Category: Big Thoughts

The Funniest Article You’ll Read Today About Risk

Wang:  “A brave man likes the feel of nature in his face, Jack”
Egg Shen:  “Yeah?  And a wise man has enough sense to get in out of the rain.” – Big Trouble in Little China

Whoever took this photo was having a Kodiak moment.

Fairbanks, Alaska.

One thing about Fairbanks (and Alaska) is that it is rougher around the edges than the lower 48.  Everywhere.  They’re so tough there that they make the fries out of real Frenchmen.  Also, other things are a little different:  for example, the Post Office.

I had an acquaintance that I worked with who had come to my workplace from a previous career in the Post Office.  He told a story of a new Postmaster that showed up in town.  I believe that this particular Postmaster had come from the East Coast.  Don’t know why he was in Fairbanks.  Perhaps he was in the Jehovah’s Witness Protection Program?

Regardless, this new Postmaster was going to make changes.

“From now on, we’re going to deliver packages to the doorstep of anyone who gets one.  The days of leaving packages at the doorstep are over.  And, we’ll knock and let the resident know that the package is there.  We can increase customer service, and we will.”

I wrote a letter today.  I might try a number tomorrow, if I feel up to it. 

That’s a great sentiment.  Heck, here in Modern Mayberry, when a package shows up, the USPS drops it right on my front porch, then rings the doorbell, and scampers off.  It’s a nice touch.  It probably takes an additional minute or so for every house.  It works well here, and the biggest danger most mail carriers see is the random housecat with delusions that it is stalking prey in the veldt.

But in Fairbanks it’s a different story – I’ve described people up there as “very friendly people who will generally leave you the hell alone.”

The new Postmaster from the lower 48 didn’t understand why his carriers were so reluctant to implement the “to the door” service for packages.  He heard grumbling, but didn’t understand it – the carriers would do it in town, but they didn’t want to do it for the remote routes.  So, he got in with a carrier, and they ran a remote route together.  I guess that made him a mail escort.

One of the houses was pretty far out, say, 13 miles from the city, up Chena Hot Springs road.  The Postmaster and carrier got out of the truck to deliver the package.  The Postmaster knocked on the door.

Immediately, the door opened as far as the door chain would allow.

“What the hell do you want?” asked the man opening the door.

Behind him, the Postmaster and carrier could see a man pointing a rifle at them, “Tell me they’re Feds!” yelled the man with the rifle.  He kept repeating that.  “Tell me that they’re Feds!  We’ll end them right here and now!”

I use a .30-06 to hunt deer.  That gives me a lot of bang for my buck.

They left the package.  The “to the door” delivery idea was quickly abandoned.  Likewise, I’m certain that Amazon® will never try drone delivery up there – the locals would just think of that as skeet shooting with instant prizes.

The carriers understood the risk, the Postmaster did not.  They knew that Fairbanks is (in a literal sense) the end of the road.  The people that come to Alaska were adventurers, misfits, and fortune seekers.  And some of that group were people wanted for felonies.  There’s a reason that for many years taking pictures of workers at a construction site was considered bad manners.

So, it was a question of risk.  Many people don’t really understand the risks that they take.  In many cases, some risks are entirely overblown.

Case in point:  at a recent high school football game here in Modern Mayberry, there was lightning during the game.  To be clear, the lightning wasn’t coming down around us, the nearest strikes were miles away – probably 8 or 10 miles.  But then I was shocked . . .

. . . that they stopped the game.  All of the players went into the locker rooms, and The Mrs. and I continued to sit on an elevated aluminum structure.  Yawn.

If lightning only followed the path of least resistance, why doesn’t it only strike in France?

I wasn’t really worried.  In the years between 2006 and 2019, 414 people were killed by lightning in the United States.  My chances of being hit were, oh, nearly zero.  Exactly 12 football players were killed by lightning during that entire period.  As badly as our home team was doing that game, well, they could have used something to charge them up.

But lightning?  It is estimated that 243 people are injured each year in the United States by lighting, and 27 killed, on average.  And 1/3 of those killed?  They were inside.

Yes, lightning kills.  How many?  Hardly anyone.

But yet I’m sure that every school district in the country has a lightning policy that says something to the effect of, “If there’s any lightning any nearer than, say, Poland, shut it all down.”  The policy was probably written by lawyers that want to take the danger out of anything and everything.

“Let’s go Brandon”

People rarely understand risks.

The biggest risks for someone dying when they’re young are car accidents.  By far.  The human organism is pretty strong when young.  The main cause of death is, well, being old.  Of the top 10 causes of death in the United States (those top 10 cover over 74% of deaths) all of them but one are things that mainly happen to old people.

Of the top 10, only “unintentional deaths” (6%) are more likely to happen to young people than old.  In Modern Mayberry, those deaths often involve a motorcycle, a ramp, a cow, road flares, super glue, and the phrase, “hold my beer.”

So, risk number one to avoid is getting old, which can be done using only some beer, a motorcycle, a ramp, a cow, road flares, and some super glue.

A Mexican movie stuntman died recently.  I guess Jesus died for your scenes.

I think the reason we focus on some of these risks that are ludicrously low probability is simple:  it is much easier to focus on them, rather than on real risks.

The question I ask myself is this:  What is it that I know, that I’m avoiding?

It’s a powerful question.  A Twinkie® is a much greater danger to my life than a lightning storm.  Do I avoid thinking that?  Do I try to rationalize big risks and run scared from small risks?

What am I trying to hide from myself?

When I answer that question, then I know what the real risks are.  The biggest risk, perhaps is if I become a Postmaster.  Then people would expect me, John Wilder, to be funny, and I’m not sure I could do it.

After all, it’s all in the delivery.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Making The Call?

“The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace.  It failed.  But in the year of the Shadow War, it became something greater: our last, best hope for victory.  The year is 2260. The place: Babylon 5.” – Babylon 5

Midnight?

  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.

I’ve bolded both 9. and 10.  That’s the lead story (below).

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 – Making The Call? – Violence And Censorship Update –– Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Calling It Quits – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report.  These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month.  I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues.  Also, subscribe because you’ll join over 570 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Note:  Except for the first, all images in this post are “as found.”

Making The Call?

If you’ve read these for some time, I’ve been using the internationally accepted standard for declaring a civil war.  It’s one that academics used to make a description.  In that sense, it’s arbitrary, but it sets some standard.  Most importantly, it isn’t a standard I made up.  It exists outside of this report, and you can go and check it for yourself.  I want (as much as possible) to be factual when I say something about the emerging Civil War 2.0 as it is certainly the most consequential event that will occur during my lifetime.  So, as a starter, I adopted the international standard.

I believe that we have met that standard.

From that academic standpoint, the United States would be classified as a nation in a Civil War.  I’ll provide the reasoning:  since the George Floyd riots started, there has been epidemic violence in the nation.  I had been tracking that increase, using several sources of hot-spot political violence and tabulating them.  Data, as you could imagine, isn’t tabulated that way, so my methods were an estimate.

I tried to be conservative with it.  This isn’t a Civil War where Johnny Reb fights with Billy Yank on a battlefield under banners.  Nope.  It’s a more brutal version where it’s fought on the streets in one-on-one encounters, complete a corrupt District Attorney system that lets half of the players back on the street with no punishment.

One (very fair) criticism from Ricky (who graciously provides the Links) is that this is an extraordinary claim, so it should require extraordinary proof.  He suggested a (curated, my add) spreadsheet showing each victim by name, and linking to the details?  We could all easily agree about Ashli Babbitt and those killed in Kenosha, as well as dozens of others (mainly) killed by Antifa®.

That’s a very worthy idea, but not one I would be the best candidate to maintain.  Perhaps someone will pick up that idea.

What I do have are raw statistics that back up my attempt to quantify the current body count.  Here’s a graph, from Steve Sailer’s work (LINK).

The increase in murder deaths from 2019 to 2020 was nearly 5,000.  Extrapolate that into the first three-quarters of 2021?  You get over 8,000.  If only 1/8 of those deaths are politically related, we’re there at the international standard.  Again, I don’t have a list of 1,000 names.  For perspective, even those 1,000 are just a small fraction of the people that have died from either COVID or the “jab”, yet they are categorically different:  we are killing each other over politics.

