Black Knights

I met another Black Knight on the Hudson today, he works at SMUD.

He's 25 years older than me, having graduated USMA in 1967, but there were some stunning commonalities, and I say stunning as we both turned out wholly different than what might be expected from a graduate of a conservative military academy...he presented today a discussion on peak oil, something I have followed for years.

He's a supervisor over in SMUDs energy efficiency group, and particularly, in new technologies....funny, he is a vocal advocate for passive solar, a technology in use for the past five thousand years...but nonetheless, you'd expect most West Point graduates to wave the flag high high! for threefold national security spending, F-22's by the score, and to hell with the environment. The military has a proud history of fucking things up and they don't want that to change.

But it is changing! Get this -- as a Second Lieutenant in Camp Parks in 1997 I was verbally reprimanded for allowing my soldiers to dig a position around their MSE shelter...the area was considered environmentally sensitive. I didn't know, and most certainly I didn't give a shit. Things are quite different today, both for me and the military. Drip pans are installed under parked HMMWVs nowadays. Pretty soon, smog equipment will be required.

I am honored to know that there are other former military officers who have turned to the Dark Side, who see and acknowledge the obvious connection between our over consumptive lifestyles and national security interests. No one, no one in this fading Republic, realizes that Energy Independence Is National Security. The bulk of America is totally oblivious to any connection between energy and war and will continue to remain ignorant for a very, very long time. So long as the MRAP factory employs any of any town's residents that town will be complicit for war. They fail to make the most basic of connections.

But this is to be expected in my America.