Big Thoughts – Page 56 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

A Day Trip To Another America

“The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.” – Star Wars®, A New Hope

Well, at least they’re admitting it . . . (None of the memes today are originals – they are “as-found” on the Internet)

Pugsley is an athlete, and that causes us to have to go to places to see him engage in his sport (elk milking) across the state, and sometimes across state lines. These are, for the most part, the only trips of any significance that we have taken in the last two years. Pugsley, sadly, is old enough that I can’t skip the trip with him on his sports jaunts since he no longer buys my excuse.

What’s my excuse? I’m adopted. So, I tell him, “I can’t go because my parents won’t sign the permission slip.” He doesn’t even giggle at that. He’s got a cold heart.

Here in Modern Mayberry, masks have essentially disappeared from all public life. The only place that might still require them is the local hospital, and thankfully I have no idea if they do or not. We ate brunch today and, although many of the patrons at the restaurant were older folks, there wasn’t a single mask to be seen. These are country folk. They’re more afraid of bad weather for the crops than they are of a virus, and they feel that they can control the virus about as much as they can control the weather.

Everywhere our family has been across the state, it looks and feels like the same. It looks a lot like the elk-milking competitions I went to when The Boy (Pugsley’s older brother) was in high school. This was back before the Great Plague Of Overblown Impact hit us. There are no masks, and people just behave like . . . well, nothing ever happened.

Late 2021 looks exactly like 2019 in my daily life. We even shake hands when we meet people and we don’t act like we’ve just dipped our hands in some sort of biohazard, or have touched AOC’s teeth. But I repeat myself.

The elk milking competition went well. There were hundreds of people all inside for a day. I coughed once, I think (nacho went down the wrong hole, and no, I’m not going to make that a joke about my nacho hole) and no one bothered to even look. Here in Midwestia, we’re over it. We’re not afraid.

We don’t care anymore.

Or, at least I thought.

The Boy has been off at college. As finals were over, and Pugsley’s elk milking competition was near his college, The Boy came on to cheer his brother on. Those elk milking siphons sure make a guy’s wrists tired. After the competition was over, we decided to go and grab some food. As we have exactly six restaurants in our usual rotation in Modern Mayberry, eating somewhere new is a treat.

The Boy asked his friends about good restaurants near where we were.

They were all in . . . Blue City. Every Red State has a Blue City, where nose rings and “meat is murder” t-shirts outsell gasoline and beef jerky. The friends came up with three names. Two were burger joints, and the third was a Japanese place.

I’ll admit I was interested in eating Japanese. At first, I had some pretty big resistance, until I explained it wasn’t Japanese people that we were going to eat, but Japanese food. Then everyone agreed. I guess it’s a matter of taste?

Huh, that’s a specific list . . .

We got to Blue City. Pugsley, fresh off of his second-place elk milking victory, was driving.

The first thing I noted was this: in Modern Mayberry, if I want to go to a place, I can park near it. In Blue City, in order to get to the Not At All Cannibal Where You Eat Japanese People Restaurant, we had to park over a quarter-mile away.

Honestly, the walk didn’t hurt me. Nor did feeding the parking meter $1.50 to park to not eat Japanese people. Nor did walking through the faceless, anonymous crowd. But it wasn’t a pleasant walk. It felt like walking in a street from some sort of dystopian movie, like Bladerunner®, filled with people who hordes of people I didn’t know or and who didn’t care about me on crowded streets. It was like being in my house in the morning before anyone had any coffee.

Thankfully I didn’t have to fashion a cloak out of an abandoned tarp. Or did I?

I came to a store that I wanted to go into. I was about to open the door when I noticed the laminated sign on the clear glass door: “No entrance without masks. If you wish to purchase our products but don’t want to wear a mask, feel free to visit us on the Internet.” The Mrs. quite succinctly mentioned where she thought they could stick their Internet, but I wondered if it would be uncomfortable for them to have so much CNN® up in that dark, moist place. We left them in peace, and I hope they have a lot of dark, moist success.

We kept walking to the Restaurant That Definitely Doesn’t Serve Asian People As Food Because Of That Health Inspection, the foot traffic was continuous. Many people were masked, though not all. Finally, we got to our destination. On the door was another sign, just like the first store, though they didn’t offer to ship cooked people over the Internet.

This immediately caught the ire of The Mrs., and since she’s at least a bit Irish, you don’t want to get the ire of an Irish lass too Irish. Or something. Let’s just say that she can have a bit of a temper that makes Belfast in 1972 look like a Care Bears® movie. I looked inside the restaurant, though, and there were plenty of people not wearing masks.

They were mostly all eating, but they weren’t wearing masks. Apparently, the virus doesn’t travel when you’re sitting and eating, only when you’re standing and ignoring the duct-tape crosses on the floor in the line. When we first entered the restaurant, there was another person not eating and not wearing a mask. Since he could get away with it, I figured we could, too. As he was a people of color, I would have a jolly fun time making a YouTube® show if they kicked us out, and not him.

They ignored that we were unmasked heretics and were pleasant and served us.

Hey, that’s Internet me!

The restaurant really didn’t serve Japanese food, just ramen. It was expensive ramen, since ramen with steak in it cost $14.50 a bowl. They took our order, and we waited at our table.

We got the oddly shaped (14 inches wide and eight-foot long) table near the front. The chairs were weirdly high and the restaurant smelled of . . . farts. Really. The ramen, though, was excellent. Mine was filled with steak and mushrooms and was unexpectedly (and subtly) spicy.

I generally get the chair so I can see the entrance – The Mrs. is used to it. We had gotten to the restaurant right before the rush – patrons that came in right after us were told that they could get a text when a table was available. In Modern Mayberry, you can walk into the best restaurant in town and (generally) have no more than a zero-minute wait. And a quarter block is a long walk to it.

But it wasn’t that which bothered me the most.

What I noticed were the patrons coming into the restaurant. They all wore masks, even the young children. I understand that there is both a logical and a scientific case to be made that masks do help stop disease spread. And nearly every person in the restaurant was at zero risk of serious complications from the ‘Rona. The children were at zero risk. Heck, I was nearly the oldest guy in there.

As everyone in the Wilder fam has had the ‘Rona, my fear level was zero.

Oh, money can’t buy love, but it can buy fear.

But what I saw wasn’t so much fear or even altruism in wearing the masks. What I saw was subjugation in its nearly universal compliance. Would I have put on a mask to eat a Japanese person bowl of ramen? No. I wouldn’t put on a mask to eat a nice steak bathed in PEZ® with Johnny Depp as he drank Amber Heard’s tears.

After dinner, I was struck by the differences in attitude between Blue City and Modern Mayberry. I felt fear in Blue City that I never feel around here. It’s not that the ‘Rona is done here – there are still 50 or so cases a week in the county. But I get the sense that residents here are just done caring about it.

Of the people who have died in our county, I know exactly zero of them. Zero. And I know a lot of people around here. As mentioned before, I’ve had some variation of COVID, as have The Mrs., Pugsley and The Boy. From the data I’ve seen, that makes us functionally immune in a way better than (insert jab booster number here) can never achieve. The virus itself will hopefully have zero additional physical impact on the Family Wilder.

