Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

Two Types Of Society. There Is Proof We Have A Choice.

“There are two types of people in this world:  people who like Neil Diamond, and people who don’t.” – What About Bob

A man threatened me with a coffee cup and stole my wallet.  I guess I got mugged.

There are two types of cultures.  One of them looks a bit like this:

I was walking in Silver Dollar City® more than a decade ago.  It was spring, and Silver Dollar City™ was an amusement park where we could take the kids and visit attractions, and even though they weren’t even teenagers, there were plenty of rides for them.

As we were walking through the park, a young blonde man of 18 or so ran up behind me.  It wasn’t a sprint, but the easy strides of a high school football player in top shape – like Michelle Obama, the kid looked like a linebacker.  “Sir, sir!”

I turned around.  “Yeah, how can I help you?”

“You dropped this.”

What did Mike Tyson say to Vincent van Gogh?  “Are you gonna eat that?” (meme as found)

The kid handed me two $20 bills.  This is unusual, since normally I have to at least pull up my shirt for anyone to give me $40 so I’ll put the shirt back down.

I stuttered, “Th-thank you!”  I felt in my pocket, and, sure enough there were two twenties that must have followed my hand out of the pocket like a structured thought sneaking out of Joe Biden’s head.

The blonde kid smiled, waved, and ran off before I could even offer him a fiver for his honesty.  And, thinking about it, he might have been offended if I offered him money.  I know I’ve turned cash down before for similar acts of honesty or help.

You don’t do it for the reward.  You don’t do it for the glory.  You don’t do it for the free shrimp and talcum powder.  You do it because it’s the right thing to do.  Period.

That’s one type of society.

This type of society functions pretty well.  The prices (back then) at Silver Dollar City™ were much lower than at other attractions of a similar nature that I’d been to.  The park itself was clean and tidy, and every local business was polite.  Did they want our dollars?  Sure they did, but they were great about wanting to come by them honestly.  They wanted to earn my money.

That’s the way that Modern Mayberry is, mostly.

Sheriff Taylor retired to a farm, so he could see Barn every day.

But San Francisco?  Wow.

I haven’t been there in almost a decade, but the pictures I’ve seen recently show a city that’s not in decline.  It’s in free-fall.  In Modern Mayberry I always lock my car doors because it’s a habit from living in big cities.  In San Francisco?  People don’t lock their cars.

People don’t lock their car doors (and many leave their trunks open) so prospective thieves can see that there’s nothing to steal without breaking the windows of the cars to rummage around themselves.  The people have surrendered to the criminals.

Porch pirates are everywhere in SF, and steal whatever they can.  People live on the streets in tents, and often defecate and do drugs in public, because, why not?

San Francisco is also leading the nation in stores disappearing or locking up all of their items.  Why?  Because mobs loot the stores, in broad daylight.  If the thief is caught, they’re immediately released.  The only solution for a store that wants to be in business is to sell you the item, go get it from a locked room, and then give it to you after you’ve already paid.

Want to watch Mad Max:  Fury Road in the most realistic way possible?  Go to San Francisco.

Lefties, I’m sure, have plenty of theories for why San Francisco is like this.  White privilege.  Institutional racism.  Failure to provide mental health services.  Lack of reparations.  It’s Wednesday.  Spin a wheel and pick an excuse.  But every one of them is a lie.  And I can prove it.

How?

Go look at the streets today where President Xi of China will be when he travels San Francisco.  The homeless are gone.  Crime is gone.  The streets aren’t covered in poop and needles and Disney™ products.

If the city of San Francisco can do that for Xi, it means that they can do it.  Even Governor Gavin “Plastic Man” Newsom said the quiet part out loud:

“I know folks say, ‘Oh, they’re just cleaning up this place because all those fancy leaders are coming into town.’  That’s because it’s true.”

A poll was taken by California Governor Gavin Newsom’s office which asked whether people who live in California think Illegal immigration is a serious problem.  29% of respondents answered: “Yes, It is a serious problem.  71% of respondents answered: “No es una problema seriosa.”

Guess he wants to impress people that don’t live there.

San Francisco doesn’t have to be like it is.

The only reason that San Francisco is a horrifying dump is because people want it to be a horrifying dump.  As I’ve said before, the solution is obvious (We Already Know The Solutions).  Criminals need to value the gain they make from a crime less than they fear the penalty for when they get caught.  That’s it.  The equation is simple.

We know exactly what we need to do to solve almost any problem.  And, as is on display right now, the Powers in San Francisco know exactly what solution is required to solve this problem.  But they don’t, or at least limit the solution to times when world dignitaries visit – the effort for just common people is too much.

I wouldn’t worry about it.  It was a he said/Xi said situation.

Why, exactly do they allow a kleptocracy to fester in California?

  • They don’t like guns. Guns have been the great equalizer
  • They will ruthlessly target and destroy common citizens who defend themselves or their property because in their minds only the State should be able to wield force to protect itself.
  • There is no punishment of the criminals, because they’re a favored voting group.

Probably the biggest reason is this:

  • They want the people to be scared. They want the people to feel helpless, as if there’s nothing they can do and they don’t care how much money it costs you.  They want to use this to get just a little more power.

That’s it.  The reason for the kleptonomics on the street is because it serves those who could fix the problem.

Me?  I’ll take Silver Dollar City© and Modern Mayberry any day.

Does It Seem Like Everything Is Falling Apart? It Is.

“Don’t come apart on me, Frank.” – Scrooged

What makes a good tongue-twister?  That’s not easy to say.

The story of the 20th century was one of things coming together.

Part of it was based on technology – the world shrank as successive technologies made communications, typically mass communications, easier and quicker.  The world went from letters carried over land to telegrams to telephones and then radio and television.  Information that previously took weeks to get out, could now go out to millions nearly immediately so we could all know how tough Meghan Markle had it last weekend.

