asher553: (Default)
asher553 ([personal profile] asher553) wrote2019-09-11 05:04 pm
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2019-09-11 Wednesday evening: Back from the dead at DW!

It's been a year and a half since I last posted at DW. I spent the first half of 2018 in a live/work situation with an eccentric, elderly entrepreneur in the hills outside of Scappoose; it had its moments, but it proved to be a financial and professional setback. By the end of 2018, I was back in the professional world, working full-time in IT and living in Hillsboro.

And that's where I'm at now. I work help desk in a technology company in the Dawson Creek area, and live just a couple of miles down the road in Tanasbourne. My trusty Subaru failed the emissions test last April, so I've been commuting by bus, which entails a fair amount of walking - and that's probably good for me.

Last month I visited San Francisco for a week to see the kids. Didn't get to spend as much time with them as I would have liked, but it was great seeing them. They are both wonderful young people and I couldn't be happier to have them in my life - even if at a distance.

Socially and politically, I'm enjoying being around people again, and I'm more comfortable being open about my politics than I used to be - coming out of the closet as a conservative, so to speak. I don't feel like I have to be secretive about it anymore.

On social media, I am active on that necessary evil known as facebook, and post a lot of political links (along with the obligatory cat videos) there. I'm also giving the alternative social media a fair trial; Gab seems to be struggling, but I'm on Gab [https://gab.com/asherabrams] where I post sporadically, and I'm on MeWe [https://mewe.com/profile/5ab6613ba40f3016336ffd08] where ditto.

And of course I'm still on LiveJournal [https://asher63.livejournal.com/].

September 11. It's that day. I'm going to share this excellent piece by my longtime facebook friend Abraham Miller:

https://spectator.org/9-11-you-said-you-wouldnt-forget-you-did/

'The system of competing tribes with different realities only works if there is an overarching sense of community. From the Europe of the Peace of Westphalia, 1648, emerged the idea of the nation state. This was the binding together of similar yet different peoples into a shared identity.

Three-hundred-plus years later, that ideal began to crumble. Devolution became the objective of peoples who found unity artificial. Minus the integrative loyalty of communism, Yugoslavia crumbled into different ethnic enclaves and civil war. Czechoslovakia broke into the Czech and Slovak Republics. The Soviet Union broke up into its pre-imperial past. Many African states devolved into tribalism.

Our strength is most definitely not our multiculturalism. Our strength is a multicultural society that possess a transformative sense of unity. Dramatic events like 9/11 rekindle that purpose.'

Please go to the link to read the whole thing.

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