Special to L. Neil Smith’s The Libertarian Enterprise

When I was fourteen, my parents took me on the first vacation I remember having, and dad and I went rock climbing.

Okay, it wasn’t that formal. It is that since I was six or so, our way of enjoying the beach was to walk by the ocean, and that kind of morphed into climbing cliffs because the sea shore in the North of Portugal is very rocky. (Mom liked just sitting with her friends and talking or knitting (on a beach!) but I’ve never done well at sitting still. Even with a book, I preferred to sit somewhere away from people to read.)

The vacation was in the Southern most tip of Portugal, but it was still rocky, and we would get caught up in “I want to go THERE because it’s difficult” moments.

In a way it was just a morph of our walks in the woods around the village, trying to see things few people saw and/or do difficult things/push ourselves a little further. Only the walks by the sea had fewer tadpoles and dragonflies. More baby sharks and crabs, though.

Anyway, because these expeditions were improvised and often not exactly well thought out, we once found ourselves atop a cliff, as the tide came in horribly fast, and … Well. I can’t swim. So we were stuck until the water went out again. And we just talked for however many hours.

It wasn’t my favorite thing, but on the other hand, I got to hear a lot of stories of his childhood that he’d never told me before (like playing wild west in the woods outside the village) and ask a lot of questions that didn’t normally come up.

I’m not sure why this came to mind today, when I thought about what to write, so I’m trying to make sense of it.

Look, that enforced immobility—there were maybe six feet by four feet up there—is completely against my character. I like to be moving. And it got a bit cold as the sun set. And yeah, we had no cell phones, so mom was getting frantic.

But worrying about all that didn’t do us a whit of good while stuck up there. So we just tried to figure out how to while away the time not unpleasantly and not hurt ourselves trying to get back when the water was too deep for me, and also too deep to see the rocks under it.

And for a while there, on top of that cliff, we wondered if the water would ever go down, if there was any point to waiting anymore. Maybe we’d dreamed of our path here?—Yes, the ocean can be very disorienting.

In the end the water went down enough we made it to the shore never going higher than our knees, and we were only minutes late for dinner, which was good as we’d missed lunch.

I think in a way that’s where we are as a nation.

We didn’t see the tide coming in. That it’s a tide of madness doesn’t make it easier. Well, I saw it coming in, which is why all of 2020 I didn’t sleep much.

But it is not a lasting tide. This is more of what we called a maré viva when I was little. It’s hard to describe this effect, but it’s comparable to a mini-tsunami because there is an Earthquake somewhere hidden.

When I was little and playing on the beach we had to be aware of these, because in like three/four minutes, the entire beach would be full water, which would then drain just as rapidly.

As a kid, you just ran to high ground, while the women and men picked up the stuff off the floor of the little rental huts and held it aloft to keep it dry. I just did a cursory look to find out what it actually is, but the search was swamped by “Viva Mare” restaurants, etc. In fact, all I caught were some weird hints that this might be due to under-water geography along the coast, which also makes the North of Portugal—now—a surfing Mecca.

It is kind of like that. A false tide, caused out of order by … well, some very corrupt people, who’ve had the run of things for far too long and can’t afford to be exposed or deposed.

I guess those are tides too. We’ve seen them elsewhere, like the fall of monarchy in France, or the truly bizarre spasms of various other societies as the industrial revolution up-ended everything.

But they aren’t…. permanent. They come in, they swamp everything, and they recede

The more so here, as I don’t’ think any of them realizes capturing America doesn’t serve their needs. Without America, the totalitarians starve. And capturing us means making us like them, which I don’t think they realize except for the things they WANT.

But we thought, or at least we hoped we had longer. Another ten years or so. And we certainly didn’t expect it to be quite this insane. I mean, destroying the country’s economy in an attempt to subjugate us to their crazy international agenda? Do they understand consequences, forget “unintended” ones?

We’re stuck here and for right now there’s no much we can do.

…. but we can talk, and we can prepare. And yes, some of the preparation must be mental and emotional. Some, more material things.

Use this time to think of things you might want/need that might not be available with ease. Sure, okay, yes, cleaners. But also perhaps computer parts or—Think about it. Make an outlandish list. Then reduce it to what you can actually afford right now.

And keep calm.

Keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.

Once the tide of madness breaks against the shores of reality—and it’s already starting to—it will recede very quickly, and there will be much work to do.

Get ready for the work. And take a deep breath.

Waiting is hard, but sometimes you have to.

The tide of madness will go down. Perhaps not as fast as we’d like it to, but it will. And then the shore will be easily attainable. Meanwhile, don’t beat your mind against what can’t be. Keep calm. Be not afraid.

In the end, we win, they lose.

 

Reprinted from According to Hoyt for April 17, 2021