June 27, 2022 · 2:48 pm

Being like the water fowl

In my blog post yesterday I mentioned that my little container garden has brought me many hours of pleasure and it’s helped me come to terms with major loss and the loss part is what I want to write about today. No, this isn’t going to be about losing my husband, although that’s been the most crushing loss I’ve experienced in my life.

Being fearful is easy. Putting fear aside takes hard work. I speak from experience. I was an extremely fearful child, to the point “Scared” should have been my middle name. One of my biggest fears, besides the dark, was I was terrified of strangers. It took years and constant encouragement and prodding by my parents to get me past a lot of that. I had to work hard on dealing with my fears and learning to face them. Then I had to learn to not let fear take a hold of me and often that involves not listening to people spreading fear and for me it takes praying and asking God to help me.

Even as I reached adulthood, I was still a very fearful person and overly cautious. My husband helped me learn to face my fears and some of his courage and fearlessness rubbed off on me over 40 years of marriage. He always told me I can do things, while I would list the reasons why I would fail.I wandered around my home many hours each day for almost a year after my husband died last March.

Planting this little container garden hasn’t been some spectacular garden and some people would scoff at the small amounts it’s produced, but for me each seed that sprouted and grew into a plant felt like it was filling a hole in my heart. It felt like God was blessing me with growing things in my backyard and each tiny success gave me enormous hope.

When I was a kid one of the little habits I started when fears started taking hold was to deliberately focus on all the things that were good that were going on around me and all the many blessings all around me. By switching my focus to looking for positive things the bad didn’t disappear, but the good started taking an upper-hand over the bad and the fears. I prefer to focus on working on things I have some control over in my own life and trying to help people where I can. Worrying about global conspiracies, evil elites, even real major system failures with the global economy doesn’t get me anywhere, while looking around my own home, family, neighborhood and focusing on things I can actually do each day moves me in a better direction. What I do might not work for millions of people and it’s likely millions of people won’t agree with my views.

Writing blogs is a trend that’s losing popularity, as social media has moved on to other formats most people now use – video content is way more popular, podcasts are popular too. Instant and quick have large audiences while reading 1,000+ word blog posts is about like reading books – most people don’t want to invest that much time. In fact, even with news, it’s obvious on social media like Twitter that most of the blue checkmark crowd of politicos there react to headlines and don’t read through the articles linked.

Starting this blog was tackling another of my biggest fears. I always loved writing, but I had a lot of fears about writing and letting people read what I wrote. Self-doubt literally crippled me from writing. This blog was like a blank piece of paper that was mine to fill as I chose.

A friend urged me to start this blog and it’s been a whole lot of commentary on politics and current events. Watching the corruption expand in our institutions, from government to media to even things that shouldn’t be political, I’ve found myself becoming less of a right-wing partisan and thinking more in terms of just being an American citizen, as our politics has gone further off the rails in recent years. I don’t want to be part of Red Team America or part of Blue Team America. I just want to find ways to work toward things that matter to me and that I feel are positive for all of America.

I’ve had to catch myself recently with writing commentary on my blog about things I see on social media and disagree with, because I’m not into popularity contests, pissing contests, the clique mind-set or people caught up in their social media “followers” and “subscribers” status (I’ve watched this on Twitter, people on facebook bragging about the number of friends they have and on YouTube – those are the social media formats I’ve used.) And I do find a whole lot of things I see online that I think are fear-mongering for clicks, total bullshit, or the rush to weigh in without doing any fact-checking. It’s not just regular people who have social media formats that do this.

What’s really distressing is how many professional journalists, political pundits, and even political leaders rush to weigh in on every hot button thing that flits across social media too. In the process, trust in the news media and our political class has plummeted. Too much of America feeds on reacting rather than taking some time to think about information, do some fact-checking and then taking a little time to think things over. I write my blog posts for myself, as my space online to write what I think and believe is the truth. I will never monetize my blog and I have no desire to venture into more social media formats. I don’t do public speaking, have never taken a selfie in my life (I found that selfie trend very disturbing when my kids were younger), I don’t do videos and I intend to keep it that way.

