Day 1139 – The Idiocy of John Bolton

Wednesday, June 12, 2024

I listened to an interview with John Bolton last night. This guy is a bad dream. He keeps hanging around and every once in a while someone gives him a job. He’s like Ken Cucinneli. Guys that have nutty dangerous ideas and get a chance to screw up the their world when given a chance.

I remember when Bolton was first on the scene, his big quote that kept being reported was that you could wipe off the top two floors of the UN and not lose anything. He got appointed to the U.N. as our ambassador. when he left that job the Secretary General, who was famous for always saying something positive, said of Bolton that he alway showed up on time for meetings. That was the only positive thing he could say about the man.

More recently Bolton wrote a book and ripped off the signature line from Hamilton. Yes, he was in the room where it happened. Did he tell us anything? No. The best thing about his tenure in the State Department was Fiona Hill.

So what did Johnny boy tell us last night? That he wouldn’t work for Trump again. That Trump was dangerous. Wow. You had to work for the guy to learn that? 

What about Joe Biden? Well, he wouldn’t vote for him because he doesn’t agree with his policies and thinks Biden is unfit for office. Other than making, repeatedly, that blanket statement he doesn’t go into details. Of course not, why would he? If he did he’d be caught out on facts. 

So what’s he going to do in November? He’s going to vote for someone else. A protest vote. Great. Good thinking. Maybe, the right has a fruit cake he could get behind? Or an independent one? I dunno. Is the former heroin addict still in the race?

He and Tom Cotton seem to use the same schtick. They don’t like what’s going on. They never do. So they come up with some hare brained scheme to make it worse.

These people never have an idea how to make something better. Their only solution is to wreck whatever has been done.

We now seem to live in a post fact society. Some say facts don’t matter. They invent nonsense and try to pass it off as truth. They always have magic bullets somewhere in their solutions. Covid? It will go away. (Nonsense, it took real science and politicians to enact that science to defeat Covid. The nut jobs like bolton and Trump have an answer that is some form of, “Well, I don’t know.”) The alliance that has kept Europe safe from war since WWII. Get rid of it. Why? Oh god, it’s either, “It costs too much,” or it’s “We don’t need it.” Tell that to the people of Ukraine.

Um. Let’s dwell on Ukraine for a moment. Russia has stomped on Ukraine for centuries. So some of these politicians we have think, “It’s okay because they’ve been doing it for years.” Let’s see, it started with Catherine the Great, and has continued on and off since then. Fiddler on The Roof? It’s a play about the Russians coming into Ukraine and killing people and taking their grain. Stalin? Remember him? What did he do to Ukraine? Came in and took all their grain and the people starved to death. He caused the greatest famine in the 20th Century. So yeah, Russia has been messing with Ukraine for years. Centuries actually. So should we say, “Hey, it’s none of our business?” 

That’s what people like Bolton and Cotton would say. Or Marjorie Taylor Red (not Green, Red let’s show her true colors. Except, she’s too stupid to realize she’s being a useful idiot to Putin.)

And then there’s the whole Covid thing. There are people wandering around saying you don’t need to get vaccinated, and they have various reasons. All silly. I just say to them, “Do you think the American Indians would have preferred to get vaccinated or let at least 80% of their population be wiped out by disease?”

Bernaz Diaz who was one of the conquistadors with Cortes wrote an account of the conquest of the Aztecs. If you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. Even if you don’t like history books. It reads better than any international best selling thriller. What did he say about the effects of disease on the Indians? 

Diaz wrote about marching into villages and no one was left. That the wind blew through and it was eerily quiet. No one was there. Yeah. Let’s not vaccinate, because you know, “I don’t like it.” 

Then there are the people that didn’t get their kids immunized against the basics. Stuff we never thought about,  just did it. Now? Amazingly (not), there have been outbreaks of diseases like measles. Where? In areas of the country where well off, well educated people who think they know better didn’t get their kids vaccinated. Oh well, if you get measles as a kid there is a distinct possibility that you will be sterile so I guess the upshot is at least they won’t be able to reproduce. Tough on the kids. Let’s bring out some love from Tom Cotton shall we? He’s big on being mean to people with some form of tough love.

Or how about Bill Mahrer pontificating, “If you keep yourself healthy …” Yeah Bill, you think the millions of American Indians who died weren’t healthy?

I gotta go. Where’s the TV clicker?