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.

 A friend complained that I had stopped posting to my blog.  I explained that I had reestablished my substantive posts on Facebook now that they permit substantive posting again.  He explained that he did not do Facebook.  Accordingly, I am going to try to post in both places - at least for a while.

Here is today's observation:

According to an article in NPR, Secretary of State Rubio said, in Saudi Arabia, yesterday, that “while Trump's plan for taking over Gaza surprised many, it is what's on the table for now.  What cannot continue is the same cycle where we repeat over and over again, and wind up in the exact same place,  Hamas cannot continue as a military or government force."  That is about as clear as diplomatic speak ever gets.  Trump’s Gaza redevelopment proposal is designed to assist Riyadh in developing a plan for Gaza that is acceptable to Jerusalem and the Palestinian people.  The muscle that is being applied to Amman and Cairo is designed to support Riyadh’s formula, not the Trump plan..

The more interesting part of all of this for me is the motivation of American politicians and political activists in their statements regarding Gaza.  I can not believe that none of them can see what is behind Trump’s superficially unacceptable proposal.  I accept that they are stupid, but I do not believe that they are blind.  I conclude that their domestic political aspirations are more important than speaking the truth and that disturbs me even more than the war in Gaza because it illuminates the cancer that is destroying this country.  I excuse the political rank and file that have never been outside of their own very comfortable lives for not being able to see through diplomatic double-speak, but I can not extend that excuse to those that are paid to govern us, nor can I excuse the journalists that are supposed to explain these kinds of things to the American public in a truthful manner.

Please note that I am not here addressing the negotiations themselves.  I am instead using Gaza to illustrate the internal cancer that is at the root of our societal decline.  A decline that we refuse to accept our own part in bringing about.  Look around you and tell me if you see any two Americans discussing the situation in Gaza in other than partisan terms - including you.  The closest that comes to happening is one of us saying to another that Trump is out of his mind, while the rejoinder is “NO HE IS NOT!  Neither one of us even begin to try to think about why a Jew and an Arab might decide to live next to one another peacefully, nor what we might do to help them decide to do that.  Trump, on the other hand, has the Abraham Accords in his list of real accomplishments.  An accomplishment that no one before him has been able to bring about since the state of Israel was established at the close of the most recent world war.

I am not here saying that I think this ploy of his is going to work, but I give The Donald full credit for trying, and I am openly rooting for him to be successful.  I should also say that I continue to be pleasantly surprised by Rubio in his new role as Secretary of State and I wish him well in his pending discussions in Riyadh about Gaza and the war in Ukraine.  Before I conclude, I would also like to note the difference between Biden’s abortive attempt to brand the Saudi Crown Prince as a pariah and Trump’s effort to make him a central part of our foreign policy.  In this regard I would highlight the decision to make Riyadh the place where we start the negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.  None of this is accidental folks.

PS:  I will not blame Rubio if he is unable to bring Lavrov along with us on Gaza.  I do not see that having any real possibility of happening until Trump and Putin decide the Ukraine issue, or at least announce to the rest of us what they have already decided.  Everybody agrees that things are moving very fast, but they may well may be moving even faster than we think.

The Biden Presidency.

 Forbes has an article out today that sites poll reports that rate the Biden presidency. The president did not fare well in the report except in working to improve gay rights. I usually view polls with skepticism, but I agree with this one. I see the Biden Presidency as being something of a disaster and rate him at the very bottom of all of the people who have occupied that office in the several centuries that our country has existed.  

His current effort to claim great successes during his time in office would be hilarious if we were watching a Broadway play, but we are not. There is a very real possibility that he actually believes what he is saying, but I find that to be hard to accept, even if his staff did shield him from reality and our press abdicate their responsibilities. I believe that he is, instead, a practiced charlatan that has long been permitted to get away with unacceptable performance of his civic duties. He played the good old boy extremely well and managed to carry it over into the presidency, but he ran out of gas in the process. Obama, who had observed him up close and personal for four long years, saw him for what he was, and tried to warn us by not supporting him as his successor, but we chose to ignore him.

Having said that, my greater criticism is of the society that aided and abetted the dumpster fire that was the Biden Presidency. Leaving the radical left aside, and accepting the failure of the press, far too many Americans failed to view our political situation critically, permitting their own personal needs and desires to dominate our thinking. We have now turned to Biden's political opposite for relief and we are going to flip flop once again in virtually every facet of public life. Some of us with glee and some with sincere trepidation.

