The Millennium Bug, a.k.a. as y2k, was supposed to cause a disaster. It had to do with digital file storage, computers and more. Supposedly when we rolled over from the year 1999 to 2000 systems would crash, chaos would ensue and society as we knew it would collapse. In case you missed it or think that it did collapse and everything was covered up, there was no collapse. The world didn’t come to an end. Hardly anything at all happened.
HLS
This family story will have a very direct tie in to what we are seeing in our culture today. In some ways it won’t be flattering to my father-in-law but I feel it important enough to delve into it. I was after all his favorite son-in-law. Dad bought into the whole y2k disaster scenario hook, line and sinker. He went down the rabbit hole and made it a bunker.
I should tell you a bit about Dad. He was well educated but he was also smart. The two don’t always necessarily go together. He was an aerospace engineer. He was sharp right up until the very end. He had Parkinson’s disease and spent 12 years in our care. He was a great guy and I loved him very much. In my mind he would not have been a good candidate for being someone caught up in the panic surrounding the Millennium Bug.
He along with a couple of friends ending up full blown survivalists holed up in the barren lands at the edge of civilization in Arizona. I didn’t realize the extent to which he had gone down the rabbit hole until we moved him back to live with us in Kansas.
The run up.
During the run up to the turn of the century Dad would have me read or check out certain things to show me what he was concerned about in regards to life as we knew it coming to an end. I would read or check out whatever he referred to me. But I would check out other things as well. Use different sources in addition to the sources that he was following. The more that I read and researched the more comfortable I was that there really wasn’t going to be much in the way of difficulties.
Then I realized that Dad and I could read the same thing and reach entirely different conclusions. He would see confirmation of what he thought and I would see the same for what I thought. This is called “confirmation bias”. The main difference is that I didn’t restrict my information from reliable sources. I went with the science much more than he did. The deeper he went into believing the imminent demise of our culture was at hand the more he sought out reinforcement of his original premise.
Critical errors.
The errors that Dad made were critical. For one he left the science of the experts of those dealing with y2k possibilities. He shifted his inquiries to only those that believed as he did. He ignored what was being reported. They reinforced each other and their knowledge wasn’t sound. The information that they were used was not based upon reality. He wasn’t willing to accept reality until it walked right up to him. Nothing happened. There was no disaster in the physical world.
Initially I checked out everything. In order to understand the layout of crazy town sometimes you have to visit. You just don’t have to stop and take up residence. So yes for a little while I checked out the crazy stuff. Eventually I reached the point where I realized it was just too time consuming checking out one ridiculous postulation after another.
Come to Jesus time.
There was a real hard date for failure built into the y2k theorists. It was going to happen on one day at the stroke of midnight. At the stroke of midnight nothing happened other than news that it didn’t happen. It was all over. From his bunker in Arizona Dad thanked everyone for not rubbing it in. He got over it. We got over it.
(It wasn’t a bunker. It was a little two room cinder block apartment where he was living. His friends and prepper stores were in another more defendable area close by. It was a gated community.)
But it wasn’t until I moved Dad back to Kansas that I got the full realization of how far he had gone all in on y2k. Weapons. Lots of weapons. Thousands of rounds of ammunition. Solar powered chargers. Books on survival. Rations. One side of our garage was full of survival rations. Home distiller. Canning supplies. I should mention here that Dad didn’t cook. He was ready. Except he wasn’t.
Enough for one.
Prior to y2k he was totally dependent upon medication to control his Parkinson’s disease. I’m not sure that he ever fired a weapon. He just spent thousands getting ready. In the end it was just stuff to get rid of. Fortunately he only bought enough for one. He didn’t plan on the rest of us surviving. His losses weren’t as bad as they could have been. It was an expensive lesson. Going off the deep end often can be.
Aliens
I would really like to believe that we aren’t alone in the vastness of the universe. Such thought doesn’t compromise my religious beliefs. Now it’s quite possible that there is other life in the universe. It can’t be proven that there isn’t any other life besides our own.
Just the matter of sheer statistics given the size and scope of the universe it seems that life should have happened in other places. Given the age of the universe just random events should have provide that intelligent life should have evolved in other places.
The problem is that science isn’t pointing in the direction of what I would like to believe. The science that’s available indicates that we should have been able to detect indications of intelligent life by now. Something.
Now I can go to plenty of whack-a-doodle sites if I want to find plenty of “proof” of the existence of aliens. They have plenty of conclusive beyond any shadow of a doubt irrefutable proof. Not only that but there’s all of those movies and television shows.
