I woke up this morning and went for a walk then came home, had brunch however I had this painful feeling in my stomach so I rushed to the bathroom – it felt as though someone had kicked me on the stomach it hurt that much. I ended up having to lay on my side – that that point I rang up my boss and advised him I wouldn’t be in work today because I wasn’t too sure how long it would last and whether it would reoccur later on in the day. I’m unsure what could have caused it but if it reoccurs then I’ll get in contact with my doctor but I’m sure it is something minor.
Before getting up this morning at 6:34am there was an earthquake (link) – it was a sharp jolt and I braced myself for another shake but it didn’t come. I’m lucky in that I’m a single story small single unit so there was no damage – one of the benefits of having houses built of wood is that it allows movement when there is an earthquake. It is something that you get used to when living in Wellington.
I mentioned last night that I was watching the last episode of Silo season 3 and at the end of the episode when Congressman Daniel found out the name of the women he keeps seeing when he wakes up from his deep sleep – the name of the woman is Helen Drew. He finds who she is that out after completing the operation regarding Silo 17 – he realises that may she may have been in Silo 17 or maybe Silo 18 or any of the other Silos. The moment that he realises that his actions are no longer divorced from his own personal life is the moment I think he realises the horrific thing he did to Silo 17. It’ll be interesting to see what happens with Silo season 4 when it is released and his character arch – does he fixate on just Helen Drew or does he have an epiphany which changes how he makes decisions in his role.
I’ve been listening to a few episodes of ‘The Ezra Klein’ show regarding how liberalism used to be a revolutionary force of upending the old order and pushing a better future but gradually it has become the very thing that it was rallying against. There was a more recent episode entitled ‘The reason why people hate government’ which kind of builds upon the larger thesis of why liberalism has failed. I would argue that liberalism in the United States has failed because it has failed to evolve and what it has evolved into is social democracy and democratic socialism which as been built outside of the liberal movement. Social democracy and democratic socialism are the natural evolution of liberalism resulting in those who call themselves liberals today have become what the conservatives were at the time liberalism came on the scene.
The problem is that the liberals in the United States today are more or less repeating the same talking points that conservatives made 40-50 years ago – liberalism has evolved into social democracy and democratic socialism but liberals want to maintain the privileges they have accumulated. What has essential happened in the world of liberalism is a group of people have decided that they’re now in a position of privilege, they wish to protect that privilege and as a result you see the massive push back within the Democratic Party against anyone daring to promote policies that would be considered mainstream in any other country in the world – single payer health care, paid paternity and maternity leave, making collective contracts and unionism the default rather than the exception plus many more policies.
As I’ve said in the past, what one would call the ‘corporate democrats’ are essentially the Rockefeller Republicans from 50 years ago – they’re in the Democratic Party because they’re too embarrassed to be associated with the Republican Party so they took over the Democratic Party instead. What is the net result? the corporate media play up the rebranding with the nonsense of calling these former Rockefeller Republicans the so-called ‘moderate wing’ of the Democratic Party because the ownership class want to convince the middle and lower class that the Rockefeller Republicans are now the new moderates which has resulted in the whole Overton window being pushed to the right thus labelling what used to be centre-left policy as being on the far left.
The worst airport has to be Dubai – it is like the labyrinth which is made worse when you’re travelling from Australia to France via Dubai then finding you’re having to trek from one gate to another gate with the mixture of uncomfortably hot trains to numerous escalators and lifts. The easiest would be Heathrow which was easy to navigate particularly when I wasn’t feeling the best and having to take the train out the airport then from there I was able to find the check-in desk the locate the lounge with the flight being close by.
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