January 2021 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Health, Media, And Distrust

“That’s because there’s no logical reason Vitamin C would cure polio.” – House, M.D.

What’s worse than misplacing your keys? Polio.

I really don’t have to tell you how deep the distrust in society is today. In many cases, it is for good and heckin’ valid reasons. That will be the theme for the next three posts, starting with today’s post.

Media distrust is at all-time highs in the United States. There’s an old Soviet joke about their newspapers, Pravda (which means “Truth” in English) and Izvestia (which means “The News” in English):

“There’s no truth in Pravda and no news in Izvestia.”

Especially in 2020 and (now) in 2021, our news has been so corrupted as to make Stalin jealous. Sadly, this has consequences.

I’ll start off by stating the obvious: COVID-19 is a real disease. There have been fatalities. If you read Aesop’s blog (LINK), you can get a firsthand account of his dealing with it as a medical professional. It isn’t pleasant reading, but it is truth, and when it comes to COVID-19, I trust Aesop more than the CDC. Also? I’d rather read the unpleasant truth than pretty little lies, any day.

Editor: “I want that fable on my desk, AESOP!”

It also isn’t pleasant when he comes over to this place and (validly) punches me in the mouth with all of the subtlety of a Devil Dog storming a German trench when I get my medical stuff wrong. I actually appreciate that since I want the truth to get out, regardless of ideological consequence. (Though sometimes it stings. And I’m sure he’ll remind me to get the shingles vaccine when I get older.)

But yet . . . Dr. Anthony Fauci said this on March 8, 2020:

“There’s no reason to be walking around with a mask. When you’re in the middle of an outbreak, wearing a mask might make people feel a little bit better and it might even block a droplet, but it’s not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is. And, often, there are unintended consequences — people keep fiddling with the mask and they keep touching their face.”

Remember, no matter how useless you think you are, there’s always Dr. Fauci.

On April 3, 2020, Fauci changed his story:

On masks, he said, “If everybody does that, we’re each protecting each other.”

Fair enough, people change their minds, right? But it later came out that the context of the first statement was built on a lie: “ . . . masks were not recommended for the general public, as authorities were trying to prevent a mask shortage for health workers . . . .”

How hard is it to say . . . “We don’t know. Masks might work. But right now there’s a shortage and we’re asking you to save those masks that are available for health workers”?

It’s not hard. And it’s honest. When they lie to you, that tells you what they think of you.

Now, Fauci recently (January 2021) said that maybe you should wear two masks. In his case that makes sense – one for each of his faces.

I can now tell if a person has a mustache even if they have a mask on. I guess I’m hairivoyant.

Now we end up with the COVID-19 vaccine.

To be clear: I’m not an anti-vaxxer. My kids have all of their shots – that’s why they get the tag from the vet.

What, the tags are for the dogs?

Oops. No wonder Pugsley tries to keep hiding his collar and bell and rabies tag under his t-shirt when he goes to school.

Additionally, there is clear evidence that some vaccines have done some significant amounts of good:

Smallpox has been eradicated – like my jokes, it’s a killer. But smallpox is like one of my obscure jokes – no one gets it anymore.
Polio? What’s that?
Others: Measles and mumps were (for a time) eradicated in the United States, though the number of lives saved annually due to measles might be as low as 400 a year due to the vaccine (LINK) and may be half that or less. Also? The biggest decline in measles deaths took place years before the vaccine was released.

Oh, wait, I guess I just asked.

But let’s go back to polio. While the vaccine was new, one batch had polio that wasn’t “killed” and it infected hundreds of thousands of kids. Another version was contaminated with SV-40, a virus from monkeys (it was a relic of how the vaccine was produced) that produces cancer in some lab critters. SV-40 DNA has been found in various cancers in humans, including non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, though it’s considered controversial to say that the polio vaccine triggered those cancers.

Was it worth it to get rid of polio?

I can sit back in 2021 and easily say, “Sure, those aren’t my kids.” A few parents from 1954 might want to have words with me, though.

Now, the current vaccine is of a type that’s entirely new. It uses strands of RNA (biological spaghetti that transfers information on how your squishy parts are made) to trigger an immune response by making your immune system sensitive to proteins that are a part of the ‘Rona.

A good idea? Sure!

A good idea to try on the fly with millions of people in a science experiment?

Hmmm, now I’m not so sure.

Would I want Pugsley to get the vaccine? At his current age, there is a 0% chance of death if he catches the ‘Rona. Most likely, he’d never even know he had it. If I expand his age group to include the few unhealthy kids in their 20s that caught it and died, the chances of death, if he got it, is 0.001%. For him, driving to school is far, far, more dangerous.

Would I want my son to take a vaccine of an entirely new type when the chances of side effects killing him are by definition equal to (zero is equal to) or greater than his current risk profile from the WuFlu?

Probably not.

What isn’t helping is that discussion of any subject related to COVID-19 is censored on YouTube® if it doesn’t say exactly what Dr. Fauci thinks. And, as we have established, what he says is demonstrably not guaranteed to be the truth. It might be, but we already know one thing: the man will lie to us.

Did Hank Aaron die as a result of the Coronavirus vaccine he so publicly took?

I have no idea.

Who would I trust to tell me yes or no, that the vaccine is safe?

I have no idea.

There’s even a toll in California for tying your shoe. Knot fare.

The radio spouted a daily COVID-19 death toll until the minute Joe Biden was sworn in. Now? Not at all. The only stories I hear now are (mainly) positive vaccine stories.

I just wish we had more Pravda in our Izvestia.

Pyramids, Captain Kirk, And Skills

“Seven days ago one of my satellites over Antarctica discovered a pyramid.” – Alien vs. Predator

A friend tried to rope me into a pyramid scam. “Don’t you want to be your own boss,” he asked me. “No, I hate working for jerks.”

When I graduated from college, I graduated at the same time as one of my close friends. The employment market was only so-so, but we both managed to grab jobs in a town near the college. Whereas my job was, um, more rough and tumble (I was a rodeo clown at for chubby people at the Golden Corral® – my worst day was when Megan McCain and Oprah showed up together), my friend’s job ended up being at a suit and tie kind of place. Thankfully, we still were working in the same city, and we got together frequently.

