August 2018 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Read This Blog or I’ll Shoot This Car and You’ll Feel Guilty Forever

“You have learned to bury your guilt with anger. I will teach you to confront it, and to face the truth. You know how to fight six men. We can teach you how to engage six hundred. You know how to disappear. We can teach you to become truly invisible.” – Batman Begins (The good 2005 one, not the earlier crap.)

If you don’t read this blog, I’ll shoot this car. Then wouldn’t you feel guilty?

I sat staring at the ceiling in the darkened apartment, the lights from the parking lot casting shadows on the walls. I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned. Finally, I resorted to reading. I’d read every night until I literally fell asleep with a book in my hand. I remembered, in particular, reading a big, heavy hardcover at the time, one that was about 1053 pages long.

I was being eaten alive inside. I was wracked with guilt.

What was I scared of?

Well, I hadn’t finished my master’s degree yet, but I had moved halfway across the country and started a new job. No one was asking me about my degree, but I knew that dreaded moment was coming soon. “So, John Wilder, where’s your degree? We need to see a copy.”

This was impossible. My thesis wasn’t even written yet. And I had moved halfway across the United States and taken a new job.

My torture continued. Outside of the lack of sleep, the guilt from knowing that I hadn’t finished my degree sent a chill down my spine (or is it up my spine?) every time I thought about it. At work. Shopping. Waxing my moose statue. Finally, after a week or so of this torture, I went in to my boss, who was only five or so years older than me. We started off talking about the work I was doing. At the end I brought up the degree.

John Wilder: “Oh, and one other thing, I’m not quite done with my master’s yet, I still need to finish and defend my thesis.”

Boss: “Whatever. I’m not even sure the company cares. In fact, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t. We hired you, not a degree.”

And that was that.

In that moment all the fear left me, and I felt silly for worrying about it, and even sillier for keeping it bottled up inside of me, eating away at me like a Kardashian at an all-you-can-eat waffle and cream cheese covered bacon buffet. Sometimes that horrible truth you have bottle up inside of you . . . is no problem at all.

This has been the norm in my life: if I confronted the problem, or was honest about it upfront, the problem (most times) went away. And when the problem didn’t go away, fixing it because I was honest and upfront was easier than the times (in the past) that I’d waited to confront the issue.

Guilt is a cousin to Worry, and not the good kind of cousin that brings a twelve-pack to your backyard barbeque and then offers to watch your kids so you and the wife can go have a dinner out. No. Guilt is a bad cousin that shows up at 3am, kicks your dog, and eats that steak leftover you have in the fridge while talking with its mouth full and smelling vaguely like a wooden barroom floor near a Marine base. But Guilt and Worry are related.

Worry is paying for the future problems you might have, whereas Guilt is worrying about the repercussions from past actions. Let’s be real: I wasn’t worried so much about not having the degree (I did finish it a year later) but was really worried about having moved halfway across the country only to be fired and become economically destitute – a warning sign for future people to say, “don’t be like that idiot.” I had done the deed. Or in this case not done it. My question was what would happen once I’d been found out.

And most of the time your imagination can create future consequences far scarier than they ever would be in normal reality. Unfortunately, I’m an imaginative guy. I can go from getting a “C” in a college class to getting kicked out of school to living in a squalid drug den and smelling like Johnny Depp in about three steps.

The choices (if you don’t want to eat yourself up alive inside) are simple: confront the guilt, or, better yet?

Don’t do things that make you feel guilty.

Duh.

Scams and Cons at Any Age, Part I, as told by Admiral Ackbar

“It’s a trap!” – Return of the Jedi

Admiral Ackbar knows the score . . .

Con games are as old as lying, which is to say as old as people. The “con” in con game stands for “confidence.” The entire point of a con game is to gain the confidence of your victim or “mark” so that they don’t suspect that something is wrong. True story: I was at the State Fair here in Upper Lowermidwestia some years back and one of the carnival workers would try to lure people to play the carnival games by saying to passersby . . . “Hey, Mark.” I assumed he meant Mark Twain, who had been travelling with us:

But in reality he meant me, which was good because Mark Twain is only imaginary, and I would feel pretty bad if other people saw him, too. He was open and outgoing that I was just a mark to play his game and lose money. I fooled him! I played that stupid basketball game until I won the medium-sized stuffed animal. Only cost me $75 in tickets to finally win it!

And there are plenty of other names con men call the mark (thanks to Wikipedia for a nice list): sucker, stooge, rube, or gull (for gullible). There are lots of other names for the con game as well, but con game or scam will work for our purposes.

The perfect con game (we’ll just use “con” as a noun from here on out) should just look like another event in the mark’s life. Heck, it might even be something that the mark brags about. The idea is that the mark willingly gives the con man (or grifter) his money, and then, for whatever reason, doesn’t realize he’s been cheated, or, if he does realize he’s been cheated, won’t talk to anyone about it. In many cases the actual con game sounded much more difficult than working, and a good grifter might make even more money as a politician or salesman with poor scruples (I crossed the one out because I didn’t want to be redundant).

How do you avoid being cheated? It’s hard. The first concept is “you can’t cheat an honest man.” Ideally, if you were to avoid everything you were to run across where the deal seemed too good to be true, you’d probably be able to avoid 90% plus of the scams that are out there. The other thing is being properly skeptical of claims and looking for unbiased verification. However, the very best scams attempt to provide you with unbiased verification in the form of biased websites, biased experts, and situations that apply pressure to make a decision . . . now.

As a rule, if I have only three hours or some other arbitrarily fixed and short timeframe to make almost any decision, the answer is “no.” I’ve never felt bad about that . . . rule, except for the experience that made me set that rule . . . which you can read about below.

But different scams are appropriate for different ages. I can swindle a three year old all day long, but the big problem (and the reason I don’t spend my day swindling three year olds) is that three year olds have inherently bad credit and a very limited access to large amounts of cash. They’re certainly gullible, but they’re crappy victims. Rule number one: never spend time swindling the broke. I learned that lesson only after accumulating about 5,000 drool covered Happy Meal® toys. Stupid toddlers.

Sometimes it’s not a scam . . .

Also, despite the jokes I might make, this is a how to NOT get swindled post. Knowledge is power. Or something. Anyway . . .

Teenagers:

Teenagers are only slightly more difficult to swindle than toddlers. They simply don’t know much. But unlike toddlers, they think they know everything, which makes them easier to swindle. But also like toddlers, teenagers don’t have all that much that’s worth taking. I’d avoid cheating them – it’s really not sporting.

Here’s my story of getting grifted as a teen, from my blog post on cars (Repeat After Me: Never Buy a New Car (and other lessons for young adults)):

(Backstory: my car was rear-ended by a drunk teen.) The car, literally owned by me for less than two months needed a lot of repair. I went in to find out when my car would be done. The manager (the father of a girl that had graduated a year before me) invited me into his office. He had a fairly long speech that he shared, indicating that he had found some cheaper parts than he had originally quoted the insurance company, and, well, my $200 deductible could go down to $40 if I only paid him in cash, right then.

I’m not sure how he knew that I had exactly (and only) $40 on me at the time, but his cash radar was perfect. I pulled out my wallet (brown nylon with a Velcro® strip that kept it closed) and pulled out my $40 and handed it over.

I felt vaguely dirty afterward, like I’d done something wrong. Honestly, I still fill icky about it writing this down. The reality is that he probably just needed money his wife couldn’t track for booze or lunch and saw an 18 year old coming . . . and decided to separate me from all the cash that I had.

Yeah, not very sporting, right? But, again, all it cost me was $40. Much better to scam are . . .

College Age/Young Adults:

The biggest scam for many kids is college. And it looks so legitimate. But college is the perfect scam because it involves big money. Tuition isn’t cheap, and is rising far faster than inflation says it should. Beyond that, the current average grade at Harvard is an A minus. Let that sink in. Nothing says scam like a diploma mill, and if Harvard is a diploma mill, what chance does Lame Duck County Community College have to enforce anything resembling an academic standard?

