Tagged: war

When I Think Of Russia and Ukraine, I Think of My Mom

My brother “blocked” me over a year ago. When there are in-person events we are cordial, and even able to have conversations. But he won’t accept texts or calls.

Naturally, he still chats with our mom.

Naturally, I still chat with our mom.

But my mom will not play the middle man. She has never had interest in playing the middle man—between anyone. That is just her prerogative.

This is why I think of my mom, when I think of Russia and Ukraine.

America (meaning “Americans”) does not want to play the middle man. I believe this is the fullest truth that can be asserted regarding the situation.

Two Novel Thoughts As We Wait (Wink Wink) on Iran

Firstly, I love how the media made Iraq out to be some super fighting force in the days Desert Storm 1. The big claim was “fifth strongest” military in the world. But let’s run with this. They were wrong. Next, Afghanistan was supposed to be cavemen. Now, the media wants me to be worried about Iran’s response. Did you they not see the response that the strike aircraft saw? Zero. Zilch. Nada. No response. They didn’t even know the planes were in the air. But sure, media (wink wink), we’ll wait for the response.

Secondly, this is the largest attack/action that has occurred in my non-fighting age days. As in, 9/11 was a large impetus for my wanting to join the AF. And I did join the AF to help get revenge. But right now, even if WW3 somehow starts, I have a new feeling like, “Well, I hope my company doesn’t fold during the war. I don’t know how else to make money.”

Time will tell.

Bomb Shelters In North Vietnam

So I’m reading Reporting Vietnam, published by the Library of America. It consists entirely of articles from throughout the war.

The last article I read mentioned how President Johnson, in March of 1968 declared that due to the fact that during war the President need to focus his attention entirely on the war, he wouldn’t be running for re-election (can’t mix campaigning). This article also mentioned that by this time many advisors of his wanted to stop bombing the North.

I repeat, many advisors wanted to stop bombing the North.

To be sure, fact: America and South Vietnam were bombing North Vietnam.

Today’s article includes, “Outside Hanoi, the driver’s first job, I discovered, was to look for a shelter for the passengers whenever the alert or the pre-alert sounded. Every hamlet, sometimes every house, is equipped with a loud-speaker, and the alarm is rung out by the hamlet bell…When there is no hamlet nearby, a band of soldiers, tramping along with a transistor radio, may warn you that planes are coming.”

Fact: the NV commies had decided they wanted to live and so built and used bomb shelters.

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Like fish which breathe in the water, or Everest climbers who pack oxygen for their summit, it seems that there are “tells”, if you will, that can be used to make sense of life on Earth. Can’t breathe underwater? Probably don’t live there.

One such “tell” that you live in a country that is being “bombed” is the presence of “bomb shelters.”

Final question in today’s lesson: What, then, does it mean if you claim to be “bombed” but have no bomb shelters?

Bonus question: What does it mean if you repeat the claim that some country is consistently being bombed, without ever thinking to ask, “Do they have bomb shelters?”

(Answers: 1. The claim is a lie. And 2. You’re a demonstrable fool.)

“Had I Known”, The Game

I have all sorts of analogies for why I read—current favorite is, “Books are the map of life; find yourself.” But when I read something totally new—Vietnam War history in this case—I find myself continually considering, “Wow. Had I known this earlier in life, I would’ve…” and then a fun imagination game plays out.

How about you? What information have you read which forced you to play the game, “Had I known…”?

I just ordered a “F%#* Communism” flag, probably for ceiling of garage, because of my reading. (The one created by Paul Krassner and John Francis Putnam in ‘63.) I share this so y’all won’t think I only read for its mental fitness.

It was mentioned (as a sign, not a flag) in an article about the “defoliation” AF squadron whose classically AF Pilot wit-filled motto was, “Only YOU Can Prevent Forests.”

I can hear you now. “Why?” And, “Don’t you have toddlers?”

Because as much delight as this game provides, I don’t want my kids to play it regarding such a pivotal war.

Seriously though, do comment below with any instances that have initiated the “Had I Known” game in your mind.

Do Not, Please Do Not Listen to Tim Pool Over A Pilot

I have only just begun listening to a podcast where Tim Pool is making the case that Civil War is right around the corner.

For the record, the sequence of videos was, “Tim Pool destroying some woke comedian” (that was my first introduction to the man and never harmful to watch woke people learn they are not the only people) and then the current one, “Tim Pool with Konstantin…”

If I search, I probably will find that I have shared the following war story before on here. But it is still relevant and I like telling stories that make me look good.

