The Biggest Lie

      It is an old joke.  Well, technically it is several old jokes.  

Since I am, to my discredit and shame, only familiar with humor traditions of Western culture and in the English language specifically, I acknowledge there may well be far more “biggest lie” jokes than I have been exposed to.

Sometimes it aint a joke.  I have heard the phrase used when humor was the absolute last thing anyone was attempting to communicate.  Sometimes usage of the phrase precedes a verbal or physical altercation.

As a general rule, my experience with the phrase is limited to those two use cases.  It is used either as a joke or as a threat.  That changes today.  Okay, perhaps “today” is minorly disingenuous but, I assure you it is a recent change.

The ironic thing is that I have a maxim for pretty much my entire life that is as deserving of the description “the biggest lie” if anything is.  “All’s fair in love and war” is that maxim.  Until recently I gave it no thought at all.  That lack of thought was justified (in my mind) by the blatant wrongness of the claim.  Anyone who has served in the military knows full well that war has all kinds of rules.  There are also traditions and habits and absolute no nos.  No matter how much you love someone, inflicting physical pain is frowned upon.  Taking fiscal advantage of your love interest is not something you do to impress their family.  Making promises you have no intention of keeping is not typically seen as a loving act.  As it turns out, there are in fact rules in love and war.  There are things that are considered unfair or out of bounds in love, war or business.

All of that is knowledge I would expect most any human to have.  Perhaps we might have to think specifically about a given situation but eventually, we will come to understand that regardless of where you are or what you are doing, there are actions that are unacceptable.  Most every human and plenty of entities in other species appear to know this.  But not Felon47.

A look at Donald John Trump’s life, casual or indepth, leads one inescapably to the conclusion that he actually, honestly lives his life in such a manner as to indicate absolute belief in that flawed maxim.  He openly expresses the desire for those subordinate to him to ignore the laws, local, state, national or international, and carry out his orders or follow his suggestions.  He had sexual affairs with girls or women even while he was ostensibly in monogamous relationships.  He appears to have done it in every allegedly committed relationship he has been in.  It looks for all the world that he fully believes that “All is fair in love and war,”  The evidence that gives lie to the maxim for the majority of humanity, has had no apparent effect on him.

I am starting to think that the reason he lies so frequently and completely is rooted in the fact that he believes whatever he does is perfectly fine within the arenas of love, war, and business.  I suppose I could point out just how incredibly flawed such thinking is but, the other thing that Felon47 demonstrates is a slogan from one of my biker tee shirts.  “If I have to explain it, you wouldn’t understand”.   A different quote may be even more relevant here  "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary (also applicable: power) depends on his not understanding it."

Exponential Irony

As a young, innocent and ignorant peon in the USN, I found myself needing and acquiring a pretty damn high security clearance.  The military is pretty good about telling you what to do and when to do it and how it should be done.  Unfortunately, the "why" is frequently a parental-esque "because I said so."

A result of this is that my understanding of what might disqualify one for such a clearance was flawed.  Time, experience, scuttlebutt(read: gossip) and observation did a fairly good job of filling in the blanks for me and correcting my fallacious assumptions.

Being a preacher's kid in a family that all but lived at the church, there was damn near nothing in my personal history that could have disqualified me - or so I thought.  Well after I had my clearance, I spoke with others who also had received clearances and was astonished to learn they had admitted to things in their interviews that I had believed would be immediate disqualifications.  They had admitted they had smoked pot, masturbated, associated with felons etc etc.  They got clearances anyway.

While honesty requires me to admit that it took a while to put it all together, eventually I was made to understand that quite frequently it was not the act that was disqualifying.  It was an effort to hid the act that got folk into trouble.  See, if you want badly enough to keep something hidden, you become a prime target for foreign intelligence operatives or even our home grown malintentioned citizens.  They will find out just how badly you want to keep your secrets secret.  OTOH, if you just openly admit to having screwed your wife's cousin, in theory no one can use that information to pressure you into divulging classified information.

And so we get to the ironical aspect of the essay.  If someone wanted a clearance but had had a close and long-term friendship with a known and convicted pedophile, they might choose to attempt to minimize that information.  They might reasonably choose to hide the friendship especially if the individual is no longer in their social circle for whatever reason.  That effort, the choice to hide something negative of significance, would easily be enough to disqualify them for a clearance if the investigator knows of it or even just suspects.

Felon47 would not be able to get a clearance via the path that I used to get a clearance.  However, as POTUS, he has the ultimate national control over access to classified material.  His own access to our most classified information is an irony of near infinite scope.  An individual who could not survive the process I went through is now the national ultimate authority on who gets access to classified information.  I am not of the opinion that him having that power has been good for the nation.  

