Group Identify

It seems pretty easy to dislike groups of folks.

The evil 1% rich folks. The poor who live off the backs of the workers.

Democrats are the anti-christ. Republicans are traitors.

It’s the blacks, whites, Muslims, Jews, Hispanics, gays, Christians, atheists, Chinese, Russians, commies, you name it.

The list goes on and on. There are books, movies, blogs and entire organizations dedicated to supporting or attacking groups.

It’s a tool. A tool by those who use it to distract us from what’s really happening and from what the agenda really is.

Most of us are quick to claim that “big gov” is evil and that there is a mindless, faceless bureaucracy that controls our country.

Sorry folks, it’s not a machine, it’s people. The IRS for example might be evil, but Lois Lerner was a criminal.

It wasn’t an evil machine that allowed the San Bernadino killers into the US. It was actual individuals who screwed up and allowed this woman in our country.

It wasn’t the Democrats who did Fast and Furious. It was specific people who planned it and executed it.

How many of us can name any of the leaders of ISIS?

Recently there have been some ugly comments addressing hatred of all .gov workers, all LE employees, and all .mil employees.

I can understand Sammy’s hatred of these three groups. The first group governed over his incarceration, the second group actually busted him, and the third group let him go during basic training for “health issues” that he had lied about during the recruitment process.

But, we need not fall for the trap. Some individuals are evil and some individuals are good.

Folks who paint entire groups of folks as evil are trying to play us. We’re a country of individuals despite the best efforts of the communitarians who want us to be a country of groups.

If we’re going to win this battle, we need to identify our enemies as individuals, not as a group. Target the ones who actually commit the evil acts.  Putting a name and face on evil is the beginning to overcoming it.

 

Fearmongering Clarity

The latest post got the most hits of any other post, but I believe the points I was trying to make were not as clear as they should have been

So, some clarity.

If we did a survey, every one of us could identify ten threats to us in less than an hour. If we added them all up, we could probably come up with hundreds and hundreds of unique threats.

Point 1:  If we had a magic wand and eliminated all of those threats today, hundreds and hundreds more would appear tomorrow.

Point 2:  At the end of the day, most if not all of the threats that face us are a result of “big government”.  Federal mostly, but not completely.

Point 3:  There are elites out there that want us to concentrate on these threats.  It causes folks to take their “eyes off the prize” so to say.  Each threat is a tactical fight that causes us to ignore the strategic fight.  Fighting each “threat” is like fighting a war.  You can win the tactical battles, but until you win the strategic battle, you’ll never win.

Point 4:  Lots of folks like big government.  Even some of our commenter’s like some part of big government (military, etc.)

Point 5:  There are folks that want some of these crisis’s to come to fruition.  On both sides.

Point 6:  There is no short term political solution to fixing big government on the federal level.  There may be some solutions at the state and local level, but probably only in making big government, medium government.

Point 7:  We didn’t get in this mess since Obama got elected.  We’ve been going down this path for almost 100 years.  It will take at least that long to fix it, once we decide to fix it.

Point 8:  We have two choices when the threats come to fruition:  Survive or Die.  There are two kinds of survival:  subsistence living, or restoration of a just and civil society living.  It’s completely up to you and your family.  It won’t be easy and it won’t be certain.  I never suggested that it was.

Point 9:  Our hope is in the notion of preparing.

Educate your family.

Learn to do things.

Get some training.

JC is the go-to guy for real and relevant tactical training. Culper is the brightest local intel guy I know of.  There are plenty of medical training sites out there.  There are plenty of food prep sites out there.  Learn to build things with your hands.  Community colleges are great resources.  Learn to weld.  Learn basic carpentry skills. Comms is a lot more than talking and listening.  Repairing vehicles and weapons is a useful skill  You’ll get better with practice, but for now knowing the basics is important.

Everyone doesn’t have to know how to do everything. Family and tribe should be able to learn different things that complement each other.

Embrace folks in your community that are not disruptive to your goals. You don’t have to be a Mormon to recognize their strengths in preparing.  You don’t have to be a Baptist to recognize their strong faith.  Protestants versus Catholics has been a stupid struggle for centuries.  It’s us versus big gov.

Point 10:  The struggle for the hearts and minds of America are between those who ascribe to Communitarianism (look it up) and those of us who don’t.  They have a head start!  And they have the schools and media on their side.  Use their methods against them.  Social “norming” is their method to get people to embrace things that they usually don’t like.  Ok, get folks exposed to you.  We’re not the evil ogres that folks paint us as.

