April 2020 – Page 2 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report #11: COVID, Mexico, and Civil War. Plus bikinis.

“100,000 pesos to perform with this El Guapo, who’s probably the biggest actor to come out of Mexico!” – ¡Three Amigos!

I once bought a clock with half a face. It was a limited time offer.

People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology. Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.

The clock didn’t move this month for the second month in a row. That’s good. I can’t see it moving anytime soon, since I don’t see government sanctioned violence soon. Please . . . let me be right.

In this issue: Front Matter – Violence and Censorship Update – COVID-19 and the Coming Mexican Instability – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Links

Welcome to Issue 11 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. Issue One is here (LINK), Issue Two is here (LINK), Issue Three is here (LINK), Issue Four is here (LINK), Issue Five is here (LINK), Issue Six is here (LINK), Issue Seven is here (LINK), Issue Eight is here (LINK), Issue Nine is here (LINK), and Issue Ten is here (LINK).

Violence and Censorship Update

This one is fairly straightforward. March 2020 will probably go down as one of the quietest months on record for actual violence. With a huge percentage of the population home watching Netflix™ instead of living their lives, violence just wasn’t on the menu. Censorship is generally poorly reported anyway, but I haven’t heard much of that, either, other than of Amazon® banning and then unbanning of a certain book by an obscure German-speaking author with a distinctive mustache.

“Why should I care about future generations? What have they ever done for me?” – Groucho

Me? If you’re gonna ban a book by a German that cost millions of lives, start with the undisputed champ, Das Kapital by Karl Marx. Sadly, that’s a book that’s just too popular in some places, like each of Bernie Sanders’ three houses.

COVID-19, the Coming Mexican Instability, and Civil War 2.0

This topic could have been its own post, but I’ll include it in this month’s Civil War 2.0 Weather Report as the main topic.

News is changing quickly, so quickly that it keeps us as off balance as Johnny Depp on a Monday morning. The other day, Pugsley, (my son, who is in his early teens) was talking about an event. Implied in his statement was that the event was a long time ago.

“Pugsley,” I said, “that was just two weeks ago.”

The look on his face was priceless – his entire world had spun apart, with new changes every day. Yes, it was only two weeks ago, but in that span of time a year’s worth of dramatic changes had happened which includes him not being in school. Time has compressed, just like waistbands in self-isolation have expanded.

With so much news coming out, most people are grappling with the rapidly changing events of each day, as well as the important question of exactly what seven-season television show to binge-watch in the basement and when is the proper time to switch from coffee to wine since you’re supposed to be working from home. Is 4:30 too early?

Life is like a box of chocolates. They both are down in the basement with Netflix®.

Most people seem to think that things are going to go back to normal, even as company after company begins to show economic strain from missing revenue for the last month. The idea that the world has changed hasn’t caught up with them yet. And, yes, for real, the NBA® has thrown out the idea that they could play a game of H.O.R.S.E. for money.

I’m not kidding.

But what’s next? Economies around the world are crumbling, so what will the world look like in three months, in six months?

What happens next?

One of the major contributors to the stress that will cause Civil War 2.0 is on our southern border: Mexico. Increased instability due to decades of immigration (legal and illegal) has created a country where the number of first and second generation immigrants makes up at least 25% of the population in the United States. This has fed the cultural divide in the country – immigrants from Latin American countries tend to be way more communist like big government and they cannot lie.

COVID-19 will take this trend and increase it.

Mexico’s economy is tightly twinned to the United States. Even before NAFTA, Mexico was highly economically dependent on the United States. If the economy of the United States is toast? The economy of Mexico is charcoal.

And think of the savings on shampoo!

The odd thing is that people still aren’t thinking about the future that could have 40,000,000 to 50,000,000 unemployed in the United States. The implications for that are huge: stress on unemployment systems. Stress on social welfare systems. Heck, we’re already seeing stress on an important private system: food banks.

