Can It Be Fixed?

Just how corroded is this country?

Last night I started working on a spreadsheet to demonstrate how easily someone like the Space Nazi could buy off this country. But it’s been a while since I put together a complicated spreadsheet and this one is complicated. I will finish it, maybe even today and when I do, I’ll write up my results and you’ll see them here. But after I gave up on it and went to bed, I started thinking about how damaged this country has been from Republican actions over the last 45 years, starting with Reagan or, really, starting with Nixon. And that thought stuck with me all through the night, until I woke up this morning comparing the sad remains of the United States of America to my history of abandoned cars because of rust damage from living in the Midwest.

If you’ve never lived in one of the rust belt states you might not have any idea how unrecoverable a car can become in a surprisingly short period of time. A friend of mine, who is a wonderful mechanic in Truth or Consequences NM always remarks on how much rust damage there is to my vehicles, even to the cars that I think are holding up pretty well. If you live in a Rust Belt state and you drive older vehicles, no matter how much work you put into a vehicle trying to keep it alive, sooner or later you’re gonna have to put it down because of rust. 20 some years ago I bought a late 90sFord Taurus station wagon for my wife as a surprise gift. She loved that car and took care of it as well as she'd ever taken care of a mechanical device. Like all Ford Taurus’es, eventually her station wagon needed major transmission work at about 160,000 miles. She really wanted to have the work done, it would have been about $3000 for the repairs. But the back hatch was rusted all along the bottom, the front and rear wheel wells were rusted out, there was major corrosion every place the body attached to the frame, and I made the decision for her to have the car scrapped.

In my 60 years as a car owner, I’ve had to make this decision around two dozen times. Between 1970 and the early 80s, I think I owned at least a half dozen Volkswagen Beetles and I was pretty good at keeping them mechanically maintained. But I lived in Kansas, northwest Texas, and Nebraska during those years and almost all of my driving was through heavily salted roads. I had to make the same decision that we made with that Taurus with every one of those vehicles. Because I’m an audio guy, I often had installed stereo systems in my cars that ended up being worth more than the car and I always removed those stereo systems before scrapping the car. During our lean years, that sound system might have moved from one car to another three or 4 times before it ended up being obsolete. In fact, I have the sound system from my last Ford Escort in one of my garages as the sound system for that work area. That car was also scrapped because of rust.

And now we are at a similar point with the frayed, beat-up, corroded and likely unrepairable remains of the United States of America. Just from my spreadsheet work last night on figuring out how easily Elon Musk could buy the entire Republican Party with his spare change, I have come to the conclusion that this vehicle/Constitution is not repairable. It is too corroded from within and without. We can fight to try to hang on to the good parts, but with 76 million Americans being foolish enough to take careful aim at their own feet and empty their weapons the fight is pretty hopeless.  As reported by Forbes Magazine and confirmed by several sources, “the wealth owned by the top 1% of Americans as of the fourth quarter of 2022, according to the Federal Reserve, was $43.45 trillion, compared to $4.16 trillion by the bottom 50% of the Americans during the same period. (Forbes reported in 2021 that the top 1% that year comprised about 1.3 million households making more than $500,000 per year.) Within that that top category, the top 0.01% alone controlled $17.6 trillion in the last quarter of 2022.” Lucky for the “top 1%” literacy and numeracy in the majority of American adults is practically 3^rd world (Trump’s “shithole countries”) levels.

The men who founded this nation knew these problems are likely insolvable. They warned against inherited wealth, wealth so great that it would overwhelm the power and contributions of the general population, an uneducated general population, and many of the faults we currently find ourselves mired in. Those same men were also mostly wealthy slave owners and they were afraid that democracy was an unwise (for their wealth and power) experiment. So, they built a “republic” that kept power in the hands of the idle rich and working people have been struggling to wrestle a democracy from a poorly designed republic ever since. Today that struggle is over and oligarchy has won, more than enough American citizens are so easily misdirected and uneducated that they willingly submit themselves to servitude. What happens next will be an example to the world and very well could spell the end for what remains of human civilization. The first week of the new Republican Administration indicates, to me, that this vehicle is rusted beyond repair and will either have to be abandoned or will end up stuck on the side of the road leaving its passengers stranded.

