A Modest Proposal, Part 2

In my previous article, I argued that the Political Correctness movement of the past few decades has resulted in irreparable damage to the culture and especially education.  Given that culture is like a chain that, once broken, cannot be repaired, there is no longer any way to "fix the system" and the aware human must now focus on saving what we can for the day when it can be revived, much as the Renaissance did in Europe at the end of the medieval period.

I used the secret societies as an example of organization designed to both hide and propagate forbidden knowledge - and certainly that is what classical education has become.  I concluded by saying that I would propose a new way of looking at "prepping" and "survival" in this current epoch of history.

The important thing to realize at this point is that survival of the individual is subordinate to the survival of the culture.  Without the culture, survival is nothing more than a loose group of hunter-gatherers foraging for food in a daily struggle to live one more day.  It is the culture that has defined our advancement as a species from mere beasts of the field to homo sapiens - the wise man - and which is the basis for our technology and mastery of our condition.

When I look at the modern "prepping" movement, I see a heavy focus on buying gold and silver, and storing food and water.  This is a non-sensical approach to survival that is doomed to fail.  Gold and silver only have value in a culture capable of abstract concepts, such as storing wealth.  Storing food and water is fine, as long as you think you can stay in one place, which again depends on culture to form self-organized and self-sustaining societies.

The wise "propper" must be flexible and mobile.  One must be ready to go at any time in order to escape natural and man-made disasters.  What good will all your stores be if a tornado scatters it all to the winds, or a fire reduces it all to ash?  And how mobile can you be with several pounds of gold and silver coins in your pocket?  Or how safe would you be with that kind of target on your back?  This default to normalcy is a serious flaw in the thinking of many people who adhere to the "hunker down" theory of survival.

Even if you have stored a year's worth of groceries, or months worth of water, it will run out eventually.  Do you have the skills to can food or purify water or make a fire without all the modern conveniences provided by society?  Even more important, can you read the sky to know the season and location?  After all, planting survival seeds in mid-September will be fruitless in many parts of the world if you can't look at the stars and know that it's mid-September.

Can you calculate height or distance using your position and the Sun angle?  It would help if you are confronted with a mountain range and want to know how far away it is and how high you will have to climb to get over them.

The most critical thing to consider is how will you educate future generations (or yourself for that matter) without books?  How will you teach art, science and math to future generations when the internet is gone and you have no reference materials?  Sure, your stores may last for a while, but what about the long-term collapse of society and the multi-generational effort to rebuild from those ashes?

But even books, for all their low-tech wonders, are vulnerable and must be replaced regularly.  Could you make paper or parchment?  Ink from lampblack?  Find and harvest bee's wax and make candles?  A manual printing press?  No?  Then how can you record weather patterns, growing techniques and other critical information beyond your ability to talk to someone or beyond your lifetime?

The part of survival that few people ever stop to consider is that our entire civilization is predicated on the ability to reason critically and then transmit the results through time and space to other people.  Almost everything I have ever read on prepping and survival forgets that it is dependent on the ability to tell others how to do it.  All most of these folks want to do is sell you boxes of food, seeds and water filters, but neglect the very foundation of finding food, seeding plants and building water filters out of found objects.  Furthermore, they all assume that the infrastructure to pass on knowledge is a given technology that will always be there.

Some readers may think this is a silly and pointless article, that "someone" will always be able to print books or transmit information.  They fail to consider that these technologies were radical in their day, or that civilization and culture are dependent on our ability to transmit information to other locations and beyond our lifetimes.

So what's my solution?

First, a true prepper must learn the necessary skills to make paper, ink and bindings.  The ability to observe and document our environment is the first critical step to understanding.  Knowing how to read the sky (astronomy) and create stores of food anywhere at any time.

Once these skills are learned, you must be able to document and transmit the information to future generations.  It is said that we have built our world on the shoulders of giants, but what happens when those giants stumble and fall?