A second set of great thoughts came from Eaton Rapids Joe (LINK).  He brought up two ideas:  the first is normalization.  The United States has a population of over three hundred million.  Most countries that have had civil wars are much, much smaller.  Rwanda had a population of only about 7,000,000 when they decided to kill off about 1,700,000 of each other.  To cross the 1,000 threshold (proportionally to population size) would require 43,000 dead.

That’s a good point.  He further went on to note that some cities of the United States have already crossed a proportionate threshold.  In a heat map, you’d see that most places are quite cold, but lots of Blue cities were clearly far beyond any reasonable threshold and are clearly in civil war already.

These are good points.

Because of that perspective, I can not say that we are fully at Open War, rather I can say that every element is in place.  I can say with reasonable certainty that we have crossed an important psychological threshold.  Whether we come back from the brink?

That’s one that time will tell.  As of this writing, I am only seeing signs of additional deterioration in the political landscape.  It’s getting worse daily.

Violence And Censorship Update

I think violence is pretty well covered up above.  Censorship, sadly, hasn’t ramped down, but rather increased.

Let’s start with YouTube®, which is the modern equivalent of the Ministry of Truth.  Who did they muzzle this month?

Probably the most important is a change in policy.  Now, any video that claims that “vaccines are ineffective or dangerous” will be banned.  Different opinions aren’t tolerated.  As much as I don’t agree that lies are good public policy, keep in mind that science doesn’t work that way.  Science works when free and open debate and inquiry are allowed to find the truth.  As we learn more, we discover that we didn’t understand the world quite as well as we thought.  Well, not on YouTube®.  Only thoughts approved by Ministry of Truth are allowed in 1984 2021.

This has a very significant impact on other YouTube™ channels.  Because they don’t know exactly where “the line” is they avoid the subject entirely.  As more people ditch mainstream media, it looks like alternatives have to be co-opted.  A case in point:

MiniTru, er, YouTube© also banned one of Ron Paul’s channels.  Why?  They won’t tell him.

But don’t worry!  The Fed.Gov folks are hard at work.  They’re monitoring your social media and ProtonMail® accounts.

Thankfully, they can still make sure our children are being properly educated:

And that we are not using bullying language:

And while murders are up by 30%, ClubFed® is hanging out at Right rallies in Washington, D.C. so that you and I can feel safe.  Big Benneton® is watching you.

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:

Up is more violent, and our perception of violence is down in September, again.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it ticked up this month, mainly on inflation fears.

Economic:

Economic measures held steady, but I expect a huge drop in October if trends continue.  And, the Fed® decided to not show the bad news on something I’ve long predicted . . .

Illegal Aliens:

This data was at record levels last month, and only dropped slightly this month.  Perspective:  this rate is 4x the rate from any previous year in the last four.

Calling It Quits

Calls for divorce in the United States increased in September.  Don’t believe me?

This call is showing up in pretty much every aspect of life.  We have gone from a single nation that fought about the center to one where people on the Right feel that people on the Left are a danger.  Not someone they disagree with:  a danger.

If you disagree with someone, we can talk it out.  If I consider them a danger?  That means the time for talking is over.  And if both of these polls are correct, America is pretty well done talking.  Well, at least constructive talking:

And that’s just NASCAR®.  What about Texas?

What’s the biggest cause of divorces?  Cheating.  Has there been any of that?

Of course the Left has fought tooth and nail against looking at the most statistically improbable election in American history.  Why?  They cheated.  So, given that, pretty much everyone is done.  The Left, and the Right.

LINK

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

Hold Up

Providence, RI: https://twitter.com/i/status/1441931138432385024

Olympic WA: https://twitter.com/i/status/1436355179675152391

Washington DC: https://twitter.com/i/status/1434291759169871874

Philadelphia, PA: https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1434579991853948932

Portland, OR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYwRztl0mVs

Chicago, IL: https://twitter.com/CPD1617Scanner/status/1442575822565556226

Keiser, OR: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9965833/Shoplifters-steal-thousands-dollars-worth-electrical-wires-Lowes-Oregon.html

New York, NY: https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2021/09/20/tiktok-devious-licks-viral-challenge-vandalism-stealing-in-schools/

 

Break Up

https://www.mediaite.com/podcasts/one-of-the-worst-times-ever-in-american-history-ken-burns-says-current-times-equal-to-civil-war/

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/09/16/is-the-us-headed-for-another-civil-war/

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/10/claremont-ryan-williams-trump/620252/

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/navy-seal-who-shot-bin-laden-says-internal-division-now-biggest-threat-to-america_3992743.html?

https://thenationalpulse.com/breaking/national-archives-places-harmful-language-alert-on-u-s-constitution-page/

https://www.yaf.org/news/student-senator-caught-throwing-away-flags-from-9-11-memorial-at-washu/

https://mynorthwest.com/3141211/rantz-high-school-cancels-9-11-tribute-says-it-could-offend-some-students/?

https://twitter.com/i/status/1437236890885754880

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1444333097810546690

Majority of Trump voters believe it’s ‘time to split the country’ in two, new poll finds (msn.com)

https://nypost.com/2021/09/27/sorry-but-a-national-split-up-just-wont-work/

 

What’s Up?

https://uncoverdc.com/2021/09/08/arizona-canvass-update-299493-votes-impacted/

https://uncoverdc.com/2021/09/24/maricopa-county-audit-report-over-57k-votes-in-question/

https://cleverjourneys.com/2021/09/30/how-does-the-voter-ballot-printing-company-fit-into-the-arizona-audit-results/

https://twitter.com/Shae_1776/status/1435624703658446848

https://www.ajc.com/politics/ballot-inspection-seeks-elusive-proof-of-fraud-in-georgia-election/OEQEOPIY4FDC3KPN3W47MNMKEU/

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1441008337882071048

 

Upward And Onward…

https://thefederalist.com/2021/09/08/the-top-reason-i-hate-masks-is-they-force-me-to-live-by-lies/

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2021/09/20/its-a-fourth-turning-what-did-you-expect/

https://tomluongo.me/2021/09/10/quietly-say-no-to-joe-bidens-call-for-civil-war/

https://americanmind.org/salvo/americas-intersectional-caste-system/

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/09/12/its_time_to_acknowledge_anti-white_racism_146391.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE7nkiFOB-U

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/571806-reaffirm-who-we-hope-to-be-instead-of-reimagining-our-history

https://alt-market.us/organizing-patriots-in-the-face-of-government-informants-and-false-flags/

Friday: Things I’m Thankful For

“He’s like the hard-working, grateful employee we never had. Wish he would wear underwear, though.” – Bob’s Burgers

I don’t need coffee to wake up, I wake up to drink coffee.

It’s Friday.  Time for a happy post.  We’ll need one, because (brace yourselves) I think Monday’s post is going to be grimmer than a crab bake with Paris Hilton or father’s day with Woody Allen.

But we have today.  And when I am feeling down, a step back to realize and think about what I’m grateful for always brightens my day like a big old gravitationally contained spherical continual thermonuclear explosion.

Here goes.

  • I am thankful for you, readers near and far. I’m happy for the one-time visitors, and happy for the faithful weekly visitors to Modern Mayberry.  I had written thousands of words in a journal before I ever put a single word down on a blog.  This is better, and it’s because of you.
  • I am thankful for the really great fried potatoes The Mrs. made last night. They were very crispy on the outside, yet buttery-smooth on the inside.  A dash of ketchup to taste?

I couldn’t find the thingy that peels the potatoes so I asked Pugsley.  It turns out she’d gone off to the store.

  • I am thankful for the people that I have a chance to impact in meatspace. Hmm, that’s poorly worded, it makes it sound like I’m as bad a driver as a blind Antifa® member late to get his estrogen shots.  Let me rephrase:  I’m happy to help people in real life.  Times are tough, and they’re even tougher when people are tools on purpose, so if I can make someone’s life a little better?    Many times all it takes is real empathy and a single word.
  • I’m thankful that Pugsley forgot to take the trash out to the curb this week, so I can needle him about it (playfully) all week. Seriously, though, I’m really thankful because I haven’t had to remind him in the last six months, and he’s only missed trash day twice.
  • I’m thankful that The Boy will be down from Big State University this weekend. It’s always nice to have him around.
  • I’m thankful that sunny-side eggs taste so good. And I’m thankful that the crisp taste of a fresh tomato exploding as I bite into a cool slice on a hot day exists.  I’m grateful for the knowledge that a tomato is a fruit, and the wisdom to not put it on fruit salad.
  • I’m thankful The Mrs. We have saved each other from being very horrible spouses for other people.  After being married so long we’re like good lawyers:  we never ask a question we don’t already know the answer to.

