Where Has My Country Gone?

That phrase became common along with the rise of the Tea Parties. It was misinterpreted as racist, sexist and often aligned with issues as this headline illustrates: “Outrage over gay group banned from St. Patrick's parade.” Social issues are often emotionally consuming. And some, such as transgender bathrooms, are threatening. But ultimately, economic issues rule. Disappearing factories and the shrinking middle class turned the election to Trump. Related issues such as the rise in opiate addiction fill headiness, but the connections that breed hopelessness run deeper.

My January 2017 posting “Economic Collapse?” detailed the internal deterioration of our economy. Part of that was our diminishing labor force which foreshadows an uncertain future. As of 2012, 8% of our farmers were under 35 years old with the average farmer at 58 years old. A leading economic commentator recently stated: “The big infrastructure problem in the U.S. is not in physical capital, it’s in human capital.”  Foreign-born students earned 40 percent of U.S. doctoral degrees in science and engineering in 2003.

Part of this is what former Muslim Isik Abla called educational jihad. “…wealthy fanatical Muslims are sending jihadist students to America and other Western countries to infiltrate the world’s top universities as part of their group’s ultimate objective to Islam-ise the West…Harvard, Princeton and Yale…(to put Jihadists) in high places (of) power to dictate what needs to happen…to Islam-ise the Western world.” Hassan Abbasi, former advisor to Ahmadinejad who now runs security policy for Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps, boasted that there are over two million Iranians in the US with over 7,000 having PhD’s. These are leading a clandestine army of potential martyrs in the US. We don’t need nuclear weapons. We plan to use subversive means to destabilize the US from within. While Abbasi’s statements are part plan and part his wishful thinking, they don’t mask the fact that 25% of our doctors are foreign born. (We debate and establish plans to pay for health care, increasing demand while irresponsibly ignoring the supply of health care providers.) 

Immigrants have enriched American society and created the diverse mix we enjoy daily as normal. Aside from the no borders globalists everyone wants a sensible immigration policy. One could cynically say that poaching the talent of other nations is in our national interest. But there is a difference between adding to American life, and filling a void our insolence has created. Why have the upcoming generations not prepared themselves for our unfolding future? Is it because they were led into their degree programs by faculty whose goal was not our future but their ideological desires? As their graduates were to assume professional positions, their goal was not improvement, but disruption. They were trained to be agents of social change while encumbered with debt slavery.

“(He) surrounded himself with official publications, and works of history and economics. He made no effort to inform himself directly of the views and conditions of the masses. The notion of canvassing an electorate on their doorstep was anathema to him: “unscientific”.  He never visited a factory or set foot on a farm. He had no interest in the way wealth was created. He was never to be seen in the working class quarters of any town in which he resided. His entire life was spent among members of his own sub-class, the bourgeois intelligentsia, which he saw as a uniquely privileged priesthood, endowed with a special gnosis and chosen by History for a decisive role.” Does this sound like the swamp creatures of Sacramento and Washington that know what’s best for us? Or some outspoken local folks?

The above quote is a description of Vladimir Lenin from page 52 of Paul Johnson’s book “Modern Times”. I noted the Leninism prevalent today in my March 2016 posting “What is Leninism?” Dogma has replaced reality for too many of the people currently in charge.  Assuming that Trump sends them packing, I wonder what they will do. They know how to regulate and to over-regulate into oblivion, but can they create? Is the American spirit, that turned a frontier into the most free and powerful nation in the world, dead? Our Amador General Plan, and many others like it, are documents of fear and defeatism.

PS: Despite my extensive research I could not find the answer to perhaps the most salient question. Did Vladimir Lenin bring his own bags to the grocery store?

PPS: I don’t mean to be alarmist. I’m sure that the Gender Studies graduates will do a fine job welding the Keystone Pipeline.

Copyright 2017, Mark L. Bennett

Dead Harvest

Some Facebook friends posted this video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax5A3r_z4KA&feature=share

Everyone should view this exposition of the poverty, abandoned investment and threat to our food supply caused by environmental extremism.  The moral and legal balance of equities concept is drown by lawsuits and legislative maneuvers seemingly more numerous that the delta smelt they claim to protect.

My first thoughts were of mass starvation during Stalin’s land collectivization in the Ukraine. But then I realized that this was also another manifestation of our ahistorical times and the distorted reasoning it creates. Constructing both flood control and irrigation channels gave the ancient Mesopotamians the desire for an activist government. This six thousand year old tradition has been carried through Roman aqueducts to our present Western Civilization.

In a pointless prior Facebook discussion, it was asserted than government-funded roads for projects such as Newman Ridge were socialist and that certain individuals were phony conservatives. But collective public works goes back at least 10,000 years in the archaeological record. Long before the money economy during the hunting or farming off seasons, whole communities of people would build their roads, houses of worship and other facilities. When one dismisses our shared history and makes policy decisions based only in their rationalizing minds, anything can come out. Vladimir Lenin had that quality.

Concepts like gender fluidity can grow only in an isolated consciousness that feeds only upon itself.  That style of awareness can also justify the hardships of the Central Valley for their idiosyncratic ideal of justice. But as difficult as it is for the victims to endure, or others of us just to watch, I am hearted and optimistic. With decisions as daft as this - and many others, including dam maintenance - too many people can’t be fooled for too much longer. The time is ripe for a populist leader to emerge and overthrow California’s ancien régime.

Copyright 2017, Mark L. Bennett

Coastal City Flotsam Invades the Mokelumne

This Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting included: “Assembly Bill 975: Discussion and possible action relative to the subject legislation as it relates to wild and scenic rivers.” I made the following statement:

“I urge this body to oppose both the present efforts to designate part of the Mokelumne River as Wild & Scenic and the proposed legislation in Sacramento to extend the Wild & Scenic definition. While there is much I could say, I will limit myself to two points.

Most of the discussion about the Mokelumne definition has been framed as an isolated discussion. But if you add up all the wild and scenic rivers, land trusts, conservation easements, carbon capture forests and other schemes and place them on map, America now looks like the land tenure system of aristocratic medieval Europe. I find this very ironic since, if you look around this room, probably everyone here is descended from people who voted with their feet to leave that behind. Much of the founding population of our nation were people who lost their grazing rights under the Enclosure Acts and understood the relationship between land ownership and freedom. I would add to that affordable land ownership. The American Dream should not die on our watch.

I also find these designations to be arrogant and selfish. By what right do we have to imprison the decisions of future generations? The only thing being preserved here is privilege.”