Bringing Out the Long Knives

May 18, 2013

 

Augustus of Prima Porta, statue of the emperor Augustus in Museo Chiaramonti, Vatican, Rome. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Trying to keep up with the plethora of “scandals” and “investigations” carried out in Congress this week, I wondered if this had been what life was like in the Roman Empire as, passing its peak, overreach set in and the empire began its slide into decline. The corruption of political principles, the plotting and backstabbing (sometimes literally) as one venal group or another sought to overthrow their current ineffective and equally venal Emperor, might have seemed a lot like what we are watching today. The business of the people went unattended and those who lifted their heads from the bread and circuses long enough to notice, began to flee into the countryside where they engaged in subsistence farming in order to survive. 

 

So far, no one in our own brittle empire has literally drawn the long knives in their political machinations to subvert the “will of the people” in the last election cycle, (however malignant that will might seem to them or us, in their or our particular political affiliations). Though I suppose – if history is true to itself – it’s only a matter of time.

I ponder these things – especially this time of year, as I go out to garden. I’m too old and too slow to flee to the countryside, but in truth, what I am doing is learning my own, backyard version of subsistence farming. For once those long knives are drawn, I fear it will be too late for the bread and circus crowd.

 

 

This year, I am planting more of everything. We’ve had enough rain to bring us out of drought status and more, although that may change as we move into summer. I saved back a few of the tomato and pepper transplants, hoping to outwit whatever small critter has already devoured two of the tomato starts I planted last week in between rain showers. I’m putting up the blog post early today, so I can get out to the garden and replant them after I finish planting the other vegetables. The weather has finally settled into a late spring pattern and we are expecting more rain tonight, with possible severe weather late tomorrow into Monday and Tuesday. The early crops that came up are beginning to produce and the ones that lazed about and didn’t come up, I will replant this fall.

 

 

I don’t expect things to go belly-up tomorrow in the Empire. But the drip, drip, drip of decline, with what seems to me, at least, to be a steady increase in the cost of everything, wears away at my fixed income – as it does for many in even harder circumstances. The weather is cooperating, the soil is fertile and I am in good health. So, I plant more this year and hope I will have enough to put away for the winter, share with friends and neighbors and give to the local food banks.

 

 

And with all the crazy goings-on in Washington these days, I keep a wary eye out as I garden – just in case the long knives come out and the backstabbing begins for real.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We CAN’T Have It All Anymore

May 11, 2013

Carbon Increase 250 years

Worldwide levels of carbon dioxide crossed 400 ppm this week, a level not seen in at least 2 million years – certainly not seen in the time we humans have been around. It took 7,000 years after the end of the last ice age for those levels to rise by 80 ppm; it has taken only 55 years for it to rise the last 80 ppm. That’s important.

When climate changes over thousands or millions of years, species have time to adapt. When it happens over decades or perhaps centuries, they do not. Even with all of our adaptive skills, that includes the human species.

Last week, in the comments section, I posted a link to an article from Salon. http://www.salon.com/2013/05/05/getting_rich_off_global_warming/ If you haven’t read it yet, I urge you all to read it. We are rapidly moving past the stage for mitigation of climate change and into the stage where adaptation will be the only possibility left. Adaptation will not be pretty.

“The many facets of adaptation discussed in Denver — relocating species and habitats, fortifying that which can be saved, abandoning that which can’t, the general remapping of viable human settlement in the United States — together add up to something resembling a draft blueprint for a continent-scale American Ark. This Ark’s early drafts are being sketched out in pieces mostly at the local and state level …

“ The technical conversation around adaptation will eventually meld with a political one. The sooner this happens, the better. The world coming into view is defined by unprecedented strains on natural and public resources. Which means the big rhetorical question is this: If our current framework of commodified resources and a commercialized biosphere allowed widespread hunger and poverty to persist in an age of abundance, what in the name of Sweet Jesus is it going look like in a return to scarcity?”

Most Americans, when they think about climate change at all, still think of dealing with it in terms of simple mitigation: driving fewer miles, turning the heat down or the air conditioner up a few degrees, putting up a solar panel or two, buying green, making small changes around the edges of business as usual – with the emphasis on maintaining BAU. That is not what is discussed at the conference talked about in that article.

What is being talked about there is – at best – what Bill McKibben describes as protecting “the core of our societies and civilizations.” If we are as tardy and politically entrenched with adaptation as we have been with mitigation, we may be talking about human extinction over the coming generations.

