Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

I’m on the road on the way to Liberty con, and things I’ve heard over the last few days, a lot of it in private discussions with friends, wove themselves with the news caught earlier today (we’ve been on the road since three thirty am, and not a second to spare as we got off the highway at the wrong exit and then found that it being high road work season — Denver has two seasons, snow and road work — we couldn’t get back on and had to spend sometime lost at the distant edge of Denver).

In my fitful dozing on the plane, I woke up with a Leonard Cohen quote running through my head: “I couldn’t move to warn all the other soldiers, that we had been betrayed from above.”

But being betrayed from above is not something that warrants warning in our present situation. We know it. All of the west knows it. And when the betrayal grows so deep and undeniable that you have to do something, and that the means of correction are taken from your hands, you find yourself donning a yellow vest and catapulting flaming Smart Cars at the arc du triomphe. Mutatis mutandi, in our case, of course, unless we build one for the occasion.

This is not a warning. It is a remainder we’re in trouble deep. Barring a miracle, things are going to get exponentially worse. There will be confrontations here and there, ranging from BLM level blocked highways and nuttery to Beirut. It will be worse some places. It’s not even a blue-red thing. I note that though Denver has the same nutty pro-public defecation laws as San Fran it hasn’t got as insane except in very concentrated neighborhoods. Perhaps because most of the locals aren’t amused, and the imported Californians are too stoned to count.

It is a place by place and area by area thing, and it’s not easy to guess. The American instinct is to go and “hide out” in the middle of nowhere, but in all the collapses of law and order I’ve witnessed/read about, isolated homesteads were the most dangerous (as they are indeed in South Africa today.)

I can’t make the decision for you, you have to make it for yourself.

I still think in the end we win, they lose. It’s not that we have G-d on our side, but that we have reality on our side. And reality can’t easily be ignored. Not forever.

However, what previous generations allowed — we only got here for the culmination — the concentration of power in the left’s hands, and the acceptance of Marxism as a positional good? yeah. Even being fourth-generation oligarchy dumb — aka rock eating dumb — they have enough power to make things very painful for us.

I expect trouble to start around or shortly after the elections. There is no way we can stop them cheating. There just isn’t. If we try it just brings the mess earlier and harder.

If what I expect is what’s coming down the pipe, unrest will be isolated, sudden, unpredictable. Most of your days will be completely routine and normal.

So:

Get in the best shape you can: physical, financial, emotional.

Make sure you have a supply of medicines if they’re the kind you can get a little in advance.

If not, find alternate ways to get them, in case your doctor/pharmacy are out. Hint, most things are available on the net. It all depends on how shady you’re willing to go.

Don’t go out unarmed. Now, this depends on the laws in your region, and also your licensing. Because you don’t want to throw yourself at the mercy of the system. But at the very least, carry a knife. Always. Mailbox? Knife. Groceries? Knife.

A weighted cane (or umbrella depending on where you leave) makes an excellent weapon. And no one can deny you the ability to carry them.

Don’t look for trouble. If you round a corner and see people beating each other, run the other way (see why we told you to be in the best shape?) There is no percentage in getting involved in violent incidents if you can avoid it. Unless you’re young and stupid.

Have an arranged rendez-vous point with family members, should you have to leave.

Keep your cars filled up.

Keep your pantry stocked, and an emergency supply on hand.

Do the normal preparations you’d do if you live in storm country. But more importantly, be ready to defend yourself and the ones who depend on you. To quote Robert A. Heinlein “Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.”

We can get through this and we must. We must, because we must have a say in what is built at the other end.

As cathartic as letting it all burn might be, in the end you’re just left with ashes. We owe it to our founders and to our future not to let the last best hope of mankind pass from the world.

So–

Keep yourself safe. In what I expect to be economic warfare ahead (I got hit by it this year) lend a hand when you can. Mutual aid and comfort is a thing.

And most of all, be not afraid. In the end we win they lose.

It’s just going to get a little fraught on the way there.

It’s okay. We’re the strivers. We’ll get it done.

And if it kills us, someone will pick it up after us.

In these halcyon days of calm we have left, rest and prepare. Mentally, physically, financially.

Barring a miracle, the seas are going to get rough.

Don’t drown.

 

Reprinted from According to Hoyt For June 27, 2019