I’d dearly love to have my country back, too

My Sunday movie was Young Royals, episodes 5 & 6, which is the end of season 2. This is the story of Wilhelm, Prince of Sweden, falling in love with commoner Simon. The mind games continue with cross and double cross. Some friendships are broken and others restored. And it comes to a mostly satisfactory conclusion. It ends with Wilhelm giving a speech before the students, the queen, and the press – and lots of students with their phones out. He goes off the palace assigned script and says he is tired of coverups and admits to having sex with Simon. But the episode ends before Wilhelm says anything about love or implications a gay prince has for the monarchy. So maybe there is room for a season 3? If there is I’ll probably watch. Quite a while ago I heard one of the rules of drama. If a gun is shown it will be used before the end of the story. That implies a gun is such a potent force in our culture, perhaps in all world cultures, that it cannot be shown in a story without it playing an important part of the story. I thought of that 3-4 episodes back when Wilhelm has a lesson in skeet shooting. And, yes, the gun was back in this episode. While visiting Niece at Thanksgiving I talked about watching this show and the strangeness of the English I hear not matching the lips moving to Swedish words. Niece said I can switch from dubbing to subtitles. So I tried it. And soon switched back to dubbing. I think after hearing them speak English for the previous eight hours of the story the Swedish was too jarring. In the process I heard the actors who spoke the original Swedish were the same ones that spoke the English dubbing. A few weeks ago I wrote about the book How Not to Die by Michael Greger. Its major point is that a meat based diet (the SAD – Standard American Diet) is bad for our health. The author reviews the top 15 causes of death and how eating a plant-based diet will stop the development and even reverse all 15 of those diseases. Along the way he goes through a great deal of science. My doctor had suggested a second book, which I’ve read. It is Fiber Fueled by Dr. Will Bulsiewicz. He looks at human health through the lens of the microscopic biome in our gut. The author reviews the science and has links to the studies on his website. I’ll discuss the major points and let you look at the details. It is this gut biome that does a great deal of digestion for us. The biome is made up thousands of different kinds of microbes. Some benefit us, others don’t. When we eat plants the good microbes thrive and benefit us. When we eat animal products the good microbes struggle and bad microbes thrive and that is hard on us. Because we are not eating to benefit our biome, which benefits us, we are overfed, undernourished, and overmedicated. We try to solve health problems with pills (and our doctors are great at pushing pills) that are better solved through diet. He warns against taking antibiotics. They can significantly damage the gut biome. Yes, there are times when an antibiotic is necessary. But most of the time it isn’t. When it isn’t we shouldn’t insist the doctor give us one. And when we do take one we should do what we can to help our biome to recover. This morning there was a story by Allison Aubrey on NPR about doctors who are prescribing properly tailored meals instead of medication to relieve diet induced maladies. So maybe some doctors are catching on. Back to the book. Bulsiewicz’s basic guiding phrase for what to eat is a diversity of plants. Each plant has its own combination of nutrients and type of fiber. Each plant encourages a different suite of good microbes and the greater variety of good microbes we have the better our health. So he says we should aim for food from at least thirty different plants in a week. Include seaweed and spices, both of which have their own nutrients. Don’t stick to the same dozen foods. I made a list of plants I like and I tolerate well and came up with 33 (and one of them is chocolate – hey, unless it’s milk chocolate it’s a plant with good nutrients). Alas, modern American food production usually sells packages that I struggle to finish before they spoil, so using a lot of one thing crowds out others. I used to be able to buy a single kiwi. Now I have to buy a package of six. So I don’t. Another aspect of diversity is the color of the food. This is something mentioned in other sources. Eat the rainbow and the more intense the color the better it is. A plant based diet is naturally low in calories, so if one sticks to it one’s weight will drop to a more healthy level. Another category of foods this doctor promotes that I haven’t seen in other diets is fermented foods. It is foods like saurkraut, kimchee, and sourdough bread. They also promote the good microbes. I have a hard time finding a high fiber sourdough. Avoid processed foods because a lot of the good nutrients and a great deal of the fiber is lost. Those meat substitutes that are all the rage now are processed foods. Oils are too. He discussed gluten. Unless one is sensitive specifically to gluten – and celiac disease can be nasty – one should eat foods with gluten. There is a mistaken idea out there that gluten is something to avoid. For most people that isn’t true. Foods with gluten, and gluten itself, broaden the diversity of nutrients in a diet. Bulsiewicz discusses supplements. Yes, they can help establish a healthy biome. But supplements cannot compensate for a bad diet. As the previous book had said, one doesn’t have to switch to an all plant diet all at once. Don’t worry about if sticking to it is hard. Every step towards a plant diet is good. The last 150 pages of the book is a four week plan to get one into a fiber fueled diet. There are recipes and shopping lists for each week. He offers guidance in dealing with certain food sensitivities. And each recipe is scored for the diversity of plants in it. Alas, I read through the recipes and many didn’t sound tasty. Many more involve ingredients I’m unfamiliar with and hesitant to buy in case I don’t like them. Out of that long list of recipes I see maybe a couple that look interesting. So for now I’ll muddle through in trying to at least eat a variety of plants. Greg Dworkin, in a pundit roundup for Daily Kos, quoted Julia of Belluz writing for the New York Times. She discussed the outcome of a scientific conference on obesity:

