Saturday, September 3, 2022

Canadian Prepper, "I Can't Believe it's Happening..."

Canadian Prepper, 9/3/22:
"I Can't Believe it's Happening..."
Riots are starting, civil unrest, the next Manhattan project is underway in USA, Nuclear deal failing will have global implications, Russia's Medvedev issues most dire warning to date, China responds to sale of $1.1 billions in arms sales, War is coming to Taiwan strait sooner than expected, smart meter AC remote regulation, 39 million under heat advisory, droughts ravage every continent, Europe braces for winter of rage, steel plants closing due to energy hyperinflation, quantum supercomputing arms race, nuclear power plant goes offline, climate chaos, Russia suspends ALL gas to Europe, and thats only the half of it! BUCKLE UP!"
Comments here:

"Get Your Money Out Of The Bank Before They Take It; Credit Card Rates Explode; FED Destroying Money"

Jeremiah Babe, 9/3/22:
"Get Your Money Out Of The Bank Before They Take It; 
Credit Card Rates Explode; FED Destroying Money"
Comments here:

"U.S. Inflation And The Hard Times That Are Coming"

"U.S. Inflation And The Hard Times That Are Coming"
by ConspiracyForever

"Inflation is a monetary phenomenon of too much money chasing too few goods. It’s the result of the Wall Street owned and operated Federal Reserve’s money printing madness. Since the 2008 financial crisis, trillions of dollars pumped up stock prices to the make super-rich and rich interests throughout the West and elsewhere richer than ever. Since the 2008 financial crisis, trillions of dollars pumped up stock prices to the make super-rich and rich interests throughout the West and elsewhere richer than ever. Corporate bosses also used Fed created money for large-scale stock buybacks to elevate their valuations.

Since Russia’s liberating SMO began, hegemon USA-dominated Western regimes exacerbated things by imposing unparalleled numbers of sanctions on the Russia Federation. While adversely affecting its economy, European nations were more greatly harmed. US policymakers didn’t consider how largely self-sufficient Russia is able to withstand the impact of Western sanctions.

Besides seeking to cause maximum harm to its enterprises and people, the Biden regime wants European economies adversely affected to benefit corporate America. That’s how predatory capitalism works, exploiting other nations and vast majority of people everywhere to benefit the privileged few.

The latest US CPI showed inflation to be higher than expected. It’s not the phony year-over-year 9.1% reported on July 13. As calculated pre-1990 before the formula was rigged to appear much lower than reality, it’s around 17.3% - the highest level in over 75 years, what’s unlikely to ease any time soon.

It’s not “Putin’s price hike” as the fake Biden and those propping up his illegitimacy falsely claim. Inflation has nothing to do with Russia’s liberating SMO. As establishment economist Milton Friedman explained long ago: “Inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon, in the sense that it is and can be produced only by a more rapid increase in the quantity of money than in output.”

And this from Friedman: “If you listen to people in Washington, (they’ll) tell you that inflation is produced by greedy businessmen, or it’s produced by grasping unions, or it’s produced by spendthrift consumers, or maybe, it’s those terrible Arab sheikhs who are producing it. None of (the above) produce inflation” because they don’t have a money-producing printing press like the Fed."

As long as there’s most money printed than things to buy, prices are pressured to rise. The way to cool inflation is by slowing the rate of money creation. Things have gotten so out-of-control in the US, UK and EU that most likely a stiff protracted economic downturn alone can get inflation under control.

According to analyst Doug Casey, annual US deficits are from one to two trillion. The only way to finance them is by selling excess debt to the Fed. And the only way it can do it is by continued money printing in amounts needed. The Fed is the only major buyer of US debt - notably since the Biden regime confiscated around $330 billion of the amount held by Russia.

The handwriting on the wall should have been apparent much earlier earlier. Nations concerned about being treated like Russia and others thinking they may be targeted one day are selling US debt, not buying it. When the Fed buys government debt, “it monetizes (it) by crediting the federal government’s accounts with commercial banks with newly created dollars,” Casey explained. Currency inflation pushes prices higher.

The fault is home-grown. When it occurs, currency depreciation is economically devastating. The rich can handle adverse economic and financial conditions. Ordinary people are harmed most.

Fed chairman and Treasury secretary Yellen are wrong. Current US inflation isn’t “transitory.” It’s deep-seated and not easing any time soon. Casey believes it became “a permanent structure.” “The state needs…massive (amounts of money creation) and credit to feed itself and its minions.”

Deep-seated inflation isn’t going away easily or soon in the US, UK or EU. Hard times getting harder will be the bane of ordinary people throughout the US/West for some time to come."

"Sometimes I Wish I Had A Car"

Full screen recommended.
St.Petersburg - Me, 9/3/22: 
"Sometimes I Wish I Had A Car"
"A week ago I had to go to my bank and as usual I was using public transport. I don't have a car, so I often use busses or mini busses. And of course I use metro very much. Metro is the most convenient means of transport, especially if you live in the city center. However there is a problem. I don't have metro in my area."

Watch that video and then compare it with what you see where you live and experience daily. This is reality, it's not staged, this is their life. Look at the streets and buildings; look at the people, what they wear, their physical appearance, activity; the cars and trucks; the public transport, the cleanliness and order. What's it like where you live, Good Citizen? And what do you think of those people? Then look at this...
Full screen, if you dare...

Anything to say? Feeling proud?
- CP

"Banks Are Not Releasing Deeds to Paid Off Mortgages"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, 9/3/22:
"Banks Are Not Releasing Deeds to Paid Off Mortgages"
"This is a sign of the times. Banks are taking your money for mortgage payments and when you are lucky enough to pay off your mortgage they are not giving you the deed. We are seeing this from one of the four major banks. Are the big banks in trouble?"
Comments here:

"Curveballs..."

"Just when we think we figured things out, the universe throws us a curveball. So, we have to improvise. We find happiness in unexpected places. We find ourselves back to the things that matter the most. The universe is funny that way. Sometimes it just has a way of making sure we wind up exactly where we belong."
- "Dr. Meredith Grey", "Grey's Anatomy"

"The Deadly Gaze in the U.S"

"The Deadly Gaze in the U.S"
by Mark Sashine

"The cat then hugged the mouse and purred, 'I love you to death.'"
- Old Turkish saying.

"Several years ago in one of my articles I wrote that the U.S. behaved toward Iraq like a rapist who, after raping a woman, tells her to clean herself because of her disgusting appearance. I was expecting a barrage of comments, but, instead, I got silence. In the U.S., however, silence doesn't mean assent; it means a deliberate ignoring. 

In my research to understand that pattern of brain passivity, I several times stated my perceptions directly into the faces of my fellow Americans. Whenever I did that, the reaction was the same. The person would look sideways and say nothing. I tried to catch that frozen gaze on the person's face, and, when I managed to do that, I recognized it as a gaze I hadn't seen for a very long time. It was the gaze of a bully from my childhood. You can sometimes notice such a gaze in dogs. It is the deadly gaze.

