Château Gaillard, C’est Nous!

This redoubt in Les Andelys, France, was built by Richard the Lionheart during the endless wars with France. It has a truly impregnable location, perched above the Seine River on a high peak,mover looking the (delightful) little town. So over 3-4 centuries as France and England warred and squabbled and their respective fortunes rose and fell, the château passes back and forth between them. As the 17th century was about to dawn, it had become primarily a center for brigands who terrorized the French countryside at that time, a base from which they could mount raids and to which they could retreat with impunity carrying their ill-gotten gains.

It is truly magnificent even now, although only the inner baileys are left. “Gaillard” means sump’n like champion, warrior, cock o’ the walk, mensch. Yes I think Dickie Plantagenet named it after himself!

But what I want to tell you is that, when it became essentially a pirates’ den, the King of France decided to destroy it, breach its impregnability. Did he blow it up? Nah. He simply decreed that the surrounding landowners were free to take any and all of the stones from which it was built to use in constructing their own modest hovels. Day by day the walls of the outer baileys melted away, like an iceberg in summer.

All this to tell you that I can’t stand to watch the news any more. It’s like watching the depredation of Château Gaillard. .

“The weak lay hand on what the strong have done/ Till that be tumbled which was lifted high..” Every day, sometimes more than once a day, Ol Jo[K]e “Marionette” Biden knocks a few more boulders outta the noble wall of the redoubt of Fortress America.

He’s like a demented boy with a spray can let loose in the Louvre, gleefully splotching a beard on the Mona Lisa, scrawling his fat-lettered gang moniker over the canvas of The Raft of the Medusa.

Thirty four days into his rampage, what remains to us? We have no border. We have e no prospect of peace, which seemed so possible as Trump de-Balkanized the Balkans, neutralized the pointless hostility between Israel and the Arab states. We have no prospect of seeing any obstacles whatever thrown into China’s way as it marches toward its openly stated goal of world domination.

Thirty four days.

No I don’t think I can bear to turn on Fox News, as has been my custom, when I awaken on Day 35 et seq.