Month: June 2021

They can’t stop the signal, Mal.

“They can’t stop the signal, Mal. They can never stop the signal.” – Serenity

“The chair is against the wall.  The chair is against the wall.  John has a long mustache.  John has a long mustache.  It’s twelve o’clock, American.  Another day closer to victory, and for all of you out there on or behind the line, this is your song.”

Wednesday is the day when I write about economics.  Why Wednesday?  Because it’s my blog.

I’m going to start with something that might seem unrelated.  Hang on, this will make sense in a bit.  I’m a trained professional, you’re in good hands.  And my hands?  They smell of elderberries.  But not hamsters.  I’m not into that.

On Monday, I was experiencing the highest traffic this august blog has ever gotten.  People were coming here so fast I was worried that I wouldn’t have enough coffee cups and hand-tatted doilies.  More people than live in Modern Mayberry were coming here every hour or so.

Thousands of people!  Good Heavens!

In the middle of this, an extreme social faux pas.  It was like my cat had impregnated an English princess.

Again.

My little missive discussing exactly what I thought of Mr. Biden’s idea that his F-15’s and nuclear weapons beat up on our modern sporting lawyers and BUFFs like me went dark.  Gone.  Epstein didn’t kill himself, and neither did my blog.

If you were surprised Epstein killed himself, imagine how surprised he was.

Boom.  Gone.  For hours, the entire blog went was as dead as Hillary’s woo-hoo has been since, oh, wait, there’s a limit on Epstein jokes.

To be clear:  I don’t host this website on a computer built with chicken wire and parts from a 1996 Packard-Bell© tower I found in the recycling bin and some toner cartridges from a 2003 Hewlett-Packard™ laser printer and some used chest-hair grease.

Nope, I save that stuff for the heart-lung machine at the local hospital.  This website is hosted professionally.  I had a thought that it might get popular, so the hosting I got was the “So You Think You Might Be Drudge® Someday Sucker” package that guaranteed I’d be covered unless Bernie Sanders finally admitted he liked being a multi-millionaire.

The sum total of Internet bandwidth required to host this blog is tiny.  You can stuff the entire blog – every word and every image ever – into 30 megabytes.  Without compression.  Skip the bikini posts, and you’d be under 20 megs.

But why would you skip the bikinis?  No.  I didn’t skip the bikinis.  I used that to make them relevant for this post.  See?  John I. Wilder.  Super genius.

Why don’t Leftists wear bikinis to the beach?  I mean, I thought they had nothing to hide.

I digress. The post in question (Read it here) that was so popular had one image.  One.  That image is 59.5 kilobytes.  Plus 1400 and some odd words.  Call it 100 kB.  I can’t even get decent resolution on one bikini top with that.  C’mon.  You want a decent resolution, right?

There is no way that the blog was stressing the server.  There had been 25 days since the last software update.  Everything was nice and stable for tens of thousands of views over the weekend.

But then, when it was really getting going, as the view streamed upward like Joe Biden after a transfusion of young human blood?

The entire blog was as gone as George Floyd’s criminal record.

George Floyd’s real record at boxing is 4-3.  Sad we have to count his girlfriends.

When a visitor would come here, they got a message telling them that they should go somewhere else.  Maybe a site that would give them yoga lessons.  Or teach them how to hand-tat doilies.

As soon as I knew about it, I got to work.  I had to go back to an earlier version of the software, and then rebuild twice to get the links to come back.  It was about as dramatic as when Matthew Broderick told the computer not to start a nuclear war.  I had several coffees in the middle, but the school principal decided not to suspend me.

Maybe it was just a sheer coincidence that the time when I wrote my most popular post ever, days after it was increasing in popularity exponentially that it disappeared.

Sure.  That could happen.  And Epstein killed himself.

It had been 1200 days, and only one outage, and that was a technical thingy on a not at all exciting weekend.  I found out on Saturday morning and had it fixed in 20 minutes.

You do the math.  Maybe it was a sign?

Just any old sign.  This was actually the movie that led to The Mrs. and I being married.  Who knew Steve Martin saved Western Civilization?

Okay, this is the part where we do the right turn and end up in Albuquerque.  Hang with me.  There are airbags if you start feeling queasy.  Oh, I’m sorry, that’s not airbags.  There are airbags if you hit someone else with your car while you’re driving it.

That’s what airbags are.

I mean, I don’t think airbags help anyone if you throw your car at them.  But if someone makes you so mad you throw your car at them?  They had it coming.

So, if you get queasy I can’t help you.  And if you can throw your car at someone, I’m hiring.

Regardless, I promise it all will make sense in the end.

I’ve written quite a bit about the future.  The majority of my career is in the past, until I become the undisputed Leader of Earth.  I imagine that job will require at least some work after 5p.m.  Probably not on weekends, though.

I’ll have people for that.

Although I like to mentally live in that world, sadly, I have to confront reality.  Many of the posts I’ve written have talked about the virtuous aspects of economics.  Work hard.  Be honest.  Give more than you’re asked for.  Don’t cheat people.

Bet he never saw that coming.

Those are great pieces of advice, especially when you’re working in a place that’s built on merit.  In reality, though, if you’re working in a family business, you’ll never rise farther than the owner’s worst son.  Unless you marry the boss’s daughter.

Hey, it worked for Jared Kushner, right?

Regardless, there’s at least one aspect in the hundreds of posts I’ve been allowed to transmit into the ether that I’ve neglected mentioning until now:

If you work in a company that considers you a political heretic, your lifespan is limited.

I know that a common phrase on the Right is, “Get woke, go broke,” but that doesn’t seem to be the case.  Once you reach a certain size, there appears to be no limit to the number of people that the company can hire that do nothing to serve a customer.  There are legions of leeches that will just take complaints.  There are platoons of parasites that just exist to make sure rules (that don’t help anyone) are enforced.

This won’t change the value of the corporation.  At least not for years and years.

Look at Coca-Cola®.  They actively trained employees in active hatred of a specific race, but, hey, look at the stock prices!  They keep going up.

Look at Gillette™:

In 2019, when they actively tried to shame their target customers, men people who shave, their stock price was about $91.  In 2021, it’s now up to $135.

To be clear, I haven’t bought a single Gillette® product since 2019, and as few Procter and Gamble© (Gillette’s© parent company) products as I can.

Gillette™ got woke.  They’re not broke.  And neither is Coke©.

(I’ll stop before this becomes a Dr. Seuss post about Jeff the Bezos who tried to use our product searches to seize us.)

Whatchutalkinaboutwillis?

Why isn’t Procter and Gamble™ broke?  They make products that I had no idea that I was buying to support Woke until I looked them up while I was writing this post tonight.

Tide™.

Old Spice©.

Cascade®.

Admittedly I try not to wash my pants so the water doesn’t steal my masculine essence so we minimize Tide® use.

I think my three-day armpit smell is “pleasantly musky” which Old Spice © doesn’t like, and washing dishes is for cowards who don’t want to boost their immune system because of ptomaine.

Regardless, I have all that crap in my house right now.  I’m guessing that I spend about $100 a year on Proctor and Gamble’s® crap.