One night he asked a question over Buffalo wings and too many beers: “Where did they go?”

“What? Where did who go?”

“All the old guys. I mean, I go to work, and I see that there are dozens of people less than thirty. Then, maybe twenty percent are between thirty and forty. After forty? It’s a wasteland. Hardly anyone but upper management is over forty.”

I thought about his question. Where did they go? The company I was working at (and most of the companies I’ve worked at since then) had a similar pyramid shape. Some have been steeper, and some shallower, but all have had that shape.

I have a good construction joke, but I’m still working on it.

So, where did they go?

Well, they didn’t retire – not from the company they were at – they didn’t make nearly enough to retire at 27 and live on the island with Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Robert Johnson.

Nope. The vanished people were gone. Where? Somewhere else. Some other industry, some other career. It was uno, dos, and then they vanished without a tres.

Probably the biggest reason for that pyramid shape is that younger people cost less. Do they know less? Sure, but inexpensive is an attribute all of its own.

But any hierarchical organization has fewer slots for leaders than for followers. The armed forces are a similar example. I once made the acquaintance of a (no kidding) Captain Kirk. Now, this Captain Kirk wasn’t in Starfleet®, he was in the United States Army. And he was sweating for promotion.

Captain Kirk was denied promotion. I’m thinking that someone the Pentagon saw that Captain Kirk was trying to be promoted to Major Kirk, and that there was no way that the Army would ever give up the numerical superiority they had over the Navy in their number of Captain Kirks.

No, not this Kirk.

The armed forces are a classic example of that pyramid structure: there are fewer generals than colonels, and fewer colonels than majors. And, if officers (in a certain range) fail to be promoted a certain number of times?

Well, there’s the door. So, Captain Kirk soon enough was in the private sector, and I lost track of him from there. I think he got lost somewhere in the Veridian System.

Most (but not all) companies are built upon this pyramid model. I’ve seen high-end consulting firms where it’s a paradise for everyone born in the Eisenhower era, but those are the exception, not the rule. Plus, they charge enough to pay for the most expensive video-streaming service ever: college during Corona.

So, the rub is that for many, the rule is up or out.

What to do?

Invest in the one thing that can never be taken away from you: your skills.

My poor reading skills cost me a career in sex-worker management. On the bright side, now I own a warehouse.

In 2017 I would have given a completely different list of skills than 2021. It would have been far more dull and predictable. But 2021? 2021 is like a tarot card reader’s business: unpredictable. Part of it will come down to plain dumb luck and good timing.

I’d suggest:

Have general skills. General skills are widely applicable and get a job quickly in lots of different locations. Teacher. Tom Brady’s tooth polisher.
Or, have skills that are so specific that they are nearly impossible to replicate. (Specific skills require a time and a place. I’m sure that all of the folks working on the Keystone XL pipeline had great skills. Until those skills aren’t needed.) If you want a great choice for the Biden year, I’d suggest a carbon-neutral way to turn cash into Democratic votes. Oh, wait, they’ve got that figured out.
Protip: growth industries will be the ones that the Left loves for the next two years, at least. If it’s green and fuzzy, the Left will fill it full of money. I’m thinking of investing in pool tables.
Have skills that can’t be done remotely from a foreign country. Right now, that includes teaching. I’m sure there are more, but I’ve been at a loss since Biden figured out how to be the president from China.
Have skills where a certification that a foreigner can’t get are required. Top secret clearances are nice. I’m working on a top-secret project to ferment honey to make ethanol for cars. The project is all on a mead-to-know basis.

To be fair, I had an addiction to stealing traffic lights. But I could stop whenever I wanted to.

A lot of the suggestions above would have made the 2017 list.

In 2021, however, I must stress that the world might get a lot more, um, basic than we’re used to. The reason that my Great-Great-Grandma McWilder (GGGMcW) did fine during the Great Depression was she knew how to make clothes from cloth, a needle, and thread. And if the cloth wasn’t big enough for a dress? It was big enough to be made into part of a hand-made quilt. Like Jean-Luc Picard, she could make it sew.

GGGMcW also knew how to raise chickens. And raise a garden. Probably 30% or more of the calories they ate came from the backyard – as he added soil to the garden, I’m sure he said, “so, the plot thickens.” But Great-Great-Grandpa McWilder was no slouch, either. He didn’t have a great repair shop, but the man fixed every aspect of his house, by himself. Roof leaked?

It was his job to fix. Ants? His to kill. Broken suitcase handle? His to fix.

Honestly, I don’t recall them buying anything much more than flour, sugar, bread, chicken, and hamburger and the occasional vegetable. I don’t think the area was friendly to corn so I think they got that in cans. They would have grown more vegetables, but they weren’t from Okra-homa.

I installed a beer tap in my house – now The Mrs. complains that she can’t take a shower.

But there was more. The Great-Greats were also tied into their community, and had been there a decade. The connections they had bonded them to the community. How so? During the Depression they raised another child from a family that couldn’t afford to feed the kid.

The pyramid is real. In many ways opportunities may diminish over time. But life goes on, so keep investing in the skills that you might need.

All of them. Because you have no idea what the future might bring.

In Their Own Words

Three Kinds Of Evil

“You’re semi-evil. You’re quasi-evil. You’re the margarine of evil. You’re the Diet Coke of evil. Just one calorie, not evil enough.” – Austin Powers

I heard that Kim Jong Un was evil because he had no Seoul.

Evil.

Several of my posts have been about Evil recently. I use the capital E because, in my conception of the world, Evil is a force. I know your mileage may vary, but I think that today’s post can benefit you regardless of your belief system. Stick with me on this one. I brought cookies and juice boxes for halftime.

Normally, I had thought of Evil (when I thought of it) as just plain Evil. The idea that there were different kinds of Evil wasn’t something that I dwelled on. Bad is bad, so why categorize it? It’s like determining if Biden’s morning Depends™ is worse than his night time Depends© – he calls them both Executive Odors and then talks about Corn Pop.

