John – Page 89 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Too Much News? Take A Step Back.

“I’m a reasonable guy, but, I’ve just experienced some very unreasonable things.” – Big Trouble in Little China

An Antifa member, a communist, and a guy living in his mom’s basement walk into a bar. He orders a drink.

“That’s it, I’m going to have to stop,” The Mrs. said.

John Wilder: “Stop what? I mean, please don’t stop gourmet* night.”

The Mrs.: “No. The news. I’m going to have to stop reading it. I’m just so mad I can’t see straight.”

I agreed with The Mrs. I usually do: she knows where most of the shooting irons are, and I sleep pretty heavy. The Mrs. had been following the news of our current national situation, which is usual. But in this case, The Mrs. had been getting pretty mad.

It was fairly obvious. The Mrs. often talked politics with me when I got home, but this week it was different. Her voice was louder, and she was visibly angry. This wasn’t like her at all, unless I had forgotten to install that hardwood flooring I’d promised to put in. Five years ago.

“If it bleeds, it leads” was first used in 1989 to describe the practice in journalism of focusing on the most horrific story possible. Even though the phrase was new in 1989, the practice wasn’t: there’s a reason that we got into a war with Spain, and it didn’t have a lot to do with the U.S.S. Maine.

Really, this was like picking on that one kid whose parents dressed him in a collared shirt and tie for school.

But back in 1989, news was different and less available: there was the evening news, newspapers, for the first five minutes on the top and bottom of the hour on the radio, and monthly magazines. Sure, if you had CNN®, you could get a constant stream of news.

In practice most people didn’t hook into the news. They spent time living their lives. You’d think that would make it easier for tyranny to take root. Not so. But more on that later.

Back in 1989 the news simply occupied a much smaller place in public consciousness. I think that 9/11 was what changed Americans (I can’t speak to other countries) for good, and addicted us to a continuous stream of atrocity and terror, as we all waited for the next event that would transform our lives.

I still miss Weekly World News. Wonder what ever happened to batboy?

Now news is created and brought into our lives constantly. We’re never more than a click away from news. And news is crafted to trigger our brains. Which parts? Not the parts that glow or fizz or sparkle or whatever it is a brain does when we’re happy. No, the news is crafted to stimulate an easier and more powerful set of emotions: rage and fear.

The news is extreme. And since we now have news that casts a net across the world, you can see:

Time-tested principles and values tossed in a heap weekly,
New divisions in society delivered daily,
And new outrages, fed straight to your smartphone hourly.

It seems like too much. And it is. Tyranny seems to love this situation. The important portions of news are buried in the static. When we watched half an hour of news, we had to focus on the important parts. Certainly it was easier to bury things from the American public back when news was less a part of our immediate lives, but now the news is a minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour source of distraction, how often are we so inundated we can’t sort the out the important threads from the millions of false leads?

We don’t have to live like this.

Wait until he reads what the mice are up to.

Scott Adams, Dilbert® cartoonist mentioned in one of his articles that he didn’t watch scary or sad movies. He avoided them because he didn’t want to watch things that made him unhappy. It wasn’t a casual choice for him – it was a rule.

Mr. Adams probably wouldn’t do so well in our house, since we consider Predator to be kid friendly. Heck, when Pugsley (then about 9) saw me field dressing a deer I was worried that he’d be squeamish. Nope. Pugsley was ready to put it on the grill.

I think Mr. Adams is probably a bit on the extreme side. I’m not criticizing, the special sauce on his burger is working out pretty well for him. You don’t have to remove yourself that far from the reality of the situation.

But like The Mrs., you can step back for a bit, too.

Sure, things are rough in this minute if you watch the news. You can only control so much, and can’t (at all) control the actions of Leftist big city governments in Seattle or Minneapolis or in dozens of other cities across the country.

Beer is probably a good start with your preps. Don’t forget to rotate the stock!

None of this is telling you not to prepare. You should. If we’re this far down and you don’t have a Plan B? Shame on you. Work on that. But the news won’t help you prepare for 2021 when the aliens show up. Shut out the noise, step back, and think. If you want to prepare by stocking up on food, do that now. If you want to prepare by stocking up on ammo, do that now. And if you plan to bug out at friend’s place when things go bad? You’d better toss him some money now so you’re showing up to your supplies that he’s keeping for you, and not expecting that he has planned for 34 of his closest friends to show up and eat his preps.

For most people reading this, in this moment you have every physical need met. The troubles you have already conquered are in the rearview mirror. You’ve done great. Congratulate yourself.

The troubles you may face aren’t certainties. There’s no need to fear them now. Prepare yourself? Certainly. But do it cheerfully. Tomorrow will be a great day. The Sun has yet to go out of business.

Turn off the news and your cell phone. Enjoy this day, and prepare for the rough days ahead. You’re up to the challenge.

*Gourmet Night was inspired by the ABC® television show Hannibal. Hannibal was a series about Hannibal Lecter, the character from Silence of the Lambs, but portrayed by Danish actor Mads Mikklesen, who does even better than Hopkins with the character. But the show itself has some wonderfully creepy scenes where Hannibal is cooking a fancy dinner and you have no idea if he’s cooking pigs or people. Oddly enough, this inspired The Mrs. to cook intricate dishes for dinner like beef Wellington or ribeye with crème sauce. Hence, gourmet night, which has been a success at our house.

But wherever does The Mrs. get such tender meat?

Your Economy, Featuring: Romans, Rothschilds, and Rioters

“You have two settings-no decision and bad decision. I wouldn’t let you run a bath without having the Coast Guard and the fire department standing by, but yet here you are running America. You are the worst thing that has happened to this country since food in buckets and maybe slavery!” – Veep

I had made a mistake and bought too many art supplies. That was my excess stencil crisis.

Cui bono. That’s Latin for “who benefits,” and in this case doesn’t have anything to do with the singer for the band U2©, who have been benefiting from everything. Even my GPS is branded by U2™, and it sucks. The streets have no name, and I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

Cui bono.

That quote being in Latin is especially appropriate for today’s post. Marcus Licinius Crassus (115 B.C. – 53 B.C. – they aged backwards then) goes down in history for creating the first fire department that Rome had. At his own expense, he recruited and trained a brigade of 500 men who, at the first sign of a fire, would speed toward the smoke and flames.

Crassus would rush to the fire with them. Once the fire department was on site, Crassus would find the building owner and offer to buy the burning building at an obvious discount. I am not making this up. Obviously, the longer the fire went on, the lower Crassus’ offer would go. Once the property owner had sold, Crassus would give the signal and his fire department would save his newly purchased building.

I’m sure that sometimes the fire got away from him, but most of the time Crassus profited from the deal. It was a fire sale, right?

When I was working as a firefighter, in one building all that was left was the bottom of a shoe – it must have been the sole survivor.

Often, Crassus would then rebuild the building using his army of slave architects and artisans (not making that up, either), and then lease the building back to the original owner. So, Crassus even had a way to get his money back. Crassus was wealthy not only by ancient standards, but by any standards. He’d be worth at least $11 billion in today’s money.

Cui bono? Crassus. I looked for a name I could call Crassus, but it was hard to find one, this being a family-friendly blog. I’ll settle on cullion.

This is an early example of economic plunder. Legal, yes. Honorable? No.

It didn’t stop with Crassus.

I once paid $20 to meet the Prince, but I partied like it was only $19.99.

When you search the Internet for tales of Nathan Rothschild back in 1815, you’ll find a host of stories that from the scholarship of 2020, don’t seem to be supported. But what generally seems to be agreed with (even by the Rothschild Archives – LINK) is that during the Napoleonic Era, Rothschild and his brothers across the European continent had a fairly sophisticated system to transfer news and information to each other.

Information is just like a building fire in Rome: the sooner you catch it, the more it is worth.

What had been vexing everyone in London during June of 1815 was the return of Napoleon from exile and his resumption of power in France. Since Europe had been fighting alongside Napoleon or with Napoleon for nearly 20 years, people in the United Kingdom were scared to death that a victory by Napoleon could lead to another 20 years of war. And just like today, no one wanted to watch a re-run.

Napoleon broke out of exile because he needed more Elba room.

