Slaying dragons

A month or so ago, I saw some article where some billionaire said something like, “You peasants can’t understand how tough it is to be rich.” I mean, that wasn’t what was actually said, but that seemed to be their real thoughts.  I read that, and I thought, You know, in days of yore, there would be brave knights who would come and slay the foul beasts that hoarded gold and laid waste to the land. 

I liked that image, and for a couple of days I tried to figure out some story I could write with it.  While I didn’t find a story idea, I did realize what I would do if I had a few million dollars I didn’t know what else to do with.  I would create an organization, The Knights of … some term that hasn’t already been taken by some other organization or metal band.  This organization would hire a bunch of investigative journalists, forensic accountants, and a ton of lawyers.  And the point of the organization would be to … metaphorically slay dragons.  Probably in a monthly, online newsletter.

Are you some company who doesn’t pay your employees overtime?  Do you use some accounting slight-of-hand to underreport your profits to the IRS?  Do you use your obscene wealth to basically buy a politician?  Our job would be to make sure everyone knows that. 

Now we wouldn’t just repeat baseless gossip.  The key point for the organization would be that everything we report would have been double and triple confirmed to the point it would hold up in a court of law.  And if the gossip was some company was doing something illegal but we couldn’t prove it, we would come out and say that we were unable to prove it.  I guess I should say we wouldn’t slay all the dragons, just the ones we could prove were committing crimes.  And I bet, most dragons would still be upset by that.  Curious.

A message to political introverts

I am an introvert.  Three independent groups of people gave me the nickname Silent Steve.  I maybe say a couple thousand words a week, and most of that is at work where I have to talk to customers.  If I didn’t have to work, and talking to the dog didn’t count, I could easily be down to a hundred or so words a week.  There are several factors as to why that is.  First, it’s just the way I am.  Second, I do have interests I could talk about, but most of the people I know who share those interests are online.  And third, many of my views on religion or politics aren’t widely shared where I live.

Expanding on that third point, I think Trump was the worst President since … ever.  The next worse one would probably be Nixon, but at least he had the decency to resign.  I have a pretty good grasp of history since WWII, and I know there were some corrupt Presidents in the 1800s, but none of them tried to overthrow the government.  I’m in the rough spot of on one hand wanting Trump to be punished in prison for the rest of his miserable life for the uncountable number of crimes he’s committed, but on the other hand I see that he clearly has mental issues and deserves dignified treatment and care. 

Now I live in a very red county.  I had written that even in the weeks after the assassination attempt, I didn’t see any increase in Trump signs or hats or anything.  But in the last couple of weeks, I still haven’t seen any new yard signs, but there has been a slight uptick in people wearing Trump hats or shirts.  And even people not wearing such obvious MAGA clothing will still blurt out some MAGAish statements.  It’s not a question of if, but when I’ll hear someone make a racist comment about Harris. 

All of this is to say that I don’t talk about politics in general, but in the last decade or so I’ve become even more guarded.  So I’m not one to put up a Harris/Walz sign, or wear a button or anything like that.  And I’m too broke to help them with money.  I do write stories, such as “Hot Enough for Ya?” which shows what could happen with a second Trump term, but too few people follow me and will even see it. 

This came to a head a couple of months ago.  I felt like I wasn’t doing enough to save democracy.  Like, the fate of the nation rested entirely on my shoulders.  I wanted to do more, but couldn’t and felt terrible.  And I realized that one, it’s not all up to me, but more importantly two, I wasn’t the only one who felt that way.  There are probably tens of thousands of people across the country giving themselves ulcers worried that they, personally, aren’t doing enough.  Maybe they’re an introvert and don’t like talking to strangers about things like abortion or climate change.  Maybe they’re struggling financially and can’t really afford to give some politician $20.  Or maybe they’re a blue dot in a rabid MAGA sea and don’t want to make themselves a target.  And my message to all the political introverts out there is you are not alone.  You don’t have to single-handedly save democracy.  If the only thing you are emotionally/financially/physically able to do is vote on November 5, then do that.  The entire point of talking to people and paying for ads is to get people to vote because that’s the most important thing.  And if that is the only thing you can do, then you’ve done the most important thing. 

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And just a quick note, since voting is the most important thing, check to make sure you are registered to vote.  If you find any issues now – say you were “mistakenly” purged – it can all be fixed so Election Day will run a bit smoother for you.

Short story – “Hot Heads”

 “Hot Heads”

With a whimpered grunt, Jacob fell against a tree.  He immediately regretted the jolt that gave his broken rib.  A last-minute gust of wind had caught his parachute and slammed him into a tree trunk.  From the pain, he figured he had broken at least one rib, but he wouldn’t be surprised if it was two or three.  He had also lost a bunch of skin along his right side and his upper arm.