The Boy With the Deadly Gaze: He was transferred to our school when we were in the 5th grade, so most of us were about twelve at the time. That was the age when a teenager "grows out of his uniform," as one teacher said. Of course, in Russia at the time, we didn't have cell phones or the Internet; we didn't even have good clothes. Most of us wore uniforms: greenish-gray pants and jackets for boys, white blouses and brown skirts for girls. We were the "young pioneers," and each of us had a triangular red tie, symbolizing equality, fraternity and liberty, as well as the sacrificial blood of the martyrs of the Revolution. The strict collective code of honor included studying hard, helping other people to learn, helping the weak, and respecting society by behaving properly. At the same time, every teenager of our time lived most of his or her life on the beat, and we learned the unwritten "street rules' by experience. As an overweight kid, I had a tough time. 

No matter what happened between us kids, the worst possible thing you could do was to rat on your peers to adults. We had our rules, though: It was a shame for a boy to hit a girl and for a girl to instigate a fight. It was a shame to hurt someone weaker than yourself, unless that someone had asked for it. And it was a shame to tease old people and to torture animals. Not that we were perfect: We smoked, drank (sometimes with tough health consequences), stole things, fought ferociously and cruelly, cheated on homework and exams, lied repeatedly, and disturbed the peace. But I could say we were honorable. The bully wasn't, however. We saw this from the start.

He was a tall, lanky, blondish boy with a strange, sticky voice. When he talked, it seemed the words came out of him in slow-motion. We noticed his voice first, because it was full of sh*t. He used profanity as a primary way of communication. It was kind of like the way movie characters talk these days. We all used bad words, but coming from him they sounded exceptionally dirty. He had two followers who looked very much like him, though not as repulsive, and this unholy triad roamed the school hallways and nearby streets night and day. Nobody knew where he lived; it seemed as if he could appear and disappear at will. You could go out for groceries and bump into him. He would then perform his ritual of pretending to be your friend, pawing you, especially if you were a girl, then complaining that you didn't appreciate him, so he had to hurt you for your own good. All that would usually end with some really dirty thing, like throwing your groceries on the pavement and stomping on them, throwing stones at your pet, or lighting a match near a girl's skirt so that it created a huge hole in the only uniform she had - etc, etc. 

While his goons laughed their ears off, he never laughed. Instead, his frozen smirk seemed to become more like a mask and his expressionless gaze would get uglier than ever. Sometimes he would force a kid to do something dirty to others; he called it a coalition. That wouldn't last for long, however, because you could never satisfy his perverse appetites. Eventually, he would discard his temporary allies and hurt them even more. At that time, I didn't know about moronic evil, or such terms as "sadism." If had known about them, I would have recognized the pattern in the bully. But I was a bookish boy, and I recognized him instead in references I encountered to the Hitlerjugend and the SS. The bully was like them. In books about the Nazi culture, the training of young children that deprived them of a social conscience was described in gory detail. One of the main goals was to develop in them a sense of total indifference to, and contempt for, "others" - the inferior beings, whether animals or humans. The children were also pushed to have fun hurting people. In that context, our own bully was a "natural."

People noticed his behavior and tried to change it. Teachers warned him repeatedly, and the pioneer organization threatened to take away his tie (a very tough public punishment). One day, when he had been caught in some bad action, he put on quite a spectacle, promising to change and become a better person. To the kids who were his victims, though, this was a disgusting sight. We all knew he didn't mean it. The smirk was there all the time.

That's when those of us who had been hurt by him decided to take the matter into our own hands. On that rainy evening, we took off our red ties after school as usual, but we didn't go home. Instead, I went to intercept the bully, leaving the others ready to back me up. He was at his usual place and called me to approach, but I told him to f&ck himself, and when he started toward me in his deliberately menacing posture, I ran. Then the bully, accompanied by his two allies, followed me down the street and into the dark stone passage, through the cast-iron gates. Those gates were usually closed, but this time they were open. Right after they passed the gates, I reached the end of the passage, where the exit gates were closed. And at that moment a screeching sound told us that the entry gates were also closed. I stopped and looked at them. Then the shadows along the passage walls came alive and the enemy triad found itself surrounded, with nowhere to run.

As we presumed, the two butt kissers betrayed the bully in a second. We pushed them away, threw a blanket over him and started hitting. At that moment, we forgot that he was always bragging about carrying a knife. But, in this circumstance, he was lucky not to have one; if he had been carrying a knife, the enraged kids would likely have killed him with bricks. We knew this was our day. The deal between us was that we would stop punishing the bully when he began to cry. But he didn't cry. For some time we could only hear ourselves, our own animalistic rage. Suddenly, however, we heard a howl. He howled like a wounded beast in a paroxysm of helplessness and desperation. Then we stopped. We opened the gates on both sides and left in silence. None of us felt any satisfaction. We were just tired and empty. The one girl among us saved our souls that evening. When we all stopped to go our separate ways, she took out our red ties, which we had given her for safekeeping, and neatly put a tie on each of us. Then she smiled at us all and vanished into the darkness. The burden was lifted. We knew we had done the right thing.

The bully didn't come to school in the morning. The two others came, but they knew nothing of him. Eventually, we heard that his parents had transferred him to a special school for kids with psychological problems. We never saw him again and, for some reason, the bullying among ourselves also stopped entirely. None of us wanted to be like him, ever. We had all grown up.

When as a parent you introduce shame to your child, you do that by appealing to the child's sense of empathy and of self-preservation. Those are connected in a thoughtful human. Empathy tells you that you inflicted something on another person that you would not like to be subjected to yourself. And the sense of self-preservation tells you that the same kind of hurtful action could be directed toward you. Those realizations make you feel ashamed of your actions: you see them as not only mean, but also stupid. A person with no concept of shame, who sees the world only as an object for self-indulgence, is the bad seed. Such a person belongs in an asylum. We have such people at the highest levels of power in the U.S. It is bad enough if one person is shameless. But what if this disease were to spread through the entire nation?

Our Gaze at the World: I have been living in this country for 33 years now, and through all those years we have been at war, either directly or indirectly. Here are the places I remember since Y1989: Iraq, Kuwait, Somalia, Panama, Sudan, Kosovo, Lebanon, Haiti, Iraq again, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, and now a proxy war in Ukraine. In all these cases, we had our fun. We killed a lot of people after leaning on them, pretending to be their friends, and proclaiming our love. In all these cases, we denied any atrocities and vehemently called ourselves the best people in the world. In these cases, too, as well as in numerous cases before, we forced other people into a "coalition" with us.

