Is America Past The Point of No Return?
A whole lot of us have been pondering this question. In one way or another, a substantial number of articles here have been devoted to trying to answer this question.
Thom Hartmann weighs in over at Alternet:
Have corporate/billionaire control of our republic reached such a point that it’s no longer reversible? Have we passed the tipping point where democracy dies?
A few years back, on my radio show, President Jimmy Carter said that America, in large part because of Supreme Court decisions like Citizens United, has become “just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery.”
He’s right. It’s the elephant in the room that everybody, particularly our corporate media, completely ignores.
Good question! Hartmann offers up several examples that 99percenters are vary familiar with and then quotes FDR's VP:
This is rule by the rich. It’s here. It’s now.
As Vice President Henry Wallace predicted in a prescient New York Times op-ed in 1944:
“They [the super-wealthy] claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest.
“Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection.”
Yep. Trump is a billionaire oligarch's wetdream. Hartmann reviews President Eisenhower's "communist expansion", through the Lewis Powell memo and Citizen's United then segues into his book, The Crash of 2016:
In “Crash,” I pointed out how each of our nation’s major reboots (each leading to a huge progressive leap forward) happened after an economic crisis. The economic crisis of 1772 (which led to the Tea Act, and then the American Revolution), the Great Crash of 1856-’57 (which even wiped out Abraham Lincoln and led to the Civil War), and what was then referred to as the Republican Great Depression of the 1930s (which led to World War II) all led to major changes in America.
Will it take another Great Crash to bring about a reformation of our government? Or have our oligarchs so deeply embedded themselves and their shills into our institutions of government that it’s no longer possible for us to pull back from our headlong rush into neo-feudalism/neo-fascism?
It certainly looks Trump and the oligarchs are determined to destroy Western Civilization as we know it. Hartman concludes:
And our ascendant political party, the GOP, is working as hard as it can to transfer trillions more dollars of wealth from working people to its patrons in the top 1%.
As Eldridge Cleaver said, “There is no more neutrality in the world. You either have to be part of the solution, or you’re going to be part of the problem.”
It’s truer today than ever before. And it’s not like we weren’t warned.
http://www.salon.com/2017/07/05/is-america-past-the-point-of-no-return_p...
Well there you go. That looks like a pretty damn accurate analysis to me. That's why I was at Occupy L.A. and Occupy City Hall with BLM. Why I'm here instead of TOP. It may very well be too late to stop the bastards, but I will go down swinging, biting and throwing elbows.
Any thoughts?
Comments
Thom Hartmann?
The man who plugged HRC left, right and center?
No thanks.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
stopped clock moment
Hey, it appears that our Essayist has caught Mr. Hartmann in a "stopped clock moment", as this current point of his does indeed ring true.
Perhaps Mr. Hartmann wants to recover some credibility?
"US govt/military = bad. Russian govt/military = bad. Any politician wanting power = bad. Anyone wielding power = bad." --Shahryar
"All power corrupts absolutely!" -- thanatokephaloides
I used to listen to 'Brunch with Bernie'
But Hartmann's 'coming home to the Dem Party' schtick got very obvious and old fast.
Let's hope he sells a lot of gold coins.
Gëzuar!!
from a reasonably stable genius.
Yep
Bernie, Warren, Hartman, etc. Occasional allies are better than no allies at all. I'm not betting the farm (or even the strawberry patch) on the likelihood that any of them are saviors. Just keeping them tuned in FWIW.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Hartmann loses his mind every four years.
Been listening to Hartmann on and off for a long time. Every presidential vote cycle he seems to lose his mind and become an avid supporter for the democratic party candidate. During Obama's second election he really got on a caller for attacking Obama's war record with Tom claiming that Obama brought peace to Iraq when he simply followed Bush's plan and attempted to actually keep troops in Iraq. After each election he goes back to being a decent progressive voice.
It's not just america.