So, Gillette™ won, I guess.

But if I were to give advice to my kids?  Their money is not worth your soul.

If you looked at Google® in 2001, there wouldn’t have been a better place to work in the world.  Their motto was simple:  “Don’t be evil.”  In 2021?  Their motto is now, “leave no virtue standing.”  I would say their motto was, “bayonet the corpses” but that’s likely to be the motto of the Right in the not too distant future.

Here’s a new one:

Don’t work at a company that demands your soul.

Sure, if you agree with what they’re doing, it works.  If you like killing babies, by all means go work at Planned Murdermoms Parenthood©.  If you like censorship curated free speech, by all means, go work at Twitter® or FaceBorg™.  And if you believe that we’ve always been at war with Eastasia, Google© is your dream job.

I hear one Satanist’s soul weighed a pentagram.

And if you want to incite dweebs to incite violence, give them weapons, and then foil the crime?  Well how could you beat the FBI?  As long as we’re on government jobs, I hear the ATF is hiring . . .

In 2021, many companies (or gover1nmental agencies) demand your soul.

This is your choice.  If you pretend, there are only two outcomes.  They’ll end up firing you, or end up owning your soul.

Not a hard choice for me.  If you were 22 today I’d tell you – avoid the Leftists.  Avoid Leftist companies.  Avoid Leftist jobs.

As for me?

Wilderwealthywise?  I own the domain name.  I have the backed up files.  If they take me down?

I’m really down.  But I don’t worry.

Someone will replace me.  Next man up.  And there are millions of us.  One down, next up.

That’s why we’ll win.

“They can’t stop the signal, Mal. They can never stop the signal.”

Welcome To The Unravelling

“All we can do, Scully, is pull the thread. See what it unravels.” – The X-Files

I imagine the guy who decided to use Velcro™ on shoes said, “Why knot?”

Well, that struck a nerve.

I’m never sure when I hit “post” how what I’ve written will be taken.  Some of the things I’ve written that I’ve felt were really good don’t have much of an impact.  I’m not complaining – when I’ve finished writing a post it feels like my soul is a bit lighter – like I’ve accomplished something more than turn oxygen into carbon dioxide for the day.

One clue that a post will be popular is when the post appears to write itself.  That was the case with my last post.  When I finished, I was in bed two hours earlier than normal.  I normally go to sleep when the cows wander back into the field, because that’s pasture bedtime.

The reason, I think, that post was so popular is because I just had the good fortune to write what many other people were thinking.

This is because we’re unravelling.  We just don’t have words for it.  It’s not just as a nation, it appears to be all of Western Civilization.

What the media would have people believe is that there is a great, monolithic consensus.  Prior to the Internet, that might have been achievable.  There was only One Acceptable Opinion, and it was presented to you live, in living color on three networks.  The local paper (generally) also had some version or other of the One Acceptable Opinion.

Elvis Presley’s last big hit?  The bathroom floor.

That meant that stories could disappear from the public view fairly easily.  Ruby Ridge?  I heard of that story on a local talk radio station.  The person who was telling the story, honestly, sounded crazy.  Here they were talking about this crazy story of a man being framed and then Federal agents killing his family.

The guy really did sound crazy.  Here he was, telling a story that I hadn’t heard of.

Crazy.  It sounded like a conspiracy theory.

The government used to be considered a trustworthy source by, well, everyone.  Looking back, I’m pretty certain the government never did tell us the Truth.  But the important thing was everyone believed the One Acceptable Opinion.

After her boyfriend went missing in the forest, what conspiracy did Barbie® believe in?  Kentrails.

Oh, sure, there were failures now and then.  When Tail Gunner Joe pointed out, rightly, that the State Department and Hollywood® were filled with commies, people were upset.

Leftism was generally viewed as bad.  It was so obvious that Stalin was a bad guy that even the New York Times® couldn’t hide it, as they had swept the human cost of the Holodomor (In The World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold And Silver Medals) under the rug two decades earlier.

In the World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold and Silver!

The way the Left did that is they went to their normal playbook.  How do you trump logic and facts?  A plain appeal to emotion:

“Have you no sense of decency, Sir, at long last?” was how they went after Senator Joe McCarthy.  They tried to make his dogged pursuit of Leftism appear to be an unhinged attack against ghosts.

But McCarthy was . . . right.  After the fall of the Soviet Union, it was shown that Joe was right about the scope and scale of Soviet infiltration.  Where?  Everywhere Joe had said.  McCarthyism was just what you and I would call, “Telling the truth.”

Again, McCarthy was right.  Leftism had infiltrated the Federal government.  Stalin had better progress reports on the atomic bomb than those that were given to Truman.  There’s a reason we celebrate Juneteenth around my house.

Why did Julius and Ethel Rosenberg cross the road?  Because they were never on your side.  (meme: not original)

Leftism has burrowed inside of our country.  For decades.  When Reagan was shot we couldn’t watch it on TV.  There were no televisions in our classrooms.  But some teachers had radios and instead of listening to a lecture on social studies, we sat and listened to the news on a tinny AM radio.

Would President Reagan live?  No one knew.  All we knew was that he was in the hospital.

One kid, whose parents were Leftist professors at the local college, said, simply, “I hope he dies.  Maybe then the Senate will choose Ted Kennedy as Vice President.”

The split we see now isn’t new.  It’s been festering in our country for decades.

I could come up with example after example.  But if I were to try to create a scenario where people would be on each other like Karens on a manager, I couldn’t create a better scenario than what I see today:

  • Multiple cultures forced together in small spaces.
  • Actual propaganda presented as nightly news.
  • Dogs and cats, living together.
  • An Internet where people can check facts for themselves.
  • A demonization of the Culture that created the place.

My fat parrot just died after a long illness.  It’s a huge weight off my shoulder.

I actively don’t believe anything I hear anymore.  For months, Google®, Facebook™ and Twitter© would ban anyone who said that the ‘Rona came from a lab in China.

Ban.

Now, that’s the current One Acceptable Opinion.  The previous version has been tossed by a Winston Smith-type person into the memory hole.  But we remember.

And now we know that the entire “conspiracy theory” smear tactic was created, explicitly, so people wouldn’t ask questions.  Wonder what really happened to JFK?  Dunno.  There are still nearly 500,000 pages yet to be released.

Not words.  Pages.

I guess everyone knows how Kennedy died.  That one is a no-brainer. 

But does that really matter?  Kennedy is dead.  What really matters is that the Feds created the entire idea of mocking people who believed in anything other than the One Acceptable Opinion.  Think the COVID-19 mRNA treatment is as sketchy as sharing a needle with Johnny Depp?

You’re a conspiracy theorist.  You must not believe in sCiEncE!  There is One Acceptable Theory.  Anyone who disagrees is stupid or evil.

But now in 2021, we have the Internet.  In 1982, or in 1952 this might have worked.  The sheep would go back to grazing.

Now?

It’s just more energy to help the country unravel as the One Acceptable Theory is just like the famed Emperor Who Had No Clothes.

Is there anything left to unravel?