Yet, NONE of these cases produced any positive outcome. In fact, we considerably worsened the world economy and devastated political structures, creating chaos and misery whenever we went. Those are the facts, and they are indisputable. If it wasn't for that insane gaze of ours, all of us here in the U.S. would be on our knees begging God's forgiveness. Instead, we are going to celebrate Labor Day after we've destroyed anything that even remotely resembles honest work for honest pay. We are truly unbelievable, and my little psycho-bully would fit in here very nicely. He would be in charge of some important department, and the media would be calling him "Slow, but Smarty, Mike," or whatever his ugly name was. The presence of the bully here has become so obvious that every morning I am afraid to see his face on TV. Sometimes the bullies come back, courtesy of Stephen King. They eat their breakfast, send their kids to school, and then proceed to spread their deadly love over other people, leaving dead bodies behind.

Americans are sick, and that sickness overtook them in the 20th Century when they benefited immensely from other people's miseries in two World Wars. Since that time, they have felt superior to other people and that feeling culminated in the BOMB. Not only do we have the BOMB; we actually used it and got away with it. Nobody threw a blanket over us and kicked us bad. Our hubris rules supreme. Our religion tells us that we are the freest, the smartest, the most righteous people on earth, and thus all our actions toward others are GOOD. We claim the right to dominate others, because we indulge ourselves and believe we are by default the ones who deserve it. Do you recognize the logic? It is the logic of a shameless, bratty toddler. There is no real love there, just self-adoration. We behave like a child who is "asking for it," and anyone who is at least a half-wit should become very worried indeed. Humankind is not very different from a middle school, and eventually the shadows will separate from the walls. Do we really want to risk being exposed?

I Am Not Fair: I concede that I am not entirely fair in comparing the whole American nation to a psycho kid from my childhood. There are plenty of good people in this country, and I have no right. No, I have every right! This is my home. Diversity: the real display of it is not in food, drinks and flowers. It is in the historical, generational experience, in the memory of the heart. I have an obligation before my people here to report a dangerous, maybe even fatal, psychic disease - a disease that once consumed the whole German nation and is now in full swing in America. I don't want to run again, panting and sweating into that dark passage. It is the light I seek, and in the light we fight. I am not fair. I am in love and I want to protect this beloved country of mine. In this battle I take no prisoners. It is easy to get cured. Just put the damned psychos into an asylum, where they belong!"

"A Look to the Heavens"

"These three bright nebulae are often featured in telescopic tours of the constellation Sagittarius and the crowded starfields of the central Milky Way. In fact, 18th century cosmic tourist Charles Messier cataloged two of them; M8, the large nebula left of center, and colorful M20 on the right. The third, NGC 6559, is above M8, separated from the larger nebula by a dark dust lane. All three are stellar nurseries about five thousand light-years or so distant.
The expansive M8, over a hundred light-years across, is also known as the Lagoon Nebula. M20's popular moniker is the Trifid. Glowing hydrogen gas creates the dominant red color of the emission nebulae, with contrasting blue hues, most striking in the Trifid, due to dust reflected starlight. The colorful skyscape recorded with telescope and digital camera also includes one of Messier's open star clusters, M21, just above the Trifid."

"We All Know..."

"We all know that something is eternal. And it ain't houses and it ain't names, and it ain't earth, and it ain't even the stars... everybody knows in their bones that something is eternal, and that something has to do with human beings. All the greatest people ever lived have been telling us that for five thousand years and yet you'd be surprised how people are always losing hold of it. There's something way down deep that's eternal about every human being."
- Thornton Wilder

"Feeling Overwhelmed: Breathing into Order"

"Feeling Overwhelmed: Breathing into Order"
by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM

"Always know, the Universe works in perfect order and you are never given more thank you can handle. Sometimes we may feel like there is just too much we need to do. Feeling overwhelmed may make it seem like the universe is picking on us, but the opposite is true: we are only given what we can handle. Difficult situations are opportunities to be our best selves, hone our skills and rise to the occasion.

The best place to start is to take a deep breath. As you do, remind yourself that the universe works in perfect order and therefore you can get everything done that needs to get done. As you exhale, release all the details that you have no control over. The universe with it's infinite organizing power will orchestrate the right outcome. Anytime stress begins to creep up, remember to breathe through it with these thoughts. Then, make a list of everything you need to do. Note what needs to be done first, and mark the things others may be able to do for you or with you. Though we often think no one else can do it correctly or well, there are times when it is worth it to exhale, let go of our control, and ask for help from professionals or friends. With the remaining things that feel you must do yourself, take another breath and determine their true importance.

Sometimes they are things we'd like to do, but aren't really necessary. After taking these quick steps, you will find you have a plan laid out, freeing you from frenzied thoughts circling in your head. With calming deep breaths, you are now free to focus more fully on our priorities. Herbal teas or flower remedies along with wise choices about caffeine and food can help keep us from becoming frantic too. But with nothing further from us than our breath, we can breathe in our best intentions and let the rest go with an exhale. Keeping ourselves centered and breathing into and through life's challenges helps us learn what we are truly capable of doing, and we will find we have the ability to rise to any occasion. Remember you aren't being picked on, and you are never alone."

Chet Raymo, "Seeing"

"Seeing"
by Chet Raymo

"There was a moment yesterday evening when the elements conspired to evoke these few lines, spoken by Macbeth:
"Light thickens,
And the crow makes wing to the rooky woods,
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse."

The fading light. The crows gliding down the fields to the trees in Ballybeg:
"Light thickens,
And the crow makes wing to the rooky woods,
Good things of day begin to droop and drowse."

It's all there, in those few lines - the mysterious power of poetry to infuse the world with meaning, to anoint the world with a transforming grace. One could spend an hour picking those lines apart, syntax and sound, sense and alliteration. The t's of light thickening, tongue against the teeth. The alar w's making wing. The owl eyes of the double o's. The d's nodding into slumber - day, droop, drowse.

The poet Howard Nemerov says of poetry that it "works on the very surface of the eye, that thin, unyielding wall of liquid between mind and world, where somehow, mysteriously, the patterns formed by electrical storms assaulting the retina become things and the thought of things and the names of things and the relations supposed between thing." It works too in the mouth, in the physical act of speech - tongue, teeth, those d's gliding deeper into the darkness of the throat.

I stand in the gloaming garden and the black birds glide, down, down to Ballybeg, and I marvel that with so few syllables Shakespeare can - across the centuries - teach me how to see."

The Poet: Paul Laurence Dunbar, "We Wear The Mask "

"We Wear The Mask"

"We wear the mask that grins and lies,
It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes,
This debt we pay to human guile,
With torn and bleeding hearts we smile,
And mouth with myriad subtleties.
Why should the world be overwise,
In counting all our tears and sighs? 
Nay, let them only see us, while
We wear the mask.

We smile, but, O great Christ, our cries
To thee from tortured souls arise.
We sing, but oh the clay is vile
Beneath our feet, and long the mile.
But let the world dream otherwise,
We wear the mask!"

- Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Daily "Near You?"

Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, United Kingdom.
Thanks for stopping by!

"What Are The Facts?"

