Big Thoughts – Page 12 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The People’s Sick Day™: Commies . . . Not Working. Again.

“Uh, yeah, sure, no I’d be happy to, yeah you, uh, you just produce a corpse, and uh, I’ll release Sloane. I wanna see this dead grandmother first hand.” – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

If I take LSD before a vision exam, I always pass with flying colors.

In one of the more interesting moves, the remnants of the pot-addled hippies that were protesting in the 1960s have emerged from their Volkswagen™ camper vans and finally figured out that Jerry Garcia is as dead as Hubert Humphrey and the Equal Rights Amendment. They looked around, and decided that, heck, there wasn’t near enough communism going around, so they needed more.

Their cunning plan? A three-day sick day. When is it going to happen? Sometime. They don’t want to say when, because they don’t want The Man to know. The idea isn’t for them to show how little the world needs all the communists who have jobs in HR or making PowerPoints™ so they can pay someone to ignore their out-of-wedlock child (if they’re lucky) or cats (if they’re not).

Nope, that’s not it at all.

The idea is to point out who they are so that they’ll be easier to recognize in the future. As if the blue hair and nose rings, “gender dysphoria” or pronouns in their bios weren’t enough.

What do you call a polygamous hippie’s wives? One Mrs. Hippie, Two Mrs. Hippie, . . .

I digress.

Thankfully, on their Discord© server they have a list of their demands, and, a professional journalist waded through the GloboLeftist coping and seething and published them on MSNBC®(LINK). This is good, because the demands are so cringe that it’s hardly sporting to make fun of them. But I will, because I’m hardly sporting.

Why don’t I have PTSD? I’m the traumatic event.

I’ll list their demand (The People’s Sick Day™ Totally Stupid Demand, or PTSD), and my counter-demand (Wilder Talking Facts, or WTF):

PTSD: Calling for the impeachment, removal, and arrest of Donald John Trump and the Republican administration for knowingly manipulating the U.S. stock market, ignoring the U.S. Constitution, trafficking humans, and destroying our federal workforce. HE IS A CRIMINAL! LOCK HIM UP.

WTF: What happens in 2028 when Trump runs for his third term is no longer the face of the opposition? Who will drive them insane with hate? Regardless, my reasonable response is: No.

PTSD: Demanding HANDS OFF Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and veterans’ benefits

WTF: No. Most of SNAP should go. Most of Medicaid (not all) should go. Social Security should be phased out with the kids below 30 so that they don’t have an excuse to complain when the whole thing falls over. Also, eliminate Social Security on half of Americans based on birth year. Heads, eliminate odd years. Tails, eliminate even years. Just for giggles and it would be fun to watch the chaos.

Moses was also the first person to use CTRL-C as a shortcut.

PTSD: Demanding the removal of caps on Social Security

WTF: Do the checks really come with hats?

PTSD: Demanding NO MORE tax breaks for the rich — TAX THEM ALL!

WTF: Yes! Tax everyone! Tax everyone at the exact same rate for ALL income at 20%. Then everyone has skin in the game. And, make sure that people are taxed with on an Alternative Minimum Income: The minimum people are taxed is based on the federal minimum wage and if you can’t pay we deport you to Australia, for old times’ sake.

PTSD: Demanding an end to unlimited corporate profits and economic injustice

WTF: I demand an end to economic progress and creation of worldwide famine. See? I said exactly the same thing, but with way fewer words.

PTSD: Demanding an end to lobbyist and SUPER PAC funding

WTF: Nice try, since you own the media. No. My counter? I demand that CNN® be forced to feature nothing but things I’ve written. I mean, I guess I could stand for less exposure than I have now, but it’s a different audience – the CNN® crowd can’t read.

PTSD: Demanding the elimination of Citizens United

WTF: Man, panties are sure in a wad that they can’t stack the game, aren’t they?

PTSD: Demanding an increase in the federal minimum wage to $20 an hour, with adjustments for inflation as needed

WTF: Make it $100 an hour. No, $1,000 an hour. No, $10,000 an hour. See, you can joke, and I can, too. And there won’t be inflation, because only gold and silver will be money.

What’s the hardest part of making a vegan pizza? Catching the vegan.

PTSD: Demanding a cap on CEO pay at no more than 35% above the lowest worker’s salary

WTF: Welcome to not understanding what a contract worker is or what nested corporations are. Do they give you guys Crayons™ and a placemat to color on your Discord©?

PTSD: Demanding that wages for elected officials be capped at the median salary of their district

WTF: Sold. And no investments, either – they can only keep cash and they must rent, and this includes wages and investments for their extended family. AOC goes back to being a barista because it pays more.

PTSD: Demanding caps on rent, grocery, and insurance costs

WTF: Agreed. I demand unicorns as well, because they’d be good company as I lived on the street with no food or insurance.

PTSD: Demanding universal healthcare for all U.S. citizens and federal protection for sick time

WTF: I demand zero insurance for anyone and federal prosecution for anyone who starts an insurance company. I demand that anyone who takes a sick day from work without being near death be flogged if they don’t get away with it. Just kidding, like anyone will have a job if the PTSD proposals are enacted.

That dog looks like a brrrrito.

PTSD: Demanding term limits for all members of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court

WTF: Yes to Congress and no to SCOTUS. I would like treason charges for judges that violate the Constitution, and judges to be put in prison if someone they let out without bail injures anyone. And the robes should be form-fitting. For . . . reasons.

PTSD: Demanding reform of immigration policies

WTF: Agreed! Send them all home. All of them. Now.

PTSD: Demanding gun law reform — PROTECT OUR KIDS!

WTF: Agreed! Mail order machine guns and crew-served weapons, which are much more suited for children because they can work together to get that Ma Deuce warmed up. Besides, the hands of children are small and they generally have good eyesight, so field stripping an M60 should be a breeze.

PTSD: Demanding codified women’s rights to choose

WTF: You mean paper or plastic? It’s a stretch because I don’t trust the collective choices of women, but I’ll allow it.

PTSD: Demanding codified DEI and affirmative action

WTF: You mean penalties for having DEI and affirmative action? I’m in favor of that, and maybe you can talk me into making it a felony.

PTSD: Demanding the elimination of the Electoral College and a ban on gerrymandering

WTF: No.

PTSD: Demanding ranked-choice voting in all federal and state elections

WTF: No. Counter-demand: no voting until the family has been in the country for three generations, and one vote per family (mother/father, married). Otherwise, votes for military-aged males only.

PTSD: Demanding the taxation of mega-churches

WTF: And the taxation of micro-churches. And commie non-profits. And NPR® – those tote bags cause cancer.

My friend Gomez has a dismembered hand. I guess it’s okay, but it’s not my Thing.

PTSD: Demanding free post-secondary education

WTF: Only for students with an ACT of above 30 majoring in engineering, physics, or math who maintain a 3.5 GPA. And not fake engineering like “engineering tech” or fake astrophysics like “astronomy”. Real engineering. Real physics.

Okay, that about does it. Since I’ve solved all of those problems, I guess I’ll go back to work.

Take a sick day? I ain’t got time to bleed.

Caste Over Competence: Globalism Is Economic Suicide

“India’s a black hole.” – World War Z

How many Indians does it take to change a lightbulb? Sixteen. Fourteen to argue about whose responsibility it is, one to explain that lightbulbs are better in India and invented by Indians, and one to call the power plant to tell it to reboot because it must be a software issue. (all memes “as-found”)

Picture a world where kids in Bangladesh sew soccer balls for pennies (whatever a penny was), and some goatherder in Albania is working at a factory cranking out VCRs. VCRs, like it’s 1985 and I’m renting Back to the Future from Blockbuster®. I kid. Albania doesn’t even have electricity yet.

