Wednesday, October 5th 2022
They are now overturning voting rights laws. They’re working on overturning the civil Rights act. They are working very hard to overturn the rule of law.
Over the last few weeks, I watched an American TV show called Hunters.
The basic premise is that a group of ragtag vigilantes in the late 1970s take up the task of hunting former Nazis who were then living in the United States. The group was led by Al Pacino and to be honest, it’s a pretty difficult show to watch on many levels. For me, the reenactment of Nazi atrocities in the concentration camps was difficult to handle. But equally so, some of the stylistic choices of the filmmaking seemed a bit crazy and chaotic. In the end, especially the final episode of the 10 that they produced simply had too much weirdness to be believed. It was as if they simply could not decide how serious they wanted to be about the material they were making. Nevertheless, I think they are going to be renewed for some reason.
At the heart of the show however, there is a premise that is based on reality. It’s not only that former Nazis are alive and well but that the American government specifically brought in scientist and individuals do work for the state. The idea being that if they did not bring these people in and weaponize them for the United States, the Soviets would. As a result however, it seems we have quite a few Nazis running things in Washington. You bring the ideology in or you allow the ideology to mingle with Americans who actually share the same racist ideas and principles and Nazism continues.
I mentioned that this premise was based on reality. This operation was known as Paper Clip.
Operation Paperclip was a secret United States intelligence program in which more than 1,600 Nazi German scientists, engineers, and technicians were taken from former Nazi Germany to the U.S. for government employment after the end of World War II in Europe, between 1945 and 1959. Conducted by the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA), it was largely carried out by special agents of the U.S. Army’s Counterintelligence Corps (CIC). Many of these personnel were former members, and some were former leaders of the Nazi Party.
To explore openly racist policies in the United States is a subject but could spend a decade on. One does not need to look further than the basic statistics for race-based crime or specific differences in race-based criminal justice to understand the truth in this. The color of someone’s skin or someone’s sexual orientation or even someone’s sex really has always been enough to create societal limitations. Basically the money flows to specific places and is prevented from flowing to others while at the same time, advantage is taken over the lower classes in terms of the types of foods they are given, the medical care provided, the type of education they are allowed and of course the type of police interaction that gets inflicted on them. You could also mention availability of drugs and guns and people who profit off of all of this human misery.
It seems though that what we are really looking at is in fact the Fourth Reich.
The Fourth Reich (German: Viertes Reich) is a hypothetical Nazi Reich that is the successor to Adolf Hitler’s Third Reich (1933–1945). The term has also been used to refer to the possible resurgence of Nazi ideas as well as pejoratively of political opponents.
It’s really hard to argue this argument. It’s hard looking around at what is happening in the world, how politics is being played out and the resulting violence and hatred that is ensuing. It’s hard to not see this (not see the Nazis) once the idea gets into your head that this is what you’re looking at.
We could argue that it’s a matter of semantics. Probably a better word other than Nazism would be fascism.
Fascism is a far-right, authoritarian, ultranationalist political ideology and movement, characterized by a dictatorial leader, centralized autocracy, militarism, forcible suppression of opposition, belief in a natural social hierarchy, subordination of individual interests for the perceived good of the nation and race, and strong regimentation of society and the economy.
I think you could take almost any part of this description and apply it to so many places in the world where politically at least, the right seems to be making as many inroads as possible. Right wing politics ironically has a very similar sounding explanation.
The one single thread that I see running through all of the fragmented arguments about laissez-faire economics or allowing money to be inherited through the generations or even to anti voting initiatives or specific initiatives that disallow voting to take place amongst different classes in favor of authoritarian divisions in society is that society should be well ordered and ruled from a central location. It is the absolute decision that people do not have the right to rule themselves.
Now, there might be an argument to what I just said and in certain cases, you would say that the right wing people are exactly in favor of individual rights and especially so for business. But here actually is the Crux of my point. When speaking about individual rights, there is a big difference between economic rights and freedom of choice to live one’s own life as they like. It is exactly one thing to say that someone with money in their hands can do whatever they want without bothering themselves with ecological problems or acute detrimental exploitation of workers or people living near their factories and another thing to say that people have the right to please themselves regardless of how much money is in their pocket. Or of course the color of their skin, they are sexual orientation or even simply their sex.
