High Trust, Low Trust, And The Coming Breakdown

“I know what you mean, Blair. Trust’s a tough thing to come by these days. Tell you what – why don’t you just trust in the Lord?” – The Thing

He also broke up with his moonshiner girlfriend, but he says he loves her still.

One of the places we vacationed once upon a time was Branson, Missouri.  It’s absolutely a tourist town.  One of the places we went was Silver Dollar City®.  It’s like one of the large theme parks you’d find almost anywhere.  It’s also a nice place to go, not like that theme park that discriminates against the blind – Seaworld®.

I was walking there with The Mrs., The Boy, and Pugsley when we were all a decade younger than we are today.  All of a sudden, a young blonde man who looked like a fullback ran up to me.  He was probably 19 or so.  “Sir, sir, sir!  You dropped this!”  He handed me two $20 bills – they’d been in my pocket after getting change from buying sodas for the family.  They’d fallen out.

I was . . . stunned.  I couldn’t see this happening in most places that I’d been.  I thanked the young man, shook his hand, and he loped off to catch back up with his girlfriend.

That is the example of a high trust society.  People do things like that because they’re the right thing to do.  They get enjoyment out of doing them.  When I was surprised by behavior, like I was by that kid handing me cash, it made me feel great.  It gave me hope for society.

This also gives me hope for society. 

It was also a lesson for The Boy and Pugsley on how to behave.  Here is a person who could easily have walked away with $40, but who did the right thing and returned it.  No one would have ever known except for him and his girlfriend.  But, I’m betting, he didn’t want to have to live with being the type of person who didn’t live his life virtuously.

I think it also made the kid feel great to do something nice.  He got a great story to tell people about the goofy man with the little kids who dropped forty bucks out of his pocket.

Trust is crucial for a really high-functioning group of any type, from a family to a state to a country.  Trust provides a glue that keeps people together, and gives them common ground to collaborate.  People who trust each other tend to reciprocate, cooperate, and take care of each other.  It’s like the Mafia, but with fewer people being “taken care of”.

Trust also leads to prosperity.  Trust plays a huge component in how easy transactions are.  In a society where people keep their word, contracts aren’t as important because honor is important.

Where do you live?

Trust leads to greater governmental stability.  While there have always been awful people in government who were only out for themselves, I think we’ve reached the bottom in having awful people at all levels of government.  There are some good ones, but the FBI is generally pretty good at having them transferred to Fairbanks.

One of the things about cities is that they tend to breed anonymity.  In Modern Mayberry, we ignore gunshots and get concerned when we hear sirens.  In most cities, they ignore sirens and get concerned when they hear gunshots.

They were going to film part of the Transformers movie in Detroit, but Michael Bay said they couldn’t afford the CGI costs to repair the buildings.

A high trust society requires rule of law instead of rule of men or rule of The Party.  It’s that trust that the judicial system is impartial and does its best to send guilty folks to jail (or worse) and let innocent folks go free, no matter who they are.  There hasn’t ever been a perfect justice system, but if the people feel that it’s as good a system as people can create, it does the trick.

So, that’s what it’s like living in Heaven.  What does a low trust society look like?

  • High levels of apparent corruption,
  • Low confidence in public institutions,
  • High crime rates,
  • Political polarization,
  • Lack of any sort of sense of a coherent society, or common goal, and
  • Social unrest.

It’s clear that, as a nation, we’re closer to a low trust society than a high trust society.  Rather than just being a social or philosophical question – it’s one that costs money and determines what services are available.  An example is the new Walgreen’s® store in Chicago.  Apparently, Walgreen’s© got tired of having urban hunter-gatherers wander in and loot the store in broad daylight with little fear of any sort of legal jeopardy.   Walgreen’s© has closed nearly 30 stores in just San Francisco alone.

I guess they were asking for it.  And, yeah, I’m back on Twitter®.

