The SS United States: A Sinking Ship
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“Give me a place on which to stand, and I will move the earth.”
Perhaps Archimedes really said that perhaps not. I don’t know, but I’ll testify that standing on ignorance gives the feeling that moving the Earth is simple and easy. I think that explains a lot about our current administration and its habit of appointing people with no qualifications to positions of sweeping power.
Take Jared Kushner if you will: scion of a real estate mogul with a history of questionable ethics swimming in a swamp of evidence of wrongdoing from blackmail to the selling of green cards for personal gain.
Aside from being the Secretary of Everything, charged with “re-imagining government’ to World Peace, he seems to be involved with (or against) Attorney General Sessions in Prison Reform. It’s not working out, which impasse apparently has given the director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, General Mark Inch, a reason to resign last week.
Did he have Plato’s caution about the perils of debating with madmen in mind? Whatever the precise reason, Major General Inch has had long experience with military corrections and enforcement and neither Kushner nor Sessions have any at all – nor do their appointments. This is the norm for the Trump administration of course
“In a dictatorship, Ministers come and go”
Said Graham Green, writing of Haiti in the Duvalier years. Is it really a stretch to make the comparison? Time will tell, but by the time I gave up listening to Rachel Maddow for reasons of health, (physical and mental,) at least 70 Executive branch officials had quit or been fired. Yes, I do believe that’s a record.
Such a level of turnover would be a warning to investors if the United States were a publicly held business, the sales gimmick that helped elect Trump and Nixon for that matter; but it’s not a business of course and there’s no board of directors that can simply fire a CEO abusing company assets, selling trade secrets and lining his pockets with side deals.
We’re stuck with this one. We can’t sell our shares and walk away and even if the company is losing a fortune, the preferred stock interests and perhaps even the competitors are keeping the officers in power. What will it all be worth in 2020? Will there be dividends or only executive bonuses? What about mergers and acquisitions? Does the future involve bananas? I’m not sure I want to know.
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I just watched that movie and it is frightening, and I DO THINK it could happen today as long as Trump is in office. His millions of ignorant supporters would rally to his side, since most have never read one book.
All empires fall, usually the decay is from within. Never more true than now. But something more sinister is afoot. Trump’s collusion with Russia is real, he is also cosy with China, trade war, no trade war, sanctions, no sanctions. You can’t really have a trade war with your business partners, not good for business. Putin is breathing down the necks of the old Soviet satellites. The Swedish government has sent warnings to every household to be ready for war and what to do when it happens. When it happens.
The EU is fragmented, and Putin is delighted. A united Europe is not in his interests. Putin’s promoters of fake news deserve a raise.
China is a big player in what’s happening on the Korean Peninsula. Calling North Korea’s exalted dictator ‘Rocket Man’ didn’t bring him to the table, China did.
Too much guesswork involved to say what might or might not be happening, but to me it seems like the big three bad guys, Trump, Putin and Xi are considering slicing up the world between them.
Well said indeed.
Indeed, unfortunately!
We are America and we are a majestic ship, one constructed in the late 1700s. Yes, it’s worn-in, but still seaworthy. We (the passengers) co-own the vessel and hire the crew. For the most part, we agree on certain things: people should have a right to live peacefully; we should come together in times of distress and when our values are threatened; we should treat each other fairly and aspire to provide everyone with access to essential resources needed to exist free of suffering. We should. Yes. We should.
Yes, and we should not put children in cages and put the cages in camps and then lose track of them. We should not shoot children between the eyes because somehow the madman and his henchmen equate them with some gang. We should not deport people who are culturally American and speak no Spanish – who own businesses, have professional degrees and were brought here as babies.
And yet we do this and we do worse and there are enough people who support it that there may be no way to stop it because the courts and law enforcement and the facts themselves are being sabotaged.
Point 1:
I believe a more common and telling version of the Archimedes quote is “Give me a lever and a place to stand and I will move the earth”. That being said, consider that an inclined plane is a type of lever, and an inclined plane wrapped around a cylinder is….. a screw.
Which explains our current status.
Point 2:
Trump’s issue with the Justice Dept., especially the FBI, is that he assumed that, like Hitler’s Brown Shirts, their purpose was to protect him. Recall his demanding then FBI Director Comey’s “loyalty”. Since he did not get that loyalty, then they must ne enemies. Similarly sessions would not protect him from “Russia-gate” either, so = enemy.
Re: Trump’s surrounding himself with incompetents. There is an old saying about brides selecting ugly bridesmaids in order to make themselves look better….
🙂 at the ugly bridesmaid. My best friend was my choice for my maid of honor and when he was getting his suit made he told the guy, don’t make me look better than my friend she won’t stand for it.
I like you better every day Jess!
My sister in law stood for my husband since she was his best friend too and he could not think of anyone he wanted beside him, other than his sister. We did not have a traditional wedding at all, even though many in his family wanted the whole Catholic ritual, I was like nope not happening, this is not your wedding it is ours. If you guys want a church wedding go get married, renew your vows etc.
It feels like our country and its democratic structure is slipping through our fingers and there seems little we can do about it. All those that helped put these madmen in power, no matter what their reasons were, are dumbass traitors. That is all.
And of course the wooley mammoth sitting in the room is the attack on the Justice department: the massive effort to denounce and invalidate an investigation so awash with evidence one wonders if there enough prisons to hold them all – unless Trump pardons them all.
Are there enough Fox Suckers to go along with it and stand there while Trump takes over and dismantles it all? Congress seems carefully oblivious and the country seems far more concerned with more fashionable targets.
Yes, I’m truly concerned for the survival of our country in any form related to what it has been and more so what it was evidently headed towards. Hell, they’re blaming the investigation on Hillary and it’s enough to make Orwell sue and as we sit here, they’re kidnapping hundreds of children and sending them off to camps because after all MS-13 are “animals” Oh but Hillary! Oh but Sam Jackson!” Oh but Starbucks!
There is a quote attributed to Seneca I can see in my husband’s home office framed. It’s a photo of Seneca and it says on it, It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that things are difficult. I am having a hard time watching people being relegated to background noise, when they dare speak up about this asshole.
It is frightening what our beloved country is becoming and there are around a third of us are letting it go unchecked because they like the whole, daddy says you need to (insert whatever here), or you will be in lots of trouble.
I know I echo the thoughts of millions of others, and it might be getting timeworn, but I’m genuinely concerned for the human race with this lunatic sitting in the Oval Office.