I’m also going to be consuming less prepper-related content and less politics content online, because very little of it makes me feel any-better informed. I don’t want to indulge in reacting to the latest hot-take conspiracy theory, dire predictions, or news reporting that is more retweeted crap by journalists that none of them fact-checked. I also don’t want to hear reports that random people send to a content creator that haven’t been verified in any way. I don’t want to lose my peace of mind in living a simple lifestyle and succumb to fear-based shopping or financial decisions or feeling America is doomed based on information that will likely completely change in 10 minutes, an hour and in a day most of the current hot take information will turn out to be totally wrong. Very little of “the facts” in the news that create a buzz online holds up in 24 hours.

Spending more time in my backyard has made me think about many things. I felt a keen loss of quiet time that this little container gardening effort has restored as I’ve spent less time online. In a recent blog post I wrote about my quotes notebook and our retired pastor’s wife when I was a kid. Her nature walk came to mind, because of a loud squabble one recent morning sitting on my patio sipping coffee after I watered my garden. I watched a water fowl (could tell from the legs, feet and size of the bird, even though it was a good distance away). It flew and landed in a tall tree in the woods behind my back fence. That bird created a near riot among the mockingbirds, which flew in from both sides of my backyard and one flew out of the willow tree in my backyard. Those three mockingbirds were squawking loudly as they charged toward that tall tree to chase the water fowl away. It was fascinating to watch those mockingbirds. Often I feel like people act like that too.

The water fowl flew away and the mockingbirds settled down. I’m flying away from some contentious things online too – and moving back to reading more books and writing about some topics besides social media drama, current events, politics and doom and gloom economic news.

I want to write more stories from American history

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June 26, 2022 · 8:03 pm

A garden update and some thoughts

This is a sort of garden update post.

I started working in my little container garden before 6:30 am. Even small gardens take some time each day and with the horrible summer heat and high humidity here in southeast GA every summer, I try to do outside chores early in the morning or in the evening.

I’ve been enjoying this gardening effort and although it certainly hasn’t produced massive amounts, I did get a whole lot of cherry tomatoes – I had enough to freeze 4 quart size bags, make a pint of sun-dried tomatoes and I filled up a gallon glass container and fermented those, plus I had plenty to eat. I pulled out the last of those determinate cherry tomato plants this morning.

I haven’t had to buy any bell peppers or green onions so far this summer. I dehydrated kale four times and have a gallon container full of kale flakes. I dehydrated lemon basil, sweet basil and oregano. Cucumbers have done okay. I planted two pots of straight eight cucumbers and 6 pots of small pickling cucumbers. I made 6 pints of bread and butter pickles and I have enough small cucumbers picked to make several pints of dill pickles. I froze 4 quarts of green beans, plus cooked some several times. I’ve had plenty of lettuce, squash and green onions.

I have two dragon pepper plants (some sort of cayenne pepper) that are loaded with peppers, which are starting to ripen. I have a jalapeno with a lot of peppers on it too. I picked two very small heads of cabbage (have three left) and once I cleaned them, it came to about the amount of cabbage on a small head of cabbage from the store. It was plenty for a meal of kielbasa and cabbage.

My radishes, carrots, okra haven’t done well. My first strawberries bit the dust, as did my zucchini. I replanted and have four zucchinis growing. I replanted okra three times and I’ve got one okra plant that survived. I replanted radishes. I left the carrots in the container and they’re slowly growing and haven’t flowered yet, so I’m leaving them alone. My last yellow squash bit the dust, but I’m still getting a lot of pattypan squash and today I’m making squash casserole with some of the pattypan, because I have 7 of them sitting on my kitchen counter at the moment.

