[Chicago, 2/27/14] This Labor Day weekend, shootings left 11 dead and 55 injured in Chicago, 10 dead and 23 injured in Philadelphia, and I’m sure Saint Louis, New Orleans and Oakland, etc., were similarly festive. Baghdad, Juarez, Kabul and Kiev had to be more tranquil.
Hi Linh - you wrote "Watching the US from afar, I’m amazed not just at its rapid disintegration, but also by the obliviousness of many Americans to their plight."
Hemingway's 'The Sun Also Rises' was probably on your mind. At least - I know it's on mine.
Specifically:
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”
It's an analogy for how most of us live in so many aspects of our lives. Frittering away our health with a diet of sugary, salty food and too little physical exercise to ameliorate the effects, resulting in a stroke or heart attack. Or squandering our finances on an unending parade of bright shiny things which, with one serious event like a job loss, suddenly turns into bankruptcy.
Or - more pertinently to this article - watching the old neighbourhood disintegrate, the walls and razor wire go up, the guardhouses appear at the end of suburban streets, without paying too much attention and then suddenly being mugged and shot.
The little that we can do to stave off the 'suddeness' of deleterious events is to pay attention to how we live. To stay actively aware of our own life and keep decent relations, as best we can, with our family, colleagues and neighbours. You've done the best you can and, from reading your articles and the comments, I think that most of your readers have been inspired to do the best they can too.
I'd love to 'gift a subscription' or 'share' with my husband and friends, but they would be deeply angered and shocked by Postcards from the End. They are unshakeable in their deranged rage towards the Orange Man, all our problems have been caused by the evil Russians, and proudly display their Ukrainian flags and 'We Support BLM' signs in front of their homes and businesses. Even my husband, once a sensible, wise, intelligent person who entranced me with his musicianship and insight, has gone full berserk and I have to watch my words carefully with him. Now I only know two people with whom it's possible to have any kind of discussion and share observations on the state of the world. We are watching the West descend into madness and the people I love the most are embracing the Idiocracy. It's astonishing.
My daughter lives in Portland, and we visit every year. We lived there for five or six years until she graduated from high school about 25 years ago, after which my job took us elsewhere. My daughter stayed to go to college there and chose to stay afterwards, so we have gone up there every year or so to visit. The homeless situation has steadily gotten worse over the years, but has absolutely exploded since 2019. They didn’t even need Covid to destroy local business—the BLM/Antifa riots managed that quite nicely downtown before Covid even got started. The once-beautiful downtown district is now a deserted sea of mostly plywood storefronts. The transient population is evident everywhere, including along every freeway and many off-ramps, and I fear for the safety of my daughter, her husband, and my grandson living nearby. They seem nonchalant about the whole thing, thoroughly immunized by the university.
We usually do some shopping when we go up there to avoid sales taxes. Last year we went to a Home Depot to buy a hedge trimmer. When I went to lift it into the cart, I found it was wired to cables on the floor, and I had to summon a clerk to unlock it for me. She told me they had started doing this because "people" were coming in and just walking out the door with major items like that. The employees have strict instructions not to attempt to stop shoplifters when this happens. (Q: Is it still called ‘shoplifting’ if you don’t try to hide it when you’re stealing it?) And at the time I thought: What would keep me from walking out the door with it after the clerk unlocked it for me? Does the clerk conduct a visual assessment to decide whether or not to do that?
This store wasn’t even in a questionable neighborhood, but was in a normally placid suburb. I guess this is just another incentive to take the retail business model to “on-line sales only.”
You said: “Watching the US from afar, I’m amazed not just at its rapid disintegration, but also by the obliviousness of many Americans to their plight.” Me too. Virtually everyone I know has taken most of this in stride, and if you try to instruct them otherwise, they either look at you like you’re crazy, or get angry at you. I’ve long since given up on my extended family.
As you said, Trump just won’t abandon the shots, despite attempts by a number of otherwise sympathetic commentators to get him to denounce them. But most of the zombies will vote for him anyway—what other choice are they being given? For all the good it’s done, I’ve been voting third party for so long, I can’t remember the last time I didn’t.
You hit on something when you observed that “most Vietnamese remember well the near starvation years that only ended two decades ago, so they can revert to eating next to nothing.” That portion of the planet’s population more accustomed to getting by on not much more than the basic necessities, or closer to the Earth by virtue of their lifestyles than the modern Westerner, do not have far to fall when the card table finally collapses, and may be, by their lifestyles, the best equipped to survive or even thrive.
BTW, now reading “Love Like Hate”. Fine piece of work!