But that’s the flavor of globalism’s siren song that leads economies to doom: anything can be made anywhere, as long as the price is dirt cheap. I’ve heard the refrain, even in the comments here: “If you complain about competing against Albaniaks and Bangladeshites, well, you’re a commie that doesn’t believe in capitalism.”

If the goal of capitalism was to serve itself, well, then yes. It’s a battle of all against all, and whoever can outbreed the next country to lower the cost of (spins wheel) designer purses should make them.

I mean, it sounds great for your wallet, right?

Wrong. This is a strategy for hollowing out the West’s economy, stripping our skills, and handing our jobs to foreigners who don’t play by our rules at all, transforming our country into Albania on the Atlantic. Globalism is not just bad economics, it’s a betrayal of the West. And politicians love it.

But The Simpsons killed off Apu . . . maybe he wanted a raise?

Isn’t it strange that no matter how many times we vote “No, we don’t want any more aliens, illegal or not” that they nod their heads and bring them in? Is it any stranger that no matter how many times we vote, “No, we don’t want our factories shipped to places that don’t use vowels,” that our factories are shipped to places that haven’t yet invented vowels?

It’s a betrayal of the West

Let’s break it down. Globalism turns labor into a commodity, like trading baseball cards, except the cards are my job, my skills, and my family’s (and country’s) future. It’s a race to the lowest cost. Why pay an American $30 an hour when a kid in Swaziland (Swaziland still exists, right?) works for a handful or USAID® rice a day?

Why build a factory in Ohio when Ceylon’s got sweatshops begging for your blueprints? The GloboLeft (and, let’s be fair, the RINOs, too) cheer this as “progress,” but it’s a death spiral. Here’s how it plays out, step by step, until the West’s economy is a husk.

Thankfully all the Indians in Canada are very good with hand-held electronics. Tractor-trailers? Not so much.

The Stages of Economic Suicide

Design machines, build machines that make stuff, and make stuff: This is the golden age—think 1950s America. We designed cars, built the factories to make cars, and made cars. America flourished. Families thrived. Grandpa’s lunchpail as he went to work the railroad that shipped those cars meant something. Skills stayed home, and so did the wealth.
Design and make machines that make stuff: By the 80s, we’re still designing and building the machines, but the stuff’s starting to come from Japan and Taiwan as they focus on quality and crack the United States market. We’re losing the “make stuff” part, but hey, at least we’ve got Wall Street.
Design machines to sell to people who make stuff: Now we’re just selling blueprints. China’s got the factories to make iPhones® we’ve got the patents for the iPhones©. The know-how’s slipping—designing isn’t building. People don’t learn to weld by drawing a weld on paper.
Buy stuff made by other people from machines you designed: Welcome to the 2000s. Now we’re just selling blueprints. China’s got the factories to make iPhones® we’ve got the patents for the iPhones©. The know-how is now slipping—designing isn’t building. People don’t learn to weld by drawing a weld on paper. Our skills erode. No one in Ohio knows how to make a microchip anymore. The muscle memory of manufacturing? Gone. Microchips? They struggle with Pringles™.
Buy stuff made and designed by other people: The endgame. Now we become a country of consumers now, buying Chinese drones. All that’s left are knowledge jobs (coding, engineering), service jobs (baristas, Uber), and jobs that can’t be exported (plumbers, cops, construction). But wait—why not outsource the knowledge jobs too?

This is where globalism’s knife cuts deepest. The West’s economy is hollowed out, with a Starbucks® in the lobby of the Citibank™ that’s in a bigger Starbucks®. Oh, and Amazon warehouses.

Manufacturing’s gone, and with it, the skills that built manufacturing in the first place. And then? The GloboLeftElite says: “Hey, let’s import foreigners for the knowledge jobs too!” Enter the H-1B visa, and the West’s last stronghold starts to crumble. To be clear, the Donald and the Musk both love those H-1B visas, too.

Here’s the dirty truth: foreigners don’t like us. They don’t think like us. They don’t value the same things we do. In some cases the only thing we have in common is that we both consume oxygen.

Take India. Please.

I bet the driver felt enriched by the diversity.

India is the poster child for H-1B tech workers. Their culture rewards “cleverness”. So does ours, but the definition is very different. To an Indian, “cleverness” is: lying, cheating, and deception.

To be clear, these are all fair game under their religious and cultural framework. Don’t take my word for it: a 2019 report estimated 30% of tech resumes from India include fake degrees or inflated credentials. India ranks 93 out of 180 on Transparency International’s 2024 Corruption Index. Nepotism and bribery are practically Olympic® sports for India, which is good because despite being a nation of 1.4 billion people, their only Olympic© was a bronze in Yahtzee™.

But hey, don’t take my word for it.

Then there’s the caste system. It’s not just history from some movie filled with short, weak brown people who can’t quite speak English and fight with women over the five-pound barbells. No. The caste system is alive, even in Silicon Valley. Indian managers on H-1B visas often hire their own: same caste, same village, same cousin. I think the CEO of Microsoft™ is the uncle of half the company.

Merit?

Nope, it’s about loyalty to the clan. A 2021 study found 90% of Indian-led tech firms in the U.S. had Indian-majority staff, despite only 20% of H-1B visas going to Indians. Nepotism is their game, and it locks Americans out of jobs in their own country.

I bet they think that’s what they call clever, but it’s escaped scrutiny because it is what the GloboLeft calls this “diversity”.

Globalism’s promise is cheap stuff, which sounds nice until you’re unemployed because an Indian manager hired his brother-in-law over you. The West’s economy was built on trust and competence, not the caste and the scam. Outsourcing knowledge jobs to cultures that don’t share our values is like handing your house keys to a guy who thinks picking locks is a personality trait.

Why let this happen? Because the GloboLeft and their Chamber of Commerce Republican buddies love it. Cheap labor means cheap goods means more profit this quarter and damn the country.

But it’s clear: we can’t build wealth by outsourcing our future to foreigners who don’t like us and think our rules are stupid and weak. To be clear: the elites don’t care—they’re too busy cashing checks to care and hoping that TEMU® will sell a quality yacht soon.

This isn’t just economics; it is the destiny of a people.

The West thrived because we valued competence. Again, economic systems aren’t the goal. The goal is the well being of the people in a country. I mean, even the Albanians could read this post and agree.

I mean, they’d read it if they had electricity.

The West’s Forgotten Victory: Why They Hate Vienna

“What’ll we drink to? Let’s drink to victory!” – LOTR, The Return of the King

Did the Ottoman Empire export sultan pepper?

One of the things I’ve learned about history is that they skip all of the really good parts. I recall my time as a leader in that well known paramilitary organization, Boy Scouting® (back when they were boys and they were doing scouting). On occasion the boys would mention some historical event, and I’d go into more detail: the Battle of Britain, the Revolutionary War, heck, even the Romans.

We’d talk through history. Then, when the subject was done, invariably one of the scouts would say, “Man, that’s interesting! Why don’t they teach that in school?”

Well, because you’re watching Frozen or Shrek instead so your teacher can sleep of a hangover and your textbooks prefer pronouns to Patton.

Who knew that campfire coffee mixed so well with history?

What do you get when you cross a polar bear and a seal? A polar bear.

The nice thing is that there are still subjects that I learn about. Namely, 9/11.

Oh, this isn’t the story of that 9/11. This is the story of September 11, 1683. And I believe that it’s a story that the muslim world has yet to get over.

It’s September 11, 1683.

Not a date I learned in school, but it should have been. In the history of the Western world, it isn’t even that far back. Isaac Newton was busy figuring out the delicate ballet of the spheres in the heavens, and Oliver Cromwell’s head was still busy rotting on a pike in London.

