The 2019 Quincy Adams Wagstaff Lecture

{We are late with this year's lecture, but thought it fitting for the last post of the year. - A.}



"You asked for this lecture, and you're going to get it, good and hard.
These are my principles.
If you don't like them, I have other ones."

Wherever you're reading this, you've had unmistakable evidence that things aren't going to go all rosy. Perhaps ever again. Perhaps just for a long dark winter of the soul, and/or of the entire civilization. There has been more than one Dark Age period in human history, and they will happen again. You may very well get to see this firsthand, and experience life amidst it. Howsoever long or briefly.

You've had a respite of some 37 months to get your metaphysical crap together in one bag, and use the time prudently.

If you've squandered that lead time, woe unto you.

Yes, on one hand, 1/4 of the federal judiciary is appointees of this administration. Three more judges appointed in the Ninth Circus flips it, and frees eleven western states back to common sense, and a decent shot at the rule of law. Sometimes.

That ain't nothin'.

The minions of Leftardia have shot everything they can at the current president, short of actual bullets, and achieved nothing, save cementing his popularity, and virtually putting a lock on his re-election next November, while chaining themselves to a concrete-filled floor safe and hurling themselves off a skyscraper.

That ain't nothin' either.

But it doesn't make the dollar solvent, or the economy implosion-proof.
The Leviathan that is the federal government remains untrimmed to any notable degree  (save the width of shelf space required for current US Code. Huzzah!).
And the handmaidens of jackbooted thuggery, especially at the federal level, continue unabated and unhindered in their ceaseless quest to saddle you, collar you, and put the spurs to you to fund their unbridled destruction of liberty and freedom, and you're still paying for that, and handsomely, at least if you're in the 50.4% of America that works for a living instead of voting for one.

So even with another five years of POTUS Sticking It To The Man (sometimes), January 20, 2025 is still coming as sure as the sun rising, and any time between now and then, plus a stray heartbeat, and you're looking at President Pence. Who is not the Orange Man Bad blunt instrument chosen to burn the mother down.

So at any time, things could go from mediocre to abysmal.

The far greater likelihood is that owing to desperation and lack of other options, your would-be communist overlords from the Uniparty are going to kick off the ball, to usher in their planned Final Solution, and strangle the weakening experiment that remains of the Republic, and all it represents.

If you can think, and would be free, they hate you, and they want you dead.

Speaking from behind enemy lines, some places already feel the state's tender caresses more and more, exactly as Boston was getting the most love from King George long before 1776 rolled around on the calendar.

We don't know how many things, or where, might kick things off to go really bad, but any doubt that they're almost certain to do so is disappearing like fog on a summer morning, even for the most clueless Norm the Normie.

Whether it's just you, a nuclear family, extended family, or tribe of like-minded individuals, you have a hierarchy of absolute necessities for life.

You can survive three seconds without Safety.
You can survive three minutes without Air.
You can survive three hours without Shelter.
You can survive three days without Water.
You can survive three weeks without Food.

All of the above require tools and training to obtain and maintain.
Which takes time and deliberate effort.
Costs money.
Requires fuel, power, and other resources.
Necessitates a secure homestead.

Of the above, what have you got locked down?
What needs more work just to achieve the bare minimums?
What have you forgotten, or ignored?

Having a job is nice.
The above is what it's going to take to survive to get to that job, and hopefully, continue to survive long after that job (or anything related to it) is a distant memory.

Anything less than adequate effort in every regard above makes you nothing but another coral animal in the future reef of life, rendered dead and fossilized as a supplement to what survives beyond you.

If life strikes you as a worthwhile occupation, and ye would a long and happy one, with offspring who may surpass what you've seen and done, it requires deliberate effort.

Get ready, mentally, physically, materially, and spiritually for what is nearly certainly coming, right at you, like a freight train, whether you like it or not.

And get cracking on getting ready.
We are entering one of those eras where the Universe is about to demonstrate that it doesn't usually grant second chances to the lazy, the foolish, the stupid, and the unprepared, and no excuses will be sufficient nor accepted.

Take that reality well and truly to heart.
Or else go and make your funeral arrangements, and set your affairs in order.

No one gets out of this life alive. But the fortunate, the prepared, and the diligent, may at least have some say about when, where, and how they make the transition.

Now go, and face the new decade intelligently and diligently.