Treason doth not prosper

So my (vaxxed, boosted, very-careful-about-masking-in-crowds) friend has the 'rona.

Most likely because someone in the group they met with last weekend had "just a sniffle", didn't mask, didn't stay home, and now has succeeded in dosing them and two others in the group (and probably more who will come back hot in the next couple of days).

Which is a reminder, in case the current U.S. House majority, and the previous Administration, aren't vivid enough warnings, of what my old drill sergeant used to tell us; that the success of our mission depended on the competence of the stupidest person in our unit.

In any group, or any nation, success depends on either those people being 1) willing to learn how to be minimally functional, or 2) being safely sidelined so their incompetence is immaterial to the mission, or 3) being shitcanned entirely. 

The sort of people who infected my friend are and are not likely to be either 1 or 2, and we've given up on number 3.

And I have no idea how we can change that short of an extinction-level crisis like the Great Depression, or a global war that either 1) pulls the general public's collective head out of it's collective ass, or 2) makes the douchenozzles like Republicans (in the Thirties) or fascists (in the Forties) so loathsome that even the morons refuse to touch them and confine their moronity to stuff like pro wrestling.

Especially now, now that Republicans ARE fascists and antivaxxers and QANuts, too?

And some forty percent of the public and the mass media refuses to be honest about that or call them what they are, or despise and shun them for it?

I'm kind of worried about how we move on from there.

And speaking of people doing fucked up things...

I didn't write anything on the second anniversary of January Treason

Mostly because that fucking ship has sailed, hit a sunken rock, capsized, caught fire, exploded, and sank.

The traitors are now a majority in one house of Congress. They - the leaders of the betrayal - paid no price for their treason. 

The goon squads that actually did their dirty work ran off afterwards and had to be slowly, imperfectly tracked down (and largely - to the extent they were - only because some of them took videos and posted to Twitter of them doing a criminal fuckin' conspiracy. Stupid people, right..?)

While in Brazil...

...their own home-grown traitors tried the same shit just now.

It's worth noting that in Brasilia hundreds of these gomers left, not rolling their coal or waving their treason flags but in zip-ties and police vans. The Brazilian Supreme Court has issued warrants for several higher-ups, including a police colonel, who were part of the inside job.

This is Brazil, a barely-Second-World nation without the sort of massive police organization that exists here in the U.S., that managed to put the collar on these dirtbags. 

We'll see if they follow through with crushing the head of the Bolsonario snake, as we should have done with the MAGAts on January 7, 2021.

But We the People already look pathetic in that Brazil, with its long and woeful history of dictatorships and coups, has been harder on their present traitors that we have been on ours, on every level from vaccination to drag queens to actual rebellion.

Whether it's as big as treason against the nation or as small as giving other people your fucking disease, I can only say this again:

"If this is not crushed with brutal force we will rue this as the day we made these traitors our masters."

Headshot

I was watching the Beeb last night about the protests in Brazil, comparing them to the protests in Turkey, and wondering about my own country.

Because it seems to me that two far-distant places are experiencing much the same political problems; both are democratic republics, both have a legal system in place for the citizens to vote for change. But in both a substantial minority of the people believe that their "votes" are meaningless, and that the way the system of government is currently set up that they have no hope of bettering the lives (or affecting particular issues they see as worsening their lives) within the democratic process.

So they take to the streets.

We had that here, not so long ago, with the Occupy protests, and to my mind the only real difference was in the reaction of the governments. In Turkey and Brazil the police agencies had and have a long, ugly history of brutal reaction to public protest. The initial beatings and gassings had the effect of reminding Turks and Brazilians how much they reeeeeally hated the way their cops beat and gas them, and the protests became as much about that as about the initial grievances.

Here our coppers have learned to be crafty and patient. Protest met with a riot baton wrapped inside a comfy pillow is protest that gradually loses its vitality. If it doesn't lay you out cold a rap on the skull just pisses you off. But an indifferent stare is boring. The U.S. coppers knew that the way to defuse Occupy was to make it boring, and they did. The U.S. public lost interest, Occupy lost it's momentum and has already faded into insignificance.

Which in my opinion will be remembered as a tragedy. The Occupiers had one burning insight; that from the mildly benign oligarchy it had been from 1932 to the late 1970s the U.S. is rapidly becoming a predatory toxic oligarchy through the rapaciousness of its oligarchs. This insight was lost in the foolish cacophony of noise the Occupiers generated and the criminally negligent reportage of the courtier press. I believe that we will one day regret that we did not pay more attention to the rise of the modern aristos.

The result has been a continued slide back to the rampant inequality and social division of the Gilded Age, with the concurrent erosion of the sort of stodgy bourgeois middle-class attitude of the "rest" of the U.S. public as it sees it's decent-wage jobs, it's pensions, it's influence, and it's security ever more crammed down and eroded away. Combine that with the overwhelming sense that gold now makes the rules and that the reopening of government to massive inflows of cash has made individual voting almost meaningless and you get a public that seems to me daily more vulnerable to a demagogue, a "man on horseback" that promises to make those changes that they can't.

And that vulnerability makes me think of perhaps the saddest image I've seen from these recent protests:

This young woman was first said to be an Egyptian visiting Istanbul; since then the Egyptian embassy has devowed knowledge of her. So we have no idea of who she is - or was, since she must have suffered massive head trauma from the direct gas-canister hit and is very likely dead - or why she was there, or what she was doing and thinking at the time that the heavy metal can turned that day into endless night.

