This weekly column is a collection of short snippets: responses to posted articles, practical self-sufficiency items, how-tos, lessons learned, tips and tricks, and news items — both from readers and from SurvivalBlog’s editors. We may select some long e-mails for posting as separate letters.
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The latest from commentator “Mr. Reagan”: FBI Accidentally Admits to Jan 6 FBI Operation. JWR’s Comment: I suspect that if Ray Epps is ever subpoenaed before congress or a Federal Grand Jury that he will conveniently not wake up some morning, a la Jeffrey Epstein or John McAfee.
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Reader W.S. in Switzerland wrote:
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My #1pointed me to this thought-provoking essay: There are no other constitutional rights in substance without freedom to transact.
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Israel365News reports: Bennett to surround Israel’s borders with wall of lasers; A ‘Biblical Pillar of fire’ that protected Israelites from Egypt.
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St. Funogas had these comments:
A week doesn’t go by where SurvivalBlog doesn’t have useful and informative articles. But it’s not often when we’re treated to two earth-shaking articles in the same week. That happened in the past 7 days. The first was a link to Brandon Smith’s February 18 article “Separation or Purge? Sharing a Society With the Political Left is Impossible.” The second was R.G.’s article on Sunday February 20, “The U.S. as Babylon the Great, and What It Means to Preppers.” Do yourself a favor and go back and read both articles.
Many Christians will go off topic and argue endlessly about which translation of the Bible R.G. is using and whether all the i’s were properly dotted and the “t’s crossed. Many non-Christians passed the article up and blew it off as another Sunday school lesson. Whether J.G. is interpreting John’s words correctly, or whether or not John was showed a revelation of the world’s end, or whether he was just a smart cookie who understood history and looked around at the world in his day, the words are still true.
John’s description of our day and age has never been more obvious than it is today in 2022. There’s not a whole lot I can add to J.G.’s comments. The fact that I disagreed with how one or two of his t’s were crossed is completely irrelevant to the overall message. We should all give it heed.
The second article Brandon Smith’s on Separation or Purge, takes up where J.G.’s left off. He modernized the concepts into more-understandable irrefutable language for 21st Century and discussed today’s events in no uncertain terms. Many of us were yelling, “Amen Brother!” out loud as we read his words. Until we got to the last six paragraphs. John the Revelator told us how to prep spiritually and J.G. added in how to prep materially. Brandon Smith told us what needs to happen next. Many who minutes before had been yelling “Amen!” were now glossing over and/or reviling his solution on how to fix the problem.
Another essay, “The Eight Degrees of Ignorance and Stupidity” by Darren Smith (not to be confused with Brandon Smith above,) explains to us exactly why people were skipping those last six paragraphs. We interpret “stupidity” far too broadly. It doesn’t refer to the multitude of attributes we ascribe to it and importantly, it’s independent of all other characteristics of a person’s good character. It only refers to the two things Isaiah mentioned in Isaiah 44:18, “Such stupidity and ignorance! Their eyes are closed, and they cannot see. Their minds are shut, and they cannot think.”
So what is stupidity? It’s when we close our eyes to the obvious and refuse to see, we shut our minds and refuse to think. Darren Smith calls this Level 6 form of stupidity “Unyielding Stupidity.” It refers to those who are totally unwilling to accept any fact that is contrary to their own presumptions regardless of how much factual proof is placed before them. No amount of convincing will get them to abandon their false beliefs or get them to accept the facts presented to them. This is the condition of the vast majority of society. Why are they that way? Again Isaiah 44:18, “Their eyes are closed, and they cannot see. Their minds are shut, and they cannot think.”
Level 4 of Ignorance is when we are negligent in attending to learning or intellectual growth required by our environment or social situation. Or, in other words, we’re too busy watching Gilligan’s Island reruns and endless YouTubes instead of developing our intellectual capacity and expanding our knowledge base with the things that are important and really matter. You’ve spent years studying the 9/11 events trying to prove what happened. You firmly believe that the government was in on it. Excellent! You’ve concluded the government is evil and strayed far from what it was designed to be by the Founding Fathers. Now quit obsessing over 9/11 and move the logical next step: What are you going to do about that evil government? Spend your time on that important topic instead of the events of 9/11. Whether Epstein and his cronies were running a sex slave-ring is irrelevant to us; whether our favorite movie idol needs a boob job or not; whether all the click-bait stories on Fox News and the internet are interesting or not. These things are completely irrelevant diversions compared to the things we should be expending our time on. Most preppers will be totally unprepared for the events described by J.G. because they’ve been negligent in attending to their learning and intellectual development. Many will be unprepared because they insist on sticking with the false ideas they believe no matter how much factual evidence and common sense is placed before them. Adopt the phrase “I used to believe that but now I’m better informed.”