The Wilder Response To Mr. Biden

“It’s perfect. We traded one nuked civilization for another.” – Battlestar Galactica.

Bill Murray wasn’t cast as Thor by Marvel®.  They figured that no one likes an electricity Bill.

I had an utterly different post planned.  It was so funny that the laughing that it would induce would have caused your ribs to exit your body.  It was a post so funny, it was dangerous.  Comedy, as they say, is not always pretty.  I try to do those posts on Fridays.  Why?

I had a boss that gave sage advice:  never give your boss bad news on a Friday afternoon or a Monday morning.  I figure that people need a palate cleanser going into the weekend, and try to provide a bit of fun.  And this post that I had planned?  It would have been banned by the Geneva Convention as a Weapon of Mass Hilarity.

Sadly, that post might now be lost to history, since I have to replace it with this one.  Normally, my posts are created weeks in advance and focus tested against a cross-section of laboratory badgers who have no spleens.  Why no spleens?  They tell me that’s important, something about we don’t need no spleenin’ badgers.

But no, the Occupant-in-Chief decided to make the single most irresponsible statement ever made by someone who was sworn in as President since Richard Nixon said, “What’s the worst that they can do to me?”

I don’t want to be accused of taking Biden out of context (not that there’s much of a chance of that) but here’s his quote, to the most accurate degree I can find:

“Those who say the blood of patriots, you know, and all the stuff about how we’re gonna have to move against the government, if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.”

First, Biden is as articulate as a fourth-grader with fetal alcohol syndrome who’s just smoked a bowl of Hunter Biden’s crack.  And, yes, his Fraudulency has a son who smokes crack with hookers and takes videos of it.  This is a thing that really happens.  Of course, the response from the Left is to say Putin is corrupt.

Sorry.  I’ll try to stick to the topic.

Second, that’s also the same logic as a fourth-grader with an extra chromosome or three who’s just huffed a can of sparkly gold spray paint.  Abraham Lincoln made the obvious response fairly well:

“All the armies of Europe and Asia could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”

Lincoln was wrong about a lot of things.  He was right about a lot of things, too.  He is correct about this:

“As a nation of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide.”

Joe Biden could have the armies of the united States get him a drink by force from any river in this land.  But Joe Biden and all the armies of the united States couldn’t hold the length of the Missouri or the Mississippi for a single day by force.

The armies of the united States number some 1.3 million men oh, wait people oh, wait, xim/xers.  Add in the Reserves?  Let’s round WAY UP and call it three million.  Total.

There are three million males in Missouri.  I pick Missouri only because they recently decided they’re going to tell the Feds to attempt to compact a very large object into a very small space when it comes to firearm laws.

Go, Missouri.

Not all of the three million males in Missouri would be on the side of freedom, since there are always some disgusting gelatinous slugs of humanity that will side with Evil over Truth.  But there are enough.  And don’t tell me that neighboring states wouldn’t flow in.

No, Mr. Biden.  The only one who needs F-15s and nuclear weapons for control is you, you disgusting pile of fake hair, fake teeth, Alzheimer’s degraded brain, who gets his only Father’s Day card encrusted in cocaine dust and whore DNA.

The united States governs only, let me make this clear, only by consent of the governed.  As citizens, we’re generally pretty good.  But we are horrible, horrible at taking instruction from tyrants.  It’s in our DNA.

No, literally.  This is not an exaggeration.  My family line came across an ocean to tame a continent.  That was their resume.  That was their job description as they rocked back and forth on little wooden boats in the midst of Atlantic storms.  We didn’t come here because we were weak.  We came here to fight and die and bleed and make this land our own.

We came here because we were strong.

We came here because we yearned for freedom.

Mr. Biden, your butt-sniffing and shoe-licking parents and your degenerate sons and personal weaknesses are abhorrent to every fiber of my body.  Mr. Biden, you are disgusting.  Mr. Biden, your forefathers were horrible.  Mr. Biden, you and your weaknesses represent everything wrong with this country, and everything that has led to where we are today.

How dare you threaten me?

  • To threaten me is to threaten Duncan MacWilder of the Clan MacWilder, who came here before this was a country.
  • It is to threaten Hans Wilder, who came here to leave tyrants behind in Europe before World War I.
  • It is to threaten my forefathers who died hewing a civilization out of this continent with their blood and sweat and toil and dead babies so lazy writers like me could exist.

The deal we made in 1776 is the same one we have today, Bucko.  We are here because we have certain inalienable rights.

Mr. Biden, you want to threaten me with jet fighters?  Mr. Biden, you want to threaten to use nuclear weapons against your own citizens?

We didn’t come here for that.  We didn’t die here for that.  We didn’t bury our sons and daughters on dusty plains and hills and hallows across this country, building it with our blood for that.

Reparations?  We paid for that in blood in places you have long forgotten, like Manassas Junction.  Everyone I’ve ever been able to research on any part of my family has been someone who made the united States better.

Every.

Single.

One.

We taught Eisenhower (really).  We built farms.  We built bridges 150 years ago that still exist today.  We built infrastructure that serves tens of millions of people – this is not an exaggeration.  We built railroads across mountains that mountain goats couldn’t cross.  We took trains up those mountains when the snow was 20 feet deep.  With our kids.

Just for fun.

We raised and nurtured children and taught them freedom.

Our blood is in this soil.  Our children are buried here as payment from sea to sea.

My blood is in this soil.  My forefathers weren’t evil.  They were Big Damn Heroes.  Odin and Thor and Jesus would be proud of them for their courage.

Did other people build this land as well?  Sure.  But Wilder blood is spread here from the Mayflower to today.

  • I can do no less than to tell you, Mr. Biden, what Duncan MacWilder would have said:
  • I can do no less than to tell you, Mr. Biden, what Patrick Henry would have said (distant relative, according to an aunt):
  • I can do no less than to tell you, Mr. Biden, what Hans Wilder would have said:

No.

And, to mark the first time I have ever used this word on this blog?  Each and every one of them would have added:

Fuck you, Mr. Biden.

Bring your jets.  Bring your nukes.  The only way you have to dislodge us off this continent we conquered with our blood and sweat and buried kin is to kill us all.  We will never give up.  We will never surrender.  This will not die with me.  Or my children.

You will never defeat us.  Never.  Our blood is here.  Here we make our stand.  We can go to no other country for freedom.  We can go no further to a distant frontier.  Despite what you will try to do with us, despite the injustices you will visit on us, we will win.  We will mock you, and your grave will be pulled up and your bones used by our children for their amusement.

We will smile, and nod.

We did not choose this.  We do not want this.

You spiked the ball too soon.  Maybe two generations into the future, they would go gentle onto that goodnight.

Too soon, Bucko.

Fuck you.

What Advice Would You Give A Kid In 2021?

“My best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors® last night. I guess it’s pretty serious.” – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

What does a German scientist say when he runs out of beer glasses?  “Nein stein.”

One thing I’ve done with my kids is try to give them the best understanding of the world as I know it.

The problem with advice is that it assumes a set of conditions where the advice is valid.  If you’d assume that learning how to balance a checkbook would always be useful, sending you back to 1066 or forward to 2036 would probably convince you otherwise, though the Normans might find your penmanship amusing.