Lord Wellington had been put in charge of a coalition of armies from across Europe, 68,000 total troops. Joined by 50,000 Prussians under Blücher (cue obligatory whinny), Wellington met Bonaparte at the small village of Waterloo. Napoleon wasn’t alone. He had 73,000 French soldiers, and Wellington had left his panzers in his other coat, so the French fought back like they’d have to shower and give up cigarettes if they lost.

Spoiler alert: Napoleon lost, but barely. I think it had to go into at least one overtime, and there were some controversial instant replays.

The story goes that with the Rothschild information network, Nathan was notified about Wellington’s victory before anyone in London. By knowing that, Nathan could make a killing in the stock market. How well did he do? We don’t know. His courier wrote him: “I am informed by Commissary White that you have done well by the early information which you had of the Victory gained at Waterloo.” It is reported (LINK) that the Rothschild fortunes went from £500,000 to £1,000,000 in that year. So probably pretty well, since I assume a £ is a metric $ or something.

Yes, I know that there are other stories about Nathan’s Big Day Out® that are much more exaggerated, but this one does fine in proving my point: the best time to make money is in an uncertain market. Or, as has been attributed to Nathan: “The time to buy is when there’s blood in the streets.” Especially if, like Nathan and Marcus, you can remove the uncertainty and make your bet a sure thing.

I did invest in an Asian/Middle East fusion restaurant called, “Wok Like an Egyptian.”

This went on during Roman times, and it went on during Napoleonic times. Is it going on today?

It certainly is. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine the other week, and he works for a company that was funded by a private equity firm. Per my conversation, they deals that just his company is looking at are in the range of one hundred million to one billion dollars. Sure, that’s a pretty big range. But the kicker was this:

“There are pools of billions of dollars waiting for deals.”

What kind of deals? Deals on great assets in a collapsing economy.

As we look at the wreck that we’re seeing in the economy due to the WuFlu and now the great #BLM (Burning Looting Marxists), what sort of reaction are we seeing? Does it surprise anyone that 269 companies (LINK, H/T to CA at Western Rifle Shooters) are supporting the (actual, really founded by Marxists, look it up) BLM?

Does it surprise anyone that hundreds of millions of dollars are flooding in to BLM and affiliated organizations? And I’m not exaggerating the amount – the fund just for bailing out rioters and looters in Minneapolis was over $90 million dollars. Some people can loot a whole week and not make that much!

The support for BLM could be from one of the following sources, and I suspect that one or more is in play depending on the company donating:

Genuine support for civil rights. Sure, I believe that from companies that import goods made by overseas labor treated more poorly than the Wilder family treats our outdoor cat.
A cynical ploy signaling corporate virtue to get people to buy burgers. Think of it like an advertisement, but instead of featuring the social justice flavor of the week, it’s BLM this week.
Coordinated donations with full knowledge that the money will go toward a Marxist transformation of the United States.
Selected by the CEO’s secretary executive assistant at random.

I never let BLM members into my basement – I don’t want a whine cellar.

Amazon® has really been impacted by COVID-19. I’m betting that every facet of Bezos’ business has been helped, from their online shopping to their web infrastructure to their movie rental business. Coronachan has been good to Jeff. But I don’t blame Bezos for that – I don’t think it was his plan to infect the United States with a virus and convince everyone to stay in the basement for three months and then have seven pages of BLM merch to sell.

Because if he did? That’s some real Bond villain stuff and I’ve got to say, that’s the most anyone has ever done to try to convince me to buy a Prime® subscription.

Cui bono? I mean, besides Bezos?

Someone is going to profit from BLM, even beyond the hundreds of millions of dollars donated recently to it, and even beyond the billions of dollars that will go to purchase assets during the crisis. And it may not be money, or burger sales. It might be measured in raw power, the power to turn a society towards the Marxist goals of the founders of BLM.

But even Crassus knew that once a fire got started, it just might get away from you.

A Modest Proposal: Defund D.C.

“In an emotional address at the state capitol, Nebraska Governor Paul Burmaster made a public apology for his state being so flat.” – Hot Shots! Part Deux

If I could have a steak dinner with any historical figure, it would be Gandhi. More steak for me.

The Family Wilder was having dinner out a few weeks ago. We generally do that every Friday. Pugsley has OCD so he insists that we give the waitress what we want starting with the highest priced item first. It’s an extremely rare dish order. Of course, I kid.

As is our custom, before we go out for dinner we toss all of our cell phones on the table. We literally party like it’s 1999. Discussion takes place without the constraint of Internet-enabled fact checking. Rather than argue the facts, we agree to table that discussion until later, and can talk instead about pure ideas, like when The Boy decided that giving up spreadsheets forty days before Easter was an Excel® Lent idea.

Our conversation often travels into weird subjects, like it did that night. This is actually the combination of several conversations we’ve had over time. Being married for years means that a lot of what’s included in this conversation was said weeks or even years earlier, so it’s not exactly our dinnertime discussion.

John Wilder: “You know, part of the problem is Washington, D.C. is just in the wrong place. Sure, when the nation was founded it was smack in the middle of the 13 states. Now? It’s stuck on a seaboard, three thousand miles away from California, and 1,500 miles away from anything that could plausibly be called the center of the country.”

I want to ban the sale of pre-shredded cheese. Together, we can make America grate again!

The Mrs.: “Yes, plus all the lobbyists flock there. They spend huge amounts of money wining and dining Congress. Gotta get that bacon-wrapped shrimp.”

JW: “Yes! Plus the population there has just grown to love government. Heck, in 2016, 90.9% of the folks in Washington, D.C. voted for Hillary. Donald Trump got 4.1%. This doesn’t have remotely resemble the nation as a whole. It also explains why the Left was so surprised when he won. They probably don’t even know someone who voted for Trump. Though you could have made a fortune mining the salt from their tears.”

The Mrs.: “Perhaps there’s a better place for the capitol?”

JW: “Perhaps. How about Sioux Falls, South Dakota? I think it gets hot there in the summer, but also cold in the winter. If we just made sure the new capitol building had substandard heating and air conditioning . . . .”

The Mrs.: “And made sure that no hotel better than a Holiday Inn Express® could be built . . . .”

JW: “And made sure that all fancy parties had to be catered by Sonic®?”

It would be so nice if Sonic added an “e” to its name.

It was a fun thought – fancy lobbyists forced to eat chili-cheese tater tots instead of the previously mentioned bacon-wrapped shrimp. Perhaps the reason is that I, as an American citizen in the southern part of Northern Midwestia, have no real connection to the level of luxury and power that our Congresscritters experience on a daily basis.

It’s not just that. The power in Washington, D.C. has proven to be as attractive to Leftists as Jeffrey Epstein’s plane was to Bill Clinton.

I recall back in 2000 when some sort of group on the Right was thinking of marching on Washington, D.C. In the comments, one person asked, “Why would you want to go there? There is no one from the Right there. You’re travelling into enemy territory. If you want to protest, try Wyoming.”

Make no mistake about it, Washington, D.C. is enemy territory. Although everyone there isn’t a Leftist, it’s Leftist enough that wearing a Gadsden Flag t-shirt in a public location is probably not conducive to long term oxygen use here on Planet Earth. There’s a reason that Trump “inspected” the bunker as fires and riots were raging outside of the White House. I mean, riot season so early? I still have my COVID decorations up.

There were riots in Detroit, too. They caused $7 million in improvements.

Would that riot have happened in Sioux Falls? Or Hastings, Nebraska? Or Missoula, Montana? Or Bismarck, North Dakota? I think not.

Since the conversation that night, I had the idea that there’s no real reason that the United States needs to have a fixed capitol at all. Put the thing into a group of double-wide trailers and move it around from state to state – each state gets a shot to have the capitol for six months or so.

To make it even spicier, make sure that the cities the capitol lands in have populations of less than 300,000 or so and are more than two hours from a really big airport. Heck one month they could skip telling the New York delegation where they were going, just for giggles.

I tried to think of a social-distancing joke, but this was as close as I could get.

It wasn’t long after this conversation that I got an email from a reader suggesting exactly this same idea. “Defund D.C.” was the suggestion. I’d name them, but I didn’t have permission, but here’s a direct quote (with minor changes – style only):

“On January 21, 2021, start moving all Federal offices out of D.C. and Northern Virginia. Leave only small legislative liaison staffs, and establish new offices in currently red states. All national monuments in the area will continue to operate, if they charge admission and become self-sustaining without National Park Service funds.”

