Adaptive Curmudgeon

Why was I not informed of this video?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=8&v=ZjQakLzlPfs

Hat tip to Bayou Renaissance Man who linked the video. My day is clearly improved now that I’ve seen “running of the squirrels”.

The weather sucks as a brutal winter fades into floods and mud. I also made a rookie mistake.

I needed to get my trailer back “in service” so I hooked a chain to it and dragged it out of the icebank where it was stuck. I maneuvered (is my spell check correct with this word?) it to my garage and repacked the bearings; in the rain and mud outside the door (and got filthy doing it). Then I  drove the truck onto the lawn to ditch the trailer out of the way so I could make a trip sans trailer. No biggie.

Twelve hours later I was back home and needed to finally load the trailer. I backed up, hitched, and SQUISH… the whole truck sank. It was precipitous and (to my embarrassment) unexpected. The photo doesn’t look like much but it went to the axle in the front and nearly so in the back. The sod was total mush… barely supported my weight. I had zero traction. You can get very stuck without the theatrics of a half acre mudpit.

Rookie mistake. We’ve all been there.

I could’ve fought nature but instead I bailed. I left it there (hoping it wouldn’t sink any further) and called it a day. I drank three beers, got a good night’s sleep, and was out there before dawn.

The soil was semi frozen. It could have gone either way; easy drive out or hours of chains and shovels. Lucky for me it just barely held. I rocked back and forth and drove out. Whew!

You’re never too experienced to re-learn old lessons about thawing mud.

This is why my yard always looks like shit.

I was lighting a controlled burn in my back lot when it began to snow. Perfect timing! I wanted to reduce the volume of a pile of limbs and brush without any drama. A fire “escaping” is drama (and the reason why don’t “play with fire” conflicts with the excellent utility of fire as a management tool). Snow eliminated even the tiniest hint of a shadow of risk.

I’d trudged through knee deep show to get there and the perimeter of the fire was a good foot deep for 100′ in all directions. Even without the cooperating snowfall (the weather report was right!), I’m pretty sure it would contain a nuclear meltdown, much less a brushpile with 9′ flame lengths at its peak.

It was fast and simple. A few hours sitting in a lawn chair (in snow so deep that the butt of the chair was touching snow) and that was that. Unlike a summer fire that’ll burn everything to ash, edge to edge, this one consumed most of the light fuels and the pile’s core but left me with a snow-covered donut of old logs and such. Fine with me. Someday, when I have time, I’ll shove it all into the center. As the summer progresses, bits and pieces of fallen trees and whatnot will get tossed on. Ideally, next winter the cycle will repeat and I’ll have yet another drama free burn. It’s amazing how much random shit (biomass) accumulates at a homestead in a year.

After that, the next task was to run to the vet and get meds for my dog. My companion, OPSEC enforcer, and blog editor is creaky these days. I hover over it like a helicopter parent. Elderdog is fully retired; dog-emeritus. I lavish attention on it because the clock is ticking. The dog has no idea why it’s the center of attention but relishes it. It also has no idea why I keep opening a rattling bottle and stuffing something in twice daily treats. But it sure loves the treats!

Our veterinary is a large animal vet that does a sideline in small animals. (My huge dog is “small” only compared to cattle.) There’s one thing you need to know about agricultural veterinarians; they haven’t got time for bullshit. They are used to vaccinating 50 cows with an assembly line mentality that would make Henry Ford smile. Picture the “soup Nazi” and you’re getting the idea. No time to talk, when there’s shit to do. She is good but as prickly as a cactus.

“Hi this is Curmudgeon, I need dog meds.”

“Fine, I’ve got ‘em in stock.”

“I’ll come by and pick ‘em up right now.”

“If you do, my husband will punch you in the head.”

So, that was a surprise. Folks, you’re a smart crowd, can you guess what the hell that was about? I was baffled. The dog can go an afternoon without drugs, so I compromised:

“OK. Tomorrow then?” I was thinking I would pick them up around lunchtime.

