What lurks in hiding for us there? Nothing good, and that is the general feeling one gets from the ripples and small currents in the wide ocean of the blogosphere. I’ve been paddling in that ocean since … 2002, when I gave up on Slate as an original aggregator news site shortly after 9-11, because the communities which gathered in the various comments sections just got too angry and irrational for words. Something let me to Instapundit, and through his links to the original incarnation of Sgt. Stryker’s Daily Brief. I became a contributor when the original Stryker appealed for other contributors and have been paddling away at the margins of the digital information ocean ever since. Back in the pre-internet day, I had subscriptions to all kinds of magazines. As a military public relations professional, I reasoned that I should know when and from which direction the next political- military-social sh*t-storm would arrive. Tracking blogs and digital media serves the same purpose for me that print media once did.
Ripples and currents – some of them, like the supply chain slow-downs have been addressed here by other Chicagoboyz contributors and commenters. Other blogs and comments have noted shortages of certain items on grocery store shelves. It’s not shortages of the same items, consistently across the board, but different things in different places; deliveries are starting to be unpredictable, in some locations more notable than others. One has the sense of things beginning to wobble dangerously, and a growing conviction that a dangerous crash – of an economic, social, or political nature cannot be avoided, only prepared for in as many ways as one can prepare by stocking up on those things which one would rather not do without, or that which would be too expensive in future. (Discussion here, from Bayou Renaissance Man.) For us, one of the most unsettling things was noticing that there was no Halloween candy at the local HEB on Halloween day itself, when there is usually enough left over afterwards for substantial sales of the stuff. And the San Antonio Ikea outlet had no packets of frozen Swedish meatballs last weekend – only the unappealing vegan or chicken variants. I mean – Ikea out of meatballs? Is this a sign that the end of the world as we know it is nigh, or what?
I suppose that many Americans have managed not to notice shortages and gaps on the grocery store shelves, but it would take a very willful and/or sheltered individual, or one employed by the National Establishment Media or the Biden administration to not to notice how the price of everything has gone up – from gasoline to Thanksgiving turkey. The National Establishment Media can perform all kinds of jiggery-pokery in trying to avoid mention, or to plaster a kind of cheery lipstick on this pig of a situation, but as hard as the media monkeys dance and distract, they have less and less luck. I mean, who are we to believe; CNN and the ever-circulating Jen Psaki … or the evidence of our own lying eyes?
I also don’t suppose that many of us can ignore the evidence of our own lying eyes, regarding the two-tier system of justice, when BLM/Antifa violent protesters are freed on bail almost before they finish throwing the Molotov cocktails, while the January 6th conservative protesters are given the Abu Graib treatment by federal law enforcement. Or the two-tier social structure, in which the rich and powerful can cavort maskless at society events, while the pleb-level hired servers and help have to wear the face-diaper of servitude.
Comment as you wish – and what are you doing to prepare? Besides buying stuff while you still can.