I planted plenty of flower seeds. I’ve always been more enthusiastic about growing flowers than vegetables.

Mostly, I’ve had fun planting seeds, watching things grow and tending to this little garden every day. I went into this container gardening effort, expecting to plant only a few containers for my patio, but I’m glad I expanded that. I’ve been buying a lot of seeds. I’ve saved two types of bell pepper seeds so far. And now I’m getting ready to start some seeds in July for a fall vegetable garden.

What I learned with using grow bags is the plants dry out quickly in the heat here and I’ll be using mostly plastic containers and larger plastic tote containers for my fall garden. I’ll still use grow bags for herbs and flowers, but I’ll be transitioning toward getting more large plastic containers. I learned that I could manage to take care of more plants, even in the heat, than I thought I could. I plan to put some raised beds together when the weather cools down in the fall and get them ready for next spring.

The violas are still blooming despite the temps being over 100 degrees several days. The five pieces of succulents Me-Su gave me are growing too.

There are three tiny watermelons forming on two plants I started in May, I think. I don’t expect them to amount to anything, but they’re cute.

This is one lantana that I planted years ago in front of my house. It comes back every year and grows out of control. I have vincas in front of my house that reseed on their own too. Not having plants that reseed themselves is a real downside to container gardening.

Beyond providing some food, this gardening effort has brought me a lot of pleasant hours working in the backyard and some coming to terms with major loss in my life.

While I think it’s unrealistic to begin vegetable gardening expecting to grow all your own vegetables or to plant an enormous garden without first having some experience gardening, jumping in does matter. It’s easy to get discouraged or to talk yourself out of attempting to learn new things. Every new kitchen and gardening skill can give you more self-confidence to tackle more.

The lines I’ve hated since I was a kid are when people say they don’t have a “green thumb” or that they’re such a bad cook they can burn water. I had my mother and great-grandmother telling me that I have a green thumb and my mother believed everyone can learn to cook, so she had us measuring, stirring and cooking things from a very early age. I remember plenty of plant failures and the first time I made pancakes by myself, they were burnt on the outside and runny on the inside. I got alarmed and my mother casually told me that I might want to turn the heat down for the next batch.

If growing vegetables or cooking aren’t your jumping off point to being more self-reliant, perhaps learn a new skill like something mechanical or some basic carpentry skills. Knife skills are useful in many dozens of ways, as is learning how to care for knives. Learning more knife skills is on my to-do list. A self-defense course or even starting an exercise program can help with being more self-reliant. There are thousands upon thousands of useful skills to acquire, so it doesn’t have to be gardening or raising animals for food.

My parents gave my youngest brother my mother’s old car that needed the engine rebuilt for his first car. He rebuilt that engine on his own with a little assistance from my Dad and some technical advice from an uncle who was a master mechanic. He was the kid who was always taking everything apart and often he couldn’t get them back together properly, but he did master putting together a V-8 engine kit that he got as a gift for Christmas one year. Everyone can learn new things – at any age.

Many people have been talking about the Great Depression, especially Great Depression cooking, since our economy is headed down the tank. An interesting fact about popular culture during that era was romance novels became very popular, board games were popular, and many people turned to listening to radio programs. Soap operas, comedies and music were popular, not politics. Popular movies weren’t about politics or serious topics – they were escapism with lots of musicals, comedies and romances, with characters living posh lifestyles.

I remain hopeful for America and for the future. Each day can be the start of something good. We don’t have to live in crisis mode everyday to be prepared for emergencies or bad times. I’m following the news, not burying my head in the sand, but finding some balance and looking for some good news matter too.

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June 24, 2022 · 12:04 pm

Wild ride ahead

Well, time to buckle up for a wild ride ahead in America.

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June 23, 2022 · 12:43 pm

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.

