What We Learned Yesterday

Commentary 9n the developments of yesterday is presently dominated by the testimony before the Jan 6 Committee of a White House aide who reports President Trump’s egregious misbehavior on January 6 about which she was told by his Secret Service detachment. There are some rumors that his Secret Service detachment is preparing a formal refutation.

What did we learn? I learned nothing. I already thought that President Trump was not fit for the presidency by temperament or character. I never voted for him; I am no more likely to vote for him should he choose to run again in 2024.

I also learned nothing about the January 6 Committee. I already thought is was focused, as President Clinton might have said, like a laser on battlespace preparation for 2024. The proceedings did nothing to change that perception. I sincerely wish that President Trump and President Biden would both announce (even better: jointly announce) that they will not seek the presidency in 2024. Maybe that will put us out of our misery or, more accurately, subject us to different misery.

The news about Ukraine was largely about Russian missile attacks on a Ukrainian shopping mall containing a thousand of more shoppers. The Russians quickly retorted that the shopping mall had long been deserted and was next door to a facility in which advanced weaponry received from NATO was being stored with overflow storage in the abandoned mall. This morning I’ve already seen a rebuttal of that counter in the BBC.

I haven’t learned anything from that, either. I continue to think the Russians are completely capable of attacking a shopping mall. And I still believe that we cannot take any reports on that war at face value—everybody is lying when it suits their purposes.