Category: Big Thoughts

Financial Vulnerability – Who Owns Your Money?

“Also, I’ve been told that the company’s expense accounts have been frozen. . . “ – Arrested Development

It’s hard to explain theft to a government, because they take things, literally.

The power to regulate is the power to destroy.  If you know who has that power over your life, that’s one aspect of preparedness – financial or otherwise.

Here’s an example I saw play out in real life:  In Modern Mayberry there was a retailer who had a small specialty shop.  Now, in Modern Mayberry there are limited shopping opportunities.  There’s the Walmart®.  There are seventeen antique stores selling stuff from nearby barns.  There’s a used kids clothes store – they’re very specific about just taking the clothes.  I tried to sell Pugsley during his difficult phase, and they simply wouldn’t take him.

But this shop was different.  It was a very specialized store – bicycles and parts – and nice bikes, the ones that cost more than the $75 that Walmart™ wants for a Huffy© with “some assembly required.”  It just so happened I was going through a biking phase, so I was gearing up.  One day, I got a package that I’d ordered from Amazon™ – I noticed that this small package (bicycle stuff) had come from the local retailer.

I thought to myself, “That’s weird.  Not as weird as a badger wearing underwear and lip gloss, but it’s not Saturday night yet, either.”

I did find two badgers in a U-Haul® once and called the ranger.  “Are they moving?” he asked.  “Maybe.  I guess that would explain the U-Haul®,” I replied.

I walked in there since I’d bought my bike from him and asked the owner what was up.  About the bikes, not the badgers.  I don’t think anyone can explain the badgers except people over at the military base, and they’re not talking.

The owner explained his business model to me.  It turned out that he did very little business locally.  What he had done was to build a small niche business selling specialty bike stuff on Amazon©.  Even though his merchandise was branded by non-Chinese makers, he bought it in bulk from China and sold it via Amazon®.

“I even sell some of it back to customers in China,” he laughed.

Then one day, Amazon© changed (in some fashion, I’m not aware of the details) the terms of the deal.  Within six months the shop was closed.  Within a year, he was divorced and had sold his house and had left to wander and find rights to wrong, or wrongs to write.  Or something.  I kinda got bored after he kept wanting me to snatch a pebble from his hand and stopped listening.

The six or so employees?  Also gone.  Not dead.  Just had to find new jobs, like looking for stuff in barns.  Side question – where did barn owls sleep before we invented barns?

The entire business gone – all with one, simple rule change.

Is there freedom of speech in Canada?  Sure, but if the government doesn’t agree with you, there won’t be freedom after speech.

Canada made a simple rule change, too.  They suspended the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.  They decided that if you disagreed with them politically, you could have your money frozen.  I’d use the word “stolen” but it’s not clear that’s the case yet.  Of course, like any breaking news in the land of the Internet, take every story you see below with a grain of salt.

I knew Trudeau had a fixation on single moms, but this is ridiculous:

And they can shut down your life nearly immediately:

The idea is clear, though.  Just like that small businessman in Modern Mayberry, one tiny rule change can make everything go away.  In this case, of course, the rule change wasn’t tiny.  It allows banks to shut down the accounts of those people who try to get all their money.

And for what crime?  Giving (in some cases) token amounts to the Truckers Who Honked.  A $50 donation, made before the emergency act, before it was “illegal” resulted in all of her cash being (at least for now) forfeit.

To be clear, if the government can do that with a stroke of a pen, is it really your money?  Thankfully, though the Canadian government is taking a stand against tyranny.  In Ukraine:

Roses are red, sorry for the hypocrisy, we’ve just updated our foreign policy.

There was a push a while back for what’s called “Universal Basic Income.”  The idea that everyone would get a check each month for breathing.  Think the government would manipulate that to manipulate you?

Nah, no danger in with this, right?

It gets worse.  It turns out that this is, by far, the biggest dream that Leftists have had since, well, forever.  Let’s hear it straight from one of them on Plebbit® (Reddit©). . . .

This is what they admit that they want to do to those who don’t follow their dictates.  They admit this in public.  The poet and well-known philosophizer Samuel Hyde perhaps said it best:

And there’s certainly no danger and nothing you’d have to prepare for with this new government change, is there?

Canada, Lies, and Videotape

“When the truth offends, we lie and lie, until we can no longer remember it is ever there. But it is still there. Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth. Sooner or later, that debt is paid.” – Chernobyl

I hear Justin got great Marx in school.

On Friday the folks that run the hosting service told me that the place was infected again.  This is a (more or less) normal occurrence since I wrote the post telling Mr. Biden exactly where he could shove his bald-faced threat of war against average Americans.  That’s when the hacking started.  It comes and goes in fits and starts.

The most frequent times are when I bring up points against The Narrative.  Particularly, they were worried about COVID and any sort of deviation from “vaxx is Mother, vaxx is Father, and you should do anything that the State says.”  Those things tend to correlate strongly with attacks.  Once is an accident, twice is a coincidence, and three times is enemy action.

I think the latest thing to set them off (and this was a fairly strong set-off) was the post /pol/ versus The Canadian Banking System.  Huh.  Who would have thought that central bankers would have thought that the idea of collapsing the banking system would be so very scary that they would go after anyone who dared point out that Empress Justine (and the Canadian financial system) had no clothes?

I would think that the deeper the truth, the more they’d go to suppress it.  And that appears to be just the case with everything going on in Canada.

First, there’s the law itself.  The Emergency Measures apply to, shall we say, a very limited group of people.  If LGBTQ+ Afghan refugees wants to burn down Ottawa, that’s fine.  Just can’t have truckers with bouncy houses.

The long-term goal is to make these new powers permanent.  This allows government to have nearly unprecedented control in Canada.

Thankfully for Justin, many world leaders liked his methods:

The police in Ottawa also have signaled that they want revenge.  They will not stop until every single person involved in the peaceful protest in Ottawa is punished.

Leftists, of course, agree fully with this:

They agree so much, that they probably bought the story that was going through the news media.  As the police were breaking up the protesters, they brought in mounted police.  According to the radio station I was listening to, a protester had “thrown a bicycle at the horses.”  At least we know who would have turned in Anne Frank so that they could have been good boys.

No, it’s not your imagination, there isn’t a bicycle there.  Why?  Because it’s a mobility scooter.  Soon enough, the Toronto Star© jumped in and said that people were faking photos to make the Mounties look bad.

Thankfully, I have a picture of the top Toronto Star™ correspondent.  I think his name is Bob.

I also got a copy of the Toronto Star® journalism guide.  It’s low on words, since I’m not sure many of them can read:

Here’s a picture of the event, with the mobility scooter crushed in the snow.  It could be fake, right?

Yes, it could be fake.  I had that thought myself, until I found not one, but two videos that corroborated it completely.  I tried to upload the media files in a player, and if that failed you can download the media below:

Video 1

Video 2

Here’s what the nice lady looks like:

Solzhenitsyn perhaps said it best:

So, they will lie to you.  They will take your jobs, take all your money.  They have threatened to take children from protesters, and have threatened to kill their pets.  It’s clear how they feel about Canada.

Always remember, when they give you no choice, that’s where freedom begins.

The Virtue Of Being Unreasonable

“I’m a reasonable guy, but I’ve just experienced some very unreasonable things.” – Jack Burton, Owner-Operator of the Pork Chop Express

I put some giant, big, huge, enormous bread in the toaster today.  I made synonym toast.

