The November 2020 General Assembly of the Whole, which would normally be held on Thursday, Nov. 12th, has been postponed. We hope to reschedule for Nov. 19th, but watch here or on our mailing list for the final date.
Gov. Jay Inslee has announced new statewide restrictions to help curb the spread of the coronavirus, which includes closing indoor service for restaurants and bars and prohibiting indoor social gatherings.
These rules will mostly go into effect on Monday at 11:59 p.m. and will remain in effect until Dec. 14.
The announcement comes following days of increasing COVID-19 cases.
The impacted industries/areas are:
The biggest impact will be the closure of indoor dining at restaurants and bars. Outdoor dining and to-go service is permitted. Outdoor dining must follow the outdoor dining restriction. Table size limited to 5 for outdoor dining. These restaurant restrictions go into effect at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 18.
In-store retail limited to 25% indoor occupancy and must close any common/congregate non-food-related seating areas. Food court indoor seating is closed.
Indoor social gatherings from people outside your household are prohibited and outdoor social gatherings should be limited to 5 people outside your household.
Fitness facilities and gyms are closed for indoor operations. Outdoor fitness classes may still occur but they are limited by the outdoor gathering restriction listed above.
Wedding and funerals receptions are prohibited. Ceremonies are limited to no more than 30 people.
All retail activities and business meetings are prohibited. Only professional training and testing that cannot be performed remotely is allowed. Occupancy in each meeting room is limited to 25% or 100 people, whichever is fewer.
Movie theaters are closed for indoor service. Drive-in movie theaters are still permitted and must follow the current drive-in movie theater guidance.
Religious services limited to 25% indoor occupancy no more than 200 people, whichever is fewer. No choir, band, or ensemble shall perform during the service.
Museums/Zoos/Aquariums are closed for indoor service.
During an 11 a.m. press conference, Inslee announced $50 million for aid to businesses who have been impacted.
Watch the press conference below or by clicking here.
Good infection! A third doodle on the Trinity from the pen of C.S. Lewis looking at the Holy Spirit. “God is Love” but this does not mean “Love is God”. It may not mean that all our feelings of love are necessarily godly… This is an illustration of C.S. Lewis’ third talk from his fourth radio series called ‘Beyond Personality: Or First Steps in the Doctrine of the Trinity’. This became Chapter 4 of Book 4 in his book called ‘Mere Christianity’…You can find the book here: http://www.amazon.com/Mere-Christiani…
(0:06) Tuberculosis (also called consumption) is a potentially serious infectious bacterial disease that mainly affects the lungs & caused widespread public concern in the 19th & early 20th centuries as the disease became more common. In 1815 one in four deaths in England was due to “consumption”. In the 1880s the infected poor were “encouraged” to enter sanatoria that resembled prisons.
(4:36) “. . . When people try to get rid of manlike, or, as they are called, ‘anthropomorphic,’ images, they merely succeed in substituting images of some other kinds. ‘I don’t believe in a personal God,’ says one, ‘but I do believe in a great spiritual force.’ What he has not noticed is that the word ‘force’ has let in all sorts of images about winds & tides electricity & gravitation. ‘I don’t believe in a personal God,’ says another, ‘but I do believe we are all parts of one great Being which moves & works through us all’—not noticing that he has merely exchanged the image of a fatherly & royal-looking man for the image of some widely extended gas or fluid. A girl I knew was brought up by ‘higher thinking’ parents to regard God as perfect ‘substance.’ In later life she realized that this had actually led her to think of Him as something like a vast tapioca pudding. (To make matters worse, she disliked tapioca.) We may feel ourselves quite safe from this degree of absurdity, but we are mistaken. If a man watches his own mind, I believe he will find that what profess to be specially advanced or philosophic conceptions of God are, in his thinking, always accompanied by vague images which, if inspected, would turn out to be even more absurd than the manlike images aroused by Christian theology. For man, after all, is the highest of the things we meet in sensuous experience” (Lewis, Time magazine, 1947).
(6:53) “At this point we must remind ourselves that Christian theology does not believe God to be a person. It believes Him to be such that in Him a trinity of persons is consistent with a unity of Deity. In that sense it believes Him to be something very different from a person, just as a cube, in which six squares are consistent with unity of the body, is different from a square. (Flatlanders, attempting to imagine a cube, would either imagine the six squares coinciding, & thus destroy their distinctness, or else imagine them set out side by side, & thus destroy the unity. Our difficulties about the Trinity are of much the same kind.) (The Poison of Subjectivism).
(6:01) There are some instances where love of self, love of a friend, love of a child, love of a king & love of family had to be rebuked in Scripture to some degree, & these rebukes can still apply today.
(12:04) John 1.1-5 “In the beginning was the Word, & the Word was with God, & the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made through Him, & without Him nothing was made that was made. In Him was life, & the life was the light of men. And the light shines in the darkness, & the darkness did not comprehend it.” https://biblehub.com/john/1-1.htm
(12:49) Anyone feel like joining a Greek dance line, smashin’ some plates & yelling ‘Opa!/ώπα!’? Music taken from the soundtrack to the ‘The Guns of Navarone’.
The magazine article shows italics as follows (in capitals): “Instead of being ON the table”; “does not come AFTER the cause”; “as if the Father & Son were two THINGS, rather than two persons”; “Love is what one PERSON has for another PERSON…”; “then before the world was made He was NOT love” ; “is a REAL person”; “How could he NOT die…” : “what CAN he do but wither and die?”
Yesterday, John Crump published a report at Ammoland.com regarding a recent conference call between the ATF’s top brass and the “Biden transition team.” To be clear, no matter what you may read in the media, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. is not yet the president-elect. At least not yet. None of the 50 states have certified their election results and the electoral college isn’t due to vote until December 14.
That made the conference call in question both premature and inappropriate. We’ve talked to people with direct knowledge of what was discussed on the call and can confirm Crump’s report that the higher ups at the ATF told the Biden boys they want to target two items should their boss occupy the oval office in January. Number one on the hit list is pistol arm braces and number two is 80% lowers.
The people we’ve spoken to confirm that the push to ban these items is coming from the top two seats at the ATF — acting Director Regina Lombardo and Associate Deputy Marvin Richardson. Also on board with banning these items are three members of the bureau’s general counsel’s office — Chief Counsel Joel Roessner, Deputy Chief Counsel Pamela Hicks and Associate Chief Counsel James Vann.
Both of these items have, of course been legal for manufacture and sale to the public for years. The ATF itself approved the sale of pistol arm braces eight years ago. Since then, millions have been sold and hundreds of people in the industry have jobs that are based on the manufacture and sale of braces.
As for 80% lowers, it’s always been legal for Americans to build their own firearms for their own use. Only a couple of state require serialization and registration of home-built guns now.
