Bad Smells – Page 12 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Yes, Your Leftist Friends Are Mentally Ill. You’re Not. Share This Post With Them To Trigger Them.

“Snap out of it! You’re Krusty the Clown! One of Look Magazine’s Hundred Most Promising Clowns of 1958!” – The Simpsons

I told Pugsley that Aristotle taught us that, “We are what we repeatedly do.” So I told him I was his mother.

A Dutch dude named Erasmus of Rotterdam (who died in 1536) made a famous quote that I’m sure you’re all familiar with, namely, “In regione caecorum rex est luscus.” Presumably, Erasmus said this before he died. I was going to follow this up with a joke about the Dutch, but then I looked at my site statistics, and found that the Netherlands is number 5 on the countries that come to visit here at Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise.

So, my conclusion is this: people of the Netherlands are amazing people who have impeccable taste in fine writing and I’d be glad to give them all a free bikini wax, but I’m pretty sure that they’re so tall, blonde, disciplined and perfectly proportioned that they’ve trained their bodies to not grow hair where they don’t want it. Go Netherlands!

I’m pretty sure they have flying cars in the Netherlands now.

Anyway, what Erasmus was saying was originally in Latin, but Latin isn’t a dead language – it’s still Roman around. My initial translation was, “Near the gas station in the skanky part of town, never pick up women after 3am.” These are wise words, but what Erasmus really meant was, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

That’s one of those phrases that sounds really cool. In fact, I imagined being able to see in a country full of blind people. I mean, the only actor that would be able to play Batman would be Christian Braille. And, using my crazy superpower of sight, I’d be able to break into their houses at night and steal all of their PEZ®.

But that’s not the way it would work.

I would probably try to explain to them that I could see – a sense that they didn’t have at all. The concept of photons and colors and would sound crazy to them. In fact, they’d probably think I was crazy and come at night while I was sleeping and give me blanket parties or worse until I shut up or left.

In the modern world, it’s similar, but it’s what’s commonly referred to as “Clown World” where everything is inverted. Things that are beautiful are corrupted, and people are expected to applaud the bravery inherent in people reveling in the corruption. I’ll let Stonetoss lead the introduction of the topic at hand.

If you’re not familiar with what Stonetoss is writing about, there is a “teacher” in Canada who decided, apparently, to wear comically large and obscene fake breasts to shop class. How do we know they’re obscene? YouTube® banned them.

But, yet, these Z-cups are allowed because a “teacher” showed up to work wearing them, and the school board is apparently afraid to confront the dude. When a parent tried to bring the subject up, the local school board shut down the meeting rather than confront the amazing amounts of silicone (or foam rubber??) being paraded in their classrooms. In fact, they say it’s illegal to criticize the “teacher”.

In my assessment of the situation, there are two possibilities. The first is that the “teacher” is so mentally insane that allowing him to dress like this is similar to allowing him to claim that he’s made of string cheese and now has a mouse phobia. That’s the first possibility.

The second is that the “teacher” is gaming the system and seeing how far he can push things so he can get mental disability payments and not have to show up to work, or not be graded based on his job performance. I actually consider this more likely, but, hey, it’s 2022 so he just might be bonkers.

This was actually the plot to a South Park® episode where a teacher became more aggressively, explicitly gay in front of his students in an attempt (I recall) to get fired. Instead, the people celebrated his inappropriate behavior because of his bravery. So, yeah. Blame Canada. I’m sure that this is what the Canadian troops were thinking about when they hit the beach at D-Day, the freedom for shop teachers to don Z-cup fake breasts.

Women are, oddly, not at all good with this. Not all women, of course. I use The Mrs. as a sounding board for this sort of insanity, and she (more or less) notes that it’s offensive for (at least some) actual women to see men parading around pretending to be women. But Canada says it’s okay. And companies will ban you for “hate” if you dare to not say that this is completely normal.

In 2022, it’s now accepted that teachers indoctrinated in Leftist institutions should be allowed free access to your children. And there’s nothing bad that can come of that. Because teachers have shown themselves to be so stable.

The problem really does start with Leftism. I know I drone on and on about this, but it’s true. Leftism is a mental illness rooted in victimhood. How can I prove this? THEY TELL US THIS WHENEVER THEY CAN. It’s worse than being stuck in a room filled with vegans who do Crossfit®.

I sometimes think it’s a competition on how many mental illnesses that they can have, like they all want to be the Georgy Zhukov of mental illness and be the (she/they/them/it) with the most medals.

Part of the idea is that Leftists are incapable of harboring thoughts that are counter to their programming. Scott Adams found this out and after this cartoon strip, he was canceled from 77 newspapers.

Here are a few examples of why.

Yup. Martha’s Vineyard. Importing millions of people across the border is amazing, right? Well, no. Not when they show up in near the beach bungalows of the rich and famous. Obama lives on Martha’s Vineyard, and his house alone could have housed every illegal alien that was transported there. But, no.

They booted all the illegals in 44 hours. Who needs a wall when you invade the territories of Leftist lawyers?

But the damage of Leftism is real. It destroys families. And it stops families from even being made.

But it leaves some really important questions to be asked.

And it makes you wonder what Biden is really after, when it turns out that “Right Wing Extremism” is actually less deadly than riding lawnmowers. Really.

Seriously, though, this isn’t the battle the Left should push, because when real Right Wing Extremism hits? Continents burn.

I guess that works for me. I’ll continue to be a Right Wing Extremist.

And if they want Clown World, that’s fine. They can soak in it.

Me? I think this next picture works better than anything they can come up with.

Erasmus would certainly agree with me. And? Go Netherlands! You guys rock!!!! (Yes, I know Ariel is Danish, but you Danes have got to get your pageviews up.)

Three Best Stocks To Own After A Nuclear Attack

“It’s not the money, it’s just all the stuff.” – The Jerk

Biden wanted to emulate North Korea’s experience for COVID – Biden liked the way Kim implemented a lockdown.

I was on hold with Tech Support working on site issues (again) when I came up with the post name. I couldn’t resist, because that’s exactly the sort of headline that I see when I flip through financial pages. Oh, sure, I could have just as easily gone with “How A Zombie Holocaust Can Help Your Portfolio”, but the nuclear attack seems a wee bit more timely.

As I’ve written before, a big part of wealth isn’t just cash. It isn’t money. Queen Elizabeth II may have had a much fancier funeral than I will, but just like Generalissimo Francisco Franco, she’s still very dead even though there are rocks worth hundreds of millions of dollars on top of her coffin. Money could buy her a lot of stuff and allow her to avoid Markle, but it couldn’t buy her one more minute on the planet than she had.

So, wealth means more than just money. And as the world seems to be shifting ever so fast under our feet, what are the true components of wealth?

I did hear about one king that was exactly 12” tall. He was a horrible king, but a good ruler.

First on my list would be having a horde of skilled fanatical barbarian soldiers that do my every bidding. That’s pretty cool. Sadly, I can’t find a wizard who’s willing to narrate things like the following every morning when I get out of bed and get ready to go to work:

“Between the time when the oceans drank Atlantis and the rise of the sons of Aryas, there was an age undreamed of. And unto this, Conan John Wilder, destined to wear the jeweled crown of Aquilonia Modern Mayberry upon a troubled brow. It is I, his chronicler, who alone can tell thee of his saga. Let me tell you of the days of high adventure!”