But this is in Vienna, the heart of the Holy Roman Empire

Vienna on this date is surrounded by 300,000 Ottoman Turks. Think illegal aliens but with scimitars and an even more unintelligible language without any Juan being able to understand it.

My great-grandfather was a wigmaker, so now I have an antique family hairloom.

Vienna is down to 15,000 defenders. They’re starving and outnumbered 20-to-1, so why not just give in? The Turks are promising they’ll be treated well. Thankfully, the Turks had tried this line with another city in Austria that actually did surrender. The Turks had laid siege to the town of Perchtoldsdorf (gesundheit), and promised all the inhabitants would be spared and that the city would not be sacked.

When they surrendered, the city was sacked and the vast majority of inhabitants were killed or enslaved. That’s good, because now the people at Vienna knew exactly what sort of devil they were dealing with.

What sort of devil was it? It was the Ottomans, led by Kara Mustafa, who are determined to own Europe, turning cathedrals into mosques, and making the West kneel to the Turks and to their god.

I’ve heard that the Council for American-Islamic Relations says there is no room for violent extremists within American mosques. They did announce they have a waiting list, however.

Sound familiar? It’s the kind of existential threat the GloboLeft pretends never existed, because “white culture” is always the bad guy in their revisionist fairy tales. In looking at European history, this was a Very Big Deal, and yet it’s glossed over or (in my case) never even mentioned in class. I think that it’s because the story didn’t end the way the anti-Western Civilization establishment that had taken control of education wanted it to end.

The defenders didn’t yield even a square inch (3.3 millicamels) of the city of Vienna. Instead they held the walls through two months of hell. Disease, cannon fire, Ottoman sappers blowing tunnels under the city. They went through summer, and now were hungry, and they were praying for a miracle.

Enter the relief force arriving on September 11^th. 47,000 Germans and Austrians with 20,000 or 30,000 Poles. Most famously, King John III Sobieski of Poland, leading the Poles, including the Winged Hussars. The Winged Hussars were an insane calvary force comprised of big, husky Poles on huge horses, wearing lion and tiger pelts over their armor with huge eagle wings and 19-foot-long lances, four pistols each, swords and war hammers.

To be clear, this is exactly what I would have drawn when I was six.

Before the attack, the Vizier of the Ottomans heard the thud of the Polish war drums. “I don’t like the sound of that.” The Poles responded, “Oh, he’s not our regular drummer.”

On September 12, Sobieski’s cavalry charges down Kahlenberg Hill, breaking the Ottoman lines like a velociraptor in a room full of puppies. By nightfall, the Turks had abandoned everything. Everything. The were trying to get back to Istanbul before it could be re-named Constantinople. are running, leaving 15,000 dead and the Ottoman Empire’s dreams in the dust with the single largest military defeat in their history to date.

Sobieski’s letter home after the battle is amazing, and recommended reading (LINK).

Vienna is saved.

Europe is saved.

The West lives to fight another day.

The Siege of Vienna wasn’t just a win: it was a philosophical line in the sand. Faith fueled those defenders. Faith in God, in their people, in the idea that the West was worth saving. It’s in the first lines in Sobieski’s letter to his wife:

How Praised be our Lord God forever for granting our nation such a victory and such glory as was never heard of in all times past!

Contrast that with despair, the kind the GloboLeft peddles today: “Western culture’s evil, dismantle it because it is worse than (whatever their pet culture is today).”

I heard that Mozart is in his grave, de-composing.

Vienna’s men didn’t negotiate with Kara Mustafa; they fought. More than that, they chose to fight there. They believed in something bigger than themselves: their family, their faith, and their civilization. That’s the code that built the West, from Athens to Rome to Vienna.

The GloboLeft hates this story. They want history rewritten. Sobieski’s a “colonizer,” the Hussars are “problematic.” They’d have you believe the Ottomans were just misunderstood diversity consultants.

Hollywood™ is no help in 2025, obviously: they churn out preachers of pronouns, not legends with lances. The 1683 defenders didn’t care about your feelings; they cared about survival. That’s the difference between faith and despair, valor and cowardice. They want us to forget Vienna because it proves the West’s worth fighting for. The Siege of Vienna shows what happens when men believe in something and act.

History rhymes, and because it does Vienna is a warning and I think there is no mistake in the choice of the date for the attack on the Twin Towers, they’re still stinging from the defeat. The defenders weren’t perfect. Some were drunks, some mercenaries, but they stood together. And the relief force had a clear vision of what they were fighting for. Back to John III’s letter:

There is a huge pile of captured flags and tents; in short, the enemy has departed with nothing whatever but his life. Let Christendom rejoice and thank the Lord our God that he has not permitted the heathen to hold us up to scorn and derision and to ask, “Where, now, is your God?”

So next September 11, remember what happened on September 12.

One Page At A Time

“Then I shall die as one of them!” – LOTR, The Two Towers

I never trust what a minotaur says. Half of it is always bull.

It’s cold outside. I can see that in how crisp and clear the air is. The big picture window in the cabin up on Wilder Mountain lets my young eyes see a mile, looking for the headlights on a dim winter morning.

The bus rounds the corner, and I head off. Burt, the driver, is rarely off on time by more than a minute or two. I’m the farthest kid out, and he starts rounding up the school kids with me.

“Hi Burt!”

“Morning, John.”

Since I’m in middle school, and I’m the first on, I tromp my winter boots all way to the back of the bus. That’s where the cool kids sit. I remember the first day I decided to sit back here. Since I was the first on, there was no one to stop me, so I decided to break the norm of the past few years and just sit there.

I was in sixth grade, and the high school freshman started to object when he got on. He didn’t finish the sentence. If he would have asked me to move, my answer would have been short.

“Make me.”

I didn’t have to. Even in sixth grade, I was bigger than him.

But I lived so far out that most of the time, I had the entire back of the bus to myself.

So instead of a long, boring bus ride, I decided I’d do something else. Like take a trip to Mordor. Or fight bugs with Johnny Rico. Or figure the best way to ambush a troop of Sardaukar. Or take a trip to Boulder after Captain Trips paid a visit.

One group of web developers likes finding bugs in their work: spiders.

The bus isn’t a ride, it’s a journey through the past that never was and the future that never will be. It was, metaphorically, my campfire, and these books were the ways that storytellers of my people could share the legends that shape humanity.

In part, these are the legends that shape me, just like our ancestors learned valor and cowardice from tales told under starlit skies in long-ago Sparta and Denmark and Scotland and Rome.

Stories aren’t just entertainment. They are the code that programmed humanity and fueled the creation of Western Civilization. Warriors heard of Achilles’ courage and the hubris of Icarus, learning to strive for glory and wear a parachute if they were going to fly too close to the Sun.

Is a monk with wings an air friar?

Kids grew up on fables of clever foxes and lazy hares, etching lessons of wit and work into their bones. These weren’t bedtime stories: they were survival guides and cultural norms, showcasing the best of what we could be and the worst that we should avoid at all costs. Both lessons are useful.

My bus ride was no different. Tolkien’s Christian valor, never naming Christ but screaming His Truths three different ways through Frodo, Aragorn, and Gandalf lit a fire in me. Heinlein’s musings on duty versus freedom made me question what I owed my community, and what it owed me. Those pages were my elders, whispering truths no teacher could match, even though they were sometimes quite contradictory.

Stories aren’t just ink on paper, they’re the software that nourishes our souls. Throughout history, they’ve been the mirror showing us who we are, who we could be, who we should avoid being, and what the journeys of the hero really meant.

