Author: John

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

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: At The Bank Of The Rubicon

“Who the hell is Julius Caesar? You know I don’t follow the NBA.” – Anchorman 2

Good thing it’s not already at 5:56 . . .

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

We remain in the gray zone between step 9. and step 10.  I will maintain the clock at 2 minutes to midnight.  There is the possibility of a reduction back to step 8. in the future.  Post-election, authorities have begun to crack down on Leftist violence, plus the cold weather makes riots less fun, especially since the stores the fuel has all been burned.

Previously, I stated that the only thing keeping the clock from ticking to full midnight is the number of deaths.  I put the total at (this is my best approximation, since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) 500 out of the 1,000 required for the international civil war definition.

But as close as we are to the precipice of war, be careful.  Things could change at any minute.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Banks of the Rubicon – Violence And Censorship Update – Maps –  Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Intolerable Acts and the End of the Republic – 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, feel free to subscribe and you’ll get every post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30 Eastern, free of charge.

Banks of the Rubicon

They were going to come after him, he knew, with the full legal apparatus of the state should he give up power.  He knew this.  They had told him as much.  They hated his fame and popularity; they hated his bestselling books where he boasted of his accomplishments.

But it wasn’t just him, it was his family.  He knew that they would take legal action against his family, try to take every bit of his money.  They meant to ruin him.

He didn’t want to do it, but they had forced his hand.  He would call for an insurrection to take power so that his enemies couldn’t pervert the law to use against him, to use against his family.  In the end, was there really a choice?  He would take unprecedented action, because the politics in his country were ruined as it was.

Gaius Julius Caesar stood at the banks of the Rubicon, and hesitated.  To take a Legion across the river under his command would mean civil war.  It would break long-standing tradition.

He ordered the troops forward.  On to Rome.  Caesar reportedly said, “The die is cast.”

“What does the weather look like, Brutus?”  “Hail, Caesar.”

History doesn’t exactly repeat, but it sometimes rhymes.  I’ve been writing about an American Caesar for years.  The parallels between the United States in December, 2020 and the Roman Republic on January 10, 49 B.C. are large.

Could Donald Trump seize power and become something different than a President?

Yes, he clearly could.

But that might mean the end of the Republic – which has seen a string of peaceful transfers of power that has gone back through time to George Washington.

Wouldn’t it?

Probably.  But one could argue that installing a president in an election where there is overwhelming evidence that fraudulent activities took place similarly would destroy the Republic, but just over time.

Will Don cross the Rubicon?  If so, expect it on or before the next Weather Report.

Violence And Censorship Update

As I write this, violence appears to be down.  Winter, plus it appears that some of the Leftist leaders have gotten the order to keep the rabble in check now that they are “in control.”

As part of the “shut it down” theme from the Left continues, I’m getting reports that large numbers of Leftist accounts are now being shut down by Twitter®.  Is this the Leftist’s usual playbook that, once they feel they have power, to get rid of the useful idiots?

Possibly.

How do communists spread their propaganda?  Using commercials.  Meme is as-found on the ‘net.

Of course, this censorship doesn’t come from government – nope.  This censorship now comes from private companies.  I’ve been meaning to write a post about how evil that is, but hadn’t gotten around to it.  Thankfully, Alexander Macris wrote it well (LINK) so I didn’t have to.

From the article (but RTWT):

This essay has only scratched the surface of a very deep topic. The mechanisms by which tyranny is outsourced are ubiquitous. And it’s not just bypassing the Bill of Rights. Outsourcing of tyranny is used everywhere to bypass the checks and balances placed on our government. Whether it’s accepting control over our currency from the Treasury, offering private mercenaries unconcerned about the laws of war, or monitoring and recording all of your private data, Tyranny Inc. is ready to do the dirty job that government isn’t supposed . . . but really wants . . . to do.

Maps

I’ve seen dozens of maps that describe a hypothetical Civil War 2.0.  This one I found interesting for several reasons – it shows the approximate physical extent of Leftist demographics in the country, but also encapsulates a factor that most people don’t consider when dealing with Civil War 2.0 – outside forces.

Found this map on the web – don’t have a person to give credit to.  We’ll just call them Anon.

Yes, we know that while Civil War (Beta Version) was fought with Great Britain across an ocean, Civil War 1.0 was fought between states, Civil War 2.0 will be street to street – perhaps with dozens of Stalingrad-type conflicts across the nation.

But while I was watching some movie that involved narco-gangs, I ended up doing research.  The fourth-largest (behind 1. American Citizens, 2. American Armed Forces, and 3. American Police Forces) armed group in America are likely the drug cartels.

Civil War 2.0 would be an opportunity for them.  But it would also be an opportunity for China.  I didn’t put the map together, but you can certainly see that Anon put time into thinking which nations might help which side in the event of a Civil War in the near term.  I had several that I could argue with, but I thought I’d present it for what it was – another take on the way an uncertain world might shake out.

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 lead to the index.  On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

Up is more violent.  The public “perception” of violence dropped drastically during November.  I expect that this number will drop once again.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  Instability dropped slightly.  December – will it bring a conclusion or more tension?

Economic:

The economic measures are strongly up this month, even as lockdowns continue.  Is the vaccine a real cure, or is it a false hope?

Illegal Aliens:

Down is good, in theory.  This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol.  Numbers of illegals being caught is rising again to a record November.

The Intolerable Acts and the End of the Republic

At last count, over 50% of voters thought the election was rigged, which includes Leftists.  Since they felt that Orange Man was literally the most evil and fascist person ever (rather than the mid-1990s moderate his policies showed him to be) cheating to Leftists is justified.  The ends always justify the means to the Left.  They’re happy the election was rigged.

Then, there’s the middle.  They mostly don’t think about it.  Whatever news readers on television say, well, that probably works for them.

I hope you’re not reading this in 2021, since all these memes will be outdated Biden.

There are some people who are stunned at the idea that we might have a fraudulently elected president.  I am in that category.  Why?  The idea that one of the last bastions against tyranny, the ballot box, is gone leaves Americans with few methods to redress their grievances.  What are we supposed to do next time, vote harder?

But the idea that the presidency, the crown jewel of political power in the world can be sold is intolerable to many.  Intolerable means simply that – cannot be tolerated.  If the office can be openly stolen once, it can be openly stolen in the future.

This is inherently destabilizing – and if not corrected, will certainly be more destabilizing than Trump’s term in office.  Does it end the Republic?  Just like Trump’s crossing the Rubicon, it likely does – though the big question is “when?”

LINKS

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

2020 ELECTION FRAUD EVIDENCE OVERVIEW

https://hereistheevidence.com/

https://www.theepochtimes.com/election-fraud-allegations-infographic_3605589.html?utm_source=newsnoe&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2020-12-04-5

https://thomisticthinker.com/skeptical-of-voter-fraud-in-2020-heres-your-evidence/

https://www.thelibertybeacon.com/election-fraud-evidence-of-chicanery-during-2020-presidential-election/

https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/23/5-more-ways-joe-biden-magically-outperformed-election-norms/

https://theredelephants.com/there-is-undeniable-mathematical-evidence-the-election-is-being-stolen/

https://stonecoldtruth.com/2020-election-fraud-evidence-compiled/

https://streamable.com/4gcp0i

MATT BRAYNARD – VOTER INTEGRITY PROJECT

https://twitter.com/MattBraynard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atkp6fnwk9w&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH9ihoLi1NA&feature=youtu.be

GEORGIA ELECTION MALARKEY

In a hurry?  Go to 9:00…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbTSUkA8xgI&feature=youtu.be

Explanation?

https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2020/12/fact-check-video-from-ga-does-not-show-suitcases-filled-with-ballots-pulled-from-under-a-table-after-poll-workers-dismissed.html

Or Not?

https://www.libertariannews.org/2020/12/03/cctv-captures-ga-ballot-fraud-after-fake-pipe-leak/

INFIGHTING

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/11/pelosi-floats-above-democrats-war-435799

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/03/maga-georgia-civil-war-trump-senate-republicans-442776

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/12/georgia-senate-runoff-republicans-civil-war.html

ON THE EDGE

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/civil-war-united-states-unlikely-violence/2020/10/29/3a143936-0f0f-11eb-8074-0e943a91bf08_story.html

https://theconversation.com/five-reasons-trumps-challenge-of-the-2020-election-will-not-lead-to-civil-war-150320

https://internationalman.com/articles/winding-up-americans/

https://chicagocrusader.com/cold-civil-war-in-america/

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-u-s-is-at-a-tipping-point-that-could-lead-to-civil-warn-warns-the-worlds-biggest-hedge-fund-manager-11606922363

OVER THE EDGE

https://straightlinelogic.com/2020/11/08/its-perfectly-clear-by-robert-gore/

https://americanmind.org/features/a-house-dividing/2020-a-retrospective-from-2025/

Fit For Service: Fat Little Dogs With ESP And You

“We’re on a mission from God.” – The Blues Brothers

I thought this guy looked like a werewolf.  If he bit me, I’d go to the doctor to see if I had a beast infection.

