Month: June 2021

“System of government categorized by extreme dictatorship. Seven across.” – Hot Fuzz

I bought an Antifa© alarm clock.  It just calls me names.  Talk about a rude awakening.

7. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
8. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
9. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
10. Open War.

May had (again) increased violence, but not as bad as it could have been as unseasonably cold weather kept other temperatures down.    Again, none of the violence that I could see originated from the Right.

I’m holding May at 9 out of 10.  That’s still two minutes to midnight.  Last month I said that “ July or August could take us to a 10” and the reason is becoming clearer, as hot weather and economic woes will be showing up on the street.

I currently put the total at (this is my best approximation, since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) up to around 800 out of the 1,000 required for the international civil war definition.

As close as we are to the precipice of war, be careful.  Things could change at any minute.  Avoid crowds.  Get out of cities.  Now.  A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Two Years On – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Inflation – Links

Front Matter

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

Two Years On

I started this line of posting two years ago, and it was clear to me that the United States is Balkanizing around multiple worldviews.  You can’t read the headlines today without seeing it.

It’s getting worse, not better.  Trust me, I’d much rather have a post that says, “LOL, looks like it’s all good, this is the last issue.”

The seeds of this situation were planted decades ago.  Back in 1990 (according to Pew Research) we were mostly one nation.  Sure, there were people on the extremes of either end, but those people were mostly ignored.

I believe that after this term in office, Chuck should get another term.  In prison.

But when Pew looked at people in 2017, they found the Left has moved far to the political left, while the Right had only slightly moved.   The Balkanization exists because the Left has moved left.  That direction of drift by the Left is accelerating.

Right and Left have, since 1999 or so, completely given up on the idea of fiscal discipline.  It’s gone.  The spending has just sped up, and taxation is no longer related at all to the amount that the Federal government spends.  There are numerous problems with this, not the least of which is the off-balance way that growth is funneled to chosen winners.

What happens when you mix a population that doesn’t have the same conception of the fundamental function of government with massive numbers of unassimilated foreigners and throw in an economic dislocation?

Civil War.

The reaction to Trump brought about the current coalescence of the Left’s strands that have many fundamental reasons to hate each other, but skipped it for the purpose of hating even more.  Internally, they’ll eventually face a mass purity test, but for now they’re content to just spend their daily Two Minutes Hate on the Right.

Conditions are closer now to Civil War than at any point in my life.  The Civil War 2.0 Scale™ has moved from a 6 to a 9 in that time frame.  Billions in property damage have been done.  At least hundreds of people are now dead with untold thousands of injured due to this ideological conflict.

All in 24 months.

Violence And Censorship Update

This month is, again, mainly censorship.

Point 1.  Twitter® Is Unaware Of Irony

Twitter™ got kicked out of Nigeria.  Why?  Because they deleted a Tweet® from the President of Nigeria where he was threatening secessionists in his own country who might try to start a civil war.

Here was Twitter’s™ response

Wait, what?

It’s an essential human right for people to have Twitter™.  Huh.

Point 2.  Wuhan Fluhan

One of my big pet peeves about the press is when they turn news stories into editorials.  It reduces my trust in them to, well, zero.   Looks like they can’t even trust themselves as they go back to memoryhole their own inconvenient headlines:

Point 3.  Enemy Of The State

Homeland Security has now issued warning bulletins for:

• January 27 and “coming weeks” as they waited for violence from the Right,
• May 14 for “Right Wing Violence” and, now,
• Last week, for Right Wing violence against marchers at the Tulsa Riot Anniversary.

It turns out that Joe Biden wants to simply change the War on Terror laws to make them applicable to, well, everyone Joe doesn’t like.  You remember, those laws that were derided by the Left and Right as un-Constitutional, back when such things mattered to the Left?

How do we know who is on those lists?  Well, the CIA is spying on Americans.  Huh.  Thought that was illegal?  No matter.

