Exile

I am seriously considering it.

I am not at all certain that the work needed to be done to keep the country from a civil war can be accomplished.  Portlandia most certainly ain't the place to ride out the storm.

But arrangements need to be made, I am not the youngster who can plump myself down and rebuild from scratch.  At my age I have to make concessions to energy, drive, and their impact on economics.

So, the plan is to keep a weather eye peeled for geezer jobs in out of the way places.  Southern Oregon, Eastern Washington, and Eastern Oregon are the geographic targets.  

Like it or not, the high population density areas are most likely to go crazy.  Seeing as Portlandia is half-way there already......well.

The Cult of the Ubermensch

My sons and I always argue about which of the nine "Star Wars" movies is the best.  They are always appalled by the idea that I find "Rogue One" to be the most compelling.

This isn't going to be an article about movies, this is going to be an article about the way that people think about their world and their wishes.

The bulk of the Star Wars franchise is oddly built around the plot device of midichlorians.  Everyone has them, but there are supermen out there who have a buttload of them and those high-mitochlorian folks are who either:

1. The Bad Guys who want to take over the world and oppress the shit out everyone in sight, or, 
2. The Good Guys who beat the crap of the bad guys in a predictable dramatic arc of weak..get strong...challenge...almost lose...come back and win.  Lovely and time-proven dramatic arc.

Rogue One is lonely in this fantasy universe.  One movie.  Everyday people working to fight back against what is arrayed against them.  Not a Jedi Superman in sight.  People get shot and die, people trying to better themselves but with merely human powers.  People willing to do what needs to be done and pay the price.

Now, the odd segue into the political realm.

We look at our "leaders" and our high level politicians in the same way that we fantasize about the high-mitochlorian folks.  They are bad guys or good guys.  They have powers to oppress us or save us.  In most peoples minds the struggle is between light and dark at the highest levels.  Us low-lifes are mere pawns.

What I propose is that we stop looking at Donny and Hilly as either the demon or savior.  They are just people who are out in front.  They really don't have that much say in the way things are run. 

The politicians are subject to the same massive tides of change that all of us are caught in.  They are trying to steer the unsteerable  They serve different portions of the general population and are trying to steer the ship so that it hits the iceberg on the right side or the left side.

All the argument and angst about Donny-boy and Hilly-girl and their legions of shrieking followers are missing the whole point.  All parties in our entire country and all ideologies have to look at what they most firmly desire and figure out how to do with less. 

Because, at the end of the day, what we have and what are our desires just aren't sustainable, and sacrifice is the only tool that we have.

Looks innocuous, doesn't it?

But check out under properties when you take a peek.  Lots of info there about your humble blogger.

As I have stated in the past, using Windows or Mac is a choice for those who don't care what our alien overlords know about us :-)

In Linux, there is a photo editing program named GIMP that can do this.

Everyone Knows

Look.  The way out is simple.  Not easy, simple.

Military needs to be reduced by 60%.  No new weapons for a minimum of ten years.  Honest reappraisal of our defense needs to protect the country, not  to stick our spoon in everyone else's soup.

Pharma and Health care need to be rationalized and nationalized.

The FIRE sector of the economy need to be gutted.  The banks need to be brought under control.

News Media needs to be cut away from corporations.

Education needs to be stripped away from people who don't know how the world works and start preparing people to work. 

Corporate taxes need to be collected in full.

Rich people need to be taxed a lot more.

Back Home in Portlandia

I think that before anyone goes too far ahead, they should read this little gem.

https://www.unrv.com/government/political-violence-in-the-roman-republic.php

Yesterday, the jackasses of ANTIFA attacked a bunch of right-wing whackjobs from a group named Patriot Prayer.  I can't really say that I would mind horribly if these two groups beat the living shit out of each other, but there are bigger fish here to discuss.

We seem to be entering a period of time where mob violence and direct violent action against political opponents is gaining some cachet.  Maxine Waters, her astonishing lack of forethought only matched by Trump, has publicly called for mobs to form in order to attack political opponents.

An extended aside here, to be completely honest, MW never said to physically attack anyone, but she did say to:

“If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd,” Waters, 79, told supporters. “You push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome anymore, anywhere.”

OK:  that is physical intimidation of a political opponent.  That is quite simply where political violence begins.

Now of course, the tweeter-in-chief could not manage to come up with the dignitas to defuse the situation.  Where he could have stood a little on the high ground and tried to defuse a situation, he chose (of course) to go low and call MW stupid and issue a challenge.

