Leftist environmentalists are bringing suit to block the construction of a detention center for illegal aliens in the heart of the Everglades. This should interest Sarasota resident and fellow philosopher Elliott Ruffin Crozat who paid me a visit over the last three days. You can imagine the 'orgy' of philosophizing that took place, both peripatetically (hiking in the Superstitions), aquatically (in the pool and hot tub) and automotively (as we meandered down to see Brian Bosse in Green Valley south of Tucson via the scenic route with a stop at the Tom Mix Monument on SR 79 south of Florence and before Oracle Junction.)
We thereby honored Aristotle, Thales, Mix, and Kerouac. Here is Crozat looking cool as a cucumber after a five hour ankle-busting hike in 100 degree Fahrenheit weather. Hot, sunny, dry. Just the way we like it in these parts.
And here is your humble correspondent:
What hypocrites these hate-America leftist scumbags are! Not a peep out of them re: the environmental damage to our beautiful deserts caused by their support of wide-open illegal immigration. The environmental impact on the Everglades will be minimal. The 'gators will see to that!
Here, along with many other arguments, is my Environmental Argument against illegal immigration:
The Environmental Argument. Although there are 'green' conservatives, concern for the natural environment, and its preservation and protection from industrial exploitation, is more a liberal than a conservative issue. (By the way, I'm a 'green' conservative.) So liberals ought to be concerned about the environmental degradation caused by hordes of illegals crossing the border. It is not just that they degrade the lands they physically cross, it is that people whose main concern is economic survival are not likely to be concerned about environmental protection. They are unlikely to become Sierra Club members or to make contributions to the Nature Conservancy. Love of nature comes more easily to middle class white collar workers for whom nature is a scene of recreation than for those who must wrest a livelihood from it by hard toil.
And you are still a Democrat? WTF are you thinking? ARE you thinking?
MavPhil commenter Trudy Vandermolen and her husband Ken from Michigan paid me a visit yesterday. It's becoming an annual thing. Next year: either the Garden Valley Loop out of the First Water Trailhead or Fremont Saddle out of Peralta. Here are a couple of shots of me and Trudy from the hike I took them on. Photo credit: Ken.
Trudy, "The guidebook said this hike is moderate!" Me, "It is by the standards of the Superstition Wilderness."
"These are trails that try men's soles." Thus spoke the Sage of the Superstitions.
One of the exciting things about living out here in the Arizona Territory is that all too many local hombres love to greet the the New Year with a hail of gunfire aimed heavenward. It adds a nice Middle Eastern touch to the Copper State.
Part of the problem is the sad state of science education in these United States. There are people who do not understand that a falling projectile poses a threat. (I have actually met such people.) They understand that they cannot catch with their bare hands a round fired at them; but they don’t understand that that same round, falling on a human head from a sufficient height, will kill the head’s unlucky possessor.
Let’s see if we can understand the physics. If I jump from a chair to the floor, no problem. Same if I jump from a table to the floor. But I shrink back from neighbor Bob’s suggestion that I jump from my roof to the ground. "Just kick away the ladder, like Wittgenstein, and jump down." Nosiree Bob! But why should it be any different? The mass of my body remains invariant across the three scenarios. And the gravitational field remains the same. But the longer I remain falling in that field, the faster I move. A body falling in the earth’s gravitational field falls at the rate of 32 feet per second PER SECOND. Thus the body ACCELERATES. The body’s velocity is ever increasing. Now the momentum of a moving object — which is roughly a measure of the amount of effort it would take to stop it from moving — is the product of its velocity and its mass. So a small mass like a bullet, left falling for a long enough time, will attain a high velocity and thus a high momentum, and so do a lot of damage to anything it comes in contact with, a human skull for example.
It is still deliciously cool, mornings, this Sonoran spring in the Zone, but the summer will soon be upon us. And so my regimen changes. I leave for my desert mountain bike ride earlier and earlier. This morning I was out from 5:11 to 6:37. First light is now around 5:00. The idea is to get to the Easternmost point of my loop before Old Sol is up and in my eyes. Ideally, he peeps his ancient head over the Superstition ridgeline just as I am turning Southwest.
Will I buy an e-bike? Eventually, after I can no longer respectably crank my Trek 930 over hill and dale, road and trail.
As for what Thoreau calls "the philosopher's drink," I double the early-morning hydration this time of year: no less than two 12 oz glasses of water right after arisal, and only then to coffee, that synaptic lubricant par excellence without which morning would be a mistake.
DO NOT come to Arizona! It's just too damned hot here for you snowflakes. And on top of that everybody is packing heat. That's why you don't hear any honking on the highways and byways. "An armed society is a polite society."
We are racist to the core in this rattlesnake-infested inferno which is also home to the scorpion, the Gila monster, and other venomous critters no librul would want to tangle with. There is nothing here but hot sand and dirt lightly covered with some dessicated but still prickly-as-hell vegetation such as cat claw.
