Mayor Ed Murray’s answer to those who want him to deny a permit to build the new youth jail has been to let us know, “the City must base any permit decision on the technical design facts in a permit application, and not on any policy considerations.” I think that’s a refreshing reminder that this is Seattle, where only process is king.
Instead of asking the mayor to stop the youth jail, people should be knocking on the door of the New Jail Pixie.
Another way to put it is once some ball starts rolling there’s no stopping it. Haven’t we all learned that lesson? Once someone gets the idea that there has to be a stadium, arena or a tunnel, there will be one, because process has no off switch.
Another way to put it, not to be so generous, is that whatever powerful people (read “rich”) can use to become more powerful (“richer”) will materialize. There’s a pixie for it. There are pixies everywhere. If there’s money, there’s a stinking pixie.
It’s not only true in Seattle, it’s true worldwide. It’s the reason I don’t expect global warming to end. It won’t end because it will never be profitable to end it. Pixies are heating up the coal and oil industries as we speak, and the heat is melting the Arctic ice cap. Literally.
One day after the winter solstice last week, a weather station 90 miles from the North Pole measured melting temperature. How do the pixies do it? There are no sticks there for them to rub together.
We’re all getting used to the idea that the new federal government is going to act as if global warming is nonexistent. I have a theory about that. My theory is that the Narcissist in Chief-elect can’t acknowledge any problem that he can’t personally fix.
So he can be all over foreign affairs so long as there are fixes for all problems that come up. He can raise tariffs here, drop bombs there, nuke this or that city that poses a difficulty, whatever he needs to do. Therefore, those sorts of problems are allowed to exist. Problems that can’t be bombed into oblivion can’t be admitted to exist, because they represent limits on the Bigly One’s scope of power.
Speaking of horribly bad news, many of my friends have hinted that they believe the coming year will resemble FDR’s first year in office, that what we are entering into is a kind of mirror image of that history. I am being reminded over and over again that FDR met a lot of resistance and wasn’t able to do everything he wanted to do. So, it’s all looking good for the resistance.
There’s a tiny little problem with that. The reflection in the mirror is not an equivalence. FDR was building programs. Trump will be destroying them. FDR needed architects and planners. Trump needs dynamite.
Some predictions for the New Year (Why not? In a year no one will remember anything I guess here anyway!)
I’m going to guess the price of avocados will hit $10 each by October, if you can buy them at all. The added price of guacamole will pay for the U.S.-Mexican border wall.
There will never be a Muslim registry. There will be something called, simply, The Registry. The Registry will include names and addresses of people, that’s all. You don’t need to know which people. You won’t be the one making the list or using it.
We will begin to see tax revolts. If the rich get tax cuts, everyone will want tax cuts. If services are cut, no one will want to pay for them. If cities can’t get housing funded, they will look at the federal taxes their citizens are paying and question the sanity of turning those funds over to a government bent on only building bombs with it.
There will be a revival of Expressionism, for a while, and then either non-representational art will resurge and drown out the screams and the darkness, or it will all be quietly removed and there will be nothing left but Elvises and Jesuses on velvet.
There will be lots of new jobs created by the new administration, in such lucrative areas as weapons building, law enforcement and the prison industries.
Pixies will be busier than ever.