Thankfully, someone is speaking out for the Right:

Glenn Greenwald has a lot more at this (LINK).  RTWT.

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Up is more violent, and violence is down again in May.  Inner-city rioting continues and murder rates are up by double-digits, but nobody seems to care anymore.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  Instability increased this month, as expected.  I think June may calm down, but who knows what Congress will get up to this month.

Economic:

I expected this number to be less positive.  It’s not.  Inflation has yet to hit this measure.

Illegal Aliens:

This data is at record levels for every year I have data for.  Comments from the Left?  “There needs to be more.”

Inflation

“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose” is more than a song lyric – it’s true.  Right now we’re seeing inflation everywhere.  Lumber.  Gasoline.  And . . . hamburgers.

All of the inflation stems from different things.  Wood, well, it’s demand and a limited supply of mills.  Gasoline?  Those prices are up based on capacity, too, but also on crude oil prices, which have gone back up to pre-COVID levels.

Hamburgers?  I just saw a fast-food double cheeseburger for $6.99.

Ouch!

Ranchers are making the same to less money than when beef was cheaper, so just like lumber, the big money is being made by the processors.

Not that any of that matters.  Inflation is corrosive – it’s really a stealth tax where a government prints more money and, well, to put it in the immortal words of AOC when she wants to pay for universal healthcare, “You just pay for it.”

Obviously, there are consequences, and those are rising prices.  Is there a limit?

No.  There is no limit.  The result, though, is generally catastrophic.  People in an inflationary economy don’t behave rationally, since they become tempted to purchase absolutely anything because their money is so worthless that they want to get it out of their hands as quickly as possible.  Why?

Because as worthless as it is today, tomorrow it will be worth even less.

This creates panic.  Mania.  Desperate people.  A situation ripe for changing out a government.  Or even a revolution.  In the 1970s, there was no revolution, but the government was changed out, decisively.  Twice.  But in the 1970s, the United States was the world leader in manufacturing.  In the 1970s, the United States was (relatively) culturally homogeneous.  In the 1970s, the difference between Right and Left was much, much smaller.

Now?  None of those are in play.  For a government to play with inflation now is like trying to catch falling daggers:  dangerous.  Revolution after revolution and war after war has been caused by the devastation created by bad economic conditions.

LINKS

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

CHATTER LEFT AND RIGHT

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/democracy-race-power/

https://theweek.com/articles/983063/threat-civil-war-didnt-end-trump-presidency

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/05/12/gop-civil-war-dont-bet-on-it-487192

https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2021/05/14/its-not-a-civil-war-its-a-purge-492851

https://news.yahoo.com/civil-war-bad-business-095607030.html

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2021/05/31/pete-meijer-slams-gop-treacherous-snakes-salivating-civil-war/5286907001/

https://richmondobserver.com/opinion/item/12399-opinion-will-treason-mania-destroy-america.html

http://www.stlamerican.com/news/columnists/mike_jones/is-a-next-civil-war-in-our-future/article_4a634fd0-bb7a-11eb-afc8-ffafd746b7d5.html

 

SECESSION TALK

https://vtdigger.org/2021/05/31/edward-mcmahon-u-s-could-soon-cease-to-be-a-functioning-democracy/

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/01/the-new-secession-crisis/

https://americanmind.org/salvo/red-lines/

https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/denton-county-republican-party-passes-resolution-supporting-hb-1359-the-texas-independence-referendum-act-12016219

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/their-own-private-idaho-5-oregon-counties-back-a-plan-to-secede/

https://www.thestate.com/news/nation-world/national/article251530708.html

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/img2.png?itok=p10yKIFF

 

ONE, TWO, THREE, WHAT ARE WE FIGHTING FOR?

