A Minor Digression

 
Taishō period (1912–1926) / Goyo Hashiguchi/ Ducks

I lied.

Got some work done around the house, but too nice of a day to stay inside, so I took a mosey down to the local dual-purpose beer store/bar and I am sipping sour beer and tossing off some verbiage in the sun in front of the taproom.

Not a bad life. All the home-ec work is done for now, beer made, still cleaned and put away, Hell, maybe I'll even bake some more cookies.  (Late note:  Molasses crinkle cookies are made and yummy).  The youngest came over last night and we had a nice chat.  He is handling things well, but I wouldn't want to be 22 again and that is the truth.

Abbey style ale is in the fermentation jug.  I think that I am getting into the swing of this brewing thing now.  But if I am to continue the home-ec thing though my dotage, I will need to go all Marie Kondo to get the tiny space in a functional state.

Now I am up in the dark again (Goddamn daylight savings anyway) sucking down coffee and getting ready for the spectacle.  I am not really looking forward to the generalized career desperation that anything out of the norm brings to the management of my particular corner of the world.  

Screed:

Did get to spend some time in the morning yesterday catching up on my quarterly read of "Foreign Affairs".  Man has that poor little rag gone downhill of late.   Most everything is a piss-poor copy of Fukiyama's "End of History" that spends a lot of time explaining how if we could go back to the old days where all the wogs did what they were told by us white folk, the world would be a beautiful place.

Pretty much the whole edition is a set of serial whining pieces about how the worlddoesn't buy our brand of shit anymore.  They seem to be shocked that the reasoned, ruled-based, liberal international order that we worked out to benefit ourselves and leave crumbs to the rest of the planet is being challenged.  Pity that.

I think that this particular magazine represents the "thoughts" of our elite as well as anything.  I think that the elite that rule the country have drunk deeply from the Kool-Aid of the "City on the Hill" and that American Exceptionalism is really the only possible lens to see the world.  

Well buckaroos, we are moving down the ladder slow, and other folks are either holding steady or even inching up.  We are overcommited to maintaining a world order that allows plunder of the weak for the benefit of the strong, and now we might not be all that strong.