So long, for now.

Project: Pioneer #81, April 17, 2025 Thursday 9am

Photo by Amine mouzaoui on Unsplash

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.

Listen to the audio above for our new theme music, Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby. Please share this post!

Don’t despair—prepare.

I've always taken pride in not being a sensationalist, always being practical and analytic. But it's true the frogs don't notice the water is getting hot until too late. It's true that people in cataclysmic historical times never actually realized it at the time. It's clear now the USA is an authoritarian regime. The Oval Office meeting with the El Salvador dictator on Monday made that clear. The past few weeks have made all this crystal clear:

The Constitution is dead.
The rule of law is dead.
The separation of powers is dead.
The checks and balances are dead.
The Supreme Court has been rendered a joke.
The entire top hierarchy of our government is corrupt and acting in concert.
We are strongly allied with Russia, striving to replicate that dictatorship.
We no longer have allies to save us. They pity us.
The bond market meltdown last week made clear the world is running from us.
We are heading for a long recession, possibly depression.
We are in complete chaos—daily political, financial, and climate destruction.
Experts on fascism are leaving the country.
Our brightest doctors, engineers, researchers are leaving.

If you don’t see the above happening in real time, you’re not paying attention or you’re in denial. I have a friend like that—always poo-pooing things he doesn’t want to acknowledge or doesn’t agree with, until reality makes it impossible. And maybe even then, he’ll still deny it.

I have another friend, a Mexican-American of dubious citizenship status. He and his wife are all in with the cult. They like to travel. I’d be quite nervous presenting my papers the next time they re-enter the US. He doesn’t realize he’s dirt to Trump’s racist leadership, as are his kids and grandkids, because they “look dirty” to these racists, due to their skin color. They may get “sent back where they came from” simply for that reason. Sure, there’s Kash Patel and other tokens, which allow them to say, “See? We have black and brown friends.” They get in the club with massive devotions and donations, of course. You aren’t in the club.

But, I love my friends, and we all have our quirks :-) However, it will always fascinate me how people who love and listen to all that music with lyrics that are the antithesis to trumpism, people who call themselves Christians, can support something that is the exact opposite.

If you’re one of the folks who voted for trump, don’t say, “I didn’t vote for this.” Yes, you did. We all saw it coming. He said he would do all this. Don’t ever call yourself an American patriot. You’re a gullible, hateful person who reacted emotionally because you’re uncomfortable around people who aren’t just like you. Or, you’re some greedy entitled prick who doesn’t want to pay taxes to the country that made *you* great. Or, somehow, you bought into the fallacy that a greedy, corrupt guy who has only ever destroyed everything and everyone he’s come in contact with, with six bankruptcies including a casino, but played a fake successful businessman on a scripted “reality” TV show, was indeed a successful businessman and would lead *you* into prosperity.

These billionaire fascists will come for you, eventually. You and those you love will suffer economically for these wannabe dictators. You already are. You are not in the club, as you’re just starting to find out (unless of course you’re a straight, white, male, billionaire). You’re not a fan of anything this country was based on, because this whole MAGA movement has always flown in the face of all of it. Don’t call yourself a Christian, because it’s always been the polar opposite of Jesus’ teachings. Re-read those Beatitudes. Carefully. You f’d around, joined a cult, now you’ll find out. You did this, you owe it to us all to join the fight.

At most we have a year and a half before the curtain comes down on the USA as a constitutional republic, if we’re lucky. The report trump requested on day one of his presidency, on whether he should use the Insurrection Act, is due on April 20. He may decide to use it earlier, to quell the planned April 19 protests. There’s no way they're going to allow mid-term elections, at least not legit ones. One piece of strong evidence happened in that Oval Office press conference on Monday, all the ass kissing for the dictator from El Salvador.

And so, back to us. You don’t find much real, actual, non-cosplay prepper content online. By virtue, we are paranoid, and a part of the recipe is to keep your mouth shut about your tactics, if you are serious about this. I only wanted to help others, and I hope I have over these two years of providing you so much information that you may very well need, and very soon. Those posts are a gift to you, but I can’t guarantee I’ll keep them online if things get hotter.

Do I sound mad? Yeah, big mad. Giavana and I had that dream of building a nice, isolated prepper log cabin. Trump’s election ended that, because we knew the USA empire would fall. We wouldn’t buy or own real estate in Russia either, for the same reason. Would you? If not, then sell. Then we started thinking about joining an eco-village, to form a community for security and survival. Yesterday, on an informational meeting, we were getting all excited, then I had this vision:

General (big strong guy, tears in his eyes): “Sir, I’ve come to you directly because Secretary Hegseth is still sleeping off his bender last night. This is important. We’ve discovered a village of woke, liberal smurfs living happily in the woods.”

Trump: “Seize it, use eminent domain, and burn it to the ground, hopefully while that scum are still asleep.”

