Hello, everybody. As you can see, I haven't posted here since March.
I have stayed busy over at my Substack, Precipice, which has a fair number of subscribers and is where I post longer essays that tend to be about a wider range of topics.
I started Late in the Day a few years earlier (LITD, 2012; Precipice, 2019), and the intent has been to invite the public to fully grasp what has happened to this formerly recognizable thing called the West. I do a fair amount of that at Precipice as well, but LITD has always been a bit more topical and the posts more link-rich.
I guess what prompted me to wade back in over here is that I'd like a place to less formally gather my thoughts in response to each - or at least many - of the developments comprising the torrent of abrupt history-making whenever the mood strikes me. A place to feel my way toward inspiration for other projects.
Let's see; the last post I did here had to do with the Jeddah talks regarding Ukraine.
What a ten months it's been since then. Putin still has no interest in any kind of peace settlement. In fact, he's upped the savagery level of his missile and drone attacks.
There's the related issue currently on our plate of the Very Stable Genius's blathering about Greenland with random capitalizations and uses of quotation marks and the thank-you-for-your-attention-to-this-matter sign-off that characterize his social media posts. It’s yet another example of this ha-ha-am-I-kidding-on-the-square-or-deadly-serious “presidential” style that we’re saddled with. But it definitely has Denmark, and Europe generally, alarmed and discussing various what-if scenarios.
The bottom line in that arena is that the post-1945 international order is no more. We're back to spheres of influence. Brute force. (Hell, Stephen Miller says so.)
Venezuela? Sure, as an isolated development, it's great that Maduro has been captured and deposed. But let us consider that newly sworn in president Delcy Rodriguez is a Chavista through and through. As is interior minister Diosdado Cabello, who wields a blunt instrument, literally, in the country's government. And collectivos are boarding public buses and demanding that passengers hand over their phones so they can check for signs of support for Maduro's ouster. Then there's the VSG's clear indication that oil is his first priority. That's how Vance is thinking of it, too.
There's the situation with ICE in Minneapolis. I've watched some of the video. It does look to me like Renee Good was steering her car to the right, away from the agents. From what I can tell, they had options other than shooting her in the face. Is it true that she was a cause-y lefty with an edgy lifestyle? Sure. But she was an American citizen and her life is as precious as that of any other of God's children. And now both sides have dug in their heels, have glommed onto hard and fast positions that will brook no nuance.
So things will probably get increasingly confrontational between ICE and people on the streets of post-America's cities. And not only will the question of how to humanely address the situations of long-time residents from elsewhere who have lived productive lives in the US continue to get sidelined, more actual citizens will surely get caught up in the ugliness.
Anyway, I think I'll start chiming in here again with some degree of frequency.
I've been kind of missing the place.