Events are accelerating. If you look at the charts at the beginning of this post, you’ll see that, of that 80 ppm increase of carbon dioxide over the last 55 years, over half of it has occurred in little more than a decade.

We cannot continue business as usual. The costs of adaptation preclude that. We must decide, both as individuals and as a nation, what is important to us. We are moving rapidly away from a chance at mitigation into a chance at adaptation. If we fail here, there are only two choices left – bare survival or extinction. We simply can’t have it all anymore.

A Weird Start to May

May 4, 2013

As I began writing this post on Friday afternoon, the outside temperature was thirty-five degrees and snow had been falling in big,
wet flakes, off and on since late Thursday night. More snow fell yesterday evening and off and
on last night. This is the latest it has ever snowed in May, here in Springfield, MO,
since they began keeping records back in the late 1880s. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, we were in the high seventies and low eighties. Yesterday’s high finally reached thirty-eight, the coldest daytime high for May here, again, since record keeping began.

Thankfully, the nights have been several degrees above freezing, so the few vegetables I have planted so far, will probably make it as temperatures gradually warm up to mid seventies by Wednesday and maybe even hit eighty again by the end of next week.

All around the upper midwest, farmers are scratching their heads at the May snowfalls, while along the Mississippi and Missouri rivers, farms are flooding and farmers wonder when and if they’ll get their crops in. Flooding is expected across the southern states this next week. Meanwhile, the drought continues for its third year in many of the southwestern states. Officials in New Mexicofight with the fracking companies for water and unusually early Santa Anna winds have brought early wildfires to California.

I do not write this to argue once again for global warmingand climate change. That ship has already sailed, as far as I’m concerned. It’s here; it’s queer; get used to it.

Yes, I know we can’t definitively blame any one unusual weather event on global warming. Yes, I know we have always had the twenty-year, fifty-year, or one hundred-year snow
storm/flood/tornado/hurricane/wildfire. However, speaking as an ordinary small gardener, I don’t know a single fellow gardener, in person or on the internet, who hasn’t had at least a small case of the willies over the string of unusual weather events in just the last few years.

Sometimes, while wandering around the yard or neighborhood, it seems the wild world, itself, holds its breath, wondering what nature has in store, next. Last year, it was the noticeable absence of bugs in the garden from late May through the heat and drought of
summer. Not even the grasshoppers, which usually take advantage of that kind of weather to munch on the drying leaves and stalks. Usually around here, the air is full of bird songs – especially the cardinals – from April on into the heat of summer. This year, I heard a cardinal a little over a month ago and had not heard nor seen one since – until I saw one, silent, in a tree next-door early this week. The
henbit finished its run across the backyard and is everywhere around the garden, but the creeping Charlie never really made it out of the gate. Now, the mouse ear, with its tiny blue blossoms, mats large portions of sunny areas along the south yard. It seems to me, it’s a month early as, last year, a type of mouse ear with yellow blooms covered those same areas in early June. The pokeweed that ran rampant on the north side of the house last year (and has popped up somewhere in my yard every year that I’ve lived here) is nowhere to be seen this year.

Perhaps I’m remembering incorrectly; perhaps nature itself is confused. And, I suppose that is the whole purpose of this meandering blog post. I’m not sure. Whether it’s the
weather, the birds, the weeds or my own garden, nothing feels certain anymore. I’m waiting here, along with a dozen or so tomato and pepper starts, to see whether this weather will settle back into its “normal” May patterns in time to get those starts into the garden along with the corn, squash, beans, cucumbers and melons.

I am only one, small-time gardener semi-dependent on what I grow right now. But, this country was known as the bread basket of the world in large part because stable weather
patterns, rich soil and dependable water supplies allowed our farmers to grow large
surpluses and a variety of crops to sell (or in disasters, to give away) around
the world year after year. With the increase of large, mono-crop farming around the world, even more dependent on stable weather, what happens to global big agriculture as that weather continues to destabilize? We lost nearly fifty percent of our corn crop
to drought last year. Russia, if I recall correctly, lost a good portion of its wheat crop to drought and a new variety of wheat rust.

It worries me so many ordinary people have lost touch with the real source of the food they consume, that they no longer have the good sense to worry about what is happening, themselves. They have lost touch with the reality of its intimate dependence on those stable weather patterns, on healthy, fertile soil, reliable water supplies and the fragile web of non-human life that feeds into and receives back from those staples of weather, water and soil.

