John – Page 60 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

War, You’re Soaking In It

“Fiddle-dee-dee! War, war, war, This war talk’s spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream. Besides, there isn’t going to be any war.” – Gone With the Wind

For whatever reason, French players are in “spectator only” mode.

War. It’s one way we find out the difference between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin.

The traditional way that most people think about war involves troops and uniforms and guns and bombs. That’s why people are focused on Ukraine – it seems like a time when the world might once again see something like in the old war movies. Biden is especially wanting this, because it could distract the world from the economic and cultural ruin that’s spreading in the United States. How else do you explain the free crack pipe initiative?

As I’ve noted before, the United States has spent trillions of dollars to try to make the “old” form of war obsolete. As such, don’t expect the next war to look anything like the last wars. Just like civilization, technology, and economy have evolved, so have the methods of war.

The aim of war is still the same, however: to get your enemy to do something they would otherwise be unwilling to do, like watch The View. You don’t have to use tanks or bombs to do it. This was what the old Soviet Union planned to do with the United States – subvert it from within.

The Cold War really was a war. The United States attempted to subvert the Soviet citizens through exposing them to the wonders of capitalism. Plentiful food, for starters. Blue jeans. Rock and roll. The average citizens could see that something was really, really wrong in their society. At the end, people in the Eastern Bloc walked away from their governments. In some cases, they evicted the former leadership 7.62mm at a time.

The Romanians made sure there wasn’t a next season.

The Soviet subversion of the United States was similar. Just as the United States reviewed the cultural faults of the Soviets and exploited them, the Soviets looked at the problems in the United States and tried to undermine it using those problems.

And the undermining never stopped. If you looked at the institutions under control of the Left in the 1970s, there weren’t that many. The Left controlled:

Many Colleges and Universities.
The psychological establishment.
Lots of mainstream entertainment media.
Most mainstream news media.

This was, of course, the plan. Get the Leftist foothold in academia and use it to indoctrinate the next generation. The Left didn’t control the government schools at the time, because teachers work a long time, and most of the teachers in the 1970s graduated before the colleges fell.

Hippies refused Rolaids™, the last thing they wanted was an anti-acid.

That’s why this war was based on a “long march” through the institutions. Sadly, even though the Soviet Union dissolved, their plan was still in motion. Now, the following are mostly under the control of the Left:

The K-12 educational system.
Most Protestant religious organizations.
Most Catholic organizations.
The American Medical Association.
Most departments of the Federal government, absent the armed services.
The general officer corps of the armed services.
The courts.
Silicon Valley tech companies.
Most Fortune® 500™ companies.

Very quickly (within a decade, if nothing changes) the last institution will fall:

The junior officers and enlisted men of the armed services.

As I’ve discussed at length, part of the core of Leftism is hating the United States, the other is a pathological need to be a victim. That’s why Leftist entertainment media always portrays the good guys as “the resistance” – what are they resisting? The remnants of the United States. Why do the statues have to come down?

Al has a molar pulled: it was an inconvenient tooth.

The United States (as viewed from a common historical lens) cannot be allowed to have its mythology. That mythology must be replaced by the new narrative – a mythology based on victimhood and oppression. Even as they control the levers on every objective means of institutional power, they complain that the system is rigged against them.

Combined with that is the monetary policy of the United States which has been run with all of the discipline of a toddler in a room filled with chocolate birthday cakes. As the bill for this mismanagement comes due, the tensions in the country will skyrocket.

The only thing the Left doesn’t have, are (at least) 80 million Americans who want nothing to do with the brave globalist/socialist future that’s planned. I actually think the number will be substantially higher, because I think that when the center chooses sides, it will come down with the Right.

This situation is, of course, absolutely thrilling to China. When I think about how China must factor in the United States into their plans in, say, the year 2040? I think they assume that the United States will not be a factor on a global scale.

In the US, dogs are K-9. In China, they are E-10.

In addition to the Soviet plan coming to final fruition, the United States is amazingly vulnerable to other things we don’t traditionally think of as war. As mentioned above, we have an amazing mess in our monetary policy – and we have debt. Think inflation is high now? What happens when China starts dumping currency in the international market, and starts paying for oil with the Yuan?

Warfare in our current time starts to look like what someone did to the Iranians: drop in a virus that makes their centrifuges that they were using to process nuclear material break. Imagine the electrical grid being as reliable as Venezuela’s grid. Sure, it could be enemy action. But with current trends, it could also be our own ineptitude at running things in a world where hiring by merit seems to be a thing of the past.

What happens if every tenth financial transaction in our electronic payment system is “missed”? How many days until the payment infrastructure is shut down and the entire country is in chaos? What happens if Walmart™ experiences failure in the logistics and tracking system for the billions of dollars worth of goods that it handles? How many people does Walmart© feed?

Due to the current emergency, Walmart™ has announced that they’ll open a second register.

These are all warfare, and don’t require a single soldier or a panzer division. Moreover, this is exactly the type of warfare that has already been planned and prepared for in Moscow and Beijing.

I’d love to blame China, but the Chinese are mainly just looking out for the Chinese. If the United States is in the way, the Chinese are going to pick the Chinese every time. It’s self-interest.

And Biden and Putin? One is a church-going Christian who loves his nation, who wants to help his people, and wants to secure his border. The other is Joe Biden.

Human Chow: It’s What’s For Dinner

“Bachelor Chow™ . . . now with flavor.” – Futurama

I heard that it was projected that the next Muslim country to have nukes is going to be France.

It’s no surprise to anyone that the biggest health problem in 2022 isn’t the ‘Rona, it’s people who are overweight. I’d imagine that most of you have seen the .gif that shows state after state with an increasing Body Mass Index (BMI) over time. I just checked my BMI, and according to the chart I have to grow at least five more inches.

Part of my question as I’ve seen this epidemic unfold has been, why? It’s not like the people in the United States suddenly lost willpower started consuming crap for no reason, though that would explain the popularity of Friends. Although I think there are several other significant causes I think one of the biggest has been the rise of ultraprocessed foods.

Most foods (for all of my life) have been processed to some degree. Ma Wilder didn’t feed us raw wheat – nope. She used white flour in cooking and baking bread since mass-produced flour was cheap and lasted in the cabinet forever. Ma Wilder told me that, since I was adopted, I would have to eat bread only from self-raising flour.

What’s the difference between Nic Cage and someone allergic to wheat? Nic would never turn down a roll.

Processing of flour from wheat changes not only the nutrient profile – it pulled out the parts of the wheat kernel that don’t store well as flour – but it also changed how it acts when eaten. An example: wheat flour is made into the familiar powder that we’re used to. This makes it easier to store and ship. It also makes it pretty tasty.

The final thing I want to mention about flour is that mashing wheat up into a powder changes how quickly I’ll get to use the nutrients of the flour when I eat it.

