The Unraveling

“Since when can weathermen predict the weather, let alone the future?” – Back to the Future

I knew a lady who loved mushrooms, she was a fungal.

The unraveling continues. In one sense, what’s happening is predictable. Looking back in history, while not everything happens in the same way, things very much rhyme. That’s why certain aspects of the current financial collapse are very, very familiar.

The Fed® still has enough influence that it can stop a snowball. Can the Fed® stop an avalanche? Not so much. They may have some tricks to push the day of reckoning down the line if it isn’t off the rails. Again, like a presidential election, it’s a short-term solution to a long-term problem.

If it were merely a financial problem, the actions might be enough. But it’s not just financial.

Other problems include extreme societal decadence. Decadence is a strong word. When I was a kid, it was applied to places like the late Roman Empire, or Willy Wonka’s® Chocolate Factory™ where those Umpa-Loompas wore those scanty tight outfits.

But when people take kids – elementary-age kids – to Pride®©™ parades that contain actual nudity and sex acts between adults, and then suggest putting hormones into five-year-olds because they pretended to cook in a pretend kitchen one day, you know that this is the point where God told Noah, “Get the boat,” and told Lot, “Tell everyone to wear sunglasses – I don’t care if it’s night.”

“Oh, and Noah? Put some lights on the boat. Floodlights.”

Whatever fetish sex act that any individual wants to do “because it’s Thursday” now seems to take the place of virtue. Replacing actual virtue with temporary individual passions is exactly what every single functioning society in history has avoided to in order to remain functioning. When people follow passions that are productive, like building rockets, they add to society. When people act on passions counter to virtue?

Those passions consume and destroy society. Period.

We don’t live in a world where “if it feels good, do it” can ever be a policy that lead to a productive society. At some point, we must be guided by virtue, we have to have a shared vision for a future, and a shared desire to build. Can you imagine a single event that would bring us all together again?

I can’t. We have to have that shared vision – if nothing else, to survive. Do we have it?

What’s the best way to avoid significant radiation exposure? Don’t bomb Pearl Harbor.

We do not. We are divided. The idea of a selfless devotion to duty seems to have (in many places) evaporated. Cops are supposed to put themselves into danger to save the innocent – that’s the only reason we put up with the rest of the nonsense that they get up to. If they have changed their motto from “Protect and Serve” to “Hide Until We Can and Give Traffic Tickets to People That Don’t Scare Us” then they’re not much use.

Globalism is likewise something that sounds good, but isn’t. I can understand the need for some places like, say, deserts to import grain and Alaska to import medicine and export oil and good vibes. But can someone tell me that we’re in a better and safer position as a country now that we depend on far-flung nations for things. When I talked to The Boy about careers, the advice I gave him was simple – don’t do anything that someone can do over the Internet. If you do, you’re competing with a job with millions or billions of people.

We have reached the stage of cultural collapse. I’m in favor of capitalism – but amoral capitalism is different. When capitalism is allowed to meet any need, the result isn’t good. Like any system, it needs boundaries. As John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Why can’t the Democrats use the 25th Amendment on Biden? They can’t count that high.

Freedom needs boundaries. Freedom needs responsibility. Liberty, real liberty, requires obligation for stability. Otherwise? It descends into chaos.

So, we’ve established that we’re in a difficult place. The things that we depended upon are slowly slipping away. The economy is in a very precarious place, culturally we’re shattered to the point that not even another 9-11 would bring us together. The difficulties that we see from here on out won’t serve to bring us together, they will bring us apart. How about the economic difficulties related to just high fuel prices alone?

The Lefties love it, even as it destroys our economy. Heck destruction of the economy might even be the point.

But stresses have consequences. If I drop an orange, it will fall. If we destroy an economy, it will fail. Some parts of it will be predictable: interest rates going up will make housing prices go down. Simple. We can talk about other correlations on Wednesday (feel free to bring up more below).

I dated a homeless girl once – it was nice, after the date you could drop her off anywhere.