"What are the facts? Again and again and againwhat are the facts? Shun wishful thinking, ignore divine revelation, forget what the stars foretell, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors think, never mind the un-guessable verdict of history - what are the facts, and to how many decimal places? You pilot always into an unknown future; facts are your single clue. Get the facts!"
- Robert A. Heinlein

And always remember...
"When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains,
however improbable, must be the truth."
- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, "Sherlock Holmes"

"The Moment of Greatest Danger"

The Writing on the Wall
"The Moment of Greatest Danger"
by William Schryver

"With the incomprehensibly bloody and understandably merciless repulse of the hapless Ukrainian “Kherson counter-offensive”, and now the almost comical debacle of the bungled “commando raid” of the Zaporozhye nuclear power plant, the decisive military operations of the Ukraine War have taken a giant step towards their long-foregone conclusion. Russia will fully achieve the three objectives of its “special military operation” as explicitly stated by Vladimir Putin in his address to the world delivered on the opening day of the war: liberating the Donbass; excising the Nazi influence from the region, and demilitarizing Ukraine.

The demilitarization of Ukraine has assumed particularly gruesome proportions. What was the largest, best-trained, and best-equipped land force in Europe at the beginning of 2022 has been reduced to a pitiful shell of its former glory – close to 100,000 dead and twice that many permanently maimed. The troops now manning the front lines are a rag-tag assembly of mostly untrained conscripts, frequently forced at the point of their own officers’ rifles to face the massive artillery barrages of an enemy they will likely never see and at whom they will never even get a chance to shoot back before the shell with their name on it tears them to shreds at the bottom of a feces-littered foxhole.

To be sure, the Armed Forces of Ukraine still retain some dangerous long-range striking power in the form of a handful of surviving NATO-provided M-777 howitzers and whatever few rockets they have left for their dozen or so remaining HIMARS launchers. But this war has reached the stage equivalent to Nazi Germany in mid-January 1945: the war is lost; everyone knows it is lost, and all that remains is the positioning in advance of the inevitable surrender, the unrestrained looting, and the occasional harassment of the never-say-die snipers who will fight to their last round of ammo and last drop of blood. In other words, we’ve finally arrived at the most dangerous juncture of this conflict.

You see, as I have frequently observed, this war, at its deepest root, has always been an existential struggle between Russia and the rapidly declining fortunes and dominion of the long-since irredeemably corrupted American Empire. Beginning with the fall of the Soviet Union, and continuing throughout the 1990s, the western vulture capitalists raced to divide, conquer, and despoil the unfathomable natural resource wealth of the former USSR. And indeed, in ten short years, they managed to extract a massive pile of treasure at Russia’s expense, only to be prematurely thwarted by the unforeseen rise of the previously obscure Vladimir Putin.

At first, the finely accoutered locusts believed they could manipulate Putin as easily as they had his immediate predecessors. But they were soon disabused of that fallacy. So then they began to pressure Putin and Russia by methodically assimilating into their “defensive alliance” all the previously unaligned nations that stood between NATO’s 1997 borders and the Russian frontier.

This, of course, awakened in Russia a sober sense of their increasingly precarious position, and in 2007, at the Munich Security Conference, Putin delivered a landmark speech wherein he put the Empire on notice that Russia was drawing a line in the sand beyond which it would not permit further NATO expansion. That line extended from eastern Poland to northern Armenia.

Predictably, Putin’s declarations were first mocked and then summarily dismissed. I suspect this was the point at which Russia came to see that war was very likely inevitable in order to retain its sovereignty and security. Nevertheless, Putin exhibited extraordinary patience. While initiating an aggressive military upgrade and expansion program, he bided his time for the next several years.

But with the threat to Russia’s strategic naval base in Syria and the US-orchestrated coup d’etat in Ukraine, he was compelled to act, albeit with considerable restraint, to alter the trajectory of events. He dispatched an expeditionary force to Syria to prevent the fall of the Assad regime at the hands of US-supported “moderate rebels”; he moved to reclaim historically Russian Crimea, and to much more aggressively support the ethnic Russian separatists in the Donbass region of Ukraine who were waging a tenuously balanced civil war against the US-installed regime in Kiev.

American designs in Syria were foiled. But the ongoing de facto NATO assimilation of Ukraine continued, as the US and its NATO allies set out to methodically construct what would eventually become the most formidable proxy army in history, with ambitions to lure Putin into a Slavic civil war that would sap Russian strength, mortally wound its still-fragile economy, and induce social unrest within Russia and discontent among its various loci of domestic power, and ultimately effect “regime change” in the Kremlin. But, at every juncture, Putin out-maneuvered them.

Meanwhile, the decades-long superiority of Russian missile technology produced for Putin several trump cards in the form of long-range stand-off weapons capable of threatening prime US military assets virtually anywhere on the planet. Armed with this “ace in the hole”, Putin’s negotiation posture was significantly fortified, and from 2018 onward he began to articulate much more forcefully that Russia would not abide any further NATO expansion towards its borders – most explicitly in the case of Ukraine, where the ambitious training and outfitting of a NATO proxy army continued apace.

Yet again, Putin’s warnings were mocked and dismissed. Finally, when the overly confident Zelensky government in Kiev moved, in late 2021, to position its most experienced, best-armed, and best-trained forces in the Ukrainian-held western Donbass and in Mariupol, at the gate of the Crimean land-bridge – clearly preparatory to an attempt to subjugate the separatist-held regions of eastern Ukraine and to eventually retake Crimea – well, Putin knew the moment of truth had finally arrived.

In late December 2021 the Russians crafted and forwarded to the US and its NATO vassals a document articulating in exhaustive detail Russia’s explicit demands for the roll-back of NATO to its 1997 borders. Yet again Russia’s demands and warnings elicited scoffing summary dismissals from the United States and its submissive European colonies. And so, the long-inevitable war began on February 24, 2022 and continues to this day.

Now, it must be clearly understood that the war in Ukraine is about far more than simply Russia reestablishing strategic depth on its western border and the re-assimilation of ethnic Russian populations into the motherland. No, it is, as all the great powers of the planet very clearly recognize, about putting an end to unrestrained American hegemony – economically, politically, and militarily. At some level, there can be no question that this is now widely recognized as the second-order consequence of this war. It is unquestionably recognized as such at the highest levels of imperial power in Washington, New York, and London.

The decisive defeat of its Mother of All Proxy Armies in Ukraine, and that defeat’s indelible demarcation of the high-water mark of imperial expansion, will accelerate the already commenced transition of the planet to a multipolar, balance-of-powers paradigm such as characterized the world prior to the advent of American global dominance in the post-World War II era. 

Simply put, it marks the end of the American empire. And, as such, we are now at the most dangerous moment humanity has faced in the previous three-quarters of a century – very possibly in its entire history. Now we will find out what the self-anointed Masters of Empire will do when faced with the impending loss of their dominion over the earth.

