Sunshine and Olly

by Jonathan Blaustein

I just pulled on a sweater to fight the chill.

Because it’s 26 degrees outside.

Cold, gray, with patches of snow on the ground, after the last few days of storms.

We’re ending our fifth month of Winter here in Taos, and if you’ve been reading Sunshine and Olly since its inception, you’ll know it’s a year-time that makes people batty and bitter.

Not only because we’re five months in; worse, there’s still a month to go.

If one skies or snowboards, it’s heaven.

(I used to, and back then, it was all good.)

Now, though, being cold for this long makes me ornery.

And being stuck inside gets me thinking.

---

After my morning smoothie, and a bit of marijuana, I got to musing about the state of the world in 2024.

(As one is wont to do in such situations.)

The Russia-China alliance is the biggest thorn in the side of The West these days.

And it only hardened once we began spending untold billions to defend Ukraine, which we absolutely had to do.

(Good bless those tough bastards.)

But Russia and China are uneasy bedfellows; two superpowers who share a long border, and equal global ambitions.

Those two get along about as well as the US and the USSR did, when we were allies in WWII.

Hard for the youngins’ to believe, but we were allies in war, and then on opposite sides of the Cold War, once the spoils were divided.

(It’s how the Soviet Union got Eastern Europe and split Germany.)

Meanwhile, we’ve been cozying up to a blatantly racist and potentially genocidal India, a hedge against China, which I also get.

We have to do it, in the world of realpolitik.

But isn’t the smarter play to try to divide Russia and China?

How do we go about doing that?

---

Better yet, let’s look at how America built allies the last time the world was this uncertain.

The ashes of WWII gave us The Marshall Plan, in which America helped rebuild Germany and Japan, committing both nations to peace for the past 80 years.

Only now, they’ll each have to build up militaries again, to counter Russia and China.

And speaking of Marshall Plans, given that the US can literally print money, and we have spent billions of subsidy dollars on bombs in Ukraine and Gaza…

…how about a Marshall Plan to end homelessness in the US?

A New-Deal-style project that just says, we’re going to do it.

We’ll spend what it takes.

Americans deserve better than to die on the street of fentanyl addictions.

Baking in stinky tents.

By the millions.

Or 20-somethings, for whom living in their cars or vans is just normal.

What if we collectively as a nation just said, “Come on, America! We’re better than this!”

We’re going to have to build a whole new bridge in Baltimore, at the fucking port from “The Wire,” so maybe it’s time we rebuild our national pride, left and right.

And find or build housing for everyone.

OK, I’m done.

See you Friday.