It’s spring. The weather warms. The blossoms bloom. And a cloud of doom lowers over our heads.
You feel it. I feel it. Random strangers on the street feel it. Commentators (those who haven’t drunk gallons of the Kool-Aid) feel it. Redditors buying GameStop and Dogecoin feel it. Heaven knows, anyone who’s studied Austrian economics must feel it (and while that’s only a few people in THE world, it’s a lot of people in our freedomista world, and some of the smartest). It’s there, looming over us like a green or orange sky blotched with mammatus clouds (and if you’ve lived in the midwest, you know what that means). It’s the stormcloud of economic disaster and the many related disasters potentially in its aftermath. Lately, the air cracks and crackles with pent-up energy.
Will the storm burst this time?
In 2008, the Fed and its cronies in and out of government put their corrupt big heads together, wheeled out their magical sunshine-pumping machine, and thinned the clouds out a little — long enough for them to get a whole lot richer and more powerful while We-the-Increasingly-No-Account-People got screwed. (Yes, you there in the bottom generations got it worst, but please don’t blame Boomers in general. The Boomers who did the worst were not down here scraping along like the rest of us. Read Nomadland and understand how many are in the same boat … or van.)
But this time …? Can the Fed hold it back? Can regulators or rapid scrambling by industry insiders keep entire financial sectors from collapsing? Are there enough trillions of FRNs (or Euros) to keep housing and stocks and derivatives and cryptocurrencies and good grief NFTs and SPACs from going simultaneously BLOOEY? Ah … but the more trillions of FRNs there are, and the more people are hastily converting them into assets, the worse and worse and worse it gets.
Lurid sky. Ominous clouds. And look over there, isn’t that one cloud drooping a little low and getting twisty-looking?
—–
I mentioned last week that a blogasaurus about Freedom Outlaw Cockapoos might be on the agenda. This is not that post. Except in a way, it is.
Lo those many years ago I wrote The Freedom Outlaws Handbook, which created (or really, recognized) three classes of Freedom Outlaw: Ghosts, Agitators, and Moles.
Years later, on June 7, 2010, on this blog, I added one more, the Cockapoo. Some people missed it or forgot it and I’ve barely mentioned it since. But today it may be the most relevant form of Freedom Outlaw, and it’s absolutely, without argument, the most prevalent.
Much though I despise authors who egregiously quote themselves, I give you the Freedom Outlaw Cockapoo:
That’s a type I’ve hinted at from my first books. But it’s a last choice — a choice of the tired, beaten, and all-but-defeated. But these strange days, an increasing number of us are tired, beaten, and darned-close-to-defeated. So … when no choice is left to you, when all else has failed, become a Cockapoo. Accept every scrap of “aid” offered by the benevolent but all-consuming state. Be useless. Become the government’s pet — and contribute in your own small, but purposeful, way to sucking it dry.
If I were naming them today I’d probably say Goldendoodle instead of Cockapoo, but you get the idea ether way. Cockapoo it is, meaning possibly the world’s most useless dependent.
Did you receive a COVID-relief check from the taxpayers Donald Trump last spring or summer? How about $600 or $1,400 in the last few months through the generosity of the taxpayers Joe, Kamala, Nancy, and Chuck? Did your business take out a COVID-relief “loan” from the taxpayers federal government that was forgiven after you met some bare minimum requirement?
Welcome to the ranks of the Cockapoos! You’ve joined whether you wanted to or not.
Once upon a time I would have side-eyed you. Now, I’m one of you. And the guy standing next to you is one of you. And the woman across the street. And the clerk at your grocery store. And grandpa and grandma. And the guy who picks up your recyclables. And with the rarest of exceptions, everybody. Hate it, but you escaped it only if you are one very rare person. The question is, how does this change things? What will we and our fellows do in our new “pet” status?
Most are probably willing dependents without a single plume on a Freedom Outlaw’s hat. Ninety-five percent, maybe? Ninety-seven (as the late Mike Vanderboegh might have said)?