We have “given away our souls,” as Wordsworth said, and are made the poorer for it as, in the name of infinite growth on this finite planet, we destroy the very things our lives depend on.

That thought has been a constant as I’ve wandered from the computer to the window and back over the last couple of days. It has left me with a chill that has little to do with the cold. It will follow me to the garden in the coming days as I rake back the leaves in the last two beds, lay the manure, smell the soil, plant the rest of the vegetables I hope will help feed me next winter and contemplate what might come next, in this weird start to May.

Conspiracy Theories

April 27, 2013

Missouri Dept. of Conservation

The events in Boston, two weeks ago, numerous conversations I’ve had with forum friends in the doomer community every time such events happen and a conversation with a poster to the comments section of last week’s blog post have set me to wondering, over the last few days, whether I am, in fact, a conspiracy theorist.

The answer I’ve come up with is a fairly firm, “No.” For example, I don’t believe 9/11 was a vast covert operation by elements of the government – much to the chagrin of some of my doomer friends. On the other hand, I do think it entirely possible that elements of the government, whether through simple hubris or deliberate choice, ignored warnings that led directly to the attack, then used that attack quite deliberately to whip up public support for wars against both Afghanistan and Iraq and the building of a massive security apparatus to protect itself as the Empire enters decline.

Nor do I believe that every notable incident, from mass shootings to hurricanes and super storms is a red flag, black ops, HARRP induced, UN sponsored attempt to take away our “freedoms”. However, I do see these incidents used ever more frequently as propaganda tools in which we are encouraged by the government to see danger everywhere, trust each other less and give up ever more “freedoms” – in the cause of national security – on our own.

In that sense, it really doesn’t matter at this point, whether or not the government committed any or all of these events. Either way, they have been successfully used by the government to accomplish those things noted in the previous paragraph with surprisingly little backlash from the average American.

As I pointed out last week, I do find it curious that the government does not see, nor are we pressed to see the hugely more dangerous and deadly actions of risk-taking bankers, greedy corporate boards and careless company executives as greater threats to the life of the nation than a nineteen-year-old “terrorist”. Of course, the needs those insiders to perpetuate itself at home and abroad, whatever danger they pose to those of us who comprise the nation.

While the mass shooter, the careless company executive and the terrorist are capable of the same amount of damage to the homeland, in terms of lives lost or damage to infrastructure, only the terrorist presents a direct challenge to the story of benign intervention around the world, that the Empire tells about itself. And that challenge is especially threatening to an Empire entering collapse.

Which brings us back to conspiracy theories. Why doesn’t the Empire see those stories as a threat? Surely the rantings of Alex Jones, Glenn Beck and, perhaps, even those similarly minded doomers I know, represent a threat to that story as well, don’t they?

Probably not. For one thing, they don’t have the same traction – at home or abroad – as stories of evil terrorists out to destroy our freedoms. Nor do they challenge the story of benign intervention by the Empire in the same way as direct attacks by individuals from nations who have been ravaged by those interventions, but are too powerless to declare an outright war.

And, in their own way, such conspiracies are useful to a fading Empire in keeping us divided and afraid. Even as the costs of problems such as diminishing resources, climate change and economic instability increase, we become increasingly unable to mount a challenge to the spending priorities of an Empire that must now defend itself, at any cost, from the very enemies it has created.

Eventually, if history is an accurate guide, the expense of defending the Empire will prove so costly to the average American, that even the story of benign intervention will not quell our anger. At that point, we become the enemy. If we are so busy divining the entrails of the latest conspiracy theory as to whether this piece of legislation or that one will be the one that will let them take our guns away, sell us out to the UN/Illuminati/black helicopter guys, turn our property over to Monsanto/Goldman Sachs/Exxon Mobil or open the gates to the Democrats/Republicans anti-gun/pro-gun/ Christian/Muslims/Atheist crackpots trying to take over the country, we will never see it coming.

At that point, they won’t bother with new laws to do any of the above, if they feel the need to do them. At the point where the Empire finds itself desperate enough that we’ve become the enemy, they will simply kick in the door (or its equivalent) and twist the laws already in place to justify it. If they feel justification is necessary. Historically, that’s what empires in collapse do.

So, no, I’m not much of a conspiracy theorist – not that I think governments can’t and don’t conspire. The Empire is in decline; it will do what is necessary to protect itself in that decline from enemies both foreign and domestic. All the conspiracy theories about who, what, how and when will not change that if those unhappy days comes in our lifetimes. All they will do is keep us too divided to recognize what’s happening.

