Ain't Buyin' What They're Sellin'

The entire Western hemisphere has become a chaotic mess and it is destablizing the delicate balance of ideologies that is the Real World.

In South America, we have Venezuela eating itself alive, a situation that has escalated since Chavez vanished from the scene.  Keep in mind that Maduro is the 65th president, so we're not talking about a nascent democracy here.  It gained independence in 1811, and has been relatively stable for most of that time, with a fairly robust economy centered around its oil reserves.

Venezuela's southern neighbor is Brazil, the largest and most powerful of the South American republics.  It too has been reasonably stable for some time with an economy dominated by oil.  It has also undergone a steady decline leading to the impeachment of President Rousseff and the installation of her political polar opposite Temer.

Chile's long-ruling moderate PDC party is in a heated race against a Socialist coalition.  Argentina, which hasn't been stable since the 1980s, continues to ride an economic roller coaster.  Meanwhile, Mexico appears to be on the verge of another revolution, which would likely cause havoc in Central America.

The EU is a mess.  Non-existent immigration controls have led to a boiling social and political situation that could flare at any moment, and that moment could come with the French elections.  Islamic immigrants/invaders are wholly incompatible with the extant culture, yet the leftist blanket laying over the continent prevents any meaningful dialogue on the subject.  Even the Roman Church, which has anchored European culture for millennia has sold out to Socialist Utopian fantasies.

In the US, the scene is even more ridiculous.  The leftists that dominated the past decade have isolated themselves physically and intellectually from the rest of the country.  The began by migrating to self-contained sycophantic enclaves, like New York, Los Angeles, Portland, and Seattle.  They then spent the entire past decade congratulating themselves on how clever they were while dictating their social proclamations to the rest of the country, which was pretty happy being left alone.

The leftists in both the US and EU so completely lost contact with the Real World in their intellectual circle-jerk that they set up an incompatible dichotomy of idealism with more moderate traditionalists hardening their positions against things like immigration, gay marriage and transgender toilets.

The dichotomy was unbalanced, with the vast majority being on the traditionalist side of the equation.  The progressive left, unable to find anyone in their Ivory Towers to say wait a minute pushed the boundaries of propriety until the traditionalists snapped back.

Enter Donald Trump.  As a businessman, he was bold, adventurous and used to getting his way.  His gregarious style worked well in marketing and he, too, built an isolated world around himself, full of people who always jumped when he called.

Trump instinctively knew where the money was.  AS a salesman, he built his empire on reading the market and responding in a way that got sales.  He knew that image and branding was everything, and he used his skills to remarkable effect in the 2016 campaign.

The problem is that government doesn't operate like a business.  He masterfully controlled the sound-byte and the lower-third title crawl, but now that it has come to action, he wants to delegate the responsibility to others.  He is thinking in terms of generating leads and handing them off to the marketing staff to close the deal.  All he wants to know is the result.  How the result is achieved is outside his scope of work.  That's Someone Else's Problem.

At this point, the traditionalists are placated by the unwinding of the progressive agenda.  On the other side, the leftists are so busy consoling themselves that whatever remained of contact with the Real World is now gone.  As a consequence, no one is minding the store and Trump is discounting everything to fire sale prices.  In other words, Trump has taken the position that any sale is a good sale, without regard to costs of doing business.

The rest of the world is catching on to Trump's weakness - a short-sighted and obsessive focus on near-term results without thoroughly thinking through the consequences.  During the campaign, he said anything that got him wild applause.  Now his applause is coming from a much smaller and more self-interested inner circle.

With everyone in the Western world either hysterically happy or hysterically upset and myopically focused on immediate results one way or the other, there is little room to worry about global stability and long-term developments.

Slowly, cautiously, the Eastern hemisphere is reading the zeitgeist.  They see two shopkeepers embroiled in an argument over unfair competition, and like opportunistic thieves, they are making off with the goods.  Put another way, two ad executives are so focused on fonts and kerning that the copywriters are slipping all kinds of content past them.

China is buying up the West at break-neck speed.  Russia has completely recovered from the West's economic sanctions.  The only part of the East that the West has ever really held any sway over - the Middle East - is collapsing and/or bitterly opposed to further alignment with the West.

The only Western stronghold in the Eastern hemisphere is Australia, and they are currently arguing over which side of the toast the butter is on.  Their closest trading partners are China, India and Indonesia, but the US and EU are demanding fealty without offering solid social and financial solutions.  If/when push comes to shove, they may well choose their own survival against cultural ties.

Trump is quickly showing that he is the wrong man at the wrong time.  In a world that requires finesse and subtlety, he is a bull in a china shop.  Russia and China are no longer weak and backward economies; they are now sleek and nimble, able to capitalize on mistakes quickly and quietly.