Oh, wait. They’re not done yet?

But what impact will baseless fear have on our lives? Right now there is a threat that if we:

don’t take an mRNA shot that doesn’t work,
we won’t be able to work because we might be able to transmit a disease that we can’t get,
but that those who get the mRNA jab can get.
And those who get “jab” can also transmit.

Fear is the source of most Evil things that have plagued (intended) mankind. At this point, the biggest shortage we have is a shortage of courage. Stand strong. I won’t suggest that you do or don’t do anything, but for me, the mRNA shot and its infinite number of iterations is a step too far.

Dead Romans Agree: Don’t Let The Small Stuff Bother You

“Happy premise number three: even though I feel like I might ignite, I probably won’t.” – Bowfinger

I hear that Marcus’ wife was a perfect X.

Mike, the proprietor over at Cold Fury (LINK), is going through a very difficult time. Big Country has set up a gofundme for him here (LINK). Much more information at the gofundme site.

Now to the post . . .

I woke up this morning just irritated. No particular reason. In all fairness, it was entirely an internal feeling, and I imagine most people never noticed. I was nice and polite to nearly everyone I interacted with. And why not? None of them were my ex-wife.

I wasn’t irritated with them, I was just irritated. There were no issues. I wasn’t in pain. No one around me was in particular trouble. Thankfully I’m not an electrician – people might dislike me not being positive at work.

As I thought about it, what was irritating me? I couldn’t quite put a finger on it. There was no rational reason at all. During a conversation tonight, though, I had a reason to quote Marcus Aurelius:

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

Not mine, but I couldn’t resist.

Sure, Marcus Aurelius’ kid was an utter tool, but when you become Caesar at 18, well, it might tend to go to your head – think of Commodus as Miley Cyrus, 180 A.D. Back to Marcus, though. Marcus genuinely did his best for the Roman Empire. As near as I can tell, Marcus was a pretty good leader.

And that little quote above wasn’t written for you and me. It was written for Marcus, by Marcus. He was reminding himself that the external things in the world had only the power he gave them. He was giving himself a pep talk.

Marcus Aurelius was right. In the conversation I was having tonight, the person was very upset (most of you don’t know the person, though specific readers in California and Indiana do – hi guys!). The reason she was upset? Nothing rational at all. So I quoted a dead Roman emperor.

Who says that Stoics aren’t compassionate?

Did it help? I don’t know. I’m beginning to see a pattern where crying people don’t stop crying when I quote dead Roman emperors. I’m beginning to see why the kids call The Mrs. when they want actual human sympathy.

My irritation (I think) came from the same place. Nowhere. I felt fine (except for my right knee which is much better now) and the day generally went fairly well. I realized that the advice I gave was meant just as much for me as for the person I was talking to. I was just being irritated because I let myself be irritated.

Once I was done and realized I didn’t have to be irritated?

My hands disappeared today, but I can’t really point my finger at what caused it.

My irritation disappeared. I know that the way I feel is (generally) my choice. I can choose how I feel: salty, Wednesday, or even drunk. The only reason that I’m not happy every morning is if I choose not to be happy on some particular morning.

Are there actual reasons why I might have different feelings? Sure. If I had mental problems (other than an unseemly affection for awful jokes and a desire to consciously be able to make my fingernails grow absurdly fast) that might be a reason to have a feeling other than what I choose.

Don’t know. I do know that there are people with actual mental problems. There’s proof: some people actually voted for Biden. But, going back to Marcus, that’s not external. Being sick or goofy enough to vote for Biden isn’t external.

Marcus Aurelius might have voted for Biden – Marcus is dead, after all.

Physical pain also is an internal source that can destroy moods. I once (for a few months) had sciatica. I was irritable enough every morning to chew nails and spit bullets. Then I discovered that I could work out for a few hours on an elliptical trainer to make the pain go away. A week later?

I was fine. My irritation vanished along with my sciatica, never (hopefully) to return.

That was nearly 15 years ago. Sure, I’ve felt pain since then, but most of it was the good pain from a hard workout. Heck, most days the worst thing that happened was the crisp morning breeze running through my back hair.

My mood depends on me. My attitude depends on me.

Does that mean that I can’t see the actual situation we’re in? Of course not. I see a nation tearing itself apart. It’s worse: it’s not just a nation, Western Civilization seems to be happily thrashing about as it marches down a path to extinction.

Is that good?

Of course not.

Does it mean that I should walk around every day being sad?

Of course not. I am doing, I assure you, everything I can think of to stave off that darkness. I mean, those memes won’t make themselves.

Never buy a sculpture of Bonnie Tyler. Every now and then it falls apart.

And I am doing it cheerfully. I laugh every day. I smile because I know that most of the things that I worry about can have no power over me unless I give them that power.

Make your choices, and understand that while you might wake up irritated – it’s your choice if you wish to stay in that mood for a minute or an hour.

Me? I like being happy, so I choose that, even in moments where it might not be appropriate. I might even need to stop high-fiving people at funerals.

So, I got started late typing this after a day I chose to just be irritated. And, I’m going to choose to end now.

With a smile on my face. Go and have a great day. Most of the time, having a great day is just a choice.

Choose wisely.

What If The Mess . . . Is All Planned?

“There is a pestilence upon this land, nothing is sacred. Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress in this period in history.” – Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Think you’ve had a great morning? Every day Joe wakes up and someone gets to explain to him that he’s the president.

Peter Grant over at Bayou Renaissance Man (LINK – if you’re not going there regularly, you’re missing out!) mentioned a quote from Monday’s post (The Winds Of War?):

The idea is simple – warfare encompasses absolutely every facet of the life of the enemy. Destabilize the government. Force their economy into chaos. Starve them. Own their communications systems. In other words, it’s just like a Biden presidency.

When I write these posts, there are generally multiple edits. First, I do a draft. Then I go through and edit that. Then I go through and use hammer, tongs, spackle and a welder to fill the post with jokes. The last bit I do is to go to work in the meme forge and sweat and pound and make (mostly) new and original memes.

If your only tool is a meme, every problem looks like a grumpy cat.

In this case, I wrote the Biden line in the first edit. I was trying to be a bit cheeky, but it just fit so well. When Mr. Grant noticed that line . . . I thought about it even more.

What happens when your government is making war on you?

Seriously – if a foreign government would try to:

destabilize our currency (not money, currency) through massively printing it,
produce and disseminate propaganda to further polarize the citizens,
import millions of people with no ties to the country and no understanding of its governmental systems,
work through an admitted conspiracy encompassing virtually all media(traditional and social as well as search engines), corporations, state and to make sure the vote produced the “correct” winner,
make yet more Marvel movies,
effectively purge from the military all senior officers who don’t follow the correct ideology, and
create a culture of dependency on government programs,

we would say that was an act of war, or a copy of the secret Disney® business plan.

Sure, Donald Duck can walk around Disneyland© without pants and he’s beloved. I do it, and I’m “banned for life.”