Post Mortem: I Just Wanted a “Family Day”

Monday 2/26/2018

My wife, Robbye, and I are having one of those classic “quiet days” after her day-long plan to drag me into the Cities for a day of being ignored by the kids, buying stuff, and waiting around for her visit to end stalled when she learned I had no interest in going. She tried the guilt trip, the anger trip, and the "I’m not talking to you” trip and we’re still in the last phase. She decided, yesterday, that she wanted to go into the Cities for a political meeting. Later, she decided she wanted to visit our daughter and her family before the meeting. Sometime after that, she started saying “we” when she described her plans and, this morning, I had to remind her that I had other plans for the day and had no interest in the 100 mile trip just so I could sit around being tolerated until she got back from the meeting. 

I’m just not into all of the family hassle any more. I’ve been everyone’s daddy for 60-some years and it hasn’t been particularly rewarding. I was a pretty terrible parent and only slightly worse as a grandparent. I tried, but I don’t have the necessary skills. I disappoint people on a constant basis, mostly because I do not understand them . . . ever. I don’t know what people want from me and I don’t know what I’m supposed to get out of most relationships. 

About the only line I’ve managed to draw in my life has been on funerals. Even that one gets crossed far too often. Once someone is dead, I’m convinced they no longer need anything from me and I would rather not attend funerals as a rule. I went to my step-mother and father’s funerals and those events were as baffling as being hit on the head from behind by a stranger. I don’t know why I was there or if anyone cared that I was. If my goal in life is to bring comfort to others, I’d just as soon they kill me and eat me for that purpose. 

Robbye and I are at the point in life where we are considering what we’d do if we were suddenly alone. She likes to think she’d do something independent, for the first time in her life. She imagines herself driving places towing a camper, a dog, a cat, and a house full of stuff. Or she might put all of the crap in a storage bin, where it will rot and be infested with mice, rats, and insects. The exploring part is the dream, though. I suspect she will muddle along in our Red Wing house for a year or so, get tangled up in some sort of home repair scam and lose a bucket of money, panic, and sell the house, camper, furniture, and the rest of our stuff for a huge loss and move into an assisted living facility. I like to think that I’d observe a reasonable period of mourning and hit the road. I’d probably sell the house to be sure I have nothing to come back to and simply disappear from my past life. 

The obvious directions are west or south: west coast or South America, that is. The past three years in Red Wing have made it pretty obvious that the “home” we thought we’d discovered and built is a myth. We’re about as established here as we were when we moved from Colorado to a rental house in Roseville in 1996. The “communities” that we imagined we were part of are all illusions. People say you aren’t a Minnesota resident until you are at least 3rd generation and, apparently, that is true. Likewise, once your kids no longer depend on you for support and sustainence, your relevance to their lives vanishes. That’s normal, if unexpected, and healthy for them. Sticking around to see if they might still need you is, however, insane. 

So, my wife’s dream of a “family day” is something she and we are going to have to get used to not having from here out. The kids don’t need us, probably don’t like us much, and get bored quickly when we are around. We always feel like we’re imposing when we visit them, their busy lives go on hold while they put up with us, and that’s about as satisfying as a pizza that has everything you don’t like sprinkled on top of the things you can just tolerate.

And God Said

The gods don’t do a lot of talking, except to crazy people and other “prophets.” Nature, however, is pretty communicative; if you bother to listen. Early human religions were slightly more realistic than the clown shows we’re stuck with in modern life. Humans used to pray to the sun, the moon, the winds, rain, and good or bad weather. In other words, they begged nature not to kill them or their families. If you are going to be begging some greater entity for survival purposes, you probably ought to at least aim your questions and requests at something semi-real. Of course, even the most deluded theist or deist knows that nature does not give a damn about the existence of individual humans or even the entire species. We are just one lifeform, out of many, that has accidentally through evolution managed to turn into a marginally sustainable species. If we manage to kill ourselves off through stupidity or viciousness, nature will crank out another attempt at sentience (or not) in a few million years.

So, to an outside non-superstitious observer, what does all of the praying to various representational gods look like? It looks silly as hell, that’s what.

Re-imagine this, “Do not add a thing to what I command you nor subtract from it, so that you may keep the commandments of the Lord your God that I am delivering to you. Then the Lord said to Moses that same day” with “Do not add a thing to what I command you nor subtract from it, so that you may keep the commandments of nature that I am delivering to you. Then nature said to Moses that same day.” Nature is never that wordy, so maybe that line will have to be left to the comedians.

