John – Page 56 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Wilder’s Principle Of Greatest Amusement

“Get old, you can’t even cuss someone and have it bother ’em. Everything you do is either worthless or sadly amusing.” – Bubba Ho-Tep

Hunter wanted to start a new delivery service, but Instagram® was already taken.

I’ve stumbled on a principle that I think is currently guiding the flow of history. Being a very humble person, I have named this Wilder’s Principle of Greatest Amusement. Put simply, it’s the idea that if there are two more or less equal outcomes, the most amusing outcome will happen. It’s like instead of being dead or alive, Schrödinger’s Cat had a choice of being a polar bear or nuclear warhead.

Amusing, in this context, doesn’t necessarily mean good. It doesn’t mean beneficial. The late, great comedian Norm Macdonald (PBUH, who I’m sure was part of the branch of the MacWilder side of the family) put it this way, “The job of a comedian is to make comedy. Comedy is when something unexpected happens. So, what’s funnier than a comedian that tells a joke and the audience doesn’t laugh?”

Norm’s joke.

I think, for reasons to be explained below, that we are in a time in history where the most amusing thing that could happen, will happen. And I have evidence. And not the burn a body at a funeral home it’s a cremation, but burn a body at home all of a sudden it’s “destroying evidence” sort of evidence. Nope, most every story is one you’ll be familiar with.

The Trump Election in 2016 was my first clue. I’m fairly sure that Trump thought he was going to lose on election night, but after the polls closed? Amusing as can be. Hillary’s mental breakdown and gin-infused refusal to admit that no one would announce her as “Her Cankleness” at the United Nations?

Amusing.

Also amusing was COVID. Remember the pictures of people collapsing on the street in China? Yeah. People fell for that. In the end, it became a meme. Again, I’m not saying it was positive, but how amusing would it have been if people had said, “Oh, it’s a really bad flu.” Heck, there are still people who so mRNA addicted that they get the Pfizer® shot into their eyes every other week.

Why did Hunter sniff artificial sweetener? He thought it was Diet Coke®.

Amusing. Even more amusing? If the mRNA vax didn’t actually help people and was instead an amazingly irresponsible experiment where we tested it on people before we tested it on mice. Oh, wait . . . .

Not mine.

Although I wanted Trump to be re-elected in 2020, I have to admit that the 2020 election was amusing. What happens when a bunch of well-funded Leftists and Globalists decide they want to change the rules and control information flow so a barely-living reanimated corpse of a political hack so limited in intellect that he plagiarized law school work and so limited in charisma that houseplants regularly get more attention gets close enough that they can commit (what is likely) the biggest electoral fraud in history?

And Biden is doing such a wonderful job that he’s making Jimmy Carter look like an effective and competent President, while displaying worse morals than Teddy “pants optional” Kennedy. Sad that Biden doesn’t remember any of that from day to day, and that his son Hunter doesn’t remember the years 2008-2021, and that the New York Times® doesn’t remember anything bad anyone named Biden ever did.

When NASA shows a picture of a hole at work it’s a scientific breakthrough. When I do the same thing, it’s an HR violation.

It’s certainly amusing, and probably more amusing than if Trump were in his second term. And what if that child-sniffing dementia patient picks the most vapid and, well, retarded mentally challenged person to ever sit as Vice President?

Amusing as can be. Mike Pence was boring, mostly. Kamala Harris regularly shows that her knowledge of foreign policy came through watching game shows and infomercials. Sham-wow®!

If Kamala was amusing, the withdrawal from Afghanistan was even more so. To have Joe Biden state, “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a . . . .embassy in the—of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable,” less than a month before that exact thing actually happened?

Amusing.

Like salmon return to spawn in the rivers, COVID-19 laid its eggs and became the Ukraine. The Mrs. heard one young high schooler say, “Hey, COVID’s over! We have World War III!” The Ukraine became the Next Big Thing.

And then?

Elon Musk. Pretty much everything he does is amusing. Twitter® is hilarious. Beating NASA with 1/1,000^th of their budget even more. And selling electric meme cars to Leftists that now hate him?

I hear that Amber will soon be touring with Korn.

That’s amusing! He even showed up in commentary at the Johnny Depp/Amber Turd trial.

I think, maybe, that The Market Collapse of 2022 is at least partially from the Left trying to take down Musk and keep Twitter™ as the main source of Leftist indoctrination. It bothers them so much that they actually panicked enough to appoint a Ministry of Truth.

See? Amusing.

Now, just this week, I hear that “men” are lactating. And that “men” can have abortions. Oh, and did I mention the Supreme Court decision?

Yeah. Amusing.

The dead writer Robert A. Heinlein wrote about this (when he wasn’t writing about Oedipus) in his Future History. He called it the Crazy Years. The Crazy Years were just that – the years after society broke down. Heinlein didn’t write about that period much at all, mainly because it’s not a great story.

I do hear he was a savvy shopper, so they called him Bilbo Bargains.

J.R.R. Tolkien was going to do a sequel to The Lord of the Rings. He didn’t. Why? After the One Ring was chucked along with Frodo’s finger (note to self, that would be a good band name) and destroyed, things were good. The world had been saved from Evil, and anything that would be a sequel would have been dark. It would have involved (from his notes) Aragorn’s kids idolizing Orcs and slowly being seduced by a decadence that prosperity brought, eventually leading to degeneracy and corruption replacing morality and virtue.

Heyyyyyyyyyy . . . .

Most years, most decades, haven’t seen as much amusement as these last six years. We live in those dark years that neither Heinlein nor Tolkien wanted to write about because it was depressing.

That’s okay. We’re not in a story.

What we are in, though, is a history moving ever so quickly that the novelty content is ever increasing.

There is one thing that we can do, and one thing only. In the darkness of years where degeneracy and corruption replace morality and virtue, be moral. Be virtuous. Stand for what is right, even when the world flows around you and tells you that good is bad, and men can breastfeed. Be virtuous, especially when those around you count virtue as the greatest sin.

Why? It’s right. And it’s not at all what they’re expecting.

I guess that makes it amusing, right?

The Funniest Post About Jevons’ Paradox You’ll Ever Read.

“But seen from out here everything seems different. Time bends. Space is boundless: it squashes a man’s ego. I feel lonely, that’s about it. Tell me, though, does man, that marvel of the universe, that glorious paradox who sent me to the stars, still make war against his brother?” – Planet of the Apes

I heard she prefers to be called “aoc” because she doesn’t like capitalism.

In 1865, when Joe Biden was barely sniffing at his first hair, English economist William Jevons noticed something: that Biden’s behavior was really inappropriate. Besides that, Jevons also noticed that innovations that made coal more efficient to use led not to lower uses of coal, but to the use of more coal. This became known as Jevons’ Paradox.

When you think about it, this makes a huge amount of sense. If electricity cost 10 times as much as it does today, we’d use less of it, and The Mrs. would probably (reluctantly) turn the air conditioning up from 62°F to 64°F (23 to 52 megaparsecs/joule-furlong) in summer. To make it clear: The Mrs. likes it colder in the house than a college faculty lounge when someone mentions personal responsibility.