That would be nice. I guess second on my list would be a wizard-bard to narrate my life, throwing in things like, “And despite having had one too many glasses of wine the night before, John Wilder bravely got up as his alarm went off, brushed his teeth, stared into his mirror, and began the noble process of finding socks to wear today.”

An illiterate wizard is useless. He can’t spell.

What would be third on my list? I mean, I’ve already got a fanatical army and a wizard-bard. Some people work a whole lifetime and don’t get either of those. At one point, I would have said “Immortal Life” but then I realized that if I lived too long, that would probably void the factory warranty. So, that’s out, unless those random calls I get on my cell phone about getting an extended warranty aren’t a scam.

But I still need to have a number three on my list. I’d say food for my fanatical barbarian army, but I think they’d be fine feeding themselves – that’s the advantage of having a barbarian horde – they make their own sauce. I guess I’ll have to live with surgically altered doubles that look and sound exactly like me. Why? If I have a fanatical barbarian army, why wouldn’t they send James Bond® after me?

I always invite Bond over to my BBQ. He’s got a license to grill.

For my fourth item, I suppose the boring thing would be to look for would be a lair hidden deep underneath a volcano suitable for launching my spaceships. The big problem is demand. First, I think Elon Musk has the market cornered. Second, if James Bond© saw what Great Britain looked like in 2022, he’d probably join up with Blofeld™ because he and Blofeld© probably share more actual British values than Britain does.

I’ll be serious – I wouldn’t turn any of those things down except the doubles. As irritating as I am, I can’t imagine what it would be like to live with multiple iterations of myself. And I can’t even imagine the number of socks that would be in the living room.

But what is real wealth outside of money?

I’m going to start with family. The Mrs., for whatever reason, is on board with my nonsense. And, as I wrote recently, we are building the people that will take us into the future. They are our children. We build them for the future, so that they can build the future. Of wealth, there is absolutely none more precious. Except the fanatical barbarian horde.

Yet, more battles are won by infantry than by adultery.

Second on the list is health. I can only buy this a little. The rest I either have due to genetics (on one side of my family, I have heard that the only thing that can kill us is gravity), or hard work. I need to spend a bit more time on the hard work. And that’s an easy way to invest in myself that has amazing dividends.

Third on the list is skills. Skills are yet another way of investing in myself. What kind of skills? The basic ones are the best – and there is depth required in some of them. If I garden, it’s not just planting a seed and then walking off to come back later and eat. Nope. There are millions of ways to kill a plant, and I know most of them. Many skills come from simply knowing how to not screw it up. So, picking the right ones is one way to get to the future.

I debated putting reputation up higher, bud decided that I’d leave it here. In the world, leadership is a way to multiply yourself. And that leadership is a function of reputation. Known as a liar and a cheat? No man will follow me or trust me. Known to be a man of my word? I can have influence far above my level of skills or health. When General Patton took over the II Corps in North Africa, he had a few weeks to turn them into a fighting force. That he was able to do so was built on skills, sure, but more than that on his reputation for having an amazing force of will.

The last thing on my list for today is a variation on the first real thing. Just as my children take me into the future, the inheritance that I got from Pa and Ma Wilder allows me to know what to send into that future. It is the inheritance of values that I speak of here.

I heard she never carried cash – who wants to carry around pictures of their ex-mother-in-law?

So, on this day, I’m certain of one thing: I’m wealthier than Queen Elizabeth. And in better shape, too. I wouldn’t trade her family for mine. I’m certain I could beat her at Uno®, so I have skills covered. Reputation, though is difficult. I mean she couldn’t hit 100 before she died, though I think she made sure Diana did.

What’s The Meaning Of Life? It’s Right Here.

“Well, that’s the end of the film. Now, here’s the meaning of life.” – The Meaning of Life

The dinosaur with the cleanest teeth is, of course, the flossiraptor.

What are we here for? It’s a big question, and one we have to ask now. Sadly, I think the answer for many people would be, “inexpensive Chinese-made throw pillows, new Marvel® movies, and the next iPhone®.”

For most of my life, it was a clear question that didn’t involve any of those things, except maybe affordable throw pillows, because they wear out so very quickly. At some point though, I figured it out. What was it? The meaning of life, or at least the abridged version. The existence of my generation, of any generation, was for two reasons:

First, to create the next generation. It’s the toughest and most fun work in the world. A family, working together, would do the best job possible at creating the best children possible.

Why do we need those children? Why do they need to be better?

The “why” is the essence of the second reason. There are more challenges, literally an infinite set of challenges, that are before us. There are more horizons for us to conquer – we may have been to the Moon, but we don’t live there. We have sent robots to Mars, but we haven’t visited. Humanity has a job, and it has always been clear to me that our job was not yet done, at least not until we have developed a reliable way to make the PEZ®/Anti-PEZ™ drive (LINK).

I was at a performance of Hamlet when there was an earthquake. It was a Shakesperience!

Both of those answers rely on optimism. I think that optimism is justly earned. Even though humans have created unimaginable horrors, they have created, time and time again, amazing wonders. As Shakespeare’s Hamlet noted:

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!

What I see today, however, isn’t the wonder of man, it’s the crisis we face with apprehension. It consists of multiple fronts.

Energy: Even though we are up against physical limits on the energy systems that we use, the idiocy of the Green Energy™ movement feels more like a mutual suicide pact. The use of energy, primarily since the Industrial Revolution has created the greatest amount of prosperity and well-being the world has ever seen. It is an absolute certainty that if the Leftists have their way, the amount of misery around the world will make World War II seem like a carnival ride. I mean, not a good carnival ride, but at least it would have Patton.

How did Patton celebrate November? He gave tanks.

Family: One of the primary reasons for civilization in the first place is that it creates the basis for making itself better, and that basis is the family. Children are not easy to raise. Any single parent working by themselves would have been my victim. It took both Pa Wilder and Ma Wilder (along with my brother, John Wilder) to make me a better person than Feral John Wilder would have become. Family is important, and you can’t make good and strong children without one.

Morality: Morality is crucial. We have moved away from the moral basics that have created Western Civilization, and inverted them. We used to celebrate the beautiful, and now celebrate the ugly. And Pride Festivals®? Pride was a sin. And it still is. Unless it involves lions.

Who are the enemies?

The Globalist Left: This is a big bunch, but they come in two flavors.

The Globalist Left – The Antifa Gang: These are people, who, generally despise themselves. They revel in ugliness, because they feel that they’re ugly inside. They look at society and hate it. They want to watch it all burn. They hate themselves, and want to make the world outside as horrifying as the world they old inside themselves. This probably describes everyone that works at CNN®.

I had dinner with a journalist, but he pulled the labels off his ketchup and mustard. He liked to keep his sauces anonymous.

The Globalist Left – The Elite: They always seem to exist. They were there at the fall of Rome, they were there when the Library of Alexandria was sacked, when Russia became a killing ground, and when China killed uncountable millions. They appear to be the parasites that are jealous of real achievement and seek to game society so that they can come to power. They also appear to gravitate to power for the sake of power, and delight in the destruction of anything as long as it brings them wealth and comfort, even if it kills the host society.

Technology: I could go on all day, but there are two that jump out – they are the two most destabilizing technologies that exist today. Technology is difficult, because now it moves so quickly, but humans don’t adapt to it very quickly at all. I mean, VCRs existed and no one ever figured out how to stop the blinking 12:00.

