Month: March 2024

Family Structure, Part II: Orphans Still Not Required

“It’s taken almost thirty years and my family fortune to realize the vision of that day.” – Back to the Future

It’s easy to make a website for orphans – you don’t need a home page.

Last post we talked about the main family structures that impact the ideology of the United States (Absolute Nuclear, Authoritarian, and Egalitarian Nuclear).  As noted in the post and in the comments, there were several left out.  Let’s start out with the biggest structure in the world and the structure that breeds commies:

The Exogamous Clan.

  • This is the family structure that was seen in China, Cuba, northern India, Russia, and the part of France commies come from.
  • The basic structure is that marriage occurs with women from outside the clan, and the husband brings the wife home.
  • This is a wickedly high stress scenario: more than one woman in the household is insanely susceptible to the competition and emotional games that more than one woman can bring, plus lots of adult males and jealous wives under the same roof.
  • The result, the father has to have huge amounts of power. Women are pushed down relentlessly to keep peace in the family.  This is reflected in that the sons’ wives are chosen by the parents, and even the sons are fairly replaceable.
  • The idea of independence never comes up until the father dies and the son has to form his own clan and only then does the family break apart.

The result of this is that the culture where the Exogamous Clan is the family structure prizes discipline, social duty, conformity, and not being different.  The culture lends itself to strong central governance:  strong emperors or a strong central government – looking at you, Chairman Xi.  In China, the initial failed attempts at communism were attempts to move this Exogamous Clan structure to the societal level.

And they decided they didn’t need to teach him, they said, “Hilfinger it out.”

When these cultures have an overthrow of their leadership, the bloodshed is epic until the new father figure takes over.  Children from this family structure will have a really hard time understanding the Absolute Nuclear and Authoritarian since independence is prized in the Absolute Nuclear and Authoritarian and is a cancer to the Exogamous Clan structure.

The next stop on our world tour leads us to the Islamic world, which pretty much all follows the same family structure:

The Endogamous Clan.

The Endogamous Clan is essentially and nearly exactly the Islamic world.

  • These are marriages based on arranged cousin marriages.
  • There isn’t much family stress since everyone is already family and is already inbred related so everyone pitches in.
  • Dad busy? There’s an uncle who will help you out.  The “Patriarch” rarely has to rule because the uncles will form an opinion and go with it.
  • Women aren’t outsiders, and they are the ones who end up setting up the marriages, picking and choosing which cousins should marry.
  • They consider the entire world a clan, and their goal is to carry their clan, Islam, to everyone.
  • If you’re outside the clan, however, slavery is just fine with them.

If you think about having kids with your cousin and go, “ewww, gross” you’ve been inoculated against Endogamous Clans.  For good reasons:  one study in Bradford (U.K.) determined that childhood birth defects in Bradford was double the national average – largely because of Pakistani first cousin marriage.  I guess it’s okay for them to sleep with their second cousin, if the first cousin doesn’t mind.

Islamic pubs are the worst, no drinking, no dancing.  But the women can get stoned.

The English and the Pakistani (and other East Asians from Endogamous Clans) living in England will never really understand each other.  The English will see a group that they want to assimilate, and the Pakistani are there only for conquest.  Why did Pakistani kebob shop owners chop up and cook and sell an English child (to other English people)?

The kid was not a member of the Clan, so who cares?  This is a significant cultural clash that has yet to come to a head.

The last major group is from sub-Saharan Africa.  This was classified by Todd as a Flexible System.  There’s a system, but that system is defined as “whatever”.

  • This is primarily in sub-Saharan Africa, and Todd found it also in the United States cotton belt.
  • Monogamy? Polygamy?   Whatever.
  • Women raise the children while men wage war and herd cattle.
  • A large number of the men don’t have the opportunity to have sex: polygamy leads to periodic civil wars.
  • Men join together in war bands to take women or create social status.
  • Power is important, but responsibility is not prized.

Africa has been chaotic, and it appears that much (not all!!) of the social system seen in the United States today from African descendants has been a replication of the Flexible System, which appears to be in many cases becoming the predominant urban family structure for all people, not just African descendants.

Since Ford V. Ferrari was such a hit, Chevy tried to release a film:  Total Recall.

The final two are Asymmetric and Anomic.

Asymmetric is:

  • Weird and limited to India, consisting of arranged marriages from the cousins of female relatives only.
  • It’s India, so like all things Indian it’s confused and chaotic and covered in curry powder.
  • I’d like to ignore it, but it’s like a billion people. But it’s a billion Indians, so I’ll ignore it.

