Adaptive Curmudgeon

Normalcy bias is when weird shit goes down but an individual chooses to deny the reality of the new situation. One may deliberately (or unconsciously) avoid evidence of otherwise incredibly, remarkably, obviously, abnormal events. It’s understandable. We all have a human desire to stay in our comfort zone. This prompts us to reject contrary information. The problem with normalcy bias is that preserving the mental illusion of “normal” has no bearing on reality. If the situation is abnormal, you must comprehend its abnormal state. Use your big expensive overclocked monkey brain to overcome your biases and recognize the changing situation. It you fail to adapt you’ll quite likely wind up fucked.

We’ve all seen it. We’ve all done it; hopefully in harmless situations. Heck, it’s the plot to most horror movies. “I’m sure that rustling in the weeds next to the spooky haunted house is just a racoon. Let’s split up.”

I joke, but the matter is serious. If the world is “not as you perceive it”, you’ll make bad decisions. The new situation might curbstomp your ass. You’ll be standing there with a stupid look on your face while the tidal wave takes you down. You might not even accept the true reality despite immense suffering. How many miserable cat ladies bitch into their mimosas as they age, alone and forlorn? How many employees stay in a formerly enjoyable job while the company around them slowly implodes? How many Americans stayed in Afghanistan because they had a job, or an apartment lease, or figured they’d get a better warning before the shit hit the fan? How many kids go straight from 13 years of public school to a $150,000 tuition bill, only to major in “advanced underemployment”?

It’s a risk we all face. Have no fear! I’m here to help!

Ready?

Listening?

Shit’s not normal.

Didja’ hear me? Are you automatically rejecting my statement because I’m some internet rando? Don’t. Forget about me and fuckin’ look around you. Open your eyes and see for yourself.

Shit. Is. Not. Normal.

Don’t take my word for it. Examine examples you’ve experienced for yourself:

1. In the middle of the night, nine months ago, vote counting stopped simultaneously in many States. Statistically improbable numbers exploded into existence and Biden had the most votes ever recorded! A record holder! Isn’t that amazing? A record, by definition, is not normal. Should you feel comfortable with this “normal election”? Is it normal to have a candidate who spends most of the campaign unwilling to leave his house? Every candidate in my life has spent months eating corndogs at state fairs and kissing babies. I’ve never seen a winning candidate incapable of filling a high school auditorium. Our 2020 record vote winner always gets less hits on a YouTube than the guy who lost. Despite his awesome record vote, he’s already polling very unpopular. Eight months to go from “record votes” to unpopular?  Normalcy bias tells us that life would be more convenient if the 2020 election was fair, or at least as fair as an “average” election. We could just shrug our shoulders and try again in 4 years. But the evidence suggests abnormality. When I say “Joe Biden won more votes than any other candidate in history” does that make you comfortable? Does it feel like I’m reporting  a fact? Shouldn’t Biden start speeches with “having won more votes than any candidate in history I have a mandate to…” When I state “Biden got the record number of votes” it makes everyone’s skin crawl. Nobody, on either side of the divide, likes hearing that statement. Go ahead, say it aloud. Say it to a Democrat. See what happens. Say it to a Republican. See what happens. Everyone is trying to digest what they don’t want to know.
2. Our modern supply chain is increasingly unreliable. This weekend there was no toilet paper at the grocery store. Before 2020, I personally had never seen a grocery store in America without toilet paper. It is said that cars aren’t getting finished because they lack certain computer chips. I’d never heard of that before. “Ammo drought” was not a word a decade ago. The supply of goods and services two or five years ago was “normal”. What’s happening now is different.
3. Planet-wide, people are doing unusual things about COVID. New Zealand is locking up the entire island. Australia is rounding up children, separating them from their parents, and administering shots. France has been in riots for weeks.
4. Borders between nations are no longer treated normally. This has been building for years. The excuse du jour is COVID but obviously that’s not the reason building a border wall made one party go ape in 2016. Also, COVID exists on both sides of every border so it’s not like sealing borders makes one side sterile. Were told COVID risk is affected by a person’s wealth and legality. If you’re poor, illegal, and desperate COVID somehow knows that and doesn’t hitch a ride. If you’re middle class and law abiding, you’re dangerous and hassled. Fifty peasants illegally swimming the Rio Grande in the middle of the night is not considered a risk for COVID. A thousand Afghanis landing in Newark is not a COVID risk. Yet if a law abiding Canadian hockey player wants to vacation in Seattle or a silly American blogger wants to fish in the Canadian wilderness that’s unacceptable COVID risk.
5. Americans are becoming suspicious of other States. Our society was fine with a couple eloping to Las Vegas in 1950, or some dude crossing state lines to buy fireworks in 2019. Now they’re trained that those assholes in that State over there are the reason for COVID in this State over here. This is very bad news. COVID is caused by a virus, not the politics of people you dislike.
6. The rule of law is not longer certain. If those in power feel like it, they can do things that aren’t written in the laws. They can control your rental house, tap your phone, arrest you for being in DC on January 6th, ban you from Twitter, deny you a car loan, or tie an experimental vaccine to your college attendance. All of the things I mentioned would have been unthinkable a decade ago.

