Free State Observer

[editor’s note: the following post may be offensive to hippies, Christians, and people who don’t find South Park funny]

A few weeks ago, I received an invitation to attend an organizational meeting of a new “ecovillage” that’s being developed in Barnstead. I didn’t know what an ecovillage is, or where Barnstead is, but I was intrigued enough to find out more.

The idea behind the ecovillage is that a couple of self-described hippies own a large tract of largely undeveloped land. They’re getting on in years and lack the time and energy to develop it themselves. They’re also demoralized by battling, for years, with the planning nazis of their small town, who have wasted a great deal of their time and money by imposing various arbitrary rules on them as far as what kind of home they can live in on their own property, how many friends they can have living with them, etc. But, as you are probably aware, the national real estate market is in the toilet right now, so they don’t even have the option of selling their property. Their adult children don’t share their passion for permaculture and have no interest in giving up their various careers to live in Barnstead. So the property owners are making a last-ditch effort to meet like-minded individuals willing to join them and try to develop an intentional permaculture community on the property.

I had to look up the word permaculture on wikipedia, as I really didn’t know what it meant. After doing so, I liked what I saw. I particularly liked this quote: “Permaculture design principles extend from the position that “The only ethical decision is to take responsibility for our own existence and that of our children” (Mollison, 1990).” Although I was pretty turned off of modern American environmentalism as practiced by mainstream government-funded-and/or-colluding nonprofit organizations, based on my experiences working for the Sierra Club and a nonprofit recycling company, I still believe in the fundamental concepts. Resource conservation makes sense. I like fuzzy woodland creatures. I’ve been known to climb a tree (OK, mostly I just *think* about climbing trees…). I’ve also been giving a lot of thought to what kind of house, if any, I’d like to own. The truth is, a 1-BR apartment holds me, my cats, and everything else I own pretty nicely, and I am beyond lazy when it comes to things like housecleaning and handyman tasks. The thought of me owning a 3+-BR house seems like a recipe for disaster, unless I firmly commit to paying other people to maintain it for me. So the idea of developing a community based on the principles of resource and energy conservation, possibly featuring tiny houses, appeals to me. I also like the idea of having privacy within my own modest home, while still having the option of hobnobbing with other freedom-loving individuals who live within walking distance. Plus, the ability to just pack your house on a trailer and relocate it as necessary has definite appeal in these increasingly fascistic times.

I missed the first ecovillage organizational meeting due to illness. I did make it to the second, but showed up late on account of having to rush from the monthly LPNH meeting. By the time I got there, everyone else had disappeared into the woods for a tour of the property. One woman who had stayed behind told me which direction to head into the woods, and said “When you get to the yellow schoolbus, just keep going.” Ah yes… I was definitely in Hippie Country.

Perhaps I should mention that I spent many years in the socialist triangle of Berkeley/Oakland/San Francisco California. I attended college at Cal Berkeley, spending the first two years living one block up from People’s Park. I know hippies. And, [Cartman mode]GODDAMMIT!!![/Cartman mode] I don’t like ‘em.

Now, don’t get me wrong: I occasionally burn incense. I saw the Dead… twice! (Granted, I fell asleep during one of the shows.) I am most definitely anti-war. I can even tolerate the scent of patchouli.

But many other aspects of hippiedom make my stomach churn. I’ve got nothing against peace, love and happiness per se, but for Christ’s sake, would you get a JOB?! Take a SHOWER?! Plan for your own FUTURE, not to mention that of your children and those two mangy dogs you’ve got living under the overpass with you?! Unconditional love, IMHO, should be limited to pets and babies. Everyone else needs to *earn* love by being a decent, pleasant, productive human being. Obviously, if Jesus “Love Thy Neighbor” Christ and I had to go mano a mano, Jesus would kick my weenie ass in the fans-of-his-philosophy department, but I don’t care. I’m right, [Cartman mode]GODDAMMIT!!![/Cartman mode], and Jesus was just the first of the hippies, mooching free food and crash space off other people with, you know… jobs.

Where the hell was I?? Oh yeah, Barnstead. So, I caught up with the others, but was surprised to discover that, although all the snow had melted down where I live on the southern border of the state, there was still at least a foot of it up there in the woods. Fortunately, Doc Martens are fairly waterproof. We had a nice tour of the property, which is beautiful. We saw an owl head (yes, just the head), which was an odd David Lynchian touch. The owner of the property, who seems like a very nice old guy, told us his history with the property and what his vision for it is. Then we adjourned to a cabin on the property to continue the discussions.