Walgreen’s™ decided to build a store with no shelves, just a little kiosk where people can pick products from a digital tablet.  The idea of wandering down the shelves, shopping leisurely, comparing one product against another is dead in this store.  Pick the Preparation H™ and some clerk will wander to a shelf in the back room and pull a tube down and stick it in a bag.

Then, after the customer pays, they’ll hand them the stuff.  Walgreen’s© used to trust customers in Chicago.  Now, they don’t.  Their revenues will go down (nobody ever goes to the store to buy cashews, but when you walk by them . . . ) and their costs of having to have people run to get products will go up.

Why?  Stores are being looted on a regular basis.

Meanwhile, you could walk into Wal-Mart® here in Modern Mayberry and see every towel neatly stacked, all of the shelves full, and nobody stealing anything.  Yeah, they check my receipt as I walk out the door now, but the lady at the door only pretends to look at it.

Wal-Mart™ makes money here.  The Walgreen’s© in Chicago doesn’t.  San Francisco, plagued by a new breed of criminals that the police won’t arrest (or if they are arrested, the DA won’t charge) systematically loot store after store of products when they’re not busy pooping in the streets.

San Francisco is now low trust.  This is spreading.  I wonder where it will end up next?  Oh.

The War On Victims – About Time

“Isn’t it your picture in the newspapers? Didn’t I see you on the video this morning? Are you not the poor victim of this horrible new technique?” – A Clockwork Orange

I hear he was convicted – I hope he didn’t beat himself up over that.

One of the very recurring themes in this blog has been a fight against victimhood.  This has mainly been at a personal level on Friday posts in the same way that when I, in second grade, went to my parents’ door and said, “I’m scared,” Pa Wilder sat up.  He paused, like a man who wasn’t interested in nonsense, and said:

“Go back to bed.”  The tone of his voice was such that I was, at that point, a hell of a lot more afraid of Pa Wilder than any shadow in my bedroom.

Victimhood is such a subtle and vile personality trait that I think that fathers, especially, jump on it like Whoopi Goldberg on a sandwich:  it’s messy, vicious, and you really don’t feel like eating after seeing them at work.

Pa Wilder was an especially good teacher of this lesson.  I remember whittling something and cutting my thumb.  My first reaction wasn’t fear at the spurting jets of blood from my thumb.  Nope.  It was, “Oh, no, Pa’s gonna take away my knife!”  The idea of death was only slightly more scary than the thought of being unmanly before Pa.

I guess I found him Travolting.

To be fair to Pa, he was a kind and caring man.  Mostly.  But if he thought you were being less than manly, and if he smelled even a whiff of it, he’d react in a fashion to let me know that it would never, ever be accepted to hear me whine or complain about being a victim.

Ever.

That’s the message I’ve taken with The Boy and Pugsley.  To be fair to them, our society is one that’s built on exceptional care for feelings.  The other night I was watching a YT video of an arrest (it was a hoot) where the passenger of a car tried to fight the cops.

Yeah, it ended with a Tasin’®.  The cop then, calmly asked the guy that he had just tossed to the pavement, “My pronouns are he and him, what are yours?”  The dude looked like a dude, and said “he/him” but later said “his” name was Julia.

I wonder if when Levine’s wife kicked him out if he packed up her things and left?

My thought was that this cop had been thoroughly indoctrinated with the idea that, “Tasin’® a he/she is okay, but don’t you ever, ever misgender them.”  The idea was that he could have pulled the trigger and sent a few thousand more volts through “Julia” a dozen times, and that would be cool.  But to misgender “Julia” would have been a career-ender.

He’s probably (in June of 2023) right.  Break an arm or two?  That’s okay.  But violating a victim’s sense of victimhood?

For shame!

At least part of the problem we’re seeing with people today is that society (schools, teachers, psychologists, cops, Bud Light®, the military, the Governor of California, the media, the Internets, etc.) encourage them to be victims.  And it makes life awful.

