Backsliding

So much for posting every day. Old habits die hard.

We had a busy weekend. Saturday was a memorial for a dear friend and co-worker who died recently (fucking cancer). Rest in peace, Dorothy. Sunday, we had the monthly Moose Legion breakfast followed by our monthly meeting. Then yesterday, I had a doctor appointment that the doctor was an hour late for. 

On top of all that, Debbie is working a bunch of extra days covering for people on vacation. And just to make things interesting, summer monsoon season arrived yesterday, dumping about two inches of rain in a little more than an hour.

The Russia-Ukrainian war is going very badly for the Ukrainians, and by extension the US and NATO. Tank warfare is now officially in the same category as horse-mounted swordsmen. Aircraft have been downgraded to stand-off weapons. Missiles, drones, and artillery seem to be the most effective weapons and whichever side can make the most the fastest wins. All the high-tech shit we've spent trillions of dollars building is being systematically turned into scrap metal by Russian missiles and kamikaze drones. We have the technical knowledge to build drones and missiles and artillery, however we no longer have the industrial capacity to build the stuff at the rate necessary to defeat a major industrial power like Russia or China.

In other words, our global empire is toast.

That means we have a choice. We can draw down our over-seas "presence" in an orderly fashion or we can pretend none of this is happening and repeat the embarrassing fiasco of the Afghanistan withdrawal, only hundreds of times over. We could focus on rebuilding our industrial capacity or we can continue to pretend that we can run an economy by, as the late great Dr. Pournelle used to say, doing each other's laundry.

We could do many things to prepare for the inevitable, but we probably won't. Instead we will march off the cliff fully convinced in our ability to fly.

Enough reality. Back to the bread and circuses.