Situational awareness: is the ability to understand and respond to a situation by being aware of your surroundings and any potential risks. It’s an important skill for making effective decisions in many situations.
I don’t hang out with crazy people. I know some, but I choose to not spend my time with them. Everyone I know knows what they are doing, at least to some degree. They all know. All of them. When they cast a vote in one direction or another they KNOW what that vote means. They KNOW who, and what, they are truly voting for. The “Biden is a reptile and is secretly on trial at Guantanamo,” people are certifiably insane. The others aren’t crazy, just radicalized. They know the reality of what they are voting for, and what the repercussions might be, but their hatred and fear of the other side is so great it clouds things like common sense, intelligence, and knowledge. Hate and fear. So, so powerful. The demise of literacy has arrived.
Now we find ourselves here.
In 1993, during my first three months of news photography internship life, I was living in Phoenix and renting a room at another photographer’s house. The landline rang. It was my brother, and I knew something was wrong. My brother and I talk more on the phone these days, but back in those days it was rare and only happened when something was off. He got arrested. I got arrested. You know, Milnor family tradition. “Tom got shot and killed last night,” he said. Pause. Pause. Tom being my cousin Tom, one month older than my brother and one entirely unique individual. I know without question, were he still alive today, Tom would have changed our world for the better. He was that kind of guy. Artist, entrepreneur, one-off, comedian, and a guy with a heart for the other. Not just himself. A rare bird indeed.
Tom was a thinker, just not in the same way that you and I think. Tom had troubles in school. Tom had troubles with his parents. Tom didn’t fit a premade mold, and this is why he was so great. American society, especially now, isn’t built for people like Tom. We are built for the standardized test. Tom would have never made it past admissions. The people who killed him were straight up killers. Bangers from East Los Angeles who were in Denver because nobody came looking for them. For the event to go down like it did meant that our society had seen system failure at the hightest levels. Family structure, education, law enforcement, the legal system, availability of firearms, etc. System failure. And this was in 1993. It’s only gotten worse.
America, in some ways, is massively hung over. I still like living here, for you flag wavers. Still like it. I do. I don’t need to wave a flag and wear a t-shirt with an eagle on it to express my gratification, and I find that many people who do often choose to do so for somewhat contradictory reasons. So, why bother with the show. I express my gratification by trying to better understand us, ALL OF US, and this place we call home. We are hung over from post war 1950s. America as white hat wearing good guy. But the data no longer supports this fantasy. Even talking about it can get you labeled as “anti-American.” Again, we aren’t built for questioning. We are built for conforming. Get in line, drink the Coolaid. Greatest Country in the World. Maybe. Sometimes.
Around the time Tom was killed my father pulled me aside and said “Okay, as a country we are in transition.” “You need to up your situational awareness.” “You’ve lived your life in the green but now you have to move to yellow.” “At all times, never go below yellow, or you might not make it out.” Dad was far from a prepper, but he was cautiously aware at most times.(Except when making horrendous personal decisions.) I remember stumbling across a momma bear and cubs while on a hike in Wyoming. Mom and dad and I were walking a two-track to look for trout in a series of beaver ponds when we turned a corner and roughly twenty feet away was a momma black bear and two of the cutest damn cubs you have ever seen. Only at that moment they weren’t that cute. They were the worst possible scenario.
And what are you never supposed to do when you see a bear? Run. So, we ran. Within seconds of turning to run I heard the slide on a Detonics Combatmaster .45 being racked. Way to go dad. Not that he had any desire to shoot a bear, but if it came down to his wife and his best child, BY FAR, well, send flowers to the bear’s family. He would never sit with his back to a window. He would choose parking spots carefully. He knew that before the cavalry arrived you have better damn well know how to defend yourself because maybe they come and maybe they don’t. Green to yellow my friends. Green to yellow. Just one step up. The basics. After you move that needle it just becomes second nature.
I just moved to orange.
Yep. Yellow since 1993, but now I’m at orange. Not like I wanted to move, just felt it prudent. Why? Did I experience any direct threat? Well, kinda. Happened a few months ago. Was a false alarm in some ways although at the DNA level of the event several people died. Their deaths set off a chain reaction which I was an unwilling part of. And remember, I’m out and about. I see and I listen. And I record. I collect information. I watch from the edge of the fire, from the darkness, and I remember. Some would call this subversion, or communism or something worse. I call it fun. l call it habit.
When I look around at “Us” now I don’t see intelligence. I see lowest common denominator. I see a people clinging to a false narrative. I see Enshittification. This is hilarious but so spot on. We have learned to settle. For just about everything. Education, food, lack of healthcare, culture, entertainment, etc. We are average at best. We tell ourselves we aced the test when it reality we didn’t use a number two pencil and showed up on the wrong day.