India probably breaks every rule, primarily because regardless of the family structure, that structure also has to contend with the caste system.  When I was interacting with Indians, they looked to see what caste I’d have been in if I were Indian.  Due to several questions, they seemed convinced it would have been the warrior caste (they were warrior caste) so we were cool.

India will keep being India, and Indians (wherever they go) will want to hang out with other Indians more than anyone else, including getting all of their family hired.

What do you do with an elephant with three balls?  Walk him, and pitch to the rhino.

Anomic is:

  • No fixed structure, whatsoever.
  • Tribal, think rainforest tribal.
  • Consists of oppressive empires and peasants, with consisting of military dictatorships coupled with coups.
  • Comically ineffective at doing anything of note.

I have no doubt that Mssr. Todd would not write this book today in the current climate of moral relativism.  In choosing to review cultures and compare them, by definition some will come up short in some way or another – the greatest burst of human invention, ever, came primarily from two family systems, the Absolute Nuclear and the Authoritarian.  Cultures like the Exogamous Clan structure have provided innovation, but for the most part (until recently) tried to turn their back to the world since dealing with foreigners is, well, messy.

What did Malcom X name his son?  Malcom XI.

But it does explain that to the CCP and Chairman Xi, if you are Chinese-American, you’re still Chinese.  Back in (I think?) the year 2019 I read that China had naturalized 4,000 citizens from other countries.  That’s not a typo.  4,000.  Conformity comes from being Chinese, which is why I don’t really expect them to ever be interested in taking over the world.  They like Chinese people, and I’m pretty sure they think they’re a separate species.

Will China fight for resources?  Certainly.  Will China fight for Taiwan?  Yes, to the Chinese, those are just more Chinese.  Does China want to control Japan or Korea or Vietnam?  No.  They want them to do what China wants, but China has been, historically, very happy staying at home, likely (in part) for the reasons Todd discussed related to family structure.

The endgame of this is complex – as family structure in nations changes due either to technological progress, social change (divorced moms), and/or the influx of foreign family patterns, the very ideology of nations is bound to change.

Family patterns may change, but remember, to an orphan a selfie will always be a family photo.

Another Key To Understanding It All: Family Structure

“Without the ability to defend one’s own viewpoint against other more aggressive ideologies then reasonableness and moderation could quite simply disappear. That is why we’ll always need an army.” – Monty Python, The Meaning of Life

Geology is great, but geography is where it’s at.

The ideology of a group can come from many things, including the propaganda that we are all exposed to from a very young age. Another part of it comes from the family structure that we’re surrounded by. A French dude named Emmanual Todd spent a lot of time thinking about this in the 1970s, and decided that the ideology of a country, in part, could be determined by the family structure that the country. I was introduced to Mr. Todd’s ideas by the WhatIfAltHist YouTube® show. I recommend that show.

First, I was intrigued. A French guy named Todd.

Weird.

And who loses when I post an image of Heather Graham? No one.

Second, it felt right. One of the things that people often don’t rate highly enough in the world is genetics. Genetics are very powerful, and influence far more than just hair, skin and eye color or other merely physical attributes. No, from what I’ve seen, genetics very much impacts the basic way related people think. It’s as if family structure, that which literally gives birth to genetic structure, could be a selection mechanism to create and reinforce ideology as well. That would entirely be in line with my observations of both people that I know, as well as the flow of history.

Third, I was interested. What Todd had to say was based on the cultures that he saw in the world in the 1970s, which, due to unceasing hordes of unchecked illegals has now changed. What tensions might conflicting ideologies based on family structures bring to countries being invaded?

But they’re as close to me as steppe-brothers.

Let’s start with the family structure that was the one that came from England and was predominant in the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Normandy:

Absolute Nuclear.

  • It’s what I grew up thinking a normal family was – the term nuclear family was coined in 1924, and has nothing to do with atom bombs.
  • The mother and father met and chose each other for love.
  • They lived in their own house.
  • Their children were expected to become independent, be responsible for themselves, and their lives, after they grew up, was in their own hands.
  • Parents could disinherit kids, and split up the inheritance however.
  • God judges individuals.
  • Societies are mostly stable, but when internal revolts happen, they are horrific.

This is the most successful culture in history, and has been amazing for freedom. Christianity and individual salvation plus independence and individual outcomes lead to structures where people have incentives to produce, and incentives to be moral.

Why can’t you trust an atom? Because they make up everything.

Many other cultures cannot understand this culture – it appears cold and impersonal, and it values freedom over equality. For this system to work, though, high social trust is required.

