Big Thoughts – Page 2 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Last Refuge Of The Left: Tritler

“Because it’s Hitler’s harmonica. You can’t play Hitler’s harmonica.” – Rat Race

Why do we drink water? Well, because we can’t eat it.

All memes today “as-found”

Sometime in 1990, Mike Godwin came up with Godwin’s Law: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”

As this note indicates, this is five years before the World Wide Web made WWW a prefix that we can all now safely ignore, but Godwin pointed out what’s been happening in our society since at least 1964: anything a GloboLeftist doesn’t like is Hitler starting (I think) with Goldwater, and certainly with Nixon.

I guess Mussolini was pretty good in track in high school. They called him “the fascist guy in Italy”.

It really is an analogy that deserves to die. World War II ended (does math) over 79 years ago. The knee-jerk reaction seems to be the go-to to absolutely anyone and anything that disrupts the ability of the GloboLeftElite to do what they want. What does it mean? It means whatever the GloboLeft want it to mean.

In the last week, the GloboLeft and GloboLeftElite have launched their own Operation Tritlerossa comparing Trump with the Austrian in over 5,500 stories in one week, according to the prolific Tyler Durden over at ZeroHedge®. Now, if there’s one thing I know about Austrians today, they’re far too busy with their boomerangs and kangaroos and didgeridoos to worry about world domination.

I can attest, though, that the media is all-in on this final putsch, er, push as they have been in the past.

Yup. Finding those took about two minutes. The really funny one is that Hillary seems to forget that in 1992, Bill Clinton accepted the nomination for president in Madison Square Garden, back when Bill could still work a Bush over.

Beyond that, though, the reason for this insane analogy is that the GloboLeftElite have nothing left to attack Trump with, creating a character I call Tritler. I tried it without the “r” but that leads to weird internet search results.

Kamala cannot look to competency, because Kamala is the result of the ultimate in GloboLeftElite power plays: Obama didn’t want someone smarter than him because his ego wouldn’t allow it. Joe fit the bill perfectly. Biden didn’t want someone smarter than him because Jill wouldn’t allow it because he was insecure. Kamala was the single most unpopular candidate on the Democrat slate for the 2020 election, dropping out because she was less popular than both Bernie Sanders and gonorrhea.

Kamala left the race before a single primary vote had been cast, and in this case entered the race after the last vote had been cast. Kind of poetic for the first anchor-baby president who didn’t even bother to go to high school in the United States.

“Elections have consequences” man doesn’t understand where the division came from. Huh.

So, should she run on her record? Well, that would be, as a GloboLeft foot soldier would say, “problematic”. As far as I can see, her record has been to attend some meetings that weren’t very important and to keep out of the way.

Okay, her policies? Well, Kamala can’t articulate much beyond “I’m not Donald Trump” and what she has listed (less inflation, more houses) are more the wish list of a dim toddler who is trying to look important and smart around the adults even though she can’t quite figure out what the conversation is. I don’t know if she’s just that dim or if she’s spent her entire life in a bubble where she never had to defend a position other than describing that her favorite one was missionary.

I wonder if this is A.I.?

To be fair, Donald spent his first term doing what Donald does: trying to make deals. In some cases, that was appropriate. We don’t need a war with Kim Jong Un, and neither does South Korea. Would it be better if North Korea was free?

Sure.

That’s not the job of the United States, though. That’s the job of the North Koreans. Trump saw a way to take an isolated country under a despot and move them closer to normalized relations.

In other cases, it was inappropriate. There was a clear mandate for reduced immigration, yet the wall he built was stymied at every instance by the Democrats while Trump negotiated for a deal. Ironically, Kamala made fun of Trump in the Fox® interview for not building more of the wall.

Huh?

Once again, The Bee called it.

So, the GloboLeftElite can’t run on ideas. They can’t run on issues. They can’t run on competence. That leaves one thing: to run on hate and fear. I don’t think anyone is in particular fear of Hitler’s ghost right now, so all that leaves is that weird combination of Tritler.

The accusations are nonsensical, but, when you’re out of arguments, all that’s left is to play the Trump is Hitler card, just like Godwin noted back 35 years ago. And if you disagree? You’re just as bad as . . . Kamala?

Deep Thoughts And Dank Memes About Halloween And Strippers

“When the fear takes him, and the blood and the screams and the horror of battle take hold, do you think he would stand and fight?” – The Return of the King

I have a cookbook that mentions ancient evil monoliths: the Necronomnomnomicon.

Most memes “as-found”, maybe an edit or two here and there..

When I was a kid, it seemed that Halloween was really about the kids. I would dress up (usually) as a vampire, until I got older. As I got older, it seemed that Halloween tipped from being a holiday for children to an excuse for younger adults to have drunken parties in costumes like “slutty elf costume” and “slutty Handmaid’s Tale costume” and “slutty presidential candidate”.

One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is that Halloween is about the darker side. Ghosts and witches and monsters have been a part of the celebration since Pharaoh Bubbahotep got his chariot license. You’ve probably not heard of that Pharaoh before – after they mummified him they kept him under wraps.

The time of Halloween is certainly in line with being a harvest festival – I mean, it’s after harvest in the northern hemisphere, and there’s plenty of evidence that some version of Halloween was observed in ancient times. Whether or not the Christian holiday of All-Saints Day (November 1) was a takeoff from this is up for grabs, but the trappings and idea of this being a time focused on dead humans is undeniably thousands of years old.

At college, I told my advisor I wanted to take a class on how to be a mime. He said, “Say no more.”

But, again, a harvest festival. In the northern hemisphere, plants are dying at this time of year, leaves are falling, and it begins to get cold and dark. This is the foreshadowing of winter, a time where the planning and planting and preparing pay off in order to tide families back to spring when the world comes alive again. What better way to celebrate the idea of dead people and the impending bitter winter than by having a party, getting drunk, and dressing like a “slutty Seal Team Six” member?

Trick or treating itself has been practiced for (at least) five hundred years, including costumes and begging for food. Ultimately, though, the idea comes back around to the idea of what happens to the soul after death – the year becomes, essentially, a proxy for the life of a human, with Halloween marking the time when death is contemplated. And it’s scary to think about death.

Many people like to be scared – that’s one reason why horror movies are so popular. In my dating days, I noted also that the scarier the movie I took my date to, the more amorous they became afterwards. Keep in mind my sample size was mainly limited to girls who would eventually become strippers, but nevertheless, it’s still data. Like grandma always said, “Write what you know, Johnny, even if it involves bad decisions, teenage lust, and women with daddy issues and narcissistic personality disorder.”

That meme makes me feel like a Djinn and tonic.

So, just like Pavlov’s dog, I began to associate scary movies with good times. But I liked them before that, even as a young kid I’d stay up late to watch B-movies in black and white on Saturday night and feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up when the sound of the house settling at night would happen in the dark behind me.

Is working on your abs for forty minutes daily a waist of time?

