Scotland has Nukes but Won't Use Them.

2026 and all that: Well for one thing the nukes are not Scottish, more UK-ish but also mostly USA-ish. It's mixed bag of defence chicanery that goes right back to the 1950s and the Polaris deal with the USA. A time of Cold War poverty spec desperation. The British government has relied on an arrangement with the USA which increasingly looks not only shaky and expensive but out of date. 

I just don't know what we're doing by developing world ending hardware and then basically pointing it back at ourselves - but at least we're not as cranky and unstable as Israel.

There's very little going on in this world that stacks up to make any kind of sense. Step back and look at how ridiculous, petty and stupid we really are - despite the fact that we've advanced to a technogical point where travelling to other worlds and beyond will soon become a reality, we can't quite clean up the mess we've made of the planet and it's proving impossible to feed everybody and keep them healthy too. Full metal jacket AI is unlikely to solve these problems.

So what about us? The Scots look like a people who have stopped believing all the tales we once told ourselves. We don't believe the stories from London either. We laugh at them and us because laughter costs less than faith. We accept our self generated fictional fate. We will drink the pain away.

Because we're Scots, even if we had our own red button I doubt any of us could push it. The Scottish psyche eh?

We have worked hard but with nothing now to show for it. That is seen as normal. We complained without expecting anything to change. We speak of being second rate and of repeated betrayal as though they were as natural as the weather. We'll climb up our small but deadly mountains on a Saturday and swim in ice cold water on Sunday as if to prove the decline has not reached into our bones. We know better but still can't do much about it.

We called ourselves small, but carried ourselves like people who remembered being larger.

Now we fear boasting more than failing. It keeps us honest. It also keeps us lower than they are. And so the unknown others will win. 

This ramble was supposed to be some kind of reflective and cathartic essay on our premature 2026 World Cup exit. I've failed to cobble it into a coherent piece. I can't really describe the feeling of a World Cup exit. The fans did nothing wrong. It's down to our team, coaches and the SFA who just can't deliver the fragile reality of staying on in the World Cup.