Category Archives: Politics
Wild ride ahead
Filed under General Interest, Politics
Summer of rage likely
There was an important Supreme Court ruling this morning:
A Summer of Rage by the left just became much more likely. If the Supreme Court overturns Roe vs. Wade it’s a safe bet a good percentage of the left will lose their minds.
That’s the blog post. Have a good day.
Filed under General Interest, Politics
A few afterthoughts, as usual
Update: I had to deal with a mess of cherry tomatoes and decided to try fermenting them – got that done and now, as usual some afterthoughts. My previous blog post is intended, not to pick on the prepper channel I mentioned, but to point out something for the former military guys to think about. What happens if things do get more chaotic, as is likely if as radical Dems have promised, a Summer of Rage, and if the continuing efforts to hunt down “white supremacists” and undesirables on the right continues? It’s a long road to 2024. This isn’t about picking on this particular prepper channel, but I’m pointing out the reality of the situation of relying on liberal-owned social media platforms for building both your own platform and even bigger than that a community.
If anyone was paying attention to how many people on the right got silenced for Covid “misinformation,” if they disagreed with the politicized claptrap coming from the “experts,” well, this situation is going to intensify. I, along with other way more prominent people, like Sen. Cotton, questioned the origins of the virus and among the liberal crowd on Twitter and some NeverTrump folks, you’d have thought a crime was committed to even raise the question. There’s a full-blown effort underway to silence people on the right. I pay for my small space online here and consider myself more a voice in the wilderness. And I will say what I think, as long as I have this space. YouTube has all sorts of rules and even just randomly removes videos. This has happened to people like Bret Weinstein and there was a full-blown effort to silence Dr. Robert Malone, not just preppers and people on the right.
Anyone old enough to remember the 90s, should be aware of how some right-wing terrorist acts led to the liberal media, the Clinton administration and the FBI to insist there were right-wing militias behind every tree. That liberal political and media culture still dominates media in America. When the alt-right” liberal media hysteria began, it coincided with a massive effort to paint Trump as some evil authoritarian. That effort continues to this day and will intensify, but it’s not just Trump who will be targeted – it’s anyone who gets in the way of the liberal messaging efforts. Conservative and right-wing people who use social media platforms should never forget they’re operating on a medium owned and controlled by liberals who hate them. That’s a glaring strategic vulnerability, but also the larger point is should we all just accept America is doomed and sit around preparing for surviving the collapse? I refuse to accept that mind-set.
Filed under Emergency Preparedness, General Interest, Politics
A viewpoint I completely reject
I’ve seen numerous homesteaders and preppers mention this channel, Pinball Perparedness, and give him rave reviews, but let’s just say I find so much of the former military peeps’ advice totally off-base and counter-productive toward moving America away from civil disorder and chaos. They take military strategy and tactics from other conflicts and try to apply it to a possible SHTF in America. Sorry, the first people to be silenced and obliterated from the popular social media public spaces will be preppers and homesteaders who offer advice like this:
The interesting thing about the online preppers really into guns, ammo and blabbing about civil war and SHTF is they have built their online forums using platforms owned and run by liberals. In fact, I suspect many of them rely on the income generated from their online social media influencing efforts to survive. That’s the most glaring strategic mistake ever – to rely on people who despise you and your views, to run your online business. Trump made this glaring mistake too – he relied on Twitter and facebook, platforms run by people who hated him and wanted him destroyed, then he had no plan for when they actually did ban him. It took over a year for Trump to get back on social media – Truth Social. If you think the liberal elites are out to silence you, then building your communications capability using their platforms is a huge risk.
Why on earth would anyone be talking about poisoning people, as something to think about? I’ve watched several of this man’s videos and I don’t agree with most of his military takes, but that happens a lot when I listen to men talk about military strategy and tactics – I take apart their plans and look at each part, then I think about what they say their goal is – we can call it a “mission,” but I prefer to think in terms of ends, ways and means.
First, America isn’t Ukraine, which was invaded by a foreign army and we certainly aren’t Iraq, where American strategic planning failures for the follow-on operations, after toppling Saddam Hussein, led to a full-blown insurgency developing. Our strategic planners chose to ignore the very real cultural divides between the West and the Muslim world. America had operated trying to maintain a small footprint in the Muslim world for many years, because of this cultural clash. They decided to embrace what I call catchphrase strategy, buying into slogans rather than sound strategic thinking. We were sold a “global war on terror” and “building democracy” in places, where none of the ingredients to building a functional democracy were present. Then when our military was facing a real SHTF situation dealing with the Islamic State, we had top generals wanting to turn the entire US military into embracing COIN, when US policy failures created the situation for that insurgency to develop and grow.
