mea culpa

I'm no longer watching those "China watch" YouTube news channels I mentioned in prior posts and I've unlinked them. Don't get me wrong, I steadfastly think China is the biggest threat to the U.S. and believe they consider themselves already at total war with us (in all ways but military because they know they currently couldn't win), and are using all means necessary to remove the U.S. from its position of global dominance in the coming decades and take that place themselves. 

China is not a friend. It is no partner. Friends and cooperative partners don't say the things that China has said to any country that challenged them since the pandemic began (threats, warnings, bluster). The Chinese Communist Party is a mix of organized crime and a terrorist organization and diplomatically somewhere between a hostile competitor and outright enemy and should not be engaged without metaphorical blades close at hand. Taiwan's literal motto towards China is "we sleep with our swords next to our pillows". Taiwan's advantage is we know China is the enemy and that they want to make us the next Hong Kong.

The reason I'm disavowing the China watch news sites is that during the U.S. election and afterwards, it turns out they are shamelessly pro-Trump and willing to use their news platforms to disseminate misinformation about voter fraud and that Trump won. That makes them no longer news, but right-wing, pro-Trump propaganda and not much different from Fox News or the CCP propaganda machine. They came down on one side of an opinion and stamped themselves as biased and no longer reliable as news sources.

The irony is that growing anti-China sentiment in the U.S. is bilateral with both Democrats and Republicans realizing the China threat is real, present and active, and that their infiltration efforts have been going on since the 90s after the west rolled over and played dead after the Tiananmen Square Massacre. Australia and Europe are also just coming to this realization based on evidence and experience. By siding with Trump, these formerly-considered "news channels" are shooting themselves in the foot, becoming deluded conspiracy theory channels with limited credibility. If they can't report the facts as they are about the election and keep insisting on idiotic fringe rantings, then what should I believe about their reporting on China? It's about character and credibility, and they lost it. Is their reportage on China also idiotic fringe rantings that I accepted because it was what I wanted to hear, but not actual reality?

Further irony is that Trump is a much greater immediate danger to U.S. values and democracy (the China threat is further down the road). By supporting Trump (thinking his hardline stance against China furthers their own reasonable, supported-by-evidence message that the CCP is evil), they're in effect supporting undermining U.S. values and democracy, which is exactly what China would love! And it's probably no coincidence that I've noticed Trump's tactics and actions to have been very similar to what the CCP uses. Trump seems to take a hard line against China, but in reality he exhibits behavior that mirrors them, despotic and authoritarian, intolerant of dissent or disagreement, eliminating perceived enemies (including former "friends" he previously showered with effusive praise) with just an order. Xi Jinping made it possible for him to be leader for life, Trump has hinted his administration going beyond second or even third terms. His propaganda tactics of lying and continue lying until people believe those lies is chapter one in the CCP playbook (possibly taken from Stalin or Hitler).

To be clear and undeluded, I don't think a single person latched onto those YouTube channels because I shared them. I don't think a single person who didn't already know about the insidious nature of the CCP learned something new or became concerned. That's a good thing since it means I didn't spread pro-Trump, basically anti-American channels in that they're trying to subvert democracy. It also means I won't be getting China news to fan the flame against the CCP, but that just means I'm becoming more the average American. The average American would do themselves well by paying attention to any news that makes it to the mainstream about China and the CCP. It's something about which Americans should stay informed. Heck, the average American already missed the boat with ManBearPig climate change more than 20 years ago.

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A year ago I expected hot water. Last winter I demanded hot water. I can't recall ever living in a place that didn't have hot water. I'm a product of the first world and hot water is a hooman and hoowoman right!

I did start to have troubles with hot water last winter and given the above statement, it was perfectly reasonable to run the tap until I got hot water. I demanded hot water. Until last winter, hot water was completely reliable and I'd get it after running the water for just a bit. 