I hear that insane people are driving trains in Mexico.  I guess they have loco-motives.

  • I’m thankful that I have had the good fortune to have had great bosses in most of my jobs. A good boss covers your back.  A great boss pulls more out of you than you ever knew you had.  One boss made the mistake of telling me to have a good day, because then I went home.
  • I’m thankful for being granted the maturity to (mostly) know when I was wrong, and to look at those times not as a personal attack, but as a hint on ways to get better.
  • I’m thankful for books. One of those great bosses that I had said, “Books are the only real way that you can talk to the greatest minds in history.”  He and I got along very well.
  • I’m thankful for the troubles I’ve had in life. Most of those troubles were like the chisel of a sculptor – they knocked off bits of me that I didn’t need, and left me better after the trouble passed.  As dead Danish dude Søren Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”  After I learned this lesson, every time in life I encountered difficulty, I asked myself:  “What am I supposed to learn from this?”  Life got way better after I realized that what started out as a difficulty could be the greatest gift ever.

The French donated the Statue of Liberty to the United States because they had no use for a statue with only one hand up.

  • I am thankful for fuzzy slippers in winter, electric fans in summer, and good cigars all year round. Protip:  if you look up “how to light a cigar” on the Internet, you will get 80 million matches.
  • I am thankful for the innocence I had. I am thankful for the experiences that removed it.
  • I am thankful for the valor of strong men who have defined bravery and given us heroes and heroic stories to the ages. I am stronger because of Leonidas.  I am stronger because of Seneca.  I am stronger because of a certain carpenter who lived and died and rose again some 2,000 years ago.
  • I am thankful for history, and the ability to gather vast amounts of scholarship to understand the past in ways that would have been impossible for all but the most dedicated scholars until recently. What do the “good parts” of American history and common sense have in common?  They’re both being wiped from existence.
  • I am thankful for PEZ®, because now I can honestly say that I’m the man who developed the PEZ®/Anti-PEZ™ space drive (PEZ Spaceship Secrets).
  • I am thankful that the heat of summer has given way to the cool nights of autumn. I won’t miss summer.
  • I am thankful for the way a perfect ride on a motorcycle feels as the gears shift smoothly upward under full acceleration, which, for a moment, is like riding the wind.
  • I am thankful for a hot cup of coffee on a cool fall morning, on the deck, with a book, a breeze, and nothing else in the world to do.

Pugsley called me, “Severely ignorant.”  I said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  • I am thankful for the things I don’t know.
  • I am thankful for one of our cats, not so much for the rest of them. Of course, the cat I like is the cat I wanted least.
  • I am thankful for all of my children – each of them in their own way.
  • I am thankful for a night of good sleep, and a morning where I have something exciting that pulls my head from the pillow. The Mrs. likes to lightly rub my back while I sleep, which is an amazing expression of gentleness. Unless you’re in prison.
  • I am thankful for work.
  • I am also thankful for time off.
  • I am thankful for the way my shirt smells the day after a campfire. It’s not uncommon for people to die in campfires – I mean, it’s not common, either.  I guess it’s medium rare.

What are you thankful for?

Time: It’s The Only Thing You Have

“I didn’t invent the time machine to win at gambling. I invented a time machine to travel through time.” – Back to the Future 2

I have two dogs, Rolex® and Timex™.  They are watchdogs.

Time.

Of things that have long fascinated me, time is at the top of the list.  Even when I was a little kid, time fascinated me.

The idea that time, of all of the physical parameters of the world there was the one that we couldn’t control.  Humanity has mastered the power of the atom, at least partially.  We haven’t tamed fusion, but we can create it, and have several fewer islands in the Pacific because of it.

Humanity has dammed the largest of rivers, giving us power.  We have used technology to shrink the world.  The first recorded circumnavigation of the world took 1082 days.  Magellan didn’t quite make the whole trip, but he still gets the credit on a technicality.

Now?  The International Space Station does an orbit in 90 minutes or so at 17,150 miles per hour, which is nearly as fast as Haitians are entering Texas.

Humanity has conquered the riddle of steel – we’ve made steel buildings that reach upwards into the sky to please Crom.  We have conquered climate – people live at the South Pole in perfect comfort, as well as managing to live in Houston without melting into puddles of sweat.

Batman® couldn’t solve the riddle of steel, but he could name the worst riddle:  being riddled with bullets.

We can see at night.  We can talk, nearly instantly, with people a continent away.

My phone buzzes every time there is motion outside my front door – it’s like having a superpower of sensing where and when there is activity at a distance.  Another superpower is being able to access obscure facts anywhere on the planet that can reach a cell signal.

But time remains fixed.  It flows only one way.  And it is the most subjective of our senses.  Even Pugsley notices it:  “This summer was so short!”

He’s in high school.  That’s when the transition from the endless summers of childhood begin to transform into the fleeting, never-ending carousel of years that is adulthood.

Best thing about being in Antifa® is that you never have to take off work to protest.

I’ve long felt that I understood why this was.  Let me give it a shot.

For a newborn, the second day it’s outside and breathing is 50% of its entire life.  For a six-year-old, half of their life is three years – much more.  It’s not a big percentage, but it’s much smaller than 50%.  For a sixteen-year-old, half their life is eight years.

If you’re forty – half your life is twenty years.  1/8 versus 1/20?  It’s amazingly different.  We don’t perceive life as a line.  We’re living inside of it – we compare our lives to the only thing we have . . . our lives.  Each day you live is smaller than the last.

But that’s not everything.

As we age, novelty decreases.  When we’re young, experiences and knowledge are coming at us so quickly that we are presented with novel (new and unique) information daily.  New words.  New thoughts.  New ideas.  That’s why babies keep falling for that stupid “got your nose” thing.  They don’t realize that I can reattach it.

Three clowns were eating a cannibal.  One clown says, “I think we started this joke wrong.”

Over time, though, novelty decreases, as does the percentage of your life that each day represents.  Ever drive a new route somewhere?  When I do it, I have to focus my attention.  It seems like it takes longer because I’m having to deal with novelty.

I’ve had my “new” laptop nearly seven years.  I had my old laptop for longer than that, yet my “new” laptop still seems like it’s temporary.

There are only so many routes I can drive to work, so much novelty that I can find in a daily drive.  Even a commute of an hour begins to fade into a brief moment in time if it’s the same commute, day after day.

Work is similar.  Over time, we gain experience.  Experience shows us how to fix problems (and sometimes how not to fix them).  But that experience of taking a solution and modifying it to fix the next problem isn’t as hard as fixing the first problem.

The fact that each day is a smaller portion of my life, combined with the fact that as I get older, the possibility that I see something new dims.  I’ve solved a bunch of problems in my life.  Finding a new one is . . . difficult.

Life goes faster, day by day for me.  Every endless summer day of youth is in my rearview mirror.

And yet . . .

Each day is still 24 hours.  I can still use each day and live it with all of the gusto of a 10-year-old fishing for trout after building a tree fort, playing with his dog, and building a model of a Phantom F-4 to dogfight with the MiG 21-PF already hanging from the ceiling.

They did not see that coming.

Even though those 24 hours seem shorter now than at any time in my life, they are relentless in their exact sameness.  I get to choose how I spend those moments in my life.  I get to choose what I want to produce, and how hard I work to make it happen.

Humanity may never have the ability to crack time – it appears that even today, outside of sands falling from an hourglass, we can only describe time as a fundamental entity, something we measure against.

Does the flow of time vary?  Certainly.  But only if we’re moving at large fractions of the speed of light or are caught in a huge gravity well, but let’s leave your mother out of this.

Gravity is just a social construct invented by an English Christian to keep you down.

I have come to the conclusion that I will likely never understand what, exactly, time is, outside of this:

Time is all we have – it is what makes up life.  We measure our lives in it, because no man can buy an extra hour of life.  We have the hours we have.  The only difference is what we do with that time.