From an economic standpoint, one goal appears to be: destroy the middle class and destroy small independent business owners.

Why?

Large businesses can be easily converged into following the Narrative with little actual damage in most cases. Need examples?

Gillette® attacks traditional masculinity. It’s still in business. It doesn’t want my business, and doesn’t care. It’s doing fine financially.
Coke™ reportedly provided access to training that told employees to “be less white” and its stock is up about 20% since that came out, despite my personal boycott.

That’s two. There are countless others. If you look at the major companies that financially support the radical Marxist organization Black Lives Matter©, they are overflowing with cash. They are free to take whatever political positions they want, as long as those positions are Leftist. Just ask Ben & Jerry’s®, which is a Leftist political organization masquerading as an ice cream company. I guess communists have finally fed someone.

I met a French guy – what a coward. He kept asking for “mercy” . . .

Big Businesses love Big Government. They love the huge shield that regulations bring – the more regulations, the fewer competitors they face. And, if you’re lucky like me, OSHA names a new safety regulation after you.

Big Businesses also don’t care what consumers think, because most consumers are mad for a week or a month and then forget. Me? I haven’t bought Levi® jeans since 2002 or so when they went full anti-Second Amendment. I guess I’m stubborn. Must be in my jeans.

Big Business also doesn’t really care about inflation. So what if a dollar is worth less? Their job isn’t to sit on piles of cash, their job is to create cash flowing through the business, while keeping some of the cash for themselves. Because the cash is flowing through, it doesn’t matter much if that cash is becoming less valuable every day, they’ll just make more cash and use it immediately to buy more raw materials.

Hunter wanted to be the Secretary of Energy until he found out it wasn’t pipes and lines.

Destabilization of the economy through inflation, though, is good if you want to create more government power. Another way to create more power is to make sure people are polarized. That means that they can’t come together to demand freedom.

Increasing poverty is a good one, too. Having people become poor makes them slaves to the government, and afraid to speak up at injustice. Microsoft® may choose to support Black Lives Matter™, but individuals can be fired for criticizing it on their own time even when not connecting that criticism to their employer.

Is it government suppression of speech? No, why would they bother when private businesses will do it for them. The effect, though, is the same.

At least he’s not French Vanilla Ice.

Is it too far to call it warfare against the Right? It’s more than that – it’s a war against every aspect of American culture and the basis of what made that great – Western Civilization. The statues are coming down not because the Left hates slavery or “colonialism”, the statues are coming down because they want to erase the history of America so that they can rewrite it to fit.

Looking into what that means to wealth for individuals, let’s extrapolate what we know:

The United States government for over 100 years had gold and silver as money for a very special reason – gold and silver meant stability for the money of a country. You either have gold or you don’t. You can’t print more. Could you manipulate it? Sure, but it was certainly harder than running a printing press.

When FDR (press S to spit) took from American citizens the right to own gold, he was effectively robbing them. He bought gold from them at $20.67. A year later, he revalued the dollar to $35 dollars to the ounce of gold. It now took $1.69 to buy what a dollar did before Roosevelt’s heist.

“For example, the free circulation of gold coins is unnecessary, leads to hoarding, and tends to a possible weakening of national financial structures in times of emergency,” was what that philandering monster said to excuse the theft. Me? After I read that, I was glad he was in a wheelchair.

Fun fact: he never ran for office.

But the pattern is there: if the Left wants something you have, they will take it. Will they confiscate gold in the future? I don’t know. I tend to think not, unless it’s just for spite. In this case, they’ll inflate the currency, and lend freely to Big Businesses and Big Banks so that they can acquire houses and land and every asset with cheap, borrowed dollars. Why steal the gold when they can make people so impoverished that they sell it?

After the elite have bought all the stuff they want?

Inflate again if they missed something. Will they lose control and end up in hyperinflation?

Probably not, unless they want to. But realize that almost every person reading this doesn’t have a seat at the table, and the game is certainly rigged. We knew that.

But what happens when a government declares economic war against its own people?

The Winds Of War?

“I admire your ethics. But right now, a little violence might help.” – Star Trek: Enterprise

Is an inconsistency in a Cheech and Chong movie a pothole?

War in 2021 has much the same objective as war throughout human history – make the enemy do something that they otherwise wouldn’t do. It’s never been pretty. In the end, though, the old adage that violence doesn’t solve anything is wrong – ultimately violence solves quite a few things, as Heinlein notes in Starship Troopers:

“. . . I was heaping scorn on an inexcusably silly idea — a practice I shall always follow. Anyone who clings to the historically untrue — and thoroughly immoral — doctrine that `violence never settles anything’ I would advise to conjure up the ghosts of Napoleon Bonaparte and of the Duke of Wellington and let them debate it. The ghost of Hitler could referee, and the jury might well be the Dodo, the Great Auk, and the Passenger Pigeon. Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and freedoms. . . .”

Our current military is ready to fight a war. It’s just that the war in question is World War II. Our armed forces absorbed the lessons of the Wehrmacht and now could totally defeat the Germans and the Japanese much more quickly than the first time. Even I got caught into that mindset when I displayed dismay that the bomber fleet of the United States was down to just over 100 bombers.

Okay, not that kind of bomber . . .

My mind was locked into old paradigms: 1,000 bomber raids. Those days are gone. There is no real reason to send slow, crewed planes on missions where a much faster missile can do the job. Big bomber raids are a thing that you only do against people who can’t shoot the bombers down which every significant near-peer enemy of the United States can.

And if you want to destroy a city? You use a nuke – if I had a nuke, I’d call it Dr. W. You know, W, M.D.?

Likewise, our aircraft carrier fleet is great when used against an enemy that can’t really fight back. Use them against Iraq? Sure. Use aircraft carriers against China?

Ummm, that’s probably silly, since if a carrier is within fighter range of China, it’s probably in Chinese missile range, too. American aircraft carriers are just targets preloaded with casualties.

Why am I writing about this today?

There are rumblings of war. Putin looking to take over part of Ukraine? China looking to take over Taiwan? An American senator talking about a first strike against Russia?

I know when I yawned in physics class it set off a chain reaction.

To the extent the United States isn’t involved in either of these conflicts, things probably remain nice and boring. If Putin wants the Donbas, I’m not sure that I care. I have no idea why he might want it, but it seems like a lot of Russians live there. I can certainly understand why he wants to keep the Crimean Peninsula, since that’s where he keeps his ships.

Again, I’m not sure that I care. At all.

Taiwan is a different situation. Its shore is as close as 81 miles to the Chinese mainland. For the people in Taiwan, this is unfortunate. From the standpoint of the United States – what, exactly would we do to help Taiwan if the Chinese invaded?

I don’t know.

I’m not sure that the United States could do anything. In report after report, the United States loses, and loses quickly when China attempts to take Taiwan every time we wargame the situation. Taiwan is 81 miles from China. Taiwan is 5,000 miles from Hawaii. To the extent that Taiwan isn’t prepared to defend itself, I’m pretty sure the United States has limited options in responding quickly.

I heard the Dalai Lama has a gambling problem. He loves Tibet.