When we start talking about the Nazis, you can’t really separate the ideology from the fact that they systemically marginalized and then legalized the murder of jews, gypsies, intellectuals, homosexuals and any peoples who they felt were racially inferior to themselves. Eugenics and the belief that somehow these white people were the master race and entitled to rule was at the basis of their argument. And of course they were very good at bringing like-minded people to their cause. Just like religion perhaps gives people comfort in the belief that after their death they will ascend to some Paradise because of their connection to the church, people feel their social status rises with their connection to those in power. Nazis have a tendency to breed Nazis.
What I’m saying is that this is an infestation. What I am saying is this right-wing conservativeism and this modern manipulation of politics and the acquisition of power through the manipulation of politics is a cancer for our planet. It isn’t immediately so that people are bad. It is the segment of our population, a very small percentage of people really, who are leading a great percentage of the masses down the road to misery and destruction all in the fantastic dreamlike hope that somehow they rise out of their situation by association. They don’t see the manipulating hands that put them and keep them exactly in the shithole they live in as being the same hands they worship as salvation. They don’t see that the people they look to for answers out of their difficulties are the same people who put them into their difficulties and keep them there perpetually.
It’s hard to stop a machine like this once it gets rolling. It’s hard to get cancer out of your system once it’s in there. Not only is the medical procedure to get rid of cancer long and laborious and extremely uncomfortable, it’s ridiculously resource intensive. It’s not only that cancer takes over and ruins your life and health, the fight against cancer takes even more of your life and health out of you. It also takes everyone close to you with it.
My solution to this problem is to simply stop feeding it. When my friend Mike found out he had cancer, he told me that one of the tests that they make to find out the extent of the cancer is to inject some radioactive sugar water into his system. It turns out that cancer absolutely loves sugar as a food source and whatever cancer cells are alive in his body simply light up in response to the injection. Mike however would not stop eating a predominantly sugar based diet during this time. Unlike a lot of cancer patients, he didn’t become a vegan. He didn’t reject processed foods. In fact, he didn’t even stop smoking cigars or drinking alcohol. Strange, odd and difficult to understand decision making.
The logical solution would be to stop feeding the cancer. When you find out what cancer likes to eat, you simply stop giving it to them. Of course this will make the cancer angry. Getting cut off from things you love and need can be very difficult.
I can attest to that as I have lost quite a few things because of the fascists. I’ve had more than a few things taken away from me by fascists and after a while, you learn to live below the radar as much as you can. It seems that fascists don’t make deals, they just take what they want. Or in other words, I learned my lesson a long time ago.
If you know the things that fuel the power, you can stop supporting it. If you understand where the money comes from, you can simply stay away from it as much as you can. The infestation is pretty deep. Global warming and climate change are pretty much symptoms of this cancer as much as anything. Doing everything you can to support environmental sustainability also goes a very long way to starving the cancers of the world. You can also do this in terms of diet. Eating locally and buying locally does a lot to kill the cancer. Trusting in your own community and even bartering or just being helpful does a lot to keep cancer at a minimum.
All I’m saying is that what we are looking at with all of this remarkably horrific news are simply the symptoms of a cancer that we have been feeding for a long time. The cancer is based on an ideology but there are those who have the right to rule others. This one simple striation, this one simple agreement that the world must be divided and those who have should have more and there are others who should be surprised is exactly the issue at hand. Whether we take these divisions by visual cues or whether we take them through an understanding of each other’s labels and objectification, it’s really all the same. It’s all just very nasty rhetoric that we use to justify our hate. It’s all just justification for cruelty that we use to justify our own addictions.
Perhaps we should all just start living human lives and eat human food for a change. Perhaps we just don’t need the excitement of dancing with death anymore. Maybe we can just let this go and allow things to grow quiet for a while. Clean up the mess, figure out a few systems how to live well on a smaller scale and just try to be kind and accepting of our neighbors. It’s really not so much to ask. We just have to agree to stop the war.
***
It’s 7:00 a.m. and I’m in the middle of some kind of non-wake up. Last night was not a good sleepless night. Sometimes I don’t mind my insomnia and it gives me an opportunity to do some interesting things. Sometimes it’s just some reading or flipping through social media. Sometimes it has some serious things like doing good paperwork or even fixing things that don’t require too much light. Last night was one of those miserable nights where all you want to do is get some sleep but you just can’t get more than a few minutes at a time. You can’t concentrate and you can’t pass out. It’s horrible.
