly continue the attack throughout the region.  A tactical defeat that helps keep emotions highly charged.

I try to look beyond the tactical struggle to see the larger picture that is unfolding, not only in the Middle East, but elsewhere as well.  I am immediately drawn to the Chinese and Russian challenge to our international leadership.  Because Putin has his hands full with Ukraine right now, he correctly sees all of this as mitigating the support that we can give to the defense of that beleaguered country and he benefits marginally by receiving weapons from Teheran.  His interest is primarily tactical.  China, on the other hand, is primarily motivated by strategic objectives in the region to include the long term need for Iran’s energy.  These issues dwarf any concern for Israel and ensure that Beijing and Moscow will continue to support Teheran over Jerusalem.  The trajectory of this conflict in the Middle East will play a very large role in determining our effectiveness more broadly in international affairs.

All of this complicates our options in a conflict that could very easily result in a nuclear exchange, assuming, as I do, that Teheran already has a nuclear capability or could achieve one in a heartbeat.  Were I in a position of influence, I would sit down with Iran and explain that they must stop their attack on Israel immediately or face war with the United States,  If they choose war they should fully expect to be obliterated from the face of the earth - no matter what that might entail in the way of weaponry.  Our attack would be as effective as possible and would include nuclear weapons if necessary.  I would, in a timely manner, fully inform both Moscow and Beijing of my conversations with Iran.  The fundamental point that I would be making is that I don’t want war, and I will not engage in it, except to win it.  I would also come up with a face saving international committee structure designed to provide fig leaf political cover to all of our adversaries as well as a real effort to assist the people of the Middle East live a better life. 

Gaza is not the main event.

 Here in the United States we tend to see the critical struggle in the Middle East to be between Israel and Iran and we are currently torn apart over our effort to be pro-Israel without supporting the killing of “undue” numbers of Arab civilians.  The Biden Administration ignorantly feels it can best accomplish this objective by managing the flow of weaponry that we provide Israel and helping knock down Iranian missiles from time to time.

I argue that the real struggle that is ongoing in the Middle East is Shia versus Sunni, and Arab hostility to Jew is a side show.  Important in and of itself, but not the critical struggle.  The Trump Administration favored Sunni Riyadh and the Biden Administration Shia Teheran.  Given the stated objectives of the leadership currently controlling the two sides of the war within the Muslim community, in my opinion, the Biden Administration picked the wrong side, and the Trump Administration the right side.

Unfortunately, Riyadh is not very good at making war and Teheran is.  Riyadh’s military efforts in Yemen have been either laughable or abysmal and Teheran’s efforts throughout the region have been masterful.  Iranians are really good at making war and Saudis are definitely not.  And neither are we in the Middle East.  We have an edge in technology and formal combat situations, but because we are ignorant of the culture, we are unable to use military action to change the political situation.  It is hard to do at best, but we are nowhere close to doing it anywhere in the Middle East.

Were I influential, I would facilitate closer relations between Riyadh and Jerusalem and I would support both in their struggle against Teheran.  I would halt Teheran’s march toward having a nuclear capability, even if it required military action on our part.  Going to war with Iran right now is a very distasteful idea, but going to war with them after they have nuclear weapons is unthinkable.  Very unfortunately, thanks to Obama and Biden, they may already have the damn things.  If so, the choice is between confronting them now or waiting until they have even more.  It is not a good choice, but avoiding it is mindless.

Not one American is, today, engaged in combat.

 Kamala Harris in her debate with President Trump noted that “as of today, there is not one member of the United States military who is in active duty in a combat zone in any war zone around the world, the first time this century.”  Don’t pass over this statement in a rush to be joyful.  This is the person that, if elected, is going to have to deal with Vladimir Putin, Xi Jin Peng, and Kim Jung Un.  This is the person who is going to have her finger on the nuclear button.

The fact is that today there are tens of thousands of American military personnel engaged in combat, the most intense of which, right now, is in the Red Sea.  She is either knowingly lying, hiding behind legalistic definitions, or ignorant.  None of these explanations encourages me to think that she would make a good president.  She is also associated with Joe Biden’s Ukraine policy, which has pretty well destroyed Ukrainian infrastructure, killed far too many Ukrainians and Russians, and wreaked havoc on the American and world economies - needlessly.  She was also “the last person in the room” when they decided to abandon Afghanistan and left town in the dead of night without telling our NATO allies that we were abandoning the field to our joint enemy.