Now, despite the fact that Barnstead is a bit beyond commute distance from my job, and my aforementioned aversion to hippies, I was trying really hard to keep an open mind and to see if I might be able to work with these people. Unfortunately, the owner lost me when he started discussing the mandatory ground-rules that would have to be applied to all who chose to pay to come live on his property. They included the following:
* no alcohol (granted, I don’t drink, but I have friends and relatives who do)
* no drugs (no mention was made of allowance for people who smoke marijuana for medicinal purposes)
* no firearms (I guess intruders will be kept off by the smell of patchouli?)
* no harsh language, because that is violence
* no walking your dog in the woods; it might disturb the wild creatures

Now I’m sorry, but this, to me, does not sound like a recipe for “freedom”. Some of these rules were to be imposed as a form of self-defense against the local police, who would apparently be looking for any excuse to shut the whole thing down. I fully understand that, and would probably be equally eager to protect my assets, liability-wise, if I were the one who owned the property. But still, if I can’t get hammered and scream obscenities at my significant other within the privacy of my own home, and must rely upon my bad breath to scare off intruders, what’s the point? And what the hell did my (theoretical) dog do to anyone?

Maybe I’ll take a second look at Grafton.
– fin –

6 Comments

A few weeks ago, when I was visiting the fam in California, my mother asked, “Why do you blog?”
To which I replied, “That’s a very good question.”

Since then, I’ve been giving that some thought. Granted, I often crack myself up writing this shite (I laugh at my jokes, whether or not anyone else gets them). And sometimes there’s a certain feeling of catharsis from getting something off my chest. But aside from that, why *am* I doing this?

Long-time readers may recall (and anyone can see on the About FSO page) that the original stated purpose of this blog was as follows:

to provide news, opinions and journals written by libertarian activists in the state of New Hampshire. Our writers are actively involved in New Hampshire politics, business and civic life. The FSO provides an insiders’ view of the growing New Hampshire libertarian community.

The predecessor to “Free State Observer” was entitled “5437 Miles to Freedom”, named for the mileage on my car after driving from Oakland, CA to Manchester, NH three years ago next month during my move to the “Free State”. The blog then migrated to the domain Free State Observer, partly as a project for a class I was doing in the Libertarian Leadership School, and partly with the intention of expanding it into a multi-writer blog with a greater diversity of styles and opinions. That idea never got far off the ground, although there are a few entries by other people in the archives. You can check out Free State Blogs , which was launched after this blog but really took that concept and ran with it.

I’ve been gruntled to receive very positive feedback from numerous people over the years, some of whom I was quite surprised to learn read this blog. But to be honest, I’m not aware of having convinced a single solitary person to join the FSP and/or move to New Hampshire based on the past 2 1/2 years of writing. Oh well.

My signature on the FSP forum, years back, was “Free your mind, and your ass will follow” (a line from a Parliament/Funkadelic song). I did free my mind, at least part of the way, and it dragged my ass to New Hampshire. I have no regrets about that. I intend to stay. However, I’m frequently befuddled by the level of, how shall I say… “irrational exuberance” expressed by almost every other Free State Project early mover I know. Check out this recent article for a few unpleasant statistics; I leave it as an exercise for the class to draw your own conclusions (or not, as the case may be).

By the way, I don’t think I ever explained the origin of my online handle “Friday”, which I’ve been using steadily for… christ… 22 years now. (I was a BBS freak before this here Internet thingie even went mainstream.) It comes from the title character of a novel by my favorite libertarian writer, Robert Heinlein, which I read at age 17 on the recommendation of the person who also taught me the word “libertarian”. It chronicles the adventures of a multitalented but mildly neurotic female secret agent. There’s quite a bit of sex and violence. Also, kittens. She winds up emigrating to a new planet, where the book ends, because she’s just too busy living her life and being happy to bother with chronicling her adventures anymore. I used to think it was a bit of an anticlimactic ending, but now I kind of get it.

I could just keep this blog going as a journal of my thoughts, feelings and daily activities. But I hate that shit. As I said in my very first post: “I know what you’re thinking… the Internet needs another blog like you need a hole in the head. Well listen… this isn’t your average blog.” I don’t want it to turn into the average blog; or even worse, just be neglected, so that people check in occasionally and find that nothing has been posted since last year (the fate that seems to befall almost every other blog I’ve ever bothered to check out). I also don’t want to be an idiot. I’m finding new ways to maximize my personal freedom and happiness, but it would be counter-productive to myself to blog about them (helLO Homeland Security, BATF, IRS, TSA, FBI, XYZ and PDQ, and thank you for your patronage! ).

