10/26/24

 Saturday, October 26, 2024

rt6

76y

u87p

I was in bed by 9, awake at 3:30, and up by 4:00. I let Lilly out into the 40° morning around 6:00 and lit the first fireplace log of the season.   At 7:30, a small, young, scraggly coyote walked by my window, next to the bird feeders. 

Prednisone, day 165, 5 mg., day 16/28.   Prednisone at 4:42.     

Israel has attacked Iran which has verbally responded that it has "a duty" to respond.  The US and UK respond that Israel has "a right" to defend itself.  Iraq, Syria, and other countries say Iran has "a right" to defend itself.  There are no aggressors, only defenders.  Who started the exchange of hostilities?  No one.  Tit for tat.  Tat for tit.  When will it become unrestricted warfare?  What will be America's involvement?

Email to Solas, 6:54 A.M.: "Hi, Sweetie.  I read Jay Kuo's most recent posting and Heather Cox Richardson's.  I learned last night of the decision by the owners of the LA Times and the Washington Post to pull the papers' intended endorsements of Kamala Harris.  I also know that the most recent - and last - respected polls show Harris and Trump in a dead heat, 48/48 in the Times poll and 47/47 in the other (CNN?) poll.  I would rhetorically ask what this says about the U.S., but we know the answer to that question.  America has long, perhaps forever, had a sizable fascist element.  I wonder whether this may be true of any large polity.  People who are harsh in their judgments of the German (and Austrian) people who supported Hitler in the 1930s and 40s foolishly think that they would have acted differently if they had been in the same social, economic, and historical circumstances.  They're fooling themselves.  It's hard for me to imagine myself with the Seig Heil crowds but then I remember I voted for Goldwater in 1964.  There were and are plenty of homegrown fascists here as Sinclair Lewis demonstrated in "It Can't Happen Here" in 1935.  Britain had its Oswald Moseley and Edward VIII/Duke of Windsor.  In any event, most of the Western World is turning rightward and it appears it may now be our turn.  That said, I'm pretty despondent over the situation.  Nate Silver, the NYTimes numbers guy, said in his recent column that his gut tells him Trump will win.  My gut says the same.  By hook or by crook.  By popular vote, electoral vote, in the House of Representatives or the Supreme Court, wherever, whatever, whenever.  By chicanery or otherwise.  I'm inclined to agree with the now-deceased Italian journalist 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."  By that standard, it would be hard for anyone to beat Donald Trump, the psychopath/sociopath.  I've lived too long and read too much history to believe that anything good can come out of a second, well-informed, much savvier Trump presidency.  I am despondent at the prospect, not so much for myself who must at some not-too-distant point pass on from this 'vale of tears,' but for you and Andy, the grandchildren, Steve and David and their families, all the younger people who will live with the consequences of a second Trump presidency and probably a Trump-dominated Congress and Supreme Court.  I'm glad you have acquired German citizenship.  I know Germany has its own significant challenges but I'm hopeful that Germany, having lived through its own catastrophic experiences with fascism and autocracy, won't sink to America's level.  On this side of the pond, I'm shaking in my boots and barely holding on to the hope that somehow Trump will lose."