 

NYC : https://twitter.com/yuhline/status/1399502974272131078

Portland : https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1398986717047230467

Miami : https://twitter.com/ONLYinDADE/status/1399791879068192783

America: https://twitter.com/i/status/1399800643880108035

https://www.city-journal.org/critical-race-theory-portland-public-schools

https://andrewsullivan.substack.com/p/removing-the-bedrock-of-liberalism-826

 

1,000 KILLED THRESHOLD TO OFFICIALLY DECLARE CW? HOLD MY DOS EQUIS…

 

https://fox59.com/news/national-world/body-count-from-drug-cartel-wars-earns-mexican-cities-label-of-most-violent-in-the-world/

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/mexico-shares-grim-figures-on-disappeared-citizens/2202969

https://www.dw.com/en/dozens-fall-victim-to-mexicos-brutal-election-campaign/a-57694375

https://apnews.com/article/caribbean-mexico-police-f6ea7798ca3cc171ac13b3a5a6a6c266

https://www.cdc.gov/media/releases/2020/p1218-overdose-deaths-covid-19.html

Actual Johnny Carson Joke:

Carnac The Magnificent, holding envelope to his head to divine the contents:  “Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, and Arnold Schwarzenegger.”

Carnac The Magnificent, opening envelope and reading contents:  “Give three reasons you should name your baby Al.”

How do you determine love?  I mean, if you put your wife and your dog in the trunk of your car, who is happier to see you in two hours when you let them out?

Why do we do it?  I mean, I’m the funniest writer on the Internet, so I know why I do that.  But why do we do all of this?  You know, the life stuff?

Life is difficult.  It’s an uphill slog, and the ending (of the life part) is predetermined.  Yet we keep picking up one foot and putting it in front of the next.

Why?

Because it’s who we are.  It’s what we are.

We have lived in the most prosperous civilization that’s ever existed.  In most Western countries, we have many, many more people afflicted with diseases because of too many available calories, rather than too few.

That’s a rarity in human history.  In medieval France, peasants would essentially spend the whole winter in bed together, shivering, trying to minimize calorie loss in a simulation of hibernation.   Now?  It’s Cheetos®, PEZ™, elephant rides and pantyhose for everyone.  We are in a civilization characterized by excess.

That may not always be the case.

I wish they made pantyhose that don’t rip, because now everyone in the bank has seen my face.

I’ve read a book or two, and one that really hit me was A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich.   It’s by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.  I think I come close to pronouncing his name correctly, which might make me sound pretentious.  But if you read Solzhenitsyn, it’s not pretentious at all.

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich is just that, a day in the life of a guy named John (Ivan means John).  This particular John is in prison.  Why?  He was captured by the Germans during World War II.  Anyone captured by the Germans who wasn’t suffering from life-threatening wounds was considered a traitor to the U.S.S.R.

Denisovich was not only in prison, he was in the GULAG.  It’s all capitalized because, like NATO, it’s an acronym.  In this case, GULAG is an acronym for a series of Russian words, Гла́вное Управле́ние Лагере́й that I imagine sounds like a cat choking on a hairball made of fiberglass and cheap vodka when pronounced correctly.

See, that’s not pretentious!

This particular book is very, very short.  Solzhenitsyn uses his language with economy, yet to me he creates a story that’s like a joke.  It’s not clear what he’s talking about until the very last page, and (for me) it hit me like a ton of bricks.  It’s like if M. Night Shyamalan wrote it with a particular twist.

You’ve already read Solzhenitsyn.  See?  You’re not pretentious.

I recommend it unreservedly.  I bought it at a garage sale, and I gave it to the foreman of a crew who was putting in cinder blocks.  That makes sense in an M. Night Shyamalan way, too, but you have to read the book.  Here’s one place I saw a copy (LINK).  I’d give you mine but I’d have to track down a retired bricklayer with a bad back.

The message I took away from this book is that life isn’t about grand moments.  And, as I mentioned some time ago, life isn’t about comfort, either.  Life is much more than that.  In the book, Denisovich takes outlandish pleasure at what we would consider bare minimums.

