Last Sunday the Pastor posed the question of what we would consider to be necessities in today’s life. He gave some statistics from an earlier, time, maybe 50 or so years ago, wherein there were only about 19 things listed whereas in the current time were listed about 98 items. I’m not sure of the exact numbers, but those are close. Wow, 98 items considered necessities for an American.
Well, me being me, when he said “necessities” I immediately began thinking of survival, as opposed to microwave ovens and hand-held devices. The first item on my list was a good knife as I figured with a good knife I could either build or kill my way into most everything else. With some effort, after reaching only about five essential items on my list, I quit the inventory and got back to the sermon. Since then, though, I’ve had a chance to reflect on that question and the meaning of it to our society.
It came to me that our inability as Americans to survive in meager circumstances, or put another way, our dependence on technology, gadgets and the government, is evidence of the decay of character in our society. By that, I mean, our inability to be independent, innovative and willing to put up with hardship reflects how truly weak we have become. Our lack of perseverance in the face of adversity is evidence of our impotence. Unless we are surrounded by what many in the world would consider sumptuousness, we don’t believe we can make it.
If we don’t get our water out of a tap from a government approved water system, where will we get it? If we don’t get our protein from the local mega-store, sliced, diced, shrink-wrapped and priced, how do we get it and process it? If the burners on the range don’t work, or if we at least can’t get charcoal for the grill, how do we cook it? Need vegetables? How do they grow? Where do we get seed? When our shoes wear out, what do we do? When it’s cold outside, how do we stay warm?
I understand that folks growing up in the cities don’t have some of the outdoor opportunities that some of us have, but I am convinced that there are opportunities to develop individuality, independence, self-confidence and other survival skills without having to spend a year in the Rockies on some kind of sabbatical. Survival is more a mind-set than a setting. Attitude is everything.
Being innovative and imaginative is essential whether you’re in downtown Houston or central Nebraska. Skills of observation and patience are not natural talents, but acquired skills; both are essential and both can be acquired through discipline. The ability to reason and employ a rational, decision making process is needed in order to survive and thrive. Again, that is an acquired skill. Determination, grit if you will, is a trait to be cherished, not erased.
Why do I address this idea of necessities and survival in this column? What, you may ask, does that have to do with Taking Back America?
Our nation was founded by independent free-thinkers who were able to craft in their collective imaginations the essence of liberty. That imagination did not come from a dependence on the Crown of England to provide for their every need, but a willingness to be innovative; a willingness to persevere in the face of scarcity; a willingness to survive. The lack of that spirit is at the heart of the troubles we now face in America.
Health care issues; let the government fix them. Poor education in our schools, the government will fix it. Lack of discipline in the schools, we will regulate that by the government, too. Economy is weak; the government will provide for us. Coffee too hot at McDonald’s, let’s file a lawsuit. Offended by someone’s callous comments, get legislation to make that a hate crime. Don’t want to pray in public, make sure nobody else can either through lawsuits and legislation. Too lazy to work, go on welfare. Too lazy to get job training, get welfare. Want to make the stupid decision to quit school; that’s ok, there’s welfare for that, too. Have babies out of wedlock because of dumb decisions; that’s ok, we will give you money, medical care, food stamps and tell you it is a personal decision (even though tax money from productive citizens supports your dumb choices).
Whatever the problems we may face, the government will take care of us; cradle to grave. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the problem.
We have lost our independent spirit. We have lost the ability to innovate. We have lost the desire to stand on our own. We no longer want to be self-sufficient. We no longer teach our children what discipline is and why it is important. In short, we have become a nation of parasites.
Fortunately, not all of us are parasites as there are still enough productive tax payers out there to support the rest who are, but the numbers are dwindling. The decisions being made in congress will continue the crippling of our society until finally, the parasites will be the majority. And, when the parasites are the majority, we will be finished.
Since I’ve been sharing my thoughts on preparedness a lot in the past couple years, it got me thinking about how long, not just preparedness, but learning to be as self-reliant as possible, has been part of my lifestyle. What changed in the past couple years is I began paying attention to the online Prepper community, especially the YouTube prepper community. I had formed a very negative opinion of “preppers” based on the sensationalized Hollywood portrayals like Doomsday Preppers and also the extreme survivalist type shows.
Sure, there are some online preppers, I think are kooks, but the vast majority I think are decent people and trying to present information they think will help people become better prepared for emergencies.
I started this blog in 2012 and early on a friend of mine wrote an essay, Gimme A Knife, on self-reliance, which I posted on my blog and I’ve mentioned it many times over the years.
Not that long ago I wrote a post about my husband teaching me to drive when I was in my early 20s and I mentioned how he refused to let me quit, which I want to expand on a little bit before reposting my friend’s 2012 blog post and my blog post responding to his.
Recently there was a news story about a female Air Force special warfare candidate being given special considerations and also allegations that she quit several times, which would require elimination from the course, but she was allowed to continue the course. I don’t want to get into the women in combat and special forces debate, but suffice it to say I do not agree with opening a few ground combat and special forces jobs to women. My opinion was formed from serving a short time in the Army and following how these feminist political games are played in the US military for decades.
Rather than the politics, what I want to focus on is “quitting” and what that means, not just to emergency preparedness, but to every aspect of your life. My husband and I were both in the Army serving in a Pershing missile battalion in Germany when we met. We did not like each other at all at first and it wasn’t until we were forced into working together that we began to even talk to each other. For the first 8 months he worked down the hallway in S-3 and I worked in a small office as the battalion Public Affairs person. We avoided each other and tried not to even speak to each other. I thought he was a cocky jackass and I suspect he thought I was a prissy airhead.
In one of those politicized decision-making mind-sets, a commander thought it would look good to the NATO evaluators to have a female M-60 gunner, to show how great women were integrated in the US Army. Our first sergeant tasked my husband with training me. At first I told my husband I knew it was a stupid idea and there I was quitting before even trying. That infuriated my husband. He told me he was tasked to train me and I would learn, but he also explained probably one of the most important lessons I’ve ever learned in my life. He explained to me that it’s not about me. He told me that I am part of the Army team and other people are depending on me. He told me other people’s lives could count on me doing my job – whatever job I was tasked with doing. I let that sink in for a minute and then I told him I would do my best and I did. And that’s the thing that really matters in life.
There’s a whole lot of time and energy by “experts” in our society focused on urging us to focus on our feelings and telling us when to ditch people in our lives or how we should focus on ourselves. This particularly pertains to urging women to focus on how they feel. An entire genre of TV talk shows developed from Phil Donahue to Oprah to the tabloid crap like Maury Povich, dedicated to putting people on stage, urging them to reveal the most intimate details and problems in their relationships. It’s a media culture dedicated to encouraging people to betray the people who should matter most in their lives. No family bond is off-limits, not even encouraging parents to get on stage with their children and trash them or discuss private family matters.
Treating the people who matter most to us with some respect matters. Looking beyond our feelings and to other people who count on us matters too.
We are all part of teams in our lives, even if we’re not in the military. The most important team is our family, then we have friends and community. Other teams we may join or commit to could be church, civic organizations, work-related groups and some preppers form groups.
Even if you fall on you butt a thousand times, cry, scream, come up with a different game plan. Do whatever you’ve got to do, but get back up and try again. And never lose sight of the teams in your life, especially your family.
The news here in America and beyond is alarming. While Russian military action is definitely possible in Ukraine, China might feel emboldened to make some military moves too. However, for the past few years, I’ve been thinking that China and Russia are already setting the stage to wage a major economic war against the West. America and the West are more politically unstable than at anytime in my lifetime and while most of us have been lulled into believing America is invincible and the world’s only remaining superpower, I don’t believe that’s true.
The main lesson I learned from the pandemic was how thoroughly incompetent and unprepared our government is at both the federal and state level. If there was a major economic system failure (or multiple failures), nothing I’ve seen in either political party’s leadership reassures me that there are comprehensive plans in place, let alone any contingency plans and most of all I doubt they have the resources and vital supplies stockpiled to keep our nation functioning. All across our major institutions, but especially among elected leaders, there’s an alarming lack of competent leadership and this applies to both major political parties.
