Michael Day

If a hurricane doesn't leave you dead

Then it will make your strong

Don't try to explain it, just nod your head

Breathe in, breathe out, move on

-Jimmy Buffett

Thirty-nine degrees out there, under slate gray skies.

I'm running the space heater here in the home office for the first time this season. It reminds me of the first of the four Octobers we spent in Corning, which began with a sunny trip out on Seneca Lake with friends and ended buried in snow. This time around is feeling that way, although the next ten days are forecast to vary between frost and the low 70s.

There don't seem to be many images from Milton's landfall last night. Maybe the photos are starting to populate the internet, but I don't have enough bandwidth here to type this blog and open a new tab to take a look. I did see where Tropicana Field lost its roof. The poor Rays can't catch a break.

It will be interesting to see what happens to the Florida real estate market after this month of monster storms, with hurricane season still seven weeks from conclusion. Peg thinks folks will just end up moving inland a little. Perhaps. That would be great news for Wyldswood as an investment, if not a place to live. But people come to the Sunshine State largely for the beaches and bays; take those away and you have Louisiana, and folks aren't exactly flocking there. Time will tell.

One benefit of Milton barreling through the news cycle for a few days is that the potential apocalypse on election day effaced a little on the pages of the NYT and other news outlets. This morning's Times grimly reported the latest Senate race polls, which strongly suggest the Rs will be rewarded for all their bad behavior by retaking that body. If things go sideways in November and they have control of all three branches of government, it means there were absolutely no consequences for the mendacity and outright fraud practiced by pretty much the entire party in the age of Trump. Or, more accurately, it means the consequence of all that is control of the government, by decision of my neighbors.

P and I have run the numbers, and we have the ability--barely--to leave the country in that event and stay gone. Not that I think they're coming for us, two white country club conservatives, sort of. I just don't think I can live in a society where I know the person in the next booth at the restaurant, or standing in line behind me in the grocery store, occupies that reality and holds those beliefs. You can have it. We'll brush up on our French.

On the other hand, I found myself immersed in a very long read this morning from Vanity Fair (it pretty much crowded out reading anything else except a few headlines, because I ran out of time). The essay painted a portrait of the intellectual landscape of Steve Bannon's "traditionalist" political world, in the context of the coincidence of the annual meeting of the National Conservatism Conference and that of NATO, both in Washington during the same week last summer. I can't say I agree with Bannon's worldview, or the revolutionary vandalism the movement would represent if it reached the levers of power (something that should concern us all, given that JD Vance is a true believer), but there is some insight in the movement's explanation of how we got here, even as its proscriptive message that we should pull back and let the world sink into multipolarity and chaos strikes me as irresponsible.

The article stands out for its profiles of the players in this battle of ideas, and for taking the time to explain where Bannon's movement is coming from intellectually, rather than dismissing him as some sort of comic book villain.

If you have the time, it's worth the read.

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/steve-bannon-nato-world-order

Ready for my corporate tax lesson, followed by a completely pointless mediation.