So there we were. (If I was a plane pilot, Top Gun-style, I would hold my hand out flat, palm down, to represent me in my plane. But I was flying a helicopter so we chopper pilots twirl our index finger like the “whoop-dee-doo” signal.)

So there we were.

In formation—combat spread.

Two (could have been more) Pave-Lows flying across the Iraqi desert in the middle of the night.

The cockpits are illuminated, low-lightedly, by the various aircraft instruments and, given this occurred in 2008, full-color multi-function displays which currently show a map and the helicopter symbol. (Pretty standard for any navigation today—but it was high-speed for military aircraft back then.)

The general way missions are flown is the aircraft commander manages, and the co-pilot flies. So I was on the controls.

According to the MFD (moving map, remember), there was a decently large body of water in front of the helicopter symbol. According to the earth in front of us, there was a trickle of a stream.

The aircraft commander, apparently focused on the MFD, questioned aloud my decision to incautiously continue approaching this cousin of the Pacific—especially since we did not even have our HEEDS bottles on us (little scuba gear things that we would fly with when flying over water in case we went down).

I was astounded and unable to check my astonishment and said, “Uh, there’s no lake.”

He proceeded to look outside which of course became a source of great shame.

The 53 has two pilots and a flight engineer up front. The FE sitting between the heroes.

Besides the MFD, there were FLIR screens and one of the FE’s (“seat”) duties was to call out “feet wet” and “feet dry” as appropriate so that we could all arm our HEEDs bottles etc.

On this night, Seat came through for me big time as he saw the trickle approaching and said, “Feet wet…feet dry” even faster than you just read them. Lol. So funny.

Do you understand me? Tim Pool, to get going, even used some other podcaster’s “one screen, two channels” witticism/analogy to describe what is happening in the country of late.

Hahahahaha.

Wrong.

There is only screen on and screen off.

Turn. Off. The. Screen. (At least if you desire, at least some of the time, to live under the banner of truth.)

I Can’t Shake My Joe Rogan Fantasy

Douglas Murray lost the “debate”. Or he came away looking weaker than Rogan and Smith. It all boiled down to Murray’s ill-advised, “Have you bean there?”

As a reminder, faithful readers, classical rhetoric delineates three areas of persuasion, Logos (logic), Ethos (expertise), and Pathos (emotion). The generally accepted breakdown of how to employ these during debate is 60-80% Logos, and the remaining 20-40% evenly divided between Ethos and Pathos. Murray obviously employed Ethos in more than its rule-of-thumb 20% maximum when he uttered his “bean” line.

But even without that type of thinking, I *feel* like we all knew (consequently Murray should’ve known too) both that Kamala was destroyed by her “been there” interview moment and that, with Harris’ failure in mind, JD triumphed with Zelensky, in his own “been there” moment in the Oval Office. The Vance answer was all the more compelling because he brought Logos right into the moment by clearly pausing—which seemed to betray that he was aware of the rhetorical trap—before answering the question.

Oh well. Nobody is perfect.

ICYMI Murray was recently chatting with Gad Saad and in the discussion plainly decried the problem that I’ve instinctively had with the JRE podcast along—despite my inability to put a name on it. Murray pointed out that the JRE podcast is irresponsible.

Douglas Murray, who I find myself nearly entirely aligned without actually giving me unrealistic hope that anyone else is listening, is part of ARC (Alliance for Responsible Citizenship). So it is only logical that his criticism of the men who beat him is that they are irresponsible. But the fact is Murray is correct. That studio in Austin with its 30 million Trump interview views and 0 (zero) Harris interview views is irresponsible.

My fantasy, then, is for Joe Rogan to prove Murray wrong.

Then again, I am not sure that would accomplish much. Imagine it. Rogan converts to responsibility; severe and instant backlash occur. Then Rogan joins the myriads of smaller podcasts. Fizzle. Whoopdeedoo.

I certainly don’t wish Joe Rogan any ill will. So maybe my fantasy is some horrible and embarrassing revelation of my envy of Rogan (which always manifests in sabotage) since it would surely result in negatives for him on every front.

But I can’t shake the fantasy.

If Only The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg Owned Slaves, Then He Might Have Acted Civilly.

Even slave owners of old knew of things like this rule of civility.

