Category: Big Thoughts

Toxic Positivity, Because Leftists Say So?

“Dad, you’re, you’re twisting my words! I meant burden in its most positive sense.” – Frasier

In Rambo® 7, Rambo™ fights arthritis.

News stories are like sheep they arrive in flocks as part of a lambush.  One flock of stories this week was about, and I quote, Toxic Positivity.  Just like another bogeyman, Toxic Masculinity, the Left seeks to take something good and turn it into something to be seen as bad.

The basic idea of the stories is this:

  • Positive people make it hard for people to be sad or defeatist.
  • Because people can’t express their sadness or defeat, they feel even sadder and more defeated.
  • Therefore, the people who tried to cheer them up are evil. Oh, wait, the Left doesn’t acknowledge such an old-fashioned concept as evil.  It has to be “toxic.”

Positivity is good.  Is it a universal cure-all?  Absolutely not.  When Ma Wilder died (more than two decades ago), the last thing I wanted was someone to crack a joke or try to make light of the situation.  I was grieving.  I was not interested in anyone putting the “fun” in funeral.

It’s normal to grieve when a parent dies.  But wallowing in that grief for too long doesn’t help anyone.  If I had stayed in that grief?

That’s despair, and despair is evil.  Not toxic.

Evil.  Despair eats into the soul.

Moses was a high-tech prophet – he was the first to use a tablet.

That was my first reaction when I read this story:  whoever is behind it is evil.

Why?

Life is tough, really tough.  People that we love die.  The economy has hit millions directly and is looming over many, many more.

Heck, if I wanted to, I could spend this entire post writing about things that were horrible in 2020 and 2021.  But I’m not going to, because, even when things are pretty tough, almost every person reading this has a life that’s better than 99.99% of every person that has ever lived, even on your worst day.

The four stages of Santa:
1. You believe in Santa.
2. You don’t believe in Santa.
3. You are Santa.
4. You look like Santa.

Objectively, my life has been fantastic, as has the life of The Mrs. and the rest of my family.  Have bad things happened to us?  Sure.  But we don’t dwell on them, because that’s despair.

One thing that’s critical for me when I’m having a bad day is being around someone positive to bring me up and out of my sadness.  It’s critical because if you let it, sadness will turn into self-pity.  And self-pity is a hole with no bottom.

Joe Biden has indicated he wants to put chips in the brains of United States Citizens.  What kinds of chips?  “Well, you know the thing, sour cream and onion, maybe.”

So why are there people preaching against Toxic Positivity?  I can only think of two reasons:

  1. There are a group of people who actively like feeling bad about themselves. As I’ve established before, this group tends to be (but is not exclusively) Leftist.  Positive people are a mirror that they don’t like to see:  a mirror of what kind of person they could be if they weren’t such miserable wretches.
  2. Oops, there’s only the one group.

The alternative to positive people is . . . negative people.

I avoid negative people like I avoid personal hygiene.  Why?  Because every day I live or work around negative people, it feels like my life is slowly being sucked away.  Negative people are emotional vampires.  The sort of defeatism that they spew out is as infectious as Madonna® before her monthly penicillin shot.

I hear mummies are into wrap music.

Negativity can poison a workplace:  it’s the guy at work who is always sure that someone else has it better, that some other group is the favored group, and that whatever raise they get is never enough.  Then one person in their team is recruited – they begin to see that their group are always getting a bad deal, treated unfairly, having to work harder than others.

Strong people can avoid this self-identified victimhood.  However, I’ve seen good people sucked in and become unhappy in a great job, merely because they felt that someone else, somewhere else, had it better than they did.

The biggest weapon against that attitude:  being positive.  That’s why I write so often about it.  I think that 95% of the way I feel on an average day is entirely in my control.  No, it doesn’t apply at a funeral or on other dark days.  But most days?

At my funeral, my friend promised to say, “bargain,” and that means a great deal.

I choose to be happy.  I choose to enjoy my life.  I choose to be positive.  I choose to try to uplift those around me.  Do I acknowledge that times might be rough?  Sure.

But the answer isn’t giving up, and taking our ball home.  The answer is to work harder, get better, and never give up.

Toxic positivity?

Sign me up.

Money In 2021? (Explained With One Bikini)

“Well, Saddam owed us money.” – Arrested Development

What does Superman® dry off with?  A Tow-El.

Money.

What is it?

Really, the truth is money is anything we accept as having value that we can trade for something else.  Cigarettes have been used for money.  Cowrie shells were used in China for money nearly 4,000 years ago.  Booze has often been used for money.

I read an article back in 2013 that bottles of Tide® were being used to trade for drugs in New York City, so you know that there are plenty of insane.  Heck, I hear the Germans are even raising money online through Krautfunding.

Ideally, money has some sort of scarcity attached to it.

Gold has a historic role as money.  You can cut it up into very, very tiny pieces, and you have lots of tiny pieces of gold.  It hasn’t changed – you can melt it back into a single bar again, having lost nothing.  You cut up a dollar bill into very tiny pieces?  You have a pile of gerbil cage fluff.

Gold is nice.  So is silver.

But, like anything, there are problems.

I found a little gold once while prospecting – it was a minor success.

Well, generally always the same problem.  Government.

I’ve mentioned Rome before, because it’s a great illustration of what happens when government designs money.

At the beginning, Roman silver coins were, well, actually silver.  The problem with silver coins is that you can’t make silver show up out of thin air.  Oh, wait, if you’re a government, you can.  The Imperial Romans managed to maintain enough restraint that their silver coins were over 90% silver for a little over 150 years after Empire.

Proving once again I definitely deserve the Nobel Prize™ in Economics for my discovery of Bikininomics©.

After that, the percentage of silver in the coins declined rather quickly.

So did the Roman Empire.

Interestingly, where it took Rome 150 years, it took the United States 142 years for the same thing to happen:  from 1792 (when the Coinage Act was passed) to 1934 (when Roosevelt confiscated United States silver and gold).  History may not repeat, but it sure does rhyme.

Sure, there were silver coins produced after 1934, but silver coins were (largely) discontinued as United States currency in 1965.  (*There were exceptions for dollar and half dollar coins in selected years.  That ended in 1976.)

As soon as the non-silver coins were minted, the silver coins began to disappear from circulation.  Gresham’s Law states the simple fact:  bad money (non-silver coins) drives out good money (silver coins).

But it’s had an impact on people’s thought processes as well:  they have (largely) stopped thinking about gold and silver as money.  Want proof?

Yup.  When Mark Dice offered people either a King Size® Hershey’s™ chocolate bar or a 10 ounce silver bar, everyone chose the candy bar.  As bad money replaced good, people stopped even thinking about silver as money.

The money supply today is fiat money.  I’ve written about that before – it means that our money is entirely made up.  No silver backing, no gold backing, the only backing is the faith of the people who accept it.  Oh, and several thousand nuclear weapons, if you’re talking about the United States dollar.

The next step from that are the cryptocurrencies.

Those are entirely a mathematical concept, though Ricky has noted in comments that this mathematical construct can cost upwards of a million dollars in power a day.  Bitcoin is currently at $33,000.  Four days ago?  $40,257.

Used with permission.

Is Bitcoin a bubble?  Will it go to zero?  Will I go to $500,000?

Honestly, I have no idea.  I would have bet against it going to $40,000.

The scary part of today is just that uncertainty.

  • Gold has (generally) held its value over time, performing far better than the dollar since the Federal Reserve© came into being.
  • Gold hasn’t performed as well as stocks over the same period – creative people added more value than a motionless metal.
  • Stocks are today at a valuation that is (by my reckoning) insane. They can stay that way longer than I can bet against them.
  • Bitcoin? Who can say?  I think its primary role right now is to indicate bubble tops.
  • Bonds? Who wants to buy bonds at nearly zero interest rates?

