The Lost Island, 31st Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): T.S. Eliot is full of shit. Give me April any day - it's January that's the cruelest month. The throat of winter is upon us, and the barren barley fields are swaying like mad in the gusty, 35-mph winds. 

It snowed in Atlanta this morning (Atlanta!) although it didn't stick and only came down for less than an hour. But still, it's cold outside: 25° F with a wind-chilled feels-like temperature of 8°. It's supposed to drop down to 17° overnight, and I can only guess what the wind will make that feel like.

It's colder than the furnace in this drafty old house can keep up with. I turned the thermostat up to 75, but after running non-stop all day, it's only up to 73° in here, and away from the thermostat and the airducts it feels a lot cooler.  No telling how far down the inside temps will drop tonight. I'm dripping water from all my faucets to reduce the chances of pipes freezing. 

Worse, it's not forecast to warm up anytime soon. It will remain frigid all next week, and we won't see seasonal temperatures until at least next weekend. And I saw a not-at-all encouraging long-term prediction that it will stay colder than normal until well into the spring. 

I don't like the cold. Sure, hot, humid weather can be uncomfortable, but the cold is downright painful. And while heat stroke can be a risk if you don't know how to manage yourself in the Georgia sun, hypothermia and the cold carry a greater risk of death. 

I'll get through it. I'll find my Zen space that's neither hot nor cold, and I'll take solace in the fact that today is the last day of January and we're almost halfway through Childwinter.   

Tozan said, “When it is cold, let it be so cold that it kills you.” However, that doesn't mean you should just go ahead, accept your fate and die. The "you" that the cold should kill is the ego-self with its preferences and biases and desires. Tozan is reminding us that what we call "cold" is just the world as it is - the climate doesn't experience "cold," it's us who suffer the cold. Today feels cold, this summer it will feel hot, one day it will rain, and another it won't. Flowers, while cherished, fade, and weeds, although despised, thrive. This is the way the universe works, whether we like it or not.

There's no escaping the cold or the heat, but we can let go of our preferences and accept that this is the way things are. Ditto sickness, old age, and death. Tomorrow when you're old and your mouth is paved with gold you begin to feel the cold inside. 

But we don't need to give up. Go ahead and build a fire or crank up the thermostat when you're cold, take your medicine and get some exercise when you're old and sick. But we don't need to increase our own suffering by adding on our personal preferences as to the way we want things to be.

This is the meeting of two arrows in midair ("hitting a bullet with a bullet"), where Zen and Stoicism come together. In the cold. In January. Right here, right now.

 

Structures of Earth, 30th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Helios): A warming climate increases the surface temperature of lakes, oceans, and other water bodies. As the waters warm, the solubility of oxygen decreases, organisms die, and the decay of organic matter leads to further oxygen depletion. The higher temperatures also increase evaporation from water bodies, resulting in increased precipitation. This causes higher rates of weathering of rocks and higher concentrations of phosphorous and other nutrients in rivers. The nutrients further lower oxygen levels in deep waters due to increased respiration by organisms.

Anthropogenic climate change is currently warming the planet and depleting the oxygen in rivers, lakes, and oceans, but back in geologic time, volcanism was the culprit in raising global temperatures and oxygen-deprived oceans. The CO₂ released during volcanic outgassing caused global warming at various times in the geologic past, the cascading effects of which resulted in anoxic oceans. 

The late Cambrian Steptoean positive carbon isotope excursion (SPICE) coincided with trilobite extinctions and global ocean anoxia. Geologists recently analyzed sedimentary rocks at four sites across the central Missouri basin representing a range of Cambrian water depths. Their data indicated that during the SPICE, increased phosphate was available in the surface ocean, resulting in persistent oxygen-poor conditions in shallow seas. They inferred that the elevated phosphorus levels increased biological activity in the surface ocean, sustaining oceanic anoxia until the feedback was broken by rising atmospheric oxygen levels. The study identifies phosphorus as a key driver of late Cambrian oxygen depletion in the ocean and a cause of the trilobite extinction.

Some people think that CO₂-related global climate change is a relatively new concept, something dreamed up by Al Gore and Greta Thunberg. But geologists have been studying the effects of CO₂ and other greenhouse gases on the climate for decades - I learned back in the 1970s that the Eocene was the warmest Epoch in the Cenozoic, and we know this by both the fossil evidence and the high levels of atmospheric CO₂ trapped in the sediments. The global average atmospheric CO₂ concentration is currently about 422 ppm, continuing the rapid, long-term upward trend from pre-industrial levels of about 280 ppm. However, CO₂ levels during the Eocene CO₂ concentrations were approximately 1,400 ppm and the average temperature was about 86° F with little temperature gradient from pole to pole. Today, the global average is about 57° F with significant latitudinal variation. 

So it came as no surprise to me to hear concern decades later that man might be monkey-wrenching our planet with our profligate CO₂ emissions.

 

Acrid Takeover, 29th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Electra): Acrid - having an irritatingly strong and unpleasant taste or smell. Takeover - to assume control or possession, to become dominant. Example - The FBI's seizure of election ballots from 2020 in Atlanta yesterday left a bitter and unpleasant taste in the mouths of Georgia citizens appalled by the acrid takeover.  

As you've no doubt heard, the FBI executed a search warrant yesterday at an election center in Fulton County, seizing ballots in a significant escalation of the administration’s continued efforts to overturn the Stable Genius' 2020 defeat in Georgia.

This affects me personally - I care because my mail-in ballots from that covid-sodden year-of-the-plague 2020 are probably among the ballots seized. The FBI has my five-year-old votes and my voter's registation information. Infuriatingly, the only reason the ballots still exist and weren't destroyed after two years as per state law is because of private lawsuits (Favorito v. Wan, and Jeffords v. Fulton County) by MAGA zealots that have been lingering on for years, and a judicial order that the ballots be preserved as evidence in the suits.

Inexplicably, Russian asset Tulsi Gabbard, the wildly unqualified Director of National Intelligence, was present at the Fulton County raid. Senator Mark Warner of Virginia pointed out there are only two reasons why Tulsi would be at the raid. “Either Director Gabbard believes there was a legitimate foreign intelligence nexus," he tweeted, "in which case she is in clear violation of her obligation under the law to keep the intelligence committees ‘fully and currently informed’ of relevant national security concerns — or she is once again demonstrating her utter lack of fitness for the office that she holds by injecting the nonpartisan intelligence community she is supposed to be leading into a domestic political stunt designed to legitimize conspiracy theories that undermine our democracy.” He further pointed out that “either is a serious breach of trust that further underscores why she is totally unqualified to hold a position that demands sound judgment, apolitical independence, and a singular focus on keeping Americans safe.”

The Stable Genius has been obsessed with his loss in Georgia in 2020 (good). However, the ballots have been tabulated and retabulated, counted and recounted, electronically and manually, and subject to multiple lawsuits. Georgia and Fulton County officials and election experts have repeatedly confirmed the vote and have refuted assertions of election fraud and no evidence of fraud was ever presented under oath in court. 

