The Impossible Society

Watching it all play out, I’m amazed a society like ours exists.

And then I got stabbed. Source

Something I’m going to try to overcome writer’s paralysis: instead finding a specific topic to focus an essay on, I’m going to occasionally publish a “variety” entry where I briefly discuss multiple topics in short form. It’s a way for me to get thoughts off my chest and also avoid a prolonged period of dead air.

I don’t intend to commit to this as a regular thing; I’ll primarily do this when I don’t have time for a deep-dive or if I’m struggling to settle on what to write about. It’s just a way to put something out and avoid long stretches where I don’t publish anything. I feel like I’ve previously announced that I’m going to try something like this; if so, consider this another try.

Let’s begin.

The National Debt Isn’t A Problem… Yet.

Peter Zeihan explains the magnitude of the United States’ national debt, but forces us all to take a step back and look at the bigger picture:

Zeihan’s argument can be summarized as thus:

• Yes, the debt is a problem.

• No, it won’t be a crisis any time soon, not for at least 30 years.

• Demographics are the most decisive determining factor, as it’ll dictate how much tax revenue will be generated in the future to keep the show going.

What do I think? First, the government isn’t funded through taxation. It’s impossible, given the amount of money it spends. It’s funded through bonds and through foreign investors purchasing debt. Zeihan is correct in talking about the importance of demographics and having enough people to generate income for the state, but with time, this will become of lesser significance, at least at the federal level. It’s not that demographics won’t matter - it certainly will for the health of the overall economy - but not having enough people paying taxes is absolutely not the reason why the debt problem is insurmountable.

Which leads to my second point: when the debt crisis does go critical, the government will do what every government does in the same situation: print the money. It’ll cause hyperinflation, but the alternative is worse, hard as it might be to believe. I once talked about how the government is absolutely not going to cut spending because too many people depend on it. Why would it, anyway, when it can just print the money? As long as America remains the world’s repository for capital, as Zeihan says, there’s no reason not to take advantage of the money printer.

As for Zeihan’s assertion that it’ll take about 30 years for the debt bubble to finally burst, I don’t know about that. I agree that it’s not going to burst next year or in the next five years. But could it happen in 10 years? Zeihan’s projection is based mostly on demographic trends and an assumption that everything else more or less stays in place for the next three decades. Even he, however, concedes that a lot can happen during that time. I don’t know if Zeihan buys the Fourth Turning theory, but that’s something that’d make the debt bubble burst in the next 10 years.

The good news in all this? Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are here to stay, and we’re not going to be screwed out of it like so many of us fear. The caveat is that it won’t be worth a whole lot. It’s already something which can barely be lived off today. It’ll be far less so when we’re the age our parents and grandparents are now. Whatever you choose to do, relying on a government pension is probably a bad idea.

Are Cats Really Being Eaten in Springfield, Ohio?

Independent investigative reporter Tyler Oliveira, whose YouTube channel I recommend subscribing to, went to Springfield, Ohio to investigate claims that Haitian immigrants are eating household pets, among other claims.

The story is one that I’d intended to take a deeper dive into and there may still be time for that at a later point, depending on what comes of it. However, most of the story developed during my time on super-secret assignment overseas, so I’ve decided to table it for the time being and instead watch people like Oliveira try to get to the bottom of what’s going on.

You can watch his report here:

Here are the conclusions I drew from his report:

• Pets may or may not be being eaten: When asked by Oliveira whether the rumors are true the response was consistently that they didn’t know anything about it. At the same time, many of the residents claim they see migrants picking up stray animals (though this sounds like secondhand knowledge), there have been instances of this happening elsewhere in America, and eating domesticated animals isn’t something uncommon in Haiti.

• Driving seems to be a big issue: Somehow, the new arrivals are getting driver’s licenses and cars very quickly despite so few of them speaking English. Nobody is able to explain how this is happening. Their inability to drive safely has also become a problem.

