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: 56 Days To The Last Election Ever In The United States

“It appears we will be required to ignite the midnight petroleum, sir.” – ST:  TNG

It’s all fun and games until it hits midnight.  And we’re getting pretty close.

  1. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
  2. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  3. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures.  Just in case.
  4. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  5. Open War.

We are at step 9.  Step 9. is, of course, two minutes to midnight on the clock.  Violence continues to be commonly justified by local and state authorities.

In this issue:  Front Matter – What Is A Civil War? – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – 56 Days Until The Last Election – Links

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.

What Is A Civil War?

Multiple comments that I’ve had, both in the comment section at the blog, as well as in email and even text message asked the question – what happens to the index this month.  The answer is that we’re still at a 9 out of 10.  The only thing remaining to take us to a 10 is a body count.  That’s because I’m using this (admittedly academic definition by Doyle and Sambanis in 2000) as my definition for the existence of a civil war:

  1. The war has caused more than 1,000 battle deaths. This war hasn’t yet done so.  Is 1,000 an aribitrary number?    This is the only criteria not yet met.
  2. The war represents a challenge to the sovereignty of an internationally recognized state. I think it’s clear that Antifa® and BLM™ want nothing less than the dismantling of the existing state and construction of a Marxist Utopia©.  The fact that they are aided and abetted by fellow travelers in district attorney offices, mayoral offices, and congressional offices doesn’t mean that they aren’t communist revolutionaries fighting against freedom from the inside.
  3. The war occurs within the recognized boundary of that state. This is an easy one.
  4. The war involves the state as one of the principal combatants. One of.  Not the only one.  Ask a policeman in Portland if they feel that they’re in control.
  5. The rebels are able to mount an organized military opposition to the state and to inflict significant casualties on the state. It states casualties, not deaths.  And that also makes this an easy one to check off.  Organization discussion is directly below in the Violence And Censorship Update.

 

I list all of the five criteria for a simple reason – to show that the only thing between us right now and a full blown, internationally recognized definition of civil war is the number of body bags we have yet to fill.  When I started this update last year, I was expecting things to move faster than you expected.  I did not expect things to move faster than I expected.

They have.

Violence And Censorship Update

Violence this month is obvious.  The killings have started.  Outside of the increasing violence tied directly to police standing down because they have no support which I talked about last month, bullets are now flying in the “mostly peaceful” protests.

Outside of the CHAZ murders, where two teenagers were killed, much of the violence has been peripheral.  I moved the index up to nine out of ten when killings became commonplace.  As near as I can tell, the killings directly associated with the Antifa™ and BLM® action is probably somewhere short of 100.

But two of those deaths are deaths that Antifa© cannot abide.  In Kenosha, I wrote about Kyle Rittenhouse’s clear self-defense shooting against both a pedophile and a wife beater, and alleged self-defense shooting against a person who was (by the film I saw) drawing down on him.  You can read it here – reviews say it’s the best thing I’ve ever written, but I’d suggest my signature on my divorce papers from my first wife was better (Have The Kenosha Riots Given The Right Our Rosa Parks?).

From my vantage point, Kyle Rittenhouse is a hero.  But Antifa™ cannot let that stand.  At all.  It’s my estimate that out of rage, the killing in Portland as well as the attempted murder by car in Portland were “revenge” hits on people wearing paraphernalia of the Right.  If you read reports that break down the killing (HERE) and other experiences (HERE) in Portland, it becomes clear that Antifa® is using military discipline, and is broken up into a military command structure.  (H/T to Vox Day (LINK) and Mike at Cold Fury (LINK))

Antifa™ is a dedicated group.  They have undergone a brainwashing and are a religious cult – no Jim Jones Kool-Aid® drinking cultist could compete.  I wrote about that here (Why Would Anyone Become A Leftist?), and stand by it.  Antifa® and BLM© stand against everything that has made America wonderful, rich, and prosperous.  And they are fanatics.

I’m not sure if you know what they have in mind for people that don’t agree with them.  It isn’t pleasant.  The idea is that there is a pure society coming, and the way to get to that new society is to eliminate everything that doesn’t fit.  Which almost certainly includes you.  But don’t worry – they want to torture people to death to show the remaining people how wonderful the future communist utopia will be.  See?  You serve a purpose in their minds.

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.

July was generally better than June, which is like saying that World War I was “better” than World War II.  Let’s go to the graphs.  In general, I’ve used bikini graphs in the past.  Given where we are, I’m a bit more somber.  Here are the graphs, without bikinis.

Violence:

Up is more violent.  June pegged the scale of violence.  This measure because the way it’s constructed, doesn’t go higher than 300.  It’s lower again this month despite clear assassinations by the Left.  Does that mean it’s less violent this month?  Certainly riots are down, but the measure is a measure of how people feel about the violence.  Since it’s so common now, it’s not spiking.  That is, in my opinion, very bad – we’re getting used to this nonsense.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  Instability is down, slightly.  I expect September and October to be down more, since voting generally has a calming effect and all emotions are focused there.  After that?  All bets are off.

Economic:

Down indicates worse economic conditions, are down slightly.  Again, we’re nowhere near the bottom.  I expect that to drop off in October.  Maybe to historic levels.  But I could be wrong?

Illegal Aliens:

Down is good, in theory.  This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol.  Oops!  This metric is now nearly at the highest it’s been in years.  As the Wuflu® hits Mexico, the Mexicans are deciding to head north again.

56 Days Until The Last Election

I firmly believe the United States has had stolen elections in the past.  But the nice thing about the Electoral College is?  It makes it really, really hard to steal an election.  Impossible?  No.  Hard?  Yes.

Every single person in every graveyard in Chicago, California, and Queens can vote for a Democrat, and it doesn’t matter.  The Electoral College adds legitimacy to an election by breaking corruption at the state lines.  That’s one reason the Left hates it.  It makes elections hard to steal.  In my state, my vote doesn’t really matter – my state will go for Trump even if every person in every grave, ever, votes Democrat.

Mail-in voting changes all of that.

Yes, this was one of my favorite original memes that I created, but a new version.  Still valid.

Stalin has been quoted as saying, “I consider it completely unimportant who in the party will vote, or how; but what is extraordinarily important is this — who will count the votes, and how.”

It’s hard to cheat in a Red State.  You have to steal zillions of counties.  It’s easy to cheat in a Blue State – you just have to cheat in the big cities.  If everyone in Chicago voted Trump, Illinois would still go 60% for whatever Democrat was opposing him.  But with mail-in voting?

Examples I have seen show the party on the outside of the envelope.  How hard would it be to casually “lose” a few thousand votes from envelopes that had a big, fat, R on the outside?  Or a few thousand from precincts that consistently vote Right?  Not hard at all.  This is on top of demonstrated voter fraud in Left cities where poll workers were caught on camera dumping ballot after ballot into the box on election day.

If mail-in voting passes?  We’ve had our last election day.  From now on?  It’s selection day – selection of the candidate that the Left wants.

Thanks to the innovation of mail-in voting, you don’t even have to bring the corpses to the polls!  What else will modern technology come up with?

In a further, ominous sign, the Media® has been setting up the idea that Trump will win on election night in a convincing manner, but will lose as the mail-in ballots are counted.  This is particularly horrific.

If you knew which six counties you needed in close states, could you game the Electoral College?  Absolutely.  You could have boxes of ballots pre-staged in Philadelphia, or Milwaukee, or Cleveland to flip the results.  Simple.  Want Florida to turn blue?  Just found a box with 25,475 Biden votes in Miami.

Don’t think the Left wouldn’t try it.  They would do anything to win the election, since they’re contemplating electing a person who couldn’t navigate a corn maze with more than two stalks standing.

If mail-in voting is made the law of the land?  Expect that this is the final election, ever, that won’t be a simple selection of the candidate that best fits the desire of the Left.  Sure, there will be some token people on the Right elected, but they’ll mainly be people who believe in real conservative values, like only allowing 1,000,000 illegals in a year, and only allowing 7,000,000 people a year in on H1B visas, and restricting anything but a muzzle loading black powder rifle, like our founders intended.

Oh, wait, conservatives have conserved nothing!  They just pick the values from the Left from ten or twenty years ago, and defend those until the death.

LINKS

That’s a bad ending to a video game . . .