Absolute Nuclear is a big chunk of my genetics. But the majority of it is:

Authoritarian.

This is just Todd’s name. If I were to name it, I’d call it the Ancient Honor culture, or something like that. It is a very big part of the culture of the United States, especially from the Southern States. Why?

  • This culture is that the Germans, Scandinavians, Czechs, Irish, Scots, Welsh had historically, and it also describes the Koreans, Japanese, and northern Spaniards (where Franco was from).
  • Only the oldest son inherits, so the clan follows the eldest.
  • What do the other sons do? Warriors or warrior monks so they have something to do.
  • The story of the society is one of a lineage that goes back through time. If you worry just a bit too much about your family story (like I might) and care about its honor (like I do) this may describe you.
  • The story of the society is one of the lineage of the family, the sense of history, stubbornness, and that everything thrown in front of you makes you stronger. Only the Irish can destroy the Irish, only the Scots can destroy the Scots. Losing makes them tougher.
  • Women have significant value, unlike in many other cultures.
  • These cultures typically have a large middle class, because if you don’t inherit, you’d best figure something out.
  • There is very little oppression in these societies, because individualism is cultivated – people like each other and will fight for their group.
  • These people are awful at creating empires – it took the British to unite the Irish since these groups are like a bag of cats. That’s why Japan and Germany and Scotland and Ireland were so hard to unify.

This is a very successful culture, historically, and is the other “big” Western culture. If I come across someone who wants to fight because I accidently took his parking space? Tell me you’re Scots-Irish without telling me you’re Scots-Irish. The tensions between the Authoritarians (South) and Absolute Nuclear (North) led to the Civil War.

I met the Godfather of the Scottish mafia. He made me an offer I couldn’t understand.

This is the rest, and possibly the majority of my genetics, and by far the majority of The Mrs.

Don’t make her mad on a point of honor.

The third culture that’s now impacting the United States is the one from (most of) France, (most of) the Italians, South America, Mexico, and Central America.

Egalitarian Nuclear:

  • In this structure, all sons inherit equally. There are several properties I’m aware of where the Spanish father split up the property (five miles by five miles) so his sons could all have access to the river that ran down the middle, so they could water their cattle. Fast forward to today, and there are several properties that are 200 feet wide by five miles long so they can still get access to the river.
  • Marriages aren’t arranged and females have huge influence.
  • Because everything gets split up into weird chunks, rich people end up buying the odd land and the sons end up with nothing to give for inheritance. This leads to massive wealthy inequality.
  • Because the families are equalitarian, they want equity in society, which leads to a series of revolutions because their property always ends up in the hands of the rich.
  • Why have most South American countries had a zillion revolutions, constitutions, communist uprisings, while the United States has had the same Constitution?
  • Since the daughters get nothing, it leads to an “alpha-male” dictator, but they’re comically bad dictators (think Chavez or Mussolini) that don’t get much done because, equality leads to zero discipline.

When this family structure is a significant minority, it ends up running the country. France. Italy. Most South American countries. Mexico. Why are they this mixed bag of equalitarian nonsense? Because of this social structure. Since often a minority population ends up deciding how the country is run, exactly how many Egalatarian Nuclear people can we let in from South America and still have a country that values freedom over equality?

My humor is a lot like food in Venezuela. Most people don’t get it.

We’ve created new family structures that Monsieur Todd never thought about back in the 1970s, since they were just in the process of becoming. What ideology will they create?

I have enough material for another post on this, so I’ll probably skip economics and do one more on Wednesday on family structure and ideology.

Winning Starts With Belief That Winning Is Possible

“Win the crowd.” – Gladiator

If your wife just sits around in bed all day, not moving a muscle, congratulations!  You’ve got yourself an atrophy wife!

I was sitting on my desk when my boss’s boss came up.

“John, we have something we’d like you to lead.  It’s got the attention of the top people in the company, including the CEO.  We need it done in 90 days.  We’ve used about 15 of them.  You have the full commitment of the company.”

Yikes!  What could I say?

“I’ll do it.”

Looking back, I think they thought it was an impossible task.  I would also have to leave my current job, with absolutely no promise of a future position after 90 days.  It was amazingly risky, but it was also presented as, well, not a choice.

If I lost, well, they could fire me, say they tried, and then buy themselves time to meet the commitment.  It would look not perfect for them, but it would give them breathing room.  I know company politics, and I knew what that meant.

I had to win.

Never challenge Death to a pillow fight unless you’re prepared for the Reaper cushions.

