Is A Fascist Future Inevitable?

Many of us have been losing hope for years that the slouch toward a Fascist future can be reversed or delayed. The West, as it were, has Fascism baked in in one form or another, and no amount of rebellion or resistance is enough to overcome it. We are on the path of descent and there's no way back.

And it may be true.

With the advent of Trump in the White House -- an existential mistake in my view -- we got a taste of what our Fascist future might look and feel like. Many of his defenders were ostensibly "progressive," but we found that their "progressivism" was limited to opposition to various individuals, personalities, and policies that were advocated, featured or implemented by The Government. There was and is no coherent ideology among these "progressives" except opposition a thing, person, or policy largely for the sake of opposition.

Trump upset a few apple carts, broke a few rice bowls, and introduced constant chaos into The System, and as such he was worthy of support and defense by people who should have known better -- and I believe did. But more important to them was shaking up The System, disrupting routines, and skewering ("pwning") institutional complacency.

Trump's behavior was one thing, but his intent was clearly to rule as an authoritarian, indeed Fascist, dictator, no less so than Nixon, and Bush I & II. They set the standard. Trump was too mentally deficient and chaotic to follow through very well, but he sure tried. And a good deal of what he set out to do is still in place, as are many of the people he put in office.

Our problem -- if we oppose Fascism -- is not so much Trump or his chaos as it is the sponsors who see their advantage in fostering this sort of thing. Their primary advantage is in keeping the masses (to the extent they are acknowledged at all) diverted and entertained. 

In other words, making it all but impossible for there to be an uprising against the corporate-fascist ruling clique, a ruling clique that intends to endure no matter which political party is ostensibly in power. Trump was great at keeping the hoi polloi outraged and entertained. So long as they were, they didn't have time or energy to do anything about their lot in life, and as it happened, in death as the COVID pandemic easily managed to eliminate something over a million "useless eaters" in the United States and God knows how many globally. That pandemic is ongoing, though the death rates have (temporarily?) declined. Other illnesses and wide-spread poverty exacerbate the problems of the masses.

Until recently, I was almost always optimistic about the future and about building a better future mostly via community. The individualism that was so heavily promoted by the libertarian right was in my view a passing phase not likely to outlast the numerous crises that seemed to be accumulating. It was only through community, I believed, that we as a society would be able to get through what was coming.

Well, I was wrong. 

The breaking point was the lawless interference of the Supreme Court in the presidential election of 2000. While I saw it then as a deeply erroneous ruling, almost worse was the acceptance of this monumental error by the Democratic Party and the electeds, including Al Gore who presided in the Senate over his own loss of the presidency. The only ones who objected were the Congressional Black Caucus. And they were promptly silenced -- by Al Gore. 

Something was very wrong at the very top of the governmental structure. It would lead -- inevitably? -- to the catastrophes of September 11, 2001, and the perpetual wars in the Middle East, South Asia and Africa. All of a piece.

Yet I thought and believed that the American People, indeed the people of good will throughout the world, would be able to overcome the worst aspects of the ruling clique that included both political parties and seemed to be spreading internationally. 

The War Party seemed to be universal.

After a certain point there was no more Peace party. Code Pink seemed to be the only outspoken party for Peace in the United States and often it seemed its voice was faltering.

The horrors perpetrated by our rulers were atrocious and obvious, yet nothing was done. Obama was seen as the redemptive counterpoint to all that had been going wrong, particularly the economic meltdown of 2008, and yet he turned out to be part of the problem rather than the solution.

The fundamental problem was our reliance on a singular figure -- the President in the case of the United States -- to solve the problems that just kept building up. The President can't do it, and not only that, it's not appropriate to expect him (or her) to.

It takes a community, a community of communities, the society as a whole, to do it, and the society of 2000 and later was not capable. All the energy was going into fragmentation of society rather than cohesion. And it seemed to me that the internet and later social media was part of the problem.

We are now so far down that path, the only way back toward community is the fascist path.

 Yes, fascism is a rightist "community" strengthening ideology. There is nothing equivalent on the left any more. Socialism and communism once played that role, but no longer. 

There are a few leftish religious outfits that could-- maybe-- be the kind of counters to the slouch toward fascism that could slow or halt the current trends, but I don't see any of them becoming strong enough.

My former optimism for the future is pretty much gone.

The Trump experiment was bad, but it wasn't definitive or final. We'll face the elements of fascism again. 

And again and again until it becomes the default social organization for much of the West.

We've been on that path -- whether we want to be or not -- for a long time, and there may be no way back,

Is it inevitable? What is the upshot? I don't have an answer. 

We'll just have to see, won't we?

 

A Note or Two on The Election

I confess I did not vote this time around. Went to the MVD to get a handicapped parking permit -- finally; it's taken a month to do the paperwork -- and then across the street to the polling place at the community center. Well, I didn't see a line out the building, but once we got inside, it was packed and there was a long line snaking through the lobby. Man came in after we got in and said it was worse than when he tried to vote earlier. Election worker came out and said there would be a delay; they only had four booths, and there were so many in line, it would be a while... the line had stopped moving. I had to sit down on my walker -- as did a few other elders -- and so we waited.

Man who came in after me left. Others kept coming and the line didn't move. After a while, election worker came out and said that the lines were much shorter at other polling places, one about seven miles away, another about 20 miles.Some left to go to these other polling places. Most stayed and others arrived. 

After another 20 minutes or so with no movement in the line -- except it kept getting longer -- that was it. I said let's go. Not gonna vote this time.

I voted absentee last election, but didn't apply for an absentee ballot this time. Other things took priority. This is a heavily Republican county. I usually vote Democrat, but sometimes vote for alternative candidates if there are any on the ballot, and I'm still getting to know local candidates and will vote for Republicans if they're sane and competent. So far, that's been OK. 

This time around, the county results were interesting. They're usually about 70/30 Republican, but this time the results were closer to 74/22 with 4% going to the alternative candidate for governor, a Navajo woman who was running as an independent though she said she's Republican. I thought she'd take votes from the Republican candidate, but she didn't in this county. Nope. She took Democratic votes instead. Indeed, Republicans out performed their usual votes. Hmm. Makes me wonder. Is this county getting more Republican? Are Dems moving out? Possible I guess. I see people moving in all the time. Don't see people moving out.

One thing that bothers me. Trumpists have adopted displays of the US flag as their emblem after their displays of the Stars and Bars didn't go over so well. I don't consider the Trumpists patriotic. And their display of the flag is nothing if not hypocritical. That aside, the problem is that there is no counter to it. Nothing comparable on the so-called "left" that says "I'm a Patriot."

Patriotism exclusivity by one political faction is dangerous for it can easily lead to outrages like we have seen in our own history (genocide, lynchings, various "scares") and to horrors like the Nazi Holocaust during the mid 20th Century -- and has happened in other countries much closer to our own time.

What do we do about it? So far, nothing. It's as if this fragmentation, fracturing, is being allowed -- required? -- to happen as prelude to a "reset" or catastrophic failure of society.

Why? To whose benefit? We all need to think about these things, and I don't see much thought being applied to our broken political and institutional processes. I don't know where it leads in the end, but right now, it's not looking good.

Rohatsu 2022 -- The Day of the Buddha's Awakening

Kamakura Daibutsu from Wikimedia Commons

So I'll try to join a Rohatsu sesshin from December 1 through December 8 as a celebration of Shakyamuni's "awakening"under the Bodhi Tree oh so long ago. 

Our text for this sesshin is a translation of the Avatamsaka Sutra called "The Flower Ornament Scripture" that attempts to describe the Buddha's enlightenment. Oh well, good luck with that!

The initial descriptions actually parallel something I experienced -- was it Enlightenment? I don't know -- many years ago, nigh on fifty years back, I think. I may have mentioned it somewhere in these blog pages. I was sitting zazen in my apartment in San Francisco. Something happened. A Void opened up as it were and I was no longer a  sitter in a room in an apartment on Geary. I was no longer "I" but All. The Void was the ground of Being. Which encompassed Everything. The Void was not perception, could not be perceived, was not part of the Material World but spontaneously gave rise to it as well as many other Material Worlds simultaneously. The Void was Nothing -- No Thing -- but gave rise to Everything. All Things and much more besides.

Understanding, was this the Awakening that Buddhists yearn for? Oh, I don't know. No one can actually say, for when the Awakening comes, there are no words; it just Is. 

So this happened while I was sitting zazen in a semi-dark room in my apartment on Geary in San Francisco some fifty or so odd years ago -- I don't remember the year -- and when I ended the sit, my perceptions had changed in ways I had never encountered before. The semi-darkened room appeared to be glowing with crystalline light of many colors, not the drab gray I knew it to be. The main room to the apartment had a view to the garden behind the building where a jungle of plants and flowers flourished. I briefly glanced at the garden -- now glowing with an inner light as well --  as I passed by on the way to go outside.

As I went through the lobby, every step and wall and decoration including the wrought iron gate to the old building I lived in glowed with auras of many colors, and the sky outside was a color I'd never seen before, and the color changed as I walked down Geary toward Union Square a few blocks away. Every thing and every person on my way had multi-colored auras. 

I won't describe the whole experience because when I have tried to do so in the past, I've been accused of either "being on drugs" -- I wasn't and did not use drugs in those days (nor do I now) -- or reporting a dream, not something that actually happened.

"Not something that actually happened..." Well, wait. What does "actually happened" really mean?

What I experienced was an altered perception that grew out of Non-Perception, the Void as it were, and I saw it as a means to recognize the Illusion (or Delusion) of what our Minds tell us is Reality.

