Into the Woods

Very little about Americans is amusing these days, but I did have a good laugh this week about right-wing “preppers.” The companies that sell them guns, storage food, and survival items flourished during the Obama years. After all, right-wingers were told that President Obama was going to take their guns away, that the dollar and the economy would crash, that there would be runaway inflation, that FEMA concentration camps were being prepared for them, that Obama would wage a war on religion, etc. If President Obama is going to get all that done, he has two days left in which to do it.

But after the election of Trump, the Economic Collapse blog’s Michael Snyder reported that “it is like a nuclear bomb went off in the prepping community.” The bottom fell out of the market for survival food and survival gear, it seems. The Deplorables feel safe, now that that black family is out of the White House.

But for those of us who live in the real world, we are going to have to pay close attention to events as they unfold. With the Fed starting to raise interest rates, we appear to be approaching the unhappy part of the economic cycle. Trump’s deck is full of wild cards that he is playing into the global geopolitical situation as well as into the domestic situation. When crisis hits — and it will — Trump’s ship of fools and the right-wing radicals in Congress will pull all the wrong levers. It’s time to seriously consider buying survival food while that stuff is on sale.

I have never been terribly deluded about just how awful people can be, but I am still in a state of shock at the display of hatred and delusion that we saw last year. One of the things I’ve been thinking about is how to maintain the highest wall possible between myself and the people who bought a ticket on the Trump train. I’m tired of being told that we should reach out to them with our usual liberal compassion. Did we fail to notice the “Fuck Your Feelings” bumper stickers and T-shirts? They are simply not reachable by anything other than the right-wing media and their ugly religion. Maybe four years from now (probably sooner, actually), when their hopes are dashed and their hero billionaire has betrayed them and reminded them just how small they are, they might be in a better mood for some liberal compassion. But not now.

One resolution I’ve made is to do everything possible not to do business with people who don’t like me. Even here in a Republican county, it has been no trouble to locate a liberal hardware store, a liberal plumber, a liberal roofer, a liberal local drug store, liberal landscaping supplies, and so on. I will spend as much of my money locally as possible. We all have to do business with corporations, though, so I’ll pay close attention to the politics and track records of the corporations that I spend money with.

I also will do my best to stay away from people who don’t like me.