• The migrants are stressing local services: Oliveira visits a welfare office where there are long lines daily, affecting the ability of local residents, including a veteran, to receive benefits. Haitians themselves confess they’re being provided up to $500 in government aid in a single month. This despite not being citizens and who knows what their immigration status actually is?

Bottom line: pets may be being eaten, but it’s among the lesser of the concerns. The real issue is quite simple: there are too many of them, Springfield isn’t big enough, and they’re stressing the resources of the city, as well as the kindness of locals.

Here’s an anonymous account from someone claiming to be a Springfield local. You should always regard such accounts with skepticism, but it’s still worth reading:

Source

Based on what Tyler Oliveira discovered on the ground, do you think this anonymous account is inaccurate? You be the judge.

“He Was Shot Over $2.90!” No, He Wasn’t.

Another YouTube channel I recommend you subscribe in “Cash Jordan.” He discusses the public response to the police shooting of Derrell Mickles, an unfortunate incident where two innocent bystanders were caught in the crossfire, with one apparently suffering brain injury after being struck in the head.

Mickles was being pursued by police after jumping a turnstile to avoid paying the fare to ride the New York City Subway. He then drew a knife which, contrary to Mickles’ supporters, was clearly visible to officers as evidenced by the body camera footage, and shouted threats at the officers. After minutes of de-escalation failed, officers responded to what they perceived as an immediate threat with gunfire, which again, struck bystanders along with Mickles (who survived).

I’m not going to go into too much depth over the incident, but I want to address the common narrative heard in response to it, which is that the suspect was “shot over $2.90.” In other words, he was shot over nothing. Obviously, that’s a dishonest statement, but for the sake of argument, let’s accept it. For the sake of argument, let’s say that pursuing and shooting someone over $2.90 is both immoral and imprudent.

The problem with that argument is that fare-evaders, like most criminals, aren’t otherwise law-abiding citizens who just had a bad day and decided to break the law in that moment to get even with the world. Most fare-evaders do so as a matter of habit. Even if this were the first time he jumped the turnstile, people who commit supposedly small crimes commit other small crimes.

Point being, the total dollar amount of the crimes this guy committed is far in excess of $2.90. Sure, the cops didn’t know that, but it’s not up to them to decide not to pursue someone because it’s “only” $2.90. They wouldn’t be doing their jobs, then. For the rest of us, if we’re not going to be outraged over him evading a $2.90 fare, then we should be outraged over all the other crimes he committed and the total amount of losses incurred as a result of his lifestyle. Even if this was the first crime he ever committed, stopping him the first time prevents greater losses down the road. It’s what they once called the “Broken Windows” theory of law enforcement.

The catch is, you have to be understand the importance of law and order to begin with. It’s pretty clear at this point in our history we’ve forgotten.

There’s Always A Death Penalty

The Left’s latest moral panic (which was over with quickly, thankfully) concerned the execution of Marcellus Williams, a Black man accused of the murder of Felicia Gayle, a 42-year-old White woman and reporter for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I’m not going to get into the case into too much depth, but I want to share some thoughts regarding the death penalty.

As in the case of Derrell Mickles, the toll society paid for Williams’ existence goes well beyond the murder of Gayle. That one crime is enough that Williams ought to pay for it with his life, but my point is that even if there existed reasonable doubt for Williams’ innocence, he’d left a trail of destruction a country mile long that he didn’t need to murder Gayle for his permanent removal from society to be warranted.

Look at his criminal history:

Williams has a robust criminal history, including 15 felony convictions in addition to offenses related to Ms. Gayle's murder:  robbery (2), armed criminal action (2), assault (2), burglary (4), stealing (3), stealing a motor vehicle, and unlawful use of a weapon, which is all consistent with entering the home, attacking Ms. Gayle, and taking her items.

There exist moral hazards related to executing a man for past crimes versus for the one really bad crime he may not have committed. But ask yourself: how many crimes did he commit before committing the totally unforgivable offense of murdering an innocent woman? At what point should Williams have been put down for good to prevent any future crimes, to save Felicia Gayle’s life? I suppose there’s no good answer, but our inability to arrive at an answer is costing the lives of innocents.