Jacob had no idea how much time he lost from the various times he passed out from the pain or time spent trying to rip the parachute into bandages.  But he finally got moving.  He had to find the bomb.

Leaning against the tree, part of Jacob knew he needed to rest, but the rest of him knew that if he gave into the cries of his legs to sit down, he might never get going again.

“I have to go,” he told himself.  He remained leaning against the tree.

Taking as deep a breath as he could Jacob shouted, “I have to find the bomb.” With that, he took a staggered step forward.  He made it two or three trees before he needed to stop again.

He had only been there for a few seconds when he thought he heard something.  He tried to quiet his panting to listen.  At first, he figured he had imagined it, then he distinctly heard the thump of a distant helicopter.

Was it just a helicopter on a regular mission, or had the authorities been notified?  Despite the drought, there were still plenty of leaves on the trees, so it was unlikely they would spot him.  Regardless, he needed to find that bomb.

The helicopter didn’t seem to be getting any closer, so Jacob forced himself to keep going.  He was soon rewarded when the wind changed and brought him the scent of gasoline.  Looking around he saw the bomb’s parachute tangled in the branches.

Even with his goal in sight, it still took him a few minutes to reach the bomb.  It was just a metal case hammered out in a basement.  It had broken open in the crash, and the hundred gallons of homemade napalm were spilled out onto the forest floor.

Jacob dropped to his knees next to the bomb.  Fortunately, it had landed with the detonator panel almost on top.  Jacob took out his multi-tool and opened the screwdriver.  He unscrewed the screws from the panel and removed it.  One of the wires for the detonator had come loose.  Jacob couldn’t help but laugh.  All the weeks they had spent, ruined by a loose wire.

Their plan had been simple.  Sam had his own plane, so they built a bomb and dropped it in the dry forest hoping to start a massive forest fire.  But after they had pushed the bomb out, there had been no explosion.  After some debate, they flew back to the airport, picked up a parachute, and flew back to the site.  Since Jacob was the only one who had ever jumped from a plane – eight years earlier – he was volunteered to find out what had happened to the bomb.

The big biofuel companies planted vast forests only to pulp them for biofuel.  They planted new forests and the cycle repeated.  The trees took the carbon out of the atmosphere, and the fuel put it back.  In theory, no new carbon was added to the atmosphere, and the carbon already there was just recycled.  Their claim was that while it wouldn’t stop global warming, it would slow it down some.

The fools.  God was going to destroy the world with fire, and there was no use fighting the inevitable.  Jacob took a deep breath and let it out.  He said a silent prayer, then reattached the wire.

***

I first wrote this story over ten years ago.  At the time, I think it was about how crazy would someone be for wanting to destroy a feeble attempt at stopping climate change.  Not that terrorists are known for well thought out arguments, but still, once you reach some point of lunacy, you pretty much become ineffective.  Oh, for simpler times.

Random Story – My smoking car

This is just an odd little story from my life.

Years ago, I had an almost thirty-minute commute from where I lived to where I worked.  Fortunately, there was a freeway that ran almost the entire way.  Unfortunately, thousands of other people also drove on it, which lead to traffic jams every morning and evening.  When I first started that job, my car was kinda old, and liked to overheat, especially if it wasn’t moving and getting some air flow.  Because of that, and because who likes sitting in traffic jams, I found alternate routes to work and home, which was pretty easy because there were highways and smaller roads that ran pretty much parallel to the freeway.  I took one route to work in the morning, and a different one home.  The route I took in the morning started with me getting on the freeway, but then getting off just before the spot the traffic jams started.  I then took a highway until it rejoined the freeway at a spot after where the traffic jams usually cleared up.  Not long after I started this job, I got a new car.  It didn’t have the overheating problem, but I still didn’t care to sit in traffic, so I continued following these routes. 

One rainy morning, a couple of months after getting my new car, I was going to work and I took the exit off the freeway and stopped at a red light.  I sat there for twenty seconds or so, when I saw a wisp of what looked like smoke coming up from my hood.  I was freaked out by this, but then the light turned green and there were plenty of cars behind me, so I had to go.  But I stopped at a little strip mall maybe a quarter of a mile down the road and popped my hood.  I’m not a car guy, but I figured I would be able to spot a fire, but I didn’t see anything, not even smoke.  So the rest of the drive to work was a bit nerve racking, and every time I hit a red light, I’d strain to see if there was any smoke, but I didn’t see any more.

