20th Century Rocket Boy

Getting Away With Mass Murder

The news out of Ukraine regarding the reclaimed township of Bucha is beyond the pale.  

In response Russia has claimed is that it's all fake news and we should be examining our own conscience. That one's pretty laughable because I living in country that tears itself apart over whether one its great war heroes might in fact be a psychopathic war criminal. Next to what Russia has been doing in Ukraine, it's arguable our conscience is white as bleached toilet paper before use compared to the shit they're carrying around in their lives in the Russian leadership.

So Joe Biden has since again labelled Vladimir Putin a war criminal - and by modern definitions, he would most certainly fit the accusation. The thing is, he's also hiding behind a wall of nukes in one of the most paranoid dictatorships on par with the one in Pyongyang. 

The thing is, we can accuse Putin of war criminality all we like. If we can't bring him to justice, it's all kind of pointless. There are clear signs we still have to negotiate with this sociopath if we want to get to peace, and he's going to push every lever and button to get what he wants to let us get to that peace. Even when we get the peace we want, we would not be able to bring him to justice as things stand. 

So what good is any of it? It just goes to prove that the notion of war criminality is the justice of victors. If you can do it and win, you will get away with it as surely as Vladimir Putin will. 

It's a sucky kind of world, but them's the breaks. 

When The Lights Go Out

Somewhere in the pandemic, Chuck Yeager passed away. He was 97 and its wasn't from COVID-19 so it's not like he was cut down before his time. It was a full and eventful life with plenty of achievements. Frankly, I was a little surprised he was still around even for most of 2020. 

There's still the weird romanticism for the early pioneers of space. It is kind of cool to be a test pilot that straps into a rocket plane and breaks the sound barrier. It's a weirdly optimistic moment in history, even as the Cold War hangs nuclear weapons over everybody's heads. If you want nihilism, there was plenty of that to go around in the 1980s, but a generation before that, there was still this buzz for the technological achievements and accomplishments of these figures. Chuck Yeager was somebody you learned about in books, if nothing else to get to put a name and a face on the Bell X-1.

And just like that with his passing another piece of 20th century sort of fades out of view. We're already 1/5th of the way into the 21st Century, and in several years' time it would be a quarter of the way in. The 20th Century fades from the rear view every day, but it seems worthwhile to remember the old excitement of that glistening age of early rocketry. It was a very different kind of ball game to Elon Musk and Space X. 

Come Join The Fun!