I’d add that we don’t want to burden Red States with a batch of imported Leftists, so the offices would be moved, and we could pick up new staff at the new locations. We could house most of them in empty big box retail stores and malls. Plenty of locals would like the jobs, but I worry that they’d be more efficient than the Leftists they replace and we might actually get the government we pay for.

All in all, I like the idea. Heck, anything we could do to reduce the power of the Federal government at this point, I’m for.

I once pushed a female mathematician into a swamp. She ended up with algae bra.

But I worry it’s too late.

When I look at the way that both sides have been spending money over the last twenty years, I am fairly certain that all of them go to parties where “deficits don’t matter” is written out on the buffet table in prosciutto ham wrapped asparagus. Beyond the financial stress, the political stress has been built up. To be clear, this political stress was built up when things were relatively good in the country. When things go bad financially?

Look out below, it’s a long way to drop.

Given that, it might be too late. But I will admit that it does make me smile when I think about Congresscritters bathed in rivers of sweat in July and having to give speeches in overcoats and mittens in November in double wide trailers on the Great American Prairie.

It might not solve anything.

But it sure would be amusing.

500th Post, Including Nic Cage

“Well, my normal fee is $500, but seeing that it’s for you, I’m gonna need it in advance.” – Futurama

You can always tell an identity thief’s Twitter page. Their pronouns are ‘you/yours.’

Dear Readers and Friends,

This is my 500^th post here at Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise, so I’m going to celebrate by writing a letter to you, which is great because I don’t have to steal from other bloggers research notes and prepare. Yay! Up front, I want to say that I appreciate you coming by more than you know, and I appreciate your comments, too.

I thought I’d start out by answering a question I’ve seen on the blog. I have seen more than one comment of the general flavor: Why do you do this? I’m not sure if it was:

Why do you do this? or,
Why do you do this? or,
Why do you do this?

The answer to all of those questions is the same: I really enjoy doing this. That’s at least the start of the answer. Do I have some other goals with this project someday? Sure. Maybe. But I love writing and all of those other projects depend on that fact.

I must love it though: the schedule is rough.

I heard there are no cats on Mars – Curiosity got to them first.

Often I don’t manage to finish writing these gems until it’s 4:30AM or so. On a couple of occasions I’ve jumped right from writing a post overnight into the shower to get ready for work. Why does it take so long? Well, there’s work, and then time with family, and then the time spent smoking cigars that I lit with flaming $100 bills in my hot tub filled with rare Mongolian* champagne.

Those are things I just won’t give up.

So in order to write, I have to replace the one thing that’s sort-of negotiable – sleep.

It didn’t used to take me until 4:30AM to do a post, I’d generally knock them out by 2AM at the latest. I blame The Mrs. for it taking so much longer. The Mrs. told me in 2018, in no uncertain terms, that I wasn’t working at my writing. It was okay, she said.

But.

The Mrs. then told me that the quality of my posts hadn’t gotten better in some time. Really thinking about this, I realized that The Mrs. was right. I’d been coasting in my writing like Nic Cage has been coasting in his acting since 1998.

Despite all my rage, I’m still just Princess Cage.

When I was younger, that sort of criticism might have stung me or I might have ignored it like Nic Cage does. But 2018 me realized that ego is a tool. I can dial it up, or dial it down. And dialing it down is the only way a person can have a receptive mindset so that they will listen, take advice, and improve. So I listened. And I studied. And then I did what I did in college when I had a test in Numerical and Voodoo Simulation Methods for Advanced Partial Derivatives: I worked really, really hard.

The problem with hard work is that it takes time. The odd thing I’ve found is, as I’ve gotten better (my perspective, yours may vary) I cannot abide by turning out work that I consider less than my version of my best effort. I just can’t. And the paradox of this is, as you get better, your best effort does, too. And that takes time.

If only I had low standards like Nic Cage.

Seriously, is he hiding both his receding hairline and his butt?

An example: commenters here are really sharp. One commenter (I’d mention your name, but don’t want to draw attention unless you want me to) mentioned an error I made, and followed up with, “I’m not giving you a hard time, I just got the idea from your writing that you’d want to know.” That was a really, really perceptive statement.

Old me who was driven more by ego? Would he want to know? No.

Me now? Yes.

I want to make these posts as perfect as I can make them. I want to make people laugh, out loud, and be a little embarrassed that they did. I want to present ideas that people haven’t had, and have them be intrigued at the new horizon I’ve opened up. Either one is a win. In my very best posts, I hope I do both, and have you laugh as your mind expands. It’s a good thing, because when you’re laughing as your skull gets bigger, it distracts a little from the pain.

This guy should be feeling zero pain.

What happens when I think I’ve written a great post? I hit “publish” and schedule it for 7:29AM Eastern, and I think I’ve done a good job, I’m as happy and excited as Johnny Depp when he finds out he’s purchased square whiskey bottles that don’t roll under the bed. I find it nearly impossible to sleep because I’m so happy.

When you’ve been up for 22 straight hours and are too excited to go to sleep?

That’s a pleasure. Or it’s Johnny Depp some Hollywood® celebrity on an ether binge.

That joy went from showing up monthly, to showing up weekly to now happening most (but not all) of the time. That’s killer when you have to get up 100 minutes after your head hits the pillow, being so excited you can barely sleep. But I still go to sleep with a smile on my face.

That’s not the whole story. I’ve never heard of a writer that writes only to write and shove boxes of paper in a trunk. A writer writes to be read, even if they’re writing a personal journal – they imagine their kids will read it someday. With me, as I mentioned above, it’s at least partially about making people laugh. Making people surprised at a new fact, idea, or concept works, too. But in order for people to experience that uplifting humor or mind-expanding concept, they’ve got to read it.

I try to write so the message will be timeless. But yet often the messages and the inside jokes are tied to our time and culture. That’s a contradiction.

Yes, a meme on a guy who was burned at the stake 420 years ago. Oh. Burn? 420? How blunt.

I bought Giordano Bruno’s book The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast (published 1584 A.D.). Why? It was one of the breadcrumbs I was looking at for some reason I can’t remember. Then the book showed up. After about six pages, I realized he was making references to stuff you could have only seen in the 1584 version of The Tiger King®. Let’s be real: in the year 2050 nobody is going to remember Joe Exotic or Stupid Carol unless they follow the footnotes.

Even though Bruno was burnt at the stake for his dangerous thoughts, going through his (relatively half-baked) ideas was going to take twenty minutes a page to sift through the references. Likewise, in the year 2436, I’m pretty sure that no one will get any of my Escape From New York® references about everyone thinking that Snake Plissken™ was dead. The good news is that I don’t expect the Catholic Church in Italy to sentence me to death via Inquisition.

I guess no one expects the Italian Inquisition, which I guess is one of their main weapons?

In the year 2025, if man is still alive, if woman can survive, they may find: Joe Exotic (Zager and Evans and Wilder)

Regardless, I’ll own the topical jokes that I make. It should at least be interesting to the archaeologists in the year 3351, so there’s that. Bruno had friends that put up with him while he was writing his crazy books filled with made up heresy.

And I’ve got you guys.

I spent an hour putting together a list of people and commenters who helped along the way. I got to forty, and realized I wasn’t even halfway close to a good list. Then I had the realization that even when I got to a good list, I’d be leaving someone important off.

Dangit. And I thought I’d be getting to bed early tonight.

I had one guy who worked for me who told me, “John, you’re one of the first people I’ve worked for that says, ‘Thank you’ on a regular basis and I appreciate that.” He’d worked for over forty years when he told me that, and that meant something to me. Too often we walk through life without gratitude to those we are close to, those we work with. And those that care for us. I want to be clear – I’m 100% grateful to the people that have helped me grow and introduced me to larger audiences and commented here.

How long will I keep the writing up? My best guess is at least 750 more posts. That’s five years. And, if this experiment goes the way I think it will? They’ll have to pry the keyboard from my cold, dead hands because I’ll never stop because I’ll be court jester to the new Emperor of North America.

Michael J. Fox was a little shaky on me using this meme.

We will be looking at difficulties in the future – I think we all can feel that. But look around and realize that we can and should be thankful for the people around us, and the good fortune we find. And I am thankful for you, and thankful for the circumstances that brought us all together. If you’re reading this, that includes you.

From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Sincerely,

John

*0.00075% of my readers are Mongolians (and that’s an actual number). I like to think it’s The Hu.

