Another day in paradise

Look out your window. It looks peaceful, doesn’t it? It’s spring. At my house, we have a pair of baby rabbits in our yard, and birds chirping. The squirrels are running around as busy as always, and the grass is green. Kids are playing and shouting in the block behind us, and my dog, wanting to play along, echoes their shrieks with a few barks of her own. Seems nice, doesn’t it? Here’s what’s really going on.

On Wednesday, Boeing announced that they would cut 12,000 United States jobs. In the retail sector, Pier 1, J. Crew, Neiman Marcus, Stage, and JC Penney have declared bankruptcy. A trade war being waged between the Russians and Saudis has lowered oil prices to a level where extraction is no longer profitable for U.S. drillers. Let’s face it, when the oil industry sneezes, the US economy contracts a cold.

Grocery store shelves are sparsely stocked, and although retail beef prices are soaring, beef producers aren’t feeling the increase. They are, in fact, losing revenue due to supply chain problems. The Department of Justice has launched an investigation of the beef processing industry on allegations of price fixing and collusion. Meanwhile, participation in food pantry and other charitable food programs has skyrocketed even in the best of neighborhoods throughout the United States.

Expanding reliance upon social support programs, government and private, is not a surprise given the current unemployment claims, which have now topped 36 million.  The drop in Gross Domestic Product is estimated at 4.8% for Q-1, 2020 and Gross National Product has slowed to only 2%. With the fourth stimulus package passed in 2020 (so far) at an estimated expense of $2.4 trillion, the total national debt is well on its way to $30 trillion. Backed by the full faith and credit of the United States Government, we can continue sell bonds and print money well into the foreseeable future, but as we flood the market with bonds, inflation will surely follow hitting already struggling Americans in general, and more specifically, employers with increased material and operating costs and threatening further layoffs and bankruptcies.  The government can print money, but they can’t print jobs.  

Sadly, we have had yet another African American perish in police custody, triggering civil unrest in Minneapolis, but also motivating citizens in cities across the country to spill into the streets in sympathetic protest. We are also seeing civil unrest associated with lockdowns in Michigan. A few weeks back, a group of freedom-loving citizens exercised their right to open-carry at the State Capitol in Lansing. As you are aware, some folks are gun people and some people are not. Exercising one’s right to open-carry in the state house makes some people feel uncomfortable. Doing so may not exemplify the behaviour of a perfect gentleman, but it is 100% legal in Michigan and when a bunch of good ol’ boys with AR’s slung on their shoulders entered the State Capitol, those people who aren’t gun people suffered from involuntary self-soiling.

Globally, we are still in Iraq and Afghanistan, but we are also watching continued instability in the so-called “Northern Triangle” (El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras) which invariably results in asylum requests on our southern border. Venezuela’s economy continues to crash, resulting in pressures on surrounding South American countries, particularly our democratic allies in Brazil. Russian meddling in Ukraine continues to test our resolve while Russian support of the Syrian regime has been far more overt. China’s actions in the South China Sea have created a recent resurgence of unrest in Hong Kong while Beijeng’s rhetoric regarding Taiwan seems to be sharpening. Meanwhile, Hezbollah keeps lobbing shells at Israel and occasional skirmishes take place on the Korean Peninsula.

And then there is Africa. Libya risks further destabilization, and Al-Shabab is gaining ground in Somalia. Burundi is in the midst of a government crackdown and the Congo is weathering yet another round of the Ebola virus. Nigeria is still tangling with Boko Haram and our friends with McCook ties in Burkina Faso have joined forces with the Ivory Coast in anti-jihad operations against groups who are storming and executing Christian communities.

The position of our “magnetic north” is shifting at the rate of 30 miles per year, which is faster than usual and accelerating. It will surely throw navigators off track, but science tells us that we are more than 300,000 years overdue for a magnetic flip and if that were to happen, increased earthquakes and tsunamis would be anticipated, not to mention damage to birds and other migratory species. Then of course, there is the Yellowstone caldera with its potential to produce a supervolcano, which is believed to happen every 600,000 to 800,000 years. It has been 640,000 years since its last eruption, but in late April, an asteroid passed earth at a too-close range of 26,000 miles, which didn’t pose an immediate threat as a collision with earth, but was well within the geostationary ring and could have taken out a few satellites.

Of course, I had forgotten that we were supposed to have started world war three with Iran by now. That has completely slipped my mind. I had also pretty much forgotten about the unidentified drone swarms flying over eastern Colorado and Western Nebraska, but of course now we have Murder Hornets. Giant Man-killing Murder Hornets! But there were also kids eating Tide Pods and sticking pennies into light sockets too.

The things that concern us and consume our attention are sometimes real, and sometimes imagined; sometimes serious and sometimes whimsical. There seems to be a veil of mass hysteria that hangs over all of it, however ridiculous or sublime. It’s up to us to sort through it and try to figure out what is real and what is not. As someone who makes a conscious attempt to bombard myself with information from every angle, I can tell you that it’s a challenge to filter this stuff, which is what takes me back to the green grass, and the bunnies and the calves in the fields, and the sound of dogs barking and children playing. I can’t blame anyone for suspecting that our buttons are being pushed, but let’s try to stay rooted in what’s real and let the rest sort itself out.