February 11

 Cold and cloudy with a few snow flakes. We are buttoning down for a possible winter storm due tomorrow morning through Thursday. I had thought to put off our shopping until later in the week but reconsidered after looking at the Weather Channel's prediction.  We shop about every three weeks give or take so today was a manor restocking effort. I like to keep enough staples on hand to cook almost anything I normally cook. I don't do much exotic kinds of foods. So I tend to buy a couple of what ever (two cans of baked beans for example) and then put the item on the shopping list when I use the last or next to last item. As I said--today was restocking a number of items we were out of or nearly so.

As I watched the news conference with the King of Jordan and Donald Trump a stray thought came to mind. Trump seemed unable to understand a reporter's question about what would happen to Palestinians who didn't want to relocate outside Gaza. He keept insisting that they would be so happy with new, comfortable, safe homes elsewhere. No matter how the reporters rephrased that question he repeated the same answer and insisted Palestinians would have no "right of return" to a reconstructed Gaza and wouldn't want or need to return. That Palestinians wouldn't want to leave homes that have been thoroughly demolished seemed to elude him. But that is something I have seen before. For some years now a group of Silicon Valley tech bros have been trying to buy up a large part of California and been opposed by people living there who don't want to cash. One of the partners was quoted in an article bemused because people were so attached to their homes. Trump and the Silicon Valley group a representatives of a large part of our population who can't recognize value unless it can be reduced to money or some facsimile there of. For some the phrase "home is where the heart is" isn't just a phrase. It means something tangible--a piece of earth. You don't sell your heart. You don't abandon your heart.

Simplicius made an interesting point on his blog this morning: that Trump's moves have been busily dismantling the "load bearing pillars of the globalist superstructure" which he thinks has been "suffocating the planet for decades." He sees USAID as one of those pillars. I hadn't made that connection. I viewed the extent to which our global has been globalized with a lot of suspicion. Globalization hasn't always been good for individuals or countries. The history of the last fifty years has many examples of the process being harmful to individuals and countries. The responses to COVID. The stripping of industrial capacity as manufacturing was moved to countries with lower cost labor and fewer regulations. The pollution that was exported to those lower cost and less regulated countries has overwhelmed many areas. Globalization has encouraged consolidation of industries which led to massive companies with less accountability to anyone and a lot of political power. And that is only the tip of the iceberg. However, rolling back the process will be messy, painful, and won't be complete--unless our global civilization goes the way of the last one (the Roman) and collapses.

Robert Reich posted this hilarious piece today: a letter from Nixon (in Hell) to Elon Musk.

Ian Welsh also posted an interesting but not at all hilarious article: It's the end of the American Era. Period.