Well, it turns out that for me, when I read about these categories it made Evil easier for me to see. It also made the progression of Evil easier for me to understand. And if I could better see Evil and understand Evil, I could anticipate Evil. Most importantly, I could try to avoid personally being Evil.

And that’s why I thought this was worthy of a Friday post, where I normally write about health. What could be healthier (for your mind, if not your soul) than not being Evil?

The first form of Evil is one that most often came to mind when I thought of Evil, and that is Luciferian Evil. Describing this type of Evil is easy: “If it feels good, do it.”

What feels like the United States but isn’t? Washington, D.C.

If that sounds familiar, the entire decade of the 1960s and most of the 1970s was dedicated to exactly that phrase. Regardless of social conviction, regardless of taboo, regardless of the impact upon society, the idea was to live for yourself. How else would you explain disco music?

In theory, that’s a great idea. (Not disco, but living for yourself.) In practice, however, living only for yourself has an amazing cost. I’ll admit that I know this because, at one phase of my life, I thought that this was just fine.

Oh, not in the way of stealing things, or breaking things, but in the realm of personal relationships. Let’s just say I had a large number of girlfriends, some of whom may have had self-esteem issues. We’ll leave it at that.

Doing what feels good at the expense of the context of a traditional relationship has consequences. In the end, it feels empty. Lust is never as good as love, though it was easier to find at 11:30 on a Friday night.

I don’t have a problem with low self-esteem, considering how awesome I am.

Living life just for pleasure ended up making me feel lonely and empty and nihilistic – the very partnership that a stable traditional marriage brings was what was avoided. But, you know, it felt good. That makes it okay. Right?

Well, no. That’s what makes it Evil. When I gave that up? Life became better.

The second type of Evil is more Evil than the first one. Dr. Bruce Charlton (LINK) referenced it as Ahrimanic Evil*. (Dark Brightness (LINK) had the excellent original post I read and the link to Charlton’s site.)

Ahrimanic Evil requires Luciferian Evil to open the door. “If it feels good, do it” seems to lead to “everyone should follow the value system of the material world and globalist systems. It’s for their own good.” That coercion is Ahrimanic Evil.

Just as Luciferian Evil removes the spirituality out of sex, Ahrimanic Evil removes the virtue out of sacrifice for society. If you’re against the soul-destroying, controlling, Chinese Social Credit system, what you’re really opposing is Ahrimanic Evil.

I hear that the unit of mass George Soros uses is the pentagram.

The soulless Yuppie of the 1980s became the architect of the Ahrimanic control structures of political correctness and cancel culture. Ahrimanic Evil wants you to live in pods and eat bugs and take the vaccine. Fun? Not on this Evil. It’s about the relentless and constant pursuit of material success.

It seems like, since 1990 or so, we’ve been living in a world based on materialism, denying the spiritual or natural component of human existence. The libertine (not libertarian) excesses of the 1960s and 1970s gave way in the 1990s to full-on materialism. If it’s good for the economy, it’s perfect. Free trade, open borders? Who cares about what the consequences are to society as long as the economic systems function?

I’ll admit, in the 1990s I was seduced by this model. I worried more about economic systems than I did about the social structure of the United States. Was I for NAFTA then? Yeah. What could go wrong?

A lot. It looks like Ross Perot was right. But during that time I was following the same model – I pursued my career as a top priority. Yup, I’ve tried to put that Evil behind me, too.

Want it, buy it, forget it.

The last stage that Charlton mentions is Sorathic Evil. It is the most evil of the three Evils.

Sorathic Evil requires the progress from Luciferian to Ahrimanic Evil in society. In practice, you’d think that having a global police surveillance state was the worst thing you could think of. You’ve seen all the films, right, and listened to Pink Floyd’s The Wall, which was (sort of) an attack on the Ahrimanic Evil they saw coming.

But what is this final Evil?

Destruction. Hate. Spite.

You’d think that Evil would be happy with the image, in Orwell’s words with this: “imagine a boot stamping a human face forever.” Total control, through the end of time.

Nope. That’s not enough. Sorathic Evil requires destruction. And, I’ll admit that I felt that way once or twice. It, like the lustfulness or materialism, is soul-destroying. After I released feeling that way, I felt immediately better, like a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders.

The end state of Sorathic Evil is despair. It is envy. It is the desire for the destruction of others for no other reason than you want them to be destroyed. But as we have seen recently, the destruction of others is not enough: Trump transgressed the Ahrimanic system, so Trump (and all who supported him) must be (in their minds) destroyed.

If it were just about justice, that would be simple enough – the absence of Trump was the win for the Left. After Obama ceased to be President, I ceased to care about him. Leftists, the current embodiment of Luciferian, Ahrimanic, and Sorathic Evil, want Trump and his supporters to suffer. If we all changed to their viewpoint today, it would not be enough.

I interviewed to be a mime once – but I didn’t get the job. Must have been something I said.

Imagine Cambodia times the Cultural Revolution times the Holodomor. Squared. That is the future the Left wants for us, and I’ll be writing about that for Monday’s post. And that is the Evil we face.

What they fail to realize is that is the future that they will also get for themselves if they are successful. There won’t be any Gender Studies Majors on the Central Committee. The Left would line up the Leftist professors to be shot far faster than the Right ever would.

The only way to feed the Beast is to make people suffer.

I’m not going to say I’m a great person. I regularly meet with and interact with people who are far better people than I will ever be. I will say, I try. But by having lived through and let go of these three types of Evil, I immediately felt better.

The other thing I’ve learned is that Good is stronger than Evil. Good fills the void, while Evil only brings additional hunger.

We’re not done.

This isn’t over.

*(As far as the terms Charlton references, you don’t need to follow the rabbit trail as to where he got the names for the Evils and points I’m making in this post. It gets a bit esoteric, and you can spend hours, days or weeks wandering down there, but Charlton points the way if you are interested. Beware, it’s filled with esoteric weirdness.)

The Post That Gave The World Bikini Economics: Why MMT Is A Bad Idea.

