7/11/24

Thursday, July 11, 2024

1863 1st draft lottery in New York City; exemptions are offered for $300,

1995 More than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys are massacred by Bosnian Serbs after they overrun the UN 'safe haven' of Srebrenica

In bed after 9 and up with bad lower back pain at 4.  I let Lilly out at 4:20 but she did her normal looking around into the darkness,, turned around, and came back into the house without emptying her bladder, not good.  She came out from Geri's bedroom at 5:30 and went out again. 

Prednisone, day 60, 10 mg., day 3.   I took my pill at 5:20 followed by borscht at 5:30.    

Lilly at the groomer.  Geri and I struggled again to get Lilly into the back of the Honda.  In the process, she bumped her head hard on the car's chassis and also hit her chest hard.  At the groomer's, she fell off the grooming table twice.  What is clear is also what Geri and I don't want to talk about: we can't take care of her anymore, at least in terms of getting her into and out of the car to get to the veterinarian's clinic, the animal hospital, or elsewhere.   She is less than 4 months away from her 15th birthday.  Her hind legs are regularly collapsing under her hips when she stands still.  She often seems to be confused, is hard of hearing, probably has vision and hearing loss from age, and is insensitive to movement around her.  Nighttime brings on the pacing and panting.  Dreaded days ahead.

"Hubris and egotism."  In an op-ed, in this morning's WaPo, Jason Willick wrote:

This is a fight over power more than values, and it’s driven by fear more than reason, on both sides. Part of me wants to see Biden overpowered as a comeuppance for his hubris and egotism. But part of me wants to see Biden overpower the noisy hysterics who closed ranks around him out of fear and are now fleeing for the same reason.

Joe Scarborough this morning:

What's going on behind the scene: many in the Biden campaign an other Democrats believe that Barack Obama is quietly working behind the scenes to orchestrate this.  And if Joe Biden believed that, that's not going to get him out of the race any faster.  Any time David Axelrod attacks him, Axelrod ensures that Joe Biden will dig himself in another day. . .  The pathway to Joe Biden graciously stepping aside is not through the Obamas or the Clintons. . .  Joe Biden is deeply resentful of his treatment under the Obama staff but also of how he was pushed aside for Hilary Clinton.  He's deeply resentful of those trying to shove him out of the way.  He's always felt like an outsider, always felt like people have looked down upon him

Jonathan Lemire this morning:

As an Irishman, he proudly holds grudges and uses them as fuel.  You're right to highlight the 2015-2016 decision when Obama supported Hilary Clinton instead of Joe Biden for the presidential nomination that year.  That's something that has eaten at Biden ever since. 

What is Joe Biden's basic problem, the one that underlies all the others?  I have been thinking it is his lack of exceptional intelligence and mental quickness or adroitness coupled with his exceptional ambition and lust for power, prestige, a place of honor and admiration.  I have expressed this as his being a pretty ordinary guy with extraordinary, indeed grandiose ambition, Uncle Joe from Scranton dreaming about being Leader of the Free World, Numero Uno, Chairman of the Board, King of the Mountain.  He was the son of a used-car salesman, described in Wikipedia as "a poor student" in high school, and "an unexceptional student" in college.  At Syracuse Law School, he graduated 76th in a class of 85.  But he was a football "standout" in high school and ran for and was elected class president as a senior.  The best job he could get out of law school was as a public defender.  He later hooked up with a local Democratic activist lawyer but had to supplement his earnings by managing some real estate properties, hardly an auspicious start for a guy who, only a few years later at age 29, would see himself as a U.S. Senator and, by age 45 would see himself as President of the United States.  He had a very high opinion of himself, so high as to suggest the hubris and egotism of which Jason Willick accuses him (and perhaps we should add narcissism.)  But these traits are common coin in the U.S. Congress, especially in the Senate.  What makes Biden stand out from his peers is the ordinariness or unremarkableness of his background, the absence of any driving political agenda other than seeking and holding high office and striving for higher office, and his persistence in lusting after the Oval Office.  He seems the poster boy for hubris, i.e., excessive pride and self-regard, overconfidence, and arrogance.  His main skill has been getting people to like him through glad-handing, backslapping, hugging and kissing.  "Retail politics", person-to-person, relationship-building at which he excelled and Barack Obama did not, rather than "Wholesale politics," or appealing to wide audiences, at which Obama excelled and Biden did not.  Who can name a political policy or goal associated with Biden's career?  What does he "stand for"?  What are the hills he would choose to fight and die on?  I can't think of any.  What he is known for is his affability, decency, and empathy. Everybody likes him.  Lindsey Graham said of him: "I think he's the nicest man I've ever met in politics" and "as good a man as God ever created" and "If you can't admire Joe Biden as a person, you've got a problem."  The longer this shabby drama drags on, the easier it is not to like Joe Biden as a person, to see him as I see him, as a self-involved, self-centered, self-serving politician more concerned about his own ego-needs than the welfare of the nation.  In today's The Atlantic online, Mark Liebowitz has an essay with the Bidenesque title "C'mon, man."  It opens:

Never underestimate the destructive power of a stubborn old narcissist with something to prove.

Ideally no one gets hurt along the way: Maybe grandpop refuses to give up his license, drives into an oak tree, and only the car gets totaled. But sometimes there are casualties: Maybe a pedestrian gets hit.

President Joe Biden, 81, is acting like one of history’s most negligent and pigheaded leaders at a crucial moment, and right now, we are all pedestrians. . .

It is now obvious that Biden has in no way internalized the disaster toward which he is defiantly ambling—or, more to the point, toward which he is leading his party and his country (and, for that matter, NATO, Ukraine, thousands of as-yet-not-deported immigrants, and unprosecuted Trump “enemies”). He seems fully indifferent to any consideration beyond his own withered pride and raging ego.

Wasn’t this, supposedly, about the fate of democracy? Existential threats and all the big words and phrases that Biden and his campaign have been tossing out for months? You have to wonder, in retrospect, if they were sincere about how must-win this election really was, given how cavalier Biden sounds. . . But he controls this story, which since the debate has only made him look more and more foolish, selfish, and, yes, likely to lose. . . 

It says something about the bleak state of affairs that more than one prominent Democrat I’ve spoken with in recent days said they secretly hope Biden face-plants again. “This is a terrible thing to say,” one White House official told me. “But that might be the only thing that could force him out at this point, while there’s still time to rewrite the ending.” 

[I write these journal entries in bits and snatches, starting in the middle of the night or early morning and continuing throughout the day.  They are often discursive and perhaps incoherent, in part because they are done 'on the run' and are not edited.  So it goes with writings that are not intended for publication (other than the daily unedited blog) and are not edited, but it reminds me too that if I were not writing down my thoughts but rather just thinking them as they dart around my brain like minnows in a bait bucket, even more unorganized and random than my journal jottings, my thinking would be even more fortuitous, erratic, scatterbrained.  

Anniversary thoughts. l First, it is always the case that our wars are fought by the poor and powerless and profited from by the rich and powerful.  "The strong do what they will, the weak suffer what they must." Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War.  This is why Trump called the dead Marines and soldiers at the World War I Aisne-Marne American cemetery in France and the 1,800 Marines killed at the battle of Belleau Wood "suckers" and "losers" because, in a tragically real sense, that's what they were, suckers for falling for the propaganda that urged them to fight and die pro patria mori, and losers of their young lives.  How many politicians and wealthy draft-age men served in Vietnam with me and my fellow Marines?  John Kerry.  Who else?  George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Trump?  Was I and were my buddies in the Marines suckers and losers?  In a sense we were.  Trump was at least partially right.

Second, the anniversary of the massacre at Srebrenica, ordered by the Serbian genocidal war criminal Radovan Karadžić reminds me again of how barbarian Europe history is.  And they claim to be Christian and civilized.

 

.  Biden's press conference.   I doubt that it reassured many people.  He was strong, knowledgeable, and focuied when his answers were short and concise, rambling, and difficult to follow when he spoke at length.  A lot of incomplete sentences, like this one.  A lot of "well, anyways."  Many more defections from his camp are expected today.  It's impossible to imagine him holding onto power for another four years.