By Bubo Virginianus

As I write this, it’s the day after Christmas, December 26, in the year of our Lord, 2022. Christmas. The time of year when we celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. I hope everyone had a Merry Christmas. At this time, I’ll briefly go over each of the previous 5 parts, with links to them. Part 1, “The Illness”, covered the cause of the problems our society has been experiencing for some time and showed that the problems are accelerating and increasing in frequency. In the US, this pattern began the further we moved away from Biblical principles and toward a religious adherence to Secular Progressivism. This occurred in both our government and the people in our society.

Part 1 can be read here- https://libertytreemaine.com/f/the-maine-way-forward

Part 2, “The Cure In The State”, discussed the state’s need to return to the Christian ideals that our nation was founded on. It showed America’s explicitly Christian legal basis and what happens when we try to orchestrate society based on subjective standards and opinions.Part 2 can be read here- https://libertytreemaine.com/f/the-maine-way-forward-1

Part 3, “The Cure In Koinonia”, focused on the family, the church, and the community, with the resolutions and freedoms that can be enjoyed within those social clusters when they find their operational basis in a Christian moral framework.Part 3 can be read here- https://libertytreemaine.com/f/the-maine-way-forward–part-3-the-cure-in-koinonia

Part 4, “Maine, The Bad News”, goes through Maine-specific issues caused by Part 1’s Secular Progressivism that affect our state. Thankfully, Maine has such a rich history, that we can see the decline of Maine’s civilization every day while we occupy and walk to grand ruins that previous generations skillfully labored to produce.Part 4 can be read here- https://libertytreemaine.com/f/the-maine-way-forward-part-4-maine-the-bad-news

Part 5, “Maine, The Good News”, sheds light on the benefits Maine specifically enjoys. The rich culture and ruins that we can see around us show how much our culture has fallen and intimates that there is a way of living that can be reignited. Geographic benefits and the ability to take advantage of freely available opportunities make Maine particularly unique in its offering. Part 5 can be read here- https://libertytreemaine.com/f/the-maine-way-forward-part-5-maine-the-good-news

And now, here we are, Part 6: The Conclusion.

Assuming all previous parts are correct and accepted, then this conclusion should be the icing on the cake, but, if any previously discussed argument is discarded, this conclusion may be used for some reprieve.

That pendulum will go even further left, and time, hope, resources, and people will be lost.

We live in a weird time. There are high-impact, volatile, chaotic, and difficult-to-predict forces at work in the world, and what follows are a few.

A lot of people put one or more dubious vials of experimental liquid into their bodies. One group of people is convincing children, teenagers, and adults to turn themselves into eunuchs. Another group of people is pursuing relationships with individuals who share the same sex chromosomes. Other people are put off by the idea of having children altogether.

Before 2020, the birth rate in America was going down, and this new comedy of errors will only greatly compound the problem.

Another aspect of the interesting times in which we live includes the economic pickle we find ourselves in. We face an economic fork in the road, where one direction looks like the greatest depression of all depressions, and the other direction is Weimar Republic-level hyperinflation.

How does this play out in the coming years? Does the US Dollar become displaced as the Global Reserve Currency in favor of the Euro? Ruble? Yen? Something else?Yet another brewing issue is geopolitical. What we’re seeing with Ukraine and Russia, and US involvement in that situation. When it comes to Ukraine, China supports Russia, and India does as well.

To say things are getting a bit intense between America, China, and Russia is an understatement. If it’s not a hot war, then it’s clearly a cold war that could go hot at the drop of a hat.

Looking back inside our borders, we have a mess that’s been brewing for a while. It would seem there are politically motivated legal assaults against individuals who hold views contrary to whichever ruling party occupies certain government positions.

We’re quickly getting to the point where I expect every sitting president to be impeached, or at least threatened with impeachment.

It would seem that there’s the making of extreme conflict within America, and it doesn’t matter whether that’s intentional or unintentional. What matters is that the possibility exists.In looking at birth rates and the health of our society, economically concerning inflationary and depressionary activities, international geopolitical turmoil, and great American political schisms, it’s looking pretty rough. I didn’t include things like energy, “climate change”, resource depletion, border crisis, tyranny, or any number of other bizarre happenings. If we look at all these things that are occurring simultaneously, then we can conclude that we’re playing with matches atop the lid of a powder keg.