Seizing ballot boxes and voting machines is a classic tactic straight out of the totalitarian playbook. It's the behavior of the Maduros, the Mussolinis, and the Putins of the world - in other words, right up the Stable Genius' alley.  

Friendly reminder that the Constitution clearly and explicitly puts voting laws and procedures squarely in the hands of the States, not the federal government. I don't trust Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, the FBI, or anyone in the Stable Genius' administration with my vote and my voter registration information. I'm appalled that they this information - not only who I cast my ballot for, but my address, date of birth, and all the other sensitive information in the registry. I don't trust that they won't do exactly what they're insinuating Fulton County's done - namely, destroy ballots, generate false ballots, and alter existing ballots - and also use my personal information for retribution purposes. 

Hands off my ballots, Tulsi! Hands off, Kash! Hands off, FBI! Hands off, Stable Genius! And to paraphrase Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey, "Get the fuck out of Fulton County!"

 

Day of Drifts, 28th of Childwinter, 536 M.E. (Deneb): I hate 2026. I hate its cold, frigid weather. I hate this year's extrajudicial executions by federal agents in Minneapolis.  I hate our government's Venezuelan adventures earlier this month. I hate my grocery bills and the rising cost of everything. This year sucks.

Okay, got that out of my system. Nothing is all bad or all good - there must be something positive in this woe begotten year, so let me think. . . I saw a couple good movies on Netflix, but they were made and released in 2025 (or earlier) so they're not really something good from this year. Some of my favorite sports teams won some of their games and the New England Patriots are going to the Superbowl, but I recognize that those are "good" events only relative to myself and that for every win I celebrate someone else is lamenting a loss. I guess the best part of 2026 so far has been Alex Honnold topping the 1,667-foot Taipei 101 skyscraper in Taiwan - no one other than a complete psychopath was cheering for the skyscraper. 

I could look at it existentially and say, "Well, at least I'm still alive," but in a year like this, I'm reminded of the old Chinese curse, "May you live in interesting times."  

The best part of being dead is you no longer have to say, "I wish I were dead." The best part of being alive is you can still say, "I wish I were dead."

 

Day of Barren Swarm, 27th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Castor): "If you white men had never come here, this country would still be like it was. It would be all pure here. You call it wild, but it wasn’t really wild, it was free. Animals aren’t wild, they’re just free. And that’s the way we were. You called us wild, you called us savages. But we were just free! If we were savages, Columbus would never have gotten off the island alive." - Leon Shenandoah, former Tadodaho of the Grand Council of the Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy.

The fascist takeover of the U.S. government, the militias in our cities kidnapping people and murdering citizens, the kleptocracy, the corruption, and the abrogation of civil rights is the karmic consequence of two and a half centuries of the existence of the United States of America. A country founded on the twin practices of genocide and slavery can't expect things to go well in the long run. 

But it's not completely our fault. To those white supremacists who laud European heritage and values, and who boast that all great ideas and progress stemmed from Europeans, I say that it was the European values that insisted on cleansing the continent of its indigenous people, and instituting slavery to spur productivity and profits. The sins for which we're paying the karmic price now were the sins of the European monarchies and not the American colonialists, although the colonists eventually took to them with a disturbing passion.

Acolytes of the Stable Genius say, with their tongue only slightly in their cheek, that a little bit of dictatorship may not be a bad thing, and maybe we do need a king to get things done around here. But Western civilization has tried it with royal kings and queens before, and it wound up with endless wars between competing monarchs, not only militarily but economically as well.

England and France and Spain and Portugal and Rome and others had been competing for domination for centuries before the discovery of the New World, each kingdom convinced of their absolute moral and spiritual superiority, each determined to see their rivals perish and fail. The New World simply presented a new sphere of competition, as well as a source for raw materials to further the kingdoms' ambitions. England in particular saw its North American colonies as nothing but vassal states to grow crops, mine ores, fell wood for the ambitions of the King, and to consume the goods and pay tribute to its sovereign overlord. Spain saw the continent as an open land ripe for plundering and looting. The other kingdoms were no better.

The fact that indigenous people were already living on the new continent was merely an inconvenience to the competing monarchies, an obstacle to their imperial goals. Killing, looting, raping, and kidnapping the natives was considered the divine right of the superior nation, so if the presence of the indigenous got in the way of their goals, they were to simply be eliminated, and if they, god forbid, fought back, they were to be exterminated.

The Portuguese, having taken the lead in the exploration of West Africa, were able to take over the Arab trade of African slaves, and the New World, which needed labor to raise crops and do all that farming, mining, and felling, was simply a new market for their new trade. It was the English and Spanish who introduced slavery to these shores, with the Portuguese aiding and abetted the practice not to mention forcing an astonishing number of Africans to relocate to Brazil.

The colonists went along with the royal competition, including the genocide and the slavery, until it was no longer in their interest and they declared their independence, only to continue the genocide and the slavery on their own. And so here we are now, four centuries after 1619 and two and a half after 1776, paying the karma for those dirty European kings on their filthy continental thrones.                           

"Our religion," Shenandoah said about the Iroquois and other indigenous nations, "is all about thanking the Creator. That’s what we do when we pray. We don’t ask Him for things. We thank Him. We thank Him for the world and every animal and plant in it. We thank Him for everything that exists. We don’t take it for granted that a tree is just there. We thank the Creator for that tree. If we don’t thank Him, maybe the Creator’ll take that tree away... We are made from Mother Earth and we go back to Mother Earth. We can’t “own” Mother Earth. We’re just visiting here. We’re the Creator’s guests."

If only the "superior" Europeans were that enlightened, we might not be in the mess we see today.

 

The Crescent Heart, 26th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): It's cold.

The winter storm has passed and with minimal damage here in Atlanta. Other places can't say the same,  and I extend my deepest condolences to those without power or who suffered other misfortunes from the cold snow and ice. 

But now that it's gone, it left behind some bitter cold temperatures - the high temperature today (38°) occurred at midnight and dropped down to 23° as the night progressed. It was only above 32 for about an hour or two this afternoon but blustery winds made it feel even colder and it's forecast to drop down to 14° overnight. It was so cold today, I didn't take my alternating-day walk, even though it's a walking day 

This drafty old house, this pile of bricks on a hill, can't keep up with temperatures that low. The heat works fine down to about the mid/upper 20s, but below that the furnace just runs and runs but the inside temperatures drop down into the 60s, with noticeably colder spots in some nooks and crannies around the house.

This has happened before and I've gotten past it, but this year the cold is expected to last at least a week, with next weekend even colder than today. “When it’s cold, become one with the cold," Tozan advised. I may not have a choice in the matter. "Let the cold kill you," Tozan continued. 

2026 sucks, man. We should ask for our money back - this year is defective.

 

The Ancient Village, 25th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): Although a massive winter storm tore through the Eastern United States yesterday and today, killing seven and leaving more than a million people without power, it wasn't much of a storm here in Atlanta. The temperature never dropped below freezing, and we had some overnight rain and rain all day today, but no snow, no accumulations of ice, and no extraordinary threat to life and property. I was correct - it turned out to be a big nothingburger ("Oh boy, right again!" - Laurie Anderson, Let x = x, 1982). 

