John – Page 50 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Economic End Of Europe

“I don’t get history. If I wanted to know what happened in Europe a long time ago, I’d watch Game of Thrones.” – Community

Why do communist governments always fail? They cease the means of production.

(Memes today are mostly as-found.)

The handling of the war in Ukraine will go down as a historic blunder, rivaled by only a few events in history:

Archduke Franz Ferdinand deciding to go cruising down the road in his ragtop,
Socrates, who in his last words said, “I drank what??” (thanks, Real Genius), and
The forming of the band U2®.

The Western World had already been rocked by the response to COVID-19. The economic shenanigans required to keep the economy on life support had been bad enough. The entire debt-based currency system had been lurching back and forth more than Hillary Clinton after quality time with a bottle of gin and her “Madame President” scrapbook.

And bad things are going around in Switzerland, as we’ll see below. And big trouble may lie ahead for Great Britain:

In truth, the recovery from the Great Recession hadn’t created any real structural changes. The primary mechanism for preventing utter economic collapse was printing bucketloads of cash and shoving it into the faces of the banks so that they didn’t fail in a catastrophic and sequential fashion. It isn’t the only time that irresponsible decision-making was rewarded with buckets of greenbacks, but let’s not dwell on Hunter Biden.

Where are we now?

Europe is facing an energy drought – one that (unless Russian gas shipments are resumed fairly quickly) will result in lowered economic output. How bad? Some have said, “Great Depression bad.” The precursors of this can be seen in the cracks we see developing economically:

If the Pope commanded the cash be transferred electronically, would that have been a PayPal® order?

Now, one thing I do know: religions are really, really good about keeping their eye on their cash. I wonder if there was some reason that the Pope was wanting this financial move? Was it because he like making Papal airplanes? Or, was it because someone had tipped him off?

Why can’t the Pope be cremated? He’s still alive.

People are betting that Credit Suisse® to fail. They’re also betting that Deutsche Bank™ will fail. Why? When banks lend money to people that can’t pay it back, well, unless the Federal Reserve© comes around to stuff the banks full of cash, they fail.

So, COVID-19 hits, governments around the world print cash, but nothing is physically broken. We can (sort of) pretend that the world is fine, and whistle through the graveyard and hope that we can squeak out another year of wild naked greased PEZ® parties, elephant rides, and pantyhose for everyone.

Then, Ukraine. As I’ve said before, with a sane president capable of making good decisions, this would have been solved with a few phone calls, some Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and maybe a few coupons for 50%-off shrimp at Red Lobster™. Nope. Biden escalated all of it.

And, again, maybe (probably not, but maybe) in a world with an economy that had underlying actual strength, Biden could have pushed it just like he did and not cratered the entire economy of the West.

But he did. And now the consequences cannot be avoided. Interest rates are shooting up.

How high?

Oh, surely we aren’t in a real estate bubble.

Oops. But at least the international community isn’t panicking.

Oh, they are? Well, at least Biden hasn’t sold off our energy reserves in a naked bid to influence the 2022 election.

Oh, he did? Well, at least Biden has a good understanding of how energy markets work, and how supply and demand sets prices.

Oh. Well, I guess that’s really scary. Thankfully, no one is messing around with the fundamentals of reality.

Huh. I guess my dog just quit.

Well, at least The Mrs. and I had a serious talk about the bedroom.

All foolishness aside, if Europe has an energy drought that lasts three years or more (one of the latest estimates I’ve seen) the results will be as devastating as a war. Economies need jobs to produce wealth so people can have wild naked greased PEZ® parties, elephant rides, and pantyhose for everyone.

And, despite the magical thinking of some people on the Left, free anything (not just healthcare) isn’t free. Someone, somewhere, has to work for it to pay for it, otherwise it’s slavery. Which, I think, is fine for Leftists, because they never imagine themselves the slaves.

But I have faith, faith that the Swiss will save us.

The Swiss have a long and proud history. This history goes back to at least 1307, or so the legend goes, to William Tell (the guy who shot the apple resting on his kid’s head). In fact, William Tell and his son were in a bowling league, but the records of what team they were on are now lost to us. We will never know for whom the Tells bowled.

Deception: The Media Is Soaking In It

“Theatricality and deception are powerful weapons, Alfred. It’s a good start.” – Batman Begins

Thankfully he wasn’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition.

I’m certain that few had any idea of how the Internet would change the world. Oh, sure, some did. In one of the zillion versions of Ender’s Game (or the never ending stream of sequels) Orson Scott Card wrote about the Internet, in the 1980s, I think. In his version, people could make carefully reasoned arguments and other people would listen to them and be swayed.

Ha! Instead we have Twitter® with its 280 character limit, and meme warfare.

I actually don’t mind meme warfare being the place where ideas are injected into society, primarily because the Right memes pretty well, and the Left can’t meme at all.

That is, of course, what the Left is worried about. When the Internet began to gain popularity in the mid-1990s, it was a Wild West. It was first created, page by page, by people who were passionate about something. The programming was easy, and the hardest thing was to get noticed, since the search engines and directories were rudimentary. I used at least three, depending on what I was searching for, because one was good for technical stuff, one was good for “normie” stuff, and the last one, as I recall, wasn’t good for much at all.

On the Internet, you can be whatever you want to be, so why do so many people pick “stupid”?

Then came the Media®. At first, they didn’t really know how to use it, so they’d just put their written stuff out there, since video would swamp most dial-up connections. But everyone knew it was going to be big, which is why AOL© merged with Time-Warner™ even though all AOL® presented was just a single way to get to the Internet.

But the problem for the Media™ and .GOV was that the Internet had shattered their ability to carefully script a single narrative. It had also destroyed their ability to memory hole or gloss over big stories. Now those passionate people could chronicle entire events that the .GOV would rather you forget, or, better yet, never even know about. The carefully crafted defamation of everyone who believed in something outside of the Approved Narrative as a Conspiracy Theorist began to crumble.

People say it’s a small world, but I know I certainly wouldn’t want to paint it. And in that small world where communication had drastically lowered the time for information to come out, and also made it harder for the information to be erased. The Genie of information, once out of the bottle, couldn’t be put back in.

Does anyone know what an ink blot test is? I Googled® it, but only found pictures of my parents yelling at me.

The Wild West continued. Google® had a corporate slogan of Don’t be Evil® and Amazon™ would sell most any book that was it was legal to sell. And the established Media© and .GOV still had no real understanding of how to control what people see and hear and remember. The Internet was built to be decentralized, and hard to control.