The most common set of conditions that we assume is that tomorrow will look a lot like today.  That works pretty well most of the time.  Heck, there are entire millennia of human history where tomorrow looked exactly like today.  “Uhh, Grug make rock into pointy spear, kill mammoth, maybe get Mammothlix and Chill with Samantha.”

A second set of conditions is that today’s trends will continue.  This is similar to the first one, but involves, well, trends.  One trend is that electronics keep getting more advanced, and the pace of technological change keeps increasing.  That seems logical, but . . . well, look around.  It’s not like we’re getting any smarter, so there’s a limit there.

There are times when neither of these things is true.

Hobbits may not be smart, but they are well rounded.

A few years ago (has it been that long???) The Boy and I were discussing his future college plans.  There were two good state schools he was seriously considering.  He was also considering either Annapolis, West Point, or Colorado Springs.  His swimming looked much like a swan attempting to change a tire on a 1993 Buick® without a lug wrench.  I mean, it’s possible, but there is a lot of unnecessary motion involved.  And feathers.  Feathers everywhere.

Part of me was hoping that The Boy would be interested in one of the military academies.  He had the grades and the athletics, and certainly the love of country.  He rejected them.  Perhaps he saw then what I see now, that the United States military is being very quickly absorbed into the Leftist collective.  Or maybe he just decided that the military would keep him from his ambition of starting his own cryptocurrency and buying Paraguay.

Who can say?

I hadn’t anticipated the change in the rank and file of the military, so quickly.  The military has had issues over time, but I expected that the Oath would matter more than the occupant of the White House.  Everything I see now points as evidence that the Left is moving exceptionally quickly to politicize the military.  The idea is simple:  drum those out who don’t conform.

So, me telling him to go to a military academy would have been very bad advice.

I guess if you’re hungover at West Point, the advice is to use breath mints, like Tac-Tics®.

What other advice doesn’t ring true in 2021?

How about, save money and buy a house?

That has been wonderful advice since, oh, 1945 or so.  Before then, I assume, you wandered into the great frontier and hewed a cabin out of logs.  Oh, wait.  The Great Depression caused a previous mini-mansion real estate boom to collapse.

My bad.

But does it make sense today?  In many urban areas, would it even be in the realm of possibility for a kid today?

Not in San Francisco.  The median home price there is now $1.4 million bucks.

  • What about Miami? $385,000.
  • Minneapolis, a city I regularly make fun of? $325,000.
  • Salt Lake City? $485,000.

If I do the math, just the payments on a $450,000 loan are about $2,000 a month.  Add in taxes and insurance and you’re probably closer to a monthly payment of nearly $3,000?  At that point, even an average home in Salt Lake City is out of reach of most people under 30, unless of course, they were bringing home in excess of $120,000 a month as a family.

Possible?  Sure.  But at that level of debt payment, there’s very little margin for error.  Mom loses her job making PowerPoints® about (spins wheel) “Overcoming Group Synergy Issues In Dispersed Work Environments” and now the entire family is just a month or two away from knife fights with bums over great overpasses to put a box under.  Well, I guess that’s still real estate.

I tried to offer 0% loans for houses, but there was no interest.

Oh, that brings up other old advice:  save your money.  I consider savings great.  It’s a moral thing to do, and virtue should always pay off in the future.  Unless, of course, the Fed® is printing money as fast as the computer can add zeros.  Then, what you saved soon becomes worth less, and eventually worthless.  Spend it as fast as you can on pantyhose, PEZ® and elephant rides because tomorrow you won’t be able to buy a used disposable razor with that cash.

So, there’s another value inverted.  Honestly, I’d rather suggest that my kids save money in Bitcoin over the dollar.  At least the Fed® can’t (yet) print Bitcoin.  If I were to give my kids advice, I’d say to stock up on all the silver they can.

At least silver holds value.

If the werewolf was clueless?  He’d be an unwarewolf.

Or it has in most times and places.  After the Romans left Britain, though, silver was pretty much ignored because the concern was getting food after civilization collapsed.  Newsflash:  you can’t eat silver.  Yes, that’s a very cherry-picked example, but there are circumstances where even precious metals cease to be precious.   Except for the One Ring.

What about education?

I used to be a “if you can go to college, go to college” guy.  I am not any longer.  College is like any other business proposition.  If a degree has a positive rate of return?  Go for it.  That’s probably limited to a few select degrees in 2021, especially with the price of college.  It certainly doesn’t include any degree that ends in “studies”.

If someone else is paying for most of school, it probably is a good idea to choose a degree that’s in demand, that can’t be done online by someone from Mumbai or Shanghai at $0.43 per hour and has a credential that an illegal alien can’t (yet) get.  Remember, if a degree can be replaced by a machine or computer program or an Internet search?  Don’t do it.

But if it’s not going to cost a kidney or require later “repayment” to gentlemen from extortionist rackets, like organized crime people who make student loans.

Then, go to college.  Otherwise?  Get a job that requires a credential that an illegal can’t (yet) get.

The best advice I’d give today is this:

  • Be adaptable.
  • Be useful.
  • Be optimistic.
  • Learn skills, and understand that learning never stops.

What skills?  Figure out a strength that helps people and earns your keep.  Then get good at it.  Then learn a skill that complements it, a next-door neighbor, if you will.  Then?  Repeat.

Here’s my example:  I always tested well and performed well in language stuff, umm, things.  But for most of my career it was just a complement to the other work I did.  Since I’ve been writing these blog posts I think I’ve gotten a bit better at writing, and much, much better at editing.

Why could the Bible have used a better editor?  Well, to make a long story short . . .

The big result is that I can now tear through an amazing amount of communication-stuff at work with little effort.  They don’t seem to like the bikini memes I keep throwing into emails, though HR keeps laughing.

The world has changed.  Bigly.

Not all of the Millennials and Zoomers are lazy.  The advice Pa Wilder gave me was tried and true and lasted for decades before he shared it with his odd Gen-X son.  Mostly, it worked, and worked really well for me.

But society has moved on.  And, after my study of history, I cannot see the trends we see before us lasting for more than a decade.  Herbert Stein (Ben’s dad) said it very well:  “If something cannot go on forever, it will, Bueller . . . Bueller . . . anyone . . .  stop.”

I see before us several things that are near their stopping point.  In reality, everyone before the Millennials and Zoomers had it easier.  No, not easy.  Easier.  We worked hard.  We put in the time.

But the old rules still worked.  Now?

Not so much.

Think about it:  what is the best advice you’d give a 15 to 30 year-old kid in 2021?

We’re Back! Welcome to Season 2! Better, More Technically Advanced, Shiny.

The wait is over!

The latest episode of Bombs and Bants is up!  See how many times I can mention Sean Young in five minutes, what’s the difference between looting and scavenging, and what lessons might be learned from the civil war . . . in Finland.  Watch it because you want to.

As a special treat, The Mrs. pulled this gem out of the podcast:

 

I had promised that I’d post a link when The Boy got Bombs and Bants up on other formats, and here it is (Bombs And Bants) for Bitchute, Apple podcasts, and Odysee.