Technology Itself – The Pill: To a certain extent, one of the big foes of humanity right now is our state of technological advancement itself. Multiple technological advances have created stresses that have never been seen before in human history. The first of these, The Pill, was a disaster. Some of the oldest rules to make society stable were about marriage and reproduction. Why? The stability of the family structure was ripped apart by The Pill, and the divorces started not long afterward.

The most effective method of birth control I ever used was my personality.

Technology Itself – Social Media: When the printing press was originally invented, it opened a world where the knowledge of the entire history of mankind could be shared. When the Internet developed, all of that knowledge could be shared freely. Instead, the Internet has become a dopamine factory that is one of the most insidious narcissism trap in the history of humanity. What could have united us has, instead, created zombies of people who sit in restaurants staring at their phones rather than talking to each other and having authentic conversations. This has created a world with artificial closeness between people who have no connection, and artificial barriers between those who should be close.

Obviously, I could keep going. The enemies of that which is Right, True, and Good are legion. The methods they use are diverse.

I bet he gets tired in prison explaining he made more than one bomb.

If I were writing a screenplay, I’d be wondering how I write myself out of this predicament. Thankfully, the answer is that I don’t have to. Western Civilization has defeated enemies just like these for thousands of years. We have been at the breaking point again and again.

It is true, we won’t be the same after this crisis. There’s no guarantee that the crisis won’t last for decades. And I promise it really will be the most difficult thing that any of us live through. I mean, those of us that make it.

So, what are we here for? We’re here to carry the torch forward. To have wonderful children that exceed us in our capacity, because there are tough horizons, and more work to be done. We are building the people that will take us into the future. They are our children. We build them for the future, so that they can build the future, despite the obstacles and enemies of humanity.

And we’ll win.

We always have.

Energy: We Need Everything. Now.

“No, Jonny. It consumes them. It eats energy: sunlight, electricity, the energy in a living body. Anything it can get.” – Jonny Quest

What do you do with a dead chemist? Barium.

I remember way back in high school gym class when I was a freshman. One day we showed up in the gym and saw a roughly six-foot diameter ball in the middle of the gym floor, as if a majestic bird the size of Alec Baldwin had left an egg for us.

That was new.

Coach said, “Welcome to Push Ball. Wilder and Jones, you two are captains. Pick your teams.” Jones and I were on the football team together, so we divvied up the rest of the boys. I think the girls were doing something like advanced couch-sitting that day.

Coach followed up: “Here are the rules. No rules. If your team pushes the ball into the opposing team’s bleacher, you get a point.” Technically, that was a rule, but I decided not to argue.

Pretty quickly I divined that part of the point of Push Ball was to burn up a lot of energy on a game that was very hard to win. Probably “something, something teamwork blah blah blah”.

But then I looked at the ball. It was filled with air, not Baldwin-DNA-soaked egg yolk, so it wasn’t all that heavy. But it was way too big for any one person to grab.

It wasn’t entirely smooth, though. There were laces.

These laces were like those on a football, except the gap between the laces was big – big enough to slip my fingers through. I developed a plan. I told my guys, “It’s gonna get easy – we’re gonna win. When I say go, get in front of me and block.”

Alternate meme text: “When the weather tells you to dress for the 100’s.”

As we played, I concentrated on rotating the laces towards me. When they were right there about shoulder height, I slipped my fingers in the gaps between the laces, and got a good hold.

“Now!” I yelled.

With the leverage of the handhold, I could easily use the opposing team’s force to pop the ball back towards me, and up. And with the ball gone, my guys got in front and blocked. I ran, holding the absurdly large ball over my head with one hand and slammed it into the retracted bleachers causing the wood to reverberate under the mighty force, scoring the first point.

“THIS. IS. SPARTA!” I yelled. Okay, no I didn’t, it sounds way cooler to pretend that I did. And I sure as hell felt like Thor (not the fake Marvel® one) slamming his hammer and making the lightning crash. Our team really did high five.

Coach blew his whistle.

“Okay, we now have a rule. You can’t do that.”

We had a really good weightlifting facility.

Weirdly, this post is the second one about energy. In one sense, our world is like that game of push ball. We work to innovate and create breakthroughs to better use the energy we have. The number of cars are up in the country, but the miles per gallon are way up, too.

Government would love to take credit for it, but it’s really not the case. Sure the CAFE standards have led to higher mileage, but a lot of that is due to innovation that occurred outside of those standards. When I read that the Trans Am® in Smokey and the Bandit only produced 200 horsepower, I realized that most of the cars I own have more power under the hood, and get better mileage. I always wanted a car with a T-top like the Trans Am™ in high school, so my dates could have had more legroom.

I was considerate that way.

We have become more efficient at using energy, and that’s great. But we find more uses for energy, too. If I lived in the same house today in 1977, right now there would be zero power usage outside of the fridge and the freezer. As it is, I’m watching a silly movie on a huge television while I type on a laptop with alarm clocks that don’t tick from springs winding down. I’m happy for that, because if the alarm clock would go tic-tic-tic all night, it would keep The Mrs. awake and she’d want to toc.

Is my house using a lot of energy? No, but there are a lot more devices in a home today using energy passively, like charging cell phones and security systems and “always on” televisions and computers and garage door openers on low power mode.

I drove up to my garage and saw someone had painted a “3” on it. I thought, “That’s odd.”

Even industry is more efficient, generally, at using energy. Modern manufacturing plants are expert at using what would have been waste heat in all sorts of ways to save energy, which in turn saves money. I mean, don’t be an engineer if you’re not so hot in thermodynamics.

But at the base of all modern industry, energy is crucial. It is the ultimate leverage. One analyst noted that $20 billion in Russian natural gas was used by Germany to create $2 trillion in economic output. That’s stuff made. It’s amazing leverage – $1 in natural gas was the basis for creating $100 worth of added value. Germany would like to start a war, but the rule is that it’s three Reichs, and you’re out.

Energy is that important. And energy usage isn’t a linear progression – it has been exponential. The problem is that energy usage is growing nearly exponentially. If you look at any short-term graphs, it doesn’t quite show it, but here’s one that puts it in perspective. I got it at Our World in Data (LINK) and it’s reused by CC (LINK).

If Ebola grew as fast as the world energy consumption, it would be called Hyperbola.

I think this one graph alone should be tattooed backward on the head of every Leftist who says BuT MUh ALtERnaTivE EneRgy. Eliminate oil, coal, and natural gas, and you have a world that, roughly, has as much energy as 1920.

The world population right now is 7.97 billion people. In 1920, the population was closer to 1.9 billion, which is roughly the number of people on a typical airplane nowadays. In 1920 electricity was only in 35% of homes. In the United States. Most people in the world in 1920 had no electrical power usage at all, heated their homes with firewood or coal, and only saw electrical lights at the picture show. Also, they were, sadly, almost sixty years too early to see Smokey and the Bandit.

Let’s go back to Germany (not the 1920 version) but today. Just $20 billion in natural gas costs $2 trillion in value added. Population is growing exponentially. Energy use is growing exponentially. We’re setting ridiculous ideas that we’ll be all-electric by 2030 by changing rules to limit innovation and declare winners. It’s like Coach not allowing innovation in Push Ball, but this time with real-world consequences.

But those electric cars. They’re powered by . . . what, exactly? Seriously, look at the chart. What? Nuclear we haven’t built? Solar which is so small it can’t be seen? Hydropower which is in decline because it can’t be built? Wind? I can’t see wind outside, and I also can barely see it on the chart.

Looks like the Green Energy Plan is free of charge.

Anyone, and I mean anyone who is not realizing that the Leftist energy pipe dream won’t lead to the greatest suffering that mankind has ever seen, even more than anything Global Warming® could ever cause, even more than both of the World Wars, combined, is deluded.

We need more innovation in energy, and we need it now, because the exponentials in energy use and population require investment to keep ahead of the game. Exponentials are funny that way, you have to be like Alice’s Red Queen and run faster and faster just to stay in place.

The Leftists that want to bring it all down? They deserve to be put into a Push Ball filled with Alec Baldwin’s DNA-soaked yolk.

The Amazing Bigfoot UFO Diet

“Boys, I slipped in poop! Bigfoot poop!” – Trailer Park Boys

Bigfoot saw me today. I bet nobody believes him.

Last week I was about 75% done with the writing of a new post. It was about 1am, which was a bit late, but not horribly so. From where I was, I was an hour of edits, an hour of memes, and then a final hour of edits from being done. 4am? Not so bad. Sleep is for the weak, and it’s no substitute for caffeine. I even made a really funny meme that fit with the post complete for the main meme:

See, genius at work! Not pictured: anything to do with this post.

When I type (I’m not going to be so bold as to call myself a writer), I can generally tell when and where a post is going to close when I start writing. And this was going there, but it was . . . bleak. And one thing I like to do on a Friday post is to end on an “up” beat.

I try to make the Monday post the heaviest in thought, the Wednesday post the heaviest in economic conditions, and however those posts end, they end. They represent the best I can find with reality. Am I always right? No. But I’m not going to look at the Senile Senator from Scranton and pretend he’s a leader or even anything more than a drooling moron with only the slightest bit of consciousness rattling around in the dim memories that he has left between pudding pops and wondering why Bob Barker isn’t on The Price is Right®.

Joe Biden: “The doctor told me I have dementia and the economy sucks. But at least I don’t have dementia.”

But Fridays are different. I like ending the week on high note. That wasn’t the post. I might rework it, or not. I have plenty of stuff to write about as the universe keeps following the modestly-named Wilder’s Principle Of Greatest Amusement (short explanation: if there are two possibilities of an event happening, the most silly one will occur, which explains Trump, Biden, and Elvis dying on a toilet).

Because of all that, I’m switching gears wildly this Friday. My story starts when I was but a wee Wilder living on Wilder Mountain in the deep woods, 45 miles from the nearest movie theater, a place so remote that we would beg strangers for news of the outside, and we would woo our women with chocolates and nylons from the Red Cross packages that were airdropped occasionally.

One thing Ma Wilder always indulged me on was books. I had to use my allowance on the models. Since there were no other kids around, I surrounded myself with things I made. I slept under them: a fleet of two Constitution Class Heavy Cruisers (NCC 1701 was one) facing down the improbable alliance of a Romulan™ Bird of Prey and a Klingon D-7, both flanked by Phantom F-4s (for whatever reason painted glossy silver – seemed like a good idea at the time) along with the Battlestar Galactica™ headed straight for a Cylon Basestar© which was improbably flanked by both a Sopwith Camel and a red Fokker triplane. I was especially proud of the Galactica®, since I had (by that time) figured out how to put realistic charred areas for battle damage along with about 100 pieces of glow-in-the-dark tape, so when I turned out the lights it looked like all those windows were shining light into the dark, asbestos-laden ceiling of my bedroom.

I confused model glue with a tube of Preparation H®. At least my model never itched.

Those I had to pay for. But he books?

Nope. Ma Wilder indulged me on those, and never questioned a single one, as long as I read them.

I have no idea if I had to choose to spend my hard-earned allowance on magazines – I simply can’t remember. But I do know that they didn’t blink at those, either. So, I had in my possession a copy of UFO Magazine™. I have no idea of that was the exact title, but it was close enough.

In this particular magazine, there was the scariest story I had ever read. The idea of the story was that bigfoot wasn’t a creature that was normal, like a bear or a coyote. We had bear and coyote and mountain cats on Wilder Mountain. Those weren’t horribly scary.

According to this magazine, bigfoot was, instead, a phenomenon that was entirely alien in nature. It was controlled by either the critters that ran the UFOs, or it was a trans-dimensional being that exhibited supernatural powers. It didn’t matter which, since both of those types were dangerous and psychic. What would it do to me? Hell, I had no idea. But it was an evil alien psychic bigfoot. Isn’t that enough???

I went to a psychic’s house and knocked on the door. She asked, “Who’s there?” so I left.

I had a view of the edge of the forest, as it the ridge due north of my bedroom reached for the peak of the mesa to the back of my house. Of course, as a third grader, I’m certain that I saw a pair of glowing red eyes from ridge a quarter mile away. Now, of course, I’d have to put on my glasses to even see the ridge, but back then I was sure I saw them. I’m not sure how one can fall asleep while every muscle in the body is tense with fear and sweat was trickling everywhere, but I’m sure the covers over my head helped.

Thankfully, as I grew up, I came to the realization that UFOs were certainly not real. The UFO phenomenon (and bigfoot!) gradually came to take the same place in my mind as pro wrestling. They weren’t real, but they were certainly entertaining.

But I kept an eye to the sky. Just in case.

I’ve been watching the news stories, and seen the videos leaked from the Navy. Strange. But I really didn’t think too much more about it. The idea that UFOs were something more than sensor glitches or advanced US tech seemed unlikely.

Weirdly, I was listening to Dr. Michio Kaku’s radio show the other day. Sometimes (especially in the hottest weather) The Mrs. likes to listen to Fairbanks, Alaska radio, and Michio’s radio show is on Sunday afternoon.

Michio Kaku named his son “Physics” so he could be called the Father of Physics.

Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist that has a few bestsellers, but what’s most amusing is his radio show. The Mrs. and I pronounce his name Meee-chio, since he regularly talks about himself in the third person. I think he should be next in line to be King of England, since he’s so good at using the Royal We already. Regardless, Michio is amusing.

One thing he said in his radio show two weeks ago, though, got to me. I’ll paraphrase, but I think I’ve got most of the intent, “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, but I think that in the case of UFOs this has shifted. The evidence is so overwhelming that the phenomenon exists, and the burden now belongs to those who claim the phenomenon is normal to prove that.”

I was shocked. I’d listened to him off and on for years. Every other time, he’s mentioned aliens, the opposite has come out of his mouth. His case now?

It’s real until someone proves it isn’t.

How do we know aliens aren’t vegan? They haven’t contacted us to tell us.

I don’t know what’s going on. There are multiple explanations. Some of them are amazingly dark – several researchers into UFO phenomena have come to the conclusion that what’s going on is sinister, as in worse than psychic bigfeet. Far worse.

But if it’s something as boring as psychic bigfeet, hidden German technology from under Antarctica, oddly humanoid aliens, or even run-of-the-mill travelers from another dimension, this will still be remembered far into the future, much farther than anything that will come out of AOC’s silly mind or Chucky Schumer’s bloated ego.

So, which would be most compatible with Wilder’s Principle of Greatest Amusement? My money is on psychic bigfeet. Sometimes the psychic bigfoot is confused with a sasquatch.

Yeti never complains.

The End of COVID, And Mining Salt From Leftist Tears

“That’s the saltiest thing I ever tasted, and I once ate a big heaping bowl of salt.” – Futurama

Think they were crying at CNN® when they wrote that headline?