The proprietor over at Adaptive Curmudgeon (LINK), who goes by Adaptive Curmudgeon, Hank Curmudgeon challenged me that he’d only type naked until I did a post where all of the memes come from a particular web page, specifically this one (LINK), which documents Victorian beard styles.

(Update:  Do go visit Adaptive Curmudgeon!  I’m sure I have already confused him with several comments, so I’m owing him big time!)

It’s getting cold, so I thought I’d allow him (Update:  Hank) to at least get a blanket.  Since this isn’t normally how I do my memes, we’ll see how it goes.  But I’m concerned for him – I hear it’s so cold where he is that you can get soft-serve straight from the udder.

(Update:  So, yes, as usual, the problem exists between my keyboard and my chair.  I was thinking that Hank Curmudgeon was Adaptive Curmudgeon sharing a first name and didn’t want to share that name without permission.  So, it turned into a big Frasier episode where Frasier doesn’t know that Daphne spiked the eggnog, and then he spikes the eggnog, and then Miles spikes the eggnog, and then they catch Martin on fire.

All error belongs with me.  End update!)

On to the story.

My dog has ESP.  Well, that’s not really true.  It’s not my dog.  It’s The Mrs.’ dog, MacReady.  I’ll do in a pinch when The Mrs. isn’t around, but I’m not the preferred person – that’s The Mrs.

That’s understandable.  The Mrs. feeds MacReady and pampers it.  In my world?  Dogs get kibble and (once in a while) leftovers.  In The Mrs.’ world, dogs get canned dog food.  So, yeah, MacReady probably picked the right person.

This particular dog is a miniature pinscher, so it’s supposed to be about eight pounds of misplaced aggression.  The Mrs.’ has currently “overserved” MacReady, so he’s currently about sixteen pounds of misplaced aggression and high self-esteem.

I can hardly remember when I tried to get into optometrist school.  It’s all kind of blurry now.

By misplaced aggression, I mean the dog is sixteen pounds, yet it barks like it thinks it’s a linebacker for the Chicago Bears® when someone rings the doorbell, and will bravely waddle to the door to defend the house as fast as its little legs will carry it.

When MacReady jumps off of the bed, I’m constantly in fear that his legs will collapse up into his body and we’ll be left with a sort of dog/sandworm mix that will only be able to wiggle around the floor.  If that happens, we’ll keep still keep him.  You know, for the spice.

The Mrs. is worried MacReady might rupture like a bag of soup.  If so, we’ll toss him in the compost heap.  Then he’ll be min-pin soup for the soil.

Anyway, MacReady has ESP.  By ESP, I mean that he has extra-sensory perception.

I was going to make a joke about his eyes, but I worried that would be two cornea.

And my phone is the cause.

See, whenever my phone isn’t on mute, it makes a particular noise when my front doorbell senses motion.  It’s like a set of not-annoying wind chimes.  The Mrs. used to have the same app on her phone, and somehow MacReady associated that sometimes when the wind chimes played, there would be a person, like a UPS® guy evil eldritch horror or monstrous alien threat* (LINK) at the door.

So, MacReady has figured out that whenever my phone makes that chime noise it means that bad men, perhaps wearing hats are lurking outside to ring the hated doorbell?  He clomps his huge min-pin butt to the door and barks, as threatening as a feather duster in a biker bar fight.

But, as fat and as tiny as MacReady is, he is fit for purpose.  He has two jobs:  be warm and cuddly, and be annoying when someone rings the doorbell.  That’s really it.

Maybe he grew that to cover a neck brace?  If so, he never looked back. 

As people, though, we have a purpose, too.

Are we fit for it?

And, that’s the question I have for you today.

I can’t tell you your purpose.  I can only give you ideas on how I found mine.  But I assure you that you have one even if you don’t know it.

I once read that you should write down things that you could do and do it until you break down and cry with the beauty of what you have written.  I think that smells kinda bogus, and really doesn’t fit well with reality as I’ve found it, and I haven’t cried since Hornady developed the 6.5 Creedmoor.

Me?  I’ve found my purpose (as I know it now) by trying things.  First one, then another.  I’ve found a few things that I’m good at.  Sleeping.  Eating Ruffles®.  I’ve even found some things that I do that are useful.  Putting laundry into the dryer is definitely one of those things.

His girlfriend left him, too.  She found out he was seeing someone else.

But I’ve found far more that I’m awful at.  Singing.  I love to sing.  People love it more when I don’t sing.  Playing guitar.  People like my guitar playing better than my singing, but not by much.

If you have no talent in a subject (or, like me an aggressive anti-talent in music) it’s rarely going to form the basis of a purpose.  Finding those talents that you have, developing them, and then combining them (Scott Adams calls it a talent stack) is really the basis of a purpose.

A purpose is, in the end, the reason that you exist.  And eating Ruffles© and sleeping, no matter how good I might be at those things) is not it.  This blog is part of that purpose.  And my purpose is constantly evolving, not because I’ve lost focus, but because I’ve learned more about who I am and what I can do.

And a purpose may not have anything to do with your job.  Often it is.  But in the end, you do the job you need to do so you can feed your family, even if it sucks.  Of course, if you don’t need money, that rule goes right out the window.  But most people who have jobs find them distasteful from time to time – that’s why they’re not called hobbies.

His other hobby was taking pictures of trout wearing clothing.  He said it was like shooting fish in apparel.

But if you do have your purpose, especially if it’s a special purpose, I can tell you that you need to get fit for it.  Even as MacReady’s purpose is pretty easy to meet – be a warm furry throw pillow and be a tool by barking like a chopper door machine-gun two dozen or so times a day – I bet yours isn’t that easy.

So what is it that you have to do to fulfill that purpose with all of the impact of a fat miniature pinscher impacting a carpeted floor accelerated by gravity at 32.1740 ft/s2 (6.62607015×10−34Js)?

  • Is it physical? Get in the best shape you can.
  • Is it mental? Practice improves everything.
  • Is it spiritual? There are many folks that can help you there – who knows what you might find.
  • Is it courage? Is it scary?

It might be.  Actually attempting to fulfill a purpose can be daunting.  What happens when you fail?

Not if.  When.  If the purpose is big enough and worthy of you, you will fail – that’s the basis for learning.  And you will fail until you don’t.  You have to be strong enough to keep going, building yourself up layer by layer.

I like having lots of layers on my bed – that’s a blanket statement.

You’ve got to bark at that door every day, if that’s your purpose, even if you don’t have ESP.

*I went with the spelling from the 38 year old movie – I figured it was more commonly known than the spelling in a story written over 82 years ago.

Luck And (Sort Of) $20

“What’s this, then? ‘Romanes eunt domus’? People called Romanes, they go, the house?” – The Life of Brian

When Clint was taking pottery class, before he put his ceramics into the oven, he’d snarl:  “Go ahead, bake my clay.”

I went on a long-ish walk today.  Walking is fun, gets me outdoors, and allows me to feel the wind on my scalp.  Not that being bald is bad – when I was younger I used to play chess with bald old men at my hometown’s park.  It’s really hard to find 32 of them all at once, though.

I went on the same walk yesterday.  The thought came to my mind, hey, I’m going to find a $20 bill when I go walking soon.

And today?  As I had just finished 1.56 miles (still heading out) I looked in the ditch by the side of the country road.  Could it be?  Was it?

It was.

No, not another Bud Light® can.  It was my $20 dollar bill!  I’m not making any of this up.  Here’s a picture.

I got home and found that someone ripped the center pages out of my dictionary.  It went from bad to worse.

Now it’s not the worst thing I’ve found inert, piled in the weeds next to a crumpled Bud Light™ can – that would be the Ex.  But it wasn’t exactly a full $20 bill, either.

