Hanging Chad

I was thinking today about how, sometimes, the course of history seems to bend around seemingly inconsequential moments. Moments that might even seem consequential at the time but only in the way that a kid thinks any given Christmas is consequential but, then, easily forgotten. So the moments, no matter how anticipated they were, fade into inconsequentialness, and we never think of them again even though they turn out to be pivot points of history.

So... here we are on the brink of environmental devastation... the end of life on Earth in its current incarnation... and I was wondering how we got here.

It's not like this was all of a sudden and we couldn't have made plans long ago about how to deal with it. It's been more like a gas gauge in a car, and we've been choosing to bypass all of the gas stations along the freeway telling ourselves we'll be fine even though the gas stations have been fewer and fewer along our drive...

Have you ever driven through west Texas? I have. Granted, it's been a while, but I can't imagine it's changed much. When you drive through west Texas, which is vast, there are signs along the freeway that say things like "Next gas station 48 miles," which may not seem like much, but it's a long way when your gas gauge is riding the empty line.

We're in a car running on fumes and about 20 miles into that 48 mile trip to the next station.

You do the math.

The thing is that the driver of the car has been choosing to drive past gas stations for hundreds of miles. We, as passengers, haven't been paying attention, but the driver has known all along.

See, it's a metaphor.

Scientists and politicians and corporations have known about climate change for decades. It's just the public that hasn't been very aware, and that was all the better for politicians and corporations. Still, with things like acid rain in the 70s and 80s, scientists almost convinced politicians and corporations to do something about the looming threat of environmental catastrophe all the way back in the 80s. Almost. Until corporations really looked into the cost and profit loss of fixing the planet, and they made the decision to fuck the planet and rape it for all it was worth on its way to ruin. By the early 90s, Republicans had us firmly on the path of unnatural disaster and did it gleefully.

But there was still a pivotal moment, a moment that probably seems inconsequential to most of us, right now, but that's only because we're not looking at it through the correct lens.

That moment was Al Gore's loss to Bush for the Presidency in 2000. We could even point, more specifically, to the hanging chad controversy in Florida and the subsequent Supreme Court case that handed the Presidency to Bush in a 5-4 decision. That one moment changed everything and sent us on a path to destruction that we seem unwilling to stop.

Hey, I get it. I was no fan of Gore at the time. He seemed like milk toast to me. And I never liked Bubba Clinton (still don't like him, though I'm a huge fan of his wife). Then, when 9/11 happened, I thought how fortunate we were to have Bush instead of Gore. Yeah, I was young and stupid, and, hey, I grew up in the South and still had some of that stupidity running around in my head.

Let's go back and look at that moment, though, that moment that gave us Bush, and wonder what things would be like if Gore, who WON THE POPULAR VOTE (sound familiar?), had become the President instead.

• Gore was (and is) extremely environmentally minded. He would have put us on a path of environmental reconstruction more than a decade before Obama began making the attempts. (Attempts that Trump (#fakepresident) has completely reversed making things worse than ever.)
• Gore would not have involved us in all of the wars that Cheney put us in. Wars motivated by profit and oil, not delivering democracy or freedom to people.
• I'm just gonna go ahead and say that we would not have suffered the financial crash of 2008 if Gore had been in office. Much of what allowed that to happen can be traced specifically to, well, not exactly Bush, because Bush was too stupid, but to Cheney and his people. Profit at all costs and all of that bullshit.
• Trump (#fakepresident) would not be driving our country and the world out into the middle of the desert right now in a car with no fuel.

I'm not saying everything today would be all sunshine and roses if Gore had been President; after all, there would still have been the scum-of-the-Earth Republicans (especially Newt and Mitch) doing all they can to destroy us all. But I do think things would be... better. And we would at least be on a path of environmental protection rather than one of environmental destruction. And, maybe, yes, MAYBE, the Middle East wouldn't hate us quite as much, because I'm pretty sure Gore's response to 9/11 would have been much more measured than the "bomb the shit out of them" approach the Republicans took.

It's all just something to think about. Hindsight and all of that.

It's also something to think about because I believe we're just a few weeks away from another of those pivot points in history. And, yes, we do see this one coming up as consequential, and that's because IT IS. We can't allow the Boomers another win in November. If they consolidate their power with this upcoming election, that will be the end. Authoritarianism will have taken root firmly in American soil, and there will never be another fair election in the United States again. Not without a rebellion. But, more importantly, it will spell the final doom for the Earth.

Sure, you go on and say that I'm being extreme, but, then, you go read the UN climate report and tell me if you still think that. If you do, you're one of the people in the car running on fumes, passing the last gas station while telling yourself, "We'll be okay." We're not gonna "be okay" folks. It's time to turn this thing around and start fixing the damage that's been done.

The Comfort of Lies

Remember The Matrix? Great film, right? Well, it is as long as you pretend the two followups don't exist. Once you embrace the entire trilogy as one story, it kinda sucks. Okay, more than kinda. But, you know, it's okay to pretend; it's only a movie.