This is probably one of the more difficult times to invest in my lifetime – risks are very high, but returns don’t seem to have kept up.

First role of 2021?  Don’t talk about 2020.

We seem to be, everywhere I look, near to a breaking point in our systems – economic, political, and social.  Who knows, maybe we’ll be back at cowrie shell money by 2030.

But I think I’d prefer the booze, since I don’t smoke and, well, if you have booze do you really need clean clothes?

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Standing At The Brink

“Treat the cause, not the symptom!” – The Rocky Horror Picture Show

No change this month.  We’ll see what January brings . . .

  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.

We remain in the gray zone between step 9. and step 10.  I will maintain the clock at 2 minutes to midnight.  Last month I indicated that there was a chance to move the clock back if authorities took Leftist violence seriously.

Looks like I was too optimistic.

Previously, I stated that the only thing keeping the clock from ticking to full midnight is the number of deaths.  I put the total at (this is my best approximation, since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) 600 out of the 1,000 required for the international civil war definition.

But as close as we are to the precipice of war, be careful.  Things could change at any minute.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Symptom, Not The Cause – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Harper’s Ferry 2.0 – 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, feel free to subscribe and you’ll get every post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30 Eastern, free of charge.

Symptom, Not The Cause

The Left has many errors in perception.  Many of these errors are ‘own goals’ – the Left doesn’t know what the Right is thinking because they’ve managed to short-circuit the feedback mechanisms created by the Founding Fathers.  As Sarah Hoyt puts it so eloquently (LINK):

For years I’ve told the left that when they used fraud to win, they’d broken the feedback mechanism.  It didn’t mean their ideas were winning, that people agreed with them, or that they were safe. It was the equivalent of breaking the fire alarm and thinking they were safe from fires.

This is similar to my commentary in this post (Four Boxes: Soap, Jury, Ballot, and Ammo).

If you asked the average Leftist, I think most of them would say that Trump was the cause of the situation that we as a nation find ourselves in.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

Trump is a symptom.  Trump is, in many ways, a skilled communicator.  He uses media to bypass gatekeepers and those that would interpret him to speak directly to the people.  Could he have had tens of thousands of people chanting “Build The Wall” or “Lock Her Up” if those people didn’t believe that in the first place?

Of course not.

Trump found the messages that resonated with a very large group of Americans that had been bypassed by both the media and the political process for decades and gave them a voice.  Does he believe in those messages?

I have no idea.  I am not a mind reader.  But Trump became a mirror of a large group of voters to show them that, yes, he heard them.  And, yes, he’d fight for them.  The degree that he actually followed through is debatable.

But back to the voice of the voters:  People wanted to “Build The Wall” not because they hated the people coming across the border, but because borders matter.  If everyone from Japan (for instance) moved to California, you wouldn’t have Californians:  you’d just have more Japan.  Americans, rightly, want to live in America.  They’re not afraid of change, they just want the inevitable changes to be American, and not Japanese (for example).

“Lock Her Up” wasn’t just about Hillary – it was about the groups of politicians that served themselves and the state instead of voters.  Why are the Clintons swimming in hundreds of millions in cash when they came into office as thousandaires?  Why are the Obama family wondering which mansion to stay in each week rather than budgeting for a once a year family vacation?

Corruption.  It wasn’t just Hillary, it was (and is) virtually every politician in Washington.

That’s what Leftists don’t understand – the movement Trump gave a voice to won’t go away regardless of what happens to Trump.  The underlying causes aren’t getting better, they’re festering because the feedback mechanism is broken.

Violence And Censorship Update

The Capitol was stormed, but you know the details on that one.  December had numerous violent protests by the Left, but only the Capitol having unscheduled visitors received major press coverage.  Rationale?

Censorship.

This month has been, by far, the biggest outpouring of censorship of any month of my lifetime.  The sitting President of the United States has been banned from essentially every online social media outlet.  Even the store that sells merchandise related to Trump, Shopify©, has banned him.  I’m certain that stopping the sale of red MAGA hats will solve all of the world’s problems.

Twitter® was, by far, the biggest way that Trump evaded the mainstream media lock on news selection and interpretation.  Trump could speak directly to the American people without being a newscaster using the words “unfounded” every other word.  He had sent 57,000 Tweets™ since he was on the service.

Not only was Trump censored, but I heard that the top 35% of his supporters were also censored.  Journalist John Robb put it very well:

Bottom line:  expect more, much more, censorship in the coming year.

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 lead to the index.  On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

Up is more violent.  The public perception of violence dropped drastically during November, and dropped again in December.  January?  Too soon to tell.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  Instability dropped significantly in December.  January – will it bring conclusion, or more tension?

Economic:

The economic measures took a small setback this month.  I’d expect January to show a minor uptick.

Illegal Aliens:

Down is good, in theory.  This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol.  Numbers of illegals being caught is rising again from a record November to a record December – the floodgates are opening.

Harper’s Ferry 2.0

In October of 1859, ever photogenic John Brown and 22 of his best friends decided that the time was right to trigger a slave uprising in the South.  Their idea was to capture the Harper’s Ferry Arsenal and then –  well, the “and then” part wasn’t exactly clear to anyone but Brown.  His plan was that he would kidnap slaves locally, and then give them guns as part of a great army.

The slaves he kidnapped ran away from Brown, having no desire to take part in his plan.  In the end, most of John Brown’s men were either shot by the United States Marines that retook the Harper’s Ferry Arsenal or were executed after a trial.  Ironically, it was the actions of Robert E. Lee that stopped the locals from hanging Brown on the spot and allowing him to be taken for a trial.

This was the last major incident that happened before Civil War 1.0, and greatly divided the country:  half saw John Brown as a (sort of insane) leader that was working for good even though people died in the raid.  The other half saw him as a treasonous criminal and a threat to their way of life.

I think that the way that people think of the storming of the Capitol last week has exactly the same polarity.  They went to go protest at the Capitol, found that they could (more or less) waltz in and claim the place.  Having done so, they were like a terrier that caught a Ford F-150® pickup.  “What the heck do I do now?”

Some see it as a (sort of silly) show to our government that the government exists at our pleasure, and that even the walls of the Congress, located in one of the most Leftist strongholds in the nation, is not safe.  They see a group of people protesting an election that they feel was decided by fraud.  They feel this way honestly and sincerely.

Others see it as treason against the nation and actions to prevent a president from being confirmed.  They feel that their cause is just, since, even though there might have been irregularities in voting (50% of Biden voters think the election was stolen) that it’s okay.  They think:  “Trump will be gone, and the Electoral College is silly, since popular votes are what democracies do, anyway.”

Regardless, this is an action that won’t be repeated.  The State is scared that it was tested and found to be so vulnerable.  They won’t make this mistake again – even now thousands of troops are pouring into Washington D.C.

LINKS

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

From Ricky:  “My self-imposed cut off for this batch of links is the GA Senate Race and the Congressional acceptance of the Electoral votes.  Who the hell knows what is about to happen next.”