Second, rather than plan for everything falling apart, I prefer to devote my energies on finding ways to pull Americans together. I refuse to spend one bit of my energy planning for civil war – ZERO. I will devote every ounce of my energy toward finding ways to avert civil disorder, lawlessness, and God forbid, civil war. I will work as hard as I can to help as many people as I can and to try to pull Americans toward being kind to each other and being messengers of hope and offering a helping hand.
We are still the United States of America, even though most of us see the disturbing divides that have deepened due to the 24/7 spin information war blowing hot air onto every little spark of discord (real and imagined), as one incident after another goes viral and spreads across social media and news media.
Like I wrote in 2015 – “Brilliant geopolitics experts, almost to a man, say “that’s the way it’s always been and I have seen nothing in history to indicate it can ever change.” Of course, if you accept it can’t change, very few people will even bother trying to change it.” Sorry, no disrespect intended toward this man’s service or expertise, but I reject this way of thinking completely, because that’s why nothing ever changes.
I’m not a feminist and reject modern feminism as a leftist ideology meant to undermine and erode western democracies, but in the real world men and women think very differently. I prefer to use military strategic concepts, not guns and violence, toward avoiding a collapse of the system (civil war or anarchy). I believe we should be investing more energy into the oath we swore – to protect and defend The Constitution, rather than already giving up on America, as past the point of no return.
And for the record, I pay for my blog at WordPress and I have never monetized my blog. I have planned for years what happens if (when) efforts are made to silence me – long before Trump was even in the American political arena, because I lived through an effort in 1998.
Filed under Emergency Preparedness, General Interest, Politics
More spin war garbage dumping again
This post is going to be about politics and current events. The Biden administration tried out some new messaging yesterday by sending a letter to oil execs. urging them to be patriotic and refine more oil. So, the White House messaging moved from “Putin’s inflation” to shifting blame to the oil executives for the high gas prices. This messaging is all a sham, because Biden bought into the far-left green energy policies and tactics long ago. His first day in office he signed an executive order freezing the Keystone pipeline and setting in place a war against fossil fuel. The current situation with gas prices is a direct result of Biden’s war against fossil fuel. The letter to oil executives was nothing more than political theater.
However, the messaging gimmick provides a big clue as to how this White House is going to try to con the American people, by blame-shifting and invoking “patriotism.” Expect more messaging from this White House blabbing about “patriotism.” What will be hilarious to me is if they get so desperate that they start replacing all their identity politics flags and start running around waving the American flag. Wouldn’t that be ironic…
The Biden administration invoked the Defense Authorization Act for the baby formula shortage and I expect more power grabs like that to come. President Trump opened the door for using the Defense Authorization Act dealing with Covid and Biden is now taking that up a notch. A couple days ago there was Twitter buzz that the Biden White House might invoke the Defense Authorization Act with oil production – this would be the Biden administration seizing control over American oil companies, using this crisis as cover. The thing about using the Defense Authorization Act and blabbing about “patriotism” is the US military is still one of the last remaining institutions that most Americans trust and the optics of the US military dealing with a crisis sells that “patriotic” messaging. Underneath these cheap messaging gimmicks are determined, ruthless partisans trying to seize as much power as they can.
I believe the Biden White House and many Democrats would embrace civil unrest or some sort of situation they can hype to use as cover for seizing more control. Since the Obama years, the goal has been to try to federalize policing and take away that power from states and local communities (the “defund the police” effort in 2020, using the George Floyd case was a massive leap forward in that goal of federalizing policing in America.)
The serious part of all of the White House’s actions is they’re trying to make cheap power grabs, while targeting other people as the “bad people” causing all of these problems, that Biden’s own energy policies and failure to respond quickly have compounded.
This pitting Americans against each other has become the easy route for decades with the Democrats’ spin information war, but since Trump it’s escalated. There are also plenty of rabid people on the right selling division and some on the right have embraced “civil divorce,” which anyone seeing how divorces go knows “civil divorces” are the rare exception. Most divorces leave a lot of carnage to clean up or people walk away from them feeling badly battered, especially children.
Yes, Trump “fought back,” but he fought back by embracing the same corrupt spin information war tactics of the Democrats and their liberal media friends. Trump winning Twitter spin battles or jetting around the country staging big rallies to incite the right isn’t a way to unite America or handle the major crises we’re facing now. That road is a road many on the right still cheer. My take on a Trump presidency in 2024 is that Trump a second time around, after J-6 and watching the mixed bag of looney-tunes candidates Trump has endorsed, is be careful what you wish for. There won’t be any Pence or calmer heads in a second Trump presidency – it will be kooky flamethrowers, who are good at stroking Trump’s ego. A whole lot of people on the right are heavily invested in the Trump cult of personality, as much as people on the left were invested in the Obama cult of personality.