The Greeks had Odysseus, outsmarting cyclopes to get home to his family valor in action, and the aforementioned Icarus, flying too high and crashing, a warning against arrogance. Norse kids heard of Thor’s hammer, inspiring strength, but also Loki’s betrayal, a caution against deceit. But you should ignore that, because I’ve heard from the news media that there is no white culture.

I would never download a copy of Homer’s Iliad. I hear it’s full of Trojans.

These archetypes stuck because they’re shades of the universal Truth: every boy wants to grow up to be the man who is a hero, not the coward who folds. My bus ride library was no campfire, but it did the same job. Tolkien taught me sacrifice, Frodo carrying the One Ring, knowing it’d break him, but doing it anyway. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers hit me with duty: you don’t get a vote unless you’re willing to bleed for it because sooner or later someone will.

Harsh? Sure. But it made me think, heroes sometimes falter, freedom isn’t free, and communities aren’t built by loners.

Even Dune’s Paul Atreides, wrestling with destiny and betrayal, showed me the weight of leadership. These weren’t just stories; they were blueprints for being a man, not a drone.

The GloboLeft hates this. They want stories that flatten everything into DEI dogma. No heroes, no villains, just victims and oppressors, any woman being equal in combat to the strongest man.

They’d rewrite Tolkien so Frodo’s a non-binary climate activist, and Heinlein’s troopers would be whining about microaggressions and wanting to use Zoom™ instead of a dropship. You can see it in the box office: their stories don’t inspire; they control exist as humiliation exercises. Look at modern Hollywood: every film is a lecture, not a legend. No wonder kids scroll InstaChat® instead of reading. They’re starved for tales that stir the soul, not the HR manual and they haven’t even been given the words to tell us this – the video game is as close as they come to the myths that make a culture.

Does Beowulf get two thumbs up? Not from Grendel.

Stories work because they show us the extremes, the valor to chase, the cowardice to shun. Take Beowulf: he faced Grendel head-on, no excuses. I read that one in high school, and loved it. I thought, “This is amazing. Our ancestors were heavy metal badasses two thousand years before electric guitars were a thing.”

Beowulf is the guy you want to be, not the prol cowering in the mead hall.

My bus ride heroes were no different. Tolkien’s Aragorn didn’t negotiate with orcs. He killed them.

Heinlein’s Johnnie Rico in Starship Troopers learned civic duty the hard way, bugs don’t care about your feelings, and when they kill your mother, well, they’ve sent a message that you simply must respond to.

Stand up, protect your own, don’t bend.

I guess they use Mordor oil.

From what I’ve seen, GenZ didn’t take too many bus rides with Tolkien, they’ve got TikGram™. Schools push “diversity” over duty, “equity” over excellence. The campfire’s gone, replaced by screens spewing shadows, not legends.

To be clear, the GloboLeft wants it that way. But stories still matter, and, I think, you can see Gen Z starting to rise, especially among the boys. And that’s important: they’re how we pass on the code.

Tell the kids stories. Real stories, not Modern Disney©. Make them read 1984, and Tolkien. And Beowulf.

Every tale’s a seed, planting valor and weeding out cowardice, because at some point every man needs to be able to say the two most important words a man can say:

“Make me.”

We Already Know The Solutions, We Only Lack The Will

“Because I saved your whatever-it-is that was safely hidden before you dropped a Hellfire missile on it.” – The Mummy (2017)

Google™ is female. It won’t even let me finish a sentence without making suggestions.

I’m stuck in a conference room that smells like stale donuts and broken dreams.

Okay, that sounds like a detective novel that ends up with the hot dame double-crossing the private dick over the insurance money and a bottle of bourbon, but that’s not this post. Really, it’s just a business meeting and the meeting is done. But since everybody in the building knows each other, the meeting is in the lingering phase where we’re solving all the problems of the world.

Apropos of nothing, I say, “You know, 37% of the elderly have been taken advantage of by foreign scammers.” I have no idea if this is true, but it’s very specific. I pause. “That means that there are 63% who are still available to be scammed, so if we’re not millionaires, it’s our own fault.”

How did we clear bingo parlors in North Vietnam? B-52.

The reality though, really does piss me off. Americans lost $12.5 billion in 2024. These aren’t just Nigerian princes with emails littered with the comical spelling errors, no they are also slick Mumbai call centers with intense marketing campaigns. I had heard an estimate (that I can’t find) indicating that upwards of 80,000 Indians worked in these call centers, all laughing as they entice American grandmas to go to Target™ to get gift cards.

It actually does make me quite mad.

I lean forward, fed up.

“The solution is and always has been dead simple. The NSA has these call centers mapped down to their curry orders and can tell you the last time Gupta changed his underwear. They know where they are. Trump could launch a BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missile carrying 1,000 pounds of high explosive tomorrow into a call center. Turn it into rubble. Get on TV and say, ‘Another missile is on the way. Shut down the scam call centers.’

“When they don’t, another missile hits. Trump gets back on the TV. ‘Another one tomorrow. And the day after? We shut India off of the Internet and satellite communications. We mine the harbors. Your choice.’ The world would be stunned. The calls would stop.”

One of my friends said, “Well, that escalated quickly.”

No, it didn’t. It was and is the obvious solution. It could stop tomorrow if someone had the spine.

I hate it when my friend tells me about going to chiropractic school. Too much backstory.

Since Trump took office, he’s shown what spine looks like (with the exception of the Epstein papers). His border policies, travel bans, and tariffs weren’t just talk he did what he promised and got a rare federal budget surplus in June due to them. This is unlike every other empty suit before him who campaigned on “tough on (drugs, crime, illegals)” then promptly developed amnesia on day one in the Oval Office.

Our problems: drugs, terror, illegals, scams, and more all have simple fixes. The only thing missing is the will to implement the solution.

We’ve got a laundry list of messes, and the solutions are the first thing you’d think of if you weren’t a spineless bureaucrat.

Drug Trafficking: Cartels pump fentanyl across the border, killing 100,000 Americans yearly.

Solution: Deploy the military to the border, treat cartels as enemy combatants. Drone strikes with AGM-114 Hellfire missiles slamming into stash houses or cartel overlord’s haciendas, streamed live by the White House at the top of each and every hour for a week, and I imagine that getting drugs across the border will be the least of the concern of what remains of the cartels.

Repeat as necessary.

Remember, for an orphan, any back of chips is “family sized”.

Terrorism: A stronger immigration screening policy and 9/11 would never have occurred.

Solution: Denaturalize radical aliens and ship them home. Make Somalians in Minnesota Somalians in Somalia again, and then sink any boat leaving Somali. Deport or detain without apology.

Illegal Aliens: Millions of illegals cost taxpayers $150 billion annually—schools, hospitals, welfare. Their foreign culture and zero desire to assimilate pushes the country onto the path of Civil War.

Solution: Arrest the CEO of any company employing illegals. Sentence for the C-Suite? A year for each illegal employed. Create Wilder’s Square Mile: a square mile, fenced camp on the border with Mexico. Illegals found will be dropped off there until processed, like an AirBNB® with no Wi-Fi. The border with Mexico is open, so they can leave if they want to. If the illegals don’t leave? Seize all of their assets – bank accounts, sneakers, cars, houses, anything they own is forfeit. End sanctuary cities with federal troops. One mayor in custody for insurrection, others comply.

I opened a sanctuary for large marine mammals: Habitat for Huge Manatees.

Is all of this Constitutional?

Well, most of it, probably. Thomas Jefferson set the precedent in 1801. Barbary Pirates, Muslim slavers and pirates from North Africa raided U.S. ships, enslaved sailors, and demanded tribute from our new nation. Jefferson, fresh in office, said “Enough, bitches.” Or something like that. But he had a secret weapon: Article II, Section 2 makes the president commander-in-chief to protect American interests.