Now the good news. The weird shit ‘aint going down easily. People are noticing. They are rejecting it. 

I recently drove by yet another “Trump Store”. Someone had rented a big building and plastered the outside with Trump flags. Big huge honkin’ flags that say “No More Bullshit” and “TRUMP WON”. People were happily buying this stuff.

This is not normal.

In the last 50 years the following presidents have lost an election; Ford, Carter, Bush Sr., and (presumably) Trump. Not a single one of was popular enough to sell memorabilia after they lost. Nobody bought “Ford’s Awesome” banner in 1977. There was no “Carter for Peanuts” flags in 1981. You didn’t see “Bush Sr. Rocks” posters in 1993.

I can buy a huge flashy Trump flag nine months after the election. His competitor won the most votes in history. I’ve never seen a store selling a pro-Biden flag after the election. I never saw one before the election.  Why not?

The press can deny Trump’s popularity, but reality shows a different story. You can see it with your own eyes.

What about the popularity of other failed candidates? Did you ever see an “Al Gore” flag sold nine months after Gore lost? How about Hillary Clinton? Mitt Romney? John McCain? Have you ever seen anyone buying any flag for a candidate that lost… nine months after the election? This is reality breaking through.

Whatever happened in the 2020 election has not been accepted, forgotten, or ignored. It’s not going away. Everyone who buys a Trump flag in 2021 is NOT considering things “normal”.

Trump gathered a huge crowd in Alabama just two days ago! I heard reports that it was 75,000 people. I don’t know the actual count. Photos of the crowd looked as big as a Metallica concert I once attended. Can you imagine Al Gore, Hillary Clinton, Mitt Romney, or John McCain racking up Metallica sized crowds?

Just try to picture Hillary Clinton with 75,000 happy fans… in 2016… after losing.

Biden, who were told won more votes than anyone else in history, is currently as popular as herpes. He’s only been in office eight months.

Trump is packing venues. His name alone is enough to sell a giant banner. This is the guy that lost… to a record winner.

“It’s nine months after Biden won more votes than any other candidate in history.” Go ahead… type that sentence into your favorite social media echo chamber…. on either side of the political divide. The normal reaction after a normal election would be “no shit Sherlock”. That’s not the reaction you will get. Because this is not a normal time.

Look around and ask yourself… “have I seen this commonly, before this election, in State and National contests?”. You haven’t. You’re not alone wondering why. Others are thinking the same thing.

It’s a messy time but things could be worse. Keep your head on a swivel, avoid crowds, don’t get on the cattle car, and whenever the press says something, go out and find out for yourself. Most of us are still OK. All is not lost. I’m rooting for ya!

Note: I’m not the only one “noticing”. House of Eratosthenes is playing to the same beat:

The 2020 Election turned into a cheat, and the cheat turned into a battle of wills. My side lost the battle of wills. And then the people who won it used the Capitol Penetration on January 6, and other things, to try to make their victory more decisive, and — let’s all just come out and admit it — accumulate for themselves a level of influence over things elevated as far as possible, above what was merited by their “victory.”

Now we know the whole thing was a mistake. So people like me are looking around and wondering…alright, is this the part where I keep my mouth shut and allow others to gradually come to the conclusion we were right all along, on their own? Or do we go with the “Nobody else will toot my horn for me, so here I go?”

Vox day is now at voxday.net. His earlier spot was only a “temporary landing site”. I’m sure he’s got ten other sites just sitting around for deployment as needed. I’ve never met the guy but I’m happy to see any free thinker quickly skipping around cyberspace while GoogleEvil sits on its unresponsive corroded bureaucratic ass like Jaba the Hutt. (Strange analogy eh? Oh well it’s the weekend and I’m happily not fretting over the small stuff.)

