Let me apologize for the crude language.

People are chanting it at ball games. People are putting up banners that say it:

     "Fuck Joe Biden. Fuck Joe Biden. Fuck Joe Biden." 

We have all heard and read the word, but it is still a little shocking and offensive to see it used so casually in public. 

The shock and offense are features. The words aren't meant literally, of course. The words are body-language as physical as the raised middle finger, a means to show open contempt. It proves a point that people can get away with insulting Biden. 

Harsh political language is as old as the presidency. Democrats joyfully mocked Trump and still do. He is the "orange man" with a bad combover. People displayed a giant balloon caricature of infantile Trump and an ugly one of naked, fat, doughy Trump, with small genitals. It was as harsh and disrespectful as people could make it.

The "Fuck Joe Biden" chant is nothing new.

The mocking did not hurt Trump. If anything, it helped him. Trump is a pugilist and provocateur. That is his brand. Trump dished it out and Trump got some back. He belittles opponents. He called Elizabeth Warren Pocahontas, Joe Biden sleepy, Jeb Bush low energy, Ted Cruz a liar, and now he is calling Mitch McConnell a weak RINO. Trump does it openly, joyfully. That behavior sent an unsaid message that nothing could stop Trump from exercising his will, including the norms and expectations surrounding "presidential" behavior. Trump's insults communicate Trump First, which makes him credible when he says America First. He signals status and hierarchy. A tiny example: He did not apologize for rudely shoving ahead of Montenegro's head of state because, after all, Trump represents the USA and Montenegro is small. The Montenegro leader did not shove back. After all, Trump is number one.

Biden's brand is different. Biden intended to return to pre-Trump normalcy. Biden has old-school dignity, which is consistent with his effort to lower the temperature of rhetoric and to be "above the fray," i.e. "presidential." Biden wants Americans to work together. Let's all get vaccinated. Let's all wear masks. Let's all do a bi-partisan infrastructure package. 

When people fail to cooperate, Biden loses. He needs other political players to get along, but it is to their advantage not to get along. Biden is the substitute teacher who cannot get control of an unruly class, someone proven to be too weak for the job. 

That is the context for the "Fuck Joe Biden" chants now taking place at football games and NASCAR races. The meme is proliferating. I have begun seeing bumper strips reading "Fuck Biden." A house near my farm just put up this large sign next to a Trump 2024 sign. 

This is bad for Biden. A person who is bullied but attempts to look "above it all" looks like he is backing away from a fight. It happened to Dukakis when mocked for the tank ride and for Kerry when he was "swift boated." Voters want a Commander in Chief, i.e. someone who hits back when hit.

But every action has a counter-reaction, and possibly there is a silver lining amid the gloom for Biden. He looks bad but possibly Trump and his supporters look worse. Whether they be Proud Boys, Capitol rioters, or people putting up signs like this in residential neighborhoods, Trump and his movement look out of control. Trump keeps saying extreme things that seem less and less plausible about the election, he bad-mouths Republicans who have friends and supporters in their states,  and his supporters keep cheering him on whatever he says.

The choice voters will face in 2022 and 2024 is one between weak versus nasty. If Democrats can make the case that the nastiness is all part of a movement aimed at fellow Americans--like this middle finger--then Democrats may survive. They should not count on it, though. Trump's political success shows that Americans crave a strong leader and are not fussy about how he exercises that strength. 

It's a worry.

Finally! A reason to be vaccinated

"Yes, COVID-19 can cause erectile disfunction."

       Headline in a report by the Cleveland Clinic

 

Getting America vaccinated is slow going. Many Americans say "no thanks" and some people dig in and say "no way."

Cleveland Clinic's illustration

Even death by suffocation isn't a sufficient motivator for some. 

Policy-makers search for ways to increase America's vaccination rate. Data on the unvaccinated in ICUs and patients on ventilators isn't enough to change minds. Lottery tickets don't do it. TV ads don't persuade. Employers issue vaccination mandates, which cause resentment and resignations. Government vaccination mandates cause backlash and accusations of government over-reach. Some people, especially young and healthy men, feel immune.