The one thing that I can tell you, is what comes next won’t be like what came before. The problems that we have rhyme with the problems of the past, but they’re not the same. During the Great Depression, we were at least (mostly) homogeneous as a country. Now, not so much.

The end state is tied to the initial conditions. And the initial conditions of the Great Depression were greatly different than they are today, so there’s no way that we’ll see the same results. And things will never go back to “normal” because we simply cannot go back in time, and there isn’t any such thing as “normal” nor any time period which is “normal”. They will be different.

What we have, though, is the rhyme. It won’t allow us to predict perfectly. But it will allow us to see, dimly.

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

47 thoughts on “The Unraveling”

  1. If it were merely financial a financial problem, the actions might be enough. But it’s not just financial.

    Replacing the idea of actual virtues with temporary individual passions is exactly what every single functioning society in history has avoided to in order to remain functioning.

    These might need a rework. Thanks for the article. The time difference means I get to read them just after my dinner break, which is why I am awake already.

  2. What we can do at this point:
    – Continuing iwth preparations for SHORT-TERM shortages – food for a few months, water the same, a stash of cash.
    – Put longer-term supplies – tools, more food, seeds, etc. – further away from other people, preferablt in a location near some people you can trust.
    – Be aware of problems arising. Don’t let your gas tank get too low; have five gallons or so in a safe place for middle of the night escape.
    – Have alternative communications available – GMRS (wider range than walkie-talkie, more channels and sub-channels, often used by police and other emergency workers), short-wave radio and practice with it under actual circumstances, some education on using Morse code would be optimal. Expect cell and internet communications to be monitored, particularly those that claim to be safe from that monitoring.
    – Get your meds up to date, and have extras in case the supply is interrupted.
    – Relax. Don’t become so hyper-aware that you can’t realistically assess situations. While you can, enjoy the family and friend circle. Take time to pray, think, and reflect.

    1. Linda – I’m an active ham radio hobbyist, and whenever I hear people talk about ham radio being part of their “preps”, I have to ask “Who do you expect to be talking with, and what difference do you think it’ll make?” If you call for “help”, what sort of help could be provided? If you hear a call for help, what would you do? Amateur radio is a license service, and licenses can be suspended (as they were, during World War 2, just as private ownership of gold was forbidden during the Great Depression-1).

      Maybe, when the loss of ad revenue shuts down the commercial Internet, and we can’t post comments to blogs or send each other email, we’ll use ham radio to coordinate sharing of resources. “I’ve got pumpkins, and need oats. Anyone care to swap?”

      Or, maybe, we can use ham radio with the CERT program to build bridges to local government emergency responders, so when the word comes out that Lathechuck’s place is being robbed, they’ll know it as a community resource to be defended, not that crazy coot off in the woods who never trusted anyone.

      1. CERT: We have a CERT Team in my neck of the woods. I had never heard of it until I moved into my neck of the woods. I went through the curricula and am now a CERT Team member, FWIW. Actually turns out to be a pretty responsive and quickly mobilized resource at the community level. I think every community should have one. We were all issued Boafangs with pre-programmed freqs. We are the first responders when the first responders are overwhelmed. Think storms and natural disasters. But don’t limit it to that. Drill harder and find CERTs that are also switched on. THOSE are the ones you want to answer the radio call.

    2. Relax is a good one – we can’t change a lot of what’s coming, so, prepare what we can, and be ready to improvise.

  4. Rinse & repeat the 1920s…a decade of inflation, everybody’s an expert stock picker, get Hoover to pass massive spending bills – sound familiar?

    Deflation is right around the corner after the remainder of the middle class is hamstrung by credit card debt, mortgage default and $6 gasoline.

    1. If I recall correctly the thing that ended the Great Depression was a war in Europe. This seems to be why we are currently slow marching toward a repeat of that. I’m doubtful the end result will be the same for our country this time around. History does indeed rhyme.

