11/19/23

 Sunday, November 19, 2023

In bed at 11:30, waited for Geri's return, up at 8.  Let Lilly out.  38°, sunny day, high of 46°, wind N at 7 mph, 4-11/18,  The sun rose at 6:18 and will set at 4:24, 9+35.       

Treadmill; pain.  I woke up with back pain but w/o CPP.🙏  . . .  It didn't take long for the CPP to show up.  I'm wondering if sitting is a trigger.  If so, I'm in trouble. . .  Laid down and fell asleep around noon, CPP gone upon awakening, but returned.  

Edward Said.  I watched the second half of a 2-hour interview of Edward Said in 2002, said to be his last interview as he suffered from a terminal case of leukemia.  He was a renowned literary scholar, musician, and advocate for the cause of the Palestinian people in Israel, the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, where he was born in 1935.  I was interested primarily in what he had to say about Israel and the Palestinians.  His family moved to Egypt and then the U.S. in his youth.  He went to Princeton for his undergraduate education, and to Harvard for his master's and doctoral education, and he taught at Columbia for many years.  He was close to Yasser Arafat for many years and was on the Palestinian National Council from 1977 to 1991.  He split from them after the Oslo Accords in 1993, which he called a disgraceful sellout.  He was not a fan of the Palestinian leadership.  It was interesting seeing this distinguished Palestinian/American scholar speak on behalf of the suffering and mistreatment of the Palestinian people and calling for a single-state solution with equal citizenship for Israelis and Palestinians.  He considered the U.S. brokered "peace process a charade or a meretricious canard.  As I watched, I thought of how much worse matters became in the 21 years since his interview, years dominated by Israel's governance by Likud Party politicians and Binyamin Netanyahu.   I think of Oriana Fallaci: "No matter what system you live under, there is no escaping the law that it's always the strongest, the cruelest, the least generous who win."

Biden editorial in this morning's WaPo.  There is a long piece by Joe Biden in this morning's paper, repetitively asserting Israel's right to defend itself and calling for "a two-state solution" to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people.  In America's unending virtue-signalling, he calls attention to his advice to Netanyahu to observe international law about protecting innocent civilians and hails the fact that some humanitarian relief is being delivered to Gaza.  He levels no criticism at Israeli policies and practices in the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Gaza itself, notably the growth of settlements, displacement of Palestinians, thefts of land, and the multi-year blockade of Gaza and now the relentless bombardment and destruction of Gazan life and infrastructure.  Does anyone other than Joe Biden really believe that a two-state "solution" is realistic anymore, with 600,000 to 800,000 Israeli Jews living throughout "Samaria and Judea"?  With perhaps tens of thousands of Israelis (Srugim) believing in  Eretz Yisrael Hashema including all of the West Bank, Gaza, greater Jerusalem, much of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Egypt?  Or is this just more of the charade or meretricious canard about a so-called 'peace process'?  I suspect that the so-called 'peace process', if it ever had a real chance, met its end with the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin on 11/4/1995, or perhaps with Yasir Arafat's rejection of the Clinton-brokered deal offered by Barak Ehud's government in 2000.   Give us a break, Joe.  Wake up and smell the coffee.  Stop pissing on our shoes and telling us it's raining.  Other clichés come to mind.  

Santiago, Italia    I also watched this documentary on OVID while Geri was at the symphony.  The first half was about Pinochet's takeover of Chile and his rule from 1973 to 1990.  I think of this as the Nixon-Kissinger-CIA coup that overthrew the democratically-elected socialist government of Chile and installed a fascist, military dictator.  So much for America's belief in democracy and majority rule.  Again we see Fallaci: "No matter what system you live under, there is no escaping the law that it's always the strongest, the cruelest, the least generous who win."  

It was interesting to watch 2 hours of Edward Said stating his views on Israel and the Palestinians, and on colonialism and imperialism, knowing that he was labeled a "terrorist" and a "radical" by many on both sides of the issues and was the subject of a lengthy file maintained on him by the FBI, and then to watch interviews of many Chilians who appeared to be perfectly normal middle-class human beings who also were members of the Communist Party, though certainly not Stalinists.

11/18/23

 Saturday, November 18, 2023

In bed @ 9:15, up at 6, and a couple hours on lzb after mild GERD, and multiple pss.  Let Lilly out.  32°, high of 50°, sunny day ahead, wind WSW at 11, 4-14/26.  Sunrise at 6:48, sunset at 4:25, 9+37.

Treadmill; pain.  25:01  0.52 while watching a YouTube lecture analyzing Yeats' The Lake Isle of Innesfree:

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree,

And a small cabin build there, of clay and wattles made;

Nine bean-rows will I have there, a hive for the honey-bee,

And live alone in the bee-loud glade.

And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow,

Dropping from the veils of the morning to where the cricket sings;

There midnight’s all a glimmer, and noon a purple glow,

And evening full of the linnet’s wings.

I will arise and go now, for always night and day

I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;

While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,

I hear it in the deep heart’s core.

The lecturer mentioned that Yeats wrote this in 1890 while living in London, then the largest city in the world and filthy with foul air and foul water, loaded with the poor crowded into filthy slums.  That's where he was when he was "stand[ing] on the roadway, or on the pavements gray" yearning for the lake isle of Innisfree.

Then I watched another YouTube lecture by Stephen Cheeke on Yeats' bizarre beliefs in faeries, theosophy the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, life after death, seances, 'automatic writing', reincarnation, and the occult: "The Wonderful and Frightening World of W. B. Yeats'" Bristol Lectures.  At the end of the lecture, the speaker referred to a paragraph in Yeats' prose work "Per Amica Silentia Lunae" that revealed to me where the 4th stanza of his poem "Vacillation" comes from.  From the poem:

My fiftieth year had come and gone, / I sat, a solitary man, / In a crowded London shop, / An open book and empty cup / On the marble table-top. / While on the shop and street I gazed / My body of a sudden blazed; / And twenty minutes more or less / It seemed, so great my happiness, / That I was blessed and could bless.