The point of no return has been reached for all humankind and most if not all living creatures.
We need much more than a moon landing or Manhattan Island project at this point and that's not going to happen.
I fight by recycling, reusing what many throw away, growing a garden, and above all, not wanting what I don't need.
Fighting a lost government for a lost cause has escaped me. I believe it's much too late.
It's time to think of survival for one purpose. I want to be around long enough to see it all burn.
But...... that's just me.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
Communes. We're going to
be looking like "Walking Dead" sooner than later. Might as well start building those urban and rural communes while we're trying to save what's left of the republic. "Sanctuary Blocks," sanctuary towns.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Communes.
Already, kinda, sorta there.
Kinda funny though. A great many of them are heavily armed.
Gotta be sneaky.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
I've been thinking a lot about that lately...
a c99 community. We'd need a tract of rural land with a water source, a well. Farmable land to grow food.
I'm serious about this, I've been thinking about it a lot lately.
Would love to help.
I'm in southern Michigan and only demand sweat equity.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
I'm a country boy...
I'm a planner.
I'm a builder.
I'm an excellent gardener.
Sweat equity, yes.
The land is the tough part.
It takes two.
You have an excellent idea. The problem being, where do even a minority of @c99 live?
I have acreage with water but who lives here?
Maybe we need to ask where we all live.
Jackson County, Michigan.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
Lots of things to work out...
is it doable? I think so.
Same here. n/t
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
@Pricknick Grew up in
Grew up in Lenawee and Hillsdale County. Parents still live in Jackson County. I'm now living in Oregon. Flying back to visit the parents in two weeks.
Extra bedrooms in the house, 21 acres of trees,
but doable by someones with chainsaws to clear some mucklands, Ithaca, NY.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
Might set up a few spots around the country
diversity increases the likely hood of success.
Deschutes county, Oregon
The graphs in this article shows why the assumptions I made several years ago are not too far off target. The graphs may help us better understand the unique challenges in each of areas of the country we live.
Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.
I live in NY-21 in
Jefferson County, but can move.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Hollis NY
Queens County.
Actually looking for a new apartment and hoping I don't end up having to settle for another piece of crap.
Wish I could have some land. Did some gardening in my youth in Rochdale. We had a gardening club and a small plot where we grew the best veggies!
Yaldabaoth, Saklas I'm calling you. Samael. You're not alone. I said, you're not alone, in your darkness. You're not alone, baby. You're not alone. "Original Sinsuality" Tori Amos
I'm now in British Columbia
Obviously, things are much better for me in the short-term than anyone in the US. But I have no real hope that Canada either can or wants to stop the flood of Neoliberalism. They elected Trudeau for crying out loud. Things are better here, but only in the sense that we are on the same road as the US but maybe 10 years behind.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Have extremely remote
property in AK. Not exactly farmable, but gardens can be built. The biggest expense is transportation, which is unfortunately, fossil fuels all the way.
exactly, the land is the hard part,
look, who can afford to invest in buying land these days? Being confronted with it quite clearly in trying to buy land on Hawaii. It's really THE issue. And don't forget, once you have the land, think about how, to whom you might inherit it and who has the power to confiscate that land, once you own it.
I wonder when a person really owns its land. Seems to me it can be taken away too easily, especially in the US.
https://www.euronews.com/live
I'm fortunate.
I have acreage. We are starting to maximize our position. We need to drill a second well. That will set us up to become much more self sustaining.
"The “jumpers” reminded us that one day we will all face only one choice and that is how we will die, not how we will live." Chris Hedges on 9/11
It'll take community...
to have a chance at surviving what's heading our way.
Totally agree. n/t
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
The Farm in Summertown TN
is a great resource.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Great tip...
Thanks for that, looks very interesting.
Led by Stephen Gaskin; was asked to step down as leader in 1983
http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-stephen-gaskin-20140706-st...