The 1819 Project: Restoring America

“Restoration may be possible, in two days. By the book, Admiral.” – Star Trek II:  The Wrath of Khan

We can finally predict the platform that George Bush’s kids will run on.

The United States is in a bad place.  Monetarily.  Philosophically.  Morally.  It even has bad manners.

Ultimately, the systems that led us to this situation won’t lead us out.   Voting won’t save us.  The Supreme Court won’t save us.  Conservatism?

Conservatism© certainly won’t save us.  It certainly didn’t save itself, and it becomes increasingly quaint as Conservatism 2021® quietly ignores nearly every position of Conservatism 1965™, if not right out taking the exact opposite position from even a decade ago.

Conservatism® has led us to where we are today.  It’s just last year’s Leftist platform, but dressed up in a suit with a useful idiot explaining the Conservative Case for Sex Change Surgery for Toddlers.  Oh, and this should be done even if the parents disagree.  For the good of the child, you know, which they will all nod and agree, is a Conservative™ value.

Imagine if we called the Left intolerant!  That would show them!

The reason for this is the Conservatism™ is inherently a negative philosophy.  It doesn’t stand for anything, merely against (mainly) Leftist ideas.  Once those Leftist ideas gain a mainstream following?  They become a part of Conservatism®, and Conservative™ shills pretend those ideas were always part of their philosophy.

Conservatives® were always in favor of sending troops to Uganda to secure the rights of Ugandans to have gay marriage.

But Conservatism™ in 2021 is now as dead as whatever it is that lives on top of Sean Hannity’s head.  There is zero actual Conservative™ philosophy, merely a money and influence game where politicians sell their influence to the largest corporation for thirty pieces of bacon-wrapped shrimp monthly.

So conservative!

All is not lost.  Look at, for instance, gun rights.  Gun rights were presented not as, “what the Left wants, but more slowly” but instead as, “from our cold, dead hands.”  It was that level of determination that led to the “assault weapon” ban lapsing.  What started with a concealed carry movement has now led to Constitutional carry (i.e., concealed carry without a permit) in state after state.

In the year 2000, one state had Constitutional carry.  In 2021 (by my count) the number is over 21.  And gun rights is where the Right has had a similar victory recently.  In Missouri, the governor signed into law a bill that bars the police from enforcing Federal gun laws.

All of them.

Of course, the Leftist Justice Department was quick to sperg out and say, “Missouri, you can’t do that” but Missouri just kept hitting “ignore” and sending them straight to voicemail when they called again and again.  In truth, the Feds will never be able to enforce Federal law in Missouri unless they unleash the might of the American military against the people of Missouri.

The chances of that happening aren’t particularly high, plus Missouri seems entirely justified.

Amazing what a little light will show you.

Missouri is just following the pattern we’ve been seeing from States for years.  Want to sell marijuana in violation of Federal law at the State level?  Sure.  Multimillion-dollar industries can be set up in a year.  Want to exclude police from helping enforce immigration laws?  Sure.

This is just the next, logical step.

And it gave me a crazy idea.

The 1819 Project.

In 1819, the Federal government didn’t have these regulations and laws.  In 1819, the average citizen’s interaction with the Federal government would have been voting for a Representative and voting for President.  We weren’t THE United States, we were the united States.

Until the Civil War, that was fairly clear – States were sovereign entities – they didn’t gain their existence from the Federal government, the Federal government got its existence from them.

The Federal government didn’t tax individuals.  The Federal government didn’t place arbitrary restrictions on what you could do with your business, your hiring, and your land.  These simply were not Federal issues.

Could the States regulate these things?  Certainly, that’s what the Constitution said.  Did they?  I imagine they did, some of them.  Were the states free to pick and choose who voted and how and why?  Yes., they were, and without resorting to appeal to the nine black-robed justices in Washington, D.C.

It’s funny that I can write the speeches the governor of Oregon will give in the future.

Could Oregon turn itself into a communist paradise?  Sure.  But it couldn’t turn its people into serfs, and it couldn’t put up walls to keep them in.  It might be able to keep people it didn’t want out, as would any State.

Sure.  That’s freedom.  But the Commie Rot would be stuck in Oregon.  And people could leave it.  Senators wouldn’t be elected, but appointed by State legislatures.  This improves the ability of the States to fight against silly things from larger States, and makes the ratification of a treaty a real event, not a popularity contest.

Corporations?  Well, like people, they’d have a finite purpose and a finite lifetime.  If corporations have the same rights as a person, they have to die, too.  70 years might be too long.

How about 40?  Regardless, in 1819, corporations had a charter, and existed for a specific purpose and had a specific lifetime.  That changed with a Supreme Court decision (not looking it up, it’s late) in the 1880s that gave corporations an infinite lifespan.

Sounds good to me.  Every corporation should have an end date.

But the point is that we don’t fight to conserve anything.  The time has now come for a Restoration.  What do we restore?  A culture filled with freedom; a culture where the Federal government was a tiny, distant force that had the responsibility of national defense and regulation of interstate commerce.

No, not the creeping interstate commerce regulations we have today (where having a phone number constitutes evidence of participating in “interstate commerce”) but a very limited scope so Texas can’t put tariffs on goods from Oklahoma.  This leaves room for the FAA, but very little room for the FBI since 99% of Federal crimes disappear overnight because they no longer exist.  And the ATF?  Only to enforce taxes and not kill women and children with fire.

Hey, it’s not easy to brutally enforce arbitrary regulations on law-abiding citizens.

Politics is downstream of Culture.  What’s needed is a Restoration of Culture.

If it sounds like I’m making up a movement, I assure you I’m not.  The 1819 Project is well underway and has been for years.  Parents are, especially in the Leftist parts of the world, pulling their kids from government schools and putting them in religious schools or homeschooling.  Why?

The 1819 Project has already started, at best, I’m giving it a name.  It’s well underway in places like Modern Mayberry, where a kid can grow up (more or less) free.  The Feds seem to have forgotten that rural places exist, and hardcore Leftists don’t seem to want to live here unless they can get ganja and free stuff.

That can be tough to take in.  Next week we’ll start in on how he’s born to treat women badly.

Places like Missouri are going to become the norm.  I anticipate that, with the coming Troubles I see, the Federal government will become weaker and weaker.  The hallmark of a failing government is more tyranny, but the people of the united States have seen their share of what happens when they give up their guns.  Pol Pot, Mao, and Stalin have provided a clear example that gun confiscation precedes life confiscation.

Will we get back to 1819 in values?  I have no idea.

But I do know we need to be headed towards something, and not just reacting.  1819 is a good start.

The plan.

The Beauty Of The Red Pill

“Hey Samantha, don’t take the Red Pill!” – Grandma’s Boy

If my son wanted to be a fiction writer, I’d send him to college to study journalism.

Have you ever not asked a question because you already knew the answer, but were afraid to hear it?  I’m willing to bet we all have.  I try to leave occasional breadcrumbs here, especially during my Monday and Wednesday posts, but I’ve stopped short of leaving my posts in the forest near a witch’s house.  Besides, I hear Hillary has security guards.