  5. I’ve read numerous hand wringing tomes regarding on how “Murica will disappear due to the “natural law” of how other countries progressed.
    Balderdash!!!!!! America will be here in some state or the other until G-D comes back with His new plans. America will survive as it has been built on the foundation of common sense. Yep, I realize that the elite has none of that trait; but this country is too vast, diverse and unique.
    Is there need for despire…..yes, because the one and only entity that gives us what we need (freedoms) is under attack. And we allowed it. We need to fight back and correct this situation.
    Fighting back will give us the hope that is needed to continue with this great experiment.

  6. John – – You said, “Heck, destruction of the economy might even be the point.”

    That is SPOT ON !

    It is the basis of the Cloward-Piven Strategy that proposes that the only way America would become communist is for the “system” to be overloaded and then, out of the chaos and bloodshed, a youthful and energetic leader would arise to lead the nation to the Nirvana of Communistic Perfection….. (Any ideas about that…?? Would it be WoeBama…????)

    Could it be that hyper-inflation and destruction of food processing plants is part of this plan? After all, people with full bellies never start civil wars, rampaging, burning and killing. (Exception is the $$$$ fueled Antifa and Black Block type of paid rioters seen in a few major cities. One could argue that these “riots” were a test to see how volatile the Sheeple were toward starting the conflagration of a civil war……)

    Richard Cloward and Frances Piven were two communist professors in the Political Science Department of Columbia Univ back when Barack WoeBama was a student in that department. If you understand Cloward-Piven Strategy, and look at WoeBamaz tyrannies and those of Xao BuyDem (aka Quid Pro Joe), you will see the correlation and understand that everything the DemonicRats do is done with the goal of furthering the Cloward-Piven Strategy.

    They actually want a civil war, blood in the streets, death and destruction….so they can Build Back Better……

    Hmmm… now do you see the grand scheme?

    Request you write a missive on this issue, subject to your usual PEZ fueled jocularity !

    1. Will do . . . I was going to a while back (2 or 3 months ago), but there were a batch that came out that were very good. But not as funny.

  7. John, states can stand up in some form or fashion to either economic collapse or social collapse but not both. It is only when both the economy collapses and the society collapses that things come apart. If one thinks of Rome (yes, I know, everything that collapses does not have to go back to Rome), the idea of being “Roman” in the Western Empire persisted well after the collapse of the Western Empire itself (e.g, societal expectations at some level remained intact even as the economy became localized). The Byzantine Empire, while it recovered somewhat under the Paleologi Emperors, never truly came back from the losses of the Fourth Crusade (how did that really work out for you Western Europe?) as even though the idea of the Empire persisted, it never had the lands or money to support.

    The reality is that those who are trying to shape this “Brave New World” are depending on the old institutions and beliefs to continued support them; a sort of “have your cake and eat it too” moment. The reality is that the country is far more divided and atomized than ever before (one of the great arguments Uisdean Ruadh and I continued to have is what it would take to reunify it; he says it can happen, I do not see it). Having spent so long subdividing people into smaller groups, I suspect they will find there is no unifying factor when they will most need it.

    History does indeed rhyme, although seldom repeats itself. Unfortunately, not of the things this current situation rhymes with went anywhere that any thinking person really wants to go.

    1. Your last sentence is the really scary bit. This will resolve itself . . . one way or another.

  8. Remember when that no-good, evil Religious Right claimed that gay marriage was a “slippery slope”?

    Those were the days.

  9. The problem with intentionally causing chaos is that chaos is…chaotic. What they are unleashing might not spin the way they are expecting.

    1. And that is one thing that has always hovered in the background of these deliberations…. what if the plan doesn’t go as planned? I have secretly looked forward to the time when the machinations of my betters were overtaken, as they say, by events….

      When Reagan presented A Time For Choosing in 1964, he mentioned the issue of having somewhere to go when things got really dark. (“Two friends were talking to a man who had recently escaped from Castro. As they listened to the man’s story, one friend turned to the other and said, ‘We don’t know how lucky we are’. ‘How lucky YOU are?’, said the refugee. ‘I had somewhere to escape to…”).

      We are the place the rest of the world has come when their plans didn’t work out. Now we are facing those sorts of problems. Where shall we go, then? The answer seems to be, where we are to. If there is nowhere to escape to, then the stand must be here, where we are, such as we are.