I also note that Vox insulted virtually everyone from the Pope to “midwits” but the only thing that seems to have really pissed people off was Boomer Bashing. I, of course, am a delicate flower who loves everyone equally. Thus, nobody is ever pissed at me. It’s interesting that he can savage entire nations, multinational corporations, sports teams, the Pope, most of the press, and the Beatles yet only the latter seems to have burned bridges.

In other news, I might have an ally through whom I’ll send up a signal flare should the Crimethink mafia nail my blog. Nice! You know who you are and I very much appreciate it.

I’m making efforts to avoid societal collapse bullshit on weekends so I’ll defer further exploration of that idea until later. Enjoy the sunshine and get outside y’all.

[You’re not paranoid if they really are out to get you.]

Part 1: Vox: I mentioned yesterday that Vox Popoli went down. He was back online pretty much instantaneously. You’ll find him at milobookclub.com. (That may change in the future.) Vox continues to blog as if it is just one of many irons in the fire, which, for him, might be true.

As far as I can tell, Blogspot’s bullshit is a classic “deplatforming”. It goes like this; get one or a gaggle of hive minded groupthink unaccomplished losers into positions of control. Their host is invariably a bureaucracy (ANY bureaucracy). They will unhesitatingly turn that bureaucracy from it’s original purpose and even against its self preservation. They will make their host do their bidding. If the host dies, they’ll go to the next host. (Who hasn’t noticed the revolving door of bankruptcies that follow certain woke power brokers?)

It’s a weakness that hinders nearly all bureaucracies. Is there a reason HOA’s are universally loathed? Their job is to manage landscaping fer crissakes! Is there a reason Coke has a “policy” about race? They make a soft drink. They don’t need an opinion on anything. Does your local school seem particularly concerned with instilling true knowledge in kids? For that matter, how much of government is focused on core duties of governance? Does the FBI stop any crimes they didn’t start? Does the USPS need domestic spying to fuck up your mail?

Note that you never get pissed off with a bureaucracy that does what it’s supposed to do. If your local government is busy fixing potholes and plowing snow; you don’t mind. If the HOA keeps the streets clean without going apeshit; you’re happy. If a teacher is working really hard teaching a kid to read; it’s wonderful.

Blogspot, as is common with modern bureaucracy, deliberately sought people with an opinion different than theirs. Then someone somewhere, probably a committee or “work group” enjoyed the heady rush of fucking them over. The justification for why they just did an evil deed is irrelevant; “he was promulgating hate, dude is racist, it’s for the children, the jerk likes disco, the guy was fuckin’ Orange, the climate is not to my liking, etc…” The reason given is a means to an end. The purpose is control. If we ever wind up living in mud huts it’ll be because we let base people force subservience instead of keeping them on a short leash. (Or, as I prefer, mocking them!)

This deplatforming is one of many. I wouldn’t even mention it normally. However, Vox is not an “average” blogger. He’s no fool and claims to have been waiting for this opportunity. He aims to work the angles of legal resistance. He has an impressive track record and I see no reason to doubt his sincerity. He seems to relish challenges of this sort. This, to him, will be fun.

To each his own. I prefer obscurity; avoiding the bullshit lest it get stupid all over me. I’m happy raising butterflies, stacking firewood, and telling stories about squirrels. Vox lives to shiv corporate fuckheads in the wallet. I’ll admit, his hobby is cooler than mine. I suspect  his blog still lived at blogspot.com specifically to bait the Karen collective.

Alphabet, which owns Google, which owns Blogspot (all of whom have made “don’t be evil” a punchline) may wish they’d ignored this guy. In Vox they found a small but determined (and well prepared) hornet’s nest. They grabbed it, shoved it down their shorts, and are about to see what happens next.

Is this going to change the world? Nah, but it’s a step. Blogspot picked on a guy who’s rhetoric is excellent, in an arena where rhetoric matters. Just from reading his posts I suspect he and his lawyers are vicious and effective. I wouldn’t mess with the guy in any arena where he’s already prepared the ground. He wanted this!

Part 2: Wirecutter: Knuckledraggin My Life Away is nothing like the intellectual knife’s edge of Vox Popoli. It’s more a matter of joyous freedom and plentiful fart jokes; which is an excellent thing in it’s own right. I check it every day and always get a laugh. Here’s what he has to say:

So they took down Vox Popoli, and they could do it to me.

If they do, I’ll be down for a few days while I figure something out. In the meantime, keep an eye on The Feral Irishman and Phil over at Bustednuckles (which you should be doing anyway), and I’ll ask them to do a post with my new link. They both helped me out last time when my site crashed and thanks to their kindness, I regained all my own traffic.

