Category Archives: General Interest
Some special needs preparedness considerations
While I understand the desire to be totally self-reliant and not dependent on other people, the reality is we are all a part of many systems in our modern life. Emergency preparedness for people with special medical needs and special dietary needs got me looking for more detailed information back in 2020 and despite my criticisms here and there of some online prepping advice, overall I have learned a great deal from the YouTube prepper community and the homesteading community. Although these are two separate communities, there are some overarching topics between the two and both communities push learning to be self-reliant and learning more skill sets.
Everyone’s got to have water, food, clothes, shelter, but if you or a loved one have special medical or dietary needs, emergency preparedness becomes a lot more complicated. Despite my desire to always try to be as self-reliant as possible, in 2020, I realized just how challenging life could be during an emergency situation with my husband unable to even get out of the bed hospice brought and needing assistance with everything. Many days he couldn’t even sit up in bed without help. I’m going to explain some challenges and some of the things I learned and some things I probably should have done differently.
First and foremost, many preppers talk about go bags or bug out bags, which is a bag that has emergency supplies for each member of the family in case you have to evacuate your home. There are many excellent videos and information online on things to consider packing. If you or a member of your family require special medical equipment or a member in your household has mobility problems, the basic bug out bag will not be adequate and neither will the get-home bag, preppers recommend you have in your car. Often people with special needs require a whole lot more equipment and necessities than can fit in a bag.
Before my husband was on hospice care, he had been dependent on a walker for several years and then a few years before hospice care, he had become almost completely wheelchair-bound. He could take a step or two with the walker to get him into the wheelchair some of the time, but at other times he needed assistance to get on his feet and move at all. So, even leaving the house required some prior planning. Going anywhere by myself also required prior planning, because he could not be left home alone due to dementia and mobility problems. I had to arrange grocery shopping or my doctor’s appointments so that my son could be here with my husband.
If you or someone in your home has special needs, it’s going to require thinking through some emergency preps beyond the basic bags and supplies. If the special needs involve home oxygen, medications that require refrigeration, and other special arrangements, this creates an even greater need to think through how you would handle an emergency evacuation from your home and leaving your vehicle, to set off on foot, might not even be a possibility.
Watching unfolding emergency situations closely in your area becomes imperative and you might need to contact officials in your area for advice or assistance, depending on the situation. You definitely can’t be a lone wolf type prepper if you’re dealing with special needs.
Hurricanes are a common weather emergency where I live and we dealt with one hurricane evacuation a few years before 2020. Once the weather reports put us in the cone of uncertainty, I started thinking about plans to evacuate and did not hem and haw. I coordinated with other family members and I needed my two sons to help me with my husband and the pets. We evacuated early and did not wait until the last minute.
My husband was put on home hospice care in late January 2020 and at first there were 3 nurse visits a week and 3 CNA visits a week to help with his care, but once the pandemic craziness started things changed quickly. The CNA visits stopped completely and the nurse visits went to one home visit a week and one phone visit. I felt overwhelmed with that level of caregiving required for someone completely bed-bound, but the hospice nurses were very willing to offer advice and suggestions, plus they had a 24-hour number and a nurse on call for emergencies, which I did have to call one weekend.
One day the power went off during an afternoon thunderstorm and it was off almost an hour. My initial thought was, “Oh shit, what am I going to do now,” but I took a deep breath and calmed down. My husband was on home oxygen, so I switched him to one of the portable tanks of oxygen and I began monitoring the power company’s outage app on my cell phone, to follow when power was expected to be restored. Another time, late on a Sunday night, the oxygen machine started beeping loudly and it died. I called the emergency service number on the machine and the man from the medical supply company arrived within an hour with another machine.
There was also an afternoon of bad storms, where we were under a tornado watch and I spent hours sitting by my husband’s bed pondering how on earth to get him to the main bathroom if a tornado hit, because that’s the safest space in our house. I kept looking at the window in the room and wondering what would be the best thing to do if a tornado touched down. I messaged one of my daughters, who lives in another state, to see if she had any ideas, because I was thinking perhaps if I put a blanket on the floor, I could slide him off the bed onto the floor and pull him to the bathroom using the blanket. My daughter suggested getting him on the floor and covering both of us up with a blanket and the mattress from the hospice bed. Thankfully, no tornado touched down.
