I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Making predictions is difficult. Particularly about the future.
Of course, it sort of is my stock in trade as a science fiction writer. Kind of. Almost. Sideways, if you look at it with an eye half closed, so it doesn't bite you (which is what you should do to 2024, btw. After the last four years? I ain't trust it an inch.)
I mean, unless you assume G-d or whatever it is you, personally, calls whoever keeps this thing cranking (no, please. Spare me. Logic has very little to do with this. Narrativium does. Roll with it) runs on whimsy. Heinlein might have thought so, so you're in good company, though the truth is all believers see G-d in our image and semblance, only larger and more perfect, so writers tend to believe Himself is an author. Pratchett, Heinlein and myself might be biased.
If in fact that's the truth, then the predictions we make might come true, because let's face it, we don't do them for accuracy, but for the rule of cool. Take the world of Darkships (please? I mean, I'll borrow it back, hopefully, a couple of times this year for sequels, one which will bring Thena and Kit to their upright and locked position and leave them alone till we mess with their kids, and another to do Fuse's story, because it must be done) when I was doing actual projections for that future history, it got dark. Very, very dark. And then I added in anti-grav brooms, and a USAian cult, and.... Because rule of cool and I aim to entertain, not predict exactly. (And at 500 plus years in the future, it allows for a couple of impossible breakthroughs based on the edges of what we don't know yet.)
So while it is my job to do predictions and extrapolations, I'm not exactly in the business of near future, really close, or particularly accurate.
OTOH last night all the amateurs were out in force making their predictions, and more importantly, I got a very strong sense that the herd was being stampeded.
[As an aside, here: To the high and mighty "lords" in DC, pay heed: you've done many, many stupid things in your misbegotten official existence. But probably the stupidest of all was to bring to bear on America the techniques you used abroad to "shape opinion" and "create movements." and whatever the heck else you thought you were doing. This is eating-rocks stupid for two reasons.
First, I don't know what you thought you were doing abroad, precisely, but we all know your gathering of information and intelligence THERE was laughable enough that I'd think you'd still be in the lavatory washing that egg from your face when the USSR fell without your having any inkling this was even possible. You should at least have a vast cleansing top to bottom with a scouring brush and sworn off hiring bien pensants from the ivies who know the theory of everything and the reality of nothing. You didn't. You're morons studying to be incompetents. You never really shaped politics abroad, which you'd know if you were even sentient life forms. Your money did -- to an extent -- but it was all astro-turf. Leading to the debacles in every American war since WWII, when you had a say in it.
Second- You're trying to do it in America, quite unaware of how different we are IN THE HEAD from every other nation on Earth. It ain't gonna work. If shaping the politics and thoughts of the rest of the world evaded you, you ain't gonna manage us. You delicate hot house flowers just don't get us anyway. You'd have a better chance at the French, and you fail there too.
As grandma would say, there is not enough toilet paper for how bad you're about to shit yourselves. You might as well wipe your hands to the wall.]
Not that I think they're going to manage to stampede us (see parenthetical above, and excuse the ADD. Went to bed late.) BUT they do manage to depress those of you who are depressives. And no one needs that on top of whatever crazy shenanigans they'll pull this year. (And they will.) More importantly, I don't want you -- or me -- on edge, and miscalculating because of all the doom-panicking that has infested political not-left blogs. (A part of me really would like political not-left blogs to figure out how many of their contributors are operatives. Ah well, probably a lot, at the rates they pay. People need other income.)
First the general impression: you see that bridge above, shrouded in fog? (The photographer, btw, João Cabral, does magnificent pics of the city where I went to college. I can't afford his work, of course, but I found that he had a bunch of the early ones in Pexels, including the one above.) It was built by Eiffel, of tower fame, and it is very pretty. One of the levels is for trains, the other for traffic, with pedestrian sidewalks on either side. And by the time I was going to college in town it had become unsafe. Heck, it had been unsafe for fifty years. But of course, it was still used. (I just tried to remember if it's still being used. I can't, because my last few visits were very brief, and the last one a whirlwind showing new DIL and her family around, so things escaped me. But I do know the bridge has been replaced, and I have a vague idea it is now only pedestrian. Maybe? And that maybe considerable shoring up work has been done?) The only way South from Porto, by train, was to cross that bridge.
