I have a fascination sometimes with the Soviet Union. Other people obsess over the 12 year period of Nazi Germany. To me that was a relatively short “one-off”. A nut propped up to be used as a tool by the Elites to fulfill their agenda. The Soviet Union on the other hand lasted for 74 years. They also had 9 leaders to my count. It can’t be dismissed as an aberration. What can be learned from the Soviet Union hasn’t been as well publicized as it should have in my opinion. Which makes sense if you admit the education system in America has been taken over by socialists, who wants to admit their failures?
I imagine cultural anthropologists could tell you volumes on the successes and failures of the Soviet Union. If you had the time and inclination to read all the books on the subject. Probably one of the failures of our system is the lack of distillation of all this information into an absorbable form. My point of all this is to try and assimilate a recent article from World Net Daily that I used as the title of this post. March 15, 2020 was a pivotal date in my mind (just short of 2 months ago).
It was the first time in my life I had ever experienced a shortage of a good I wanted to buy. People from shitholes are no doubt used to shortages, America was not supposed to be a shithole. In that incredible writing style I have its doubly ironic, as the shortage was toilet paper (toilet paper/shithole, get it? Its funny). Being a Cold Warrior from way back, I’m surprised I didn’t think of it myself. But it took this WND article looking at the infamous shortages in the Soviet Union, to see what might be in store for us.
I think WND missed it in one respect. They seem to think Americans being “paid unemployment not to produce anything” is going to result in shortages in the months ahead. I disagree simply from the respect that modern America doesn’t make that much. I think they did nail it in a psychological observation though. It begins with the humble shopping bag. They said the reusable shopping bag was invented in the Soviet Union, and it had nothing to do with being ‘green’.
They said the cloth bag was something a woman could fold up and put in her purse, or a man could put in his lunch pail, and have with them at all time. The reason they wanted that was so if they happened upon an item in the store that hadn’t been available, they’d be able to snatch it up at a moments notice. The Soviet Union being world famous for its shortages. Then they hit upon something I’d never heard before. A lesson for us.
Bread was forever in short supply in the USSR. But they said you could often find loaves of moldy bread in dumpsters. Why would that be? Why would people be throwing away a commodity in such short supply? Because whenever the artificially low-priced bread was available, they’d whip out their shopping bag and buy way more than they needed! Its a psychological need. I see it now myself. I probably haven’t used rubbing alcohol 10 times in my life, but now that its not available, I want it! They created the bread shortages by buying more than they could use.
Toilet paper is a funny little story. On 3/15 when the shortage started, I was able to soon buy 2 packs of 18 rolls. I had never figured out how long a roll lasted. I found out it lasted 2 weeks. 36 rolls times 2 weeks a roll, works out to 72 weeks of toilet paper. That’s almost a year and a half of toilet paper I now have. Okay I’m a little embarrassed. But (butt) imagine the people who filled up their garage? Or basement? Or spare room with toilet paper? Shortages beget hoarding, and hoarding begets shortages. Chicken / egg.
I talked to a clerk at Walmart one day trying to get a feel for the supply chain to the store. This was in early April and Walmart was letting people walk out with a case of toilet paper! That’s 24 packages of toilet paper! These loons are now into the 2030’s with their supply. I suppose they could pass it on to their kids in a sort of heirloom situation. Another item is alcohol wipes. I probably didn’t use maybe 12 a year in picnic situations or at the State Fair when I need to wipe my hands without water. People now have hundreds of them, if not thousands.
Walmart used to have a very well stocked array of bandanas. Well as soon as it was discovered that they could work as a makeshift mask (to make up for the nonexistent commercial ones), they disappeared too. I almost forgot the meat shortages, beef, chicken and pork. Early on those shining examples of corporate citizenship, meatpackers, told their illegals they had to come to work even if sick, or they’d be fired. Well guess what happened?
Packing plants became the epicenter of outbreaks. So of course the authorities shutdown the meat processors. As wise people have known throughout the centuries, its when people get hungry that change happens. That’s when people get desperate. What will be the outcome of the coming unrest is not clear to me. Americans have become fat and lazy in most respects. They’ve had it so cushy for so long they don’t know how to rebel.
Couple that with technology that makes it so easy to ride herd on a populace, I frankly don’t see how a government could be overthrown. Not that people would choose the right path anyway. They could just as easily choose a more authoritarian socialism as they might a reversion back to our more limited government roots. Unrest is coming. The social fabric held together during the Great Depression of the 30s because we were 1 people. Warts and all.
That’s no longer the case. We have 30 million Mexicans in country that (most) have no allegiance to this country. A substantial Muslim population trying to install a system of Sharia Law. A declining number of the white population that identifies as Christian. A black population that’s as dysfunctional as ever. Cultural pathologies they didn’t have in the 1930s. The institutions that held this country together at one time, no longer exist.
We are not the nation we were in 1989 that amazed Boris Yeltsin. A trip to a Randall’s grocery store in Clear Lake, Texas turned out to be a pivotal moment in Russian history. Unfortunately too few Americans have heard the story. Boris and company made an impromptu stop at a small town grocery store to pickup some item. He could not believe the untold bounty in the store. The “luxury” available to everyday Americans that was not available to even the Soviet Premiere Mikhail Gorbachev.
As they point out in the article, up until the recent pandemic, Amazon and Walmart took that one step further and were fighting to see who could deliver that bounty to your door. But if WND is correct, that luxury will not be continuing. The generation that lived through the Depression and WW II has now largely died off. They were perhaps better adjusted for societal upheaval. They had dealt with cataclysmic events. The generation following, my generation, hasn’t faced that.
And if my generation is unprepared for the coming events, imagine where the Gen Xers are? The Millennials? If we’re not on the cusp of change, I would be very surprised. As Jesus said, you can’t rob the house of a strongman until you bind him. You can’t replace the system of a strong America, until you first tear it down. Mission accomplished.
Politics and Religion 