I am guessing that Putin, Orban, Netanyahu and associated dictatorial asswipes are pretty comfortable with it.  I am hugely disappointed that so many of those I served with and those who were protected by my service, are so willing to turn our national secrets over to one who demands complete loyalty while offering no loyalty whatsoever to anything that is not money or power.

I feel the urge to remind everyone that the USA is by no means the only nation with an intelligence apparatus.  While POTUS is the ultimate classifying authority in this nation, he has no authority whatsoever over the information generated by and classified by other nations.  Whether or not “we” feel like it is justified (and for the record, I do), those who would normally share their intel with this nation are being a lot more circumspect.  Rather obviously, that does not make our nation more secure. 

If the foreigners should suspect that others in the misadministration have adopted the Dear Leader’s casual attitude about intel from other nations, for their own security they MUST stop sharing with the USA.

The final shoe to drop may never actually drop but the potential is too juicy to ignore.  Those who have shown themselves to be fine with the manner in which this misadministration handles classified information regardless of the source, could quite feasibly find themselves no longer able to get clearance once some level of sanity is restored to our political system.  That potential does the heavy lifting of letting me sleep comfortably.

The Record is Crooked

See, here's the thing, given the area where Jesus would have lived, I would suggest that Felon47 looks as much like the actual Christ probably looked as does the typical depiction of the icon in the Western world. (which is to say, not at all)

As much as I hate to cut the global menace any slack, if a depiction of Jesus as a blue-eyed, fair-skinned guy with straight blonde(ish) hair doesn't offend you, then seeing Twitler as the Christ is just you picking and choosing what lie you prefer.

Not Too Old To Learn

 WE ARE LOOSING

TO BLACKS, THEY ACT MATURE

Soooooooo, the video linked below showed up in my feed with the two lines quoted above, visible on the video.  Being true and honest about my own pedantic assholeishness, I ignored it.  

Abusing words needlessly is a good way to make sure I ignore a given video or essay.  Be it wrong, stupid or something else, I prejudge frequently on the basis of language.  Oddly enough, I can forgive honest ignorance.  TBF, I do not wish to be held responsible for things I actually and honestly do not know.  As such, I cannot in good conscience hold others responsible for things they honestly do not know. 

I have no real idea who added those words to the video.  I am at this stage, pretty damn sure it was not the speaker featured in the video.  I encountered the video several times prior to actually watching it.  However, when a "trusted" source recommended it, I thought I would watch at least a couple of minutes which should be sufficient to justify my casual dismissal.  It turned out that the speaker was an author I paid a lot of attention to in the early days of the internet/Web.  I watched it in its entirety and strongly suggest you do as well.  

Seriously, stop what you are doing and pay attention to this video.

Not Normal

 It is incredibly atypical for me to agree fully with anyone on just damn near anything.  That is somewhat intentional.  It makes me very nervous for everyone to agree with me - it makes me assume I got something horribly wrong.

So you should absolutely take it seriously that I am struggling to find something to disagree with in my friend's post on Substack.  You should go read it in full and point out where I should be in opposition since my reflexively argumentative nature is apparently malfunctioning.

You may want to read other of his musings and you could even find yourself wanting to subscribe.  Click this link and share it if you feel so inspired.

Aeronautical Prevarication

 I own weapons. Several as a matter of fact.  Some are traditional martial arts weapons.  Some are my own improvisation.  Some, are firearms.  Some are projectile weapons that do not require chemical explosions.

I legally own and possess those because I am a law-abiding citizen and I can.  All of that to say that my ability to own, possess and wield weapons has not been obliterated in the recent or distant past.

I am 99.999999999999999999999999% sure that if I knew the exact flight path and the exact time and intensely practiced for a year, nothing in my (small) personal arsenal could bring down an F15 or an A10.

No sane person needed the confirmation that Felon47 is an obligate liar but that confirmation is here anyway.   Obliterated weapons systems or obliterated military capacity would not be any better at bringing down either of those warplanes than I am.  Yet, both of them went down and other aircraft have taken fire.

For no reason or for any reason at all, Felon47's first impulse is to lie to you.  (unfortunately it is also his second, third, fourth ad infinitum impulse)

Its Always Darkest, Just Before It Goes Completely Black

 I understand the temptation to cheer at the dismissal of senior misadmistration officials.

But we need to be honest with ourselves. The replacements are always more evil and less competent - even when it seems like no one could possibly be.