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/03/us/stephen-gaskin-hippie-who-founded-...
http://www.thefarm.org/
These days the Farm teaches about permaculture
and sustainability through its Ecovillage, and the tireless efforts of Albert Bates.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Um, we'd have to grow weed too.
I can help with that.
Wouldn't be the first time...
in that rodeo for me either.
I was actually thinking about this earlier today,
something my brother, sister and I have considered for a number of years but have never acted. Personally, I'd love it, creating a community as self sufficient as possible on a some land. I hate not doing things like this I know I should do.
My mom has 40 acres
in central MN. Weed grows wild in the horse pasture. Just sayin'. Hubby and I are going back there next month; we decided it's time to GTFO Utah. Now if only I could afford to help her pay it off....
This shit is bananas.
Money crop. n/t
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Most definitely.
Only a fool lets someone else tell him who his enemy is. Assata Shakur
Same here. Not just
a post on the internet. Most of us in a few years (or sooner) won't be able to survive individually, but collectively we could. I could move to Costa Rica or Equador, but I would rather continue the fight here.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
We'll be in Ecuador
in November if everything works as planned. I doubt being there instead of here will protect us if this mess does collapse but I'm sure we'll enjoy it while we can. I can't overstate the relief we found in making the decision to go to a simpler life with a great environment and people. I've even begun to come to terms with the feeling I'm running from a fight and leaving others behind.
"Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now..."
They're popping up all over the map.
You will want to check out the Fellowship of Intentional Communities. They help streamline the process and provide resources and support.
Go to the Interactive map.
Here's one way of making it happen
...on the fly, leaving most of the time free to devote to establishing gardens and sustainable utilities, and creating common areas and atmosphere.
A Fast and Inexpensive Path to Cohousing
There are many other strategies out there. It's very doable.
One of the easiest ways
is just to encourage people to move to the same town or place. Once there, they can cooperate and collaborate. A lot of politics and conflict is avoided if the community isn't too formal and collective.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
I'm reminded of an intentional community
years ago. It seems that one of the units was having toilet issues, and rather than just fixing it, instead members chose to have endless discussions and debates on exactly how they should go about it, what supplier, etc. All it needed was a simple part, but certain personality types were encouraged to micro-manage and chime in on everything imaginable.
In the meantime, some people couldn't flush.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
Good link, Pluto.
If folks are serious about this idea, check out that link, as the profiles of the communities explain how they function and how long they have managed to function that way. And check out the link that studentofearth provided upthread. Look north, look inland, look upland and not swamp, and then find counties and towns that will let one build just about anything on unincorporated rural property.
Multiple sites -- an archipelago, as it were -- across North America probably make sense, and that was the pattern of the early-1900s Arts and Crafts communities (some of which, like Arden, DE, still exist). If you have a rural site to provide produce, you can also acquire small-town or urban buildings to serve as markets or community amenities where you interact with the rest of society. The Farm, for instance, made itself accepted by an initially very skeptical Tennessee population by becoming the cornerstone of a farmer's market in Nashville.
It's one helluva lot of work for aging hippies, but it's absolutely do-able and smart if the resources are there and the land and an amenable county/town can be found. If you can conceive a model that is not expensive -- cheap land, unpolluted water, gradual ramp-up to sustainable energy, low-cost housing types -- and have the people to provide sweat equity for the community and bring those costs down further, you can create something that would be what others trying to survive what comes will emulate.
There are plenty of caveats.
A northern site will be chilly (or downright cold) for a few years longer, so buildings and foundations have to be appropriate and that's more expensive.
Most of northern North America also has little soil (the glaciers took that soil and dumped it just above the Mason-Dixon Line), so you'll have to build soil aggressively for the rest of your lives. This is all the more true of northern upland sites, where you'll need to terrace and/or berm just to keep the soil in place and probably construct cold frames and greenhouses to extend your growing season. Fortunately, many foodstuffs want to come into existence in northern climates, and those will give you an advantage over southern sites that will transform rapidly from steamy to desert conditions.
