I remember reading news articles in the 1980’s about people fleeing Communist countries, getting to America, walking into supermarkets, and bursting into tears at the overwhelming abundance that was offered.
Were those stories true? Maybe. Coulda been Cold War propaganda. But, I’ve met quite a few refugees from Communist countries and, to a man, they’ve all a) said ‘yeah, this place is freaking awesome’ and b) they vote Republican. I had a neighbor from Poland back when Poland was still firmly stuck in the Soviet sphere. He could take potatoes and cook them up to taste like whatever you wanted…because where he grew up, potatoes were all you could rely on being available. As a result, you learned how to make potatoes taste like the million things you’d rather have been eating.
Had another neighbor, her and her parents fled Hungary back when Hungary was really kept on a tight leash. She spent a couple years living in a refugee camp in Canada before moving to the US and becoming a citizen. She told me stories about her mom struggling to get food and other necessities under the Communists.
And, naturally, I’d feel a little swelling of nationalistic pride…because, after all, this was the US…we have twenty flavors of Tang, two hundred channels, and fat poor people. Where else on the planet are poor people fat???
And yet…I walk into grocery stores, Home Depot, and Sportsmans Warehouse and the mantra is “supply chain issues”. Da, comrade….we have nyet inventory. Is supply chain.
There is nothing romantic, noble, egalitarian, or equitable about living in Third World conditions. At the moment there is running water, electricity, food to be had, fuel to be purchased, so all is good. Except….it’s slowly getting pinched off. Either the ‘supply chain issues’ empty the shelves, or creeping inflation and rising prices force you to leave those goods on the shelf. Either way, it winds up with you coming back from the store with less than youre used to.
When it takes $25 dollars to buy what cost $20 three months ago, but you’re still making the same wage, that is your lifeline being slowly choked off. And when you do decide to go ahead and pay the inflated price you’re told that, sorry, we’re out of stock. And that cinch tightens a bit more.
And, personally, I see it getting worse before it gets better. Even if there’s a political remedy, its going to be a while before the offices change hands. Thats plenty of time for your savings and retirement to be slowly dissolved by inflation. Assuming you keep your job as employers close because they cant hire people, or vaccine mandates cause them to fire people.
Me..I’m playing it close to the vest. I do my job(s), bank my money, buy some metals, keep the freezer topped off, and keep on top of the news. It’s only a matter of time before the morning comes where you stagger out of bed, put on your bathrobe, plop in front of the computer, and…Russia invades Ukraine, inflation peaks, someone shoots up a school, lockdowns are initiated, new taxes are levied, travel bans are brought to bear, etc, etc.
If there’s any advice I would offer to someone in these rather interesting times it would be this: be deliberate in everything you do. Think through the consequences several layers down of any action you take, or don’t take. Making mistakes in the current environment is a luxury that most people can’t afford too often.
The most egregious disease we suffer from is generational abundance. Fat ‘poor people’ with flat screen tvs, is right. The only way we can worry about the ‘lack of gender transition counselors’ in military is that we’ve effectively run out of real problems, so we create imaginary ones.
Once upon a time I lived in Moscow where I routinely waited 30 minutes in line to buy friggin carrots. And they were nasty. Unbelievable.
There will be a reconning. And these snowflakes will think they e been transported to another time dimension.
After my family and I returned from being stationed in Europe for 5 years in 1979 we wandered around a grocery store in Philadelphia in amazement for well over an hour. I can only imagine the awe immigrants from communist or 3rd world countries might have felt. It is amazing how we have digressed in the past 10 months. Let’s go Brandon.
I had the same reaction after returning from former Yugoslavia 25 years ago. My parents laughed at me standing in wonder at the end of a grocery store aisles for several minutes at a time.
It’s not just that cost is going up, shrinkflation is reducing your purchase power.
My sister in law lived in Russia for six months as a foreign exchange student back in the 80’s. She remembers the rare times they had meat it was essentially the gristle and trimmings like we cut off our T bones and give to the dogs. The local Ruskies bragged about having such ‘good’ meat available. She lost 20 pounds and she wasn’t a big girl, came back quite skinny but was able to speak fluent Russian.
I am thankful for all we have but concerned about the future. George Orwell called it with his books Animal Farm and 1984. The pigs keep changing the rules and big brother is getting bigger every day.
Starting to wonder if it’s even worth it, all this prepping. Will we just be delaying the inevitable? Wonder if there were dinosaurs back when the meteor hit that had a bunch of water, grass and leaves stocked up in a cave some where and lasted another few weeks or months before they eventually croaked like the rest of them?
