Once a month I have lunch with some ladies I used to work with at Walmart. We’re in our 60s and 70s and one lady is over 80. We were sitting in a restaurant yesterday when the FEMA emergency alert test occurred. Phones went off and for a few seconds people looked at their phones. One lady in my group had heard (and bought into) right-wing conspiracy chatter, so she was a a bit jumpy and she had turned off her phone. Another lady hadn’t heard anything about it, because she has a lot of other things going on in her life and doesn’t pay much attention to the news or spend time online. The others were aware of the test, but were not concerned at all. We quickly went to talking about other topics and enjoyed our lunch after the test.
Last night I saw a nice older homesteader lady’s video from yesterday morning – she, like my friend, was turning off her and her husband’s cell phones and unplugging her computer. We all have enough worries, especially with the inflation that’s causing many people, especially many elderly people, to struggle to make ends meet, that we don’t need more worries.
For people on the right, it’s very easy to see the far-left crazy and the extremism, in whatever tangent of their “intersectionality” causes that hits us, from the green crazies chaining themselves to trees or gluing themselves to artwork in museums and pavement, to all the gender insanity, to women raging about #MeToo, or BLM’s defund the police, and the list goes on. However, I don’t think most people on the right are willing to admit that a whole lot of the political stuff right-wing pundits and people on social media get worked up about are increasingly just as crazy as the far-left craziness.
I was irritated that my friend was worried about an emergency alert system test, because emergency alerts are intended to give people advance warning in emergencies and save lives. The lesson from Maui wasn’t the government used space lasers or something to start the fires, which I saw a video of Steve Bannon spreading that craziness. It was a story about some government failures and bad decisions, including not sounding emergency alarms. Getting people alarmed and conditioning them to not listen to FEMA emergency alerts or to try to find ways not to receive them is craziness. If there was a serious emergency – we should want everyone to pay attention to emergency alerts.
A whole lot of the people who spread these conspiracy theories, do it because they get a whole lot of clicks from it and make money off of spreading conspiracy theory garbage, that harms other people. Yes, these conspiracy theories inflict harm and they also fuel more divides in our country. The big name people who spread this stuff know these conspiracy theories are garbage and they deliberately want to get people riled up, in fact, they’re counting on it – because they’re making money and advancing political agendas off of this. If someone always wants you to get angry and upset, that person is not operating in a way that is good for you or good for our country. People who are always fired up and “fighting mad” aren’t really making sound decisions.
The right has always been big on preaching responsibility and accountability, so as this latest right-wing conspiracy theory now gets memory-holed and brushed aside, perhaps the people who race to get online and spread these wild conspiracy theories should own up to that they fell for another conspiracy theory and not only got worked up themselves, but rushed online to get other people worked up too.
If you take the attitude, well this time it wasn’t true, but you know how our government can’t be trusted on anything, well that’s also a refusal to admit you fell for another conspiracy theory. Each time you buy into crazy stuff and refuse to admit it, the next time you’re likely to buy into even crazier stuff.
What probably won’t happen is most people who bought into this conspiracy theory won’t look at who all they listened to online or in-person, that were selling them the FEMA conspiracy theories, and stop listening to those people or at least be more skeptical about the information those people put out.
The wisest thing would be to start treating all these online hysterical hot takes conspiracy theories like you do scammers calling you on your phone or getting scamming emails – don’t buy into any of it and start looking for information. A lot of of the big name people who spread conspiracy theories operate just like scammers – they try to throw you off balance and get you alarmed – like, “You owe the IRS $2,000” or I’ve had several calls telling me there was a very large purchase on my Amazon account and trying to tell me how to take care of it. The first thing I do with scam calls and emails is I start searching for information and I put “scam” in my search description. I usually quickly find search results matching the exact theme of the “scam” call or email I received.
With my blog post about Deborah D. Moore novels a couple days ago and my politics rant post about the right-wing conspiracy theory hamster wheel, I may have come across as flippant about preparedness and that was not my intent. I believe learning how to cope with uncertainty and staying calm and focused on the things that really do matter is more important than obsessing about financial “collapse” hysteria or the latest right-wing conspiracy theory that everyone’s talking about on social media or right-wing media – or even some hyped list of possible shortage items.
A “collapse” in America has already happened, but it’s not the one I see the online prepper community talking about all the time.
Our American news and information systems have already collapsed. This collapse has been in progress for decades. The political spin information war, corrupt media, corrupt politicians, hostile foreign information operations, social media and probably a whole host of factors have played a role in this collapse- including we the American people. When I keep adding links, it’s because I try to verify as much information as I can and it’s gotten harder over the past decade. I’ve found Google isn’t always where I find a reliable way to search for information.
When I keep warning conservatives and right-wingers – trying to debunk the conspiracy theories or warn about guarding against trusting the right-wing media echo-chamber as much as they distrust the liberal media echo-chamber, I’m not trying to pick on online preppers and homesteaders for believing in conspiracy theories. It is virtually impossible not to fall prey to some incorrect or bogus information online. I’ve fallen for information that was bogus many times. I’ve encountered the same thing with emails in the past.
I’m alarmed, because if the only people who are proactively working at being more self-reliant and urging people to be prepared for emergencies are constantly hysterical, trust in a failed information system, and so easily race down one conspiratorial rabbit hole after another, who on earth is left in America to help lead and hold anything together?
We’ve all been along for the ride as America’s information systems collapsed and it’s been an integral factor in the escalating divisiveness and instability in American society.