I tried to pay attention to the baseball but unfortunately, I missed Aaron Judge’s 62 homer. I don’t feel like I dropped the ball by not being there. I saw the replay. Even if I was there, it would not have been so much of a thrill. I mean, I think it’s one of the cool things that happened this year in baseball. I think the guy is an amazing baseball player and he’s just had one of the greatest hitting years of all time. Barry Bonds class great.
Judge was so good this year, he could hit a homer off of Jesus himself. Actually, he did hit this last home run off of Jesus. The picture who threw the ball was named Jesus Tinoco.
The Mets swept their double header today making it to 100 wins but the Braves also won making it to 101. Today is the last day of the season and the Mets still have a chance to tie and force a one game playoff. Actually, I think I’d be happier to let the Braves take the title and worry about facing them in a few days. But, we will see what happens.
I don’t think I’m going to try and tune in to the games tonight. If it turns out that I wake up and can’t get back to sleep, maybe I will take a look. But I am not setting any more alarms.
Yeah, it’s hard to get my brain focused right now. I really didn’t get enough sleep.
As for chores, I don’t really have a lot to do. I don’t have so much wash to take care of. I could do it or Let It go and it wouldn’t make any difference. I don’t have any intentions of calling anyone for help but if Ghenna or Lena come looking for jobs, I can accommodate them.
One of the projects that Ghenna suggested for himself is to put a new roof and a new cranking apparatus over my well. As of the moment, it’s just a pair of wooden posts with a hand crank held between them. The posts also hold up a small sheet metal roof. I don’t know whether someone leaned on it or what but after a year and a half of trying to keep the thing straight, it’s now leaning too far for the roller to bring up a bucket. Technically, none of this is really necessary. It’s not a very deep well and it’s not so physically difficult to just drop a bucket in on a rope by hand. But if we’re going to rebuild it, it’s certainly time to do the job. I could do the carpentry myself but I’m in need of materials and a couple of tools in order for this to make sense.
Other than this, I think the only thing that I really need to take care of is to make sure that my plastic bag full of plastic makes it to the garbage truck by 3:30 this afternoon.
Of course I could do some gardening. If it’s dry and the Sun comes out, it might be nice to go and start clearing the area around the trees we planted last year. The remainder of the fertilizer and straw that we have is for these trees and the berry bushes. I think my ex partner has purchased three more berry bushes. Planting them and prepping the trees and the bushes is the very last of our fall work. Well, we still have food in for the garden boxes. When we finish with them and button them up, that will be everything.
If it means anything, I think I’ve changed my mind about all the cabbage we planted. During the course of the summer, I couldn’t get the thought out of my mind that we had wasted space by growing so much cabbage. I have all of the greens I need from horseradish leaves that grow naturally here in ridiculous abundance. Literally, it was my go-to greens all summer. Now though, the cabbage we have has ripened and I’m very much enjoying having fresh cabbage available. I don’t know if we are going to make some kvasheni from what we have or not but I like cabbage quite a bit. I don’t think I will ignore planting some next year. I’m pretty happy we did this.
Basically though, that’s about it. I don’t really have much else to do.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind days like this. I don’t mind not having responsibility. I don’t mind not being pushed or needing to push myself. I don’t mind when it grows quiet at all. I don’t mind simply relaxing. I don’t mind it one bit.
***
Here are a couple of updates from the war. The first one is from The Russian Guy and the second is from Denys Davydov. I wish I could have this information with less boisterous enthusiasm and less aggressive self-marketing. However, I’m pretty happy with the accuracy because basically, they agree with each other.
Perhaps I’m overdoing this but here is one more with some very technical specifics about the operation in Kherson. This one is simply titled Reporting from Ukraine.
It’s not really about taste, it’s just that things are going really well for Ukraine right now. Me? I am in favor of anything that leads to peace and the Russians going home. Personally, I’ve had enough of the Russians for a lifetime, thank you very much.
***
It’s straight up noon and I’m back in my kitchen/cafe enjoying some tea and basking in the afterglow of brunch. Call it a late breakfast or an early lunch. Say that I was in a bit of a sugar low by the time I got here. Say anything you want. This was one of the tastiest and most fulfilling thing I have made in a long time.
