Diesel Powerd Murikan Roadkill

 

I took this picture with my iphone at a truck stop in Utah

It's 2 in the morning and a shape appears on the northern Indiana road in front of me. At 65 mph there are only a couple of seconds to decipher the image and react. It's quickly realized that there are two raccoon on the road, they are moving around, probably picking at some type of food. It's a mystery what they are doing, but in the next second there is a thud thud as the 80,000 pound semi tractor trailer continues on at 65 mph. It seems that racoon should be more intelligent than this. The next several minutes are followed by a lingering melancholy. I've just taken one, maybe two, lives, and senselessly with no premeditation. I've killed directly before, with a 30/30, but I killed intentionally from a tree stand 20 feet up in a tree. I also ate the meat.

As I drive on through the night and contemplate the death of those raccoon, I'm reminded of some things. I begin to ruminate on America, and why I have also unintentionally killed thousands of people.

17 years ago I was on a U.S. Aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Carl Vinson, and planes crashed into the World Trade Centers in N.Y. City. That day changed this country. It changed all of the citizens. It changed me in irrevocable ways, and for different reasons than it changed most. The first Murikan bombs dropped on Afghanistan were from my ship, and I spent a lot of effort directly helping that reality, and I consequently spent even more effort trying to understand why. At the time I was a 21 year old idealist. I should have never enlisted in the military, but I was lost, and wandering, and searching for my own way in the world. I had grown up mostly fatherless, the product of a single mother. That too has gone a long way towards defining who I am now and why I was on that carrier in the first place. Constantly on a quest, searching for something that I defined as the truth. What was the world, and what was I supposed to do with it? I was not interested in money, but money is necessary in society.

I smelled a rat. I smelled a stinkin', no good, putrid, walking dead rat. At the time I couldn't put my finger on it, but I knew that it had something to do with my country, and my navy, and my conscience. Cognitive dissonance grew to lighting and thunder in my own mind. It shook me to insanity, and I ran away from any contribution to those bombs. Consequences be damned! I was 21. That decision has also continued to define me. Shortly after the terrorists attacked we were in Iraq looking for weapons of mass destruction as the military moved in. There were no WMD's, that was a lie, as was the effort in Afghanistan. A lot of evidence points towards the U.S. , at a bare minimum, being complicit towards the demise of the towers. The government at least allowed it to happen, and then used that tragedy they allowed to happen to accomplish a goal. Why is our military still in Afghanistan and Iraq? Nobody in Murika talks about the fact that Murika is still at war, and has been since 9/11 of 2001. If forced to think about it “keeping Murika safe from terrorism” will likely be regurgitated all patriotic and programmed meme like.  Well...it's really not correct to call what Murika is doing "war."  It's actually occupation, domination, and usurpation of formerly independent and autonomous nations at drone, bomb, missile, and gunpoint.   

Petroleum is the reason we have been at war for 17 years. More specifically gasoline and diesel is the reason. Petroleum is a limited resource, and that is an irrefutable fact of geology. It's an irrefutable scientific fact. Read that again, slowly, and for comprehension, and try to have a clue about what it means. Murikans are professional delusionists. I knew that we are completely dependent on petroleum before I took a job as a long haul flatbed trucker. Now I KNOW it. Everyday I burn somewhere between 50 and 100 gallons of diesel. Do you know how many truck drivers there are in Murika doing the same? It's somewhere around 4 million. It is just about impossible to buy anything with money that has not been on a truck at a minimum of once. It's more likely that the finished product you buy has been on 4 or 5 or 10 trucks (in many cases thousands..this would be your average car) and probably a ship and a train before you spend your money on it. In order to buy something that has not been on a truck it just about has to be made by human hands, locally, and from raw materials that have been harvested locally from nature.