What concerns me is so many people are invested in getting worked up based on information they saw or read online (and yes, I was doing a bit of that in my rant, I know, and I’m trying to stop doing that), because we’ve all been conditioned, for decades, to respond to 24/7 media incitement theater, that now masquerades as news.
In my blog post a couple days ago about the Deborah D. Moore apocalyptic/prepper novels, there were some some very important preparedness themes in her stories. We all should be buckling down and be more like the Wonder Woman Survivalist, Allexa Smeth, the main character. Smeth had practiced a lifetime of preparedness and building all sorts of skill sets. She had her supplies organized and inventoried. She also was always forward-leaning and not waiting around to take action to become better-prepared. She was always trying to motivate everyone around her, even her 12-year-old granddaughter, to learn skills and take some responsibility for their survival. And she was always trying to adapt and thrive no matter the circumstances – even as she was reacting to crisis situations, she kept looking ahead. Preparedness and self-reliance were fundamental parts of her mindset.
In my book review blog post, I mentioned the collapsed information systems Smeth and other characters kept dealing with and that part struck me as totally realistic. She kept focusing on the situation around her home, family and community that she had some control over and that seems like a sensible approach. This is a sensible approach for us too, I think.
Quite a few of the other characters in Moore’s novels reminded me of people I know – people who don’t know how to do much of anything, people who are always blowing money on fun stuff, but don’t have even a week’s worth of food stocked up, people who believe the government will take care of them in an emergency, people who will show up expecting you to take care of them. I had a neighbor years ago, who talked to me in my driveway, the day before a hurricane was expected to hit. We chatted and I asked her if she was ready and she didn’t even have a flashlight, so I gave her an LED camping lantern and extra batteries. I have some close friends and family who think even stocking up extra food is a waste of money or crazy, because they believe the stores will always be open and full of merchandise. I also have family and friends who are well-prepared.
Somehow though, I suspect the people who are totally unprepared for any kind of emergency far outnumber the people who are even a little bit prepared. However, one thing I’ve seen in my life is often people possess skills, knowledge, experience on all sorts of stuff that can surprise you. They might not be a “prepper,” but they might provide a vital skill set or knowledge, so it’s always important to be open to blessings that come in unexpected ways.
In the first Moore novel one of the first problems Smeth encounters is an unprepared local man, who knows she’s a prepper, showing up at her door – trying to forcefully take her stuff. She shot him when he tried to force his way into her home. While many of the natural disaster situations and events in these novels seemed far-fetched to me – that situation with an unprepared man seemed very realistic to me now, after seeing the rise in crime and violence around parts of the country. I always had a very Pollyanna type attitude toward helping people and not thinking about personal/home defense much, but since the 2020 Summer of Love rioting and watching that chaos, I’ve done some major rethinking.
I hope we never have to deal with an apocalyptic crisis, but we can lose our country in many ways beyond some apocalyptic event, if we have citizens with no clue about our American history, our American heritage and most all the virtues of hard work and sacrifice that built our nation. Finding ways to preserve our American ideals is as important as preserving all of our other vital items. A country that can’t pull together on anything is in as precarious a situation as a massive financial collapse and unfortunately we are already there.
I don’t have a plan for defeating the spin information war or a means to build a reliable information system. I’ve debated trying to comment and provide verified information on sites in the past and then I decided against doing that, because people consider that trolling if you post a comment disagreeing with the content creator. I’ll continue to try verifying information, doing some research and writing my blog. Whenever I see a lot of social media hysteria churning, I start trying to figure out what’s going on – I try not to buy into it – no matter which news organization, pundit, politician or whoever is spouting it.
The information chaos and confusion will only grow, as AI becomes more widely used. Manipulated images and videos are everywhere online now. Just being aware that our information systems aren’t reliable – especially the political news – can help us become more skeptical and learn to take a wait and see approach rather than running around yelling, “The sky is falling!”
So, what’s really going on with the “bioengineered” we’re seeing everywhere on food labels these days? The short answer is in 2016 Congress passed a national mandatory standard for disclosing foods that are bioengineered, that went into effect January 1. 2022. Here’s an explanation from the US Department of Agriculture:
U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue announced the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard on December 20, 2018. The National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Law, passed by Congress in July of 2016, directed USDA to establish this national mandatory standard for disclosing foods that are or may be bioengineered.
The Standard defines bioengineered foods as those that contain detectable genetic material that has been modified through certain lab techniques and cannot be created through conventional breeding or found in nature.
The implementation date of the Standard is January 1, 2020, except for small food manufacturers, whose implementation date is January 1, 2021. The mandatory compliance date is January 1, 2022. Regulated entities may voluntarily comply with the Standard until December 31, 2021.
It’s understandable that with the radical environmentalist dietary ideas we keep hearing about, like eating bugs and other lab produced meat substitutes, to eliminate meat consumption, that seeing “bioengineered” on labels could be disturbing.
After a bit of googling, apparently America has a long history, going back to the 1860s, with the federal government establishing safe food processing and handling regulations and food labeling. Here’s information from a 2018 University of Texas at Austin article:
For many consumers, food labels are a primary source of information about the foods and products they eat. Because of this, it is important that these labels are trustworthy, and that companies are held accountable for the claims printed onto their products.
First, to understand the importance of food labels, let’s look at why food labels were created. Originally, food labeling emerged as a safety precaution for consumers due to foodborne illness outbreaks in the 1850’s. One of the most notable deaths related to food borne illness at this time was the death of President Zachary Taylor after consuming contaminated fruit and milk at a picnic. After this highly publicized death, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) was created in 1862 by President Abraham Lincoln which led to the creation of strict guidelines for food handling and processing. However, it would be 128 years before a recognizable nutritional facts panel was mandated on all food products.