Last winter, for the first time ever there were more than a handful of instances when hot water wasn't forthcoming. It was a new experience, it was perplexing, and my solution was to run the tap until hot water came through, which it always eventually did. Sometimes it took 10 minutes, sometimes 20, once it took nearly an hour that I was wasting perfectly good fresh water down the drain waiting for hot water to come through! There was frustration and anxiety involved, and since I shower closer to lights out than not, it disrupted when I went to sleep. Even though it happened only a few times, every day there was doubt whether I'd get hot water reliably soon or I'd have to run the water for extended periods while going back to my computer and futz around, checking the water status every 5 or 10 minutes. 

As summer faded this year and temperatures started cooling, I just had a feeling remembering last winter, a premonition perhaps, that there would be no hot water when I asked the tap for it. Maybe not a premonition but just the product of my negative mind and pessimism. Whatever, the fact is that my fears have come to pass and I have no hot water. However, I was able to brace for it and change my attitude and assume and accept that I no longer have hot water. 

Going into winter, cold showers are now the expected norm. Granted, Taipei is subtropical and winters are on par with San Francisco, but even in SF I took hot showers in the winter (and summer). It's not like snow-bearing regions like New Jersey, Ohio, Seoul or Tokyo where I suppose cold showers in the winter would range in the realm of howling holy shit 'unbearable'. 

Currently I think of showers as "jump in the river" experiences. You jump in the river and it's shockingly cold, but then you just have to deal with it and endure it. Every night. Or I can recall and emulate the legendary Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi who supposedly stood under freezing cold waterfalls to steel his discipline. Probably not every night. 

Or I can visualize plunging into cold, ocean surf.

Another way of looking at it is from a mindfulness practice perspective. Living life we habituate ourselves for most part to gravitate towards comfort and avoid unpleasantness as much as we can. Yet according to the Tibetan Book of the Dead that attitude may help keep people in the cycle of death and rebirth. In particular during the second death bardo, the bardo of "reality", it is said we are faced with bright, bedazzling, blinding apparitions of colored lights so intense as to be fairly characterized as terrifying, but if we recognize them as the nature of our own minds, that can lead to enlightenment (whatever that means). However if we fear the lights and flee from them (downwards) towards comforting dull lights, we are running towards another rebirth in this world of suffering where we have to go through birth, disease, old age and death anew. The dull lights represent various levels of lives we can live, according to our karma. Going for the comforting dull lights is the natural, habitual tendency of the vast majority who have not been introduced to or trained in the bardo death practices.

I find that certainly applicable. My entire life now is all about maintaining a dull comfort and an uneasy, ultimately untenable, stability. The day-to-day conveyor belt is about comfort. Staying close to my bathroom because of gastro issues is about comfort. Recovering from whatever minor disruptions to my daily routine is just about comfort. This is all fine as I consider my life already over. There's nothing I need to do in life, nothing I want to do, so this is my personal version of palliative care as I wait to die. 

No hot water and cold water showers is not in my control. Apparently I'm the only one affected as no one else has called the landlord to complain about it. Unless . . . they're all like me? If they're all like me, who am I to complain? But as long as it's not in my control and is not a wrist-slicing disturbance, apply it as practice. Cold water showers is looking at and facing the blinding bright colored lights and not wanting hot water, which is the dull comforting lights leading back to rebirth. 

On the other hand, it might get old real fast as temperatures continue to decline. And I have to be honest with myself, cold water showers in cold weather suck. However I choose to cope with them, they're annoying, frustrating and remind me of the big joke that is my life (Really? The Universe can't send me cancer or liver failure and instead turns off my hot water? The Universe is #worstlandlordever). 

It's still unknown whether this will be a moderate winter or particularly cold; either which is possible. If the unpleasantness ranges into first world unbearableness, I might have to resort to setting up my space heater to point into the bathroom during showers. I don't know if that'll work, but at least the air will be warmed after shivering under the cold water is over.