Important note NOT in the audio:
I’m caught between a rock and a hard place. I’m just back for travel to see grandkiddies. I am due out with a podcast and I have an interview scheduled for tomorrow.
I also have a topic burning a hole in my brain about the Guilty White Letfy idiots insulting multiple races and tearing down more statues. The one, on the P4B in a few days, is a doozy!
In the interest of time and timeliness, I cut two segments out of the original.
Enjoy.
As usual, if you want to support my work, I’ll leave a bunch of buttons in the text below the audio line so you can grab P4B gear or all kinds of gifts and/or decor.
If you are not otherwise engaged, you can follow along with this podcast in the text below the audio line.
It’s almost that time again. We just passed the All-Star break. I had intended to bring Ron Cori back before the break to sit down with Sam Peebles from the Braves Dugout podcast. But I was on vacation through the break. But that’s okay because the season is definitely heating up. So I’ll bring them in next week to compare the Phillies and Braves, talk about each teams challenges and maybe take a wider look around the league.
So keep an eye out for that one. Ron’s shows have been consistently the most popular here.
And speaking of vacation… I’m fresh off the road. I and the woman and the dog hopped in the pickup and dragged a 5th wheel to the mountains and then the beach.
We spent a week in Cherokee, North Carolina1. The RV was parked in a place called Happy Holidays RV Resort. It was pretty great. They had a great fireworks show for the 4th. My friend, Dale and I played a round of golf (He can play the game. I pretend...and curse…a lot). The only really nice drive I had all day almost hit the party ahead of us, 300 yards away. I NEVER hit 300 yards unless it is to send the ball three fairways to the right.
And I rode a very skiddish horse named Rio. We made a deal; he doesn’t throw me and I don’t send him to the glue factory. We both survived the experience.
I highly recommend the RV park and the town for a cool family vacation. To give you an idea how popular Happy Holidays is, there is a three-year waiting list to park your rig there long term.
We spent the second week at the Onslow Beach on Camp Lejeune. This was our second time staying there. It has a GREAT beach. We spent two days with my cousin, Barb and her husband Joe. They are both fans of the podcast. We WILL do that again next summer!
If you are military or DoD civilian, you should consider a cabin or RV stay at Onslow Beach. The only caveat, you are MILES from the gates to Jacksonville, Moorehead City or Sneadsville. But it’s worth it. You might even see that as an advantage.
I posted cheesy vacation pictures in the text
A quick note about Peter Zeihan
Most of the warnings here about demographics and economics are from PZ. Some are mine. The 11 Points that I contend MUST be addressed to move through the coming contractions are mine.
That said, while Peter’s work is first rate thinking, and my work is nothing short of brilliant, they are the product of individual thinking. There are always variables that come into play that prognosticators never thought about, but thinkers and populations might come up with, to mitigate or avoid the predicted difficulty. Let’s hope there are a lot of people like that preparing for the near future.
And while I do enjoy PZ’s work, I am not a blind follower of his thinking. There are areas in which we disagree. I was surprised to learn, for example, the he is an ESG and Davos/WEF apologist. In a recent post, Zeihan said Davos was just a big party and that there were, meh, good things to consider in ESG.
I don’t sense an agenda, although there might be one. But I reject his thinking out of hand for two reasons. First, I have clips and quotes throughout this Substack of the Davos loonies telling us in their own words exactly what they intend to do to this world and to our lives. It’s already happening. Second, our government is shot through with Davos/WEF cult members who are putting ESG into play. They are also rapidly bringing a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) online. This is PRIMARILY a programmable form of electronic control over all of us. Meanwhile, BlackRock and Vanguard and other WEF member banks are buying up HUGE blocks of stock in key industries and wielding incredible power over boardrooms to promote a dull, grey life for you, and power and wealth for them and the rest of the cult.
C’mon. You don’t think Disney and Bud and Target are committing financial suicide because they care a wit about the trans fad, do you? They get rated by the government and those banks on how much of that shit they publicly pretend to support.
