It’s Memorial Day here in the U.S., the day set aside to remember those who sacrificed themselves to protect our freedom. Although the official purpose of Memorial Day is to remember those who gave their lives in the service of our country, let’s also remember all of those brave men and women, living and dead, who through the years have put their lives on the line to protect all of us. As we have our cookouts and family get-togethers today, let’s all take a moment to think about our troops in the Middle East and elsewhere, who can’t be with their families. And let’s have a thought, not just today but every day of the year, for them and the sacrifices they are making and have made.
08:59 – It was 64.5F (18C) when I took Colin out around 0645 this morning, bright and breezy. With Barbara gone, Colin’s a bit at odds. He was a good dog yesterday. He pestered me pretty constantly, but he does that when Barbara’s at home. He actually deals better with her absence than any of other other dogs have, probably because Colin actually likes me while the others were all about Barbara. Oh, well. Only five more days until Barbara returns.
This morning I read Fred Reed’s latest column, followed by Kurt Schlichter’s. The two in juxtaposition are interesting. Fred writes about the Eloi class of so-called journalists, who don’t mix at all with us Morlocks. Kurt writes that the Eloi are shocked that we Morlocks are starting to hate them right back.
I’ve always read a lot of history. My dad really got me started when I was in sixth grade. One day he brought a bunch of large books into my room and stuck them on the bookshelf. One group was a complete set of Gibbons’ The History of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. The other was a then-complete set of Will and Ariel Durant’s The Story of Civilization. He suggested I read the Durant volumes first and then if I wanted to know more about Rome to read the Gibbons. As it turned out, I read Durant through Caesar and Christ and then temporarily abandoned Durant to read the Gibbons set. Ever since then, I’ve been fascinated by Roman history but also interested in the rest of what the Durants covered.
And reading history is probably one of the major reasons I’ve always been a prepper. Over and over, one reads about people whose lives were going along swimmingly well. All of them thought nothing bad could happen because nothing bad had happened before. Until something bad happened. Often something disastrously bad. History is basically a long string of disastrously bad situations interspersed with infrequent and short periods of things going well. But people rapidly get used to the latter and come to regard it as normal when in fact it’s anything but normal.
We’ve had Eloi and Morlocks since the dawn of civilizations, and the progression is always the same, anywhere and anywhen. The Eloi rule with an iron fist inside an iron glove, until at some point the Morlocks just stop putting up with it. And I think we’re on the cusp of such an event. And, just as Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette or Nicholas and Alexandra, if they thought about it all, thought their privileged lives would continue just as they were, today’s Eloi have no clue that the rumbling among their Morlocks presages something very unpleasant on the near horizon.
When this dam finally breaks, the consequences are going to be disastrous for everyone. The Morlocks, certainly, but even more so for the Eloi.