American Supremacy

I've read some other blogs and done a fair amount of thinking and reading about the future of this country and how we got into the economic and cultural state we are currently in.  The first reaction is to protect ourselves by seeking distance from dependence on others and becoming more self reliant.  I'm right there with the group of Americans that believe we need to be less dependent on Government, grocery stores and the electric company.  I was in Iraq when Hurricane Katrina destroyed the city of New Orleans.  It was an eye opening experience.  People died.  Lots of people.  Government from the ward and city level, state of Louisiana level and federal level all failed.  In the crisis local first responders were unable to respond.  Law enforcement from New Orleans and outside the city seized privately owned firearms from people who had no other means to protect themselves from roving bands of criminals who took what they wanted from the helpless.  The Governor of Louisiana failed to react in time, she failed to decide to send assistance and to ask for federal assistance.  The only entity that provided support quickly and to its full capacity was the Louisiana National Guard.  The National Guard Bureau, the national level HQ for the Guard, reacted quickly and arranged support from numerous other state Guard units, but not until after the Governor got around to asking for help, days later after lots of people had died and the situation was extremely bad.  Those folks who were stuck in the city with no food, clean water and electricity were on their own.  Grocery stores were quickly emptied of food.  Looting was rampant.  Vehicles were flooded, there was little fuel available for those that were running and it went fast.  Price gauging was occurring.  People were fighting for what few life sustaining assets were available.  As I said earlier, there were roving bands of armed, opportunistic thugs.  Some were brazen enough to engage law enforcement and National Guard troops in shoot outs.  When federal "help" arrived it came with Blackwater security contractors.  The same ones who were over-employed in Iraq and Afghanistan and freely engaged in shooting innocents and making the situation worse for those of us who were trying to help establish a working civil government and defeat the insurgents and Al Qaida.  Seeing them on the streets of New Orleans had me seething. 

The nation, as a whole, is not in danger of Katrina-like natural disasters, but disaster is disaster.  Economic disaster, I predict, would look a lot like Katrina.  Military disaster would too. 

American supremacy is the key to continued prosperity and security.  I mean economic and military supremacy, not some cultural/racial/"we're better than you" kind of supremacy.  American economic supremacy means that the USA stays at the top of the world's economic pyramid, a position currently threatened by China.  What a change from the late part of the last century when the USA was the unquestioned economic superpower and no communist entity could ever hope to aspire to our level of economic stability and market dominance.  Economic supremacy is key to military supremacy and both are the bedrock of security.

In the past two decades we have seen the erosion of American economic supremacy.  This is where I get on my soap box.  Throughout human history successful societies have been agricultural societies.  The American economy must be based in economically healthy, sustainable agriculture.  America is an agricultural powerhouse.  I would go as far as to say we are the probably the world's preeminent agricultural producer, producing surpluses of meat and grain that feeds the global market.  Russia produces a lot of grain, but their methods are feeble.  America actually exports rice to Asia.  Many of us on-line tend to disdain the grocery stores and large "industrial" farms.  As a result of large agricultural success in this country the average American of today relies on the grocery store to receive the produce of American (and foreign) farms.  We do not have to rely on growing our own food.  At least, not right now.  That is a positive thing, not a negative thing.  Maintaining the level of economic security that allows us to be lazy enough to buy our food instead of growing our own in something many, many people on Earth envy us for.  Even those advanced, industrialized nations in Europe and Asia that have similar convenience do not have the total security that we have been blessed with.  We may all curse the big oil companies but the fact is Russia is not turning off our winter heat to make a political point.  Germany lives in fear of that.  Energy security is a real issue for them.  Their politics reflect it.  We don't have that problem, yet.  I believe that having a piece a land on which I can grow food is part of my family's rainy day survival plan.  What does that mean?  It means I am learning to be self reliant while I have the luxury of being reliant on the grocery store and the electric company.  I am learning which breeds of chickens are best for my homestead.  Which are the best dual purpose birds that lay in cold weather.  I am learning what vegetables grow best in my garden, which keep best and longest and what I can grow in the off season.  I have learned how to heat and cook with wood.  I am planning to provide my own basics: clean water, healthy food and personal security.  Why? Because history has proven that the government will fail us, the grocery stores will fail us and the people beyond our circle of trust will fail us.  In the mean time we are blessed with the best economy on earth, even with our high unemployment rate, high foreclosure rate and artificial inflation.

