Stopping To Smell the Roses (And Other Roadside Allergens)

It's been a bit since I wrote a new post for this blog.  Yet as I have discovered from recent comments to my blog, people are still visiting, reading, and making comments.  I want to take this opportunity to thank those who are still visiting this site and to explain my hiatus.

I remain deeply interested in the subject of economic precarity, not only in the United States, but throughout the developed world.   Therefore I'm still planning sooner or later to talk about those elements of precarity which I have not yet discussed, particularly regarding the coping mechanisms of the precariat.  However, it must be acknowledged that in order to say anything intelligent, I need time - time to think, time to do research, and time to synthesize my thoughts and research into a coherent post.  Writing some of the posts I want to write will be a rather heavy lift.  (I compare my attitude toward these posts to the attitude someone might have toward carting a huge pile of sand one wheelbarrow at a time after having worked at manual labor all day!  I know that sand needs to be moved, but please, not just yet...)

Another thing is that now seems to be a good time to take a bit of a mental health break.  The world at present is in a chaotic state due to the actions of rich and powerful people with narcissistic tendencies.  (I am thinking particularly of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin.)  By their deeds they scream for attention, which seems to be a major motivation behind their choice to do such deeds.  Yet paying attention to these people and their deeds can be quite draining to the rest of us.  I am choosing right now to take a bit of a step back so that I can focus on the things in my life which are under my control and which I believe I have been called to do.  Focusing on that work helps me reclaim my agency.  Thus one of the things I have been doing is to read some big-picture books that provide the framework for identifying long-term social trends.  Also, I've started learning Mandarin Chinese.  I have my reasons, one of which is to gain the ability to understand China myself rather than hearing about China solely from increasingly right-wing American mass media.  Plus, it's just fun! - although I must go slowly.  (I've gotten to the point where I can tell you that 我有两只猫...)

I do remain interested in following the long-term outworking of certain social trends in both American and global society.  I am still very much convinced of the truth of such statements as, "Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, this he will also reap."  I firmly believe this applies to those who violate the Biblical mandate for social justice.  Thus it is interesting to see how the white American evangelical/Protestant church has begun to reap some unexpectedly bitter consequences.

Take climate change, for instance.  The white American evangelical/Protestant church has for decades engaged in magical/wishful/denialist thinking in its refusal to acknowledge the reality that the Earth's climate is changing due to human economic activity.  So it's rather biting to see how the ongoing climate crisis has begun to affect conservative, patriotic, Rethuglican churches, both in the Bible Belt and elsewhere in the U.S.  This year at least one church was hit by a tornado while services were in progress, and an increasing number of conservative right-wing churches are finding that property insurers will no longer write policies for them.  Indeed, a large number of churches are finding that their existing property insurance policies are being canceled.  It's not that property insurers are asking these churches about their politics.  It's just that so many of these churches are in areas that have now become susceptible to catastrophic weather events and/or wildfires.  Thus they have become a bad insurance risk.  Then there's the effect of the massive evangelical abuse scandals on availability of liability insurance coverage for churches and their staff.  It's telling to think that churches must now think of such things.  Maybe God isn't really on their side after all.

Anyway, please stay tuned to this blog if you're a regular reader.  I should start posting again in late November or in December, unless something occurs to me that does not require much bandwidth in order to write about, in which case I'll post sooner.  Thanks, all!

Clear Air At Last?

The past several months have been painfully busy.  The last month has been especially excruciating.  The experience of entrepreneurship has recently seemed to me to be like being a skipper of a fishing boat caught in a gale, or like being a bush pilot for an air freight company whose clients suffer from permanently stormy weather.  However, my client backlog may finally be easing up.  I can hardly wait until I can once again start getting to bed at decent hours, resume exercising regularly, and take time to watch the sunsets.