I sent a picture of it to my friend.  “Looks like you’ve got about $9.50 there, John.”

Yup.  It is a real $20 bill.  Just not a complete $20 bill.  And since you need to have 51% of a piece of paper currency to trade it in – it’s not $9.50, it’s $0.00, although I’m sure that in Pennsylvania (or Wisconsin, or Georgia or…), my 45% of a $20 dollar bill would magically transform at 3AM into a full 55%.

So, was I lucky?

Yup, I was.

Why would I deprive an Uber driver of a chance to take part in a marathon?

Although we talk about all of the right things to do with your money (or bullets, or gold, or PEZ®) one thing you have to factor in is luck.

Pa Wilder, generally, did it all the “right way” – saved money, owned his home free and clear for years, bought his cars with cash, and stayed out of debt.  About 25 years after he retired, he was broke – he had spent most of his savings, so my brother John (yes, my brother’s name really is John, too) kicked in and helped Pa along.  Pa didn’t spend it all on pantyhose and elephant rides – generally, he just lived a very quiet life.

Then there was relative “B”.  They went from one cash shortage to another for almost their entire lives – not because of any sort of fault – they were frugal and worked hard.  In one particular cash crunch, they ended up having to sell cattle to pay an emergency bill.  Then, one day, a group of geologists came on to their land just as they’re ready to retire.  The oil company drilled a few wells and started sending them checks.

How much were all those checks worth?

Enough to allow them to get a bulldozer to push over the house they were living in.  Honestly, they didn’t need a bulldozer since the only thing holding the house together were mice holding hands with termites.

I enjoy testing microphone/speaker combinations.  Have any feedback for me?

And enough was left over to build an entirely new house.

It was . . . luck.

As humans, we plan.  We can’t help it.  And we observe patterns:  not getting married until you’re ready, finishing school, not getting divorced, saving money, being thrifty, and investing are things that generally lead to financial stability.

Choice of career is also important – there are few composers of 17th and 18th century-style music that are wealthy.  But for those composers that are?  If it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it.

But we should all take a step back and understand that the future isn’t based entirely on skill – it’s also based on luck.  And, yes, I know what you’re saying – the same thing I normally think – quoting Seneca (the dead Roman):  “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

I try to live my life by those words.

But there’s still just plain luck.

Did Romans kept fit by doing Pontius Pilates?

I am normally that lucky guy.  Seriously – I started writing down a list of incredibly good luck that I’ve had in my life.  It was a very long list.  If I took a hard look at the list, sure, some of it happened because I was clever enough, or fast enough, or strong enough, or just so very pretty – too damn pretty to die, some might say.

But some of those coincidences that happened to me were none of that.  The opportunities were so amazingly rare, and yet, there I was.  It’s not just me who has observed this.  A good friend once described me like this:  “John, if you were walking down the street and fell down into a pile of gum, you’d come back up with a $100 bill stuck to your forehead.”

Part of luck, however, is just understanding that some days are your day – nothing can go wrong.  And other days?  Nothing will go right, even if you’ve prepared wonderfully and meticulously.

Yes, I believe that Seneca is right, and you prepare as hard as you can for those days and seize the ever-loving snot out of those days.  So when it’s my day?  I try to push my luck as far and as fast as I can.  The Romans had this one sniffed out, too:  Fortis Fortuna adiuvat.  Fortune favors the bold.

What kind of aspirin do fortune-tellers take?  Medium strength.

When it’s not my day?  I just slooooooow down.

What I really have seen is that people who are in great moods have . . . the best luck.  Those same people often find opportunities where others don’t see them.

Maybe I’m just an optimist.  I think great things are going to happen to me, so, they do.  When I was out walking on the deck when it was raining and one foot slipped and I did the splits?  The kind of splits that you feel some muscle in your left leg streeeeeeeetch, and then feel that same muscle “give” because I haven’t bent like that since I was in high school?

Not lucky?  Right?

I can’t be sure.  Stretching my leg like a pretty, pretty ballerina sure fired me up to get walking to build that muscle back up.  And it’s working just after a few days.  And I found this neat $20 bill.

Or at least part of one.

Weird, huh?

The United States And The Road From Abundance To Bondage

“Is life in bondage better than death?” – The Ten Commandments

I heard Leftists can’t find tasty mushrooms:  someone said they lost their Morel compass.

Henning W. Prentis, Jr., presented a speech at the mid-year graduation of the University of Pennsylvania in 1943.  Mr. Prentis was the President of the Armstrong Cork Company.  Now, you might think that a cork company would only be of interest to the Swiss Army, but Armstrong was a different breed:  during World War II Mr. Prentis had Armstrong Cork making .50 caliber ammo, tips for warplane wings, sound insulation for submarines, and camouflage.

If your wife can fix a car, fix dinner, and then set a broken bone?  You have a Swiss Army Wife.

Eventually, several divisions were spun off, and it’s certain that you’ve walked on Armstrong Flooring and sat on furniture that was made by yet another Armstrong subsidiary underneath ceiling grids and ceiling tiles that were made by yet another Armstrong company.  All of this was started in a little Pennsylvania cork company way before Pennsylvania’s voting fraud made Kim Jong-un consider moving to Philadelphia.

Anyway, Mr. Prentis seemed to have an awful lot to say – his commencement speech clocked in at 4,953 words.  At 125 spoken words a minute, that’s nearly 40 minutes of straight talking, with zero memes or bikini graphs – looks like he didn’t know how to put a cork in it.  And all of those speeches were before the long lines of diplomas.

Graduation must have taken six days back then.  If you want to read the whole address, it’s here (LINK).

Mr. Henning Prentis’ essay has some very relevant content to today – I’ve posted just a few bits of it below.  I’ve fixed some punctuation, but the words are still Henning’s.  But I still haven’t found the answer to the most important question:  Who the heck names their kid Henning?

The historical cycle seems to be: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to apathy; from apathy to dependency; and from dependency back to bondage once more.

At the stage between apathy and dependency, men always turn in fear to economic and political panaceas. New conditions, it is claimed, require new remedies. Under such circumstances, the competent citizen is certainly not a fool if he insists upon using the compass of history when forced to sail uncharted seas.

Usually, so-called new remedies are not new at all. Compulsory planned economy, for example, was tried by the Chinese some three millenniums ago, and by the Romans in the early centuries of the Christian era. It was applied in Germany, Italy and Russia long before the present war broke out.

Yet, it is being seriously advocated today as a solution of our economic problems in the United States. Its proponents confidently assert that government can successfully plan and control all major business activity in the nation, and still not interfere with our political freedom and our hard-won civil and religious liberties. The lessons of history all point in exactly the reverse direction.

Prentis’ quote can, thankfully, be summed up in a single chart that won’t take you 40 minutes to read:

Let’s not be like Russia circa 1917, okay? (Source for base: Wikimedia, CC-BY-SA-4.0, J4lambert)

In the United States, we were (mostly) blessed by abundance for decades at a time.  The Great Depression wasn’t the normal condition for the United States – it was an aberration of a fairly prosperous place.  But the Great Depression really was bad – Bob The Builder® was just called Bob then.

Inertia has a quality all of its own, but luck always helps.  After World War II, Europe was mostly devastated by the war.  Half of a decade of bombs and artillery shells and tanks and armies had killed millions, but also destroyed a majority of European and Asian governments plus much of the productive infrastructure.

America, meanwhile, had been untouched.  It had the oil, the steel mills, the agriculture, and the workforce.  It created consumer goods for itself and products for the world.  There was little competition.

Last time I bought land it was in Egypt.  Turns out I fell for a Pyramid scheme.

Oh, sure you could buy the Soviet version of Chevy Camaro® called the Lada Latitude©.  The Latitude™ was modeled on the Soviet T-34 Tank (500 horsepower diesel engine) that went zero to 32 mph in 45 seconds, and sported a stunning 1.17 miles per gallon in the base model.   It was also available with optional dual jet engines from a MiG-21.  Sadly those engines didn’t allow the tank to move, but did allow the wolf to blow down that pesky brick house, along with those capitalist swine.

There are many things you can call Soviet engineering.  Subtle is not one of them.

But post World War II gave the United States, and then, gradually the world, abundance, leading to selfishness.  Selfishness was probably best showcased in the 1970s and 1980s.  Tom Wolfe even titled the 1970s “The Me Decade.”  The 1980s followed suit – the pursuit of wealth was seen by many as the goal.  Morality?  The market (and leisure suits) were the definition of morality.