The trouble with populists (and Maxine is a populist as well, just playing to a different population) is that they use very blunt tools.  Whipping up the hoi polloi is an easy thing to do, but it is a knife without scales or quillion.  It can very easily turn in the hand that tries to wield it.

Another thing to read

Cheap Living

Been trying to drop pounds.  I have even been successful. 

Nothing complicated.  Watch what you eat and keep track of calories and have energy output exceed energy input. 

Now I am trying to set up for the week ahead.  Breakfast is pretty easy, Coffee with a shot of some kind of creamer.  140 calories and on the way.

Lunch is what I refer to as "Stupid Oatmeal" ...

• a cup of dried quick oats,
• a cut up sausage,
• a teaspoon of bouillion
• a teaspoon of Mexican spice mix
• some dried onion
• an ounce of cheese
• some dried broccoli

Drink at least two liters of water

Dinner this week will be taco salad.

• Lettuce at least a half a head of iceberg
• 1/2 cup of cottage cheese
• 8 ounces of turkey/bean mix with spices
• 2 ounces of cheese
• a cup of salsa
• Some tomato if affordable

This weeks main attempt will be no-snacks, 6,000 steps a day, and no whining.

I even like Yanos

Spend a little time reading this gem.

https://www.architectural-review.com/10031408.article

I think that, in a sense, this well written and moving bit of work is indicative of the problems we are facing and the West's responses.

The walls are to define what is mine.  The people who build them look at them as a way to protect their stuff from people who feel, either unjustly or justly, that they want a piece of the action.

The sad part is that both sides feel that they stand firmly in the moral high ground.  It has been this way since the days of Ashurbanipal.

We are the builders of walls.  I am sitting in a coffee shop in Ashland, Oregon looking at the fruits of those walls.   I am the youngest of a dozen old men and women, All of them dressed in REI/Cabelas casual and chatting easily about those shallow things that are left to retirees.  I cannot imagine that they even think about the walls.  If they did, they would probably approve mightily, because it is those walls and those walls alone that allows them the luxury of their yearly dose of the celebration of the imperial might that we have had bequeathed to us from our forebears.

Over and over and over again.  The bald truth of the matter is that these walls allow many of us us here in the USA to take a lot more than our share of just about everything.  The folks surrounding me, when they finally figure out that the physical comfort and privileges of their lives will be threatened, will insist on higher walls.

Checking Things Out

Gonna head over to K. Falls today.  Check the place out and see what is happening there. 

I still am not sure about the plan.  I am trying hard to figure out the way to jump.  I have been wrong too many times in the timing of things, and I am not at all for certain that relocating is that good of an idea.

I am getting a strong feeling that Portland ain't the place to be in bad times.  The place is rife with self-absorption and poorly thought-out utopian fantasies.   These are not usually the kind of places that are comfortable in times of change.  Being rootless, things there tend to blow away at the first inkling of a storm.

Kitschy and Spoiled

I really wasn't all that thrilled about coming down this year.  I wanted to spend some time with the boyos and hang out with Carl, but Ashland itself is getting long in the tooth.

Just drank a coffee and ate a scone, had a burrito for breakfast earlier.  Watched the City wake up.  It is a never-never land kind of place.  The almost-wealth of the 10% and their ilk is the sole reason for the existence.  A celebration of the country and culture that birthed us and taught us the value of exploitation. 

I am an old white guy froma long line of old white guys.  Me and my ilk were the centurions and legionaries that went out and secured the wealth that flows here.  The mini-wealth here is built on a century of exploiting little brown brother for six times the amount of manufactured goods and five times the energy resources that we allow others. 

We are entering a dangerous stage now.  The others that we have looted so efficiently are starting to push back.  The really wealthy and the sort-of wealthy that congregate here may well have to give back some of their loot to let the rest of the country live, and that ain't gonna fly.

We might be entering the times of the Gracchi.

Pit Stop

Travelling between the liberal bastions.  Left PDX this morning.  Travelling down to Ashland.

I am in Albany, drinking yet another coffee and charging the computer.  Listening to a preacher two tables away.  Taking out loud about Jesus and God and his views on the matter.  This is where this kind of thing happens.  In the hinterlands.

For years, I drove straight through.  Went from one liberal hotbed to another.  No time for the stuff here.  This was always a mistake.  I don't believe any of the Christian spiel.  But overall, they are better neighbors and better company than the bubble people in Portland and Ashland, alone in their echo chambers.

We are two nations, but it is becoming more and more clear to me these folks, here in the hinterlands, secure in their God are more welcoming and open than the "liberals" in their bastions of openness.  These folks are pretty certain of their faith.  And they realize that it is faith, not fact.