Or should I take my lump sum 401k, pension and savings (low seven figures) and party it up in Las Vegas with hookers and blow then when it’s all gone jump off the Stratosphere hotel tower and go out quick? Decisions decisions.
On an up note, my new SA-35 just arrived. Hope I don’t shoot my eye out. Merry Christmas!
i have been struggling with the same thoughts. i don’t think days on earth are life and i don’t see things getting better, only worse, in my foreseeable future. why prolong it indeed.
Don’t let the bastards grind you down.
Spending your money on the trivialities which are the only escape from the hell they create to further enrich them is the worst strategy.
Spend your money on the world you want to see. Endow a small stipend/scholarship focused on free thought, liberty, or whatever you core values are. Leave a legacy that will echo through and multiply. That’s the way to fix things long term.
I really like that sign
“Consequences just ahead”
Pity is showing it around the local coffee shop I’d have to EXPLAIN it to most of the younger ones and that ruins the impact. AFTER ALL THEY have their “Smart phones” and a credit card that buys fancy coffees (for now).
People WANT TO Believe “All is Well” as the buildings explode all around them.
Even my beloved wife a very intelligent RN, has normalcy bias because she WANTS to Believe all is going to “Work Out” and thus the life she has earned over the decades will not be frittered away by the Human Cockroaches known as Politicians and Gimme Dats.
After you eat the leftovers of those cases of Mountain House-MRE’s all you have is some marginal scraps of useful material. IF you have the Skill of Gardening in YOUR Area (it’s a local thing so books help but dirt time WINS) you KNOW how to get that carrot to Overwinter and how to protect it for SEEDS next Year.
Yes, Virgina, some plants like carrots, cabbage and onions are Biannual REQUIRING this year’s grown from seed plants to be nurtured to grow a Second Years growing season to make Seeds.
Tim (above comment) might have bought “Crappy carrots” in Moscow BUT somebody with some level of gardening skill Grew them and both sides did a bit better that day for their efforts.
Short US Dollars even if as my wife says we have saved-earned lots of them, Long TRUSTED Friends and Gardening Skills.
We are circling the drain,,, where the hell is a stopper?
I remember being in high school. I was harassed and brutalized. Until one day I fought back. Well what do you know, no more brutalization and no more harassment. Why have we not banded together and stopped all this CRAP. The time is now to say no more.
It will only get worse.
Lets go Brandon
A Nuremberg Code suit was just filed in International Criminal Court against many politicians/bureaucrats, just remember the punishment is hanging and it is past time to go long rope.
Too many snowflakes would scream blue murder if the “Stopper” was not PC enough for them.
Facts don’t matter as much as opinions to such as these…
Keep in mind that playing it close and being deliberate, will drive some family members crazy, esp. those who just want to go along to get along.
I own gas station/convenience stores in Oregon.
Things can always get worse.
Gas pump filters have been out of stock for over two months. Stations are shutting down Super nozzles and moving the filters to the regular nozzles because they can’t pump gas. What happens when you can’t buy gas?
Products are scarce. My 12′ candy section is now 8′, with cookies filling in the rest. Cup Noodle is down to two flavors, no Totino’s pizza, milk arrives maybe once a month, cream cheese is out of the question, and we are on our fourth brand of toilet paper due to shortages.
Guess what is never out of stock? Anything Federally taxed. We have no shortage of alcohol, tobacco, beer, wine, or lottery. Now trying to find someone to deliver those products is impossible, but they are available. You just have to order huge quantities and put them in back-stock, for when the order does not show up.
The newest thing is for the “Age Protected Class” to come in, raise hell and get thrown out, and then sue you. We have three lawsuits going on right now.
I had to install metal bollards along the front of the stores, so people would stop driving vehicles thru the front doors. We use 2-3 canisters of mace a week dealing with the homeless. Four weeks ago I had a homeless person pull a knife on me. Her response seeing me with my hand on my hip was “Your going to Shoot Me???” When the police arrived, there only response was “no one was actually injured, so with Covid was can’t even arrest her.” (The police in Oregon have been awesome, they just have their hands tied behind their back but he local government)
Wow, sorry for ranting, but the level of feces is above my head.
With dealing with all that, are you consistently seeing enough positive cash flow that it’s worth keeping the stations running?
Here in Minnesota I figure we’re a couple years behind the West Coast for how things will be going.
