Weekly Roundup (Dec 1, 2023) (Patreon)

What a week to be an elderly statesman. Sandra Day O'Connor passed this morning, just a couple days after Henry Kissinger. How does Jimmy Carter feel about outliving Ronald Reagan, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell, and Henry Kissinger? Somebody should talk to him.

OK. Let's talk about Kissinger. There are two kinds of people: those who know that Henry Kissinger was the greatest war criminal of post-WWII American history, and people who are wrong. Reagan, the Bushes, Obama, and Trump simply did not have enough time in the Oval Office to kill as many people as Kissinger. Kissinger knowingly and gleefully condemned millions of people to death in the belief that holding political power is the greatest of all ends. And given that he died at the jaw-dropping age of 100 without ever having spent a day in jail, he may have had a point.

We live in Henry Kissinger's world. Netanyahu's elegiac tribute to Kissinger makes that clear. The invasion of Gaza is the sort of thing that happens in a world where Henry Kissinger ordered the U.S. military to deploy "anything that flies on anything that moves" in Cambodia, without facing real consequences. Maybe The Hard Times was right about Kissinger dying of a broken heart over the temporary ceasefire in Gaza. 

It doesn't seem like we have much good news at the moment. A crazed incestuous libertarian crypto-bro is the president-election of Argentina, one of the countries where Kissinger's knack for statesmanship kicked off the ghastly neoliberal nightmare we live in today. The most progressive president in contemporary American history is enabling a genocide in the Levant. It doesn't look like things are getting better.

Maybe there are flashes of hope. Any ceasfire in Gaza is good news, at least for a short time. George Santos getting expelled from Congress is funny. And frankly, even if Kissinger was never prosecuted for his crimes, it's nice to live in a world that doesn't have him in it anymore. Our next step is to dismantle everything he ever achieved.

In my own world, oh boy. I've had to start over on the biggest project of my college career. But I have time to pull it off. And I'm finally geared to graduate after about eight years of college. No idea what my next gig is (and if you have any job leads for a writer/reporter, preferably in New York state, send them my way). But there's something liberating about the unknown. Maybe the future of the world is unknown too. Let's hope we all get some big surprises soon.