Yesterday, as Bill and I were preparing to eat at our second culinary destination in one day, I noticed a scary Facebook post in a local group I’m in. It seems there is a gang of women in our town who have been trying to break into houses. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, Bill told me that one of his coworkers, who happens to live in our town, caught someone trying to break into his car. And there have been two posts in our group about criminals trying to break into people’s homes, even when they have gates. These criminal bitches have tools and have been caught trying to breach the gates.
Naturally, reading about this made me nervous… so as we sat in a Parkhaus turned Michelin one star restaurant (until the usual venue can be rebuilt after a fire), I went on USAA and upped our insurance coverage. It may not have been necessary, but it wasn’t like the extra coverage cost that much. And it did offer peace of mind. On the other hand, how sad is it that I was looking at my phone before a Michelin one star meal? And how sad is it that I could buy extra insurance coverage in a matter of minutes, using my phone? Technology is a double edged sword.
Then, while we were waiting for dessert, I happened to notice a post from a former colleague of mine. Actually, colleague is a stretch. I worked as the cook at a summer camp, and he was one of my dishwashers. He posted a rude meme about Joe Biden, likening him to the Taliban’s greatest employee. I had to have a laugh at that. If anyone is the Taliban’s employee of the month, it’s Trump. Trump made the deal with The Taliban in the first place. And this pullout was destined to be a mess regardless.
I was reminded once again of a post I wrote for my original blog, in which I wrote about how Trump’s leadership is the perfect example of “seagull leadership”. You know what that is? Basically, the seagull comes in, makes a huge mess, and leaves, expecting others to clean up their shit. I think Trump is the poster child for the seagull style of management. I really don’t think he would have been better or done more to make this transition better.
What is sad, though, is that so many Americans WANT to see Biden fail. They are screaming about impeachment, seemingly forgetting that if he leaves office, their worst nightmare will happen. Kamala Harris, a biracial woman, would take over. Do they think they would get better treatment from her? I don’t know. I think she can do the job, but I’m not sure that’s what the Republicans really want. A lot of them are both racist and sexist.
I read a comment last night from some guy who said he didn’t vote for Biden became of WHO he is– even though he knows Trump is a narcissist. Sorry… I just don’t get it. Trump, as a narcissist, is the worst kind of person to be leading. Narcissists don’t care about other people. I voted for Biden because of WHO he is… and who Trump is. I say, if you know your party’s candidate is a bastard, why not demand better? I would prefer a younger, more dynamic candidate myself… but I would easily choose Biden over Trump. Biden isn’t a narcissist, and that automatically makes him much more qualified, in my opinion. But I realize that not everyone understands why narcissists are such bad news.
Anyway… we just had a huge lunch, and I am about to fall into a food coma. So I will quit writing now… and hope that shit will improve soon. I see that ISIS is coming in now, complicating matters and, for sure, delaying our departure, forcing us to deal with the aftermath of the pullout…
The 20th anniversary of 9/11 is coming up. I hope people are on their guard. I wouldn’t be surprised if ISIS has something planned, while we’re dealing with Afghanistan.
So… until next time… sayonara. I have to take a nap now and digest the fabulous fresh trout we had for lunch.
What I find…curious about conservative reactions to the fall of Afghanistan is how all of a sudden there are thousands of angry right-wingers who are shocked, shocked, I say, about how badly President Biden screwed up the evacuation in that war-torn part of Central Asia. I find it odd, disconcerting, and tonally dissonant to now see armchair strategists critiquing the Biden Administration for not moving fast enough or having enough foresight to know that leaving Afghanistan was going to be a shitshow on par or worse with the U.S. evacuation from South Vietnam in 1975.
I will say that while Biden is, as commander in chief of our armed forces and therefore the buck stops with him, I don’t see how he could have handled this evacuation better. We don’t know what information he was getting from the military and intelligence communities, nor do we know why we didn’t see the collapse of the Afghan government coming. What most of us who look at these things rationally know is that Donald Trump was the guy in charge in February of 2020 when the Doha Agreement with the Taliban was signed. We also know that the original exit date was May of this year and that Biden wanted to extend that until next month. Plus, we also know that Trump caved in to the Taliban’s demands to release five thousand of their captured fighters, a move that the former Afghan government vehemently opposed.
A third point is that since Trump cut the size of the U.S. contingent in Afghanistan before he left office in January, the Taliban was able to gain ground faster than anyone here predicted. And while I concede the possibility that some of the flak fired at the Biden Administration might be justified or comes from folks with more information than I have, much of it comes from Trump supporters who didn’t care about Afghanistan and cheered as “their” President got us out of our “endless wars.”
Most of the MAGA crowd’s handwringing is just politically-motivated drama.
I agree. It’s a bunch of butt hurt people who apparently want to see our country in chaos. This shit started with Obama. They couldn’t stand to see a black man running the country and are now desperate to hang onto their “power”. It’s sickening.