We have come to take for granted the communications revolution. YouTube by itself is transformative. Think of what it would be like to go back to the days before "screens." I lived a substantial portion of my life that way. Sometimes people like me get confronted: "How could you do it? How did you get by?"
Looking back, it did not seem as rough as you might think. We definitely needed more patience. There were more hoops to jump through, like going to the bank and standing in line at a teller window. ATMs puzzled a lot of us at the start. I remember some politicians expressing concern about people having to "pay to get their own money." People had to be reminded that banks are profit-making businesses. Any pushback against the ATMs seemed to evaporate. We were paying for convenience and in the end, we didn't mind.
Further note: I have yet to use an ATM. Any day now, will change. An old high school friend says he'll advise me, next time he comes to town. He stays up on all the new stuff while I am a laggard.
Ingrained in us
Don't we sort of get pushed into accepting the ritual of Thanksgiving without exercising our own critical thinking? And does this not pertain to Christmas too? Does a part of you feel disrupted by getting drawn into the traditions? We commemorate the Pilgrims dining with Indians. This was not a prelude to the kind of relationship that would develop between these groups.
Europeans penetrated the North American continent in many ways before the Pilgrims. The Pilgrim story became a charming way to share our nation's background with our kids. The whole Christmas thing is based on religion. This is becoming dicey because of the melding of Christianity and politics. The chant of "let's go Brandon" has begun entering our churches, according to news reports. I suspect pastors might be inspired to speak on the Rittenhouse verdict, in a celebratory way.
At some point, might we push flashpoint topics like this aside and just focus on Jesus and the Gospel? Could any of you really see Jesus celebrating right wing politics in America? Yet so many of our churches push down that path. And if you choose not to attend such a church, you might get a hard time from friends. I realize that our world around Morris MN is much more red state-attuned than the average. Not sure why this has to be.
We have so many older residents who benefit from Social Security and Medicare, programs that the political right associates with "socialism." They even come at us with the word "communism" now. That's an old trick that got shot down for a while - now it's coming back. Donald Trump talks about the "communist Democrats." He continues to speak with a potty mouth so often. It does not deter his local fans who flock to churches where you might hear "let's go Brandon."
To review, the phrase means "fuck Joe Biden." Not exactly sterling eloquence.
Jeb Bush has spoken up for "abolishing" Medicare. How would you feel about that? Would all the local red staters say "aye?"
The right wing comes down on Joe Biden for any little reason. Today's little snippet: brickbats for Biden's decision to continue a family tradition of joining relatives in Nantucket. The righties thought Barack Obama was spending too much time playing golf? How did Trump do on that score?
The real warning light
I will repeat: All these little issues that red staters seize upon will in the end seem insignificant. The rising cost of things will become paramount. There is literally only one cure: allowing interest rates to rise. Oh but woe is us: rising interest rates could/would kill the stock market. We have had years of accommodation for the stock market. The powers-that-be simply cannot allow stocks to slide in a substantial way.
Is prosperity this easy to script? Of course it isn't. A healthy stock market goes up and down. People learn how to make money when it goes down. At least, that's the way it used to be. And then the era dawned for all the common folk - the masses - getting coaxed into stocks as in "401Ks."
And now with interest rates at basically zero, the chimera of inflation raises its ugly head.
What on earth is going to happen? I mean, we see news reports of all the "food insecure" people, the stretched food shelves etc. A friend of mine who used to teach in the Lad qui Parle school told me "there's lots of poverty" there. So whither all those folks with prices taking a new jump upward? I mean, really.
The micro picture
Are you all concerned that we have a big grocery store in Morris that has pretty close to a monopoly? Realistically there is only one full-service grocery store: Willie's. The price inflation makes me wonder: would we be better off with two viable grocery stores engaging in a certain level of competition?
I remember a book I read by the libertarian John Stossel: he talked about the myth of how people in the business world admire competition. Competition is a bulwark of our free market system, right? In reality, Stossel wrote - and I think I can remember his exact words - "people in business hate competition and they try to shut it down wherever they can." I checked out the book from our public library.
Morris certainly had competition with grocery stores once. And it wasn't just two stores. The main ones were Willie's when it was Red Owl, and Super Valu which had the Juergensen name. Plus there was a Holiday grocery store. There is a belief that Mitch's Food Pride got wiped out by the city's Atlantic Avenue project. Also, there's the very strong legend that Coborn's left town because it wanted to build new and also wanted a liquor license. The answer was "no" on the liquor license and the rest is history. Which I suppose makes Paul Martin happy.
Boy, I don't know. A fresh new Coborn's store would be a real plus. They were open 24 hours.
What are banks up to?
This is bizarre: I remember going to the Morris banks back around 1980 and finding interest rates that were in orbit compared to what we see now. What we see now is basically zero. So even though there was inflation coming out of the 1970s, one could keep pace with your savings. Are banks even doing a lot of loan business now? If not, what is their raison d'etre? They occupy a lot of real estate on Atlantic Avenue. Riverwood displaced a very popular old restaurant. That is fading in our collective memory.
Will food get so expensive, restaurants will cease to exist? You have to pay a cook and a waitress when you dine out, plus the restaurant has an assortment of other overhead costs. Will prices rise to where the customer base will erode? Erode to where the businesses cannot sustain themselves?
"Ours is not to reason why," Tennyson wrote. (I have previously written "wonder" instead of "reason," but seems to mean the same.)
If we wonder why, re. the inflation and other woes, we might conclude that "Brandon" is our best hope for recovering.
Our Christian churches are so charming now, n'est-ce pas? "Let's go Brandon," i.e. "Fuck Joe Biden." Let us put this in a time capsule. Maybe just skip celebrating Christmas.
Addendum: What would Jesus say about the new Penn State football coach getting a contract for $85 million? This individual should be able to handle inflation.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com
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