Elites, Fires, David Lynch Died, DEI in Indiana, Indiana Writers Programs, The Bloomington Book Festival

This was drafted early yesterday and I forgot to post it.

KH told me this when I called him with my medical update, it was both a shock and not. Lynch was closing on 80, after all. Still, the world with him in it seemed a whole lot more interesting. So far, all I have read about him since the news came to me was from Lincoln Michel. I am not sure many will top what he writes in Fix Your Hearts or Die!: A Short Ode to David Lynch (RIP).

 Indiana Author Awards announced its 2025 Speaker Program and Writer's Workshops. This led me to the website for The Bloomington Book Festival. Who knew there was such a thing? Well, probably not many, since 2024 was its first year.

What is merit?

That question came to me from reading Indiana pastors decry governor's shift from DEI to MEI. Then more questions follow:

• If merit hides racism, then is it really merit? 
• If DEI, means looking at the merits of minorities, then what is wrong with the concept? 
• Do DEI's opponents find no merit in minority businesses, and, if so, what merit do they lack?

Friday was a slipping-sliding kind of day. The back felt fine, but I felt off. Whether the neighbors have again raised the temperature on the furnace, or it was a leftover feeling from the muscle relaxer, is open to discussion. I am waking up in a pool of sweat. Work went quickly, and so did the group therapy. However, I was in such a hurry to get the bus, that I left my notebook at work. No notes for yesterday's session. It was a review of stuff already spewed forth. But I did not feel all that peppy. I got a few groceries, omitted going to the bank, skipped getting the lumbar x-ray, and headed home. I did call the federal public defender's office without getting any satisfaction - in fact, my reaction was outright splenetic. I wanted to do a separate post on that, but my lassitude overwhelmed my spleen. Instead, I read a little of my emails, wrote a different post, crashed Edge, and waited for a call from MW. When that did not come, I napped from 5 to 7. After doing the dishes, and a little cleaning, I did some reading for "Chasing Ashes". I also started watching Snowpiercer on Netflix. By 10:30, I had enough of that. Also, Edge kept crashing. I had a continuing dream that woke me three times, the last just before the alarm today.

That brings me to now.

There is a ceasefire in Gaza. That is good.

We stand on the verge of Donald J. Trump having the power to disrupt the world.  A bad-tempered toddler having the power to destroy us.

From Obama to Justin Trudeau, how the liberal world order crumbled

Across the West, other right-wing populists — from Giorgia Meloni to Marine Le Pen to Nigel Farage — are either in power or surging. The elemental forces that were supposed to have vanished at the end of the Cold War — illiberalism, protectionism, spheres of influence, autocracy, territorial revisionism — have all reasserted themselves. There are more conflicts across the globe today than at any time since 1945.

On Thursday morning, I watched David Lammy give a speech in Whitehall that acknowledged this new reality. “When will things get back to normal?” the foreign secretary asked rhetorically. “My answer is that they will not.”

Is it that the people need entertainment so much that they mistake politics for sport.

Something was said in yesterday's group, just before opening, that I did not hear all of and perhaps not clearly, but it was to the effect that we did not know what was coming, and we'd just have to wait and see and learn then what we've got.

And I thought, what you might get is dead. I think I know why older voters went for Biden - we grew up with the Vietnam War in our faces. I remember Walter Cronkite giving the daily death totals for us and for the enemy on the evening news. Iraq and Afghanistan were fought by volunteer armies, and they were distant from our minds. No one fled to Canada to avoid the draft because there was no threat of being involuntarily sent to die in an unpopular war.

No more Soviet Union, no more talk of nuclear winters. Doctor Strangelove and Failsafe are unknown to the younger generations. Few are those scared of Trump having a nuclear arsenal at his disposal. Maybe the younger generation thinks he is just joking because internet trolling is their reality. Maybe they want the destruction - that it is better to go out in a nuclear fireball than wait for the slow extinction of global warming.

And you people are scared of me? 

Then, too, maybe we thought too highly of our fellow human beings. I remember the days when my depression ruled me, and my thoughts were consumed by how rancid my fellow human beings were, and an escape was needed from the ugliness of the universe filled with stupid, mean-spirited people. After my breakdown in 2010, after realizing I might survive prison, I sought out ways to better cope with the universe and to right the distortions of my depression. I thought I had done so through my writing and joining the Orthodox Church, and by deciding that I would do the opposite of what I had once done - including my ways of thinking. This morning, after a night of bad dreams, is it possible that my diseased brain was right about humanity and my Zoloft-fortified brain is wrong?

At least I can remain my contrarian self by refusing to go back.