I remember hiking my first 14,000 foot (43 liters) mountain.  It was a spur-of-the-moment trip.  I grabbed two of my friends and off we went.  We intentionally spent the night above 12,000 feet (12 kilopascals).  The world above 12,000 feet (32 ergs) is strange, to say the least.  Water boils at a very low temperature due to the low atmospheric pressure and cools very quickly.  I’ll tell you – low atmospheric pressure certainly makes my blood boil.

The next day we finished the ascent as planned.  Also as planned, we decided to hike our way back out to the car.  We made our way back down, losing well over a mile in altitude, thankfully not all at once.  I had worn sneakers up the hill.  Those were perfectly fine for going up.  But when we started heading down from our camp, the bottoms of both feet started to feel a bit warm.

Some of you probably can guess where this is going.

After several more horizontal miles and several thousand more vertical feet, that warmth in my feet had turned into a blaze.  I looked forward to the creeks that cut through the trail, which provided cool water to cool my feed as we waded through.  It felt wonderful.

I met a moray that had been knighted.  Now that was Sir Eel.

I didn’t realize it then, but what was happening was with each downhill step I took, my foot slipped just a bit inside the sneaker.  Just a bit.  That slipping of foot against the inside of the shoe generated friction.  That friction was multiplied by thousands of downhill steps.  The primary location that friction showed up?

The soles of my feet.

Finally, we made the Jeep® that my friend had borrowed for the trip.  I peeled off my shoes when I got in the back.  The sole of each foot was covered in a single, large blister from heel to where the toes start.

One friend asked, “Why didn’t you have us carry your pack?”

My response?  “I carried it up.  I’ll be damned if I wasn’t going to carry it down.

Hey, don’t laugh at those shoes – ATF agents have to wear those every day.

Certainly, that was more foolish than heroic.  I had in my mind that I wasn’t going to shirk my responsibility to someone else.  It certainly wasn’t a reasonable idea, but that’s okay.

Change isn’t made by reasonable people.  Real accomplishments are made only by people who are fanatics.

Of course, this doesn’t apply to the weekly trip to the grocery store:  being Mad Max in the aisles is probably counterproductive.  But when working on trying to accomplish something significant, being reasonable has to go right out the window.

On the other hand, given how Biden has messed things up, this might be what shopping looks like this summer.

I was talking with Pugsley about diet (last week’s post was a taste of the conversation).  The Mrs. overheard the conversation.  “Ahhh, your dad has a case of the TB – True Believer.”  She paused, “Pugsley, if you’re ever around someone who used to smoke, it’s the same thing.”

And she is right.  Quitting smoking is hard.  Nicotine is highly addictive, and quitting, once started isn’t a reasonable thing.  It requires willpower.  And, like Mark Twain said, “Willpower lasts about two weeks, and it’s soluble in alcohol.”

It’s so very hard to quit tobacco that it often takes several tries – I know, I did it.  So, to finally quit takes fanaticism.  This is, in the end, the same sort of fanaticism that it takes for any significant change.  It’s the same sort of drive that makes Elon push SpaceX®.  It’s the same sort of drive that the Founding Fathers had when they forged a new nation.

Elon Musk is a bully.  He beat up NASA and took their launch money.

It’s the same drive that creates great teams.  Once people buy into the vision of what can be created, they give of themselves to further the vision.  If the goal is big enough and important enough people ignore their sense of self.  That’s when the magic happens.

Not only do we get amazing things done, we don’t really care who gets the credit.  Big goals create big teams, dedicated teams.  They come together and work towards success.  Do they always win?  Certainly not.  Sometimes the biggest goals are tackled by amazing teams and the team fails.

But not as often as you might think.  Let’s look at the difference between NASA and SpaceX®.  When NASA and SpaceX™ started working on a project together, NASA freaked out.  Why?  SpaceX© was going too fast.  They were achieving in a month things that would take NASA a year.

Although NASA still has people driven to get man into space, there aren’t many.  Most just want to keep a job until the Federal pension kicks in.  SpaceX™ just wants to get people into space, and it’s pounded into them daily.  The difference is a vision.  In the 1960s, NASA had both a vision and some particularly talented scientists that had some rocketry experience from previous jobs.  They achieved one of the most amazing feats that humanity has every accomplished.

Why do wolves howl at the Moon?  They don’t have cell phones.

Vision and fanaticism matter.  And they’re good things when the vision is good.  When the vision is dark, that fanaticism is dangerous.

I’ll change gears from outstanding feats back to my feets.  The blisters (one per foot)came off, and most of the fresh skin underneath was exposed.  It stung.  For a while.  A day later?  It was like nothing had happened.

Something did happen, though.  I climbed a really tall mountain.  Did I accomplish the goal?  Certainly.  And I was completely unreasonable in the way I went about it.  The good news?  You can be unreasonable, too.  Because if life is a hike, it’s only done at the end.  And to accomplish things?

Sometimes you have to do something unreasonable.

/pol/ Versus The Canadian Banking System

“Blame Canada.” – South Park, The Movie

Momma Bear angry!  I hope she packed him an extra-special lunch for his next day when he had to go Prime Minister around all those mean other boys.

Notes:  much of the memetic content is “as-found”.  We’ll also livestream on 2/16 at 9pm EST at this channel.  

Justin has had a bad run of it recently.  His mommy had to stick up for him in public, and those gosh darn people won’t do what he tells them to do!  Plus, he just recovered from his bout of the ‘Rona.

The problem is, first, that they were locking down his beloved Ottawa.  As the Bee® notes, that’s Justin’s job:

And this was driving the people crazy.  They felt like they were being held hostage:

Nothing Justin did seemed to make it better:

People weren’t at all sympathetic.

So Trudeau decided to double down.

One of the biggest fears that bankers used to have was the bank run.  That’s the phenomenon where people show up at the bank and demand cash.  Of course, the bank only keeps a few bucks on hand, so soon enough they run out.  What happens then?  People begin to get angry.  Pitchfork and torch angry.

Trudeau’s wife was robbed at gunpoint at an ATM.  The robber asked, “Do you ever want to see your husband again?”  She said, “No.”  They both had a good laugh.

For the record, only a small fraction of the currency in the country is actual, printed cash which is why if you want more than a small fraction of your cash from the bank, they’d pull out their pockets and shrug.  The vast majority of cash is just a collection of ones and zeros located in computers in various banks.

It’s a useful fiction so socialists and people wanting to finance wars can just print more cash to pay, and everyone pretends that it’s not stealing.  Countries have been very, very careful not to upset this particular applecart.  A politician can mess up a lot of systems, but that politician would have to be a fool to suggest that he’d freeze the bank accounts of millions of his own citizens.  Or that politician would be Justin Trudeau.

But I repeat myself.

That’s what Justin Trudeau did.  He indicated that, because he said so, they’d take all the money they wanted from anyone who they thought was helping the protesters.

No, actually even Gilligan wouldn’t have tried this nonsense (apologies to Aesop for spoiling Gilligan by comparing him to Trudeau).

Seriously, what was Trudeau thinking?  That the millions of people that, using emergency powers normally reserved for war against an outside enemy would just be pulled out because people wouldn’t take a shot he wanted and drove trucks and protested peacefully?  Oh, sure it was a peaceful but honk-filled protest, but that’s akin to a world war?