From "Per Amica":

At certain moments, always unforeseen, I become happy, most commonly when at hazard I have opened some book of verse.  Sometimes it is my own verse when, instead of discovering new technical flaws, I read with all the exitement of the first writing.  Perhaps I am sitting in some crowded restaurant, the open book beside me, or closed, my excitement having over-brimmed the page.  I look at the strangers near as if I had nown them all my life, and it seems strange that I cannot speak to them: everything fills me with affection.  I have no longer any fears or any needs; I do not even remember that this happy mood must come to an end.  It seems as if the vehicle had suddenly grown pure and far extended and so luminous that the images from Anima Mundi, embodied there and drunk with that sweetness would, like a country drunkard who has thrown a wisp into his own thatch, burn up time.  It may be an hour before the mood passes, but latterly I seem to understand that I enter upon it the moment I cease to hate.  I think the common condition of our life is hatred - I know this is so with me - irritation with public or private events or persons.

Shutterfly.  I wasted some time trying to order a coffee mug with the photo of Lilly in the dining room doorway.  I become increasingly incompetent in dealing with digital/computer stuff, including placing orders over the internet

Having a hard time writing today, thinking of Ukraine and Gaza . . . the human condition, human nature, homo hominis lupus, 'He's got a plan for each of us' and "He's got the whole world in His hands."  Daily text messages from Mike Johnson, the Christian nationalists, Ryan Zinke, Mike Pompeo, and assorted fascists.  Joe Biden, Donald Trump, The Big Lie vs. No Big Truth.  Is it really so hard to imagine the U.S. as a fascist nation, controlled by contemporary Confederates, neo-Nazis, homegrown SA, SS, and Gestapo?  Is it really so hard to understand why most Democrats want Joe Biden to get the hell out of the race, why his age, his negative charisma, his VP, his mumbling and bumbling scare the shit out of anti-Trumpers?  He turns 81 on Monday.  Can we even imagine what he will be like at age 82, 83, 84, 85, or 86?  I despair.

I think of the Gazans' holocaust and a Quantico  Basic School memory.

    We worked with and fired or exploded all the land-based weapons in the Marine Corps’ arsenal, other than napalm: M60 air-cooled machine guns that fired 7.62 mm rounds, water-cooled machine guns that fired the larger .50 caliber rounds, hand grenades, anti-tank and anti-personnel land mines, 60 mm and 81 mm mortars, 3.5 inch rocket launchers a/k/a “bazookas,” 106 mm recoilless rifles.  We conducted exercises with tanks, huge roaring monsters on tracks with 105 mm guns.  We fired 105 mm and 155 mm howitzers.  We were bused down to Little Creek to conduct an amphibious assault.  We were helo-lifted by H34 helicopters, the workhouse of the early Vietnam War, in vertical assault and other exercises. We studied nuclear, chemical and biological warfare and endured exposure to tear gas.

In the fall, we were ‘treated’ to “Hell Night.”  Francis Fukuyama, author of The End of History, commented during a recent interview on C-Span’s Book TV, “American troops are basically trained to blow things up and kill people.”  His observation was entirely correct, all of that ‘hearts and minds’ stuff notwithstanding.  Hell Night was a demonstration of the sights and sounds and the feel of blowing things up and killing people and of being blown up and killed.  Specifically, it was a demonstration of the defensive firepower employed along a ‘main line of resistance.’ It was conducted after sundown.  We were bused from the Basic School to a clearing in the woods where bleachers were set up.  The lieutenants were required to be present.  Wives were encouraged to be present and Anne attended.  As dusk turned to darkness, an introductory explanation of what we were about to see and hear and feel was given and then all hell broke loose.  Artillery barrages began, white phosphorous flares were lofted to illuminate the battlefield, mortars exploded, machine guns laid down interlocking fields of fire, recoilless rifle rounds hit salvage tanks made visible by the white phosphorous.  It was a relatively low-tech, 1963 version of the obscene 2003 Shock and Awe show that Bush and Rumsfeld and their military myrmidons put on in Baghdad, but it was terrifying to imagine oneself on the receiving end of the weaponry.  It was scary just to see the tracer rounds from the small arms and the flash and blast of the high explosive weapons, to hear the infernal noise, and to feel the concussions from the explosions.

I have two thoughts remembering that night in the woods.  First, I am reminded of what my father experienced on the beach of Iwo Jima.  He and the other Marines and hospital corpsmen had unimaginable firepower unleashed on them for days on end.  Japanese howitzers, rockets, mortars, mines and machine guns in front of them and the Navy’s 16 inch guns on the battleships, 8 inch guns on the cruisers, and 5 inch guns on the destroyers behind them.  An inferno, with dead and dying and wounded Marines – and parts of Marines’ bodies - all around.

I think too of the fact that Anne was there, that wives were encouraged to attend.  I wonder what the thinking was behind that.  To give spouses a clearer idea of the danger of combat?  To bring home the reality of what Marines do?  To scare them?  To make them more supportive of their husbands’ work at the risk of them becoming less supportive of their husbands’ work?  Marine Corps training is thoroughly thought-out; nothing is done without a specific set of objectives.  I wonder just what were the objectives of having the wives present.  I wonder about it more now than I did then.

Every time I see a news report showing explosions in Gaza I think of the fact that almost certainly civilians on the receiving end of the bomb or rocket are being killed, injured, maimed,  burned, broken apart, or crushed.  Men, women, children, young, old.  My Jewish friends would probably object to my use of the term 'holocaust' to describe what is being done in Gaza now, but in what sense is it not a holocaust?  Old men and women, disabled people, mothers and fathers with infants, toddlers, and children are targeted if not intentionally, at least knowingly.  Fish in a barrel.  "The horror, the horror."

Geri is off to the symphony with Micaela tonight.  Brahms 4th Symphony, Shostakovich Cello Concerto performed by Andrei Ioniƫa, Ruth Reinhardt conducting.  I would probably enjoy this concert more than Geri but (1) Caela invited Geri, and (2) the process of getting to the symphony hall and getting seated would not be an easy one for me,  and then there's the problem of pit stops.  Alas.

       

11/17/23

 Friday, November 17, 2023

In bed at 9:45, awake @ 4, up at 4:40.  46°, drizzle, high of 56°, wind NNW at 15 mph, 6-16/26, WC is 39°.  Sunrise at 6:46, sunset at 4:26, 9+39.

Treadmilll; pain.  Another morning with CPP.  I'll be seeing the urologist a 8:15 on Monday.  I'm thinking levator ani syndrome but probably just another term for CPP, interstitial cystitis, etc.