In order to win, I had to have a plan.  I had to put together the resources to make it happen.  I asked for some very specific, very high performing people.  I was told, “no”.  (At least one reader knows this story very, very well.)

The first step was that I had to believe that I could win.

I look around at the country that we have today, and I see a similar circumstance:  the forces that are arrayed against the TradRIght are numerous.

Seriously:  they own

  • most federal bureaucracies,
  • most government employees,
  • the military leadership,
  • academia,
  • media,
  • Hollywood, and
  • the people who count the votes.

But even with all of that, they scared.

Hillary proves it takes a village to climb a staircase.

No, strike that, they are terrified.  They are terrified we are going to win, and the GloboLeftistElite will lose because they know us.  They have seen that the TradRight can do when it is unified and has a common goal.  When working together, we can tame continents, build a miniature star to end a war, and put people on the damn Moon in a tin can with three gallons of fuel left without having our heartbeats go above 100 and then defeat International Communism 2.0 (I count the French as 1.0).

We are the TradRight.  We did all of that when we are unified.

I think that, in the end, they expect to lose.  That’s why they throw everything they have, every silly law, every silly accusation against Donald Trump because they mistakenly think that if they break him, if they make him poor, they break us.

Make no mistake, Donald Trump is not our leader.  Donald Trump is a very smart man who saw the motion of the people and jumped out in front.  Did he want to Build The Wall before that line got applause in a rally?  Maybe.

Don’t worry, I hear that protests are only illegal on January 6.

I know that Ann Coulter is still miffed that The Donald didn’t Build The Wall and was far too chummy with the Democrats, but anyone who makes them as crazy as President Trump did accomplish quite a lot:  he made the GloboLeftElite and the RINO conspirators show their true faces.

But I remember in a rally where he bragged about the Vaxx®.  The crowd let out a wave of disapproval, and he got off the Vaxx™ train that minute.  Trump may not lead us, but he does stand for us.  He finds what we want and jumps out in front.

No, breaking Donald Trump won’t break us.

But, let’s face it, the DOJ is even afraid of the Clintons.

Back to Wilder’s 90 days:

I immediately got a plan together.  I used the resources I was given.  I set expectations with my leadership on what we could accomplish in the remaining 90 days:  I defined victory, a real victory.

My definition was approved.

I fought the political games necessary to get various leaders I had to convince on board – instead of shooting at us, they covered my flank so they could take credit if we won, while still being able to blame me if we lost.

We won.  I got a 25% raise and the biggest bonus I’d ever gotten in my life up to that point.  I could even mathematically prove that my methods and intervention at crucial points in the project had saved the company about $3 million.

Ta-Da!

To be clear:  if I had thought that I was going to lose, I would have lost.  Was it hard?  Certainly.  I could have lost, and about day 53 it was Not Looking Good.  But my team and I turned the ship and won.

We won.  Because we thought we could win.

This story, though, isn’t about me.  It’s about all of us.  If we think we’re going to win, we will win.  If we refuse to be demoralized, we won’t be demoralized.  The ability to win even at the cultural level is there, primarily because we believe in the True, Beautiful, and Good.

Anyone else find it odd that the Flintstones® celebrated Christmas?

The GloboLeftElite?  They despise the True, Beautiful, and Good because it shows the empty places they have in their souls – they believe in no Truth, they believe they are ugly, and they openly despise the Good because it sets standards they cannot meet.

The physical and moral levels are a cakewalk.

That, my friends, is why our victory, though it may be difficult, is inevitable.  And it’s also why they want to fill us with despair.

Onward!

Economic Systems, Not Religions

“The Pagans celebrated the solstice by cutting down holly and ivy and dragging it into their homes along with a giant yule log that they’d set fire to.  It sounds rubbish, but with no app store to speak of, killing trees and plants was as good as entertainment got. Even at Christmas.” – Cunk on Earth

Or, as every person forced to live in communism called him at Christmas:  “Hungry Santa”.

One of the things that I have done many times over the years is note that communism (Leftism) is a religion.  It’s why the joke about “Real Communism has never been tried” is funny – the people who say that actually believe it.  Beyond that, they actually believe, deeply, in communism.

It’s their faith.

Just like Christians believe in Christ returning to do stuff and then give us paradise, commies really believe that when Real Communism is finally implemented, the world will be safe for losers like them.

Communism depends on the rank and file believing that they’re not the problem, everyone else is.  If everyone realized what a great talent they are, well, that stupid high school quarterback would be happy to clomp back into the mines and fields and factories humming the tune the loser wrote.  The loser believes that centralized processes are better:  if it works for me, it should work for everyone.

