Watching Tank Porn in Panama: Fun, But Victory Happens Far from the Battlefield

 

All my life I have watched war movies.  Tactics look awesome on screens big and small.  As a kid, I loved tanks. By age 22, I was a US Army tank commander.  Tactics make great movies, but tactical battlefield videos, tank porn, are not the way to follow a war.  

Wars are won far from the battlefield.  The bigger the war, the more the outcome depends on the decisions, the beliefs, the hatreds, the prejudices of those with power.  

When Hitler declared war on America after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, the Nazi leader made the biggest mistake of his  horrible career.  Millions of Germans became dead people walking at that moment. They were just waiting for their particular B-17 Flying Fortress to reduce their home to rubble three years later.  

Currently, I am sharing a house in Panama with an enthusiastic follower of the Ukraine War.  My housemate is particularly fond of tank battle videos and was delighted to find I am a former tank commander.  I watched a few, but my interest waned quickly.  

As much as I love seeing Russian formations defeated, I know the war will be won or lost in diplomatic meetings and conferences with NATO nations that support Ukraine.  Sadly, clandestine agreements among the new Axis of  Evil: Russia, Iran, China, Turkey and Jihadi Arab countries with North Korea and Hungary as appendages, will also determine the outcome.

The bravery and sacrifice of the people and Ukraine is not enough by itself to defeat an enemy much greater in population with seemingly endless supplies of weapons.  Ukraine will win or lose based on support from allies--or not.  

The smoking wrecks of several Russian tanks hit by Ukrainian drones and direct fire delights me, but reports of Britain and Germany sending more weapons and support to Ukraine delights me more.  

Tank porn, like the other kind, can be exciting, but leaves the viewer with a limp feeling afterward, and nothing accomplished.  

Russian Embassy in my Panama Neighborhood

 The day after I returned to Panama we moved to a different AirBnB closer to Panama City in the Albrook area.  Less than a mile away on the road is the Russian Embassy.  It's a seven-story yellow building which our host says has seven stories underground. 

Today  I was riding in my Ukraine bike clothes, so I rode back and forth in front of the Russian Embassy then stopped to take some pictures and a selfie.

I'm sure they have plenty of security, but I saw no guards, guns, dogs or drones as I rode.  Across the road is a stream that runs past where I live.  Crocodiles live on the banks of the stream. Maybe part of the security team?

Down the hill from the embassy is a little Russian Orthodox Church. 

I'll be riding this way a lot in the next six months.  

Прибет Товариши!  

(Hello Comrades!) 

Back in Panama: Finding Better Roads

 

Today is the seventh day since I arrived in Panama.  After some very difficult rides back in August, I have found better roads and hope to find more.

Today I rode the Amador Causeway, a long straight smooth three-mile road that runs to an island in the Panama City harbor. The Panama City skyline is off to the east of the long roadway and bicycle path.  A beautiful ride on a sunny day.  

  I'm meeting new neighbors also.  A coati on the balcony.

An agouti who lives across the street.  

Ships in the harbor beyond the causeway.

On Sunday I rode about a third of the way across the country to the town of Chililibre.  Since I was last here, ten kilometers of the road between State Highways 4 and 9 were completely repaved.  The rolling mostly uphill stretch of road two of very smooth pavement. Still no shoulder, but the traffic is not as bad on Sunday.I had a delightful 50km ride up to Chililibre  and back down again.  

It's better, but still a place where I am always alert. 

 

Canvassing in the 21st Century

 

The losing political campaign is in the midst of a huge blame game.  One of the critics of the campaign spoke with derision about all the people knocking on doors.  "Who answers their door to talk to a stranger," he asked. He was right. 

People asked me how many minds I changed.  None.  My mission was to remind Democrats to vote, not to change the minds of Republicans. In part, that's because I talked to so few people. 

No one is outside in suburban neighborhoods.  And 9 out of 10 people don't answer the door.  As the election neared, the few people I talked to had already voted or had a plan to vote.  The people I talked to who had not voted or planned to vote did not know who to vote for.  Or did not plan to vote at all.  For these registered democrats both candidates were the same. Or voting was worthless.

I wrote several posts about the experience of canvassing, but the most important to the election result was Empty Streets.

If anything was going to convince people to vote, it was certainly someone on social media.  A canvasser is so 20th Century. Or maybe 19th. 

Peace is Easy to Break, Hard to Restore

 

If, on November 6, 2024, at 1 a.m Easter Standard Time Donald Trump had not won the election, our country would have been sliding toward civil war.  

The best predictor of a successful coup d'etat is a failed coup attempt.  If he had lost, Trump would have thrown the country into chaos. This time he would not make the mistakes he did the last time. He would be assured that the Republican-majority government in most of the swing states would sow enough doubt to throw the election into the House where, by the Constitutional rules, Trump has the advantage.  

Instead we have peace.  Trump won so he has no reason to lie about the results.  More importantly, he is effectively endorsing the election system--because it elected him.  

On the one hand, we will be governed by an old authoritarian wannabe on January 20, 2025.  

