Killing The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg

“Don’t eat the eggs. We put LSD in the eggs.” – The Men Who Stare At Goats

I never trust a goose journalist – too much propa-gander.

This is a Lame Repost, didn’t have time to finish the longer post I’m working on.

Aesop (no, not our modern one who appears to have just emerged from his self-imposed technological monkdom by solving the riddle of Aesop’s Cables– LINK) was a storyteller who died in 564 B.C.  This was long enough ago that the Greeks had yet to find the drug that stops the aging process:  hemlock.  To quote Socrates, “I drank what?”

But one of my favorite of Aesop’s stories is the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg.

The story is very simple, though when I was a kid they tarted it out so that it was fifteen minutes long and they could keep us shut up while the film ran so our teachers could take smoke breaks.  The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg involves a farmer and his wife.  They have a goose.  Each day, the goose lays a golden egg.  I know this sounds like the details found on page 347 of Joe Biden’s economic plan, but bear with me.

11 year old me thought that was amazing!

In Greek mythology, Chiron was a half-horse, half-human doctor.  I guess he was the Centaur for Disease Control.

Current day me?

I’d sell the goose to a private equity fund for $3 billion dollars and buy myself an island and then start a podcast where I drink bourbon every week with Elon Musk and lie to our wives about when we were going to come home.  We could call it Manhattans With Musk®.  Elon and I would just sit back and laugh as the private equity fund clones the goose and then crashes the gold market with goose clone gold.

Or maybe the cloning process doesn’t work and the private equity fund then has 45,000 cloned geese that lay eggs made out of whatever fake metal the Chinese use (Chinesium®?) to make all those tiny metal statues of Bandersnatch Combersnoot.  I mean Blandercrab Clambakehatch.  Blendersnout Clumberbake?  Oh, yeah, Benedict Cumberbatch, that I bought on Ebay® after too many Manhattans.

Okay, this is actually a chocolate statue of Bunderslam Camberthatch.  We had a dog that weighed six pounds and ate a one pound bag of chocolate.  Killed him.  14 years later.

But back to Aesop.

In Aesop’s story, the stupid farmers couldn’t cope with getting a single, solid gold goose egg each day.  Nope.

An aside:  How much would a golden goose egg be worth?

The answer, at $1900 per ounce gold, is $176,640.  (For those of you playing our home game:  remember to convert to troy ounces.)

So, yeah, these greedy Greek peasants couldn’t just wait and have $176,640 a day show up out of the goose’s butt.  So?

They killed it.

What do the Irish call fool’s gold?  Shamrock.

Yes.  They killed it.  And when they took their pudgy stupid fingers and looked for gold?  They found nothing but Greek goose guts.  Oops!  Instead of having a creature that slowly made them immensely wealthy, they ended up with whatever it is you eat that’s made out of goose.  Pâté de foie gras?  It’s okay if you want your goose . . . de-livered.

I bring this up, because that’s what’s happening to Western Civilization.  I mean, not being made into pâté, but having the goose that gave Western Civilization our prosperity is being killed.

And it really is happening.

Right now.

The wonderful and amazing thing about Western Civilization is that it has produced, by far, the greatest amount of prosperity and wealth ever seen in the history of mankind.  Heck, North Korea loves western rock:  Sweet Child In A Mine is one of their favorite songs.  They love the Guns,  but said we can keep the Roses.  Regardless, there has never in the history of the world been a group as amazing as Western Civilization has been.

Ever.

Nearly every invention that’s worth mentioning has been invented by Western Civilization.  Nearly all the wealth that’s been produced in the world, has been produced through ideas started in Western Civilization.

So, we all win, right?

Well, no.

I’ve heard (years ago) propaganda that claimed that every culture is equally valid.  This is, of course, a Big Lie®.  I’m not saying that people who live in mud huts who really know how to wok a dog must move to the suburbs and eat McDonalds®.  Certainly not!  If people wish to live in mud huts and eat cât-e de foie gras?  That’s fine – I sincerely hope that they enjoy it.  Nah, I don’t – just kitten.

But they have no right to move to the suburbs in Minnesota and have people pay for their every need.

Cannibals never eat entitled kids – they always taste spoiled.

But in 2020, the idea that everyone on Earth is, somehow, entitled to live in a society that they had exactly no part in creating?  Sure!  Let’s call it a right.  They devastated their home country, so why not let them do that in Minneapolis, too?

As near as I can figure it out, the only answer as to why this happens is Leftism.  Leftism is fixated on creating a world where equality of outcome is the biggest goal.  That means that no person on Earth should have anything more than any other.

Except, of course, for actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and billionaires like Bill Gates and important people in Washington D.C. like the guy who writes the tax code.  I sincerely hope that Leonardo DiCaprio never gets injured in a car accident on a Star Wars® movie – I would hate it if he were Han DiCaprio.

The answer is always famine.

But to a Leftist, a murderer in prison is due the same physical comforts and opportunities as an upstanding member of the community that has worked 2500 hour years for decades and saved their money for retirement.  Of course, the irony is that when everyone has the right to move to the United States, it ends with no one having any rights at all.  Except for Leonardo DiCaprio, Bill Gates, and that guy who writes the tax code.

This is the reality of Leftism in the West:  Leftists feel that prosperity comes from (shakes Magic 8-Ball®) luck.  Except when they win, in which case it was completely deserved.  Leftists believe that since prosperity is unequally distributed, they can just redistribute it at will because prosperity isn’t earned.

This is the same idea that led to walls around the communist countries in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s:  People are the property of the state.  Differences in outcomes aren’t the result of cultural differences.  Differences in outcomes must be a mistake, right?

According to Leftists, yes.

As I write these words, the West is facing a crossroads in every single Western country.  The idea corrupting it is simple and insidious:   that Western achievement is based on nothing but theft and lies, and that all men on Earth should be able to move to Western countries because everyone on Earth is owed the same lifestyle as people in Western countries have.