But let's explore that idea a little more.
And, you know, if you haven't seen The Matrix... Well, you'll just have to try and keep up, because I'm not explaining the movie in this post.

As you know, Neo has to make a choice, the choice between Reality and the fabricated world of the Matrix. One is real; one is a lie. The choice is symbolized by the two pills pictured above, the red pill or the blue pill. Of course, we all know which choice Neo is going to make, because the movie would be over if he were to choose to stay in the Matrix. Besides, it's the choice we all tell ourselves that we would make. Of course we would choose to forsake the lie!

But, man, Reality really sucks. (Much like the reality of the subsequent two films.)

Which brings us to Cypher. Cypher, having lived in the real world for quite a while, decides he doesn't like it. He decides he would rather live in a comfortable lie than continue to struggle through Reality. Remember, Reality sucks.

So Cypher cuts a deal with the machines and betrays his friends so that he can re-enter the lie, the Matrix.

The general reaction from the audience at the time was one of bafflement. How could he choose to go back into the Matrix knowing it was a lie? How could he?! But, you know, he tells us all the reasons as he's making the deal. He misses the... comfort... of it. The taste of food (rather than protein mush), the feel of the sun and the wind (rather than the blotted out sky), the ease of living as opposed to the constant life-threatening struggle that was Reality.

And, man, I empathize. Reality sucks, especially this current reality where we (in the United States) live on the teetering edge of authoritarianism and fascism. I get why so many people are choosing to believe the lies Trump pushes. It gives them comfort. It's their blue pill. If they can just believe in Trump enough, they can pretend he's not a racist douche bag and, if he's not a racist douche bag, then they, also, are not racist douche bags. And no one wants to be a racist douche bag. I mean, heck, even the white supremacist Nazi assholes try to pretend that they're not racist douche bags; that's why they go with all the "white pride" shit instead. But they're only fooling themselves.

To be fair, it's not like those on the Left aren't sucking on their own blue pills by continually talking about how we've forgotten the "white working class." This, also, is an appeal to racism and white supremacy. "C'mon white people, we're on your side." Seriously, no one forgot the white working class. In all seriousness, the white working class is doing just fine. The white working class, no matter how they feel about it, is still doing better than people of color. Any color. We need to stop talking about the "white working class" and how they feel left behind or whatever bullshit they want to call their racism. All they're really saying is, "We're worried our superior position is in jeopardy." And everyone else is trying to make them feel better about it while people of color are still getting the shit end of the stick.

Let me give you a practical example of the systemic racism in the system:
As I'm writing this, hurricane Irma is losing power, but the damage has already been done. There are about 45 known deaths to the storm and much of Florida is without power at the moment. Of course, just prior to Irma was Harvey. Harvey is responsible for 70 deaths and major flooding in Texas. These two storms caused huge amounts of destruction and have dominated the news for weeks.

However, in the midst of this, Mexico suffered the worst earthquake its had in a century, leaving around 100 dead. The media barely mentioned it and isn't talking about it anymore. And the news hasn't even mentioned that 2017 has been a harsh year for monsoons (hurricanes) in south Asia. The worst year in decades. So far, there have been almost 1300 confirmed deaths due to these storms and over 40 million people affected, including the destruction of more than 700,000 homes and a massive loss of crops due to flooding which is likely to cause food shortages. But, hey, they're not white, so, you know, big deal.

Right?

Look, I'm not diminishing what's happened to people in Houston and in Florida and in the Caribbean. What has happened has been horrible, but it doesn't make it less horrible to remember that other people are suffering, too. Except that, for some people, it does make it less horrible, because, to them, having bought into the Lie, they believe it's Us against Them, anything that happens to Them is okay because they deserve it. Or, maybe, not quite deserve it, but they don't deserve the special protection that white people ought to have from these kinds of events so, somehow, when it happens to white people, it's more tragic. Like when the Greeks only wrote tragedies about nobility because it wasn't tragedy if it happened to the common man.

But we're all common men.

The Lie is that we're not. The Lie is that it's Us (whites) against them (people of any other skin color).

Let me put it another way, to paraphrase Yoda:

My ally is the Truth, and a powerful ally it is. Life creates it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us, binds. Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter. You must feel the Truth flow around you. Here, between you, me, the brown person, and the black, yes, even between all others and the white.

The Truth, what Reality really is, is the we are all us.

We are all us.

(And I didn't even mention the blue pill of climate change denial.)

Alone in the Dark (or How Do You Turn on the Lights?)

My family just got back from vacation. Or most of us did. My oldest son actually elected not to go this year. That's okay. He's 19, and he had other things he wanted to do. Like staying connected to the Internet because his girlfriend is in Florida, right now, so going off for a week during which he would have no contact with her at all was rather more than he could deal with.

Him staying home was actually convenient for us, too, because he was able to take care of the cat and water the garden, which is now sporting a baby pumpkin.

