Brace Yourself Collapse Is Coming

I don’t want to be that writer, always warning of collapse and spreading gloom and doom in every essay. I’d rather write essays about travel, adventure, and the occasional poetic dalliance. Yet, I have to warn people even if it means that the message falls on mostly deaf ears.

The next four years of the incoming Trump administration will be chaotic and alter the course of our country and the world forever. President-elect Trump is already offering up the most unqualified crackpots to run various governmental positions.

From controversial Dr. Oz running the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to wrestling magnate Linda McMahon running the Department of Education, we’re going to be in for misinformation and misdirection for the foreseeable future.

Trump and his incoming administration’s sole goal is to grift. They’re sacking Rome from the inside first, getting the choice morsels, before opening the gates to the Visigoths and escaping out the back door.

Along the way, they’ll dismantle everything they dislike or disagree with their worldview. Women’s rights? Get back in the kitchen, bitch! LGBTQ rights? Get back in the closet, you fag! Climate change? That’s a hoax! We want cheap oil!

Trump, Vance, and their administration will trample on the rights of Americans and dance on their backs.

You know it's coming: the repeal of the ACA, the insolvency of Social Security, the gutting of Medicare, and the elimination of the Veterans Affairs if Musk and Ramaswamy have their way.

I can see the dominos falling from a mile away, and the voters who voted for Harris, see it too. Too bad, the average American — once again — voted against their best interests.

The old German saying, “Wer nicht hören will muss fühlen,” is so apropos here. Translated, it means, “If you don’t listen then you’re going to feel it”. It’s metaphorical, you made your bed and now you sleep in it.

In our case, and for the survival of humans, not only did we make our bed but we took a big shit on it and set it on fire, wondering why there’s so much smoke in our room and everything stinks.

My partner said some frightening and ominous, she said that when people are starving they will sell you out for a potato. They will choose themselves first, to survive. I have no reason to doubt her words, she grew up in a village in China where people starved. She saw this firsthand.

This is what worries me about the future of the USA and the world. Once our growing seasons and arable land get compromised by a warming world, food production will fall off. People will start starving and they will do unspeakable things for the last potato.

I’ve written about it before and I will say it again, we must band together. We must find our “tribe” before it’s too late. To survive the next four years and for a warming future, we have to organize; there is strength in numbers.

We must become a life raft for like-minded people, who have the skills needed to keep a society functioning. Over the years we’ve built up a network of doctors and engineers, people who can fix things and heal the sick. We’ve surrounded ourselves with writers and artists, creatives who can keep us informed and help us appreciate the world.

We’ve started to simplify our lives so that one income can carry the family for a while. We started growing our own food to supplement our summer and autumn dinners. We created a local seed exchange where we share local acclimated seeds and plants. Next, we need to learn to jar them for winter storage.

We started building our tribe, our life raft, and you can too. You have to start today, no matter how small, to be prepared and connected. It can be as simple as gathering your friends together and agreeing to work together when things destabilize or get too expensive.

The prepared among us might not come out of the storm unscathed, but they’ll weather the storm better than the masses who didn’t.

I hope you listen.

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