I got up and had a brief walk around and noticed that there were even more walnuts lying around. I guess this year was a bumper crop for walnuts. So before I did anything else and feeling rather happy to be up and around and pain free, I grabbed a rake and started moving leaves around. Eventually, all of these Walnut leaves are going to land on top of my compost pile. My new belief is that these leaves can be composted. My secondary idea for them is to lay them on the paths in the new orchard and specifically on top of grass that is growing there.
I worked until I had two buckets and then noticed that I was shaking a bit hypoglycemically. No oil in the dinner meal last night pretty much diminishes the effect of diabetes on my ability to process food. Also, last night’s carbathon had cornmeal as a thickening agent. Outrageously tasty. Outrageously fulfilling. The result was not exactly a food coma but more of a food afterglow. It didn’t do a damn thing for my sleeping patterns but it certainly felt pretty good to eat it and digest it.
Now however, the physical activity was giving me the shakes. I tried to play with discipline but after two buckets, I’d had enough and came inside.
I did use a little bit of the new olive oil. I guess I always make the most flavorful decisions when I’m really hungry.
So the last of the cabbage I have lying around went in, and onion went in, a couple of chili peppers went in, a little bit of garlic went in and suddenly I hit a wall. Something was missing. Something else needed to go in. I went over to the potato basket but for some reason was not struck with the idea that I actually wanted potatoes. But just in back of the potatoes were my pumpkins. Bingo.
I took the smallest one I had and hacked it in half. I used my potato peeler to take off the outside green skin and then cut it into slices. I took out the seeds and put them somewhere to dry and then cut up the slices into bite size pieces and put them in the pot. Yes, I ate one piece raw and it was absolutely delicious.
To end up with curry, I just used the remainder of yesterday’s peanut hummus. I threw in some extra water to loosen it up from the blender and scraped down the sides to get every drop and then tossed that into the pot and gave everything a nice mix. The chickpeas of course started to thicken and when it got to the consistency that I wanted, I tossed in some noodles just because I bloody well love noodles.
Flavor and warmth. Absolutely the stuff of Legends. I don’t even know why non-vegans exist when food like this is possible. I can’t think of a single breakfast I’ve ever had in my life that I would rather have than this. Absolute food for the soul, excitement for the mouth and nutrition for the body all at the same time.
I was well into my afterglow when Lena showed up. Today is a beautiful day. Belarusians don’t like working in the rain but they get great ideas about making money when the sun comes out.
She was in a fine mood. It only took me one suggestion to get her to stop screaming at me and talking in a quieter voice. She agreed that she was drunk last Thursday but that she’s back on the wagon now. She’s popping candies as a support habit.
No, I actually don’t need the floor cleaned and no, I actually don’t need any wash done. I don’t have that many things to wash and frankly doing it myself is something I can do that I don’t actually mind. I am genuinely enjoying this new mobility and it’s extremely hard for me to go back to a completely non-physical life. I’m not doing 8 hours of Labor and have no plans anywhere in the rest of my life unless it is an absolute necessity of life and death. But moving the blood around a little bit is good for health and frankly there’s a huge difference between living in my head and living in the physical world. I am not ready to give up on walking around just yet.
But I did ask her to go to the store for me. I could use some standard spaghetti and if they have any kvasheni, I could use a box of that. Winter is coming and I’m starting to feel it.
I didn’t really need this service but I didn’t want to leave the women empty-handed. It’s not really so much pity. Maybe it is about pity. Maybe it’s just that I actually appreciate people who help out regardless of motivation. And regardless of her actual fitness for life, she has been one of the few people showing up all the time to make sure I’m still alive. Again, regardless of motivation, it’s hard for me to be hard.
I mean, all of that kind of bullshit. I’m a guy. I really can’t help feeling this stuff.
At the current moment, she is off on her mission. She said she will be back within a half hour. I’ll believe it when I see it. I still have more walnuts to gather. The tree sits next to a fence and those two buckets I picked up this morning were only on the other side of the fence. I still have the Rose Garden side.
I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this before but my ex partner has some rose bushes planted out in front of the house. So far, they are not amounting too much but give everything about 2-3 years and I think this place will really be something.
Wow. That was the first one. Just as I was finishing up that last sentence, a praying mantis came in and landed on my arm. I managed to get a photo of him and even take a small film. I don’t think he’s in such good shape. I tried to shoot him out of the house and he doesn’t seem to want to fly or move very well. I think he’s on his last legs. Maybe I should have listened more closely to what he had to say. Do you think praying mantises have wisdom for us?
