Last night I fiddled around with things and got 10 things prepared to put on Ebay but in the end, didn't do it. I did some shakuhachi practice so that's good.
It was really foggy overnight and I woke up at about 1:45. I checked the weather right away and thought I might have a window of time to make an H Mart run, but then it started raining and has stayed wet.
I also "played with my food" by which is meant I portioned out some beef (1/2 lb, two servings) and put it in the freezer, and "flensed" a bunch of salmon skin trimmings I buy cheap at H Mart. It's not only cheaper, but some of the tastiest meat on a salmon, and it's just a matter of cutting the long pieces into smaller pieces then filet'ing the meat away from the skin. That made 5 servings out of about a pound and a half of trimmings so it was about 4 oz. of trimmings I put outside for the birds.
On the radio they were doing a piece on the "Russian Imperial Movement" and its links to white-supremacist groups all over the world and in the US. They interviewed an American Nazi 2.0 guy and the guy was almost likeable. He understood global warming, and the problems of capitalism. He wanted to see US presidents from Bush to Obama, I believe even Trump, "put before a tribunal".
As always, the guy's big bugaboo is "The Jews". These guys get so close, and yet are so far... To these guys, "The Jews" are a sort of timeless, ageless creature; there are no poor Jews, etc.
I guess I can say the guy was almost likeable because his line of thinking is a better-articulated version of my thoughts when I came over to the mainland from Hawaii in 1986. I wanted a tribe. I wanted a family like one reads about in books (now I reflect how many of those books were written by Jews) where people care about other family members. I wanted the kind of folk-feeling I grew up seeing among the many Asians in Hawaii. I thought if I moved to the mainland, I'd be closer to family members and I'd find an organization to join.
Where I was living during my last few years in Hawaii, was a room in a house on a lot with two houses. The one in front was lived in by a white guy, who I guess owned the thing, and who was a John Bircher. I tried talking with him, and he emphasized that the Birchers were vehemently non-racist. Their big bug was Communism, and as Communism didn't sound too bad to me, it seemed that I'd not be barking up the Birch tree. The guy seemed to hold me in some veiled contempt because in my early 20s I wasn't already a home-owner like him.
But on the mainland, Huntington Beach, considered a skinhead town, was just up the street. So I did some sniffing around and it seemed that not only were they scarce, but that they were unorganized and 99% interested in fighting other skinheads who happened to wear a different color of boots than they did. I thought a proper skinhead organization ought to be out helping little old ladies cross the street and improving parks and such civil-service type things.
But enough about my boring experiences. The thing is, the difference that some almost "smell" about Jews or Asians, is the underlying cultural assumptions. Asian and to a great extent Jewish culture, thinks about things in the long-term. The family is not just a group of individuals who happen to live together but part of a long chain that you're a momentary part of. Your fortune, or lack thereof, are the fortune or lack thereof of your whole family, extending not only side-to-side over however many members but also extending far into the past, and into the future.
Western culture is all about the short-term. Family means next to nothing. In Western culture, if you're a millionaire and your sibling, child, or parent is homeless, it's perfectly OK, even admirable, to do nothing to help them. Western culture is always waiting for Doomsday, or the Apocalypse, or the Rapture. Why think for the future? Live it up! There's that family saying: Raised by wolves. This is esteemed in Western culture. Wolves have no history.
In Buddhism we talk about kalpas, a kalpa being roughly the time it takes for an entire universe to be born, live, and die. Hinduism deals in extremely long times also, and ages. I believe the present age is called by them Kali Yuga, an age of violence and strife. I'm not too informed on Daoism but I believe it also deals with vast times.
But in Western culture, with Doomsday coming any time now and some groups even desirous to bring it on faster, why think about the future? And if it's each individual's responsibility to get into Heaven or not on their own, why care about each other? If they're a sinner, you'll be helping a sinner and if they're fated to go to Heaven, they're going there anyway no matter what you do. Predestination, individualism, and social Darwinism which wraps these idiotic beliefs in a wrapper of being "scientific", these are deep, unquestioned beliefs in the West.
So you live in a small town and you're on your own, working whatever job you can get, friends aren't helping you, family's not helping you, and a Jewish immigrant comes to town. He works scut jobs too but he saves his money. Presently he buys a small business, maybe it's just the trash-collection route, anything. Other family come along and instead of the guy kicking his kids out to sink or swim in their teens he actually helps them get educated, learn the ways of business, and by working together they come up with the seed money to buy, say, a hardware store. More years pass and now they own the town's department store. To your average Western-culture person, this is something akin to witchcraft.
So they come up with theories about Jews having different genes or being on cahoots with the Devil, or whatever sounds good. And there's nothing secret about their "powers". Anyone can start thinking long-term and working together and thinking about not just themselves but their kids, grand-kids, etc.
Asians don't really have a place in Christian mythology like Jews do, so the West's excuses for why they do better is that they can get by on less, work harder, etc. As someone who's worked and out-worked quite a few of them, it's not that. It's that Asian parents will bust their asses to get their kids educated and set up in life. And rather than it being something to laugh over, Asians will not let a family member be out on the street, homeless.
And both of these groups that scare those of Western thought so much, place great value on the simple concept of saving some of the money they earn. While Western culture seems to greatly discourage saving money or planning for a "rainy day" or for an opportunity.
I'd have been a natural saver, as I was into finding and collecting seashells and loved organizing things. But it was drilled into me, over and over, that any money obtained must be spent right away. Actually saving money is odd in Western culture and saving money as a kid would have been considered truly bizarre. That I was able to save $10, carefully collecting pennies I found in the street, a quarter for an odd job, etc. in an old cigar box for my first BB gun was an example of how weird a kid I was. And it would not have been possible even a year or two later, as we were falling out of the middle class rapidly and any money saved, even a dollar, if not spent right away would be taken by siblings, parents, or one of the various "hippie" hangers-on Mom started allowing into our house.
Eventually I drifted out of shell collecting because if I'd collected many, even they would have been stolen and sold if I didn't get out and hustle and sell them myself. Save nothing! Think only of Now!
And so, living "paycheck to paycheck" is the Western way of life, a precarious way of life where everyone's one step from homelessness, a situation you can expect no help escaping.
Meanwhile, your typical Asian or Jewish household is going to have some savings. And if you can save some of your money, suddenly a lot of fear goes away. But Western culture, as fond of war as it is, needs a large majority of people to be scared and thus prone to listening to demagogues.
So this skinhead fellow ... if someone were only able to explain to him what he really hates, and hates because he fears, and fears because he envies. That's the root of it right there - envy. Anyone living the dog-eat-dog Western way would envy someone who has a family and a community that gives a damn about him.
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