11-23-2014
As a child I grew up in Germany and spent my first 8 years there, I heard many stories from my relatives about some of the things that occurred prior to the second World War and after and how both sides of my family had either suffered or prospered during this time. The first was my great grandmother and grandfather during hyperinflation in Weimar Germany.
My grandfather for years had always bought my grandmother silver & gold jewelry, for their anniversary, Christmas and birthday. He did this for over ten years. He did it because he loved her and wanted to show his appreciation for her. What he did not realize was that he was investing in the future as well. The Weimar Republic (Germany) began hyperinflation in 1921 and it would last till January 1924. During this time, many Germans lost their jobs. Even more lost their savings and slipped under the poverty line. The main thing that allowed my great grandparents to not only survive but keep their standard of living was to live off my great grandmother’s jewelry during those 3 years. They also owned stock, which was invested in the only beer company to survive the war. Their shares would have been worth a lot after the war except that they were incinerated in one of two bombing raids that their home suffered along the way.
My mother’s grandfather was attending school and became a doctor in the late 1930s. He worked as a doctor for others and eventually opened his own practice, building the office adjacent to his three-storey home at the edge of the city on the family farm. By then, World War 2 was in full swing and Germany was in the middle of it. My mother’s grandfather continued running his practice and helped Germans from all walks of life. Eventually, all German doctors had to become part of the government and military and so were issued uniforms and pistols. Some of these doctors had to help the German elite and SS members in their cities of residence. My grandfather continued to run his small practice and kept his uniform, though he rarely wore it. By then, the war was approaching its end and my great grandfather had to sit in his basement outside the city and listen as American and British bombers laid waste to the city. He decided to hide his pistol and uniform in his attic because he figured the war would be over soon. When the Americans did finally march down the street, past his front door and into the city, my grandfather laid an old Red Cross flag out and offered to treat any wounded soldiers. To him, it was just his job. He wasn’t interested in semantics. He just wanted the war to end. In return for his service, American G.I.s gave him rations and other supplies for his practice. At the same time, he hired a couple of kids from the neighborhood to continue managing his farm. He produced food for locals and helped people with his medical skills all the way through Germany’s reconstruction period. He was spared during the allied bombings and because of his many wise financial moves, he prospered. At the time of his death, his net worth was over three million dollars. He had built his son, who was married, a middle-class home and financed it himself. He also owned some rental property in Frankfurt. All of this made possible by his hard work during the war.
I lived in Germany for many years as a dual citizen and after my parents separation, moved to the United States at age 8. In time, my father, an American citizen, grew tired of both the cold German climate and since his relationship with my mother had deteriorated beyond salvage, they decided that it would be best if he returned to the U.S. I was given the option to accompany him, if I so wished. My mother seemed to be much more interested in spending time with her new boyfriend instead of me so the choice seemed a simple one.
I moved to the United States that summer, learned English in under 8 months, and assimilated into American culture. At the time I must admit I found American patriotism to be mesmerizing. I wondered why Germans weren’t nearly so patriotic. Though I understood my homeland’s history, I had failed to appreciate its impact on its people. Germans had become wary and highly skeptical of their government for very good reason. The years between 1997 and 2001 seemed great. The internet had been around for all my life and video games occupied much of my time outside of school and the Boy Scouts. The dollar was strong, my dad was working for the civilian service on the local Marine Corps base, and I enjoyed school because it was less strict than in Germany. I especially loved this wonderful new thing called “recess.” At the age of sixteen, I was set on joining the Army via parental consent. I spent weeks hanging out in the recruiter’s office, asking questions and being drawn in by my patriotic love of the nation state. When I finally told my father that I wanted to join the military at the end of the year, he lost his mind and refused to the necessary consent. He didn’t want his signature to be on a contract that I may gravely regret in the future. Understood but angry all the same, I went down to the recruiter and informed him that I wouldn’t be joining after all. I still spent some weeks at the recruiter’s office just hanging out and asking stupid questions. After a while, the recruiter let his guard down, maybe because he figured I would never join anyway. He started making jokes about the ease by which he could convince kids to sign their lives away to the state. The last straw came one day, sitting at the back of the office, when one of the recruiters signed-up an eighteen year old kid who was so excited that he ran straight home to tell his parents. Seconds after he was out the door of the office, the recruiters high-fived and quickly proclaimed how one had reached the monthly quota and would be receiving a bonus for his efforts. I slowly started to see through the military’s mythology and saw the ugly truth behind it. Throwing my life onto a piece of paper was just a job for money and there was nothing more to it. I left. Throughout the next summer, I was glued to the news and often stayed up late to watching all that I could about the Iraq war, glad not to be a part of it myself.