About a week later, the same thing happened at the same spot, and I again checked but didn’t see anything wrong.  This happened three or four times over a month, with me eventually not even stopping to check if anything was wrong. 

I don’t know how much time I spent thinking about all this on my drives to work, but I eventually noticed that this only happened when there were two conditions.  First, it either had to be raining, or a very dewy morning.  And second, it only happened at this one stop light.  If it was raining, but I hit a green light coming off the freeway, but then stopped at the next red light a bit down the road, there wasn’t any “smoke.” I eventually hypothesized, that on rainy or dewy mornings, some water droplets would condense on the underside of my hood.  The five or so minutes of driving on the freeway was enough to heat the engine up that when I braked at this red light – with the exit ramp slopped slightly downward – these drops would break off, fall on the hot engine, and evaporate into steam which I mistook for smoke.  These droplets probably fell on the engine at several points, but I was usually driving and the airflow dispersed them before I could see them.  Any stops I made before this point, my engine probably wasn’t hot enough yet, and any stops after that point, all the water droplets had probably already fallen.  It was only this very narrow bit of coincidences that led me to think my car was on fire.

An encouraging sign?

I live in a pretty red part of Pennsylvania.  Like, in 2020 Trump received 78.7% of all the votes in the county, which was an increase from the 78.0% he received in 2016.  In 2020, in my drive to work I saw a dozen or so Trump signs and flags.  And they stayed up, like, in late 2021 there were still a couple yard signs out.  And hardly a week goes by I don’t see some asshole wearing a MAGA hat or an “I’m voting for the felon!” t-shirt at work. 

But back in … June or so I noticed that I was seeing less and less of those people.  And I hadn’t noticed any yard signs.  I was thinking maybe the fever had passed, and I was thinking of writing up a post about how not seeing Trump signs everywhere was an encouraging sign, but I figured I would wait a little closer to the election before doing that.

Then, on July 13th, I was at work and this lady said that Trump had been shot.  I think she had a friend at the rally and wasn’t sure what all was going on.  It was a few minutes before I was able to get to my phone and check the news.  I saw that the bullet had “grazed his ear,” and the first reports I saw listed two dead, and I thought it said as well as the shooter, so I thought three people were dead.  I don’t know if it was just confusion on the developing story, of if I misread the report.

Now, I’m not a fan of Trump, but I don’t want him shot.  For one, I don’t want to make a martyr of the asshole, and two, he deserves to spend the rest of his miserable life locked up in prison.  And three, political assassinations should have no part in a democracy.  Although, I will admit, there were times back in 2016-2020 where I could start to see the appeal.  So I was happy that Trump wasn’t severely wounded, and saddened that three (really two) people were dead.  We’ll probably never know what troubles that kid had, but that wasn’t the way to go about fixing them.

Once I knew Trump was still among the living, I realized my job would become agonizing.  Because I expected all the magats would come out of the woodwork.  A couple years ago, someone had stickers made of Biden saying, “I did that,” and put them on the gas pumps at one of the stations down the street from where I work.  I know this, because some guy found that so goddamned funny, that he took a photo of them, and then had to show that photo to a complete stranger working at a different store.  I could have explained that the President has no control over the price of gas and high gas prices are the results of greedy oil assholes, but what are facts and reason to a Trump supporter?  So after the assassination attempt I expected a constant barrage of MAGA hats and conspiracy theories.  Like the one semi-regular customer who said that the fires in Hawaii a year or two ago were “obviously” caused by an energy weapon as some kind of false flag to convince people climate change was real.  Fortunately, I haven’t seen that guy in like two months, so I thankfully don’t know his thoughts on all of this.

But none of that happened.  I only work Saturdays and Sundays, and I counted the number of Trump hats/shirts I saw.  I didn’t keep track before July 13th, but I would guess I saw one or two each weekend.  And that’s how many I’ve seen each weekend since.  And except for a neighbor putting up a Trump flag, I haven’t seen any new yard signs on my drive to work.  And given how many customers feel the need to talk my ear off about anything, I’ve surprising not heard anyone say anything.  I thought maybe on the 13th, people hadn’t heard about it yet, but I figured it would be nonstop talk on the 14th, but it was if it never happened.

And that’s why I wonder if this is an encouraging sign.  Perhaps the Trump fever has finally broken, and there are just the few, isolated cases of foam-at-the-mouth MAGAtism.  Don’t get me wrong, most of my customers will still vote for Trump in November, because for decades they’ve been told “Republican good, Democrat bad,” and that’s about the extent of their political thinking.  So they’ll still vote for Trump, but they won’t be as excited about it as they were in 2016, or 2020.  Which, while small, is still a step in the right direction.