The 1980s bled into complacency, and finally into apathy.  The Grunge movement was a reaction to materialism.  What did it all mean?  What does any of this matter?  Pure apathy, so let’s not bathe and get a bunch of piercings and tattoos.

Now we are in a nation where citizens aren’t seeking freedom – they’re actively seeking dependence on the government – free money (guaranteed basic income), free healthcare (Medicare for all), and all manner of other support systems.  To quote one Mr. Harvard McClain (1950s?):  “If your government is big enough to give you everything you want, it is big enough to take away from you everything you have.”

Sure, I want everything for nothing from the State, but in every single time that’s been tried in human society, it always ends the same way – with the people becoming the enemy of the State.

And that’s how you get to Mr. Prentis’ last stage: bondage.

For a guy dealing with cork, Mr. Prentis has some pretty good vision.

Oh, and I don’t have to yell to get The Mrs. to come downstairs – she can hear a cork pop all the way across the house . . . .

Black Friday 2021

“Who buys an umbrella anyway? You can get them for free at the coffee shop in those metal cans.” – Seinfeld

I never understood why people got attacked by sharks.  Can’t they hear the music?

Black Friday is easy to make fun of, but I won’t (so much) this year.  As other people go nuts over shopping, I get to sleep in on a Friday morning and not go shopping.  It’s a win-win:  other people get to do what they want to do, and I don’t have to join them.

I can see the appeal – the idea of, perhaps, getting a deep discount on something they wanted to buy anyway is attractive.  And economizing by not wasting money is a very good thing, especially if you’re able to afford something that you normally couldn’t buy.  By not participating, though, I save 100% in every store.

I have no idea how well the sales figures will be on Black Friday, 2020.  I expect that the economy is significantly weaker than people imagine.  Multiple shutdowns for Coronavirus seem to have taken a major toll on the economy, so I’m not sure how many people are going to want to spend extra for new cooking gadgets.   I know that there’s a mask mandate in most places, but please be aware:  around here they expect you to wear pants, too.

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and flies like a duck, it’s probably a government surveillance drone.

Many retailers, including our local shopping choice, Wal-Mart®, were closed on Thanksgiving.

As we all know – if there’s a buck in it, stores will stay open.  That is, after all, why they’re in business.  Someone did the math and figured out that it wouldn’t make sense to be open on Thanksgiving this year. That should tell you a lot about where the economy is.

The real economy.

The idea that the Dow-Jones® Industrial Average (DJIA) just hit a record 30,000 should also tell you something – the economy has split.  FaceBook® is doing so well that they’re still hiring Congressmen.  As several astute readers here have noted – the DJIA seems to be entirely disconnected from the reality of the actual economy most people have to work in, even though once upon a time there really was a connection.

But there is a connection between Black Friday and Christmas.  Several people I know complete all of their Christmas shopping either on Black Friday or Cyber Monday.  Businesses count on this behavior to make a profit for the year, although big businesses (Amazon®, Wal-Mart©, etc.) have already had a great year.

If you used your COVID stimulus check to buy baby chickens, did you get your money for nothing and your chicks for free?

The Mrs. and I no longer get very excited about Christmas presents – we’re fortunate that we have most of our needs met and the best gifts are the small ones that require some thought, like when The Mrs. bought me that book on anti-gravity.  I just couldn’t put it down!

The Boy seems generally content, and when I ask him what he wants, the answer is generally, “I’ll think about it.”  Pugsley still has a list.

Well, not a list.  A dozen lists.  He emailed me the first one.  Of course, knowing him, I entirely ignored the list.  Never even opened it.

Why?

Because there was a new and entirely different list the next day.  And a new one the day after that.  Finally, he seemed settled.

I named my iPad® Titanic, so when it was updating it said, “Titanic is syncing.”

“I want an iPad®.”

“Why don’t you take my old one?  I never use it.  Enjoy.”  It had originally been given to me by a Chinese friend – I do love homemade presents.

“Wait, what?”  After complaining that it was the 2015 model, he finally accepted that making do with an old iPad® and something else for Christmas was actually a pretty good deal.  Honestly, I think he’ll remember that more than getting a new iPad™.

Like I said, our family is in a good place, but we know that not everyone is.  I expect that there will be a lot less spent on gifts this Christmas.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing.  The best parts of healthy relationships aren’t material.  Long after a gift has worn out or been lost, the benefits of a real relationship remain.

If Schrödinger’s cat went on a crime spree, would he be wanted dead and alive?

I expect that the recession is far from over.  I also think that we’ve moved from a period of relative plenty into something . . . new.

New doesn’t mean bad.  New means different.

And if that meant that Black Friday stopped being a materialist holiday?

We might all be better off.

Time, Treasure, and Talent: Three Gifts To Be Thankful For

“We paid him in gratitude and life lessons.” – Psych

But it’s what we got. 

The other day I went to McDonalds®.  This is not a usual thing, because the McDonalds® in Modern Mayberry is run and staffed by people who (really) once gave me a bare McMuffin™ instead of the Sausage McMuffin™ with Egg© that I had asked for.  Some of the folks who work there (not all of them) couldn’t spell dog if you spotted them a “d” and a “g”.

I ended up going there because The Mrs. asked if I wanted to have lunch with her and one of her relatives.  I was intended to get the food.   When I asked what she wanted, she said, “Surprise me.”   Since I like spending time with The Mrs., I agreed.  Since we never went to McDonalds™, I figured that would surprise her.

The Mrs. said to meet at noon.  Immediately the calculations went off in my mind:

  • It will take me fifteen minutes to get to McDonalds®.
  • It will take 10 minutes in the drive-through at McDonalds™. In Modern Mayberry, McDonalds© isn’t fast food, it’s convenient food (at least when they get the order right).
  • It’s another 10 minutes to the relative’s house.

To be on time, I’d have to leave home 35 minutes before lunch.  Simple.  And, as it turned out, my timing was exactly (nearly to the minute) correct.  But my biggest revelation of the trip was this:  to feed three people a warm lunch from the drive-through cost $23.74and took 20 extra minutes from my life.

I bought lunch for the three of us (again, with me eating light) and I did the math – with the cost of my lunch deducted, each of them could have had a one pound ribeye steak and side dishes if we cooked it ourselves I and could have done that in 20 minutes or less.

Oh, sure, you say, who would want a one pound ribeye steak when one could have a box of ten lukewarm chicken McNuggets®?

Well, me.

Well, I guess McDonalds® has a pretty sophisticated social media group.

And that brought me to today’s thought.  It’s the week of Thanksgiving and I already hit gratitude, but I’m going to drive that psych-out home with this post, too.

Gratitude is being grateful for the gifts that you are given.  That implies that you use those gifts wisely.  The biggest gift is the only one that we all get right out of the box when we are born:

Time.

Time.  It’s been a subject that has fascinated me since I discovered that there are irreversible processes.  You can’t unbreak a glass.  You can’t uncrash a car.  And you can’t undo intentionally leaking all the ink from 20 or so pens on an oak hardwood floor under your bed and drawing pictures of horses when you are three.

My parents were really chapped about that last one.  Oh, they weren’t happy about the car, either.

Each of us only has so much time.  It’s both a blessing and a curse that (most of us) don’t know how much time that is.  It’s a blessing because we can face life unafraid without knowing our fate.  It’s a curse because we might waste our Time.

Literally the first item in my search for the term “time”.  I could have picked another term, but ain’t nobody got time for that.

Waste of anything we have is a failure to show gratitude.  We are each given our measure of Time.  To waste it?  You are wasting everything that your life is made of, and what you could achieve.  To be clear – your achievement isn’t for you, it’s for the future of mankind.  What are you doing with those precious moments that you have to make the future of mankind better?

Or, at least you could use your time to get on the cover of The Rolling Stone.

Even if you aren’t religious (to be clear, I am), this duty is simple – what are you doing to make the world better?

Don’t waste your Time.

The second thing that you can waste is your Treasure.  Good heavens – when I looked at the prices I paid for lukewarm McNuggets® compared to the cost of a home grilled steak dinner, it was embarrassing.  Seriously – the cost of a Quarterpounder® with Cheese™ and a medium fries was the cost of a ribeye steak.

I’m not saying that I’m only going to eat ramen noodles warmed by the heat of my thighs rubbing against each other as I spend quality time on an elliptical trainer.  Nope.  Besides, that’s much messier than keeping the ramen duct-taped under my armpits.

You really don’t want to know where I warm the pâté.

But each one of the people reading this (I’m hoping that Bezos and Musk don’t read this) have a limited amount of money.  What you do with it really matters.  Ma Wilder (who was my adopted mother) didn’t deal well with waste – to her, a wasted drop of gravy was an affront against all that was good.

And Ma Wilder was right.

“What’s the most expensive food in the world?  Food you buy and then don’t eat.” – John Wilder

But that’s also why we don’t make candles in summer – we have to pay for the heat to melt the wax and then to get the heat out of the house again.  I love having candles in the basement, but most of the year I can’t have them – who lights a candle when the air conditioning is on?

That’s the most expensive light in the world.

I’m sure someone else has said that the most expensive food in the world is the food you buy and don’t eat, since it is the most basic idea in the world.  But I haven’t seen it before, so I’ll take it until some bright commenter (Ricky?) notes that the Internet says that some French monk said it in 457 A.D.

(And, no, that won’t bother me a bit.)

But I guess that’s maybe why the French eat snails?

Well, he’s no Pinochet.  He didn’t have helicopters.

But wasting your money is wasting your time, and wasting your life.  I’m not sure about many of you, but my inheritance was the time and love I got from my parents and family.  Oh, and a box of rocks (this is true, I’ll save it for a future post, maybe).  But the Treasure you have represents potential.

There was a story I read once, I’m going from memory, and it went (more or less) like this:

A group of monks asked a Chinese Emperor for more robes.  The Emperor asked:

“What will you do with the old robes?”
“We will turn them into sheets for our beds.”
“And your old sheets?”
“We will turn them into rags to clean the floor.”
“And your old rags?”
“We will incorporate them into the bricks that make up our monastery.”

Do not waste your Treasure:  exhaust it.

The final thing you should have gratitude for?

Your Talent.

I am really grateful for each of the Talents that I have.  But, like Time and Treasure, wasting Talent is, well, wrong.  Just like Time (mostly) and Treasure (at least partially), most of the Talents you have weren’t earned, but given at birth.

What do you do with your Talents?  That’s where it gets interesting.

I have used many of my Talents during the years, and only a few of them are on display in this blog.  After all, you can’t see how shiny my scalp is over the Internet.  NASA uses it as a beacon to guide spacecraft back from orbit.

Wasting Talent is probably the worst, even more than wasting Time and Treasure.  Time is determined in many cases by forces beyond our control.  Treasure?  Treasure is fleeting.  Elon Musk made $100 billion dollars this year.  And it can evaporate as quickly as it rained.

But Talent is the most inborn of the traits, and in my opinion, the most tragic thing anyone can waste.  I can’t gain the Talent of Eddie Van Halen even if I devoted my entire life to playing the guitar.  If I spent the next decade studying the guitar, or trying to sing?  People would pay me for those talents.

Pay me not to use them.

Well, I never bought any Princess Leia CDs.

I’ll explain:  one time we went to church and I was too hoarse to sing.  The Mrs. said after that service, “I never knew how beautiful that music could be.”  This is a true story.  I guess that if people can have Talents, I can have an anti-talent, too.

In the end, I have to be grateful for the Talents that I have, and grateful for the Talents I can use.  Can I be filled with pride for them?  Nope.

So, as I sit here typing – my goal is this:

To use every Talent I have, for every minute left in my life, as much as I can.  Why?

Because a Talent is a gift.  And if I use it well, for the benefit of me and those around me in a positive way?

That is Virtue.  And that is a goal all of us can share in:  living the most virtuous lives we can.  Think of your Time, Treasure, and Talent as ways to become virtuous, because they are the greatest and, perhaps, only gifts you will ever have.

Also, don’t look up Rule 34.

So, to sum up:  I’m grateful for the Time given me, the Treasure I have earned, and the Talent I was given at birth.  These are three of the things in my life I’m most grateful for.

I’m also thankful for the Hot Mustard Sauce® from McDonalds™ on lukewarm McNuggets©.  That still tastes pretty good.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving Week: Gratitude

“Karma is a word, like love.  A way of saying ‘what I am here to do.’ I do not resent my karma – I’m grateful for it.” – The Matrix:  Revolutions

If Columbus had stopped to ask for directions, they might celebrate Thanksgiving in India, too.

2020 has been a very difficult year.  It’s not over, in fact just like a horror movie, you think it’s over, and then you look at your watch and realize there’s still 20 minutes left.  2020 might still have surprises left for us, and there are plenty of reasons to think that 2021 might be worse than 2020.

But the beauty of life is that life isn’t about avoiding difficult things.  Comfort is not really our friend.

Why?

The warm comfort of a bed is nice.  No sane person would disagree.  But the comfort of the warm bed is a trap.  Very few things in life are accomplished from the comfort of a warm bed.  Not to say zero things, but this is a family friendly blog.

What does create accomplishment is risk, change, and discomfort.  2020 has so far been the poster child for each of these things.  But now it’s time to take a pause and reflect.

And, yes, be grateful.

Lighthouse?  Have you ever tried to lift one?

Gratitude is the basis for a fulfilled life.  Practicing gratitude provides lower stress, better sleep, and generally better health.  It makes people around you happier, too, because who likes living around a tool?  Gratitude might seem like something that you’d do for other people, but it turns out the biggest beneficiary is . . . you.

So, in that spirit, following are some things I’m thankful for.  The order is sort of random.  In the comments, let me know what I missed.

I’m thankful for the country of my birth.  I was born in the United States when a vast majority of the world was under horrible oppression.  I remember hearing the stories on the news and asking Grandma McWilder why I was so lucky to be born in the United States when I was five or so.

I don’t recall being satisfied with her answer.  Regardless, I am still very thankful for the chicken and noodles that she made me – noodles made from scratch in the way only a Southern-born Grandma can.  You might like your grandma, but I assure you mine was the best one ever.

Oh, wait, that’s Queen Elizabeth II going to go see Princess Diana . . .

That easily brings me to my next gratitude.  I’m thankful for my family, past and present.  As long-time readers know, I’m adopted from within my family.  But what I haven’t mentioned before is that I was adopted by my family at the very last second possible.  I had just been placed with a new family, but my parents reeled me back in through a court battle to overturn the Electoral College pending adoption.

I’m thankful for that, too.

I even wrestled the kid who was adopted in my place when I was in high school (this is true) and beat him.  It was on points – he wasn’t bad, but I knew was going to win from the second we shook hands.  I didn’t find out that he was the replacement kid for me until later that year, after we had wrestled.

I always carried a piece of paper when wrestling, if my opponent turned out to be The Rock.

Obviously, his parents got the inferior model.  But don’t feel bad for him – his parents were millionaires several times over.  And, honestly, unless my parents were related to me by blood they would have put me (rightfully!) in a burlap bag weighted with several heavy lead weights and dropped me in a lake.

I was that bad.  Really, I was an awful child until about age 9.

My family has rough spots on it like every family.  Real families hardly ever resemble a 1950’s sitcom family.  But I have had The Boy come home after hearing some drama his friends were tied up in and say to me, “Pop, you have no idea how lucky I am.”

Yeah, The Boy, I really do understand.  I’m just as lucky as you.

I’m thankful for every gift I was given at birth by God.  Or, you might think genetics, but who brought those people together on that cold winter night in February, or that hot summer day in August, hmmm?  Oh, wait, we’re back to the “warm bed” argument.

One thing I really have learned in life is that the gifts you were born with aren’t gifts you can be proud of.  Should you be proud of your hair color?  Your height?  Of course not.  Those are things that you are born with.  Similarly, I’m not ashamed that my shiny head is used as a beacon by the ISS when they overfly my house.  I can’t control whether or not I have hair, so why be upset about it?

Okay, not at all true.  I can type well.

But you can feel some pride (remember, it’s rightfully a sin) at what you do with those gifts.  Be (a little) proud of that.  But if you were born smart, strong, and incredibly handsome like me?  Don’t be proud of that.

Be proud of what you can do with that.  Remember, potential without action is . . . failure.

I’m thankful for every experience I had in 2020 that made me stronger.  By definition, the parts to be thankful for are the tough parts, since eating Ding Dongs®, PEZ™, and Coors Light© on the couch isn’t a great path to achievement or enlightenment.

