Warm and wet. Possibly sunny. Probably not for the whole day. Friday we got rain on and off most of the day. Over an inch at my house, other parts of Houston got a whole lot more. The bayous were well up from their normal levels.
Did one pickup yesterday, mostly household items and some additional defensive gear. One well broken in pair of combat boots will be going into my truck with a heavy pair of socks. I often wear lightweight shoes or even sandals (granted that they are Teva brand and very sturdy and I’ve walked hundreds of miles in them over the years). However, if I had to walk a long way or over rough terrain, I’d prefer to do it in boots. Finally found a pair cheap enough, and sturdy enough, and slightly big, that I can just leave in the truck.
I unloaded and moved some stuff around at my secondary location. After my pickups today, I’ll be headed there to set up a couple more lots for my industrial auction.
Turns out, I’ve got less than a week before going out of town for a few days. Yup, making progress on my ebay and cleanup, so of course we’re going on vacation. WDW here I come. As much as it bugs me to keep interrupting my progress on other things, I do love the place and I love being there with the kids. Everything has a sort of “last run” feel to it right now too, so there is that consideration. Mom and one sibling will be joining us, and we’re staying in a resort I’ve never stayed at before. I’ll have a good time, but there are always tradeoffs.
It is interesting to see some other bloggers FINALLY getting it, and starting to seriously prep for bad times. Also a bit dumbfounding, as I’ve been doing it for so long now (even though I started fairly late) that it’s second nature and I thought the reasons were pretty self-evident. Well, better late than never, and there is still time. No one knows how much time, but using Venezuela as a model it could be another year or two. Or something could kick off tomorrow. If it did, it’s unlikely that things would be very bad for some time even then. Unless it’s something like 2008 only 3x as bad, or 9-11 only with a container nuke in a port city.
Even when China moves on Taiwan, I think it will have immediate negative impacts on us but we’ll dither… and there will be time for a ‘last run’ or two. We’ll probably even let them have it in a short sighted attempt to keep the chips flowing and the entire world economy from crashing. Then it will be up to China how fast they crack down, or start the extortion, and manage to kill the golden goose. And it WILL all crash down anyway, because China will be as heavy handed and brutal as always.
I’m not so worried about Russia in Ukraine, or Estonia, they don’t make the underpinnings of the entire world economy. Russia will move, we’ll let them, our oligarchs will maneuver to profit from it, and that will be that for us. It will suck for whoever the Russians move against, but it won’t make much difference to us. Taiwan on the other hand does make a difference. Since we’ve put chips into almost literally everything (my toaster brags that it is ‘microprocessor controlled’ on the front panel) we need to keep getting chips. No matter what China tries to do, there will be disruptions in the just in time flow of chips, and we’ve already seen some of the effects of disruptions in the chain… When NOBODY can get the chips they need, it WILL fall apart.
And that will be very ugly.
These are the Crazy Years. We celebrate madness, literal madness, when we celebrate the mental illness of trans people. We revel in debauchery that would have made the Romans blush as part of our public ‘culture’. We become more partisan, more divided as a people with every passing day. Our ‘leaders’ have become our rulers and the power relationship enshrined in our founding- that THEY work for US, that THEY are our SERVANTS- has been inverted. The barbarians aren’t at the gates anymore, they’re being bused and flown to cities well inside the empire. The gates have been flung open, and the flooding continues.
Most of us just want to be left alone to live our lives as we see fit, with as little contact with, and interference from our government as possible. I don’t think that is going to happen. They can’t let it happen, because as long as someone could point to us and say “well they’re doing ok without you” the whole lie falls apart. We must be brought into the fold, we must be forced to repent, and we must be punished for our sins.
Keeping our heads down and our profiles low might work. For some people, maybe most people, there will be an accommodation arrived at. But for some, it’s going to be violent, and destructive. People have argued that all we do when we bomb foreigners is create more people that hate us, and create the next generation of terrorists. WTF do those same people think will happen here to the children of THEIR political prisoners, or the people who will be killed by the state when this kicks off? What happened to the people who remember Waco, Ruby Ridge, Ashli Babbitt, LaVoy Finicum, and others killed by the state already?
Bad things. Bad times. Coming like a freight train. I keep asking for a reality check, asking if anyone sees a way to avoid it, and I keep getting no answer. It’s coming. People are gearing up in every sense of the word, and in every conceivable way. You can feel it. You can see it in their actions.
Stack it now, or wish you had later.
nick