The problem is that the traditionalists have unleashed blustery showboating, while the leftists could only offer social engineering that the rest of the world neither wants nor cares about.  The result is that the West is ideologically bankrupt and economically unbalanced.  With nothing to offer, the rest of the world is ignoring the Western powers and going about their own business.

If Trump continues to poke the military in matters that no longer concern the US, he will only coalesce the resistance.  With North and South America and Europe in chaos, and with nothing of interest to sell the rest of the world, the shutters will soon close on the American century.

Perhaps in hindsight folks will come to their senses, but I'm not counting on it.

The End Is Nigh!

Among the scads of reasons for the collapse of the USSR, the lack of incentive for working stiffs like us was a major one.

You work your ass off all your life for a dingy little apartment in a drab and depressing concrete ant hill.  No matter how much you put into your job, you can't move up till someone at the top dies, and even if you got to move up, you still had to stand in line all day for toilet paper and a spud or two on holidays.  When you were too old to work, you were sent to the collective to twaddle around until you croaked and made room for the next stiff.

The only way to really get something out of life was to become an inner party member, but to do that, you had to be the childhood blood brother of an inner party member, which meant that one in a million or two was going to go that route.

American capitalism, it seems, is not far from the now collapsed socialist system.  The primary difference is that the inner party members carry titles such as CEO, CFO, COO, etc., rather than something more drab and functional.

Suppose you work your tail off and the best you can do is a bland, gray concrete box on the 14th floor of a bland, gray concrete box that looks like dozens of other bland, gray concrete boxes?  Suppose all your labor and effort means that you still can't afford to fill the pantry or your family's bellies, and you still have to stand in line to get your basic necessities?

Now suppose that welfare checks and food stamps offer you as good or even slightly better?  Where's the incentive to work?  If you can never get ahead, never improve your lot, and not working is pretty much the same lifestyle as working, then why roll out of bed in the morning?

Yup, better to just sit and stare at the TeeVee and sign the registry once a month down at the welfare/employment office, than to buy a work wardrobe, pay for transportation, maintain a bank account (all fees included) and pay rent on a drab, gray concrete box that looks exactly like the neighbor's who's getting his for free from Uncle Sugar.

Why have an idea that no one will act on?  Why put up with daily dressing-downs from the boss (whose drab, gray box is slightly larger than yours)?  Why go through the hassle of doing anything more than just breathing when it makes absolutely no difference at all?

 The USSA is riding the coat tails of the USSR.  Folks are giving up.  There's no point to the rat race if no one wins - except the inner party members to whom you are most certainly not related.

America today is little different from the London of the Industrial Revolution.  Work is hardy more than indentured servitude, slaving away 12 hours a day for nothing at the end of a lifetime of drudgery.  It will most certainly hit that point in the near future when all retirement accounts are swept clean to pay off the gambling debts of the inner party members.

True capitalism means that the harder you work, or the better your ideas, the higher you social status and quality of living.

My great uncle Pat was from a family of Welsh coal miners who relocated to Butte, Montana.  By luck and good looks, he got a job as a house servant instead of in the mines, where his brothers worked.  The brothers died of black lung...to a man.  Pat was able to save his two coins of pay per month by eating scraps from the master's table.  Eventually, he got out and was able to build a good life in California, where his family eventually became quite successful.

Chances of that happening at Wal-Mart are slim to none.  So why get up in the morning?  Welfare and food stamps are free, require no effort and the lifestyle is the same.

Besides, what an insult it must be to work in a store full of products you'll never be able to buy...

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.

Family Law Is Neither

There is a pernicious evil eating at the core of western civilization.  It is the foundation of nearly all other evils attacking the good people there.  It is the root of moral decay and systemic destruction of the family.  Because of it, folks no longer have an ethical compass and it is chasing men away in search of stability and balance in their lives.

It goes by many names, and has operatives and spies nearly everywhere.  It feeds off the worst aspects of the human character.  It impoverishes people and incarcerates them in a whimsical and nonsensical manner.  It has no regard for truth or justice.  It's sole purpose is to destroy from within.

IT is the so-called Family Law system.  This vile rot is eating out the heart of nations and has completely destroyed millions of lives.

It purports to champion women and children, but it must utterly demonize men to do it.  It empowers the worst aspects of the female personality in order to trample the rights and lives of husbands and fathers.  It entices women by offering 'insurance' that the men will 'pay' for their children and spouses, yet it's primary goal is to imprison the men so that they are prevented from doing what the system says they should.

I have met dozens of men in Asia who have escaped the vicious maw of the Family Law system.  Some have been impoverished by ex-wives and girlfriends who, out of sheer vindictiveness, have taken all that they have worked for and endeavored to build with their lives.

