Feeling Ill, Plus A Blast From The Past

      Yesterday, I spent much of the day with a digestive upset.  It was the kind of thing that will take one's attention right off world affairs.  Frantically hoping you'll get down the hall in time to avert personal disaster overrides wondering what kinds of large-scale disasters various world leaders are dreaming up.

      Nevertheless, in all the distraction I chanced on passing mention of something that sounded like an echo of the old Cold War, the kind of pernicious nonsense that teeters on the brink of farce, lacking only a sense of humor to push it over.  Surely it was just an editorialist's effort at historical perspective?

      This morning, I looked it up and no, it isn't.  The bulging brains* at Democratic Socialists of America are blaming the Russian invasion of Ukraine on (wait for it, wait for it...) Western imperialism!  Yes, they're lined up with Mr. Trump in wanting the U.S. out of NATO, and convinced everything will all work out for the best if the West just lies back and lets that nice Mr. Stalin, er, Putin do whatever he wants.

      History teaches lessons, but it doesn't care if we learn.

      As for me, a breakfast of a bagel and rose-flavored yogurt (I joke that it's "soap-flavored" but it's actually delicious, and they still don't list the flavor on their website) may help put things right, if past experience is any guide.

      When it comes to DSA, I don't think yogurt's going to help.  While mainstream politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike, ever sensitive to the shifting winds of public opinion, have lined up in support of Ukraine and put the blame squarely on the man who set the invasion in motion and broke the peace, their fringes have only become even fringier.  Some writers have called pointing this out "hippie-punching," but it's hardly so violent.  More like laughing at them.  Hold any opinion you like, it's a free country -- unlike Russia, whose leader seems hell-bent of rebuilding an empire even if all he ends up with is rubble. 
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* By which I mean "neo-Tankies."  Blaming eeeevil Western imperialists was old stuff by the mid 1970s and age hasn't made it any more plausible.  Most disco songs have held up better.