Once you have the ability to transmit information, you need the information to transmit.  Thus, I propose that groups of like-minded folks get together to create private libraries.  One of the scourges of modern society is the destruction of the public library.  It is vital, therefore, to work together to create a neighborhood library, privately funded and stocked.  Perhaps you or a neighbor have an empty basement.  Build some shelves and start buying bulk used books (very cheap these days).  And by books, I don't mean pop fiction, I mean the classics of art, science and mathematics.  We cannot depend on our ability to transmit or read binary code, so physical books are the only sure means to store and propagate information that cannot be intercepted or edited by outside parties.

And that brings up the whole reason for this line of thought.  As I mentioned in the last article, the system cannot be fixed and it has entered the dangerous realm of protecting itself from change.  It has already infected the minds of generations of people, who are now incapable of critical thinking or even controlling their emotions.  The system is perpetuating itself on its ability to control the flow and content of electronic information.  The hard-won right of free speech is being dismantled, and what's worse, the minds of the next generation are being controlled to the point that they are physically repulsed by open and unfettered discourse.  They literally cannot distinguish a logical fallacy from a condomed phallus.

The control of education, the destruction of the public library and the censoring of electronic discourse has reached a critical phase.  If not the current generation, then certainly the next will - a la Orwell - no longer be able to conceive of natural rights nor defend the reasons for having them.  They are becoming the ultimate slaves, who not only have no desire for freedom, but cannot imagine any other way of living.

It is fast reaching the point that individual survival is subordinate to the need to preserve and transmit information.  Our culture is dying by design, and the system that is doing it cannot be fixed.  It doesn't want to be fixed.  It was never intended to be fixed, as it is doing exactly what it was intended to do.

The time is now to create underground cultures to preserve and disseminate information and knowledge, however one can do that.  We must look to the success and structure of secret societies, which have done just this sort of thing for centuries.  We must accept that in the current epoch real knowledge is becoming a bad thing, and that those of us who want to preserve it are bad people.

To chose another literary example, look to Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.

Or perhaps my own experience will illuminate the issue.

Back in the 1980s, when I first began studying alternative history and "subversive" knowledge, there was no internet or digital revolution.  The only way to get this information was through hard work and persistence.  If you wanted a copy of Henry Ford's The International Jew, or to see for yourself what mysteries were contained in The Poor Man's James Bond or The Anarchist's Handbook, one really had to go far out of the way to find it.  In fact, in my case, I had to drive out to the remotest parts of West Texas, to a place called the Patriot Gas Station, where the owner sold fill-ups, oil changes, tire repair, military surplus, and underground literature.  It was a minimal two-day round trip just to obtain information that the system had deemed to dangerous - to itself.

Because I have stood on the shoulders of giants, I have concluded from their experience that we are perilously close to a new dark age for free inquiry and thought.  It also seems, from their experience, that the only way to survive this period in history is not by buying K-rations, water filters and gold coins, but by learning basic skills and protecting knowledge from those who would destroy the past to control the future.

Fixing what is, is not possible, and the sooner we acknowledge that fact the quicker we can get about saving our culture for a time when the winds are a bit more friendly to freedom.  We should be prepared for that time to take centuries, as history shows us that breaking the chain of culture means that it must be rebuilt one link at a time.

It is entirely possible that I am a complete nutter and all of this is some apocalyptic fear-mongering.  I freely admit the possiblity, but in the end, what have you lost by following this prescription, and what has been gained should this nutter be right?  A rational cost-benefit analysis says that it is a worthy investment.

Besides, think how cool you would look if you sent out your next batch of Christmas cards on handmade paper with handmade ink using hand-carved wood blocks.  That's something people would save for years.

Post Scriptum: Wouldn't it be handy to learn how to make a camera and photographic plates so you wuldn't have to hand-copy all those books?

A Tall Ship And A Star To Guide Me

For those who enjoy seeking conspiracies, I believe one of the most subversive and obvious of them all resides in just about every modern home.  In fact, if you take a moment to look around you, you'll likely find at least two or three examples of this conspiracy sitting very close to you this very moment.  But first...