Which brings us to the face of war in 2021. The Chinese have been thinking for a very long time about war with the United States. To be sure, I’m willing to bet some very, very smart people in the United States have been thinking about just the same thing, when they weren’t distracted by Afghanistan or Iraq.

This following is from the 1999 treatise “Unrestricted Warfare” by Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui. (LINK):

. . . if the attacking side secretly musters large amounts of capital without the enemy nation being aware of this at all and launches a sneak attack against its financial markets, then after causing a financial crisis, buries a computer virus and hacker detachment in the opponent’s computer system in 146 advance, while at the same time carrying out a network attack against the enemy so that the civilian electricity network, traffic dispatching network, financial transaction network, telephone communications network, and mass media network are completely paralyzed, this will cause the enemy nation to fall into social panic, street riots, and a political crisis. There is finally the forceful bearing down by the army, and military means are utilized in gradual stages until the enemy is forced to sign a dishonorable peace treaty. This admittedly does not attain to the domain spoken of by Sun Zi, wherein “the other army is subdued without fighting.”

The hippies tried to get to Afghanistan – they heard that smoking weed there got you stoned to death.

None of this is really new – destruction of civilian cohesion is a tactic that’s been used again and again. At the end of World War I, the Allies kept a food blockade on Germany from 1914 until months after the November 1918 Armistice – the blockade lasted until July of 1919 to force Germany to sign the Treaty of Versailles. Over 100,000 German civilians died during the famine after the Armistice was signed.

The war envisioned by the Chinese (if it happens) won’t be the antiseptic thing that most civilians in the United States have dealt with since 9/11/2001. It will involve the systems around us failing. Imagine the utter loss of every modern convenience, including food being available and plentiful. Then imagine there is no information on when (or even if) the help is coming. Alone. No food. No power. In the dark.

That’s what unrestricted warfare looks like.

After going through Hurricane Ike (a small one, by destructiveness standards) it was enlightening to watch the systems go down. After four days, Home Despot® opened up, and was selling limited amounts. How limited? As I recall only 8 customers were allowed in the store at a time. Purchases were done, as I recall, with cash only. I went by to purchase a battery-operated fan, and was actually in and out fairly quickly – the Hurricane might have been a small one, virtually all services stopped.

Recovery was fairly quick because the damage was regional. All of the surrounding areas pitched in and within a week, most power was back on in the city. We had radio, so we were listening to the city come back to life in real-time.

I think when the astronauts saw this storm they said, “Houston, you have a problem.”

The interconnected, wired, and powered world has created an unparalleled ability to create wealth, to create comfort, and create convenience. But it has added a great degree of fragility. In 1919, if you had taken out the electricity to the United States, the result would have been inconvenient, but not fatal. Some water systems might have failed, and people would have had to switch back to candles. Abandoning the top floors of buildings that were inconvenient to reach except via elevator would be bad, but there would be no fundamental reason we couldn’t fix the systems: this failure would hurt, but not paralyze us.

Today, it creates a system where unrestricted warfare could result in a conflict that would be over in minutes, and end with a country so devastated that it might never be rebuilt.

So, have a happy Monday!

This post was inspired in part by email with a reader – I’ll let them bring it up if they so choose.

Energy in 2022? I Hope So . . .

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

I went into a room with a negative person in it, and then there were no people in it.

Energy is freedom.

Energy allows one person to do the work of hundreds or thousands. I sit here typing this in Stately Wilder Mansion, it’s near freezing outside, yet a nice and toasty 61°F (43 and 2/3°kiloPEZ®) inside due to natural gas piped directly to my heater. I like it cold in the house, just like my heart.

My computer is running, the television is running, and because I am apparently the only person in the house who knows how to use a light switch, at least 32 lights are on in the house are on. It’s winter, so a light left on is (at worst) a little inefficient heater, so all is not lost. I will tell you that when I die, though, I will walk to the light. And turn it off.

Our energy costs aren’t all that high in winter, especially since I can keep warm by rubbing my thighs together like a cricket. I go and fill my gas tank about every two months, so gasoline isn’t even that much of an issue. When your commute is four miles a day (two miles each way) and takes four minutes (if I get caught at the one traffic light), well, it’s hard to use a lot of gas unless I pour it all over the truck and ignite it to look like a cool meteor while I’m driving. Again.

But energy is freedom.

I started bench pressing again. That’s a huge weight off my chest.

When energy prices are low around the globe, freedom increases. As I’ve discussed in previous posts, high energy costs act like a tax on nearly all physical goods. Sure, it won’t make the cost of a Kindle® e-book go up much, but it will increase the cost of a physical book – that has to be manufactured using energy, moved using energy, and delivered using energy.

So, what’s up? Why are prices where they are? Where are prices going?

I’ll start with “what’s up?”

We can’t create additional energy just by turning a knob: the process is a bit more complicated than one of Joe Biden’s coloring books.

Let’s take oil. In the 1930s, oil in Texas was so plentiful that it crashed the price. Pools of the stuff would show up if you stuck a McDonalds straw too deep into the ground in East Texas. Oil was so plentiful that people could barely tell the difference between water and gasoline. Of course, in Flint, Michigan, you can get the gasoline unleaded.

I hear their swimmers are always in the lead.

What happened then is the Texas Railroad Commission decided it was in charge, and it limited the amount of oil that could be produced. It was OPEC® before OPEC™ was even thought of – their idea was to stabilize the price of a seemingly limitless resource.

It worked.

But the era of oil abundance in the United States ended in 1973, and the Texas Railroad Commission (which still exists but no longer regulates railroads, seriously) ended allocations. Texas could no longer control the price of oil in the United States by restricting sales. The hunt for the next big oilfield was on.

We had then to hunt for oil in more and more distant places.

Alaska.
The Middle East.
Deepwater offshore.
Johnny Depp’s hair.

Also? When exposed to pollen, bees develop hives.

Then we hit the jackpot – fracking. Fracked oil is different than conventional crude. It’s hidden in tight rocks that aren’t as porous. That’s where the fracking comes in – the rock has to be fractured to let the oil out. To keep the cracks open, high-pressure water and sand (and chemicals) are forced into the cracks. The grains of sand remain and keep the cracks open. There are so many jokes I’m not going to do here.

When this process started, it was inefficient. But smart people spending billions of dollars will tend to make progress over time. Dumb people with billions of dollars? We call that the opposite of progress: Congress.

There are three problems with fracking:

One – fracked wells are most productive in their first year of production. Oil companies often run a rejuvenation process that increases flow after a few years, but mostly the later years are just a trickle in comparison to the initial years of production. So, to have a continuous supply, you have to keep drilling, which is not boring.

Two – you have to keep drilling. If the price drops and drilling stops, then the quantity of oil available drops quickly. Then the price goes up. Then everyone drills. Because everyone is drilling, then the prices drops again. And everyone stops drilling. This acts like a “crack the whip” on the economy, since, as mentioned above, high oil prices act as a tax.

Why fracking? Because I hear drilling is rigged.

Three – there’s more than profitability at stake. Let me give an example: if I have to walk to the grocery store to get food, and then I walk back home, that sounds healthy, right? Sure. I’m burning energy to go to the store.

