It’s “great” to watch someone you care about (per hypothetical) walk into a meat grinder?
Well, something is gonna be normal, by definition. That’s all I was saying.
Go for it! You may never get another chance.
What if “it” is having kids? 
I’d recommend against that particular ‘it’.
My advice would be: “At any given moment, life gives you few advantages. Make sure to exploit each absolutely to the max, because it’s all you’ve got.”
Most of this (not all, but most) is “right now” advice for surviving our tumultuous times. And that’s fine and valid and useful.
I’ma step back and offer my best “always” advice, applicable in good times and bad.
To wit:
Regret is almost always a waste of energy. Live your life so you don’t need it.
What does this mean? Hindsight is 20-20, as they say. You look back at past choices, with the benefit of knowledge you have now but didn’t have then, and you wish you’d made different choices, and it eats you up inside.
Fuck that noise. Waste of energy.
Be mindful, right now. Make the best choice you can, right now, with the information available to you, right now.
Maybe it works out. Maybe it doesn’t. You can’t know. You can’t foresee all eventualities. All you can do is make your best, most thoughtful choice, right now. And then live with it.
If it doesn’t work out, then look back and consider whether you really did make the best choice you could, with the information you had then. If you did, then that’s it. There’s no regret to be found. Move on.
The only regret that’s valid is recognizing that you made a bad choice and should have known it at the time. You were lazy, you weren’t thinking, you were impulsive, whatever. That, you can regret. Because it’s under your control, and you can fix it and learn how to make a better choice.
But regret for things that are out of your hands? Bullshit. Don’t waste your time.
That’s my advice.
Huh. Three of my nieces just recently announced they are pregnant.
Then you apparently should advise them to abort, judging some of the replies here so far.
(And whatever reaction anyone reading this might have had, and why, is precisely why I asked this question to begin with.)
No, they are much worse; the Nazis didn’t have nuclear weapons. There aren’t going to be any Allies to overthrow the fascists. They can just keep killing, enslaving and torturing as they please until their incompetence brings the system down, then burn what’s left of the world out of spite.
Hitler by all accounts wanted to destroy Germany and as much of Europe as possible as a final act of spite when Germany lost; he just didn’t have the power. The American fascists do have that kind of power. And many are literally looking forwards to the Apocalypse.
Noted.
Wear sunscreen
I second this. Re-bloody-lax. Turn off the news. Put down the paper. Touch grass.
Have you got them confused with Lehman’s?
Not that Vermont Country doesn’t have some neat stuff, some of which might well be useful; but I wouldn’t really think of them for a serious survival tools selection. Or even a serious basic homesteading tools selection.
I think my advice is: if at all possible, make friends with your neighbors. You’re likely going to need them. (Yes, I know that with some people it isn’t possible.)
Oh yes, and presuming you get a chance: vote. On all levels.
Nope. The choice is to believe there are only those two choices, or to find others. You can select what news sources to watch and how often, so you don’t render yourself useless. You can select some specific area in which you stand a chance of being useful, and do that. There’s no way that’ll fix everything, true; but there is no one way that’ll fix everything. If things are going to work out OK for most people, or for many people, or even for some people, it’s going to be the result of a whole lot of different people doing a whole lot of different things. Most of them small things. But things that they did not give up on and go hide under the bed instead, hoping that Somebody Else™ would do everything.
Or not. My father’s family had some 45 people killed.
How about some advice from people who survived this the last time?
Ellie Wiesel:
- “The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference”.
- “Because of indifference, one dies before one actually dies”.
- “Indifference, to me, is the epitome of evil”.
- “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim”.
- “There may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest”.
- “There are victories of the soul and spirit. Sometimes, even if you lose, you win”.
Miep Gies:
- “If not for the apathy of people not just in Germany and Austria but everywhere—basically decent people, no doubt—the horrible slaughter could never have assumed the proportions it did”.
- “I don’t like being called a hero because no one should ever think you have to be special to help others”.
- “But even an ordinary secretary or a housewife or a teenager can, within their own small ways, turn on a small light in a dark room”.
- “My story is a story of very ordinary people during extraordinarily terrible times”
Edith Carter (Auschwitz Survivor):
Everybody, every human being has the obligation to contribute somehow to this world.
Walter Kase:
When you see injustice happening, stand up!
Edmund Burke:
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is
for good men to do nothing.
Good post - was going to post something similar.
Do what good you can. There’s a lot that needs fixing in this world, and most of it, you can’t fix. But do what you can. Help a few friends and neighbors who need it. Make your little corner of the world better. And if everyone did that, we would fix the big problems.
I believe I know @LSLGuy well enough to assume the intent is that we not panic over the risk.
But like @thorny_locust, most of the branches of my father’s family (mother’s to a lesser extent) that were in Germany and Poland are just gone.
My great-grandparents got out of Europe right after WWI. The rest of the branches? Well. They apparently didn’t leave, or lacked the means until it was too late.
NOW again, I’m Jewish (secular) - I’ve lived my whole life with that as part of my cultural background.
And I’m not evacuating, because other than Israel (frying pan / fire situation) most nations aren’t interested in two late middle aged persons without great wealth. Not to mention my parents, and my wife’s parents are moving into a very fragile age, with limited support (albeit some financial stability).
My heartfelt, serious advice: stay informed, but don’t doomscroll. Keep yourself healthy as possible - exercise, cut bad habits, avoid excessive stress, and be careful of excess self-medication. Help others where you can, but prepare for the worse. Having reasonable stockpiles to meet your basic needs is probably a good idea (several weeks) - having more will make you a target and likely strain your finances and storage to minimal aid.
IF (huge if) you have the mindset, and have or get the training, AND (considering the OP) aren’t a risk for self-harm, consider buying a reasonably priced firearm, ammunition, and practice with it. NO, you cannot and will not stop the military, or even government sanctioned militias, but it may become useful if the absolute worst comes to worst, or if you’re an isolated known blue factor in a red area. TBH though, the circumstances of the OP mean my concerns about self-harm largely override the small possibility that having the option will help in any way.
ETA - yet another qualification to the last point. If you have kids in the household, I personally wouldn’t keep a firearm in the house, as I’ve said in a few other threads. Too much curiosity, and even with best efforts, it’s too easy to circumvent most private household firearm security options. Others can disagree, but we’re already talking about risk factors, and this would be one too many for me.
I have been thinking about buying a new gun. I sold mine a few years back.
But I am glad you posted this because I am feeling increasingly despondent lately. I really don’t want to take the risk of something happening however small that is.
Then I’m glad I posted it. Seriously, having a firearm in the household is always a risk, and more so at such stressful times as these. It’s a huge risk and responsibility, and I think well of those who realize that both/either are more than they can safely handle.
I’m not sure how I would recommend doing this, however, I would suggest getting an objective opinion on one’s own mental health, so that you could try to address it as appropriate.
I say this as a guy who found out that he was high functioning autistic at age 64, as well as subject to depression. I’m not suggesting that everyone has some sort of mental health issue, but being the best you can be, mental health-wise, is an invaluable gift.