That gave me perspective.  Again, that’s not the insight grenade I took from the book, but it’s close.  When is the last time you really thought about the salad you were eating, savoring the crisp crunch of the lettuce, the tang of the Caesar dressing, and the hard, yet yielding texture of the Parmesan cheese?

Each and every bite is a taste no king or potentate could have had out of season.  I can have it every Tuesday.  Or Thursday.  Or any other day ending in y.

I know it was a bad joke.  Everyone romaine calm.

In many ways, I often overlook the luxury I’m surrounded by.  I can get a fresh tomato in the depths of winter, and when I bite into it feel the taste of a spring day erupt.  I’d add in red roses in winter, but The Mrs. knows where the rose bush grows if she wants a few.

Our world is filled with unimaginable convenience.  Our world is filled with unimaginable abilities to entertain and distract.  Like I said earlier:  our world is filled with excess, but it might not always be.

In Solzhenitsyn’s world, well, a luxury is an extra ration of rough bread made from poorly milled grain.  Solzhenitsyn knew what he was talking about:  he spent years in a GULAG for saying in a letter to a friend during the war that Stalin wore granny-panties.  Okay, it wasn’t that bad, but it was a mild criticism.

In a letter.

So, off to GULAG.

In the GULAG, Solzhenitsyn got cancer.  Ouch.  He survived.  And, when Nikita Khrushchev was leading the U.S.S.R., Solzhenitsyn actually got to publish some of his critical commentaries on communism.  Why?  Khrushchev wanted to remove every bit of the stain of Stalin from the U.S.S.R., so Solzhenitsyn was his guy.

The Soviets made the best bread in history – people would wait in lines for days for a single piece.

That didn’t last long.  In most cases, commies want to show the world (and their own citizens) that no one can escape.  Sadly for them, Solzhenitsyn was too famous to pop into prison, and too outspoken to leave among the citizens.  That sort of thing happens when you win the frigging Nobel Prize.

So?

They booted him.  Stripped him of his citizenship.  He lived in the United States until 1994.  Famously, he predicted the future of the United States in an address to Harvard® that he’d be lynched for today.

How cool was the address?  It contains these lines:

Even biology tells us that a high degree of habitual well-being is not advantageous to a living organism.  Today, well-being in the life of Western society has begun to take off its pernicious mask.

Read The Whole Thing: (LINK)

What irritates me the most is that on a long weekend when I was a kid, I probably could have gone, met the man, and bought him a beer.  If I could write just once the wisdom that Solzhenitsyn gave in just that one speech I could go to my end a happy man.

Was it a missed opportunity in not just getting in my car and driving to find him?  (I even had a copy of his book at that time.)  If I regretted things, I’d regret that I never did buy Solzhenitsyn a beer and gave Gorbachev a wedgie.

Okay, I’d like to give both of them wedgies.  Atomic wedgies.

Solzhenitsyn later moved back to Russia, his citizenship restored, and they gave him a nice house.  Spoiler alert:  he didn’t do it for the house.

He did it because, as he said in his speech to Harvard©:

If the world has not approached its end, it has reached a major watershed in history, equal in importance to the turn from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance.  It will demand from us a spiritual blaze; we shall have to rise to a new height of vision, to a new level of life, where our physical nature will not be cursed, as in the Middle Ages, but even more importantly, our spiritual being will not be trampled upon, as in the Modern Era.

The ascension is similar to climbing onto the next anthropological stage.  No one on Earth has any other way left but – upward.

This is why we do it.  This is why we put that one foot in front of the other.

“You only have power over people as long as you don’t take everything away from them. But when you’ve robbed a man of everything, he’s no longer in your power—he’s free again.” – Solzhenitsyn

It’s who we are.

It’s what we are.

Anybody need Doritos®?  Oh, and remember, Solzhenitsyn outlasted the Soviets.