Wednesday, July 16, 2024
D+250/178/1283
1945 The first test detonation of an atomic bomb occurred at Trinity Site, Alamogordo, New Mexico,
1964 Republican convention selected Barry Goldwater as presidential candidate
1973 During the Watergate hearings, Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of tapes
2018 Helsinki Summit; Trump credited Putin's word over the US intelligence community
In bed at 9, up at 7:05 after a normal night of ups and downs, painful shoulders, hips, back, and bladder. 74°, high of 82°, thunderstorms this afternoon.
Meds, etc. Morning meds at around 8 this morning. I think I forgot to take any yesterday and may have felt the effects on my prostate during the night, but I may be mistaken. My journal says I did. On the other hand, I'm pretty sure I skipped injecting the Kevzara, a big mistake. I do it today and hope I'm not ODing. This is more evidence of losing the ability to take care of myself. Not good. Very bad. It doesn't help that my head is a bit messed up over the upcoming surgery and the need to stop taking meds that suppress my immune system. Pity party & bad pun: I am so sick of all this health shit. What's the point? It's worse than I thought: I took the Kevzara on time last week and didn't need an injection yesterday. I discovered this after I wrongly injected today. F. Take me out behind the barn and shoot me.
I picked Andy up at noon and took him to Ogui's Garage for the Lexus.
Two men were sentenced to prison on Tuesday for felling Britain’s beloved Sycamore Gap tree in 2023, an act that a judge said had caused a “sense of loss and confusion across the world.” The tree, planted in 1800, stood in a picturesque dip along Hadrian’s Wall, the 70-mile fortification that once guarded the northern edge of the Roman Empire, was found illegally cut down in September 2023. The men, Daniel Graham, 39, and Adam Carruthers, 32, were each handed sentences of four years and three months during a hearing in Newcastle, in northeastern England. The act was a drunken spree, mischief.
Some thoughts this morning. (1) For years, at least starting in 2015 when Kitty and I talked every morning, I have wondered whether my deep pessimism about our country and its future was just a personality flaw and neuroticism. How many times did I close my dire forecasting with "I hope I'm wrong"? But last year on this date, I wrote:
Gleichschaltung was the process of Nazification employed by Hitler and his political party. It consisted of a series of laws that basically suspended the Weimar Constitution and gave all power to the new Reich Chancellor, Hitler. I consider Judge Cannon's dismissal of the classified documents case with the Supreme Court's decision in the presidential immunity case, along with the near assassination of Trump in Pennsylvania and the iconic photo of him, bloodied and defiant under the American flag, as ominous portents of what is to come. All of it has to be considered against the backdrop of Joe Biden as an enfeebled, aging, weak, and stumble-tongued octogenarian whose time has come and gone. I watched the nominating process of the RNC. I saw the excitement and unity behind Donald Trump's candidacy and thought of the condition of the Democratic Party today and the malaise over Joe Biden's candidacy. I also thought of the scene in Cabaret in which, in a slowly expanding close-up of a Brown-shirted, blue-eyed, blond youth sings [Tomorrow belongs to me.]
Two years ago today, I wrote about the Ukraine war:
The war seems to have degenerated into something like the trench warfare of World War I. Which is to say both side pounding the piss out of each other while making little headway in terms of territorial advances, like e.g. the infamous Battle of Passchendaele in Belgium, with hundreds of thousands of casualties on both sides. Are we in for a long, drawn-out, stalemate? Will the whole war end up being like the Battle of Bakhmut, with both sides battling over a city that is no longer a city, a no-man's land filled with the empty shells of buidlings destroyed by artillery and other weapons? . . . Ukraine is paying for the war in blood and otherwise but the U.S. and NATO allies are paying for it in dollars and euros. Are American and NATO allied citizens as committed to Ukrainian control of Donbas and Crimea as Vlodymir Zelenski is? I don't think so. I suspect that Putin is correct in thinking that NATO's unity will eventually give way when it comes time to consider endless warfare vs. a negotiated settlement with Russia keeping Crimea and probably Donbas and a land bridge between Crimea and Russia.
Was I clairvoyant? If so, was it a gift or a curse?
(2)The Irish Catholic Church and culture. In this morning's NY Times, Dig for Children’s Remains Begins at Irish Home for Unwed Mothers:
Excavators broke ground on Monday in western Ireland to search for the bodies of hundreds of babies and young children, some of them discarded in septic tanks, who died at a home for unwed mothers that was managed by Catholic nuns from 1925 to 1961.
The circumstances of the children’s short lives, the treatment of the mothers and the decades of secrecy surrounding the deaths have been recognized widely as a profound moral stain on the Irish government, which funded the institution, and the Catholic Church, which managed it.
About half of the children, estimated to number about 800 in all, died before their first birthdays. . . .
In the first decades of Irish independence, when the Catholic Church ruled almost every aspect of daily life with an uncompromising doctrine, unmarried pregnant women in Ireland were widely seen as immoral. Shunned by their communities and disowned by their families, they were often sent to one of many such homes. There, the young women were forced to work. Their babies died at rates far above the national average.
In that era, few people could speak out against the Catholic Church, which ran the homes and other institutions with near-absolute power. The government last year reported that there had been thousands of allegations of sexual abuse at schools run by Catholic orders in the last century.
We remember, too, the Magdalene laundries. And we know that the American Catholic Church and culture in which we were raised was an Irish Catholic Church and culture. If we were to count the number of American bishops historically and currently, I wonder how many of them had or have Irish names. Of those whose names are not Irish, I wonder how many had Irish mothers. I think of all the Irish cardinals during just my life: Spellman, Egan, Cooke, O'Connor, Dolan (New York), Hickey, McIntyre, Manning, Mahoney (Los Angeles), Burke (St. Louis), Stritch, Cody, George (Chicago), O'Boyle, Hickey, McCarrick, McElroy (Washington), Tobin (Newark), Farrell. (Dallas), O'Brien (Baltimore), O'Connell, Cushing, Law, O'Malley (Boston). The Irish Catholic cultural dominance of the American Church started with John Carroll, the first archbishop of Baltimore (1789-1815). He was the founder of Georgetown University in 1791, and was part of its history and legacy of slave ownership, with him owning 2 slaves himself.
I think also this morning of Sinead O'Connor, and of her sad history of abuse in Ireland as a shoplifting 'bad girl.'
What I suggest today is that this Epstein mess reminds me very much of the news about a "third-rate burglary" at the DNC headquarters in the Watergate office complex on June 17, 1972. It wasn't that big a news story at the time, but oh, how it grew. On October 10, 1972, Woodward and Bernstein broke the story about the burglars being tied to the Committee to Re-elect the President, and people very close to Nixon. I don't think the Epstein story is going to go away, no matter what Trump posts on Truth Social or says at press events. Where are today's Woodwards and Bernsteins? Where is today's Deep Throat?
Television news independence report: I stopped watching all television news on July 3, coming up on two weeks. I did watch last night's opening segment of L'O'D just to watch him bloviate and rant about Trump and Epsein.
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