One thing you hear constantly in daily conversation in the US is: "Oh, you just can't plan for anything, it is hard to tell what is going to happen next." This is an attitude and phenomenon that isn't limited to the volatility and capriciousness of the Trump administration either, though certainly the administration is accelerating that tendency. This is something that is occurring on many different levels and scales of daily experience here.
You're having these huge stock market swings that are just not smart, and are not based on the fundamentals. And the ruling class is responding to these swings and basing substantial decisions on these swings.
A lot of people are cynical enough now that they just ignore a lot of news and ephemeral events, and just trust that life is going to get a little worse. Gotta feel for those really plugged-in types though, who have to base their lives on the movement of large sums of money. Watching the good stuff slosh to-and-fro, swirling about the drain.
And then us plebes toiling in the fields, stopping to gaze up vacantly at the death ray as it hits and poofs prominent social supports, arcing its way towards the load-bearing stuff like Social Security.
And Trump with his doomsday tariffs, and you hear all of these reports of shipping just shutting down, and these huge logistics and supply operations profoundly revising their long term plans, and then Trump blinks and whoop, lowers some of the China tariffs and sprinkles in some delays for good measure. But all of those dislocations are still making their way through the system.
I mean, dang, I was rubbing my sore neck the other day and realized that I had suffered whiplash from trying to make sense of any kind of structured set of principles in the West. First they wanted to represent the Holocaust as the supreme evil, and it certainly was evil. And now we're supposed to look the other way as the Gaza genocide continues on? I'm sorry, but our necks don't bend that way that fast.
And what happened to Q Anon? Their whole reason to exist seemed to be based on smashing that secret pedo ring. But now their savior is whole hog for Israel? What do they think Israeli intelligence baits its honey traps with?
Ah anyway. In general, it is getting more difficult to make any kind of long term plan, but long term planning and predictability and stability are exactly what you need to keep this world running.
Eventually you do just have to shrug and get on with your day, and plan for poor planning. Living in California, and now living in Washington, I've been exposed to a fair amount of disaster preparedness literature and messaging. There is that massive subduction zone right off of the coast, that sleeping giant that could wake at any time and send a gigantic earthquake and tsunami our way. And then we live right next to an active volcano.
Picture a colossal earthquake in a region like the Pacific Northwest, that hasn't had a huge quake in centuries, that isn't built out for that sort of thing, which largely runs on hydropower, and is spiderwebbed with a vast network of increasingly fragile bridges, and that's just off the top of my head. The definition of unpredictability there. A switch could be flipped, who knows when, and you're who knows where doing who knows what, and who knows what that we depend on every day is in ruin, altogether at once.
What all of that disaster preparedness literature recommends is just having some basic supplies and planning ready. Having some clean water, some dried goods, some lights and charging stations and shovels and other appropriate tools, a bug-out bag, some blankets and toiletries, a clear meeting area and a clear escape or safe zone, some cash. Having some of that going on doesn't hurt a thing, and you can just live your life as you would, knowing the very basics are there.
