Good morning. Hello. How are you? #464
The horror of Kabul, and some other substantially less important stuff.
Good morning. Hello. How are you? I am.. Well, shocked, appalled, distressed? Watching Afghans overrun the Kabul airport, clinging to planes, desperate to escape, it’s just horrifying. The thing that shocks me the most is how utterly unprepared the administration was for this. I’m completely shocked that anyone thought this wasn’t going to happen, was going to happen slowly. It seems entirely predictable to me that the Taliban would take over the entire country within days, and I am not a particularly smart person or an intelligence analyst. What did they think was going to happen? And the absolute lack of planning to get American and our allies out safely is just a complete dereliction of duty.
I am, by bent, an interventionist in my geopolitical worldview. If it were up to me, we would not be leaving Afghanistan now, at least not this century. In a perfect world, I believe that the US should use its power to assist the rest of the world into democracy, out of poverty, into rule of law and safety. In concept I believe in nation-building. I mostly believe that whole trope about a spiritual hole at the bottom of the American experiment, capitalism supplanting any sort of charity, and in my head this is solved by the US using its obscene wealth to do good on the planet. However “In a perfect world,” is doing a shit ton of heavy lifting in that sentence. We do not live in a perfect world, and there is almost no practical way for this to happen. We have elections every four years, and it requires centuries of staying power to nation-build (John McCain was the only one brave enough to admit this truth).
Plus, of course, the US has basically completely failed in being a beacon of light and democracy in the world, we’re out there hacking every government, raping the earth, not signing climate change treaties. We’re hypocrites, and as such, our moral authority in bringing freedom and democracy to the world is compromised, perhaps irredeemably, forever. Certainly can’t be turned around in 200 days.
It should also be said that I’m not in charge, and if that were my platform, I would lose every election I ever ran. Americans do not believe this. We barely ever believed it, even when we were good and successful at doing it. Even when the Marshall Plan was happening, even when America saved the world from Tyranny, somewhere between 40 and 60 percent of Americans, at any time, wanted us to pack up and go home. And now, even though we live in an interconnected world, even though the myth of isolationism is exposed as a complete fantasy, most Americans still believe this.
America wanted out of Afghanistan. Everyone but the hawks wanted out. Bernie’s supporters wanted out. Trump supporters wanted out. People told us that Killary was going to keep our forever wars going and start more. Trump signed a deal with the Taliban that completely capitulated and agreed to leave. Biden simply kept our word.
This is 100% on every American, not just Biden.
In some ways, I feel bad for Biden. Despite everyone saying that the US was caught totally unprepared, I suspect they knew full well what was going to happen and how fast. They did, after all, tell everyone months ago that we were leaving, and hey maybe people should have listened and gotten out. He’s been saying in the lead-up “oh it won’t be that bad, they wouldn’t dare,” but they were the empty-threat sabre rattling of the impotent, and he knew it. That’s my theory, anyway.
Of course, that presumes there was anywhere for people to go, and that presumes anyone would take them, and even now the US is caught up in absolute bullshit bureaucracy and red tape blocking the safe exit of people.
Some administration official said “this is not Saigon.” They’re right. This is worse than Saigon. The thing about Saigon is that you could get the Americans out, and their collaborators, and then everyone else would be (relatively) safe under the new Viet Cong. And while the evacuation of Saigon was by no means perfect or fair, we got tens of thousands of people out. The thing about the Taliban and Kabul, though, is that basically every single woman is in danger. The average Afghan woman isn’t going to be able to keep her head down and live under the Taliban in more or less the same manor as they did before. Their very lives are at risk.
What a disgrace.
Don’t really know how to transition from that, but here we go anyway.
Anyway. How was your weekend? Mine was pretty uneventful. I spent too much time on Zillow. I played too much Civilization. I listened to Horse Rotovator by Coil. I did enough chores to not feel guilty about being unproductive but not a hair more. I played with Jane a lot.
Today will be my fourth day without nicotine. I quit smoking some fifteen years ago, but the entire time since I’ve been on some form of nicotine replacement. For the last six years, I’ve been on these amazing one milligram Habitrol nicotone lozenges. When Emma and I took our road trip to Alaska in 2010 or so, I discovered one milligram nicotine lozenges, which are so, so much better than the 2 or 4 that are available at drugstores in America. Much weaker, less speedy, more of a low-and-slow habit. I love them. I love them so much. Part of me thinks there’s no point in ever quitting. Nicotine is not in and of itself carcinogenic, it’s basically just a mild stimulant like caffeine. But there’s always been at least one big problem which is that medical blood tests don’t distinguish between nicotine in your blood from smoking vs. lozenges, so I’m sure no doctor ever believes me when I say I don’t smoke, plus it’s always been difficult to buy supplementary life insurance. I’m also becoming increasingly convinced they play some contributory part in my chronic headaches. Of course, there won’t be any way of knowing if that’s the case for a week or two since, you know, one of the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal is headaches, so, fuckin lovely.