But even among them, how many are pissed off in some way? How many, even among those who just take the money as their due (and perhaps much less than they consider their due) and think no more about how it came to them, know they’ve been defeated — brought to their knees — by the chicanery of an elite class that not only gains billions a day but that no longer even pretends to consider us anything but trash to be swept away or a herd to be managed for their benefit?
Sound like some potential allies there.
Even if you and I were already Ghosts, Agitators, or Moles (or some combination of them), we are now all, in addition, Freedom Outlaw Cockapoos. We’re kinda stuck with that these days, even as we keep our principles — or struggle to do so. But millions of our neighbors could now be on the verge of getting it, too. And getting madder about it. Mad enough to rise up and start breaking things.
—–
Now the problem with that — and really, there are a lot of problems with breaking things — is that aside from being damned messy you don’t know which way it’s going to go. First, you don’t know who among the newly outraged Cockapoos might join the currently faddish (and always appealing to Those Who Don’t Know) Marxist/Critical Racist/Antifa/Whining-Morons/Blow-Stuff-Up/Riot-in-the-streets/No-great-effort/Kill-the-people-who-didn’t-do-it crowd instead of the forces of freedom. Second, you don’t know who’s going to “win” the resulting conflict, but you can bet your last-before-they-confiscate-it silver ounce that tyranny will triumph. Not merely tyranny this time, but a new form of totalitarianism empowered by surveillance technologies that fulfill the dreams of every Evil Dictator since the writers of the bible were still wandering around a tiny desert, lost for 40 years.
I don’t believe that last thing really happened. But I believe it’s a pretty good metaphor for what will happen to us if we aren’t able to rouse ourselves to be proper Outlaws for freedom.
—–
Rousing ourselves DOES NOT INEVITABLY MEAN PHYSICALLY FIGHTING. That’s a last resort and unfortunately also one of the surest ways of ensuring you’ll get tyranny with or without your “win.” I keep repeating myself, but there it is. Please. Take up arms only when other options are exhausted, or when a situation simply becomes too suffocating, too insane, or too brutal for ordinary people (not just you and your handful of friends) to endure. No, we can’t in the meantime fight tyranny politely. We can’t reason with it or v*te it out of office and v*te freedom in. But there are still options.
Thanks to a comment in last week’s post, I learned the term, “Irish Democracy.” It’s a way powerless people often fight back. The Irish are hardly alone in it, though they’ve had almost a millennium to practice it.
“Quiet, anonymous, and often complicitous, lawbreaking and disobedience may well be the historically preferred mode of political action for peasant and subaltern classes, for whom open defiance is too dangerous….One need not have an actual conspiracy to achieve the practical effects of a conspiracy. More regimes have been brought, piecemeal, to their knees by what was once called “Irish Democracy”—the silent, dogged resistance, withdrawal, and truculence of millions of ordinary people—than by revolutionary vanguards or rioting mobs.” – James C. Scott, Two Cheers For Anarchism
In a factory, you don’t break the machines; you just make sure they never quite work up to snuff. In an office, you see to it that files are misfiled, communications uncomunicative, and money is misspent. Waitstaff are surly to Overlord customers. Vendors deliver the wrong goods — or the right goods to the wrong corporate or government places. Moles quietly act on their true principles. Ghosts pull support from rotten systems without fuss. Agitators stir up discontent, but less from a soapbox and more in small gatherings, with subtle comments and hidden acts of samizdat and subversion.
And Cockapoos keep demanding more bounty.
It’s all part of the great, time-honored means by which We-the-Better-Not-Make-Waves Peasantry gradually break the grip of power. And while there’s always been somebody around to take a dictatorship’s bounty, it’s usually been someone who can actually get close enough to influence power. Until matters reach the point that rulers have to begin offering bread and circuses.