All are from Ricky:

MSM message: alt-Right continues the march to civil war….

https://www.the-sun.com/news/1316052/proud-boys-group-brawl-antifa-protests-kalamazoo-michigan/

https://www.the-sun.com/news/1354432/portland-brawl-breaks-out-proud-boys-antifa-fight/

https://www.breitbart.com/clips/2020/09/03/schmidt-trump-supporters-want-to-see-a-second-civil-war-in-this-country/

https://washingtonmonthly.com/2020/08/30/white-supremacists-are-invading-american-cities-to-incite-a-civil-war/

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/sandia-labs-goes-nuclear-employee-who-sparked-internal-revolt-over-critical-race-theory

https://www.shtfplan.com/headline-news/americans-sense-something-is-wrong-gun-sales-up-72_08272020

…a challenge that must be met with force…

https://jonathanturley.org/2020/08/18/berkeley-columnist-calls-for-violent-resistance/

https://www.dailycal.org/2020/08/12/this-war-cant-be-civil/

http://thesaker.is/will-hillary-and-the-dems-get-the-civil-war-they-are-trying-to-provoke/

…for abstract justice…

https://theweek.com/articles/931090/are-bread-riots-coming-america

https://nypost.com/2020/08/11/black-lives-matter-organizer-calls-chicago-looting-reparation/

https://www.npr.org/sections/codeswitch/2020/08/27/906642178/one-authors-argument-in-defense-of-looting

…and with concrete action…

https://summit.news/2020/08/14/black-lives-matter-mob-demands-white-people-give-up-their-homes/

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/watch-blm-protesters-shot-homeowners-while-marching-through-rural-pennsylvania-town

https://www.theorganicprepper.com/battle-zones-america/

This revolution WILL be televised, as documentaries…

https://theduran.com/steven-turley-new-civil-war-being-fought-on-three-fronts-video/

https://theduran.com/the-second-american-civil-war-is-here-part-i-the-combatants-video/

https://theduran.com/the-second-american-civil-war-part-ii-strategy-of-the-blues-video/

https://theduran.com/the-second-civil-war-part-iii-update-dr-steve-turley-largely-confirms-video/

https://theduran.com/the-utopia-of-democrat-activism-video/

…an unending stream of gripping short-attention-span clips from the front lines…

https://twitter.com/The_Real_Fly/status/1300955946521432064

(Scroll here for more video gems:) https://twitter.com/The_Real_Fly/

….and an explosion of editorials…

https://www.columbiadailyherald.com/story/opinion/columns/2020/09/02/rowland-civil-war-real-possibility/5690696002/

https://themichiganstar.com/2020/08/28/commentary-in-kenosha-the-seeds-of-civil-war/

https://greensboro.com/rockingham_now/opinion/ending-the-civil-war/article_a2f83f72-eaef-11ea-88b4-e7bcbc8a60ec.html

https://signalscv.com/2020/09/jonathan-kraut-an-undeclared-civil-war-in-america/

https://www.niagara-gazette.com/opinion/singer-promoting-a-new-civil-war-in-america/article_399450b1-7aee-5a47-abd1-8555b616d0cf.html

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/portland-killing-trump-caravan-civil-war-20200830.html

https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/kenosha-trump-kyle-rittenhouse-portland-antifa-20200901.html

https://www.newspressnow.com/opinion/editorials/stop-a-civil-war-before-it-starts/article_57576526-e7d3-11ea-a6c0-f31f4893dc90.html

https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2020/08/20/thursdays-headlines-armed-for-the-civil-war-edition/

https://prospect.org/politics/americas-civil-war/

https://www.independent.com/2020/06/14/an-american-civil-war/

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/the-thin-veneer-of-american-civilization/

https://www.chicagotribune.com/opinion/commentary/ct-opinion-kenosha-wisconsin-unrest-violence-shooting-20200826-m3e7zcqg7faxxou2xhqywmsobe-story.html

And as one (now-dead) Antifa guard claims to have fired the latest shot heard ’round the world…

https://www.insider.com/portland-shooting-suspect-said-saw-civil-war-coming-2020-9

…a newspaper founded during the last Civil War won’t be around to cover any new one…

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/09/04/trump-and-stars-and-stripes-attacking-american-icon-column/5706859002/

If Journalists Were Pinocchio? We Could Climb Noses And Be On Mars Tomorrow.

“I hired you to raise the vocabulary level of this paper. I want to keep the journalistic level very low.” – Transylvania 6-5000

FACTS

How can we change history if you have your own copy?  Paging Winston Smith – we need to edit the past.

Every once in a while it’s good to try new things.  This post probably a one-time thing, but I had all this material, and couldn’t resist.

What is it?

It’s a list of stories where the media was so biased that they performed anatomically impossible acts to sell their stories.  I have double this number of examples, but I consciously steered away from more sensitive topics where the media contradicted itself. 

Why?

Well, I described one of the examples I had with The Mrs. 

The Mrs.:  “Don’t use it.”

John Wilder:  “Why?  I fact checked it.  It’s legitimate.  Both stories are still on their web site.”

The Mrs.:  “It detracts from the message.  It may be true, but people will just focus on the subject, and not the point you’re making.”

I took The Mrs.’ advice.  I skipped that example.  And 27 others.  I could have doubled the post length with more examples of unintended irony or media just contradicting themselves on Tuesday because Monday’s message wasn’t convenient.

The Mrs. is right. 

The message isn’t the topic of the contradiction, it’s the contradiction itself.  The topic of the contradiction was more sensitive than the ones presented below.  If you wanted to convince someone of the lie, showing them a lie without the baggage might be more helpful.  That’s my theory. 

I didn’t create any of these, I caught ‘em wild on the Internet.  If you know of any that are factually inaccurate, please do let me know.  I didn’t check all sources, and anything added in the image itself isn’t mine. 

The snarky comments below? Those are mine.

Remember, these are the people that are attempting to convince you how to vote in the next election.  These are the people who want to control your views.  These are the people who want to be immune from your comments, and, in the case of the Vice® comment above, not be held to account for the things they said in the past. History is inconvenient.  As you will see.

WIRETAP

When is a wiretap not a wiretap?  Well, did they really use wires?

VIOLENCE

As we all know, old ladies with walkers commit 50% of the crimes in the United States.

TRUTH

To make CNN happy, all Joe has to do is fog a mirror.

SOROSIt’s a conspiracy theory that George did the thing he bragged about doing?

POST

Democracy dies in darkness?  How about irony?  Does that need a tanning bed?

PHILLY

Is it Schrödinger’s murder rate, which is neither down nor up?

NFL

Oh, and Schrödinger’s ratings, too!

NEWSWEEK

If the White farmers move to the United States, would they be African Americans?

NBC PROTEST

I think these two were posted within an hour of each other.  Those crazy night shift guys!

MAYOR TERROR

Well, she has a point.  I mean, as long as they’re attacking businesses, it’s not domestic, right?

LONDONCOVIDAhh, England.  You’ll only be in here once, right?  Oh.  More to come?

LEAVE

Apparently family leave is awesome, unless you’re a woman.  Which is anyone in 2020.

KHAN

Whew!  How things change in a month!  Did Khan need a diaper, too?  

INDIGEN

So, does that mean the Vikings can kick the Maori out of New Zealand? 

HIV

Literally no one could have seen this coming, right?  Must be racism.

HEALTH2

It’s vital to know about certain candidates, right?  Must be a guy thing?

HEALTH1

Oh, not a guy thing.  Hmm.  What could the reason be?

GUILT

Joe Biden denies that his dementia is dementia is fair?

FREDO

We reject the idea that people are stealing the things we said people are stealing.

FIRE

The fires that the scientists predicted nearly a year in advance?  It’s misleading to say that we mismanaged them.  Bigot.

FEELS

Whew!  Fact free journalism that’s based on convincing people to do the things we want!  Zimmerman, get on that right away!

FACTS

Ahhh, the Left has him now!

CNN

Get that girl a GoGurt, stat!  She’s been saved by the entire population of Syria!

CLOTHES

I’m naked.  Except for my jeans, underwear, socks, and the shirt I have.  Oh, and the cellphone.  Totally naked.  

BLM

Hmm, so if a person gets out of prison after spending decades in for being in a terrorist group doing terrorist things and was caught with hundreds of pounds of explosives?  Well, kind of a terrorist.  But what a great resume to get a board seat on a charity with nearly a billion dollars on the books!

AUTHOR

Same writer.  I guess that only Some Woman Lives Matter?  

ALLEGED

Yasmin just can’t catch a break.  Allegedly.  What a fantastic American.

ALLEGED

Get a television show, fascist.  Then people know you’re telling the truth.

Guard your mind.  What are they pumping into it?

 

 

Investing? Invest In Yourself.

“If M.A.D starts making gold out of lead, it will undermine the world economy!” – Inspector Gadget

CAT

I invested in a series of walking trails for mental patients, but it failed.  I guess Psycho-Paths® was a bad name.

