Fear and Self-loathing

We faced a substantial, unexpected expense this week, related to our one vehicle, and it conjured up all manner of emotions, some based in reality, and some emanating from the deeper wells of my paranoia. I do not believe I am alone in such reactions, so I am sharing them here.

First, we are fortunate. We can absorb the cost of repairs and new tires with our savings. There are countless citizens who are not that advantaged, who would be charging it on a credit card, or forced to abandon personal transportation completely. Racking up debt seems to be as much of an American pastime as baseball and apple pie.

Every time we dip into savings, though, means less money for the future. It is snipping another thread in the safety net. Everything monetary seems extremely tenuous now, and that is where fear starts to creep in. I believe that anxiety is a legitimate concern. Everyone who is not a billionaire should behave cautiously.

The self-loathing comes from not having traditional employment, or at least some kind of reasonably dependable income. I abandoned that lifestyle well before the pandemic. I am simply dysfunctional in the average workplace. Subjecting others, and myself, to that is not in anyone’s best interests. I do thrive when I get to choose who I want to work with, but I am in a rural location now where that is almost impossible to do in person.

I am nearing retirement, I think, but the age at which you can claim full benefits from Social Security keeps going up. Neither political party seems to have a problem with this because the people we elect to public office are so wealthy they don’t need Social Security themselves. They also get a government pension, and their own premium healthcare package.

Personally, we have investments, even a “wealth manager,” but they certainly have bigger fish as clients. Obviously, everything tethered to the stock market is precarious now, thanks to tariffs and other destabilizing actions that our President and congress have been taking. Consequently, I don’t think of our financial state as “real,” let alone something we can count on over the next twenty or thirty years.

This is all a predicament I think many of us share, and it has enormous ramifications. One horrifically distressing aspect is that as perceived personal risk goes up, we are a lot less likely to make donations to nonprofits that, ironically, help people in even worse circumstances. There are also many environmental organizations and civil rights advocates that I would like to support with my dollars, but what if we have another personal emergency?

I begin to rage when I think about how government has defunded many of those agencies and non-governmental organizations doing positive work, and instead grossly inflated the budgets of the “War Department,” and I.C.E. Emphasis on “gross.” We should have the exact opposite scenario.

If money itself is not the problem, it is the weaponization of it that enables cruelty, and compounds existing misery. We have to make money irrelevant, somehow, to rob it of its power. We stand to lose control of it entirely should cryptocurrency become the new standard. Almost nobody understands blockchain, myself included, and crypto represents, essentially, the privatization of currency. Its value will be determined entirely by powerful individuals, and we will be at their mercy.

My greatest act of fiscal resistance has been to enroll in a credit union. I did that decades ago when I lived in another city, and I have been delighted by the results. Spreading assets across different types of financial institutions seems like a good strategy, at least for now.

Today, our car is safer now, with new brakes, and rides a little smoother thanks to new tires, but where will the proverbial road take us? The GPS navigation device/department of our governments seems to be malfunctioning, and we are being taken for a ride, instead of being in the driver’s seat and determining our own destination. Fasten your seatbelt.

Nacho Land

There is another thing that bothers me about the concepts of “home” and “sense of place”: Do we even have a right to claim any understanding of the landscape, let alone ownership of it? What qualifies as home when you have stolen the land? How do you, personally, and we, collectively, reconcile our participation in the damage done, or at least halt the continuing destruction and disrespect? First, we have to accept that we are part of colonialism, without shrinking and shaming. Somewhere between illicit pride and Christian Nationalism, and paralyzing regret over what our ancestors started, lies a path to humility and true progress.

IndigenousPeoplesResources.com

With all due respect to Woody Guthrie, this land is not your land. It belongs to Indigenous peoples who occupied the continent prior to European settlement (read “theft”).By this measure, none of us who are White can call the United States, Canada, Australia, South Africa, or any number of other countries “home.” We cannot say we have reverence for a “sense of place” in our nature writing when our residency has no legitimacy.

Before Independence, and even after it, for that matter, parts of the United States were settled by empires other than the British. The French and Spanish had significant territories, of course. The Dutch also had a presence. In the southern U.S. in particular, someone of British descent might be third in line for claims to ownership.

It should b evident by now that empire and colonialism have never benefited the land, its ecosystems, or even the vast majority of settlers themselves. Instead, those manifestos have punished and exterminated Indigenous peoples, enslaved others, and extracted natural resources, to advance the wealth and power of a select few.

Meanwhile, capitalism has gone hand-in-hand with colonialism, promoting the idea, in theory, that one can achieve private individual ownership of property, including land. Public ownership of land varies greatly from state to state. I grew up in Oregon, where federal lands account for 53% of all acreage. State ownership adds another three percent. I now live in Kansas, where 98% of land is in private hands. This does not necessarily translate to ownership by Kansas residents. Between 2015 and 2023, absentee ownership of Kansas agricultural lands increased by three percent. Kansans owned 71% in 2015, but only 68% in 2023.

Increasingly, foreign ownership of land in the U.S. is on the rise. This is especially true for mining companies in Canada. Absentee ownership in the industrial sector has frequently resulted in severe environmental damage, and often increases in chronic illness in surrounding communities.

In urban locations, private equity is now precluding home ownership by the average citizen. Private equity firms outbid other real estate entities with lucrative cash offers, buying houses in bulk, to be rented out. Again, these corporate enterprises are usually absentee owners, often with little interest in maintenance and upkeep of their widely-dispersed properties.

It is no coincidence that the people telling us that land has no value until humans build something on it, or pave it over, or plow it under, are the same people telling us that our country would be better off if we killed the homeless, eradicated the LGBTQ+ community, deported immigrants (undocumented or not, apparently), and celebrated White supremacy. They benefit from culture wars that distract us from solving real problems, allowing them to profit beyond their wildest dreams. We know better. Reparations look a lot like land back, and fair housing for all.

It is obvious, from science and spirituality, that the Earth owns us, not the other way around. It is interesting that so-called pagan religions have more of a grasp of this than their Christian counterparts. In order to effect lasting change, I would argue that we need to invite Indigenous people into our public and private institutions, then promote them into positions of leadership, authority, and power. When we have more Indigenous leaders in our collective spaces, we can begin to learn the ways of properly living on the land, and engaging fairly with all citizens.

Sources: Dehlinger, Katie Micik. 2023. “Minding Ag’s Business: Land Ownership and Foreign Investment Trends in Kansas,” Progressive Farmer.
Mayyasi, Alex. 2025. “Here’s what happens when private equity buys homes in your neighborhood,” Planet Money Newsletter (NPR).