Well, what idle speculation will we fill our days with now that the Chinese Balloon has been shot down?
Every man, woman and child in this fair land were transfixed by that little white sphere from Wednesday, February 1 when it was clearly spotted over Montana, until Saturday, February 4 when it was shot down off the coast of South Carolina.
When I heard that it was flying over Montana, that was a dead giveaway for me that it wasn’t a spy balloon. Two things; when you can read a license plate number with a spy satellite or fertilize sugar beets within an inch of tolerance using GPS, why, oh why, go up up and away in my beautiful Chinese balloon to spy on anything? There are much better ways to surveil this great land.
And secondly, over Montana? Montana? What could the Chinese possibly want to know about Montana that they couldn’t find in a second hand set of Encyclopedia Britannica from a used bookstore in Seattle? Change in Montana has not been what you’d call rapid.
I could tell them from personal experience that there’s great fly fishing in Montana. The scenery is beautiful down on the ground and I have a craft brewery that I could recommend in Whitefish. Despite these facts, the sushi is so so, and they could probably do better closer to home.
I also give the Chinese more credit than to choose a place called “Big Sky Country” to surreptitiously float an object the size of three transit busses overhead to check us out. This is an old civilization we’re talking about here. Not their first airshow.
So, allow me to posit the theory that they wanted us to see their balloon. Much like my posting Hey, I’m Bald , they were screaming, Hey I’m a Big Chinese Balloon and I’m flying over your country.
Once again, this adventure proved that no matter how much or how little the average American knows about any subject, we all have an opinion. Shoot it down, don’t shoot it down, capture its data, snag it and drag it to Disney Epcot Center as a new attraction. Just ignore it. Let’s call this one, Don’t Look Up.
And even when we don’t know all the intel available to the President, we are quick to characterize his decisions. The fact that we weren’t shooting it down was proof positive that Joe Biden is a weakling and a miserable failure as our President. Never mind the fact that for a brief time the balloon was flying over Canada and the handsome, virile, young Justin Trudeau didn’t scramble the jets or send out the Mounties with sling shots to take out this airborne hazard.
In the immortal words of Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, “We don’t know, what we don’t know” but that hasn’t stopped us from telling everybody at the bar what we think. That is our right as Americans and good for us. Just think how boring bars would be if that weren’t the case. It might explain the dearth of bars in China and Russia.
But what to do now?
They have flown a big balloon over our house to supposedly check the weather. They could have just asked. The weather is no secret.
I still think they did it just to piss us off. Just to say, hey look, here’s a big balloon flying over Montana and we’re not a bit sorry.
There are a couple of ways that we could get even. The first opportunity has sadly been missed. Secretary of State Tony Blinken could have still travelled to China for his meetings, but arrived from Mongolia in a hot air balloon with a jet escort.
But my best idea is more plausible and could still be deployed.
We have a weapon greater than their silly white weather balloon. A weapon that has terrified the UK and other NATO nations. It has been deployed to great impact. It is inexpensive. It is available and it is perfect to embarrass the Chinese and ensure they will never again violate our airspace with a blimp, airship, or dirigible. We will have out-blimped them into submission.
Our weapon, Baby Trump.