Anyway, I’m not ready to “blow up the school” [random BTVS reference] just yet… although I am still reading Atlas Shrugged, and Wyatt Ellis has already blown up his oil well. Still waiting for poor dimwitted Dagny to get a clue: everyone else is leaping out of the pool, and she doesn’t understand why; she has failed to see the turd someone has launched in it that’s headed right for her. She’ll open her eyes soon; I hope you will too.

And now, let’s see what’s on Friday’s nightstand for some light-hearted bedtime reading:
Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
Crash Proof: How to Profit from the Coming Economic Collapse - Peter Schiff
The Collapse of the Dollar and How to Profit From It - James Turk & John Rubino
When All Hell Breaks Loose - Cody Lundin
How to Be Invisible - J.J. Luna
How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World - Harry Browne

Blog series finale most likely coming soon!

4 Comments

When not thinking deep anarchocapitalist thoughts and compulsively listening to FreeDomainRadio, I work for a software consulting company, where almost all work is project-based. Periodically, as a project is completed (or “goes live” in the geek vernacular), the project manager sends out a company-wide email announcement about the successful implementation/upgrade/bilking (just kidding on that last one) for Client XYZ with public thank yous to Tom, Dick and Sanjay for all their hard work. One of these announcements went out a couple of months ago, for some company I’d never heard of. Here’s an excerpt:

It is with great pleasure that I announce the successful Go Live of PDQ Corporation in January. We are currently assisting PDQ with closing their books for their first month in Oracular.

PDQ specializes in the design and manufacture of electro- explosively actuated devices and gas storage and release systems for military, underwater and aerospace applications.

My initial thoughts on reading this were an inward chuckle of black-hearted glee at the unbelievably twisted Orwellianosity of “electro-explosively actuated devices”. Can’t they just say BOMBS?! Then, reading the list of names under Tom, Dick and Sanjay, I chuckled even harder when I saw my own name in the list. Now that is a comic error. Then, I thought “Hey, wait a minute…..” :-\

I did indeed work on that project. For one whole hour, I assisted a coworker. I didn’t even know which project it was for at the time (and have never met the coworker, come to think of it; much of my work is done via email), and was just given a 5-digit project code to put on my timecard after the fact. But I guess I must admit that I did something evil, if ignorantly and extremely tangentially (technically, I assisted someone who was assisting others who create stuff that other people use to do evil in configuring software to balance their checkbook). How heinous, bogus, and non-triumphant.

So far I’ve been pretty lucky, working for a succession of clients with whom I have absolutely no philosophical differences: an online job placement company (jobs are good; I like jobs!); a global travel company (basic human necessity in the modern world); a company that invented a simple industrial product so very ubiquitous, the company name is now a part of the English language; and most recently, a pretty nifty high-tech company whose products you have undoubtedly used if you’ve ever listened to a CD or viewed a DVD (and who have the coolest office art you can imagine, including an original 1968-issue Fillmore poster and whose conference room has a “Rolling Stones” theme.) But some of my officemates haven’t got off so clean. They have worked for a client in the “defense” industry, where security is so tight they’re not allowed to bring their cell phones with them because, if allowed to do so, they would surreptitiously take photos of lethal bleeding-edge (pun-intended) technology and transmit them to Kim Jong-il or MI6 or something.

What happens the day they ask me to work for Mass Murder Inc.? “That will be an interesting day.*” I like to think I will respectfully refuse.

*will these infernal Firefly quotes never end?

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Just got back from my first trip to KKKalifornia in almost two years. It hasn’t changed. I spent the first week in the East Bay attending training for work, then spent a few days visiting the fam (which I shall not discuss as it has recently come to my attention that my mom reads this blog… eep!) in the north bay.

