Because I Love You, But also Because I’m Not Getting any Sleep

I have collected two weeks worth of half-written blog posts as an exciting goulash of important issues worthy of further discussion, addressed in a half assed manner because I can barely get my shit together I am experiencing technical difficulties. Someday I will look back on this portion of my life, laugh nervously and change the subject.

half written blog post number 1: links about the Bundys and the Malheur wildlife refuge occupation:
So this is a good essay and great reporting written by an author disposed to be sympathetic to the occupiers, but best of all written with both skepticism and a far more thorough understanding of western history, Mormon history and law than possessed by all of the occupiers put together. If you want an introduction to the context that was unreported by more mainstream outlets, and of which most of the actual occupiers were largely ignorant, you can find it here.

The American Lands Council leads the charge for the privatization of federal lands. High country news has written about them in these articles:
The hidden connections of the sagebrush insurgency
and
The surprising history of the Malheur wildlife refuge
and finally
A History of the Sagebrush Rebellion

next post
A meditation on the assholes in our midst:
Over on Lawyers Guns and Money, there was a post on how the global temperature is 2 degrees C above average, and how that represents a huge climatic tipping point. Lawyers Guns and Money Since we have passed it, we get all most of the sea level rise, ice cap melting major climate shift crap that climate scientists have been warning us about for decades. Which is a bummer. If human civilization is to survive in a recognizable form, we are going to have to start taking climate change seriously. But the most interesting thing about that thread, was not predictions of possible effects, viable alternative energy solutions, geoengineering or anything interesting or constructive. It was one commenter’s personal crusade against the consumption of meat. It was a crusade, in that he was mostly in it for religious reasons, he didn’t particularly care about making a case to the unconvinced, he was showing off for the true believers in the “confrontational vegan” choir loft. This character makes one or two good points in the most intentionally confrontational way and completely loses his shit when people disagree with his arguments. I mean, he’s not wrong, the way Americans eat meat really is a perfect storm of terrible policy, terrible conditions for livestock, terrible conditions for workers and terrible use of agricultural production capacity. If humans calmly stopped eating meat as of 11:00 we’d have a hard time realizing the so called advantages of meatless world for years. Meat packing workers would be out of their (admittedly exploitative) jobs, but they wouldn’t automatically get hired to work in an artichoke packing plant. rats and coyotes would gorge themselves on billions of livestock carcasses, we’d get to see up close and personal what a “plague of flies” really looks like. Some island communities would face immediate starvation due to the lack of food other than fish. Here in Wisconsin, the unhunted and newly unhuntable deer population would explode and it would be decades before the predator population could come anywhere near to controlling them. Until then, farmers would have to put up 10′ and 15′ fences to have any crops to harvest in the fall, and every vehicle bigger than a skateboard would need massive brush guards to protect against collision with deer, wild turkey, and any surviving feral livestock. But to be honest, that’s not the way a global embrace of the vegan lifestyle would work. It wouldn’t work that way because it won’t happen at freaking all. Look how hard it is to simply put an end to whaling. We can’t even get Iceland and Japan to stop killing creatures that are arguably sentient with human level intelligence for food. Simply asserting that the global meat industry is harmful, is brutal to workers and is an environmental disaster and accusing anyone who disagrees with those facts is a conservative, an animal torture enthusiast and a terrible human being isn’t a very convincing argument, unless the audience is already chock full of vegans.

I am going to go ahead and admit that commenter is correct, the meat industry is horrible to livestock and workers and wastes capacity that could be used to feed actual human beings instead. And it would be more efficient to satisfy our needs for protein by using soy or insects like termites. But to the extent that we moderate or eliminate our consumption of meat and beef in particular, we can together take a big step in slowing down the coming shitstorm. And maybe meat is something you feel like you can’t live without. But if we sit down and make an inventory of things we can each personally change in our lives to slow down global warming, now might be a good time to start. For that matter now is a good time to start most any positive change.

But I notice that people tend to have the default assumptions and customs and appetites of the culture which produces them. Forward thinking people (or liberals or progressives) tend not to have “enlightened” opinions on more than a handful of their own cultures, customs, and attitudes. Thus we get Berniebros who are excited about income inequality but hostile on topics like Black Lives Matter, or the sexism of some of the civil rights protesters in the 1960s. Some paragon out of time might have the most enlightened progressive take on every single issue facing humanity, but that person would have a hell of a time communicating with the rest of us especially if they spent all their time criticizing their audience as opposed to those people that are entirely hostile to the progressive agenda. And we ourselves should occasionally take the time to consider the words of the occasional obnoxious confrontational troll who tells us we are doing it all wrong. Are they telling us something about ourselves? The one honest thing about a troll is that it doesn’t care about protecting the feelings of it’s victims. It’s hard and draining work to filter out nuggets of wisdom from attacks and abuse, so I don’t blame anyone one bit if they don’t think it’s worth the effort most of the time. But sometimes when I am bored or need a distraction it can be a source of insight to at least try to find valid criticisms in attacks from trolls.