Here’s an interesting video about Russia and China stockpiling efforts by Chris at City Prepping, a very informative emergency preparedness YouTube channel:
I have been seriously stocking up on food and other supplies since the Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020. Before that I always had lots of food stocked up (and other stuff), but I had no preparedness plan. While I’d like to think I have enough food stocked up now to last close to a year, I know I don’t have enough water stored, even though I have stored more water in the past couple years. I also know that the food I have now could be at risk, if there was a natural disaster that required evacuation, prolonged power outages, theft, or even if other family members needed help. Most of all having store-bought canned goods and supplies is great, but it likely would not be an easy resource to replenish if shortage problems worsen.
Counting on our federal or state government for anything seems extremely risky, after watching their performance in the past few years. Even the state governors who didn’t destroy the economy within their states with extreme “social mitigation” policies, sure seemed more concerned about the partisan politics and getting their daily talking points into the news media spin cycle than about ordinary citizens’ well-being.
I’ve been trying to learn as much as I can about emergency preparedness and have been following an excellent Prepper School series on YouTube, by Sensible Prepper, where the information is presented without any fearmongering or hysteria. Yesterday was Vol. 12 and definitely worthwhile:
Several weeks ago I was in my backyard looking around and thinking about how empty it is. There’s a storage shed that needs to be torn down, because it’s in sad shape. There’s a willow tree and a few shrubs. That’s it. I used to have a vegetable garden, flower beds, a swing set, and even a clothesline, but as my husband’s health declined over the years, I asked my sons to remove the chain-link fence and gate where I had my vegetable garden, remove the clotheslines, and even my flowers went too. We hired a lawn service to take care of the mowing. My husband put together that swing set for our first granddaughter, who started college this past fall.
As I was looking around, I noticed a couple small patches of mint starting to grow out. Living in growing zone 8b, we have some stuff growing year-round here. We get a few nights a year that temperatures drop below freezing, but the ground hasn’t frozen for the almost 30 years I’ve lived here.
That mint was a gardening mistake I made about 25 years ago, when a friend gave me a few pieces of mint from her garden. The cuttings were in a damp paper towel inside a plastic bag, which I left sitting on my kitchen counter a few days before planting. Those cuttings looked more dead than alive, but I planted them in a flower bed in the back yard.
Mint is very invasive. That mint took off and spread into the back yard and patches even spread along the side of the house and into the front yard. Over the years more and more of the mint died off, so I was surprised to see these two small patches. I picked a few pieces of mint and started it in a small flower pot and put it on the windowsill in my kitchen. It’s already growing.
These pieces of mint growing made me feel hopeful for some reason and I began to look at my backyard with an eye to the future, instead of thinking about all the life that used to be there. I also thought about my vegetable garden, where my husband did all the heavy-lifting work, yet he always called it my garden.
Instead of following all the partisan politcal spin theater that fuels our 24/7 news media lately, I’ve been spending time watching gardening videos and learning more about raised bed gardening, which is what I’m going to attempt. I also started pulling out my old gardening books and reading, because I felt like I forgot a lot since I last planted a vegetable garden.
My husband was way more organized than I am and he would sit and sketch out plans and measurements, while my mind was filled with daydreams of pretty flowers and abundant bounty from the vegetable garden. I was full of big ideas and dreams; he was big on setting up infrastructure first. He grew up in Baltimore and knew nothing about gardening, but he figured out the garden set-up and watering with drip irrigation. He knew nothing about composting, so I showed him some composting bin ideas in gardening books and he set to work building two large wooden composting bins. I never turned the compost pile or pushed a single wheelbarrow of compost to spread on the garden. He did that.
I am not sure how much I can tackle by myself at 61 years old, so I asked my sons for help with setting up some raised beds and then I will try to do as much of the rest by myself. I talked to one of my sisters and she set up raised beds several years ago and she told me she set up shelves with grow lights in her basement to start her seeds. I priced a utility-type shelving unit and grow lights and will be setting that up in the next week. I’ve been pricing supplies for raised beds and other gardening supplies too.
I bought plenty of seeds.
Working on a vegetable garden seems like it will be time better spent than paying attention to the political blowhards on Twitter and in the news media. I can’t do a thing to change the big events unfolding in the world, but I can attempt to utilize my time better and perhaps even plant some seeds of hope in my own backyard.
2/7/2022 Update: I took the little pot of mint out in the sunroom to snap a photo. Please excuse the dirty table and windows, but I haven’t used that room since my husband died last year. It was his room. He was a smoker and sat out there to smoke and watch TV. Here’s a hint about bringing any plant matter from outside into the house – it might bring some unwanted friends along too. The pieces of mint came with some fungus gnats, I think these are. So, I stuck a yellow sticky trap in the pot and it’s dealing with them so far.
Our American politics goes into the crazy zone on both sides so often in recent years, that I often shake my head in disgust at the hyperbole and wonder if America will ever regain a large center, where calmer leaders emerge and foster a sense of good citizenship rather than this constant right-wing saber-rattling and paranoia of evil radical leftists destroying America and left-wing “transformation” politics and paranoia of dangerous right-wingers lurking everywhere. I’m very much politically homeless at present – thoroughly sick of plenty of politicians on both sides. I’m not into being outraged everyday and frankly living like that seems totally counterproductive and exhausting. And it sure won’t unite America.
This is a very unsettling time we’re in and although most partisans prefer to reduce all problems as being caused by the other side, things are rarely that simple. Even if you don’t care about politics at all or if you have strong partisan political views, I expect the spin information war is impacting everyone, and when it comes to efforts to impose rules and measures to infringe on fundamental rights American have, well, that effort is coming from the left, where this corrupt spin information war began. There are now more people taking notice and speaking out on the politicized efforts by large (liberal-owned) social media platforms to control and silence more and more people for what is deemed “spreading misinformation.”
This current trend I expected for over 20 years with the crap Dem spin information war, that began with the Clinton crowd, spread to the entire Dem and liberal political sphere and then finally spread to the Republican side with Trump embracing the same corrupt spin information war model as Dems in 2016. Trumps supporters cheered that Trump was “owning the libs” and “breaking all the rules,” while still being outraged at that very same behavior by Democrats and liberals… Trump acting as corruptly as them became the new Republican standard.
The American political spin information war has advanced to a critical point. Every trusted information entity has lost a lot of credibility in recent years, especially the news media. Finding ways to access accurate, reliable information is going to become the biggest lifesaving tool aside from the most basic, food, water, and shelter needs. Having sources of information you can trust when the political class is engaged in spinning everything and the news media is thoroughly corrupted by spin and collapsing journalistic standards makes finding reliable information challenging. The online information ecosystem is filled to the brim with inaccurate, false, and unreliable information and it’s beginning to create what I dubbed an “information void.” We’re surrounded by mountains of information, but we don’t have the the time or resources to even sift through a fraction of it and determine which information is reliable. Where we used to trust in professional news organizations to provide reliable information, that trust has eroded a great deal and polls continue to indicate Americans no longer have much trust in the news media – across the board.
The continuing Covid political drama has reached the point where I believe the harms to children, the school disruptions, the devastating impact on small businesses due to government-imposed mitigation rules/shutdowns, the continuing politicization of public health and the mental health fall-out from millions of people living their lives in a political/media-induced state of fear for almost two years now has left trust in many of our most vital institutions in a downward spiral. Added to all of this, the world economic system shows major signs of instability. There isn’t much good news on the political or economic fronts in America, but the most at risk and crucial front that doesn’t get much attention is how vulnerable we all are in America when it comes to access to reliable information.
I started reading a 2020 book, A Time to Build: From Family and Community to Congress and the Campus, How Recommitting to Our Institutions Can Revive the American Dream, by Yuval Levin, which delves into the role of institutions in our society and the need to bolster them. For decades I’ve been concerned about the growing partisan divides and lack of trust in American institutions, so I keep reading articles and books, which deal with these topics, both trying to understand what’s happening, gain some historical background and most of all looking for potential paths that might lead to less political and cultural chaos in America.