I am an economic conservative and a social liberal. That ensures that no one agrees with me as to the ideal policy in virtually any political arena. I see the incoming administration as being a positive development overall, but believe that when it ends, we will still have leagues to go to get this country back on track. Hopefully Trump will oversee the transition that needs to take place in our military - changing it back from a squad of poorly supported Boy Scouts to a legion of well equipped, lethal killers. Hopefully he will also reduce inflation without further damaging our credit and manage to revitalize our manufacturing sector. I also support the effort to make government more efficient, even as I deplore some of the rhetoric surrounding that issue. And I expect him to champion much needed law and order in our streets.

My guess is that he will actually do some portion of what needs to be done. Much of America does not like him and can be counted on to continue to malign him fairly and unfairly, but, deep down, the majority of us actually understand that this country is a mess and something has got to be done before we destroy ourselves. The key to success over the long run depends entirely on you and me. Not Trump. Not Biden. Not some foreigner. You and me. We either face up to reality or we go under. Our call.

As for me, I don't care if you are black, white or purple. I don't care if you have a bank account or are stone broke. I don't care if you have a college degree or never set foot in a school in your life. I don't care if you are a man, a woman, or confused. I don't even care if you are an American or not. I advocate making all of our lives matter and honestly believe that is the absolute only way to make this world worth living in. For goodness sake, quit freaking out on our differences and focus a bit more on our similarities. Please.

Was Afghanistan the "right call?"

National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Sunday that President Biden made the right strategic call to withdraw from Afghanistan three years ago and that history reflects well on that decision.  I vehemently disagree with Mr. Sullivan, but I am not surprised that he would say this.  Both he and his boss have to ignore the problems that have arisen since our withdrawal from Afghanistan and emphasize what they claim to be the benefits of the decision.  I find it particularly interesting that nowhere in this conversation is any concern for the Afghan people expressed by either Sullivan or Biden.

As I have noted in earlier articles, I directed the evacuation of Danang, which was, in my mind, the result of a similar failure of resolve on our part.  In my mind, we should not have tried to replace France in Southeast Asia, but once we did, we incurred significant responsibilities that we went on to ignore when it suited us.  When I asked the Bishop of Danang if he wanted to be evacuated, he said no, he would stay with his people.  He then went on to ask; 'if you were not going to stay, why did you ever come?  His words haunt me to this day.

Afghanistan appears to be an even greater tragedy than South Vietnam in that we did not adequately facilitate the evacuation of those that helped us try to restructure that blighted country.  In Vietnam we at least got most of those that cooperated with us out of country.  I personally sponsored 36 of them and am happy to say that they adapted to their new surroundings exceedingly well.

In addition to the human tragedy that few Americans feel important, our cowardice was blatantly obvious to the entire world - friend and foe alike.  The evacuation was not only a strategic mistake but a horrendous tactical error as well. We didn't even tell our European allies that were there with us that we were leaving Baghram in the dead of night.  In addition to all of that, China has managed to increase its influence in the country since our exit, further complicating the regional security situation.

No, Afghanistan was not a good call by Biden, but I fault you and me for not demanding a better international relations effort on the part of our government - no matter which politician sits in the White House.  Trump was set on selling the Afghan people out too.  He probably would have managed our tactical exit better, but we were, as a country, bent on abandoning Afghanistan.  "If you were not going to stay, why did you ever come?"

Greenland

 I confess to be very interested in President-elect Trump's reported desire to acquire Greenland.  I have never been there and know nothing about it, but apparently Trump believes it to be full of natural resources and strategically important.  I very much doubt that we would ever seriously consider taking it by force, as some seem to fear, but, assuming it is a potentially valuable acquisition, I would not be opposed to purchasing it.  Those currently expressing outrage at the very idea, forget that we bought Louisiana and Alaska and those purchases worked out pretty well.  In this context, I find it very interesting that Greenland Prime Minister Múte Egede said Friday that “Greenland is for the Greenlandic people. We do not want to be Danish, we do not want to be American. We want to be Greenlandic.”  the Prime Minister went on to say, ‘We are not for sale. But we are open for business. I think we ought to take him (Trump) at his word.”"  My guess is that, while all of the blather will inevitably confuse the situation, the new Trump Administration intends to increase our involvement in Greenlandic affairs, particularly as regards security and economics.  I am very open to the idea.

Nile, Mekong, Colorado Rivers...

 My father was career military.  I grew up with the pledge of allegiance in school in the morning.  I gave up a college deferment to join the army during the Korean War.  I spent most of my foreign service career fighting communism.  I do not believe that we should decide to try to change our sex, because we are unhappy with our emotions.  I feel perfectly comfortable defecating in just about any bathroom I can imagine - no matter the sign on the door, and I can definitely pee in back of the barn.  I am uncouth and out of touch with American society today.  You have to understand that I understand that fact of life.  