I think, from what I see so far that the strategy has been to do at least five things:

Throw Lots of Content Out

Oddly, even though the major news sources keep firing journalists, they keep making more stuff. What kind of stuff? Clickbait, really. Stories with little informational content, stories about celebrities, top 10 lists of best/worst/etc. (fill in the blank). These aren’t news – they’re entertainment. Heck, one browser I have on my phone has (it looks like) computer-generated compilations of posts from Reddit®. The idea is to distract. And if the algorithm is good enough, heck, maybe that person will forget what they were looking for in the first place.

Marginalize and Trivialize

This is one that’s carried on from the past. If I had written a post about MK-Ultra (where the CIA essentially acted like the worst possible mixture of Jeffrey Dahmer and the DMV) in the 1960s, it would have been dismissed as a “conspiracy theory” at best. The idea isn’t to contradict, it’s to hit the person making the accusation with personal attacks, and make it sound like they’re a nutcase. And when the facts come out? Minimize them – make them sound unimportant, “Oh, that tear gas we used at Waco? Well it may be flammable, but only in super-high concentrations. We won the war. Go back to sleep.”

So, Alex Jones was right again, eh?

Control Discussion

How many people that you interact with are . . . real?

I’ve recently gotten robocalls that are very sophisticated, so much so that they nearly get through the uncanny valley of sounding right. But what if the sound wasn’t an issue? In a Twitter® comment it isn’t. It is known that a significant percentage of Twitter® users are bots – programmed to interact. Why would anyone go to that level of trouble? Because they want to sell you something – an ideology, a candidate, or PEZ™. They’re also useful to make it seem like there’s a consensus.

People are wired as pack animals, and generally want to be a part of the group, to not be left out. Plus, a group of bots can drown out viewpoints and ideas and bury them in a sea of text. On a related note, how many conversations are taking place on the Internet that are nothing more than one bot talking to another?

Control Access

Most people come to this website either directly or from other blogs. The web search traffic I get is amazingly low – most days less than 3% of my traffic. That’s new. I used to get more traffic from search engines (20%+) but after July or so of 2020, Google™ shut the valve, and traffic dropped. Likewise, I know that this site is banned by corporations. Why? Maybe my ideas are considered to be . . . dangerous.

A related question is this: just how many website hits does Google® really have? I searched for Civil War Weather Report and noted I wasn’t on the first page. I jumped ahead to page 18. If you’ll note, on an earlier page, Google© claims that there are 34,800,000 results. But when you get to page 18, well, there are only 174 results. I know I’ve written nearly 40 Civil War Weather Reports. Funny that I didn’t see ‘em all in this list . . .

Note that Amazon®, which for a long time would not ban any legal book, now bans hundreds if not thousands of books merely because Amazon™ disagrees with their ideas.

Just Keep Lying

It seems to work for the FBI, Bill Clinton, and the CIA, so why not expand it to the Media®? That’s just what they do. These pictures will help illustrate the problem:

So, in the end, it has been established that the Media© wants to control you. The only remaining question so that we can put the pressure where it needs to be is this: who controls the Media™?

Unplug Yourself From Things That Drain You. And Kardashians.

Then you’ll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself. – The Matrix

Okay, it’s not great. The other one was, “What do you get when Keanu Reeves does ‘shrooms? Neo-sporin.” See, I saved you from that.

Unplug yourself.

I mean, don’t stop coming here. That would be silly, because you definitely want to associate yourself with someone who has the amazingly good hygiene and stellar good looks that I do. I mean, unplug yourself from places that make you mad.

Consciously, most of my posts, while letting you know the unvarnished Truth with a capital T* (*really, as best as I know it), are meant to poke fun at it. It might make you think about things that you really don’t want to think about. I understand. I’m still sorry about that Kardashian meme.

Honestly, dating a Kardashian would be like dating a wookie®.

Well, obviously not that sorry.

Back to the Truth.

Most people that I talk to have an Agent Smith (from The Matrix, not that pesky ATF guy who keeps asking if the stuffed dog I have is filled with Tannerite, because, let’s face it, the only thing that ATF agents love shooting more than kids is dogs) moment.

No, the Agent Smith moment I have with friends goes like this: I talk about facts. They nod. I talk about actual events. They nod. Then I bring up a premise that is inescapable: “So, we agree gravity exists.” Nod. “And I’m holding a coffee mug over a 1,000 foot (4.3 Celsius) cliff.” Nod. “And if I drop it, it will fall down, and shatter into a million pieces, and it will never be able to be put together again.”

Then Agent Smith takes over the conversation. “Well, I don’t want to think about that.” The conversation is over. There is a step that they cannot take. It’s like me trying to convince them that a constant diet of candy corn, Twinkies®, fried Snickers® bars, and drinking the fluid from a chocolate fountain that 359 kindergarteners have been putting their booger-soaked fingers into isn’t a good diet.

This is what happens when you follow the USDA food pyramid.

I recall having a conversation several years ago with a guy on the Left. “Yes, John Wilder, I agree. Massive immigration is destroying every one of the values in our country. But strawberries might be more expensive if we didn’t allow them in.”

My response was rather simple, “So, you, a guy on the Left, wants to pay people less so you can have cheaper strawberries? Wouldn’t it be simpler to pay people more, pay less than 1% of what you make in a month to pay Americans enough to give you strawberries?”

Agent Smith took over his mind. “Umm, well, I don’t understand those things very well.”

I took him to the ledge, but he refused to look over.

But, hey, he saved $0.35 this week.

That’s the Truth. And, I assure you, the Truth is your friend.

What is Truth? Step on a scale. Look down. The number is the Truth. Try to pick up a weight. If you can, you can. That is Truth. The Iron never lies. The scale never lies.

I was working with a person who noted I had lost some weight. He asked me, “How can I lose weight?”

My response was simple: “Weigh yourself. Every day. The scale doesn’t lie.”

The look on his face was amazing. I think he wanted me to tell him, “Believe in aliens, bigfoot (bigfeet?) and the Loch Ness Monster, drink seven shots of Hershey’s® chocolate syrup ever night, and you’ll lose 27 pounds a week.” When I told him to weigh himself, his face fell.

He didn’t want the Truth. And I didn’t follow up with, “By the way, I also rarely eat between Saturday night and Friday,” because that would bake the gourd of most people. They don’t want to know that losing weight sucks, that it requires amazing work and walking into the house at night after work and telling The Mrs., “No dinner for me, I’m fasting.”

I’ve been doing this whole Intermittent Fasting thing. Bums me out. I did it at least nine times today.

People want pretty lies. Yet, the healthiest thing for them is the Truth. Just before I started writing this, Frequent Commenter Ricky emailed me a story that said that, per FDA guidelines, water could not be labeled as, “healthy”. So, enjoy all the Gatorade®, Pepsi™, and Coca-Slop© that you want. It doesn’t have fat in it, so, according to bad science dating back to before I was born, it’s better for you than water.