The Biden Administration, in which she is the second in command, has permitted the situation in the Middle East to deteriorate dramatically and there is zero indication that they are going to be able to change things for the better in the foreseeable future.  The apocalyptic leadership in Iran is on the cusp of having a nuclear weapon, or already has one, and they daily declare that they intend to destroy both Israel and the United States.  All of this before we address the problems that afflict Africa, South and Central America, and Taiwan, let alone the deterioration of security here in this country.

I agree with some of the criticism of Donald Trump, but the idea that we would consciously elect Kamala Harris to the presidency is ludicrous, as well as dangerous, and stupid beyond belief.  We are not risking our democracy as much as we are endangering our continued existence.

BRICS as an indicator of a much deeper problem.

 According to press reports, a total of 23 countries have officially asked to join BRICS.  An additional 24 other countries have informally indicated their desire to join the organization.  Most are developing countries that appear to be primarily interested in trading with one another in their own local currencies, rather than in US dollars.  This at a time when America’s relationship with these same developing countries continues to deteriorate.  

Following the Second World War, we made a genuine effort to assist developing countries all over the world.  That effort had some specific successes, but, overall, did not live up to our expectations and the American public turned against it as being a waste of money.  During the same period of time, China and the United States grew further and further apart.  Over time, Beijing made its relationship with the developing world a major part of its foreign policy.  

I see BRICS, not as a specific threat, as much as a barometer measuring our overall relationship with an important part of the rest of the world, and the needle is moving in the wrong direction.  Add in the increased influence of crime and conflict all over the globe and you have an increasingly hostile international environment for America.  I look at our current domestic political scene and see no indication that any of us, either in Washington or out here in the hustings, are thinking in these terms.  Instead, we are arguing about the age of the fetus, the price of gasoline, the sign on the bathroom door, and our precious feelings.

One side of our internal disagreement argues for better management of our resources, while the other mindlessly does everything in their power to reformulate all of our societal relationships.  None of us are interested in anything outside of our non-existent borders.  All foreign issues are judged by their impact on the price of groceries in the corner store.  The closest that we come to showing an interest in what is happening in the rest of the world is for some of the more inane among us to invite the rest of the world to come live with us even as we struggle to take care of the population that we have now.

No politician on the left or the right is going to save us from further decline until you and I wake up.  Not only do we have to engage in an intelligent discussion of real issues facing us, we have to then go on and address the issues facing the rest of the world if we are to have any hope of avoiding more war - including nuclear war.

When the bastards come for us...

 Former President Trump was endangered by a would-be assassin twice recently, and everybody is suddenly an expert in the work of the Secret Service.  I, too, am highly critical of their performance in the Butler, Pennsylvania shooting, but I am much, much less critical of their performance in the Florida near-shooting.  I agree with the Secret Service’s appraisal of Butler and believe that some of the weaknesses reflected in it have been addressed, the principal one being the removal of the former head of that agency.

Public outrage focuses on specific details in both situations.  Communications in Butler being a popular item and failure to sweep the edge of the golf course in Florida being a leading contender there.  The public then goes on to bemoan the inadequacy of whatever - inadequate manpower, and insufficient funds being high on everybody’s list.  (America actually believes that lots of people and money solves problems.)   These are indeed important points, but the far more important point is the quality of the leadership of the organization.  I don’t care how smart you and I think that we are, we are not smart enough to improve the performance of the Secret Service, beyond finding the right person to lead it and giving him or her the support that is necessary to do the job, however we end up defining it.

I am conservative in my thinking.  I believe that assigning WOK leadership, ensures inadequate WOK results.  If I were in a position of influence, I would assign an individual that has real world experience in dealing successfully with the very real, very shitty world that today threatens nice people.  I would be far less interested in his or her ability to fill one of the WOK checkboxes.  In this regard, Google tells me:  “In 2023, Cheatle (the former head of the Secret Service) told CBS News the agency needed to “attract diverse candidates and give opportunities to everybody in the workforce, particularly women,’ outlining her goal that by 2030, thirty percent of its recruits would be female.”  I don’t know anything about this lady, but I strongly suspect that she, like many of the other people in high office today, were selected for the wrong reasons.  I’m not saying that they are bad people - just that they are out of their depth and in the wrong job.

