This and That and a Bit of Gloating

All quiet on the Diplomad home front. Well, sorta. 

One of the dogs, the Akita, got car sick on the drive from Raleigh to Wilmington. He was with his two buddies in the back of the truck; I didn't notice until we got to the Wilmington house. I opened the  truck and --Wham-o!--I was instantly transported back to various of my overseas assignments. Crap everywhere. Took the poor boys out, washed them down and then released them into the house while I did my best to clean the truck and the dog beds. Finished my Herculean labors, I went into the house where, once again, my olfactory senses transported me back to some long forgotten third world village, in a place far, far away, and long, long ago . . . Dog had got sick again, but this time on rugs, carpets, and hardwood flooring. Massive clean-up effort ensued, which involved, the point of this so-far nasty and pointless tale, my having to rent a rug cleaning machine from the local supermarket. 

Guess what? 

I had to produce government-issued identification to rent the machine! 

Yep. 

No id? No rug machine for you!

I don't need id to vote, but, to clean up dog crap, well . . . you know, priorities in today's America . . . I should have let the black guy in line behind me know that he would find it impossible to rent a machine since, as the wokesters tell us, black people have no government-issued identification. To add insult to injury, the smiling clerk asking for my id was--Oh Horrors!--black!

As my cruelty knows no bounds, if I hadn't been in a hurry, I would have hung about to watch the full fury of white supremacist, Jim Crowism come crashing down on the black applicant for a rug machine . . . but, I was in a rush to get home . . . .

The dog is fine, by the way.

I see the Senate did not approve that farcical commission to investigate the "January 6 insurrection." A minor victory. I am almost certain the Pelosians will launch a House commission, regardless. Anything to bury or, at least, distract from the interesting vote audits underway in a couple of states, and (possibly) looming in others. I don't want to oversell those audits, or get too cheery about them, but they do offer hope of providing some clarity, some truth, to the "results" of the elections last November. Let's see what happens, and hope it's not just just another Durham report.

The ol' Diplomad, I must say, called it pretty much on the money re the ChiCom Virus. Go back and reread the stuff over the past several months and you'll see. I noted repeatedly that we have a contagious virus, of Chinese origin, with a survival rate in excess of 99%. I also stated that shutting down the economy was about politics--the Dems had to break Trump's shiny toy--and not about science. The lock-downs proved criminally absurd, and most likely contributed to many more deaths than did the ChiCom virus. It is also now becoming clear that the Chinese government through its WHO mouthpiece pushed for the global economic lockdowns as a way to cripple its adversaries.

Anyhow, off to deal with a wayward IRobot vacuum which has gotten itself stuck.

"The land of the free/ Where the less you know/The better off you'll be . . . "

Apologies to the late Warren Zevon for stealing lyrics from his "Disorder in the House." 

They strike me as an appropriate anthem for the times in which we live. The woke ones in charge of our troubled nation certainly what us to be "happy" by not knowing what's going on. 

Before we get to all that, I will rail against old age. 

I don't like it. 

One day, I was 25 years old, and, then, suddenly, I wasn't. Don't like it all. Don't mind the greater "wisdom" but not at the cost of aches and pains, doctor visits, and a smorgasbord of medications for this and that. As a young man, if something hurt, I knew why. Now . . . I just wake up and it hurts. No further explanation given. I have grown tired of the well-meaning young medical types labelling such-and-such malady as "age appropriate." 

So, I retreat to the man cave with my dogs, and spend money on an ever-growing gun collection to which I have added, in the past few weeks, a beautiful, but expensive, 19th century Afghan Jezail black powder musket. As a poor young diplomat in Pakistan decades ago, I could have picked one up for next to nothing, but the Diplowife insisted on our saving money for a house. Sigh. I hate priorities when they get in the way of having fun . . . I also have acquired a 1942 M1 Garand rifle in magnificent shape (CMP muzzle rating of 1.0/throat rating of 1.5). A beautiful beast of a gun, and certified in excellent firing condition, as long as I don't shoot overly powerful rounds. I will have to read the warnings more carefully. In the end, I probably will not shoot it; I will put it on the wall next to (I hope) a Japanese Arisaka rifle on which I am bidding in an auction. 

I already have a 1871 Mauser with bayonet on the wall along with a splendid 19th century British-made Martini-Henry, and a 1930s Argentine Mauser, also with bayonet. Lots of old pistols--French, American, Spanish--and swords--German, French, Spanish. It's a race among wall space, bank account, and time left to me . . . which will win?