      That sort of thing, long-term, requires help and community and partnerships and all those good things. But now we all have different opinions, and our own personal truths, and so on. Thus, consensus is impossible, and so any coordination of effort. Rather convenient, this.

      It takes no time at all to notice the progression of processes that have made it so, quite deliberately. It takes even less to see what kinds of things would need to happen to forestall these events from their fruition. Unfortunately, it is these measures that are denied us, through social engineering, legislation, regulation, and corruption.
      Now we are come to the end, and we shall be tested. There is no avoiding this. It is a matter of time, as the dominos fall and the discreet features fail.
      How frustrating, that such genius and progress can be brought so low by those who know of neither. For me, that is the greatest tragedy…. So much will be lost, that cost so very dearly.
      Not without a fight, though.

  10. What happens next, makes us a homogenous country again.

    It’s a little thing called “Your meatsuit is your uniform.”

    Bummer for the outliers, but not assimilating has a price, and the bill’s coming due.

    1. Funny, I’ve always wondered what TEOTWAWKI would look like. And then one day I realized I was looking right straight at the belly of the beast. All these years. All these preps. All this SA. Now it’s like sitting in pre-op. Let’s get this done and get it right.

      1. “Forecasting is difficult. Especially with regards to the future.”

        In spite of my previous comment, this is not an event I’m looking forward to. It’s a big band aid that’s really gonna hurt. That said, did you catch this on WRSA?

        https://identitydixie.com/2022/06/16/ten-plausible-civil-war-scenarios/

        There are a few scenarios with very near term implications. Elections and abortion require no explanation and could look something like the summer of 2020. Red Flag Laws, which are nothing more than a due-processless license to confiscate, can be very problematic once the inevitable abuse begins.

        Other ‘chatter’ suggests widespread violence in August and November. That could be based on any number of circumstances.

        1. “widespread violence in August and November.” That’s the ‘traditional timeframe’ that the economy takes a dump… September/October… not too hot to riot, not too cold to riot… nice fall weather for the majority of the country and the yoots aren’t necessarily back in skool yet…. The Third quarter, Q3 runs from 1 July – 30 September… and usually very telling in regards to projections for the Fourth quarter, Q4 which runs 1 October – 31 December.

          I’d say Mid September… especially since the Fall Harvest reports (ain’t going to be one) and subsequent Food Shortages, combined with a run up to Election Hijinks, it’ll hit the fan…. hmmnn (looks into Magic 8 Ball) My call 14th of September +/- 5 days on either end…

        2. Great link – WRSA is filled with ’em, and I think things are primed, very much. People are on edge.

          1. WRSA is my go to. That’s where I found you and BCE, among others.

  11. The Long March to burn it all down is complete.
    No one said that West South Africa delivered by muh bike big adventure Joe Slovo Biden would be easy.
    Just put some grease and lard on some fweedom fwies and your hecho en China USA lapel pin and go along with whatever brain dead slogans normies are onto because they aren’t smart enough to figure out that you don’t mean it.
    Nihilism uber alles in order to rule over a steaming pile of utopia is the best that manboons could come up with.
    If your morale gets low just remember that Kojak loves ya baby.

  12. … and new wars generally start like the last ones ended. Lets see. How did the last one end? Oh yeah. BOOM!

  13. “The one thing that I can tell you, is what comes next won’t be like what came before.”

    Here’s the key fact about what will be different…the easy-to-reach liquid and gaseous hydrocarbons our civilization is based on are long gone. Farming is currently on the verge of collapse at current diesel prices and availability (or lack thereof) for fertilizer. It’s gonna get worse from here. Cue Mad Max…

    https://youtu.be/wTKK6mGAT0E

  14. It will be Interesting what happens after the Fedgov crew ship our farm products overseas this fall and they send in teams to go Holodomor on the U.S. kulaks come spring.

      1. But if you can get the steel and price the jobs lower than the illegals, I’m betting a security door and window bar company might make some bank….

        n

Comments are closed.