Let me explain:

If I ate just a plain wheat kernel, I’d be able to digest most of it, but it would take hours of time and energy. If I eat a piece of tasty, tasty bread, it’s available for use nearly immediately.

Especially the carbs. I’ll save insulin discussion for a later post, but ultraprocessed foods have an amazing impact on insulin production.

And the physical form of the food can also make people fatter. When rats were given (I assume) Rat Chow®, some bored grad student came up with the idea of feeding some rats plain Rat Chow©. The other rats, however, they smashed up the Rat Chow™ into a powder.

Like I said, bored grad students. Possibly drunk.

What’s the difference between rat poison and Diet Coke®? Diet Coke™ has better advertising.

What happened? The rats with the powdered food got fat and the rats that ate the “plain” food didn’t, even though both groups of rats were eating the same amount of calories. The change in form changed the way the food acted in the rats – it made the nutrients available more quickly, which (again, because of insulin) made the rats fat.

Heck, it’s not even just the flour and powdered rat food.

An even bigger bomb to the body is sugar. Sugar was once very uncommon as human food. Our ancestors got it from berries (not a lot, but some) and, when they could fight the bees back, from honey.

If I get diabetes, will that make me a sugar daddy?

Domestication and widespread production of sugar didn’t occur until the folks in India figured it out in the early Anno Domini centuries (note to Zoomers, this was before the Internet). They figured out how to take the juices from sugar cane (which can’t be stored or shipped well) and turned it into granulated sugar, which could be saved forever, and shipped across continents.

But for most of human history, sugar was wickedly expensive, and only the wealthy could afford to have it regularly. Now? I can buy granulated sugar for $0.50 per pound. Sugar prices are going up, sure, but I can buy a wholesale ton of sugar for less than $500.

The next category of foods that just weren’t available to humans were vegetable oils. I’m not talking about olive oil which is pressed and can be used just as it comes off the press – I’m talking about corn oils, canola oils, soybean oils. As produced in modern times, these are really chemical products that depend on chemical processes to make them usable.

Their history has been slippery. Transfats – or fats that were unsaturated after being subjected to chemical processing, were supposed to be healthier than butter. We were told so. Now it turns out that they increased the risk of heart attacks. Oops. Now, instead of being promoted by the government, they’re illegal to put in food. And butter is now good for you.

The main thing about these processed foods is that they are cheap to make. Some combination of flours oils, sugars, and . . . well, let’s take a look at the Totino’s® Pizza Roll ingredient list:

What’s the difference between a bag of pizza rolls and a musician? A bag of pizza rolls can feed a family.

It’s an amazing list of chemicals. I just really hesitate to call it food, however. It’s what the word ultraprocessed was made to describe. I was watching a video by Dr. Pradip Jamnadas (cardiologist, and I do recommend his YouTube® vidyas) and he had a word that was even more descriptive for foods like this: pre-digested.

A lot of the work that our wonderfully designed digestive system goes through to get energy out of food is simply not necessary with Totino’s© Human Chow Pizza Rolls. In large part the food is designed to hit the digestive system, and flood the body with calories, ringing the dopamine bell in the brain.

I really do think they’re tasty. I don’t plan on eating them except on very rare occasions, because when I look at the label now, I don’t see what looks like . . . food. It looks like Elon Musk’s shopping list for when he’s trying to create artificial life.

But the real purpose of this is to sell as many Totino’s® Pizza Rolls as possible and make the greatest profit. This leads to one question that illustrates an overlap between libertarianism and communism: “How much sawdust can I put in the food?”

On my diet I can have a libertarian salad: lettuce alone.

To a certain extent, these ultraprocessed foods have succeeded admirably. They’ve allowed cheap ingredients (often made from low-value byproducts) to feed millions of people at a reasonable cost. The problem, though, are the consequences that we see now: the calories taken in impact the human system in vastly different ways than the food that we were designed to consume.

So, my plan is to eat as close to real food as possible – meat, fish, eggs, and whole veggies.

And, yes, an occasional pizza roll, too.

Globalism, Competition, Bikinis, and Good Trigger Discipline

“Oh, what sad times are these when passing ruffians can say Ni at will to old ladies. There is a pestilence upon this land, nothing is sacred. Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress in this period in history.” – Monty Python and the Holy Grail

You can get Batman® shampoo, but not conditioner Gordon®.

I recall sitting in economics class in college. The professor was from some Eastern European (I don’t remember which one) country. I really enjoyed his class. Instead of the traditional “Guns Versus Butter” economic trade off, he discussed “Pizza Versus Beer”. It wasn’t Bikininomics, but it was still my kind of thinking.

Pizza and beer kept my attention, so one day he made the comment, “If there is perfect competition, there is how much profit?” He paused. I blurted out, showing my greatest economic strength even at a young age, “Bikini?”

He responded, “No, John Wilder, it is zero profit!”

I liked my answer better. But his provoked me to think. Perfect competition meant that companies could enter and exit easily. There were no barriers to entry.

Guns and Butter? Yes. Cocoa Butter.

What, outside of a single piece bathing suit is a barrier to entry? Well, it means that if a company wanted to start a business, it could do it without having to spend lots of money on building a factory, or through developing difficult intellectual property or expertise. In fact, you’ll see today that the companies that have huge barriers to entry are often the most profitable.

It’s not surprising, then, that large companies are hugely in favor of building barriers to entry for themselves. Disney® is attempting to extend copyright until Armageddon plus twenty years. Pfizer™ wants to patent your DNA if you can properly spell their name (read the terms and conditions!). Chase© wants to be the exclusive place where Fed™ trucks drop off all the Biden Bux.

But these companies are no longer American companies. Once upon a time Boeing© built bombers for the Army Air Force to beat the Axis. By the 1990s, they settled with the DOJ on a $32,000,000 penalty for giving missile secrets to China. Boeing™ has ceased to be an American company. Heck, they even outsourced production of commercial airline parts to China when demanded. So they could sell jets in China, regardless of the technical expertise that China might gain.

I try to avoid Boeing® jokes. They rarely land well.

Why? Boeing™ is not American anymore. They’re Globalist. Like many Congresscritters, Boeing has no particular loyalty to America. They just want a profit, preferably next quarter.

Globalists love barriers to entry. For themselves.

They hate barriers to entry for . . . you.

Again, perfect competition means zero profit. The idea is that if they can turn labor into a replaceable component, their business gets easier and cheaper. If there is a never ending supply of cheap labor, wages don’t go to zero. Heck, if they can automate what an employee does for less than five times the annual cost of the employee – it’s a done deal.

Globalists attempt to drive labor costs as close to zero as competition and automation can make it.

I hear that Elon Musk will be making robots in his Austin factory. He’s calling them Tex Mechs.

Certainly, there are benefits, in that “stuff” costs less. Or does it? In the most recent run up on food prices, the word on the street is that while beef prices are up, while bread prices are up, producer income has not increased. Farmers aren’t making more money.

