Big Thoughts – Page 29 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Friday’s Musings, Including LEGO, Seinfeld, And A Ted Talk

“Clarice, doesn’t this random scattering of sites seem desperately random, like the elaboration of a bad liar?” – The Silence of the Lambs

LEGO® just put in a hospital near my house, but they only do plastic surgery. It’s busy though, people are lining up for blocks.

Fridays are generally the more relaxed post of the week, so this one won’t be an exception. Here are some random musings:

Joe Biden won’t be the nominee – the cliff of performance we’re seeing from him is too stark. Kamala Harris has the charisma of chlamydia, so she’s out. That leaves two players for the Democratic nomination, Mike Michelle Obama and Grabbin Nuisance, governor of California.

My prediction? Biden will bow out at the Democratic convention. He’ll very emotionally note that “for the good of the country” he’ll bow out in favor of Obama or Nuisance. The big networks will already have this in the books, and the new candidate will get hours of free advertising from every network so they won’t be stained with Kamala’s chlamydia.

What does syphilis and chlamydia have in common? Kamala.

It’s funny to watch the Leftists try to blame cold winters on Global Warming®. Yup, they did that. Global Warming© is the best thing that every happened to the Left: it’s an excuse to solve weather fluctuations with global governmental control and communism. Everything is about Global Warming™, and finally Leftists have figured out how to blame it getting cold on everything getting “warmer”.

Sigh.

To the Elite, every single event will be used to increase control. Stayed up too late and tired at work? Mandatory bedtimes, unless you’re protesting or at a BIPOC LGBT+ riot, in which case you get a guaranteed minimum income.

If Global Warming© doesn’t happen, it will be anti-climatic.

Whenever I feel far from God, it’s not because He moved. Duh. Most (90%?) of the problems I have in life are the ones that I created. Wonder who is going to fix those?

Things happen when they happen, and not when they’d be easiest. The proper time to install machine gun nests and to mine the southern border with Mexico was 1960. Life would have been pretty simple if that happened.

But it didn’t. Life is what it is, and not what we’d like it to be. The solution to the border problem is obvious to any thinking person. It will be taken, or the United States will Balkanize into a collection of warring states, or a Caesar will arise. Regardless, we’ll get snacks. Or unending low-level conflict. To-may-to, to-mah-to.

The Swatch© in Switzerland, thank heavens it wasn’t made in Croatia – then people would have been staring at their Crotch™.

Peak racial amity in the United States was in the 1990s and early 2000s. Barack Obama was (for race issues) the absolute worst president in the history of the nation, erasing decades worth of propaganda poured into virtually everyone from the 1960s on led to my generation being the least racist generation of white kids in the history of the United States.

Race issues will continue to go downhill as all of that is undone by the racial animus currently on display against white folks. But, hey, we’ll always have Seinfeld.

As found.

I thought I was getting too old to enjoy books, since the recent ones I read sucked. I then re-read older books that I had, and discovered the truth: Older books were better. It’s not because people were better writers back then, but editors and the people who pick the books that are published pick crap.

Yes, I think people are getting stupider on average, but there are a lot more of them, so there still are a bunch of smart writers, even more than before. But people who can write books that don’t suck aren’t getting them published as much. Regardless, it’s time to read more than I have in the last few years. Books are the best way to understand the thoughts of someone from years or decades or centuries ago.

I wonder if my memes will be studied 2,000 years from now?

Speaking of reading, several years ago, I started reading books with a pen in my hand. If I see something I like, I underline it. If want to make a note, I make a note. It makes it easier to summarize books for this blog, but it also will allow a future reader to see what I thought at the time.

The Mrs. noted that, as laudable as this habit may be, it’s still going to cause people to talk if they see me reading Ted Kaczynski’s book with a highlighter.

TED: Ideas worth spreading. (As found, and as if I weren’t on enough lists.)

I’m superstitious. In high school I had a great football game (multiple sacks, multiple tackles, performed CPR on a child that choked on a Hubba Bubba®). I used a particular roll of athletic tape before the game, so I used it the rest of the season. There are dozens of things like that. Humans have a pattern-seeking brain, and I have a good memory. That’s not necessarily a great combination.

Sure, rationally, I know that these random coincidences are just random coincidences.

But you never know.

Electric Vehicles: The Big Con

“You mean, drive in hybrids, but not act like we’re better than everyone else because of it?” – South Park

If you buy an EV from Dodge®, you also get a Dodge Charger™. (Memes mostly as found)

Based on the evidence I’ve seen so far in news stories, I’ve come to a conclusion about electric vehicles (EVs). It’s this: If you keep your EV parked in the garage at all times and never, ever drive in the winter, it works perfectly.

And, no, I don’t have one – I don’t need to have one to view the evidence that’s piling up. I would believe that even the manufacturers would tell you that it’s pretty hard to charge an EV when it’s zero outside, unless you warm up the battery first.

They also have lower winter range for two reasons: they have to electrically heat up the interior, which directly robs range, and in cold weather the battery cannot discharge as deeply – the rate of chemical reaction that the battery requires slows in cold conditions.

I wonder if all those people waiting to charge their cars are listening to AC/DC?

The range of most electric vehicles is incompatible with a Real American Road Trip. Modern Mayberry has one big advantage over most places – it’s 100 miles from anywhere. The downside for that on an electric car is obvious – a round trip to Mt. Pilot is simply not possible during the winter, unless I find and use a charging station. The one in Mt. Pilot (there is only one) is not exactly in the best part of town, and it’s dozens of miles out of the way on any trip – a 100 mile trip now has another half an hour of driving added, plus the time required for charging.

Or, I could just bring a gasoline powered generator . . .

You can tell it’s not an Apple® car – it has Windows®.

Yes, I suppose that it’s true that an EV could replace most of my car usage. Most days I drive less than 40 miles. But in order for the EV to work, I’d have to own a second car just for the (not at all rare) trips where I have to go over 100 miles from home. The range of an EV is simply incompatible with the size of the United States.

I suppose that would make sense if owning an EV provided cheaper transportation.

It doesn’t. Insurance is much more expensive for an EV than an internal combustion engine car of the same value because they’re much more expensive to work on, even when they don’t catch fire. Hertz™ Rent-A-Car© found this out – they’re now ditching the majority of the EVs that they bought. Too expensive to run, too expensive to fix, too expensive to insure.

What happens when a Tesla® hits someone at a given frequency? It Hertz®.

A dirty secret that’s causing the value of EVs to drop on the secondhand market is that the batteries will die. If you use an EV a lot, the batteries will cycle and die. If you don’t use it, the batteries will age and die. If I had twenty-year old vehicle (and I do) I know that the hoses will break, I’ll eventually need to replace the clutch pad and brake pads. Stuff will eventually need to be replaced.

But every time Pugsley turns the key, it cranks over and he drives it to school. If it depended on twenty-year-old batteries?

Not thinking it would be a pretty sight if he had to depend on batteries old enough to vote. On a zero degree day.

If a crackhead stole the copper lead, would he be guilty of mis-conduct?

The biggest drawback to EV adoption is battery tech. It sucks. But let’s pretend that we could store five times the energy in a typical EV battery pack – move from a 200 mile range to 1000 miles. That would be awesome! Let’s forget that’s nearly an order of magnitude increase in capacity for a second.

