"Tuesday Afternoon" (opens in separate window)

something bigger than politics

friday, july 26th, 2024

It’s difficult to describe historical moments as they’re unfolding, but let me hazard a few initial observations about former President Donald Trump’s speech at the Republican National Convention on Thursday night.

[FULL TITLE: "Trump’s Triumph At The RNC Suggests Something Bigger Than Politics Is Unfolding In America".]

On a convention night infused with an air of divine providence, Trump gave a speech for the history books.

Watching a presidential candidate (and former president) describe his near-assassination less than a week after a bullet came within millimeters of ending his life is quite simply the most captivating, awe-inspiring thing that has ever happened at a political convention in this country.

“I will tell you exactly what happened, and you’ll never hear it from me a second time because it’s actually too painful to tell,” Trump said.

In a calm, almost somber tone, Trump recounted in detail his near-death experience to a breathless watching world. “I’m not supposed to be here,” he said, attributing his survival to “the grace of Almighty God.” Many in attendance, and not a few watching at home, were in tears as Trump told his tale. He described getting shot in the ear, the blood running down his face, and the Secret Service agents shielding him. Again he invoked divine providence: “There was blood pouring, and yet, in a certain way, I felt very safe because I had God on my side.”

Then he described the crowd’s reaction: They didn’t run, they didn’t stampede. They were worried about him, Trump said, afraid he might be badly wounded — or worse. Trump said he wanted to show them he was all right, that he wasn’t going anywhere. So he stood up, raised his fist, and shouted, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” When he said this, the crowd at the convention echoed him in chorus.

Perhaps the most poignant, moving moment of the speech came shortly after, when Trump eulogized Corey Comperatore, the local Pennsylvania man who was struck by a stray bullet from the shooter and died in front of his wife and two daughters at the rally. “He lost his life selflessly acting as a human shield to protect them from flying bullets,” Trump said. “He went right over the top of them and was hit. What a fine man he was.”

Before Trump took the stage, two people rolled out Comperatore’s firefighter helmet and jacket, and at one point Trump walked over and kissed the helmet, then asked the crowd for a moment of silence to honor his memory.

Then he said: “There is no greater love than to lay down one’s life for others. This is the spirit that forged America in her darkest hours, and this is the love that will lead America back to the summit of human achievement and greatness. This is what we need. Despite such a heinous attack, we unite this evening, more determined than ever. I am more determined than ever, and so are you. So is everybody.”

Again, nothing like this has ever happened at a political convention in America. It was a remarkable, almost unbelievable moment in American politics.

In fact, the whole convention, coming less than a week after the assassination attempt, had an air of myth, of the spirit of divine providence — a palpable sense that, as one commentator on X put it, we are “caught in the tide of larger shores.” Earlier in the day, the convention opened with a prayer to Saint Michael the Archangel, a traditional Catholic prayer for protection against “the wickedness and snares of the devil.” Later, the Rev. Franklin Graham offered a prayer for the nation and for Trump.

That is not to say the convention as a whole was explicitly Christian. Indeed, it was in some ways less Christian than GOP conventions of the past. Much has been made of the decision to remove language about ending abortion from the Republican Party platform. And more than a few commentators on the right noted distinctly pagan and nonconservative elements of the convention, like the Hindu prayer and the choice to platform Amber Rose.

But there was nevertheless an air of something larger at work at the convention, as indeed there has been these last week in America. At one point in the evening, Tucker Carlson gave a few unscripted remarks about what’s happened in the last month, how in his view “everything was different” after the assassination attempt. He suggested something is happening right now that seems bigger than mere politics. “I think even people that don’t believe in God are beginning to think, well, maybe there’s something to this actually,” he said, and closed by saying, “God is among us right now, and I think that’s enough.”

Tucker is right, events are unfolding that seem to go beyond mere politics. Something is moving in America and among its people, and we are not in control of it.

At the end of over an hour of speaking, Trump closed with an appeal to set our bitterness and divisions aside and “come together” to move forward as “one people” — eschewing the recriminations and outrage that his detractors might have expected of him after surviving an assassination attempt.

“Tonight I ask for your partnership, for your support, and I am humbly asking for your vote,” he said. “To all of the forgotten men and women who have been neglected, abandoned, and left behind, you will be forgotten no longer. We will press forward, and together we will win, win, win.”