Sustaining our agricultural supremacy means sustaining the industries that produce the tools and transportation that keep our agricultural base supreme. Keeping America supreme means owning our own industrial assets that allow us to build the tools and infrastructure to keep our economy on top.  Sending industry to foreign countries to take advantage of lower wages and a lack of union manipulation is the wrong answer.  Moving industry to locales inside the USA where the industrial base can take advantage of lower wages and lack of unions is the right answer.  I hate the labor unions, but they serve a purpose.  I see them as nothing more than a socialist irritant to big business, one that has become an industry all to itself, irrevocably tied to the political left and bereft of their original purpose, which was to protect the American worker from being exploited by the robber barons of early 20th century industry.  Without them, however, and the threat of activism (strikes) and legal action to protect the American worker, we would continue to have the economic exploitation of our dark industrial past.  Unfortunately the AFL-CIO = The Democratic Party, and that makes them part of the problem, but no other non-government entity exists to protect the American worker, and we can expect the governmental organizations to fail.  I believe workers would pressure the unions to get real about wages and benefits when their Detroit based auto-worker jobs are threatened by moving to Arkansas or Mississippi to escape the unions' exploitation of the industry.  The bottom line is America needs to own our industrial base, not be reliant on foreign governments and workers for our economic security.  Industry leaders must be interested in long term sustainability of the critical industries and be more willing to forgo the multimillion dollar bonuses for individuals at the top.  Long term economic security means long term industrial supremacy.  We are losing that one.  America needs to own the global steel industry and we don't.  That is a problem.

American military supremacy is key to long term security.  Being able to produce the aircraft, ships and weapons to project American might against global threats means having the industrial base to manufacture those tools.  Being able to feed the workers that produce the tools that can project American might means having the world's supreme agricultural base.  History has proven that stronger nations will exploit weaker nations.  This is one of the things that makes America so great - we don't exploit weaker nations, we protect them.  If we exploited weaker nations we would own this entire hemisphere and nothing could stop us.  Personal security for me and my family is provided by us.  Because we are Americans we have the God given right to own firearms.  Should the economic situation deteriorate to such a level that we had to defend ourselves against individuals or small groups intent on doing us harm we would be well situated for defending our family and home.  Being a combat veteran, I pray we never see those days in this country.

A good day for Borscht

It's cold again this morning.  I guess winter really is coming.  The wood stove has been a real treasure these past two weeks or so.  By the way, the red beans I cooked on the stove turned our great.  It inspired me to look into other things to cook on the wood stove.  I was thinking about having to using the wood stove as our only source of heat and cooking.  There are a few things that we simply cannot live without, at least not at first.  My first thought was about coffee.  We have an electric drip coffee maker like the rest of world that depends on the electric company.  When I was a kid my dad made coffee on the gas stove in a little aluminum percolator coffee pot.  I used that percolator when I went camping in the woods in Florida as a teenager.  I have no idea what ever happened to that beat up percolator but I know it made good coffee.  I went to Amazon and found a reasonably priced, stainless steel percolator, about $20.00.  I also splurged on the $1.99 glass top for it since it came with a plastic one.  Thinking about it now, I'm not sure why I did that, but looks really cool and if you are going to use something you should like it.  I like it with the glass top. I made coffee in the percolator this morning but I confess I did it on the stove in the kitchen, not the wood stove, because I was cooking this morning - more about that below.  The coffee was OK but I need to relearn making coffee in the percolator.  Lesson #1, no matter how much of a good idea it seems like, don't use a paper filter.  Maybe the next pot will be on the wood stove without the paper filter.  I also looked at a bunch of cast iron cookware and came to a startling discovery.  Most cast iron cookware available in the USA is made in China.  That is unsat in the extreme.  There are a couple of cast iron companies in America but they will not be enough to sustain us all if things really go to pot.  The lesson there is: buy your cast iron now. 