Used with permission.

This, my friends, is killing the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg as Aesop described over 2,500 years ago. The major theme of Leftism in 2020 is that cultures that exists on a pre-technological level, and that the residents of said culture should have the right to not only live in, but live in and direct the cultures of Western culture.

For whatever reason, the cultures of many nations have failed to produce a society that is capable of producing Western Civilization levels of comfort and wealth.  It’s beyond this post to describe why that is.  I’m sure that a culture producing wealth and prosperity is all random.  Speaking of random, what’s the difference between a Leftist and a random word generator?  Sometimes the random word generator tells the truth.

But hey, at least we’ll still have hemlock.

Right?

Fear: Don’t.

“I am Pasquinel.  I come to you, unafraid.” – Centennial

Andre Celsius died in 1744 at the age of 43, though Daniel Fahrenheit would have insisted that Celsius was 103.

This is a week of frequently discussed topics here, or if not frequently, regularly.  On Monday, I posted about the looming Civil War 2.0.  It’s a topic that’s important, and one that will define whatever rises from the ashes of USA 6.0.  I’m calling it USA 6.0 because I number them this way:

  1. The Colonies (before 1776),
  2. The Confederation (before 1788),
  3. The Several States Constitutional Republic (before 1860),
  4. The Single State (before 1913),
  5. The Progressive Empire (before 1990), and
  6. The GloboLeftistElite Playground (ongoing).

Your mileage may vary, but each of these incarnations was different, and each of them rose from the remnants of what had come before.  It’s a pretty big and important topic.

So, that’s Monday.

I saw a war movie set in a campground – the battle scene was in tents.

On Tuesday, I talked about how the unbridled “compassion” of the GloboLeftistElite was choking the United States pretty badly, and that, regardless of their intent, it was setting up a situation where the economy along with the culture is becoming pure Weimar.

Never go pure Weimar.

But it’s Friday, so it’s time to return to another frequently discussed topic:  Attitude.

If you are religious, the biggest goal of the Enemy is to create literal demoralization in both senses of the word – to cause you to lose hope fill you with despair, along with causing you to lose your morality.  The second part is listed as an archaic part of the word, and that’s a shame.

When I pass on, I’m going to leave some lucky ready my arm bone, because I think that would be humerus.

If you’re not religious, don’t tune out – this applies to you, too.  You don’t have to believe in Him for demoralization to be a huge danger.  Deciding that nothing matters, or nihilism, is the gateway to deciding that anything is possible, and feeling despair is the gateway to nihilism.

Capital E or small e, this is what the adversary wants.

The reason that so much of the news media is set up the way it is, is to provide an echo chamber that makes us all feel alone.  Think a baby born with XY chromosomes is a male?

They did find the genetic cause of shyness, finally.  It was hiding behind two other genes.

That’s pretty much every sane person.  But the GloboLeftElite want you to think that you’re alone in having these thoughts.  They thrive on it.  They depend on it.

Why?

Because if you feel alone, you’re subject to manipulation.  Many people (women especially, because of the way that they’re innately wired), for instance, want to go along with the herd and believe what everyone else does, because to many, politics is just another form of fashion.  If the cool people believe it, well, shouldn’t we all?  I mean, the Europeans laughed at us for electing Trump!

So?

It’s a perception that the GloboLeftElite is trying to create in our minds.  The same way that Kamala has gone from one of the most unpopular politicians in recent American history to within cheating distance of taking the White House, the attitude that they want to instill in us is defeat.

I forgot the rules of chess, but then I remembered I was allowed to check.

And if we take that attitude, and accept it, we will lose.  There is a reason that one of the most repeated admonitions in the Christian Bible is “Fear not”.  Frank Herbert eloquently wrote this in Dune:

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

I was an utter nerd in middle school, though I was also a noseguard so I never got picked on, and I had that passage memorized in seventh grade.  It was true when Herbert wrote it, it was true when I first read it, and it’s true today:  fear is certainly the worst emotion a human can have.

I firmly believe that the worst outcomes of my life are from those few times I gave counsel to my fears.  Nothing good ever came of it except the deep understanding that nothing good ever comes from it.  Now, when I cried, “Havok!” and let slip the dogs of war and gave it my all, even when everyone said that what I was about to do was impossible?

Good times, man.

To be clear:  we can’t lose.  Really.  I do understand and fully believe that we haven’t seen that darkest night, that time when we think that all hope is lost.  It’s coming.

And we’ll win.  The reason I am certain comes from the understanding that, no matter what the Enemy (or enemy) has done, it has never, ever kept us down forever.  I am not done.

I actually own an authentic human skull.  It’d show it to you, but I’m using it right now.

I haven’t finished doing what I was put here to do.  And if I do it, facing my fears directly, I know that I’m going to win.  And I know that, over time, after heartache and after piles of skulls and blood.

We win.  It’s inevitable.

And then, in some far distant future, we’ll have to fight again.  But that’s another story.

The Government: Killing You With Their Compassion

“I warned you about compassion, Bruce.” – Batman Begins

The people who were pro-vaxx say that our jokes about being right are getting old.  Unlike their kids.

It has long been a theme here at Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise that compassion and charity are wonderful things.  For me as an individual, there is something fundamentally uplifting about giving of my time, talent, or treasures to those that I can help.  If done properly, this compassion and charity are amazing at lifting people up when they need it.

But the dark side is when someone is compassionate for you, with none of your involvement.  This is a hallmark of the GloboLeftElite:  they want to take your resources to give to other people.  They then call that compassionate, and tell me I’m evil if I don’t buy into the concept.

In fact, if you look at people on the TradRight, we are far, far more compassionate with our actual time, talent and treasure than people on the GloboLeft.  Donation statistics show it, and if you look at the people involved in actual charities and volunteer organizations (that don’t depend on other people’s money) they are overwhelmingly on the TradRight.

They don’t have blook banks in England, but they do have a liver pool.