Honk War III?  World War Honk?  The Honkening?

Yup, I guess.  But this time there’s an amplifier.  /pol/.  /pol/ is a website run by the notorious hacker, 4chan.  /pol/ is, well, its own place.  It’s essentially an autism-powered supercomputer that has its own interests, language, and customs.  I really don’t recommend anyone go there.  Besides, they’re full.

But /pol/ is capable of wizardry.  The night that Kyle Rittenhouse created two good commies in Wisconsin, /pol/ had videos from every angle before and after the shooting, and identified the people Rittenhouse erased, including criminal records within hours.  They also tracked down an Antifa® killer from Portland and had his name, address, employer, and location before the police.

So, the crazy new idea to steal people’s money more quickly?  /pol/ jumped on that.

It didn’t take long for the word to get out to the world:

And it didn’t take long for the news suppression to hit:

Understand that this will probably come to nothing.  But also understand this:  the banking systems and veneer of civilization is thin . . . unlike future Trudeau.

I hear he stress eats.

War, You’re Soaking In It

“Fiddle-dee-dee! War, war, war, This war talk’s spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream. Besides, there isn’t going to be any war.” – Gone With the Wind

For whatever reason, French players are in “spectator only” mode.

War.  It’s one way we find out the difference between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin.

The traditional way that most people think about war involves troops and uniforms and guns and bombs.  That’s why people are focused on Ukraine – it seems like a time when the world might once again see something like in the old war movies.  Biden is especially wanting this, because it could distract the world from the economic and cultural ruin that’s spreading in the United States.  How else do you explain the free crack pipe initiative?

As I’ve noted before, the United States has spent trillions of dollars to try to make the “old” form of war obsolete.  As such, don’t expect the next war to look anything like the last wars.  Just like civilization, technology, and economy have evolved, so have the methods of war.

The aim of war is still the same, however:  to get your enemy to do something they would otherwise be unwilling to do, like watch The View.  You don’t have to use tanks or bombs to do it.  This was what the old Soviet Union planned to do with the United States – subvert it from within.

The Cold War really was a war.  The United States attempted to subvert the Soviet citizens through exposing them to the wonders of capitalism.  Plentiful food, for starters.  Blue jeans.  Rock and roll.  The average citizens could see that something was really, really wrong in their society.  At the end, people in the Eastern Bloc walked away from their governments.  In some cases, they evicted the former leadership 7.62mm at a time.

The Romanians made sure there wasn’t a next season.

The Soviet subversion of the United States was similar.  Just as the United States reviewed the cultural faults of the Soviets and exploited them, the Soviets looked at the problems in the United States and tried to undermine it using those problems.

And the undermining never stopped.  If you looked at the institutions under control of the Left in the 1970s, there weren’t that many.  The Left controlled:

  • Many Colleges and Universities.
  • The psychological establishment.
  • Lots of mainstream entertainment media.
  • Most mainstream news media.

This was, of course, the plan.  Get the Leftist foothold in academia and use it to indoctrinate the next generation.  The Left didn’t control the government schools at the time, because teachers work a long time, and most of the teachers in the 1970s graduated before the colleges fell.

Hippies refused Rolaids™, the last thing they wanted was an anti-acid.

That’s why this war was based on a “long march” through the institutions.  Sadly, even though the Soviet Union dissolved, their plan was still in motion.  Now, the following are mostly under the control of the Left:

  • The K-12 educational system.
  • Most Protestant religious organizations.
  • Most Catholic organizations.
  • The American Medical Association.
  • Most departments of the Federal government, absent the armed services.
  • The general officer corps of the armed services.
  • The courts.
  • Silicon Valley tech companies.
  • Most Fortune® 500™ companies.

Very quickly (within a decade, if nothing changes) the last institution will fall:

  • The junior officers and enlisted men of the armed services.

As I’ve discussed at length, part of the core of Leftism is hating the United States, the other is a pathological need to be a victim.  That’s why Leftist entertainment media always portrays the good guys as “the resistance” – what are they resisting?  The remnants of the United States.  Why do the statues have to come down?

Al has a molar pulled:  it was an inconvenient tooth.

The United States (as viewed from a common historical lens) cannot be allowed to have its mythology.  That mythology must be replaced by the new narrative – a mythology based on victimhood and oppression.  Even as they control the levers on every objective means of institutional power, they complain that the system is rigged against them.

Combined with that is the monetary policy of the United States which has been run with all of the discipline of a toddler in a room filled with chocolate birthday cakes.  As the bill for this mismanagement comes due, the tensions in the country will skyrocket.

The only thing the Left doesn’t have, are (at least) 80 million Americans who want nothing to do with the brave globalist/socialist future that’s planned.  I actually think the number will be substantially higher, because I think that when the center chooses sides, it will come down with the Right.

This situation is, of course, absolutely thrilling to China.  When I think about how China must factor in the United States into their plans in, say, the year 2040?  I think they assume that the United States will not be a factor on a global scale.

In the US, dogs are K-9.  In China, they are E-10.

In addition to the Soviet plan coming to final fruition, the United States is amazingly vulnerable to other things we don’t traditionally think of as war.  As mentioned above, we have an amazing mess in our monetary policy – and we have debt.  Think inflation is high now?  What happens when China starts dumping currency in the international market, and starts paying for oil with the Yuan?

Warfare in our current time starts to look like what someone did to the Iranians:  drop in a virus that makes their centrifuges that they were using to process nuclear material break.  Imagine the electrical grid being as reliable as Venezuela’s grid.  Sure, it could be enemy action.  But with current trends, it could also be our own ineptitude at running things in a world where hiring by merit seems to be a thing of the past.

What happens if every tenth financial transaction in our electronic payment system is “missed”?  How many days until the payment infrastructure is shut down and the entire country is in chaos?  What happens if Walmart™ experiences failure in the logistics and tracking system for the billions of dollars worth of goods that it handles?  How many people does Walmart© feed?

Due to the current emergency, Walmart™ has announced that they’ll open a second register.

These are all warfare, and don’t require a single soldier or a panzer division.  Moreover, this is exactly the type of warfare that has already been planned and prepared for in Moscow and Beijing.

I’d love to blame China, but the Chinese are mainly just looking out for the Chinese.  If the United States is in the way, the Chinese are going to pick the Chinese every time.  It’s self-interest.

And Biden and Putin?  One is a church-going Christian who loves his nation, who wants to help his people, and wants to secure his border.  The other is Joe Biden.

Human Chow: It’s What’s For Dinner

“Bachelor Chow™ . . . now with flavor.” – Futurama

I heard that it was projected that the next Muslim country to have nukes is going to be France.

It’s no surprise to anyone that the biggest health problem in 2022 isn’t the ‘Rona, it’s people who are overweight.  I’d imagine that most of you have seen the .gif that shows state after state with an increasing Body Mass Index (BMI) over time.  I just checked my BMI, and according to the chart I have to grow at least five more inches.

Part of my question as I’ve seen this epidemic unfold has been, why?  It’s not like the people in the United States suddenly lost willpower started consuming crap for no reason, though that would explain the popularity of Friends.  Although I think there are several other significant causes I think one of the biggest has been the rise of ultraprocessed foods.

Most foods (for all of my life) have been processed to some degree.  Ma Wilder didn’t feed us raw wheat – nope.  She used white flour in cooking and baking bread since mass-produced flour was cheap and lasted in the cabinet forever.  Ma Wilder told me that, since I was adopted, I would have to eat bread only from self-raising flour.