Nope, the Truth sucks. People are awful. Bad guys win – a lot. People get old. And then they die. All of us die. And, the FDA lies. But, most of you come here regularly. Can you handle the Truth? Yup, you can. And you seek it. I think most of you understand that.

But there is a group of people who are trying to demoralize you. The easiest way to win a battle, per George S. Patton, Jr., is to make the enemy afraid of you. Yet, they wouldn’t have to do any of this if they had won.

They haven’t won. They are desperate to win, yet you and I remain, stubborn, like islands in the middle of a hurricane. We live. We persist. And we will win. That’s what scares them the most.

Why am I so stubborn? I’m not telling you.

So, when you see something that makes you feel like all is lost, remember, that’s them whispering in your ear. The want you to think that you can’t win, even though everything that is right, beautiful, and True is on your side. When you see this sort of demoralization?

Turn it off.

Don’t go back. Not because you’re afraid of opposing viewpoints, but because you refuse to have your emotions manipulated. Never, ever, let Agent Smith inside. Seek the Truth. It’s there. Unless it’s a Kardashian that isn’t hairy.

That’s a lie.

Flirtin’ With Disaster, And By Disaster, I Mean Nuclear War

“A four-alarm fire in Downtown Moscow clears way for a glorious new tractor factory, And, on the lighter side of the news, Hundreds of Capitalists are Soon to Perish in Shuttle Disaster.” – Airplane II: The Sequel

Hillary tried to sell her soul to the devil to be elected president, but the devil declined, “Can’t do it, you don’t have any collateral.”

The big story in the news is the hurricane about to hit Florida. If it were about to hit Detroit or Baltimore, it might add a few billion in value to those cities, but alas, it looks like it might create damage beyond anything ever seen by man – it might muss Tom Brady’s hair. It also reminded me that I’m hungry, since I accidentally typed “burricane” twice before I got it right – my mind must be on burritos. Or maybe it’s prophecy – that a hurricane-sized burrito will hit Tampa?

That’s (the hurricane, not the burrito) the story in the news, however, I think the much bigger story is buried. Or it was buried.

Russia makes most of its money by shipping natural gas, oil, fertilizer, and wheat out to the world. It imports tracksuits, cell phones, and gold chains. As I’ve covered before, what Russia imports is silly, but what it exports is crucial. The cheapest way, by far, to export oil is in the hair of a Russian or Italian. But they don’t do so well at moving natural gas, so people build big holes called pipelines.

Really, that’s all a pipeline is. It’s a hole. As tempting as it is, I’m not going to make a Kamala Harris joke. And you can bury it like they do most places, you can put it on stilts like they did in Alaska, or you can even have it under the sea.

I hear that part of the ocean is haunted, so Germany might be getting super-natural gas.

As the Europeans have come under more political pressure to stop adding CO₂ to the atmosphere, they’ve moved away from coal. They’d like to move to entirely renewable energy sources, but last I heard those only exist in sufficient supply to power a technological civilization in the dreams that Greta Thunberg had in the womb as her mother engaged in one too many vodkas while riding rollercoasters on sleeping pills.

No, in 2022 Europe is powered by fossil fuels. Sure, there are some renewables, and the French built a lot of nuclear power plants. But the desire for power has increased exponentially to keep up with civilizational growth. Concentrated energy is also a multiplier, it allows a person or a company or a nation to do far more. With natural gas, a German factory can build all the Volkswagens® and bratwurst and lederhosen that the world needs. Without it? The production is (if they’re lucky) one percent of the powered production.

Time zones are confusing. It’s September 28 in Europe, September 29 in Australia, and 1953 in Moscow.

Russia was the biggest single supplier of natural gas to Europe, providing 45% of the needs. Nord Stream© was one such pipeline, and it took the route of going on the seabed from Russia to Germany. Why? One reason was that it avoided having to pay Poland, Ukraine, and other Eastern European countries that never visit this blog for “transit rights” through those countries. For example, if Russia wanted to send gas through Ukraine (natural gas, not sarin) then Russia would have to pay Ukraine for the right to do so.

They say they saw Bubbles in the water after the explosion . . .

As such, the Poles and the Ukrainians hated Nord Stream®. But, it was successful. And the Germans loved it. Besides Austrians in the 1930s, what can all Germans agree on? That they like the Nord Stream© and Nord Stream II ™ projects. It lowers the price of energy for them, and makes it less likely that they’ll be held hostage by the Poles (hint, the Poles are still a bit miffed at the Germans and the Russians). The Ukrainians hated it most of all, since it looked like those projects alone would end up costing them over $4 billion dollars a year in transit fees, and it also lowers their political power to hold Russia hostage at the expense of European countries.

And some people have paid dearly for that . . . .

That brings us close to today. The United States has always opposed any of the Nord Stream projects. Why? First, if Europe is divided, the United States has one less group to be concerned with on the world stage. Almost as bad as a united Europe is Germany and Russia on good terms. Combine Germany’s economic powerhouse with Russia’s raw materials? That’s a threat that gives the State Department bad dreams.

Wasn’t she in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest?

This probably explains 90% of what went on in Ukraine, and the other 10% involves Hunter. Could Biden have de-escalated the conflict? With one phone call, yes. But it’s going now, and there reaches a point where even I’m concerned – and that’s the crippling (it can be fixed, but how bad is the damage?) of Nord Stream™ I and Nord Stream® II.

My dad can fix it. He’s got the ultimate set of repair tools.

Why would the United States do that? Well, the biggest reason (that I can think of) is that it makes it so that Germany can’t back out of the sanctions when winter gets cold and prices start to be amazingly high and there just happens to be this nice, big straw filled with natural gas that they could suck on all day to be warm.

Note: this is supposed to be a satire account.

How do we know that people knew this was going to happen? Well, there are reports the CIA told Germany an attack was imminent. And there’s this little matter of the British pound collapsing right before the incident. And, there’s the little matter that an explosive was found next to the original Nord Stream© not too long after Russia took Crimea back in 2014. The detonation wire was cut, so whoever was getting ready to blow up the pipe had changed their mind (cough) Obama (cough). The fact that this happened even before we know the results of the Russian referendum?

Do you think the Ukrainians would meet this result with Jeb!ulation?

Do I think that Germans will freeze to death? Probably not many. They may clear-cut forests, they may shut down industry for February and March, and they might make it against the law to heat your house in any way other than having a chubby girl in corduroy pants rub her thighs together as a space heater. On an economic scale, Frequent Commenter Ricky noted, it might devastate Germany’s economy even more than 9/11 did ours.