Now I don't know how much what we'd been told/drank with our mother's milk was true, but I know all locals believed that one day the beautiful bridge, with all its intricate iron pieces and the train on it would go down into the shallow, rocky, turbulent river. And no one could survive that fall. And those who, by a miracle, did would surely drown because the Douro is an unforgiving river.
So when you were on a train crossing that bridge you could tell the locals from the tourists, because the minute you started in on the bridge every local shut up, held his breath, didn't move, lest the vibration of his speech were the final cap on the bridge's instability that made it collapse.
I feel the year ahead kind of like that moment. We're entering it, and very bad things could happen. And we're on this train, and each of us, individually, has very little control over what happens. And there's fog ahead, to boot. But--
But you must remember that bridge never fell and still stands.
Anyway, after that long and weird preamble, (again, I remind you, ladies, gentlemen and dragons, that I am ADD AF) sit down, pour yourself a cup of coffee, and let's start the:
2024 in Preview
Elections
First of all, as we all know as, with a heavy heart, we put away the noisemakers and funny hats, and drain the bottles of the last champagne, it is now, for our sins (A second flood, a simple famine Plagues of locusts everywhere Or a cataclysmic earthquake I'd accept with some despair But, no, you sent us Congress. Election Season Good God, sir, was that fair?)
So, how does that turn out.
Effed if I know! No, seriously. Effed if I know. Or anyone else knows.
I love the eternal optimists, or maybe fantasists argle bargling that neither Biden nor Trump will be candidates, or that at least one of them won't be. Kind sirs, I remember 2016. Kindly take a powder. Trump was baked into the cake from the moment the election was blatantly stolen in 2020 (no? Bite me. You're funny, you are.) Because the American people hate injustice. And also because he has unbeatable name recognition. Biden? Ah, that. Well, the puppet is being run by a powerful cartel of some sort, and my guess is between money paid, and money received and bodies (many) buried around the world everyone is afraid to replace the walking corpse. (Hopefully not literal, though I had thoughts about RBG. And we do know that young blood can keep the very old alive a long time.... And China.... Well, any big shipments from over there?)
So, it's Trump and Biden, and if this were an election as such, I'd say Trump wins it walking away, or even standing still, mostly because of the evils the walking corpse is inflicting on us.
But this is not an election as such. This is a whole bunch of fraud, with nominal "votes" which are controlled, diluted and skewed by the madlads in DC who, on top of all are also looking for a way to keep those who'd rather not know for sure, from believing it's fraud.
Normally I would say Trump had not a chance. If the measure of fraud I got by looking at the incoming numbers in 2020 and the -- much smoother -- 2022, there is not a hope on Earth or Heaven.
But then.... Hey, guys? What happens when the people you trust to fraud you into power are so disgusted with you that they either don't do the thing, or do it in the other direction? And is that a possibility? Gut says yes. Gut says very yes. Because these clowns are .... well, special. And they're managing to remove their masks so fast that even those with strong stomachs and corrupt hearts are vomiting. And this type of betrayal from within has happened before. (And I have suspicions about Argentina, because if you think they're clean!)
So, I'd give it 50/50 chance, and at any rate think we should vote in numbers, if nothing else because they'll know how much they have to fraud, and we want them scared.
Also a note, will Trump, if he wins, have learned his lesson, and borrow Xavier Milei's chainsaw? [Rubs hand down face.] Gods and little fishies, guys, I wish I could tell you he would. The problem is the man we're dealing with is, in his own terms, a Paladin. And what he's a Paladin to seems to be some idea of normalcy and order probably from his childhood. He should by now have a measure of the swamp and some idea of how to drain it. But.... Hey, we can hope, right.
At any rate, the one thing I can tell you is that it will be nothing like what the left is predicting. Mostly because what they're predicting is what they'll try to do if they fraud the corpse in again. Only it won't work, because they have the mierdas touch, and that's when you have to hold on really tight, because this whole thing goes on a roller coaster.
All is lost
All is not lost. Because if all were lost they wouldn't be spending so much time trying to black pill you. I'll go into some topics I keep seeing as "abandon ship" below, but right now, up here: no one spends that much effort convincing others they've already lost, unless the others not only have a chance, but have a good chance.