Interpersonal conflicts kill most intentional communities. Plan for them, so you can resolve things before they wreck all your work.
Work out the finances well in advance, so all know what to expect. Look to those long-lived intentional communities on Pluto's link to see what they did.
Everything is do-able, but we'd need to get started now. We're not getting younger, and the earth is not getting cooler.
Yep there is an intentional community
near Tallahassee Florida that is over 40 years old and still going strong. i have posted below about it.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Intentional community - Real life long term success
A long lasting intentional community is located outside my home town of Tallahassee Florida. Founded in 1972, the Miccosukee Land Co-op has been in existence for over 40 years. While it is not a self sustaining community (like food production), it does serve as an example of how a community has survived over the decades and remained sustainable and vital. I am linking two articles on the Land Co-op. I have personally known a number of people involved in the development of the Land Co-op and who have or are still living there.
The first article was written in 2009, while the second in 2016. I think these two articles give a good picture of the trials and successes of setting up and sustaining an intentional community. The Miccosukee Land Co-op is an amalgamation of privately owned property and co-operatively owned property which is somewhat different from what I believe you may be proposing, but there is plenty to learn from it.
Having since met and known some of the founding and early members, my take is that not only do you need people of vision, but who have the proper knowledge skills to make something such as this work. I highly recommend everyone who may be interested in something similar read the above linked articles.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
I've been a lot about it too
Hydroponics can cut down on both the needed arable land and the water. You can't grow everything hydroponics, but you can grew enough.
Escape to central Vermont
We live in Massachusetts, but have been in love with the land and people of VT for decades. In 2000, we bought 25 hilltop acres in beautiful Orange County, where nothing much ever happens and that's the way we like it. The views are spectacular, and so are the village communities. We go there every chance we get; it is a great place to find misplaced sanity.
After tent camping for a few years (and getting sleeted on two Columbus day weekends in a row) we started building a log cabin on our hilltop. It began as a large wooden tent, wind and waterproof, but is now insulated, heated toasty warm by a woodstove in winter and cooled by crossventilation in summer. We put in a septic field and dug a 440' deep well, then ran out of money to connect the two, and they had to wait a few more years of outhouse living, including a couple of years when our road washed out and we backpacked food and water up the last quarter mile, about 600 vertical feet. It was worth it.
There is good soil and a number of working family farms in the valleys. The soil is sparse on the hilltops, along with difficult access and weather in winter and mud seasons. The perfect place for silly flatlanders to build a cabin-- but our neighbors are the salt of the earth and help us out with a tractor and a comealong when necessary. Trees and raspberries grow on our hilltop, not a whole lot else aside from the previously mentioned sanity, and it's hard to put a price on that.
We've worked up to an off-grid setup, very comfortable with LED lights, a tiny chest freezer for ice for our cooler in the summer, and hot showers. We still depend on propane for the water heater and summer cooking, about 100 pounds over the last three years, and a gas generator to run the deep well pump to fill the storage tank. That pump is a real current hog, not sure how to avoid the petrochemicals, though we have plans to add more solar panels and storage over the next couple of years.
This is getting really long, can write another installment if there is interest.
Yep, between the global warming
and the exponential population growth, there isn't much chance.
What seals the deal is that the PTB don't apparently give a damn.
"Obama promised transparency, but Assange is the one who brought it."
You're giving
the TPTB wayyy tooo much credit.
Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.
Indeed. n/t
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
Population growth, a basic driving factor in ecological disaster
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=japan+population+decline&t=ffsb&ia=web
We’re told facing climate change demands real sacrifice. If the emergency is so bad, why doesn’t “sacrifice” include measures to limit population? From that perspective, Japan would be the only country to have any credibility when it comes easing pressure on the environment.
China too, at least while the one-child policy was in effect between 1979 and 2015.
Even without global warming, unsustainable population growth eventually leads to famine and collapse.