And for the record, “smart cities”, courtesy of Davos, will be prisons. The bars will be your cell phone and CBDC. Doubt me not.
What I won’t do is fall for the fallacy that if I disagree with you on point X, then everything else you say is wrong. That is the default position of most of our nation of 12 yr olds. Much of what Zeihan warns of is mathmatical certainty. No matter your politics, he’s worth the read. I’ll leave an unpaid link at the end of the text.
If you disagree with any of my 11 Points skip over those. But no thinking person can dismiss all of them. PREPARE!
Before we get into the points, this note. Last week I had the pleasure of appearing on a Long Live Alternative Parties Podcast, hosted by my buddy ANDREW BUSHARD. Andrew is a good guy and has guests with some interesting takes on politics. We covered a variety of subjects, especially how the GOP field was shaping up. I think you’ll enjoy it. In the podcast I said my URL was .com. As you can see above, it is a .us. Just hit the button in the text to hear my interview with Andrew.
Let’s talk about Crime
I heard it said recently that if the Democrats in our major cities stopped beating and killing each other, violent crime in this country would drop by 90%. I don’t know how accurate that is, but I’d bet it’s close.
We have become exactly what the ruling class want us to be. We are wildly divided over issues that are self-evident in their clarity. But we manage to argue over them anyway. That’s because so many of us are emotional train wrecks and reject reason for what sounds pithy or woke. We are distracted, not paying attention to the things we should. We have work, little league, Netflix and dart tournaments. That works out very well for the political whores.
But the thing the politicians need us to be more than anything is to be living in two camps; criminals and frightened sheep. Because we have been conditioned not to fight back, criminals and political whores thrive. People walk through their day itching to get into conflict, while others will do anything to placate the violent and the obnoxious.
This is why our cities have been turned into shitholes, more dangerous than Fallujah or Basrah ever were. For decades the political whores sucked up money from state and federal government, or directly out of your pocket and created sham “programs” to fight crime. It was all lip service. They were never intended to work. You are easier to control if you are frightened. And criminals are convenient for political whores who want too keep you frightened.
Now, they don’t even hide their agenda. Left wing DAs, funded by scum, often foreign scum, now state outright that they have no intention of fighting crime on a real level. They have no intention of clearing the streets of the worthless criminals or homeless or addicts who shit on our sidewalks. But god help you if you do. THEN they bring the full weight of the law down on your head.
That would be because you would be messing with the disgusting dystopia that feeds their power and wealth. Can’t have that.
They are actively building a world where there will be no sense of good and evil. They are actively building a world based on violence and ignorance. It works for them.
So crime is another area we must fix. The coming market shortages and demographic collapse SHOULD work out to be a minor inconvenience in this country. We SHOULD be able to get through it in relatively good shape compared to the rest of the world.
But with the criminal shit, emboldened by politicians who rely on the existance of the criminal shit, any blip in the supply of goods, any energy problems experienced (also an invention of political whores), any disturbance in our day to day life, will be seen as an opportunity for the criminal class.
Any consumable we value can and will become a black market commodity. We already have inner city gangs moving into the suburbs. This problem will grow exponentially in the present criminal justice system.
So, in order to see the other ten of the 11 Points to successful conclusions, we MUST radically alter our attitudes about crime and criminals, and so do quickly. Every citizen who wishes to live safely and peacefully MUST make the lives of their local and state politicians un-peaceful. We must get very loud at council meeting at the town and county level.
Do you remember the Loudon County parents who stood up for their kids in school board meetings last year? They got changes made. Some were elcted to that very board and to the county board of supervisors. They were loud and persistent, but most importantly - they showed up!
To do these things, we might have to give up a few rounds of golf. We might have to make carpool arrangements for little league. We might have to DVR our favorite movies. But we NEED to get in the faces of the complacent ruling class and make it clear their days in power are going to be very short if things don’t turn around very quickly.
We must, as a group, demand and secure the resignation or dismissal of the prosecutors and DAs who refuse to do their job. We must vote for politicians who have NO INTENTION of coddling violent criminals. We must also vote for people who will take a bulldozer to tent cities, force the people in them to clean up their act or live in institutions rebuilt for that purpose.
