Time Slips Away

 Time keeps slipping away. I get a snow day, but I accomplish little,

I get tired and nap, and then I am - for want of better words - stay grumpy for the rest of the day, Lethargy with an edge to it.

The morning was good. I got caught up with videos saved on YouTube. There will be posts of them.

More rejections came in. I started to submit more and decided to put that off.

My big accomplishment for the afternoon was getting a car reserved for next Tuesday's polygraph.

I did manage a trip to the convenience store around 5.

I made my way through The Kominsky Method (it was good to see Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner working together; it also made me feel my age), and Extraordinary Attorney Woo (oh, please, do not let American TV try this - they will botch it).

Trudeau is out in Canada. Trump is back talking about annexing another country.

Laundry - scanning - dad's case: that's what needs doing.

I will walk to work. There was an idea to take a taxi, but I want to see if this will work.

I keep chipping away at Gore Vidal's The Golden Age without any joy. There is nothing of Vidal's sharpness of wit. No acerbity, whatsoever. He is putting all his weight on the idea of FDR conspiring to have the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor. While reading, I thought that conspiracy theory might be the original conspiracy theory in American politics, not the JFK assassination. Vidal's essays criticize the American Empire and the National Security State. I happen to agree with him on his criticisms, and his proposed remedy - a return to a Republic. Trump is his usual chaotic self in this regard - he wants us out of international organizations that are part and parcel of our imperial state, while talking about acquiring Greenland and Canada. He certainly wants to increase our domestic security state - what else will result from his desire for retribution? Vidal's ideas date to before China posed a threat to our world order. Trump does not see that retreating from the WHO or NATO or any of the other organizations through which America asserts its power offers an opportunity for China to move into those organizations for their own purposes. Talking about imperial power in terms of land shows Trump's lack of imagination; he remains only a real estate developer, not a statesman. I remain unconvinced that FDR meant the destruction of American battleships at Pearl Harbor - there was too much of an attachment in the American Navy to its battleships, which were outmoded. If someone could show me that FDR knew that aircraft carriers were the future of naval warfare, then I would take the Pearl Harbor conspiracy more seriously. I suspect we thought the Japanese inferior and not likely to attack - regardless of opinions put forth by smarter people lower in the ranks. (I recall reading somewhere a young George C. Patton wrote a paper on a possible Japanese attack that matched what they did on December 7, 1941, but that is Patton.) Another component of the Pearl Harbor conspiracy is that Hitler would declare war on us. Yes, he did; that might be the one time he did not renege on a treaty. After all, the Japanese were not helping him out with the USSR.

Time to get to ready for work.

sch