There was also some chatter yesterday at the start of the group therapy about the Los Angeles fires. No one else seemed to know that Los Angeles is an unnatural city, that the place was once a desert. I guess they never saw Chinatown. An op/ed from The Guardian shows how LA's fires should warn all of us: What is happening in Los Angeles is our future.

Such ignorance is not likely to go away - so long as we can afford it

‘It’s going to be rough’: what Trump’s response to LA fires portends for future climate disasters

“Climate change is adding fuel to the fire and it is absolutely outpacing our ability to adapt in certain areas,” said John Abatzoglou, a climatologist at the University of California, Merced.

Yet Trump’s focus during the fires has been to assail the Democratic leadership of California and its stricken largest city, baselessly claiming the habitat protection of an “essentially worthless fish” stopped water flowing to LA as overwhelmed fire hydrants ran dry.

***

“The LA county fire department was prepared for one or two major brush fires, but not four,” said Anthony Marrone, chief of the department, who added that nothing that he chose to do differently would have altered the outcome.

“No firefighting system in the world based on fire hydrants can produce enough water to put out fires at this scale, it’s a civil engineering impossibility,” said Jesse Keenan, an expert in climate adaptation at Tulane University.

‘Criminally reckless’: why LA’s urban sprawl made wildfires inevitable – and how it should rebuild 

This disaster has been on the cards for decades. In his 1995 essay, The Case for Letting Malibu Burn, the late activist and urban theorist Mike Davis charted how generations of unbridled residential construction in the fire-prone hills had created the perfect conditions for a firestorm. He railed against the “rampant uncontrolled proliferation of firebelt suburbs” which saw timber-framed homes “scattered like so much kindling across isolated hilltops and ridges”. The forests of southern California are supposed to burn as part of their natural cycle, he argued, and it was criminally reckless of the authorities not only to allow but actively incentivise development in such fire-prone areas.

***

In LA, there is already pressure to rebuild as quickly as possible, with mayor Karen Bass issuing an executive order this week to “clear away red tape”. But, as the former head of the federal emergency management agency, Craig Fugate, has said: “A house that gets destroyed is not an affordable home.” It’s not a sustainable one either. The city needs greater urban density, not more firebelt bungalows. Ironically, it might be the inability of the insurance industry to pay up that finally forces LA to change.

I read and hear so much about elites. They get the blame for what is going on. I have no idea who these elites are. We do not have an aristocracy handed by birth. Are the elites the college-educated? Are they the rich? If so, two questions follow.

• Are they the graduates of Ivy League colleges?
• Are they the graduates of any college?
• Why vote for the political party dominated by the billionaire class - the Republicans?

Donald J. Trump is a college graduate, he even went to an Ivy League school, for all he talks like a drunk on a barstool at closing time:

Donald John Trump does indeed have a college degree. He earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania in 1968. However, the university has not been very forthcoming about his time there.

Prior to attending the University of Pennsylvania, Trump spent two years at Fordham University, where his grades were described as “respectable.”

Does Trump Have A College Degree? Fact-checking Trump’s Education History

Wasn't a key theme of conservatism that individuals are responsible for themselves? That was their response, discounting societal causes for crime and poverty.

If so, why are conservatives now blaming the elites?  It would seem worthwhile asking why the complainants did not further their own educations, which would have improved their economic positions. Laziness is no excuse. The lack of ambition would, I think, encourage discretion rather than discontent. Instead, we get brickbats thrown at those who stood up and took their future into their own hands. Those who made the effort strike fear into those who never tried. Odd. Such an anti-American way of thinking.

And for all my education, I never thought of myself an elite. 

And if the elites are the political class, then why did those decrying the elite not run for office, or otherwise get involved with their favorite political party? Again, those who made the effort strike fear into those who never tried.

How many of those using the "elite" as a whipping boy, are themselves college-educated and politically engaged? 

I suspect many, which may point to the real identity of the "elite". The "elite" are the bogeyman, meant to scare the ignorant, the stupid, the perpetually resentful too lazy to take the direction of lives into their own hands into a political culture that soothes their fears and justifies their resentments.

And I have spent all too much time on writing this piece. Too much to do today while I feel capable of action.

One last thing, another stray thought coming from group therapy, came from what the counselor said about self-isolating. I find myself liking my solitude, but I do not think of myself as isolated. Yes, there is work and the people there. But it is more than that - Joel C. wrote me last night, I am in communication with others. I feel no more isolated than Thoreau felt on Walden Pond. I certainly do not want the crazies coming to visit. The work I have to do here with my writing is done alone, but I do not feel physically isolated. Age does make me feel isolated. I think that is readily apparent from what I write about politics. My solution to the feeling of any such isolation is to reach out and try to understand, rather than slamming the door and ignoring what feels foreign.

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