Yet what’s going on in some parts of the world could be termed a population explosion. And globalizers either don’t want to talk about it or are enabling it, encouraging it, promoting it.
And to top it off, there’s the problem portrayed at the start of the movie Idiocracy. What can be expected to happen over the long-term when “more intelligent” people cut their reproductive rate and “less intelligent” people don’t?
Doom and Gloom?
Fracking deep for oil but there's nothing in the sump
There's kids all picking at the garbage dump
I am running out of water so I better prime the pump
I am trying to stay sober but I end up drunk
We'll be eating dirt
Living on the side of the road
There's some food for thought
Kind of makes your head explode
Feeling kind of hurt
Yeah
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1DWiB7ZuLvI
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Nah, we got em right where we want em.
"reformation of our government"? In how we govern ourselves? The illusion slash delusion that this country used to be a democracy has to be understood as a false narrative. It sends a message that reform of this political system, designed from the beginning to be an oligarchy system to maintain the power at the top of the wealth chain, is possible. It isn't. It has to be replaced. People like Hartman won't say that, they'll just keep leading people down the rabbit hole searching for ways to elect better politicians. Until enough people who have the means and desire to do it understand that we have to take a major league step here, then the corporations, oligarchy and plutocracy will continue to rule.
We're slaves until we tell them we're no longer.
At TOP ten years
ago, I bugged the people I respected with the reality that -- as my signature said for years -- "Until we break into, and break up, the Media Cartel's monopoly on narrative, we'll keep losing; don't matter what we do."
Still the case. Will be the case next year, and the next, and...
Given that 3/4s and more poll as seeing the Media as garbage; 4/5ths as seeing both parties as corrupt and disinterested in our well-being; 2/3rds-7/10ths as "on the wrong track" for this whole century it's insane to not engineer a 'political full-spectrum' effort, to force the fact of how unrepresented the people in this Mockrazy are, into a major and daily topic in mass-reach media.
The objection it can't be done is based on emotions of powerlessness and despair; not on reason in the face of the -- to my mind inarguable -- reality that IF ANYTHING GOOD is going to happen, the first thing is to break into the narrative machine the 1% uses to manipulate us.
If mass-reach media had been forced to deal publicly, for instance, with the fact that two thirds of America saw the Trump-Clinton choice as ludicrous, a whole other course unfolds.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
Occupy Wall Street Changed The Narrative
Or so they say. The idea of malignant 1%ers entered the dialogue, but nothing really changed. The M$M belittled and ignored the messenger and the message. Still do.
Both political parties and their massive institutional bulwarks kept plowing ahead regardless of the facts and clear will of the people, i.e. the Hillary Clinton primary coronation and then Republican healthcare abomination.
The argument of BLM is absolutely righteous. Point in fact, cops should never gun down any unarmed citizen, but they still do.
Big Al is right. Political change does not have a high likelihood of success. But how do we "tell them" we are done being wage slaves?
Beats me. Wish I had the answer.
"They'll say we're disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war." Howard Zinn
Petition the UN.
Claim "No Confidence" in the current government, which does not represent the will of the People. That will neutralize US influence internationally. Demand an emergency reorganization of the nation's purpose and vision and an emergency election. Use the language of the Declaration of Independence, modernized for the 21st century.
Grow like bitcoin. Help will come.
@Pluto's Republic
Whoa, cool! As long as the UN acts sensibly...
Edit: and doesn't get bought/blackmailed/bullied/bombed.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
2M tweets emails phone
calls letters a day to all the editors and talking heads: Both Parties and You are enemies of Democracy; mislead us constantly.
From left right and center.
OWS could be put in a box show clips of provocateurs and fools doing damage, and then just shut up about it. Make the reality ubiquitous and how long before the dam cracks? Before it becomes dominant on public discussion; nowhere for rulers to hide. A month? Six weeks?