But now they can’t pick up the phone and call Putin and say, “We miss heat. Er, you. Please turn it back on. Here are rubles.” That option is gone, and that’s why I’m certain that it wasn’t the Russians who did this: why destroy your best bargaining chip? And, no, it’s not shoddy Russian construction – the companies that made the pipe and built the line are the best in the world, not Yuri’s Pipeline By Mail Company.

Even the Polish know the score . . .

And I thought it was Joe Biden, not For Bidden.

So the United States did it. Biden even told us that he was going to do it. I’m not sure he remembers he did it, but he did. It’s even on video, and he looks rather lucid (for Biden) during the speech.

The thing that scares me is this: if I were Russia, I’d take this as a rules expansion pack: undersea pipelines are now fair game. And the ones that feed Europe from Norway are mighty vulnerable. This, more than anything, just ups the level of tension and ensures that what started as a property dispute keeps escalating. And escalating. And escalating.

In Minecraft, of course.

And one thing I learned from Tom Clancy movies?

Hmm. Good advice. I’ll even add this bit:

Frequent Commenter Ricky also noted that I get to be the first person to make fun of the next stage in escalation toward a nuclear war. So, I’ve got that going for me.

Life Lessons From George S. Patton, Jr.

“Do you think it would cause a complete breakdown of discipline if a lowly lieutenant kissed a starship captain on the bridge of his ship?” – Star Trek, TOS

If Peter Sellers fought for Patton, would he have driven a pink panzer?

I have been a long-time fan of General George S. Patton, Jr. It started when I was a kid, and my history teacher even ordered a few extra Patton films for the World War II section of U.S. history because he knew I was a Patton fan. Probably the biggest accolade that he could have was from the Germans who he fought, one of whom said simply, “He is your best.”

For whatever reason, though, I had never read The Patton Papers 1940-1945. On a whim a week or so ago, I ordered a copy, and I cracked it open at lunch the day it arrived before I headed back to work. I’m not sure I’ve ever enjoyed a book more. I’m not sure The Mrs. feels the same way, since when I’m reading it, about every five minutes I’ll come up with a snippet to read to her. She keeps saying, “Thanks, but no tanks.”

The book itself is a compilation of diary entries, letters Patton wrote, and orders he gave in the period from 1940-1945. To have the ability to read through those are amazing, even when he just writes about the mundane aspects of his life or his son having trouble in math at school. I didn’t start at the beginning, I just picked it up and started reading at a more-or-less random spot, which coincided with his taking command of American troops in North Africa. And then I couldn’t put it down.

While many passages have resonated with me, I decided to write about one in particular today. It consists of his instructions that were provided to his officers prior to launching Operation Husky, where he and Montgomery launched a naval invasion of Sicily. Spoiler alert: he did pretty well. This is one passage I’ll make sure to share with Pugsley and The Boy because there is so much truth not only in a military sense, but in life to what Patton wrote on June 5, 1943.

Stuff in italics is Patton’s (from page 261 and page 262). My comments are in plain text.

Discipline is based on pride in the profession of arms, on meticulous attention to details, and on mutual respect and confidence. Discipline must be a habit so ingrained that it is stronger than the excitement of battle or the fear of death.

Discipline can only be obtained when all officers are imbued with the sense of their lawful obligation to their men and to their country that they cannot tolerate negligence. Officers who fail to correct errors or praise excellence are valueless in peace and dangerous misfits in war.

Discipline starts with a single individual. In my case, it doesn’t come from without, it must come from within. Getting up on time. Paying the bills. Having a sense of purpose in life. It has been my observation that people will do what you want when you’re looking if they fear punishment. If they are being judged, they might do it when others are around. When it becomes a value, however, they do it every time, all the time, even when no one is looking, and even when no one will ever know.

Officers must assert themselves by example and by voice.

People watch. And people listen. Letting things slide never creates excellence.

There is no approved solution to any tactical situation.

There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change. It is: “To so use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum of time.”

Obviously, war isn’t a game, but the lesson for life outside of attacking Sicily in 1943 still exists. And it’s not to use Claymores (FRONT TOWARD ENEMY) and a mortar barrage to open a business meeting. But I have been involved in business and life situations where time was of the essence, and being polite just had to go out the window.

Never attack [enemy] strength, [but rather his weakness] . . .

You can never be too strong. Get every man and gun you can secure provided it does not delay your attack . . .

Casualties vary directly with the time you are exposed t effective fire . . . Rapidity of attack shortens the time of exposure . . .

If you cannot see the enemy, and you seldom can, shoot at the place he is most likely to be . . .

Our mortars and our artillery are superb weapons when they are firing. When silent, they are junk – see that they fire!

One thread that runs through Patton’s writing and actions is his devotion to attacking. Defending wasn’t something that he was interested in. In life, I think that attitude is required. It’s easy to give up, it’s easy to fall into the trap that there’s nothing more to do, nothing more to gain. It’s similar to having all A’s on my eighth-grade report card and deciding to coast on that for the rest of my life.

Potential can only be realized if we push ourselves, and we can only push on the attack. So, attack life like a poodle going after a pork chop, up to the very last breath.

Never take counsel of your fears. The enemy is more worried than you are. Numerical superiority, while useful, is not vital to successful offensive action. The fact that you are attacking induces the enemy to believe that you are stronger than he is . . .

A good solution applied with vigor now is better than a perfect solution ten minutes later . . .

IN CASE OF DOUBT, ATTACK . . .

Again, attack. But the additional thought is added: don’t listen to your fears. Fear is something that will paralyze even a strong man. And from my experience, the best way to get over fears and avoid the paralysis that comes with them is to take action. What action? Any action that leads you toward your goal. Even the smallest action often sets off a cascade of following actions that lead to . . . success.

Mine fields, while dangerous, are not impassable. They are far less of a hazard than artillery concentrations . . .

Speed and ruthless violence on the beaches is vital. There must be no hesitation in debarking. To linger on the beach is fatal.

We are going to run into problems. Some of them huge. Some of them of our own making. The idea is to push through. The Mrs. and I watched a kid on the local wrestling team that was just awful in terms of skills, experience, and well, brains. But, he’d get it in his head that he could win, and he would go out and win some very, very unlikely matches. Why? He didn’t hesitate. He jumped on the chances he made.

I’ll probably have a few more of these as I go through the book. And, as much fun as it is to read, I’m going to take my time to enjoy it. I’d best show a little bit of discipline . . . Patton might be watching.

Yes, Your Leftist Friends Are Mentally Ill. You’re Not. Share This Post With Them To Trigger Them.

“Snap out of it! You’re Krusty the Clown! One of Look Magazine’s Hundred Most Promising Clowns of 1958!” – The Simpsons

I told Pugsley that Aristotle taught us that, “We are what we repeatedly do.” So I told him I was his mother.

