by Philip Giraldi, The Unz Review:

I recently returned from a twelve-day cruise to celebrate my wife’s seventieth birthday. I usually spend much of my cruise time in the ship’s bar instructing the bartender how to make a proper James Bond gin martini “shaken not stirred,” a successful endeavor which has transformed the alcohol culture on a number of vessels. Less fruitful, however, have been my efforts to teach the waitstaff to sing “The Whiffenpoof Song.” But be that as it may, this particular cruise came at a time when Super Tuesday primaries were taking place in the US as well as the State of the Union Address. In Europe the war in Ukraine appeared to entering a new phase with France threatening to send its poilus to fight Russians and Germans contemplating the use of long-range missiles against Moscow. Meanwhile in the Middle East the Gazans continue to be slaughtered by the Izzies, who are America’s perpetual best friend. Joe Biden, who is arming Benjamin Netanyahu, is perversely planning to build an artificial “humanitarian” food and supplies delivering “floating harbor” attached to a pier offshore of Gaza that will be finished and ready for use in two months after the last Palestinian has died from starvation or disease.

TRUTH LIVES on at https://sgtreport.tv/

 And, by the way, it will be constructed by US military personnel who will no doubt be targeted and killed by the Israelis using American supplied bombs as a case of “mistaken identity,” just as they murdered those 34 sailors and crew on board the USS Liberty back in 1967.

All of this seemingly uncoordinated activity generates a bit of confusion, while voters far and wide are wondering if their government leaders are all on Chinese produced fentanyl. That said, a cruise ship is a wonderful place to experience unedited what people are thinking. Present are Americans and foreigners from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds who are easy to meet with casually if one takes advantage of the multiple largely unstructured dining, drinking and entertainment experiences available on shipboard as well as the mingling during excursions on land.

A retired Italian engineer from Udine with whom I was drinking an ombra prosecco explained how he was feeling intense disagio, translated as uncertainty or unease, over the state of the world and not just his own country, pointing to the terrible electoral choice coming up in the US in November as well as the tottering regimes and struggling economies in Britain, Germany, France, the Netherlands and throughout Scandinavia. Meanwhile all the politicians can talk about is more wars and the necessity of supporting clowns like Volodymyr Zelenksy and murderous thugs like the Israelis. There is increasingly no place to escape to.

Among the Americans, whom I assessed as predominantly well-off blue collar retired, many of whom haling from the Midwest or South, I did not spot a single MAGA hat or Biden-Harris t-shirt but did find that most people intended to vote even though they were completely fed up with the entire political process. Neither Trump nor Biden excited them in any way – nor did any of the non-major party hopefuls like RFK Jr. On the contrary, it seemed to most that the political class was out to punish the American people, a view that I heartily agreed with. Several Americans observed that if the current process whereby the US continues to go to war continues, the draft would inevitably be activated to fill the understrength ranks of the military, putting our children and grandchildren at risk. One woman commented that if there were a button that one could push in the voting booth that would get rid of all existing politicians she would push it. It reminded me of the William Buckley comment that “I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty.” A wit subsequently quipped that the country might as a consequence well be run by several iterations of “Anthony A. Aardvark.”

Read More @ Unz.com