Until the 1960’s, most Americans prepared the majority of their meals at home, but with a shift in consumer demand for prepared products came a public demand for detailed production information. By 1966, the USDA mandated that a list of ingredients must be placed on all products participating in interstate commerce due to consumer demand for accurate production information.
Dietary and health advice abound, along with people very emotionally invested in their food choices. Many people also have food allergies and medical problems impacting their food choices, so knowing what we’re buying is important.
Reading labels carefully remains a good habit to follow and contacting manufacturers if you have questions or concerns can help alleviate worries. This January 5, 2022 NPR article, GMO is out, ‘bioengineered’ is in, as new U.S. food labeling rules take effect, stated, “Shoppers who suspect an unlabeled item is actually a bioengineered food can file a complaint with the USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service.”
As far as insects as a food source, there’s some confusion, as insects in foods have generally been looked at from a food contamination perspective, so assuredly new guidelines and regulations will likely emerge if eating insects becomes part of the American diet. Here’s a 2019 CNN story, if you’re up to this: Bugs, rodent hair and poop: How much is legally allowed in the food you eat every day?
And with that, I’m going to end this blog post and go eat lunch.
It’s gotten to the point where if I click on a prepper/homesteading YouTube channel and the content creator is worked up about financial catastrophes and/or antigovernment hysteria, their news source is more often than not – Zero Hedge (or some other YouTube content creator who relies on Zero Hedge), which I’ve mentioned many times. I can’t speak to the motivation for the Zero Hedge fearmongering and why their themes consistently fuel distrust of the US government and spawn wild conspiracy theories, and hysteria.
My views about Zero Hedge predate the Trump years.
Back in 2016, Drudge Report was still a big news aggregator among right-wing America. The Drudge Report became a thing among the American right back during the Clinton impeachment drama. In 2016 I noticed some big changes in the news Drudge highlighted – like mainstreaming Alex Jones, a total nutcase. In late 2016, Drudge dropped the link for RedState a conservative political blog, and added Zero Hedge. I noted this change in a blog post back in 2016 and on Twitter, that’s why I remember it.
If your trusted source always sends you into panic mode and down endless conspiratorial rabbit holes, perhaps that’s something to seriously ponder.
Things have gotten very crazy among the American right-wing echo chamber since the Obama years. This current Oct 4th hysteria reminded me of the 2015 Jade Helm hysteria .
Beyond Zero Hedge, there are several liberal reporters, who for many years I felt, that if they weren’t on the Kremlin payroll, they should be considering how consistently they aided Russia’s anti-American propaganda efforts, especially trashing the US military, and now these reporters are darlings of right-wing media. One, Glenn Greenwald, was constantly selling the traitor, Eric Snowden, as a hero and this guy is now a right-wing media darling… Truly, a whole lot of conservative and right-wing America has gone off the rails.
I also can’t fathom the right-wing embrace of Elon Musk as some sort of savior of free speech in America. Musk is all in on the green energy transformation – heck, he manufactures EVs, for crying out loud. He also personally visits Russian leaders and Chinese leaders, to advance his own business. And as far as his commitment to right-wing causes, well, that’s dubious. He didn’t become the richest man in the world by being stupid and X is a platform he intends to transform into an online site where people can do everything – digital banking, socialize, entertainment, shop. Here’s a July article, For Elon Musk, X equals everything.
Left-wing America went off the rails long, long ago, which leaves me wondering what on earth is going on. When right-wingers are selling Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. a far-left environmentalist loon as a sound choice for conservatives, something is totally nuts. I had a close family member, a sensible person, send me a RFK Jr. article a while back and this brought to mind how a whole lot of the right has become just as reactionary and hysterical as the left. Many jumped on the Trump bandwagon in 2015-2016, willfully ignoring his liberal views, his liberal morals in his personal life (sleazy), his close associations with prominent Dems and liberals and even two of his his kids couldn’t vote for him in 2016 GOP primary, because they were still registered Democrats – but, millions of angry right-wingers willfully turned a blind-eye to all those facts. Just like they ignore that all the bad people in Trump’s administration, whom he blames for any and all problems, were chosen by him. This same willful blindness extended to the GOP filling up with assorted weirdos and frauds, all Trump-endorsed.
Yes, of course our nation’s finances are a train wreck and of course, we should always be wary of government overreach, but none of this constant online fearmongering and endless right-wing conspiratorial hamster wheel actually helps anyone become better prepared for emergencies or hard times and frankly, it can propel people to make reckless and ill-advised decisions. It fuels more divides constantly.
The hard truth for most Americans is they are just as bad at handling their own personal finances as the government is at handling our nation’s financial house (over $1 trillion credit card reported in US – Aug 2023). I faced that personal reality check when I was accumulating more credit card debt than I felt comfortable with and then I decided to make big changes in my money habits. It was hard and sticking with it is still a challenge at times, when I want to overspend. If people, who have been financially irresponsible all of a sudden decide to run around “preparing for the end of the world” and even attempt to buy a fraction of the “prepper” stuff hyped online as “vital,” well, they would be way more likely to be wiped out by a personal financial tsunami than an actual one.
First step toward being better prepared is to get out of debt and put some money aside for an emergency fund, then start working on building up basic preparedness supplies, as you can afford them. I’m not going to advise where to put that emergency fund or in what type of assets you choose, but I’m still using a bank, although I prefer to have some cash on hand too. I’m not into the precious metal stuff, but if that floats your boat – have at it. If you can’t learn the self-discipline to commit to long-term responsible choices and saying no to having everything you want now, well, chances are you’ll have a very hard time in a serious emergency.