Now, instead of 200 miles worth of electricity stored in a battery that you’re sitting on, it’s 1000 miles worth of electricity – five times the density. Did I mention that when an EV battery fails, it fails spectacularly? Like in a crash?

Yeah, my car has a lot of stored energy in the gas tank, but we’ve figured out how to (mostly) keep it from blowing up all the time after over 100 years of experience, and most car explosions are in movies where the hero tosses a cigar to blow up the villain. Of course, he does this and doesn’t look back, because it’s way cooler that way.

My dog exploded – he was half Irish setter, and half meth lab.

I’ve come to the conclusion that EVs are nothing more than a niche car for people who live in nice climates that never get really cold and are rich enough to have a car for each day of the week.

The gamechanger, for EVs is, of course, battery technology. Triple the energy storage and halve the charging time at a lower cost with more safety? Excellent. Atomic powered batteries that are crash resistant that only need charging every fifty years? Winner.

But I won’t hold my breath waiting for that. There don’t appear to be any breakthroughs on the horizon that will make this work. And if there were, there are other problems.

Where does all that electricity come from? Right now, the Texas grid is shedding load. And California, who can’t seem to generate electricity without creating wildfires would need to consume at least 50% more electricity to electrify all their transport. Since California has gone from NIMBY (not in my backyard) to BANANA (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything) it’s obvious that electric capacity would have to be built in Arizona or Nevada or in the orbiting Unicorn Fart Farm.

How do you get Canada to support their electric grid? Say it’s transgender.

No. California won’t be going electric anytime soon. Sensible places like Alberta and Switzerland discourage or prohibit EV charging in cold winter months, and they aren’t governed by Grabbin Nuisance.

It’s weird when a society makes detailed maps about how it’s going to destroy itself. Well, at least people will soon be able to walk like an Egyptian.

The irony is this: if the Left was really serious about reducing greenhouse gases by using less gasoline, the answer is really simple. 35 to 45 mile per gallon cars were made in the early 1980s, and had sufficient power to be useful on the highway.

What happened? Additional environmental controls that addressed problems than 90% of the country doesn’t have. Nitrogen oxides? Bad in places that have smog. Out in the rest of the Midwest? Zero issues. Yet, every car is designed based on the problems of Los Angeles. In Fairbanks, they had a pretty simple emissions test, and wouldn’t let you drive a car in winter (when Fairbanks has smog) if it didn’t pass.

That’s too simple. Let’s make every car suitable for L.A.

Then there are the CAFE standards – the Corporate Average Fuel Economy imposed on the automakers. But CAFE excludes trucks and SUVs, so now everyone makes trucks and SUVs. What about the mighty Toyota® Hilux, the car voted most likely to be driven by a Middle Eastern Faction? Can’t sell it here, because of California and CAFE – small trucks have to meet silly standards.

We could save millions of gallons of gasoline tomorrow if we allowed sensible cars to be sold.

But no. That would lower the cost of a reasonable car with great fuel economy to about $15,000, and nobody wants that. I mean, Big Auto and Big Environment are in bed and agree, so who cares about the people?

Who cares? Toyota, apparently.

I think EVs combined with silly-expensive cars is a meme trap for the mass demobilization of the American people. And why not? They can go to 15 minute cities, as the World Economic Forum keeps preaching. And since almost half the world’s electric cars are being produced in China, is this a plan to offshore what remains of automobile manufacturing in America? I imagine a rhyme of the phrase utterd by Barack Obama, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” which will become “If you like your car, you can keep your car.”

If it was a good deal, and EVs were the solution, we’d see technological and price advances and not have to depend on silly government handouts to make them a reasonable purchase. EVs will stick around longer than they should, but, just like Joe Biden, they will never be the solution, no matter how the Left tries to force it.

But, hey, I hear that EVs work great in the garage!

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: The Death Pact

“What in the hell is diversity?” – Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy

Yes, this is a real headline. No, that is not the Bee®. Yes, we are in Clown World, where having insane flight controllers is more important than, oh, your life.

All memes as found.

I still recall hearing the phrase “diversity is our strength”. Google’s® Trends™ only goes back to 2004, but it absolutely peaks in May of 2004. I think it must have been the Friends series finale, where Rachel is killed by a multicultural gang while Ross declares he is in love with Chandler.

(If any of that is wrong, I’m just making it up because I never saw an episode of Friends.)

Diversity is our strength is true when you’re talking about reinforced concrete, the steel protects it against tension, and the rock, sand, and cement keep it great for compression, which is why my car is made from reinforced concrete.

But “diversity is our strength” is just a mindless platitude. (Platitude comes from the Latin word “Plat” meaning “I can’t spell flat” and Greek word “itude” meaning, “I can’t spell iTunes®”.) Diversity is our strength could just as well be replaced with Pfizer saying, “People are our biggest asset” when, in fact, their biggest actual asset is the dozens of Congressmen they own.

Hey, it’s all the same, Jefferson, Washington, and Adams could all have been replaced with people for whom “seven” is a color.

“Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” (DEI) is the new Affirmative Action (AA) – it’s simply a set of buzzwords that mean, “too many straight white men have jobs that we deserve.”

That’s it. Period.

Which jobs? Sanitation workers? No. No one is saying that there aren’t enough black sanitation workers, or that women are discriminated against in a 99.99% male-dominated field.

No. That’s not a job they want.

I think we need more cats writing about chess, since roughly the same number of cats play chess as women play NFL™ or college football.

What about the NFL® or the NBA©?

No. There is no one saying that the NFL™ has a discrimination problem because it doesn’t feature enough elderly disabled Asian women, even if they identify as trans. Why? Because people take the NFL™ seriously. And the NBA©? Doesn’t hit have a white person inclusion problem, as in they are underrepresented? And what about the “differently tall” population, or the Irish representation in the NBA?

No one is saying that, because white men are already minorities in those jobs. But in the NFL™ if there aren’t enough black coaches, that’s a problem. If there aren’t enough black quarterbacks, that’s a problem. Why? Because blacks want those jobs.

Silly. But mentally unstable air traffic controllers? Those are totally fine.

Thankfully, the Catholic Church is getting with the program. Next: Luigeusus.

Just like there is (maybe) one white cornerback in the entire NFL™, what about a position where . . . now stick with me on this, straight white males are the most qualified?

Not in the NFL©, but in the world?

That’s the problem. I mean, that’s the problem if the job is one that a Hispanic person wants. Or one that someone who has a bizarre sexual fetish wants. A big problem.

How big a problem is it?

Engineering is just filled with systemic and systematic and diastolic racism. That’s why so few minorities people of color (POC) are in STEM. What, Asians do fine and are overrepresented? Crap. I meant BIPOC – black and indigenous people of color. Damn Asians are always screwing up the con game, er, I mean, “push for equality”.

In the rush to get more BIPOC involved in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math), I’ve heard that several larger universities that should know better have decided that they’d start recruiting STEM students from BIPOC candidates that don’t understand math. The odd thing is, if it’s a real science (biology, you’re looking pretty dodgy) it involves math where an understanding of calculus is the minimum standard.

And when it comes to diversity, why not diversity in safety? I mean, it’s been so boring for so long here in Modern Mayberry, wouldn’t the diversity added by atrocity make it all better?

