The sun is out. The sky is still cloudy, though – but I like the variegated expanse more than the single texture, whether all clear, all blue, or all coated.
I feel I’m being evasive here.
I went to bed last night with the news of US airstrikes against Syria (and indirectly against Russia) ringing through my head, and all the hawks across every spectrum lining up with Trump on this, rah-rah-rah-ing… No variegated sky there, just a unison of clear blazing sky …or dank coatedness, depending on your perspective.
I’m horrified by this turn of events, and I don’t know the extent to which I’m being played, either. If you read articles – as I did yesterday, hours before the strike was revealed – about memetic warfare (papers, PDFs), you know there’s propaganda involved on both sides. At the same time, in my heart, I wonder why we (the US) should play cop or referee here in the first place. Then I start to question all the Sarin gas stories, and to me it all feels like Iraq and WMD all over again.
I was adamantly against that war from the start, and never believed the WMD bullshit for even one single minute. Not one.
Then in turn I feel badly for questioning the Sarin gas attack story, except that perhaps it really wasn’t Assad. At some level, you have to wonder why he’d do this. Then there’s Tillerson and Haley saying a week ago that Assad can stay, and then, boom, a week on and Assad has (allegedly!) gassed civilians – and, oh my god, think of the children (that old canard, always good for a bomb or two) – and all of a sudden it’s “regime change” time? Then, even if I read – and think – “Well, Raytheon is happy,” I wonder if that’s part of the memetic warfare going on. What a clusterfuck.
In other news, W. came home on the 3:20p.m. train yesterday and seemed confident he has a new job.
Last night I discovered that S. is on Facebook, posting extremely silly videos of himself and another Francophone acting out an elaborate anti-Trump skit in both English and French, with a bit of Spanish on S.’s part at the end. It’s incredibly old-fashioned and unsophisticated, which made it kind of embarrassing to watch in some ways. The underlying authenticity of its political intent was dressed up in this ridiculous old European charade which has no purchase whatsoever, really, on our current times. The editing was kind of slick, with some stop-motion effects, but the content and acting was pure postwar continental European (mostly French). It made S. seem a lot older than he is (b.’43). He has also filled out, not as skinny as he used to be. We none of us are, I guess. Very strange to watch. It reminded me of the silly one-off newsletter (satirical) we (LM., SMc., SH., et al.) put out, our silly cartoons and faux scripts… I’d like to think I’m past that (it was ’83 or so), but, somehow, S. doesn’t seem to be. He really liked our effort back then, too, never mind that it was rather puerile.
The sun is now frying me here, at the window. It’s still cold outside, though. The heat’s still on. The sky has a crack in it, pure blue, all clear. Radio signals are made of light, too.