What’s the difference between Nic Cage and someone allergic to wheat?  Nic would never turn down a roll.

Processing of flour from wheat changes not only the nutrient profile – it pulled out the parts of the wheat kernel that don’t store well as flour – but it also changed how it acts when eaten.  An example:  wheat flour is made into the familiar powder that we’re used to.  This makes it easier to store and ship.  It also makes it pretty tasty.

The final thing I want to mention about flour is that mashing wheat up into a powder changes how quickly I’ll get to use the nutrients of the flour when I eat it.

Let me explain:

If I ate just a plain wheat kernel, I’d be able to digest most of it, but it would take hours of time and energy.  If I eat a piece of tasty, tasty bread, it’s available for use nearly immediately.

Especially the carbs.  I’ll save insulin discussion for a later post, but ultraprocessed foods have an amazing impact on insulin production.

And the physical form of the food can also make people fatter.  When rats were given (I assume) Rat Chow®, some bored grad student came up with the idea of feeding some rats plain Rat Chow©.  The other rats, however, they smashed up the Rat Chow™ into a powder.

Like I said, bored grad students.  Possibly drunk.

What’s the difference between rat poison and Diet Coke®?  Diet Coke™ has better advertising.

What happened?  The rats with the powdered food got fat and the rats that ate the “plain” food didn’t, even though both groups of rats were eating the same amount of calories.  The change in form changed the way the food acted in the rats – it made the nutrients available more quickly, which (again, because of insulin) made the rats fat.

Heck, it’s not even just the flour and powdered rat food.

An even bigger bomb to the body is sugar.  Sugar was once very uncommon as human food.  Our ancestors got it from berries (not a lot, but some) and, when they could fight the bees back, from honey.

If I get diabetes, will that make me a sugar daddy?

Domestication and widespread production of sugar didn’t occur until the folks in India figured it out in the early Anno Domini centuries (note to Zoomers, this was before the Internet).  They figured out how to take the juices from sugar cane (which can’t be stored or shipped well) and turned it into granulated sugar, which could be saved forever, and shipped across continents.

But for most of human history, sugar was wickedly expensive, and only the wealthy could afford to have it regularly.  Now?  I can buy granulated sugar for $0.50 per pound.  Sugar prices are going up, sure, but I can buy a wholesale ton of sugar for less than $500.

The next category of foods that just weren’t available to humans were vegetable oils.  I’m not talking about olive oil which is pressed and can be used just as it comes off the press – I’m talking about corn oils, canola oils, soybean oils.  As produced in modern times, these are really chemical products that depend on chemical processes to make them usable.

Their history has been slippery.  Transfats – or fats that were unsaturated after being subjected to chemical processing, were supposed to be healthier than butter.  We were told so.  Now it turns out that they increased the risk of heart attacks.  Oops.  Now, instead of being promoted by the government, they’re illegal to put in food.  And butter is now good for you.

The main thing about these processed foods is that they are cheap to make.  Some combination of flours oils, sugars, and . . . well, let’s take a look at the Totino’s® Pizza Roll ingredient list:

What’s the difference between a bag of pizza rolls and a musician?  A bag of pizza rolls can feed a family.

It’s an amazing list of chemicals.  I just really hesitate to call it food, however.  It’s what the word ultraprocessed was made to describe.  I was watching a video by Dr. Pradip Jamnadas (cardiologist, and I do recommend his YouTube® vidyas) and he had a word that was even more descriptive for foods like this:  pre-digested.

A lot of the work that our wonderfully designed digestive system goes through to get energy out of food is simply not necessary with Totino’s© Human Chow Pizza Rolls.  In large part the food is designed to hit the digestive system, and flood the body with calories, ringing the dopamine bell in the brain.

I really do think they’re tasty.  I don’t plan on eating them except on very rare occasions, because when I look at the label now, I don’t see what looks like . . . food.  It looks like Elon Musk’s shopping list for when he’s trying to create artificial life.

But the real purpose of this is to sell as many Totino’s® Pizza Rolls as possible and make the greatest profit.  This leads to one question that illustrates an overlap between libertarianism and communism:  “How much sawdust can I put in the food?”

On my diet I can have a libertarian salad:  lettuce alone.

To a certain extent, these ultraprocessed foods have succeeded admirably.  They’ve allowed cheap ingredients (often made from low-value byproducts) to feed millions of people at a reasonable cost.  The problem, though, are the consequences that we see now:  the calories taken in impact the human system in vastly different ways than the food that we were designed to consume.

So, my plan is to eat as close to real food as possible – meat, fish, eggs, and whole veggies.

And, yes, an occasional pizza roll, too.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: The Jenga® Civil War And Lessons From Canada

“Superhero landing. She’s gonna do a superhero landing. Wait for it.” – Deadpool

What’s more than step 9, but not quite to step 10? This clock.

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

As close as we are to the precipice of war, be careful. Things could change at any minute. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – The Jenga® Civil War – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Lessons From Canada – 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 640 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

https://wilderwealthywise.com/civil-war-weather-report-previous-posts/

The Jenga™ Civil War

The game of Jenga© has been pretty popular in the United States since it was introduced into the United States. The object of the game should be familiar to most – build a tower taller and taller until it falls. It always falls. Someone tips the table, someone pulls out the one piece that shouldn’t come out, or Islamic terrorists decide to fly a chicken wing into it.

But Jenga™ illustrates something else. If you keep increasing the instability of a structure, it will fail. It’s an when, not an if. Jenga® doesn’t end until the tower falls over, and each pull and replace of a piece reduces stability.

As found on the Internet.

What causes the collapse?

It doesn’t matter, unless you’re the player that does it. What matters are the conditions. As I’ve tried to do below with the graphs, I’ve tried to create a barometer for conditions that might lead to Civil War. And, no, we’re really not there yet. Is the blood flowing? Certainly.

Are both sides engaged? Certainly not. That’s what scares the Leftists in Washington, D.C. to no end. The idea that people on the Right will engage in a strategic sense to start and end the phase of open-armed warfare keeps them up at night.

And it should. But, again, it’s not the spark. Historians in the future will write about the spark, but the spark would have no effect if the conditions weren’t there. What are the conditions? You know them, you feel them. There is no sense of who and what we are anymore.

As found.

As a nation, we have no goals except what hedonism can be sold to us weekly. It’s what’s streaming, what’s playing, and what new McFood© is coming out this week. Commercial activity can’t be the binding for a nation, so our ties are just as tight as those Jenga™ bricks, kept together by gravity, inertia and little else.

And every week the tower gets one brick higher.

Think Joe’s not taking this seriously?

Violence And Censorship Update

Again, not much on the organized violence this January. Censorship, as usual, is busy.

Rogan

Joe Rogan is a podcaster who has managed to become slightly more popular than me. His podcasts regularly pull 11,000,000 listeners. Rogan also was big enough to get serious A-list quests. All of that made Spotify® decide that Rogan is valuable. How valuable? They pay Rogan more than they pay for every bit of music that they stream. Yes. Joe Rogan is more important to Spotify© than all of the recorded music in the history of the world. He’s worth $100,000,000 to them.