Part of horror for me, though, was the idea of the supernatural. I recall reading Stephen King before he morphed into a parody of someone’s GloboLeft lesbian wine aunt with Trump Derangement Syndrome and the first book of his to profoundly disappoint me was Cujo. Why?

It was about a dog with rabies. That’s it. No evil spirits. No Walkin’ Dude. No vampires. Just a stupid dog with a stupid disease.

So what?

Bad things happen, I get it, but horror to me wasn’t Michael Myers attacking teenagers in the night while wearing a William Shatner mask inside-out. No. It was him getting up after taking damage that would kill a dozen men and relentlessly pressing forward. He wasn’t a man – he was a force beyond anything natural, much like my deodorant.

The other part of the horror trope at the time was that the Final Girl, the one who faced down the supernatural bad guy, was virtuous. Who got killed? The kids drinking and making out. Who lived? The clumsy virgin. In essence, these horror movies were morality plays showing that the wicked were punished and that the virtuous were rewarded, a lesson that thankfully went over the heads of the eager and enthusiastic frolicsome fräuleins.

Those morality plays made sense, and the plot, like a tune, had a melody that was familiar and pleasing.

I guess they couldn’t party in the living room.

Again, for me the element of the supernatural was crucial. One of the things that I realized over time is that the element of Evil implied that there was Good, too. The dark, Lovecraftian world where ancient brooding evil ones who didn’t even pay any regard to mankind in an unfeeling universe hadn’t crossed my mind yet, but that was before I had even met my ex-wife. But a movie like The Exorcist, was based on the existence of Evil.

And that Evil wasn’t aloof and uncaring. No. That Evil was intensely interested in humanity. Intensely. In fact, humanity was the focus of that Evil in a war that we could only see the edges of, one that was being played out in realms we had only the barest perception of. The Exorcist implied all of that, but also more than implied the existence of the other side: Good. With a capital G.

If Cthulhu made cheese, would he call them “LoveKraft Singles”.

I know that moral relativists hate the idea of this duality of Good and Evil, preferring to live in a world not of black and white, but one filled with shades of gray. Or grey. Or . . . now why am I thinking about gravy?

Regardless, lots of people were scared by the embodiment of Evil shown in The Exorcist. I was comforted. My love of horror isn’t about a fascination with death and Bad things – quite the opposite, it’s about a fascination for life and Good things.

And most of those girls I dated aren’t strippers anymore, which is a good thing given their age, that they’re now saying: “Sorry, we’re clothed until further notice.”

The Most Important War: The War Between The Sexes

“I am opposed to the women’s libs.” – Revenge of the Pink Panther

If I write a novel about the different shades of the color blue, is that cyans fiction?

Note: No podcast tomorrow. I’ve got a work thing that will take me right up until showtime, so I won’t have time to create the quality notes that drive the show, so I guess you’ll just have to wait until next week for the podcast that listeners describe as “usually punctual”.

While we spend a lot of time reading about the war in Ukraine or the war that Israel is involved in and realize that right now the only winners are Raytheon®, Boeing™, and Lockheed Martin©. I mean, it must be a relief for Boeing™ to try to design something that’s supposed to experience kinetic failure at high impact killing dozens. Sadly, their new Nerf™ ClusterBomb© isn’t having the combat impact they had hoped for.

I think, however, that those wars distract us from a much more important war: the war between the sexes.

This is Wednesday, so obviously we’ll be talking about the economic costs as well as the social costs, so we might as well start talking about that right now:

The root of the problem is that women are working. This was seen back in the day as a mechanism to get more cheap labor for business. Oh, that wasn’t the main point of Women’s Lib, just a nice byproduct. No, Women’s “Liberation” was first and foremost a tool of the GloboLeftElite to try to break apart the true atom of society, the family.

My brake pedal, though, wants therapy. It’s tired of being depressed.

And it worked, swimmingly. They knew it would, of course. When Edward Bernays was hired by the American Tobacco Company to get more women to smoke, he paid a lot of women to smoke during one Easter Day Parade in NYC. He tipped off the press that women suffragettes would be smoking “torches of freedom” and they took it from there. 99% of women over 45 at that day and time didn’t smoke.

Thankfully, for Marlboro®, the women were very susceptible to propaganda.

Just like at work. The progression went from, “get out and work” to “you don’t need no man” to “go to college and get an education and make big bucks”.

Now, as the meme goes, women are taught that devoting themselves to a husband and their children is slavery, but going to work at a faceless corporation for a man, which is, I guess, empowerment.

Women can be very capable and driven, so those that apply themselves early in their career (like men used to be taught to do) and push the long hours can reach success, in many cases, more easily than a man. And there are multiple problems embedded in this.

When women are working fifty-hour weeks, regardless of if they’re in a relationship, they defer having children. When they defer, that often means that their window of fertility closes without even a FedEx® envelope showing up marked, “Urgent, your chance to have a baby expires in 28 days.”

I hear that AOC occupied a fertility clinic. Being a communist, she wanted to seize the means of reproduction.

I recall one article I read about a fortysomething who had frozen a plethora of her eggs in anticipation that one day she’d have enough, that she’d be where she wanted to be to have those children that she had neglected to have when she was 23.

Oops. I can’t quote it exactly, but she talked about “raging, screaming like an animal” when she found out that her frozen eggs were about as viable as a Bernie Sanders presidential run. Although I’m not completely evil, I did enjoy a bit of epicaricacy at the thought. I know, it’s a bad habit, but in this case I was hoping that some 23-year-old read the news and decided to not become a regretful wine aunt.

But just the mechanism of women wanting to have great jobs is killing them. Women are (as far as I can see) programmed to find men that are better than them. They want a man who makes more money, but they also want to be high powered corporate lawyers, which takes, at minimum, enough effort to push to and through 35.

And those men that make more money than the women? They’re not looking for 35-year-old lawyer women, they’re looking for a 23-year-old Stacy who isn’t cynical after spending over a decade climbing the ladder. Women in that position have rendered themselves simultaneously undesirable and incapable of finding a man.

This one woman said she was a trophy wife, but her ears stuck out and the previous winners’ names were all tattooed down her back.

The Mrs. and I were having a conversation. Her thesis was that women were monogamous – they just had to find the right man. That would make sense. Again, from the newspaper, another 40 something woman (there are a lot of these stories), blows up her marriage of fifteen or twenty years. Leaves it to find and reconnect with the man that had been The One that she had dated for a month or six before she met her husband.

In my favorite version, the man has no, absolutely zero, recollection of the woman. She is an Alpha Widow, forever pining for that Alpha she had back in the day.

The probability that a woman becomes an Alpha Widow increases with every sex partner that she has. Whether or not The Mrs. is right, the facts show that if a woman spends her 20s in dissolute sex, the chances that she’ll be psychologically able to remain faithful to man number thirty or sixty plummets to zero. For women who view that their sexual worth is not determined by massive numbers of partners, I’d ask who wants to buy a pair of shoes that have been worn by 126 dudes?

