Slow News Week? All that stuff in the three columns above is actually going on. A sample of of it is included in the note above- we would never have imagined a thousand young Americans being in a place called “Niger.” Apparently we have some sort of agreement with whoever is running that nation at this moment.

That is a news note typical of the week- notification flew by and was not mentioned again. The Congress has contributed to the apparent pace of events. “Section 702,” remember that issue? Apparently we have authorized another two years of warrantless surveillance by our government aimed at our citizens. That means we can catch our breaths for a moment before beginning the argument again.

It is amusing, in a way, since we use to talk to Admiral Mac Showers about what it was like when the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was passed some forty years in the wake of the revelations of government abuse by the Church and Pike Committees on the Hill. Apparently the time that has passed has allowed us to grow a couple generations of officials who have adopted the techniques of information collection pioneered by advertising and imposing them around the old constitutional prohibitions on such activities.

We don’t actually understand what those are, so it fits the week. The Big Foreign Aid Bill? That leads to a castigation of the Speaker of the House, who is accused of cooperating with the opposition in the chamber he ostensibly leads. There are three parts to the aid package headed toward the President today. The largest of them is 6.500 million bucks to support the borders of a nation under brutal assault on another continent. There is another 1,400 million bucks headed for a similarly violent conflict in another region, but that one is more confusing, since we are apparently funding both sides of that war while ignoring an invasion of our own.

That sums up part of a busy week that has produced not much information subject to interpretation. It is like the Australia-New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) celebration celebrated in the English-speaking world today. The sacrifice offered on the beaches of Gallipoli a century ago are recalled and honored even if we no longer recall the intricacies of the global effort to recruit, train and ship families south and west from Europe, and then north and east as an army across the Equator and then west to east across the International Dateline. It was a big deal, even if we no longer recall the specifics of it.

We will at least remember what they were called, even if the details on why they did it and to whom they did it has become a little foggy. We hope the Congress has cleared some of the wreckage from the legislative calendar. We want to get back to watching images of a candidate for high office here in America dozing as he is pinioned in a New York courtroom by citizens committed to his destruction.

We are assured things are going to pick up soon in terms of intensity and speed shortly as we march with determination into a storm of increasing intensity. We intend to come out swinging, even if we are not quite sure what target at which we are supposed to be swinging. you know?

Copyright 2024 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com