Lilly at the dining room doorway waiting for a treat after an outing

It's dark and a fly is attracted to my laptop screen.  We have a flying critter in the house, taking shelter from the dropping temps?  It reminds me of Emily Dickinson:

I heard a Fly buzz – when I died – 

The Stillness in the Room

Was like the Stillness in the Air – 

Between the Heaves of Storm – 

The Eyes around – had wrung them dry – 

And Breaths were gathering firm

For that last Onset – when the King

Be witnessed – in the Room – 

I willed my Keepsakes – Signed away

What portions of me be

Assignable – and then it was

There interposed a Fly – 

With Blue – uncertain stumbling Buzz – 

Between the light – and me – 

And then the Windows failed – and then

I could not see to see – 

. . . . . . . 

That reminds me of Psalm 46: "He says 'Be still, and know that I am God.'"  A strange sequence of early morning thoughts when I woke up thinking of Lonnie Donegan's 1961 hit song:

Does your chewing gum lose its flavor

on the bedpost overnight?

If your mother says don't chew it,

Do you swallow it in spite?

Can you catch it on your tonsils,

Can you heave it left & right?

Does your chewing gum lose its flavor

on the bedpost overnight?

. . . . 

Also thinking of yesterday's mindfulness discussion and the idea of STILLNESS.  "The three stillnesses are stillness of body, speech, and mind. . .  You are not doing things like moving, talking, or following thoughts and it is important you notice these non-actions as a union of an absence and a tangible clear presence. They are not just nothing; by noticing the three stillnesses you bring stillness to life and directly experience a new dimension of your being."

Dickinson, the Psalmist, Lonnie Donegan, and the Buddha.  Good morning.

"Donald Trump is the biggest danger to the world in 2024." Thus editorializes The Economist.  "In our 38th annual predictive guide to thecoming year, and in all that time no single person has ever eclipsed our analysis as much as Donald Trump eclipses 2024. . . . This is a perilous moment for a man like Mr. Trump to be back knocking on the door of the Oval Office.  Democracy is in trouble at home.  Mr. Trump's claim to have won in 2020 was more than a lie: it was a cynical bet that he could manipulate and intimidate his compatriots, and it has worked.  America also faces growing hostility abroad, challenged by Russia in Ukriane, by Iran and its allied militieas in the Middle East and by Cina across the Taiwan Strait and in the South China Sea.  Those three countries loosely co0ordinate their efforts and share a vision of a new international order in which might is right and autocrats are secure. . . A second Trump term would be a watershed in a way the first was not.  Victory would confirm his most destructive instincts about power.  His plans would encounter less resistance.  And because America will have voted him in while knowing the worst, its moral authority would decline.  The election will be decided by tens of thousands of voters in just a handful of states.  In 2024 the fate of the world will depend on their ballots.

. . . . . 

And Wisconsin is one of them.  This ominous warning reminds me of my moaning to Kitty about America falling into fascism following Trump.  I didn't get into that in this text message, but it's the one I sent to her 2 years ago today:

Good Morning, Sweetheart,

      Two nights ago, for no reason known to me, I lost all the text messages saved on my laptop.  Hundreds, thousands just disappeared overnight.  And now I can’t type new messages so I am now using my phone with my clumsy fingers on the tiny keyboard.  I’m very displeased by this, very very displeased.

    I got a call from Kelly yesterday and I am always eager to hear from her but. She is not very informative.  I wish I could be with you in Arizona but I don’t think it’s in the cards.  I’m not in very good shape myself these days, feeling like I’m 90 years old rather than 80.  Long distance travel just about does me in.

    I am hoping beyond hope that Michael and especially Chrissi will be able to provide all the help you need but this COVID situation sure makes life more difficult for all of you.  I have the sense that neither Jim nor Chrissi is very symptomatic and I sure hope that is true.

    Geri learned yesterday that her good friend who lives across the street is building a new house and will be moving away, not all that far but still not in the neighborhood.  Its a big disappointment for Geri and will be a big loss.

 I hope you are bearing up under all your challenges.  I’m sure you know you are in my thoughts and prayers every day, every night, and every in between time.❤️🙏🏻❤️ 

What a blessing she was to me; what a blessing she still is in my memory.  I'm thankful that I've been able to save years and years of messages we share with each other every morning for so many years.  More blessings.  I'm reminded to back up onto my external hard drive this laptop again tomorrow as I try to do every Saturday now (wow, that's some awkward sentence.😝)

David and Ellis dropped over at 5.  Ellis brought a print of this year's school picture and David lifted the window over the kitchen sink whiich I could raise more than 3 inches or so.  We had to lift it to close the storm window.  While Geri and David schmoozed about Thanksgiving dinner, Ellis and I identified movie and book references in the moving ROKU graphic on the TV screen: a Harry Potter, King Kong, Showboat, Jaws, Rear Window, The Birdman of Alcatraz, Around the World in 80 Days, Diner. Sleepless in Seattle.

11/16/23

 Thursday, November 16, 2023

In bed at 10:45, up at 6:34, let Lilly out, 46°, high of 60°, mostly cloudy, AQI=95 (PN2.5), wind SSW at 11 mph,  2-19/35, windy afternoon expected. Sunrise at 6:45 at 115°SE, sunset at 4:27 at 245°SW, 9+41 .  Solar noon at 11:36 a.m., alt. at 28°   

Journaling and my 'asshole epiphany.  It's odd the things we remember from long ago, and perhaps odder the things we partially remember.  Many years ago when I was a young professor at the law school, I drove to work one day along Lake Drive and Lincoln Memorial Drive on the lakefront.  There was to be a faculty meeting that day and I was thinking about my position on some matter that would be coming up.  I knew that my position would not find favor with my older, much more conservative colleagues, and I recall thinking to myself, "If I say such and such, they'll think I'm an asshole."  That thought was immediately followed by "Maybe I am an asshole on this issue, so what."  The words aren't exact but I recall pretty vividly the epiphanous insight that on some issues I might be an asshole, out of sync with most others, and even maybe wrong but also perhaps right and the others wrong and that I could live with that, being outé was OK.  The thought sequence occurred as I was turning from Lake Drive onto Lincoln Memorial Drive at Lake Park.  What I don't recall is what the issue was on which I would be the outlier, the asshole.  There were many issues over many years on which I differed from my older, Republican, traditional Catholic colleagues.  I'm thinking back on that experience now in connection with the practice of journaling, attempting to put in writing my thoughts on any number of matters on which my thoughts may be incoherent, unclear, perhaps contradictory, uninformed or misinformed, perhaps "tattooed in my cradle" with tribal falsities, biases, and prejudices, etc., or simply wrong.   I'm also thinking of my many thoughts of my complicities, my weaknesses, guilt, all that Yeatsian 'responsibility so weighs me down' and 'my conscience or my vanity appalled' stuff.  I realize that this paragraph itself is incoherent, without a clear sequitur between its beginning and this ending, but so be it I guess, maybe I am an asshole.