Life has me trying to pack 32 hours into 24 today, so I’ll leave you with this blast from the past, the famous post that gave us bikininomics. New stuff on Friday.

“Grab a brew. Don’t cost nothing.” – Animal House

The future economic expansion is so bright, she’s gotta shield her eyes with a hat.

So, today I’d like to talk about economics. No, wait, don’t leave! I promise pictures of girls in bikinis if you stay!

Today’s economic idea is a particularly stupid one. Just about as stupid as when the Ming Dynasty tried to disarm Japan by buying all their swords. This really happened around 1432 A.D. (according to some experts) but was less successful than the Ming projected: the Japanese just made more swords – at least 128,000. Today’s stupid idea is called, “Modern Monetary Theory.” Epsilon Theory had an article on it (LINK), and I did some research and thought I’d give you a rundown on this horrible, horrible idea which smells worse than Johnny Depp’s sweat socks after a night running through a farm ditch in Utah. Don’t ask.

Okay, John Wilder, I’ll humor you if you promise bikini pictures. What is Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)?

This poor person is deprived by a Marxist economy, so poor she cannot afford proper clothing and is weak enough from hunger that she’s forced to crawl along the beach.

Here’s a bikini picture to prove that these will be the sexiest graphs in the history of economics. Now pay attention and I’ll explain Modern Monetary Theory. MMT is simple:

The main idea of MMT is that since government creates money there are exactly no limits to how much money government can create. Back when money was backed by gold (say, with one ounce of gold being worth $20) there was a physical limit – by definition you couldn’t have more $20 gold coins than you had ounces of gold. MMT says, “Hey, since Nixon took the world off of the gold standard, we’ve been making up this money stuff anyway. So let’s go all in.” This is not exactly like a drunken 21 year old with Mom and Dad’s credit card in Las Vegas. Not exactly. The credit card has a credit limit.

So, under MMT, there is no limit to how much money government can print. The genius idea (from Bill Mitchell, an Australian economist who came up with the name “Modern Monetary Theory”, and whose dog’s name is “Dog” and daughter’s name is “Girl”, and whose pet name for his wife is “That Woman On The Couch”) is that there is also no limit to the amount of money that government can spend. This is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s high school prom fantasy where Justin Bieber picks her up in a pink helicopter and makes her all warm in her special place. Oh, and by special place I mean other people’s wallets: this is a family-friendly blog, get your mind out of the gutter. The implications are stunning. “Why not just pay for everything? The government can just print the money, right?”

Yes. She really said that. See, pure economic genius!

Yes, this is exactly the logic of a twenty-something girl who can’t figure out how to pay for an apartment, and wonders what fruit Froot Loops® are made of.

Bill Mitchell has a doctorate in economics, which shows you how easy it is to learn absolutely nothing while getting a doctorate, just as Ocasio-Cortez can demonstrate that an undergraduate degree in economics is essentially majoring in pure pre-barista. An analogy used on a website that promotes MMT is that football referees don’t have a limit to the number of points that can be awarded during a football game. There’s no requirement that they come from somewhere, and giving someone else a point doesn’t take a point away from you. Therefore points are infinite and don’t change the way the game is played.

Genius.

You can clearly see the equilibrium required in an economy consisting entirely of tequila shooters and cocoa butter.

Why not make every dollar worth, oh, say $10? That way everyone could just add a zero to their bank balance? Doesn’t cost anything, right? And why not pay for every person’s medical care? We’re just making up the dollars as we go. While we’re at it, there are unemployed people. Why not pay your average unemployed art major to make Xir’s (a gender-neutral pronoun) armpit-hair sculptures each and every day?

Don’t cost nothing.

This is an amazing idea! Government can have it all! There is no limit to the amount government can spend because Tom Brady can make all the touchdowns he wants during a game. Yay, tortured grade-school logic!

There’s a corollary to this – Dr. Mitchell thinks we can have all of this infinite money and low interest rates. There’s no need for inflation. Print the money. Prices won’t go up. MMT says we can spend ourselves into prosperity*.

*As long as you appropriately tax people to soak up excess money. Mitchell, in the fine print, says that we can spend up to the entire productive capacity of the nation on, well, whatever. When we get to that capacity, then we have to soak up the extra money with taxes. The taxes don’t really go to anything, we just use them to pull money out of circulation. Government still buys stuff with whatever money it prints. Taxes exist only as a sponge to soak up excess cash.

Two consecutive quarters of GDP contraction make a recession, and they’d also leave a nasty sunburn.

This puts the printing of money into the hands of the Federal Reserve Bank, and the spending and taxation into the hands of Congress. Sadly, Mitchell never postulated putting adults in charge. Regardless, Congress never ever spends too much money and certainly wouldn’t structure taxes to be punitive against groups they don’t like. So, sober people like Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi would have infinite spending ability. I’m sure, like Goldilocks, they’d get the porridge “just right.”

MMT will be the next economic pied-piper of the political class in Washington, and will probably be the torch carried by the next Democratic presidential nominee. It has no downside! Spend today because deficits don’t matter. Interest rates are 100% controllable. Only have to pay a few taxes, and we’ll have free prosperity for all.

We’ll just print the money. “You just pay for it.”

And, no one will have to be a barista! We can guarantee a living wage to each and every artist so that the United States can be the undisputed leader in the creation of sculptures made out of armpit hair.

There’s no reason this can’t work. Why, The Boy, when he was in kindergarten, came up with a system that was very similar. For whatever reason, his class had made “feathers” by cutting out feather-shapes out of different colors of construction paper. The Boy got into his Gummi-bear® addled kindergartner brain that these construction paper feathers were actually worth real money. He even had an exchange rate in mind – each feather was worth three dollars. He had three feathers, so, he demanded nine dollars. I tried to negotiate, but it was useless – he drove a hard bargain, what with the laying on the floor and crying.

But he made the same mistake that Karl Marx and MMT make.

GDP is proportional to the height of the girl in the bikini. That’s a basic economic concept.

