Frail & Vulnerable

That is the title of a very good article in The Guardian which can be seen here.

My dad has a unique character trait. He loves to inform people when someone has died. This is an extrapolation of his general desire to learn of some news before others and then be able to tell them. It makes him feel superior — to have some news that you don’t have. But his crème de la crème is reporting news of someone’s death. The other day he shuffled across the road to my house and got into character — this is where he assumes a forlorn look of despair and then he delivers the news that someone I’ve never heard of has died. Then he insists I know them because once when I was home visiting 35 years ago this guy stopped by for a cup of coffee or something along those lines.   

Or he’ll corner me in the house and say “Now, are you up to speed on the situation with your sister’? Which one I say, I have 3 sisters. Which one? Which one he will say again loudly, in seeming disbelieve that someone unaware of the situation can’t guess which sister. Shannon of course, who else would it be? I don’t know I mumble—not knowing if Shannon was bitten by a rattlesnake or needs to borrow a cup of sugar. And then he’ll say something like, ‘the cable guy is going to her house while she’s at work and I need to be there to keep an eye on things’. I’ll feign interest and thank him for his service.

That’s his jam. Being the bearer of news. But he especially loves bad news as it lets him get fully into his melancholy character.

Two democrats have an argument and decide to duel. They get back-to-back, walk their 10-paces, turn around and each immediately shoots themselves in their own foot. This is the haplessness of democrats. Still intimidated by Republicans and too timid to hold their ground. 

Democrats are their own worst enemy. When Obama was president in his first term, and Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, they had 60 votes in the senate and even then only passed the ACA. All other critical legislation got pushed past year two when they lost the House of Representatives and from that point on nothing meaningful got done.

And now the DNC and Slow Joe have boxed us in. Last Thursday night Biden had a complete and utter meltdown in front of millions watching on TV. He stumbled, fumbled, slipped, bumbled, tripped, gaffed, stuttered & mis-quoted and in every way appeared the tired old dementia addled grandpa that he in fact is. And we are left now with no good options. A good president who didn’t have the humility or good sense to retire when he was at the top. They proposed an 81-year old man who was clearly deteriorating rapidly and never had a plan B.

The DNC should be begging Bernie Sanders to forgive them for the two times they sold him out and tipped the scaled for Hillary and Joe Biden—two entitled career pols who never had the passion or get out the vote potential of Bernie. The DNC completely misread the national sentiment. Donald Trump winning was more about hatred for status quo than actual policy. Bernie is the only candidate talking about kicking the status quo in the balls and taking a radically different approach to government. He can still mobilize large groups of young voters while reassuring the older moderates. 

But as we know, Dems are hapless and will fuck this up too. Going all the way back to when they stood aside and let George Bush steal the Florida election with the disastrous results of two costly and unnecessary wars, 9/11, climate denial, and a massive financial meltdown. Democrats have never understood their opponents are ruthless—they’re still fighting with knives against a GOP with machine guns.

And now this. The Supreme Court vomited up an orgy of decisions that cut the hamstrings of our already fragile democracy. They for all intents and purposes posited that presidents are not liable for their actions — or more succinctly, presidents are now in fact above the law. So we assume the current criminal cases of Trump trying to subvert the election are now impossibly handicapped by a complicit Supreme Court — 3 of whom Trump himself appointed. 

The implications of this decision, should Trump get re-elected, which appears increasingly likely, cannot be taken lightly. He quite literally now could imprison or kill political opponents and be immune from prosecution. And he can pardon any of his lunatic supporters who take aggressive action against Trump’s opponents or detractors. This is no joke — a serious blow to the fragile balance of powers of the three branches of our government. The scales are now tipped very heavily in favor of the executive branch and we are about to install a vicious madman in that seat.

You do not have to be a constitutional scholar to know this was not the intention of the founding fathers — they were running away from kings. The SC also has now made it much harder for government regulatory agencies to enforce critical social and environmental legislation.

There is a feeling of inevitable doom in the air now. It’s palpable. Omnipresent. Trump and his disciples of vampires spew forth vast amounts of hate and fear and political lies that are so wild they are unprecedented. But they are believed by the zombies walking around in our country whose brains have been evacuated, leaving only dank, foul-smelling space between their ears. And our democratic checks and balances are eroding as fast as the polar ice caps are melting. 50% of the people in this country support a dictator. They want to evict every single immigrant and to roll back environmental legislation and to handicap the CDC and our other gifted science advisory agencies. They are pulling books from libraries and threatening to put doctors in jail for performing abortions even when the mother’s life is at risk. They will drill for planet destroying oil and gas in our precious national parks. Truly horrific stuff happening at unprecedented speed. And we are paralyzed and allowing it to happen.

In the papers we read bird-flu is now coming to get us. Several infection disease specialists are predicting these strains of bird flu, which can be 25% – 50% fatal if contracted (COVID at its peak was 1.9%),  will eventually mutate to a state where they will be airborne transmittable from human-to-human. Imagine next January when we find out Eric Trump is now heading the CDC and Ivanka is Secretary of State. 