Something tells me they are highly unlikely to shrug their shoulders, wax philosophical about the whole thing, gather up all their military toys, and go home. To do so would signal to all their colonies and vassals that the jig is well and truly up; NATO will effectively cease as a meaningful and credible alliance; the European Union as presently constituted will quickly dissolve.

That said, I have no capacity to predict what the imperial powers-that-be will do at this pivotal moment in human history, nor can I confidently anticipate what the consequences of their actions will be. All I know is that the moment of greatest danger in all our lives is now bearing down upon us. At some point – likely sooner than later – those who wield the power and control the levers of empire will make a move to preserve its dominion. I am personally convinced they will fail – and abysmally so – but almost certainly not without leaving oceans of blood and mountains of ashes in their wake.

Prepare yourselves accordingly…"

"The Way You Carry It..."

"It's not the load that breaks you down, it's the way you carry it."
- Lena Horne

"Massive Price Increases At Kroger! What's Next? What's Coming?"

Full screen recommended.
Adventures with Danno, 9/3/22:
"Massive Price Increases At Kroger! 
What's Next? What's Coming?"
"In today's vlog we are at Kroger, and are noticing massive price increases! We are here to check out skyrocketing prices, and a lot of empty shelves! It's getting rough out here as stores seem to be struggling with getting products!"
Comments here:
If they'll do this for a tv, what happens when there's no food?
Well,just wait until EBT runs out and the stores run out of food.
 Imagine how they'll behave then. This you have to see!
Very strong language alert, and I can't post it here:
Hat tip to the Burning Platform for this material.

"What Happened to American Labor?"

Editor’s note: Here, on this Labor Day weekend, we reprint a previous article acknowledging the American worker. In real terms, he has barely budged a jot in 40 years. But why? Today we grope for answers - and ponder his future.
"What Happened to American Labor?"
by Brian Maher

Annapolis, Maryland - "This we learn from the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics: American productivity has increased 62% since 1979. But average real hourly pay (adjusted for inflation, that is) has scarcely increased 17% across the same space. That is, productivity has run 3.5 laps around wages since 1979. Thus the average American worker finds himself a hamster upon a wheel… jogging largely in place.

Here our co-founder Bill Bonner reduces to concrete the abstract plight of the American worker: "In 1971, you could buy a new Ford F-150 for $2,500. At $4 an hour, it took 625 hours to buy the truck. Today’s model costs $30,000, and the average hourly wage is $26. So the wage earner has to work for 1,154 hours to get a standard F-150. Put another way, he has to sell almost twice as much of his time to get a set of wheels.

But it is not only the F-150 owner who has lost the value of his dearest commodity - time: You can do the same calculation for housing. An average man paid about $24,000 for the average house in 1971. Today, he pays $371,000. Priced in time, the house cost 6,000 hours in 1971 and 14,269 hours today… It takes more than seven years of work for the average guy to buy the average house today – four years more than it took in 1971."

Is it a coincidence that Mr. Bonner selects the year 1971 to draw a contrast? We do not believe it is coincidence.

The Fiat Dollar and Globalization: In August 1971, old Nixon slammed shut the gold window... and lowered the shade. The gold standard was a mere rump in its dying days. It nonetheless kept the balance of trade in a range. A nation running a persistent trade deficit risked depleting its gold stocks. The unbacked dollar - the ersatz dollar - removed all checks.

America no longer had to produce goods to exchange for other goods… or fear for its gold. “By the sweat of your brow you will eat,” Genesis instructs us. Under the new dollar standard, America could eat by the sweat of foreign brows - without perspiring one bead of its own. Scraps of paper, rolling off an over-labored printing press, were its primary production. Ream upon ream went abroad in exchange for goods - real goods.

The international division of labor was suddenly opened to the world’s sweating and heaving masses. Many were peasants from the labor-rich fields of China. They entered the factories in their millions, each toiling for one dollar per day. Perhaps two. The competition depressed average American wages - wages that have never recovered. Meantime, the past decade has only deepened existing trends…

The Sparrows Go Hungry: The trickle-down theory of economic progress argues you must first feed the horses in order to feed the sparrows. It contains much justice - poor men do not open businesses. They do not provide employment. They put no bread in mouths.

But the Federal Reserve’s stable hands have overfed the horses. Those earning $1 million or more have captured 63% of all capital gains this past decade. But the sparrows went scratching along on the leavings. The Main Street economy has guttered along at a lilting 2.1% annual pace. Never had the gap between stock market and economy stretched so broadly. The sparrows - incidentally - presently wilt beneath a terrible inflation that plunders them insidiously. Is there a way out of the maze? Yes, argue the technologists...

The Promise of Technology: They insist automation, robotics and artificial intelligence (AI) will soon catapult the economic system into vastly more productive realms. By 2030 alone, they project (at least before the pandemic) it could yield an additional almost $16 trillion to global GDP. They further claim 40–50% of human occupations will be subject to automation over the next 15–20 years.

These occupations are not limited to trucking, taxi driving, manufacturing and construction. To these, we must add white-collared jobs in law, finance, medicine, accounting, etc. What would become of the attorney at law, we wonder - and the human helmsman of the ambulance he chases? In truth, we are unconvinced automation will proceed at the rollicking gallop its drummers project. But suspend all assumption for the moment... and drive on to the inevitable question: What happens when robots acquire the brains to perform nearly all human labor?

Creative Destruction: Economist Joseph Schumpeter (1883–1950) shoved the term “creative destruction” into general circulation. For Schumpeter, capitalism was the “perennial gale” of creative destruction. Capitalism blows away the old and inefficient. It hauls in the new and improved. Because of capitalism’s perennial gale, today’s serf lives more royally than yesteryear’s king.

Explains economist Richard Rahn of the Cato Institute: "The average low-income American, who makes $25,000 per year, lives in a home that has air conditioning, a color TV and a dishwasher, owns an automobile and eats more calories than he should from an immense variety of food. Louis XIV lived in constant fear of dying from smallpox and many other diseases that are now cured quickly by antibiotics. His palace at Versailles had 700 rooms but no bathrooms (hence he rarely bathed), and no central heating or air conditioning."

Here is progress itself. All because capitalism’s creative gales flattened all before it. Capitalism’s obvious glories are why most notice the “creative” side of the ledger sheet. But what about the equally critical “destruction” side?

The Destructive Side of Capitalism: Innovation and technology have always allowed humans to mine fresh sources of productive employment. The 19th-century farmer became the 20th-century factory worker… became the 21st-century computer programmer. Now introduce an omnipotent robot...A robotic brute that can drive home a rivet is one thing by itself. But a genius robot that could do anything a human can do - yet better - is another entirely. This robot would tower above the human as the human towers above the beasts of the field. An Aristotle, a da Vinci, an Einstein would be pygmies next to it.