America is fortunate – it still produces and will continue to produce enough food to feed ourselves plus a big chunk of other nations. It still has oil to be extracted, natural gas to provide heating and fertilizer, and still has large amounts of mineral resources. Most importantly, it has vast forest resources and factories to produce the most important commodity on the world today: toilet paper.

Mexico, however, is a nation with a kleptocratic government that’s famous for being impotent and corrupt, with a secondary government consisting of drug cartels. Economically, Mexico periodically grows (slowly) between currency defaults. Right now, 41% of people in Mexico are in poverty, and that’s when things are going really well, which they have been. Mexico has been having a pretty significant period of stability and growth since 2010 or so. I mean, for Mexico.

Mexico is partially funded by what are known as remittances.

$26 billion or so is sent back every year by Mexicans working (mainly) in the United States – these are the remittances. This is the single largest source of foreign income to Mexico – think about that – people doing (mainly) menial labor in other countries are is their most economically successful export.

Large hats are the second largest export.

So, what happens when the Greatest Depression now brewing in the United States cascades into economic catastrophe for Mexico, both in Mexico and in the United States?

The waves of people that tried to get into the United States when things were working well will look small. The United States, even in the midst of the oncoming collapse is going to look much, much better than the failed state that Mexico will certainly devolve into.

Tension is already developing in the United States. Back during the Great Depression, cities commonly erected signs that discouraged men from even entering town, “Jobless Men: Keeping Going, We Can’t Take Care Of Our Own.” In a start down that road, the Department of Homeland Security announced that the H2B Guest Worker program was on hold. H2B visas are intended for, “temporary non-agricultural workers.” How long until H1B Guest Workers disappear? How long until illegals cease to be able to find work because of public backlash?

Best part of blogging as a job? Don’t need to worry about income taxes.

Something tells me that whatever party tries to tell the unemployed that importing tons of guest workers even temporarily to take jobs from Americans will soon find themselves out above the crowd, perhaps on a lamppost.

Regardless, there will be unemployed and desperate Mexicans that will seek life and the safety net available in the United States – all of the Democratic candidates raised their hands on offering free healthcare for illegal immigrants, even though Biden probably was thinking that they said free sniff hair for weasel innocence. Any campaign promise that involves sniffing hair is definitely one Biden will keep.

The benefits of being in the United States, even when illegal, are astounding. Essentially free health care at emergency rooms and clinics. Free schooling. Free food for their children. Free medical care to have babies. Illegals with children born in the United States get food stamps, legal services, and New York offers them up to $300 a month in cash. I think California offers them free cell phones, though most illegals won’t take them because they’re Android® phones and they were hoping to get a cute iPhone™ like that hota Lupita has.

The car company that makes Dodge™ automobiles doesn’t make cell phones. Just Chargers®.

Even though I predict a backlash from unemployed citizens to emerge, the lure of all that Free Stuff in the United States will prove to be too strong to citizens of an economy that will be devastated an order of magnitude greater than the United States.

They will come, especially since it’s likely that not only will Mexico be economically unstable, but politically unstable, leading to yet another revolution down south. That always works out so well for them, right? Just like the economic conditions of the United States pushed Mexico into the abyss, the collapse of Mexico will put additional pressure on the United States. In addition to the Free Stuff, Mexicans will be coming for safety from the Subcommandante of the Week.

Soon enough, dealing with the hungry in the United States will be all that we can do. Mexico imports 45% of its food right now. How many Mexicans will try to get to the United States when Mexico can’t afford to import?

Updated Civil War II Index

March was a difficult month for the economy, and that shows up in the graphs. April, I believe, will be worse. As such, I tried to make sure to select bikini models that suggest the somber nature of the graphs, or, failing that, I looked for cute ones. Either way, I’m sure that you all will agree that this meets or exceeds the fine journalistic standards set by my compatriots at CNN®.

