The year when everything changed.

This past year will forever be remembered by our children as the one when everything changed, when bustling classrooms and extracurriculars were replaced with Zoom calls.

Human contact was halted, and the world went cold, digital, distanced. Life gave its best imitation of art in the form of Orwell’s 1984.

The sheep among us forgot quickly the words of our father in founding, Benjamin Franklin, those who give up essential liberty for temporary safety deserve nothing and neither.

To the heavy, gargantuan hands of the state we ceded control of lives and livelihoods, lapping up edicts as they decided who wins and who loses, who can remain open, who we can visit, and if, when and why we can leave our kennels. The pee pad in the corner is now soaked, and our spirits broken.

O’Brien knew the game well, “Power is inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing” (1984).

It’s like the Bill of Rights became conditional, subject to force majeure. The Liberty Bell now weeps quietly and alone on the empty streets of Philadelphia, mainly to the sound of her own death rattle.

Too dramatic?

Maybe, and here in Texas things could be worse, but the stories that flood my feed – the Twitter porn – from both coasts and all over the world are both tragic and arbitrary. It saddens and scars my human spirit.

Lives are being ripped to shreds, downright ruined. Businesses representing generations of saving, self-reliance, and sacrifice, the lifeblood of local communities, flushed down the toilet with excrement by stroke of pen. The hubris is both mindboggling and sickening. Something deep in our souls is being molested.

Again.

The first time was after 9/11, with the Patriot Act and all that followed, and it seems we have recovered none. We were young and stupid then. Uncle Sam was family. He wouldn’t hurt us…

We’re not young anymore, but still easily manipulated.

A good crisis

I won’t rehash my last post, but read it if you haven’t. There are forces at work trying to reshape the world, to cement their place at the top while managing, (a) the controlled demolition of the debt-based money system, and (b) impending output and environmental declines from resource depletion.

It’s a big club, and you’re not in it.

Hat-tip to John Rubino for turning us on to this incredible interview with Catherine Austin Fitts (investment banker, former Assistant Secretary of HUD), explaining how the pandemic and lockdowns are part of this bigger plan, enabling the world-improvers to redesign and control everything-

Is she correct? No one at our paygrade knows, but I came to these same conclusions one month prior. This is mindboggling, but well-researched stuff.

The good in all this

Frankly, good is hard to find, but when you can see what others cannot, opportunities abound. None of this will come as a surprise to my family, and we’re positioned for all of it. If you haven’t downloaded our free Ultimate Parent’s Money Guide (below), start there, and thank us in the morning.

If it feels like we’re being manipulated, that’s because we are. It’s why I decided to call our fourth book “The Madness of Crowds”.

All of us humans originated from apelike ancestors over six million years, with behavioral traits we carry today designed to preserve the species in a world completely unlike this one.

The life our ancestors led was not one where disagreeing with the group would end well. They’d quickly get banished, then picked off by a predator, starve, or freeze to death. Because of this, humans think in herds, act in herds, and can easily go mad in herds (recovering our senses only one at a time).

For most of our evolution, the safety of the crowd was our only chance to survive. We are pre-disposed to believe anything that appears consensus, no matter how wrong or self-destructive.

This trait is even more dangerous now, when the levers can be pulled on social media, manipulating our spending or voting behavior and herding us into carefully managed pens.

At BadDaddy Publishing, we’ve spent two dozen years studying economics, history, and crowd psychology, to piece together the stories that can help your family be wise to the game.

Join us (this April) in a journey through time, from financial bubbles to witch trials to global pandemics, as groupthink overcomes the good senses of many, planting the seeds to successfully navigate a different world then evolution prepared us for, where security now lies in independent, critical thinking.

It takes a child, after all, to tell the world that the emperor has no clothes.

If you haven’t yet read (with your kids’) our first three – Better Bedtime Stories – join the Alliance today and save 40%. With the trajectory we’re now on, the world will not be kind to the unprepared.

Then watch from the safety of your perch with a knowing smile as things unfold as you expect.

Want more like this? Try The Great Reset for Dummies.