The reality check is you have developed a huge sense of entitlement, when you are living way beyond your means. How well, do you think people who have never practiced any self-discipline and self-restraint would do at carefully managing their food, water or other supplies in a serious crisis?
Packing up your family and moving into the wilderness is not advisable if you have no experience or know-how about how to navigate that lifestyle. The same goes for moving from an urban lifestyle to rural. People are certainly adaptable and can learn to thrive in all sorts of situations, climates, and locations. but people who overreact and get worked up easily usually encounter more difficulties – and make bad decisions. Plus, if you rush around in a panic or keep changing course with your own preparedness plans based on online hysteria, well, you’re reacting – not being proactive or planning ahead. Small, steady steps at building up basic emergency food and supplies can add up quickly in improving your readiness and developing a preparedness mindset.
I do believe in emergency preparedness and working to learn new skills, but beyond all that we should all learn to develop some resilience and a positive mindset. If all you do is worry about the end of the world or some other catastrophe people online are yammering about, you can end up in a self-limiting box. Even with all the societal and political chaos, we still live in very good times in America. We are a land rich in resources and potential. Despite the inflation and supply issues, we also still have access to so many goods and opportunities, that our ancestors who toiled and struggled could not have imagined.
Again, I wrote off the left in America, as overtaken by far-left extremists and especially the Democratic Party as irredeemably corrupt decades ago, but I’m feeling that a large portion of the right and the GOP is now also a total basket case of extremism, corruption and truly batshit craziness too.
The degree of right-wing crazy in recent years disturbs me a great deal, because I’m wondering if there are calm, principled leaders anywhere to be found in America… and if the worked up mobs on either side would even listen to them.
In my last blog post I shared a Prepper Potpourri YouTube video that had a list of dystopian/prepper novels and I’m on my third Deborah D. Moore novel – The Journal series. I found this series available on Hoopla. I’ve recommended Hoopla, an online service that includes free audiobooks and e-books, available through many public libraries here in the US, in other blog posts. I use my local library card to sign-in to Hoopla and borrow books online. My local library also offers Libby, another digital book service, but I have had some issues using the Libby app and for a lot of books on Libby that I’ve wanted to borrow, there’s a waiting list.
Reading an apocalyptic novel where the main character is a female super-prepper is something new for me. This entire doomsday prepper/dystopian genre seems very much like the male thriller/action novels my late husband often read and occasionally I’d read one that he recommended. It didn’t require any coaxing with the early Tom Clancy novels, because I often claimed first dibs on new Clancy novels. Invariably, the main character in those male action novels was a MacGyver/super warrior all wrapped into one – fighting to save the world from death and destruction. Moore has created a female main character, Allexa Smeth, who is pretty much a female version of that. The first book in the series is called The Journal: Cracked Earth, where the US east coast is hit by some freakish bad hurricane and then other parts of the US & world begin experiencing major earthquakes.
The story is set in some small Michigan town, where besides being a super-prepper, master at gardening/foraging, spectacular cook and baker, and a weapons expert, Smeth is also the local emergency manager. Yet, her training appears to be living off-grid for years, information she’s gathered by reading how-to books, being an OCD prepper and from her online prepper groups, not professional training for being the emergency manager within a government system.
Knowing how to navigate in government systems and leverage bureaucracy to your community’s advantage is something Smeth, as the emergency manager, does not know how to do at all and seems hostile to. This antigovernment sentiment seems very prevalent within American prepper/survivalist communities and frankly knowing what government resources are available and who handles what resources, plus developing some professional relationships within the bureaucracy can often help a community acquire scarce resources (and information, which is a critical need too). Developing working relationships within a big bureaucracy can also help cut through red tape.
First, I’m going to explain the things I didn’t like about this novel. As a first novel, well, there are loads of typos & editing issues and those were distracting, but I’ve read piles of crappy romance novels in my lifetime, so I can overlook a lot of that. Decades ago, there was a romance novel fad for time travel romances and I read more of those than I care to admit and every single one was absurd. I breezed through The Journal: Cracked Earth and flew through the second novel, The Journal: Ash Fall, in this series and am now on the third one, The Journal: Crimson Skies. Hoopla is free and I doubt I would have purchased this series, but I’m curious to see where this story goes.
A lot of romance writers use predictable plot twists and this story feels like a Doomsday romance novel genre, that I didn’t know existed. I’m finding, that as soon as there’s some hopeful events, this author’s going to throw in more mayhem, another natural disaster or deadly disease outbreak wreaking epic destruction… or gunfights and that’s the way it’s gone through the second book and into the third.
Little things often irk me a lot and in this novel one of the main character’s sons has gotten out of the Army, after serving a number of years and he was a Sergeant First Class, but consistently, the author spells Sergeant as Sargent and that common misspelling is just a pet peeve of mine that makes me grit my teeth.
Often Allexa Smeth is presented as a genius at handling emergency management challenges, yet she seems to hold the people she’s supposed to be serving in contempt and she’s constantly complaining about not wanting them to rely on her… but them turning to her as their community emergency manager is part of her job. The whole moral dimension of being a public servant seemed missing in Smeth in the first book, but by the third book, while she’s still a reluctant public servant, she has become much more adept at team work with other community leaders.
