This and That II

“The grand essentials to happiness in this life are something to do, something to love, and something to hope for.”
― George Washington Burnap

I was chatting with two Japanese women and a Chinese woman and the talk turned to the violent attacks on Orientals that have been in the news lately and the Chinese woman said that if the US police and courts won't do anything to stop it maybe China should send army units to take over American cities and enforce law and order.  I started to smile, not taking her statement seriously, but then I noticed the looks on the faces of the two Japanese women.  They looked afraid.

At first, I misread the headline and laughed out loud!

“Cheerfulness keeps up a kind of daylight in the mind.”
― Joseph Addison 

Poet Kenneth Rexroth, dubbed "the father of the beat generation," once said that the difference between a liberal and a conservative is that liberals actually believe the lyrics of love songs; that is, they possess a youthful wishfulness and naivety throughout their lives that those of a conservative bent either never had or quickly outgrew, and a good way to preserve that naivety is to avoid confrontations with reality.

 “Leaving sex to the feminists is like letting your dog vacation at the taxidermist.”
― Camille Paglia

 One of my best friends was a Jewish girl with a similar background to me. She was an Air Force brat and officer via ROTC, helped pay her way through college with a series of odd jobs, and I was a Navy brat and officer via OCS and helped pay my way ditto. I only knew she was Jewish because one time we were invited to Christmas dinner  and she mentioned it and I said, "Huh.  Didn't know that.  So you're not coming?"  And she said, "And miss a free meal?  Didn't I just say I was Jewish?"  I knew Scotsmen were supposed to be skinflints but I hadn't know Jews were too.
When we were both stationed on Guam, she got a ride for me on a B-52 when a Japanese film crew came down to Andersen to do a story and since I am fluent in Japanese she arranged for me to be our side's interpreter.
The Japanese on-air talent showed up dressed as if he were going on stage during retro night at the Grand Ole Opry, with rhinestone suit, garish cowboy boots and a ten-gallon hat.  I thought he was an arrogant moron and so he proved to be, preferring to ask questions of the crew in his incomprehensible English rather than speak through me in Japanese.  I had to constantly reinterpret for him. Ugh.
We flew a simulated low-altitude bombing run to the range at Farallon de Medinilla and this guy lost his cookies all over his fancy suit.  To be fair, it was a very bumpy, bouncy ride.
I never saw the TV program, but I got the impression it had already been done except for video of the the base and a bomber and crew in action. I suppose it was a typical Japanese production about an American topic -- they consider us stupid and dangerous but entertaining and our country a carnival side show staffed by Darwin Award contestants.

“Discouragement is a moral state, a failure of heart; you treat it by taking courage, not Prozac.”
― David Gelernter

"A proper invasion of Taiwan would mean the largest amphibious invasion in human history. An operation on this scale could not be disguised or hidden. We would know about it weeks, and perhaps months, in advance. The weather in the Strait is treacherous. There are only a few months every year where such an invasion could occur, and only a few beaches where an invading force could safely land.
"Our era is defined by a precision-munitions weapons regime. This sort of weapons regime heavily favors the defense. The same A2/AD [Anti-access/area denial],  logic that keeps the U.S. Navy away from Chinese shores can work to keep PLAN vessels away from Taiwanese shores. Missiles, drones, and mines can destroy invading ships many times their cost and inflict thousands of casualties. 
"The PLA is an organization with human-capital problems. I have met kids in the PLA. I naively expected them to exude the confidence, competence, and intelligence of America's enlisted servicemen. They don't. The PLA is an organization with no combat experience, and the Chinese government having told their people for so long that Taiwanese reunification is inevitable and pacification easy, it is not clear to me that PLA peasant-soldiers, products of single-child families, and the broader Chinese public, will be all that resilient in the face of military casualties, setbacks or disruption."
~ Tanner Greer 

“One must never underestimate the profound bigotry, anti-intellectualism, intolerance and illiberality of liberalism.”
― Richard John Neuhaus 

 

 Setting aside all the profound differences among the various white nationalities and subcultures — as different as white eye and hair colors and skin tones — I’ve always thought that a profound pensiveness and melancholia, tied in some way to our love of our past, of our native soil, of our homelands, is very characteristically white, perhaps more northern white than Mediterranean, but even so….
Also a love of the sea, of storms, fog and forest, of nature, of animals, of grand vistas, mountain fastnesses, remote wilderness…and an incurable wanderlust, an urge to see what's over the next hill, around the next bend.
And also a joy in camaraderie and revelry, and a love of daring, of adventure, of challenge — “to strive, to seek, to find and not to yield” — in the words of Tennyson.
Or maybe that's just me.

The handshake game is too interesting to ever go away.  I recall reading an old Saturday Evening Post essay by a man who reckoned he was only four handshakes away from George Washington.  My great-grandfather was friends with Charles Lindbergh, whom he met in 1929 when Lucky Lindy visited the Saratoga in Panama.  How many famous people had Lindbergh shaken hands with by that time?  Since I've shaken hands with my father who shook hands with his father, have I in some way shaken hands with all those famous people?   Or does not knowing who they were make it not count?
My great-grandmother was friends with Anne Morrow before she became Mrs. Lindbergh.  I have a photo of my great-grandmother with Anne and Mary Pickford at some social function; she must have shaken hands with Pickford, and since I have...etc...does that mean I have shaken hands with...etc.?
My father once shook hands with G. Gordon Liddy, who was a speaker at some rubber-chicken dinner event -- and I can hear my dad correcting me that it was Liddy who shook hands with him, heh -- so since I've shaken hands with my father, I've vicariously shaken hands with Liddy who must have shaken hands with Richard Nixon who must have shaken hands with Dwight Eisenhower who....

“Nature is always pulling the rug out from under our pompous ideals.”
― Camille Paglia