Even though it really, really sucks, the tough parts of life are what make us better – Nietzsche had that one figured out when he said that what doesn’t kill us, makes us stronger.  Exercising every day is hard.  Even the act of exercising is hard – people get big muscles by constantly tearing (at a small level) the muscle fiber so it grows back stronger and better.

My feet and hands have callouses.  How do you get them?  Hard work.

Hard work leaves its mark on your body.  If it doesn’t break you?  It makes you stronger.  Ding Dongs™ never make you stronger.

What steps should you take before an explosion?  Large, quick ones.

COVID-19 gave me (and certainly some of you) plenty of times to get stronger.

  • For a while, I worked from home. Then I had to fight my way through a zombie horde relax with my stockpile of toilet paper that I had in the basement from way before the ‘Rona.
  • We reviewed our stockpile of storage food and bought just a little extra, always leaving things on the shelf for others.
  • We watched as entire portions of the local, national, and international economy collapsed. We were forced to think in ways that were outside the box of our previous lives.
  • Finally, we watched as cities burned in a way that’s never happened during my lifetime – exceeding the L.A. riots. Does this happen without the WuFlu?  Nearly certainly not.  Does it make us stronger and smarter?    It shows the truth of what Leftists want – destruction of our very country.

I’m thankful for the work I have had during my career.  During my career, I’ve had the ability to help individuals grow and serve entire communities.  That’s kind of cool.  Who knows what will happen next?  I don’t.  One of the biggest gifts a person can be given is the opportunity to help others on a big scale.  I’ve done that.

What’s next?  Who knows?

I don’t.  That’s because:

I’m thankful for the nearly limitless number of opportunities that exist in this world, even after COVID-19 if we are smart enough and quick enough and virtuous enough to grab them.  Ideas aren’t the currency of life – executing an idea is.  Hundreds, perhaps thousands of people have the same great idea at the same time.  After that?  You have to turn that idea into reality.

And most people don’t or can’t.  So, is opportunity out there?  Certainly, even if you’re 18 or 80, though your time horizons and the types of opportunities you can pursue differ.

Seriously, thank you.

I’m thankful for you.  Seriously.  I’m glad you keep coming back.  2021 will, in my estimation, give us more surprises than 2020 did.  I hope it gives you every experience that could help you be stronger, better, and more fit for the next world.

Time To Play B-Sides

“Call it fate, call it luck, call it karma.  I believe everything happens for a reason.  I believe we were destined to get thrown out of this dump.” – Ghostbusters

If your wife insists you treat her like a queen, remember that allows you to behead her if the Pope doesn’t authorize an annulment.

Just a little bit before my time, a popular way to buy music was on a 45rpm record.  It was a little, circular YouTube® that you could put on a record player, for all you Zoomers out there.  These were small records that just contained a single song.  Generally, the best song was the “A” side.  On the back?  The record company generally put a song that they felt was inferior.  This was the “B” side.

The record company was generally right, but sometimes spectacularly wrong.  Queen’s “We Will Rock You” was the B-side to “We Are The Champions.”  But most of the time, the B-side really was an inferior song.  As time was precious and you can never tell when another one is going to bite the dust, why would you take time to listen to a song that wasn’t the best?

You wouldn’t.  Unless . . .

In the song, “Burning for You” by Blue Öyster Cult, one particular lyric is:

Time everlasting,
Time to play B-sides

Even though I owned a total of two 45’s in my life, I understood this when I first listened to the lyric on a dodgy cassette player that ate batteries like they were candy outside while stacking firewood.  Ben Franklin said it very well when he said:

“Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.”

Time is our most precious commodity.  But what if you had time to play the B-sides?

You’d have all the time in the world.

Our lives are built entirely built in how we spend our time.  It’s like the Native American story of the two wolves inside of each of us – one good and one evil.  Which one grows?  The one we feed.

And we feed our life through the choices we make which choices we feed with our time.

And both of the wolves are named Toby.

One of my choices on how to spend my time has been writing this blog.  It has been one of the most fulfilling things in my life in the three and a half years since I started it.  So, by feeding it, I change my future.  To some very small extent, I might even change the lives of the people who read it.

Doing this blog is an A-side.  And it’s one I plan on continuing, if not expanding.

But we all need time for B-sides.  Why?  Because exploring the undiscovered can only take place when we move off of the path that everyone else takes.  I like to think that this blog is somewhat unique – it’s not to everyone’s taste, certainly.

Nah, you can see that Racine eats a lot of carbs.

“Life is a comedy to those who think, a tragedy to those who feel,” is a quote from dead French writing dude Jean Racine.  And he’s right.  I think that life is mostly amusing.

One of the biggest sources of amusement to me is the idea that we can plan our lives.  Of course, to a certain extent, we can.  But everywhere we see that there are unexpected things that show up.  That is, perhaps, one of the best things in life.  The Chinese farmer story (which I’ve used before) tells the tale.

I first heard this from a friend in 2002 or so . . . there were several of us that would get together to talk about ideas and concepts, and one of the participants told this story:

There is an old Chinese story about a farmer.  One night, there was a terrible storm.  The wind blew so hard, it opened up his corral, and his horses got out.

“Bad luck!” said his friends.

“Good luck, bad luck.  Who can say?” replied the farmer.

The next week, his horses, lonely for home, came back.  But while they were loose, they got in with a group of wild horses.  The wild horses came home with them.  The farmer now had twice as many horses.

A centaur got a cough and worried he had COVID-19, but the doctor told him only his legs were horse.

“Good luck!” said his friends.

“Good luck, bad luck.  Who can say?” replied the farmer.

A wild horse is good to no one, so the farmer’s son began to work on breaking the horses.  Most of them were no problem, but one particularly fierce horse bucked the farmer’s son off.  The farmer’s son broke his leg.

“Bad luck!” said his friends.

“Good luck, bad luck.  Who can say?” replied the farmer.

The next week, the Emperor, having decided to go off to war due to a very dangerous threat against the empire, marched with his troops through the farmer’s town.  They called up in a draft all of the able-bodied young men to accompany them to war.  The farmer’s son could not go – his leg was broken.

Good luck, bad luck?  Who can say?  Hopefully

Where do Vikings keep their children?  In the norse-ry.

One thing I do suggest is that, at least occasionally, you take the time to play at least some of the B-sides of your life.  You never know when life will throw a change at you, and your B-side becomes an A-side.

Fight Club: A Dystopia We Can Learn From?

“Fight for us.  And regain your honor.” – The Lord of the Rings:  The Return of the King

What’s a robot’s favorite Mexican food?  Silicon carne.

When I was a kid growing up, I read 1984 by George Orwell.  This was the grim version, as opposed to the much funnier version by Mel Brooks.  It had a profound effect on my worldview, as books often do when you read them in 7th grade.  In it, a globalist group of communists fought each other continuously, while subjugating the entirety of the human race.  Hmmm, wait, that sounds familiar?

1984 was a bleak book.  I’m not sure who I talked about it with, outside of writing the chicken scrawl of a report in schoolboy block letters and handing it to my really hot 7th grade English teacher.  Since my reading scores were, well, advanced, she just let me read what I wanted to read while the rest of the class all read the same book.  It felt nice being a special pretty pony.

I followed 1984 with Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.  I think my teacher suggested it.  Whereas 1984 was a dystopia built on the subjugation of a boot eternally stomping on a human face, Brave New World was a dystopia built on frivolity.

I fell into a vat of chemicals once.  My quick reaction nearly killed me.

Frivolity was where the masses were, more or less, endlessly drugged and entertained and so that their opinions never had a chance to develop, or impaired at birth so they could never think.  The tyranny in Brave New World was the tyranny of a vapid public who never thought beyond the most recent mindless and sexual encounter (strongly encouraged by the state) and the latest movie.

Oh, wait, that sounds familiar too.

Yet another dystopia is the movie (and book) Fight Club.  Fight Club is a 1999 movie based on a 1996 novel that (mostly) tracks the movie.  It is a creation of the 1990s, but, to quote the most excellent YouTube® movie reviewer, The Critical Drinker (LINK, some PG-13 language), it is very relevant to today’s world.  If you haven’t watched this 21-year-old movie and are interested, I suggest you watch The Critical Drinker’s review afterward – he includes spoilers.  I’ll warn you – the R rating was earned, and there are some very dark moments to the movie.

There won’t be any spoilers here – what I have to say doesn’t require me to spoil the film.

Tyler Durden told me handcrafted soap is the best.  No lye.

