Month: August 2022

How To Thrive in the Banana Republic of America – Part 1

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This essay and its title are more for a research project than a how-to pamphlet.  I think this gets to the essence of what all of us will have to figure out to survive in where this country is headed.  We have to figure out how to provide ourselves and our families with the things they need and want without having to compromise our self-respect and even our sanity.

As a for instance, what if you want to become a professional.  If you desire to be a medical doctor, you’ll have to be indoctrinated in the various fictions that currently apply to the medical profession.  You may be forced to approve of a pre-teen boy being castrated and having the rest of his genitalia amputated and put on estrogen to satisfy his mother’s desire to turn him into a girl.  If you want to be a lawyer you may have to festoon your office with rainbow paraphernalia and attend galas for the LGBTQ mafia and even then, you’ll probably be passed over for promotion because you’re just a straight white guy.  Even engineers are called upon by their employers to parrot mantras about white privilege, white supremacy and toxic masculinity at all the company gatherings in order to show management that they are aligned with the prevailing orthodoxy.

But even if you don’t work in corporate America the regime is going farther and farther to impinge on the life and prosperity of all those who won’t burn incense to Caesar.  California is legislating the end of gasoline engines for automobiles starting in 2035.  New York has criminalized the use of “gender specific language” in all business documents.  They are very purposefully criminalizing normal life.

The details of all this vary from place to place but you can see that they are casting a very wide net and will tighten it as time goes on.  Those 87,000 new IRS employees are there for a reason.  They will be there to punish the enemies of the regime where it hurts the most; in their bank accounts.

It will be of the utmost importance to identify the strategies and tactics needed to avoid the worst of the consequences.  But it is obvious that the only way to thrive in such an environment is to locate the most sympathetic local regimes that will help protect you from the full brunt of the Leftist system.

For instance, Florida is setting itself up as a refuge against woke-ism and other leftist problems.  With Ron DeSantis as governor and with a Republican legislature they have enacted laws to prevent transgender medical malpractice against juveniles.  Likewise, they have gone after critical race theory (CRT) in the public schools.  These kinds of initiatives are exactly what is needed to allow people to survive under the Biden regime.

And I think the most progress against banana republicanism will occur when several states coordinate their policies to prevent the federal programs from strangling the freedoms of Americans living in those states.  All of this may lead up to a showdown between these states and the feds.

But in reality, I don’t think anyone really knows how or even if we can make life in the former United States of America somewhat free and honest.  Even those on the Dissident Right who talk about the “revolution” have no idea what, if anything, that means.  We’re all so horrified and disgusted by what is going on we just assume that somehow it will have to turn around.  And that is where we are probably wrong.  Assuming that the pendulum will reverse direction anytime soon is probably wishful thinking.  After all, representative government took fifteen hundred years to return to Western Civilization.  There’s no reason to think it will happen in one hundred years this time.

Hopefully when I write the second installment of this essay, I’ll have some more practical points to contribute but I think identifying the need to look for these strategies has merit in and of itself.  Feel free to provide anything you’ve thought of on this topic in the comments.

The ZMan Explains How Gaia Hates Plastic Bags

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The ZMan tells the story of how his local Wegman’s has compelled him to honor Gaia and stop using plastic bags.  This amusing tale is the green revolution writ small.  And honestly it’s probably the least crazy part of the whole movement.  Plastic has become so ubiquitous in our lives that we no longer even think about it.  Paper bags or even reusable bags might make sense.  But square this with the behavior that occurred during the COVID crisis when reusable anything was suspected of killing old people.

It’s obvious that “science” is not what’s going on with these decisions.  We’re being ruled by cultists who don’t understand the reality behind the narratives.  But read the story for ZMan’s trademark humor and bile.

The Paper Bag Test

Cry Havoc and Let Slip the Puppies of War

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So, what to write about today?  Creepy Uncle Joe buying votes in the mid-terms by canceling student loans?  Meh.  Handicapping the mid-terms?  Boring.  Now there were a few headlines that caught my attention.  Donald Trump implores the senate Republicans to dump Mitch McConnell as leader when they take back the Senate.  Now that’s a great headline.  And it’s good advice.  But what’s there to say about it other than it’s a good idea.

And my current personal projects aren’t really that universal in their appeal.  Right now I’m trying to learn enough PHP and MySQL coding to automate some very time-consuming changes to my website.  The book I’m working from is about a thousand pages long and I’ve just gotten past the introduction so it’ll be a tough slog.

I haven’t read or watched any interesting stories in the last few days.  And I’m way behind on my photo work and the fiction writing.  The whole system is falling apart.