With this communication, the model was simple:  one to many.  One person could have their ideas spread out to literally everyone.  In the Soviet Union, radio versions of Stalin’s speeches could be broadcast instantaneously to every person with a radio in the Soviet Union, though those radios were powered by large industrial tractors produced in Tractor Collective Number 323 that weighed 17 metric tons.

With the advent of this communication, it became feasible to run an actual empire, in real time.  Things started clumping together because the span of control allowed it, and the size of empire was useful.  The Soviets started collecting satellite states like they were Hallmark© Christmas ornaments, and so did the NATO nations.

What does the blue in a communist flag stand for?  Food.

Europe itself clumped together into the EU, which, oddly, was exactly the plan of an Austrian art-school reject.  Up until the 1990s, clumping together was all the rage.  There was strength in being together, and it was also strength in the titanic war without weapons between two competing ideologies:  Western Capitalism versus Eastern European and Asian Collectivist Communism.

Some have said (and I would have argued, incorrectly, in the past) that technology is neutral.  It is not.  Technology absolutely changes the equation between the types of governments that can exist.  Take, for example, weapons:

To be really good with a sword takes a lot of practice.  I assume this because I watched a lot of movies where people learn to be good swordsmen and people always seem to get older in the montage.  Beyond that, the suit of armor that a knight had to have was really, really expensive?  How expensive?  More than “hot dog at an NFL® game” expensive, it was completely unaffordable unless you had a manor and a bunch of dudes growing stuff for you.  And, if you had it, those dudes couldn’t really do anything to you when you were out and about.

Which Knight was chosen to build the Round Table?  Sir Cumference.

Freedom, in this case, belonged to those who had armor.  That equation changed over time, and it’s a real reason I like firearms.  I can go in a store and buy a close copy (or in some cases much better stuff) than the United States Army gives to the rank-and-file soldier.  Remember, “military grade” is the code word for the cheapest stuff that they could buy that might do the job.

Anyway, as long as millions of Americans are as well armed as the average infantry soldier in our army, we are free.  Round us up and try to put us in concentration camps like they did in Australia during the recent pandemic?  Not going to happen because, well, all the guns.  It doesn’t even take a montage to learn how to use a firearm.

Mao may have been ugly and smelled bad, but he knew something very true:  “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”  Why does the Left want to take away guns?  Because they want power, and as long as you have weapons that equal theirs, they cannot make you do whatever it is that they want.

Robespierre, Trotsky, and Mao walk into a bar.  There are no survivors.

But that’s a digression.  Technology allowed the flourishing of really large empires, mainly due to information management and that “one to many” communication model.  Being together in these combinations allowed two sides to fight each other.

Until they didn’t.

The biggest failure of Soviet-style communism wasn’t the socialist part, but the collectivist part.  Capitalism in the West simply out produced them, but the collectivist mindset wasn’t really “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”  That sounds spiffy, but in reality it became, “From each according to how little work they could get away with, to each according to how much they could milk the system for.”

I asked A.I. to make the workers lazy.  Boom, the cell phones show up.

This collapsed.  I think it was a coincidence that it was just as the Internet began to flourish, but the Internet has changed the entire way that communication can flow.  The old model was “from one to many” while the new model is “from many to many”.  Not everyone has an equal voice, but ideas now flow freely.

This is what puts the panties of Those Who Are In Power into a wad – they have lost control of the Narrative.  It’s also going to be the story of the 21st century:  the time when things dissolve.

We’ve seen it start with Brexit.  Brexit would never have happened under the previous mode where the only options were the options from TPTB.  In this case, the people rose up, and said no.  Of course, in the case of Great Britain, TPTB decided to keep the unending flow of illegals headed there, because the last thing they want to reward were people from Great Britain deciding their own destiny.

I wonder if Departugul will be next?  Or will it be Polend?

It’s too late to put the genie back into the bottle, however.  We see strains on NATO where vastly divergent incentives have weakened that alliance, and I see similar strains on the EU right now, where countries like Poland and Hungary are being ostracized for not wanting to become minorities in their own lands.

Likewise, we see the pressures of division putting strains on the United States.  Every reader here is a part of that, since you regularly partake in ideas that are not approved by those who would have you live in pods and eat bugs and give up your arms.  For the greater good, you know.

The story of the 20th century was of coming together.  Our story, right now, is of things coming apart.

Friday Movies. Because I said So. 1986 in Review.

“Captain, there be whales here.”  Star Trek:  Search For Whales

Has A.I. even seen these movies?  All art for today’s post is A.I. generated, maybe after it or I (or both of us) had some drinks.

Here are my picks for the best movies of the year 1986 that I remember fondly now.  Why?  Why not.  It’s Friday, and there’s certainly enough heavy stuff going on, and each of the movies on the list below, in its genre, is better than anything made this decade.  In several cases, the movie might not have been great, but it was one I watched that year and felt it was memorable.

They are in alphabetical order, which really implies no particular order since the starting letter of the movie has nothing to do with how good the movie is, with the exception of Zardoz, which features Sean Connery in an orange diaper, rendering your arguments moot.

If Pixar® had done Aliens . . .

Aliens – Aliens starts with A, so James Cameron gets to go first.  The Terminator was really his “can James make movies” tryout so that he could make Aliens.  Aliens took a horror franchise and transformed it into an amazing science fiction action movie.  The great part about all of this is that it all looked so very real in a world without digital effects.  Too bad no one ever made a sequel to this.  It could have been great.  It’s also sad that James Cameron retired.  To think, if he hadn’t retired, he might be making stupid movies about blue aliens.

I guess there’s an admission preference for illegal aliens.