But what happens if I burn more energy to go to the store than is contained in the food that I buy at the store?

I lose weight. I’m actually spending more energy to get food than the energy in the food I’m consuming. Plus, I’m rubbing my thighs together so I can stay warm.

What might be good for me is devastating as an economy. At some point, it will be so difficult to get energy from oil, that, just like my trip to the store, we’ll be spending more energy to get the oil than the oil will provide us. The energy return on energy invested will actually deplete the amount of energy available for us to use.

The more energy we use? The faster we run out of energy.

I spent an hour on the treadmill yesterday. Tomorrow? I might turn it on.

Our primary energy source is that thermonuclear reactor that shows up every morning. Our secondary source is tens of millions of years of stored sunlight from that same reactor, which just happens to show up in the form of oil, natural gas, and coal. But the sunlight striking us every day has a problem: it’s so diffuse that it’s difficult to make profitable use of it. Sure, it warms us, it tans us, it makes the wind for our turbines, the photosynthesis for our corn, and the rain for our hydroelectric. Energy is only useful when it becomes concentrated in some way.

You can’t generate energy with a tan. Unless it’s a really, really good tan.

Are we at the point where it takes more energy than it’s worth to get energy? A wind turbine in a good location will return 10 to 20 times the energy it took to make it, though that’s over the course of 20 years. In a bad location? A wind turbine will never return that energy, though I hear they love music: they’re huge metal fans.

So, are we there yet, where the production of energy costs more than the energy we get?

I don’t think so. Not quite yet. When we do get there, it will become a cascading failure – every bit of energy we produce will actually dig us deeper into a hole. Just like the Red Queen I mentioned last week:

“Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

Never take a racing snail’s shell. That makes it sluggish.

To keep a world of 8 billion people alive and with enough energy to consume Doritos® and Disney™ and Facebook© takes an ever increasing amount of energy. 2020 was an aberration – people stopped driving and energy prices (temporarily) went down faster than Kamala Harris’ . . . approval rating.

The last question was “what happens next?”

Currently (today) oil is about $70 per barrel. The analysts that JPMorgan® have chained up in the basement of their skyscraper say that oil will jump to an average price of $125 per barrel in 2022, and then pop up further to $150 per barrel in 2023.

Double today’s prices. Yikes!

What about the Energy Information Agency (EIA, a .gov that seems to be actually interested in energy)? They say that in 2022, oil will average about . . . $72 per barrel – nearly the same as today.

It’s funny, because to know the price of oil, you have to know what is happening with economic growth, oil demand, and inflation. If any of us know any of those things with certainty, we could make bets and double our money or better in six months.

Why did Biden win the golf tournament? Because he finished it with one big stroke.

If JPMorgan™ has that genie in a bottle, they certainly wouldn’t be sharing it with mere mortals like you and I on the Internet – they’d make private trades and be zillionaires. The fine folks at the EIA probably don’t make nearly as much as the analysts at JPMorgan©, but they do have the abject despair of working at a government job every single day.

My prediction?

If the economy crashes and the stock market implodes, oil will follow. People who aren’t working don’t need to go to jobs. Will oil hit $40? Depends on how low the stock market goes.
But! If inflation spikes and the government keeps shoveling cash like coal into a train firebox, well, $150 per barrel oil might seem like a bargain that would be cheap enough to take a shower in.

Crappy prediction, right?

It is. Because with all of the difficult issues we simply don’t know. The easiest bet is that oil will be more expensive because once inflation is unleashed, it’s hard to put back into the bottle. The 1970s looked like this, so that would be my best bet.

Regardless, expensive energy has almost always been the enemy of freedom.

Prepare accordingly.

Bikini Economics And The Red Queen

â€œYou heard Marcellus threw Tony Rocky Horror out a four storyÂ windowÂ for giving me a foot massage? And you believe that?â€ â€“ Pulp Fiction

Ahh, Chuck Norris, with his hair feathered like the wings of a majestic eagle . . .

We have a built-in bias that there is a way that the world should be, rather than spending effort on understanding how the world it, and adjusting accordingly.

When something â€œbigâ€ happens, the default human condition is to assume that things will eventually go back to the way that they were before the event.Â This is normal.Â I recall reading in Talebâ€™s The Black Swan about how his relatives in Beirut kept expecting Lebanon to go back to the way it was before war broke out in the 1970s.Â It hasnâ€™t.

And it wonâ€™t.Â And Lebanese police have it the worst:Â they have to investigate restaurants if they hear of a bad hummus side.

Our economy is that way.Â It is built, in large part, on inertia.Â In January 2020, a broad definition of money (the Federal ReserveÂ® calls it M2) was $15.5 trillion dollars. Â Today, it stands at $22 trillion dollars.Â Keep in mind that this includes money just sitting in accounts, gathering dust.

The money supply has increased by at least 43%.Â How?

This graph is somewhat misleading â€“ it doesnâ€™t explain that savings accounts were added in the adjustment to make that big vertical line.Â The totals I have in the text above are the latest I could find at the FedÂ®.Â All I can suggest is that you find someone as interested in you as the Wilder SpokesmodelÂ® is interested in economics.

The government printed it and then spent it.Â The banks lent it, since there is essentially a zero reserve requirement now.Â Regardless, what it means is that dollars are being printed at an ever-increasing pace.Â The latest spending bills just add trillions to the mix.

Through all of this, economists are pretending that 20% inflation is growth.Â As prices go up, the Gross Domestic Product goes up. But inflation is increasing faster.Â Weâ€™re in recession, but that recession is hidden by inflation.Â Our economy is shrinking even as printed money makes it seem larger.

Oddly, there are plenty of jobs at lower wages that are going unfilled.Â Why?Â Because with current stimulus spending and government benefits, in some cases it doesnâ€™t make sense for people to go back to work.Â Work for $15 an hour, or play vidya and eat TwinkiesÂ® for $12?

Not a hard choice for many.

Did you hear about the Amish topless bar?Â Not a bonnet in sight.

What about people who want to work but donâ€™t want to take the â€œjabâ€?Â Those wages are going up phenomenally as companies work to compete for a shrunken pool of labor.Â Think EMTs.Â Firefighters.

It is a weird recession â€“ prices go up, wages are going up (but not as much as prices), labor is scarce, but the GDP is down in constant dollar terms.

Looking around the corner, this simply cannot last.Â Iâ€™ve written about the Red Queen before.Â The Red Queen said to Alice in Alice in Wonderlandâ€™s sequel, Through the Looking-Glass as Alice asks the Red Queen why theyâ€™re running and not getting anywhere:

â€œNow, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!â€

Well, itâ€™s almost a bikini picture.

Printing dollars like we are is just keeping the economy (sort of) in the same place.Â Itâ€™s the monetary equivalent of using increasing amounts of crack to cure a junkie, or using electrical shocks and massive amounts of medication to keep a doddering 79-year-old Alzheimerâ€™s patient mobile enough to give a rambling speech off of a teleprompter when wheeled out in front of a crowd.Â But in either case, a Biden and pudding are involved.Â So thereâ€™s that.

