October 4, 2017

Below are unconnected musings, recent events, and random items picked, like bitter fruit, from the Internet,

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity

 

Yeats wrote that in 1919 to describe post-war Europe, but do his words fit well on the U.S. a century later?

 My own unease began with the disaffection of the Republican Party in July of 2015 and unease soon devolved into disdain. The GOP had, for years,  been the counterbalance to the progressives with their lies and bags of poison candy, but that counterbalance was loosing its heft.  The Republican Senators seems committed only to remaining in the Senate and feathering their own nests. Not only has the Senate done little to assist President Trump, some actually appear to thwart his efforts in hopes reaching the White House themselves.

That said, I can not foresee the U.S. going to hell in a handbasket in the near future.  Europe almost committed suicide with WWI & II.  The closest the US has come to that level of folly was the War of Northern Aggression. Even though the Vietnam War was a stupid blunder that did much damage to the social fabric, the country did come through. The information technology revolution has changed many of the foundation of society (I read today that social security numbers are outdated), but have the basics changed?  Is the country rotting internally? I recently came across this:

A Manifesto for Enlightenment Humanism

by Michael Shermer, journal Theology and Science, July 2017

Abstract

The success of the Scientific Revolution led to the development of the worldview of scientific naturalism, or the belief that the world is governed by natural laws and forces that can be understood, and that all phenomena are part of nature and can be explained by natural causes, including human cognitive, moral, and social phenomena. The application of scientific naturalism in the human realm led to the widespread adoption of Enlightenment humanism, a cosmopolitan worldview that places supreme value on science and reason, eschews the supernatural entirely, and relies exclusively on nature and nature’s laws—including human nature and the laws and forces that governance us and our societies—for a complete understanding of the cosmos and everything in it, from particles to people.

 Next, I read:

 1) That less than 26 percent of poor Americans and 39 percent of working-class Americans are currently married, compared to 56 percent of middle- and upper-class Americans. Another scientific study shows that the percent of happily married couples has shrunk down to the 25 percent range and, of course, the divorce rate is always climbing.

2) The media (with the exception of Fox) and all liberals despise the POTUS.

3) The annual overdose deaths from opioids surpasses deaths from both car accidents and guns. Experts estimate that nationwide over 500,000 people could die from the epidemic over the next 10 years.

4) The number of Americans incarcerated has increased from .5 million in 1980 to 2.5 million in 2017, not counting those on parole. This week the media screams that a man killed 58 persons in Los Vegas, as if tacitly waiting to announce next that another crazy has broken that Guinness record. Somehow the smug boost about the widespread adoption of Enlightenment humanism, a cosmopolitan worldview that places supreme value on science and reason and eschews the supernatural entirely, seems to ring a bit hollow.

5) "The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047," Lionel Shriver imagined America slouching into dystopia merely by continuing current practices. In a Reason magazine interview, Shriver says, "I think it is in the nature of government to infinitely expand until it eats its young." In her novel, she writes: "The state starts moving money around. A little fairness here, little more fairness there. ... Eventually social democracies all arrive at the same tipping point: where half the country depends on the other half. ...Government becomes a pricey, clumsy, inefficient mechanism for transferring wealth from people who do something to people who don't, and from the young to the old -- which is the wrong direction. All that effort, and you've only managed a new unfairness."

And so it goes...

Diary Entry

The gym was unusually empty this morning, just the manager, a middle age relative of the owner, and her two year old grand daughter. The little girl is on the floor playing with toys. I remark on the child's high level of cuteness and grandma glows with pride. After my daily regimen I stop at Powell's Grocery, in the black community, for a carry out. The store is typical of most southern towns: It sells gas, carries some groceries, dry goods, fishing tackle, and lots of fried food - including delicious deadly cracklings.  The owner/operator is white and the four employees in the kitchen area are all black women.  I point to a large biscuit holding a piece of mystery meat displayed behind a greasy class case. The woman presents the biscuit and indicates I should pay the owner behind the cash register. The owner examined the thing and declared there was also an egg inside, so $2.33. On down the road I unwrapped the thing and almost choke on the giant biscuit. By the time I arrived at Billy's Small Engine Repair, at end of a dusty dead end road, biscuit crumbs litter the front seat of the car. Billy's yard is a grave yard for lawn mowers, garden tillers, chain saws, the likes. His shop, a dark hole filled with the innards of old implements, has to be entered with care to avoid stumbling over unassorted junk. Billy was not around so I moved over to the dilapidated trailer and called out. A small woman, with unkept grey hair, emerged wearing a tee shirt inscribed, "Don't Steal - the Government wants no Competition", and talking on a phone. "Let me put on my shoes and I'll take care of you," she said without taking the phone from her ear. I am unsure I want to be taken care of. As she finished filling out the tag to be attached to the chain saw, the phone rang and she stopped to talk, then waved me away as she had all the info needed. Billy's driveway is covered with soda and beer cans, flattened so as to pave the way. I wonder if the technique was planned or was just the results of tossing empty cans out the door.

