"Disneyland on Alcohol: a Sober Journey Into the Hospitality-Industrial Complex."

Don't let City Hall see this, or they'll
be taking a junket to Sonoma for TIF opps.

This is a thoughtful article about the intersection of agriculture, tourism, law enforcement and gentrification. Meanwhile, "Disneyism" as a way of life has not ever made sense to me, even when completely smashed. As with religion, there's not enough alcohol on the planet to dupe me into believing the palpably untrue.

Disneyland on Alcohol: a Sober Journey Into the Hospitality-Industrial Complex, by Jonah Raskin (CounterPunch)

Lila Weinberger, the cofounder and co-owner of Readers’ Books, noted not long ago that, “If you offer wine and cheese at an event in Sonoma, people will be sure to come.” Indeed, it doesn’t take much. There was no cheese, but there was a bottle of Cabernet and another of Sauvignon Blanc at a recent launch at Readers’. By the end of the evening, the bottles were empty, the books sold and autographed by the author, Jeff Falconer, who told the audience, “Meditation is an internal energy massage.”

In Sonoma, wine is not only at Readers’, but also in bars, bistros, and supermarkets. It’s at bachelor, bachelorette and birthday parties, and at weddings that are often held at winery “event centers.” One can’t drive a mile in any direction from the plaza and not encounter Chardonnay and Pinot Noir vines squeezed closely together and cultivated to maximize the weight of the crush and the alcohol level.

From all over the world, tourists come for a taste of what’s called “Wine Country Living” that has been created by the “hospitality-industrial-complex” which includes spas, restaurants, vacation rental and tasting rooms.

Some observers call the complex, “The Juggernaut.” All-too-often, politicians are beholden to it, while public relations employees sing its praises. Sly as a fox and slippery as an eel, the Juggernaut employs thousands of people who work in fields, warehouses, hotels, kitchens, dining rooms and on assembly lines that turn out millions of bottles of red, white, rosé and sparkling wines that bear the name Sonoma and that are exported around the world. Sometimes the wine in the bottles is made from grapes grown in the Central Valley and South America, and sometimes executives in France and China call the shots.

Still, if the valley is known for one thing, it’s wine, and, while some rejoice at the renown, others complain about what they call “Disneyland on Alcohol.” On the whole, the industry fails to live up to the standards it promotes in advertising and publicity ...

Personal change, political change, and why the orangutan sleeps tonight.

When you've been in the principled position of political opposition for 35 years, having realized long ago that the problem isn't so much Republican or Democrat, but America's non-thinking, two-party dysfunction itself, then election results so disappointing to others are like water off a duck's back.

Floyd County hands its Democrats a purely epic, top-to-bottom beat down.

Here's an essay from a few years back. I like it because of this impeccable conclusion:

We can follow the example of those who remembered that the role of an activist is not to navigate systems of oppressive power with as much integrity as possible, but rather to confront and take down those systems.

Exactly.

Forget Shorter Showers; Why personal change does not equal political change, by Derrick Jensen (Orion)

WOULD ANY SANE PERSON think dumpster diving would have stopped Hitler, or that composting would have ended slavery or brought about the eight-hour workday, or that chopping wood and carrying water would have gotten people out of Tsarist prisons, or that dancing naked around a fire would have helped put in place the Voting Rights Act of 1957 or the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Then why now, with all the world at stake, do so many people retreat into these entirely personal “solutions”?

Part of the problem is that we’ve been victims of a campaign of systematic misdirection. Consumer culture and the capitalist mindset have taught us to substitute acts of personal consumption (or enlightenment) for organized political resistance.

Veggie by necessity?

Hilariously in this year of drought, there is as much an absence of American political "leadership" on topics like this one as there is rain. That's because patriotic American exceptionalism, rationalized by the purported deity's preference for robber baron capitalism, teaches us to scoff at the planet's needs.

Food shortages could force world into vegetarianism, warn scientists ... Water scarcity's effect on food production means radical steps will be needed to feed population expected to reach 9bn by 2050, by John Vidal (guardian.co.uk)

Leading water scientists have issued one of the sternest warnings yet about global food supplies, saying that the world's population may have to switch almost completely to a vegetarian diet over the next 40 years to avoid catastrophic shortages.

Humans derive about 20% of their protein from animal-based products now, but this may need to drop to just 5% to feed the extra 2 billion people expected to be alive by 2050, according to research by some of the world's leading water scientists.