A Dutch dude named Erasmus of Rotterdam (who died in 1536) made a famous quote that I’m sure you’re all familiar with, namely, “In regione caecorum rex est luscus.” Presumably, Erasmus said this before he died. I was going to follow this up with a joke about the Dutch, but then I looked at my site statistics, and found that the Netherlands is number 5 on the countries that come to visit here at Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise.

So, my conclusion is this: people of the Netherlands are amazing people who have impeccable taste in fine writing and I’d be glad to give them all a free bikini wax, but I’m pretty sure that they’re so tall, blonde, disciplined and perfectly proportioned that they’ve trained their bodies to not grow hair where they don’t want it. Go Netherlands!

I’m pretty sure they have flying cars in the Netherlands now.

Anyway, what Erasmus was saying was originally in Latin, but Latin isn’t a dead language – it’s still Roman around. My initial translation was, “Near the gas station in the skanky part of town, never pick up women after 3am.” These are wise words, but what Erasmus really meant was, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

That’s one of those phrases that sounds really cool. In fact, I imagined being able to see in a country full of blind people. I mean, the only actor that would be able to play Batman would be Christian Braille. And, using my crazy superpower of sight, I’d be able to break into their houses at night and steal all of their PEZ®.

But that’s not the way it would work.

I would probably try to explain to them that I could see – a sense that they didn’t have at all. The concept of photons and colors and would sound crazy to them. In fact, they’d probably think I was crazy and come at night while I was sleeping and give me blanket parties or worse until I shut up or left.

In the modern world, it’s similar, but it’s what’s commonly referred to as “Clown World” where everything is inverted. Things that are beautiful are corrupted, and people are expected to applaud the bravery inherent in people reveling in the corruption. I’ll let Stonetoss lead the introduction of the topic at hand.

If you’re not familiar with what Stonetoss is writing about, there is a “teacher” in Canada who decided, apparently, to wear comically large and obscene fake breasts to shop class. How do we know they’re obscene? YouTube® banned them.

But, yet, these Z-cups are allowed because a “teacher” showed up to work wearing them, and the school board is apparently afraid to confront the dude. When a parent tried to bring the subject up, the local school board shut down the meeting rather than confront the amazing amounts of silicone (or foam rubber??) being paraded in their classrooms. In fact, they say it’s illegal to criticize the “teacher”.

In my assessment of the situation, there are two possibilities. The first is that the “teacher” is so mentally insane that allowing him to dress like this is similar to allowing him to claim that he’s made of string cheese and now has a mouse phobia. That’s the first possibility.

The second is that the “teacher” is gaming the system and seeing how far he can push things so he can get mental disability payments and not have to show up to work, or not be graded based on his job performance. I actually consider this more likely, but, hey, it’s 2022 so he just might be bonkers.

This was actually the plot to a South Park® episode where a teacher became more aggressively, explicitly gay in front of his students in an attempt (I recall) to get fired. Instead, the people celebrated his inappropriate behavior because of his bravery. So, yeah. Blame Canada. I’m sure that this is what the Canadian troops were thinking about when they hit the beach at D-Day, the freedom for shop teachers to don Z-cup fake breasts.

Women are, oddly, not at all good with this. Not all women, of course. I use The Mrs. as a sounding board for this sort of insanity, and she (more or less) notes that it’s offensive for (at least some) actual women to see men parading around pretending to be women. But Canada says it’s okay. And companies will ban you for “hate” if you dare to not say that this is completely normal.

In 2022, it’s now accepted that teachers indoctrinated in Leftist institutions should be allowed free access to your children. And there’s nothing bad that can come of that. Because teachers have shown themselves to be so stable.

The problem really does start with Leftism. I know I drone on and on about this, but it’s true. Leftism is a mental illness rooted in victimhood. How can I prove this? THEY TELL US THIS WHENEVER THEY CAN. It’s worse than being stuck in a room filled with vegans who do Crossfit®.

I sometimes think it’s a competition on how many mental illnesses that they can have, like they all want to be the Georgy Zhukov of mental illness and be the (she/they/them/it) with the most medals.

Part of the idea is that Leftists are incapable of harboring thoughts that are counter to their programming. Scott Adams found this out and after this cartoon strip, he was canceled from 77 newspapers.

Here are a few examples of why.

Yup. Martha’s Vineyard. Importing millions of people across the border is amazing, right? Well, no. Not when they show up in near the beach bungalows of the rich and famous. Obama lives on Martha’s Vineyard, and his house alone could have housed every illegal alien that was transported there. But, no.

They booted all the illegals in 44 hours. Who needs a wall when you invade the territories of Leftist lawyers?

But the damage of Leftism is real. It destroys families. And it stops families from even being made.

But it leaves some really important questions to be asked.

And it makes you wonder what Biden is really after, when it turns out that “Right Wing Extremism” is actually less deadly than riding lawnmowers. Really.

Seriously, though, this isn’t the battle the Left should push, because when real Right Wing Extremism hits? Continents burn.

I guess that works for me. I’ll continue to be a Right Wing Extremist.

And if they want Clown World, that’s fine. They can soak in it.

Me? I think this next picture works better than anything they can come up with.

Erasmus would certainly agree with me. And? Go Netherlands! You guys rock!!!! (Yes, I know Ariel is Danish, but you Danes have got to get your pageviews up.)

Three Best Stocks To Own After A Nuclear Attack

“It’s not the money, it’s just all the stuff.” – The Jerk

Biden wanted to emulate North Korea’s experience for COVID – Biden liked the way Kim implemented a lockdown.

I was on hold with Tech Support working on site issues (again) when I came up with the post name. I couldn’t resist, because that’s exactly the sort of headline that I see when I flip through financial pages. Oh, sure, I could have just as easily gone with “How A Zombie Holocaust Can Help Your Portfolio”, but the nuclear attack seems a wee bit more timely.

As I’ve written before, a big part of wealth isn’t just cash. It isn’t money. Queen Elizabeth II may have had a much fancier funeral than I will, but just like Generalissimo Francisco Franco, she’s still very dead even though there are rocks worth hundreds of millions of dollars on top of her coffin. Money could buy her a lot of stuff and allow her to avoid Markle, but it couldn’t buy her one more minute on the planet than she had.

So, wealth means more than just money. And as the world seems to be shifting ever so fast under our feet, what are the true components of wealth?

I did hear about one king that was exactly 12” tall. He was a horrible king, but a good ruler.

First on my list would be having a horde of skilled fanatical barbarian soldiers that do my every bidding. That’s pretty cool. Sadly, I can’t find a wizard who’s willing to narrate things like the following every morning when I get out of bed and get ready to go to work:

“Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Conan John Wilder, destined to wear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia Modern Mayberry upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!”