Jefferson sent the USS Constitution to blast Tripoli’s ports, no Congress needed, and the Marines get a line in their song. By 1805, the pirates begged for peace, “Please, just don’t send more of those Marines!”

All of the above echo Jefferson: act fast, hit hard, protect the Actual Americans. The Constitution’s fine with it; only spineless elites disagree.

Why then, do these problems persist?

Here’s the dirty secret: the elites don’t really want to solve these problems. The solutions aren’t hard, literally your first instinct, the first thing you think of is the thing that will work.

Drugs? Blow up a cartel. Terror? Sink a boat. Illegals? Deport ‘em, jail anyone who employs them. Scams? Missiles to Mumbai.

So, why aren’t these problems solved? In some cases, it’s because politicians are gutless and don’t want to anger India. I don’t care much about what India thinks, but that’s another post.

In other cases, there’s a collusion of the darkest motives of our political system. Illegals? The Chamber of Commerce crowd wants cheap labor to pluck chickens and make beds, wanting the TradRight to not take action. The GloboLeft love that the illegals swarm to states that vote Blue, and increase the number of members of Congress that come from, say, California.

My friend’s ex-wife asked if she could stay with him because she’s afraid because a stalker has been coming to her house. She’s going to save him quite a bit in gas money.

The dame walks into my office – she’s got a pair of thirty-eights, and a pistol, too. I could smell perfume that cost more than I made in a month as she walked in.

“John Wilder, I hear you’re a P.I. who . . . solves problems.”

“I sure am, sweetheart.”

I mean, I’ve found that you can solve almost any problem in the world with only three BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missile carrying 1,000 pounds of high explosive.

The Left’s Blue Cluster Cult: Escaping The Shadow Religion, Pants Optional

“When I came up here for my interview, it was as though I’d been here before.” – The Shining

Today I dreamed of a paint color that doesn’t exist, but I guess it was just a pigment of my imagination.

The setting: back in 2017, I decided to look about for a new job. I applied at a few places, and one was particularly interesting – this one used all of the skills I’d been working on for decades, but in an entirely different economic sector. Think: building big space infrastructure.

The email came back. They were interested. They asked me to do an interview. “Sure!” I responded. But this was before the days of Zoom™ – this was a pre-recorded video interview, not the kind where you shake hands and size up the guy across the desk to see if he likes fart jokes, too.

No, in this case, I’m sitting in my home office, staring into my webcam like it’s a one-eyed cyclops judging my soul. “This is Skynet®, prepare responses, Human Number 43.” I’m talking to a computer.

A series of questions come up, written, on the screen. I can read, so I know I’ve got that in the bag! But, again, no human, no banter, just me and a screen in a digital void. It’s the most dehumanizing interview I’ve ever had, like auditioning for a role in The Matrix as The Matrix®.

The first nine questions? Cake. Technical stuff—group organization, technical development and implementation, the kind of problems I’ve been solving since Y2K was a thing.

I’m crushing it, feeling like a much taller Tony Stark, but without the goatee and smug. Then, question ten hits like a woke freight train: “Explain your thoughts on diversity.”

That’s it. No context, no follow-up, just a landmine characters on the screen.

I know what I’m supposed to do. I’m supposed to get on my belly to worship at altar of DEI or get booted as a candidate faster than Jeff Epstein’s video surveillance record.

Plato, that old Greek with a beard longer than a Grateful Dead® solo, had a story about a cave. Prisoners chained inside the cave mistook shadows on the wall for reality, they’d even fight to stay inside, not believing anything else could be true.

In 2025, the cave is a Zoom® call, and the shadows are the GloboLeft’s sacred cows.

A 2023 study from the British Journal of Social Psychology lays it bare: the GloboLeft’s opinions huddle in a tiny blue cluster, like hipsters at a kale convention, agreeing on everything from pronouns to net-zero. That’s the lead meme. There is an amazing congruence of thought. The GloboLeft has made the comment that the TradRight has “only one joke” but that’s based on the GloboLeft only having one thought, like a Reddit™ thread with one upvote.

The TradRight’s red cluster? It’s a sprawling mess: libertarians yelling about gold and wanting to lower the age of consent, preppers stacking ammo and buckets of wheat, Boomer grandmas quoting Thomas Sowell and Pat Buchanan. You want diversity?

This is diversity.

But I guess diversity goes only one way.

The Left is so far from reality, their ideology has become a religion, and their symbolic thing they call “diversity” is their holy grail. The problem is that it isn’t real diversity. Real diversity is a country called Japan filled with, wait for it, Japanese. Real diversity is China, you might spot a pattern here, filled with Chinese. Real diversity is America . . . filled with heritage Americans.

That provides a world filled with different people, some coming up with different ideas, some trying experimental cultures that might prove to create innovation that all men might, in time, embrace. Not you, India. Sit down.

Diversity for them is a symbol. It is also a symbol they worship over truth.

Let’s unpack how I navigated this cave and why you should ditch it, too.

The soulless interview, void of humanity, wasn’t a conversation; it was a ritual where they tried to find people who were already following their pattern of thought. The webcam was supposed to be my confessional, the HR diva asking the question the priestess, and “diversity” the sacrament.

No human face, no handshake: just a screen projecting shadows of GloboLeft dogma. It’s Plato’s Cave, but with worse lighting and a “connection unstable” warning. The GlobLeft’s obsession with “diversity” isn’t about different ideas; it’s about checking boxes to signal the same virtues they have.

You know, if we just fill in the entrance . . .

They’re so divorced from reality, they think a rainbow org chart solves world hunger. The 2023 study by the Brits is a flashlight into the depths of the cave where only one idea is true. The GloboLeft’s blue cluster is tight. Everyone nods in lockstep on gender, race, climate, because they’re repeating the same talking memos.

Say “biology matters to life outcomes” or “maybe fossil fuels aren’t evil,” or “men can never become women” and you’re excommunicated.

The TradRight’s red cluster? It’s a rollicking bar fight of ideas, just like the comments section here. Bitcoin bros vs. Bible-thumpers, all welcome as long as you bring your own beer. The study’s heatmap shows the Left’s a pinprick of conformity; the Right’s a supernova of debate. Guess which one’s closer to reality?

The reality gap, in action.

The GloboLeft’s ideology is their new religion, minus the hope or miracles but with mandatory Pride Month. No God, no Truth, no Beauty, and no Good. Those require judgement, and we all know that every good GloboLeftist knows that 400 pound hamplanet women are just as attractive as supermodels because Beauty isn’t real and gravity and mirrors are liars.

GloboLeftists must believe this, so that is what GloboLeftism is.

“Diversity” means Western Culture bad, not diverse thoughts. They’ll hire a trans astrophysicist over a straight white guy with a Nobel, then call it progress. An Indian gets hired and only hires other Indians from his own caste? It’s just his culture. A white guy does it? It’s racism.

GloboLeftists must believe this, so that is what GloboLeftism is.

Climate hysteria’s another psalm: they swear the planet’s doomed unless we ban gas stoves, ignoring any data that says we’re fine. Even St. Greta the Now Above The Age of Consent has said it: it’s not about the climate – it’s about redistribution of wealth.

GloboLeftists must believe this, so that is what GloboLeftism is.

Equity? It’s equality’s evil twin, demanding equal misery over equal shots. Everyone must be miserably poor.

GloboLeftists must believe this, so that is what GloboLeftism is.

Plato’s shadows were puppets; the Left’s are PowerPoint® slides with pronouns.

How the GloboLeft see the political spectrum.

Back to the interview.