The pandemic craziness brought shortages in stores, which I had never even thought about happening in America. Prior to this I did not pay close attention to how much medication we had on-hand, I just called in a refill when my medicine or my husband’s began to look low. I began paying close attention to both my medication and my husband’s medications and supplies. My doctor gives me a 90 day supply, so if you can get a 90-day supply it is important to try to keep as large of a supply of your prescription medications as possible. I also refilled my prescriptions as early as possible. I coordinated with the hospice nurses and they used FedEx to deliver my husband’s medications the next day.
With all the supplies that hospice ordered and our insurance covered, I also found these supplies online and ordered extra and paid for them myself – from chux, to wipes, to depends, etc. If you have over-the-counter medications or medical supplies you use regularly, it’s best to build up a supply now, if you haven’t already done that, as shortage situations are increasing again and the political and world situations are entering a very uncertain time.
Talk to your doctor about concerns. Talk to family members and friends about your concerns or special needs, whether it be medication, equipment, help with tasks around the house, and especially talk about and ask for advice before there’s an emergency. Make sure they know details about your situation and if you’re unsure about your planning or how to handle situations seek out help and information.
There’s even professional information on YouTube. I found a YouTube channel, Dementia Careblazers, an invaluable source of information on caring for my husband and dealing with many of the challenges, especially the year he was on hospice care. Many times when I was at my wit’s end dealing with some of my husband’s difficult dementia behaviors or bewildered with it, Dr. Natali’s videos helped me figure out how to cope with it and find strategies that helped. While this information wasn’t emergency preparedness information per se, it sure helped me understand the special needs involved with dementia.
While all the basics of emergency preparedness apply to people with special medical and dietary needs, it’s really imperative to put extra focus on the special supplies and assistance you will likely need in an emergency situation and think ahead as much as possible. With the world situation and a trucker’s protest set to begin in the US in a few days, this could lead to more shortages or disruptions in shipping and availability of supplies.
I strongly encourage anyone with special medical or dietary needs to sit down, take inventory of those supplies and make a list of items to stock up on.
Being diabetic, storing 50 lbs. of rice won’t work for me, because rice shoots my blood sugar sky-high. What I’ve been doing is working on losing weight, working to keep my blood sugar under control and while stocking up is a little more challenging, it’s not impossible. I have a lot of frozen vegetables and items I do eat stocked up. I also have canned goods and a couple years ago I started dehydrating a lot of vegetables. I hope to grow some fresh vegetables of my own this spring and summer, but if that doesn’t work out as planned, there are many local farmers nearby, farmers markets and also some farms in the area do “pick your own,” where you can go pick vegetables or fruit at their farm. I’ve picked blueberries here many times at a local farm.
Try to think about and figure out more options for your specific situation and I believe the most important one is sharing your concerns and talking them over with family and friends and don’t hesitate to seek out more information or advice, if you’re not sure what to do.
Ask lots of questions rather than sit and worry or let yourself feel overwhelmed. This is something that took me some time to get used to doing, because I like to think of myself as independent.
Filed under Emergency Preparedness, General Interest
Special needs prepping
Tomorrow I will have a blog post about some thoughts on prepping supply challenges for people with special needs. With supply shortage problems escalating, I strongly believe anyone with special medical needs or special dietary needs should really put extra effort into thinking ahead and stocking up on supplies.
In 2020, I took personal preparedness much more seriously, because my husband was placed on home hospice care in late January 2020 and completely bed-bound until he died last year. I am an insulin-dependent diabetic and have heart problems, so I put a lot more effort into prepping supplies.
If you wait for someone else to come take care of everything for you, in this shortage environment, you may find your problems way more critical much faster than you can’t find your favorite brand of a particular food item or toilet paper.
If you have special needs, I highly recommend you move your prepping efforts, of not only basic supplies, but as many of the supplies specific to your special needs, into high gear. I’ll jot down some things I learned throughout this pandemic in tomorrow’s post.
