Sorting things out on a Tuesday is always a challenge, as you well know. We had been talking to a fellow yesterday at the tobacco hut while on the stock-up swing. He was interesting. He had started his life in a place called Yemen, a place we knew and which owns Great Socotra Island. and a bunch of rockets. He manages the shop we visited on return from the grocery store and gas station as a minor precaution to keep things normal on The Patio, just in case there are minor disruptions. Not an urgent trip since everything is normal, at least in traffic and supply, so it seemed like a reasonable set of useful errands.
Good time for it, all things considered.
Splash asked the Yemeni-American what he thought about the Houthis in that country shutting down the Suez Canal with rockets and he shrugged and said that is why he was in Arlington, Virginia and not Sana’a. We all shrugged, pleased we are here as well.
That sums up the mood. The Salts were still a little riled up from the realization that we are living in one of those moments we have all shared down through the years, either over the airwaves or in person. But the number of elements combined in the messaging and kinetic aspects of this one are impressive.
The pile of the morning digital traffic gave some perspective on interwoven areas of concern. We characterize ours, generally, as causing us to be mildly alert while attempting to stay relaxed but engaged. That has been a moderately successful approach to a lot of activities, but this one is a curious one in the number of areas in simultaneous uproar.
War in the Mideast, maybe Monday. Probable energy distribution problems resulting. Down in Venezuela there are problems with oil exports away from the Mid-East rockets. Domestically? The wild campaign stuff continues, as does the return of the Public Health thing again with an economy unraveling due to the impact of some fiscal policy initiatives that never made a great deal of sense. Would have been worthy of discussion before they started, but that is not how we do things these days.
A pal from Pentagon days- a full bird in her time- was at the table. She wondered whether we were worried about things in the circle of Salts. We huddled on that, having just seen that eleven Yanks were injured in the rocket attack on al Asad Airbase in Iraq.
And Rocket laughed and threw in the curious news from Kiwi-land, a place far away from virtually everything threatening. They are taking action against a pretty bad version of the flu. They just gave their Minister of Health the power to detain, isolate or quarantine persons, places, buildings, ships, vehicles, aircraft, animals” to isolate, quarantine or disinfect them.
So, we have Americans under attack in Iraq, with carriers and squadrons flowing into the hot spot. We have economic problems at home unfolding. Plus a possible health emergency re-emerging.
Are we worried? No, not really. We have seen all these sorts of thing before and managed to lurch through them. Like all the great civilizations have have records surviving the ones they didn’t.
But this one at this moment is fairly unique in the number of emergencies, in all the strata of human activity are happening all at the same time. Or maybe we are just being told to be alarmed. We don’t know. It is an area of mild concern.
In our time- yeah, we know that three-word phrase reeks of geezer-hood- there was the realization that at least there were some people managing things in an imperfect but dedicated manner in an attempt to be prepared and minimize risk.
In contrast, we appear now to have an Executive Branch of our government so complex that it is composed of largely unidentified experts unaccountable to anyone except those who contribute to their continuation in those invisible office cubicles we used to inhabit.
Our favorite summation of the situation was the announcement of how we are going to deal with this multiplicity of real, significant and impending concerns.
There was late news that things are finally being taken seriously. Late yesterday came the announcement that Julia Louis-Dreyfus, a talented actress, has been summoned to help sort it out. Her character on the political show Veep as “Vice-President Selina Meyer” was credible and well-written and already recorded. She has been likened by many to the new nominee for election to the actual White House job.
That is in the contest against a former game show host to manage the fate of our portion of the world. Julia will be a “extra-involved” in the events leading to an election currently scheduled for about a hundred days from now.
That is how we are preparing. We think mild concern about that is how to approach it this morning. We will see how it unfolds over the next week and see whether or not to get really alert, you know? We are already prepared enough to do that, anyway.
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