I ain’t gonna lie — these last few weeks have been a grinder. I’ve got a whole lotta irons in the fire, but that’s a mostly good thing and certainly nothing to complain about. It’s not the work load that weighs me down. I tell ye, I smell trouble on the wind. Bad trouble. Check your flints and priming, boys.
I recently posted at Running Iron Report on the National Intelligence Council’s Global Trends report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, A More Contested World. The scenarios spun out in that report ain’t pretty. In fact, they’re downright bleak.
We are well and truly in The Crash, and there is no way the United States — and maybe Western Civilization as a whole — can muster the gumption to weather it and come out stronger as we have previous crises. A culture that valorizes victimhood and seeks status through grievance is not a culture that can take a punch. A culture that no longer trusts its institutions — and whose institutions are proving unworthy of trust — cannot take a punch. A culture fragmenting along the most base lines of identity cannot take a punch…
And we’re going to get punched. Hard. Repeatedly.
I wrote that before the the DarkSide ramsomware attack that shut down Colonial Pipeline, which ships 45 percent of the fuel consumed on the East Coast. This “criminal gang” from Russia has revealed a critical vulnerability in U.S. infrastructure. It’s just that easy to create a major disruption. This is just a probe. A real cyber attack is gonna smash some stuff…
And anybody who believes that this was just the act of a “criminal gang” doesn’t know fat cow from poor bull. There’s no criminal gang of hackers operating in Russia and attacking foreign corporations without at least the tacit blessing of the Cheka, I mean NKVD, I mean the KGB, I mean the FSB…
This right here is low-intensity cyber warfare, with a small but adequate fig leaf of plausible deniability.
*
I’m not here to doom you out. Honest.
I just figure that most folks who pause at the Frontier Partisans campfire are always keeping a weather eye out, watching the horizon and the back trail. And if you’re paying attention, it can get you down. And, as you all know, when I get down, I head for the woods.
A few days back, I hit the dirt roads to the west hard — a good 10-mile ruck. And a Tyler Childers song kept a driving cadence:
Get me drinkin’ that moonshine
Get me higher than the grocery bill
Take my troubles to the highwall
Throw ’em in the river and get your fill
We been sniffing that cocaine
Ain’t nothin’ better when the wind cuts cold
Lord it’s a mighty hard livin’
But a damn good feelin’ to run these roads
I set aside my taste for moonshine and never did get into sniffing that cocaine. For that matter, I only require one woman to keep me goin’ and my engine clean. But I sure do get that damn good feeling running these roads. This is where I palaver with ghosts, where I fatigue the body to quiet the mind, where the shit gets sorted out into..
Lawmen, women or an early grave
Same old blues, just a different day
*
Maybe you’re feeling that devil wind kicking up out on the desert. Maybe you hear the drums, drums, drums in the deep. Keep your powder dry, and watch your top-knot. And if you need a tonic, I can vouch for the efficacy of taking up rucksack and rifle and getting out on some backroads with some Tyler Childers banging around in your head. Cuz…
All this runnin’s gonna keep me sane
Quixotic Mainer says
The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed. We’re all on our own personal quests, if you’ve got the room to take up that trail it needs to be followed now more than ever.
There’s a different sort of calm required to be able to enjoy little things while you’re waiting for the bugle to sound to arms and to horse. I think the constant flow of negative information is partly to blame for the nervous kicking disposition so many have these days.
JimC says
This is a salient point. It is my nature to seek to be informed — but I’m not sure whether being plugged in to the extent that I am serves being informed as much as it serves being agitated. I have been pondering how I can modify my intake effectively.
Matthew says
Yeah, you have to watch your intake. You also have to be aware of how you respond emotionally to what you hear. If you are getting frustrated you may have to cut it off.
I actually haven’t been paying much attention to what is going on since my home life has been chaotic to say the least.
Quixotic Mainer says
One of my favorite paradigms comes from The Mask of Zorro, where Don Diego is explaining the concept of the circles from Destreza; Spanish fencing. When his apprentice expresses preoccupation with the future and with old enemies he admonishes him to focus on what is “in his circle”, or what he can face, and try to positively effect. Things too far away either in time or geography, were not worth sullying his real and tangible efforts locally, in the here and now.
It’s been a good mantra for this “sky is falling” era. I mean, if it worked for Zorro, who am I to question?
JimC says
Good stuff. Reminds me of a passage that struck me in one of “Mark Owen’s” books about his SEAL experience. His unit was training on climbing outside Las Vegas with subject matter experts (hippie climbing bums). “Owen” (Mark Bissonette) was afraid of heights, and he was struggling. One of the instructors scampered over to him on the rock face and told him not to look up the destination or down at his partner, or over at him, but to focus on what was immediately in front of him. “Stay in your three-foot circle.” Bisonnette said that resonated and applied to a lot more than the climbing. Which it does. Thanks for the reminder of that.
Matthew says
The Stoics say “You can’t control what happens to you, but you can decide how you respond.” I’ve been trying to remember that lately.
Aaron says
Hi Jim. Off topic but are you and the guys still going to be making Running Iron Report podcast. Friend and I took a trip out to Cody, Wyoming from central Wisconsin. We started listening as we crossed the Bighorns. Very entertaining.
JimC says
Hey Aaron — thanks for the kind word. We WILL get back to the RIR podcast — but it’ll be a bit. Craig is deep into making his movie, and the bandwidth just isn’t there right now.
Miguel Rodriguez says
Perhaps.
.lane batot says
Yeah, I’m not one to throw up my hands and just let the doom and gloom dominate my thinking. Sometimes all this doomspeak ends up becoming a self fulfilled prophecy, if too many humans subscribe to it. You havta balance it out with other REALITIES, and there is hardly any better place to do that than somewhere in Nature far removed from the human controlled world. Despite all the negativity, there is still much that is good in the world, and in people. Don’t succumb to the negative biased propaganda. A recommendation–EVERYONE should read the recently published “Humankind” by Rutger Bergman(I especially liked his chapter on the REAL “Lord Of The Flies”!)–and reset yer perspective on the world and people!
wayne says
For road trip mind clearing, I travel to the sound of the Ozark Mountain Daredevils’ Back Roads:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keOlDEgS3LA
JimC says
That’ll get it done.