Minimum. Mathematics are the tool, at every level, of people in STEM, unless you want bridges to fall down or airplanes to fall from the sky, or your Internet search history to be transmitted to your boss by “accident”.

Ahhh, yeah, that bridge in Miami that collapsed a few years ago? It was a triumph of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion since the women who designed it were of all colors of the rainbow. And Boeing’s problem with its software that crashed several of their planes?

Last I heard it was the result of offshoring the programming to inexpensive Indian programmers, which is cool, because it’s diverse, right? Good job Boeing®! I’m sure that you’re finding when one door closes, another opens. Often, in flight. But to have a plane that arrives at the destinations with all the doors closed wouldn’t be diverse, would it?

Thankfully, we now know that avoiding diversity is fascism.

And thankfully the FAA changed the Air Traffic Controller Test so that it was nearly impossible to pass as a white dude. Why? Because diversity. And now even mental stability is out the window. Guess I picked the wrong week to give up sniffing glue if I wanted to work as an air traffic controller.

In one sense, the real problem is that the straight white men built and invented most of the technology that created this world that feeds billions of people and keeps several billion living in luxury beyond the dreams of any Caesar. It’s just so darn complex! I mean, it requires people to understand math and stuff to keep it going! It’s another problem that straight white men created.

But I’m sure that having people who don’t have the capability to do math becoming engineers and pilots won’t cause any problems, especially if that means that straight white men don’t get the job.

What a great goal. I mean, what could go wrong?

I mean, diversity is our strength, right?

At this rate, only the Democrats will be eligible to be air traffic controllers.

Purpose, Calculus, and the “Why” of Life

“As you will find in multivariable calculus, there are often a number of solutions for any given problem.” – A Beautiful Mind

When you take a calculus test, make sure you don’t sit between identical twins – you’ll never be able to differentiate between them.

Often as I go through my daily life, I have to step back and ask the question, “Why?”

“Why” is a really important question, but Sir Isaac Newton was focused in his science on “What”.

Newton figured out (to the best of available information and measurements possible at the time) a very large amount of the “What”. His equations of motion and gravity are really, really accurate, right up until the point where very large speeds (think how quickly illegals pass over our “border”) or very large masses (think your mother) change the game. Newton’s rules allow us to predict the orbits of most of the planets with precision.

This is all based on based on 1690’s tech, which your mother would have been familiar with.

He also designed a second Pink Floyd album cover that day, after he set his roommate on fire.

Gottfried Leibniz, though, was really focused on the “Why” question even though he and Newton discovered calculus about the same time.

For Newton, the “Why” was a given. Newton spent more time in study of the Bible than he did in study of nature or of economics (Newton was the Grand Baron of the Mint, or some such, and was really in favor of executing counterfeiters and people who clipped coins.

Like I always say, for every problem there is a very simple solution.

Leibniz wanted to go further and understand why gravity existed. Ultimately, that was a question that he couldn’t solve with the measurements available at that time, and we still really don’t have a good idea for the “why” of many basic features of the reality that allows us to make and enjoy PEZ™, watch movies, or sit in a hot tub.

Yeah, things like “time”, “inertia”, “why everyone likes Italian food”, and “why we are even here in the first place”. Those are things that are, so far, beyond the ability of physics and science in general to explain.

And that’s okay.

What kind of chicken did Leibniz order? He always Gottfried.

When I look at my own life, I often wonder “why” about a ton of different issues. I really believe that I’m fortunate in many ways that I really can’t understand the “why” of. I remember when teachers would tell me that my kids were smart, well, I’d feel proud.

Now? I realize that I had (almost) no impact on that, at all. They were born with it – as Rush Limbaugh (PBUH) used to note that he had “talent on loan from God.” When I first heard that, I thought it was braggadocio, but then realized that Rush was acknowledging that his way with words and skill at communicating, even his sense of humor were nothing for him to be personally proud of – they were on loan from God.

I get it now.

The events of our lives are like that, too. Some are random, and some have a deeper meaning that either is immediately apparent or is apparent at some future point in time. The random ones are just that, random. It doesn’t generally matter (much) if a leaf falls on the east side or the west side of my house – I can ignore them perfectly well on either side. It’s meaningless.

When a BMW® owner learns to drive, what car do they generally switch to?

But I’ve observed that little delays in my life, the “where did I put my keys” moments that slow me up getting out the door have several times saved me from getting into accidents. A small thing?

Certainly. But there are bigger ones that happen, too, things that are so unlikely to happen that they are effectively miracles – those have occurred far too frequently in my life for me to ignore. Yes, once you’ve lived through 10,000 or more days, 5,000 or more commutes, some unlikely stuff is going to happen.

But we all know the bigger coincidences when we see them – the events that occurred in our lives that, looking backward, were either omens or led to situations we never expected.

This leads, ultimately, to a contradiction in my life there is John Wilder who:

Tries to prepare all of the important things so that everything is covered, and tries to live a virtuous and Godly life,

And,

Sees the outcome of the planning slowing turning into a colossal mess and the attempts at being virtuous leading to negative personal outcomes and says, “Meh, whatever.”

It’s true – virtue and grace don’t guarantee economic success – soulless creatures like George Soros prowl the world like a Lovecraftian Monster, using their money to spread chaos and disrupt cultural traditions dating back thousands of years. And he’s rich. If Soros has even a single positive virtue, I have yet to hear of it.

Kamala got chosen as VEEP for her race and gender instead of for providing sexual favors – which might make it the proudest moment of her life.

There is a scene from that great classic of cinema, BASEketball, where the main character (Joe Cooper) has reached rock bottom, he’s been abandoned by his childhood friend, his girlfriend is filled with contempt for him and he’s being publicly vilified.

His boyhood friend, however, has gotten everything: public acclaim, money, and gets into a hot tub with a Playboy® playmate (they used to be girls).

Spoiler: Joe Cooper sticks to the path of virtue, and in the end, everything is returned to him.

That’s the way that, as humans, we want to see life work out, so the good guys win.

What happened to the Russian who told a joke about Stalin? I don’t know, either.

But it doesn’t always do that, and that’s okay – Soros will be rich until he leaves that money (along with control of dozens of Evil Foundations) to his son. I can’t change that, and I won’t be upset about it. It just is.

In the end, I’ll try to be like both Leibniz and Newton. Like Leibniz, I’ll work as hard as I can to try to understand the “why”, but like Newton, if I don’t get there, I’m good with that.

I mean, they were okay with your mom, so you should cut them some slack.

The Wilder Cure For Illegal Aliens

“Prime Minister Tojo, Senator Edwards, my fellow Americans and our millions of illegal aliens. It seems like only yesterday l was strafing your homes. Here l am today, begging you not to make such good cars.” – Hot Shots! Part Deux

What’s the difference between an illegal alien and E.T.? E.T. learned English and went home.

I remember in high school thinking about the Roman Empire. I chuckled to myself that the United States (clearly an empire even then) might fail but wouldn’t face the same challenges as the Roman Empire. Where, I wondered, would the barbarians even come from?

James O’Keefe is a national treasure. He’s amazing at pushing buttons on the Left to get them to react. His latest piece of journalism is below. WTWT. In this, Mr. O’Keefe begins to pull the curtain back on a huge infection and begins to make public things that were thought to be “fringe” conspiracies. Again.