The more expensive or more inefficient something is, the less it is used, which probably explains why they keep Kamala Harris in a Tupperware® container when they’re not trotting her out to somehow make even less sense than Hunter Biden after a three-week coke, hooker, and greasy cheeseburger binge.

That’s weird, because I was always under the impression Kamala was the cheap resource. Who knew?

Hunter Biden on drugs: “Cocaine use? I have to draw a line somewhere.”

I was conversing back and forth about various and sundry things with Eaton Rapids Joe (you can find him HERE) on email since he decided to experiment on the tensile strength of his bones (they rarely break in compression) in a kinetic environment and is as mobile as a Ford Pinto™. That made him bored enough to drop yours truly a line. As the conversation progressed, I thought of good old Jevons.

The truth is that we swim in a pool of Jevons. You might want to soap up when you get out. Seriously, though, we normally adapt our work to use cheap (the non-Kamala kind of cheap) resources.

Here’s an example: back when I went to college, computing processor and memory time was expensive. The CPU was the pivot point. In my programming class, students were actually given an account that charged them per Pelosi-second of processing time.

Last night Pelosi was so drunk she took the train home, which was weird, because it was the first time she ever drove a train.

A Pelosi-second is the amount of time required for Nancy’s liver to absorb a bottle of vodka given to her by a Ukrainian lobbyist, so it’s pretty fast. Just like in Joe Biden’s brain, memory was rare and expensive, too. But when the cost of memory went down, we ended up using more of it.

Nowadays, because of Jevons’ Paradox, we find that computing processor power and memory are cheap. There are two pictures, three Polaroids® and six daguerreotypes of me growing up. I have more pictures of Pugsley’s first birthday cake.

One result of this is that computer code is no longer (really) optimized. Because CPU and memory is cheap, industry has decided that they can be sloppy programmers. If we have overflow in the 32GB of RAM, well, we can reboot once a month. Unless you’re in a Boeing®. Oops.

Sorry if those jokes were boeing.

That’s computer stuff. What other things have Jevons’ Paradox impacted?

Energy.

Food.

Money.

“Holy cow, John Wilder,” you’re saying, “that’s nearly as important as the Johnny Depp-Amber Heard trial!” Let’s start with . . .

Energy.

Yup. And in energy, especially, the Paradox has been our friend. What energy does is, essentially, provide us with amazing amounts of prosperity. It moves important stuff like fidget spinners from China to Stately Wilder Mansion for pennies. It moves less important stuff like life-saving medicine and PEZ® for unimaginably small amounts of cash.

Ubiquitous energy has made the world small. It has made huge efforts, like moving Bill Gates’ ego from place to place, inexpensive. But as we see Russian energy cut off, and Biden doing his best to make the United States energy inefficient, perhaps so the only source of energy would be AOC’s thighs rubbing together.

Is the Hooters® home delivery service called Knockers™?

Regardless, we face a future where all the inefficiency that we’ve allowed into the system due to cheap energy will have to unwind.

Next on the tour is . . .

Food.

In my early life, food has always been worth a commercial or two showing starving kids covered in flies from some hellhole where they use sharp sticks for money as well as kitchen appliances. I think it was Baltimore. Regardless, in the last decade, world hunger was solved. We had enough food so we could pave roads with Pizza Rolls® and stripe them with Hidden Valley Ranch™ dressing.

Yup. Totally solved. More than enough calories for everyone on the planet to use Oreos™ for deodorant and bathe in Coca-Cola©. Sure, sometimes people starved, but not very many, and mainly in communist hellholes where the local warlord still hasn’t gotten over his devotion to U2® and Bono comes by to make public appearances to show how much he cares. Or Baltimore.

Were people hungry?

Certainly, but they were generally fat while they were hungry. But the problem was solved.

Broccoli is a great thing to eat when you’re hungry and want to stay hungry.

In a world where Ukraine and Russia aren’t exporting grain and fertilizer, however, this changes. Sure, in the United States we can probably count on food for everyone, just expensive food. But that world hunger thing? Yeah, it’s back in play.

What’s left?

Money.

Huh? I thought we were awash in money, so much so that gasoline was more expensive than supporting the Ukraine for an afternoon? Well, no. Money is the one thing that is getting more expensive.

The reason is simple – we’ve had nearly zero percent interest since 2008. The Fed® has been shoving it down the throat of banks. Bush, Obama, Trump, and Biden have been printing it as fast as they can, since it didn’t seem to matter.

They also make cameras, the Go-Provolone®.

Until it did. And now interest rates are higher. But who needs money? The same people paying record-high prices to try to extract Energy. The same people who need to borrow cash to fertilize fields and plant seeds and harvest them.

Yup. Expensive money means less energy and less food.

Oops.

Well, there must be a bright side?

Yes, thankfully there is.

Faculty lounges all over the continent will heat on up. And maybe personal responsibility will make a reappearance. Or maybe AOC will see her shadow, but that’s scary.

That means six more weeks of communism.

5 Things Biden Has Done For Us???

“Here’s to failure!” – The Producers

When a cow runs out of milk? Udder silence.

I was flipping through my phone and an article caught my eye. In this case, it wasn’t about the story, “Woman Mistakes Menu Prices For Calories” (an Actual Story) but instead it was “5 Good Things Biden Has Done For All Of Us”.

I was a bit surprised by the title, but, hey, I could go with that. What did the author (a long-time water-carrier for the Left) have to say? It’s no surprise that nearly every adult who hasn’t had a prefrontal lobotomy or isn’t a committed Leftist (but I repeat myself) has been disappointed by Biden. And that was from a really low bar of expectation so that “speaking coherent and complete sentences and not doing anything” would have been considered a win. However, this article title was the equivalent of, “Smallpox And Native Americans, The Bright Side For The Sioux”.

I’m worried that my smallpox joke is old, and that people just won’t get it anymore.

What did they credit droolin’ Joe with? First, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill. This will add over a trillion dollars to the debt. Why should that matter? Well, the last time I checked, inflation was over 8% by the “official” numbers that likely understate it by half or more. Spending another trillion probably won’t destroy the economy that much faster than the other crap Joe’s messing up, or will it?

Sure, the roads could always use more funding, but most of what I’ve seen would benefit the large urban centers with the types of large government plans that Leftists love. I, for one, am thrilled that the government is going to fund electric charging stations and freight rail, you know, things that private companies could and should do instead of having Washington fund it.

Don’t worry, if the government makes electricity stations for cars, they’ll be free of charge.

Second, the Leftist hack had the guts to credit Biden for the economy. Yeah, I know, it was tough to type that without laughing. I won’t try to explain the tortured pretzel logic. It was similar to everything that a Leftist ever creates: a huge explanation of why something isn’t what it really is, like why babies are dangerous or murderers are really the victims.

The economy is a wreck. Even without inflation, the stock market is crashing, the jobs that are being created are awful, and we’re importing record amounts of stuff. Oh, sure, we’re exporting, but it’s mainly free stuff to the Ukraine and marketing of Hunter Biden’s valuable “services”.

I’m betting it’s like sauerkraut, smoke, and six-day old sweat.

Okay, what’s third on her list?