I’m staring at my webcam, looking at the LED asking me . . . “Explain your thoughts on diversity.” It’s a gotcha, like asking a Christian to swear allegiance to Garfield® as his lord and lasagna savior. I knew the right script, the sacrament. “Diversity’s our strength, inclusion’s my passion, blah, blah, blah.” I’m not built that way. I lean into the mic and say, “When it comes to solving a technical problem, a diversity of viewpoints is essential to getting the right and true answer.”

Honest, direct, like a right hook. Different perspectives—engineers, coders, old-school gearheads, mechanics who fix stuff and the guys who have to run it collide to find truth, not to check boxes.

Do you see what I see?

I tell my brother, John Wilder (yeah, our parents didn’t believe in naming diversity), an HR drone with a clipboard and a heart of compliance about the interview. He shaked his head. “That wasn’t what they were looking for.”

No kidding, Wilderbro. They wanted a hymn to DEI, not a nod to reality. My answer was too red-cluster—too focused on Truth over their false sacrament.

The GlobLeft’s blue cluster doesn’t want diverse thoughts; they want diverse faces parroting the same gospel and then intermarrying to create a world of exactly zero genetic diversity.

Plato’s prisoner saw sunlight and realized the shadows were fake. My sunlight that day was the question exposing the Cave’s lie.

I didn’t get a callback. Shocker.

I won, though. I don’t know everything, but I could certainly spot these as false shadows. Besides, the last laugh was on them. During the interview? No pants.

That’s just how I roll, yo.

Illegal Aliens Versus Actual Americans: The Stakes Of The $33T Parasite Party

“And on the unjust enrichment charge, Richard will agree to pay Hooli for the phone charger.” – Silicon Valley

Where do Orcs go to school? Uruk-Hai. (meme as found)

Enrichment. I mean, who doesn’t feel that when they think about illegal alien invaders, since they’re like Orcs crashing a Hobbit© potluck? On thinking about them, I came up with what I thought was a very interesting idea. What if illegal aliens were the key to . . . a painless recession that helped all the Actual Americans? I mean, by leaving.

Let’s look at the results of kicking illegals out or not having them show up in the first place:

Lowered home prices. Up to 40 million illegals living in the United States, millions of whom showed up in the last few years puts pressure on home prices. Sure, some illegals are helping to build homes, but they’re consuming more than they create. If the invaders left that lowers demand for the existing home stock. Sure, some markets might continue to be unaffordable, but I don’t want to live there. The result? Young Actual Americans would be more able to afford homes.
Crime would go down. Yes, I’ve heard the argument that illegals commit fewer crimes than Actual Americans, but any crime they commit is one that won’t happen if they’re not here. Since we already have all the recipes, you can still go and get a burrito. We’ll keep the burritos, you take the banditos.
Wages increase. Since the early 1970s, the share of wages for the average worker when compared to corporate profits has plummeted. Why? We offshored manufacturing because someone asked, “Hey, wouldn’t it be a good idea if we imported everything and allowed foreigners decades to figure out how to optimize manufacturing?” But beyond that, we imported hordes of illegal and legal aliens for the jobs that remained because someone asked, “Hey, wouldn’t it be a good idea to import tons of people who can’t complain about hours or conditions?”
Prices for (some) goods and services may go down. Why? Fewer people competing for those goods and services. If profits are high and demand decreases, prices fall. Profits are at an all time high. You do the math.
Pressure for more infrastructure decreases. 40 million more people means millions of miles or roads, sewers, water lines, curbs, and schools. It’s 10% infrastructure for the rest of us . . . for free!

Easiest way to tell if a high school student is on drugs: ask him what a gram is. See! The metric system is useful for something.

Schools have more resources. Speaking of schools, not only does the teacher/pupil ratio get better, but fewer services are required since illegal aliens need enhanced services due to language and “special needs” issues.
Government growth is dropped. Illegals LOVE government doing things for them and always clamor for more. And they get more. GloboLeftElite politicians also LOVE giving illegals benefits that Actual Americans don’t qualify for. Without illegals, this slows government growth.
Lower fraud. SNAP (federal Supplemental Nutrition giveaways) wouldn’t be used to pack the fridges of half of the food trucks in Los Angeles. More food would be available for purchase, and prices would go . . . down.
Lower health care costs. Illegals use the emergency room as their go-to medical facility, clogging it up for colds that an Actual American would go to a doctor for, and paying nothing. Well, they pay nothing. You and I foot the bill for them because they have zero health insurance (except for government handouts), so why not go to the emergency room for a Tylenol®?
Higher costs for strawberries and lettuce. A few labor-intensive farm products will increase in price. Be honest, though: if strawberries doubled in cost you wouldn’t care. Especially not if your taxes and inflation overall went down.
Farm profits would go down. This would hurt farmers. But it would hurt big corporate farmers the most. Maybe they’d have to pay a market wage without illegals pressuring it down.
Lower remittances going abroad. Over $70 billion in wealth is shipped out to foreign countries in remittances. This could be kept at home with Actual Americans using it to buy something they liked instead. Like PEZ®.

Finally, I saved the crown jewel for last:

Higher economic growth.

Well, that might be a lie. Economic growth would actually decrease for the first year or so. That’s the textbook definition for a recession: growth decreasing for two business quarters. And, I’m okay with that, because growth can be good or bad.

Said differently: all growth is not good, and all contractions aren’t bad.

I built a model of Mt. Everest. My friend asked, “Is it to scale?” I had to break his heart when I told him it was just to look at.

What happens if the recession is caused by removing illegals? Let’s look at the numbers:

Since the vast majority of illegals are Hispanic, it just so happens that we have a good guess at the lifetime impact on the economy of a Hispanic person. It came in the form of a meme, but it’s footnoted. So, science. I guess.

Drumroll: in the early 2010s, someone did an estimate of the net lifetime contribution of a Latino. The answer was: -$588,000. Again, that’s over their lifetime. I imagine that illegals cost far, far more than the average Hispanic American. The average third-gen Hispanic American who was born into an English-speaking household from his legal birth and whose name was “Troy” rather than “Esteban” almost certainly is much more productive.

I mean, Troy probably took Spanish in high school and got a “C”.

But those are old numbers. Let’s update that $588,000 net cost to 2025 numbers.

Wow. It’s up to over $810,000 now for a lifetime cost. Assuming a lifespan of 50 years in the United States (illegals, remember) to suck up our resources, over that 50-year span, 40,000,000 illegals would suck up nearly $33 trillion.

If the definition of a parasite is an organism that pulls the life energy from another, then that fits the bill to describe this as economic parasitism.

I think there could be fewer illegals than 40 million, but it’s nearly certain their lifetime costs are higher than the $810,000 estimate, perhaps even double the costs of an Actual American Hispanic. So, let’s use those numbers. I think they’re conservative.

He’s lucky it wasn’t the Hawaiian Muslim food truck: Aloha Snack Bar. (meme as found)

Rough calculations shows that every million deported or averted would save Actual Americans $32 billion per year. Deport them all? A net savings for a family of four of $8,000. Each and every year for their entire lives.

You and your family are contributing about $2,000 EACH just for the luxury of having illegals in the United States, not counting house prices, health care costs, depressed wages, and a dozen other non-economic ways I could think of that illegals are making things worse for Actual Americans.

$2,000. Minimum. Each and every year. Could you use that for something? Like PEZ™?

Yes, illegals cause economic growth, because they cause economic activity. But all economic “growth” isn’t good, especially when that “growth” takes away from the wealth and prosperity of Actual Americans. If economic activity was all we needed, we could peg the gauge by just having Los Angeles illegal riots every night.

Imagine how rich we’d all get off of tearing it all down and rebuilding it every week!

Again, you could quibble with the numbers, and I’ll agree that a meme isn’t a peer-reviewed paper. But, what university in 2025 would support a professor pointing out that a significant portion of the population is making the country poorer just by breathing?