I recently finished two Sebastian Junger books, Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging and Freedom. Junger delves into the idea of community in Tribe and explores what he thinks many people express when they talk about their feelings of isolation and lack of belonging in modern society. In Freedom, he takes the reader along on a personal adventure, while exploring what freedom means. Both books were quick reads. They left me with a lot to think about, but no closer to how all of that helps us with personal ways to weather the worsening economic, cultural and political storms we’re inexorably entering.
Reading about big picture theories and ideas about what’s happening interests me, but truthfully in my everyday life, I’m looking for uncomplicated ways to keep my life less stressful and functioning as normally as possible in these crazy times and probably that’s what most people are doing. However, along with the normal activities, I spend time trying to plan and prepare for bad things too, many of which feel like they’re not on the far horizon, but much closer.
Being able to access accurate and timely information is critical when it comes to not only preparedness, but truly it informs our decision-making from daily life decisions to critical decisions in an emergency.
The movement to silence views under the guise of “stopping dangerous misinformation” on social media platforms began a few years ago and it’s accelerating. I doubt most people realize how unreliable the American news media ecosystem really is and this applies across the political spectrum, not just to the news that doesn’t fit your partisan leanings. As institutions all around us have begun to fray, become corrupted, fail to adhere to their own ethical standards, well, journalism isn’t immune from that decay too. There’s a pervasive reliance on “reporting” what some other news agency or reporter working somewhere else “reported” and very little independent verification going on before running with “breaking news.” It’s typical now for news agencies and journalists to keep issuing updates and corrections, because they ran with information they hadn’t verified and then find out it was inaccurate or not true. Even worse is too often photos or videos are attached to news stories, which are not even from the event in the news story or the narrative attached to the photo or video is inaccurate or untrue.
On social media in the past few years political left messaging efforts have centered on protecting Americans from “misinformation.” I noticed it when Twitter banned Alex Jones, a far-right conspiracy guy, whom most people considered nutty. I thought Jones was a whacko, so it wasn’t hard to rationalize that Twitter decision, but now across social media platforms the movement has been to censor and remove content and ban people from platforms – always claiming they were spreading “dangerous misinformation.” Through 4 years of Trump, it was “dangerous Russian misinformation” and in 2020 the political left in America switched to censoring and banning “dangerous Covid misinformation.”
Today on Twitter I saw another disturbing effort to try to silence Joe Rogan, a famous podcaster, whom I had never listened to. He got Covid and received treatment from his doctor, which included ivermectin. He spoke about his experience. Then he interviewed Dr. Robert Malone and YouTube, Twitter, and facebook removed the video of this interview. Joe Rogan has the full interview on Spotify. Dr. Malone is a virologist, who has worked with Dr. Fauci and he’s been critical of the vaccines. Any prominent people who speak out or question the government Covid policies and rules, end up being attacked and then efforts are made to censor them on social media. Now there’s a group letter by some activist doctors and science educators, calling on Spotify to stop Rogan from spreading “misinformation.”
A coalition of doctors, physicians and science educators is calling for Spotify to take action against misinformation spread on "The Joe Rogan Experience" podcast.https://t.co/zJcyCozJhE
Watching this online trend by big tech liberal elites to use their social media platforms to silence political viewpoints, I expect an escalation of this behavior, especially if the economic chaos deepens and shortages become more widespread. In recent weeks the shortage situation is worsening in my local stores and although I had planned to attempt a low-spend January, as some online homesteaders and frugal living people do as a challenge, instead I’ve been looking over my pantry and around my house and doing more stocking up. After seeing the increasing out-of-stock situation and trying to glean information from various news, I decided to stock up more on some items.
As the shortage situation escalates and economic conditions continue to worsen, I expect more groups of people and even more ordinary people in America to be targeted online for censorship and banishment. Thinking about ways to continue to communicate outside of relying on big tech social media platforms or apps on our cell phones will become critical as this crazy spin war rages further out of control. The spin war battles will expand to targeting more and more social media “influencers.”
Relying on liberal owned and controlled platforms, who are actively participating in a partisan political spin information war is a huge vulnerability. The information piece of preparedness, of being able to openly communicate and share information online, I expect will become harder if censorship efforts expand. I’ve been thinking about how people will communicate not only in worst case situations, like the grid goes down, but how to talk and share information outside of the social media controlled space and it’s challenging. Most of us are so used to relying on the convenience and accessibility of apps on our cell phones and the large social media platforms that we haven’t thought about freely being able to talk to each other and to find reliable information as a vital part of our preparedness, except in a worst-case scenario type situation.
I believe knowing people around you can create a vital network close at hand in any emergency, but we also need to be able to network with other people we trust across America and know what’s going on across the country and in the world. If you want any sign that the mainstream news media is unreliable, just look at the assiduous way they avoid giving a lot of coverage to the anti-lockdown, anti-Covid rules protests that have been happening in Australia and several European countries. Their doubling down on not talking about Hunter Biden’s laptop technique has now become perfected and is used by liberal news media to not talk about Covid-related news that doesn’t advance the partisan Democrat spin narrative.
Finding solutions to come up with alternative ways to communicate quickly and find accurate information isn’t as easy as prepping for items we can still purchase, but it’s vital and something that’s been on my mind a long time (years actually, as I wondered how this corrupt spin war would advance).
Former President Trump has tried to cultivate loyal news media entities by hounding and haranguing FOX News owners. He’s sucked up to One America News and cheered on Newsmax too. However, the liberal-owned news and social media organizations dominate (and control) most of the information world we operate in.
To see just how difficult it is to find alternatives, with the same ease and convenience of the popular social media platforms most Americans use, all you have to do is watch Trump-connected efforts to create a Trump-friendly news space and a social media platform to compete with the liberal-owned ones, who banned him. Direct TV is expected to drop One America News (OAN) from its satellite service. Amazon kicked Parler, a right-wing owned social media upstart, off of its web-hosting service. There’s now efforts to censor Joe Rogan, the largest podcaster in the country and a pressure campaign against Spotify to censor Rogan. Then there’s GETTR, a social media upstart by former Trump aide, Jason Miller, which I am not joining, because I want more details on Miller’s financial dealings with international business people, especially Guo Wengui, a dissident Chinese billionaire, who allegedly has close ties to the CCP.
Interestingly, Joe Rogan joined GETTR after being angered by efforts to censor him and within days Rogan was slamming GETTR for faking follower counts and harvesting his Twitter tweets to GETTR.
For ordinary Americans, who have an online presence or say a following on a YouTube channel, those can be demonetized, censored or even banned, leaving those people little recourse or alternatives. Even in a much more basic sense, trying to find alternative ways to communicate for most of us would likely have to rely on much less ambitious efforts than trying to create our own start-up social media platform, but still it’s important to think about things like having some basic information on people who matter to us saved somewhere other than online or in our cell phone. Having a good, old-fashioned address book, where you write down addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, etc. of close family, friends and people we want to keep in touch with, especially in an emergency, might be a simple first step.
I’m totally tech-challenged, so I don’t have any big ideas on how to prepare for the worsening access to reliable information situation, but in my gut I feel it’s going to become a huge challenge for all of us.
Update 1/17/2022, 9:21pm: If you think my concerns over maintaining ways to communicate are ridiculous, consider for a moment that all it takes to get on the wrong side of Covid information rules is to disagree or question anything the Biden administration, CDC, Dr. Fauci, Dem-run state Covid rules, or to point out their lies on some social media platforms or even podcasts and other online forums. Countering the Covid narratives can get you labelled a right-wing extremist in America, but in several other Western countries, the crackdown on publicly disagreeing with government policy and/or protesting can lead to even more stringent government actions.
