Occupation of Independence

This summer, readers are likely to hear me rhapsodize over soft sagebrush hills and their shadows at dawn and dusk. And more times than they need. It didn't even take one day to start mooning and swooning. But shifting my view to the forested top of a high hill, it was easy to be almost troubled by it. The green forest seemed to be slowly sloughing off the top of the hill, causing it to invade my sagebrush hills. It is strange to think of a forest on the march. Oh sure, Macbeth reminds us, "Fear not, till Birnam Wood do come to Dunsinane." Or maybe it was the news and photos of the creeping malevolence of lava on the Big Island of Hawaii. It was certainly a reminder of how important it is for the observer to properly prepared, in order to be strongly affected by "beauty", which would in fact become boring rather quickly, otherwise.  Earlier in the day my dog and I had slowly seeped up that 1500 feet or so of hill, on the mountain bike. At sunset, some o

Recently I wrote about James Howard Kunstler surprising me with some of his opinions. Another long-standing and well-known pundit is doing the same thing. Pat Buchanan recently wrote a post that makes him sound so disgusted with the current pope that he is searching for an alternative to Roman Catholicism. He rhetorically asks whether the pope has the power to change the eternal verities of the Catholic religion. My short answer is, yes, the pope does. When Buchanan talks about the eternal verities of the religion, doesn't he really mean the values and ideas that he got used to as a Catholic boy in the 1940s? Does he really think that his religion should be static? If so, he never belonged to the right religion in the first place. In fact he has overlooked a great advantage and strength of the Catholic church.  All religions say that they worship "God", but strictly speaking, they either worship 1) a church hierarchy, or 2) a holy book. Catholics, Orthodox, M

One of the stump speeches on this blog is that Suffering is under-rated -- not so much for the sake of itself, but for what it can lead to. I ran into an extreme example of that recently. For instance, reading forums on the internet can be depended on to deliver exquisite suffering to anyone with half a brain. After reading them, one can only scream, "So this is what we get for hundreds of billions of dollars spent on public education in this country!" The younger and more macho the commenters are, the more idiotic. Try a mountain bike forum if you don't believe me. You don't need a list of their favorite instruments of torture. Let's be brave and face up to the suffering. In fact, let's even wallow in it a bit. And then, when you least expect it, you run into a comment like this: Reading this thread is like watching a toddler learn to walk- it keeps looking like it's going to fall flat on it's face and you start to wince and look away,

There is an art to choosing which pundit to read.  A reader seeking comfort can read a pundit that they always agree with. Inevitably, this turns into disappointment. Soon you can anticipate everything the pundit will say, and you've heard it all before. On the other hand, if you disagree with everything they are about to say, you have the same problems as above, with the added benefit of being made angry. And so, the middle ground is best. You must be relieved and delighted when he agrees with you. These moments also predispose you to give him the benefit of the doubt when he disagrees with you. At least you stay good-natured about the disagreement.  That is why I have read James Howard Kunstler over the years. He has come a long way from his roots as a New York Jewish Democrat/Bolshevik (grin). His latest essay was mildly shocking -- and enjoyable.  For a moment there I thought the essay was written by Fred Reed.