Thankfully, this isn’t a peer reviewed paper, since those are often created by an entirely different type of parasite, but I digress.

Could it be that we’re enriching ourselves to death? What I’ve written about here talks only about the financial ways in which illegals are screwing all the Actual Americans. Aliens, both illegal and legal, also put on intense cultural pressure. Remember, diversity is our weakness, and multicultural empires Balkanize in horrific ways based on that weakness. It’s like having a United Nations cage match, but in your backyard. More on that in a future post.

So, a recession brought about by illegals aliens going home is one I’ll happily look forward too. And their home countries should be glad to get them – I mean, won’t they feel enriched? Besides, I think it’s obvious that I’d never be nice to a parasite at one of my parties – I’m not a good host.

It Came From . . . Patriotism

“Freedom!” – Braveheart

“The most difficult thing about being humble is not being able to brag about it.” – George S. Patton

Housekeeping: We should be a go on podcast tomorrow night, though I’m on the fence on a Friday post, as I just might take the day off.

I’ll change things up a bit due to Fourth of July (or as it’s known in the metric world “Friday”), and have a slightly different take on films this month – patriotic films. In this, I don’t necessarily confine the patriots in question to entirely American patriots – I do allow some room for a couple of films that show patriotism from other cultures. These are in something of an order, but don’t put too much on that. Let’s just say the easiest to include on the list are first, and the ones that just barely made it are at the bottom.

I will say, I liked the way the A.I. posters turned out this time.

So, here are my top 10 patriotic movies:

No man could salute like Patton. At least, no human man.

Patton

George S. Patton knew he was going to be a general in the United States Army from when he was a child. He lived that life to become the enigma that George C. Scott portrayed perfectly on screen. Patton wanted glory, but also was personally filled with bravery and admired the men who displayed it. Patton was for an America ruled by Americans, and was willing to lead hundreds of thousands of men to capture 82,000 square miles (6.3 megaliters) of Europe and capturing nearly a million enemy soldiers.

No matter how he tried to retire, they kept dragging him back in.

The Patriot

How could I skip this movie? Well, I couldn’t. The United States wasn’t given to Americans, it was willed into existence by men such as the one played by St. Mel of Gibson in this film. Interestingly (to me at least), the main character is pulled into military service not because of his zeal to kick the British out of the colonies. Nope. His motivation is personal – his son being killed by a British officer untouchable by justice.

If he had been born in 1970, he’d have been William Wallace, Guardian of Scotland and Walmart® greeter.

Braveheart

I warned you that not all films would show strictly American patriotism, and this one chronicles the life of William Wallace, the Scottish rebel who fought against England to attempt to free Scotland. He failed to free Scotland, but it wasn’t long afterwards that Robert the Bruce did lead my ancestors against my other ancestors to win freedom. Braveheart clocks in at somewhere close to three hours, but doesn’t seem that long. A good film, and St. Mel again chews up the scenery.

Is that a French submarine surrendering?

Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

One of my favorite movies. A captain, very well played by Russell Crowe takes his ship on a journey to fight the French, who only surrendered once in this film. This line, about Lord Nelson tells the tale: “The second time… The second time he told me a story… about how someone offered him a boat cloak on a cold night. And he said no, he didn’t need it. That he was quite warm. His zeal for his king and country kept him warm. I know it sounds absurb, and were it from another man, you’d cry out “Oh, what pitiful stuff” and dismiss it as mere enthusiasm. But with Nelson… you felt your heart glow.”

The Soviets weren’t expecting what they got when they parachuted into Henson, Colorado.

Red Dawn

1984 was Reagan’s year. He had made it clear that the United States would stand toe-to-toe with the Soviet Union, and would win. At that point, the country was together much more so than now, and you can see it in the vote total Ronnie got for re-election. A movie like Red Dawn was a slam dunk – plucky American teenagers being insurgent guerillas against an invading multicultural force of commies. Huh – that was back when we could sense danger, I guess.

Well, I guess we know what they serve there now.

300

Submit? To you? Here? In Sparta? No. Because . . . This. Is. Sparta. Leonidas fought against all odds to contain the Persian horde from entering Greece because that’s patriotism. Did he die? Yes. Gloriously. So gloriously that he’ll be remembered in 10,000 years. I think that’s how long the A.I.’s memory cache will last.

I can hear Kenny Loggins now, singing about Maverick after he lost his pilot’s license, “I waited in the loading zone . . . “

Top Gun: Maverick

I found this a much better film than the original. I always thought the original was boy meets girl, but with fighter jets. Here? It’s all about the mission. And Tom Cruise flying that F-14 Tomcat one last time before Social Security kicks in.

“Houston, we seem to have two more problems.”

Apollo 13

Not all patriotic films have to do with war, and Apollo 13 is a good example. The movie is about Americans fighting to win the Space Race and get to the Moon. Oh, we did that already? NASA has made it boring? Well, let’s see how they do if their ship explodes while they’re the farthest away from Earth that anyone besides a few other Americans have been. Excellently plotted, filmed, and told by an ensemble cast of great actors led by Tom Hanks, it’s a movie I can just start watching from any point and enjoy.

Wonder how this would have gone if all the characters were played by Tom Cruise, like some old Peter Sellers movie?

Saving Private Ryan Cruise

This one was the last on my list. I’m not sure why. It does feature the everyman (Hanks) who sacrificed everything because that’s what the orders said to do. It features the shared burden of that sacrifice on those who survive. It’s stunningly filmed, and, though the story drags a bit in the middle, is tense. I think that the reason that it’s here is that it’s the film I’d simply be least likely to re-watch of all of these. YMMV.

If this was a top 10 list – it is one shy. I left room for one I missed or didn’t think about.

What did I miss? Other notable films that nearly made the list include: Midway, We Were Soldiers, The Green Berets, Gettysburg, and Gods and Generals. Gettysburg honestly had the best chance, but I would have had to watch it again, and the movie lasts about 74 hours, or two hours longer than the battle itself. I kid. It’s 271 minutes, or 27.1 metric hours.

Make Haiti Great Again: Send Haitians Back

“Promise me that you’ll never go to Haiti.” – Anchorman 2

Give an alien a fish, and you feed him for a day. Deport him, and you can keep all your fish.

I think that, before anyone is admitted to the United States – even to visit – that we evaluate their home country. If it is awful, they can’t come in. Ever.

The point is that if we allow a significant number of people from horrible places into the country, they’ll merely replicate that culture of failure right here. The United States isn’t a magical place with Magic Dirt (thanks, Vox Day for that term) that suddenly transforms a Haitian cannibal into a virtuous, upright American in an afternoon.

Or in a lifetime.

Trump’s administration just announced that the “temporary protected status” is ending for half a million Haitians in the United States and they’ll have to go, well, somewhere. It doesn’t have to be Haiti, but as the bartender says: “You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.”

The idea that importing almost five percent of the population of Haiti makes Haiti better or makes the United States better is laughable. If it were true, why not bring them all?

Okay, that would make Haiti better. The real reason for that is that the thing that makes Haiti bad isn’t its climate, location, or even history. The thing that really makes Haiti awful is the Haitians.

If I bring you breakfast in bed, just say “thanks” – that’s enough. Not, “Who are you?” and “How did you get into my house?”

The people leaving Haiti to try to leech of the United States are, probably, the very best Haitians. I know that’s not saying much, but it really is the cream of the crop that would be trying to get out. They won’t improve the United States in any way – the cream of the crop of Haiti is below the average American in every single measurable human attribute.