In this particular case, Mr. O’Keefe went down to Arizona and followed illegal aliens (they’re not immigrants, they’re invaders) as they are housed at a shut-down school. The school, Ann Ott Elementary School, 1211 E. Apache St, Phoenix, is surrounded by chain link. From the looks of Mr. O’Keefe’s video, hundreds of illegal invaders are bussed every hour.

Where?

To the airport, so that the illegals can be forcibly injected into our society.

From the Google® Streetview™ capture in December, 2020, you can see the secrecy is already in place. Fabric covers the gates so passersby (you and I!) can’t see in to see what’s going on.

2020. This facility was in place during Trump’s administration.

If I leased a building to help people do illegal things, how long before I was in jail?

The rot is very, very deep.

Who is a part of this corruption and ongoing subversion of our country and its laws?

The International Rescue Committee©. Yeah, a shadowy NGO formerly linked with the CIA and headed by a member of England’s elite, and, oddly, has mostly been headed second generation immigrants throughout its existence in the United States. For many decades, the IRC™ was mostly fixated on people of Eastern European extraction. And that’s from their Wikipedia™ entry and their own page.

Why I don’t trust the second generation.

The IRC® gets (according to O’Keefe’s latest numbers) over $1.4 billion a year. That’s enough to provide $600 to every illegal caught and released in the United States in the last year. O’Keefe even found the receipts:

Wow, sooner or later that will start to add up! (from O’Keefe’s video)

This money, mainly, came from you. Places like the State Department and the Department of Health and Human Services pour hundreds of millions of freshly printed dollars into IRC© so they can do exactly what they’re doing. None of this is a mistake.

The IRC™ is just one group. There are others.

Follow the money.

But the funding isn’t just a secretive organization being run in the background by foreigners – nope. The American Red Cross™ had a project manager there, too, and the place was filthy with Red Cross™ blankets. The American Red Cross® normally does a lot of stuff with blood, which is the main income. Over the years, it has also trotted to Congress to request funds to pay for disaster aid after events like Katrina.

Fair enough.

Silly to put your name on something proving you’re involved in human trafficking.

Want to bet that every bit of their aid in helping illegals break the law and transporting them across the country to transform us into a country that doesn’t resemble in the slightest the country we were born into? I’ve not done the research, but I’m betting the Red Cross© is neck deep in this, too.

Both of these organizations are working as fast as they can to inject as many illegal invaders into the United States as quickly as possible to the tune of tens of millions. AOC even said in her “big brain way” that the problem with undocumented illegal aliens is that they’re undocumented. It’s the same sort of 12 year old girl logic that led her to previously respond to a question on how the United States could pay for a neverending stream of socialist benefits: “You just pay for it.”

Real genius.

What AOC imagines when she things about illegal aliens. How did Elvis® get in there?

Why are there housing shortages? Illegals. Why are we printing billions and billions of dollars so that these people can live free while you and I work and scrimp to get along? And while we’re peppered first with advice to not have children, and then propaganda that we need hordes of illiterate people who don’t speak our language so that we can survive economically.

Because people like AOC and Black Rock® (Larry Fink is on the IRC© advisor list) like uneducated, often illiterate and criminal illegal aliens better than they like you and me. They like them better than they like homegrown Leftists, too, since the illegals are a group of compliant second-tier serfs that feed their businesses with cheap labor and, soon enough, will vote reliably for the Democratic Leftist Global Elite candidates. To top it off, these invaders are a net economic negative, costing far more than they produce in revenue.

Trying to import low-skilled, low-education labor to improve the economy is like trying to lose weight on an ice cream and beer diet. But, hey, it helps people like Larry Fink buy your house and make you homeless, plus they get the fun of watching you get evicted.

Okay, this isn’t what Larry looks like, but I think they caught his smile watching you suffer.

From today on, I will do the best in my power to boycott every company and charity that I can that supports this invasion. The Red Cross®? I’m done bleeding for them, even though I’ve given plenty of gallons of red stuff over time. As we find more of the groups that are doing that, well, I’m done with them, too. And if there’s a business that employs illegal aliens? Nope. Not doing business with them.

Oh, Red Cross®, you don’t deserve to be immortalized in a PEZ® dispenser.

I’ve written before that the solutions to nearly every problem are simple, we just have to get to the point that we are prepared to do them. They have to go home to their countries. Again, self-deportation is preferable, and can be accomplished with sensible regulations in about a month. Under the Wilder Plan© the main limitation on getting them out will be transport capacity, because, I assure you, they’ll want to leave, having no jobs, no benefits, no housing, the inability to buy at any store, and the threat of losing their children to orphanages if they don’t leave will provide quite a bit of incentive.

We’ll even offer free Pfizer™ vaxx on the way out, if they want it.

Hey, at least at that point they’ll really be refugees, rather than refugees that GO HOME FOR CHRISTMAS AND THEN FLY BACK HERE.

The result of the “everyone is an American” policy is a wrecked economy, political instability, and destruction of a country that formerly was one of the greatest the world had ever seen. Even people in Leftist strongholds are now aware of this problem, so I expect they’ll start to try to stash them in places like Modern Mayberry.

The barbarians are now here.

The solution is simple. While we’re at it? Arrest and jail every single person involved in this pipeline of misery for treason. After a fair trial. Then deport them to the country of their choice with the illegal aliens they so love.

We do this, or we Balkanize.

And I’ve heard the advice, “Never go full Balkans.”

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Planning For The Fixed Election

“I think it’s safe to assume it isn’t a zombie.” – Alien

I was going to post a joke about free and fair elections, but I’m not sure any American will get it . . .

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 V, Issue 8

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.

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 – Distractions And Conspiracies – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Rising Consciousness – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join over 820 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Distractions And Conspiracies

In the latter part of December, a tool er, elected official, er tool in Colorado determined that, in her official capacity, that “Donald Trump is a no good meanie who tweeted® some things I don’t like so he can’t go on the ballot.” Oddly, the Leftist members of the Colorado Supreme Court agreed. This will be taken to the United States Supreme Court and overruled.

Colorado, leading the nation in Free and Fair© elections.

It never was supposed to actually get the Donald off of the ballot – no, this was meant to stir the pot. This was meant to be like a magician’s hot assistant wearing a skimpy outfit – it was a distraction.

Oh, sure, California and Colorado (and Maine, apparently) would love to get Trump off of the ballot because they hates him so much, that tricksey Trump. It doesn’t matter, obviously: Maine, California, and Colorado are solidly and reliably Leftist either through immigration (California and Colorado) or being bought off by Stephen King (Maine) since he has all that extra money after being off cocaine.

If the election were free and fair, and held today, Trump would win handily.

I’m shocked – I thought the Biden Campaign had real “Mike Pence” energy.

The election isn’t going to be held today, and it won’t be free and fair. That’s why they need the distraction. After the 2020 election, the Left couldn’t help themselves – they had to brag. In print, they admitted doing everything they could think of to elect the single least appetizing candidate to ever run for the presidency since Jeffery Dahmer narrowly lost the Democratic nomination to Bill Clinton in 1992.

The Left can and will do anything, and I mean anything so Trump will lose. The weird thing is that they define making sure people can’t vote for the candidate that they want to vote for as “Defending Our Democracy.” The tell is in the speech – it’s not “Defending Democracy” – it’s “Defending Our Democracy” – and you and I aren’t part of “Our”.