NATO. I’m laughing at that one. Leftists spent decades wanting to tear down NATO because it was in opposition to the place they really loved, the Soviet Union. Now that the Soviet Union is gone and Russia is the current bad guy, the Left loves NATO like Nancy Pelosi loves vodka.

I used to like NATO, but that was when we had an existential crisis brewing with the Soviet Union – it was them or us. It served its purpose and the Soviet worldview based on world domination lost. So, why do we need NATO? Oh, sure, Russia. The same Russia that’s currently spent 82 days gaining approximately six acres in the Ukraine?

Don’t get me wrong, I’m in favor of a strong defense, but I’m just not sure what NATO defends against right now. But, hey, they have 62 acres of office space in Brussels right next to some pretty cool chocolate shops and a cool gay NATO flag.

If the war keeps going like this, Russia might want to join NATO for protection against Ukraine.

Fourth on the list is child poverty. I can understand Biden’s desire to avoid child poverty, since it makes their hair brittle and not smell so appealing. On a serious note, the way he’s doing this? The way the Left does everything: pouring more money that they printed into it. The irony is that the short-term, minor reduction in poverty will be utterly dwarfed by the size of the economic destruction that the unending streams of free money cause.

The last thing on the writer’s list?

Diversity.

I could go on and on about this one, but Diversity as used by the Left means, “not a white guy who likes girls” – anything else is Diverse. I have no idea why diversity is listed as a strength, but everyone keeps saying that, which is like asking “do you walk to school or carry your lunch?” It’s nonsense packaged as being self-evident. Is there any possible way that having sex with men helps the comically named Pete Buttigieg a better Secretary of Transportation? Is there any reason that having more women in the White House is a benefit, I mean, outside of paying them 30% less?

No.

What does Diversity mean to me? A lot of different things.

The end result is this: the Left is grasping at straws – any straws. Anything and everything that Joe Biden has done has turned into failure. Not small failure, but the worst type of humiliating, debilitating failure. It’s funny when it’s just him and Hunter, but in this case we’re paying the price. On the bright side? At least Hunter has something to do . . . .

24 Random Thoughts In May

“Well, Brian, you’ve lost your bet. I, or rather my alter ego, Zac Sawyer, am currently the most popular boy at James Woods High.” – Family Guy

Pugsley wants to dress as COVID this Halloween, but I told him that doesn’t scare anyone anymore.

It’s a Friday in May, so why not some random thoughts?

Nothing worthwhile happens without discomfort. The things that I have found to be the best for me, personally, started with things that were at first glance tragedy. When times are dark, look for the lessons. They’re there. Be grateful for the difficulty – it’s how we grow. I believe it was either Jon Bon Jovi or Norman Vincent Peale that described the process of birth – I paraphrase: “You’re warm, comfortable, and life is great. Then there’s pressure. For the first time you have to use your lungs. Bright lights. For the first time in your life, you’re cold.” When it sucks, remember that something is being born. You get to determine what it is.
I like James Woods in Vampire$.
A great day at work is when you’ve been given worthwhile challenges that are just at the edge of your ability to solve, and that consumes your entire being, focus, and skill in doing them. The day ends, and it seems like mere minutes have passed. Men need challenges – they need the great game. Without that, a little bit of our soul dies. Play a game worthy of being played.
I like James Woods in Videodrome.

The Mrs. was watching TV last weekend and screamed, “Don’t go in the church, it’s a trap!” Pugsley asked me if she was watching a horror movie. “No, just our wedding video.”

Almost all of the time something makes me mad, it’s not personal. Most people don’t care about me at all. People are like cats and generally act in their own self-interest, and don’t really care who gets hurt.
I think my cat would eat me before my dog did, if it came to that. Unless I was covered in gravy, in which case the dog would be all in.
The biggest fights are over the smallest things.
Never get into a heated fight with your chiropractor. Then you’ll have to spend the rest of your life looking over your shoulder.

What’s the difference between an IRS agent and Styrofoam®? Burning Styrofoam© is bad for the environment.

I’ve done almost everything in my life that I’ve really wanted to do. The main reason I could was because I decided I would do them. Henry Ford said, “If you think you can or think you can’t, you’re right.” Henry Ford is dead, so I guess he didn’t think he could live forever. But he was right. And it’s (probably) not too late to do something amazing and important.
One thing Henry Ford didn’t succeed at was being a brothel owner – it was filled with Ford Escorts.
People only understand money within a certain range of orders of magnitude. For most people, $100 million is essentially the same as $100 billion or $10 trillion. These aren’t the same thing. But everyone understands what $7,354 is. This is more important than you might think.
I’m ashamed to admit I donated to the Taliban. I paid taxes.

I got banned from the airport the other day – apparently calling “shotgun!” when you get on the plane is bad form.

The most important economic unit is the family. Why? The family is a unit based on trust, and should be nearly independent of government oversight. That’s why the Left wants to do anything it can to distort and destroy the family. One of the first things the Left did when they took over Spain before the Spanish Civil War was to abolish marriage. This is not a new goal.
Postmen on vacation in Spain should visit Parcelona.
Passion for life and passion for a mission in life is crucial. Otherwise? It’s just one step away from being a Non-Player Character.
Would a video game where you went back in time to kill Adam be a first-person-shooter?

How does bigfoot keep in shape? Sasquats.

One of the biggest gifts is time to focus. The distractions of everyday life (including the great work in 3. above) sometimes pull away from the bigger picture. Take time to take stock.
I tried to set up a retreat for adults to give them time to focus. Perhaps “Concentration Camp” wasn’t the best name to use.
I have lived through the most prosperous period in the history of mankind. The one conclusion I can reach from that experience is prosperity alone doesn’t make people happy, and might make them a little crazy.
A crazed murderer might try to offer corpses for free, but I call that a dead giveaway.

Jokes about murderers aren’t funny unless they’re properly executed.

A study I read once said that most people, regardless of their wage, wanted to make about 10% more and they’d be happy. 10% more is a dream. Happiness, once you can pay your bills, comes from inside – I was once in debt (outside of my mortgage) by the amount of money I made in a year. I was very, very happy.
When I was in debt with a negative net worth, I told Pa Wilder that I felt worthless. He responded: “Son, don’t worry. You’re less than worthless.”
The best decisions are made in the daytime.
Maybe James Woods should only star in horror movies from directors with a last name starting with the letter ‘C’ and starting with the letter ‘V’?

Joe Biden: Tasting Your Frustration Edition

“I can taste all the flavors from the past sixty years. I can taste the Korean War.” – Bob’s Burgers

I have the memory of an elephant. I recall seeing one at a zoo once.

Yesterday, thankfully, Resident Joe Biden indicated he was really in tune with modern Americans. During a press conference, Joe stated, “I understand the frustration. I can taste it.”

Taste it. Yes. Normally, I goof on Joe about being a bit addled, but here he’s nosing in on my gig. “I can taste it.”

I wonder, what exactly frustration tastes like? Is it like the dinner I made last month when Pugsley asked, “Was it supposed to taste like this?”

I wonder if, to Joe, our frustration tastes like something exceptionally expensive. A fine Bordeaux or, say, gasoline?