In fact, that is the true goal of the Family Law system.  It is not to protect anyone.  It is designed solely and completely to destroy men and prevent them from achieving their true potential.  By literally stealing all that they have amassed, and continuing to pop up wherever the men go to take their paychecks and throw them in jail if they fail to meet the outrageous judgements against them.

I know of men who are still being hounded by the system though their children are well past majority age.  I know men who have been chased for years for paternity payments, even though they have DNA tests that prove they are not the fathers.  I know men who spend a great deal of time in jail because they can't find work, since they are now ex-cons, and so can't meet the support payments, which lands them back in jail...again and again and again.

I know men who pay outrageous sums of money every month to support children they are forbidden to see.  They are buried under a mountain of restraining orders and other legal rubbish for no reason other than a vindictive female judge and a wicked ex-wife.

Part of the Family Law system is a...how do I put this politely...thing called Child Protective Services (or any of a dozen other equally benign names).  This vile and deleterious organization is nothing more than a band of legal kidnappers and slave traders.

It thrives on a system that pays 'foster parents' to 'care' for children they have kidnapped from the rightful family.  These 'foster parents' care little about the children and many offer horrid and squalid conditions in order to collect the state payments.  The children are tortured and abused in ways that make many of the worst abusers look mild by comparison.

With the children as hostages, the Family Law system can extract any amount of concessions from the natural parents, who are desperately trying to get their children back.  These poor parents become docile drones wiling to do anything to save their children.  It is a horrible and demeaning system that beats down human beings to create emotional basket cases.

Let's take an example of someone I know.  His story is so horrific that he is still recovering nearly 10 years later.  We'll call him Paul.

Paul came home from work one day to find his house completely cleaned out, lock, stock and barrel, and his wife and three children has vanished.  Her cell phone number had been changed, as had the numbers of her friends that he knew.  The only person he could contact was the father-in-law, who railed at Paul for what he had done to the wife.

Paul was mystified, not sure what any of that meant.  On the kitchen counter, he found the case number and contact for a police investigator in the spouse abuse division.  Paul couldn't fathom what was going on.  He had never abused his wife, and in fact had spent years trying to get his wife help for abuse she had suffered at the hands of her mother and step-family.

As it was Friday, Paul had to wait until Monday to contact the investigator.  When he did, he ws informed that the wife had accused him of beating her.  Paul was shocked, to say the least.

At lunch, he went to the police station to talk with the investigator.  He was told the the wife had several serious injuries and had accused Paul of beating her the previous Thursday between 7am and 730am.  Paul wrote out his statement, and when he returned to the office, he collected key card records, computer log-on files, email and phone records which showed conclusively that he was sitting at his desk at the very time she reported being beaten.

The investigation concluded that there was no possible way for Paul to have beaten the wife, and he later found out that she had tried changing her story a couple of times to match what she thought was Paul's testimony.

The wife finally turned up three months later 1,500 miles away in another city.  The children had been taken from her since they were running wild outside a motel where she was prostituting and doing drugs.  She had been kicked out of the shelter system because she was never there taking care of the children.

In the meantime, the oldest child had admitted to the CPS 'case workers' that his mother had been sexually abusing him for some time.  He was 12 years old at the time.

This and other information was presented to a judge in the other state who agreed to release the children to be returned to their home state.  But they were not returned to Paul.  Instead, they were placed into foster care while Paul was thoroughly investigated up one wall and down the other.

The children were repeatedly traumatized by being placed with family members, and then re-kidnapped on several occasions for no apparent reason.  The mother-in-law, afraid that the horrific abuse she and her current husband's family had perpetrated on the wife when she was young, began making dozens of wild accusations.  They were accepted without question despite years worth of psychological records showing the woman to be quite unstable.

The mother-in-law was also placed in charge of the wife, who was at this point facing numerous felony charges.  Despite being in the mother's "loving" care, the wife committed suicide under suspicious circumstances and her body was not discovered for three days.  This followed three previous attempts in the mother's own home.

Meantime, the Family Law system investigated Paul's every breath.  They took his school records, job history, driving record, tax filings...everything public record they could dig up.  They forced him into psycho-therapy and dozens of useless classes and help groups.  He went along with all of it in the desperate hope of getting his children back, who by now had been spirited away to some 'foster' home for months without contact of any kind.

Despite having combed through Paul's life with a fine-tooth comb, they found nothing but a couple of hundred dollars in unpaid taxes from 10 years before.  This didn't stop them from putting him through sheer hell.  They loaded him down with insipid classes and therapy sessions, and dragged him to court once or twice a week for pointless hearings.  They drug tested him and visited his house on a regular basis to see what he was up to.

In the three years that Paul went through this, friends and family had helped him rebuild his home so that the vultures could see that he was prepared to give the children a comfortable and safe place to live.  He had kept the children registered in school in the hopes that they would be home soon.  But it all took a toll.

Paul was fired from his job because he spent more time jumping through hoops than sitting at his desk.  He had already spent more than a quarter million dollars defending himself from nothing, trying to get his children back.  Without a cent and no job, the vultures smelled blood and pounced.

Paul's own sister, a lesbian and a 'social worker,' had taken the children by now.  She saw an opportunity to take the children from Paul, since she was never going to have any by natural means.  She sided with CPS and the Family Law system and finally forced Paul to make a horrible choice: either go to trial without a lawyer and risk losing the children forever, or accept joint custody with his sister.  He would have visitation 'rights' and would have to pay support based on his income from his last job.  He was making well over $100,000/year when he was employed.  They were going to stick him with support payments of $4,000/month...with no job and absolutely no resources left.

Paul saw the writing on the wall.  They were salivating at the prospect of throwing him in jail within months for non-payment.  His only option was to sign away his 'parental rights.'  Mind you, this is all while his children were being held incommunicado, which means he was under about as much duress as a man could be.

Paul signed.

Immediately, his sister got a restraining order and refused to let him see his children.  He bounced around trying to find work and doing freelance projects.  His life was completely wrecked and he was on the verge of becoming a full-blown alcoholic trying to drown the pain and anger he felt.

This is the Family Law system in a nutshell.  It is a horrible, dreadful creature that eats families and destroys lives.  It is the reason I meet so many men here in Asia looking for traditional culture and decent women, and a legal system that still respects family above all.

Until this blight is completely dismantled and relegated to the dust-bin of history, I see little hope for the future of western civilization.  It is eating itself from the inside out.  The Family Law system is a parasite draining the life out of the culture.

Despite the magnitude of this evil, it remains well hidden, because its victims are thoroughly discredited and have no voice to fight back.  The feminist movement has created a beast that eats men's lives with little though for truth and justice.  The Family Law system does not promote equality and fairness.  It is nothing more than using the power of the state to vanquish the family and create mindless sheep.  It has completely undermined thousands of years of balance, tradition and real strength.  And that is its true purpose.

If there is one single cause for the rise in divorce, the plummeting birth rates and the masculinization of women, then the Family Law system is it.  Destroy it and restore sanity to the world.

Bugging Out And Other Hobbies

As the West enters a death spiral and the economic situation reaches levels not even seen in the depths of the Great Depression, a number of people are bugging out (old military term meaning 'pack and leave fast').  This is a common and very old response to rising tyranny and roving goon squads, such as those now taking over most Western countries.

Refugees from political and economic turmoil have been an age old problem.  The secret to doing it successfully, is to recognize and admit the problem while everyone else is still in denial, then act on that knowledge in a controlled and organized manner, so as to inflict the least amount of disruption in your life, and the lives of your intended landing spot.

Aye, there's the rub.  That whole 'organized' bit usually stumps most people.

The biggest hurdle is the decision to move in the first place.  People get comfortable where they are and find it incredibly hard to uproot.  They are also attached to all their things and don't want to let go of the things they have dragged with them through life or acquired along the way.  For this, I have no advice, except for men, you can marry a avaricious woman who takes all your things while you are at work, and does the job for you...like ripping off a bandage quickly.

This part of the decision is intensely personal.  One must perceive the benefits of uprooting to be of enough value to overcome the impulse to sit still.  What you take with you is also a tough one.  Many people want to take it all, and so find the cost and logistics of bugging out to be overwhelming.  All I can say here is that it gets easier to throw things away the more you do it.  There's a tremendous feeling of liberation once you reach a certain critical level.

When I left the US, I had a single suitcase, a shoulder bag and a little cash.  What little the former wife left, I sold on eBay.  Literally all that's left back home are some clothes and personal effects in a closet in my mother's house.  I've always been an all or nothing kinda guy...I don't generally burn bridges, but I often lose the map to them.

Perhaps, though, the criteria I used to select a bug-out location would be more helpful.  Taking the decision to actually make the move is something no one can help with, only advise.

The first cut for my choice of locations was selecting a hemisphere.  Having traveled extensively, I had pretty much covered Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and points south of Mexico.  Europe wasn't even an option, since the coming tidal wave in the US was going to take out Europe, as well.  Plus, I had never been to Asia, and it was high on my list of things to do before I died.

Having narrowed my search down to the eastern half of the world, I could rule out Australia and New Zealand, since they were part of the western economic system and will be creamed by it, as well.  That left the Indian sub-continent, Asia Major and the archipelago.  We were getting somewhere fast now.

My first criterion was a network of folks that would give me some connection to my new location.  That narrowed it down to China, Thailand and Indonesia.  I had direct, local connections in these countries, which meant I would have at least one person to talk to.  This would help when it came to language and culture, and learning things like, what is the real price for things (not the tourist gouge).  I also had a desire to engage in the cultures of these countries, which is something one must do if adopting a new home.

The next criterion was language.  Though I was already fluent in three languages and passable in another seven or so, the Asian languages were a daunting hurdle.  I had learned a smattering of Thai and Mandarin at various points.  Both were highly complex, and not just because of the written characters.  Thai is basically two languages, one for men and one for women.  Mandarin, while being fairly straight-forward in grammar, was a major block when it came to pronunciation.

That left Indonesian, which is based on the Roman alphabet, each letter has only one sound, and the language is an amalgam of Malay, Hindi, Arabic, Portuguese, and Mandarin, with a good chunk of Dutch and English thrown in.  That meant that, without having studied a lick of it, I already had a pretty good vocabulary of cognates.  Because of this, Indonesia was quickly working its way to the top of the list.

The next consideration was immigration.  How easy or difficult was it to set up in the target country?  In this respect, Indonesia was a bit more protectionist than most, though that has changed recently.  In order to get permanent resident status, one had to get married or have a sponsoring employer.  Fortunately, I had friends in Indonesia with a company willing to sponsor me.  Just this year, Indonesia has added retirement visas, like many other countries.  Folks over 50 with steady income from pensions can get a retirement visa in Indonesia for less than $1,000 per year.  Until recently, being married to a local would grant permanent resident status, but not a work visa.  The recent changes have also updated that nonsensical bit of law, as well.  The only remaining hurdle is that foreigners may own houses and condos, but may not own the land.  Lobbyists are busily working on that one, since Bali is becoming a global haven for retirees.

So, what about the economy?  This is obviously a major consideration, as you being to narrow the list of possible landing spots.  Indonesia's economy has been growing like a house afire since the early 2000s.  Of the Asian economies, it tops the list with Vietnam, in terms of sheer growth and expansion.  Indonesia is also a gross exporter of food and energy, two key components of any survival plans.  Granted, inflation is the beast in the closet, but the cost of living is roughly one-fifth that of Texas, which is one of the lower-cost places in the States.

Taxes here are a bit steep, especially for foreigners.  They run between 15% and 30% on average, on a graduated scale, plus a 10% VAT on just about everything but breathing.  Still, there's no inheritance tax and capital gains taxes are 0.05%.  Property tax is 5% on transfer of title, plus a minor tax annually in the $40 range.  This one varies significantly by location, so you'll have to do your due diligence.

The next thing I considered was culture.  Indonesia is well-known in the English language for the Seven Seas and the Thousand Islands, not to mention Bali.  Borneo (Kalimantan) was were King Kong was discovered.  For centuries, these islands have been the targets of western colonialism because of the wealth of spices and natural resources.  There are still parts of the country barely explored, and hardly a week goes by you can't find an article about some new discovery in Indonesia.  All this means there's a good supply of things to do.  There's plenty of exploring and over 300 distinct cultures and tribal groups to learn about.

Indonesians have a healthy distrust of government, which I find refreshing.  They primarily rely on family and friends, and don't assume that government will always jump in to save the day.  Sure, there is always a strong effort on the part of the UN and NGOs to meddle with local tradition and culture, which they do very well.  These groups are always trying to export the profound errors of the West into every aspect of life in the "Third World".  Fortunately, at least so far, Indonesians tend to disregard these efforts.

Yes, everything you've heard about corruption is true, but it is systemic in all of Asia.  I find it refreshing that the corruption is open and obvious, rather than hidden under a veil of legalisms and supposed equality, such as in the States.  There's no pretense to moral high ground, such as exhibited in Western governments.  Much easier to deal with this way.

Among other considerations, there was health care.  Pretty much anything available elsewhere is available here.  You just have to be choosy.  There's still a lot of home remedies and old wive's tales prevalent in local medical practices.  Still, there's a wide variety of alternatives and overall, the costs are far cheaper.  Also, many drugs are available over-the-counter and don't require a prior visit to a doctor.  If you know what you need, then there's no reason to run around getting permission from the medical mafia to obtain it.  Drugs prices are much more affordable, as well.  If you don't trust the local docs, you can also fly cheaply and quickly to Singapore or Australia for your alopathic fix.

Near the bottom of the criteria list was climate.  Certainly, being buried to my neck in snow half the year did not appeal.  Indonesia has an equatorial climate, meaning it rarely spikes above 90F, and rarely drops below 75F, day in, day out, all year 'round.  There are only two seasons, Wet and Dry, each about six months long. This means a year-round growing season, a wide variety of fruits and vegetables grown locally, and home gardens that never stop.  The local markets are stuffed to the gills daily with fresh produce brought directly from the mountains south of town.  It's even more direct in smaller cities and villages.

