Project: Pioneer is the live weekly reality journal of a couple and their small dog as they leave their ‘normal’ life in a luxury apartment for a new semi-off grid life in a small recreational vehicle. We cover prepping, politics, spirituality, afterlife, RV life, and personal finance. Half of all subscription/donation money goes to The National Alliance to End Homelessness, the other half pays for expenses. You can listen to the audio podcast version of this journal at Substack, Apple, Spotify, PocketCasts and others.
Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!
Don’t despair—prepare.
A slow-moving stream turns a water wheel, which then powers the gristmill’s grinding stones to turn grain into flour. The wheel of time also turns, slowly, ambivalent to the follies of mankind. History rhymes, repeats, the same lessons having to be learned again and again, as they’re easily forgotten in the fog of memory.
Throughout history there are countless occasions of greed and power run amok, mostly through the deception of the working class by the ruling class. In a recent post, I mentioned the Secession of the Plebeians back in old Roman Empire times. In this country, the USA, we’ve seen several cycles of this.
In the 1700s, when British colonists had had enough of a greedy king back home, they held a Tea Party and bloody revolution for their freedom.
In the 1800s, when the decent people had had enough of the horrible human and financial abuses of slavery, they revolted, and we had a long and bloody civil war.
In the early 1900s, Upton Sinclair’s bloody exposé on worker conditions led to changes in workplace safety.
The gilded age of runaway capitalism and abuses from the 1870s to 1890s was exposed by a Mark Twain novel of that name. It featured prosperity for the wealthy and runaway corruption, exploitation and poverty for the working class. This culminated in the big stock market crash of 1929, the following depression, and resulted in reforms after workers rose up, held strikes, and formed unions. Those changes led to a balance in wealth/equality distribution, and a prosperous middle class where one non-college educated wage earner could provide a comfortable standard of living to a family while a spouse/partner kept the home and cared for the kids. Ironically, that was the true golden age of America the MAGAs visualize when they talk about making America “great again.” All except for those
Dark skinned people talking funny languages down at the QuickieMart while I’m tryin’ to buy my scratch-offs and PBR.
of course. America was great then (except if you were a minority, gay, or female).
Then came Reagan and the return of monstrous, excessive greed. The Empire Strikes Back! The Social Security system was raided in Reagan’s Great Heist to pay for a big tax cut for the wealthy Got deja vu yet? Union busting took away worker power. Deregulation led to poor product safety and greater profits. Antitrust regulations were ignored to smash competition and create monopolies. The two Bush Presidents, as well as Trump v1, continued this march, resulting in several catastrophic economic periods that left the economy and middle class in shambles, to be rescued and rebuilt by Democratic Presidents each time. Nobody was ever held accountable for the countless lost homes and jobs from the 1999 Dot-Com Bust, 2008 Financial Crisis, corporate bailouts, the raping of the treasury with corrupt COVID-era PPP loans to politicians and the rich, the 2017 Tax Cuts for the Wealthy that cost us actual taxpayers (and our future generations) another $7 trillion. And they’re queuing up V2 to launch quite soon.
Four years ago yesterday the misled, gaslit working class rabble rose up and rioted because they were told their hero, an extremely corrupt lifelong con man with many bankruptcies under his belt, had actually won a free and fair election. He was that guy who was going to (finally) do something about…
Dark skinned people talking funny languages down at the QuickieMart while I’m tryin’ to buy my scratch-offs and PBR.
A few months ago, they rose up again and re-elected him President, believing he would actually fulfill his promises this time, particularly the one about making their eggs cheaper and do something about…
Dark skinned people talking funny languages down at the QuickieMart while I’m tryin’ to buy my scratch-offs and PBR.
Now that Trump is officially on the record, before even day one of his presidency, and it’s become clear that he won’t be doing any of that, the rabble is stirring again. Especially since he’s sided with his billionaire friends in regard to actually bringing in planeloads more of those
Dark skinned people talking funny languages down at the QuickieMart while I’m tryin’ to buy my scratch-offs and PBR.
from India and Africa on H1B “indentured servitude” visas to take jobs from their white American kids. Trump and his billionaire pals love H1B and H2B workers and fill their businesses with those cheap-labor American-displacing workers. It’s very good for profit!
There’s a recent, excellent post by Thom Hartmann that puts this historical trend in context of predator and prey. I highly recommend you read it!
The above are examples throughout history of people being screwed over until they just can’t take it anymore. To get to the point of this post, that’s when the fun starts.
A guy fed up and in pain from being screwed over by massively profitable health insurance companies run by folks that make tens of millions of dollars (and use AI to reject claims) goes and kills a CEO. Now he’s a folk hero, with massive donations to his legal fund.