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June 20, 2022 · 7:42 pm

Finally, the quotes notebook story

Without trying to be controversial, the truth is there really are big conspiracies and some of them are carried out by rich and powerful people or by political factions, but where I have a problem is so many people leap to embrace conspiracy theories, without doing some research or even considering any other explanations. Most of the conspiracy theories I see floating on social media are garbage.

Over the weekend I saw a video of a fuming liberal lady, irate about high gas prices and she’s blaming the religious right for the high gas prices. She completely believes this:

https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1538533685728669696

Of course, I realize many people likely disagree with me and that’s fine. I grew up in a large family where a lot of us had opposing opinions, but my parents insisted when we sat down to eat dinner, we had to be civil to each other. I don’t want anyone silenced or shouted down, even this liberal lady or the prepper guy I criticized. I also didn’t get outraged by her rant, in fact, it struck me as an indicator that the soaring gas prices are affecting everyone and we’re all feeling the pain.

There are people on the right who believe that everything going wrong is because of liberals. Interestingly, this lady says she gets her information from Robert Reich. In a recent blog post I mentioned a former Clinton administration official who tweeted about putting Americans who wouldn’t get vaccinated in camps, well, that was Robert Reich…

That’s kind of where America’s at these days. What alarms me is a whole lot of powerful political players and influencers online amplify many of these conspiracy theories to agitate their respective partisan followers against the other side or get clicks. It’s a very deliberate effort to fuel divides for partisan political gains.

This Libs of TikTok Twitter account is basically catnip for the right, I know, but this is an excellent example of the rage that’s pretty palpable around all sorts of hot button issues – on both sides of the political aisle.

Many people are concerned, anxious, afraid, angry, and some are fighting mad about everything that’s going wrong – from shortages, to sky-rocketing gas prices, to runaway inflation (yeah, inflation is rising faster than most of us will be able to keep up with), and all the other alarming happenings in the world, from the war in Ukraine to the economic war between the US and Europe vs. Russia and China, to the continual finger-pointing from the President and dismissing concerns about inflation and high gas prices.

There are more major, global crises incoming right now than I can remember in my lifetime, so all any of us can do is try to position ourselves, as best we can, to focus on trying to cover the basics. There isn’t any sort of master plan that guarantees any of us smooth sailing through any of these crises as they hit, but economic hard times are already barreling towards all of us.

Trying to keep ourselves grounded, calm and hopeful will help all of us weather the coming storms.

Finally here’s the story about my quotes notebook. I wrote about it long ago on my blog, but I don’t remember what post that was. I’ve been writing this blog since 2012.

I grew up in rural northeast PA, in the Pocono Mountains, right by part of the Blue Mountain Ridge, which is actually part of the Appalachian Mountains

My area of Monroe County was called the West End and we were considered the hick farmers of the county, even though family farms had mostly died out long before I was born. A lot of people, including my parents had other jobs and commuted to other towns and areas with jobs and industry. My father was a supervisor for a road construction company and my mother was a registered nurse.

My father was an excellent gardener and both of my parents worked in our large vegetable garden. I remember my mother used to lecture me not to touch the plants in the garden when the leaves were wet and I got the lecture many times about how that spreads plant diseases. She was also big on saving seeds.

We lived in the same house with my great-grandmother and she was an avid needle-worker, everything from quilting to embroidery. She grew up on a farm, worked her own farm when she was raising her family and she was very good at starting flowers, plants, shrubs and trees. She knew which propagation methods worked best for each thing. I trotted after her as she tended her plants and showed me how to do things.

My area was characterized by the locals, who were mostly of PA German ancestry (they had been farmers) and although we weren’t Amish or Mennonite, among my parents generation a lot of the locals spoke PA Dutch at home. My father and his family spoke PA Dutch amongst themselves. PA Dutch cooking lives on too.

The Poconos became famous for being a resort area in the early 1900s and that continued through the last century, although when I was growing up, many city people from Philadelphia, New Jersey and NYC began migrating to the Poconos and living there year-round, while commuting to their jobs in the city. This influx of city people created a culture clash of sorts and it also dramatically changed the local culture as the area became more populated. Many city people also bought summer homes in the Poconos, so between the resorts and summer homes, we had a seasonal population influx.