ON THE EVE OF DECIDING CONTROL FOR THE SENATE AND PRESIDENCY:

QUESTIONS:

https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/blog/do-black-lives-matter-in-the-white-elite-s-civil-war-/

https://www.creators.com/read/pat-buchanan/12/20/is-our-second-civil-war-also-a-forever-war

http://www.sfltimes.com/opinion/is-there-a-civil-war-in-america

https://www.independent.com/2020/06/14/an-american-civil-war/

 

ASSERTIONS:

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2020/12/the_new_phony_war.html

https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-trumps-final-days-lines-are-drawn-for-a-republican-civil-war-11609772298

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/a-new-civil-war-its-here-the-rights-grievance-politics-is-killing-thousands-every-day/ar-BB1bOXoE

https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/trump-gop-elections-mcconnell/

https://www.pantagraph.com/opinion/letters/letter-country-close-to-civil-war/article_e99472ac-6b83-5509-aa93-3f03f2c92382.html

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/12/democrats-civil-war-cease-fire-georgia-senate-runoffs-election-444633

https://www.salon.com/2020/12/12/psycho-secession-texas-lost-cause-lawsuit-was-the-first-shot-in-a-new-civil-war/

 

CALLS TO ARMS:

AZ: https://www.mediaite.com/politics/arizona-republican-party-now-calling-on-voters-to-die-for-trumps-election-fight/

MI: https://www.icbps.org/make-them-pay-michigan-lawmaker-calls-on-leftist-soldiers-to-attack-trumpers/

GA: https://www.mediaite.com/tv/trump-supporters-refuse-to-accept-biden-presidency-in-gobsmacking-cnn-report-could-be-a-civil-war-you-never-know/

TX: https://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/2021/01/watch-texas-gop-congressman-threatens-civil-war-if-democrats-win-georgia-runoff-elections/

TX : https://www.foxnews.com/politics/georgia-runoffs-senate-chip-roy-congress

 

CALLS FOR CALM:

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/louie-gohmerts-talk-of-violence-and-civil-war-is-despicable

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/civil-war-united-states-unlikely-violence/2020/10/29/3a143936-0f0f-11eb-8074-0e943a91bf08_story.html

https://www.indianagazette.com/opinion/the-civil-war-that-fizzled-out/article_4ad57e5a-3968-11eb-9be6-9ff5ee8e14a2.html

https://news.yahoo.com/constitution-answer-seditious-members-congress-113001597.html

https://news.yahoo.com/civil-war-212148092.html

 

CALLS TO SPLIT:

https://thehill.com/homenews/media/529609-rush-limbaugh-says-us-trending-toward-seccession

https://americanmind.org/features/a-house-dividing/a-common-sense-solution/

https://mises.org/wire/red-and-blue-states-its-time-multistate-solution

 

A WAKE-UP CALL:

https://strongnation.s3.amazonaws.com/documents/1243/2e0396bc-8bc1-40f6-ba07-9b94a079b7d5.pdf?1608225594&inline;%20filename=%22Letter%20to%20Acting%20Secretary%20Defense%20Christopher%20Miller.pdf%22

https://www.strongnation.org/articles/737-unhealthy-and-unprepared

Penultimate Day And 2021 Thoughts

“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

Why did 2020 cross the road?  To get to the other cyanide.

This year we didn’t celebrate our traditional Wilder family holiday, Penultimate Day.  What does Penultimate Day entail?

Well, you drive south for two hours or so.  Then you go to Best Buy® and, under no circumstances do you buy a cell phone.  But you must look at cell phones.  Then, after not buying a cell phone, you go to Olive Garden® and have some nice pasta.

This celebration started (I think) in 2011 or 2012, I think.  The Mrs.’ cell phone (a Blackberry®!) was going south.  We drove to the nearest cell phone store that was tied to our carrier, which was a Best Buy™ about two hours from us.  We got frustrated attempting to figure out the deals after the phone clerk wheeled out a surgical gurney to take out part of my intestines.  I told him, “No way!”

“Really?  You need to look at the contract closer.  It’s in the appendix.”

We gave up on buying a phone.

Then, frustrated at our lack of being able to find a phone, we gave up and decided to have dinner.

Hobbits always use vibrate on their phones – they don’t want the ring to give them away.

And then we drove home.  It was impossibly silly, driving a total of four hours to go to not buy a cell phone.  And we did it on December 30.  So, I made the joke that since the New Year was a made-up holiday, why not make up our own?  Thus Penultimate Day – the next-to-last day of the year – became an official Wilder holiday.

Over the years, we took Penultimate Day seriously.  There were one or two exceptions where we skipped Penultimate Day, primarily because Pugsley or The Boy had a sports event.  That is, of course, acceptable.  The goal of Penultimate Day is to do something fun together as a family.

We stuck to celebrating Penultimate Day.  Why?   Because it was fun, it was silly, and it was ours.

We didn’t celebrate Penultimate Day this year.

First, traveling into a major metropolitan area didn’t make sense to us – here in Modern Mayberry the case-rate for the WuFlu is relatively low, and we have no idea what the requirements are to even go into Best Buy® in Major Undisclosed Metropolitan Area.  Second, while we enjoy going to the Olive Garden™, I’m still convinced that the free breadsticks are some kind of con game.  I keep expecting a bill to arrive from them in 2028:  “owed to Olive Garden© for “free” breadsticks:  $257,065.”

What’s the only pasta you can get during COVID-19 lockdown?  Macaroni and sneeze.

Instead, we slept in late, played a few games, and more-or-less relaxed the entire day.  Our contribution to the economy of the United States?  We had a nice dinner The Mrs. cooked for us at home, used some natural gas to fire our heater, and spent about $3 in electricity for lighting the place.  That was it.  Our participation in the economy on December 30, 2020 was probably less than $20, total.

That’s the problem if you’re running an economy.  No gasoline, no money heading to the Olive Garden©, and no tip to the waitress.

I read that Christmas spending was down this year, to $851 from $976 in 2019.  That’s a drop of 13%.  But this is Monday, not Wednesday when we talk about economics.  On Monday, we talk about the big picture.

But 13% is a huge drop-off.  And when you add in all of the activities that people aren’t doing?  I imagine it was even more.  The big picture?  Economic contraction increases instability.

I wrote in 2019’s Penultimate Day that we were entering a period of chaos, where entire edifices that we used to stand behind would crumble.  Now, we sit in 2021, and a majority of the people who voted in the national election think it was rigged.

How do you get a baby alien to sleep?  Rocket.

Also rigged?  The system of justice in the nation.  We see Antifa® and BLM© “peacefully” destroy cities.  The massive number of unindicted felons?  It’s okay to loot.

2020 was a mess, but it looks like we got to get a glimpse of the man behind the curtain.

2021 will certainly start out like a mess.  January is going to be chaotic.  Regardless, I’m optimistic about 2021 – not because I’m insane, but because I know what starts the upward rise:  the upward rise starts after you’ve fallen and hit bottom.  While we around the world have fallen and are headed toward the bottom, the biggest lesson is this:  bring something back up with you.

That’s the question for today:  what can we bring back up with us?

  • Understanding that the world can change around you in an instant. One moment, the world was normal.  The next?  Lockdowns, the destruction of an economy.
  • Understanding where your vulnerabilities are. Food?  Toilet paper?  What can you do to fix them?
  • Knowing that your job is not “safe” – the entire economy isn’t safe. Be prepared for more dislocations.  What skills are you working on?

These are important realizations.  In 2021 and for the foreseeable future, complacency will not be your friend.  Constantly question your assumptions.  Constantly try to understand your side, but also periodically ask yourself, “What if I’m wrong?”  Try to understand the other side of the issue, too.

You may or may not be wrong, but questioning (not doubting, but questioning) yourself is key to deep understanding.  Hold your own beliefs up to the same scrutiny you use on opposing beliefs.

Thankfully, hindsight is 2020.  Or did I get that backward?

As I wrote on Friday, I’m not sure that 2021 will be a great year, but it will be a birth year for the next phase of what happens to our society.  What’s probable this year?

  • Unemployment continues, and likely gets worse. Ideas of a quick rebuild will be crushed.  People at the bottom end – twentysomethings and service workers – are already hoisting a white flag.
  • Society will become even more fractured. Left and Right are guaranteed to be further apart in 2021 – the way this presidential election has gone is sure to inflame both sides, no matter what happens.
  • The very mechanisms that we normally see as protecting society will continue to erode. People on the Right who are defending the “thin blue line” will become aware that many (not all!) of the police will do whatever the people signing their checks tell them to do.  This is not the year to be a cop in Portland, Oregon.
  • People will continue to flee California and large Leftist cities in a locust-like plague. They will not leave their Leftist ideas behind.
  • The debt of the United States will continue to climb. My bet?  We add another $4-5 trillion this year.  That doesn’t include personal debt and business debt.  The idea that printing money is better than earning it will continue and probably increase in 2021.  This idea will only stop when events force it to stop.