Iâ€™ve begun to wonder if Hunter might not be the best of the two for the Oval Office, at least he has goals.Â Prostitutes and crack cocaine are goals and there’s a chance he might not show up for work at all in a four-year span.Â He’s good at taking jobs and getting paid for nothing.

But this ignores a basic principle of fact. Â When I print a dollar, I have created nothing.Â To explain this, Iâ€™ll go back to the writings of dead French guy FrÃ©dÃ©ric Bastiat.Â Bastiat asked a simple question:Â what happens if someone breaks a shopkeeperâ€™s window?

Well, he must go buy another window.Â If that costs 6 francs (7 and 3/16 liters) then the glassmaker has an economic gain, which he could invest in increasing the size of his glass manufacturing, or, more likely (since he is French) use it to buy cartoonishly long wands of bread, cheap cigarettes, and berets.

So everyone wins, right?Â The shopkeeper gets a new window, and the glassmaker gets a profit.

Well, if that were correct, then all we would have to do is enjoy the George Floyd Economic PlanÂ®:Â burn down cities and everyone gets rich when we rebuild them.

Obviously, thatâ€™s nonsense, primarily because the economy is (at best) the same as it was before.Â At worst?Â Every dime spent to replace broken glass is a dime that wasnâ€™t spent making the economy wealthier:Â many profits are spent to increase capacity or efficiency.Â Increased capacity increases the wealth that the factory can produce.Â Increased efficiency lowers their cost.Â Both of these things are (generally) good.

Breaking windows, like printing dollars, is just theft.Â Whereas the shopkeeper has his window destroyed, the people can have all that they worked for and saved destroyed.

My friend patented a cold air balloon, but it never took off.

Printing cash is theft, but theft from those that have been productive to those that either leech off of the system or those that are insiders.Â But I repeat myself.Â In the bailouts following the Great Recession in 2009, billions of dollars were offloaded to Wall Street insiders for taking no-risk positions in mortgage-backed securities.Â If the insiders won, they won and kept the money.Â If the insiders lost, the U.S. Treasury (that is, us) lost.

The games have gone on too long â€“ the economy is a lie, and politicians of both flavors are happily breaking windows to keep it going just a few more years until they get theirs.

Iâ€™ll point out that Iâ€™ve correctly predicted five of the last three recessions, so I do tend to be a bit on the pessimistic side.Â Regardless, Iâ€™ll maintain that all of the elements exist right now for significant and lasting decline.Â All of the â€œemergencyâ€ spending bills, the â€œBuild Back Betterâ€ bill â€“ all of those have one purpose â€“ to feed the Red Queen so we can go faster and faster.

To stay in the same place.

Why do I never eat before a marathon?Â I fast.

As much as we might like to go back to a simpler time â€“ a rewind to the 1990s, perhaps, we cannot.Â Resets donâ€™t really exist â€“ the only actual outcome is to create a new (or the same) set of winners.Â We are on the verge of a strange and dangerous new future.

It starts the moment printing ceases to have any effect.Â Thatâ€™s just around the corner.

Time to stock up.Â I think there might be a lot more broken windows by the time weâ€™re done.

Why Leftists Hate You

“Well, I don’t care if he’s a Liberal or an ax murderer, I want you two boys to stay clear of him, understood? – Eerie, Indiana

I hear that Greta loves this blog – she knows most of my jokes are recycled.

“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior ‘righteous indignation’ – this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.” – Aldous Huxley

Regardless of whether or not you like Huxley, he certainly hit the mark with this comment. This has certainly been the case with the reaction of the “vaxxed” crowd to those that have chosen to avoid having themselves subjected to more-or-less experimental-level mRNA manipulation. I hear the lead scientist was Gene Hackman.

If you’re a coward, the FDA has just approved a new drug. Ask your doctor if Growacet® is right for you.

Though Huxley tapped into a universal weakness, this is a reaction that is far more common on the Left than on the Right. Leftism is built on weakness. If people can take care of themselves, if they are confident, if they respect themselves, it is much less likely that they will become Leftists.

Leftists, at the core of their being, feel inferior. This is observable in the ways that they protest – they constantly put themselves in danger. They lie down in front of cars. They block highways.

The reason is that, due to their feelings of inferiority, they actually long to be either punished or to have their existence ended. And the data shows that Leftists are much more likely to suffer from a mental issue. Much more likely. Here’s a thread where data scientist Zach Goldberg breaks down a Pew® study (LINK).

If you didn’t click on the link, here is just one fact that says it all: 56.3% of white female Leftists between the ages of 18-29 have been diagnosed by a mental health professional with a mental health condition. White “conservative” men in the same age group? 16.3%. Leftist men in the same age group? 33.6%.

Do insane accountants hear strange and threatening invoices?

If you are talking to a young Leftist woman, it is more likely that she has a mental health issue than not. If you are talking to a young Leftist man, you are talking with someone who has a greater chance of having been diagnosed with a mental health issue than any age/sex group on the Right.

So, Leftists feel inferior and lead the league in diagnosed mental issues.

What else?

This sense of inferiority coupled with mental illness makes Leftists especially brittle mentally. They cannot even listen to ideas that they disagree with. Ideas that they find distasteful, no matter how true, are psychologically devastating to them. When they say that they are “literally shaking” it’s probable that’s correct. Me? I only “literally shake” when I make James Bond® a martini.

We know the true villains the Left wants to stop . . .

This leads to the Great Counterfactual Gambit of facts that Leftists have to ignore to live on a day to day basis:

Men (on average) will always be much stronger than women. When a high school boy beats a woman’s world record time in swimming practice, it’s normal. Yet some people (weirdly) say there’s no physical difference between women and men.
This brings us to trans- people. Any suggestion that the latest mantra of “trans women are women” is against all manner of biological facts, well, is unacceptable. If that were the case, we wouldn’t need to have a word for “trans women”. Likewise, “trans women” wouldn’t be upset that they often can only get dates from other “trans” people.
We aren’t all born with equal abilities, temperaments, or physical characteristics. We are actually not even remotely the same in many respects. Sure, we’re human, but some populations have extremely different DNA, with great degrees of differing abilities based solely on that. Intelligence is (studies suggest) at least 60% heritable, and maybe higher. The trend is that, in 2020, people segregate themselves by I.Q. before they marry – we’re mobile and smart people end up (mostly) marrying other smart people. This increases the number of very smart people, and it’s not random. (And, perhaps a reason that autism is on the rise.)

I could go on and on. The difficulty is that Leftism requires that people ignore reality when reality gives them results they don’t like. I read one article where a Leftist was writing a hand-wringing piece about how disappointed that he was that artificial intelligence could determine the race of the patient being x-rayed with a high degree of accuracy. This bothered him because the researchers intentionally took the data and degraded it.

The A.I. could still easily determine accurately the races of most of the people being x-rayed. This bothered the scientist because it violated his belief that race was just a social construct, yet here a robot was dismantling that very belief.