“Early. Don’t be late.”

This too was a surprise. The veterinarian just leaves the drugs on the counter; you walk in, pick up your drugs (among the several that are set out), cut a check, and leave the check behind. I pick up dog medication roughly once a month and I don’t think I’ve seen her in person for at least a year. What the hell was this “show up early” stuff?

Prickly country people sometimes take a little chatting to get to the heart of the matter. What it boiled down to was that their driveway was a sea of mud. Her husband had just dragged the driveway flat with his old tractor. So, if I showed up and drove my truck to their house (which is also the veterinarian’s office) I would chew the hell out of the driveway. I had to arrive in the morning, when the mud would be frozen. I’m glad she explained that because I had no intention of showing up until lunch at which time her driveway, like mine, would be goo.

The next morning, I was there at the crack of dawn. The driveway is very long, and not particularly well engineered. It was also gorgeous; recently dragged flat like a tabletop! I gingerly drove down the driveway, which was solid as only ice can be. It was perfect until I got to the end where it went up a slight hill. Right there, the drainage was awful, and there was too much water for the whole thing to freeze up.

I felt my front tires sink deep into mud the consistency of oatmeal. There were no other options. I engaged 4×4 and floored it. I barely made it.

I got to the veterinarian’s office having left 100-foot rooster tail of flying mud and tire ruts somewhere between nine and 12 inches deep. I was terrified! There are only so many skilled laborers where I live. The veterinarian knows her shit, it would not do to piss her off.

Luckily, no one was home! I grabbed the meds I needed, cut a check, and practically ran to get back in my truck before I was seen.

Too late! The veterinarian was nowhere to be found but her husband was there. Shit!

This is where the story takes a twist. The veterinarian is a grumpy individual. It turns out her husband, who I had never met, is the sweetest old farmer in the world. Wow!

He had come out to make sure I made it up the muddy path. I presume he is retired, because he had all the time of the world to talk. He chatted my ear off about road drainage, his old tractor, how we set the drag chains on his tractor, the weather, hunting prospects for this fall, traction on various kinds of trucks, and (oddly) the price of propane. I was worried I would piss him off by wrecking his driveway but I think he was delighted to have the opportunity to drag it flat again.

Go figure.

Back at my house, the sun had come up. Our driveway had turned from ice to sludge. That’s why God made 4×4. Gleefully, I tore ruts clear down the whole thing. Why not? It’s my driveway and I’ll nuke it if I want to. A few months from now I’ll drag it flat if/when I can start my tractor.

It occurs to me that folks may not realize the situation with rural driveways. Don’t think of a suburban driveway that’s paved, sloped, and goes 50 feet from a garage door to a paved road. Think of ill funded privately-owned roads. They’re, randomly engineered, dirt tracks that go anywhere from a hundred yards to a half mile through God knows where. Most were built entirely based on where the bulldozer went when somebody decided to build a house several decades ago. Many are based on where it was convenient to ride a horse and wagon a century ago. It’s not unusual to see them veer around rocks that are too big to move by hand, or zig zag around a tree that the owner preserved or a stump from a tree that died 30 years ago. A few driveways are beautifully sloped, have lots of gravel, and excellent drainage but those are rare. The veterinarian’s house is brand new but her driveway is just clay from where someone scraped the topsoil off last year when they threw up the house. In fact, parts of it are slightly below grade… making it a clay bottomed ditch. It’s also shaded by trees so, it won’t dry out for months. That’s probably why she married a nice gentleman with a running if rusty 1960’s era tractor.

After I got home it started to snow again. Mrs. Curmudgeon was livid. Glaring out the window as if to vaporize each snowflake with a ray of hatred. I get it. We’re all tired of winter. I gave my dog a pill and ran for cover.

And that’s the phenology report as winter grudgingly yields to mud season.