What we see and think we know in the Material World is all Illusion, a construct, we're told, of the Mind. And it has no real existence at all. 

Our thoughts and feelings and perceptions are all Mind-created, not Reality. By experiencing an altered perception I was able if only for a moment to recognize the Ground Truth both of the Mind and of the spontaneous arising from Nothing. 

And so it was. Is this what the Buddha experienced after sitting under the Bodhi Tree? I don't know, but it could be. Is it what the Avatamsaka Sutra is attempting to describe? I can't say for certain, but sure, why not?

Sparkling jewels figure heavily in the Sutra; fragrant flowers, multicolored silks, everything and more that an East Indian adept might treasure; all were revealed and made manifest after Enlightenment. Well, yes. Of course! But is that what Enlightenment is? Of course not!

No, I see it as a metaphor -- a long and beautiful metaphor -- for something ineffable that cannot be described in words written or spoken. Beyond the jewels and silks and fragrant flowers, beyond the multitude of universes which figure as prominently, there is... No Thing. Or...? What? No, the question is wrong. 

One of the principal tenets of Buddhism is that we are already Awakened. We are already Enlightened. It is our natural state of being. We don't have to go on a quest to find it -- as the Buddha did. We don't have to yearn for it. We already have it; we are already there. 

What we -- usually -- lack is recognition of the fact. Gaining recognition may take enormous effort and lead to many wrong turns along the way, or it may come in an instant with no effort at all. We all follow different paths. But once we gain the recognition, we're essentially unified on the same path, and in Zen and Mahayana Buddhism in general, it's a Bodhisattva path, then we're all chopping wood and carrying water together. Even as we go our own ways.

The translation I have of the Avatamsaka Sutra is over 1,600 pages long. Now that's absurd. 1100 pages is the Sutra itself, the rest is commentary.  

Buddhists love to speculate on Meaning and write commentary on the Sutras. Thus to possess and explain that which cannot be possessed or explained. 

Of course I'm doing it myself!

So Rohatsu is coming up shortly. I already have some scheduled events during that week, including doctors' appointments and possibly appearing at the trial of the man who assaulted me a year ago in July. I won't have any teeth, either, as all are scheduled to be pulled next week, and nothing is to replace them until January.

What fun. 

Since the Rohatsu is online, though, it will be possible to catch up. I suppose.

----------------------------------------------------------

Koan:

What did the Buddha perceive as he Awakened under the Bodhi Tree?

 

Time for an Update

 

I'm getting better! I think I'll go for a walk!

Welp, It's a little hard to describe what my recovery has been like. I am doing better. I can walk, usually without the assistance of a cane or a walker, but I'm pretty unsteady on my feet and weak on my right side. I've been doing physical therapy exercises, but it will be weeks/months before I get my strength back. Oh well!

Meanwhile, I'm having dental work done that will go into next year -- and cost me more out of pocket than hospitalization. This is kind of criminal of our health care System and I know it affects a lot of people and causes a lot of misery. We have dental insurance, too. As do many people. But the out of pocket costs for dental care with insurance can often be astronomical.

I checked the bill for the rehab hospital stay (10 days) and was surprised. It was over $92,000. All of it was paid by insurance. Wow. The initial hospitalization (13 days) was about $52,000 of which I owe about $1,500. Not too bad. There will be some follow up bills, maybe another $1,000 for ambulances and so on. But the dental work -- with what is considered "good" insurance -- will cost me almost $8,000 out of pocket. I can just about handle that, but what of people who can't? It's crazy.

Overall, I think I'm lucky in many ways and a fool in many ways. I neglect my health and dental care all the time, and yet so far I've been able to get through -- with a lot of help, including that of my wife for whom there is no comparison. It's a learning experience, an opportunity, here in my dottage, to still come to realization, "enlightenment" and greater compassion for those not so lucky -- or foolish as the case may be. 

Yes, I am getting better. But oh my goodness, this has been the toughest one yet. 

The Hospital 3

 So let's explore a little bit, okay? A tale to tell...

I started noticing back problems around the first week of July and went to the ER the first time on July 18 where I was treated primarily for constipation as I hadn't (at that time) had a bowel movement for 11 days. Too much information? Well, hang on, there's more. I listed lower back pain as part of the problem that brought me to the ER and I got an injection of some pain killer (torodol I think) that took care of it right away. But there was no effort to find out what was causing the back pain. Went home, cleared my bowel, got and got over Covid, continued to have back pain, went on about my business as best I could.

Come August, the pain was getting much worse and lasting much longer. I was self medicating with Tylenol and Motrin, each of which sort of worked some of the time and together proved to be a potent combination that pretty much utterly failed. I was on the phone periodically with advice nurses that didn't know what to do, and eventually called up for an appointment with my PCP which was essentially futile as his schedule was booked for weeks. I asked for someone sooner, and got someone via video visit much to my surprise, someone who prescribed what he said were the strongest non-narcotic pain killers he could. Well, much like Tylenol and Motrin, they sometimes worked but often didn't and I recognized that my condition was deteriorating rapidly. What to do?

Video doc said "go to the ER, stat." I hesitated, one because of cost, two because I was once again constipated -- this time for weeks -- and what if they only looked at that? Again?

Go anyway. So after waiting three more days, I called an ambulance as I couldn't sit in a car and I couldn't drive. Went to the nearest ER some 40 miles away where I've had bad experiences in the past. 

I was taken right to an exam room and seen by an NP (I think) within maybe 45 minutes. For some reason, he suspected something given the pain I was having and the duration of my condition (then for a month and a half and getting worse the whole time.) He sent me for an MRI and maybe an hour after the procedure, he came back with a diagnosis: osteomyelitis and discitis needing immediate hospitalization and treatment. There were more tests run in the ER, and then toward evening I was trundled by ambulance to the main hospital downtown (five miles or so) and put in a room on the 4th floor that resembled a nice hotel's "jr suite." It was large, private, quiet, had a comfortable seating area, a large bathroom, but sadly no view as the window looked onto an inner court that I couldn't see.

I was for all intents and purposes completely bedridden. I was given pain killers, laxatives, antibiotics, and who knows what other medications; I was taken for bone biopsies, xrays and other tests, and just before I was discharged from that hospital (after 13 or 14 days) a picc line was installed to make the IV medication at my new hospital easier to administer.

I was being transferred to a rehabilitation hospital nearby where I would continue to undergo treatment for osteomyelitis and discitis but also be subject to physical therapy and occupational therapy so I would be able to get around well enough to go home, likely in 10 days.

A non-emergency transport got me the few hundred yards to the rehab facility where I was put in a double room, not as nice, not as large and with less view than at the first hospital, but adequate for the needs of the moment. For the first few days, I didn't have a room mate.

Right away, the rigors of therapy began. They called it "evaluation."

I was very weak but very willing, and soon enough was at least partially ambulatory, though only with a walker. I was taken for exercise almost every day, usually twice a day, and gradually became able to get around though not without struggle and not without pain. In fact, despite the opiod pain medications, the pain was sometimes so bad I had to stop. The other issue was that my blood pressure would fall dangerously low during or just following exercise. It was a mystery and remains one, though medications and dehydration were/are the suspected culprits.

Many liters of normal saline were administered. I was admonished to drink more water. Still my BP would fluctuate wildly and sometimes reach dangerously low levels. Then it stabilized lower than my normal but not severely so. As long as it was relatively stable, it was considered good enough.

As it got closer to my discharge date, my progress seemed insufficient to release me. I could sit up, stand, walk, move my limbs with and without weights, could do simple tasks like getting in and out of a car, I could wash myself, dress myself, and so on, but I lacked stamina, and I frequently needed assistance. And if I went home, there was a question of how I would receive IV antibiotic treatments as it was suspected that we couldn't get a home health aide to come out to our place in the country.

Sure enough, that proved to be the case. For several days it wasn't clear whether I would be able to go home or would have to go to a skilled nursing facility. I continued working toward going home though, and had faith that the antibiotic problem would be resolved. It was. Ms. Ché would be trained to do it at home. 

Through all of this, I was boosted, cared for, helped, encouraged, "tortured," and inspired by an amazing staff wherever I was being treated, at both hospitals and the ER as well as another facility where I will have to go once a week to pick up IV supplies, have blood tests run, meet with the doctor, and be evaluated for progress.

I can't thank them enough. 

I'm still not well. Far from it. But bit by bit... getting there. Now to find something to eat...!

The Hospital 2

Just got home from three weeks+ in two hospitals being treated for osteomyelitis and discitis. I know there is a lot of chatter on the internet that heath care in the United States, especially since the advent of Covid 19, is a tragic joke. For some people, I know it is. I have seen or experienced some of the worst aspects of the industry -- shameful, tragic, and I'd go so far as to suggest evil. Something you can hardly imagine if you weren't witness.

And yet... welp, here I am after three weeks plus in two different hospitals being treated for serious bone infection and disc ruin in my lower spine, pain running wild, bedridden so long I could barely stand or walk when I was transferred to rehab, and truly I cannot thank the doctors and staffs at the ER and both hospitals enough for their kind and generous care, their quick admission to astonishingly nice room at the first hospital (quiet, too 😴) and extraordinary care at the second rehab hospital that got me back on my feet and able to get around, pain controlled, and set up to go home where antibiotic treatment continues with the lovely and talented Ms. Ché will be doing IV push daily. There's a lot more to the story, but I'm still processing it all. This experience is a counter to almost every single hospital experience I've had as a patient or advocate my whole life long. And counter, too, to so many horrid experiences we hear about so often. How? 

