A likeable feature on Facebook raised a series of memories enshrined there from this date, including this gem:
Posted there semi-ironically and in no small measure to reinforce the glories of branded curmudgeonry , its appearance today caused a moment’s pause and reflection on how such an image comports with my contemporary state of mind. The answer is, quite nicely, thank you.
Make no mistake, we live quite apart from others, and no one is violating the sanctity of of our physical boundaries. To the extent that the boundary is violated, it is almost certainly a trusty delivery-person bringing to us the bounties of our global empire (arriving tomorrow: The Howe Dynasty: The Untold Story of a Military Family and the Women Behind Britain's Wars for America).
No, my steady adoption of the sentiments above come as I turn inward and local, rejecting the outward and national. I have wistfully grown to quote the Bible/George Washington/Lin-Manuel Miranda as a means of characterizing this evolution:
And he shall judge among many people, and rebuke strong nations afar off; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks: nation shall not lift up a sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. But they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid . . . Micah (4:3-4)
The thing about my implementation of the above though, is that it is not coming as the result of grandeur and divine intervention, so much as it arises from a growing sense of powerlessness against ignorance, primarily the ignorance of my fellow citizens. My confidence in this nation is shaken, and a life-long devotion to national security, national politics, and international relations grows increasingly dim. My obsession in my work and writing over the last four decades has been to promote American naval power, the rule of law, individual liberty, and free markets; and on all fronts, these seem increasingly quixotic pursuits. Hence the luminous attraction of my vine and fig tree. Here, corruption will not be celebrated; coarseness and incivility will not be admired; ignorance and know-nothingism is not substituted for wisdom, experience, and competence. Here, that which was always of the highest importance—(but because of my flaws not sufficient)—the love of a good woman and two wonderful daughters, the peace and beauty of the farm and river, life in a town with issues worth knowing about (and which I—irrespective of where I’ve lived—have always ignored)—is slowly assuming not only a place of sufficiency, but of joy and contentedness.
I realize that no retreat from the world will inoculate me from ignorance (especially my own), and that what I’m describing here is no Walden, no “Outermost House”. But this notion of “Get Off My Lawn” grows in me, as I look at the hash that is modern American life. While my confidence in the nation is on shaky footing, my own sense of contentment grows. I am coming to grips with the reality that the grand ambitions of my life are unlikely to come to pass, and rather than causing in me some hole, some longing, some sense of deficiency, it is liberating. I will not be able to bring about a larger, more powerful Navy. I may just get the new doors installed on my garage. I will not be able to convince the political/military establishment of the United States that centralization in the Department of Defense and in “Jointness” renders this island continent less secure and prosperous. But I did assemble two stand-up planters full of a wonderful assembly of spices. I will not arrest the decline of the Republican Party into ruinous populism. I just might get ahead of the relentless weeds popping up through my gravel driveway.
Come out and see me. Just stay off the lawn.
“…preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States…”
These words come straight from the Oath of Office required of the President of the United States, as stipulated in the Constitution of said nation. Where I come from, this provision requires the President to not only abide by the Constitution but to, you know, act in accordance with its strictures. And while there are (in)famous examples of Presidents not doing so (Lincoln, habeas corpus, Civil War), extension of the moratorium on evictions directed by the CDC as a public health measure does not seem to rise to the level of national emergency that might provide a President with cover for obviously unconstitutional acts.
Because the President is not known for his verbal acuity, his own words on the subject provide insight into the problem.
“The bulk of the constitutional scholarship says that it’s not likely to pass constitutional muster,” the president said on Tuesday afternoon. “But there are several key scholars who think that it may — and it’s worth the effort.”
Putting aside the fact that the President has worked in and around politics and the law for 174 years (and was at one time the actual Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee), it strikes me as reasonable to expect that the most powerful man in the free world has access to superb legal minds. And when they tell him that an act is unconstitutional, it strikes me as counter to the Oath above to proceed onward with it, irrespective of how popular the policy is to the mewling WokeBase of the Democratic Party.
Is this an impeachable act? Of course it is. The President of the United States cannot simply blow off the Constitution. Should he be impeached for it? Of course not. But it would be helpful if members of his own party weren’t criticizing him for not aggressively lawyer shopping and rather focused on criticizing him for acting outside the bounds of his office.
On Cryptocurrency
Whilst reviewing the Sunday New York Times the other day, I happened across this longish piece on Cryptocurrency. It is important now and again, to force oneself to read on a subject in which one has no interest, but which the society around one seems to find quite interesting. The Sunday New York Times is replete with such fodder, and as a means to punish myself for ongoing sin, I tend to read one such story a week. Not having access to a piece on transgender-owned craft gin startups in Paraguay, I decided to devote myself to cryptocurrency.
I am 56 years old, my investment portfolio is appropriate for a man of my age, although I did spend the first sixteen years of my post college life applying all my resources to cars, women, and alcohol, while wasting the rest. In my late 30’s I straightened up and began to fly right.
Like epidemiology, investing is something that I am by education and capacity fit to have pleasant conversations about but upon which I am wholly unqualified to opine expertly. My nest-egg is managed by people who I assume to be better positioned to do so, and who care more than I do about being expert in that field. I do not wish to have some Vanguard Analyst poaching my territory as a navalist, and so I’ll leave her to the money management.
That said, the cool kids are abuzz with enthusiasm for what is broadly referred to as “cryptocurrency”, and in order to perhaps have a pleasant conversation about it some day, I consumed the article under consideration. I come away from it with little more understanding of cryptocurrency than I entered it, with no additional desire to instruct my officious money managers to get me into it, and with likely even less of a desire to have a pleasant conversation about it.
Further to my curmudgeonly life approach discussed above, I plan to treat cryptocurrency like I’ve treated video games—as something for the kids to obsess about. In the mid 90’s when I was a whelp in my early 30’s, the “kids” (Ensigns and Lieutenants JG) on my ship were nuts about video games, and I applied a jaundiced eye to them almost immediately, one I have continued to apply ever since. It is this jaundice I choose now to apply to cryptocurrency. I don’t understand it. I can’t explain it. I don’t want to explain it.
That said, as I sit here and apply the dwindling brain power I possess to the subject, it occurs to me that I have little or no idea how to explain the existence of ANY means of monetary exchange not backed up by some store of value. But I’m too old to bother with that, and so I’ll keep sending the money to the folks at Vanguard.
Another Cross-Country Jaunt
On Friday, I will fly across this great continent and rendezvous with my oldest daughter in California to take custody of her car for the drive back to Easton, MD. I know some of you are saying “Wahoo, you just DID this” and those of you would be right. But her job ends Friday and if she drove the car back across country, there wouldn’t be any time for her, her sister, and her mother to spend time together before said sister and mother begin a drive of their own back to college. Least I can do.
The May version of this trip was a meander and a ramble, covering an average of less than 400 miles a day with a few stops and an extra night in Tahoe. None of that this time. The plan is for 600 miles a day, all business. I’m considering a few special editions of the CW substack, but we’ll have to see how I feel at the end of the days ahead. No posh steakhouses this time, it will be Applebees and Perkins from what I see on the route….