You see, Marx’s theory (as well as MMT) both incorporate a fascinating idea – that the value of an item is based on the inputs that it takes to make the item. So, from that standpoint, our armpit-hair artisan should be able to charge the cost of her Xir schooling (plus that summer in Europe with Marco!) and her Xir apartment and food cost for that armpit hair sculpture. It is that valuable.

Real world economics that don’t result in economic collapse and the starvation of millions of people would disagree. An armpit hair sculpture is worth only what someone is willing to pay for it, and not a penny more. It’s a market, and it’s based on free exchange. It’s that simple idea of the market setting the price that makes capitalist economies work. And it’s the brutality of the market that ensures that armpit-hair artists have to have a real job actually producing things that people want. Like coffee.

Ideas like MMT seem to be too good to be true because they are too good to be true. They always end in failure, poverty, and human suffering. Thankfully they can use that taxation sponge to soak up all the blood after the revolution.

But “infinite free stuff” is sure a great line when you’re running for office. Worked out great in Venezuela….

End Censorship Of The Right With This One Simple Trick

â€œThis is the worst kind ofÂ discrimination. The kind against me.â€ â€“ Futurama

TwitterÂ® Safety Council Warning:Â This meme has disinformation â€“ this was not crack, Hunter Biden was smoking meth.

I get worried when I see Internet personalities come up with entirely new philosophical positions. Â I generally roll my eyes and ignore them.Â I can recall reading details of a few â€œmaster systemsâ€ that could never work unless they were implemented by a group of autistic libertarians on a planet with infinite resources, free fusion power and access to unlimited deodorant.

Oh, wait, I just described Switzerland.

History shows, though, that one â€œmaster systemâ€ created by a group of guys actually worked. This is, of course, the United States.Â The United States was a 2.0 version â€“ the original 1.0 Articles of Confederation apparently needed an upgrade to function.Â (There are those who say the 1.0 version was working just fine, but thatâ€™s another story.)

There are several safeguards built into the Constitution.Â Some of them appear to not work very well anymore, like the Supreme Court, which went on the fritz somewhere around 1932.Â Some changes (like the direct election of Senators) are like a fuse in a 1982 Buickâ„¢ SkylarkÂ© – the fuse has blown but been replaced by someone sticking a penny in the slot.Â The Senate doesnâ€™t really do what it was designed to do, anymore.

What kind of cancer was Jar Jar diagnosed with?Â Meesathelioma.

One remaining safeguard is Federalism.Â Federalism is the idea that the individual States arenâ€™t simply a subdivision like a county or city, but are individually sovereign.

This is a really big deal.

The States have given up several of their rights by joining the Union, but certainly not all of them.Â One particular right that the several States retain is to protect the civil liberties of their citizens.Â It is perfectly legal for any State to protect its individual citizens from discrimination, especially discrimination by businesses.

My suggestion is this:Â since the Right controls a large number of States, and a large number of important States, why not use that power for the Right?

Hereâ€™s one suggestion:

States controlled by the Right should protect their citizens from discrimination based on their legal opinions â€“ political or otherwise.Â We could start out with something simple, like making discrimination on social media illegal.

Okay, thatâ€™s not really simple.Â But it is something that we can do.

If the French army used Twitter, all youâ€™d hear from them is â€œRetweet, retweet!â€

Here is my contention:Â large social media companies in a world where opinions are increasingly driven by them arenâ€™t a privilege, theyâ€™re a right.Â And being excluded from them can swing elections.Â Uganda certainly thought so:Â they banned TwitterÂ® and Facebookâ„¢ because (according to the Ugandan ruling party) they were taking sides in the election.

Yes, you got that right:Â Ugandan despots have a higher moral ground than TwitterÂ® does.

TwitterÂ©, in an unintended bit of irony, complained that censorship was wrong.Â Wait, Twitterâ„¢ said censoring TwitterÂ® was wrong.Â Â TwitterÂ© is, of course, fine with censoring the accounts of American citizens who have opinions that Twitterâ„¢ doesnâ€™t like.

Hereâ€™s what TwitterÂ© said:

â€œAccess to information and freedom of expression, including the public conversation on Twitter, is never more important than during democratic processes, particularly elections.â€

In Soviet Russia, the vote hacks you!

Care to take a bet that TwitterÂ®, Amazonâ„¢, FacebookÂ©, and GoogleÂ® didnâ€™t influence the election in the United States?Â Think that Twitterâ„¢, which has zero competition, hasnâ€™t unduly influenced the â€œdemocratic processesâ€ in the United States by choosing what information to promote?

Well, letâ€™s make all of them live up to Twitterâ€™sÂ© words and guarantee access to information and freedom of expression.Â How about we make a law that says:

Any discrimination by censoring users with legal opinions is punishable by a $1,000,000 fine. Per occurrence.Â Every censored user could split the fine halvsies with the State.Â If I were to be particularly evil, I would suggest that this be done via administrative law, which takes it right out of the court system.Â They could only appeal to, for instance, the Texas Social Media Freedom Commission, where theyâ€™d learn that messing with Texans is a bad idea.
Censoring porn? Just fine, since itâ€™s not appropriate or legal for every user to see.Â Censoring, real, actionable threats?Â Those are already illegal.Â So thatâ€™s fine.
Can an individual block other users that offend them? Â But no large social media company can.
Repeated violations open the social media companies up to punitive damages, which is where the big bucks start to show up. Punitive damages are often large enough to make billionaires take note.
Removal of the service from the State enacting these laws is evidence that every citizen has been deprived of their civil liberties. Therefore?Â The social media company owes a million dollars . . . per citizen.

The idea is simple:Â FacebookÂ®, Twitterâ„¢, InstagrandmaÂ©, and all of the other general purpose social media companies can no longer hide.Â Does Aunt Ermaâ€™s knitting bulletin board have to let Marxists try to turn knitting communist?

Pugsleyâ€™s Grandma knitted him three socks for Christmas.Â Why? Â We told her he had grown another foot.

Of course not.Â Aunt Ermaâ€™s knitting board isnâ€™t a general-purpose board.Â Itâ€™s focused on a single topic.Â Social media thatâ€™s really small (less than 10,000 daily users?) can ban whoever they want.Â They are not really impacting the national agenda.Â Social media with over a million daily users thatâ€™s not focused around a specific topic?