Back to School – Rodney Dangerfield.  Girls in bikinis.  The Triple Lindy.  This movie was set back when you could make fun of everyone.  And Rodney did, including Kurt Vonnegut, to his face.  The plot is simple, millionaire decides to go back to college, has his assistants do his homework.  Bonus points for the line “Bring us a pitcher of beer every seven minutes until somebody passes out.  Then bring one every ten minutes.”

Does that look like Kurt Russell to you?  Stupid A.I.

The Best of Times – Kurt Russell and Robin Williams.  In a movie.  Together.  Yes, this happened.  The result was a great comedy about reliving the past and trying to make up for that mistake you made a decade ago.  A simple movie about simpler times, and very funny.  How could it have been better?  It would have been better if John Carpenter had made it.

I don’t watch anime, but I might watch this.

Big Trouble in Little China – Kurt Russell with John Carpenter directing one of my favorite movies of all time.  Why?  Because this movie is just about the textbook in what to do when your girlfriend and truck have both been kidnapped by an ancient, cursed, Chinese wizard.  It’s got everything: dashing heroes, wimmins to be rescued, magic, kung fu, semi fu, butterfly knife fu, and balls of green flame fu.  Green flame!

Working title:  The Color of Rain

The Color of Money – I’ve only seen this the one time, and probably won’t watch it again, so this is a review based on remembering it from nearly 40 years ago.  I was on the left side of the theater, so I don’t think I got the best stereo so, you know.  This wasn’t a great movie, but it really captured the 1980s, what with Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman making an epic road trip . . . what?  This is the billiards movie with Paul Newman and I’m really thinking about Rain Man?  Oh.  Take this one off the list.

I think they might need a drummer.

Crossroads – Before the Internet, the story of Robert Johnson selling his soul on the crossroads for musical success was passed in the school hallways by someone who half heard it.  That’s where I heard it, and, weirdly, most of the details were right.  This movie came out after I’d heard about it, and it was great.  Ralph Macchio, even though I think he was forty or fifty years old (the man does not age, I think he sleeps in Tupperware® so he doesn’t spoil) when he did this movie did a great job as a kid who wanted to learn the blues.  Guitar solos at the end?  Pure 80s.  Sadly, this movie was successful enough that the scriptwriter wrote Young Guns and Young Guns II, proving that he probably had first-hand experience at the crossroads.

Not A.I. generated.  Unless we’re living in a simulation.

From Beyond – If you don’t like horror, just skip ahead.  Bringing H.P. Lovecraft to the screen is hard, because sometimes his writing glossed over the details.  From Beyond brings the horror of Lovecraft to the screen, the thought that there is a universe just next door that wants to get to us, and the things it wants to do . . . aren’t pleasant.  Except for Barbara Crampton in a leather bikini.  That was pleasant.

If only Batman® could have saved the American car industry.

Gung Ho – Michael Keaton is now an “actor” after playing Batman®.  Back in 1986, he was a guy who was great in comedies.  Gung Ho is the story of a car manufacturing plant that was closed, and the fight to get a Japanese company to come and reopen it and the comedic cultural clash that follows.  This was the 1980s, and back then the Japanese scared the heck out of America, since it looked like they could do all of the things we couldn’t do anymore:  build great cars, be Japanese, have discipline, create anime, and have Micheal Keaton in a comedy.

Looks like the kid is trying to decapitate himself.

Highlander – Sean Connery plays a Spaniard with a Scottish accent, while the French actor(who didn’t speak English) Christopher Lambert played a Scottish guy with a French accent.  Whatever.  It worked.  A group of immortals move through time to the time where they have to gather and try to decapitate each other.  Except in churches.  And the movie opens at a professional wrestling match.  It really, really sounds silly, but it’s a powerful movie that, sadly, there was never ever a sequel to.

Looks like the Village People® are here, too.

Iron Eagle – This movie taught me that it’s easy to learn to fly an F-16 in a montage that just lasts a few minutes, and that everyone flies better if they strap a cassette player to their thigh and play rock and roll while you shoot down MiGs.  I believe that this is the current air strategy of Ukraine, since in their latest aid request they wanted Louis Gossett, Jr. to train their pilots, and wanted some Sony Walkman™ cassette players.  Okay, this wasn’t a great movie.  And I haven’t seen it since 1986.  But if I ever need to fly an F-16?  I’m gonna rent this one on VHS.

Has there ever been a more 1980s picture?  I think not.

Maximum Overdrive – This movie makes no real sense.  It was based on a Stephen King short story, and in the 1980s, movies regularly appeared that were based on the shopping lists a cocaine-crazed Stephen King would write before blacking out for the evening.  In this case, a cocaine-crazed Stephen King also directed it, before passing out for the evening.  What happens?  Trucks and cars come to life, and you know what that means.  An AC/DC® soundtrack.  It’s not a horror movie, it’s really a 98 minute music video that doesn’t take itself seriously.  I watched with the kids a few years back, and they laughed, a lot.

Okay, maybe this is more 1980s.

One Crazy Summer – This is an flick about John Cusack (yes, I know now he’s an insufferable tool who blocked me on Twitter®) and Demi Moore (yes, I know now she’s an insufferable tool) in a romantic comedy that’s got a flair for the absurd.  Bobcat Goldthwait stuck in a Godzilla® costume destroying a model of a planned development in front of the investors?  Priceless.

Okay, this one was difficult to get to – the A.I. just hated doing it.

Ruthless People – This was a Zucker brothers movie, so it’s that kind of humor.  Bette Midler is an awful person who gets kidnapped, and Danny DeVito is her awful husband who doesn’t want her back.  It’s the first movie I saw Bill Pullman in before he was elected president after being a hero fighter pilot (he probably watched Iron Eagle to learn how) and killed the aliens on Independence Day.