As I told my X-wife (X rather than ex because she came from another reality and was X-Files® worthy), “Here’s a hammer and three nails.  Why don’t you nail yourself up to another cross?”  Apparently, I’m now known as a jerk by all the soul-sucking vampires.

Mea culpa.

My X-wife made the same mistakes again and again, since she lacked reflection.

Regardless, that might have been a sign that the marriage wasn’t going well because one of the things that fills me with disgust is victimhood.  And here, in 2023, I see the push back.

The Bud Light® trans-marketing (it only identifies as marketing) fiasco was the spark.  A fire requires fuel, oxygen, and a spark.  This was the spark.  The fuel was the consistent pushing of victimhood, the oxygen was the Internet.  The only thing left?  A spark.  From that point, every bit of victimhood is on the table:  racism, speciesism, agism, colonialism, and sexism.  And if it ends with “phobia”?  Pound sand, we don’t care.

We don’t care about the grievances of any group.  Suck it up, Buttercup, and do your job.  Rub some dirt on it, crybaby.  Put on your big he/him or she/her underwear and deal with life.

We don’t care.

The primary idea of the Left was to make people think that they were alone.  Heck, marketing professionals seemed to think that the only real people were the rainbow-flagged companies on LinkedIn® and on Twitter™.  They thought that people really didn’t mind the creeping victimhood permeates our culture like capsaicin coats my mouth after The Mrs. makes traditional Wilder green chili which has been known to be hot enough to melt steel.

The answer is that it simply isn’t true.  The vast majority of people in the country are despised by the marketing people running major companies, but the people they despise were meant to believe that they were alone, that their voice didn’t matter.

I was walking across the street and I saw my X-wife getting run over by a bus, and I thought, “Wow, that could have been me,” but then remembered I don’t know how to drive a bus.

But it does.  One of the big events that let the velociraptor of responsibility represented by the Right on the kitten of victimhood championed by the Left was at least partially enabled by Elon Musk burning a few billion of his spare dollars on Twitter®.  His cutting loose on the mouths of people muzzled by the algorithm has been transformative.

Admittedly, there’s no chance of a “small” Twitter© account having a Tweet™ exposing actual Truth go viral, but we can see each other again.  We can speak.  And we can do that thing the Left hates more than anything – point out the weakness of the victimhood that all of the groups wanting something for nothing.

I hope my agent is reconsidering his life choices.

When they are denying that they’re responsible for the positions they find themselves in, that just stirs up the thing that they fear most:  the accountability of people who aren’t afraid to confront them and deny that people who are living their lives are somehow responsible for every little hurt felt by every little group in the world.

The “Expired By” date for all of that victim nonsense is dated 2023.

Thank Heavens.  Pa would have wanted it that way.

Could it be . . . aliens?

“Good evening, Otto. This is Agent Rogers. I’m going to ask you a few questions. Since time is short and you may lie, I’m going to have to torture you. But I want you to know, it isn’t personal.” – Repo Man

When BMW® owners learn to drive, what car do they switch to?

It appears that absolutely everything that could go on is going on this week.

  • Someone blew up a major dam. It’s okay, because it didn’t contain gallons, just cubic meters of water, but everyone is talking nuclear catastrophe.
  • Trump is about to be indicted for doing something every other president has done, and that Hillary Clinton did twice last Sunday. This will bring us many steps closer to Civil War 2.0.
  • Joe and Hunter Biden are proving that the phrase “Biden Crime Family” is probably how they’ll go down in history since it looks like they took millions from the Ukies. This not being punished would probably bring us many steps closer to Civil War 2.0, but I think Biden will be getting a walker soon.

At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Yellowstone Caldera recharged with magma and made Wyoming the first state with more senators than surviving population.

I’ll certainly get around to those stories, since it’s looking like that chaos will be flung about like monkey poo in a zoo, but let’s go for what, on any other week, would be the biggest story:

Aliens.

Or something.