I mentioned in a previous post that (during the week) I often get by on scant hours of sleep.  That’s because I have more things that I want to do in my life than I can fit in a day that’s less than 20 or 22 hours some days.

I choose to try to do more, to try to make use of this time, because each moment is a gift.

Maybe I can settle for that definition of time:  a gift.  Each moment is a gift.

Don’t beg for more, or live in fear of losing them.  Just make each moment count.

Perhaps that’s the secret and precious nature of time.  It is the one thing we should never waste, and never wish away.

General Milley, The Vanguard Of The American Caesar

“What else is a TARDIS for? I can take you to the Battle of Trafalgar, the First Antigravity Olympics, Caesar crossing the Rubicon, or Ian Dury at the Top Rank, Sheffield, England, Earth, 21st November, 1979. What do you think?” – Dr. Who

What do modern people call socks worn with sandals?  Birth control.

History doesn’t always repeat, but it rhymes.

On January 10, 49 B.C., Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River at the head of his troops.  He had been ordered to leave the troops beyond the Rubicon.  After crossing the river, it is said he uttered, alea iacta est, or Latin for “I know you are, but what am I,” (Caesar was a big Peewee Herman fan).

Caesar didn’t pay any attention to the order to leave his troops behind, and Legion XIII, Gemina, followed him to Rome.  What followed was a four-year civil war that ended up with Julius Caesar taking over the Roman Republic and founding what soon became the Roman Empire.  That lasted until the Empire was split in two by a pair of Caesars.

One of the most scrupulous traditions in the United States has been that there are three independent branches of the Fed.Gov:  the legislative, the judicial, and the executive.  What’s missing?  The military.  That’s just as intentional as Biden wearing Depends® the day after he eats prunes.

What determines the length of a Biden press conference?  Depends.

That’s because the military is unique:  the legislature controls funding it and declaring the war it should fight, and the executive is their commander-in-chief.  It should be pretty straightforward.

Except:  the military went from a citizen-militia type military fairly early on.  Even then, it was still pretty lame by today’s standards:  it had a core of officers and smallish numbers of troops.  The armed forces were expanded during times of war, of course, through citizen volunteers.  This lasted until the Civil War became such an unpopular party that you had to force Northerners to come and play because the Southerners were being such meanies.

Sure, the military wasn’t always used just for wars – Congress has authorized use of force 23 times since the end of World War II, and at least once of those times wasn’t related to “scaring up some hot chicks with daddy issues” for Clinton.  Declaration of “War” has become out of vogue since war has such nasty connotations.  Thankfully people can’t die unless war is declared.  I’m surprised the Department of Defense isn’t called the Department of Peace.

I guess both of these guys rubbed women the wrong way.

But, sorta, the idea has still worked out.  Congress authorizes the use of force, and the President wages war peace with tanks.  What’s missing there is the military deciding what it should be doing.  The military is a verb:  kill and break stuff.  The civilian government provides the noun, which is as simple as the name of a person or nation.

The system has some drawbacks:  in my view, it’s much easier to use the military than it should be.  I can understand in a world that has grown much smaller due to things like missiles and the Internet why we can’t wait a year to get ready to make war peace with bullets, but that should be our last resort.

This brings us to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

General Mark A. Milley is the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).  That particular job is not really as cool as it sounds.  The JCS isn’t technically even in the chain of command for war peace with artillery.  They have no command authority over combat forces – that goes from the President to the Secretary of Defense to the commanders of the various Unified Combat Commands.

What does the JCS do?  The short version is that they’re the Human Resources group for the armed forces where they make diversity policies and pick who gets what job.  They also help make sure that “stuff” like food and bullets and goes to the right places.  It’s important – but the JCS aren’t fighting wars providing peace with torpedoes.

I’m not saying he’s woke, but his favorite animal is a pander.

This makes me wonder what General Milley was up to when he decided to tell the Chinese that he would let them know if we were going to attack them.  Of all the things that a General in the United States Armed Forces should be, promising to our (potential) enemies that he would give them a heads up if the elected Commander In Chief decides that even more vigorous peace with a particular country is required, is . . . not his job.  He’s Human Resources, and his job isn’t to set the priorities of the country or conduct diplomacy.  His job is to decide what happens if Jeff steals Julia’s salad in the break room fridge.

Yet, here General Milley was, conducting a policy discussion and taking orders from a sworn enemy of the United States:  Nancy Pelosi.  I kid:  Pelosi isn’t completely evil.  She only wants the complete destruction of the United States after she retires.

I put Jesus as my lock-screen picture.  Now he’s my screen savior.

But here is the danger:  Leftists will talk about how wonderful General Milley Cyrus is.  He won’t be charged with any crime.  He’ll retire from the JCS in 2023, and write a book about how great all of his decisions were.  He’ll get hired by a company that makes components that the Chinese will buy to make weapons for their military.  He’ll get to fly corporate jets and eat bacon-wrapped shrimp at parties with very fancy people.

That’s (mostly) not dangerous.  Unless you have to read the stupid book he’ll write.

What’s dangerous is that it sets the military up as being able to define the noun.  They get to do all the killing of people and breaking of stuff, but now they get to pick who they kill and what stuff they break.  That’s the dangerous point – the Rubicon.

I’ve warned in the past that I see two possible futures for the United States – a balkanized America.  For two decades beyond World War II, the nation was coming together and becoming less regional and more homogeneous.  The influence of television gave us another set of shared experiences.

But splits have been engineered, and now even though New York has a McDonalds® and so does Des Moines, the two places aren’t remotely alike in values or even, in many cases, language.  A balkanized America is one very real possibility as the polarity of the nation increases.

That’s one possibility.

I never judge a book by its cover.  I use that little paragraph on the back.

An American Caesar with a follow-on American Empire is another.  Besides being treasonous, Milley’s call with China is scarier:  it was an independent act of the military at the highest level to circumvent civilian leadership.

There is no doubt – this is close to crossing the Rubicon.  If the allegations are true, Milley should be tried, and if guilty, convicted.  As I said above – I think Milley’s insubordination will likely be rewarded and then he’ll be praised like a pet poodle, and he won’t be punished.

Somewhere there is a colonel taking notes, and waiting for an opportunity to strike in the coming unrest, getting ready to cross the Rubicon.

We’ll see if he has the chance.

When Times Are Tough, First, Sharpen The Saw

“You have personal habits that would make a monkey blush.” – Red Dwarf

I know a lot of broken pencil jokes, but they’re all pointless.

Stephen Covey made roughly a bazillion dollars with his book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, which at least makes his marketing pretty effective. I read it back in the early 2000s when I found a copy sitting on a shelf in an office when I started a new job. This was lucky for me, since I could never find the self-help section at the library. The librarian just would say, “Well, if I told you where the self-help section was, that would defeat the purpose.”

I couldn’t name most of the 7 Habits unless I cheated with Duckduckgo®, but I do remember the last one of the seven: Sharpen the Saw.

You might think that this would be a reference to Jason or Michael Meyers, but no. In the book he relates a story about Abraham Lincoln, who, when asked if he were to race to cut a tree down, how he would do it. “Well first, I would sharpen the saw, and then I would hire the neighborhood kid to do it and then I would invade the South,” Lincoln replied.

Talk about a one-trick pony.

How many Amish people does it take to change a light bulb? None.

But Covey picked up on this idea: if you’re not sharp, you’re not at your best. You can look at that through several dimensions, and include things like fitness, but you know how to get in shape. That answer is simple – even if you don’t want to do it.

The dimension of sharpness that I want to write about is mental. I know how to exercise to get fit, but if I’m so burned out that I don’t have the motivation to do it, I simply won’t.

The first level of control I do is to control the intake of my mind.

Around 2016 I went full-stop on listening to NPR® radio. NPR™ had always had a lefty slant, but in 2016 they went Full Throttle Leftist. The conclusion that I came to is that if I felt like shouting at the car radio that the host was wrong, I should probably just stop listening to them.

And I did. The reason I did wasn’t that I was afraid of the facts – no. I embrace finding out when I’m wrong. The reason was that the opinion that had always been in the backseat of the car became the driver. And I don’t like the opinions of Leftist NPR© hosts unless they’re midgets: the midgets always know what’s up.

