Badlands Journal

 Academics have expressed concern that colleges trying to protect young adults from certain issues may render them incapable of dealing with real life when they graduate. -- Riusin O'Connor, The Independent, Oct. 19, 2017

 

 And now, instead of mounting barded steeds

To fright the souls of fearful adversaries,

 ...There is also something else going on in societies defined by the equality of conditions. Claiming to be meritocratic and egalitarian, they incite individuals to compare themselves with others and appraise themselves in an overall hierarchy of values and culture. Since actual mobility is achieved only by a few, the quest for some unmistakable proof of superior status and identity replaces the ideal of success for many. Consequently, the pitiless dichotomy of us-versus-them at the foundation of modern nationalism is reinforced.

People seek self-esteem through a sense of belonging to a group defined hy ethnicity, religion, race or common culture. Mass media, popular culture and demagogues fulfill and manipulate their need for psychological dependency, and fill up their imaginative lives with a range of virtual enemies: immigrants, Muslims, liberals, unbelievers and the media itself. Professional groups, such as doctors, lawyers, small businessmen, once categorized as the petite bourgeoisie, are particularly prone to thinking of themselves as besieged... --Pankaj Mishra, Age of Anger: A history of the present; 2017, p. 270.

One's view toward the computer invasion of another familiar field either with enthusiastic faith in new technology...or with dark laughter. I find the latter is better protection against the new religio-technodogmatics of our times. But we live close enough to Silicon Valley that sometimes its hot breath reaches across the Dumbarton Bridge over the Altamont and through the nut orchards to our door, generating slogans like the one to explain the land-developer boondoggle known as UC Merced as "this high-tech, bio-tech engine of growth!"-- wmh

I happened by sheer chance to meet Harry Dean Stanton twice, in the winter of 1966-67, once in a large meeting hall in Stockton, again, a couple of months later in a small hotel room in Mexico City. In both places, he seemed to fade into the background in favor of more outgoing fellow actors. In both cases he was on a break from filming on location and it was as if he was just resting his entire personality. It was almost as if he was saving any impression of himself you might have had for the screen. It was, if you think about it, a dramatic accomplishment in itself. 

MACBETH

Act V, Scene II

 Willie Brown, former California state Assembly speaker (longest serving), former mayor of San Francisco and general bon vivant, used to have lunch on Fridays in the City at a restaurant called Le Central, with several friends, including Herb Caen, legendary Chronicle columnist.

It looks like Willie picked up a few literary pointers over the cassoulet. -- wmh

 Merced City Council members Jill McLeod and Michael Belluomini advocated for quieter trains at last week's council meeting. They targeted the BNSF tracks in the northern part of central Merced because Amtrak adds more trains to the already busy tracks. But when Ms. McLeod, known in some central Merced circles as "Strawberry Jujube," repeatedly said that the area has an "industrial" feeling, we wondered how long before the council would mandate the Strawberry Jujube Aesthetic for our neighborhoods. Would we all be required by ordinance to die our hair orange and wear a pigtail to escape the onus of looking "industrial," the way many working people employed by various industries do look.

We don't think McLeod and Belluomini are going after the worst aspect of the trains. The dirt, the dust, and the grime that both BNSF and Union Pacific trains kick up pose worse problems for health and housecleaning than their noise. And the hazardous materials constantly traveling through town on frieght trains pose potentially catastrophic dangers to public health.

The past is never dead. It's not even past." -- William Faulkner, Requiem for a Nun

The thing about lies and threats is that they are meant to intimidate and they often achieve their goals.  Part of the shock involves the recognition that the regime in power actually wants to intimidate you.

Actually, it does. It does it blatantly, as in Trump's lies about the number of illegal votes cast in the last election, who is going to pay for the alleged wall on the southern border,  the size of the crowd at his inauguration.

                                  'California Collapse'

by Lance Breakfast 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIQazFRIhZY&feature=youtu.be