To really get Fight Club?  You have to watch it at least twice.  It is a thoughtful movie.  Does it have detractors on the Right?  Sure.  It’s R-rated.  Some have called it nihilistic (I disagree) and there are other complaints which I won’t go into here.  Regardless, I won’t beat myself up for going against the grain of other folks who didn’t like the movie.

Very few movies are perfect, but this one is very, very good.

I first watched Fight Club in 2012 or so.  It made over $100 million at the box office, so at least someone talked about Fight Club.  When I finally watched it (which was no fewer than three basement furniture re-arrangements ago) I was stunned.  How stunned?  It’s the only movie that has its own tag on this blog.

Vegan Club?  Everyone talks about Vegan Club.

The constant, pervasive theme of this movie is that the systems of globalism have created boxes for men that make them less than men.  Here’s Tyler Durden (one of the movie characters):

“We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.”

This is a simple translation.  A large proportion of the citizens of the United States define themselves by:

  • How much and what kind of furniture do they have?
  • How nice is their apartment?
  • How well can they write reports in a soul-killing job where large corporations seek to avoid liability in a cold, systematic way?  Does that kill their soul?
  • How can they avoid deviating from the norm to wear the right tie to the meeting?

These things are death to the soul.  As the character Tyler Durden explains:

“You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your (deleted by J.W.) khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.”

I saw a robbery in an Apple® store once.  I was an iWitness©.

Marcus Aurelius and Seneca nod in approval.  They’d follow up:  you are your virtue.

And you, dear reader, are not your money or your clothes.  In many ways we are conditioned by society to believe that those are the things that define us.  We are not.  And if you believe that, you’re not alone.  Tyler describes the twilight of the soul brought about by a life dedicated to consumerism and status.  Live for the material world, and you’ll be swallowed by the material world.  You can never achieve enough, because someone always has more, does something better.

With that philosophy?  Money becomes the god that men seek:

“Damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy (stuff) we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war.  Our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”

I saw a meme (didn’t save it, don’t have the author but I’d love to credit them) that I (sort of) reproduce below:

Michigan is going to ban car sales based on popular Internet videos – the governor wants to stop car-owner-virus.

This meme gets me.  It’s the essence of Fight Club.  We’re a species that is, more or less, programmed to achieve.  For who?  For our group.  It’s why the NFL® is popular today.  Okay, that’s why the NFL™ was popular until they showed us that we’re really not part of their group at all.

We run races for a reason.  We play basketball.  We wrestle.  We have swim races.  Well, you guys have swim races.  I was in a 100-yard swim race in sixth grade and placed 11 out of 12.  I wasn’t dead last because some poor kid got the cramps.  My 11th place finish wasn’t close.  I think they ended up timing me with a calendar and an abacus.

Regardless, we compete.

Why?

It’s wired into us.  Competition partially defines us.  And the stakes have to be real.  There is, of course, a religious aspect as well.  A man has to serve a higher power.  It’s not just competing for today.  There is a bigger game, and there are bigger stakes.  That’s what makes it worth playing the game.  Life is more than consumption and procreation.

Q:  Why did the Libertarian cross the road?  A:  TAXATION IS THEFT!!!  

But men who can run a race fairly and lose with grace are men.  They don’t have to like losing – no man does.  But loss is a forge that makes us stronger, gives us incentives.  Thomas Sowell (I think?) once said that if he were designing a car for safety, he’d put a Bowie knife pointed at the driver in the center of the steering wheel, not an airbag.

Incentives matter.

Now?  We insulate children from the Great Game.  Lose?  That’s okay, you tried.

No, it’s really not.  I lost the swim meet because I suck at swimming and am only slightly better than a car at swimming.  Slightly.

Did I cry?  No.

Antifa protestors – never have to take time off from work.

Did I focus my energy on something where I could be as good as nearly anyone in the state?

Yes.

Swimming was pointless.  Telling me that it was okay was worse than pointless.  It was a lie.

Back to Tyler:

JACK, in voiceover:  On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

CLERK:  Please… don’t…

TYLER DURDEN: Give me your wallet.

Tyler pulls out the driver’s license.

TYLER:  Raymond K. Hessel. 1320 SE Benning, apartment A.  A small, cramped basement apartment.

RAYMOND:  How’d you know?

TYLER:  They give basement apartments letters instead of numbers.  Raymond, you’re going to die.  Is this a picture of Mom and Dad?

RAYMOND:  Yes.

TYLER:  Your mom and dad will have to call kindly doctor so-and-so to dig up your dental records, because there won’t be much left of your face.

RAYMOND:  Please, God, no!                            

JACK: Tyler…

TYLER:  An expired community college student ID card.  What did you used to study, Raymond K. Hessel?

RAYMOND:  S-S-Stuff.

TYLER:  “Stuff.”  Were the mid-terms hard?  I asked you what you studied.

JACK:  Tell him!

RAYMOND:  Biology, mostly.

TYLER:  Why?

RAYMOND:  I… I don’t know…

TYLER:  What did you want to be, Raymond K. Hessel?

Tyler cocks the .357 magnum Colt© Python™ pointed at Raymond’s head.

TYLER:  The question, Raymond, was “what did you want to be?”

JACK:  Answer him!

RAYMOND:  A veterinarian!

TYLER:  Animals.

RAYMOND:  Yeah … animals and s-s-s —

TYLER:  Stuff.  That means you have to get more schooling.

RAYMOND:  Too much school.

TYLER:  Would you rather be dead?

RAYMOND:  No, please, no, God, no!

Tyler uncocks the gun, lowers it.

TYLER:  I’m keeping your license.  I know where you live.  I’m going to check on you.  If you aren’t back in school and on your way to being a veterinarian in six weeks, you will be dead.  Get the hell out of here.

JACK:  I feel sick.

TYLER:  Imagine how he feels.

Tyler brings the gun to his own head, pulls the trigger — click.  It’s empty.

JACK:  I don’t care, that was horrible.

TYLER:  Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessell’s life.  His breakfast will taste better than any meal he has ever eaten.

How many people would love to have Tyler come into their lives and make them live their dreams?  How many people struggle through life, because they can’t take the next step?

You’re not too old.  If you’re breathing, you can make a mark on this world.  You’re not too poor.

My limiting factor is my imagination.  I realize that – it’s probably yours as well.

Regardless of the dystopias of 1984 and Brave New World, Fight Club shows a dystopia where we can win.  How do we win?

By understanding that our lives are in a precarious balance, just like Raymond K. Hessell.  And the first step to living life?  It’s letting go.  Achieving.

I learned to swim when I was very young.  My dad taught me.  I thought I’d never get out of that bag. 

And if you lose at swimming?  Try again.  Or try a new game.

At the end of Fight Club, men prove themselves to be stronger and larger than the dehumanizing systems that they serve.  It’s your choice.  How will your breakfast taste tomorrow?

Also:

Avoid the clam chowder.

 

 

Unrelated:

Steve is a blogger who is a FOW (Friend of Wilder).  Unlike me, he’s talented.  Because of the idiots who run his state, you’re lucky he has time to create something like this for you.  Do it.  No, I don’t get paid.  Steve does.  He’s Our Guy.

Do it.  Here’s the LINK.  There is just enough time for Christmas.

Four Boxes: Soap, Jury, Ballot, And Ammo

“Prentiss got caught stuffing the ballot boxes, so I won.  I am the sheriff!” – Soap

I was physically restrained and denied the right to vote once – and Pugsley would have made such a great 6th grade treasurer.

Western Civilization is a work of genius.  Yes, there are flaws, and some of them may be fatal, but it has produced the greatest amount of achievement in human history.  Western Civilization has done things that no culture has in history.  It has gone from the farthest reaches of the Arctic, to the Antarctic, to the tallest mountain in the world and the lowest trench in the sea.  And don’t forget the Sports Illustrated® Swimsuit Edition™.

While other nations starved their own citizens on purpose, we gladly fed the world.

Were we perfect?  Certainly not.  I, for one, want to apologize to the world for The Brady Bunch, which I believe was in violation of the Geneva Convention.  But in most cases, we brought far more than we took.  When Western Civilization retreats, freedom dies and chaos reigns.

There are Four Boxes that keep Western Civilization safe – really four systems.  Remove them?  Freedom dies and chaos reigns.  I’ll note that Western Civilization is built on more than this – but these are four stabilizing features that help protect it.

The first box is the Soap Box.