During some of the worst moments, I found myself fantasizing about what my life would have been like had I become an author of short fiction instead of a technical professional.  The fantasies were triggered one morning at 4 AM while I was finishing writing a narrative and preparing CAD drawings for a schematic design report that was due at noon of the same day.  I hadn't slept since the previous morning.  As a bit of a distraction, I had taken a quick look at an Internet article about one of the crop of new young Chinese writers whose work falls loosely into the category of "magic realism."  The article showed a picture of this writer sitting at his desk while what looked like morning sunshine streamed through the window.  He was reading what looked like a book of ancient Chinese literature while he held a cat perched on one knee.  Both he and the cat looked vastly more relaxed than I was at that moment.  That got me wishing that I could be like Chen Chuncheng, Liu Cixin, Haruki Murakami, Yoko Ogawa, Ketty Steward, Yaa Gyasi, John Le Carre, and others like them who had actually found a way to craft an artistic career that pays the bills.  Ah well, one of these days ...

What I'd like to do all day.  In this picture, the computer actually has technical work on its screen, but let's just pretend that it really is displaying a short story or poem in progress.  The cat in this picture is mine ...

A Clarifying of Stance, Part 2

From time to time I check my readership stats, as I want this blog to be informative and I want to gauge its impact.  I noticed that over the last few days, people have been exploring some rather early posts in my back catalog.  I am flattered by your curiosity, although I must warn you that some of my perspectives have changed over the years, due to the acquisition of newer information which superseded some of my early assumptions.  So today's post is a bit of a grain of salt for you who are exploring those early posts.  As a sign I once saw on a co-worker's desk once read, "I don't always agree with everything I say."

Generally, I do agree with everything I have written from the end of 2016 onward.  I also agree with some of the statements of the very early posts of this blog, namely that the modern industrial societies of the First World are running up against limits to growth.  These limits consist of resource limits and the cumulative effects of environmental degradation.  No reasonable person can disagree with this.  There is one other theme that I explored in parts and pieces throughout various posts from the start of this blog until now, namely, that there is a powerful, well-organized movement among the wealthiest and most privileged people to roll back all the civil rights gained by the world's poorer people - especially those who are nonwhite - during the 20th century.  I'd like to suggest that this movement would have emerged regardless of the emergence of resource constraints and their effect on economic growth.  Therefore, those of us who have become once again targets of oppressors must learn to thrive while navigating a threat environment.  My posts from 2017 onward have largely explored the question of how to do this.

One last caution.  Many of the people who were writing about the impacts of resource depletion, climate change, and American fragility from 2007 to around 2015 were actually aligned with white supremacy, the Global Far Right, and the Russian government.  I am thinking of how many of these people aligned themselves with the candidacy and later presidency of Donald Trump.  I am also thinking of how their earlier suggestions for dealing with the emergent crises of the early 21st century all revolved around buying a large-acre doomstead somewhere in the western United States and stocking up on guns, gold bullion, and baked beans in preparation for the zombie apocalypse.  Let me just say straight up that these people were and are dead wrong.  Their hyper-individualist responses have actually made them and their society much more fragile.  Look at the hyper-individualist responses to the COVID pandemic in the United States, and compare our shamefully high death rate from 2020 onward to the much lower death rates in many of the more collectivist societies of the nonwhite world and the developing world.  And as for the Russians, I hope that my posts on Russia from 2017 onward have completely erased any pro-Russian bias that exists in my posts that are earlier than 2017.  Please see my post titled, "A Clarifying of Stance" if you want more detail.  Vladimir Putin is a thieving little man in a bunker, and Putin's regime is a good-for-nothing piece of garbage.

Research Week - Fall 2021

My summer "Backyard Office"

I don't have a lengthy post this week.  This is partly because I need to catch up on some things I didn't get to finish over the last few weeks.  But it is also partly because a book came to my attention within the last week, and I need to read that book so that I can write an intelligent and accurate critique of it.  That critique may well become next week's blog post.  

In the meantime, interested readers can view my "backyard office" setup shown above, which I half-jokingly promised in an earlier post to show in a YouTube "Study With Me" video.  As you can see, I never got to the "video" stage, so people will just have to content themselves with a still picture.  I'm mildly saddened by the fact that I'm about to lose this "office" for much of the next six to nine months, as it is supposed to rain this upcoming week where I live, and the weather will get colder.  I guess it's back to the spare bedroom as an office...

