The Agrinautica

Today was a beautiful day. Perfect for beekeeping. I didn't get much work done today.


In the early morning my time, my phone started beeping like mad with notifications. When I'd gone to bed the two democratic senators had just been declared winners in Georgia, yet when I opened my phone to the messenger chat group of my politically minded high school friends the first post I saw was "shit shit shit shit," but I scrolled up 44 messages to the last one I hadnt' seen to see what was happening in order. Of course as I was reading them more shit was going down. I finished right around the time people were announcing "they've breached the senate chamber" and "people are shooting in the capitol" .... shit shit shit shit.


This has been.... an unprecedented day. I hope all these insurrectionists whose faces are brazenly on camera --mugging for shots behind the rostrum or even livestreaming themselves with their feet up on Pelosi's desk-- get charged with sedition and locked away forever.


The one plus side is I hope Trump and his ilk have overplayed their hand and completely discredited themselves. A number of republicans and conservatives loudly distanced themselves from him today and there seemed to be serious talk about the 25th Amendment, wherein his own cabinet would declare him unfit. He shockingly actually conceded in the early morning hours after the EC count was finally formally completed (which I think was at 3:45am so he was still awake and monitoring it at that time like a neurotic maniac?? Like he somehow thought it might somehow still go his way???), but I hope that doesn't take reimpeachment or the 25th off the table. I think they need to send a strong message that this is utterly way beyond acceptable. Rermember when Sen Collins said she thought Trump had "learned his lesson" after the last impeachment (and therefore her vote against it was, she alleged, justified), yeah about that. Related fact, Adolf Hitler was convicted of High Treason in 1924 but given a slap-on-the-wrist sentence, eight years later he had absolute power. Sedition cannot be punished with slaps on the wrist.


I'm going to bed now, I fully expect to wake up to more wild news developments.

   America is burning. If I have this chronology correct, Last night Trump vowed to use the military to stamp out the protests he himself has been fomenting. His word choice during his short speech is creepy and chilling. He accuses protestors of "crimes against God" among many other things. Don't get me wrong, obviously there's a police brutality and racism problem that is not directly related to Trump, I mean, it existed long before he was a public figure, but his encouragement of racist attitudes has not helped the behavior and his criticism of the protests has definitely fomented stronger protests. Mobilizing the military seems like any reasonable person could see is NOT the way to de-escalate this.

   Take note too that he specifically says he'll send in the military "if a city or state refuses ... then I will deploy the United STates military and quickly solve the problem for them." -- whatever happened to the party of States Rights?

   He delcared "Antifa" a terrorist group, which, to quote what the fuck just happened today (a great daily roundup I like to read every morning), "Antifa, however, is not an organization and does not have a leader, membership roles or any defined, centralized structure. Further, if antifa were a real organization, current law only permits the State Department to designate foreign organizations as terrorist groups. The U.S. does not have domestic terrorism statute." Antifa is just a loose term self-applied to people who are adamantly against fascism, and to my knowledge no one has ever done anything more terroristic under the antifa name than vow to punch nazis in the face, which I'm pretty sure we're all in favor of. I'm pretty sure declaring it unlawful to be anti-fascist is the very definition of fascist.

   Anyway, after this press conference in which Trump declared war on the American people, he apparently went across the street, where he had his security detail clear peaceful protestors away from a church using tear gas and pepper spray so that he could have a photo op in front of it while brandishing a bible. The local episcopal bishop responsible condemned Trump's use of the church, noting that while there "he did not pray," and just used it "as a backdrop for a message antithetical to the teachings of Jesus and everything that our churches stand for."

   And then, and THEN, that evening as protests swelled in front of the White House (again, I'm assuming there's usually protests there when tehre's somtihg national like this, but being as teh White House wasn't directly involved in George Floyd's death, if the president had responded with empathy and a good faith desire to improve things, the White House wouldn't itself be a target of protestors), Trump felt cmopelled to hide out in the underground bunker under the White House and turn off all the White House lights. I assume they took this latter measure so no one could get a good photo of the White House in the background with protestors in teh foreground.