The Truth is shocking.  Many times, the Truth isn’t pleasant.  I remember coming to one unpleasant Truth realization in college:  the college didn’t care if I did well or even if I graduated.

It hadn’t been like that in high school.  But in college?  I was just a number.  It sounds silly to me now, but back then it was quite a realization for me.  Gradually, more Truths started showing up in my life.  In many cases, I denied them as long as I could, but they eventually became inevitable.

They call this the Red Pill, after the scene in The Matrix where Keanu Reeves gets a job painting pills red.

Never let Morpheus do the cooking at a Matrix cast barbeque.  There’s a reason they call him Lawrence Fishburne.

Part of the problem with discovering Truth is that it can make you feel alone.  Much of our society is based on covering uncomfortable Truth with pretty little lies.  It has always been so, but in 2021 it’s at the very worst that it has been in the history of the United States.  People were censored a year ago for telling what are now the (generally) accepted theories about CoronaChan.

The Truth is that we still don’t know where it came from, but vary from any generally accepted truth about COVID on YouTube® and you’ll be censored.  Thankfully, YouTube™ is so committed to “truth” that they gave themselves an award for being so courageous about it.  Really – there isn’t even a punchline.

Here’s another Red Pill:  no one (and I mean no one) is coming to save you.  No one (and I mean no one) is responsible for your actions but you.  If you can’t save yourself, you’ll just have to depend on luck, which is a crappy strategy.  There is no secret cabal of government good guys like Qanon® used to put in his cryptic message board posts.  Q is not coming to save you.

I guess QANON was just another 4Chan teller.

Part of the problem with taking a Red Pill is that, once you’re finally awake and aware of how the world works, just like Ebola, you want to share it with people.  That’s a bad idea.

The unfortunately named Desiderius Erasmus Roterdamus made the silly quote, “In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” and with the new Red Pill knowledge, you want to share it far and wide.

Sadly, Desiderius, the one-eyed man is not king.

As H.G. Wells wrote, the blind people can’t see what the one-eyed dude describes.  They think him mad, and if they have a chance they’ll tie him down and remove that silly eye that keeps giving him all of those wild notions and that awful practical joke of leaving the plunger in the toilet.  People will fight nearly to the death to keep a pretty lie alive, especially when the Truth is ugly.

I wrote a check to a charity for the blind, but I’m worried they’ll never see a penny of it.

But there is opportunity for an individual once the first real Red Pill hits.  Seeking Truth becomes a habit.  And you find that Truth exists in many, many more places than you might imagine.  When I go to find Truth, I know one place I can find it very quickly.

Truth is in the Iron.

I started lifting again this week for the first time since COVID raised its head.  I was stunned at how one of my standard lifts was half – HALF – what it had been 18 months ago.

That is Truth.  The Iron is Truth.

Was it at all pleasant to find my strength had dropped that far, that fast?

Of course not.

But it is True.

I gave up on lifting cases of Pepsi® for exercise, it was just soda pressing. 

I cannot hide from the Iron.  I cannot cheat the Iron.  The only things there in the weight room are the Iron, Gravity, and Me.  The only thing that changes in that equation is me.  I can’t blame the Iron.  I can’t blame Gravity.

The Red Pill?

No one will make me physically stronger but me.  And the only way I can do that is to wrestle against Gravity with the Iron.  And, unless I am quite ill, it will always work.

And here is the hope.  Here is where the Red Pill really begins to pay dividends.

I’m the one responsible for:

  • my physical state,
  • what I eat,
  • how I react,
  • what I say,
  • what I watch,
  • how I treat others,
  • my own Virtue,
  • who I am, and
  • where my life ends up.

I’m not responsible for who loves me.  I’m not responsible for how much they love me.  Those are the output.  If I control every bit of input in my life, what happens, happens.

There is nothing, and I mean nothing more wonderful than that realization.  It goes beyond winning and losing.  It goes beyond the opinions of others.

The downside, of course, is seeing all of the pretty little lies and all of the attempted manipulation.  Even worse:  the attempts to numb minds, to distract, and to pretend that the new lie doesn’t contradict the last lie.  The stunning thing to me is how many people will flitter from one contradictory opinion to another like butterflies in the Sun, with never a thought.

When I take responsibility for myself, I am a changed person.

I was born a male, I identify as a male, but according to Stouffer’s Frozen Lasagna®, I identify as a family of four.

That doesn’t mean the battle ever ends.  The first struggle is, always, against myself.  Why am I weaker?

I had weights at home, but didn’t lift.

Why?

Well, I could make any number of excuses, but none of them matter.  I didn’t lift.  That was it.  So, my choice is simple:  will I work to get better every week, or will I be complacent with where I am?

I asked the Iron a question.  It told me the Truth.

Now, my choice is how will I answer?

I have only one answer.  Sweat.

It’s never lonely when you’ve got Truth for a companion.

Cassandra Says: Look Out Below

“Doing so might allow the energy to escape, with potentially catastrophic results.” – Lost

What do you get when you cross the Titanic with the Atlantic?  Halfway.

There is a rumor in The Mrs.’ family, that her Great-Grandpappy, the banker, warned all of his clients to pull their money out of the banks before Black Monday on October 28 of 1929.  According to the legend, he was a hero because he saved that money for all of his friends.  I heard that as an old banker he was sad, because he always drank a loan.

I have no idea if he saved all of that money, but the legend serves a purpose:  it confirms that, in most people’s minds, that there are wise people who can see trouble coming.

I can do that, too.  When The Mrs. chucks a can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew® at my head, well, I know instinctively that if I don’t duck I’ll end up with a crescent impression on my favorite noggin.  The Mrs. generally chooses stew instead of soup, because when she checked the pantry we were out of stock.

Pattern recognition and seeing trouble coming was something that the dead Roman philosopher, Seneca did fairly well.  Like a good Roman, he took a stab at it.

In one observation, Seneca noted that it’s really hard to build things up:  whether it be getting into good physical shape, or building a house or creating a civilization.  Purposeful, positive growth is hard and takes time.

Where did Brutus get his knife?  Traitor Joe’s.

But if I want to ruin my health it only takes half the time as it does to get into good shape.  A modern American house burns down so quickly that firefighters tell me that they don’t even try to save them.  If a Goodwill® store catches fire, they stay far away – they don’t want to inhale second-hand smoke.  If you want to destroy a civilization?  Well more on that later, but they evaporate much more quickly than it takes to build them.

Here’s what Seneca said:  “Increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.”  Actually, he said something in Latin, but when you quote Latin it sounds like a doctor is trying to pick up on a lawyer while gargling vodka.

I came across this concept while reading Italian chemistry professor Ugo Bardi’s blog (Cassandra’s Legacy) back in 2011.  That initial post I read back then is here (LINK).  Since that time, Dr. Bardi has written two books and now bases most of his blogging on that one philosophical statement.  Some people ride that one pony and ride it hard, and it looks like Ugo has found his.

There are some other things I’ve noticed that are related to this concept:

Generally, things go on until they collapse.  Is it easier to tear down a system and build a better one, or keep the old one going?