Less than ten percent of us hold a passport. Twenty seven million of us can’t read at a level high enough to fill out a job application. Fifty million read at a fourth grade level. Forty two percent of college graduates never read a book for the remainder of the post-school life. One third of the nation is illiterate and this is growing by millions each year. THIS is who we are. And I don’t care if this offends you because IT SHOULD. We are doped by fantasy. And when questioned about this, we respond with rage. We don’t like what we see in the mirror.
But tabling these things often brings little more than finger pointing, political insanity, and a dusting of hate. Humor is one of the best ways to present this information, and The Onion does it well. I hadn’t really thought about The Onion for quite some time. One of my good friends was an Onion lover but he passed away a few years ago, so lately I’ve been on an Onion diet of sorts. I stumbled across this old film, and while it made me laugh, it also made my realize just how close to home this really is. We need to take stock and start acting rationally about who we are, and it’s most likely gonna sting.
So, yes. I moved to orange not but because l fear attack. I moved to orange because I feel like we are nearing the point of no return when it comes to lack of intelligence and acceptance of fantasy. The point of no return with our education system, and this means from our best institutions to our book banning cowards who are now asking for the elimination of the separation between church and state. The point of no return on our acceptance of convenience. The point of no return on our acceptance of greed and corruption.
We have the ability to do better, to do more. As I mentioned early on, everyone I know KNOWS what they are doing. They know things aren’t right but often find themselves hindered by illusionary ideals placed on them by master manipulators. Corporations, politicians, tech bros, finance bros, pseudo-religious leaders, etc. We can do better. Will we? At best, I see this as a 50/50 chance at this point. It’s not looking so good, but maybe we get a change in the wind before the ship splits apart and sinks like a stone.
Comments 23
The Onion video was hysterical and depressing in its truth. “Kids too obese to ride their hover boards.” We have much to improve upon, and plenty of blame to go around. Ugh. I’m gonna have another cup of coffee and read my book now.
Author
It’s so true. They did one a few days ago, “Man getting high and eating Taco Bell a thousand miles from his family has best Thanksgiving Ever.” I so love what they do.
Shortly after t was elected, I asked my son, the Army veteran, “did they teach you hand to hand combat?”. “Yeah…,” he replied while looking at me askance. “Why?,” he asked. “Because I want you to teach me and my friends,” I replied. A few days ago, I watched the Buy More documentary on Netflix. Earlier today, I saw a meme in one of my weaving groups about how weaving is a skill for the post-apocalyptic world. I laughed but damn, I’ve thought that more than once on my own.
We are so fucked. And we are surrounded by people who don’t see it, don’t want to believe it if they do see it, think everything is hunky dory or would be if they have their white nationalist way.
I get really angry about this sometimes. Really depressed other times. I haven’t the slightest idea how to get millions of people to wake up or care or fight back. But I’ve just returned from the library, having returned the bird book (thanks again for that recommendation) and borrowed a couple of weaving books. As I was driving home, feeling that library glee, I thought ‘god, I hope we get to keep the libraries…’ We’ll see, I guess.
I still like living here too. Hell, I live in the south but I still like it down here. Wanda Sykes was on one of those late night comedy shows and the host asked if she was going to live in France with her wife. She said, “Hell no! The blood of my ancestors is here!” Yeah… the blood of thousands of people soak this land via their forced sacrifice and I have come to see that I can honor them by my resistance and my stubborn will to keep on keeping on. I’ve taken to writing the serenity prayer while writing in my morning pages. And I re-read Jack Gilbert’s poem, A Brief for the Defense often. And anything by Mary Oliver. I think I have to keep showing myself the miraculous or I will surely cease to breathe. And I am very sorry about your cousin, Tom.
Author
I’m not sure the people who voted for t want change. I think they are perpetually angry, and so is he, and that is enough. He has never gotten over being a third tier guy. The first tier never wanted him, and it has made him pathologically angry at the world. They are too. They just want someone who feels the same. It’s gonna be ugly, for sure, but we have to try to make this place better than it is now.
It was always fun to say that “Idiocracy” was a documentary. Until it was true.
Author
Yes. Like The Onion. So much is spot on. I spoke to a Trump voter who didn’t know about his placement of the Supreme Court justices, nor did they know he had overturned Roe v Wade. They seem to know nothing about the man.
The statistics you cite about literacy are a haiku of decay. Any country that cares about its own survival makes literacy a foundation. That we don’t speaks volumes about our depraved priorities.
