And so today I packed out my house and left Pismo Beach. It feels surreal. But it is time for new adventures and new quests, and to find new ways to try to bring some light into the encroaching darkness.

Hugs to all,

--Cliff

youtu.be/J9gKyRmic20?...

"“I wish it need not have happened in my time," said Frodo. "So do I," said Gandalf, "and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.""

Fiction, yes. Yet the majority of America's populace supports the degeneration of our country into a perverse cross between 1930s Germany and the mafia state that is Vladimir Putin's Russia. Or they just don't care enough to stop it. Gilead is no longer a giant leap away.

And as June Osborne said in A Handmaid's Tale: “America wasn’t Gilead until it was, and then it was too fucking late."

While the United States remains a country filled with great beauty and good and kind people, they are now a minority. We are a degenerate nation. As Jonathan Last recently wrote in The Bulwark, "no empire can survive the degeneration of its people."

Yet each day in America, we see the shadow grow. Trying to catch the deluge in a paper cup is exhausting.

I've treasured hundreds of incredible dinners in the vineyards, getting to drink some of the best wines in the world almost daily, and seeing thousands of the most spectacular sunsets on my afternoon jogs. My life has been blessed.

10/10: Can the American people stop him? I don't have a f*cking clue.

9/10: Back in the late 1930s, the United States stood as a great world power that supported democracy. Today, by the choice of the American voters, the president of the United States not only stands in support of fascism, but seeks to transform the United States into a fascist state.

8/10: If you notice parallels between what is happening now and what happened back in Germany in the late 1930, that is because these are greatly similar situations. But there is one major difference.

7/10: But they will do it, because their lives, and their freedoms, depend on it.

6/10: Of course, Europe is well aware of all of this. They know that Ukraine's potential surrender foretells their future fortune. It will be a great hardship for them to continue to help Zelenskyy, not only without support from the US, but with the US actually aiding Putin.

5/10: That will go on until the easy targets run out, or a disagreement arises as to who gets to "protect" a mutually desired country, and then the three superpowers will turn on each other.

4/10: Perhaps slowly, but perhaps very quickly, the dominoes would fall, and democracy would come to an end globally, as China, Russia, and the US all start acquiring countries to place under their "protection."

3/10: But that was just the beginning... it would have also given Putin license, now with the US's tacit support, to invade more of Europe, and it would have given Trump license to take territory like Greenland and Panama that he seems to want.

2/10: Not only would the surrender have given Putin territory that Putin wanted, it would also have given Trump license to plunder the natural resources that Ukraine needs to rebuild after the war.