What human ability would lie beyond this unnatural beast? Artistic expression, perhaps? A 900-IQ robot might run its circles around the human antique, you say. But it could not appreciate beauty - much less express it. The robot is all brains, that is… but no heart, no soul. The kingdom of the arts belongs to man and man alone. Well, please introduce yourself to AIVA (Artificial Intelligence Virtual Artist)

Will the Next Mozart Be a Computer? AIVA is a computerized composer. Programmers drummed into its ears the music of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart and other colossi of the classical canon. AIVA teased out their tricks... and taught itself to compose original music based upon them. Its outpourings are indistinguishable from the carbon-based professional’s. They have been featured in cinematic soundtracks. Advertisements. And computer games. Will the next Mozart be a computer? Not even the oldest profession is safe from robotic invasion - but let it pass for now. What about technology’s impact on the general community?

Winners and Losers: Schumpeter’s creatively destructive gales tear apart the social fabric… Capitalism puts out its tongue at tradition. It yanks the roots out of communities. It swings the human being around hairpin turns of social and technological change, like a lad pinballing on a carnival ride. Within a generation, the centuries-old farming community has given over to the assembly line and the punch clock. A generation later, the factory goes dark as creative destruction blows the jobs clear to China… or Vietnam… or wherever labor is cheapest.

Americans must often rip up their families to follow the jobs - thus, they can sink little root in the local topsoil. Not all the displaced can take up new lines of employment. Many are simply left behind, broken… and can never catch up.

Capitalism, Progress, Must Advance: We are heart and soul for capitalism. We do not believe a superior system exists. And as political theorist Kenneth Minogue has noted: “Capitalism is what people do when you leave them alone.” We are for leaving people alone - and for being left alone.

Hence we are for capitalism. The river of progress must carry forward. Do you reject progress? Then you must believe the man who tamed fire should himself burn eternally... that the inventor of the wheel should be broken upon the very same wheel... That Franklin should have fried in an electric chair for discovering electricity… that Ford should have been knocked flat by his auto... that Salk should sulk in endless miseries for scotching polio.

If this is what you believe, please drive on. But let us recognize: The advancing river of progress sometimes takes the human note with it. And not all change is progress. Within cold and lifeless economic data, behind dense forests of statistics, exist living human beings with beating hearts. And many with broken hearts.

To these, our fellow Americans - to all who hew the nation’s wood and draw its water - we hoist an acknowledging toast today."

Friday, September 2, 2022

Canadian Prepper, "Humans Will Be Extinct By 2030"

Full screen recommended.
Canadian Prepper, 9/2/22:
"Humans Will Be Extinct By 2030"
"This is probably one of the most dire predictions ever. In this video I interview Dr. Guy McPherson, he makes some bold predictions that all humans will be gone in a few years... Lets hope he's wrong!"
Comments here:

"Our Major Cities Are Being Transformed Into Stomach-Churning Cesspools Of Squalor"

Full screen recommended.
"Our Major Cities Are Being Transformed Into 
Stomach-Churning Cesspools Of Squalor"
by Epic Economist

"All over America, large portions of our major cities are becoming disgusting cesspools of misery. The standard of living that fueled the growth and prosperity of previous generations no longer exist. And now, we’re confronting a decaying reality of rising poverty, homelessness, and substance abuse even in some of the nation’s wealthiest areas. The decline of our main metropolitan areas is just a reflection of an economy that is steadily falling apart. And the greatest threat we are currently facing is a rapidly deepening downturn that is likely to unleash civil unrest all around the country. But while some are rushing to flee dysfunctional cities before another black swan event hits, millions remain trapped in stomach-churning conditions, completely unaware of the dangers that lie ahead.

Not long ago, columnist LZ Granderson authored an op-ed piece in which he described what life is like in Los Angeles right at this moment. In 2021, LA spent over $620 million in tax dollars just to address its homelessness crisis, and yet, the homeless population jumped by 16% in the past year alone, representing an additional 60,000 people living on the city’s streets. “As a Los Angeles resident, I am among those who wonder what the mayor’s office is doing. When I lived downtown it was virtually impossible to walk a full block in any direction without seeing a homeless person. In Silver Lake where I live now, there are tent cities. On my drive to work, I see people living underneath the highway overpasses. It’s no longer Skid Row here. The skid is everywhere,” Granderson wrote.

Sadly, that description could also apply to San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Denver, Minneapolis, Chicago, Detroit, St. Louis, Memphis, Cleveland, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and countless other U.S. cities. Similarly, in New York, giant piles of trash are being spotted in every corner of the city. And despite the rampant levels of societal rot, it turns out that it’s incredibly expensive to live among the garbage. Since January, rents rose 33 percent in New York City, 16 percent in Los Angeles, and 12 percent in Chicago. But many Americans are realizing that living in these decaying places is unsustainable, and they’ve been doing everything they can to relocate before another disaster, emergency or downturn emerges.

With housing affordability issues worsening, and a huge part of the population at risk of facing energy poverty this winter, have you already stopped to wonder what are those cities going to look like once we get deep into the ongoing economic downturn? Most people will continue to live in denial until the very end. And even though 61 percent of the population is living paycheck to paycheck, people continue to rack up debt as if there was no tomorrow. Americans are drowning in debt, but the cost of living continues to climb much faster than inflation, leaving us imprisoned in a system that is doomed to fail. At this point, everyone should be building up their financial cushions, because what is coming is not a joke. The time to wake up is now. Those who refuse to face this reality will find themselves ill-prepared to handle the very harsh economic environment that is ahead."

"Greatest Crash Ever Will Cause Hell On Earth; System Is Breaking Apart; Markets On Borrowed Time"

Jeremiah Babe, 9/2/22:
"Greatest Crash Ever Will Cause Hell On Earth; 
System Is Breaking Apart; Markets On Borrowed Time"
Comments Here:

"The Forgotten Man"

"The Forgotten Man"
by Jeffrey Tucker

"The classic movie "Gold Diggers of 1933" featured a song-and-dance number called “Remember My Forgotten Man.” The movie was ostensibly about how farm girls who moved to the city and faced economic depression would do whatever it took to get along. That was the theme of the opening song, “We’re in the Money,” the lyrics of which are truly hilarious once you understand the point.

But the deeper theme was summed up in the final number about the Forgotten Man. It was based on a hugely impactful essay by the same name written by sociologist William Graham Sumner in 1916. It’s the story of a lost generation of young men who lost jobs, social status, dignity and hope due to war, conscription and generally being treated like animals by the state.

In 1923, we saw a huge loss in life expectancy among the young generation. This was due to drugs and alcohol poisoning plus suicide. The loss was particularly poignant at that time because we had seen nothing but progress since 1870, when the great American economic boom took place that transformed life on Earth. The Great War was an interruption in this progress. As an attempt to shape people up, the U.S. government under expert medical advisers implemented nationwide alcohol prohibition. It was a disaster, driving people from controlled liquor to bathtub gin and resulting in poisoning.