If you make a device that’s good at noticing patterns, you can either accept that patterns exist, or you can make the machine ignore reality and thus make it useless, and Congress can’t stand the competition.

If an A.I. takes a picture of itself, will that be considered selfie-aware?

This reflects outward in the art that Leftists love. They hate the world, so they like art that is to a sane mind repugnant is what they seek. They see themselves as afraid of any sort of competition, so they want to practice inversion:

Weakness is strength.
Cowardice is courage.
Ugliness is beauty.
Defeat is victory.

Oops, forgot! Slavery is freedom.

The result of an inverted Leftist utopia is a burned world, cleansed of all that they despise.

The philosophy of the Left is similarly bankrupt. The ideas are based on another rejection of reality:

All cultures are equal.
Scientific analysis is led by philosophy, and valid only when it backs Leftist talking points.
Classification of things – good and bad, smart and dumb, fat and thin is inherently wrong.

Remember, the best way to win an argument is to silence anyone who has a different opinion!

The granddaddy of all of these is this:

All truth is relative.

This one is especially insidious – it takes a True statement (we cannot know everything) and thus takes it to the idea of the general: we can know nothing for certain. Start with mathematics: if you believe that 1+1=2, then you believe that there is Truth. Gravity always pulls down. Truth.

Do I see every event from every angle? Can I know the position of every atom inside of every person in a play? If I watch the play from a different seat, do I get a different meaning?

Sure, I’ll buy that I can’t know everything. But if I jump in front of a semi that’s traveling down the highway at 120 miles per hour (4 liters per second) I will die and what’s left of me will look like someone dropped a bag of vegetable soup. Unless the semi is made of Nerf® material, but that’s fairly unlikely since it absorbs vegetable soup.

Lastly, the Left feels they have no power. Ever argue with someone in real life who has never had any real power? Whatever they have, they will use until it’s nearly abuse – the average DMV will prove my case. Power is the end product. They feel that they are inferior, reject reality, and wish to have power so that they can have revenge against those that they feel have slighted them.

A Leftist won a contest – he would get $100,000, but $200,000 would go to the person he hated most. I wonder what he’s going to do with $300,000?

Together, these ideas explain the absolute hatred that the Left feels for those who have refused to take “the jab.” These are based on the idea that, at last, they are superior. What would they do to get and keep that power? Would they put people into camps? Would they gladly watch them die?

Yes, yes they would.

Black Friday: 2021

“Oh, and remember, next Friday is Hawaiian shirt day. So, you know, if you want to, go ahead and wear a Hawaiian shirt and jeans.” – Idiocracy

When I was a kid, I thought, “This little piggy went to market,” meant the pig went shopping. He did not.

Thanksgiving is over, sadly. We had a great one here. We had eight for dinner, and five under the roof when nightfall hit. Of course, Stately Wilder Mansion has room for more, but this was a good number. After dinner, we played games and enjoyed being with each other until things got rough – I was put in jail and nearly stabbed while I was in there. The family takes Monopoly® pretty seriously.

Other than that, it was a peaceful night. That is why I love Thanksgiving. It’s a space where (around Modern Mayberry) only one store was open today, and that store was only open for a few hours. Not that it mattered – we had everything required for dinner. I thought we were low on cream, so I sent Pugsley to the store on Wednesday. He brought home nonfat half-and-half.

At least he tried. Nonfat half-and-half? That’s like PEZ®-free PEZ™.

Thankfully, The Mrs. already had cream, and we had plenty for the mashed potatoes.

But now it’s time for the Friday after Thanksgiving: Black Friday.

My activities in Black Friday in recent years have mainly been related to not leaving the house. I really love spending time with my family, but spending time with strangers standing in line to buy things I don’t really need?

What’s the best place to find a man who has no arms and no legs? Where you left him.

That’s not my idea of fun. I don’t like shopping, even for shrubs – plant shopping always leaves me bushed.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t look down on people looking to get a bargain on Black Friday. I’ve been fortunate enough in the last two decades of my life that the main shortage in my life isn’t money, it’s time. For those that are experiencing an acute lack of money, well, I can sympathize. To be a few dollars short is tough. Marrying my first wife was like winning the lottery: five years later I was broke.

I’ve been there.

At one time in my life, I was running at the ragged edge. Every dollar that came into my life had a home – it was already spent. That was okay, but it limited my choices. One time I was needing to pay dues to play rugby with the local club, but I was raising two children with help only from my friends. The dues were $75. I didn’t have a spare $75.

So, I had decided I couldn’t play. The next day? A check for $200 showed up (that I had no idea was even owed to me) in the mail. Huh.

I guess I could play (prop), after all.

Why are Jedi® so bad at rugby? Because there is no try.

Regardless I’ve known a life where a spare $20 made the difference in a month. This helps me to understand those that stand in line for deals at Black Friday without looking down on them. Those people are looking to do the best that they can for their family – they’re trading their time to make the lives of their family better, just as everyone who has a job and sells 40 or 60 hours of their life every week does.

The part of Black Friday that has always bothered me, though, isn’t the searching for bargains. The part of Black Friday that bothers me is the willingness of people to abandon rules of civil behavior so they can get $10 off on a toaster that they’ll use once in the next year.

Oh, sure, I love toast enough to keep mine in a cage – then I can say it is bread in captivity. But I don’t love toast enough to engage in wanton violence for cheap consumer goods. I have standards. It would have to at least be moderately priced consumer goods for me to riot for them.

The violence, though, are a signal that the cohesion that made society function so well during most of my life is breaking down. I already know that economy is broken. I think that here, in 2021, the economy is broken more than at any time in my life. That’s the good news.

I got one federal stimulus check on Saint Patrick’s Day. Must be the luck of the IRS.

Why is that good news? Even though it will undoubtedly be difficult and tough, the way forward always brings with it the promise of a new rebirth. This rebirth isn’t unprecedented – at more than one time in history have the eternal guideposts of truth, beauty, and virtue faded.

But they keep coming back. Truth may become dim under the tyranny of oppressors, but the fact that it is being oppressed doesn’t make it any less True. Again, I believe in absolute Truth. I didn’t say that I had it, but I know it exists. One plus one is two – it is never any other number. If you start at the physical, very quickly there are many examples that prove that Truth isn’t relative.

Likewise, beauty. We know what it is, because we see it. The curve and texture and color of a rose petal is elegant. It is something that is beautiful. You can, no doubt, come up with many similar examples. Beauty, though difficult to quantify, is nearly always something that people can agree on.

And virtue? For thousands of years we have known what virtue is. It shows itself in the action and grace of those that walk with it.

TOAST

I keep the toaster on the lowest setting. I am black toast intolerant.

I have spent paragraphs and posts talking about truth, beauty, and virtue. Why? Because truth, beauty and virtue matter. They are timeless and ageless. They will endure.

Humanity cannot be long isolated from them. We keep finding them, again and again, not because we are clever, but because they are eternal concepts.

Happy Thanksgiving 2021, Wilder Style

“Two men are dead! This is not the time for petty sibling squabbles. That’s what Thanksgiving is for.” – Psych

Isn’t it odd the only people who tried to tell you how many people it’s appropriate to have for Thanksgiving dinner are the Centers for Disease Control and Jeffery Dahmer?