My radio karma was definitely in effect on this trip. The day I was driving from the East Bay to the North Bay, just around the moment where I was wondering for the first of what would be many occasions why I was doing 10 mph on a multilane freeway in perfect weather during non-commute hours with no accidents nearby, the radio regaled me with California Uber Alles by the Dead Kennedys. Oh, right. I’m in CALIFORNIA. At the end of the trip, just as I was about to return my rental car, I was treated to the mellifluous sounds of my favorite Northern California homegrown band, Cake, covering Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive“, which seemed strangely apropros considering how much time I spent feeling maudlin about places I used to live, people I’ve loved and lost, yadda yadda. Then, when I’d made it back to the Free State of New Hampshire and had just crossed over the town line into my town, the radio played my favorite song by my favorite band, Kiss Off by the Violent Femmes. Which reminded me that the world’s most neglected and woefully out-of-date fan site was due to expire at the end of the month, but, overwhelmed with nostalgia, I decided to renew it for another year. Maybe I’ll turn it into a chicks-with-guns site.

I bitch and moan a lot about California, but the truth is, there are a lot of things I love about it. And considering that the human body is 65-90% water (I’m probably at the high end of that scale, considering how much water I drink on a daily basis), my adult body was made out of Calistoga Water. Also, sea salt from shark-infested Stinson Beach; dirt, bugs and grass seeds from my many hours wandering the golden hills in my youth; strawberries, grapes, artichokes and mint leaves from my parents’ backyard; pebbles and gravel embedded in my knees from running cross-country in high school; countless bottles of Sutter Home… let’s face it, I might as well have a tag that says “Made in CA” on the back of my neck.

Jack London served as bookends on my trip; on my first day released from work, I visited his statue in Jack London Square, Oakland, and said “Hey buddy”, and on my last day I visited his former ranch in the wine country. The Valley of the Moon is God’s own country in the springtime. While enjoying a nature walk amongst oak trees, golden poppies, poison oak (”Leaves of three, let it be”), rattlesnakes (”do not provoke”), and mountain lions (”may be unpredictable”), I pondered the paradox of London’s avowed love of socialism, and the fact that he was the epitome of the rugged individualist and self-made man throughout his too-short life. That led me to think of the number of people I know who call themselves libertarians, or even anarchocapitalists, but their actions tell a very different story. What’s the point of labelling yourself an anarchocapitalist if all your behavior makes you indistinguishable from a card-carrying Republican apparatchik? How can you claim to espouse a philosophy of self-responsibility while *not* acting responsibly regarding your own health, financial welfare and/or children? I don’t know; my little jet-lagged brain can’t make sense of it. But it seems to me that actions speak louder than words.

I’ll wrap up with my favorite JL quote:

“I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. I shall use my time.”

Very, very, very glad to be home.

2 Comments

This morning, I worked from home in southern New Hampshire. Tomorrow, I’ll be working in Ann Arbor, MI. The day after that, I’ll be working in the San Francisco Bay Area. And last week I could have worked in Dublin, Ireland if I thought I could pull it off without my brain exploding. I’ve travelled for business before, but if I recall correctly, this is the first time I’ve ever done it solo. I keep sniggering to myself about this whole high-powered globe-trotting software consultant schtick; is anyone really buying this? I mean, this morning I was sitting in my underwear dipping Girl Scout Thin Mint cookies in coffee for an ever-so-nutritious power breakfast in front of the computer, and tomorrow I’ll be feeling silly wearing a suit while providing training to 66 people who, hopefully, don’t have a clue that I’ve never done this before. And the day after that, my employer will be spending a not insignificant amount of money training me in a new module of the software we configure and support. They do this because I am a “resource”. That is the actual word used. I’m like timber, or petroleum. God I love capitalism.

My trip has been relatively smooth so far, except for the moment of panic when I was next in line to go through the ever-so-pleasant airport security and suddenly remembered I had failed to remove my Swiss Army knife from my bike messenger bag. It’s a very nice, sapphire knife with lots of cool attachments and a ridiculously sappy inscription from a former love and I *really* didn’t want to gift it to the annoying security man who had remarked that I looked much happier in my driver’s license picture (why do men think it’s acceptable to tell complete strangers to smile? I hate that.) and later yelled at me for putting my laptop backpack on top of the laptop in the dishwashing bin thingie that goes through the scanner dohickey to keep the “homeland” safe. At least he didn’t comment on the fact that my big toe was sticking out of a large hole in my right sock. Fortunately, because New Hampshire is (at least for now) a lightly populated state where airport employees are actually fairly mellow and good-humored, I was able to retrieve my suitcase which had already been checked and disappeared through the mysterious flap through which all checked luggage goes and put my knife in it. If I’d been flying out of Boston instead of Manchester, I seriously doubt this would have happened (and some federal employee would be fondling my lovely knife that says [censored pet name] loves [censored pet name] right now).

