Occupation of Independence

It is hard to settle on an attitude toward these ghastly presidential elections that satisfies me. The easy thing is to say, "Just ignore it. Why make yourself depressed or angry when you don't have to be?" But this approach is too facile. We do, after all, live under a system of self-government. Something better than mere avoidance is called for. But don't worry: I'm not about to give you a pep talk that belongs in school civics class.   Rather, I want to be candid about how hopeless the USA is, and face up to the fact that we are looking into an abyss. Don't avert your eyes from it. Wallow in it a bit -- not for the mere sake of misery of course, but for the sake of moving on to something better. For instance, lately I have been on a streak of books about Muslim history. Think how narrow public discourse is about Muslims as 'terrorists'. Does anyone ever define what a terrorist is? Isn't it just an example of asymmetrical warfare? Do

I have written before of how thought-provoking it can be to come into a city after a lengthy spell in the backcountry. The greatest difficulty in doing a good job at this is to belittle it right from the beginning: "Oh this is just some kind of thought experiment. It isn't practical. I don't want to waste time by acting like a kook, in his own little mental playground..." Recently I experienced a special version of this. I was visiting a small metropolis that was big enough for a tumescent growth of big box retail stores on the edge of town. The Republican party's debate was in the news. As tempting as it might be to throw mud-pies at each specific runt in the debate, it is more important to ask something more fundamental: if Democracy were so great, and if Americans were so suited for it, how could a country as large as the USA and with all its achievements and deep pool of talent, produce such a pitiful list of candidates? Something is fundamentally wrong wi

Donald Trump is following in the recent tradition of GOP presidents and candidates. Indeed, he has already proven that he is the most qualified candidate: he thinks that re-naming a mountain in Alaska with its traditional Indian name is an insult to Ohio, despite the fact that 'Ohio' itself is derived from the Iroquois word for 'great river'.  Perhaps we should rename the state of Ohio after a congressman from Connecticut. The anti-intellectualism -- or rather, non-intellectualism -- of the modern GOP can be a source of merriment, but actually it is a serious issue for a later post.

If our consumption of information was analogous to food-diet, what diet plan would we be on? What is the informational equivalent of vegetarianism, veganism, paleo-carnivorism, or Old Roy dog chow? It is hard to see all the analogies. But one can be seen: most people are on an information-diet analogous to eating all of their food out of gas-station-convenience stores. That is, their informational junk food comes from the mainstream media, mainly television. What a shame. The financial turmoil going on now should be an opportunity to ask fundamental questions about our banking and political systems. At the very least, the general public should learn how our system really works, not just in theory, but the brutal and unseemly realities of it.  Who is benefiting from the basic policies? What are the incestuous relationships between banking and political power? How do they hide it or at least deodorize it from the general public? Why are the losers so complacent to the winners?

I haven't read everything that there is to read about the Torture Report, the big news story of the day. So at the risk of making a mistake, based on pure laziness, I would still like to point out what isn't being said: everybody is ignoring the fact that the American CIA didn't practice beheading. Beheading is shocking and barbaric. Only medieval Muslims would practice that. America is the sort of country that aims at higher ideals. We are a civilized and Christian nation. We restrict ourselves to torture.

Surely most internet readers have learned from experience to temper their expectations about websites that are new to them. How many times have you gotten excited about a newly-found website, only to learn that your first half-dozen visits have shown everything that you are ever going to see there? Then, when the sting of disappointment sets in, you just want to grab the blogger by the throat and scream, "Come on! You can do it. Take a step upward." But they seldom do. [*] What is stopping them? Are they just dummies? Or completely static? Maybe they are afraid of something. Lately I have been fixating on a simile from Arnold Toynbee's abridged "A Study of History," Vol 1, Chapter IV. Maybe it will mean something to readers: Primitive societies...may be likened to people lying torpid upon a ledge on a mountain-side, with a precipice below and a precipice above; civilizations may be likened to companions of these sleepers who have just risen to their feet

The Republican party won a major victory last night. Big deal! They won't accomplish anything the next two years.  Will they roll back the amerikan police state by repealing the so-called Patriot Act? Discuss whether the USA should withdraw from NATO, now that it serves no defensive purpose? Will they make it legal for amerikans to import pharmaceutical drugs, at lower price of course? Do anything to slow rampant inflation in health care and college costs? How about cleaning up the corruption in the banking and financial sector? Will they limit the fanatical Keynesian bubble-brewing of the Federal Reserve? Can they help young people look forward to good jobs or anything brighter than college debt and paying for trillions of dollars of Medicare expenses for aging Baby Boomers? Of course not. The only thing the Republican party cares about is military spending and finding new wars in the Mideast: new places to kill Muslims or anybody who doesn't like Israel, where 1/3 o