My personal theory is, it’s better to spend whatever time we have between now and then, planting our gardens or securing our food supplies, finding ways now to do more with less, making our homes less energy dependent, finding ways to use things we might have thrown away, getting to know our neighbors, localizing our needs and making our communities stronger. I just think those things are far more useful to us (though probably more difficult and less entertaining) than picking through conspiracy theories.

Enemies of the State

April 20, 2013

This has been a sad and frightening week for the United States. On Monday, April 15, a “terrorist attack” at the Boston Marathon left 3 people dead and 174 injured, when two bombs detonated near the finish line of the annual race.

On Wednesday, April 17, a fire and explosions at fertilizer plant in the town of West, Texas, killed 14 (in the latest account I’ve read,) injured around 200, with one or two still missing and destroyed 200 homes in a city of about 2,600 people.

As terrible as the deaths and injuries were in both of these events, what made them particularly unsettling for me was the way in which the two incidents were categorized, treated by the government and covered by the media.

The Marathon bombings were immediately designated a terrorist attack (whether foreign or domestic) by the government. And the government – federal, state and local – threw the full force of the trillion dollar security apparatus of that government – federal, state, and (increasingly militarized) local – into pursuit of those terrorists. The media covered the attack endlessly that day and over the following four days as an attack against America, complete with pictures of the smiling eight-year-old who died and the ashen-faced, bloody man in the wheelchair, with his legs blown off. And we were just as endlessly subjected to the, “We are Americans, our spirit will not be dimmed, the people of _____ are strong and we will stand together in the face of this tragedy” propaganda from the media and our leaders that has become so commonplace as to be virtually meaningless in nearly every tragedy since 9/11. Then, last night when the manhunt ended in the death of one of the alleged terrorists and the apprehension of the second, the scene – carried in excruciating detail on television – ended with people cheering and waving flags in the street. America was once again safe from terrorism.

I do not mean to make light of the genuine relief those people must have felt. But contrast all this with the way the press and, frankly, the government handled the equally tragic incident in West, Texas. And, the difference in the responses of the people involved in that tragedy.

Yes, there was some (comparatively) momentary coverage of the fire and explosion that followed. Yes, there were speculations that this, too, might have been a terrorist act. I’m sure the security apparatus checked out that possibility, too. And, there were the usual interviews of harried local police, firefighters, and frightened citizens on TV and internet news sites. Yes, the President assured the people of West, the government would stand behind them in this tragedy. Yet nowhere was it treated as anything more than a local tragedy. Nowhere did I see gruesome pictures of the dead or injured for days on end. The coverage I saw amounted to a quick bulletin on one or two of the national news stations and perhaps 30 seconds of coverage on the nightly news over the next couple of days, a flurry or articles in national papers, followed up by a few internet articles. Certainly we saw no patriotic scenes of the people of West, Texas waving flags and cheering the local police and firefighters after they triumphantly killed or captured any careless company owners who might have cut corners with safety regulations to save a few dollars.

And it is this difference in treatment of these two incidents – and all those like them, since 9/11 – that worries me and raises such niggling, persistent questions.

Back in 2011, for the tenth anniversary of 9/11, Reason Magazine ran an article entitled, How Scared of Terrorism Should You Be? http://reason.com/archives/2011/09/06/how-scared-of-terrorism-should Their conclusion? Not very.

Among other facts and figures the article pointed out in trying to answer that question, it stated:“Ohio State University political scientist John Mueller and Mark Stewart, an engineering professor at University of Newcastle in Australia recently estimated that the U.S. has spent $1 trillion on anti-terrorism security measures since 2001 (this figure does not include the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). Assuming that 2,300 Americans might have been killed by terrorists inside the United States, this implies a cost of more that $400 million dollars per life saved. Typically when evaluating the costs of protective regulations, federal government agencies set the value of a life at about $9 million.

“However, terrorism is especially frightening (that’s why they call it “terrorism”), so the average citizen might want to spend double the usual amount to prevent a death. But [this] still suggests that on a reasonable benefit-cost basis public and private spending is 20 times too much to prevent deaths from terrorist attacks. Now let’s retrospectively add the tragic 3,000 deaths from the 9/11 attacks to take into account the remote possibility that terrorists might be able to pull off another similarly spectacular assault; that still means that nearly $200 million is being spent per plausible life saved.”
Federal OSHA statistics show that, every year thirteen workers per day (4,609 in 2011 alone) die in work related accidents, with 4 million injured per year. While many of these are due to simple worker carelessness, many are due to deliberate decisions by company owners or corporate boards to save costs by cutting corners on worker safety.

