An excellent piece by Andrew Bacevich at Tomdispatch. More than a decade ago I basically disavowed many of the actions of the Federal government in the only ways I could and can--by voting and proclaiming as loudly as I can that what is being done is not in my name or with my consent. My participation in voting does not automatically mean I agree with what is done by those who win the election merely that I have to live with whatever atrocity they perpetrate and more frequently of late the result has been atrocity not benefit. I have long wondered whether voting is worth the bother. I don't vicariously participate in the winning or the losing. The results don't stroke my ego or shatter my soul. I wonder if Bacevich shouldn't have included another point although he bounced off of it earlier in the piece. McNamara's thought may indeed have become reality and the powers that be no longer need to focus public anger to prosecute a war. Instead it is more useful to focus public anger on internal "enemies" like blacks, women, gays, Muslims, illegal immigrants. Afghanistan is so far away and how many Afghans have you met lately? How do we get out of perpetual war when public awareness of it is so faint and we don't even recognize its impacts on us? By the way, notice Englehardt's discussion of the linguistics that mask the reality of war. Words do matter and all the words used by our leaders and our media mask that reality.

Came across this and it started some wheels turning in my mind. The answer the senator gave to the question in the clip echoes a sentiment expressed by the CEO of Nestle sometime in the last year when his company was engaged in a battle with local people over the local water supply. He claimed that water was simply another commodity which should be for sale to the highest bidder--in other words, no one has a "right" to water unless one can pay for it. The senator claimed that we do have rights--to life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness, and, of course, to freedom. To which I would ask: if we have a right to life (the first right on the list), how could we not have a right to those things that are absolutely necessary to the continuation of life? There is a rule among the survival/prepper groups--the "rule of three." You can live three minutes without air, three hours in a hostile environment without adequate shelter (I would add clothing to that), three days without water, and three weeks without food. What good is your right to life if you don't also have a right to those things that are absolutely necessary to maintain life? As for "freedom"--well Janis Joplin sang "freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose." The question that prompted the senator's asinine answer had to to with a "right to medical care." The question should be: what level of health care? To say "none at all" is to basically tell most people that they simply don't matter and we don't care whether they live or die. If we go along with that notion then we aren't a society but a gaggle of beasts engaged in what Thomas Hobbs called a "war of all against all" in which there are no true winners.

I am so glad #45 approved an emergency declaration for Mississippi--before Hurricane Nate even made landfall. Considering how slow he and his administration were on Puerto Rico, I guess this is an improvement. But it smacks to me of someone who desperately wants approval for himself.

Spearmint is ground and in the appropriate jar on the shelf. Chocolate mint--the last for the season--and some lavender (collected so I could fill the dehydrator) are drying now. I hadn't any real plan for the day but managed to do the herbs and to put a few stitches in a cross-stitch piece I have been working, on and off--mostly off, for a very, very long time. Oh, well. As the seasons change the itch to do needlework gets stronger.

As the mornings seem to come later and later I have gotten started later and later. In high summer we usually start our coffee about 4:30 or 5 am. Today we didn't get our first cup until almost 6. I can understand why a blogger I read last year looked forward to the time change when light would come earlier in the morning even though darkness would also come earlier in the evening. Her kids had to wait for a school bus near a busy road at a bit of a distance from her house. Not a safe proposition for a number of reasons. It rained well last night and we expect more all day today and tomorrow. No gardening till Sunday when we should have sun and dry conditions again. Well I have things to straighten out in the planting/craft/storage room.

Every now and then Fr. Dwight Longenecker has an interesting column. This one precipitated quite a discussion here at our house. He brings in the statistics on the rising suicide rate among white, middle aged or elderly men and tries to connect it to the Las Vegas mass murder. I could also bring in the rising drug overdose rate and opioid addiction rates that show an overlap in the category of white, middle aged or elderly men. A basic question: if this reaction is from a creeping and growing despair, what is driving the despair and is that a problem we have the resources and will to solve? And then I wonder why aren't more white, middle aged or elderly men succumbing to opiates, or to suicide or committing mass murder in this, admittedly, depressing society?

Time Magazine has a slightly different take which is also interesting and not necessarily at odds with the Longenecker piece.