Some vaccination-supporters try scolding and shaming. Michael Trigoboff, who sometimes comments here, suggested trying peer-to-peer messaging:

Angry denunciations by urban liberals of rural people for prioritizing individual freedom over getting the vaccine are clearly not helping. Why not widely publicize statements by unvaccinated rural people who ended up in the ICU with COVID and who now wish they had gotten the vaccine? At this point, many rural people despise urban liberals (who, by the way, massively return the favor), and will not listen to them, or possibly even do the opposite just to annoy them. But there is a good chance rural folks would listen to their own.

"Malcolm," who also sometimes comments on this blog, suggested:

Spread the word that COVID survivors are like six times as likely as those of us who’ve had our shots to become impotent. As we speak, they are trying to figure out if this soft dick syndrome lasts 6-12 months, or the rest of their fearful lives. I’m of the belief that most “real men” care more about getting floppy dicks than they do about their alleged concern about communism, socialism, liberty or freedom. “Hiya, Floppy? Still looking for a new girlfriend?” 

BTW, I’ve confirmed this issue at several (legitimate) medical sites.

Maybe Malcolm is onto something. This blog has noted that some anti-vaccine messaging is about macho courage in the face of COVID. Vaccine refusers are too tough to care about COVID. Old guys men lying in hospital beds on ventilators are an image of "the other guy," someone weak. Denial is easy, maybe inevitable. But a young man knows his penis has a will of its own. No one wants to be that guy in the Cleveland Clinic photo.

Is COVID-caused impotence a real thing? There is data suggesting it is, and from credible sources. The Cleveland Clinic reports that "blood supply to the penis can become blocked or narrowed as a result of a new or worsened vascular condition caused by the virus."

WebMD reported it this way:

Researchers armed with an electron microscope found coronavirus particles in penile tissue samples taken from two former COVID-19 patients who became impotent following their infection, which had occurred six and eight months earlier. . ..

"We found that the virus affects the blood vessels that
supply the penis, causing erectile dysfunction," said senior researcher Dr. Ranjith Ramasamy, director of the reproductive urology program at the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine. "The blood vessels themselves malfunction and are not able to provide enough blood to enter the penis for an erection."

Forbes headline

Information on COVID-related erectile disfunction is drifting out from academic and hospital journals into the general media. 

It is an idea that could move the messaging needle, but there is a problem with it: The occurrence is apparently uncommon. If men who got COVID immediately began complaining that they had ED, we would know it. COVID-linked impotence has the problem that plagues the entire COVID messaging universe: Most people survive COVID. Tens of millions of people caught COVID, then lived to tell acquaintances that they got over it with no apparent lingering effects, including their erections. That fuels the notion that COVID-mitigation efforts are overdone. What's the worry?

In the opposite direction is the fact that the USA has 320 million people, and even a low incidence of hospitalization and death--less than 1%--when dealing with the full age-range of people who contract COVID, still means 700,000 deaths and counting. The incidence of dying in an armed robbery or kidnapping are far less than one percent, and yet people fear it, spend money to defend against it, and lock their doors. We protect against remote misfortunes. For the elderly, the overweight, the ill, and the immune compromised, the risk is not remote. It is the equivalent of living in a very bad neighborhood.

Currently, young men don't think they live in one. If data begin to show their erections are at risk of being stolen, they will know the neighborhood changed.

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Vaccine resistance in Trump country

     "You are just going to have to ask God and pray for wisdom. You can't trust the politicians. You can't trust the doctors, you certainly can't trust the CDC or any World Health Organization." 

    Josephine County Commissioner Darin Fowler, as quoted by Grants Pass' The Daily Courier

From The Oregonian 

Josephine County is Trump country. The county supported Trump 31,800 to 18,500. This week only 57.4% of Josephine County adults are vaccinated for COVID, well behind the statewide average. The Daily Courier, one of the sources for the quotations in this post, did an on-line survey of its readers regarding vaccine mandates. It was cited by the commissioners as justification for opposing vaccination mandates for employees involved in health care. The poll showed 75% of respondents opposed these mandates.