Part 3: Bison Prepper: Bison Prepper is waaaaaaaay in front of the curve on this one. He just plain went off grid! I mentioned on my blog it a year ago. I mailed Bison Prepper a pittance using… get this… an envelope! Yes, I sent him what amounts to a buck a month (maybe double that because I added a tip) and I get a CD in the mail. I don’t always read it, but it just makes me super happy to get a CD in the mail. At the rate at which society is fucking itself into the ground, I’m very happy to support Bison Prepper as he develops and tests a genuine sneaker-net alternative to an online world that seems increasingly straitjacketed. If you’re interested in the full off-grid option, send the guy a small check and see for yourself that old ideas still work just fine.

So there you go; everyone falls somewhere on a spectrum of reactions and I just mentioned three entirely different approaches. All meant to adapt to a declining intellectual world. In general, the vast majority knuckle under immediately. “The masses are the asses.” Nearly all that escape the first clumsy swath will collapse on the second pass; the first hint of a threat of a possibility of the tiniest repression and they fold. A few show more spine. Some take on their enemy in a colorful and doomed fury; Ragnarok of the mind. They never last long. A tiny sliver scheme cleverly and lead excellent plans to fruition; Vox is my example of this. Some go old school, like Bison Prepper. Wirecutter is practical and has wisely staked his claim somewhere in the middle.

I, a rounding error in the universe, would rather evade than collide. Unwisely, I haven’t formed alliances as demonstrated by Wirecutter and Vox. I should, but I’m just not a people person. Stupid people acting stupidly (which is to say almost everyone almost all the time for years now) creep me out. I don’t like being around stupid. It’s contagious. It’s corrosive. It stinks of failure. Who needs the company of the failed? I yearn to saddle up and head for the horizon. How better to seek inner peace? What else is there?

If I can keep my soul and simultaneously let my blog merrily amble about, unnoticed by the maelstrom, I’ll do so. (Always with humor; “Karen and the Twitterfreaks” would be a good punk band name. “GoogleEvil” would be ideal for Finnish metal.) None of this is dire. I have optimistic expectations and have stayed online 11 years so far. However, if it can’t happen in a world gone mad; then that’s a problem for the mad society and not a concern of mine. If I disappear, it doesn’t mean I was defeated, only that the overall quest to live a meaningful life led me to scrape virtual lemming shit off my boots and and go camping where the bears do it for real.

This post isn’t about me, but I’m going to use an analogy from my life. When I started martial arts I’d be paired up with more experienced students during training. I’d be told “punch like this…” and I would do my very best. My counterpart, well skilled in such things, would block or dodge my punch like they had all the time in the world; it felt like they could make a pot of tea and still catch me. I just couldn’t move fast enough.

It all happened in the fraction of a second between when my fist went into motion and when I found myself staring at their knuckles. And yes, the counterattack was inevitable and always a work of art. I’d see a flash of motion. Before it registered, a fist came to an abrupt halt a quarter inch from my nose, or just lightly touching my ribs… like a butterfly. I could tell what power was there and what it might have done. But it was controlled. Sometimes, if I’d done something incredibly erratic to give them even more time, there would be more elaborate moves. A block that spun me around putting me off balance, a combination of punches, or a big huge showy kick. A superb ballet like motion that planted a heel or toe right where it could surely floor me; should they have wished it.

I was impressed.

Exquisite control on their part. Ridiculous flailing on my part. My relative ineptitude was  obvious. You’d have to be a monkey not to see the difference between us. I’d been deflected, distracted, missed, blocked, shifted and the counterpunch (which never seemed to come from anywhere) surely could have taken my head clear off. Thank goodness this was training! I was safe… but humbled. How did they do it?

I kept at it. Eventually I was on the other side of the learning curve. Some new dude, often as not a hulking fellow who thought he was hot shit, would get handed to me. He’d be disappointed to get paired with the bearded geezer. He’d mutter something about “being careful not to hurt me” and then launch a punch that seemed to slow time. It would take forever. I’d see the muscles, the balance, the eyes. I’d watch it happen as if almost frozen in a peaceful and transparent version of time and motion. I’d have ample time to evaluate my options. I could block or dodge or any of a dozen combinations. I could block immediately or wait until the last minute or anything in between. Almost as an afterthought I’d respond with a counterattack that felt like it came from the center of the earth to a millimeter from a wide open exposed target. I’d stop it just where I wanted. It worked every time.

