Friday Afternoon Long Read

[chris_gerrib]

Various thoughts, saved up throughout the week, and regurgitated here.

Syria

I have long been able to hold two thoughts of Syria, namely that Assad is a wart on the ass of prosperity and that US involvement in Syria, especially military involvement, would be counterproductive at best.  So I’m not fond of Trump’s cruise missile attack on the country.  It appears to be knee-jerk and ineffective, never a good combination.  As Camestros Felapton says, even if one argues that Assad is a cancer, surgically excising him requires a skilled surgeon.  Trump does not appear to be that surgeon.

Trump and the Alt-Right

I’ve not said much about Trump as of late.  There’s only so many ways I can say he’s a complete idiot leading a party of semi-complete idiots without becoming tiresome.  I will say it’s become amusing (for “walking to the gallows” values of amusing) to watch his alt-right fans do contortions about his latest action.  The alt-right, including noted military expert Scott Adams, had decided that Tuesday’s chemical attack was either a false flag or a total fake.

Seeing Trump respond as if it were real threw them for a loop.  I note that Adams has deduced that this is yet another example of Trump’s playing 4-D chess while us mere mortals are playing checkers.  Color me unconvinced.

Dreams

From serious to trivial: last night, I dreamed I was sleeping, or rather trying to sleep, in all sorts of odd places.  In my dream, when my 80+ year-old great aunt asked me what I was doing, that was the thing that woke me up.

Dreamhost

I did not read the new LiveJournal terms of service that was forced upon me.  Having been told that it makes clear LiveJournal is under Russian law, I shall be moving with deliberate speed Dreamhost.

Comments

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

As I said elsewhere, all of this is aimed at the Russian Живой Журнал users.  The very fact that the new User Agreement is only binding in Russian tells us this; if we mattered, or what we do mattered, an English-language edition would have been vetted and considered binding.

LiveJournal is a HUGE political engine in Russia, way far more than we ever have had here.  That's what this is all about.  We leftovers are below the radar.

Update:  Even so, you have a point (http://baron-waste.livejournal.com/2566329.html).