Germany is considering shutting down telegram service:
“Germany raised the prospect of closing down the Telegram messaging service over concerns about its use as a platform for extremist groups. “
The so-called “extremist groups” are people planning protests against the Covid lockdowns and rules. In America, between the Covid government overreach and the continuing liberal political effort to broadly label Trump supporters and other conservative white people as racists and “white supremacists” or “white nationalists,” this type of effort to silence Americans doesn’t seem that far-fetched at this point. Before Covid, I would have said none of this stuff could ever happen in America and now it’s beginning to happen.
Years ago I purchased an e-book at Amazon, How To Analyze Information: A Step-By-Step Guide To Life’s Most Vital Skill, by the late Herbert E. Meyer, which I’ve referred to in previous blog posts. Unfortunately, I no longer see it available at Amazon or online. Meyer was a contrarian. Being a contrarian myself and often having opinions that swim against the prevailing views, I found Meyer worth paying attention to (and very interesting besides). In this small guide he laid out some very simple, but crucial steps to take to analyze information, which most of us often overlook. Here is his 7-step process:
Step One: Figure Out Where You Are
Step Two: Be Sure You’re Seeing Clearly
Step Three: Decide What You Need To Decide
Step Four: Determine What You Need To Know
Step Five: Collect Your Information
Step Six: Turn The Information Into Knowledge
Step Seven: Add The Final Ingredient (Judgment)
I think most of us take a lot of short-cuts when analyzing information and it leads us to assuming we have a lot more knowledge on many things than we really do. In our fast-paced, digital information environment, astoundingly many experts in our most information-crucial environments (like intelligence guru pundits), seem to skip these steps and rush to embrace partisan-packaged conclusions that either bolster popular political narratives or give them an opportunity to preen in the glow of the media spotlight, as journalists clamor for these intel whizzes to impart their wisdom to us.
Meyer gave very common situations as examples to explain these steps. Figuring out where you are isn’t just about your geographical location, it can be where you’re at metaphorically. In my last post, I recommended simplifying your lifestyle by beginning with building emergency savings and paying down debt as first emergency preparedness steps, in my view. So with simplifying your lifestyle, you have to really know where you are – from finances, to responsibilities, to physical health/limitations.
Seeing clearly takes effort, because everyone has what Meyer referred to as “prisms” that can distort how they view a situation or information. Prisms can be beliefs, biases, ideologies (political views) or even people we trust or distrust that will impede our ability to see information clearly. Meyer gave an example of having a friend you trust, but everyone else knows is a crook, would make you unlikely to see the information everyone else is seeing, until it’s too late. Often we glide by negative information on people we like, while taking a microscope to the tiniest, flimsiest piece of dirt on someone we dislike. Recognizing your own “prisms” and working to see clearly opens the way for you to move on to figuring out what you need to decide and then what information you need to collect for your decision-making.
Most of us, I suspect, start around Step Four or Five, when it comes to analyzing information, because we assume we know where we are and that we see clearly. Plus, most people, myself included, often assume we know what we need to decide, yet often later realize we should have been thinking about an entirely different matter first, should have taken more time to think things through, should have done more research, should have looked at other options – especially with financial decisions in our vast consumer culture and the ease with which we can swipe or click or make online purchases.
Meyer’s final ingredient was a chapter on judgment, which he described this way:
“Judgment is the sum total of who we are – the combined product of our character, our personality, our instincts and our knowledge. Because judgment involves more than knowledge, it isn’t the same thing as education. You cannot learn judgment by taking a course, or by reading a book. This is why some of the most highly educated people in the world have terrible judgment, and why some people who dropped out of school at the age of sixteen have superb judgment.”
Meyer, Herbert E.. How to Analyze Information: A Step-by-Step Guide to Life’s Most Vital Skill . Storm King Press. Kindle Edition.
Of course, the thing is we can all learn and improve our decision-making and judgment by becoming more aware of our short-comings, biases, and for all of us, honestly facing our past mistakes rather than making excuses for them.
Some people are reckless with money and some people, by nature, are very cautious, so being honest with yourself about your money habits will put you in a better position to knowing where you are and seeing clearly. I have known many people who go from one financial train wreck to another and invariably they blame “bad luck” for all of it, never taking personal responsibility for their bad decisions. Facing the truth is hard, but crucial to ever being able to figure out where you really are with your personal finances. Then you can decide what you really need to decide and set about gathering information, which is more than just reading one source that fits your “prisms.”
You’ve got to collect information from numerous sources and start figuring out what information is more accurate and reliable. This puts you on the road to acquiring knowledge. This process will hopefully lead to better decisions. I think it’s really helpful to have some trusted sounding boards, people who have experience or more expertise than you do, in your life.
Taking money advice from a friend who is always broke and behind in paying their monthly bills isn’t a good candidate to be a sounding board on good financial planning, but a friend like that may help you feel better about your own poor financial decisions and lead you to making more bad money decisions. I have seen this with people who are shopaholics and they seek out friends who reinforce their bad spending habits. Don’t seek me to be that shopping friend, lol. I have always hated shopping, except for craft and needlework stuff, which I have plenty of and don’t want more.
This all sounds so simple, yet until I read Meyer’s short little guide, I realized that I often completely skipped his Steps One and Two, which led me to become an excellent cherry-picker of information, looking for information that fit my “prisms” and often not really having a clear idea where I was, especially in making personal decisions.
I like to slow down now and take my time with making decisions. In the prepper world, I hear a lot of “hurry up and stock up on this or that now, before it’s all gone” and a lot of fearmongering, that the sky’s falling. I also see a lot of online preppers who talk almost exclusively about their purchases (hauls) and the YouTube “haul video” thing is in almost every YouTube community I’ve seen. We are a nation of shoppers, that’s for sure. As I said in my last post, emergency preparedness can save your life, but it’s got to start with being responsible in your daily life and that begins with getting your finances in better order, not shopping for “preps.”
I do have emergency savings and basic emergency preps, but still not as much water as I think I should (I am aiming for a 6 month supply). I’m still thinking about next steps in my preparedness efforts and have been thinking about buying a Berkey. Like many people, I think about emergency preparedness a lot more than I did pre-pandemic chaos and pre-BLM civil unrest. And like many Americans, I’ve been pretty fed-up and grown completely distrustful of our government rising to the occasion in major crises.
Of course, you’d have to be living under a rock not to be aware of all the disturbing events that have disrupted and impacted most people’s daily lives. Inflation is impacting everywhere, from fuel, to electricity, to consumer goods, to grocery prices and I haven’t seen any financial experts predicting things will improve anytime soon. It’s pretty unified warnings that inflation is expected to worsen and shortages will continue into 2022. The pandemic “stuff” is still ongoing too.
Even if the worst case financial collapse doesn’t happen, protracted national economic problems really can be a personal “sky is falling crisis,” if you’re not prepared – especially if your finances are already on shaky ground. Building some emergency savings and eliminating personal debt are two of the best “preps” you can do to increase your emergency preparedness to weather economic hard times.
I like Dave Ramsey, but many people disagree with his 7 Baby Steps Plan. I bought his book, Financial Peace, at a yard sale many years ago, read it and found it useful. However you decide to get your personal finances in order – eliminating personal debt frees up money, that you can put towards savings, building up basic emergency supplies, or other goals. If Ramsey isn’t your cup of tea, there are plenty of other financial planning and management sources.
Meyer’s 7-step guide helped me reassess how I was analyzing information and I found it very useful. If I find it available online, I’ll share a link.
A few days ago I watched a useful YouTube prepping video, 5 Things You Must Do NOW to Prepare for 2022, by City Prepping, which was a follow-up to his video on the top 10 threats we’ll face in 2022. He begins his list of 5 things to do with simplifying your finances by budgeting, cutting expenses and eliminating debt:
Talking about financial stuff isn’t an area where I feel like I have any expertise, but here are some of my learned from the school-of-hard-knocks personal finance thoughts. Money habits are like most of our other everyday habits, that most of us either grew-up practicing or kind of slid into without a whole lot of thought or consideration. Once I actually start learning more and honestly assessing many of my ingrained (and hard to break) habits, I almost always realize there are better choices available. It’s a real struggle to change ingrained habits, but I’ve found even modest changes can reap big benefits. Changing some of my bad money habits hasn’t been as hard as trying to change some of my bad eating and fitness habits, which I’m working on.