I managed to get him out the door and he wandered into my woodshed probably looking for insects to eat. I wish him well on the remainder of his journey.
***
It’s a little bit before 5:00 and I’ve just finished a second remarkably satisfying meal. If breakfast was a Wonder, this dinner was just a mega meal. I couldn’t help it. Simple spaghetti and veggies. I have too much food lying around. It was too easy.
When Lena was here, she said that I’m getting fat. She’s probably right. There’s too much food lying around. I don’t know what to do with myself. I’ve been rubbing my fingers together and worrying about every penny and every drop of water all year and now I’m sitting in my kitchen/cafe and I’m just surrounded by edibles. Of course I’m getting fat. There’s too much food around me. I feel I have an obligation to make use of it. I feel bad if I ignore it. This is bullshit but it’s also probably true.
Tomorrow will be a light eating day. It seems strange to say something like that in advance. Only a few days ago, I was talking about how life’s natural rhythms lead you along. Now, just days after such a statement, my eyes have become bigger than my stomach and I just can’t help myself. Perhaps I should just say that the party is over, I’ve had my fun and it’s time to go back to reality. Anyway, it’s just for a day. Friday night is only 48 hours away. I can have another one of these or probably something more like what I had this morning again.
I got two comments today. I got two very intelligent comments today. I am very pleased with the intelligence of these comments. I can only hope that this is something that may continue into the future. I have my doubts but still, it was nice to see people take a shot at speaking about the world intelligently.
I have an idea for a new business the other day. It’s not really a business in the sense that people will get rich. It’s more of an intellectual version of my green2021 ideology of setting up carbon friendly businesses that would aid the community. The idea there was free distribution of funds. Pure profit sharing with a limitation. The limitation means that it’s not a business that we enter into specifically to get rich but rather just to feed us. If wild success comes our way, the next step is obviously to expand the amount of people that we feed.
Yeah yeah, I understand. I’m a foolish utopian. Can’t help it.
This time however, it would not be physical help for the community, deliveries, businesses that aim to provide carbon friendly energy alternatives or Geo heating or cooling, this one was just a website based upon pure idealism. I thought to call it pointofview.something and it would simply be a place where people could express their point of view in essays. Exactly and directly pure freedom of speech. Kind of like a website that gets a lot of comments but the website is actually the comments.
As far as making money, if this thing should for some reason grow in popularity, I think we should share the resources amongst all contributors. Yeah, yeah, I get it. One person comes in and suddenly they have 5000 views and 10,000 followers and they end up being the Superstar of the organization. How could I possibly say that money earned should be equally shared and that they should not make more profits? I get this quandary.
My answer is simply that if this is my original idea and I do the setup and some measure of administration, I also should not be taking more than my own share. That’s the whole point.
In any organization, you are going to have good guys and bad guys. The Yankees made it to the playoffs this year but with the exception of Aaron Judge, the rest of the team seemed hell-bent on crashing what was a juggernaut of a first half. Nevertheless, he might have been responsible for a pretty decent portion of the offense but this is not basketball. No matter how well he hits, he’s not Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant taking over a game and scoring 80 points. The team still needs pitching and it definitely needs people picking up balls in the field and throwing people out.
Judge himself by the way is a remarkably good team player. I’ve never heard anybody say a bad word about him as far as his clubhouse presence goes. They are also considering him for the captain of the team. That is, if he stays. I think he’s going to be looking for a small country and five or six Renoirs to pay for his skills over the next decade. A few airplanes, ownership of a few Banks, the dictatorship of a small country in Eastern Europe…
What I’m trying to say is that the important thing is that people speak. The important thing is that people say what they really feel. Well, not only that they say what they feel. If we are talking about comments on websites, there are places that draw thousands of comments. Thousands upon thousands of people typing in a few sentences trying to say how they feel about some stimulus that came from the source material. I’m not talking about stray sentences. I’m talking about rational essays making a specific point and backing up that point with facts.
One of my problems as an English teacher in working with advanced students is the problem between facts and opinions. People are perfectly happy to give their opinions. Even here, where freedom of speech is known to be something that can get you thrown in jail, people often are free to say the truth. What I’m talking about however is people building reasonable cases for their point of view. I like it because it’s interesting or it’s interesting because I like it is not what I’m looking for here.
