409. Poem: Knowing How to Do It

Man, I said, that's the  only thing we can fall back on after we've taken continents away from people and made them slaves that we know how to do things and that may not make up for our crimes but at least it keeps those people from giving up the knowing we passed on which is good for them and maybe, just maybe, makes them a little grateful and makes some of them maybe feel a little less high on their horse because gratitude heh heh lets us say aren't you accomplices, complicit in the crime and if they say certainly not we're victims we ask well do you want us to give back the continent and return the slaves' children to theirs and they say that's impossible now and we say yes and everybody knows it and a few know what a rare privilege you enjoy to be able to have the benefits of another's crime without being complicit because you would oh so willingly give the benefits back but alas you can't and we say every culture has a name for that and historians will know it and learn it and stick it under your saddle and maybe you will come down and join the accomplice party with us and we will all lift a glass to ahem American know-how but before we get on our horse you can ask how much do you know about doing funerals and I say oh oh I've known child after child who through long years had learned enough about a person as wife and mother to fill a book of poetry but the best they could say when they the center of the service got up to speak was that she was "real special" and the grateful primitives can say so you don't do ceremony or language very well do you and ask us to listen to one of their children:

She is clothed with strength and dignity;
    she can laugh at the days to come.
She speaks with wisdom,
    and faithful instruction is on her tongue.
She watches over the affairs of her household
    and does not eat the bread of idleness.
Her children arise and call her blessed;
    her husband also, and he praises her:
“Many women do noble things,
    but you surpass them all.”
Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
    but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
 Honor her for all that her hands have done,
    and let her works bring her praise at the city gate.

408. Let's lose the word "meddling."

As in "Russia is meddling in our elections!"  As in even the coolest news outlets.  PBS.  Yamiche Alcindor must have used it thirty times Monday night.  It was her only word for Russia's fault.  It's the alt's, it's the mainstream's, it's the commentariat's main word.  My wife walks in on a program late and picks up only the outrage.  "What have the Russians done now?" she asks. Meddled in our election.  Still.  "Indicated meddling... established meddling... denied meddling... meddle, meddle, meddle."

We've got to find another word if we're going to maintain our outrage.  Which is the purpose of it all, isn't it?  I mean, how can you win an election in America unless you can say your opponent is insufficiently outraged by Russian behavior?  How can you save your newspaper, how can you sell your newsmagazine, how can you give your program an edge, if you don't maintain outrage?  The habits of young people can take you only so far, you know.

How we forget the lessons of the past.  Do we think George W. Bush could have gotten us behind his invasion of Iraq if he hadn't kept the picture of its outrageously cruel dictator before us, the third in a veritable triumvirate of evil.  Evil, man.  If you're not outraged by that you don't deserve to live in a Christian country.

Unless you're outraged by communism, evil enough to do the job without theological support.  How could you, I ask you, how could you let the CIA land its nut cases unless it's on the shore of evil ninety miles away.  Not to mention letting Lyndon Johnson land the Marines on that farther shore.

The trouble with "meddling in our elections" is there's a limit on how long it can work.  Sooner or later somebody in the warm commentariat is going to notice or remember what somebody in the cool commentariat has said about meddling, that we meddle too.  As busily as the Russians.  All the way.

 Bags of cash delivered to a Rome hotel for favored Italian candidates. Scandalous stories leaked to foreign newspapers to swing an election in Nicaragua. Millions of pamphlets, posters and stickers printed to defeat an incumbent in Serbia.  The long arm of Vladimir Putin? No, just a small sample of the United States’ history of intervention in foreign elections. 

That's Scott Shane, in the Times (2-17-18).  He quotes Steven L. Hall, CIA chief of Russian operations, 30-year veteran: “If you ask an intelligence officer, did the Russians break the rules or do something bizarre, the answer is no, not at all,”

Loch K. Johnson, an academic and sworn to cool, says Russia’s 2016 operation was "simply the cyber-age version of standard United States practice for decades.  'We’ve been doing this kind of thing since the C.I.A. was created in 1947....We’ve used posters, pamphlets, mailers, banners — you name it. We’ve planted false information in foreign newspapers. We’ve used what the British call "King George’s cavalry": suitcases of cash.'”

So then the dawn comes and the word crashes. We need  something that refers to actual lawbreaking. "Indictable"?  "Criminal"?  That's what the FBI is supposed to investigate isn't it, crimes?  Not reprehensible behavior.

Mueller got something specific on the twelve Russian agents, hacking into a computer network, but the words for this, "breaking our laws," lacked flame.  Nothing like "meddling in our elections."  It remains to be seen how many of Mueller's other charges will stand up.  So far the exposure is not producing many outrage bytes, and doesn't seem likely to.

"Outrage?  You want outrage?"  Oh, oh, one of our guys is heating up.  "What the hell's the idea of taking up our time with all these non-issues?  God Almighty there's a whole planet heating up under us.  Russian meddling my ass.  Get real."

407. A Poem about Trump and Putin

Where do you throw your support when an unsupportable president moves to change the least supportable policy of the four presidents before him?  I mean nobody, nobody who really thinks about it, can defend our pushing against Russia when the Cold War ended, acting as if it hadn't ended, taking Russia's moves towards accommodation as signs of weakness, keeping NATO in the same mode, pushing its borders ever eastward, threatening to make war-treaty allies of countries snug against its interior (Ukraine, Georgia, Abkasia) when there really wasn't a need for NATO at all any more?  No you can't, it's not supportable, but only a few guys in think tanks and one brain on spindly legs in Foreign Policy are saying so, nobody in public life, until along comes this insufferable blowhard, speaking in tweets saying just what needs to be said.  And you're going to say, "Amen, brother"?  How can you say "Amen, brother" to an asshole?