Sadly Appropriate For the Day
Posted on August 8, 2017 Posted by John Scalzi 37 Comments
Thanks to a dumbass president wetting himself about North Korea and trying to hide it with bluster.
Bear in mind I think we’re almost certainly likely to be fine and everyone will climb down from their current state of rhetorical stupidity. On the other hand, having a dumbass for a president is already tiring.
On the other hand: Kate Bush is awesome. Yay, Kate!
Yes, it is tiring. Constantly.
“Don’t worry; everything is going to be fine; things aren’t as bad as they look, take all you want but eat all you take; and all the other classical optimistic, Protestant bullshit the “shepherds feed to their flock” while the 1% spend money to help forget this shit, and the rest dig-in for the long-run of bullshit to come. Hell, even children don’t believe that crap anymore; and the only ones promoting it have something to benefit.
Truth is, nothing is going to be fine, shit is actually worse than it seems and, since just deserts are well overdue, who gives a fuck. Let the damn climate change til it’s broke; let Dump start world war III while America embarks on its 200 years overdue civil war, and/or race war and hey, to all the girls and boys in the band, PLAY ON!
Isn’t it wonderful when we just learn to accept this shit, besides, there’s no place else to do, unless you own a billion dollar shuttle, and even then guarantees are limited?
. . . not . . . “The Whole Story.” :)
I rather liked Breathing from that album, but my favorite is Cloudbusting.
For the life of me I could not understand a word Kate was singing other than the word “breathing.” So I didn’t finish the song video and I have no clue what it has to do with the latest Trump North Korea news.
But amen, I am so weary of the way the broadcast new media reports on everything related Trump that I am about to check out on listening or watching any media newscasts for the balance of Trump’s service as President. I can always tune into BBC world news; they will cover anything I need to know about Trump.
Also, North Korea is a sovereign nation. What gives any other sovereign nation the moral or legal right to tell North Korea that they cannot be a nuclear power too? Yeah, yeah long ago the then nuclear nations signed a non-proliferation treaty to keep their monopoly exclusive, but what moral right did they ever have to say–“we get to remain nuclear powers and no one else not now a nuclear power can join our club.” No matter how nice that might be, neither we nor the other then nuclear powers had any right to take such a stance.
It’s exhausting: it feels like Year 17 of Nixon, and it’s only been 201 days!
I dunno what else I can add. Maybe “Let the chumps fall where they may”?
(But maybe somewhere less visible to the rest of humanity. Mars. Maybe Mars would be a good venue, if we could send said chumps on the one-way plan…)
Trump is transiting from entertaining to worrying. At least for people outside the US.
And it feels like Nixon was an amateur compared to the current state of affairs.
Right now politics seems to go sour wherever you look. Time to stock up and prepare a shelter.
Sorry for second post, but this tweet is a bit funny: https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/373743492151136256?lang=en
Kate Bush is great. I remember when Wuthering Heights was released, my friends and I used to try and guess what the words were.We came up with some pretty imaginative lines, but we weren’t even close.
Love Kate Bush.
“Fire and Fury”??? Good god. He rants like a tin pot dictator. NPR Marketplace closed by saying something like if your kids ever ask when Wall Street stopped taking Trump seriously, it was this day. Trump rattled his little saber and the stock market barely glitched. If they took him seriously, there would have been a bear running all across the market.
Still, we may need more Kate Bush:
North Korea could use a change of leadership. That said, they will *not* attack the US. The boy god-king might talk tough, but you can bet your last Oreo there’s an Ohio-class missile submarine parked 100 miles off the coast of NK – and his generals dam’ well know it.
What happened to diplomacy? We go straight to threats? This leaves us no options. Great distraction from the Russia probe, no?
Thanks for this, John. I haven’t heard this in years. But I don’t miss those days of anxiety and nightmares. I wish you Americans would rise up and fix this situation.
Nice one, John. I think this one is also appropriate:
“For the life of me I could not understand a word Kate was singing other than the word “breathing.” So I didn’t finish the song video and I have no clue what it has to do with the latest Trump North Korea news.”
Some early Kate Bush can be that way. It’s ambitious stuff, though, especially for her age. This song is from the perspective of a baby in the womb, singing about life after the atomic bomb has been dropped and not wanting to leave that safety for the terrible world outside (if you’d stayed to later in the video, you’d see Kate and some others in hazmat suits. It’s a pretty bleak song, really, but then it was meant to be. It’s classic early 80s M.A.D. fears.
Example:
We’ve lost our chance
We’re the first and the last, ooh
After the blast
Chips of plutonium
Are twinkling in every lung
Was SMH at Trump clutching his arms to his side in an “I’m terrified” posture while trying to bluster. Pathetic (and scary).
wizardru
Thanks. That helps a wee bit.
>> NH says:
>> AUGUST 9, 2017 AT 2:29 AM
>> Trump is transiting from entertaining to worrying. At least for people outside the US.
Anecdotally. I’m outside the USA. He’s always been worrying IMHO
>> myfaketvboyfriend says:
>> AUGUST 9, 2017 AT 6:30 AM
>> What happened to diplomacy?