In 2020, with the pandemic, some of the northeast counties in PA became Covid hot spots due to this movement of city people back and forth. I remember this, because one of my sisters gave me an earful about those “damned city people.” I grew up hearing about those “damned city people” and even as I moved around with Army life. In phone conversations, my mother frequently had some complaints about some encounter at the grocery store or some new things that were going wrong due to those “damned city people.” I remember my mother’s outrage about some lady from the city wanting sidewalks to be built. My mother went on and on about, “if that lady wanted sidewalks she should have stayed in NYC.” This bias continues with my sisters, brothers, many locals, and me, even though I moved away from the area in 1979, when I joined the Army. In fact, those “damned city people” are why I have no desire to move back there and why I much prefer living in GA. The Poconos is nothing like it was when I was growing up.

My “damned city people” bias and broad stereotyping is what I want to talk about and my quotes notebook is part of the story.

Our elderly retired pastor and his wife lived across the road from us, right next to the parsonage. He was an expert woodworker and converted a small woodshop he had built into a small home after he retired. He had fit in perfectly in our area, because although he wasn’t from our area he was of PA German ancestry and spoke PA Dutch. His wife, though, in one of those typical American love stories, was from NYC, had graduated from Teachers College at Columbia and she was Jewish.

She was one of the most lovely ladies I have ever known and although she was very different than the female role models in my family, she was like another grandmother to me. I think everyone would benefit having a wise Jewish grandmother. She took me under her wings and tried hard to teach me to play the piano. I was a dismal failure. She loved opera and she would play her albums and explain the stories to me.

We didn’t have a local library, but our retired pastor and his wife had a pretty impressive home library and they had many magazines going back to the 1920s, all neatly organized on shelves in the attic. When my brothers and sisters and I had reports to write for school, she allowed us to scamper up the ladder to the attic and look through magazines, but she often would do research for us and have a stack of magazines and books with pages marked with information for our reports.

I remember one time during the summer, when her grandson was visiting she organized a nature walk in the woods, going up part of the mountain. At our dinner table that night, my brothers were talking about how dumb and boring that was. My brothers and her grandson had no interest in her nature walk, but I was captivated. She had field guides and was pointing out all sorts of things that I had never noticed before. It felt like I was seeing our woods through new eyes with her pointing out so many new things. To this day, I love field guides.

In my teens she let me borrow their copy of Bartlett’s Quotations to read and she urged me to start a notebook and write down the ones I liked. Thus my quotes notebook was born. I still collect quotes.

I never once considered her a “damned New Yorker.” I loved her like she was one of my grandmothers.

Traveling around the Army, I’ve met wonderful people from all over the world, including many people from NYC. Stereotypes get smashed to smithereens when you start looking at people as individuals and get to know them. I always told my kids to stop listening to gossip and bad things “about” people, because all you’re getting is second-hand information. I told them to get to know people – face-to-face and you’ll always be amazed at how interesting so many people can be. In fact, I bet when the ranting liberal lady in the TikTok video calms down and talks about her life, well, most of us might find some common ground with her and if all else fails, I agree with her that the gas prices are insane.

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June 18, 2022 · 9:19 am

Cats and conspiracies…

The economy is tanking, inflation is soaring and here’s a big CNN politics story today:

“As presidential cat, Willow Biden has privileges”

I kid you not.

Well, where to begin, first off, I’m going to try to shift away from commenting on social media content creators, because frankly, any criticisms are deemed “trolling” and from what I’ve seen across the board online, from professional journalists, politicians, and individual content creators, most people take any criticism as trolling and get up in arms. I figure if you walk into the public arena and post content, then if you face criticism, that’s part of entering the arena of public commentary. I don’t regret using that prepper channel as an example, because frankly talking about “be creative” in thinking about ways to defend your property and using the example of Ukrainian farmers poisoning cherries deserves criticism. This is America and we should be trying to find ways to pull our country together and help each other, since our inept government certainly won’t.