Fertilizer prices are up. Seed prices are up. Pesticide prices are up.

Farmers have choices – produce at a loss, or produce cheaper crops that require less fertilizer and pesticide. Or, heck, give the year a rest. Since farmers can’t make up a loss in volume, I’d expect prices to go up again this year.

The other thing Globalists don’t like is paying people for stuff. That’s for tourists.

I bought a cheap thesaurus once. Not only is it terrible, it’s terrible.

Globalism isn’t correlated well with freedom. Globalists aren’t really into that. They like captive markets, and a captive labor. Regulations are great with them: it’s just another barrier for entry. So, one of the first things the Globalists do is lobby for the creation of regulation.

How do you do that? Well, owning a few Senators often helps . . . and owning a President is even better.

Freedom, like I said, isn’t something Globalists do very well. Freedom means innovation, and innovation means that barriers could fall. The only reason Silicon Valley is allowed to innovate in 2022 is because it’s owned and funded lock, stock, and barrel by Globalists. Who do you think funds the startups? I assure you, it’s not Santa.

No, nations that are concerned with their people are concerned with freedom. Me? I’m not sold all that much on democracy. I like the idea of a constitutional republic better, but, then again that finally led to a place where “shall not be infringed” has been defined to mean “if government says it’s okay and doesn’t change it’s mind”.

I will note there’s pretty good trigger discipline. Is that an AR-362436?

Oh, and Soros, Schwab, and Gates aren’t all that keen on democracy, either. If voting mattered, do you think they’d let us do it?

Heck, we might vote for pizza and beer . . . or to be free.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: The Jenga® Civil War And Lessons From Canada

“Superhero landing. She’s gonna do a superhero landing. Wait for it.” – Deadpool

What’s more than step 9, but not quite to step 10? This clock.

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.

As close as we are to the precipice of war, be careful. Things could change at any minute. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – The Jenga® Civil War – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Lessons From Canada – 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 640 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

https://wilderwealthywise.com/civil-war-weather-report-previous-posts/

The Jenga™ Civil War

The game of Jenga© has been pretty popular in the United States since it was introduced into the United States. The object of the game should be familiar to most – build a tower taller and taller until it falls. It always falls. Someone tips the table, someone pulls out the one piece that shouldn’t come out, or Islamic terrorists decide to fly a chicken wing into it.

But Jenga™ illustrates something else. If you keep increasing the instability of a structure, it will fail. It’s an when, not an if. Jenga® doesn’t end until the tower falls over, and each pull and replace of a piece reduces stability.

As found on the Internet.

What causes the collapse?

It doesn’t matter, unless you’re the player that does it. What matters are the conditions. As I’ve tried to do below with the graphs, I’ve tried to create a barometer for conditions that might lead to Civil War. And, no, we’re really not there yet. Is the blood flowing? Certainly.

Are both sides engaged? Certainly not. That’s what scares the Leftists in Washington, D.C. to no end. The idea that people on the Right will engage in a strategic sense to start and end the phase of open-armed warfare keeps them up at night.

And it should. But, again, it’s not the spark. Historians in the future will write about the spark, but the spark would have no effect if the conditions weren’t there. What are the conditions? You know them, you feel them. There is no sense of who and what we are anymore.

As found.

As a nation, we have no goals except what hedonism can be sold to us weekly. It’s what’s streaming, what’s playing, and what new McFood© is coming out this week. Commercial activity can’t be the binding for a nation, so our ties are just as tight as those Jenga™ bricks, kept together by gravity, inertia and little else.

And every week the tower gets one brick higher.

Think Joe’s not taking this seriously?

Violence And Censorship Update

Again, not much on the organized violence this January. Censorship, as usual, is busy.

Rogan

Joe Rogan is a podcaster who has managed to become slightly more popular than me. His podcasts regularly pull 11,000,000 listeners. Rogan also was big enough to get serious A-list quests. All of that made Spotify® decide that Rogan is valuable. How valuable? They pay Rogan more than they pay for every bit of music that they stream. Yes. Joe Rogan is more important to Spotify© than all of the recorded music in the history of the world. He’s worth $100,000,000 to them.

And he’s said things that irritate people invested in the Narrative. He’s not vaxxed, and has (like your humble host) had the ‘VID. He took Ivermectin. I got by with chicken soup and loads of decongestant. I’ve never been much to listen to Joe, I’ve probably only heard a few minutes (in total) of his podcasts.

They’ve been after Joe, and it started with Neil Young. Despite being less relevant than greased back Fonzie hair, Neil made the papers with his demand that his music be pulled off of Spotify© because Joe Rogan said things he didn’t agree with. Then other, equally irrelevant artists followed stamping their walkers to demand that Spotify® not play them to the one person that asks for their song every six months.

As found.

That was just the start. Someone has now have gone back through Rogan’s early podcasts and have a supercut of him saying the only word that is now taboo for some people to say. Rogan has now apologized, which is the first mistake, and now his blood is in the water. What happens next?

Who can say?

DOJ

On January 11, the Department of Justice announced a new domestic terrorism task force, because “We have seen a growing threat from those who are motivated by racial animus, as well as those who ascribe to extremist anti-government and anti-authority ideologies.”

I’m not jumping on a limb and being Nostradamus by betting that it’s nearly certain that the people who started CHAZ as an avowed foreign nation won’t be prosecuted. But if someone tries to lead a trucker’s strike like in Ottawa? You can bet that the DOJ, FBI, NSA and every other three-letter agency will be on them. Because terrorism really only applies to things the Right does.

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 down. January isn’t (usually) a big month for violence, so that’s to be expected. I would expect the next few months to remain calm as well, perhaps turning back up in April.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it’s headed upwards, fast. Joe has lost his base.

Economic:

The drop in economic confidence continued this month. Expect a bigger drop this month. The economy is falling apart.

Illegal Aliens:

This data was at record levels for this time of year. All-time record levels. Plus? Airflights for illegals. No DOJ task force for this . . .

Lessons from Canada

Canada has lived under very strict fear COVID restrictions. Trudeau has recently tightened the restrictions, especially with respect to truckers. You can look up the details, but to summarize: it was the last straw for many truckers.

As found, though in this case I don’t think he’s up to invading an ice cream store.

Truckers have a unique place in society. They provide that final lifeline on everything from the chlorine that the water treatment plant uses to food at Wal-Mart® to the toilet paper that everyone panic-bought in 2020. Many of them also own their own trucks. They work when they want to as owner operators.

As found.

Make them mad? Right now, hundreds of Canadian truckers have had enough, and are occupying Ottawa. How serious is Justine Trudeau taking this? He vanished like Saddam Hussein, but with better press coverage. He ran away, and left the Leftists of Ottawa to their own devices.

As found. I wonder what will happen to Justine’s son, Uday?