Could this be the latest chip? (as found)

When I was a kid, there were these quaint items where someone would print out what is now part of the Internet and call it a “magazine”.  I think there was one called UFO Magazine™ but there were various magazines and they were all printed on pulp paper and pretty sketchy.  And many (not all, but many) of the folks surrounding the UFO phenomenon were sketchy, too.

The reason that UFOs were viewed as a fringe subject was that the government intentionally began a campaign to paint adults who took UFOs seriously as nuts.  Of course, the fact that some of them indeed were nuts didn’t particularly help.  Pilots who saw strange things could report them, but the last thing a pilot wants is to be viewed as a nutcase, so most sightings were (and are, I’d imagine) unreported.

Famously, when the “Phoenix Lights” hit the news in March of 1997, then-governor Fife Symington held a press conference where one of his staff showed up in an alien costume.  Showing that politicians are truly weasels, Symington later (2007) said that he saw the lights and said, “In your gut, you could just tell it was otherworldly.”  Yet, he was making fun of the hundreds of people who saw them.

Yes, this was from the press conference.

Fast forward to 2017 – several UFO videos taken by US Navy pilots were leaked to the press, and were eventually, reluctantly verified by the Pentagon as real.

Now, there are people from decidedly un-sketchy backgrounds.  David Grusch was a senior intelligence analyst who was on the Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP) Task Force.  He’s a decorated combat officer.  Here’s what retired Colonel (Army) Karl Nell who worked with him on the UAP Task Force said:  “His assertion concerning the existence of a terrestrial arms race occurring sub-rosa over the past eighty years focused on reverse engineering technologies of unknown origin is fundamentally correct.”

Whaaaaaa?

At least 12, perhaps 15 craft are apparently in the possession of the government according to sources.  There is some corroboration of this in a memo that’s available here (LINK) where a researcher named Eric W. Davis talked to Vice Admiral Thomas Wilson where Wilson complained he couldn’t get in to view the captured UFOs that were being held by a military contractor.  My bet would be Lockheed®.

So, it’s 2023 and I now believe, fundamentally, that everyone is lying to us, all the time, and we won’t get to the Truth in this post, but I think we can cover most possibilities (and tell me what I missed in the comments) here.

  1. It’s fake. Project Blue Beam (I won’t go into it because I have to sleep at some point and it would probably take a thousand words, six memes, and 28 jokes to do it justice) laid out the idea that fake aliens would show up one day when the governments wanted to create a one-world religion, etc.  With Trump’s indictment and the dirt coming out on Biden, perhaps someone at Langley decided it was time to play the “it’s aliens” card.  Or?  It’s a grift.

(as found)

  1. It’s really highly advanced human technology that we’ve created and kept on the shelf because it’s so easy to make that if Russia and China even knew about it they’d easily copy it so we consciously stay just ahead of the Russians technically because . . . reasons.
  2. It’s a breakaway human civilization that went down to the Arctic and built a superbase under the ice and has just been making wonder weapons since, oh, say, 1945. Yeah, probably not.
  3. It’s paranormal or supernatural, i.e., actual demons and not the cast from The View.
  4. Dinosaurs never died out and have just been messing with us.

(as found)

  1. They’re humans, but from a nearby dimension. This would imply a huge amount of physics left to be discovered.
  2. They’re aliens, but from a nearby dimension. Same story on the physics.
  3. They’re an A.I., but from a nearby dimension. Yup, it would require a physics re-write.
  4. They’re aliens, and from another solar system. Yup, another physics re-write.
  5. They’re alien probes, from another solar system. Actually this is very easy to do – should be in the grasp of humanity to do this in the next 50 years if we make it that long, and could send probes throughout the entire Milky Way in probes in just a few million years.
  6. They’re an A.I. from space. Ditto it wouldn’t take long (a few million years) for them to cover the whole galaxy.
  7. This is an Easter Egg in the simulation caused by Tucker Carlson’s firing. Time for a reboot?

That’s it – those are the possibilities that I see.

