Mark Steyn

Sums up some of the attitudes that are making me sad, twitchy, and borderline hopeless:

"Now get back to being peasants, peasants, and leave the electricity for your betters".

I admit it. I have a lurking fear that in a few years, there will be new Sumptuary Laws affecting how often ordinary folks can eat meat, drive, have children, turn on the heating or air conditioning, buy new clothes, and on, and on - that our freedom to be the owners of our own lives will be slowly drained away, in the name of Saving The Planet.

While our "betters" still get to have mansions and use all the electricity they want and travel to exotic places and tell the natives there living in poverty how much better off they are living in poverty.

I don't know. What's happening to my country? Some days I wonder if I will recognize it in a few years.

I suppose I could think of an underground movement - of a group of people devoted to still trying to have SOME comfort, driven to barter what skills and goods they have. I suppose in that kind of economy, I'd do pretty well, seeing as I know how to make bread from scratch (I can even make my own starter culture of wild yeast if I had to), and I can sew and knit and crochet and kind-of spin yarn. And I know what wild plants are edible and what ones are poisonous. And I can play music, if we were living high enough on Maslow's hierarchy for music to even matter.

And I theoretically know how to make yogurt (never have done it but know the basic process). And I can make quilts given the supplies. And I know how to make candles. And in theory, soap. (Soap would be one thing that would be very important to me in a post-apocalyptic world: If I can't wash, I don't want to live).

So I don't know. On the one hand, I realize intellectually that I'm doing the same stuff the Bush Fear people were doing a few years ago. On the other hand, I look at Cap and Trade and wonder and worry: how many old folks are going to die because they feel they can't afford to put the heat on in the winter? How many poor families will have to decide between feeding their kids and keeping the house cool in the summer (no, wait: they will probably both be eligible for relief programs, whereas I will not).

I don't know. Maybe I need to learn to make yogurt (and cheese) for real. And learn more useful skills. And get my CPR registration renewed. And just kind of be prepared.

I don't know. I need someone to kind of talk me down from this but I really do have this vision that in a few summers, I won't be able to afford to air condition my house, or I won't be able to afford food at the new cap-and-trade-prices, or that things are just going to go very bad.