What you do or don’t do today will affect what you are able do tomorrow. There’s always a “domino effect.”

Whether you are thinking about the game of Dominoes or the pizza company Domino’s ®,  there are similar lessons to be exposed.

When Domino’s Pizza entered the market, they distinguished themselves by offering home delivery and guaranteeing hot, fresh products. Nice. Dining at home took on a new flavor and we became accustomed to getting our meal within 30 minutes or there was no charge. Good deal.

Next, other food companies adopted Domino’s successful model and the home delivery of all kinds of meals became commonplace. Uber Eats and Door Dash compounded the convenience. Even Cooler. And, we were getting spoiled.

Grocery stores did something similar toward the end of the Baby Boom era (1946-64), they became Super Markets and expanded into the distribution of just about every life essential related to food or household well being. This was so popular that they popped up everywhere. Home buyers even specified that they wanted a home convenient to a supermarket and retail food outlets. No longer was a nearby public school the first amenity they searched for.  Movie theaters with multiple screens soon repeated the trend.

People stopped raising crops for their own food. They stopped stocking up supplies for the winter and canning foods for potential shortages.

More importantly they stopped knowing how to do these things. (Pause to reflect on that.) 

This was not just a few people, this is the majority of the US population. During World War II families everywhere, even in urban apartments, raised “Victory Gardens” to provide for their own food and to lessen the demand on our nation’s resources. Everything we did was to support and not hinder the war effort. We were committed to winning the war for freedom no matter how difficult it became. Today home gardens are an amusing luxury for people with lots of free time. Almost none of us could survive for long without the stores and restaurants we rely on.

Then Came Covid

We learned through the Covid19 passage that movies at home on a huge flat screen TV could be almost as good as the theater experience, and a lot cheaper. We learned that many of the meetings that used to require travel and assembly could be done just as well via Zoom or Skype. Great, we saved time, money and remained productive. We developed hygiene habits that should have been practiced long ago. And we learned how to combat a major disease through drastic changes in public behavior. Also good.

However

Schools, where kids socialized, exercised and learned together became sad sit-in-your-room Zoom experiences that held almost no social value. Yes, they were learning but only the lessons, not the life skills. Friendships atrophied and no new ones were forming. Compound this isolation with the “cabin fever” effect of spending too much time indoors and you get a very different graduate at the end of the school process. Masks made it worse, we were afraid of ALL other people, even the harmless looking ones. The mask reminded us how threatening any life form might be to us and it obscured the facial expressions that centuries of humans have used to “read people” as a friend or foe.

One day in early 2020 I was on a remote hiking trail in California and encountered another hiker going the opposite direction with his dog. He was wearing a mask. Far from civilization and alone on a mountain trail, he was masked. As we passed he yelled at me for not wearing a mask too. He was irate and screamed at me for being so reckless in my behavior! Imagine if we had been in a congested urban setting like a store or shopping center. I told him to find someone else to scold. Everyone was afraid and nobody knew what to do about it. Most of us just masked up and stayed six feet apart (a regimen from 1918, not a scientific solution.)

Free-Falling into Debt

Will America soon be bankrupt? The Biden administration seems committed to it. The spending rampage is unbound by rational thinking or intentions to perpetuate our society. It’s as if the parents are away and the young teenagers have control of the bank account, liquor cabinet and car keys. Trillions of dollars in debt at some point soon will be too great to ever be repaid. Then somebody else will soon “own” us.

What is the Domino Effect of all this?

The net effect of these factors has been an increased weakness in our society. We are not self-reliant, nor self-sufficient anymore. Basic skills like those taught in Home Economics and Industrial Arts (Shop) classes in public schools have been replaced by gender studies, racial sensitivity, and valuing diversity. We are no longer able to take care of ourselves without our familiar and convenient resources.

When I was in the first years of my Army enlistment, I was trained as a Combat Medic and Corpsman. The medical corps’ slogan was “To Preserve The Fighting Strength.” We were all clear on our role: to keep the fighting soldiers healthy enough to continue the fight. Today, it is doubtful that many of us could even put up a fight compared to what our parents and grandparents could do.

Who cares? Why do we need to change?

Because we are no longer as safe as we think we are. The more we lose basic abilities, the more vulnerable we become to even mild threats.

If you need to bring down an overwhelming opponent, the best strategy is to weaken it first. In our case we have taken care of that ourselves. It’s almost like we are inviting opponents to take us down.

We have been teaching our adversaries how to defeat us!

How do you know where your opponent’s vulnerabilities lie? If you don’t know, then you allow your adversary to show you. Nature gets this. All predators, large and small, know that the least effective way to defeat an opponent is to confront them directly. The best plan is to make some small attacks with minimal risk to yourself and then observe how your opponent reacted. You stalk them, test them, observe them, taunt them and watch for openings. So, if you are Iran or China or Russia, or ISIS, what you would do is cause a crisis and then watch and document how the USA responds. Once you see how they communicate, organize, shift resources, react in defense, and reinforce their defenses, then you can find out where their weak spots are. That’s when you would attack all of the weakest points at once. Game over!

We did this in Iraq and Kuwait. The first Gulf War was over in a matter of days because we practiced what we called “Instant Thunder.” We hit every vital target of Saddam Hussein’s regime in one huge sweep. Overnight they were out of the war business. They couldn’t move, transport, communicate, resupply or even know what they were facing. Their only option was to give up and evacuate from Kuwait. But we did this with airstrikes and lots of traditional military moves.

Today’s wars are not always “military”…at first.

Recent weeks have held news of many attacks. Pipelines have been attacked and disabled large segments of our transportation network. Computer systems and power grids have been hacked and disabled large geographic areas. Government data bases have been hacked and vital information shared with countries who want to harm us. Our southern border is “hacked” daily by thousands of illegal invaders surrounded by innocent looking families and children seeking refuge. Our political system has been invaded by Islamists, Marxists, Communists and Socialists who have no intention of allowing Freedom and Democracy to endure. School boards and Universities have been infiltrated by racists and anarchists parading as normal citizens while eroding our education system from within. City councils have been infiltrated or even taken over by people who are hell-bent on weakening our police force, enabling BLM and Antifa thugs, erasing our societal sense of history, and selling us a new virus of Woke-ism that will make us afraid to speak to each other.

Every response we give to these threats also exposes our preferred defense strategies and therefore our weaknesses too. They ARE watching! Those who want to defeat America and replace us with a Marxist society are always watching. We need to show them our strength again. We need to become as self-sufficient and self-reliant, and well-connected with each other as we can. We need to become strong again. This must happen just like their taunting attacks have happened, on all levels, not just one.

If we fail to become stronger, more educated, more productive, more aware, more courageous, more caring about each other, more fiscally solvent, and more committed to our Constitution and our Democratic Republic, then we set up the Domino Effect for the bad guys. We cannot afford to line up our assets around wokeness, inclusion, convenience and luxury, lest everything falls from just one blow. We must become Good again, Strong again, Financially Sound again, Emotionally Mature again, Willing to Struggle again and Prepared again if we are to be safe.

As we can see from this Democrat administration, House and Senate, your votes really really count! One vote here and there that is cast, because you like what it symbolizes or “the message it sends”, erodes our ability to sustain our democracy! Don’t vote your feelings, vote your deepest American values. We have a lot of damage repair to do. Please: Vote for Conservative leaders at All levels for as many years as it takes to purge the weaknesses and poison of this Woke generation.

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