A US military veteran fed up about trying and trying to get ahead, being held back by his skin color, creed, and other factors, rents a pickup truck and mows down a crowd of people to make a statement.
A Trump-loving white military guy rents one of Musk’s crappy cyber trucks and blows it up in front of one of Trump’s crappy hotels. Why? Perhaps he heard that it had just come out that Trump wasn’t going to do nuthin’ about…
Dark skinned people talking funny languages down at the QuickieMart while I’m tryin’ to buy my scratch-offs and PBR.
How bad will the class warfare get in a few weeks and beyond? That’s when we’ll turn the keys to our almost 250-year old democracy to a gaggle of the most corrupt, greedy, working-class hating folks on the planet.
How bad will it get when those tens of millions of Mr & Mrs Bubbas see that not only have their egg and gasoline prices doubled, but those…
Dark skinned people talking funny languages down at the QuickieMart while I’m tryin’ to buy my scratch-offs and PBR.
have actually multiplied like rabbits due to H1B and H2B visas. And then, on top of that, the Musk-promised “time of pain” when they crash the stock market (to make big short bucks), driving massive layoffs. The Trump Bucks checks won’t be coming this time, kids.
The rest of us are already mad. We know the truth of what happened in the last administration—all the massive corruption, theft of taxpayer dollars, criming that went on. We know, because we haven’t been watching the gaslighting channels. Wait until the rest of ‘em figgers it out. Them folks is heavily armed. They might then start to take note:
That wall never got built, and Mexico didn’t pay for it. He never locked her up.
There never were any caravans of murdering, raping immigrants. No pets was ate.
COVID wasn’t a hoax. Never went away in spring. Countless Americans died from the lies.
The deficit wasn’t eliminated, as he promised, it was jacked bigly.
He didn’t bring back the coal industry, steel jobs, or those auto plants he said he’d save, or even that Foxconn plant he promised. There was no 4% GDP, as promised.
There was never a big, beautiful healthcare or infrastructure plan.
And worst of all, nuthin’ was ever done about them…
Dark skinned people talking funny languages down at the QuickieMart while I’m tryin’ to buy my scratch-offs and PBR.
Wait until the part when they say they need to make big cuts to Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, unemployment/food benefits, and more in order to “get us out of trouble.” When they find out the lobbyists are responsible for newly exposed lies like how a glass of alcohol a day is good for you, when really it’s a contributor to cancer. When they figure out all the poisons put in their food to make their children addicted and sick, and even more with additional regulation slashing.
They’ll be mad when they realize that all along it wasn’t those people crawling across the Rio Grande River with only their kids and clothes on their back that was the problem. They were only coming for slave wages and jobs and to pay $70 billion in taxes for services we get to use, not them. They were coming for the jobs the billionaires were dangling. They spent their lives in hiding, not raping and murdering. They were really…
Dark skinned people are talking funny languages down at the QuickieMart while I’m tryin’ to buy my scratch-offs and PBR.
But in reality, they’re more like Bubba’s family than the billionaires Bubba just put in charge of things. Just trying to survive, just trying to give their kids a better life. Bubba will sure be mad when he/she figures this out.
The rabble will realize they shouldn’t have focused on immigrant pay, they should have wondered why, not too long ago, CEO pay was 30 times average worker pay, now it’s 3000 times more. That’s why your stuff costs so much, bruh. That and stock buybacks, another fun capitalist greed tactic. See below.
How about when they realize it wasn’t the welfare queens they should have been condemning, but corporate welfare? Wait until they see that billionaire-led “efficiency” team ignoring these massive lobbyist-inspired corporate welfare giveaways while taking away their Social Security, healthcare, veteran’s benefits, and unemployment. Lookee there at that list below—$16 billion of your taxpayer money for a company that makes airplanes that fall from the sky and kill the taxpayers inside. Don’t even get me started on all that waste for rich donor ambassador appointments Trump is giving out like candy. Imagine that—uber fantastically rich folks getting the fanciest digs, meals, drinks, all over the world on your taxpayer dime. Will that waste be cancelled? How about the armies of Secret Service and staff being forced to stay at Trump properties at jacked up prices to watch him golf while he promised he’d be working (again)?
The Biden/Harris cabinet of about a dozen people had a total net worth of about $118 million. Trump’s partial cabinet is now at around $340 billion, and that doesn’t include our $500 billion real, shadow President, Leon (sic) Musk (who incidentally, was an actual illegal immigrant for a time, was named after a Nazi rocket scientist’s book character, and grew up in a very wealthy, racist Nazi-sympathizing family in good old South Africa). Anyway, it’s hilarious how Mr and Mrs Bubba thought these working-class hating rich folk were going to make their lives better, and get rid of them...