The appropriate response to the horde of black-pillers is the one (apparently apocryphal) given the Russian Warship: Russian Warship, go fuck yourself. Or if you prefer the one Elon Musk (a man not our friend, but definitely an enemy of our enemies) gave "Fuck you." Because that's the only response free men and women should give to those attempting psy-ops on us.
Immigration
I am not happy about the erasure of our borders. I don't think any sane American is.
But the important thing to realize is that what our enemies are trying to achieve with this is not only unlikely to come through, it's bloody fracking impossible.
First I'd like to counter two pieces of nonsense, one from the doomist right, and one from the ignorant left, and then I'll explain why what they want is impossible, and while it's going to be difficult to right the ship it's not a fatal wound.
So, starting with the ignorant left: Yesterday on FB I think someone tried to be sarcastic at me on the idea we could close the borders and bring in only those people who had money or a profession or something else the country NEEDS. I.e. immigration for the benefit of the country. I think we can ignore her knowledge of history because when I said Australia for instance does that, she seemed to think Australia was STILL a penal colony. But moving right along: every country in the world used to do that. Until Merkel opened the borders of the EU (and we've seen how that has gone, yes?) that was normal. Including in the US for legal immigration. You get a health report, and you show your education and that you're likely to be able to make a living. AND more often than not, you have to deposit money to prove you have something for the lean times. Or have a sponsor.
This is not unobtanium of "racist" policies. It's what immigration policies across the world have been FOREVER. And that's for reasons. Like sanity.
The nonsense from the doomist right, I encountered yesterday at American Greatness, which other than their never Trumpist reflexes is normally better than that, so this is an odd kick in their gallop, and I expect will be all over today. And that is that we have taken more illegal immigrants in this year than we have had births.
Um... okay. That's cute trivia, but I fail to see what in the bowels of hell that has to do with the price of codfish. Newborns aren't men of military age (usually. I mean, have you seen any dragon's teeth?) which are the bulk of the immigrants. And this bulk of immigrants does seem to be male, so you can't even flop around like a fish and say they're changing our demographics forever. If they were child-bearing age women, sure, but really? Unless you're a leftist, you should be aware men don't give birth. Worst case scenario, we have a large (kind of. The birth rate is in the crapper) number of males that create their own demographic in the US and probably raise our crime rate for a while. And that's worst case scenario, and therefore not the most likely.
And this is what I mean by doomist and trying to stampede us. The same article added the helpful "terrifying" fact that half of young adult Americans have a parent born abroad. This is me holding my middle fingers aloft. BEHOLD, I have a matched set. If you think the children of say the Clintons or the Obamas are more patriotic than my kids or the about 2/3 of their circles with an immigrant parent, I invite you to admire my digiti medii impudici. (or also Russian Warship, go fuck yourself.)
But Sarah, the numbers. The left is trying to orchestrate an invasion. They are trying to destroy us via replacement.
Yes, they are. Racial replacement, but more importantly, replacement of those who are, want to be, or have become (by dint of great and concentrated effort) Americans. They might hate whites (it's complicated, starting with "what is white" which you'll find out for them is mostly German or Norse and continuing with the fact that they don't so much hate them, they just believe "other races" are naturally more submissive (which is wrong on various counts, but then they ARE horribly racist, and mostly very white)) but there is nothing to the red-hot hatred they have for the free and the brave of this land.
However, the thing to remember about the left is that they have rats in their heads. BIG hairy rats, dropping shit everywhere. Which influences all their thinking.
So, number one, you don't do population replacement by importing males. I've noticed here the same thing I noticed years ago in British entertainment, where every couple on TV is not bi-racial and usually the male is darker. I think the left has sort of realized their original plan won't work and their new plan is to talk every American chick into marrying a darker-skinned male. Eh. That will be fun. Those poor men, by and large. There is a reason so many geeks in the nineties went to find women abroad. Anyway-- Moving right along.
Most of the people coming in are male. And at this point most of them are not from South America, but from Asia and Africa. If you look up "Planes Trains and Automobiles" on this blog, you'll see this is likely being financed by one of the many, many communist fronts around, not to mention likely by the CIA, (because they're idiots.)
