This isn't normal

Anyone out there a little fuzzy from staying up to watch the end of the big game last night?

I'll confess here that I wanted the 49ers to win.  Not a big fan of these inevitable dynasties, we suffered through it with Belichick and Brady and now this.  Despite how much I like and appreciate Andy Reid being something of a throwback in many ways, there are members of his team that are the very definition of the popular and thus overexposed athlete.

There, I feel better.

What I came here for was to discuss what's being said at campaign events by the former President, who's had a break from court appearances to campaign for the job he really wants.  I understand fully that he comes from outside of "mainstream" politics and that's a big part of his appeal to a certain percentage of voters.  But making disparaging remarks about anyone who's serving in the military (active duty or reserves or National Guard) is not appropriate.  Nor is implying that foreign dictators operate their governments more efficiently than our country's democratically elected leadership does.

This contempt for norms has stretched to include NATO, which was a critical element of rebuilding Europe after World War II, and protecting what was reconstructed thereafter.  Until he became President in 2016, there wasn't a lot of discussion about whether we received fair benefit from being a charter member of NATO, but now there is.  And the Republican Party, formerly the primary vanguard of appropriate foreign policy, is going right along with him as he says if a NATO member is delinquent in its payments to the alliance, they should be subject to whatever Vladimir Putin and Russia wish to do to them in response.

While we're at it, let's all take a breath as we watch Israel defy the wishes of the civilized world and at least take a step back from this all-out war that appears to be underway in the wake of attacks in October.  Millions of occupants of the Gaza Strip were told to migrate south, they did, and now they're all concentrated there.  Now these same people, refugees in their own adopted home areas, are being told to evacuate again.  But Egypt doesn't want them, so the question becomes "where will they go" or even be able to go?

I'm reminded at times like these of an operative line in the Rob Reiner/Aaron Sorkin film "The American President," in which President Andrew Shepherd, played ably by Michael Douglas, states flatly that "we have serious problems and need serious people to solve them."  If that's not the truth....

Have a good week.