Steelheart
Thanks for your honest rant as it provides a true view of the front lines. I have a 6 month old granddaughter and worry deeply what she will have to go thru. I wish I could see a path for our country but I suspect that the uninformed majority will continue to ignore what is in plain sight for the informed. Those in charge, whomever they really are, know what is going on and continue on their path to oblivion.
One of the major problems is most people want to believe in “nice”… and as long as people don’t see the forest for the trees, as in “there is evil afoot that wants to do us in…” we are eventually going to do some serious hurting. “Nice” is nice but going forward nothing will be nice. Prepping is a good idea, the crunch comes when your friends and neighbors who only believe in “nice” are going to be knocking on your door. What do you do? It’s a conundrum to which I have no universal answer. Very few people want to deal with the probable realities going forward.
Houston has been sheltered from many of the adverse effects, both economically and socially. That said, when I drive around with my eyes open, we have a HUGE number of tent cities under freeway overpasses. I have no idea where the bums are getting $100 tents but there are a lot of them.
Graffiti stays up longer. There are more closed store fronts, and for lease signs. Even my long term auto mechanic has closed this month. He’s being replaced by a laundromat according to the sign.
The streets and neighborhood are more physically dirty than they were. The city and state can’t or won’t keep up with debris on the roadway and shoulders. There is more illegal dumping, and the amount of trash and litter is increasing. I’m also seeing the type of 3rd world street vendor that tries to sell flowers, or bags of peanuts, or other cheap trinkets at stop lights. I see people with folding tables and open car trunks in parking lots selling shoes or other merch.
Even streets that had lots of thriving strip developments are looking run down and seedy.
We are definitely on a downward trajectory.
n
(not just in my neighborhood. I get all over the Houston metro area from the Energy Corridor on the west side, to Baytown and the chemical plants on the east, and Conroe to the north down past Dickenson in the south. That’s an area 2 hours x 2 hours on freeways.)
Spent 4 years assigned to a Joint Unit at Travis AFB in the mid 90s as a US National Escort for the INF and START treaties with the former USSR republics (mostly the Russians). They built a new Base Exchange at Travis AFB, and at its grand opening we took a team of 10 Russian Arms Control Inspectors to go shopping. We noticed one of the Russians on his first trip to the US, in his mid-40s was flipping out when he saw all the products available to the US Military folks. We thought the guy was going to have a stroke.
One of our major non-inspection duties was to take these guys shopping to Walmart, K Mart, Dollar Store, Base Exchange, and Class 6 (Base Liquor Store). Most of the Russians would load up on items they couldn’t get back home and would bring back large boxes of US bought goods for either family members or to sell on the Russian Black Market. Needless to say, it was a very interesting working with these guys.
Have been watching this slow-motion train wreck coming down the tracks in 2005, and don’t expect it to get much better with the illegitimate regime running the show for now. The only thing I do know there is no voting or way out of this mess. Keep on prepping folks, we are in for a very bumpy ride.
if voting made a difference they wouldn’t let us do it – Mark Twain
Well said Zero!
Suggest you take a look at armstrongeconomics.com for further enlightenment
Merry Christmas! Oops not supposed to say that
George
Exactly. #10 cans of Mountain House are in stock and on SALE in most places right now for example. Don’t cry latter when you go to buy them and they are $75 a can and backordered 2 months if you can find them.
I think China and Russia will make their play (Taiwan and Ukraine) fairly closely to one another to throw the US and Europe off balance. The US and Europe would both suffer economically if they try to hit both Russia and China at the same time with economic sanctions.
“Hard times create strong men. Strong men create good times. Good times create weak men. And, weak men create hard times.”
― G. Michael Hopf, Those Who Remain
It’s all part of that great big circle of life…
“Circle of life” or circling the drain?
Once you internalize the phrase “They want us all dead”, much of what’s going on makes a lot more sense. It doesn’t make it easier to deal with, but it makes more sense.
Our government has and is in the process of further selling us all to China. Of course, China doesn’t want the people, it just wants the land and the industries, so we must go.
I look forward, with no pleasure whatsoever, to some very spicy times. It will be interesting to see how this all turns out, assuming I survive.
I’m not feeling too optimistic about 2022. All I can say is it’s been really nice having a good supply of food, reliable electricity, and indoor plumbing. And Let’s Go Brandon.
Part of the libs or communist lite playbook is to destroy the nation from within. They have know for much of the last eight decades they can’t beat us through military actions. To defeat us failures of our system must come in waves of debacles from within, take the fiasco now underway at the border or the bulk of Our medicine made in China etc, every one paying attention can continue Citing those type failures effectively for hours, days and beyond. Simpletons voting for the dreges providing forever handouts further stresses the entire system of cheçks and balancees, bleeding and running down of the nation.
