PP #35: Welcome to the Grand Illusion
Project: Pioneer #35, May 18, 2024 Saturday 4pm
I’m going to let you in on a secret, because I care about you. It’s all an illusion, it’s all fake. It’s the greatest, grand scam of all time, and you’re living in it. Don’t get mad. Read, think, open your eyes and your mind.
Let’s make clear while we’re at it, I don’t want to be the doom and gloom guy. That said, there’s a lot of reason to be fearful and gloomy. I want to be the guy who helps people understand that, so they can take all measures they can now, to avoid what may well be terrible times. I teach people to get ready and protect their families.
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. Most posts are free, more personal posts are to reward our loyal paid subscribers. You can listen to the audio podcast of this post at Substack, Apple, and Spotify)
In this journal post:
RV Life Updates: Another Backup Fail
Welcome to the Grand Illusion (Politics, Prepping)
What’s Next?
RV Life Updates: Another Backup Fail
I keep writing about being prepared. It’s essential for living and surviving in this full-time pioneer RV lifestyle. Quite a bit can go wrong, disastrously so. Last week, I got into our trusty pickup named Henrik, twisted the ignition (no push button starter here…), and….bupkus. Nada. No cheerful lighting up of the center screen with chimes and colorful graphics. Just silence, and little Pia looking at me with a cocked head, wondering why things were different this time.
Henrik is a 2021 vehicle, so this shouldn’t happen, but then nothing is made well today, it seems. I always make sure Giavana and I have a jump-starting power cell with air compressor in our vehicles, similar to this one. It can be a lifesaver in case you’re stuck on the side of the road or in a parking lot, especially with no cell service (isn’t that where it always happens?). Roadside service plans are great, but can take hours to get to you.
But guess what? Mine got old and wore out, and I didn’t replace it. As with my recent RV power management system debacle, Murphy was waiting to teach me a lesson. I feel hunted lately. Thankfully, this occurred at home, so I hopped in Giavana’s like pocket rocket and went to buy a new battery. Today, because I still haven’t replaced my solution to this problem, my new battery was dead. Yes, I’m investigating, troubleshooting, and heading to Costco for a jump-starter!
The rain continues, every day. You know what? Another advantage to this RV life is that our roof is always above us, and the patter of those drops above while we’re inside, snuggled safe and warm, is very serene and comforting. Especially with all we have to discuss below!
Welcome to the Grand Illusion (Politics, Prepping)
I’m combining two of my regular topics into one section, because this is very important. It’s funny how as you age, your eyesight gets worse, but you see more clearly. Please take my comments below in context—I’ve always loved my country, I’m a military veteran from a long line of military veterans, including my son and son-in-law, who served in combat.
We grew up being taught about America’s exceptionalism. It was created primarily by our free-market capitalism, freedoms, and willingness to take in those from other countries who were willing to work hard to create a better future for their families. Many were escaping fascism and hatred in their home countries. They fought and died for us in two world wars, our biggest triumphs.
In our prime, circa 1950s to 1970s, a person with just a high school education, like my father, could get a hard-working job in a small industrial company and give his family a good middle-class home, functional car, and the spouse/partner could stay home and care for the kids and house, if they preferred. It was almost utopian, other than there was still a lot of racism, homophobia, and misogyny. Workers did their 9-5 with an hour lunch, two weeks vacation, a pension to retire with dignity, and CEOs were paid about twenty times the normal workers.
FDR’s New Deal and Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society truly made us a great country to live in. Almost utopian.
Then the 1980s hit, the Reagan years, and our inherent human bias toward greed kicked into high gear. National debt was jacked through the roof, worker’s unions were busted, and the Social Security system was raided to supply billions in tax cuts to the wealthy. It was under the guise of, “If we give them massive amounts of money, they’ll create jobs, and it will all trickle down to the rest of us.” Spoiler alert, it never did. They left us holding the bag for all that debt (because they don’t pay taxes, that’s for the little people), while they deposited their riches in off-shore accounts, yachts, and lavish properties all over the world, passed it down to trust-fund babies like Trump. Reagan also laughed while gay people, God’s children, died from AIDS. Fun times (not).
What was once real, that semi-utopian life here in America, is now an illusion. I see the people all around me—those done or toward the end of their working lives. I see them limping, waddle walking, lurching side to side, their bodies spent, broken, tired, and spit out by the machine. There’s no longer a pension safety net. The remaining safety net, Social Security, is in trouble primarily due to the damage Reagan did. Why do people who are worth millions and billions get to receive “social security” (socialism money?) after a lifetime of having their super-high earnings capped from contributions to the system?
Your vote is an illusion. The Supreme Court turned over control of elections to the super-wealthy, big corporations, and political action committees like AIPAC (read up on that one) with the Citizens United decision in 2010. Now, your hard-earned tax money goes to tax breaks for the rich (still not trickling down), to Big Pharma, Big Tech, and Big Military-Industrial (who get massive amounts of your tax dollars for free, to create cool stuff, then turn around and charge you up the wazoo for said cool stuff…). Your tax money goes to wealthy, well-defended countries like Israel, who are using it to commit genocide against innocent babies and children.
Our peaceful democracy and transfer of power is now an illusion. Trump took all that away on January 6, 2021. It’s gone now, the history of a country in its better times. Here in our pioneer woodland enclave, there are people who have signs associating Trump with the American flag. They are buying the illusion, as these two things are now purely antithetical.