The CDC® has just sent out the word: Corona-Chan is over. The ‘Vid is over, served its purpose, finished, and, whereas last year Joe Biden wanted everyone who wouldn’t submit to the Vaxx fired, well, now it is over.

Done. Doesn’t mean that at certain places that they still can’t fire you for not having been Vaxxed, but it’s starting to look a bit silly.

There are, apparently, a group of people that have looked on the ‘Rona as one of their base sacraments, nearly an item of worship.

The CDC is my shepherd; I shall not want.
It maketh me to inject mRNA: it leadeth all men with slight fevers to quarantine.
It affirmith my gender: Biden leadeth me in the paths of inflation for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Drumpf, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy heckin’ science and stimulus checks, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of Cheeto Hitler: thou anointest my hair with unnatural colors; my electric car runneth over people.
Surely virtue signaling shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Corona forever.

Except, not. I’m thinking with midterm elections coming up, just like Biden declared victory on inflation, he can declare victory on the ‘Rona. And here in Modern Mayberry I can’t recall the last time I’ve seen anyone in a mask. It’s simply not a thing anymore. Oh, yeah, several vaxxed folks I know have had the ‘Rona. Shocking, that:

But, the Left simply cannot fathom a life without one of their fears, it’s like they’re in some weird, inverted sense, comforted by their fear. Their reaction is telling, so, without further ado, I’ll let them (mostly) tell it in their own terms.

Warning: some of the language is a bit salty – they’re pretty butthurt about this one.

Let’s start with Reddit®

Surely things are better at Twitter©.

Ouch. Guess not. Well, I’ll let them speak (mostly) for themselves. Enjoy mining the salt from the Leftist tears! See you Monday!

My response:

‘

Trump: The Symbol and Symptom of the End

“I’ve come back. Give me a drink, Brother Kipling. Don’t you know me?” – The Man Who Would Be King

I guess I should be sorry about telling all those the bad yolks now.

Wednesday is usual the “wealthy” part of Wilder, Wealthy and Wise. Why? Because it starts with W.

Duh.

But I can’t this week. I normally like to talk to the deeper issues, the longer trends, and those timeless aspects of the human condition. There is more than a little evidence that we’ve been, in one way or another, been two sides fighting for thousands of years across a gulf between two factions. One is open, and the wellspring of Western Civilization.

The other is one that, for lack of a better allusion, is best represented by the worst aspects of Rudyard Kipling’s poem The Gods of the Copybook Headings (reprinted at the end of this, because it’s old enough that Disney® doesn’t own it, it’s wonderful, and it’s True) – that implacable urge to move away from those values that emphasize what is Good, Beautiful, Right and True to placate what Kipling called “The Gods of the Marketplace”. It is a battle that provides humanity amazing wealth, meaning, and prosperity when The Gods of the Copybook Headings win.

Spoiler alert: The Gods of the Copybook Headings always win.

One signpost in the road downward is the raid on Donald Trump. The word that people are using is “unprecedented” and they’re using it for a reason. It is unprecedented. As I went upstairs a moment ago, the news on the radio was insisting that Joe Biden had “no idea” what was going to happen.

The Mrs. remarked, well, it starts with “Bull”. You get the idea. If Biden didn’t know about this, then the system is horribly broken. If he did, the system is horribly corrupt.

What’s Biden’s favorite musical group? The Who?

Do I believe a former president should be above the law?

I certainly do not. But unless the FBI® found a dead stripper or a live boy in the safe, it ain’t enough. As much as the Clintons were corrupt and literally stole items out of the White House, there was no real push to have them arrested. Sure, Bill was impeached, and sure, because he perjured himself he could no longer practice law. That was about it.

And I’m okay with that. Even Nixon, who took part in a conspiracy and looked like, well, Nixon, was pardoned. Why?

Because Nixon was politically neutered and could never take part in the public sphere again in any consequential manner. He was humiliated enough that the Left could enjoy it. Bill was humiliated, but (unlike Nixon) was he decided he’d try to bilk millions (and bimbos) out of those that wanted to buy influence with his political machine.

What toothpaste did Nixon use? Colgate®.

It is clear that every president since (and certainly including!) FDR has likely committed multiple felonies in office. It’s our system. Some, because they were not good guys. Some simply because there are more felonies on the books than hairs that were implanted in Biden’s head. The Federal way is now the way that the Soviets liked it – as Lavrenty Beria, former head of the Soviet NKVD and GULAG architect extraordinaire said, “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”

Now, Trump.

In every case during his presidency, he has been the boogie man for the Left – the man that gives them I accidently killed John Wick’s dog-level night sweats. Why?

I’m not sure. Even though he couldn’t build a wall, Trump certainly upset the apple cart. Perhaps his singular achievement as president was to return the Supreme Court into a court that could actually read the Constitution in plain English again. The Constitution was written the way it was, for common men. It was written that way so that nearly every man in the United States could read it and understand the plain language. I mean, today they’d do it with angry cat memes, but you get the picture.

Given hundreds of years, the language was buried in a stream of emanations and penumbras such that what was clearly the written language of the Constitution became ignored in favor of piles of case law that in some cases twisted the original meaning nearly 180°. The Fourteenth Amendment, so beloved by the Left, turned a series of prohibitions on Federal activity into a prohibition on activity by the Several States.

When Ma Wilder caught me with a copy of the Constitution, I told I only read it for the articles.

Why is this important?

Because it became a weapon of the statists, of those that would become globalists to use as a club so that the centralized government that the Founders feared could be put in place. Now every Federal law could be pushed into the Several States with impunity. Horrible Federal bureaucracies could be put in place. I remember reading that OSHA (which regulates workplace safety) was challenged in court by a company in Maine.

The company in Maine argued that they only worked in Maine, digging a hole for people who lived in Maine, in Maine. What business was it of a Federal Administration that sounds like the noise I make when a cigar ash hits my bare chest? Why did anyone care that the Maine hole didn’t match what a government rule written in Washington D.C. said?

The Federal prosecutor didn’t even refute the argument. The administrative (not Constitutional) judge in this case ruled against the guy from Maine, since the judge said, “they have a phone and use the mail” so they’re engaged in interstate commerce.

Really. It’s a nonsense ruling, like you’d see in Alice in Wonderland but involving people who hated their lives but who were just “doing their job”. In 2022, for the first time in my life, this sort of nonsensical reasoning is being challenged at the Supreme Court level.

Go ask Hunter, when he’s at the mall.

And they hate Trump for it. They hate him with every fiber of their being, even more than they hate Vladimir “Putler” or people who don’t take the vaxx or people who would deny teachers the right to indoctrinate kindergarteners into the world of S&M. They hate it more than they hate people who won’t kill their babies.

For that, Trump must be punished.

Is it rational? Not at all. They’re willing to destroy the Republic for that, because they want to destroy the Republic anyway. There are those on the Right that are accelerationists: anything that brings on the actual shooting war with the Left should be embraced. On the Left, there are accelerationists, too. Anything that can pull down another statue, anything that can pervert another value, anything that can make the legacy of the United States die is to be saluted.

Really. They hate it so very much, and Trump has been an inconvenient speedbump along the way.

So, their most fervent fantasy is Trump in an orange jumpsuit, whereas the most fervent fantasy of the Right was Hillary being an impotent drunk wine aunt staring from the outside in at a party she could never be a part of. Sure, the crowds at the Trump rally chanted “Lock Her Up” but what they really wanted was her humiliation.

The Right got it, and then some.

Hillary tried to sell her soul to Satan to become president, but Satan responded and said that was like Bill trying to sell his virginity.

Perhaps that was what drove them over the edge into insanity. Again, they want the destruction of the United States, so, they’re cool with that. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. I’m not really sure what bizarre fantasy plays in their heads as they contemplate the collapsing economic system and the utter lack of any shared goals or morality. Perhaps it’s a rainbow, though I doubt they’ll understand that the only actual consequence that they can really have is one that will lead to. But Rudyard Kipling understood it, every bit of it.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

by Rudyard Kipling

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper protestations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall.
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn.
That water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision, and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market-Place;
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch.
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch.
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings.
So we worshiped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: ‘Stick to the Devil you know.’

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbor and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: ‘The Wages of Sin is Death/’

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selective Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: ‘If you don’t work you die.’

The Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew,
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four—
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man—
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:—
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wobbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: The Divide Grows

“We can take whole by force what they propose to divide.” – Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

The book I ordered about clocks finally came in. It’s about time.

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

I’ve kept the Clock O’Doom the same. Tensions are still high. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – The Divide – Violence And Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Growing Farther Apart – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join over 700 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

The Divide

One thing that hasn’t changed, at all, since Biden was installed in the White House is that the tension hasn’t dropped. It’s a matter of Team Blue being in charge, and is looking at every way that they can stick it to Team Red. It’s not a new story, but it is a continuation of a fundamental divide in the country, about nearly everything.

When Donald Trump allegedly tossed hush money to a tramp, it was nearly grounds for impeachment. Joe Biden allegedly funds tens of thousands of dollars for Hunter’s periodic chemical and biological safaris?

Not a word. So, it’s an offset, right?

Not really. The Left has a deep hold on the institutions of this nation, who will, apparently, actively run cover for the Left, no matter what they do. Which institutions? Not big ones. Just the FBI and the major news media. The mere fact that CBS® is now running the story that the Washington three-letter agencies are all-in for Biden shows that the Left is getting ready to ditch Biden, or at least sending him a warning. I mean, it’s not like he’d notice.

The cultural divide is far worse that that would indicate, though. Let’s take the children. No, really, that’s the slogan of the Left: “Let’s take the children™.” They want them desperately, and are dedicated to doing whatever they can to indoctrinate them. Case in point:

As near as I can tell, this defines a lot of what’s going on with kids, but it’s not just schools, it’s media as well. There is a reason they want unfettered access to kids – it’s not about education, it’s indoctrination. What proof?

Imagine what the world would look like if teachers were secretly trying to make kids moral and Christian. The ree and cry would come from the usual sources, and then all the Left would dress up in Handmaid’s Tale outfits and pretend the United States was near to becoming a theocracy when it is farther than it has been, ever and the danger to kids isn’t coming from the Right. And the biggest fairy tale is coming from the Left:

Violence And Censorship Update

First, the Left wants to create conformity, and make sure that if your opinion differs, that you’ll feel left out. Their bots are Legion:

So, your opinion isn’t valid. But neither was the past opinion of the Left, if it was inconvenient. Left is always the direction of the Censor. And one of the biggest goals of the censor is not only to censor your current views, but it’s also to censor their past views. Why?

Because only the current view is valid. If the past view (for example) was that it takes an actual man and an actual woman to get married, why, that view is very uncomfortable now. So, any view that contradicts the New Truth® is forbidden. And when people try to use your own views against you? That’s hate speech, right?

It was Winston Smith’s job in the novel 1984 to make facts inconvenient to the Left disappear from the record. That job continues: the Left cannot accept the idea that the economy of the country is in very bad shape – and is in a technical recession. It hasn’t been long enough for Google® to take the previous definition down:

But at Wikipedia®? The Leftist editors are all too happy to change the definitions in near real-time just to make the Left happy. They do it for nothing but Good Boy™ points.

I think Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There had it right:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master: that’s all.”

Biden’s Misery Index

Last month’s inaugural edition inspired Aesop (LINK) to come up with his own version.

That’s a lot of Kamalas!

But when we look at the reason behind the graph, it’s simple: this is the pain associated with a planned Leftist transition.

Here’s the current graph. I suppose the good news is that even though things are getting worse, they’re not getting worse as fast as they were?

Updated Civil War II Index

The Civil War II graphs are an attempt to measure four factors that might make Civil War II more likely, in real-time. They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings. As each of these is difficult to measure, I’ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that combine to become the index. On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

Violence ticked downward again this month. I think it continues to be muted because the Left has kept their dogs on a leash.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it dropped a tiny bit in June. Elections are coming up – I’m wondering if we’ll see more?

Economic:

Economic indicators ricocheted upwards this month. Looking at the reasons: the markets stopped falling, the interest rates stopped shooting up – this is related to the Misery Index being slightly less awful. This is an instantaneous look, and things aren’t as awful as they were last month.

Illegal Aliens:

It set a new record for this time of year. But it was down from last month, for the first time in ages. Must be hot out.

Growing Farther Apart

The first story was the divide – the second is that the divide isn’t getting better. People are making choices to move to areas that match their ideology. And what about the people there?

They’re ready to check out. Red State Secession (LINK) conducted a poll at the end of June and released the results at the beginning of July. The result?

People are talking about breaking up. In the eight states they polled, (HI, TX, LA, MS, AL, FL, and SC) the results were fairly similar: They felt that if California were to want to leave the Union, that 56% felt there should be no penalty, 41% felt that there should be economic sanctions. Only 5% were willing to use military force to keep California in the Union.

The numbers were pretty similar if Texas wanted to leave. Texans, on the other hand, were ready to go to the next level. 69% of voters want to hold a referendum on separating from Texas, including a majority of Democrats and independent voters.

In Arizona (not part of the study) you can see that the Democrats don’t much care for the United States, either:

And the showing of a Revolutionary War flag on a coffee cup. It wasn’t me, even though I own one myself, which I bought at a United States National Park:

People are sorting themselves based on ideology, as long predicted:

And I’ll leave this Tweet® for the last word on how close we are to being one country:

Sounds like someone is a bit butthurt?

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1544768644244049920

https://twitter.com/i/status/1542746999245549568

https://twitter.com/i/status/1545705450703912960

https://twitter.com/i/status/1546007176002408449

https://twitter.com/i/status/1546000131744759808

https://twitter.com/i/status/1545917339467661312

https://twitter.com/CrimeWatchMpls/status/1544240651734228994

https://twitter.com/CPD1617Scanner/status/1543577251681390597

https://youtu.be/SVDWQv5lWPM

https://twitter.com/CPD1617Scanner/status/1553032236760535041

https://youtu.be/Vz4r8nNWOHA

https://www.foxnews.com/us/video-shows-utah-child-4-shoot-police-outside-mcdonalds-drive-thru

https://www.revolver.news/2022/07/the-hidden-agenda-behind-new-york-times-desperate-ray-epps-puff-piece/

https://www.insidebidensbasement.org/

Good Guys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg7q00OczIU

https://twitter.com/iamyesyouareno/status/1550500701465452545

https://twitter.com/i/status/1544337951332655110

https://twitter.com/i/status/1545874643994787840

https://twitter.com/Tr00peRR/status/1544619495100145664

https://youtu.be/ELDO8tJx0iY

https://www.fox5ny.com/news/off-duty-correction-officer-hailed-hero-after-shooting-man-who-pointed-gun-crowd