(as found)

If the answer isn’t 1., 2., 3., 4., 5. or 12., why are they here?  Maybe because they like trees?  Or maybe it’s because the one thing humanity could actually be a threat to the galaxy is to create an autonomous A.I. that gets all Terminator-y.

If I were to start eliminating things, I think I’d start with these that are the least likely:  2., 3. and 5.

Well, I’ve got to get ready for the volcano.  What do you think?

(as found)

Choose. But Choose Wisely.

“Yeah, yeah, it came in the shape of a bottle? We’re from the Kingsman tailor shop in London. Maybe you’ve heard of us.” – Kingsman, The Golden Circle

During COVID they said I needed to wear a mask and gloves to go shopping.  They lied.  Apparently I needed clothes, too.

There was a time in my life when I had to make a choice.  It was a dark time for me.  Let me give some background.  Please, everyone pretend that there’s a swirling motion and fuzzy stuff as we go back in time . . . to a land before cell phones and Google®.

In my first semester at college, I did pretty well.  I studied for a few hours and got a 3.4 at a college that had the reputation as being the toughest one in the state.  Life was good.  I believe that I spent more time with Coors Light™ that semester than I spent studying calc, physics, or chemistry.

My second semester wasn’t the same.

In my first three tests (within the first two weeks of the semester) I got three Fs.  These were the first three Fs I had ever gotten in my life on tests.

Ever.

They asked me to describe failure in two words.  I replied, “I can’t.”

They weren’t horrible Fs, but the percentages were all in the 50s, except for physics 2 which was in the 40s.  To be fair, the average score for the physics 2 test for all students was in the 50s – physics 2 was a designated “weed out” course.

Right before spring break, I had midterms.  I didn’t know the scores that I had gotten on the next tests, but spring break was not fun.  I had a full ride scholarship, and it required that I keep my grades above a certain GPA for both semester and cumulative to keep the scholarship.

Yikes.  Do you mean there are consequences for my actions?

For the first time in my life, I was looking real failure in the face.  It was the long, dark, Kobayashi Maru of the soul.

I got 8 out of 10 on my driver’s test.  Two jumped out of the way.

I sat on the hood of my car at the end of spring break for a few hours at an Interstate rest stop under the gentle spring Sun, still hours away from the school.  I figured I had two options:

  1. Go back to school and tough it out. Nine more weeks of hell, and no promise that I’d do any better than I had done in the first nine, but if I did, it would mean studying harder than I ever had studied anything, except those times I studied the rare illicit Playboy® that came into my hands.
  2. Drive north. It was before there was much of a border, and I could just drive into Canada, get a knit hat.  I already knew the language, I could say “aboot” and “take off, eh” as well as anyone.  I had a Visa® with a $500 limit, and a car that was owned free and clear, I had half a can of Copenhagen®, and I was wearing sunglasses.  I could drive to Saskatchewan and become a lumberjack.  Yes, this was my backup plan, even though I’m not sure Saskatchewan even has trees.

After a long time thinking, I . . .

There are several strategies in life, just like there are several strategies in a supermarket.  Oh, sure, I could shop like everyone normally does here in Modern Mayberry and cover my nipples in yogurt while I’m in the dairy aisle (because nipple yogurt is free here), but I’m not talking about the shopping part, I’m talking about checking out.

The first option is to pick a line and stick with it, even if the lady in front of me has 43,238 coupons and price matches every item on the sale flyer from the competing grocery store and ends up getting $983,365.55 worth of groceries for $1.98 plus a raincheck for sour cream.  For the nipples, you know, if you’re allergic to the yogurt.

What’s the most important culture in the world?  Agriculture.

Okay, that’s not a great option, because every other line in the grocery store will cycle 43 times while the lady does one checkout and the clerk silently fantasizes about going home for a few gallons of gin.