Meditation and Mindfulness Awareness.  This morning for the first time, I dialed in to join this group, moderated out of Green Bay.  There were perhaps 8 veterans in the group [ plus Lou, a peer counselor out of Green Bay, and Mary, a Whole Health health coach out of GB.   It was interesting and I will probably stick with it.  I'm about to leave to go to the North Shore and WFB libraries to check out some Mindfulness materials. . .  I picked up 2 DVDs on mindfulness practice and one book "Beginning Mindfulness: Learning the Way of Awareness."

Fintan O'Toole: Biden's Selective Outrage in the November 14 issue of NYRB  O'Toole is one of my favorite, perhaps my favorite, essayist.  He writes great stuff for NYRB and The Irish Times.  He's a 'youngster', only 65 years old, born in Dublin to working-class parents, educated (like me) by the Irish Christian Brothers (a/k/a ICBs or International Child Beaters), and at University College-Dublin, not Trinity or Oxford or Cambridge.  Also, like me, he is not a big fan of Joseph Robinette Biden.  He's not utterly condemnatory, like MAGA morons, but he isn't taken in by Biden's schtick.  His most recent offering in NYRB about Biden's selective outrage is subtitled "The rhetorical choice to pair Israel and Ukraine has not created a common moral cause. It has exposed a double standard."  He writes:

The pairing of Israel and Ukraine has not created a single moral cause. It has exposed a double standard. From the early days of Putin’s war on Ukraine, as evidence began to emerge of the extensive war crimes committed by his forces, it was clear that there was a weak spot in America’s accusations of Russian depravity. The US has a history of deep ambivalence toward war crimes—evident in, for example, its refusal to accept the jurisdiction of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Its inconsistency on this score has long threatened to undermine the belief, so important to the struggle being waged by the people of Ukraine, that Putin is violating not just territorial borders but moral boundaries. For Putin it is good news indeed that the US, so fierce in its denunciation of his attacks on civilians, has been so forbearing in its attitude to similar assaults on Gaza. His cynical belief that ethical standards are just weapons in the propaganda war is being vindicated. . . . 

There has been nothing secret about Israel’s intent to punish the whole population of Gaza by depriving them of electricity and water. On October 9 the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, announced a “complete siege” of the Strip. “There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel.” The following day the Israeli Army’s coordinator of government activities in the territories, Major General Ghassan Alian, addressed the population of Gaza in Arabic: “Human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water. There will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.” 

We do not have to guess how the Biden administration would have responded to such statements had they come from Moscow rather than Tel Aviv. In November 2022 Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the US ambassador to the United Nations, spoke to the security council about Russia’s destruction of civilian infrastructure in Ukrainian cities, which had left millions of people without power or clean water: . . . 

ILater that month the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, used even stronger language to condemn Russian attacks on vital infrastructure: “Heat, water, electricity—for children, for the elderly, for the sick—these are President Putin’s new targets. He’s hitting them hard. This brutalization of Ukraine’s people is barbaric.” . . . . 

In July, when the US began to share evidence of Russian war crimes in Ukraine with the ICC, The New York Times reported that “American intelligence agencies are said to have gathered information including details about decisions by Russian officials to deliberately strike civilian infrastructure in Ukraine.” Assuming such reports are accurate, this means that the Biden administration has been actively helping the ICC prepare a possible indictment of Putin for deliberately depriving civilians of electricity and clean water. 

Each recorded fatal Israeli airstrike on Gaza since October 7 has reportedly caused an average of ten civilian deaths. The Biden administration has acknowledged that killing innocent people at this rate is unacceptable. As Blinken put it on a visit to India, “Far too many Palestinians have been killed; far too many have suffered these past weeks.” By the logic it applied to Iran, the US has to take responsibility for its indirect part in those deaths. Yet there is no evidence that it is willing to hold itself to the moral standards it insists on for others—and very little evidence either that the influence it seeks to wield behind the scenes in its dealings with Netanyahu has had much effect on the ground in Gaza. The administration’s tacit moral case—that its backing for Israel’s war allows it to save Palestinian lives by restraining what Biden, on his visit to Tel Aviv, called “an all-consuming rage”—seems more and more like wishful thinking.

As the conflict in Ukraine looks increasingly attritional and settles into a bloody stalemate with no obvious endpoint, it has become harder for democracies to sustain the idea that this is not a proxy war between power blocs but a genuine struggle for decent values and an international order based on universal laws. What will those Western governments say this winter when Putin again tries to destroy Ukraine’s power grids? Can they say, as they have before, that these attacks are horrific and barbaric? Or must they now preserve an awkward silence because such language has lost the power to express a shared sense of revulsion at all inhumane acts, whoever perpetrates them? 

O'Toole wrote another piece in NYRB two weeks ago: "No Endgame in Gaza: After weeks of bombardment and thousands of deaths, what are Netanyahu’s political and ethical limits?"  There he wrote:

Peacemaking is a political process. Wars may shape the circumstances in which it is done, but they do not make it happen. Rabin, one of Israel’s most accomplished warriors, understood that truth. With his assassination and Netanyahu’s rise, it was deliberately unlearned. Politics—the negotiation of a just settlement with the Palestinians—was abandoned and replaced by the illusion that security could indeed be created and maintained by planes, tanks, fortifications, and surveillance technology. That illusion has died a terrible death, but it retains a zombie existence. It persists because the first condition of a return to politics would be the admission that Netanyahu’s whole approach has been a disaster, not just for the Palestinians, but for Israel. . . . 

The idea of controlled carnage ended in the unrestrained slaughter of October 7. Netanyahu was forced to abandon overnight the scheme that had been the touchstone of his whole approach to the Palestinian question: keeping Hamas strong enough to deny authority to the Palestinian Authority, but weak enough to pose no more than a sporadic and limited threat to Israeli citizens. . . .