They can only ban users that violate the law with the content that they posted.

Oddly enough, we could make some of the same arguments the Left does. Recently, an A.I. was able to, based on photographs alone, determine with 75% accuracy who was on the Right and who was on the Left.Â We can make being on the Right a protected characteristic.

Being on the Right might not be a choice.Â So, if a baker has to bake a gay cake, TwitterÂ® has to host people who have a problem with that.

The beauty of this idea is that we are protecting the civil rights of citizens.Â We are fighting for First Amendment protections.Â And we are not forcing anyone to do anything special â€“ just donâ€™t ban people who have different ideas than they do.Â Corporations are allowed to do a lot of things, but censoring voices that differ from what they think is right is simply not one of them.Â TwitterÂ® censored a major United States newspaper because they published data about a candidate that TwitterÂ© didnâ€™t like.

I think this is, at least partially, why marijuana legalization has been so successful in the States that have legalized it:Â it is granting additional rights to citizens and businesses.Â The Federal government knows that it is on thin ice when it wants to regulate commerce that takes place entirely within a State.

But the Internet doesnâ€™t take place entirely within a State, right?

No.Â But weâ€™re not trying to regulate commerce.Â Weâ€™re protecting the civil rights of our citizens.Â And TwitterÂ® and Facebookâ„¢ are attempting to market our citizens for money.Â Theyâ€™re engaging in commerce to everyone in the State by offering their free service.Â So, if they exclude people (or mute people) because they donâ€™t like their opinion?

Theyâ€™re discriminating, and if we get this done, they will be illegally discriminating.Â And the Right should punish them.Â Does Facebookâ„¢ need Texas more than Texas needs FacebookÂ©?

It is simple:Â FacebookÂ® needs Texas more than Texas needs Facebookâ„¢.

What’s the difference between Mark Zuckerberg and Jean Luc Picard?Â Picard didn’t sell Data

So, if youâ€™re with me, start working at the State level to get these protections of our essential freedoms in place.Â Talk to your State legislators â€“ heck, Iâ€™m willing to bet that some readers are State legislators, so letâ€™s get this going.

The place to fight for freedom isnâ€™t only at the Federal level â€“ in fact, the best place to fight for freedom might be at the State level.

Weâ€™re not done.Â And this isnâ€™t over.

Toxic Positivity, Because Leftists Say So?

“Dad, you’re, you’re twisting my words! I meant burden in its most positive sense.” – Frasier

In Rambo® 7, Rambo™ fights arthritis.

News stories are like sheep they arrive in flocks as part of a lambush. One flock of stories this week was about, and I quote, Toxic Positivity. Just like another bogeyman, Toxic Masculinity, the Left seeks to take something good and turn it into something to be seen as bad.

The basic idea of the stories is this:

Positive people make it hard for people to be sad or defeatist.
Because people can’t express their sadness or defeat, they feel even sadder and more defeated.
Therefore, the people who tried to cheer them up are evil. Oh, wait, the Left doesn’t acknowledge such an old-fashioned concept as evil. It has to be “toxic.”

Positivity is good. Is it a universal cure-all? Absolutely not. When Ma Wilder died (more than two decades ago), the last thing I wanted was someone to crack a joke or try to make light of the situation. I was grieving. I was not interested in anyone putting the “fun” in funeral.

It’s normal to grieve when a parent dies. But wallowing in that grief for too long doesn’t help anyone. If I had stayed in that grief?

That’s despair, and despair is evil. Not toxic.

Evil. Despair eats into the soul.

Moses was a high-tech prophet – he was the first to use a tablet.

That was my first reaction when I read this story: whoever is behind it is evil.

Why?

Life is tough, really tough. People that we love die. The economy has hit millions directly and is looming over many, many more.

Heck, if I wanted to, I could spend this entire post writing about things that were horrible in 2020 and 2021. But I’m not going to, because, even when things are pretty tough, almost every person reading this has a life that’s better than 99.99% of every person that has ever lived, even on your worst day.

The four stages of Santa:
1. You believe in Santa.
2. You don’t believe in Santa.
3. You are Santa.
4. You look like Santa.

Objectively, my life has been fantastic, as has the life of The Mrs. and the rest of my family. Have bad things happened to us? Sure. But we don’t dwell on them, because that’s despair.

One thing that’s critical for me when I’m having a bad day is being around someone positive to bring me up and out of my sadness. It’s critical because if you let it, sadness will turn into self-pity. And self-pity is a hole with no bottom.

Joe Biden has indicated he wants to put chips in the brains of United States Citizens. What kinds of chips? “Well, you know the thing, sour cream and onion, maybe.”

So why are there people preaching against Toxic Positivity? I can only think of two reasons:

There are a group of people who actively like feeling bad about themselves. As I’ve established before, this group tends to be (but is not exclusively) Leftist. Positive people are a mirror that they don’t like to see: a mirror of what kind of person they could be if they weren’t such miserable wretches.
Oops, there’s only the one group.

The alternative to positive people is . . . negative people.

I avoid negative people like I avoid personal hygiene. Why? Because every day I live or work around negative people, it feels like my life is slowly being sucked away. Negative people are emotional vampires. The sort of defeatism that they spew out is as infectious as Madonna® before her monthly penicillin shot.

I hear mummies are into wrap music.

Negativity can poison a workplace: it’s the guy at work who is always sure that someone else has it better, that some other group is the favored group, and that whatever raise they get is never enough. Then one person in their team is recruited – they begin to see that their group are always getting a bad deal, treated unfairly, having to work harder than others.

Strong people can avoid this self-identified victimhood. However, I’ve seen good people sucked in and become unhappy in a great job, merely because they felt that someone else, somewhere else, had it better than they did.

The biggest weapon against that attitude: being positive. That’s why I write so often about it. I think that 95% of the way I feel on an average day is entirely in my control. No, it doesn’t apply at a funeral or on other dark days. But most days?

At my funeral, my friend promised to say, “bargain,” and that means a great deal.

I choose to be happy. I choose to enjoy my life. I choose to be positive. I choose to try to uplift those around me. Do I acknowledge that times might be rough? Sure.

But the answer isn’t giving up, and taking our ball home. The answer is to work harder, get better, and never give up.

Toxic positivity?

Sign me up.

New Podcast: Man-Eating Squirrels, The Fall of Ancient Greece, and The Fall of Education

In this podcast we tackle: Attack of the Man-Eating Squirrels, the Fall of Ancient Greece, and The Mrs. admitting she nodded off in high school English.

Money In 2021? (Explained With One Bikini)

â€œWell, Saddam owed usÂ money.â€ â€“ Arrested Development

What does SupermanÂ® dry off with?Â A Tow-El.

Money.

What is it?

Really, the truth is money is anything we accept as having value that we can trade for something else.Â Cigarettes have been used for money.Â Cowrie shells were used in China for money nearly 4,000 years ago.Â Booze has often been used for money.

I read an article back in 2013 that bottles of TideÂ® were being used to trade for drugs in New York City, so you know that there are plenty of insane.Â Heck, I hear the Germans are even raising money online through Krautfunding.

Ideally, money has some sort of scarcity attached to it.

Gold has a historic role as money.Â You can cut it up into very, very tiny pieces, and you have lots of tiny pieces of gold.Â It hasnâ€™t changed â€“ you can melt it back into a single bar again, having lost nothing.Â You cut up a dollar bill into very tiny pieces?Â You have a pile of gerbil cage fluff.

Gold is nice.Â So is silver.

But, like anything, there are problems.

I found a little gold once while prospecting â€“ it was a minor success.

Well, generally always the same problem.Â Government.

Iâ€™ve mentioned Rome before, because itâ€™s a great illustration of what happens when government designs money.

At the beginning, Roman silver coins were, well, actually silver.Â The problem with silver coins is that you canâ€™t make silver show up out of thin air.Â Oh, wait, if youâ€™re a government, you can.Â The Imperial Romans managed to maintain enough restraint that their silver coins were over 90% silver for a little over 150 years after Empire.

After that, the percentage of silver in the coins declined rather quickly.

So did the Roman Empire.

Interestingly, where it took Rome 150 years, it took the United States 142 years for the same thing to happen:Â from 1792 (when the Coinage Act was passed) to 1934 (when Roosevelt confiscated United States silver and gold).Â History may not repeat, but it sure does rhyme.

Sure, there were silver coins produced after 1934, but silver coins were (largely) discontinued as United States currency in 1965.Â (*There were exceptions for dollar and half dollar coins in selected years.Â That ended in 1976.)

As soon as the non-silver coins were minted, the silver coins began to disappear from circulation.Â Greshamâ€™s Law states the simple fact:Â bad money (non-silver coins) drives out good money (silver coins).

But itâ€™s had an impact on peopleâ€™s thought processes as well:Â they have (largely) stopped thinking about gold and silver as money.Â Want proof?

Yup.Â When Mark Dice offered people either a King SizeÂ® Hersheyâ€™sâ„¢ chocolate bar or a 10 ounce silver bar, everyone chose the candy bar.Â As bad money replaced good, people stopped even thinking about silver as money.

The money supply today is fiat money.Â Iâ€™ve written about that before â€“ it means that our money is entirely made up.Â No silver backing, no gold backing, the only backing is the faith of the people who accept it.Â Oh, and several thousand nuclear weapons, if youâ€™re talking about the United States dollar.

The next step from that are the cryptocurrencies.

Those are entirely a mathematical concept, though Ricky has noted in comments that this mathematical construct can cost upwards of a million dollars in power a day.Â Bitcoin is currently at $33,000.Â Four days ago?Â $40,257.

Used with permission.

Is Bitcoin a bubble?Â Will it go to zero?Â Will I go to $500,000?

Honestly, I have no idea.Â I would have bet against it going to $40,000.

The scary part of today is just that uncertainty.

Gold has (generally) held its value over time, performing far better than the dollar since the Federal ReserveÂ© came into being.
Gold hasnâ€™t performed as well as stocks over the same period â€“ creative people added more value than a motionless metal.
Stocks are today at a valuation that is (by my reckoning) insane. They can stay that way longer than I can bet against them.
Bitcoin? Who can say?Â I think its primary role right now is to indicate bubble tops.
Bonds? Who wants to buy bonds at nearly zero interest rates?

This is probably one of the more difficult times to invest in my lifetime â€“ risks are very high, but returns donâ€™t seem to have kept up.

First role of 2021?Â Donâ€™t talk about 2020.

We seem to be, everywhere I look, near to a breaking point in our systems â€“ economic, political, and social.Â Who knows, maybe weâ€™ll be back at cowrie shell money by 2030.

But I think Iâ€™d prefer the booze, since I donâ€™t smoke and, well, if you have booze do you really need clean clothes?

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Standing At The Brink

“Treat the cause, not the symptom!” – The Rocky Horror Picture Show

No change this month. We’ll see what January brings . . .

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.
Open War.

We remain in the gray zone between step 9. and step 10. I will maintain the clock at 2 minutes to midnight. Last month I indicated that there was a chance to move the clock back if authorities took Leftist violence seriously.

Looks like I was too optimistic.

Previously, I stated that the only thing keeping the clock from ticking to full midnight is the number of deaths. I put the total at (this is my best approximation, since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) 600 out of the 1,000 required for the international civil war definition.

But as close as we are to the precipice of war, be careful. Things could change at any minute.

In this issue: Front Matter – Symptom, Not The Cause – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Harper’s Ferry 2.0 – Links

Front Matter

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

Symptom, Not The Cause

The Left has many errors in perception. Many of these errors are ‘own goals’ – the Left doesn’t know what the Right is thinking because they’ve managed to short-circuit the feedback mechanisms created by the Founding Fathers. As Sarah Hoyt puts it so eloquently (LINK):

For years I’ve told the left that when they used fraud to win, they’d broken the feedback mechanism. It didn’t mean their ideas were winning, that people agreed with them, or that they were safe. It was the equivalent of breaking the fire alarm and thinking they were safe from fires.