But Trump also said something else, circling back to his opening theme: divine providence. He said, “Just a few short days ago, my journey with you nearly ended. And yet here we are tonight, all gathered together, talking about the future, promise, and renewal of America. We live in a world of miracles. None of us knows God’s plan or where life’s adventure will take us. But if the events of last Saturday make anything clear, it is that every single moment we have on Earth is a gift from God. We have to make the most of every day for the people and country we love.”

We live in a world of miracles. None of us knows God’s plans. Every moment we have is a gift from God. All of this is true. They are the sort of things nearly every American professed openly only a few generations ago, but they are not the sort of things you would ordinarily expect to hear at an American political party convention.

These, however, are not ordinary times. They are times shot through with providence and history and wonder. And where they lead only God knows.

A Day In The Life.

Up at 8:15a on Friday, I went thru my finger stick to check my BSL (Blood Sugar Level) and recorded it on my Diabetes 2 chart, made Kona Coffee, had some Bacon, Egg & Cheese Bread Toast, and lots more coffee, took two 50mg Tramadol and a 300mg Gabapentin for various pains, fired-up the Win-7 Pentium HP desktop to let 32 million lines of code load, had a couple smokes in the semi-cool garage and checked the leftover errands list.

It was a bright, sunny, clear sky, cooler/less humid 69° morning, and I made coffee, fired-up the HP Desktop. I enjoyed some smoking time in the garage, feeding the squirrels and some Cardinals and Bluejays with peanuts. After tuning into the "CS Show LIVE". I took a 250mg Bayer Aspirin for the R/S lower back/hip/buttock/leg pain of Sciatica, which had been mercifully absent for the past few days. My morning Bill O' Fare: "Chris Stigall Show LIVE" (CS Show) from 6-9a, then the "Chris Plante Show LIVE" (CP Show) 9-12noon.

Nowhere to go, nothing to do, and no one to do it with.

I did a Covid-19 Test yesterday, and it was 'negative', whatever that really means. That Wuhan Chinese CCP Flu Crap seems to be resurfacing and making it rounds, again. Hard to believe July's almost over, with August and the Fall months right around the corner. "Tempus fugit".

While scanning the weather and news, I heard that the entire world's Windows 10+ O/S Computer and Cloud Computer' Systems were severely-affected by a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death), Windows 10 PCs all crashing, displaying the dreaded "Blue Screen of Death", then being unable to reboot. From US computer software giant, CrowdStrike. All US airlines, hospitals, banks, shopping sites, railways, businesses, government etc etc etc, with machines getting "bricked" -- unable to function, dead. It's an apparent worldwide InterNet outage. But since I'm still running the trusty, ol' Windows 7 Pro x64 O/S, I'm not affected. (Yet.) Sure sounds like some kinda IT 'fun', worldwide.

I left at 12:30p for 2 errands, and was back home at 1:30 to unload, and get a quick nap before Sherry arrived just after 5p. Back up at 4p, I had new calls on my cellphone, which must have come in silently... I never heard them. We had a wonderful time together until almost 8p, when Sherry left, and I had a light dinner. While I was having a smoke in the garage, my neighbor and his lady friend stopped by for a visit, and brought some carbonated 17% carbonated drinks in a (gift to me) portable shoulder-carrier cooler, and we spent the next almost 3hrs arguing politics. Fun evening! I crashed around 12midnight.

I slept-in until 9a on Saturday, an overcast 80°, windless morning. After making coffee, I had a smoke in the garage, fed the squirrels and 10(!) Bluejays, and listened to some "CS Show Podcasts" I'd missed the past week. The Windows 10+ outage continues, worldwide. Glad I still use Win-7 Pro. I had breakfast, lots more coffee, and did some condo chores. By 2p, I was ready for a snooze, and grabbed 2hrs on the LR couch. After some dinner, I watched the evening news, and Trump's Rally speech for 90mins, switched over to History's "The unXplained" until 1a, and unplugged. F1 Hungary GP Race at 9a.

Up at 9:15a on Sunday, missed the F1 Hungarian GP Race start, but will catch it later on the F1 Channel replay function. I went up for a shave and shower, used my trusty ol' Norelco Triple Header Electric Shaver, then switched to a Bic Disposable to square-up my sideburns, and nicked my left ear. A TRUMP WOUND! It bled profusely for almost an hour, and after finally getting it stopped, got my shower. I skipped breakfast, had some lunch around 4p, and watched some TRASHCAR racing on TV. Yeah sure, Lunch Bucket Husk Joey Bidet 'stepped aside', but anyone with a functioning brain could see that coming. The corrupt networks and media went batshit, with unending coverage, and will for weeks. Y-A-W-N. Osambo kicked him out of the race. The demonKKKrats will dominate the news cycles and media from now until the 'convention' in August.