Almost any woman can have an Alpha for a night, but the problem is that once they’ve had one, they feel that’s what they deserve.

All of this, together, is what I call The Big Lie that women have been told.

I weigh a fraction of what I did in school. An improper fraction, but still, a fraction.

This has consequences. The first is that the average Alpha loves it. He can get as much sex as he wants, when he wants it. The Beta, though, is getting wise, and having an Alpha Widow isn’t what he’s interested in.

The consequences are lowered male investment and engagement in society. Women expect to be protected by men on the subway, but elect the District Attorney that turns the rapists back to the street, and sit on the juries that convict men attempting to protect them.

Additionally, men are shying away from doing the things that make them high value. Why engage in those behaviors if they can’t attract the attention of a decent woman? Despite modernity’s challenges, what men really want is a marriage and children. That’s it. It’s wickedly simple.

Women ask, “Where have all the good men gone?” The answer is simple. They’re either married to someone else, or the men never chose the path of radical self-improvement required to make them better. Why work fifty hours and then work out when the prospect of a family is raising Chad’s kid with Chad’s Alpha Widow?

Yup, that’s an Alpha Widow.

Outside of the political consequences, this has also created a sharp political divide. The younger groups are skewing away from each other, based on sex. Women seek the party of least responsibility so they can kill babies at will and thus make the big bucks making PowerPoints™. Men are tired of the game, and are seeking what has been lost to them, which they see being fulfilled through nationalism and populism.

It’s a train wreck ready to happen.

Again, the good news is we always win this one. Will it be horrible and difficult? Yes. But it is a battle that has been fought for centuries, and always, the family ends up winning in the end.

Otherwise? None of us would be here. Which will also be the outcome if someone doesn’t stop Boeing®. Seriously. These guys need to be stopped before . . . oh, too late.

Violence: The Starting Point Of Civilization

“I don’t like violence, Tom. I’m a businessman.” – The Godfather

I tried to be an architect, but they didn’t like my library design. It only had one story.

Violence is something that society has been built to avoid. Historically, violence has been much higher – I recently wrote about the Yanomami people and how half of their men died in combat up until recently. This is an ugly fact.

One of the myths that has been force-fed to us is that native peoples are nice and peaceful and reverent. I had heard that people like the Blackfoot tribe “used ever part” of the animals they killed. But that same tribe would kill them by making a herd stampede over a cliff, mashing themselves as they fell – it’s what’s called a “buffalo jump”. Yes, I imagine they used a lot of the buffalo, but I’m fairly certain that practice resulted in a lot of waste just by the sheer nature gravity and the rocks below.

Likewise, the Aztecs were worse: they sacrificed 4,000 actual humans for one party in 1487.

I know the Aztec priests worked hard, since the high priest said, “I’ve made a lot of sacrifices to get where I am today.”

Yet, now the world is much safer, though places like the United States are getting less safe by the day.

Why?

Not enough violence. At least, not enough violence in the right places.

While Western Civilization certainly didn’t start the idea of laws, they’ve been embraced wholeheartedly since laws work. Although the number of laws in our current system far exceeds the number we need for a functioning society, laws are still important.

But laws are just words. Ultimately, enforcement of the law means that someone has to be willing to employ violence to follow up on the law, up to and including killing the violator. That’s where the sheer number of laws gets silly. Should we really face imprisonment for a broken taillight?

Yes, I know that’s not the penalty, but try not paying the fine and see what happens. Eventually, people with guns will come and put you in jail and if you resist, they will shoot you. The reason I think we should consider very carefully what laws we as a society have is that ultimately the threat of violence is what underpins them all. The Feds ended up putting dozens of people to death at Waco over novelty paperweights.

That is, of course, a ludicrous overuse of force, done by bureaucrats so that they could justify their funding at the congressional level.

I think we can agree, though, that laws are necessary. And laws gain power through their enforcement. If a law isn’t enforced, it loses all of its power. If the penalty is too small, then the law will be ignored. As I read once, “If a law is only punishable by a fine, that means it’s legal for a price.”

If you stop a Catholic service with a squirt gun, does that make it a Weapon of Mass Destruction?

Likewise, if attempted murder is punishable by six months in the slammer (I recently read about a murderer who was out after that length of time for attempted murder), the penalty is less severe than the fifteen years that a man received in Iowa for burning a pride flag.

If there is no penalty for crossing the American border and then taking over apartment buildings in Aurora, Colorado, why, people will do exactly that. And why stop at one apartment building? Martha Raddatz of ABC® seems to think that five is a perfectly acceptable number of apartment complexes to be taken over by criminal Venezuelan gangs.

This is the outcome of the propaganda that “violence is never the solution”. Violence, or the threat of violence is often the only solution to many problems. An example is if a thief is attempting to break into my house and do Heaven knows what. My answer isn’t to politely state that what the thief is trying to do violates the laws.

I bought a substitute thesaurus, and it’s really bad. Really bad. Just, bad.

Nope. In order to protect my house and family, I may have to use violence at that point. Certainly, it will be a reluctant use, but the reason why homes don’t experience much burglary around here is because people have guns and burglars know that, and also know that juries around here are made of people just like me.

The law doesn’t keep houses in Modern Mayberry safe, the threat of violence keeps people safe.

But all the world isn’t Modern Mayberry. Places like Chicago or Baltimore have ongoing violence levels that are at multi-decadal highs. Why?

The criminals have gotten the message that they can do whatever they want, whenever they want. And if someone tries to step in and protect citizens? Well, like the Marine Corps veteran Daniel Penny, who restrained a potentially dangerous man in a way he thought would keep everyone safe, they’ll be put on trial.

Yes, and the trial is expected to take six weeks. At $1,000 an hour for lawyers, that’s $40,000 a week. Or $240,000 for all six. Maybe he’s got a coupon?

Is a lawyer required to name his daughter Sue?

Regardless of if Penny is found guilty or not, his trial sends the same message as New York has always sent to its citizens: you’re not allowed to protect yourselves. Criminals threatening violence have the upper hand. Just ask Bernie Goetz, who decided he refused to be a mugging victim again.

We’re at the point where the criminals will start using violence – not because they have any political objective, but just because no one is stopping them, and those who would attempt to stop them are punished very visibly.

The way forward is obvious. At some point, decent people will have no other place to flee, and will have to stand and fight. When I review history, the pattern is pretty clear that civilization does return, though it does take the reestablishment of violence to get us there, and probably a few more buffalo jumps.

I had a bison steak the other night, and asked the waiter for the buffalo bill.

And it’s been 200 years since the last organized buffalo jump, I here. I guess that makes it a bison-tennial. And maybe Penny can get an Aztec lawyer – they get right to the heart of the problem.

The Competence-Free Economy, The Cargo Cult, And Control

“I’ve only been out of the United States twice. A handful of times in Mexico, and then the second time I left the country, we went to Salem, Oregon.” – Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

Do you think she prefers “colored-hair person” or “person of colored hair”?