You’re Not Alone

“Théoden King stands alone.” – Lord of the Rings

Google® is so biased they only ranked our Solar System one star.

Originally this was going to be an economic post (as is usual for Wednesday) about Crisis Capitalism and how this particular Crisis, like many others in the past will be used to concentrate wealth even more, perhaps with bikini graphs. Maybe the bikinis get smaller as the economy shrinks? At least that would bring some good out of the current crisis. Plus I’ll always be known as “the guy who made economics interesting at last.”

That post will have to wait until next Wednesday.

What hit me today was an onslaught of news. Not one story, but nearly every story I read was about deplatforming or attempting to silence alternative viewpoints to the conventional narrative as seen on TV. In rapid-fire, I saw stories about deplatforming of news and opinion outlets, deplatforming of individuals and doxing (making private personal information public of non-public figures) of pre-teens(!) for thoughtcrime.

Heck, there was even a Serbian soccer player (playing soccer for an American pro soccer team) that was fired (after he was made to apologize) for comments his wife made on social media. And his wife made those comments in Serbian. I guess that he should have done his manly best and kept her home without access to electronic media devices? Is the message that athletes should take away from this is that they should keep their women on a shorter leash?

Is this the Left telling men that they need to be more patriarchal and tell their women to be seen and not heard?

But his wife wanted to go anyway.

But the seemingly disjointed activities all had one purpose: to make you feel alone.

The biggest story is that Zero Hedge® was cut off from Google® advertising revenue. Since ZH™ is a for-profit company, this will hurt them. Why was it cut off? The story I saw indicated that it was because people commenting on the site were being less than politically correct. And, yes, Google® has the legal right to do this, unless they did it because Zero Hedge© is transgender.

No, I don’t have examples, but these are commenters, not ZH© staff. I jumped in to see the comment section on a typical post that I thought might be incendiary. Would all the comments be safe to repeat at work? No. Have I seen worse comments on Twitter®? Yeah, a lot worse. I’ve seen worse commentary on Yahoo® news stories.

Zero Hedge™ has already been banned “permanently” once by Twitter©, and then reactivated. The reason given was that Zero Hedge® had “doxed” a Chinese researcher . . . by publishing information that was already on the Wuhan Institute for Creating COVID Virology’s website. As of now? They’re unbanned. Twitter© called it “an error.”

But it’s clear that they have made someone angry.

How much will it Google’s deplatforming cost Zero Hedge©?

I have no idea.

Google® did give a four star rating to Chernobyl. They would have given it five, but the locals ran out of fingers.

I do know that The Federalist™, another website was threatened with Google® demonetization due to comments on articles like this one (LINK). The Federalist© just shut off comments entirely.

And that just might be the point.

Comments here are (generally) fairly unmoderated. I think that outside of auto-moderated comments, I’ve nuked only one or two comments out of thousands during the life of this blog. I am blessed with some of the smartest, most well read, and politest commenters on the planet. You’re also probably the most physically attractive commenters on any website in existence, and I bet you all have impeccable armpit hygiene to boot. But the comment section gives people a chance to talk to each other, bounce ideas off each other, and get to know each other. It also is a little light on a dark Internet letting you know that you’re not alone.

Even the people who don’t comment benefit from the comments section. For each person who comments, at least 100 other readers don’t comment. But they read what you say. And it’s important to them, and lets them know that they’re not alone, either.

Then there’s Laura Towler.

Laura is a British YouTuber® who is on the Right. On June 6, she sent the following Tweet® and got the reply that follows it:

“Chuffed” is slang that means “happy as a poodle with a pudding pop.”

This all went international. The idea that a company would be so “brave” as to come out in favor of a group that is only supported to the tune of tens of millions of dollars by the largest tech companies and most of the largest news companies is really risky.

To boot, Yorkshire Tea© then picked on a (nearly) unknown individual citizen. Brave, indeed – I’m sure that Laura is quite the power to be reckoned with given her 50,000 or so YouTube™ subscribers. And Yorkshire Tea® is so small, being the biggest selling tea in Great Britain (which made 5.5 billion tea bags last year).

It’s like Coca-Cola® decided to pick on some kid going to prom.

But it led me to ask this question: Did any of the companies that sponsor BLM even bother to go to the BLM website?

Outside of the cringing references to “comrades” and “collectivism” on the BLM website, they note that BLM wishes to:

“disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family” and “collectively” care for one another.
They also want to [free themselves] “from the tight grip of heteronormative thinking.”

This is not the language of a civil rights program, it’s the language of a communist front masquerading as a civil rights program. And it’s not even Halloween yet, and I think that all of the cosplay conventions are on Coronahold.

What’s the best way to kill communists? Communism.

We’ve seen that at C.H.A.Z. and virtually every other protest activity that BLM is tied tightly to Antifa. Imagine that C.H.A.Z. wasn’t six blocks being held by armed Leftists, and instead was being held by a militia from the Right. I’d imagine we’d see National Guard Apache helicopters and the Seattle mayor calling for a neutron bomb strike to make the Hug Box of Seattle safe again.

I’m sure someone will bring up the Wildlife Refuge seizure by members of the Right in 2016. But 26 of the occupiers of the Wildlife Refuge were charged with felonies. Care to take bets on if the C.H.A.Z. occupiers will face any criminal charges? Any of them?

Ms. Towler was able to handle the media storm that followed, and not apologize. Heck, her Twitter® feed now cheekily shows “Disavowed by Yorkshire Tea©” as the lead line. That takes style.

But Laura knew she wasn’t alone, and has weathered international condemnation.

It doesn’t stop there.

Russians call their website censoring the Inter-nyet.

The classic (and very boring) movie Gone With The Wind, the television shows of COPS®, Live PD™, and an episode of (the very funny) Fawlty Towers that first aired on October 24, 1975 have since been either hidden or cancelled. Just like statues, these works of art define who we are as a people. And removing them makes us not more, but less.

Every person who has a statue made out of him has something in common with those works of art – they have faults, especially when viewed through the lens of the 2020s. And removing them or hiding them or tearing them down with mob violence is meant to make you feel alone.

If you’re against police corruption and militarization? You’re not alone.

If you’re against excessive use of force by police? You’re not alone.

If you’re against rioting and mob violence? You’re not alone.

If you mock companies that virtue signal popular causes while avoiding tough issues like the near slave labor they use to produce goods that they offshored from American production? You’re not alone.

If you’re against globalism and collectivism? You’re not alone.

I’m not saying that the position of the Right is always the right position. There are times the Right has been wrong. But the positions of the Right aren’t based in hate – they’re based in a love of freedom, or family, or tradition, or nation, or a healthy desire to be religious.

If those things are important to you?

You’re not alone.

And if you suffer from paranoia, you’re not alone. There’s someone behind you.

If you want this nonsense to stop so you can see economic graphs featuring bikinis?

You’re not alone.

Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals: Now For Use By The Right?

“I have a radical idea. The door swings both ways, we could reverse the polarity flow through the gate.” – Ghostbusters (1984)

I haven’t figured out how to publicly indicate that I’m against protesting.

I was talking with a friend a few weeks ago, and casually mentioned Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals as a playbook that had been used by the Left back when they controlled very few of the country’s power centers. Top Hollywood® stars like John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Frank Sinatra were openly patriotic – it was the norm. Politics is one reason I think Frank Sinatra would hate 2020, and the other would be whenever he started coughing he’d think he had Crooner Virus.

But the Leftist rot had already started long before the 1960s. It started in academia. Sure, that seemed safe. Let the Leftists work quietly where they had little money. It was thought the most important decision made was what the professor’s wife would wear to the faculty dinner and the most important rumors were about that new cannibal professor, Hannibal Lecturer. But once it took root, Leftism spread from the colleges and out into the streets.

Alinsky started his quest to organize in the 1940s in Chicago, and the Chicago Tribune described his legacy this way:

“Rubbing raw the sores of discontent may be jolly good fun for him, but we are unable to regard it as a contribution to social betterment. The country has enough problems of the insoluble sort as things are without working up new ones for no discernible purpose except Alinsky’s amusement.”

The Tribune was one of the few papers that were negative about Alinsky. By the time Rules for Radicals was published in 1971, the editorial departments of most newspapers had been taken over by Leftists that those “harmless” college professors had indoctrinated. Most newspapers applauded Alinsky by 1972 when they reviewed his book.

