The Collapse

A Love of Reading

When I was a kid, I liked to read. My mother used to get me books, and the first books I remember reading were the Hardy Boys. I got to the point that I could read a Hardy Boys book in about 45 minutes by the time I was in the second grade.

I loved reading so much that the school librarian began paying me with Oreos to place returned library books to the shelf for her. I became a voracious reader, often reading an author’s entire contribution to the library in a few days.

Soon after that, Boys’ Life magazine published the Heinlein story Between Planets. I remember enjoying the story so much that it turned me on to SciFi. Star Wars came out, followed by fan fiction novels like Foster’s Splinter of the Mind’s Eye, which in my mind is a better story than any of the Star Wars sequels by Disney.

I soon had read every Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov book in the library. I moved on to novels like Silent Ship, Silent Sea, the Guadalcanal Diary and more. So many I can’t even remember them all.

The came the Mack Bolan books, the Penetrator, and many other pulp fiction novels of the late 70s and early 80s.

This shaped my childhood, my view of the world, and an intense love of my country. It also made me who I am. By the time I was 12 years old, I was maxing out reading tests. I was reading at the level of a college senior, 300 words per minute with 85% comprehension. Reading fiction became a way to energize the brain and make complex thought not only possible, but enjoyable.

Now contrast that with what kids are being fed today. Pushed away from reading books into reading trash on social media. A constant stream of tranny, communist propaganda.

It’s no wonder that we have lost a nation. Our nation, brain dead and on life support, is soon to see its plug pulled. The artificial life support of endless fiat cash is becoming toxic to the very systems it is supposed to keep running. The land that I grew up in is gone.

Can we change it? Is there enough there that it can be saved? I don’t think that there is. We are entering a dark age where people no longer read, no longer think, and knowledge is of little value. We value the athlete more than the scientist. Most people, including scientists, don’t even know what science or the scientific method is.

It saddens me to see our nation dying, one idiot at a time.

By Divemedic, ago

Workforce Participation

Much ado is being made of the fact that unemployment claims are at a two month low. Biden will most assuredly make a big deal out of it. That number means little. What matters is the labor force participation rate. For July, that stands at 62.1 percent.

Back at the turn of the millennium, 66 percent of Americans were working. That number dropped during Obama’s Presidency, all the way to 62.8 percent by December of 2016.

Then Trump took over. By February of 2020, it had regained a quarter of what was lost and rebounded to 63.4. The left couldn’t have that, so enter the COVID shutdown. Now Biden is rejoicing as the labor force participation rate hovers at a level that is even less than Obama’s low.

By Divemedic, ago

The enemy in our homes

Less than a year ago, I told you about one of my wife’s friends and her stepson. The little asshole had declared to his family that he was a Marxist. The father had been ignoring it, assuming it was just some sort of phase.

Well, the kid came home and announced that he is now a girl. No longer Carlos, he is now calling himself Inez and insisting that everyone use that name. He is telling them that Carlos is dead, and using that name is “deadnaming” him. He is now Inez.

Well, his dad has been crying for three days. He is supporting his son in this new name, because he is afraid that his son will commit suicide if they don’t play along. Carlos is basically holding himself hostage and using that to control everyone in the house.

That, in my opinion, is what this is. It’s about control. When I met the kid seven years ago, I thought he was a little odd, but many kids are. However, this kid is as hardcore left as they come. He is a committed socialist who wants to destroy this country and replace it with a communist one.

We all need to think about that for a moment. The people that will be on the other side of any civil war will be people that we have known for years. That little boy who lives down the street? The one you have known since he was in kindergarten? He is plotting to kill you.

That’s where we are. So as you listen to our President tonight, and hear him tell America that *YOU* are the enemy, that you are a threat to our nation, and that you don’t deserve to live here, remember what the left has done to our children. Remember what they want to do to you.

Plan accordingly.

By Divemedic, ago

The Brink

I had a post all ready to go. It was all about tactics that could be used against these assholes.

By the time I was almost done with the post, I realized that I was so angry, and the post so violently bloody, I realized that it could be used as evidence. It isn’t as if all of the signs of what is to come aren’t there.

Our own President is calling half of the nation “fascists.” Charlie Christ, who until today was Florida’s Congressman for Pinellas county (and current Democrat candidate for Florida Governor) defended and echoed those statements. Then in another speech, the President went on to declare that he would again make “assault weapons” illegal and further said that anyone who opposes that would be facing F-15s and other heavy weapons, seemingly indicating that he is looking forward to bombing American citizens.

Tomorrow night, Biden will be addressing the nation during prime time to talk about the “extremist threat” posed by the 80 million people who voted for President Trump.