Astonishing.

The Hospital

I've been hospitalized since August 28 with a serious bone infection affecting my spine and hips. I've been essentially bedridden the entire time, although I can get up and out of bed for short periods with help. It's not so much getting up and about that's the problem as that my blood pressure plunges when I get up or do any exercise. Sometimes it's so low I practically pass out and would if I weren't able to lie down in bed promptly -- which so far, I've always been able to do.

I spent about a month at home attempting to wrangle with whatever was going on, but my condition kept worsening and it couldn't be accurately diagnosed without proper tests which could only be done at the hospital or ER. So finally I called an ambulance and made the 40 mile journey to the nearest ER where alarms started ringing right away. Something was wrong, bad wrong, and after the test results started coming in, they thought they knew what it was. An infection, possibly cancer, that would require extended treatment.

So, here I am, waiting for more tests scheduled for tomorrow, and eager to get out and be whole again. 

What a drag it is getting old.

Ah But That's Not The End of the Story

After lavishing praise on the staff at the ER, I got home only to wake up the next day with symptoms of Covid. I'd been exposed, I knew, to at least four people who announced they were positive. But there may have been more. 

Symptom # 1 was that very nasty taste in my mouth. It isn't a loss of taste, it's a constant taste of -- inside of litter box?, ashes soaked in bleach?, burnt straw?, Oh I don't know. Whatever it is, it's terrible, and it's constant. 

The next day, I started having other symptoms. Fever, cough, runny nose, dizzy, pains, sore throat. Huh. I got out one of the home tests and screwed it up. I did another one. Positive. Then I started calling about what to do. Not easy to find out, despite the fact that I'd been told months ago to call right away to get immediate treatment if  I tested positive. It was after hours so none of the nurses and such I talked to knew what to do or who I should get in touch with to get treatment, and one steered me in a completely wrong direction. Finally, though, one recognized that there was probably an on-call physician in rheumatology who could help. Why didn't I try. So I did, and behold, within an hour, I had a prescription for Paxlovid, the anti-viral treatment of choice. Picked it up an hour later. Took it for five days, and it cleared most of the symptoms. But... Ms Che got it, and we went through the whole routine again with her provider.

Ten days on, I tested negative, she still has vague positive tests, and her provider says she may have them for months. As long as she has no new symptoms she's good to go.

Of course this happened because I went to the Urgent Care and ER where I was exposed, as was everyone else, including staff. It's insane. Or rather deliberate.

It's why I tried to stay out of the hospital for as long as possible. 

But the time came and there you are. It eventually will get everyone.

A Day and A Night in the ER

 Welp, it's happened again. After waiting longer than I should have, I called the advice nurse about my increasingly uncomfortable condition. She said I needed to be "seen" within the next four hours; I should go to Urgent Care or the ER. Mkay? The nearest Urgent Care run by my HMO was 47 miles away. There is a Primary Care run by another outfit in my little town, and as it happens they take my insurance, so I've been able to go there for immediate care, but not this time. They wouldn't be able to see me for at least 24 hours. Low on staff, high on patients. Mkay? 

So the choice was the Urgent Care way out there. They could see me in a couple of hours.

I got there and was informed they were running behind, but they'd get to me as quickly as they could. It was only about an hour later (c. Noon) when I was called in to the examining room. BP and temp were OK; I was alert, coherent, ambulatory -- with some difficulty. Described symptoms and problems.

"Dude, you need to go to the ER, stat."

Oh fuck. I hate the ER. Nothing but turmoil, stress and strain, lack of care, waiting and waiting and waiting while the place fills up with more and more suffering, disease, madness and pain. What is the point. 

The nearest ER as it happened was another 15 miles or so away, and the Urgent Care said they would call over and let them know I was coming, and they said it would probably be less of a wait there because they would probably have fewer patients.

Mkay. We get to this ER, and truth was there were hardly any patients in the waiting room. Five, maybe six. Most had already been triaged. Some had been seen and were waiting for test results.

It was calm. Very little obvious suffering. Quite a few people came in while I was waiting for triage (c. 30 min). Nearly all were members of one family there to see their relative who was being treated inside. They were allowed in two by two. 

Triage was straightforward, and I was told to wait in the lobby. They'd see me inside as soon as they could. 

More patients came in while I waited. More visitors came to see the one special patient as well as other patients in treatment. Some of those who arrived were in really bad shape. Extreme pain, unable to walk, one couldn't even sit and her wheelchair ride was torture for her. Some appeared to be having strokes or heart attacks. 

And believe it or not, all of those I saw in serious distress were treated promptly and compassionately by the very young staff, none were left to linger unattended. Some were treated directly in the lobby, others were wheeled or ushered into the ER treatment areas, but none were neglected.

This was astonishing. I have never been in an ER where staff did not neglect the patients, ignored their suffering, even disparaged those who sought treatment. I have never been in an ER where prompt treatment of severe conditions was the rule. I have been in ERs where staff had no interest in or consideration of patients waiting, and where patients died while waiting without any care at all. The cynicism and contempt for patients in some ERs I've been in has been off the charts, and it's happened so often, in so many different ERs in California and New Mexico, I took it for granted as just the culture of these places. It's outrageous, but there you are.

This was an entirely different situation altogether. I didn't need immediate treatment, though I would have appreciated the pain medication I eventually received had it been administered while I waited. I got an xray within an hour of arrival, but had to wait to be "seen." My distress was minimal compared to some of the patients who sought care, and everyone who needed immediate care received it compassionately. Those of us who had to wait mostly did so with equanimity; so many others were in much worse shape than we were.

After about 5 hours waiting in the lobby, I was called in to the treatment area and assigned a room where I was introduced to the nurse and CNP who would be treating me. Both were kind and positive. As it turned out, the nursing staff would have a shift change in an hour, but the CNP stayed with me throughout. 

Treatment would take just about 8 hours.  During that time, I received a CT scan, pain medication, Ringer's lactate, anti-nausea and anti-inflammatory medication, and two different treatments for the condition I was there for. Neither was fully effective while I was there, but I was discharged with a prescription for another medication to take if the ER treatments didn't work within the next 6 hours or so.

When I read the after visit summary, I noticed that the CNP had missed a finding on the CT scan -- I had a hernia -- which which was probably a contributory or precipitating cause of the problems that sent me to the ER. Oh. I suspected the hernia, and I pointed out the odd swelling and pain in my groin, but it was not recognized by me or anyone else for what it was at the time. The CNP said it was "gas". And I saw on the CT scan report that there was considerable build up of "gas." But missing a hernia with obvious symptoms (I realized later) was odd. 

The treatments that were administered in the ER did work effectively the next day at home, so that part of the problem was taken care of, thankfully. The hernia has not been addressed yet, though the swelling and pain are not as severe.

It seems to me, I've had this condition before -- a hernia, that is -- and after several weeks, it self-repaired. We'll see. It's not fun, but it's bearable. Primarily it limits my movement. 

What I can say about the overall experience in the ER this time is that it was worlds better than any ER I've been in (for myself or on behalf of others). Even though part of my problem was missed by the staff, or perhaps not missed but dismissed as not that important, I was treated with consideration and respect, was given needed medications and treatment, was tested and imaged to a fare-thee-well, and discharged with explicit instructions and medication prescriptions with orders to return promptly to the ER if none of it worked.

Well, it did work, and I'm grateful.

Now to deal with the hernia... 🤪

Another Memory Exercise. Some Things About This House

There are lots more memory aids now than once there were. It's easier to remember but also easier to get confused. One of my memory aids for the house in the San Gabriel Valley I've posted about several times is Google Street View. It's become something of a historical record because it records the appearance of the house and neighborhood over time, in this case from 2008 to 2022. A major change -- to me -- took place after 2011. 

This is a screenshot of my house and the house next door (where the Vegas lived when I lived in the neighborhood) taken in October 2011:

 

Several things: The Vegas' house is light brown, which it was when I lived in the neighborhood. The house where I lived is painted yellow -- which it wasn't when I lived there. But it was yellow the last time I saw it in person in 1969. When I lived there, the house was painted white with dark green (Hunter Green) trim. 

There's a heavily cracked blacktop asphalt driveway, the only one still remaining in the neighborhood. That was put down some weeks or months after we moved in in 1954. All the driveways in the neighborhood were blacktop initially. Before the driveway was installed, it was just graded dirt which turned muddy when it rained. My mother was livid about it. But the house itself wasn't finished when we moved in. There were still parts needed stucco and plaster, some plumbing fixtures weren't installed in the shower, trim still needed to be applied on the interior and exterior, and the house hadn't been painted. 

Part of the problem was that our house was the last one on the street to be built and finished. This was the Post War housing boom, and houses were being built all over the Los Angeles Basin at a furious clip. This neighborhood was being developed so fast that Life Magazine did a feature on one family that moved from Connecticut to California and faced the dilemma of the New and Incomplete Reality of Los Angeles -- and this particular neighborhood --  at the time.

What had been essentially wild country -- hills and pasture, hills and oak forest, etc -- was turned into housing overnight. Initially, there were no curbs, gutters, sewers, or other amenities that would come later. Finishing the neighborhood, to the extent it ever would be finished took years. 

The curbing you see in the picture didn't arrive until long after we moved out in 1959. I'm not sure curbs were there in 1969. And I've noticed on Street View that the sections built on street extensions later (in the '60s and '70s) have street lights while the sections built in the '50s do not.