Gotta start somewhere. Don't make it happen and we keep losing.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
If we can't change
the corporate narative - and we can't - then we must create our own.
YouTube is great for that, but internet radio (or web radio) is more immediate. Both have their place, and are great tools to plug people in to alternative media.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
We can change the
corporate narrative. And we must. It's the assumption we can't that makes us not do it. The internet -- the place where people go to look for the like-minded and not to reach all factions, everyone in a self selected info ghetto -- has been around for 20 years now. Has the position of Americans and ordinary people the world over gotten better or worse in that time? Yes, some battles get won, but the war is clearly, inarguably, being lost.
Orwell: Where's the omelette?
@jim p
And beyond the corporate narrative, the corporate/billionaire influence on public policy must be replaced by the paramount and public interest environmental/natural life system survival while anything remains to salvage. Though I doubt that any corporate narrative will present that as a good thing, lol. They'd apparently rather die.
Psychopathy is not a political position, whether labeled 'conservatism', 'centrism' or 'left'.
A tin labeled 'coffee' may be a can of worms or pathology identified by a lack of empathy/willingness to harm others to achieve personal desires.
Good article.
The author speaks about how republicans have gerrymandered the country so that it's going to get harder for democrats to win elections. This has been happening for decades and the democrats have sat back and watched.
Also in heavily democratic areas people stand in lines for hours because there aren't enough voting machines for them.
I used to wonder why the democrats didn't put more machines in those areas, but now I understand why they didn't.
The democrats changed the filibuster rule for some reason in 2013 and now they have very few ways to block republicans. Just a bit too convenient now that republicans own both houses, isn't it?
I'm with JtC and Big Al. Let's find a place for all of us to ride out the upcoming storm.
If TPTB have bug out places, we should have one too.
Don't river runner and citizen of the earth have land?
Putin isn’t going to make you homeless or kill you or deny you health care.
Your government will allow it to happen though.
If I recall correctly...
there are several members here that have mentioned owning land.
21 acres of woodland
and no mule here.
Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.
Snoopy, see my reply to Big Al above.
I like the idea of having a sort of refuge for people where my friends could come, even if it was little more than a tent city. Having spent some time in just such a place in New Orleans once I like the idea of it; I'm just not sure how workable it would be, for various reasons. You'd have to really trust the people who'd come, but I really think the only way we're going to survive whatever is coming is by helping each other out as best we can.
This shit is bananas.
"Trust" isn't that big of an issue
In a sense, yeah. But think about the alternative. If you are unable to generate trust then you're going to be going it alone. If I was of a mind to build one of these collectives I'd realize right off the bat that extending some degree of trust is going to be mandatory.
A lot of wanderers in the U.S. political desert recognize that all the duopoly has to offer is a choice of mirages. Come, let us trudge towards empty expanse of sand #1, littered with the bleached bones of Deaniacs and Hope and Changers.
-- lotlizard
Big reasons we moved to France. We were done in 2008.
Our dream is about to be realized: one acre, on a small river, very self sufficient house.
You need enough land for raising solid fuel to supplement the days/nights when solar and wind don't work. Passive is very good at carrying some time for stored heat and energy.
Donkeys, goats, chickens; fertile soil. Grapes and herb. We have a design we've used for raised block beds which can be made into mini greenhouses. Purifying water, and water capture very important. Guinea fowl for tick and bug control.
Need a Nurse practioner/osteopath/herbalist.
This founder of Territorial Seeds is quite good about this sort of thing:
Soil and Health
I think the commune would have to decide on whether to procreate. Many of us are now too old though.
I think communal living is a great idea and a way to go. And being gregarious and at least half Italian, good food, good friends, good wine and gardening cooking in groups is the way of life.
You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again you did not know. ~ William Wiberforce
If you can donate, please! POP Money is available for bank-to-bank transfers. Email JtC to make a monthly donation.
I think you have it exactly right.
I'd love to hear more about it.