A frequent commenter on my blog mentioned that with how many right-wing people do get censored and have videos deleted, he found it interesting that video wasn’t banned. He wondered if that site was a law enforcement set-up, similar to what happened with the Gov. Whitmer kidnapping plot. I have no idea, but I will leave it at, if you’re giving advice to Americans on how to protect themselves and you’re talking about poisoning people as a creative example – I will never listen to your advice again. Period. I did check this morning to see if that video was still up and it is, but I won’t be clicking on that channel again. I think it’s a safe bet that federal law enforcement has some presence in the YouTube prepper community. And no one should ever consider poisoning people as a “creative” home defense idea. Seriously, this is insanity!

Among right-wing America there’s been a sea change with how reactionary many of them have become and I suspect a lot of it has to do with social media and the right-wing media space, selling paranoia and amplifying one conspiracy theory after another. Trump latched onto that and sold it too. This isn’t something new. I remember the Jade Helm conspiracy theories over a military training exercise in 2015. Another bizarre incident was there was an online generated confrontation in a TX town several years ago, where two groups of people showed up fighting mad at the other side, but the information spread online was all made up. (likely a hostile foreign information operation.) It was carried out sort of like scammers calling to tell you to send them money, to avoid the IRS coming after them, except they conned people with differing views into showing up to protest, pitting them against each other.

The belief that the government is trying to destroy the food supply is pretty widespread among the online right-wing sphere. It’s based on the belief that the Biden administration and Democrats are evil and want to destroy us. It jumped into high gear with a rash of food facility fires and the belief that there are just too many fires, so of course the only explanation is “they’re trying to destroy the food supply.” Of course, since the economic chaos in 2020, many businesses don’t have enough staff or have hired inexperienced staff and many types of food processing facilities are fraught with hazardous conditions, including fire hazards.

Same goes for the thousands of cattle dying in Kansas recently in the heat wave. The online right-wing buzz is the evil “they” killed the cattle… “trying to destroy our food supply,” again. Here’s a 2017 story from weather.com and I don’t recall right-wing online hysteria about this happening: “California Heat Wave Kills Thousands of Cattle and Overwhelms Dairy Industry.” Large numbers of cattle dying in heat waves isn’t something new. That 2017 report estimated 4,000-6,000 cattle died in that heat wave. It took me less than a minute to find information on other incidents of large numbers of cattle dying in heat waves, but I guess it’s easier to get online and ramble on and on spreading conspiracy theories that it must be an evil government plot rather than taking less than a minute to do a bit of checking into the subject.

Where I suspect the real government overreaches are going to occur is in trying to react to the escalating economic and food shortage crises, because the mass panic will start, chaos will escalate and the Biden administration has no federal plans and most states aren’t prepared. Democrats have moved to prodding big corporations to take actions to circumvent Republican resistance and also to shift blame, which we saw during the pandemic. It’s easier to say private corporations can set their own rules and stores have routinely placed limits on some purchases, like sales items. So, I expect more stores to start limiting amounts of various items customers can purchase as shortages worsen and for a lot of “data-sharing” efforts between big tech, big corporations and the federal government to monitor individual Americans purchases. Tracking Americans will move into high-gear is my guess. Now, that prospect I do find ominous, but then again I find so much of data-collection already taking place creepy and invasive.

Yesterday, I saw a news item about the Biden administration had been mulling sending Americans gas rebate cards to help ease their pain at the gas pumps, but that it’s unlikely to happen. CNN played words games in their report. Here’s paragraph 3:

“However, this is unlikely to happen in part because it would be difficult to administer and there would be no way to ensure the cards are only used for gas, the official said. Moreover, Congress would need to approve funding for such an emergency move and that would be challenging.”