I’m far more angry about the GenZ and younger people who will never enjoy the USA the rest of us had. For the first time, the children of working families have little chance of doing better than their parents. That’s not because of trans people or immigrants. There is one clear, obvious reason: corporate greed, corporate welfare. That’s what changed our life here so quickly from my parents’ time, one generation ago, where a high school dropout manufacturing worker could work Monday to Friday 9-5 with a solid hour lunch and give his family a comfortable life while his spouse stayed home to raise the kids properly. Now we’re all slaves to this corporate machine, stressed and tired, and it’s still not enough to survive, while those at the top wallow in luxury due to the fruits of our labor.

The government are now seizing and examining the phones and content of US citizens, without warrants. That makes us a target, and maybe even you as well, for reading stuff like this. It puts people I love at risk, and I can’t tolerate that. I do this for you. There’s no financial benefit, and frankly hasn’t been a whole lot of interaction, which makes it easier. I’ll die for this cause, I’ll die on this hill for those I love who are younger, but I can’t put loved ones in danger. It’s not a sell-out or cop-out. I will be in this fight in every way I can, and I hope you will too. Everything depends on it.

I’ll continue the fight, subversively, but that can’t include writing what I write. Not on a public blog, anyway. Trump said he’ll start sending US citizens to that gulag torture prison in El Salvador. I’m a small voice, whistling these words into the wind to a small audience. But, I enjoy this, and thus it’s another thing taken away.

In the past, when I dared to dream (nightmare) all this happening, I was often naive enough to think, “The cops and military are regular people with families, all races and creeds, most of them wouldn’t go along with a takeover or violence against citizens.” Surprise, it’s happening all over right now. Cops, ICE, Homeland Security, FBI, all in full fascist concert. Probably the military is next. They seem to be loving the chance to use all those cool weapons and rough some folks up. That’s what too many cops do, it’s why too many are cops. We’ve seen autistic Black kids beaten and killed by Black cops, incredibly.

In our last post, I talked about this overwhelming sense of things coalescing into…something. I mentioned earlier in this post that people in cataclysmic historic times don’t actually realize they’re in cataclysmic historic times in the moment.

A few scenes from the new The Chosen season five stand out. There’s one where the disciple Little James is a talented singer and makes the cut to sing in the national choir as a young man, but is told he can’t because he has a physical disability. Immediate flash to Trump saying it’s “not a good look” for him to be seen with disabled veterans.

There’s another scene where the Roman spy Atticus is telling Pontius Pilot his only job is to win, and another where the Jewish Pharisees are talking about “winning” and absorbed with politics over their faith and teaching. Of course, there’s the depiction of runaway greed when Jesus overturns those tables at the temple.

It was always about temptation, from the Garden of Eden onward. The Lord’s Prayer says, “Lead us not into temptation.” Actually, we’ll always have temptation. It’s always been our job to do the right thing. It’s always been a test.

Pioneer Update

We just paid our taxes, normally a patriotic contribution to pay for the good things we enjoy as citizens of the USA. Now, we pay with the knowledge that in some form or another, our hard-earned money will find its way into Trump’s pocket, pay for his weekly expensive and extravagant golf outings, finance his cruel fascist agenda. "Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's."

We’re going to commence laser firearms training, in addition to going to the range. These safe, quiet systems allow you to train at home. You can practice the most likely need to use your weapon—intruder drills.

Yesterday we moved our White House covered wagon RV from our former beautiful campsite to her staging area near us, to evacuate mid-country when things get real bad.

I won’t say I’ll never post again, but certainly not on these topics. Perhaps I’ll write on fiction and faith/afterlife topics, we’ll see. Maybe I’ll find the discipline to withhold political content/opinion and just write about prepping. Maybe I’ll get that follow-up novel to Farawayer done, and get my ham license. We still have so much prepping to do. As a parting gift, if anyone wants one of my fiction paperbacks, audio, or ebooks I’ll give them to you for $1, well below my cost, as a thank you. I’ll sign the paperbacks if you want. But only direct through this website. Nobody else knows, it’s our secret :-)

Where should you go for critical content on these topics? Definitely avoid the big social media apps/sites. Take them off your phones, it’s walking proof you’re the resistance. Use them from your home computer, if at all, with a VPN and burner proton email address. Reddit is a bit more under the radar (so far) so on that site go to r/EconomicCollapse r/TwoXPreppers (women’s prepper group!) r/preppers r/PrepperIntel r/prepping and maybe I’ll see you there.

In the meantime, be safe and keep the faith. Giavana, Pia and I love you all very much. Thank you for joining us on this journey.

“An empire toppled by its enemies can rise again, but one which crumbles from within, is dead forever.”—Unknown

“Look back over the past, with its changing empires that rose and fell, and you can foresee the future, too.”—Marcus Aurelius

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Intro music is Stormy Blues by Arne Bang Huseby.

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