Speaking of YouTube, in the course of my paying work I discovered a couple of YouTube recommendation blocker browser plugins.  The plugins came in handy for me about three months ago when I needed to watch an instructional video in order to use a certain piece of electronic test and measurement equipment.  In fact, the plugins were so handy that I tried them on a couple of fingerstyle guitar videos.  I have therefore been experimenting with allowing YouTube once again to be an electronic presence in my life - this time, though, on a very tight leash.  If I start seeing weird neo-Nazi commercials, or if I find myself wasting time watching other people play guitar instead of practicing on my own ax, then I will have to ax YouTube for good.  If that happens, I'll make a YouTube video describing how I quit watching YouTube!  Or maybe not...

Connecting Moral Dots

I check my blog stats from time to time, and I noticed that there are people who are actively exploring my back catalog.  Thanks much for your readership!  One note: my favorite posts are the ones I have written over the last four years.  If you go really far back, you may stumble across posts which are a bit cringe-worthy, as my writing style was a bit more convoluted back then (I was trying to imitate a couple of bloggers whose writings I have since abandoned), and my worldview was not as fully developed.

I am happy to see that people are re-reading my post "Nihil Nixed".  That post is actually the first in a series of three connected posts, the other two being "The Go To Jail Truth" and "Whadja Do With The Money?!"  I am no prophet, yet note that I wrote "The Go to Jail Truth" about six months before the massive protests in Russia over the arrest of Alexei Navalny.  Anyway, if you have time and you have enjoyed "Nihil Nixed," feel free to check out the other two posts.  And as for this upcoming weekend, I will try to have a fresh post ready, a post that will continue to deal with the subject of strategic nonviolent resistance.

On The Relative Poverty of Money vs Time

Last year was truly horrible in many respects, as the world in general and the United States in particular were subjected to the criminally incompetent leadership of malignant leaders aligned with the Global Far Right.  The COVID-19 pandemic was one of the fruits of this leadership.  COVID-19 sidelined many economies, including the economy of the United States.  The sidelining we endured was protracted by the refusal of our former Prez Donald Trump and the Rethuglican Party to take effective measures to deal with the pandemic.

As a result, for several months I found myself with very little to do, and hence no real income.  This was not a terrible hardship, as I had some money saved up.  So I spent way too much time traveling the world via YouTube (and falling in love with countries like the Philippines!).  I also spent time sharpening my occupational skills, developing marketing plans, and writing proposals.  During the summer (at least up until last year's terrible wildfires) I spent evenings taking walks through the neighborhood and playing guitar in my backyard as the sun went down.  

This year I find myself suddenly working like a dog.  This is exciting on a certain level, as my line of business is beginning to revive.  On the other hand, there is a certain stress.  I sometimes envy the lives led by my "associates":

Koshka and Vashka, doing what cats do best!

Someday I'll get to do that again ...

Working Like A Dog

Those who follow this blog will have noticed that I was unable to write a post for last weekend.  The title of today's post explains why.  I suddenly find my occupational skills to be in very high demand - which is a good thing as it helps me to buy groceries!  However, I will try to have a post for this coming weekend.  In the meantime, here is a link to a fascinating article exposing the actual basis of the 2020 profits of the Tesla corporation.  The linked source, along with others, points out that Elon Musk's company has been unable to this day to be profitable on its own by selling its own cars.  The only thing that has helped the company post profits recently is the selling of carbon credits.  This is interesting, because Musk has built a PR campaign over the last year to portray himself as a smart, cutting-edge businessman and intellectual.  (See this also.)  Beware of celebrity culture; you know the old warning about all that glitters...

Technology Delay - December 2020

I had every intention of writing another post today for my series on Gene Sharp's book From Dictatorship to Democracy.  But...technology woes intervened over the last week, during which I spent an inordinate amount of time researching a solution to some intermittent Internet access issues.  The issues are finally fixed as of 4 PM this afternoon, but I have no desire to begin writing a research-heavy post so late in the day.  So we'll have to wait a week.

I do want to mention that sometime in the future I'd like to begin writing a series of posts on the subject of autarky.  Autarky as practiced by empires is a very bad thing.  However, there is a good kind of autarky, a kind which does not involve making oneself self-sufficient by knocking one's neighbor over the head and taking his stuff.  Certain Scriptures from the Good Book come to mind just now.  This good form of autarky does, however, require hard, meaningful work.  And it is especially relevant in a world in which the ability of certain groups of people to enrich themselves by using the tools of empire at other peoples' expense is coming to an end.  Stay tuned...

