Sunny this morning. Chilly but not cold. All I will need for the moment is my sweater. We have an errand later and, since it is so late, we will have our late meal out.
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Still dark outside--damn time change. Our high yesterday reached about 65. It is supposed to hit 70+ today. Time to do a bit more outside.
The author of this post on The Honest Sorcerer takes off from the post on Ecosophia John Michael Greer wrote a couple of weeks ago. (I linked to it a couple of days ago after mulling it over for about a week.) As I read it I remembered articles over the last couple of decades, which quickly disappeared without much attention, describing the aging of farmers and ranchers in this country. The average in that occupation group has gone from high 50s to mid 60s in that time. I followed a link in the post linked above to this article which contains and discusses a map of the world with the median ages of populations noted. And then, with a question tickling my mind, I found this article listing the average age of workers in various occupation groups. We are already experiencing disruptions from declining populations.
It looks like several countries are going through a serious "negotiation" over national identities. We have seen Putin turn to Russia's past to create a Russian identity that is opposed to the West and its "decadence." Modi in India is pushing "Hindu" nationalism and a new citizenship law. Here in the U.S. we have a struggle between those who support an "inclusive" society and those who are pushing "Christian Nationalism" (a.k.a., white supremacy. (I put these terms in quotes because they seem elastic depending on who is speaking or writing.) China, according to this article, is also having its troubles defining the soul of China. Like so many in this country they are trying to do so by erasing the not so valorous, not so heroic parts of their past as presented in modern literature. I wonder when they will try to do what some of our zealots are doing and move from restricting what people can read to editing their history. Maybe they already have but our information sources haven't covered it.
Stray thought: listening to Israeli politicians, especially Netanyahu, insisting on continuing the operations in Gaza until they destroy (obliterate??) Hamas and "win" the contest I remember a scene in a sci-fi novel where a warlord tries to educate a subordinate in the notion that you can lose the war by winning a battle and retreating isn't the same as losing. Will Israel have its own Pyrrhic "victory?"
This story about a former Harvard professor of medicine who took a contrary position on COVID, COVID vaccinations, and COVID lockdowns illustrates the problem with censorship, whether official on any level or informal) is a bad idea. It is also why I follow several blogs which try to present critical information that goes against the official position on our controversial topics. I might or might not agree but at least the information is there for me. That is why I also disagree with the current efforts to prohibit TikTok unless its Chinese parent company divests and sells it.
Bill Astore posted an interesting bit on his Bracing Views substack. He expresses thoughts I have had since not long after 9/11. We have had a long period where our government uses the military to enforce solutions international problems. They swaggered around the globe like some kind of modern cowboys. We needed (and need) leaders who can think on a different bandwidth. I also believed we needed to get beyond the Cold War but were still dominated by Cold Warriors. But that doesn't describe either Biden or Trump. Astore is right: they aren't the politicians to formulate a new path for the country.
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