Disaster Then and Now: Such dramatic shifts in vital statistics are worth a focus. They signal massive calamity. That’s how we might sum up the CDC’s newest statistical release that shows how three years of life expectancy have been lost in a mere two years. Stunning.

It’s not the fault of COVID. The same data sets show how COVID deaths in total were borrowed from what might have otherwise been flu and other deaths by respiratory ailments. In other words, viral crowding out. The average age of death from COVID is equal to or above life expectancy in 1919. The real problem traces to despair and ill health caused by the pandemic response. That’s right: In the name of protecting our health, governments around the country wrecked health. That should not surprise us at all. It’s consistent with the law of unintended consequences.

This mess is showing up in every area of economic life. The latest employment report shows a slight but mostly meaningless uptick in the unemployment rate. Buried in the report and getting almost no public attention was the data on worker/population ratios and labor force participation rates. These are still nowhere near recovered from 2019.

At least a million people are missing from the workforce. It particularly affects men, whose labor force participation is shockingly low. In terms of job creation, there are more and more jobs being created. True. How is this magic possible? A flat percentage of the workforce is accepting two or three part-time jobs, scrambling just to stay ahead of inflation.

Meanwhile, at the Fed: I’ve got a theory about what the Fed is doing now. They know two things for sure: Recession is already here, awaiting final confirmation, and inflation is still with us in one form or another. They have decided to announce this as policy to get ahead of reality. This way they can say: This is exactly what we were intending!

Truth is that they have no idea what they are doing. The interest rate increases are cooling off money expansion but that might be entirely because the economy is slowing through lending restrictions, particularly as it affects housing. Beyond that, they have no real means to sop up the $6 trillion-plus in new liquidity that they dumped on the markets between March 2020 and March 2022. They know that this new money has to make its way through the system through larger prices.

They further know that prices in general are NOT going to go down. At best, they will in general settle down to a more reasonable rate of increase. All told, 15% of the purchasing power of the dollar has been stolen in a mere 2½ years. That’s something we’ve not seen in 40 years but probably not really since the latter days of the American Revolution.

Knowing all of this and aware that the Fed has no power to do anything about it, the new policy is to act like this was the whole point of the policy, thus perpetuating the myth that these masters of money have intelligence and competence.

The Red Dictator: No summary of the present calamitous moment would be complete without an assessment of the goings on of the Biden administration. The creepy red dictator-chic backdrop to Biden’s fiery speech yesterday was no accident. These people are facing disaster and ready to try anything to distract the country from the ongoing economic meltdown. Therefore, they decided to take a page out of the 1932 book by Carl Schmitt called "The Concept of the Political."

In Schmitt’s view, the best means to hold onto power is to reinforce a friend/enemy distinction. You need to rally a nation of friends around the idea that an enemy exists among them and in order to survive that enemy needs to be extinguished. He tried this last summer by the demonization of the unvaccinated. The same tactics are being intensified now in an effort to call all Trump sympathizers “semi-fascists” who are a threat to democracy itself.

Chutzpah: Now, this tactic really requires some chutzpah, especially if you are going to deliver the message from a quasi-fascist stage with lighting pulled from interwar dictator rallies. But there you go. There is something in the heart of man, they believe, that longs for an iron hand. If they really are planning to unleash an army of tax collectors, attempt to arrest the former president and punish all political dissent with censorship and media demonization, they might as well go the full way.

Will this work? I’m no longer willing to offer a prediction either way. Dictatorship in history is far more politically popular and effective than anyone likes to admit. We can only await the polls, provided we can trust them. At this point, we might find that people are afraid to tell pollsters their true views. This is what happens at a time of growing state power.

Forgotten, Not Gone: We might look back at the summer of 2022 as the calm before the storm. Inflation is certainly returning. It will leave electricity and re-enter oil. It will leave financials and go back to groceries. It will leave housing and re-enter durable goods. Finally, it will hit commodities. By this winter, layoffs will increase and a new Republican Congress will be frantically and wildly fighting with a hateful White House and administrative state. There will be no progress toward fixing anything for another two years.

Meanwhile, the demographic problems we face today are truly grim, and potentially more devastating than the economic ones. Take care my friends: There is never a case for despair, only ever more reasons to reach deep and find a source of hope from within."
Full screen recommended.
"Gold Diggers of 1933", "We're in the Money"
The famous opening song from the film "Gold Diggers of 1933", performed by Ginger Rogers. All musical scenes in the film, including this one, were choreographed by the legendary Busby Berkeley.

Gregory Mannarino, "The Debt Market Hyper-Bubble Remains Unstable And Could Crack At Any Moment - Be Ready"

Gregory Mannarino, PM 9/2/22:
"The Debt Market Hyper-Bubble Remains Unstable
 And Could Crack At Any Moment - Be Ready"
Comments here:

"Banks Don’t Want to Give You Your Money"

Full screen recommended.
Dan, iAllegedly, 9/2/22:
"Banks Don’t Want to Give You Your Money"
"Thanks for making it near impossible for you to take withdrawals from the bank. They are doing everything they can to limit your access to your money. This includes making you wait three weeks for a withdrawal and having you provide documentation to prove your identity. It’s just ridiculous."
Comments here:

Musical Interlude: 2002, “Cycle Of Time”

Full screen mode recommended.
2002, “Cycle Of Time”

"A Look to the Heavens"

"Braided, serpentine filaments of glowing gas suggest this nebula's popular name, The Medusa Nebula. Also known as Abell 21, this Medusa is an old planetary nebula some 1,500 light-years away in the constellation Gemini. Like its mythological namesake, the nebula is associated with a dramatic transformation.
The planetary nebula phase represents a final stage in the evolution of low mass stars like the sun, as they transform themselves from red giants to hot white dwarf stars and in the process shrug off their outer layers. Ultraviolet radiation from the hot star powers the nebular glow. The Medusa's transforming star is near the center of the overall bright crescent shape. In this deep telescopic view, fainter filaments clearly extend below and to the left of the bright crescent region. The Medusa Nebula is estimated to be over 4 light-years across.”

"The Heart of Humanity"

"The Heart of Humanity"
by Madisyn Taylor, The DailyOM

"Sitting with our sadness takes the courage to believe that we can bear the pain and we will come out the other side. The last thing most of us want to hear or think about when we are dealing with profound feelings of sadness is that deep learning can be found in this place. In the midst of our pain, we often feel picked on by life, or overwhelmed by the enormity of some loss, or simply too exhausted to try and examine the situation. We may feel far too disappointed and angry to look for anything resembling a bright side to our suffering. Still, somewhere in our hearts, we know that we will eventually emerge from the depths into the light of greater awareness. Remembering this truth, no matter how elusive it seems, can help.

The other thing we often would rather not hear when we are dealing with intense sadness is that the only way out of it is through it. Sitting with our sadness takes the courage to believe that we can bear the pain and the faith that we will come out the other side. With courage, we can allow ourselves to cycle through the grieving process with full inner permission to experience it. This is a powerful teaching that sadness has to offer us - the ability to surrender and the acceptance of change go hand in hand.