In the picture you see a rusty rural mailbox. That was put in by my mother after a dispute she had with the post office. It was probably 1956 or so. Initially, she'd mounted a fishing creel on the wall beside the front door to collect the mail. One day she got a notice stating that her mail receptacle was not regulation and must be replaced or US Mail would no longer be delivered to that address. If I recall correctly (ha!) there was no indication of what would be acceptable. So I suspect she marched down to the post office (I don't remember where it was) and demanded to see the regulations, and she found that a rural mailbox would be... fine. 

She went to the hardware store and bought one with a metal stand. She painted the box with flowers and vines and such, mounted it on the stand and put the whole apparatus in the ground (may have had help from a neighbor) beside the driveway. With a note that said, "Put Mail Here."

Later she found out that a rural mailbox in a suburban neighborhood like ours wasn't regulation either,  and she got a British iron letterbox at an antique store and mounted it where the fishing creel had been, and that was where the mail was deposited until we moved. I think she took that British letterbox with her when we moved, but I'm not entirely sure. I seem to remember it turning up in several later houses but it may have been another one.

There's a large tree next to the mailbox in the picture up top. That's an oak (madrone?) that I planted between 1956 and 1958. It was a seedling that sprouted up in the hills beyond the end of the street. I dug it up and carried it down the hill in a can of some sort and planted it in the front yard when I got home. It grew. It's somewhat unusual because oaks don't like being disturbed especially as seedlings. But this one did fine. It was maybe two-three feet tall when we left.  Sadly, the oak tree and the mailbox are now gone (a/o 05/22). But they had quite a long run.

The Odd Persistence and Absence of Memory

Note: there has been much editing since I first published this post. And a discovery or two.

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This goes back to that picture haul I was gifted with on Father's Day. One picture in particular sticks in my mind, but there were several taken on what I think was the same day in the summer of 1957 (I was 8 or 9), and while I focus on one, the others might be referred to from time to time for context.

The photo in question is one of me sitting on the couch in the living room of my house in the San Gabriel Valley of California on a sunny but probably smoggy day. There's a sort of misty quality to the photo which I find intriguing. It's probably due to a dirty lens, but when I think of that, I also wonder who took the picture. The picture appears to be taken from the level of the seating, and I suspect the camera was placed on the seat of a wing chair that faced the sofa (a sofa that was actually a sofa-sleeper.) I'm holding a fluffy cat whose name I don't remember. I don't recall the picture being taken -- nor do I recall ever seeing it before. This makes me wonder. 

I don't recall having a camera of my own at that time of my life, but maybe I did. There was a dual lens reflex camera I remember using frequently a few years later after moving to Northern California, and it is at least possible that I had it much earlier and that the picture in question was taken with it -- or one like it. I say that because I have a vague memory of more than one such camera.

But the problem of who took the picture -- or the series that day -- is vexing. I have the feeling that I took them with a shutter-timer. But I have no memory of having a camera with a shutter timer until much later in the '60s or even the '70s.

So I think the camera was placed on a chair, the timer was set, and I got in position -- with a cat -- before the shutter was tripped. If there was someone else there, who could it have been?

I had quite a few friends in the neighborhood, but they rarely came over to my house. I usually went to their houses, and I remember many games of canasta or Monopoly at friends' houses, but hardly any at mine, and when we did play cards or Monopoly at my house, we sat on the front porch, never that I recall in the house or backyard. The rarity had to do with the fact that I was there by myself while my mother was at work at the hospital, and she was quite clear that she didn't want me to bring other kids over to our house while she was not there. Could she have taken the pictures? Perhaps, but I don't think so.

These pictures were taken at my house in the living room and the back and side yards of me and my pets and there appears to be no one else there. Which would be right -- it would be very rare for one of my friends or another adult to be there when my mother wasn't.

This is one of the many oddities of memory, though. I could be misremembering. There were times, I know there were times, when a friend, a neighbor, or another adult came over when I was there alone, I just don't remember it happening as part of taking these pictures, nor do I remember my mother taking the pictures, and there is nothing in these pictures that indicates anyone else was there.

And I don't remember these pictures being taken or ever seeing them before Father's Day this year.

The sight of a much younger me sitting in my living room in 1957 holding a cat is somewhat jarring. I remember the room quite well and its furnishings. I remember what that couch upholstery felt like (rough) and look of the round oak table we used as a coffee table (it had been a tall mission style "center table" that my mother had cut down). I remember the antique mirror hanging above the couch and the Currier & Ives prints on either side. I remember the white cotton shag rug under the table -- and how glad I was when my mother bought it and brought it home. If I remember correctly -- and I may not -- the walls of the room were painted gray-green. There was a huge picture window at one end facing the mountains to the north and I remember the light from that window being very bright despite its northern exposure.

The story of the rugs in that house is kind of important to my memories of living there. The house was not quite finished when we moved in in 1954. There was still stucco-ing and painting going on and there were bits of trim being applied and plumbing fixtures being installed (if I recall correctly, the shower wasn't finished when we moved in). There was no landscaping; the lot was bare and dusty. There were no sewers, no curbs, no gutters. Initially the driveway wasn't finished, and one day the asphalt pavement was put down, but we had to be careful not to walk or drive on it for a time. The absence of sewers meant that the plumbing drained into a cesspool -- not even a septic tank -- in the front yard, and I remember it had to be pumped out from time to time. The sewer line was installed the year after we moved in.

We had a few braided rugs that had come with us from other houses, but they were small and didn't do much to muffle the echoes of footfalls in the house. Oh yes, I remember the house being very echoey due to the plaster walls and hardwood floors. The white cotton shag rug in the living room probably appeared some time in 1957 -- my mother also got a new car that year -- and even though it wasn't all that big (probably 6x9 though it may have been 9x12) it made a big difference because it was soft and sound absorbing, and I remember the echoey-ness of the house diminishing greatly once that rug was put down.

By the time these pictures were taken the back and side yards -- and the front, too but there were no pictures of that -- had been planted with grass and bougainvilleas and roses and there was a water feature in the backyard ringed with bricks and lattice fencing put up to hide the incinerator (which I think we couldn't use after 1956) and to mask the side yard where the clothes line was.

I had asthma and the smog was bad in the San Gabriel Valley, so being outside (or inside for that matter) could be difficult for me. I had attacks fairly often until we moved to Northern California in 1959. But oh well. It was what it was.

I remember the house was painted white with hunter green trim, quite different from other houses in the neighborhood which were mostly brown, beige or gray with white trim. I remember my mother insisted on white and dark green trim. She said there was a reason, but I don't remember what it was.

I'm 8 or 9 years old in these pictures, and I'm surprised at how skinny I was. I don't remember being skinny until I was a teenager. In fact, I remember being kind of pudgy up until the age of 14 or 15 when I started getting taller. So seeing how skinny I was at 8 or 9 is a revelation.

There's an exercise I'm supposed to do prior to a Zen workshop coming up: describe yourself from the point of view of the Earth.

From the point of view of the Earth, of course, these descriptions of myself as skinny or chubby or alone or with friends or my age in these pictures or really anything are silly, irrelevant, laughable. From the point of view of the Earth, I don't exist as an individual at all. The minuteness of humans in the context of the whole wide world -- which itself is minute in the context of the Solar System -- is striking. There is no "me" in that context; there is no "we." Less than a mote of dust. 

And yet from the point of view of the Earth, I and the aggregate of humanity of which I am a infinitesimal part are in the process of "killing the planet." Perhaps like a disease organism might do to me or someone else at human scale.

The planet, the Earth, is responding. Cranking up an immune response against which I and the aggregate of humanity have no real response.

In thinking about these matters of scale and existence/non-existence, past and future, I recall the teachings of Vimalakirti  and all the Buddha-realms beyond our ken. Perspective is hard to obtain. Once obtained, it may be hard to maintain, and memory may fade. But what is is no matter whether we see or know it or not. 

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Silly me. I looked on the back of the photo and found a note written in my mother's handwriting stating that the "we" took the picture in the house, and the flash didn't work. Note says, "How was I to know it needed batteries!" 

A Most Astonishing Thing

For Father's Day, my wife gave me a photo album of pictures she came across a day or two before, she said in a K-Mart photo envelope. They must have been randomly put there for safekeeping or something, and it must have been thirty or even forty years ago, maybe even fifty years ago, since we hadn't used K-Mart photo processing any later than the early '70s.

These pictures were far older than that.

The oldest one probably dates to 1910 or so and I think it is a picture of Mamie or Maggie, the maid/nanny in my grandfather's house in Iowa. There's another old one of what looks like a town somewhere in the Midwest or West. Not any place in Iowa I'm familiar with. Based on a car in the picture, it was taken in the 1930's or '40s.

Then there are a lot of pictures of me taken between the ages of a few months to 16 or 17. There are some of my nephew from the time he was a few months old to the age four or five. One of my sister a year after my nephew's birth.

There are some pictures of household pets from the 1950s and 60s. I remember the dogs' names but not the cats.

Some pictures of my mother in the 1950s and '60s. 

And some Polaroids of a dog and a shopping center at Christmas time from the 1960s.

Some came as a shock because I don't remember ever seeing them before. 

I would say with some confidence that I haven't seen any of them in fifty years, and some I may never have seen before though I probably did and forgot.

I've spent some time putting them in more or less chronological order and making notes about what/who they are pictures of. But there are some I have no idea of. Or only the vaguest idea. 

It's fascinating and a little creepy.

Yet Another Massacre -- The Uvalde Thing

Nineteen kids and two teachers shot and killed at an elementary school in Uvalde, TX the other day. Just another day in the killing fields of the Good Ol' USofA. The number of injured is overlooked in most of these incidents so I'm not clear about how many were actually shot by the gunman -- who himself was supposedly shot and killed by an LEO marksman after more than an hour -- they now say -- "waiting."