Today Our Betters are reduced to buying off the merest bitter clinging Neanderthal deplorable to keep themselves from being swarmed with torches and pitchforks. And now so much is an “entitlement”! It’s Cockapoo heaven! (Mind you I don’t suggest that anybody break any laws or defraud any government programs; a Cockapoo is not a common fraudster, but a smart puppy who knows how to legitimately suck milk out of the system — on a smaller scale, but otherwise just like those bigger dogs on Wall Street or in corporate boardrooms who are experts at bending the law until it creaks without ever actually snapping it in pieces.
—–
When the twisty cloud of corruption, economic manipulation, and cultural insanity breaks over our heads, what will we do? What will those more ordinary Cockapoos do?
We’re already seeing signs. Charles Hugh Smith — smart on economics, and often with a unique twist of analysis — says we’re currently in a “Take This Job and Shove It” recession. The tl;dr version: Common wisdom says low-ladder employees are refusing to go back to work simply because government is paying them more to be unemployed. This may be true, but beyond that lies a rebellion of the screwed against the screwers. And possibly a resulting enlargement of the gig and gray economies.
Maybe? Maybe not. But certainly the “shove it” attitude is out there.
And what of the millions, young or old, by choice or by fate, who are reducing their role in the goofy system that says “spending is prosperity”? Aren’t they practitioners of Irish Democracy — even as a huge proportion of them rely on social security or some sort of government aid?
I mentioned Nomadland above. I just finished the book; haven’t seen the movie yet. Although it often made me furious over the post-apocalyptic economy elderly survivors of 2008 devastation have to endure, I was just as often struck by the adaptability, ingenuity, and sense of community among these almost universally hard-hit people living in their vans and RVs. They don’t want trouble and they’re not trying to make trouble, but if they’ve got to be down, they’re going to choose to be out in the best style they can manage. How many are Freedom Outlaws, I don’t know. But there’s a spirit there. And a similar spirit rises among younger people who’ve adapted to a world of limited opportunities by “going small.”
—–
We used to be “We the People,” who formed the union of states to ensure that our rights, individual rights, were honored. Well, that was never true. But until recently we were able to maintain the illusion that we, even if not exactly the masters of our countries, had power and authority that the BIG authorities had to respect. Does anyone believe that illusion any more?
Yes, you can still speak without getting arrested — mostly. You can v*te — and hope first that your ballot gets counted and second that the politician who takes office won’t be as horrible as most. You can protest — but only if you protest in the “right” causes, and never, never ever step into the sacred halls where Your Betters just v*ted to protect themselves with nearly $2 billion of new security. Step over that line and you may be held incommunicado for months with no sign of due process until The Authorities figure out how they can charge you with something much more serious than trespassing.
I don’t think this is what “We the People” ever envisioned. I certainly don’t think We the People were expected to scrape and cower for more than a year as would-be rulers at many levels tested new fiat powers over us. As dismaying as it looks, I have to believe, and some evidence says we should believe, that something passing for a American spirit — or an Irish one — is still operating within and among us.
Maybe it won’t reveal itself in full until we’re caught in that storm.
Agitators. Ghosts. Moles. Cockapoos. They all play parts in what is to come. But increasingly, as in any dictatorship, the Agitators will be limited to a brave few who are literally willing to pledge their lives, honors, and fortunes to fighting the system and rallying others. The rest of us — and it’s already happening — are melding into one “Irish Democratic” mass, slipping below the vision of Authoritah, forging our own paths through swamp and fire (albeit not yet The Princess Bride’s fire swamp). We are a silent minority, gnawing at the elitist’s system of control.
We took — willingly, unwillingly, or even unwittingly — the bounty designed to placate us and induce us to spend, spend, spend. Some of us are lost. Some of us have fallen too hard to get back up. Some don’t want to get back up. Some of us take their bribes for our submission and that’s the end of it.
Chose your own attitude and descriptor. Some of us are Cockapoos in the Freedom Outlaw sense. Many of us will practice Irish Democracy. Some of us, inevitably, are descendants of Kipling’s Picts:
We are the Little Folk—we!
Too little to love or to hate.
Leave us alone and you’ll see
How we can drag down the State!
We are the worm in the wood!
We are the rot at the root!
We are the taint in the blood!