But let’s talk about the Leech Class, a faction of the GloboLeftElite, who suck the cash and resources from all of us to support their “charitable” goals.

FEMA comes to mind due to the recent incident where DHS spokes-scrotum Alejandro Mayorkas.  Only in the corrupt stages of a failing nation could a paperwork American (Majerkas) who was born of a Turkish father and a Romanian mother and who was born in Cuba be put in charge of immigration.  Oh, and an anchor baby running for president.

But here we are.

This week, Madorkas said there wasn’t any money to help hurricane refugees.  It turns out that under border-Czar Harris, the Biden/Harris Junta declared, proudly, that they were diverting FEMA funding to give to American “Blue” cities to support the teeming hordes of illegal aliens that they had invited and, in some cases, had flown into the United States (this is true, by the hundreds of thousands).

Is a short dog from New Mexico an Albu-corgi?

Yes.  Biden/Harris created the crisis.  Then, they pulled the cash from FEMA to give to their cronies to pay for these illegals.  Where did the money go?  In New York, shiftless illegals are living in four-star hotels with turndown service.  They’re being provided with food at no cost.

And veterans have to fight for surgery.  And the people of North Carolina are told that there’s no money for them.

But illegals, many criminal, and many not even remotely vetted, are living in luxury hotels.

This causes the prices of hotels to go up – FEMA is even paying for empty beds in these hotels.  This causes the price of food to go up, you can’t add 10% population to a system and not expect inflation as more people fight for the same resources.

My urine is crystal clear.  It’s 1080 pee.

But it’s compassionate.  Compassionate to bring 20,000 Haitians into Springfield, Ohio.  The Haitians have zero experience living in a civilized society, having been brought up in a country (that they created) where a good day is there’s enough mud to eat.

Springfield didn’t add 5,000 houses, so where are these aliens living?

One rumor has it that a local politician/landlord booted out his American tenants who were paying $1,000 or $1,500 a month in a house, and replaced them with 20 Haitians who pay $250 a month for a cot.

Hey, profit, right?

And housing costs go up in Springfield.  I guess they can make it up since the dogcatcher no longer is needed to round up stray pets.

But I’m probably not considered compassionate when I bring this up.

Why have one man, when you can have 80 cats?

Today, I saw some brain-dead GloboLeftist X® (formerly known as a Tweet®) that we should be happy, because illegals keep the prices of vegetables down.

First, no, they eat them, too.  Second, if the base value of your philosophy is to bring in cheap labor to pick strawberries, you might have the morals of a slaveholder, but just with other hands holding the whip.

The final insidious nature of what we’re seeing is that this is the year that our national deficit is equal to the size of our economy in the United States.  The last time this happened was in World War II, and at least we got lots of tanks, fighters, bombers, aircraft carriers, nuclear bombs, and other cool stuff that I can’t buy on E-Bay®.  Again, ATF should be a convenience store, not a place for LGBTQ people to scheme to take away guns owned by honest people.

No, we’re spending all this cash on . . . the acceptable compassion and charity based on the values of the GloboLeft.  I saw part of a presentation today (on YouTube®) that FEMA put together so that the needs of people with non-standard sexual preferences were prioritized in the event of a disaster.

Prioritized.  “Hey, that 10-year-old boy is hungry, but he’s white and was born male, so let’s focus on the thirty-year-old dude who thinks he’s a girl and wants to have sex with cats.”  Yes.  Emergencies don’t know skin color or sexual fetish, but FEMA sure does.

I stopped drinking, but then I bought a motivational poster and decided Wayne Gretzky was right:  “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

That’s bad enough, but they’re spending so much money on the groups that the GloboLeftElite want to shower with charity that it’s turning whatever capitalism that was left in the United States into a joke.  Yes, people are still using cash to buy things, but the government is now buying more than the economy creates.

Mainly on charity.  For people who are not me, and not you.

The final piece is that studies have shown that people who get this unearned charity often resent those who have more, and want the charity to give them the life of a Bill Gates, rather than just guaranteed food, housing, education, and medical care.

It’s so unfair!  I still remember one woman who was a part of the first The Caravan of 10,000 people (what a dream, only 10,000!) was filmed after getting food aid consisting of refried beans, tortillas, vegetables, and a drink.

“This food isn’t fit for my dog!”

She was overweight.

Yup, that’s what governmental charity and compassion to the undeserving creates.  Oh, and as a bonus it wrecks the currency and makes you and I poorer.

Wonder how that’ll turn out?

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: The Silent Coup

“And after your glorious coup, what then?” – Gladiator

What’s a three-line poem that overthrows a government?  A Hai Coup.

  1. Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
  2. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
  3. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  4. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  5. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  6. Open War.

Volume VI, Issue 5

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.  I’ve kept the Clock O’Doom at the same place – though it will notch up quickly if there are any signs of the TradRight stiffening up.

This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly.  The advice remains.  Avoid crowds.  Get out of cities.  Now.  A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue:  Front Matter – The Silent Coup – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index  – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report.  These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month.  I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues.  Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 850 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

The Silent Coup

Looking back at the last six years, it’s clear that there has been a silent coup.  The coup had its origins in the results of the 2016 election.  W, though just as demonized by the GloboLeft, played ball with the GloboLeftElite and was allowed to win, twice.

Obama was firmly a GloboLeftElite candidate from the moment of his selection – he was always in the pocket of the Washington and New York elite, and got his unlikely public image with the help of a fawning press.

Trump, however, broke the cycle.  A ¡JEB! would have been a fine candidate for the GloboLeftElite, but Trump took everyone by surprise.  They were so surprised by Trump’s victory that they weren’t able to cheat in time.  Hillary, who had been promised her shot, instead had to blame it on the Russians, who did buy something like a few hundred thousand dollars of Facebook® ads.

Since 2016, the Silent Coup has been a full court press against Trump.