It’s entirely possible to see us turn the corner exposing the Marxist in the dresses of Hollywood, New York lib elites or the scum running around the south side of Chicago. Most should be tried for treason. Then hung.
Don’t give up, try to expose these lib frauds in everyway you can, and keep packing The necessities of Water, seeds, food and powder. I will.
I had a Romanian roommate in college, late 80’s. His mother came to visit us. He was busy during the day at school the day after she arrived and he asked me to take her to the grocery store to buy stuff for her to cook with. He wrote out a shopping list in Romanian and English. The simplest word to describe her upon entering the store was shock. I will never forget the look(s) on her face as I wheeled the cart around the store with her. One of the items on the shopping list was yogurt – when we got to the shelf with many display feet of many different brands and flavors of yogurt she started crying. I cannot speak Romanian so did not know why. She cried the rest of the time at the store. When my roommate came home I asked him about this. He told me that in his village back home there is only one of everything – one brand and size of beans, one brand and size of corn, etc. and that the store was often out of many things. Yogurt – there was only one brand and size of yogurt. When she saw the huge selection at this American store she burst out crying not only because of the enormous quantities and choice available but that all they had been told for years, about how Americans were starving and suffering so badly because capitalism was evil while THEY were all living in a communist paradise, was all a lie. A series of huge lies. Lies that people believed because they did not know any better. I will never forget this short episode in my life.
Great stories guys. Franks SHOULD be in the front pages of every TRASH newscast EVERY day. These libs and communists are completely evil. It’s great that those among us that KNOW libs,,,communwitts, but we must fight to keep getting to word out.
MERRY Christmas to those we can say it to and F those who don’t want to hear it. Have a blessed and prosperous NEW Year too. Storing extra food, water, powder, beans, bullets and Band-Aids here.
Tis a sorry state my friends when Poland and the Hungarian gommints treat their people better than our treats ours. Not even including the phony virus BS. The Polish and Hungary have made heaps of progress towards rights and freedoms one the last 20 years though. If I had to give this country up I would seriously consider one of those if Europe was an option. At present it is not.
So far we have enough of things that make modern life possible. But time is getting short. The longer we stall about producing products needed here the worse it’s going to get. And the longer we allow the present criminals, both parties, to run rampant over our Constitution and freedoms with no accountability the faster it will progress towards the great sewer of all out revolt, chaos, and anarchy.
Ijust this year alone it has taken me 8 full months to get hydraulic fittings needed tome hydraulics work on the tractor. 8 fricken months! to say nothing about the dies I ordered Dec.15, 2020 and finally received the last one Dec. 12, 2021 A full friggin year, and they are all made right here in Nebraska.
And by the way Commander Zero – Mele Kaliki Maka & Ho Maka Hiki Ho
I wish everyone well in the new year, may it turn out to our liking. But we’ll still have to work for it.
“I don’t have to destroy America. America will destroy itself”. Nikita Khrushchev
One aspect of all the old socialist stories that I think we miss out on is this – everyone knew who to go to in order to acquire that thing that was Not Available. It wasn’t exactly their “tribe” to use the going terminology – but those connections are vital. Make them now. Who knows what, from water treatment plants to, as above, fuel suppliers. That information is critical, those connections as valuable as some metals.
I can recommend Monalisa Foster’s “Pretending to Sleep”, about her growing up in late communist Romania…
https://www.amazon.com/Pretending-Sleep-Communism-Survivors-Short-ebook/dp/B084KJP46V/ref=sr_1_3?crid=3A3WHN3AOSRUK&keywords=monalisa+foster&qid=1640369995&s=books&sprefix=monalisa+foster%2Cstripbooks%2C102&sr=1-3
Nothing lasts forever, and things are breaking. Get everything you think you and your tribe’ll likely need, and then get more of it.
If you’re old— I’m pushing 70— teach everything you can to your kids, and to their kids. My wife and I spend every second we can with our grandkids. We’re not remotely wealthy, but we spend quality time with our family. Our children were taught to read critically, and to write clearly. They had vast advantages over their peers.
Our grandkids will be even better equipped to excel.
Turn your backs to every government-run nonsense that you can. Teach your family to think for themselves and not sign on to anybody else’s program. Encourage them to own property, especially land. Teach them to garden, hunt, reload ammo, and to put up their own food.
Instill solid values and judgment into the next generations, and take care of your own business. Our country is fine. Our government is a train wreck. Take care of your part of things, and your descendants will do the same when it’s their turn.