Read no Letters, Books, or Papers in Company but when there is a Necessity for the doing of it you must ask leave. Come not near the Books or Writings of Another so as to read them, unless desired, or give your opinion of them unask’d; also look not nigh when another is writing a Letter.

In sum: it is always possible to read things you shouldn’t. The error is the reader’s, not the writer’s.

Listing Benefits of Security Guarantees

The only question that we ought to ask ourselves is, “Why give Zelensky what he wants?”

For ease of thought, modify it slightly to, “Why allow Ukraine into NATO?”

  1. We believe Ukrainian lives are worth protecting at immense cost to our own lives.
  2. We believe there is some moral benefit, ie “the gods will be pleased” if we help those who cannot help themselves.
  3. We believe there is some practical long term benefit, such as “preventing future problems” as Zelensky seemed to have in mind when he uttered the “nice ocean” bit.
  4. We believe the wealth generated by the “get rich off minerals” idea actually does outweigh the cost of war or ongoing difficulties with Russia.
  5. We simply believe that we must not let the man Putin achieve his desires.

That’s what I can come up with. What about you?

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To be clear, Ukraine does not satisfy the clearly established requirements for joining NATO. So no one needs to spend any brain cells on “Why not allow Ukraine into NATO?” Instead, the issue is literally, “What’s in it for me?”

I am very excited to see how this plays out. For time capsule purposes, my gut today says, “Zelensky is out. Trump gets deal done afterwards (no new security guarantees, definitely no NATO)—which amounts to ‘can kicked down the road’. And this is fine. No need to solve every problem immediately.”

Lastly, a longstanding talking point for my entire life (and yours) has been “Russia/communists educate/train/propagandize whatever group they are trying to defeat.” It’s generally been used as the explanation of the degradation of American universities. But today I heard the claim in reference to Ukrainian students.

Does anyone actually believe this is how life works? That you just kidnap/lure people and put them in classrooms and then in the long game you win? What a joke. It’s past time to stop indulging in that joke/conspiracy theory. People have minds and can reason for themselves. If they reason poorly, that is because they are poor reasoners, not because they are victims of some boogie man’s “long game.”

Little Hands, Little Burritos, Big Memories

I needed some canisters for flour, sugar, brown sugar, and chocolate chips, and I have such fond memories of such ingredients coming from yellow Tupperware of the 1970s and 80s, that I thought, “Why not search for some ‘vintage’ canisters on Ebay? I bet they’d be in great condition and cheaper than new, flimsy versions to boot.”

I was right.

And like any search, I quickly detoured onto a search for another item—the yellow Tupperware drinking cups we used to have when growing up. All throughout my suburban childhood, one of these cups sat eternally beside the faucet as the “water cup.” All the family drank water from the faucet from this one cup. That seems bizarre and uncouth today (not to mention like the opening scenes of the next deadly pandemic), but the five of us did it for 15+ years.

And I found them, too. And ordered them.

Let me tell you that the experience of holding them again was priceless. Memory is usually faulty, but these cups felt more familiar than old t-shirts and jeans.

To be clear, they make excellent cups for young kids. To start, they are indestructible. The cups I now hold are at least 30 years old and do not have any distinguishing marks on them, nor would anyone guess they were not brand new—let alone 30+ years old. Beyond indestructibility, there are two other features that lead to their appeal for kids’/family use. Firstly, they have a subtle texture which allows for easy gripping. Secondly, while 12 oz cups, they are narrow enough for a 3 year old to confidently grasp with a single hand. Maybe it is only because the previous cups we had my 3 year old on were smooth and wider, but these vintage cups truly seem a godsend.

Abruptly changing items, but not themes, what is not a godsend is the shrinkage of Chipotle burritos. Am I the only one who has always thought these Colorado burritos were huge—essentially too much for one meal? I mean it takes at least two hands, and arms, to raise the things. But we all went back for them again and again, partly because the $10 price seemed like a steal for such an abundant meal.

Skip to the end; the other night I grabbed one after a couple month hiatus and it seemed like my same 3 year old could grasp the thing with one hand. I appreciate an inexpensive dinner as much as anyone, but I would’ve rather been seen switching from debit to credit card by the general public at the unexpectedly higher total than have the other option unfold, which did occur, having arrived home, ate, and still been hungry. Bummer.

Oh, and US military aircraft were shooting Iranian weapons headed for Israel out of the sky.