Probably not far off from the real poster.

Short Circuit – Alley Sheedy gets a sentient robot that won’t shut up, and comic hijinks are the result, rather than it plugging into DARPANET and annihilating the human race.  This one, thankfully, is spared a cocaine-crazed Stephen King.

Well, I have no idea what this hot mess is, but I couldn’t pass it up.

Star Trek IV:  Whales In Space – Yeah, I know that’s not the official title, but when I write that, you know which one I’m talking about.  This wasn’t the high point of the Star Trek movies, that was Wrath of Khan.  But it did involve time travel to 1986 America, and Kirk going on a pizza date with a marine biologist and going home to a stolen Klingon® vessel.  I’m beginning to get the idea that 1986 was a year where people weren’t afraid to be a bit silly.

That’s it.  Are these the best movies, ever?  No.  But how often do you see good comedies since, oh, 2016?  Only three of the movies above were sequels or part of a “cinematic universe”.  A lot of them were experiments that lost money, or made Sean Connery do silly things, like act with French people.

Will we see another year of movies like this?  Probably not in my lifetime.  I’m especially glad they haven’t made any new Star Trek since 2005.

Snapshots Of The Economic Collapse

“I’m the source of all your misery?  Who closed the store to play hockey?  Who closed the store to go to a wake?” – Clerks

I found a store that only sells donuts, bagels, and macaroni.  It’s called Hole Foods.

Misery is a state of being includes suffering, but suffering is short.  Misery is like suffering crossed with my ex-wife talking about my faults:  it goes on and on and never seems to stop.

Misery is OJ.

OJ is up.  And you don’t need to be worried about your throat being sliced open followed by a weird car chase, because in this case it’s not Orenthal James, it’s Orange Juice.  Since 2020, OJ has gone up in price by 315%, while Orenthal James probably hasn’t killed anyone in that time period.  Here’s the graph:

What’s the difference between O.J. Simpson and the movie Caddyshack?  One had a Bronco pursuit and the other one had a Chevy Chase.

It’s not like there’s a shortage of OJ, because if there was, I’d expect to see a shortage of vodka, too, and there’s no shortage of vodka, I mean, not that I’d know.  But when orange juice is headed through the moon, I expect to look around and see Eddie Murphy and Dan Ackroyd swapping a dollar on a bet.

I suppose that orange juice isn’t required for living, but you have to live somewhere.  I was talking to an acquaintance the other day, and he mentioned his kid had graduated from college and had a job in a major metropolitan area – not one that’s known for being expensive, mind you.  The apartment building is probably in a sketchier neighborhood because he mentioned it was gated.  The rent?  $1,700 a month.  For a fresh college grad and his spouse.

How many ants to fill an apartment?  Ten ants.

Ouch!  They’re probably not saving a lot of money, fresh college grads, at that level.  Is it any wonder that the birth rate for folks who contribute to the economy is down?  Who has money to have a baby when you have to cough up $1,700 a month, before utilities, to live in a neighborhood that requires walls and gates to be safe?  I guess that’s where the vodka comes in . . . vodka:  overriding good judgement in child bearing since 1405.

The impact of rent has been bad, but housing prices have done the youth of our country no favor, either.  It has long been my thought that people shouldn’t make themselves poor by buying a house, and, yet, they do, with the exception of Joe Biden, who has made buying the White House pretty lucrative.

Not my meme, but you can tell it’s classy by the “FF” in “PROFFIT”.  At least he’s doing well in this economy . . . 

It seems like the market is rigged to extract the maximum amount of money out of the people consuming housing, especially when compared with the 1950s when a single manufacturing income could afford a decent home for a family.  I can’t imagine a rent of $1,700 as a new college grad – that’s more than I’m paying right now on my existing mortgage.  I know that $1,700 sounds like Heaven to those of you living on the coasts, but this is a mid-tier southwestern town.

Houses have gotten worse.  In August, the average asking price in the United States was $445,000.   Due to inflation and interest rates, the average price that a purchaser could afford was $356,000.  This is an obvious recipe for deflation in housing prices in any other economy.  But in 2023?

How do Millennials fireproof their home?  By never owning one.

And, yet, there’s a housing shortage.  How could that be?

Could it be that millions and millions of people have hopped the border since 2000?  The minimum is 6,300,000 since Biden became Resident.  Minimum.  It’s likely that the number is much higher, and it’s nearly certain that tens of millions of illegals have poured across the border since 2000.  Want cheap housing?  You’re competing against people who often don’t pay taxes, live many families to a dwelling, and, when finally given the opportunity, will vote far Left to elect people who want us to eat the bugs and live in the pods.

In any previous world, we have the makings of an economic catastrophe:

  • Unlimited labor,
  • Massive cash printing,
  • Mass illegal immigration into crowded cities,
  • Bidens,
  • Housing shortages, and
  • Skyrocketing food prices.

What’s happening is that the things that are required to live, food and shelter, are becoming very, very expensive.  The blame is mainly left at the feet of the United States’ government and the Federal Reserve Bank®, but there’s more to go around.  McDonald’s© is selling a Big Mac® meal around Modern Mayberry for about $9.  That’s ludicrous for what you get in both quality and quantity, but that’s what it costs.  On the East Coast, it’s $16.  Here at the locally owned butcher shop, a very, very good ribeye from a local cow is $12.95 a pound.  Take your pick:  meat® on a bun™ or juicy, delicious steak?

YMMV, but for me that’s an easy choice.

My doctor suggested I eat at Burger King®.  I know, technically, he said, “no more McDonald’s®”, but I know what he meant.