There’s a saying by the historian Will Durant: The great problem of any civilization is how to rejuvenate itself without rebarbarization. You could extend that to mean that civilization can only be established by first getting rid of as many problematic individuals as possible. Civilization is always fragile, but even more so in its infancy. Order and safety aren’t givens. To get to where we are today, where people follow the rules just because, many murderers, thieves, and other miscreants, even those who committed what many of us today would consider “victimless” crimes, were eliminated, their bloodlines terminated. Literally.

Order and safety aren’t paid for with tax dollars. They’re paid for with blood. It doesn’t matter how much money we pay if the people charged with protecting us aren’t willing to stop the Marcellus Williamses of the world before they really take a toll. As someone once said, there’s always a death penalty, it’s a question of who’s the one being penalized.

Many came to the defense of Williams, claiming him to be the victim of an injustice. I have to wonder if the real reason why they rushed to his defense wasn’t because he was innocent, but if he was, in fact, guilty as sin.

How Do We Keep Living Like This?

The YouTube channel “MN Crime,” which chronicles emergency incidents throughout the state of Minnesota, recently featured a fatal vehicle collision that occurred on April 4, 2021. The incident is worth exploring on a number of levels, specifically with respect to what it says about race along with law and order in America.

The video is almost an hour long, but if you watch nothing else, watch the part beginning at 8:56, timestamped by the account so you can see how the driver at fault, Camille Lashay Dennis-Bond, conducted herself in the wake of the collision [WARNING: LOTS OF YELLING].

She can be heard wishing death upon the two people she isn’t aware have been killed by her driving. The video also reveals Dennis-Bond, along with younger brother Leon Bond III, have a history of reckless driving and violence. Bond III was in fact on probation at the time of the incident, a fact which will play a significant role in the outcome of the case.

Watching it all play out, I’m amazed a society like ours exists. On paper, it seems improbable. She seems to have White friends, yet her first defense is that the people she killed, who were White, were racist. Race relations in America aren’t just dysfunctional, they’re downright abusive in nature. Guess who’s the abuser?

Convicted on all six charges, Dennis-Bond was sentenced to 15 years in prison. However, thanks to the possibility of parole, there’s a good chance she may be out of prison by 2032, meaning she’ll serve only nine years of that sentence. 2032 is a long time from now, but it’s also not. It’s two election cycles from now. Dennis-Bond was hardly an upstanding citizen when she killed two people. What do you think she’s going to do with her life when she gets out?

Despite being found guilty on two counts of third-degree murder, Bond III was sent to a rehabilitation center instead of prison because he was charged as a juvenile, not as an adult. According to the report’s findings, in most cases, someone only 80 days short of 18 charged with crimes of such severity would be tried as an adult. In the end, neither he nor his older sister will spend even a decade behind bars between the two of them.

The mother of one of the victims was interviewed in the video. She expresses dismay at the injustice the system inflicted and what she describes as “the level of entitlement” of the Bond family. Still, the mother chose to be magnanimous and wished her son’s killers would be rehabilitated. She even claimed they were willing to plead for a less severe punishment on their behalf, had they expressed remorse and begged for forgiveness.

You know what I think about this. We can take the high road all we’d like, but that only works with people who see you as part of the same collective and share your values. It doesn’t work with someone who’s predisposed to view you as an oppressor, who absolutely don’t think your life matters. The family of the other victim had to essentially defend them from charges of racism, when in a sane world, Dennis-Bond would’ve been the one forced to defend herself for issuing false accusations. At some point, Americans, Whites included, need to be willing to demand justice ferociously and unapologetically, and treat these incidents like literal crimes against humanity, the same way Blacks would treat these cases had the races been reversed.

The hardest part about watching this video was watching the mother explain how she worked through the system to find justice that was ultimately not forthcoming and that she still wants to see something good come from her loss. As much as I feel for her personally, I’m just not sympathetic to this viewpoint anymore, sorry as I am to say. The system isn’t broken; it did exactly what it was supposed to do, which is to deliver justice not on behalf of victims, but of criminals who were presumably done wrong by society, especially Black criminals. This is anarcho-tyranny and if the outcome doesn’t make any sense, it’s because that was what was supposed to happen in the first place.