This is similar to my commentary in this post (Four Boxes: Soap, Jury, Ballot, and Ammo).

If you asked the average Leftist, I think most of them would say that Trump was the cause of the situation that we as a nation find ourselves in. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Trump is a symptom. Trump is, in many ways, a skilled communicator. He uses media to bypass gatekeepers and those that would interpret him to speak directly to the people. Could he have had tens of thousands of people chanting “Build The Wall” or “Lock Her Up” if those people didn’t believe that in the first place?

Of course not.

Trump found the messages that resonated with a very large group of Americans that had been bypassed by both the media and the political process for decades and gave them a voice. Does he believe in those messages?

I have no idea. I am not a mind reader. But Trump became a mirror of a large group of voters to show them that, yes, he heard them. And, yes, he’d fight for them. The degree that he actually followed through is debatable.

But back to the voice of the voters: People wanted to “Build The Wall” not because they hated the people coming across the border, but because borders matter. If everyone from Japan (for instance) moved to California, you wouldn’t have Californians: you’d just have more Japan. Americans, rightly, want to live in America. They’re not afraid of change, they just want the inevitable changes to be American, and not Japanese (for example).

“Lock Her Up” wasn’t just about Hillary – it was about the groups of politicians that served themselves and the state instead of voters. Why are the Clintons swimming in hundreds of millions in cash when they came into office as thousandaires? Why are the Obama family wondering which mansion to stay in each week rather than budgeting for a once a year family vacation?

Corruption. It wasn’t just Hillary, it was (and is) virtually every politician in Washington.

That’s what Leftists don’t understand – the movement Trump gave a voice to won’t go away regardless of what happens to Trump. The underlying causes aren’t getting better, they’re festering because the feedback mechanism is broken.

Violence And Censorship Update

The Capitol was stormed, but you know the details on that one. December had numerous violent protests by the Left, but only the Capitol having unscheduled visitors received major press coverage. Rationale?

Censorship.

This month has been, by far, the biggest outpouring of censorship of any month of my lifetime. The sitting President of the United States has been banned from essentially every online social media outlet. Even the store that sells merchandise related to Trump, Shopify©, has banned him. I’m certain that stopping the sale of red MAGA hats will solve all of the world’s problems.

Twitter® was, by far, the biggest way that Trump evaded the mainstream media lock on news selection and interpretation. Trump could speak directly to the American people without being a newscaster using the words “unfounded” every other word. He had sent 57,000 Tweets™ since he was on the service.

Not only was Trump censored, but I heard that the top 35% of his supporters were also censored. Journalist John Robb put it very well:

Bottom line: expect more, much more, censorship in the coming year.

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Up is more violent. The public perception of violence dropped drastically during November, and dropped again in December. January? Too soon to tell.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable. Instability dropped significantly in December. January – will it bring conclusion, or more tension?

Economic:

The economic measures took a small setback this month. I’d expect January to show a minor uptick.

Illegal Aliens:

Down is good, in theory. This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol. Numbers of illegals being caught is rising again from a record November to a record December – the floodgates are opening.

Harper’s Ferry 2.0

In October of 1859, ever photogenic John Brown and 22 of his best friends decided that the time was right to trigger a slave uprising in the South. Their idea was to capture the Harper’s Ferry Arsenal and then – well, the “and then” part wasn’t exactly clear to anyone but Brown. His plan was that he would kidnap slaves locally, and then give them guns as part of a great army.

The slaves he kidnapped ran away from Brown, having no desire to take part in his plan. In the end, most of John Brown’s men were either shot by the United States Marines that retook the Harper’s Ferry Arsenal or were executed after a trial. Ironically, it was the actions of Robert E. Lee that stopped the locals from hanging Brown on the spot and allowing him to be taken for a trial.

This was the last major incident that happened before Civil War 1.0, and greatly divided the country: half saw John Brown as a (sort of insane) leader that was working for good even though people died in the raid. The other half saw him as a treasonous criminal and a threat to their way of life.

I think that the way that people think of the storming of the Capitol last week has exactly the same polarity. They went to go protest at the Capitol, found that they could (more or less) waltz in and claim the place. Having done so, they were like a terrier that caught a Ford F-150® pickup. “What the heck do I do now?”

Some see it as a (sort of silly) show to our government that the government exists at our pleasure, and that even the walls of the Congress, located in one of the most Leftist strongholds in the nation, is not safe. They see a group of people protesting an election that they feel was decided by fraud. They feel this way honestly and sincerely.

Others see it as treason against the nation and actions to prevent a president from being confirmed. They feel that their cause is just, since, even though there might have been irregularities in voting (50% of Biden voters think the election was stolen) that it’s okay. They think: “Trump will be gone, and the Electoral College is silly, since popular votes are what democracies do, anyway.”

Regardless, this is an action that won’t be repeated. The State is scared that it was tested and found to be so vulnerable. They won’t make this mistake again – even now thousands of troops are pouring into Washington D.C.

LINKS

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

From Ricky: “My self-imposed cut off for this batch of links is the GA Senate Race and the Congressional acceptance of the Electoral votes. Who the hell knows what is about to happen next.”

ON THE EVE OF DECIDING CONTROL FOR THE SENATE AND PRESIDENCY:

QUESTIONS:

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/blog/do-black-lives-matter-in-the-white-elite-s-civil-war-/

https://www.creators.com/read/pat-buchanan/12/20/is-our-second-civil-war-also-a-forever-war

http://www.sfltimes.com/opinion/is-there-a-civil-war-in-america

https://www.independent.com/2020/06/14/an-american-civil-war/

ASSERTIONS:

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/12/the_new_phony_war.html

https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-trumps-final-days-lines-are-drawn-for-a-republican-civil-war-11609772298

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/a-new-civil-war-its-here-the-rights-grievance-politics-is-killing-thousands-every-day/ar-BB1bOXoE

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-gop-elections-mcconnell/

https://www.pantagraph.com/opinion/letters/letter-country-close-to-civil-war/article_e99472ac-6b83-5509-aa93-3f03f2c92382.html