I tried to get some dinner in the hotel restaurant, but it’s closed on account of Easter. So I walked across the street to Wendy’s… and it was closed too. Fearing a repeat of my historic first meal in New Hampshire, I ran across another street to a Korean/Japanese restaurant with a promising neon “Open” sign in the window. It was called “Seoul Garden”. I wonder if they even meant that as a joke. (You know.. .Michigan? Motown? “Seoul” Garden? OK, *I* thought it was funny.) It was definitely open, and full of real Asian people speaking an Asian language! Toto, we’re definitely not in New Hampshire anymore.

I like Koreans; they’re my kind of people. They don’t close their businesses in honor of Dead Jesus Day, they put cheese whiz on their salad (ok, not really, but it looks exactly like cheese whiz) and they will take absolutely any animal part, roast it, slather it in BBQ sauce, and call it a meal. A quick glance at the menu revealed tongue, tripe, heart, and ankle(?!). I even saw the word “dog” on there, although it did have the word “hot” before it so I’m hoping the place wasn’t *that* authentic. I had a delightful belly-expanding feast of cheese whiz salad, miso soup, seaweed salad and Unagi Ka______ (don’t speak Korean, forgot the word) aka BBQ’ed eel. Just like Mom used to make… not.

Here is some potentially helpful information reprinted verbatim from the wrapper of my chopsticks:
1. Tuck under thumb and hold firmly.
2. Add second chopstick and hold it as you would a pencil.
3. Hold first chopstick in original position move the second one up and down. Now you can pick up anything.

How come when I try this, I resemble Beatrix Kiddo after a day with Pai Mei? God I love forks.

2 Comments

You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. — Morpheus in “The Matrix”

As I mentioned in my recent blog entry deep thoughts, I have been slowly and painfully transitioning from little- and big-l libertarian to full-blown anarchocapitalist. No one is more surprised by this turn of events than me.

I was first turned on to libertarianism by reading “Atlas Shrugged” in my mid-twenties. By odd coincidence, at the same time I was reading it, I moved into an apartment that was a mere 100 yards from a very busy train track used by both an Amtrak station directly across the street, and the Port of Oakland half a mile away. Trains went rumbling by 24 hours a day, and would blast their horns as a warning when approaching my driveway. Somehow, the noise never bothered me; I guess it became romanticized in my mind thanks to the synchronous misadventures of Miss Dagny Taggart.

I can remember quite clearly attending a local Free State Project meetup in northern California a mere… 4 years ago?… and being shocked and mildly disgusted to discover that one of the people in attendance was an anarchist. I not only didn’t believe that anarchy was feasible, it somehow repelled me.

Fast forward a couple of years: I had moved to New Hampshire, or the Free State as a few hundred of us hopefully/desperately/idiotically (depending on your perspective) refer to it. I was carpooling to the wedding of a fellow Free Stater, and recall being outraged when the guy whom I was giving a ride mentioned that he doesn’t vote, for philosophical reasons. Considering that I had just moved across the country in order to “work within the political system to minimize the size and scope of government”, I took it as some sort of personal affront. (Oh, the universe revolves around me, in case you didn’t get the memo.) I am now *most* of the way to understanding his perspective.

Fast forward to a year ago, when a fellow Libertarian loaned me a copy of Murray Rothbard’s “For a New Liberty”. I read it, and agreed with the vast majority of it. Afterwards, I was left with a strange feeling of unease. Didn’t the philosophy described in the book indicate that what we, as big L Libertarians, were doing was wrong? If slavery is wrong, you don’t campaign for better working conditions for the slaves; you campaign for ABOLITION. Something was off.

I recall 14 months ago, when Ron Paul announced the launch of his exploratory committee regarding a run for President, as a Republican… and almost everyone I know appeared to go stark, raving mad. All Free Stater activity became Ron Paul-focused. The FSP broke its long-standing policy of not associating itself with any political party or candidate and repeatedly placed Ron Paul (not an FSP participant, or a resident of New Hampshire, or a candidate for any office in New Hampshire) on its home page. I felt oddly detached from this whole phenomenon. Aside from what seemed to me to be the glaringly obvious fact that Ron Paul was never going to be POTUS, it seemed equally obvious that, even if by some miracle he were elected… so what? He is one man. He can’t change the direction of this country. He can’t control the legislature. He can’t undo decades of brainwashing of the masses via public schools and television [comical aside: earlier today I read an email from my Congressman happily letting me know that our government is subsidizing citizen’s purchases of digital televisions in preparation for the coming broadcast format change]. If his campaign proved anything, it proved that things are much, much worse than we thought. He went on national television and told people he would abolish the income tax, and they DIDN’T CARE!?! Kill me now.