Since 1998, I’ve been warning about the dangers of this corrupt spin information war. Having America deeply divided may work to secure short-term partisan political gains, but it will eventually make America ungovernable and lead to a country with raging factions (we might be at this point already,) who rush online to rant and rave or jump into action taking to the streets, reacting to some hot news that they don’t even have the facts about yet. The American people and all of our American institutions are being demolished the longer this spin war drags on. America dividing to the point of civil conflict would doom all of us – there will be no winners there. It would be the collapse of the world’s remaining superpower.
While most people on the right would happily vote for Trump right now, rather than have Biden or Harris as president, this post isn’t about Biden vs. Trump – it’s about America writ large. Partisan politics can’t save America – only the American people can do that. Waving Trump flags won’t save America and getting all invested in the partisan cult of personality politics won’t unite America or even help Americans be able to create some sense of unity in their own family or community (unless your entire family or community is totally red or totally blue).
The default reaction on the right is for the men to start reacting out of fear, blustering about “they aren’t taking my guns,” and urge people on the right to go buy more guns and ammo. President Obama was the most effective gun salesman in America.
On the left, the default reaction is to blame the bad people – Trump and/or The Deplorables. There have been plenty of prominent Dems who have tweeted out their real thoughts since 2020 and a former Clinton cabinet level official once tweeted about putting the deplorables, who refused to get the jab, in camps. The level of political rancor and partisan hatred online has been shocking at times.
It’s a tall order since we’ve all been steeped in this spin information war ecosystem for so long, but more Americans are going to have to stop thinking like partisans and start thinking like Americans. If we stand any chance of pulling our country together and weathering the crises barreling our way, we can’t let our country split into raging factions and become ungovernable.
I first wrote about the spin information war in 1998 on the Excite message boards and explained how it worked – and a whole lot of effort went into silencing me. I started this blog many years after that, in 2012. My goal has always been to defeat the spin information war, expose wholesale public corruption, and work to unite Americans into believing in One American Team again. That remains my goal.
The photo at the top is of a notebook I started in my early teens – collecting quotations. I still have that notebook and in my next post I want to write about how that notebook came about and more importantly about how destructive the Us vs. Them way of thinking is. America is about the potential of individuals and we need to start thinking about getting to know individuals and not trying to stick people in partisan boxes. Freeing ourselves of the partisan blinders can help free us of the power of the spin information war to control us. The spin information war (on both sides) is about controlling, not only the media narratives, it’s about controlling public opinion by pitting factions against each other.
Filed under General Interest, Politics
A repost of a 2015 blog post
I want to write this post, which assuredly most people will dismiss out of hand. This is my explanation of why I think Peace is possible and the fall of civilizations remedied. I’ve been an adherent of a “God does not give us impossible missions belief” my entire life. I believe God gave us FREE WILL. We can choose to do or not to do, to soar or to sit on our butts whining that life isn’t fair and wait for others to do for us. We can choose to live in FEAR or we can dare to stand up and say, “I don’t care if that’s the way it’s always been, I am going to think for myself and see if I can think, invent, build something better.”
As far as I can tell, the only human unit that is vital is the husband/wife combo, because without them reproducing , the human race will perish. For a child to survive, requires both the mother and father. Of course, living in groups – the “it takes a village” idea, definitely makes it much easier for humans to flourish. So, most people live in groups.
I like to analyze systems, even though I have had no formal training to do this. One of my sons works for a large aircraft manufacturer as a software engineer. He tells me about his travels to go diagnose and fix problems for customers, whose planes have something not working right.
Now, imagine if their planes had some fatal flaw where, say, inexplicably their most popular deluxe model of planes started suffering engine failure after hitting around the 20,000 mile mark. The company would not accept the 20,000 mile failure of their planes nor would they want to have to rebuild engines, over and over or replace the ones that died. They would send someone to do a systems analysis and try to detect what design flaws or equipment failure are leading to this problem.
I never accepted either the “belief” that civilizations are doomed to this endless “rise and fall” cycle, nor do I wander off into utopian pipe dreams. My observation is that civilizations are built and deconstructed by man, just like planes – they are a man-made invention. We find on earth some societies that remained content to settle for living in small groups and fighting to survive at bare subsistence level. Others seek to live in a fancier deluxe model grouping, thus the most advanced civilizations are built to please those customers. These deluxe model civilizations rely on several complex sub-systems to operate.
My mother used to get frustrated with my unwillingness to accept answers that began with, “that’s the way it’s always been”. Accepting that premise dooms us to wasting a lot of, not only material wealth, but more importantly human lives and potential (often large portions of an entire generation), because lots of people perish when we have multiple sub-set systems failures.
