A Note to Owl Farm

“If World War III can start in a vacuum of silence and stonewalling by the White House, we are doomed like rats in a maze of fear.  We are slaves to mendacity and hostile disinformation.  Bread and circuses were not enough to sustain the Roman Empire and they will not be enough for the United States of America.”  - Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, “Hey Rube,” published in 2004.

Jesus, HST, had you only stuck around until 2018.  Say what you will about the perfidious hooligans around W, they were, as a bunch, professionals. They knew that blood money is tough to spend in an irradiated world; they were dangerous and felonious, but they knew just enough about foreign affairs to keep us away from the Edge.

Alas, the same cannot be said about the unaware-of-their haplessness cretins that can be found in overabundance in 45’s Administration.  Driven by greed, blood lust, fanatical devotion to the Dear Leader, and/or a twisted Weltanschauung that makes Dick Cheney look like a reasonable moderate, the current band of thugs in and around 1600 Pennsylvania is a genuine menace to the Republic. Is General Kelly the thin line between an addled President and a nuclear “event” (intentional or otherwise)?  Maybe so.  In any event, I would rather have him in Trump’s ear than, say, Stephen Miller.

Was it bad with Ari Fleischer shilling for Bush 43?  Yes, but Sarah Huckabee Sanders and her version of “reality” is far worse.  She was born in Hope, Arkansas…just like her dad, the former Gov. Mike Huckabee, and former President Bill Clinton.  So is the leading export of this Podunk town inveterate liars?  HST, the levels of “mendacity and hostile disinformation” are off the charts.  Like Georgia Tech 222 – Cumberland 0…these scores shouldn’t even exist, but they do.  And we are not the better for it.

So where is the Wisdom? There must be something beyond a fervent wish for a swift impeachment and righteous conviction.  A hope that the Republic is more resilient than we have any right to expect?  Well, looking back at recent U.S. history, there is the sense that Progress…often halting, frequently painful, and replete with reverses and false starts… can occur when the Opposition keeps grinding away.  There is a way out of the maze, but the obstacles won’t surmount themselves.  The wave doesn't have to break as long as the motion continues forward.

In solidarity.