Dark skinned people talking funny languages down at the QuickieMart while I’m tryin’ to buy my scratch-offs and PBR.
Good Lord, the ignorance. Wait until they find out the same dude is now pushing to kill the net neutrality law that prevents internet companies from spying on all your stuff without a warrant 24/7. Especially since he plans to make his satellite-based ISP the one and only monopoly for internet access. Then, if you say, call him a pasty white loser trust fund baby, he can cancel your life the way he cancels people now on his social media platform who disrespect his fragile man-child ego.
So, it will be no surprise when a whole lot of heavily armed pissed off folks rise up. By then, it will likely be martial law, suspension of elections, and use of our vast and powerful military and all that Musk technology (see: drones) against anyone who dares speak out. Anarchy will likely ensue. We’re already starting to see it, and Bubba has only just started to figure things out, how hard he/she got played. Then it will likely no longer be conservative vs liberal, Democrat vs Republican. It will be the plebes against the royalty, once again as the wheel turns.
When someone who came up from working class becomes successful, they sometimes then look down their nose at their former tribe (see: Vance, JD). Others might go the opposite route and help those they left behind. See the Henry Ford quote at the end of this piece. It seems we’ve put the former group in power, those who grew up rich and despise the working class, and those who “made it” and also despise the working class.
Again, we’re not calling for or advocating violence, although it tends to be inevitable in cases like this, as history has shown again and again (and again). We are fans of non-violent class warfare.
Here are some suggestions:
Patronize your local mom and pop small businesses, get off that Amazon crack. Log on now and cancel Prime. Should you really be paying more and more for Prime, especially since you’re now subjected to commercials on their content? We go local first and foremost. If that doesn’t work, we go Costco, a very good company who treats their workers well. If that doesn’t work, we tried the $49 Target Circle. It’s actually amazing—an ever growing Amazon-like online selection that ships free and fast and actually will deliver to you same day if it’s something stocked at the local store.
Do you need all those rip-off streaming services? Ever check the free (even live) content that comes with your TV or a high-definition antenna?
Is it worthwhile spending all that money on watching people do things (sports, entertainment) and contributing to their massively out-of-whack salaries? Ticket prices are massively jacked up, thanks to the Ticketmaster monopoly. Head to local minor league sports and local bands. It’s in many ways even better, and far less expensive.
Go to real local restaurants instead of those nasty chains.
We’ve turned the keys over to a group of the worst of us. A sex-abusing alcoholic misogynist in charge of our military. A conspiracy theorist science-denying brain-worm infested scam artist in charge of our health (actually, two scam artists in charge of our health). On and on, you can’t make this stuff up, it’s so bad. Inexperienced felons, criminals, drug abusers, pedophiles at the top of massive, critical government agencies.
These are people who have never gone grocery shopping, changed a flat tire (let alone a baby’s diaper), had to pay a bill, drive their own cars, or care for a child in charge of our lives. I mean, what could possibly go wrong? They never have to be around…
Dark skinned people talking funny languages down at the QuickieMart while I’m tryin’ to buy my scratch-offs and PBR.
They’ve only ever been catered to, doted on, served. Behind their country club doors, while sipping very expensive scotch, they really do refer to “the rest of us” as losers sucking on the teat of government. All while they enjoy those massive subsidies and a pass at paying any actual taxes on their massive wealth and income.
The people actually voted for that, instead of someone who had just actively participated in rebuilding yet another Republican devastated economy and was promising help for working people in so many ways, from starting businesses to actual meaningful tax breaks for working people, to buying affordable homes, to making the wealthy pay their fair share. All that wasn’t enough, cuz there’s…
Dark skinned people talking funny languages down at the QuickieMart while I’m tryin’ to buy my scratch-offs and PBR.
And now, the price will be paid, and folks are going to be big mad.
To close, kudos if you figured out this post is a tip of the hat to the late Gil Scott-Heron. He was my old Farawayer buddy Damon’s hero. Heron wrote this piece to bring attention to the massive spending on the military-industrial complex and space program while so many were suffering here at home (especially marginalized communities) during the horrible economic period in the 1960s to 1970s.
A rat done bit my sister Nell.(with Whitey on the Moon)Her face and arms began to swell.(and Whitey's on the Moon)I can't pay no doctor bill.(but Whitey's on the Moon)Ten years from now I'll be paying still.(while Whitey's on the Moon)—Gil Scott-Heron
"Money doesn't change people, it only reveals them."—Henry Ford
So, this is where Giavana, Pia, and I are currently in our pioneer journey. Stay tuned! This pioneer journey continues…
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Intro music is Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby.
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