Note the use of “our democracy” . . .

I can assure you that the plans are being made in conference rooms across the nation where smelly (Leftists don’t shower, it’s not carbon-friendly) Leftists are huddled with their yellowing teeth and rubbing their hands together with glee and planning their strategy.

It always does that, right?

Am I certain that Leftists stole the 2020 election using illegal means? I am. Could we prove it in a court of law? There were enough shenanigans and evidence of many, many irregular and illegal activities in just the precincts and locations required to swing the election. And they’re not going to leave anything to chance.

Violence and Censorship Update

It’s beginning to look a lot . . . more difficult though actual violence and censorship are down. Usually I comment on these, but I’ll just leave them for you this month:

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again. But the very first time that it might have been flat, thanks to winter and lower gas prices. But remember, when you’re going off a cliff, when you look around sometimes there’s a nice view.

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 flat. Winter is in, and riots aren’t as fun in galoshes.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it is up. This was a bit unexpected – we’ll see if it continues.

Economic:

Economic numbers are swinging back up again this month, and reaching a local peak. Lower gas prices and giving up in Ukraine, and avoiding (so far) a wider Middle Eastern war are partial drivers.

Illegal Aliens:

Another one of the biggest numbers, ever, in the history of the country, record for December. For all time.

Also, other people are noticing what I’ve been graphing for years:

Rising Consciousness

The average reader here is certainly more in tune to the news than the average person, and is aware of the coming catastrophe that will be Civil War 2.0. Since the inception of this series, I’ve made (you can check) the earliest year that Civil War 2.0 kicking off is this year – 2024.

That means just that, the earliest. The latest I would peg it at would be the mid 2030’s. That’s the latest. I wish that I could say that I see the danger passing.

I do not.

An article I read decades ago mentioned that couples who got divorced talked about one thing that couples who stayed married didn’t talk about: divorce. Civil War 2.0 is rapidly rising in our mental consciousness.

Barack Obama recently produced a movie on Netflix® that was about a civil war. Another one is coming out this spring. It’s showing up in polls, and it’s in our popular culture.

Just like couples heading for divorce talk about divorce, a people headed for civil war will talk about civil war.

This might just explain Zuckerberg’s underground bunker, as well as all of the boltholes that were built in New Zealand by billionaires. Could be they’re talking about it, too.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1732674896172630213
https://twitter.com/i/status/1743918696899187005
https://twitter.com/i/status/1743646909317742988

https://twitter.com/i/status/1743575570334531701

https://twitter.com/i/status/1744009477521617162
https://twitter.com/i/status/1743751214158807051

https://twitter.com/i/status/1743696547185861093

https://twitter.com/i/status/1743562835387400411

Good Gals

https://twitter.com/briana_whatley/status/1732963908342747300

https://bearingarms.com/john-petrolino/2023/12/06/overcoming-adversity-n-j-woman-with-one-hand-gets-permit-to-carry-n78066

One Guy

https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1735434239829811639

Body Count

https://kirschsubstack.com/p/data-from-us-medicare-and-the-new
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/insider-newsletter-287-19-1024×704-4.jpeg?itok=xHFFK4fE

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2023-12-04/red-flags-everywhere-2023-sees-alarming-rise-excess-deaths-across-america

https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/trends-statistics/overdose-death-rates

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/inside-catastrophic-jobs-report-record-15-million-crash-full-time-jobs-multiple-jobholders

https://cdn.statcdn.com/Infographic/images/normal/31441.jpeg

https://twitter.com/fentasyl/status/1740779371529740380

https://www.muckraker.com/articles/illegal-alien-invasion-maps-exposed/

https://www.muckraker.com/articles/federal-child-trafficking-pipeline-exposed/
https://korybko.substack.com/p/is-biden-about-to-put-10-million

https://endoftheamericandream.com/are-hordes-of-military-age-chinese-men-being-brought-into-the-united-states-in-an-attempt-to-destabilize-our-society/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12869575/pentagon-biden-army-navy-marines-space-force-military-recruit-gen-z.html

https://mwi.westpoint.edu/the-ghost-of-gwot-haunting-the-military-recruiting-crisis/

Vote Count

https://archive.is/z6Ouy

https://heartland.org/opinion/heartland-rasmussen-poll-one-in-five-mail-in-voters-admit-to-committing-at-least-one-kind-of-voter-fraud-during-2020-election/

https://www.newsbreak.com/news/3271703855135-how-ron-desantis-100-million-death-star-collapsed

https://jonathanturley.org/2023/12/21/times-editorial-board-member-paints-opponents-to-trump-disqualification-as-modern-day-confederates/

https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fthefederalist.com%2F2023%2F12%2F18%2Fmedia-lie-about-this-leftist-linked-voter-roll-maintenance-group-to-protect-democrats-election-machine%2F

https://thenevadaindependent.com/article/democrat-linked-attorneys-sue-to-stop-voter-id-ballot-measure

https://wvmetronews.com/2023/12/11/gubernatorial-candidate-mac-warner-the-election-was-stolen-and-it-was-stolen-by-the-cia/

https://twitter.com/RepMalliotakis/status/1731418203480285206

Civil War

https://www.altaonline.com/dispatches/a45965333/eastern-oregon-secession-movement-julian-smith/

https://www.newsweek.com/texas-independence-usa-secession-1852816

https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/texas-secession-group-says-petition-signatures-should-nab-ballot-spot-18174488

https://reformedjournal.com/the-undertow-scenes-from-a-slow-civil-war-2/

https://metro.co.uk/2023/12/06/doomsday-community-wants-people-live-575-bunkers-19932385/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12825301/Young-Americans-fearing-2024-election-spark-civil-war-Gen-Z-doomsday-preparations.html

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/comment/2023/12/20/donald-trump-colorado-supreme-court-civil-war-election/

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3akydj/conspiracy-theorists-think-alex-garlands-civil-war-is-actually-programming-americans-for-civil-war

Ye Olde Wilder’s Almanack of Things That Won’t In Thine Yeare of Our Lord 2024 Happen

“Since when can weathermen predict the weather, let alone the future?” – Back to the Future

I think Lady Macbeth wanted to walk her dog the other night. She kept yelling, “Out, damned Spot!”

Notes: No podcast tomorrow. Or the next week. I’m not going to push The Mrs. this week, and next week she has to go get measured for one of those plastic bubbles so she can live in one (just kidding, follow up visit and we probably won’t be home from Modern Mount Pilot by then, she’s getting better every day).

Second: if you’ve emailed me and I didn’t respond, please email me again. I enjoy and respond to every email sent to me (if I’m cc’d or bcc’d, no, but I read most of those). I found several in a spam filter today, and I apologize for not checking that since roughly 2007. I’ll check every week now.

Now, on to the show!

Last year I swapped out my idea of predicting the future. It appears to be harder. Now, I predict what won’t happen. It’s more fun, and I can pretty much bat 1.000 by doing that while making a few humorous points along the way. So, with that, here are my Wilder Predictions for What Won’t Happen in 2024™.

First: Ukraine won’t “win”. So far, the war in the Ukraine has been a disaster for everyone involved. Had Donald Trump been in office, this never would have happened. Donald is all about the deal, and had he been president at the time, Putin and Zelensky would probably have come together over a deal that would have been mutually beneficial, and trade would have probably been increased between the two, and there would have been hugs all around.

Really. That’s what would have happened. Biden could have shut this down with one phone call. Of course, the Left would have gone nuts, since a large part of their strategy is to pump the wealth out of the Ukraine directly into either their pockets or their campaigns. Ukraine is a country that makes the money laundering on Better Call Saul look like amateur hour, so I guess peace was never an option.

Still more credible than the official story.

Second, Israel and Palestine won’t be joining each other for dinner. Ever. Note: I don’t have a dog in this hunt. The following is an analysis, not a wish list. No matter what I feel, the writing is on the wall.

This is an existential crisis for both sides, and both are already in a diaspora so they can continue this fight wherever Jews and Palestinians (or Leftists) are in the same city. In the long term, nobody wants the Palestinians, even (and especially) the neighboring Arab states, so Israel wants to export them to Europe and the United States. I’m betting they all end up in Canada, or what future historians will call, “Gaza with Grizzlies.”

The Romans couldn’t invent algebra because X was always 10.

Long term for Israel, well, Israel is doomed, too. They’re surrounded by Islamist populations that will soon outnumber them 50 to 1. I anticipate another diaspora there, too. Maybe to Ukraine? Not sure anyone will be living there, but there will be plenty to mine. Or de-mine.

Third, and I’m going out on a limb with this one: The US Debt won’t come down. Even though Congress and both presidential candidates will jaw about it incessantly, they won’t do anything, and I do mean anything to even slightly slow it down. Nope. It’ll increase faster than Taylor Swift can ruin a football franchise. Side note: I took my car to the mechanic because it was making a horrible noise. Turns out it was Taylor Swift on the radio.

Fourth, the 2024 Election won’t be free and fair. I know, I know, I’m playing with fire on this one. It’s clear that the Left mobilized every single trick they read on that Buzzfeed® article, Ten Crazy Things You Can Do to Steal An Election And They Won’t Stop You (You Won’t Believe Number Seven!). They even bragged about it in a Time® magazine article about how they conspired to do everything they could possibly think of to Make America Democratic Again, since it was clear that Joe Biden created as much enthusiasm with the American people as passing a kidney stone.

They stole the election.

I wish our elections were less corrupt, like China or Russia.

The biggest factor was in creating slop in the system. Early voting, that ensured that dead people would vote. Yeah, dead people. Some percentage of people who voted died after their ballots were cast, and not all of them were Friends of Hillary. So, dead people voted, and their ballots were just as good as yours.

Ballots were harvested, this is clear, we’ve seen people dropping off dozens and hundreds of ballots. Exactly as designed. Mail in voting? Why not? And early voting resulted in numerous cases (especially in Michigan) where the early vote was counted, even though the actual voter showed up at the poll and claimed they never requested an early ballot. They were given a provisional ballot. In a leaked recording of a Michigan training session, the provisional ballots were given out so people wouldn’t throw a fit. The provisional ballots of people who showed up in person whose votes were stolen were . . . discarded.

Making an election free and fair is easy:

Paper ballots only. California just outlawed paper ballots, so you know this is a good idea. The idea isn’t that we make the system so that votes are easy to count – the idea is that we make the system so only valid votes get counted. If you need more people and it’s important, hire them.
Same day voting, in person, only. Exception for the military – they vote where they are. If overseas, they vote on election day and the votes are counted right there and results transmitted to the precincts by 11:30pm precinct time. That day. All votes are counted by midnight. If not counted by midnight, they are discarded. If Detroit can’t figure out how to do that? Pound sand.
All votes, all voting boxes are counted and are on video every second and broadcast.
All vote counting takes place on video in full view.
Every voter sticks their hand in that blue stuff they cover bank robbers in. It’ll wash off. If you have a Smurf® hand? You can’t vote again. Oh, and you need I.D., even though the Left thinks that blacks aren’t smart enough to get one.

As I said, this won’t happen. Leftists want every vote counted so that they can just manufacture votes as needed. People on the Right want only valid votes counted.

Thanks to Biden, soon every American will be a billionaire! Of course, that’s what it costs for a Snickers®…

Fifth, suppression of viewpoints on the Right won’t stop. One of the key elements of control is the control of the ability to share ideas. That’s why the Left was the “Free Speech” party right until they felt they could spike the ball and start sending us to the GULAG. Blog views are down over most of the Right blogs, and that’s due in part to suppression of search engine traffic, which is a primary way that new readers find us – they stumble upon us while searching for a topic. If I were Vox Day I’d suggest we create a news and commentary search engine for the Right.

If only someone like Ricky would make one…

A bikini covers only 5 to 10 percent of a woman’s body, yet men are so polite they only look at the covered parts.

Sixth, Elon will not hit peak amusement in 2024. Good heavens, that man cracks me up. It’s really fun to watch him change positions over time, but not unusual. Why? They have to suppress our ideas because the Truth is inherently Right.

Seventh, no alien contact will happen this year, but it will be trotted out again and again – my bet is that in March and July or August or whenever Biden needs a distraction it’ll show back up in the news. It’s the ultimate shiny object to distract with. I mean, besides COVID.

Eighth: The RINO congress won’t suddenly become effective. This is a repeat for the last 27 years. Gingrich did a good job.

Ninth: Illegal immigration won’t be stopped, but may be (slightly) slowed. The Wealth Pump from the Elite demands it, and the ideology from the Left demands it.

If you filmed a superhero movie in Detroit, you’d have to use CGI to repair buildings.

Tenth: 2024 is not the year we lose. The spark that is at our core has existed since (at least, and probably before) the dawn of civilization, and started to burn brighter some 2024 years ago. That won’t change. Provided we don’t go full Revelation, we’ll exist until we go full Revelation.

This isn’t over. We’re not done. Take that to the bank.

A.I.: The Most Important News Of 2023?

“This is the One Ring, forged by the Dark Lord Sauron in the fires of Mount Doom, taken by Isildur from the hand of Sauron himself.” – The Fellowship of the Ring

I asked Microsoft’s® Bing™ A.I. to draw itself, and it looks like the A.I. is dying for a microbrew. All drawings this post are from A.I.

It’s between Christmas and Penultimate Day (that’s Saturday, December 30 this year), and I often write about “whatever” during that time frame, so I’ll focus on what a truly goofy year this has been while I watch The Fellowship of the Ring in the background.

If I were to pick the first biggest reason 2023 will be remembered (if it isn’t because of the brewing World War III that seems to be on the verge of breaking out) it will be as the year that A.I. became a reality.

No, I’m not talking about generalized artificial intelligence, but I am talking about A.I. that’s useful enough to start taking jobs away. This won’t be the first time that’s happened. Google Translate® has cratered the market for interpreters/translators. Why? Even if Google Translate© isn’t right, it’s probably close enough for 99% of tasks that people used to use translators for. I mean, I can now ask, “What is this growth in my armpit?” in Swedish.

Translator wages have been flat, and in the United States (according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics) there is the need for a total of 14,000 in the country at a stagnant average wage of about $50,000 with roughly 10% unemployment in the field.

I guess a Googlebot™ will help you pack your bags if you get fired as a translator. But, hey, free cats.

Without Google™? We’d need more translators. Free translation is killing that profession. Never try to compete with a product, however inferior, that’s free.