I could do what I’d seen done. Once you can do it, it’s surprisingly easy.

Most students get it and apply themselves to the lesson. Some don’t. A few just couldn’t accept what had just happened. A decrepit backwoods hick twice their age wasn’t falling down like they’d seen in the movies. It made them doubt just how tough they really were. Most learned, some got frustrated. In the latter case, they’d lose what little control they had and get even sloppier. Regardless, I’d gently brush off the most testosterone laden, rage filled, death punch like it was a mild summer’s breeze. Which at some point, it was.

It’s a skill like any other. It took a lot of work to learn, but it’s not rocket science. Once you learn the proper use of mind and body, you wonder how you ever lacked that knowledge.

Why do I mention this? Because I’ve just seen an example in cyberspace.

Vox Day is a blogger, writer, and publisher. He’s well attuned to the winds of our era and simply loves to tack into them. Ideally suited in capacity and inclination to stick a pin in “the narrative”, he’s rare in our world of groupthink. I’ve always wondered “how long until some dipshit tries to deplatform this guy”.

In a world where Twitter had the power to override the president of the United States, an obscure blogger is toast. But is it really that way? Of course not! It only appears so.

Trump got kicked off Twitter… because he was on Twitter. What kind of flaming dumbass boomer moron puts his nuts in someone else’s vice? If anything could demonstrate failing to adapt, that was it.

I’m a rounding error compared to Vox (and I write far less provocatively), but even I have taken precautions. I moved from wordpress.com to my own hosting nearly five years ago. Everything is backed up on drives and cloud locations I control. I can’t get kicked off Twitter because I’m not on it. I don’t do YouTube. I don’t let Amazon’s kickbacks lull me into a sense of complacency. I don’t fret over Google rankings. (Don’t be evil my ass!) I love PayPal or Patreon donations (hint hint) but I also know they’re ephemeral; a sandbar in the river. A nice place for a picnic but you don’t build your house there. Plus, I’m always ready to just walk away.

Vox, has more grit than me. He has more motivation and a bigger budget. He has the character necessary to make wise preparations; his are wheels within wheels.

I clicked this morning on http://voxday.blogspot.com/. “This blog is under review due to possible Blogger Terms of Service violations and is open to authors only.” Riiiight!

So this is it? Some midwit fuckhead with a degree in under-employment had pulled a Karen. A fool barnacled into a bureaucracy finally pulled the trigger and they probably haven’t yet realized what they’ve done. Yet, his readers all knew it was coming. Like any intelligent person, Vox did not fall prey to normalcy bias.

So, was I defeated in my desire to get my daily dose of wrongthink? Nah! I went to https://gab.com/. There I found Vox Day in a few seconds. That led to his “emergency landing spot”, an alternate version of the main blog (dating back to 2003). It has been prepped and ready for years. There you’ll find his relevant post “Conflict is the air we breathe”. (I’m not linking directly because I don’t know if that’ll help or hurt Vox’s efforts. You can find it on Gab like any other person. It’s not hard.)

Google’s punch was slow, stupid, predictable, and telegraphed. Meaning it was ineffective. Google put it’s full force into stopping an obscure blogger and yet I was reading his post 30 seconds later. So much for the massive power of algorithms. All that power and bluster and bullshit meant nothing. It was the flailing of a fool. Vox’s dodge was instant and effortless. The groundwork had already been laid. As I described in martial arts, so it has played out with Vox’s intellectual pursuits.

A quote from today’s post (read directly from the blog Google blocked):

“There is nothing to fear here. This is a battle we have long anticipated, some more eagerly than others. Sadly, the hound dog who was Alphabet’s former head of legal is gone, so we can’t assume complete incompetence, but that will only make the eventual victory all the more glorious.

Remember, conflict is the air we breathe. It is the water in which we swim.”

I don’t think he’s worried.

After watching… well everything, but especially 2020, it’s easy to wonder what’s going on. Are you surrounded by morons? Is the world run by idiots? That can’t be true, there must be some more palatable explanation!

Nope. They sound like idiots, they think like idiots, they talk like idiots, they reason (or fail to) like idiots… and the reason for this is that they’re just plain idiots. What you’re seeing isn’t deep 4d chess (at least most of it)… a big part of the explanation why the world feels like it’s run by idiots is that they really are idiots.

A newly installed software “helper” has been nuking comments for two weeks. Lacking the slightest idea what I’m doing I tried to fix it. I got under the hypothetical hood, grabbed a handful of virtual logic, and ripped the offending algorithmic bullshit out through the non-existent tailpipe.