Apparently, the Soviets did one thing right:  they made the best bread in history.  Why, people would wait in line for days just for a single piece.

So what if a few million peasants starved?  That’s a small price to pay for the coming workers’ utopia.  There can be no compromise in our vision of the exact same prosperity for everyone, since our vision is perfection!

Yup, that’s communism in a nutshell.  It has no real empirical evidence that it could ever work, yet it gets trotted out by the losers again and again.  The problem isn’t with the plan, it’s that:

  • The people sabotaged it!
  • Foreign countries sabotaged it!
  • The time wasn’t right!
  • We ran out of people to kill!
  • I swear, the dog ate the economy!

The result is always the same, a priestly class who aims to reeducate (convert) everyone to the religion of materialism.  The end result of this – unless it’s stopped by a Stalin – is the endless Leftist Purity Spiral where there is no Leftism so far Left that it can’t be exaggerated further Left, and anyone to the right of this Left position is a heretic.  As I mentioned, this was happening in the Soviet Union until Stalin just shot all the people on the far Left to stabilize the nonsense.

I was going to tell an awful bowling joke, but I’ll spare you.

One side note:  I was watching the comedy Silicon Valley several years ago, and one of the characters said he followed the “left-hand path” which is a loser way of saying, “Satanist”.  Just noting, Leftist, left-hand path . . . I’ll leave that there for you to draw your own conclusions.

Regardless, a lot if not all, of the problems we face in society today is due to Communism or it’s kid brother, Socialism attempting to put a central control on everything we do and think to conform to their current Narrative.

But I’d like to take a step back, since often libertarians (or Libertarians) make the same error:  they equate magical powers to the market.

I remember my parents telling me, “I’ll give you something to cry about” when I was a kid.  I expected a spanking, but instead they ruined the housing market.

And, yes, I’ll agree.  The free market is so much better than the planned markets put together by commissars in Central People’s Warehouse No. 49, and has historically provided an abundance of “stuff”. Milton Friedman famously said, “In capitalism, goods wait for people; in socialism, people wait for good.”

It’s true.  It’s also true that, just as communism is a poor religion, so is capitalism.  Capitalism isn’t a religion, it isn’t a force, it has no morality, it’s a mechanism for distributing points.

Capitalism doesn’t care what it creates, as long as the points are properly distributed.

Probably the most free-market period in the history of the United States was during the frontier.  Don’t want money, well, you could move out west, fend mostly for yourself, farm, and not worry (too much) about needing money.  If you wanted money, you could get it by mining, trapping, killing buffalo or making railroads.  Nobody stopped you doing almost anything if you were far enough out in front of civilization.  But after towns sprang up?

When I was leaving home today, I had the feeling I’d forgotten something.  Then I remembered.  The Alamo.

Your friends and neighbors had a vote.  Capitalism and free markets were constrained by morality, specifically Christianity.  Was there booze?  Drugs?  Prostitution?  Porn?  Yes, those things were with us and have been with us.

But society was more cohesive at that time, and would shun the immoral, if they didn’t deal with them in extrajudicial ways.  Laws weren’t required to constrain capitalism, the morality of the people constrained capitalism – actual religion took the place of economic religion.

Real capitalism isn’t a religion, and it won’t solve problems.  And, yes real capitalism has been tried and is very successful when practiced by a more-or-less moral people, though the version that we have here in 2024 isn’t real capitalism.  Examples?

  • Regulations
  • Taxation
  • Labor Laws
  • Federal Reserve Interest Rates
  • Federal Reserve Cash Printing
  • Welfare/Transfer Payments
  • Government Spending (Education, infrastructure, defense)
  • Unchecked Immigration

The last one is favored by many Libertarians.  They note that in a market free of all of the other bullet points, well, just let anyone in.  My response is that most people in the world don’t really want to be free people living in freedom:  Most people in the world would just rather have free stuff.

Boeing®, putting the “final” in final approach.

That means creeping centralization and an amoral government bent on taking from one group to give to another, and the same material god that is worshipped by communists everywhere.  But no one can say that the far Left is in a hurry – they keep Stalin.

A Modest Proposal Concerning Haiti

“Don’t worry. It’s good luck. In Haiti.” – Caddyshack

Two cannibals were eating Amy Schumer. One asked the other, “Does anything taste funny to you?” The other cannibal answered: “No.”

Haiti is in trouble. Again. This is not a repeat from (spins wheel) . . . nearly every year in Haiti’s history. If you look back, more Haitian leaders have been killed and eaten (hopefully in that order) than there are grains of sand in a beach.