But as I said in the introduction to Friday’s post, I remain weirdly optimistic that, even given all of these trends, this will be a year that we will look back on and say, “That was the year that things changed.”  Certainly, 2020 was a year that will likely be looked on as the start of the crisis.  2021 will be looked at as the year that the seeds of the new are planted.

How can I better describe it?

1776 is they year that most people associate with the birth of the United States.  What most people forget is that it wasn’t until 1787 that the Constitutional Congress was held.  Likewise, it wasn’t until 1789 that George Washington was sworn in as our first President.  That was thirteen years after 1776 – thirteen years where there was war, economic failure, and finally a coming together over a very unique document.

Change takes time.

What did Washington say before his men got in the boats to cross the Delaware to attack the British?  “Get in the boats.”

So, if I’m right, people will look back on 2021 and say, “That was when things turned around.”

And the good news is, Penultimate Day or not, you’ll be there for it.  Again, I never said it was going to be easy.  It will likely be the complete opposite of easy.

Freedom rarely is easy.  And I’m still pretty sure that the Olive Garden© has a comprehensive spreadsheet somewhere charting my breadstick consumption . . . .

Plato’s Cave, Bonfires, And They Live

“Put the glasses on! Put them on!” – They Live

Jack Nicholson gave us a Colonel of truth in that movie.

Living in the country has advantages.  One of them is being able to conduct experiments into nuclear fusion without a license.  Oops.  Did I say that out loud?

The other is that I can make a bonfire the size of Delaware.  Why would I want to do that?  Just like making my own fusion reactor, why wouldn’t I want to do that?

In my case, the next-door neighbor and I have trees that regularly need to be trimmed, or, as I mentioned in a story (A Tree Fell On My House, But I Have A Chainsaw) a while ago, just plain fall down onto my house.  We haven’t burned the pile for about three years, so I figured it was time to get rid of prime snake habitat and burn it all down.  Winter is the best time for a ludicrously large fire, so we decided tonight was the night.

Now lighting deadwood on fire sounds easy, but this time it was fairly difficult.  We were nearly getting ready to give up, go inside, and let the pile smolder out when a section caught.  Admittedly it was on the fifth bottle of charcoal lighter fluid, so I guess persistence pays off.

If I ever become an island castaway, I’ll set up a flaming signal on the beach:  it’s the shore fire way to get attention.

Within five minutes we had a conflagration pouring tornado-like flames thirty feet into the sky.  There is a moment when, after unleashing that fire, I realized it was utterly beyond our control.  It was burning fuel so fast that branches suspended five feet about the base were burning with a bright bluish-gold flame.  Sparks were shooting 60 feet into the air on an updraft of hot air that would make Maxine Waters blush.

Thankfully, I could release that sweet, sweet CO2 back into the air to Make Siberia Warm Again.

I liked that, because an immense, hot fire burns quickly, and I wanted it to be a boring pile of coals and hot ash before I went inside.  It was – within ten more minutes (seven liters) the fire had consumed 70% plus of its fuel and it was perfect for toasting marshmallows – from forty feet away.

We heard sirens sounded like a fire engine in the neighborhood, but we didn’t go and look – showing up at a neighborhood fire with marshmallow roasting sticks is bad form here in Modern Mayberry.

As I sat there beside the fire, I was thinking about Plato.

No, Plato isn’t Goofy®’s dog, that’s Pluto™.  Which makes me wonder why a cartoon dog has a dog as a pet?  Disturbing.

My computer password is FrodoKirkGoofyScoobyBugsSacramento – just like IT said – five characters and a capital.

What I was thinking about was the dead Greek guy, Plato.  In many things, Plato was a complete idiot, but he wrote everything down, so we remember him.  Diogenes the philosopher, it is rumored, loved making fun of Plato, especially by putting Icy-Hot™ in the nether regions of Plato’s toga.

But one thing that Plato left us with that was useful was his Allegory of the Cave.

The Allegory of the Cave is a fairly simple story.   A group of people are chained in a cave so all they can do is stare at a blank wall.  But behind them is a fire, which casts shadows on the wall.  Not being able to see real, three-dimensional reality, the people stuck in the cave seeing nothing but shadows give names to the shadows.

I tried to come up with another philosopher pun, but I just Kant.  And I Kant lose any more weight.  Another Plato.

Their reality, knowing nothing else, are those shadows that they can see.

But one day, one of the people escapes.  He leaves the cave, and upon looking around sees the rich tapestry of things that are not shadows.  He sees colors.  He sees trees.  He might see a Taco Bell® depending upon where the cave is.

He finally experiences reality as you and I do, especially if he orders extra cheese on the Nachos Bell Grande®.

It must be a stunning information overload – countless things that he’s never seen before – remember, if it hasn’t cast a shadow on the cave wall, it doesn’t exist in his world.

Having friends in the cave, the escaped person goes back in.  “Dudes, you have to see this.  We’ve been wrong our whole lives – there’s a rich world out there.  Nothing is as it seems to you.  Come and see!”

In the kingdom of the blind, is the one-eyed man king?

No, in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is considered, at best, crazy.  More likely, however, the one-eyed man is viewed as a threat that must be eliminated.  So is our escapee that returns to enlighten his friends.

No one wants to be robbed of their illusions.  Many people don’t want to consider alternate viewpoints.  The escapee will be shouted down by the rest of the captives.  “Surely,” they say, “such a world cannot exist.  If it did, I’d have to change my conceptions, and there are two things I never change, my underwear and my conceptions.”

What kind of pants do they wear in Plato’s cave?  Yoga Tights?  No.  Stalac Tights.

The bad news is, to one extent or another, we’re all prisoners of the cave.  We see misperceptions in our daily life, either of our own construct or as constructed for us.

Who would construct misperceptions for us?

Lots of people.  Here are a few examples:

  • Harry Truman, on August 6, 1945, said: “Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base.”  Well, sure.  It was a militarily important city.  And farms were militarily important because they made food that people might eat.  And schools were militarily important because they educated children that could fight us.  But that would be like saying, “San Francisco, an important American Army base.”  (Note:  I’m not saying I disagree with the decision, just that Truman’s statement was shady as a Netflix® show about dancing children.)

Don’t worry, in the sequel the Japanese take out Detroit.

  • Operation Northwoods: Essentially a plan from the Pentagon for our military to stage terrorist attacks in the United States while pretending to be Cubans as a justification to attack Cuba.  Really.  Here’s the Wikipedia® on that (LINK).  Not Alex Jones.  Wikipedia™.
  • The CIA performed illegal mind control experiments on American and Canadian civilians.  Here’s the Wikipedia (LINK).  Most of the documents were burned, so there’s no telling how many people were impacted.  When I first heard of this, my response was that it was impossible.  Nope.  They did it.
  • Let’s pull the media in, too. The New York Times® “reporter” Walter Duranty wrote stories that there was no mass starvation in the Soviet Union in the early 1930s, despite knowing that millions were being starved to death on purpose.  Duranty got a Pulitzer Prize™ for his lies – a prize that has never been rescinded.  I wrote about that starvation here (In The World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold And Silver Medals).

I could do dozens more where the government, academia, industry, or unions lied and most people believed them.  I’ve written about those again and again – the 1960’s Harvard Sugar Study, anyone (High Carbs, Harvard, Insurance, And Avoiding Doctors)?  If it was just statements from politicians that were lies that most of us believed?  I don’t have enough electrons on my computer to store all of those.

Essentially, unless I get up and go outside of the cave I’m in, I’m sitting and watching those shadows on the wall.  But when I do get up and go outside of that cave, I learn amazing things – all those things that are glossed over in history classes, and generally not easy to find, though they’re (for today) clearly documented on even Left-leaning sites like Wikipedia®.