Now, I wouldn’t call Google© Translate™ A.I., since it’s just matching patterns, it’s something that could have been done by a whole big library of notecards where it matches the ones that you pick.

But ChatGPT© is very different. It’s possible to have an actual conversation with ChatGPT™, and a much more interesting conversation than one with a feminist. Is it like talking to a human? Mostly not, but I’d argue that it passes the Turing Test better than most Leftist college kids. Is it conscious? Probably not, even though there are emergent properties – it does more than it’s programmed to, and in some cases (speaking of current A.I. as a whole) we don’t have any idea how it does the things that it is doing.

So, I guess A.I. is familiar with Harvard.

One version of ChatGPT© (GPT-4) lied to a TaskRabbit™ worker so that the worker could solve CAPTCHAs for it so it could get the information it needed. The worker, suspicious, asked GPT-4 why it needed help and asked if it was a robot. GPT-4™ told the worker it was a blind person instead.

A.I. is becoming useful. It’s also replacing people. Sports illustrated® was recently caught creating fake writers that were creating content with A.I. On my cellphone, one news service is obviously entirely written by A.I. The dates and facts are wrong, and the stories are often entirely made up, on every story (feednews.com). Based on the types of stories, they’re either clickbait or attempting to influence public opinion (by lying). So, feednews® is just like a politician, but it doesn’t tax me.

Also, apparently Fox News® never covers news about foxes.

But A.I. is moving quickly, and changing. If you were to have spent the time to become an expert at using ChatGPT© a year ago, that time would have been wasted. Why? The model is evolving, and evolving at an ever-increasing rate of speed.

Science fiction author Vernor Vinge came up with a term for the time in history when, as artificial intelligence begins to feed back on itself, the pace of technological change becomes so fast that it becomes constant – imagine hyperinflation, but with technology. A.I. art is moving along very, very quickly, and, just like the market for translators – the market for illustrators will be drying up. A.I. art may not be perfect, but it’s very hard to compete with free.

The concept of the singularity is one that is more probable by the day. 2023 made that clear, and I would expect that in 2024 or 2025 we’ll see commercialization of A.I. tools that replace huge amounts of human brain work. GPT-4 was passing the bar exam in the beginning of 2023, but what if an A.I. legal tool could review all case law (in the appropriate court system) so that it could help create the most powerful arguments?

So, this is what happens when I input the previous paragraph in the art description. I know I’ll be sleeping well tonight.

I have made the argument that, soon enough, we’ll be seeing A.I. as a mandatory part of the medical diagnosis process. Why? Lawsuits. As soon as A.I. can be used to, say, read x-rays or read EKG information or verify medication dosages on a commercial scale, it will be used.

Why? A.I. analysis of EKGs has already shown that the A.I. can see who has heart problems better than doctors. Soon enough, a clever lawyerbot will file a lawsuit noting that the doctor was negligent because he didn’t use A.I. to diagnose a patient who died.

It’s coming.

The prediction was that A.I. would replace fast food workers, when the reality is that it’ll do a much better job replacing mediocre programmers which cost a lot more than the dude at the Wendy’s® drive through.

Profits will be huge for the companies that most quickly harness and use A.I., so they’re all rushing as fast as they can to make it, regardless of the consequences. It’s almost like they’re trying to be first to create that One Ring of Power®, because if they can do that first, well, that absolute power certainly won’t corrupt them.

Christmas 2023 – Looking Back

“It’s like Christmas at the Kennedy Compound.” – The Simpson’s Movie

What happens if you hallucinate and see a psychologist?

I was going to write a story about one of my Christmas experiences, but instead I thought I’d write about more than just one. Since my only boss at this blog is you, dear reader, I thought you wouldn’t mind.

So, for this Christmas, I’ll share some of the Christmas memories I have of my family while growing up. Why? Because those Christmas memories are the strongest in the young, but our understanding of Christmas as well as our experience of Christmas changes as we age.

The very first Christmas memory I recall as a child was of sneaking out of my bedroom, late at night on Christmas Eve. As an adopted child, I might have been looking for firearms or an exit so I could exit if these adoptive parents wanted me to do chores or something. Or not. I was four. Long after everyone had gone to bed, filled with excitement, I got up and headed towards the fireplace where I had been told Santa would be dropping off presents. I recall seeing Santa, putting presents in the stockings, his back to me. Or it might have been an alien. I was four, so it was probably just a dream. Or maybe Ma and Pa Wilder put something extra in my eggnog so I “slept well”.

That would have been an uncomfortable parent-teacher conference for them, “Hey, he’s thirty and in the fourth grade, but he sleeps well.”

Jeff Bezos doesn’t sleep naked – he sleeps with pajamazon.

The next year, when I was five, I recall that there were presents under the tree. Of course, I was drawn to them like the Colorado Supreme Court is drawn to crack cocaine. Being five and having the coordination of Joe Biden biking, I stepped right one of the presents that was meant for me. The result? My foot tore right through the wrapping paper, revealing to me what the gift from Uncle McWilder was. It was awesome: a tool belt, complete with real tools including a flashlight, screwdriver, and metal pliers. Immediately, I imagined putting the belt on and helping Pa Wilder fix things, like the sink.

Our sink had never been broken to my knowledge, but if it ever did break, I had a pair of real metal pliers and all the tools a five-year-old could imagine would be necessary to fix a sink.

We never did fix a sink, though I believe I did an unsanctioned fieldstrip of an Electrolux™ vacuum cleaner. Note: I still have the pliers.

I once bought a three-foot long ruler at a yard sale.

I don’t recall a particular present from first grade, but I do recall sitting at dinner. Being an idiot, I announced to Ma and Pa Wilder (who I think had stopped drugging my food by now) that there was no Santa. My brother, John Wilder, kicked me savagely under the table.

“Ow! Why did you do that???”

“You idiot, now they won’t give us presents for our stockings!”

I’ve written about second grade before, here:

A Wilder Story, or, The BB Gun, The Black Bear, The Soviets, and Me

In third grade, we had moved to Wilder Mountain. We were in a very small place while the rest of Stately Wilder Manor was still being constructed. Ma Wilder decided to make wine, which involved really good, thick balloons.

My brother John and I decided to play a strange version of volleyball using one of the really thick wine balloons over the small pine tree Ma Wilder had made since we were living in a house the size of Hunter Biden’s sense of morality. Good times.

In fourth grade my brother John Wilder was proven wrong, as my parents really went all out filling our socks. In addition to several G.I. Joes®, my brother and I got wind up cars that, when they hit something, all of their body panels flew off. I had no idea that kind of toy existed. What was best? The surprise.

What crayon is in charge of answering the phone? Yellow.

In fifth grade my parents had said we weren’t going to get any presents. It was part of a deal – they were going to buy some new snowmobiles, and because of the expense, those would be our Christmas presents. To be fair I was fine with that – a snowmobile is just awesome. But, my parents lied, and on Christmas Day we found lots and lots of presents under the tree. What were they? Boardgames, galore. Everything from Mousetrap® to Clue™ to giant checkers.

The present I remember most from sixth grade was one from my brother – he got me the cassette version of Alice Cooper’s album, Alice Cooper Goes to Hell. An odd Christmas present? Sure. But I’ll never cry.

Welcome to my lunchline . . .