I was reading Mark’s blog over at Practical Eschatology (LINK) the other day and he had a story about a “pink-haired DEI trainer” who had managed to get the deputy head of the Oregon Department of Forestry put on administrative leave. His alleged crime?

Well, besides being a Chad that the “pink-haired” tattooed circus freak of a DEI trainer could never in a million years manage to get a glance from (she is beyond coyote ugly), his crime was that he wanted to hire “candidates most qualified for the job”.

Yes, that was his sin. He wanted to hire people who could best do the work that the taxpayers of the state of Oregon were paying them to do. I mean, Oregon has a lot of trees. They have so many trees that I hear that in order to keep track of the ones they cut down: they make their lumberjacks keep a log.

The comedian Bill Burr has a brother that’s a lumberjack. Tim.

What was the DEI circus sideshow reject’s solution instead of hiring competent people? According to the Daily Mail (and every other paper that I can find), it was to pick people via an “ ‘intersectional lens’ whereby applications from people of marginalized backgrounds are given greater weight. Since the head and shoulders shot of the DEI trainer is all we have, I’m unsure of how she could be given greater weight since I’d estimate that 400 pounds is long in her rearview mirror.

Why is a blue whale called a blue whale? It’s not fat enough to be called a diversity trainer.

Her other complaint was that a colleague made a joke that she, “puts in in a really good lunch order.” Which is somehow sexist? Because guys don’t order lunch? Maybe this person was striving to make a nice comment about a person whose job it is to be perpetually offended by everyone and everything. Oh, wait . . . .

Speaking of which: she/her was also upset that she was carved out of the regular executive meetings of the Department, but, in my view, it’s simply because absolutely no one wanted to be in a meeting where decisions about forests and trees were made with a whiney GloboLeftist who cares more about pronouns than pine. She was as necessary as Joe Biden at a Cabinet meeting.

Does my description of her sound mean to the “pink-haired” gravity well in question? Probably. But I’m not going to apologize, since it is people who say the things that she does that are ruining it for the entire world, especially her “marginalized communities.”

They wanted Samuel L. Jackson in this commercial, but they couldn’t get him to say “nature” after “mother”.

The bigger point is that to the GloboLeftist and GloboLeftistElite, there are only two possibilities on how they think about economics.

First, the GloboLeftist, the rank and file – the DEI hires and DEI trainers – think that wealth and prosperity is something that simply exists. They don’t view the world as a place where people work and strive to create that wealth and prosperity.

Instead, they view that that wealth and prosperity is their right, merely by having been born.

They have no idea where wealth comes from, and in this are like the Cargo Cults that came to their greatest prominence after World War II. This is a cult where the native population was suddenly overrun by great armies in motion across the Pacific. These armies would move in, create an airfield, and suddenly planes would appear.

What would be on the planes?

Most everything. People. Ammunition. Fuel. Guns. Food. Simply the most amazing wealth the natives had ever seen.

These people had nearly no understanding of the world outside of their island – to them the airfield was magic. The white people who built it summoned great gods from beyond that brought them amazing wealth. Then those same white people took all that wealth, which was obviously meant for the natives, and left.

Where do you punch mythical horse/man hybrids for the most effect? In the centaur of mass.

After that, these natives would build airfields, towers, bamboo airplanes, and hold mock military drills like they had seen the soldiers do.

Their expectation? That, regardless of their competence, regardless of their understanding of the way aircraft and modern commerce worked, that they would get the wealth because they deserved it. Now, they resent the white man for taking the wealth away, and spend their time building lonely airfields, waiting for the wealth to come back.

That’s the GloboLeftist:

They fundamentally hate those that have achieved more than they have, and are driven by envy, hate, and fear. Yes, this “pink-haired” monstrosity is only one species of this type of life form.

There are others. They are the type of people that if they cannot possess a thing, they want to destroy it. They revel in it. The orgy of the George Floyd riots is simply one example.

On the other hand, the GloboLeftistElite want to crash everything and really doesn’t care about competence since I assure you, Larry Fink and Bill Gates don’t hire their pilots or security staff based on intersectionality, unless one axis of that intersection is “amazingly competent.”

Kamikaze use as a weapon? Now that was a one-hit wonder.

A prosperous middle class that has a culture, tradition, and roots can stop them from doing as they please. This is dangerous to them.

How better to facilitate the end of this class, the end of broad wealth, than to encourage incompetence through nonsense like DEI? Why else would BlackRock® want to buy houses and then rent them back to the people that used to buy them? Why else would services like Übëŕ® be held at as a way that the middle class can rent a car, instead of owning one?

To the GloboLeftistElite, the assets a member of the middle class used to take as normal – a house, a car, a farm, a business – are assets that they want to buy, own, and use so that no aspect of a life in the United States (or anywhere else they control) isn’t subject to a cut off the top for them. They really don’t care if you live in a pod, as long as you pay your cut to the house.

So, we have two goals that are being followed by two groups. The first group, the GloboLeft, consists of AntiFa®, the “pink-haired” activists, the kindergarten teachers that just can’t wait to teach children about pronouns and gay sex, and their hangers-on. Why are they in it? As we’ve discussed again and again, they hate what the world has done to them, they feel powerless, and by destroying the system, by making it as ugly and incompetent as they are, they get power.

The second group is the GloboLeftElite. The GloboLeftElite loves, loves the GloboLeftists because they’re the willing footsoldiers that take common, hardworking men of competence and force them to hire people based on their particular fetish, mental condition, or other random factor. The GloboLeftElite is pushing these people into organizations everywhere, so they can defang the last opposition to them: the middle class. Those 17,000 jobs that Boeing® just lost?

DEI, baby.

I hear that 25% of the crew was named Juan. I guess that’s a three to Juan ratio.

I think the Department of Forestry Chad will be fine, since, well, he’s a Chad. And, he’s on paid leave right now, which is a vacation. I’m sure he’s got some pension vesting, and I’d be willing to bet he could get a job in a variety of states that don’t take the word of “pink-haired” DEI trainers who are offended when people are hired based on their competence.

And, if Oregon persists in DEI hires Forestry Chad will want to move out of the state, soon enough the forests will be deserts. Won’t that be diverse!

Fear: Don’t.

“I am Pasquinel. I come to you, unafraid.” – Centennial

Andre Celsius died in 1744 at the age of 43, though Daniel Fahrenheit would have insisted that Celsius was 103.

This is a week of frequently discussed topics here, or if not frequently, regularly. On Monday, I posted about the looming Civil War 2.0. It’s a topic that’s important, and one that will define whatever rises from the ashes of USA 6.0. I’m calling it USA 6.0 because I number them this way:

The Colonies (before 1776),
The Confederation (before 1788),
The Several States Constitutional Republic (before 1860),
The Single State (before 1913),
The Progressive Empire (before 1990), and
The GloboLeftistElite Playground (ongoing).