We are the thorn in the foot!Mistletoe killing an oak—
Rats gnawing cables in two—
Moths making holes in a cloak—
How they must love what they do!
Yes—and we Little Folk too,
We are busy as they—
Working our works out of view—
Watch, and you’ll see it some day!
Great article. Longtime fan. Already a Cockapoo. However, as long as all parties agree on the “rules” of the Bankster Monopoly Game, the can will be kicked down the road indefinitely. My Cockapoo money is being converted into tangibles. There is still plenty of product here in Winterfell(North Idaho). My tribe and I are planning accordingly. Bleib ubrig, Claire.
One thing for sure, I never thought I would live to see the day where McDonalds is giving out hiring bonuses.
Why do they say Please don’t feed the bears?
Because once they get dependent on the hand out that will change them forever and even make them a danger to those handing it out, one of their solutions is to kill those that then become a danger.
But there is another way, instead of just offing the bears why not move them to somewhere where there is no hand to bite that feeds them. Bears are dumb animals but we are not (at least some of us) so why not we get out of debt, get independent, raise a garden, get out of the rat race, etc etc Live free more!
And if free money appears in the mail box, who couldn’t use some more ammo? When that hand that feeds ya comes for ya, ya might want to protect yourself?
“Hate it, but you escaped it only if you are one very rare person.”
I do, I did and I am and I intend to stay that way, till my end.
I have another name for what you call a ‘cockapoo”. I saw it in my parents’ generation among those who professed an objection in ‘principle’ to Roosevelts socialism but when the time came, sent in their request to receive the stolen pelf of SS nevertheless. I have seen it in the self-proclaimed libertarians like Walter Block who practice and preach a similar behavior oblivious to the fact that being a receiver of stolen goods will be used by the thief as an excuse for why they need to steal. Such an expedient opportunism by the recipient will never harm the thieving entity and never has, from the plebs pacified with bread and circuses, to the present. It will only debase and enervate the co-opted and compromised who are now transformed into dependents on the dole and thus conditioned to not bite the hand that feeds them. I call them the herd; those who never desired freedom or ever accepted the personal responsibility that is its price. Who never adopted an individual ethic but only sycophantically complied with a social morality like a chameleon assuming the color of its surroundings.
“What we think, or what we know, or what we believe is, in the end, of little consequence. The only consequence is what we do.”
—- John Ruskin
“Most are probably willing dependents without a single plume on a Freedom Outlaw’s hat.”
In my estimation that percentage is more like 99.99%
I escaped it because I make too much so I didn’t get any but I tell everyone if you ever paid in then it’s owed to you because they haven’t done anything to benefit the working man in a long time…
There are always various ways of looking at things: Is it an entitlement? Is it deserved compensation? Is it a bribe? Is it the return of stolen goods? Is it just the way things are? Is it “Better me than a bumbling bureaucrat?”
I am sure there are other perspectives, as well.
In my case, I regarded the near-simultaneous arrival of the original $1200 check and my M1 Garand (with extra clips, sling, and 200 rounds M2 Ball) from the CMP as a somewhat ironic and auspicious omen, and a happy coincidence.
Here is an article that looks at a couple of perspectives re: California’s “free money” to many of it’s residents (aka inmates):
https://reason.com/2021/05/13/are-gavin-newsoms-600-checks-a-redistributive-vote-buying-scheme-or-welcome-return-of-stolen-goods/
As l long as you do not become dependent on the largesse, and therefore fully dependent on The State, it should be OK.
I paid many many many times that amount in taxes last year. It certainly does not equal things out, but anything is better than nothing.
We spent it on tangibles to replace various very old and broken things. #1 son bought silver.
We are largely debt free, so we’re better-off than most.
As for Nomadland – I’ve wanted to join them for a decade now. When I met my wife, I lived in a bus. My goal is to move BACK into a bus – or trailer. #1 son and I converted a cargo trailer into a camper last year. The conversion cost about $1,000 and includes decent electrical and diesel heat. We figure to put another $500 to have excellent electrical, solar, and make it fun to be in. It’s tiny – only 5’x10′ and can be towed by our cars no problem.