Yet even in the most egregious cases, you do not see the full force of the government security apparatus come down on company owners or CEOs. The media does not speculate endlessly on the danger they pose for America. The FBI and other agencies do not flash their pictures across the televisions of the nation as dangerous criminals, or post them around the world for identification on social media, or send them to Interpol for evaluation. Swat teams or heavily armed police units do not hunt them down like rats in a barrel. Nor does the media cover them for days on end as threats to the very heart of the nation, their demise to be celebrated with patriotic jingoism and flag waving.

Why not? Both types of events are the result of people making deliberate choices that lead to (often massive) injury, death and destruction. Certainly, both lead to grief, uncertainty and, yes, terror in those who have gone through such an event. So why do we treat both the events and the perpetrators so differently?

Why do both the government and the media continuously encourage us to fear the terrorist and the next potential terrorist attack, but basically encourage us to “suck it up” and get on with our lives when similarly massive damage is caused by greed and corporate carelessness? Is one any less of an attack on “America” than the other? Perhaps not, but while the latter are certainly an enemy of the people, only the first have been declared an enemy of the State. It’s a distinction worth noting.

There’s a lot of speculation across the internet when one of these events occur – whether it’s a terrorist attack, a mass shooting or an industrial “accident” – as to whether it is actually a false flag attack, designed to promote fear and make people more dependent on the government for security. Well, the government has certainly proved itself capable of such actions – both here and abroad – through the years. And whether you believe 9/11 was a covert operation by our own government, or an act of accidental or deliberate “ignorance” by government officials, you cannot deny that it and other terrorist events have been used by the government – abetted by a compliant media – to keep Americans fearful and dependent on the huge security apparatus that has been put in place since then.

Which again raises the question, Why? Why do they need us to be fearful and afraid?

Personally, I think it has to do with the nature of State – especially Imperial States – as they begin to fail and enter collapse. Such States begin to lose the confidence of the people within them. It is the faith of the people in their government that supports a State. And even in the best of times, governments are not above lying and manipulating that faith to get support for the things it feels are necessary for it to do in its own best interests, by convincing the people that it’s in their own best interests as well.

However, as the State fails and the people lose confidence that the State is acting in their best interest and not its own, fear becomes an equitable substitute for confidence. For a long time, fear of the other will do the trick. Fear of the other can rally the people behind their government and distract them from the slow erosion of rights and the rapid development and maintenance of a security apparatus necessary to protect itself, as we’ve seen repeatedly since 9/11. As we’ve been encouraged to see in this latest “terrorist” episode.

Eventually, as the State moves deeper into collapse and even fear of the other is not enough to maintain control, fear of the other is replaced by fear of each other as the people, themselves, become the enemy. We are on the cusp of this right now.

Look at the turn of events over just the last five days. We were told a terrorist attack had occurred. The government and the media told us that five pressure cooker bombs had been set up in Boston, but that the police had found three and disarmed them. Two others exploded at the Marathon site. The media showed us a constant stream of horrific images; local, state and federal government officials assured us that, whoever did this would be brought to justice. The full force of the security system kicked into operation. All the rights we’d given up came into play. Security camera images, phone records, emails, private pictures and videos from the scene were requested or confiscated.

For two days we were urged, by the media, to speculate whether it was a known other like Al qaida or some sinister domestic other on a government watchlist that had done the dreadful deed.

A couple of days later, two young men – designated “white cap” and “black cap” were presented as suspects. Both carried big backpacks; one was seen in security footage setting his backpack down and leaving, shortly before the second bomb went off. Their images flashed around the world on social media as we were asked to be participants in identifying them and bringing them to justice. For a while, it looked like they could be any two American kids – not others, but each others.

At last, they were identified. Two young Chechnyan men, living and going to school here for the last eleven years; their parents, Chechnyan refugees. Not any of the known others, but somewhere in between an other and each other.And finally, over the next twenty-four hours, Boston and its suburbs went into virtual lockdown as these not-quite-others and not-quite-each-others were hunted down by the security apparatus. One dead; one barely alive.