But what about McDonald’s©?  Surely they must be having a McAwful™ day to have to raise prices that high.  Nah.  Their stock price is doing fine and they’re making lots of money – they beat the profit that Wall Street thought they were going to make.  McDonald’s® isn’t hit by inflation – they can just (at least until now) make everyone else pay.  That probably won’t last, but it sure is miserable for many now.

To summarize, the things that are required to live are going up.  The misery created by the current bad set of choices by bankers and elected officials is real, and getting worse by the day.  So, tonight, let’s put all of our worries aside and enjoy a television show about a bunch of hot people who are rich and successful!

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, Violence Is On The Menu

“I don’t like violence, Tom. I’m a businessman.” – The Godfather

People say violence is never an option, but when I’m in a room with a Kardashian, well, let’s just say it’s option number one.

  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 6

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 – New Achievement Unlocked:  Acceptable Violence – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Are We At War? Revisited – 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 nearly 820 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

New Achievement Unlocked:  Violence Acceptable

One of the hallmarks of the countdown to Civil War 2.0 has always been:  Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.  We’ve debated about where to put it, but it’s been there since the very start of the countdown/index.  This month a Constant Reader sent me a link to American Partisan where the article discussed exactly that (LINK).

When a high government official formerly in charge of extrajudicial executions calls for the extrajudicial execution of an elected official to a national body, you might live in a banana republic.

  • 31% of Trump supporters and 24% of Biden supporters indicated that democracy is no longer viable.
  • 41% of Biden supporters and 38% of Trump supporters thought it was acceptable to use violence to stop their opponents.

Yes, I know that technically we’re not a democracy anyway because the Founding Fathers felt that was little more than mob rule, but it looks like a huge chunk of people are flat done with the idea of voting with ballots and are ready to start voting with fists, clubs, and bullets.

Except against women.  Or people who identify as women.  Or Leftists. But I repeat myself.  

This, sadly, is something that many have expected as the government loses the legitimacy that it enjoyed during most of the history of the country, with only 16% (according to Pew®) trusting the government to do way is right most of the time.

As I’ve mentioned before, some of the best advice I’ve ever heard about divorce was, “If you don’t want a divorce, don’t talk about one.”  Here, large numbers of the population are currently contemplating divorce, and contemplating not using a lawyer to get what they want, since 41% of Trump supporters and 30% of Biden supporters are in favor of secession based on political lines.

Although there is a flaw in the Leftist strategy.

Even when I started this blog, that seemed unlikely.  Although the maps show Red states and Blue states, the reality is that in 2016, many of them were purple – a roughly equal mixture of both.

Now we see that people really are moving from one state to another for purely political reasons.  If you’re on the Right, why live in a state that will criminalize you because you own guns?  If you’re on the Left, why live in a state that won’t let you kill all the babies you want to kill?

Violence and Censorship Update

Hillary Clinton, that bastion of common sense and moderation, noted this month that people who supported Donald Trump need to be “formally deprogrammed”.  If you think the Left is up for a truce and to forgive, that would be a mistake.

Proving that a Leftist is as loyal as a scorpion, well, read the note below.

But, good news for her!  She can update her Tinder® profile.

In a further example that we are at an 8. on the steps to Civil War 2.0 (list above, more story below) Portland has stopped trying to look good for a date, and is now at the stage that they’re eating frosting straight from the plastic container with a spoon.  The cops have given up.

The EU wants Elon Musk to censor comments on X®.  The only problem?  Like taking a woman to a restaurant, the want Elon to figure what they want him to censor without telling him.

Regardless of how you feel about, well, anyone, the First Amendment exists.  Except for certain subjects as the former governor of Mumbai points out below:

And Ron’s not far behind:

Lastly, Canadians seem to enjoy a few freedoms.  At least today:

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again.  Looks like Biden is going for the record.  Who says he never gets anything done?  I hear he was even on hand to thank one of his financial supporters.

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 is up again, again slightly – I was expecting more during a long, hot summer.  I’m guessing that people don’t even notice it anymore.  Think San Fran will be paying for cops anytime soon?

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, up.  I expect December to be a time when this starts to head upward, significantly, because, bears.

Economic:

Economic numbers are swinging back down again this month, and a bit more in October – I expected more.  Well, we’ll see.  Maybe there will be a miracle?

Illegal Aliens:

The biggest number, ever, in the history of the country, an unending flood.  Read Enoch Powell’s speech.

Are We At War? Revisited

Last month’s Weather Report topic was a simple question:  Are we at war?  The reason for this is that a Constant Reader said I was obviously stoned, because the war was obviously already going.

Another Constant Reader responded to this response as noted above that I was stoned for thinking we were closer to war than they did, and I thought it was a more than fair assertion that deserved a response:  “Not 8.  Not anywhere close to that.”

Well, as to point 6., where people are avoiding the other side, this is an ongoing process I noted that began years ago.  I have several friends that have specifically decided to move away from Leftist hotbeds for exactly that reason.  My own brother, John Wilder, is currently behind enemy lines in the Reddest area of a very blue state.  He’ll be moving before too long to a very, very Red State where he is no longer considered to be an extremist.

He does, however, have a great lawn.

Next, to point 7.  If anyone doesn’t think that organized violence is occurring regularly, they need to revisit their news sources.  Cities, even in Red States, are being run not by cops, not by commissions, and not by mayors.  Those cities are being run by district attorneys that are not prosecuting criminals and are sanctioning the violence.  It’s bad enough that it’s normalized – the group protests, riots, and mob thefts that are occurring with the tacit approval of the “justice” system takes us to an 8.  Reminder, this Civil War won’t have masses of armed troops to inflict the damage, especially at the start.

To get from 8. to 10. could happen in as little as two weeks – imagine another blatantly stolen election in 2024 . . . that might be the spark.  As shown in the first story, polls indicate that a growing number of people no longer want peace at all costs, and the peace that flows from the barrel of a gun would be quite acceptable.

