“It was the best of times. It was the worst of times.”

~ Charles Dickens, from “A Tale of Two Cities”

I was born in 1958. Yeah, it has been a lively run.

~1960’s — Woodstock, Kent State, the moon shots, Robert F. Kennedy assassination, Charles Manson, and the sexual revolution. (Try as I might, I cannot remember JFK or the Cuban missile crisis.)

~1970’s — The OPEC oil shock, Watergate, the Iranian hostage crisis, Jimmy Carter, and the beginning of the Libertarian Party.

~1980’s — Disco, the can-do Reagan era, the stock market CRASH, and the accelerating migration of manufacturing from America to China.

~1990’s — The first Gulf war, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the dot.com bubble, the Y2K scare, and losing my independence to a marriage vow in 1995 (still with the same woman).

~2000’s — The dot.com crash, 9/11, the resulting wars on “terror” (including the Patriot Act, an implicit war on Americans), the widespread adoption of the internet, the housing market bubble and subsequent near-catastrophic economic collapse.

~2010’s — Quantitative easing to goose the stock market support the economy, the gargantuan growth of government at all levels of society, the rise of the “woke” culture, Donald Trump, and the demonization of Russia.

All leading up to the first two years of the decade we now live in which has brought us, in no particular order, the explosive ballooning of the national debt via trillions upon trillions of “injected” dollars into circulation by the FED, the embarrassing military debacle and humiliating retreat from Afghanistan, “mostly peaceful, though fiery” riots, and last but certainly not least, Covid-19, which has engendered widespread submission to a false choreographed narrative, devastating lockdowns, “warp speed vaxxines”, near universal acceptance of virtually useless face masks, deep-seated fear on the part of an enormous slice of the general population, “Let’s go, Brandon!”, the visible collapse of legacy media, and massive loss of public trust in established institutions.

But, enough about that. The really important thing to think about is this. What is coming in the remaining part of the current decade which I (you) will live through?

Donald Trump? Hillary Clinton? Again?? Please God, I hope not.

---

“The drift into authoritarianism doesn’t always set off alarm bells. Citizens are often slow to realize that their democracy is being dismantled even as it happens before their eyes.” ~~ Steven Levitsky

“It can take a long period of suffering before an otherwise supine population refuses to continue submitting unquestionably to authority. But the longer the condition exists, the more oppressive the methods that the state uses to defer the inevitable crisis become. Until something finally gives.” ~~ Alasdair Macleod

“What we see here is a deeply dangerous loss of trust not only in government, but in everything, including tech, media, experts in general, and a growing cultural perception that truth is no longer accessible to us…We are living amidst the rising of information chaos, the late stages of what Robert Malone has called mass formation psychosis. Where it ends up cannot be known in advance, but that something is coming and will hit us very hard is no longer in doubt.” ~~ Jeffrey Tucker

---

“…something is coming and will hit us very hard…” “Until something finally gives.”

Compare the situation we are in with the image of a massive rubber band being inexorably stretched until it reaches the breaking point. Until it snaps at the weakest point and the entire status quo collapses into a new paradigm of reality. Until everyone is forced by circumstances to make adjustments, both personal and social, in order to survive.

About much of this, there is nothing that any single individual can do. It is going to happen. The rubber band is going to break. The “sins” of the fathers are being visited on the children and, whether the children like it or not, they are the ones who are going to pick up the pieces and attempt to put their lives back together again.

When a rubber band snaps, there is instantaneous pain and the amount of pain depends on how large the band is and how directly it hits any object in its trajectory. Will I be on the receiving end of that when the current state of affairs breaks? Probably, yes. Will you? Probably, yes. In fact, it is nearly certain that everyone, in some way or another, will suffer pain, hardship, and loss. Some more than others. Some will lose every material gain they have accumulated over a lifetime. Some, perhaps even myself, will die horrible deaths through no fault of their own.

(Unless you are the type of person Alabama sang about in their hit, Song of the South. “Somebody told us Wall Street fell, but we was so poor that we couldn’t tell.”)

Does any of that matter? Well, yes, in fact, it does, and people should take steps to protect themselves from potential harm. However, this is not the proper question to ask. Instead, it should be rephrased. Should the risk of trouble in the future prevent me from doing what is right and true in the present? Should I avoid confrontation with the evil around me in the hopes that I will not be harmed by it? Should I refuse to be a “hero” by keeping my head down? Should I avoid attention at all costs, even if it means that I say or do nothing when I see something which is not right?

When I was young, I believed that I would live to 100 years. My mindset has changed. Now, considering everything happening around me and my own slowly deteriorating physical health, I think I will be doing good to make it to my 70th birthday, now less than seven years in the future. That being said, I have lived in interesting times and I am looking forward to what the future brings (no matter what it brings, which is probably going to be different than anything I would engineer if I had the ability to shape it in more than a cursory way). Regardless, I intend to do what I can to influence my world positively AND I intend to die with my boots on, working and fighting for what I believe to be right and true.

“If you know what you should do and you refuse to do it, to you it is sin.” (paraphrased)

James 4:17

“A good man leaves an inheritance for his children’s children…”

Proverbs 13:22

How much more needs to be said?