Topic: VDH - A Vandalized Valley

[Pandora]

I am starting to feel as if I am living in a Vandal state, perhaps on the frontier near Carthage around a.d. 530, or in a beleaguered Rome in 455. Here are some updates from the rural area surrounding my farm, taken from about a 30-mile radius. In this take, I am not so much interested in chronicling the flotsam and jetsam as in fathoming whether there is some ideology that drives it.

...

As I write, I am looking out the window toward my barn at a strange new trash pile that, presto, appeared overnight while I slept: all the accouterments of an old car — seats, dashboard, outside moldings, etc. — are heaped together, along with household garbage. What am I to do with it? I can’t burn it. (Believe me, an environmental officer would appear out of nowhere at the rising of the toxic smoke to fine me, as surely as he is absent when the garbage and refuse are tossed on the roadsides outside of town.) There is too much of it to pile into my $100-a-month Waste Management bin, where I put the plastic garbage sacks tossed by the mailbox each week. It would take two trips in my pickup to haul it to the distant county dump. So for now, the problem is mine, and not that of the miscreant who tossed it. Was he thinking, “Mr. Hanson has more time, more money, more concern over trash, or more neuroticism of some sort, and therefore is more likely to deal with my trash than I am”? — as if to say, “I can live in a neighborhood where wrecked car parts litter the road; he obviously cannot.” So are these tossers simply comfortable with refuse on our streets, or are they not, but, like irked toddlers with soiled diapers, expect someone else to clean up after them?

And is not that the point, after all? Behind the easy criminality of stealing metal or driving outside of town to toss your garbage is an implicit mentality, as frightening as it is never expressed. Someone will indeed take the garbage away. And someone indeed will have copper wire for others to harvest for their needs. And someone will pay the taxes and costs associated with the commission of the crime, efforts at prevention, and rare apprehension of the criminal. And lastly, someone most certainly should. In our crude radical egalitarianism, the fact that one has more, and another less, is de facto wrong, and invites popular remedies. Now, for every crime committed, a new sociology will arise to explain away its commission. We are back to the bankrupt French philosophers who asserted: “Property is theft!”

Long read; worth it, but sad, sad, sad.

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/print/286354

[Alphabet Soup]

I sympathize Mr. Hanson for his plight. It's nowhere near that severe where I live.

But I have a small problem with his naivety on this recurrent theme:

What am I to do with it? I can’t burn it. (Believe me, an environmental officer would appear out of nowhere at the rising of the toxic smoke to fine me, as surely as he is absent when the garbage and refuse are tossed on the roadsides outside of town.) There is too much of it to pile into my $100-a-month Waste Management bin, where I put the plastic garbage sacks tossed by the mailbox each week. It would take two trips in my pickup to haul it to the distant county dump. So for now, the problem is mine, and not that of the miscreant who tossed it. Was he thinking, “Mr. Hanson has more time, more money, more concern over trash, or more neuroticism of some sort, and therefore is more likely to deal with my trash than I am”? — as if to say, “I can live in a neighborhood where wrecked car parts litter the road; he obviously cannot.” So are these tossers simply comfortable with refuse on our streets, or are they not, but, like irked toddlers with soiled diapers, expect someone else to clean up after them?

The answer Victor, as you well know, is IDK/IDC. I don't know and I don't care. I don't GAF about your problems or your predicament - I only gots time for me.

We've never been more self-absorbed as a culture. We've never been more indifferent to the plight of others. The left is 'winning' the culture wars and, as a result, we are poised to enter a new dark age.

I hope that VDH catches a clue...

[Libertas]

"We've never been more self-absorbed as a culture. We've never been more indifferent to the plight of others. The left is 'winning' the culture wars and, as a result, we are poised to enter a new dark age."

That!

And I hope a lot more get a clue!

 

[Pandora]

What Hansen is experiencing is spreading, albeit not to California's extent, but it's coming soon to each area.  Law enforcement won't enforce the law against the illegals, the gangs, and the deliberately f**k-you-in-yer-face; they target the producers now, as is typical of government everywhere today.  OWS in each area?  A portent.