  • The FBI set up Flynn for a phone call.
  • Trump was impeached for . . . a phone call, where he was asking about potentially illegal activities of the United States government.
  • The election results from 2020 were “fortified” by a well-funded group who did everything thing they could to skew voting so that votes could be harvested by the GloboLeft foot soldiers.
  • After the election, the war on Trump intensified, and a Special Prosecutor was illegally appointed to spend tens of millions of dollars to find something, anything, that they could charge Trump with.
  • A law was changed in New York eliminating the statutory period for lawsuits, so Trump could be sued by a woman that I would have turned down at her best, who couldn’t even remember the date of the assault, and, before her lawsuit, Tweeted™ about a question about people having sex with Trump for $17,000.

There’s more.  All of it equally silly, and the pending felony sentencing is postponed until after the election making it moot.

Well, it’s not all silly:  There have been multiple assassination attempts on Trump.

But the actions haven’t just been against Trump – they’ve been aimed at those who would support Trump.  Most recently Hurricane Helene hit the western part of North Carolina.  No, I don’t blame the Democrats for that.  But the hurricane produced tragic flooding.  Those areas are Trump +10% or +20% in a state that is crucial for both candidates to win.

What would the motivations be of a highly partisan government?  Recovery?  Or create enough chaos that thousands can’t vote in a close election?

What about allowing the sale (on an expedited basis in a way that has never been done) to George Soros of over 220 radio stations?  Oh, and that over 25% of the funding for this purchase is coming from foreign sources?

Beyond that, the government has been shoveling hundreds of thousands of illegals straight into Red States.  Why?  When the make them paperwork “citizens” then their votes will replace those of heritage Americans, and then there’s no more worrying about the pesky people who built this nation and their offspring.

Violence and Censorship Update

Obviously, the big story is the second attempt on Trump:

And that the press is observably all-in for Biden Harris:

And that it’s obvious the plan once they get full power:

And that only approved media should be allowed to be made:

And why you should ignore what the press says:

And some names aren’t allowed:

And this is the plan to keep people under control:

And soon the laws will vary based on your race:

Biden/Harris Misery Index

Let’s take a look to see how we’ve done this month . . . .

Yup, up again.  It’s like there’s a pattern here . . .

Updated Civil War II Index

The Civil War II graphs are an attempt to measure four factors that might make Civil War II more likely, in real time.  They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings.  As each of these is difficult to measure, I’ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that combine to become the index.  On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

Violence is up significantly, and this should be higher given that Venezuelan gangs are turning parts of US cities into no-go zones.  The meme below isn’t related to any of that, but I liked it:

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it is up some.

Economic:

The economy is in full juice mode for the election.  There will be a hangover at the end.

Illegal Aliens:

September is showing as down, again, since (my take) the .gov folks are just making up numbers now.

LINKS

As usual, links this month are courtesy of Ricky.  Thanks so much, Ricky!!

Bad Guys

https://youtu.be/29JKG3OOV5A
https://x.com/rawsalerts/status/1837363341360046429
https://x.com/i/status/1837835644279652796
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/leaked-us-army-documents-thousands-violent-venezuelan-prison-gang-members-run-amok-across
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1839747244561461495
https://x.com/judiciarygop/status/1841908406702977486?s=46

Good Guys
https://x.com/realdschmidt/status/1835804388687852030
https://x.com/TONYxTWO/status/1836957753270567118
https://twitter.com/i/status/1835830627251441713

 

One Guy
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1832805912945496432
https://x.com/i/status/1836429342806806920
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r_xc09q9vo
https://www.ammoland.com/2024/09/chicago-woman-defends-her-daughter-against-home-intruder-police-take-her-gun/
https://bearingarms.com/camedwards/2024/09/16/jewish-groups-issue-travel-warning-about-massachusetts-county-where-man-charged-in-self-defense-shooting-n1226239

 

Body Count
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/USPopulationByRace_web.jpg?itok=xEy0RSJD
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2024-09-17_08-01-06.png?itok=-Wfnpo_M
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Counties-at-least-25-Percent-Dep.jpg?itok=0-ieqYQ5
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/millennials-gen-z-childless-money-finances-massmutual/
https://www.muckraker.com/articles/finding-the-feds-missing-children/
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4900734-us-suicides-remain-high-cdc/

Vote Count
https://electionbriefing.com/
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/11/politics/early-voting-election-what-matters/index.html?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc
https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-non-citizens-say-they-are-registered-to-vote-in-key-swing-state
https://news.gallup.com/poll/651185/partisan-split-election-integrity-gets-even-wider.aspx
https://www.arcamax.com/currentnews/newsheadlines/s-3422282
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/widespread-problems-with-u-s-mail-system-could-disrupt-voting-election-officials-warn
https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/OJ0TtjhBIQTDX0ZDApXCew–/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTI0MDA7aD0yNDAwO2NmPXdlYnA-/https://media.zenfs.com/en/us.abcnews.gma.com/d034e5923caf1fc1883add9a80a79e24

The Future Of War
https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1842138275726680357
https://x.com/AncientAlien01/status/1840339044804292657
https://x.com/ConnieLingus123/status/1784570453094178936
https://x.com/UaCoins/status/1756753637483647280

Civil War
https://screenrant.com/civil-war-2024-movie-streaming-ratings-success/
https://jonathanturley.org/2024/09/17/age-of-rage-26-million-americans-believe-political-violence-is-justified/
https://napolitaninstitute.org/2024/09/18/17-say-america-would-be-better-off-if-trump-had-been-killed/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/09/17/half-republicans-wont-accept-trump-loss-2024/75142477007/
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-2024-election-is-a-tinderbox/ar-AA1qG4j0
https://archive.is/Bpkki
https://www.thefp.com/p/republics-unravel-rome-america-trump-jan-6
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2024/09/28/you-dont-need-a-weatherman-to-know-which-way-the-wind-blows/

Prepatude.