Thankfully, Joe is willing to devote all of his senses to solving our problems. I wonder if Biden smells our bank accounts? Probably not, though I heard that Joe took an interest that the supply chain issues have made stores run out of Pantene® – Joe said he’d personally sniff out the situation.

What’s the difference between The Mrs. and I? When she says “sniff this” it’s usually pleasant.

Thankfully, in the very same press conference, Biden also said, “. . . inflation is our strength . . .” Yes. He said that. Pretty quickly, Nina Jankowicz (the Jerry Springer of government officials, except Jerry would kill for her jawline) got up and echoed that thought: “Inflation is our strength, and war in Ukraine is peace.”

Okay, I’m making fun of these people, but in truth, they aren’t serious people. They’re an administration that might actually think that Robert Downey, Jr., is really Iron Man® and really might come and save them after he stops the Russians in Kiev. And that’s me being charitable in my assessment.

When it comes to government, one of the Leftist talking points was that, with Biden in the White House, we’d have the “adults back in charge”. In this case that’s an apt description, but only if the adults in question are a collection of diversity hires unable to get a job where an IQ greater than room temperature (Fahrenheit, not the meter thing). Oh, and they are in favor of The Current Thing, whatever it is.

Pictured: White House security badge.

Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine dresses and calls xirself a woman. Xir also dresses like and calls xirself an Admiral.

As the assistant secretary for health, Levine told NPR that “there is no argument among medical professionals — pediatricians, pediatric endocrinologists, adolescent medicine physicians, adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, et cetera, about the value and importance of gender-affirming care.” It’s no wonder that Biden appointed a Supreme Court Justice that said she couldn’t define what a woman is. How ever did she decide what to put on her driver’s license?

So, that leads me to several options when it comes to the economy. The first idea is that we have left the equivalent of a group of dim-witted glue-eating children in a room filled with razorblades, poison ivy, cyanide, and whatever hellish creature that Australia might produce that I haven’t had a nightmare about yet. Carnivorous, poisonous koala bears that fly and have scorpion tails, perhaps?

Why did the koala drop out of the tree? It was dead.

Regardless, these idiots were saved from being Marxist perma-baristas by vote harvesting and have somehow gotten the keys to the economy. Of course, never having heard of debt, inflation, or Zimbabwe, the best idea that they had is “make everyone rich by printing more money”. Really. That’s it.

That’s the first option, actual idiocracy.

But what if this is the desired result?

Thus, the second option. The Cloward-Piven Strategy dates from the 1960s and was based around breaking the system through welfare. Cloward and Piven were two married professors that decided that since they were making money from the public for doing essentially nothing, that everyone else should be able to get a piece of that action, too. Economies aren’t based on people being productive, right?

The end idea of their strategy was bankrupting the country through increased pushing of social programs. Why do that, to help people? No, the aim was revolution in the United States. And this wouldn’t be a revolution like the French one (which was a head of its time) which proved that the French can win a war, if it’s against the French.

What’s a good way to start a revolution?

King George was only 11 inches tall – he was unfit to be a ruler.

Doing exactly what the current idiots are doing. It used to be just the commies like Cloward and Piven and their cousins Pol Pot and Stalin who wanted to change man, to make him perfectible. Now, the World Economic Forum (LINK) is on with the same old idea that’s caused so much grief over the past century and change. They have an agenda to make man a global economic cog in a machine where only one culture, one set of ideas is acceptable – in the world.

Strangely, the outcome of the “toddlers in charge” plan looks a lot like the outcome of the “Global Commie Power Grab” plan.

So, was Joe being stupid when he said “inflation is our strength” or was he just slipping and sharing the quiet part of the plan that he wasn’t supposed to say?

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report – Ministry of Truth, and Socially Coming Apart

“Remember, all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.” – The Matrix

TEN

My day was great until noon. Then I woke up.

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

I’ve kept Clock O’Doom at the same location. For now. 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 – Ministry of Truth – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Abortion and Conflict – 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 690 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Ministry of Truth

We now have a Ministry of Truth. Oh, I’m sorry – it’s the Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board. Why? Presumably because people say things the Leftists don’t agree with.

I’ve heard that calling a groomer “groomer” really makes them mad.

The leader of the board that determines what is true and what isn’t?

Nina Jankowicz.

Nina, if you’re unaware, is the poster child for insufferable Leftist blather. She is, first, a low level, stooge for the Left. Her expertise in all things disinformation allowed her to opine that Hunter Biden’s laptop was expressible only in the holy high words of the Left: Russian disinformation. Russian disinformation was, according to the legend of the Left, the only reason that St. Hillary wasn’t elected.

Sadly, this Nina has no luftballons.

Now, ordinarily I don’t mind such creatures – their trajectory is predictable – they write a book, take a position washing dogs for their political masters, and then gracelessly drift away. These sorts of political vampires are what make writing fun.

But Nina’s different. Nina wasn’t hired by the political bits of Washington, she was hired by Homeland Security. What’s the difference? The Department of Homeland Security is primarily a law enforcement agency. It’s (sort-of) okay having a reptilian partisan hack at the cabinet level, but infesting law enforcement with Leftist partisan robots is a step too far, especially when Resident Biden is talking about Ultra MAGA, or whatever the voices in his head were telling him that afternoon.

At least, though, the mask is off.

Violence And Censorship Update

It’s been fairly quiet on the political violence front, at least recently. We do have plenty of Censorship news.

Okay, this isn’t real.

For the first time ever, got some good news up first:

Twitter®. If you had a wheelbarrow, you could have made a fortune mining salt from Leftist tears. The very same Leftists that were overjoyed that they controlled Twitter® aren’t exactly thrilled by the idea that they won’t control this platform. Here’s some salt to share:

It’s even better to mine the salt from a famous person.

Twitter isn’t done censoring, though. They censored info about the FDA containing info from the FDA.

DuckDuckGo® had to counterbalance the loss of Twitter© – they decided that the only news sources they would handle would be trusted. I’m betting Nina will love that.

And never forget that having an opinion that the Left doesn’t like is punishable by violence.

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 again flat. Perhaps turning back up in May or June – Antifa® seems primed?

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it went up a little in April. Much more in June?

Economic:

I had bet the economic numbers would be worse, and I was wrong. If the stock market slide continues, though . . . .

Illegal Aliens:

This data was at record levels for this time of year. All-time record levels. Again.

Abortion and Conflict

The draft abortion decision by the Supreme Court is out. It shows a huge divide in the country. An example of the salt to be mined is here:

There were even a few words from Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

And the Federal Reserve© had a comment:

The United States is hopelessly divided. An example?

This was thought of as a negative result that would make people on the Right mad, rather than the desired result. Tinder® and all of the rest of the hook-up culture has been horrible for the people involved, especially women. I spent some time watching a YouTube® of a pro-life march at a college in some city. The pro-life folks were kind and polite, but the people on the other side of the issue were mean, angry, and wouldn’t listen, at all.

The idea of a rational discussion and debate with the Left is nearly impossible. The objectives are 100% out of sync.

