Biden’s 2024 sermon sounds just like his 2020 COVID preaching

This post is going to be a bit of politics and a few thoughts about a common idea I’ve seen expressed within the online prepper community. First, let’s hit the politics – President Biden announced his reelection campaign last week and here’s the ad:

Instead of the 2020, Biden the COVID Preacher, we’re now going to have Biden the MAGA Extremist Slayer. Various political punditry on the right describe “Wokeism” (an umbrella term for the far-left culture war agenda) as the secular religion of the political left in America, and the Biden campaign in 2020 positioned Biden as a preacher of COVID, masking alarming power grabs as moral choices to “protect our democracy.” This 2024 Biden messaging campaign is now going to be a massive effort to sell censorship and banishing opposing political viewpoints from the public square, all under the guise of “saving the soul of our democracy” and “protecting freedom.” Whatever, it’s all a bunch of malarkey.

Democrats and the liberal media are desperate to keep former President Trump in the news and do everything possible to assure he is the GOP 2024 candidate. They need Trump as the face of “MAGA extremism.” And assuredly Trump will oblige Democrats and give them plenty of craziness and outrageous antics and statements. Unfortunately, it sure looks to me like both sides in America, despite polls indicating Americans hate the divides, actually feed on the constant political spin theater and buy into it.

The amount of crazy takes I see float by on the news and social media sure look to me like moderates are a very small faction of the American electorate and that zealous liberals and zealous conservatives make up the vast majority of Americans, who pay attention to the news and are most likely to vote in elections. That’s good news for Democrats, who can sensationalize the gun violence news stories, the most extreme anti-abortion positions on the right, and then just highlight the Trump circus clowns acts, like Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene. The GOP is so far from the Ronald Reagan “Morning in America” vision that I no longer recognize this far-right craziness that energizes the Trump faction of the GOP. The mainstream, liberal media has become very adept at squashing news stories that reflect negatively on the liberal culture war agenda and especially on Democrat politicians. If a heinous crime is committed by a liberal wacko, the mainstream media quickly moves past that story and deflects attention to some other right-wing crazy story. This has been going on for years, long before the Trump era or Hunter Biden’s laptop story. It’s pretty common for the liberal media and Democrats to blame Trump for everything bad that happens, even when it’s crimes committed by far-left crazies or problems resulting directly from the BLM “defund the police” efforts they rammed through in 2020.

I’d imagine the Biden team will try to keep him tucked away in Delaware or the WH and away from microphones, as much as possible. The same charade as the 2020 in the basement campaign model. Basically, same old, same old with the spin information war in America still blowing hot.

Now, on to another issue that’s been bugging me and that’s the idea about building all your own systems and getting off of the systems we all rely on, that’s touted by many in the prepper community. This idea is expressed many different ways among the online prepper/homestead community and it takes various forms. Some forms, like growing more of your own food and having alternative basic systems, in case of short-term emergencies, makes sense to me. Who doesn’t appreciate a flashlight when the power goes out? Is it really practical or realistic to build all your own long-term systems for water, power, food production, etc. to survive a catastrophic SHTF event? How many people even have the technical know-how to construct such a system, let alone the means to afford that?

While becoming more sustainable is a laudable goal and I believe growing more of your own food and livestock, if you can, are very worthwhile endeavors. However, trying to build my own long-term power system is beyond my technical know-how and resources.

I’m trying to simplify my life, not embark on more and more complicated projects, based on reacting to online hysteria, that’s reaching new levels of absurdity all the time. It’s more important that we work to become good stewards of the resources we already have, rather than constantly focus on buying more and more and more stuff, in the belief that all that stuff will increase our survivability odds in a major catastrophe. With that in mind, I’m trying to shift focus to using more of the things I already have rather than this constant buy this, buy that mentality that dominates most Americans’ thinking, including the online prepper/homesteading communities.

While I can see the sense in being prepared for short-term emergencies, when it comes to moving completely away from all the systems we rely on in modern life, as a preparedness goal, well, that isn’t in my budget. Even more than that, I do not possess the technical or mechanical skills to even attempt that and I doubt most people do. What I’ve mostly seen online with preppers going this route is piecemeal efforts, that I doubt would work long-term.

When there are so many other practical things that most people can do to be better prepared, considering the vast majority of Americans aren’t prepared for even short-term emergencies, it just seems more sensible, to me, to focus on basics first and work on skill sets that increase self-sufficiency.

Trying to tackle too many large projects to build a “doomsday fortress,” overlooks the reality that in an actual major SHTF, no matter where you are, you might have to relocate. That’s why I’m focusing on increasing my everyday preparedness and trying to be more resilient. I realize that I am set in my ways and often resistant to new ideas. Along with that, as the news becomes more and more negative and over-the-top pessimistic, along with paying less attention to the news, working on remaining hopeful and optimistic is a daily focus. We’re all going to need to look for the good and some hope with the 2024 presidential campaign gearing up now.

Keeping a gratitude journal is part of my daily preparedness focus these days. It’s very easy to let a scarcity mind-set take over when you start on the emergency preparedness path, which can make you see the world in a zero-sum game way, where you believe opportunities no longer exist. Everything becomes us vs. them or I need to buy more and more and more, thinking too much about possible doom and gloom possibilities, while losing sight of all the opportunities that still exist. I don’t have the energy to react to hot take news items all day long, let alone the energy to actually do some research on all these things.

America is still a nation of vast resources. Unfortunately, along with having so much, we are also the most wasteful people on earth. I’ve found that even small changes to be less wasteful in my daily life reaps big benefits over time. Repurposing items is also something I’ve been working on always – I even save twist ties from bread wrappers and the little plastic plastic square bag clips. Yep, I keep a small metal can with those plastic bag clips:

I found this YouTube video with uses for these plastic clips, but there are dozens upon dozens of other uses – including reusing them as bag clips: