Being an Aggie Librarian for me is all about learning to live with one’s personal contradictions. I’m a city boy but one who’s in touch with and has connection to roots in rural Missouri. My daddy was a farmboy, but also grew up to be a Science teacher. Mom lived on a Missouri farm, too, and became first an English teacher, then a school librarian.

I am unabashedly Left-wing, but anymore, I’m insulted with being called Liberal. I’ve moved beyond Liberalism…I’m now a Radical, in the current scheme of things, though I don’t think the things I believe in are at bottom really all that radical. Now I do usually agree with Old School Democrats of the Liberal mold shaped by FDR. I happen to think, despite his corruption scandals, that radical Louisiana populist Huey Long was pretty cool too, and he helped push FDR further Left than FDR really wanted to go. Like any populist leader that makes a real difference in the lives of poor people, Huey Long has had to be demonized time and time again. But the “American Fascist” label, invented by real American fascists, by the way, simply doesn’t stick to Huey Long. He was a Democrat who happened to believe in small-“d” democracy, roused the masses, had the audacity to tax the wealthy, then help the poor. Maybe enriched himself a little much along the way, but nobody’s perfect.

I think the people can seize the reins of the state and use it as a blunt instrument for economic and social justice, and to make everyone’s lives better, and push back and keep the National Security State in check, on a tight leash. But I’m no “mere Liberal”, either, of the type Phil Ochs satirized in his song… (“…love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal…”). Mere liberals can still support the worst of US imperial politics abroad, albeit for the most noble of misguided motives. Mere liberals are still paranoid, rabid anti-communists who quickly brand me with their voodoo label they call “Stalinist” (I’m more of an anarcho-syndicalist Trotskyite-Titoist, thank you very much). I’ve been a radical small “d” democrat and Marxist for quite some time now, and I no longer have a gag reflex when people bring up the signifier “Marxist-Leninist”. I feel increasingly pushed towards Marxism-Leninism nowadays, really. I’m in need of doing more research and taking stock of my current beliefs again.

In the meantime, I believe that mildly paternalistic welfare-state socialism can and does work, well-funded and efficient public mass transportation is superior to the sprawling, expensive road network created for personal car and 18-wheeled trucks, and I believe such a state sector can be integrated, ala Tito-style, into a Yugoslav-model “mixed economy”, with a vibrant (but properly and stringently regulated) market sector, if you want to go that way. There’s also something to be said for the Spanish anarchist cooperative collectives around Mondragon, too. Grassroots ECONOMIC democracy is a GOOD thing. But even in so-called Liberal circles today it’s still heresy to defy the Reagan-Thatcher inspired orthodoxy, which declared post-1991 that “There Is No Alternative” (TINA) to so-called “Liberal free-market democracy”. That was swallowed whole by both Clinton and Tony Blair. Thus, they occupied the ground formerly occupied by so-called Rockefeller Republicans. US New Democrats today all struggle to “restore” so-called Liberal Free Market Democracy, the Republicans are plowing full steam ahead with a crazy brand of “free-market fundamentalism” combined semi-theocratic Christo-Fascism, unbridled militarism, and naked imperialism. It was an old fashioned US Liberal president (LBJ) that helped give us Vietnam (though fatuous GOP rhetoric that intimates that the Republicans would have avoided Vietnam is pure fantasy…the Republicans would’ve NUKED Vietnam if they could have)…LBJ felt pressure from the Right, and from the National Security State, to get involved with Vietnam, to continue what Kennedy had clandestinely started...

But there is one issue out that could ultimately render most of this whole political debate meaningless and absurd, and really break down a lot of Left – Right distinctions and show that the only true Dynamic one need really worry about is the Top versus Bottom dynamic.

That issue is Peak Oil, or specifically the post-Peak oil decline in world oil production, and how the world leaders and world citizens decide to react to it and to each other in light of changing physical reality.

In a later post I might provide more links to Peak oil-and-gas related information, for those not yet educated on the phenomena and its implications.

But so that I don’t make this post overly long, let me simply state a few watchwords to remember for the unavoidable Post-peak oil/gas (and therefore economic) decline.

1) Re-localize your economies
2) Learn permaculture—start growing your own food now!
3) Get off the grid…go solar, maybe, but mainly, learn to cut consumption!
4) Get out of debt, but invest in physical gold—not paper gold—as your rainy day fund.
5) Self-reliance is an excellent virtue, but mutual aid is better.
6) Learn self-defense and be prepared/vigilant.
7) All politics are ultimately local…get to know your neighbors, talk to them about Peak oil.

This isn’t really a Right or Left discussion, this is a human survival discussion….it’s a living in denial versus facing reality question. And while I generally like the warm touchy-feely fuzzies generated by Mother Earth News,

http://www.motherearthnews.com/

…like the US Democratic Party, it became too Yuppified from its scrappy, hippie roots; I’m told it is returning to those roots, slowly (and how could it not, with GWB in the White House!?) but it appears to be a slow arc back, by the look of it. The advice given isn’t bad, but it’s….maybe a little too fashion conscious?