Also, as a son of a firefighter, I really relate to your father’s preparation, readiness, and awareness. My own dad combined joyous risk-taking combined with careful hedging, the paradox any first responder knows well. So, I work hard to be prepared, stay alert, observe, look for the exits, and never book a room above the 10th floor. And, yeah, it’s always orange in my world these days, too.
Author
Literacy here now is viewed as nothing but bad. Dangerous. Don’t question the gilded one and his army of illiterates. Ban anything in question.
Some Canadians laugh and point the finger, but I don’t. It’s happening here too.
“enshitification” was coined by a Canadian
Author
Lots of good stuff come from the Great White North.
Author
Yep. We always thought “Oh, it will never happen again.” Wrong.
I think most women grow up in the orange level, always aware of who’s around them- who to worry about, who might help- how to deflect attention, how to shut up and avoid confrontation. There has been a little progress in this sad state of affairs, but the promotion of self-confessed abusers enables other abusers. So much more for young women to worry about- social media, AI nude alteration of their image, getting roofied (which happens more frequently than you might think), online dating- rapists, murderers and con artists to watch out for, laws that undermine women’s health and safety. There are many more good men than bad, but the bad ones are very busy. I like Margaret Atwood’s response to the book burners- a special fireproof edition of The Handmaid’s Tale. I like this quote:
“Books are sometimes windows, offering views of worlds that may be real or imagined, familiar or strange. These windows are also sliding glass doors, and readers have only to walk through in imagination to become part of whatever world has been created or recreated by the author. When lighting conditions are just right, however, a window can also be a mirror. Literature transforms human experience and reflects it back to us, and in that reflection we can see our own lives and experiences as part of a larger human experience. Reading, then, becomes a means of self-affirmation, and readers often seek their mirrors in books.”
― Rudine Sims Bishop
Author
And now we have the toxic male influencer combined with hundreds of millions of boys who have grown up online. Does not bode well for getting out of the orange. “The bad ones are busy,” is the statement of the day. Well done.
Danielsan, The “50/50” chance is optimistic (I think). I mean, I’m a “glass half-full” guy as well. But, I just regained consciousness from a Tryptophan-overdose, after bumping bellies with my overweight American relatives…And realized, we’ve ALL been moved to a “different” orange (for at least four more years)…I will never “Kiss The Ring.”
Author
Same. I just returned from the land of the self-inflicted political wound. Cutting off their nose to spite their face. We won! And now the great blame game begins.
“If a monkey hoarded more bananas than it could eat, while other monkeys starved, scientists would study that monkey to figure out what the heck was wrong with it. When humans do it, we put them on the cover of Forbes.”
I think that sums up everything wrong with our species.
Author
Oh man, that is so spot on. Greed and corruption rule. But cant’ say it out loud or otherwise you aren’t a capitalist or you might even be socialist. I’ve said it all along. We deserve what’s coming.
I recommend Naomi Klein’s Doppelganger to anyone who wants some clues as to how we got here.
Author
Hmm, don’t know that one. Thank you!
If you lived for 10+ years in Europe (any country where you speak the language fluently), you’d be having the same complains. Educational standards have taken a hit across the Western World in the last 20-25 years, because the new fashion is to lower the bar in order to “accommodate the least capable”. The USA is just the place it starts, Europe follows with a 5-10 year delay. The phenomenon is even worse in most of Europe, where parents have no school choice rights, and no means to relocate. They may appear more educated to you because they are snubbing you, and modern Americans think that “the bigger snob must be more educated”.
But would you really want to live in a country with super-educated people? People who know, for example, that “woke” is a resurrection of (comically primitive) Lysenkoism? People who would want you to mention specific things, and not just cloudy generalizations? And to go to specifics, exactly what steps has your favorite political party taken to raise the bar in education? None, right? Because the result, especially in California and Illinois, just proves that (btw, Illinois teachers are on average the highest paid teachers in the world).
Things have changed a lot. And maybe pointing the finger (a proud tradition of LAZY accusers) is not the answer. I thought you hated laziness, and yet you are lazy by not listening to the other side, and by just pointing the finger without checking who was, and is, the one insisting on lowering the educational bar.
PS. Is it Stanford (or Yale, or Harvard) that is abolishing entry standards as we speak? Check it out.
Author
Wow, glad you are expert on everything. You must have been born a genius. You sound radicalized, for sure. And yes, I’d love to live in a country of super-educated because none of the super educated people I know behave like you mention above. I just love how you think you can put me in a camp because I question your side of the equation. I don’t have a political party. If you had listened or read anything I’ve ever said, you would have known that.