I bought a bunch of sugarless mints to help tide myself over through the first few weeks of withdrawal. I’m sick of them already. The thing about Habitrol lozenges is you put one in your mouth and it lasts an hour. But with these normal mints, I get the craving, I put it in my mouth, and it works for a second, but a craving lasts, like, 20-30 minutes, but the mints only last like five, so I have to have like five, six mints in a row to get through a craving which makes me feel like a crazy person.
Anyway. Four days. Go me. Wish me luck.
Finished my podcast this weekend if you are a fan of the audio channel of the burgeoning Webb Chatham Media Properties Inc. media empire.
And I did the gardening video too, but I don’t think I’ll post it this week. It’s short, only like fifteen minutes. Am really in a maintenance mode right now. Garden is doing great though. Tomatoes are mostly a failure, but everything else is going great. I’ve really turned things around with my squirrel-and-deer protection. So, like, whereas before virtually everything but the basil was failing because the deer and squirrels were eating it all, now just the tomatoes are. And, like, they’re growing great, my in-ground tomatoes, which makes me very excited for next year. It’s just that i didn’t plant them in a place I could protect them from the squirrels, alas. I am getting a few tomatoes, but really not many.
But the new cucumbers, watermelon, and beans are growing like gangbusters, and the older carrots, basil, fennel, peppers, grapes and blueberry plants are doing great! I need to plant more radishes and onions still, but not for another week or so.
And my compost is just lovely.
Lotta people giving Maureen Dowd shit for her column about the excessive opulence of Obama’s birthday party, calling her racist for implying that the president is “uppity,” not that she said that. I mean, look, I intensely dislike Maureen Dowd but anyone of any race who throws a birthday party like that in the midst of a pandemic deserves to be called tone-deaf and plutocratic, or at least plutocratic-aspiring. It was a bad idea, it was garish. I’m sure other rich people are having giant parties right now, and I don’t know about them, and there is definitely a racial component in the media deciding which giant rich-people parties we should know about and which can go unreported, but super big expensive parties filled with 300 celebrities right now is maybe a bad look for anyone. And this is coming from someone who had 500 people at his wedding.
There’s a Boar’s Head shortage going on. Seems to be nationwide, or at least up and down the east coast. Their Twitter feed is great, they don’t talk about the shortage at all on main, but the replies are a constant stream of the exact same vague acknowledgement verbiage over and over: “Hi there, we understand how frustrating it can be not finding the products you want or need. For a variety of reasons, there are significant strains on supply chains of every sort nationwide–it's taking time return to normal. We hope the situation improves very soon. Thank you!.” My Harries Teeter has stopped letting you order Boar’s Head with your delivery order and they stuck a banner across the whole site about it:
This seemed a bit excessive, and at first I wondered if it was just HT, but then I went to the other local grocery store, Lowe’s Foods, and they had almost no Boar’s Head meats at all (plenty of cheeses though). I am very curious about this and really want to know what’s going on. Like… I don’t know much about Boar’s Head but I very much doubt their supply chain for, like, turkey, roast beef and ham is exactly the same, unless they produce all their own meat, which I doubt, but all of these seem to be out at once, so, like, are they missing packaging? That seems plausible.
There’s no news about it. Seems like a job for an intrepid Eater reporter. BUT I did just find this fascinating article about a lawsuit going on between the children of the founders of Boar’s Head, so, you know, maybe they’re too busy fighting to make the meats.
Okay, well, I think I’m gonna call it a day on this entry. I never really survived the change of topic from the Taliban at the beginning, did I? This is why, when I talk about politics in here, I usually work my way up to it. Get all the more personal and Bombeckian stuff out of the way first before ramping up to existential dread about the world’s political situation. Oh well, live and learn, we’ll try again tomorrow.
Let’s do a mix. Moody and quiet mix. Fits. I’m sad about the Afghans. It’s Monday. I’m nic-fitting, which I haven’t done this century. It’s raining. Except rain is good. I like rain. My plants like rain. But rain is still moody, so that works. Lotta new discoveries on this mix, Lingua Ignota is one of the craziest, most intense and disturbing new things I’ve listened to in a long time. MAN ON MAN is just fantastic. Roadrunner meets a gay bar. Valerie June seems great so far, but only one listen. Don’t know much about her, but that is a good name. Couple oldies here too. The Curtain Hits the Cast, by Low, had its 25th anniversary last week, which is just crazy to think about. Crazy to think of all those Low shows at TTs and the Middle East and opening for Soul Coughing at the Paradise. I miss seeing Low so much, and miss them in a small club even more. I like the theater shows, but there was something about seeing Low at TTs or somewhere, where people were in the other room just drinking and shouting, while the band stayed up there, unflappable, and played that perfect, slow, delicate music.
I also gave Steve Perry’s solo album a listen for the first time since the 80’s and it wasn’t bad. More prog than I remembered. Oh Sherrie really is the standout track, though.
Okay rainy Monday, do your worst.
Oh did anyone click the secret button on Friday? Pretty cool site, huh? I made that a couple years back for Ben. It’s nice to know all that stuff is still online. A giant body of amazing work, just sort of gone from the internet. But not anymore!