The man that I voted for in the last election has just been declared to be a convicted felon through the application of law-fare, and the msn that he is replacing got surprisingly wealthy, allegedly on a government salary.  I look around me and I see a government in disarray and a society that is coming unglued at the seams.  It depresses me, particularly because I feel helpless to do anything about it.  Society frowns on me because I fail to toe the current line.   People refuse to hear me - or anyone else that speaks honestly to substance, for that matter.  We are firmly siloed into our own fantasies and refuse to hear anything inconsistent with our personal fairy tale.  National decisions are not made by an informed public, they are made by shifting partisan majorities and they only last a couple of years, at best - no matter what they are, because none of them are well thought out and the great unwashed public, that periodically gives them validity, is mindless.

Los Angeles is burning and you and I are looking for ways to ensure that the blame falls on the other.  I hold that it is well past time to think about water more broadly.  Turkey is controlling the headwaters of the Euphrates and Ethiopia and China are both already changing the way water flows.  Both the Nile and the Mekong will never be the same again.  We have done the same with water from the Colorado all through the West and it is well past time to update and extend, repeat extend, our systems.  The basic problem is the mass of humanity demanding that water, but there are also severe distribution imbalances that must be addressed - not just for fire suppression, but literally for everything else, including basic food production.  What is happening to Los Angeles can happen to any of us and so can the malnutrition that is rampant in the Sahel.

A world worth living in.

 President Jimmy Carter, was, in my opinion a wonderful humanbeing and a failed president.  Very few commentators are addressing what I consider to have been the most significant foreign affairs failure during his presidency - Iran.  Carter presided over our government during the period that an anti-American Islamist government replaced an archaic imperial dictatorship allied with this country.  Iran then transitioned into the formidable problem that it is today, linking unrest in the Middle East to problems in Europe and the Far East.  I was serving in Stuttgart, during this period of time, at the military headquarters that should have handled the hostage problem, but we were cut out and it was mishandled directly out of Washington.  Washington bungled it, but all of that, miserable as it was, is not my basic critique.  America failed to support Iran's move into the modern world.  The failure was larger than just Carter.  We were, as a nation, content with a relationship with a government that was failing to answer the problems of the country adequately to resist the coup.  It is a storyline often repeated with diverse details all over the world and it reflects what I consider to be our, your and my, greatest weakness.

We tend to rely on tactics when we should be developing strategy.  Whether we choose to accept it as fact or not, the world is overpopulated with humans.  The vast majority, if not the entirety of humanity, is inherently greedy.  The existing pool of humanity includes vast differences in the quality of life.  A time honored method for redressing this imbalance is war.  All of this at a point in the evolution of humans where we have developed nuclear weapons.  Today, several governments, hostile to us, possess the ability to destroy us - lock, stock, and barrel.  The single most powerful deterrent to war between us is the fear of mutual devastation.  The worry that I have is the fragility of the argument against conflict.  Vladimir Putin literally has his finger on the nuclear option.  So do Xi Jin Peng, and Joe Biden.  I don't trust any of them, and I have no way of knowing who will be replacing them down the road.  It just takes one fool to trigger a cataclysmic event that may well solve the overpopulation problem, but it will bring with it far more than we are bargaining for as we quibble about the piss-ant subjects that seem so important to us now.

President elect Trump brags that there was less world conflict under his watch than under his successor.  True, but his "solutions" only go so far.  We, you and I, need leadership that will move us away from the present morass of confusion, past MAGA, to a people bent on improving the lives of all people clinging to this spinning rock wandering around aimlessly in an empty eternity.  In order for that leadership to appear we, you and I, out here in the hustings, have to demand it.

Trump is an improvement over Biden, but we still have one hell of a lot further to go if we are to do what needs to be done to avoid an atomic stupidity, let alone create a world worth living in.  The sign on the bathroom door is not as important as having a bathroom with a door on it.

Wild Fire is a serious issue

 Wild Fire is a serious issue and should not be relegated to the cesspool of political partisanship that so hampers decision-making in this country.  There is a fire.  Get people out of the way.  Put the damn thing out.  Rebuild.  Move on to the next problem.  Get the heck out of the habit of using today's tragedy to prove that it, whatever it is at the moment, is not my fault and it is the fault of "the other."  The climate is changing.  Wild Fire is a greater menace than it used to be.  Quit defending old ideas and start finding new solutions.  Granted, there has to be an analysis of what went wrong and, where appropriate, corrective action taken, but quit the political jabber and get on with the real work that needs to be done.  Political retribution is NOT as important as the future of humanity.

If I were influential, I would attempt to convince the populace that "it," whatever it happens to be, at the moment, is our responsibility, not the responsibility of our leaders,  I am far more interested in finding a way to provide enough fresh water to support humanity than I am in the political color of any given politician's political slogans.  I drive into town across a bridge that spans a small river dumping huge amounts of fresh water into the ocean.  Were I to drive north or south on the same road, I would cross hundreds of other large and small waterways doing precisely the same thing.  Diverting that water will cause major changes, some of which will require changes in the way we and other life forms continue to exist.  Making those decisions is where the real work lies and it requires each of us to participate because it is going to affect all us no matter which side of whatever argument we are on.