Just before I took this job as a trucker I was busy learning how to do just that with bamboo. In fact you could have bought a basket from me, made by me, out of bamboo that I grew, harvested, cured, treated, split, and wove all by hand. You'd have to pay around 2 to 300 dollars for it because said item would have represented a minimum of 25 hours in direct artisan labor on my part. That's not counting the time it took to care for the groves, to harvest the cane, to process it, and then to cure it. That's just counting the time it took me to treat the cane with fire, and then to split the cane with a traditional Japanese bamboo splitting blade, and then to weave it. Next to nobody will pay 300 dollars for an artisan bamboo basket grown and crafted by artisan hands locally when they can go buy a plastic (petroleum) bucket from Lowes for $5. I also spent a number of years training in permaculture design. I made money with bamboo and permaculture, but not enough money to support myself in this world, much less a wife and two children.

Split bamboo next to whole canes.

A bamboo fence for my wife's garden spot

I was involved in Permaculture and bamboo, and both because I was following my bliss. That bliss was to live a natural life. That bliss was to use my hands to create beauty, and to be a good steward to the natural landscapes that sustain us as biological creatures. That bliss was to pay homage to the actual reality that is the natural processes that occur in nature to make things such as the air we breath, the water we drink, and the soil we grow our food in. That bliss was to treat the Earth as a living entity that, along with the sun, imbues and blesses us all with life. That bliss was an idealistic lie in this world. Alas, idealism does not pay any bills.

Weaving a door for the garden spot fence

Delusional bliss in action

A bamboo door

So what does roadkill have to do with Murika and petroleum and war and an idealistic hippie playing with bamboo and digging permaculture holes? I realized that America is this truck that I now drive for money, and those raccoon are the rest of the world. That is exactly how Murika treats the rest of the world, as well as the natural environment. It's just “collateral damage” (a term coined by the Murikan Military Industrial Complex to describe innocent civilian deaths in war) that is unfortunately necessary to keep us all up in the manner we have become accustomed. Just about nothing, with the exception of nature (and air brakes combined with engine compression brakes), can stop an 80,0000 pound truck at 65 mph. Anything that's in the way becomes roadkill...thud thud. Worse than that actually, because at least the scavenger birds can pick at the roadkill, and occasionally some crazy ass re-wilder may come along and take the roadkill home to eat it. 

Those raccoon may as well be the old me sitting in the road weaving my bamboo basket from bamboo grown in my yard, planting trees, and attempting to make my way in this world as a permaculturists specializing in bamboo. Now I'm at the wheel as well. I'm now a willing participant finally made complicit to the Murikan semi that's making a thud thud out of the rest of the planet...kickin' your brown ass and takin' your brown gas! If only the 21 year old me, getting himself kicked out of the navy on account of his idealism, could see me now! If he could see me he would disown me, or kill me before I could get out of control with complacency, apathy, and what he would see as cowardice while kneeling down before the puppet masters of the system for some pellets of comfortably numb conformity.

Ironically I love this job! I wasn't entirely a product of a single mother. My father was in my life, but minimally. I saw him a couple of times a year when I was a little boy. He was a trucker, but that wasn't why I didn't see him, that's ironically what enabled me to see him. I didn't see him because his second wife hated my mother, and she hated me because I was my mother's son. For a number of years he was under her spell (something he now recognizes), and so I rarely saw him. When I did see him it was to go with him over the road in his semi (and his wife had no idea, hence the afore mentioned irony). Such power fathers have over their children!  It's enough power to make them into truck drivers 30 years later on account of a couple of preteen memories!  Well, that, and a large helping of genetics.  

Deep down I love semi trucks and trailers. I'm sure it has a lot to do with the need I have to be a man, and a father, due to a wife and two of my own boys. My father was a trucker.  He was the only template on being a father I've ever had.  When I finally spent time with him it was to the sound of a diesel engine, and to the smell of diesel, and with the allure of the passing road. I love driving a semi, I love the power, and I love the mechanical accomplishment they represent. But if I'm completely honest, some part of me feels that I have finally grown to a man, and I am now providing money for my family. Men are supposed to provide, and in our society that means money. Yet the plague of cognitive dissonance continues to haunt me with it's furious sound of hypocrisy.