Fast forward to 4 months ago, when the owners of NHFree, an online discussion forum very popular amongst the Free Stater community, politely but firmly announced that they no longer wanted their forum used for the discussion and planning of political activity and to kindly take it elsewhere. Oh, the wailing and gnashing of teeth, from myself and dozens of others! It seemed so insulting. Just because they’re anarchists who don’t believe in the political system, why were they banishing the discussions of those of us who chose to work within it? Weren’t we all working towards the same goal? Weren’t we all on the same side? My answers to these questions now aren’t the same as they were then.

Fast forward to a mere 3 weeks ago, when I started listening to podcasts on FreeDomainRadio. This was a first for me; I have never liked talk radio, and had never listened to a podcast, IIRC. I own an iPod but literally had never removed it from the box it came in. I found myself agreeing with the large majority of what Stefan Molyneux was saying. And what he was saying, in his rather humorous and wacky but inexorably logical way, was that everything I thought I knew was wrong.

At the moment I’m feeling a bit like Cypher in the Matrix, whinily wishing I had taken the blue pill and could continue to enjoy my blissful ignorance. But this will pass. I took a great deal of emotional and spiritual comfort throughout my childhood in religious beliefs that I rejected in my late teens, and although I’ve had some good times and met a lot of great people via political activism over the past several years, I can’t reinsert myself into the matrix of within-the-system political activism now that the scales have fallen from my eyes (or the tubes have been unscrewed from my skull sockets, to keep the Matrix analogy going). When I read the various email lists to which I’ve been subscribing for the past few years, that used to inspire me to action through hope or anger, now I just see the unfiltered code.

SO… now that I’ve just alienated the vast majority of my legions of readers , where do I, and this blog, go from here? Fuck if I know. Not quite sure how I’m going to spend my free time now; granted, Molyneux’s verbosity is staggering and I could conceivably spend every night and weekend for the next two years sitting in this chair listening to podcasts. But somehow, I don’t think that’s going to happen. I could go live in a shack in the woods and commune with nature; but then the Starbucks drive-through would be too far away! I hold no pretensions of being Neo or Morpheus or John Galt or any other legendary leader of the anarchists. But maybe, like Frodo the hobbit, I can find just a few stout-hearted comrades and together, we can find a way to destroy the Ring of Power… or at least muck up Dagny’s railroad tracks a bit.

‘I will take the Ring’, he said, ‘though I do not know the way’. — J.R.R. Tolkien

4 Comments

According to the American Civil Liberties Union, the U.S. Federal Government’s terrorist watch list is now approaching a million “winners”. The ACLU has a clever graphic demonstrating the rate at which this list is growing: you can watch the number grow in real-time: http://www.aclu.org/privacy/spying/watchlistcounter.html

Assuming that only adults are on this list (a very big assumption when dealing with the Feds, admittedly), and adding this figure to those in my last post, and assuming I still remember how to do algebraic equations (a very big assumption when dealing with my sodden brain, admittedly) this works out to 1 in 71.4 American adults who are either locked up or being watched.

Sing with me now: I’m proud to be an Amuricaaaaaaaan…

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According to a recent New York Times article, 1 in 100 U.S. adults are now behind bars:http://tinyurl.com/2oxar8

I’m having trouble wrapping my mind around these statistics. Seriously.

• 1 in every 99.1 adults in the U.S. is currently behind bars
• 1 in 36 Hispanic adults
• 1 in 15 black adults
• 1 in 9 black men between the ages of 20 and 34

I’ve been meaning to reread “1984″; it’s been many years. But IIRC, it seems like the current reality of the U.S. may actually be worse than Orwell envisioned. This is actually worse than all sorts of sci fi dystopian books/movies I’ve read/seen over the years.

1 in 100?

I’m currently re-reading Atlas Shrugged, and these statistics just bring into sharper focus the fact that an ever-shrinking number of us (including myself in this “us”) are supporting a shocking chunk of the rest of the population. We really are carrying the world on our backs.

But for how long?

2 Comments