Editor’s Note: As has been noted elsewhere, this is a Tuesday that feels like a second Monday. Nestled in Virginia’s rolling Piedmont, we here at Refuge Farm are subject to all sorts of political turmoil. It is piled up on the way to our loopy Virginia off-peak election next week. Former Presidents and governors visited us yesterday to assure us everything will be fine if we cast our votes the right way. There is more on that line, and it is a bit confusing, whether it is a second Monday or not. Some of these things are beyond politics and it feels as if we are on a nature hike through some sort of bizarro-land. This morning, we share Marlow’s view on those matters while the Editorial Staff evokes a recent memory of hurtling across America for a celebration of continuity and joy. We cherish that momentary celebration of things that mean something to our family, not politics. But first things first, right?
– Vic
Author’s Note: As many of us watch the unending, televised, real-time-analyzed haphazardry of our nation’s elected, it increasingly seems they are wandering about a future wasteland of a once great world capitol.
I must confess to a certain grotesque fascination listening to Administration apologists explain its most lunatic ideas and claims. It is a bit like watching someone choke down criadillas, on a bet, then declare it four-star Guide Michelin cuisine. (Note to any triggered Shiite vegan readers: This is a simile, not a recommendation. Trust me, I know — criadillas taste lousy.)
This process is a simple two-step do-si-do. At first, there is stunned silence. (Did he really claim that all these all these proposed new benefits are free?) Then the frantic search for hidden underlying reason(s) that sound rational only to those who reside inside the DC beltway. (The problem with Build Back Better program’s flagging support in the country is the media’s fault.) Then out of the blue our focus was shifted to the Chinese Communist Party’s growing threats to Taiwan — which PresBid stumbled into the right policy at last week’s CNN moderated town hall with a calm defiance — America will defend the island against a People Liberation Army invasion. (White House staff went full on Emily Litella mode: Nevermind.)
All of us who live out here in the real world are being knocked back on our heels by these incessant departures from sanity.
Friendly media endlessly try to defuse these matters by pointing to PresBid’s good intentions saying his objectives are not bad. All cold comfort to those saddled with higher prices for everyday necessities and those likely called to lay down their lives in another Asian land war.
We should not play down the importance of having another president with harebrained notions. But we should not explain away these oddities when they veer from BS into crazy dangerland.
Loopiness at the highest level encourages a certain type of staff response to minimize the damage of the boss’s strangeness and poor judgment. PresTrump’s White House oftentimes looked like an adult day care center, population “1.” PresBid’s seems like a dementia lockdown facility, population “1.”
Thus inspired, here are a few appropriately demented and loopy observations on these Beltway goings on.
– Marlow
Wasteland Observations
A conceptual future American apocalypse
Only those who can destroy a thing, control a thing. See ancient Rome’s Carthage solution to the endless Punic wars. No one sentient at present inside America’s Capital Beltway seems to want instant true control despite their uneven understanding of this truism. Are they crafty or just lucky?
“Law is the ultimate science” reads the engravings above the office doors of the DC beltway’s truly powerful.
Eyes that always look ahead for the safest course are closed forever.
Despite my advanced age, I still long to spit, once, on some of these folks’ heads.
Today, churched and secular religions and politics seem to be riding together in various red and blue media war carts. Will the whirlwind follow?
Completely smooth operations in legislating betrays the ass-covering of bad ideas. Real politics, like small boats in the open ocean, rock.
An absolute rule in today’s American politics: money must flow.
What we despise reveals our true selves.
Why should we pay for the violence of our long-ago ancestors?
America’s survival over the past two plus centuries was underwritten by its citizen soldiers’ and sailors’ ability to swim in dark roiling waters. These waters should be forever covered in wreaths in their memory.
We humans need crave a logical universe. But the real world is senseless — always one step beyond logic. A bit maddening, no? This might explain in large part our perceptions of current times.
Let’s not call these beltway folks Ishmael, if only out of self-preservation,
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