Tuesday, December 15, 2020

Another Spy Novel, but Stupid

Now that John LeCarré has died, people have to come up with their own thriller fiction, and boy, is it stupid:

The real mystery is how those trees managed to hold onto their foliage in mid-December, in Maine.

Funny, a Chinese invasion of the US would seem to be newsworthy, especially with Canadian complicity, so I guess the Lamestream Media is in on the plot to overthrow 'Murrica, along with those perfidious Canadians. I dunno, it's kinda weird that fifty-thousand Chinese soldiers could be holed up for so long in a bunker constructed in a town with a population of 574:

Luckily, they were laid low with a single thirty-thousand pound 'bunker buster' bomb... it's really difficult to get proper town-sized bunkers constructed these days.  I suspect that one of Trump's fly-by-night construction contractors built the thing.

The source of this lunacy is a religious fundamentalist who believes that Obama was nominated from Satan's throne, that chemtrails are real, and that cannibalistic giants exist.  The fact that this cockamamie tale has been taken as gospel truth by a not-insignificant cadre of Trump dead-enders is a bit worrisome... I sure hope that the Biden Administration is formulating a plan to deal with the troubling number of Americans who have become completely delusional.

6 comments:

The New York Crank said...

"I dunno, it's kinda weird that fifty-thousand Chinese soldiers could be holed up for so long in a bunker constructed in a town with a population of 574"

Weird? Not really. The phenomenon you refer to explains the fall foliage on the "trees" which, as anyone with really sharp eyes can see, are actually invading Chinese troops disguised as autumnal Maples.

As for the 20,000 lb. bunker buster bomb — that's a tribute to American technology. We now can bomb a bunker to smithereens with an explosion that's so powerful, it's inaudible to human ears. When you pay tribute, remember that all this happened when the nation was still on Donald Trump's watch.

Or maybe on his cuckoo clock. Same difference.

Yours very crankily,
The New York Crank

Anonymous said...

Oh come now. Silent explosions were new technology way back when, I forget the exact year but remember it was back when Rocky and Bullwinkle were popular ... let's say the early 60s.

The Russians were frantically trying to get the formula. They sent a pair of their top agents. Silent explosives didn't roll off the tongue so they came up with a nickname ... I have it here somewhere ... Ah, yes ... I think they called it the "hushaboom formula".

StringOnAStick said...

I read how a retired police chief ran a truck off the road near Houston, held the driver first at gunpoint and then with his knee on the guy's back until police arrived (I don't know the race of the poor driver but I think we can safely assume he wasn't black or that knee would have been on his neck). This loon was convinced the truck contained 750,000 missing ballots instead of the air conditioning parts that were actually in there. The retired police chief/assault with a deadly weapon guy identifies himself as with a citizens militia, because of course he does. There has damned well better be a felony conviction and jail time for this.

Glen Tomkins said...

This particular conspiracy theory has the scent of something designed to appeal to folks who lived through the Korean War.

During that war there was an official conspiracy theory pushed by the govt that the Chinese army had managed to sneak hundreds of thousands of soldiers into North Korea undetected in late 1950. These stealth hordes then ambushed the completely unsuspecting UN forces as they marched north to liberate all of Korea, catching them unawares and sending them scurrying south in defeat.

Actually, there had been no massive intelligence failure, in the sense of technical military intelligence, the detection and tracking of enemy troop movements. What actually happened was a massive failure of MacArthur's intelligence as a general, and of his willingness to keep his political preferences subordinate to his duty as a general. He both grossly underestimated the military capability of the Chinese forces he knew to be in or near Korea, and, worse, was not entirely against the idea of their inflicting some level of reverse on UN forces that would further his political aim of turning the Korean War into a global crusade against godless Communism.

Well, MacArthur's actions produced a rout of UN forces rather than a mild reverse. He was sacked, officially over that second aspect of his misdeeds, that he had disobeyed the president and went beyond his pay grade as a general and into manipulating foreign policy by antagonizing China into belligerence. It was felt, though, that the first part of his misdeeds, the military incompetence of underestimating Chinese military capabilities, had to be covered up, not accentuated. The rout of UN and US forces was so complete that a counter-myth of Chinese invincibility sprang up that threatened to replace the racist myth of Chinese inferiority.

To keep the US public behind the war, to counter the tendency for our side to throw in the towel, it was thought necessary to build up the idea that Chinese successes in late 1950 and early 1951 were the result of their almost superpower trickiness that allowed them to conceal huge hordes just miles away from UN forces. Their military prowess could thus be sold as a one-trick pony. The military superiority conferred by Western genetic and cultural superiority would of course be restored as soon as our side recovered from the low blow, sucker punch, ambush the Chinese had managed, and we were back in an honest stand-up fight.

This idea that the Chinese could conceal tens of thousands of troops mere miles away from the US border is actually less ridiculous than the 1950 idea that they could conceal hundreds of thousands of troops mere miles away from UN forces.

Big Bad Bald Bastard said...

Weird? Not really. The phenomenon you refer to explains the fall foliage on the "trees" which, as anyone with really sharp eyes can see, are actually invading Chinese troops disguised as autumnal Maples

Heh, Sichuan Syrup...

I have it here somewhere ... Ah, yes ... I think they called it the "hushaboom formula".

Thanks, now I have something to watch on my overnight shift while snowed in!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WLMaVjVXryw

The retired police chief/assault with a deadly weapon guy identifies himself as with a citizens militia, because of course he does.

It's even worse, he was paid about a quarter of a million dollars by a GOP megadonor!

To keep the US public behind the war, to counter the tendency for our side to throw in the towel, it was thought necessary to build up the idea that Chinese successes in late 1950 and early 1951 were the result of their almost superpower trickiness that allowed them to conceal huge hordes just miles away from UN forces.

It's like a Sax Rohmer nightmare! Back when 'Jade Helm' was big among conspiracy theorists, there was a similar narrative of Chinese troops massed on the US/Mexico border. I had fun with that one...

https://bigbadbaldbastard.blogspot.com/2012/05/cinco-de-mao.html

E.A. Blair said...

If you’ve ever seen Kurasawa's Throne Of Blood¹, you’d know how an invading army could disguise itself as a forest.

¹It’a a Japanese interpretation of Hamlet with samurai.