Your mileage may vary, but each of these incarnations was different, and each of them rose from the remnants of what had come before. It’s a pretty big and important topic.

So, that’s Monday.

I saw a war movie set in a campground – the battle scene was in tents.

On Tuesday, I talked about how the unbridled “compassion” of the GloboLeftistElite was choking the United States pretty badly, and that, regardless of their intent, it was setting up a situation where the economy along with the culture is becoming pure Weimar.

Never go pure Weimar.

But it’s Friday, so it’s time to return to another frequently discussed topic: Attitude.

If you are religious, the biggest goal of the Enemy is to create literal demoralization in both senses of the word – to cause you to lose hope fill you with despair, along with causing you to lose your morality. The second part is listed as an archaic part of the word, and that’s a shame.

When I pass on, I’m going to leave some lucky ready my arm bone, because I think that would be humerus.

If you’re not religious, don’t tune out – this applies to you, too. You don’t have to believe in Him for demoralization to be a huge danger. Deciding that nothing matters, or nihilism, is the gateway to deciding that anything is possible, and feeling despair is the gateway to nihilism.

Capital E or small e, this is what the adversary wants.

The reason that so much of the news media is set up the way it is, is to provide an echo chamber that makes us all feel alone. Think a baby born with XY chromosomes is a male?

They did find the genetic cause of shyness, finally. It was hiding behind two other genes.

That’s pretty much every sane person. But the GloboLeftElite want you to think that you’re alone in having these thoughts. They thrive on it. They depend on it.

Why?

Because if you feel alone, you’re subject to manipulation. Many people (women especially, because of the way that they’re innately wired), for instance, want to go along with the herd and believe what everyone else does, because to many, politics is just another form of fashion. If the cool people believe it, well, shouldn’t we all? I mean, the Europeans laughed at us for electing Trump!

So?

It’s a perception that the GloboLeftElite is trying to create in our minds. The same way that Kamala has gone from one of the most unpopular politicians in recent American history to within cheating distance of taking the White House, the attitude that they want to instill in us is defeat.

I forgot the rules of chess, but then I remembered I was allowed to check.

And if we take that attitude, and accept it, we will lose. There is a reason that one of the most repeated admonitions in the Christian Bible is “Fear not”. Frank Herbert eloquently wrote this in Dune:

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

I was an utter nerd in middle school, though I was also a noseguard so I never got picked on, and I had that passage memorized in seventh grade. It was true when Herbert wrote it, it was true when I first read it, and it’s true today: fear is certainly the worst emotion a human can have.

I firmly believe that the worst outcomes of my life are from those few times I gave counsel to my fears. Nothing good ever came of it except the deep understanding that nothing good ever comes from it. Now, when I cried, “Havok!” and let slip the dogs of war and gave it my all, even when everyone said that what I was about to do was impossible?

Good times, man.

To be clear: we can’t lose. Really. I do understand and fully believe that we haven’t seen that darkest night, that time when we think that all hope is lost. It’s coming.

And we’ll win. The reason I am certain comes from the understanding that, no matter what the Enemy (or enemy) has done, it has never, ever kept us down forever. I am not done.

I actually own an authentic human skull. It’d show it to you, but I’m using it right now.

I haven’t finished doing what I was put here to do. And if I do it, facing my fears directly, I know that I’m going to win. And I know that, over time, after heartache and after piles of skulls and blood.

We win. It’s inevitable.

And then, in some far distant future, we’ll have to fight again. But that’s another story.

The Government: Killing You With Their Compassion

“I warned you about compassion, Bruce.” – Batman Begins

The people who were pro-vaxx say that our jokes about being right are getting old. Unlike their kids.

It has long been a theme here at Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise that compassion and charity are wonderful things. For me as an individual, there is something fundamentally uplifting about giving of my time, talent, or treasures to those that I can help. If done properly, this compassion and charity are amazing at lifting people up when they need it.

But the dark side is when someone is compassionate for you, with none of your involvement. This is a hallmark of the GloboLeftElite: they want to take your resources to give to other people. They then call that compassionate, and tell me I’m evil if I don’t buy into the concept.

In fact, if you look at people on the TradRight, we are far, far more compassionate with our actual time, talent and treasure than people on the GloboLeft. Donation statistics show it, and if you look at the people involved in actual charities and volunteer organizations (that don’t depend on other people’s money) they are overwhelmingly on the TradRight.

They don’t have blook banks in England, but they do have a liver pool.

But let’s talk about the Leech Class, a faction of the GloboLeftElite, who suck the cash and resources from all of us to support their “charitable” goals.

FEMA comes to mind due to the recent incident where DHS spokes-scrotum Alejandro Mayorkas. Only in the corrupt stages of a failing nation could a paperwork American (Majerkas) who was born of a Turkish father and a Romanian mother and who was born in Cuba be put in charge of immigration. Oh, and an anchor baby running for president.

But here we are.

This week, Madorkas said there wasn’t any money to help hurricane refugees. It turns out that under border-Czar Harris, the Biden/Harris Junta declared, proudly, that they were diverting FEMA funding to give to American “Blue” cities to support the teeming hordes of illegal aliens that they had invited and, in some cases, had flown into the United States (this is true, by the hundreds of thousands).

Is a short dog from New Mexico an Albu-corgi?

Yes. Biden/Harris created the crisis. Then, they pulled the cash from FEMA to give to their cronies to pay for these illegals. Where did the money go? In New York, shiftless illegals are living in four-star hotels with turndown service. They’re being provided with food at no cost.

And veterans have to fight for surgery. And the people of North Carolina are told that there’s no money for them.

But illegals, many criminal, and many not even remotely vetted, are living in luxury hotels.

This causes the prices of hotels to go up – FEMA is even paying for empty beds in these hotels. This causes the price of food to go up, you can’t add 10% population to a system and not expect inflation as more people fight for the same resources.

My urine is crystal clear. It’s 1080 pee.

But it’s compassionate. Compassionate to bring 20,000 Haitians into Springfield, Ohio. The Haitians have zero experience living in a civilized society, having been brought up in a country (that they created) where a good day is there’s enough mud to eat.

Springfield didn’t add 5,000 houses, so where are these aliens living?

One rumor has it that a local politician/landlord booted out his American tenants who were paying $1,000 or $1,500 a month in a house, and replaced them with 20 Haitians who pay $250 a month for a cot.

Hey, profit, right?

And housing costs go up in Springfield. I guess they can make it up since the dogcatcher no longer is needed to round up stray pets.

But I’m probably not considered compassionate when I bring this up.

Why have one man, when you can have 80 cats?

Today, I saw some brain-dead GloboLeftist X® (formerly known as a Tweet®) that we should be happy, because illegals keep the prices of vegetables down.

First, no, they eat them, too. Second, if the base value of your philosophy is to bring in cheap labor to pick strawberries, you might have the morals of a slaveholder, but just with other hands holding the whip.