The rain here finally ended at around sunset, and the temperature is expected to remain above freezing until about 3:00 am. It's going to be a cold week with with overnight lows in the 20s and even down to the teens by next weekend, and highs in the 30s and 40s. But with no rain or other precipitation in the forecast, I'm not worried.

Speaking of ice, they shot and killed another person in the streets on Minneapolis this weekend. Naturally, ICE, the DOJ, and the Stable Genius immediately labeled him an "domestic terrorist" and depicted him as a gun-wielding maniac attacking the occupying troops in Minnesota, but video clearly shows he was assisting an injured protester (he was a nurse) and holding a cell phone. I'm old enough to remember Kent State and when troops killing U.S. citizens on American soil was considered a bad thing ("I guess I just wasn't made for these times!" - Brian Wilson, I Just Wasn't Made for These Times, 1966).

 

 

Second Twelve, 24th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Helios): The twenty-fourth day of Childwinter and the Year 526 of the Modern Era is called Second Twelve. We're four six-day weeks into the year and it's already shit. 

I walked a 5.5-mile Monroe today and now I'm back home waiting for the icepocalypse to arrive. They predicted this thing like ten days ago, and the wait has become nerve-wracking. The latest forecast has the precipitation finally arriving in Atlanta at around 9:00 pm tonight, but the temperatures are expected to stay at or above 32° all night. So the latest forecast for here is no snow, no ice, no "significant accumulations of ice," and no "extraordinary threat to life and property." 

I might see a dusting of snow and some ice on the driveway when I get up tomorrow, and the roads will probably be slippery in the morning, but I have nowhere to go anyway. 

It will be a lot worse up in the North Georgia Mountains, where the higher elevations will be a bigger factor that the higher latitudes. Good luck and best wishes to them and everyone else affected by this "monster storm," even if it looks like Atlanta will be spared after all the dire warnings. 

At least I now have a good stockpile of prepared salads and a lifetime supply of peanut butter to last me through the weekend, and at least now I don't have to worry about losing power and missing tomorrow's Patriots game.

 

The Last Counsel, 23rd Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Electra): I have to admit they have me spooked. "Monster winter storm threatens half of U.S., with at least 16 states declaring emergencies," reports The Guardian. "Snow, sleet and freezing temperatures are forecast for the south, midwest and east coast over the weekend."  

"America Readies to Hunker Down Ahead of Weekend Storm," according to the New York Times headline. "More than 160 million people from the Rockies to New England prepared for a combination of snow, ice and bitter cold through early next week. Cancellations mounted amid urgent forecast warnings." A subheading ominously declares, "Storm Poses Big Threats to Power Grids Across U.S." Even all the way down south here in Georgia, the governor has declared a state of emergency throughout the entire state ahead of the looming winter storm.

The Severe Weather Alert on my phone was even more blunt: "Extraordinary threat to life and property," it exclaimed. "Significant icing expected. Total ice accumulations between a quarter of an inch and an inch are expected." It warned of power outages and tree damage. Travel could be, not difficult, but in their words, impossible. "Abandon hope all ye who heed this warning," it practically said. 

Here's the thing, though: the actual forecast doesn't look that bad to me. It's been raining on and off, and I had to cancel my alternating day walk yesterday because of the precipitation. However, yesterday was relatively warm - three degrees above the norm for this time of year - and today is about the same with temperatures in the mid- to low 50s. Subfreezing temperatures aren't forecast to arrive here until Sunday morning, and then be back up above freezing by noon that same day.

The trouble will be those six or so hours on Sunday morning when the temperature is below 32° F and the precipitation probability ranges between 60 and 80%. That will form as ice on the ground and make the roads generally undriveable on Sunday. I'm  not planning on going anywhere that day.

No rain, snow, or sleet is expected after Sunday, and next week the forecast is sunny to partly cloudy. The sun and the highs in the 40s should melt the ice off the streets, but the evenings are forecast to be bitter cold, with lows in the 20s and even teens. The question is whether the days will be warm enough to melt the ice off the pavement before it refreezes in the evening.

My intuitive guess is that it will quickly melt and although Sunday will be awful and the roads unpassable, we'll be back to more or less normal by Monday afternoon, Tuesday at the latest. I've stocked up on enough food to last me well into next week. If the power goes out, I'll be out of luck in this drafty old house and the icy roads. It may be uncomfortable, although it won't be life threatening. 

The Stable Genius, one of the dumbest people in the U.S., cited the incoming storm as proof that climate change is a hoax. He posted, “Rarely seen anything like it before. Could the Environmental Insurrectionists please explain – WHATEVER HAPPENED TO GLOBAL WARMING???” I'm going to give him a pass on identifying people who understand climate science as "insurrectionists," not because he might be right but because I'm simply too fucking exhausted to make that argument right now. 

The storm, however, is the result not of DEI, wokeness, or immigration, but of a  mass of frigid air from the Arctic hitting warmer, moister air in the U.S. The cold Arctic air is usually confined above the Arctic Circle by the polar vortex, a stream of wind circling the northern portion of the globe. When the polar vortex weakens, the freezing Arctic air spills south into the U.S. 

The Arctic is heating up by as much as four times faster than the rest of the planet, with the elevated polar temperatures are altering the polar vortex. Among other things, the loss of sea ice in the Arctic that allowed intrepid sailors to pass through the Northwest Passage last summer is amplifying the heating that leads to polar vortex disruptions.

Also, a single winter storm in one region of one country says very little about long-term, global climate trends. The world is undeniably heating up, and winters in the U.S. are warming at a faster rate than other seasons, resulting in the loss of glaciers and changing seasonal norms.

By attacking climate science, branding environmentalists as "insurrectionists," and incorrectly identifying the incoming storm as evidence that climate change is some sort of hoax, the Stable Genius is misleading his loyal followers. Actions like this, on top of stripping government web sites of scientific findings on climate change, defunding climate research, layoffs at NOAA, the National Hurricane Center, and elsewhere, continued subsidies to the petroleum industry, opening formerly protected land to new oil drilling, and suppression of grants for solar and wind energy projects, not to mention the hostile takeover of Venezuela to control its oil reserves, the Stable Genius is aggressively making the world a worse place in which to live for the short-term economic benefits of a handful of already wealthy backers and petrochemical industrialists.

Day of Speaking, 22nd of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Deneb): Listen to the words of the Stable Genius at a press briefing two days ago: 

"[I] signed an executive order to bring back mental institutions and insane asylums. We're going to have to bring them back. Hate to build those suckers, but you got to get the people off the streets. We used to have, when I was growing up, we had in my area in Queens, I grew up in Queens, we had a place called Creedmoor. Creedmoor. Did anybody know that? Creedmoor. It was a big . . . I said, "Mom, why are those bars on the building?" I used to play Little League baseball there at a place called Cunningham Park, I was quite the baseball player you wouldn't believe.

