Why are things so grim?
It might just be me, but it seems that the world has gone stark raving mad. I suppose it is a commonplace that out government is dysfunctional. The courts are crusading … again. There is a massive change in attitude toward non traditional sexual arrangements; a lot of people are saying pretty much anything goes. If that is what the majority want than by all that is beneficial that is what they should have. The laws should make it happen. But the courts are making it happen. All right. Laws have been passed on both sides. But it’s up to the courts to apply the law, not to apply what they imagine people are going to want the law to be in the near future. The legislature has been so divided that we have faced crisis after unnecessary crisis.
Then there’s the legislature. There are things I like immensely about our president. He is loath to start wars. That’s great. I love it. War is a failure of diplomacy. It should never happen. But in this hostile world it seems imperative to be ready for one. You need a military strong enough so that nobody wants to give you too much trouble. So the proper use for a military is as what they used to call, “A fleet in being.” Suppose you have a navy and you have a safe port for your warships. Your enemy has a comparable fleet off your coast prepared to keep you bottled up. What do you do? You stay put. Your enemy is using resources and you are not. You don’t want to change that. I don’t think Germany in WW II ever quite got that into their heads. You don’t take your fleet out and do battle; you stay holed up and feint from time to time but you don’t want to lose that fleet.
A military can be used any number of times as a threat and keep all its capabilities. Enter battle and you have lost the peace, not to mention your young people and your treasure.
We have no ground troops in Syria. Good. And we say we are not going to put ground troops in Syria. Not so good. We just scuttled our own fleet. We have said no engagement in the Ukraine. We will confine ourselves to posturing and economic moves that hurt us economically. There goes another fleet. You don’t strike unless you must, and when you do you do in sorry not in anger.
The worst part of it all is that we are the good news. There was just another terrible, pointless military action between Hamas in the Gaza strip and Israel. There are pictures of Israelis sitting in lawn chairs on a hilltop watching the fireworks as hell rained on Gaza and cheering every explosion. I am assured that the attitude was the same on the other side. That is neither anger nor sorrow; that is pure venom.
There is the Islamic State a.k.a. ISIL or ISIS. They commit atrocities wholesale. Atrocities happen in a war. But they make movies of them and publish them. Venom again.
Then there is Ebola. If you don’t know the nightmare that it is wreaking I’ll not darken your day. We sit back and let the charities deal with it. One of their biggest problems is lack of supplies. So many airlines have canceled service to affected countries that they can’t get the gloves and gowns they need for minimal safety. It’s no threat to us, with our excellent hospitals and public health, right? Wrong. The virus is carried by bats, which do not fall ill from it. Occasionally it gets transmitted to a human, who falls very ill and is quite contagious. So an American on vacation abroad picks up the virus from someone who has just fallen ill. Neither suspects the problem. The American returns home, takes no particular precautions and falls ill after a week or two. The health care specialists run down all contacts and observe everybody and treat the symptomatic. Right so far? They don’t look for the bat which somehow got infected.
Now it’s in the bat population. We will have sporadic cases until the end of time. And in this hemisphere we have vampire bats. That’s going to make for a lot of sporadic cases. No vampires in the US. They’re way off in Mexico among other places. Of course global warming might change that. Don’t believe in global warming? Are you that sure?
Send in an aircraft carrier. One of those babies probably has routinely enough field hospital units and enough supplies for the whole epidemic along with means to deliver it all safely. If not, it can sure carry enough. I’d really like to see America being the good guys once more. Don’t have a spare carrier? Well build one. Meanwhile do it with ordinary transport ships that are helicopter capable.
But there is not any debate on the issue. It’s them and not us.
And that’s what it comes down to. Hate between them and us. Of course that doesn’t mean everybody, but a functional majority it seems to be. If people who didn’t hate them would kindly attend to business and marry kin, it might all go away, that is unless it’s already too late.
Things look worse to me, and I don’t see the downhill slide slowing until the root cause is addressed.
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