The environment that we can all see before us looks prime for a severe black swan event (or multiple) that could either be isolated to America alone or international in its effects.

Writer, statistician, and analyst Nassim Taleb defines a Black Swan as “an unpredictable event that is beyond what is normally expected of a situation and has potentially severe consequences. Black swan events are characterized by their extreme rarity, severe impact, and the widespread insistence they were obvious in hindsight.”

Given the fact that the whole world is ripe for a Black Swan event, making decisions that have a high probability of success becomes difficult due to the unpredictable nature of the environment that we’re living in.

To implement the cures of the previous essays, we need an environment that is largely immune and robust to highly unpredictable and destabilizing events for a long time.And now we turn our attention to the game of Risk.

The Australian Turtle Strategy

Risk, as the subtitle of the game states, is a “Game of Strategic Conquest”. In it, the world is broken down into 6 of Earth’s 7 continents (Antarctica is not playable), and within each of the 6 continents, there are several playable territories. Each player has a variety of little army pieces where they can invade and defend territories across the globe. When a player holds an entire continent, they get certain advantages strategically, fiscally, and militarily. The game lasts 5 turns, and whoever has the highest score at the end of those 5 turns wins.

Enter Australia.

In the game of Risk, Australia is the smallest continent, with the least number of territories, the lowest bonus when a single player occupies it, and the least number of borders. In the game, Australia is largely lackluster, lacking appeal, boring, out of the way, small, and insignificant.

The other continents are more valuable, larger, more difficult to defend, and more difficult to occupy. Also, once occupied and then lost, the player that occupied it is most assuredly going to lose the game.

The goal of the Australian Turtle Strategy is simple: use your starting forces to take the entire continent of Australia and sit. That’s it. Just sit it out. Sit in Australia, gain bonuses and troops, fortify your position, wait until year 4 or 5, toward the end of the game, and then win.

It’s not complex. It’s a simple strategy that takes patience, dedication, foresight, and confidence. Implementing the strategy in the first or second turn isn’t easy. You have to displace enemies and take their territories. You have to vigorously defend your border against invasion, where another force can come in and take over your territory. If you lose a single territory of the whole, all strategic advantage is lost.

The other players of the game are often forced into waging war on one another. If they don’t, then one player will take one of the more difficult-to-take continents, with greater bonuses. If another player does that, they’re sure to win by building a massive army that will dominate the world.

So, take Australia, and sit. Let the world burn, with armies waging war on one another, while the continent of Australia grows strong.

While national politicians want to behave like Neanderthals, slinging poo at one another, accomplishing nothing, and making everyone dumber every time they open their mouths to speak, just let them fight. Let them pointlessly wage war against one another while everyone runs around playing the rat race in support of them.

Let the rest of the players in the game use all their troops, time, and resources trading continents and territories with one another.

Sit. Build. Wait. Lay bricks. Plant trees. Tend bees. Butcher cows. Have lots of kids. Year after year. Teach Christ and his commandments.

Maine is like Australia. By modern standards, it’s largely inconsequential. There’s not a large population. Life is harder. Maine has a small economy. There are not a lot of large companies in Maine. Maine only has 4 electoral votes, and in the 4 it has, it’s split between two districts.In the grand scheme of things, if Maine was in the game of Risk, it would be Australia. While companies, politicians, voters, and financiers are fighting over California, Texas, New York, Idaho, Florida, Washington, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee, there’s little to no fervor over Maine.

In Risk, it’s at the beginning of the game that Australia is conquerable. The longer the game goes on, the forces are stacked in different territories that ensure Australian capture is strategically impossible.

Like Australia in Risk, the sooner Maine has good forces just sitting and multiplying, the more effective this strategy will be in defending against whatever ills want to enter our town and then our households.