Cats kill more birds than windmills. Heck, I can’t recall the last time I heard of a cat killing a windmill.

The Mrs. relayed to me that some journalism schools were now teaching that journalists should be, rather than impartial reporters on a story, a good journalist should actively intervene in favor to further Social Justice narratives.

My site isn’t a news site. My site is generally an opinion site – your opinion and my opinion. We can all have them, and as long as we agree to that, it’s fine. But NPR® began peddling opinion as fact, and editorializing during straight news stories, “discredited” and “false” were used as modifiers in news, as in “Fauchi debunks the false and discredited idea that people should wear masks,” a week before Fauchi says you need to wear six masks.

NPR® was harshing my mellow without giving me anything that I couldn’t get elsewhere.

The next level of control is to rest.

If I’m going all out, working and blogging, I might average five hours of sleep Sunday through Friday morning. That’s probably not enough. I play catch-up on weekends, but that’s not quite enough. A few weeks ago I decided I wouldn’t go in to work until after lunch on Friday.

It was glorious. I started the weekend with a full tank and that Friday was amazingly productive.

There are only so many hours in a day, and I have a list of things I have to get done. I do often live with a sleep deficit, but I do try to at least monitor it. I did find a scientific test on sleep deprivation online. It told me how much sleep I needed: just five minutes more.

And Chuck Norris doesn’t wear a watch. He decides what time it is.

The third thing I like to control is chaos.

Okay, I can’t control chaos. But I can control what I care about. I can prioritize. I can plan. I can make lists.

Make lists? How does that help?

I find that when I’m feeling whelmed, that just making a list turns a chaotic list of things to do into something I can attack. And sometimes, I just pick something I can do, something I can complete from the list, and just do it even if it’s not the most important thing.

A shopping center burned down – nothing left but Kohl’s®.

The best catalyst for action is . . . action. When I start getting things done, more things get done. Then things begin to disappear from the list as I cross them off.

At the end of the day, I feel good. Things are done. Sure, some aren’t, but finishing tasks and crossing them off the list makes me happy.

The fourth thing I do is step away. Turn off the chaos by connecting with other people. By reading. By writing.

There is always the danger in distraction. If done too often, it is simply running away.

But a moment to pull back, reflect, and work with the important connections in my life? That’s keeping the reason I face the chaos in perspective. I do those things for the people I love, for principle, or because it’s virtuous and has meaning.

Reading? That’s how I get ideas. That’s how I hit the reset button by focusing on other ideas.

Writing? That’s how I work through ideas. When I put it in writing, I begin to understand where the holes are in my thinking. Then I research. Then I get closer to the Truth.

Again, done too often, it’s an escape, not a refresh.

When the aquatic mammals escaped from the zoo, it was otter chaos.

Finally? I pray.

YMMV, but prayer does wonders for me. Danish theologian Søren Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards,” except when he said it, it came out more like, “Livet kan kun forstås baglæns, men det skal leves fremad,” and it probably sounded like Søren was gargling a mouthful of small wet frogs.

But Søren was right. Life is tossed by uncertainty and fortune, good and bad, and no one is getting out alive. As I get older, I begin to understand, and see the structure, though I have enough wisdom to know how little I really know.

Prayer brings me peace.

Thanks for sharing in my saw-sharpening. I hope it wasn’t too dull.

How Single Suburban Soccer Moms Are Killing The Country

“Train yourself to let go . . . of everything you fear to lose.” – Star Wars, Episode III

Childhood is like being drunk.  Everyone remembers what you did but you.

I’ve written a lot about fear, and how negative it is.  But fear is a very potent persuasion technique.  Fear motivates people to action.  Heck, I had a fear of elevators, but I took some steps to avoid it.

That’s why it’s used.  David Frum (press “S” to spit) recently wrote an article in The Atlantic titled, How to Persuade Americans to Give Up Their Guns.  I’m not going to link to it because I don’t want to drive traffic to this screed.  That just encourages them to pay Frum to write other crap when he’s not sleeping in the warm chest cavity of the “conservative” money laundering schemes think tanks.

In the end, David takes his Canadian* sensibilities to tell the benighted Americans that they should be horribly afraid of guns.  Guns are scary!  I believe, in technical terms, they are so scary that they make Frum wee a bit in his pants.

I guess we know Frum’s favorite drink:  pop.

Policy Exchange, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, Weasel Hair Added By Wilder

In the end, who, exactly was Frum writing this article to?

Well, let’s eliminate who he wasn’t writing to, first:

  • He wasn’t writing to you. He wasn’t writing to me.  If you’re a regular here, it’s nearly a lock that you’re at least sympathetic to the idea that the Second Amendment provides, in clear language, an individual right to own and carry weapons of war.  And we don’t wee our pants about it.
  • He wasn’t writing to the Left. They don’t need to be convinced.  The Second Amendment is probably the biggest single impediment to their plans (see:  Australia).
  • He wasn’t writing to rural folks. We have so many guns that our guns have guns.
  • He wasn’t writing to urbanites. Most people deep in the hive are already Leftists.
  • He wasn’t (for the most part) writing to guys. Guys (generally) like guns, and are generally less in favor of restricting them.  Women, for instance, are 30% more likely to support restrictions on standard size magazines.

Single Suburban Soccer Moms have such high double standards.

What does that leave?  Suburban women, specifically Single Suburban Soccer Moms.  Frum even admits as much in the article – he references both Mothers Against Drunk Driving® (MADD©) and Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense In America™ (MDAFGSIA®).  No, I didn’t make that last one up.  It’s what happens when the wine aunt tries to come up with a catchy name and everyone is so blitzed on the white zin that they don’t tell her, “Oh, Mabel, that is an awful name.”

But, yeah, the weasel-faced Frum was trying to manipulate the SSSM, because they’re often the swing voter in elections.  And, they make decisions based on fear, unlike me.  I like my emotions like I like my beer.  Bottled.

MADD© and MDAFGSIA™ are an excellent example of fear being used to manipulate Moms.  Did MADD™ do some good?  Certainly.  But even the founder thought they went too far and quit in 1985 because MADD©, founded to stop drunk driving, became (in her words) “neo-prohibitionist”.

That has been the problem:  fear drives decisions which then result in laws that take away freedom.

The SSSM has been the most reliable target of the “if it only saves one life!” and the “what about the children?” level of logic.  And that’s what has led us to the path we’re on today.

As Yoda taught us:  fear leads to hate.  Who does the Left hate now?

People who won’t take “the jab”.  Not everyone, of course.  BIPOC seem to be exempt from this hate, so it’s pretty much people who like freedom and people on the Right.  I’m surprised there isn’t a group called Mothers Against Icky Infected People Not Doing What I Say (MAIIPNDWIS).

It’s healthy to eat dried fruit.  I’m just raisin awareness.

Really, where we’re at is hysteria.  Remember how the ‘Rona crisis started – grainy videos of people walking down the street in Wuhan and collapsing, apartments being welded shut to keep the residents in, and Chinese denials that there was any issue.  It was just like the first four minutes of the average Hollywood® “plague destroys mankind” movie that has been made dozens of times since 1950.

Is the ‘Rona real?  Certainly.  It does have a body count, though I think the one being reported has been artificially inflated.

So it is real.  I’ve had it.  And it seems to kill people somewhat randomly, though in very, very small numbers as a percentage of those who catch it and are captured in the statistics (I’m not).

And the perfect way to beat the fear drum so that Single Suburban Soccer Moms forget the clown show exit engineered by Biden.  The specifics of the “vaccine” mandate don’t matter as much as the process, which never changes:

  • Suck at leading.
  • Have bad poll numbers.
  • Make use of either an existing or contrived “scary” situation.
  • Come down hard on the “scary” situation: propose something that takes away rights, if possible.  The Leftist base will be fine with it, and it will engage the SSSM crowd.

Oh, and I forgot:  always pass the buck.

This is what passes for Leftist leadership.  Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s Chief of Staff, said the quiet part that you’re not supposed to say out loud:  “Never let a crisis go to waste.”  If there wasn’t a crisis, the Left would invent one.  Drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was one.  The Keystone pipeline from Canada is another.  These are manufactured to enrage and engage people on the Left.