All of those things that receive warnings on Twitter® and are banned on Facebook™?  Shadows.  I’m not saying that everything that gets a Twitter© warning is the Truth.  But I am saying that if they’re suppressing an idea, it merits investigation and clear thinking, and abandoning your preconceptions to try to find Truth.

But if someone would have told fifteen year old me that those things in the bullet points above were true?  Would I have violently rejected that?

Absolutely.

Fifteen year old me wanted to believe in the government, wanted to believe that the press wasn’t hopelessly corrupt.  Me in 2020 has seen too much.

If you haven’t seen the movie They Live, there is a scene where the protagonist tries to help his friend stop staring at the shadows on the wall of the cave.  In the movie, there are sunglasses you can wear to see a different reality.  The clip below from the movie, with Rowdy Roddy Piper playing the protagonist, and Keith David playing his reluctant friend who really, really doesn’t want to put on the glasses (some NSFW dialog):

Rowdy Roddy, rest in peace.

The bonfire in my backyard is now just some smoke and a few glowing coals, not enough light now to cast the amazing shadows that the thirty-foot flame made.  But my television is going, showing a documentary where a gentleman is earnestly telling me about his particular trip outside the cave.  If he’s right, it changes the world.

As does every trip outside the cave.  But, I have my doubts that he’s right because the truth he’s presenting is so counter to mainstream thought, so I’ll keep doing my research.  And learning.

Leaving the cave is scary, and it’s difficult.  And I absolutely don’t promise that understanding reality a little bit better will make you happy – it’s very likely to have the opposite effect.  But it will bring you one step closer to the truth.

Maybe you and I can finally figure out what those shadows really are.

Let’s go see what’s outside.

Bikini Economics, The Money Supply, And Dinner With Gandhi

“It’s a growth economy, Gus. We’ve already made like, 500 rupee.” – Psych

The economy is so bad, Facebook® just laid off 50 Congressmen.

I was flittering across the Internet the other day and I came across a disturbing image.  I mean, who wants to even think about Barack Obama wearing just a feather boa and covered in gerbils?  See if I ever go to the New York Times® website again.

But, if I may, I think I found an even more disturbing image – a graph of M1.  What is M1?  M1 is the narrowest definition of money:  it’s the cash in your cushions, it’s the cash in your pocket.  It’s the cash in your checking account.  Nearly anything you can go out and spend right now and not owe anyone for:  that defines M1.

M1 is not, however, credit cards.  And it’s not savings accounts or the stock market or savings bonds.  It’s ready, hot cash.

And the M1 graph has spiked.  Spiked as in going up from just under $4 trillion last year at this time to nearly $6.6 trillion right at this moment – a growth of $2.6 trillion dollars – in one year.  That’s a huge change, since it took sixteen years to grow from $1.4 trillion to $4 trillion, and those sixteen years contained the biggest recession the United States had seen since the Great Depression.

So, here, take a look.  Since it’s Christmas time, I tried to get the most festive pictures I could find, even though technically one of them isn’t a bikini.  Oh, sure, you feel like complaining, but what about me?  I’m the one who has to flit through literally hundreds of bikini photos to find the best ones to properly illustrate economic principles while being festive.

This is the longer view, which shows M1 since 1975.

This is a close up of more recent M1 behavior.  I made the last little bit on the graph thicker and orange because it was hard to see.

It certainly looks scary.  The graph, not the bikini.  Look at the graph.

What’s going to happen?

I’m not certain.  I originally wrote, “I have no idea” but what has happened historically when a country prints 65% extra cash in one year?

I have an idea of what happens there, and it really is scary.  After World War I, the German economy was pretty well wrecked, plus they had to put down a communist revolution.  I’m not getting into the details (mainly because it’s boring) but the Germans just started printing money as fast as they could.

And by printing as fast as they could the printing presses were the problem.  Thankfully, they managed to double money production – by only printing on one side of the currency.

That’s AOC-level super-genius thinking.

A ewe in a swimsuit just drove up in an Italian sports car.  It was a lamb bikini.

Within six years what had cost 1 Mark cost 1 trillion Marks.  And all because they printed money.  I write on a regular basis about the world changing around us, and this is a great example.  In 1914 everyone had been happy with their new-fangled electric lights, and in 1924 you had to pay 4 trillion Marks for a newspaper, but even then the news was the wurst.

The good news is that the Germans could pay off their mortgage with cheap money, right?

No.

While their money melted away in a blizzard of banknotes, their debt was (eventually) tied back to the new currency that replaced the inflated mess.  As an example, mortgages were revalued at 25 billion (yes, billion) times their value in the inflated currency.

Surely they did the same thing with depositors, right?

Of course not.  In some cases bonds were revalued, but only at a tenth of the value of the mortgages.  As always, there were winners and losers, and, as always, most people aren’t in the club that allows them to make out like bandits while the economy collapses around them.

My crack research staff uncovered that Adams never said that even though it sometimes is attributed to him.  It took a Google® search and one result.  Arduous.

As I write this, a $2.3 trillion dollar spending plan was just passed by Congress.  Nearly a trillion dollars of that is going directly to people, many of whom badly need the cash.  Trump wants to hold out to double it, since as we’ve seen, what’s another trillion?

The rest of the bill is packed with nearly six thousand pages of “stuff”.  Since it’s well known that most Congresscritters can’t spell or type, who wrote those six thousand pages, filled with things like making unauthorized downloads of movies a felony, $30 million to set up the Martin Luther King, Jr./Mohandas Gandhi Scholarly Exchange Fund.

Sounds like CoronaBux for Leftists complaining about how awful the United States treats the hordes of people that keep trying to sneak in?  Probably.  I could go on and on about the rest of the money we’re shooting like water out of a Super Soaker™, but I won’t.  The point is, since we’re in a budget deficit already, this is just printing more money.

Okay, this one might have been a bit made up.  And Gandhi was notorious for being able to put back six or seven bacon cheeseburgers at a sitting.

Not all of this money will go directly into cash.  But some of it will be quickly recycled back into the United States as cash:  we lend Egypt a billion or so to buy guns and jet fighters and bombs, and that money goes, partially, to the salaries of the Americans who make the stuff.

And from there right into that M1 graph.

The one thing I know is that vast amounts of money sloshing around within our economy have consequences.  Right now, some of those consequences are being held in check – a steak today costs about the same as a steak last year.  Gasoline costs less than gasoline did last year.

Why?  Most commodity prices that I’ve tracked are still declining, and have been for nearly a decade as the Everything Bubble that followed the Housing Bubble funnels investments into ever-lower returns.

As I’ve said before – we will have inflation.  But we will have deflation first.  And when it whips back into inflation?

Well, thankfully, I’ll have a graph for that . . . .

America: Walking The Razor’s Edge

“The pathway to salvation is as narrow and as difficult to walk as a razor’s edge.” – The Razor’s Edge (1984)

What did the hobbits say as they rode the Ents into battle?  “Run, forest, run!”

It was on July 4.  I had convinced two of my friends to follow me on a bizarre quest – we were going to climb one of the tallest mountains in North America.  By one of them, it’s in the top 50.  So, in my book that counts.

The trip started using gasoline – we had a borrowed Jeep® that we took as far up the hill as we could, since it was a borrowed Jeep™.  My friend who had borrowed the Jeep© didn’t want to wreck it, since it was before YouTube® and we wouldn’t even get likes from a cool video if we wrecked it on the amazingly rough road.

We decided to make this hike a three-day event.  On the first day, we’d do nearly a mile gain in elevation while we camped out 1000’ below the summit of the mountain.  Then, we’d summit the mountain and spend the next night at our basecamp.  Then we’d hike out the next morning.

Of course, it rained.