There are aspects to this series that raise it above romance-novel-gone-doomsday-prepper. This novel was published in 2014, long before our surreal pandemic information dramas, but Moore includes many situations where Smeth periodically catches some news, when the power is on, which is sporadic, and she can’t make sense of what the news media is reporting. She also can’t make sense of some of the information she receives from her superior in a nearby city. Often the news media gives initial reports of catastrophes and massive causalities, then provides no follow-up coverage. The characters are left not knowing what’s really going on in the world. Lack of reliable information becomes the norm and that seems very realistic. Smeth and her small circle of family and friends are left operating by focusing on their own immediate situation and circumstances, trying to continually think ahead and preparing as best they can with what little information and resources they have.
After just reading, The Journal of David Q. Little, I’m seeing two completely different ways to develop a story told via a diary. Smeth’s story often sounds like she’s regurgitating stuff from a survival blog or a prepper video, while David Q. Little comes across as a weak man, who is alarmed and unsure of what’s happening and he’s not sure how to navigate with the rapidly changing new rules. Smeth seems a bit too confident about being prepared and knowing how to handle every situation. There’s too much modern feminist ideology entwined in the story for my taste – the, “I am Woman Hear Me Roar” mentality. Wonder Woman Survivalist, Allexa Smeth, often overshadows all the male characters, to the point she comes across as very cold and calculating and makes the men, especially her love interests, look weak and impotent.
The author obviously put in a lot of research on a wide variety of topics and has extensive experience with the modern prepper/survivalist ecosystem. Many of Moore’s characters work hard to acquire new skills, share knowledge and know-how and keep working hard to cope with the monumental challenges. The family closeness between Smeth, her adults sons and her grandchildren softened some of her harder edges, as the larger-than-life action heroine. Life continues, even when the world is falling apart with this family – birthdays and holidays are remembered and celebrated with simple family & friends get togethers and that’s something I enjoyed in the plot. The story moves along at a fast pace, so these are quick reads.
These novels include all sorts of situations and events that I’ve never even thought about, so I have no earthly idea how realistic the imagining of these apocalyptic disasters are. Before the pandemic, novels with so much bad human behavior surging would have struck me as absurd, but seeing the fallout from the BLM Defund the Police mindset, with disrespect and disregard for the rule of law spreading across the country, and the Us vs. Them partisan divisiveness spreading in America, a novel where some of the people devolve into gangs of feral animals or bad actors, unfortunately seems plausible.
This series isn’t the worst thing I’ve read and I’d probably give it a 2-3 out of 5 star rating. And, as I’m almost through the third book in this series – the typos and editing problems continue and Sergeant remains… Sargent, but the story doesn’t seem any worse than a lot of doomsday movies, which were very popular and it’s better than a lot of romance novels I’ve read. I’m not sure whether I’ll continue with this series at some point, but after Crimson Skies, I’m moving on to some upbeat books for a bit.
In the above YouTube video, Prepper Potpourri, a very practical-minded prepper, put together a list of apocalyptic fiction to consider. In her video she collaborated with some other preppers in the YouTube prepper community about their favorites in the dystopian genre.
One of the other YouTube preppers in her video, Cold War Prepper, offered a great tip for reading dystopian novels and it’s actually the way I read non-fiction books too. He suggested having large index cards, post-it flags and a pen handy, to mark pages and jot down notes. This is how I’ve been reading for decades.
This year has turned into a departure from my usual type fiction reading choices, as I’ve wandered into some dystopian fiction this year, which I’ve generally skipped. I’ve also been reading a lot of non-fiction on totalitarianism, Mao and Soviet communism and other serious topics, trying to make sense out of our rapidly changing world. I even watched the first season of The Last of Us, an apocalyptic series about most of the world being wiped out by a rapidly spreading fungal infection, that attacks the brain and leads to, well, a zombie apocalypse.
I prefer happy endings and historical romances have always been my top fiction choice, but I’ve taken this reading detour lately, as I realized how many things I don’t know about preparedness and other very serious topics. I vaguely knew what an EMP event was, but once I learned more, well, that led to the William R. Forstchen novels and more reading on that topic.
Back in March I wrote a blog post about reading William R. Forstchen’s 2009 novel, One Second After (the John Masterson series). I then read his follow-on novels, One Year After and The Final Day. I also read his novel, 48 Hours. I recommend all of these, because even though a few things in the plots seemed unrealistic and a lot of Masterson and the town doctor dialogues often sounded more like they were regurgitating some “worst case scenario” information from some government report, overall I learned a great deal. The 4th book in Forstchen’s John Masterson series, Five Years After, was released in hardcover a couple days ago. The paperback will be released in May of next year and on Amazon, there is a Kindle version available.
Last year, I reread, George Orwell’s 1984 and a lesser known 1960s dystopian novel, A World Without Men, by Charles Eric Mann, which I saw mentioned at some conservative site several years ago, so I had ordered it and read it. Orwell’s masterpiece continues to be the easy go-to comparison for every extremist thing happening in the world.
The Mann novel delves into some of the extreme societal shifts within a world that, over time, through man-made reproduction problems, becomes literally without men. It’s a world maintained via artificial insemination using harvested sperm from males, as male babies were dramatically decreasing. Then male babies stopped being born and the last male on earth died off, leading to a secret global race for scientists to get male fetuses to survive. The story begins far in the future, then jumps back in history to set the stage of global events that explains how this all-female world came about. All of the characters felt hollow and forgettable to me. As the story returns to that future world, the protagonist figures out some important truths and she starts making waves.