For what?

Well, that's the question, isn't it? 

Massacres have been part and parcel of the (North) American Experience at least since the initiation of European, primarily British, settlement in the 1600s. The practice of massacring the previous residents -- Natives in the case of America -- so as to protect the newcomers seems to have come over from Britain as a sort of cultural marker. It's what they do. They were doing it in Britain and Ireland for hundreds of years before they came to America. Europeans in general seemed quite comfortable with massacres of their enemies -- or really anyone who got in their way. And of course the notorious Black Legend of the Spanish conquests in the New World was full of massacres of the Natives, sometimes simply because they could.

The bloodlust of the newcomers was insane. Is insane.

Because the massacres in this country have never really ceased -- although in most of Europe, Britain and Ireland, they've almost disappeared. The exception right now of course is in the Ukraine, where apparently "Slavs" and "Aryans" are having it out one more time, renewing a conflict from WWII.

Young men seem to be triggered time and again to go on killing sprees, generally of innocents, strangers they don't know going about their ordinary lives in schools, churches, shopping centers and markets, movie theaters and so on. Wherever ordinary people might gather, say at a concert as in Las Vegas a few years ago, some trigger-happy man (almost always a male, almost always white) will go on a shooting spree. 

A shooting spree made easier and more effective by the easy access to military style rifles and tons of ammunition -- access jealously guarded and made ever easier by politicians who seem to find the whole thing -- all the carnage, terror and bloodshed -- little more than a minor inconvenience in their quest for everlasting power over anyone they don't like.

It's so ingrained and the resistance to doing anything to curb it is so rigid that Americans in general are frustrated and bewildered. Angry and yet powerless to do anything about it.

Their lives and those of their children obviously mean nothing to their rulers, regardless of supposed political party. Even when members of the ruling class are targets (which is almost never) nothing is done to curb the killing; in fact, in many cases gun laws are loosened following a massacre on the bogus theory that "good guys with guns" will protect against the next massacre. 

Well, no. They don't.

But that seems to be the point. Proliferate firearms, make it ever easier for those on a quest to kill to do so and let the chips (and blood) fall where they may.

We can say it's a sickness, a mental illness, but that only goes so far. It's a cultural fault. One that isn't really seen as a problem by those who might do something about it.

It's like the Corona virus response. More than a million dead so far -- mostly met with a shrug by the Overclass who, since they are relatively well protected (as they are from mass murder) simply don't think about, and don't care about, what happens to the rest of us.

I've long said that our system of rule is the primary problem. It's a system that resists change for the better because the system itself is presumed to be best. When change comes on behalf of the downtrodden, it may be only after hundreds of years of constant agitation, and it is always beset with efforts to backslide, some of which will be successful.

In other words, it's a constant struggle to be better, a struggle that often fails.

That's built in. It's systemic.

So we'll go through the usual posturing over this massacre; soon enough there will be another, and the ritual of nothing will repeat ad infinitum. Something from outside may change the cycle, but what that will be, who can say.

The Genocide(s) on the Horizon

I made a comment on another site recently that it appears a good deal of the "left" of this country is working itself up into a genocidal rage at Russia for crimes real and imagined and not limited to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In an earlier comment, I suggested that Russia's invasion, aka "Putin's War", may indeed prove to be his fatal error.

Marching to Moscow, burning the Kremlin and hanging Putin seems to be one of the animating fantasies of the Azov-Nazis defending Ukraine-Kiev. Where does this come from? Well, of course, Hitler failed in his great march across the steppe to Moscow as did Napoleon before him. The Grand Imperialists never seem to be able to conquer Mother Russia, but the urge to do so seems implacable among a certain sort, and so, apparently, here we go again.

The Ukie-Nazis are doing the fighting and largely losing against Russia, but all the USandNato players are doing their part to fund them and supply them and keep the fighting going "to the last Ukrainian." So then my question is "what is the purpose of depopulating and destroying much of Ukraine? Cui bono as it were?

I've noted that the Ukrainian population declined some 30% after the fall of the Soviet Union, and since the invasion, another 25% or so have fled to other parts of Eastern Europe, and some back to Mother Russia itself. Parts of cities and villages have been destroyed. Planting and harvesting has been disrupted. There is no going back to the status quo ante, and it is my suspicion that many of those who have fled the fighting won't go back to Ukraine, either. 

In the meantime, genocidal forces are let loose. Zelensky claims (constantly) that the Russians are committing genocide in Ukraine. There is no evidence that this is the case. On the other hand, Putin has made the claim that Ukraine has committed genocide against Russians and Russian speakers in Ukraine. The eight year Ukrainian war against the Donbas oblasts (and now republics) is cited as evidence, together with the appalling massacres in Odessa and Mariupol in 2014 following the coup against the government of Viktor Yanukovych. Russia, on the other hand, has vowed to "denazify" Ukraine, with particular emphasis on liquidating the Azov Regiment and other neo-nazi elements  of the Ukrainian state. The threat is not to Ukrainians per se, but to groups within the Ukraine who espouse Nazi and neo-Nazi ideology -- and presumably who take action to violently enforce their will.

Which then leads to revenge.

A good many of our overlords seem to like it that way.

We see genocidal rage building in many other areas of the world as well. The United States is no exception. The urge to kill The Other in the US has long been paramount. One could say it is foundational. Now we have a situation where practically everyone is The Other to someone else, a level of alienation and lack of community that may be unprecedented. The internet provides a refuge of sorts, and the simulation of community, which has, from time to time led to extraordinary acts of violence int the real world, acts that by their nature can be characterized as genocidal -- and would be considered so but for the relatively small numbers of targeted groups murdered by the killers.

The internal stresses and tensions could metastasize at any time into generalized mayhem. What then? It seems we've been conditioned to accept it. "Nothing can be done." And our lords and masters are fine with it. So long as it doesn't touch them.

For now, crises compound without much mitigation. Society pretty much everywhere is enduring a stress test. Some will survive. Many won't -- possibly including our own. 

"Longtermism"

 So let's ponder this arising cult of "Longtermism". Haven't heard of it? Well, I think we've been living with the consequences for some time now.

Apparently, "Longtermism" is a philosophical belief system, an ideology if you will, manifest widely among our overlords and their minions, particularly in Silicon Valley and its offshoots and in higher order academia. It's an ideology that posits human value in the Future, distant Future in many cases, and effectively devalues humanity in the present. One's vision, supposedly, should be on the Future, longterm benefit, wherein, it is thought/believed that there will be trillions of humans living all over the Universe, happy and wise, and descended from the Good People of today.

Those Good People, of course, are the few and favored oligarchs and their closest servants. They and only they are to be protected at all costs no matter what happens in the present and near future, because they and only they will be the progenitors of the Wonderful World of Tomorrow, filled with joy and ease and Happiness.

There are far too many people on the earth today and thus their cull through disease and war and the effects of climate change and so many other crises is meet and just and should not be effectively interfered with -- so long as the overclass is protected from the consequences of these crises. 

Whatever happens in the political realm is irrelevant; the economy is irrelevant. What's relevant right now is holding on to power over the safety of the overlord class. So long as they -- and only they -- survive, Future Joy will be assured for their trillions of descendants.

Which is the sole point of "Longtermism."

Maintaining a polite distance from the rabble of today helps maintain the power of the overclass. This process was worked out long ago by royalty and the stars of the entertainment world. CEOs and such have a long history of rudeness toward the masses, but in the Brave New World of libertarian freaks who actually have power these days, polite indifference combines with exploitative interest to assure an unbroken continuation of power.

According to Longtermists, there won't be any rabble to contend with, exploit or oppress in the Wonderful World of Tomorrow. All the struggles we see today will be over. Everyone will be happy and content and will be as gods -- or would be in the context of today. In their own context, the very concept of "gods" would be unknown. Everyone would be a god, so no one would necessarily be better than any other.

We could go on all day filling out their fantasy, but let's instead focus on the consequences right now.

Why are we living in such bizarre, chaotic, and for many of us deadly times? What's going on? How did things get so badly out of whack?

The ideology of "Longtermism" provides at least a hint of an answer.

The question really is, "What can we do about it?"

Check it out:

https://www.salon.com/2022/04/30/elon-musk-twitter-and-the-future-his-long-term-vision-is-even-weirder-than-you-think/

https://aeon.co/essays/why-longtermism-is-the-worlds-most-dangerous-secular-credo

Odessa Massacre -- May 2, 2014

It's an event seared in my memory. On May 2, 2014, I was able to watch several livestreams from Odessa covering what was expected to be "something interesting" in Ukraine following the February Euromaidan coup in Kiev. 

Apparently two competing rallies were planned in the center of the city, one in favor of the Euromaidan coup and one opposed, and both were attracting young hooligans and soccer fans. Or so it seemed. One of the livestreamers at the rallies filmed the preparation of Molotov cocktails and showed some of the participants armed with pipes, bats and at least in one case a pistol. Militia members were part of the crowd. Police momentarily tried to keep the opposing groups apart, and then seemed to melt away, allowing -- encouraging? -- the groups to brawl in the streets.  

Some distance away, at the Trades Union House, a protest encampment had been built on a broad plaza in front of the building. It had been there for some time, occupied mostly by middle age and older Russian speaking opponents of the Kiev regime. At the time, Odessa had a majority Russian speaking population, and many were deeply opposed to what they saw as an American inspired and funded fascist/Nazi takeover of their country. 