One argument here could be that this strategy is easier to implement in a place like the Canadian Arctic tundra, Alaska, or Wyoming.The problem is that these places have ailments that we can easily explain using Risk. Risk has 6 continents. Antarctica is not in the game, although it is one of Earth’s continents. It’s not in the game, because it’s not in the game. It has zero strategic value. If you take and hold Antarctica, the rest of the players would pat you on the head and say, “Good luck with that,” and then you die, achieving nothing.States like Alaska and Wyoming have other problems, whether it’s the fact that they’re hard to hold, or the states don’t offer enough of a bonus in holding them. There’s a fine line between being able to live somewhere and subsist for a long amount of time, and that place also at the same time being viable in its ability to offer substantial geographic specific benefits and resources. A place to build a kingdom, but be strategically valuable enough to warrant building the kingdom there, and where people could willingly and happily occupy the kingdom.

Maine offers these things in a way no other state does. With the benefits outlined in Part 5, it is tempered with the downsides of Part 4, but those downsides are what makes Maine such a viable offering in terms of this Australian Turtle Strategy. If the continent was easy to take, like Antarctica, it wouldn’t be of any long-term strategic benefit to “Turtle” on.

While the world awaits a Black Swan event that may or may not ever come to fruition, we have an existing set of problems within an environment that is accepting and accommodating of chaos and destruction. On top of the necessity for a place to implement the creation of a truly American society over a long span of time, we need that place to be able to withstand highly destructive destabilizing events. I don’t claim to know what the Black Swan event is or its nature, but based on the lay of the land, Maine seems like it has a lot of factors and benefits that allow it and its people to still be standing while the dust is settling from whatever events the future has to offer.

I’ve outlined much of America’s problems, why and how we’ve strayed, and how to combat these issues in local government, our communities, and our families. The fixes and cures that I’ve proposed are completely consistent with the foundational principles of our nation.

Previous essays have revealed Maine’s downsides and upsides. The hurdles that must be overcome, and the benefits this state offers for moving forward.

But again, like Risk, a lot of the way these fixes are implemented isn’t in fighting or engaging in the ongoing war. Like Risk’s “Australian Turtle Strategy”, the play here is to sit, live, grow, and actively push out the people who hate America’s founding principles.

How long? I don’t know. It’s the type of conviction that leads someone to labor on the foundation of a building that will never keep him warm and dry. An intense endeavor that is a benefit to his progeny, but not him personally.

It’s the type of work that can take a lifetime. A family of masons where the father spends a lifetime building a cathedral, passing down the trade to his son and then grandson. Where three generations of masons work on a single building only to never hear the sound of the cathedral’s bells.

These ideas fly in the face of our modern sensibilities that have been shaped and molded by instant gratification, but the strategy is sound. We’ve dug ourselves into a hole that we can’t easily get out of, and it’s going to take a lot of time to fix. There’s not an instant gratification type of fix, and the attempts have been fleeting and unsuccessful.

“All we need to do is take the house and senate.”

“All we need is this super swell guy as president.”

“All we need is a majority of the Supreme Court.”

These easy “fixes” fall as easy as they are implemented, and generally, they don’t result in any tangible progress.

To quote John Adams again, “our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Creating a people takes time, and it takes a place for them to be made.Moral and religious fathers need to create families, in a local region, which makes a moral and religious people.

To quote another New Englander, in 1799, Jedidiah Morse stated that “Whenever the pillars of Christianity shall be overthrown, our present republican forms of government, and all the blessings which flow from them, must fall with them.”

These pillars either have been overthrown or are thoroughly in the process of being destroyed. If we want our republican form of government, which Jedidiah Morse enjoyed, we need to reestablish the pillars on which it stood, namely the pillars of Christianity.

Only then will we get to enjoy any of the blessings which flow from the republican form of government.

Maine is the place to do this. Maine is accommodating to this form of Turtle Strategy.

Are there tough local pills to swallow? Yes. But there are rocks and boulders in the best of fields, and it’s through that toil that something good is created.

Join me, as I hurry up and wait. As I hustle and bustle my way into living a quiet and Christian family life. Building locally. Bringing like-minded Christians here to help me turtle along.

Reject the noise. Reject the fake conservatives with temporary “solutions” which almost always end in people being propped up for power and profit. Reject self-destructive modernity. Reject Secular Progressivism in all its forms.

Embrace hard work.

Embrace the sweaty toil.

Embrace large families.

Embrace localism.

Embrace working on impossible tasks.

Embrace Christ, the King.

“As Maine goes, so goes the nation.”