[I planned to slack off but I got another donation. Suddenly I’m motivated! Y’all are the greatest! Also, I set out to write about a tractor but veered into philosophy. Why? Because I modified the tractor due to philosophical thoughts. There is no reason why “preparing for the unexpected” has to be naught but canned beans and stacked ammo.]
I reflect on how we got here. In the swirling currents of current instability I can’t deduce where we’re going. You can’t either. Recent history suggests that absolutely nothing is “impossible”.
So long as society is in disarray it’s good to be humble about one’s predictions. The two things I’m most certain of are that it snows in winter and anyone who says they know what the future holds should be kicked in the balls.
Sit back and think of all the many possible timelines we’ve skipped from and to in the last few years! It’s mind boggling!
Most of us don’t take enough time to think. I implore you to do so now. Allocate to your soul the necessary time to process and digest what you’ve so recently experienced. Sit down, shut up, and think about it. Think about how you got where you are. Isn’t it weird?
Writ large, the nation lurches from timeline to timeline… each more perilous and weird than the last. It’s good to remember the madness; the stumbles and reversals. Settle it into your mind. You must do that or the gaslighting of the present and future will erase your awareness. Remember what you personally witnessed or you’re nothing but an NPC on someone’s vote farm.
Things were churning along one path; the economy was roaring back after 16 years of Bush / Obama. Half the political landscape was furious at all the… prosperity? Endless shrieking was touched off when Hillary’s Coronation in 2016 was denied. People dressed up as vaginas and broke glass windows in the streets. For some reason this wasn’t considered odd. An orange menace paid attention to American citizens outside of DC and for that unforgiveable sin, he became an avatar of hate.
The Gutenberg sized revolution of social media drove most of us mad. Words turned from communication to tools of control. Pretty much everything spoken in public now had shaded meanings; often implying the exact opposite of what the words were defined as. Consult a printed dictionary from a saner past; you’ll be surprised. The word “true” and “false” were twisted into “misinformation” and “fact checking”. Notice how the press never says simply “this fact is true and that fact is false”? Reality was bent on the anvil of ideas.
Then came the “Pants Shitting Hysteria of Covid”. It hit like a freight train and upended us onto a completely different timeline. After a few months it still wasn’t ok to leave the house to work or hug grandma but it was totally patriotic to burn shit down. Thus, we stepped on the altered path of “The Summer of Mostly Peaceful Protests”. Summer chaos led directly to “Statistical Improbabilities Which Shall Not Be Named”. (Indeed it is within the letter of the law to discuss such things but not the defacto application of such. The formerly free speech zone of USA reels under the weight of things which cannot be said.) Statistical anomalies created the next step. Now we’re stumbling along in the hot sweaty armpit of existence that is the “Bidenverse”. All this is right and proper and D.C. has the political prisoners and deployable mobile concertina wire perimeters to prove it.
Imagine that! Now it’s three years later. Gas tripled in price and we blithely pay. Meanwhile the press is actively “fact checking” whether the President did or did not shit himself on stage. (I’ve no opinions on sharts versus old men trying to sit in invisible chairs. Heck, I’d look stupid on camera if you followed me 24/7 so what do I know?) Regardless, that’s the timeline of our lives now. The Bidenverse drifts into the Shart-opia and we have convicted opposition party leaders to prove it.
We all have to live in a world where things are dumb. Unverified octogenarian bowel movements are a legitimate political discussion but things the National Debt is ignored.
What’s next? I’ve no idea. You don’t either. Anyone who’s lived through the last few years should be very humble about “what is simply impossible”. Do you think you really know what’ll happen? Did you predict, in 2019 while experiencing the lowest unemployment since 1968, that mass hysteria over an effect that originated in a Bio-Lab in Wuhan China would close your bowling alley? If you didn’t make that call in 2019, you don’t know what the rest of 2024 holds in store.
That’s ok. Life would be boring if it were too predictable. Knowing where you’re going is denied to mortal man. Unless you’re into pre-destination and have a direct line to the almighty, you’ll find out just like the rest of us… when it gets so weird that you notice it.
Where am I going with this? I’m grasping for things that I know to be true (extremely likely) for my own personal future. One thing I predict with full confidence is that it will snow in the winter. Neither of the shitweasel parties can change the planet’s orbital procession (though they sure talk like they can!).
Spastics like Al Gore and Greta Thunberg proselytize that 1.) Winters will cease and 2.) it’s your personal fault. But they don’t count. Anyone dumb enough to believe that shit is too dumb to be relevant. (I’m speaking here of the Nobel Committee and the UN, both of which are about as wrong in everything as a Paul Krugman economic prognostication.)