Additionally, college has entered into the realm of “being the new high school” since employers are looking for smart employees. College at least weeds half of the students out even with the high average grades, so it’s at least some sort of test. It would be far cheaper for businesses and the economy as a whole if we just allowed IQ or intelligence testing of employee candidates which correlates well with not only intelligence but also with diligence. Alas, for some reason it seems to be some sort of allowable bypass to only hire from colleges that only accept kids with great ACT or SAT scores (which are great proxies for IQ). So, instead of an IQ test that takes half an hour or so and costs a few hundred dollars, kids now have to shell out tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars to make them candidates for top positions. And don’t even TRY to pass the bar (outside of California) without a law degree approved by the American Bar Association . . . .

Additionally, college has the advantage of generally not being paid for by the person getting the service. Often, it’s paid for by parents. When it’s not, it’s often paid for by student loans. Buy, you say: “John Wilder, the student has to pay back the student loans. Aren’t they responsible?”

“Nice hat,” I respond, “it must keep the sunlight off your pointy head.” Seriously, have you ever met an 18 year old that could intellectually conceive of paying off a debt of tens of thousands of dollars over the course of a decade or more? NO! We don’t allow these people to drink because they’re far too stupid. But, yet, we allow them to make decisions that essentially grind them into servitude for the Academic-Industrial Complex. Ohh, I need to trademark that phrase.

Another way that scams get you is similar to what happened to my friend Joe – I discussed this in a blog last year (Scams, Your Momma, and Cheap Speakers)

“So, guys, the most incredible thing happened to me,” said Joe. “I was at a Burger King® and I had just finished eating. I was walking back out to my car, and this guy in a van stopped me.”

I think I jumped in with something to the effect that very few good things happen when a guy from a van approaches you in a Burger King™ parking lot. Joe ignored me and continued, “He had these speakers in the back of his van. He had dropped them off at a rental, and he had mistakenly signed two extra out. If he took them back to the shop, they would have fired him for checking the extras out. These are $1000 speakers! Each!

“I got them for $300 for the pair! They sound totally awesome with my stereo! I had to run to the bank to get the cash, but I got them!”

I smiled.

I had just read in the local newspaper that there was a scammer group operating around the metropolitan area of Moderatelylargecity, East Westeria near where we lived. They were selling speakers worth about $50 a pair out of the back of trucks at fast food restaurants. Cash only.

I thought to myself – “Hey, Joe likes the speakers. He really likes them. And if you tell him it was all a scam, he’ll hate the speakers and feel stupid. Is it hurting anyone to let him think he got a deal?” Joe was a nice guy, and I successfully held back my inner jerk (on that far distant morning).

So, college age kids are just coming into their prime for scams. I’ve heard that they’ve updated the old “speakers from a van” to include websites touting the brand of speaker that they’re “selling.” In the information age, have to be ready for the 22 year old with a smart phone.

Amazingly, I’ve only gotten 22 years into my 78 year survey of how you will be cheated during your life. I’ll continue this topic next Wednesday.

Show Me the Man, I’ll Show You the Crime: Justice, Civil War, and Game of Thrones

“If you think this has a happy ending, you haven’t been paying attention.” – Game of Thrones

I’ll admit I’m enjoying this season of Game of Thrones. Intrigue. Betrayal. Lust for revenge. Oh, wait, that’s just the political news since August started.

As I’ve noted before, none of these political posts about civil unrest are my wish – they’re more what I see coming (or maybe coming) as history rhymes with the past in the United States. It’s not the same, really, since we’re very different as a people in many significant ways than 1860, but the passions of the people and the divide that we see doesn’t appear to be closing and in a way that is reminiscent of the 1850’s. Here are a few of the previous posts in this loose series:

Harvey Silverglate wrote the book Three Felonies a Day – I bought my copy back in 2010, Amazon reminds me. Silverglate’s theme in this book is that there are literally so many regulations and laws that you’re breaking multiple laws daily. And you don’t know that you’re breaking a law because many of them aren’t horribly logical or even obvious. Silverglate gave the spoiler in his title – he thought the average American committed three felonies a day regardless of evil intent. At that rate, the government holds all of the cards. Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria was head of Stalin’s secret police. Beria’s second most famous quote, “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” His most famous quote? “Whazzzzuuuuuupp?”

The idea is that you find the unpopular person, and then, because everyone has committed a crime (many, if not most victimless) you find the crime. And let’s be honest. Trump has committed felonies. So has Hillary. And, so have you. I, on the other hand, have led a spotless and exemplary life, so no reason to go sniffing about here.

Like Beria, Robert Mueller has the man, so he will show us the crime. We’ve seen this before – Ken Starr and his relentless and unceasing review of Bill Clinton gave us perjury charges when Clinton lied about (probably) the most pathetic sex ever to occur in the White House since Woodrow Wilson’s encounter with the first electric . . . well some things are best left unsaid.

And how do we know that Mueller is our Beria? It’s simple. He gave immunity to Rick Gates for crimes that were arguably worse than Paul Manafort’s. He charged Manafort with things that the (according to many observers) are commonplace in Washington, and that no one has ever been prosecuted for. And as far as income taxes, Representative Charlie Rangel failed to pay . . . a LOT of taxes. And failed to disclose $600,000 in assets on a federal form. And, yet? No harm, no foul. I could raise many examples of similar crimes by Congresscritters and government employees that only are prosecuted if they don’t play the bacon-wrapped-shrimp party game, where you go along with what’s going on.

Hmmm.

The main concept of this special prosecutor is that, regardless of what crime it is, a crime will be found that Trump will be prosecuted for. This is a consequence of the idea that Trump is illegitimate, and must be cast out. In conversations I’ve had with some on the left, the very idea that Trump could serve out his term is considered hateful. The idea that 90% of Republicans love him is unfathomable. I’ll explain below why this sort of thought is more dangerous than a Spice Girls reunion.

Belief in rule of law keeps society together: it is the hallmark of Western civilization. To the extent that society at large believes that guilty people are punished and the innocent set free, the rule of law is deemed to have worked. There can’t be favoritism. Not for cops. Not for elected officials. Not for appointed officials. Not for Hillary Clinton.

When people believe that the system is rigged (rightly or wrongly) you get the Los Angeles riots, the Ferguson riots, and the Bundy Ranch standoff. Remember the Bundy Ranch?

The Bundy Ranch standoff occurred in Nevada back in April of 2014. I won’t recap it in detail, but it occurred because a group on the right felt that the rights of the Bundy’s were being violated. Largely peaceful, the standoff resulted in the Bundy family keeping their cattle, but at least two people were convicted of felonies related to the standoff, although the Bundy’s themselves were acquitted of all charges based on gross prosecutorial misconduct. I’m not saying I agree with the merits of the Bundy case, but dozens of people with guns showed up to back them.

But the rule of law is important because without it, we become stuck in never-ending vengeance cycles, like the people in New Guinea – here’s an excellent New Yorker article (LINK) about a society where warfare and revenge replace justice. From the New Yorker:

The war between the Handa clan and the Ombal clan began many years ago; how many, Daniel didn’t say, and perhaps didn’t know. It could easily have been several decades ago, or even in an earlier generation. Among Highland clans, each killing demands a revenge killing, so that a war goes on and on, unless political considerations cause it to be settled, or unless one clan is wiped out or flees. When I asked Daniel how the war that claimed his uncle’s life began, he answered, “The original cause of the wars between the Handa and Ombal clans was a pig that ruined a garden.” Surprisingly to outsiders, most Highland wars start ostensibly as a dispute over either pigs or women.