Okay. That may be an exaggeration, since I made up the statistic. But it’s clear that Haiti is awful. The best part of Haiti is not even close to being as good as the worst part of the United States. I believe it was Michael Yon who described Haitians as “Cannibals Without Borders” which is a phrase I really hate for the sole reason that I didn’t come up with that one on my own.

Dangit.

Look how they’ve kept their plate clean.

Haitians have a history that would make Pol Pot jealous. From the beginning, it was born in blood and slavery, and then managed, somehow, to get worse. I want to make a stand, right here and now, and say that the number of Haitians that should be let into the country is zero.

To be clear, I don’t want most anyone allowed in anymore, but I decided to pick on Haiti because it’s the latest foreign hellhole that will soon be sending in droves of awful people trying to escape the very problems that they created by moving to Nebraska or some place so they can bring the wonders of Voodoo (yes, they still do that) and cannibalism (yes, they still do that) and rape (yes, it’s the national sport) to the Cornhusker state.

As I said, this isn’t entirely a Haitian thing, though they’ve managed the impossible: they make communist Cuba communist Venezuela, and all of the Mad Max® movies look like paradise in comparison to Tuesday in Haiti.

This is what roadside assistance looks like in Haiti.

No, the biggest reason I don’t want Haitians to come to the United States is because I really feel empathy for the Haitians and wouldn’t want to expose them to the horrors of our country. First, it’s a philosophical question: The GloboLeftElite tells me that all cultures are equal. So, if all cultures are equal, I think that depriving Haiti of their best and brightest is selfish. They should stay home and keep their totally equal culture going.

I mean, why shouldn’t they give cannibalism a chance?

Point Two: I’ve been reliably informed that the culture of the United States is filled with systemic racism. Why would we want to bring more People of Color into a situation where they would face that? Why would they want to come here? I realize that Point One says that all cultures are equal, but it’s been pointed out that the culture of the United States is bad, so we cannot in good conscience let anyone else in.

Ever. We’re that bad. We need to keep everyone else from living here.

Why does the expression on Jerry Nadler’s face always say, “Oh, my, that wasn’t a fart.”?

Point Three: I’ve been reliably informed that the United States, while having no culture of its own, steals the culture of various people across the world. Imagine the horror! White teenagers are making tacos, TACOS!, at the local Taco Bell® thus stealing the sacred food that only Hispanics can make and despite the GloboLeftElite© being in favor of diversity.

An aside: I came up with a climate-friendly way to stop the illegal alien problem while fighting Climate Change™ by turning all the illegal aliens into food to stop them from entering the most carbon dioxide creating economy on the planet and killing us all. Sadly, this would be (I am reliably informed by the GloboLeftistElite) cultural appropriation from Haitians. Perhaps we should ship all of the illegal aliens to Haiti to allow them to be consumed, thus feeding Haitians and slowing Global Warming®?

Point Four: The Haitians might feel bad because there are still statues left standing of amazing Americans and Europeans that have achieved things that Haitians didn’t, like killing but not eating lots of Japanese or going to the Moon and not killing or eating anyone up there. We really want to spare their feelings.

How dare the Japanese deny Haitian culture!

Point Five: The vast majority of Black Studies programs in the United States wouldn’t be good for Haitians because they do not, in fact, deal much with black people, but rather with how evil white people (and now those sneaky Asians) have been bad to black people. Since the vast majority of Haitian History (since 1800 or so) has been more-or-less white people free, these college courses would just confuse them.

Point Six: Many Haitians actively say that they hate white people. Good Heavens! The United States is literally filled with white people! I think we should take them (and every other illegal alien that hates white people) and help them by sending them to a country without white people, like Wakanda or the upper part of the Amazon drainage basin.

Point Seven: The United States is one of the most slave-free countries in the world today. In all of the countries of North and South America, Haiti is number two in terms of per capita modern slavery. Why would we want to impose our anti-slavery cultural imperialism on the absolutely equal (according to the GloboLeftElite) slavery practices of Haitians?

In summary, we need to keep Haitians out of the United States because we don’t want to expose them to the toxic United States culture (which also does not exist) which would infect their totally-not-awful-and-not-at-all-a-hellhole-culture-which-is-totally-equivalent-to-the-United-States-except-it’s-better-because-the-Haitians-aren’t-imperialist-colonizers.

Could be worse. Could be raining.

