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Let me get this straight.  As of now, the four leading presidential contenders are Donald Trump, who will be 74 if he keeps office, Biden 78 if he wins, or Senator Sanders 79, or Senator Warren 71 respectively.  As a septuagenarian myself, I look at the formative values of their parents, and ignore the partisan jabber now rankly abusing the whole ear of America.

Fred Trump, Sr. was a New York building tycoon, made a fortune, and, with his wife, (a former United States Court of Appeals judge), made all the right moves to keep it. Joe Biden, Sr. was rich in his twenties, also, but had met with hard times by the time Jr. incarnated.  The Sanders family, like the Warrens, grew up on the ragged edge of chronic financial struggle and knew all about belt-tightening.  

But, in a country where any billionaire can grow up to be president, wealth disparity is not the determinative factor we might like to believe. Not really. The truth is that none of these candidates have a clue about how a breadwinner could actually feed his or her family independently of the State. The voting public can’t imagine it either.

Just one hundred years ago, things were vastly different. Missourians fed themselves and supplied cities all the way to the East Coast. But admit it or not, the vast majority of us can no more return to a healthy species relationship to nature than we can flap our arms and fly.

But we’re good swimmers. Like those scrawny coin divers you see on the Geographic channel, bobbing around the cruise ship Free Trade, and jostling for the loose change that rich people toss overboard for entertainment.

Not that I’m jealous. You take away the looks, money, intelligence, charm and success and there’s no real difference between me and any of them. With the perspective of time, everything that irritates me about their hubris has led to a better understanding of my own self, which is even more irritating.

Now for a confession:  I have also made missteps. Take that time on the town square in Seymour.  Modestly curious, I’d gone to hear some office-seekers’ eructation of inspired nonsense. But whatever he said was instantly forgotten when I got back my crew cab.

There, in the backseat, were two ginormous bags of orphaned zucchini nestled next to the equally bursting bags that I was desperate to get rid of myself. Now four bags!   Some marauder had tossed them in when I wasn’t looking. 

The feeling of violation was indescribable. Nobody locks their car in the country! It’s the law!  I’d rather sit in Walmart’s parking lot with a box of free kittens than go one more hour with that squash hogging my ride. So, sputtering like a damp bottle rocket, I quickly found another unlocked vehicle and -this was before all the cameras- deposited all four bags into the victim’s life and ran. 

My conscience is salved only by the knowledge that no jury would convict me. But kids today know nothing about the joys and sorrows of country life, of living on the edge, or the statutes of limitations.  When I inform Gen X’ers and Millennials that old age is not for wimps, and socialism is not the answer, they just roll their eyes.  

What good are my motivational memes or coin-diving techniques to people who get buyer’s remorse over a $3.99 pack of Oreos? Still, I’m  all sympathy.  

That’s because almost forty percent of them still live with their parents and have a useless diploma, will never own a home, and are fated to toil under the unpayable debt we’ve left them. They think I’ve got it made and have no interest in fixing a broken system because it’s the source of my income.  

But they have a good point, I’m thinking. We elders, who fight the bankers over pennies while bobbing around in an ocean of money, can’t find our inner tubes with both hands. We share a universal lack of imagination with the people frolicking on the upper decks: How can we utilize other people’s money? 

But the bitter truth is we cannot solve our problems from the same level of consciousness that’s creating them. Our lawmakers can only perpetuate the institutions that sustain their existence.  

Listen up you snuffies, squad and platoon leaders of my generation.  You are the last adults in the room!  No one’s coming to fix this mess!  It’s time, yet again, to lead. The cause is Liberty itself, if time yet remains.

“Our estimate shows that there will be over 4.2 million estates transferring $1.5 Trillion from one generation to the next between 2011 and 2060 . . .  Over the next 10 years (2011-2020) an estimated $134.97 billion will transfer between generations in Missouri households- the TRANSFER OF WEALTH (TOW) OPPORTUNITY.” (from The Wealth in Missouri and its Counties).

Opportunity for whom? That’s the wake-up question. It will take several hundred billion to restore our squandered food freedom. We must voluntarily self-tax (as it were) the money that we leave to each other in our wills and mobilize a one generation restoration of citizen self-government.

If you were to count one million dollars, at one dollar per second, it would take 11.5 days. Counting to a billion dollars takes 32 years.  Counting to a trillion and a half takes 48,000 years. One percent of our money is 15 followed by ten zeros.

This invisible asset base is fungible. Just one percent of this real wealth can be channeled through a Charitable Foundation mechanism dedicated solely to rebuilding each of Missouri’s major watershed’s food production communities (bioregional autarchy). This is how to quickly restore democratic self-government, food security, our health, and a renewed purpose to life.  Permaculture Nation in One Generation! There is no other way.

The Farm Resettlement Congress’ 20 Year Plan is an open-source template that re-visions the Charitable Foundation mechanism. The Plan outlines a three-tiered approach to economic decentralization that restores food security to urban markets.  It rebuilds our rural, independent farms, creates worker-owned processing facilities and value chains, as well as producer owned distribution systems (PODS).

If the theoretical capture rate of 5% were assembled in Douglas County, and five contingent ones where the FRC 20 Year Plan is developing it would amount to some $178.83 million over a ten year period. The same 5% capture over 50 years is an estimated $75.53 billion. And that’s just seed money.  We don’t need to wait to die; revocable trust assets are fungible from the get-go. When the infrastructure and soil rebuild costs are amortized, it turns out that all we need to rebuild is on hand. 

All assets must be reinvested back into the watershed community from where they come, and are managed and disbursed according to charter, independently of corporatist politics while staying true to the subsidiary principle. This is the route to restoring food production and environmental conservation responsibility to everyday people.  And, to consolidate our gains, Foundation assets must strictly operate through locally-owned banks, home town lawyers and financial managers.

This message is to all those young people that believe there’s no future for them. If you are fit and ready to pursue a path of self-discipline in pursuit of self-mastery, then you must divorce yourself completely, yet responsibly, from every power and technology that is destroying our planet. 

The FRC movement is participation through invitation.  To set up an interview, please send a one-page bio and SAE to: Friends of the FRC, PO BOX 434 Theodosia MO. 65761.