Filed under Emergency Preparedness, General Interest
Survival: The Mind-set
Here’s my 2012 follow-up to my friend’s post:
Reading Gladius Maximus’ excellent essay, “Gimme A Knife”, brought to the fore some thoughts on this subject of survival. Since getting hooked on my Kindle a few years back, I frequently download obscure free books on a range of topics(mostly history, but some literature and the occasional odd title that catches my fancy), in addition to the many I buy. To save you the inconvenience, I’ll add this off-topic comment: don’t download free public domain books from Barnes and Noble. The formatting is awful and each one starts with a message from Google, stating each book has been carefully scanned to preserve it. How each page ends up with many words containing symbols in lieu of letters, I know not, but save yourself the aggravation of reading this mess. Amazon’s public domain books far surpass Barnes and Noble’s.
Now, back to the topic, a few months ago, I read my amazon.com freebie, Willa Cather’s, My Antonia (available free here or here). This novel exemplifies the “put one’s hand to the plough” mentality that separates those who persevere and thrive and those who prefer to wallow in misery. The young male main character, Jim Burden, narrates the story of moving to early 20th century Nebraska to live with his grandparents, who were early homesteaders. Jim becomes fascinated with neighboring homesteaders, the Shimerdas, a family of Bohemian immigrants. 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.”
Despite the Shimerdas family’s hardships and suffering caused by their parents lack of survival skills, Antonia Shimerda and her siblings (thanks to neighbors and others in their rural Nebraska community), get on the path toward successfully homesteading and thriving in America.
I’ve noticed this dichotomy in how various regions of the country respond to natural disasters too. In the heartland, entire towns were swept away by flooding, yet you saw neighbors helping neighbors and I recall one reporter interviewing a young man, who was helping build a sandbag barricade. This young man, nonchalantly told the reporter that his family’s home had already been washed away one town upriver, so there was nothing they could do about that. He told the reporter they decided to come and try and help their neighbors save their homes. Yet, when natural disasters strike urban areas, the scene quickly turns into political posturing about the federal response, looting concerns, and a general spectacle of people who don’t seem well equipped to survive. To be clear this isn’t a racist comment, I’ve observed this in Long Island, New Orleans, LA, and other urban areas and I think the difference is in the sense of community that still flickers in rural America, that no longer burns in urban areas.
During Hurricane Katrina, GEN Russell Honore became one of the most prominent faces of Katrina. After Hurricane Katrina he wrote a book, aptly titled, “Survival: How A Culture Of Preparedness Can Save You And Your Family From Disasters” (here). I bought the book, thinking my husband might want to read it, because he worked for GEN Honore, earlier in their careers and my husband came home almost daily with stories (many very amusing).
When I read the first few pages, I decided to read the whole book. His book offers up many excellent remedies for improving our state and federal response to disasters, but the main take away he pushes to the forefront is that you are the main driver of you and your own family’s survival. He describes his rural upbringing working on his father’s farm and later working for pay for a neighboring dairy farmer , Grover Chustz. He describes Chustz as lacking formal education, but being highly creative, innovative and most of all striving to make sure everything on his farm was done well. Honore describes how Chustz taught him a fundamental lesson that carried him through a highly successful military career. Chustz pulled out a single wooden match and had Honore break it. Next, he pulled out two matches, put them together and had him break them, which proved harder to do. Then he pulled out four matches and Honore couldn’t break them. He explained to Honore that’s the power of a team. I believe that’s the challenge we face in America – rebuilding the power of the team. With the rise of the Tea party movement, the phrase, “Take Back America” took flight, but perhaps we ought to readjust that to rebuilding the American team.
Reality TV garbage, like Doomsday Preppers and the fixation on extreme survival skills, like Bear Grylls, marginalize the seriousness of learning practical steps to take to be prepared. In fact, stockpiling and building a fortress probably won’t increase your odds of survival anyway. The surest way to survive lies in building that team, where individual strengths and skills can lead to innovation, creative-brainstorming and more ideas on how to tackle our problems, even in the most dire situation. If you are stranded by rising water, calling Washington won’t help you, but calling your neighbors, who can pool resources sure might.
In a previous post, I mentioned federalism as the key to revitalizing America, in hopes of pulling back on some of the federal encroachment on states’ rights. And the vital building blocks to stronger states lies in rebuilding our sense of community. This isn’t about celebrity-driven national movements or the Glenn Beck type extravaganzas. It’s about concerned citizens within communities sharing concerns, ideas, pooling resources and taking charge of their own survival. Considering the fractured nature of not only American communities, but more importantly American families, this team-building effort can’t be done overnight. In fact, it could take years, but without it, we will keep making those 3 am calls to Washington and realize, no one is at home.