The Josephine County commissioners have lobbied aggressively in opposition to the national and state requirements regarding vaccination and masking. They wrote a letter to Oregon Governor Kate Brown saying, "Your vaccine mandate is extremely unpopular for a reason." They said the mandate would cause "dramatic harm" because many employees will quit their jobs rather than be vaccinated. Commissioner DeYoung said, "We plan on keeping our employees." Because the county jail has a health care clinic and because the county juvenile detention center provides education, almost one third of county employees would be subject to the vaccination mandate.

"People in America still have freedom to choose, Commissioner Fowler said. "I am shocked that people are willing to give that up for the good of society. That sounds very communistic, very socialistic."

Fowler said that "All the status [sic] about whether a person vaccinated died or one that was unvaccinated died, these are all just statistics. Remember the old saying that liars use statistics and statistics are for liars, or something like that." .

Local hospitals' ICU units have been overwhelmed with COVID cases, coming almost exclusively from the non-vaccinated segment of the residents of the two-county region that includes my home in Medford. The Jackson County commissioners have joined Josephine County in letters of protest to Governor Brown. Jackson County commissioner Colleen Roberts expressed doubts that deaths attributed to COVID are really from COVID. Victims were old, overweight, or ill from something else, and their deaths should be attributed to the co-morbidities, not to COVID, she said.

My farm is in "farm county," i.e. a rural part of the Jackson-Josephine County region. My conversations with people here--done outdoors and at a distance of a few feet--make unsurprising these comments by the commissioners. Their words reflect the point of view of a significant segment of the population. I know from experience that County Commissioners hear the public mood directly. Commissioners consider policy and then implement that policy, so they are exposed as the decision-maker. The buck really does stop there. 

The people who are most adamant and outspoken about a policy are people in opposition to something. Those discontented people tend to have strong, clear opinions. The people who are generally content lack that intensity. It would misread rural people to think they are  selfish and inconsiderate. They are as likely to "love thy neighbor" as people in town. Readers should not take Commissioner Fowler's indignation at being required to do something for the "good of society" as indication that the people who think like him litter, steal library books, cheat on their taxes, or otherwise act any worse to neighbors than does anyone else. The issue got defined by political leadership and conservative media as a matter of freedom, not as patriotism at a time of war. Trump early-on decided to downplay COVID, hope it faded away, and carry on. It was a guess and he guessed incorrectly. Trump's messaging set the tone. 

The American public's response to COVID is a vivid example of the power of leadership in defining an issue. Democrats are understood to be tyrants, pushing a burdensome solution to a minor problem. This fits the observation and experience of many Americans. The 700,000 deaths in a country of 320 million people means just one death in 460 people, with those deaths concentrated among people who were elderly and sick. Their deaths are not a surprise.

Some of my readers will consider the comments by commissioners to be astonishingly ignorant and irresponsible. I agree. I am embarrassed for them, and disappointed in them, but I understand their political environment. They aren't apologizing. They are in a large body of people less worried about COVID than about government overreach. They are not out of sync with the loudest and most persistent voices in their communities, and very possibly a majority of the voters.     

Message judo

 Down is up. No is yes. 

Trump is a master at switching the polarity of political messages.  It works, and it is happening right before our eyes.

This is message judo.

Earlier this week political pundits noticed what Michael Pence had done. How dare Democrats insult Republicans!  His actual words, spoken on Hannity's show on Fox were this:

I know the media wants to distract from the Biden administration's failed agenda by focusing on one day in January. They want to use that one day to try and demean the -- the character and intentions of 74 million Americans who believe we could be strong again and prosperous again and supported our administration in 2016 and 2020."

