Author: photog

27APR2024 – OCF Update

photog Current Events

So, Camera Girl is yelling and throwing stuff at me and threatening me with grievous bodily harm if I don’t do some of the things on the honey do list.  Most pressing in her mind is raking and disposing of all the leaves in her flower beds.  Now this is grunt labor because I’ve never gotten organized.  What I should do is rake the leaves onto the lawn and run the mower over them.  Because a lot of it is oak leaves this reduces them significantly down in volume and makes disposal much less onerous.

But I’m just that lazy that coordinating getting the mower ready for use and piling the leaves on the lawn defeats my initiative.  So instead I’ll go out there and spend ten hours going through this ritual of backbreaking stooping and scooping the leaves into a garbage pail and hauling them to the edge and hurling them into the bottomless abyss that yawns below the Cliffs of Utter Chagrin.  So let me be brief.

It’s a third beautiful day in a row.  No rain.  No clouds.  No wind.  The Lord himself is telling me to get up and go outside and

DO SOMETHING!

So thatsa whata I’ma gonna do.

I’ll be back later with something sad or sublime or inspired.

So please enjoy the morning and we’ll see about later.

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Utopian Hangover

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My recent foray into utopian/dystopian nation-building has satisfied my desire to have my say about our disastrous political situation.  Amen.

Okay moving on.

In the here and now America Melting Down and its impact on Election 2024 including the Show Trials of Donald J Trump unfold in their Kafkaesque grandeur.  It’s hard to imagine a fictional cast of characters and a plot to rival the Keystone Kops film festival that we see unfolding around us.

Laughable prosecutions based on kindergarten versions of legal proceedings that keep getting bounced out of court by Appellate and Supreme Court reviews and cartoon judges and prosecutors strutting around kangaroo courtrooms trying to convince even partisan jurors that they know what they are talking about.

It’s preposterous.  But eventually this level of organized railroading must eventually culminate in at least one prison term for Trump.  I’m guessing it will be in New York.  And I’m also guessing that this will embolden the hapless and utterly corrupt Republican Party to ban Trump from the ballot in November.  And that will signal the end of the Republican Party as a viable political entity.  And it will also represent the end of belief in the legitimacy of American politics.  Unmask! Unmask!

Of course all of this is a cataclysm but I’m secretly looking forward to it as a relief from this sham theater that we have to endure every two or four years.  Having to imagine people like Mitch McConnell and Mike Johnson as our “heroes” or even our allies is too nauseating to continue indefinitely.  Let it all crash and burn.  Let the Democrats steal every last penny left and pour in the millions of illegals and outlaw the Bill of Rights.  Hurry up and bring on the People’s Republic of Leftwingistan, with that haircut in California Gavin Newsom as its cardboard cutout “leader” and that mindless nitwit Kamala Harris as its poster child.

I’ll spend the apocalypse attempting to do the things that I find interesting and amusing.  Art will have to substitute for reality.  Sure, eventually deprivation and loss of freedom will put an end to any actual joy as we head down the road to neo-Marxian repression and poverty but at a certain point you stop fighting a losing battle and find consolation in whatever bits of life are left to you.

Even in a prison there is the potential for joy.  The inner life of the mind is something that can replace the outside world for those who no longer have access to freedom.  Gee, that sounds grandiose or ridiculous; depending on your point of view.

Well, I’ll watch our little passion play with a mind for the humorous and absurd situations.  I’ll record for myself and anyone who is reading along what strikes me as interesting.  But more and more I think that we are looking at a new world.  The people in charge have rigged the game thoroughly and the only consolation is that the pretense is over and we can see the progress of the game without much difficulty.  The Bushes and the Kennedys shook hands and agreed on Obama and now the Clintons have agreed that Joe Biden is the clown face of the Uniparty and we will find out just what that means in the weary years ahead.

But I’ll try to make it fun.

photog’s Republic – Postscript

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Thanks to everyone who read and/or commented.  I guess I just wanted to think out loud about what would represent a pretty good place to live in.  Not a paradise, not a hell but something in the middle for the people in the middle.  Not too good, not too bad.  Not too smart, not too stupid.  Not too rich, not too poor.  Just reasonably somewhere in the middle.

I’m aware that it’s impossible and people gravitate to some dysfunctional equilibrium where the winners and losers sort themselves into an aristocracy and an underclass but it must be the American Catholic school background that traps me into a fantasy where “We all just get along.”

Well, no harm done.  It cheered me a good bit to express that thought experiment.

As Plato found out tyrants aren’t philosopher-kings.  It was Machiavelli who formulated the saying, “the ends always justify the means—no matter how cruel, calculating or immoral those means might be.”  We’ll see.

27APR2024 – Quote of the Day

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Among the causes of the tremendous confusion characterising present-day Europe is the transplantation of British institutions to the Continent where they are in complete contradiction to existing conditions, so that their application becomes either illusory or distorted. The so-called “British school” has been the cause of the French Revolution, and the consequences of this revolution, so anti-British in tendency, devastate Europe today. The concepts of freedom and order are so inseparable in the British mind that the last stable-boy would laugh in the face of the reformers if they appeared by preaching his freedom.

Klemens von Metternich

Guest Contributor – Glenn W – 26APR2024 – Power to the People

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I used to think that the wealthy in this country recognized that a healthy middle class was good for business, literally that a strong middle class is a “win-win” for everyone. I have now come to the conclusion that I was terribly naive. The uber wealthy want both money and power.

Once a person hits a certain level of wealth they no longer need more money. Sure, a bigger villa in Tuscany or a larger yacht may be nice but does it really matter? What’s an ambitious person to do? It looks like the answer is power. Sure you own a lot of nice stuff but look how many serfs I have.

I remember a few years back, Tucker Carlson was in a discussion (maybe with Ben Shapiro?) where he said that driverless trucks should be banned. He wanted the ban because so many American workers with only high school diplomas work as truck drivers that much of the middle class would be impoverished. I agree with Carlson on that. We need policies that encourage a strong middle class even if it hurts economic efficiency.

Economic efficiency is another thing I have become very leery of. I always liked Milton Friedman and at one time he had me convinced of the righteousness of completely free trade with no tariffs or import quotas. His argument went something like this: if American manufacturing goes to cheaper overseas manufacturers those products will still be sold in the U.S. The dollars generated from those sales will ultimately need to be spent in the U.S. thereby encouraging formation of new, more efficient businesses here. How did that work out? Well, all the manufacturing from the Midwest was relocated overseas and the profits generated did come back to the U.S. as bond sales. The Midwest was sucked dry but New York city (where the bond trading takes place) profited handsomely. Thanks but no thanks. Milton Friedman was wrong.

I also agree about encouraging direct participation in our own governance. I’m not sure what the solution is but I’m willing to hear anyone’s ides on the topic.