This would be one of those “Winds of Change” features if I had the energy. It was a tough day for old people yesterday, an adventure in the world being born and the one to which we are starting to bid farewell.There is something happening in this wide and wonderful land, and to take note of it is to become labeled, from what I can tell, a domestic insurrectionist. That change in our usual status is a little surprising, since we are the same citizens we were a few minutes ago. But like the Climate, things change.
One of the Interns suggested we just run some Footnotes that outline the fact that many of us still try to obey all the laws we are aware of. Pay taxes even if we are not making much money anymore. All that stuff that normal people do. Or used to, before the smart young crowd came around the corner and said the way we lived our lives was part of a criminal conspiracy to systematically deny the rights of others.
That was a bit of a shock. Loma remembered being asked to comment on the provisions of a post 9/11 piece of legislation that came through his office. It was called the ‘USA Patriot Act.’ It was intended to open up some of the remarkable capabilities of the National Security Agency and smite the stovepipe distribution of intelligence products to Law Enforcement, opening it to all.
That was one of the lessons-learned from the terror attack, but in the waning time our crowd intended to stay in the government, Loma wondered what was likely to happen should the just cause of that moment be harnessed to someone else’s just cause under different circumstances. Our pal Mac Showers was still very much alive then, and his memories of Watergate times were still fresh, and formed some of reservations. The only slightly luke-warm support I penned for the office was approved, and life went on.
Well, I think it went on. The Winds of Change series is more caustic in tone that I would share with friends who have not previously been wound up in the machinations of The Swamp. There are- or will be- separate accounts of the various Crises we confront and which require establishment of Emergency Rule. The common ones are the Gun Emergency, the Climate Crisis and Domestic Terrorism, though we are certain there are others simmering.
There is only a “Winds of Change” series because of Socotra House concerns about the security of the website, which originally had been intended to take advantage of the wonders of the Internet. There are now twenty years of archived materials contained there, and it is possible I may have mentioned something disparaging about someone in the course of the last 6,000 or so daily episodes. The crisis I did not mention is the one that directly impacts the cyber arena. The Russians and the Chinese are either harboring the criminals who are playing ransom games with our financial and medical records or are actively at war with them.
The redoubtable Webmistress who put it all together and maintains the site was concerned, and took bold action to look at the site management line-up. That included me, her, of course, and Brett, the bartender at Willow who did a site upgrade a few years ago. And one other name neither of us recognized. With “admin” access to the site, which would permit things to be altered, changed or deleted. I looked at the name and IP address for a couple minutes, and wrote back immediately to ask if I should write to the owner of the address and politely ask who the heck ‘he’ was and what he was doing on our site.
The WebMistress had already looked it up, and she said “NO.” It was a spam address that had been active in thousands of other activities, none of them good. So, we may have found a mole, prepared to take Socotra in hand in case the compendium had value to us, or was useful for shutting down mild luke-warm doubts about the wisdom of some of the crazy crap going on all around us.
Marlow, one of the stalwarts of Socotra’s eclectic authors, was mildly alarmed by our efforts to restrict access to the more hysterical stream of concern about a Western Civilization that seems to be in the process of self-immolation. So, should you need the straight opinion about the madness, you can request access to the site’s more polemic treatments with your own password. We will try to keep that limited to people who care, but for the others whose cares lie in other directions, we have no cash for ransoms, and no intent to overthrow the Government of the United States which we proudly served, in total, family, friends and shipmates, more than a couple centuries.
Oh, and distilled? The Climate Crisis? It changes, that is the definitional component of a chaotic system-of-systems. A recent discovery of an old US Army drilling project on Greenland’s ice sheet was examined closely for a proxy of atmospheric conditions over the last few tens of thousands of years. The ice was examined closely. The dirt at the bottom of the cores of ice were put away and not examined, since it was only old dirt and some still verdant vegetation. So, just another reminder that an “ice free arctic” might not have much to do with humans activity.
Guns? In order to curb a burgeoning gang-war in our cities, the Government has announced a campaign against legal and licensed gun dealers. They are not the problem, nor are most lawful gun owners. The problem with guns is about criminals who use them, mostly against one another, and a culture that supports their actions that cannot be mentioned due to a melanin issue.
Domestic Terror? We have general agreement that there are some crazy people who live here. Since that is a purely subjective assessment, we think the Framers were wise to include Freedom of Speech up front. I think they might have had some problems with the Patriot Act, but I understand they are all dead, and did not realize they were writing a “living document” that could reflect modern sensibilities.
In clarification, we are in general agreement that our position is firm and loyal. We just want to be left alone. The hysteria can be found on the website, but you would need a password for all our protection.
Copyright 2021 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com