But the crisis had to be a specific one:  a crisis that could engage the SSSM brigade.  As the de facto swing voters, political policies are determined by how the fears of this group can be exploited.  COVID-19 is just one example.  Why do you think images of little kids in cages were trotted out to show how actually enforcing immigration law was mean?  Me, I only get upset when I see a hamburger bun in a cage – that means it was bread in captivity.

I bought a knife that can almost slice five baguettes of bread at once – but it’s only a four loaf cleaver.

Since there is nothing a SSSM loves more than safety, they’ll vote for it every time.  And it doesn’t matter if liberty is on the line – the SSSM essentially views government as her spouse and protector.

Perhaps, though, there is an alternative?

Maybe we could convince the SSSMs that, historically, governments have committed murder on the wholesale level.  Maybe we could get them up in arms about that?  Heck, I even have a name for it if they want to use it:

Mothers Engaged Against Tyrant Politicians Exploiting Everyone (MEATPEE)

Which is weird, because that’s exactly what I think David Frum probably smells like.

*Technically Frum got American citizenship in 2007 or so, but I think it should be revoked because he’s a tool

The Mrs. went to a lot of trouble to create an advertisement for the livestream on Wednesday at 9 Eastern.  Here it is:

Biden’s Big Bluff

“You’ve got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em . . . .” – The Gambler

I bought dice, but they didn’t have the 2, 4, or 6 one either one. They are very odd.

This was originally going to be a post on another topic, but events have overtaken it. Again. Instead of getting a sidesplitting romp about a lighthearted subject, you’ll get sidesplitting romp about Biden’s (latest) Big Blunder.

I’ve never been that dedicated of a poker player, though my friends and I played quite a bit when I was in high school. I do recall one game way back then where I won a bayonet (an M8A1 with matching scabbard for you knife nerds) but lost a hand where I wagered a girlfriend.

Oh, and I also won $6.48, mainly in pennies.

I still have the bayonet.

One thing I did notice was that when I was winning, it became easier to bluff. I could bet on junk, but only if I’d won most of my hands up to the point I started bluffing with strong cards.

None of us were experienced poker players, so it was trial and error. I found that the bigger, more confident bet that I had made (after I was winning) the faster my friends would fold their hands, and the fewer bayonets and girlfriends I could win (or lose). But if I wanted to end a hand quickly, a big bet was what I would try to bluff my opponents into folding so I could win the pot.

Never trust a cheetah. They always try to pull a fast one.

Even with that small amount of experience, I can tell you that former vice-president Joseph Robinette (I guess his parents couldn’t afford a real Robin) Biden is bluffing.

And Biden is scared.

The withdrawal from Afghanistan was so poorly managed that it would be enough to charge Captain America® with treason. And that’s probably the best thing that happened to Biden in the last month, even though his recollection of the evacuation of Kabul might be dim and confused until they bring the flashcards out.

As bad as it was, Biden managed to make that national shame even worse. How much respect does he get from the American people when he checks his watch every time the coffin of a soldier goes by? Maybe he thinks there’s something on it, since he obviously doesn’t know what “not on my watch” means.

No, things have not been going well for the kid-toucher in chief.

This string of decisions so bad it makes Johnny Depp on a three-day drunk look as lucky as a chipmunk at a peanut convention. It’s bad enough that I imagine most of the senior White House staff are looking for jobs, or in some cases, countries that don’t extradite back to the United States.

I guess El Chapo would be used to high officials.

Through the art of remote viewing and making things up, I have an exact transcript from discussions among some of the members of Biden’s political strategy team last week:

Soulless Political Drone 1 (SPD1): “Okay, we’re down in the polls. What do we do?”

Soulless Political Drone 2 (SPD2): “It’s not so bad.”

SPD1: “No, it really is. Biden is now less popular than,” checks list, “having leprosy . . . on your genitals.”

SPD2: “Well, people kind of like leprosy nowadays. It grows on you. Besides, we know that there’s a floor to the number of people that will support him, though. The voters . . . .”

SPD1: “Voters? You do realize that most of those voters are copier machines we rented at Kinkos®, right? No. He’s lost the suburban soccer moms.”

SPD2: (shocked) “You mean he’s lost the support of the SSM? That’s a disaster! Our focus groups say they used to think of him,” checks focus data, “as category 74-b: ‘befuddled elderly relative that mostly means well but you wouldn’t leave alone with girls between the ages of six and twelve.’ What do the focus groups of Suburban Soccer Moms say now?”

SPD1: “Now they have him as a 93-w: ‘Creepy old man with degenerative brain disease who probably smells like week-old urine.’ Also, that he doesn’t care about Americans stuck in foreign countries and is . . . weak.”

SPD2: “Ouch. SSMs don’t like weak. Remember when all of them were having romantic dreams about Trump and Trump supporters?”

SPD1: “So, what do we do?”

SPD2: “Let’s do what we always do: trot out the kids. Let’s make a big fuss about COVID-19 not being safe for children, blame the unvaccinated.”

SPD1: “We’ve done that already. It’s getting a big yawn. We have to spice it up.”

SPD2: “We could have him do push-ups, maybe beat someone up? Think we could dig up Corn Pop?”

SPD1: “Do you even hear what you’re saying? You sound like Kamala when she’s off the sauce for a day. This is serious.”

SPD2: “Ok, serious face on. Ohhh, we could have a vaccine mandate. We could threaten the jobs of 100,000,000 or so people if they didn’t comply.”

SPD1: “What? How is that remotely Constitutional?”

(Both laugh. And laugh. And laugh.)

SPD1: “Whew. Constitutional. Still funny. But 100,000,000 people? How many of them are Biden voters?”

SPD2: (checks website) “2,113,210.”

SPD1: “Only 2,113,210? Out of 100,000,000?”

SPD2: “Well, after we were done with the counting.”

(Both laugh.)

Okay, that might not have been exactly the conversation, but it was close. Biden’s political advisors see that he’s as weak as vegan housecat. They have to think of something to distract the voting public and bring his poll numbers up.

  • His economic policies appear to consist of burning money to keep his supporters warm while importing future voters as fast as he can. Can’t use those.
  • It’s pretty certain that there are approximately seven people left that want to go bomb foreign countries for a distraction. Sending cruise missiles to blow up people in (spins board) Denmark is out.
  • Can’t get tough on trade with China – they have too much information on where Joe’s bank balance came from.

That leaves . . . the ‘Rona.

Thanks to Biden, a lot of people are going to be back on their feet again, since they can’t afford cars anymore.

I think the idea was to craft policies that appeal to the Suburban Soccer Mom while not impacting the SJW base. So, go after people with jobs and force them to take “the jab.” Suburban Soccer Moms will love it because it will leave little Cody or Colby or Colbee or Codi “safer” because the TV and Facebook® said so. SJWs are all about injectibles, and this has the added bonus of forcing people to do their will, which makes it just that easier to order them onto the trains.

A hospital in Houston fired 150 for not taking “the jab” – and every private business with over 100 employees will be forced to do the same. Yet Biden is exempting 600,000 Post Office employees. Why?

To lose the mail system would hurt his poll numbers.

Looks like everyone knew this was going to be a popular speech.

This is his big bluff. He’s nearly out of chips. All he has is one chance to try to redeem himself.

I guess it makes sense. I mean, nobody is going to accept Jill as collateral.

What to do?

Huh. I’ll see your bluff, and raise you “the loss of consent of the governed.”

Is that sweat?

Bikini Economics And The Money Supply

“What do you know about gold, Moneypenny?” – Goldfinger

One of the few things that Pa Wilder left me in his will was his bed. I guess you could call it an heir mattress.

On April 5, 1933, Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order that made the owning of more than trivial amounts of gold by individuals illegal. Owning gold wouldn’t be legal again until Gerald Ford signed a bill into law that reversed that abomination of a policy.

That law went into effect on December 31, 1974, and people could once again buy gold.

In 1933, the price of gold was fixed: $20.67 per ounce. It didn’t vary, because the value of the dollar was pegged to the price of gold. The Fed© couldn’t print dollars unless they had at least 40% of that value in gold to back it up.

Pro tip: If you have a balloon elephant that won’t fit in your backseat, you can always pop the trunk.

What did the government then do?

It defaulted on the dollar. A dollar had been worth (around) 1/20th of an ounce of gold. After the government stole it all, they decided that a dollar was now only worth 1/35th of an ounce of gold. Poof. Immediately, and with the stroke of a pen, the government stole 43% of the value of every dollar in existence.