And like Ken Starr animated the right in the 1990’s, Robert Mueller has animated the left. The left is ready to declare victory, spike the ball, and prepare to fight President Pence in 2020. As has been pointed out by astute commenters to this blog, there really aren’t two parties (normally) in Washington, merely one party with two faces. Each one has the same goals, just different timing. As far as I can see, the only principle each side sticks to religiously is their position on abortion, which is safe to fight about because the Supreme Court has taken that decision away from them. No other principle is sacred to either side.

Thankfully, I still read it as unlikely that Trump will be impeached in this term. Although the agencies in Washington are loyal to the agencies themselves and not the American people, it’s still my bet we end up with a Republican house until 2020. But if the House turns? The Senate will still not vote to convict on a campaign finance violation, especially when it’s possible the payments are completely legal, Trump having done so in the past to protect himself prior to becoming President.

But . . . what if?

Washington is firmly held by the statists. For Trump, Washington is enemy territory – an enemy that he taunts almost daily. In Washington itself, Donald Trump got 4% (that’s not a misprint) of the vote. That explains why the left is incredulous that he won, they don’t know anyone who ever voted for Trump. It’s clear that the careerists at the agencies don’t like Trump. So who does have faith in Trump?

The same people that engaged in the standoff at the Bundy Ranch.

But I don’t think it will get there, and I hope it doesn’t get there. But if it does? I hope it’s peaceful. I sense we’re heading to a very difficult place, and I hope it doesn’t lead to Civil War II too soon. I haven’t seen the end of Game of Thrones yet. On the bright side? Happy Monday!

Pleasure, Stoicism, Blade Runner, VALIS and Philip K. Dick

“I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.” – Blade Runner

I wonder if there is any symbolism in this artwork? I guess we’ll never know.

Recently I’ve been reading Philip K. Dick’s novel VALIS.

It’s interesting. I enjoy it.

Philip K. Dick’s work (you never see him referred to as “Phil” or “Phil Dick”, it’s always Philip K. Dick, just like John F. Kennedy is always known as “Sassy”) has taken over Hollywood. From Total Recall to Minority Report to Blade Runner to The Man in the High Castle, Dick’s work has been made into something like 14 movies and an entire series of shorter television episodes available on Amazon® Prime™. In what might be the most ironic ending ever, he only really became popular after his death, with Blade Runner being released just a few months after he died at the age of 53.

The story themes that he visited during his life were fairly consistent:

What is the nature of reality? What if it’s a lie?
How do we know that we are sane?
What if reality is insane? What should our response be?
What is information? Is it living?
Where can I get more drugs? I mean a LOT more drugs.

VALIS is based on (at least partly) a vision that he had in February and March of 1974, and describes a lot of things that Dick said personally happened to him, which include a secret Roman Empire that still existed, aliens, and the fact that his son had a hernia that would kill him if he didn’t have the doctor look at it. The hernia part is verified. The secret Roman Empire? Not so much. Oh, did I mention he did a LOT of drugs? Yeah. He made Hunter S. Thompson seem like a virgin.

However, as a writer he had an amazing amount of insight, which may account for the popularity. One quote that struck me was an interesting philosophical digression in VALIS:

Masochism is more widespread than we realize because it takes an attenuated form. The basic dynamism is as follows: a human being sees something bad which is coming as inevitable. There is no way that he can halt the process; he is helpless. This sense of helplessness generates a need to gain some control over the impending pain – any kind of control will do. This makes sense; the subjective feeling of helplessness is more painful than the impending misery. So the person seizes control over the situation in the only way open to him: he connives to bring on the impending misery; he hastens it. This activity on his part promotes the false impression that he enjoys pain. Not so. It is simply that he cannot any longer endure the helplessness or the supposed helplessness. But in the process of gaining control over the inevitable misery he becomes automatically, anhedonic (avoiding pleasure – JW). Anhedonia sets in stealthily. Over the years it takes control of him. For example, he learns to defer gratification; this is a step in the dismal process of anhedonia. In learning to defer his gratification, he experiences a sense of self-mastery; he has become stoic, disciplined; he does not give way to impulse. He has “control”. Control over himself in terms of his impulses and control over the external situation. He is a controlled and a controlling person. Pretty soon he has branched out and is controlling other people, as part of the situation. He becomes a manipulator. Of course, he is not consciously aware of this; all he intends to do is lessen his own sense of impotence. But in his task of lessening this sense, he insidiously overpowers the freedom of others. Yet, he derives no pleasure from this, no positive psychological gain; all his gains are essentially negative.

This idea is fascinating to me. In this case, a virtue, self-restraint and stoicism, is turned into a vice. And not only a vice, a vice that replicates itself and spreads its misery around.

I see this most often among people who have no real control or power in their lives – the people who sit on Homeowner’s Association boards and send out little notes that my grass is too long, or that my siding needs to be washed, or that they object to the new “sheet metal hammering and shredding at midnight with strippers” business that I set up. The phrase that I’m reminded of that describes these people is: “The fight is so bitter because the stakes are so small,” which is a paraphrasing of Wallace Sayre’s original quote, “I hate going to the Department of Motor Vehicles”. So, not only do you not like going to the DMV, we’ve learned that they hate being there as much as you do, so they share their misery as much as possible.

But Dick’s quote also explains why people become self-destructive. If they sense that they’re going to fail, well, they’ll toss some gasoline on that fire and get it going now. The logic becomes simple – I don’t really fail if I control my failure. Or deprive myself of pleasure. I know I don’t deserve the money, so I’ll just save it until I die and leave it to my cats. My ability to defer today’s pleasure becomes . . . a way to punish myself today.

And yet . . . there’s that leading stoic, Seneca:

“Therefore, explain why a wise person shouldn’t get drunk, not with words, but by the facts of its ugliness and offensiveness. It is easy to prove that pleasures, when they go beyond proper measures, are punishments.”

Could it be that people subconsciously (or consciously!) punish themselves through pleasure as well? Theoretically, being a philosophical stoic isn’t about avoiding pleasure, it’s about striking that balance. Seneca himself was very, very, rich, but struggled with whether or not he should be a vegetarian. Seneca decided not to be a vegetarian – it might have been seen as being pretentiously virtuous, like the vegan who does Crossfit™ and drives a Prius© – what do you tell people first???

Absolutely there is virtue in self-control. Right up until it becomes a vice. Like lots and lots and lots of drugs. Lots of drugs. And maybe Crossfit™.

What is Wealth? Is it More Than Money?

“Aristotle was not Belgian, the principle of Buddhism is not “every man for himself”, and the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.” – A Fish Called Wanda

This may be the most important philosophical question of our lifetime, especially if you’re haulin’ oats.

The other day I was listening to the radio and the hosts (Walton and Johnson) were discussing wealth. Since actual radio around Casa Wilder consists of a single AM station broadcasting crop reports and lean cattle futures and an FM station that is “All Hall and Mostly Oates, All the Time!” Therefore? We listen to radio stations on the Internet. Walton and Johnson are out of Houston, but we also lived in Alaska, so we also often listen to a station we like out of Fairbanks. Obviously, when the radio in the bedroom says it’s -40°F and the kitchen radio says it’s 85°F, there’s likely to be wind and a rainstorm down the hallway.

Maybe I misheard that lyric?

Anyhow, Walton and Johnson were discussing wealth. They mentioned that a recent study showed that, in Houston, a survey said that to be considered “wealthy” you had to have $2.5 million dollars in net worth. To be considered “well off” you only needed to have $1.4 million dollars – which is quite a bargain – many people work a whole year and don’t make that much money!

After a bit of research, I found the source of the story: Charles Schwab®, the investment firm. You can read the study here (LINK). In San Francisco (according to Schwab©), it’s even more money than Houston to be considered wealthy: $4.1 million.

Looking at the best numbers I could find, the median household net worth is about $100,000. To be in the paltry $2.5 million Houston-wealthy club (versus the expensive San Francisco $4.1 million club), means that your household is in better financial shape than 96% of American households.