It’s a scene man. Doom. Gloom. Greed. Evil, Angry mobs roaming the streets. Apocalyptic times.

Since the 70’s, the Republicans began transforming into a party of fear, manipulation, and misinformation. They started heavily cutting marginal tax rates to further enrich the wealthy who in turn donated to GOP campaigns to keep them in power. They told lies about social programs and generally eroded confidence in government. This burning down the house mentality accelerated with Reagan and Newt Gingrich and of course we now find ourselves in the MAGA era where a sociopathic con-man and convicted felon who tried on multiple levels to subvert the democratic process is now perceived by a majority to be a better protector of democracy than a decent and honest man with a lifetime of political experience. 

I’ve been predicting on these pages for years now the downfall of America. It always seemed inevitable to me as our trajectory could be observed and plotted on a graph. It’s just unsettling to be living through it and to see the toxicity coming from within our own population. Other than a little election meddling from Putin and others, which has gone on for generations by many countries including the US, our downfall here in America is completely of our own ignorance. We simply have too many stupid people who make no attempt to educate themselves and have little compassion for anyone and think only of themselves. Instead of investing in our own people and institutions and infrastructure, we give all the money to the billionaires, start a massive useless war every decade or so and then blame the poor people for our increasing national debt. And it works for the most part because a majority of the population believes this nonsense. 

Ed and Rita (Dad and Mom) stopped over the other evening after dinner. I was reading and mom wanted to know what I was reading and what it was about. It’s Bernie Sanders ‘It’s Okay to be Angry About Capitalism’.  One fact I quoted them is that Americans now live on average 6 years less than people in multiple other countries. Mom immediately says “are you sure that’s true. That doesn’t sound right”. I explained that it has a lot to do with lack of access to health care and stress of being poor and malnutrition and other things. Mom said “Well I know that’s not true. I’ve had some poor friends and they go to the doctor”.  She has also told me how bad Canadian Healthcare is because she met a Canadian once who complained about it. 

So that’s what we’re battling. For context—my mom hates Donald Trump. She has a lot of intuition about certain things. But she is not well informed. She is legally blind and cannot easily read. Her access to news is local 10:00 news and that’s about it. She lives in Trump country so is constantly barraged by all the lies and misinformation that surrounds that crowd.

Mom was 9 years old when WWII ended. When the United States was truly the most prosperous and powerful nation on earth. Every other developed nation was bombed to shit. Her rhetoric and reinforcement then for many years has always been we won the war, we have the biggest baddest military, we have the highest GDP so therefore we’re the best. Mom and Dad spend a good deal of time at The American Legion. So while in the past 70 years or so, the US has been on a long slow decline due to misplaced priorities, fraud and waste, a dysfunctional political system that favors corporations over individuals and wealthy over average citizens, we now find ourselves significantly behind other developed nations. But mom, who is brighter than most, simply will not have that conversation. She doesn’t believe the facts — or at least not as I tell them to her. 

Her whole view of national and global politics is based on her personal observations. I love my mom, but this is a flawed foundation from which to interpret political landscape. She simply cannot imagine a world in which we could learn from other countries.

‘The loss of cultural information due to the depopulation of our rural areas is far greater than all the information accummulated by science and technology in the same time period’

Wes Jackson

I have often observed on these pages and to anyone unfortunate enough to be stuck in a discussion with me, that we as a society are losing precious chunks of knowledge that took us hundreds of generations to learn. The knowledge to plant seeds, tend the plants, harvest and store the crops for later consumption are what delivered us from hunter/gathers and ultimately the foundation for industrial revolution and technological wonders. But we should not be throwing out the hard fought knowledge in exchange for us to use a PC or smartwatch. We may well need those skills again. 

I am more and more amazed at the amount of knowledge of the people of Appalachia. They know so much about so many things. Kenny can walk through the forest and name almost every tree and bush and knows at least 10 kinds of mushrooms that can be cooked and eaten. He knows how to hunt and process half a dozen native animals. He can feed his family, build the house, maintain electricity and plumbing and fix just about anything that needs fixed. He can survive if shit goes really really badly. I cannot.

I wonder who first threw away the ‘A’ when hyphenating Be Aware to Beware. Beware to me is ominous and dark like a werewolf was spotted in the area. Be aware feels more like just pay attention to your surroundings, like maybe there is a break in the sidewalk. 

So a hyphenation that seems to overstepped its bounds. 

In real life news, Ed and Rita came to visit Black Dog Ridge last weekend. It was a trip to be sure. This weekend we celebrated what Brittany describes as ‘America’s Last Birthday Party’. Quite possibly true.

Next week back to Boston for me. Brittany will spoil Marti with thrice walks and pup cups. We will all continue to shudder at the thought of what happens on November 5th and then January 20.

Humbly Submitted
Robert Myres, Flanker, Portneuf Valley Rugby Football Club, (ret.)