Squares like me weren't aware it wasn't just 'shrooms voted in. Thanks Obama: "permission structures" & the Progressive arrow of time. The Savannah River Site: eminent domain, and nature moves back in
Great news everyone!
Not only are 'shrooms legal (and not something you can prevent from coming to your local community by the way), but there one of a few substances that are now legal.
Golly, one wonders what substances out-of-state, deep-pocketed advocates will push to legalize here in Colorado next. I look forward to seeing what's next!
https://www.westword.com/marijuana/breaking-down-colorado-new-semi-legal-psychedelic-substances-17494388
Thanks Obama...
No, I'm not straying again from my usual preference for local issues. What I'm going to write here could be seen on a more national level (seeing as how it involves Obama), but it has relevance for this state because I think Obama's attitudes are reflected in our current state leadership.
It also touches on issues that are relevant at all levels of politics.
The essay from The Federalist I linked to below is a (lengthy) rundown on Obama's legacy and presidency. If you're a fan, I'll leave it to you to read up and come to your own conclusions.
What I want to touch on here, in keeping with what I wrote in the intro, is a couple things.
First is a quick vocab lesson and a persuasion technique to keep your eyes peeled for as you're out and about. Quoting the essay:
“'Permission structure' is a phrase that’s been used by marketing executives for many years, and was apparently in common usage at the Obama White House. The idea is 'based on an understanding that radically changing a deeply held belief and/or entrenched behavior will often challenge a person’s self-identity and perhaps even leave them feeling humiliated about being wrong. … Permission Structures serve as scaffolding for someone to embrace change that they might otherwise reject.'”
If you're like me, you probably wanted examples, so took a screenshot from the second link below and attached it. These apply to COVID vaccines, but I think they provide good examples of the general structure and also particular examples.
Now that the easy bit's done, let's consider the second thing. Obama made frequent use of the term "wrong side of history" and he also (borrowing a quote misattributed to MLK) saw history as an arc bending toward justice. These are noteworthy for us here in Colorado in particular because I think that the politicians running this state share this view. That is, since they share politics with Obama, I don't think it's too far out of bounds to figure they share the same outlook on how things ought to go in life.
I think many in this state, following Obama, see history and/or time as NECESSARILY needing to move "sequentially" for lack of a better term: history and time as a series of connected events with a definite endpoint. Further, this is combined with the idea that there is one PROPER sequence , which they, of course, are aware of and can shepherd the rest of us on.
I find this kind of thinking flawed for a few reasons.
Maybe it's a perspective informed by studying modern physics, but I do not see time nor history as moving in either straight lines or one direction. Nor do I always see any grand organizing scheme. Any grand theories to the contrary strike me mostly as a manifestation of that all too human tendency to apply narrative and story over the top of loosely-connected events. We do it nightly in our dreams.
Time and history are replete with blind alleys, leaps forward, falls back, good souls and bad. I think there can be trends, there most assuredly can be goals and aspirations, but those depend on the humans alive at any given time and are thus as apt as any other thing to die when the humans that held those notions do.
I also disagree strongly with the notion that there is one, and only one, correct path for us to take or endpoint to reach. There are multiple ways to do everything. And those multiple ways can all be equally right in a moral sense. It's okay to have a preferred path. It's okay to disagree. But we should be skeptical of ANYONE, regardless of whether you agree with what they propose or no, who tells you that theirs is the only way or the way that is compatible with the hallowed arc of history. If you've read this page long enough, you've (I hope) built up a big enough storehouse of fallacies and pitfalls in human reasoning to trust a contention like that!
We are all free to choose and we are all free to decide what we do with our time. Every new human, every new day, is an opportunity to do so, an opportunity to "make the world anew".
I don't know about you, but I prefer natural freedom for people to come to their own judgments, to make compromises with each other, to attempt to persuade, and to (as long as it doesn't step on me) live as they see fit.
I do not like the idea that I need to be manipulated or the arrogance implied by someone giving me "permission" to be wrong in their eyes provided I eventually come around to see things their way. Nor do I like the idea that my disagreement with the way you see things somehow puts me on the "wrong side of history".
I hope you and others of goodwill do not swallow what Obama or other progressives are shoveling out.
https://thefederalist.com/2023/08/09/obamas-fraudulent-legacy-is-being-exposed-and-its-on-the-wrong-side-of-history/?fbclid=IwAR1OIAmXwN0HBK1vOdTHuWiXT9XRbuBcJHoxsXVuZSJE11DHMypvfIWJ4R4
https://modelthinkers.com/mental-model/permission-structure
Savannah River Site (SRS): Eminent Domain and Secrecy in the Cold War, and How Quickly Nature Moves Back In When Man Leaves.
This is the last post of the day (and the last one til Sunday--I'll be away from my computer for a day).
You know what that means, something interesting and not related to current politics.
Well, let me be a little less cavalier. What I'm going to talk about below is still an issue, still relevant to today, but I will only talk about the historic aspects of it and not the present-day issues.
One of the stops on this year's nuclear tour was the SRS outside Aiken, SC. I put three links below if you want to dig more into the history and/or look into getting your own tour.