Hi Linh - you wrote "Watching the US from afar, I’m amazed not just at its rapid disintegration, but also by the obliviousness of many Americans to their plight."
Hemingway's 'The Sun Also Rises' was probably on your mind. At least - I know it's on mine.
Specifically:
“How did you go bankrupt?” Bill asked.
“Two ways,” Mike said. “Gradually, then suddenly.”
It's an analogy for how most of us live in so many aspects of our lives. Frittering away our health with a diet of sugary, salty food and too little physical exercise to ameliorate the effects, resulting in a stroke or heart attack. Or squandering our finances on an unending parade of bright shiny things which, with one serious event like a job loss, suddenly turns into bankruptcy.
Or - more pertinently to this article - watching the old neighbourhood disintegrate, the walls and razor wire go up, the guardhouses appear at the end of suburban streets, without paying too much attention and then suddenly being mugged and shot.
The little that we can do to stave off the 'suddeness' of deleterious events is to pay attention to how we live. To stay actively aware of our own life and keep decent relations, as best we can, with our family, colleagues and neighbours. You've done the best you can and, from reading your articles and the comments, I think that most of your readers have been inspired to do the best they can too.
I found this pertinent https://medium.com/publishous/how-to-fight-the-beast-5ba1c8712a88
Faith smothers the Beast. Faith in yourself, your family and your friends. Everyone who believes in you.
Things will get better. When they’re better, you might remember that they’ll eventually get worse again. You’ll be right.
I'd love to 'gift a subscription' or 'share' with my husband and friends, but they would be deeply angered and shocked by Postcards from the End. They are unshakeable in their deranged rage towards the Orange Man, all our problems have been caused by the evil Russians, and proudly display their Ukrainian flags and 'We Support BLM' signs in front of their homes and businesses. Even my husband, once a sensible, wise, intelligent person who entranced me with his musicianship and insight, has gone full berserk and I have to watch my words carefully with him. Now I only know two people with whom it's possible to have any kind of discussion and share observations on the state of the world. We are watching the West descend into madness and the people I love the most are embracing the Idiocracy. It's astonishing.
My daughter lives in Portland, and we visit every year. We lived there for five or six years until she graduated from high school about 25 years ago, after which my job took us elsewhere. My daughter stayed to go to college there and chose to stay afterwards, so we have gone up there every year or so to visit. The homeless situation has steadily gotten worse over the years, but has absolutely exploded since 2019. They didn’t even need Covid to destroy local business—the BLM/Antifa riots managed that quite nicely downtown before Covid even got started. The once-beautiful downtown district is now a deserted sea of mostly plywood storefronts. The transient population is evident everywhere, including along every freeway and many off-ramps, and I fear for the safety of my daughter, her husband, and my grandson living nearby. They seem nonchalant about the whole thing, thoroughly immunized by the university.
We usually do some shopping when we go up there to avoid sales taxes. Last year we went to a Home Depot to buy a hedge trimmer. When I went to lift it into the cart, I found it was wired to cables on the floor, and I had to summon a clerk to unlock it for me. She told me they had started doing this because "people" were coming in and just walking out the door with major items like that. The employees have strict instructions not to attempt to stop shoplifters when this happens. (Q: Is it still called ‘shoplifting’ if you don’t try to hide it when you’re stealing it?) And at the time I thought: What would keep me from walking out the door with it after the clerk unlocked it for me? Does the clerk conduct a visual assessment to decide whether or not to do that?
This store wasn’t even in a questionable neighborhood, but was in a normally placid suburb. I guess this is just another incentive to take the retail business model to “on-line sales only.”
You said: “Watching the US from afar, I’m amazed not just at its rapid disintegration, but also by the obliviousness of many Americans to their plight.” Me too. Virtually everyone I know has taken most of this in stride, and if you try to instruct them otherwise, they either look at you like you’re crazy, or get angry at you. I’ve long since given up on my extended family.
As you said, Trump just won’t abandon the shots, despite attempts by a number of otherwise sympathetic commentators to get him to denounce them. But most of the zombies will vote for him anyway—what other choice are they being given? For all the good it’s done, I’ve been voting third party for so long, I can’t remember the last time I didn’t.
You hit on something when you observed that “most Vietnamese remember well the near starvation years that only ended two decades ago, so they can revert to eating next to nothing.” That portion of the planet’s population more accustomed to getting by on not much more than the basic necessities, or closer to the Earth by virtue of their lifestyles than the modern Westerner, do not have far to fall when the card table finally collapses, and may be, by their lifestyles, the best equipped to survive or even thrive.
BTW, now reading “Love Like Hate”. Fine piece of work!
Yes. A planet of tears indeed. Thanks again for another postcard.