Bally K, as they both called it, was a British show from the late 1990s featuring the goings-on in a small Irish town. Romance, minor intrigues, and that sort of thing. Not much action, just an amiable band of characters living out their lives in an entertaining way.
Mom and Dad watched it every single day, religiously, and even though they'd seen the entire series through a dozen times or more, they wouldn't miss it for the world.
As I considered what to get them, I thought to myself: where...twenty years after it aired on the other side of the Atlantic...might I be able to find some BallyK merch?
Nowhere within the borders of this nation was there anything, which wasn't a surprise. It'd be like finding a Phantom Flan Flinger costume, or a Blue Peter T shirt. Decades old esoterica from the Isles is just not going to be about in the U.S.
But across the pond, there were several sellers offering what seemed the perfect Bally K tchotcke. It was a decorative teapot, shaped like the pub that's a central meeting place in the show. It's one of the miracles of the modern age that one can find a used specialty teapot in a knick-knack shop in rural England, and without too much muss or fuss, you can have it shipped across the planet. That's precisely what I did, and within two weeks, it had arrived at my doorstep.
Having lived in England as a boy, that worked both ways. My grandparents could ship presents to me from Georgia or New York, and they'd be there on Christmas Day.
Only, well, that's how it used to work. Back when things worked, and before Dear Leader and his Death Eaters mucked it all up.
Small items...like teapots, or specialty parts for old cars, or books? These things used to be sent freely, by the mutual agreement of all of the civilized nations of the world. If it's worth less than $800, we didn't worry about it.
But the new tariffs included everything sent by everyone, no bottom limit, no exceptions. And also, no process for actually doing what was proposed. You know, like when you get that new idiot manager, the one who has no idea what they're doing, and they start making literally impossible demands that show they don't understand the business at all. You'd have to put in an insanely excessive bureaucracy, and waste all of our time and money.
So now, a thing that has worked for 100 years no longer works. Other nations, faced with this arbitrary, ill-conceived new demand, are choosing just not to work with us at all. They're stopping all citizen-to-citizen or small-business-to-citizen mailing across borders. You can't get that part for your vintage Triumph. You can't peruse the wares at a little shoppe in Dublin and order it from the family that runs it. You can't send a gift to a family member. You are disconnected from the souls who still live in the lands of your ancestors.
That's temporary, hopefully. Other people will clean up the mess. Systems will figure their way around it, hopefully sooner rather than later.
How does that make us great? How does that make us more free?
Incompetence never does.
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