HAIR SALON NAPOLEONS IN THE YANKEE CAPITAL

Guest Post by Fred Reed

Pickle Boy Steps Up

Dill, Sweet, or Kosher?

March 21, 2014

Now, about this Crimea thing: What I figure is, the top part of the Feddle Gummint got dropped on its head when it was little, and the rest is just asleep, or might as well be. We look to be ruled by a bus-station of dumb-ass rich brats in a constant state of martial priapism. I can’t understand it. Out of three hundred million Americans, and lots of them went to school and can pretty much read, we get a slick minor pol out of Chicago for President and Pickle-Boy Kerry for Secretary of State, God knows why. Before that, we had Hillary, former First Housewife. Even god couldn’t explain that. And they throw their weight around just like they had some.

Now Obama’s threatening Russia about the Crimea. He may know where it is. I admit the possibility. We live in a strange world, and unexpected things can happen. What I can’t see is, why he thinks the Ukraine is Washington’s business. Last I heard, the Crimea was hung off into the Black Sea by the Isthmus of Perekop, like a hornet’s nest from a peach tree.

Why do we care about it? I guess if it gets to be part of Russia, Arkansas is next to go.

Maybe it moved, though. Continental drift is a reality. It could be anywhere by now, maybe in the Gulf of Mexico. And even if it ain’t, I guess we need a war with Russia over a place that’s none of our business. I mean, I don’t see how we can get along without one.

Now, about being dropped oin their heads: : Pkcle Boy has said of the Crimea, “You don’t just, in the 21st century, behave in 19th century fashion by invading another country on a completely trumped-up pretext.” I reckon he hasn’t heard of Iraq either. The world is full of countries, and it’s hard to keep track of which ones you’ve wrecked.

I have a strategy. If we want to do those Russian rascals in, bring’em lower than dirt, we ought to arrange to have the American public elect their government. You know, on some kind of contract. Then they’d be ruled, like us, by a nursery full of pansies, milquetoasts, ethno-picks, growly feather-weights, diesel dykes, and sorry rich kids who never got into a school-yard fight. Russia would never recover.

We won’t either.

One thing you learn in the school yard is never call a tougher kid’s bluff. It might not be a bluff. Uh-oh. This Putin guy, I hear they call him Vlad the Hammer: I bet there’s a reason. And Pickle Boy looks to me like a bug on an anvil. It’s Little Lord Fauntleroy calling out Mike Tyson deep in the ‘hood. Where Mommy can’t help.

I see that Genghis Obama has sent a destroyer, the closest he can come I guess to a Golden Horde, to the Black Sea, grrr, woof. It’s going to conduct military exercises—push-ups, maybe. Now, that’s going to frighten Vlad. I guess a sense of humor is a good thing in a president. Maybe he can amuse Putin to death. I mean, by all the gods and little catfish, what does he think a tiny irritating boat like that is going to do—torpedo the Crimea? It doesn’t float, Barack. It’s stuck to the bottom. You can’t sink it.

To put it simply enough that even the hair-salon Napoleons in the Yankee Capital might be able to understand, but most likely  won’t, don’t make threats that the other guy knows you can’t follow through on. This idea is called “brains,” or sometimes “self-preservation.” Them days is gone when Washington could send the bathtub toys pretty much anywhere in the world and everybody would fall on his face and say, “Yassuh, bwana, yassuh.” Any third-grader in a country school in Georgia can see how things stand: Pickle Boy and the Jellyfish can (1) start a shooting war with Russia, or (2) back down and get laughed at by the whole world. Ain’t any other choices that I can see. God save us from little men with big egos and no judgement.

Now, I read a lot of history. It’s because I don’t have to spend all my time getting elected and posing for cameras and lying. A patch of history I’ve always liked is World War One. It teaches you how to get into a big war that doesn’t turn out like you think which is what usually happens in wars

You start by getting a toy president, or amateur Kaiser, who doesn’t know squat but you can’t tell him because that’s disloyal or, depending, racist. Besides, he can have you shot. Then you let the military get the upper hand—von Tirpitz, von Schlieffen, von Petraeus, von Hagel, they’re all the same. It helps if the amateur president or Kaiser wants to be a Wahhhhh! President or Kriegs Kaiser. You know how short men act. It would be less trouble to buy them a codpiece.

Then you surround him with incompetent toadies like von Bulow or Pickle Boy. Then you tell the public about German Exceptionalism and how God meant for Germany to rule and civilize the world and everybody hates Germany because it’s so wonderful so we need a bigger and bigger army. It works every time. It helps to tell people there’s a Serb under everybody’s bed, or an a Brit, or a commie or a Islam or terrorist or something. Pretty much anything will do. I figure it must get crowded under those beds.

The final part is to get yourself in trouble by having dam-fool mutual-defense treaties. You tell half the world that if anybody attacks anybody else, you are gonna jump in. Now the Kaiser had his own list of these traps. But Pickle Boy and the Obama Squad labor under the accreted load from years before.  So Washington has to defend Japan, Estonia, Korea, the Philippines, Georgia (bof’em), most all of Europe, Ukraine, and lots of other places nobody ever heard of or wants to..

It just might be smarter to let the rest of the world settle its own problems.

I’d like to set these milli-Talleyrands and micro-Metternichs down and see whether they know anything at all about, say, Russia. I mean, like where it came from, how it got to be what it is, and what it wants, and why it acts the way it does. I don’t mean hard questions, like what did Oleg nail to the gates of Constantinople. Could Relish Man tell me who Denikin, Kolchak, and Wrangel were? What was the NEP? Just simple Russian history. I’ll bet good money they wouldn’t have the tiniest underfed clue. But they can bark from under the sofa.

A wise old newspaper editor once told me: “A burro is an ass. A burrow is a hole in the ground. A reporter should know the difference.” Now, I wonder why that thought just came to mind.

I remember what my Uncle Hant told Burnside before the battle of Fredericksburg: “Jinral, if you got the brains of a goddamed retarded piss-ant, you won’t try to cross that river under all them guns.” You couldn’t take Hant anywhere in polite company. But he had a point.