Pence took the energy of an opponent's condemnation of Trump's plan of insurrection and replaced Trump with the media and Biden as the new target.  This was done in dead seriousness, but its boldness and audacity have a comedic predecessor in the 1970s movie Animal House. It was the "Otter" gambit, named after the character who used it in the college dean's disciplinary hearing.

Otter:  Ladies and gentlemen, I'll be brief. The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules, or took a few liberties with our female party guests. We did. But you can't hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few twisted individuals. For if you do, then should we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn't this  indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg--isn't this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we are not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America!  

And with that, the fraternity members parade out of the hearing humming the Star Spangled Banner.

In the movie the ploy did not work. Who would fall for that? In real life in America, it works pretty well. Polls show a majority of Republican voters fall for it when Trump does it. The Fox News network employs the technique nearly every hour. Fox says that when Democrats talk about racial justice or income inequality they are badmouthing the United States of America and the opinion host is outraged about it. 

Trump is in the news again, doing the judo substitution trick himself. Trump said that Mike Pence' statement "during his interview with the great Sean Hannity very much destroys and discredits the "Unselect Committee[']s Witch Hunt on the events of January 6th." In a statement from Trump's Save America website, he wrote: 

The Unselect Committee of partisan Democrats, and two very weak and pathetic RNOs, should come to the conclusion after spending many millions of dollars, that the real insurrection happened on November 3rd, the Presidential Election, not on January 6th--which was a day of protesting the Fake Election results.

The power of message judo is that it does not deny the opponent's argument that something big happened and that Americans should be angry about it. It accepts that thrust, and redirects it. The video of battles at the Capitol creates a high hurdle for convincing people nothing happened. People can see something big did happen. Trump said it was a big protest in response to a big event, "the crime of the century." 

Trump's substitution will not satisfy everybody and likely not even a majority of Americans. But it will satisfy a majority of Republicans and Republicans are at the knife-edge of having a governing majority in the Congress, and in 2024 the Presidency. The judo gives Republican partisans a mental fig leaf, a basis for feeling comfortable in their understanding of Trump's effort to overthrow the election. Yes January 6 was violent and ugly, but Trump and good old-fashioned Americans are the good guys righting a wrong. The real insurrection was the election.

Trump runs a risk of looking mono-maniacal, the Captain Ahab of politics. He keeps saying it; the Arizona audit did not discourage him. A lot of Republicans wish he would keep quiet and go away, but he has a crazy insistence. If a few more Republican officeholders spoke out and told Trump to "cut it out, you lost, so quit claiming you won." Then the Trump spell on the Republican electorate might be broken. So far, though, nearly all Republican officeholders are keeping mum. Trump demands it; otherwise, one is a RINO. Republican voters believe Trump, or at least they think he is maybe right or partly right, and that, certainly, there are questions raised. Besides, Democrats are terrible. Who cares about process when the alternative is a Democrat? Republican voters don't need to pretend they didn't see January 6. Now they get to interpret what they saw as rough justice being done. The people scaling the walls are the good guys.

 

Good bye, Facebook.

Theoretically Facebook gets us out of our bubble.

 
In reality, Facebook reaffirms our bubble.

Facebook is like alcohol. Addictive. Subject to abuse. Dangerous for some people and a threat to public safety.

Facebook "Cover" image

I enjoy seeing bits and pieces of the lives of people I went to Roosevelt Elementary school with. I see photographs of my nieces and nephews that I probably wouldn't see, were it were not for Facebook. I like this part of Facebook.

 American politics would be more healthy if people got outside their bubble more often. I see people blinded by their silos. (I realize some people will think the same of me.) I get this feeling most acutely when I get another email sent in broad distribution by someone from the conspiratorial right wing. The emails tell me that vaccines are a plot to poison Americans, that Democrats plan to go door to door confiscating Bibles, and that Trump won in a huge landslide. That last one particularly frustrates me and makes me want to hit reply-all to the chain letter. I want to write: Hey, idiots, Trump got a lot of votes, but Biden got more of them. Trump is a provocateur. Can't you see he has opponents?