Post 3: Trumps wall
I have to decided to collect and expand on some comments I made at LGM regarding Trump’s wall on this thread The hugest classiest wall ever.

I think that if Trump is elected, there will be a border wall. I also think that the project will collapse under the weight of being an idiotic idea designed by incompetents and constructed in an unsafe manner by corrupt and mobbed up contractors employing undocumented workers at rates below the minimum wage using substandard materials. The 100 or so miles of wall actually constructed will be an F-35 scale economic disaster, an inconvenient eyesore, a hazard to navigation, an attractive nuisance, and a monument to the stupidity of humankind.

As one commenter noted a straight up wall is a really expensive way to control a border when most of the border is uninhabited desert. A more economical idea would be a well monitored and patrolled exclusion zone a few miles wide where any unauthorized person could be detained. Controlling a border is a stupid way to fight illegal immigration because most illegal immigrants in the US do it by overstaying their visas.

So, Like every Trump project ever, the concept is flawed, not to say idiotic. The thought of building a titanic wall along the entire 2000 mile long US Mexico border when we have millions of miles of roads and bridges that could actually use some infrastructure spending is infuriating. The design of such a monstrosity will be undertaken by a firm with not even a memory of integrity, because those kind of firms wouldn’t want anything to do with a surefire disaster. So the the design will be undertaken by grifters who will pay the fewest number of discount bin civil engineers they can get away with, virtually guaranteeing that the design will be flawed from the outset.

It will be the hugest classiest border wall ever. Taking inspiration from such notable historical walls as The Berlin Wall, The Great Wall of China, The Maginot Line and Some Wall Designed by Liberace’s Decorator in a Particularly Late Baroque Mood and Built by Some Dude With No Artistic Talent But a Couple Megatons of Glitter, Gold Paint and Sequins to Use Up, the Trump wall will forever redefine corrupt, tasteless, incompetent, decadent, excess.

 

Comments: 26

 
 
 

Good meditation on agriculture and climate change, and fascinating thoughts on trolls and trolldom. I’m going to try to consider or analyze trollspeak as you suggest, because I think you’re right, but I’m going to do it in small doses and I’m not going to do it in words, online, i.e., not gonna engage. Now off to read the linky bits.

 
 

These are all interesting jumping off points. I do have one counter to the end-the-beef people though, which is how we raise beef that is the problem. Not feeding beef grains (which they aren’t designed to eat, and makes them sick but fatter right before slaughter) is a start, and using pasture rotation methods that mimic how grazing animals used to get chased around by predators actually sequesters carbon in the soil, where it should be and where it used to be before we adopted the industrail ag model. Check out the work of Alan Savory http://www.savoryinstitute.net/ I’ve seen the results in person, and they are remarkable.

 
 

Excellent point StringOnAStick. There’s plenty of things that can be done to mitigate the terrible awfulness of the beef industry as it exists, that fall short of an outright ban on beef. And not only for climate reasons, but also to end the overuse of antibiotics, end the environmental catastrophe that is a mega feed lot, and far reduce the risk of such hazards as mad cow disease. But, I wonder if the time for those kind of measures wasn’t 30 or 40 years ago, but now, given the sheer magnitude of the global warming problem, those measures might not be too little, too late.

 
 

Savory’s work is happening now, making changes that work for small ranchers. The trick is getting a group of people who tend to be conservative in action as well as politics to look at an utterly different way of doing things. According to Savory’s work, converting to his method of grazing any ruminants could sequester enough carbon to make a huge impact on climate change.

Maybe it is too little, too late, but I’m afraid that pretty much applies to just about every human endeavor to solve our environmental and climate change problems. It makes me glad that I’m well into the second half of my life, and sad when I see beautiful little kids like the ones next door.

Thanks for the first link to the HCN article. It is long, but worth every moment to read.

 
 

The days when a complementary geographical pairing (think JFK/LBJ or Dukakis/Bentsen) seemed enough are long gone.