“No harm in being prepared.” – The Fellowship of the Ring

If a detective solves a murder quickly, is that a brief case?

(most clips/memes from here on out are as-found)

Prepping is a subject that has been near and dear to my heart since I was a kid.

The Wilder family would frequently go on long hikes and snowmobile trips into the backcountry.  Likewise, we’d go hunting and fishing.  Before most of those trips, Ma and Pa would talk to me about the dangers on the trip, what to do if I got lost, and what to avoid.  I’m still at a loss as to why they covered me in honey when we were in bear country and referred to me as “Hansel” but I did pay attention.

Our spot of land on Wilder Mountain was 15 miles to the first town, which was a metropolis of about 800 people during the school year.  It had a grocery store, and a doctor’s office that was open (I believe) two days a week because the doctor went from town to town.  It was a time and place where, when I was bitten by a local dog, the doctor asked me to describe it.

“Meh.  Probably not rabid.  I wouldn’t worry.”

It was a different world back then and Gen X kids, who were pretty free-range.

Got arrested for smuggling books into Washington D.C.  Got off on a technicality, since no one there can read.

The winters on Wilder Mountain were cold at -40°F (-40°C) being a regular low, and with snowfall that could total to over three feet in a single night.  There were no natural gas lines, or even artificial gas lines, and we heated the place exclusively on firewood.  There were times the road was closed, and when the power was out, it was out for hours while the power company scrambled people from nearly 50 miles away to come and fix whatever had broken whereas fire always worked.

Ambulance?  Forget it.  When I was young, the closest ambulance (I believe) at least half an hour away.  The ambulance was whatever car you had and the State Troopers told people to put their emergency flashers on when speeding to the hospital.  Did I say State Troopers?  Nah, there was just one within 45 miles.

There is an official denial that this is a true story.  More info will come out.

And, obviously, no cell phones.  Heck, our first line was a “party” line which was shared among four houses, and all the phones would ring for an incoming call.  You could tell which call was for your house because each house had a distinct ring pattern, sort of like Morse code for Martha.

From a very young age, I knew that my safety wasn’t coming from some distant location.  I was responsible for myself.  Our family was responsible for our family.

As the slogan goes:  no one was coming to save us, and we knew it.  We also lived it, having provisions of food for more than a month at any given time, a freezer full of meat, and enough firewood to last two winters.  When the power went out, we had candles, and Ma Wilder had the wax to make more.

I was raised with prepping as a mindset.  We lived it.

I could go into more details, but you get the point – nearly everything we did was predicated on the idea that if things went tango uniform, we’d likely have to do all the digging out ourselves, which we did on more than one occasion.

When you don’t feel like physically preparing.

Looking back on it, that was a wonderful way to grow up.  It’s really the opposite of being a victim.  If I had gotten into a situation that I couldn’t have gotten out of while maintaining a 98.6°F (-40°C) body temperature, I knew it was my own fault.

It taught me this lesson:  I’m never a victim.

This is also the story of the founding and conquering of our nation:  people setting off to far lands across a sea, and then finally crossing the continent with everything they owned in a wagon, a little island of humanity that would sink or swim.

I’m a descendent of those that managed to swim, and probably, you are, too.

Well, that’s embarrassing for FEMA.

This, really, is the opposite of city life.

For someone in New York, they depend on other people for almost everything.  Trash.  Food.  Heat.  Water.  Safety.  Security.  Elevators.  Like I said, almost everything.  They exist as a cog in a technological machine that uses them for a specific purpose and then puts them to rest in the off hours so they can complain about how alienated they feel to psychiatrists that charge $400 an hour.

GloboLeft prepping aisle.

To them, prepping probably means avoiding scary people on the sidewalk, but even that isn’t any sort of guarantee of safety.  Nor is a guarantee that the systems that work to punish those who will do Evil is in any way functional.  It looks like those are breaking down at a rapid pace, and that will do nothing but increase the level of violence and corruption already inherent with large numbers of people from divergent cultures living close to one another.

Such a vibrant big-city culture!

For them, prepping isn’t an attitude, prepping is something other people do, because the stores are always open, 24/7.

More than anything, however, preparation is a continual situational review of what you have and what you have to have.  I write this now because I sense we’re in a greater degree of danger than at any time during my life, with the possible exception of 1983 when things almost got extra-spicy with the Soviets, who were nearly finished with updating their weapons from World War I.

Now is really the time to assess where you’re at, what you’re doing, and what you would do without things that are “essential”.

Essential is relative:  2 minutes without air, 2 hours without shelter (depending on conditions), 2 days without water, and 2 weeks without food (though lots of folks including myself are pre-prepped for that contingency).  How many GloboLeftists could last an afternoon, though, without the warm affirmations of their fellow travelers that they’re on the Right Side of History®?

Why wouldn’t they want people reporting on this?  Embarrassed, or wanting to kill opposition voters in a swing state? 

No, prepping isn’t about a day or a time or an event, it’s a way of life, because of the horrible things that have happened to me have been none of the ones I expected, like that time I nearly ran out of beer.  But since I had prepared generally, well, I was prepared.  I have 200’ of rope in my truck.  Why?

I have no idea what specific episode I’ll need it, but experience shows that in the next decade someone will say to me . . . “I have no idea why you had the rope, John, but it sure stopped that runaway nuclear reactor meltdown!”

I mean, most people only stop one nuclear reactor meltdown.  But two?

Know their priority.  It isn’t you.

My prepping background is my parents.  We lived near the wilderness, and lived like it.  One thing that neither Pa nor Ma would accept, at all, was a victim.

Having a proper prepping attitude, or prepatude is all about that – setting yourself up so that being a victim isn’t in your future.   Then?

Lists.

Economics Of War, 2024 Edition

“Well, it seems to me, sir, that God made me a fine instrument of warfare.” – Saving Private Ryan

I guess that there’s no thyme to tell all his stories.