Sadly this IS Trump’s version of “diplomacy”
Threaten. And then, as we’ve learned from the transcripts of his calls, whine when you call.
Yes. Kate rules. Trump does not.
A spoonful of bluster helps the medicine go down.
Seeing Kate Bush play live was one of the highlights of my year living in London. (September 9th show, if any of you reading this also got to see Kate). I was literally front and center.
Thanks for the video. The other day I noticed that my music collection tends to skew to male artists. I have occasional well-loved albums by female solo artists (one by Eartha Kitt, one Billie Holliday, one Betty Buckley, one Kristin Chenowith). But the only woman I have multiple albums by is Kate Bush.
One thing I’ve been fascinated to observe in myself is how deep the presumption of higher authority and rule of law goes. It’s only now that it’s gone that I’ve realized how much I’ve unconciously banked on having grown-ups in the WH to respond sensibly to major threats, with functioning resources to back up those responses. They maybe blustered and threatened, but one could depend on them wanting the US to survive.
Well, if someone would just give him some dragons we’d all be safer: Trump has been watching Game of Thrones…
I have an idea: Someone lock up Trump and Kim Jong-Un in a padded room to “negotiate.” Do not let either one out. Let them eat cake! Simple, easy, and far cheaper for both countries.
Also — Much love for Sting and his song, “Russians,” which I remember very well playing across campus dorms when I was a much greener young blue.
CNN are claiming that the remark was unscripted, but that ‘best not’ sounds like pure Gorka to me.
Dear Gary,
“What gives any other sovereign nation the moral or legal right to tell North Korea that they cannot be a nuclear power too?”
Oh… Wow… What?… Really?!
This is so — how do I put it — unreal and dissociated from reality, that the only thing I can think of in comparison is people arguing that the Civil War was all about “states rights.” And that severely understates the level of the nonsense you just spouted.
Dismissing the easy one — legal — there are two venues to adjudicate international law: the UN, and the Court in the Hague. When either one says that strong-arming a nation to prevent them from developing nuclear weapons is illegal, then you can declare it’s illegal. Until then, that’s just making crap up. Crap that doesn’t have any case history to back it up.
As for what you think is “moral” — I think it is the height of immorality to do anything that encourages or tolerates the proliferation of nuclear weapons. They are such a phenomenally bad and stupid idea. In what fantasy world is having more nations have them be a good idea? Do you imagine, perhaps that a “nuclear-armed populace is a polite populace?” If you are crazy enough to actually imagine that might be true, do you truly want to run that experiment?
If you do, and you are ever in a position to effect your policies, please give us all fair warning so we can find another planet to move to.
More nuclear weapons is not better. It’s never better. If the folks what got them are preventing other folks from getting them by unilaterally imposing their will, by whatever means they choose short of killing human beings, I’m 100% in favor of that.
Deciding that “national sovereignty” should somehow trump that is one of the most ridiculous, disconnected-from-the-consequences-of-your-philosophy statements I’ve heard in a long time.
~~~~
Dear Pedro,
That may just win you the Internet For The Day. It at least puts you in the running.
Bravo, sir.
– Pax \ Ctein
[ Please excuse any word-salad. Dragon Dictate in training! ]
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Since we’re being all musicultural here, howsabout some opera? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hz7SfkhJe74
As another foreigner, I’d also like to say that 45 has never been entertaining — he was scary from the minute it became obvious he was winning the election
Dear Ctein,
Win me the Internet For The Day?
Not bad for a Pixelated Entity Directed Remotely and Optokinetically.
Best,
Pedro
Our president talks tough to a rogue power the woefully incompetent Presidents Clinton and Obama allowed to develop a nuclear weapon’s program (along with Iran, thanks Obama!) and you call him a “dumbass”?
Careful, Scalzi. The violence by the neo-fascist left has been numerous and out-of-control in their suppression of any other speech or idea slightly different than theirs’ and now the Anti-Trump left has turned murderous.
http://6abc.com/man-gunned-down-outside-home-in-west-goshen/2286340/
Dear Pedro,
Indeed, for a would-be AI, you seem almost… well… human!
[VBG]
pax / Ctein
Ctein,
That’s because Pedro is an IA. Intelligent Artifice.
Going boldly where no Bot has ever gone before!
[VBSEG]
Pedro
I have never yet encountered a time when Kate Bush was inappropriate. She is the best thing that has ever happened to popular music.
Doc Stat – Any actual support for your position vis-a-vis Obama/Clinton, or are you just regurgitating Hannity?
Love Kate Bush. Loathe Don Drumpf.
You know, I seem to recall there having been a president between Clinton and Obama. One whose actions (some say) showed the North Korean dictator what could happen if he DIDN’T develop nuclear weaponry.
Dear Lyle,
Totally FAKE NEWS! Radlib propaganda for the sheeple! We had an unbroken stream of Democrat presidents and Congresses for 24 years. Totally controlled foreign policy. FACT! You can look it up!
(Totally stacked the Supreme Court, too!)
pax / Ctein