Some of the most important and vital technology we have today is also some of the oldest.  We take this technology for granted any more.  In fact, at the end of the year, many businesses hand out this technology as advertising to their good customers.  Others famously plaster scantily clad vixens on the technology and sell them for profit.  In any case, few people stop to realize the sheer magnitude of the items and their power over life and death.

Of course, I am talking about calendars and clocks. 

They are so vital that vast stone monuments have been erected to ensure their endurance.  Ubiquitous modern legends have grown up around the Mayan calendar.  There are presently about seven major calendars in use today, though the most common is the Gregorian, which renders today as 12May2012.  Many of the great rulers of history are known as much for their innovations with calendars, as anything else.

A good calendar means the difference between life and death.  Without them, our civilization could not exist.  Likely, neither could we individually, in any form we would think of as comfortable.  In fact, the current domination of Western civilization is based in part on the Gregorian calendar.

Likewise, the clock.  We organize our most mundane events and chores around clocks.  The invention of an accurate time piece for ships is what allowed the British to conquer large chunks of the globe for 300 years and lead to the current reliance on Greenwich or Zulu time and the modern Prime Meridian or Zero Longitude.

More than any other devices ever invented, these two are of the greatest consequence to our modern lifestyles and all that implies.  Without them, we could not measure the orbit of the Earth around the Sun, nor the motions of the stars in the sky, and that would mean almost certain death for billions of humans.

Calendars are central to farming and the production of food.  Without knowing when to plant and harvest, we are reduced to watching the vagaries of wooly boogers and animal fur.  Our ability to predict the first and last freeze of the winter would be completely shot, and food production would dwindled to virtually nothing.  Those who survived would be little more than hunter/gatherers, at the mercy of the elements and random luck.

As for the clock, all forms of travel, outside of walking up the street, would be almost impossible, and certainly deadly.  All navigation would be near impossible.  The Space Age could not have been born.  Most mechanized and digital tools would be unthinkable.

Think of all the things we take for granted that are dependent on calendars and clocks.  The computers on which I am writing and you are reading rely completely on internal clocks to draw meaning from the otherwise useless flow of 1s and 0s.  You dinner tonight is possible because of someone using a calendar.  Even the buxom bubblehead reading the weather forecast off a Tele-Prompt-R needs a calendar somewhere in the loop.

A fellow by the name of Crichton Miller has developed a fascinating theory that something we all consider to be a religious symbol is, in fact, a depiction of a device that was able to calculate calendars and clocks, among many other useful things.  It is so simple, yet the implications of his theory are astounding.  It is the cross.  More specifically, it is the Celtic Cross, which most folks would recognize as a cross with fat arms and a circle around the center.

When one ponders his discovery, the deeper revelations are literally mind-blowing.  Here, staring us all in the face for centuries, hidden in plain sight, and used as mundane adornment, is a tool of such remarkable utility as to allow the circumnavigation of the planet, the building of huge edifaces, and the accurate calculation of a local calendar and time system.  Attached to a plumb and either hand-held or mounted, it is an amazing analogue computer that can even multi-task, and has all its applications hardwired into it.

The implications of his theory are profound, and may even be proof of a pre-deluvian civilization, and it literally surrounds us.  Its enormous importance is shown by the central placement of the cross in so many religions and civilizations around the Earth and through time.

An interesting side note to this is a man named Eritosthenes.  He was a Greek in 200BC who invented geography and did a number of other useful things.  Among them was calculating the circumference of the Earth, the Moon, and the distances to the Moon and Sun.  Amazingly, he was exactly 10% shy of absolutely right.  The reason he was 10% short was that he used an Egyptian measuring system that was used by the high priests in ancient times to survey land tracts for taxes.  In order to inflate the tax revenues, they shaved 10% off their measurements to over-estimate the amount of land held by an individual.

Not only does this demonstrate that religion and government have lied and cheated throughout history, but it shows the importance of the ability to measure the surface of the Earth, and all of Nature, accurately.  Tools such as the Celtic Cross do exactly that, and much more.

Which brings us full circle to my original rant: the ubiquitous conspiracy that is destroying our civilization.

It's the digital clock.

Folks today can barely read, much less use analogue clocks.  It's a conspiracy to prevent us from learning certain basic skills that would allow us to build a civilization out of virtually nothing.  By keeping us ignorant of things as basic as analogue clocks, the PTW have attempted to destroy our ability to decipher our truly amazing hidden history.

I don't normally use jewelry or personal adornment.  I have little use for it.  But when I travel, I always carry a towel (thansk Douglas Adams) and an analogue watch.  The towel is strictly a comfort item, but the watch is a survival tool.

Among other things, you could literally drop me in the middle of BFE, and using my watch, I could determine my exact location, the time of year and construct tools for surveying and constructing a house.  All I need is the watch, a stick and a basic knowledge of astronomy (about 25 stars or so).  With a little knowledge of geography, I could find the distance and direction to the nearest major city.  I could build a calendar to tell me when to plant and harvest.  I could construct a mile-long viaduct to bring spring water to my little house on the prairie.  In fact, there are hundreds of useful things I could do with, or based on, an analogue wrist watch.

Oh sure, you say.  Tom Hanks made a calendar in Cast Away with nothing but a hole in the rock.  Sure, and it took him the better part of a year, and that only told him the season and latitude, not the longitude.  One without the other doesn't get you home.  If he had had a good analogue watch, he could have figured all that out in a day or two and been home in less than a year.

If every member of a civilization is not capable of starting and maintaining that civilization, then it is doomed to fail.  The most basic tools at the core of ours are the clock and the calendar.  Should any part of our civilization fail, it would be up to use to restart it, and without clocks and calendars, any other effort would be hopeless.  And the thing is, it's not really that difficult.

You need to know the right ascension and declination of 25 stars (one in each hour of the sky and the pole star), how to read the Sun and Moon, and a good watch.

When you're building a soap box racer, success and greatly reduced medical expenses are as simple as a lynch pin.  Without that one simple tool, all your efforts are doomed to fail, and it's likely to be very painful.  A few hours of reading and some warm nights staring at the stars can mean survival in the most extreme situations.

Simplicity is often the easiest thing to overlook.

OK, Now What?

Got a note from one of my faithful readers in Pennsylvania, in response to my article, "See Ya And Raise Ya:"

We are on the same wave length, it is almost scary, like being into someone elses mind.

I posted a think about the Catholic church and got a response that shows "people hear what they want to hear", so I guess you have to save your breath. So much is happening so fast that it is getting hard to keep up. I don't think the masses want a world bank, they want a fair shake and know that the banks are the ones that are preventing it. Then you get all the "political invaders" in there, stirring them up.  Most people don't want to face the facts, that is a truth.

My reply, in part, was along the lines of: we have to give up trying to wake folks up, and start discussing what we're going to do once the whole damn thing collapses.

From the way things look over here on the Far Side, the complete and utter cave-in of the New World Order (i.e. what we got now).  And we shouldn't be thinking about what scraps we can save.  It's better to utterly destroy the whole thing, lest it rise again from the ashes.

It's like that scene at the end of 'Time Bandits,' after they've completely baked Evil.  The Supreme Being tells the boys to be careful and get every bit cleaned up, or Evil will just rise again.

Another metaphor is bamboo, which is rather apt for our current surroundings.  If you cut down a bamboo stalk, two grow back in its place.  If you don't dig down about two feet and make a wall around the roots, then it will spread like wildfire.  The only way to stop it is to uproot every bit of the plant and burn the whole thing, or you'll be cutting bamboo again in about two months.

