In 1877, President Grant, just out of office, embarked on a world tour. He had been pretty much at the helm of great events since 1861 and he and his wife and long talked of a day when they would just travel the world…this was the fulfillment of what must, at times, have seemed an idle hope. They were in no hurry and stopped at many places along the way so the tour went on into 1879 (and, of course, travel by steamship and train is much slower than modern methods). In the course of this tour they visited the UK, France, Germany, Italy, Turkey (including the Holy Land then under Turkish rule), Egypt, Greece, Scandinavia, Russia, Poland, Austria-Hungary, Spain, Portugal, Ireland, India, Burma, Siam, Indochina and Japan. Aside from his wife, he was accompanied by his son, Jesse, a journalist to document the trip and one aide. He was never under any threat of harm, was greeted warmly wherever he went and generally had a splendid time.
This, my friends, was the real world. A sane world. Of course, there were dangers – Lincoln had been assassinated in 1865. The Empress of Austria would be assassinated in 1898. But the world was sane. Safe. Murder was a rare and shocking thing (my grand-uncle Eddie Diggins was murdered in a speakeasy in 1927 and it made the New York Times – back pages, sure; but a murder in LA of someone of no real prominence made the papers in New York; that is how odd murder was). Now, why bring this up?
Because Trump has removed Secret Service protection for a lot of people of late – most notably John Bolton. This is causing quite a lot of outrage in the Ruling Class as these people are allegedly under threat of assassination, especially by agents of Iran. This might well be true – and I respond to this worry by saying that John Bolton and the rest of these people who had a hand in making this insane world should suffer the consequences of their actions. We’re not supposed to be in a world where a former official of the US government is at risk of assassination. We’re supposed to be so powerful and respected that nobody but a sheer madman would dream of killing one of our people. The solution to a threat by the Mullahs in 2025 was to have removed the Mullahs from power in 1979 when they took our Embassy. Our Ruling Class didn’t. And the replacements which have moved in since then never made any real response to the 1979 outrage. Indeed, some of the Ruling Class replacements who have come and gone positively encouraged the Mullahs to remain in power.
So, if a Mullah tries to kill you, I’ve got no sympathy.
We’re not supposed to live in a world of terrorist bombs, assassins, bums sleeping in tents, illegals pouring across borders, grooming gangs in England, sex tourism in Thailand, gangsters running Haiti, Hamas sending in rape/murder squads, 300,000 Americans overdosing on drugs, bridges that can’t be repaired for years, wildfires burning out of control for lack of water…you getting the picture? This world has gone mad and I don’t propose to protect the people who made this world from harm. They should have thought about it while they were destroying everything…I’m not going to hide a guy behind walls and guns where he’s safe from the consequences of his actions. Perhaps this will concentrate some minds going forward? Make some decisions go different ways?
We can only hope – meanwhile, let those who made the mess live in it.
UPDATE: Right around the time I wrote this, Trump ordered the declassification of the JFK, MLK and RFK files. I’m not expecting much – everyone has had plenty of time to carefully sanitize them. OTOH, our Ruling Class has a lot of very stupid people in it so maybe they didn’t? In these cases, I always recall that the Brits are keeping part of their Himmler death documents secret until 2045. I’ve always thought this weird – the “conspiracy theory” about it is that the Brits offed Himmler and faked his suicide because they didn’t want him to spill it about contacts between the UK (especially, perhaps, Royal Family) and Himmler during the war. But, if so, why not just destroy the documents? But, if the documents have been destroyed, why keep them secret until 2045? It is just weird…and maybe someone sifting through, say, the JFK files can shed some light on the sequence of events…like why the FBI didn’t have Oswald under surveillance given he was a known Commie kook and the President was coming to town?


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