[Today I have a special treat, MaxDamage kindly supplied a guest post! I’m a pics or it didn’t happen fellow so he also provided a gorgeous photo! Here’s the background:

During the (still ebbing) winter of doom I whined I was a losing the battle. Keeping my driveway open had turned from holding the line, to a tactical retreat, and then into a rout. (I didn’t blog the half of my travails!) I embrace “two is one and one is none” but ran out of options as one machine after another gave out.

My first and favorite tool is a sweet little 1944 Ford 2N. These plucky little antiques are great snow movers in moderate situations. Alas, mine is owned by a mechanically inept chimp. It never runs.

Plan B is my old ATV. It worked it’s heart out until the transfer case failed. Having bravely fallen in battle, it earned a place of honor in the garage. It remains on the disabled list but will be repaired this summer.

Plan C was to throw money at the problem. Hiring a snowplow guy always leads to drama and this year’s effort was practically a Greek Tragedy. The guy I hired had better equipment than most but it didn’t help. He got curb stomped by bad luck the likes of which would make a blues player cry. If you’re think life is handing you lemons, you should talk our plow guy; he got his lemons delivered rectally.

I flailed about with plan D (a snowblower, shovels, an ice fishing sled, and eventually patient resignation) while someone mentioned I should restart my Ford. I didn’t bother. Even when the little Ford is running, it lacks a front blade. My back blade can only handle a few inches of snow before the tractor wheels (which are in the snow instead of the plowed area) get deep and start spinning.

This is when MaxDamage sent me a post about his front blade. It’s mounted on a Ferguson T20 (a mechanically identical twin to my Ford 2N). It’s the manliest, ugliest, front plow that welding and testosterone can produce. A true Mad Max level creation of scrap metal and experimentation! It’s a sight to behold. As soon as I saw the photo I asked for a guest post.

Please give a warm welcome to MaxDamage!]

Of Shops, Men of Iron, Machines of Steel, By MaxDamage:

There was a time, not so long ago, when men made things. We worked with our hands, we spent the days in factories and fields and the evenings repairing, building, tinkering. We had more time than money, entertainment was saved for the weekend, and we took pride in what we created.

Unless it was the Gremlin. I’m not certain anybody ever had any pride regarding the Gremlin. [Editor’s note. No living being ever had pride in a Gremlin. This is a scientific fact. Today is a tractor day! Let us speak no more of the mechanical disaster that is a Gremlin.]

A/C talking about his tractor, his shop, and building things of wood reminded me of my grandfather and my Ferguson TE-20. Or, to borrow a phrase from a friend, “20 hp of welded steel and sex appeal.”

Not even My Good Wife can keep a straight face when I say that.

It was Dad’s tractor, but he died young. I inherited it. It’s the same as the little Fordson’s you’ll still see every now and again. 4-speed gearbox, three-point, 4-cylinder OHV gas motor, and that’s about it. It was designed to replace two horses in 1949, and that’s about what it could do. There were various attachments for the 3-point, none of them very useful in snow, so the thought came about, “Well, couldn’t we build something?” We had a shop, we had an iron pile, we had a welder. More specifically, the welder was my grandfather, who had spent the previous 50 years at the task welding Liberty Ships in the Kaiser shipyards, landing craft in Leavenworth, dams up and down the Missouri, ships and barges in Kansas City, and everything in between.

In the Olde Days, the shop was where we hung out, learning the Ways of Men from our elders. When the supper table was cleared men didn’t retire to the living room and read the paper, they repaired (Heh! See what I did there?) to the shop and built value from sweat and ingenuity.