Their primary purpose if population replacement, and I wish they had paid more attention in sex ed. Or do they no longer teach mere reproduction? Because they've lost their bloody minds. Sure. Over time. "Family reunification." If we were in the sixties or seventies. Which we ain't, and they don't have that kind of time.
Second, the reason they want population replacement is become of the Gramscian retconing of the gospel of Marx according to stupidity. Since the proletarian refused to rise up, and in fact, got jobs, saved money and started investing, Gramsci reeinvented Marx with the helpful idea that it was "minorities" however defined (and as some friends said last week, Latins are Schrodinger's minority) that were naturally communist and would usher in the worker's dark skinned paradise. All of which is crazy cakes, but flew really well over here, because most Americans, including (or particularly) those who have gone to the third world with various NGOs have no bloody idea how people abroad live, or why other countries are so poor and have been fed Marxist pap about how they're poor because we stole their "resources" (look, dudes, we have all the nail pairings and metal filings we need. Thanks.) Most Europeans for that matter, shell shocked after WWII were willing to buy this version of history and believe they were the villains, because some of them don't tan really well, but really because the American Eve had fed them the capitalist apple. Shrug.
None of which disguises the fact that Gramsci was a genius at stupidity, with more ability in that area than even Marx. Because none of that bunch of idiocy is true. Traditional third world countries are dysfunctional because of their culture, but their culture has bloody nothing to do with the angry inkblot's theories. And more important, and of great interest to us at this point: the "minorities" are not natural allies in the fight against "whiteness."
The left has had a few glimpses of this already, but they keep covering their ears and going lalalalala.
Asians are possibly the most racist people in the world (in aggregate. I'm not insulting any of you who happen to be Asian, particularly if you're American. I mean, Asian CULTURES are incredibly racist) and against everyone, including other Asians. Africans.... Oh, dear Lord. Africa's tragedy is being a land of tribes. (Don't say anything about "African culture" when I'm drinking, please. Because shooting liquid out of my nose with force hurts.) And every tribe is racist against every other tribe, and a good number of European nationalities. (Those nationalities vary depending on the tribe, location and colonial past. And no, they don't hate all colonizers. That's crazy cakes Marxist bullshit. Real humans are more complicated. Some tribes think well of Germans, some of English, some of French and some of Portuguese. There's a good chance no one thinks well of the Belgians, a lesson that the EU should have heeded.) They will tend to look down on every other nationality and race other than the select one. Latins/Hispanics.... Ah, Madre de Dios. We're not only the Schrodinger minority, we are most of us fairly nuts culturally, and the culture isn't even by country, but by region, and it kind of depends when and where the colonies were colonized, same as with Africa for what resonates with what.
(Before you dispute the "we"-- last night again with a cute video on how Latins celebrate New Year, it was brought to me that yes, Portugal is a Latin culture. Which makes perfect sense, since in the US it's mostly attributed by surname, and if you think Marquez is Latin/Hispanic and Marques isn't we need to have a talk about cultures not being JUST spelling -- Latin/Hispanic, as your census form explains is not a race, but a culture. And Portugal as a CULTURE is -- I'm sorry, and I know my parents will be calling as soon as someone translates this for them -- part of the whole mess. Brazil is slightly less so, due to a lot of German and Italian immigrants, but yeah, it still is.)
Look, just growing up? The people from the next village over were foreigners, and also probably heathens. This is somewhat mitigated by TV now, which creates a sense of unified culture, and highways which facilitate the mixing of genes, but still, the North of Portugal is ... um.... a little quieter, due to British influence from way back. And we didn't trust them Southerners. (If you imagine the US flipped culturally, it will all make sense. Yes, yes, the Northerners are rednecks. Guilty as charged.) The rest... Portuguese look broadly down on Spaniards (no, really, trust me) and the rest of the Portuguese/Spanish speaking world. Broadly they like Africans better than they like South Americans, though perhaps they think Brazil is a little more tolerable than the rest. Crazy, but tolerable. And that goes for every single nationality flying under "Latin." Argentinians and Brazilians tolerate each other a little better than the rest of the Latin world. I'm not sure of the other finer divisions, but I know the Mexicans look down on practically everyone else. And no, they don't like those with darker skin than theirs, and are more likely to identify with blond, blue-eyed Caucasians.
