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.

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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 skinne...