So we did some sketching, some measuring, a little calculating, a lot of cutting and drilling, and Grandpa corrected me (a lot!) along the way and turned my tacks into solid welds. Some 4″ x 1/4″ angle iron became some frame rails. 3″ x 1/4″ tubing became the arms. 1/4″ flat-iron the loader arms, 1/8″ flat iron the mounts. Took a little fabrication to get a pump mounted to the crankshaft pulley, a bit more to mount the reservoir and remote. The cylinders are 2-way, I can drop them on the plow and lift the front end off if I need to cut hardpack. A steel snowplow off a city truck became my front plow, once mounts were fabricated. The rear blade is from a horse-drawn road grader, flat iron, and an entire can of welding rod. Those arms to the front hold a steel bucket, with a cylinder that works to tip and recover. I take the bucket off when using the plow, the extra weight makes it really difficult to steer. Everything can be added and removed by one man using simple pins and locks or a pipe wrench.

Didn’t calculate everything right, though. Flat iron and re-rod were needed as cantilevers on the arms to keep them from bending beyond recovery. Also had to craft in a reinforced front axle, once the arms stopped bending. I offered to show Grandpa my figures and why that shouldn’t have happened, but he just shook his head in that tired, resigned way Men Who Build have for engineers with their pocket protectors and slide rules and silly notions of the way things should behave. Did I mention I spent 7 years in college? He reminded me of that. A few times.

As you can see from the photo, it’s some mis-matched parts with all the grace and charm of a Russian weightlifter and the color coordination of a TV Preacher’s wife. Paint was whatever I had lying around, the goal is to keep it simple, reliable, and cheap. Until now, nobody’s seen it unless they went past my driveway after a blizzard. But the blade turns, the motor starts at -35, the snow gets moved, and all it cost us was about a ton of scrap steel, a whole lot of welding rod, and a month or so in the shop. Still more useful than any number of evenings watching TV. And we built something. Together. Out of steel.

When you screw up with wood you can burn it to keep yourself warm and hide the evidence. When you screw up in steel it’s there for all posterity to see.

Some day my son will inherit these 20 hp of welded steel and sex appeal. And, some day, something will require attention, and I’m absolutely sure he’ll look at it and say aloud, “What in the *hell* were they thinking?” I only hope I’m alive to tell him it seemed like a good idea at the time.

– Max

[I named this post because when I hear the press rant “Russia, Russia, Russia” I hear “Marsha, Marsha, Marsha”. For the cultural reference I posted a Brady Bunch clip. It’s followed by a great satirical take. Then my post’s text. Enjoy.]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WIMfNnMT8Q

The Muller report is in. After years (!) of “the walls are closing in” there’s a report that says everything I expected; which is basically nothing. If you pinned hopes (and even a deep need) to reverse the legal and peaceful electoral transition of power in one of the biggest republics in the world… sorry. A made up story of Russian based peeing hookers sounds better in your head than it panned out in reality. The immolation by his past life of crime of Cheeto Jesus has turned out to be a nothingburger. Trump knew it would go this way… he let this thing simmer all this time taking daily crotch shots in the press because he knew the number of skeletons in this closet was zero. Dude’s more patient than me.

I’m not surprised but not everyone thinks like me. (Which is a good thing; I talk to trees fer crissakes.)

Sadly, it’s a sledgehammer of bitter cognitive dissonance to folks who’ve painted themselves into a corner. Fervent anti-Trumpers have got to be suffering today. Rock solid evidence that reality that doesn’t confirm your notions is a difficult inflection point. I don’t envy them.

It’s hard on a soul to just plain have an incorrect idea. You had a notion. It seemed right. It wasn’t. Everything went to hell.

But it didn’t go to hell, the thing that went to hell was you. Your ego took a beating. Your self esteem got wrapped up in a political fight. You pinned too much of yourself on something you can’t control.

What put you in hell was you. It’s a cage of the mind. Neither Beelzebub nor Trump has trapped anyone. A person can walk through the unlocked door of their own cage. Just get over it.

Here are a few times to suck it up and learn from bad news:

• That new car you bought… it’s a lemon.
• That job you worked hard to get… it sucks.
• The woman you liked… she’s a harpy.
• Your major in college… it’s useless.
• No matter how hard you try… you suck at skill X.

