37 Comments

"start investing in your local area"

This. 100x this.

Think local. Act local. Buy local. Vote local. In your whole life, there has never been a more important time to get on first-name terms with ALL your neighbors. Because they are the most important part of your security system: physical security, food security, job security, ALL the security you can have in an age of chaos and crime, is the people you live next to.

Look out for them, and give them as much incentive as possible to look out for you.

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It’s small things like buying from the Mom & Pop or eating at their restaurant instead of the big corporate chain that matter. Another way to help local small businesses is to write positive reviews for them. Positive reviews from real customers are the best advertising a small business can get.

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...and it's also bigger things like giving away garden produce to your fence-neighbors, letting them know if anything sketchy has been going on in their yard while they're at work, getting out and walking around your immediate couple of streets regular enough that everybody within 1 block knows you on sight and knows you live there, always striving to look *less* prosperous than you are, but keeping your yard tidy. I want to be a good neighbor, but also not be a target for envy. I feel like it's strategic to have a car that's just a little older and a little shabbier than everybody else's, a yard that's not an eyesore but also doesn't look expensive. A good time to cultivate a certain image: I'm reliable, I'm on your side, and I've got nothing to steal.

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The Mom & Pop shops and restaurants etc that deserve it. I hate to say this, but in my experience, some don't. I can tell some ghastly stories. But I do make a point of finding the "Mom & Pops," and when I appreciate them, I tell them that I appreciate them, and if they remember me, and treat me and other customers with courtesy, I do make a point of returning as often as possible.

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Absolutely! Some of them are gross. I’m vegan, and the more Mom and Pop the restaurant is, the more disgusting the food will likely be and the fewer vegan options they will have.

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Great piece my feisty friend. Love every bit of it. You can feel it in your bones can’t you.

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Thank you! If a miracle were to happen and Trump got in, it would mean a decade of reprieve for the lower middle class. A rising tide lifts all ships and the windfalls the upper and upper-middle classes would receive might make circumstances worse, long term. Kackles and her Krew won't be able to kick the can much further down the road if she takes the helm, plus I think she will be facing more vigilante justice/militia situations than her predecessor. A Kackles presidency will force a lot of salary class to collapse and they are not going to like it.

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Read the Bible. Yourself. Loads of wisdom there and a possible gateway to faith. Speak the truth in love. Love your enemies. Be brave.

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Papers and books, yes, keep them dry, keep those dustjackets, and keep them out of the sun. Dust as needed.

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I just led the service at my local Unitarian Church. For the period of meditation/prayer, I led the congregation in a Fourfold Breath and a discursive meditation on the word Virtue. The subject of my message was the moment in the Divine Comedy when the angel at St. Peter's Gate into Purgatory inscribes 7 "P"s into Dante's forehead, (P is for the Italian word Peccato, which means Sin), the record of the 7 Sins which we all must work to combat.

Probably the first time in a half century that anyone has spoken of sin from the lecturn or the pulpit in that Meeting House.

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I am so glad to hear it! Unitarian churches often forget the "church" part -- at least in my neck of the woods. When I first started discursive meditation, one of my favorite sets of meditations was on the Seven Deadly Sins. https://kimberlysteele.dreamwidth.org/tag/seven+deadly+sins

"Probably the first time in a half century that anyone has spoken of sin from the lecturn or the pulpit in that Meeting House." I'll bet there were several spirits there silently cheering you on.

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I can write and build stuff. I’ll continue.

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Love to hear it. Don’t forget to save your paper books!

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herein I see actual "opportunity". the opportunity for self-governance, foremost. America.

we will see, once this happens, that we make the decision to simply reject their power. it won't be through violence. it will be a parallel economy, a Main Street society. local action and economy. their power is in illusion and consent. they will have lost it.

as to the rabid cultists, they have no power either. they will break in cognitive dissonance in mass scale. the blob will of course abandon them as they scurry for safety amidst the collapse.