It’s odd when the Muppet® doesn’t have the silliest hair.

Are we at an 8.?  I think so.  It doesn’t get to a 10. until the Right starts to fight back.  I do appreciate the feedback, since this is a work in progress, and it also nudges me to explain what the heck my reasoning is.  YMMV.

The fact that two readers with valid points make the opposite argument makes me think I’m close to the right answer.  We are very, very near.

LINKS

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

BAD GUYS

https://twitter.com/i/status/1718365747414761547

https://twitter.com/i/status/1720452778508595253

https://twitter.com/i/status/1718594209450480043

https://twitter.com/i/status/1719551215858798957

https://twitter.com/i/status/1715239983911452861

https://twitter.com/i/status/1715236903853691077

https://twitter.com/i/status/1714199598871228535

GOOD GUY?

https://twitter.com/i/status/1716945256804200575

ONE GUY

https://twitter.com/UR_Ninja/status/1716227124275626374

BODY COUNT

https://citizenfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/biden-state-illegals.jpg

https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_9d841124-7449-11ee-af4a-af115ad29337.html

https://twitter.com/i/status/1707919466154082771

https://twitter.com/Jeanne2999432/status/1719039832633041054?t=Nd5Phexy5Xh6W1OcG6-yIw&s=19

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/axis.JPG?itok=tZ4zVVGS
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/texas/article-12663663/Venezuelas-worst-gangsters-criminals-cross-border-carrying-orders-dictator-Maduro.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12699675/US-border-China-migrants-caravan.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12666301/Migrants-NYC-costing-taxpayer-5BN.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12484069/US-deaths-mortality-richest-countries.html

https://tnc.news/2023/10/26/assisted-suicide-in-canada-2022-1/

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4289645-bring-back-the-draft-a-divisive-battle-may-loom-over-any-major-war/

VOTE COUNT

https://citizenfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/emerald-fraud.jpeg

http://onlyinbridgeport.com/wordpress/watch-video-captures-gomes-supporters-absentee-ballot-dumping/

https://thefederalist.com/2023/10/05/10-ways-democrats-are-already-rigging-the-2024-election/

https://www.emerald.tv/p/georgias-election-officials-are-getting

https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fthefederalist.com%2F2023%2F10%2F31%2Franked-choice-voting-is-the-monster-under-the-bed-of-american-elections%2F

https://thefga.org/research/ranked-choice-voting-partisan-plot-to-disrupt-elections/

CIVIL WAR

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12589871/mexico-cartel-texas-invasion-border-war-todd-bensman.html

https://www.newsweek.com/democrat-civil-war-reaching-boiling-point-1840367

https://news.yahoo.com/large-portion-americans-doubt-democracy-160659069.html

https://jonathanturley.org/2023/10/23/americas-crisis-of-faith-new-poll-reveals-more-americans-are-rejecting-the-constitution-and-embracing-violence/

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2023-10-12/civil-war-5-4-3-2

https://www.governing.com/context/what-would-a-national-divorce-look-like

Forgiveness: It’s Not Just For Breakfast Anymore

“But when you forgive, you love.” – Into the Wild

Dogs go to Heaven, cats go to Purrgatory.

Each and every person has been wronged.  Everyone, but the degree differs for everyone.  Me?  I have approximately three people on my “you’re so morally repugnant that I wouldn’t set them on fire if I were peeing on them” category.  Or did I get that wrong.  Whatever.  In my entire life, only three people.  I’m pretty sure two will drop off the list fairly soon, but it really takes a lot to get on that list.

But at least one of those people I’m fairly certain hasn’t thought of me in a few years.  Yet, for a while I would wake up in the middle of the night and be angry at how I’d been wronged.  There’s nothing worse than being mad an awake at 3 A.M., with the possible exception of having to watch Amy Schumer pretend to do comedy.

So, what did I do?

I let it go, for several reasons.  First, I’ve seen that karma is real and doesn’t have a sense of humor.  Almost everyone who has wronged me in the past has come to great difficulties that my attorney advises me to tell you that I had nothing to do with, and that, besides, I was out of town that weekend.

The Irish gunslinger killed five people with one shot.  His name?  Rick O’Shea.

I have to learn to get past my old grievances.  It’s not for them, you see, it’s for me.  That grief that the person caused me is done.  Heck, they might not even know that they caused it in the first place.  In most cases, the people who wrong us don’t care about us, at all.  It’s less than personal.

In general, when I share your problems, it helps me.

Grievances don’t count.

Grievances aren’t one of those problems.  I don’t know about you, but when a person is constantly bringing me down about things that happened years ago, the evil John Wilder that lives in my head often screams, “LET IT GO!  Who is this complaining helping?”

I’m giving up drinking for a month.  Oops, wrong punctuation.  I’m giving up.  Drinking for a month.

Generally, no one.  Yes, when a wound is raw, it’s fair to have others share the burden.  But after a while, complaining about it makes it easy to stay stuck in the pain.

That’s why I try to not complain.  Fix a problem?  Yes.  Complain about something I can’t fix?  No.  Complaining makes me a victim.  Now, there’s a person who wronged me, and I put myself in the place of a helpless victim.

Tell me again how this is winning?

So, this is one I choke down and don’t share.  In reality, it helps me.  First, people don’t run away or throw themselves into woodchippers when I walk up to avoid hearing me whine.  Second, it removes the subject from my mind, and eventually removes the power over me.

If I started a zoo I’d want to have at least a panda, a grizzly, and a polar bear.  That’s my bear minimum.