Did it work? I’ve no idea. Please submit a few comments. They don’t have to be thoughtful. I’m going to give it a few hours to test things out. (Actually I have some tractor work that needs doing while the sun is up.) Later I’ll see if comments are in the moderation buffer.

Thanks for being patient.

Update: It’s fixed. Comments are getting to me now. My apologies to everyone who tried to comment and got ignored over the last two weeks; I can’t believe it took that long before I found out. Also, a big thank you to the guy who sent me an email heads up: may the TW you seek find you soon.

It’s been a bit quiet.

I was thinking my motorcycle ruminations suck. An acquired taste perhaps? Or maybe, in general, the time is right to just shut up and call it a day. Was I just pissin’ in the wind?

Then someone sent me an e-mail. “What’s with your comments being blocked?”

Da’ fuck you say?

So, that might explain it. Maybe radio silence was just because my receiver was turned off. One can hope. Now that I think of it; one can always hope.

A guy smarter than me will look into it shortly. Keep commenting and eventually they’ll pop up… maybe.

Thanks.

Despite my best efforts, I’ve been exposed to the miasma of stupid. It’s everywhere and it has kept the witch burners and lemmings in a panic for years now. I don’t know why it’s happening now. Maybe the Baby Boomers are intent on burning it all down before they take a dirt nap. Maybe social media hit a certain level of saturation exactly one generation ago. Maybe Marxist ideas come in cycles. Maybe sinister intentional events set in motion generations ago bear fruit right now.

Or, maybe people are just stupid. It does seem that the transition from informed citizen to livestock on the vote farm has accompanied a reduction in adult rational behavior. It’s hard to say. One thing is for sure… we’re all living through a time of deeply irrational, religiously fervent, stupid assholes who can tear down but not build. It’s clear that people  are not thinking rationally. They’re inflicting their madness on people who’d prefer to be left alone. Like earlier cycles of stupid, mad, destructive behavior, sitting quietly on the sidelines is harder and harder to manage.

It’s wearying. It’s not good for the soul. It makes wise, long term planning difficult. Who plants a tree or funds a 401(k) in a society where they’re surrounded by stupid violent people? That’s not a complaint. It’s an observation.

Irrational people are breaking things. They complain that the “other” is a terrorist, or a disease vector, or “bad for the earth”, or racist, or whatever. There’s a purpose to that. They’re working themselves up into evil actions. Once a person believes “others” must be “corrected” (by force if necessary) they can enjoy a righteous frenzy. Make no mistake, they will enjoy it. They seek to unload their hate and bloodlust. They want to experience the ecstasy of hurting “the other”; their society, their fellow citizens, friends, family, and neighbors. Most people would rather destroy than create. It’s the nature of man. It’s only civilization which keeps it at bay. So, they destroy civilization too. When the smoke clears and time passes, if they’re still standing, they’ll try to remember some version of events that makes them blameless, or even heroes. A few will repent, but it will mean nothing to the ashes under their feet.

This isn’t new. This has happened before. There are countless examples of whole societies losing their damn mind, working up to a religious fervor, and running amok. It’s described with words that wouldn’t otherwise be necessary; Karen, genocide, “Jews in the attic”, warlord, woke scold, pogrom, decimate, “witch hunt”, ethnic cleanse, “final solution”, etc… When rational adults cannot maintain civilization, monkeys run rampant where humans once held sway. There’s a righteous joyous release, the panic du jour oppresses many and kills some, economies collapse, learning is paused (and sometimes lost), society grinds to a halt…. and then it’s over. Rebuilding takes decades or longer and while it happens everyone tries to pretend they didn’t play a role in the disaster. They meant well. It was a strange time. You had to be there. They rationalize it whatever way they need.

This is not to give into hopelessness. California is not Rwanda… yet. Nor am I just sitting there waiting for the final curtain. I’m as squared away as a guy can be. I assume you are too.

I also note that this is a planet wide phenomenon and America, as wrecked as it has become, is not on the vanguard. Still, I always thought I’d have options and new geography isn’t looking good. I formerly assumed, in the unlikely event everyone lost their damn minds during my lifetime, I’d just slink off to a unimportant corner; but I see that’s not the case. It’s everywhere; France, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Italy, you name it. There is no safe harbor, only your ship’s ability to ride it out and a captain’s ability to steer.

Stay out of crowds and pay attention. This shit ‘aint over yet. Good luck. I’m rooting for you. As for myself, I’m still trying to stay as far away from the bullshit as humanly possible.