By the time the stock market crashed to signal the beginning of the Great Depression, the economy of the United States had already gone through an amazing decade of change.  Electrification was moving rapidly across the country, and prisons could finally retire the acoustic chair.  Radio was a miracle that was now bringing masses of people together as the radio waves propagated across the country at the speed of light.  Natural gas, long a nuisance in the oil patch, was being piped and compressed and shipped across larger areas of the country, bringing instant heat (and some explosions, since they hadn’t added the stuff that makes it smell bad yet) to millions.

Perhaps one of the biggest dislocations was that horses were rapidly being replaced by cars and trucks.  The economy was being motorized.  Some have even come to the conclusion that part of the dislocation in the economy was that the millions of horses required to plow, move freight, and move people weren’t required anymore, leading to an oversupply of horses.  That’s not a situation that lasts long – the oversupply of horses, can, um, be solved.  I mean, too many horses for the barns?  That’s un-stable.

But if once the oversupply of horses is solved what about the oversupply of food for the horses?

Well, what are they going to do with all of that farmland, now suddenly made even more productive through the addition of tractors and cheaply made nitrogen fertilizer?

Produce more.  Which drives prices down.  Which leads to . . .

Deflationary depression.

AMISH

It’s hard for the Amish to travel – their system is a little buggy.

I would say that “for the want of a horse, and economy was lost,” but in hindsight the real problem was the bankers.  The bankers during the 1920’s and 1930’s even developed the first birth control – their personality.  The Federal Reserve Bank® (which is neither part of the government nor really a bank) managed to destroy the economy through poor currency manipulation choices.

Part of the secret of the efficiency of market economies is that there is no controller telling people to start restaurants or PEZ® vineyards or bikini ranches.  The feedback from the economy is measured in customers buying the product, and if the product is good enough, profit encourages people to make it.

The flip side of that is business failure.  I originally wrote that was the down side.  It’s not.  Businesses, in a normal economy, that can’t produce a viable product should fail.  Note that I’m forced to write in a normal economy.  2020 has created the situation where tens of thousands (I’m not exaggerating) of businesses have failed due to the restrictions from the reactions to COVID-19.  It’s even been an international problem – Finland closed their border.  No one will cross the Finnish line.

COVID

The riots in Detroit don’t get many news stories, but I heard the rioters there have caused $20 million in improvements.

That’s not normal, of course.  Hair styling places are failing in the more restrictive states.  In Modern Mayberry?  Not so much.  But in San Francisco?  You can’t get your hair styled, unless you’re Nancy Pelosi.  I guess that the rules prohibiting business operation are only for common people.  St. Nancy can go in and get a cut and a blow dry when no one else can.  Sadly, Nancy wasn’t wearing a mask, which was the only positive thing about CoronaChan since the whole thing started.

In normal times, business thrive or fail, and both of those things lead to a stronger overall economy.  The services and goods that aren’t wanted anymore go away, like Beanie Babies®.  Thank Heavens.  But in these times of artificial economic crisis?  Good, strong businesses fail.

Regardless of the type of crisis we have now, it is upon us.  Whether or not the business would have failed is irrelevant.  The only real question is what happens next.

One thing that is sure, the economy after this crisis passes won’t look like it used to.

I’ve posted about possible good investments in the past – if I were betting, I’d bet that gold in ten years would be a better bet than Netflix® or Tesla™, even if Tesla© starts its own religion, and builds Elon Mosques.  But who knows what the economy will even look like after this crisis?  I can’t guarantee any of it.

TESLA

I hear that Space-X has designed electric grass for Mars.  They call it E-lawn.

So what to invest in?

Yourself.

Time is potentially quite short.  How should you invest your time?  In yourself.

There are so many skills that are required of a human.  PowerPoint® is probably not really high on them, so I wouldn’t spend much time there.

The first place I’d begin to prepare is mental.  In the United States, we have become very used to the most modern conveniences.  Air conditioning when it’s hot.  Central heat when it’s cold.  Even in Modern Mayberry, day or night I can go and get gasoline, a gallon of milk, and some beef jerky.  Fast Internet that allows me to stream a television show that’s been off the air for nearly 20 years.

What happens when you don’t have those things for a day?  A week?  A month?  When you’re used to being able to see what the temperature is in Moscow, Manila, Manhattan or Manchester, what happens when the weather becomes a mystery?

At least Biden can hide his own Easter eggs.

When you’re used to seeing real-time riots in Kenosha or Portland, what happens when you don’t know what’s happening in your own city?

I’m not saying that’s going to happen – the Internet is robust, and the systems we have built for delivering milk, gas, electricity and natural gas have redundancy.

But still, these things are possible.

Have you put your mind in a place where they have happened?  What would you do?  I mean, if your spouse convinces you to go to a psychiatrist, will your couch talk you out of it again?

After the mind, invest in your body.  If you’re out of shape, get in better shape.  Anything will help.  Get out and run.  If you can’t run, walk.  Being able to count on your body is always good – and if you’ve been neglecting it because of work, it’s time to pay back that debt, with interest.  I am fortunate enough to already have the body of an athlete already – a sumo wrestler.

Hmmm.  Maybe I need some work, too.

SUMO

I got a sumo wrestler for Christmas one year.  I had asked for a heavy sweater.

What other ways can you invest in yourself?  There are thousands of skills that are valuable, no matter what the future brings.  Can you do basic medical care?  I’m not asking if you can sew up a lung, but can you clean a flesh wound?  Do you have Band-Aids® and Neosporin™ for a year or two?  Iodine?  All of that is cheap and available now.  Will it be in six months?

The Mrs. bought a book on medicinal plants that showed up the other day.  I was surprised that it didn’t list thyme as a remedy – I heard that thyme cures all wounds.  What kind of books do you keep?

Can you garden?  Annually, The Mrs. spends about $117.53 to grow about seven tomatoes.  I would make fun of that, but I would also say that The Mrs. has learned lots of ways to not grow tomatoes, too.  Her gardening knowledge is better than mine.  It’s a little late to invest in gardening this year, but it wouldn’t hurt to start to understand what it takes.  There’s a whole Internet.  Heck, you could practice by killing some houseplants, like I used to do.

This isn’t a bad time for a hobby.  What kind of hobby?

  • Lots of farms have auctions and I’ve seen farmer forges there.
  • Carpentry, with and without electricity.
  • Small engine repair. Small engines can do a great deal beyond weed eating.
  • Always easier when ammo isn’t so dear, but we are where we are.
  • Making wine or whiskey – both are great for barter, and legal to make in most places.
  • Fixing things around the house. When’s the last time you patched a leaky roof?

I could probably come up with a dozen more in ten more minutes, and I imagine the comments will fill up with them.  Again, in some circumstances, these are nothing more than hobbies, and if you pursue them with a local club or group, you’ll build more community in addition to building yourself.

Regardless of the future we will see, investing in yourself pays dividends.  Plus?  It’s always better to try to grow tomatoes and fail when failure is just results in a humorous story.

Why Would Anyone Become A Leftist?

“Prime minister? I thought Italy used a king?” – Archer

ANTIFA

There’s a joke to be made about that cake, but just like food under communist rule, you wouldn’t get it.

Sometime earlier this year, I asked myself a simple question.  Why would anyone be attracted to communism?  It’s the one single system that has never succeeded.  It’s a system that, when implemented as designed, kills tens of thousands, and in the twentieth century, over 100 million of their own citizens.

For the life of me, I couldn’t understand what would drive so many people to communism in the year 2020.  In 1900 in Russia?  Well, maybe.  A typical Russian peasant wouldn’t have known much about the failings in Paris of the Leftist French Revolution.  Some bald guy says, “free loaves of bread for life,” and that might have done it.

But during the 2000-2020 time period in the West, it’s clear that communism shouldn’t take root, right?  Up until the COVID-19, the economy in the United States was going so well that some of Joe Biden’s kids could afford to quit their second jobs in the Ukraine.  But even with that economy, young people were being recruited to communism.

Why?

I had no idea how they could be recruited.  But in roving through the Internet, I found a book, Anatomy of the Red Brigades by Alessandro Orsini, which had exactly the information I was looking for.  The Red Brigades were a Leftist terrorist organization that was formed in 1970 and lasted until the 1980’s.  They were most famous for kidnapping and killing a former Italian prime minister named Aldo Moro.  They were also responsible for the later kidnapping of American Brigadier General James Dozier, who was rescued.

PENCIL

I have other pencil jokes, but most of them are pointless.

Post-war Italy was a difficult place.  It was rapidly transforming from an agricultural economy to an industrial one.  Like me, I’m sure some were tempted to steal industrial cooking implements.  But I didn’t – I’m not a big whisk taker.