But that’s the problem with this survey – since, at most, 4% of the people taking the survey would be considered “wealthy,” most of the people taking it have about as much idea about how much money it requires to be wealthy as a monkey trying to understand Nietzsche. I mean, apes read philosophy, but they just don’t understand it, Otto. And I imagine people who aren’t wealthy don’t understand that, either. The answer is just a bit more complicated . . . .

I’ve done about 70 posts on wealth, but I need to step back and ask that question: what is wealth? To say it’s purely a number is to show that you don’t understand wealth. Money represents not a fixed number, but a possibility.

If you measure wealth in love . . .

What is wealth?

Wealth is time. In fact, if you go to the basic equation – your life is made entirely out of time – nothing else. Your life literally is the sum of the things that you do with your time. So wealth is doing what you want to do with your time, which means doing what you want to do with your life. It’s entirely probable that a Wall Street investment banker with $10,000,000 in the bank from a job he hates and shrill wife with more implanted silicon than actual original equipment is less wealthy than a hunting guide who lives in a log cabin in Alaska who has less than $5000 in the bank.

In my case, I’ve traded a LOT of time for money in the past. My theory was to work hard while I was young so that I could build my career so I could save enough money so that my family would be secure in the future. You would say that working all the time is not a very wealthy (or in some cases healthy) thing to do, except . . . I loved the job I was doing! In many cases it was stressful. Difficult. Uncertain. Long hours. And when I did an awesome job? Yeah, it was like winning the World Junior Baking Championship. Not that I can bake, or even that there is a World Junior Baking Championship, but I think you know exactly what I mean.

I watched the documentary Lynyrd Skynyrd: If I Leave Here Tomorrow this weekend, and those guys simply loved playing music. They’d do it all day long, even when they weren’t getting paid. Being a rock star was awesome, sure, but it wasn’t the point. They were wealthy as soon as they could get paid for playing small clubs. Arenas were just the gravy.

And, yes, I’ve said in the past (and still maintain) that to support yourself, support your family you might really have to suck it up, buttercup, and work jobs you don’t like because an Alaskan hunting guide has really crappy health insurance and his spouse has neurohemoblastaphobia which can only be cured by a mouse egg (before the baby mice hatch) extract that’s been strained through bigfoot hair and breathed on by an honest politician. Yes, it’s as expensive as it sounds. Then you have to work the job you have rather than a job where you play guitar all day.

Wealth is freedom. Could you quit your job tomorrow without having a new one and still meet all of your obligations? For most people, the answer is no, either because the obligations are too high or the amount of cash they have is too low – 60% of people in the country live paycheck to paycheck. However, sometimes it’s self-inflicted.

Some people trade their freedom for a car payment. I’ve seen people who purchase a $60,000 pickup, and then have to pay $1,200 a month in car payments. I don’t know about you, but my 4,000 square foot house has a payment of less than $1,000, so it’s not making me freer to be tied to a depreciating asset that I have to pay $14,400 a year for. Plus insurance. Plus whatever taxes the state would extract for a $60,000 vehicle.

I have a pickup. It cost $6,000. I paid with cash. It didn’t cost very much because the car dealership was having a hard time selling a stick shift. The truck runs fine. Engine is a bit small, but 95% of the time it’s just being driven by a teenager to school and back.

But if your idea of wealth is a $60,000 pickup, I’ll never be wealthy in your eyes.

But I can be free without a $60,000 pickup.

And, no, I’m not a radical get rid of stuff and never buy anything sort of person – I’ve probably got more books on some topics than any library in my state. And, I’ve bought more than my share of crap in my life, but very little of it has made me happy, and very little of it has made me a better person. Except for the PEZ®, of course. And I’ve been on some incredible vacations.

Wealth is time. Wealth is freedom. And your wealth is determined by things you “need.”

The less you need? The wealthier you are, and the more choices you have.

The Fall of Texas and the Coming One Party State

“Well, I have a microphone, and you don’t, so you will listen to every damn word I have to say!” – The Wedding Singer

Thankfully, the Soviets put CCCP on the side of their ships in letters 40 feet high.

When I was a lad, I stumbled upon the book “The Ayes of Texas,” by Daniel da Cruz. In it, a wealthy Texas entrepreneur, who lives in Texas, funds work on the Battleship Texas (BB-35) to make it seaworthy again in time for Independence Day, 2000.

Alas, the sneaky USSR proposes a treaty to the United States: put your weapons up, and we’ll put ours up after you put yours up. And, led by East Coast leftists, we fell for it. Except for the Texans, who vote to secede from the Union, and fight it out alone against the USSR. Oh, and our entrepreneur, has secretly outfitted the Texas (BB-35) with nuclear reactors and particle beam weapons.

It’s a good yarn (it has the Battleship Texas surfing on a tsunami of liquid fire), and you can get a cheap copy on Amazon.

And it does, I think, highlight the lynchpin that Texas is in modern politics, and not the alternate reality where the Soviet Union is still a thing.

My consideration of this started in the hot tub. The hot tub is great – we sit and either relax quietly, or engage in conversation. And it was just this sort of conversation a few weeks ago about the Civil War (Civil War, Cool Maps, Censorship, and is Fort Sumter . . . Happening Now?) that led to The Boy saying:

“It all comes down to Texas.”

I was interested. “What do you mean?”

“Well,” he began, “From what I’ve read, Texas today looks a lot like California in 1980 or so. Look what California looked like then, it was prosperous. It was wealthy. It was a beacon for the country. Everyone wanted to move there.”

I remembered. Heck, I remembered one time when a family stopped at our house when I was young asking for a cup of flour so they could make gravy at a campsite. They were making their way from Oklahoma to California. California was a place where your economic dreams could come true.

“Now, that’s Texas. The economy is great there. They’re reliably Republican, and with that there are all of the low tax, low government interference policies that lead to prosperity. People are streaming into Texas.

“And that’s the problem. The people streaming into Texas, well, they aren’t Texan. Over 300,000 Californians (net) have made their way to Texas over the last five years, and the trend doesn’t seem to be slowing down. They’re fleeing the highest poverty state in the nation, which coincidentally has the greatest wealth inequality in the nation.”

I responded: “Yeah, California is regulations-happy. I read that it was against the law for a homeowner to change a light switch – it had to be done by a licensed electrician. And one time I was talking to a friend on the phone a few years ago. His dog started barking. He was afraid he’d get fined again. Because dogs barking in California is . . . illegal. Sadly, when the Californians leave to go to another state, they want to bring those regulations with them, not realizing that those regulations were the cause of the economic problems they have now. Heck, Californians can’t figure out that their restrictions on housing cause house prices to go crazy faster than Elon Musk with a few minutes to kill and a connection to Twitter®.”

Graph-Me. Data? Wikipedia.

The Boy responded. “California used to be solidly Republican. At some point in the near future, a Republican might not even be on the ballot. Did you know that Ronald Reagan was governor there?”

It’s amusing when 18 year olds begin to discover the world.

“Yeah, now that you remind me of that, I remember it.” I smiled

“Well, California voted solidly Republican, at least until 1992. From then on, it became a lock for the Democrats. And it happened quickly – within a decade. Once Texas flips to voting Democrat, it’s over.”

Once it flips? Will it flip? The percentages voting Republican have dropped, and with the continual influx of Californians that are heavily collectivist as well as the rising proportion of Hispanic voters, which vote Democrat on a greater than two to one margin, it seems assured that as the Hispanic population rises in Texas, the flip to permanent Democrat control in Texas will be nearly inevitable.

Honestly, if Hispanic immigrants voted 2 to 1 in favor of Republicans, Democrats would have insisted on a 200 foot high wall topped with automatic machine guns.

Looking at the map, it’s theoretically possible for a Republican to win the White House without Texas, but it’s unlikely. Once Texas becomes Democratic the presidency will become, like California, permanently Democratic.

What does that even look like?

