Planning for the inevitable By Dave Duffy
Issue #110 • March/April, 2008

You been watching the campaigns for the Democratic and Republican primaries? Scary, huh? One of these bozos is going to be our next President. Makes me want to double the size of my pantry and garden, stock up on fuel and supplies, and batten down the hatches.

I like Ron Paul. That’s about it. But not even his own party wants him. I wish he had some charisma, like Reagan, so he could reach beyond the Republican Party and speak to voters about his Libertarian ideas. But he has no charisma, only good ideas. That’s not enough for voters.

So we’re going to get another bozo. Another bozo while we have a recession looming on the horizon. Some economists say it may already be here. All the talk from people like me about protecting our freedoms from Government will soon turn to protecting our butts from economic disaster made worse by Government with another bozo in charge.

Has anyone noticed that the politicians seeking to be President don’t even talk about the looming recession? Economists do, but the candidates don’t. They pretend it’s not there. It’s almost surreal! The housing market has imploded, the dollar is diving, the debt is skyrocketing. Why don’t they talk about it? Of course, they wouldn’t know what to do about it anyway. And they’ll only make it worse with their “Government” solutions.

There is a rapidly growing interest in preparedness and survival in this country. It’s not to survive terrorist attacks. We can shoot those scumbags with the guns we keep in our closets. No, it’s to survive food shortages and being out of work. Many of us can sense what’s coming down the highway. We are educated capitalists at heart; we understand how our system works even if our politicians don’t talk about it. And we know there is grave danger ahead.

So what can we do about it? Here’s my plan:

I’m going to accept the inevitable of having another bozo as President during a recession and spend my time planning to protect my family from a potentially severe recession, even a depression.

You see, another thing politicians have stopped talking about is the coming collapse of the Social Security system. It is now probably too late to do anything about it anyway. The post-World War II baby boom that will trigger the Social Security collapse will reach the retirement age of 65 in 2010 — two years from now. If we are still in recession then, and if we still have treasury-draining wars going on, and if the bozos running the country continue to borrow to fund government programs we have no money for, the Social Security collapse could put such a strain on the public treasury that the country could slip into a depression— 1930’s style.

Voting for one bozo or another for President is not going to seem so important if we slip into an economic depression. We’ll be struggling to keep our family in sufficient food, to keep the mortgage company from taking our home, to keep all we love safe from the inevitable breakdowns in society that bad economic downturns can bring.

Am I being alarmist? Why shouldn’t I be? Economists are predicting recession, and politicians are not even talking about it as they run for the most important economic job in the land. Maybe they really don’t know it’s coming. That’s even more alarming.

I’ve already begun tuning up my pantry. A solid year’s supply of food is a must. Back issues of my own magazine, all collected in both paper and CD-ROM anthologies, have all the instructions I need to do this.

I’m fortunate to be old enough that my home is paid for so I am secure from a foreclosing mortgage company if times really get bad. I heat with wood and live in a forest so I have protection there too. Plus I have a 500-gallon propane tank for cooking and supplying an extra propane stove I recently installed. My water supply is a spring so I’m good there. I also have a fishing boat and live next to the productive Oregon coast, so that is a big plus. I have several good guns that I’m proficient with, but have let my ammo stocks grow low, so I’ll have to remedy that.

I’m actually in pretty good shape. We’ll get more chickens since they are an invaluable, easy-to-keep food supply for both eggs and meat. And I’ll get into rabbits too as a convenient protein source. We’ve got a big garden, and my wife cans. My woods are full of deer too.

I’m even going to nail down long-term paper contracts with Backwoods Home Magazine’s printer so we’re not subject to sudden lurches in the price of the 42.5-pound Opportunity Offset paper we use. We’ll keep publishing no matter what.

A bozo in the White House and a recession. What an unfortunate and foreboding combination. I’d better order up a new shipment of our Emergency Preparedness and Survival Guide book. People are going to want practical survival information more than ever.