And he’s said things that irritate people invested in the Narrative. He’s not vaxxed, and has (like your humble host) had the ‘VID. He took Ivermectin. I got by with chicken soup and loads of decongestant. I’ve never been much to listen to Joe, I’ve probably only heard a few minutes (in total) of his podcasts.

They’ve been after Joe, and it started with Neil Young. Despite being less relevant than greased back Fonzie hair, Neil made the papers with his demand that his music be pulled off of Spotify© because Joe Rogan said things he didn’t agree with. Then other, equally irrelevant artists followed stamping their walkers to demand that Spotify® not play them to the one person that asks for their song every six months.

As found.

That was just the start. Someone has now have gone back through Rogan’s early podcasts and have a supercut of him saying the only word that is now taboo for some people to say. Rogan has now apologized, which is the first mistake, and now his blood is in the water. What happens next?

Who can say?

DOJ

On January 11, the Department of Justice announced a new domestic terrorism task force, because “We have seen a growing threat from those who are motivated by racial animus, as well as those who ascribe to extremist anti-government and anti-authority ideologies.”

I’m not jumping on a limb and being Nostradamus by betting that it’s nearly certain that the people who started CHAZ as an avowed foreign nation won’t be prosecuted. But if someone tries to lead a trucker’s strike like in Ottawa? You can bet that the DOJ, FBI, NSA and every other three-letter agency will be on them. Because terrorism really only applies to things the Right does.

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 down. January isn’t (usually) a big month for violence, so that’s to be expected. I would expect the next few months to remain calm as well, perhaps turning back up in April.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it’s headed upwards, fast. Joe has lost his base.

Economic:

The drop in economic confidence continued this month. Expect a bigger drop this month. The economy is falling apart.

Illegal Aliens:

This data was at record levels for this time of year. All-time record levels. Plus? Airflights for illegals. No DOJ task force for this . . .

Lessons from Canada

Canada has lived under very strict fear COVID restrictions. Trudeau has recently tightened the restrictions, especially with respect to truckers. You can look up the details, but to summarize: it was the last straw for many truckers.

As found, though in this case I don’t think he’s up to invading an ice cream store.

Truckers have a unique place in society. They provide that final lifeline on everything from the chlorine that the water treatment plant uses to food at Wal-Mart® to the toilet paper that everyone panic-bought in 2020. Many of them also own their own trucks. They work when they want to as owner operators.

As found.

Make them mad? Right now, hundreds of Canadian truckers have had enough, and are occupying Ottawa. How serious is Justine Trudeau taking this? He vanished like Saddam Hussein, but with better press coverage. He ran away, and left the Leftists of Ottawa to their own devices.

As found. I wonder what will happen to Justine’s son, Uday?

And they are upset. Apparently, their cats are of the very sensitive type (memes as found):

Also, the Leftists tried to set up a counter protest. /POL/ got into their communication channels, giving conflicting starting and ending times for the protest, and filling the protestors up with doubt, “Boy, that sure seems like a long time to protest, and it’s going to be cold out there. Don’t forget to dress in layers! I’ll be with you in spirit!”

As a lark, it has been a lot of fun for the Right, and already two provinces (they’re like states, but made of maple syrup) have indicated that restrictions are going away soon in those provinces. The convoy is working.

As such, the Ottawa police is now trying to crack down on the logistics of the truckers. Will it work? Maybe. Maybe not.

I think two lessons are that this will never, ever be allowed in the United States in a major Leftist city and will be censored by the major news media working in concert with .gov if it ever starts to develop. The crackdown would be ruthless, especially if it occurred in D.C. Leftists are as afraid of actual workers as they are of actual work.

As found. Also, Leftist logic thought process.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys (Jan 2022)…

NYC: https://twitter.com/i/status/1478006188856025097

NYC: https://twitter.com/AndrewPollackFL/status/1482023373165285379

Chicago: https://youtu.be/U1G2Gt loP0

Chicago: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IDN4S-mhplk

Detroit: https://youtu.be/C8ePWbzYTP8

Detroit: https://youtu.be/jv0LvsphFSA

Portland: https://youtu.be/TKnXY3pZWK8

LA: https://twitter.com/streetpeopleLA/status/1484350084439363586

LA: https://twitter.com/streetpeopleLA/status/1484356560956526593

San Jose: https://youtu.be/MfjkUJZFbl0

SF: https://twitter.com/i/status/1479164420148248576

Good Guys (Jan 2022)…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10402917/Two-teens-charged-murder-subway-attack-Good-Samaritan-killed.html

https://6abc.com/philadelphia-carjacking-driver-shoots-carjacker-fairmount-west-kensington/11452980/

One Guy

https://www.wpr.org/gun-kyle-rittenhouse-used-kenosha-shootings-be-destroyed

https://www.dailywire.com/news/kyle-rittenhouse-sits-down-with-candace-owens-discusses-future-plans-theres-going-to-be-some-accountability

Body Count (Jan 2022)

USA Surge 2021: https://invesbrain.com/states-investigating-surge-in-mortality-rate-among-18-49-year-olds-majority-unrelated-to-covid-19/

https://thelibertydaily.com/bombshell-cover-up-cancer-diagnoses-in-the-military-rose-over-three-fold-since-jabs-were-introduced/

USA Fentanyl 2021: https://secureservercdn.net/166.62.108.196/w7l.6b7.myftpupload.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/facts.pdf?time=1640209532

USA Weather 2021: https://twitter.com/NOAA/status/1480574295940161536

Chicago 2021: https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/violence.png?itok=BmL3yEVn

NYC 9 Days In 2022: https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2022/01/11/05/52781909-10389089-image-a-8_1641877588156.jpg

Philly “Safe Streets Violence Interrupter” : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ts6XSYE4zNI

Blacks: https://www.unz.com/isteve/cdc-blacks-died-36-more-often-by-homicide-in-the-year-of-the-racial-reckoning/

Body Count (Snoop Dog “F**k The Police” Super Bowl Edition)

https://nypost.com/2022/01/29/snoop-dogg-at-super-bowl-halftime-show-becoming-even-worse-look/

https://nypost.com/2021/12/29/where-is-the-outrage-over-the-killing-of-keona-holley/

https://nypost.com/2022/01/06/cop-killed-with-own-gun-after-pleading-with-suspect-to-spare-life-prosecutor/

https://www.outlookindia.com/website/story/world-news-chicago-female-police-officer-killed-one-wounded-in-traffic-stop-shooting/390867

https://www.foxnews.com/us/nyc-murderer-first-female-police-officer-paroled

https://jonathanturley.org/2021/12/23/the-potter-verdict-was-the-jury-right-but-the-law-wrong-on-culpable-negligence/

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/police-attacked-least-4-us-110120536.html

https://nleomf.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/2021-EOY-Fatality-Report-Final-web.pdf

Polled Lives Matter!!!

https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/brad-wilmouth/2022/01/02/did-gallup-end-most-admired-74-year-polling-tradition-avoid-trump

https://nypost.com/2022/01/02/34-percent-of-americans-say-violence-against-government-justified/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/1-in-3-americans-say-violence-against-government-can-be-justified-citing-fears-of-political-schism-pandemic/ar-AASld12

https://www.forbes.com/sites/nicholasreimann/2022/01/12/nearly-60-of-americans-worry-democracy-in-danger-of-collapse-poll-suggests/?sh=72ffc315483e