The failure of Israel’s Plan A was acknowledged with its unilateral withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. The even more catastrophic collapse of Plan B has been conceded, as it had to be, after Hamas’s attacks destroyed the illusion of literal and political containment. But the only response of which Netanyahu seems capable is a completely incoherent mix of Plan A and Plan B. There will be, for an unknown period, a military occupation. But it will end in some kind of reversion to the situation that followed the 2005 withdrawal: power without responsibility. Israel will exert complete power over Gaza. But it will take no responsibility for Gaza. This is not a plan. It is a fusion of two failures.

Netanyahu is Trump in a kippah, but much smarter, more politically astute, and never buffoonish.  He has led his country to disaster and chaos, just as Trump will lead the U.S. to disaster and chaos if he is returned to the White House, which now is looking more like a probability than a mere possibility.  Joe Biden provided an escape from Trump's treacheries in 2020 but he may lead the U.S. and the world to a more disastrous Trump return in 2024.

 

Death and Destruction on tracks

 A start

 

 

 

 

11/15/23

 Wednesday, November 15, 2023

In bed at 10, up at 5:45, let Lilly out, 46°, clear, high of 59°, wind SW at 13 mph, 3-14/25,  Sunrise at 6:44, sunset at 4:27, 9+43.

Treadmill; pain.  I'm having CPP this morning, worrisome.  I took an Advil, keeping my fingers crossed. . . .  Pain still here at 10 a.m., called the VA Urology Clinic to see about moving up my 1/25/24 appointment since this pain seems to be more testicular than pelvic floor.  Got on the treadmill at 11 a.m.   25:00  and 0.60 while watching Dana Bash on CNN.

Thinking about my 'stick' collection.  I have 4 canes and one walking stick.  The walking stick I personally crafted many years ago from a sapling at Bean's Lake.  I keep it near the front door to our house.  My oldest cane is one I bought for my father almost 20 years ago at a pharmacy on Port Road, across from Kopp's.  Perhaps it was presumptuous of me because he never wanted to use it, but I dreaded every time he had to step down from stairs or a stoop.  Now I use it very often but not always when I am out and about.  I keep it in the Volvo.  It has sentimental value for me.  My favorite cane however is one that Andy purchased on a trip to the UK more than 30 years ago.  It's solid wood, unlike my other canes, and is topped not by a handle like the other ones but by a very smooth knob.  Until I bought a rubber cane tip from Amazon, the bottom was capped by a thin metal wrapping that made for hazardous footing.  My Dad once told me not to love anything that can't love me back so I guess I can't say that I love this old wooden cane, but I rely on it every day, especially in the middle of the night and on my early morning wake-ups and it's come to seem like an old friend. I keep it next to me on the library recliner during the day and next to my bed at night.   I have another cane I keep at the bottom of the basement staircase in case I need some support down there.  So far I haven't.  I can't remember why I bought it.  My fourth cane is a metal foldable staff that is taller than the other three.  I saw an old guy at the VA using one and thought it might be useful for strolling, which I never do.  Nonetheless, I got one from Amazon and use it only when I walk outside around our house, on the (to me) treacherously uneven grass-covered ground that can throw me off balance.  I keep it next to the back doors to the house.  I also have two 'rollators' provided to me by the VA because of my balance and gait challenges.  One I call "Judy" and the other "Rachel".  One is taller than the other and keeps me from leaning down on it while walking, stressing my shoulders.  When I used them, which I haven't in a long time, I would say to Geri, "I'm going for a walk with Judy (or Rachel)."  I think I stopped going for walks on Wakefield and environs because I'm embarassed to be using a rollator.  False masculine pride, foolish.   I've wondered recently whether I should put the shorter of the two in the back of the Volvo to use on my many trips to the VA.  I haven't done it yet in part because it seems like an admission of defeat to use it rather than relying on my cane for stability and support.  Plus, walkers and wheelchairs take up a lot of space in the VA waiting rooms, like the many loooonng trucks that are too big for the parking spaces in the VA patients' garage.  They stick way out into the traffic lanes in the garage requiring cars to stop and wait when another car approaches going the other way.  The wheelchairs and rollators are a bit  like that in the waiting rooms, obtrusive.  Of course their users need them and no one begrudges them their use, but I wonder about those trucks in the garage.  Do their owners really need those big trucks or is it a macho thing, real men drive big pickups?  Just wondering.   Also thinking that when the parking garage was built, I suspect the architects weren't contemplating widespread use of pickup trucks by mostly old vets.  (I can be pretty damn snooty, a nasty fault.😢)

Thoughts while reading this morning's WaPo.  (1) What ever happened to Ukraine?  That was went from everyday news to hard to find news. (2) I've mentioned my thought that one major concern in Washington about a bigger, multi-front war in Israel is that Israel would use 'tactical' nuclear weapons if its leaders believed Israel's existence were at risk.  Netanyahu has suspended from his cabinet Amochay Eliyahu, a member who has publicly mentioned such use in an interview on Hebrew radio, saying there is no such thing as noncombatants in Gaza. (3) On Saturday,  the Israeli agriculture minister, Avi Dichter, said that the military campaign in Gaza was explicitly designed to force the mass displacement of Palestinians. “We are now rolling out the Gaza nakba,” he said in a television interview. “Gaza nakba 2023.” (4)  Since Oct. 7, according to the United Nations, Israeli soldiers have killed 150 Palestinians, including 44 children, in clashes. Jewish settlers, some of whom are armed and informally allied with the military, have killed eight people, one of them a child, according to the United Nations.  Three Israelis have been killed in attacks by Palestinians since Oct. 7.  (5)  With much of the dehumanizing language employed by Israeli leaders, it's impossible to tell whether they are refering to Hamas or to Palestinians generally.  Most of them would say it's the former, but one must wonder.  (6)  I wonder how does a society, a culture, or an individual, Israeli or Palestinian, recover from what has been going on since October 7th. 