Gimme A Knife (Written by Gladius Maximus)
Here is my friend’s 2012 post:
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.
As for me, though, I’ll take a good knife.
Beyond prepper supplies
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.
Don’t quit!
United we stand, divided we fall.
Filed under Emergency Preparedness, General Interest
What are you willing to walk six miles for?
This morning I thought might be a good time to step away from the politics and what’s going on in the news to chat about something else. Recently I wrote about deciding to attempt raised bed gardening and that’s still in the works, but I’ve been pricing materials and downsized my plans (big dreams) quite a bit.
I’ve got an indoor space set-up, with grow lights and heat mats for indoor seed-starting. I did some plastic containers trying the “winter sowing” method, although that seems like a technique that is pointless where I live, since seed stratification, where certain seeds need a period of cold temperatures, isn’t a process that’s going to occur here. I could be wrong. However, I’ve got 5 containers sitting outside with seeds (winter sowing) already sprouted and growing.
Long ago, when I was new to living in the Deep South, I was determined to have tulips in my flower bed in the spring. I tried for years and gave up. I tried storing my bulbs in a paper bag in the fridge in the winter, before planting the bulbs, which was a technique I read about in more than one southern gardening book. That still didn’t lead to tulip success. A few years critters dug up my bulbs and ate them.
Stores do sell blooming tulips here in the springtime, so if I feel some desperate longing for tulips in the spring at some point, I will buy one pot and put it on my kitchen table to enjoy. I realized that continually spending money on tulip bulbs, that are not well-suited to my climate, is a waste, when I could spend that money on many other vegetables or flowers that thrive here.
Being flexible and willing to adjust, as things aren’t going as I hoped or dreamed, has taken me years to develop. At the same time, just quitting and giving up is not the same as learning to adjust and adapt my plans and expectations, especially when facing failure. The hardest thing for me to learn though was that even though my original dreams and big ideas may never materialize, I often realize as I fail over and over, get frustrated, buckle down and try other options, that I gain more from the failures and getting back up to try again, than if I had achieved my dreams easily.
It’s the journey and the lessons learned along the way that matter most.
I still intend to eventually build several raised beds beyond these two, but also I’ve already filled two large, deep rectangular planters with potting soil and planted kale, spinach, radishes and carrots and all but the carrots have sprouted and are growing. I also filled a large round planter that I had in the shed and planted mixed lettuce for salad greens and that’s already sprouted too. I have these on my patio, but might move the lettuce into the sunroom to prevent rabbits from mowing it down.
The high price of materials has made me rethink and readjust my gardening plans already. I bought the materials for two raised beds, but I’m also going to try some economical container gardening options this spring rather than the many raised beds I initially dreamed of.
I like options and although I wish I was as self-reliant as my mother, grandmother and great-grandmother, I am definitely not. They often didn’t have options and had to make do, under very adverse circumstances, with very little means and what they had.
Along with loving to read history and studying genealogy, I’ve always been fascinated with how ordinary people lived their everyday lives in different times. I wonder about their homes, how they cooked food, how they stayed warm, what kind of clothes they wore, etc. Before the internet, I often read books I found at the library devoted to these topics. I even found a book one time about water in everyday life throughout history, that explored all the fetching and carrying water for everyday life before modern plumbing.
The Pilgrims homes were around 800 square feet and one room. In the 1800s, the typical log cabin was between 12 to 16 feet square, one room and no windows.
Schoolchildren are often taught that President Abraham Lincoln was born in a backwoods cabin. He grew up living in poverty, but he never let that stand in his way to learning things he felt were important. Lincoln is remembered as one of our most eloquent presidents and he wrote his own most famous speeches, including The Gettysburg Address, which set forth an aspirational message of unity for an America torn apart by civil war.
Here’s a memorable quote from The Gettysburg Address:
“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us – that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they here gave the last full measure of devotion – that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain – that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”
My favorite President Lincoln story I found in a book, The Eloquent President, by Ronald C. White, Jr. White wrote about how Lincoln as a young man diligently worked to improve his mastery of the English language:
“When Lincoln moved to New Salem he made the decision to master the English language by an intense study of grammar. While living in New Salem, Lincoln heard that a farmer, John Vance, owned a copy of Samuel Kirkham’s English Grammar. Lincoln walked six miles to get it. He was twenty-three years old.” (pages 102-103)
What are you willing to walk six miles for?