I’ve seen online prepper and various survival advertising centered on the argument that we’re headed toward a catastrophic economic collapse as a reason to not trust in banks or even cash, but to think about dramatic (and risky if that worst case financial catastrophe doesn’t happen) financial moves to survive. Sure, there might be a massive economic collapse, but placing your entire personal financial planning effort based on that worst-case scenario might lead you to be woefully unprepared for the multitude of everyday (and much more likely) emergencies that are way more likely to impact you. I can’t buy new tires or pay an emergency medical bill with gold or silver coins, so for me I prefer to stick to cash and traditional financial savings and investment options. Living on a modest income, I prefer to have roadside assistance and rental car coverage on my car insurance policy and having money in emergency savings over dabbling in bitcoin or other investment options sold as preparing for a catastrophic economic collapse.
Yes, the worst case is definitely possible, but I’ve experienced many of the more likely emergency situations and decided where I want to focus most with my emergency preparedness efforts. This preparing for the most likely emergencies first rather than the worst-case emergencies approach makes more sense to me. I don’t believe people, who haven’t even learned to weather the more common emergencies in life, can become prepared for more dire emergencies, just by buying all the right survival gear or abandoning safer financial savings and investments. In other words, you can’t buy your way to preparedness.
Experience and then learning from my mistakes helps me feel more prepared to weather harder challenges. It’s like with needlework, where it’s much easier to start with a small project, master the techniques and gain some confidence when I finish than to start out with some large and very complicated project. This year my husband died, so I’ve had to rethink a whole lot from finances to my entire life and adjust. One of my husband’s hospice nurses, a widow, advised me not to make any big decisions for at least several months and to keep my daily life as simple as possible. I heeded her advice and it has helped me plod through each day.
With personal finances, I’ve made plenty of mistakes over the years, but I did learn that even a few modest cuts in non-essential spending, frees up some money and just a bit extra could help dealing with the inflation that’s already happening or allow you to put some money into emergency savings. Simplifying personal finances and your overall lifestyle makes you less dependent on all sorts of products and services you were consuming. Finding cheaper or free forms of entertainment can help with becoming more self-reliant.
Along with the chaos in the supply chains, I have already seen prices going up when grocery shopping and some wild price fluctuations with other purchases. I purchased a Christmas gift at regular price for one of my grandchildren online a few weeks ago and that same item, from the same seller, has now jumped $50 in price.
At the grocery store, I’ve been focusing on stocking up on basics and paying more attention to prices. I also often check prices online now, before even heading to the store, to aid in making my list. Making a list and comparing prices makes a difference, as does spending more time looking through my pantry, fridge and freezer before making a list. Last year I did some grocery shopping online that I picked up at the store, but I prefer to walk through the grocery store and see what all is there. Plus, I want to pick out my own fresh produce and meat.
Many people carefully meal plan too. I haven’t been diligent with meal planning ever, but I’ve become much more aware of thinking about how to use leftovers to make other different meals before I even cook a meal that I know there’ll be leftovers. Another area I’ve been working on for years is cutting down on food waste, especially with throwing away fresh produce, which happened way too often in my kitchen. Before I even consider buying larger amounts of fresh produce that are a “great” deal, I think about how I’ll be able to store it or preserve it to avoid waste.
Sometimes I pass on those “great” deals, because if food ends up thrown away that’s money thrown away. This same concept applies to other purchases too. If you buy mountains of stuff that are “great” deals, but it never gets used that’s waste. With prepper gear, tools, extra supplies or anything else you stockpile, figuring out how much money you want tied up in 10 of this or that vs. money in savings for all those common emergencies life throws your way should be part of your overall financial planning. I would opt for a few good quality tools and more money in savings for the unknowns rather than having 10 of every tool or piece of gear imaginable. No money in savings or even worse prepper gear on credit cards to pay off isn’t really sound preparedness, in my opinion. These kinds of financial decisions are personal choices, but this type of critically making decisions on all of your purchases is a good money habit to develop.
Truthfully, there are way too many unknowns trying to focus on preparing for such a massive catastrophe as a world economic collapse. It’s too big of an event for our minds to grasp all the ways it would impact every system our complex modern world relies on, so I suspect the best preparation there is to focus on the basics and streamlining your lifestyle to live as simply as possible. The Amish and similar types of communities that have a very simple, sustainable lifestyle seem to be less impacted and able to recover more easily from major emergencies than those more reliant on all the complex systems of modern life. The key there is community, so along with all the personal preparedness, trying to build some relationships, friendships and trust within your own community can start with just a few friendly words or even small acts of kindness. The more people you know who are nearby, the less you’ll feel like you’re completely on your own in bad times.
With so many disturbing events in the news and alarming changes in America in recent years, I’d like to talk about the importance of three pillars that can give us strength to survive whatever the future holds – faith, hope and love. While it’s the Christmas season, these three pillars apply to everyone, so if you’re not religious or not Christian, don’t go running off thinking this is going to be a preachy religious post, because it’s not.
I’ve been fascinated with leadership since I was young, wondering why some people seem to stand out as the person to follow in every group. Even with groups of kids, there always seems to be a leader who emerges. Sure, there are plenty of books devoted to leaders and leadership, often dissecting good leadership traits from bad ones, but for me I’ve always been interested in why people not only follow a leader, but why we seem to need leaders. For me a good leader puts the best interests of those he/she leads above his/her own interests and needs.
Still that leaves the question of what leaders offer and even ones with very flawed characters, I believe, offer some degree of faith, hope, and love (or at least acceptance within the group). One of the most alarming aspects of recent years is as crises hit, Americans automatically hunker down in partisan camps and bicker about each other. We don’t seem to have any leaders, political, religious, or even pop culture icons, who offer any sort of vision that we can all believe in (faith). There’s no one offering any truly hopeful messages either, but many pay lip service to sound bites and hollow slogans that fit their own agenda. Worse is many of our political leaders are dedicated to fanning the flames to divide Americans. And last we don’t see any examples of leaders who put the needs of others before their own political or monetary interests.
At the same time as we’re facing all these uncertain times and uncharted changes, due to decades of cultural, economic, and massive technological changes, most Americans don’t experience the same type of community life as even 25 years ago and even more unsettling for millions of people is often families are spread out and as the political polarization has deepened, it’s now seeped down to creating discord even within many families.
So, how do we begin the process of making any positive changes in our own life, within our families and communities?
I wrote some posts on my views on “prepping,” but I still don’t really think of myself as a “prepper” and I haven’t adopted the prepper lingo in my thought processes. I prefer to think in the same terms I always have – doing things that I think make sense for planning for the future. I rank having money saved for the future and emergencies as more important than having a whole lot of fancy prepper gear, but I do believe in stocking up on food, water, basic tools and supplies. I can’t predict the future, so I like having money saved to hopefully help in unforeseen emergencies that happen most often – things breaking in my home or car, weather emergencies and other family type emergencies.
While there are many prepper and homesteading people online who offer great advice, lists and tips on what supplies to buy, I am never going to urge people to go buy anything. I spent a lot of time volunteering with Army family support activities and the American Red Cross, I don’t want to suggest people run out and buy this item or that item, because the main thing I learned is every family situation is different.
Here’s the hard truth, the most common feature I observed was financial chaos and there’s no “go stock up on soup” or “go stock up on dried beans” that’s going to make people adequately prepared for emergencies until they tackle the financial chaos in their own life. I don’t think trying to become a prepper, like people who post photos of their amazing, vast food storage or gigantic food hauls online is sensible if your personal finances are already a train wreck or you’re struggling to pay your bills.
Tackling personal finances takes commitment to getting rid of debt and/or accumulating new debt, and making some effort to cut expenses. Unless people have this basic part of “being prepared” mastered, all their other buying prepping supplies will likely be as haphazard as their finances. That may sound cold and harsh, but that’s what I believe after my experiences. The caveat to this is I have known many people with very small incomes who slowly build up emergency food and supplies, while still living within their means.