The biggest realization Americans must come to is that one side wants justice, while the other side seeks total victory. One side wants to live in peace, the other side is waging war. Guess who’s who? And, most important, guess who’s going to win?

Confronting Savagery Is No Joke

An incident in Barcelona, Spain involving a migrant sparked outrage worldwide:

Source

The assailant, a 31-year-old migrant from Ecuador with a criminal past, was arrested, but many thought he deserved a lot more than that. I can’t blame them, but at some point, the outrage needs to subside and we need to look at the situation more soberly. It’s not a popular position to take, as Brian Sauvé notes, who ruffled many feathers:

Maybe unpopular opinion: If you can withdraw in situations like this, do so.

Your first job as a man is to get your wife and baby out of there, not to get a feel-good punch in.

You don’t know if someone has a knife or worse, and you’re tactically limited by your wife/child.

This triggered a lot of angry responses, but is he really wrong? First, this is an older man and the attacker is a younger man. Physical limitations need to be considered. Second, he has a wife and a child to worry about. I’m not sure how he was supposed to go on the attack with his hands full. Nobody wants to say it, but under these circumstances, withdrawal may actually be the better option.

The reality is, none of us are as tough as we like to think we are. Physical realities of the moment ultimately determine what actions we take. It simply isn’t realistic to expect this middle-aged man to do anything other than what he did, which was scoop the baby up in his arms and back away. All this talk about beating someone “until every bone in both my hands were shattered” is therapeutic, unlikely to be what any of us actually do in that situation.

The fact is, the attacker seen above is a savage. Imagine going up against a wild animal - it’s really the same thing. He’s someone who’ll kill you and your family without a second thought, and he’s willing to take tremendous damage in the process of doing so. Are you truly prepared to meet that level of violence? Are you physically capable of confronting someone like that?

There are times we may need to slay monsters. Just remember: you may need to spill your own blood in the process.

Weak Men Get You Killed

Excuse my language, but what exactly in the holy fucking hell is this???

Source

Three thoughts. First, someone who wants to stab you, will. A towel isn’t going to do anything, not against a sharp object. Notice the knifeman in this scenario is just holding it out and not actually trying to stab her victim. The unrealism of this scenario would be laughable if not for the fact there are people who actually believe this will save them in a real-life violent encounter.

Second, the best defense against a knife attack is distance. This is common sense. A knife’s lethal envelope is within arm’s reach. This envelope can be increased if the knife is thrown, yet another reason you want to get as far away from a knife as possible. At the distance depicted in the demonstration, there’s really nothing that’s going to save you from getting stabbed, absent outside intervention.

Third, Dr. Jordan Peterson once said, “If you think strong men are dangerous, wait until you see what weak men are capable of.” What this implies is that strong men may be capable of killing with their bare hands, but weak men will get you killed without even laying a finger on you. They compensate for their harmlessness by doing and saying things that put the lives others at risk. They seek to disarm others in the name of safety, only to render us all defenseless in the face of savages like the migrant who struck the baby in Barcelona. Or, they teach us “self-defense” techniques like the one seen in the video above, which will only increase risk to ourselves, in turn increasing the likelihood of being killed.

Any given society has its fair share of dangerous people. Only a dangerous person can ultimately confront another dangerous person effectively, however. When the weak are put in charge, their aversion to strength will lower everyone’s defenses, along with resorting to stupidity that puts us all at risk. We put the weak in charge because we indulge in the fantasy of a better way, but fantasies all have one thing in common: they’re not real.

Demographics: It’s Why Nothing Ever Happens

We’ll close with the newest video from YouTuber “KaiserBauch.” I can’t say enough good things about his work. If you haven’t subscribed yet, do so immediately. I’ll never tire of recommending him; he’s worth your time.

