Day 756

Day 756 Friday February 1, 2019

640 Days to the 2020 election and 718 Days to Inauguration Day

When I look back on my formal education, one of my most memorable classes was 11^th grade history class with Mr. Coyle. It was modern European History. Everyday we were assigned eight or ten pages to read in a fat book. We would come into class and Mr. Coyle would ask if there were any questions about the previous reading. There never were. Then he’d say, “Let me tell you about…” whatever that reading was about. I remember some of those stories he told so vividly.

One was The Charge of the Light Brigade. There’s a famous poem about that charge. How the British light calvary got the order. How they knew that it was certain death, but they had their orders so they mounted up and charged, and were slaughtered.

But Mr. Coyle told us things not in our history book. For instance, he asked us, as he always did, “Do you know how (in this case) you mount a charge?” We didn’t. “You don’t start out at a charge…” He went on. First you have to mount up. Get everyone organized and in position. You start at a walk, then a trot, then a gallop. The enemy watched all this. I mean come on. You’re sitting their ensconced behind your embankments and you can watch all this unfolding in front of you. They couldn’t believe it. It was crazy. There must be some trick. They didn’t fire on the charging men and horses at first because of that. A few men and horses survived because they got so deep into the enemy lines that, like in that Star Wars movie where Hans Solo is between two Death Stars, they couldn’t fire because the risked shooting their comrades across the way. 

Copernicus had made naked eye observations of “the wandering stars” that we today know are planets. When did folks figure out that planets were not burn balls of fire? I don’t know. Maybe, when Galileo looked at Jupiter and its moons through his telescope? At any rate, Copernicus concluded that the Earth went around the Sun because it was the explanation that allowed for simpler explanation of predicting planetary movement. In his time he only had naked eye observations and those observations would allow for an Earth centric or a Sun (Helio) centric explanation of planetary movement. In fact, there were models built at the time that showed either way worked. (At least it worked for the planets one could see with the naked eye.) There were books with paper wheels that interlocked that one could turn to predict where the planets would appear in subsequent nights. Each planet had its own geared wheel. Copernicus realized that he could get rid of one set of intervening gears if the described courses of the planets went around the sun, but not if they went around the Earth. If they went around the Sun the sort of daisy pedal course described by a planet (he concentrated his efforts on Mars) would stack up one inside the other, if and only if, they went around the sun. (The daisy pedal I describe took eight years for Mars to complete. Keep in mind this is the way the course Mars looked when viewed from Earth because both planets are circling the Sun at different rates and when you look at Mars from Earth the background stars you line up with keep changing. For that background to come back to where you started takes eight years.) 

So I ask you how is Donald Trump’s behavior like that of the people that watched The Light Brigade  charging at them, or Copernicus’ conclusions about our solar system being Heliocentric? 

If you’ve been hearing reports and opinions about Donald Trump and his behavior toward Russia what other conclusion can one come to except that he is a Russian agent? Maybe, that’s too strong? Maybe he’s only a Russian asset. In which case what one is concluding is that he’s too stupid to know. Like Carter Page, the doofus who thought he was some kind of genius for making all those contacts with Russians and not realizing that they were GRU agents. In Trump’s case, he’s been told over and over again that these people are not our freinds. He chooses not to believe it. 

But what about us? Do we choose not to believe it? Like the folks watching the charge of the Light Brigade, they couldn’t believe what they were seeing. But like Copernicus, what other conclusion can you come to?

There is no other explanation.

Like all of Trump’s behavior, it’s not subtle. It is brutal and in your face. People time and time again choose not to believe it, because it seems too unbelievable, but there is no other explanation. Either he’s an agent or an asset. The only difference being he knows or he doesn’t.

Period.

Here endeth the screed.

640 Days to the 2020 election and 718 Days to Inauguration Day

 

PS Venus, Moon, Jupiter as it appeared 6:47 am Jan 31, 2019 Chesterfield, VA

(This morning was too cloudy. Here’s yesterday’s look again. The moon was lower left with Venus and Jupiter in an approximate 135 degree line.)