Every year I get closer to seeing Democracy as more of a dogmatic faith than a sensible system of government for grown-ups. Universal suffrage is the worst idea that any society has ever come up with. Consider the 26th Amendment of the U.S. "Constitution." It lowered the voting age to 18. Why? It was probably aimed at redressing some unfairness during the unpopular Vietnam War debacle. People asked how the government could send 18-year-old "boys" to their deaths in soggy rice paddies, when they couldn't even vote on the war, back home. It is easy to sympathize with that argument. But historically this amendment was obsolete by the time it was ratified, because the military establishment has shifted over to voluntary enlistment. And it seems permanent.  Perhaps the Vietnam draft argument was only part of lowering the voting age to 18. The Media and the advertising industry focused on the huge demographic bulge of Baby Boomers becoming consumers, and after a

I was going to be kind and gentle in writing about the pickup truck insanity of modern America. This post was going to start off by discussing several recent trends in the motor vehicle industry that I think are quite positive:  anti-lock brakes (ABS) as standard equipment across the entire fleet. brake-based traction control systems as standard equipment, since 2010. This eliminates the need for mechanically complex four-wheel drive trucks for the vast majority of suburban cowboys. the replacement of heavy, truck-based, gas-sucking SUVs by lighter, unibody-framed "crossovers". the venerable Ford Econoline full-sized van is being replaced by a unibody-framed "Transit" van. small diesels are being added to the light pickup truck line. And then the bad luck hit. I happened to be driving around a dreadfully congested city (Durango, CO). It was impossible not to notice something weird when driving downtown, with the narrow streets and diagonal parking: full-size

You can easily imagine president Obama taking a few days off, maybe even a vacation, after a hard-fought reelection campaign. That's not to say that the next four years don't look frightening enough; in fact, "winning" the White House in 2012 might ironically turn out to be a curse for his party, or for the other one if it had won. But still, shouldn't he be able to act like a human being and soak it up for awhile? Alas, political life can be cruel. His post-election Era of Good Feeling is already cut short by the crisis at hand. I'm not referring to the General Petraeus scandal or the Israeli invasion of Gaza. Those are just sideshows. I'm referring to the liquidation of Hostess Brands, the makers of Ho Ho's, Ding Dongs, and Twinkies. Although it's good to see that a crisis of this gravity is being given proper attention by the business media, nobody is yet discussing the necessity of a bailout. (Perhaps in a day or two, we'll see pro-bai

Near El Rito, NM. It was finally time to come down from the high ridges and head to town to get the usual supplies. Hunters said that the only store in town was a restaurant that was humble, but offered tasty food. Victims of Bernanke's Zero Interest Policy like me have no business "eating out" but sometimes it is irresistible in small towns. It seems like you are really "making a difference" in a place that has the weakest commercial pulse imaginable. As it turned out, the restaurant was closed anyway. Typical. I drove through the town looking for a small grocery store, but found nothing. Ahh but there was something else. There were huge school buildings and athletic fields; police headquarters with high tech and expensive squad cars parked outside; and a Forest Service office. It was a large, modern, air-conditioned, office building, decked out in nice office furniture and the latest computers. Outside was an astounding number of motor vehicles; not just h

The outcome of the first presidential debate has been historically important. (Remember, I don't watch the debates themselves.) Spinmeisters are probably correct when they say this is the first time President Obama has gone in front of so many potential voters without the protective force field set up by his adoring fans in the news media. I'm not for either candidate. The great Quotemeister of the Internet, Edward Frey , found a quote (see his 12 October 2012 post) from Business Insider pointing out that Ben Bernanke has not been mentioned yet in either debate. How careless of them! Yea right. The only solid reason for voting for Romney is that he has said he won't reappoint that narco-Keynesian clown. But what Romney has completely failed to do is come out with both guns blazing about breaking up the Too-Big-To-Fail banks. From George Will today we have: It is inexplicable politics and regrettable policy that Romney has, so far, flinched from a forthright endorsem

I never watch presidential debates since they are all about personality and image in front of the TV camera. There is no substance, and when there is, it's mostly lies. So I didn't watch the recent image-fest between Romney and Obama. But the result and post-debate spin were interesting. Spinmeisters on both sides admitted -- or at least hinted -- that President Obama has been so spoiled and pampered by the New York/DC media establishment that he was too out of shape to face a competent opponent. They couldn't bring themselves to be more candid: Obama is America's first "affirmative action" president, therefore many guilt-ridden whites think they owe it to Something to treat him with soft gloves.  Although I have no great animosity to Obama, as I did to his predecessor, it has been gratifying watching spinmeisters deconstruct the Obama Myth. So far the best quote I've found comes from Andrew Klavan : Even before his inauguration, Barack Obama wa