Journalling/Blogging.  This is my 487th day of writing a daily journal using Google's  Blogger/Blogspot app.  I started at the end of July last year. thinking I would try it for a week and then a month.  I mentioned my journalling to Jody, the occupational therapist and Healing Touch practitioner at the VA yesterday, saying that I often wonder why I do it, but that one of the reasons is that writing requires mental activity, activity as opposed to receptivity or passivity, like watching a movie or a sporting event (as if😊) or listening to music.  Ditto with my painting.  Even typing the journal entries requires maintaining a skill, coordinating finger movement, relying on muscle memory but using all the fingers and thumbs on both hands.  But mostly I use it to try to keep tabs on my cognitive decline with age: can I still compose coherent sentences and string them into a coherent paragraph?  Each journal page is evidence of what is or is not going on in my aged brain.  Geri asked me the other day whether I was concerned that some malefactor might use the publicly available blog for identity theft and I said 'no,' largely because of my confidence that no one reads my ponderings and musings other than moi seulment.  I learned that with my memoir.   I suppose this is true for most or perhaps all writers other than those who write for a living (reporters, novelists, poets, professors, et al.) or those who write to a correspondent, an interlocutor; we write for ourselves, to clarify our thoughts (like Flannery O'Connor), to simply blow off steam, or for some other reason.  I print off each day's journal entry so I have a hard copy, probably because of my old timer's need for a paper record, something tangible not digital.  I have a pile of these paper pages on my desk in the basement and the other day I had a vision of someone looking at them after my death and tossing them into the recycling bin or perhaps the trash bin.  So it goes.  Sic transit gloria mundi.  Memento, homo, quia pulvis es et in pulverem reverteris.  Or as the Anglican Book of Common Prayer would have  it:   “In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our brother Charles (his journal and his memoir); and we commit his body (and his papers) to the ground; earth to earth; ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bless him and keep him, the Lord make his face to shine upon him and be gracious unto him and give him peace. Amen.”

RE Trump's use of Hitler rhetoric.  Excerpt from Vanity Fair, :After the Gold Rush", by Marie Brenner, September 1,1990:

by Donald Trump appears to take aspects of his German background seriously. John Walter works for the Trump Organization, and when he visits Donald in his office, Ivana told a friend, he clicks his heels and says, “Heil Hitler,” possibly as a family joke.

Last April, perhaps in a surge of Czech nationalism, Ivana Trump told her lawyer Michael Kennedy that from time to time her husband reads a book of Hitler’s collected speeches, My New Order, which he keeps in a cabinet by his bed. Kennedy now guards a copy of My New Order in a closet at his office, as if it were a grenade. Hitler’s speeches, from his earliest days up through the Phony War of 1939, reveal his extraordinary ability as a master propagandist.

“Did your cousin John give you the Hitler speeches?” I asked Trump.

Trump hesitated. “Who told you that?”

“I don’t remember,” I said.

“Actually, it was my friend Marty Davis from Paramount who gave me a copy of Mein Kampf, and he’s a Jew.” (“I did give him a book about Hitler,” Marty Davis said. “But it was My New Order, Hitler’s speeches, not Mein Kampf. I thought he would find it interesting. I am his friend, but I’m not Jewish.”) 

Later, Trump returned to this subject. “If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them.”

Is Ivana trying to convince her friends and lawyer that Trump is a crypto-Nazi? Trump is no reader or history buff. Perhaps his possession of Hitler’s speeches merely indicates an interest in Hitler’s genius at propaganda. The Führer often described his defeats at Stalingrad and in North Africa as great victories. Trump continues to endow his diminishing world with significance as well. “There’s nobody that has the cash flow that I have,” he told The Wall Street Journal long after he knew better. “I want to be king of cash.” 

I remember reading this long and fascinating story when it was published, or perhaps reading about it, especially about the book of Hitler's speeches on or near his bedside, and believing it then, as I believe it now.

Two trips to Port Washington today, one yesterday.   Yesterday to Walmart and Duluth Trading Company for 2 pairs of sweatpants.  Today to True Value Hardware for driveway reflectors and to drop off  some offerings at SVDP on CTH C then again to drive Andy up to Costco to pick up the Subaru after its punctured tired was repaired.  Nice conversation with Andy all the way up.

11/14/23

Tuesday, November 14, 2023

In bed at 9:45, awake at 4:50, onto lzb until 5:25, let Lilly out, 35°, high of 57°, wind SW at 4 mph, 2-15/27.  Sunrise at 6:43 at 114°SE, sunset at 4:28 at 245°WSW, 9+45.  Did a load of laundry at 6 a.m.           

Treadmill; Pain. Some moderate CPP this morning, gove by the time I got to the VA for my 10:30.  It came back this afternoon, fairly bad, while I shopped at Walmart, MetroMarket, and Sendiks.

Nyad.  We watched this remarkable film last night.  It features a tour de force performance by Annette Bening as Diana Nyad.  Geri and I had the same thought - that it is Academy Award worthy.  The on-screen relationship between Bening and her co-star Jodie Foster is also remarkable.  These are two of our favorite actors so we were eager to see this film starring both of them.  It's a tale of obsession, determination, grit, arrogance, self-determination, goal-fulfillment, egoism and foolishness, depending on your point of view.  I am reminded of the story in the news last week of a 17 year old boy who solved a Rubik's Cube in record time while free-falling during a skydive.  He's in the Guiness Book of World Records.  And???  What will be his next death-defying feat?  Will he survive it and what's the point?  I suppose we can ask these questions of many human endeavors - why do it, what's the cost, why is it worth it?  Bening's Nyad - and apparently Nyad herself - is a character that is not easy to like or perhaps even to admire, again depending on your point of view.  Her obsession exacted a toll not only on her, but also on others, particularly her coach and best friend Bonnie and on the navigator  John Bartlett who plotted the route Diana had to follow between Cuba and Key West, and the valorous assistants who jumped in the water to fight off an attacking shark with tennis balls mounted on long shafts.  I will probably want to watch this flick again to focus less on Diana's feat and more on the relationship between her and Bonnie, not amorous but supportive, at least on Bonnie's part.  To use a Trumpism, what was in it for her?

     I'm thinking also about 65-year-old Annette Bening's preparation for and execution of her role as Nyad.  It fairly mirrored Nyad's dedication to her goal in real life.  It wasn't death-defying like Nyad's, but it was demanding and indeed grueling so it raises the same kind of questions I asked above, why do it, what was the cost, why was it worth it?  In this sense, the movie seems more than a little philosophical about much of what we do in our lives, the 'why' and 'at what cost' and 'is or was it worth it?'  It also raises questions re goal-setting, shying away from difficult goals, and quitting.  I'm thinking of Dr. Baugrud calling me from her office one Friday evening, and my asking her (presumptuously) what she was doing in her office at that hour and her response: "It's what I do."  Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly, and all that.  It's what they do.  And Ecclesiastes: vanitas vanitatem. . .