The penalty for “hoarding” gold was a big one: a $10,000 fine and up to 10 years in the slammer. I guess the government didn’t (and doesn’t) like competition when it comes to stealing.

It was the biggest heist in history – until Nixon severed the link between the gold and the dollar completely. After that, people could own gold again. There was no real reason for the government to not allow them to own it: they had now stolen the rest of the value of the dollar.

If you rob a vape store, is that a Juul® heist?

And it only took 41 years from 1933 to 1974 to convince people that was acceptable.

Since Nixon removed all gold connection, a dollar is worth (today) about 1/1800th of an ounce of gold.

But that isn’t enough to feed the beast.

The (metaphorical) printing presses have been shoveling money into the economy under the mistaken assumption that all we need is additional debt to keep the engine going. It’s like a demented congressman who doesn’t understand engines deciding to open up the hood of an F-150® to just pour gasoline on it using the dim understanding of a toddler that, “gasoline makes engines go, so if I pour enough gasoline on the engine, it will be as fast as a spaceship.”

That’s really what passes as logic in Washington, D.C. now. I keep writing about the economy in the slim hope that whatever passes for an intellect in the halls of congress will get distracted enough to spend at least a minute or two learning before returning to the concept of, “Ugh, free stuff good. Grug pay for stuff easy because all money free. Wonder why Grug’s armpit’s stink?”

I swear, AOC couldn’t spell “cat” if you spotted her the “C” and the “T”.

See, economics can be interesting!

The Fed® has gone all-in on this economic shadow puppet theater, shoving pools of money toward banks to shore up their balance sheets. Some of the people who are on the winning side of this great wave of money being sloshed around have even spent some.

Blackrock® buying up all the houses for sale? Yup. They see what’s coming. All the rich and powerful buying farmland that will never produce enough via crops or cattle to justify the price? They see what’s coming. They’re moving as quickly as possible to use this money to buy everything they can.

And people are happy. “Hey, I sold Ma’s old house after she passed away for twice what she paid for it in 2000! I made out like a bandit.”

It’s not all bad. Thankfully, the velocity of money is down.

What’s the velocity of money?

That’s how fast a dollar gets spent. Poor people move money the fastest – a dollar comes in and, poof, out it goes again. They have to spend it because they don’t have any spare money. They get paid on Friday and on Saturday it’s turned into rent payments and insurance payments and Cheetos® from Target™.

Roses are red, roses are blue, depending upon their velocity relative to you.

But the velocity of money is now slower than Joe Biden when he’s asked difficult questions, like, “What is the year, Joe? Hey, we’re talking to you. Dammit, he’s gone catatonic again. Someone get those squeaky toys he likes. And keep Kamala out of the vodka.”

Things would be far worse if the velocity of money hadn’t dropped so far that it was moving as slow as Oprah trying to get off of a couch. Since poor people slosh it around so much, that means it’s exactly where the Fed® put it: with the rich people.

So, if the money supply has gone vertical, then why hasn’t the price of everything doubled?

And most of it is sitting in pools right now. Except for the early adopters who are looking for something, anything to buy so that when the dust clears out of the coming inflation that they are richer than ever and Oprah has even more Twinkies®.

I’m not against capitalism – but this isn’t capitalism. It’s a rigged card game where your money evaporates – first slowly, and then all at once.

The engine of debt isn’t driving economic growth anymore. What the debt is doing is papering over the holes in the system so that it keeps going another week, another month, and hopefully another year.

But the downside to this is the longer a failing system is kept going by speeding it up, the more energy it stores, the bigger the crash, the bigger the collapse.

Why did Princess Diana cross the road? Inertia.

The economy has inertia, though. Even though it’s working on the most significant collapse in the history of the United States, people still believe. They take dollars because they believe. They believe the rules aren’t going to change.

They will.

Since we’ve seen this game before – we can take at least some steps to protect ourselves. I suppose it’s time to buy PEZ® before the rush . . . .

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: It’s A Long Way To The Bottom

“The stars are veiled. Something stirs in the East. A sleepless malice. The eye of the enemy is moving. He is here.” – Lord of the Rings:  The Return of the King

I love really large clocks.  Big time.

  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.

Violence and open crime are still being encouraged by the Left.  In Chicago, the murder rate looks like a tote-board for a telethon.  “Only three more hours for killing, folks, let’s get those numbers up!”

I’m holding August at 9 out of 10, but it’s getting closer.  That’s still two minutes to midnight, but there is absolutely no movement away from the precipice – we keep edging toward the abyss.

I currently put the total at (this is my best approximation since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) hanging in at around 950 out of the 1,000 required for the international definition of civil 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 Enemy Is You – Violence And Censorship Update –– Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – It’s A Long Way Down – 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 550 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

The Enemy Is You

If you’re reading this, the Federal government has decided who the enemy is:  you.  The Department of Homeland Security has put up a listing of potential terror threats.  The first?

  • Opposition to COVID Measures.

Regardless of your political bent, opposition to COVID measures is a valid political or religious position.  But in 2021, we live in an era where the Justice (?) Department thinks that burning down Minneapolis is to be encouraged, but where a group of people just wanting to live their lives are . . . potential terror threats when the most extreme thing they’ve ever done in their lives is to not be willing to accept the imposition of tyrannical controls on their lives.

If the United States saw what the government of the United States was doing to the people of the United States, then the United States would invade the United States to stop it.

The second point was this:

  • Claims of Election Fraud, Belief Trump can be Reinstated

Starting with the first part, I think it’s been well proven that there was election fraud.  All signs point to it being pervasive and large enough to have swung the election.  Again, the conspirators openly shared their techniques in Time® magazine while gloating that it worked.  But maybe we should believe the Democrats when they say there was no election fraud – after all they’re the ones who have the most experience.

Trump being reinstated?  Nah.  That won’t happen.  But the idea that there is fraud is also a valid reaction to the data and the way the elections was held.  Remember them blocking out the press and covering the windows so people couldn’t look in?

Yeah.  Still no explanation for that one.

The third point isn’t really a point, so we’ll skip it.

In the end, what the DHS is really saying is that this is the actual profile of their prime terror suspects:

Why, with red flags like that, I bet they even deny that they’re racist!

Violence And Censorship Update

Violence is endemic now in major cities, and much of it is politically motivated, so we’ll skip that this month.

The big story continues to be Censorship.  Where else to start but Lt. General (Ret.) Michael Flynn?

Flynn had been a supporter of Trump, and had been confirmed as National Security Advisor and had spent all of two weeks in the job before resigning.  He was the victim of the FBI’s initial witch hunt in the Trump administration.  Oh, and the appointing of Mueller as Special Counsel to investigate, well, whatever.

Anyway, in perhaps his biggest sin, Flynn remained loyal to Trump.  Though he agreed to a plea deal, Trump later pardoned him.  So, story over, right?

No.  Flynn is still speaking openly about things the Left doesn’t like.  I don’t think Flynn is really on the Right, but he really irritates the Left.  How much does he irritate them?

Chase Bank may have denied him credit, but Flynn can still borrow from Cheese Bank in Utah – I think they call it a Provo-loan.

Yup, they canceled his credit cards.  Not due to non-payment, just because they don’t like the things that Flynn is saying.  Again, the push to unperson people the Left doesn’t like carries on.  And now you know where Chase® sits.

Unpersoning is one way to censor – it certainly gives the rest of the people speaking out pause.  But there’s still old reliable:  shutting off access.  Censorship has been the usual ongoing mess.  The big name censored in August was . . . Vox Day.

Vox Day is a writer/game developer/social commentator/etc./etc. and has been needling the SJWs and the Left for, well, forever.  It used to be considered to be sporting fun jousting with the Left, but now any deviation from their norms are grounds for immediate attacks.

Vox has proven himself pretty much immune to the attacks, as long as they spell his name right.  In this case, Blogger® (a division of Google™) took down his blog.  Blogger© was his web home for many years.  Right now, if you go to his old website, you find a note that “This blog is under review due to possible Blogger Terms of Service violations and is open to authors only.”

So, shut down.