Professor Karen wants you to think for yourself, but will grade you based on her politics.

As I’ve documented in previous posts (some that include Stormtrooper® bikini shots and pictures of a lot of slave Princess Leia impersonators) You Are The Resistance, Plus? Lots of Star Wars Bikinis and American Civil War: Four Fates, From Freedom to Soviet Tyranny, the Left has taken control of the following sectors of life, not only in the United States, but also in most of the Western world:

The K-12 educational system.
Colleges and Universities.
Most Protestant religious organizations.
Most Catholic organizations.
The psychological establishment.
The American Medical Association.
All mainstream news media.
All mainstream entertainment media.
Most departments of the Federal government, absent the armed services.
The general officer corps of the armed services.
The courts.
Silicon Valley tech companies.
Many (but not all) Fortune® 500™ companies.

Professor Warren now explains why free speech doesn’t apply to you.

One of the methods the Left used to obtain power was the vigorous application of Alinsky’s Rules. Here they are – along with my annotations:

“Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.” – Most of the Leftist power is based on fear – fear of what they might do. That’s the reason the takeover of the media was so important to them – they use it to divide and minimize people on the Right so feel that they are as alone as a Joe Biden basement thought.
“Never go outside the expertise of your people.” – Which may explain the rioting and violence of the Left in the riots today. They’re not good at building things, but they sure can hit a plate glass window with a brick from thirty yards.
“Whenever possible go outside the expertise of the enemy.” – The idea of the riots is to go beyond every expertise. It has been decades since a president had to deal with riots across the country, and even then, they weren’t all at the same time.
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” – For instance, Christians must be made to live up to Christian principles – that’s the example Alinsky himself used.
“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” – Saturday Night Live® used to make fun of politicians on the Right and Late night comedians used to make fun of the Right and Left. Now? Only the Right is mocked, and (for reasons I’ve explained before Why The Left Can’t Meme) even then, poorly.
“A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” – Whatever it is, it should give them emotional payoff – the people crying at the Trump protests early on were an example – they enjoyed feeling the pain and rage. And as we’ve learned in 2020, who doesn’t love riots?
“A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” – Sit ins? That’s so 1960’s. Burning down Wendy’s®? That’ll teach them to, um, exist.
“Keep the pressure on.” – Ideally, it should be one event followed by another – don’t give your target a chance to think straight
“The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” – Alinsky threatened to do things – all of the time. The word “threat” appears 38 times in Rules for Radicals. Often he would leak the threat of a plan, and never even have to do it as the opposition gave in to the threat alone.
“The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.” – Back to point 8 – think of things that can be kept up for a long, long time. Riots in the spring and summer nights can go on for months. In December in Minnesota? Not so much.
“If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.” – A great example of this is how BLM has kept the narrative moving about police violence against blacks, when the truth is, statistically, that blacks are shot less often than their level of police involvement would indicate, and whites are shot more But push it long enough?
“The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” – The Left no longer does this – rather than have a constructive alternative, they want things like “removal of the systems of white supremacy” and “defunding of the police.”
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” – Nixon, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II and now Trump. It’s hilarious that they thought W. was the anti-Christ, and Romney was the Devil when they are now nearly saints of the Left.

Sometimes, you can hear the “Reeeeee” from here . . . .

But can the Right use the same playbook? Absolutely. And they are.

“Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.” – The Left is really afraid of the Right, and fear the most the Right creating a coalition in the same way the Left has. They will do anything to stop that. Sadly, we on the Right seem to be very, very picky on who is in the foxhole with us. A heretic on one point? The biggest power the Right has is in joining together.
“Never go outside the expertise of your people.” – Protesting violently isn’t in the Right’s DNA. We have jobs. Rioting isn’t in the Right’s expertise. Planning is. Communicating is. Through years of necessity, we’ve also learned to meet quietly.
“Whenever possible go outside the expertise of the enemy.” – Memes are a good example. The Left ceased to be funny in 2004, and ceased to any sense of humor around 2012, so using memetic warfare is nearly as unfair as playing Twister® with a colorblind super model.
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” – /pol/, the politically incorrect part of 4chan, did exactly that when they posted signs around Seattle telling the homeless that CHAZ would have free food for them. “No borders” and “sharing” were in rules for CHAZ, so, they ran out of food on day two. Plus? It was hilarious – point 5.
“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” – This, in part, explains why I write some of the things I do. It was particularly satisfying the day I saw one of my memes being made fun of by Leftists on Reddit®. They don’t fight back unless you’re over the target.
“A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” – I love poking fun at the Left, because I know that it bothers them. I enjoy it. Other things I see people on the Right enjoying are planning and organizing and communicating and moving away from California.
“A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” – Expecting things to go back to “normal” isn’t working for the Right. You can come up with other examples of these – but in large part the playbook needs to be re-written.
“Keep the pressure on.” – The closest that the Right has come to doing this is The Donald himself and his use of Twitter® as a continual agency of chaos. He pokes. He prods. He shakes things up and looks for advantage. He’s had Democrats so tied up in nots they said that Haiti was a paradise.
“The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” – The Right hasn’t been very good at making threats or even having a cohesive plan.
“The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.” – Again, outside of Trump, there has been little pressure made on the Left, and next to no organized pressure on the mainstream Left. When has the idea of freedom of speech been used against the Left in an organized way on a college campus? This started with academia, and a good solution will leave college departments where the Leftists lurk defunded. Imagine a Grievance Studies professor having to look for a real job because they violated the campus speech code?
“If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.” – Opposition to illegal immigration is just one issue of the Right that, if it were pushed is a winner. There are others.
“The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” – What is it that the Right wants? Do we know?
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” – Groundwork has been made with people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of her Leftist group, but the Left is expert at this – Justice Cavanaugh is a textbook study, even though they lost.

But what do we want when we have a victory?

Long term, I’m not sure Alinsky’s rules will be enough for the Right as we wander towards Civil War 2.0, but they’re a start, and they’re certainly fun. As I mentioned above, it has lost institution after institution to the Left, and many of those without even a fight. None of this will be quickly won, and the Right must begin to think in decades, and also look to make common cause with people who aren’t exactly fitting some sort of mental ideal for the perfect person on the Right, since they don’t really exists.

Back to the fun.

Tales of the Mayberry Collective

“By assimilating other beings into our collective, we are bringing them closer to perfection.” – Star Trek: First Contact

The best thing about being in Antifa®? You never have to worry about taking off work to protest.

I heard with great excitement that Antifa® and #BlackLivesMatter™ had formed a new government. I was excited. It turns out that they sliced out a chunk of Seattle – six city blocks – and declared it the C.H.A.Z. Chaz isn’t just some guy that went to Princeton and polished Buffy while dating Daddy’s Rolls Royce. I mean, polished the Rolls while dating Princeton. But, anyway, it’s not that Chaz.

No. This C.H.A.Z. is the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone.

1PM, Wednesday:

I figured if starting their own autonomous zone was good enough for Antifa©, it was probably good enough for me, because what can’t I learn from a group of perpetually pampered trust fund baristas who haven’t managed to learn how to run a checking account?

I called a family council to discuss the decision, all while understanding that the concept of “family” was an outdated concept based on Heterosexual Privilege. In attendance at this first meeting of the as yet unnamed collective was me (John Wilder), The Mrs., The Boy (Home From College), and Pugsley (Snarky Teen Who Is Now Taller Than Me As Of Wednesday).

John Wilder: “Family, I think it’s time to stick it to the patriarchy.”

The Boy: “Pop. I hate to tell you this, you are the patriarchy.”

Pugsley: “Heh heh – you said stick it. Besides, what’s the favorite song of the patriarchy?”

The Mrs.: (Not looking up from the Wall Street Journal®) “It’s Reigning Men.”

Pugsley: “Score one for Mom!”

John Wilder: “No, this is serious. We must strike a symbolic blow for (I paused) something. I guess.”

The Mrs.: (Looking up from reading The Wall Street Journal®) “What are you up to now? Does it involve finally getting the hardwood floors installed or getting the garage cleaned out including that motorcycle of yours that hasn’t started since Johnny Depp ran out of money? If so, count me in. And while you’re at it, please clean the camping gear out of the rec room – there’s enough gear for the 82^nd Airborne to conquer (she paused) Poland. Or France. France would be quicker. They probably wouldn’t even notice.”