Very possibly not, if one is in a bubble. As this blog noted a week ago, in some neighborhoods the vote was over 75% for Trump, and amid some subsets of people, say White, male, non-college Evangelicals, the number might be 95% or more. 

There are Democratic bubbles, too. During the 2020 primary election season Facebook groups of Bernie Sanders' supporters were so confident Sanders would win, notwithstanding polls showing him tied with Buttigieg, that group members thought fraud can be the only explanation for Sanders failing to win in a landslide. Moreover, Buttigieg must have conspired with Hillary Clinton to arrange that the software tabulating the Iowa caucus vote be designed to fail. That conspiracy faded away. Leadership mattered. Sanders did not join in support of the conspiracy.

Sometimes a comment in one of the political blogs I read has a useful observation. Here is an anonymous one in Matthew Yglasias' SlowBoring:

Because of the way we're all segregated, a lot of left people I known genuinely don't believe anyone could be disagreeing with them in good faith – there must be some nefarious underlying reason. So they think 'well if everyone agrees with me, how can we be losing elections?' Mobilization – 'we're just not enthusiastic enough' – is a way less threatening answer than 'actually people don't agree with me.' It's similar to how my grandmother didn't believe in atheists. People might SAY they don't believe in God to be rebellious, or contrarian, or evil, but the idea that the belief was sincerely held seemed literally incomprehensible to her.

As we are learning, Facebook is designed to drive engagement. It seeks cheering or outrage, and in both cases it confirms and hardens a Facebook visitor's opinions. If I saw something I liked on Facebook, I clicked thumbs up or down. Sometimes I commented. I become the advertiser's dream customer: Facebook knows where I am and what I am reading, and what I like. Facebook knows a lot about me. I told them. 

 I don't mind having one of my silos be of people born about 1949 who grew up in Medford, Oregon. I do recognize the danger of a feed that hardens the walls of a political silo.

Why did I get Bernie Sanders Facebook chatter if I disagree with some of it? Because I intentionally sought it out, becoming a member of various Sanders' groups. But my frustration with some of what I read was a valuable to Facebook as if I had loved it. I was engaged, and clicking thumbs up and down hardened my opinions.  

I put all this in the past tense. I have largely abandoned political Facebook. I decided it was dangerous to my mental health. I will try scrubbing my Facebook page of everything except family, friends, and old classmates. I won't be clicking thumbs.

Shutkin

A college classmate, John Shutkin, wrote me saying he was deleting Facebook altogether, and I have heard that more and more people are doing it. Possibly this will become widespread. John dashed off this:

My reasons are pretty succinct and maybe more visceral than logical. I have always been ambivalent about FB: it is insidious and avaricious, Zuck is an asshole, it is a great time sucker and, oh yeah, if it doesn't actively encourage and spread misinformation, then, at the least, it does little to quash it, lest it somehow cut into its massive profits. So the whistleblower on Sunday was simply the straw that broke this particular camel's back. And, even there, once I finally found and navigated FB's deletion procedure, it had me confirm that decision twice and then told me via an email that I had 30 days to change my mind and only then would it begin to delete my info. It is relentless!"

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Whitewashing an attempted coup d'état

"Other than that one incident, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?"

The imagined question of Abraham Lincoln's wife is a classic cliche/joke intended to make a simple point. Some incidents define an event, and it is ridiculous to try to change the focus away from it. 

This blog received a comment two days ago that is increasingly becoming part of the Trump-oriented GOP's message. It redefines the January 6 attack on the Capitol. A commenter who uses the name "Low Dudgeon" wrote:

The “coup” story took off with the abject lie that was the murder of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick via a fire extinguisher—he died of natural causes—and has steadily diminished ever since.

A group of Trump louts committed trespass and criminal mischief in a shocking and reprehensible location….and to date that’s the full extent of the connected criminal convictions. It’s a soufflé.

What’s most amusing about the conceit that Republicans have gone crazy Right is that in 2021 the elder statesman and lead negotiator for the Democrats is ersatz communist loon Bernie Sanders.