Some folks may want to consider diet.  If you are particularly delicate, you may not want to live in Thailand or Indonesia, where foods tend to be rather spicy.  Also, if you're a die-hard pork eater, or can't stand the taste of unaged beef, then you may have a difficult time adjusting.

Other than that, there's all the amenities: cable TeeVee, high-speed internet (satellite for more remote locations like the LFS Global Headquarters), well-stocked grocery stores with Oreos and peanut butter, and (at least in Jakarta) a reasonably dependable public utilities system, though we have at least one redundant system for everything.  The recent week-long water outage proved the wisdom of that approach.

In other words, you are not shut off from the world by changing location.  Thirty years ago, when I backpacked around the world, there were no cell phones and instant messaging and internet.  To make a long-distance call overseas, you had to make an appointment at the telegraph office for a call that sounded like talking in a pipe with a 10 second delay between replies.  Now, contacting folks at home, literally on the other side of the planet, is no different than calling next door.  Just a heavy time difference between night and day, but hard to fix that.

Uprooting and relocating is not easy, and nothing in this article should be used to construe that idea.  There is a big learning curve, a thousand different variables (of which I've just touched the tip here), and the possibility of failure at any moment with little or no back-up.  You should have a fairly strong sense of self-reliance and enjoy the process as much as the result.

If you are the type of traveler who enjoys the travel, rather than the arrival, then this option is for you.  If obstacles are things to be reasoned out and overcome, rather than dead-ends, then you are ready.  When I stepped off the plane in Jakarta, I had a week's worth of clothes, a water filter, a pocket knife, and my wits.  Now it takes a two-ton truck to move my house.  Less than four years.

Many folks will say, "I'm too old to start over."  To that, I say you can either slide quietly into the grave, or go in the midst of your next great adventure.  You can slowly lose your mind to dementia with your thumb on the TeeVee remote, or engage life head-on, amassing knowledge and experience (and maybe a touch of wisdom) until the moment you get planted.  You're going to get old anyway, why not make it an adventure?

Despite everything you've been told, the world is still a very big place with many options for living.  Hell, if Osama bin Laden can avoid the entire committed resources of the Western hemisphere, and die six times before they finally buried him, I'm sure you can find arrangements that suit your needs.

An old Chinese proverb: The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

The Gloaming

It causes me no end of head slapping to read the hyperbole in the US media.  Comments like Pelosi's reflect America's continuing pipe-dream that it somehow still holds the keys to Life, the Universe and Everything.

To a certain extent, that was true about 50 years ago.  Being the only major power to survive WWII relatively unscathed gave it a lot of clout in global affairs.  Certainly, even as recently as Reagan, when the US sneezed, the world caught a cold.

But, those days are long since past.  Whether by design or sheer ignorance, the US has farmed out its Global Leader role, and in effect, has pissed away any power it had to call the shots in world affairs.

Much of what I see in US politics and media appears to be a desperate attempt to hold to past glory.  Like the faded ingenue, folks are plastering on the make-up and adjusting the lighting and focus to force the blush of youth onto the withered face of Time.

There's so much rhetoric about the US taking down world markets, and crashing the global economy, and causing the end of life as we know it.  The simple fact is, most people around the planet would look up for a week or two to watch the sinking of the Titanic, but after the stern slipped beneath the waves and the waters calmed, everyone would go back to their chores, with little more than a couple of, "Did'ja hear...?"

There was a time, when I was significantly younger, that the US dollar had a sort of sacred sheen to it.  A large part of the world had no middle class, and those in the boot-sticking classes saw the US as a shining beacon of glorious lifestyles and fabulous wealth.  No more.

Now, the middle classes of many former 'third-world' nations have vigorously expanded.  Now, lots of people have plasma TeeVees and personal transportation, and designer clothing, and family vacations.  The glorious American Way-of-Life has been exported to the world, and now the world has what it once envied.  So why care about the US any more?

As for financial markets, I can tell you that the world really doesn't care.  Most of the world doesn't buy stocks and bonds, and the indices don't make a good 'God damn' in their lives.  If I surveyed 100 well-heeled folks here in Jakarta, maybe two could tell me the value of ANY stock exchange, much less the Dow.  Ask them the price of gold?  Three-quarters would probably have a ball-park number.

As for dollars, they're a curiosity, since you just don't see a lot of them floating around these parts.  If you go to the money changer, they don't salivate over your Franklins.  Rather, they closely inspect them for fraud, and then discount the exchange based on how smooth and clean it is.  SingBux?  Now we're talking.  Renmimbi?  Right over here, sir!  Yen?  Would you like a cup of coffee while you wait?  Riyal?  How about a shisha with that coffee, sir?

Sure, energy is still traded in dollars, but that's more tradition now.  I've seen a number of coal deals go down in rupiah the past year or so.  Locally, gold is all valued in rupiah, and it's discounted to market, because they actually mine it here.  Many ex-im deals here are now done in rupiah or one of the Big Three Asian currencies (China, Japan, India).