The Mann novel would be totally forgettable, except some of the criticisms of early modern feminism the author touched on are worth considering, especially since modern feminism has moved into some very extreme mutations (they refer to them was “waves) with #MeToo and the ever-expanding gender movement. Seriously, LGBT is now 2SLGBTQI+ in Canada. The Canadian government explains: “2SLGBTQI+ terminology is continuously evolving. As a result, it is important to note that this list is not exhaustive and these definitions are a starting point to understanding 2SLGBTQI+ identities and issues.”
I developed an interest in all the Cold War era stuff back in the 1980s. Then the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989 and most people brushed aside all the things we had learned. Back then I had developed an interest in learning about propaganda and as we moved from one Army post to another, one of the many blessings of life around the Army was Army post libraries. Those libraries catered to military-themed topics and I found piles of interesting books to read. Perhaps, that earlier interest in propaganda is what sparked my interest in the American spin information war developing in the 1990s.
Recently, I read Reagan’s favorite dystopian novel, The Journal of David Q. Little, about the US falling under the control of an international organization controlled by the Soviet Union. Although the Soviet Union is long gone, many of the themes of Marxist ideology and Soviet operational methods described in this old 1960s novel, didn’t feel so antiquated when thinking about all the Marxist-tinged ideology that’s taken hold in America in recent years, especially among the far-left and in academia.
Now, we keep hearing about Russian and Chinese disinformation, AI generated information, fake news, digitally-altered images, bot attacks, algorithms used to distort perceptions, etc. and I’ve realized that I need to, not only try to understand the new things, but go back and brush up on older history. Influence operations went from being a thing government intelligence agencies or big corporations masterminded to now being a social media influencer” is a coveted career path and anyone with an internet connection can become an “influencer.”
Many people don’t enjoy reading non-fiction books, that’s why a dystopian fiction list like Prepper Potpourri put together can come in handy. While some of the plot twists and events may be unrealistic, the authors generally put a lot of effort into research and present scenarios, you might never have considered.
Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm planned a short summer trip from North Carolina to Tennessee, with the intent of hyping the marvels of travel using electric vehicles. Her convoy ran into problems quickly due to there not being enough fast-charging stations that worked along her carefully planned route. Her trip drew headlines when staffers drove ahead to a planned recharging stop and found there weren’t enough working chargers for Granholm’s convoy of electric vehicles. The staffers parked a gas vehicle in front of an EV charging station to try to hold it for Granholm’s convoy, which resulted in an angry electric vehicle owner, waiting to charge up, to call the police.
Beyond the obvious PR disaster aspect of Granholm’s road trip, the glaring problem, which the green dream crowd refuses to acknowledge is America does not possess the infrastructure to support this electric vehicle conversion they’re pushing. Globally, the infrastructure for this forced green energy transformation does not exist and the World Economic Forum bigwigs, like Klaus Schwab know this. Schwab stated in his book, COVID-19: The Great Reset, that this envisioned transition will take many trillions of dollars and it’s not only a matter of building infrastructure – much of the technology has to be developed.
Their big plan is to dismantle the current fossil fuel energy system rapidly and transfer the fossil fuel funding to renewable development. Why would you go about dismantling the current workable energy system before you have the newer technology even in place to replace it? Well, the green energy transformation is only part of the green dream and its their concomitant DEI agenda of transforming every aspect of our daily lives that they’re relying on to make this green energy transformation happen. They are going to try to force global changes to how we eat, how we live, where we live, and try to regulate every person’s daily consumption – all in the name of saving the planet and building their vision of a diverse, equitable and inclusive world. This plan is really a plan for a self-selected group of elites to control the world. Individual freedom will be ground into the dirt, if this “Great Reset” happens.
The common sense approach that you should never destroy your back-up system, especially when your new system isn’t even functional doesn’t even enter into the thinking, because the elitists pushing this agenda keep profiting from these massive transfers of wealth and they live within a self-reinforcing bubble. No objective criticisms are allowed within their exclusive group. If someone challenges their beliefs, they’re cancelled and banished from their elite circles.
These global Diversity, Equity and Inclusion policies do portend terrible outcomes, but it’s going to be the foot soldiers of state and local officials in this movement who will be implementing all these new rules and programs… We’ll all be dealing with more and more local bureaucratic tyrants in our daily lives, as the new rules and regulations pile up.
For this forced green energy transformation to fit within the timelines being dictated by the Biden administration, there will be a central-planner economy taking shape, with the federal government trying to seize more and more control over the American economy (plus control of 30% of American land under the Biden 30 X 30 Plan). And while the pandemic economic policies hit small businesses the hardest, while many big businesses made record profits, this Great Reset being rolled out will completely decimate the middle class. We’re going to end up dealing with more red tape, more rules, more idiots empowered to control more aspects of our daily lives – like if we have electricity, how much we can use and when we can use it will be controlled. The headlines about bureaucrats within the Biden administration pushing states to ban gas stoves, add new regulations on ceiling fans, lightbulbs, and a host of other appliances have already started. Some countries in Europe and Canada are already working to implement even more radical changes.