An 80% lower is a partially-finished block of aluminum. The buyer is then required to drill and mill the lower to make it functional for use as part of a pistol or rifle. If 80% lowers are banned, would 75% lowers still be legal? How about 70%? Will we have to regulate the sale of all billet aluminum in the country in case someone decides to use it to fashion a gun?
To ban these items, the ATF would have to reverse itself, doing a 180 on scores of opinions and rulings it has been issuing regarding these items for years. Of course, that didn’t stop them when they were ordered by the Trump White House to regulate bump stocks the same way as they do machine guns.
What such a ban would look like is anyone’s guess at this point. They could ban only new sales of the items, letting current owners keep and use them. Or, they could ban their possession, as was done with bump stocks, requiring owners to turn them in or destroy them.
Either way, if Biden is inaugurated and orders the ATF to ban these items, it will touch off a new round of lawsuits from gun rights orgs and owners of the newly-verboten equipment. Thousands of them will soon be sitting on lake beds all across the country.
In the mean time the White House apparently has the detail of what was discussed between the ATF brass and the Bidenbots. The President would be well within his rights to clean house at the ATF, just as he’s recently done at the DOD.
That, of course, would be a calculated risk. If the court challenges and recounts go his way, he’d be able to install replacements that have more respect for the rule of law, not to mention the right to keep and bear arms. But if things don’t go his way and Biden takes office in January, the replacements could well be worse than the asses that are currently in those seats.
In this video, US Army Special Forces Small Arms Instructor, Gunsite Instructor, and NRA Police Firearms Instructor Ken Hackathorn of Wilson Combat and author, instructor, and person defense legal expert Massad Ayoob discuss the AR15 and the second amendment.
The cases of Covid-19 are rising at a quick rate across America. So are the death rates from it. Just yesterday (11-11-2020) it was reported that our current cases are a higher count than they were when we had the first lockdown. I’m not trying to scare anyone. I’m trying to make sure that we are all ready for what could be our reality.
My thought on the increase in cases is that people have let their guard down. People are getting tired of the virus and are just wanting to get back to what used to be their normal. Therefore, they are ignoring it and carrying on as if it was gone. It doesn’t work like that…it won’t go away if you ignore it, it will only get worse.
If the current trend keeps up there will be no avoiding another lockdown. The upcoming holidays (Thanksgiving and Christmas) are predicted to cause a surge in positive cases. Another lockdown is getting closer to happening with each passing day. One thing that is for sure is if Mr. Biden does turn out to be in fact our president-elect, he has promised another lockdown once he takes office. It is rumored that his lockdown would be longer and stricter than the previous one. Unfortunately, the way things are heading there may be another lockdown before this year even ends.
Are you truly ready for what may happen?
Let’s take a moment to talk about this. I really hate to be the one to have to tell you this, but if you are one of those who has a 72 hour emergency kit (like the one in the pic to the left) and thinks you are ready for any type of emergency, you are wrong! Those may be good for evacuating due to a fire, hurricane, tornado, or earthquake, etc. But, they will not do you much good in a SHTF scenario such as what we are actually in the middle of with this pandemic. We are not at a point to where we would have to evacuate. In fact, as you know, we need to stay hunkered down. And if there is another lockdown, trust me, it will last longer than what’s in those kits will last. It has been estimated that a four to six week lockdown will be necessary.
So what do we need to do?
We need to make sure that we have at the very minimum 30 days worth of food and household essentials for our families. While most preppers who have been preppers since BEFORE the pandemic happened, will have at the minimum a six month supply of food and household essentials. And, then there are those who are long term preppers who have a year plus supply of food and household essentials.
If you haven’t already forgotten, toilet paper was the very first thing to disappear off the shelves, even before the last lockdown began. So, make sure you have enough toilet paper, paper towels, paper plates, etc. to last a couple of months. Then, we had cleaning/sanitizing products, hygeine products, flour, and yeast disappear from the shelves. So you will want to make sure you have enough of those items on hand as well. And, if you’re going to have flour and yeast in your food storage, make sure you have a tried and true recipe for making bread and other foods using them. The same would apply to beans and rice, make sure you have some recipes 🙂.
We also need to ensure that we have shelf stable, non-perishable food items; foods that don’t need to be refrigerated or frozen. What happens if you lose power (for whatever reason) and your refrigerated/frozen food spoils? That’s where the emergency food meals and meals in a bag can come into play. They don’t need to be refrigerated and can be as quick as microwave meals to prepare. Plus, they take up much less space to store than canned and freezer foods. Click on this link for recipes for my meals in a bag. I started making my own emergency food meals when I discovered that most of those that were available for purchase cost way more than they should. In other words, I couldn’t afford them, lol. But, I found that I could make my own, using my own recipes and substituting dehydrated or freeze dried ingredients for fresh or canned ingredients. And, I knew those homemade emergency meals would be meals that my family members would eat.
Ummmm…it seems I kinda got off on a little bunny trail there. What can I say, I just love my meals in a bag!! Anyway, a good idea is to make sure you store foods that your familiy will eat. And, it’s a good idea to have a variety. So, while you have canned foods, pastas, and other non-perishable foods, it’s a good idea to have other choices also, such as the emergeny meals, on hand for those days you need a quick and easy meal.
I’m focusing on food here because that’s the main thing we are going to need in the case of another lock down. If nothing else, learn from the very reccent past with the first lockdown and think about what items were sparce, or not available at all, in your area. Those will be the things you need to make sure you have on hand now, if you have not already done so. Then, you need to try as hard as you can to build up a supply that will last your family at least three months. Minimum.
As I am proof reading this article, I am watching The Nightly News and it is being reported that some grocery stores are putting limits on some food items again. They mentioned the very same products that I mentioned above as having been in short supply during the first lockdown as being those items that are now having limits put on them again. It is my prayer that your eyes will be open to what is happening around you, and that you will listen to what God is telling you that you need to prepare you and your family during this pandemic. Please stay home as much as is possible, and stay safe.
Until next time…happy prepping, and God bless!
James 4:17, Therefore, to one who knows the right thing to do and does not do it,
to him it is sin. (NASB)
As an aside, I just want to say…As Christians, it is hard for some to realize that even though God has promised to be our Protector, He has also told us that we need to be vigilant and look out for ourselves as well. In other words, we know that if we put our hand in the fire and hold it there long enough we are going to get burned. In the same way, during this pandemic, if we carry on our lives ignoring the reality of the Covid-19 virus long enough we are eventually going to come into contact with someone who has the virus but is not yet exhibiting the symptoms, or someone who is asymptomatic. So, we need to protect ourselves by not putting our hand in the fire. In other words, we need to follow the protocols that have been set forth by the CDC. Just because you follow protocol DOES NOT mean that you are not trusting in God. Yes it’s true that if it is our time we are going to go no matter how careful we are. But, what if it is not our time and we act in a way that will accelerate that time?