That would be nice. I guess second on my list would be a wizard-bard to narrate my life, throwing in things like, “And despite having had one too many glasses of wine the night before, John Wilder bravely got up as his alarm went off, brushed his teeth, stared into his mirror, and began the noble process of finding socks to wear today.”

An illiterate wizard is useless. He can’t spell.

What would be third on my list? I mean, I’ve already got a fanatical army and a wizard-bard. Some people work a whole lifetime and don’t get either of those. At one point, I would have said “Immortal Life” but then I realized that if I lived too long, that would probably void the factory warranty. So, that’s out, unless those random calls I get on my cell phone about getting an extended warranty aren’t a scam.

But I still need to have a number three on my list. I’d say food for my fanatical barbarian army, but I think they’d be fine feeding themselves – that’s the advantage of having a barbarian horde – they make their own sauce. I guess I’ll have to live with surgically altered doubles that look and sound exactly like me. Why? If I have a fanatical barbarian army, why wouldn’t they send James Bond® after me?

I always invite Bond over to my BBQ. He’s got a license to grill.

For my fourth item, I suppose the boring thing would be to look for would be a lair hidden deep underneath a volcano suitable for launching my spaceships. The big problem is demand. First, I think Elon Musk has the market cornered. Second, if James Bond© saw what Great Britain looked like in 2022, he’d probably join up with Blofeld™ because he and Blofeld© probably share more actual British values than Britain does.

I’ll be serious – I wouldn’t turn any of those things down except the doubles. As irritating as I am, I can’t imagine what it would be like to live with multiple iterations of myself. And I can’t even imagine the number of socks that would be in the living room.

But what is real wealth outside of money?

I’m going to start with family. The Mrs., for whatever reason, is on board with my nonsense. And, as I wrote recently, we are building the people that will take us into the future. They are our children. We build them for the future, so that they can build the future. Of wealth, there is absolutely none more precious. Except the fanatical barbarian horde.

Yet, more battles are won by infantry than by adultery.

Second on the list is health. I can only buy this a little. The rest I either have due to genetics (on one side of my family, I have heard that the only thing that can kill us is gravity), or hard work. I need to spend a bit more time on the hard work. And that’s an easy way to invest in myself that has amazing dividends.

Third on the list is skills. Skills are yet another way of investing in myself. What kind of skills? The basic ones are the best – and there is depth required in some of them. If I garden, it’s not just planting a seed and then walking off to come back later and eat. Nope. There are millions of ways to kill a plant, and I know most of them. Many skills come from simply knowing how to not screw it up. So, picking the right ones is one way to get to the future.

I debated putting reputation up higher, bud decided that I’d leave it here. In the world, leadership is a way to multiply yourself. And that leadership is a function of reputation. Known as a liar and a cheat? No man will follow me or trust me. Known to be a man of my word? I can have influence far above my level of skills or health. When General Patton took over the II Corps in North Africa, he had a few weeks to turn them into a fighting force. That he was able to do so was built on skills, sure, but more than that on his reputation for having an amazing force of will.

The last thing on my list for today is a variation on the first real thing. Just as my children take me into the future, the inheritance that I got from Pa and Ma Wilder allows me to know what to send into that future. It is the inheritance of values that I speak of here.

I heard she never carried cash – who wants to carry around pictures of their ex-mother-in-law?

So, on this day, I’m certain of one thing: I’m wealthier than Queen Elizabeth. And in better shape, too. I wouldn’t trade her family for mine. I’m certain I could beat her at Uno®, so I have skills covered. Reputation, though is difficult. I mean she couldn’t hit 100 before she died, though I think she made sure Diana did.

What’s The Meaning Of Life? It’s Right Here.

“Well, that’s the end of the film. Now, here’s the meaning of life.” – The Meaning of Life

The dinosaur with the cleanest teeth is, of course, the flossiraptor.

What are we here for? It’s a big question, and one we have to ask now. Sadly, I think the answer for many people would be, “inexpensive Chinese-made throw pillows, new Marvel® movies, and the next iPhone®.”

For most of my life, it was a clear question that didn’t involve any of those things, except maybe affordable throw pillows, because they wear out so very quickly. At some point though, I figured it out. What was it? The meaning of life, or at least the abridged version. The existence of my generation, of any generation, was for two reasons:

First, to create the next generation. It’s the toughest and most fun work in the world. A family, working together, would do the best job possible at creating the best children possible.

Why do we need those children? Why do they need to be better?

The “why” is the essence of the second reason. There are more challenges, literally an infinite set of challenges, that are before us. There are more horizons for us to conquer – we may have been to the Moon, but we don’t live there. We have sent robots to Mars, but we haven’t visited. Humanity has a job, and it has always been clear to me that our job was not yet done, at least not until we have developed a reliable way to make the PEZ®/Anti-PEZ™ drive (LINK).

I was at a performance of Hamlet when there was an earthquake. It was a Shakesperience!

Both of those answers rely on optimism. I think that optimism is justly earned. Even though humans have created unimaginable horrors, they have created, time and time again, amazing wonders. As Shakespeare’s Hamlet noted:

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!

What I see today, however, isn’t the wonder of man, it’s the crisis we face with apprehension. It consists of multiple fronts.

Energy: Even though we are up against physical limits on the energy systems that we use, the idiocy of the Green Energy™ movement feels more like a mutual suicide pact. The use of energy, primarily since the Industrial Revolution has created the greatest amount of prosperity and well-being the world has ever seen. It is an absolute certainty that if the Leftists have their way, the amount of misery around the world will make World War II seem like a carnival ride. I mean, not a good carnival ride, but at least it would have Patton.

How did Patton celebrate November? He gave tanks.

Family: One of the primary reasons for civilization in the first place is that it creates the basis for making itself better, and that basis is the family. Children are not easy to raise. Any single parent working by themselves would have been my victim. It took both Pa Wilder and Ma Wilder (along with my brother, John Wilder) to make me a better person than Feral John Wilder would have become. Family is important, and you can’t make good and strong children without one.

Morality: Morality is crucial. We have moved away from the moral basics that have created Western Civilization, and inverted them. We used to celebrate the beautiful, and now celebrate the ugly. And Pride Festivals®? Pride was a sin. And it still is. Unless it involves lions.

Who are the enemies?

The Globalist Left: This is a big bunch, but they come in two flavors.

The Globalist Left – The Antifa Gang: These are people, who, generally despise themselves. They revel in ugliness, because they feel that they’re ugly inside. They look at society and hate it. They want to watch it all burn. They hate themselves, and want to make the world outside as horrifying as the world they old inside themselves. This probably describes everyone that works at CNN®.