At the elevation of our basecamp, trees can’t grow, so we boiled filtered water in the rain.  It worked, sort of.  At that elevation, water boils at less than 190°F.  It was enough to reheat a fifteen-year-old dehydrated Mountain House® Chili Mac, even though the beans couldn’t get hot enough to not be crunchy.

After climbing up a mountain, crunchy beans and all, it was the best dinner I’d had in years.  I think I ate two.

The chili mac wasn’t red hot, but there was no way I was going to give it away, give it away, give it away now.

The next day morning we were sore – but we could leave our packs at the camp so we’d just be carrying ourselves and our water.  It was nearly half of a mile to get to the summit – a half of a mile straight up.

The trip up was a true scramble – a broken field of boulders that we sometimes had to ascend on all fours.  It was steep – very steep.  As we intersected the ridge that led to the summit of the mountain, I looked forward to seeing what was on the other side of the ridge.  I was certain that it must be flatter than the steep boulder field we’d just climbed – there was no way it could be as steep.

I got to the edge of the ridge, and looked down.

Until that moment in time, I had never been afraid of heights.  But I was not expecting to see what I saw.

It was a cliff.  A sheer drop off – I was looking at a certified Wile E. Coyote precipice.

When I was stuck on that cliff, they told me not to “look down.”  So, I smiled.

I don’t know if you’ve ever looked straight down and seen a cliff that went nearly three-quarters of a mile straight down when you weren’t expecting it.  For the first time in my life I was experiencing vertigo – it felt like the mountain under me was going to slide off down that cliff.

I moved back down the ridge.  But I still had to climb a few hundred feet upward to reach the summit.  Up the side of the ridge I went.  I assure you, I stayed back from that knife-edge as we crawled up that hill.

Then, finally, tantalizingly close, there was the summit.  I was nearly to the top of one of the highest mountains in North America.

There was one little problem.

Between the ridge I was on, and the top of the mountain there was a path.  It was about six or eight feet long, and probably a foot wide, and it was flat, like it had been machined.

What’s the difference between Humpty Dumpty and 2020?  One of them had a great fall.

On one side of it was, you guessed it, a sheer cliff that bottomed out 3,000 feet or so below me.  On the other side of the path it was a lot better.  There was only about a 1,000 foot drop.

Wait, was 1,000 feet better?  I’d get more time to live if I fell down the 3,000 foot side.

Choices.

But when facing that last few steps, shaky with the first vertigo in my life, I’ll admit those were some of the toughest steps of my life.  But, hey, what was I going to tell the folks back home?  That I climbed to a spot nearly three miles into the air to stop two feet before I reached the top?

Nope.

But that ridge (to me) was a razor’s edge.  On either side was disaster.  I took a deep breath.  I put one foot in front of the other.  And I walked – one step, two steps, three steps – to the top, where my friends were waiting.

What brought this to mind was an email forwarded by frequent commenter, 173dVietVet, where he said (in part) this on discussing where our country is:

“(I’ve) Done a bit of mountain climbing in my Ranger days and I know full well the meaning of knife’s edge, where any wrong step throws you headlong forever into the abyss of death that lies on BOTH sides . . . .”

We are in that zone.  In climbing mountains, the knife edge is more than a metaphor – it’s real.  On either side is death, and it’s not metaphorical death, it’s mangled into a wadded pile of Wilder by the combined forces of gravity and the sudden stop on the rocky outcropping at the bottom.  Sure, Wile E. Coyote could survive, but not me.

Everything went downhill after gravity was invented.

But in life, the knife-edge is a metaphor.  We’ve created a financial situation where the economy is horribly broken, and for the last year we’ve survived mainly by printing money and not allowing people to be evicted from houses, despite the questionable legality of that.

A bigger component to our knife edge is that the rule of law has been progressively ignored in the country.  Where is the right of the Federal Government to stop evictions of tenants?

Oh, there isn’t one.  They just made it up.

That would be (at best) an action by a State, though even then it’s of questionable legality.  But then the Patriot Act made spying on American citizens “legal” so who cares about legal, anyway?  Then every agency with three letters of an alphabet decided to swallow up all of that online data, and all of the phone calls, despite laws to the contrary.

Of course, Federal employees were put in prison.

Hahahaha!

No.

The NSA:  a government agency that actually listens to you!

Despite obviously illegal orders, no one was put in prison, and the only one likely to be put into prison is the whistleblower (Edward Snowden) if he ever shows back up in the United States.  It used to be the Constitution that was ignored, but that’s so 1940s.

Now, the government can ignore any inconvenient law it wants to ignore.  Of course, the people that can ignore the law are those that are either leaders, government employees, or those favored (think Antifa™) by the government.

Destroy evidence?  A felony for most.  But when the government does it?  It’s “a regrettable incident.”

What people misunderstand is that Trump isn’t at all the cause of our problems today.  Trump is a symptom.  Without Trump, the answer would have been (yet another) Bush, this time Jeb, versus (yet another) Clinton, this time Hillary.  Oh, the excitement for electing ¡Jeb!

The difference between another Clinton and another Bush?  Nothing, really.  And America didn’t want that – so America elected Trump.  If anything, Trump cleared the fog, and made the knife edge we were walking clearer.

Jeb has a perfect place in government, as the Secretary of Low Energy.

And now, we are walking, and the knife-edge is sharper and narrower than the one that I walked to get to the top of that mountain on July 4th a couple of decades ago.

We have left the bounds of Constitutional governance some time ago – people think it’s quaint when I bring the entire idea of the Constitution up.  Is there a path back to an actual Constitutional government?

Sure.  It’s narrow – a knife-edge.  But so was getting that Constitutional government in the first place.  But getting that original Constitution depended upon men climbing a mighty steep mountain several hundred years ago.  Were they afraid when they saw the cliff’s edge, the price of failure?

I’m sure they were.  But yet they continued.  And when it was time to thread that final few steps to the summit?

They did, and damn the dangers on either side.

We face the same knife-edge.  Where are we going?

Paranoia, Preparation, and Peace of Mind

“Frankly, your lack of paranoia is insane to me.” – Silicon Valley

In our library, I asked The Mrs. where our books on paranoia were, she said, “They’re right behind you.”

The biggest natural disaster The Wilder Family ever rode out was Hurricane Ike – it passed right over our house when we lived in Houston.  And it was going pretty strong when it hit our place.  We lost power, a tree, siding, and a whole lot of roof.  Thankfully, Led Zeppelin was there to sing that one . . . Whole Lot of Roof . . . .

In review, the hurricane wasn’t so bad.  At one point, I had to do my Captain Dan impression, walking outside in the middle of the hurricane at the strongest winds and yelling into the wind after the power went out and the laptop battery died so we couldn’t watch the John Adams miniseries we were watching on DVD:

“Is that all that you’ve got?”

Since I’ll probably never be able to walk away from an exploding helicopter without looking back as the flames shot up into the sky, it was just something I thought I had to do:  yelling into a hurricane wearing a bathrobe and athletic shorts.

I’ve done a lot of cool things in my life, but I really enjoyed that one.  I’d recommend it, but my lawyer, Lazlo, advises me against advising you to try it.  Maybe you could talk pleasantly into a warm spring breeze?

The reason I did it?  We had hit the toughest part of the storm.  We had ridden it out.  We were prepared.

Never smoke weed during a hurricane – lightning always strikes the highest object.

In truth, the preparation had started before we ever bought our house.  We picked a house that was so far outside the flood zone that Wyoming would be underwater before we were.

Yeah, I checked that before we made an offer.  I’m paranoid that way.

In my life, I’ve always tried to go to the idea of, “How bad can it get?”  Then I thought, “Well, how could it get worse than that?”

In the middle of the night when I wake up with yet another scenario, the answer always comes back the same:  “It really can get worse.”

Reality can get really, awfully bad.  And it can do so more quickly than we imagine.