I’d love to visit the caliphate on the Seine, especially in spring! (Reprinted with permission.)

John Wilder: “Good. It’s unanimous. I think we should name our new autonomous zone . . . Johnstown, in honor of me, the founder. We could have a symbolic flag. Hey! We could use the Kool-Aid® man. The Kool-Aid™ man could symbolize our fight to crash right through capitalism! Oh yeah!”

The Boy: “Ummm, I think that was already taken. (Thinking.) Oh, no, that was Jonestown, where a group of feel-good San Francisco liberals tried to create a peaceful, racially mixed utopian communal society in the South American jungle. Dad, I don’t think that ended well. And you might want to re-think the Kool-Aid®.”

And they told me my second choice for the name of the collective, Heaven’s Gate, was another bad idea.

John Wilder: (Grudgingly) “Okay, you have a good point. Dang. And Johnstown had such a nice ring to it, like something that a newscaster would say. Okay. How about something more inclusive. What about the Wilder Autonomous Collective.”

Pugsley: “Well, if you want to go Full Soviet, and I don’t ever advise anyone to go Full Soviet, you need a Kommissar, right? That would make it the Wilder Autonomous Collective Kommissarat. But don’t turn around. Der Kommissar is in town.”

John Wilder: “Sounds great! But it’s not catchy enough. W.A.C.K. sounds silly.”

The Mrs.: “Y’all.”

John Wilder: “Y’all?”

The Mrs.: (Not looking up from the Wall Street Journal®) “Well, you must be true to the cultural roots of the collective. So, add Y’all to the end.”

I thought about fighting – no one in the house ever used “Y’all” on a regular basis. But in the interest of encouraging harmony, I didn’t fight.

John Wilder: “So, it’s agreed – The Wilder Autonomous Collective Kommisarat, Y’all. We’ll call it W.A.C.K.Y. for short.”

3PM, Wednesday:

In the interest of creating a truly autonomous collective, the first thing I did was go out to the street. We have a little vault where the water valve is. I turned it off.

The Mrs.: “John, would you call the county? Is there a problem with the water?”

John Wilder: “I turned it off at the street. If we are going to be an autonomous collective, we have to be, well, autonomous.”

The Mrs. would not let me Spice Weasel the water.

The Mrs.: “You’re not cutting off the water when I want to take a shower. What exactly is your genius plan for water?”

John Wilder: “Well, there’s the pond out back. We can bring in water and after we filter it and boil it you can use it for a sponge bath. Sound good?”

The Mrs.: “No. That sounds awful. Go back to the street and turn it back on. Right now. What other nonsense do you have planned?”

John Wilder: “Electricity. We should get rid of it. That’s how The Man gets you.”

The Mrs.: “Unless you are going to harvest the energy of a Pugsley’s teenage angst, you’re not turning the power off on a humid and hot day like this. Look (pointing at my legs) even your ankles are sweating. And that’s with the air conditioning on.”

Well, everyone has sweaty ankles, right?

Chaz is the man, right?

7 PM, Wednesday:

I decided to go door-to-door to my neighbors to ask if they wanted to join W.A.C.K.Y. They declined. I asked them to donate $500 to a fund for their personal defense. They declined. Maybe I need to bring guns and some large people next time to politely convince them of the peaceful aim of our collective? Because of that, I set up a border around W.A.C.K.Y. using a spray-painted line that says: “Do not cross unless you want to be W.A.C.K.Y.”

7 AM, Thursday:

I worked all night long and came up with a list of the W.A.C.K.Y. demands:

The Modern Mayberry Sheriff’s Department and attached court system are beyond reform. We do not request reform, we demand. We demand that they apologize for giving me that ticket for rolling that four-way stop back in 2013 even though the judge dismissed it and it cost me nothing.
In the transitionary period between now and the dismantlement of the Modern Mayberry Sheriff’s Department, we demand that they give us a ride in the Dodge® Charger they got last year. And allow us to turn on the siren.
We demand that not the County government, nor the State government, but that the Federal government launch a full-scale investigation into why I got that ticket for rolling that four-way stop back in 2013.
We demand reparations for victims of all people who were unjustly accused of rolling four-way stops.
We demand a retrial of all balding men who got tickets, by a jury of their peers in their community. Oh, that’s the law already? Never mind.
We demand decriminalization of almost maybe rolling a four-way stop, and amnesty for drivers generally, but specifically those involved in what has been termed “The Going to Wal-Mart® for Grilling Supplies Rebellion” against the terrorist cell that previously occupied this area known as the Mayberry Sheriff’s Department. This includes the immediate release of all people who grill that are currently being held in prison.
We demand that the funding previously used for Socialized Health and Medicine, free public housing, and Naturalization services for illegal aliens be given to us as steaks and grilling supplies.

I had The Mrs. post my demands on Facebook®. The only reply that she would share with me was, “Looks like John has a case of the Mondays!”

One advantage of having your own autonomous collective? You never have a case of the Mondays, because life never changes and you don’t get weekends off.

6PM, Thursday:

I look in the fridge. The fridge is mostly full, but the items – a large pot with half a boiled potato, lettuce from the Pleistocene, and something that may be meatloaf or might be celery is on the bottom shelf. It gets worse from there.

The Mrs. is in the other room, so I ask her, “Hey, what’s for dinner?”

The Mrs.: “Well, I was going to go to Wal-Mart® and pick up some steaks and bratwurst and ingredients for a homemade fettuccine Alfredo. But you erected a concrete and steel barricade in the driveway that reminded me of the Berlin Wall, so all I have is pimento loaf and ramen.

They say that communism causes hunger. Now I see the ugly truth. It does. Can anyone spare some steak for the W.A.C.K.Y. people? I really don’t like pimento loaf, which always reminded me of bologna’s pimply friend.

Okay, none of that happened, except for the C.H.A.Z. business in Seattle. That’s real. And the funny thing is that the fictional Wilder Autonomous Collective Kommissarat, Ya’ll was more successful in every way to C.H.A.Z. Here are actual things that have happened at C.H.A.Z. up to this writing:

C.H.A.Z. ran out of food on day two. Communism in the Internet age is even faster than the old Soviet version. That’s progress, comrade!
They went from “no police” to having a gang chasing down and beating up people for putting graffiti on graffiti that the gang liked. I’m sure modern, trained police with body cameras would have launched a graffiti artist into the Sun, so he got off lightly!
They installed a garden to feed themselves by putting dirt on top of cardboard and then putting plastic potted plants on top of the dirt. They put Christmas lights around the garden, I guess because that helps communist plants grow? Regardless, I’m sure they’ll be able to feed at least one of their citizens, if that citizen is wheelchair bound and doesn’t breathe too heavily.
Issued a list of demands LINK.
They roughed up local businesses looking for “contributions” of $500 each for “protection.” Is that a daily, weekly or monthly payment? No one knows.
Someone offered C.H.A.Z a cow. A milk cow. C.H.A.Z. was against this. Why? The cow doesn’t produce soy milk. Also? Milk is rape. Yes. Liberals think that a cow having to have a calf to become a milk cow is rape. You cannot make this stuff up.
Turned a coffee shop into a “public stage.”
Created a public speech area as well, because six blocks requires two stages.
Turned a baseball field into a “relaxation and therapy zone.”
Turned a wannabe rapper into a warlord who runs the local goon squad. No body cameras or courts. Yay! What an efficient system. Have a gun in C.H.A.Z.? Guess you’re in charge now!
Instituted borders, even though they think that Federal immigration laws should be abolished.

I based the list of demands above on theirs. It looked like it was written by a group of earnest fourth graders using words they don’t quite understand but who whine at a 11^th grade level.

C.H.A.Z. is more W.A.C.K.Y. than W.A.C.K.Y. ever was.

The only difference is that I know that I’m joking.

Deflation, Inflation, Collapse – Now With Muppet Jokes

“Well those are whole pennies, right? I’m just talking about fractions of a penny here. But we do it from a much bigger tray and we do it a couple a million times.” – Office Space

If being in the Federal Reserve® offices give you a cold, what should you do? Sudafed.

The Federal Reserve© is scared. And inflation is currently not on their list of Halloween boogiemen –the monster they fear is deflation. Well, deflation and accidentally mixing up Pride Month and Bulgarian History Month. I think the main reason that the Fed™ is worried about deflation is that then people become like me in 2000 when I was looking to buy a computer.

