Home // 2012 // February

Live and learn

You’ll notice that Disloyal Opposition looks a tad different today. Well … Many years ago, I was warned to back up my files before screwing around with anything computer-related. This morning, I noticed that WordPress had a number of pending updates sitting in the queue, waiting my approval. I wanted to get on with my current project with minimal delay, so approve I did. Without backing up files.

It seems that the updated version of my WordPress theme conflicts with … something. I don’t know what, and I’m not so in love with the theme that I care to troubleshoot and dig through code. And, since I didn’t backup my files, I can’t roll back to the old version.

So I chose a new theme that includes the features I want and doesn’t conflict with … something. I hope you like the new look.

How Arizona’s land-use debates make my novel so damned relevant

A major conceit of my novel, High Desert Barbecue, (now available as a DRM-free ebook from the Google ebookstore that’s readable on your Nook, Kobo, iPad and pretty much anything but a Kindle or an Etch-a-Sketch) is the desire of a cabal of radical environmentalists to drive humans off of western lands so that they can return to some natural and, presumably, idyllic state. What some readers may not understand is that I really didn’t stretch the truth much. Tug on it a bit? Sure. But not a lot of stretching.

Last week, the current and former sheriffs in Coconino County (where Flagstaff is located) came out, a day late and a dollar short, against a federal plan, driven by groups like the Tucson-based Center for Biological Diversity, that “eliminates 66 percent of areas where car campers and travel trailers could spend the night, reducing it from a majority of the forest to an area a little more than double the size of the Kachina Peaks Wilderness area,” in the words of the Arizona Daily Sun. The scheme also closes many forest roads to vehicular use at any time.

The Center for Biological Diversity says on its Website:

[W]e believe the highest and best use of public lands is to provide safe harbor for species by protecting the ecological systems upon which they and we ultimately depend. To this end, our advocacy directly confronts land uses that harm species and ecosystems — from off-road vehicle use and livestock grazing to industrial logging and uranium and fossil fuel extraction — while advancing precedent-setting litigation, policies, and strategic collaborations to usher in a hopeful new era of biodiversity conservation for our public lands system. We work toward a future in which species and ecosystems are finally afforded primacy among public lands priorities.

No, the Center is not led by by a fellow named Rupert Greenfield. Well, not officially.

Yes, some of the sandals-and-patchouli set really do want to see human presence swept out of their wind-swept shrine. And they are able to play on cultural divisions to get their way.

In the West, outdoor use is largely divided between motors and sweat. You have your ATV riders, campers and shooters relying on vehicles to get where they want to go in the forests and deserts, and you have your trail runners, backpackers and mountain bikers depending more on their own muscles. Some people like to cast this as a moral or spiritual divide, but it really is cultural. The sweat set is largely urban/suburban and white collar, and sees machines as something to escape, and the motorheads are primarily small-town/rural and blue-collar, and see machines as things that turn back-breaking labor into mere hard work. Both sides tend to ignore the considerable overlap between their constituents while sneering at each other. The motorheads are hit hard by road closures, while the sweat set see themselves as unaffected — or even benefited — by harder access to the outdoors.

Never mind that some of the sweat set are going to be mighty unhappy when they discover some of their favorite climbable rock-faces and unofficial trails are now effectively of-limits — they’re still either indifferent to the road-closures or actively supporting them.

For the record, I’m a backpacker, trail-runner and mountain-biker — well-ensconced in the sweat-set — but I really don’t like being pushed out of the forests and deserts by a bunch of … well … tree-fuckers (read my book if you don’t get that reference!).

Why I want to paint a huge, raised middle finger on my roof

From Digital Journal, a report on the federal government’s plan to put eyes in the sky. Thirty thousand of them, that is.

A bill passed last week allocating more than $63 billion to the Federal Aviation Administration would increase the existence of drones in civilian airspace across America and is expected to be signed into law by President Barack Obama. …

If the new bill becomes law, up to 30,000 drones could by flying in U.S. airspace by decade’s end. The Senate passed the bill by a 75-20 margin. Civil liberties groups have spoken out on the measure, stating the new legislation offers no restrictions on drone surveillance operations by police and federal agencies and could put us on track toward a “surveillance society.”

What I’ll add is that we’re already a surveillance society, if not quite as Panopticon-ish as the UK. The feds don’t need flying spy robots to be all surveillance-y when they have closed-circuit TV cameras scattered hither and yon, and your neighbors are happily dropping a dime (or rollover minutes) on one another for the greater glory of state security.

Between the devil and the deep blue Santorum

The list of presidential candidates over whom I’d prefer Barack Obama is a short one, indeed. I’ll admit that I never had high expectations for old Barry — honestly, how could anybody? In 2008, when he was running for the presidency for the first time, he was a TV-ready politico-academic dilettante with an obvious social-democratic view of the ideal relationship between individuals and the state — a good-looking guy who wanted to turn the U.S. into Holland, but was ill-equipped to do so. (But he’s well on his way to turning it into Greece! Bring on the retsina!)

