The fountain of youth is dull as paint Methuselah is my patron saint I've never been so comfortable before Oh, I'm so glad that I'm not young anymore
-I'm Glad I'm Not Young Anymore, by Lerner and Lowe
Sung by Maurice Chevalier in Gigi
I've not indulged much more than a skim of the newspapers the last few mornings, preferring instead to read my book a little and muse over larger things than whatever's happening in Washington these days.
I should've stuck to that regimen. Instead, reading the paper this morning gave me a sense that the world is lurching toward 1939, only this time with nuclear weapons. And our family and extended family have all these young men to worry about as the old men crank up the meat grinder.
Putin apparently was ready to start detonating nukes, but his entourage keeps getting in the way.
While his Air Force took a pot shot at an RC-135 Rivet Joint yesterday, then explained it away as incompetence rather than aggression.
But for their blundering performance in Ukraine, who'd believe such a story? Then again, with the U.K. imploding under the leadership of a completely inept Conservative Party, they had every reason to accept the Russian alibi while they deal with the end of a government that failed to outlast a head of lettuce.
Speaking of Ukraine, how does a military respond that's whipped on the battlefield and lost the will to fight? Oh yeah, the same as every other military in that situation--take it out on the civilians.
Ah, the irony of a shambolic army sweeping into Ukraine to drive out Nazis, only to reprise the brutality of the actual Nazis when they swept through town eighty years ago.
But don't just feel sympathy for the Ukrainians, because Putin's Quisling in Belarus promises the Slavic "cleansing" of the rest of Europe is coming, in the nightmare that's kept western statesmen up at night for centuries.
Is this a real threat, what with their military incompetence, shrinking population, and relative economic insignificance? Maybe not, but for all those nukes. Oh, and the right-wing apologists for this generation's Hitler who are sweeping across Europe's political landscape. Just as they did in the 1930s. How soon we forget.
And if the nuclear war doesn't start there, our friends staring across the Taiwan Strait at each other are a good bet. Just last Sunday Xi promised to do something about it as part of China's five year plan. Our top naval officer suggests the war may start as soon as the next year.
Will we fight when that happens? I suppose if the Rs take the midterms, and later the White House, a war with China is more likely than with Russia, given their disdain for Asians and love of the possum-faced fascist in Moscow.
The trouble with the Chinese, said the guy with not one but TWO degrees in international relations and a certificate in defense studies (no kidding), is they're sitting on a demographic time bomb after all those years smothering their girl babies and populating the country with restless young men with no one to court. Socially, it's an incredibly dangerous situation, mirrored in other places to some degree, but more so it points to the inevitable, looming moment when China's population collapses for at least a couple generations, and with it their economic fortunes. Better to go to war now, before they become irrelevant.
Meanwhile at home we're about to elect our own slate of fascists, who deftly combine Putin's authoritarian predilections and Truss's economic acumen. Three more weeks, and then the red wave sweeps over the country, made possible by 51% of the population who just saw their right to physical autonomy erased just as Jeebus intended. But have you seen gas prices lately?
Yes, the American population is apparently that stupid.
So yeah, I'm feeling grateful to be 58, to have lived through the best times and experienced a few triumphs and tragedies before the fireball envelops us all, or the knock sounds at our door and some guy with a MAGA cap and an AR-15 makes a citizens' arrest for violating a statute modeled after Leviticus.
On that cheery note, I'll distract myself with some paying work before taking Peg's beloved godson Josh, a charmer if there ever was one, on a drive around the Finger Lakes, with maybe a stop for an IPA at my favorite overlook above Seneca Lake. Josh is 25 or 26--all this global badness is his problem now, and Issac's, and Jim's, and Drew's, and Sean's, and PT's. Might as well buy them a strong drink. They're going to need it.
Dont worry about us - we see this all as a positive - we've been conditioned to expect it. For us, knowing the world will be uninhabitable by our retirement age just means we don't have to worry about social security being bankrupt, that the US will be a theocracy, or even saving for retirement. Having a 401k will be the least of our worries in the 2050s. :)