As people moved from rural farms to slums in the cities to work in factories, they were uprooted from centuries of continuity in life.  That uprooting was the first step in creating a communist.  As a rule, the Red Brigades recruits were disaffected.  These people were already at the margins of society.  Orsini calls this process disintegration.  The group manipulating the new recruits would do everything possible to remove the new members from their previous outside relationships.

Once they were removed from those old relationships, reality was what the group said it was.   And what reality were they focused on creating?  The basic idea is one familiar to doomsday cults around the world.  One Red Brigadist described it as the “fanaticism of a new religion.”  Communist recruits are taught that:

. . . they are “children of the light, arriving in this world to punish and redeem, to destroy and purify.  The Red Brigades want to wash away the sins of capitalism with blood.

GRETA

They are taught that the world is corrupt, and in danger.  Remind you of anything, say, Greta Thunberg?  The idea that capitalism is sin is now taught nearly uniformly to children of the world.  Of course, it has to have a name, and Global Warming® is probably the most convenient:  it’s a sin brought on by capitalism and the old people, and will kill them if they don’t take rides on multi-million dollar yachts and speak before the United Nations.  Oh, and then be invited by CNN™ to talk about COVID-19.  Yes, they asked Greta for her expertise on that.  And for her expertise on Some Black Lives Matter©.  Each of these three has the same story being pumped into the head of the Marxist – there is a threat to the existence of all that is good in the world, and only Leftism can solve it.

Radical Leftism.  See how that works?

The process of radicalization was described by Jean Guitton (as related by Orsini):

  1. Segregation – They are kept apart from healthy past relationships – their new relationships only come through communist contacts. They are then immerse in Leftist thoughts and theory.
  2. Permanent Indignation – Inner purity is confirmed (and signaled) through outer indignation – the Left loves to despise any who think even slightly differently than they do.
  3. Desire to be Persecuted – When people in the “world” make fun of the Left, the Leftist love it – it shows how virtuous and pure the Leftist is, and confirms to them how horrible the rest of the world must be.
  4. Purification of Means through the End – Any violence is justified because it will lead to the promised land of no work and infinite goodies. Building it on a mountain of skulls is just a feature.
  5. Principle of Secrecy – Antifa’s© external goals that they advertise aren’t their real goals. They know that what they really want is the complete destruction of society, and to have it rebuilt just as they see fit.  But they don’t say that – so every member is essentially a member of a secret society.  That binds them together – they can only speak freely to each other.
  6. Preventative Internal Terror – The one thing Leftist cannot stand is anyone to the Right. Anyone collaborating with the Right in any way?  Betrayal?  Any member who strays from Leftism is certainly the biggest enemy of the Antifa©, even more so than actual fascists.

CLEAN

I got a puppy, but the ducks attack it.  Last time I get a pure bread dog.

The focus then becomes one of purity.

Purity, of course, can never be reached.  That’s why SBLM® and Antifa™ aren’t fighting for anything real or measurable.  The goal of SBLM® is “the end to systemic racism,” whatever that is.  The problem is it can’t really be defined.  It’s not a real goal – it’s a stand-in for purity, a purity that can never be reached.

The reality is that this impossible goal of for their purification must be unreachable.  It must be ludicrous.  Why?  The goal isn’t to end systemic racism.  The goal is to engender hatred in the members.

How bad is the hatred?  “Love and Strength will subdue and destroy the imperialist bourgeoisie; we shall build a society free from the slavery of salaried work,” is directly out of their literature.  To quote Orsini speaking about them, even when Marxists kill people, they see themselves as the real victims.  “They are desperate people who have no real alternative to murder.”

OJ

We all know that OJ was the real victim, right?

And that’s the difference.  The people who manipulate the communists want power.  That’s not the goal of the communists.  They want the power so that they can personally cleanse the world.  In one interview, Orsini quoted a communist who didn’t want any luxury himself after the communists won.  Nope.  All this particular commie wanted was to be allowed to personally execute capitalists after the revolution.

Capitalism is what they hate the most.  And fascism.  What’s fascism?  Anything that’s not communist.  Don’t be fooled – Antifa© isn’t against fascists.  They’re against Bernie Sanders because he’s too far right, and think he’s probably a fascist, too.  Antifa™ wants to kill everyone even slightly to the right of them.

In their current state, the concept of logic and argument isn’t something a Leftist in Antifa™ or SBLM© can even hear.  They will, due to their programming, ignore any logical argument, any evidence.  Point out that when Pol Pot takes over Cambodia in a bloody revolution that kills off nearly thirty percent of Cambodia’s population.  If they’re not too far gone, they just won’t hear you.

If they’re far gone, you’ll just hear silence, as they think, “They deserved it.”  Purity is the goal.  Their thought process that they cannot let the lives of people stand in the way of the future Earthly paradise.

CLEAN2

I had to use this picture.

How did Italy defeat the Red Brigades?  Massive numbers of arrests, and large amounts of jail time for those involved.  Hundreds of Leftists were forced to flee Italy to avoid prison.  I’m fairly sure this was fine with the Italians – as long as they never came back.

And our Leftists in the United States?  Getting rid of them won’t be easy.  They’re fully supported in most cities, even as they slowly destroy the cities – some district attorneys won’t charge Antifa© or BLM™ rioters with anything more than a misdemeanor.  Beyond that, they’re well-funded – SBLM™ alone has hundreds of millions of dollars available.

I wonder if they’ll make reparations to the business owners that were destroyed through their riots?

Nah.  The looters were the real victims of the riots, right?

Have The Kenosha Riots Given The Right Our Rosa Parks?

“We’re all Sons of Liberty here.” – John Adams (2008)

TREAD

What was it that Jefferson said about the Tree of Liberty?

Friday posts originally were about health related topics.  I’ve deviated away from “health” as a topic to focus on what might be more important now – mental health, specifically attitude.  There’s a reason for this.

The goal of the Left, as amply illustrated by Yuri Bezmenov (Yuri Bezmenov’s 1980’s Prediction of 2020), is to demoralize the West.  Demoralization’s goal is to destroy the moral outlook of our nation.  The goal of Demoralization is to destroy your moral outlook.

If you’re a Christian, the goal of the Enemy (you know who when I write the big E) is to make you feel despair.  If you’re not a Christian, and still on the Right, the goal of the enemy is the same – to make you feel despair.  To make you feel you cannot win.  To make you feel that there is nothing you can do to stop the inevitable march of history.  The Enemy (or enemy) wants you to believe that the victory of the Left is inevitable.

That’s why my Friday posts are, at least recently, focused on the opposite.  The victory of the Right is inevitable.  And that’s what scares the Left more than anything.  They will do absolutely everything they can to make you feel powerless.  They will do whatever they can to make you feel that nothing you do matters.  You can’t fight them.

That’s smart.  But a 17 year old in Kenosha proved it was a lie, and may very well be the Rosa Parks of the Right.

I was wrapping up the writing on Wednesday’s post when the events in Kenosha happened.  By events, I mean where Kyle Rittenhouse allegedly killed two people and wounded a third.  I say allegedly, because even though I saw it from nearly six different angles, nearly in real time, by saying allegedly that makes me sound official.  And my attorney Lazlo says it makes it harder for Leftists to sue me.

What I saw was fairly simple.  It was a 17 year old kid who ran from someone who was allegedly going to hurt him.  I allegedly saw a muzzle flash, which meant that someone shot at Kyle as he was fleeing.  A melee ensued, and several shots can be heard on the video.

Kyle is then seen on video, first looking to provide medical care to the man on the ground, and then talking on his cell phone.  The dying man on the ground is 5’3” manlet Joseph Rosenbaum.  Rosenbaum was an ex-convict who had spent nearly a decade in jail for sexual misconduct with a minor, who was required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life.  Clearly, Rosenbaum was a gem of a manlet.

Rosenbaum made the mistake of chasing someone with an AR-15.

MINOR

Oh, maybe that explains it.

Running from a fight is clear evidence of attempting to de-escalate and avoid bloodshed.  When shots were fired by others first?  When Rosenbaum caught the pudgy Rittenhouse?  Someone shot Rosenbaum in the head.  It’s not even clear at this point that it was Rittenhouse, but if it was, he was clearly being attacked.

In another video just after the first, you can see Kyle running toward the police.  Kyle falls, since it looks like he has a body made for being the first kid knocked out in dodgeball during PE class.  Immediately, Rittenhouse is attacked, kicked in the head.  What amazes me is that Kyle rolls into the attacker who is allegedly kicking Kyle in the head, knocking him over.  While he’s rolling over, it looks like he’s clearing a jammed round on his AR-15.

Are you sure this isn’t John Wick?  Or John Wicksconsin?

WICK

Do you think his power comes from the Crocs® or the socks?  Or is Crocs™ in Socks a new Seuss© book?

