Sgt. Mom

Air Force veteran, historical novelist, and cat-person

With Dread and Foreboding

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So, how do I regard Election Day, looming up in two weeks? With dread and foreboding, to be absolutely frank – no matter who is declared victorious. It’s absolutely guaranteed that all flaming hell will break out in either case; either within hours/minutes, or in days/weeks.

If the Trump/Vance ticket sweeps to an unmistakable, unarguable landslide well beyond any means of the Democrat Party to fraud – the anti-Trumpists will be insane with baffled fury. The national media establishment will look like Wily Coyote after one of his Acme gadgets explodes – and the entrenched bureaucracy crusted like layers and barnacles all over the various federal government departments … they will see the end of their comfortable gravy train. Ruin, disgrace, impoverishment, possibly criminal charges. The Deity knoweth and the various conservative-sympathetic bloggers and commenters, to include many fellow Chicagoboyz essayists and frequent commenters, remember very well how blatantly they played dirty pool the last time around. What would they venture this time against the Great Orange One, the avatar of their doom … Political assassination? Of him, or any of his allies? At the height of what some commenters have termed a second civil war? Like Lincoln, at the hands of an angry partisan of the losing side? Sadly. I wouldn’t put it beyond the realm of possibility. This will be bad. Very bad.

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Dedicated Followers of Fashion

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It’s kind of depressing, reading the various stories linked here and there by various blogs and social media about pro-Palestinian/pro-terrorist orgies of protest on the grounds of various colleges and universities, and in the streets of certain big cities. This reminds me of the anti-war demos of the Vietnam War era. Massive turnout, lots of signs, lots of free-floating rhetoric … which turned out to mean absolutely nothing at all, in the long run. Much of the ruckus wasn’t motivated by sincere conviction about the welfare of the South Vietnamese, or the lives of our military troops. It was all just the followers of fashion, making a show of their fashionable conviction.

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They Have Their Exits

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I’ve been following the various social media over the last week, reading and watching various reports of how local volunteer efforts are handling disaster recovery in the mountainous areas blasted by Hurricane Helene. FEMA and various other federal departments are helping – sort of – or hindering, interfering, preventing access or flat-out confiscating donations, according to some rather irate reports, which reports are indignantly condemned as rumors by all the established media sources and FEMA’s own public affairs representatives. No smoke without a fire, as the saying goes, and hacks – err, that is “reporters” for the established media certainly don’t appear to be venturing deep into the Appalachian weeds to report on such matters first-hand. Although, recalling the dog’s breakfast that the national establishment media made of covering Hurricane Katrina, that might be all to the good in the long run.

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When The Bough Breaks

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I have so far in life been sufficiently fortunate never to have been caught in a full-frontal weeks-long, totally-life-destroying national disaster. But I have been on the fringes of several brief national disasters; the earthquake that hit Sylmar in 1971, a massive typhoon that hit Northern Japan in the late 1970s, a horrendous rainfall in late 1998 which put a lot of South Texas floating down various rivers and creeks, another rainstorm a few years ago which flooded out the small Hill Country town of Wimberly, and an early spring snowstorm which dumped almost a foot of snow on South Texas, snow which stubbornly remained for most of a week, featuring freezing temperatures which knocked out both power and water in much of metro and suburban San Antonio. My parents’ retirement home in Northern San Diego County was destroyed in a massive wildfire in 2003. I also was on-line and paying attention to disasters like Hurricanes Katrina and Harvey, to the fires that destroyed Paradise, California, and Lahaina, Hawaii …

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Don’t Fear the Beeper

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I have to admit that I am snickering still over the Mossad’s targeted beeper offensive against Hezbollah … who ought now to go by the nic of “Hezball-less” – snickering in those intervals between genuflecting in respectful admiration to a national intelligence organization who can actually undertake an operation of such … intelligence. And sneaky, original creativity. And command of technological aspects. And a complicated operation conducted by a sub-rosa organization over a long period of time, without a single desk jockey blabbing to a fool like Seymour Hersh. And pulling the detonating cord at a time calculated to inflict the most damage on an enemy chain of command.

From the liver to the knee, indeed.

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