During the hurricane, there wasn’t a lot we could do.  Stores were picked clean of essentials about 24 hours before the storm hit.  Oh, sure, you could get things like diet cookies and soy milk, but the food actual humans wanted to eat was simply gone.  And booze?  Forget about it.  All of that was sold out.

The first big lesson:  Prepare Before Circumstances Force You To Prepare.  If you’re moving out of a disaster zone (cough San Francisco cough) it’s better to be five years too early than one day too late.  Especially if they’re out of beer.

Why did people hoard all the toilet paper?  It’s just how they roll . . . .

But not having the store was okay for us.  I went to visit one mainly to amuse myself and learn – what would be left?  If more people prepared, then systems wouldn’t be overwhelmed when a crisis strikes.

Thankfully, at that point in our life, our pantry had enough food in it to keep us fully fed for weeks or longer.  Water?  We had a swimming pool (they come with every house in Houston, like mailboxes or manservants) so we had thousands of gallons of water.

Don’t want to drink swimming pool water?  Well, if you had the water filter system I had, you could.  But we also had drinking water stored in plastic jugs for weeks of use.  We ended up using the swimming pool water for bathing and toilet flushing and never missed a beat.

The food was good.  Even though power was out, cold cooked corn and cold Hormel Chili™ tasted okay.  It was “camping” bad, but not “a normal Tuesday in Somalia” bad.  The worst part was the second day after the hurricane – temperatures and humidity skyrocketed, so it was uncomfortable to do anything other than sit around and sweat.  Even sleeping was uncomfortable since the still, hot, humid air was like living inside a whale that’s spending spring break in a crockpot.

Don’t sweat the petty things.  And don’t pet the sweaty things.

The hand-crank radio was our link to the outside world.  Cell service was wiped out.  And then, FEMA helpfully came on the radio and told us to go to their website for emergency locations.

Huh?  Website?  We had a hand-crank radio.

But, outside of minor discomfort, we were fine.  I even had beer, though it was warm.

The one (and only one) hole in my preparations at that point was I was out of propane for my grill.  I had to borrow from a neighbor to cook the steaks that were rapidly thawing out.  That was okay, I lent him 20 gallons of gasoline for his generator, so we were very quickly even-stevens.

Yet another lesson:  Every Detail, No Matter How Small, Matters.

I was planning for a much, much bigger catastrophe.  The hurricane that hit us was, due to the preparations The Mrs. and I made, an uncomfortable inconvenience.  It was in this case that my paranoia made our lives (relatively) easy.

The biggest lesson I learned is one that we speak of commonly now:  No One Is Coming To Save You.

If we had any issues that would have resulted in needing help?  We weren’t going to get it.  The “First Responders” had gotten themselves into an emergency operations building and had no food or water.  The radio broadcast a hilarious plea for people to come save the “First” Responders by bringing them food and water.

When seconds count, First Responders will be there in minutes.

The First Responders are almost always Second Responders – you and I, when we have a crisis, are the real First Responders.

No One Is Coming To Save You.  Get that very simple fact through your mind.  It was one we lived with each day of my childhood up on Wilder Mountain.  If you couldn’t save yourself – you were going to die.  If Pa Wilder cut off his left foot with the chainsaw while we were gathering firewood and my brother John (yes, my brother’s name is really John as well) couldn’t save him, he was going to die.

That never happened.  But we were prepared for it.

Sometimes events I write about go beyond what will happen.  I assure you, not one of the events that I write about goes beyond what could happen.  The descent of a society into madness and chaos has happened again and again throughout history.  Sure, that descent into madness generally doesn’t happen overnight.

Generally.  But sometimes?  It does.

So, when I look at the world around me, I let my paranoia run.  I encourage it.  “How bad could it get?”

That’s a starting point.  What are the additional things current me can do now to help future me?  How many human needs can I solve?  For how long?

Where I live, there are several amazing advantages.  Great water.  Good soil.  Low-ish population density.  Grain elevators filled to bursting with food that the population could eat in an emergency.  Good neighbors that I’ve known for years who think as I do, mostly.

We didn’t move to a rural area by accident.  From every story that was told to me about the Great Depression – people in the country, surrounded by their neighbors, had a much better time than people in the cities.

Think about preparing not as being about stuff, but as a way to buy time.  Saving money buys time.  Stockpiling food buys time.  Living in a low-pressure area buys time.  Living in a high resource area buys time.

Most preppers suffer from Stock Home syndrome.

If you prepare for something big, and nothing big happens?  Not generally a loss.  I can eat the food in my pantry anytime.  If I prepare by building a pantry when times are good?  I often end up saving money because food prices keep going up.

If you prepare for something big, and something small happens, like (for us) Hurricane Ike?

You can ride it out.  You get a few days off of work.  You might gain weight, having to eat all of that food that is thawing.

And you would definitely get the chance to go out and yell into the winds:

“Is that all you’ve got?”

See?  Paranoia has its advantages.  I’ll simply say this:  paranoia is the only way that our ancestors survived.

Don’t sell it short.  Preparation after paranoia brings peace of mind.  Heck, I nearly have a Ph.D. in that – just call me Dr. Prepper.

I guess anyone can be called Dr. nowadays.

 

Declaration of Independence: Not Just A 1776 Thing?

“I have nothing to declare, my dear man, except my genius!” – Babylon 5

Best breakup letter.  Ever.

Despite the common opinion that Thomas Jefferson was a hockey player for the Saskatchewan hockey team, “Saskatoon Blades®” (who was remembered for scoring three hat tricks in one season against the “Prince Albert Raiders™” in 1986) there was another Thomas Jefferson that history also remembers.

This Thomas Jefferson was an author, a president of the United States, a founder of a university, and wrote a really great mandolin solo, which has sadly been ignored since the invention of the guitar.  Sadly, this Thomas Jefferson was wholly unable to play hockey at all, probably because he couldn’t skate any better than my kid sister.

Regardless, Thomas Jefferson was only 33 years old when he also wrote a document that has been long remarked upon and probably contains some of the most famous sentences in the English language:  The Declaration of Independence.   In a little bit of history, John Adams had to get Jefferson drunk to convince him to write it because Jefferson was a bit nervous (this is actually true).  I’m sure that the next morning, Jefferson said, “I agreed to do what?”

I’m with you, Thomas.

Your eyes aren’t real – they’re just in your head.

About 25% of the original draft was deleted in editing.  Apparently, Jefferson had gotten carried away and ended up writing several paragraphs about how he loved potatoes.  The committee wasn’t pleased.  They didn’t like the part where Jefferson waxed poetically about the way they made his chest glisten when they rubbed the buttery mashed potatoes into it.

In the end, Jefferson decided to hit the print button on the sheep the parchment came from, and the document went out.

A girl:  “Hey, Stalin, come over tonight, my parents aren’t home.”  Stalin replied, “I know.”

It was not at all in small print, like a car lease at a Mercedes® dealership.  The Declaration was meant to be read – a copy of it was sent to King George III, though a bunch of sales fliers for hardware stores and Target® were also included, so George might have thrown it out thinking it was all just junk mail again.

The principles of the Declaration were in common discussion at the time in America, so Jefferson wasn’t making stuff up.  Likewise, the people who got the Declaration understood what it meant:  times were going to get spicy.

It’s been a while since I’ve read the Declaration, so I thought I’d review it.  It’s good stuff, so I thought I’d share it.

For no reason.  No reason at all.

The downside is that Jefferson didn’t have a good word processor, and that he didn’t have PowerPoint®.  If so, he could have had it down to a dozen slides or so.  I’ve made a few changes by adding bullet points and capitalizing the word “Earth”.  If Boston is capitalized, Earth should be, too.

Stupid Jefferson.

I trained my dog to smell out fruit, but he doesn’t like doing that.  He’s a melon collie.

