January 1, 2022
I’m up early as I often am. Usually I cannot stand to lay in bed for too long. Over night a storm system moved into the area and there was a pretty steady sleet coming down earlier. We seem to be right on the edge of the ice-snow boundary, with accumulations increasing as you go north. (Well that seems obvious). Temperatures have already hit the high for today and will drop to below zero by morning. The Kansas City forecast for this area predicts three to six inches of snow on top of the accumulated ice.
I sit here in the warmth enjoying fresh brewed cup of coffee. I’ve no idea where the beans for my cup of “go juice” came from, South America? Africa? It occurs to me that the comforts that we take for granted in modern civilization are a fragile indeed. Thousands of people, huge sums of money, and expenditures of great energy were required to bring this simple cup to me this morning.
Of course, it isn’t just the coffee. I look about my living room and consider what would be left if the technological clock were turned back a century or a bit more. Only two items would remain: an Antebellum armoire and a ceramic coffee cup. The existence of everything else, down to the sheetrock and paint, is dependent upon a complex network of economic and industrial forces. The bases of those two things is the dollar as reserve currency and oil as the engine of modern manufacturing. There is a hard push from the Left to change this. I listen to people talk about a “green economy” and they have no idea what that means. They have no understanding of physics or how the real world functions. Their goals appear to be driven by some sort of childlike magical thinking.
Just as the Lefty ideas of a green economy and cars running off of unicorn farts and fairy dust are a fantasy, so are the ridiculous ideas of total self-sufficiency of many survivalists. Even the Amish communities are not completely self-sufficient, though they get closer than any survivalist stockpiling five gallon gas cans with stabilizer added. I have no problem with the idea of preparedness—I do the best I can toward this. I do stock up on “beans, bullets, and band-aids,” as well as other things. However, I’ve never lost sight of the fact that it is primarily a stop-gap measure for short term disaster or political and economic disruption as seen in 2020 and 2021. I’ve followed a number of survivalist type writers for about twenty years now and I’ve never seen one say what to do once you’ve consumed the last can of beans. There is a reason that dystopian fiction portrays a 95% population loss.
Robert A. Heinlein, the acclaimed Dean of Science Fiction, wrote about the signs of a society in decline. High taxation, deficit spending, restriction of liberty, violence, Balkanization (though that term had not yet entered the lexicon), were all mentioned. Additionally he included interpersonal rudeness in small matters. That is blatantly evident today, particularly online. I would include a coarsening of the culture. A moment ago an advertisement for a new TV show was on. Apparently it centers around several middle aged women. One referred to another as a “Tik-Tok ho.” The person did not see this as an insult, but something to which to aspire. How has this happened? I think we may be well beyond the tipping point to the fall.
I hope I’m wrong.