With inflation coming, if you can get a fixed-rate loan on your house – I’d do it, as long as you can make the payments during the rocky transition between now and hyperinflation. A *lot* of people will lose their jobs during that time, and keeping their house may be a problem.
Jolly
PS( Wondering about the Walter Block reference, can you elucidate me on that issue? )
Jolly
Mr. Block has publicly advocated for taking as much government money as possible for a number of years now. While the majority of his opinions have undoubted merit, in my opinion, this isn’t one of them. In order to give it to some they have to take it from others; although in the present madness of MMT they can just fabricate fiat funds from nothing which may in the long run (getting closer every year) be even more destructive to the general pool of wealth and those who legitimately hold it through actually earning it, than even out right robbery has been and still is .I have never been able to justify to myself how money taken by the State and profligately spent the instant it was in their hands can ever be ‘recovered’ from them. It is GONE, and any rational that what you obtain from them is any more than other stolen pelf or arbitrary fabrication is just wishful thinking.
I’ve had that view, too. When it comes to government money, unless you’re immediately getting back what you paid in, taking taxpayer funds and saying you’re just getting your own back is rather like saying that because thieves stole your TV set, you’re entitled to go to your neighbor’s house and steal theirs.
Still, I see Block’s point. I see why even we freedomistas end up taking Social Security. I see why Cockapoos can be valid freedom fighters.
And today, with government taking such an aggressive stance in ruining the private economy and debasing the FRN more than they’ve already been debasing it for a century+, and most of us taking at least some government funds whether we chose to or not … I see the Cockapoo method more than ever being a valid tactic. No, it’s almost certainly not “our own money coming back to us,” and I don’t think we should kid ourselves that it is. But increasingly it’s also not “the taxpayers'” money, either. It’s just funny money, created out of thin air — for which each and every one of us will eventually pay.
Claire
I can try to understand and even excuse when this is perhaps necessary for survival; and the States recent actions have driven significant numbers to this condition in the last year. But it is a slippery slope you’re on when you take that first step in this direction and one best avoided at the outset for all less demanding needs.
About Nomadland, having not read the book or seen the movie….
The patron saint of Nomadland has got to be Bob Wells of the CheapRVLing channel on YouTube. (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAj7O3LCDbkIR54hAn6Zz7A) I’ve been watching him for quite a while, putting together ideas, just in case Plan A (being a Cockapoo) doesn’t work out and it’s time to move on to Plan Whatever. The guy is a font of how-to wisdom on being a modern nomad. There are several videos of an elderly woman, living in her car on $800/mo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0EoyTzcFOI).
I don’t want to dwell in Nomadland. I like where I am. I’m in middlin’ shape to ride this out (besides being way to close to metro areas) and an trying to improve on that. But if its too bad, we’re loading up and heading out. Go west, old man!
You’re right, Freeholder. Wells is not only the patron saint of Nomadland, he’s an important (though not focal) figure in the book, and definitely given a lot of credit for building community and teaching others how to live the life.
Claire – That’s the scary part. (Well, one of them). Its NOT taxpayer money! I wish it was. It might as well be monopoly money and in the long haul that’s what it will be worth.
I bought silver coin with all stimmy checks and the “TAX” return also.
We often accidentally overpay any bills by a buck or so, tax bills by some weird amount like $13.99. My God, three months of back and forth paperwork with the IRS to finally get our check back for 13 bucks and change. I guess our white math is not as good as we thought
The USA hasn’t had honest money since 1971 and the pace of the fakery has become ludicrous. Competence in government disappeared long ago and fiscal dependency goes all the way to the top. You may pretend to be above all this, but it is intrinsic in everything you do in business and especially in banking. I agree with the auther–we are all cockapoos, whether we believe it or not.
The longer things go, the less I consider violence to be the most likely outcome. Economic collapse is far more likely (yes, I know, that creates other things like violence). The simple fact is that at some point when a system has more taking money out then putting money, the system will collapse. Inevitably. For those that are putting money into the system, even they at some point simply give up, step down in income, or step out of the region where there money is taken.