I had dinner with a journalist, but he pulled the labels off his ketchup and mustard. He liked to keep his sauces anonymous.

The Globalist Left – The Elite: They always seem to exist. They were there at the fall of Rome, they were there when the Library of Alexandria was sacked, when Russia became a killing ground, and when China killed uncountable millions. They appear to be the parasites that are jealous of real achievement and seek to game society so that they can come to power. They also appear to gravitate to power for the sake of power, and delight in the destruction of anything as long as it brings them wealth and comfort, even if it kills the host society.

Technology: I could go on all day, but there are two that jump out – they are the two most destabilizing technologies that exist today. Technology is difficult, because now it moves so quickly, but humans don’t adapt to it very quickly at all. I mean, VCRs existed and no one ever figured out how to stop the blinking 12:00.

Technology Itself – The Pill: To a certain extent, one of the big foes of humanity right now is our state of technological advancement itself. Multiple technological advances have created stresses that have never been seen before in human history. The first of these, The Pill, was a disaster. Some of the oldest rules to make society stable were about marriage and reproduction. Why? The stability of the family structure was ripped apart by The Pill, and the divorces started not long afterward.

The most effective method of birth control I ever used was my personality.

Technology Itself – Social Media: When the printing press was originally invented, it opened a world where the knowledge of the entire history of mankind could be shared. When the Internet developed, all of that knowledge could be shared freely. Instead, the Internet has become a dopamine factory that is one of the most insidious narcissism trap in the history of humanity. What could have united us has, instead, created zombies of people who sit in restaurants staring at their phones rather than talking to each other and having authentic conversations. This has created a world with artificial closeness between people who have no connection, and artificial barriers between those who should be close.

Obviously, I could keep going. The enemies of that which is Right, True, and Good are legion. The methods they use are diverse.

I bet he gets tired in prison explaining he made more than one bomb.

If I were writing a screenplay, I’d be wondering how I write myself out of this predicament. Thankfully, the answer is that I don’t have to. Western Civilization has defeated enemies just like these for thousands of years. We have been at the breaking point again and again.

It is true, we won’t be the same after this crisis. There’s no guarantee that the crisis won’t last for decades. And I promise it really will be the most difficult thing that any of us live through. I mean, those of us that make it.

So, what are we here for? We’re here to carry the torch forward. To have wonderful children that exceed us in our capacity, because there are tough horizons, and more work to be done. We are building the people that will take us into the future. They are our children. We build them for the future, so that they can build the future, despite the obstacles and enemies of humanity.

And we’ll win.

We always have.

Demoralization? Nope. That’s How They Get Ya.

“Seriously, I don’t get it. What, you shoot luck lasers out your eyes? It’s just hard to picture. And certainly not very cinematic. I mean, luck? What coked-out, glass pipe-sucking freakshow comic book artist came up with that little chestnut? Probably a guy who can’t draw . . . .” – Deadpool 2

In calculus class, never sit with identical twins on either side of you. It’s hard to differentiate between them.

I recalled one particular wrestling match in high school when getting ready to write this post.

I was a senior, but the opponent I was to wrestle that night was undefeated. That was all I knew, since I’d never wrestled him. Late in the season, hearing your opponent was undefeated was pretty scary for any wrestler because it was an indicator that they were pretty good. While my record only had a few losses, undefeated was much, much better than “a few losses”.

As the home team, we had to move the wrestling mat from our practice room into the gym. As I helped roll up the mat, fretting a bit about my looming match, I looked down – there was a brand new quarter exposed after I moved the mat. I picked it up, and popped it into the pocket of my jeans. I didn’t give it much more thought, but I was happy at that point my name wasn’t Roy. Why? Because if anyone saw me pick it up and put it in my pants they might call me quarter Roy.

The time for the match came. The match started with an introduction, where the opponents would be announced, and run to the center of the match, shake hands, and then run back into the line. The line started with the little guys (98 pounders) and finally worked up to the big guys. I didn’t wrestle, heavyweight, but I was the next weight class down. We Wilders are a hearty folk.

We never cried, though. People would have thought the truck was headed for a breakdown.

When I shook his hands, he didn’t seem so tough. He looked, well, like a guy I could beat. My apprehension started to melt away. Besides, I had found a lucky quarter.

When I wrestled him, I did beat him, pinning him in the second period. When it was time to meet him at the District Championship, I met him in the finals. Pinned him in the first period during that match. And before the match, I could see it in his eyes – he was already defeated. He knew that I would win, and he was just hoping I wouldn’t pin him again. He knew he had no chance.

A lion would never cheat on his wife. But a Tiger Wood.

The first match was mine based on skill and strength. The second match? It was mine because he knew that I was going to win. The point of this story isn’t to tell you how utterly awesome I am – you already knew that. No, the point was to present Wilder’s Law #541:

The easiest way to win is if your opponent convinces you that you’ve already lost.

This is the game that’s being played against us today. The nonsense about the January 6 riots being a THreAt to MuH DemOcrACY is one of those. If the 81 million people who voted for Trump had wanted to take and hold the Capitol? It damn sure would be in our hands this very minute and Nancy Pelosi would be sober and asleep right now. In jail. The purpose of the Congressional inquiry and the convictions are actually a relatively brazen attempt to make you think that we’ve already lost.

I could give dozens of other examples of this behavior, and so could you. I might even post in depth on one of them on Monday, but I might change my mind.

I guess that would give me an open mind?

The point is a simple one: almost all of the power that the Left has is built on illusion, smoke and mirrors. An example of that was the power of the NKVD (later the KGB) over the average Russian. The power was this: the Russians were beaten. They were convinced that the Communist Party had one. They were stared down, and looked away.

Fortunately, this wasn’t the case in most of the Western world. Many have tried to stir up fear to create tyranny, and this is a practice that has happened again and again. Yet even as the tyranny approaches, the people of the West push it back.

The process is often ugly, it’s often bloody, and it sometimes takes not a month or a year, but decades. The Mrs. is fond of quoting the actress Audrey Hepburn, who said, “You can have everything, just not everything all at once.” There is a lot of truth in that statement – we might have freedom, and we might have prosperity, but it is now clear to me that we can’t be guaranteed both at once.

I’m expecting someone to go full Batman® soon.

And that’s fine. Heck, it’s even preferable. I love a challenge, mainly because if there isn’t a real challenge, it’s not nearly so fun. I mean, the idea of a velociraptor in a room full of kittens isn’t a lot of challenge, unless you’re one of the kittens.

Has the world been in worse shape? Certainly. Is this something we can fix? Absolutely. Will it be the toughest thing that most of us will ever do in our lives?

Without a doubt. But we have one other thing on our side.

