JOE AND NANCY “LOOSE CANNONS”

 August 11, 2022

 Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi USA’s two “Loose Cannons”.

The  last 18 months of the Biden Administration have been “bookended” between two historic American crises: “Afghanistan and Taiwan”. These two episodes  stand head and shoulders above all the other regularly occurring daily and weekly “screw ups”, “nation-weakening-economic-disasters” and debased acts which  with disheartening regularity, characterize this incompetent Biden administration.  

The Democrats began the first two years of  their 2021“mis-administration” with Joe’s deadly, criminally incompetent and chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan. That embarrassing and awful episode has now been unbelievably capped, just before mid-term elections, with the equally disastrous debilitating fiasco of “Nancy in Taiwan”.  In between these two capstone events,  we Americans have been forced to  experience all the other  sundry incompetence, improvident and imprudent acts and bad news which are listed below.   

1. An impotent and costly Biden “green agenda” having absolutely no likelihood of producing a decline in world CO2 levels, but which predictably resulted in raging high fuel prices here at home (and abroad).  Let’s not forget Biden’s  absolute stupidity of wasting our strategic oil reserve by dumping oil on the open market to increase market availability  and slightly decrease its price (at higher cost to us) , when we could have simply continued producing oil from our domestic oil wells. The more than 200 million barrels of strategic oil ($20 billion dollars worth)  will eventually have to be returned and paid for. 

2. This was followed by the completely avoidable and unnecessary Biden-Zelenskyi continuing proxy War in Ukraine which Biden instigated and which generates food scarcity, disruptions in fuel delivery and economic chaos in Europe.  The Chinese too, now rightly claim that the war was “instigated by the Biden Administration”) 

3. Biden’s unworkable but self harming anti Russian sanctions policy caused more sky-high world fuel and food prices and instigated further costly inflation and food shortages. Biden’s acts of unimagined incompetence are not confined to the USA, but causes world suffering too. 

4. At home,Biden’s silent acceptance and encouragement of “Defund the Police” policies resulted in unprecedented  surges of crime and violence all across the nation. 

5. On the border, Biden studiously ignored the crisis he created at our southern border, terming his “open border” policies “more humane”, but these policies empowered and enriched vicious, murdering Mexican drug and human trafficker gangs and caused an unprecedented and continuing surge of millions of illegal economic immigrants into the USA.  

6. We were all disturbed to learn that our own government was complicit in 

facilitating the human traffickers who abuse and overcharge their human cargo, then, when paid up, they turn over these unfortunates to Biden officials who secretly fly them off in the dead of night to inner “sanctuary cities” where they clog up the homeless shelters and create financial problems for big city mayors.  

7. To close out their near two years of “crisis-following-crisis” Nancy Pelosi and her Democrats supporters  caused a near nuclear standoff in Taiwan, which erupted  when Ms Pelosi impetuously decided to cap her overly long and well-paying career with a final self aggrandizing send off in Asia (accompanied by her millionaire Asia-entrepreneur-son) .  She ignored the warnings of the Chinese, and gave Premier Xi the finger, as she landed on that island. The resulting massive military response from the Chinese and the political fall out was an unprecedented political disaster and embarrassment for the USA—equal to or greater than that of Afghanistan for Joe’s team.  The fiasco in Taiwan  shredded any lingering assurances that the US would ever really support Taiwan in its military need.  Under Joe and Nancy the USA has  blown its reputation and is seen as a paper tiger.  Our response in Taiwan did not go unnoticed, as many of our formerly trusting allies in the Far East looked on in disbelief. They nodded in sad agreement at our impotence and stupidity.  The Chinese have won this round. After this fiasco, they strengthened their position regarding Taiwan, and closed down military and environmental cooperation and contacts with the USA. In regard to Russia, they will now more openly cooperate with that nation to upend policy in Europe.  And as evidence of the “Nancy” effect they now characterize Biden’s War in Ukraine as “instigated by the USA”. 

So we can finally understand why the term  “loose cannon” has been applied to both Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi. But to fully understand the aphorism you must know just what a “loose cannon” is.

“Loose cannon”!  was a fearful warning cry inthe 18^th Century, during the age of sail.  when British and American ‘ships of the line’, fought sea battles armed with muzzle loading, cast-iron cannons. Most often these armaments  were sited on crowded, low-ceilinged “gun decks” where they were located opposite a line of openings in the hull called “gun ports” located just above the water line. Each cannon was mounted on a stout wooden rolling carriage, which permitted it to be rolled  in toward the center of the ship, so as to provide access  the cannon’s muzzle, which was charged with gunpowder and cast iron  ball shot. Once loaded, the cannon was rolled out into the port hole to be aimed at at an  enemy ship and fired. Rows of twenty or more cannon, were sited on the gun deck lined up at their port holes on each side of the ship. Each cannon needed a five man crew to load and fire it. It took an experienced crew only five minutes  to load and fire each piece two to three times, during a a barrage or “broadside”. During a battle at sea. the gun deck was a moving, swaying, wet and slippery surface cluttered with explosions of recoiling cannons, racing gun crews. running men and boys, smoke, and noise.  There was considerable danger to the crew, moving about on the rolling deck. When the cannon fired, the heavy recoil caused the entire gun-carriage to jump back from the porthole and all hands had to stay clear.  

Accidents and catastrophe occurred commonly. The gun decks were often the prime targets of enemy ships. The impact of  an 18 pound cast iron cannon ball from enemy ship could crash through the hull a wooden ship to cause certain death and destruction.. But sometimes too, errors and mistakes such as over loading the cannon with gunpowder or improper handling  could cause the too powerful recoil to shatter metal bindings which held the cannon to the carriage.  The result was a loose, hot, still smoking, ten-foot long, two-ton cylinder of cast iron, tumbling around on the gun deck, colliding into other cannon crews…killing and maiming as it careened and smashed its way across the slippery, blood and water soaked gun deck.  

The cry of “loose cannon!” was a deadly fearful, shipboard warning.

It should be obvious now why we fear our own US “loose cannons”. Like their cast iron metaphors  they produce unpredictable, random, physical pain, fear, death and destruction—but  their impact is not confined to the old gun decks but our nation and world at large.   

And we hope dearly that our nation’s soon to be activity at the ballot box will finally end the Biden crisis and permit us to return to an America that works again.