Unless something odd occurs in the next several months, Democrats will soon lose 40 seats in the House and likely Senate control as well. Most Americans are not ingrates nor moralizing pharisees.

The comment calls the Capital insurrection "mischief" and says what was "reprehensible" was the location, not its broader purpose of intimidating members of Congress and the Vice President into overturning the presidential election. The comment includes the justification for minimizing a coup d'état: The media is untrustworthy and we didn't really see violence there; that the alternative to Trump is socialist Bernie Sanders so extraordinary efforts are reasonable; that the left moralizes irritating and offensive woke ideas; and that Democrats are unpopular and going to be voted out anyway. Biden's unpopularity means that Trump staying in office, however done, is a reflection of the public will, not an attack on democracy. 

Michael Pence made the same points on Fox last night. He said the media is untrustworthy and Biden is a socialist. The January 6 incident was unfortunate, but he is looking forward, and not fixated on the reality that Trump demanded that he discard electoral votes for Biden. Ignore that. In 2022, Pence said, the GOP will retake the House and Senate and in 2024 "we will take our country back."  January 6 was an isolated incident and Democrats are being offensive. Pence said, 

They want to use that one day to try and demean the character and intentions of 74 million Americans who believed we could be strong again and prosperous again and supported our administration in 2016 and 2020.

It does not take extraordinary investigative reporting nor the revelation of some "smoking gun" on secret tape recordings to describe Trump's efforts as an attempt to reverse an election to stay in power. Trump claims it, proudly. He predicted it before the election. He did it on election night. He publicly urged legislatures and governors to do it in the weeks after the election. He begged his Justice Department to do it. He publicly urged the Supreme Court to do it because they owed him for appointing them. He does it in rallies currently. The simple reality is that the January 6 was not an isolated incident nor an aberration, nor Halloween "mischief." It was citizens doing what Trump urged them to do, to go to the Capitol and "be strong" and to persuade Republican officeholders to overturn the election. It was part of the Trump's plan, a plan acceptable to tens of millions of Americans today, and therefore a plan officeholders cannot openly condemn if they hope to stay in good Republican graces.

Thoughtful people who write comments here, and officeholders who go on television trying to make sense of January 6 have a messaging problem. The reality is that Trump openly advocated overthrowing the election, a coup d'état. The message they are comfortable projecting is that Trump and his supporters are loyal, upstanding Americans. 

Distraction flares.

They resolve their contradiction with denial and distraction. Don't believe your eyes, don't believe the media, and ignore the repeated plain words of Trump. Nothing much happened on January 6. President Trump didn't stir up anybody and the people at the Capitol were tourists taking selfies. They were rowdy in the way of football fans who get carried away and rush onto the field after a game. It was trivial. It was a souffle'. Besides, look at how terrible Biden is. Socialism! Woke scolders! Critical Race Theory!

[This blog entry has been updated to correct the spelling of Low Dudgeon, and to correct the identification of the airplane shooting anti-missile defense flares.]

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Night Watch, in cannabis

The cannabis plants aren't quite ready to harvest, but they are mature enough to steal.

Thieves are casing the farm with drones. 

It is the wild west. It is 2:00 a.m. and I am guarding my crop. If I encounter trouble I think I will be OK. I am armed with a flashlight and cell phone.

The melon crop is easy by comparison. The midsummer hailstorm flattened the plants. Hailstones the size of ping pong balls made the plants look as if they had been crushed by car tires. Yet some of the plants bounced back, so I had a small crop, just enough to give a few away, cantaloupes, Santa Claus melons, and watermelons. There is no money in melons. The farmer gets nearly the same price today as I got when I was in high school 55 years ago selling melons to Blunt's Ranch Market on old Highway 99 and to Sherm's Thunderbird Market on West Main Street.

Melons were a business for me; I made tuition money. Now it is a hobby. I grow them to give away. A very good vine ripe melon is as complex and nuanced a flavor experience as is a fine wine, but harder to experience. Melons are seasonal, perishable and they have the extra dimension of texture to get exactly right. I am a melon snob, and I wish melon snobbery caught on, but it has not. People who are fussy about their wines eat bad melons and don't know any better. 