I'll leave it up to you to do either, both, or neither. A quick note: the SRS is still a working site. That is, research and work on nuclear weapons and waste is ongoing there. If you do go expect a fair bit of security and expect to not be able to see the insides of some things.
Instead of a blow by blow of the tour which you could likely find better examples on travel blogs, I think what I wanted to share with you was two things that stuck out to me. The unique way that government taking for nuclear installations has played out in this country (esp by modern standards), and marveling at how quickly nature moves in when man moves out.
First, take a look at the picture of the museum display. Depending on your screen you may or may not be able to read it, but it's a photograph of the letter given to the people living in Oak Ridge TN whose land was needed for the effort to build an atom bomb (i.e. whose land was taken by eminent domain).
People whose farms were in what is now the Savannah River Site got similar letters and visits, though they had more time since Oak Ridge was needed in war time and the SRS was later in the Cold War. You could argue about SRS's urgency, but it was at least not the emergency wartime need that the Oak Ridge site was.
The more I read and the more I see about the Cold War and the effort to build an atomic stockpile, the more a couple repeated themes bob up. One is the extraordinary effort and lengths the government went to in order to get what they needed, and the other is how people responded to those actions. By and large the story is one of large budgets and lots of taking with little to no pushback.
Time and again, whether done on a emergency basis or no, the government made frequent use of its eminent domain powers to build labs, bomb factories, and etc. And they spent lavishly to do it.
You also had, as is the case with the letter in the picture, the government being pretty circumspect about their plans when they came in to get the land or other resource they needed.
Yet, despite this, people were supportive and did not demand answers like they would today. I'm sure many had an inkling, especially after the factories and installations were up and running and after the first atomic bomb was used, but by and large people kept their mouths shut and so did the media.
There were fights** here and there, but by and large the attitude was one of people doing their part. To give you an example, the tour guide told us about a sign that someone near there put up which went something like "We're not sure why you need to take our town just so you can blow up another town, but if we can help keep America safe we will."
I suppose people were a lot more trusting, more cooperative, and, frankly, more scared then than they are now. This always struck me as interesting because of how much Americans were willing to tolerate in order to build up a nuclear arsenal. We sacrificed a good deal of liberty, property, transparency, openness, and accountability chasing the weapons that made us feel safe.
Let me illustrate: how it would play nowadays if the government showed up with a letter saying that they're taking your land for something important and the money would be in your bank with a portion of it immediately available to help you move out in two weeks? Exactly.
Lastly, take a look at the second attached picture. This an aerial shot of the SRS I took off the internet. What do you notice?
It's forest. Lots of forest. There are installations here and there (a cooling tower for a reactor in the back, some buildings in the foreground), but mostly trees and wilderness. Well, okay, that makes sense, they took lots of forest and cleared it for what they needed.
Except, they didn't. This was cleared farmland when the government took it over. This was settled land for decades prior.
In other words, it looked a lot more like the area in the foreground (with the buildings and parking lots) than a forest when the government moved in. The government didn't want lots of open sightlines, didn't want the hassle, and wanted space between installations, so they simply let the spaces between things revert to nature.
What you're seeing, therefore, is the result of nature moving back in after man's absence. This has made the SRS a really active area for ecological research and it's something they tout on their websites (and in the tour). There's lots of detail about the research that's going on in the second two links below. Another interesting consequence of the land reverting to the wild is there is an explosion in the deer population there. This presents a problem for the people that live there as deer/vehicle collisions are causing lots of trouble. Deer hunting's a big thing down there and they have lots of licenses (although, even at that they have to have a lottery every year).
If you are interested in nuclear or Cold War history, it's worth a visit. Keep in mind that you'll get a healthy dose of salesmanship about the need for the SRS and how good a job the government contractor that is running it is doing, but that doesn't make the trip not worth taking nor does it make what they say untrue. Just be aware of what you're signing up for.
**The tour guide also told us the story of Mr. Roundtree, a farmer who was disgruntled at the government's first offer for his land on the SRS (you can appeal and negotiate in eminent domain takings). He ended up getting enough other farmers riled up such that they sued the government and got more money for their land.
Most of that money went to their lawyer, of course--a young Strom Thurmond. Still, they won their fight and got more out of the government.
The extra money wasn't the end of things for Mr. Roundtree though. He was so angry that he was determined to not leave anything on his land for the government. He went so far as to dig up a 4 foot diameter stump from his front yard to take with him. Quite a statement but more punishment for Mr. Roundtree than the government in my opinion.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savannah_River_Site
https://www.srs.gov/general/srs-home.html
https://www.energy.gov/srs/savannah-river-site
Related:
If you're interested in reading up on something related to the post above, the curious tradeoffs of freedom and safety we made to get nuclear weapons, the book linked below is a great reference.
It touches on the themes above, but also contrasts the American experience (where we sacrificed some freedoms and openness) with that of the Soviets (where those who worked in the nuclear industry enjoyed freedom and abundance that rank and file Soviets didn't). A kind of "photo negative" situation if you will.
Good read.
https://www.si.edu/object/siris_sil_1020274