Every six months I waited, the computer I could buy for the same amount of money was much faster with more memory. Computers were really a deflationary item at the time as advances kept making them better and better on a nearly monthly basis. It made sense to wait, because I could get a better deal later.

For computers, that was okay – there was a solid market for them at the time, and Intel® wasn’t going to go out of business because its next chip was going to be faster next year. But if you apply that to the entire economy, then people would have been steering clear of the toilet paper aisle in February. Live and learn.

Deflation is great for consumers – they get more stuff for less money. Deflation also discourages debt – why borrow money when the dollar you’re borrowing will be worth less than the dollar you have to pay it back with?

But deflation in an economy slows everything down worse than a Kardashian trying to take a college entrance exam. Most economies in the world are built on endless growth. Part of the economic growth is required because more people enter the labor force every year. The other part is the system is built on growing income, growing revenues, growing the bottom line – stock prices are built (mostly) not on the intrinsic value of a company here and now, but on the value of the company in the future.

I hate stonks. Gentlemen prefer bonds.

I’ve written about deflation before, but it’s probably a good time to mention some of the clues coming from the financial system. But first, I have to explain that when a loan is paid back to the bank, money is actually destroyed. I know that doesn’t make sense, but I’m a trained professional, and we’ll get there. And by trained, I mean trained as a cook at a Chinese restaurant. Okay, not trained – it was more of a wok-through.

Let’s start with a bank. In this case, my bank.

If I were to deposit $100 in my account, I have $100 in my account, right?

Kinda.

The bank now thinks it’s their money. It turns out that when you open a checking or savings account with a bank, you’re actually lending them money. The banks in the United States are actually what’s known as “fractional reserve banks” in that they only have to keep a portion (or fraction) of the money that I deposited on hand for people who come in and want cash.

Traditionally, that fraction has been around 10%. So, if I open an account with that $100 in it, the bank can lend $90 of that money out. The theory is that not everyone wants to come in and get their money back all at once, so you only have to keep that 10% on hand for people who want their money back on any given day for whatever purpose. It’s like stealing, but totally legal.

If too many people come in, the idea of the Federal Reserve™ (the Fed®) is that they’ll send the bank some cash if needed because tons of people borrow money all at once from the bank. That way if Lady Gaga is coming to Modern Mayberry and everyone decides to fork over $1000 a seat for VIP tickets to listen to her sing about her her her Poker Face, the Fed will give us extra cash. That’s why it’s called the Federal Reserve® – it’s a reserve for banks if they need cash because Lady Gaga is coming to town.

When you microwave a Muppet®, it will even countdown with the timer!

I didn’t want to go see Lady Gaga, so I still have my $100 in the bank. Therefore, my bank has loaned out $90 to Johnny Depp who was a little short for the show after buying some killer weed.

But I still think I have $100.

But the bank lent out $90.

And Johnny Depp puts his money in his account in another bank until it’s time to pay for the ticket. So, that bank now has Johnny Depp’s $90, and can immediately lend out $81 to someone else, who deposits it back in my bank.

Thus, my original $100 deposit now accounts for $171 in the economy.

As soon as the loans are paid back, the transaction unwinds and the actual amount of “money” in the system disappears. There’s a theoretical limit to the amount of money that can be created with a certain reserve rate.

But I said the Fed was scared. And I said it was scared of deflation.

My bank used to have to keep $10 in the vault in case I come back looking for my $100. Used to. As of March 15, 2020, that reserve that banks are required to keep is – drumroll please – zero. Yes. I’m not making that up. It’s right here on the Fed’s own website (LINK). The press release is here (LINK).

What this means is that banks have to keep enough cash around so if yokels like me want to withdraw $23.73 for a trip to buy some really nice earplugs the night of the Lady Gaga concert, the bank had to have that much actual cash. But now, the banks are free to loan all of it out. They could loan not $90 to Johnny Depp, but the full $100. And when he put it in his bank, they could loan out $100 as well.

In the 10% reserve, there was at least some limit to the money that the banks could create by lending the same $100. But at zero reserve? The number of times that $100 could be lent is only constrained by the number of people who want to borrow it. My original $100 could (in theory) create infinite dollars. That’s Congress level math!

My-my-my-Joker® face . . .

This means the Fed is worried about keeping banks lending, so they can keep the money supply up. The Fed also wants to keep the money moving – they want me to buy my Lady Gaga earplugs and the person I bought them from to buy some PEZ® from Wal-Mart® and Wal-Mart™ to pay that money to an employee who buys ice cream sandwiches. If people save their money, it’s nearly the same as there being less money in the economy.

That’s where the Plunge Protection Team comes in. People with 401k investments get scared when the stock market goes down. Stock market plunges are deflationary. Plus, they really hurt the investment banks, so the one thing we know about both Democrat and Republican? They both really want to make the investment bankers happy.

Wall Street crashing? Let’s have a series of well-timed purchases of stock to turn it around. Since you can look at the Fed’s balance sheet yourself, and compare it with the stock market, perhaps the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA)® going up 500 points on a day when multiple large American cities are actively on fire. The Plunge Protection Team, it is rumored, buys (or has groups like Goldman-Sachs™ buy) stocks on multiple markets to keep a crash from happening.

I hate it when the Plunge Protection Team kneads my back while I’m sleeping.

The idea is that by keeping the stock market from crashing, the economy is saved. In one sense, that’s a logical conclusion. Falling stock markets have panic as the main feature – people literally are scared to death, so they sell even solid stocks at bargain prices. As a strategy, it’s a lot like buying a drunk guy another dozen shots of whiskey. The problem’s gone. At least for now.

But you can only game a system for so long. Eventually, the game playing will come back to haunt you. And the Fed may be scared of deflation right now, but all of the injection of money via loans and balance sheet inflation and stock market propping up? The system failures get bigger, and bigger. The old tools don’t work. And the system fails. This time for good in a spasm of deflation followed by inflation followed by currency collapse.

I know you’re worried about the investment bankers getting caught up in the deflation-inflation-collapse. Don’t be! Right now, they’re selling their stock after the plunge protection team bumps up the price and buying bunkers in Montana or old missile silos in Nebraska. Yay, free market capitalism!

I’m sure that it’s a coincidence.

I’m not saying that we’ve reached the point where we’ll see the financial systems fail with this cycle. It may not be this leg down. But like the Fed®, keep one eye open.

Deflation might be hiding under the bed.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: The Tsunami Begins, But You Knew That

“If we can stop him, we shall prevent the collapse of Western Civilization. No pressure.” – Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

I liked the ticking of the clock I got from the pawnshop, but in the end it was a second-hand emotion.

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

In the first issue of the Civil War Weather Report, I put together ten steps to a new civil war. I did not expect that on the one year anniversary of that first report we’d move from step 6 nearly to step 9. Step 9. is, of course, two minutes to midnight.

We are very, very close. I debated internally more than a bit whether we were at an 8. or a 9. this month. I finally decided to stay at an 8., despite multiple jurisdictions doing everything but arming the rioting faction of the protest movement with automatic firearms and bullhorns that make them all sound like Gilbert Gottfried. It is clear we are at least an 8., and you will see in the graphs section that our Wilder Violence Index has reached new highs.

In this issue: Front Matter – You Knew Where This Was Going – Violence and Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Balkans or Caesar Might Be The Best Case Scenario – Links

Welcome to Issue 12 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.

You Knew Where This Was Going

The most popular posts on this site have been about the political state of the country. The Civil War Weather Reports aren’t my usual form of post, but have proven to be very popular. I’m sure it’s not just for graphs featuring bikinis. Well, at least not only because of the bikinis.

I think the reason these posts are popular is simple: many people could sense the fragile peak that it seems all of Western Civilization is perched on. Whether it is a conscious review of the surrounding culture or just a feeling in the pit of the stomach when confronted with an outrageous news article, something’s just not right. Society has been changing by increments over the years, but those changes are coming faster and faster and faster.

Claire Wolfe, the groundbreaking and iconic Freedom blogger said it very well at her place last week (LINK):

Each day I think I’ve processed the latest craziness enough to blog something coherent. Useful even. But then new waves of craziness wash over the world. I don’t know what to say. I can’t write good sense against the onslaught of the crazy. I don’t know how civilization is holding together under tsunamis of crazy.