To be constantly going somewhere new, and to have everything I need with me, and to mostly be left alone...these are all things that I love about being a trucker. It's very peaceful to be left alone while listening to music, and my thoughts, as the landscape changes in front of me, as I fulfill my husbandly and fatherly requirement to get money. I never know where I will end up for the night to catch a shower and some sleep. Mostly I stay at truck stops, which are the places our society have created for the trucks to stop so that their human pilots may shower, do laundry, eat, and get coffee and cigarettes. There's also rest areas, company terminals, and occasionally a Walmart parking lot or the parking lot of a shipper or consignee. I imagine that I'm sailing a ship on the black bitumen sea, and I'm the captain. I'm also making twice as much money as I've ever made in my life doing this. I'm making twice as much as I made working as a medic on an ambulance after 8 years of service.

You see, permaculture and bamboo were not paying any bills. They were not presenting the promise of any type of stability for my wife and children. As much as I wanted to live in a world that did not exist...a world morally superior to the one we all inhabit, and a world that aught to exist, it was all just delusional thinking. Idealism made pernicious by business as usual. 

If Murika is the truck that splattered the racoon, than the Corporatocracy is at the wheel, and we're all just unique and individual diesel atoms. Murika is also a delusion, at least as it exist in the minds of most Murikans. The truth is that there are no lines on the map of the world any longer. At least not any lines that matter to the Corporatocracy. All of the inhabitants of this planet, both human and non-human, have no value to the corporate machine beyond the value of their contribution to the continuance of BAU. Business As Usual is business as it always has been. Since the rise of the first civilization the world has been dominated by the hierarchy of man. Man has taken by force using both his mind and his body. For a long time there were proper kingdoms which were ruled by kings. The king ruled by controlling the politics and the military of his kingdom. There were many different kingdoms that existed throughout the world of time and place.

One of my conventional landscape business clients had this pesky weed food growing, so I harvested it

Took it home and fed it to my family.  Bamboo shoots have more protein than any other vegetable

Now, for the first time in the known history of man, there is one kingdom that controls the entirety of the planet, and that is the Corporatocracy which has a capitol in Murika (not to be confused with capital...wait). It has control of the technology we use everyday. It controls the global military as well as the politics that control the global military. It controls all of the people of this world, and those that it does not control it kills wantonly and with no conscience. No one can stop this final rule of the Corporatocracy. The only things that have the potential to stop it are natural disaster and petroleum depletion. This is the reality that greed has formulated. The Corporatocracy's primary objective is profit for the share holders. All of the decisions that are made are made to keep those at the top at the top. They are at the top of a system that works for them, and they will continue perpetuating that system so long as they can because they are greedy and psychopathic.

What about the rest of us? Are we complicit in this unnatural disaster? We all contribute because we all need money to survive. We need money to buy food, shelter, clothing, education, healthcare, safety, stability, comfort, security, entertainment, convenience, and the electronic gadgets we need to participate in SwampBook, KnitTwitter, and all of the rest of the anti-social narcissism that currently defines the majority of the sleep walking wake walkers. There is no escaping the global matrix that controls the planet. At least there is no escape where you succeed and are still left breathing and above ground. To escape in reality, and to do so without contributing to BAU, would have to mean doing so without money. How many people do you know that are living without money? If you spend money then you are spending it on goods and services that are only possible due to this diesel powered Murika. This diesel powered Murika is only possible due to our military and the petroleum our military protects and enables. If you aren't contributing than you'll likely be turned roadkill by the semi trucks that make the American way of life possible.

The last bamboo basket I made before becoming a Trucker

Plutocracy

I don't understand how they get away with it.  That is the mystery to me.  All of the power should be with the people as we have the numbers, but it's not, and seemingly it never has been, as the documentary Plutocracy (the film at the bottom of this blog post) attests to. I highly recommend that you find the time to watch this film.  There is a second part, but unfortunately the audio has been removed due to a copyright infringement.  How convenient is that!  

The people give the power to the church by going to it and believing in it, and that's the level just below the 1%.  Below that is the military which is formed from the proletariat class, so the force that protects and ensures the whole system is kept safe by the sons and daughters of the people. 