Yet, they are probably above the average Haitian in every single attribute as well. The elite of Haiti coming to the United States observably makes both places worse. The United States gets a population that’s fundamentally unsuited to live in a first world environment with first world expectations and with behavior compatible with, say, living in a suburb and not eating the neighbor’s pets.

Eating the pets that Americans won’t.

They have no skills that would be of value to the country that would outweigh their cost. Remember, someone has to pay for their food, housing, clothing, education, and medical care.

That someone who pays is you. And your children, who end up in a poorer world and a violent classroom peopled by people for whom society is a vague concept that doesn’t apply to them.

But these are the best Haiti has to offer. There are very few people in Haiti as it is that have the mental acumen to lead the nation – and stripping them of those people makes sure that Haiti will actually get worse. It’s a brain drain from a place where brains are in short supply.

And I don’t think any honest person could disagree with me.

I said “honest person”.

Yet they do. Any differences in human performance are explained away as racism. Sadly, if you tell a dumb person that the reason that they can’t achieve isn’t because they’re dumb, it’s because they’re being discriminated against, they’ll believe you.

Most dumb people don’t know that they’re dumb. To tell them they’re just as smart as everyone else is therefore one of the cruelest things you can do to a dumb person. Instead of there being no reason that the dumb person that can change leading to them being dumb, a lie about a vast conspiracy to keep them down is invented.

So, if the lie is about to be exposed, like when Trump called Haiti a “shithole”?

The GloboLeft must then double down on their lie. For instance, I have been told by Conan O’Brien and every other member of the GloboLeftElite that Haiti is a paradise. No need to make it better, because it’s already great. Oh, and you’re a hypocrite if you’re a Christian and don’t want all the Haitians coming here.

A GloboLeftist walks into a bar. “I’ll have a standard. Heck make it a double.”

Which is why other members of the GloboLeftElite then whine and complain that sending the best and brightest Haitians back to Haiti is sending them to certain death. And who would be responsible for making Haiti awful?

Haitians. But if we send them back, well, we’re talking about sending the top 5% of Haitians who might, with help, be able to turn that “paradise” into a place that Haitians might like to live in.

Oh, sure, you say, that hasn’t happened in the 233-odd years that Haiti has been a free and independent country, but I’m sure the Clinton Foundation™ provide enough guidance to get them on the right track. Why, of the USAID awards to Haiti, you might scoff and note that 2.2% of that money was spent in Haiti while 56.5% was spent in the D.C. Beltway (source – LINK).

I hear that GloboLeftists claim that when Trump donated to a charity for blind children that those kids never saw a dime.

But the Haitians have to go back. It’s time to make repatriations great again.

Next, let’s move on to Somalians and Ilhan Omar. Since Ilhan divorced her husband, does that mean they’re no longer brother and sister?

Greedflation And Burgers And Girls Drinking Beer

“And in Paris, you can buy a beer at McDonald’s®.” – Pulp Fiction

Interesting fact: women in Arabic cities like Paris don’t need car insurance. They’re already covered.

Greedflation.

It’s an ugly word for several reasons. The first reason it’s ugly is because I generally support the free market as the best tool for setting prices. You see that at gasoline stations regularly – no station that charges a quarter more for a gallon of gasoline will be able to sell much gasoline. The price for a commodity like gasoline, in a relatively free market, sets itself.

That’s nice, because the very price mechanism that sets the price also allows the gasoline to flow to the consumers that value it the most, which according to my research are groups of post-nuclear war barbarians who hang out in Australia.

I hear they’re filming the sequel on location in Los Angeles.

Some people don’t get this. I recall having extended conversations when I was in my twenties with an elderly gentleman about gasoline prices. He was upset because after some price shock, the gasoline prices all jumped $0.50 the next day.

“They didn’t pay that much for the gasoline!”

Well, no, they didn’t. But because the supply was thought to be limited, the gasoline was worth more. Besides, the merchant was going to have to refill that storage tank at a higher price, and nobody was going to buy his high-priced gas if he charged more than the market when the price invariably went down.

“Besides,” I asked, “If you had an ounce of gold that you bought for $50, would you sell it for that, or would you want the (then) current price of $500 an ounce?”

Of course he said he’d want the $500. But he still couldn’t understand why gas prices went up.

And I only got to take him on one walk.

I wanted to establish that, because I’m going to tear into the larger corporations for lying about prices. That’s greedflation.

An example of this would be McDonald’s®. I’ll pick on them because, like illegal aliens, they’re everywhere and more numerous than they should be at this stage in the economy. McDonald’s™ built its reputation on food that was fast, tasty, and inexpensive – a place a dad could take the kids for a quick treat on the way back from the zoo on a Saturday afternoon.

At least in Modern Mayberry, McDonald’s© has ceased to be fast, and inexpensive. McDonald’s® prices are so high that a “meal deal” costs the better part of the price of a pound of ribeye. To me, that’s not a deal, or at least not a good one.

The stripper said she was stripping in order to feed her kids, so why did she get mad when I tipped her in Cinnamon Toast Crunch™ coupons?

And these prices have pushed people away – McDonald’s™ insinuated that these price hikes were due mainly to inflation and blamed the franchise owners for the ultimate pricing.

The result?

McDonald’s® ended up with declining burger sales, but with record profits. In fact, between 2014 and 2024, their prices doubled. Most of the increase was before the pandemic and inflation. Everyone’s doing it, right? No, mainly McDonald’s® was McLovin’™ it.

The average increase in prices for other fast-food restaurants during that same time period was more in the 55%-ish percent, and more or less in a straight line. They were raising their prices much faster than inflation, but McDonald’s™ was leading the pack.

The result: A lot of “inflation” is just corporations adjusting prices to the point of maximizing their profits. Sell fewer burgers and yet make more money?

Why not! Especially if we can insinuate that it’s really all beyond our control. Perfect!

I actually don’t mind that they’re increasing prices to increase profits. I get that. I mean, if they could sell just one burger and make sixteen billion dollars in profit, they’d be all in. Oh, wait, Lockheed-Martin™ is already doing that with jet fighters.

Don’t worry if the F-35 gets rained on. That only costs about $50 million to fix.

What I mind is the insinuation this is due to outside forces instead of a planned extraction of the greatest amount of profit that can be generated per sale. It’s a lie.

One of the components of the monthly “Misery Index” that I put together is tied to inflation. Inflation destroys the value of currency, and makes people feel, day by day, shabbier and poorer. However, to blame outside forces for your increased prices instead of saying, “Hey, we think this burger is worth it,” is execrable.

The Wilder household has responded by purchasing prepared foods outside of the house only rarely. Once a week – at most. Instead, we’re cooking at home. It’s likely healthier, and I can get exactly the right amount of chocolate sauce on my bacon cheeseburger.

I think many Americans have reacted the same way. And for us, it’s made us less miserable, rather than more miserable, plus the food is better.

The problem, though, is that when big business reaches a size that it can extract all the wealth it wants on a whim and keep posting record profits year after year. That’s not competition, that’s a Wealth Pump as defined by Peter Turchin, and it is a prime factor in the creation of misery and the road to Civil War.

The initial example that I gave of gas stations all competing to get my dollar is the way the markets work best. There are a number of different sellers all trying to get me to come to their station, though they haven’t figured out that if they had hot girls in bikinis they could probably double their business.

And they don’t look like they speak Arabic.

And no, McDonald’s™ rarely forces people to eat there, so there still is competition from substitutes, like a ribeye. I have the choice of whether or not to go to McDonald’s™. Please, Golden Arches, raise your prices to your heart’s content!

Just don’t lie about it, and just don’t expect consumers to hang around, though it seems to be working for you right now. And McDonald’s™ innovates, since I heard that they had a failed beef version of their McRib©.

Who says they don’t learn from their McSteaks®?