crisis on top of
crisis – crises cheaper
when you buy in bulk

I started this blog and daily haiku as a salute to words, usage and the English language.

That it has turned into my rant platform over the current state of affairs, political and otherwise in this country is not my plan nor my fault.

I just want to say that I start each day looking for that bit of unique wordplay in life that makes me want to say something about the writers writing.

That this often turns into a political rant … well, I guess that is where the best writing is going these days.

Like something close to what Michael Corelone said, “… every time I think I am out, they keep pulling me back.“

And as Will Rogers said, “All I know is what I read in the papers.”

That being said, I read in the paper this morning:

The USA is in a political crisis layered on top of an economic crisis, which itself has needlessly exacerbated an already dire cost-of-living crisis.

The idea that the answer to a single part of this horror show is to bring back a morally degenerate financial incontinent who broke his own laws is something that tells you everything about the terminal sad-sacks who are so much as thinking of it.

The formal investigation into the last truth-aborting period in office is about to begin; if it ends up censuring someone for misleading Congress on January 6, as is perfectly likely, then we’d be in a constitutional crisis too.

Maybe crises are cheaper when you buy in bulk.

So I lied.

I didn’t read this this morning.

What I read was the article, Tories on their knees – and here comes Boris Johnson. Dear reader, look away by Marina Hyde this morning in the Guardian.

What she said was:

The UK is in a political crisis layered on top of an economic crisis, which itself has needlessly exacerbated an already dire cost-of-living crisis. The idea that the answer to a single part of this horror show is to bring back a morally degenerate financial incontinent who broke his own laws is something that tells you everything about the terminal sad-sacks who are so much as thinking of it. The formal parliamentary investigation into Johnson’s last truth-aborting period in office is about to begin; if it ends up censuring him for misleading parliament over the No 10 lockdown parties, as is perfectly likely, then we’d be in a constitutional crisis too. Maybe crises are cheaper when you buy in bulk.

I changed a few nouns to adjust for Greenwich Mean Time and there we are on this side of the Atlantic Ocean.

It was Oscar Wilde who wrote, “We have really everything in common with America nowadays, except, of course, language.

I think of how in my parents time, the two countries shared Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill.

It’s just not fair.

can wipe up the sick
scrub it with vanish but the
odour still lingers

Oh those Brits.

Describing the current UK Government moves in response to the response over the current UK moves over the economy, The Guardian had this line.

“It’s like somebody has vomited all over an expensive rug,” reflected one former minister. “You can wipe up the sick, scrub it with Vanish, but the odour still lingers.”

In the Political world were so much depends on the sort memory of the voter, thank heaven that the odour still lingers.

BTW, I debated with myself to change the spelling of Odour to the American version of Oder, but Odour has so much more, that certain yet un-certain  je ne sais quoi when talking about politics and vomit.

I am becoming aware that politics, all through history, has been this way.

In the way of political action, there is nothing new under the sun.

What is new is the urgency of World Wide Web and social Media that allows to be there on the scene to see the vomit before it is cleaned up.

In the past, all we had was the odour and the speculation as to what caused it.

Today, the minute someone barfs, we are all over it.

Both to decry the barfing or to deny it depending on one’s point of view.

It isn’t that politics is a mess.

It is just that we are much more aware of it.

Not sure this is progress.

Being all over vomit is not a place I ever wanted to be.

But BOY HOWDY!, that is where we are.

From the article, How ‘knives of the long night’ led to brutally swift Kwarteng sacking,

I have always thought
the Yankees had something to
do with it, he said

Adapted from Why the Confederacy lost by by G. S. Boritt and James M. McPherson (1992) New York : Oxford University Press.

Mr. Boritt wrote:

Most interpretations fall into one of two categories: internal or external. Internal explanations focus mainly or entirely on the Confederacy, and usually phrase the question as “Why the South Lost.” External interpretations look at both the Union and Confederacy, and often phrase it as “Why the North Won.”

To illustrate the difference between an internal and external interpretation, let us look at the battle of Gettysburg as a microcosm of the larger issue.

Most of the controversy that has swirled endlessly for the past 128 years has focused on the issue of why the Confederates lost that battle — an internal explanation. Contemporaries and historians have blamed almost every prominent Confederate general at Gettysburg for mistakes that lost the battle:

Among them Robert E. Lee himself for mismanagement, overconfidence, and poor judgment;

Jeb Stuart for riding off on a raid around the Union army and losing contact with his own army, leaving Lee blind in the enemy’s country;

Richard Ewell and Jubal Early for failing to attack Cemetery Hill on the afternoon of July 1st and again for tardiness in attacking on the 2nd;

And above all, James Longstreet for lack of cooperation, promptness, and vigor in the assaults of July 2nd and 3rd.

It was left to George Pickett to put his finger on the problem with all of these explanations.

When someone asked Pickett after the war who was responsible for Confederate defeat at Gettysburg, he scratched his head, and replied: I’ve always thought the Yankees had something to do with it.

Someday maybe I will be able to write a History of the United States.

When I get to the chapters on the 21st Century, I will try to answer the questions of What Happened to the United States.

I will scratch my head and reply, “I’ve always thought Donald Trump had something to do with it.”

man against power
is struggle of memory
against forgetting

The quote this is based on is “the struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting”, is from the book, The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, a novel, published in 1979 in France, by Czech writer Milan Kundera explores the basic human nature of how people tolerate the torture and suffering of which they have no control.

Milan Kundera is a Czech writer who went into exile in France in 1975, becoming a naturalized French citizen in 1981. Kundera’s Czechoslovak citizenship was revoked in 1979, then conferred again in 2019.

Kundera’s best-known work is The Unbearable Lightness of Being.

Mr. Kundera works towards the point that people tend to forget their past and we learn nothing from history.

I know of lots and lots of Politicians who bank on this.

As Idgie Threadgoode asked, “You a politician, or does lying just run in your family?”