According to this article at the Deccan Herald, there were 700km (~435 miles) of traffic jams in Paris on Halloween as people attempted to flee the city ahead of another lockdown. The scene is reminiscent of so much disaster fiction where the protagonist tries to bugout from the city a little late. It’s difficult to know when the right time to bug out is, but if you’re stuck in over 400 miles of traffic jams, then you probably waited too long. Mass departures from cities are nothing new for pandemics. During the 1793 yellow fever epidemic, around 40% of the population of Philadelphia fled the city. But back then, around 10% of the city’s people had died from the disease within a span of three months, whereas the citizens of Paris are fleeing the government’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic which has killed 0.1% of the city’s population.
If you plan to bug out something, it’s important to know how you are going to do it and especially when you are going to go so you don’t end up getting caught in this sort of jam.
An authorisation that needs to be filled out just to take a bit of fresh air. Long traffic jams as Parisians tried to leave the French capital before it was too late. Pressure on supermarket shelves for key goods.
After enduring two months of lockdown last spring in a bid to squeeze out Covid-19, there was a weary sense of deja-vu in France on Friday as people contemplated going through it all again for at least a month — and maybe even to Christmas and beyond.
The new lockdown added to an already grim mood in France after three attacks in recent weeks blamed on Islamic extremists, the latest the killing of three people inside a church in Nice on Thursday.
There are crucial differences with the new lockdown, most crucially that children will be returning to school after the autumn break, rather than staying home.
And while nonessential businesses are to close, some were still open on Friday.
At least four shops — a shoe store, a dry cleaners, a mobile phone store and a Nespresso boutique — welcomed clients at midday on a busy pedestrian street in the Passy neighbourhood of western Paris.
“For me, it’s a normal day, it changes nothing,” said Hedi Lecaude as he headed to work at his insurance office in Paris, flashing an authorisation from his employer to police as he entered the metro.
There was also a steady flow of traffic around central Paris, even if public transport was less clogged than usual by midday, raising concern among medics over whether the public would take this round of the lockdown seriously.
There were fewer bike riders and joggers around than usual but the atmosphere was more of a lazy Sunday afternoon than the first day of strict stay-at-home orders.
Trains from the provinces back to Paris were busy after President Emmanuel Macron made clear that there would be a grace period so families could return home after the autumn break.
But in the other direction, hundreds of kilometres of traffic jams formed in Paris late Thursday as worried residents of the capital sought to flee in the hours before the lockdown took effect.
The Sytadin traffic website said there were over 700 kilometres of traffic jams in the Paris region late Thursday, with electronic signs on the Paris ring road bearing grim warnings for drivers of an hour to go before the next exit.
Yet the reality remained that within a space of months France has gone from “confinement” (lockdown), to “deconfinement” as the measures were relaxed over the summer, to “reconfinement”.
As previously, the basic rules are simple and strict. Essential workers and employees who cannot work from home can obtain passes for their daily commute.
Others will only be allowed to leave home for other essential reasons — for example food shopping or medical visits — or for exercise. These trips should be for no more than one hour and within a one-kilometre radius of their homes, Prime Minister Jean Castex said.
And like in spring, every movement outside needs to be justified by filling out an authorisation form, either by hand or online.
Worried social media users posted pictures of supermarket shelves empty of the essentials, but executives insisted there would be no shortages.
The president of the Intermarche chain, Thierry Cotillard, said his supermarkets had been busier than normal but denied there had been any “hysteria.”
Home entertainment and electrical goods giant Fnac-Darty said it was keeping stores open by benefitting from an exemption that allows people to buy goods for home-working.
According to a poll by Odoxa-Dentsu Consulting for France Info and daily Le Figaro, seven out of 10 in France are in favour of the new lockdown.
“Being able to send the children to school is a big help,” said Josephine Weil, a lawyer, as she walked with her son in central Paris, adding she was “resigned” to the reality of the new lockdown.
But some angry French took to the streets of Paris late Thursday for an unauthorised protest to condemn the new measures as overly drastic.
“We shouldn’t overdo it. From midnight tonight we must all be at home, it’s too much,” said one protester, who gave her name as Laura.
If germs invade the soft tissues below the superficial level of the skin (the “epidermis”), they can rapidly infect the main layers of soft tissue below. These include the deep layer of the skin (the “dermis”), the subcutaneous fat, the muscle layers, and various blood vessels and nerves.
Cellulitis may be easy to deal with in normal times, but it will be an epidemic in the aftermath of a major disaster. This is not because it’s contagious; it isn’t unless you have an open wound yourself or exchange bodily fluids. Expect cases simply because of the sheer number of injuries incurred from performing activities of daily survival in less than sanitary conditions.
Without antibiotics, infections can spread to lymph nodes and the bloodstream, rapidly becoming life-threatening. The end result might affect the entire body, referred to as “sepsis.” Once sepsis develops, inflammation of deep structures like the spinal cord (“meningitis”) or bone marrow (“osteomyelitis”) can further complicate the situation. In the past, sepsis was usually fatal.
The bacteria that can cause cellulitis are on your skin right now. Normal inhabitants of the surface of your skin include Staphylococcus and Group A Streptococcus. They do no harm until the skin is broken and they enter deeper tissues where they don’t belong. In recent years, a resistant bacterium called MRSA (Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus) has arisen which causes cellulitis resistant to the usual antibiotics.
As an aside, Cellulitis has nothing to do with the dimpling on the skin called “cellulite”. The suffix “-itis” simply means “inflammation”, so cellul-itis simply means “inflammation of the cells.”
Heat in the area of the infection compared to non-affected areas
Redness, usually spreading towards torso
Swelling in the area of infection (often appearing shiny and causing a sensation of tightness)
Drainage of pus or cloudy fluid from the area of the infection
Foul odor coming from the area of infection
Hair loss at the site of infection (less common)
Joint stiffness caused by swelling of the tissue over it (less common)
Cellulitis commonly occurs in an extremity, such as a leg. In these cases, it’s helpful to keep the limb elevated. Other strategies include warm or cool compresses or soaks to the affected area, and the use of ibuprofen (Advil) or acetaminophen (Tylenol) to decrease pain, discomfort, and fever.
As most cases of cellulitis are caused by bacteria, they should improve and disappear during a 7-14-day course of therapy with medications in the Penicillin, Erythromycin, or Cephalosporin (Keflex) families. Amoxicillin and ampicillin are particularly popular. MRSA cellulitis can be treated with clindamycin and the sulfa drug combination of sulfamethoxazole/trimethoprim (SMX-TMP). It’s important to complete the full course of therapy.
