So, I was trying to put the final touches on the Postcard this week from the bog down by the majestic Potomac River this morning. It was tough, since things just kept pouring in, helter-skelter. Our distinguished governor, Mr. Northam made news, announcing our collective house arrests would be eased on the first of July.
You will recall he had achieved a certain notoriety for a mistake in the ancient past when someone dug up a college picture in which he appeared in a character costume now found to be an appalling breach of propriety. He was lucky. His fifteen minutes of ignominity preceded today’s advanced and unforgiving sense of outrage by a couple months, and he still serves. Others guilty of the same offenses are being pilloried and hounded out of polite society now.
It is sort of interesting. My people were still being exploited and starved by the same British king on islands where his laws permitted the abomination of involuntary servitude in his colonies, but we were still in Ireland and Socotra, oceans away from the crimes that happened here. From what I gather, current expectations are for me to pay cash today for a litany of evil that happened while my ancestors were shackled under the crown across the Atlantic Ocean to people to never experienced the crime.
Oh well. That certainly is enough to justify tearing down the statues that mark the legacy of people who were dead a century before anyone alive today drew breath. And everyone else, apparently.
The only person today who would be justified in having a good morning is former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.
The last time I saw him at a luncheon a couple years ago, I walked up and respectfully asked him to be strong, and many of his former soldiers and intelligence professionals were pulling for his vindication. He ha no idea who I was, but he gave me that thin smile for which he is famous, and we parted amicably. Neither of us, I know, had any idea of the complexity of the legal nut roll that would continue until this morning, draining millions of dollars in legal costs from him.
He is not universally beloved, of course, and I have pals who did not like him. I respect that. I am not a huge fan of our current President. I don’t like brash aggression or real estate moguls from New York. As I have observed before, though, I study the issues and the people who wish to be elected to any office and vote for the ones who pose lesser evil to generally law abiding citizens like us.
Can you imagine working hard all your adult life, being shot at by the nation’s enemies, and then be confronted by the deepest pockets of justice in the world? To be bankrupted and perhaps jailed by the agents of the government you once served for imaginary crimes?
I have no idea what is next for General Flynn, or if he will try to claw back what he has lost. I do know that the last three years are a price no innocent citizen should endure. Meanwhile, the people who orchestrated his destruction are managing a candidate whose faculties are clearly fading and fully intend to use him as a vehicle for continued dramatic change.
I guess we will all see. I did not vote in the primary election yesterday. I do not have as profound a dislike for our incumbent Senator Warren here in Virginia as I do for our spectacularly mendacious junior Senator who could have been Vice President. He told us recently that he believed the monstrous crime of slavery was invented right here in our Commonwealth. Invented.
It all makes my head hurt. That is why I did not vote yesterday. I will accept the choices the voters made for the big show-down in November and make my decision on what is in the record.
Meanwhile, it appears the Iranian expansionists are interested in establishing a naval base on our ancestral home, Socotra Island. That way they can shoot missiles are passing merchant ships and effectively control the path between the seas. There is going to be more to that story, and it will drag in the Chinese and the Indians as well as Europe. Things seem to be spinning along in wild gyrations with no boundaries known to the usual universe we used to know.
I will try to keep you posted. We’ll see how well I can do.
– Vic
Copyright 2020 Vic Socotra
http://www.vicsocotra.com