I think it’s a tricky subject. I’m not sure how many people will be willing to volunteer their work on spec. I guess it depends on how many people are willing to chime in at the beginning. Any organization needs time to build. Any website needs time to find a following. I’m just thinking that it would be pretty cool to have a public forum where the public has the right to put together the entire newspaper.
We could have things like question of the day. We could offer specific prizes for top writers. I could see that we would either be a hobby for people who are already professional writers or a place for aspiring professionals to hone their chops.
It’s not such a crazy idea. In fact, I think it would be a pretty healthy place.
Today I ran across an interview with Jerry Garcia of all people. He was talking about the days when the Grateful Dead would participate in the great acid test. I am not advocating the use of narcotics anywhere in this idea at all but there was something that he said about this time. He said that there was no delineation, the actual word he used was chauvinism, between audience and performer. To his mind and to go with the ideology of the moment, everybody was both audience and performer. Everybody paid a dollar to get in. So the dead were not the house band so to speak but simply amongst other participants interested to see what would happen. I guess they were just making the most noise.
This is the basic idea. It is that there is a blurring between those who stand up and instruct others as to what is right and wrong and those who would not necessarily listen passively but would rather be participants on their own.
Would there be rules? I guess there would have to be. I would probably recommend that people stick to the subject at hand and not start leveling their guns at each other, intellectually or in reality. I would think in order for something like this to work, people should feel free that they have the right to offer their opinions. People are not going to come to a place where they get raped by a bunch of trolls. This is my complaint about the country I live in and about any country where fascism is the norm and people look for ways to rule over others.
This would however pose another problem. What happens when the fascists show up to give their point of view? What exactly do we do about that? What rules do we put in play to suppress fascists and Nazis and racists from taking the opportunity to get an audience for their thoughts?
This is Noam Chomsky territory of course. Chomsky famously agreed that in a world where freedom of speech is allowed, freedom of speech is allowed even for those preaching ideologies of hate.
Maybe that is the answer to this question. Maybe the point is that an argument in order to be accepted needs to be completely inclusive. If the ideas are good for a small number of people but harmful to others, they just don’t go. If in order to prove your point, a certain percentage of the population needs to be excluded or sent to their death in order for this to work, it is a nonpoint. We’re not looking for popularity contests at the expense of non-popular people. We want good ideas that work for everybody.
This raises the argument as to whether or not we should call this a communist organization. It is as true as the light of day that if I say that we are pure profit sharing and worker driven, I might as well have trained under Marx himself. Why, the very idea of even thinking of such a thing is as Pink as the underbelly of a pig.
So, is that a problem? Do you think if we wanted freedom of speech and a place where anyone could, if they take the trouble to back up what they say with facts and have the best interest of the world as a whole in mind for their ideas, do you think we should throw them away because of the name?
Undoubtedly, quite a few people will say that it just doesn’t work. Maybe an astute person will point out that Donald Trump got elected by giving people foolish names, mocking them and belittling them and raising himself up at their expense. Even in his latest speech, Vladimir Putin tells us that people who are not right thinking in their sexuality or people who are somehow against the will of the state need to be suppressed, in prison or for the benefit of the war, simply sent unprepared to the front to die.
Maybe that’s the whole point of this. Maybe this is exactly the reason why we need something like this. Perhaps we need people who think beyond borders and colors and flags. Perhaps we need global thinkers looking for answers to the problems that are not only killing the people of this region in large numbers but causing the eventual death of the entire planet. Maybe a little freedom of speech is exactly what we all need.
No, I don’t think this is going to happen. None of these ideas I come up with ever really work out anymore. I’m too old and I’m not sexy enough anymore to motivate people. In order to actually elevate this thing into the public eye or to get pushed along into the algorithm by the machine, I would need to make a little bit more meat available. People need meat in order to believe in you. People prefer photographs to words. They like to see your meat. They like meat shopping. They like assessing meat as to whether it’s tasty or not. I am obviously no longer tasty meat. I understand this. I’m learning to live with it.
It would also be an argument against this that I myself would be exploiting people. Telling them to create and distribute their own intellectual property for the good of a website (or humanity or the planet) is pure exploitation. And if we did take off, you can bet your bottom dollar that I will be accused of all kinds of inappropriate behavior, theft of funds, embezzlement, harassment and all kinds of coercion and corruption and misuse of power. It doesn’t matter whether I actually do this or not, somebody’s going to want to take us to court so they have an opportunity to make you so someone else’s meat.