Adult dosing:
-Penicillin, amoxicillin, cephalexin, or ampicillin 250-500 mg orally four times a day for 7-14 days (Amoxicillin also comes in 875 mg).
-Clindamycin 150-300 mg orally three times a day for 7-10 days.
-SMX 800 mg-TMX 160 mg orally twice a day for 7-10 days.
Those allergic to penicillins can still take clindamycin or SMX-TMP. It should be noted that not all sources will recommend the same dosage, frequency, and duration of therapy for a particular drug. In resistant infections like MRSA, combination therapy with SMX/TMP and Cephalexin 500 mg orally four times a day for 7-14 days may be necessary.
As with all medications, the longer the therapy and the higher the dose, the more likelihood that adverse reactions may occur. A much more comprehensive discussion of antibiotics can be found in Alton’s Antibiotics and Infectious Disease: The Layman’s Guide, or online at drugs.com and rxlist.com.
All the drugs mentioned above are available in veterinary equivalents (at least at present). In a survival situation, however, antibiotics will be precious commodities. You, as medic, should dispense them only when absolutely necessary. The misuse of antibiotics, along with their excessive use in livestock, is part of the reason that we’re seeing an epidemic of antibiotic resistance in this country.
Just as we recently heard that The Organic Prepper had closed their Facebook page over censorship, now PrepperNet has announced that they are moving to MeWe.
PrepperNet has moved to MeWe!
Due to Facebook’s restrictions and censorship on Free Speech, we are moving our primary social media platform to MeWe. Without warning, Facebook has deleted other pages related to preparedness such as Forward Observer’s and Prepping2.0. While PrepperNet is not a political group, there are times our preparedness group sometimes discusses and shares information and personal perspectives about current events.
With the recent and ongoing politically motivated censorship actions of many of the social media platforms, PrepperNet sees the handwriting on the wall and we are reevaluating our relationship and use of some of the social media tools. In the meantime, we are making every effort to comply with Facebook’s policies as we consider it a valuable communication tool. However, to ensure our community will be in a position to continue on, we have developed a new plan to ensure a continuity of operations should we lose access to Facebook.
So here is our plan.
We have different levels
ALL PrepperNet members should all join PrepperNet.Com. It’s FREE! If you want to support PrepperNet, please become a Premium Member for $40/year.
PrepperNet 101 is going to be Facebook. We will not allow any political or controversial topics. We will only use Facebook to “Catch” new interested preppers looking for PrepperNet.
PrepperNet 102 is MeWe. This is where you can chat and share preparedness topics with everyone. www.mewe.com/join/preppernet
PrepperNet 103 will be the PrepperNet forums. The forums are for learning and sharing information. This is old school and hopefully will not take a big learning curve. This is for people that want to share projects and really learn. We are fine with a small percentage participating on the forums. The forums link can be found in your basic membership tab on preppernet.com. You can use the app Tapatalk to connect with the forums once your account is setup.
As we move forward, we encourage all members to use MeWe as their primary social media platform when interacting with PrepperNet.
In Joe Biden’s address after being declared president-elect by news organizations, he promised to be a leader who “seeks not to divide but to unify.” Making that assertion after the campaigns we have seen, not to mention the light-years-apart treatment of the candidates, while Donald Trump is still adamantly disputing the election because of alleged Democrat malfeasance is, at a minimum, ironic. And it would be the height of hypocrisy if only a few of Trump’s claims of cheating are true. But we need to go further and recognize that even the possibility of Joe Biden uniting us is a delusion.
Agreement on the specific ends we want to achieve is unattainable because our desires are mutually inconsistent. Our agreement is very limited on even very broadly defined issues, and once we look further than vague, aspirational language and feel-good generalities, Americans disagree on virtually everything.
All of us want to be fed, clothed, housed, educated, etc. We agree in that sense. But we disagree about virtually every aspect of who, what, when, where, why, and how. We want different types and amounts, in different ways, at different times and places, and for different people. We are vastly different in the tradeoffs we are willing to make among our desires, not to mention who we think should pay our bills. Once we consider any of the myriad actual choices faced, the fact of scarcity necessitates that our specific ends conflict, rather than align.
Consider a mundane example played out daily in our homes—breakfast. Does everyone in your family agree on “the most important meal of the day”? Does everyone even eat breakfast? Does each member have coffee, a cold caffeine drink, or neither? Juice? What kind? Are all agreed on when, where, what, or how much to eat? Do we agree on who should pay for breakfast, cook it, and clean up after it? Do we agree on the “dress code” that should apply, either at breakfast or afterward?
Diverse individuals have diverse preferences. Multiplying this single example by the uncountable decisions that must be reached in society every day makes our fundamental disunity clear. And we are no more unified when we get to public policy. We are not in agreement about people’s rights and government powers that some view as essential but others view as unforgivable. The same is true of many foreign policy choices. We cannot be unified as “one nation under God” when some vehemently reject any reference to God. We cannot be unified about abortion when some view it as murder and others consider it sacred. Policies that take from some to give to others also inherently create disagreement from those whose pockets are involuntarily picked. Reducing what we take from some, entailing giving less to others than they wish, also triggers disagreement. So long as government dictates such choices, political unity is unattainable.
In fact, politics as currently practiced eviscerates the one thing Americans could agree about. This reflects the far-too-little-recognized fact that we have greater agreement on what all of us want to avoid than on what all of us want. None of us wants what John Locke called our “lives, liberties, and estates” violated. That is, each of us wants rights and property defended against invasion. Respecting all of our property rights reduces the risk from predation for each of us. But creating added rights and privileges for some at the expense of others’ equal rights and privileges makes government the most dangerous predator, even when who is selected to do so is determined by majority vote.
Each of us would like the freedom to peacefully pursue our own goals. As Lord Acton put it, “liberty is the only object which benefits all alike, and provokes no sincere opposition,” because freedom to choose for ourselves is always the primary means to our ultimate ends. That is why the traditional functions of government are to protect us from abuse by our neighbors and foreign powers, while its greatest threat is supposed protectors becoming predators against citizens. That is why Acton recognized that liberty requires “the limitation of the public authority.” But we are incredibly far from agreement on that today.
Well-established property rights and the voluntary market arrangements they enable let individuals decide for themselves, limiting each of us to persuasion rather than coercion. Except in the very unusual case where we must all make the same choice, this allows us to better match our choices to our preferences and circumstances. And unlike minority votes in elections, every dollar “vote” matters.
In fact, we should recognize that markets are our primary means to transform our disagreements into mutually beneficial cooperation, while restrictions on markets hobble that essential function.