But, at least, I hoped, he could nudge the U.S. away from its Bush-driven role as the bombs-and-waterboarding capital of the world, right? Maybe a little more peace and a little less security state. That would be a good thing.

Now, of course, we’re reading headlines about the widespread popularity of President Obama’s scheme for using drones to assassinate American citizens living abroad who have been accused (but not convicted) of terrorist ties.

Yeah. So much for that plan (I say as I nervously watch the sky).

But, even so, Obama remains … less horrendous than some people who want to be president. I’m looking at you, Rick Santorum, you liberty-hating, authoritarian freak. I mean, really … This gay-baiting, collectivist control-freak is now the leading contender (for the next five minutes) among the Republican faithful?

Well, sure. When campaigning against an incumbent president who favors an expanded role for the state in people’s lives, why not go with a guy who favors an expanded role for the state in people’s lives, but in a different way.

That’s choice, American-style!

Democracy didn’t look so good yesterday

Well, I tried keeping these two links open in adjacent browser tabs, but then they started beating on each other (and liking it — you never can tell about these media stories):

I really am happy to see Prop. 8 knocked down, and no, I really don’t give a shit about the “undemocratic” nature of a court voiding the hateful, anti-liberty will of the people. I believe in freedom and am willing to use democracy as a tool — or to push it aside as needed — in order to maintain and expand freedom and minimize the constraints placed on human action by the coercive power of the state.

My chastity belt is pinching my junk

Rick Santorum, when last he sucked off the public tit

As further support for my disdain for democracy, I point to the fact that Rick Santorum topped the polls in three states, yesterday. That’s Santorum who not only hates the chaps-and-flannel-wearers who prevailed in yesterday’s court decision against Prop. 8, but also the libertarians and fellow-travelers who were equal victors in that case. Santorum has openly denounced those of us who “have this idea that people should be left alone, be able to do whatever they want to do, government should keep our taxes down and keep our regulations low, that we shouldn’t get involved in the bedroom, we shouldn’t get involved in cultural issues. You know, people should do whatever they want.”

And people voted for this intolerant, authoritarian tool.

So those two browser tabs were a double exercise in juxtaposition: bigotry vs. tolerance and democratic betrayal of liberty vs. antidemocratic support for it.

Interesting.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/calif-same-sex-marriage-ban-ruled-unconstitutional/2012/02/07/gIQAMNwkwQ_story.html?tid=pm_pop

Freedom under the open sky

Over at Ars Gratia Libertatis, reviewer J.P. Medved (writing as “Aducknamedjoe”) focuses on the outdoor aspect of High Desert Barbecue (a not insignificant aspect of the novel, which takes place almost entirely under the open sky):

There is no shortage of novels devoted to the outdoors whose stories appeal to backpackers, campers and hikers (the granola sort, we call them in Colorado). It takes only a minute’s thought to conjure up such titles as Into the Wild, Hatchet, or Hemingway’s famous short story, Big Two-Hearted River. Many of these seriously and studiously explore nature as a vast healing power, a thunderous force not to be trifled with, or a dangerous coming of age challenge.

Rare are those stories that depict nature with a lighthearted chuckle, to be respected, sure, but also to be enjoyed by people who know what they’re doing in the Great Outdoors. Rarer still is such a story written from a free market, libertarian perspective. Luckily, author J.D. Tuccille has taken it upon himself to rectify that deficit with his new novel, High Desert Barbecue.

I’m glad this review notes this point. As a trail runner, mountain biker, backpacker. etc., I spend muchas horas (this is Arizona, folks) under the sun, and I enjoy fiction about the great outdoors. But I’m more than a little put-off by quasi-theological, neo-primitivist tripe that treats the wilderness as a morally redemptive alternative to horrible, horrible civilization and its nasty antibiotics, arts, knowledge and reduced infant mortality. *shudder*

Look, I like the outdoors. The wilderness is fun, beautiful, challenging — and it can kill you. I’ve drunk bad water when I was two days from a trailhead — an uphill climb from the bottom of Grand Canyon, at that. I’ve stumbled over rattle snakes. I’ve been chilled to the bone far from fire or shelter. I’ve been bit by things I still can’t identify, that made parts of my anatomy swell up and turn fascinating colors.

But I like being outside. I also, especially, appreciate the refuge the wilderness offers from the strictures of everyday life. It’s a place to run to escape expectations, condemnations and, especially intrusive laws and red tape. Edward Abbey spilled a lot of ink on this last point — the wilderness as a place to flee from tyranny — which probably helps to explain his mixed reputation in progressive circles, but he also indulged in nature-worship and civilization-bashing to an absurdly misanthropic degree.

Truthfully, if the wilderness is a refuge from civilization, so is civilization a refuge from wilderness. We need a place to escape from busybodies, bigots and control-freaks, but we also need a place to develop art, medicine and technology in order to explore and use our human potential.