Diary

I haven't been reading anything recently but will start next week when my new book arrives. The atmosphere here is the distinct "late summer." The vegetation is lush, and the birds are generally quiet, except for the pileated woodpeckers, which are pounding away now. The trees get covered with large holes, which become habitats for many animals. The softwoods, such as birch, tend to rot and collapse faster than the hardwoods, such as oak. The longer you live here, the easier it is to develop a sense of living in an ecosystem. The worst of the hot weather is over now, and I still haven't used an air conditioner. I got rid of two large portable air conditioners that I never used but kept one small window air conditioner just in case. Even on hot days the interior of the house stays fairly cool, and during the day the upstairs heats up. It only becomes uncomfortable for me when the humidity is high and the temperature is above 80º, and that rarely occurs. Usually the overnight temperatures are in the 60's, and if I ventilate the house in the morning and close the windows it stays cool inside all day. So far, this seems to be a good location for living during a period of climate change. There will be periodic flooding, which won't affect this house, and some severe storms, but that's about it. It currently does not appear that there will be droughts locally. We do get a little smoke from forest fires to the north and west, but that hasn't been significant so far. There seem to be some unexplained health benefits to living here: since arriving, I have had no illnesses or allergies and no aches and pains. It seems possible that I'll become a super-ager without making any special effort.

I've been avoiding writing about Trump, because I consider him to be a boring topic. In January, 2017, I described him as a gorilla that had escaped from a zoo, and he hasn't changed at all since then. At the time, it seemed as if he was a stupid person way out of his depth, and he still seems like a stupid person way out of his depth. It makes more sense to look at this from a sociological standpoint, in which the corporatization of American life since World War II has caused people to become obsessed with wealth maximization. Since this is still a male-dominated country, net worth seems to have figuratively replaced penis size. To be "well-endowed" now, money does the trick. But the ante keeps going up, and millionaires are losers: you need one billion dollars minimum. The only reason why Trump is in power now is that the Republican Party needed a leader who would follow "pay-to-play" rules. This made Trump a good candidate, because he was an experienced grifter. At a practical level, this meant that rich people and corporations could just buy the federal laws and regulations that suit them. Trump is there to misinterpret and ignore laws for the people who keep him in power. Ordinary money grubbers prefer to work with someone like Trump, because he has none of the class distinction of a Rockefeller or a Rothschild. One of the reasons why Trump seems callous and indifferent to the needs of poor and disenfranchised people is that they have nothing to offer him. He also has a sadistic streak, because he knows that at heart that he is a moron, and there is nothing that he can do about it.

Oddly, it seems that the democratic process may actually be working for the removal of Trump. He is doubling down on his fantasy "rigged election" trope because he knows that he may very well lose the House and Senate and be removed from office this time. The MAGA movement is currently recalibrating for a world without Trump, and there are defections brewing. Trump's preferred method of imposing his will on people is protracted litigation, but he is already losing cases, and I think that the MAGA members on the Supreme Court are getting tired of naughty Donald.  The midterm elections are also causing Congressional members to assess their popularity among voters if their support of Trump no longer supplies the cachet that it once did. The end is nigh.