Say I offer you a widget for sale at $10 and you say yes. That does not mean we agree on its value. We disagreed. I valued it at less than $10 worth of other goods and services, or I wouldn’t have sold it for that. You must have valued it more than $10, or you wouldn’t have bought it for that. Importantly, however, we have transformed our disagreement on values into an exchange that gives both of us benefits we consider to be worth more than the costs.
In contrast, talk of political unity is primarily rhetorical cover for those who are in power to coerce those who disagree with them. They benefit themselves at others’ expense, taking others’ resources and making them acquiesce in what they object to. And unlike markets, in which greater disagreements about value create greater net benefits from voluntary arrangements, “unifying” political initiatives are just ways to control who will be forced to do what for others, driving Americans apart while hamstringing cooperative arrangements and squandering the wealth they would have created.
Grand invocations that “I will unify us” are actually shorthand for “We disagree about many things, but those in this group are unified against others’ preferences, and we mean to get our way, regardless of their well-being and desire,” which is made clear by the demonization of anyone who doesn’t support the supposed “unity” position as divisive. That kind of unity is tyranny. Strengthening our union actually runs along a different path than the unity of 50 percent plus one, unified against the interests of others. It is uniting in a common commitment to honoring one another’s rights and the liberty this makes possible for all of us. Without unity in that, we can never achieve the kind of unity that is actually desirable and achievable. The alternative is the prospect of more of what we have experienced of late, which resembles what Thomas Hobbes called “a war of all against all.” But if we are united only by the ongoing fight to win that war against other Americans, we are selling out the birthright we have from our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.
On September 18 of the year 96 AD, a fairly obscure and elderly politician named Marcus Cocceius Nerva was proclaimed Emperor of Rome by the Senate.
Rome was in chaos at the time; the empire had suffered from years of turmoil, economic decline, and oppression.
Most of the last several emperors– going back before the suicide of Nero in 68 AD– had been extremely destructive… plundering the treasury, waging expensive wars, and dismantling individual liberty.
The government was also extremely unstable; it was not uncommon at that point for emperors to be deposed or even assassinated.
In fact, Nerva’s predecessor– the emperor Domitian– had literally been murdered that morning.
Nerva was seen by many Senators as the ‘safe choice’ to take over the government. He was old, frail, and sick… so he wasn’t expected to last very long.
Most of all, Nerva was completely unremarkable.
He had spent his entire professional life in the service of the Empire, yet his name is barely mentioned in any historical record or associated with any major achievement.
But ‘unremarkable’ was exactly what Romans felt like they needed at the time: Nerva would be a break from the chaos. Or so they thought.
We know now with the benefit of hindsight that Rome would never fully recover.
There would be a few ‘good’ emperors along the way– people like Marcus Aurelius who were able to temporarily hold back the decline.
But the long-term trends were unstoppable.
Rome was slowly going bankrupt, destroying its currency, and rejecting the basic principles of its civilization that made it so powerful and prosperous to begin with.
And no politician was able to put the brakes on those big trends and reverse the inevitable decline.
This is a common theme throughout history: empires rise and fall, not because of a single individual, but from decades of major trends that gradually cause an inevitable decline.
These same trends keep surfacing over and over again across the centuries.
Economic mismanagement is an obvious one: empires in decline almost invariably hold an arrogant belief that they are exempt from the natural laws of finance.
In other words, they believe they can spend as much as they want, accumulate infinite amounts of debt, and debase their currency without limit, and somehow there won’t be any consequences.
Another trend is that the empire abandons its core values. Integrity, civic-mindedness, and hard work give way to corruption and entitlement.
And perhaps the biggest trend of empires in decline is that society frequently turns on itself. Civility ends, and rage takes over.
It goes without saying that these trends are alive and well in the West today, especially in the Land of the Free.
US finances have been in disarray for decades. Just this year alone, the national debt has grown by $4 trillion and the Federal Reserve has conjured another $3 trillion out of thin air.
And even before Covid struck when the economy was firing on all cylinders, the government was still adding more than $1 trillion each year to the debt.
Now there are entire factions of politicians that want to take those numbers to the next level.
In fact, there’s an entire school of economics now called “Modern Monetary Theory” which poses that governments can simply print as much money as they want without consequence.
This is pretty classic empire arrogance.
But, again, the even more powerful trend now is the growing rage that’s so prevalent.
We’ve seen it unfold in front of our very eyes– violence, arson, assault, looting, vandalism, intimidation.
And if the this angry mob isn’t out in the streets causing mayhem, they’re on social media trying to destroy someone’s life who committed the thoughtcrime of intellectual dissent.
The election results last week proved that this angry mob is still a numerical minority.
Unfortunately they are a very powerful minority that has taken over a number of important institutions.
They already control the media. Objective journalism doesn’t exist anymore– it’s just activism and propaganda.
(And if anyone needs any proof, look no further than a prominent CNN ‘reporter’ weeping tears of joy over the weekend on live television. How can these people expect to be taken seriously as objective journalists??)
The mob has also taken over education too.
Schools and universities are now filled with enraged Marxists who spend dozens of hours each week indoctrinating our children with their new woke religion.
They’ve even reinvented science, history, and mathematics to conform to the principles of critical race theory.
The mob also exerts extreme influence over major corporations.
You can’t watch a Disney movie, or an NFL game, or even a commercial for men’s razors anymore, without having identity politics shoved down your throat.
They also hold extreme influence over Big Tech, whose one-sided censorship policies have become so absurd they’re starting to rival the Chinese Communist Party.
Over the weekend, for example, Twitter was ablaze with activists who launched an ‘accountability project’ to create a database archiving every supporter, donor, staffer, etc. who supported the current Presidential administration.
The project’s tagline is “Remember what they did,” and “We must never forget. . .”
And they’re targeting “those who elected him,” and “those who funded him,” referring, of course, to the President and the 70 million people who voted for him.
One reporter from the Washington Post deemed that everyone archived “should never serve in office, join a corporate board, find a faculty position, or be accepted into ‘polite’ society.”
She concluded her thinly-veiled threat by saying, “We have a list.”
Twitter, of course, did not see fit to censor this shining example of objective journalism, which now has 40,000 likes.
It’s a pretty blatant sign of decline when people start keeping ‘lists’ of political opponents they want to punish. And this madness is just getting started.
Veterans Day began as Armistice Day, which was initially a date to celebrate the end of World War I.
The armistice, or resolution, ending the armed conflict of the Great War took place on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. And so, each Veterans Day is held on Nov. 11, the date marking the end of “the war to end all wars.”
But after World War II and the Korean War, Congress chose to — under the guidance of crucial veterans service organizations — ditch the word “Armistice” and switched it out with “veterans.”
