Category: Blog

Really a great many words these days ought to be prefaced with “so-called” by default. So-called ceasefire. So-called Supreme Leader. So-called president, so-called Prime Minister, so called Secretary of so-called Defense. So-called Truth Social, so-called Artificial Intelligence. It would help our clarity and understanding.

Ceasefire for example used to mean two or more combatant sides would cease firing, simple enough. Now it means at least one entity shoots more immediately, leaving pundits to say with straight faces things like, “the ceasefire is in danger,” when no firing has ceased. So-called negotiations are happening somewhere.

King, Royal Highness, Supreme Leader, Dear Leader, what a mess. Whenever even a well-intentioned journalist refers to someone by those ridiculous titles, it serves to validate the positions and those that hold them. Mortal normal men with mortal normal flaws, called these stupid outdated terms, just stop it already. Put “so-called” in front of it, and the issue is mitigated somewhat. Perhaps at least NPR could do that. Words matter.

Meanwhile we in the USA have presidents and not kings, as recent political rallies have emphasized, and never til now did I think “so-called” ought to preface the name of that office. But now it seems to fit. The so-called president has done just about every unpresidential thing we could imagine, but wait, there’s still today and tomorrow, to do worse.

Impeachments and convictions for serious felonies didn’t matter apparently, and now it’s open season, a kind of free-for-all where laws are laughed at and the only consequences promised are by the laws of nature, which there is no avoiding.

How will it play?

We had a window of time, which has passed, when we could intelligently assess and address the climate crisis like reasonable grown-ups. The USA was in a position to help lead that human project and now we are not. The stupidest war in modern history (I’m sure there are plenty of equally stupid ones in pre-modern times, just oodles of them, but none stupider) is happening right now involving colossal and intentional war crimes all perpetrated with the burning of obscene amounts of oil products. Instead of working away from climate disaster, we are stampeding toward it.

I’m sitting here on a Caturday morning, enjoying a nice coffee, feeling grateful and blessed to not be in a war zone at the moment, not fleeing a raging wildfire at the moment, not suffering injustice at the moment as so many and our ecosystem are. I’m pondering these words, ones which are made more accurate by “so-called.” And other, essential words, like empathy. Who would ever have thought that a word with such meaning and value and depth and importance could be the object of disdain, for some? To that we have come? It’s caveman barbarity, a rejection of civilized notions, the embrace of evil.

I oppose it, and embrace empathy, including empathy for enemies. That is not sympathy or agreement or even forgiveness, it’s empathy. Look it up if you’re not sure; It has clear meanings, and without it we are lost.

I saw this headline this morning –

America’s not OK’: Surveys show US wellbeing in steep decline under _rump

and had to laugh. It is to duh, and I knew that was inevitable on the morning of November 6, 2024. So here we are, damage done, more to come, by a criminal org whose intention was and is to do every kind of egregious harm. And a mid-term election coming, what a thing.

I have no faith in the American voter, that is gone. I have hope that enough have wised up, but little confidence in that. If fed a steady diet of Fox so-called News and such from birth, poorly educated and ruined by drugs legal or illegal, out of work because global capitalism, angry and lonely and told The Other is the reason for our problems, hey, I empathize. It’s the “It can’t happen here” part, happening. Wealth inequality at such a scale dehumanizes people, and when dehumanized, one dehumanizes. It’s yucky.

If we want things to be better we need to redistribute some wealth intelligently. Health care, education, sustainable infrastructure, do it by taxing the rich and not doing stupid ass war crimes.

It’s doable. Will we do it? I don’t know. It’s hard not to despair, because this is what we should have been doing for years and decades, and many of us have known and said this loudly all along. Now we’re in steep, catastrophic decline. In large part ‘cos people voted wrong or didn’t vote. Cause, meet Effect.

In the interest of my frayed mental health I’m going for a swim and a hike in the woods today. Enjoy the air and rain and sun and say my version of a prayer, for peace and for the better angels of our nature to prevail.

Oh, and then I’ll fill out some postcards kindly organized by turnoutpac.org. Hopefully it helps.