War is one of the natural states of humanity.  Although we don’t have records back before when Grug was living in Switzerland before hot cocoa was invented, we do have Ötzi, a guy who died about 5,300 years ago.

What we can tell about Ötzi is that, first, he’s dead.  Secondly, we can tell that he was almost certainly murdered.  By who?  Don’t know, but it’s a pretty good bet that they guy who inflicted the wound died, too.  Unless he was killed by Keith Richards, who we should probably put on a space ship because only he could live long enough to travel to another star.

Why would I say that the murderer was dead (unless it was Keith Richards)?  The Yanomami people of the jungles of South America are as close as we have to “pre-civilization” people, and they killed themselves in at an astonishing rate.  About half of their men died in combat until fairly recently.

Do your part to keep him immortal.

The economics of the Yanomami violence are pretty simple – a bow, an arrow, a stone knife, and an enemy.  Heck, they don’t even have money, so I have no idea how they can get a rental car.

In one sense, we are the opposite of the Yanomami and Ötzi.  We have been fortunate enough to live in the Good Times, when the horror of nuclear weapons has thus far lowered the percentage of combat deaths since 1945 to what I think could be a historic low.  Why?

War is like football.  Everyone comes out of the huddle, and then lines up.  What the team on the offense is going to do?  Who knows.  It’s the job of the defense to respond and stop them, though using snipers is considered to be unsportsmanlike.  Creating surprise is now pretty difficult, especially surprise on a large scale.

My buddy said he made a voodoo doll of me.  I think he’s pulling my leg.

Let’s look at the Ukraine Conflict.

It started out as a grand, strategic move like a great World War II battle with tanks and bombs and planes.  That did surprise the West (me included) because it seemed so out of place given the safe world we live in – as /pol/ would say:  “nothing ever happens”.  The initial gains of the Russians were large, but by the time the Ukrainians got their feet under them, the Russians had a logistical snarl and found out that rubber tires rot if you just leave them in the garage for thirty or forty years.

Oops.

The war went from swooping strategy to what exists now: a series of mainly small-scale actions where when an infantry squad breaks through, it sometimes makes the news even though a gain of 500 yards is a big deal.  Why?  Because large troop concentrations are visible from space.  And anything visible from space is a target.  Neither side can effectively generate the schwerpunkt or focal point of forces required to break through and create a war of movement.

Are doctors who graduate online called Google® Docs?

Nope.  The latest development is that small squads of Russians are now using small, cheap ($2500 or less) dirt bikes to get to the opposing trenches fast, disposing of them as they storm the trenches.  This helps them avoid the ever-present drone swarms.  It’s like The Road Warrior, but with fewer shoulder pads.

And tank warfare?  For now, at least, it’s gone.  Just like bat is the “chicken of the cave” so is the tank now the “aircraft carrier of the land”.  They’re mainly just expensive targets, and a variety of cope cages, turtle shells, and electronic jamming have been field-innovated to try to protect them.

But when you lose a tank, you lose a pretty big investment.  Russia can only make (depending on your definition of tanks) about 1,500 a year, along with 3,000 other sorts of armored vehicles.  A big chunk of those tanks are modernized and rebuilt Soviet-era tanks.

A Russian T-90 tank costs about $4.5 million.  A drone with bomb costs less than a thousand dollars.  One economist estimated that the Russian tank losses alone was about an $11 billion dollar hit.

You do the math.

Remember when the Biden/Harris administration shot down the Chinese balloon?  At least they tried to stop some inflation.

Likewise, aircraft have had to stay well back because of surface to air missiles, of which the Russians produce a pretty good variety.  The Russians claim (heavy emphasis on the word claim) their radars can easily see the F-35 and F-22.  Claim.  An F-35 costs about $109,000,000 per aircraft.  An F-22 cannot be replaced – we lost the tooling.  Fun fact:  $109,000,000 in quarters would weigh five and a half million pounds, or the equivalent of the weight of pre-printed Biden ballots the Democrats had to dispose of discreetly after Joe dropped out.

As of January, 2024, we have 234 operational F-35s.  We have 187 F-22s.  And, yes, those babies can unleash a lot of havoc in short order, but missiles are cheap, and if it takes dozens to knock one of our fighters down, it’s dollars ahead.  And, let’s be clear:  they’re not always flying.  The US response to the Me-262 wasn’t to try to dogfight a German jet with a Yankee prop, nope, our aces hung around the German air bases and shot them as they had to land.

Is a boomerang their weapon of choice?

Every weapon has a weakness, and rarely can those weaknesses be overcome by papering them over with hundred-dollar bills.  But just as the object of making weapons has gotten bigger and bigger, our ability to fight a World War II style war has gone to zero.  One anecdote is that a captured German fighter pilot was bragging about shooting up a large quantity of American planes on the ground at an airbase.  Being at the airbase, the US officer took him outside and noted, “They’ve already been replaced.”

The German reportedly said, after a heavy sigh, “And that is why we are losing.”  That, and my great-grandfather, Johan von Wilder, who was responsible for downing five German fighters by himself.  Worst mechanic in the Luftwaffe.

The trend, though, is less $100 million fighters, but now seems to be looking towards large numbers of inexpensive, nearly disposable weapons that are cheap, lots of missiles that cost a few million bucks, and fewer “so expensive it’s silly” systems, except for those that give the really important part of the battle:  information – satellites and radar and the like.

But for all of that, the goal in war seems to have changed.  Rather than breaking stuff and killing people, the goal is more based on long-term fights whose goal is to cause the enemy to become unstable to topple their own leadership for someone more favorable.  I’m betting this is really a legacy of the Cold War.

I put my desk in the elevator.  I hope it takes my career to a whole new level.

I don’t think that we’re in any shape to fight an actual war against a determined opponent in a conventional sense for longer than a month or two, and wholly incapable of fighting in an area where we don’t have uncontested air dominance.  From an industrial standpoint, our ability to make more stuff isn’t serious:  outside of small arms and helmet and clothing, I’m not sure that there’s a weapons system that we could make without the help of overseas firms for critical items.