President Dwight D. Eisenhower made it official by signing a law reflecting the change on June 1, 1954, and it’s been Veterans Day ever since.
What’s the difference between Veterans Day and Memorial Day?
This is a big deal. Civilians who mean well legitimately confuse the two, but the different holidays should not be conflated.
Memorial Day, which is reserved for the last Monday in May, is a date set aside to honor and remember those who have died in service to their nation. That’s why it’s common to see American flags planted on the graves of fallen service members, and also why the phrase “Happy Memorial Day ” should never be uttered. It’s a day of somber reflection.
Veterans Day, on the other hand, is reserved for thanking and celebrating living vets who served in the military, either in time of war or peace. — Radio.com
Some valley events include:
The West Richland Veterans Day parade was moved online this year on Nov. 7th because of COVID-19 restrictions. The West Richland Chamber of Commerce shared a video of the parade on its website and you can watch it there.
Prosser Memorial Hospital is serving to-go breakfast to veterans and their families on Wednesday from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. at their hospital campus, 723 Memorial St. The annual tradition is followed by a procession starting at 11 a.m. in downtown Prosser. This will be followed by a short ceremony at Sylvan Stage in City Park.
The Glenn M. Sickels Post 34 of Kennewick-Pasco American Legion at 1029 W. Sylvester St. is holding a Veterans Day Spaghetti Night for $10.
Doggie Style Gourmet is raising money for the WSU Tri-Cities Veterans Center. The hot dog cart will be set up at its normal spot at 1415 George Washington Way in Richland.
The Yakama Warriors Association plans a flag-raising at 9 a.m. Wednesday at its headquarters, 480 Buster Road, near the intersection with Fort Road.
Cabela’s in Union Gap will be hosting the Marine Honor Guard and Remembrance Ceremony at 10 a.m. Wednesday. The store is at 1400 E. Washington Ave. It will be an outdoor event and those attending are asked to follow all local ordinances for face coverings and stand at least 6 feet apart.
Veterans groups and local garden clubs will dedicate a Blue Star monument at Tahoma Cemetery honoring those currently serving in the military as well as veterans on Veterans Day. The ceremony begins at 11 a.m. Nov. 11 at the cemetery, and guests are asked to come to the South 24th Avenue entrance, the release said. Social distancing is required.
The annual Veterans Day ceremony sponsored by the Marine Corps League is planned at 1 p.m. at the Veterans Memorial wall at Sarg Hubbard Park under the flagpole. The public is invited to attend and should wear the appropriate protective gear.
Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 379 will host a spaghetti feed for veterans at 1 p.m. Wednesday at the VFW hall at 118 S. Fifth Ave. Masks are required when people are away from their table, no more than five people are allowed at each table and 50% capacity is allowed, which is about 175 people. It’s open to the public and veterans and others are welcome as long as capacity allows.
The massive psyop is ongoing. Everyone familiar with the Transition Integrity Project knew how this would imperatively play out. I chose to frame it as a think tank gaming exercise in my Banana Follies column. This is a live exercise. Yet no one knows exactly how it will end.
US intel is very much aware of technology that can abet election fraud. That includes NSA software that can interfere with any network, as detailed by Edward Snowden, and manipulate vote counting; the Hammer supercomputer and its Scorecard app that hacks computers at the transfer points of state election computer systems and outside third party election data vaults; and the Dominion software system, known to have serious security issues since 2000 but still used in 30 states, including every US swing state.
The key actor is the Deep State, which decides what happens next. It has weighed the pros and cons of placing as a candidate a senile, stage 2 dementia neocon warmonger and possible extortionist (along with his son) as “leader of the free world,” campaigning from a basement, incapable of filling a parking lot in his rallies and seconded by someone with so little support in the Democratic primaries that she was the first to drop out.
The optics, especially seen from vast swathes of the imperial-interfered Global South, may be somewhat terrible. Dodgy elections are a prerogative of Bolivia and Belarus. Yet only the Empire is able to legitimize a dodgy election – especially in its own backyard.
Welcome to the New Resistance
The GOP is in a very comfortable position. They hold the Senate and may end up picking up as may as 12 seats in the House. They also know that any attempt by Biden-Harris to legislate via Executive Orders will have…consequences.
The Fox News/ New York Post angle is particularly enticing. Why are they suddenly supporting Biden? Way beyond internal family squabbles worthy of the Successionsaga, Rupert Murdoch made it very clear, via the laptop from hell caper, that he has all sorts of kompromat on the Biden family. So they will do whatever he wants. Murdoch does not need Trump anymore.
Nor, in theory, does the GOP. Former CIA insiders assure of serious backroom shenanigans going on between GOP honchos and the Biden-Harris gang. Trade-offs bypassing Trump – which most of the GOP hates with a vengeance. The most important man in Washington will be in fact GOP Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell.
Still, to clear any lingering doubts, a vote recount would be absolutely necessary in all 6 contested states – WI, MI, PA, GA, NV and AZ. Through hand counting. One by one. The DoJ would need to act on it, immediately. Not gonna happen. Recounts cost a ton of money. There’s no evidence Team Trump – on top of it short of funds and manpower – will be able to convince Daddy Bush asset William Barr to go for it.
While relentlessly demonizing Trump for spreading “a torrent of misinformation” and “trying to undermine the legitimacy of the US election”, mainstream media and Big Tech have declared a winner – a classic case of pre-programming the sheep multitudes.
Yet what really matters is the letter of the law. State legislatures decide whose electors go to the Electoral College to appoint the President.
Here it is – Article II, Section 1, Clause 2: Each state shall appoint electors “in such Manner as the Legislature Thereof May Direct.”
So this has nothing to do with governors, not to mention the media. It’s up to GOP state legislatures to act accordingly. The drama may roll out for weeks. The first step of the Electoral College procedure takes place on December 14. The final determination will only happen in early January.
Meanwhile, talk of a New Resistance is spreading like wildfire.
Trumpism, with 71 million + votes, is firmly established as a mass movement. No one in the GOP commands this kind of popular appeal. By sidelining Trumpism, the GOP may be committing seppuku.
So what will Deplorables do?
The always indispensable Alastair Crooke hits the nail on the head in a powerful essay: Trump is the President of Red America. And depending on how the scripted (s)election tragicomedy develops next, the Deplorables are bound to become The Ungovernables.
Crooke references a crucial parallel evoked by historian Mike Vlahos, who shows how the current American saga mirrors Ancient Rome in the last century of the Republic, pitting the Roman elite against the Populares – which today are represented by Red (Trumpist) America:
“This was a new world, in which the great landowners, with their latifundia [the slave-land source of wealth], who had been the ‘Big Men’ leading the various factions in the civil wars, became the senatorial archons that dominated Roman life for the next five centuries — while the People, the Populares, were ground into a passive — not helpless — but generally dependent and non-participating element of Roman governance: This sapped away at the creative life of Rome, and eventually led to its coming apart.”