The Mrs. and I have talked about the power of forgiveness.  The last time we talked, I was on the favor of, “Nah, they don’t deserve it.”  The Mrs. was relatively constant, however, and I’ve rethought it.  Forgiveness isn’t for them, it’s for me.

The rationale for this is simple:  every time that I think of a tool who wronged me, it results in me being angry.  Who is the only person who should create that emotion?  Me.

Yes, there are times I enjoy being angry.  It’s like taking a shower in chocolate syrup, sure it’s fun once in a while, but I wouldn’t want to make a habit of it, mainly because of the yeast.  But once in a while?

Sure.

Never be angry at lazy people.  It’s not like they did anything.

I have, in the last month, consciously let myself get angry because it felt good.  But forgiveness allows me to get angry when I want to, and not every second of every day and be the emotional puppet of some other person, or worse, some event.

Yeah.  An event.  To be clear, if I stub my toe in the dark of night on the couch while going to get more vodka some water, does the couch care?

No.  The couch doesn’t care.  Events don’t care – they just are.  Being mad at events is has a similar impact to being mad at Tuesday.  Just like that damn, lazy couch, Tuesday doesn’t care.  It just is.  Being mad at something in the past is understandable, but it doesn’t make any sense.

I can be mad about (spins wheel) the Franco-Prussian War, but, well, why?  If I am mad at a situation the way to review it is to understand if I can change it or not.  If I can’t change it, it’s merely a fact, like Tuesday or those damn raisins that keep existing no matter how much I hate their wrinkly expressions taunting me in my dreams.

According to an online survey, 0% of people are Amish.

If there’s a lesson from the past event, I pick it up.  If there’s something I decide I need to change, I change.  If I wouldn’t do anything different, well, what then?

Being upset or angry is okay, but I’ve learned I have to let it go or it’ll eat me up inside, wreck my sleep, and make a situation I’m obviously not happy about worse.

I’ll leave vengeance on people that wronged me to the Manager, since He does that far better than I ever could.  If it’s a situation or event and there’s nothing I can do, I have to let the Manager take care of that, too.  I mean, that’s why He has a job, right?

Don’t avoid difficulty in your life, but don’t take negative situations or people that you can’t control and turn them into situations or people that control you, since I’m officially telling you that you don’t have to pee on them if they’re on fire, I mean, firemen don’t even do that.

Enthusiasm or Passion? Choose Passion.

“In fact, it had been observed by some, that the Hobbits’ only passion was food; a rather unfair observation as we have also developed a keen interest in the brewing of ales.” – Fellowship of the Ring

Why don’t they teach sailors how to swim?  So they will defend the ship with more enthusiasm.

I hate enthusiasm.  I really do.

Enthusiasm is motivational posters.  Enthusiasm is a group of cheerleaders chanting out “H-U-S-T-L-E, hustle, hustle for victory!” when the football team is down by 25 points in the fourth quarter.  It’s pretending to be excited in a job interview.

Enthusiasm has always been a bit (as the kids today would say) cringe to me.  It really does make the skin crawl on my spine when I think about the mindless enthusiasm that I see in the world.

Why?

Because it’s generally fake.  It’s not based in any sort of reality – it’s a series of mindless platitudes that don’t mean anything or show any true or real commitment.  Enthusiasm is what I see from political candidates when they’re at their most smarmy and useless.  Oh, wait, that’s every day for them.

Like I said, I hate enthusiasm.

But I love passion.

Cattle don’t cheer, but I heard that they give encowregment.

Passion is real, it’s deep, and it’s not at all afraid of Truth.  Passion is the part of you that keeps you playing in that football game when you’re down by 25 points in the fourth quarter.  Passion is the fire inside of you.

When I was in high school, every year the wrestling coach would have a parents’ meeting at the start of the season.  As a part of the meeting, he’d have a demonstration match between two of his wrestlers.  I was lucky enough to appear in the two of those matches, one held my junior year and one held my senior year.  I think he did it to get the parents excited about the season.

In my junior year, I was wrestling a senior that was stronger and better than me – my only claim to fame was that I outweighed him by 15 or so pounds.  When we started the match, he slipped on a throw and ended up on his back – I got the takedown plus two back points before he reversed me.  He won the match 5-4.

It was the best I ever wrestled against him.

I’ve never met The Rock, but I heard he was shy.  I guess I would have expected him to be a Little Boulder.

The next year I was the senior wrestling a junior who outweighed me by about 35 pounds.  Right before the match, he said to me, “Wilder, please don’t pin me in front of everyone.”

My response?  “Jimmy, if I can pin you, I will.  This is wrestling.”

There was, in my mind, no half-measure in a wrestling match.  To go easy on someone stepping out on to the mat would, in my mind, then and now, be cheating.  I was passionate about wrestling, and the mat was sacred to me – you’re out there just you and another man, going toe to toe, and every second you spend on the mat in a real match you give it everything you have.

That, in my mind, is passion, though you might just say, “Wilder’s just a tool” and you wouldn’t be wrong.  But to not pin Jimmy if I could, well, that would be cheating the sport.  It wasn’t personal, it was the simple principle that every time, every single time I went on the mat it was deadly serious to me – I gave every single bit of myself.  To do less than I could?  That would be a lie.

I asked for no quarter, and I gave no quarter.  Jimmy was still my friend afterwards,

I bought a tie for my dog to wear on our walks.  He looks sharp when he does his business.

I think passion is like that.  It’s a drive from the core of your being – it’s not about trying to be something, it’s who you are.  Passion alone is an amazing thing, and allows peak performance.

The other variable is talent.  Just by my body’s geometry I’m unsuited to some sports.  Long distance running?  Probably not with these short Viking legs and long Norse torso.  Lifting very heavy things?

That’s more like it.

