Wayward Landlubber

     Russia has just demonstrated an anti-satelite killer missile. As a child of the Cold-War and spy-fiction of the time, the old USSR played a pretty credible game of brinksmanship. They had their classic fuck-ups, as did we, but it was more "Day of the Condor" than "Spy vs Spy". This latest achievement was right out of "Doctor Strangelove"; Trumpian in its incompetence. The old Soviet satellite which they Rittenhoused, spread a debris field that endangered the Spacelab, comprising an international crew, including a Russian. This very real threat to their lives, and the science being carried out, endured through nine orbits of the earth.        In the old days this event would be kept off of the front page. It would be something they would allow to be leaked. So that we are pretty sure of their new capability, but not too far away from deniability. And they would have shrouded the evidence from public notice. Not so today. The Russian general in charge o

     Both political parties have advocates of a thing called American Exceptionalism. In general the left sees it as reflecting the noble achievements we have blessed the world with (there are many), without ignoring where we have failed to achieve nobility. I cannot say for sure, but I imagine that is what characterizes Critical Race Theory, but being a liberal I may be too close to the subject.      The right, while extolling American Exceptionalism from every pulpit and podium, have a more cynical view of our exceptionalism. It seems to be a sermon on how there are certain norms that apply to all nations except, when the truth is finally out, us. Very much in the same way that the Evangelical views their own religious exceptionalism.       It is a character flaw of colonial nations that they see themselves as exceptional, bringing culture, or the deity, or capitalism, to the savages of the hitherto unexceptional nations. As Mark Twain once said, "The difference between the civi

    I'm currently blocked from Facebook (now Meta: which in Hebrew means, dead. [I wish I could write jokes this funny]). Early in my banishment I got a reply to a remark I made on climate change. This fellow made the preposterous comparison between climate change and a sunburn. Such stupidity can no longer be addressed politely. There was a time we could smile inwardly and turn our backs. That was before the tea-party emerged from the republican party like a hot turd through a hemorrhoid. There is an abundance of information available on climate change which people like him appear to be unaware of. He claimed to live in Australia, which is having its own threats with wildfires and drought brought on by global warming, even worse, it is an island nation, vulnerable to rising ocean levels, and bleaching of coral. These very real threats threaten the very land this fool lives on, the sources of his nutrition, as well as the rest of the planet that surrounds it. HEY STUPID, you ain