A Few Thoughts for the Week

Some ideas for blog entries which cannot fill up my self-imposed minimum of 7-11 paragraphs per entry do not always see the light of day.  Ideas like…

BARRY MANILOW COMES OUT AT THE AGE OF 73

So, now it is official.  Barry Manilow is gay.  

Worst. Kept. Open. Secret. Ever.

Many of us had this figured out decades ago.   Didn’t you get our memo, Barry?

The singer/songwriter’s main concern about not coming out until now was what his fans might think.  Unfortunately, this is an all too true concern for the gay community. True, there have been strides forward in recent years, and we may be walking back some of those strides under the current regime, but overall societal hostility towards homosexuals has not diminished.  Massive bummer!

As a heterosexual, I can only empathize to a point; there’s no way I can imagine the twisting roller coaster ride of emotions gay people go through when deciding to come out or not. 

Fortunately, Manilow’s fans have been very understanding and, surprise surprise, supportive of his decision.  Barry Manilow, a talented artist who has celebrated life and given voice to everyone’s angst over their romantic lives, is gay?  Okay, nothing’s changed!

Let’s move on to…

IF THERE IS A REPUBLICAN IN THE WHITE HOUSE, THEN THIS MUST BE WAR!

Now here’s a tale with more twists to it than a M. Night Shyamalan movie.

The new President, with sinking poll numbers and zero for three in getting his policies enacted, launches a missile attack against Bashar Assad’s regime in response to a chemical attack the Syrian leader unleashed on his own people.  Okay, kudos for appearing to look like a humanitarian when young children died horrible deaths, but I can’t give the president any points for sincerity

After all, this is the President who urged his predecessor via Twitter not to engage in military intervention in the Syrian civil war; who campaigned to his faithful, rabid base that he would not get the US involved in the conflict even as he boasted he would destroy one of Syria’s allies (ISIL or ISIS) in 30 days, and who has tried at least twice to ban refugees from conflicts in Syria from entering the US.  Now he mourns the loss of innocent victims that he would deny sanctuary?

The sympathy for the Syrians’ loss of life is a good motive, but I can’t believe it was the only motive for our attack.

Let’s look at the pros and cons.  Yes, the attack sent a message that we would not tolerate such large-scale massacres as this one.  Con: news about the attack bumped attention away from the President’s Russian connection news story for at least one news cycle. 

Russia protested that the attack was a violation of international law.  Con: for all we know, and this conspiracy theory has been making the rounds of social media, the President and Putin together plotted this attack as a way to help the President’s standing.  This could also allow Putin to save face at the prospect that his armed services did not know Assad still had chemical weapons years after they signed an agreement attesting to the fact (obviously now discounted) that Assad had destroyed all of his chemical weapons.

This is not to mention the false Republican narrative that the President’s predecessor did not make good on his promise to punish Assad for crossing the “red line” Obama drew in the sand.  For the record: Obama wanted to attack Syria when they crossed the line, but could not find any support in the Republican-led Congress or abroad.  The Bush era mideast conflicts made us all tired of fighting and drove an undercurrent of isolationism, as evidenced by the election of our current President winning the Oval Office and abroad, Brexit.  Obama’s hands were tied. He backed away because he could not LEGALLY declare war on a country without the Republican-led Congress approval.

Which leads us to the biggest con: if our new President changes his mind literally overnight from his long held belief about a certain issue, then how will he react to some sort of other provocation from, say, North Korea?

We may see nuclear apocalypse yet.

Who knew that Barry Manilow’s announcement would cause all this conflict?

(Thank you for reading.  Okay, let’s get all of those snarky comments about “Weekend in New England" out of our systems now.)