Violence:

Up is more violent. Violence is down because everyone is stuck in the basement. Depending on how the food and money situation, you could see riots, big ones, in the streets of major cities. June may be a very difficult month, politics or no, but until then, enjoy your time at the beach. Mostly alone.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable. Instability skyrocketed with impeachment, and then got better before bouncing slightly this month and last. COVID-19 won’t help with stability, and I don’t think we’ll get this behind us soon.

Economic:

Down indicates worse economic conditions. The economic indicators began to turn in February, and here is the first look at March. I expect April to be the same or worse. Based on the way this index is calculated, it only shows a part of the free-falling stock market. As many readers to this series have noted – until the economy craters, don’t expect Civil War 2.0. But as you can see, affording clothing might be difficult soon.

Illegal Aliens:

Down is good, in theory. This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol. Down. But for how long? At least past the ankle, right?

Links

Most are from Ricky this month . . . enjoy!

The Hill on Civil War

American Greatness on the Coronavirus War.

Coronavirus social unrestcoming?

COVID-19 and Martial Law?

The Atlantic on Martial Law.

Newsweek – Military Plans?

Police sickened by COVID-19.

Buzzfeed.

Gun sales spike, here, and here, and here.

Zerohedge: Are we getting ready for the boogaloo?

Survival Mindset: City vs. Country. Bonus? Country Girls.

“I’m so tired of all of this traffic. I just can’t wait to get out of Africa.” – Upright Citizen’s Brigade

Especially when I’m explaining.

When we moved to Alaska, we were moving from a mid-sized Midwestern city. The town we were moving from was not big enough for an NFL® franchise, but also not nearly small enough for a letter to Penthouse© about my experiences with an entire college sorority when I was a naïve college freshman in my first week at a small Midwest college.

But this town was a big enough town that there was still a reasonable degree of anonymity. If the person in the car next to me at the stop light was knuckle-deep up their nostril mining for mineral resources without even so much as an endangered species permit, well, the chances are I’d never see them again. And if I did, I could practice a pre-Coronavirus version of social distancing, which involved awkwardly “spilling” 173°F coffee over the hand they had extended for a welcoming handshake. I hope Grandpa forgave me after the burn surgery, but all he would do afterwards was waive that restraining order when I came over to say, “Hi,” and call the police.

He was such a scamp!

Sometimes when you sober up as a naïve freshman, you get udderly surprised.

Not too long after we moved to Fairbanks, The Mrs. had called me and asked me to pick up some canned bananas, sushi flavored ice cream with calamari chunks, and diet flavored peanuts (which turn out to be just a packet of salt) at Safeway™. I managed to get them. Did I mention that The Mrs. was pregnant with Pugsley at the time?

Anyway, after I got back into my car, I had to make a left turn to leave the Safeway© so I could head back to my house. Not a problem – it was a two lane road I was turning on to, but it was 6pm in February in Fairbanks – the traffic was as sparse as original hair on Joe Biden’s head, and it was colder than Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s womb, so at least the ice cream wouldn’t melt.

I was third in line to make the left turn. The first turning car stopped, looked left, looked right, looked left and took his left turn. Boom, off he went, never to be seen again.

Now, second in line, behind a minivan. In front I could see the driver wasn’t looking left or right. As a battleship sized (really) opening to turn left opened and closed in front of her, I could see that she was arguing with her kids, probably about how the mean blonde man shouldn’t have taken the last of the canned bananas. Finally, when enough openings for the 7^th Fleet to safely make a left turn had been there and left, my hand hovered over the horn.

I paused.

I took a deep breath.

I we got a mushing dog when we were in Alaska, but he identified as a she. I guess it was a Trans-Siberian Husky.

What had I lost out of my life waiting behind this woman? 45 seconds? I put it in perspective. Was it worth it to add stress to a mother who was currently in a battle of wills with three junior high aged kids? No. I let out a sigh, and realized that getting upset about something small like this really was, was something I could let go of. Forever.