Did get some gardening done. Basically cleaning out a couple of my 5-gal. buckets. I harvested spearmint before clearing those buckets. That is now drying. Got one of the peppermint buckets cleaned out also. Those three containers wore me out so I will wait until tomorrow when, I hope, I will harvest the last of the chocolate mint and clean it up as well--along with the other peppermint and the lemon balm. I will leave the lavender to last because the bees are having a grand time buzzing around that pot.

So Black Friday is becoming a ghost of its former self. Good thing I would say. I never participated in the commercial/consumerist frenzy but I do have relatives who used to plan their Black Fridays as though they were generals going to war. Now if we could only see a similar decline in other commercial "holidays."

I have a lot of reservations (if not downright antipathy) about industrial food production. Just this morning I read of a large recall of ground turkey products because of possible contamination with metal fragments. Sorry I didn't note the site. It is sad in a way that, to me anyway, that I now think of a recall of 300,000+ pounds of ground meat as simply "large" and not huge. This little piece from the Guardian is titled "Goodbye--and Good Riddance--to Livestock Farming". I don't think any more of this author's stance than I do industrial farming or food production. The industrial system reduces all "inputs," whether animate or inanimate, to mere numbers on a balance sheet. The abuse he mentions is embedded in the system. My grandparents had a small, mixed crop farm for most of my childhood and adolescence. I can assure you that their animals were well cared for with numbers limited to what well rotated pastures would support. I once owned horses and, with others, had the great misfortune of renting land from an absentee farmer who over grazed the land horribly. He made it difficult for us to maintain our horses in healthy condition but we did manage it. I read blogs written by small farmers and homesteaders who write about their animals and all of them pay close attention to maintaining a number of animals their land can support and making sure the pastures are not overgrazed. The pollution problems he mentions come from overgrazing and/or from feedlot operations both of which are encouraged by the industrial agriculture system. And switching to faux meat soy products won't solve problems. Soy is grown in monocultures with generous applications of chemical fertilizers and pesticides (which adds to pollution) and which require plowing and cultivation which result in the loss of a lot of topsoil each year. And since he notes that he can't tell the difference between "quorn" based minced or faux chicken, I will note that I really don't want to eat a macerated vegetable product treated with chemicals to create the texture of meat and flavored with what ever chemicals will simulate the taste. I don't know if I would be able to tell the difference but--and this is key--I don't care if I couldn't tell the difference. I don't want the chemically adulterated imitation "foods" the industry produces and am busily getting rid of them in my life.

I thought it was interesting that #45 said, while in Puerto Rico, that the Puerto Rican debt would have to be cancelled but I take everything interesting or sensible he says with a big dose of salt--enough to endanger my blood pressure. All too often those sensible mumblings are refuted soon after and that appears to be the case here.

Politico has a good summary of the U.S. response to hurricane damaged destroyed Puerto Rico. I think the story confirms my own summation. We responded differently to Puerto Rico because it was "too poor and too dark (as in brown)." Our government responded more effectively to Texas and Florida because the residents were wealthier and more white. And five years from now both areas will be whiter and the wealthier areas will be largely rebuilt while the darker areas languish. Look at post-Katrina New Orleans.

Woke this morning to the news from Las Vegas. I won't link because it is all over both broadcast and internet news sites. We turned on the TV to get what was known (not much yet) and then fairly quickly turned it off again when the anchors and "experts" started speculating on motive. Religion came up fairly quickly followed by Islam and ISIS. No facts support the speculation (as if conjecture requires fact) but I find it revealing and disgusting that, in this context, religion, Islam, and IS (or sometimes Al Qaeda) are linked as tightly as the Father-Son-Holy Ghost triad. But, of course, there is no mention of the possibility that religious motives might involve so-called Christians. I was surprised by how unsurprised I was.

Nor am I surprised that the strident voices for more gun control have already erupted. One title asked if we were "for" the NRA or the USA. I won't link because you can find the article yourself easily. The article progressed in the usual pattern: focus on the carnage, on the tragic deaths and woundings, then move onto the screed about the NRA and couch the argument in terms where one's loyalties should lie. My loyalties do not lie with the NRA but with the Constitution of the USA. You can argue on what the Second Amendment means and we have argued in court case after court case for years. However, until our legislators and president decide to approve a Constitutional amendment that either rescinds the Second Amendment entirely or changes it significantly it is still the law of the land, of the USA.