A Journey and Its Next Few Steps

Here's a quick post.  It now appears that Donald Trump has exhausted almost all of his avenues for attempting to challenge his loss of the 2020 Presidential election.  Therefore, it appears almost certain that Joe Biden will be inaugurated as the next President of the United States on January 20, 2021.  I feel like I can begin to breathe a sigh of relief.  The last four years have at times felt to me like a movie I saw when I was a kid, a movie in which a semi truck driven by a murderous maniac tries to kill a traveling salesman just for fun.  Except that I've felt like the traveling salesman and Trump has seemed to me to be the truck driver.  At the end of the movie, the truck runs off the edge of a cliff.  Trump, too, will one day reap what he's been sowing.  In fact, the reaping has already begun...

But that grand elephant of the G.O.P. has left an elephantine mess for the rest of us to clean up.  And part of that mess consists of the continued existence of authoritarian strongmen who exploit nations.  So as I mentioned in my last post, I will continue my series on strategic nonviolent resistance, using the book From Dictatorship to Democracy as a guide.  I believe that this will be useful for people in some of the countries which have shown up in my pageview statistics.  It will also continue to be useful for historically marginalized communities of color in the United States, as we learn how to apply the principles of community organizing to build our own power and liberate ourselves by means of our own self-sufficiency.

A key component of this liberation through building self-sufficiency is the ability to think strategically, to notice and accurately trace the emergent trends in our society, and to be able to see (and prepare for) the possible futures that might emerge from these trends.  Therefore, I will also try to do some trend-tracing on this blog.  I must warn you, however, that "Making predictions is hard - especially about the future," as Yogi Berra once said.  Take what I say with a grain of salt.

Lastly, I think I will update the layout of this blog.  Its layout may have been cutting-edge when it was first rolled out, but now the edge has dulled and the current layout looks somewhat klunky to me.  I will be trying out a few new layouts over the next few weeks.  Hopefully, the final result will be more readable and user-friendly.

Home Repairs, Part 2

This week, I must again bow out of writing a long post.  Yesterday I hauled several hundred pounds of scrap wood out of my backyard, and today I have a huge list of projects to finish (aside from going to church, where I will be in a couple of hours).  If idleness is the devil's workshop, then I won't have to worry about being in trouble for a very long time.

I should be able to continue my series on the revanchism of the Third Rome next weekend. I will also hopefully begin to show the role played by Russia in the rise of the global fascist far right.  (Although, if anyone wants to do his or her own research, there are plenty of smoking guns lying around where one could start.)  Stay tuned...

Home Repairs - August 2017

I have spent the last week fixing things in my house that badly needed fixing, as they were falling apart.  My backyard now contains a big pile of used lumber that I will be hauling to the dump sometime soon.  I'm afraid I'll have to wait until next weekend to have a post on my continuing series.  Until then, my prayer is that God's mercy and justice would shine on you all - especially on those who are among the oppressed.

I Gotta Pull Weeds This Weekend

I have greatly appreciated the readership and kind and appreciative comments I have received over the last few months.  Those of you who blog regularly know that quality blogging can be very hard work.  In my writing, I strive for a semi-academic style, and I like to put a lot of research into my posts.

Unfortunately, the grass in the backyard has grown almost to the point that my cats can hide in some of the tallest patches, and there's a bunch of other stuff "in realspace" (namely, around the house and elsewhere) which I need to take care of this weekend and next.  So I probably won't have a new post this weekend.  I may have a Spanish translation of one of my most recent posts online by the following weekend, God willing.  After that, I hope to resume regular blogging.  See you in a bit.  Keep fighting the good fight!

A Short Station Break

I have another post in the works, which will continue to expand the suggestions I made in "Scapegoat Survival in Uncertain Times."  (We have already covered the first three suggestions.)  But that post will have to wait at least another week.  Right now I am working on a mechanical engineering grad school project.  (That's why I wasn't posting for a long while until last fall.)  My project involves programming in a mathematical software package called Sage (www.sagemath.org).  It's free and open source, which is very good.  And if you love playing with a computer all day and are a Ph.D mathematician, the online documentation can provide hours of fun.  I don't, and I'm not.  So for me, the last several days have been filled with long hours in which I was moved to pray or tempted to smash things, not necessarily in that order.  (Yes, yes, I too am human!)  As I sometimes say in front of my Russian acquaintances, "Бог, дай милость!"

