Barrel Strength

As I write, an early snow storm has covered Ottawa in white, though some leaves are still greenish yellow. Welcome to the new Ice Age.

It is hard to maintain the keen knife-edge of mental and spiritual combat  against the Forces of Darkness every waking moment of the day. Moreover, it is harder to be excited all the time about impending Doom. I refer both to Obama and to panic in the markets. Arran Gold recently attributed my calm in the face of Obama to getting a cushy job. This is true, as far as it goes. But how far does the prospect of a few years of financial security cause this apparent lack of concern? Not far at all.

To start: If I had a vote I would vote for McCain. I am not persuaded by Obama in the least.

I am, nevertheless, not predicting the overthrow of the Republic, the overturning of the Constitution, the permanent enthronement of identity politics and political correctness and the transformation of the United States into a socialist refuge for NDPers fleeing the Conservative reformation of Canada.

Obama will raise taxes, do what he has to to secure the shaky finances of the US federal government, and generally pursue a more cautious tax policy than Bush the Second, not because he wants to, but because he has to.  The United States has been in a boom fuelled by overvalued house prices. This has come to an end, as all booms do. Things will be shaky for a while. President Obama will have to deal with this mess for three years, maybe more. Reagan had a recession on his hands for a long time, too.

The Obamesssiah will provide cool and distant rule. His emotive flatness will soon grate. His leftism will be tried against the practicalities of great power politics. Foreign rules will rumble him, if they can. Life will go on.

So why am I in this mood of acceptance? Experience is the leading cause of this feeling.

You have to live through a few economic cycles to understand that they are indeed cyclical. Time is of the essence, and it is getting shorter every day.  Time spent learning is called experience, and I have enough to know that spring follows winter. If this sounds like Chauncey Gardner in “Being There”, so be it.

When you are young, you have not seen how wood in contact with the ground rots in five years, but wood raised above the ground on stone lasts for thirty or more. Until you own or care for property, you do not notice these things anyway, and when you are in your twenties, you have not observed for long enough. By the age of thirty you are starting to cover things up for the winter, isolate wood from ground, seal windows and doors religiously, because you have seen what happens when chairs and machinery are left out in the weather, and how important it is to stop drafts. A Canadian winter will chew up indestructible plastic.

Though I know I will be blasted by the usual suspects, and rightly so by their lights, I know that the Winter of Obama will be followed by a spring. I am doing what I can to get in more firewood, reduce debt, reduce expenses, and if I feel more like the ant rather than the grasshopper at this juncture,  perhaps I am justified.

I cannot control the US election. I cannot control what will happen tomorrow. But I can control how much firewood I have, what my debt is, what my assets are. I am not going to worry about things that I cannot affect, and for the things I can control, I propose not to worry, but to take action. Maybe easier said than done. Yet we shall survive this winter of our discontent.

I may indulge in a log splitter, however.