Current Events: Incompetence and Lies from the White House, Anthem Protests, Fascism Returns to Spain, and More

As usual, there has been a lot going on in the world that I would like to discuss in depth, but as is also usual, I don't really have the time to give the topics the treatment they deserve. In the US, the on-going disaster that is the current administration continues to supply a wealth of material to activists, pundits, comedians, legal experts and psychiatrists. The handling of the
post-hurricane clean-ups, particularly in Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, has been abysmal, and it hasn't been made better by the orange-faced narcissist's incessant attempts to praise himself and the job he has been doing. The lies uttered by him and his chief of staff in relation to his handling of condolence calls to dead soldiers were disgraceful, as was his spokeswoman's claim that people shouldn't be allowed to question the chief of staff, despite his attacks on the congresswoman involved being proved totally false, simply because he had a long record of military service. The attempts to distract from the extremely serious scandals engulfing the administration by obsessing over long disproven claims about Hillary Clinton and the Obama administration is pathetic and shows that the fact that Clinton won the popular vote by a large margin still makes Donnie and his minions insecure.

And then of course there were his disgusting attempts to use the bully pulpit to attack NFL players protesting racial injustice by quietly kneeling during the national anthem. There is much I could say on this latter topic, and I might elaborate on it more in the future. But to summarize some of my thoughts: first of all, I don't even think they should be playing the national anthem before public events like NFL games in the first place. But since they do, whether the players sit, kneel, raise their fists, lock arms, scratch themselves, or lie down and nap has no effect on anyone else either present at the game or watching on television, so no one has any good reason to object. Those who say the players should "just play ball" should just shut up, as the players have continued to play ball to the best of their ability, and what they do during the pre-game activities in no way disrupts the actual games. Finally, the anthem (which is just an old, though fairly interesting, tune written for an English gentlemen's club paired with rather bellicose lyrics written by a fellow who had a rather mixed record on slavery) and the flag are just symbols. It is absurd to elevate them above the actual principles on which the nation was founded, such as freedom of opinion and liberty and justice for all, by saying people should be obligated to stand solemnly for them rather than silently kneel in order to draw attention to the gap between the country's ideals and the reality lived by many of its citizens. Attempting to force people to stand for the anthem is more befitting an authoritarian state than a free and democratic society.

On the international front, the situation in Catalonia is another mess. The Catalonian leadership bears some responsibility for this, as its handling of their independence drive has been erratic and clumsy. But the major responsibility for the rapid deterioration of the situation lies with Spain's central government. The heavy-handed and violent attempt to prevent the Catalans from holding a referendum made it look as if the current regime wants to take Spain back to the days of the fascist Franco regime (and the king's similarly pro-repression speech shows that Spain was fortunate to have his father, not him, on the throne in the post-Franco period when there was an attempt to restore the dictatorship). While one could argue whether it is actually a good idea for Catalonia to become independent or under what conditions they could actually become independent, there is no excuse for using violent methods to attempt to block the vote. Other European leaders haven't looked too good in the whole affair either, as they tacitly supported the Spanish government, even if they had reservations about some of their tactics.

Then there are the ongoing crimes against humanity taking place in Myanmar, which while they have slipped off the front pages should still receive international attention until Myanmar changes its ways. The wars in Syria, South Sudan, Congo and other places shouldn't be forgotten either. Meanwhile, Xi Jinping is continuing his campaign to set himself up as a virtual dictator in China amid continuing suppression of dissent.

On the positive side, there were some cool astronomical discoveries, the biggest being the observation of gravitational waves and various forms of electromagnetic radiation from the merger of two neutron stars in a galaxy over 100 million light years away. More recently, an object was spotted passing through the inner solar system that seems to be on a hyperbolic orbit, meaning that it came not from the distant Oort Cloud like most long period comets but from outside our solar system altogether. While I haven't seen anyone else mention this, this discovery is reminiscent of the beginning of the Arthur C. Clarke novel Rendezvous with Rama, though presumably there are no signs that this real-life interstellar visitor is a rapidly-spinning cylinder....