That first attacker moves on, wisely deciding that trying to fight someone with an AR might have fatal consequences.

The second attacker, one Anthony Huber, then slams a skateboard down on Kyle’s head.  Anthony Huber was convicted, twice, of domestic abuse.  Including strangulation.  It’s amazing that out of two BLM® protestors, we have two dirtbags.  Hmm.  Surely this isn’t a pattern?

HACK

Clearly that’s a peaceful use of a skateboard, right?  Now who is going to raise that kid his girlfriend had with another dude?

Kyle allegedly brings up his AR-15 and launches one round, center of mass, straight into Huber.  Now, where I come from, if someone is attacking you with a fifteen pound piece of wood and steel while you’re lying down on the ground, that just might be considered an attack with a deadly weapon.

Huber staggered a few feet, and then collapsed.  He ultimately lost the battle with life, as predicted in the Book of Eugene Stoner, Chapter 5.56.  Huber was 25.  His pronouns are was/were.

The final person that Kyle allegedly shot was Gaige Grosskreutz, 26.  Grosskreutz is a member of the “People’s Revolution Movement of Milwaukee,” and we all know how level headed communist revolutionaries are.  But Gaige, good commie that he is, was allegedly (I can’t verify this independently right now) convicted of felony burglary, because hey, private property is theft, right comrade?

Mr. Grosskreutz allegedly held both hands up to Kyle, who was sitting on the ground.  One of the hands held a pistol.  Kyle didn’t shoot.  But when Grosskreutz moved to draw down on Kyle?  Kyle reacted with the reflexes of a cat and allegedly blasted away Grosskreutz’s right bicep.

Grosskreutz’s pronouns are now Lefty the Leftist and Ow, I Found Out.  Oh, and alleged felon in possession of a handgun?  I’m sure that will go over well.

DRAW

Yup, that’s a gun.  But certainly a peaceful member of the “People’s Revolution Movement of Milwaukee” wouldn’t want to hurt Kyle, right?  Re-education is what commies do best.  Right?

KILL

Ooops.  Forgot.  Commies want one thing, I mean, besides food.

When reviewing the footage I was astonished at the discipline of Kyle Rittenhouse.  Each person he allegedly shot was clearly attacking him.  He held back the second each threat passed.  If I had been shooting, I’m not sure that I wouldn’t have kept shooting at the targets commies until the magazine ran dry, especially with Grosskreutz.  It’s also astonishing how quickly it happened.  The elapsed time from when he was attacked by Huber and when he allegedly shot Grosskreutz?  Less than five seconds.

Life comes at you very, very fast.

The Leftist press has lied, again and again and again about what happened.  “Shooting into a crowd” was a headline I saw.  Didn’t happen.  This was from Reuters® tonight:

“The charges against Rittenhouse in Kenosha County include first degree intentional homicide in the death of Anthony Huber, who was carrying a skateboard when he was gunned down.”

Well, technically Huber was “carrying a skateboard.”  But Reuters™ failed to mention that Huber was using that skateboard as a weapon to smash in Kyle’s head right before Kyle allegedly shot Huber.  This is clearly shown in the picture above.  Sadly, Huber’s string of domestic abuse convictions will have to end at two, and the world will be deprived of his skateboarding.  It’s like saying that JFK was not able to comment after a mostly peaceful ride through Dallas.  Technically true, but still a lie.

The reaction from the Leftist-controlled media is proof – if you’re not taking flak, you’re not over the target.  The Kyle Rittenhouse story scares them to death.  A young man, with a gun, saves his own life while trying to do the right thing.  The biggest irony is that every bit of information about the people he allegedly killed or wounded shows that these people, like George Floyd, like Jacob Blake (allegedly shot seven times while allegedly going for a weapon after allegedly resisting arrest in Kenosha) appear to be failed human beings.  Drug addicts.  Violent.  Pedophiles.  Wow, the Left sure chooses heroes from the wrong side of the track.  I’m sure they’ll show a heart of gold by the end of the movie.

The person in opposition?  A 17 year old kid who wanted to be a cop who was seen scrubbing graffiti off walls earlier in the day.  This scares the Left more than anything.  They want every city to be as lost and broken as Portland.  But the lesson here is that cities fight for themselves.  Why would people from Montana come to the rescue of Portland?  The people in Portland made the mess.

PORTLAND

Kenosha means, in Potawatomi, “the place of the pike.”  Wonder what the Potawatomi translation is for “the place of the AR”?

One 17 year old has pulled the underwear tightly up the butt of the Leftists in America.  One.  That’s why they are frightened of him.  This is the same way that society was afraid of Rosa Parks.  Here was one man, standing up for his rights.  He stood up, even though he was 17, to fire and chaos.

Can a black woman sit in the front of the bus?  Sure.  Can a 17 year old defend himself from people trying to kill him?  Sure.  And all of the virtue signaling in the world won’t save you from the Left.  They have proven that, again and again.

VIRTUE

Well, honestly, it’s not like Unitarian Universalists believe in anything, anyway.

Kyle Rittenhouse has just been notified that the same attorney that atomic-wedgied the Washington Post® for Nick Sandmann is now on his side.  And, I hear, he has a funding site from this news article (LINK).

If real justice is done, Kyle Rittenhouse will be out of custody within a week.  I’m not holding my breath.  But now the Right has a face.  A story.  And the real truth about what it takes to fight and beat the Left.  Honesty.

And a 17 year old boy.  Remember, the victory of the Right is inevitable.  Not necessarily today.  Or this week.  Or this year.  Or this decade.

Remember, we are stronger than the Enemy, or enemy, ever will be.

And smile.

SMILE

For the last several years, most of my memes have been forged in my underground meme foundry.  These are all “as found” on the Internet – thanks, /pol/.  Comments are mine.

Houses, Money, Stocks, and Bikini Girl Graphs

“Can the stock market survive a nuclear holocaust? Yes, says our next guest, and he’ll tell us what stocks to buy and what to sell in the event of a thermonuclear exchange right after these messages.” – Head Office

BIZ

Superman® won’t take Bitcoin as payment after dark.  He avoids crypto night.

“Housing prices only go up.”  I first heard that in the 1990’s when I was buying my first house.  The realtor was quite clear that a house wasn’t just a house, it was an investment in the future.  He had no idea what my kids could do with Sharpies®, hot sauce, and matches.  And that was just the living room carpet.

“The dollar is as good as gold.”  I haven’t heard that one used about the dollar in my lifetime, because the dollar hasn’t been backed by gold since August 15, 1971.

“The stock market is the place to put your money.”  That’s still what people are saying.

One thing that I’ve found throughout my life is that, generally speaking, if everyone believes in it, it’s wrong.  The major exception to this is physics, which explains gravity well enough that almost nobody can argue with it.  I read a book on anti-gravity once – couldn’t put it down.

gravy

I always fall for gravity jokes.

This is especially true in human systems.  If the entire crowd believes it?  It’s nearly certainly wrong.

As mentioned above, a perfect example of this is housing markets.  It was really common knowledge in the 1990’s that, barring a setback in a recession, housing prices always go up.  Buy a house, wait, and sell it 10 or 20 years later, and you’ll make a bundle.

In certain times and places, that’s true.  And during the 1990’s and the early 2000’s, the idea that “housing prices always go up” became firmly fixed in the minds of, well, most everyone.  That made it true, for a while.  As the banks noticed this, they decided that mortgages weren’t a risky investment at all, unlike when I broke COVID-19 lockdown to go play board games.  That was a lot of Risk.

On top of that, banks decided to make changes to the way that they had lent in the past.  Houses were a sure thing, right?  They could make them even safer by creating mortgage-backed securities.  Some of these were really unique.  You could buy the “best” performing loans out of a group of loans.  If there were 100 houses in the group, 90 would have to default on their mortgages before your security was impacted.

This mastery of risk was amazing!  Now all you need are more people to loan money to.  But not everyone qualifies, which is a problem.  They tried offering 0% loans, but there was no interest.

Solution?  Everyone qualifies.  No income?  No job?  No problem.  These were even called NINJA (no income, no job) loans.  The pool of borrowers expanded more rapidly than Joe Biden’s memory loss.  And if we add in refinancing of home equity?

That added even more borrowers!

What could go wrong?

HOUSE

And, hey, housing prices have reached new records.  Certainly they won’t fall?

Well, gravity kicked in on housing prices.  They dropped.  And when they dropped, the entire industry built up around building houses dropped.  And then the industries that supplied lumber, and pipe, and wire, and pavement, and concrete for driveways . . . dropped.

This mathematical fiction based on a delusion created a massive recession.  But, hey, housing prices always go up.