The end result of all this program changing is an America that is far more divided, and a step closer to Civil War 2.0.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1509177129044488192

https://twitter.com/i/status/1502074883550892033

https://twitter.com/i/status/1510413517509255175

https://twitter.com/i/status/1520557517130153989

https://twitter.com/i/status/1510909715961679873

https://youtu.be/iykHLx65WNw

https://twitter.com/i/status/1507576908099293189

https://twitter.com/wdsu/status/1506375168058343427

https://abcnews4.com/news/local/video-gunfire-rings-out-at-little-league-game-in-north-charleston-wciv

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnEdeUbWAlg

https://twitter.com/ATLUncensored/status/1516757571570348038

https://twitter.com/OsintUpdates/status/1510581397458599936

https://www.inquirer.com/news/shooting-philadelphia-kensington-mantua-strawberry-mansion-20220415.html

Good Guys

https://www.tmz.com/2022/04/02/sucker-punch-high-school-track-runner-press-charges-lawsuit/

https://youtu.be/-qUgXFN2aLw

https://twitter.com/t0masimp8000/status/1503871472498257920

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/houston-car-dealership-employee-flips-script-on-attempted-robber-sends-him-running/ar-AAW5MYE

Two Guys

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10684433/Gun-wielding-Texas-man-shot-dead-girlfriends-ex-husband-not-face-charges.html

Body Count

https://southfront.org/from-30-to-40-ukrainian-children-disappeared-without-a-trace-in-spain/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/avian-flu-has-spread-to-27-states-sharply-driving-up-egg-prices/ar-AAWgZBQ

https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/bird-flu-27-million-birds-dead/

https://airtable.com/shrbaT4x8LG8EbvVG/tbl7xKsSUIOPAa7Mx

https://dailyexpose.uk/2022/04/08/athletes-833-serious-540-dead-post-injection/

https://palexander.substack.com/p/us-military-doctor-testifies-she?s=r

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/number-covid-patients-us-hospitals-reaches-record-low-83819273

https://www.revolver.news/2022/04/black-lives-matter-reign-of-terror/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGb748VOcYU

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/opioid-overdose-deaths-teens-skyrocketed-due-fentanyl/story?id=84035862

https://cowboystatedaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/wyo-nuke-map-1.jpg

Vote Count

THE STEAL WAS REAL – WATCH “2000 Mules” NOW: https://www.bitchute.com/embed/TizNoVq1qcwb/

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/04/29/film-2000-mules-offers-vivid-proof-of-voter-fraud/

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/dinesh-dsouzas-2000-mules-ballot-trafficking-expose-has-evidence-can-it

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/29/dishonest-pivot-heart-new-voter-fraud-conspiracy/

True The Vote: https://twitter.com/realLizUSA/status/1513585569779040262

https://uncoverdc.com/2022/04/08/true-the-vote-previously-undisclosed-details-show-rico-crimes-in-2020-election/

https://www.truethevote.org/election-integrity-testimony-in-wisconsin-on-thursday-march-24-2022/

https://www.truethevote.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/FILE_5193_no-meta.pdf

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/04/30/exclusive-true-the-votes-catherine-engelbrecht-mules-went-routes-trafficking-ballots-repeatedly-day-after-day-ahead-2020-election/

Zuck: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/washington-secrets/rigged-documentary-details-zuckerbergs-400m-vote-juicing-for-biden

https://www.hastingstribune.com/ap/agriculture/zuckerberg-helped-fund-the-2020-elections-now-republicans-seek-to-ban-future-grants/article_24dae7d5-3989-50b3-8c63-528185976ade.html

https://newrepublic.com/article/165939/election-funding-voter-suppression-zuckerberg

AZ: https://uncoverdc.com/2022/04/07/brnovich-interim-report-finds-serious-vulnerabilities-in-2020-election/

FL: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/florida-voter-registration-republicans-overtake-democrats-100000

GA: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/investigators-georgia-ballot-harvesting-probe-zero-funding-eyewitness

PA: https://uncoverdc.com/2022/04/15/pennsylvania-compelling-evidence-shows-blue-counties-scored-grants-in-2020-election/

PA: https://www.wfmz.com/news/area/lehighvalley/lehigh-county-da-likely-hundreds-of-instances-where-people-deposited-more-than-1-ballot-into/article_90b9cd12-b451-11ec-b79a-9f2106bb481b.html

USA:https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/24/poll-one-in-six-biden-voters-would-have-changed-their-vote-if-they-had-known-about-scandals-suppressed-by-media/

USA: https://www.newsmax.com/us/biden-usps-election-funding/2022/03/28/id/1063188/

USA: https://www.axios.com/2022-midterms-out-state-money-71487d18-76fd-452a-9020-d93ddf4e3106.html

Civil War

https://dnyuz.com/2022/04/03/flurry-of-new-laws-move-blue-and-red-states-further-apart/

https://aninjusticemag.com/contrary-to-popular-opinion-we-are-not-winning-this-war-196bc828bfdf

https://medium.com/politically-speaking/will-war-break-out-between-red-and-blue-states-93cac4d8c219

https://newrepublic.com/article/165959/global-age-civil-war

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-democratic-socialists-of-americas-civil-war-over-bds/

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-civil-war-for-americas-banks/

https://www.businessinsider.com/civil-war-violence-2022-midterm-elections-texas-republican-trump-2022-3

https://www.denisonforum.org/current-events/is-america-headed-toward-another-civil-war/

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FRhTPOXVIAEyVYU.jpg

Failure: The Source Of Success

“A wizard is never late, Frodo Baggins. Nor is he early. He arrives precisely when he means to.” – The Fellowship of the Ring

Next up, Schrödinger’s Hot Pocket®, which is both ice cold and lava hot at the same time.

In my life, I have been bad at a lot of things. I’m still bad at most of them, but there are a few things that I’m good at. The way I got good at them started with being willing to experiment. By experimenting, I learned a lot of different ways to fail, just like the programmer that got turned down by the waitress – he had an error in connecting to the server.

When I failed, I learned how I failed. I then stopped doing those things. But experimenting always has the possibility of failure.

I’ve taken my sons through the same process – I’ve told them many times, “You can figure it out.” Before he left for college, I taught The Boy how to cook steak. I thought about teaching him how to make meringue, but I know the Australians hate it – they usually boo meringue.

I hope this joke doesn’t come back at me.

It’s not a lot for a legacy, but he grills steak like a demigod now. He’s so popular that his college roommates pitched in and bought him a charcoal grill. The Boy told me he grilled a chicken the other night for two hours, but the chicken still wouldn’t tell The Boy why he crossed the road.

How do you learn to cook well?

The same way that you learn anything – by experimenting, failing, and eventually getting it right.

Once you get it right? Then you can exploit the knowledge.

A group of researchers looked at just this pattern. The title of their article says it all: Understanding the onset of hot streaks across artistic, cultural, and scientific careers. You can find it here (LINK).

Related: blind Martians are now known as “brailleins”.

What are hot streaks? In my experience, it is when a person has exactly the right skills and is in exactly the right place. The authors of the article indicate that those skills come from prior experimentation. That is what I’ve observed in my life, too.