In summary, Haiti is only in trouble because we have tried to help it in the past. We could help by keeping the Haitians in there by sinking their boats and not sending them food except for airdropping them the illegal aliens who are currently suffering oppression and racism by being in the United States.

See? Hard problems have simple Wilder solutions.

27 Thoughts for Friday

“I thought so.  You remember our business partner Marsellus Wallace, don’t you Brett?” – Pulp Fiction

I got a CAPTCHA that asked me to select pictures of tractors and farm equipment.  That’s really not my field.

I’ve trotted out lists of thoughts from time to time.  The lists change based on (hopefully) me getting more wisdom over time.  Anyway, here’s this year’s list:

  1. Be on time. Seriously, it’s simple.  People notice, and people care.  It’s a basic principle of respect for someone not to waste their time waiting for me.
  2. Never be a little late to work or a little early to leave. Especially on a regular basis.  Being late an hour once every quarter is much better than being late a minute each day for sixty work days.  An hour looks like something happened.  A minute looks like I don’t care.
  3. Little changes at the start make big difference in the result. I’ve seen many people start their careers and become experts at the subject of their first assignment.  Many of them made a lot of money by knowing a whole lot about a little.

Who knew Cathy was Haitian?

  1. Choosing not to decide is a choice. I love reminding people that “doing nothing” is always an option.  But it is a choice.  And it has just as many consequences as “doing something”.
  2. For me, opportunities always showed up when I needed them, even if I didn’t understand it at the time. Thankfully in my case the opportunities weren’t subtle.
  3. After college, in a high achieving profession, it becomes rarer and rarer to be the smartest guy in the room, and someone in the room is often an expert at something in which I’m a novice. True humility allows a good leader to understand the capabilities they need, and not have to be “right” all the time.
  4. The biggest fights are over the smallest things. It seems that no one ever snaps over the house being on fire on the day the insurance payment was late – it’s that the trash wasn’t taken out on time and we have to hang on to it for another week.

What does Soylent Green® taste like?  It varies from person to person.

  1. People understand $10,000 more than they understand $10,000,000. The difference between $10,000 and $11,000 means more to most people than the difference between $10 million and $10 billion.  Most people can’t understand more than seven magnitudes of anything.
  2. Outcome is less important than process. When working on life, I try to not care about what the outcome will be.  I go in, make the best choices I can, and do the best work that I can.  If it works, it works, if it doesn’t, I try to adjust to be better next time.
  3. Outcome is still important. Dead is dead, so sometimes the outcome is final.
  4. The last outcome is always final. How many refunds?
  5. No refunds.

My chute didn’t open once when I was skydiving.  I didn’t panic.  I figured I had the rest of my life to figure it out.

  1. Nothing breeds success like success, and nothing breeds failure like failure. I’ve been on streaks where I literally could not lose.  I’ve been on streaks where I couldn’t win.
  2. Corollary to 13: I’m never as bad or as good as my failures or successes.  The streaks where I couldn’t win set me up with the habits I needed to win.
  3. Beating myself up is a loser’s game.
  4. Most people don’t think about me very much and will have a hard time remembering my name after five years. As much as I like to think I’m the center of my story (and I am) I’m only a minor player in the stories of most other people.
  5. Corollary to 16: Except where I’m their personal villain.  Then I live on forever and will definitely have someone who will want to be at my funeral, if nothing more than to make sure I’m dead.

What was the name of that Mexican villain in the Bible?  Poncho Pilate?

  1. Protect the relationships with the people that genuinely do care about me in a positive way so maybe the sad people at my funeral will outnumber the happy ones.
  2. Listen to people, really listen. They tell me amazing things if I just listen.  One time I was interviewing a guy and he mentioned committing a felony at a previous job.  Yeah, I kept a straight face.  No, he didn’t get the job.
  3. If someone says I’m wrong, I need to have the humility to embrace that and see if they’re right. Especially when my first impulse is to try to defend myself.  Even if I’m not wrong, I at least understand why they thought I was wrong.
  4. When I’m wrong, admit it and apologize. It’s amazing how admitting error makes other think I’m more trustworthy.  And apologies?  Why not apologize, have some sort of problem with that?

Okay, he didn’t say that.  But he’s the first person I thought of.

  1. Being good at several things is enough for success, if they’re the right several things. Being an expert at useless things might be fun, but mostly nothin’ times nothin’ is, hmmm, carry the nothin’ . . . nothin’.
  2. If I spend my life waiting for the next thing, I’ll spend my entire life waiting and not living. The journey is the point, and rushing through it just gets me to my grave faster.
  3. Past behaviors are almost always the key to predicting future behaviors. Leopards, spots, etc.  When I listen to a person’s story, I realize that often they’re also telling me their future.
  4. Success is based on the last thing I did, not the next. People pay to keep me around because they think I might be able to do it again.

