Welcome to Elizabeth Nickson’s current “Absurdistan”!

October 12, 2024

Once again, I am utterly flabbergasted by Elizabeth Nickson’s long and extremely comprehensive substack post. Read this long, detailed essay all the way through; absorb this globe-trotting Canadian journalist’s deep, multilayered, grounded, far reaching perspective on current events, and you will come away with a sense that, despite appearances, things are indeed looking up.

https://elizabethnickson.substack.com/p/a-brutalist-regime-dies-in-absurdity?utm_source=post-email-title&publication_id=30495&post_id=150017018&utm_campaign=email-post-title&isFreemail=true&r=62j1k&triedRedirect=true&utm_medium=email

No wonder her perspective is so far-reaching. Check out her bio:

 

bio

Then there’s her 2015 account of her “Long Journey Home from the Left.” I get it; believe me, I get it.

I would be interesting to note how her perspective has mutated since 2015. Because you know she does not stand still. Nor is she one to wear what I call an impermeable conceptual helmet. Instead, more than most people, she continues to absorb more and more of the world’s chaotic intensity while still managing to use her prolific gifts of language to create meaning.

https://c2cjournal.ca/2015/03/twenty-years-a-fool-my-long-journey-home-from-the-left/

I now want to read every single thing she’s ever written!

Political signs, and spaces: What is said, what is not said.

October 11, 2024

I live in an academic town. So of course I see Harris/Walz signs popping up on lawns during this final lead-up to the November 5 election. Every time I walk by one of these signs I have to stop myself from pulling it up and stomping on it. Geez Ann! Get a grip!

If I was to put a Trump sign on my front lawn, it wouldn’t be fair to the others who live in Green Acres Permaculture Village, since I’m the only one who doesn’t shear left automatically.

On the other hand, that’s an excuse. The deeper reason is, who knows what kind of animus I would face, not from my near neighbors, but from the many who walk down the street.

And that makes me wonder how many Trump supporters there are, in Bloomington, who, like me, do not announce the fact with a sign. Hey, and what about the Harris supporters? Are the occupants of houses that don’t automatically cleave to this sign branding not Harris supporters?

It reminds me of what I’ve thought about forever; how the space between any two points is where the meaning lies. The points, in this case, being yard signs, for either “side.” What about that vast space in the middle, where nobody is saying what they really believe? And why not?

A few relevant memes:

Yeah, I tell myself, I should initiate a political discussion? In this town? Why sacrifice myself to the mob? Because that’s what I imagine it would feel like. Better to “let sleeping dogs lie.”

Sad, how education — at every level — has devolved into indoctrination . . .

Might as well, eh?

However, as regarding the current left/right polarity, here’s the more inclusive view that, when my mind is flexible enough, expands into. I.e., what counts is a larger space that includes both the left/righ polarity and the space between.