One thing is that people in the US might find this idea
difficult to carry out. No system of transportation or communication once located in a rural area with land. Maybe retaking Detroit, which some are trying to do is a thought.
The build a castle-forte the way the people who actually did it, is a good example of folks having what we would call primitive technology, but technology it was and is.
Builing a castle the old fashioned way.
The forte with the village and the farming and animal husbandry all around had them living a very decent life style (except winter mud).
Right here, right now we need solar and wind initiatives for everyone not just big projects like solar roads.
Lots of roofs out here even in cities could go solar.
Also have been following Inhabitat for several years:
Green Cities
Chinese are thinking
The French lead simple lives, close to the ground. If things grind to a halt, we suspect they could go on with a few tweaks, and do pretty well.
I keep forgetting to add: Napolean of all people designed a system of 'departments' which I would say roughly equate to counties. The key is that each one is about the same size: the objective of the design is multi fold, but one thing is that no one is more than a day's horse ride from a government center. Same for essential services. They have been working on this for quite awhile now. Good transportation on a hub and spoke design. They are now implementing cut through routes to shorten distances between large towns or cities rather than having to go up one route to a hub and out on another. More like a spider's web.
Now a nuclear exchange over our heads is another story entirely.
Here is the home page for Steve Solomon:How to grow enough for two people on one quarter acre
Should we add this to the blog roll? Maybe we need a category on the blog roll of "Resiliance" sites. There are quite a few good ones.
You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again you did not know. ~ William Wiberforce
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I like the idea of
retaking Detroit. I was there for NN14 for just a couple days (as my mom passed during that event), but I recall downtown being drop dead gorgeous and clean, lots of police on foot, live music in a park. My kind of downtown! And, yes, while the rest of the city may be going to crap even as I bang this out, misfortune often breeds opportunity. I noticed many multi-unit apartment buildings going for under $50,000, some even under $25,000. And, for sure they're no doubt fixer-uppers, but there's a good chance of buying your own 700 sq. ft. apartment for under $10,000 as part-owner of the building. $10,000 you could pay over time as part of the mortgage. So, for say $250 or $350 a month you own the place, some of that rent money going toward fixing infrastructure and building mtce.
the little things you can do are more valuable than the giant things you can't! - @thanatokephaloides. On Twitter @wink1radio. (-2.1) All about building progressive media.
I have already planned a mini-community
that will support a few people, probably 5 at most. Water will be a problem because fracking has polluted the aquifer. I hope those fancy purifiers do what they say they do.
The bigger problem is heat. Temperatures here are already high enough to be dangerous during late summer. Makes farming very iffy, and manual labor a risk to one's health, no matter what precautions one takes.
I can't say that East Texas will be a safe haven. My plan may extend my life a few years, but overwhelming heat would wipe out everything in a generation.
"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981
We may need to dig into hillsides like they do in Iceland
against the cold. Below a few feet the temp is fairly constant. Green roofs, water capture. I have seen an underground greenhouse built like a trench with different roof types against different weather.
You may choose to look the other way, but you can never say again you did not know. ~ William Wiberforce
If you can donate, please! POP Money is available for bank-to-bank transfers. Email JtC to make a monthly donation.
That's what Rei, the Iceland woman
who posted on the vulcanism in Iceland at ToP a year or two ago, was doing. Even there, far from towns, she had to search for an architect willing to make the effort to respect her ideas and get them built. She'd be a good voice here at C99.
Seems as though every generation has to realize this for itself.
Like we have no history books or learn nothing from them? No sense or realization of continuity?
We started out being ruled by the rich. East India Company, the King and his Governors, slaveowners, John Hancock and the the majority of the Framers, etc. It's not changed, except that the rich got better organized (e.g., organizations like the Bilderburg Group, ALEC and its big sister, USGLC) and better at moving the wealth of the world into their own hands. The rest of us? Not so much, even though we outnumber them. BY A LOT. Divide et impera, indeed.