Failing Economies and Dystopian Futures

My weekly podcast landed as always last Wednesday and in it, my thoughts were on what Trump and company is doing to the U.S. economy, and to the world at large, mostly western Europe. Of course we have to include Japan and South Korea in the mix as they are heavily dependant on the U.S. for keeping their economies afloat.

Then I dive into what the future might look like once Trump and his cohorts get finished trashing everything and I Segway into dystopian futures. I've been reading a lot of that genre lately and some of the parallels are scary. Mostly, I talk about how humans will typically behave in a long term electrical and infrastructure failure.

The books I reference all talk about some kind of continental disaster that takes place that forces the survivors to adapt to living without electricity. And it isn't pretty. The criminal instincts of people come out of the wood work in spades when they realise that there is no one to tell them no anymore.

I can attest to that, and so can others. I watched Chris Hedges interview an author today who wrote a book on America's much vaunted Delta Force special forces elite soldiers and it was an eye opener, even for someone like me who had worked with some of these Army Rangers and Green Berets in the past. I had also read articles through the years but this interview was special. It's no wonder the U.S. government wants to cover all of this up.

But I'm not here to talk about the past. I am more concerned about the future of the U.S., and to a lesser degree, the rest of the world. And no, I'm not talking about climate change or the next pandemic. Which are important but not today.

One of the things I'm watching today, in between all of my chores, is what Trump's soldiers are going to do to any of the No Kings protesters today. A lot of people are speculating whether the federal police and their handpicked local riot police will try to instigate violence to provoke these peaceful protesters into fighting back. Which would give Trump the excuse to stand up more soldiers and declare martial law.

I plan to check out the days news a little later when I have a little more time. As it is, I'm squeezing this blog article in while I do laundry and try to get around to cleaning the house some.

Last week was beyond my normal pale. As I mentioned before, I'm taking a photography course, which takes up four hours of class room time each week. Although last week, I had Tuesday off. But that just gave me an extra day to work on the weekly homework and this PowerPoint project the teacher wants by next Tuesday.

Every day last week were full days as I had something going on everyday that took all day to complete. Homework, going to class, the podcast on Wednesday, class on Thursday, a onsite IT work assignment (Yes, I still do IT gig work now and again) that afternoon, then yesterday, Friday, my dear wife sweet talked me into taking the day to drive her and her two friends up into the Virginia mountains to pick some apples and see some changing leaves on Skyline Drive, the section of road they call the Blue Ridge Parkway. That was an all day affair but the ladies enjoyed it so all is good. But, I lost two whole days this week, to get my stuff accomplished.

So, here I am on Saturday doing my best to play catch up. I had tonnes of emails to read through last night and into today and as of this afternoon, I still have a couple to go through. I still have to go do the weekly grocery shopping yet. And my wife wants to go on a half hour walk around our neighbourhood this afternoon as well.

I don't know where I'm going to find the time for all of this. The days ahead don't look that promising either. But at least I'm getting back to a somewhat normal schedule next week. I still have lots to do this weekend.

Every Sunday, or most Sunday's anyway, I spend the quiet time while my wife is in church, to write up raw draft of the weekly podcast. If I have any other needs, such as emails to read and such, it's always a good time to get those done and get ready for the work week.

This college class is taking up way more of my time than I expected but I'll deal with it as the class is now half over. The teacher told the class last Thursday that we'd passed the halfway mark. Woo hoo! I am learning things but I will be sooo glad when this class is finished. I was thinking about taking the landscape photography class next fall but after this, I'm having second thoughts. I'm not ruling it out but I'm a little hesitant now after this semester.

I don't know anything about this other teacher and I'm worried that the homework and classwork might be more than I want to deal with. Again, I'm still thinking about it.

I still have to find time to process the photos I took up on the mountains yesterday. Maybe tomorrow, if I get everything else done. If nothing else, I need to at least get the photos off of my camera SD card so I can make room for the next homework assignment.

And I'm supposed to be retired and relaxing after working hard in my younger years. So much for relaxing. That's okay though. As we used to say in the military, a happy soldier is a bitching soldier. I wouldn't exactly call me a happy soldier right now but I would like to find a happy medium to my current life.

With all that's going on in the world, I can stay silent about all of it. I don't want to be like most of my neighbours, content to live in their bubbles and let the world go on around them as they go to their church meetings or watch TV all day. I have one lady next door who spends her days on her computer looking at websites. Maybe she is into online chatting or something. I rarely see her. The others all seem to have very insular lives that don't involve ICE soldiers snatching people off the streets, people being arrested for touching an ICE agent as these agents violently arrest and push away protesters and such.

I think they'll all wake up once the economy crashes and their pension checks can no longer afford them the lifestyle their accustomed to. That's my worry. I am living on my Army pension, VA disability and social security. If I lose social security, I could still make ends meet. But if I lose my military pension and disability, I would have to sell my house and find a very cheap place to live, or even be homeless. I do have my RV but I guarantee, my wife will not agree to living homeless in an RV.

As long as my pension money keeps coming in, I can ride out most any recession. We know how to tighten our belts here. As long as I have a house, I can manage the rest, I think.

There are a lot of other people who are not so fortunate. I feel bad for them. Having lived through recessions before, I kind of know what to expect and I'm preparing some for the eventuality.

I've said this before, it's not a question of if anymore, but when. Trump keeps screwing around with tariffs on China and India and others and their moving their trade away from the U.S. They're selling treasury bonds like crazy and slowing or stopping trade altogether, such as what China is doing.

Financial experts are crying about the overinflated AI tech stocks and I agree, they are overpriced. And the stock market will reset at some point in the near future. Companies like Nvidia will lose a lot of value when that happens. It's not like we haven't seen this before. I don't have any investments in any tech stocks so I should be good. I will see my investment values plummet when the tech stocks crash eventually but I don't think I'll lose it all. I'll cash out before I reach my limits. Kind of like gambling at a casino. You have to know when to hold and when to fold.

Coming up in next week's podcast, I'm looking at the havoc that ICE is doing all across the country. Rounding up anyone and everyone who fits the racial profile, to let them sort out their citizenship from a detention centre somewhere. I read an article, and it was mentioned on a news broadcast, that a lot of native born citizens have been caught up in all of this. Some were arrested for just being at the wrong place at the wrong time, touching a ICE agent as they were supposedly trying to do their jobs. Something they're calling impedement. So if you're videoing them during an arrest, they can arrest you for impedement. If you are yelling at them, they can arrest you for impedement, and so on. You get the picture. They rarely actually file any charges, or the indictments never make it past a grand jury so what's the point?

The point is intimidation. I'll leave everyone reading this with that thought as we process the No Kings protests today to see how everything worked out. I'll have a lot more on this next Wednesday. Sláinte

Oh and before I forget, if you want to watch, listen to or just read last week's podcast, jump over to the podcast page here in this website and enjoy.