If anyone knows anything about multiple arguments in a "for" conditional statement, please shoot me a comment.  If you don't know anything about that subject, at least pray for my soul.  I'll try to have something more for you soon. Thanks for your readership.

Adjusting My Own Oxygen Mask

To those who are followers of this blog, I must apologize for not posting very much recently. A number of momentous events have taken place over the last few months, but I've been too busy to pay much notice to them. Yet these events, combined with my own busy-ness, have gotten me thinking about how much attention I personally need to devote to preparing myself and my neighborhood for the times now upon us.

During the last few months, the International Energy Agency confirmed that the world has passed the all-time peak in conventional oil production. (Indeed, the latest edition of the IEA World Energy Outlook put the peak date in 2006 – a statement which confirms the mention of 2006 as peak year according to the German Energy Watch Group's 2007 Oil Report.) This last November, there were mid-term elections in the United States – elections which greatly expanded the power and prerogatives of the rich, yet were a disaster for people interested in prudent preparations for the future and the preservation of the common good. During the last few months, the burgeoning American police state has continued to grow, with “get tough on crime” initiatives being approved in a few more states, leading inevitably to a need to build more prisons sometime in the future. During the last few months, some very well-respected bloggers have suggested that it may be time for decent, thinking folk to get out of the U.S. while they still can and relocate to another country.

Meanwhile, I've been working two jobs: first, as a practicing engineer for a small design firm, and second, as an adjunct engineering instructor. I decided to try holding two jobs because of my experiences last year and early this year with my previous firm, which was hit significantly by our ongoing economic crisis. Those were unsettling times, as I was home a lot and worried about having nothing to fall back on in the event that I was laid off. I decided on teaching as a second occupational path because I believe that a highly valuable talent in the years to come will be the ability to teach complex skills – especially to adults.

When I joined the firm at which I now work, I asked to be employed part-time, in anticipation of teaching during the summer term. I had been working on a reduced schedule at my previous firm as well, and the part-time experience was a bit of an eye-opener. I saw that by being debt-free and working part-time, I was able to devote more energy toward learning skills of self-sufficiency and forging neighborhood connections. This kind of time is a valuable resource, and it seems that it is now also an endangered resource.

I am thinking just now of an interview of Jeff Vail that I recently heard on the C-Realm podcast. In that interview, Jeff described the concept of “surge capacity” as that portion of a total system which is underutilized, and which is therefore available to meet an emergency. As he put it, “...if you have the ability to get by on a fraction of what you are capable of, you're in a lot better situation...” He then envisioned “an ideal, resilient, high surge capacity, domestic economy” consisting of a “husband and wife...both working in the 'traditional economy' 10 hours a week each,” and dividing up the remainder of their time between community-focused organization and production and domestic production. The point is that by limiting their involvement and reliance on the 'traditional', official economy, the members of this ideal household would have time to focus on building other strengths and resources in order to make themselves more resilient.

The catch, of course, is that the dominant, official economy does its best to forbid mere “partial” reliance on it. If you're going to rely on it at all, the only terms on which it permits such reliance are full, unrestrained reliance. (Just as one can't be “only a little bit” addicted to heroin.) So everything that ordinary people need is now becoming more and more expensive, and indebtedness becomes more and more the prevailing lifestyle. Even if one manages to stay out of debt, many employers of degreed professionals are starting to eliminate part-time work from their offerings. Scan Craigslist or Monster.com, and you will see lots of ads with phrases like “Motivated self-starter needed for a fast-paced environment in a dynamic growth-oriented company. Must be able to prioritize, multitask and manage stress. This is a full-time, 40+ hour/week position. Extensive travel required.”

