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  • From: "Marie McHarry" <mmcharry AT gmail.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Politics
  • Date: Thu, 5 Jun 2008 21:49:10 -0500

On Thu, Jun 5, 2008 at 1:23 PM, <Clansgian AT wmconnect.com> wrote:

> My position? First elect Obama president preferably with Clinton as the
> veep and preferably elected by a landslide.
>
> When the economy tanks and the food and energy crises become acute, people
> may finally see that it isn't which platitude spouting clown you put in the
> White House that makes a difference, it isn't changing the way you change
> the
> changes, rather it is ... something else. But the first step is to realize
> it
> isn't that.

If everything tanks within Obama's first term what will most likely
happen is that the Great Unwashed will turn to a strong man dictator
to make it all right, and the American experiment in democracy will
end. I'm hoping it won't happen, but it certainly could.

> Yet ... even Ron Paul doesn't realize that we must be led out of the exurb
> and suburb society where our backsides are permanently contoured to fit a
> car
> seat, a society that can only ask where the next gallon of fuel is coming
> from
> or the next vehicle that doesn't need that fuel.

He may understand, but no politician can say it. Paul has said quite a
few things and gotten a following, but while you can tell people all
kinds of truths, they won't hear them if 99.9 percent of the
population doesn't believe they're true.
>
> The pain will have to be turned up higher before anyone is going to listen.

I run a private list (members by invitation only) that is constituted
of about 95 percent copyeditors, many of them with impressive
science/technology backgrounds. They're mostly terrified about next
winter, never mind the years after that. But they're mostly not able
to change their circumstances. A high percentage work at freelance
editing so they don't have commuting expenses, but not all of them
have a place where they can have a garden (but enough do that
sometimes I'm not sure whether I'm reading Homesteading or my list --
in fact, my listers may talk about gardening and raising chickens more
than this list does). It's one thing to know a huge natural disaster
is coming; it's quite another thing to make anything like adequate
preparations.

The people I work with are concerned. Many of them do have large
gardens (and many of them are wives working so the family will have
good insurance as their husbands are farmers). Some are already
working 4-day weeks, but HR hates to approve those. Our contract is
going to be renegotiated in the coming year, and making 3- and 4-day
weeks readily available and working from home at least part of the
time available at all is something we would like to negotiate. I don't
know anyone who is oblivious.

Marie




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