I didn't intend to offend you as as I apparently did, Slider. Some of the things I see posted here are what I consider "over the top" and take a world view that I don't share. If my replies to those come across as snotty and sarcastic, it is because I try to keep them mostly non-confrontational. So, again, to the extent that my tone of writing is offensive, I apologize for the tone, but not for my opinions. Part of the problem is the lack of face-to-face conversation; I write like I talk, and in person, people are rarely offended by what I say.
I haven't been following this thread for very long, so if people have made lots of comments and suggestions about preparations for the future, I must have missed them. Even so, I have no intention of posting what I've done and am doing in that regard, because I don't want that information open to everyone. Suffice it to say that I'm probably more prepared for a cataclysmic event than anyone here. Some things I simply don't know HOW to prepare for, and I was hoping to get some conversation going along those lines. Apparently, the tone of my posts is preventing such a conversation. I'll try to rectify that in the future, but change is a hard thing for an old fart like me to do.
To answer some of your other questions, yes I write letters to politicos, and have, on several occasions, met with them one on one to discuss things that seem important. In fact, I used to be on a first name basis with all our county's elected officials. Back to the letters to congress critters. Those are useless, and maybe worse than useless. Letters "peg" a person according to what "bins" the congressional staff choose to put the writer in. Replies, if any, are form letters that are sent to everyone in that particular "bin." Their databases are set up to ascribe certain assumed characteristics to everyone in that bin, just like your reply to me assumed many things that simply aren't true. As I'm sure you know, such assumptions are easily reinforced and rarely overcome.
For example, you assumed that I was disparaging both you and Glenn Beck. I wasn't. I read your posts carefully, and I listen to Beck just about every day. Nothing requires me to agree with all the conclusion I read or hear though, and based on my own opinions, I may choose to connect some dots differently, and IMHO, some of the dots may be left out or misinterpreted. Each of us should be doing that individually, not blindly following some other person's world view.
Just like I'm not publicizing my preparations, I'm also not being up front politically. I'll state my opinions and stand behind them, but I'm not going to be an "evangelist" and try to force my thinking on other people. But don't get the impression that I'm unwilling to stand up for what I think.
New topic (that is, this is where I try to quit defending myself from the accusations in your post):
One of the things I've tried to find information on, and without much success, is what happened in Russia after the Soviet Union collapsed. IMO, that may be a closer scenario to what we can expect here than many of the more cataclysmic predictions I read and hear. The USSR had a huge bureaucracy, and a large portion of the population was dependent on the government for survival. And then, the ruble lost value and had to be propped up so people would buy anything at all, and it was being propped up by an ineffective government with assistance from (gasp!) the international banking system. (I hope the "gasp" wasn't too sarcastic?) As a sidenote, when CA was issuing their IOUs for state payments, it was BOA that bought the IOUs, dollar-for-dollar, and kept things from degrading into near-chaos.
But back on point, what did all those Russians dependent on the gov't do to survive for the year or so it took to get the economy back on line? How did they keep their rent-controlled apartments? What did they do for food? How did the rural people get crops to market and sell them when they didn't have the gov't subsidies and price guarantees? I hear a lot of talk about the Russian Mob mostly taking control, but what did they do, and how did they do it?
Here in the US, I'd think that in a similar situation martial law would be declared, and from the little I can find out, a "shadow" gov't is already in place here. The ramifications of such a happenstance exceeds my ability to foresee events, much less plan for them.
That is the essence of my questions to you and the thread. Sorry that my poor verbal abilities didn't convey the question appropriately. |