It’s the same kind of proof that Flat Earth believers have. It’s the same kind of science rejectors proof that is being offered up about the pandemic and global warming. It’s the same kind of proof offered by people that believe the whole moon landing was a hoax.
I’ll wait for the science.
The feedback loop.
Dad entered into a loop. It was self-sustaining. The more he believed the more he wanted to believe. The more he sought out information that only supported those beliefs. He already had the answers. He just needed the right question/s. This has application to what we’re seeing currently. Only this loop has been self-sustaining for decades.
Let’s take just one element of the anti-government movement. Before we get into that they aren’t anti-government. They are anti-government that doesn’t support their beliefs; the truths that they hold sacred. Trust no one from outside the group and keep the group pure. And keep a wary eye on those in the group to make sure they adhere to the correct ideals and messaging.
The Deep State.
Try to prove to someone that something doesn’t exist that never existed. Like the “Deep State”.* The answer is that it can’t be proved that it doesn’t exist. Yet it sprang into being and moved into every facet of government undetected when Trump was elected. Fully functional. Fully operational. It was the same Deep State that kept President Obama from accomplishing his goals. Oops. That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense does it?
Then throw in a conspiracy of some kind and just plug in whatever elements are needed to support the conspiracy. The beauty of this is they just make stuff up. This was done to the Clintons for decades so it isn’t like it’s anything new. They did it and are doing it with President Obama. It isn’t even new to the political system in general and has been done since the very beginning.
Another element is that media, a.k.a. as a free press, is biased and corrupt. Media is not to be believed except when it supports the correct messaging of the true believers. The solution was to create media that supported their beliefs. Media outside of the approved media that is not to be trusted or believed.
They said. We said.
Are we ‘they’ or ‘we’ in this?
Paranoia runs deep within the Evangelical Party Conservative Republican crowd both in religion and politics! They don’t trust government. They don’t trust traditional media. They don’t trust Democrats. They don’t trust socialists. They don’t trust science. They don’t trust education. They don’t trust immigrants. They don’t trust Muslims. They don’t trust liberals. Plots are everywhere. Hidden agendas are everywhere. God is on their side. Conspiracies abound. There’s a “Deep State” working against them.
They have created an infrastructure that supports all their foundational beliefs listed above. Taken in total they don’t believe in our form of government or Democracy. This government is NOT their government as defined by them. The Jesus of the bible was wrong. They are busily creating a God and Government in their own crazed and craven image.
Don’t like it? Don’t believe it!
I learned growing up that if a person isn’t prepared for the answer then they shouldn’t ask the question. I’ve received answers to questions in life that I didn’t like. That didn’t mean that they weren’t true. Acknowledging hard truths allows us to continue or not as the case may be. I didn’t get to make up a new answer that made me feel better. Well, perhaps a little better. As in I broke up with you first!
No fat generals.
In the service I was present when our battalion commander asked my sergeant if he thought that he would make general. There were just 3 of us in the room and I was a Private. The Sergeant told him no because he was fat and there weren’t any fat generals. Based upon the reaction of the officer I could tell that he didn’t like the answer. He did go on a diet. He checked out the information that he was given and found it to be the truth. He had to acknowledge that he was overweight and do something about it if he wanted to achieve his goal.
Strange bedfellows?
President Trump has an interesting base. Some of the very first groups to throw in with him were the Alt Right et al people. By et al I mean the rest of the core group of Evangelicals, White Nationalists, White Supremacists, racists, Nazis, Confederates, KKK, anti-vaxxers, militias, secessionists, cough on people food lickers and then the Republican Party that had campaigned against him. They were all in. Still are. They recognize Trump for what he is and he is them. These are the very good armed citizens that stormed state capitols to answer the call of their leader. Now not all of his supporters fit into the above categories. Some of them are very good people.
Messaging.
It’s the Dems. It’s Obama. It’s the Liberals. It’s the socialists. It’s the globalists. It’s the media. It’s hysteria. It’s a plot. The Dems want the economy to fail. It’s the Deep State. It’s the Chinese. It’s the immigrants. It’s the Muslims. They aren’t in charge. It’s the Governors.
They aren’t responsible. Everything great is them. They were doing an incredible job at complete containment. They’re doing a great job with 85,000 deaths and COVID-19 in the White House.
Their messaging has nothing to do with the truth. Nothing.