Supreme Court promulgates unenforcible ethics rules for itself.

Since . . . it has been my intention to write something of use to the understanding reader it has seemed wiser to me to follow the real truth of the matter rather than what we imagine it to be. Imagination has created many principalities and republics that have never been seen or known to have any real existence; for how we live is so far different from how we ought to live that he who studies what ought to be done rather what is done will learn the way to his downfall rather than to his preservation.

Niccolo Machiavelli, THE PRINCE, ch. XV.

and

[L]aw was superb as a code. And the more perfect and logical a code was, the more magnificent it was. But this was at the cost of increased artificiality, rendering it less capable of existing in reality. Hence the opportunity to study and reflect on law offered the greatest satisfaction while the requirement to implement it was the saddest or most painful fate that could befall one. The practice of law led either to cynicism or madness. We could see examples of the former all around us and, as for the latter, suffice it to recall Kafka, who, though few realized it, was a Prague lawyers.

Ivan Klima, JUDGE ON TRIAL A. G. Brain trans., 1993

VA day:  "Healing Touch" with Jody.  Sights and Sounds: One of the administrative workers stopped me in the hallway on my way out and asked if she could thank me for my service.  I asked her if she worked for the VA and when she said she did, I said 'thank you for your service.  We old vets really appreciate it."  An announcement on the PA system about a program in the auditorium celebrating the service of Native Americans.   I said 'good morning' to an elderly Black lady in the elevator, pushing a very old man in a wheelchair with a Korea veteran baseball cap.  I said 'how are you?' and she replied "I'm blessed."  I said "I'm blessed too."  She told me the vet whose chair she was pushing was 93 years old.  An old vet on the house phone in the lobby as I was leaving, saying to someone on the other end that he would have some money on the 15th and then again on the 30th, living from check to check, SSA?  Disability?  Discussing co-pays?

Netanyahu to Biden and Blinkin: fuhgedaboudit.  At a press conference last Saturday, Netanyahu stated that the U.S. and Israel do not agree on 'the end game' of the Gaza war.  Israel will take responsibility for security in Gaza 'for an indefinite period.  Biden and Blinken are pushing for the seemingly unattainable "two state solution" with the Palestinian Authority governing both the West Bank and Gaza.  Netanyahu says NO but keep sending us $3B each year  on top of the $14B you have requested for us from Congress even though we are a wealthy nation in our own right and don't give a shit what you want after we destroy most of the infrastructure in Gaza and make it unlivable and perhaps ungovernable.  In other words, kiss my ass, Joe.  It's not easy to judge who is right on this issue,   Do Blinken and Biden really believe that a two state resolution is really possible with 600,000 to 750,000 Israeli settlers living in the West Bank and other prepared to move into Gaza once that territory is demolished?  And with the West Bank carved up with roads and checkpoints designed to keep the resident Palestinian communities separated?  There was hell to pay when a much smaller contingent of settlers were forcibly removed from Gaza back in 2005.  Removing the religiously militant Zionist settlers from "Judea and Samaria" would lead to civil war.  Failure to remove them would lead to a non-contiguous Palestinian speckled throughout with hostile Zionist communities and guaranteed conflict.

 

11/13/23

 Monday, November 13, 2023

In bed by 10, up at 5:05, after several odd dreams, immediately forgotten,  let Lilly out, 42°, high of 54°, sunny day ahead, wind WNW at 11 mph, 5-15/25, wc= 36°,  Sunrise at 6:41, sunset at 4:29, 9+47.

Treadmill; pain.  Woke up with some back pain but no CPP.   On the treadmill at 7:45   20:11   0.52

Trump goes full Hitler on the campaign trail.  At a Veterans Day rally in New Hampsihire:  "In honor of our great veterans on Veterans Day, we pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Faschists, and the Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie, and steal, and cheat on elections and will do anything possible,they'll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and the American Dream.  The real threat is not from the Radical Right; the real threat is from the Radical Left, and it's growing every day, every single day   The threat from outside forces is far less sinister, dangerous, and grave than the threat from within."  Trump campaign response to WaPo re comparing "vermin" rhetoric to Hitler: "Those who try to make that ridiculous assertion are clearly snowflakes grasping for anything because they are suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome and their entire existence will be crushed when President Trump returns to the White House.

VA day. 10 o'clock with Deena, my lymphedema therapist and 11 o'clock with Melinda, my Whole Heath coach. . . . AOK re lymphedema.  Sought an appointment with VA hypnotherapist re pain tolerance/management.  Sights and sounds:  an old vet sitting on the steps in the parking garage, struggling to breath while another vet stands over him, waiting for a security guard coming forward with a wheelchair to take him into the hospital, perhaps to the ER, perhaps not.  In the entrance to the hospital, another old vet with skinny legs, wearing shorts, getting into another wheelchair, assisted by an aide.  While in the basement Physical Therapy department, 3 separate announcements within a half hour: "Your attention, please.  Medical emergency.  Rapid response team needed at . . ."

Arwa Mahdawi wrote an opinion piece in The Guardian yesterday titled "Is it too much to ask people to view Palestinians as humans? Apparently so."  The second sentence in it is "I do not want to ever hear Western democracies lecture the rest of the world on human rights ever again."  Then this:

As I write this, more than 10,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s bombardment of Gaza – almost half of them children. One child is being killed every 10 minutes in Gaza. Those numbers, it should be noted, only count the kids who are dying as a direct result of Israel’s indiscriminate bombing. The kids who were “lucky” enough to die instantaneously in an airstrike. And the not-so-“lucky” ones: innocent children buried under rubble, dying painful and protracted deaths as they are suffocated by the eviscerated remains of their home.