Right from the beginning, my German relatives always said that the war was not about WMD but it was about oil and protecting the petro dollar. I was too young to understand and shrugged it off. It wasn’t until I had spent countless weeks on YouTube, watching everything I could find about the Iraq war and 9/11, that I finally started to understand the truth about them. I spent the next years convinced I would become a great detective in the police like one of my great grandfathers had been. He had captured one of the biggest serial killers in German history and I wanted to be just like him. Sadly, my patriotism and loyalty to the state had not yet worn off. In 2007 I went from high school on to college and enrolled in its criminal justice program. I also began signing up for ride-alongs with the local police department every chance I got. To summarize my college experience, I spent the first three years learning legal procedures, citizen’s rights and other legal information. In the last year, I learned about evil men in caves and how the Patriot Act now makes all the things I learned in my first three years irrelevant. I also began witnessing abuses by my local police department during the ride-alongs such as the unnecessarily tazering of suspects and attempts at dating women from domestic calls. I also realized that the novelty of seeing dead people would wear off soon enough and most likely lead to psychological problems later in life. I decided to quit school and just climbed the ladder at a local movie theater. I became a manager there and took an interest in the stock market. It was then when I first started to hear that the US might be headed towards a financial collapse. I adjusted my stock trading strategy accordingly and made some money off of some inflationary stock tips. It started to make sense and I couldn’t help but wonder, was history of my family about to repeat itself?
I continued to research everything related to the coming financial collapse coming. I was outgrowing my patriotism but was still a minarchist libertarian and voted for Ron Paul. I realized after the 2012 election that the game was rigged and I lost the last of my faith in the electoral process. It was around that time that my dad died. I became extremely depressed and coped by distracting myself with gardening and economic speculation. I began to buy silver, gold, and any books that I could read about finance, economic collapse, and how to prosper in spite of it. I came to see the United States as being like Nazi Germany on steroids and I decided prepare myself accordingly. I began listening to Gerald Celente who told me to dress nicer and have more self-respect. I also started watching Alex Jones, whose news was way more informative than anything else I had found. The years became more depressing as my newfound knowledge was more of a burden than it had been at first. I began to tell roommates, relatives, and co-workers about how the economy was doomed and that they should prepare. Sadly, it always turned into the same set of responses. They’d say things like “don’t be a conspiracy nut” and “CNN said everything’s fine.” Friends started calling me “the conspiracy guy,” and I was told by others that they didn’t want to hear any more of my negativity and the few that did listen never took any action of their own. I went to bars dressed in my nice suits, modeled after Gerald Celente, but always got the same questions like “why are you dressed so nice?” I started to realize that this wasn’t just a financial collapse but also a cultural one. If the TV didn’t tell these people that it was happening then, well, it wasn’t. The American spirit seemed dead. No one cared. Football was more important. After a while, Alex Jones even started to support the idea of expatriating to avoid the coming hardships. I also stumbled over the Dollar Vigilante’s Jeff Berwick, who called me a slave once or twice! This really got me thinking. Later that year, I went to the German embassy to acquire my German passport. I had been a dual citizen all my life but never had the passport before. I was now convinced not only that I could leave, but that I should do so as soon as possible.