Being prepared starts with being responsible and making careful, thoughtful financial decisions, not with shopping for preps.
That isn’t to say we shouldn’t all try to help people who made bad money decisions and need food or other assistance or stop pushing preparedness, it’s just that where a lot of the prepper community seems to start is with the shopping part and focusing on “preps,” when there’s a whole lot of more important things – like developing a preparedness mindset, having some sort of plan (goals) for yourself and your family, and building as much of a stable lifestyle foundation as you can. There’s also the critical need to acquire skill sets.
I think we should spend more time building our own family “survival” plan and that has to start with a serious assessment of family needs, family finances, family goals and then seeing how much can be put toward extra supplies and deciding which supplies are a priority. I know that when I go shopping without a list and a spending limit for that shopping trip, I invariably buy things that later I think weren’t wise purchases. If you’re going to work on shopping out of concern about shortages, at the very least, it’s prudent to inventory your pantry and supplies, then assess and prioritize what you need. Then make a list.
With being financially responsible usually comes learning some useful skill sets along the way. Even better is by learning to delay instant gratification, learning a bit of frugality, and working hard toward goals comes a goal-oriented mindset, not just adopting “prepping” as a hobby. Homesteaders learn the survival mindset quickly, because of the constant hard work and daily routine required to take care of animals, crops and still having to take care of their families too.
In several of my posts on preparedness, I wrote about my belief in acquiring skill sets and I’ve got a long list of new skills I plan to learn in the near future and some old skills I want to work on too. Along with the learning skill sets, I keep reading and trying to learn more.
As a kid I loved reading stories of people who survived in the most challenging situations, from explorers to wartime, to people who overcame devastating personal tragedies. I’ve also always loved American frontier stories, from the first American settlers to the settling of the West. American history is filled with stories of people surviving in the most extreme circumstances. Perhaps working to develop a little bit of the resilient American pioneer spirit would serve us better.
It would be wonderful if America had leaders who would try to inspire, motivate and try to guide people toward becoming more focused, more dedicated to helping others, and more grounded in a belief in faith, hope and love, but we don’t have any leaders like that.
That doesn’t mean we should all give up or live in constant fear or dread. It also doesn’t mean we should run around trying to buy every last item we can think of to stock up on, in fear things will get much worse or the economy will collapse. Finding that hope and love really brings me back to faith. Faith takes a bit of personal courage and the biggest obstacle to faith, in my opinion, is fear. Once I stop letting fear guide my thoughts and actions, I automatically feel more hopeful and when I talk to people who aren’t doom and gloomers, well, it’s not like they are blind to the bad stuff going on all around, it’s that they’ve made the decision to not let it stop them from plodding onward and leading their own lives. I pray and that helps me find some inner peace, but if religion isn’t your thing, some people find meditation useful.
As someone who is by nature an incessant worrier and “worst casing everything,” working on a positive attitude takes a lot of work, but when I start listening to a lot of “the sky is falling” news or advice, well, I learned to step away from that. It’s a constant work in progress to keep a positive attitude if you’re prone to worrying or anxiety, but it’s worth the effort. In a previous post I said I believe in keeping my home functioning as normally as possible – no matter what else is going on. Keeping control over my own home and not letting fear take over matters to me and I think it’s better for kids to have a home that’s a shelter of calm and normalcy, even in a crisis.
Despite no national leadership in sight, each of us can become leaders. First take charge of yourself and that means stop letting fear drive your actions and take responsibility for your own problems. Next take leadership over your own home and if you and your family are functioning fine, then look outward to perhaps trying to lead some efforts in your church, community or even online.
Yes, I know it sounds so easy, but truly it’s a daily effort to keep putting one foot in front of the other and staying focused with so much constant news media hysteria, alarming “new normal” craziness in our lives since Covid arrived and loud background noise that comes with social media. Setting more personal goals and cutting back on social media time are on my list of priorities.
Patara at Appalachia’s Homestead brought to my attention, that China is urging it’s people to start stocking up. I had seen mostly the political news on the VA governor’s race and hadn’t seen this. China has over a billion people to feed and is facing a sharp economic slowdown. It is absolutely a true news story. CNN link is right here: China is urging families to stock up on food as supply challenges multiply.
I have no confidence in our federal government to respond adequately to a major crisis, that’s the truth. This is an upfront warning. that this is going to be a politics post. The default response from our political leaders, in both parties, is to deploy the National Guard to deal with everything, whether it’s for Pelosi’s post-1/6 sideshow, where they had thousands of guardsmen at the Capitol for months to TX where the governor sent them to the border. Here’s a quote from NBCWashington on the NG extension at the Capitol in MARCH, two months after the 1/6 attack:
“Army leaders had also initially questioned whether the Capitol Police had exhausted all other options to fill the need, such as asking other federal law enforcement agencies to provide security. But officials said military leaders thought it was important to find ways to work out the details.
The threat was tied to the far-right conspiracy theory promoted by QAnon supporters that former President Donald Trump would rise again to power on March 4, the original presidential inauguration day. That day passed with no problems, but law enforcement has said threats to buildings and personnel remain.”
I’m frankly sick to death of hearing about QAnon threats and remain highly skeptical about who is generating the “QAnon conspiracy theories.” I’m not doubting there are dangerous right-wing extremists elements that are legitimate concerns. And there are people believing these crazy QAnon conspiracy theories, but why doesn’t the FBI ever tell us more about who these QAnon conspiracy theory generators are? This reminds me of the whole “alt-right” media hysteria, where the liberal media and Dems created this whole myth about how massive the alt-right threat was and how there were alt-right everywhere. And, even the FBI sells that line too.
If QAnon loons spreading conspiracy theories are such a threat, then why haven’t the QAnon content generators been identified and banned from social media? The big social media platforms have no problem banning other right-wing people they don’t like or want silenced or ordinary people spreading conspiracy theories, but not QAnon… And we’re also told QAnon is on the “dark web,’ yet the FBI can’t find out who’s behind it or stop any of these QAnon conspiracy theories? Instead, it’s these crazy stories like today, “QAnon supporters gather in downtown Dallas expecting JFK Jr. to reappear.”
The FBI has spent months tracking down every protester at the Capitol on 1/6 and yet they can’t figure out who is behind QAnon conspiracy theories?
I’m going to add this link to the much hyped August 2018 “Unite the Right Anniversary” in Washington, DC that had the media frothing for months. CNN reported, “Approximately two dozen white nationalists rallied in the nation’s capital on Sunday, one year after clashes in Charlottesville, Virginia, left one person dead and elevated racial tensions in America.” Yep, two dozen, that’s it.
After that the liberal media didn’t have fainting spells about the “alt-right,” but it moved to other massive right-wing “threats.”
The Youngkin effort is par for the course with Dem false flag operations and dirty tricks, yet the mainstream media glides by them. Back in 2018 news broke (and was quickly breezed by) that Dem operatives, working with some powerful Silicon Valley execs, generated fake Russian bots that were supporting Roy Moore in the AL Senate race in 2017 and then Dem operatives put up this whole media hysteria about Moore was supported by Russia (similar to the whole Trump–Russia Collusion spin garbage). Dem operatives also initiated some Dry Alabama influence operation against Moore, and of course, there was the whole mainstream media underage women allegation spin effort too and frankly when Gloria Allred shows up, I dismiss it as another Dem spin theater effort. Roy Moore is a detestable bigot, so no one really cared about any of these corrupt Dem influence operations and dirty tricks. Of course, it’s important to look at who one of those big Silicon Valley execs involved in that fake Russian bot operation was. From the Washington Post, “Disinformation campaign targeting Roy Moore’s Senate bid may have violated law, Alabama attorney general says” :
“The looming threat of new state and federal investigations adds to the scrutiny facing those involved in the campaign to undermine support for Moore and bolster Jones. Project Birmingham appeared to broadly mirror some of the same tactics adopted by Russian operatives who spread social and political unrest on Facebook and Twitter during the 2016 presidential election. In Alabama, its backers even introduced fake evidence that automated Russian accounts, called bots, were supporting Moore in the race.”