We can see hints of it, even now.

Control of The Microphone – We Will Shut You Down

Alex Jones is many things, but the fact that the Left thinks he’s dangerous enough to silence? It’s not a great strategy. I’m frankly amazed. But it’s not just him, the Left is looking to shut down every opinion that they disagree with. The old Libertarian in me would have said, “but they’re private companies, they can do anything they want.” Well, yes and no. If they start selectively banning people, they’ve opened their companies up to liability. And it’s been proven that they’re in the business of selectively banning racist posts, most recently when Candace Owens just changed a single word from a Tweet by Sarah “Got Dumped by a White Dude and Is Just a Bit Bitter” Jeong. I won’t post the Tweet, mainly because Sarah has a potty mouth. You can read about it here (LINK).

Worse? Who is next? What is the trip wire? I’ve heard Jones say lots of things. Some of them incredibly silly.

But none of them deserving censorship. The one common ground I used to be able to find (nearly 100%) with people of the Left was freedom of speech. Now, speech has to be stopped has become their creed. Why? Here’s a hint:

Your Speech is Violence, and My Violence is Speech

Yeah, it’s like something you would read in 1984. But the violence from Antifa® has been justified because burning things and hurting people is the justified speech of a downtrodden class and or ethnicity. Check out the sentence for an Antifa™ member who hit multiple people with a bike lock at the end of a chain. A link is here (LINK).

But it’s fine that Antifa© attempts to shut down a never-Trump conservative speaker, and Berkeley has to spend $600,000 to stop violence. You can read about it here (LINK).

Your Money is Theft, My Money is Earned

The Clintons earned $240,000,000 between 2001 and 2015. All earned, right? Obama earned $20,000,000 between when he was elected to the Senate and when he left office. Al Gore went from $274,000 in 1992 to $300,000,000 today.

This is considered fair.

A dentist makes $350,000 a year is part of the 1% and is an example of the enemy.

All Animals are Equal, But Some Are More Equal Than Others

Even more important is intersectionality, which is making it more important to be part of an even more marginalized group by being parts of LOTS of marginalized groups, say, a deaf and blind gay transsexual quadruple amputee of aboriginal Australian and Hungarian descent.

I read an article where a Native American woman described when would go to leftist meetings. Generally after her first showing up at a meeting, she would be nominated for some sort of leadership position, up to and including the presidency of the group. It amused her (but not in the good way) that they didn’t even know her name on some occasions where she was being nominated to lead the group.

And Other Things Not Good

I’m not sure how socialism ends in the United States, but it really isn’t good. There are exactly zero socialist countries that have produced the level of freedom and wealth that the United States has produced. Sure, we’ve messed stuff up, but we’ve gotten far more of it right.

Back to Texas

Texas has always considered itself of outsized importance. I once worked with one of the kindest, most humble men that I’ve ever had the pleasure to work with. Except when it came to Texas. If you made fun of his height (he was short) or his wife or his dog, it was okay. But if you made fun of Texas? It was personal.

I think Da Cruz was right – Texas is crucially important to the future of the United States. Almost as important as Texans think it is.

Pencils, Rocks, Attachment Objects and Socialism

“And the first question is for you, Karl Marx. The Hammers. The Hammers is the nickname of what English football team?” – Monty Python

I tried writing with a broken pencil once. It was pointless.

I have the same pencil since the Clinton administration. Not just in a junk drawer someplace, but as my daily use pencil at work. It’s not some yellow No. 2 pencil that I’ve sharpened until it’s a microscopic nub, rather, it’s a blue mechanical pencil, made in Japan. It’s a Cross® pencil, and has the original eraser but the eraser is so old that it looks more like a green petrified pterodactyl nipple rather than something that belongs in a book bag, and it’s harder than year-old chewing gum and just tears the paper rather than erasing anything.

I’ve used the pencil so much that the paint has worn off the brass and tin metal parts. It’s been dropped, chipped, and glued back together. The part that’s supposed to clip it to your pocket is loose and wobbles.

I won the pencil for a speech I gave during a corporate training program, about the time my career took off, so it has some special memories for me. I never intended to have this pencil forever, it just hung around at first. And then I noticed it was there on super-awesome days, like when I got divorced, or when I met The Mrs. And after six or so years, I decided I’d keep it.

I have a pen, too, but it’s really new. I got it in 2000, so I’ve only had it for 18 years.

Quirky, I know.

I mentioned my pencil to a friend, and she noted that she has rocks. From places. She knows where and when she got each one.

She mentioned that when she met her husband, he pointed out a closed box. It contained the rocks.

Husband to be: “What’s in that?”

“Oh, you’d better not look in there.”

Now, I believe, they’re in her garden. She knows where they are, and when she moves? She’ll crate up her rocks and they’ll go with her. Obviously, I understand.

A psychologist would call these “attachment objects.” Given the choice between my beat up, old Cross™ pencil and a brand-new and shiny Cross® pencil? I’d take my scuffed up ancient pencil any day. A new one could never replace a pencil I’ve had with me for most of my career. In my mind it has some sort of property ate differentiates it in some way from every other pencil on Earth.

This pencil is mine.

Another example – I bought a Blackberry® in 2008. Oh, sure, it was only six years old when I got a new Samsung™ in 2014. I know, how un-American of me. You should replace your cell phone weekly.

But I picked it up a few weeks ago. It felt . . . dead. It felt alien, inanimate.

I know, it’s not like the Blackberry© was a dancer beforehand, but still it wasn’t the same.

This tendency to place value on inanimate objects is greatest in people and groups that score highest in individuality, and lowest in collectivist-oriented people, so I imagine that Karl Marx went through pencils like nobody’s business.

And Venezuela? Don’t even get me started.

Perhaps that’s why socialist societies always fail: all of the means of production eventually become focused on generating replacement pencils?

College Funding, Value and Grade Inflation: Should Your Kid Go? Should You Pay?

“You had rich parents. You got to go to that expensive community college.” – South Park

If you do college right, you end up being able to travel to cool places. Literally cool, like Alaska. Do it wrong? You’re stuck on some hot beach in Florida during spring break.

I’ve posted several times about college here, but mainly from the perspective of the student. The other major perspective to catch is that of the parent – whether their child is asking only for advice (in a dream world – 18 year olds know everything so why would they ask an old person for advice?) or you are paying full tuition for them to attend Harvard®, you’re involved. What questions should you be thinking about when they come looking for money advice?

I think the first and most important question is if your kid should go to college at all. In 1960, it wasn’t a given that kids would go off to college. Only one kid out of twenty would go to college and graduate with a bachelor’s degree or more.

The line goes up and to the right. So, everyone is getting smarter because here in America EVERYONE is above average!

And, possibly, some folks weren’t going to college because they had been inappropriately excluded. But now? 70% of high school graduates start college. 70%!

By definition, AT LEAST 20% of the people who go to college are below average in high school. And 84% of kids now graduate from high school. Assume the dumbest drop out (not really a good assumption, but we’ll go with it). Let’s assume that the dumbest of the high school graduates don’t start college (again, not a good assumption, but we’ll go with it). Still, 20% of the people starting college would then have an IQ of less than 100.

The overall college graduation rate is now 60%. Which is ludicrous. Even more ludicrous? At Harvard©, more than half of the students have a GPA of 3.67 or more, meaning even at Harvard™ the challenge isn’t surviving Harvard©, it’s getting accepted. Admittedly at Harvard the average IQ is 125 (decent), but it sounds like the grade fairy visits there often.

So, if your kid can get into Harvard™ (or Yale©) (or Stanford®) (etc.) they should go there. If they’ve got decent study skills they’ll pass. The reason you go to Harvard™ to learn, really, you can get just as good of an education at Iowa State© for much less money. No, the reason you go to Harvard™ is to hang around with really, really wealthy people and make connections so that you’re hanging out with Mark Zuckerberg’s kid in 2032 or whatever. If you’re besties with a Zuckerberg because you had a car and Daddy Mark wouldn’t buy him one so you drove him to strip clubs? You’re set for life. They will make sure you have an awesome career, even if it just involves hanging around with their kid driving him to strip clubs for a ludicrous salary.