Did we get the right people? I don’t know. Right now, it’s difficult for me to understand how two young men could carry five pressure cooker bombs in two backpacks past security, police and bomb-sniffing dogs and distribute them around the area without arousing someone’s suspicions, somewhere. But perhaps that, too, will be explained.

As I said, we are on the cusp, right now, between the other as enemy and each other as enemy. When the Occupy movement first began to gain momentum, they were harassed by local police and city and state authorities in almost every city where they protested, called terrorists by various national legislators and denigrated daily in the press and on television. These were our own children – exercising their first amendment rights, angry at what greed and hubris had done to millions of people across the country – designated as “others” by the government. We had blurred the line between others and each other, as to who might be an enemy of the State.

The next step down in the collapse of the Empire draws ever closer. Over the last ten years, we have been carefully schooled to see every other as a potential terrorist. Over the next ten years, we may be just as carefully schooled to see each other in that same frightening light. As in other dying empires of history, at some point in this collapsing Empire’s struggle to save itself, we may all run the risk of being asked to turn on each other. Will our faces be flashed across the social media so that our neighbors can help the government by identifying us? Will our neighbors cheer and wave flags while one of us is taken away as an Enemy of the State?

Silly Putty Season – Remembering Jonathan Winters

April 13, 2013

The Wonderful World of Jonathan Winters album cover from Wikipedia

Maybe it’s the unsettled nature of spring this year, but reading some of the news out of Washington this week makes me think silly putty season has arrived for the Powers That Be.

After one of Mitch McConnell’s political strategy sessions – in which he and the boys contemplated fighting off a challenge by Ashley Judd, should she run against him, by attacking her past problems with depression and her religious beliefs – was taped and leaked to Mother Jones News by a Keystone Kops group of Kentucky liberals, Senator McConnell accused them of using “Nazi tactics” to discredit him.

Huh? What? Is that anything like “the pot calling the kettle black?”

Last Tuesday, the (ever clueless) James Inhofe – speaking to reporters about the Newtown families and the gun debate – said, “See, I think it’s so unfair of the administration to hurt these families, to make them think this has something to do with them when, in fact, it doesn’t.”

When asked why the families might believe that the debate did pertain to them, Inhofe replied, “Well, that’s because they’ve been told that by the president.”

Ummm, yeah, couldn’t have anything to do with the fact that their twenty-six dead loved ones from gun violence sort of began this whole conversation, anew, could it?

And, lest you think the silly putty is confined to our national politicians, there’s this week’s comment by Ben Bernanke – he who has spent trillions bailing out the big banks at the expense of the rest of the country – who said, “While employment and housing show signs of improving for the nation as a whole, conditions in lower-income neighborhoods remain difficult by many measures.”

Really? I wonder why that is …

At the same time, Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF and member of the Troika that has crushed whole countries of ordinary people, bailing out the Big Banks of Europe, now believes that, “The ‘oversize banking’ model of too-big-to-fail is more dangerous than ever,” to the US and world economies.

Duhhh, imagine that!

Amidst all the silly putty nuttiness, among the world’s big wigs, two other things happened this week.

The lovely weather at the beginning of the week allowed me to get the first section of my garden readied and planted with carrots, cabbage, spinach and lettuce before the rains and cooler weather moved back in. Not of as great an import on the world scene as the ongoing breakdown of our leaders, but probably of greater import to me in coping with that breakdown.

And, yesterday, Jonathan Winters died. I am old enough to remember, first-hand, the delightful cast of characters created in his fertile mind – from that lascivious old lady, Maude Frickett, and the bumbling, befuddled Elwood P. Suggins to the impromptu cast of characters (including Eisenhower’s golf club) that tumbled out of an ordinary stick, Jack Paar handed him on his show, one night.

He set the nation to laughing, in huge, liberating guffaws, as we recognized ourselves and each other in those characters, and inspired a whole generation of comedians and comediennes in their own improvisations. We were made the richer for it. And, sadly, he has passed at a time when we need his inspired lunacy more than ever.

It’s good to have a Stewart or Colbert to shine the spotlight on our leaders’ silliness, but I think it’s imperative to have someone who can shine a spotlight on the oft-forgotten rest of us – not in the bitter stomach punches that divide us, but in those rib-tickling reminders of our common frailties and strengths.

Or, perhaps we need someone to design a Jonathan Winters memorial app for our phones and tablets and laptops, that will sound an alarm and play Winters sketches, non-stop, until some goodly portion of us – republican and democrat, old and young, working poor and middle class – marches off to the nation’s capitol, surrounds our institutional buildings and, joining hands, engages in an anarchic riot of belly laughs at the beginning of every silly putty season in Washington.