The rentier class doesn't do anything but profit off of the backs of the people as this depiction shows.  It seems they could easily be overtaken by the people.  I guess that happens by striking, which I never really understood until watching Plutocracy.  Striking and boycotting are really the only meaningful actions the proletariat can take.  Protesting has no effect any longer.  It used to raise awareness back before Facebook cast it's narcissistic net over the masses.  TPTB could give two farts whether we protest or not as is obvious by OWS and Standing Rock.

Organizing a massive strike is a Herculean task to be sure.  The only security the people have are their wages, so it has to be bad enough for the fear of no wages to be less than the quality of life that the wages provide.  Over the years the 1% have perfected the means by which they control the masses.  Control of the food via industrial agriculture with terminator seeds and GMO's is probably the most important step by which they control.  They made food easy.  They made it where the people did not have to concern themselves with getting enough food, or where the food comes from.  It's not good healthy food, but it's cheap and it taste good. 

Next is private property which is what makes money so necessary.  You have to have a place to live...a place to lay your head and stay warm and sheltered.  If all of the land is private property where you have to have permission to be there, than there is nowhere for you to live your life without money.  That's ultimately where they get control of the whole thing, money!  This allows the Rentier class to profit off of the peoples backs. 

With control of the food and the money what are the people to do?  Now the people have no idea about food.  To the majority it's something that comes wrapped in petroleum at the big box store, or it's something that they drive their cars through a fast food fry pit line to acquire.  Where do the big box stores get the food?  It comes from the trucks of course.  Where do the trucks get the food?  From the food factory of course.  Where does the food factory get the food?  What do you mean?  They get the food from the food gettin' place...and that's if the fools even think that far about it, which they mostly don't.  The food just comes from the grocery store and that is all the thinking that is done about it. 

What is it that keeps us enslaved to the system they have put into place?  Is it really the ignorance and gullibility of the masses?  If you can get past the ignorance and gullibility somehow, by educating, then I suppose the next edifice is fear itself.  Or maybe a lack of imagination combined with a sense of powerlessness.  The more stupid the people become the easier it is for them to control us, and nothing is more representative of this process than Trumpty Dumpty as POTUS.  This is straight out of the film Idiocracy.   

The truth is that the people have been dumbed down to the point where they think Trump has their back.  At least a sizeable portion of the people.  The people are satiated by food chemicals, corn syrup, alcohol, nicotine, netflix, iphones, and finally fukitol. 

In the end, and there is an end to this, the 1% have built a house of cards.  We have a global 1% now, and they can all keep the people in check via the system they have built.  The huge global Corporate system that is the true plutocracy has a weakness.  Fossil fuels are that weakness!  The Corporatocracy is dependent on fossil fuels to keep the house of cards propped up.  At some point, on the back side of Hubbert's curve, there will be enough austerity for the masses that a critical mass will be reached.  There will be a tipping point, and I think that's when we will know that the game is over. 

It will be OWS times 10, only it will not be peaceful.  When there is enough austerity in America there will be nothing that can stop the anger of the proletariat.  Unfortunately they do not understand that fossil fuels are the ultimate reason why their lives have changed.  What will the 1% do when the system begins breaking under the weight of low EROEI energy?  By all measures we are at that point now, but as I have mentioned they are keeping it's dead lifeless body propped up with endless digibit subsidies.  That trick has a shelf life. 

I'm certain the 1% has a plan for the breaking point.  I don't buy that they have no idea about the weakness that's built into their system.  I can buy that the politicians mostly might not know due to ignorance, but the upper echelons are informed.  Why they aren't trying to curtail the whole thing with renewables is a mystery to me, but I'm sure there is a reason for it.  It's likely because they know that there is no way that renewables can be anything more than a band-aid.  That's why I'm starting to believe that their plan is for a massive reduction in population.  Reduce the world population by 5 billion and there's enough fossil fuels to keep this whole shootin' match going until Nibiriu comes or the Sun burns out. 

Ten Minutes Hate

It seems to me that we’ve arrived at a moment in our history as a country where certain things are no longer being kept hidden in the closet of our collective delusions.  The light of clarity is shinning brightly on our political process.  Thanks to Donald Trump it should now be clear to any American still capable of simple thought processes that something has gone terribly wrong with our country, and especially with political discourse.  To call what is happening during the presidential debates anything resembling a debate is to participate in the worst kind of Newspeak imaginable.  What does penis size have to do with the appropriateness of a presidential candidate?  On the flip side, it appears that the lack of a penis also apparently makes you a good contender.  That is to say that the two choices it appears we will have for our next POTUS think that their genitals qualify them to lead the global death circus that we have become. Sadly it seems they are correct in their simple analysis. 

