Occupation of Independence

Do you remember when Ronald Reagan said, "I wasn't born on the other side of the tracks, but I was close enough to hear the whistle?" In my mid 50s now, I feel the same way about geezerhood. The scariest thing should be impoverishment, increasing solitude, the loss of mental faculties, disease, pain, and finally death. But it isn't. The scariest thing is slowly turning into one of those old men who talks endlessly about themselves, usually about some dumb job they had way back when.

You'd think that a blogger who puts 'independence' in his title would at least be good at it. I have a concrete example of how perversely difficult it is to be truly independent about buying and using an item that you use everyday.

Admit it. As sick as it sounds, you feel a certain admiration for the Greeks: living for today, with no concern for tomorrow; throwing a big party with borrowed money; lying to the European Union (oh boo-hoo); and being guilt-free about it all. Ahh dear, that is the difference between a Mediterranean and an up-tight Northern European. Strictly speaking, the creditor who lends money to an unfit debtor deserves more condemnation than the debtor, who just wants to have a good time. And the creditors are big banks in up-tight Germany. What's the worst that can happen? If Greece defaults, it will still survive -- ask Argentina. For a few years the big banks of Germany won't lend them any new party-money. But they will, eventually. Then the festival can start all over again.

I said "net", not internet. As an experiment I've decided to stop moderating comments; thus, comments show up on the screen immediately after typing them. After all, if a potential commenter thinks the blogger doesn't trust him, it's natural for the potential commenter to just back away, without wasting his time. I never really moderated anyway, except for an occasional spam comment. I only insist on comments not being personal or on names being used. Blatantly commercial comments will be deleted.

So the truck (of last episode) belonged to a non-profit corporation, did it? Why was that important enough to stick on the outside of the truck? Environmentalism -- that is, Karl Marx meets Bambi -- is an easy belief system to make fun of, but I'm in statesman mode today. Let's just take their belief system as it is, and try to make it compatible with high quality forests, instead of the overgrown tinder boxes and spruce bark beetle feeding-grounds that most of the national forests are. Besides that, national forests are just plain ugly. Do environmentalists really like these eye sores any more than the rest of us?