Being employed under those conditions leaves very little time for things outside of work, such as building a resilient life and community. And that's fine, I suppose; as long as a man thinks he will never need alternative arrangements, he need not fret over the fact that he has no time to build alternatives and safety nets. Right now, business is booming for several of the local design firms in our area, so it would be easy to believe that one could continue to rely on the official economy for a long time to come.

But I've been reading the signs, and to me they continue to say, “Disaster ahead.” I keep seeing articles, blog posts and analyses by very intelligent people who track the fragility and poor prognosis of the official economy, both in the U.S. and globally, as well as the fragility of American society. Allowing myself to become a 40+ hour/week worker bee seems to me like trying to fight for the best deck chair on the Titanic.

I want to keep working part-time, so that I can continue to have time to devote to building personal and neighborhood resilience. Some of the resilience-building I want to do will take a significant amount of time each week. But I am getting squeezed right now by the demands of my job, and I feel like I'm regarded as a bit of an inconvenient oddity for not wanting to work full time.

I don't know yet what I'm going to do about my situation, but I'll keep you all posted as things progress. And over the next few weeks, I will be writing about some personal experiences I have recently had and steps I am taking to build a resilient life.

TH, Back From SoC

I just got back from a Labor Day weekend trip to Southern California to visit relatives. Due to time constraints, I actually thought about flying there...but at the last minute, I chickened out. (One factor that influenced my decision was finding out that the cost of a plane ticket plus a car rental in Southern California was about the same as the cost of just renting a car in Portland and driving down and back.)

Driving allowed me a chance to take in some thought-provoking (and frankly disturbing) scenery. I am thinking of the “Congress Created Dust Bowl” signs lining Interstate 5 from south of Stockton to just north of Bakersfield. These signs have undergone a transformation; their creators have changed the signs to read, “Stop the Congress Created Dust Bowl” and have added the names of members of the U.S. Congress who have been targeted by the American Right wing for removal. The connection between these signs and the rhetoric of the Tea-bagger/Glenn Beck/Fox News crowd is unmistakable, with their growth-at-any-cost message and their vehement opposition to any restrictions on the rights of wealthy agricultural landowners for the sake of the common good.

These signs have been designed to look like an expression of small-time, homemade grassroots activists from a distance. But there was one such sign on a wooden utility pole in an unfenced field near a gas station where I stopped, and upon closer examination I saw that its professionally produced message had been printed on a sheet of nearly indestructible Tyvek. As I said, there are dozens of these signs, as well as much larger billboard-sized signs with the same message in fenced fields within sight of the freeway. Making and installing these signs must have cost a lot of money.

The location of the signs tells us a few other disturbing things. Prior to 2008, the cost of farmland in the Central Valley averaged around $15,000 per acre, although by March of 2009 it had fallen to around $10,000 per acre. (Source: “California's Central Valley Farmland and Prices Not Immune to Recession”.) However, a quick search of agricultural land for sale revealed that most parcels under 40 acres cost over a million dollars. There are not very many small parcels near Interstate 5 that cost under $500,000. I only found one, and it was being marketed as a “home with property” for people who like “country living.” But then again, I only did a quick search. Those who want to try searching for themselves can go to a site like Schuil and Associates.

My point is that it seems to me that the people behind the “Stop The Congress Created Dust Bowl” campaign are all wealthy holders of large agricultural properties, and who are major players in the industrial factory farming model of agribusiness. They are not poor small farmers. Their signs are not homemade. They are not a display of grassroots activism.

They are, however, a display of the lengths to which the wealthy in this country are willing to go to seize, enlarge and consolidate their political and economic power at the expense of the rest of us and of the environment. Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that corporations have the same rights of “free speech” and paid political expression as individuals, the wealthiest and most powerful members of American society are pulling out all the stops. Farms are on my mind, so I'll mention the forest of “Chris Dudley for Governor” signs I saw on my way through Oregon on Interstate 5. I think it's probable that most of the farms sporting these signs are also large, expensive agribusinesses. But it's also interesting how many large buildings in the Portland Metro area have been covered with Chris Dudley banners, regardless of whether the tenants in those buildings like Dudley or not. And there's uber-wealthy Carly Fiorina's bid to become a U.S. Senator. (See also “$200 Million GOP Campaign Avalanche Planned, Democrats Stunned”.)