So yesterday we did some work in the garden.  I stacked another layer of tire on top of the tire gardens that have the winter veggies in them and we covered the top with re-purposed windows that Steph got from a demolition project this summer.  The long term plan for the windows is a small green house, but we didn't get there this year.  The timing was perfect, we had a hard frost this morning and our tender young spinach, cabbage, radishes and cauliflower were covered.  The plan is that the black tires will absorb heat and the clear windows will allow the sunshine in.  The windows are placed loosely atop the tires so hopefully they will ventilate well without being drafty.

While in the garden I pulled the last of the sweet potatoes from the ground and was pleasantly surprised at the amount and sizes of them.  We had baked sweet potatoes with our dinner last night, have plenty of large ones for another few meals plus a good sized pile of small and ugly ones for peeling, boiling and baking as sweet potato casserole.  Yummy.  The other thing I pulled was the very last of the beets.  With a good number of beets in the frig and the ones I just pulled I was inspired to think of cold-weather beet recipes.  Borscht came to mind.  I've never made borscht but I've eaten a fair amount.  I was totally spoiled a couple of years ago when I went to a friend's house for a Christmas party and he had made borscht.  I learned some good tips from him.  Occasionally someone at work will make borscht and bring it work.  So I looked up recipes and recalled the lessons I learned from Mark, who made it for his Christmas party.  There are as many recipes for borscht as there are little Slavic babushkas.  There is Ukrainian borscht, Russian borscht, Polish borscht and now there is Tacketts Mill Farm borscht.  Otleechna! 

I took my beets, washed and peeled them and grated/shredded them by hand.  That was work, but I hope the extra effort and love translate into extra beety goodness in the borscht.  I also cut the large beets into small chunks because I like beets and the chunks add some texture.  I kept three or four small beets and threw them in whole.  I added sour kraut, a step I saw in a recipe on line, chunked up some small carrots, sliced up a large onion, added the heart of a celery, garlic from the garden, beef broth and sea salt.  It is simmering as I type this.  If it is bad I will be unhappy because I grew those beets myself and hate to waste food.  Mark told me "Borscht is like gumbo," he knows I came here from Louisiana and all good teachers put their lessons into context for their understudies, "you just build on the basics."  So, that is what I have done.  Mark had meat in his borscht.  I do not, at least not this time.  I have a large pot of this beet soup and will doubtless bring some to work for my coworkers, a couple of whom really know their borscht.  I don't think the Manischwitz family has anything to fear from my version just yet, but I guess it is possible I could become a beet soup billionaire if I hit just right.  This is America, after all.

Re-elect Nobody

My favorite bumper sticker from this election said "Re-elect Nobody".  That's pretty much how I feel about it.  I went this morning and did my duty as an American citizen to arrest this country's fatal spiraling nose dive to the left.  I hope the message is abundantly clear to all of our elected officials that we are sick of the same old shit.  My brother described it pretty well.  He explained Obama's election as a reaction to us all being pissed off at George Bush and his idiot cronies running the country into the ground, totally screwing up two wars, letting Rumsfeld destroy relationships with our long standing allies in "Old Europe", etc, etc, combined with Mr. No Personality Except for Grumpy Old Guy McCain - what else were we going to do except lurch toward the charismatic guy who talked a good game.  We came out looking progressive and thoughtful.  He turned out to be a friggin' commie intent to ram his agenda home in spite of wide spread outrage.  I guess he thinks he knows best.  We didn't elect him to know best, we elected him to do what we tell him to do.  Got it?  I hope so.


Don't get me wrong.  I voted for the grumpy guy.