I had regularly been a reader of his site.  I can’t recall any of the commentaries that couldn’t have been read aloud on nearly any radio station in the country, legally.  But Vox has been more or less invulnerable to damage from the Left, which seems to infuriate them even more.

Another voice silenced.  Well, not silenced.  Two hours later, he was up and running, and within a day he had everything moved over to voxday.net.  As I said, he’s been pretty much immune to their attacks.

But governments can silence not just a single individual, but a whole class of people:

On Friday, I wrote about the Aussie trucker’s strike.  It has had an impact, but the government did its very best to shut down cell phones, social media, and any other electronic communications from the truckers.  The government even shut down video cameras that might have been used for people to observe the parked trucks.

Feels like the fix is in . . .

Oddly, the only way you could observe the strike in real-time was on Google® maps by the drive time delays.  And, yes, of course, the press was complicit in not covering it.  Two Leftists show up to protest the Leftist cause of the day?  Dozens of news cameras show up.

Hundreds of men protest for freedom?

Silence.

That’s to be expected.  The major news outlets are all working together with the major tech websites to coordinate what is true.  They also coordinate who has the opportunity to speak.

Twitter®:  will give people who say “death to America” a say on Twitter™, but not a former president.  That says it all.

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:

Up is more violent, and our perception of violence is down in August, again.  I guess we’ve just lowered our standards.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it dropped again this month.  Unless there’s a crisis, I expect political instability to remain low until at least September.  Weirdly, it seems like June-July-August have the lowest levels of instability.  I guess that’s due to it being fresh vodka season in Washington D.C.?

Economic:

Economic measures showed another uptick last month.  Are people becoming used to inflation?  What about when the shortages hit?

Illegal Aliens:

This data was at record levels last month, but we beat the record again.  Coming soon to a town near you, ready or not.

A Long Way Down

Right now the military of the United States is being filtered.  How?

Through the use of indoctrination/separation techniques like Critical Race Theory.  CRT was designed to create racial division.  Truth and Reconciliation efforts always are a blame game, whose main technique is constructed to not heal, but to reopen wounds.  In the United States the idea of CRT is to blame those who were uninvolved to benefit those who were unborn when the original injury occurred.

Hey, let’s take that idea to the military, where functional cohesion is dependent upon esprit de corps and camaraderie!

What could go wrong?

The entire thing, really.

I don’t like some races.  The 400 meter always made me want to puke.  It’s not a sprint, it’s not distance, what is it???  Sorry, I guess I’m critical of that race.

So, the military is cratering.  What about government?  It is nearly certain that our government is the stupidest it has ever been.  Really.

Seriously, does anyone think her IQ would even be a warm day in Houston?

We have a vice president putting flowers down at a memorial to the people who shot down John McCain after the “successful” withdrawal strategy that Alzheimer-in-Chief Biden approved and then forgot about.  Now, I’m no John McCain fan by any stretch, but this is incompetence at the level of the Three Stooges®.

Yes.  The military is being driven to incompetence.  Biden and Harris are in a race to see which is worse:  stupidity or dementia.

That leaves the economy.  At least it’s doing well, right?

The Fed should take my lead and just start showing bikini models in their graphs.  Oh, wait, they don’t want people to read them.

No.  When the Fed stops publishing a model because it shows the GDP has collapsed (as shown to be mathematically certain by this author several months ago), you know it’s very, very bad.

And we have yet to hit bottom.  When I started publishing these, in several comments folks noted that we wouldn’t have Civil War 2.0 when we had such a good economy.  Full bellies don’t start revolutions.

As the shortages develop and inflation takes hold, remember these things:

  • It’s a long, long way to the bottom. We are actually right now in the “false hope” section I wrote about back in spring of 2020.
  • Stay away from crowds. 72 hours can change everything about your life.
  • Get out of the cities.   Really.
  • Better to be a year early in preparing than a day late.

LINKS

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

Film At Eleven

NYC : https://twitter.com/i/status/1427789149986246663

LA: https://twitter.com/i/status/1425839855037210624

Oakland : https://twitter.com/i/status/1424776126115635201

San Francisco: https://twitter.com/i/status/1428774094145613826

Colorado Springs: https://youtu.be/L2fGVbMYp54

Last Word From San Diego: https://twitter.com/i/status/1427849481551106056

 

Coming In Hot – Brace For Impact

https://uncoverdc.com/2021/09/03/true-the-vote-update-videos-show-evidence-of-ballot-harvesting/

https://rumble.com/vm1ln1-all-hell-is-about-to-break-loose-in-georgia.html

https://www.truethevote.org/news-posts/the-breitbart-article-true-the-vote-update

https://georgiastarnews.com/2021/08/30/43000-absentee-ballot-votes-counted-in-dekalb-county-2020-election-violated-chain-of-custody-rule/

https://uncoverdc.com/2021/08/09/pennsylvania-134-year-old-man-voted-in-2020-election/

https://www.propublica.org/article/heeding-steve-bannons-call-election-deniers-organize-to-seize-control-of-the-gop-and-reshape-americas-elections

 

Woke World

Woke World: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZChpvvLhmI&t=135s

Cue applause (!?!) : https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet/status/1427144687740141570

Mr and Mrs : https://twitter.com/i/status/1428363839205122050

Public Education : https://twitter.com/i/status/1427337084591874055

Almighty Dollar (see 0:30): https://twitter.com/i/status/1430851901239795712

Inauguration Party : https://twitter.com/i/status/1428365941222477834

Pledge of Allegiance: https://twitter.com/i/status/1431375675903053829

American Citizen : https://twitter.com/i/status/1428031497785810954

 

Miscellaneous Mayhem

https://buchanan.org/blog/is-america-becoming-a-failed-state-149897

https://floridaphoenix.com/2021/08/24/is-america-experiencing-a-different-kind-of-civil-war-opinion/

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/08/virginia-militia-bedford-campbell-county/

https://www.axios.com/diversity-majority-minority-white-american-census-bd181b53-f170-40b2-9913-dd43363e1aaf.html

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1425794735889866752.html

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2021/09/beyond-culture-wars

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/majority-registered-democratic-voters-prefer-socialism-to-capitalism-fox-news-poll

http://themostimportantnews.com/archives/they-have-come-up-with-some-ominous-new-definitions-for-what-constitutes-domestic-terrorism

https://www.hstoday.us/subject-matter-areas/counterterrorism/al-qaeda-tells-parties-civil-war-to-find-what-they-need-in-islamist-terror-guides/

 

It’s My Party, I’ll Cry (Out) If I Want To

https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2021/09/01/leonard-pitts-right-wing/

https://www.salon.com/2021/08/31/fellow-republican-rips-freshman-gop-rep-madison-cawthorn-over-insane-threat-of-bloodshed/

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/08/madison-cawthorn-is-openly-talking-about-civil-war-at-this-point

https://www.foxnews.com/media/what-war-liberal-media-find-a-new-target-madison-cawthorn-and-civil-war

https://www.salon.com/2021/08/03/nevada-gop-griped-by-civil-war-as-far-right-proud-boys-attempt-takeover_partner/

https://www.salon.com/2021/08/09/maga-civil-war-why-trumpworld-is-suddenly-lashing-out-fox-news-and-dan-bongino/

https://lasvegassun.com/news/2021/aug/02/in-the-republican-partys-civil-war-its-moderates-v/

https://newrepublic.com/article/163285/andrew-torba-gab-white-christian-internet

 

The S-word

https://www.foxnews.com/media/former-trump-aide-makes-case-for-red-counties-seeking-blue-state-secession-to-do-so-mistreated-and-overtaxed

https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/zocalos-connecting-california/joe-mathews-california-pluralism-secession

https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/08/06/opinion-imagining-a-realistic-calexit-scenario/

https://www.thenational.scot/news/19485812.california-secessionist-campaigner-louis-marinelli-set-calexit-comeback/

https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/news/2021-07-26/greater-idaho-push-reignites-longtime-secessionist-movement

https://madison.com/ct/opinion/mailbag/robert-reid-secessionists-raise-risk-of-second-civil-war/article_28fe613c-f133-5664-b252-950c01daaf8e.html

https://www.salon.com/2021/07/18/college-republicans-in-disarray-after-stolen-election–texas-chapter-may-even-secede_partner/

 

(From M*A*S*H): Goodbye, Farewell and Amen 

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/assabiya-lee-smith