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/washington-secrets/democrats-ok-with-fines-prison-mandates-for-vax-deniers-poll

https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/partner_surveys/jan_2022/covid_19_democratic_voters_support_harsh_measures_against_unvaccinated

https://www.theorganicprepper.com/survey-unvaccinated/

THE TRUTH IS OUT THERE

USA (MUST SEE): https://2000mules.com/

GA (MUST READ): https://www.truethevote.org/ttv-statement-regarding-georgia-ballot-harvesting-investigation/

GA : https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/georgia-opens-investigation-possible-illegal-ballot-harvesting-2020

GA :https://twitter.com/TalkMullins/status/1487299420752334848

GA : https://voterga.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Press-Release-VoterGA-Drop-Box-Custody-Chain-Analysis.pdf

GA : https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/01/huge-georgia-ballot-trafficking-whistleblower-admits-making-45000-stuffing-ballot-boxes-just-one-242-traffickers-possibly-1-million-ballots/

PA: https://thefederalist.com/2022/01/17/video-shows-pennsylvania-official-admitting-election-laws-were-broken-in-2020/

PA: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/biden-s-nearly-2m-mail-in-pennsylvania-votes-in-2020-would-now-be-unconstitutional/ar-AATfqsq

TX: https://www.sos.texas.gov/elections/forms/phase1-progress-report.pdf

TX: https://www.theepochtimes.com/texas-audit-finds-over-11000-potential-non-citizens-registered-to-vote-other-problems_4188076.html

WI: https://thehill.com/regulation/court-battles/589714-judge-rules-absentee-ballot-drop-boxes-cannot-be-used-in-wisconsin?amp

WI: https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/10/how-a-mark-zuckerberg-funded-nonprofit-turned-wisconsin-blue/

CA: https://ktla.com/news/local-news/no-evidence-of-election-fraud-by-man-found-passed-out-with-300-recall-ballots-drugs-in-torrance-police/

USA: https://www.cnn.com/2022/01/09/politics/gop-election-voting-rights-battleground-states/index.html

USA: https://uncoverdc.com/2021/12/23/heritage-foundation-state-election-integrity-scorecard-puts-georgia-at-top/

USA: https://www.dailywire.com/news/biden-judicial-nominee-said-proof-of-citizenship-is-voter-suppression

They Say It’s Your Birthday…

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10391647/FBI-executive-assistant-director-stays-mum-Cruz-asks-agents-participated-January-6-riot.html

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/588446-division-reins-over-jan-6-anniversary

https://www.ajc.com/news/jimmy-carter-america-on-the-brink-of-a-widening-abyss/2ER2BJ2ZCJGQBBKHLUYSPPMRXU/

https://thefederalist.com/2022/01/17/democrats-are-priming-themselves-to-refuse-to-accept-any-election-defeats/

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/victoria-taft/2022/01/14/actor-nick-searcys-movie-capitol-punishment-is-the-best-doc-about-january-6-hed-know-he-was-there-n1549452

The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia…

https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/01/11/remarks-by-president-biden-on-protecting-the-right-to-vote/

https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/bidens-disastrous-georgia-speech-threw-away-his-last-chance-to-start-anew/

https://www.dailywire.com/news/mcconnell-blasts-bidens-profoundly-unpresidential-rant-he-propagandized-against-his-own-country

https://www.foxnews.com/media/mike-huckabee-biden-insane-georgia-voting-rights-speech

https://thehiu.com/bidens-georgia-speech-was-a-breaking-point/

https://twitter.com/TulsiGabbard?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1481467050027466752%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_

https://jonathanturley.org/2022/01/11/democracy-autocracy-or-hypocrisy-biden-to-call-for-curtailing-filibuster-rule-in-reversal-of-long-held-position/

Disco Inferno:

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/589888-kyrsten-sinema’s-courage-washington-hypocrisy-and-the-politics-of-rage

http://ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2022/january/10/we-need-a-revolution/

https://abcnews.go.com/US/oath-keepers-spokesperson-warns-wing-propaganda-dangerous-bullets/story?id=82094999

https://amgreatness.com/2022/01/09/what-makes-riots-conspiracies-cabals-and-insurrections-good-or-bad/

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60036911

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/01/06/new-civil-war-about-what-exactly-526603

https://www.spiked-online.com/2022/01/12/the-hysterical-fantasy-of-an-impending-civil-war/amp/

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/jan/16/the-next-civil-war-stephen-marche-how-civil-wars-start-barbara-walter-review-nightmare-scenarios-for-the-us

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/americas-asymmetric-civil-war

https://www.fastcompany.com/90572489/u-s-election-maps-are-wildly-misleading-so-this-designer-fixed-them

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Brookings-2economies11-20a_0.png?itok=EO-pIuFl

The End Of The World

https://brucewilds.blogspot.com/2022/01/if-unrest-soars-in-america-will-looters.html

Hedonism Leads To Nihilism

“Shut up and pay attention to me, Bender.  Look, I love life and its pleasures as much as anyone here, except perhaps you, Hedonism Bot.  But we need to be shut off.  Especially you, Hedonism Bot.” – Futurama

One thing I learned in high school – always date homeless girls.  It doesn’t matter where you drop them off.

I know that lots of people had it rough in high school, that they felt that they didn’t fit in.  They felt as awkward at Whoopi Goldberg at a bris.

Not me.

I’m not bragging, really, it was just how it worked out for me.  I had a great time in class, a great time in athletics, had great friends from nearly every walk of life.  Heck, I even had hair back then.

I was also really lucky with the ladies.  Thankfully there were no small number of girls with daddy issues in town, a drive-in movie theater, and a pizza place.  Of course the pizza was not entirely necessary for a seduction, but a guy gets hungry.  Seducing girls burns up calories.

Let’s add in the last element of hedonism:  beer.

There was a bar where if you had the $5 cover charge, you were of drinking age as long as you weren’t stupid enough to wear your letter jacket.  I should know, because I got in when I was 16.  I went in with my friend’s (who was of drinking age) license.  He was four inches taller than me and was probably sixty pounds less than me.  I wasn’t fat, he was just skinny enough to fit down the barrel of a 12 gauge and not touch the sides.

I dived off the stage at an Oktoberfest party.  I went krautsurfing.

Yes.  At 16 I thought it was a good idea to sneak into a bar holding the license of someone who resembled me only in the fact that they were another human male who had blonde hair and blue eyes and in only those ways.  And that same person who barely resembled me was also walking in with me.

I had no idea what sort of ludicrous story I would tell them if they asked.  “Oh, sorry, I thought I was another person?”  No.  “Oh, when I was at his place I accidentally put his license in my wallet and hid my own license?”  Hmm.  “I was fighting with my multiple personality disorder and physically split into two people?”

Thankfully, the place was nearly empty and the bouncer never asked me for an ID, just took my $5 and stamped my hand.

I saw a drunk caveman walk home once.  It was a meanderthal.

Apparently, I made enough of an impression that night that they never once carded me, ever.  After one night, I was a regular and knew most of the people that worked there by name.  Not so amazingly, about half the people from my social circle made the same discovery, and on a random Friday night, it wasn’t unusual to see a dozen juniors and seniors in the place.  Of course in 2022, the Safety Police would probably summarily execute the owner and the staff, but this was a kinder, gentler, drunker time.

It was life on easy mode.  Plentiful girls with dubious morals.  Cheap beer.  Great success in nearly everything I tried.  I’m not saying I peaked in high school, no.  Heck, I’m not even sure that I’ve peaked yet.  But it was easy.