Whatever drove her into that street drove her to her own doom.

That seems to be pretty much what happens when desperate, vulnerable people take to the street. Few popular rebellions seem to end well; as bad as conditions were before the Revolution it seems hard to imagine that Napoleon is an upgrade over the Bourbons or Stalin over the Tsar. The defenestration of oligarchy usually seems to produce autocracy and war, not liberty and law.

The promise of the United States is the chance to pursue life, liberty, and happiness. Not to win them, but to pursue them.

But it seems to me that that promise now stands in the street we've built to let some of us drive towards increased wealth and power.

Will they collide violently? Will the streets explode in anger, as they have in Brazil and in Instanbul?

Will the result be that promise ending up lying in the street as she lay, dazed and barefoot, dying?

Gutted

Such a day. I'm gutted. Let me tell you why.

It started this morning, when I got up to watch the US women play Brazil in the last of the quarterfinals. I thought it would be a tight match and predicted it would go to penalties...but not the way it did.I can't do justice to the match; that would take a Victor Hugo, who would have painted the late afternoon's events in his Romantic palette of dark and light and the chiaroscuro of heroism and villainy; the thunderous opening own-goal, the grumbling gathering storm of Brazilian pressure...the sudden lightning-strike of the Buehler sending-off and the saved...and then retaken and made...Brazil penalty. The unbending resolve of the U.S. women, like a rock against the storm-surge of the Brazilian attack. The individual brilliance of Marta, rising like the spirit of the storm itself to score Brazil's second and force the American women to attack relentlessly just for a chance to continue playing. The collective beauty of Megan Rapinoe's lovely service and Abby Wambach's precise header that sent the match to penalties.And then, of course, the horrible whiteknuckle lottery of the PKs, and Hope Solo's redemption on the Brazilian third effort, where she denied the very defender - Daiane - whose own-goal had begun the storm what seemed so many aeons ago.So I was already emotionally drained on my way down to Jeld-Wen Field for THE match of our Timbers' season, the home engagement with our loathed rivals the Seattle Sounders.For this match, though, you would have needed a more tragic muse. Poe, perhaps, or one of the Greek tragedians, to tell the tale of triumph and disaster, of Portland leads gained and lost, of individual heroics but of, finally, the tragedy of a team unable to play together for an hour and a half.

We sang and chanted, cheered and celebrated...but in the end, as it often does in this cruel game, as it has recently for our Boys, it came to naught. Seattle ran off a 3-2 victor, and we were left to sing a last song to them to tell them we were proud of their efforts and still supported them...but I know we all left sadder than we would have as winners.I've said this before, but it bears repeating; soccer is like life because it is so often unforgiving. You hope and believe, and in return you receive a handful of ashes.

But just as a steadfast faith that dies unseen and unknown is in itself a gift, the heart of the Beautiful Game is in the giving, not the receiving. The true supporters sing proudly even in - especially in - defeat. Because they know that the road leads through dark places, and the last measured act of defiant Life is to go down that dark road head up and singing. Because - like the young women on the field in Dresden, like the supporters in the stands in Portland - where there is love, and faith, there can never be despair, only defeat. And the undespairing heart is never truly defeated.

Return to the Silk Road 2: Tarnished Gold?

I haven't seen the game yet, but I couldn't wait to find out the result.

USWNT 1, Brazil 0 in extra time

While I'm happy for the U.S. gals - and especially Hope Solo, who has played spectacularly in goal this tournament after having drained a bitter World Cup thanks to Greg Ryan's incapability - I have to feel for the brilliant Brazilians. Possessed of the finest women's player in the world - Marta - and a terrifically talented squad they seem to have a hell of a time figuring out the U.S.

The commentators over at ESPN Soccernet, never ones to neglect to mention any USWNT accomplishment, weren't hesitant: Brazil outplayed and out-skilled an overmatched U.S. team that had to rely on luck, a bunkered defense and a red-hot goalie to stay in the game for 90 minutes. As I mentioned before, this game should have ended there and been replayed tomorrow. Instead, the tired players were required to play on and on until Carli Lloyd hit what seems to have been a rocket and that was it.I'm thrilled for the US gals, and Solo, and smarting for Marta and her teammates' disappointment. But I question if this is really a good thing for the U.S. women.

It seems to me that the U.S. team's play wasn't really all that great in this tournament. They lost a disgraceful game to Norway, only managed one against Japan (who, admittedly, were playing above themselves) and looked graceless and often lost against the Kiwis. Their win over Canada was another game that was ugly for long stretches, an especially bad sign given that Canada has always been a very flawed team with one great player (back in the day it was Charmaine Hooper, now it's UofP's own Christine Sinclair). And now this.

I'm glad when the U.S. team wins; it's good for the sport here, and it's good for U.S. women's sports in general. But I'm not so sure if I want us to win if we're going to become the Italy of women's soccer, playing 90 minutes of ugly catennacio. Is that what we want to show the world? Is that what the "91ers" worked so hard to create?

So...good luck to the "08ers"...and personal wishes that you can reach inside and find the "beautiful" in the Beautiful Game.

You love your kids just because they're yours: as the Peeper says, "family are the friends who have to love you even when they don't like you so much. But the love is always a little better, a little broader, a little deeper...when the love can come with real pride.