Think what Mark Zuckerberg might have accomplished if only he had finished college at Harvard!

The second reason that your kid should go to college is that they’re studying some sort of real science (not a fake one like sociology or anthropology) or engineering. You have to go to college, and since these degrees have (at least in the past) weeded out the intellectually inferior, well, they will generally lead to much higher wages. Ditto being a doctor or nurse. Now, as soon as we start asking how the bridge feels? Yeah, engineering will be done for. If we haven’t done that already.

See, this is an example of creative engineering. I’d pay to watch people drive this . . .

But a lot of college degrees are worthless – college becomes a four (or five, or six) year day-care for those unwilling to head to real life. And it costs and amazing amount of money for day-care. I’d just as soon give the kid enough money and send them to France for six months, not because I like my kid, but I think that France should be inundated with mouthy self-entitled 18 year olds. It’s my gift to them.

I used to think that all bright kids with good character should go to college. I don’t think that anymore. I had one kid I worked with (in a volunteer position). I asked him what he wanted to do after he graduated high school. He described a career option, where, as a journeyman, he could live in rural North Midwestia and still make at least $80,000 a year after five years, and probably more like $100,000 after the all the overtime that you can generally pick up is figured into this. When he started his apprenticeship he already had competing job offers for when he graduated.

My knee-jerk reaction (programming wears off only slowly) was to tell him, “No! Go to college! You’re so smart!” And if I had given that advice and he had taken it, well, when he graduated he’d have $60,000 in debt and (if he was lucky) would have to fight to get a $40,000 a year job. His idea was way better.

So, consider, should your kid even go to college?

Let’s say that you decide it’s worth it. College won’t be a four-year boondoggle filled with lattes and climbing walls and easy A’s – it will actually mean something.

How do you pay for it? Do you pay for it? Should you pay for it?

This is why I’m against government paid college. Then you’d have to get two doctorates and dress in an outfit made of bigfoot hair and unicorn sweat to get noticed in a job interview.

Part of the reason that college becomes a long-duration fun-fest is the problem of skin in the game. Kids are having fun at college – why would they want to end it? The colleges are making great profit off the kids. Why would they want to end it? The only people who want to end it . . . are the people paying for it.

Incentives are very bad, indeed, especially if you’re the parent footing the bill for it.

I guess I have to leave it up to the parent, but there are other options (for many people) outside of paying for it or saddling your kid with a massive debt. They could be a great athlete, and get a full scholarship. And don’t kid yourself – some engineering and technical schools have sports teams and need people that can play reasonably well. Not NFL® talent. Not University of Alabama™ talent. Just well enough to not get hurt against the smaller NCAA Division II schools they play against.

ROTC is another one. ROTC is the Reserve Officer Training Corps. It depends on the service, but in some cases they’ll pay for your kid’s college, train them to be a military officer, and then guarantee them a job. The Army will be happy to take them as an active duty officer, or will offer them a slot in the Reserves. For the Air Force? If you’re Air Force ROTC, you’re going active duty. The nice thing about the Army? For one weekend a month and two weeks a year, you get your school paid for in just a few years of reserve duty. Assume it’s four years, and that’s over a thousand dollars a day they’re paying you, and some people don’t even make that kind of money during a summer job!

Both The Boy and Pugsley are reviewing this option. It would probably work well for both of them.

Of course, there are loans. But these can backfire amazingly. I was reading a few years ago about a guy who borrowed enough money to become a medical doctor. Downside? He owed upwards of $500,000, and wouldn’t be able to pay the loans off.

That doctor is gonna die in debt, because that’s just about the only way to avoid repaying a student loan. Or maybe he could make friends with Warren Buffet’s kid? Know where the strip clubs are?

Hmmm.

Civil War, Cool Maps, Censorship, and is Fort Sumter . . . Happening Now?

â€œWe might find the abandoned furnace room, or the old Civil War amputorium!â€ â€“ Malcom in the Middle

No problems in this map.Â None at all.Â Everything is as right as rain . . .

The following is (more or less) a discussion that occurred over several days as we sat in the hot tub.Â Iâ€™ll note that our speculation reflects things that we as observers and students of history and current events think are might happen, not what we want to happen.Â Itâ€™s edited for clarity and readability â€“ itâ€™s not a transcript, itâ€™s a blog post.Â In some cases a half an hour of conversation is only a sentence or two.

Honestly, this speculation is chilling enough to use as an air conditioner on a hot day . . . .Â Previous posts similar to this can be found here at The Coming Civil War (United States), Cool Maps, and Uncomfortable Truths,Â The Coming Civil War Part II, and a (Possible) American Caesar,andÂ Immigration, Freedom, Wealth, Corruption, and More Cool Maps.

The other day when we were in the hot tub, I rudely interrupted The Mrs.

John Wilder:Â â€œThatâ€™s enough of what you want to talk about.Â I have something to discuss.â€

The Mrs.:Â â€œWell that was rude!â€

John Wilder:Â â€œAnd thatâ€™s exactly how Iâ€™ll describe it in my post.â€

And yes, Internet, this was pretty close to the real conversation, but The Mrs. is used to it after being married to me for what she calls â€œan eternity.â€Â I guess time flies when youâ€™re having fun, right?Â Wait a minute . . . that eternity comment might not be a complement?

Anyway, as we luxuriated in the warm swirling waters of the tub, I threw out my discussion topic.

John Wilder:Â â€œAs we look at parallels from todayâ€™s developments to the last Civil War, I know that events, places and people wonâ€™t be exact matches, but they seem to rhyme.Â If you look at the contentiousness of, say, the presidential elections, thatâ€™s a pretty big parallel.Â Lincoln got only 40% of the popular vote, and that was against the first female candidate for president, John C. Breckenridge.â€

I think this map was influenced by the Russians since they wanted to sell us Alaska and knew only Lincoln was stupid enough to buy it.Â Thankfully the Russians seem to want it back.

â€œIf you look back in the past, Abraham Lincoln was elected president by a party that was only six years old after an election that was so divided that one side actually refused to acknowledge the results.Â If thatâ€™s not a hallmark of a society unravelling, Iâ€™m not sure what is.â€

â€œBut,â€ I continued, â€œthe people didnâ€™t just drop everything one morning and yell at their neighbor and say â€˜THATâ€™S IT!â€™ Â There were a series of escalations that society went through that made it seem like it would be a good idea to blow up Virginia.Â And one of those events was Bleeding Kansas.â€

Bleeding Kansas was that period when violent groups (on both sides) ended up fighting each other over whether Kansas would enter the Union as a free state where slavery would be illegal or not.Â Things got heated.Â On the floor of the United States Senate:

â€œSumner ridiculed the honor of elderly South Carolina Senator Andrew Butler, portraying Butler’s pro-slavery agenda towards Kansas with the raping of a virgin and characterizing his affection for it in sexual and revolting terms.â€ (Wikipedia)

The next day, Butlerâ€™s cousin (A congressman named Preston Brooks) showed up and nearly killed Sumner by beating him with a cane.

So, if youâ€™ve never been â€œbeating a guy nearly to death with a cane mad,â€ maybe Congress wasnâ€™t the place for you in the 1850â€™s.

This was originally published by CNN â€“ the Cane News Network â€“ all canes, all the time.

Eventually Bleeding Kansas ended up as a big mess, with multiple battles (death toll total of 56, per Wikipedia), with there being multiple elections, crazy vote manipulation, and at least four territorial constitutions sent to the United States Senate for approval.Â And it gave us the album cover for the debut album of the prog-rock band KansasÂ®, which might make up for the death toll?