Orphans are often very successful at business – someone told them “Go big or go home” so they didn’t have much choice.

  1. Could I have done better?   Could I have done worse?  Yes.  I did how I did.  Success is based on how I change what I’m going to do to be better.
  2. Power and money are not the same thing. Just ask the rich guys after Robespierre or Lenin took over.

Okay, that’s 3³ thoughts for Friday.  See you on Monday!

Gamer Gate 2.0 Update: Disproportionate Response Edition

“Well, that escalated quickly.” – Anchorman

I’ve been stuck in Ancient Rome all this week.  All of the roads seem to have this one weird design flaw.

All visual content today is as-found, except the bits that I might add a comment to.

This will be a post with exceptions:  normally I like to post “second day” type material, where we’ve had a chance to get through the event and reflect back on what really happened.  On Monday, I posted about the history of Gamer Gate 1.0, and what I thought just might be the start of Gamer Gate 2.0.  Here’s a link if these posts ever get separated (LINK).

I have another post, nearly completely done, that I was going to run today.   Completely different subject.

Then fresh info on Gamer Gate 2.0 hit, and I thought it was important to show just how fast this story is moving, and how critical it is.  The older stuff can wait, and I’ll have an easier week next week polishing it and it will probably even be a better post.  I do promise that, pending significant developments, this won’t be a regular feature.

The hallmark of Gamer Gate 1.0 was that gamers just wanted to play games, and after they saw the journalistic community (allegedly) SIMP out (look it up) for a talentless narcissist, they complained.  The response was coordinated and disproportionate – it’s like you say, “I don’t like this package of McDonald’s® Chicken McNuggets™ and they say . . . “You can never come to any McDonald’s© again for the rest of your life.”

It was weird.  So, Gamer Gate 2.0 started with something simple:  “We’re watching woke Marxists injecting The Narrative into our video games and we don’t like it.”  Simple enough, and in 2024 not particularly controversial.  The response?  “Biden Admin Zeroes In On Gamers In Push To Crush ‘Domestic Violent Extremism’”.

Because Gamers are easer to catch than the unending hordes of illegal aliens that were let into the country.

Gamer Gate 1.0 very, very strange way to treat the people that are your core audience.

Gamer Gate 2.0 is using the full power of the FBI, DHS, and probably NSA to crush people who just want to play video games without a bunch of woke crap.

I know many readers aren’t into gaming, computer or otherwise.  This is not at all about video games.  It is about the attempt to use hundreds of millions of dollars of taxpayer money to create a fully functional propaganda system to fundamentally alter the values of the nation.

This is a big deal.

In this case, the journalists that hate the majority of people in this country are still awful.

And it’s wonderful that they tell you, right out loud, that they are Satanists.

Doesn’t that make it a Satantree?

But they’re only part of the problem.  Dr. Rachel Kowert, who, on her website indicates that she is:

. . . currently working on a two-year project funded by the Department of Homeland Security (in collaboration with with the Middlebury Institute of International Studies and Logically AI) examining the landscape of extremist radicalization and recruitment within digital gaming spaces. This project aims to establish a baseline of understanding for the unique characteristics of extremist activities within video game communities, build capacity within the gaming industry to prevent and counter violent extremism in these spaces, and create collaborative networks across public and private sectors.

I left the “with with” in there.  Yeah, I know I have typos on here, but it’s a bad look Dr. Kowert (and she also talks about her “cahnnell”, which I assume means “channel”.  I guess if you have a Ph.D., you’re not allowed to use spellcheck.

Regardless, this is the point:  the DHS, rather than finding the millions of illegals crossing the border, is instead putting as much money into Rachel’s fat cheeks so she can bury them with her nuts for winter.

Here’s her Tweet on 3/11:

As Anon notes, her response was because ONE GUY made a LIST of games that Sweet Baby®, Inc. might have collaborated on.  ONE GUY.  ONE LIST.

Dr. Kowert apparently locked down her X account.  Huh.

And this is what puts the Kow in Dr. Kowert.

But one thing the GloboLeftElite doesn’t complain about is when they get the game they want.  Since they’re not horribly creative, they end up making games that . . . well, you be the judge:

Gee . . . sounds fun.

And here are the stakes.  Wonder why the full weight of the DHS comes down on ONE GUY making ONE LIST?

It’s because of this.