Wayward Landlubber

Most nights I sit with my cat in my lap as I scroll through the political offerings on YouTube. I have a TV, but I gave up trying to figure out how it works without cable. Thats how old i am. Like most things media, there are good Podcasts, and there are guys in muscle shirts. There are also historical snippets among the hysterical snippets. Some of them are very good and the narrators successfully run the gamet between professorial and subtle irony. Few are boring. It's not hard to tell the difference. The most disappointing historical snippets are the ones with digitally created voice-overs.  I used to know a fellow who was a pretty good actor, no one you would know, but one who strode the boards of local theater groups with characters that were believable; the aim of every actor. When I met Doug, he had been at it for about 10 years, after mustering out of the airforce at the end of the Cuba missile crisis. He completed his acting career in 2005 when his twenty-year battle with ...

There's an ancient tome studied by military colleges around the world, and by people who study peace. The Art of War was written sometime in the 5th Century--BCE. The author was Sun Tzu. He was a general but not your ordinary kind of general. He was great enough to be studied 2500 years later. One of his stories on proper generalship during war was about a great army, maybe 10,000 strong, marching on the Imperial Palace in Beijing. Great armies make noise, in the 5th Century BC, the noise they made was a distinctive noise to a trained ear. There's of course the rythmic stomp of marching feet on cobblestone streets. The occasional drop of a spear, maybe. The noise of wagons to carry the manual implements of war, and the food to feed them, voices of men commanding, and there was the slap of leather on leather as the soldiers moved briskly through the broad plaza. How do you enter the city undetected was the problem? The solution was to drive gaggles of geese before them. The gees...

I, and some of my Marion County Democratic  colleagues have a table outside the Farmers Market on Saturdays, where we sell buttons and make a strong presence against the most incompetent presidential administration in our entire history. Not surprisingly, this same administration is also massively corrupt. Corruption and incompetence are connected. One accompanies the other as tightly as two snakes mating. It makes sense. Under corruption, where insiders compete to get inside the Boss's colon, people do not last long enough to get experienced. The rewards of our weekly ritual at Saturday Market are personal and gratifying. I love seeing someone crack a smile or give a thumbs-up as they pass by. By contrast, there are the very occasional MAGA. Some are brave enough to express themselves openly. Others say something as they pass by, like squeaking out a fart in the grocery store and quickly disappearing. Sometimes I get a quick word in. This is to the woman who ended her fart salad o...

Are you punching up or punching down? If you're punching up, you are defending from a position of weakness, gravity is working against you. And you are probably not the one who throws the first punch. Punching down, you have a more defensible position. Ukraine is punching up. Russia is punching down. France, and later US, punched down, the Vietnamese punched up. Donold of Orange would like us to believe he is punching up, he's punching down-at your exposed nose, especiall if you might be woke. Some people, usually those who are unable to take a stand effectively can't tell the difference. Whether they have become punchdrunk from too many blows to the head, or from playing Rope-a-Dope with Republicans there're a whole lot of people out there supporting the bully. For some of us  the defensive tactic; lay low and try not to be seen. If you are punching against someone close to your own size and weight you are boxing according to the Marquis of Queensbury rules. A dictator...

                                      LIBERALS, TOLERANT NO LONGER. The left wing has been assumed to be the tolerant left. It is not a difficult standard when compared to the example set by those in the dark underground of the GOP. More recently that dark underground has been solidly above ground, illuminated by the klieg lights of arrogance and ignorance. As of Jan. 22, 2025, 1500 of those inhabiting the dark underground have been pardoned. Just 2.5 days after the new president was sworn in. Some of us lefties, perhaps many, or most of us, are no longer tolerant. Republicans have been abusive partners for too long and we will no longer tolerate this abuse of power. Perhaps we should have done this long ago,when Newt Gingrich was Speaker of the House, or even when Republicans refused to sanction Trump for his insurrection with anything stronger than tepid words. But we didn't. Tolerance is a ...

                 DAVID BROOKS IS HAVING SECOND THOUGHTS David Brooks has long been a New York times columnist. During all of that time, with the exception of recently, with the first Trump administration, Columnist Brooks has been a happy right wing polemicist. He is no longer happy. Not with his Republican party. Not with Trump, not with the quality of thought on display in Republican polemics today. One Whitehouse staffer actually said that, “we are building the rocket as we launch it.” Irony is lost on the Republican party. It is not lost on David Brooks and it must have him chewing antacids like chocolate kisses. Mr. Brooks now sees himself as a Democratic party centrist. He is like the hiker who sits on a nest of ants, surrounded by poison oak, with other unseen dangers awaiting, unsure where to go next. I’m sorry for him. Like John McCain in the 1990s, he has watched his party move too rapidly towards respect for dictatorship. Or in...

I've always enjoyed reading. I pretty much read everything from an early age on. From cereal boxes to adventure stories to biographies and autobiographies, and of course the great political writers of a distant time. Mostly I thought about writing as a talent above my capabilities. It may still be, though I'm not the one to prove it either way. Great writing is a gift to good writers. Good writers are an inspiration to lesser writers. Really bad writers grow up to be Republicans. That is the order of the universe. Order, in this case, means a lineal ranking; not the Republican kind. It's really easy to write, now that I've tried it and practiced it for a few years. A fellow by the name of Red Smith is remembered for this classic homily, when asked if it was hard to write: "why no, you just sit down at your typewriter and open your veins and bleed". A typewriter, by the way, is a mechanical writing device with no memory. Sort of like Marjory Taylor Greene. Whos...