But I said to my mother, "Mom," she would be there always there for me, she said, "Son, you could be a professional baseball player." I said, "Thanks, mom." I said, "Why are those bars on the windows?" Big building, big, powerful building. It loomed over the park actually. She said, "Well, people that are very sick are in that building." I said, "Boy." I used to always look at that building and I'd see it was a big building, big, tall building, it loomed over the park. Now that I think of it, it was a pretty unfriendly sight, but I'll never forget.

I don't know if it's still there because they got rid of most of them. The Democrats in New York, they took them down and the people live on the streets now. And that's why you have a lot of the people in California and other places, they live in the streets. They took the mental institutions down. They're expensive. But I'd say, "Why does that building have those bars? Boy." It wasn't normal. You're used to looking at like a window, but this when you look at it, all this steel, vicious steel, tiny windows, bars all over the place. Nobody was getting out. It's called a mental institution. That was an insane asylum."

Listen to the words of the Stable Genius in Davos, Switzerland yesterday: 

"I'm helping Europe. I'm helping NATO, and until the last few days when I told them about Iceland, they loved me. They called me ‘daddy’ right, last time. Very smart man said, ‘He's our daddy. He's running it.’ I was like running it. I went from running it to being a terrible human being.

But now what I'm asking for is a piece of ice, cold and poorly located that can play a vital role in world peace and world protection. It's a very small ask compared to what we have given them for many, many decades. But the problem with NATO is that, we'll be there for them 100%, but I'm not sure that they be there for us. If we gave them the call, ‘Gentlemen, we are being attacked. We're under attack by such and such a nation.’ I know them all very well, I'm not sure that they'd be there. I know we'd be there for them. I don't know that they'd be there for us. So, with all of the money we expend, with all of the blood, sweat and tears, I don't know that they'd be there for us. They're not there for us on Iceland, that I can tell you. Our stock market took the first dip yesterday because of Iceland. So, Iceland has already cost us a lot of money."

For the record, he was apparently confusing Greenland with Iceland. Also for the record, after 9/11, NATO did come to our defense in both Afghanistan and Iraq. In Afghanistan, the United Kingdom lost 457 soldiers; Canada, 159; France, 90; Germany, 62; Italy, 53; Poland, 44; Denmark, 43; Spain, 35; Romania, 27; Netherlands, 25; Turkey, 15; Czech Republic, 14; Norway, 10; Estonia, 9; Hungary, 7; Latvia, 4; Slovakia, 3; Albania and Portugal, 2 each; and Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, and Lithuania, 1 each. Even countries that subsequently joined NATO but weren't members at the time of the Afghan operations came to our assistance and lost troops, including Sweden (5 casualties), Finland (2), and Montenegro (1). Similarly, NATO assisted the U.S. in Iraq, with the United Kingdom losing 179 soldiers;  Italy, 33; Poland, 30; Bulgaria, 13;  Spain, 11; Denmark, 7; Romania and Slovakia, 4 each;  Latvia, 3; Estonia and Netherlands, 2 each; and Hungary, Portugal, and the Czech Republic, 1 each. 

So there's our so-called leader, embarrassing us on the world stage in Davos, confusing Iceland and Greenland, and telling the leaders of countries that already sacrificed the lives of their own citizens to help us in two dubious military adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan that he didn't think he could count on them to assist the U.S. in a time of need. 

The 25th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States gives Congress the authority to declare the President unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office. I have no confidence that they would do that and every confidence that they won't, but the Stable Genius is clearly unstable and unfit to lead this country.

Day of Awaking, 21st of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Castor): The Buddha's first noble truth is the existence of suffering. Some people interpret this to mean "all is suffering" or "life is suffering," but I don't see it that way. We have moments of joy, of satisfaction and happiness, and we have moments of sadness, of dissatisfaction and pain. One does not negate the other, but it's the suffering for which we would like a cure.

The Buddha explained suffering as not getting what we want and associating with what we don't want. There are a lot of things with which I don't want to associate, including cancer, my old college roommate's old girlfriend (a nightmare), and car problems. Also, I could do without old age and death even as I recognize their inevitability. 

I once heard someone tell me about a woman here in Atlanta whose wealthy husband provided her with a new BMW every year. She was complaining, however, that financial times were somewhat harder this year, and although her husband still gave her a brand-new BMW this year, it wasn't a top-level M-class model but a lower-tier E- or 2-series car. That sounds shallow and superficial (and it is), but her suffering was real, even if self-imposed - she wasn't getting what she wanted and was suffering as a consequence. 

The Stable Genius wants to "own" Greenland. Never mind that the Greenlandic people have no interest in being "owned" by the U.S., or that it is a part of the Kingdom of Denmark, which does not consider the territory up for sale to anybody. Never mind that Denmark, a member of NATO,  has been fully accommodating to the U.S. with regard to military bases, and has said it will grant the US permission for more bases and additional troops, and would be glad to cooperate with mineral sales and extraction. The U.S., in short, could do almost anything within reason it wants in Greenland, it just can't own it.

And that's a BMW 228i that just doesn't satisfy the Stable Genius. A malignant narcissist and a full-blown megalomaniac, he simply can't accept "no" as an answer, and telling him he can't buy Greenland just makes him want it all the more. Like that ridiculous BMW lady, he's suffering because he isn't getting what he wants. His goal is ludicrous - it's arguably better to have full access to a territory without all the responsibilities that come with ownership. But someone said "no" to him, and his ego just cannot accept that.

So he's suffering, but the difference between his suffering and yours and mine is that he has full command of the U.S. military. And the nuclear launch codes. And a much lower resistance to disappointment and pain than like 99% of the human race. Combine that with limited intelligence and stunted maturity, and we  have a problem, and now we're all suffering due to the pervasive presence of a President with whom we don't want to associate.

 

The Open Book, 20th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): "Love thy neighbor." Really, even if they voted for the Stable Genius? Three times?  

We're being divided, folks, by politicians, by the media, and by algorithms. White against black, men against women, citizen against immigrant, and right against left. By faith, by language, and by generation. Keep splitting the herd, and neither side will ever have enough numbers to make a difference.

In my life, back in simpler times, I've had a lot of conservative co-workers. Many I genuinely liked and admired, many I even considered to be friends. Back in the 1980s and even well into the 90s, we didn't discuss politics in the workplace, at least not overtly, but one's worldview was still fairly apparent.

Mid-90s talk radio changed some of that, and made culture wars and politics into water cooler fodder. Fox News made it even worse. By 2010, I was having heated arguments with coworkers and even left one company because the political environment was too toxic.

If this country is ever going to effectuate real change, in quality of life, in affordability, in freedom, in lasting international peace, we need to stop the bickering, stop the value judgements, and stop fighting our coworkers, who are trapped in the same jobs and same pay scale as us. A people united, and so on. 

Maybe we see different paths forward, maybe we have different values. But there are still commonalities. Where is the algorithm that focuses on what we have in common? When will politicians go back to building coalitions instead of exploiting grievances and differences? Will a source of facts ever emerge that we can all agree is trustworthy?

I don't have a solution. I'm an old man in the twilight of my life. But I once held progressive values yet still had conservative friends, and my conservative friends had conservative values yet had at least this one progressive friend. Can we ever find a way back to that again?

