Dear Friends,
In Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Barty Crouch, the Ministry of Magic’s Director for the Department of International Wizarding Cooperation, stops coming into the office. He’s “working from home,” we are told.
Spoiler alert: Mr. Crouch was not working from home.
Here in the Muggle world, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin recently stopped coming in to work. People were told that he was “working from home.”
Spoiler alert: Mr. Austin was not working from home.
He was incapacitated in the Intensive Care Unit at Walter Reed Medical Center. It’s a pretty bizarre story. The President of the United States was apparently not informed that the head of the Department of Defense was out of action. The Deputy Director was apparently told that she was to temporarily assume some of Mr. Austin’s duties, but not told that he was ill. She continued her vacation in Puerto Rico.
It seems that we are not being governed by serious and sober-minded people. But, then again, we are not a serious and sober-minded people. We’re okay with mediocre 80-year-olds running things, and 70-year-olds like Mr. Austin sub-running things.
A couple of election cycles ago, you may recall, a big deal was made about which candidate would be the best to answer the phone at 3AM. Remember that? Raise your hand if you think Joe Biden is capable of answering a telephone at 3AM and of making some momentous executive decision. I also don’t think Mr. Trump would fare any better.
We get the leadership we deserve, and we are likely to pay for it at some point soon.
Speaking of Mr. Trump, there are a lot of people who cheer this blasphemy:
But it’s not a cult, really.
No: well, actually, it is. And they should repent.
And then the other day Trump was riffing on Obamacare and sneeringly brought up John McCain: “John McCain—for some reason he wasn’t able to raise his arm that day.”
John McCain was unable to raise his arms because of permanent injuries he sustained while being brutally beaten by North Vietnamese prison guards. Mr. Trump, a man who dodged the Vietnam draft by inventing “bone spurs,” once told Howard Stern than his “own personal Vietnam” was trying to avoid venereal diseases.
David Bahnsen speaks for me:
Look: who you vote for is really just between you and God. But, really: please do some soul searching this time around. You listening, Iowa friends? New Hampshire? South Carolina? And don’t talk to me about “binary choices” when you are the one creating the binary choice.
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