Why be stressed? I’d be home in less than 10 minutes anyway, and Alaska would still be in its own time zone, which was a decade earlier than the rest of the world. I exhaled slowly. Stress drained away.

The woman finally pulled out into an opening large enough to be considered an interplanetary distance. I followed, right behind. At the lights, she went straight. I went straight.

And then I followed her for seven miles. At the next right turn, she turned. I followed. At the next left turn? I followed. She turned down the secluded driveway that held four houses. I followed. She turned right one last time, and I didn’t follow, because she turned into her house.

Her house? Right next to mine.

Mainly we didn’t garden, we just raised our herds of mosquitoes.

Lesson learned. Living in Fairbanks was tough enough. No reason to make it tougher by being the jerk, especially when it’s a small place.

But the lessons learned from living in Fairbanks were bigger than that. I had grown up in the country, so I generally never left the house without things like a blanket, jumper cables, a knife, good shoes, or yak-flavored fruitcake. You never know when disaster will happen, and I’d seen Pa Wilder rescue some idiot flatlander at least once a year.

When you grow up in the country, you never know when or even if a car will come along. I’ve driven mountain roads in winter where my tracks were the only tracks that had punched through 6 inch (7 meter) deep snow and I knew that if I went off the road, the only thing that would keep me alive was between the steering wheel and the driver’s seat. You have a lot of time as you pick your way through a winding road to think of the things that should be in the car with you. You also know the only thing that will save you is . . .

You.

Second place, Jack London Memorial fire building championship (LINK). Link related.

I contrast this with living in an urban area. Sure, there are dangers there, but those dangers are man, not nature. Nature, in places like New York City, has been tamed to the extent that the only dirt you’ll see has been trucked in from miles away. In an urban setting you are reliant on people to do everything for you. Come get your trash. Heat your house. Wax and filet your Chihuahua. In New York City, they even have a number to complain, 311. In 2010, Wired (LINK) did an article and listed the complaints, graphing them. What complaints were sent to this number?

Graffiti. Consumer complaints. Traffic signals, damaged and overgrown trees, dirty conditions, chlorofluorocarbon recovery, problems with taxis, illegal building uses, property taxes, noise, and rodents.

In a rural world, graffiti is solved by talking with the neighbor boy’s dad.

Traffic signals? If you see three in a day, you’re doing something wrong.
Consumer complaints? Don’t shop there anymore.
Damaged trees and overgrown trees are solved with a chainsaw. Which also might solve the graffiti, if you know what I mean.
Illegal building uses? What’s that? When cousin Kaiden uses your barn to make meth?
Property taxes? Call the county commissioner. He lives down the road apiece and you know that Wanda is NOT his cousin.
Rodents? You do have a barn cat, right? And if by rodents you mean coyotes, that’s what the .223 is for.
Chlorofluorocarbons? The pigs eat those, right?

With a few exceptions, all of those issues are taken care of by rural residents themselves. The other things don’t even exist. Chlorofluorocarbons? Sounds like Bigfoot to me. Unless you mean sweet, sweet Freon®, which is necessary to keep the sushi ice cream cold.

Godzilla was flipping houses before it was cool.

I remember reading the Wired® article when it came out, incredulous that city dwellers would call the government and bother them with such petty things. In my mind, this call-in number over shallow inconveniences almost seemed like an experiment in conditioning people to be helpless when nearly all of these problems could easily be solved with either small arms or artillery.

In a rural setting, you’re prepared to save yourself. In an urban setting, you’re waiting for someone to save you. And in an urban setting, you’re anonymous. Do you think people would act like such fools on Black Friday if they had to face those same people the next day?

No. Good heavens. Want to see a polite Black Friday? Come to Modern Mayberry. We have to live with each other, and performing Brazilian ju-jitsu over a Spongebob Squarepants™ 50-piece socket set is just not something you can do and still nod and smile at the Dairy Queen® afterwards. Heck, it’s not like it was the Hello Kitty® smoker, right?