“On Wednesday, internet billionaire Reid Hoffman apologized for giving money to a group, American Engagement Technologies, that allegedly had ties to Project Birmingham. The donation was $750,000, according to a person close to Hoffman. Hoffman said that he did not intend for the organization or its leader, a former aide to President Barack Obama, to put the money to use in spreading disinformation. Hoffman also pledged a full review of his portfolio of political investments, two years after he began spending millions of dollars to help elect more Democrats to office.”
“One participant in the project reportedly was Jonathon Morgan, the chief executive of New Knowledge, a firm that wrote a report – released by the Senate Intelligence Committee earlier this week – about Russia’s social media operations in the 2016 election and its efforts to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump.”
Got that – this Silicon Valley exec’s company was who the Senate Intelligence Committee relied on to write their report on Russia’s social media operations in the 2016 election and then he was involved in a Dem false flag operation helping Dem operatives create fake Russian bots to smear Roy Moore in 2017… Still waiting on that investigation… It’s totally nuts.
I’ve been trying to analyze the Dems spin information war since the 1990s, when the Clintons initiated their “war room.” In 1998, I first dipped my toes into the world of social media, writing comments on the Excite message boards, and mocked the Clinton spinmeisters and highlighted their stupid spin word games on those message boards during the Clinton impeachment drama. Back then the Excite message boards was where the politicos and journos hung out. Today it’s Twitter.
I also believe Trump borrowed the Dems corrupt spin war model, so while many people, I know think Trump will save America, well, I doubt it. Trump cares about his rallies, which are just massive agitation propaganda efforts to incite people & raise money. Mainly though, Trump really wants to get back on Twitter or find a social media avenue to get back into the spin information war and owning media spin cycles. As for Repubs in Washington – they’re concerned about collecting big money from donors and power too, so I don’t expect Washington to save us. Plus they’re all hanging out on Twitter too. Trump cares about getting back on Twitter, all the journalists and politicians hang out at Twitter – and all they care about is how to “spin” everything. Spin equals the ability to drive and control public opinion in America.
The Dem and media corruption is still vast. I am a nobody homemaker, recently widowed, and my blog currently has 135 followers. On Twitter I have 58 followers and I suspect most of them are bots or something. I pay for my WordPress account and continue to write, even though mostly I feel like I am a lone voice in the internet wilderness.
So, my concerns after watching this latest Dem spin smear effort, targeting parents at school board meetings, is that the labeling of Trump-supporters, Republicans, conservatives, and even now parents who dared complain about CRT was to smear them as “potential domestic terrorists.”
My stories about Desert Storm are true and I do believe staying calm and focused on doing everything you can to stock up and prepare your own family, as best you can, for the shortages and uncertainties ahead, is sound advice.
I am not trying to tell anyone to shut-up or what to say or not say – it’s a free country. Where I worry is that preppers might become the next Dem target, in a critical food storage crisis and that’s why staying calm and committed to helping each other and encouraging others to stock up can be a vital resource to help themselves and their families and neighborhood get through this crisis. I worry since the prepper community relies on liberal-owned social media platforms to share information.
I hope that some state governments start getting their heads out of their you know what and start addressing this looming crisis, but I suspect many of them are too busy with their Twitter spin battles too, to even come up with any plans. And my other fear is that the DC pols solution is to send in the NG and expect them to solve everything. Heck, I’m surprised they haven’t sent them to unload ships yet. The NG cannot possibly be the whole government solution to deal with a massive food shortage and mass panic. Here’s the other thing – if there’s mass panic and people clearing out stores – that gives the federal government and governors all the cover they need to take more drastic action and so these are the same people still trying to cling to all their COVID government overreach.
I’m not trying to alarm anyone, and this is just my opinion. I’m just saying that staying calm, especially in emergencies is crucial- it will help you get through any crisis. Staying focused on encouraging as many people you can to stock up is wonderful, as is sharing all the prepping and survival knowledge. It’s going to take people with all sorts of skills – not just a stocked pantry to get our country through a massive food shortage combined with another possible COVID wave, plus all the partisan political turmoil. I feel that some areas where there are lots more conservative people, it might be easier to rally people to work together in a crisis than in others. If you live in Chicago or St. Louis with that idiot mayor, who tweeted this, I feel sorry for you:
I don’t flinch when gunshots ring out; my son and I often fall asleep to a lullaby of gunshots.
Focusing on anger at people in your own family or circle will leave you and them totally alienated, but yeah, I understand urging family to stock up and not being heeded – after all, our “illustrious” CDC recommends a 3-day supply. Everyone in our government is too invested in their media spin war to come up with a plan. I have no idea how much food retail companies have or are holding back or how much various states and the federal government have in emergency food supplies. All I do know is the prepper community, even the most extreme ones, are way ahead of the game in a serious food shortage situation and the YouTube prepper community could be a truly valuable resource to each other and to millions of other unprepared people.
Every person who heeds your advice to start stocking up now is one less person in a dire crisis, if this shortage situation becomes much worse. No one person can solve this crisis by themselves – we’ll all have to put in our oars and row, but first and foremost is always – take care of yourself and your family first, so don’t get overwhelmed by the magnitude of all the bad things on the horizon – take it a step at a time with preparing.
Here’s a suggestion, in military lingo, if you’re up to double-time, by all means speed up your pace:-) If people have a 3-day supply, encourage them to shoot for 2 weeks or a month and then keep on going. By working together and staying calm, I believe grassroots America could be the vital resource that pulls America through a serious shortage crisis. A lot of political mayhem, mass panic and no calm, principled leadership to be found, here in America could be very bad. However, our country was founded by brave and fearless people, who faced adversity head-on, and I still remain hopeful that there are enough good and decent people, with that same American spirit to pull us through this.
Note: It’s 9:48 am, November 3, 2021 right now and I have been doing some editing on this blog post, because I wrote it last night and reading it this morning saw some small things I wanted to change and add.
Kevin and Sarah at Living Traditions Homestead offer some thoughts on “shortening the supply chain of getting food to your table,” beyond stores and growing your food. Wonderful ideas here:
They made me think of one of my favorite novels, My Antonia, by Willa Cather. Kevin and Sarah, like many of the modern homesteaders, are so different from the back to nature movement of the 70s, where the ones that came to my rural area were hippies, into communal living, and they gave me a jaded view of modern “homesteading.” Many of these new pioneers embrace debt-free living, they do a lot of research on gardening and farming and they try to build diversified income streams. Here’s a bit from a piece I wrote in 2012, but despite this old post, I hadn’t even thought of these ideas Kevin and Sarah offer:
Throughout the story, Jack’s grandmother exemplifies the indomitable American spirit and she’s a testament to planning not just to survive, but to live as comfortably as possible in an unforgiving environment. The Shimerdas, city-dwellers in their home country, fail to take responsibility for their own survival, necessitating good neighbors to prevent their demise. In one scene the grandmother packs a hamper to take to the Shimerdas, she offers this line:
‘Now, Jake,’ grandmother was saying, ‘if you can find that old rooster that got his comb froze, just give his neck a twist, and we’ll take him along. There’s no good reason why Mrs. Shimerda couldn’t have got hens from her neighbours last fall and had a hen-house going by now. I reckon she was confused and didn’t know where to begin. I’ve come strange to a new country myself, but I never forgot hens are a good thing to have, no matter what you don’t have.”
Before offering my opinion on why we should try to include as many people in our circle of support, especially family, friends and neighbors, rather than sit around planning who we’re going to shun in an emergency for failing to meet our prepper expectations, I want to clarify that when I suggested not getting worked up by viral videos & photos until you have more information, it wasn’t to suggest that all videos and photos are “fake news,” although many of them are dishonest partisan agitation propaganda (see examples like the Covington video or the Lincoln Project staging a fake white supremacists group at a Youngkin campaign event in VA a couple days ago), or they don’t provide enough information to help you make good decisions.