So, so much for the left's hope of creating a coalition of everyone against the "whites" and being the only "whites" left and therefore the master race. In their racist dreams, this works. In reality, if by importing all those military aged males, they expect a cohesive force who will fight for them.... Well. It's going to go in interesting ways but not, in fact, as they expect.
"But Sarah, Welfare! They'll keep each minority isolated and one against all." Um... some of them might think of that, though it ignores two things: Males don't give birth. And, oh yeah, the cupboard is bare, so the poor dog gets none.
I.e. what they're doing is going to crash the already unsustainable welfare system. They don't understand this because they think money is a construct and worth what they say it is, instead of a symbolic unit of value worth what you can buy with it. (Still a construct, yes, but different.) Which just means they crash the system even faster with their clever fool tricks.
The other thing they're ignoring: These are not your grandfather's immigrants, legal or otherwise. Oh, I don't mean they're not refugees. You know that. And yeah, some of the earlier waves, even under Obama came here to work and prosper (the problem being we can't "normalize" their situation, without inviting further invasion. So I'd advise them to go back, wait for sanity, and try again.) The current wave is being enticed and transported over mostly for either illegal purposes (a lot of them) or to receive free education, health, and welfare, which to them, in their country's terms, is .... a fortune. BUT and more importantly, they are not your grandfather's immigrants in the sense that the world got so rich, more or less all over, in the last 40 years, that these people certainly didn't come here to endure hardships. Their standard for "good living" is lower than most Americans (but so was it here and in Europe in the seventies.) But it is not low enough that they want to be living on the street, or in tents in the middle of nowhere forever, which seems to be what this whole mess is defaulting to. In fact I've already read more than one interview with Venezuelans (of all people) saying that if they're going to be accommodated here at the same level or below that of Venezuela, they'll go back where they have family and connections. (My guess is that's the impetus for more Africans. Harder for the poor buggers to go back. But this is a thing I'm willing to pay taxes for.)
You guys don't know, because you're not immigrants, but the vision of America in most foreign heads is of a land of ease and plenty, where you don't have to lift a finger to be well fed, and have money to send home too.
This is true to an extent, by comparison, but not true in absolute. I knew this because I'd been an exchange student here. Most people don't. And add in that you have to work d*mn hard to acculturate to even understand the direction of "getting ahead" and you'll find that as the spigots of welfare dry up (all the faster the wider they're opened) people will very much want to go home. Or back. Or something. Because they're not constructs of perfect proletariat who tans, but human beings, with hopes, dreams and ambitions.
While on that, Obrador, you piece of communist shit, you are a prize idiot by opening your country to the hordes coming through, and you're about to get what's coming to you with interest. Because when the flow reverses, the people who can't get to their countries any other way, unless America is in a shape to fly them back, are going to head to Mexico first. I hope you and the cartels enjoy eating the mess you created.
But yeah, my prediction is mostly that probably sometime this year the flow starts heading the other way -- if it hasn't started already, and I suspect it has -- devastating everything in its way. Sucks, hard, for the border towns, but well... It was bound to happen.
The Economy
Well, now we're on firmer ground. The economy is F*CKED with a capital F which starts with failure and rhymes with "with a cactus dipped in ghost pepper sauce."
But part of what you have to understand is what parts are dying, and why.
To an extent the current economy is part of the FDR patch on the American system. Yeah, the patch was political, but all the agencies, and "worker protections" (Okay, some go back to Wilson) and general government interference created .... um.... a top-down economy of government-abetted quasi-monopolies.
It never reached full fascist collaboration between government and industry, malgre Obama's attempts. But the innovation, etc. got pushed to the edges and the places the important people thought were unimportant.
Fortunately the great minds of their respective generations are idiots, who don't understand what is likely to upend the economy, which is how we got the internet, and innovation that's upending everything.
So, what is failing is the "blue model" institutions, the top down, centralized, controlled economy. The rest.... well, is scrappy and ready to go. Which means, ladies, gentlemen and small flightless birds, that what we're seeing is not a death, but a birth.