Point 11:  We all need to define our goals.  As much as I love our Country, my personal goals are:

1. Family
   1. Wife
   2. Children
   3. Grandchildren
   4. Employees
2. Extended family (friends/colleagues)
3. Neighbors/Tribe
4. Local Community

I can influence family. I can help the extended family. I can collaborate with the neighbors/tribe. If I have extra time, I can liaise with the local community. There isn’t much more that I can influence at the current time.

Not that it really matters, but here are some reliable sources for how many aircraft carriers exist in the world!

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/carriers.htm

http://foggofwar.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/why-does-us-have-so-many-aircraft.html

End Time Fearmongoring

There are a lot of blogs and pundits talking about the end of America as we know it.

The arguments center around

1. The economy is going to go bust and America will go bankrupt
2. The US won’t be a superpower anymore if the world goes off the dollar standard
3. The 35-50% of people on the government dole will become violent once the economy tanks
4. ISIS wants to take over the world

It’s all BS to distract folks from what’s important at best, and to be demoralizing at worst.

I’m working from the assumption that my readers are working hard at accumulating their preps.

Guns and ammo? Check.

Food supplies to last one year? Check.

Advanced medical supplies? Check.

Sources of water to last you forever? Check.

Knowledge? Check.

Training? Check.

If you have the preps taken care of, how will the US Government going bankrupt destroy your life? Impossible.  Yes, things will be very different and difficult.  But you won’t die.  With the size of the economy, even if the US defaults on all of its debt, foreign countries will be trading with us within six months.

How will your life change if the US is no longer a superpower? Heck, it might get better.  According to CNN, we have a military presence in almost 150 countries!  Navy floating around far away from our borders.  Bring them home and not only will we be more secure, we’ll save trillions of dollars.

The zombie apocalypse won’t last long. In the absence of food, water, EBT cards, welfare and disability checks, most of them will be dead in less than a month.  The challenge will be handling mass graves, not in fighting the hordes.

ISIS wants to take over the world? So what?  I want a lot of things.  Wishing for something is not the same thing as being able to do something about it.  ISIS has no navy and no air force.  They have no ballistic missiles.  Let them fight it out amongst themselves.  The Middle East has long fought between Shias, Sunnis and Persians.  They are a tribal people who only belong to a “country” because of the western notion of artificially creating states.  Let them fight it out.

Heck, if we brought our military home, then we could secure our four borders.

There is an old saying about history. There are two notions of what happened, conspiracy or fuckup.  While there is a lot to say about screwing up, I put a lot of credence into the concept of conspiracy.

The best way to analyze these four scenarios is from the side of: “who benefits.”

With the crony capitalism of our federal government, lots of very rich folks are getting richer. During the last “great” depression, lots of the very rich became much richer, as they were the only ones with money and could buy lots of fixed assets like land and factories.  The same thing would happen again.  There is no incentive for the very rich to get rid of our high spending and high deficit.

Similarly, only the crony capitalists gain by spending to stay a superpower. Trillions of dollars spent on weapons systems that aren’t even that good.  The F-35 is a perfect example.  The US has 20 aircraft carriers.  The rest of the world combined has 12.  Russia has one.  China has one.  How would your life change if we weren’t a superpower?  I’d suggest our lives would change for the good.

Unlike what we see on TV of the zombie apocalypse, the non producers in this country won’t exist after they die. Once there is nothing to steal, no money left to buy anything, and they have no food, water, fuel, etc., they will die.  Politicians only spend money on the non-producers because they need votes.  If martial law is declared and there are no more elections, they won’t be spending any money on them.  Almost half of America will cease to exist.  Rich folks win.

The ISIS threat is overplayed because it makes people money. We funded ISIS and continue to fund and supply them.  Heck, the guns used in Paris have been tied to the CIA, in a flashback to the Fast and Furious debacle.  Military contractors win big when we create a new military threat.  Those who despise individual liberty love it when they can convince us that we need to give up more liberty for the illusion of security.

In the words of Fred Reed, “It is interesting to remember that terrorism is not bad for everybody. For the Pentagon, Nine-Eleven was a windfall, providing wars and new drones; for NSA, a massive expansion in its powers; for Israel and AIPAC, the destruction of Israel’s arch-enemy, Iraq; for the arms manufacturers, hundreds of billions; for the federal government in general, near-dictatorship and, for jihadists, the involvement of the US in crippling and endless wars. Which is what they wanted. Everybody profited except the American public.”

