Are you a creative? Do you write? Do you want time to think? Do you want to blog, read theology, play music?
Do you want your family to be safe?

Then, if you can, get out-of-town. Be where the crowds are not, as Remus used to say. Because the town is a bubble, and you may not see the storm clouds coming.

Liberal havens have become largely clueless about the real world about them, and have turned a blind eye to the destabilizing forces that are compounding upon them.

IF/WHEN the SHTF, these will be the absolute last places you’d want to be caught dead.

IF you were clueless enough to believe Hillary’s lies and endorse the collapsing establishment line, then there’s a very good chance that you’ll have no idea what to do when the system breaks down. You will either help fuel or be caught up in chaos, violence and desperation – don’t let that be you.

The people of the Bubble (and Auckland is on the list of places not to be because (a) NZ is susceptible to natural disasters and Auckland is a volcanic field (b) it has grown faster than its infrastructure (c) there is a property bubble there) continue to think that all will go well and that winter will not come. This editorial, from the Auckland Daily Fishwrap, reads to me like the positive psychology before the first great crash I lived through. In 1987.

The people of the Bubble forget that there is no right or wrong side to history. There is the rise and fall of nations. There are the facts on the ground. They are blinded by their ideology.

The alternative flag, meanwhile, was defeated at the referendum in March, 56.6 per cent voting against it, 45.2 per cent for it. Could that project ever be revived? Could the TPP?

Both were on the right side of the future. New Zealand, like all postcolonial countries, is on an inevitable trajectory of independence and even the most ardent traditionalists know it. In time, the replacement of its flag will be one of the easier changes it makes. In time, the very name of the nation will probably change too.

The world, meanwhile, is remorselessly becoming an integrated global economy. It is beyond any man’s mortal power to stop the trade that can now be done across border by the internet, the sourcing of goods from places were they are made most efficiently and the attraction of investment to poor countries with the potential to be rich.

Agreeing on a code of international law to govern globalisation will always be difficult. The nation-state is not in decline. Rather it is Europe’s hopeful post-war project to supersede nationalism that has taken a backward step in 2016. Britain might not be the only member to leave the European Union in the next few years.

The US election, too, was a re-assertion of nationalism, not just in economics and trade but in culture and ethnicity. Many have taken fright at the scale of migration in the modern, more integrated world.

But threats from migration have been overstated and the benefits not acknowledged by demagogues who have succeeded in politics this year. Migration is needed by most developed countries with ageing populations and birth rates below replacement level.

More important, migration enriches the receiving countries economically and culturally. Life is more better for the variety of skills, tastes and interests migrants bring.

Democracies have succumbed to fear this year because of terrorism from the Muslim world. Even the US, facing a fraction of the numbers pressing on the EU’s borders, has been unnerved.

But fear is not humanity’s natural state. We are an optimistic species and progress will prevail.

This infographic, from wired, lists cities at risk of disaster world wide. As it is American, it does not list the USA. It takes the top five from each part of the world: since the crowds are less in Oceania the scores are less.

I am glad that my daughter and son-in-law got out of the Toronto region, and are indoors away from the Christmas Blizzards. Most of my family is in Auckland, and I worry. Over the next few days I am going where the crowds are not, and the internet sparse.

And casa weka is out-of-town.