The problem with births is that they are a complete change in state, which involve pain and a lot of blood. The full birth of the industrial revolution caused (among others) the French revolution. We're in the early pangs of this one, and as always I hope it will be as close to bloodless as possible, but don't hold your breath and wait with sandwiches by the phone. Not only is the chance for very, very bad, but it's the overwhelming chance.
However, remember, as always, it will be bad in patches. For other people there will be opportunity and a lot of new things will be made, created, invented. And thus is the future birthed.
If you're one of the Huns, or even one of the more distant "Odds" chances are you're, yes, weird and never fit in very well. But you're also -- the virtues of those vices -- innovative, different, and do not so much think out of the box as you don't know what or where that famed box is. So. Straighten your shoulders and get creative. Work smarter and harder.
And if you're a younger man, or raising one, concentrate on different, innovative, creative ways of making money, and multiple streams of income. This country -- but really the world -- isn't geared for males right now, particularly young ones. They are in many ways making war on them. (Which is why it's stupid to import so many of them, among other reasons it's dumb.) So it's difficult, but man was made to strive. And again, I trust you and your kids to create the future.
BUT it's going to get difficult. No argument on that. And 2024 will get very difficult.
ABROAD
Abroad is not going to save us. It is unlikely to kill us either. It might cause us problems, but they are doing their worst by sending over their military-age males, to be honest. That's the greatest weapon they can deploy right now. (And it won't work.)
Reason being that when America sneezes the rest of the world catches pneumonia.
It takes generations for communist "economics" for China to be dumb enough to try to tank us without understanding they also tank without our consuming a lot of what they produce. They're already paying for it. And the rest of the world... Well. In detail I can't tell you who'll do better, but I can tell you everyone in the developed world is going through the same crash of the "FDR model" that we are. Because they imported it. And it's failing there. Harder and faster. The countries that ditch it fast might survive. BUT it's going to be very difficult.
We're in a mess, but we're relatively better off than all of them. And some of us with family abroad are praying very very hard.
The Unknown Unknowns
So, 2024....
I couldn't have told you the shape that 2020 would take, but I knew they were going to do something utterly stupid, because they were afraid of not having enough fraud to win the elections.
Even I couldn't have predicted the insanity that was 2020, much less the fact that so many people panic-obeyed, including some of you.
So, I can't predict the insanity they'll try now when they're in worse shape than in 2020 public opinion wise.
What I can say is that I will not underestimate them this time.
One thing in our favor is that they have trouble realizing when a tactic is no longer working. So I predict a lot of failed "scary illness! Lock down now". This has been going on for about a year, and keeps eliciting more and more yawns.
BUT at some point they'll realize it's not working. I expect some clever fool trick around April. I think they've been trying to get a nuclear war going for a while, and I'll be honest, I just don't think the resources are there, period. Feel free to imagine there's too much sanity for that, but I suspect it's mostly that other nations' nukes are largely non-functional. I don't actually put past them nuking one of our own cities, but if they do that, they won't like what comes next.
Honestly, having sat at the back of a lot of their meetings and discussions, I expect them to try 10/7 type sh*t over here, largely in big cities, and largely unsuccessful.
To the extent it succeeds, (and let me say I think they're already trying) it will be the end of them. But I don't expect they can see that.
I am nonetheless sure they are going to try next level insanity, and I'm not crazy enough to predict it, so I'm not going to try. Just be prepared for emergencies, and keep your clothes and weapons where you can find them in the dark.
In Summation
If any of you have stayed with me this long: I expect it will be a lot like those train rides. Those in the know are coming into 2024, in the ominous fog and holding our breath.
My gut, weirdly and bizarrely, tells me it will be better than we expect, and there are some miracles in store for us. BUT at the same time those ol' Earthquake* bells which don't exist, are ringing up a storm and there's a sense of mourning and horror ahead.
So, stay ready. And be aware that yes, we're going to loose some people (including perhaps the one writing this, and some reading this), and we're going to lose institutions and ... conveniences we can ill spare. And that will probably accelerate in 2024.
And they're going to throw everything but the kitchen sink at us. It's just their aim sucks, because of the rat feces in their heads.
So be not afraid. In the end we win, they lose. I think 2024 won't be as terrible as we expect, but it's only the beginning of the bridge. And there's the fog.
Hold your breath. Don't talk. But chances are good we get to the other side unscathed.
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