The terms Neo-feudalism or Feudalism 2.0 are floating about to describe this 2030 Agenda, that encompasses the green & DEI agenda at the UN, Some WEF elitist spouting, “you will own nothing and be happy,” has become the shorthand slogan for this concept, where there will be the elites ( the expert and political class) making all the rules and the peasants doing as they’re told by their betters. I watched this video this morning. Bjorn Andreas Bull-Hansen is in Norway and his videos are often themed around learning to be self-reliant. He also mentions the 15-minute city idea being pushed at the WEF and unfortunately for Republicans in America – Trump loves that idea. In this video. Bjorn discusses some new laws being pushed by the green crowd in the UK and for Americans, the trend has been the most radical green and social justice policies start in Europe and Canada, before being pushed hard here. Our constitutional rights in America create obstacles for the Great Reset agenda:
The idea of moving off-grid, which Bjorn suggests, gets mentioned frequently among the prepper/homesteading online communities a lot in America and the problem with that is even most of the people who decide to homestead (with electric or off-grid) fail. They often have no realistic understanding of the difficulties, the amount of physical toil and discomfort required, the costs, and aren’t physically or psychologically prepared to deal with the multitude of adversities they encounter. Too often they were inspired by all the bucolic bliss they’ve consumed on social media content, when the reality is dealing with manure, flies and being sweaty and dirty most of the time, as you toil away.
If you’re not ready to take the plunge to live off-grid or make some dramatic change, I think working to simplify your life right where you’re at now – from your finances to your daily life would be a better starting point, than making a radical off-grid move. My grandmother when I was a kid did not having running water in her house – she carried it in buckets from a nearby spring and she had an outhouse. She also cooked on a wood-burning stove. Yes, she raised her family and was an amazing cook and baker, but it was a very hard way to live. Plan carefully, if you’re going to make a dramatic lifestyle change and be prepared for hardship and failures.
The truth is there aren’t going to be any easy solutions to pushback against this radical transformation, but as long as we can still speak openly, that’s something we can do. Just knowing you’re not alone in your concerns can give more people courage to speak up.
Victor Davis Hanson wrote a short piece in The Daily Signal, Post-Postmodern America, Meet Mao’s Cultural Revolution, where he mentioned the Granholm road trip fiasco. He mentioned CA planning to destroy four dams, which was news to me:
Pre-civilizational greens in California prefer blowing up dams to building them.
They couldn’t care less that their targeted reservoirs help store water in droughts, prevent flooding, enhance irrigation, offer recreation, and generate clean hydroelectric power.
Now an absurd green California is currently destroying four dams on the Klamath River. In adding insult to injury, it is paying the half-billion-dollar demolition cost in part through a water bond that state voters once thought would build new—not explode existing—dams.
What seems like common sense, like pausing big transformational plans, if major systemic planning problems become obvious and try to figure out solutions, before rushing ahead, isn’t going to happen with this “Great Reset” and their set-in-stone deadlines. Come hell or high water, they’re going to forge ahead, because they fear acceding on any part of their timeline or plans, which might allow the evil naysayers power to organize, pushback or block their grand world transformation. In America, with a presidential election a little over a year away, the pace of the radical green transformation will accelerate, as Dems work to ram through as many green policies as they can- as a bulwark, in case, the unthinkable happens and a Republican wins the WH.
Unfortunately, I often wonder if the opposition on the right in America even has a clue what they’re up against or really cares to try to put the brakes on this green energy transformation or the social justice transformation with all these DEI efforts. Mostly, they waste their time on Congressional investigations, which go nowhere. The House can’t indict anyone – they send criminal referrals to the Biden Justice Department, where they’ll sit. With impeachment, the House can impeach, but then the trial is in the Senate, which is controlled by Democrats – so here again nothing’s really going to happen or change. With our deeply divided country and the media playing such a major role in how people view events, any partisan action will be embraced by one side and completely dismissed by the other side, as just a “partisan witch hunt.” The angry part of the GOP, which is the part addicted to outrage theater and the Trump/Hunter Biden dramas seems happy to rage about Stolen election, Biden or Hillary or Obama, but they’re slow at countering the green agenda, except for a few GOP state governors, who have gotten laws passed in their states to pushback.
I finished reading the novel, The Journal of David Q. Little, and towards the end there’s a conversation between Dr. Rodgers, a wise professor, who early on became a target to be silenced and labeled an “extremist” and David Little, who is seeking to understand what happened. Rodgers explains:
“I did my weeping a long time ago, and for a long time, too. I fought it… this drift to insanity, this flight from reason. Tell them, I thought. Sound the alarm, and they will respond. But few did, and I could only resign myself to the inevitable.”
“But why?” I asked. “Why didn’t they listen?”
He was silent for a long moment, folding and unfolding his heavy hands. “I finally tumbled to it. They did not understand what I was talking about, because I was unable to communicate with them. You see, each of us has a language all his own, and this is because each of us has values all his own, of one sort or another, even if one of our values is to have no values. Everything we do or say or think stems from these values. If your values and mine are reasonably well aligned, then we have a fair chance to communicate our respective thoughts with some effectiveness, provided we are of a mind to. But if our systems of values are different, then our interpretations of words and thoughts and deeds are different, too. Try as we might, communication is impossible under those conditions.” (pages 504-505)
If you often feel like you’re talking to the wall when you try to encourage a loved one to consider any kind of lifestyle change or talk about being prepared or mention the dramatic political and social changes happening and they reject what you say or dismiss it as just crazy “conspiracy theories” or “you worry too much” the chances are that person and you have completely different value systems. Even if you end up being right – the dramatic politcal and social changes happening lead to terrible outcomes – many people will still cling to their own delusions and values.
Speaking freely is important, but beating your head against the wall trying to reach people – even sometimes people close to you – probably won’t work. The truth is though that in times of great social and political upheaval, most people can’t keep their heads buried in the sand forever, because the upheavals end up at everyone’s door. In the David Little novel, even as tyranny grew and people from different social classes ended up in the same desperate conditions, they still held very different views (and values) – blaming different things or people.
Trying to work calmly and determinedly now to become more resilient, more self-reliant, and more proactively positive – looking for smaller things you can do, rather than getting caught up in big ideas to change the world might be a better approach. At least that’s the approach I’m taking – small steps every day.