After dinner, I watched the news, and every freaking channel had non-stop "Biden no, Harris go" crap on all evening. Pathetic! I finished some niggling paperwork, and unplugged at 10:30.

Awake and up at 5:45a on Monday, to a very cloudy, 72°, humid morning, forecast to get to 84°, with heavy t-storms and showers, approaching from the south. Meh, we sure can use the rain. With fresh Kona Coffee, I scanned the weather and news headlines, and ran into 800 new conspiracy theories about Bidet's 'resignation' vs the Trump Assassination Attempt. Too darned much to read, but much to laugh about. Howie Carr tells us all that we really need to know. Heh.

The skies were getting storm-dark and ready to dump, as I left at 12:30p for points south of East York. I needed to get my usual 3 errands done, and ran into a major 2 car, head-on car accident, backing-up traffic for miles. I hit Dallastown... just as a t-storm opened-up with a downpour, flooding the streets and sidewalks. No complaints. I drove around back, ran for the back entrance to the plant, and went thru rooms full of amazing cleaners' machinery, and got that errand done. On the way home, I had one more stop at the pharmacy, to get some waiting Rxs -- no charge! -- and got home to unload. I ordered a Philly Cheese Steak, Loaded Cheese Tater Tots, and a Large 14" Thin Crust Pizza w/ 5 Toppings, from nearby Domino's. Mmmmmmmmmmmm, GOOD!. After a huge meal, I had a NICE 2HR SNOOZE ON THE LR COUCH. The humidity was back up to 85-90%, and it was awful outside. The rain started at 7p, and continued until sometime after 1a. JoAnne, my cleaning lady, would be in at 8:30a.

I caught the evening news, switched to Motor Trend's "Iron Resurrection" until 12midnight, and called it a day.

Up at 6a w/ alarm, on Tuesday, to a sunny, 72°, very humid morning. I made coffee, had a couple smokes in the open garage, fed the squirrels and birds, and tuned into the "CS Show LIVE". JoAnne arrived and got to her work. I scanned the news and weather: America's newest race, class and gender candidate is already on-the-go, with Biden's 'political corpse', not yet cold. Meh. The world is laughing, nay... HOWLING at us. Pathetic.

JoAnne finished around 11:15, left and I had some condo chores to do. I had a late lunch around 2p, checked the news and weather, and grabbed a 2hr nap. Lord help us: "Heels-Up Harris" has suddenly grabbed the demonKKKrat mantra and is running with it, and Hitlery Rotten Klintoon is "helping" her. "Kama-lama-ding-dong" (my contribution) is a nightmare on wheels. It's going to be another hard, comical, sad-for-America 4 months, until Nov 5th. Just pray that we win and can get those dangerous clowns out of office, and as many of the Leftist criminals into prison, as possible.

All the times that I've cried, keeping all the things I knew inside, it's hard, but it's harder to ignore it.

Sherry stopped by around 1p, and after spending time talking my the office-sunroom, drove to Flinchbaugh's Orchard & Farm Market to get some nice things. And we did. Sherry had to leave around 5:30, run some errands and get home. We did get plans made for next week, and may get to see each other sooner. I had dinner, watched the news, skipped Lunch Bucket Joey Bidet's 'Presidential Pile-of-Shit Circle Fest' from the WH -- nice recap of it -- watched Motor Trend's "Full Custom Garage" until midnight, and unplugged.

Up at 6:30a on Thursday, I made coffee, had a smoke in the open garage, tuned into the "CS Show LIVE", and scanned the online news and weather sites. 72°, heavily-overcast, very humid and light showers moving thru the area, I checked the stuff ahead for today, By 9, I switched over to the "CP Show LIVE", but CP was on vacation and the mundane. usual substitute was, sadly, lawful. Meh.

Sis stopped by at 1p, and I drove us down south to the HUGE Amish Markets at Shrewsbury complex, and then back to East York for Flinchbaugh's Orchard & Farm Market. Back at my condo at 4p, I loaded her goodies into her BMW x3 SUV, and she left. I put my stuff away -- but had some of the amazing Pistachio Bread with dinner -- caught the early news, had a 2hr snooze on the LR couch, and watched some "American Pickers" on History, until 11:30p. Lights out.