So back at the ranch… Mr. Curmudgeon accepts that anything from a return of $2 gas to invasion by space aliens can’t be ruled out and the only sure thing is snow. What to do with this information?
If winter is coming. Make winter your business.
Every human endeavor north of a certain latitude involves pushing snow. It was true of the Germans trying to invade Russia. It was true of the Russians trying to invade Finland. It’ll be true even if our economy and society crawls up it’s own ass and dies there. Commies, capitalists, rich, poor, sophisticated, simple, urban, rural… everyone pushes snow.
I plow my own snow. My driveway is huge and I spent a fortune on equipment to handle it. Maintenance ain’t cheap either. It’s a choice I made and I’m glad I did. My tractor and plow will work equally well under Orange Man Bad, Captain Poopy Pants, or Lrrr the Ruler of Omicron Persei 8.
Right now I don’t plow driveways as a side gig. I have too many irons in the fire. But…
Suppose shit goes pear shaped… I mean goes even weirder than now? (Which is hard to imagine but is clearly possible!) Might as well gear up to be Mr. Plow.
Even if I don’t need to be Mr. Plow in this particular universe, I’ve already decided we don’t know what timeline comes next.
The next post is when I break out the screwdrivers and power drill and actually do something.
The price of gas is an interesting issue. $2 dollar gas was a result of world governments destroying the economy with their reactions to covid. Oil futures even went negative for a short time because no one was driving. Destroy the economy and then dump a metric shit ton of money into it to keep people somewhat happy and low and behold massive inflation as people and local governments had all this “free” money to spend. Wonder why schools are cutting back now? The billions in Esser funds the federal government gave them have been used up.
The other issue with gas prices is that although the US is producing more oil than ever before in history it is exporting even more of it than ever before. Exports make money easy for oil companies who get revenue by selling on the world market and thus keep prices higher here in the US. OPEC production cuts also have aided in keeping oil prices in the $75-$90 per barrel range.
You’re right, gas is a complex mosaic of inputs and outputs. However, it’s a way the average person judges how well their life (or at least the economy) is going. Nothing anyone says on the TV can “talk away” the real world information you get when filling up your car’s tank. It’s also a good way to compare states (which vary in tax and gas cost immensely). Residents of low (gas) tax states and high (gas) tax states compare notes and get a decent picture of things. It wouldn’t work for items like groceries that can be apples and oranges. (Pun not intended.)
Prices at the pump definitely aren’t 100% controlled by only one politician, but it’s common for that person to get the praise or the complaints. For better or worse that’s how it is. (I’m ok with it.) USA went from a net exporter of energy to a net importer right quick and that certainly didn’t help at the pump. Plus the incoming president signed a bunch of executive orders on day one that, whether explicitly designed to reduce supply or not, definitely reduced supply. Especially cancelling the long debated pipeline. Plus there’s inflation, paying for physical gas with ethereal fiat currency is not a great way to stay stable.
Painting with a broad brush, to a normal citizen cheap gas is “good” and expensive gas is “bad”. I think an average citizen gets the idea of a 3-4% incremental inflation as being “baked into the cake” but when things double or triple in a few months, that’s perceived as “very bad”.
One last observation, I’ve always been amused by the Petroleum Reserve. I can’t believe it still exists! I always thought a stash of anything that important was a good idea for society but also doomed in our system to be “raided” by one politician or another. It’s too attractive an asset for politicians to ignore. But what do I know? It keeps surprising me by lingering on. Now, in 2024, it’s pretty close to tapped out. I wonder if this will finally kill it? I assume, if Captain Depends is re-elected there’s no way in hell he’ll spend money on it after he got the votes he needed. If Orange Menace is re-elected he’ll try to top it off (as he once proposed) and get pulverized in the press for sending money to “big oil”. So neither option is likely to replenish the “emergency” asset.
Current level of petroleum reserves is 372 million barrels with small deposits over the last year but still far below 2022 levels. Realistically it’s best use is during hurricane season when off shore production can be shutdown. Withdrawals to keep refineries going, assuming the hurricanes didn’t shut them down as well, seems to have some value. However to think it will be a big help during an emergency is laughable. We currently use about 20 million barrels each day plus there is no practical way to remove that much per day from the reserve. Biden started to draw down the East Coast gasoline reserve and this had maybe a nickel’s worth of impact on pump price.
Pipelines are a necessary evil. Everyone knows when a pipeline leaks because they tend to be “large” so the news picks up the story and broadcasts it to the masses. Shipping by rail creates millions of little drip leaks so none cares about it but it adds up to be even more of an environmental concern. Walk along tracks that have a regular oil train traffic and you’ll see what I mean.