When I first got here about four years ago, a lot of folks asked me to help them get visas to the States.  It still had a fading bit of attraction for folks who were still left out of the growing economic explosion here.  Now, when folks go to the US, it's a status symbol only in the fact that they can afford the ticket (well over $1,000).  Many prefer Asian and Middle East destinations, which come with significantly cheaper air fares (Singapore round-trip for $30).

I've used the US embassy here in Jakarta as kind of a gauge.  Most embassies here, you just walk up, sign the book, get an ID, and go inside.  The US embassy looks like a maximum security prison, even more so since they finished the new entrance earlier this year.

You walk past a half-dozen armed security, enter through a massive steel door into a concrete and steel bunker.  You strip yourself of any metal and leave your cell phone (turned off) at the guard desk.  IF you pass the scanner, then you are given an ID, which entitles you to go out into a courtyard with a concrete half-wall guiding your path through a very large (internal) steel fence.  After passing another guard or two, you cross the basketball court (that no one uses) to the old guard shack, where more armed guards scrutinize you.  Then you enter a fenced-in area with rows of benches for the little people to wait while their visas are denied (mostly empty now but used to hold 200 folks).  You pass another guard to get to the business end of this Orwellian nightmare, where more steel and bomb-proof glass doors await.  Inside are a row of teller-like windows that must be about 3-inch thick, kevlar-laced bomb glass.  Each window has fluorescent lights on either side shining in your face, so you can barely see who or what is beyond the window.

Oh, and the embassy only accepts rupiah for services rendered.  That should tell you something.

It's like a fractal.  The smallest part looks just like the largest.  America has done such a fine job of walling itself off from the world that the world has decided to move on to other, less stressful, occupations.

After all, if you had the choice between having your privates painfully groped and an open door, which would you choose?  Like electricity, people will always seek the least resistance.  And the world has decided that the southern hemisphere, driven by a voracious Chinese economy, offers much more opportunity with a lot less hassle.

Every day, the US loses a bit more shine.  People are finding alternatives to the bully on the block.  The bully can only block one spot, but there are dozens of others to choose from.  Even if the world has to walk just a bit further, it's still less BS than fighting the bully.

Think of it this way, if there's a jerk at the office that you really hate encountering, don't you go out of your way to avoid running in them?  It's the same on a global scale.  For so long now, the US has acted like a jerk, sending its warships as projections of power, sending its banksters as ambassadors of greed.  Who needs it?

The world has weighed two options: deal with the US and lose everything while gaining nothing, or deal with someone else where there's money on the table for both sides.  Sure, some folks still go to the supermarket to buy their vegetables, instead of the farmer's market, where they are half price and dirt-fresh.  They don't want to drive the extra five miles and prefer shopping in air-conditioned comfort.  Those willing to give up a little comfort are rewarded with much better deals, though.

For all its bluster and doomsday prophesies, few people outside the US actually care.  That's part of the reason the US has made it so laborious to travel.  If folks get out in the hinterlands, they would discover that everything they are told in the media and by 'authorities' is utter rubbish.

Some folks may remember the Soup Nazi.  He was wildly popular for a while.  If you took too long to decide, you got the boot.  If you wanted something added or taken out, you got the boot.  If you didn't have correct change, you got the boot.  It had some novelty, and the soup was pretty good, so folks got a benefit from it...for a while.  Then, the novelty wore off and the hassle of getting the boot when you only had an hour for lunch became more than the value of the soup was worth.  That's the US in a nutshell.

A headline in the Kompas newspaper this morning says it all, "Indonesia Siap Menjadi Negara Maju," Indonesia is ready to become an advanced country.  This echoes most of the world, I think.  They've been crapped on by the US for so long, they've all figured out work-arounds.  Now they have their own middle classes, and the money is coming in, and the toys are priced to move.  Who needs America. anyway?

When the US defaults, maybe not next week, but sooner than later, the world will look up from their Wheaties to mark the passing, and then return to munching.  All the hair-pulling and gnashing of teeth on the part of DC blow-hards and their media lap dogs will mean absolutely nothing in the greater scheme of things.

America found a marketing niche for a while, but like all massive organizations, they became entrenched in their own gimmicks.  Instead of continuing to innovate and grow, they got lazy and satisfied with what they had.  They farmed out franchises and sat back and counted the dough.

Then the novelty wore off and people found other things to distract them.  America became the Pet Rock or the Cabbage Patch Kid.  It slid into the 'where are they now' category, while telling themselves they so dominated the world that nothing could challenge their throne.

But, the throne got taken and a wooden stool was shoved in its place while no one looked.