That quarter I found when I was rolling up the mat? I still have it. I figured it was a lucky quarter. I knew that I was good, but even at 17 I knew Wilder’s Law #443: Being good is great, but being lucky is even better.

There are many things that I’m certain of, and this is one of them: we are the luckiest people, ever.

Energy: We Need Everything. Now.

“No, Jonny. It consumes them. It eats energy: sunlight, electricity, the energy in a living body. Anything it can get.” – Jonny Quest

What do you do with a dead chemist? Barium.

I remember way back in high school gym class when I was a freshman. One day we showed up in the gym and saw a roughly six-foot diameter ball in the middle of the gym floor, as if a majestic bird the size of Alec Baldwin had left an egg for us.

That was new.

Coach said, “Welcome to Push Ball. Wilder and Jones, you two are captains. Pick your teams.” Jones and I were on the football team together, so we divvied up the rest of the boys. I think the girls were doing something like advanced couch-sitting that day.

Coach followed up: “Here are the rules. No rules. If your team pushes the ball into the opposing team’s bleacher, you get a point.” Technically, that was a rule, but I decided not to argue.

Pretty quickly I divined that part of the point of Push Ball was to burn up a lot of energy on a game that was very hard to win. Probably “something, something teamwork blah blah blah”.

But then I looked at the ball. It was filled with air, not Baldwin-DNA-soaked egg yolk, so it wasn’t all that heavy. But it was way too big for any one person to grab.

It wasn’t entirely smooth, though. There were laces.

These laces were like those on a football, except the gap between the laces was big – big enough to slip my fingers through. I developed a plan. I told my guys, “It’s gonna get easy – we’re gonna win. When I say go, get in front of me and block.”

Alternate meme text: “When the weather tells you to dress for the 100’s.”

As we played, I concentrated on rotating the laces towards me. When they were right there about shoulder height, I slipped my fingers in the gaps between the laces, and got a good hold.

“Now!” I yelled.

With the leverage of the handhold, I could easily use the opposing team’s force to pop the ball back towards me, and up. And with the ball gone, my guys got in front and blocked. I ran, holding the absurdly large ball over my head with one hand and slammed it into the retracted bleachers causing the wood to reverberate under the mighty force, scoring the first point.

“THIS. IS. SPARTA!” I yelled. Okay, no I didn’t, it sounds way cooler to pretend that I did. And I sure as hell felt like Thor (not the fake Marvel® one) slamming his hammer and making the lightning crash. Our team really did high five.

Coach blew his whistle.

“Okay, we now have a rule. You can’t do that.”

We had a really good weightlifting facility.

Weirdly, this post is the second one about energy. In one sense, our world is like that game of push ball. We work to innovate and create breakthroughs to better use the energy we have. The number of cars are up in the country, but the miles per gallon are way up, too.

Government would love to take credit for it, but it’s really not the case. Sure the CAFE standards have led to higher mileage, but a lot of that is due to innovation that occurred outside of those standards. When I read that the Trans Am® in Smokey and the Bandit only produced 200 horsepower, I realized that most of the cars I own have more power under the hood, and get better mileage. I always wanted a car with a T-top like the Trans Am™ in high school, so my dates could have had more legroom.

I was considerate that way.

We have become more efficient at using energy, and that’s great. But we find more uses for energy, too. If I lived in the same house today in 1977, right now there would be zero power usage outside of the fridge and the freezer. As it is, I’m watching a silly movie on a huge television while I type on a laptop with alarm clocks that don’t tick from springs winding down. I’m happy for that, because if the alarm clock would go tic-tic-tic all night, it would keep The Mrs. awake and she’d want to toc.

Is my house using a lot of energy? No, but there are a lot more devices in a home today using energy passively, like charging cell phones and security systems and “always on” televisions and computers and garage door openers on low power mode.

I drove up to my garage and saw someone had painted a “3” on it. I thought, “That’s odd.”

Even industry is more efficient, generally, at using energy. Modern manufacturing plants are expert at using what would have been waste heat in all sorts of ways to save energy, which in turn saves money. I mean, don’t be an engineer if you’re not so hot in thermodynamics.

But at the base of all modern industry, energy is crucial. It is the ultimate leverage. One analyst noted that $20 billion in Russian natural gas was used by Germany to create $2 trillion in economic output. That’s stuff made. It’s amazing leverage – $1 in natural gas was the basis for creating $100 worth of added value. Germany would like to start a war, but the rule is that it’s three Reichs, and you’re out.

Energy is that important. And energy usage isn’t a linear progression – it has been exponential. The problem is that energy usage is growing nearly exponentially. If you look at any short-term graphs, it doesn’t quite show it, but here’s one that puts it in perspective. I got it at Our World in Data (LINK) and it’s reused by CC (LINK).

If Ebola grew as fast as the world energy consumption, it would be called Hyperbola.

I think this one graph alone should be tattooed backward on the head of every Leftist who says BuT MUh ALtERnaTivE EneRgy. Eliminate oil, coal, and natural gas, and you have a world that, roughly, has as much energy as 1920.

The world population right now is 7.97 billion people. In 1920, the population was closer to 1.9 billion, which is roughly the number of people on a typical airplane nowadays. In 1920 electricity was only in 35% of homes. In the United States. Most people in the world in 1920 had no electrical power usage at all, heated their homes with firewood or coal, and only saw electrical lights at the picture show. Also, they were, sadly, almost sixty years too early to see Smokey and the Bandit.

Let’s go back to Germany (not the 1920 version) but today. Just $20 billion in natural gas costs $2 trillion in value added. Population is growing exponentially. Energy use is growing exponentially. We’re setting ridiculous ideas that we’ll be all-electric by 2030 by changing rules to limit innovation and declare winners. It’s like Coach not allowing innovation in Push Ball, but this time with real-world consequences.

But those electric cars. They’re powered by . . . what, exactly? Seriously, look at the chart. What? Nuclear we haven’t built? Solar which is so small it can’t be seen? Hydropower which is in decline because it can’t be built? Wind? I can’t see wind outside, and I also can barely see it on the chart.

Looks like the Green Energy Plan is free of charge.

Anyone, and I mean anyone who is not realizing that the Leftist energy pipe dream won’t lead to the greatest suffering that mankind has ever seen, even more than anything Global Warming® could ever cause, even more than both of the World Wars, combined, is deluded.

We need more innovation in energy, and we need it now, because the exponentials in energy use and population require investment to keep ahead of the game. Exponentials are funny that way, you have to be like Alice’s Red Queen and run faster and faster just to stay in place.

The Leftists that want to bring it all down? They deserve to be put into a Push Ball filled with Alec Baldwin’s DNA-soaked yolk.