Tomorrow begins a new week here in the "Journal", and it'll be a left-wing circlefest in a lubricated sleeping bag, with Kama-ama-Ding-Dong's lamebrain antics and word-salad crap. I'm looking forward to 4+ months of the MSM assholes covering for her, just as they did for shit-for-brains Lunch Bucket Joe. Hopefully, the Congressional GOP can minimize her damages to America, but I'm not holding my breath.

The Curious Case of the Missing President.

Where's Brandon?

On Monday afternoon, Joe Biden’s doctor, Kevin O’Connor, composed a memo designed to reassure the American people. The president, who tested positive for Covid six days ago, has completed his tenth dose of Paxlovid, he wrote, and “his symptoms have almost completely resolved.” O’Connor reiterated that Biden “continues to perform all his presidential duties.”

After that letter was released, everyone here at The Free Press still had the same question: Where the hell is the president?

If Joe Biden’s decision to step down was extraordinary, so was the manner of his announcement. At this dramatic denouement of his fifty-year career in Washington, he declared the end of his reelection bid by tweeting out a letter. Since then, nothing. Or almost nothing. Late on Monday afternoon, he phoned his former campaign headquarters, now Kamala Harris HQ. “I know yesterday’s news was surprising and hard for you to hear, but it was the right thing to do,” Biden said on the call.

But we still haven’t seen the president in days.

Last Wednesday, Biden flew from Las Vegas, where he had been campaigning, to his beach house in Rehoboth, Delaware. It was there that he isolated and stewed, alongside only his immediate family and closest advisers, and reportedly came to the decision to step down. According to the White House daily schedule, the president will reemerge this afternoon and return to Washington.

Assuming that happens, the president’s disappearing act will be over, but it will have been a strange stretch in which Biden vanished at the most crucial moment.

Into the void left by the amazing disappearing president appeared all manner of theories about what is going on. Some wilder than others. Was the president faking his Covid? Did Biden even sign his own announcement? Is he much sicker than his aides and doctors are letting on? Is he even. . . alive?

For some in the legacy media, the proliferation of all these “conspiracy theories” is the real concern. The Daily Beast complained that Bill Ackman had “compared Biden to [a] ‘hostage’ in [a] conspiracy rant.” For poking fun at the missing president, Donald Trump was accused by New York magazine of having a “conspiracy-theory meltdown.”

But to me, at least, the surge in conspiracy theories isn’t as worrying as the fact we hadn’t seen the president in five whole days.

After all, if Biden isn’t well enough to face the American people, is he really well enough to “continue to perform all his presidential duties,” as his doctor claims? And with Biden isolating and Kamala booting up her own presidential campaign, who is actually running this country?

You would think a Democratic Party facing accusations of an elite subversion of the primary process would want maximum transparency right now. Instead, Biden has passed the torch in a way that seems seedier and more suspicious than it needed to.

Maybe Joe Biden knows all this. Maybe he is sulking. Maybe he is fully aware that his absence only makes his party look worse, and he’s reveling in the schadenfreude. But even after Biden pops up again, the case of the missing president will be another example of those in power complaining about a lack of public trust while finding new ways to make the problem worse.

A Technological Wake-Up Call.

This past week, one tiny mistake in the code of a single third-party provider, one designed to secure software, was released without proper staging. Over the course of hours that turned to days, vast swaths of the civilized world stopped working. Flights were grounded. Deliveries stopped. Bank software collapsed. Security systems froze. Even many electronic doors stopped working. All over the world.

It was the nightmare long predicted and long dreaded.

Personal computer systems were mostly unaffected, particularly those running iOS and Linux. The problem was networked computers and the software they were running from third-party provider CrowdStrike. The company sold the software as protection against cyberattacks. The software became the attack.

It was only a few weeks ago that this space wrote the following:

“The problem is that the technological revolution as we fashioned it 30 years ago gradually evolved in an ever more centralized way, wholly dependent on a weak and old-fashioned electrical grid of networks without much duplication or backstopping. The software, too, has become centralized for each industrial purpose. If one thing goes wrong in any system with a single point of failure, the whole comes to a grinding halt.”