One of the stories that presents the biggest case for learned victimhood in cities is that of Kitty Genovese. Kitty was a bartender coming home from work one night in March in 1964. She was murdered. Some accounts say that dozens of people heard her murder, which lasted half an hour. Apparently there were one or two calls to the police, but no one came. At least one person that heard it said, “I just didn’t want to get involved.” Did I mention that happened in New York City? Yeah. It did.

Contrast it with this:

When I was driving in Fairbanks, I saw a car by the side of the road. It was -50°F outside, and it was a January night. The car was obviously stuck. I stopped, and rolled down the window. The other car did the same, and I found myself talking to a (maybe) sixteen year old girl, plainly embarrassed that she’d run off the road.

John Wilder: “You okay? Got someone coming?”

Unknown Teen Driver: “Yes. It’s all fine. I just wish everyone wouldn’t keep stopping!” They say that no man is an island, but to me it’s ironic that you’re more on an island in the sea of humanity that is New York City than you are in an isolated island of sub-arctic tundra in the snow on a rural road in Fairbanks, Alaska.

I kid. I only saw it snow once in June in the two years I lived there.

The other day I was at one of the nine stoplights (in the entire city of Modern Mayberry) and was thinking about some wonderful blog topic and not really paying any attention to the light. The light turned green. My car was as immobile as Bernie Sanders’ love of communism. There were two cars behind me. Pugsley, however, said, “Dad, get the lead out! Are you waiting for a special color of green? Are you waiting for it to grow vines and pull you through the intersection?”

None of the cars behind me honked.

When it comes to community cohesion, where would you rather be?

Okay, probably not behind me.

Submarines, Star Trek, and Economic Collapse

“But on the submarine, Boris wasn’t as cheerful as he could have been.” – The Bullwinkle Show

If it’s a missile sub, you could say, “Okay, Boomer.”

In most submarine movies, there is a scene where the submarine is hit. One of the forward compartments is being flooded, but the submarine can’t surface because the enemy destroyer is lurking on the surface like Nancy Pelosi lurking at the clinic where they reinject her with blood from the young. The captain must make the fateful decision: do I try to save the team in the forward cabin and perhaps lose the ship? Or do I close the bulkhead door and assure the safety of the ship and the remaining crew?

Time is always of the essence. When the movie is particularly well made, one of the people on the other side of the door is someone you know the captain cares about. It’s often a nephew, or a new, innocent crew member that is doomed to death. You can tell you’re supposed to like him, because he actually has a name; something like Ensign Timmy McFarmboy instead of Dead Crewman #3.

One memorable variant of this theme was in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan™. In that particular scene, Captain, Kirk doesn’t order Spock to go in the reactor room, Spock just does it to save the ship and crew from Ricardo Montalbán’s massive pectoral muscles. “Logic clearly dictates that the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few,” are among his last words to Kirk. Thankfully, Spock has as many lives as a cat, and kept returning to Star Trek® movies because his agent couldn’t get him the lead role in Die Hard.

Spock said my mother was so fat, that she outweighed the needs of the many.

Presidents don’t generally have the luxury of behaving like captains of submarines or starships in the movies, especially in 2020. The world of politics won’t allow it. Political enemies keep attempting to frame both sides of the equation so that whatever happens, the president loses.

If he acts too soon in closing the bulkhead? He’s being irresponsible – overreacting. If he acts too late and loses the submarine? He was fiddling while America burned. Regardless of his decisions, each one will be held up to the scrutiny of the perfect knowledge that only the future will bring.

That’s the burden of the mantle of command: you own the decisions. I won’t second guess President Trump – I wasn’t in those rooms when the decisions were made. I don’t have the facts that he does. And I don’t have to take responsibility.

He does.

However, to continue to use the submarine analogy, the front compartment is flooding. In many ways, the political opposition on the Left is thrilled: they feel that they have a winning issue against Trump, even if it took a crisis that will either kill Americans or wreck the economy to do it. Either is fine with them, which is a function of how polarized the country is now.