The final insidious nature of what we’re seeing is that this is the year that our national deficit is equal to the size of our economy in the United States. The last time this happened was in World War II, and at least we got lots of tanks, fighters, bombers, aircraft carriers, nuclear bombs, and other cool stuff that I can’t buy on E-Bay®. Again, ATF should be a convenience store, not a place for LGBTQ people to scheme to take away guns owned by honest people.

No, we’re spending all this cash on . . . the acceptable compassion and charity based on the values of the GloboLeft. I saw part of a presentation today (on YouTube®) that FEMA put together so that the needs of people with non-standard sexual preferences were prioritized in the event of a disaster.

Prioritized. “Hey, that 10-year-old boy is hungry, but he’s white and was born male, so let’s focus on the thirty-year-old dude who thinks he’s a girl and wants to have sex with cats.” Yes. Emergencies don’t know skin color or sexual fetish, but FEMA sure does.

I stopped drinking, but then I bought a motivational poster and decided Wayne Gretzky was right: “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.”

That’s bad enough, but they’re spending so much money on the groups that the GloboLeftElite want to shower with charity that it’s turning whatever capitalism that was left in the United States into a joke. Yes, people are still using cash to buy things, but the government is now buying more than the economy creates.

Mainly on charity. For people who are not me, and not you.

The final piece is that studies have shown that people who get this unearned charity often resent those who have more, and want the charity to give them the life of a Bill Gates, rather than just guaranteed food, housing, education, and medical care.

It’s so unfair! I still remember one woman who was a part of the first The Caravan of 10,000 people (what a dream, only 10,000!) was filmed after getting food aid consisting of refried beans, tortillas, vegetables, and a drink.

“This food isn’t fit for my dog!”

She was overweight.

Yup, that’s what governmental charity and compassion to the undeserving creates. Oh, and as a bonus it wrecks the currency and makes you and I poorer.

Wonder how that’ll turn out?

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: The Silent Coup

“And after your glorious coup, what then?” – Gladiator

What’s a three-line poem that overthrows a government? A Hai Coup.

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

Volume VI, Issue 5

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”. I’ve kept the Clock O’Doom at the same place – though it will notch up quickly if there are any signs of the TradRight stiffening up.

This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly. 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 Silent Coup – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – 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 nearly 850 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

The Silent Coup

Looking back at the last six years, it’s clear that there has been a silent coup. The coup had its origins in the results of the 2016 election. W, though just as demonized by the GloboLeft, played ball with the GloboLeftElite and was allowed to win, twice.

Obama was firmly a GloboLeftElite candidate from the moment of his selection – he was always in the pocket of the Washington and New York elite, and got his unlikely public image with the help of a fawning press.

Trump, however, broke the cycle. A ¡JEB! would have been a fine candidate for the GloboLeftElite, but Trump took everyone by surprise. They were so surprised by Trump’s victory that they weren’t able to cheat in time. Hillary, who had been promised her shot, instead had to blame it on the Russians, who did buy something like a few hundred thousand dollars of Facebook® ads.

Since 2016, the Silent Coup has been a full court press against Trump.

The FBI set up Flynn for a phone call.
Trump was impeached for . . . a phone call, where he was asking about potentially illegal activities of the United States government.
The election results from 2020 were “fortified” by a well-funded group who did everything thing they could to skew voting so that votes could be harvested by the GloboLeft foot soldiers.
After the election, the war on Trump intensified, and a Special Prosecutor was illegally appointed to spend tens of millions of dollars to find something, anything, that they could charge Trump with.
A law was changed in New York eliminating the statutory period for lawsuits, so Trump could be sued by a woman that I would have turned down at her best, who couldn’t even remember the date of the assault, and, before her lawsuit, Tweeted™ about a question about people having sex with Trump for $17,000.

There’s more. All of it equally silly, and the pending felony sentencing is postponed until after the election making it moot.

Well, it’s not all silly: There have been multiple assassination attempts on Trump.

But the actions haven’t just been against Trump – they’ve been aimed at those who would support Trump. Most recently Hurricane Helene hit the western part of North Carolina. No, I don’t blame the Democrats for that. But the hurricane produced tragic flooding. Those areas are Trump +10% or +20% in a state that is crucial for both candidates to win.

What would the motivations be of a highly partisan government? Recovery? Or create enough chaos that thousands can’t vote in a close election?

What about allowing the sale (on an expedited basis in a way that has never been done) to George Soros of over 220 radio stations? Oh, and that over 25% of the funding for this purchase is coming from foreign sources?

Beyond that, the government has been shoveling hundreds of thousands of illegals straight into Red States. Why? When the make them paperwork “citizens” then their votes will replace those of heritage Americans, and then there’s no more worrying about the pesky people who built this nation and their offspring.

Violence and Censorship Update

Obviously, the big story is the second attempt on Trump:

And that the press is observably all-in for Biden Harris:

And that it’s obvious the plan once they get full power:

And that only approved media should be allowed to be made:

And why you should ignore what the press says:

And some names aren’t allowed:

And this is the plan to keep people under control:

And soon the laws will vary based on your race:

Biden/Harris Misery Index

Let’s take a look to see how we’ve done this month . . . .

Yup, up again. It’s like there’s a pattern here . . .

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 is up significantly, and this should be higher given that Venezuelan gangs are turning parts of US cities into no-go zones. The meme below isn’t related to any of that, but I liked it:

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it is up some.

Economic:

The economy is in full juice mode for the election. There will be a hangover at the end.

Illegal Aliens:

September is showing as down, again, since (my take) the .gov folks are just making up numbers now.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://youtu.be/29JKG3OOV5A
https://x.com/rawsalerts/status/1837363341360046429
https://x.com/i/status/1837835644279652796
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/leaked-us-army-documents-thousands-violent-venezuelan-prison-gang-members-run-amok-across
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1839747244561461495
https://x.com/judiciarygop/status/1841908406702977486?s=46

Good Guys
https://x.com/realdschmidt/status/1835804388687852030
https://x.com/TONYxTWO/status/1836957753270567118
https://twitter.com/i/status/1835830627251441713

One Guy
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1832805912945496432
https://x.com/i/status/1836429342806806920
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0r_xc09q9vo
https://www.ammoland.com/2024/09/chicago-woman-defends-her-daughter-against-home-intruder-police-take-her-gun/
https://bearingarms.com/camedwards/2024/09/16/jewish-groups-issue-travel-warning-about-massachusetts-county-where-man-charged-in-self-defense-shooting-n1226239

Body Count
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/USPopulationByRace_web.jpg?itok=xEy0RSJD
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2024-09-17_08-01-06.png?itok=-Wfnpo_M
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Counties-at-least-25-Percent-Dep.jpg?itok=0-ieqYQ5
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/millennials-gen-z-childless-money-finances-massmutual/
https://www.muckraker.com/articles/finding-the-feds-missing-children/
https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/4900734-us-suicides-remain-high-cdc/

