June 7

 Good morning. I have been lazy so far today. I don't have much I want to do today. Hopefully it won't get too warm too soon. I have a few pots I want to add some soil to and some I want to finish filling. We will be looking for plants tomorrow. I did plant the sunflower seeds and some cosmos seeds Mom got as a "reward" from some group wanting a donation. I put that word in quotations because it is really something to make you feel guilty if you don't donate. She has throws most of those away--even those she had donated to before. They all want a monthly donation preferably by automatic deduction from a bank account or on a credit card. She gives once a year.

Aurelian has an interesting post which I read most of (it is very long). He calls it "The Coming Neo-Tribalism. He does note that tribalism was never totally exterminated as societies changed. Even in so-called advanced societies retained elements of tribalism. With the social chaos over the last few years I often said that the tribes were resorting themselves--redefining who is in and who is out. Groups who have lost (or believe they have lost) power economically or politically or socially, are trying to regain the positions of authority they once held. Tribes were losing cohesion before liberalism became a major political ideology. As societies grew in population and spread out over larger territories subjugating other groups the connections and networks weakened. I don't know how old Aurelian is but the neighborhoods composed of extended families had almost totally disappeared by the time I was a teenager. One friend was Polish and lived in a Polish neighborhood but she was an exception. In my own family, none of my father's siblings lived closer than 200 miles from each other and none lived close to their parents. My siblings and I are closer spatially but not particularly closely connected in other ways. Our economic history over the last 400 years have also help in loosening tribal bonds. We are a people used to leaving people behind to pursue education and employment. Sometimes others followed but not always. I imagine tribes might reform if the economies around the world abandon the pursuit of globalism, which was always emphasized the individual over all, and contract to locally dominated economics. Interesting to speculate on the possibilities.

A couple of interesting things I saw yesterday. 1) The globe hit another temperature record with May 2024 was hotter than May 2023 which means we have just posted a 12 month stretch with each month hotter than its predecessor of the year before. 2) A massive field of oil (several hundred billion barrels worth) may exist under the oceans around Antarctica. The article said the Russians have been exploring those areas for the past decade.

We put on the Weather Channel almost immediately this morning. The first thing I saw on the regular news channel was Hunter Biden's trial. I wish I could shout into the programing execs I AM NOT INTERESTED. There is so much about the news that is totally uninteresting. And it is repeated ad nauseam.

David Karpf has a good post also this morning: The Republican Party has Belonged to Trump for a Long time. I see where he is coming from and the historical trends have been evident for decades finally culminating in the Cult of Trump. I like the quote from Rick Perlstein summing up his series of books on Republican conservatism: There's always more and it's always worse. It's never new.