For the non-violent addict who gets in trouble with the law or the homeless guy who doesn’t know how to come by assistance, we can show compassion. And that doesn’t extend to letting them sleep on the street. That is not compassion. It is social suicide, as many major cities have learned in recent decades.
But to the violent criminal, we owe NO COMPASSION. We don’t owe them a comfortable cell. We don’t owe them a TV. We don’t owe them a weight room. We can provide books that impart real knowledge and perhaps even an education or a trade. But those must be earned and should be very expensive in terms of good behavior. Bad behavior must be punished harshly in full view of the prison population.
But it doesn’t stop there. Any official who breaks the rules in the disposition of criminals must mandatorally spend HIS sentence among that same population. Cops and officials who take bribes from ANY criminals, regardless the color of the collar, should get the same treament. In fact, the dirty cop should do time in a prison uniform with the word “COP” stenciled on the back of his uniform.
And yes, because I know many of you were going there, we need to be as severe with those who commit “white collar” crimes as well. In the world we are moving into, these bastards will do far more damage to the system, and huge numbers of lives, than any street scum would do.
But the visible crime. The crime that does the most psychological damage to the citizen, that tears at the fabric of society, is that done by the scum in our streets.
But what about non-violent street crime? Do we go after that with the same urgency as other crimes? While I would say there might be a matter of degree here - violent offenders need to go in a hole for a long time - I would also say that the constant thievery and vandalism plaguing our businesses and institutions is more pernicious than all the rest.
Of all the criminal activity exasperated by weak and corrupt DAs, it’s the punk thief and the addict looking for an easy fix that does the most damage of all. On its face, it may seem nickle and dime. But it is constant, and perpetrators are ever more brazen.
Earlier, I mentioned things ending up on the black market. It’s already happening in a world of relative plenty. And items in short supply are huge targets of petty crime scumbags. When you see video of these punks tearing through a store unmolested leaving with bags of merchandise, where do you think that ends up? It goes on Ebay. They aren’t stealing bread to feed their families. They’re scum. And there’s no one to arrest the scum.
If someone gets shot in front of a store near Union Square in San Francisco, it’s tragic and the cops are called to investigate. But you don’t then close the store. But if your employees hear gunshots every damn day and have to walk around human feces going to and from work, you close. And if your stores are vandalized every day and your property is stolen every goddamn day, you close. I would submit the latter is the more expensive for the store.
And that is exactly what is happening in San Francisco. Major employers and tax generators are leaving. They have to. And the city that was once a beautiful place becomes a little shittier with each closing. There have been many.
While each perp has to own his actions and should be severely punished by society, it is the political whores across the country who are actively facilitating the chaos, and then pretending to be the answer to the problem, while facilitating more. They don’t care about YOU! They don’t fear YOU! Perhaps it’s time you taught them to.
The tolerance of scum must end. The scum on the streets, the scum in our financial system and the scum in political office. How we dispose of the scum should weigh heavily on the minds of those considering any kind of offense. Right now, it doesn’t. That is what must change, NOW!
Trade Policies
This is yet another area where we should win in a walk. But with the bag o’ dicks we have running the show right now, we could end up getting dinged pretty good as things unravel.
In his book, The End of the World is Just the Beginning, Zeihan2 points out, in terms of supply and consumption, internationally, we peaked in 2019. There will not be a bigger, better year than 2019 for a very long time. That, in itself, is not a very big deal. The Boomers are aging out, the population isn’t growing by leaps and bounds (except for the illegal hoards crossing our borders), so in itself, we shouldn’t worry, right? Wrong.
When I was in the Navy we were taught that the Navy’s primary mission was to keep the sea lanes open for free trade - for EVERYONE. And for almost 60 years that is exactly what we did. But we have let that mission slide. Every year, we’re less and less interested in continuing to do that for other countries.