Duh.  People don’t like change.

They aren’t mentally wired for change.  During the few times in my life when electricity was out for extended times at the house (think hours or days), I find that I’ll walk into a dark room and absently reach out to turn on the light.  My rational mind knows that the power is gone, but I expect it to be there.

I hear at this blackout, people in New York City were stuck on escalators for hours.

When things collapse, there is generally a lot of energy built up in the failing system.  People try to prop up the system with all of the duct tape and baling wire they have.  This rarely makes things better.  Filling a failing dam up with more water doesn’t make the flood that comes after the dam fails better.

It makes it more catastrophic.

Failures like I’m describing tend to have the following characteristics:

  • They are cataclysmic. The end state isn’t predictable.
  • They happen all at once. As systems fail, they trigger the failure of related systems.  And so on.  It’s a chain reaction.  To go back to the flood analogy, these failures scour the landscape, ripping out useful and useless features alike simply because of the amount of energy that was released.
  • The more energy that’s stored (i.e., the longer we push back paying the piper), the bigger the destruction and the worse the hangover.

What’s the difference between a dam and a sock?  Almost everything.

Examples of this sort of near-apocalyptic societal transformation are actually abundant in history.

  • The French Revolution. In just a few short years, the French monarchy was deposed and replaced by a ruling junta of Leftist animals.
  • The first United States Civil War. It went from zero to armed combat across half a continent in just a few months.
  • The First World War. The Russian Revolution.  The Second World War.
  • The collapse of the Soviet Union.
  • I could really keep writing this list until dawn, but at some point I need some sleep.

The penalties are tough for misgendering in France. 

Just because the initial change happens in an instant, doesn’t mean that those changes will resolve in an instant.  The French Revolution started in 1789.  If you date the unrest that started on that day, you could pick the date that Napoleon went into his final exile as perhaps the end.  That was in 1814.

A girl born in 1789 in France would have been, perhaps, 25 then.  She would nearly certainly have been married, and probably would have her own child by then.  When we study history we encompass entire generations within the span of a paragraph, though some say that Moses started history when he got the first download from a cloud onto a tablet.

As I said, The Mrs.’ Great-Gramps apparently saved the day for his depositors because he looked around and saw what was going to happen.  True or not, it sometimes happens in reality.

Michael Burry did it, and more than once.

Who is Michael Burry?  Well, he’s the guy who shorted the real estate market in 2008 and made $100’s of millions of dollars for himself, and nearly a billion for other people in the process.

Christian Bale was movie him in The Big Short.  Burry just might have an idea or two about the economy.  What’s his take?

I wonder if they could get Chris Hemsworth to play movie me?

All I can say is be prepared – a day too late is far worse than a year too soon.

With The Left, Their First Enemy Is Truth

“I’ve heard the truth, Mulder. Now what I want are the answers.” – The X Files

My favorite conspiracy theory: everything is going to be okay.

One feature of the Soviet Union was the constant propaganda that was used against the Soviet citizens, they called it PTSD – Post-Tsarism Socialism Disorder. Of course, they used propaganda externally, but most of their efforts in controlling reality were focused internally. Everyone was expected to sing the praises of the government when they knew that they were nothing but lies. This wasn’t a bug, but a feature.

Imagine: being required to deny the very truth of a matter, just so one could continue to live in society. Imagine: having to parrot the lines of official government in order to maintain what little income you had to make it from day to day. It’s almost a bad as working at CNN®.

I often blog about Truth. I believe that there isn’t “your truth” and “my truth” but there is an objective, verifiable Truth in almost every case. Physics (except for some weird quantum events) demands it. For instance, if I put my left foot in a sock, no matter where in the universe it exists, the other sock becomes the right sock.

Bears don’t wear socks. They prefer bear foot.

But Leftism demands that you reject Truth. Leftism demands, on the most basic premise, that Truth be the very first thing sacrificed. Compliance with this is required on a daily basis. Otherwise? You weren’t Politically Correct. They even had Politically Correct comedians – no matter if they were funny or not you were supposed to laugh.

That’s the origin of the phrase Politically Correct: the Soviets. They’d use that to remind each other that truth belonged to the state. Truth that didn’t follow the state’s dictates? Politically Incorrect, and those people didn’t last very long.

Why was Political Correctness important?

Every day, citizens had to be reminded that they were controlled. Not only controlled, the citizens had to be humiliated. This is the course of history: conquerors had to remove the will to fight of the vanquished. How better than to break their will than to remind them every day of their humiliation?

Break the primacy of the family. Take children from the family and raise them with the values of the state. Let everyone know that, at any minute, they could be made an enemy of the state. It’s so bad in that the football team in D.C. had to change their name out of shame. Now they just go by “the Redskins” so their name is less offensive.

But Italians don’t like Jehovah’s Witnesses. It’s not religious. They just don’t like any witnesses.

But when the Soviets took over, that’s what the Soviets did. They lied. They encouraged children to betray their family. They came in the middle of the night with armed secret police to enforce arbitrary laws with (more or less) impunity.

Many Soviet citizens were fine with this. I (personally) can’t imagine why, but I think there’s some fraction of the population who has as their primary operating mode, “go along and get along.” They’d be fine with whoever was in charge, as long as they told them what to do. They’d rather lick a boot than complain about their entire culture being destroyed, value by value.

Guess who isn’t getting a new laptop for Christmas this year? Hunter Biden.

What are we seeing today?

A similar victory lap from the Left in the United States is taking place right now:

  • LGBTQRSTUV positivity. It’s June, which used to be known as, “June.” But now it’s known as Pride Month. Pride used to be a sin. Now? Pride has been used as an excuse to cram children too young to read as “Trans” kids.
  • An “election” that had more anomalies than Joe Biden’s latest Alzheimer’s test is demanded to be taken seriously. Why? That’s why.
  • “Laws” and a “border” that are, at best theoretical constructs. As in Alice in Wonderland, laws are what the rulers say they are. And laws can change from day to day, and person to person. Borders? We don’t need no steenking borders.
  • A definition of being “American” that includes all people living in the world right now, and probably any intergalactic beings as well, as long as they can be counted on to vote for the Leftist candidate. I’m sure the Arcturans need to be treated as refugees, too.
  • The primary prerequisite to being in the military isn’t that you’d have honor, duty, and service to country as goals. Can you put the current policy of the current administration at the top of your agenda?

Every day this is what people see. The news articles are filled with one humiliation after another.

The idea is simple. Values must be turned on their head, especially the most cherished ones. In our society, what has come to be regarded as the highest value is our children. Therefore, the values we had built up the most have to be destroyed.

When the Greeks sacked Troy, the children of the leader, Priam, were all killed. All of them. That’s what conquerors do to the conquered. One thing is certain in this world – not a trace of Priam’s DNA survives. The Greeks made sure of that. The Greeks devastated everything that was Troy, and left it a burning hulk that was lost to history except in the songs of the Greeks for thousands of years until a weird German found them while searching for the Indiana Jones set.

My body is like a temple. One that the Romans destroyed 2,500 years ago.