If I were in a position of authority, I would look to personnel that have a background in real-world killing - old-fashioned police, special forces, etc, - people that can provide the type of thinking and experience necessary to deal effectively with the mind of their adversary, as well as his or her tactics.  A rule book is nice to have, but it can only do so much.  The leader that I envision would not need a congressional inquiry to look into mistakes.  He or she would be on the perpetrators before they could turn around and would address the problem immediately in the field - not back in the office around a conference table.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.  Biden has taken this exact approach to every aspect of our governance - and our defense.  It is a principal reason why nothing works anymore.  Very nice, very articulate, very well-meaning people in all of the wrong jobs.  Kamala Harris explains that she will continue the stupidity.

The dilemma that America faces goes well beyond the immediate challenges.  It is that we are consciously breeding the type of individual that we need out of our society, in favor of folks who have better social skills.  When the bastards come for us we will face them with better table manners and wonder confusedly why it does us no good.

Re-arranging the deck chairs on the very luxurious ship of state.

 I have recently seen considerably more “news” than usual due to my confinement to bed, because of illness.  The experience is extremely depressing.  Not only is the situation that we find ourselves in right now, in far too many areas, very negative, the quality of the “news” relating to it is abysmal.  I am highly critical of Trump, but the inane vacuousness of Harris makes him look like a national savior.  The American press is fully in bed with one or the other candidate and objective analysis is a great rarity, if it exists at all.

I continue to reserve my most vehement criticism for you and me and I increasingly fear that our national sanity may very well be irretrievable before foreign threats overtake us.  Harris claims that her values have not changed, yet she tailors her present statements about her intentions to fit her appreciation of where the most votes are, without giving any clue as to how she intends to achieve these often contrary objectives, nor any explanation as to why these proposed policies are radically different than her earlier stated policies.

Trump is beginning to call Harris a communist, but that is nothing more than a rhetorical version of what she is engaged in.  She is not a communist, she is merely a weak individual trying to mindlessly play to what she regards to be the popular will.  I do believe that there are individual politicians on the political left that admire aspects of communist ideology, but I do not believe that they represent a significant portion of the political left.  Most are good people, with minimal real world experience, who are fully engaged in wishful thinking.

On a tactical level, the United States is now controlled by an informal group of left leaning politicians to include all of the most prominent individuals currently holding specific positions in government fortified by the most respected recent officeholders.  Barack Obama, Eric Holder, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, etc - even Hillary Clinton.  They are currently in the process of trying to replace their White House office holder, because they feared that Biden was going to lose to Trump. Time being short, they were stuck with Harris and they are trying their best to make do, even though they never in their lives thought that they would have to rely on her as their front person.  The Biden to Harris coup was implemented on a dozen or so cell phones, but I still smell the cigars.

The American public is, by and large, uninterested in substance, preferring instead to seek simplistic platitudes that fit their individual personal situation, irrespective of the relevance to reality.  None of us, left or right, are thinking beyond self and that ensures that whichever way the electoral college decides, we will elect another seriously flawed national government.  The Hobson choice is which one is worse, not who can best lead us going forward.

I choose Trump because the frailties that he reflects are more long range than the ones that Harris represents.  Biden and his puppet masters have permitted the international scene to fall into even more chaos than is usually the case.  Harris has the same puppet masters and they will inevitably permit the international scene to deteriorate further, with the very real potential for outright conflict with one or more of our international competitors and that seriously risks a nuclear exchange.  Trump can almost certainly avoid that and can significantly improve our daily lives, but he can not bring himself to reach out to the rest of the world and provide the kind of leadership that is necessary to eliminate the long term danger inherent in too many people living on a planet of fixed dimensions and resources.  Very unfortunately, the reason is that you and I don’t give a rat’s ass about anybody but ourselves, and would not support him if he did.

You and I have a serious problem that we studiously ignore as we devote ourselves fully to re-arranging the deck chairs on our very luxurious ship of state, while endlessly saying to one another “it is not my fault.  It’s them.”

People ask who is running this country.

People ask who is running this country.  I do not believe that there is any one single person or even a small group.  Never has been, at least in my lifetime.  The Founders set it up that way in an effort to make it responsive to the American people.  America was a reaction to King George.  The problem that we face today is not in Washington.  It is out here in the hustings, where, we refuse to discuss substantive problems intelligently with one another.  Because our political system is incapable of long term decision-making, the importance of the bureaucracy understandably increases and we are today ruled in very large part by unelected bureaucrats, which conservatives find unacceptable because they by-in-large reflect liberal values.