The three-day meeting was infused with an implicit understanding of what obesity is not: a personal failing. No presenter argued that humans collectively lost willpower around the 1980s, when obesity rates took off, first in high-income countries‌, then in much of the rest of the world. Not a single scientist said our genes changed in that short time. Laziness, gluttony‌‌ and sloth were not referred to as obesity’s helpers. In stark contrast to a prevailing societal view of obesity, which assumes people have full control over their body size, they didn’t blame individuals for their condition, the same way we don’t blame people suffering from the effects of undernutrition, like stunting and wasting. The researchers instead referred to obesity as a complex, chronic condition, and they were meeting to get to the bottom of why humans have, collectively, grown larger over the past half century. To that end, they shared a range of mechanisms that might explain the global obesity surge. And their theories, however diverse, made one thing obvious: As long as we treat obesity as a personal responsibility issue, its prevalence is unlikely to decline.

In a Ukraine update Kos of Kos included a tweet from Tendar about Putin meeting with wives and mothers of dead and wounded Russian soldiers. Several of those women sitting around the table with him have been identified as actresses. The rest probably are too.

It is so revealing that with more than 80.000 killed Russian soldiers Putin couldn't find (or risk) to sit with a few widows. Pathetic to the core.

Mark Sumner of Kos wrote that at the start of the war Republicans almost completely sided with Ukraine. Before the election Republicans were eager to support Putin by stopping support of Ukraine and even pulling out of NATO. Putin pribably won’t conquer Ukraine but certainly conquered the GOP. This fealty of Putin got to the point that Russians were counting on the Red Wave (that didn’t happen) to “save their illegal, unprovoked, war-crime laden invasion of Ukraine.” Even Russian soldiers were hoping for a Republican win. The desire to please Putin began, of course, with the nasty guy’s adoration of the dictator and his desire to pull out of NATO. The now want to “gift Russia with something that Russia could never win on the battlefield; not just victory over Ukraine, but victory over NATO. And the United States.” Sumner followed that with a recognition of Holodomor Remembrance Day, which was Saturday. Ninety years ago a drought caused a food shortage in Russia, which was relieved by the Red Army, under Stalin’s direction, stealing Ukraine’s corn and wheat. At least 3 million and maybe as many as 10 million Ukrainians died of hunger. There is chatter around Russia saying that to punish Ukraine for resisting there should be a second Holodomor. Jack Watling, a researcher into land warfare, tweeted a thread about fighting in winter. No leaves on trees means the infantry has to stay low, which means dealing with cold and wet. Stay wet for too long and the soldier is no longer effective and can die. The lower levels of command must watch their troops, rotating them into a warm space as needed. Ukrainians, with the help of Finland, have learned how to keep dry, what to watch for, and how to warm up their soldiers. NATO is also providing proper cold weather gear. Russians don’t have the low level command, don’t have the gear, don’t have the training, don’t have the warming areas. A lot of them will die from exposure. And Ukraine can accelerate that by skirmishing just enough to keep Russians in their trenches. Sumner also discussed Russians and hypothermia.

Death is only the final act of hypothermia. Well before that last act there is a classic suite of symptoms: exhaustion, confusion, loss of coordination, loss of memory, slurred speech, extreme drowsiness. Put all this together, and it could explain what’s happening with Russian forces in eastern Ukraine.