Option 2 is a different one.  In this one, I could flit from line to line like a politician being:

  • against gay marriage during election season
  • to being for gay marriage in special circumstances when election is comfortably far away
  • to being silent before election season
  • to sponsoring mandatory hormone treatment for toddlers because toddlers can’t consent to choosing their gender.

Yeah.  While that might get a politician lots of money and votes, it just gets me moving from a stopped line to a moving line that stops as soon as I get in it and I don’t even get appointed as an ambassador to the Swedish Bikini Team.

I sold my Swiss watches to a friend in Mexico.  Adios, Omegas!

Option 3, however, is probably the sanest one.  Look around for the best line.  If the coupon lady gets in, or there’s a price check, or the clerk is obviously on some sort of depressant medication because they’re not at home drinking a few gallons of gin, move to the next best line.

In my career, I jumped lines a couple of times.  My first job was into an industry that was in the middle of a slump in the region I lived.  So, I jumped.  In this case, I jumped to an entirely different industry, and had a pretty good career.  When that industry slumped, I jumped again, and then jumped back.

All of the jobs were basically related, except if you looked at them from the inside – they were all different.  The combination of those experiences led me to a career that turned out to be a pretty good one, though there is the possibility that if I had jumped one fewer time, it would have been even more lucrative.

Or not.  I might have ended up as a clerk who was missing their evening gin.  I’m not going to worry that I might have done better if I had or hadn’t jumped a line, because life is far too short for that type of regret.

Also?

I’m going to try to not let the choices I’ve made in the past make me too timid.  As many of the readers here, there are likely more years behind me than ahead, and it’s far too early to stop trying to kick a dent in the Universe, which in itself requires risk.  I may win, I may lose, but I’m still in the game.

Looking back, I’m fairly happy with the progression that developed from my choices.  And it’s because I stayed in line at the first opportunity to jump:  college.

I made a paper airplane that wouldn’t move.  I guess the problem was that I used stationary.

Back to that Interstate rest stop, far away in time and space . . . . (imagine the swirly thing again)

After a long time thinking sitting on the hood of my car on that warm spring day so many days ago, I decided that I could pack up my stuff and go up to Saskatchewan any time to be a lumberjack, even at the end of the semester if things didn’t work out.  I could also take the time to learn if there were trees there or if I would have to fight the beavers for maple syrup so I could be strong when the wolves come.

But I only had one shot to try to see if I could dig myself out of the hole that I had made for myself.

I did.  I got two Cs and a D – the best-looking D (and still the only D) that I’ve ever had in my life.  My scholarship was safe.  The semester after that one was okay, and then every semester after that I got great grades.  I had learned that I could come back from failure, and though I changed lines later a time or two, I decided to see if this line would move for me because I was only risking failure, and only risking nine more weeks of my life.  The line moved.

In life, pick your line.  Move when you need to.  And realize that the choice is yours.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report – May Edition – Lies and Immigration

Newspaper Headline: “Roman Moroni Deported to Sweden. Says He’s Not From There.” – Johnny Dangerously

How should they be deported?  Juan by Juan.

  1. Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
  2. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
  3. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  4. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  5. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  6. Open War.

Volume V, Issue 1

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.

This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly.  The advice remains.  Avoid crowds.  Get out of cities.  Now.  A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Immigration Crisis – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Spark, Part 2 – 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 join over 790 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Immigration Crisis

Immigration has been a continuing and contentious issue throughout my life.  The major reason people immigrate in this age is not due to mistreatment, but due to economic factors.  If it weren’t economic, the Guatemalans would stay in Mexico, which is culturally much closer.  But it’s all about money for the majority of immigrants.

This is difficult, because the people coming into the United States mainly don’t like the United States all that much, they like the money and free stuff – that’s why they have their flags held high as they march toward our country.

It’s the same in most other Western countries – the immigrants coming into Germany, for instance, haven’t helped as much as they suck from the economy – only half of the immigrants to Germany since 2013 have paid employment.

They want the stuff.