I’m still working my way through President Reagan’s favorite dystopian novel, The Journal of David Q. Little, with a little over a hundred pages left to go. The protagonist, David Q. Little, in this story doesn’t have much in the way of character that I admire or respect and frankly, I find him to be a weak, self-absorbed truly “little” person. He too easily sacrifices his conscience by consistently choosing the path of least resistance, even as he realizes true tyranny is advancing and that America is falling apart before his eyes. He consistently talks himself around to conforming to the madness and the new Communist-enforced rules.
There’s still a hundred or so pages left for David Q. Little to redeem himself, but I’m less than optimistic, considering the choices he’s made thus far. One of the things that rings true in this novel to what I’ve read about various tyrannical regimes is the people who stand up loudly in the beginning become the primary targets and are usually eliminated quickly. Perhaps, standing on the rooftop screaming and bragging about how you will never surrender isn’t the best strategy for a long-term resistance effort and more discretion and caution would be needed to survive and work against tyrants in a situation than direct confrontation against overwhelming numbers, who have all the power.
It’s easy to talk big when life is going along normally or to believe you would be brave and heroic in a crisis. Once things are falling apart and you’ve got loved ones to try to keep safe and you’re trying to keep some semblance of normality and keep things together, I’d imagine it would become harder and harder to do anything that attracts more attention and that could endanger your loved ones. So, I do have a tiny bit of sympathy for David Q. Little.
The above video offers an explanation for why most people are so obedient. For myself, I’m an odd mix, because by nature I’m a contrarian and often hold views that go against the popular opinion of the day. I’m used to being the one person, who doesn’t agree in a crowd and mostly, I am used to being the odd person out and I don’t care really. At the same time, if there’s some “rule” – government or even a private business posts a sign with their rules of conduct, I generally strive to be polite and a good citizen. The pandemic forced me to reevaluate where I stand on being such a “following the rules” kind of person “to be polite.” And I’m still mulling that over.
We were manipulated by the use of emotional blackmail, with experts warning us that we would be jeopardizing the lives of our “at risk” loved ones (grandma and grandpa) if we didn’t comply. Who on earth wants to be labeled a selfish “killer” of the elderly? That deliberate use of emotional blackmail by our public health officials and political class has left a bitter taste in my mouth, especially considering these same people made rules blocking loved ones from seeing their elderly loved ones in nursing homes and being at the side of loved ones who died in hospitals and nursing homes. Then to top that off all sorts of crazy funeral rules were enacted around the country to interfere in families being allowed to grieve as they wanted. My late husband passed away in March 2021 – and the funeral home had a 50 person limit still in place and the veterans cemetery did not allow a graveside service at all. We could visit his grave late in the afternoon after the burial. I still think about how pointless so many of these pandemic rules were.
Meet Mandy Cohen — Biden's next CDC Director.
Here she is LAUGHING about how she and other “experts” came up with COVID restrictions during her time as North Carolina Health Director:
“She was like, ‘are you gonna let them have professional football?’ And I was like, ‘nope!'… pic.twitter.com/UmNefob9AE
— DeSantis War Room 🐊 (@DeSantisWarRoom) June 16, 2023
The new CDC director, Mandy Cohen, who was the giggling mean girl health director, in a video above, where she explained how they made decisions during lockdowns, now wants to turn the page:
With all their rules, it’s going to be all kinds of smaller people down the ladder, who will keep making rules, based off of bad information they believe that came from on high or that trickles down through their workplace. We’re going to be dealing with the damage from the pandemic social mitigation craziness for a long time. It’s easy for people to get fired up and rant that they’re not ever wearing masks again and I understand that feeling, but I ran into a situation back in July, when visiting an elderly friend, who had been placed in a nursing home. The nursing home required visitors to wear masks. I wore a mask, because I wanted to visit my elderly friend. She died shortly after that and I’m glad I went to visit her. If doctors I need to see start requiring a mask again, I’m going to wear a mask, because I don’t want to just stop my medical care. And that’s the dilemma a lot of people face when it comes to conforming and not conforming – sometimes we’re stuck in these daily life dilemmas. It’s very much a “pick your battles carefully” situation for most people, I think.
Back in the spring I mentioned trying to grow my own moringa tree. Moringa has all sorts of health benefits and I wanted to see if I could grow one. I had ordered moringa seeds and it should be able to survive in my zone 8b area. Well, it took planting seeds two times to get one moringa tree started. My little moringa tree isn’t much, but so far it’s growing. I’ve grown several herbs, and I’m working to learn more about herbal remedies, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to just stop my prescription medications. I also discuss herbal remedies I take with my primary care physician. Getting some elderberry bushes is on my list too.
While it’s important to move on past the pandemic craziness, I also think it’s important not to forget what happened in America and how easily we just surrendered our rights under the guise of a “national emergency.” We were deliberately lied to and manipulated by our public health experts and political leaders. Here’s a video on where we’re at – no apologies and no real contrition or admission that their rules trampled on people’s fundamental rights:
Just when you think your trust in our national security experts can’t sink any lower, here’s a CBS Sunday Morning interview with GEN Mark Milley, Chairman of the JCS, insisting that the Chinese spy balloon that hovered over sensitive US military sites, during a week long, transnational flight back in February of this year, did not collect or transmit any intelligence data. I am skeptical about his assertion to say the least. That Chinese spy balloon just happened to hover some of our most sensitive military sites and we’re supposed to believe it wasn’t spying…
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