Those numbers don’t count the kids slowly dying of hunger and thirst. The kids getting sick from drinking sewage and sea water. They don’t count the kids with cancer who will not be able to get any care now that the Israeli siege has forced the only cancer hospital in Gaza to suspend operations. They don’t count the kids who are going to die from entirely avoidable diseases because hospitals in Gaza are ceasing to function. They don’t count the kids who are so traumatized from being born in an open-air prison, so scarred from having their neighbourhoods and loved ones eradicated in an apocalyptic act of collective punishment, that their lives have changed for ever. . . .

Those numbers certainly don’t count to the president of the United States. The empathizer-in-chief; the man who likes to make a big song and dance about what a decent guy he is. Joe Biden came right out and said: we don’t believe Palestinians about the death toll.  It would be funny if it wasn’t so fucking horrific, so fucking insulting. I’m sorry … what does Biden think is happening, exactly? . . . Does he think the pictures of entire neighborhoods being wiped out are some sort of AI deepfake? . . . .

 I will absolutely condemn Hamas but I ask that the absolute condemnation goes both ways. And it doesn’t, does it? People demand that Palestinians denounce violence while screaming that Israel has the right to defend itself at the top of their lungs. Israel has the right to defend itself, you see, but Palestinians do not. Everything that the IDF does has some sort of justification, explanation; violence by a Palestinian is never justifiable. 

 As for non-violent resistance? That’s not allowed either. The US has long been trying to criminalize the peaceful boycott, divestment and sanctions movement. Calls to boycott the 2019 Eurovision song contest, which was held in Tel Aviv, was described as an “weapon of division,” and demonized. Going on a pro-Palestinian march is smeared as antisemitic – the UK home secretary, Suella Braverman, branded them as “hate marches” – even if half the people marching are brave Jews in organisations like Jewish Voices for Peace. Not even children’s art is tolerated if those children are Palestinian. Earlier this year a London hospital took down artwork by Gaza schoolchildren after UK Lawyers for Israel said that “Jewish patients … feel vulnerable, harassed and victimised by this display.” Those children some people felt so harassed by? There is a good chance they are now all dead.

So what are we supposed to do, I ask you? What are Palestinians supposed to do? That’s a rhetorical question because the last three weeks have made the answer to this crystal clear: we are supposed to shut up and die.

Indeed, Israel is not even being coy about its intentions for Palestinians right now. Craig Mokhiber, a top United Nations human rights official who stepped down last week, wrote in his resignation letter that what is happening is “textbook genocide.” In an interview with Al Jazeera, Mokhiber noted: “Usually the most difficult part of proving genocide is intent, because there has to an intention to destroy in whole or in part a particular group. In this case, the intent by Israeli leaders has been so explicitly stated and publicly stated – by the prime minister, by the president, by senior cabinet ministers, by military leaders – that that is an easy case to make.”

Tell that to the US government. Tell that to the cowardly and hypocritical US press. Twenty years from now, when it is far too late for journalism to make any difference, someone will win a Pulitzer for telling the truth about this moment. They’ll be celebrated for unequivocally and unapologetically using the words that people are currently losing jobs or being targeted by hate campaigns for saying: occupation, genocide, ethnic cleansing. Only when every single Palestinian is dead or displaced will it be acceptable to treat us as human.

Arwa Mahdawi is a Guardian US columnist

Mahdawi was interviewed by Scott Detrow on NPR's All Things Considered yesterday and said, in response to National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan's comment that the US doesn't want to see firefights in hospitals:

It's not enough for the U.S. to say we do not want to see. The U.S. can pick up the phone and tell Israel to stop this. This is being done with U.S. taxpayer money. The U.S. government isn't just allowing this to happen. It's actively cheering it on, and it could stop it at any moment. This is why so many of us are so incensed - because not only is this horror unfolding, we're all complicit because our taxpayer dollars are paying for this. . . . 

DETROW: As you wrote about, as we have seen over and over again, we have seen many Palestinian leaders and advocates be pressed in interviews to publicly condemn Hamas. And in your piece, you offer that condemnation. But then you say, you, quote, "ask that the absolute condemnation goes both ways." Can you explain what you're asking for there?

MAHDAWI: You know, it's always Palestinians are asked to condemn, condemn, condemn violence. Meanwhile, I never hear Israeli commentators being asked to condemn the occupation, to condemn the killing of Palestinians. I mean, I think, you know, what frustrates me is that the media attention is only ever when Israelis get killed. Like, the violence did not start on October 7. And obviously, what happened on October 7 was horrific, and I will condemn that. But I do ask that the condemnation goes both ways, and it does not happen.   I think that people talk about the conflict being complex, but human rights, human dignity - you know, that is not complex. Anyone who has been to the occupied territory, anyone who has seen how Palestinians have to live, will realize that that's not complex. That is unfair.

David Ignatius: A silent desperation on the slow march out of Gaza City "This war has produced deeply horrifying images: Israeli children assaulted in barbaric ways by Hamas terrorists; Palestinian children left to die under Israeli bombardment. It’s a war in which we’ve all looked into the abyss."

Psalm 137: 7-9 "GOD, remember those Edomites, and remember the ruin of Jerusalem, That day they yelled out, “Wreck it, smash it to bits!” And you, Babylonians—ravagers! A reward to whoever gets back at you for all you’ve done to us; Yes, a reward to the one who grabs your babies and smashes their heads on the rocks!"

Hosea 13:16  "Samaria will pay the penalty for her guilt, Because she has rebelled against her God. They will fall by the sword, Their children will be slaughtered, And their pregnant women will be ripped open.

Isaiah 13:18  "Their bows will dash young men to pieces; they will have no mercy on the fruit of the womb; they will not look with pity on the children."

Isaiah 14:21  "Prepare a place to slaughter his sons for the iniquities of their forefathers. They will never rise up to possess a land or cover the earth with their cities."

The Siege of Berlin by Alphonse Daudet.  My reading while waiting for my meeting with Melinda, my Health Coach.  An old colonel in Napoleon's army, in his apartment overlooking the Arch de Triomphe, fooled by his doctor and his granddaughter into thinking the French army was laying siege to Berlin instead of the reality of the Prussian army entering into Paris in the Franco-Prussian War.  On the day he believes the French troops will march foen the Champs Ulysses, he pulls himself out of bed, gets dressed in his old military uniform with his sword, and stands on his balcony to salute the returning victorious heroes.  He sees instead the Purssians, shouts "To arms!  To arms!", collapses and dies.  

Another one bites the dust; and then there were four on the stage.  Tim Scott is out.  Who's next?