How about this one re-written for sentience, “Then nature told me about some men from Anathoth who were threatening to kill me. They had threatened, “Stop prophesying in the name of nature or we will kill you!” That one is pretty much what Trump and the Trumpanzees are saying to the EPA, National Parks Department, and NASA. Maybe this biblical revisionism has a future? Even though humans probably don’t.

I sort of like this one, too: “The law of nature is perfectand preserves one’s life. The rules set down by nature are reliable and impart wisdom to the inexperienced.  Nature’s precepts are fair and make one joyful. Nature’s commands are pure and give insight for life.  The commands to fear nature are right and endure forever. The judgments given by nature are trustworthyand absolutely just. They are of greater value than gold,than even a great amount of pure gold;they bring greater delight than honey,than even the sweetest honey from a honeycomb. Yes, your servant finds moral guidance there; those who obey them receive a rich reward.” If a society made this substitution and practiced it, humanity might have half-a-shot at sustainablity. And I might have a dramatically higher opinion of my species.

We could add “the environment” to “nature” and really get some value from bibles. “But you who remained faithful to nature and the environment are still alive to this very day, every one of you. Look! I have taught you statutes and ordinances just as nature told me to do, so that you might carry them out in the land you are about to enter and possess. So be sure to do them, because this will testify of your wise understanding to the people who will learn of all these statutes and say, ‘Indeed, this great nation is a very wise people.’” Indeed, that would be a great nation full of very wise people, instead of being a brainless pack of morons driving headlong into oblivion.

Tipping, When Your Career Path Depends on Begging

I was in Durango, CO when I began to write this. My grandson and I were taking a Rocky Mountain motorcycle tour and we ended up here after a few days of camping. Right after parking the bike at the motel, we went for a walk downtown and stopped at an ice cream shop. An ice cream cone and a smoothie cost me about $10 and the server was obviously putout that I didn't leave a tip.

I suspect my father went his whole high school teaching life without spending much more than $10 on tips. His advice on tipping was that extraordinary service might warrant a tip, but just doing your job is what you get paid for. Today, people doing practically any sort of job that requires some sort of interaction with a customer expect a tip for the slightest nod to common courtesy.

I suppose I should be interested in the fact that most of these folks have done a pitiful job of planning their careers. I should probably care that their lack of technical knowledge or employable skills has relegated them to a life filled with the repetitive phrase, "Would you like fries with that?" or "Can I get you another beer?" I should find sympathy for the awful situation these people find themselves in after a life of screwing off in class, taking the easy path through the public education system, and grabbing an easy job at Old Navy or Payless Shoes instead of pursuing a career in manufacturing or doing something meaningful and useful. Sorry. I can't generate any sympathy for any of those decisions or the results.

A kid recently told me he had "the best job in the world." He was a guide in the Grand Canyon. So, having recently experienced the tactics guides use to weasel tips out of customers, I said, "Cool, you're a beggar." He was offended. Go figure.

When you spend at least half of the time you're with a customer telling them about how hard you've worked for all of your "outdoors degrees" and how much student loan debt you're in because of those degrees, you're begging. When you mention, every five minutes or so, that your guide has worked hard to show you a good time and that the guide deserves something extra for that effort (even if you paid $500 for a couple of days on a rubber boat), you're begging. When you make a special trip, with your hand out, around the group of tourists to be sure they have an opportunity to tip you, you're begging. There is no such thing as a "professional beggar." You're either a panhandler or you aren't one.

There are all sorts of jobs that are more critical, more entertaining, more helpful and more important than the occupations that incorporate begging. Firemen don't expect a tip after saving a home from a kitchen fire, so why tip a valet for parking a car? Teachers don't expect tips for educating children for a life free from begging and panhandling, so why tip a waitress who didn't bother to listen in school and who chose the high tech life of moving plates from a counter to tables? Not that long ago, craftsmen refused tips as a matter of pride. If we have degenerated so far that begging for handouts has become accepted practice for any act of employment we might as well walk around with "will work for food" signs on our backs.

No tipping for common courtesy and expected service isn't disrespect or cheapness, it's reasonable. You chose your career, you do your job, you know what the salary was when you accepted the job, why imagine the public is obligated to make up for your lack of foresight? If the foodies wonder why most people would rather grab a fastfood burger and go home, look at the unrealistic expectation of "food serving" beggars for your first clue.