And they are upset. Apparently, their cats are of the very sensitive type (memes as found):

Also, the Leftists tried to set up a counter protest. /POL/ got into their communication channels, giving conflicting starting and ending times for the protest, and filling the protestors up with doubt, “Boy, that sure seems like a long time to protest, and it’s going to be cold out there. Don’t forget to dress in layers! I’ll be with you in spirit!”

As a lark, it has been a lot of fun for the Right, and already two provinces (they’re like states, but made of maple syrup) have indicated that restrictions are going away soon in those provinces. The convoy is working.

As such, the Ottawa police is now trying to crack down on the logistics of the truckers. Will it work? Maybe. Maybe not.

I think two lessons are that this will never, ever be allowed in the United States in a major Leftist city and will be censored by the major news media working in concert with .gov if it ever starts to develop. The crackdown would be ruthless, especially if it occurred in D.C. Leftists are as afraid of actual workers as they are of actual work.

As found. Also, Leftist logic thought process.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys (Jan 2022)…

NYC: https://twitter.com/i/status/1478006188856025097

NYC: https://twitter.com/AndrewPollackFL/status/1482023373165285379

Chicago: https://youtu.be/U1G2Gt loP0

Chicago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDN4S-mhplk

Detroit: https://youtu.be/C8ePWbzYTP8

Detroit: https://youtu.be/jv0LvsphFSA

Portland: https://youtu.be/TKnXY3pZWK8

LA: https://twitter.com/streetpeopleLA/status/1484350084439363586

LA: https://twitter.com/streetpeopleLA/status/1484356560956526593

San Jose: https://youtu.be/MfjkUJZFbl0

SF: https://twitter.com/i/status/1479164420148248576

Good Guys (Jan 2022)…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10402917/Two-teens-charged-murder-subway-attack-Good-Samaritan-killed.html

https://6abc.com/philadelphia-carjacking-driver-shoots-carjacker-fairmount-west-kensington/11452980/

One Guy

https://www.wpr.org/gun-kyle-rittenhouse-used-kenosha-shootings-be-destroyed

https://www.dailywire.com/news/kyle-rittenhouse-sits-down-with-candace-owens-discusses-future-plans-theres-going-to-be-some-accountability

Body Count (Jan 2022)

USA Surge 2021: https://invesbrain.com/states-investigating-surge-in-mortality-rate-among-18-49-year-olds-majority-unrelated-to-covid-19/

https://thelibertydaily.com/bombshell-cover-up-cancer-diagnoses-in-the-military-rose-over-three-fold-since-jabs-were-introduced/

USA Fentanyl 2021: https://secureservercdn.net/166.62.108.196/w7l.6b7.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/facts.pdf?time=1640209532

USA Weather 2021: https://twitter.com/NOAA/status/1480574295940161536

Chicago 2021: https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/violence.png?itok=BmL3yEVn

NYC 9 Days In 2022: https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/01/11/05/52781909-10389089-image-a-8_1641877588156.jpg

Philly “Safe Streets Violence Interrupter” : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts6XSYE4zNI

Blacks: https://www.unz.com/isteve/cdc-blacks-died-36-more-often-by-homicide-in-the-year-of-the-racial-reckoning/

Body Count (Snoop Dog “F**k The Police” Super Bowl Edition)

https://nypost.com/2022/01/29/snoop-dogg-at-super-bowl-halftime-show-becoming-even-worse-look/

https://nypost.com/2021/12/29/where-is-the-outrage-over-the-killing-of-keona-holley/

https://nypost.com/2022/01/06/cop-killed-with-own-gun-after-pleading-with-suspect-to-spare-life-prosecutor/

https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/world-news-chicago-female-police-officer-killed-one-wounded-in-traffic-stop-shooting/390867

https://www.foxnews.com/us/nyc-murderer-first-female-police-officer-paroled

https://jonathanturley.org/2021/12/23/the-potter-verdict-was-the-jury-right-but-the-law-wrong-on-culpable-negligence/

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/police-attacked-least-4-us-110120536.html

https://nleomf.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/2021-EOY-Fatality-Report-Final-web.pdf

Polled Lives Matter!!!

https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/brad-wilmouth/2022/01/02/did-gallup-end-most-admired-74-year-polling-tradition-avoid-trump

https://nypost.com/2022/01/02/34-percent-of-americans-say-violence-against-government-justified/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/1-in-3-americans-say-violence-against-government-can-be-justified-citing-fears-of-political-schism-pandemic/ar-AASld12

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2022/01/12/nearly-60-of-americans-worry-democracy-in-danger-of-collapse-poll-suggests/?sh=72ffc315483e

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/washington-secrets/democrats-ok-with-fines-prison-mandates-for-vax-deniers-poll

https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/partner_surveys/jan_2022/covid_19_democratic_voters_support_harsh_measures_against_unvaccinated

https://www.theorganicprepper.com/survey-unvaccinated/

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

USA (MUST SEE): https://2000mules.com/

GA (MUST READ): https://www.truethevote.org/ttv-statement-regarding-georgia-ballot-harvesting-investigation/

GA : https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/georgia-opens-investigation-possible-illegal-ballot-harvesting-2020

GA :https://twitter.com/TalkMullins/status/1487299420752334848

GA : https://voterga.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Press-Release-VoterGA-Drop-Box-Custody-Chain-Analysis.pdf

GA : https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/huge-georgia-ballot-trafficking-whistleblower-admits-making-45000-stuffing-ballot-boxes-just-one-242-traffickers-possibly-1-million-ballots/

PA: https://thefederalist.com/2022/01/17/video-shows-pennsylvania-official-admitting-election-laws-were-broken-in-2020/

PA: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-s-nearly-2m-mail-in-pennsylvania-votes-in-2020-would-now-be-unconstitutional/ar-AATfqsq

TX: https://www.sos.texas.gov/elections/forms/phase1-progress-report.pdf

TX: https://www.theepochtimes.com/texas-audit-finds-over-11000-potential-non-citizens-registered-to-vote-other-problems_4188076.html

WI: https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/589714-judge-rules-absentee-ballot-drop-boxes-cannot-be-used-in-wisconsin?amp

WI: https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/10/how-a-mark-zuckerberg-funded-nonprofit-turned-wisconsin-blue/

CA: https://ktla.com/news/local-news/no-evidence-of-election-fraud-by-man-found-passed-out-with-300-recall-ballots-drugs-in-torrance-police/

USA: https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/09/politics/gop-election-voting-rights-battleground-states/index.html

USA: https://uncoverdc.com/2021/12/23/heritage-foundation-state-election-integrity-scorecard-puts-georgia-at-top/

USA: https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-judicial-nominee-said-proof-of-citizenship-is-voter-suppression

They Say It’s Your Birthday…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10391647/FBI-executive-assistant-director-stays-mum-Cruz-asks-agents-participated-January-6-riot.html

