[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.