So, it looks like Her Inevitableness is tottering on the way to her coronation, attended by throne-sniffing, lickspittle courtiers like Chris Matthews of MSNBC, who most notably got bent out of shape last night by Patricia Smith (the mother of former SEAL Sean Smith, killed in the 2012 mob attack on the US consular office in Benghazi) calling Her Inevitableness a liar. Such “lese majeste!” harrumphs the egregiously offended Mr. Matthews, whom I assume followed this up with a demand that those kids get off his lawn.
Sgt. Mom
OPSEC
That is one of those military acronyms which everyone who has ever been in the military for longer than oh, I don’t know a couple of years? A single hitch in one of the armed services? Whatever; what it means in plain English is “operations security” and what that entails in the larger sense drilled in by basic training, refresher training, briefings, a constant dribble of AFRTS spots cautioning the same in 30 second bites, and occasionally by the direct intervention of a supervisor administering a stern reminder is that you keep your mouth shut about stuff and treat classified material with every care. Even stuff that seems minor, inconsequential, trivial, and is not in point of fact, actually classified. Because a whole lot of little pieces put together by an expert analyst could reveal a pretty big picture; a big and possibly life-threatening picture to someone, or hundreds, even thousands of someones.
The Paving on the Road to Hell
That paving was laid down in California over the last few weeks; first by attendees at a Donald Trump rally in San Jose being harassed and physically attacked after the rally by protestors and this with the apparent acquiescence (or possibly the tacit encouragement) of the San Jose Police Department, and then again in Sacramento a week ago, when a protest organized on the grounds of the California State Capitol in Sacramento by a group calling themselves the Traditionalist Worker Party variously described as white supremacists or neo-Nazis was attacked by a group proudly identifying themselves as anti-fascist. As was reported in the Los Angeles Times, when last Sunday’s rally began, “Waiting for them were counter-protesters, including members of the anti-fascist organization Antifa Sacramento, which had promoted a “Shut Down Nazi Rally” event on its website…”
The Traditionalist Worker Party members, whatever their merits or lack thereof, had a permit for a demonstration, and in the larger understanding of things, a perfect right to make fools of themselves in public, just as it was found in 1978 that a neo-Nazi organization had the perfect right to march through Skokie, Illinois. No less a luminary than the ACLU defended that as a matter of free speech and the exercise thereof. Personally, I find it ironic that the so-called anti-fascists are acting more like actual, historic fascists than those they loudly accuse of being fascists.
A Diversion: From Luna City 3.0
(Yes, the two Chronicles of Luna City are selling very well, and my daughter and I have generated sufficient plot for the next volume – Luna City 3.0. For your delectation and amusement, below the fold is some cheery and diverting humor, set in a little South Texas Town which could, if you bent down and looked at it sideways, bear a slight resemblance to Cecily, Alaska, or Lake Woebegon, Minnesota…)
Bubbles, Harbingers, and the Perils of Talking Past Each Other
If ever there was a nation-sized demonstration of the Pauline Kael intellectual bubble on the part of a national elite being caught with their metaphorical trousers down and their pale pasty behinds glowing radioactively for all to see … then the vote this last week for Britain to depart the EU at speed would be it. Here all the movers and shakers, the intellectual, social and political set were so certain in their own rectitude and equally convinced of the stupidity, backwardness and flat-out racism of their fellow citizens … well, of course, I can almost hear the wailing from the Remainders all the way in Texas. Because all the right-thinking people agreed with them; membership in the EU was a Positive Good, and the Way Forward, and the Wave of the Future, and such membership showered nothing but good things upon them ….
Well, it showered good things on the right-thinking people, but everyone else living outside the privilege bubble saw disadvantages up the whazoo, including the fact that basically, there was no appeal. Everything from the sugar content in jam to the proper curvature of bananas and that was just the petty, annoying stuff was all in rules written by some faraway bureaucrat who could never be sacked for cause, or voted out of office.