Donald Trump, Captain “you’re fired while I go bankrupt for the fifth time” is a serious presidential contender?  Let’s keep in mind that his fifth bankruptcy will likely occur while he’s the damn president of our country.  He’s going to run this country like a business, which I’ll admit is appropriate due to the fact that it is a business that’s run by the Corporatocracy.  The fact that it’s appropriate to think of the president as a business man is telling in and of itself.  Running the greatest country in the world as a business was not what the founding fathers had in mind.  I’d really like to know what Thomas Jefferson or Pain would have to say about Donald Trump (or Hillary…which I’ll get to next) as president.  I’ll admit that being a good business man definitely adds to the portfolio of a good presidential candidate, but there are more skills necessary than just your ability to make money (or balance a budget).  In Trumps case, he’s clearly not a good business man, and I’ll submit his four bankruptcies as evidence.  What does that leave by way of qualification for Trump as POTUS?  That’s right, his penis size, well that and his porn star trophy wife.  He’s going to build a wall around the United States and kick all of the brown people out?  Nobody will have health care under Trump except for the 1%.  Within weeks he’ll piss somebody like Putin off and we’ll be facing another nuclear holocaust with Russia.  I suppose the one good thing about Trump is that he’s outing the dark, displaced, disgruntled, bigoted, and xenophobic American underbelly.  Trump supporters seem exceptionally odious to me.  As horrible as it is to admit, Trump is the perfect president for this time in the history of our country.  At least everything will be out in the open.  Trump represents what the United States has truly become.  We’re a narcissistic and greedy consumer society that cares for nothing but our own interest, and the entire world knows it.  Well, the entire world minus ourselves because Americans seem to have no idea.  

Melania Trump, the next first lady? 

What about Hillary?  Well, have we all forgotten about what her husband did while he was president?  I have not forgotten.  “I did not have sexual relations with that women.”  That’s right, Clinton got his knob slobbed in the oval office by an intern, Monica Lewenski.  Not that this was an exceptionally horrible thing, or even close to the worst thing Clinton did to our country.  I’ll submit NAFTA for the worst thing he did.  The North American Fair Trade Agreement was anything but fair, but then the political process is all about double think and Newspeak, which is to say that the opposite of what is said is actually the truth.  “Love is Hate,” and “freedom is slavery” and whatnot.  Granted, her husband did these things, but does that exonerate her?  Maybe we can exonerate her from these things, but the fact remains that our president will be the first first lady as president to have been a first lady while her presidential husband got a televised blow job in the oval office.  Again, I suppose the truth is that this makes her more than fitting to be the next president.  That way we can all point to the great first female president with pride, and we can say to the world “she stood proud and tall while adulterous Bill got his pole hummed on.”  Seriously, this is okay America?  

Now, keep in mind that this is all happening a midst one of the best presidential candidates we’ve had in a long time.  Bernie Sanders would make an excellent president (not that he’s got a chance in hell).  He want’s universal healthcare, a decent minimum wage, and he’d finally legalize cannabis (which is pretty much a cure for all of our health and economic problems).  However, I’d say he’s worth voting for just to get rid of Wealthcare.  We’re the only industrialized nation in the world that does not have universal healthcare.  Why do you think that is?  Further, why do you think the rest of the industrialized world has universal healthcare?  Is it because it’s such a bad idea?  If so, it seems there would be another industrialized country without it.  We don’t have universal healthcare because “healthcare” in our country is about making money, not about caring for people.  I’m more than qualified with my opinion on this matter having worked as a medic for 8 years in our wealthcare system.  I saw the change that happened around about 2009 that is epitomized in our switch from “patients” to “customers.”  Why would somebody about to die in the back of an ambulance be a customer?  I’ll tell you why, because of the revenue that said customer brings in.  The pharmaceutical companies write the textbooks that our doctors study in medical school.  Why is that?  Well, I’ll tell you money, money, and money is why. 