One thing I did was try to connect emotionally with those frolicsome fräuleins of my hometown.  That seemed (in many cases) like a lost cause.  One night while sitting under the moonlight in the Wonderful Wildermobile, between hickie sessions, I looked up at the Moon and said to my girlfriend at the time, “It’s amazing to look up at that, and think how much smaller it is than the Sun.  How much smaller the Earth is than the Sun.  It’s a fantastic Universe we live in.”

Her response?  “The Sun is larger than the Earth?  No way!!!!”

Okay, our relationship was over pretty shortly after that comment.  And that also changed me.

I bet my old girlfriend thinks Starbucks® is a currency that aliens use.

I had an epiphany.  I was living a life of hedonism.  And although I had a life of pleasure, there seemed to be a lack of meaning.  I had everything that every guy on the football team could desire.

But I felt empty.  Not dead inside, but empty.  I felt that the things I was doing were, while extremely physically pleasing, were devoid of meaning.  It was like being Hunter Biden without being a Biden, smoking crack (or meth), and getting money from anonymous donors for my retarded attempts at painting to try to influence my dad.

I’m betting that this is the first time Scotty and scotch were used to explain nihilism.

The feeling of empty was a tough one.  It helped me see how someone can go from that feeling of empty in the face of pleasure to a feeling of nihilism.  I looked up the definition of nihilism, and came up with more definitions than I had girlfriends in high school.

I’ll give this one, which I found after looking at a dozen (many contradictory) definitions on the Internet:  “as the view that nothing we do, nothing we create, nothing we love, has any meaning or value whatsoever.”  That is the one that mirrors the emptiness that I felt.

It is the inherent danger of a life that borders on the libertine.  What matters if life is so easy?

Thankfully, I’m glad I caught that as early as I did.  I can see easily of how falling down the rabbit hole of hedonism could lead to nihilism.  As I got older, I realized that, whatever definition used, nihilism is the worst of philosophies, and the worst of the human condition.

Even though the Universe is large, and there have been countless years since the start, and, perhaps, countless years until the heat death of the Universe, we matter.

What happens in this world does matter.  We have meaning.  And fighting the good fight for Good over Evil does matter.  Life and meaning are built not in the pleasure, but in the struggle to be better, to do more, to be more, and to add value because we were here.  Those are the stories worth telling – they are the ones that will be sung around campfires in 100 years.

I hope Aaron Burr didn’t name his son Tim.  It would have been awkward to look for him if he ever got lost in a forest.

Never give up, because what we do here matters.  What you do here has value.  Even as we stare at the vastness of a Universe that no one can comprehend, it matters that we are here.  And it matters what we create.

And our love?  It perhaps has the greatest value of all, though it is rarely found in the bottom of a glass of beer, unless there’s a live band.

Did I mention they had live bands at the bar?

Choosing A Path In Life, 2022 Edition

“What’s all this talk I hear about you fooling around with the college widow? No wonder you can’t get out of college. Twelve years in one college! I went to three colleges in twelve years and fooled around with three college widows.” – Horse Feathers

In this episode, Gilligan eats the last cookies on the island.  Ginger snaps.

The “traditional” path for students with good grades was to “go to college.”  Honestly, this was pretty good advice for a long time.  The number of high school graduates that went to college bounced between 40% and 60%, of course being higher during the Vietnam draft.  When my uncle was in Vietnam, he killed a dozen soldiers.  Next year we’re going on vacation to a different country.

Around 1974, however, the percentage boomed, with over 80% of high school graduates at least attending some college by 1978 or so.  The rationale was that a college education was a ticket to a better life.  Again, for the most part, the common wisdom was right.

But why?  In 1971 after a Supreme Court decision, companies could no longer use I.Q. tests for employee selection, they had to use something because, despite what the Simpsons™ might suggest, you really want smart people operating nuclear power plants.  Certificates and credentialism had always been nice, but now businesses desperately needed some way to select employees that were smart enough to do the job.

What did Three Mile Island say to Fukushima?  “Nuke, I am your father.”

Thus:  college degrees.  The more selective the college, the greater the ACT® or SAT™ score required to get in.  ACT© and SAT™ scores are actually a very good proxy for intelligence, so, graduate from a good school?  That shows a (likely) innate intelligence along with enough foresight and planning to defer satisfaction until the degree was granted.

In 1970, going to college at Harvard™ could be paid for with the (current 2021) equivalent cost of $22,000 or so a year.  Now it’s over $75,000 for the sticker price.  College prices went up because demand went up.  Harvard’s© prices went up more because they were more selective – it was harder to get in so they were a better sifter for I.Q., I mean, who would have guessed that Hawking had the same I.Q. as Evel Knievel?  I mean, they both loved ramps . . . .

But another factor was the increase in money available.  Politicians looked for ways to encourage people to go to college.  So, colleges increased prices to better soak up all of the student loan dollars available.  Getting students morphed from “here’s where our graduates work” to “here’s what our climbing wall looks like.”  Millions were invested to make a college more of a theme park than a serious place of learning.  They raised prices so high that during COVID, college even became the most expensive video streaming service.

Along the way, though, standards decreased to get more students in the door.  Not only was it easier to get in, inflation hit grades as well.  Right now, the average grade at Harvard© is an A-.  The average.

Harvard®, the vegan Crossfit™ of colleges.

Even now, though, Harvard™ is still a great rate of return for students.  It’s not the education, it’s who a student meets.  Harvard® is useful for the connections with wealth and power a student can make.  Get in good with the right family?  A student can become engaged with that class, though often there’s a cost.

Harvard® is still a good investment, even though it’s supposedly hard to get in.  Heck, I got in.  They don’t even lock most of their windows.

Some colleges are horrible investments.  Going to Podunk U in North Central BFE and majoring in Anthropology of French Basket-Weaving Poets?  Yeah, that’s also known as majoring in pre-barista.  But that student could have been a barista without rolling up $50,000-$75,000 in student loan debt.  And, if the student majored in philosophy, they can ask, “Why do people want fries with that?”

The Mrs. told me I needed to grow up.  I was speechless.  It’s hard to talk with 45 gummy bears in your mouth.

So, if I were giving general advice to a kid who was determined to go to college, I’d suggest that they avoid anything that someone can do over the Internet from Bangladesh.  I can hire 45 Bangladeshis for approximately half of a Slim Jim© an hour, so why compete against tens of millions?  Engineering is good, if you have the knack.  Medical fields are constantly in demand – I saw an ad here in Modern Mayberry for nurses.  Five-figure signing bonus – and that wasn’t $199.99, it was over $10,000.  That’s probably a good idea.  The short answer is that it’s not 1970 anymore.  A student can’t just do any degree – they have to major in something that will pay the cost of the college degree.

Is college a good idea?  Not for all of the 80%.  Probably, college is still a good idea for 40%, at most.

So, what about trades?

Just like college, the economics has been twisted there, too.  Just like supply and demand has tossed prices for college into the stratosphere, an oversupply of laborers has cratered the cost of many trades.  Except for carpenters who build stairs – they’re always thinking a step ahead.

Where did the labor come from?  Immigrants, illegal or not.  Entire construction trades in many parts of the United States are completely staffed by people who speak less English than Pepé Le Pew.  Whereas they often do great work, they are part of the reason that wages are stagnant in many trades.  Sure, in 2022 there are shortages everywhere putting an upward pressure on wages, but that’s a short-term event.