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.

I would say that it has always been my favorite holiday, but that’s not really so. When I was younger, say between toddler and 12, Christmas was. The reason that Christmas was so important was, well, the stuff. The movie A Christmas Story says it all.

But as I grew older, Thanksgiving kept growing in importance. In part, it grew in importance because it didn’t have the gifts. It had all of the proper things that, in my mind, a good holiday should have:

Time away from the cares of the day,
Time focused on being grateful,
Free from stress, and,
Cold.

The stress of Christmas was from the commercial aspects. Would I get that thing I wanted? The gifts overshadowed the holiday. Of course, each year the presents got less and less important, and the time with loved ones became more important. That’s when Thanksgiving started to win.

This year is the 400^th anniversary of Thanksgiving. The first one was held (according to a letter) in 1621. It wasn’t held at this time of year, rather, sometime near the end of harvest. The Pilgrims knew that they were going to make it.

April showers, bring . . .

It wasn’t always so clear. The original deal that they drew up was socialist. Everybody worked, and everybody shared equally. That worked as well as it ever has. Nobody worked, so nobody shared anything, except starvation. That was 1620.

Starvation is a tough teacher.

The Pilgrims then came to the good and sensible decision that if you grow it, you own it. The result?

So much food that they wanted to have a party – a party that lasted three days. And history teaches us that the Pilgrims weren’t teetotalers. But this harvest festival was sheer joy: giving thanks for the good sense to give up socialism and allow people individual freedom. There’s a big lesson here, yet we keep trying to repeat the same evils that impoverish men.

Oh well.

The holiday being a direct repudiation of the philosophy that’s killed more people than any other philosophy, well, that’s not the main reason I love the holiday. It’s just whipped cream on the pumpkin pie.

It’s so cold this Thanksgiving I saw a socialist with his hands in his own pockets.

The cold plays into why I love the holiday as well. The work of planting is done. The work of growing is done. The work of the harvest is done. Now is the time to sit, rest, and be thankful. The harvest was good. The food will last us through the winter and spring until the next crops can be grown from a renewed Earth.

It’s that stillness, that preparation. The great woodpile set and prepared against the winter’s cold. The food stocks set against the winter’s hunger. Now is a time of peace.

And that resonates through 400 years.

The life of a man, when faced with 400 years, is but an instant. But the peace of a single Thanksgiving can seem as an eternity. The moments created when family gathers together to celebrate is nearly magical. Overcooked turkey or gravy as lumpy as the Hunter Biden’s thighs? Not a problem.

We are here to give thanks.

I’m pretty sober, but even prettier when I’m not.

A drunken uncle who wants to need Mom about something that happened when they were six? Not a problem. Your team doesn’t win the football game? Not a problem.

We are here to give thanks.

Of course, at this point, the question is, to give thanks to who? Well, in our folks, the dinner will start out with us giving a prayer. That is, over those 400 years, the most common way the feast was held.

Giving thanks is part of being human, whether you are religious or not. Being thankful is a way to be healthier. The mere attitude of being thankful changes the way that people think. It moves them from a spirit of greed for what they don’t have, to a spirit of gratitude, for what they do have.

French tanks have rearview mirrors, mainly so they can see the battlefield.

Studies have proven that being happy about the things you have is about a zillion percent better for your health than being unhappy about things you don’t have.

Duh. This is the equivalent of psychology professors stealing money to do a study, because nothing in the history of humanity has been more obvious since, well, ever. Yet, they studied this. You could look it up, but, why?

You already know that it’s true. To quote it again:

We are here to give thanks. Not complain. Not be upset about any of the day-to-day things that always go wrong. Thanks.

I seemed to figure that out a little each year as I grew older. When I was six, it was all about the stuff. I remember ripping through the wrapping paper like a velociraptor in a room full of Leftists who had been raised on soy since birth. Some of the bits probably reached orbit.

As I got older, the greed waned, and the importance of Thanksgiving increased. Last year when I cooked the turkey upside down? I don’t think anyone but me noticed. But we were together as a family on the 399^th Thanksgiving. Together, in a house filled with the smells of turkey and pumpkin pie and a family that loves each other.

The most frustrated ghost in the world? The one that tried to haunt Helen Keller.

The things that I am thankful for are so numerous I couldn’t list them if I kept writing for the next eight hours. I’d put my list down, but I’m going to (as my textbooks always said) leave this as an exercise for the reader. It’s not what I’m thankful for, it’s what you are thankful for that will help you.

Even in the deepest depths of difficulties, there is a time and a place to stop. And give thanks.

Every minute I think about those things I give thanks for, I feel better. And the crazy thing I’ve learned? I don’t even need a turkey and mashed potatoes to do it. But the gravy? I’m especially thankful for my annual gravy bath. What would Thanksgiving be without it?

Happy Thanksgiving.

Rittenhouse Has Caused More Tears Than Old Yeller

“Ladies and gentleman, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookie from the planet Kashyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about that. That does not make sense.” – South Park

I guess Kyle did have a salt rifle.

The reaction from the Left on the Rittenhouse verdict has been different than I expected – I expected a few riots, sure. Riots are the standard when dealing with Leftists. They want the world to burn, so why not start with a Starbucks®? Or, heck, almost any huge corporate entity. They seem to love it when Leftists burn down their buildings – they immediately respond by vowing to rebuild and then donating to the very groups that . . .

. . . just burned down their store.

But Kyle Rittenhouse bothered them, deeply.

Don’t recognize his two IMDB® credits. Probably wouldn’t be a good dinner guest.

I watched, while not the whole trial, a huge chunk of it. Just after the Prosecution was done, the Defense could have said, “The Defense rests,” and still won.

It was that clear-cut. I don’t know why it took the jury so long, perhaps they were just waiting around to see if they could get those Panera® sandwiches the judge promised them if they were still deliberating on Friday.

The Left, who has never seen a criminal atrocity so bad that they don’t want the criminal to go free, was fixated on this case. The media was on board, mainly. Large numbers of people thought had no real idea of the facts of the case, and some even thought that Rittenhouse had killed multiple black people for no reason other than that they were protesting.

So, what did they have to say? (Some language not safe for all audiences, and all memes today are as-found on the Internet.)

Umair Haque is a grifter, and a fairly successful grifter. Does he bring up valid issues? Certainly, from time to time. And, if his solution is commies leaving the United States? I will personally help buy tickets if they promise to never come back.

Ayanna apparently has a keyboard that doesn’t allow her to type a capital “W”. Also? She takes her love of Jean-Luc Picard a bit too far.

Does “Prince Jellyfish” describe his arm?

Possibly fake. But funny.

Take a breath and come up for some Umair, Umair.

If you had any doubts about who we are dealing with . . .

That explains everything! Why would a Wookiee, an 8-foot-tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor with a bunch of 2-foot-tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: “What does this have to do with this case?” Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me, I’m a lawyer defending a major record company, and I’m talkin’ about Chewbacca. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you’re in that jury room deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation… does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.