So, far we’ve got most of the best geopolitical systems analysts (world leaders, scholars, statesmen, soldiers) not working on finding ways to fix the multiple, simultaneous, sub-system failures that lead to a collapse of a civilization. They study the various sub-set systems and do some disparate diagnostics, then shrug and say, that’s just how civilizations are – “they rise and they fall”. Some try to design quick-fix patches. Some recoil in fear and are content to be passive spectators to the collapse and murmur, “It’s always been that way”. Brilliant geopolitics experts, almost to a man, say “that’s the way it’s always been and I have seen nothing in history to indicate it can ever change.” Of course, if you accept it can’t change, very few people will even bother trying to change it.
In fact, they invariably insist that when one of those sub-set systems, one intended to safeguard the entire system, runs amok and helps destroy most of the frame and body of the entire civilization, we’re just supposed to accept that these most complex advanced civilizations have some fatal flaw – it’s either that’s how God made the world, accept it, quit being a daydreamer and shut up about “utopias”.
I refuse to accept that belief. I believe that if we build it, we can always improve on the design and come up with better sub-systems to build a newer, better performing model. If your best systems analysts don’t ever even really try to find the design flaws and fix them, but instead wander off, halfheartedly fixing, only bits and pieces of some of the sub-system design flaws, of course the system will continue to reach the point where these sub-systems start falling apart and down the chute into the dustbin of history goes all that work that went into it. In the process usually many, many people perish, because most of these sub-set failures happen in midair, resulting in spectacular crashes, although some do implode and burn slowly on the runway too, so to speak. Cleaning up the wreckage from civilizational collapses can take centuries, sometimes those people that survive don’t even bother, they wander off into the wilderness.
The known history of man provides us a great deal of information to study the various sub-sets, how they work together, which models work better and the flaws in the various systems. For instance, we know that in governmental systems there are good kings and bad kings, dependent on one thing – the king. For that system to work long term, relies on the accident of birth and hoping the genetic lottery of life works favorably for your kingdom, because all it takes to wreck a good kingdom is one bad king.
Others, say, in America, sat down and studied history and analyzed government systems throughout history and tried to select components that would provide a safeguard against the one bad king, as they had just got done ditching one of those bad draws in the genetic pool kind of kings. In America, some men gathered together and said, even though no one in the known history of man has tried this first, we are FREE to come up with a better system. We started with the premise that ALL MEN ARE FREE and constructed a governmental system that we thought would best safeguard individual freedom. Many people in the world get sick of hearing Americans blabber on about our Constitution. Lots of countries have constitutions, but none of them starts with the bedrock BELIEFS that ALL MEN ARE CREATED EQUAL and ALL MEN ARE FREE.
In Iraq and Afghanistan, we tried to transplant democracy, but democracy isn’t what leads to a better life for people; FREEDOM does. A Constitution is just a piece of paper. Napoleon was one of the world’s premiere constitution writers in history. As soon as Napoleon conquered a place, he wrote another constitution for those conquered people to obey. Selecting a good governmental system, in my opinion, is the most important sub-system in a group’s organizational structure, because that sub-system determines how well any other component sub-systems you design will work. We shouldn’t be telling the world that democracy makes us different, we should teach the world that the BELIEF IN INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM does.
Many other governmental systems work, and all governments are subject to engine failure (where America is at now) and a host of other sub-system failures, because any government relies on many other complex sub-systems to work too, just as civilizations do. Being willing to do the diagnostics and taking the corrective actions to prevent a total breakdown determines the fate of more complex groups, who rely on a more advanced organizational structure than a simple group, like a tribe or religious commune.
My son recently lamented to me that he doesn’t understand why some, way more experienced, software engineers he knows settle for creating sort of patches to fix problems, instead of trying to figure out what’s causing the problem to occur in the first place and fix that. He asked why people are like that and I told him, that in my opinion, lots of people prefer to take the easiest road – believe me, growing up in PA, our pothole-patched roads attest to that. Because throwing a patch on is easier than repairing the entire road. And I should know, because my father built roads for a living.
Filed under Food for Thought, General Interest, Politics
Collapse of the system, you say
I haven’t felt well today, so I’ve sat on the computer too much, instead of getting work done around my house. I’ve been thinking a lot as I read more news than I’ve done in a while and checked in on Twitter and YouTube, browsing around. What I’ve been thinking about is something I’ve been thinking about for over 20 years and it’s also something I’ve written about a whole lot on this blog. If you cringed and thought, “Oh, no, she’s going to ramble on about about the spin information war again,” you guessed wrong. What I’ve been thinking about is bigger than that and it’s more about how can we (meaning the American people) prevent a total collapse of the system, which is comprised of several major systems, when our leaders are making epically bad decisions that will lead to mayhem and disaster?
