Rain & Politics
Jun. 1st, 2025 08:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraExcept that it never did stop raining yesterday.
All day long, I registered the raindrops hitting the mud puddles in Icky's garden. The raindrops slowed down in the afternoon. But they did not stop.
Me being me, I castigated myself: If you weren't such a wimp, you'd go out tromping in this!!! What's a little water???
But, no. I may not have much sense, but I do have enough sense to come in out of the rain.
This morning, the sun is herding puffy, pastel clouds across a blue sky, though it is extremely soggy. Good day for gardening.
###
I was diligent yesterday. Got a lot of Remuneration done and mostly staved off the feelings of worthlessness and impending doom that accompany every day without full-spectrum sunlight for me.
My knee is almost back to normal. So, since I am the pivot around which the Universe revolves, it's very clear to me that the Universe made it rain to enforce another of rest & recuperation for my knee.
###
The world at large continues to horrify. Ukraine. Gaza. All those people dying. Wars—with the possible exceptions of World War II & the Vietnamese annihilation of the Khmer Rouge in 1979 — are beyond senseless. Fifty years after every war that's ever been fought, enemies are allies again, boundaries have been renegotiated by treaties, trade is brisk. So what exactly is the point? Is the blind territorial instinct some sort of failsafe on Mother Nature's part to periodically kill off millions of potential sperm donors and keep the global population down?
###
In the here & now of Trump's America, Trump is a fulminating piece of shit, of course, but his economic policies are pretty easy to understand if you see them as a game of cost-shifting: Trump promised to cut individual taxes, and cut individual taxes he shall (probably), but, of course, the U.S. needs that money. So, now instead of extorting it from individual citizens via an IRS 1040 form, he is extorting it from individual consumers via specialized excise taxes (i.e. tariffs).
One could make a strong argument, in fact, that that second way of funding the government is actually fairer since the individual has no choice over whether or not they pay income taxes, but they do have a choice over whether or not they buy a made-in-China washing machine, or a new Hyundai, or an avocado at the supermarket.
And actually, I support Trump's plan to shift millions in funding for colleges & universities to trade schools.
Some years ago, I had a conversation with a beautiful chemistry teacher in the Detroit area. She told me bluntly that the reason why so many high schools had shifted their curricula to college prep was not because their administrations had become more aspirational about student intelligence. No! It's because the college prep curriculum is significantly cheaper than shop classes and what they used to term "home economics."
Given the dismal reality of massive student debt that has turned vast numbers of college graduates into indentured servants and the fact that AI is rapidly replacing all those entry-level, white-collar jobs (that barely pay $45,000 a year with no health insurance) college prepared these poor babies for, I'd say the higher education system in the U.S. is pretty much a scam these days. It needs gutting.
###
Enough blather! Off to the garden.
All day long, I registered the raindrops hitting the mud puddles in Icky's garden. The raindrops slowed down in the afternoon. But they did not stop.
Me being me, I castigated myself: If you weren't such a wimp, you'd go out tromping in this!!! What's a little water???
But, no. I may not have much sense, but I do have enough sense to come in out of the rain.
This morning, the sun is herding puffy, pastel clouds across a blue sky, though it is extremely soggy. Good day for gardening.
###
I was diligent yesterday. Got a lot of Remuneration done and mostly staved off the feelings of worthlessness and impending doom that accompany every day without full-spectrum sunlight for me.
My knee is almost back to normal. So, since I am the pivot around which the Universe revolves, it's very clear to me that the Universe made it rain to enforce another of rest & recuperation for my knee.
###
The world at large continues to horrify. Ukraine. Gaza. All those people dying. Wars—with the possible exceptions of World War II & the Vietnamese annihilation of the Khmer Rouge in 1979 — are beyond senseless. Fifty years after every war that's ever been fought, enemies are allies again, boundaries have been renegotiated by treaties, trade is brisk. So what exactly is the point? Is the blind territorial instinct some sort of failsafe on Mother Nature's part to periodically kill off millions of potential sperm donors and keep the global population down?
###
In the here & now of Trump's America, Trump is a fulminating piece of shit, of course, but his economic policies are pretty easy to understand if you see them as a game of cost-shifting: Trump promised to cut individual taxes, and cut individual taxes he shall (probably), but, of course, the U.S. needs that money. So, now instead of extorting it from individual citizens via an IRS 1040 form, he is extorting it from individual consumers via specialized excise taxes (i.e. tariffs).
One could make a strong argument, in fact, that that second way of funding the government is actually fairer since the individual has no choice over whether or not they pay income taxes, but they do have a choice over whether or not they buy a made-in-China washing machine, or a new Hyundai, or an avocado at the supermarket.
And actually, I support Trump's plan to shift millions in funding for colleges & universities to trade schools.
Some years ago, I had a conversation with a beautiful chemistry teacher in the Detroit area. She told me bluntly that the reason why so many high schools had shifted their curricula to college prep was not because their administrations had become more aspirational about student intelligence. No! It's because the college prep curriculum is significantly cheaper than shop classes and what they used to term "home economics."
Given the dismal reality of massive student debt that has turned vast numbers of college graduates into indentured servants and the fact that AI is rapidly replacing all those entry-level, white-collar jobs (that barely pay $45,000 a year with no health insurance) college prepared these poor babies for, I'd say the higher education system in the U.S. is pretty much a scam these days. It needs gutting.
###
Enough blather! Off to the garden.
