Look, I know I shouldn't be shopping at Walmart, but it's the cheapest and most convenient option for me where I currently live, so I do. I'm poor.
I also really don't like fighting crowds, so I go early in the morning. I get in and out with little fuss. Usually. It didn't work out today.
I got there a little later than normal, and the crowds were just starting to build. Of course you've got to worry about all the Walmart employees blocking up the aisles with their big carts getting orders filled for the pick-up and delivery customers these days. Thanks Covid! Very cool.
I was just a little bit ahead of the mob though, and ran for the exit. My local Walmart is almost all self-checkout except for the one register that sells tobacco and for some reason tobacco sales in the current year require more scrutiny than a home mortgage contract.
It's usually easy for me to get through the self checkout system since I'm not a Boomer. I kinda like not having to make fake small talk with a cashier anyway. Today though, there were only four self-checkouts open. I had to wait a little bit, and as I got my pizza rolls and sommer sausage scanned, the line behind me built up incredibly fast. There were probably 20 customers lined up by the time I was done. Many were angry! They probably came early in the morning to get in and out like me.
Some of the customers asked the only Walmart employee that was there why all the other registers were closed? She said it was because of a few issues. She said that several people had quit, and some had called in sick. She was the only one who showed up to work. Oh, by the way, Walmart just implemented a new policy, only a few registers can be open for every monitoring employee on duty.
The lady didn't say, but I'm sure the new policy of registers per employee is due to people stealing. We now live in a low trust society and if people are checking themselves out, they are going to accidentally on purpose miss scanning a few items. Maybe that's an employee discount since the Boomers like to say that self checkout means you're working for the store?
This Is A Symptom of Wider Issues
I spent a lot of time in the Third World as a soldier in my youth. America is still a very nice place, but it reminds me a little more of the Third World every year. I expect this trend to continue for the rest of my natural life. Lemme tell you why.
The people who have been doing the real work in this country are about to retire or drop dead
The jobs that really make this country work have been done for decades by Boomers with very few GenX and Millennials moving in to replace them. I'm talking about the moderate to high skill blue collar work that is easily overlooked yet essential for our complicated economy. Those Boomers are in the process of retiring and/or dropping dead en masse right now. These are jobs that can't just be filled by some newb off the street with good results. These are jobs that historically were filled by people who worked as assistants to the masters for years, apprentices if you will before they began to work unsupervised. Also people of my generation were told almost from birth to go to college, go into computers, avoid the trades. The Boomers also held on to their positions far longer than previous generations partly because they had their retirement accounts rugged by Wall Street bankers in 2008.
I said all that to say that we are facing a massive competence crisis. New people can be put into those positions, and they'll be able to (barely) get the job done, but things just aren't going to run as smooth as they did when the guy with 30-40 years in the business was running things.
ICBM's Are Manned By People Who Don't Understand Them
Here is another symptom of America's decline. In this article from military.com an admiral complains that he doesn't have any technicians still alive who still understand the drawings to upgrade the Minuteman III nuclear missiles.
This should be taken with a grain of salt because it's the statement of a man trying to spruce up his budget and get a few hundred billion more dollars out of Uncle Sugar. However, this is one of the most strategically important pieces of American military defense strategy, and it appears there is a major competence gap. Imagine how big the gap is in areas of the military that aren't that important.
Academia Is A Bunch of Frauds
The recent scandal surrounding the former president of Harvard is exposing what a giant fraud academia is. These ivy league jerks try to tell us flyover country folks how to live. They use their academic credentials as authority. It turns out, most them are plagiarists and don't really know their south side from a hole in the ground. These people form our ruling elite, and they aren't even a tenth as smart as they think they are.
On top of the straight up cheating, many of the people in high positions in 2024 America got there because of the color of their skin or their gender, not because of any level of competence. If you want to see where this road leads, look no further than South Africa. The steadiest and most competent group in our society is white males. White males have been told they are trash every day since the 1990's and many have started to believe it. The more white males that check out of productive society and waste their lives on drugs or gaming the worse off we'll all be.
The Economy Is Fake and Gay
As @grayzoneintel recently pointed out on Twitter, approximately 40% of all new jobs created in 2024 were government jobs. This means that if government spending slows or stops, our economy goes down like TerraLuna. And government spending could easily slow or stop soon. I don't care what Biden says, the American economy is a house of cards. Most people are engaged in jobs that produce nothing except pain for the average person. Green energy jobs, HR departments, and the entire US military are on net destructive for everyone involved.
It's All Going To Get Worse
So we've got old competent people with good jobs that require years of experience dropping dead and their replacements just don't have the experience to fill the oldsters' shoes. We've got young people quitting Walmart type jobs because they suck and major corporations are hell to work for so every business now is understaffed. We've got a ruling elite that used fraud and DEI nonsense to get where they are. These elites are both incompetent and very hateful towards anyone they think is below them. We've got an economy that is basically a globalized Ponzi scheme. Our real sources of energy are being demonized and replaced with fake green energy scams. Our international trade networks are being attacked by pirates. Washington DC is engaging in wars everywhere it can that even if won would do nothing for Americans, but what is worse, THEY'RE LOSING!
Just like the Roman Empire was defeated by many different problems, the American Empire will also go down because of a laundry list of deficiencies. One thing is for certain, it is crystal clear that America is a dying empire. In general, for a long time, things here are going to get worse and worse.
I just wanted to write an upbeat feel good post today. I think I did that.
Ha! Is joke comrade!
I don't want to just complain though. There is a bright side. As the average American IQ plummets, you can excel with a consistent effort at self improvement. Spend your weekends wisely and in seven years you may be a warlord and rule your own little corner of blighted America.