So, what’s causing all this havoc?  Well, we’ve been overrun for the last week (and will be into next week) with grandkids.  The little devils have successfully invaded the Compound and are monopolizing Camera Girl’s time.  Worse still they’ve subjugated me too.  When I’m not overseeing their infestation of the swimming pool, I’m forced to play chess with one of them or read stories to another.  And they even have me ferrying them around to the neighboring towns for tennis practice or school open house or whatever.

Actually, it’s kind of great.  My third oldest grandson is becoming a pretty decent pool player and a very good chess player to boot.  And tonight, my little granddaughter asked for three extra bedtime stories from her old grandfather instead of from Camera Girl.  It seems that she likes the same stories I read to her mother more than thirty years ago.

Really the only downside to all this babysitting is the lack of time.  It turns out I really do need time to write the stuff I post here.  There’s no way to multi-task while you’re refereeing young children at play.  They’re just too dynamic and need to be monitored pretty closely to prevent bickering from exploding into fisticuffs.  I have to rule with an iron fist.  Well, it’s probably more like a lot of haranguing by me but you get the idea.

But honestly, the political scene is just status quo.  After the FBI’s gestapo tactics against Trump there’s not much to say.  We know where things stand and we’re just waiting to see whether the electorate repudiates the Democrats or acquiesces in our new status as a banana republic.  So that just leaves me cultural and general interest topics to write about until the feds do something even more outrageously unconstitutional.

And of course, that’s bound to happen in the next week or so.  Biden is desperate to change the story away from runaway inflation.  He’ll attempt to bribe some other constituency with another illegal executive order.  The only question is whether it’ll be transgender polo players or normalizing monkey pox at America’s gay bath houses.  So, bear with me.  Things will return to normal soon and I’ll be back to decrying civilizational collapse again before you know it.

Will America Pass the Test?

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We live in troubled times.  Many very strange ideas are loose in the world.  For the last hundred years or so Western Civilization has become increasingly unstable.  And now most of the first world has embraced its own destruction.  The idea of eliminating the majority of humanity from the planet in pursuit of some ecological paradise is a common philosophy among millennials.  And the belief that subsistence conditions that include eating bugs and giving up mobility and things like climate-controlled homes is being promulgated by the government and “thought leaders.”

I think we will find out very soon whether the majority of our countrymen agree with these ideas.  After all we are a “democracy” or something like one.  If the ayes have it, we’ll get bugs and electric cars.  But something leads me to believe that the whole world won’t succumb to this plan.  I have to believe that there remains a substantial group of people that aren’t fools and know that human ingenuity is substantially more capable of overcoming problems than what’s currently on display from the “green revolution” crowd.

I guess the question will be where will that ingenuity be allowed to flourish.  Up till recently the United States was the premiere center of innovation.  And we were also a magnet for entrepreneurs from across the world who were looking for a chance to pioneer new concepts in everything from robotics to medicine.  But now this trend is reversing.  Many innovators are returning home to their own countries to launch new companies and build factories.  Places like China and India are rejecting the green revolution in response to the need to reap the benefits of twentieth century technology that was made possible by fossil fuel powered industry.

Wind mills and solar panels are being deployed in the West but the rest of the world is burning coal, oil and natural gas.  And if things continue in the direction they’re going, eventually nuclear power plants will also become a common sight in the non-Western countries.  When that happens where will the center of innovation be located?

That’s the main question.  Which culture will have the confidence to continue the legacy that the Western World has already bequeathed to humanity?  What a strange thought that maybe in fifty years Europe and North America will be living in some kind of post-modern poverty with a marginal economy based on some socialist model while some currently third world country takes the lead and raises the standard of living of their people even higher than what we currently enjoy.

Strange or not, it might be the future.  I’m far from confident that Americans will come to their senses and demand better for their children than the message of deprivation and mediocrity that we’re being fed by the Democrats and their corporate allies.  We’re currently at a very critical juncture in our history.  We’ve recently been given a vision of energy prices becoming unsustainable while the government is using huge subsidies to convince Americans to buy electric cars.  And at the same time foods like meat and milk are also becoming prohibitively expensive.  This would be the time for angry consumers to lash out at the Democrats and punish them at the polls.  But what if they don’t?

That would tell me that the old America is gone for good and the current crop will be led by the nose to whatever fate the elites have planned for them.  And that will be a good time to start looking around and figure where the new center of human flourishing will end up.

I hope we don’t fail this test.  My whole world is anchored to this country.  All my relatives and especially my descendants are all here.  I want them to be part of the best society on the planet.  And so, I pray there are still enough people with common sense to keep us on the right track and moving into the future.  But from where I’m standing it looks like a fifty-fifty shot.