OK, fun stuff out of the way.

The political-social-economic scene remains dismal. 

The woke attack continues unabated. 

Let me provide, as the wokesters say, an example from "my life experience." The other day at the local gym while on the cross trainer machine--mask mandate gone!--head-set on, listening to Chuck Berry and Tom Petty, I looked up and saw that on the gym's twelve giant TV screens, NOT ONE hetero white male appeared. One would think, to judge, from the commercials and presenters, that we live in a matriarchal African nation. The occasional white guy who appears almost inevitably comes across as an effeminate, quasi-gay buffoon who suffers diarrhea or another physical or moral flaw, and needs straightening out by a wise woman doctor, lawyer, scientist, financial advisor, etc. It's getting a bit much, more than a bit much. 

This wokeness has even infected historical period films in which we, for example, now see ancient England with black aristocrats. Right. OK. So, if that's even remotely true, how can the wokesters argue that Europe and America have been historically and systematically racist? Makes no sense. As a friend of mine said, "Like you, I never have cared about race before, but now I think I have had it." 

The wokesters create the racism and the anti-semitism they claim to deride. They, of course, do this on purpose to create conflict requiring intervention by the woke authorities. The racism and the anti-semitism need manufacturing, just like veggie fake "beef," an artificial commodity for which there exists little natural demand.

In the end, however, we are all tribal. You can push us, insult us, and try to erase us for only so long before, even among the most tolerant of us, the tribal blood rises and the tribe strikes back. 

On that, Diploson3 had an interesting observation in slight disagreement with me. I told him I was getting guns before they banned them. He argued the wokesters won't bother with that. They will let us keep our guns, and obsess about keeping them, while they do away with all the other rights and protections. The law enforcement, judicial, and military institutions are joining the education and the media establishments as tools of the prog-woke machine. The "cancel" effort grows stronger and bolder. Non-woke positions become harder and harder to hold and express; you do so at the risk of losing your job, among other things. The censorship grows and grows, making communication of "unpopular" ideas ever tougher. The woke even have established that the government, under a flimsy pretext, can keep us locked in our homes, jobless, dependent on hand-outs, unable to gather with friends and organize with like-minded individuals; our electoral process, as you all know, is a cruel joke from top to bottom. 

They, therefore, my son argued, don't need to take our guns, at least not for now.

I hope the lad is wrong, and our tribal survival instincts will kick in so we can break the corrupt woke machine before it achieves its 1984 nirvana.

Tragic. Absurd.

Sorry for the long break. 

Neither dead nor in a witness protection program in Mongolia, I suffer with old age grumpiness, the pains of the endless moving-in process for the new house, and a variety of minor but irritating physical ills which serve to compound my growing despair over what I see happening to our country and to Western civilization.

Two words come to mind when surveying the current socio-political-economic scene: "Tragic" and "Absurd." The first word "tragic," of course, get abused quite a bit. We see endless references to a "tragic" car accident, fire, plane crash, etc. As with so many others words today, this word had lost its meaning and impact unless you go back to the original Greek idea of "tragedy": A horrid event foreseen by all, but the actors keep on heading for that predicted disaster. The disaster, of course, is the "absurd" part.

The absurd Biden drama, whereby the corrupt, and not too bright ex-Senator from Delaware, long sold out to China and corporate interests, pretends to act as President is a true Greek tragedy. 

Who could not have foreseen the consequences of putting, via massive electoral fraud and the aid of a craven media and a high-tech cabal, this easily manipulated, barely conscious, senile, frail old moron in the White House? Is anybody surprised by: 

Chaos at the southern border? 

Damage to our international interests and growing violence overseas? 

Increasing racial and class divide? 

Rising mayhem in our streets? 

Complete collapse of our so-called education system? 

Growing inflation and unemployment? 

Use of law enforcement for political ends?

Employment of "science" to attempt a denial of our basic rights and to launch a total redo of our way of living?  

We, to cite but one small example, have the world's foremost energy producer and major oil exporter, now suffering gasoline shortages as the so-called Biden administration leads us back to the 1970s . . . well, better said, with luck it will prove the 1970's, and not the 1860's . . . 

Blame it on Russia, yeah, blame it on Russia. Oh, yes, and on Trump, but then Russia and Trump, go together like fish and chips . . .

Absurd clowns. Killer clowns, really.

More soon.