Vote Count
https://electionbriefing.com/
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/11/politics/early-voting-election-what-matters/index.html?iid=cnn_buildContentRecirc_end_recirc
https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-non-citizens-say-they-are-registered-to-vote-in-key-swing-state
https://news.gallup.com/poll/651185/partisan-split-election-integrity-gets-even-wider.aspx
https://www.arcamax.com/currentnews/newsheadlines/s-3422282
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/widespread-problems-with-u-s-mail-system-could-disrupt-voting-election-officials-warn
https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/OJ0TtjhBIQTDX0ZDApXCew–/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTI0MDA7aD0yNDAwO2NmPXdlYnA-/https://media.zenfs.com/en/us.abcnews.gma.com/d034e5923caf1fc1883add9a80a79e24

The Future Of War
https://x.com/visegrad24/status/1842138275726680357
https://x.com/AncientAlien01/status/1840339044804292657
https://x.com/ConnieLingus123/status/1784570453094178936
https://x.com/UaCoins/status/1756753637483647280

Civil War
https://screenrant.com/civil-war-2024-movie-streaming-ratings-success/
https://jonathanturley.org/2024/09/17/age-of-rage-26-million-americans-believe-political-violence-is-justified/
https://napolitaninstitute.org/2024/09/18/17-say-america-would-be-better-off-if-trump-had-been-killed/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2024/09/17/half-republicans-wont-accept-trump-loss-2024/75142477007/
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-2024-election-is-a-tinderbox/ar-AA1qG4j0
https://archive.is/Bpkki
https://www.thefp.com/p/republics-unravel-rome-america-trump-jan-6
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2024/09/28/you-dont-need-a-weatherman-to-know-which-way-the-wind-blows/

Prepatude.

“No harm in being prepared.” – The Fellowship of the Ring

If a detective solves a murder quickly, is that a brief case?

(most clips/memes from here on out are as-found)

Prepping is a subject that has been near and dear to my heart since I was a kid.

The Wilder family would frequently go on long hikes and snowmobile trips into the backcountry. Likewise, we’d go hunting and fishing. Before most of those trips, Ma and Pa would talk to me about the dangers on the trip, what to do if I got lost, and what to avoid. I’m still at a loss as to why they covered me in honey when we were in bear country and referred to me as “Hansel” but I did pay attention.

Our spot of land on Wilder Mountain was 15 miles to the first town, which was a metropolis of about 800 people during the school year. It had a grocery store, and a doctor’s office that was open (I believe) two days a week because the doctor went from town to town. It was a time and place where, when I was bitten by a local dog, the doctor asked me to describe it.

“Meh. Probably not rabid. I wouldn’t worry.”

It was a different world back then and Gen X kids, who were pretty free-range.

Got arrested for smuggling books into Washington D.C. Got off on a technicality, since no one there can read.

The winters on Wilder Mountain were cold at -40°F (-40°C) being a regular low, and with snowfall that could total to over three feet in a single night. There were no natural gas lines, or even artificial gas lines, and we heated the place exclusively on firewood. There were times the road was closed, and when the power was out, it was out for hours while the power company scrambled people from nearly 50 miles away to come and fix whatever had broken whereas fire always worked.

Ambulance? Forget it. When I was young, the closest ambulance (I believe) at least half an hour away. The ambulance was whatever car you had and the State Troopers told people to put their emergency flashers on when speeding to the hospital. Did I say State Troopers? Nah, there was just one within 45 miles.

There is an official denial that this is a true story. More info will come out.

And, obviously, no cell phones. Heck, our first line was a “party” line which was shared among four houses, and all the phones would ring for an incoming call. You could tell which call was for your house because each house had a distinct ring pattern, sort of like Morse code for Martha.

From a very young age, I knew that my safety wasn’t coming from some distant location. I was responsible for myself. Our family was responsible for our family.

As the slogan goes: no one was coming to save us, and we knew it. We also lived it, having provisions of food for more than a month at any given time, a freezer full of meat, and enough firewood to last two winters. When the power went out, we had candles, and Ma Wilder had the wax to make more.

I was raised with prepping as a mindset. We lived it.

I could go into more details, but you get the point – nearly everything we did was predicated on the idea that if things went tango uniform, we’d likely have to do all the digging out ourselves, which we did on more than one occasion.

When you don’t feel like physically preparing.

Looking back on it, that was a wonderful way to grow up. It’s really the opposite of being a victim. If I had gotten into a situation that I couldn’t have gotten out of while maintaining a 98.6°F (-40°C) body temperature, I knew it was my own fault.

It taught me this lesson: I’m never a victim.

This is also the story of the founding and conquering of our nation: people setting off to far lands across a sea, and then finally crossing the continent with everything they owned in a wagon, a little island of humanity that would sink or swim.

I’m a descendent of those that managed to swim, and probably, you are, too.

Well, that’s embarrassing for FEMA.

This, really, is the opposite of city life.

For someone in New York, they depend on other people for almost everything. Trash. Food. Heat. Water. Safety. Security. Elevators. Like I said, almost everything. They exist as a cog in a technological machine that uses them for a specific purpose and then puts them to rest in the off hours so they can complain about how alienated they feel to psychiatrists that charge $400 an hour.

GloboLeft prepping aisle.

To them, prepping probably means avoiding scary people on the sidewalk, but even that isn’t any sort of guarantee of safety. Nor is a guarantee that the systems that work to punish those who will do Evil is in any way functional. It looks like those are breaking down at a rapid pace, and that will do nothing but increase the level of violence and corruption already inherent with large numbers of people from divergent cultures living close to one another.

Such a vibrant big-city culture!

For them, prepping isn’t an attitude, prepping is something other people do, because the stores are always open, 24/7.

More than anything, however, preparation is a continual situational review of what you have and what you have to have. I write this now because I sense we’re in a greater degree of danger than at any time during my life, with the possible exception of 1983 when things almost got extra-spicy with the Soviets, who were nearly finished with updating their weapons from World War I.

Now is really the time to assess where you’re at, what you’re doing, and what you would do without things that are “essential”.

Essential is relative: 2 minutes without air, 2 hours without shelter (depending on conditions), 2 days without water, and 2 weeks without food (though lots of folks including myself are pre-prepped for that contingency). How many GloboLeftists could last an afternoon, though, without the warm affirmations of their fellow travelers that they’re on the Right Side of History®?

Why wouldn’t they want people reporting on this? Embarrassed, or wanting to kill opposition voters in a swing state?

No, prepping isn’t about a day or a time or an event, it’s a way of life, because of the horrible things that have happened to me have been none of the ones I expected, like that time I nearly ran out of beer. But since I had prepared generally, well, I was prepared. I have 200’ of rope in my truck. Why?

I have no idea what specific episode I’ll need it, but experience shows that in the next decade someone will say to me . . . “I have no idea why you had the rope, John, but it sure stopped that runaway nuclear reactor meltdown!”

I mean, most people only stop one nuclear reactor meltdown. But two?

Know their priority. It isn’t you.