Here’s a recent song of mine, which seems to punctuate these thoughts for me, somehow.

Live long, and prosper

I had a fascinating dream this night, a pretty clear one too, with some parts I remember vividly. It involved former bandmates and colleagues, and some arguing, and some agreeing, and some yelling and some reconciling.

“Ship and stores have gone, so now we’ll go home,” famously said Ernest Shackleton to his men, at a moment when the chances for any of them to reach home or civilization alive again were extremely remote.

Was it sincerity, or was it willful optimism in the interest of good leadership? Who can know, though I suspect it was probably all of that.

It wouldn’t do to say, “We’re toast, gentlemen, there’s little hope and I reckon we’re doomed, but let’s just trudge along a while longer in futility and despair.” This may not have motivated individual effort and teamwork, one thinks.

“Ship and stores have gone, so now we’ll go home.”
Such perfect language.

Many point to Sir Ernest Shackleton as an example of a great leader, and he unassailably was, for in the end, his entire crew survived that series of ordeals, each escape from doom more miraculous than the last, and credit where due, that’s amazing. I’d offer that a great leader might instead of sailing headlong into the coldest most inhospitable-to-humans place on earth just have taken the lads to a pub for a tipple and pies by the fire but of course, then we wouldn’t have heard of them.

Still, great leadership. And why, just the other week, some of my team leaders hosted a holiday party with hearty beverages and song. Famous? Nay, but great. Yet, I digress.

Aboard the crippled spaceship Apollo 13, Jim Lovell asked his two flight-mates what their intentions were. And, he told them simply, he wanted to go home. Their odds of safe return were as bleak at that moment as Shackleton’s had been when he said “we’ll go home,” but that was the task at hand, and they set out to do it. The teamwork between them and the ground crew was so brilliant and spectacular, and of course it’s all beautifully portrayed in the Ron Howard film. When pressed for the odds of survival by an annoying and stupidly unhelpful president Nixon, flight director Gene Kranz snaps back, “We are not losing those men!”

Intention. Leadership. They didn’t lose those men.

These are famous stories. Not as famous are the infinitely more common stories where the odds were bleak, and then all hands perished. Maybe there were inspiring speeches, “We’ll go home, mates,” just before a ship is swamped and dashed on the rocks. Ron Howard won’t make that movie, and why would we want to see it?

What of now, our ship of state. What of values, and the rule of law. What of a habitable biosphere, and the biodiversity that requires, which human society stupidly obliterates. What of all these simultaneous existential crises?

We’re Apollo 13 halfway around the moon, a thin fragile layer between us and oblivion, careening toward an uncertain fate over which we have only some minimal control. What’s our leadership, who’s our Shackleton, our Jim Lovell, our Gene Kranz? Surely we have many a qualified candidate, but, these persons are presently not running our federal government. To the contrary we have these belligerent imbeciles bent on ruining all that is good. Rather than bringing to bear our wisest, smartest, best scientific and moral minds as the Apollo 13 team did, and Shackleton’s team did, it’s.. this.

Until we have good leadership in power again, I suppose we have to build our own morale, and try and set good examples for each other. I try not to share my bleaker assessments. But they creep out of me; I can’t be so message-disciplined all of the time. I think the chance for handling the climate crisis intelligently was blown, the deadline has passed – it was Nov. 5 of 2024, and botched. No one wants to hear that. Ron Howard wouldn’t make that movie. And I don’t want to be right. We’ll see.

Humans can do remarkable, amazing things. Or we can be so acutely stupid. We seem to be in The Age Of Stupid. Inconvenient timing, since the forces of nature won’t wait.

Anyway it’ll level off, this Anthropocene. Human population will peak, then plummet. Strange time to be alive, really. An amazing privilege to be present and witness it all. I remain curious as to exactly how and when things will unfold, and I don’t think anyone truly knows. Cultivating more willful positivity meanwhile, seeking to do the next right things that I can. I do have some control over that.

Cue Philippulus the Prophet.