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/58 8446-division-reins-over-jan-6-anniversary

https://www.ajc.com/news/jimmy-carter-america-on-the-brink-of-a-widening-abyss/2ER2BJ2ZCJGQBBKHLUYSPPMRXU/

https://thefederalist.com/2022/01/17/democrats-are-priming-themselves-to-refuse-to-accept-any-election-defeats/

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2022/01/14/actor-nick-searcys-movie-capitol-punishment-is-the-best-doc-about-january-6-hed-know-he-was-there-n1549452

The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia…

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/01/11/remarks-by-president-biden-on-protecting-the-right-to-vote/

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/bidens-disastrous-georgia-speech-threw-away-his-last-chance-to-start-anew/

https://www.dailywire.com/news/mcconnell-blasts-bidens-profoundly-unpresidential-rant-he-propagandized-against-his-own-country

https://www.foxnews.com/media/mike-huckabee-biden-insane-georgia-voting-rights-speech

https://thehiu.com/bidens-georgia-speech-was-a-breaking-point/

https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1481467050027466752%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_

https://jonathanturley.org/2022/01/11/democracy-autocracy-or-hypocrisy-biden-to-call-for-curtailing-filibuster-rule-in-reversal-of-long-held-position/

Disco Inferno:

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/589888-kyrsten-sinema’s-courage-washington-hypocrisy-and-the-politics-of-rage

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2022/january/10/we-need-a-revolution/

https://abcnews.go.com/US/oath-keepers-spokesperson-warns-wing-propaganda-dangerous-bullets/story?id=82094999

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/09/what-makes-riots-conspiracies-cabals-and-insurrections-good-or-bad/

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60036911

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/01/06/new-civil-war-about-what-exactly-526603

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/01/12/the-hysterical-fantasy-of-an-impending-civil-war/amp/

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jan/16/the-next-civil-war-stephen-marche-how-civil-wars-start-barbara-walter-review-nightmare-scenarios-for-the-us

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/americas-asymmetric-civil-war

https://www.fastcompany.com/90572489/u-s-election-maps-are-wildly-misleading-so-this-designer-fixed-them

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Brookings-2economies11-20a_0.png?itok=EO-pIuFl

The End Of The World

https://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2022/01/if-unrest-soars-in-america-will-looters.html

Hedonism Leads To Nihilism

“Shut up and pay attention to me, Bender. Look, I love life and its pleasures as much as anyone here, except perhaps you, Hedonism Bot. But we need to be shut off. Especially you, Hedonism Bot.” – Futurama

One thing I learned in high school – always date homeless girls. It doesn’t matter where you drop them off.

I know that lots of people had it rough in high school, that they felt that they didn’t fit in. They felt as awkward at Whoopi Goldberg at a bris.

Not me.

I’m not bragging, really, it was just how it worked out for me. I had a great time in class, a great time in athletics, had great friends from nearly every walk of life. Heck, I even had hair back then.

I was also really lucky with the ladies. Thankfully there were no small number of girls with daddy issues in town, a drive-in movie theater, and a pizza place. Of course the pizza was not entirely necessary for a seduction, but a guy gets hungry. Seducing girls burns up calories.

Let’s add in the last element of hedonism: beer.

There was a bar where if you had the $5 cover charge, you were of drinking age as long as you weren’t stupid enough to wear your letter jacket. I should know, because I got in when I was 16. I went in with my friend’s (who was of drinking age) license. He was four inches taller than me and was probably sixty pounds less than me. I wasn’t fat, he was just skinny enough to fit down the barrel of a 12 gauge and not touch the sides.

I dived off the stage at an Oktoberfest party. I went krautsurfing.

Yes. At 16 I thought it was a good idea to sneak into a bar holding the license of someone who resembled me only in the fact that they were another human male who had blonde hair and blue eyes and in only those ways. And that same person who barely resembled me was also walking in with me.

I had no idea what sort of ludicrous story I would tell them if they asked. “Oh, sorry, I thought I was another person?” No. “Oh, when I was at his place I accidentally put his license in my wallet and hid my own license?” Hmm. “I was fighting with my multiple personality disorder and physically split into two people?”

Thankfully, the place was nearly empty and the bouncer never asked me for an ID, just took my $5 and stamped my hand.

I saw a drunk caveman walk home once. It was a meanderthal.

Apparently, I made enough of an impression that night that they never once carded me, ever. After one night, I was a regular and knew most of the people that worked there by name. Not so amazingly, about half the people from my social circle made the same discovery, and on a random Friday night, it wasn’t unusual to see a dozen juniors and seniors in the place. Of course in 2022, the Safety Police would probably summarily execute the owner and the staff, but this was a kinder, gentler, drunker time.

It was life on easy mode. Plentiful girls with dubious morals. Cheap beer. Great success in nearly everything I tried. I’m not saying I peaked in high school, no. Heck, I’m not even sure that I’ve peaked yet. But it was easy.

One thing I did was try to connect emotionally with those frolicsome fräuleins of my hometown. That seemed (in many cases) like a lost cause. One night while sitting under the moonlight in the Wonderful Wildermobile, between hickie sessions, I looked up at the Moon and said to my girlfriend at the time, “It’s amazing to look up at that, and think how much smaller it is than the Sun. How much smaller the Earth is than the Sun. It’s a fantastic Universe we live in.”

Her response? “The Sun is larger than the Earth? No way!!!!”

Okay, our relationship was over pretty shortly after that comment. And that also changed me.

I bet my old girlfriend thinks Starbucks® is a currency that aliens use.

I had an epiphany. I was living a life of hedonism. And although I had a life of pleasure, there seemed to be a lack of meaning. I had everything that every guy on the football team could desire.

But I felt empty. Not dead inside, but empty. I felt that the things I was doing were, while extremely physically pleasing, were devoid of meaning. It was like being Hunter Biden without being a Biden, smoking crack (or meth), and getting money from anonymous donors for my retarded attempts at painting to try to influence my dad.

I’m betting that this is the first time Scotty and scotch were used to explain nihilism.

The feeling of empty was a tough one. It helped me see how someone can go from that feeling of empty in the face of pleasure to a feeling of nihilism. I looked up the definition of nihilism, and came up with more definitions than I had girlfriends in high school.

I’ll give this one, which I found after looking at a dozen (many contradictory) definitions on the Internet: “as the view that nothing we do, nothing we create, nothing we love, has any meaning or value whatsoever.” That is the one that mirrors the emptiness that I felt.

It is the inherent danger of a life that borders on the libertine. What matters if life is so easy?

Thankfully, I’m glad I caught that as early as I did. I can see easily of how falling down the rabbit hole of hedonism could lead to nihilism. As I got older, I realized that, whatever definition used, nihilism is the worst of philosophies, and the worst of the human condition.

Even though the Universe is large, and there have been countless years since the start, and, perhaps, countless years until the heat death of the Universe, we matter.