In summation, ignore the threat mongers.

Continue to do your preps.

How much to have is a question that can’t be answered.  Some is better than none.  You can’t have too much.  Once you think you have enough, continue to get more.  Help friends and family.  The basics of food, training, knowledge are kind of like guns and bullets.  You never really have enough.

It’s all local.

 

Why Do We Need a III King

As the Kerodin debacle evolves, events seemed to unfold in a bizarre matter.

Questions were raised.  Counterattacks were launched.  Facts seemed to come out in three to five round bursts from some very unlikely sources.  More counterattacks.  More facts.  Dirty tricks were launched to try and get a III fired from his job, and then the bizarre law suit against Kenny.  In the height of hypocrisy, Sammy, who has blogged that  “Racism, defined as judging the individual based on the color of his skin rather than his behavior… The term ‘racist’ cannot be applied to anyone for any reason – not in a world where Intellectual Honesty is part of the equation.  There can be no such thing as racism in America.”  had his wife sue Kenny for being racist against her.

Despite Sammy posting pictures of Holly executing CQB techniques and posting, “You must escape from two of the biggest, strongest guys in the class.” “Holly executes these techniques on me with ease.” – somehow Holly is scared of a guy who lives in California!

The good news is that folks eventually seem to get what they deserve.  Sam and Holly seem to have been tried in the III court and have been found wanting.  It’s been gratifying to see that there still is logic and reason in America.  Many of Sam’s old allies have declared that they’ve broken ties with the Kerodins.  Some of them did it visibly with removals of links and cross posts from web pages.  Others oddly enough have said they’ve broken contact, but their sites are still advertised on Sammy pages.

It’s disappointing to see folks still defend the Kerodins.  I can understand that you might still like them; I like many folks that I disagree vehemently with.  But to still defend their actions seems to be a total breakdown in reading comprehension skills.  Logic and reason running amuck.

Two things really concern me though.  The first is the argument that if you don’t support the Kerodins, you have to support MBV.    Even before the Kerodin debacle came to light, it would have been fine to support both or neither one of them.  The III movement is in your heart, not on someone’s web page.

The bigger question is why we think we need to have any III king.

Do we want or even need some sort of III spokesman?

I’m not certain that there is a commonly accepted definition of this movement that a spokesman could possible speak for all of us.  We have folks that are preparedness gurus, political strategists, tactical geniuses, medical professionals, etc.  I’d proffer that there are numerous spokesmen that speak to what they are good at.

Do we want or even need some sort of III leader?

Many talk about the concept of “rightful liberty”, but again, the definitions are not commonly accepted and the desired end state is rarely defined.

If we want a leader, what would we expect them to know what to do?

Sammy himself tells folks that he doesn’t have the tactical skills, the communications skills, the medical skills, you name it.

MBV himself would be the first to deny that he is the leader of the III movement.  He goes so far as to explain that there shouldn’t be any such thing.

So, what of a III king?  The king is you.

The III movement needs and really has hundreds of thousands of kings.  The very fact that you have the III in your heart, establishes that you desire something better of our society and our country.

Years before we were called the IIIs, we were the survivalists.  Before that we were the “rugged individualists”.

We need to return to our roots and embrace self reliance.  We’re Americans, by God!  How many of us are guilty of these?  The faucet leaks? Call the plumber. The car makes funny noises?  Go to a mechanic. Someone is sneaking around your house at night?  Call a cop. A porch light stops working?  Call the electrician. You saw a mouse?  Call a psychiatrist. Self-defense?   Dear God, no.

We are the ones that need to demonstrate mental toughness.  Mental fitness is so much more valuable than physical fitness.

We all need more.  More skills, more training, more information, more everything.  But we’re going to the battle with the most important skill, and it’s between our ears.

No army has ever gone on the battlefield with everything they thought they needed.  Better prepared, trained and equipped armies often lose.  Inferior forces often win.

Our goal in what we can call peacetime, is to learn and prepare.  Find the subject matter experts and learn what you can and make alliances with folks that are subject matter experts in things you don’t know.  Train your families.  Educate your children and grandchildren.  Be the III pillar in your family and community.