Tragic Prelude, by John Stewart Curry – John Brown is the crazy looking dude with the ZZ Top beard and Eraserhead hair in the middle.Â True fact:Â John Brown was really 12 feet tall, and the reason that basketball was invented in Kansas was so he could have a sport to play.

So, back to the hot tub.

John Wilder:Â â€œIâ€™m thinking that FergusonÂ® and Black Lives Matterâ„¢ is the Bleeding Kansas of today?â€

The Mrs.:Â â€œI donâ€™t know.â€

The Mrs.:Â â€œYes.Â AntifaÂ©.Â The level of violence that they initiate is amazing, and they think that their violence is justified.Â Their violence isnâ€™t real violence because they think they have a good reason to be violent.Â Just as Antifaâ€™sÂ® racism isnâ€™t real racism because they have a good reason to be racist.â€

I nodded.

The Mrs. continued, â€œBut I wonder if a civil war is possible at all.Â There isnâ€™t the same geographic concentration that there was during the 1850â€™s.Â You donâ€™t have a group of industrialists in the north competing against the agricultural south.â€

John Wilder:Â â€œBut you do have the rural-urban divide.Â Heck, our county here went 80% for Trump.â€

The Mrs.:Â â€œAnd our county has all of the guns.â€

John Wilder:Â â€œWe do now.Â But groups like Anitfaâ„¢ have shown that theyâ€™re not afraid to use violence.Â In our county we donâ€™t even lock our doors because either weâ€™re too nice to steal much or the thieves know that behind every door is a 12 gauge shotgun or an AR-15.â€

The Mrs.:Â â€œTrue.â€

John Wilder:Â â€œGuns arenâ€™t that hard to get, or hard to learn how to use.Â Oh, sure, you have to really work at being able to do a 500 yard shot with a 20 mph crosswind (15 kilometers with a 20 liter crosswind for the metric-impaired) but half of Africa was conquered by revolutionaries who couldnâ€™t even read with AK-47s that were built in factories in Bulgaria whose idea of a precision tool was a sledgehammer.â€

The Mrs.:Â â€œI can see that.Â But weâ€™re not as concentrated as we were back then.â€

John Wilder:Â â€œHave you seen this map?Â We are divided geographically â€“ and one side lives in a really small area, while the other side lives in the country.Â Coincidentally, thatâ€™s where all the soldiers come from â€“ rural places like where we live.Â And we make all of the food and most of the energy.â€

The Mrs.:Â â€œYeah.Â Non-Trump counties make television shows and TeslasÂ®.Â Oh, and they lead the country in corruption, poverty, and crime.Â So I guess it could happen, but it would be a lot more chaotic than the first Civil War.â€

John Wilder:Â â€œSure, I think the chaos is pretty much a given.Â No way to predict where will be safe.Â So, whatâ€™s our Uncle Tomâ€™s Cabin?â€

Uncle Tomâ€™s Cabin, a book that was instrumental in setting the stage for the Civil War was the most popular book in the United States (besides the Bible) in the 1800â€™s.Â However, not long after it was published, it was strictly censored across the many Southern states.Â One man was sentenced to 10 years in prison for owning a copy of the book, and that was before the Civil War started.Â The book would be wholly censored across the Confederate States during the Civil War.

John Wilder:Â â€œIs it Alex Jones?â€

The Mrs.:Â â€œYes, that feels right.â€

Alex Jones is a radio talk show host that specializes in fringe news stories â€“ news stories the regular media doesnâ€™t cover, and news stories that are at times thinly checked (at best) and at times far in advance of â€œmainstreamâ€ news.Â And Jones has been an equal opportunity political poo-flinger.Â Heâ€™s gone after Clinton, Bush, and Obama.Â Republican or Democrat?Â He doesnâ€™t seem to care.Â To be fair, Jones has been a fairly consistent proponent of Trump.

Free speech is important, itâ€™s written in Silicon Valleyâ€™s DNA, right?Â No.Â On a single day, Jones was banned or punished in some fashion from FacebookÂ®, YouTubeÂ©, SpotifyÂ®, Amazonâ„¢, and PinterestÂ©.Â Soon enough LinkedInâ„¢, YouPornÂ® (huh?) and MailChimpÂ® (whatever that is) followed.

No one in the hot tub felt that Alex Jones represented the gold standard for journalism, but his silence was a sign that ideas outside of those of the gatekeepers could simply not be tolerated.Â I spent some time looking for examples of â€œhate speechâ€ that was supposedly the cause of his being banned.Â I found nothing worse than the usual hyperbole of the left, and certainly nothing as personally threatening as many things celebrities and journalists said in the heat of the moment following Trumpâ€™s victory in November of 2016.

The concept that he was censored amazed me.Â Bombastic?Â Yes.Â Over the top?Â Sure.Â The WWEâ„¢ of news?Â Absolutely.

Something to be suppressed and censored?Â Wow.Â Speech an entire party (nearly) agrees should be banned?Â Double wow.Â But free speech seems to have few fans on the left now.

Now I know where my wallet went . . . George Soros has it!

But back to the hot tub.Â By this time, The Boy had joined us.Â I think Pugsley was inside napping, or maybe working on connecting his brain directly to the Internet through a device he was making based on a YouTube video.Â Pugsley had been looking for a drill, some hydrogen peroxide, and an N-size battery, so he might by a cyborg by now.

John Wilder:Â â€œWhat other events were there on the way to the Civil War?â€Â Since The Boy had taken US history most recently, perhaps some things were fresher in his mind, and since we were in the hot tub, it was easier to ask him than to GoogleÂ® it.

The Boy:Â â€œWhat about the Dredd Scott decision?Â That was a biggy.â€

John Wilder:Â â€œYes, even the courts were involved in the unravelling before the Civil War.Â But with the people divided as they were â€“ Dredd Scott could have been decided either way and would have inflamed one side or the other.Â In this case, it drove the North nuts.Â If they had decided the other way?Â It would have driven the South nuts.Â A no-win situation.Â The sides werenâ€™t even talking the same language at that point.â€

The Boy:Â â€œWell, I guess that leaves Fort Sumter.â€

John Wilder:Â â€œSo what does our Fort Sumter take place?Â Or has it already?â€

Fort Sumter was the spot, on April 12, 1861, at 4:30AM, Confederate soldiers fired on the Union Fort.Â (Spoiler, they won.)Â Fort Sumter is notable because even after Southern secession, several months passed before the first shots were fired there.Â It was as if there was a hope that things could be brought back together, that there was some alternative to war.

John Wilder:Â â€œSo what is it, what does it look like?Â Does it occur after a Trump 2020 victory?â€

The Mrs.:Â â€œWell maybe sooner.Â If the Republicans continue to hold the House after the 2018 election, I think that might make California secede.Â From what I seen on FacebookÂ®, theyâ€™re in a frenzy already.Â They canâ€™t even stand the idea of Trump finishing a single term.â€

John Wilder:Â â€œWhat if . . . what if Fort Sumter is going on right now?Â Letâ€™s look at it:Â there was a part of the government, in that case the states, which denied the legitimacy of the sitting president.Â Okay, they might have thought him legitimate but they decided that they didnâ€™t want be a part of it.Â Isnâ€™t thatâ€™s whatâ€™s going on right now with the Deep State?Â Insurance policies?Â Investigations into people not because of a crime, but investigations of people to find a crime to prosecute them for because they donâ€™t have the right political belief, that theyâ€™re not part of the right club that gets bacon-wrapped shrimp at the Friday get-togethers?â€

The Boy:Â â€œNot sure if that fits.Â Maybe.Â Maybe.â€

John Wilder:Â â€œAn attack doesnâ€™t require that the militia brings out cannons and shells Dallas.Â No, if you look at that, plus the sanctuary cities, plus the judiciary routinely ruling against Trump on things that they would have rubber-stamped for Obama?Â Is this open insurrection right now, just not with cannon?â€

The Boy:Â â€œIâ€™m not sure.Â But I do think I know the end point of all of this.Â Iâ€™ve been thinking . . .â€

And he had a pretty insightful observation.Â More on that next Monday, I think.