So the movement of goods, between aging and less productive populations is not only shrinking, but it will become more dangerous at sea. Don’t believe me? Okay, show of hands, who doesn’t think that if left to their own devices, Ukraine wouldn’t sink the first Russian oil tanker they could get to? I am including sabotage in open waters or in foreign waterways. And those are not the only unfriendly actors on the world stage. Their conflict is just hotter than most others.
Due to factors other than age, European productivity is dancing on the edge of a cliff right now, mostly as a result of unfortunate energy policies. The EU is soon to become a memory. Scotland might still break from the United Kingdom. Brexit is already in the rear view. And China is headed for the industrial dung heap.
Old alliances and trade relationships are about to become very fluid. Previously reliable supply lines will have gaps if they even continue to exist.
This will be a major challenge to governments and people. It’s the reason I wrote the 11 Points. We need a much more mature and resilient society and a nimble economy in order to get through the tough times ahead, or to make them less tough. That said, there is opportunity here, IF we can find competent representatives to exploit the mess on our behalf.
On my podcast called Walking With Giants with Patricia Degennaro, I hit on an idea that could have real legs. If it works, I want full credit in the history books. It has to do with new trade relationships.
The Brits, post-Brexit are still seeking trade partners. Leave aside they chose to pull the plug on the EU while the old order was unraveling. Their remaining in the EU would have staved off the worst of the slide only for a year or two. It’s even possible that the UK was just the first rat off a sinking ship.
We have a good reltionship with them already. I think we should grab a blanket and some nice wine and seriously canoodle the island nation. Great Britain still sits atop a huge commonwealth of nations. They have trade and cultural connections that can either thrive or wither on the vine as international trade and exchange of value becomes tenuous.
I think the US should propose an expansive free-trade network where we become the biggest, most powerful member and customer of the Commonwealth. And why not? Lot’s of former colonies, now independent, are loyal members. They can all continue to bow and scrape for King Chuck. But the important result will be a viable alternative to the dying global order. Many of the most important members are already existing allies. So maritime security would be easy to provide.
We could continue to grow our influence and trade with other important countries as well. Mexico, Colombia, Brazil, Vietnam, the Philippines, Turkey, if they’re smart enough, can grow and trade with the Commonwealth + 1, or crash with the rest of the trading world.
But all this requires real heavy lifting. The repatriation of industry, already started (a little) in the United States has to really take off - NOW! We need to retool and relearn how to manufacture our own stuff on a power grid that doesn’t rely on tinker toys.3
We need to rebuild our steel industry with technology we created and the rest of the world uses now. Micro technology and medicine must be viewed as strategic assets and brought here. Agriculture must return to the creation of food, meat and vegetables. We must STOP putting food in our gas tanks. It’s never worked as advertised anyway.4 And the nuts crying about cow farts and that awful fertilizer must be ignored. They are a threat to our national security.
ESG MUST be ejected from the economy and government. It’s a assault on YOUR personal liberty and stands in the way of all 11 Points we seek to address.
What we should NOT do, and what the puppet masters running the present administration seem to be doing, is prop up China. We need to educate China about the future. Xi Jingping has psychologically, gone fishin’. China has cities that are nearly uninhabited because they went on a building spree unsupported by population growth. We need China just long enough to spin up factories, here or elsewhere, to replace Chinese factories. Then we cut China loose to sink or swim. They need to kiss our asses if they want anything from us.
We need to wreck Iran’s nuke program. Just because B. Hussein wanted to be the Muslim-American Savior who gave Shia the Bomb doesn’t mean we have to go along. This has been a foreign policy embarrassment for the US for a decade now. Iran must be isolated. Regime change should be our announced policy. And yes, we would be repeating history. Hopefully we won’t have another Jimmy Carter in the White House at a critical point.
If traveling to or near Cherokee with a tow, FIND THE TRUCK ROUTE. We got stuck pulling more then 5 tons up a small mountain road. It was a sub-optimal experience.
A man who also uses phrases like “bag o’ dicks” and “bag o’ hammers”.
See my podcast where I compare Green scams to the “Trans” fad.
See this podcast on The Energy Revolt to understand the stupidity of putting food in your gas tank.
Crime First, Then International Trade [redux]