My next stop is the coffee room at BanCorp.  I am a bit late, the conversation is already well underway: the proposed move of the county court house personnel to the overlarge three story building holding Farmer's Bank, once know as "Tom Ed's Last Erection," for the deceased president of the last bank of another name. Eventually Donnie, the president walks in and the conversation turns to another topic: A few day earlier a man asked to speak with Donnie in his office about the sign outside the bank advising everyone not to enter the bank while wearing sunglasses, hat, or toting a gun. The man said he had a permit to carry and then pulled back his shirt to show a pistol. Did the permit cancel the power of the prohibiting sign?  Donnie referred the question to the coffee room sages, but as nobody was sure, I urged Donnie to call the state attorney general's office. This time Donnie has a print-out with an outline of the Arkansas gun law. Sure enough, the sign on the door over ruled the permit. Next Doodle said the board at the Methodist had ruled that nobody could bring a weapon into the church. An old guy, only know as Cowboy, said he was a retired deputy and had been carrying a 44 for 40 years and was not going to change. So he sold out and moved back to Texas, where I assume, he can bring his 44 to church.  Doodle then told a story about when he was a deputy near Camden and had been called to a big dance where a man dressed in camo and holding a big knife was spotted  in a tree outside the dance hall. Doodle drove there,  shined a light up the tree and  "Buck Williams, what the hell you doin' up there?"  Buck looked down and said, "There is a man in there dancing with my wife. When he comes out I'm gonna cougar jump him."  Doodle, "He's parked on the other side of the building. You might as well come on down form up up there."

After I left the bank, I had to go across the street to the hardware store. Keenan runs the hardware and is also the Methodist preacher at our church in Washington. Next Saturday is the bicentennial of the first Methodist Church in Arkansas. There is a stone marker in Warren Webster's pasture, a few miles west of Washington, on the spot where the first church stood. The bishop will come down from Little Rock and there will be a ceremony followed of course by a meal, as these are Methodist.
Keenan had asked Vicky to bake four loaves of bread for the occasion, but did not indicate if the bread was for the meal (which would mean baguette) or for communion (round, with a cross cut into the center). Inside the hardware the temporary clerk, Elizabeth a recent college grad searching for a real job, had piled up about 50 tees.
tee

"What in the world are you going to do with all those?"  The red faced customer replied in a world weary voice, "rat traps," and I said he must have millions of rats and then asked how tees would trap rats. He demonstrated how another piece would be attached, filled with bait, and fastened to the wall of a chicken house. I failed to see how the contraptions would work and he agreed, "Just some more Tyson bullshit that the growers will have to pay far."

Before I departed the hardware Keenan said the bread was for communion for over 200 participants. As the faithful usually tear off just a morsel of bread, I wondered why so much was required. "Just want to be sure we have enough," he said,...( perhaps he thought some uninitiated might rip away enough to make a sandwich). Then he gave me a quote from The Lord of the Rings for Vicky, as the two  of them are devout followers of Tolkien...(something about birds in a cedar tree was all I could remember, but Vicky understood anyway).

My last stop is the grocery store for a bag of unshelled peanuts. As this is the first of the month the store is full of recipients of government electronic money. At the check out stand is an odd ménage à trois. A skinny skin head, chinless white guy with a Chinese character tattoo on his neck, a rough but attractive black woman built like Serena Williams, and another less attractive chunky black woman with a gold ring in her nose. All are in their early 30's. Their two carts are filled with the usual low class selection: white bread, lunch meat, gallons of soda, sugary cereal, jelly, kool aid, and of course, no fresh vegetables. The woman with the nose ring has the WIC card. The computer knows which items are allowed and which must be paid for. To pay for the unauthorized items she produces a wad of bills and hands the clerk a fifty. In the parking lot I see them loading the loot in the back of an almost new Jeep Cherokee.  I don't think ill of them because "Government is a clumsy, inefficient mechanism for transferring wealth from people who do something to people who don't, and from the young to the old -- which is the wrong direction."  To Lionel Shriver they are my fellow drones.

On the drive back to the farm I consider the morning events and decide to record them, so I might look back one day and remember this day in rural south Arkansas.