Filed under American Character, American History, General Interest
Why mention Trump, when Dems are in power?
A few thoughts to add:
My blog post today is too long and rambling, yes, I know that.
My blog post, by mentioning Trump’s spin corruption along with the vast Dem corruption might sound like both-side-ism, since Trump is out of office and Biden and the Dems are in power. So, here goes with why I mentioned Trump’s spin antics too, even though the Dem corruption is so much more widespread and organized That January 6th rally which turned into mayhem at the Capitol was fed by Trump’s corrupt “Stolen Election” spin effort, as much as the Dems “Trump-Russian Collusion” hysteria was corrupt fevered spin crap to stop Trump’s inauguration and when that failed it turned into 4 years of relentless spin attacks to wreck Trump’s presidency.
I don’t believe two wrongs make a right, but unfortunately in politics we seem to keep getting the same bad choices.
Here’s the difference I see between Trump’s spin corruption and the vast Dem/liberal media/big tech spin corruption. Trump doesn’t have a vast mass media spin machine. He doesn’t have thousands of media and partisan activists and operatives who will jump into action to spin up a narrative or create massive spin distractions.
Trump had his own sideshow antics, his own personal Twitter account, and the bully pulpit of the Office of the President for 4 years. He had a willingness to thwart rules, norms and had no interest in the legality or morality of his actions. He also enthusiastically engaged in vicious name-calling spin attacks and petty smears, that were on par with the Dem/liberal media character assassins. He now has much less media spin firepower, but Dems and the liberal media machine fear him, because he’s effective and as willing to use fair means or foul to win as they are.
Trump also does not have and likely never will build a vast, corrupt media spin enterprise like the Dems, liberal media and big tech elites are running, because of his own one-man show personality and his ingrained habit of playing his own team members against each other. What Trump does have is millions of Americans who would take the Trump economy and policies over the Biden debacle and millions of Americans, who are sick to death of the Dem power grabs and infringing on Americans’ personal freedom, under the guise of public health measures to fight Covid. I am right there too.
The Dem/liberal media/big tech corruption is of a magnitude Trump could only dream of possessing and with Dems currently in control of the White House and Congress, it’s a much more pressing concern in my estimation. And since their effort is definitely aimed at targeting Trump supporters or people who won’t go along with liberal ideologies and edicts, most people on the right (myself included,) naturally look to the opposite partisan side to counter the one we disagree with.
Here’s where I part company with many on the right, I am against the use of corrupt spin information war and public corruption – whichever direction it’s coming from. It’s about more than am I for politician X or politician Y; it’s about believing in supporting the rule of law, equal protection under the law and that we operate demanding one set of standards for all of our elected officials.
My views on this blog have a very small reach, but since I pay for this WordPress account, I feel like putting my two cents in.
I hope more Americans start thinking as Americans rather than placing themselves in partisan boxes and feeling like they have to choose red pill or blue pill constantly.
Filed under General Interest, Information War
Time to expose the wholesale public corruption
Yesterday was a typical news day, as far as how the major news organizations and journalists report news on Twitter, which is where the American news narratives are generated. First it was ominous reports that in a speech the president of Ukraine said Russia is expected to invade on February 16th. Hours of repeating that followed. By late afternoon, there were reports that the Ukraine president’s speech in question appears to have been misinterpreted. And so it goes with the news media.
Russia assuredly could invade, but I sure wouldn’t trust the American news media reporting that event. It’s February 16th, so we shall see what happens. I am sitting here sipping my coffee and plan to just go about my day.
I’ve seen some prepper YouTube channel headlines run with full-blown nuclear war prep mode since the Ukraine situation has escalated, but thankfully most of the prepper headlines I saw were about basic emergency preparedness. To be clear having knowledge on nuclear preparedness isn’t a bad thing, but I prefer that topic to be covered calmly, not in reaction to news media-generated hysteria.
Events happening with our neighbors to the north have disturbed me more than Ukraine.
“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked emergency powers Monday to quell the paralyzing protests by truckers and others angry over Canada’s COVID-19 restrictions, outlining plans not only to tow away their rigs but to strike at their bank accounts and their livelihoods.” https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trudeau-protest-canada-emergency-powers-freedom-convoy/
Along with the spin word games to paint the Freedom Convoy as racist, right-wing terrorists, no stone has been left unturned trying to freeze financial support to the truckers.