That’s what the winners do. They pull down the statues of those they beat. They eradicate their history, or make the losers out to be the bad guys. And, finally, they have the children of those they beat forget the faces of their fathers and emulate the values of the winners.

This century has been unusual, in that the Revolution has been (more or less) a bloodless one. The idea of actual warfare has been replace by the subversion of culture and the inversion of values.

I had hoped for a long time that the idea of a cultural swing back to the Right would show up. It has not. Trump was one attempt at such a swing, and the lasting value of his administration approaches, well, zero. “Cthulhu swims slowly, but he only swims Left.” Almost – not all – but almost all of the changes in values during my lifetime have been a ratchet, and a Leftward ratchet. *Click* – a Leftist point has been won.

No, we can’t turn that clock back, because, (for instance) Rowe Vs. Wade is now settled law. The ratchet has clicked. According to the Left, it simply can’t turn back.

If H.P. Lovecraft got rid of cable, would he sign up for Cthulhu?

But we have examples of societies that have explicitly rejected the Leftist ratchet by pulling so hard that the gears stripped, and have turned back. The best examples are Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. If you ever want to find people that hate Leftism, wander off to Poland or Hungary.

The reason that I’m not a pessimist is that we, humanity, have beaten the horrors of Leftism every time it has arisen. The battles haven’t been short, and they have numbered in decades of oppression and hundreds of millions of lives.

The propaganda is strong out there. It’s in television. It’s in the news media. It’s in the schools.

Don’t give up.

Keep the fire of Truth alive.

Blogger Versus Evil

Jack Burton:  “Great.  Walls are probably three feet thick, welded shut from the outside, and covered with brick by now.”

Wang Chi:  “Don’t give up, Jack.”

Jack Burton:  “Okay, I won’t Wang.  Let’s just chew our way out of here.” – Big Trouble in Little China

Never make a deal to buy a guitar from the Devil.  There are always strings attached.

The Exorcist is a feel-good movie.  Well, at least it is for me.

I wanted to watch it when I was an especially wee Wilder, but for whatever reason, Ma and Pa Wilder felt that exposing a first grader to that particular film would be considered a war crime.  I don’t remember how old I was when I finally saw it, but as I recall it was rented on a VHS tape.

By the time I’d seen it, I’d already been exposed to much more brutal horror:  Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Norman Lear sitcoms.  I’ll say this about reading horror – the things I conjured in my mind while tearing through the pages of The Stand were far scarier than anything I’d ever seen in a movie.

But I made a pretty bold statement:  The Exorcist is a feel-good movie, so I guess you’re gonna make me back it up.  Thankfully, I have that not only on my authority, but on the authority of the author of The Exorcist.  William Peter Blatty summed up the reason I like horror films with this very simple quote:

“My logic was simple:  if demons are real, why not angels? If angels are real, why not souls? And if souls are real, what about your own soul?”

Blatty even described The Exorcist as his ministry – it seems he’s religious.  Who would have expected that?

What don’t demons wear hairpieces?  Because there would be Hell toupee. 

Much of what we see in the world we explain through simple materialism.  But when I read novels where the demons are mere humans, well, (with the exception of Hannibal Lechter) I’m generally let down when the Scooby Doo® ending explains away the supernatural mystery at the heart of the story.  Mr. Blatty’s quote describes exactly why.

“If demons are real, why not angels.”

Now I know that several readers are atheists.  As I’ve pointed out before, this blog is sort-of a litmus test.  People that are the kind of atheist that just hates God will generally not opt-in to reading this blog for any length of time.  I have no idea why, but they just don’t.  Actual, rational atheists that don’t turn rabid when the supernatural is discussed don’t seem to mind.

Maybe they look at it like I look at the WWE®:  they can watch it and be amused, even though they’re certain it’s not real.  They especially like it when Hulk Hogan® hits me in the head with a chair.

Where did Randy “Macho Man” Savage™ work out?  The Slim-Jim©.

Regardless, I think most readers here share the same view of Evil (or even evil) in this world.  It’s visible in the raw naked lust for power that we have seen repeated again and again from the Left.  It’s also visible in their unbridled joy at the destruction of Truth, Beauty, and Society.

The Left revels in the Lie, the inversion of Truth, the inversion of Beauty:

  • Billions of dollars in damage in Minneapolis is a “peaceful protest” while a march on the Capitol is, according to President* Biden: “The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”
  • They demand, using free speech, to restrict the free speech of those that offend them.
  • The Left demands you look at what is obviously a man, and claim it to be a woman.

It’s simple, really:  everything that’s Bad is presented as good.  And everything Good?  Well, it’s Bad.  How dare you think self-restraint and hard work is virtuous?

Sniff.  “Smells like fraud.”

Let’s look at how a simple Good thing like a married man and woman having a baby is turned on its head:

  • What about the woman’s career?
  • Why not live the childfree life?
  • Why have the baby at all?
  • There are too many people on the planet already.

The last argument is especially Evil, because when the propaganda works, the headlines then sing out:  “since we’re not having enough babies, we need to import multitudes to grow our economy.”  “Meet the New Americans.”

It’s fun to use this technique on Leftists.  I can recall a Twitter® exchange with a Leftist where I Tweeted™ that I opposed immigration to the United States on the grounds that people in the United States had the highest carbon footprint, so by bringing in more people into the United States they were destroying the planet.

Brain lock ensued when they couldn’t deal with the conflict between their two opposing beliefs.  It’s fun to come up with these couplets to invert the Evil right back at them, though, in the end, there is no conversion for a True Believer outside of a gentle helicopter ride.  They have given in to the Evil.  They’ll avoid the conversation.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle:  three ways to dispose of a dead Leftist.

It is especially difficult for parents of children:  what is innocent is sexualized.  A first-grade boy isn’t old enough to decide what he should eat on a regular basis – why would the world think that he should be turned into a she?

It’s all around us, every day.  It’s sold to us in media, it’s in the news, it’s everywhere.

And it’s attacking the Values of what we all know, deep inside ourselves, to be True and Good.  That which is Good, True and Beautiful hasn’t changed within the lifetime of mankind on this planet, but when you’re confronted with people trying to sell that which is a Lie as the Truth?

You can be sure those people are Evil.

Not to say that people on the Right are immune to that – far from it.  Eaton Rapids Joe has a great little story to that effect here (LINK).

To be clear, the ultimate aim of the propaganda of Evil is simple:  to make Good people feel despair.

Why despair?  Despair is the opposite of hope.  It is the opposite of Truth.  It is the opposite of Beauty.  Despair is Evil.

And when propaganda wins?  Evil wins.

H.P. Lovecraft was tormented by doubt all of his life.  Imagine if he hadn’t slept in despair bedroom.

But that’s not what happened in The Exorcist.  Father Karras, who had lingering doubts and was on the verge of Despair, conquered it.

Because he conquered Despair, Father Karras conquered Evil.

When you feel Despair, know that’s nothing more than Evil.  And you can conquer it, too.

Yeah, I told you that The Exorcist was a feel-good story.  And I was right.

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Extra Meme and Tagline, because I made one too many:

In other news, the 2024 election will be postponed until they find the results in Biden’s desk.