For decades I’ve read and listened to a whole lot of right-wing thinkers, pundits and read a lot about political issues in America (along with a lot of other topics – I just have always read a lot). I have also read a lot of stuff and listened to a lot of progressives, Democrats and other thought leaders on the left.
Being a right-winger myself, I used to buy into many of the “buzzword” fearmongering that fuels the right-wing political sphere and this “collapsing the system” idea is one of those phrases that Glenn Beck and other right-wing pundits have harped on (and hyped for ratings) for years Since it sure looks to me we likely are heading full-speed ahead toward a collapse of several vital systems, I was thinking about a blog post I wrote back in 2015: If we build it; we can fix it
The left-wing ideologies (and their strategies) invariably have serious glaring gaps in them – their ways and means in their strategic thinking and planning never result in their pie-in-the-sky ends. For some reason people on the right have this fear of leftist ideology, as if it’s omnipotent and that there are mastermind strategists plotting all of this stuff, when in reality, I believe the thought leaders and rich and powerful among the left are glaringly lacking in sound strategic thinking and planning – your ways and means should work to achieve your ends. Unfortunately, the leftist pipedreams aren’t attainable, because they defy human nature and more importantly their ways and means lead only to misery and suffering for millions of people – and mayhem (“defund the police,” anyone.)
The most important thing is for people not to give up on America or believe that we’re doomed, because truly that will seal our fate. I believe we have enough smart, honorable, decent, hard-working people still left in America, that we don’t have to accept defeat or cower in fear. Things could get very bad, but what I wrote in 2015 is true – we shouldn’t quit before trying to do every last thing we can to save our republic. As long as we are free, we can work together in small groups to help each other, we can network with others across America and share information, advice and lend a helping hand, where we can.
We don’t have to be sitting ducks while our corrupt and clueless leaders fail to act. It’s going to take millions of Americans working hard to pull our country together, while the elites (not only on the left, there are plenty on the right too) flounder about, try to spin away the growing chaos, point fingers at each other and lie, lie, lie.
It’s going to take a whole lot of grassroots effort – not wasting time on political rallies or marches or bs like that, but actually working to find real help for people – trying to help source vital goods, trying to keep Americans fed, trying to keep Americans finding positive solutions, to keep America up and running.
The last thing we need is a lot of flame-throwing and raging fools – there are enough of those in Washington and the media. We are going to have to work together and pull as many like-minded people together toward, not just pointing out all of the problems and shortages, but on finding ways to locally help each other, then expanding it to working on networking with other Americans across the country. We need to stay focused on solutions – not fear, panic, worrying and worst of all we can’t let defeatism take hold of one iota of our spirit. Letting defeatism into your mind is fatal.
Politicians only dream up expensive government programs that don’t work. To get through what’s headed our way, I think it’s going to take all of us to start working on self-empowerment. Work to take care of yourself and your own family, then, if you can, try to start helping others, rather than sitting around bitching about Biden and our feckless leaders in Washington.
These are my thoughts.
I’m going to repost that 2015 blog post.
Filed under General Interest, Politics
The new normal is a blast…
Okay, this is political, but this lady’s tweet is spot on for where we’re at. First it was a baby formula shortage that Biden used the Defense Authorization Act to fly in baby formula from Europe… now there’s a tampon shortage. One can only wonder how the Biden administration will handle this shortage…
Here’s a true story from this week. I got sick a few days ago. When I arrived at my doctor’s office, I realized I didn’t have any face masks in my car or purse. So, I called my doctor’s office and was put on hold, as I drove to a nearby CVS to buy a face mask. When the receptionist finally answered my call, I explained what happened and told her I would be a few minutes late. My primary care doctor prescribed antibiotics. I get my prescriptions filled on a nearby military post, where the Refill Pharmacy is located on one side of the snack bar and not at the military hospital pharmacy. Prescriptions from off-post doctors go through the Refill Pharmacy – that’s been a shuffling around over the years too with military retirees and their families – using on-post military doctors, then they wanted us to use civilian primary care providers, then it was some care went back to military providers.
That refill pharmacy went through several procedures since 2020, even going to setting up some makeshift drive-through pharmacy operation in the parking lot, which was chaotic. I felt sorry for the soldiers having to run in and out the building in the summertime heat, to handle each prescription. When they went back to allowing people to go inside to get their prescriptions, it’s been a face mask required location, even though it’s located in the snack bar, where soldiers and their families sit mask-free and eat. The refill pharmacy has also had socially-distanced seating in their corner of the snack bar until recently, but the mandatory face mask rule is still in place.
The pharmacists pull down their masks frequently and all along I’ve wondered why they’re doing all of this face mask drama in an open snack bar, where other people aren’t wearing masks. It’s all bureaucratic bs. at this point.
