Tunnel Vision and Situational Awareness (and politics)

I'm very aware that I don't always know what's going on.

       I wrote on the subject of situational awareness a few weeks ago, and now that I'm back at work and getting caught up on politics and other things that I blithely ignore when I'm at home (in favor of good barbecue, shooting guns, fishing, swimming, boating, cold beer and chasing Inappropriately Hot Foreign Wife around the kitchen), I realize where some of my knowledge gaps lie.


   I can't help but note that there is truly nothing new under the sun. Whether it's Clinton's corrupt yet unstoppable machinations, worthy of Crassus, Sanders' promises of increased bread and circus, channeling Graccus, it's all the same old shit.

 More broadly, the Republican elite are losing their minds in fear of Trump crossing the Rubicon and establishing himself on the banks of the Tiber. There's certainly a sense that should this happen, things will change... but history says otherwise.

 I don't know where my vote lies now. I know who I like (plural), not whom I will support, just yet.  We sure could use a Cato the Elder, but Cato, being brilliant, could only rise so far. I think we could do worse than a Trump presidency, but the man's no conservative, just a wave-rider with a good sense of the flow coming from the Vox Populi. "You could do worse" is a challenge to do so, not a comfort.

     Our multi-culti masturbatory one-world fantasies have failed us but refuse to die. The world has gotten a lot uglier, and there's not much value, in my opinion, in spending time decrying the condition of the Vienna Opera House when the Ottomans are at the city walls.  Lots of folk accuse Trump supporters of being an undirected monomaniacal cult, but there's a point when it is worth taking seriously the mob's concerns. We really don't want to rely on another Charles Martel to save our asses from the Turk. What happens if our great military leaders can't pass the Loyalty Test and display enough concern about Global Warming?
            

    Too many questions, not enough answers. But we know what happened to Rome. It wasn't built in a day, or dismantled in just one, either, thank God.