Except when they don’t.

Just like the dollar fell from its perch.  Originally, the dollar was backed by actual, physical gold.  That’s when the phrase, “as good as gold” was first used.  Why?  Because at any moment, you could go and change your dollars into gold.  Walk into the bank with a $20 bill, and walk out with $20 in gold.

This wasn’t always the case, there were periods in the history of the country where this wasn’t so (greenbacks issued during the Civil War backed by the credit of the country), but it was generally the case.  But after Franklin Roosevelt made gold possession by Americans illegal (yes, this happened) then you couldn’t go in and get gold for your dollar.  Once that link was broken, the government was free to print money more or less at will, creating inflation even in a “gold backed” currency.

PURCH2

You can plainly see that women are shorter now that the purchasing power of the dollar has dropped.

Now?  The dollar isn’t worth but a few percent of what it was in 1940.

And other countries realize it, too.  As the multiple trillions of dollars are printed this year to prop up everything from the airlines to the banks to the stock market, the value of the dollar has dropped.  Why?  The rest of the world can count.  There is only so much printing you can do before it starts to add up.

The dollar has dropped 10% in the last three months.

DOLLAR

The dollar’s fall is fast, but not as fast as when I fell into the coffee.  It was instant.

Good as gold?

No.

Which brings us to the stock market.  Money in the stock market is always safe, over a long enough term.  It took six years to recover from the Great Recession.  In real terms (inflation adjusted) it took from 1928 to 1955 for the Dow© to recover from the Great Depression.  It took until 1994 for the Dow™ to recover from the 1964 peak.  So, if you’re good waiting thirty years to break even, the stock market is a sure thing.

BOB

Speaking of up and down – I got a free yo-yo.  No strings attached!

While the economy is still stuck in lockdown in many parts of the country, massive unemployment, and a “riot-a-day” social structure, the Dow Jones Industrial Average® is only down 3%.

I wonder, just maybe, if everyone is wrong?

Yuri Bezmenov’s 1980’s Prediction of 2020

“Mommy, why are you making civilization collapse?” – Futurama

BEZMEN

Video games never made me want to hurt people.  Working with people did that.

Yuri Bezmenov was a KGB agent who defected to the West in the 1970’s.  Bezmenov told everything he knew to the CIA, and was set up in Canada.  He did several interviews which are available on YouTube®, which I’ll link to in a bit.  Most recently, Call of Duty®:  Black Ops Cold War™ brought Bezmenov back into the public consciousness by cutting in clips of his interviews in.

You can watch it below.  It’s only a minute or so.

During interviews, Bezmenov made the quote that only 15% of the KGB’s activity was tied to James Bond® stuff.  Their primary goal wasn’t to find out which parts of an F-15E jet fighter were made out of titanium and which parts were made out of paper-mâché.

Matching the United States in weapons systems was important, but it wasn’t number one.  Besides, the KGB generally had a spy class of ideological communists built into numerous classified projects.  Bezmenov said that 85% of the KGB’s efforts were spent in destroying culture in the West.

Why fight an actual war, if you can get your enemy to become you?

Bezmenov even set out the mechanisms that they were in the process of using.  It wasn’t a complicated process, and it was just four steps.  They called this process, “active measures” and it was nothing less than subverting the ideology that made America great.

The first step was Demoralization.

Demoralization is based around removing the moral framework of the country you’re attacking.  The easiest way to do this is to co-opt the education system.  Bezmenov said that this took 15-20 years, but his number was low.  First, the educational institutions needed to be captured.  The people who train the teachers, the people who are the “guiding lights” in educational theory must buy into Marxism.

I don’t have a direct measure of the ratio of Leftist to Rightist in those that teach education, but I’d imagine it’s no less than journalism, which is at 20:1.  It may exceed history, which is 33.5:1.  Regardless, the educational academy is now firmly in the hands of the Left.  This leads to the production of teachers in a Leftist pedagogy (fancy word for teaching), with bad Leftist theory sometimes even enshrined into law.  No Child Left Behind?  Yes, that was bad.  Common Core appears to be worse.  Here’s one example:

CORE

Yes, this is really what they tried to teach little kids.  From the Heartland Institute.

I have to wonder if the idea is that such simple things like addition and subtraction can be made so complicated that parents won’t be able to teach them to their children.  In essence, it’s a way to further sever the ties between parent and child, while strengthening the ties between child and state educator.

Certainly, not all educators are Leftists.  Here in Modern Mayberry, there are a few, but I think we likely have a more healthy balance.  But there are those who look at the remote classes from COVID-19® as a potential threat to their attempts to indoctrinate children:

DEMORAL

Is Demoralization 100% complete?  Not as long as we have those pesky parents standing up for the customs, culture, ideas, and values of the West.  Is it complete enough to take over society?

Maybe.

The goal of Demoralization is a lot of what we see now on the streets of Portland or Seattle or any other major Leftist city.  Bezmenov described the end product of Demoralization as:

“They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information. Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behavior.”

In other words?  Leftist robots.

Destabilization is the next step.  This is the destruction of the systems that define the country.  The economy.  Social relations.  Defensive systems.

In the last few months, the economy has been put into the most precarious state within living memory.  The United States is more divided politically, ideologically, linguistically and ethnically than at any time in history.  Naval vessels ram freighters.  Senior officers are fired due to ideology.  Women are brought into combat operations despite proof that their inclusion lowers fitness for mission.

Bezmenov said that Destabilization took two to five years.

Destabilization leads to Crisis.  Crisis in this system is necessary to get people to accept a new government, new systems, and to give up the old system.  There’s been a great deal of experience in creating Crisis by the Left.  Think the Color Revolutions that have taken place all over the world, from Georgia to Ukraine to Lebanon, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.

What does Crisis look like in the United States?  How about open violence encouraged by receptive District Attorneys that refuse to prosecute?  Does it look like the dollar losing 7% of its value in three months?

KEN

Crisis leads to promises by the Left.  High minimum wages.  Free healthcare.  Guaranteed basic income from the government.  “Equality” in housing, in education, in policing.

Are the promises real?  Of course not.  The promises are whatever it takes to get enough support for the Left so they can take control.

If we are not in the Crisis, you can certainly see it from here.  Ideally, for the Left, Crisis leads to control, or Normalization.

Normalization is the end game.  It’s consolidating the country under the Leftists.  It’s the creation of new institutions.  In the Soviet Union and in China, it consisted of killing farmers and replacing them with people from the cities and expecting these collective farms will feed the nation.

Of course, all of the Leftists burning Kenosha and Portland think that they’ll be the ones in charge.  In the new Socialist Utopian States they’ll be the ones who will write poetry and conduct gender reeducation camps, right?

BULLET

This poetry comes from Seattle, I believe.  Plans are now in full view.

No.  The reality is that they’ll be most likely to be put up against the wall and shot or sent to the convenient leisure gulags.  Why?  They will be disillusioned when the actual power structure emerges.  The reality of every communist paradise in history is that the intellectuals are shot first, especially the intellectuals that are communist.  Why?

Dissent is a thing of the past.

Here are Yuri Bezmenov’s ideas, in his own words:

You Get To Choose Your Mood. Why Not Be Happy? No Assembly Required.

“Smile and smile… I don’t trust men who smile too much.” – Commander Kor, Star Trek (TOS)

SMILE

When Pugsley was little, he was excited that about his birthday.  “Daddy, I have a birthday coming up and I’ll be this many old!”  Then he held up four fingers.  The police still don’t know where they came from.

Smile.

Shhh.  Don’t argue.

Smile.

Do it for, say, thirty seconds.

I’ll wait.

(Really, I mean this.  Smile.  Thirty seconds, look at a clock if you have to.  Everybody do it.)

Feel better?

You do.

I’m not sure what kind of day you’re having.  But smiling makes you feel happier.  There’s a study I could link to, but I’m pretty sure all of you know how to use the Internet, so look for it if you want.

Doesn’t matter if you look it up or not.  Smiling makes you feel better.  Smiling is good for you.  Smiling changes your mood.  Change your mood?  Your output is better.  Not only more, but better.

Once upon a time, I had a job at a company that was failing.  Not because of me, but because they had spectacularly failed on some business that they were doing.  How spectacularly?  They were losing millions of dollars.  Some work that I was involved with was likewise losing money, but in this case only a few thousand dollars.

My Boss pulled me into his office.  This is a real conversation, not one I made up.

Boss:  “John, do you know what position the company is in?”

John Wilder:  “Sure.  Two of our divisions have lost enough money that we are in danger of becoming bankrupt.”

Boss:  “Well, then, why are you so happy?  The company is in trouble.  People have noted that you’re too upbeat.”