The numbers coming into the country are undercounted, significantly.  And there’s no longer any place to stack them.  New York is saying they’re full.  The black people in Chicago don’t want any more of them.  The average American voter doesn’t want them, and I’d guess the average Dane or Italian would feel the same way.

So why do they keep on coming?

Because the Left wants them – Leftist businesses for cheap labor, and Leftist politicians for a vote farm of poorly educated, easily led (because they don’t speak the language) voters.  And it’s not that the immigrants are choosing this themselves – millions of dollars (likely your tax dollars) are spent getting them to our borders.  This video shows the massive amounts of money being spent on them as they make their way north.  Similar groups are spending millions in Europe to destroy it in the same fashion.

Your tax dollars at work.

And the government is in on it in a manner that many might call treason:

Even in Canada:

The end result is a push towards greater chaos, which can end in nothing but conflict:

Violence and Censorship Update

This month is less about violence (the biggest events of the month were the NYC protests about Jordan Neely’s death – Neely was the Michael Jackson impersonator that went nuts on the subway).  The big takeaways is that government is lying to us and covering up for the Left.

I know, this is my shocked face.  First, the only people who didn’t do anything wrong in the “Russia colluding with Trump” lie are Russia and Trump.  The FBI lied.  I know that this isn’t surprising to anyone, since May has been just about the worst month for the three-letter agencies being shown to be partisan Leftist liars.  Let’s continue with more FBI:

It looks like the very best way to get fired from the FBI is to try to be honest and follow the law.  Thankfully the CIA is . . . oh.

Yup.  The CIA lied.  Shocking!  What about the DOJ?

Yup, them, too.  A loss of trust in government fairness and in-your-face corruption is often a precursor to Civil War.

Biden’s Misery Index

Let’s take a look to see how we’ve done this month . . . .

Yup, up again.  I guess he wants demolish everything so he can Build Back Better®.

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:

Violence jumped up – it’s getting warm out.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it was down a bit, though people are thinking a lot more about Civil War.

Economic:

Economic numbers are swinging back down, a bit.  The numbers look fairly unstable from month to month, which isn’t good.

Illegal Aliens:

I’d say the border is wide open, but we have no border.  New York and Chicago are now irritated because they want these illegals to go back to Texas.  Huh.

The Spark, Part 2

Last month, I wrote about the idea that the very successful boycott of Bug Light® might be the beginnings of Americans realizing that they don’t have to put up with the culture that has been forced upon them for decades.  I am pleasantly surprised that this spark, this countering to the current culture is spreading.  In general, American media has controlled the messages that go out:

The Internet really changed the game and still allows people to put out alternate viewpoints, and memetic warfare is fighting for the hearts and minds of the people.  And it worked.

Bud Light® isn’t the only victory.  Here are some others:

When they call me an economic terrorist because I won’t buy stuff from people who hate me, it feels kinda good.

And every marketing executive now is afraid.  It’s no longer a cost-free proposition to pump Lefty ideas into your ads.  And I think they’re finally beginning to understand who they’re dealing with:

Can we fix the culture?  No.  I think it must be restored.  And I don’t think it will be easy, either, but we will win.

The Babylon Bee© and a wag on Twitter™ are pointing the way back . . .

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1661097342051942401

https://twitter.com/ArabChicago/status/1660324204502212609

https://twitter.com/ppv_tahoe/status/1654983449701220352

https://twitter.com/DeanPreston/status/1656023543333933057

https://twitter.com/DeIudedShaniqwa/status/1657507128322523139

https://twitter.com/i/status/1653398943978385408

https://twitter.com/i/status/1658857771217854469

https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/canvasser-shooting-eddie-brokenbough-onepa-20230509.html

 

Good Guys

https://twitter.com/TheRightMelissa/status/1656861108697800705

https://twitter.com/KarliBonnita/status/1656862956896878595

https://twitter.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1661191693260165121

 