When the public elects one or another politician, that politician sees it as being critically important to govern by catering to their “base.”  You and I thus drive decision-making in Washington and it understandably reflects the divisions that we permit to exist in the body politic at large.  Compromise does not occur because America does not want it.  Were our two political sides not so evenly matched in numbers, the problem would be different.  Instead of flip-flopping every couple of years as the lack of compromise eviscerates the side in power, we would stumble down one or the other path as determined by shear numbers of voters, rather than any intelligent thought on the part of the public.

My appreciation of the situation is that the liberal side of the stupidity is prevailing and the nature of our demise, long term, will reflect liberal weaknesses, but please do not read this as being an endorsement of conservative “solutions.”  In my view, unadulterated conservatism is equally flawed.  Assuming no epiphany, I remain pessimistic about our ability to ward off a nuclear exchange with one or another foreign adversary because none of us out here in the hustings think beyond our body parts.

After the nuclear holocaust.

 So what would I do about the mess in the Middle East?  First, I would initiate an intelligent conversation here in this country about the Middle East.  It would involve thousands of years of very confused history and it would step on a lot of toes.  The reason that is necessary, is that a sensible US policy, that can be sustained into the future, requires an America that actually understands one of the most complex stories imaginable and is willing to pursue the sophisticated, difficult and expensive policy set that is required long enough for it to be effective.  Imperfect though it is, America is still a democracy and an informed public is necessary for an informed and sustained foreign policy.

A while back, I served as Political Advisor to the Commanding General of all US military forces in all of Europe, East and West, all of Africa, and all of the Middle East.  I decided that I needed to better understand the Middle East in order to do my job.  One of the things that I did was go to Jerusalem, and, on alternate days, take a tour of the exact same historic sites with first an Arab and then a Jewish guide.  It wasn't history, but it was an eye opener.  Another thing that I tried to do was discuss Arab/Jewish relations with representatives of the two cultures currently serving in an official capacity.  Never was I able to break through the hostility on either side of the divide to discuss possible compromises, and I tried mightily for the four years that I served in that capacity.   I faced the exact same mindless hostility that I face today in this country when I try to talk conservatism to liberals or liberalism to conservatives.

The same cultural ignorance clouds our understanding of all of the other ongoing conflicts that are alive and well in the Middle East and the rest of the world. The result is that our actions are driven by the hap hazard arrangement of issues that confront us at the moment, and we are knocked around as the various “situations” interact with one another, adding to the infinity of confusion.  A Saudi born journalist working for an American newspaper, is murdered in Istanbul and we brand the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia a pariah until we decide that we want more Saudi oil and think that it would be useful if he and an Israeli political leader, that our president does not like, should be good friends.  Meanwhile, out here in the hustings, we are trying to decide if we like a megalomaniac more or less than a confused little girl.  Never do we discuss anything meaningful.  In fact, we actively forbid that conversation as being harmful to our precious feelings.

And, at the same time that we squabble about the proper age of the fetus, the price of gasoline, the sign on the bathroom door, our “leaders” meddle ineffectively in wars all over the globe that they do not come close to understanding.  Ukraine, Gaza, Somalia, Venezuela, Haiti, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles ….  Men like Putin, Xi and Biden actually have their fingers on the nuclear button and you and I hide in our house hoping that somehow things will get better if we just elect the right leader.  In a few months we will usher the senile old man out of office and replace him with either “The Donald” or “The Brat.”  At that point our work will be done.  We can go back to “democratically” squabbling about our feelings and telling our foreign friends how to fight their wars.  You and I adamantly refuse to face reality, preferring wishful thinking instead.

We are an infinitely stupid people and we have been just clever enough to invent the tools that we need to destroy ourselves.  The question that intrigues me the most is what humanity will look like after the nuclear holocaust, but I sincerely hope that it happens after I and my loved ones leave the scene.

Gaza.

 I frankly admit that I do not well understand the situation in the Middle East, but I am equally certain that the United States government is not dealing with the region intelligently.  I much preferred the approach implicit in the Abraham Accords as compared to the appeasement inherent in both Biden and Obama’s policies.  The current focus, to the extent that there is any focus, is the conflict in Gaza, where the Biden/Harris Administration is floundering badly in exactly the same way that the Obama/Biden Administration did.

My understanding of the situation is that Hamas is but one of several Iranian proxies in the region, and Shia Teheran has ordered all of them to make trouble in an effort to thwart Sunni Riyadh’s efforts to control the region, in part through the Abraham Accords.  The American public is understandably focused on the horrible conflict in Gaza, but the game is much larger than just Gaza and the Palestinians.  It is the latest manifestation of the age old argument between Shia and Sunni Arabs complicated by the age old animosity between Arab and Jew.  Given that Teheran is either on the cusp of having a nuclear capability or already has such, we are looking at the very real possibility of a nuclear exchange that will benefit no one.