Is this vegan thinking? That’s a heck of a good question. This is probably worth sending over to the oracle.
You know, you don’t exactly get a yes but if you scroll down those first few pages, it certainly seems that one ideology seems to lend itself to the other. It’s hard to say whether this is a Chicken and the egg thing, what came first communism or vegetarianism, but it does seem that the moment you find pity or a distaste for eating flesh you tend to Fall away from all of the flesh eating inherent in death race capitalism. Those leaders who don’t mind creating all that dead flesh in wars might prove that point. A person who finds dead animal flesh distasteful would probably be the last one to want to create more of it.
Anyway, it’s just an idea that came through my head. I guess I’m feeling kind of writerish today. I got two, not one but two comments today and both of them were damn serious and worthy of listening to. I don’t really think this means my world is going to change radically. I also don’t believe that starting a website where people are free to express their points of view is going to work. It might. It might become a thing. It might become a bloody media Giant. But I’m cynical.
I mean, we are consumers now, aren’t we? We are Urban dwellers striving for the middle class, aren’t we? We are all determined to get our piece of the pie, isn’t this true? We all have to look out for number one, right?
A Florida journalist once told me that the reason she probably wouldn’t publish my story is that there’s just not enough blood in it. People need quite a bit of blood to satisfy them. Florida is a very conservative state by the way. People who live there understand this. People who live there go right along with the economic ideas given to them by the media. Florida is definitely not the place to go to talk about silly things like the end of the world.
***
This has nothing to do with the war, veganism, politics, society, health or my freaky neighbors. It’s just a really cool breakdown of Judge’s number 62. Enjoy
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Yeah, today was quite a day. You get to the end of a day like this and it’s kind of hard to just turn it off and go back to doing what you’re doing. In fact, it’s kind of ironic in the fact that all I’ve ever done is ask people to stop and perhaps restart their lives in a different way but yet they never do. You ask people to slow down for a moment, just to perhaps enjoy that moment but they simply can’t. They are locked into what they are doing and no one is ever going to stop them.
I’ve had people ask me to do this. I am a notorious party pooper. I’ve had people invite me to get togethers and when I simply say thank you and that I’m happy to have been there but it’s time to go home, they always seem to be in shock that I haven’t jumped on board their boat and decided to go in a different direction. Maybe we all suffer from the same delusion. Maybe we all believe that we should be in power.
I am going to stop though. I’m going to stop in a couple of weeks. It’s hard to say whether I really want to put away this journal writing. I actually kind of enjoy being able to talk about this stuff. In some ways, I feel like I’m contributing to the world in a general and real way by taking note of what I’m doing. Perhaps it might seem kind of funny, like a stunt or something like that to stop living in town and go to the country and try to grow some food. Perhaps to some people I’m just playing this game and that really I’m just going to say hahaha, that was fun, let’s go back where we were. I guess this is possible but I sincerely doubt it. It may seem like either personal Insanity for writing everything down or a stunt by some rich guy for attention but unfortunately, this really is what it is.
I had a tiny conversation with an old friend today. What started as a purely political conversation ended up getting personal. I’m afraid I was guilty of the same rules I put on my theoretical website. I said something personal instead of leaving the conversation alone. What came of it though was a really interesting question that seemed to be more politically oriented but was in fact a genuine question about taste. I was asked if I didn’t believe that humanity would be better if everybody just crawled into the cities and let the forests regrow outside the walls of that City. I guess an actual understanding of human agriculture had never gotten into their thinking. But my answer was more clear. I told her I was much happier in the quiet and the fresh air and that I really had no interest in living a middle class urban life. It was simply no longer my way.
There was a revelation that came with us. Perhaps we really were polar opposites. This didn’t bother me. I’ve been aware of how far apart we are for a long time. I’ve always been okay with it. I have lots of conservative friends. I have lots of friends who have brains that work in strange and interesting ways. I have lots of friends who have been taught how to live by people who were handing out information in an unfortunate way. Everything’s ok.
I don’t want to stop writing. I really think I want to try some literature though. I don’t know whether that is instead of this or taking over a big percentage of this. Maybe in addition to this. Or maybe completely without this.
The truth is, I don’t understand why I should stop talking. Why should I stop thinking about things? I don’t understand why what I do and what I seem to have made a massive part of my life should end. I don’t know why I should consider this a stunt or that my reality is really somewhere else. Maybe I just like it here. Maybe what I have is good enough.
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