But then, of course civilization isn’t holding together — and I’m not just talking about the one-two punch of totalitarian don’tleaveyourhouseism followed without pause by riotandlootallyouwantism.

Chains of rapid-fire events and chaos like this are not generally the friend of those that love freedom. The Russian Revolution promised:

Peace, through ending World War I,
Food, because Communists are well known to produce excess food,
Land, whereby peasants would get parts of land owned by the wealthy,
Minimum wages,
Maximum working hours,
Running factories by elected worker representatives and
Lots of other promises.

In the end, up to 12,000,000 people (mainly civilians) died in the civil war that followed, and the promises that were made were largely ignored. The Bolsheviks said and promised anything to get a force of disaffected behind them. Not sure if this sounds familiar to AOC fans?

Hey girl, are you the French Revolution? Because I keep imagining you sans-culottes.

I get a sense that the Left today is up to the same trick. They’ve “created” media events and have managed them to get power – political power and power in the street. Some of the Leftists may even be stupid enough to believe that there are magic economic levers that they can move to keep the promises they’re making. In reality, they really don’t care: it’s all about the power.

Lenin’s reintroduction into Russia and subsequent funding from foreign sources bring George Soros to mind. Soros continually funds groups in the United States that are directly opposed to actual freedom. The protesters and their associated rioters have a structure that has been funded and provisioned with everything from water and medical supplies to pre-staged bricks and gasoline. Not saying that George is funding those directly, but . . .

Questions: Important For Llamas And Finding The Truth

“Have you calculated the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything?” – Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Sean Connery is a stickler for grooming. I was stuck in a burning building while he was using the extinguisher to keep a path open for me. Then he told me, “shave yourself!”

A few years ago I was meeting with a person that reported to me at work. I was asking a question with a yes or no answer. One thing that being in thousands of hours of corporate meetings has taught me is that if you ask an open ended question, people will talk. And talk. And talk. Even if they have nothing to say – those meeting room corporate doughnuts aren’t going to eat themselves.

So, a lot of my questions were phrased in the form of, “Do you know where the llama is?”

My company doesn’t use llamas except for unlicensed medical experimentation to find a cure for chronic nose picking, so in this case “llama” is really easier than referencing the “Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator” that we really make.

There are really only two answers:

“Yes, John Wilder, the llama is in the break room playing beer pong with Vladimir Putin.”
“No, John Wilder, I have no idea.”

Well, I guess we know what’s going to happen in July.

A pattern that I had noticed was that when the answer was “Yes, I know where the llama is,” people would just say, “Yes.”

Simple. We’re done. Move on to the next question.

But if people didn’t know where the llama was, what I mentally thought of as “The Story” started. The story had a million variants: “No, John Wilder, I don’t know where the llama is because it had sticky glands and we were out of llama soap and a friend came in from out of town and I just quit heroin and Vladimir Putin took off his shirt and making sweet talk to the llama last week.”

The Story is long. The Story isn’t really relevant.

People didn’t want to tell me “No.” If they had, and knowing where the llama was mattered, I could follow up with a question. Most of the time my question was, “Well, when are you going to find the llama?” Frankly, I’ve heard more excuses than Joe Biden has lost memories, so “Why don’t you know where the llama is?” was most of the time something I didn’t really care about. But they made the decision that I cared why they didn’t know where the llama was.

Never worry about food when you travel with llamas. Alpaca lunch.

I had one very bright employee, Bill Nothisrealname, that a recent college grad. He started to explain why he didn’t know where the llama was: he was winding up to tell The Story.

I stopped him.

“Bill, you were first in your class in high school, right?”

“Yes.”

“And then you went to college at Southern North Eastern Midwestia State, which is a pretty good school. Heck, I bet that you were in the top ten in GPA in your degree?”

“Yeah, I was in the top five of the class.”

I gestured at the offices up and down the hallway. “Bill, everyone here was at the top of their class in high school and graduated at the top of their class from college in a degree just as tough as yours. My boss, Boris. He’s as smart as a Vulcan that crossbred with a computer and has the personality to match. When he asks me a question, he wants me to answer that question. He’s no dummy.

“And Boris isn’t afraid to ask questions, either. He’s realized that even as a top executive in the company, he doesn’t and can’t know everything.”

Bill nodded.

I never really liked that Coppola movie, Alpaca Lips Now.

“Here’s what I think. When you were in third grade, you were smart. When the rest of the class didn’t know the answer, the teacher looked at you, right?”

“Yes.”

“And that didn’t change in high school. Or, for you, even in college. I think that you think you have to know the answer, because you were the smart kid. Bill, everyone, and I mean everyone here is that smart. You weren’t hired because you knew all of the answers – you were hired because you were smart, and had good character. Don’t be afraid to not know everything – asking questions is a sign of power. And . . . answer the question that was asked.

“Bill, do you know where the llama is?”

“No.”

But don’t-a worry – health is her new issue. She’s still all-in for Ollamacare.

I moved on to the next question. In this case, the llama wasn’t all that important, except as it related to teaching Bill that he didn’t need to know everything, and that asking questions isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of self-confidence. And if it sounded like the exchange was mean, it really wasn’t. Bill’s worldview was just a bit off. Besides, I knew that once Putin got his claws into a really pretty llama like this one, we wouldn’t see either of them until they’d ridden through the mountains together and hunted the Rocky Mountain Spotted Poodle – the only true sport for men.

The point is still valid. Whenever I’ve seen a good leader, that leader isn’t afraid to ask questions, and isn’t afraid to admit that they don’t know everything. Part of writing this blog is me answering my own questions. And I have to be right – you’re a tough but fair crowd, and you tell me when my participle is dangling.

Questions are important.

The first thing I like to question is myself. Scott Adams says that two people might watch the same event and give it entirely different meaning – he calls it watching two movies on one screen. An example is Trump: Leftists think that everything, and I mean everything he does is comprised of a pure evil that requires he eat a live puppy every day. There’s even a name for it: Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). The symptoms include being triggered, literally shaking, wandering around in a circle muttering, “impeach . . . impeach . . . impeach.” Thankfully, many sufferers have found work as extras on The Walking Dead.

That’s one movie. There’s a second group that views Trump as a genius God Emperor who is sixteen steps ahead, playing 11-dimensional chess. This group thinks that the riots are perhaps his crowning achievement since he can use the riots to . . . ummm, I’m not sure what. I bet that plan shows up soon.

Both groups are wrong. My experience is you can talk to the God Emperor crowd, but the TDS sufferers just can’t discuss Trump. At all.

How much of my reality am I allowing to be filtered? How much am I deluding myself? These are the questions I repeatedly ask as I look for Truth.

Or you could just take their lunch money and buy yourself something nice.

The second question are my sources. People write all sorts of things, and on the Internet I can find a theory that all of the Challenger space shuttle crew survived the explosion and are still living today. Why? Because the Earth is flat. Really, that’s what they believe. There are also people who believe that the world is run by reptilian aliens who run the banks.

Of course those are absurd. The Internet is so questionable when it comes to facts that I’ve even seen Internet reports that I have hair. But how many shades of truth do we believe in each day without checking? I know that I’ve been shocked when I do research for Wilder, Wealthy and Wise that it’s not what I know that shocks me: it’s what I know that isn’t right. Who knew kittens couldn’t fly, even if you used a really big slingshot to give them a good takeoff?

The next question are my viewpoints. How many are wrong? In some cases I have taken years to figure out what I think about a subject, because I just hadn’t figured out the right way to look at it: I just don’t have a mental or moral model that fits it properly. I ended up being a ping-pong ball. There were good points on each side. How do the pros and cons line up?

When I was younger, I was more of a pure libertarian, even sometimes a Libertarian. I believed that if McDonalds™ wanted to sell me a hydrogen bomb and I had the cash, I should be able to order a McNuke®. As I get older, maybe not. And I now think that young children shouldn’t have guns: they’re much more effective using a crew-served weapon like a heavy machine gun or a mortar since they can overcome their inherent weakness by working together. If only a six year old could lift artillery shells….

My militia may be small, but they work for chocolate milk.

The final question is what can I learn from others? And I can only do that by asking questions – and having the humility to listen to the answers, no matter how stupid they are. I kid. I really have learned a lot by listening instead of talking.

So, anybody know where the llama is? Did another one fall in love with Putin?