It is gray this morning at the farm, seasonal chill, clouds. They say rain and snow later, which drives a schedule that includes moving large bundles of split logs. Country living has some things that call out in memory- like, what to expect from the world on that day.

It’s funny. The weather is another thing that has become political, or part of it has. It has been attached to the major effort of our New Administration to affect the global climate. I think that was unemotional, right? I didn’t apply any opinion, since disagreement with the theory is discouraged. Sometimes strongly.

I looked at the weather app on the screen, a source of information I know not to trust beyond a certain distance. I saw that this day in this place, temperature is going to go up and down some twenty degrees. It will be dry and then wet. That is open to discussion, like, “That sounds sorta crappy but normal.” No foxes, squirrels or groundhogs have been noted around the door with tin cups. The Vultures still soar above the pastures looking for objects of interest.

The passage of a single day is unremarkable. But further discussion normally starts with a test question, based on belief. Like, “Climate change does…”

That normally ends polite discussion, since any deviation from agreement could make you appear to be an opponent of settled science. I am not. I live in the country. Sometimes it is crappy and sometimes wonderful. We live on. Our planet features things like sea fossils on mountaintops. Things change, sometimes slowly and sometimes dramatically. We should understand what is going on around us, on what timescales and what impact. Since it is now policy, and hence political, we are driving on with something that has as little to do with the climate as the stimulus bills have to do with pandemics.

There is no issue flying today that doesn’t have that same sort of social litmus test. This morning it was the incident of the police running over a citizen in Takoma, WA, with their cruiser. Rightfully a big deal, but the other details, first reported, was that there was a street festival of people in cars doing automotive tricks- donuts- in an intersection. That used to be discouraged, and certainly nothing ordinary.

Today is a phenomenon, and we have seen reports of similar events of vehicular insurrection elsewhere. Don’t mark me as a denier. Long ago, I saw another version of the same sort of activity. Then, it was fast linear racing on public thoroughfares. My first traffic ticket (Charger 440RT) was impressive enough to get me grounded for a few months. But in Takoma, the crowd around the pirouetting cars attacked the cops who responded, pounding on the windows. In the ensuing confusion, five people got hit by the cruiser and one was killed.

In my time, there was no vehicular revolution. We just walked quietly to the police car, got in the backseat, and were relieved there were no handcuffs. But of course, any discussion that involves social trends, dramatic change and unsettled times, you have the initial response: are you opposed to police misconduct?

There is something like this happening with everything else, and seems to be a social change to accommodate bewildering complexity. Elections. Epidemics. Elective gender identification. It becomes irritating, since all are worthy of discussion, and to a degree I am generally supportive of fairness, efficiency and personal responsibility. But now it is Scientific Truth that gets waved around, and if you even question some elements of it, you are an unspeakable abomination. I had a neighbor laugh about the term “domestic terror” and John Brennan’s reference to “libertarians” as one of the terror cells.

You can imagine my confusion, since I thought he was talking about librarians, long a suspect group.

I wasn’t hearing properly, and once again allowed the immediacy of events to overcome my memories of history. Do you remember World History and the baffling centuries in which relatively civilized Europeans fought one another all over the globe over religion? It was a gaudy history of mayhem, some committed in the name of a higher purpose. Disagreement could get you excommunicated or burned at the stake.

I hear some of the tones of that sort of thing today, alternatives as stark as the old Hades and Heaven. It is very strange. Within the farm bubble, nothing has really changed. Outside is something completely different. It is fascinating to see unfold. Everything old is new again.

Copyright 2021 Vic Socotra
www.vicsocotra.com