So, the Canadian government can just label Freedom Convoy protesters and people who support them as terrorists and freeze their bank accounts. I can assuredly see Dem. politicians in Washington attempting a move like this too, in their zealous effort to hunt down right-wing extremists in every nook and cranny. When a government starts punishing ideological beliefs and views as the same as actions, we’re hurtling down a slippery slope.
With the recent protests in Canada, I don’t support blocking roads or bridges, but I absolutely support the right to peacefully protest and despite the mainstream media’s effort to amplify the spin narrative that the Freedom Convoy protesters are violent subversives, so far these trucker protests have been peaceful.
The latest Trudeau government response of invoking emergency powers serves as a harbinger of what’s coming to America very soon. The effort to neutralize the Freedom Convoy protesters began with a massive liberal media spin effort, in Canada, in the United States and in the Biden White House, to paint the protesters as dangerous right-wing subversives.
The following is a chronology of how we came to Trudeau invoking Canada’s emergency powers act.
Here’s a quote tweet I retweeted Feb. 10th:
Here’s a tweet from Feb. 9th with a video compilation of the American liberal media spin effort to smear the protesting truckers in Canada:
The liberal media spin effort went into semantical overdrive trying to use typical spin word game tactics. Framing trucks as a “weapon of economic warfare” wasn’t a bridge too far for the American liberal media spin crowd.
That media spin effort to sway public opinion did not deflate support for the Freedom Convoy protesters, but a former Obama DHS official made the recommendation to slash the tires of the trucks, which was mercilessly mocked on Twitter by right-wing pundits (and people who know about semi tires):
GoFundMe stopped donations to the truckers protesters. Before Trudeau’s latest crackdown effort, he had tried to seize GoFundMe donations to the trucker protesters. GoFundMe came under fierce criticism, backed down from supporting that move and announced they were returning all of the donations to the donors.
A Christian fundraising site, GiveSendGo, began taking donations for the Freedom Convoy. Trudeau tried to impede that fundraising effort too.
A Canadian judge froze these funds:
“The Ontario Superior Court of Justice issued an order halting access to funds collected via the GiveSendGo website, Canadian outlet Global News reports. Protesters had raised millions via “Freedom Convoy 2022” and “Adopt-a-Trucker” campaigns on the site, but government officials in Ontario asked the court to stop organizers from accessing and doling out those funds, a request that was granted Thursday, Ivana Yelich, a spokeswoman for the office of the Premier of Ontario, told the outlet.” https://www.npr.org/2022/02/10/1080022827/a-canadian-judge-has-frozen-access-to-donations-for-the-trucker-convoy-protest
The GiveSendGo fundraising site responded:
“Online crowd fundraising site GiveSendGo said on Twitter it will not follow a Canadian court order mandating it stop distributing funds to convoy protesters.
“Canada has absolutely ZERO jurisdiction over how we manage our funds here at GiveSendGo,” the company wrote on Twitter. “All funds for EVERY campaign on GiveSendGo flow directly to the recipients of those campaigns.” https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/11/business/givesendgo-trucker-convoy-protest/index.html
Trudeau’s latest move of invoking emergency powers allows his government to label anyone who supports the truckers as a “terrorist” and that could include anyone even making a comment on social media that they support the truckers . Then the Canadian government can freeze their bank accounts.
To add to this, there are reports that the fundraising site GiveSendGo has had its site hacked and the donor list is being “leaked” online, so all of these private donors could be labeled “terrorists” and be subject to financial reprisals. Kind of amazingly serendipitous timing how this hacking and doxxing of donor names came right in time to aid Trudeau invoking emergency powers and efforts to freeze bank accounts of people who donated money to the truckers.
American liberal media support Trudeau’s actions completely and so does the Biden White House. And just like the Democrats, liberal media and big tech elites worked together to #Resist Trump, tirelessly working to destabilize and destroy his presidency by any means necessary, these same tactics are being deployed against the Freedom Convoy.
The American media and Democrat effort to aid Justin Trudeau’s move to crush the Freedom Convoy alarms me more than Ukraine.
