HERE COMES FALL

THE TREES AROUND THE HOUSE are beginning to drop their leaves, prompting me to turn over the compost and create space for new material. Hard indeed it is to believe that all the material from last year now occupies just one (of three) piles and looks like very rich soil indeed.
Also, here in the USA, we have less than 60 days to endure before the Presidential election. As a relative newcomer to this land, it is still amazing how much considerations from certain religious attitudes intrude into the political process. Also puzzling , not related to anything I have written so far, is the level of 'socialism' (whatever that may be) that is present in this intensely 'capitalist' country. Way, way back, President Nixon, concerned about the high price of food, instituted a change in farming support that enabled farmers to profit from corn no matter what price they might get for it. Now we have so much corn that it appears, in myriad forms and derivations, in almost all the foods we eat, not to mention being turned into ethanol so we can fuel our cars as fossil fuels diminish; we even feed it to other animals before we eat them. As well, there are tax benefits granted to many industries; it seems that the oil industry is a considerable beneficiary from government largess. And just this week, the federal government has had to move to bail out 'The Frannies' whose debt level is higher than the economies of many nations. So great it seems that their impending collapse was capable of stopping credit worldwide! Now we taxpayers will have to take over this debt burden.
To add insult to injury, it even seems possible that the Frannie masters who have run to ruin these two conglomerates may even be permitted,while shareholders loose all, to walk away with multimillion dollar golden handshakes. Socialism for the rich and powerful is OK but not, it seems, for the poor and needy.
Well then, back to religion and politics; those two unmentionables in polite conversations in the local (pub). Just now, one party is doing all it can to retain or increase support from the 'religious right' and hopes that the selection of their VP candidate will assist in achieving that goal.
I wonder about the terms 'right' and 'left'. In language, 'right' usually means 'correct' and 'left' suggests something to worry about. For example, in Latin, 'dexter' is the word for 'right'; from which we get 'dexterous'. On the other hand (forgive the pun), 'sinister' is the word for 'left' reminding us that this side is not altogether 'correct'; bad things, often unexpected, can come from the left side. In French, the word for that side is 'gauche', carried over into English, this is not an epithet one likes to have applied to one self!
Perhaps I am being gauche! There may be a case that a strong component of 'rightism' answers to the need for certainty, for simple strong action. We humans differ considerably in our tolerance for complexity and uncertainty. One does not find much fundamentalism out there in the left zone. Risking a fall into excessive simplicity, I surmise there may be a connection to 'capitalism'. Before Charles Darwin made us part of Nature (vs. 'apart' from Nature); we had a convenient, simple view of ourselves in the world, the world and everything in it was made for us, as we were made for God. For many this meant that we could do anything we liked with Earth's bounty, its myriad creatures and material resources, so long as it led to our aggrandizement and greater glory. As wealth became concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer there came about a dehumanization of the common person. Just as kings and princes could formerly send with impunity ordinary folk into war, the emerging owners of industrial might could send laborers to the mills and the mines.
Those were hard and cruel days, we will say...the days of child labor and of slavery, of harsh conditions in fearfully grimy cities; all gone now, of course, or so we think.
Even so, I suspect the tension between the powerful and the poor, buffered somewhat by a substantial and educated middle class, lies just beneath the political process. In the meantime, what will our resolution of this tension portend for the rest of nature? Now that we, having arrived at our present place in the world,are so collectively powerful and able to alter life on Earth.
Never mind 'global warming', just get down the price of gas! Forget the polar bear, the Arctic fox, and the Alaskan wolf; there are probably too many of them. Reclaim more prairie for cropping. For that matter, clear away the Amazonian rain forest so that we can grow more sugar cane to produce ethanol for our cars. Never mind that it supplies a lot of the oxygen we burn in our blast furnaces and cars and nicely tucks away a good deal of the carbon dioxide we produce. And hey, forget all those species that disappear with the trees, they are of no use to us anyway.
Gauchely yours 'til next time...
Roberto