One example the authors use is Peter Jackson, who is most known for The Lord of the Rings trilogy and also the billionaire that looks the most like an actual hobbit®. All of Jackson’s previous work had prepared him for his streak, which in this case was The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Originally the studio wanted a product tie-in: Frodo would have connected the keys to JCPenney®, Dillards©, Macy’s™, and all the restaurants in the food court and then tie them to the One Ring. Then they’d have one ring to rule the mall.

What’s the difference between a Halfling and a Hobbit? Copyright.

The work that Jackson had done prior to this was important – it taught him all of the things necessary to make a movie, and making The Lord of the Rings was no ordinary movie, since the movies were all filmed at one time. On top of that, the movie required special effects on a scale that was unprecedented – they had to make Elijah Wood look Frodo-genic.

It was all coupled with Jackson’s fierce devotion to the source material so that the movies would be faithful to Tolkien’s vision. He even explained why the Eagles couldn’t fly the hobbits into Mordor – it turns out they were on tour.

Making the three movies cost around $300,000,000, so there was quite a bit of trust involved. Without his prior experience, no one would have given Peter Jackson the job. Without his prior experiments and his prior failures, he wouldn’t have had the ability to make the film.

But he did have that ability.

Originally Jackson wanted to make a cartoon, but the studio thought that was sketchy.

The movies collectively made nearly $3,000,000,000 (which, for scale, is what we send to the Ukraine every 45 minutes) at the box office, so investing in these films made approximately 10 times the initial investment. The movies weren’t just popular with people, they were popular at the awards, winning 17 out of 30 Oscars® and getting positive reviews and not getting slapped by Will Smith.

By nearly any measure, these are three of the best films ever made, so I’d call that a pretty good streak.

Peter Jackson must be driven, because he made hundreds of millions of dollars and still goes to work, but I’m thinking he only works on stuff he wants to work on.

That’s the power of being on a streak. The components are simple: experimentation, finding a challenge worth taking on that the experiments have prepared you for, and then exploiting those skills to take on the challenge at full speed. That’s when the streak starts – the right person is at the right place at the right time.

I started teaching my sons karate when they were young. I don’t know karate – I just enjoy kicking children.

My comment would be to keep experimenting because the experiments will provide skills. And the combination of those skills will, perhaps, lead to opportunities and places that you’d never expect.

I have learned one secret that I’ll share with you about how to make a steak taste better: eat it around a bunch of vegans.

Biden’s Economic Case For Nuclear War

“Two hundred years have passed since the nuclear war raged to an end and the computers took over what was left of the world – sealed it off from the outside – and made it perfect. Now, in the Domed City in this year 2319, living is unending joy.” – Logan’s Run

After a nuclear war in the Middle East, there will only be one country and the Persian Gulf left. Just Kuwait and sea.

When we lived in Fairbanks, my hobby in the summer was getting firewood. I was the Bubba (from Forrest Gump) of firewood: “There’s lots of ways to have birch. There’s split birch, there’s dry birch, there’s stacked birch, there’s birch that the bark fell off of, there’s birch that still has bark, there’s wet birch, there’s birch logs . . .” you get the idea. Now imagine that James Spader was saying it. That will become important later.

As such, we spent a lot of time in the (mostly Gump-free) forest. The Mrs. would generally keep an eye on the (then four-year-old) The Boy. Outside of moose and grizzly bear, the forest was safe. Oh, did I mention the wasps? Yeah. Fairbanks was infested with them. So, one day while I was knocking down trees and sawing them up, The Boy was playing near a tree.

What’s Gump’s password? 1FORREST1. (meme as found)

Then The Boy started screaming. If you noticed the clear foreshadowing, it certainly wasn’t a bear or a moose, but rather The Boy had been jumping up and down (unknowingly) on a subterranean wasp nest.

Wasps have a sense of humor. Oh, no, they don’t. They’re hatred wrapped up in spite with a side order of malice and animosity. So, they did the only thing their stupid malignant minds can comprehend: they stung The Boy. Repeatedly.

Fast forward a few months. We had abandoned all of that sweet, sweet birch that we were going to combust in order to liberate the carbon back into the atmosphere and move from Fairbanks to Houston. Ugh. In the backyard, though, a beautiful butterfly came fluttering by bouncing from flower to flower.

I could see the wonder and amazement in The Boy’s eyes as he tracked it across the backyard. He moved close.

“Be careful,” I said, “they bite!”

He ran screaming into the house, and now I had a four-year-old son that was deathly afraid of butterflies and also the problem of explaining to The Mrs. how I was really just kidding and not intentionally emotionally scarring our child.

Good times.

I sleep on a cushion made of butterfly larva. It’s a caterpillow.

“What,” you might ask, “does that story have to do with nuclear war? I can read the title, John Wilder, and I didn’t come here for twisted tales of how you made a child cry by telling him that butterflies sting.”

Well, bear with me.

What if . . . nuclear war is not so bad? What if nuclear war is Joe Biden’s cunning plan to revive our economy?

I mean, giving trillions of dollars just seemed to work for a while, and now everyone’s tired of having all that free money. Giving billions to the vaxx companies so that they could, um, prevent oops, lessen the likelihood the vaxxed got COVID oops, lessen the impact of COVID oops, make billions of dollars in profits.

The Mrs. says that Jack Daniels® keeps her healthy. She calls it Liver Cross-Fit®.

The next best idea that Biden had, besides eating crayons and attempting to have sex with his desk was just more of the “print trillions of dollars” idea. That didn’t go as well once people figured out they weren’t the ones getting the money, and they had to trade internal organs for a tank of gasoline.

Giving billions of dollars to Ukraine seemed safe, but outside of asking for more money, Zelinsky’s prime impact on the war effort in Ukraine appears to be walking around sweaty in an olive drab t-shirt while looking for escorts with Hunter Biden.

Huh. That doesn’t seem to be working.

So, how about provoking a nuclear war? I can just imagine the conversation with the cabinet . . . .

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin (SECDEF): “Are you sure, Mr. President? Don’t you think that giving Ukraine, and I quote, ‘a whole bejeebus load of guns and stuff’ might provoke the Russians?”

Vice President Kamala Harris (VP): (unintelligible giggling, possibly drunk)

Secretary of State Antony Blinken (STATE): “I’d like to remind you, Mr. President, there are a lot of Ukrainians that we’ve got left. I mean, the Russians have to run out of artillery shells at some point.”

Joseph R. Biden (BRANDON): “But, hey, man, have you thought this through? If we bomb the Russians, and they bomb us, we can (long pause) you know the thing. Build better boobies.” (waves hands while looking uncomprehendingly at imaginary people behind him)

Vice President Kamala Harris (VP): (giggling) “You said boobies! Check out this rack!” (lifts blouse)

Monica Lewinsky is 48! It seems just like yesterday that she was crawling all over the White House.

Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen (TREAS): (ignoring VP) “He has a point. Think of all the industrial activity we would get if a nuclear war hit the United States. Look at (checks notes) Japan. We nuked them twice, and look how their economy skyrocketed!”

Joseph R. Biden (BRANDON): “Yeah, man, he has a good point. Is it a good point? Who has the good point?”

Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen (TREAS): “You, sir.”