 

The Long Hold, 19th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran):  Since at least 1966, Martin Luther King, Jr. had endeavored to broaden the civil-rights movement for racial equality into a larger movement for economic justice. “Racial segregation,” he pointed out, “did not come about as a natural result of hatred between the races immediately after the Civil War.” Rather, he argued, it had evolved as part of a larger campaign to destroy an alliance between former slaves and dispossessed whites that emerged during Reconstruction. If you can convince the whites that despite their poverty and hardships they were still at least better than the blacks, you effectively prevent a broader movement against economic inequality, and the rich and powerful will remain effectively rich and powerful.

The Stable Genius, or those behind the scenes funding and fueling his rhetoric, is using the same strategy. Demonizing immigrants in particular and Latin Americans in general creates a division between white and black citizens and the growing Spanish-speaking demographic. Divide the population into ever-smaller ethno-economic demographics, and you'll never have to answer to a bloc that could potentially effectuate real socio-political change. Hell, they're even sowing divisiveness between rural and urban whites, between white conservatives and white progressives. 

Were he alive today, Dr. King would be in Minneapolis calling for the protection, safety, and quality of life of both the Hispanic and Somali immigrants there. He would have led a memorial for Renee Nicole Good, and would be protesting in front of the gilded remnants of the White House. 

If we succumb to the divisiveness and allow ourselves to be distracted by the phony, made-for-TV culture-war issues, and if each demographic assents to the further marginalization and suppression of the demographic it feels is on the next rung just below it, the Stable Genius wins, all power and wealth will fall into the greedy little hands of the autocrats, and the United States of America will effectively end as the land of the free and the home of the brave.

In fondest memory of you, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.     

       

 

Day of the Undertone, 18th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Helios): And here we are, at the third Helios of 526, three, 6-day New Revised Universal Solar Calendar weeks into this terrible year. I honestly don't know if we're going to make it to the end of this cursed year.

Do you think the Stable Genius is going to allow free and fair elections to occur this year? Elections all polling indicates his party will probably lose? The only question is how much they will lose by if the elections are free. Or will he invoke the Insurrection Act, install the military in Democratic states and cities to intimidate voters, and seize ballot boxes like he wanted to do in 2020?

Impermanence is swift and these terrible times won't last forever, but forever may still be far off and I fear things will only get worse before they got better. 

Of course, we've already broken the climate and passed so many tipping points, and there's no coming back from that except in terms of geological times scales.

But hey, the Patriots might make the Super Bowl this year! 

 

Day of the Gap, 17th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Electra): Yesterday's post was largely a reiteration of an address by Tim Walz, governor of the state of Minnesota and former Vice-Presidential candidate.  In response, the U.S. Justice Department announced it is investigating Walz for his statements under the flimsy theory that his public remarks constitute a conspiracy to impede federal immigration agents. They're also investigating Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey under the same flimsy pretense.

Criticism isn't obstruction. Protest isn't insurrection. An insurrection is an organized uprising or rebellion against the government, often involving violence. Protesters videoing ICE agents as they violate the civil rights of American citizens isn't an attempt of overthrow the U.S. government, nor is support for a political party other than the one currently in power. 

Arson, looting, and property damage are all crimes - namely, arson, looting, and property damage - but are not insurrection, even if they occur during a protest. People who loot during a protest should be arrested for looting, not for trying to overturn the U.S. government. An insurrection would be a crowd of people rioting, looting, and damaging property to try to impede the certification of an election, as occurred on January 6, 2021. That was an insurrection, not  Renee Nicole Good in a parked car on a Minneapolis street saying, "I'm not mad at you, dude" (her last words).

The Stable Genius wants to label the protests in Minneapolis as an "insurrrection" so he can invoke the Insurrection Act, a law that enables the President to deploy federal troops for domestic law enforcement. Citing the Insurrection Act overrides the Posse Comitatus Act that restricts military involvement in civilian matters, allowing for actions like quelling civil unrest or enforcing federal laws. 

So badly does he want this, he is deliberately trying to stoke violence and foment an uprising to justify declaration of the Act. His response to an ICE agent murdering an unarmed U.S. citizen, calling her a "fucking bitch" as he walked away from the crime, was to defend the agent and defame the victim and her wife, and then call an additional 1,000 troops into Minneapolis. He's poking the bear, hoping for the mayhem he saw there in 2020 after the George Floyd murder, so he would have the authority for unlimited military action in the streets.

Remember, he told a gathering of top military commanders that they would soon be "practicing" in U.S. cities, whatever that means.

The man who would be king wants to make his authority known by occupying our cities with U.S. military forces. Not just Minneapolis, but San Francisco, New York, and Chicago. Eventually, probably your city too.

 

Day of Dusk, 16th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Deneb): What’s happening in Minnesota right now defies belief. News reports don’t do justice to the level of chaos and disruption and trauma the federal government is raining down upon the state. Two to three thousand armed agents of the federal government have been deployed to Minnesota. Armed, masked, and under-trained, ICE agents are going door to door ordering people to point out where their neighbors of color live. They’re pulling over people indiscriminately, including U.S. citizens, and demanding to see their papers, at grocery stores, at bus stops, and even at schools. They’re breaking windows and dragging pregnant women down the street. Grabbing Minnesotans and shoving them into unmarked vans. Kidnapping innocent people with no warning and no due process.

Those words aren't mine or some hyperbolic antifa agitator (if such a person even exists). They're the words of Minnesota Governor and former Vice-Presidential candidate Tim Walz, a moderate, middle-of--the-road Democrat. 

These are the times and this blog is a record of the times. And on this 16th day of the the 526th year of the Modern Era, the times see an American city besieged by military forces working at the direction of its own President, who has threatened that "the day of retribution and reckoning is coming." That’s a direct threat against American people who dared to vote against him and who continue to stand up for freedom. 

"Let’s be very, very clear," Walz said. "This long ago stopped being a matter of immigration enforcement. Instead, it’s a campaign of organized brutality against the people of Minnesota by our own federal government."

Last week, as you undoubtedly know by now, that campaign of organized brutality claimed the life of Renee Nicole Good. Videos of the shooting are all over the media, and everyone's clearly seen what actually happened. And yet, instead of conducting an impartial investigation into the confrontation and potentially hold the officer responsible for Renee’s death accountable, the Stable Genius is devoting the full power of the federal government to finding an excuse to attack the victim and her family. Six federal prosecutors, including one longtime career prosecutor, quit their jobs rather than go along with this assault on the U.S. Constitution.

Across Minnesota, people are helping neighbors who are being unjustly and unlawfully targeted. They’re distributing care packages and walking kids to school and raising their voices in peaceful protest, even though doing so has made many of them targets for violent retribution.

The Stable Genius wants this chaos. He wants confusion and he wants more violence on the street so he can invoke the Insurrection Act to justify further military action against the American people on more American streets. It turns out the existential threat to American democracy isn't communism or radical Islamism or woke ideology - it's the White House. The call was coming from inside the house all along.  

Accountability will eventually come at the voting booth and from the courts, according to Walz. We can and will reclaim our country from the Stable Genius. We can re-establish a sense of safety and community and bring an end to this moment of chaos, confusion and trauma. We will, he says, find a way to move forward together. 