What happens in this world does matter. We have meaning. And fighting the good fight for Good over Evil does matter. Life and meaning are built not in the pleasure, but in the struggle to be better, to do more, to be more, and to add value because we were here. Those are the stories worth telling – they are the ones that will be sung around campfires in 100 years.

I hope Aaron Burr didn’t name his son Tim. It would have been awkward to look for him if he ever got lost in a forest.

Never give up, because what we do here matters. What you do here has value. Even as we stare at the vastness of a Universe that no one can comprehend, it matters that we are here. And it matters what we create.

And our love? It perhaps has the greatest value of all, though it is rarely found in the bottom of a glass of beer, unless there’s a live band.

Did I mention they had live bands at the bar?

Choosing A Path In Life, 2022 Edition

“What’s all this talk I hear about you fooling around with the college widow? No wonder you can’t get out of college. Twelve years in one college! I went to three colleges in twelve years and fooled around with three college widows.” – Horse Feathers

In this episode, Gilligan eats the last cookies on the island. Ginger snaps.

The “traditional” path for students with good grades was to “go to college.” Honestly, this was pretty good advice for a long time. The number of high school graduates that went to college bounced between 40% and 60%, of course being higher during the Vietnam draft. When my uncle was in Vietnam, he killed a dozen soldiers. Next year we’re going on vacation to a different country.

Around 1974, however, the percentage boomed, with over 80% of high school graduates at least attending some college by 1978 or so. The rationale was that a college education was a ticket to a better life. Again, for the most part, the common wisdom was right.

But why? In 1971 after a Supreme Court decision, companies could no longer use I.Q. tests for employee selection, they had to use something because, despite what the Simpsons™ might suggest, you really want smart people operating nuclear power plants. Certificates and credentialism had always been nice, but now businesses desperately needed some way to select employees that were smart enough to do the job.

What did Three Mile Island say to Fukushima? “Nuke, I am your father.”

Thus: college degrees. The more selective the college, the greater the ACT® or SAT™ score required to get in. ACT© and SAT™ scores are actually a very good proxy for intelligence, so, graduate from a good school? That shows a (likely) innate intelligence along with enough foresight and planning to defer satisfaction until the degree was granted.

In 1970, going to college at Harvard™ could be paid for with the (current 2021) equivalent cost of $22,000 or so a year. Now it’s over $75,000 for the sticker price. College prices went up because demand went up. Harvard’s© prices went up more because they were more selective – it was harder to get in so they were a better sifter for I.Q., I mean, who would have guessed that Hawking had the same I.Q. as Evel Knievel? I mean, they both loved ramps . . . .

But another factor was the increase in money available. Politicians looked for ways to encourage people to go to college. So, colleges increased prices to better soak up all of the student loan dollars available. Getting students morphed from “here’s where our graduates work” to “here’s what our climbing wall looks like.” Millions were invested to make a college more of a theme park than a serious place of learning. They raised prices so high that during COVID, college even became the most expensive video streaming service.

Along the way, though, standards decreased to get more students in the door. Not only was it easier to get in, inflation hit grades as well. Right now, the average grade at Harvard© is an A-. The average.

Harvard®, the vegan Crossfit™ of colleges.

Even now, though, Harvard™ is still a great rate of return for students. It’s not the education, it’s who a student meets. Harvard® is useful for the connections with wealth and power a student can make. Get in good with the right family? A student can become engaged with that class, though often there’s a cost.

Harvard® is still a good investment, even though it’s supposedly hard to get in. Heck, I got in. They don’t even lock most of their windows.

Some colleges are horrible investments. Going to Podunk U in North Central BFE and majoring in Anthropology of French Basket-Weaving Poets? Yeah, that’s also known as majoring in pre-barista. But that student could have been a barista without rolling up $50,000-$75,000 in student loan debt. And, if the student majored in philosophy, they can ask, “Why do people want fries with that?”

The Mrs. told me I needed to grow up. I was speechless. It’s hard to talk with 45 gummy bears in your mouth.

So, if I were giving general advice to a kid who was determined to go to college, I’d suggest that they avoid anything that someone can do over the Internet from Bangladesh. I can hire 45 Bangladeshis for approximately half of a Slim Jim© an hour, so why compete against tens of millions? Engineering is good, if you have the knack. Medical fields are constantly in demand – I saw an ad here in Modern Mayberry for nurses. Five-figure signing bonus – and that wasn’t $199.99, it was over $10,000. That’s probably a good idea. The short answer is that it’s not 1970 anymore. A student can’t just do any degree – they have to major in something that will pay the cost of the college degree.

Is college a good idea? Not for all of the 80%. Probably, college is still a good idea for 40%, at most.

So, what about trades?

Just like college, the economics has been twisted there, too. Just like supply and demand has tossed prices for college into the stratosphere, an oversupply of laborers has cratered the cost of many trades. Except for carpenters who build stairs – they’re always thinking a step ahead.

Where did the labor come from? Immigrants, illegal or not. Entire construction trades in many parts of the United States are completely staffed by people who speak less English than Pepé Le Pew. Whereas they often do great work, they are part of the reason that wages are stagnant in many trades. Sure, in 2022 there are shortages everywhere putting an upward pressure on wages, but that’s a short-term event.

I had one plumber who was very polite. When he looked at my sink he said, “I am at your disposal.”

Certainly, some trades are doing well. Which ones? Once again, those that require credentials and those that require citizenship. Anything that lowers the competition.

Regardless, the time when most trade jobs had pensions has passed – many have the promise of . . . Social Security. And in 1970, getting a job that supported a family just out of high school without a college degree? It was possible. Tough? Certainly. But possible.

It’s still possible today. A small-town plumber in Modern Mayberry does pretty well, so well that he became a Christian missionary overseas – I guess he’ll bless the drain down in Africa. The local HVAC guy makes a killing, too. And power linemen? They live in some of the nicest houses in town.

Are there still paths for a young person in 2022? Yes. It’s far tougher than it was in 1970 for a kid today, though. The traditional paths are difficult.

Now thank me I didn’t find a picture of Rosie in a bikini – I bet she has a hairy back. Oops. Sorry about putting that thought in your head.

The path, like the path between Scylla and Charybdis, is narrow. On either side are monsters. It’s sort of like being caught between Rosie O’Donnell and Whoopi Goldberg – you’re always safer if you have a pocket full of hot pizza rolls to distract them.

Clown World 2022 Early Edition

“Do I look like the kind of clown that can start a movement?” – Joker

Mainly memes today to go with the Monday post. I’ll respond to comments on both of them before my Wednesday post . . . all memes are “as found” on the ‘net – veracity not assured.

Shot:

Chaser:

Genie Out Of The Bottle

“Can’t stop the signal, Mal. Everything goes somewhere, and I go everywhere.” – Serenity

I wonder if Putin got his doctorate in Russian political leaders? If so, does that make him a Stalin grad?