I began looking at South America and started saving money. By the beginning of 2014, I had only saved nine-thousand dollars, which is hardly enough to make a decent escape. Word began to spread that the movie theatre I was working at could close at any time. I decided I would leave as soon as I had what I thought would be enough money or until I lost my job. Later that year in September my great grandmother, the wife of the doctor I mentioned earlier, passed away. Her husband had passed away a couple years earlier. From her, I inherited fifty-thousand Euros and so, I finally had enough to leave the crumbling empire. That fall, I took a leave of absence from the theatre and booked my plane ticket to Chile. I was intending to buy a small farm and just do WorkAways, (workaway.info). I was going to survive and prosper during the collapse just like my relatives in Germany had. I was getting ready to leave when I started talking to my friend Luke Crowley who suggested I hang out with him in Chile for a while. He said he could help to make buying a farm and exploring Chile easier. I was thrilled and left soon after. Upon my arrival, I met Luke, his wife Lourdes and their son Dylan. He informed me that we would be hooking up with an old friend of his, Gabriel Scheare, and that a new project called Fort Galt had come up. Intrigued by the project, I decided to join. I must say that coming to Chile and joining Fort Galt has been one of the greatest experiences of my life, so far. It’s a huge relief on the heart to be involved with people who understand your pain and your worldview, in general. Having people understand and also be willing to work with you towards shared goals is one of the greatest things I have experienced. My depression is now gone and I feel alive again. I also had the privilege of spending time with an entrepreneurship school down here called Exosphere and the more I do, the brighter the future looks. I’m certain now that history is repeating itself and wouldn’t be surprised if a third world war broke out. Whether it gets that bad or not, I know now that I will be fine and will continue to grow and thrive like my grandparents before me. The Idea of America will live on in other parts of the globe and while the great changes ahead will be seen as a crisis by many, I would invite everyone to join us in seeing it as merely another opportunity to test and develop the strength of the human species.
Article Originally Appeared at Liberty.me
My mother’s grandfather was attending school and became a doctor in the late 1930s. He worked as a doctor for others and eventually opened his own practice, building the office adjacent to his three-storey home at the edge of the city on the family farm. By then, World War 2 was in full swing and Germany was in the middle of it. My mother’s grandfather continued running his practice and helped Germans from all walks of life. Eventually, all German doctors had to become part of the government and military and so were issued uniforms and pistols. Some of these doctors had to help the German elite and SS members in their cities of residence. My grandfather continued to run his small practice and kept his uniform, though he rarely wore it. By then, the war was approaching its end and my great grandfather had to sit in his basement outside the city and listen as American and British bombers laid waste to the city. He decided to hide his pistol and uniform in his attic because he figured the war would be over soon. When the Americans did finally march down the street, past his front door and into the city, my grandfather laid an old Red Cross flag out and offered to treat any wounded soldiers. To him, it was just his job. He wasn’t interested in semantics. He just wanted the war to end. In return for his service, American G.I.s gave him rations and other supplies for his practice. At the same time, he hired a couple of kids from the neighborhood to continue managing his farm. He produced food for locals and helped people with his medical skills all the way through Germany’s reconstruction period. He was spared during the allied bombings and because of his many wise financial moves, he prospered. At the time of his death, his net worth was over three million dollars. He had built his son, who was married, a middle-class home and financed it himself. He also owned some rental property in Frankfurt. All of this made possible by his hard work during the war.
I lived in Germany for many years as a dual citizen and after my parents separation, moved to the United States at age 8. In time, my father, an American citizen, grew tired of both the cold German climate and since his relationship with my mother had deteriorated beyond salvage, they decided that it would be best if he returned to the U.S. I was given the option to accompany him, if I so wished. My mother seemed to be much more interested in spending time with her new boyfriend instead of me so the choice seemed a simple one.
