Author: Blue Bronc

— Caligula

August 9, 1974 Nixon resigns.

We kept the newspapers and put them in special bags to keep them for posterity.  The shock and the importance of the event was so hard to believe.  There was nothing to reference in our lives for this event.

Those newspapers moved around the country with us, always a reminder of a tremendous event.  If only we knew to keep more than one copy of each newspaper.

This week has shaken many of us more than watching Tricky Dick waving his stupid fingers as he entered the helicopter.

As close to a disaster Nixon had brought us, it is nothing like what the idiot and imbecile is doing.  He directed an attack on the Congress, the Vice President and the Speaker of the House.  He had tried to cause damage if not death to the people who are supposed to be in place for succession of the government.

The Executive Branch put together an attack on the Legislative Branch of the U.S. government.  The only reason the coup d’état failed is because the idiot failed to create a usable military unit which could capture or kill the Congress and the Vice President.  Due to his narcissistic brain he could not pass command to someone, such as a former general named Flynn, who could create a unit capable of taking over the Capitol building.

I am not saving the newspapers now.  Going forward the Internet will record what is happening.

The new impeachment is a real one.  This time it is to impeach a president who tried to  become a dictator.

I am extraordinarily passionate about the Black Death, which is not something most people are into. – – Mira Grant

After WWII America went on a great buying and building spree.  The pent up demand for new cars, new clothes, new radios and the new fangled television sets blew up all sorts of economic plans.  All that also had everybody wanting to get out of the parents house or apartment and get their own.  Most of the world was damaged and relied on the U.S. to supply the basics of life.  There were babies to be born and schools to be built.  The economic growth was fantastic.

As the rest of the world recovered they too joined in the economic wonderment of the post war life.  Most not all though.  The Soviet Union went on its own path.  As did Communist China.  But Japan and Korea set a pace that was great.

What will we see after enough people are vaccinated?  What number will be “enough people”? Will there be war to “capture” vaccine for a country?

I need a couple of new refrigerators, but I will wait for President Biden to sort through the rubble of what SFB caused to international trade before committing.  I just bought a new truck and new computer (a lot of separate parts to build one).  The prices are good right now because of the lack of competition for those. I might sell my house as I do have a retirement home I am rebuilding and can move into it. But, I probably will wait to do that.

We can be assured that any recovery will take years to happen as it will take years to achieve a large enough immunity to make it safe to get out and about. I have seen several happy talk (bs talk) about how fast the U.S. will reover once there is a vaccine. It will take years to vaccinate enough people. Back when the polio vaccine was brought to the public we had pancake breakfasts where the vaccine was given out. We cannot do that with this as we have to take care that infected people do not spread the virus. It will take time.

The coming carnage of the base economy of the United States is not imaginable.  Today’s common estimate of about forty percent never reopening after the early 2020 shut down will be the opening gambit. Huge swaths of big business retail have already declared bankruptcy and shut down.  Retail names are owned by hedge funds which own shopping malls.  Shopping mall owners bidding for other retail names as they become available scrambles the future for brick and mortar destinations.

There are so many small businesses which are either closed or on the death bed.  Small business is a rough game to play in a good economy, it is not worth putting money into when the word depression is tossed about as often as recession.

Think of the local food store or truck or convenience store next to an office building. Security guards may have showed up for coffee or something at the start of the shutdown.  But no more as the office building is still closed and plans are to sell it.  All the souvenir stores around the baseball stadium have no business.  No more are there services that support office workers.  How many taxis have sold their tags, if they could have sold them.  I see cars with every gig driver company there are in the windows.

What will we see in the future?  Even if a vaccine becomes available and the world vaccinated by 2022, what will remain?  Consider that the U.S. and Western Europe economies were already moving towards and even away from being service economies. 

Finland has been experimenting with a population which is paid a wage and were not expected to work, they were being paid to be consumers by the government.  It is better paying than welfare, and they were not putting pressure on other jobs.  What will be next? Perhaps twenty hour weeks with pay for forty, there by sharing one full time job with two people?

Republicans go into screaming fits when anyone mentions helping people eat by using SNAP (food stamps).  They lose it all into their diapers when you bring up Finland.  But, at some point we have to consider what to do when we have machines that are hyper-productive that do not need humans to oil the joints. 

— Euripides

Just over nineteen years ago terrorists destroyed American icons, the New York City twin towers, and damaged the Pentagon.  This occurred with over one thousand dead and many injured.  Those injuries are resulting in deaths to this day.  The attacks enraged a nation which had been stable for many years.

The aftermath continues in countries around the world in ways unknown or unseen to Americans for many reasons.  A large one is the willful lack of information from Afghanistan, Iraq and several African countries.  Not for national security, other nations are reporting the actions.  But, to continue a course of keeping Americans ignorant of military actions.  All we know is the Department of Defense receives more money than all other nations combined.

Has the trump monstrosity destroyed the importance of 9/11?  Has the novel coronavirus, COVID-19 overwhelmed our national focus on Middle East terrorism?  Has the interminable war in Western Asia finally been complete? Trump is withdrawing American troops, often without to regard of the consequences for the local people.

I think all of those questions are being answered with a solid “yes”.  Twenty years of anguish cannot continue.  The Trade Towers went down and anger rose.  There is no way to sustain that anger after our fight became our children’s fight and in some way our grandchildren’s fight.  The Pentagon hiding what is happening in other countries does not matter anymore.  The deaths are rare and are little covered in the media.  A thousand dying of COVID-19 every day no longer makes headlines.

Just as the last of those who experienced the Japanese air attack in Honolulu and Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 has passed and the date is just another shopping day, so is September 11, 2001.  There are important moments and remembrances, in the Capitol and New York City as well as in Pennsylvania, but these are no longer a must see on television.

The country is no longer joined and focused on one enemy.  We are split into major factions, and not focused on the one enemy which is killing hundreds of thousands.  Maybe sixty percent see the enemy and forty percent are looking at an alternative universe.  I hope not but that is what it looks like on this nineteenth anniversary of a terrible attack against America.

Twenty years is considered a generation.  We will be one generation removed from the attacks next September.  It is hard to pass on such horror and anger.  It will be interesting to see if the horror and anger of hundreds of thousands of Americans will create a generational remembering of why so many have died.