Friday 20 October 2023

The 1910 People

 Matt Walsh quote:

"Someone born in 1910 would have lived through WW1, WW2, the Spanish Flu, the Great Depression, and the Kennedy assassination all before they turned 60. We live in comparatively uneventful times."

I would probably add seven additional lines.

The same people (born in 1910) would have marveled at the inventions of penicillin, band-aides (came in the 1920s), the hamburger (1924), traffic signals, the electric guitar, walkie-talkies, the TV, silly putty, barcodes, solar cells, the passenger jet, LED, digital maps, rockets, and the automatic transmission.

The same people would be shocked at the complexity of life evolving.

The same people would be shocked at railway stations dissolving away, and interstate roads getting you from coast to coast in three days.  

This Travis King Episode

 If you remember....Private Travis King was this guy who got all stressed out....while in South Korea, and ended up crossing the border into North Korea....thinking his life would improve.  

The North Koreans after a while....came to realize that the guy had no value whatsoever, and was a 'problem'....so they gave him back to South Korea.

Yesterday, the US Army announced that they have eight charges up against him...desertion is one of them (pretty serious), and oddly enough....some kind of child-porn charge comes into play.  Looking at the mess, if convicted on all eight....he'd probably be doing 15 to 20 years in prison.

King being mentally incompetent?  At some point, his Army lawyer is going to ask for a mental eval, and I suspect that the Army clinic will admit on maturity level....King is probably a 12-year old kid, and not capable of adult actions.

Army's fault for accepting him into service?  Well....you have a limited amount of time to look over test results and just assign a number to each recruit.  King, I suspect, just fell through.  

But here's the thing.....the Army has wasted tons of man-hours on King so far, and they need to show something for all this worthless effort.  

King walking free?  It wouldn't shock me if the charges were dropped and a discharge given to the guy....because of his mental issues.