(I originally wrote the following as a comment on Booman’s recent post regarding the false attack alert in Hawaii. It grew, so here it is as a standalone post.)
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The recent “false nuclear alert” in Hawaii is the way the world will end. Not with a bang, and not with a whimper. Only sheer incompetence will be to blame.
I do not know how, why or as a result of whose incompetence this particular mistake happened…I half suspect that it was either a hack and/or an experiment to see how people reacted…but incompetence is now rampant all up and down this system.
Incompetence reigns, from your local garage helpers and checkout people right on up to the Senate and the White House with seemingly endless steps in between.
Senator Franken, meet Senator Arpaio. Senator Arpaio, meet Senator Manning. Senator Manning, meet President Trump. President Trump, meet the next president, President Winfrey. President Winfrey, meet another incompetent predecessor, President Butch II. President Clinton…if you are not too busy playing sex games with a star-struck intern/secretary and a cigar on the Oval Orifice rug…you oughta pay attention, too. Or are you too busy wondering when the #MeToo tribe is going to catch up with your own compulsive, philandering ass?
Alla you schmucks, meet the shade your first true forbear…the real founder of the incompetence brigade, President Reagan. In 1981 the president of the massively nuclear armed United States was a wooden B movie actor rapidly descending into senility, a man who governed by the advice of his equally incompetent actress wife’s astrologer. Why keep trying if that’s the case? At that point we had already descended into Marx’s second stage all history, farce. When you get there, It’s every man for himself and competence has no more value. Only greed and the most primitive survival instincts are left.
And here we jolly well are, aren’t we…37 or so years later, our tails between our legs, cringing at every glance at the news and every “HOTTEST THING EVER” mass notification on our cellphones.
Farce, up and down the system.
We await the ultimate pratfall with nothing but fear as our protection.
So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is…fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.
It only took about 48 years to descend from FDR to President B Movie, and it’s been almost entirely downhill from there.
As the radio comics Bob and Ray used to say…themselves products of the FDR years, witnesses to the beginnings of our decline:
Best of luck in the future.
Call if you get work.
And hang by your thumbs.
It’s back to work for me…
And…have a nice day.
Later…
AG
P.S. As for me, if a nuclear attack ever actually happens I wish to be exactly, precisely at Point Zero. Quick. Over and out; I’ll see you in the next dimensions if there are any. Bye bye…