Merry Memorial Day

...or whatever it is we are supposed to say. I know the party line is that today we are supposed to remember all those who have "fallen" (yes, I find that particular euphemism rather offensive) in defense of our liberty or democracy or what have you. And yes, there were times when the United States was under existential threat. But as you might expect from a contrarian cynic, I remember all the lives lost in pointless conflicts from Vietnam to Afghanistan to Iraq, Libya, Sudan, etc. And not just the thousands of American lives lost for absolutely no reason, but the millions of lives of all those "other" people that we wiped off the face of this "best of possible worlds" (to use Voltaire's phrase; the full quote is, "If this is the best of possible worlds, what then are the others?").

And what Memorial Day would be complete without some celebrity saying something stupid? Jane Fonda recently opened her mouth and vomited this:

This is serious – we’ve got about seven, eight years to cut ourselves in half of what we use of fossil fuels, and unfortunately, the people that have the least responsibility for it are hit the hardest – Global South, people on islands, poor people of color.... It’s a tragedy that we have to absolutely stop.... We have to arrest and jail those men – they’re all men.... There would be no climate crisis if there was no racism. There would be no climate crisis if there was no patriarchy. White men are the things that matter and then everything else [is] at the bottom.... If we solve the climate crisis, and we haven’t solved all those other things, we’re gonna be in trouble.

Does this sound like someone in control of their faculties? Fonda is 86, which makes her six years older than Biden and three years younger than Feinstein. Just sayin'. I mean, "cut ourselves in half"? "Arrest and jail those men"? The whole thing sounds like the ravings of a lunatic or a mass shooter's manifesto. I'm always puzzled by America's infatuation with these people. We don't have royalty, so we replace with with a different set of inbreds?

Anyway, time to unhook from my dialysis machine. I'm so proud that I was able to keep my pledge to write shorter bits more frequently two whole days in a row. Woohoo!