“May you live in interesting times.”

English Expression commonly attributed to Chinese tradition

We now live in interesting times. We most definitely live in interesting times. The interesting is not evenly distributed yet. But the interesting is spreading. And we will need to be ready for the interesting when it arrives at our door.

The right wing prepper fantasizes that the interesting will take the form of civil strife. Specifically they are imagining a specific brand of civil strife where they have free rein to brutalize all the people they against which they are bigoted and also those who have forced them to behave in polite society. But I don’t think the interesting will take that form. I look at places where the interesting did arrive in large scale. And I see different things. I look at post World War One Germany, and I see people with wheel barrows full of hyper inflated currency. I look at civil war torn Syria, and I see a massive refugee crisis.

Yes, reality does provide the occasional Somalia to give the right wing prepper hope. But that seems to be something which occurs in only a minority of cases. Violence is not uncommon, of course. But the kind of violence where the right win prepper will get to vent their bigotry and hatred seems uncommon. Misery seems far more common. Poverty seems common. Famine seems common. Displacement seems common. Prepare for those interesting times.

寧為太平犬，不做亂世人

Feng Menglong, Stories to Awaken the World