On the other hand, we did not fall into civil strife that could easily have led to violence beyond the control of any government.  

Once broken, peace is hard to restore, so I am glad we have peace.

I am also hopeful. Once Trump is gone--he is almost 80--his successor will not have flag-waving worshippers.  His successor will be just another politician to be criticized, doubted, and attacked. The Trump phenomena will not be repeated by JD Vance or Trump Jr. or Tucker Carlson.  Nobody will wave Tucker flags. 

It may not be for long.  But for now we have peace. I am thankful.

No Canvassers for Trump

 

At all the houses I canvassed, I saw one piece of Trump literature

Several times when I canvassed on weekends, I ran into other canvassers.  They were always Democrats.  Usually, I was canvassing for a Congressional or State candidate and the other canvasser was out for Harris-Walz.  We made sure to avoid overlap so as not to knock on the same door twice in five minutes.  

But I never ran into a Trump canvasser.  In fact, I saw only one piece of Trump literature on a porch the whole time I canvassed.  In some neighborhoods, I would see several pieces of literature left under a mat or near a door I was canvassing.  The literature could be for Harris-Walz or other candidates, but it was there.  

I listened to Holly Otterbein, a Pennsylvania political reporter talk about strife within the PA Republican Party over canvassing.  She said the party traditional organized canvassing, but the national party had hired Elon Musk to control the canvassing and it was not getting done.  That certainly agreed with what I saw. No literature. No canvassers.  

If Harris-Walz win Pennsylvania that lack of canvassing may be a factor.  I can only hope.

Who is the Antichrist? A 2,000-Year Fantasy Journey

 

Meet the Antichrist: 

In the Bad-Theology (Burn-at-the-stake Heresy) Novel Series Titled Left Behind 

the Antichrist is the Secretary General of the United Nations. Currently Antonio Gutierrez. 

When Trump held his Nazi-revival meeting at Madison Square Garden last week, one of the vile warm-up acts called Vice President Kamala Harris the Antichrist.  

Unlike Trump and the majority of his followers I have actually read the Christian Scriptures--in the language they were written in. If you haven't you may not know that the Antichrist is mentioned just twice in the entire 27 books that comprise the Christian Scriptures.  Both mentions are the letters the Apostle John sent to new Churches during his lifetime.  In another letter (2 Thessalonians) there is a reference to a "man of lawlessness" and the "beast" of Revelation that are taken to be the Antichrist, but the references are ambiguous.  

More importantly, the prefix anti in Greek has multiple meanings.  In can mean against or in opposition it can also mean equality or correspondence as in antitype.

But if we take Antichrist as in opposition to Christ, the context of both letters is to men acting against the Church at the time the letters were written. 

But for those besotted with prophecy, identifying the Antichrist has been a source of endless vain speculation for two millennia. Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins wrote the bestselling Christian-market novel series in history in the 1990s turning a very bad interpretation of Bible prophecy into the Left Behind novels.  

In the first of the seven novels the Antichrist is identified as the Secretary General of United Nations.  Maybe the LaHaye and Jenkins had Kofi Annan in mind or Boutros Boutros Ghali.  They did not get their supervillain from the actual citations in 1 John or 2 John.  They were using the Beast of Revelation.  

Novelists can and do "make shit up" but their readers took as "gospel" their wacky reading of Christian Scripture.  If you wonder how Donald Trump became King Cyrus of Persia in the minds of prophecy obsessed Christians, the sales of Left Behind (upwards of 50 million copies) shows a very plausible path.

Neither Vice President Kamala Harris nor the Secretary General of the United Nations is anything like the actual references to the Antichrist in the letters of  John. The best candidate for that office in modern America is the proud commandment breaker Donald Trump.   

Canvassing in Monoculture Neighborhoods

 

Multifamily homes I canvassed were multicultural.  Every sort of American lives there. 

But when I canvassed neighborhoods with single-family homes with two-car garages, the demographics were very different. As I mentioned in other posts I get the name, age and party affiliation of the voter.  In multifamily homes I often had the names of both members of a couple, or even a couple plus an older parent or adult child.  

But in single-family suburban homes, I often had just one name, almost always a women.  And if someone answered the door, it was often a man of about the same age. Which means that man was not a Democrat.  Assuming he was a voter, he was Republican or a Republican-leaning Independent.  

I asked for the voter by name. She was "not available." I would say I was asking her to vote for the candidate.  The guy said he would tell her, or say "We're not interested."  Door shuts.

The age of the voter and the couple was often 40s to 50s.  Kids were often hovering around the parent who answered the door.  While the couples in these houses were mostly white, there was one interesting exception.

It was a neighborhood of single-family houses, all built since 2021 on two parallel streets named for Ivy League colleges. All of the families on the first street were South Asian.  All of them.  The voter lists had three or four generations of voters. On the porch were shoes of kids and adults.  

I skipped three houses, which means they were probably Republicans--the entire family. But the shoes and the Hindu blessings on the doors said they were South Asian also.

On the second street it was mostly South Asian families plus a few Black and East Asian families. 

Canvassing is fascinating just for the demographics.