Let's look at the situation this way.  Not too long ago, you were a kook if you:

• believed in black helicopters - now everyone knows about them and many know that the N-numbers and insignia are painted in infrared colors;
• refused to believe the official song and dance about 9/11;
• you said the Iraq/Afghanistan wars were about oil;
• if you thought the next president would be worse than Reagan/Clinton/both Bushes;
• believed in the existence of the New World Order;
• didn't genuflect and cross yourself every time you said the name Obama.

This is all common knowledge now and it's hard to find someone to disagree with you for an entertaining argument.  Frankly, if anyone still believes that America is the savior of the world and that Obama is a Man of Peace, there's no hope for them.  Heck, it's even hard to find someone who admits voting for the slimeball these days.  I actually hear some folks say they wish they had voted for Hillary, though I daresay that's like wishing you had Satan while Mephistopheles is poking you with his trident.

The proper way to go about this, is to wish that Obama would go hunting with Cheney.  Now we're getting somewhere.

The point to all this is that we should start turning our thoughts and efforts to deciding what to do AFTER the collapse.  What do we replace The System with?  How do we handle banking and finance?  How about governments in a post-centralized world?  And should banksters and lawyers become the new N-word and F-word...unspeakable and unthinkable?

To begin the argument, I think it's obvious we can not go back to centralized anything.  With the state of technology, there's no reason to have mega-cities.  Most cost-center jobs can be done from the living room, while manufacturing is quickly moving towards mass-customization, meaning small, multi-purpose assembly lines scattered around in various strategic locations would allow anyone with come up with an idea and make it nearby.  A prime example is the car built with a 3-D printer that hit the headlines a while back.

The guy who discovered Comet Elenin was using a rent-a-telescope in New Mexico while he sat in his house in Russia.  Why can't we do that with factories?

As for banking and finance?  No reason why we can't use digi-bux, as long as it's backed by something real.  Each geographic location could produce their own accounting and statistics, auditable by any other geographic location.  Based on the total output of a given area, they could issue a certain amount of digi-bux, which the locals would earn for goods and services, and then spend in the open markets.

If a certain region didn't want to join the world, and wanted to live like the Amish, they could.  If another region wanted to become trans-human and turn themselves into cyborgs, they could.  But no region would be allowed to dictate to any other region.  And people traveling would have to abide by the rules of the region they were in.  If they didn't like it, they could move on.

Each region would be limited to a certain physical size, say 500,000 square kilometers.  No region could annex or take over another.  Each would be completely autonomous and could form whatever governance it wanted, or go completely without.  There would be no passports or ID cards.  You are who you say you are until someone says different.

The upshot of this little discussion is that everyone gets into revolutionary fits and wants to tear down the existing regime.  But no one sits around and thinks about what they're going to do afterwards.  Look at Libya and Egypt right now.  Just a bunch of folks wandering around picking their noses asking, "What now?"  A successful revolution is NOT kicking the bad guys out, it's putting something better in their place.

There's no reason why we can't have a global set of Rights and a global integrated system.  The secret is to keep it from getting centralized and sucking up all the power, wealth and resources.  A good start would be to ban corporations and lawyers and banksters forever and a day.

All laws must be written in plain language, address only one issue, and can not be any longer than 10 pages.  There can be individuals and groups of individuals, and groups of groups, but no entity can have individual rights except an individual.  All companies and associations must have officers who are personally liable for the actions of the group under their control.  Most importantly, all banks can only operate within the confines of their home region, and may never have branches or allegiances outside of it.  

Finally, all trials must be jury trials, no one may hire themselves out as a 'lawyer' or 'attorney,' and judges only exist to answer questions of law and keep order.  Basically, a referee.  In fact, they can't wear black robes, only striped shirts.  Juries are selected by randomly picking the first 12 people you find outside.  No voir dire.  

One last biggie.  No public schools operated by a government entity.  All schools must be privately owned and operated.  They can teach any curriculum in any manner they see fit, and the market will choose the ones with the best track records for turning out smart people.

That's it.  See how simple that was?  Now all we have to do is implement it.  We;ll get the chance, because revolution or not, the system is collapsing.  The situation boils down to making sure we get off on the right foot after the mess is cleaned up.  If we continue to do what we've always done, then we'll always get what we've always had: serfdom and poverty.