The liberals in their bastions don't see their beliefs as beliefs per se.  They see their beliefs as facts, to be imposed on others.  I am tired of this aspect of Portland and it's environs.

Late addition

In McMinamins in Roseburg.  Look, another thing that just irks the hell out of me re: Portland.  The snooty, "I am too good for McMinamins" attitude.   Fuck them.  Look, the franchise is good.  They treat their people and customers with a fair amount of respect.  They run a good shop.

Virtue signalling coupled with status signalling....that is Portland in a nutshell.  A pathetic cross between hipster and hippie, and not bothering to do either at all well. 

A Bit of Rest

Ivan Aivazovsky: Ayvaz Sredy Voln (Among the Waves)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Finally:

Taking a week off and getting out of Dodge to do some thinking. 

Gonna head south to the drylands, get some culture, and check out potential landing spots for my soon-to-come exit from the workforce.

Look, all the stuff I have written over the past twelve years here has a pretty embarrassing track record for accuracy.  I still back most of my presuppositions (e.g. Climate Change, overpopulation, resource depletion.  Those dogs are still in the hunt, but the endgame is still somewhere in the future and I have learned that giving out predictions just makes you look like an idiot. 

What I am really doing is figuring out from where I get to watch the next ten or so years.  I think that these years will be interesting.  Going into the next ten years with my age, energy level, and opinions doesn't allow me much in the way of personal impact, what I am looking for is a fairly good seat to watch the show. 

The problems that will be faced have a time-line much longer than mine.  The issues will probably be just starting to get traction about the same time that I shuffle off this mortal coil.  I am hoping for quite a bit of time personally.

I am working on lowering my impact and my needs.  I have to decide whether this will be more effectively done in a large city (Current Location, Portland, OR: population 2.5 million), or a small City (current candidate: Klamath Falls, OR population 22,000) or a Town (current candidate Brookings, OR: population 6,300).

I'll keep you up to date.

Living Right?

That title is a particularly tough little bit of writing to punctuate.

I can't really say which is the right way to do it.  Sometimes I am afraid to re-watch the movie "The Matrix".  First because I always want to punch Keanu Reeves in the face, the second is that I am afraid the the underlying theme of the movie may be close to what is real than I care to think about.

I have retreated from the world a lot lately.  Luckily, I am allowed to do this due to age and children growing up.  I really don't wish to retreat completely (though the thought of living on the edge of a desert in a shipping container has an odd attraction).  So whither Ennis.

The overwhelmingly bourgeois nature of contemporary American culture is wearing at me.  The "Ownership Society" has always been about status signaling and wealth displays.  Such things have always repelled me.

How does one live.

Outrage...A brief Response to Ilargi

There are seven and a half  billion pairs of little feet here on the highway.

There is, at best, room for maybe three billion pair if humankind were capable of creating a just and equitable system.  I have my opinion on that.  Professors Spengler, Toynbee, and Tainter would posit "that shit ain't happening".

What is being seen now is the beginning of the true "intersectionality": that of overpopulation, environmental degradation, climate change, and the breakdown of the Imperialist system of economics.  Those preconditions don't lend themselves to coming up with a just and equitable system.

I understand those who arrive are looking for a better life, and the conditions that they are fleeing are horrific.  But there is a slim, albeit very slim, possibility that we here in the Land o' the Free (tm), might be able to pull our head out of our asses long enough to create a shallower slope on the way down.  We most certainly cannot do such a thing by opening our borders.

So, I agree with you that the methods that we use to close our borders are unjust.  I will even agree with you that our support of dictators and the actions of our corporations are part of the root cause of the problem.  These should be addressed. 

But we should close the borders, we should reform our system to one more that is more just and equitable.  But we should do it for our people. 

That is enough, and that will probably be a task that we will fail.  Look around you.  Every other person that you see is in the category of "too many".  The task that needs to be done is hard enough with who we already have.   

From Ursula K. Le Guin's translation of Lau Tzu

Be completely empty. Be perfectly serene.

The ten thousand things arise together;

in their arising is their return.

Now they flower,

and flowering

sink homeward,

returning to the root.

The return to the root

is peace.

Peace: to accept what must be,

to know what endures.

In that knowledge is wisdom.

Without it, ruin, disorder.

To know what endures

is to be openhearted,

magnanimous,

regal,

blessed,

following the Tao,

the way that endures forever.

The body comes to its ending,

but there is nothing to fear.