The other part which was reported elsewhere was there is a chip shortage, so producing rebate cards is an even bigger problem than Congress. Today CNN Politics is reporting about Willow, the Biden’s cat… Priorities in their news reporting at CNN are quite something.

I will get to writing about my quotes notebook, but I’m going to take a break from blogging this weekend .

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June 17, 2022 · 4:04 pm

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.

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June 17, 2022 · 10:59 am

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.

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June 16, 2022 · 2:33 pm

More spin war garbage dumping again

My quotes notebook from the 1970s

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.

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June 14, 2022 · 10:34 am

A short update to my last post

This morning I added this paragraph to my last post, because I wasn’t sure the point about leadership I was trying to make was clear:

“Each person trying hard to prepare, help others, and sharing useful preparedness information can be a leader too. We all can step forward and try to help and guide those who have no idea how to go about working on emergency preparedness.”

I’m very much a contrarian, not good at “going along to get along’ and I can ruffle people’s feathers a lot, so I’m often left thinking, later, like with my after-rant post the other day, “Perhaps, I could have toned that down or chosen my words better or explained what I meant better.” However there are dozens upon dozens of people, especially online who are great at public speaking, great at putting together interesting and useful how-to videos and conveying information and yes, there are people all over America, in every community like this. Each of those people could choose to be a leader (many already are doing just that) in helping maintain calm, order and help others learn how to be better prepared and learn important skills. These people could be leaders and small beacons of hope, within their own family, community and even online as this economic and food crisis worsens.

The truth though is everyone at some point has a leadership role in life, like every parent has a duty to teach, guide and lead within their family. When I mention my late husband, I’m not trying to make him sound perfect, only trying to share useful leadership skills he taught me, even though I prefer not to be the leader in a group. In fact, I have always preferred to work in small groups with people committed to the same mission or goal that I am committed to. I like working with like-minded people who get stuff done and I get very frustrated and impatient with lazy people on the team I’m on, people who brag constantly and produce little, or the person who creates unnecessary drama and conflict within the group. I hate “drama” and therefore, this is the truth, I have always preferred to work in a group of men rather than in groups of women (boy, that’s a controversial thing to say, but that’s how I feel). That said, nowadays with all the gender stuff that’s gone on for years, I’ve noticed so many young men who are into being drama queens too and plenty of young women, who have to wear the pants in their family, because they’re raising kids alone or have some deadbeat man in their life, so there is that.

Let’s just leave it at, I prefer to set a goal and then focus on getting it done. We can all work towards being more productive and more proactive in our lives, rather than waiting for someone else to do for us. All that “the sky is falling” drama that spreads like wildfire on social media isn’t going to help anyone – we need more people who can stay calm, offer practical and actionable information, and who can spread a bit of hope.

There’s lots of bad news and more bad things happening than I can keep track of with this growing global economic and food crisis and that’s the important thing to remember – it is global. No country can escape all the fall-out from these crises, even America. There’s also fall-out from the war in Ukraine and climate issues, like drought affecting this crisis. Of course, I’d argue President Biden’s actions in regards to fossil fuel are making things much worse, but truly there is no magic bullet – everyone in the world is going to be impacted. Wasting a lot of energy every day looking for a scapegoat for all the serious problems is a waste of time. Each of us can look around our homes or in the mirror and see a whole lot of areas for improvement. I like to put my energy toward changing the things I can control.

People already working on homesteading, emergency preparedness and frugal-living are already taking big steps toward being more self-reliant and they’ve got important lessons they’ve learned that they can share with others. There will be disagreements about which way to do this or that is the best way, but at this point taking any steps toward growing some of your own food, learning more skills, working on stocking up food and emergency supplies, building some community spirit is better than doing nothing.

Most of all we should all live in today, not in fear of some future catastrophes. The little daily joys are what life’s all about.

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