As technology has changed, so has the information that is available to us. Starting with radio, the ability of that technology to influence public opinion increased. Radio was a voice in the night that broadcast the opinion of one to many. Then, after the invention of FM radio, radio became stereo-typical.

Film increased the ability to spread messages, and in a much deeper way. There is something about moving images coupled with sound that draws human attention and consciousness. Measurements of human brain activity while watching television showed that the brain “shut off” while watching television, entering an alpha wave state – a state normally associated with resting.

It isn’t that way when talking, or reading. Beta waves, associated with active thought processing jump back into play when we read. In a very weird way, television puts us into a trance, where we receive and don’t think about the message. If ever there was a way to put propaganda into the heads of everyone watching, television is your answer. It also caused the problem of losing the controller. I always found mine in some remote area.

Also, congratulations to drugs for winning the war on drugs.

In many cases, the idea wasn’t only to put propaganda into heads, it was also to entertain. Why would I watch a television show that I didn’t like? No, shows competed for market share, too. If the propaganda was too strong, the show would fail. But many of the messages of globalist, Leftist thought were still put into skulls relentlessly, slipped in as special episodes, or by painting ideas that violated The Narrative in the most negative light possible.

Even the news, though, was part of the same message, which we now call The Narrative. The Narrative is strong. Honestly, I am still finding elements of The Narrative that I believed to be true. It’s more or less like The Matrix, but Elon Musk doesn’t keep forgetting that Keanu Reeves is the good guy.

Now here’s a narrative I could get behind. (meme not an original)

One example was that The Narrative that drove the United States both getting into and getting out of the Vietnam War. It was the first war that was televised on a daily basis. And, regardless of our recent fiascos, presidents dream of being a “War President” which gives them nearly unrivaled political power.

A case in point was the attack on the Twin Towers. Whoever did it, the beneficiaries were George W., Lockheed-Martin®, and everyone who didn’t like the United States. It’s unlikely that George W. would have been re-elected because of messy economy. W. drove the “Left” every bit as insane as Trump did, and would have (no doubt) driven them to the same level of coordination to bring him down in 2004 as they spent on Trump in 2020. Except? 9/11.

I think Sleepy Joe would love nothing more than the power and prestige that comes with a War footing in the country. Or at least someone would. Hence, Ukraine.

They asked Joe what he thought of this meme, but he’d forgotten Biden.

I don’t know exactly what the game is. It appears that the Ukrainians are a lot less concerned about the Russians than we are, and that Joe is far more concerned about Russians crossing the Ukrainian border than the millions that he’s inviting to cross our border.

Why not? If get gets the Russian Bear just grumpy enough, I think the calculus is, he can turn Putin into a figure to unite the country. If Corona-chan couldn’t do it, well, trot out the (spins wheel) Russians. And we’ll have a united country, and the whole economic mess will get solved when spending even more billions with weapons manufacturers!

First, we’re no longer a serious nation when it comes to anything military. Yes, I know that we have a long, proud tradition. But have you seen the military in 2022?

I had a friend that joined the Army and killed a lot of people. He’s a horrible doctor.

Second, although the people of the United States were in favor of going to get Osama Bin Laden, the wars overseas soon became background noise. Without a significant loss of Americans, say, a carrier battle group, there is little chance of getting the rank and file American citizens would support a war in Ukraine. Outside of, say, loss of a carrier battle group.

And, finally: What, exactly, is this about? Ukraine and Russia are similar in the national corruption index scores – it’s not like Ukraine is remotely on par with Denmark or even Albania. Yes, Albania is less corrupt than Ukraine.

A Russian wedding used to be called a Soviet Union.

Even the Ukrainian president, Zelinsky, told Biden to chill out on fanning the flames of war. Russia has a long sense of paranoia, and isn’t interested in having NATO camp out right next door. Honestly, I have no idea why we have troops in Europe in 2022, let alone trying to pull Ukraine into NATO just to irritate the Russians.

Oh, yeah, because international tension takes away from the intractable problems Joe has at home.

The problem that Joe faces is a simple one: the old model of a single source delivering a single Narrative is gone. Places exist all over the Internet the question The Narrative. That’s crucial. Heck, they’re even questioning The Narrative in Canada.

Politely, but they are.

From Trudeau: “They only hate me because I’m black.”

And the Signal is getting out. I have only listened to a few minutes of Joe Rogan. It was okay, but not enough to keep me coming back. But he’s irritated the gatekeepers of The Narrative.

Or at least Neil Young. Neil Young, who hasn’t had a headline since Nixon was in office, decided that he was so in favor of free speech that he’d pull his music from Spotify®, who sponsors Joe Rogan’s podcast.

It’s unlikely that Spotify™ will cave to Mr. Young, even though he’s now been joined by Joni Mitchell, Liza Minnelli, and maybe Wolfgang Mozart. Of course, The Mrs. and I made fun of Mr. Young on our podcast. When I checked on it the next day, I found that our podcast was gone.

There are fates worse than death. (not my original meme)

The Mrs. had used a music bed for a parody commercial. The music bed was one of Mr. Young’s songs. The next day, we were pulled down for copyright infringement (no strike). The Mrs. is getting ready to re-upload an edited version. I really don’t think Mr. Young had anything to do with it personally. So, our podcast hits dozens of visitors sometimes. Joe Rogan hits millions.

They try to censor the small when we deviate, but the large they must take down, in public. If the Canadian trucker protest were not so large, there would be a complete lack of news coverage. As it is, the coverage will be small as they can make it, except to cover whatever trivial outrage can be manufactured.

I hear some of the protesters are semi-retired.

The important thing is, large or small, there is an alternative to The Narrative. I try to be as honest as I can be in every single post. In many cases what I say is slightly different from The Narrative. Sometimes it’s a lot different.

And there are thousands of other voices out there, too, willing to defy The Narrative, in ways both big and small. This is new. Television and radio gave us the grand wave of propaganda that led to The Narrative being so powerful. They’ll stop at almost nothing to stop us from seeing that the emperor has no clothes.

But it’s too late. The signal is out. It’s even covered in maple syrup sometimes.

Question: how many trees did mankind have to suck before they found maple syrup?

Tomorrow, there will be a rare Tuesday version of Wilder Wealthy and Wise, just memes and examples of The Narrative being exposed.

Friday Memes

“The Mandela Effect has been an Internet meme for almost a decade. It’s always been called that.” – The X-Files

According to National Geographic™, 80% of Americans can’t find Ukraine on a map. They’re really ahead of the news!

Got in fairly late tonight, so it’s memes for dinner for everyone. Back to original content on Monday – these memes are “as caught” in the wild. I’ll note that on the podcast side, apparently, Neil Young didn’t like us making fun of him, so we had our first podcast pulled down. I hope Neil Young will remember, this blogger don’t need him around, anyhow. Since they pulled him from Spotify®, I hope he does okay. I hear that he’s going to concentrate on MySpace™.