Unfortunately, so many people, especially medical people and military top brass, will cling to this ridiculous Covid theater for the foreseeable future. I remember how long they kept in place all sorts of pointless post 9/11 security measures, that made no sense whatsoever, especially at airports and on military installations. Anyone expecting the federal government to solve anything is delusional, I think.
The elastic ear loop of my disposable mask tore as I was walking toward the refill pharmacy and I was standing there tying the elastic around a corner of the flimsy mask, hoping it would hold long enough for me to get my prescription filled.
As I waited the lady in the Panda Express kept apologizing to customers, telling them she was sorry, but they were closing at 2:30 pm, because there were only two of them working and she said they would be closing at 2:30 for the next few days. That’s what life is like – endless, stupid, mindless rules and nothing operates like it used to.
Filed under General Interest, Politics
Those who live in ivory towers
Sorry, this turned into a long rant, but here it is. I watched this video this morning, after working in my container garden a couple hours. I’ve watched Doug and Stacy videos for quite a while, even though I have no desire to live off-grid and I live in a residential area with a backyard space to garden. I learn a lot from many of the online homesteaders, just like I learn a lot from online gardeners, preppers, frugal-living people, and needleworkers. Doug was trying to avoid the politics in this video and urging people to get up and start doing now, before the economic crisis worsens. He’s absolutely right. Here’s the video and then I’m going to make some comments about the politics:
In regards to the politics, while certainly I believe the Biden administration policies have been disastrous for the American economy and I also have believed since the Obama years, that there’s a multi-faceted culture war raging that encompasses not only hot button issues like race and gender politics, but also the climate change activism and world-wide economic changes. Among the far-left there’s been a belief in “collapsing the system” to force cultural, political, and economic transformation in America since probably as far back as the late 1960s-early 1970s.
None of the things President Obama talked about were new ideas among the radical left, even though American right-wing media became obsessed with generating hysteria, fear and plenty of idiotic Obama conspiracy theories (that birther crap was nuts – Obama’s mother was an American citizen, so that gave her child a right to American citizenship, wherever he was born). Many of these right-wing talkers’ millions of loyal groupies along with the right-wing pundit celebrity culture is as destructive as the Oprah/TV talk show culture was to American culture, where Americans were conditioned to airing all of their most private dirty laundry in public and betraying their closest family members on stage, all under the guise of sharing pain and family problems.
So right now, right-wing media and social media content creators gravitate toward hyping a lot of “news” that is little more than unsubstantiated innuendo and conspiracy theories, while other like-minded people in right-wing media and social media repeat all of this stuff without any independent verification whatsoever. It’s a vicious information cycle, where people add their own bits and takes to it, just like the game of telephone with kids sitting in a circle and whispering something to each other, around the circle. What the last kid hears is nothing like what the first kid whispered.
Absolutely, President Obama had a long history of supporting radical leftist ideologies and within his administration were many people I considered far-left kooks and a few were even hardline communists, but even more of them were mainly corrupt politicians. President Biden has many of the same people in his inner-circle and I don’t expect any changes in policy direction from this White House. They’re committed to the same fundamental transformation as I’ve heard blabbed about since the 1970s, although the latest iteration is the “great reset.” It’s the same radical leftist ideology repackaged with new lingo.
Trump and his administration also contained many corrupt charlatans, corrupt politicians and kooks too. Ditto that for the GOP. That’s why I don’t expect a Republican win this fall or in 2024 to create some miraculous change, unless enough Americans start facing the out-of-control corruption (and spending) in our politics and in our culture. That starts with ourselves – we’ve got to stop blaming other people for everything that’s going wrong and start becoming more committed to changing ourselves and working on improving our own lives.
What I want to talk about is thinking about how much of your energy and time you’re choosing to invest in things you can change and have the power to control in your own life vs. how much time and energy you’re choosing to invest in fear, panic, anger or rage at daily political hot air and online-fueled hysteria?
I see several prepper channels pop up in my YouTube feed, where they cover the political happenings several times a day, claiming they have inside sources, and I keep wondering how much time they have to work at their own preparedness efforts with their almost constant social media presence?
I don’t have time to read as much news, reports and follow the spin war garbage as I did when I spent many hours sitting beside my husband’s hospice bed every day and where my daily chores involved being inside the house almost all of the time, carrying a baby monitor with me, so I could hear him if he needed anything and to make sure he was okay. His 13-month hospice ordeal was horrific for him (it wasn’t a picnic for me either) – he was completely bed-bound. I had to help him sit up on days where he wasn’t strong enough to do that and other days it was turning him and using pillows to rotate his position every couple hours to avoid pressure sores. He was a very independent person and hated every minute being trapped in that bed, but he kept fighting to pull himself up to a sitting position by himself and he kept trying to eat to get stronger. I would have given up the fight within days, but he fought to the last moments.