So as much as the Dem machine had wanted it, Trump is not yet Imperator Caesar Augustus, whom the Greeks called Autokrator (autocrat), but was a de facto monarch. The American Augustus, Tiberius and most of all Caligula is still further on down the road. He will definitely be a benign, humanitarian imperialist.
In the meantime, what will imperial Big Capital do?
The West, and especially the American Rome, is on the edge of a double precipice: the worst economic depression ever, coupled with imminent, myriad, uncontrollable explosions of social rage.
So the Deep State is reasoning that with Biden – or, sooner rather than later, Supreme shakti and Commander-in-Chief Maa Durga Kamala – the path gets smoother towards the Davos Great Reset. After all, to reset the chess pieces, first the chessboard must be knocked over. This will be one step beyond Dark Winter – which not accidentally was evoked by teleprompter-reading Biden himself on the final presidential debate. The script gets ominously closer to the Rockefelller Foundation’s 2010 Lock Step.
Meanwhile, Plan B is kept in ready, steady, go mode: the lineaments of a global rampage, focused on “malign” Russia’s sphere of influence to satisfy a “revived” NATO and the military-industrial complex, which selected the now media-appointed President-Elect in the first place because he’s no more than a pliant cardboard figure.
Almost as predictable as the rising of the sun is the issues of keeping a guerrilla group supplied. In every historical account I’ve read and personal encounters training and patrolling with the Kurdish Peshmerga and even the Afghan Border Police (which is little more than a government sanctioned militia) the number one issue boils down to logistics. In all cases, its not even having a combat load of ammunition for a patrol- they barely have ammo to even train, much less sustain a firefight for long. Such is life. Today many are finding themselves in a similar situation. Ammo, for the most part, is short and expensive where you can find it. The guns don’t seem to be the problem- 5.56 and 9mm are the new 22 Long from the era of Obama. Taking that into account, how many here in the States actually have a realistic picture of how much equipment it’ll take to remain supplied for any amount of time?
I’ve always had a fascination with Cold War era conflicts- partly because I’ve known many who were involved in them and still look to the ones alive for advice, but also because there’s so many lessons that inherently go overlooked in terms of the realities and challenges a guerrilla force will face. Reality, always, is far different from one’s expectations and a far cry from the fantasies many espouse.
The Cuban Revolution is a great example. Early on, the primary challenge that the various factions faced was not finding motivated people but establishing a standard for arms and ammunition, followed very closely by a coherent training plan to evolve the motivated would-be guerrillas from randomly successful fighters against a far superior military force to a force to be feared using the Escambray mountain range as a natural base of operations.
Such is the interesting story of Frank Sturgis in Cuba. It was Sturgis, a WWII Marine Raider, who was largely responsible for first recognizing these needs then starting his own airlift to supply them with surplus WWII arms and ammunition. The M1 Carbine became a very popular arm for the tight jungle terrain and became the weapon of choice among many. It was light and fast, had decent stopping power within the relatively close distances jungle fighting entails (an opinion shared by Philippine Guerrillas a decade earlier) Sturgis used his lessons learned fighting in the Pacific in WWII to make the guerrilla band a force to be reckoned with, later being instrumental in the training of Assault Brigade 2506 that landed at the Bay of Pigs and then continuing to train the survivors until just before he died in the 1990s. And somewhere in that timeline he found himself breaking into Watergate. But the larger point to be made is that without outside support, the Cuban Revolution would have been crushed- a reality that forced them to work with outside sources that were often cagey at best.
Taking that lesson into account, there’s a few lessons that bear noting, and have repeated themselves over time. The first is having a standard weapon that is both easily supplied, repaired, and simple to teach others to use. Many times, several of us have probably heard the questions “why do you have more than one of those? You can only shoot one…” and while that last bit might be true, it neglects the reality of the need to arm others. We don’t exist in free space, and the notion of ‘I’m just going to bug out to my retreat and they’ll leave me alone!’ is a pipe dream. Further, the ability to arm others infers control and inherent authority. I armed you, you work for me. If there is no authority, there is no cohesion.
You need one standard of ammunition and magazines. Having a multitude of random specialty calibers or proprietary magazines for those weapons means that you’ve added a layer of complications to your logistics plan that will at best cause that weapon to be an expensive club later on down the road. Further, a guerrilla’s personal choice of weapon is more often dictated by what ammo he can source rather than what he would like. Last, and this is one that my personal experience mirrors, is that the so-called ‘battlefield pickup’ is not a reliable plan to resupply your group. That doesn’t mean it won’t be viable in some instances, but the reality of combat is that in fluid and volatile conditions, you don’t always have time to pick up weapons and supplies off your adversaries alone. Despite the popular internet tropes in survival circles, there won’t just be guns laying around everywhere. I’ve operated in two different warzones, and aside from a few inert shells here and there, I didn’t see any weapons laying around and not in the hands of people ready to use them.
Finding yourself as the potential leader of a guerrilla band, one of your principle challenges then becomes keeping a healthy stockpile of munitions to both accomplish your needs in combat while recognizing your training goals. It would be remiss to point out that ammo is currently experiencing a major shortage in the US from the very real looming threat of domestic instability. The two most common calibers in the US, 9mm and 5.56, are nearly non-existent and expensive where found. On the other hand, 7.62×39 can still be found with minimal price gouging. And while AK prices are higher than in years past, the weapon is still not extremely expensive to get into. The learning curve on the AK, at least from my own perspective, is far shorter to build a competent shooter, especially within its intended range and role.
Whatever the future holds, the reality is that no matter how much ammunition you have today, you really don’t have enough for a potential future. The world is changing rapidly and with it, the United States. Look at where we are today compared to just six months ago…let alone four years…and gasp- two decades. Let it be a sober reminder of the urgency of the times.
If Joe Biden walks away with a presidential victory, conservatives will have many reasons to despair. This would portend some terrifying realities about propaganda and the manipulation of public opinion, the acceptance of potential fraud, and the willingness to accept the curtailment of basic liberties.
But it need not. In fact, conservatives have reason to be quite hopeful. We might be in an Obi-Wan Kenobi moment, wherein striking Trump down will make his movement more powerful than anyone can possibly imagine. Beyond the typical takes on the election that give conservatives hope — we appear to have kept the Senate, and socialism and critical race theory lost — we have five long-term reasons to be hopeful.
1. Final Liberation from Establishment Republicans
At some level, the left has to be jealous. For any chance of defeating Donald Trump, look what they had to settle for: a dementia-addled, 78-year-old fossil who’s spent 47 years in the Senate as a pandering politician straight out of Central Casting. But the Democrat establishment pushed him because he polled best against Trump and, as Democrats are so quick to remind us, “science and data.”