Now's the time to be thinking about what to replace the current mess with, and even starting to build on it, so that when the other leg gets kicked out from under the stool, we'll have a running start for the exits.

How can we act on this now?  Well, while you're stocking up, why not think about tools you'll need.  How about books?  Think about what 10 books you'd want in civilization collapsed and you needed to rebuild.  "The Way Things Work" would be a great start.  Maybe a chemistry book or two.  Some philosophy and classical discourse.  Physics?  Why not?  Put them in your safe storage with your rice and beans and water filters.

Communications are vitally important for rebuilding.  How about some radio gear and a book on electro-magnetic propagation?

Telescopes and microscopes, definitely.  A good book on astronomy would help you predict the seasons.  Heck, if you know the stars well enough, you can puzzle out your exact location on Earth by the declination and right ascention of key stars.

Storing away some bricks and mortar BEFORE the earthquake can never be a bad idea, both literally and metaphically.

Chances like the one we are in the middle of now only come along once every few hundred years.  With some careful thought and planning, we can make a pretty good stab at doing it right this time.  It's all just a matter of thinking and acting, instead of veging and watching.  No one ever solved a major global issue watching football and soap operas.

By the way, has it occurred to anyone else to save old vinyl recordings?  You can play them with a styrofome cup and a sewing needle, without electricity.  Just a thought when you really need that Mozart fix and the CD/DVD players don't work.

How many 'survival' sites have you seen THAT on?

Shot Heard 'Round The Block

US: After you.
EU: Oh, no.  I couldn't.
US: I insist.
EU: Pleas, after you.
US: Oh, nonono, that won't do.
EU: Let's go together!
US: OK.
**CRUNCH**

The Battle of Brooklyn Bridge got underway over the weekend, with the owners of the bridge trying to cross, and the bankster henchmen, I mean NYPD stopping them.

My dad always said that when the revolution gets under way, you'd better have the cops on your side.  I don't think he envisioned JP Morgan blatantly paying a $4.6 million bribe, I mean making donations NYPD.

One ray of hope were the military types who are showing up to help out with Occupy Wall Street.  Of course, they are harder to bribe and their bennies are being ripped off by the very organizations being protested.

The unions are showing up, as well.  But, according to Drudge, they're chanting "Re-elect Obama!" Which can only mean one thing: there are political operatives and agitators infiltrating the ranks, most likely as agents provacateur, and certainly to steal the limelight from real people demanding something be done to curb the bandits in 3-piece suits.

The protests are spreading, to Boston, to LA, to Seattle.  Folks are finally targeting the real criminals, but it remains to be seen what the outcome will be.  I put NOTHING beyond the banksters to cover their Blessed Assurances.

Meanwhile, the EU corpse has already begun to rot, even though it's still in the midst of St. Vitus' Dance.  Folks are beginning to realize that there will be no resurrection from the grave.  Germany has already begun to rake in its marbles to go home.  France is pretending like anyone still listens to them.  The PIIGS are desperately trying to find a move out of checkmate.  And all Britain cares about is whether Kate is preggers or not.

In Asia today, the markets were whipped bloody, with Hang Seng getting hung snug.  Jakarta is senseless and bleeding.  The only one who escapes was Seoul, because they were on holiday.  But they've already been hit so hard that there's not much left to take.

Globally, everyone is holding their breath, both from the stink and from the anticipation.  Who will be the first to shoot.  You know it's inevitable.  These things always end in a bloody mess.  Anyone who isn't making contingency plans for that eventuality had better wean themselves off the Xanax bars.  Short of an alien attack or the Second Coming, there's no other way out of this mess.  Wherever you are now, that's probably where you'll be when the real nasty starts.

You can rest assured that if JP Morgan is willing to bribe the entire NYPD to get their way, then there are no holds barred here, folks.  Lines are being drawn and one should put serious though to which side of it one stands on.  In this next go-round, there won't be any neutrals or third-parties.  There will only be closer and farther away.  Sooner or later, every heart and every mind will be involved.