I write a lot about the truth and here’s a home-truth for myself – I am not in good health and in many serious crisis situations the odds are stacked against me surviving. I have no delusions about being the last person standing in a crisis, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to sit around and do nothing to prepare or to try to better my odds. I have children and grandchildren. I want to make sure they survive.
I’ve been working on losing weight, working on trying to become more physically fit, but as I’ve mentioned before I’m an insulin-dependent diabetic with heart problems, which makes me very dependent on our medical supply chain and even my insulin has to be refrigerated. My doctor has lowered my insulin dosage twice since I started losing some weight and I am hoping I can continue on this path of losing weight, controlling my blood sugar, and lowering my reliance on insulin. Everyone can work a little bit at a time toward becoming more self-sustainable and self-reliant.
There are millions of people in America who have various medical needs and disabilities, which require a heavy dependence on our medical supply chain and modern technology. If you are reliant on medications or medical supplies, it’s prudent to try to increase the amount of medication and supplies you have on hand to create a buffer in case of shortages. Often, doctors, medical insurance and costs can limit how much medication you can have on hand.
There are probably even more Americans who live in delusion-land about the economic crisis that’s already beginning to impact America and who believe there’s not a serious economic “hurricane” headed our way. They’re like the people at the beach the day before a hurricane touches land, where the surf is getting choppy and rough, but hey the sun’s shining, so everything’s fine…
America likely won’t face the same levels of devastation as some countries like Sri Lanka or Turkey, where Sri Lanka has food riots and the Turkish economy is collapsing, but we’re not immune from having our self-indulgent consumer culture upended. America is a land with immense resources, even though we’ve outsourced so much of manufacturing and become reliant on cheap foreign imports. We might be able to avoid some of the horrific devastation many countries will be facing as this global economic crisis and food shortage crisis hit. However, the rainbows and sunshine, head-in-the-clouds folks will probably be in total panic mode when they realize they should have prepared and that the political leaders they trusted, were blowing smoke up their you know what
If you wonder how on earth anyone can still believe everything is going great and that we’re not headed toward a serious economic crisis, well, this came from the White House press secretary a few days ago:
It’s not until more and more Americans take off the partisan political blinders and realize Washington and our political class (across the aisle) are the problem and not the solutions, that any meaningful political change will happen in America. It’s not a matter of “red” America or “blue” America winning, it’s about when the American people start talking to their neighbors, friends and each other and working together to survive the coming crises, that perhaps our country can start moving in another direction.
I hope more people can put aside anger, rage, reacting to media-generated hysteria and move toward trusting in ourselves, each other and in working hard every day to be stronger, better-prepared, more resilient. and most of all I hope we can all work hard on being more grateful for the many blessings living in America has afforded us. I hope we can be more gracious to each other, even the people who hold differing views.
How about each day find a few things in your own life and home that you can do to improve you and your family’s quality of life and to become more self-sustainable. Instead of spending hours enraged about the latest hysterical topic social media is buzzing about or about shortage situations all over America or trying to follow every empty store shelf report, perhaps put that energy toward something positive in your own life.
The reality is the shortage situation is likely to get worse and that means everyone will need to have a personal strategy – whether it’s adequate food storage to buffer the impact, growing more of their own food, or a localized information and food supply chain to deal with that. It doesn’t do me any good to get worked up about empty shelf videos of grocery stores in CA or all around America, when I live in GA. It also is wasted energy. I want to shop less often and make less trips to the store, not run around every day in a panic looking for this item or that item. My first thought when I realize I am out of an item is to think, “Do I have something else in my house that will work?”
My little container garden isn’t going to provide enough produce for me to live on, but this morning I picked more kale to dehydrate (third kale harvest from this kale) and I can probably get one more harvest from that before it bolts. I have more kale growing. I’ve picked enough cherry tomatoes for salads in the past couple weeks and frozen two quart-size bags. I’ve picked green beans twice from five grow bags with green beans – enough for meals, cucumbers, squash, onions and I’ve been dehydrating sweet basil and lemon basil this week. I intend to work on gardening year-round again (zone 8b that is possible) and planting more vegetables in my backyard space. I bought blueberry and blackberry bushes and I’ve got one raspberry. I bought a grape vine and strawberries. It’s a small start at gardening, but I’ll probably have enough cucumbers, bell peppers and cherry tomatoes to give some to neighbors. My squash looked great until the squash vine borers arrived and now it’s a battle. I replanted zucchini. I’ve been planning what I’m going to plant in late-July and August for fall vegetables.
