Almost Imaginary Poll

On a scale of one to ten, ten being the most comfortable, how comfortable are you waking up to the news that Pete Hegseth has just started WWIII?

Republicans: MAGA! MAGA! SIS. BOOM. BAH!

Democrats: Well….

Independents: (sic) Where’d you hear that?

2 thoughts on “Almost Imaginary Poll

  1. bystander February 28, 2026 / 9:38 am

    Where does a person with the comfort level of ZERO, NADA, GTFO…. (only b/c apparently negative/imaginary numbers would not be offered in a poll) fit in the organization of this world?

    • William Timberman February 28, 2026 / 10:12 am

      (Looking around.) Well, judging by my own surroundings…how about Rootless Cosmopolitans? It’s what Stalin’s mouthpieces called the Jews, and was the passionately ironic title of a blog I used to follow by a South African Jew named Tony Karon who had the historical misfortune to begin his political life as as an anti-apartheid activist for the ANC back when that could easily have gotten him killed. He later became a senior editor at Time, and then, much later, at al-Jazeera. His personal blog disappeared at one point, and I lost touch. I found him again on Substack here. Highly recommend his insights on world affairs.

      But I digress. People who see current worldwide events as the nightmare they really are can have no home—no political home, at any rate—except in the reports left behind by like-minded witnesses of earlier existential threats, some of whom who survived, and some who didn’t. Stalin’s epithet fits us as well as anything could, and applying it to ourselves seems both accurate and respectful of those who kept the faith before us.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.