'WE'RE SHUTTING IT DOWN': COORDINATED ECONOMIC BLACKOUT SET FOR NOV. 25 - DEC. 2

[DFW]

66. This will have to be a spectator sport for me and my wife

The nearest part of the USA is just under 4000 miles from us.

We buy most of our food from the local farmers market, held three times a week in our town square, like people here have been doing for the last 800 years or so. No oligarchs there, just people who get up for work at 4 or 5 in the morning—just like I do, come to think of it.

My 12 year old car has close to 40,000 miles on it. At $7.50 a gallon, about 75% of which is taxes, it makes sense to take public transportation. Besides, there’s no way I can even consider battling traffic down to Paris, Brussels or Zürich for a day of work and expect to be home by midnight if I drive. At 73 with a mild case if narcolepsy, I’d fall asleep at the wheel anyway. So, I don’t drive much, and never five hours in one stretch. If I get gas more than every six weeks, it’s a lot.

There is a McDonald’s in our town.The last time I was there was with our daughters, about 25 years ago.

Unless FedEx, Malca-Amit, the air lines and the Treasury Department go dark, neither will we. My outfit now has about 1000 employees. It is run by the same two guys who started it as 20 somethings with maybe 12 other 20 somethings a little over 50 years ago. They could both retire if they wanted, but neither of them sees watching TV and jogging as a stimulating alternative. If we go dark for a week, maybe the top 800 people won’t get a Christmas bonus (the least-earning 200 would get one regardless—we take care of our own). I was recruited 50 years ago at age 23. I told the top guy then that I had met this incredible woman in Germany, would require extra vacation time to visit her as long as she would put up with me. He said, tell you what, establish some viable contacts for us over there, and take all the time you want. I did, and we now have offices in six European countries, and my German beauty is still with me, and still beautiful (California Peggy is my eyewitness).

So, you people back in the States do what you want. Life isn’t perfect here in EU/NATO-land, but we make do. Belgium and, especially, France have disrupting strikes all the time. They piss off working people, me included, but we’re used to them, and they change pretty much nothing except the schedules of working people who don’t work from home. We’ll continue to spend what we spend, which, other than food, contributions to food banks and other charities, and travel to see family or our annual down time in Massachusetts every summer, isn’t much.

We try to avoid cliché phrases, as they remind us too much of people we don’t really admire—such as people who hate “liberals” or use “Democrat” as an adjective. To us, that’s the far right’s equivalent of “corporatist” or “oligarch.” We don’t need others to instruct us on who we like or don’t like. We actually manage to figure that out all on our own.

Since I’m at home on both continents, maybe I’m looking at this from too broad a perspective? But like Sly Stone sang, different strokes for different folks.