   Someone on facebook speculatively asked if this was "the Storming of the Bastille or the Burning of the Reichstag" -- I think it's both. I think we have a president who thinks getting the Bastille stormed would be the perfect excuse to burn the Reichstag.



Meanwhiel Coronavirus seems to have completely fallen out of the news.
   In Australia there are 493 active cases (9 new lat 24 hours), and 102 total deaths (last death May 23rd)
   In the US there are 1,137,340 active cases (22,153 last 24 hours), and 106,927 deaths (730 last 24 hours)

   Firstly of all you may have noticed there was a recent election in the United States. (Presumably?) unrelated, Attorney General Jeff Sessions then resigned / was pushed out the window. While he wasn't much beloved by most people I know, he had at least refused to fire Mueller and I'm assuming Trump is replacing him with someone rip roaring to do so. I posted a facebook post outlining my fears that this will happen, and well, it said this: "This of course paves the way for Trump to appoint someone who will fire Mueller and terminate the investigation, which will mean the president can literally get away with criminal activities. I feel like US democracy is on a collision course here. People say "oh he couldn't do THAT there'd be huge protests," but it's already plausible he could disperse those crowds with tanks and his supporters would cheer him."
   I bring this up here and now because I just want to thank myself for not unfriending my Trump supporter friends like so many of my other totally reasonable friends have done. If I had flushed them all away I would be sitting here thinking really seriously how can anyone really support him and is that nightmare scenario I outlined really plausible? Buuut out of the woodwork to bolster my fears no less than three of my Trump supporting friends commented in earnest seriousness that the investigation hadn't found anything criminal (really? how many guilty pleas is it up to now?) and really should be disbanded, as well as talking about what an uncivilized beast CNN's Acosta is, despite this having nothing to do with the argument at hand (since I think all their minds work in a sort of connect-these-very-disparate-dots-to-justify-my-worldview kind of way). Note to future self or anyone who lives deeper under a rock than I do, the Acosta thing is because Trump kept interrupting Acosta and a female staffer tried to physically remove his mic today.


   In other news, a sort of mini rant myself here. I got to talking to the wife of a beekeeper friend in the area today, I hadn't previously met her. She said she'd been meaning to talk to me because she is also interested in helping people in Guinea. When we got on the subject of how France has been intentionally holding Guinea back through exploitive corporate agreements she suddenly launched into me with "and this is YOUR fault too! You yanks are exploiting it as bad as anyone [insert anti American tirade]," and when it came out that my volunteer projects there are funded by the United States Agency for International Development she clearly curled her upper lip in a distasteful sneer. And then after all this she suggests when I go there again I could take her along as a "cultural attache" because she's "good at collaborating with people" or something. I just smiled politely because I am actually diplomatic but I was thinking "you know I actually have a degree in this, in international relations, and you have completely unnecessarily made me feel blamed and attacked in this very short conversation."


   In other news I've received many very positive comments to the short short little story I hammered out for last LJ Idol prompt. Thank you, I'll try to get back and reply to all the comments (I still have the houseguest about so am not sitting in front of hte computer alot). Many people have said they want to read more and indeed I'd like to make it longer (and I didn't intend to end it abruptly right there until I wrote it to that point and realized it was a natural stopping point), but the question is how?? Some ideas I've had are to introduce a young lady in the local town who is romantically interested in him but obviously terrified of the house. Also it occurred to me that I should have him have some happy rememberances of his dead friends earlier, at a point where we don't realize they died horribly in front of him, like he walks past the pub and thinks of some of their unique mannerisms and misses them but we do not then learn they're dead.
   In behind the scenes news, I left it kind of ambiguous but it's the Crimean War (1853-1856) (famous for the the Charge of the Light Brigade) and other conflicts around that time period that in my head he had fought in, and it's vaguely set in Scotland (all the names I took from the more normal sounding names on a list of common Scottish names). I welcome any ideas on what else to add to the expanded story!


   And finally, Cristina and I have an appointment (via whatsapp) to talk to a visa agent tomorrow (Friday) morning to discuss if she has any chance of getting here on a tourist visa and if not then a student visa and if not.. what hare brained scheme we can cook up. :-[]


   Also I have as yet no idea what to write for the next LJ Idol prompt of "Kayfabe" :-\