On the afternoon of 20 January 2021, shortly after the swearing in of the country’s first female Muslim president, Huma Abedin, the Clintons left the White House for the last time, in a van filled with furniture, paintings and bathroom fittings. At their home in Chappaqua, New York, a now very reflective Bill Clinton wrote the critically acclaimed memoir, The Little Blue Dress.

‘The building smelled like everybody who ever lived there, and as my feet touched the threadbare carpeting of the ancient stair, I grasped the cool wooden handrail, worn smooth by generations of sweating hands, and as I did I caught the soursweet smell of cooking that seemed to be coming from the second floor, the landing dimly lighted by a dirt encrusted bare bulb that cast my moving shadow on the wall beside me, and together we stood in front of the door the cooking smell was coming from, a cooking smell that meant woman, and a woman was what I needed right now more than food, though I would probably be hungry afterwards.’ So ended the first sentence of Bill Clinton’s memoir, and I can’t wait to read the rest of it, though the rest seems to be written, fittingly enough, in rhymed couplets.

I’ve been accused of lies and rapes
I tell you, friends, it’s sour grapes
From women I  have kissed one time
But kissing women’s not a crime
I liked them short and liked them tall
But more than that I can’t recall
Though some were slim and some were fat
But women all and that was that
Not all were pretty, that’s a fact
And being with them took some tact
But I’ve enjoyed my life so far
And that reminds me when a car
Pulled up as I was on a walk
She stopped and said we have to talk
We spent the weekend at her place
But darned If I recall her face
The White House cooled me off a bit
But just to keep in shape I’d sit
At my big desk and I confess
I wish to God I’d burnt that dress

The summer of 1916 saw the Western allies preparing for the great summer offensive that would end the war. In the British sector, Haig planned the breakthrough along the Somme River, beginning with a weeklong bombardment by 1500 guns designed to kill every German in their trenches just a short walk east of the British lines. When the barrage lifted the Pals Battalions climbed out of their trenches and were mowed down by German machine-gunners, untouched in their deep bunkers by the bombardment, killing 19,000 British soldiers in a single morning. There will be no future Sommes, at least not in the details, but there are those pressing for war by NATO against Russia over its incursion into Ukraine, and NATO means the United States, whose army has been so greatly reduced in size and readiness by Obama that one fears the result of the current US Army facing such a formidable opponent on his home turf. Do we really want our little girls to come home in body bags? The feminists do, and the Left does, all in the name of fairness, all in the name of opening up military careers previously denied women, as if the military were just another corporation or law firm. The military is there to fight and win wars, and the denial of women to be in the combat military is, or was,  based on the immutable nature of gender that makes women unsuitable for the physical demands of combat. The feminization of the military has gone on for decades, to the point where women have assumed very high command positions in the combat arms, and hundreds of flag rank officers have been dismissed by Obama and replaced by sycophants whose only qualification for command is race and gender. A recent ruling by the Obama administration allowing the transgendered into the military completes the circle of the suicidal insanity begun by the feminists and their leftist male colleagues. Had half the 101^st Airborne been women and transgendered would they have held Bastogne? To ask the question is to answer it. The Somme offensive saw hundreds of small villages across Britain lose every young man in one morning. A land war with Russia will result in thousands of body bags filled with young women coming home. Losing a son in war is terrible enough, but losing a daughter to feminist ideology is not to be borne.

The big four engine cargo plane
Lands safely and on time
And taxis to the color guard
Her cargo almost home
The flag draped casket comes to rest
On tarmac that has seen
So many aircraft in its time
That brought the cargo home
The hearse receives its occupant
And leads the mourners out
From Dover and the sad-draped flags
To see the cargo home
The gravesite hides the new-turned earth
With green hued plastic grass
Her parents watch with tear red eyes
Their little girl now home

The country is on the verge of coming apart. Obama has set blacks against whites and whites against blacks and both against Hispanics, to the point where there may not be a coming together as one country ever again. At a busy intersection of a crowded city street, I chanced to glance behind me, and saw, through the summer throng, the ghostly figure of an elderly man dressed in a tattered robe and carrying a sign that read, The End Is Near. Beside him, the ghostly figure of a young woman stared fixedly at me. The young woman approached and whispered in my ear. “A mighty nation has divided,” she said, voice low and ominous, “and the sharp and broken shards have taken the sword one against the other, the blood red blades not to be put down again for thirteen generations. I, Kassandra, the daughter of Hecuba the Queen, prophecy thus.” Still staring fixedly, she faded until gone, with no one there but the elderly man with the sign. He smiled and said, “What will thee believe, young sir, a prophecy that implies that all will be well in thirteen generations, or the evidence of your eyes?” He came closer and said, “In measured time the shards will tire of the sword, and the nation will devolve into a myriad of paper nations as unsubstantial as the morning mist, ruled by princes and usurpers, the evil and the mad. Thus is, and was, the nature of man. Prepare, my son, for the music has stopped, though few as yet have noticed.” With that he smiled again and slowly faded, leaving me again at the busy intersection, surrounded by the smiling summertime crowd of those who have not yet noticed.

That night I dreamed a lonely dream of being home again
Surrounded by the golden gleam of moonlight on the fen
And as I walked beneath the sky so bright with starry light
There came a soft and mournful sigh that filled the darkened night
Kassandra walked beside me and she whispered in my ear
And as she did she touched my hand and said the end is near
Twelve generations now are gone, have perished every one
And yet will come the new born dawn to see the setting sun
For endless war is never done when nations break apart
When brother kills his mother’s son and breaks his mother’s heart
The princes and usurpers and the evil and the mad
Have all the hatred fires fanned and liberty forbade
The prophecy was wrong, she said, the error it was mine
Destruction though, and millions dead, that error it was thine