No, for my money, you want the best advice for surviving the aftermath of post-Peak oil collapse, your best source is going to be Backwoods Home Magazine,

http://www.backwoodshome.com/

Scrappy, independent minded—a publication even a Left-wing Anarchist could love. Honest!

Yes, the magazine is in fact a little Right-wingy, but their hearts are in the right place. Maybe in the Clinton years I would’ve thought they were nuts…but in the Clinton years I was ignorant about Peak oil, even though the implications of Peak oil had been theorized in the 1950s and widely known in petroleum circles since at least the 1970s.

For what it’s worth, I should mention that I happen to agree with Michael C. Ruppert and his investigative reporting staff over at http://www.fromthewilderness.com/ . I think the PNAC people needed 9/11, and helped conspire to make it happen. I highly recommend his website and his print newsletter as well.

Now, the folks at Backwoods Home Magazine might dismiss Michael C. Ruppert’s investigative reporting team out of hand, and people like me who read him. They have a banner that says “Remember September 11, 2001”. I would agree, just remember that signs point over and over to it being an inside job, or at least aided and abetted by elements of the National Security State, within the Federal government apparatus, under Dick Cheney. Read Michael C. Ruppert’s very excellent book Crossing the Rubicon for more details.

The precedent is there, folks…if you’re not familiar with the name “Operation Northwoods” from the 1960s, get familiar with it. “Rex 84” is another Federal plan to be familiar with. Some right wingers are aware of these things, and thus their fear of the Federal government does have some basis in fact. I am myself prepared to say, as a Leftist and an Atheist, with no special love for religious nuts, I think there’s something fishy about Waco and the fiery, bloody end to the siege of the Branch Davidians, and moreover, there’s something fishy about Oklahoma City, and for that matter something fishy about TWA Flight 800, too.

So for a number of reasons, even as a Leftist, I endorse Backwoods Home Magazine whole-heartedly, because, frankly, there IS a lot to fear about the Federal Government these days. After Katrina, is there really any doubt that these bastards don’t care about ordinary people and will only do just enough to keep up the appearance of caring, if that. In public pronouncements about Avian Flu, the government message is clear: “you’re on your own, chump”.

Backwoods Home Magazine is more straightforwardly Libertarian…no government intervention period. They are less explicitly condemning of corporate power centers, though, as near as I can tell. In fact, they don’t really address overarching corporate power that much at all, other than a general screed against mindless materialism generally. They make no distinction between paternalistic welfare state a la FDR and outright fascist states like GWB. They believe in backwoods self-reliance as the ultimate expression of human freedom, in a kind of Jeffersonian, yeoman-farmer mold.

I can respect that view, but as a Left-wing socialist, I believe the paternalistic “nanny” state (as the Libertarians mockingly call it) can actually do some real good in the world, engage in socially beneficent income redistribution, and restrain the worse corporate excesses, but the Welfare State in general, and the Social-Democratic parties that ran them, let’s be honest, were always just bones tossed out by the capitalists to keep working class people, especially in Europe, from going communist. Social Democracy was always that kind of compromise pay off…don’t go communist, workers, vote for social democracy and we’ll give you modest pensions, national health insurance, paid vacations, and educational opportunities. Once the USSR collapsed in 1991, though, all bets were off, all compromises no longer needed, and the more vicious, nakedly aggressive forces of Capital came to the fore to smash all half-measures and revert us back to 19th century modes of capital/labor relations, world wide. So anyway, the “welfare state” has been replaced by the “warfare” state, and it truly IS a thing to be feared.

Backwoods Home Magazine above all advocates what is properly seen by socialists as a fall-back position, nearly Anarchist in nature--a strategy of survival. The magazine and its writers advocate self-reliance. I’d say self-reliance is good, but Anarchic “Mutual Aid” is better. I’d rather have old-fashioned democratic State socialism slightly left of FDR, maybe even slightly left of Marshall Tito. But recognizing that that probably won’t happen in my lifetime, Anarchist communes are the next best option for survival, but they need to be able to defend themselves. Which is why I recently held my nose and rejoined the National Rifle Association, and why I subscribed to Backwoods Home Magazine, and would recommend it for any Public Library. With my NRA membership, I get a free subscription to American Rifleman. I will say the same thing about American Rifleman that I say about Playboy Magazine...I read it for the (technical) articles, and enjoy the pretty pictures (but ignore the right-wing blather, the way I ignore raunchier fare like Hustler).

…Backwoods Home Magazine gives so much practical advice that you’ve got to love them. Permaculture books are fine, and I do recommend them, but I also read Massad Ayoob’s columns on guns with great interest. I mostly ignore the right-wing blather, or read between the lines.

