I feel like I write quite often about looming government shutdowns. There’s a lot of shutdown-averted-at-the-last-minute content on this blog, and I have to say that it’s not my favorite topic. I’m posting about continuing resolutions almost as much as I post about handbags and books and irrational fears. It’s turning into Politico around here. I need to return to my regular beat.
Friday was a rather heavy news day even without the stupid “will they or won’t they fund the government, which is literally their only fucking job” drama. I was home working that day, and listening to and checking the news all day long, because a shutdown would have put me temporarily out of work. Any other day, shutdown brinkmanship would have been the top news story on every broadcast and site, but between Kate Middleton’s cancer announcement and the terrorist attack in Russia, the Capitol Hill crisis was pretty much an afterthought.
*****
I’m not sure why none of the online conspiracy theorists seemed to even consider the possibility that the Princess of Wales, who had just undergone major abdominal surgery, might have had cancer. It was the first thing I thought of. Of course, I hoped that I was wrong. But when she disappeared from view for a few weeks, the Internet in its dubious wisdom imagined everything from a bad haircut to marital turmoil to plastic surgery gone wrong. I’m not a royalist, and I couldn’t care less about the Princess’s hair or the state of her marriage to the future King, but I am very sorry for her, as I would be sorry for any seriously ill mother of three young children (and for the record, even if she was laying low because of bad hair or a fight with her husband, it would be nobody’s business). I hope she recovers quickly and regains full health.
And speaking of conspiracy theories, I know that ISIS claimed responsibility for Friday’s horrendous mass murder in Russia. But the timing is a little suspicious, isn’t it? Ever since I read Anna Politkovskaya’s A Russian Diary, which contains much of the reporting that got her killed, I immediately suspect a Putin-led or at least a Putin-enabled plot any time there’s violence or even a natural disaster in Russia. I believe Politkovskaya’s theory (and I think many experts believe it too) that the 1999 apartment bombings in Russian cities were not the work of Chechen terrorists, but a Putin-engineered false flag operation that gave him the excuse he needed to escalate his war in Chechnya. Putin has a whole network of violent criminal gangs to carry out his orders, and he’s not above working with ISIS, either. I’m not sure why he would have chosen ISIS rather than one of his usual gangs of thugs, but maybe he’s planning something in the Middle East again. Maybe he actually believes that he can fight wars in Ukraine and Syria at the same time. I’m sorry for all of the victims, no matter who is responsible, but I’m pretty sure that ISIS didn’t act alone.
*****
The shutdown, as you probably know, was averted. I went back to work on Monday morning, as I always do; and had a pretty good day at work, as I almost always do. I’m very lucky. I like my job, which is neither dangerous nor physically demanding. I’m not in a war zone or in a refugee camp. And I wasn’t on the Baltimore Key Bridge (we have a DC Key Bridge too) last night, unlike those unfortunate construction workers. That must have been terrifying. It was terrifying to watch on TV, especially if you’ve driven back and forth across that bridge many times, as I have. Seeing the video of the bridge just dropping like Lincoln Logs into the Patapsco River, I thought that January 6, 2021 was the last time I’d watched a news broadcast with that much “what the hell is happening” disbelief and shock. It’s still hard to believe - a boat crashes into a bridge, and the whole thing just collapses, in seconds. A major local landmark is just gone. It’s Tuesday now and it’s another big national news day; but in Maryland, the bridge is all we’re talking about.
No comments:
Post a Comment