Israel is currently bent on destroying Hamas, believing it to be the only way to protect itself against further conflict.  Every single Hamas fighter that Israel manages to kill has a family, every single one of which will understandably hate Israel to their dying day.  I understand the hardliners in the Israeli government’s appreciation of the situation, but do not believe that it will accomplish anything positive and long lasting.  The current conflict is but the latest round of killing in a terrible conflict that has been going on for millennia.  The horrible part of October 7 is that Hamas targeted that element of the Israeli public that most wanted to end the conflict.  Every single one of the people killed that day were among the most liberal elements of modern Judaism.  I do not believe that point was lost on the leadership in Teheran.  Quite the contrary, I believe that to have been a central objective of October 7 and, combined with the horrible travesties that were committed that day, were a central part of Shia strategic thinking.

Teheran is not afraid of Jerusalem, or better put, Tehran is more afraid of Riyadh than it is Jerusalem.  October 7 was designed to stop Riyadh’s rapprochement with Jerusalem, not promote the interests of the Palestinian people.  The folks living in Gaza are merely pawns in the larger struggle and our confused participation in the mess merely magnifies the stupidity.  The Biden/Harris approach may well be the worst of all possible ways to deal with the mess that could be imagined, but we are now front and center in the killing, whether we like it or not.

PS:  I do not see the Abraham Accords as being the result of Trump’s brilliance.  The force behind that effort was the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia.  You remember him.  He is the guy that our current president called a pariah because he is believed to have sanctioned the bungled murder of a troublesome Saudi journalist that worked for an influential American newspaper.  The reason that I prefer Trump to Biden, in this situation, is that Trump had the foresight to champion the Saudi Crown Prince.  The reason that I dislike Biden’s approach to world affairs is that his actions are driven by his appreciation of ignorant public opinion in this country.

We are the modern Rome and it is way too bad.

 I was taught in school that I had the right to free speech and I enjoyed that right during a long life in what I honestly believe to be the most enlightened country in the history of the world.  I still have that legal right, but I find it to be increasingly difficult to exercise, not because of governmental restrictions but rather because of societal pressures.  It is an oversimplification, like most thought today, but I fall on the conservative side of most arguments and that puts me in the MAGA camp whether I want to be there or not.  I readily acknowledge that I disagree with the Brat even more than I disagree with the Donald.

I am an “active” senior citizen which means that I am out and about, rubbing shoulders with a wide variety of thought in the general public, but exchanging meaningful conversation about real problems with no one - absolutely no one!  When I try, I am shunned and, if I persist, I am subjected to whatever societal pressure can be mounted against me.  I am not rebutted, I am just told to shut the hell up, and, if I persist, societal pressure that impacts my economic viability is brought to bear.  I find myself retreating from the fight and it bothers me no end.  I have never done that before in my entire life and it raises questions about me that I find extremely troubling.  I am going along to get along, even as I understand that I, along with the rest of this country, am going down the wrong road.

If I were not part of all of this, it would be hilarious.  What we are doing to ourselves is pure unadulterated stupidity of the very highest order.  It is also very fundamental stuff.  The very nature of our people is changing in the most fundamental of ways.  American society is no longer what it was when I learned the societal rules.  As a kid, I believed in this country sufficiently to give up a student deferment and join the army at the height of the killing in Korea.  As an adult, I wholeheartedly participated in the effort to defeat the Soviet Union.  Today, I watch us become the laughing stock of a world that wants to eat our lunch and is actively preparing to try to do just that.  I honestly believe that our mindlessness risks our continued existence, because we and our principal adversaries have armed ourselves with nuclear weapons.  

Several things are at work on me.  I am finishing up my ninety second year on earth and do not function mentally or physically as well as I used to, and I increasingly question the value of the society that increasingly shuns me.  I am seriously tempted to sit back and watch history repeat itself once again as we swirl down the sewer pipe of history.  The only reason that I continue to try to get through to the rest of us, is habit.  It is not because I have any real hope of reversing things.  Wishful thinking is on the cusp of victory and nuclear obliteration is sure to follow soon thereafter.  The price of gasoline, the age of the fetus, the sign on the bathroom door and our precious feelings be damned.  We are the modern Rome and it is way too bad.