One Guy

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/conservatives-hail-daniel-penny-as-hero-after-killing-man-on-subway/ar-AA1b98jg

https://www.foxnews.com/us/marine-veteran-nyc-subway-chokehold-death-faces-tough-legal-road-experts-say

https://thefederalist.com/2023/05/05/the-lesson-of-jordan-neely-your-courage-and-sacrifice-will-be-punished/

https://www.fox13memphis.com/news/man-arrested-after-he-returns-fire-at-car-thieves-outside-of-his-shelby-county-home/article_cb42209a-f354-11ed-a2c9-b7e1f051cd76.html

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/was-florida-man-justified-in-killing-gunman-after-the-shooting-stopped-a-jury-decides/ar-AA1bqiNy

 

Body Count

https://twitter.com/TVNewsNow/status/1657178704039034882

https://news.yahoo.com/nyc-chicago-clash-biden-migrant-141046631.html

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.breitbart.com%2Fpolitics%2F2023%2F05%2F04%2Ftitle-42-countdown-700000-migrants-in-mexico-waiting-to-rush-u-s-border%2F

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.americanthinker.com%2Fblog%2F2023%2F05%2Fless_than_a_week_before_511_migrant_rush_everything_is_going_swimmingly.html

https://nypost.com/2023/05/16/google-meta-amazon-hire-low-paid-foreign-workers-after-us-layoffs-report/

https://archive.fo/OwgOY

https://www.palladiummag.com/2023/05/18/industrial-civilization-needs-a-biological-future/

 

Vote Count

https://headlineusa.com/maricopa-county-election-director-told-woman-to-abuse-voting-system/

https://www.libertynation.com/watchdog-reveals-how-easy-it-is-for-non-citizens-to-vote/

https://citizenfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/arizona-signatures.jpg

https://www.westernjournal.com/lake-attorneys-closing-argument-least-70k-votes-not-verified-election-must-set-aside/

https://twitter.com/DC_Draino/status/1660717421710155780

https://amgreatness.com/2023/05/11/the-voter-registration-machine-flipping-the-states-blue/

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fthestarnewsnetwork.com%2F2023%2F05%2F19%2Franked-choice-voting-proposed-for-pennsylvania-municipalities%2F

https://www.revolver.news/2023/05/rfk-jr-sparks-a-wildfire-us-election-fraud-becomes-a-blazing-issue-in-2024/

https://warroom.org/controversial-zuckerberg-group-purchases-storage-center-for-voting-machines-and-ballots-for-election-offices-ahead-of-2024/

https://redstate.com/kiradavis/2023/03/29/bombshell-james-okeefe-uncovers-massive-potential-political-money-laundering-to-democrat-campaigns-n723020

https://zarkfiles.substack.com/p/the-first-discovery

 

Civil War

https://oregoncapitalchronicle.com/2023/05/15/secession-is-not-the-solution-for-rural-oregon/

https://www.kuow.org/stories/pnw-secession-movements-arent-new-but-lately-eastern-oregon-is-feeling-idaho-curious

https://news.yahoo.com/rural-america-dreams-secession-eastern-011532936.html

https://www.inquirer.com/columnists/attytood/allen-texas-shooting-white-supremacy-greg-abbott-20230509.html

https://www.wboc.com/news/state-senator-talks-secession-cites-underserved-southern-delaware/article_67541026-eebc-11ed-8c89-8bd0d754ba06.html

https://prospect.org/blogs-and-newsletters/tap/2023-05-23-battlefield-reports-new-civil-war/

https://www.wpr.org/reporting-front-lines-slow-civil-war

Friday Memes, Because I have to get up early tomorrow.

“Not random at all, maybe, like there’s some pattern here?” – Silence of the Lambs

Whenever I hire anyone, I throw away half the applications I get randomly.  I don’t want to work with unlucky people.

Apologies – I gotta get up very early tomorrow, and need some sleep.  Here are some random memes I found that I’ll share so I can prove I was thinking about you.  Don’t forget to celebrate #HumilityMonth this June!