The same liberal media and Democrats who spun the violent rioting that accompanied the BLM protests in 2020 as “mostly peaceful” and who raised money to bail out those protesters arrested for criminal actions, including burning down a police station in Minneapolis, are now spinning truckers as “economic terrorists.”
After the January 6th US Capitol attack, there’s been a disturbing full-blown US government, FBI, liberal media and most of all Democrat political effort to label Trump supporters and Americans with right-wing political views as “white nationalists” and “domestic terrorists.” The Biden administration has pushed this labeling effort into the US military and the Pentagon has been busily tracking soldiers’ social media content, encouraging soldiers to report on each other, and an array of programs to promote liberal political views.
Trump’s ill-conceived “Stolen Election” 1-6 rally spin effort has provided Dems and their liberal media and big tech friends cover to ramp up spin attacks and paint every Trump supporter as an “extremist” or “white nationalist.” At the same time, there has been no liberal media or Dem effort to condemn or confront the violent rioting in 2020.
The Biden administration also tried to initiate having the IRS require banks to report on every bank account that has more than $600 of activity in a year, but faced steep opposition. They wanted the IRS to monitor every American’s financial transactions. This all brought back memories of the Obama-era IRS corruption, with the IRS targeting right-wing charities.
I’ve written endlessly about the spin information war for years and argued it’s a serious national security threat. All along this spin war has been much more than just political spin messaging “word” battles in the media. The media spin word games are only the most publicly visible part of vast, wholesale public corruption.
It seemed to me these YouTube preppers jumped into nuclear war worrying, by listening to the liberal media and Biden administration reporting on the situation in Ukraine. My gut reaction was I didn’t trust anything the Biden administration or liberal media says. The unified war drum hysteria seemed to signal another Dem spin effort more than actual intelligence on the ground in Ukraine. I also don’t trust right-wing media or pundits either, so I’m as much homeless with news sources I trust as I am with political parties I support these days.
I kept thinking these mostly right-wing YouTube preppers have a much closer and serious threat than Ukraine or Russia – it’s the wholesale public corruption with this political/media effort to control public opinion in America.
The spin information war corruption includes Democrat clandestine corrupt collusion with liberal media organizations and big tech elites. It also includes Trump’s impulsive and ill-conceived spin war efforts and that January 6th rally (spin effort there) that turned into an attack on the Capitol. He was trying to interfere with a Congressional constitutional duty of certifying the Electoral College vote. Throughout his entire presidency, Trump was under a massive, corrupt Dem spin attack, but he continually tried to emulate the Dem’s wholesale public corruption waged via spin war.
If you ask me about whether there was Dem corruption in the actual election – I haven’t seen any evidence yet, that would have changed the outcome, but would not be surprised if in a couple years we find out about all sorts of Dem corruption there too. So, my view is America follows the constitutional process with the information on-hand at that time, which is what happened. Biden was inaugurated. Dems tried to stop Trump’s inauguration in 2017 too – claiming Trump-Russian Collusion was so serious Trump’s inauguration should be delayed.
Exposing all of the public corruption and having one standard of justice is what we should all be demanding, not falling for the “lesser of two evils” choices we keep buying into every 4 years. Until this vast corruption is exposed, where the media spin war noise can’t cover it up, the powerful politicians, big media and big tech elites will keep operating this spin war against the American people and it will get much worse. They keep getting richer and more powerful by constantly dividing Americans into two partisan camps and pitting them against each other.
The Biden White House cheering on Trudeau’s power grabs to crush the Freedom Convoy just feels like it’s a more clear and present danger, to borrow the Tom Clancy title, than the Russians and Ukraine. Boy, the corruption in that novel is small fries compared to what’s going on now.
Ukraine is an international hive of corruption, just look at aspiring artist, Hunter Biden…
I wonder how many documents the US embassy in Kiev destroyed in the past week, prior to evacuation…
Some happy tunes
I have no idea how on earth I ended up watching YouTube videos of the 1960s Australian pop group, The Seekers, but somehow that happened a few days and I’ve been totally captivated by Judith Durham’s voice all over again.
Being a 1960 baby, those early 60s groups were before my time, but my oldest sister is 8 years older than me and she had quite a collection of 45s and albums, that she let me play – over and over.
The Seekers sound reminds me of the Mamas and the Papas. This hike back in time felt good and brought a smile to my face. Hope it does the same for you:
Filed under General Interest
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