Here Among the Nuts

The trouble with being a nut is that you are a similar shape as other nuts and you all tend to roll into the same corners when things get shaken up. I find myself in the company of an odd assortment of lovely, rugged individualists -- opinionated the lot of them, well-read (I almost said "educated' but then given the unipolar structure of modern education these days "educated" can mean a lot of things). They are, however, for the most part, fair fighters. Oh, we've had some brouhahas, but without the typical animus you see in the press and on social media lately. We tend to argue until someone runs out of facts or energy or witty comebacks. We throw memes at each other, but most of us don't hate each other - at least not those who have rolled into the corners I frequent since the great shaking of 2016.

Mostly it's a vicious Marxist sort of snide cracks and jibes (Groucho Marxist that is). One finds out rather quickly who can't stand the heat. They abandon the kitchen and try to lock the door behind themselves. Only to find, of course, that the door only locks from the inside and most of us are in favor of leaving the door unlocked so that new material may drift back in once in a while to give us subjects for our weblogs and memes.

You know, like Trump pressers, Biden speeches, AOC tweets, or Pelosi tantrums. This past week has been an embarrassment of riches for conservatives as the boys at Right Angle called it.

I think what this is, may be the inevitable row couples get into sometimes when something has been wrong but nobody wants to talk about it. We're polite to each other while the problem festers until things blow up. Then, we either get a divorce or we apologize, have sex and make up. Nations don't actually have sex. Usually they have an all out war and then everyone's fine for a while. It can't be these little gropey brushfire shootouts either. It's make the danged declaration and then go unload your carriers on them, roll out the tanks, send over the B-2s.  I hope we don't have to have a bloody knock down, drag out with Russia or China or the whole Middle-East. It's unlikely I think. Russia has the sense to know it's badly outclassed and that we've got another one of those cowboy presidents. That scares them enough to give pause. China may be in the process of eliminating themselves with their own bio-weapons, and the Middle East couldn't get organized enough to pick someone to head up the committee to throw a falafel-themed potluck dinner.

I'm a pessimist about the fate of the world. For the first time in history, we have the technology to turn our nations into puddles of glass and we have the lunatics in positions of power who would push the necessary buttons. I figure we'll one of these days, argue ourselves into a giant nuclear orgasm at which time Jesus will come round collecting baskets full of nuts from those those stray corners they've rolled into, before they get over-roasted.

 © 2020 by Tom King (excerpt from my comment on "Random Thoughts by Mark Milliorn)