SAD

When I get sad I cut myself.  Another piece of cake.

I was being told that I was being too happy and positive in the workplace.  How do you even respond to that?  Rip and tear your clothes and cry?  Sacrifice pigeons and stray raccoons to some ancient Sumerian god?  Gather up a group of warriors and go raid a competitor and steal their business so you can hear the lamentation of their women?

Willkommen to das Hötel Kalifornia.

I sort of understand what my Boss was getting at.  You don’t whistle, hum, crack a beer, and then sing Sammy Hagar songs at a funeral, even if there are headbangers in leather picking a three lock box.  But I sort of didn’t understand it, either.  How on Earth do you turn the business around, how do you make things better if you’re gloomy and you’re certain you’re going to die?

You don’t.

This week, a post at a great blog, Tempest in a Teardrop (LINK) mentioned St. Philip Neri.  I hadn’t read about him before.  I certainly hadn’t met him, since he died in Anno Domini 1595, which was about when your mom was finishing high school.

Neri’s quote that impressed me was:  “A joyful heart is more easily made perfect than a downcast one.”  It would be a conceit of the highest measure to think a single sentence I ever wrote would be quoted 400 years from now (though in my dreams I imagine there will be thousands of young students getting their degree in Wilder Wisdom Studies in the year 2356), but Neri absolutely nailed it with this line.

NERI

I wanted to be a standup comedian, but with Coronavirus?  Now they’re all inside jokes.

You have a choice.  Be mad.  Be sullen.  Be angry.  Be filled with wrath.  Give up.   Be jealous of those who have it better.

That’s five of the seven deadly sins (The seven deadly sins and society. How do they fit together?).  Eat seven bacon cheese burgers and think about your neighbor mowing the lawn in a bikini and you’re up to the full seven.  I mean, assuming your neighbor would look good in a bikini.

You don’t have to feel that way.  At all.  Ever.

Smile when you feel down.

When I was in college I had the opposite experience.  I had one particular professor, one of the most fun professors ever.  He was Swiss, and had been a mercenary in the 1950’s, and had done everything.  I was his student, and when I was in grad school, I was his Teaching Assistant.   His advice, coming between puffs of cherry-smelling smoke from his pipe?

“Keep smiling, John.”

GOLLUM

Smiles are contagious, so my state says I should wear a mask.

If you did what I said earlier, and smiled, you felt better.  And you should do it as much as you can.  If you have a choice to be happy, why wouldn’t you choose it?

There are other hacks as well.

Sigh.  A deep sigh.  You will feel your tension lower.  Actual clinical studies that I think I read about show that this lowers blood pressure.  I feel better when I sigh, and I also stop sweating blood, which I think means my blood pressure is lower.

Another trick:

Stand like a superhero, chest thrust forward, hands on your hips.  There’s a reason the artists draw it that way – it makes you feel confident.  Powerful.  Competent.  I can recall falling asleep at night in a pose just like Superman™ flying – one hand out, the other back, and one leg up.

SUPE

If Superman® and Batman© had a baby, what would it be?  Adopted.

I woke up feeling great!  But, of course, my liver didn’t have the mileage on it that it does now.  I still sleep like that most nights.  However, if you stand like a superhero?  You’ll feel like one.

If you ever listen to Scott Adam’s videos, “Coffee With Scott Adams” he starts them with a Simultaneous Sip.  To participate, all you need is a beverage in a container, and you sip when he says go.  It’s a dopamine hit to the brain, which he says will “make everything better.”  And it works.  You feel better when you participate.  Heck, I feel so much better that I often won’t even start listening unless I can do the Simultaneous Sip.

These are just a few hacks that immediately change your mood.  Yes, I understand sometimes these might not help.  More than a dozen years ago, I had a back problem that made sitting horribly uncomfortable.  When I walked, it was fine, but when I sat?  Excruciating pain.

BACK

I tried the ancient Chinese needle treatment for back pain.  The heroin worked best.

In my case, the solution to the pain was the body, again.  I started working out (especially my torso) and the back pain has been gone for (fingers crossed) nearly 13 years.  But if you want to feel better, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t?

  • Check your mood.
  • Check your posture.
  • Check your surroundings.
  • Check your attitude.
  • Check the things you are allowing into your mind.

You own your mind.  It does what you say.  You own your feelings.  They are what you allow them to be.

Me?  I try to practice relentless reality optimism.

  • I’m gonna die.   That tells me I have to hurry in the things I do.  I don’t have time to waste.
  • I’m gonna fail.   That will tell me things I can do better next time.
  • I’m tired.   That means I’ve been working as hard as I can.

I want every component of my body to be absolutely used up on the last day of my life.  I’d like the organ people to look at me and say, “Nope, nothing for us.  Unless we can transplant the smile.”

Smile.

Hold it.

Now you don’t have excuses.  Go and do it, whatever it is as long as the stakes are high enough.

STEAKS

I had to cut my last duck out of my life.  He was addicted to quack.

Clock is ticking.  And failure is just a teacher to make you better.

Oh, and the company that was failing?  Because of some changes I made in dealing with their major client, they managed to get over two hundred million dollars in business when they were near bankruptcy, generating millions in profits after I left them.  They’re still around today.

I guess smiling pays off, after all.

The Data That Drives Advertising . . . Could Decide The Election?

“Never theorize before you have data. Invariably, you end up twisting facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” – Sherlock Holmes (2009)

FIRST

Mark Zuckerberg has been banning bots from Facebook™ before the election.  Trump has made Mark turn on his own kind.

As I’ve mentioned before, The Mrs. used to be in radio.  On one of her jobs, she did the news, sports, and weather for a collection of stations.  The thing that fascinated me was that The Mrs. was the one that selected which news stories and which sports stories to put on the air, even to the point where she interviewed Senators and Congresscritters as part of the press pool.  The Mrs. might be a wizard, but she couldn’t really select the weather, so the weather was what the weather was.

The Mrs. didn’t like the NBA®, so during basketball season she refused to cover it.  At all.  If you would have listened to her broadcast, you wouldn’t have known that basketball was a sport.  Despite that the NHL® didn’t have a “local” team, The Mrs. covered hockey, even though after a storm the farmers care more about grain wetzky than Wayne Gretzky.

I’ve told that story before, but it’s been some time since I mentioned it so I know it’s new to some of you.  I think now is the perfect place to mention it again.

RADIOF

I used to tell radio jokes, but the reception was poor.

Why?  That will become clear.

But let’s start with this idea – you’re a product.  Almost six years ago I heard a quote in a Wired® article (LINK) about the predictive power of social media interactions:

In the end, the researchers found that with information on just ten Facebook© “Likes,” the algorithm was more accurate than the average person’s colleague. With 150 “Likes,” it could outsmart people’s families, and with 300 “Likes,” it could best a person’s spouse.

Imagine the power.  With enough data, Facebook® could sell data to companies with complete certainty that they’d be able to understand your income level, age, health problems, fears, and what it takes to sell you a product.  By knowing when you went to bed, they’d be able to predict if you were a night owl, though I didn’t predict The Mrs. reaction when I replaced our bed with a trampoline.  She hit the ceiling.

It’s not just Facebook™, and in my mind they’re not even the worst.  I make it a point to never use my work computer for personal “stuff” – I don’t log in for email, social media, or any other site where I log in.  Heck, I made it a point to minimize my surfing to the point where most of my Internet use at work was work related.  I learned that they really don’t like you surfing YouTube™ videos at work during the six hours I spent at a job as an air traffic controller.

ATC

I’ve never been an air traffic controller, but I hear that their motto is:  “If the pilot screws up, the pilot dies.  If the air traffic controller screws up, the pilot dies.”

But one day I went to a weather site, and saw ads about something I’d searched for at home – something I was thinking of buying.

If it were a normal thing, that would make sense.  In this case, it was a fairly obscure outdoor product.  Boom.  Right there on the weather page.  It wasn’t just one product, which would have been a coincidence.  People who are interested in the weather might be outdoorsy, right?

Nope.  It happened again and again.  Somehow, Google® (my guess) had figured out that John at home was the same guy who was using that work computer.  I had noticed years earlier that Google™ gave one set of results on a search at work, and a completely different set on my home computer.  That almost made sense – people at work are usually not looking for the same results as people at home.  For instance, always make sure when you Google™ the actor Gary Oldman that you type in an “r”.

But look at all of the sources of data that exist on you, primarily (but not always) generated via social media.  Just your search history tells the companies serving the Internet a lot about you.  The Mrs. is a writer and was looking for ways people die for a book.  She joked that the FBI® probably would arrest her if anything ever happened to me.  But I don’t trust the FBI™, since the last time I was at the dentist they wanted to do a cavity search.

