A Rambling Sunday Rant

There’s Just Too Much Idiocy to Focus on One Thing

I’m still not completely over my rant from Friday about the Globe Theatre adding a trigger warning to their production of Romeo and Juliet, but it’s Sunday and I am a creature of habit, so on to a new rant I must trudge. All I will say about that earlier piece is that the fact that no commenter has come to the Globe’s defense gives me a glimmer of hope that there are still some out there who have not succumbed to the farthest extremes of the political correctness/woke madness that seems ever-present today.

So much has happened this week, that I feel the need to do something akin to a “rant digest,” briefly hitting several of the low points rather than focusing on just one. With any luck, this will cleanse my overloaded brain and allow me to start a new week with a clear head, able to produce those hard-hitting, intellectual stories you all love so much, like “If the E Street Band Were the Avengers, Would Little Steven Be Thor or Hulk?”

Let me begin on a personal note, one that is yet another probably useless plea to all the anti-vaxxers out there. On Thursday, my youngest daughter had a surgical procedure (she came through fine…thanks to all of you who sent encouraging messages), and the procedure was one that required an overnight stay in the hospital. She is 20 and allegedly an adult, but you parents out there all know that we stop seeing our kids as toddlers about the time they throw the dirt on our caskets.

So you can imagine my rage when the equally frustrated doctor told me they had to discharge her less than two hours after surgery because the hospital was at capacity and needed the bed for COVID patients. Yes, her recovery at home went fine with several non-medical professional people hovering, but it should not have had to. People who forego the vaccine are causing a ripple effect through the healthcare system that goes far beyond just COVID, overloading it to the point that care we take for granted is no longer available. These selfish fucks have made anything that requires a trip to the hospital or ER a life-threatening event simply because they won’t get a goddamn shot.

Call me callous, but this would be fine with me if it was only the vaccine-refusers who suffered; nature has always been able to cull the weak and stupid from the herd, and if you are going to insist on your “freedom to choose” you have to take the consequences of that choice. Sadly, it is far too often those who have done the right thing, the ones who don’t believe that science is determined by who you vote for, that pay the price. Healthcare workers, firefighters, and the military risk their lives for us every single day, yet you won’t get a simple jab that is free and takes less time than you spend bitching about too much soy in your latte. This was already personal for me, but now you’ve brought my kid into it. In a nutshell, get the vaccine or fuck off.

Deep breath.

Also this week, we saw twenty years of lost lives and misspent treasure undone by the Taliban in 11 days. I am a veteran, and thus have mixed feelings about the entire mission. There is no question that following 9/11 we had to go in after al Qaeda when the Taliban would not surrender them. We clearly needed to relieve the horrific plight of women and girls under Taliban rule.

What we did not need was to almost immediately shift our focus to a search for non-existent weapons of mass destruction in a completely different country. We did not need to send wave after wave of American and UN troops for two decades and basically forget about them while our lives skipped happily along until we finally remembered they were there as the Taliban rolled into Kabul. We have consistently forgotten and ignored those same troops when they came home forever scarred, but that is a separate rant.

We also did not need to swiftly and heartlessly turn our backs on a people we had made promises to for so long. We had 20 years to get this right, and we failed across the board. And make no mistake, we will end up back in Afghanistan sooner than later. With a reported $1 trillion in minerals the world desperately needs buried in the Afghan soil, we won’t stay gone long. We have always found a compelling national interest in places where money is involved.

For item number three, the lovely and talented Simon Dillon shared a post with our writer’s group about a commenter who believes that Steven Spielberg is not a great director because he only puts out “commercial crap.” I will not dwell on this person’s idiocy since Simon is writing his own article about it (but do check out his excellent pieces on Spielberg here and here). Rather, I want to say a few quick words about critics, starting with a quote by Ernest Hemingway:

“Critics are men who watch a battle from a high place then come down and shoot the survivors.”

There is clearly a place for critics in film, literature, and other areas of the arts. The best ones inform and enlighten us with well-reasoned analyses while helping us decide where to spend our limited time and money. There is no place, however, for the critic with an ax to grind; these “critics” enter a theater or bookstore with only one goal: tearing down someone who had the guts, drive, and talent to create something; guts, drive, and talent the critic clearly lacks. As former Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn was fond of saying: “Any jackass can kick down a barn door, but it takes a carpenter to build one.” We need to be on watch against so-called critics who are really nothing more than trolls.

Finally (and if you’ve stayed this far your reaction may be “thank God”), let me close with my picture of the week, from a protest in Georgia by parents opposed to kids wearing masks in schools.

The parent on the right is forever banned from helping their child with spelling homework, let alone teaching them anything about science. Every time I think I’ve seen it all, someone proves me wrong.

That’s the rant for today, and I apologize for its rambling nature. Just so you don’t go off into your Sunday full of gloom, rather than the illiteracy of the photo above let me leave you with this:

See, I’m not just a grumpy old bastard. Sometimes you need a jumping baby goat to remind you that everything is going to work out. Have a great week.