He discusses the role demographics play in the outbreak of civil wars and revolutions:

This video merits its own essay, which I may or may not write up. For now, I’ll summarize KaiserBauch’s argument: for a country to have a civil war or revolution, it needs to have a large population of young men. The median age of a country that experiences an internal conflict is between 20 to 30 years old. He mentions studies showing that countries where 55 percent of the population is over the age of 30 experience no internal conflict. The U.S., as of 2023, has 55.5 percent of its population at age 30 and over. More on that in a bit.

These findings have an array of implications, not just concerning civil war/revolution. For example, why did crime in America rise so dramatically beginning in the 1960s, then fall so dramatically beginning in the 1990s? There’s never one reason, but if we start with the premise that crime is a young man’s game, consider: in 1970, the median age in the U.S. was around 28 years, with the largest age group being 5-to-19-year olds. The crime rate in the country peaked around the late 1980s into the early 1990s. Do the math and figure out how old 1970s 5-to-19-year-olds were by this time.

When crime fell to historic lows in 2014, the median age was 37, almost a full decade older than 1970, along with a more balanced age structure. Today, the median age is close to 40. Yes, crime has gone up by a lot since 2014 and disorder is becoming a serious problem, but crime rates are still much lower than they were 30 years ago. If we accept that mostly young males commit crime and that they comprise a smaller proportion of the population today than they did 30 to 50 years ago, isn’t it less of a mystery why crime rates have fallen as much as they have?

Again, age isn’t the only reason, but without young males, you’re just not going to have lots of violence. It also means that nobody can really pat themselves on the backs for reducing the crime rate. As I’ve often described it, crime waves are like wildfires, often driven by demographics. They have to be contained and allowed to burn out.

What do demographics say about the likelihood of civil war/revolution in the U.S.? Does it change my mind? Not really. Demographics aren’t the only game in town. Historical cycles are in the mix, too. The Fourth Turning, which is a genuine historical phenomenon, is happening as we speak and says America will find a way to end up in a major war that’ll cost the lives of thousands. I assure you that I don’t say so flippantly; I say so because the historical record shows it happens every time like clockwork.

However, you can’t totally dismiss demographic realities, either. Prior Fourth Turnings, including World War II, happened during a time of younger populations with disproportionately large numbers of young males. As KaiserBauch says, today’s life expectancy is higher than ever before, populations much older than ever before, with large numbers of people alive today who would’ve been dead or near death as recently as a century ago. If not a single country today with 55% of the population aged 30 or older is experiencing an internal conflict - and the U.S. is in that group - just how reasonable is it to expect a war, within the next 10 years, no less?

I think what we saw in Britain, which has a similar demographic structure to America, over the summer proves that no country is immune from unrest or the risk of internal warfare. Same goes for what we saw in 2020. The Anglosphere as a whole is older than much of the world, but younger than much of the developed world. It still has a large number of young men, even if not disproportionately so. So, while the likelihood of civil war in a country like Germany is low, it’s much likelier in a place like America, Britain, or even France. It’s just a question of how bad it’s going to get if it happens.

Even a low-intensity conflict like The Troubles of Northern Ireland sparked off when the median age of the population was in the 20s, fading when birth rates declined almost 30 years later. So even a relatively small-scale armed conflict requires a surplus of young men. Without it, we can definitely rule out a higher-intensity conflict like the Spanish Civil War. The likelihood of something like The Troubles is also greatly diminished. So, why am I still worried?

Again, because of what we’ve already seen. No society is exempt from war. There’s tremendous anger in this country and that anger needs a release. Right now, we have plenty of escapes, thanks to our economy. But when the next economic crisis hits, what happens then? I just find it very difficult to believe with this level of anger, this level of division, and this many people out there that there won’t be some kind of outburst of major violence, especially when we have a proven historical model that says that’s exactly what’s coming up the road.

I think the next civil war, or what I’m calling the “Great American Internal Conflict,” will be marked by cycles of heavy unrest and rampant disorder more than sustained violence. There will be incidents that result in greater bloodshed than others, but demographic realities will put a cap on how prolonged and widespread the violence gets. There’s just not enough young males to keep anything going for too long and people value order over chaos. The older population might tolerate some instability for a while just to get some anger out of their system, but eventually, they’ll demand a restoration of relative tranquility. After all, if it gets too out of control, they’ll be defenseless. I don’t care how many guns are in their hands; nothing beats the fury of thousands of young men.