I had one plumber who was very polite.  When he looked at my sink he said, “I am at your disposal.”

Certainly, some trades are doing well.  Which ones?  Once again, those that require credentials and those that require citizenship.  Anything that lowers the competition.

Regardless, the time when most trade jobs had pensions has passed – many have the promise of . . . Social Security.  And in 1970, getting a job that supported a family just out of high school without a college degree?  It was possible.  Tough?  Certainly.  But possible.

It’s still possible today.  A small-town plumber in Modern Mayberry does pretty well, so well that he became a Christian missionary overseas – I guess he’ll bless the drain down in Africa.  The local HVAC guy makes a killing, too.  And power linemen?  They live in some of the nicest houses in town.

Are there still paths for a young person in 2022?  Yes.  It’s far tougher than it was in 1970 for a kid today, though.  The traditional paths are difficult.

Now thank me I didn’t find a picture of Rosie in a bikini – I bet she has a hairy back.  Oops.  Sorry about putting that thought in your head.

The path, like the path between Scylla and Charybdis, is narrow.  On either side are monsters.  It’s sort of like being caught between Rosie O’Donnell and Whoopi Goldberg – you’re always safer if you have a pocket full of hot pizza rolls to distract them.

Ignoring Reality Catches Up With All Of Us

“When dreams become more important than reality, you give up travel, building, creating. You even forget how to repair the machines left behind by your ancestors. You just sit, living and reliving other lives left behind in the thought record.” – Star Trek (The Cage)

After creating the Nile, God became a podcaster, “Check out my stream!”

Philip K. Dick said, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

It’s a pretty simple definition, and it mostly works unless you have really persistent hallucinations.  Persistent hallucinations just like Philip K. Dick probably had.  This may explain a lot of his fiction and his fascination with reality.  And as for 2021, I’d say reality has great graphics, but horrible gameplay.

In 2022, though, we live in a world where reality seems to be split, and split along ideological lines.  One generally reliably Left member of the media (but I repeat myself), Bill Maher, just gave up on the fiction:  “It’s just gone on too long, nobody cares anymore.  I don’t want to live in your mask paranoid world anymore.  You go out, it’s silly now.  You have to have a mask, you have a booster, they scan your head like you’re a cashier and I’m a bunch of bananas.  I’m not bananas, you are.”

Still not on your side.

With that, the cracks of reality on where we’re at with COVID have swung wide open.  There is the fiction that has the single, double, triple, and mega-vaxxed living in constant fear.  The Mrs. was reading the comments to me from some Lefties on a website she frequents.  One particular set of comments was of Lefties looking for test kits like they were looking for crack.  One commenter had consumed at least four instant kits (without a positive result) because they were certain that they had . . . the Rona.

I have no idea what induces that level of fear in a healthy person.  When one of them pointed out that they were consuming tests that could have been better used by people in nursing homes, this entirely common-sense idea was shouted down by a sea of Leftist fear.

This is a denial of reality.  COVID has killed quite a few people, but it’s no Black Death.  Everyone in my family has had it, and for us it ranged from two or three days in bed (The Mrs.) to an afternoon of fever (me).  I’d go so far as, having had it, to bet that millions of people have had it and don’t even realize it.  For two years, these people have managed to live every moment dripping in abject fear.

How a Leftist imagines a trip to COSTCO®.

Beyond the impact of the fear, there’s the impact of the Vax itself.  There is more than sufficient anecdotal evidence that the mRNA shots have significantly more complications than any vaccine ever delivered.  No one can say what the long-term implications are.  With any luck, the negative health impacts are over more quickly than the protections offered by the shot, but there are no guarantees.

Especially not a guarantee from the manufacturer.  Hmmm.

The “adverse health impacts”, of course, are being denied as well.  But such an overwhelming amount of data leads to even the monolith of “jab good, deniers bad” being breached at an official level.  The current shot does nothing against the current strain of COVID, and it appears the current strain of COVID leaves those that get it immune to certain other forms of COVID.

Huh.  It’s almost like the virus is attenuating like, oh, every virus, ever and becoming progressively more infectious and less lethal.  Even Bill Gates is ready to call this one over.

We know that Bill Gates didn’t invent COVID – none of his other products come up with new versions this frequently.

This isn’t the only reality the Left is denying.  It’s not even the most important reality that is being denied.

What’s falling apart, that Leftists say isn’t?

Well, the economy, but I’ve been on and on about that, so I’ll give you a rest.  Besides, Wednesday is a better day for bikini economics.  For whatever reason, Biden owns the economy now.  In this, I’ll give him a pass.  He’s like the last player in a game of Jenga® where you know the tower is going to go, but he’s gotta try to make it one peg higher.  More on that later.

Our border.  The character of a country is in its people, and so is the success.  I do believe that the traditions of our great nation led to the great prosperity that we had.  That, and having thousands of nuclear warheads.  Yeah, having great traditions is nice, but having the ability to obliterate anyone who disagrees with you never hurts.

Regardless, there’s a group that actively says that the United States, “has no culture” which is like a fish wondering what water is.  The fact is that the culture of the United States was so successful and pervasive that people didn’t recognize its influence because it is literally everywhere.  Is American culture perfect?  No.  But it certainly has remade the world, in some ways for the good, in others for the not so good.

I killed an Australian spider with my shoe.  I’m glad he wasn’t big enough to carry both of them.

But if you replace the people, you’ve replaced the culture, and the Magic Dirt won’t make them prosperous.  Just like if you replaced the Japanese with (spins wheel) Argentinians, it wouldn’t be Japan anymore, you can’t replace Americans with (spins wheel) Japanese and expect anything but another Japan.

The Left somehow thinks the thousands of people in the medical professions (doctors, nurses, administrators, etc.) are magically going to be replaced when they refuse the Clotshot®.  No.  These are skilled positions requiring education and practical training.  Replace these professionals with idiots like me, and you’d end up with every solution being amputation.  They don’t call me “John Wilder, Civil War Surgeon” for nothing.  It did cut down on the owies my kids brought me, though.

Our relationship with each other.  At every level this is breaking down.  That’s not fair.  At every level, people are being pushed apart.  On a racial level, everyone is being taught that, even when there’s no intent, one group of people is awful and the other is blameless.

One of the most pernicious things that can be done is to create a victim class.  No matter what happens, they are told, they have no responsibility.  If they behave badly, well, it couldn’t be helped.  Why not?  Well, something happened three hundred years ago, you see.

It’s nonsense.  I know Scott Adams has been taking a few lumps recently, but a while back he had a thought experiment I felt was interesting:  what would happen if you asked an alien about the situation of blacks in the United States and if reparations were owed.  If the alien looked over the situation, Scott seemed to think that it might say, “Well, comparing your life span, material goods, and general standard of living compared to if you had stayed in Africa, you probably owe the white people.”

Women drinking coffee.  My three favorite things.

Probably not a popular idea to float in 2022, but the constant stream of victimhood replacing any sort of rational assessment will end up doing only one thing:  tearing us further apart.  Which is just what Leftists want.

We are on the road to many reckonings.  From the looks of them, they won’t be delivered sequentially.  I tend to think the big trigger will be the economy, but regardless of the trigger, there comes a point where, regardless of what we believe, reality will set in.

I hope it doesn’t have too much Kardashian.