“The president thinks that there is an extremist threat to our democracy. The president has been as clear as he can be on that particular piece,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters this morning. This wasn’t an off the cuff gaffe. She said that while reading prepared notes. She said what she meant to say. If you voted for Trump, the President is declaring you to be a traitor, a threat to the very nation.

Whatever he has to say won’t be conciliatory. It’s almost as if he is trying to be inflammatory, trying to pick a fight. Will he use this speech as a way to cause enough domestic unrest to allow a declaration of “emergency powers?”

This nation is separated into armed camps. They are polarized like no other time since the 1860s:

You have the hard-core Communists of Antifa, BLM, and their cronies. They are armed, violent, and just itching to get their revolution on. They are using the J6 protest as their Reichstag fire, an excuse to seize power.

The so-called MAGA Republicans, who represent the majority of the politically aware right, are sick of the bullshit and are pushing back. They are not looking for a fight, but are well armed and pissed off. All they wanted was to be left alone.

There are the kiddie diddlers. The fags, trannies, and other deviants who see the power vacuum as a way to be able to fuck little kids. The left is content to let them have their way with your kids, as long as they throw their weight behind this commie takeover.

Then there is the “go along to get along” pussy wing of the Republican party, the political whores whose only core value is to do whatever it takes to remain in power, even if that means kissing Democrat ass to stay there. Their chairman is Mitch McConnel. He is ready to kiss Biden’s ring, proving that he is out of touch with mainstream Republicans and unfit to manage a Planet Smoothie franchise.

All I know is that this new move to inflammatory rhetoric by the President is not a good sign.

EDITED TO ADD:

It turns out that I am not alone in this thought.

By Divemedic, ago

Refuse to Do Business

Yesterday, I wrote that small businesses should refuse to do business with people who live in California, because they are exporting their police to enforce California law on other states. Now here comes New York, going after large businesses.

They are investigating whether Tyson foods violated New York anti gouging laws by charging higher prices for meat during the COVID lockdowns. Tyson is refusing to comply with the subpoena, claiming that they cannot be investigated in New York for the price of meat charged by them in Arkansas.

This has a logical outcome. If the state of New York wants to mess around and force companies to sell food at a loss, then companies will simply stop selling there. No matter how large the market, if profits aren’t there, then there is no reason to sell there. It’s like the old SNL skit.

The original skit ended with “People ask us how we can make money, when all we do is make change. The answer to that is simple: volume.” For some reason SNL removed that line from the bit. Maybe because people today wouldn’t get it.

New York doesn’t get it. No matter how many people who live there, if there is no profit, companies won’t do business there. That is the essence of the national split we see today. The cities can’t impose their will upon the rural areas without limit. There will be push back, and there lies the source of our national split.

We as a nation are headed for divorce. The people in the middle of the country will only be pushed so far. The cities will have to play nice, or they will found out just what cold, dark, and hungry are.

By Divemedic, ago

Paper Eagle

China is about to invade Taiwan. I know that Taiwan’s intelligence chief says it won’t happen this year, but hear me out. I would say it will happen before the end of October. Let’s look at why I think so:

Weather

The weather in that area of the world becomes too treacherous for an amphibious invasion from the end of October through the end of March. Once fall sets in, the water around Taiwan is too rough for an invasion force. That means putting things off until at least April. Why won’t they do that?

Preparations

China has mobilized large portions of the PLA, moving a large number of forces to the area, I think we are looking at an invasion within the next 90 days. No country mobilizes a large military force only to call it back.

Those air incursions into Taiwanese airspace haven’t just been saber rattling. Nor was the model of American carrier battlegroups they were using as target practice. These point to a country practicing for war. They are ready to fight and win. Our military is busy learning to put on drag shows and recognizing each other’s pronouns.

Every simulation run by the US military shows China defeating the US in detail. While China has carriers in the area, they won’t need them. The order of battle is impressive:

Military Situation Overwhelmingly Favors China:

The US carriers in the area are the USS Ronald Reagan with Carrier Airwing 5, which has less than 60 F/A-18E Super Hornets embarked. The USS Tripoli with its 20 embarked F-35B‘s is there, as is the USS America, but only carries aircraft for transporting its embarked marine battalion. Taiwan themselves have several hundred first line fighters, but the combined Taiwanese and American aircraft would quickly be overwhelmed by the sheer number of aircraft China has in the area (over 1,000).

There are some airbases on Okinawa (400 miles or so away) where there are a couple of squadrons of F-15s, F-35s, some AWACS, aerial tanker support, and there are a few strategic bombers there (I think B-1s). The rest of the US forces in Okinawa are marines, some spec ops people, support units, and some air defense units. I don’t know if Okinawa based units can get involved, since Japan would have a say and would not want to get drawn into the conflict. If these units DO get involved, expect Japan to get hit with some missile strikes, which would be HUGELY unpopular with the Japanese people, who overwhelmingly don’t want US forces there anyway.