A lack of young males also makes it unlikely the U.S. will wage a war requiring mass mobilization. Both Ukraine and Russia were demographically in poor shape before the war, with a dearth of young men. I suppose the U.S. could force the issue if it wanted to like Ukraine and Russia did, since it’s still in better condition, but it’d cause itself a big problem in the long run, depending on the number of casualties. I know technology has mitigated the necessity of large amounts of warm bodies, but again, as the war in Ukraine and now the Middle East show, there’s always going to be a need for troops, especially in a high-intensity conflict.

One thing’s for sure: we’re going to see some kind of armed conflict in this country. There’s just no other way forward, there’s no political solution to any of our problems. But we’re also in uncharted territory. How will the Fourth Turning unfold in a time of older populations and declining birth rates? What does a war or revolution look like under such circumstances? There’s no historical precedent for this. If there exists one, I’d love to hear about it.

It’s pay-walled, but

Rod Dreher

was kind enough to share this excerpt from an interview the Financial Times did recently with Michel Houellebecq, one of the most prophetic thinkers of our time:

Is he still predicting civil war? Houellebecq takes time to think. “No. There will be lots of violence but not between Muslims and non-Muslims,” he says. “Until recently all the immigrants coming to France were from the same two regions, north and west Africa. Now they come from all sorts of places, Pakistan, Chechnya, Somalia and other countries.” Some are Christian. “They bring their conflicts here . . . There are ethnic wars in France to control drug trafficking,” he says, echoing a common trope in French media. “Some end in submachine gun fire.” He pauses. “Well, it could be worse. In France, it’s still relatively difficult to get a submachine gun.”

Of course, I think there will be civil war. But I also think Houellebecq is right in that it won’t be between natives and invaders, Whites versus non-Whites, First World versus Third World. Things are a lot more intersectional than that. Speaking of the U.S. specifically, it’s a political divide, and the real problem has long been those we call our “fellow Americans.” What demographic change does, the real threat it poses, is the introduction of large numbers of young males into a society who’ll compete for jobs and social dominance in times of peace, then turn into hostile combatants in times of war. This is the underlying concern over the influx of so many fighting-age males over our southern border.

One last anecdote and then we’ll close it out: In the latest episode of the Ready Your Future Podcast, host Todd Sepulveda interviewed a homesteader of 20 years. She explained what happened once when they had a surplus of male ducks in their livestock pool: conflict erupted. The males fought each other constantly, the females received tremendous amounts of undue attention. At one point, one of the males was fixing to kill the others. How was the situation resolved?

A stronger, more powerful force intervened. The woman and her family culled the surplus of male ducks. It sounds barbaric, but the alternative would’ve been to watch the ducks kill each other and the ecosystem fall into disarray. They did the same to a rooster who became violent - they turned him into chicken soup. There’s a lesson in that story; I’ll let you figure out what it is.

There’s a reason why some of the most important thinkers of our time - Neil Howe, Peter Zeihan, Rudyard “Whatifalthist” Lynch, and we’ll throw KaiserBauch into that group - are either demographers or focus a lot of their attention on demographics. There’s an old saying about war: Amateurs study tactics, professionals study logistics. You could put a spin on it and say instead: Amateurs study politics, professionals study demographics.

A Light Still Shines

Let’s end on some good news. Remember this story from Houston? I wrote about it at the beginning of 2023:

Source

Read my essay if you want a background on the incident. I’m happy to leave it right here. It’s nice to see justice prevails, if only once in a while.

What are your thoughts on any of the topics covered here? Consider this an open forum as well; feel free to bring any topics of interest of your own to the table, anything you believe relevant to the growing discord in America or preparedness.

Max Remington writes about armed conflict and prepping. Follow him on Twitter at @AgentMax90.

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