Far Side Waxing

Dengue Fever in Florida
Lazy-ass Do-Nothing CONgress
Fiddling While Rome Burns
More Fiddling About While Pompeii Burns Too
A Trillion Here, A Trillion There...
What's A Little Extinction Among Friends?
Creating the Self-Fulfilling Prophesy
Americans Quittin' n Buggin' Out
The Great and Powerful Oz



The first thing you should notice about the above links is that they are not wild-eyed bloggers (like me), conspiracy nutjobs or 'fringe elements.' These are 'mainstream' media outlets talking about America's long dark tea-time of the soul (sorry Douglas Adams).

In fact, America has been in decline for a long time. I was aware of it somewhere around the Reagan Administration. At that time, I pointed out to my father the old wisdom that the hunter must become the hunted. By extension, America must become like Soviet Russia and vice versa. It would seem that my observation was somewhat precient.

The above articles document Americans changing nationalities (defecting), living conditions devolving to 'third world' standards and a growing revolutionary fever. Does this sound like the richest, most powerful nation on Earth? Or a tin-pot poseur with a microphone and amplifier?

Outbreaks of dengue fever and epidemics of bedbugs sure sound like the kind of conditions we used to point at 'lesser' countries and snigger at how backward they were. We were so proud of our progressive welfare state that turned an entire nation into a bunch of teat-suckers. We had all the latest toys and geegaws, while those 'lesser' nations were still mucking around in the jungle. Hell, just watch any version of King Kong, which all begin with the capture of the beast on Borneo (Indonesia). Notice how the natives are depicted. Now take a clear and serious look at American cutlture and lifestyles. From over here on the Far Side, I don't see much difference. Even has the sacrificial female re: Congresscritter Waters.

When the Financial Times headlines that Americans are bailing out, then you can smell a trend. We're not just talking ex-pat status, but throwing out the citizenship baby with the burdensome-taxes bathwater. Remember all the stories and movies about Russian defectors? Remember how we would point to that as proof that we were better than 'them?' Remember when being anti-government was simply unthinkable? We couldn't imagine someone not liking America or wanting to be an American. The whole world wanted to be American! They all wanted dollars and McDonald's. Well, you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who wants dollars now, and gosh, McDonald's is about as healthy as eating raw plastic, except the plastic doesn't come with artery-damming fat. In fact, America's veil of bullsh*t has grown so thin that even the Mexicans are running the other way across the river. The image of rats from a sinking ship comes to mind.

When all you have left is jingoism, then the game is up. Insecure and inwardly weak, the bully boasts loudly and protects his piece of turf against all enemies, both foreign and imagined. The dying power resorts to slogans and invading ill-prepared countries in order to display the tail feathers of past glory. Sadly, America has completely lost sight of what made it great. It wasn't the ability to reduce other nations to rubble. it wasn't the nanny-state welfare system that encouraged sloth. It wasn't even its industrial might. It was one very simple act. So simple, in fact, that it has become almost invisible, yet the implications of this one act are so profound as to be Earth-shaking. The original idea that made America great was that government stepped aside and let people build themselves up. But once regulations and laws and fees and taxes and agencies and authorities (when did they go from servants to authorities?), all was lost. It was only a matter of time before the bloated, rotting carcass would collapse on itself and belch forth streams of maggots.

I am reminded of a famous quote. Who was it? De Tocqueville or Tyler? "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the majority discovers it can vote itself largess out of the public treasury. After that, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits with the result the democracy collapses because of the loose fiscal policy ensuing, always to be followed by a dictatorship, then a monarchy."

It would seem that dictatorship has decended upon America.

Things don't look good for America from here on the Far Side. We have about the best perspective one can have, whether physically, culturally and psychologically, that can be achieved on the surface of Earth. What we see here doesn't look good for America's future. Oh, sure...you can argue semantics or say that it ain't so bad "'cause ah live here an' things is jes fine." Hard to see the forest through those darned trees.

My father had a sign on his desk when he was in the Texas Legislature. It read, "When you're up to your ass in alligators, it's hard to remember that your first thought was to drain the swamp." When Clinton was in office, people looked fondly back at Bush the First. When Bush the Second was installed, people actually thought Billy wasn't so bad. Now we have Bammy and folks wish that we could have Bush the Second back in there. The line of outrage always moves forward, and the trailing line of nostalgia is in lock-step behind it. Remember Nixon? People beat their breasts and lamented the end of the Republic. Now the Watergate break-in seems insignificant to the level of crap flowing from the Beltway.

Two and a half years ago, I announced to my circle of friends and family that I was moving to The Far Side. The most common response: "Indonesia...is that in Bali?" Most others thought I was just plain crazy moving to the Third World from good ol' Merica. Now, many of those same people want to know how they can move here too. Such is life. A visionary is always considered crazy until he is proven right.

A little perspective goes a long way.

And such is Life on the Far Side.