We just don’t make it here anymore, and building the basic industries to allow us to do so will take decades and trillions of dollars in capital invested.  I think we’ve reached the point where our primary weapon is financial.  There’s a precedent that situation can last a long time – the Byzantine Empire lasted in one form or another for over 1,000 years.

The Byzantine Empire had a gold stash that would make Scrooge McDuck® do whatever it is that ducks do when they’re happy, however.  We don’t.  Our wealth is based on paper and mathematics, and can move across borders in milliseconds (megafarads if you want an SI unit).

What would Ötzi’s people think about that?  I don’t really know.  I guess we’ll have to ask Keith Richards.

Yuri Bezmenov’s 1980s Prediction Of 2024

“Mommy, why are you making civilization collapse?” – Futurama

BEZMEN

Video games never made me want to hurt people.  Working with people did that.

This particular lame repost is because I got tied up on another project today, and this seemed appropriate given the election cycle.  My project was only a little bit productive, and that’s fine by me.  Fresh content on Wednesday!  

Yuri Bezmenov was a KGB agent who defected to the West in the 1970’s.  Bezmenov told everything he knew to the CIA, and was set up in Canada.  He did several interviews which are available on YouTube®, which I’ll link to in a bit.  Most recently, Call of Duty®:  Black Ops Cold War™ brought Bezmenov back into the public consciousness by cutting in clips of his interviews in.

You can watch it below.  It’s only a minute or so.

During interviews, Bezmenov made the quote that only 15% of the KGB’s activity was tied to James Bond® stuff.  Their primary goal wasn’t to find out which parts of an F-15E jet fighter were made out of titanium and which parts were made out of paper-mâché.

Matching the United States in weapons systems was important, but it wasn’t number one.  Besides, the KGB generally had a spy class of ideological communists built into numerous classified projects.  Bezmenov said that 85% of the KGB’s efforts were spent in destroying culture in the West.

Why fight an actual war, if you can get your enemy to become you?

Bezmenov even set out the mechanisms that they were in the process of using.  It wasn’t a complicated process, and it was just four steps.  They called this process, “active measures” and it was nothing less than subverting the ideology that made America great.

The first step was Demoralization.

Demoralization is based around removing the moral framework of the country you’re attacking.  The easiest way to do this is to co-opt the education system.  Bezmenov said that this took 15-20 years, but his number was low.  First, the educational institutions needed to be captured.  The people who train the teachers, the people who are the “guiding lights” in educational theory must buy into Marxism.

I don’t have a direct measure of the ratio of Leftist to Rightist in those that teach education, but I’d imagine it’s no less than journalism, which is at 20:1.  It may exceed history, which is 33.5:1.  Regardless, the educational academy is now firmly in the hands of the Left.  This leads to the production of teachers in a Leftist pedagogy (fancy word for teaching), with bad Leftist theory sometimes even enshrined into law.  No Child Left Behind?  Yes, that was bad.  Common Core appears to be worse.  Here’s one example:

CORE

Yes, this is really what they tried to teach little kids.  From the Heartland Institute.

I have to wonder if the idea is that such simple things like addition and subtraction can be made so complicated that parents won’t be able to teach them to their children.  In essence, it’s a way to further sever the ties between parent and child, while strengthening the ties between child and state educator.

Certainly, not all educators are Leftists.  Here in Modern Mayberry, there are a few, but I think we likely have a more healthy balance.  But there are those who look at the remote classes from COVID-19® as a potential threat to their attempts to indoctrinate children:

DEMORAL

Is Demoralization 100% complete?  Not as long as we have those pesky parents standing up for the customs, culture, ideas, and values of the West.  Is it complete enough to take over society?

Maybe.

The goal of Demoralization is a lot of what we see now on the streets of Portland or Seattle or any other major Leftist city.  Bezmenov described the end product of Demoralization as:

“They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information. Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behavior.”

In other words?  Leftist robots.

Destabilization is the next step.  This is the destruction of the systems that define the country.  The economy.  Social relations.  Defensive systems.

In the last few months, the economy has been put into the most precarious state within living memory.  The United States is more divided politically, ideologically, linguistically and ethnically than at any time in history.  Naval vessels ram freighters.  Senior officers are fired due to ideology.  Women are brought into combat operations despite proof that their inclusion lowers fitness for mission.

Bezmenov said that Destabilization took two to five years.

Destabilization leads to Crisis.  Crisis in this system is necessary to get people to accept a new government, new systems, and to give up the old system.  There’s been a great deal of experience in creating Crisis by the Left.  Think the Color Revolutions that have taken place all over the world, from Georgia to Ukraine to Lebanon, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.

What does Crisis look like in the United States?  How about open violence encouraged by receptive District Attorneys that refuse to prosecute?  Does it look like the dollar losing 7% of its value in three months?

KEN

Crisis leads to promises by the Left.  High minimum wages.  Free healthcare.  Guaranteed basic income from the government.  “Equality” in housing, in education, in policing.

Are the promises real?  Of course not.  The promises are whatever it takes to get enough support for the Left so they can take control.

If we are not in the Crisis, you can certainly see it from here.  Ideally, for the Left, Crisis leads to control, or Normalization.

Normalization is the end game.  It’s consolidating the country under the Leftists.  It’s the creation of new institutions.  In the Soviet Union and in China, it consisted of killing farmers and replacing them with people from the cities and expecting these collective farms will feed the nation.

Of course, all of the Leftists burning Kenosha and Portland think that they’ll be the ones in charge.  In the new Socialist Utopian States they’ll be the ones who will write poetry and conduct gender reeducation camps, right?

BULLET

This poetry comes from Seattle, I believe.  Plans are now in full view.

No.  The reality is that they’ll be most likely to be put up against the wall and shot or sent to the convenient leisure gulags.  Why?  They will be disillusioned when the actual power structure emerges.  The reality of every communist paradise in history is that the intellectuals are shot first, especially the intellectuals that are communist.  Why?

