8/17/23

 Thursday, August 17, 2023

In bed at 9:30, up at 5:30, thunder, lightning, rain.  66°, high of 73°, AQI Alert until tomorrow, Canada wildfires.  Wind SW at 18 mph, 8-18/34.  1" of rain is expected over the next 24 hours.  Sunrise at 5:59, sunset at 7:51, 13+52,

Israel and Argentina, canaries in the mine shaft.  Two recent reads drive home the point.  The first is Michael Dreeben's April 11, 2023 article in JUST SECURITY What Israel’s Judicial Crisis Can Teach Us About Our Own.  The second is in this morning's WaPo:  Argentina’s angry polarization is a warning for the United States by Gabriel Pasquini.  Each essay gives a useful description of the political history of the author's country from the 1940s on.  In Israel's case, the history starts with the post-Holocaust formation of the country and continues through the development of the deep political divisions within the country that have culminated in the current extreme-right government under Benjamin Netanyahu, Itamar Ben Gvir, and Bezalel Smotrich. The curent government's plan to reduce the power of the country's supreme court has led to months of protest demonstrations by hundreds of thousands of Israelis.   In the case of Argentina, the description starts with Juan and Eva Peron and the Peronistas, the military juntas which followed them, up the present emergence of Javier Milei, who, this past Sunday, won the country’s mandatory cross-party primaries by pledging to get rid of the entire political class, dollarize the economy, abolish the central bank, dismantle any remnant of a welfare state and arm citizens. A self-defined libertarian, Milei doesn’t shy away from legalizing the sale and purchase of human organs. Yet he is also a social conservative seeking to ban abortion, crack down on crime and forbid the use of inclusive language.  According to Pasquini, Milei "represents what’s left after polarization exhausts itself without offering any real solutions: pure anger."

Israel and Argentina have both been coming apart at the seams for years, Argentina with it's history of coups and military juntas more than Israel but it's impossible not to see the profound polarization sparating Israelis from one another.  Secular/religious, Ashkenasi/Mizrahi, settlers/non-settler.  Pasquini describes the political situation in Argentina as "mutual loathing."  Is it that bad in Israel?  in the U.S.?  I don't know about Israel, but the description seems fitting for us/U.S.  

What does this portend?  Dark days ahead.  Pasquini's chilling judgment:  "In any case, Milei’s emergence signals a large part of the country’s exhaustion and exasperation with a polarized era that brought only collective failure — the grim future my friend and I thought we had escaped by immigrating to the United States.  Had we? Polarization is like a drug: After experimentation comes continued use, then a rising tolerance. The rules of caution are broken, and the unthinkable becomes possible. That was Jan. 6, 2021, in the United States: a failed insurrection instigated by a defeated president refusing to leave office. American democracy, with all its accomplishments and failings, was to be discarded into the bin of history to reject those people’s victory — as it was in Argentina over the past century."

Grass, dope, weed, gummies.  I've been living with pain and discomfort for some time now.  I can't remember when I last felt good on a daily basis.  Lower back pain, pelvic floor muscle pain, bladder pain, peripheral neuropathy, hips, knees, shoulder, arthritis (?) moving around at will from joint to joint.  Sometimes the pain is worse in the morning when I get up and then gets better as the day progresses; other times it hangs around most of the day.  Sometimes it's semi-crippling, making almost any movement painful, daunting. And the line between "pain" and "discomfort" is hardly a clear one.  In any case, I wonder whether the pain and discomfort would be helped by cannabis but Wisconsin continues to criminalize the possession of marijauna, not only for recreational use but also for medical use.  It would be great to get some reliable, expert medical advice on the use of marijuana for pain (and the related stress) reduction.  According to the latest (2019)  MULS poll, 83% pf Wisconsinite would like marijuana legalized for medicinal purposes and 59% would approve of legal recreational use, but the Republicans who control the government say no.  Simple possession is a misdemeanor, and a second conviction is a felony entailing 3+ years in prison.  I could drive to Mundelein IL(90 miles and about an hour and a half) to buy some legally and risk arrest for bringing it back home to Wisconsin, but that wouldn't solve the problem of getting good, reliable medical advice about use, composition, dosage, etc.  On top of that, there are no federal safety standards or FDA safety and effectiveness standards because marijuana remains illegal under federal law.  My primary care doc at the VA is even forbidden to advise me on use because the VA is a federal program.  Land of the free and home of the brave.  Crazy.

Middle of night dream of Milwaukee on fire.  I had a vivid dream of Milwaukee's beautiful lakefront on fire, not the beaches but the bluffs leading down to them, and the fire had spread to downtown.  A reaction to the horror in Lahaina, Maui, a climate change shock more immediately telling than most others.  1,000 missing?  😱🙏

LTMW at a feisty little female downy woodpecker holding her own against finches and chickadees trying to horn into spots on the sunflower tube.  'Wait your turn, bozo!"  The chickadees fly to the niger tube; the finches try their luck on the ground.  Now a big red-belly has arrived and he's not too eager to share either.  As soon as he departs, the finches return.