The shortage crisis is real and it’s projected to get much worse. There is a global economic crisis.
The global economy system is very complex and I don’t even have a clue as to all the factors creating this crisis, but our government officials report the problem is serious and projected to worsen, as do all sorts of legitimate experts – so, yes the shortage crisis is real. The problem with relying on some viral video or shortage information from even trusted family or friends who live across the country from you or who you talk to on social media is what they are experiencing may not be what’s going on in your local grocery stores And here’s where having more information is what we really need, before rushing out to the store based on “did you see all those photos and videos online of empty shelves?” or “I heard on social media, blah, blah, blah.” So far there are some items that there’s been a widespread shortage – for instance hay, lumber or canning lids for home canners, etc. but for general grocery items, the availability can vary at online retailers, stores around the country and even within your own local area.
It seems to me we’re all going to have to take a little more time to shop strategically, if we’re going to locate the foods we want and try to find food items that keep us within our budgets, especially with inflation climbing. Staying calm as we all try to navigate through this crisis will help us not only weather this crisis, if you have kids it will help them adjust and adapt to these chaotic and uncertain times. You can not possibly assess and respond well to a protracted economic crisis, if you spend everyday getting angry at people who aren’t preparing as you think they should and running around every single minute in crisis mode. In fact, the more you react emotionally, the poorer your information analysis becomes. Plus, other emergencies can surely come along and we’ll have to deal with them too. Weather emergencies are pretty common, the COVID situation is still with us, there’s a lot of political turmoil, and even personal emergencies and the list goes on.
Showing a little grace and kindness to others will go way further than spending your time fuming about friends and family who aren’t preparing like you are, while still encouraging them to prepare.
Now to a few personal stories. In January of this year, my youngest daughter, son-in-law and infant grandson in TX experienced the grid failure during a winter storm. Naturally, I had been urging my daughter to prepare and when I warned about a power outage, she told me there was no need to worry about that, because the power lines are underground where she lives. I told her that didn’t mean the grid can’t go down.
So, when the power outage happened, naturally, I was upset that she had dismissed my concerns. I sent her a link from The Provident Prepper on how to survive a winter emergency and offered some ideas. In my mind, I was thinking, “Why didn’t she take my concerns seriously?” and of course, I was worried.
I was on the phone with one of my sisters in PA, who is retired from the Air Force and served in Afghanistan. I was telling her about this and she told me she had talked to my daughter too and she didn’t think my daughter ignored me and she told me she was sure that my daughter and her husband, both in their mid-30s, married over a decade, were going to do everything possible to keep the baby, their first child, safe.
So, I thought about it and I had to be honest with myself about my prepping – especially the stockpiling basics and trying to think about every what-if imaginable vs. my daughter and son-in-law’s emergency skills. On my side I like having lots of supplies, I did a lot of family support volunteer work when my husband was in the Army and I spent a few years as a Red Cross volunteer casework chair at an Army post we were at, providing emergency communications services and emergency assistance to soldiers and their families. I trained volunteer caseworkers, working alongside the paid Red Cross staff. So, okay, I had some experience, but here’s the thing, my daughter was in a Boy Scout Explorer group as a teenager, that met at a local fire company and she took state-certified fire-fighting training, to include extracting people from burning vehicles. Right out of high school she took an EMT course and she worked at a local hospital doing admissions at the ER. My son-in-law was in the Army when they got married. He served in Iraq as a combat medic.
The other truth is in a real SHTF situation they would both be much calmer in a crisis than I am, because I worry a lot. I’m better at something like handling Red Cross emergency communications or cooking food or baking cookies to help people rather than dealing with blood and guts stuff. They made a blanket tent, kept tabs on the temp. situation, in their house, talked to two friends in the area, who had gas heat still working, so they went to one of their friends. I had urged my daughter to decide before it got dark if they were going to go to one of their friends, to avoid traveling on icy roads in the dark and they did that.
I mentioned Desert Storm in a few posts and that’s because I learned a lot from that experience. The rumor mill among Army wives is something to behold, when the husbands are away on field training exercises, but having them actually deploy to war was surreal. That rumor mill, which you can get a smidgeon of a taste watching the social media drama, isn’t just benign, it can severely damage morale of troops, if they call their wives and start worrying. In the Army it’s part of commanders’ responsibilities to try to provide information to dispel rumors. Many of the wives who had a lot of problems were the ones who believed every rumor that circulated.
Before the ground war, a doctor from the Army hospital at Frankfurt called me to see if I could bring my youngest daughter, who was 3, down there for a non-emergency surgical procedure, that she was on a waiting list for. They were trying to utilize the empty operating rooms, while the hospital was preparing for potential casualties. I was having some car problems, so I asked the doctor if I could call back in a few hours and see if I could work out arrangements. The doctor wanted to do the procedure and keep my daughter overnight, so I had to find transportation to Frankfurt and someone to watch my other 3 kids overnight. A close friend told me she would pick-up my kids and keep them overnight and she lived in the housing area where the elementary school was located. She said she could take them to school and pick them up too.
A young wife of one of the soldiers in my husband’s company stopped by my house and she had a problem child young wife with her – one who was always worked up about something. I told them that I was trying to find transportation to Frankfurt and the one wife told me she could take me down to Frankfurt, but she had something going on and couldn’t pick me up the next day. The problem child wife immediately told me she could pick up my daughter and me in Frankfurt the next day. I asked her if she was sure and she told me she’d love to help. Just like that a problem wife solved my problem. I am grateful to this day.
So here’s another reality check about my stockpiling extra food and supplies, not to mention my mountain of craft and needlework supplies. I don’t have stuff stacked up like in one of those episodes of Hoarders, but invariably my closets and cupboards are full and I continually cart extra stuff and stick it in the garage. When my youngest daughter was a teenager, as the older kids left home, I turned the smallest bedroom into my craft/sewing room and the whole room was more like an overstuffed closet. My youngest daughter many times went in there and organized everything, labeled containers, and cleaned it so there were clear work surfaces while I was at work. She couldn’t stand my clutter. She did the same thing with my cupboards and pantry and she tossed canned goods past the best buy date, which I don’t do, then she organized everything. She’s also helped me clean out the garage two or three times when she’s been home visiting, so I am trying to do better at organizing.
One time, many years ago, I had an Indian meal moth situation in my kitchen and ordered moth traps from amazon. My daughter helped me clean out all of my cupboards. One really useful thing I learned watching a lot of YouTube videos was about proper food storage, which prompted me to start using the foodsaver my youngest daughter had given me years before and that I had tried once and put away. I use mylar bags with oxygen absorbers now too. No lie, yesterday she sent me a text message with info about McCormick spices in the can are at least 25 years old and she wrote, “You probably have some of these.” LOL. I don’t actually, I had read that a few years ago and found a few cans in the back of my spice cupboard and tossed them.
My youngest daughter is never going to stockpile groceries like I do – and I understand her point of view, even if I think it’s wiser to have a large stockpile of food, water and supplies. I tell my youngest daughter that she’s just like my mother, who ruthlessly purged unused stuff around our house… and lectured me that I was turning into a packrat, just like my grandmother. It skips generations in my family, I think.
And finally, here’s the thing, most emergencies you encounter are around your home and community, even most car accidents happen close to home. Your desired prepper friends, who meet your prepping standards, likely won’t be around you, but your family, friends and neighbors will. And that’s the number one reason that especially in an emergency you should do your best to work together. Several times I’ve seen flood news stories over the years from the Midwest, where there are people who lost their homes to a flood, working in a nearby town filling sandbags and trying to help other people save their homes. I remember a young man telling a reporter that there was nothing they could do about their home, so they decided to try to help people in the next town. That’s the kind of emergency response attitude, I think would serve us better than all this fuming about people who aren’t prepping like we think they should. And of course, it’s good to continue to encourage people to prepare and try to provide accurate and helpful information too.
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