The Books of Bokonon

The Union is in a bit of a state right now and for the foreseeable future. Let's count the ways: 1. The US federal government is gung-ho about waging war on its own citizens and residents. That's what the ICE presence in Minneapolis, Los Angeles, and elsewhere amount to. The White House now has its own paramilitary that exists to mindlessly meet quotas while terrorizing people who might merely be dropping kids off at school.  2. The efforts to build a gulag archipelago are taking shape. If this effort does not succeed, it will be our good fortune that Trump and his toadies are still idiots after all this time. 3. The "Big Bloated Bill" that was signed into law last year has dramatically increased the annual budget deficit and of course the national debt in order to transfer wealth from working folks to the Epstein Class.  4. Trump's idea of "diplomacy" has alienated the US from its usual trading partners and military allies. The kidnapping of Maduro whil...

As of this writing, the full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia is still on-going. This was a war started by Putin that was supposed to end in three days with perhaps a handful of weeks needed to consolidate control over Ukraine. Putin's been clear for a while that Ukraine is not a real nation or that Ukrainians have a unique culture. The Russians started with what was supposed to be a formidable military on paper and vastly outnumbered Ukrainian forces. So the conventional wisdom ahead of the war was that Ukraine did not stand a chance and that Zelinskyy needed to find the nearest exit if he wanted to remain alive. And yet here we are with a war in which the front lines have changed little since the summer of 2022. The warning signs were there in the autumn of 2021. The Russia and Belarus governments had amassed large numbers of troops and equipment along their borders with Ukraine, ostensibly as part of some sort of joint military exercise, and despite what Putin had been saying...