Back in the dark ages, before I had a blog, I attempted mass communication using a word processor to put words on material made from dead trees. I then used an envelope and stamp to send my missives to the local newspaper in hopes they might indulge me by sharing my words with their readers.
I didn’t realize it, but my parent saved at least some of those published Letters to the Editor.
Although my parents died in 2012 and 2014, my brothers are still cleaning the attic of their house. Stuff related to me has ended up on my desk. These two clippings arrived recently and are from over 20 years ago:
I give up reading and commenting on social media for Lent. I have done so for years. So, I want you all to realize, by making this post, I am contravening a holy obligation I have taken upon myself, and breaking it for reasons I deem sufficient to break that obligation:
Stock in months of dietary starch. By months, I mean, double digits of months. By God, and my hopes of Redemption, do what the Mormons advise and stock a larder of dried basic provisions to keep you and your immediate loved ones alive, even at risk of dietary insufficiency, for at least two years without resupply.
If you don’t know how to hunt, learn how to hunt for protein, legally, and possibly illegibly in extremis. Stock ammo to keep you and yours alive. Stock fuel, or means to use scavenged fuel, to turn raw food into edible food on an unlimited basis. If you don’t have a camping-scale wood-burning option, get one.
Plan for vitamin deficiency and either stock to overcome or plan to collect.
The global supply chain has not yet completely collapsed, but it wasn’t what it was in 2016, when you could order anything you wanted and have it appear in two days. Expect the new normal: you can order it, and it might appear in six weeks, before everything fails and we’re back to medieval trading.
Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe the entire root-to-leaf Biden administration, plus all the administrative supporters, swings from the branches of DC cherry trees in the next eight months, plus similarly in every state capitol. Even so, it’s not going to change the practicalities: it’s going to be a rough few years. The COVID stuff was peanuts, mostly a matter of government diktaks well in excess of the actual risk of a flu-grade virus. Government, authoritarianism, is what killed us as a people, not the virus.
Plan to live as if the wider bureaucracy doesn’t exist. America will survive. Americanism stands strong, living in the heart of everyone that accepts in their heart the fundamentals of the Declaration of Independence. It’s the formalized federal and state governments that will have to be shed as the un-American, un-Constitutional self-serving bureaucracies that they are.
Practically, that means: they will cut off social security, disability. EBT support. Let it go, those were always a trap. Instead, plan to support your local innocent poor, and turn out the predatory of any affluence. The Non-Aggression Principle is a good guide. Teach people into general utility. Our (great-great-)great-grandparents survived the Depression and wartime rationing through hard lessons and hard practicalities; we’re likely to have to teach the surviving part of the next generation the same.
I’ll tell you one thing: if anyone asks you your pronouns, or tells you theirs, leave them to die on the side of the road. Nobody has time for that faculty-lounge shit any more.
I’m impressed that your local paper printed those letters.
I had lunch with some of the editorial staff once. I think I managed to convince them I wasn’t a total nutjob.
Excellent!