Stop telling people what you’ve read (covid is a bioweapon!) and teach yourself the basics of biotechnology so you can make an informed decision. Then tell us what you know, not what you’ve read. Stop telling people what you’ve read (“you absolutely cannot reuse canning lids!”), ignore every single thing you’ve read on the subject and test it yourself by canning some water with used lids. Then you can tell people what you know, not what you’ve read. Don’t be Unyielding Stupid.
Brandon Smith clearly laid out what needs to be done about sharing our society with the Left. Most of us readers of SurvivalBlog agree that the country has gone to h*ll in a handbasket for all the reasons I don’t need to name. The only way to fix the problem is clearly explained by him to those who have opened their minds so they can think and opened their eyes so they can see. Have the majority of us accepted the obvious? No, no, and no. We live in the past and can’t let go of our unwillingness to change our false presumptions regardless of all the factual evidence that lies before us.
I was called a troll and the devil incarnate because I expressed the opinion on SB that the Capitol Breachers, regardless if they were zealous Republicans, Democrats or agent provocateurs, should have burned that place to the ground. Too many Conservatives, stuck in the past, worship the building as a part of our heritage not to be toyed with. Yes, it’s part of our past which is long dead and gone. Leave it in the past and pay attention to current events. Today the Capitol represents the most evil and corrupt group of “leaders” who have ever assembled there. They never pass laws to restore any of our freedoms, only to take them away. Burn that place down as a symbol that We the People are sick of their bulls*it and tired of the evil crap emanating from there. Leave the old Capitol where it belongs, in DC where evil politicians congregate. Build a new Capitol in the country of Greater Idaho. Screw enlarging the state, follow Brandon’s Smith’s advice to “carry this process to the next natural conclusion.” “This will not happen peacefully because leftists cannot tolerate freedom.” He then suggests we separate ourselves and let the blue states die in their squalor. I suggest Conservatives build anew: a freedom-based country where most people are in agreement of basic decency, truth, and righteousness. Conservatives and Christians grow a pair! Recall that DC is far more corrupt than what the Founding Fathers fought against in 1776. Stop trying to preserve something that is evil and corrupt and long-dead while we still have a chance.
Brandon directly addresses good decent people like Conservatives when he says, “There is no reconciliation with tyrants and trying to maintain a union with them is the pinnacle of idiocy.” He’s talking to us, folks. Idiocy = Unyielding Stupidity. “There is no union, it’s a figment of your imagination.” Figments are false, stop holding onto them so dearly, let go of them and tell yourself, “I used to believe that but now I’m better informed.” Brandon: “We continue wasting all our time and attention trying to hold a system together that is corrupt beyond repair. We will never be allowed to peacefully repair what has been broken.” Accept the obvious facts he’s pointing out. Stop trying to save something that is long dead and gone and make the necessary changes while we still have time.
Finally, “We will never be allowed to peacefully repair what has been broken. In the end, these people [leftists] cannot be tolerated in a free culture and their power to harm and enslave others must be removed, one way or another.” I think what “another” means is obvious.”
But we won’t. Unyielding Stupidity will not allow us to let go of our false presumptions which we regard as “patriotic.” The word patriot comes from the Latin word meaning father. We cannot be loyal to America, it’s just a beautiful piece of real estate, we can only be loyal to our father, the corrupt government that rules over us like a tyrannical, abusive parent.
At some point we’ll be sitting in gulags and concentration camps dreaming of the guns that we adored but were too afraid to use, sorrowing and regretting our stupidity like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn did when he said,
“And how we burned [with regret] in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say goodbye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrest, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood that they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? After all, you knew ahead of time that those bluecaps were out at night for no good purpose. And you could be sure ahead of time that you’d be cracking the skull of a cutthroat. What about the Black Maria sitting out there on the street with one lonely chauffeur – what if it had been driven off or its tires spiked. The Organs [Soviet state institutions] would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!”
But we won’t do a thing. God help us.”
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