January 10, 2022

The ordeal of Ted Cruz – Jan Psaki demolishes a reporter – Vandalism in Big Bend – Yearning for opening up of international travel – Evening statistics

It is disputed who originated the comment, but a jest currently making the rounds is that there is one simple answer to the question of why so many people dislike Ted Cruz on sight:  “it saves time.”  He is paying heavily at present for his sycophancy of Trump and his allies, for earlier this week he underwent an experience astonishingly similar to that of dissidents in Mao Zedong’s regime being “struggled against.”  At a Senate hearing this past Wednesday, Cruz said that the nation was approaching “an anniversary of a violent terrorist attack on the Capitol.”  Instantly Tucker Carlson’s hackles were raised by any criticism of his fellow Trump supporters and on the following day he denounced Cruz for this comment.  Cruz became alarmed and, like the tower of jello that he is, immediately backtracked:  “The way I phrased things yesterday — it was sloppy, and it was, frankly, dumb.”  But Carlson, that most fervent of Trump devotees, found this sniveling apology inadequate, and lost no time in making his displeasure known; in response to which Cruz groveled still more, saying that he was just talking about a “limited number” of people who assaulted police officers – not the “thousands of peaceful protesters” supporting former President Donald Trump.” He sounded exactly like a cowed dissident in Marxist China voicing a self-criticism, without having the excuse, however, of his party having the power to subject him to physical torture and dismemberment.  They aspire to possess such authority, in all probability, but as yet they have not attained it.  Despite these limitations, Carlson has doubtless given considerable gratification to his Supreme Leader in Beijing – no, sorry, I meant to say, in Mar-a-Lago.

Fox News, however, is discovering that not all holders of public office are as docile as Cruz, as the following Twitter exchange between Fox News Pete Doucy and White House Press Secretary Jan Psaki can attest:

DOUCY:  I’m triple-vaxed … You’re triple-vaxed, still got COVID. Why is the president still referring to this as a pandemic of the unvaccinated?”

PSAKI: “You are 17x more likely to go to the hospital if you’re unvaccinated, 20x more likely to die.”

Oddly enough, Doucy’s own father Steve Doucy, of Fox & Friends , compared the vaccine to a bullet-proof vest, saying that while the vest may not “stop a bullet” from hitting the person wearing it, “it won’t let the bullet kill you.”  But Pete Doucy is certainly not the first to display the withering effect of Trump’s influence on filial solidarity; once again, Cruz sets the example, continually fawning upon the man who publicly and repeatedly slandered Cruz’s own father.

A panel of ancient petroglyphs in the Indian Head area of Big Bend National Park was irreparably damaged when vandals chose to scratch their names and the date across the prehistoric art, which dates between 3,000 and 8,500 years old.  This incident is far from unique; in Big Bend alone, archaeologists have seen over 50 instances of vandalism since 2015.  Nor is such behavior confined to the United States.  I vividly remember visiting Plovdiv in 2014, which contains, among its other numerous attractions, a site that displays evidence of habitation dating back to the 6th millennium BCE, when the first Neolithic settlements were established.  It was impressive to behold but also saddening, for parts of it were ineffably defaced by graffiti. 

I cannot forebear, nonetheless, from heaving a sigh of nostalgia for that loveliest of cities.  There are two things I wish to do if I get the opportunity to go to Bulgaria again:  climb up Vihren Peak a second time – and perhaps, with more favorable weather than we had during the last visit, include going along the knife-edge ridge of Koncheto – and spend some days in Plovdiv.  Our group stayed there for only a single day, which is far too short a time to savor all that it has to offer.  I hope the experts are correct when they assert that the virus will peak in a few weeks and then decline; perhaps international travel will eventually become easier than it is now. 

Today’s statistics as of 8:00 PM – # of cases worldwide: 310,766,166; # of deaths worldwide: 5,511,726; # of cases U.S.: 62,526,210; # of deaths; U.S.: 861,277.