You were so certain, but it just wasn’t so. Information that doesn’t comport with your world view is trying to tell you something. If you accept it you’ll have to endure the misery of having been incorrect.

The only way to avoid that minor unpleasantness we’ve all faced is to distance yourself from discomforting reality. Boy oh boy is that a trap. Dodge reality even a little bit and it’ll fuck you up! It only lets the incorrect notion lodge deeper in your heart. It becomes important to protect that notion. You start to shepherd your precious notion. You grind yourself up to protect it from reality’s jagged edges.

That’s how you wind up saying profoundly stupid things. What’s worse you double down.

• The car is pretty awesome… except for the blown engine, which could happen to anybody. And I’m sinking a lot of money into rebuilding it because it’s such a great car.
• The job is great except the boss just hired his son who is mismanaging the place. I’m going to stay there because the boss will eventually understand I’m a great employee and his son is a tool.
• She maxed my credit card, keyed my car, and had a three way with the gardener and my sister, but I’m sure we can work it out.
• My degree in Archaic Greek Fetish Symbolism is going to pay off after I do this unpaid internship for a few years.
• I’m going to hockey camp again. The scouts are sure to see me if I make a big play.

There’s an alternative. Take a deep breath, put on the brakes, and say; “this thing I was certain about has turned out to be incorrect.” Say it clearly, loudly, and in public. Then it’s done. You did it. Feels like shit doesn’t it? Sorry. But the hard part is over. Drink a six pack, cry a little, and get over it. Even if everyone is laughing at you, they’ve been there too.

I mean it. We’ve all had to do it. There is no life without disappointment. If you’ve had no disappointment you’re not an adult.

More importantly, there are 300,000,000+ Americans and it’s unwise to disassociate yourself from the truth that some of them have different world views. Just accept it. They’re not murderous alien monstrosities. Quit projecting fantasies that they’re just itching to rape your cat and set fire to your mailbox. They’re just different people with different opinions.

How did we get here? Where there are people on TV looking weepy because the president is not a traitor? Isn’t that good news? We got here from successive points of cognitive dissonance. Each time was a chance to step back from the abyss… or a moment where one could double down.

Folks who thought Trump could never win the Republican nomination had to decide what to do when he earned the nomination. Was it a mistake in their world view? It was a moment where they could say “well, apparently the nitwits of the Stupid party really want him”. Or double down; “he won because he’s a lying, cheating, Tweeting, space monster, who used the magic power of Orange to steal the primary”.

It would have been easier to get off the crazy train right then. “Don’t like him but apparently he’s a contender.” Pretty painless right? Rip the band-aid off and get on with life.

Those who didn’t were lined up for a bad shock when he won the election. I accepted election results at odds with a hyper-partisan press with a shrug of my shoulders; “Apparently the press was as wrong as they sounded, neato. ” Folks who were already going crazy that he was even in the running were faced with a mountainous point of cognitive dissonance. It was a good time to step off the crazy train; “there are over 70,000,000 Americans who willingly voted for Trump… there’s no accounting for taste but it is what it is.” Accept the information and get over it.

The dangerous path is to double down again: “70,000,000 Americans were tricked into this! They didn’t know what they were doing! The count was wrong! They were attacked by Russian paratroopers and marched to the voting booth at gunpoint!”

Doubling down allows one to avoid saying “The idea I previously held was incorrect. He really can win”

Now a biased investigation that could’ve nailed Mother Theresa for racketeering didn’t find collusion on Trump. Trump has been deeply investigated with rubber gloves and a team of lawyers. He’s come out clean; he can say “not a whiff of scandal” and have written backup. (OK, it was mean to use Obama’s words there, but it was fun.)