Were I involved in decision-making, I would advocate capturing and distributing more fresh water even as I understood that it would adversely impact other life forms.  I think it naive, or worse, to believe that we can select which life forms we favor and which we do not.  We are stuck with humans as being our major concern and responsibility.  Once we get our own house in order, here in this country, we will need to find ways to help the rest of the world do precisely the same thing on a very wide variety of fronts.  It is a huge task and it requires that you and I get out mojo back, not continue to piss on each other.

Mark Zukerberg's decision to lighten the hand of META on expression of opinion.

 Mark Zukerberg's decision to lighten the hand of META on expression of opinion in the various META social media channels is a welcome decision and I wish him well in the effort to stop stifling free speech.  Understandably, the decision is being derided by those that preferred the censorship and it remains to be seen how successful he will be in the face of the opposition he will face.  I live in California and find it particularly interesting that one of his decisions is to move those elements of his company that interact with this particular set of problems out of the state.  I agree with that decision as well.  I love California, but disagree with the majority of Californians about free speech.  Let me hasten to add that I do not disagree with their right to have those opinions, only that I disagree that they or anyone else has the right to tell me what to think or my right to express those thoughts publicly.  Most of the folks that are chattering about all of this have benefitted from a freedom that I actually put my ass on the line to protect - multiple times.  I feel, rightly or wrongly, that I have paid my dues and can say what I think and do not need guidance from those that have not lifted a finger to protect the sacred rights that they chatter about.  Don't get me wrong.  I believe they have the right to say what they want to say.  I just don't think that they have the right to tell me what I can say and what I can not say.  I agree that there is a lot of misinformation and outright evil out there.  The ONLY way to combat it is to face up to it, not hide it from view and pretend that the world is better because we pretend not to see it.  When you see or hear a lie, brand it so with reasoned prose, don't hide it under a nasty meme and a clever comment.  

Strong letter to follow.

The greater challenge facing humanity

 I am not a fan of The Donald, but I give him full credit for his ability to hob nob effectively with the elite of the world.  The  number of senior foreign leaders that are flying in to Florida right now is very impressive, but I also remember his conversations with Kim Jung Un and Vladimir Putin.  The comparison with Biden falling asleep at various world leadership conferences and failing to wake up in time to make the group picture is stark.  I am not at all certain what kind of a deal Trump will strike with Kim, Putin, and/or Xi, but I believe that we have a better chance with him than we had with Biden.  I also expect to approve of his policy vis-a-vis Iran.  The place where I continue to be concerned is his emphasis on making our country Great Again without what I believe to be sufficient concern for the rest of humanity.  My guess is that were he to be challenged along these lines he would argue that one must address first things first.  My counter argument would be that, while true, that very unfortunately can become the excuse for never facing up to the greater challenge facing humanity.

Old Age.

 I am not the man that I once was and it depresses me to think about the minutia of old age that drives me today as compared to the exhilaration of life in my youth.  I gave up a college deferment to join the army during the Korean War at the height of the killing  I expected to be sent to Korea as an infantry man and was disappointed when I was not permitted to join the airborne.  The army saw that I had two years of college and mistakenly thought that I was intelligent enough to be in military intelligence. That error almost certainly saved my life in as much as I was put into a year long course studying the Chinese language instead of fresh meat for the killing fields..  The armistice was in place when I was finally sent to Korea.  I was too young to understand “the big picture”, but Korea made it clear to me that war was not a good thing.  I decided to become a diplomat and “make peace.”

I turned down a Mustang commission and, after completing college, went on to spend my working life in the Foreign Service, where I grew to understand that diplomats and politicians contribute to war as much as do military men and women.  I progressed rapidly in the career in large part because I wanted to be where the action was, believing it to be my patriotic duty.  As a junior officer, I argued against picking up Viet Nam after the French gave it up, but volunteered to serve there because of “duty.”  I served in Saigon and Danang off and on all through the war.  I was Consul General in Danang when the NVA crossed into the South.  After directing the evacuation of I Corps, I went down to Saigon and helped various people that I knew get out ahead of the final defeat of the South.  I still remember walking through abandoned South Vietnamese office buildings looking for friends.  Today, I am not up to doing the family shopping because I am feeling poorly..  It grates on me.

If anyone were to ask me what I thought the most difficult part of life was I would argue that it is the deterioration of mind and body that accompanies old age.  It matters not how good a front you put up, you know the truth and I find it extremely difficult and exceedingly distasteful to cope with.