This opposition was widespread in Eastern and Southern Ukraine, and it wasn't unknown in Kiev and other parts of the country. Most of the country had long been part of the Tsarist Russian Empire and later of the Soviet Union. Bits and pieces had been added over time, taken from Austria-Hungary and Poland-Lithuania. During WWII, the Ukraine had been overrun and occupied by Nazis, and Ukrainian collaborators especially in the West of the country were commonplace. Ukrainians participated in numerous massacres of Jews, Communists, Gypsies and other undesirables during the Nazi occupation, and notoriously volunteered as concentration camp guards. 

None of this history was mysterious prior to 2014, nor was it controversial in the West. Ukrainian Nazis and Nazi collaborators were a real thing. They survived after the War and became an internal destabilizing force against the restoration of Soviet power over the territory. As such they were apparently supported by covert forces in the West, much as former Nazis had been rehabilitated and been granted favors and asylum in the West including the United States.

Ethnic Russians and Russian speakers had deep roots and had long lived, worked and loved in Ukraine, primarily in what was called Novorossyia, New Russia, the region east of the Dnieper River absorbed by the Russian Empire during the reign of Catherine the Great (a German princess for what it is worth who married and later had assassinated the Russian Tsar... but that's another story...)

Russification was often ham-handed and could be brutal under both the Tsars and the Soviets. On the other hand, Ukrainians were included in the Imperial regime and were fundamental to the Soviet regime. Numerous Politburo members and even the Party Chairman Khrushchev were Ukrainians, and the Ukrainian SSR was a member of the United Nations even though it was at the time an integral part of the USSR.

Upon the dissolution of the USSR, Ukraine along with many of the former Soviet republics and Eastern European satrapies became independent, left to fend for themselves without central control or support from Moscow -- with interesting results.

Some maintained close ties with Russia; others became fiercely anti-Russia and tied to the West. 

And from appearances and all accounts, the West has been trying to capture Ukraine, or at least cleave it off from Russian influence, since independence. 

It hasn't gone well. The 2014 Euromaidan occupation and protests in Kiev were part of a series of color revolutions that sought the elimination of ethnic Russian political influence and control within the Ukrainian government, and once the Yanukovych regime was overthrown, that objective seemed to be complete. 

Nazi-descendant militias roamed free and some were incorporated into the Ukrainian armed forces with the upshot of the massacres in Odessa and Mariupol and the nearly total ethnic cleansing of Ukraine west of the Dnieper. Russians and Russian speakers were driven out or murdered. The objective was an ethno-state aligned with Nato and the US to act as a bulwark in opposition to Russia.

The point of a Nato cordon of allies along the western Russian border is the eventual dismemberment of the Russian Federation.

It's all very bizarre. 

The massacres were triggers for a civil war that has now become a general war in Ukraine between Russia and the West that has the potential to turn into a nuclear holocaust for no conceivable reason at all. The victims of the Odessa Massacre were among the first to feel the effects of the Nazi madness unleashed in Ukraine and by implication throughout Europe and soon, we can be sure, in North America and elsewhere. 

This truly may be the opening of Ragnarok. Longed for. Inevitable. Twilight of the Gods.

Ukraine Thing

 So that Ukraine Thing continues to fester like a huge open sore that can't heal. It shouldn't have happened to begin with, and once it did, it should have been quickly closed and heavy doses of antiseptic applied, but that's not what we're getting. Just the opposite, mostly. Let's see how much bigger the wound can get, eh?

Sure. Why not? Our rulers must be bored with themselves.

I've said here and in other fora that Russia has their reasons for the invasion of Ukraine and for going Grozny on the neo-Nazi resistance thereunto. I don't like what the Russians did and are doing, and I think they should stop and leave. But that's not going to happen as long as Ukies (oh dear, insults so soon?) are being supplied and re-supplied by the USandNato with mercenaries and materiel to keep the conflict going indefinitely -- and with an increasingly bloodthirsty urge to take the battle all the way to Moscow, burn the Kremlin and hang Putin no matter the risks or consequences to the whole wide world.

Whoever is running this thing, if anyone, doesn't care what happens to the rest of us. Certainly they don't care about the Ukrainians, so many of whom have fled the country so as not to "get caught in the crossfire."

I read a statistic that the population of Ukraine had fallen some 30% since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and with the advent of the war, another 20-25% had fled, many of whom will not be returning but will scatter and serve as a boost to the declining population of the rest of White Europe. Oh what a tangled web is woven.

It may be that Ukraine is headed to extinction as a viable state. In some ways it goes with the long-term depopulation of the American Heartland. It drives me nuts that so many of the hot-shot observers of American politics have no idea at all what's going on outside their fancy urban and suburban bubbles and could even begin to hypothesize that "rural America" elected Trump. Then do the diner tour to "prove" (ha) what they already believed. 

People. There simply aren't enough people in "rural America" (definition lacking) to elect anyone to national office, let alone a President. I believe the statistic now is that the population is 89% urban and 10% and change "rural." They think the election of 2016 was "so close."No it wasn't. Hillary won the popular vote in a veritable landslide, but she lost the election because of the Electoral College which awards votes by state. By this means, "rural America" won the presidency for Trump. But even that's not true. No, it wasn't "rural America." It was largely a matter of suburban votes for Trump and voter suppression in places like Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. But so what?

The point is that Rural America is largely depopulated, and depopulation seems to be the prime objective of the Ukraine War -- on both sides. The Ukrainian state ceases to exist except as an appendage to one or the other Sides. The Ukrainian people are left to flounder, suffer, and be exploited no matter who marches in the Victory Day Parade -- if there is one.

The risk of course is that this whole Thing is gonna blow up. It's getting very close, and it looks like the double-dog daring  stage has been reached, and half the world is on tenterhooks wondering how much longer it will be before the Nukes start flying.

Our Rulers clearly want that outcome. 

They are playing a very, very sick game.

And there's not a good gottdammed thing we can do about it.

Deplorable.

Books

I've written about our household library before, I'm sure. It's still growing. As Ms Che was collecting her MFA in creative writing she bought dozens of books of poetry, but since they don't take up a lot of room, the bulk of them hardly groans on a single shelf in "her office." The rest of the books, numbering several thousand (I'd say 3.25) are scattered around the house, and some are still in the boxes we transported them in from California. They're in the garage and a couple of storage buildings in the back of the property.

As I've watched some of the renovation shows on TeeVee and looked at magazines and the internet for renovation ideas (our house is crying out for another do over, and we're getting the debt down so we can) I see that books are often used as "decor", props. They're turned spine to the wall, so you only see the page edges. They're covered with pastel colored paper, wall paper, white paper, cream paper, and they're arranged by color on otherwise bare shelves. Or on shelves with scattered bits of pottery or other collections. You don't see titles. There aren't any titles. Books made to be there but do nothing except take up space. They're not to be read, not to be browsed; they're to be looked at, glanced at, blankly stared at.

There was a period not too long ago when people with too much money and not much sense bought old leatherbound books by the yard, books in foreign languages that had beautiful bindings, books with no content just beautiful bindings, books ancient and decrepit that couldn't be read because the pages were falling apart, but the bindings were beautiful, and they filled their shelves with them. And then there was the fashion for hanging wall paper with images of full bookshelves instead of having the books on shelves take up valuable room. 

They say books aren't being published, sold, or read any more. "Almost all content is delivered electronically, digitally." That may be true. I don't know. I pulled out my somewhat tattered copy of Lost Horizon the other day and quoted from it on these (digital) pages. I did a quick digital search before doing so, and I could not find the quote I used from the preface of the 1936 edition. There were a couple of truncated versions, but none that gave the whole quote -- which is itself condensed (by the author) from a rather longer conversation between the main character Connolly and the High Lama of Shangri La. Consequently I reconfirmed the notion that the printed book continues to have value above and beyond whatever appears digitally in its place.

A lot of our books are old and not in the best of condition -- somewhat like we are! -- and some I know, like a 19th century Dickens collection, are almost unreadable because the pages have become so brittle. There are some Tom Swift novels in similar condition, as well as a bunch of Horatio Alger books that literally flake to pieces when you open them. It's possible, though I can't be sure, that most or even all of these works are available electronically. The physical book has a presence, a reason for being, but if it can't be read because it is disintegrating, what good is it, really?

Our oldest books, though, books of poetry from 1801 and 1802, are in surprisingly good condition (the pages anyway, the leather bindings not so much.) The pages are rag paper, crisp but not delicate, and the printing is handset and sure. These books will last long enough for the poetry style they present to come back into fashion, say another couple of hundred years.

We have a lot of art books, some of them becoming sought after like early Andy Warhol and David Hockney books. I've been watching The Andy Warhol Diaries on Netflix and oh my, talk about temps perdu. It had never occurred to me that Andy had become such a historical rather than contemporary character. The book of his works I'm thinking of (can't find it right now but I know we brought it here) is from the mid-'60s and contains images of much of his work up till then, including the advertising illustrations he did in the '50s and some of his "dirty movies" in the '60s. Acquaintances of ours in Sacramento owned a number of his works, including the famous Marilyn and Elizabeth Taylor silk screens, as well as other less well known Warhols. I don't remember now exactly how they acquired them. Some were from a gallery in New York, I think, but I remember vague references to direct dealings with the artist. It may have been in reference to some other artist though.

Many of our books will never be read again, I'm sure, and most of them, I have little doubt, will be discarded after we leave here. Maybe some will be used for "decor", cut up and used for wall paper, or as might need be, burned for warmth. 

Books are said to be out of favor. Unnecessary burdens on modern life. Well, if that's the case.... we might do well to question, again, the value of "modern life."