I hope he's right.

 

Day of the Left Hand, 15th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Castor): The ego is like a balloon: the more it's inflated, the thinner its skin.  

Day of the New World. 14th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): The cancer my cat is suffering from (squamous-cell carcinoma) is the same form of cancer from which my sister is recovering. Grisly coincidence. 

I tried to call her today to see how she's going (she's scheduled for another round of simultaneous chemo and radiation therapy this month), but I couldn't. It took me a while to realize what was going on, but every time I tried to call, I immediately got a "call ended" error message. I thought it was my phone or its settings, but couldn't find the problem, until I finally noticed the letters "SOS" where the connection bars should be.   

The "SOS" means that I'm not connected to my carrier, but can still get through to 911 or other emergency services. More Google searches finally revealed that my carrier, Verizon, was experiencing a widespread service outage with no reason given or estimate of when service will be restored. "We're aware and we're working on it."

So meanwhile I have no telephone connection with the rest of the world, although to be honest, some 90% plus of my communications with the outside world are through email or text.

What's odd about this, though, is that although the outage seems to be a widespread, national problem, there's very little media about it. Most of what I've seen online to confirm the problem has been on Reddit posts. Usually, when I have a power or internet outage, I get a text from the provider confirming that they know there's a problem and an estimated time for restoration. But Verizon? Crickets. 

Anyway, my cat and my sister have the same cancer and I don't have phone service.

Day of the Thought Markets, 13th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): Eliot and I visited the vet today. The prognosis isn't good. 

He's lost a lot of weight and his fur is extremely thin. Every day, I have to wipe away these crusty growths that keep accumulating around his eyes and on his nose. He drools a lot and and frankly, smells bed. He's stopped grooming and picks at his food. The vet pointed out that he's also underhydrated, even though I see him frequently drinking water.

The diagnosis is oral feline squamous-cell carcinoma, an aggressive cancer in cats indicated by all the symptoms he's exhibiting. We didn't do a biopsy but the vet recognized the illness as it's not uncommon in older cats (Eliot's almost 17, equivalent to 84 years for a human). 

The disease has a poor prognosis, and treatment usually extends a cat's life by only a few months. Palliative care to manage pain is generally the best course of action. 

My cat's dying and this year really, really sucks. 

First Ocean, 12th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Helios): Time is existence, according to Zen Master Dōgen, and all existence is time. When we are waiting for someone, an hour can seem very long, but when we are pressed for time, an hour can fly right by. The passage of time is relative but we still measure it as exactly 60 minutes per hour and sixty seconds per minute. 

It's commonly assumed that time always moves forward at the exact same rate, one second per second, and this happens everywhere, always, in all instances. You can set your watch by it. If one hour seems excruciatingly long and another seems to zip right past, we assume it's our perception, not time, that's been altered. But if time is existence as Dōgen asserts, and existence is subjective and relative, then time is actually our subjective experience of it, and some hours, minutes, and seconds are truly longer than others. One hour doesn't merely seem longer than another; one hour is actually longer than another.

Einstein proved time is relative to the observer by mathematics that I don't understand, but I can summarize my interpretation using the old joke about the chicken crossing the street. 

I don't know why the chicken crossed the street, but there was a time when the chicken existed on one side of the street, another when it existed on the other side of the street, and a time when it existed somewhere  in the middle of the street. We can think of time as a linear process, a series of instances that arrives at the present moment and then moves on. That sequence of instances exists now, and our existence occurs in that "now."

We can see time as that linear progression, but since existence is time and vice versa, the chicken's existence and time were always one and the same. Time never "arrived" at the chicken's existence, which is to say, the chicken never existed outside of time. Assuming it didn't get hit by a car or something and it still exists, time never left the chicken. Time does not come or go from existence, and when we see time as a constant, as opposed to a linear progression, then even a continuous process, like crossing the street, is seen as the present moment.

Let me try putting it another way: the chicken on the other side of the street was in the past and no longer exists except as a memory. The crossing of the street only exists in my mind, which put together a string of memories and observations, and since my mind is always in the now, the chicken's crossing is an instantaneous moment, occurring right now.

 

The Ecstatic Alarm, 11th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E.: The Stable Genius is reportedly pissed that the oil companies aren't excited about the opportunity to take over Venezuela's oil industry because of the high cost of modernization, security concerns, political instability, and the current low price of oil which would make turning a profit take decades. 

It's almost as if he hadn't thought it all through. 

It's bad enough this country is turning into an authoritarian shithole. It's all the worse that it's being done by some of the stupidest people this country's ever produced.

 

Quartz Day, 10th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Deneb): The faster we go, the slower time passes. Einstein proved this with mathematics I don't pretend to understand, but imagine this: you're on a spaceship traveling at near-light speed, say 99% the speed of light. You turn on your "headlights." What happens? Does light move ahead of your spaceship at 186,282 miles per second, the speed of light? Or since you're already moving at 184,419 mi/sec, 99% of the speed of light, does it move ahead at "only" (186,282 - 184,410 =) 1,863 mi/sec? 

Here's the head-scratcher: relativity, as I understand it, says "no," you will perceive the light moving ahead at the full 186k mi/sec, but if a stationary observer were somehow watching all this, they would see the light "slowly" moving forward from your ship at 1.86k mi/sec.

Einstein surmised that the reason this can happen, that light can be moving forward at both 186k and 1.86k, is that time is passing more slowly to the people on the spaceship relative to the stationary observer. The speed of light is constant but time is not. 

To that photon emitted by the spaceship's headlights, traveling at the full speed of light, time is so slow that it actually stops and time doesn't exist at all. To the photon, no time passes between being emitted from the headlamp and arriving at whatever planet or other body with which it eventually collides. 

The star Deneb, a supergiant in the Cygnus constellation 200,000 times brighter than Helios, our Sun, is 2,600 light-years from Earth. When we observe Deneb, we're seeing light emitted 2,600 years ago, around the time of the Buddha. We're seeing Deneb as it existed in 574 B.C., but to a photon emitted from Deneb back then, no time has passed during its long trip to Earth. To the photon, it was emitted and instantaneously arrived here. The passage of time does not exist to something traveling at the speed of light.

Of course, all this is further complicated by the fact that we're not really stationary. We're on a spinning planet traveling around Helios at 67,000 mph, which itself is moving through the Milky Way galaxy at 447,000 mph. You'd have to be some sort of Einstein to take all that into consideration. 

So, what is time, if it can speed up and slow down, or simultaneously exist and not exist? 

The Chinese Zen Master Yaoshan Weiyan was born in 745 A.D., or when the light we now see from Deneb was halfway between the distant star and us, and wrote a poem about time:  

Time is standing atop a soaring mountain peak

Time is plunging to the bottom of the Ocean

Time is a three-headed, eight-armed deity

Time is a golden sixteen-foot statue of Buddha 

Time is a monk’s staff or his ceremonial whisk

Time is an outdoor pillar or a stone lantern

Time is your next-door neighbor or a man on the street

Time is the whole of the earth and of boundless space

The stanzas of Yaoshan's poem compares time to the highest of highs and the deepest of deeps, to demons and saints, to the sacred and the commonplace. I think the point of the poem comes in the last line - time is not a "thing" but is in fact everything. Time is space and space is time. Yaoshan  (745-834) and Einstein (1879-1955) got there by very different means, but I don't think their understandings were far apart. 