What I do see coming, perhaps, is a version of Nomadland (have not read the book or seen the movie), a society where downward mobility becomes valued not because of what the lifestyle is like, but the freedom from having money taken away and the ability (as long as it lasts) of taking from the government instead of giving to it.
The whole thing feels like a fruit with a peel that needs only a single thumbnail to pierce it.
Your Obedient Servant, Toirdhealbheach Beucail
When one has zero control over the government that is robbing us daily, and the so-called “voting” has been exposed as totally fraudulent – as seen right here in New Hampshire – I don’t see a problem with getting back some of the money sent to that same government.
I do NOT agree with Claire’s analogy about the stolen TV set. I have THREE national “representatives” to the government – and I gave up trying to change any of their minds. To a person, not ONE ever responded to ANY of the myriad emails on specific subjects. I got boilerplate every time, usually in diametrically-opposed viewpoints from my points.
All three voted in lockstep with my enemies. The voting is a joke. They take $100 from me at gunpoint, then shove a $5 bill with a wink-and-a-nod and ride off to rob somebody else.
If I’d’ve been asked, I would’ve said “NO STIMULUS” – but I wasn’t asked. But, if they’re throwing $5 bills on the ground – I’ll pick one up.
That’s as far as my pragmatism goes.
At least SO far.
Jolly
I think the stimulus and advanced tax credits are just another form of psy-ops to divide the people. It is evident in these comments.
I didn’t have to do anything to recieve these funds, they just showed up in the mail. I did have to forfiet labor to pay taxes for things which I don’t approve of. I tried the tax protestor approach for 15 years and it didn’t work out that well. You can’t fight them from within their own system. And I am not prepared to put my family in jeopardy to fight them in the streets.
I cashed the checks and considerate it a conservation of my resources. I have no illusion that it means anything other than a government freebie. I paid in much more than I will ever receive in services. This is just the “Bank error in My Favor” card in monopoly. You can’t win monopoly with those cards, but they sometimes make the difference between staying in the game our being out of the game.
The game rules are set by society. I can reject that society, but I prefer to stay in a position to try to help society learn about self determination, independance and how this current system is highly manipulative of thoughts and aspirations.
I have been pidgeon-holed with a lot of descriptons. But it is always by people who don’t know me. Such is life, especially right now, while the goverment sets labels to groups and then sends them against each other.
I know all of us here are on the right path. That is good enough for me. Our differences are shown in our individuality. And that is the gold of our life.
Love ya All!
Jeff2
The real problem is they pay out way more than the individual pays in, to keep the votes.
This says it all, an uncredited quote.
“The most terrifying force of death, comes from the hands of “Men who wanted to be left Alone”.
They try, so very hard, to mind their own business and provide for themselves and those they love.
They resist every impulse to fight back, knowing the forced and permanent change of life that will come from it.
They know, that the moment they fight back, the lives as they have lived them, are over.
The moment the “Men who wanted to be left Alone” are forced to fight back, it is a small form of suicide. They are literally killing off who they used to be. . . .
Which is why, when forced to take up violence, these “Men who wanted to be left Alone”, fight with unholy vengeance against those who murdered their former lives. They fight with raw hate, and a drive that cannot be fathomed by those who are merely play-acting at politics and terror. TRUE TERROR will arrive at the Left’s door, and they will cry, scream, and beg for mercy . . . . but it will fall upon deaf ears”.
Go west, old man!
Depends on where you start. I wouldn’t go much past Arizona. (Sorry, Claire.) A better direction might be south, stopping before you get to Mexico. I’m certainly not sorry I’m in Texas, even with the Red party once again dragging out their sacred cows.
Sure would be nice if folks would learn that just because something’s wrong doesn’t mean it has to be illegal.
The storm is coming. What surprises me is that it has held together this long.
“The storm is coming. What surprises me is that it has held together this long.”
+1