Lost Horizons

I thought I'd just drop this here.  

 James Hilton condensed a conversation between Connolly and the High Lama (about the war to come) in his novel Lost Horizon, 1933, and put it in the Preface to the 1936 edition: 

"It will be such a storm as the world has not seen before. There will be no safety by arms,, no help from authority, no answer in science. It will rage till every flower of culture is trampled, and all human things are leveled in a vast chaos... The Dark Ages that are to come will cover the whole world in a single pall; there will be neither escape nor sanctuary, save such as are too secret to be found or too humble to be noticed ..."

 

How much happier one would be to dismiss all this as thoroughly out-of-date, than to admit, as one must, that in 1936 it has become more terrifyingly up-to-date than ever! 

 

The War to Come did come, of course, soon enough, and it was worse, much worse, than the previous world war, and yet most people survived, most of "civilization" endured, most of the ruins were cleared, most of the earth recovered more or less well, and we carried on. Hilton's vision was shared by many others at the time. They knew or sensed that the Great War had concluded nothing, that another round of the fight would be coming, and no matter the efforts to forestall it, the world would be plunged into darkness for the duration yet again. 

And here we are again on the precipice of darkness, chaos and annihilation of civilization. Many of us share the vision of absent future, destroyed by the vanities of the powerful and not very clever few who rule over us. They cannot seem to stop themselves. War-fever and bloodlust have spread so widely now that I don't see any way for the ruling classes to back away from the brink. 

Let's hope they do, but how many people hoped the same in 1914, 1939, and on and on and on. Only occasionally -- and almost accidentally -- did wiser heads prevail. This time around, I'm not seeing any wiser heads atop the rulers.

How Close Are We to Nuclear Annihilation?

I'm seeing more and more commentary opining that we are well and truly into WWIII, the War some were claiming Hillary was going to start with her no-fly zone suggestion over Syria c. 2016.

She explained, perhaps inartfully, that a no-fly zone over Syria would only happen via negotiation with Russia, and she was not proposing a unilateral declaration. But of course, as is the way with political campaigns, her clarification was ignored, as was, interestingly, Trump's proposal for a refugee "safety-zone" -- essentially a no-fly zone by another name. Oh well, water under the bridge.

The point, I think, about Hillary was that she was belligerent toward Russia. Trump was anything but.

Anti-Russia belligerence was part of US government foreign policy from way back, at least tracing to the depths of the Cold War, intensifying rather remarkably during the Obama regime. It was painfully obvious that Obama and Putin did not get along, but why was never entirely clear. At times it seemed like there was a deep seated racist component, one I may have noticed and written about at the time but I'm too lazy to look it up right now. 

For what it's worth, there has long been a foreign policy outline that involves the dismemberment of the Russian Federation -- already much smaller and weaker than the Soviet Union -- and essentially remaking the parts into Western satrapies for easy exploitation and control. Russia has resources, after all, and according to our rulers or those who rule our rulers, those resources are "ours."

An independent Russia must be destroyed. 

China would be next.

This plan goes back decades, and you can bet the Kremlin has been well aware of it. 

It wasn't implemented -- at least not fully -- because Russia is armed with nuclear weapons and was believed to be skilled and ready to use them if the Motherland was existentially threatened.

Well here we are.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine in February was quite a surprise to practically everyone. Many simply didn't think Putin was that stupid. Even Zelensky and his backers in Kiev didn't think it would happen, and when it did, they were caught on the back foot. That's putting it mildly.

I said at the outset that either Kiev would capitulate quickly, or Russia would "go Grozny" on their asses. Grozny is the Chechen capital that was leveled and its defenders annihilated by Russia in two Chechen Wars in the '90s. Tens of thousands are said to have perished. 

Kiev did not capitulate but become even more belligerent as the invasion proceeded. There is considerable evidence that Russia has experienced significant losses while inflicting considerable damage on Ukrainian targets. Large parts of several cities have been reduced to ruin, mullions have been displaced -- about 10% of the population has become refugees in other parts of Europe -- and in essence, the Ukrainian economy, which wasn't much to begin with except for the looting by Ukrainian oligarchs, has ground to a halt.

Nuclear saber rattling has been going on since the outset of the invasion; threats from Moscow, retaliatory threats from the US and Nato. 

Of course those of us who remember the history of Cold War saber rattling are aware that we came very close to nuclear war with the Soviet Union several times during the era, and the whole routine of preparing for and (possibly) surviving if the button should be pushed was part of conditioning the population "just in case." I still have a Civil Defense pamphlet, "Surviving Nuclear War," and there are a couple of old radios around the place with CONELRAD emblems ("tune to 640 or 1240 on your AM radio dial for news and information in the event of an emergency..."). Together with Duck and Cover drills, air raid siren tests, and the location of public shelters and the building of backyard shelters this was what people of a Certain Age lived with for decades of their childhood and adolescence. 

I remember calculating how far from likely Bomb targets I lived, and it was never more than a few miles. 

Most of that conditioning faded as the Cold War ended -- or we thought it did. 

The various invasions and attacks since 2001, however, revived some of the terrifying images of the past, and the relentless marches to war the US and Nato have engaged in against enemies real and imagined, far and near have been deeply troubling to many of us.

Why this constant drumbeat of War and More War?

And why war against Russia?

Of course, it's been the Plan All Along. One day it had to happen. 

And here it is.

So how close are we to nuclear annihilation? I'd say very.

The war in Europe is creeping beyond Ukraine, and there are growing calls for Ukraine to attack and march to Moscow, burn the Kremlin, hang Putin, blah, blah, blah. It's not likely, but war-fever does strange things to people, and there is some intense war-fever among certain political interests. Ukraine and Zelensky are way over the edge. Bloodlust seems to be their sole animating force these days.

As they say, this can't end well.

We live considerably farther from likely targets now, so there's that, but the prevailing winds will still blow, and we are still downwind. Oh well!

No is no perceptible anti-war/anti-nuke movement today. I think people are just weary of... everything. The pandemic, increasing precarity, inflation, war and rumors of war, climate catastrophe. There seems no end to it all, and no escape either. 

So what's to be done? 

I've said that the nuclear trigger won't necessarily be pulled by either the US and Nato or by Russia. There are other nuclear players in the world, and some of them are getting antsy. If, say, Israel or North Korea (among other players) decide the time is ripe to rock and roll with nukes, how will the major players respond? 

We think of ourselves as the center of the Universe, but things can happen at the margins (the butterfly effect) that can change everything in a twinkling. The US and Nato are playing with fire and gasoline in their proxy war with Russia in the Ukraine, but something might well happen elsewhere that could trigger a global war of annihilation that would actually result in a longed for (by some) population drop. And then...?

This roller coaster ride we've been on may be nearing the end. 

The 1950 Census

So I looked up my infant self in the 1950 census. At first I was frustrated because the address I checked was listed as "No one home" and had a note: "see pg 70" or something and there were only 31 pages in the tract. Hm.

So I checked all the pages, and indeed I found the address and the listing on page 70-something -- which was one of the 31 pages. But at the address where I thought I'd lived I found another family. Husband, wife and 16 year old son. Oh. Well... how could that be? Unless I didn't live there in 1950, and my memory of where I lived was faulty. Wouldn't be the first time.

But there had to be a record somewhere. So I checked all the pages, and eventually I found my mother, sister and myself living at a different address just down the street. Hm.

So I did the Google thing, and sure enough, this was a little house a few doors down from the duplex where I thought I lived. And this little house was strong in my memory. I knew I had lived in a little house on this street, or thought I had lived there, but all the pictures I could find showed us living in the duplex. But then it occurred to me. Those pictures were all taken in 1951. So in 1950 I really was living in the little house I remembered. But I wasn't any older than two when we lived there. Where do these ancient memories come from?

I have a vague memory of a move around that time, but the move I am thinking of was to a different house in another part of town -- from the duplex to the other house. Or was it? Was the move from the little house to the duplex down the street, and then, a year or so later to the other house? A scrambled memory?

I remember the appearance of the interior and exterior of the little house. The duplex not so much, though the exterior resembled the little house (I assume they were built about the same time, c. 1930). I remember the exterior of the other house we moved to, but nothing of the interior. Which is odd because I do remember the interior of the house next door quite well. 

I've written before about how memories are tricky things, whether they are long ago childhood memories or more recent ones. I don't know how it works, but I was really surprised to find that for the census of 1950 my sister, mother and I were living in the little house where I thought, until I found pictures showing us living in the duplex down the street that resembled the little house. 

Well, well, well...

And ultimately, the question is how memories work and don't work, what we recall and don't recall and why. I don't know how I have retained so many childhood memories, some of them from Iowa when I was no more than a few months old. Other, more recent memories are just gone. Every now and then, Ms Che will ask: "Do you remember X, Y, or Z?" naming a person, incident or place that we had known or experienced. Sometimes my answer is yes, but often -- I think too often -- my answer is no. 

Where do those memories go? And why is her memory of these things and people so much sharper than mine? On the other hand, I have much sharper memories of my early childhood than she has of hers.

It's a mystery...

OK

So the Ukraine Thing is becoming very strange, turning inside out. Just what is going on, we don't know, partly because there is almost no non-narrative based on the ground reporting, no livestreaming, no embeds, no honesty, either. 

It's all propaganda, every bit of it, at least up to now. This is the ninth-tenth-thirteenth-fourteenth day since the Russian incursion. We've seen the same building blow up again and again, the same satellite still image of the same long-long convoy stalled outside Kiev/Kyiv, the same crying woman in the subway, the same neonatal unit in the bomb shelter, the same hospital bombed to smithereens, the same pregnant woman carried away from the ruins... well, it's the same over and over.

