Comment on The Belmont Club "Happy trails"

Obama is preemptively destroying the US nuclear stockpile. That reduces the credibility of our deterrence. It increases the probability of aggressive action by everyone else.

The difference between now and the world of Bogart is that then the struggle was perceived as a contest between people, some right and some wrong, but both with mutually comprehensible reactions to questions involving issues such as force and fear and love and hate. Bogies newspaper is attacked by fascist thugs and stooges but it would have been to incredible to expect the audience to see them being lead by simpering self destructive monsters like whiskey's tranzis and sexually confused sluts.

Evelyn Waugh did have characters like the ones who have brought us to this pass. The difference is that back then most of them had enough of a survival instinct to support the majority in its struggle to survive. Ambrose Silk, Poppett Green, Parsnip and Pimpernell and friends at least knew who their real enemies were.