Plus:
“It’s a terrifying thought that the whole of modern life hinges on such a thin foundation that can crack at any time, wholly changing reality in front of our eyes, taking down whole sectors, and disabling all functionality .... Any system can be hacked and compromised in any sector: car sales, real estate management, delivery systems, banking and finance, and payment processing. It can all be here today and gone tomorrow. All these systems claim to have redundancies, but we have no guarantees of that. And we’ll never really know until they are really tested. Redundancy is just a management slogan. It might be real but most likely is not. In fact, there have been very few serious stress tests of anything built over the past several decades. We’ve just barreled ahead, piling digit upon digit and trusting that everything is going to work just fine forever. We have no assurance of that.” What happened just a few weeks later was the anticipated nightmare.

All of this began decades ago with the obsession with creating vast networks, made necessary because Windows machines simply could not develop enough software to meet the market demand. Trust was high—I certainly trusted—and the networks grew and grew, both within firms and industries and all over the world. A popular new software would be widely adopted by industry and maintained by the provider.

Most of these related to end users but the real money was in software governing the administrative structure: security systems, cloud services, and other efficiencies. If they break, no user can fix them.

They always require centralized fixes, geeks with passwords and secret forms of access. This is all because of security, don’t you know, and no normal person could ever be trusted to fix one’s own machine much less update it.

Quick story from my personal work. It was perhaps 20 years ago when I was charged with upgrading all the office systems. I tapped a provider who immediately started building what was and is called an intranet, an internal network with a local server (which eventually moved to the cloud). As I watched this going on, I witnessed several occasions in which people’s machines needed to be updated but the user could not do it.

The provider immediately clarified that it would be charged with such a job.

I instantly pulled the plug on the whole scheme. Instead I insisted on free-standing, independently operating machines. There was no need for anything else since this was not a bank or a financial firm but merely an educational service. It struck me instantly that any other system would face constant breakages with aging hardware, software updates, security threats, and so on. The scheme struck me immediately as a huge racket to provide revenue to outside companies.

Sure, sometimes it is necessary but there was never any question about the problem. The issue is that a small breakage would bring down the whole. Now, back in those days, such systems were constructed only within a firm or institution. Over time, it became industry-wide and then up and down the supply chains. The approach ended up creating gigantic hierarchies of control in which only digital oligarchs possessed all control.

That works until it does not. When it does not, the result is catastrophic. It seemed obvious to me then, and still does, that we do not want vast digital networks in which a tiny breakage would render millions and billions of people helpless as they sit and stare at blue screens of death. There was NEVER any question that this could happen. It was just a matter of when.

And by the way, Apple took a different direction, centralizing all core software, and only reluctantly allowing applications with zero administrative access. Apple is usually behind the times in its software, a fact about which a generation of techies used to make fun. But no one is laughing now. Those systems were never threatened.

The frustrating feature of what happened last week is that nothing will change. Sure, the third-party providers will do every manner of internal investigation and swear to change. There will be loads of reports issued and everyone will pretend to build redundancies and run table-top games to prevent the last error. None of this will stop the next problem because it will be different.

The multitudes of large corporations that rely on huge technical hierarchies will keep them in place. They will keep using radically insecure Windows systems and trust providers with fancy logos and large market capitalizations. And there will be more and more breakages, and they will be longer and more devastating.

Nothing can change this.

I’m going to say something no one wants to hear. The world converted from analog to digital technology too quickly, without putting in safeguards against failure and with an eye to sustainability. It was a frenzy to rebuild the world, replacing steel and bricks with gum, tape, tissues, and gassy hopes of some cloud-based reality no one had ever seen.

It was made possible only via cheap credit, fiat money, government subsidies, and high-flying financial markets, without which none of this would have happened. Now we find that the whole of life depends on systems no one in particular controls, which have never really been tested, and which cannot be fixed. The possibility of global breakage for an unlimited amount of time is very real. Think of it: even our lights and air systems are networked and running on apps, to say nothing of the whole of the fiat-based and debt-driven monetary and financial systems themselves.

And yet here we are, with all the capital and energy being designated to building even more such systems, this time being run by artificial intelligence. Again, they are being constructed not as strong by virtue of decentralization but weak due to their central points of failure. As the parable says, these are houses built not on stone but sand.

The world will rue the day this switch was made without thinking. This is already happening right now. I know exactly what my Mennonite friends would say about all of this. It looks ever more like they might be correct.