Okay. So, What?

April 6, 2013

U.S. Geological Survey – Public domain image

After talking over my rising blood pressure with the PA who sees me for most of my routine medical care, we decided to up my blood pressure medication. Since I am otherwise healthy, it seemed a sensible thing to try. It’s always about 20 points higher in the doctor’s office than it is when I take it at home. Still, what I consider my “normal” blood pressure is quite a bit higher than what the medical community considers healthy. And, as I am not getting any younger (including my blood vessels,) I’ve decided to see what I can do, on my own, to “help the medication work”.

Over the years, I’ve cut back on my use of the salt shaker dramatically, though unless you can afford to eat only fresh meat and vegetables, nearly everything purchased at stores, these days, contains a good deal of hidden salt.

Although I don’t have a formal exercise program, I’m rarely still. Even the time I spend at the computer is interrupted every few minutes to do something that needs attending to. I garden with hand tools; I go up and down one or two flights of stairs several times a day just to get in or out of my apartment; I keep a couple of two liter bottles of water beside my desk to do lifting and stretching exercises when I think about it. And, of course, I walk almost anywhere I go around the neighborhood since I don’t drive.

Nevertheless, I do read the news every day. I do see signs that the American Empire and the huge energy, military and financial systems it has built to maintain itself are all fraying around the edges and gradually collapsing. I do see the subtle and not so subtle signs of a destabilizing global climate and its effects on the health of our environments. I do see the decline of cheap, easy to access fossil energy sources the world’s economic growth has depended on for the last one hundred years and the effects of trying to maintain that growth with more expensive, harder to access fossil energy.

And, like any good doomer, I worry about all this. I worry about my aging self, as things go belly up; about my kids and their kids; my family; my neighbors; people who don’t see what’s coming and aren’t prepared for it; people who do, but don’t know how to prepare for it; people who live in other countries that are being destabilized by the Empire’s fight to save itself. I even worry about the non-human populations extinguished or displaced by it.

Yet, as I came home from the doctor’s appointment, new medication in hand, and sat down at the computer to read that day’s news, it hit me just how little control I had over any of these things. And how much the tingly anger and fear and worry I feel in reading the news really comes down to that lack of control.

Okay. So, what?

If the housing bubble or stock market bubble or student loan bubble or any of the multitude of bubbles now building in the economy should suddenly burst, do I have any control over that? No. I do not.

If the big banks go belly-up and our government uses the Cyprus template to rescue them by seizing depositor assets, can I stop them? No. I cannot.

If Kim Jong Un decides to act on his rhetoric and lob some missiles at South Korea, or even at Austin, Texas, is anything I can say going to change his mind? No. It is not.

If the government decides to kick the financial can or the climate change can or the peak energy can down the road in a desperate attempt to maintain BAU, will anything I do make them stop it? No. It will not.

So, we are everywhere urged to fear this, be angry over that, worry constantly about it all and, if we only fear, feel anger, worry enough (and give enough money to The Cause) – by ourselves or in mass – we can exert control over all this. We can “bring change”. No. We cannot.

Change will come, not because of our attempts to control it, but in spite of them. There seems to be a tendency among doomers, as things get worse, to go into a frenzied cycle of boom or bust over every little news item or statistic that may herald The Change that will “bring it all down”. We worry it to death, afraid we’ll be caught off guard, angry that it doesn’t work out the way we expected. Does all this change anything? No. It does not.

Change is non-linear. It takes time for the black swans to hatch, fledge and leave the nest. And no one can predict their flight, or where and when they will land. We simply can’t prepare for every possibility.

Okay. So, what?

I can’t speak for you, but I’ve decided to quit. Quit being angry, quit fearing, quit worrying over things I can’t control. This doesn’t mean I will no longer check out the news, fire off an email or letter to a local, state or federal official acting in a more egregious or stupid manner than usual. Or, that I won’t join a local protest where it might have some actual effect.  Or that I’ll quit prepping or writing this blog.  It just means, that having done so, I will send it out into the universe without anger, fear or worry and with no grand expectations.

I hope it means I’ll have more time and energy to control what little I can – Me. My behaviors, my emotional states, my choices. Who knows? Maybe even my blood pressure. It’s sure worth a shot. So, that’s what.