The incredible, latest development in this illusion is that it’s caused people to yearn for the past, for simpler times. People are yearning for the semi-utopian 1950s again. You know, back when all the neighborhoods were white, men had dominion over women and had all the fun, and anyone that wasn’t a straight male Christian had better stay in the shadows, stay in their lane, and stay silent. And so, because of that yearning, we’re falling into yet another illusion, another trap.
To take advantage of this, those who wield power have worked hard to plan for their new vision—a fundamentalist Christian theocracy United States of America (or whatever they’ll choose to call it). Don’t believe me? Watch the recent documentaries Bad Faith and God and Country on Amazon Prime. Educate yourself about their public game plan, Project 2025. Watch the speech given by a football player to college graduates last week, where he told the women in that audience, who had worked hard for years, spent an egregious amount of money on their degrees and future, to think about fulfilling God’s vision for them and become “homemakers” instead of pursuing a career. While he was at it, he slammed gay people, God’s beautiful children, as “deadly sinners.”
For those ultra-right wing zealots who dream the dream that we’re somehow going back to that 1950s semi-utopia, it’s just an illusion. The beauty of this country, this beautiful concept, was that it was always a messy melting pot of humanity and democratic ideals.
This is the Gilead they have in store for the United States, for you, your children, your grandchildren. It’s not a Trump thing, he’s just a useful idiot to them. This has been underway for a long time (see the documentaries above), and it’s finally coming to fruition (with a great deal of help from the false idol, the illusionist/con man, Trump). The corruption of the Supreme Court is complete (see the recent scandal that broke about Alito). A bunch of classless, unintelligent, immoral grifters has infiltrated our Congress, sent there by the voters who’ve bought into the illusion. It’s a done deal, and it’s coming soon. Be ready. Prepare.
You are being used up by an out of control capitalistic nightmare gone wild. We’re pushed and pushed with this grand myth of how hard Americans work, to burn yourself out and be cast aside, spent, as soon as an algorithm or machine can take over. CEOs now make 350 times what regular workers do, often while busy running companies that are losing money.
Ironically, the out-of-control capitalism monster may be brought down by eating the one true thing that made our country great—the hard-working immigrant. You’re being taught to hate them, which is silly, because they are most of our great-grandparents, and again, built this country (along with slaves!) and made this country great for real.
We live in the age of the illusion, the scam, the Matrix. One of the most successful con artists in history was elected President by people who bought into the illusion. A guy they saw as a successful businessman, who had squandered most of the fortune left by his wealthy parents (and stole much of from his siblings), bankrupted many business ventures (including casinos?!), has always been in massive debt, and ripped off countless small businesspeople, contractors, students at his false university, and fake charities. It’s the prime example of our times, of our downfall, buying into the grand illusion of this horrible, horrible man.
We’re presented with the illusion that anything that’s done for us with the massive amounts of money we pay in taxes is that bad “socialism,” we’ve always heard about. Working people are incredibly brainwashed in this talking point by propaganda news networks run by billionaires that then take that money happily, and are working hard to take away those “socialistic” “entitlements” like veteran’s benefits, public schools, affordable public healthcare, unemployment, Social Security, and Medicare.
You’re being played. It’s all fake. It’s a grand illusion. Wake up. Think for yourself.
America spells competition
Join us in our blind ambition
Get yourself a brand new motor car
Someday soon we'll stop to ponder
What on Earth's this spell we're under
We made the grade and still we wonder
Who the hell we are—Dennis DeYoung, Styx, The Grand Illusion
What’s Next?
With the fast-moving events driving us now inarguably toward the destruction of our country, democracy, and this dystopian Gilead-like hell, we’re dropping almost everything else and focusing on our dual citizenship. We’re getting the documents in place as quickly as possible, learning a new language, researching like crazy. And, we’re finding a vast community of people who are doing the same. Notably, Kirsten Power’s moving piece at this link.
I’ve posted before about how many of the wealthy class clearly see this new USA not as an opportunity, but as the economic disaster it will become as they round up a huge chunk of the workforce and “ship them home,” and deregulate all the remaining rules that keep our products, food, and water safe, which will surely lead to more massive climate disasters and bankruptcy as we try to plug those holes in the dike. We’ve had our run here. Every democracy eventually ends. The fall of the Roman Empire ironically was precipitated by a pandemic.
Other countries see this opportunity. They saw how America was truly made great—by taking in decent refugees. And now, ironically, they’re seeing this opportunity and doing the same, encouraging the best of us to come to their land. And when the best of us are gone, and only the folks that can’t afford it, and the uber-wealthy who will benefit are left, it will be mission accomplished—a true two-class dictatorship of just peasants and royalty.
These countries luring us away provide far more affordable food, health care, and a life with safety nets and dignity. Right now some knucklehead out there is saying “Oh, yeah for 30% taxes!” It is yet another illusion. Because guess what, Chucky Cheese. When you factor in the massive cost of health care, education, long-term care, or retiring with dignity in this country, you’re paying far, far more than that “high” foreign tax rate. In those countries, a health care emergency can’t bankrupt you. Played again. There’s a reason the people in those countries are far, far more happy than here. There’s a reason every ex-pat we talk to, especially the ones that left when Trump first won in 2016, unanimously tell us they are far happier than they were in this place where we’re all being pitted against each other.
This pioneer journey continues… Don’t forget, commenting is now turned on for everyone on these free posts. Let’s interact! Too many of you reply to us personally, share the love with the Project: Pioneer community :-)
“True individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.”
—Franklin Delano Roosevelt
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