I’m not the only Lefty who does, either. Check out:

http://www.liberalswithguns.com/

and

http://progunprogressive.com/phpBB2/index.php

I myself have mixed feelings about gun politics and issues. I think the NRA’s rabid tirades against the United Nations are utterly insane. The UN isn’t trying to take away your guns, they couldn’t do it even if they wanted to. The UN is trying to reduce the spread of military small arms in the Third World, too lessen the chances of ethnic conflicts boiling out of control to become full-born blood feuds and civil wars. Don’t they have a right to guns too? I guess so, in the abstract, but they also have a right to an education, adequate housing and food, and a decent job, according to the UN. The UN is trying, in its own way, to save lives in impoverished areas of the globe by reducing the tools of violence in those regions. It’s a thorny issue enough without the NRA throwing a paranoid hissy-fit and conflating an issue that has nothing really to do with them (arms trade regulation in the Third World) with legitimate questions on gun ownership and regulation in the First world, in more stable societies with police, rule of law (ostensibly, at least), the 2nd Amendment, etc.

I think gun laws that work for, say, rural Montana might not work for urban New York City, and vis versa. In sum, I think it should be a local issue. I believe cities are right to insist on stringent CCW regulation, and to declare some areas off-limits, even to licensed concealed-carry owners, such as venues that generate 51% or more of their revenue from alcohol sales (bars & liquor stores), public schools, large central Public Libraries, etc. Rural areas can and should be able to be more relaxed and less stringent with gun regulations.

Come the Peak Oil decline & collapse, though, you will not only need to know how to garden, cultivate your own food, and perhaps raise animals for food…you’ll have to be familiar with guns to defend your family and your community. They won’t be coming from the UN, but black SpecOps helicopters are real, and make no mistake…the Pentagon has its own contingency plans for global warming, Peak oil, etc, and what little has come to light isn’t very pretty. That’s the main reason I re-joined the NRA. And it’s not just the Pentagon, mind you…they’re just the servants and shock-troops of the Wealthy. The mega-rich have their own contingency plans for survival…what else do you think they talk about at the Bilderberg conference, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Project for the New American Century, etc.? Do you think they’re unaware of the looming crisis? They’re not—but they’d prefer to keep you in the dark for as long as possible. I may not be a good Lefty in some people’s eyes for not disavowing guns 100% and seeking only non-violent solutions. I can only say in response that the Black Panthers learned how to use guns, and so did The Weathermen splinter group who broke off from SDS (Students for a Democratic Society). I respect the hell out of practitioners of non-violence who achieve positive results by sheer moral force. But I don’t have the faith in humanity to believe the Gandhi way will work every time…I still remember my Frantz Fanon and Ernesto “Che” Guevara, too. Every MLK will have his Malcom X, and even MLK was a lot more radical than official histories properly recognize.

It’s a sad fact that not everyone will prepare properly, either, and some will be less well able to deal with the economic shockwave than others…You should be charitable when you can to those who are without, but realize some who are without will have guns and try to take your food (and guns) by force, too. I’m trying to get my parents prepared, slowly, gradually, without scaring them half to death. I really do wish we could realistically move back to our grandparent’s homes in rural Missouri sometimes. We may yet do that, I can’t say. Maybe I am a little paranoid myself, but as I always like to say: “Just because you’re paranoid does NOT mean they’re NOT out to get you.”

I pray (figure of speech only--I’m an atheist, mind you) the worst of this won’t happen in my lifetime, that I’ll be long dead before any of us really have to worry about post-Peak oil economic collapse and even a worldwide human Die Off event of massive proportions owing to starvation and disease.

But the more I read, the less confident I am that this won’t start happening in my lifetime.

A friend of mine, and fellow librarian, once said she wanted to study the effects that post-Peak oil collapse would have on libraries. I commented that libraries are in large measure a product of mass civilization. If that civilization collapses, libraries as we know them collapse too. And Socialism? Yeah, it would’ve been a good idea, when we still had the industrial means to go that road…instead, democratic anarchist communes will have to suffice, if they can be defended and maintained.

Socialism now would help mitigate the worst effects of post-Peak oil decline and collapse, but there’s zero chance of it being implemented in any Western country where it would make a real difference.

So don’t throw out those old LIS books on how to do manual card-catalogs just yet. Keep around a copy of older versions of AACR2, keep your manual type-writers, The Big Red Books, and your DDC21 books (or LC Classification Tables if you got ‘em)…you just might need them if small, community based libraries are to survive the demise of Petroleum Man someday. And save those print archives of Backwoods Home Magazine, and Farmer’s Almanac and all the best 1970s Permaculture books, mainly from Australia.

Humanity will be lucky enough to maintain an 18th or 17th century mode of existence in the wake of a post-Peak oil collapse, if even that. Even that may be too optimistic. Vital minerals have become so difficult to recover, it is questionable whether, without cheap petroleum energy, humanity would even have the material basis for a return to the Bronze age, much less the 17th or 18th Century with its proto-industrialization and world-wide commercial empires. There’s only so much we can recycle from our existing material culture; the world of Mad Max isn’t as far fetched as it seemed in the 1980s. It too was about a collapsing world of hyper-scarcity of fossil fuels, if anyone cares to remember. As much as I love city life, Cities are the one place you don’t want to be when the crap really starts to hit the fan.

I’ll write more later but for now I want to wrap up this post. Backwoods Home Magazine is important to read, and important for your local library to subscribe to if you can’t afford a subscription yourself. The archival collections they offer through their website seem totally worth it, too.