I also show farm visitors how a watermelon sounds when it crunches to the ground and what it is like to eat the heart of a dropped melon. Melons are fun.  I like having farm guests

Crunch

. 

I don't like having farm thieves. They are out there, right now. Three times in the past four days workers have heard a buzzing in the air. They are employees of registered growers who have leased land from me. Each drone was different, presumably owned by different people. The drones  hovered over the cannabis crop. They went up and down the rows, low to the ground, out of reach but close enough to the plants that their cameras could see exactly how far along the plants are. When hovering higher up, they could scope out the farm roads, the various ways into the property, the closed (and locked) gates. They could count the number of workers. 

The operators of the first drone stood at a vacant parking lot of a nearby country church, the old Table Rock School. A neighbor who saw the drone got into his car and caught up to them as they stuffed the drone into a black Silverado. The drone operators had removed the front and back license plates from their truck. The truck sped off. The neighbor followed them two miles until they stopped at the parking lot of the Lower Table Rock trailhead. They got out and in a menacing way approached the neighbor, who took photos of them from the presumed safety of his car. but left without confronting them. 

This needs to be said: No guns were displayed or brandished. There wasn't a shootout.

Cannabis regulation by the Oregon and federal authorities is extraordinarily complex. There is plenty of law enforcement as regards registering cannabis grows and collecting taxes, but there is grossly inadequate law enforcement as regards theft. A cannabis grow-site a few feet from my property was robbed last year. The thieves got a vehicle stuck in a ditch and had to abandon it at the scene of the crime--a slam dunk place to start a criminal investigation, one would think. The county sheriff's department examined the stuck vehicle, said the car's owner lived eight miles away, but that they do not investigate cannabis thefts. We were on our own. "But we are taxpayers and property owners. The crop is registered, has permits. Don't we get the protection of the law?" The deputy sheriff said no, that as they saw it, all he had was an abandoned vehicle case.

So here I am, at the farm, a night watchman, guarding the eight plants that I grow. These eight are not "Medical Marijuana." They are grown under a different set of complex rules regarding personal use allowed for owners and residents of Exclusive Farm Use zoned parcels. The drones hovered over my parcels, too. I am physically close to the plants, awake, frequently going out to observe the plants and check for people, lights, and sounds. All quiet so far. My farmhouse is lit up. I am trying to communicate that someone is here, on the job, alert.

I have placed tracking devices in all eight plants. Thieves who would take an hour to disassemble each cannabis plant for a careful harvest would eventually notice and disable the devices, but the reality of a theft of cannabis here at the farm would most likely be a "smash and grab." They would steal the whole plant and stick it into a big van, truck, or trailer, dealing with it the way one would deal with a large, thick Christmas tree. Get in, get out. As soon as the plant and GPS tracking device move, I will be alerted and the tracking device will follow the thieves. The Jackson County sheriff department may not investigate the theft of cannabis, but maybe they would be willing to investigate the theft of my tracking device. Will law enforcement in fact investigate?  I don't know, but presumably the thieves would not know either, or would prefer not to risk that they would.

My hope is that the professionally-made signs alerting thieves of the presence of GPS trackers will discourage them. I am presuming thieves would not want to be tracked. People in a rural Oregon cannabis environment tend to be armed. The thieves don't know whether I am one of them or have friends who are. My wife asked me what I planned to do if I stepped outside the farm house and saw a caravan of people robbing me. I said I planned to turn the car headlights onto high beam, to point a very bright portable spotlight onto them, to hit the "panic" button on my car keys that starts loud honking, and to photograph them with my cell phone camera. I said I hoped that would chase them off. They would presume with all that racket that I would have called 911 and that police or fire people or someone would be showing up. I promised her I would not engage them in a gunfight. 

It is 4:00 a.m., the time I normally get up.

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