And what’s happening is a lot of Russian soldiers are so cold they are acting like zombies with no reaction to bombs going off around them. Many of those bomb are because the soldiers have bonfires to keep warm – and give away their position. Russia has an alliance, their counterpart to NATO. It’s falling apart as the other nations see how badly Russia is losing. It’s so bad that Azerbaijan, formerly of that alliance, will supply Ukraine with equipment to restore the electrical grid. That attempt to keep the Ukrainian utilities in a shambles means Russia is low on missiles to launch. They are taking the nukes out of long distance missiles and firing them at Ukraine. This sort of missile won’t cause a lot of damage, but it may draw rockets of Ukraine’s civil defense system, allowing more destructive missiles to get through. Stratcom, the Ukrainian center for strategic communication, tweeted a NASA image from November 24 of Eastern Europe at night. City lights from northern Italy, Istanbul, Moscow, Stockholm, Oslo, and many other places are clearly seen. But Ukraine is quite dark. Strangely, so is Hungary (and I don’t have an explanation of that). Charles Jay of the Kos community told part of the story of the Ukrainian Special Operations Forces. These small groups have played a sizable role in the war in particular incidents where their small numbers did significant damage. I’ll let you read it. Speaking of zombies... Rebekah Sager of Kos discussed her fascination of zombie stories. She wrote that she frequently thinks about whether she would be prepared if a zombie popped up in front of her.

After years of being laughed at by friends and family about being kind of a zombophile, I had to ask myself why I was so fascinated by them. And I finally figured it out. As a Black woman who is Jewish and whose mother was a lesbian, history shows us that my people—all of them—have been targeted for centuries. The monsters may be different, and they’re not undead, of course, but the goal of devouring me is identical. ... The threats to marginalized Americans and others are real and daily. The fear that white people have about being replaced is so deep-seated that they will walk into a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood or a synagogue or a church and open fire—and have. These monsters are real, and they are dangerous, and it doesn’t matter that they have laws, policies, law enforcement, justices, and lawmakers to protect them, they still have a craven desire to be solely in power, and they will do whatever it takes to keep it that way.

One of the basic ideas of the MAGA crowd is they want to take their country back. Dartagnan of the Kos community wants Republicans to know he also wants to take his country back. As a youth he and his dad roamed all over rural Pennsylvania hunting and fishing. They would visit small towns and feel welcome. They would see plentiful game. And saw no sign of politics. Now many areas are restricted because of fracking. He must be careful of the fish he catches because of possible mercury poisoning. The small town diners are replaced with chains. And the politics is in your face. All that projects a hostile attitude and he feels like an unwanted visitor.

That country, the one where you didn’t have to think about or acknowledge the political environment wherever it was you were going, no longer exists. The mask has been ripped off, and what’s beneath is seething, unabashed racism, looking for an outlet. And, boy, do they hate us. The truth is a lot of them would be more than happy to kill us. That’s the natural result of all the nonstop demonization that Fox News pours into their ears and eyeballs every day. Ultimately it doesn’t matter what ginned-up grievance motivates them, because they’ve been taught to hate. As long as Fox News and Donald Trump have told them, it’s fine, that’s all they need to know

. Dartagnan mentioned the McCarthyism of the early 1950s.

But it’s a different kind of McCarthyism that’s out there now, one that smolders just beneath the thin veneer of civility, one that gets its juices recharged every night through Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and the never-ending panoply of virulent racists yammering away on addictive social media platforms. It’s not one susceptible to being wiped out simply by taking one individual out of the picture. It can’t be shamed because it knows no shame in the first place. And it’s channeling something far more lethal and longstanding in this country than fear of Communism ever was.

That hate is defacing idyllic rural Pennsylvania and will continue until we as a nation figure out how to stop it. That will take a while.

Until then, the countryside I loved so much as a boy will never have the same appeal to me. These people always say they “want their country back.” Well, I’d dearly love to have my country back, too. But I’m pretty sure that’s not going to happen anytime soon.

Wednesday will mark one year since the shooting at the Oxford High School, north of Detroit. It is about six months since the shooting at Robb Elementary school in Uvalde, Texas. The Sunday Detroit Free Press (in an article behind a paywall in such a way I can’t share a link) told the story of several Oxford teens traveling to Uvalde to have a party with the survivors. Part of it was the older kids saying I know what you’re going through because I’ve been there too. Part of it was all of them, children and teens, learning how to be a kid again. I’m so glad they had that party. I so wish they didn’t have to.