The night we got back, I asked him, "So how was it?" You know, how was his first stay at home alone. Not only was this his first extended stay at home; this was his first just overnight stay at home alone. Yeah, we don't get out much.

I used to get left alone like that a lot, I suppose. Well, not for anything extended, because my parents didn't ever go off, either, but they would sometimes go down to my grandparents' overnight, and I would stay home. Once I was in high school, I was always busy, so, unless my mom let me know at least a week in advance, I already had something I was doing on Friday afternoon when she would say, "Hey, we're going down to the farm; do you want to come?" That was actually rather frustrating, because I liked my grandparents and the farm.

They went away for an extended trip when I was 17; I don't remember why. It was during the school year, though, so I couldn't go. My mom was worried that I would be scared and made arrangements for me to stay with someone if I got too scared to stay alone at home. Because, yeah, it would have made my mom scared, so she couldn't imagine any way that I could make it for the four or five days they would be gone without hiding in a corner from fear of the boogeyman. Or something. When they got back, she couldn't believe that I had not called my emergency backup number and gone to stay there.

The closest my son has come to being left alone, though, is that sometimes when he gets up in the morning everyone else is already gone. Usually, he doesn't even bother to eat in those situations because, you know, self-feeding and all of that. Honestly, despite buying him some easy to prepare foods (i.e. microwavable), we were a little worried we'd get home to find out that he hadn't eaten for a week. Surprisingly, all of the food was gone.

But, anyway, I asked him, "How was it?"

He said it was fine. He said it was fine except that it was a little dark.

"Huh?"

He said the first couple of nights he kept thinking, "It's so dark in here," and he couldn't figure out why. Granted, it's pretty bright outside until, like, 9:00, so it took him a while to notice that it was dark, and that's around the time he generally goes off to his bed with his laptop, anyway, so it wasn't exactly inconveniencing him. But he didn't know why it was dark, not until the third night when he realized...

He hadn't turned on any lights!

He said it was because he's never had to turn on the lights. Meaning, they are always already on, and he's not the guy who turns the lights on, so it took a while for him to realize that they were off.

We had to laugh.

It is, however, a good illustration of how we might not think about things that we don't generally deal with, even common things. Things like turning on the lights. Or using a microwave oven. Or, like me today, trying to download songs onto my daughter's iPod, which I had never done before and couldn't figure out at first. Seriously, I thought those things were supposed to be intuitive or something. I think I should just be able to set the iPod on top of the CD and have the iPod do it.

So that first night that my son finally figured out that he needed to turn the lights on? Well, he went to bed and closed the door to his bedroom, because the boys do that to keep the cat out. The cat likes Lego. To eat. Their room is like a big buffet, so they have to keep the door closed all the time. Anyway, my son went to bed and, while he was lying there, he realized there was light coming in under the door, and he couldn't figure out why there was light because no one else was home, and he started wondering who could have turned on the lights...

Do you see where I'm going with this? He also never turns off the lights, so he hadn't done that, and it took him a moment to realize that he was the one who left the lights on. heh

Really, he's a smart kid. Mostly A's and all of that.

But we still laughed. Again.

Abandoned Places: Xanadu Houses

I'm not gonna lie; X was... difficult. I mean, X is always difficult, but it was difficult enough for this theme that I began to think about cheating. But then! Then I found the Xanadu houses! The Xanadu houses were designed as homes of the future in the late 70s and early 80s. The had computer controlled environments, were ergonomically designed, and, most importantly, were made of polyurethane foam. The foam was meant to allow for quick construction.

Of the three Xanadu show homes that were built, the one built in Kissimmee, Florida, not far from EPCOT, proved to be the most popular, drawing over 1000 visitors a day at its height. However, due to the quickness with which the technology in the houses became obsolete (they used the Commodore 64 (can you imagine trying to run a house, today, from a Commodore 64?)), they never became more than a curiosity. Which turned out to be a good thing in all likelihood as the polyurethane proved to be not very resistant to mold and mildew. After being abandoned for several years at the end of the 90s, the Kissimmee house, the only one left at that point, was overgrown with mold. It was finally demolished about a decade ago.

Unfortunately, I could find no photos of the houses that are available for use, but you can see a gallery attached to the short article about the homes at io9.

For today's photos of abandoned places, I'm actually going to share some images of things that (mostly) have no place to be or I liked but did not cover. Enjoy!

 Above and below two photos by Klugschnacker under the linked license.

This next item is not exactly abandoned, but...

Those are views of the Aral Sea, what was once one of the four largest lakes on the planet. In the 60s, the Russians began diverting water from the various rivers that fed the sea. The view on the left is from 1989, the right from 2008. As you can see, the sea is almost non-existent at this point. It's considered one of the worst environmental disasters in history. Here is what it has left behind:

Aral photos by Martjin Munneke and used under the linked license.

A few other images that escaped posting: