Thursday: I started the day with a 20-minute pedal on the stationary bike, then the first of my three exercise sessions, and a 600 m walk — shorter than usual because we had to get to the hospital for an X-ray and my second follow-up meeting with the surgeon. I was pleased to have him tell me I’m doing well, nothing is wrong, and my progression is as expected. We were at the hospital for about one-and-a-half hours; the X-ray and meeting took perhaps 10 minutes of that. The rest of the time was waiting.
Good thing we both brought books to read. Everyone else, of course, was staring at their phones. Not merely younger people, either: even seniors our age were glued to their phones, and in some of the waiting areas, the ‘bing’ tone of a received message on their phones was a constant annoyance. I often feel the obsessive attention to phones some people have is proof the Idiocracy is upon us.*
And another milestone: the doctor said I can drive again! So I got into the driver’s seat for the first time in six weeks, and drove home from the hospital. Getting in and out of the driver’s seat is a bit more challenging because of the way I have to move and bend. But I will get used to it, and as I improve my bend, it will get easier. It has to: I have to drive to Barrie later this month for a meeting with my urologist, and Susan is not comfortable driving that far on the increasingly busy roads up here.
I managed a 17-minute bike pedal after lunch, with the rest of the exercises. I wish I could say that these pedal sessions loosened up my knee, but they don’t do it very much. As you can see by the photo, the knee and the thigh remain fairly swollen. The surgeon says it won’t return to “normal” for several months.
Progress is slow and at times painful, but the pain is diminishing. Aficionados of the slow movements — slow food, slow thinking, etc. — would likely appreciate how the surgery gives one time to consider each movement, plan each step. At the same time, you really wish for a faster recovery. Festina lente, the Romans would say: Hurry up slowly. Today we often say “Hurry up and wait.”
Of course, being slow isn’t the same as being contemplative. Contemplation is, I believe, much rarer in today’s world than in the past. Not the sort of monk-in-an-isolated-cell-under-a-vow-of-silence contemplation, or Buddhist mindfulness meditation (both of which I respect), but rather simply thinking deeply about things; assessing, weighing, analyzing. Those skills are being lost at an accelerating rate by people who don’t or can’t read long text. Certainly, they have been lost by anyone who watches Fox Newz or supports Trump.
Today’s technology and digital information sources are designed to deter both that sort of thought and deep reading. Instead of the internet and mass media helping develop our intellect and our wisdom, they have given us the low-IQ, conspiracy-addled Fox Newz hosts, the rage-farming Trump mimic Pierre PoiLIEvre, the treasonous MAGA-loving Danielle Smith, the orange dictator in steep cognitive decline Donald Trump, anti-vaxxers, creationists, and flat-earthers. We have become addicted to social media without the ability to use critical thinking or analysis about its contents; with millions gullible to the propaganda machines of pro-Russian outlets like Fox Newz and lying demagogues like Donald Trump. Technology is eating our brains. And of course, the oligarchs want it that way because an uneducated electorate is easy to fool and manipulate.
Not that this is a new complaint. Back in 1954, the philosopher Martin Heidegger wrote in his essay, The Question Concerning Technology,
Everywhere we remain unfree and chained to technology, whether we passionately affirm or deny it. But we are delivered over to it in the worst possible way when we regard it as something neutral; for this conception of it, to which today we particularly like to do homage, makes us utterly blind to the essence of technology.
Heidegger, who died in 1976, did not have to deal with personal computers, the internet, social media or those damned mobile phones everyone seems glued to today. Closer to today, playwright Aaron Sorkin said in an interview in 2020:
People are developing a chemical addiction to their phones. A gambling addict feels that rush of dopamine and serotonin not when they win but when the roulette wheel is spinning. When kids stick their hand in their pocket to get their phone and see if someone has commented on the photo they posted, they get that rush of serotonin and dopamine. It’s a big deal. And now, when we talk about our concerns with Facebook, we’re talking about the power that it has to disseminate misinformation and disinformation. We’re never going to put this genie back in the bottle, but surely we can decide that lies are bad.
Aristotle wrote, in his Nicomachean Ethics, that in a good society, people strive to lead three different lives in their search for happiness (“eudaimonia”): pleasure-oriented, politically active, and contemplative. These are also sometimes called gratification and money-making, political action, and a philosophical life. Aristotle also believed that a good life was based on four key principles: virtue, virtuousness, and the pursuit of happiness. Virtue — aka behaviour expressing high moral standards — seems desperately missing today, too, at least among conservatives. Who else would defend and protect pedophiles? Who else would create agencies to kidnap children off the streets? Who else would defund cancer research?
Of the three lives, the first two seem to dominate today, with the first (gratification and money making) far ahead of the second. We are a culture of convenience and selfishness, obsessed with material goods, consumerism, celebrity, and money; easy marks for bread and circuses ploys. It used to be, at least before social media, that political action meant serving the greater good. Now it just seems to mean attacking and beating your political opponents.
Doomscrolling: In the USA, the government has been shut down because of Trump and his MAGA party who are all determined to help push through Putin’s agenda to destroy the USA. But, of course, they are unfairly blaming the Democrats for the shutdown despite efforts by the Dems to secure healthcare that the MAGA cultists want to take away from millions of Americans. The shutdown is also an excuse for Russell Vought, the neo-fascist director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), to gut government departments and fire tens of thousands of workers who might not be loyal to the Orange Dictator. Vought was one of the architects of Trump’s fascist agenda, Project 2025, that is being used to further Putin’s goals to demolish the USA.
At the same time, MAGA is willing to bail out the failing Argentinian economy with $20 billion injection of funds, while denying American citizens healthcare. All because Trump likes the incompetent, far-right Argentinian dictator. Plus, China stopped buying soybeans from US farmers because of Trump and his tariffs, and changed their orders to Argentina, so Trump is bankrolling Argentinian farmers at the expense of American farmers, who now need their own bailout. And as you might expect, Trump’s $20 billion bailout package for Argentina directly benefited Rob Citrone, a well-connected hedge fund billionaire. Citrone is a longtime friend of a former colleague of Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, who announced the package.
Can it get any more corrupt and incompetent in the USA? Of course it can. And it will. Fascism is just getting rolling in the USA and there are more horrors to come. Trump’s Billionaire cronies will continue to benefit at the expense of the American taxpayer. Freud opens his little book, Civilization and Its Discontents, with
[P]eople commonly use false standards of measurement — that they seek power, success and wealth for themselves and admire them in others, and that they underestimate what is of true value in life.
And all the while, the deranged Trump continues to post AI-generated, racist memes on his UnTruth Social, but which also get posted on official government websites. Where is the media outrage over these memes? Where is the media outrage over Trump threatening to use American troops against American citizens? Where is the media outrage over any of the authoritarian moves?**
What the dictator Trump’s new order on domestic terrorism really means for America (spoiler alert: fascism). Watch this…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKvBzvVYlKw
Friday: Began with a 20-minute pedal and the rest of my exercises. Then at 10 a.m., I had another physio session at the hospital where I did 9 minutes on one of their bikes. Later in the afternoon, I did 13 minutes on my bike while I did the third set of exercises. This was my fifth week of physio. I have at least one more week left, but if I have not progressed in my bend to a degree much closer to 120, I may have to stay on. I’ll know more at the end of next week.
Tonight I’m making another pasta dish, but using the leftover sauce from Wednesday. And maybe I’ll throw in some of the last cherry tomatoes from our garden.
Saturday: We start with a warm 20C, much higher than the 6-9C we’ve started the days with for most of the last week. Got up to 30C by late afternoon: August weather. The warm weather will stay with us through Monday, then dip down to 14C daytime high. Did 20 minutes on the stationary bike this morning, which burns (according to the bike’s info panel), 130 calories. Did 15 minutes on the bike after lunch, too, along with the rest of the exercises. More exercises to come before bed.
Tonight, Susan is making rainbow trout with rice and veggies. I started reading Santa Claus: A Biography
by Gerry Bowler yesterday and it’s quite entertaining. The fifth Christian deity has quite a long and tangled history.
Elbows up! Remember: boycott all unnecessary travel and vacations to the USA, buy Canadian goods, wine and spirits, and produce instead of American, and don’t buy products from so-called Canadians who are MAGA lovers (like Wayne Gretzky). Canada is under attack by Trump and his administration, and any Canadian who still supports Trump is a traitor. Like Danielle Smith.
Notes:
* Psychologist Susan Greenfield wrote in her book, Mind Change, “Imagine in the future people become so used to external access for any form of reference that they have not internalized any facts at all, let alone put them into a context to appreciate their significance and understand them.” Quoted in Reader Come Home: The Reading Brain in a Digital World, by Maryanne Wolf (Harper, 2018). Wolf’s book is also the source of my reference to Aristotle and Heidegger. Excellent book, by the way.
** Stalin’s Article 58 of the Soviet penal code defined anyone who criticized the government as “counter-revolutionary” and allowed them to be imprisoned or executed (millions were).
Hitler’s Malicious Practices Act of 1933 made it illegal to criticize the administration and to put dissenters into internment (concentration) camps. Later, they would be executed in those camps.
Trump’s Presidential Order NSPM-7 redefines dissent as terrorism and authorizes the state to treat opponents as enemies.
See the similarities? If Trump were a Russian asset doing Putin’s work to destabilize American democracy and break the country apart, would he do anything different? I doubt it. But NSPM-7 is far worse than you imagined. It includes this:
This “anti-fascist” lie has become the organizing rallying cry used by domestic terrorists to wage a violent assault against democratic institutions, constitutional rights, and fundamental American liberties. Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.
This is pure Talibangelist (aka pseudo-Christian Nationalist) white supremacist rhetoric, and, as usual with every MAGA declaration, packed with lies. Antifa is short for “anti-fascist” and the opposite of it is pro-fascist. Which, of course, MAGA is. There are no “domestic terrorists” behind the word: just ordinary citizens who oppose authoritarianism. Who are now targets of the police and state because Trump says so.
None of the terms “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity” are defined, so it allows the state (i.e. Trump and his loyalists) to determine if you are a “terrorist.” If you are like me, an atheist, you are a “terrorist”. Or if you are opposed to predatory capitalism and egregious income inequality, you can be labelled a “terrorist.” And we all know that “anti-Americanism” is MAGA-speak for anyone who doesn’t like Trump or his policies. Whatever happened to the US Constitution guaranteeing free speech, guaranteeing freedom of religion, and guaranteeing the right to dissent and protest? Trump happened to those rights. In this declaration, Americans lose them.
Plus what are “extremism” views on race? Or gender? And what are “traditional American views” on anything and who determines what they are? It’s whatever the Trump administration says. And ordinary citizens can become — as they did in Nazi Germany and Stalin’s USSR — criminals for criticizing the government.
Groups can be targeted and shut down, their members imprisoned, without having done anything or broken any laws, because the declaration includes this: “law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies before they result in violent political acts.” And what are “criminal conspiracies”? Thought crimes against the state. You recall George Owell’s novel, 1984? It’s come true in the USA.
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