Cannabinoids cure cancer and can be grown next to your dandelions (pending you stop poisoning them with biocides to keep your lawn “weed” free).   Legalizing marijuana would mean the cure for cancer could be grown in your lawn.  Do you know how much money goes into the “cure” for cancer?  The cure being a strategy of poisoning the entire human body in the hopes that the cancer dies before you do, along with massive doses of DNA destroying radiation.  When I was a nuclear engineer on an aircraft carrier I had to wear a Thermo Luminescent Dosimeter to make sure that I did not get more than 5 rem of exposure per year.  Why?  Because too much radiation kills you.  The last thing the powers that be want is to allow us to cure ourselves with weeds.  There is no money in the cure.

As far as the decent minimum wages goes…well that one is beyond a pipe dream (and not the pipe you use for smoking cannabis).  All raising the minimum wage would do would be to ensure that small business owners (like myself) would never be able to stay solvent.  Within a year of raising the minimum wage to 15 dollars there would be no small businesses left.  It’s hard enough to stay solvent as a business and I have no employees.  It’s just me running my business as an owner operator.  I can’t even afford to pay somebody $10 per hour right now.  Still, Bernie’s idea is at least morally correct.  I agree that somebody working 40 hours per week should be able to at least pay all of their bills without using credit cards.  Why is it that during this election we have two of the worst presidential candidates imaginable along with one that actually makes a lot of sense but has no chance of becoming president?  It sort of makes me angry.  It’s as if they are rubbing it in, and I suppose it’s as if because it is. 

You want to know the truth about all of this?  The truth is that we have a Corporatocracy that runs the majority of the world.  That is, we have multi-national corporations who recognize no lines on a map, no country, and who care about nothing but profit to ensure excessive fiscal bonuses for the 1%.  They will cut the last tree down and continue to poison the only planet that we have, and nothing is going to stop them.  None of this is news, or at least it shouldn’t be.  Our world is in a bad way right now, and it is the world that sustains us.  We have become digitalized automatons contented by Facebook and entertaining violence.  Contented by fukitol, alcohol, factory slave made gidgets, and monoculture.  We are a monoculture of everything.  Our medicine, our food, our society, it’s become a monoculture, or as I like to call it an “anti-culture.”  Culture is mostly about diversity, which is also mostly what nature is about.  The only diversity we have is a man made chemical diversity along with millions of entertainment options on our devices.  We can chose between a plethora of life killing chemicals for our food and our medicine.  Read the ingredients to any packaged food you can buy at a big box store.  I promise of the 50 or so words you read none will be recognized as food.  Real food mostly has one ingredient.  An apple for instance, it’s just an apple, which is food.  A list of man made and mostly petroleum chemicals in a petroleum bag is not food. 

Here we are, on the precipice of completely destroying our biosphere and most of the life in it.  Here we are, and Trump or Hillary will be our next president.  It doesn’t matter what your opinion is where pertains to the next global corporate leader.  What we will have in 2017, with our next president, will be more of the same program.  That program is more poison for us and more money for them.  That program is unsustainable for us and for them.  It’s my opinion that the only hope we have can be found in the nature we have left.  Nature is what sustains us, not the president, or lines on a map.  My country is the human race, and our politics have become a bread and circus meant to distract us and entertain us.  The truth is that Trump and Hillary are destroying our planet, and we are letting them.  I have little hope to offer.  This is the truth, and it’s not kind, but it is, and the only hope we have is that we begin looking at it for what it is and not for what we would like it to be.  In so doing, the seed for positive and life supporting change can be found.  If we can collectively agree that business as usual is killing us than maybe we can agree that we should change it.  That is our only hope, and it’s the only chance of changing the horror represented by our presidential candidates.  I hope that Bernie can win because I want to believe we can change, but I happen to have no faith in the political process.  We might as well start pledging allegiance to the Corporatocracy…I’ll see you at the ten minutes hate. 

Donald Trump Made Claims About His Penis Size... by wochit