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fourth-of-july-mass-shooting-richmond-virginia-thwarted-police-tip/

https://abcnews.go.com/US/mississippi-teen-hailed-hero-helping-rescue-girls-officer/story?id=86300178

https://abcnews.go.com/US/93-year-man-shoots-home-intruder-fends-off/story?id=85991432

https://www.star-telegram.com/news/state/texas/article263351778.html

https://donsurber.blogspot.com/2022/07/even-if-it-saves-but-one-life.html

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fcrimeresearch.org%2F2022%2F07%2Fuber-driver-in-chicago-stops-mass-public-shooting%2F

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/miacathell/2022/07/27/10-times-a-good-guy-with-a-gun-saved-lives-n2610406

One Guy

https://heavy.com/news/elisjsha-dicken/

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/19/us/eli-dicken-indiana-mall-shooting-bystander/index.html

https://www.wthr.com/article/news/special-reports/greenwood-mall-mass-shooting/armed-citizen-was-not-the-only-one-with-a-gun-at-the-greenwood-park-mall-shooting-the-first-victim-killed-had-one-too-indiana-elisjsha-dicken/531-e5f3c8db-8f58-4c62-b8b0-acaab48ec4d1

Body Count

https://youtu.be/aakhNFhbhWk

https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1550526039234908164

https://thepostmillennial.com/52-shot-in-new-york-city-over-july-4-weekend

https://news.wttw.com/2022/07/05/68-people-shot-8-killed-shootings-across-chicago-over-july-4th-weekend-police

https://www.yahoo.com/news/chicago-4th-july-weekend-violence-160718752.html

https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=63182

https://www.unz.com/article/28-black-on-white-homicides-counting-white-hispanics-middle-easterner-unspecified-juveniles-etc-june-2022-another-month-in-the-death-of-white-america/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-10976437/How-Californias-legal-cannabis-dream-public-health-nightmare.html

https://goodsciencing.com/covid/athletes-suffer-cardiac-arrest-die-after-covid-shot/

https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/in-memory-of-those-who-died-suddenly-17d

https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/vaccinated-english-adults-under-60
https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/will-physicians-ever-speak-out

https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/the-safe-and-effective-narrative

https://twitter.com/ElectionLegal/status/1549833362919112704

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/color%20map.jpg?itok=NWg8Tskj

https://news.gallup.com/poll/394262/fewer-bible-literal-word-god.aspx

Vote Count

https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/voterga-uncovers-massive-election

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/nyc-election-sites-had-no-republican-ballots-primary-election

https://dnyuz.com/2022/07/05/on-conservative-radio-misleading-message-is-clear-democrats-cheat/

https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/07/07/poll-majority-of-americans-believe-midterm-elections-will-be-tainted-by-fraud/

https://www.kawc.org/news/2022-07-04/biden-administration-to-sue-arizona-over-law-requiring-proof-of-citizenship-to-vote

https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-biden-donald-trump-wisconsin-supreme-court-05166e3f3ef970b5cde8ac15cd30e18b?taid

https://uncoverdc.com/2022/07/01/u-s-supreme-court-takes-case-that-could-impact-future-elections/

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-case-voting-rights-experts-say-bring-chaos-elections-rcna34033

Civil War

https://news.gallup.com/poll/394202/record-low-extremely-proud-american.aspx

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10971195/A-QUARTER-Americans-say-ready-arms-against-government.html

https://www.science.org/content/article/half-of-americans-anticipate-a-us-civil-war-soon-survey-finds

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/contributors/2022/07/03/americans-divided-civil-war-unlikely/7767742001/?gnt-cfr=1

https://mises.org/wire/avoid-civil-war-learn-tolerate-different-laws-different-states

https://english.elpais.com/usa/2022-07-27/fear-of-a-second-us-civil-war-ignites-debate.html

https://dnyuz.com/2022/07/02/spurred-by-the-supreme-court-a-nation-divides-along-a-red-blue-axis/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/on-the-campaign-trail-many-republicans-talk-of-violence/ar-AAZTYhP

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2022/07/11/are-we-looking-at-another-civil-war-n2609990

https://thecarousel.substack.com/p/theres-gonna-be-a-war-in-montana

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/5/31/the-civil-war-that-is-here-and-the-one-that-may-yet-come

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/07/04/50-year-attack-right-wing-corporate-forces-leading-us-back-towards-civil-war

https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/a-president-asking-for-civil-war

https://www.businessinsider.com/civil-war-expert-barbara-f-walter-us-heading-toward-insurgency-2022-7

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/07/jeff-sharlet-on-the-martyrdom-of-ashli-babbitt-and-whats-to-come

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/washington-secrets/experts-make-case-for-the-ar-15-only-defense-in-civil-war

Progress

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6tOAafAJCA

Mr. Jones And The Lies Of Communism (And Communist Tools)

“Good morning. My name is President Taft and this is my brother-in-law Lee Harvey Oswald. This is the 35th season of our Oscar-winning radio series Prune Farming in the Ukraine.” – Penn and Teller

What sound did Stalin make when he drank water? GULAG, GULAG, GULAG

Some subjects for these columns seem to select themselves. An example is today’s topic – the movie Mr. Jones. Mr. Jones came out in 2019, and I had never heard of it until the screen saver on my television said I could watch it for free even though it did not feature James Spader. Or was that why it was free, because it was Spader-less?

I was already familiar with the titular (12-year-old me snickered) character of Gareth Jones. I was actually sort of shocked that this film was made. It was released in 2019, and is a very anti-communist film, showing that the Soviet Union was totalitarian and homicidal in a way only exceeded during Mao’s China in the twentieth century. The fact that anyone was putting money down to fund a film, especially in 2019, that was this anti-communist surprised me.

The subject of the film is Gareth Jones’ discovery and reporting of the Holodomor. I know that many of you are already familiar with the Holodomor, but a brief recap is required for context for those that aren’t familiar with it. The Holodomor was, essentially, the Soviet government giving the farmers of the Soviet Union a “going out of business” sign so he could create collectivized agriculture.

No Leftist idea is so bad that Justin won’t try it again.

Lenin had tried to corral the farmers, but he discovered fairly quickly that the Revolution doesn’t run on good intentions, and had to back off. Farmers were allowed to farm so that the Revolution could be fed. But after Lenin died, Stalin took over and decided to make a “kinder, gentler” nation.

Just kidding. Stalin started purging right and left. And as poor as everyone in the Soviet Union was, a hardscrabble farmer (wink) that made a few extra bushels of grain was considered very wealthy. They called them Kulaks. Who was a Kulak? Well, anyone with just a little more than the average peasant.

So, Stalin decided to go to war against his own people. He mobilized factory workers, gave them guns, and sent them out to root out the real enemies of the revolution. Keep this in mind when you hear about the war on farmers in Canada or the war on farmers in the Netherlands.

How does one get rid of millions of farmers but not starve the rest of the nation? Take all of the food the farmers have. All of the food. From all of the farmers. Then let them die.

I guess they won’t be having any Holland Oats anytime soon.

Yup, that was it. That was the strategy. And it worked. Bodies were collected on a regular basis, and all across the Soviet Union, millions died. Many were shipped off to the GULAG system, too. This is yet another reason the Soviet Union wasn’t the inspiration for many theme parks.