The US is likely to put a dent in an invasion force, if they decide to intervene. A US submarine is likely lurking in the area, and China would lose some amphibious ships to it, that is almost a certainty. If the US becomes involved, there is a better than 50-50 chance that we would lose at least one of those carriers, and a near certainty that we will lose several ships. All of this means thousands of US casualties, perhaps 10,000 or more, within days of the onset of hostilities. Is the US ready for that?

In the end, there is only one possible outcome: Taiwan will fall. The only possible answer for the US would be to accept the loss of Taiwan, or go nuclear. Biden doesn’t have the stomach for nukes, and even if he DID use them, Taiwan will eventually be lost.

So what will happen?

Joe Biden has said that the US is committed to defending Taiwan. South Korea is fully expecting the US to honor that commitment. This puts him in a bind. If we refuse to defend Taiwan, the US looks weak, and we lose more influence in the region. If Biden tries to defend Taiwan then loses anyway, the US looks even weaker and loses influence worldwide. Then we also know that China owns Biden’s greedy, crooked ass.

The US has never been weaker, with a weak leader, weak economy, and a failing military. American political and military leadership is a joke.

In short, we have already lost. China knows it. The US military knows it. So does Foggy Bottom. I’m not sure Joe Biden knows it, but he is a senile old man. The only reason that China hasn’t invaded yet is that they don’t want to lose the US as a trading partner, but the US is quickly failing as an economic powerhouse and is no longer the profit center it once was.

For all of the above reasons, I think China invades Taiwan before Halloween. I think the US does nothing but whine and complain to the UN. I also think that this does severe damage to our influence in the Far East.

This is strangely reminiscent of Japan’s actions a century ago. Japan’s big failure then was that they didn’t have raw materials and depended on imports. China learned from that. They have access to all of the raw materials they need. We are looking at China becoming THE dominate world power for the foreseeable future.

The US, on the other hand, is staring at economic collapse and political instability. The peak of the American empire has come and gone.

EDITED TO ADD:

Okinawa also has a squadron of F-22 Raptors, but China has them outnumbered ten to one with their own advanced fighters. Even if the Raptor is a better airplane, quantity has a quality all its own.

By Divemedic, ago

What price, now?

There was a story I read when I was younger, a short story by Robert Louis Stevenson. The story is about a working class native of Hawaii, Keawe, who buys a strange bottle from a sad, elderly gentleman who credits the bottle with his wealth and fortune, and promises the imp in the bottle will also grant Keawe his every wish and desire.

Of course, there is a catch — the bottle must be sold at a loss, i.e. for less than its owner originally paid, or else it will simply return to him. The currency used in the transaction must also be in coin (not paper currency or check). The bottle may not be thrown or given away. If an owner of the bottle dies without having sold it in the prescribed manner, that person’s soul will burn for eternity in Hell.

The bottle was said to have been brought to Earth by the Devil and first purchased by Prester John for millions of dollars; it was owned by Napoleon and Captain James Cook but each sold it. At the time of the story the price has diminished to eighty dollars, and declines rapidly to a matter of pennies.

The problem here is that as the price approaches a penny, it will become harder and harder to sell the bottle, as the buyer will be in fear of being left holding the bag.

This tale reminds me of our current national debt. As our debt increases, the interest payments will balloon. They can only get so large before default is inevitable. At that point, anyone in possession of a US bond will be stuck with worthless paper. Because of this, the returns for these bonds will have to increase, so as to entice people in taking the risk of buying them, which will make the interest payments higher, thus making the end that much closer.

By Divemedic, ago

Forever Gone

For those of you who believe that all we have to do is vote, let me point out that the changes being put in place by the Biden administration aren’t anything that can be simply changed. Even if voting works, we are screwed for a generation or more.

Biden isn’t just putting some policies in place that can be changed with an executive order. No, he is dismantling our gasoline producing infrastructure. He is planning on closing the ammunition plant that makes 5.56. He is going to allow the chip manufacturer in Taiwan be overrun by the Chinese.

In the meantime, he stymies investigations into Chinese fair trade violations. In this particular case, it actually makes it less likely that the US will move to green energy because it prevents American solar manufacturers from competing against Chinese products that are being labeled as coming from other countries while at the same time not providing DPA protections to US firms. This is crippling US solar manufacturing.

The damage that he is doing to the west is not easily repaired. It will take years, perhaps a decade or more, to repair the infrastructure that is being destroyed right now. In the meantime, China will become the world’s largest and most powerful nation. The US is about to become a second world nation.

It’s almost like Biden is an employee of the Chinese government.

By Divemedic, ago