My prepping background is my parents. We lived near the wilderness, and lived like it. One thing that neither Pa nor Ma would accept, at all, was a victim.

Having a proper prepping attitude, or prepatude is all about that – setting yourself up so that being a victim isn’t in your future. Then?

Lists.

Economics Of War, 2024 Edition

“Well, it seems to me, sir, that God made me a fine instrument of warfare.” – Saving Private Ryan

I guess that there’s no thyme to tell all his stories.

War is one of the natural states of humanity. Although we don’t have records back before when Grug was living in Switzerland before hot cocoa was invented, we do have Ötzi, a guy who died about 5,300 years ago.

What we can tell about Ötzi is that, first, he’s dead. Secondly, we can tell that he was almost certainly murdered. By who? Don’t know, but it’s a pretty good bet that they guy who inflicted the wound died, too. Unless he was killed by Keith Richards, who we should probably put on a space ship because only he could live long enough to travel to another star.

Why would I say that the murderer was dead (unless it was Keith Richards)? The Yanomami people of the jungles of South America are as close as we have to “pre-civilization” people, and they killed themselves in at an astonishing rate. About half of their men died in combat until fairly recently.

Do your part to keep him immortal.

The economics of the Yanomami violence are pretty simple – a bow, an arrow, a stone knife, and an enemy. Heck, they don’t even have money, so I have no idea how they can get a rental car.

In one sense, we are the opposite of the Yanomami and Ötzi. We have been fortunate enough to live in the Good Times, when the horror of nuclear weapons has thus far lowered the percentage of combat deaths since 1945 to what I think could be a historic low. Why?

War is like football. Everyone comes out of the huddle, and then lines up. What the team on the offense is going to do? Who knows. It’s the job of the defense to respond and stop them, though using snipers is considered to be unsportsmanlike. Creating surprise is now pretty difficult, especially surprise on a large scale.

My buddy said he made a voodoo doll of me. I think he’s pulling my leg.

Let’s look at the Ukraine Conflict.

It started out as a grand, strategic move like a great World War II battle with tanks and bombs and planes. That did surprise the West (me included) because it seemed so out of place given the safe world we live in – as /pol/ would say: “nothing ever happens”. The initial gains of the Russians were large, but by the time the Ukrainians got their feet under them, the Russians had a logistical snarl and found out that rubber tires rot if you just leave them in the garage for thirty or forty years.

Oops.

The war went from swooping strategy to what exists now: a series of mainly small-scale actions where when an infantry squad breaks through, it sometimes makes the news even though a gain of 500 yards is a big deal. Why? Because large troop concentrations are visible from space. And anything visible from space is a target. Neither side can effectively generate the schwerpunkt or focal point of forces required to break through and create a war of movement.

Are doctors who graduate online called Google® Docs?

Nope. The latest development is that small squads of Russians are now using small, cheap ($2500 or less) dirt bikes to get to the opposing trenches fast, disposing of them as they storm the trenches. This helps them avoid the ever-present drone swarms. It’s like The Road Warrior, but with fewer shoulder pads.

And tank warfare? For now, at least, it’s gone. Just like bat is the “chicken of the cave” so is the tank now the “aircraft carrier of the land”. They’re mainly just expensive targets, and a variety of cope cages, turtle shells, and electronic jamming have been field-innovated to try to protect them.

But when you lose a tank, you lose a pretty big investment. Russia can only make (depending on your definition of tanks) about 1,500 a year, along with 3,000 other sorts of armored vehicles. A big chunk of those tanks are modernized and rebuilt Soviet-era tanks.

A Russian T-90 tank costs about $4.5 million. A drone with bomb costs less than a thousand dollars. One economist estimated that the Russian tank losses alone was about an $11 billion dollar hit.

You do the math.

Remember when the Biden/Harris administration shot down the Chinese balloon? At least they tried to stop some inflation.

Likewise, aircraft have had to stay well back because of surface to air missiles, of which the Russians produce a pretty good variety. The Russians claim (heavy emphasis on the word claim) their radars can easily see the F-35 and F-22. Claim. An F-35 costs about $109,000,000 per aircraft. An F-22 cannot be replaced – we lost the tooling. Fun fact: $109,000,000 in quarters would weigh five and a half million pounds, or the equivalent of the weight of pre-printed Biden ballots the Democrats had to dispose of discreetly after Joe dropped out.

As of January, 2024, we have 234 operational F-35s. We have 187 F-22s. And, yes, those babies can unleash a lot of havoc in short order, but missiles are cheap, and if it takes dozens to knock one of our fighters down, it’s dollars ahead. And, let’s be clear: they’re not always flying. The US response to the Me-262 wasn’t to try to dogfight a German jet with a Yankee prop, nope, our aces hung around the German air bases and shot them as they had to land.

Is a boomerang their weapon of choice?

Every weapon has a weakness, and rarely can those weaknesses be overcome by papering them over with hundred-dollar bills. But just as the object of making weapons has gotten bigger and bigger, our ability to fight a World War II style war has gone to zero. One anecdote is that a captured German fighter pilot was bragging about shooting up a large quantity of American planes on the ground at an airbase. Being at the airbase, the US officer took him outside and noted, “They’ve already been replaced.”

The German reportedly said, after a heavy sigh, “And that is why we are losing.” That, and my great-grandfather, Johan von Wilder, who was responsible for downing five German fighters by himself. Worst mechanic in the Luftwaffe.

The trend, though, is less $100 million fighters, but now seems to be looking towards large numbers of inexpensive, nearly disposable weapons that are cheap, lots of missiles that cost a few million bucks, and fewer “so expensive it’s silly” systems, except for those that give the really important part of the battle: information – satellites and radar and the like.

But for all of that, the goal in war seems to have changed. Rather than breaking stuff and killing people, the goal is more based on long-term fights whose goal is to cause the enemy to become unstable to topple their own leadership for someone more favorable. I’m betting this is really a legacy of the Cold War.

I put my desk in the elevator. I hope it takes my career to a whole new level.

I don’t think that we’re in any shape to fight an actual war against a determined opponent in a conventional sense for longer than a month or two, and wholly incapable of fighting in an area where we don’t have uncontested air dominance. From an industrial standpoint, our ability to make more stuff isn’t serious: outside of small arms and helmet and clothing, I’m not sure that there’s a weapons system that we could make without the help of overseas firms for critical items.

We just don’t make it here anymore, and building the basic industries to allow us to do so will take decades and trillions of dollars in capital invested. I think we’ve reached the point where our primary weapon is financial. There’s a precedent that situation can last a long time – the Byzantine Empire lasted in one form or another for over 1,000 years.

The Byzantine Empire had a gold stash that would make Scrooge McDuck® do whatever it is that ducks do when they’re happy, however. We don’t. Our wealth is based on paper and mathematics, and can move across borders in milliseconds (megafarads if you want an SI unit).

What would Ötzi’s people think about that? I don’t really know. I guess we’ll have to ask Keith Richards.