It’s over. The Trump faction of the Republican Party was beaten by the Sen McConnell and the rest of the Never-Trump faction. On the opposite side of the aisle, the Democratic Party is savoring their victory and eager to bring their domestic agenda into being.

Meanwhile, another power is gloating, having considerably weakened the world’s economic super power with a novel virus, that “escaped” from a virus research laboratory. Whether the escape was intentional or accidental is beside the point now. The Chinese “accident”has considerably weakened the United States.

Right now, we still think our adversaries lurk across some fanciful divide called the “aisle”. Please. If you are that stupid to want to continue this domestic “cold” war, then God help you. And God help us.

We have been weakened economically by the virus. Our real adversary has been, over past couple of decades, the Peoples’ Republic of China. Since they like to make money as much as we do, we have failed to assess the military risk. How do I know this? We have spent more time and energy weakening our domestic adversaries than preparing to deal with China. I don’t expect a love feast between (or among) the parties and factions, but a little good judgment and common sense go a long way. We NEED a diverse domestic industrial base.

We need to produce our own generic pharmaceuticals, tires, textiles, etc. We need to protect our dual use technology, (both military and civilian applications), from foreign (Chinese) acquisition. This is deadly serious business.

Believe me, we don’t want the Chinese to attain military and economic hegemony over any more of Asia or Africa, or Latin America. They are brutal totalitarians. Ask the people of Hong Kong, faithful Chinese Catholics, the Muslim Uighurs, the Tibetans, the practioners of Falun Gong.

So now Joe Biden is the President. And there is an international cold war that should take precedence over whatever resentment and grudges we may hold toward our domestic political adversaries.

COVID-19 has been a Pearl Harbour in slow motion. Trust me. President Biden is not our adversary, nor is former President Trump, nor are Senators McConnell and Romney.

We can let the Chinese gloat over this pending impeachment blood purge of dubious value. We can position our respective parties for optimal advantage in the next election. But that carries the assumption tbere is going to be a next election. Don’t be so certain of that event.

.

There has been a news blackout pertaining to the Roswell Space Alien in recent years. It’s just another example of Trump”s xenophobic domestic policy.

I call on President Biden to appoint the Roswell Space Alien to a cabinet level position. The Space Alien will be the First Extra Terrestrial appointed to the cabinet. This is the first among all firsts. It gives America the vast insights to the workings of the Universe only an Extra Terrestrial can offer.

How about it, Mr President?

No, not the Biden Inauguration. Something else.

This is about the feeling we all have, I suspect, that the time isn’t quite right to do something. The something could as momentous an act as starting a family, or coming out, or as trivial as taking out the trash, or changing the sheets.

Procrastination.

That’s what they call it in the educated class.

Stalling works just as well among the blue collar set.

The result is the same.

So I guess I will start the chili for dinner in the slow cooker.

NOW.

Yes. That Lee. Robert E. How do you react when you hear that name? Does your opinion of me change, simply because I mentioned him?

I’m tired of the arguments surrounding the Confederate generals and the whole damn Civil War, for that matter.

If you were conceived because your parents both got drunk one night and did it, “unprotected”, does that make your life any less worthy of being, of existing? Maybe this whole country is an existential accident, like the unplanned pregnancy I mentioned. Does that make America any less worthy of existing? Countries are like people. They die. Imperial China died. Imperial Russia died. The Soviet Union died. Slaveholding America died.

But we can’t change how we came into being. Here we are. Ignorance of the past won’t make it go away. Self-hatred and shame won’t change the facts of history, or make the lives of the dead any different.

Anyway. Robert E. Lee was born 214 years ago. Happy Birthday, General.

My eyes hurt. Lack of sleep, unfulfilled sleep. Time spent wondering, drinking coffee, eating because maybe that will momentarily quell the churning in my gut.

I watch passenger trains go places, riding the life support that is Amtrak. I dream I’m on a train headed to where there are no politicians or thieves or plague. I imagine a dream domain like the Sixties but without LBJ, J. Edgar Hoover, or Charles Manson. It’s my sodding dream, after all.