 
 

Though Donald Trump has racked up his fair share of bizarro endorsers—think Aaron Carter, The National Enquirer, Roosh V, and every alien from the Star Wars cantina scene (I think)

 
 

I come from not sagebrush land, but other public forests. Sure, when I was a kid, it was something to dream up local control…

…But the problem is I learned from history. Local control can’t keep out those who have money and force lands into their own hands.

I really, seriously hate private control over forests and wild lands. They absorb our fire reduction, fire fighting, water and flood control, and then have the gall, the gall to say we should open more public lands to their pocketbooks. It disgusts me.

And I always wonder why these hacks who now a days label themselves protestors – mostly terrorists, I’d say – as they ignore the big money using them as useful fools.

 
 

There’s a certain earnest, unironic and treacly sentimentality that is like mother’s milk for traditionalist American conservatives – think Ronald Reagan,

 
 

Helmut, I love ya man, but those run-on paragraphs are killin’ me!

Shorter sentences!

More spaces in between!

You can do this!

******

Now on the subject of climate change…

Future historians will record that humankind had many chances to do something about this.

Even something as simple as PLANTING MORE TREES!

And humans have got tree planting technology down pretty well in this the 21st century.

We have lots of unemployed people who would be happy to get paid for planting trees!

******

But alas, humankind was more interested in eating junk food and watching the Kardashians than planting trees, or doing anything else to stop global climate change.

*****

It’s the Easter Island story writ large.

 
 

Hmmm, teh Donald appears to be quite controversial in Chicago.

 
 

“Though Donald Trump has racked up his fair share of bizarro endorsers”

It’s true that Trump has gotten some awe-inspiring endorsements, including Wayne Newton and Tila Tequila. He also has the much-coveted backing of Zoltan Bathory, guitarist of Five Finger Death Punch. But Rubio is endorsed by both Niall Ferguson AND Jenna Jameson (together at last!).

And Scott Walker had the power-packed support of the mighty Scott Baio… and he still lost! How was it possible?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endorsements_for_the_Republican_Party_presidential_primaries,_2016
(I haven’t posted here for so long I no longer remember how to do the linky thing)

 
 

The fact is, you left liberal media bias socialests will not take America from us, the real makers of value. You are the takers, who spooge off the job creators and spur them. If you succeed in your socialest plan they will take everything with them including your freedom and life, and the ISIS will kill us all but you love them. Liberals and gays will be headed. We want a return to the consitution and realty, which is what Trump has, and talks straight no PC.

 
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What I love (not) about vegan fundamentalist types is, we could do so much for the planet if we all ate only 5% of the meat we’re eating now. Grass fed only. Wild game, too. Eat meat once or twice per month.

Would that make them happy? Of course not.

 
 

Rubio’s ace gets Trumped!

That’s the good news.

The bad news is looks like we get Hilary whether we want her or not…

 
 

Republicans are going to look like jerks if they don’t give Obama’s SCOTUS nominee a hearing.

 
 

who spooge off the job creators and spur them.

newsletter? website?

 
 

So, apparently I’m still a masochist being as i clicked on the LGM link. Brought back memories of the great troll infestation here. And I’m not convinced that that troll is not the same troll. Ick…and *shudder*

 
 

took a second to figure out that what gary wrote was not a joke. the trolls here need to step up their game (I read the comment before I saw the username)

 
 

I’m a rabid teetotaler. Am I supposed to drink a beer because somebody really wants me to have one?

It’s a core part of their belief system. I can respect their not eating meat on a trip like that. It can be done in a respectful way, I suppose. Not in an ‘ewww, you’re a murderer, and I’m so superior, would you like to smell my wonderful soy farts?” OK, the odds of many vegans pulling it off wtihout… Oh, I dunno, maybe it’s just me.

Besides, it’s a slippery slope, just ask Anthony Bourdain, the next thing you know, you’re eating charred pig rectum!

OK, maybe that’s not a slippery slope.

 
 

Rob Ford, RIP.

 
 

For those old enough to remember the Nixon administration.

Were they lying? Were they dogwhistlin’?

Of course they were!

http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2016/3/22/1505025/-Top-Nixon-Aide-Admits-War-on-Drugs-was-Excuse-to-Target-Blacks-and-Hippies#comment_60494495

 
 

Think Trump and Barry, both worry-free and unencumbered by principle.

 
 

Trolls are unencumbered by brains.

 
 

Friends romans sadlynauts and other oxygen consuming life forms, ’tis a pleasure to read y’all again. Been keeping the doctors busy for a while and have managed to continue with the breathing and the agrivatin of fools though it has seemed
A bit touch and go at times. I have missed most of y’all and plan on making a fool out of myself a bit more freauently.

 
 

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