Bolton, Kissinger & Hemingway
It is amazing, though predictable, how quickly liberals will go from despising a public figure to holding him in esteem. All that’s required is that he pass a simple litmus test.
It is amazing, though predictable, how quickly liberals will go from despising a public figure to holding him in esteem. All that’s required is that he pass a simple litmus test. If he despises President Trump, he’s a good guy; if not, he’s a villain.
We’ve seen it happen with not only James Comey, but with the former heads of our intelligence agencies, John Brennan, James Clapper and Michael Hayden. Now it’s happening all over again with John Bolton. For years, they hated the man who, before being named our ambassador to the U.N., called for our removing ourselves from the organization.
He was so unpopular in Washington that he only got the short-lived appointment because George W. Bush took advantage of a Senate vacation to give him the job for a year. It was short-lived because the Senate refused to make it permanent once the recess appointment came to an end and they had a say in the matter.
The world knows Bolton to be hawkish when it comes to America’s foreign policy, which is why Trump finally had to bounce him out of his administration. Bolton was born in November, 1948, which would have made him a prime candidate to serve in Vietnam, but he escaped combat by using a student deferment. His own perfectly reasonable desire to avoid getting killed or maimed in a needless war hasn’t deterred him from supporting America’s intervention in similar wars all over the planet for the past 50 years.
Chicken hawks is the term used for perverts who prey on young children. I believe it is also used about 71-year-old career bureaucrats who sit in comfy arm chairs and blithely send young men and women to fight in foreign lands in which this country has no national interest.
But ever since it was leaked that Bolton might be able to paint his former boss into a corner on behalf of the Democrats, liberals are treating the schmuck like a messiah whose message must be heard by the heathens.
Something has recently gone viral on the Internet and it keeps winding up in my in-box. It purports to be a lengthy statement of support on behalf of President Trump by none other than 96 year old Henry Kissinger.
One, I have no reason to believe Dr. Kissinger actually said it. All sorts of stuff gets passed around on the Internet, including doctored photos and misattributions.
Two, even if it’s authentic, it would simply be the reverse of the praise the Left is heaping on its former nemesis, John Bolton. Why should anyone care what Kissinger says about anything? I have personally despised Nixon’s chief advisor for the past five decades. This is the guy, after all, who urged Nixon to invite Red China into the so-called community of nations. It was also his idea to prolong the Vietnam War when Nixon could have easily followed the lead of President Eisenhower, who ended the Korean War by blaming it on the Democrats and simply withdrawing our troops.
Just think how much better off the country would be today if Nixon had blamed the War on Kennedy and Johnson and withdrawn our troops in 1969.
After I recently wrote about the unfortunate fact that whereas most people today have never even heard of novelist Booth Tarkington, high school and college classrooms still make Herman Melville and Ernest Hemingway mandatory reading, I heard from Miriam Samuels.
She wrote: “I majored in English in college. Although there were many works I loved and a few I hated ("Sophie’s Choice” springs to mind), there was only one I gave up on after a few chapters. That was “Moby Dick.” (God bless Cliff Notes.) I did slog through “Billy Budd,” though I hated it.“
As for Hemingway, she continued: "How does anyone stand reading him? All I recall is short choppy sentences, the worst writing style ever. I did attempt a couple of his novels on my own, but never got beyond a chapter or so. If the whole macho thing wasn’t annoying enough, the horrible writing was.”
I replied: “Right you are on all counts. If English teachers didn’t continue to make it mandatory, nobody in his right mind would ever read "Moby Dick” or “Billy Budd,” two boring novels that were turned into equally boring movies.
“When it comes to Hemingway, I’m convinced he became influential because it was so easy for hack writers to mimic his adolescent style and for others to mimic his attempt to personify Mr. Macho Man. I would have thought that even he would have grown tired of carrying on as the great white hunter/big game fisherman/bullfight aficionado, but apparently he didn’t. Otherwise, he would have used a pistol instead of a shotgun to commit suicide. Even at the end, the great pretender had to suggest that only an elephant gun could bring down the mighty Hemingway.
Now that I have officially tossed my hat in the ring in seeking the title the Duke of Sussex, I am keeping close tabs on Prince Harry, lest he change his mind about surrendering it.
It seems that a Netflix deal and a $15 million advance on a memoir will tide him and Meghan over until they start endorsing sneakers and hawking a line of royal baby clothes and cosmetics on TV.
I’m not calling for a replay of the Civil War, but how is it that states and municipalities all over the nation are being allowed to flout federal law and the Constitution by declaring themselves sanctuaries for foreign invaders?
How is it that governors and mayors aren’t being perp-walked out of state houses and city halls by federal marshals for not merely refusing to cooperate with ICE agents, but for hindering their efforts to enforce the law?
It was in 2018 that the mayor of Oakland, California, Libby Schaaf, alerted several hundred alien felons of an impending raid by ICE agents. And yet she still remains in office and not behind bars, where she belongs for aiding and abetting.
It was naturalist Edward Abbey who, sounding a great deal like one of the Founding Fathers, said: "A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against its government.”
Someone or other sent me the following joke a while back. If it seems old, it might have been new when I received it.
Shortly after closing hours, a weary and famished vagabond showed up at an inn called Saint George and the Dragon.
When he knocked on the door, the innkeeper’s wife stuck her head out of a second story window. “What do you want?”
“Could you spare me some food?”
“No,” she hollered down, “we’re closed.”
“Could I at least have a pint of ale?”
“Are you deaf? I said we’re closed.”
“Could I at least sleep in your barn?”
“No!”
After a moment, the vagabond began again. “Might I please….”
“What now?” she yelled.
“Do you suppose I might have a word with George?”