Ah, I remember those days. I remember hearing the smart set tell us how a Herman Cain would be an abject failure as a candidate or president, so we’d better go with a traditional politician, such as John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Jeb Bush.
Then came Trump, dismantling the entire paradigm. One of the most beloved politicians in our history, he showed us how a successful American with a love for his country can do great things, things politicians have been promising for years, such as lowering unemployment for minorities, increasing wages for the working class, sticking it to communist China, creating peace in the Middle East, giving us energy independence, restructuring bad trade deals, withdrawing from foreign entanglements, and revolutionizing the federal judiciary.
Meanwhile, the Democrats get to watch a doddering hack grapple with the wily Sen. Mitch McConnell for four years, while trying to pick up the pieces of an economy they tanked to get Biden elected president and nothing else. Or maybe they’re looking forward to a President Kamala Harris doing her “Excuse me! Excuse me!” routine like that vice principal you mocked in high school.
You almost have to laugh. While they’re locked into “establishment mode” for four years, pantomiming gravitas with their whole “adults in the room” schtick to impress the seven remaining people watching CNN, the right will be having a blast retaking the House, nurturing a new generation of Trump-like candidates, and choosing another unconventional leader for president in 2024 that we actually like and don’t have to hold our noses to select. We’re done with the establishment, and it feels so liberating.
2. Germination of Several Movements
Let’s get into that new generation of conservatives. Trump brought in a significant swath of working-class voters. The Blexit movement continues, with obvious results in the increased turnout of black voters for Trump. With Trump’s Hispanic gains, can we say the whole “demography is destiny” theory officially ran out of juice at, of all places, the Rio Grande and southern Florida?
The last these demographic groups tasted of genuine Trumpism — prior to the Wuhan virus — they were doing outstanding. Now they got Biden to build his case that destroying the energy sector and subsidizing green energy will really get things going again.
Who better than an old, pandering white guy to convince young minority Americans that maybe it’s time for a second exodus from the Democrat plantation? And who will be on the sidelines with a megaphone the whole time saying, “I told you so. Remember what you had under me?”
3. Trump Not Going Anywhere
That of course leads to our third reason for long-term hope: Trump isn’t going anywhere. This is a man who did five to six rallies a day, speaking an hour and a half at each one, for two weeks after recuperating from COVID-19. He’s also a man who hates losing, and his family is completely invested in the movement he started.
Who knows how this will translate. There’s talk of him beginning a right-leaning media outfit to compete with Fox News. Will he continue doing rallies to inspire support for a transformed Republican Party? Will he do a Grover Cleveland number and run for president again?
Whatever it is he chooses to do, he remains the same person uniquely suited to the task at hand, of disrupting the status quo in Washington. He clearly has the support of half the country. Many love him like they’ve never loved any other politician because of how he spoke up for them. That doesn’t end.
4. The Left Not in Charge When We Survive Meltdown
The left displayed a real logic problem this year. I became alert to this problem when I heard Biden and others blame Trump for the COVID-19 deaths. Huh? Do people really fall this easily for the “post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy, the logic that “X is president during Y, therefore X caused Y”?
Of course they do. That defines the leftist mind, the hive mind, the belief that agency doesn’t reside in the individual but in collective systems. This is how they think. Consequently, they must run those systems. They must have power.
Their attraction to the swamp comes with an underlying presumption of incredible self-importance. They manage the economy. They keep peace in the world. They take care of us all, good people that they are.
So what do you suppose it means when precisely nothing happens 10 years from now, about the time the world is predicted to implode from climate change? If the left is in charge of things, you know exactly what that will mean: “Thanks to President Ocasio-Cortez’s extreme measures, we’ve saved the world from catastrophe.” We’ll get a preview of this propaganda when a President Biden announces the end of the pandemic due to his wise governance.
This is why they not only needed to win this year but win big, big enough to enact the Green New Deal. That, in turn, could only be sustained with court-packing and a few new states to ensure a friendly Senate for the foreseeable future. With each radical measure, they would use the COVID-19 response as a template. “We came together before to defeat coronavirus; let’s do the same to defeat climate change!”
Alas, this is not going to happen thanks to the GOP’s other 2020 election victories. Without new states and new senators, the midterms will remain seasons of GOP success. It’s difficult to imagine the next presidential election generating excitement for a second Harris or Biden term, at least enough to create coattails for a Democrat takeover of the Senate and House.
2030 will come with glorious weather, and the left will have had nothing to do with it. After a string of exposed lies — Russia, COVID-19 “science,” systemic racism, polls, climate change — how soon before the nation becomes wise to the fact that leftism is synonymous with lying?
5. America Is Still America
The answer to that last question gets to the American DNA. Americans distrust power. The left does well appealing to that distrust, promoting a false narrative blaming the “powers that be” whenever they’re out of power. They milk that “post hoc ergo propter hoc” fallacy for everything it’s worth. It comes more naturally to them than it does to the right.
How often, these past four years, did the leftist mind resort to “Orange Man Bad!” and a primal scream into the cosmos every time their car didn’t start, or they encountered a long line at McDonald’s, or they just felt blue? It’s their psychic makeup.
No more. The left is running their asylum now. They’re great at manufacturing fear about the bogeymen behind “the system,” but in actual governance, they do nothing but lose. Of course, the leftist answer to that conundrum is, “If we all just work together, nothing is impossible.” So they can continue to blame the Senate, disinformation, gridlock, those on “the wrong side of history,” and Trump.
The whole point of leftism is that it can’t succeed without total investment by everyone in its program. That’s why it’s “all hands on deck” from Big Tech, Big Media, Big Business, Hollywood, Wall Street, human resources departments, and the Washington swamp. That’s why cancel culture is integral to their success. Dissent, alternative information, and a muscular minority topples the whole house of cards.
We’re America. We left the tyrannies of the world to come here. We left our cultures and even families. We’re all just a few generations away from incredible risk-takers, fighters, and survivors. Rugged individualism is in our blood.
Add to that the brilliant system set up by the forefathers with its many checks and balances. The newly conservative federal courts, red state governments, and that troublesome right to free speech aren’t going anywhere for now. Meanwhile, the free market is begging for new social media platforms and a FBexit or Twexit movement.
The left tells Americans, “We’re all in this together,” but it won’t be too long before, well, 70 million people say, “Speak for yourself. We’ll speak for ourselves, thank you.” That 70 million isn’t going anywhere. It’s only growing.
Just as we recently heard that The Organic Prepper had closed their Facebook page over censorship, now PrepperNet has announced that they are moving to MeWe.