But I need to sleep, beside a lover, who cares not a whit for television or pandemic or politics. I yearn for a lover without reservation or second thoughts, who appreciates the magic of menopause, and the luxurious necessity of lube.

I don’t want to have sell her on fucking. She will want the product as much as I need it. Maybe sanity will fill the space that tears now fill.

The internet and social media has created an exponential increase in our access to information.

One type of information is the knowledge we don’t need to know or is none of our business to know. First among these is what other people think of us. Makes no difference what other people think. As a general rule, other people hate you. Simply because, you are NOT them.

I got into a micturating contest with a blogger and was accused of being a troll. Oh well, I’m a troll. At least I paid my child support, back in the day.

My whiteness and privilege are problems for some people.

Note to my readers.

I am an old white man.

I guess that’s a problem.

https://wp.me/pYA4j-eMs

John-Henry Westen has an excellent Catholic and pro-life website Life Site News. Here he interviews Pam Acker, MS, a former vaccine researcher who fills us in the use of aborted fetal tissue used in vaccine development.

It is all the more sinister when we consider that COVID-19 is a manmade virus. This is one of those issues where people of “good will” are on both sides of the question.

There is a lot of stuff I don’t want to think about any longer tonight.

It isn’t unusal for me to awaken at 3:00 AM or thereabouts. J is at work and I miss her. When she is home, more than likely she is in bed, sleeping or watching television.

So right now, I’m listening to Nina Simone, trying to go back to sleep.

8:30 AM.

I slept. I’m still in bed. I hope to sleep a little more.

Yesterday. I went to Daily Mass at 530 at St Benedict. This was the second time I had attended Mass since the COVID-19 precautions were implemented. The Mass definitely restored my ability to appreciate the transitory nature of all the turmoil that has plagued our country in recent months.

Maybe I will just take a nap later.

Peace, y’all.

To clear the mind.

Rather than trying to make sense of the ongoing absurdities of The Trump Era, I will defer to historians, who through the filter of time, (and access to all the archival materials) will render a more objective and complete assessment. Hopefully I will live another thirty years and have enough marbles to read and understand it.

Whether Trump gets thrown out tomorrow, his term expires next Wednesday, or space aliens kidnap him for a specimen tonight, his days are numbered as POTUS. Thank God. Democrats, your dream of four years has come true. The stage will be all yours.

The Myth of Trump will endure. I mean that in the classical sense of the word myth. Politics and governance got a little complicated, and for four years, characters took the stage. This wasn’t Homer, or Cervantes, or Shakespeare, however. It was real life. And now we must look somewhere else for our drama and our dreams.

La Belle et La Bête (Beauty And The Beast) is Jean Cocteau’s masterpiece. The special effects, camera work, makeup, editing, were decades ahead of their time. Today computer-generated effects would do the heavy lifting. But the film isn’t about the special effects, rather it is the same love story told for centuries, that we children love. It is beautifully acted by Josette Day and Jean Marais.

What is surreal? The last four years have been a dream, some say a nightmare, but in Cocteau’s surreal story, we know that love and beauty triumph without editorializing or ambiguity. The ugly who pose as beautiful are reflected for what they really are. Ambiguity is the curse to those of us who are awake.

We have finished the political page-turner, we bought at the airport newstand four years ago It had a surprise ending, to be sure. We can spend the next four years watching the argument about who has the movie rights to the story. Do not doubt me.

Soon another fairy tale begins, or rather a graphic novel. This is what we now call comic books, elevated to literary genre. We need makeup for the heroes and villains. But first we have to decide who the characters will be.

Will we have an ambitious Queen, deprived of the throne, who longs still for the power? Will we have two Duchesses, presiding over each chamber of Congress, dreaming of power greater than The King? What will one duchess do, now that plotting is unnecessary? Will others plot against The King? Will he continue as the decrepit shell of the man he once was? Who will be the shadowy presence looming in the background? Or will there be two, three shadows? Perhaps this is a Javanese shadow play, with gamelan music accompanying it, but the shadow figures are the true forms.

All that is left is theatre, because that is all that we really love.