The most disturbing sight I saw came when I arrived home again today shortly after midnight. I was on my computer checking my e-mail (and wasting time surfing a few sites) when I discovered that Thomas Nelson Publishers, who had released the "American Patriot's Bible" in 2009, was now agressively pushing this 'Bible' via Glenn Beck and Fox Television. Truly this would have been for me a “spew coffee all over keyboard” moment if I'd been drinking any coffee. According to several reviews, their “Patriot's Bible” is a compilation of stories of American patriots inserted into a New King James translation, along with commentary “illustrating” how Biblical principles “fit” into the founding of the United States. The aim of this “Bible” is to continue to promote the myth that the United States is an “exceptional” nation founded by God, and that the proof of this is unending material prosperity for America, as well as justifying all of this nation's wars of conquest.

You can read some objective reviews of this “Bible” below:

• “The American Patriot's Bible,” Burnside Writers' Collective,

• “The Patriot's Bible and Justified Torture,” Greg Boyd,

• And “Book Review: The Patriot's Bible,” Out of Ur.

It's interesting that this “Bible”, which was basically unheard-of for several months, should be aggressively pushed right now, only a few months before the November election. It's as if American evangelicalism with all of its entertainment/content “industries” had become simply another arm of a wealthy right-wing corporatist/materialist enterprise.

I'll say right here that I am a Christian – a Bible-believing, fundamentalist Christian. (Hopefully, that won't make you spew your coffee all over your keyboard;) But when I read the Bible, I come to conclusions that are radically different from those of the nationalists and xenophobes of the American right. I think that much of American history is an abomination. (Millions of former slaves, exterminated Native Americans and dead Iraqis would agree with me.)

I think of the religious parts of America not as Christian, but as Christ-haunted (in the Flannery O'Connor sense): destructive, materialist, greedy people who say the name of Jesus quite loudly, yet persecute as “Socialist!!!” anyone who suggests that maybe we should act like Jesus. The editors and publishers of the “Patriot's Bible” spent a lot of time inserting nationalist, war-mongering propaganda into their “Bible,” yet they failed to take heed to this passage from the Good Book: “I testify to everyone who hears the words of the prophecy of this book, if anyone adds to them, may God add to him the plagues which are written in this book...”

The American Patriot's Bible is yet another expression of the longing of many Americans for a magical, something-for-nothing life in which one never has to face the negative consequences of one's own foolish choices. It is yet one more piece of propaganda pushed by the wealthiest members of a rapidly shrinking American “mainstream” who fear a multipolar world in which they must learn to live within their means. The shrinkage of our means and the rise of that multipolar world are coming, whether we like it or not. Meanwhile, beware of denialist propaganda. It can be found oozing out of surprising places.

A Short Station Break While I Grade Papers

I have a lot to write about, but this weekend I also have a ton of student papers to grade from my short-term teaching gig. I'll try to have another post ready soon. Stay tuned...

A (Short!) Summer Break

This is a quick note to let you all know that I'm buried in things to do just now. First, there's the summer class I will be teaching as part of a renewable energy curriculum. (My part is not cutting-edge; it's just a sophomore level engineering class.) Then there's the chicken coop I'm trying to finish (I started last year, believe it or not), and the summer vegetables I'm trying to get started at long last, and the winter vegetables and perennial vegetable seeds I have to order and ...

But I do have two valuable interviews coming up, one of which will be posted next week, God willing. The interviews are part of my continuing effort to engage my community in a conversation about post-Peak living and adapting to a time of collapse. Stay tuned...

Intermission - September 2009

I will not be posting anything heavy this week. Instead, I'm taking a bit of a break. However, I hope to have another post for you all next weekend, followed by another short break. Thanks for all your readership and comments so far.

In the meantime, some of you may want to check out Trimet Confidential (http://danbusdriverman.blogspot.com) to get a taste of public transit through the eyes of a bus driver. Trimet Confidential is written by Dan, who is a follower of my blog, The Well Run Dry. (Fortunately, my transit trips usually aren't nearly as exciting as some of his stories.) One day, I hope to run into Dan the Bus Driver Man. I'll get on his bus, show him my transit pass and say to him, "Are you Dan? I am TH in SoC..."