First off, a short programing note: Mrs. Left is undergoing foot surgery tomorrow, which will be followed by 6-8 weeks of recovery, including a week of bedrest. If you take a moment to do the math, you’ll understand how my schedule will be a bit constrained at least for a week. I’ll try to find some time at the keyboard, and I’ll do my level best to keep content coming, but I’m not making any guarantees, especially tomorrow, which will almost certainly be a day without Kibbitz Corner (I know, that’s like a cereal without milk, but try to make it through anyway).
I saw a post on Facebook yesterday from Steve M, a friend from dancing, and a guy who I never quite realized was so enlightened until I started perusing his posts. He was just enumerating the various trigger points around the globe at the moment, including Iraq, Israel, Gaza, Syria, Ukraine, North Korea, and Somalia. We’ve got ISIS, beheadings, bombings, drone attacks, rocket attacks, incursions, invasions, and oh yeah…there’s that small matter of Ebola spreading through Africa like a wildfire in dry brush and high winds. Every time the CDC reassures us that there is no immediate danger to the US, I’m tempted to buy another case of MRE’s and another box of ammo. I’d really like the CDC to explain to me why they’re convinced that a highly contagious virus that is easily and rapidly spread from human to human and has so far ignored a dozen national borders is going to somehow be deterred by an ocean or two. Delta may divert flights when someone starts bitching about the reclining seats, but I doubt they’ll turn the plane around if someone looks a little feverish.
So if you’re of an evangelical Christian mindset, I can see why you might be concerned that we’re on the verge of the rapture, or if you’re more metaphysical, of pole shifts or other apocalyptic earth changes, or if you’re just a pessimist, like me, of a total shitstorm of woe and war and plague for the next couple of decades. Look, you’d have to be deaf to not hear the percussive beat of war drums in the not so far distance. These ISIS assholes are good at messaging in the twenty-first century. Now they’ve done their second video beheading in a little more than a few weeks, and the outrage engendered is exactly what they expect and even demand. (I wonder how much outrage would result if someone ever videoed the immediate physical result and aftermath of a US drone strike. Is dismemberment by explosion less terrifying than dismemberment by blade?) Obama doesn’t instantly respond, then responds in a calm and measured manner after confirming the authenticity of the latest shock video, and the predictable hyperbole, bellicosity and bloviating vomits from a host of right-wing mouths. If John McCain or Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan had been president, we’d already have the 101st Airborne dropping into Damascus, and there’ be a hundred cruise missiles in the air…no particular targets, but someone by god needs to die. In fact, had one of those statesmen been at the helm, we’d already be marching all over Syria, Iraq, Iran, and probably Libya for good measure. These guys are more eager to pull the trigger than a nine year-old with an Uzi, and so far as I can tell, the Republican response to the unemployment problem is to give everyone an M-16, desert camo, and an insufficient monthly paycheck from the Department of the Treasury.
At this point, I don’t see how President Obama can possibly keep us out of a new war. Given the depressing predictions for the makeup of the Senate after the next midterm elections, it may be all he can do to keep his job until January 20, 2017. Get on your raincoats and goggles, boys and girls…the shit is really gonna fly.
BW
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