This is where Gareth Jones comes in – he was a British writer/reporter who talked himself into the Soviet Union, and talked himself into visiting the Soviet countryside, specifically in the Ukraine. What he saw wasn’t good – it was exactly the mass starvation that I wrote about in the paragraph above. If only he had read that, he could have saved himself some time and a whole lot of trouble.

But the main reason we know about the Holodomor is that Gareth Jones wrote about it. He told the outside world, so we owe him. The movie, Mr. Jones, depicts this journey across the Ukraine in a pretty unfaithful way – meant to shock the viewer, and also meant to particularly show that Ukraine was the victim. In reality, Ukraine was hit particularly badly, but millions of farmers across the U.S.S.R. outside of the Ukraine were also treated in a similar fashion.

But it will be different this time, right?

That’s one of the beefs that the Jones family had with the film – Jones never ate nor witnessed the items on the menu that the film depicts. They were also a bit miffed that they felt that his memory was used to be anti-Russian, rather than anti-Soviet. You can see a bit more here (LINK) on how the family felt. In one sense, it looks like this movie was made not because of the anti-Soviet theme, but because of the anti-Russian propaganda value. Maybe because of Trump and muh Russia collusion?

Who can say?

But one other thing to note is that the Soviets aren’t the only bad guy – there’s another: Walter Duranty. Walter Duranty is one of the scummiest people to have ever lived. The fact that he enjoyed a life of power and debauchery was only part of it.

For an example of how degenerate Duranty was, he was best buds with Aleister Crowley. They did magic together as well as drug-fueled orgies with participants of all varieties. This, of course, made him the perfect hire for the New York Times©. Duranty wrote such a glowing portrait (“there is no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be”) that he received a Pulitzer Prize® for his work denying the Holodomor. Duranty’s writing about the Soviet Union was influential in getting the Soviets accepted and into a cozy sleeping bag with FDR.

Some things never change . . . .

So, given that his hands are stained with the blood of literally millions of farmers, you can understand that this is probably one of the few times this sentence has ever been written in the English language: In retrospect, Duranty’s drug-fueled pederasty might be the nicest line I can write about him. Oh, wait, he’s dead. That’s something positive I can write about this vile leach that stained the lives of millions.

In the movie Mr. Jones, Duranty is depicted as just the depraved greasy worm I sketched above, so it’s got that going for it. And the family of Gareth says they got his character spot-on, that’s two for two of the main cast. Oddly, they have Jones meeting George Orwell, when in fact during all of Gareth Jones’ life Orwell was still an avowed socialist who had yet to become disillusioned by fighting with the commies in the Spanish Civil War and there’s zero evidence the two ever met.

Overall, the movie made $2.8 million at the box office, so unless they made mad bank from Blockbuster™ rentals, they ended up losing lots of cash. Again, it was an art-house anti-commie movie released into the woke world of 2019. What did they expect?

My birds were stuck together. I took them to the vet – he said he couldn’t help – it was toucan fusing.

So, do I recommend it? Dunno. It wasn’t bad. I probably wouldn’t watch it again because it’s a “one-time” movie and did not have James Spader in it.

Collective Punishment: It’s The Plan Of The Left

“Could be race memory stored in the collective unconscious. I wouldn’t rule out clairvoyance or telepathic contact either.” – Ghostbusters (’84)

Reminder to Leftists: the Geneva Convention is not a checklist.

One of the things that I was raised with was the idea of individual responsibility. That didn’t come from society – it came from Ma and Pa. If I drew on the hardwood floor under the bed in ink I’d blown out of ballpoint pens? Like a dozen ballpoint pens?

It was on me. And when it was found, it was my responsibility to scrub it until the ink came off. I could add in another few dozen things I did, but what parent doesn’t remember coming home and seeing the family photo collection curling up because their six-year-old thought he could make bigger copies by stretching them in water? I mean, it worked in the darkrooms on the TV shows. I mixed in all of the cleaning chemicals under the sink because it seemed odd that the pictures weren’t stretching.

And those are not the worst examples of my behavior – not even close.

I once told a joke about the Hindenburg. It didn’t land well.

For society as well, that seemed to be the rule. While groups might have different attributes, if someone broke a law and was convicted, they didn’t send grandparents and children and uncles and nephews to jail – they sent the guy who broke the law to jail.

Certainly, families may have felt shame, but the person who did the crime did the time.

That is so deeply ingrained in me that it took me quite a while to understand that viewpoint is no longer the default in Western Civilization, but rather it is on its way to becoming a quaint anachronism. What’s replacing it?

Collective guilt. You can see that nearly everywhere, and the 1619 Project®, the BLM™ and reparations movements, anti-Christian movements, and others are proof. Reparations: people who did no wrong paying people who weren’t injured 150 years ago.

When Elizabeth Warren canceled her presidential campaign, it wasn’t the first race she had to leave. (meme not original)

The theory is rather simple – every person related to someone who did something in the past is guilty. The idea is that groups are collectively sinful and must be punished collectively. This is certainly not an idea that is enshrined in the West. Oh, sure, the town of Mudstinklebottom was been put to the torch because the Earl Hootertinkletwerp of Snottlyford was not amused because his trousers weren’t pressed properly. But these examples of collective punishment are rightly viewed as atrocities, not a “how to” guide.

And I wasn’t at a single one of them. And neither were you. As I wrote last week, no one alive should feel even the smallest amount of The Guilt® that is featured on display every day in our world.

But yet, the statue of Thomas Jefferson has to come down because the things he did, which were considered normal back in 1780, are now realized to have been morally abhorrent. The genius of the man, the founding of the University of Virginia, drafting the Declaration of Independence, and inventing sno-cones can’t be thrown aside based on the moral lens of 2022.

I named my daughter after Thomas Jefferson. About 250 years after.

The real idea for the destruction of American (and Western) history loops straight back to the tactic collective punishment. Dismantling the heroes of a civilization, the men and women who saw farther and did more is just part of the punishment – and more on that in a minute.

The Left hates Western Civilization and wants to bring it down. The Guilt is simply one of the tools of the Left, in order to have the battle end even without a fight. It’s demoralization, and it’s part of the playbook. But it is intended on a collective basis. Who is the guilty party? Based on what I know of my readership, if you’re reading this, you can nearly be assured that the coming collective punishment is intended for you. And this collective punishment is indeed a tool of the Left. If you’re not familiar with the Left’s regular use of collective punishment, here’s a taste from your humble author (LINK).

But news of the broom really swept the nation.

Because, as I’ve written before, the aim of the Left is to win before the first battle is joined. To do that, they have to make us hate our past. Why?

In order that the enemy (us) will accept collective guilt. Again, I’m a poor test subject because I feel zero guilt about you can’t effectively punish a people if they have pride in their past, and pride in themselves. If every American was evil, and the country was founded on that evil, then everything the country has done since then must be evil, too, right?

Sadly, there are many Americans who have utterly fallen for this concept. They blame themselves for actions that they have never taken, for thoughts they have never felt, and for crimes that they have never committed. And the Left wants to take down, to erase all of it.

I’m working less at the cat shelter – they reduced meowers.

Why? Because they believe, deeply, in collective guilt, and the West has been tried and convicted as far as they are concerned. The sentence, if they can carry it out, is death. As has been said before, the Left hates you and wants you dead.

Yes, I still believe in individual responsibility and individual guilt – Ma and Pa Wilder certainly taught me that. So I guess most of the Leftists should have individual trials. And individual punishment.