Time to work through cognitive dissonance and rejoin reality. Trump isn’t Hitler. He didn’t put anyone on cattle cars and ship them to Dachau. He didn’t tank the economy. The lights are still on. He didn’t cause a nuclear war with North Korea. While he was busy not causing war, he found time to not cause famine and pestilence too. The interesting thing is that a lot of this is good stuff. Much of it is imagined disaster that didn’t happen.

Everyone should be happy with a disaster that didn’t happen. If your well being requires bad things to happen you’ve got problems.

Also, I hope folks gain a little perspective. Trump’s not God; he doesn’t know your name, he’s not lurking in the bushes in your backyard, and he won’t cut you off in traffic. Presidents are just people that come and go. Trump’s doing at least as well as an average president and the sky hasn’t fallen. There are worse fates.

Of course, one of those fates is to pick over the emptiness of the Mueller Report looking for a reason to double down again. Now they’re trying to redefine the word “exonerate”.  That’s doubling down yet once more. I can’t talk anyone out of it but I sincerely hope everyone suffers as little as possible. I’m sure Russia Russia Russia, isn’t over. There are people who make a living at it, so it’ll continue. I just hope the crazy train leaves the station with as few passengers as possible.

“The Aztecs thought their gods would turn against them if they were not given human sacrifices. This belief led to many wars to find victims both captured in war and those paid to the Aztecs as tribute by the people who were conquered. Human sacrifices were made to make the sun rise the next day. They believed that if the sun god were not fed human hearts and blood the sun would not rise and the world would end in disaster. The Aztecs believed that their special purpose in life was to delay that destruction. They sacrificed to the gods to avoid destruction for as long as possible.” [Emphasis added.]

(Source.)

As long as I’ve been alive, politicians (and their crotch sniffing lackeys in the press) have told me I face certain doom. They always present the same solution; I’m to repent of my ways (which are not merely incorrect but sinful), accept sacrifice (usually taxes and/or regulation), and submit to greater control by a government or organization. In exchange for my vote and taxes, wise political operatives will intercede on my behalf. Only they can stand against the mighty forces arrayed against me. I can’t do it alone. It’s only through submission to government or an organization that I can survive. My life depends on following the narrative; repentance, sacrifice, submission, and subsequent intercession.

This isn’t a one time thing. It’s perpetual. There has never been a time when a politician hasn’t been telling me I’m doomed.

This shit was writ large in the seventies. What a depressing time to grow up! Carter faffed about while OPEC throttled our oil supply and the economy tanked. Teachers and others in authority(!), told me “this is how the economy is now, the good times are over”. (I heard the same phrase “the new normal” during the Obama administration.)

Also I was told that internal combustion engine cars wouldn’t be possible when I was old enough to have a license. There would be no gasoline. (Talk about a buzzkill!)

I’m not making these things up. That’s what happened. I was just a kid. I didn’t know that everyone is always predicting the end of the world.

Shockingly… Armageddon never happened.

The 1970’s ended with a “close” race between Carter and Reagan. “Unexpectedly”, the unserious dipshit who wasn’t even liked in his own party won a 44 state blowout. (We cut out press clippings in school. I remember how the press ripped Reagan a new one all through the campaign. He was “a divorced actor” lacking Carter’s gravitas. I also remember post election talk of eliminating the electoral college. It’s no different than now. It’s a repeat motif in my life; if the “wrong” person wins, people who aren’t good at math theorize about how to “fix” it. Conversely, nobody was upset about the electoral college when Clinton or Obama won.)

I was told that Reagan was an unhinged cowboy. He would get us into WWIII with the mighty eternal Russkies. Never happened. Baltimore wasn’t vaporized and the mighty Russkies folded like a house of cards starting in 1989.

As for freezing in the dark due to OPEC and the first peak oil scare (there was a resurgence in peak oil gloom during Obama’s administration), that didn’t happen either. In fact, America has recently became a net exporter of oil. Now it’s OPEC’s balls that are in a vice. Quelle surpise!

