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pitchfork futures
Friday, September 7 2007
I know I'm not the only one looking on in dismay as the Bush administration ramps up its public relations offensive to try to kick the can of the Iraq occupation down the road another Friedman Unit. One Friedman Unit ago, of course, we were told that we'd be seeing clear and convincing benefits from the "surge" in six months time (now), but that if it didn't pan out "there is no plan B." So it all comes down to an analysis of now. Here the administration has a distinct advantage: it completely controls access to Iraq and can set up Potemkin villages and markets to woo those who come "to see first hand whether or not the surge is working." They can also manipulate and craft the statistics they gather and present any way they want, since they are indeed the ones gathering and presenting them. If they want to suddenly only count dead bodies with holes in the back of the head, they can just decide to do that. And they can compare such figures with the figures from earlier years, figures they weren't deigning to collect but which include dead bodies no matter the position of their bullet holes, and they can then claim that the number of dead bodies is decreasing. They can do this to a point because Fox News, the Pravda of this operation, is sure to report such reports uncritically. And General Petraeus can get up in front of the microphones and cite these reports as encouraging news, playing the role of the disgraced Colin Powell, and through sheer force of inertia carry the day and kick this can down the road another Friedman Unit to the next Powell/Petraeus type who will in turn expend his reputation kicking the can yet another Friedman Unit. Meanwhile there is insufficient leadership in either party to call this what it is, a fraud, one that continues to drain the blood, reputation, and treasure of this nation. Some day historians will scratch their heads in wonder that the decay in our political system could have penetrated so deeply. Sorry Obama and Hillary, but at this point I'm convinced that only mobs with pitchforks and torches have the potential to fix a system so thoroughly dysfunctional. Mob violence is a brutal, irrational force, but occasionally it can be a force for good. Would there have been any momentum behind the Voting Rights Act and Great Society programs had American cities not been torn by riots?
The impact of the Iraq war on the United States has mostly been invisible to Joe Channelflipper, but I have to believe the cancer is starting to spread beyond gasoline and coffin prices. I suppose if the economy goes into a complete tailspin, there might be the necessary incentive for people to start hunting for their pitchforks. Now might be a good time to invest in pitchfork futures.
Today I worked on setting one of the four posts for a woodshed I'm building uphill from the south end of the house. It seems a good idea to minimize the amount of firewood stored in the garage, if only to open up that semi-indoor space for other uses. Amazingly, I managed to dig a hole nearly two feet deep in the rocky soil, a miracle anywhere within the greater Catskills. I'll still need to be setting the posts in concrete, although I can probably stop at at that depth without worrying about frost heave (our well line only froze once in the thirteen years since it was installed, though in one place it had been buried under only six inches of soil).
On a drive to a housecall in Woodstock today, I brought my gas-powered Stihl chainsaw and used it to bisect a large oak log whose weight had defeated Gretchen and me when we'd tried to load it into the car back in February. The housecall didn't go all that well (which was to be expected; I was working on a four year old Dell laptop) but when I was done I was showing the client my chainsaw, and he joked that I should cut down a dead tree (a worm-eaten hickory) on the edge of his driveway. So I did, although it wasn't easy. The tree kept hanging up in other trees and I kept cutting four-foot pieces off the bottom hoping to get it to fall down. Eventually we pulled it down using a jump rope. In the end, though, the biggest piece was mine.
On the way up from the south end of Manhattan to their weekend house in greater Marbletown, Penny and David like to take a route that passes by a Trader Joe's. Gretchen and I both love Trader Joe's groceries, so we've gotten into the habit of placing orders for P&D and others to fulfill. I tend to go for the dry carbohydrates (crackers, corn chips, and bagels) while Gretchen goes for the pasta, fake meats, pre-processed microwaveable food, and canned cherries. Penny and David called from the road and I met them at their place. (I think Gretchen was watching Ugly Betty at the time.) It was a warm night, a little uncomfortably so even out on their deck. We sipped wine and talked about a number of things, particularly our favorite kinds of food. After I said that I loved New Orleans cuisine, David and Penny hatched a plan for us to drive down to New Orleans this winter for an eating and drinking vacation. We'd do that at night and then undo the karmic and caloric damage by day, helping to repair flood-ravaged houses. (Notice I didn't use the word "homes," because — contrary to what realtors would have you believe — that would have been improper word choice.)
Penny and David's house (a modernist wooden cube) is undergoing massive repairs to its siding and massive double-glazed windows, all of whose seals are blown. I keep asking for them to give me the panes instead of allowing the workmen to throw them out, but this never gets communicated to the workmen, and so now the only panes left are the ones for the sliding glass doors.
Watching Penny and David deal with the many little bits of damage and insult that come from having strangers working on one's house reminds me of one of the unsung advantages of doing everything yourself: when you break something you have only yourself to blame. (But of course you're more careful when you're working on your own house and so you don't break things, even when you're working intoxicated.)
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