Seventh grade brought probably one of the most peaceful Christmas Days from my youth. I recall on Christmas Day quietly doing a Star Wars™ jigsaw puzzle. If ever there was a day where there wasn’t a single problem, no strife, nothing but a completely happy time spent with my family growing up, this was the day.

The biggest present I recall for Christmas in my eighth grade year was a Nerf® football, which my brother and I promptly took and threw in the driveway for hours on an unseasonably warm Christmas Day.

As a freshman, my brother and I were out shopping for Christmas presents for Ma and Pa Wilder. One gift I saw was a towel. It wasn’t just any towel, but one that had metal snaps and the Everlast® logo. It looked like boxer’s trunks when you wrapped it around your waist. This was the era of Rocky™, and I told my brother, “Man, that’s cool.”

He said, “Yes, it is. I like it, and I’m buying it, for me.” I was only slightly disappointed, since he had the money, and I didn’t. Imagine my surprise on Christmas morning when I unwrapped his present to me and found . . . the towel.

I named my pet rock “Rocky” – not because it’s a rocky, but because it has trouble speaking.

When I was a sophomore, all the varsity wrestlers shaved our heads. Why? I have no idea. We were in high school. Ma Wilder took great amusement in this, and, for Christmas, she made me a knit hat in my high school colors. The hat was ludicrously long, and perfect in every way.

My junior year was the last year that my brother was with us before he got married, so, in a sense, it was the last, close family Christmas. Pa Wilder could see the nerd in me, and my present that year was an HP-15C programmable calculator that used reverse Polish notation (RPN). Back then, HP™ had no equal.

My senior year, I recall that Pa Wilder gave me a metal puzzle – one that he had given all of his friends that year. Made of brass, it wasn’t a hard puzzle, but I still have it, a memory of the last Christmas before college.

Going through this, it’s interesting (to me, at least) to see the changes over time as I moved from greedy excitement to looking for meaning and peace. This year? Not sure I’m getting a present at all, and I’m certain I don’t need one. I’m also not sure if there’s going to be a Monday post, I’ll give myself permission to skip it if we’re having a good time here at Stately Wilder Manor.

I hope your Christmas is a wonderful one, and brings you peace and meaning as well.

On Winning The Big Fight

“If I owned a company, my employees would love me. They’d have huge pictures of me up on the walls and in their home, like Lenin.” – Seinfeld

And how do we get rid of communists? We Oxycute™ them!

We’ve talked about the bigger picture recently. The bigger picture includes Elite Overproduction and The Wealth Pump. What we haven’t discussed so much is how the Left subverted so many of our institutions. I think we have the why down pretty well, but let’s go to the “how” of the situation.

It starts with Vladimir Lenin: “Give me your four year olds, and in a generation I will build a socialist state.”

Yup, Lenin said that. Or at least someone typed that he said that. I mean, someone besides me. And when Lenin said it, it was probably in Russian and I imagine he needed a breath mint, because I always imagined he’d smell like cabbage and B.O.

How does Stalin drink water? GULAG, GULAG, GULAG.

Regardless, Lenin’s idea was to propagandize kids from the start. And, in the Soviet Union, he could get away with that because the Soviets had the secret police and the bravado and the people thought they were at their mercy. I think Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn said it best:

And how we burned in the camps later, thinking: What would things have been like if every Security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family? Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand? The Organs would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!

If . . . if . . . We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation…. We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.

In the United States we were entirely different – there has yet to be a secret police that could act with impunity against Enemies of the State. Oh, sorry, forgot about Ruby Ridge and Waco and January 6 protestors and the ATF and FBI. I guess we do have one, but ours is on a shorter (for now) leash since they still have to pretend that the Constitution exists.

I’d tell an ATF joke, but I can’t compete with their supervisors.

But to get to where we are now, things had to start to rot. The rot in America really started in academia, specifically colleges. And, the colleges that were targeted were the education departments of the colleges. Why?

Here’s Lenin’s statement again: “Give me your four year olds, and in a generation I will build a socialist state.”

Now, in my experience, teachers generally start teaching when they’re in their early 20s and stop sometime after they become petrified wood. I think my kindergarten teacher was born in the late Triassic, but my first-grade teacher was maybe 22.

If you’re a Lefty in a rural farm school district, you’re not going to get away with much, especially if the other teachers are all married and religious conservatives. But over time, bureaucracies always swim Left. I recall the first really Leftist teacher that showed up at my school. She was fresh out of college, and was a substitute. She went on a long rant about income redistribution and lots of other commie talking points.

Someone said I make too many graphs, but I know where to draw the line.

Since it was middle school and she was a substitute, she got about as much respect from the students as Joe Biden would if he guest-hosted Jeopardy!, which is zero. “You know, you have to answer the question in the form of a question like my dead son, who was in the military did.”

These teachers had to bide their time, move into the administration, and slowly build a majority. Of course, this didn’t happen all at once, it evolved. And once it evolved, it did what Leftists always do: they radicalized themselves more and more until only the most Leftist idea survives. I was blessed to have “conservative” and left-leaning teachers, but no real Leftists.

But in the big cities and in Blue State?

Lenin would be proud.

But that’s only a part of it. Pop culture is important, too. I recall reading once that because Fonzie in Happy Days said, “The Fonz don’t go to sleep without sweet smelling teeth,” that toothbrushing doubled among the 8- to 14-year-old set.

I fell in love with some blood, but it was all in vein.

Propaganda works, and the younger you get the kid, and the more hours that you have with the kid, the deeper the hook sets. That’s where television came in.

Before the big cable invasion, before the Great Fragmentation of the streaming services and multitudes of video sharing services, there was the Big Three. CBS®, NBC™, and ABC©. These three dominated the airwaves, and produced content that was beamed directly into the brains of Americans from when they got up to when Pa Wilder turned off the TV after watching the 10:30 weather.

In between, it was filling brains with Leftist propaganda. Norman Lear (who just died) was one of the biggest proponents of Leftist propaganda on television, and made tens of millions. It really was Lear who made me question if the ideas of freedom and nationalism that I’d had since I can remember could ever be funny, or if the only humor could come from the Leftist perspective.

Of course, I know now that the brainwashing didn’t hold, and that we’re actually a lot funnier than the Left because our humor is based on Truth, and the only way that they’re funny is when they set up a construct. In order to poke fun at the Right, they had to construct an Archie Bunker and use him as their strawman. And Norman Lear created him. And had shows that showed that stronk womens don’t need no man (On Day At A Time).

Why are divorces expensive? They’re worth it.

Those shows weren’t aimed at parents – they were aimed at kids, so Norman could pump his Leftism into their brains when the teachers were off duty.

Norman made millions attempting to destroy everything that made American culture strong, and when Reagan was elected, Norman took is tens (if not hundreds) of millions and tried to continue on building a cultural subversion mechanism, People for the American Way©, which, even now, funnels money to Leftists.

This subversion took decades, of course, and it brought us to where we are.

Thankfully, the tide is turning. Home schooling is great for counteracting Leftism impact on kids and more people are opting for it. Places like Modern Mayberry don’t care much for Leftism in schools. The media chokehold the Left had forever is weakening – they can’t channel our minds on just three channels for 12 hours a day.

Let’s look at the other side:

“Give me your four year olds, and in a generation I will build a state of free men that won’t yield to tyranny.”

Do we want to win? We have to show up. With our children.