Everything here either sticks, stings, or stinks. Go elsewhere! Oregon and Idaho would love to have you. Or better yet: wallow in the shit you shat. Enjoy the sanctuary that your sanctimonious silliness has built. Receive the wages of wokery.
California lost a Congressional seat due to mass exodus. Excellent! Geographically beautiful, California is now a political craphole to rival the People's Republic of Taxachusetts. I say that as a native Californian who lived for most of the '70s in Boston.
Mark Granza: A decade ago most people would have considered ‘Woke Capitalism’ a contradiction, and probably laughed at the idea. Today, nobody questions its existence. Do you think there are there inherent characteristics within Capitalism that transform it into a progressive machine, or are corporations simply responding to the ideological demands of the political class?
Blake Masters: Capitalism works. It’s a really good system for generating wealth. The problem with capitalism is that can work too well in a sense, it can create the conditions for people to grow complacent, which ultimately, as Ross Douthat has written, contributes to the sort of decadence we’re experiencing today. Capitalism’s an incredible engine of material progress, but it’s not a self-contained moral system. It has its own incentives, but those incentives aren’t always necessarily correlated with a conception of the good. Companies under capitalism just respond to profit incentives. If you act on them you’ll generate a lot of wealth, but it won’t tell you what to do with that wealth, which is why a parasite like Wokeness can basically spread and take over. An example is offshoring. Maybe it’s good for GDP, but if you have too much of it, that’s clearly really bad for the country and most people living in it. It crushes the middle class by sending jobs overseas by the millions. But such are the incentives that the capital owners are responding to. So I think problems like Woke Capitalism, or ‘globalization’, are actually much older and bigger problems than people think. Because you can’t just be a capitalist country, because a country is not just an economy. You also need a conception of yourself as a nation, as a people, and as a culture. And that’s what America is increasingly lacking today.
BV: The last three sentence are very important. A country is not just an economy. Do libertarians understand this? Not to my knowledge. They want to reduce everything to economics when it is the history, heritage, and culture of a nation that provides the framework within which a successful economy can operate. Or is the rule of law an economic concept? How about the concept of citizen?
Mark Granza: I’d like to move from here to the issue of Justice in America. You were a vocal supporter of Kyle Rittenhouse before and during the trial. What do you think the fact that Kyle (as opposed to someone like Gaige Grosskreutz) was the one being prosecuted says about the US justice system?
Blake Masters: I think we’re very close to a two-tier justice system, if we’re not there already. Look how differently loyalists and dissidents are punished today. The Kyle Rittenhouse case was simple. The ruling class hated that a young man defended himself with an AR-15 because it contradicts their official narrative. And so they did everything they could to punish Kyle. The FBI literally withheld high-resolution version of the footage from Kyle’s lawyers, because it basically clearly exonerated Kyle and they found that inconvenient. Now I think the jury’s decision to acquit Kyle of all charges showed that you can still get sort of a fair trial in America, that there’s hope. But again, that only happened because in this case, there happened to be extremely clear video evidence in his favor. If there weren’t, Kyle would be in jail for life. So this case is a wake-up call. It’s crazy that Rittenhouse, and not his attackers, was on trial at all. Contrast that to how the BLM and Antifa looters and rioters who committed violent mayhem during the summer of 2020 – nothing happened to them! And on the off-chance one of them did get arrested, then-Senator and Vice Presidential candidate Kamala Harris was there with her bail fund, just waiting to bail them out. Meanwhile, the January 6 protestors, many of whom were not violent at all, are treated like terrorists, with some being held without trial in solitary confinement and others getting sentenced to many years in prison. If we don’t do something now, the rule of law will soon be gone forever. Anyone who questions the left’s narrative is going to be hunted down. I truly believe that. That’s what we’re fighting against.
BV: Again I say that the last three sentences are very important.
Blake Masters gives a speech next to Donald Trump, December 2021.
The boys were a little anxious but acquitted themselves well on this five and a half mile loop through characteristically rugged Superstition terrain except for the easy walk through Garden Valley itself. The guide books say it takes four and a half hours. It took the old men a bit longer. We left at 6:36 and were back at the Jeep at 11:22 ante meridian. We made the full trip to Hackberry Spring which involves an arduous return via some scrambling and a lot of streambed rock hopping.
In these times that try men's souls it is excellent therapy to be on trails that try men's soles. Isn't that cute?
Dennis proudly standing and your humble correspondent sitting near Hackberry Spring. Photo credit: Jeff K.
Dale Tuggy has a good eye. Here is a shot from our Good Friday hike, 3 April, 2015. We are headed back to the trailhead from Hackberry Spring via the First Water Creek bed.
And here is the man himself in the vicinity of Hackberry Spring:
The hike was almost over. The light was failing as we gingerly negotiated the last steps of the treacherous downgrade of Heart Attack Hill on the Bluff Spring Trail in the Superstition Mountains. Suddenly my hiking partner let out a yell and jumped back at the unmistakable sound of a diamond back rattlesnake (crotalus atrox). It was a perfect hike: physically demanding in excellent company with a dash of danger at the end.