Another teaching of sadness is compassion for others who are in pain, because it is only in feeling our own pain that we can really understand and allow for someone else’s. Sadness is something we all go through, and we all learn from it and are deepened by its presence in our lives. While our own individual experiences of sadness carry with them unique lessons, the implications of what we learn are universal. The wisdom we gain from going through the process of feeling loss, heartbreak, or deep disappointment gives us access to the heart of humanity."

"Remember: Your Mission Isn’t Done"

"Remember: Your Mission Isn’t Done"
by John Wilder

"One winter, while hunting elk up on Wilder Mountain, we had, well, an issue. We were about fifteen or twenty miles in from the nearest pavement, and headed home. It was overcast. It was lazily spitting snow, with a breeze that was slowly picking up. Looking to the west, where there should be a resplendent sunset, the sky was dark, heavy, and pendulous with brooding storm clouds that blotted out even a hint of the winter Sun.

That was when the problem hit. Pa Wilder, while driving over a “road” that was little more than a common path cut by four-wheel-drive vehicles over the course of decades of hunting and firewood gathering, drove over a small branch that had fallen in the road. Not a problem, right? Well, it was a problem. In this case, the branch had the stem of a broken off limb, sticking straight up. Pa drove the GMC Jimmy® right over that sharp shard of limb. In the span of a dozen or so feet, we had lost not one, but two tires. It penetrated the center of each tire, poking a hole the size of a half-dollar coin in each.

Amazingly, we had lost another tire already that day, already. We now had a four-wheel drive with five tires and three flats. In winter. As a blizzard approached and night was setting in. And all of this was in country where it could easily hit -40°F as night descended.

I bring this up to say that we had a mission. Our mission at that point in time was to get home. There were several challenges, and I’m pretty sure if most people were in the backcountry as a blizzard was descending that the last person they would choose would be a 12-year-old boy to be a guy on the team. Which is sad.

Children can have missions. Children can face danger. Children can do important things. We forget that because we’re in a society that doesn’t give children important things to do, mostly. Midshipmen in the Royal Navy were as young as 14. To be clear: Midshipmen in the Royal Navy were 14. A midshipman is an officer. If you were unaware, the Royal Navy wasn’t a social club, and often those boys fought in wars. As officers. So we forgot that boys can be given real, substantial responsibility. But there’s also the chance that we forget something else: that each of us is on a mission. And each of us has a role to play.

We currently are in a place where freedom is an increasingly precious and rare commodity. It’s not just in the United States – Trump may have said, “Make America Great Again” but down under they seem to be following the “Make Australia A Prison Again” plan. And Canada? I love our Canadabros that come by regularly (Canada is the second-largest readership here), but Canada seems to be determined to become the Soviet Above the 49th Parallel, led by that Tundra Trotsky, Trudeau.

It seems like in this day and age we all have a mission. Just like 12 isn’t too young, 80 isn’t too old. Frankly, we need all hands on deck. The size of the mission is the largest on the North American continent since 1774. I almost wrote that the idea was to preserve the Constitution and the Republic. Seriously, I’d love nothing more than to write that.

I’d love for that to happen. I’d love for us to come together. I’d settle for the laws to look like they did 90 years ago. Heck, even 70 years ago. That would be preferable to today. A reversion, sadly, is impossible. Whatever will come from tomorrow will not look like the past. It may be a shadow. The Holy Roman Emperors weren’t Roman. And the Holy Roman Empire wasn’t the Roman Empire. Or it may be something entirely different. I think it will be entirely different.

And that’s where you come in. Yes, you. You have a mission to create a new nation here. It won’t look like what we have today – it simply cannot, since we have created a situation that is at the far end of stability. I assure you, you play a part. The initial conditions of what happens are crucial to the final outcome. If George Washington had wanted to be King? If Thomas Jefferson had been a Martian Terminator Robot like the one that keeps triggering my motion detector lights at night even though the sheriff won’t believe me?

Things would be entirely different. And you are important. Your actions in the next decade are critical to the creation of what will come after. Do we want a nation that will be based on slavery, control, and that eternal boot stamping on a human face? I’d vote no. If you’re a regular here, I’m betting that’s your vote, too.

If so, let me shout as loudly as I can: You Are Not Done. This is Not Over. What is it that you can do to create a world where freedom beats slavery? What can you do to create a world where children can run free from the indoctrination of an all-powerful, all-regulating state?

There’s a lot. Our nation was, thankfully, built on the consent of the governed. Most things that local government provides, we want. To quote Python, Monty: "But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?"

To be clear: the Federal government does very little to make anything in the list above better, and often does a lot to make them worse. Except for the interstate highways. Those are actually pretty cool.

But I will tell you – you are the seed of the future of this country. You are the seed of the future of this continent. You are the seed of the future of this world. It doesn’t matter how old you are. The time is coming, and coming quickly where great injustices will be attempted. And you are the seed to make what comes after better for humanity. Would the world rather live in 1950’s America or 1930’s U.S.S.R.?

The choice is stark. Your mission is clear. How will you act to make your county, your state, your country one where free men can walk? It’s up to you.

Back to the mountain. For me, it was a game. That’s the advantage of being 12. Pa Wilder and my older brother (also named John due to a typographical error) and I wheeled the tires so we had two good ones in front. We locked in the hubs on the four-wheel drive.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to drive up a mountain path in a car with only two tires in a snowstorm as it got darker every minute. It doesn’t work very well. The flat back wheels couldn’t push the Jimmy® up the hill. That’s where I came in. It was my job to take the winch cable, run up the hill, and loop the cable up the base of a tree. Pa would then use the combination of the winch and the two front tires to pull the Jimmy© up. Tree by tree, cable length by cable length, we worked pretty flawlessly as a team to get the Jimmy™ to the top of the hill. Thankfully, for the most part it was downhill from there. Although Pa was driving on the rims, we got it home.

Was there danger? Certainly, there always is. We had snow, so we had water. Ma would have called the Sheriff not too long after dusk, and even though the mountains were a labyrinth of roads, people had seen us. We also had matches, hatchets, wool blankets, gasoline, and a mountain’s worth of firewood to keep us warm. But we also had a mission. Each of us served our purpose, and we got home.

Pa was a bit raw about having to buy two new rims and three new tires for a day’s worth of not seeing any elk, though. For the record, I never saw a single elk when hunting with Pa. I’m telling you, that man knew how to hunt. Finding? Sometimes I think he just wanted a good drive in the woods and hike with his boys, teaching them about living. Teaching them about missions, and the part that they play, whether they know it or not.

In this life, we all have a mission, and we all play a part in it. I can assure you that your part is not done, because you’re above ground, breathing, and reading this. I hate to repeat something so trite, but in this case, it’s true: you are not done. This is not over. And the whole world depends...on you. It’s up to you. You will create the future.

So, go do it."