EVIL

I guess if Google® made Lucky Charms©, they’d be tragically malicious? 

Facebook’s™ statement that with 300 likes they would know a person better than their spouse is nearly six years old.  How much better than that are their computer systems now?  I would imagine much, much better.  Now they have data stretching across years that would likely predict a lot about a person’s outcomes.

Several years ago YouTube® used to suggest me content that was much edgier than I had initially searched for.  It was as if I watched a video about the Right and got fed another that was six steps farther Right than the previous video.  YouTube™ was giving me more and more “extreme” content.  Why?  Because more extreme content drives emotions.  It pops chemicals into my brain and stimulates more viewing time.

YouTube™ was optimizing based on getting more viewing minutes.  The best way to do that?  Show me videos it predicted would increase emotion, especially outrage.  And, as we all know, it’s easier to get strong emotion with anger rather than happiness.

PROTIP

I watch chemistry videos periodically.

For a while, I was on Twitter® – there is still a John Wilder account, but I had some fun with a parody account that was since deleted.  But I noticed the same pattern at Twitter™ – keeping eyeballs through generating emotion.

What happens when you aggregate all of that data?

You can be told a story that’s unique to you.  Immersed in information that is designed to drive your economic behavior – understanding what you’re most likely to spend money on, what time of day to best provide an ad, what phrases cause you to click, and which ones you ignore.

I’ve cut back on social media.  Facebook® is only used on a single browser, and I haven’t opened it in months.  Since I never understood what was fascinating about Facebook™, that’s super easy.  It doesn’t need a replacement.  Likewise, it’s been months since I was on Twitter©, although I do spend some time on Gab®.

I’m cutting back on YouTube™ and moving towards BitChute© – YouTube™ in the last year has been on a tear of censorship and herding – trying to move people farther Left.  Some things are harder to find on BitChute™ – it has the worst search I’ve seen.  But when I can find the people I listen to normally on BitChute®, I go there.

YTRES

Dracula got caught uploading illegal content to YouTube™.  He’s got the problem – a count suspended. 

And browsers?  Have you tried Brave™?

Understand that Google©, YouTube™, Twitter®, and Facebook® (among many!) are creating a product based on you, and attempting to sell you to whoever they can.   Heck, if YouTube™, Twitter®, and Facebook® merged, they would have an amazing amount of data, but they’d be stuck calling themselves YouTwitFace®.

If it were just that, we’ve been facing less sophisticated versions of advertising for years.  As even the Romans said:  “Buyer beware.”

But with this immense power, what are the odds that they are consciously attempting to craft a narrative to change what you believe?  Is there an agenda behind the stories that are presented to you, the way the headlines are written?  Is there an agenda behind the stories that you’re not allowed to see?

ZZHOWE

I wanted to buy a skating rink, but my realtor only gave me a ballpark estimate.

Most people coming to this blog are pretty good at making up their own minds.  But this fall’s election might be based on the votes of perhaps a 20,000 people or less, who have no idea who they’re voting for right now – elections are won by convincing the undecided.

I wonder what narrative Facebook™, Google©, Twitter®, and YouTube™ will try to spin for them?

I’m betting it has nothing to do with hockey.

Shield Walls And Responsibility

“Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not ‘every man for himself.’ And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.” – A Fish Called Wanda

ROMAN

Four Norse gods, one Roman god, and two astrological bodies walk into a bar.  Everyone knew Wilder was going to make another week joke.

Farther back than written record exists, people have been fighting each other in an organized fashion. Though there are indications of earlier Egyptian battles, probably the first written records of tactics come from an inscribed stone thought to depict a Sumerian victory around 2500 B.C.  Again, perspective – the time of Christ is closer to us than Christ was to this battle.  Another way to say it?  Almost as old as your mom.

The tactic as shown on the stone would have been familiar to a Greek or a Roman or a Viking:  it’s a shield wall.  The idea is that soldiers working together would provide each other mutual protection through their overlapping shields.  In the case of the Greeks, the shield wall (or phalanx) was manned by citizen-soldiers called “hoplites.”  The Greeks had a lot of stories, though.  The half-human, half-horse who was a doctor?  They called him the Centaur for Disease Control.

Each hoplite protected himself and the man on his right.  Much of the most effective fighting was done by the guys in the second row, who were also protected by the shields of the front row.  The shield wall was generally employed by both sides during ancient conflicts.  As a superior technology, the choice was simple – adopt or learn to speak a new language, if you were lucky.

PROTON

Protons are underrated.  They’re always so positive.
Photo CC BY-SA 3.0, Sting, viaWikimedia

Combat was simple.  The opposing shield walls would meet and, as near as we can understand, a big sumo match between porcupines was the result.  The worst thing that could happen to a shield wall is breaking.  If a shield wall broke, the only real option for the side that broke was to flee.  For just that reason, the Greeks put the most inexperienced soldiers in the front and center of the shield wall.  That gave them psychological comfort of being surrounded by experienced fighters, plus they couldn’t get scared and run off.  They were stuck there in the middle of the fight.

The shield wall is one example that I could think of where the responsibilities of the individual to the group were vitally important.  Individual thought in a Greek phalanx is more than discouraged – it’s fatal.  That’s why the put the rookies in the middle.  The choices in the middle of a Greek phalanx are two:  fight as a unit and maybe win or be individuals and certainly die.

PHILIP

Philip also asked if he should come to Sparta as a friend or a foe.  The Spartan response?  “Neither.”

I’ve been thinking quite a lot about the tension between responsibility and individuality as I get older.  When I was younger after I read Ayn Rand I was a ready-to-move-to-Galt’s-Gulch Libertarian.  My thoughts were rather simple:  I’d do as I please, not harm anyone, and the world would let me be.

Heck, I even went to a meeting of the largest Libertarian group in the state I was living in.  When I saw it was just six guys in a booth at Taco Bell® (I’m not kidding) I decided to skip the meeting.  Libertarians are horrible at organizing.  Everybody wants to do their own thing, which makes for lousy coordination.  It shouldn’t have surprised me that there were only six of them, and that they met at a single booth at a Taco Bell™.  Also, since then I’ve come to the realization that the world will never let us be so we don’t have the option of going to Galt’s Gulch.

I still love the idea of individual freedom.  And even when I was young, I realized that individual freedoms came with individual responsibility.  You make a mistake?  You’re held accountable for it.  But there’s a component that’s missing that complements the first two:

Responsibility to the group.

ALIEN

Do Transformers® get car insurance or health insurance?  Neither, they are illegal aliens.

Does that constrain your individual freedom?  Certainly.  But it’s reality.  If you’re on a football team, working at a business, part of a family, or even in a tribe of Libertarians living in Galt’s Gulch, your individual freedom is limited to an extent that you have responsibilities to the group.

Just as the Greek hoplite was responsible for his own life, he was also responsible for the lives of those around him.  Each individual hoplite was responsible for the success of the group.

As I get older, I realize that responsibility does exist for each of us.  It’s not the same immediate life or death imperative of a hoplite, but it’s serious nevertheless.

BIDEN

If Joe wins the election, at least Hunter can get a job closer to home.

In one sense, the State (mainly the Federal government, but also small-s state governments) has done it’s best to remove that individual responsibility to society – it’s now nothing more than a series of payments to the State – taxes here and taxes there and you can go about your life without worrying about your responsibility to the state.

Poor people?  That’s easy.  The State will pay for them.  The break between individual charity is gone, but I’ve written about that before (Charity, The Terminator, and Flat Tires).  But it goes much further with similar stories in education, medical care, and retirement care.  There are a million ways that the State has replaced the responsibility of the individual to that group.

One impact of that has been the recent riots.  Reparations?  Make the State pay.  Burnt out buildings?  Make the State Pay.  Chose to get a degree and rack up enormous debt?  Make the State pay.  Unhappy with your life?  Capitalism has failed.  The State should fix this.

STALIN

During the Soviet Revolution, they didn’t get every goal, but the did aim for the Tsars.

In the minds of Leftists, every solution requires more State power.  That’s been at the root of every issue we’ve seen in 2020.  Beyond the riots, COVID-19 has provided another outlet for the religious fervor of the Left.

  • Vaccines? Should be mandatory once one shows up.
  • Masks? Previous:    Now:  Required.
  • Trump’s response? Previous:  He doesn’t have authority.  Now:  Every death is on his head.
  • Voting?   Protests?  Just fine.

The cause of this is that there is a natural desire to want to have responsibility that the State has severed.  In its place, there are still chances to do that – be a Little League® coach.  Volunteer at the food bank.  Volunteer your time down at the local shooting club to teach people how to protect the man to their right.

That’s what a responsible hoplite would do, after all.