Talent is also unfairly distributed.  I’ve seen people who have zero talent for something throw their entire lives, passionately into an activity.  Ma Wilder was passionate about art.  And, I still have some of the landscapes she did as oil paintings.  When it came to landscapes, she had a gift.

But when it came to people?  Ma was Modern Museum of Bad Art bad at drawing people.

The one on the right looks like the clues I get in Pictionary®.

Add talent to passion?

That’s where “world class” comes in to existence, because passion is the only thing that can keep a man driving himself to his limit day after day.  The best concert violinists practice more than the average ones, not less.  Their talent plus passion is what creates that world class performance.  Talent alone?  You get a collection of people that all fall into the “could have been” category, gifted people who didn’t have the passion to turn that gift into world class performance.

Working hard, day after day, year after year, is what it takes to be great at anything.  Raw talent isn’t enough.

Fake enthusiasm?  No thanks.  It’s time to get passionate and angry about something.

Me?  I’m starting with raisins.  Man, they piss me off.

IQ, Lies, and National Wealth

“Now there’s a fine choice for intelligent offspring.” – Star Trek, TOS

Is it just me, or does Biden’s only expression convey, “Now why did I walk into this room again?”

I once was in a meeting with one of my son’s clubs. One of the kids came over, “You know, John Wilder, I am very smart.” The kid was a junior in high school. “Really, Zeke? That’s great! Are you planning on going to college?”

“Yes, I think I might want to teach history,” Zeke replied.

“Wonderful! How did you do on the ACT?” I asked. The ACT is a test that measures both a student’s preparedness for college as well as the ability of their parents to pay for the test. I’ve heard a rumor that colleges like money.

Zeke told me his score, and I tossed it into the Internet. The nice thing about the Internet is that it has lots of data related to testing and IQ. Pretty quickly, I correlated Zeke’s ACT score with his IQ. This isn’t a perfect correlation, but it’s close enough.

Zeke’s IQ was (within a margin of error) about 85 according to his ACT scores. Is this correlation perfectly accurate? No. But it’s probably close enough and I didn’t think his parents would be happy if I kidnapped him and forced him to take an actual IQ test.

I once got a C on a Roman numeral test.

An IQ of 85 isn’t horrible. It does, however, mean that roughly 275,000,000 people in the United States have a higher IQ than Zeke. It doesn’t make them more moral than Zeke, and it doesn’t make them better people than Zeke, but they do learn more quickly and process information much faster than Zeke. Plenty of people with an IQ of 85 have had happy, productive lives.

But people with higher IQs than Zeke can also learn concepts that Zeke simply cannot. On one website it says that people with an IQ of 85 can . . . “complete any (college) course.”

This is a lie.

No one could honestly tell me that I could sprint as fast as an NFL® receiver. Nor should they, because that would be a lie. No one could honestly tell me that if I worked really hard at it, I could grow two more inches taller.

Do taller people sleep longer in bed?

The fact is that IQ isn’t like knowledge – I can study and learn more, but I can’t increase the overall processing speed I was born with. Just as if I never ran, I’d be slower than if I practiced, I can certainly do plenty of things to degrade that information processing capacity. But just like there’s a physical limit to how fast I can run, there’s a physical limit to how fast I can think and the number of things I can hold in my mind.

That’s the thing that most people miss about IQ – it follows the same bell curve that most human attributes follow – height, speed, strength. If anyone told Zeke he was five inches taller than he was, he would have laughed. But people told him he was smart, and he believed that.

I can understand how that might seem to the compassionate thing to do – to tell someone that they’re smart. The downside of that is simple – if Zeke feels like he’s smart because everyone told him he was just as smart as anyone else, what happens when he doesn’t have the success that other people have?

Will I be successful with my glass coffin business? Remains to be seen.

He becomes resentful. He sees others succeeding because of things he can’t fathom happening around him. What, then, must be the reason that other people are successful? They must have some sort of system that is rigged against Zeke.

If it were just Zeke, it still wouldn’t be okay to have this compassionate “participation-trophy” lie. It has consequences for him.

On a societal level, however, we’re busy sending people off to college that have no real business being there. The result is a large number of people in society today who think that they have all the tools necessary to be exceptionally successful at intellectual pursuits and it’s just not so. This creates a society-wide level of bitterness. It’s especially bad when those college kids with no intellectual prospects get worthless degrees (if it ends in “studies” it’s a worthless degree) and are then saddled with huge amounts of student loan debt.

Why is it hard to fight corruption in the United States? Because he controls the FBI.

And, since intelligence is mostly heritable (as proven again and again), it’s likely that these kids like Zeke have a parent (or, less likely, parents) that are also not as bright. Identical twins have virtually identical IQs, even when growing up separately. Nature matters a lot more than nurture. One statistic I read back in the day was that student performance in verbal IQ was tied to the number of books in the home of the parents. This mattered (again, as I recall) much more than the number of minutes the parents read to their children.

Society has a very, very particular relationship with the concept of the heritability of intelligence so much so that this is a huge hot button issue. Certain incentives in our current system encourage mothers of lesser intelligence to have even more not-so-bright babies. This is, of course, as featured in the documentary movie Idiocracy. Since this idea has such significant implications, not the least of which is the fate of nations: smart nations do better than, um, less bright ones. Here’s the data:

I’ve heard that talking to yourself is a sign of intelligence – at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

The data is from the book IQ and the Wealth of Nations, so it dates back to before they year 2000, as far as I can tell. That really shouldn’t matter much, since the relationship is so strong. Smarter countries are richer – a lot richer.

We’re entering a period of time where resources will be far more constrained than at any point in my lifetime. We’re entering a time where we will have no choice but to stop lying to ourselves about IQ and its impact.

And when I die, I do want my ashes put into a participation trophy. I think I’ve urned it.