Freedom of speech is stabilizing, within certain parameters.  If an insane person is allowed to speak, that’s a safety valve.  Bad ideas won’t gather much purchase:  they are drowned out by good ones.  Heck, even North Korea has freedom of speech.  They just won’t guarantee your safety after you speak, however.

Communists allow free speech – no one says otherwise, right?

But as I’ve documented at length in the Civil War 2.0 Weather Reports (LINK) censorship is a primary tool of the Left.  I’ve documented time after time how the Left is censoring ideas across the primary means of communication today – the Internet.

I know that many people have said (especially libertarians) that Twitter®, for instance, is owned by a private company so censorship is fine.  It’s not merit-based like it used to be.  Heck, at one point even Jesus only had 12 followers.

I can understand that, because once upon a time, I was a libertarian, too.  Heck, I’ve been registered as an independent until the last primary election.  Why did I change?

First, I’m older than 35.  Second?  So I could vote for myself.  Take that, Mrs. Svenson (my kindergarten teacher).

Twitter® used to advertise itself as the “Free speech wing of the Free Speech Party.”  Now, a better line would be the “Allowed speech wing of the Leftist Revolution.”  It’s true.  Place any idea on Twitter™ that’s out of the mainstream, even if backed up by data?

It will be suppressed.  And sure, you say, there are alternatives.  You could go on Gab©.

You may not know this, but Gab™ was cut off from its payment processors.  If you wanted to give money to Gab® via Visa©?  You can’t.  You can pay for porn with a Visa®.  But you can’t pay for Gab©.

See the problem?

Used with permission. 

When Alex Jones was banned from Twitter®, in rapid succession he was banned across nearly all social media in the same day.  He wasn’t a killer – killers can have Twitter™.  He wasn’t a foreign government who calls the USA “Great Satan” – they have an official account.

Nope, he was just a Texan who said things that scared people.

The ideas of the Left don’t hold up to history.  Their compassion is, mainly, a lie.  Should Twitter® be a public utility?  Maybe.  I hate to suggest that step, but perhaps the time has come.

Regardless – removing the Soap Box is dangerous.  Suppression of ideas will lead to suppression of people.  And suppression gives a validity to ideas that they might not have otherwise.

The Soap Box is the first safety valve.  If people cannot vent?  If they cannot share their opinions?  The system begins to fail.  The system is based on the idea that Truth can be debated, but Truth cannot be suppressed.  Heck, I’ve even seen politicians speaking the Truth – they were calling each other liars.

Our system now is dangerously pushing censorship.  And Leftists cheer it, as Leftists always do.

The second box is the Jury Box.

As members of Western Civilization, we give up some rights to play the game.  One of the most important rights we give up is personal vengeance.  In areas where personal vengeance is still the normal mode of operation, one killing follows another which follows another.  It’s like Chicago, but without the charm.

I guess I don’t understand court.  After they found me not guilty of bank robbery, my lawyer told me I shouldn’t have asked, “Does that mean I can keep the money?”

An article that opened my eyes to the importance of the justice system to Western Civilization is at this (LINK).  It’s by Jared Diamond, who is often wrong on things, but this is perhaps his strongest work.  It shows clearly what happens to a society that has no law.  But Diamond was talking about New Guinea, not San Francisco.

In the United States, we make fun of lawyers, because many of them are worthy of being made fun of. They charge thousands to write out your last wishes.  Did they never hear of free will?  But the justice system is crucially important:  first, it allows a push back against government.  Second, it provides a way that the guilty can be punished, so you and I don’t have to do the dirty work ourselves and create feuds that last generations.

So, yes.  The Jury Box is that important.

It has been subverted, however.  Prosecutors always charge people with amazing levels of crimes in order to achieve a plea bargain and have the ability to throw nearly infinite resources at prosecuting a man because they don’t like him.

“Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.”  This is a quote by one of the most evil men to have ever had power in the world – Lavrentiy Beria, who was head of Stalin’s secret police.  It could almost be the motto of the Department of Justice in 2020.  The DOJ seems fixated on finding an unpopular person and then finding crimes.  Hillary Clinton admittedly committed multiple felonies with her email server even though she never confessed to the fashion police.  Green pantsuits?

No charges will ever be filed against Hillary, or almost any powerful person.  Governor Cuomo abused his power to force Coronavirus patients into nursing homes where they infected and killed thousands.  But heaven forbid that a businessman make a mistake in filing foreign taxes.

That’s one way to lose faith in the justice system.

George Soros hates Flat-Earthers.  They’re not globalists.

Another?  Buy your justice system.  George Soros has been spending tens of millions of dollars getting District Attorneys that he likes elected.  Nope, this isn’t a conspiracy theory – it is well documented by mainstream sources (LINK).

What happens when you own the District Attorneys in dozens of Leftist-controlled areas?  They decide who gets charged, and with what.  So, a Leftist college professor swings a bike lock which would be an assault with a deadly weapon for you and I?

Probation for three years.  If that had been someone from the Right?  Prison.  Certainly.

But who do you think funded the D.A. that let the bike lock professor off with probation?  Soros.  Here’s the link to the San Francisco Chronicle (LINK).  I don’t make this stuff up.

I’ll skip the activist judges that want to legislate and make new law from the bench – you can look them up.  They’re out there and ubiquitous enough that they’re a stereotype.

A justice system that doesn’t have the faith of the people undermines all of Western Civilization.

The third box is the Ballot Box.

At least 60,000,000 American citizens think the 2020 presidential election was stolen (so far – the results aren’t done yet).  Let that sink in.

And these 60,000,000 Americans aren’t foolish, stupid, or acting in bad faith.  They’re actually quite rational.  On the face of it, electoral fraud is nearly certain.

How can I make such a statement?

  • The people who would have engaged in the fraud thinks Trump is “Literally exactly like a certain leader who led Germany from 1932-1945.” When faced with that?  In their minds, a little fraud is justified.  Motive is proved.
  • The systems are set up that relies on trust at the lowest levels. Opportunity exists.  The people hired to run the system at the lowest levels are politically motivated.  The Means exists.
  • On top of that, getting caught is difficult. Certain cities like Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee have been corrupt for decades.  Graveyard voting in Chicago has been a joke for decades.  Think Detroit is better?
  • It doesn’t need to be widespread. It only takes four cities to rig a presidential election in 2020 – Atlanta, Detroit, Philadelphia, and Milwaukee.
  • The Mainstream Media is 100% compliant in covering it up. How many people do you think CNN® is sending to look into allegations of voter fraud?  Umm, zero.

As I said, election fraud is certain, the only question is the extent.  Was this election stolen?  Means, Motive, Opportunity plus cover-up?  Why wouldn’t it happen?  How many ballots could you fill out in four hours?

No, this doesn’t look unusual, or at least it wouldn’t look unusual in the Soviet Union. 

Were I Joe Biden, and there was a chance I was going to become president under a cloud, I would work with Trump to clear my name.  Fraud in Philadelphia?  Let’s find it.  Fraud in Milwaukee?  “I’m sure it’s malarkey, but let’s investigate it.”  If he wants to fix the country, he should jump in and fix this.

But it’s not happening.

And people who are certain that $200,000 in Facebook® ads in 2016 from Russia changed the election are certain that the election is clean this time.

Shocking.

A failed voting system is a cancer on the Republic.  The voting system is exactly the last system that can relieve pressure in politics.

That leaves only one box:

The Ammo Box.

The Founders wisely put free speech in the First Amendment.  They put in an above-average justice system.  They put in a voting system that minimized the spread of fraud – the Electoral College.

But they also put in place the Second Amendment, which had the purpose of being both a safety measure and a curb on government.  The safety measure is that a populace who is armed feels safer – they will be measured in a response.  The curb on government is the flip side of that coin:  if you were going to do something that would put a substantial portion of your population to think that armed insurrection was a better idea than doing what the government said?

The government loses.

And there are at least 300,000,000 firearms owned by American citizens.  My bet is closer to 500,000,000.  Want to talk about a successful government policy?

In this nation, the bulk of the American population is well-armed.  A portion of it, veterans, are very well trained, perhaps better trained than the current members of the military.  I know several people that compete regularly shooting things so far away that I can’t see them even if I’m wearing my glasses.

Understand that ending up at this stage is something that almost no one wants.  We want freedom, peace, sound money, strong justice systems, and voting systems with unquestionable integrity.

But there’s always another alternative:  the last of the Four Boxes.

Let’s hope we don’t have to go there.