Medical Advances, Pop Rocks, Agriculture, and Nic Cage

â€œNews team, let’s hunt.â€ â€“ Anchorman

The view from the coffeemaker (story below).Â No coffee was injured in the making of this post.

I was talking with a coworker at the coffee machine back when I was working in Houston.Â Our offices were in the 45^th story of a gleaming skyscraper.Â Very futuristic.

â€œSo, Mr. W, what do you think the most important invention was?â€Â I have no idea why he called me Mr. W, but itâ€™s been a theme â€“ Mr. W.Â No idea why.

â€œEver?â€ I asked.Â This was the setup.

â€œSure.Â Most important invention ever.â€

â€œAgriculture.â€

I love it when I look into a personâ€™s eyes and literally watch their brain slowly melt from the answer they just got.Â That was the case here.Â For a full fifteen seconds he didnâ€™t move, blink, or breathe.Â I think his brain was rebooting.

After he got past the login screen:Â â€œThatâ€™s . . . thatâ€™s a good one.â€

I had that answer ready because Iâ€™d been thinking about just that.Â What was the most significant invention in history?Â Heck, even the Bible talks about it â€“ the story where Cain (the farmer) killed his brother Abel (the sheep herder)?Â Itâ€™s potentially an allegorical story about where agricultural civilization replaced the earlier pastoral civilization thatâ€™s come down to us over thousands of years.

Or maybe Cain was just a dick.Â I kid.Â We all know Abel had it coming.

However, agriculture was transformative.Â Prior to that, it was hunting, gathering, and herding.Â Or starving if you didnâ€™t know how to hunt, gather and herd.

Notice that I didnâ€™t say that agriculture was good for us.Â There are plenty of ills that came from agriculture, but it was undoubtedly the most significant transformation that humans have ever encountered, with the possible exception of the invention of Pop-RocksÂ©.Â I heard a kid ate a whole bunch of Pop-RocksÂ® and then drank a Pepsiâ„¢ and his stomach exploded.

I found this, oddly, at the Pop RocksÂ© website, where they assure me that their product hasnâ€™t killed anyone recently.Â That they know of.Â I kid.Â Pop Rocksâ„¢ has a website to assure you that you are in no danger of a stomach rupture eating their product â€“ itâ€™s here (LINK).

I heard that they experimented with a product called Pope RocksÂ©, but it was made illegal because it reportedly turned water into wine, which is totes illegal in Utah.

Oh, yeah, I was talking about agriculture.

Agriculture was an important step â€“ it made people stop moving around.Â If you planted a crop, you had to stay there and grow it.Â And if you stayed there, and had food?Â Now you had to defend it.Â And you had to have houses.Â And you could make pots.Â And buy furniture from StoneAgeIKEAÂ®, which was largely abandoned by 3000 B.C. because no one had invented screws or hex wrenches.

Just that one invention changed economics, developed division of labor could exist.Â Mankind now had farmers, soldiers, generals, and developed taxation and accountants.

Yeah.Â Taxes.

But this didnâ€™t make mankind a bit healthier.Â In fact, it made the average person die sooner.Â Oh, and when they died?Â They had new diseases like arthritis.Â And they didnâ€™t grow as tall or as robust as their nomadic ancestors.

Why did we do it?Â Dunno.Â Women like houses, probably.Â And men could brew beer (which happened to show up about the same time as the first agricultural settlements.Â That same downfall occurs throughout history â€“ women and beer.

I assure you that you didnâ€™t want to mess with this guy.Â And he was probably average.Â Not sure that TwinkiesÂ®, cars, and air conditioning helped his overall health . . . . and Iâ€™m sure that GoogleÂ® now thinks I want to see pictures of shirtless men.Â Oh, the things I do for you, readers.

Letâ€™s face it, not everything that modern medicine has done has helped our health.Â Some studies have shown that the nomads and herdsmen, on average, lived longer than the farmers that followed them in history.Â Oh, and donâ€™t forget, if you donâ€™t have farms, no need for slaves, right?

But letâ€™s look at medicine more directly:

What actual changes have made life healthier?

Well, agriculture has increase the overall amount of nutrition. We wouldnâ€™t be able to feed everyone on Earth if we didnâ€™t have that.
Maternal vitamins and nutrition make healthier and smarter babies. Thatâ€™s good.
Sanitation is amazing. Not living in poop somehow makes you healthier.Â Who could have imagined that?
Cheap food. Hard to be healthy if youâ€™ve starved to death.
Pest control. Vermin are also not real healthy to live with.Â Plague and all, right?

Clean drinking water is much better than the alternative, but not as good as Scotch, which I guess is another alternative, so clean drinking water is second.
Antiseptics are good. Much less Civil War surgery.

Antibiotics are also pretty good. Iâ€™m pretty sure that theyâ€™ve saved my life more than once.

Trauma surgery is now awesome â€“ many things you would have died from 20 years ago are now survivable, from gunshots to car accidents.
Vaccinations are, on balance, probably good. Is there proof that they kill people?Â Â More people have died from HPV vaccinations than from HPV.Â So, yeah.Â But Iâ€™ll skip the small pox, thank you.Â Oh, they donâ€™t vaccinate for that anymore?

So, whatâ€™s not on this list?

End of life care. Itâ€™s expensive.Â And it barely makes life longer.
Many cancer treatments are difficult and require hacking and poisoning the sick person. Some really do extend life, for decades even.Â (Some donâ€™t do much of anything.)Â But none are more important than clean water, exercise, and PEZâ„¢ to human health.
Most really expensive diagnostic tech. Sure, some of it is awesome, but Iâ€™m not sure an MRI machine is all that awesome.

What societal changes are actually hurting health?

Cheap food. Yeah, itâ€™s a paradox.Â Starve or be fat.Â Sue me.
Automatic stuff. Â As a whole, we have to do much less work than 20 years ago.Â Much, much less than 40 years ago.Â And 100 years ago?Â Oh, my.Â Elevators replaced stairs.Â Natural gas replaced firewood.Â Cars replaced bikes.Â Exercise drops through the floor.
Climate controls. Iâ€™ve got a theory that if you turned off the air conditioning and the heat in your house youâ€™d actually be healthier.Â But this theory will never be tested because I have The Mrs., for whom climate control is a right up there with free speech and free shotguns.Â Thankfully she likes it about 60Â°F in the house all the time, too.
What is in Doritos?Â 40 different ingredients, many of which have never been incorporated into the diet of a human until the last 50 years.Â Whatâ€™s in a steak?Â Cow, which weâ€™ve been eating as soon as we developed spears.Â Because steak is worth building a spear and chasing a wild, untamed giant auroch through the forest.
Lack of genetic culling. Iâ€™m not in favor of this as a policy, but it is a fact that the genetic pool is degraded over time when people who would have died out reproduce and pass along defective genes.Â Letâ€™s look at me:Â I wear glasses, and developed the need about age 20.Â I would have made a crappy nomadic warrior, so, unless I was smart, I would be squinting at the horizon while Ugg and Trevor chased the hairless caribou across the frozen tundra of the African veldt.Â And no food for my family.Â So we died off.Â But wait!Â This is 2018, and Iâ€™ve got lots of kids because I donâ€™t have to squint, but glasses?Â Yeah, thatâ€™s a thing for half my kids.Â Ugg and Trevor had kids with keen eyesight.Â Again, not a policy since I like my life and the kids I have, but as we save more people with health issues like my nearsightedness that can be passed along genetically?

Like anything, there are good and bad effects of changing our civilization.Â Without agriculture, we never get to the Moon, but we also never get Nicholas Cage movies.Â A tradeoff?