There were countless other points of doom along the way. I liked fishing and folks got me worried that acid rain would kill all the fish. Others thought the newly discovered hole in the ozone would burn our skin. Others panicked about the emergence of crack or AIDS. Remember Y2K? I can do this all day.

Obviously, none of this mattered because mass starvation was a done deal. Here’s an excerpt from The Population Bomb (a best-selling book of the time):

“The battle to feed all of humanity is over. In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. At this late date nothing can prevent a substantial increase in the world death rate…”

The author was Paul R. Ehrlich who is a Professor of Population Studies at Stanford University. Not only did hundreds of millions of people refuse to starve, but the world death rate from starvation decreased more than at any other time in history. It wasn’t humanly possible for Ehrlich to be more wrong. Is that how you get a Stanford gig? By being very wrong?

Of course, Ehrlich didn’t get a Nobel prize. Al Gore got one. Al said this:

“Humanity is sitting on a time bomb. If the vast majority of the world’s scientists are right, we have just ten years to avert a major catastrophe that could send our entire planet’s climate system into a tail-spin of epic destruction involving extreme weather, floods, droughts, epidemics and killer heat waves beyond anything we have ever experienced – a catastrophe of our own making.”

That was in 2006. We were supposed to have a major catastrophe beyond anything we’ve experienced by 2016. Aside from millenials eating Tide pods, it didn’t happen. After Ehrlich, Al Gore is roughly the second most wrong dude; which is why he got a medal but not tenure.

So much for listening to politicians. If they were right I’d be struggling amid the tiny post apocalyptic remnant population that didn’t starve in the 1970’s or get nuked in the 1980’s.

It didn’t happen. Press announcements aside, we haven’t always been at war with Eastasia.

Having survived global warming’s doom in 2016 brings no solace. Three years later, the newest generation of doombringers gets the spotlight. I present Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez:

“Millennials and people, you know, Gen Z and all these folks that will come after us are looking up and we’re like: ‘The world is gonna end in 12 years if we don’t address climate change and your biggest issue is how are we gonna pay for it?’”

So, the hot new end of the world prediction is uncreatively rescheduling 2016 for 2031. The straggling few that didn’t starve in the 1970’s, get vaporized in the 1980’s, or fall prey to global warming in the by 2016, will be toast by 2031.

We are always a decade away from doom.

Must it be this way? Yes!

There’s something deep in the hearts of humanity that reacts to it. Our minds are primed for the story of future inevitable destruction at the hands of forces we cannot fathom or control. We are inherently receptive to the leader who promises to save us from it. It’s already wired into our minds.

In any era there’s always someone using the same story. There’s always a con man offering to avert tomorrow’s doom by controlling the masses today.

It spans time and culture. In 1350 some Aztec peasant listened to a priest standing on a pyramid. The story told from the pyramid was this:

“I have to do this. If I don’t sacrifice these people lined up here the sun God will get pissed off and the sun won’t rise. You wouldn’t want to be plunged into eternal darkness would you? It is only I, the super awesome shaman priest dude doing this rite, that will keep you from total annihilation. So don’t bitch when it comes time to assess tribute and keep me in power… or you’ll all die.”

It’s the same story. One version is an Aztec priest making sure the sun God doesn’t destroy the crops. Another version is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez personally saving us from the end of everything within the next 12 years. Other versions involve starvation with Paul Ehrlich or global warming with Al Gore. Without fail, we are doomed and the only solution is to let “the right people” run things.

The story works. It’s a proven strategy. Explain that were doomed. Then demand sacrifice and power so that they, special people that they are, intercede and save us.

Not everyone falls for it, but enough do. They always have. They always will.

Don’t feel smug. You and I may know better but we are dragged along with the currents of humanity. We didn’t watch a priest on a pyramid protect us from the sun God. But we (collectively) elected a president who claimed his victory was “the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal”. Dude healed a planet. Pretty impressive. He got a Nobel too.

So don’t laugh when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez talks about doom. She’s following the story and the story works.