{"id":38905,"date":"2018-09-26T09:47:57","date_gmt":"2018-09-26T16:47:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/?p=38905"},"modified":"2018-09-26T13:09:54","modified_gmt":"2018-09-26T20:09:54","slug":"midweek-musings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/2018\/09\/26\/midweek-musings\/","title":{"rendered":"Midweek musings"},"content":{"rendered":"

I got up early this morning and the quality of the moonlight slanting in from the west was so striking it reminded me of that old barbershop quartet song<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Orion appeared above the trees, fully visible for the first time this season. Through a trick of the light, it stood alone. While moonlight and mist obscured most stars, Orion was clear and strong. Even the fuzzy “stars” of his sword<\/a> were visible.<\/p>\n

Although generally when it comes to the sky I couldn’t tell Cassiopeia from the Perseid meteor shower, I learned to love this constellation when I was a kid in California. Its appearance signaled the return of blessed rain and clean air after the too-hot, too-dry, too-smoggy summers. Here, of course, it just signals the return of more<\/em> rain after the season of less rain. But it’s still beautiful.<\/p>\n

I sat a while watching out the big south window. Then I ruined it all by turning on the computer.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

Yesterday after Ava and I visited Furrydoc for her physical, Furrydoc’s husband walked me into the parking lot and immediately asked, “What’s the libertarian view on the Brett Kavanaugh business?”<\/p>\n

(Is there one?) “Who needs a libertarian view?” I shrugged. “What we need is a civilized human being’s view.”<\/p>\n

And we launched into a mutual rant about mob mentality, the politics of mud-slinging, the shallowness of contemporary discourse, the embarrassing absurdity of the MSM giving so much sober credence to evidence-free accusations, and above all the horror of being judged forever by actions we may — or may not! — have committed in high school.<\/p>\n

He told me he couldn’t even face F*c*b**k any more. We both agreed we thought often about totally bailing out of the Internet.<\/p>\n

But there we were, talking avidly … about matters taking place mainly online. Sigh.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

I’ve said I’m no great fan of Brett Kavanaugh, an authoritarian who doesn’t like the Fourth Amendment. But whatever he was — or wasn’t! — as a privileged prep school jock, he seems to be an honorable man who’s more than proved his mettle as a grownup.<\/p>\n

Does anybody deserve to be judged forever based on what he or she may have done as a teenager? Or worse, based on what someone says, 36 years later, that he or she may have done<\/em>? Only if they carried slimy teen behavior into adulthood.<\/p>\n

I wish every person, and especially every journalist, publisher, and politician who wants to see Kavanaugh pilloried this way could also have their reputation and their career forever judged by the worst thing a high school acquaintance claims they ever did.<\/p>\n

Man, we’d all be sunk, wouldn’t we?<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

That said, why has the Supreme Court and so much of the rest of DC become so dominated by the Harvard-Yale-prep school crowd? <\/p>\n

It wasn’t always this way. Supreme Court justices used to come from varied backgrounds, including hardcore working class. Now, whether they’re “right” or “left,” they’re first and foremost members of the same elite ivy league club, carrying with them the same elitist attitudes. <\/p>\n

And they may well carry the same elitist histories of prep school boozing and privileged pawing at weaker peers. (I wouldn’t be surprised if Kavanaugh was a complete jock-jerk in school; but he’d hardly be alone.)<\/p>\n

Of course the whole idea of setting nine unaccountable rulers over the rest of us is insane on the face of it. We just forget that because we’re used to it. <\/p>\n

But as the population has shifted westward and become more varied, why has government, and the court in particular, taken such a snobby eastern ivy league shift? How many of those people have ever had to dig a ditch? Did they ever work at McDonalds? Take a year off to earn money for college? Go to an undistinguished state university? Grow up eating cheap hot dogs and beans? Not know where the next month’s rent would come from?<\/p>\n

Brett Kavanaugh doesn’t deserve what’s being done to him, and wouldn’t even if he’d actually done some drunken mauling when he was 17. But he’s not exactly “one of us.” Not that a person of elite background can never understand or stand up for We the Peasants. But when you get them in self-referential gaggles, everyone else’s everyday reality ceases to exist.<\/p>\n

We the People have no representation. But then, we knew that. Matters are merely trending worse. But then, we knew that, too.<\/p>\n

—–<\/p>\n

The Wandering Monk is due back this morning to help me with a bunch of miscellaneous finishing details. <\/p>\n

With a little luck, he’ll even help me take the waves out of the front gutter<\/a>. (I never should have tried to do that job by myself.)<\/p>\n

Whatever we accomplish, I’m looking forward to working with him in the fall sunshine. And to being away from the ‘Net and its manufactured travails.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I got up early this morning and the quality of the moonlight slanting in from the west was so striking it reminded me of that old barbershop quartet song. Orion appeared above the trees, fully visible for the first time this season. Through a trick of the light, it stood alone. While moonlight and mist obscured most stars, Orion was clear and strong. Even the fuzzy “stars” of his sword were visible. Although generally when it comes to the sky I couldn’t tell Cassiopeia from the Perseid meteor shower, I learned to love this constellation when I was a kid…<\/p>\n

Continue readingMidweek musings<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,11,14,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38905","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-insanity","category-government","category-home-improvement","category-rural-and-small-town-living","ratio-natural","entry"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38905","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38905"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38905\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38917,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38905\/revisions\/38917"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38905"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38905"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clairewolfe.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38905"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}