To take this one step further, time is space and space is time, and all things exist in space-time and cannot exist outside of space-time, so all things, in effect, are manifestations of time. The present moment is the only point in which our existence comes together with time and all things exist only in this present moment. On the other hand, time is required for all actions and time can only be realized through action. 

Today, this present moment, is a walking day but the forecast is a 100% chance of rain, so I'm staying inside instead, and see what happens in my mind when it doesn't have a long walk or 90 minutes of sitting mediation to occupy it?

Basalt Day, 9th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Castor): “I don't need international law.” In a interview with the New York Times, the Stable Genius boasted about his reputation for unpredictability and willingness to resort to military action. "Let them hate me, so long as they fear me," he told the Times.

No, just kidding, that second quote is from the Roman Emperor Caligula, the insane, murderous tyrant who demanded and received worship as a living god (the first quote was the Stable Genius). Caligula delighted in humiliating the Senate and nominated his horse to be a consul. Over the course of his short reign, he became increasingly self-indulgent, cruel, sadistic, extravagant, and sexually perverted, and not unlike the Stable Genius, he had a fondness for grandiose, costly building projects, intended to entertain the masses but considered by many to be wasteful.

Asked if there were limits on his authority to strike, invade, or coerce other nations, the Stable Genius told the Times, “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.” When pressed on whether the U.S. still had to follow international law, he shrugged it off, saying “It depends what your definition of international law is.” 

When asked why he felt he needed to acquire Greenland, he said, “Because that’s what I feel is psychologically needed for success. I think that ownership gives you a thing that you can’t do, whether you’re talking about a lease or a treaty. Ownership gives you things and elements that you can’t get from just signing a document.”  

Even nuclear arms control didn’t faze him. Asked about the imminent expiration of a key treaty with Russia, he shrugged: “If it expires, it expires.”

After a surprise military raid on Venezuela, threatened attacks on other countries, and yanking the United States out of dozens of international agreements, the Stable Genius is openly saying the rules only apply to him if he feels like it. His interview made perfectly clear that he views laws as optional and alliances as expendable, and that power flows from only one source - him.

As his mind dissolves, the malignant narcissism that characterized him in his first term has descended into full-blown megalomania. We've gone from rule by mad King George III to Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, also called Caligula.

Granite Day, 8th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Blood on the streets of downtown Caracas, blood on the streets of Minneapolis. Her name was Renee Nicole Good, but does anyone know the names of the estimated 80 persons killed by U.S. troops in the raid to capture Maduro? 

And now for your moment of Zen:

Nanyuan was once asked by a monk, “On top of this lump of red flesh sits a sheer cliff of a thousand feet. Isn’t this what you said?”

Nanyuan said, “It is.”

The monk then lifted and turned over the meditation bench.

Nanyuan exclaimed, “Look how this blind ass acts!”

The monk started to speak.

Nanyuan hit him.

The sheer, thousand-foot cliff represents the barrier to our understanding. Nanyuan says it's on top of us because it is us - it's the barrier of our mind trying to grasp the ungraspable.

The monk thought he had come up with a clever means of direct action to show his teacher an understanding that went beyond words and ideas, but the teacher saw that the premeditated action was just another idea, not a spontaneous expression. He calls out the monk with an insult and when the monk begins to spontaneously respond with words (language), Nanyuan strikes him (direct action) to show him he's on the wrong track. Besides, almost all the Nanyuan koans end with, "he hit him." Zen masters back then often behaved more like Moe Howard than Gandhi.

Although it does not appear in the Blue Cliff Record, the Book of Serenity, or the Gateless Gate, Zen Master Dogen including this story in his anthology of 300 koans. However, Dogen does not discuss or quote this story in any of his other writings. It has been translated into English by Andy Ferguson (in Zen's Chinese Ancestors) and John Daido Loori includes it in The True Dharma Eye.

 

Luminous and Ashen, 7th of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): The Stable Genius says that Venezuelan oil will be sold at market price, "and that money will be controlled by me, as President of the United States of America." More evidence, as if it were needed, that the irresistible lure of Venezuelan oil isn't as an energy source to the U.S. or elsewhere, but as a means of propping up the failing U.S. petrodollar.

Meanwhile, the U.S. military announced that forces had seized the Marinera, a Russian-flagged tanker, in the North Atlantic between Scotland and Iceland for allegedly violating U.S. sanctions. The ship, which was not carrying oil, had previously tried to sail to Venezuela to pick up crude and had been eluding U.S. forces for more than two weeks. The Coast Guard separately intercepted another tanker that was under sanctions, the M Sophia, in a pre-dawn operation in the Caribbean.

Meanwhile, the Stable Genius is renewing his threats to acquire Greenland either through purchase from Denmark or by military force. Little Marco, his Secretary of State, National Security Advisor, and Viceroy to Venezuela, said he will be meeting with Danish officials regarding a potential acquisition, but isn't ruling out use of military force. Obviously, an invasion would be another and even more egregious violation of international law, as we would be going to war with a NATO ally, which would effectively be the end of a 70-year-old, highly successful alliance. All for the delusional whim of a malignant narcissist. Be sure to reset your doomsday clock before going to bed tonight.

Meanwhile, ICE thugs killed a woman, apparently a bystander, in Minneapolis today,  shooting her multiple times as she was in her car. ICE, Republicans, and of course, the Stable Genius have branded the woman a "domestic terrorist," but the mayor of Minneapolis called ICE's account, "bullshit," and told ICE to "get the fuck out of Minneapolis. We do not want you here.”

Meanwhile, the Stable Genius announced that he was withdrawing the U.S. from the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the bedrock international agreement established in 1992 that was the legal foundation for the Paris agreement and forms the basis for countries to rein in climate change. Also, the White House Council on Environmental Quality rescinded the National Environmental Policy Act, which requires federal agencies to consider a project's possible environmental impacts before it is approved. In essence, Environmental Impact Statements are now a thing of the past. A spokesperson said, "NEPA's regulatory reign of terror has ended."

Meanwhile, the Stable Genius today halted more than $10 Billion for childcare and family assistance funds in California, Colorado, Illinois, Minnesota and New York, citing concerns about fraud and misuse. Can't help millions of families get by if someone, somewhere is misusing some of the money now, can we?.  

We're not even at the one-year anniversary of the Stable Genius' second term yet, and already both the country and the world are going off the rails.

 

Morning and Evening Asylum, 6th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Helios): The first week of this 526th year on the Modern Era is now complete, and the world is already a far different one than it was in the last week of 525.