The crisis, however, is huge. And it’s far more than Corona.

Easter sheep: ready to wool the world.

I would bet that the reason that Trump said that he wanted the country to reopen for business at Easter was that he was given information about how the COVID-19 measures are wrecking the economy. But I think the information he was given was overly optimistic. I don’t think anyone told him we’d see 3.3 million initial jobless claims – no one expected that we’d see the largest numbers in history. The expectation is that we’ll see another 6.0 million next week. In a labor market of 160-some million Americans, that’s a 6%* unemployment increase. (*edited for an incorrect figure and updated unemployment with 4/2/20 numbers)

In two weeks.

No, his advisers didn’t tell him that.

“We’re the first nation to go to the poorhouse in an automobile.” – Will Rogers

The personal pain and tragedy that level of unemployment represents is astonishing. In previous posts, I told you the economic fallout would be Great Depression bad, but this is worse. The Federal Reserve Bank is projecting 32% unemployment at the high end. 25% was the highest unemployment rate during the Great Depression.

At the height of the Great Recession in 2009, the unemployment rate hit 10%. Total. Not 10% additional two weeks. The Great Recession is the biggest economic emergency that many people remember, and this is projected to dwarf it.

The jobs we’re already losing aren’t all low-paying jobs, either. Oil has dropped in price to $20 and I don’t think it’s done dropping. Oil production companies, the folks that drill the wells for the sweet, sweet oil? They’ll be shedding jobs nearly immediately. The average oilfield job pays $100,000 per year, but $20 per barrel won’t pay for $100,000 per year jobs. Or pickup trucks. Or houses.

The economy is crashing faster than at any point in recorded history. Daily. Based on JP Morgan’s™ recent estimates, it will be $4 trillion smaller (a drop of nearly 20% overall) this year. That’s assuming that the economy returns to astonishing levels of growth in the last half of 2020.

I hope I’m wrong, but I consider an immediate rebound highly unlikely.

Why?

Dear Diary, Today the stock market didn’t crash.

This is far worse than 2008 – at this point, it’s projected to be eight times worse. At the maximum rate of growth the economy has seen in the last fifty years, it will take a decade to get back to where we are today. That’s a decade of lower employment. A decade of people having to do with less, not more.

I’ve heard it said that all of the economy is still there, waiting to be re-occupied. But it’s not. The stock market has dropped by a third. How much of that was in the average person’s 401k? Spending habits will change. And the people who have been fired – will they come back to work for a company that fired them nearly immediately? Will businesses start as usual the instant the stay-at-home orders are lifted? Will oil zoom back up in price to $60 a barrel?

No. Spending isn’t being deferred – in many cases spending is being cancelled right now. If this goes on until May, that will be at least six weeks without the usual wages for millions of people, perhaps as many as 20 million people. For the majority of households not capable of handling a $1000 emergency, what will happen to their spending profile?

And the people won’t be the same, either.

Most of my jokes about unemployment don’t work. Oh, except for the one about the unemployed classical musician. He’s baroque.

Think about that for a second. Are people going to emerge like cave dwellers from the basement, and start consuming like they used to? No. They won’t have the money, having spent it all on toilet paper. They’ve had bills. Food. Electricity. Rent. Sure, they’re not getting kicked out of their house or apartment during the crisis, but someone has to pay the rent at some point.

Corona has also hit economies all around the entire world. As we speak, the world stock markets have lost trillions of dollars as well. Sure, that impacted all of the Greek shipping tycoons who wanted to buy a yacht, but it also impact all of the people who were thinking of buying a new car this year. Not only will demand be down in the United States, demand will be down globally.

For a decade.

If we’re lucky.

We sit at the crossroads of a country experiencing increasing polarity, year after year, and have just had the greatest financial catastrophe anyone living has seen. The submarine is still taking on water, and the hatch isn’t yet closed.

Expect even more surprises.

Soon.