Most of us don't remember WWII.  Unlike most Gen Xers, my parents were Depression Era/WWII.  My grandfather was a SeaBee in WWI.  So where most of my contemporaries had parent of the Korean War variety, my second-hand education stretches back just a bit further.  And it's not a pretty picture.

My dad got his first pair of new shoes at 12 years old.  His toys, as a youth, were things that he and his friends made from found items.  One was called a 'nigger shooter.'  It was a pistol-shaped piece of wood with a clothes pin attached and a handful of cut-up inner tube.  Another didn't have a name that I remember, but it also used a clothes pin, a broken knife blade, and would launch a strike-ahywhere kitchen match a fair distance while striking it at the same time.

Dad served his time on the home front as a general's aide de camp, but his best friend and one of his brothers served under Patton.  Another brother was in the Pacific.  The third was in the second wave at Normandy.  All survived.  Between them and my grandfather, I got an earful about the gloom in those days.

What's coming makes all that look like spring training, and we don't have half the skills and inventiveness they did.  How many people do you know, including yourself, still save jelly jars for glassware?  How many know how to can fruits and vegetables?  Who can sew, or even has the tools to do it?  Anyone out there with a root cellar?  Does anyone out there know what an ice box is, or how to churn butter, or even where to get fresh whole milk to churn?  Do you know how to make farm cheese?  Can you hunt and field dress an animal?

If you answered no to most or all of these questions, you're in deep shit.

How about some other skills?  Can you navigate by the sun and stars?  Which side of a tree does moss grow on (in the northern hemispere)?  Which mushrooms are edible?  What medicinal plants grow in your area?

Believe it or not, I learned all of this stuff, mostly from my dad and his brothers.  The navigating I learned myself.  When I first arrived in Indonesia, I started studying the local flora.  I know that if I get dengue fever, I need to chew guava leaf, that sort of thing.

Yes, I'm strange, but I may get a bit further down the road than some.

What does all this have to do with protests in Brooklyn, you ask?  Well, that's the opening salvo.  It's the 'shot heard round the block.'  It will escalate, more than likely at the hands of the PTB, but folks will answer.  It always starts like this.  While you have a minute, go read up on Lexington and Concord.  See if you don't detect a few parallels.  Soon we'll have the Blockade of Charleston.  The only real question is "when".  My guess is it's close enough now that you can open the office betting pool.  Closest to the actual date wins 1,000 rounds of ammo.

Poppyboy and Dad used to go on about the coming revolution.  They would fill my head with signs and portends of the coming storm.  They would tell me which things had always worked throughout history, and which didn't.  In a way, Fate has prepared me for this time, if for no other reason than to be able to sit here and tell you, "Watch out!"

Perhaps not.  But that's beside the point.

The point is that IT has begun.  There is no escaping that conclusion.  You should be preparing your heart and mind and your household for the eventuality.  Wishful thinking and willful blindness can not and will not change the course of history.

If there is one ray of hope, it is that the PTB are genuinely afraid.  It is getting out of their control, and they eat control for breakfast.  Like any cornered beast, they will fight with a ferocity that I think most folks are ill-prepared to face.  Clif High at HalfPastHuman.com calls it the 'normalcy bias.'  Folks will deny their own senses until they are run over by the train at the end of the tunnel.

If you did not grow up in the Age of Political Correctness and were not taught that being male is wrong, then you probably played army when you were a strapling.  Remember how you used to strain your senses to catch any sign of someone approaching?  That's where you should be right now.

For God's sake, turn off the TeeVee.  You can't think clearly when someone is telling you what to think.  You must READ all your news.  Reading involves a lot of filters and engaged cognitive function.  It won't take long before you can start reading through the words.  Don't wait.  Start today.

Everything you know is about to change.  You can either stell yourself for it or let it smear you into the pavement.  Your choice.