My Actifit Report Card: February 23 2022

Still getting poor writing output, but some of that is trying to get back into some more creative writing. I’ve also just been quite tired because of being woken up during the night on consecutive days for a variety of reasons, and that hurts my ability to focus.

Did some work on Kenoma today just to keep forward progress going. I want to see how living and vibrant I can make that world without making too many explicit judgments in the text. Or, rather, when I make judgments in the text, I don’t want to tip my hand too much.

I understand that my hardline anarcho-capitalist beliefs make things a little hard to put in simple terms. When you have a certain cynicism (and I don’t know that cynicism is the proper term, but it seems to be the best approximation) about so many parts of society, it makes it hard to view a lot of things that are just facts of modern life as anything but villainous.

One part of that is thinking about the current situation in Ukraine. I don’t really have any affinity for the Russians or the Ukrainians, given the fact that I actually have some friends from both countries. The situation seems pretty complex, and I’ve heard alternatively that the regions currently in dispute have had a historical affinity for Russia and that they’re staunchly Ukrainian.

Personally, I trust the people who say that the separatist regions have more of an affinity for Russia more, but that’s just a question of how well I know them versus the other people. Plus, some of that might be a relationship between my own anarchism and dissatisfaction about being forced into a union with people I don’t share political convictions with, so my bias leads me toward that end. It’s always helpful to be aware of your own bias, even if you don’t reject it.

I’m to the point where I consider everything I see in media to be a lie, or at least sufficiently altered so that even a factual statement will be framed in such a way that nobody involved can be fooled into thinking that it is anything but a cynical attempt to achieve influence and gather power. I may spend too much time on Twitter, but I’ve found it very interesting how heavily the establishment line has been torn apart.

The most important thing is that the US actually probably can’t do anything to Russia, even if we wanted to. The left-wing anti-fossil fuel agenda has basically made it so that we’re dependent on other countries for oil, which we’re nowhere near weaning ourselves off of. There may be an effort to go cold-turkey or severely ration resources, but that’s going to create problems. For one thing, people don’t understand how much of the power grid runs from fossil fuel power plants of one form or another, and those power plants at the very least need fuel transferred to them via trucks (which use diesel fuel).

We could try to mitigate that by moving to battery-powered electric cars, but we don’t actually change our fuel consumption portfolio all that much, we just shift the numbers around from personal vehicles (and commercial vehicles, if batteries advance enough to make that possible), and we wind up needing to upgrade our electrical grid to handle the fact that we’re vastly increasing electricity use that way.

Start messing with the global economy and all of that gets more difficult.

So basically, some asshole gets to decide how much everything costs (though as standard economics dictates, politicians can only raise and never lower prices in the final analysis), and whether they’re in the White House or the Kremlin I don’t like our odds much.

For what it’s worth, I’m happy to see the sheer number of people who are adopting the old American isolationist approach, at least in places where I didn’t expect to see it. Sure, a lot of it’s bitter and cynical. Hell, some of my isolationism is bitter and cynical, though I also have a more principled underlying reason for it.

No Russian mandated that our children had to wear masks, or that I should lose my job. Needless to say, if I had to pin my problems on someone else (which I’m loathe to do in general, in part because I don’t think I have all that many problems), I’d be pinning them over in Washington DC or my state capital, rather than looking for someone on the other side of the planet to blame for stuff.

The most hilarious thing is that the same people who insisted that we trade with China (despite knowing for a fact that they’re engaging in bad faith practices) and give them all sorts of support on the basis that soldiers cross borders when goods don’t (which is, while a valid analysis, not a mandate for universal trade) are now arguing for sanctions as if they’re deliberately trying to create war.

Truly we are all at the mercy of wicked men.

And women, it’s the 21st century, after all.

I am perpetually reminded of Rothbard’s analysis of the state as a gang of bandits. It explains almost everything much better than any other theory of governance. We’re seeing CDC data be redacted, which is absurd. The police up in Canada are cracking skulls, and if you don’t believe that they do the bidding of the same ruling elite as exists in the United States you don’t really understand the hegemonic nature of power very well.

Now it’s war with Ukraine. Now, that’s a bit premature. We’re probably not going to get into a shooting conflict unless our ruling elite are more idiotic than I think. They’re probably doing some math right now and trying to figure out if they get Ceaușescued at the end of a hot conflict. My gut feeling is that it’s not coming to a conclusion they like, given the current approval ratings.

Of course, there’s always a chance that I’m wrong here. I listened to Ernst Jünger’s The Forest Passage again the other day, and I’m still reading through it because I keep jumping between things.

One of the things that he points out is that you wind up with a situation in a totalitarian state where you have people voting basically for and against the regime.

In a multi-party democracy, you are not actually guaranteed less totalitarianism. You’re simply offered multiple choices, so a vote for one of the state-approved candidates works.

There aren’t really state-forbidden candidates on the ballot, so it’s hard to gauge how much disapproval is “I wish we had Trump back” and not “I desire an end to the American political experiment.”

Jünger’s forest rebel is one who votes no against the whole regime, not merely disapproves of the current regime. One in a hundred people actively working against the efforts of the government is a heavy burden, but fifty in a hundred looking to gain majority control over the existing institutions (in complete ignorance of the nature of the ruling elite and the managerial regime) poses no threat. They are even less of a threat than one in a thousand rebels, because they do not struggle properly against what ills them and are sickened even unto death.

Oh, yeah, exercise. Got out for a nice long walk this morning. Stomach was feeling better, strain didn’t bother me much, so I’m feeling pretty good. Sun does good for me, I think. Ate some stuff I shouldn’t have today, but I don’t think it’s so wicked that I’ll have any major problems. I should get better about what I eat, but with Lent coming up that’ll be a big opportunity to re-orient toward a healthy diet.

Other than that it was mostly stuff around the house, though I didn’t really do that much. Hung out with my cat a little, which is always fun because she’s a sweetheart.

This report was published via Actifit app (Android | iOS). Check out the original version here on actifit.io

Walking