I moved to the United States that summer, learned English in under 8 months, and assimilated into American culture. At the time I must admit I found American patriotism to be mesmerizing. I wondered why Germans weren’t nearly so patriotic. Though I understood my homeland’s history, I had failed to appreciate its impact on its people. Germans had become wary and highly skeptical of their government for very good reason. The years between 1997 and 2001 seemed great. The internet had been around for all my life and video games occupied much of my time outside of school and the Boy Scouts. The dollar was strong, my dad was working for the civilian service on the local Marine Corps base, and I enjoyed school because it was less strict than in Germany. I especially loved this wonderful new thing called “recess.” At the age of sixteen, I was set on joining the Army via parental consent. I spent weeks hanging out in the recruiter’s office, asking questions and being drawn in by my patriotic love of the nation state. When I finally told my father that I wanted to join the military at the end of the year, he lost his mind and refused to the necessary consent. He didn’t want his signature to be on a contract that I may gravely regret in the future. Understood but angry all the same, I went down to the recruiter and informed him that I wouldn’t be joining after all. I still spent some weeks at the recruiter’s office just hanging out and asking stupid questions. After a while, the recruiter let his guard down, maybe because he figured I would never join anyway. He started making jokes about the ease by which he could convince kids to sign their lives away to the state. The last straw came one day, sitting at the back of the office, when one of the recruiters signed-up an eighteen year old kid who was so excited that he ran straight home to tell his parents. Seconds after he was out the door of the office, the recruiters high-fived and quickly proclaimed how one had reached the monthly quota and would be receiving a bonus for his efforts. I slowly started to see through the military’s mythology and saw the ugly truth behind it. Throwing my life onto a piece of paper was just a job for money and there was nothing more to it. I left. Throughout the next summer, I was glued to the news and often stayed up late to watching all that I could about the Iraq war, glad not to be a part of it myself.
Right from the beginning, my German relatives always said that the war was not about WMD but it was about oil and protecting the petro dollar. I was too young to understand and shrugged it off. It wasn’t until I had spent countless weeks on YouTube, watching everything I could find about the Iraq war and 9/11, that I finally started to understand the truth about them. I spent the next years convinced I would become a great detective in the police like one of my great grandfathers had been. He had captured one of the biggest serial killers in German history and I wanted to be just like him. Sadly, my patriotism and loyalty to the state had not yet worn off. In 2007 I went from high school on to college and enrolled in its criminal justice program. I also began signing up for ride-alongs with the local police department every chance I got. To summarize my college experience, I spent the first three years learning legal procedures, citizen’s rights and other legal information. In the last year, I learned about evil men in caves and how the Patriot Act now makes all the things I learned in my first three years irrelevant. I also began witnessing abuses by my local police department during the ride-alongs such as the unnecessarily tazering of suspects and attempts at dating women from domestic calls. I also realized that the novelty of seeing dead people would wear off soon enough and most likely lead to psychological problems later in life. I decided to quit school and just climbed the ladder at a local movie theater. I became a manager there and took an interest in the stock market. It was then when I first started to hear that the US might be headed towards a financial collapse. I adjusted my stock trading strategy accordingly and made some money off of some inflationary stock tips. It started to make sense and I couldn’t help but wonder, was history of my family about to repeat itself?
I continued to research everything related to the coming financial collapse coming. I was outgrowing my patriotism but was still a minarchist libertarian and voted for Ron Paul. I realized after the 2012 election that the game was rigged and I lost the last of my faith in the electoral process. It was around that time that my dad died. I became extremely depressed and coped by distracting myself with gardening and economic speculation. I began to buy silver, gold, and any books that I could read about finance, economic collapse, and how to prosper in spite of it. I came to see the United States as being like Nazi Germany on steroids and I decided prepare myself accordingly. I began listening to Gerald Celente who told me to dress nicer and have more self-respect. I also started watching Alex Jones, whose news was way more informative than anything else I had found. The years became more depressing as my newfound knowledge was more of a burden than it had been at first. I began to tell roommates, relatives, and co-workers about how the economy was doomed and that they should prepare. Sadly, it always turned into the same set of responses. They’d say things like “don’t be a conspiracy nut” and “CNN said everything’s fine.” Friends started calling me “the conspiracy guy,” and I was told by others that they didn’t want to hear any more of my negativity and the few that did listen never took any action of their own. I went to bars dressed in my nice suits, modeled after Gerald Celente, but always got the same questions like “why are you dressed so nice?” I started to realize that this wasn’t just a financial collapse but also a cultural one. If the TV didn’t tell these people that it was happening then, well, it wasn’t. The American spirit seemed dead. No one cared. Football was more important. After a while, Alex Jones even started to support the idea of expatriating to avoid the coming hardships. I also stumbled over the Dollar Vigilante’s Jeff Berwick, who called me a slave once or twice! This really got me thinking. Later that year, I went to the German embassy to acquire my German passport. I had been a dual citizen all my life but never had the passport before. I was now convinced not only that I could leave, but that I should do so as soon as possible.
Article Originally Appeared at Liberty.me
No comments:
Post a Comment