It's not just that the U.S. invaded Venezuela and kidnapped its president and his wife. It's that in so doing, the U.S. showed the world that it's abandoned any and all pretense of abiding by international law or diplomacy, and the Stable Genius showed that he feels he's no longer answerable to anyone but himself. Not to Congress, not to the Courts, certainly not to the American people. "Yeah, I did it for the oil," he freely admits to anyone who'll listen. "We're going to keep the oil, and I'd do it again." Meanwhile, the sycophants around him are warning that Greenland, Columbia, Cuba, or Panama could well be next. 

His malignant narcissism, so dangerous before, has turned worse and now he's full blown delusional. His delusions of grandeur have moved him from Commodus to Nero, and now, after this week, he's in Caligula territory. It's as if we're getting both mad-king George III and the extravagant and lascivious George IV at the same time. It's both fascinating and horrifying as we watch his mind disintegrate before our very eyes. 

Horror grips us as we watch you die

All we can do is echo your anguished cries

Stare as all your human feelings die

We are leaving, you don't need us.

Yes, the Stable Genius, old mad King Caligula George III/IV himself, invaded Venezuela for its oil, as he keeps telling everyone. But the Stable Genius isn't as independent as he wants us to believe and there are powerbrokers and megadonors around him to manipulate (bit don't control) his actions. He may have ordered the invasion for the oil, but the U.S. attacked Venezuela to protect the petrodollar.  

As described yesterday, all OPEC and virtually all other oil is bought and sold in US dollars. This arrangement keeps the U.S. currency afloat and allows the U.S. to print unlimited money to fund its military, entitlements, and deficit spending. Countries that try to buck this system generally find their leadership replaced by the United States. 

When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, Daddy Bush used the U.S. military to drive him back to Iraq but left him in power, albeit with sanctions. When Hussein started selling petroleum on world markets in dinars and other currencies to skirt the sanctions, Bush Junior stepped in, had him deposed, and let disgruntled Iraqis hang him. The lesson was it's one thing to invade another country but another to sell oil without U.S. petrodollars. 

When Gaddafi proposed a gold-backed African currency for oil trade, Obama had Libya bombed and Gaddafi killed.

The BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) are pursuing payment systems that bypass the U.S. dollar. The Stable Genius has placed large, double-digit tariffs on three of the countries (Brazil, India, and South Africa), and has a testy relationship, to say the very least, with China. He loves his Putin, but Russia has been selling oil in rubles and yuan since it invaded Ukraine, and the one and only time the Stable Genius ever criticizes Russia is over sales of sanctioned oil. 

BRICS has expanded to now include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. Iran has been trading in non-dollar currencies for years to get around U.S. sanctions and the Stable Genius has already bombed Iran once last year, and is now throwing gasoline on the flames of the current civil unrest there. He's bombed Nigeria, which isn't BRICS or an obvious enemy of the petrodollar, but is in OPEC and a significant oil producer and the bombs may have been a warning, a brush-back pitch in baseball jargon. 

Venezuela, another OPEC member, isn't BRICS either, but wants to be. Brazil blocked their application over democracy, or lack thereof, but Maduro has independently threatened that Venezuela would free itself from the petrodollar. It's probably no coincidence that Venezuelans were among the very first groups of immigrants that the Stable Genius singled out for deportation when he started his second term. 

The surprise over last weekend's invasion wasn't because he struck at Venezuela but because of the timing and how unilateral the decision was. Everyone, especially Maduro, knew G.I.s were going to arrive in Caracas eventually. They just needed to look at the flotilla offshore, or talk to the widows of the 100+ boaters the U.S. military had already killed.

I'm not saying oil wasn't a factor in the invasion - of course it was, the Stable Genius is freely admitting as much. But the invasion is also a part of a long pattern of deposing heads of state or otherwise punishing nations that sell oil outside of the petrodollar system. A nearby, oil-rich nation with a leftist, virulently anti-U.S. government was always going to be a potential target, but selling petroleum to the Chinese in yuans all but sealed their fate. 

It was inevitable.  

Sun Quarter Pass, 5th Day of Childwinter, 526 M.E. (Electra): The real reason the U.S. invaded Venezuela has nothing to do with drugs, HOSCA claims. Venezuela accounts for less than 1% of the cocaine entering the U.S. and virtually none of the fentanyl. It's not about fighting terrorism, either; there's zero evidence that Maduro runs a "terror organization." And it's certainly not about preserving democracy - the US supports a Saudi royalty which doesn't tolerate or allow any elections. 

It's not even about oil, at last not directly. HOSCA claims it's about preserving the value of the U.S. petrodollar system and maintaining a 50-year-old agreement that lets the U.S. print money and has kept it the dominant economic power for half a century. 

In 1973, Nixon and Kissinger got the Saudi royal family to agree that America would provide military protection for Saudi Arabia's oil fields in return for the Saudis pricing their oil exclusively in U.S. dollars. The Saudis were to refuse all other currencies, except the dollar, as payment for their oil exports in exchanged for the military protection. Since the signing of the agreement, all OPEC oil is quoted in US dollars.

The agreement created an artificial, global demand for U.S. dollars. Every country on Earth needed dollars to buy oil. This allowed the U.S. to print unlimited money to funds the military, entitlement programs, and deficit spending. The petrodollar is more important to U.S. hegemony than aircraft carriers.

But then in 2017, Maduro threatened that system by announcing that Venezuela would "free itself from the dollar" by implementing a new international payment system using other currencies, including the Chinese yuan, the Euro, and the Russian ruble. Venezuela's petroleum ministry began listing oil prices in yuan rather than U.S. dollars for the first time.

The proven oil reserves in Venezuela are the largest in the world, totaling 303.3 billion, more than Saudi Arabia's 297.7 billion barrels. For the first time, some 20% of the globe's petroleum preserves were available for purchase in yuans, not dollars.

The U.S. takes that kind of challenge to the dollar's supremacy seriously. In 2000, Saddam Hussein announced that Iraq will sell oil in euros instead of dollars. This was the real reason Bush Junior invaded Iraq and had Saddam deposed and killed. Not terrorism, not WMD's, not to finish what Daddy had started. After the war, Iraq's oil switched back to dollars and the WMDs were never discovered because they never existed.

In 2009, Gaddafi proposed a gold-backed African currency for oil trade. In 2011, Obama had NATO bomb Libya. Gaddafi was killed and his African currency died with him.

Then Maduro, with five times more oil than Saddam and Gaddafi combined, started actively selling petroleum in yuan. Now he's on trial in Manhattan for whatever charges the DOJ comes up with. 

The world is watching a sovereign nation get invaded for trading outside of the dollar. Russia, China, and Iran have already denounced the invasion and kidnapping as "armed aggression."  

The deeper problem is the petrodollar is already in decline. Due to U.S. sanctions, Russia has been selling oil in rubles and yuan since it invaded Ukraine. Iran has been trading in non-dollar currencies for years to get around U.S. sanctions. Saudi Arabia is openly discussing yuan settlements, and the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) have expanded to include Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE, and are actively pursuing payment systems that bypass the dollar entirely.   

Every country now clearly sees that if you threaten the dollar's hegemony, you get invaded. The U.S. has shown its hand. The invasion is an admission that the dollar can no longer compete on its own merits. 

If you have to bomb countries to keep them using your currency, your currency is already dying.