Vice President Kamala Harris (VP): (giggling) “So, it’s settled! Margaritas for everyone! This has been a long, hard day, if you know what I mean.” (winking at Yellen)

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin (SECDEF): “Sounds great! I’m in. Just one more thing to do before I call it a day!” (picks up phone to call NORAD) “Brandon has authorized Operation McChicken™, repeat, Brandon has authorized Operation McChicken©, authorization code “PEZ BRAVO JOHNNY DEPP.” (hangs up phone) “Now where’s that margarita?”

So, if it appears that that the Biden Administration is being run by people who have all of the competence of Bulgarian mall lawyers attempting to fix a seventeen-year-old copier by poking and prodding it with whatever pens and paperclips their greasy fingers can find hoping against hope that their random actions will fix whatever “ERROR 031” is?

No. The Bulgarian mall lawyers, though only dimly aware that their random actions are little more effective than hitting the machine with a hammer while chanting Sheryl Crow songs in the nude, at least were bright enough to not vote for Biden.

So, perhaps like that butterfly, nuclear war won’t be so bad? Despite how good Biden makes it sound, I’ll take my chances without having a nuclear war, thank you.

As found.

I’d love to write more, but I’m watching a movie with James Spader and it requires all of my attention because he might be Jack the Ripper.

Does A 1904 Geopolitical Theory Explain The War In Ukraine?

“I don’t recognize him, but judging by the head-to-toe denim, I say he’s either not American or deeply American. I’m thinking Ukraine or Kentucky.” – Brooklyn Nine Nine

You would think that an octopus would go to war well-armed?

When I look at the war in Ukraine and other world events, I see evidence of Sir Halford John Mackinder. It would have been cool if he was the frontman for a 1910s version of Judas Priest, but no. Mackinder was a guy who thought long and hard about mountains, deserts, oceans, steppes, and wars. You could tell Mackinder was going to be good at geography, what with that latitude. The result of all this pondering was what he called the Heartland Theory, which was the founding moment for geopolitics.

What’s geopolitics? It’s the idea that one of the biggest influencers in human history (besides being human) was the geography we inhabit. Mackinder’s first version wasn’t very helpful, since he just ended up with “Indonesia” and the rest of the world, which he called “Outdonesia”.

Mackinder focused mainly on the Eurasian continent. Flat land with no obstacles meant, in Mackinder’s mind, that the land would be eventually ruled by a single power. Jungles and swamps could be a barrier, but eventually he thought that technology would solve that. Mountains? Mountains were obstacles that stopped invasions, and allowed cultures to develop independently. Even better than a mountain?

I crossed a dog and an antenna once. I got a golden receiver.

An island.

There’s even a theory (not Mackinder’s) that the independent focus on freedom flourished in England because the local farmers weren’t (after the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Mormons, and Vikings were done pillaging) subject to invasion and were able to develop a culture based on a government with limited powers, along with rights invested in every man.

Mackinder went further, though. He saw the combination of Eurasia and Africa as something he called the World Island. If the World Island came under the domination of a single power, he thought, it would eventually rule the rest of the world – it would have overwhelming resources and population, and it would have the ability to outproduce (both economically and militarily) everything else.

“Pivot Area” is what Mackinder first called the Heartland.

Mackinder, being English, had seen the Great Game in the 1900s, which in many cases was a fight to keep Russia landlocked. The rest of Europe feared a Russia that had access to the sea.

Conversely, Russia itself was the Heartland of the Mackinder’s World Island. Russia was separated and protected on most of its borders by mountains and deserts. On the north, Russia was protected by the Arctic Ocean, which is generally more inaccessible than most of Joe Biden’s recent memories.

Russia is still essentially landlocked. The Soviet Navy had some nice submarines, but outside of that, the Russians have never been a naval power, and the times Russia attempted to make a navy have been so tragically inept that well, let me give an example:

The sea Battle of Tsushima between the Japanese and Russians in 1905 was a Japanese victory. The Japanese lost 117 dead, 583 wounded, and lost 3 torpedo boats.

But the Russian Seals did work just for the halibut.

The Russians? They lost 5,045 dead, 803 injured, 6,016 captured, 6 battleships sunk, 2 battleships captured. The Russians sank 450 ton of the Japanese Navy. The Japanese sunk 126,792 tons of the Russian fleet.

Yup. This was more lopsided than a fight between a poodle and a porkchop.

Mackinder noted that the Heartland (Russia) was built on land power. The Rimlands (or, on the map “Inner Crescent”) were built on sea power. In the end, almost all of the twentieth century was built on keeping Russia away from the ocean, and fighting over Eastern Europe.

Why?

In Mackinder’s mind, “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland (Russia); Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island; Who rules the World Island commands the World.” In one sense, it’s true.

Mackinder finally in 1943 came up with another idea, his first idea being lonely. I think he could see the way World War II was going to end, so he came up with the idea that if the United States were to team up with Western Europe, they could still command the Rimlands and contain the Soviet Union to the Heartland.

There are several reasons that the United States has responded with such an amazing amount of aid to Ukraine. $33 billion dollars? Some people don’t work a whole year and get that much money.

Crimea River? No, Crimea Peninsula.

No, the idea is to bleed Putin as deeply and completely as they can. Why? If they’re following Mackinder, this keeps Russia vulnerable. It keeps Eastern Europe from being under Russia’s control – if you count the number of “Battles of Kiev” or “Battles of Kharkov” you can see that it’s statistically more likely to rain artillery in Kiev than rain water.

This might be the major driver for Russia, too. A Russian-aligned (or at least neutral) Ukraine nicely plugs the Russian southern flank. And this is nearly the last year that Russia can make this attempt – the younger generation isn’t very big, and the older generation that built and can run all of the cool Soviet tech?

Looks like Nirvana killed the Russian sex drive?

They’re dying off. Soon all their engineers with relevant weapons manufacturing experience will be . . . dead. If Russia is going to attempt to secure the south, this is their only shot. Depending on how vulnerable the Russians think they are, the harder they’ll fight. NATO nations tossing in weapons isn’t helping the famous Russian paranoia.

I think that the United States, in getting cozy with China in the 1970s, was following along with Mackinder’s theory – I believe Mackinder himself said that a Chinese-Russian alliance could effectively control the Heartland and split the Rimland, given China’s access to the oceans.

And that’s what China is doing now, with the Belt and Road Initiative. Remember Mackinder’s World Island? Here’s a map of the countries participating in China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Never forget China’s national sport: hard labor.

Spoiler alert: It’s the world island.

Belt and Road Map: By Owennson – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

1990s Movies – Because I Said So

“Flores! Flores para los muertos!” – Quick Change

Someone said the next Bond should be a woman – imagine he car explosions and wrecks, and that’s just when she’s parking.

Movies. I grew up with them – it was where I took my girlfriend on a Friday night before we went to the pizza place and then, um, drove to look at the stars. I once took a date to go see one of those graves that have a constant natural gas torch, but it turns out that is a bad idea – you should never take a date to go see an old flame.

But more than Friday night fun, movies were our cultural mythology. As man 20,000 years ago told stories around the fire to establish and share the history of the tribe, our history was told with movies. In essence, movies and television became our campfire, our shared cultural experience. When people say that the United States has no culture, or is guilty of cultural appropriation, they’re wrong and I want to punch them. But I can’t, because I’m not Irish.