Now we're told that the assault on the nuclear plant wasn't quite what we were told before. The reactors were never in danger, there was no radiation leakage, the Ukrainian staff is still on the job, the Russians are in control of the plant, nothing to see here, move along. 

And so on. Again and again, "Move along."

One thing I've made note of repeatedly is that Putin's grievances have some basis in fact, and yet that does not justify an invasion. USandNato propaganda insists there is no basis for Russian grievances. No Nazis, no genocide, no oppression of Russian speakers, and furthermore Ukraine has always existed, and Ukrainians and Russians are totally different people. This is absurd.

Ukraine is a democracy dagnabbit! 

Uh. No.

But let's get some clarity, ok? If our rulers actually believe the bullshit they're spewing, then we've got to come to grips with some things and we better do it quick. I think it was DW that did one of the more interesting "fact checks" on Putin's grievances, declaring them all "false" and yet in the little explanations, admitting they were all at least partly true.

Let's see if I can find it.

Ja, here we go.  

First grievance and objective: "Denazify" Ukraine.

DW declares it "false" because someone in Sweden said that Zelensky is Jewish and was elected by an overwhelming majority (true)... therefore.... what? There are no nazis in the government and military of Ukraine?

Wellllllll, not exactly.

The entire propaganda apparatus in the USandNato uses the formula that because Zelensky is Jewish and was elected by an overwhelming majority, Putin's complaint about Ukrainian nazis is bogus.

Let's see what DW says further about it, tho: "there are far-right groups..." and during the Euromaidan uprising "individual far right groups" (whatever that means) were involved, but today, far-right groups like the notorious Azov Battalion are integrated into the Ukrainian National Guard, so.... what? Not nazis now? Or what? 

And while there have been scandals regarding the far-right in the Ukrainian military they were exposed, So... so...? Again, they admit a basis for the complaint but deny its validity because "Zelensky is Jewish."

This is absurd, but oh well. Let's go on.

Complaint: Nato troops advancing toward Russia's borders. Is this true? DW says it's "misleading" and then admits it is true, getting more true every day, only it's not in formation, so what's the problem, eh?  Ukraine is not (or was not) being admitted to Nato despite all the alliances, bases, and training with Nato that were in place and expanding prior to the Russian invasion. It wasn't just Ukraine. Oh no. 14 formerly Warsaw Pact countries have joined Nato, four of them bordering Russia, and they all have Nato troops and ordnance on their borders. 

Complaint: Russia must defend itself from Nato aggression and the independence of Donetsk and Luhansk under the UN Charter chapter 7 article 51.

This gets tricky. Russia launched a preventive war which UN charter allows under very limited circumstances which Russia has invoked but Nato denies. Russia claims that Nato activities and troops on its borders are a provocation and a threat; Nato's activities in Ukraine were explicitly a threat to Russia, and the Zelensky government made other explicit threats (including reacquiring nuclear weapons) which precipitated action by Russia against Ukraine.

This argument is essentially the same one the USandNato used against Afghanistan and Iraq, the first with UN concurrence, the second without. Does this constitute "justification?" Well, obviously, if the USandNato does it, yes. If Russia or any other nation (except Israel) does it, no.

Complaint: Genocide by Ukrainian nazis against Russian and Russian speaking civilians. Again, tricky. "Genocide" has a very specific definition in international law, and what the Ukrainian civil government, armed forces and militias have been doing since 2014 technically fits that definition, though the scale of "genocide" in Ukraine is debatable. And it is genocide against Russians and Russian speakers within the borders of Ukraine. Indeed, since the start of the Russian incursion, it's only gotten worse, with rumors of nazi-ish death squads activated to liquidate pesky-Ruskies who've not fled to Russia or the Donbas already.

There is no genocide according to DW because there haven't been any documented "mass killings" of Russians and Russian speakers -- despite the fact that there have been -- and even if there weren't, "genocide" is not at all limited to Babi Yar type mass executions of many thousands at one go or to Auschwitz type extermination camps. Of course DW -- and all the rest of Western propaganda media -- knows this, but what they know doesn't matter when the truth is to be masked no matter what in service to a narrative.

And that narrative says that Russia's behavior is bad -- it is. That narrative says that Ukraine's behavior is above reproach -- it isn't. That narrative claims that the USandNato are doing their utmost on behalf of enabling Ukraine to defend itself without going directly against Russia -- debatable. And that Ukraine and the USandNato have never, ever done anything to antagonize the Russian bear -- demonstrably false.

I've been an anti-war activist since Vietnam, and I'm not about to change my stripes now. I have no brief for any side in this conflict. They're all wrong and they're all doing wrong in a very dangerous Guns of August - Missiles of October manner for which there is no excuse, none. Our ruling classes are out of their minds, following urges that date back very far but which are invalid in the current circumstance. In fact, there are so many far more important things they should be dealing with but utterly refuse to. They want war and they will have it come what may.

We the rabble have no choice in the matter.

Welcome to Eternity.

Puffy Putin and His Long-Long Tables

Note has been taken among the Western Propaganda Media -- and some others -- that Vladimir Vladimirovich is looking distinctly unwell with a very puffy face and an odd for him demeanor. His fury at Ukrainia is really uncharacteristic. Yes, I realize there's this whole "projection of strength" thing, but this guy has been around for practically ever, and most observers have taken his measure and got his number, and his recent appearance and actions are just "not like him." Something is going on. 

And then there is the whole business about those long-long tables in those gigantic white-white rooms in the Kremlin at which he has his meetings and conferences. He sits at one end and those who wish to speak with him sit yards and yards away from him. And then what? Yell? It's very odd. Commentary suggests he's paranoid of catching the Covid. But... why? We've seen Trump, Boris, and Bolsonaro among others get it and get it bad and come through with the kind of treatments that are only available to the rich and powerful, and so, Vlad should be fine even if he gets it. 

But then, there's the whole "puff-face" business. That is often a consequence of taking cortico-steroids like prednisone and such, and there are other meds that do it, like cancer drugs. So.... could there be something going on where his immune system is all bolloxed (such as with cancer treatments and other conditions) and thus his wariness of sitting near someone who might be a carrier? Has he been poisoned? 

And then there's the question about his behavior. I was certainly surprised when he ordered a full-on invasion of Ukraine. From the outside looking in, it was stupid, and he is not stupid. There is no clear objective -- "demilitarize and denazify" is all well and good, but this isn't even close to doing that. And why now instead of in 2014 when it was more doable if you will? And actually, it was expected then. 

Instead, he just sat back and watched.

Hm.

What gives? Dunno.

It's not just Putin, tho. Far from it. 

Paul Jay did and interview with Lawrence Wilkerson wherein they discussed some of the oddities of this latest round of conflict. They correctly see it as a contest of oligarchies -- American, European, Russian and Ukrainian. This is not, at all, about "Democracy vs Autocracy." Jeeze, whoever came up with  that one must have been on drugs. It's oligarchs against oligarchs. The working class has no say. Very much a la WWI. Which is not a good thing. Far from it.

There are strategic military objectives, but regime change in Kiev/Kyiv (the correct pronunciation of which  no one quite knows or agrees on... the best one seems to go something like "KREE-iv") isn't one of them. Occupation of the whole of Ukraine isn't one of them. Destruction of Ukraine isn't one of them. Strategic military action would focus essentially entirely on "Novorossiya", the east and south, and essentially ignore the rest ("Banderastan")

And yet from appearances, Russian troops are flailing around, sort of trying to "take" the big cities in the north -- Kiev, Kharkov -- and advancing on Mariupol and Odessa in the south without really defending Donetsk and Luhansk in the Donbas. 

We keep hearing about the Siege of Kiev/Kyiv, but that doesn't really seem to be happening. The airport was apparently taken by Russian troops. And every now and then a missile is lobbed toward the city hitting sort of randomly, but there doesn't seem to be a "siege." Same with Kharkov. 

In the south, there's little word, so it is not clear what the Russians are doing. It has been reported, maybe true or not, that the Ukrainians are fiercely shelling the breakaway republics and there is little or no Russian counter offense or defense. 

And now we hear veiled references to "nuclear deterrent" from Moscow. The USandNato have never disavowed First Strike with Nukes, so Moscow is understandably concerned, yet...

It reminds me a bit of all the people running around screaming that Hillary was going to start WWIII with her talk of a No-Fly Zone in Syria. Huh? No. Not gonna happen. All out nuclear war takes two to tango, and from all appearances what they were screaming about was that Putin would respond to a No-fly Zone with nuclear weapons, and there was no sign at all of him doing that.

So was the screaming just partisan bullshit? I think so, yes. But with current events in mind, I wonder. Was there something else going on?

Was there a plan in place to goad Russia into doing something.... erm... unwise (like a full on invasion somewhere) that would enable the implementation of the Russia-Project (ie: its dismemberment and de-nuclearization among other things) as a "defensive" measure, a plan to be executed with Hillary in the Oval Office?

A plan that was interrupted but not cancelled by the unexpected installation of Trump.

So now with Biden in office it is being executed "at last". Putin has done his part by invading Ukraine -- and flailing around and now by "talking nukes."

The point from The West is to destroy/dismember Russia. This has been a goal since the 1990s. Once that's done, move on China.

But the whole plan started with destroying the Middle East. Followed by Iran -- which still hasn't been done. Then Russia. Then China. With the idea that China would surrender rather than be destroyed.

Well. 

Here we are.

Spring's coming. So at least there's that...