Every now and then I read an editorial that makes me want to jump up and cheer. I saw one such piece by Eric Margolis today , "Fury at the American Raj." Recently Mish Shedlock made an astute comment on why Romney will lose the election: the GOP doesn't have enough appeal to independents, who hate Perma-War and the huge waste of national resources on "defense", which really means global empire of course. In fact the Republican party today stands for little else other than war against every country in the Mideast that hates Israel and has oil or other resources. It wasn't so long ago that foreign policy was seen as a strength of the Republican party. That was obliterated by George W. Bush and his neocon advisers. Rather than repudiate this recent perversion, Romney has embraced it.  What geniuses the Republicans are! Many Americans of all political stripes would love to see Wall Street bankers go to jail or at least get a firm smack-down. And who do the

During presidential election years it is typical for the two main political parties to rent an empty store in a strip mall and use it for their local campaign headquarters. I happened to be going by the Democrat headquarters this morning, in the college town of Gunnison CO, when I saw this.  This isn't aiming any specific accusation at the Democrats. I doubt that they were doing anything illegal, and if I knew where the Republican headquarters was, I might have seen a similar sign.  The "college loan bubble" has been been getting a lot of attention lately, at least on the internet. Is it a "complex" issue? Or does this photograph undercut the need for, not only a thousand words, but also a thousand pages of a book about government funding and the ability to corrupt everything it touches?

Uncompahgre Plateau, west of Montrose, CO. I am pleased to stumble upon my second "forest miracle" in one summer. Up here at 9000 feet the locals are busy as beavers harvesting firewood in various areas where it is allowed. It's nice to see them actually get some use out of their oversized, overpowered, and overpriced pickup trucks, the official car of Colorado. Maybe one of them will tell me how much a full load of firewood is worth, compared to buying heat from the power company. Of course, I just love seeing downed timber get cleared away. It makes the forest a lot more attractive and removes "ladder fuel" from a potential forest fire. And Coffee Girl can chase squirrels up tree with fewer speed bumps on the forest floor. (Then again, she has amazing buoyancy in bounding over logs.) Progress is being made in this forest, and I don't want to sound greedy, but do you think that commercial companies can get permits to cut firewood and then sell it

Is "obscene" too harsh of a word? It could be. For many years I called Christmas the most obscene national holiday. But that was a mistake. The commercialism (and endless, stupid music) of Christmas might be objectionable on the basis of taste, but it doesn't really offend important values held by serious and sincere people. After all, Christmas really isn't a Christian holiday; it never was. It's simply about fun. But the hypocrisies of the modern Fourth of July do offend the values that most Americans used to take seriously. What could be more disgusting than pretending to care about "freedom" one day a year when, in fact, freedom means little to the average Amerikan today. Too bad I haven't paid more attention to politicians' speeches; it would be great to have statistical proof of a mere suspicion of mine that Democratic politicians don't even bother bloviating about freedom -- nobody would believe them if they did. The whole no

Since being listed on hitchitch.com recently (due to no effort of mine) this blog has many new readers. I probably owe it to them to tell them about this blog so they don't waste their time. This is not one more RV blog that discusses where the blogger is today, whether he got the oil changed at Walmart, or whether RV toilet paper should be one ply or two. Nor am I interested in selling you solar panels, LED lights, etc. Presumably you don't need me to tell you that there is 'breathtakingly beautiful' scenery in XYZ national park. I don't want more readers -- I want better readers and commenters. So then, let's put our newbie readers through a sink-or-swim test by depriving them of the travel escapism and eye candy that they expect. _______________________________________ Anyone who reads a lot of editorials and opinion on the internet must feel frustrated much of the time. So it is a pleasure to announce a rare victory: an editorial that is worth rehash

It must be mere impressionism because it really doesn't make sense that a mountain biker would see more wildlife than a hiker, but such has been my experience. On today's ride I saw a bobcat stop in the middle of the forest road, a hundred yards ahead of Coffee Girl and me, and then do a double-take. Connected by a leash tied to my hip, we must have looked like a pretty strange animal to that bobcat. After a couple seconds it scampered off. There's no mistaking that short tail. Speaking of impressionism is it really true that the middle of a forest is as depopulated of wildlife as it seems, or do too-many-trees simply get in the way of seeing what animals are there? Wildlife biologists must know the answer to that. My version of common sense -- which could be mistaken -- is that there just isn't as much to eat in the middle of a pine tree monoculture as there is at the edge of a forest, or for that matter, in somebody's backyard on the edge of town. You'd t

At long last it is time for the Duel . In order to appreciate the drama of this you might consider watching the end of Barry Lyndon , where you will find more than courage and honour involved. You'll also see intricate rules and rituals being followed to the letter, whilst Schubert's excellent piano trio plays in the background. Young Lord Bullington, the step-son of Barry Lyndon, spoke to him: "Mr. Redmond Barry (aka Barry Lyndon): the last occasion on which we met you wantonly caused me injury and dishonour, in such a manner and to such an extent to which no gentleman can willingly suffer without demanding satisfaction , however much time intervenes. I have now come to claim that satisfaction."    I couldn't have said it better myself. In the original challenge I neglected to explain how the winner would be determined. Rest assured that it will be decided by a distinguished group of "seconds", as well as the head "factors" in charge