As our shared culture, however, movies have always had a huge power to change our minds. As propaganda, they changed our culture, many times not for the better. Movies were also a huge opportunity to change our culture, change our lives, nearly as much as early metallurgy – after all, those who smelt it, dealt it.

I hear when you eat aluminum, you sheet metal.

I used the term “were our mythology” intentionally. The world has changed. The ‘Rona took movies and fragmented them further. Now, to see a big movie you can still go to the theater, but streaming now allows people to focus on narrow interests. Heck, even Putin watches Nyetflix®.

At work, unless we have the same streaming service, we’re not watching the same things. Better Call Saul? I asked people sitting at a table today if they’d seen it. No one had. It’s a gem, and probably the best thing on television today. But no one else had seen it.

There went a shared conversation, a shared moment.

And, like I said, movies are fragmented and not a part of common culture. Why was no one watching the Oscars®? Because no one cares. The Academy Awards® don’t reflect anything about America anymore, since the moves . . . suck. Even as late as four or six years ago, the movies were better. Now, many are simply unwatchable mainly because many have been infected with “woke” culture.

So, for today’s post, I thought I’d go back into history, to the 1990s. Why? It’s my blog. And movies in the 1990s were far more fun than movies today.

I tried to research LGBT stuff, but I couldn’t get a straight answer.

I’ll say that I tried to pick movies that weren’t propaganda, but were, rather, just fun. So, without any further nonsense, here are my favorite movies of the 1990s, year by year. I probably missed some, but this is the list I’m going with at 1am.

The structure? My favorite movie in each year. My criteria? The one that mattered to me. So, let’s get into the time machine and hit. . .

1990:

Quick Change.

I’m a sucker for Bill Murray. I even watched him in Razor’s Edge, which made me think of Peter Venkman from Ghostbusters as a hollowed-out shell of a man after World War I. Yeah. That movie didn’t work at all. That being said? Quick Change is funny. It has monster trucks, a heist, and mistaken identity.

In a (very) distant second place is Joe Versus The Volcano. Tom Hanks wasn’t so serious, and there was a quirky fun with watching him go to work – we’ve all had that job. Would I recommend it or change channels to watch it? No. But I do remember it. Hula girls, unite.

1991:

1991 was a MUCH better year for movies. Hands down, Silence of the Lambs wins. It’s tense. It’s 100% related to the book, and Hopkins and Foster never have had better roles. Ever. This is obviously a movie that couldn’t be made today because the character that was the baddy was a mentally deranged person. You know the plot. It’s a movie that you can watch once and the writing is branded into your brain, and it’s perfectly cast, perfectly delivered.

I guess we now understand what Biden’s Assistant Secretary for Health was doing in the 1990s.

In second place is Hudson Hawk. I am, perhaps, the only person besides The Mrs. that loves this awful, awful movie. It’s campy. It’s silly. The premise? Ludicrous. Whatever. I loved the stupid movie.

1992:

Reservoir Dogs was amazing, though I didn’t see it until 1994. Wow. There are no reservoirs or dogs in the movie, but despite that, the movie is amazing. It is (perhaps) Tarantino’s best movie. The acting and pacing and tension are amazing.

As honorable mention is . . . My Cousin Vinny. I rewatched it last year with Pugsley, and it was a hoot. Perry Mason crossed with Green Acres. When a movie hinges on the cooking time of grits? Good stuff.

1993:

Army of Darkness is campy fun. Okay, it’s really like the Three Stooges meets H.P. Lovecraft. If that sounds good, watch it. If you hate either of those things? Run. Really. It’s a movie I love because it’s horribly stupid cosmic horror. It also has multiple endings, depending on the version you watch. I can’t pick which one I like best, but I don’t have to.

Honorable mention? Demolition Man. Which isn’t a great movie, but 1993 wasn’t a great year for movies. It takes place in 2032 after Political Correctness takes over the United States. It is not a good movie, but it is fun.

1994:

I would pick Pulp Fiction but I’ve already picked a Tarantino movie so instead I’ll pick Pulp Fiction. I believe this is the only movie on the list where a co-worker said, “Oh, you’re the guy from Pulp Fiction.” Which character was I compared to? The Wolf. That’s me, when I’m at my best.

Mmmm. Good coffee.

I can’t believe this movie isn’t older, but honorable mention is . . . The Crow. If you’re gonna die after one movie, this is the one. Brandon Lee did an amazing job, and the movie would have made him a star, if Alec Baldwin hadn’t been in charge of props that day.

1995:

Wow. I had a big list. 1995 had a raft of great movies. I’m going to pick a movie I hated the first time I watched it: In the Mouth of Madness. In the Mouth of Madness wasn’t what I expected, but every time I watch it, it gets better. Sam Neil in a Lovecraftian (see a pattern yet?) horror by John Carpenter? Yeah.

I have five other movies on my list from 1995. I’m going to pick 12 Monkeys. 12 Monkeys is weird. It bends reality because it involves time travel if Monty Python designed the universe. It’s not funny. It’s also the first time I saw Brad Pitt, and I definitely can’t get the charge nurse to make it yesterday.

1996:

Mystery Science Theater 3000, The Movie. That would mean something if my hands were made of metal.

Hamlet, honorable mention. Mel Gibson chews the scenery as the mad prince of Denmark. Alas, Yorick, I won’t give any spoilers, since this plot is only 400 years old.

Reminder – never go on another vacation with Sam Neil.

1997:

Event Horizon. Sam Neil. Check. Lovecraftian. Check. Yup, I’m a junkie. This is not an easy movie to watch, and the story of how they made it is hilarious – they did second unit filming on weekends when the executives weren’t watching and that’s when they filmed all the disturbing stuff. Not for kids. I mean, not for your kids. Mine are made of sterner stuff. Also, Sam Neil is known around our house as The Evil Sam Neil.

Second place? Fallen. I liked it. It’s a one-trick movie, but I enjoyed the one trick.

1998:

So, this is a tie. Vampire$, which is a great movie with guys who hunt vampires for money directed by John Carpenter and BASEketball, which is (early) South Park mixed with Airplane. It was too tough – but if I had to pick one I’d pick BASEketball because it is so very stupid.

It was losing the truck that really made them mad.

An honorable mention is: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. It’s rough, but so is the original source material. Johnny Depp captured the manic intensity of Hunter S. Thompson, but my guess is that’s what Johnny Depp is really like, 24 hours a day. Beware of bat country.

1999:

The best year on the list, easily. Bowfinger. Galaxy Quest. The Matrix (wish they made a sequel, right?). Office Space. Fight Club. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels. I’m not picking. Of these, though, I’d probably (if I had to pick one to watch tonight) pick Fight Club or Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, but that’s probably just my mood tonight.

The 1990s was a decade before The Narrative took over, and you can tell – the movies themselves were more innocent than today. We’ll look at more decades in future months – you can bet the 1980s had the best teen comedies. Better Off Dead, anyone?

So, what did I miss? Which movies from the 1990s had the biggest impact on you (assuming you’re not Johnny Depp)?