Dissent is a thing of the past.

Here are Yuri Bezmenov’s ideas, in his own words:

It Came From . . . 1991

“Well, Clarice, have the lambs stopped screaming?” – Silence of the Lambs

I had a professor who devoted an entire class to the movie Silence of the Lambs.  It was a Hannibal lecture.

While I think we have one more year (I’ll have to check) in the 1980s to do, we’re jumping into 1991.  Once again, the rule of no sequels takes out a decent movie or two, in this case Terminator 2, which some (not me) like better than the original.  T2 is much bigger and has better special effects, but, whatever.  It’s not on the list.

You’ll also not see some more popular movies from the year.  That’s okay, I either didn’t see them, or didn’t like them, like that crapfest of nihilism, Thelma and Louise.  Awful movie except the part where the feminists die.  That was good.

Warlock – When I met The Mrs. we quickly realized that we both liked Julian Sands for this very same movie.  It’s about . . . well what it’s about isn’t horribly important since the plot is silly – an evil warlock from witch-burnin’ time travels to the present followed by a witch burner.  The witch-burner goes on a buddy road trip chasing the titular warlock.  (I love saying titular.)  It ends pretty much like you’d expect.  It might have even been better if it was a sequel to Ghostbusters, but then it wouldn’t be on the list.

Julian Sands looks like David Bowie gave him a makeover.

L.A. Story – I liked it when I first saw it, but on a second viewing it seems a lot shallower.  Steve Martin is good, but restrained, and part of what throws me off on the later viewing is the horse-faced Jessica Parker, who I have learned to loathe.  Best part?  Steve Martin having to prove his credit score to get a restaurant reservation.

You could cook a lot of liver and fava beans on that many burners.

The Silence of the Lambs – As far as genius films go, this is one of them.  From start to finish, the tension and connection to the characters is built up, with the real star of the show being a serial cannibal.  Good times!  Technically, this could be considered to be a sequel of the earlier film, Manhunter, but I make the rules, so it’s in.

If Looks Could Kill – I love this movie.  It’s stupid.  The plot is written in crayon.  It depends on stupid coincidences.  But it works for me.  And apparently just for me, because everyone scoffs at this movie.  Scoff away!  Oh, and it features lots of central bankers being assassinated, so it has that going for it.

Toy Soldiers – This particular movie is also very silly, and is mainly on the list because I believe that there was a time in the 1990s when it was required by federal law that Toy Soldiers be available at any time to anyone who had basic cable.  This movie was on all the time.  The cast was awful, the plot was silly, but it did have R. Lee Ermy and his eyebrows in it.

Apparently in this version, Bill Murray plays a cat.  Like he did in Garfield.

What About Bob? – This is Bill Murray as I imagine him in real life, if he didn’t get mad at people.  Murray plays a psychiatric patient who gets very clingy with his therapist, and in the span of a weekend becomes more beloved to the therapist’s family than the therapist is.  Richard Dreyfuss plays the therapist by, I believe, just by being Richard Dreyfuss.  If you couldn’t tell, I don’t like Richard Dreyfuss

BackdraftBackdraft was a very good movie that could have been great, but just missed because of the muddled morality of the ending plus the good guy and the bad guy dying sorta pointlessly.  As usual, director Ron Howard throws his brother Clint Howard in a role, because Clint Howard uses his amazingly large brain to psychically control Ron.  Not a re-watcher, but one that was a good summer movie.

Hudson Hawk – This is easily the most ill-advised movie that Bruce Willis has ever been in, where he plays a burglar who sings a lot with his crime partner, Danny Aiello on the way to assembling Leonardo DaVinci’s lead into gold machine for secret evil dudes.  Did I mention that Willia and Aiello sing?  Oddly, a movie this stupid has to have someone that likes it, and in this case, both The Mrs. and I enjoyed it.

And it looks like he killed her.  Also, the corgis look suspiciously plump.

Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead – most memorable scene?  A kid is using a shotgun to shoot plates that his brother is throwing off the roof.  When finished, he says, “The dishes are done, dude.”

Hot Shots! – Charlie Sheen back in the days when he was funny instead of borderline insane in an Airplane! style movie spoof of Top Gun and Rambo.  Funniest foreshadowing?  A pilot with the callsign “Dead Meat”.

Doc Hollywood – Michael J. Fox before his Parkinson’s, and Julie Warner who I keep mixing up with the actress Finn Carter who was arrested in Vegas for credit card fraud.  It would be funny if Finn had stolen Warner’s credit cards, but I doubt it.  Plot?  It’s essentially and nearly exactly the plot for Pixar’s® movie Cars.  But Doc Hollywood’s not animated and cars don’t perform plastic surgery.

That one girl has got a crazy eye.

The Addams Family – As a fan of the television show (there’s a reason we named our son Pugsley), I was dreading that this wouldn’t be very good.  It was good, and the cast simply was mostly perfect.  Oh, we didn’t really name him Pugsley, but we do very much call him Pugsley.  I’m glad Child Protective Services never found that out.

The Last Boy Scout – The start of this movie was just amazing – a football player, drenched in rain, starts running down the field and pulls out a Beretta 84FS in .380ACP and shoots the players that are about to tackle him.  Now, there are two problems with that scenario.  First, you’d probably want more stopping power than a .380, I’d think a .45ACP as a minimum.  Second, is there even a rule against using guns during a game?  I mean, the worst thing might be a 15-yard penalty for unnecessary roughness plus an ejection.  I’ve since found out that pretty much everybody involved in the whole movie hated each other, which makes me like it all the more since I feed off of the pain of others.

This is a lame list.  The quality of movies was in steep decline since the 1980s, and, really, on this list only Silence of the Lambs is a classic.  When do I think it started to go wrong in a big way, based on seeds set in earlier decades?

The 1990s.