I’d rather be working on things I can change, not spending days on end worrying or fuming about politics and things that I can’t change. More people are waking up to the reality of the economic hurricane heading our way, but assuredly there will be some fools (like liberal pundits on Twitter) still floundering about wondering why there aren’t minimum wage delivery people to cart their groceries to their front door in this crisis, like back in 2020, when their cushy jobs allowed them to work from home. In fact, many of the liberal elites might be waking up to realizing that they no longer have that cushy job at all. The reality of a serious economic and food shortage crisis is inescapable, even for those who live in ivory towers.
Filed under Culture Wars, Emergency Preparedness, General Interest, Politics
Look for goodness, even in bad times
This is a bit of a political post and then some more thoughts on dealing with people who might come asking for help. Here’s a financial interview from this morning:
More bad economic news and predictions here, so lots of people grumble about the high cost of food and gas, but they haven’t made lifestyles changes to try to position themselves better to weather a serious economic crisis.
Yesterday I saw this speech by JP Morgan Chase & Co, CEO Jamie Dimon from June 1st, where he says we’re facing an economic hurricane and we don’t know yet whether it will be a minor one or a superstorm Sandy or Andrew:
I’m here to tell you that even minor hurricanes can cause a lot of destruction and kill people, because by their nature hurricanes bring high winds, flooding and spawn tornados. In economic terms, even high inflation can wipe out many businesses or push families living with very limited means beyond being able to stay afloat.
The political question for Democrats will be whether they continue to cave to the far-left and the global zealots or some start pushing back against the green energy zealots’ war against American fossil fuel. However, at this point, it seems that any internal uprising in the Democratic Party against the far-left will be met with fierce resistance and seems unlikely to succeed.
Dangerous economic storm clouds aren’t in the distance, they’re moving in fast and I suspect President Biden and the green energy zealots aren’t likely to change course to steer America toward safer ground.
Everyone will end up having to face the reality of runaway inflation caused by soaring diesel fuel prices, shortages, and more shipping disruptions. The single best thing anyone can do, besides having extra food and water stored is to get your personal finances in order. Americans are even more financially unprepared for hard times then they are with being prepared with basic supplies for emergencies, so this will affect all of us, even people who did prepare.
I believe in being nice to people and trying to help people, but one thing I learned decades ago with doing volunteer work (trying to help people) is the people who ask for help constantly are predominantly the people who create financial chaos in their lives, don’t think ahead and live life without any goals or concerns for preparing for a rainy day.
My post about helping people the other day is how I feel. I try to help people, when I can.
Yes, I understand that people who aren’t prepared vastly outnumber people who do prepare and that means those who prepare will need to prioritize who they choose to help, how much they help and be aware of their own safety. What bothers me is sitting around wasting time dreaming up scenarios and wasting time and energy thinking about which family members or people you know will be leeches and which ones you’re not going to help. To me that energy and time could be better spent doing more to prepare and do positive things that need doing in my own home and life. I also don’t get angry at people who don’t heed my advice about preparedness. Anger gets me nowhere and it’s not going to motivate them to get busy on being more prepared or to listen to me.
I can find dozens of things that need to be done around my house every single day. I can also find dozens of things I could be working on to become better prepared and especially better organized. Worrying about who I’m going to help and what I’m going to say doesn’t require planning. I learned how to say, “No, I’m sorry I can’t help,” years ago. I’m selective with charities I donate money to. I am selective about handing out money to people collecting money for people they know who are in need. This doesn’t take planning for me – I just think about the situation and decide whether I choose to donate or not. It’s the same with people with sad luck stories – even family. I’ve got limits, just like I think most people do.
I also believe in self defense – enough said. It’s always a good idea to practice situational awareness and nowadays that requires getting your eyes unglued from electronic devices and paying attention to what’s going on around you. Years ago, as the cell phone addiction problem grew I said America could be taken over and millions of people would be totally unaware unless they saw something about it on their cell phones. Watching what’s going on around you is the single most important skill to develop, which can help you assess a situation and avoid danger. Most of this is just common sense everyday life stuff and not specific to emergency preparedness.
A skill I’ve had to work on and it’s taken me a lot more time to learn is how to be a better listener and not rush to judgment about people with problems. I’ve found many times that making small efforts to help people or encourage them often does more than lecturing people or preaching at them about what all I think they should have done or need to do now. Offering to help someone learn to do something or offering a helping hand up requires forming a relationship and trust. I’ve found that If I can find a bit of common ground, where I’m talking to someone, not down to them, it can often create a dramatic change, where we can find ways to work together.
On a brighter note, I’ve had lots of experiences where total strangers extended kindness and did nice things for me. It’s important to see goodness in the world and not focus solely on the doom and gloom – especially in very bad times. Don’t forget how to smile and find joy in life.
Filed under Emergency Preparedness, General Interest, Politics
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