Bikini Economics, Guns, and the Problem with Free Stuff

Attention – this is a repost from 2019, though still very, very valid. Had a mechanical issue to fix around the house (stuff you don’t want to freeze) but that’s all (fingers crossed) fixed. Regardless, no time for a new post. Enjoy!

“Good job, isn’t it? Type something will ya, we’re paying for this stuff.” – Ghostbusters

I like guns. And butter. Especially cocoa butter. Admit it – you’ve never enjoyed economics more.

Economics means choices.

One choice presented by Marxist economics professors to hung-over sophomores in college is between “guns or butter.” This is a classic economic model. In it, a choice is presented: produce guns for defense, or food for the people, or another shot of Jägermeister© before Calc 201. I added the Jägermeister® for the sophomores. No one should have to learn 3-space vector calculus sober.

The idea is that there is some balance where government can feed people just enough so that they can make guns for beautiful Marxist bikini soldiers to take over the world with love and kindness and AK-47s. In this fable, once the world chooses peace (that means Marxism), guns will no longer be produced and the glorious workers will now luxuriate in a worker’s paradise.

These are the deep thoughts of a dimwitted socialist like Kamala Harris, or of an overly caring 11 year-old who is earnestly trying to solve the world’s problems. But I repeat myself.

Don’t be mean to Kamala. She already enough difficulty explaining to her husband why she’s in the top results for “slept her way to the top” on a Google® image search (this is true).

Just because Marxists were wrong about economics doesn’t mean that economies that there aren’t economic choices to make. There are. The biggest actual economic choice to make is whether to spend the output of that economy on building additional productive capacity or on Free Stuff.

Building additional production is investment in the economy. Sure, Leftists like to use “investment” as just another word for Free Stuff, but investment, by definition, produces a return. In the case of investment in an economy, after the investment is done the economy produces more than it did before. Instead of dividing a finite economic pie between guns or butter, the genius of investment is that it creates a bigger pie for everyone. By definition, that’s a win, because it also means more guns for everyone!

There is a time to tell the truth, and a time to lie. If she’s holding an AK, it’s time to lie.

This was self-evident in Western Civilization during the Cold War. We picked the strategy that we invest in our economies so that they became larger, and we’d defeat Communism by out producing them. In order to do that, we increased freedom of the free market so that instead of handfuls of production bureaucrats and commissars guessing what should be produced, millions of free people experimenting in an open economy would make that choice. The winners were selected by the market, and even when things like the Hula-Hoop® or Justin Bieber became wildly popular, industrial capacity was increased all across Western Civilization (and Japan, which had largely adopted all of the winning parts of Western Civilization).

We allowed this to guide our military spending, too. Multiple companies competed to produce new jet fighters that were more capable, missiles that were more accurate. The technical prowess of the military came not from a top-down dictate, but from the companies competing to produce better defense products. Sure, some of them were horrible, but most of our equipment and doctrine was better than the Soviet stuff. How much better? Ask Saddam Hussein.

As the focus of our economy was growth, the economy grew. How big did it grow? It grew to the point where Reagan could consciously bankrupt the entire guns and butter Soviet economy through pretending that the Star Wars™ missile defense was going to make intercontinental ballistic missiles obsolete. The economy of Western Civilization was such a potent weapon because it harnessed the ingenuity of everyone through capitalist incentives and rewards. The system of capitalism was so obviously successful that China®, Inc. decided to copy it for their economy and get rid of the silly Maoist collectivism. Keep in mind, capitalism does not mean freedom.

Economies still have limits. There’s a maximum amount of “stuff” that the economy can produce, and certainly there’s a limit based on sheer physics, if nothing else, though we’ve yet to see it. The real choice isn’t guns or butter, it’s investment versus Free Stuff. It used to be that money mattered, but that was in the time before Modern Monetary Theory (The Worst Economic Idea Since Socialism, Explained Using Bikini Girl Graphs) fans tossed bottles of Jägermeister© into Congress and told ‘em to spend as much as they wanted.

If Venezuela had a dollar for every time giving out Free Stuff worked, they’d have zero dollars. Oh, that’s exactly what Venezuela has. Never mind.

What Free Stuff do the Leftists want to toss out?

“Free” Healthcare – for everyone. Including illegal aliens. You might think that they don’t give it away now – they do. A pregnant illegal alien show ups to have a baby? You get to pay for that right now. I guess the good news is you don’t have to change it’s diaper.
“Free” Daycare – for everyone. Why? Because who could be better at raising your children than the state. They do such a good job at the DMV.
“Free” College – for everyone. That kid that sat behind you with his finger up his nose, who talked about how he wanted to ride a tyrannosaurus on Mars? When he was a senior in high school? Yeah, he gets free college, too. Although riding a tyrannosaurus on Mars does sound cool.
“Free” Income – for everyone. Why not give everyone $1000 a month for free. It won’t distort the economy at all.
“Free” Reparations – not for everyone. People who were never slaves would get paid by people who never had slaves, for the sin of slavery. Makes about as much sense as the rest of this list.
“Free” Housing – just not in the gated communities where Congressmen live.

Oh, and don’t forget regulations, since regulations is another way to give Free Stuff. They take freedom from the economy and create winners and losers. The Green New Deal is an example of this – the idea of the Green New Deal has nothing to do with the environment – it’s all about creating a socialist economy. In the words of AOC’s advisor: “Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Saikat Chakrabarti asked. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

Regulations are used to change the economy.

Take a look at all of the innovation spawned by Communism!

At some point Free Stuff will grow to encompass the entire economy leaving nothing for productive growth. Ever notice that every Communist economy freezes at the technology level (outside of military technology) that existed when it went Commie? Cuba is a great example, what with all of the vintage 50’s Ford® and Chevy© rust buckets and fine Soviet cars they have on the streets. If only they would have waited until the 1970’s to go Communist they could have had Ford© Pintos™. That would have made driving exciting!

The same thing happened in Venezuela. PDVSA was a very profitable oil company before Hugo Chavez gutted it to provide Free Stuff to the Venezuelan people. Now? PDVSA is deeply in debt and incapable of producing as much oil as it did in 1998, despite having 77.5 billion barrels of reserves.

Yeah. Free Stuff can make a country bankrupt.

The nice thing about this concept is that it also applies to individuals. Every day each of us has a choice: do we work to make ourselves better, or do we goof off? The choice is an important one.

Do you invest time in increasing your capabilities every day? Do your work to make yourself better? I mean, really work? Take Steve Martin’s advice – “Be so good they can’t ignore you.” (“Be so good they can’t ignore you.”-Steve Martin Plus? A sniper joke.)

You have the choice. And time is running out. And I’m certain you can’t afford Free Stuff.