"in chaos lies opportunity"

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The reason Covidmania did not take off here in the US like it did in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Israel, and most of Europe has to do with the spirit of the land here as much as the Second Amendment. The US was a country of "do your own thing" long before European settlers arrived and university educated Mao groupies aren't going to change that.

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Solid advice. I have lots of skills, but I need to work on networking and building a bigger, older magical library. That and more herbalism.

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Same. If this essay inspires one person not to get rid of their paper books, it has met its intended goal.

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I just learned how to do some basic book repair: bookbinding fabric, end tapes, archival glue... saved a favorite old volume that the cover had ripped off of. This is a wonderful thing to learn, while the online tutorials are still readily available.

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That is amazing!

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I would say that at this moment, the best thing Americans can do (assuming they have the means and wherewithal) is to start setting up Orania’s in preparation for America’s future, which, demographically speaking, looks like Brazil or South Africa.

If your local area can facilitate this, I think you should go for it. It’s also very important to organize and meet like-minded people who are also of high intelligence and good stock, who can help grow the community.

It really just has to start as a closed neighborhood community with a HOA.

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Yes, and I think the biggest problem we face is that great groups of people (old and young) are holding on for dear life to the idea that America is still a First World country.

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I was in Spain a year ago(I know-travel) and was shocked at how clean everything was and what good repair the roads and transit were. It was humiliating.

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I have heard people say the same thing about other European destinations. Also, the people were well-dressed and nobody was in pajamas or flip flops.

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You may want to extricate *yourself* from the hate. Because unless I see evidence of sexual misconduct, all this just sounds like the same old hatred directed at any woman in public life.

"Kackles Kneepads Harris and her team will steal it. America is about to get its first XX chromosome sort-of half-black President. She will prove once and for all that sucking and swallowing your way to the top is a viable strategy."

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The gaslighting begins! Well, maybe it never ended…

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Don’t ever extricate yourself from humor . That’s what I read.

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I've noticed this week that I am getting unexpectedly hostile responses in multiple forums online. Trying to figure out if that's a coordinated trolling strategy, or some broad astral effect. Literally got a nasty personal attack from a total stranger in response to a completely nonemotional, unpolitical local-groups discussion trying to find out about the local tapwater quality (dismal) and what methods people were using to mitigate it. Could not for the life of me figure out why anybody would be so emotionally invested in the local water quality unless they were getting paid by the utility comission to attack and discredit anybody who pointed out the problems... but then the same thing happened in a couple other completely unrelated venues on completely unrelated subjects.

Is this a broader trend out there? Are people being weirdly emotionally volatile generally? Or is it a general uptick in paid trolling by non-regular commenters?

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I think the troll farms have been working overtime. There are also bunches of psyops going — the current trends on TikTok are particularly insidious, subtly promoting morbid obesity and transexualism, though I can already see how they will backfire on their Chinese Communist Party authors due to their continuing failure to understand the spirit of the American land. The main CCP strategy is to pit us against each other as they did in the Covid era, but what often tends to happen is they force the separation of wheat from chaff. In other words, they push the strong people together and give them a clear view of who the enemy is. The CCP is a clever, mean high school girl who is so immersed in her own petty hatreds, she cannot imagine that other people are not built like her.

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Makes as much sense as any theory I had entertained!

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I've noticed this on some other substacks in recent days.

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I've wondered at it, because I am also noticing it on FB and WP. All at the same time.

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It's even on TikTok. Lots of manufactured support for Kackles and the same old "a vote for Trump is a vote for Hitler" hysteria.

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A lot of the stuff I'm seeing isn't even political, it's people suddenly and for no discernible reason, accusing other people (regular commenters, usually) of attacking them, and then descending into namecalling and angry accusations even when nobody is taking the bait. Like they are having an angry argument with some imaginary version of their opponent that nobody else can see.

Which is a thing that happens on the internet, but usually not in every single forum I read, at the same time! That's why I wondered if it was some astral-conditions thing. All the little-bit-crazy people's antennae lighting up from the same mass-broadcast signal.

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--but yeah, "hysteria" is a good way to characterize it. Maybe even sudden-onset delusions of persecution.

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