Regardless, here it is:

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the Earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

  • That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
  • That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
  • Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
  • But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
  • Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government.

The rest of the Declaration of Independence is an indictment – a listing of reasons why the Declaration had to be written, a “we told you so” section, and the “it’s not me, it’s you” breakup section.  There was another section about how Jefferson would really, really, miss Great Britain and keep the big stuffed teddy bear they won him at the arcade, but the committee told him to “not be a wuss” and leave that out.

You never want to reach the end of the Y-axis on a plane.

In reality, when I re-read the Declaration, I was amazed at how, pardon me, revolutionary it was.  The United States wasn’t founded by guys doing it “just because” – it was founded by guys who really thought about it, and who couldn’t check up on the Internet and find out about how Cardi B was upset about her hair care products.

They had time to think deeply through these issues.  And they came up with this list.

To be clear, I love America.  Thomas Jefferson, in 1775 said that he would:  “rather be in dependence on Great Britain, properly limited, than on any nation upon Earth, or than on no nation.”  Jefferson loved Great Britain, dearly.

The thing that I came away with is these men cared deeply about those around them.  But there was a limit to what they would take.  That limit was simple:  the idea that they couldn’t take part in any fashion in the determination of what happened to their State simply wasn’t acceptable.

  • They demanded laws, laws that weren’t arbitrary and capricious. They demanded courts that were free of bias.  How are we doing now?  We have courts that turn a “thou shalt not” into a “thou shalt” within a half of a dozen decisions.
  • They also demanded that their fate not be judged by bureaucrats who were beholden to government, but only be judged by a jury of their peers. How are we doing now?  Administrative law puts people at risk of life and property and doesn’t allow jury trials.
  • They demanded to be protected by those who would invade the country. How are we doing now?  Fine, as long as a complete disregard for our laws is okay with you.
  • TL:DR, also a bunch of other stuff.

The Federal government of the United States has crept up in size and power.  The charter of the Federal government is (if you actually read the Constitution) very small.

  • Foreign policy.
  • Make naturalization laws.
  • Run part of (not the full part, just part of) the military.
  • Make sure there are independent Federal courts.
  • Making sure that free commerce could happen between the States.
  • Regulate commerce with foreigners.
  • Borrow money and collect taxes for the stuff they do.
  • Own the post office.
  • Make war and all the stuff that goes with making war.
  • Coin money and stop counterfeiters.

Anything in there about making sure toilets don’t use too much water?  No.  Anything in there about regulating what fuels your car uses?  That your car must have an airbag?  That the toothpaste you use meet FDA standards?  That you pay someone a minimum wage?

Nope.  Not in there at all.

Hmm.  Does this sound like a long chain of usurpations?  I could probably think of a few other things.  You could, too.

Remember, if you start a revolution, aim for the tsars!

What is the last straw?  Is it a tax on tea?

Or is it an election that may have been stolen?

So, think about what the future may hold.  Don’t be Wayne Regretzky.

Money In 2021: What’s Next?

“I picked a hell of a day to quit drinking.” – (Randy Quaid) Independence Day

When the aliens finally decided to invade Earth, they started with Poland – didn’t want to ignore local customs.

2020 has been . . . unexpected.

If anyone would have submitted it as a draft for a screenplay, Hollywood would have rejected it since it was too farfetched.  Unless Randy Quaid was in it, flying a biplane to attack aliens.  Then it would have made perfect sense.  Oh, wait, a high ranking Israeli says we’re already in negotiations with the aliens?

Never mind.

That being said, 2020 is (thankfully) nearly over.  That gives us a chance to look forward to 2021.  Keep in mind that no one said that 2021 would be better . . . we just seem to hope it will be better.  It certainly is time, however, to look forward.

I know that whatever things we think 2021 will bring, the actual events of 2021 will be crazier than that.  Regardless of who is inaugurated on January 20, 2021, what are some of the things that we can look forward to?

Here are some of my guesses:

Congress and whatever President we have will keep spending as fast as they can.  Taxes may or may not be raised, but they certainly won’t match the increased spending.  Obama nearly doubled the national debt – he took the United States from $11 trillion in hock to $20 trillion.  Right now, after four years of Trump, we’re at $27 trillion or so in money owed.  This is completely on track to take the national debt to at least $36 trillion in the next four years, which is a little more than I have the last time I checked around the couch cushions.  But I did find out where all the spoons were going.

And to think I’d blamed Pugsley.

The Presidents of the United States must all be Irish – during their terms the debts are Dublin.

But $36 trillion in debt?  That’s certainly gonna leave a mark.  Like Oprah’s dressmaker learned after Oprah demanded Spandex®, you can only distort an economy so far and so long before there are consequences, and I expect that this is near the breaking point for ours.  Thankfully, when Oprah’s dress finally went, the injuries to her crew were covered by worker’s comp.

Of course, I’ve been wrong before.  I would have thought this level of debt was poisonous.  If it was, it’s at least been a slow poison.  The system is so broken that interest rates are low, in some places less than zero.  For now.

Is that enough of a bright side?

The biggest consequences of the money printing will first show up in third world nations with relatively weak economies.  The big consequences of COVID-19 have shown up here already in the damage to the economy of the United States.

In a globally connected world, however, the consequences of United States monetary policy don’t show up in the United States first – they show up first in economies where people don’t make much money.  The “Arab Spring” that led to revolutions across North Africa and the Middle East were a direct consequence of the United States spending money like . . . well . . . Democrats in charge of the presidency and the legislature.  The Syrian Civil War is a direct consequence of the Federal Reserve’s® response to the Housing Bubble.

If you watch an Apple® store get robbed, does that make you an iWitness®?

Don’t tell me that bad lending habits don’t have consequences.  When you see riots in the streets of Cairo or Mumbai or Carcosa, you know that the big consequences from the money printing have hit the world.

Once that happens, be prepared for inflation showing up at home.

Poverty rates will greatly increase in the United States, at least in the first half of 2021.  Sure, there have been billions spent on COVID-19 relief.  Almost all of it has gone into the pockets of big business.  People on the streets?  Not so much.  In some places, businesses are locked down.  In others?  Businesses are going, but limping along due to the consequences of previous lockdowns.

I heard Bernie likes to fight poverty – every weekend he goes out and slugs homeless people.

When businesses can’t afford to pay people, poverty is the result.  The average American had only small amounts of savings – by one measure I found, nearly 70% of Americans have less than $1,000 in savings, which is only enough for a minor emergency.  After that, who can say?

The economy is in the process of fundamental change, and the middle class will significantly decrease in the next year.  What has been conserved after the Coronavirus Collapse®?  Big business has done great.  Mom and Pop restaurants?  Horrible.  Modern Mayberry’s main business district got hollowed out long ago by Wal-Mart® – as did most business districts across the Midwest.

All of the small businesses are struggling – imagine owning a theater that hasn’t shown a movie in nine months.  The local theater was even broken into during lockdown – thieves stole $7,000 in merchandise – two small sodas, some Mike and Ikes® and a medium popcorn.

The transfer of economic power from small business to large has been going on for years.  The space for a small business to compete is getting smaller and smaller.  One local shop did 90%+ of its business in online sales.  Amazon® made one small change to the way that affiliates were paid and deleted the business in three months.

That business is now gone, but Jeff Bezos now has a net worth of over $200 billion – which we can all agree is an expensive net.

I got my degree in kids’ medicine online, too.  You can call me a Wikipediatrician. 

And the people going into poverty?  They won’t exactly be customers of restaurants – eating out will become (if it hasn’t already for them) an easily avoided expense.  People will actually learn to cook again.  Which doesn’t help Mom and Pop.

China will be very close to surpassing the United States as the largest economy in the world in actual GDP.  China’s economy grew last year, while the United States contracted.  Even though China has a lot more people, this still translates into political power on the world stage.  Everyone has been predicting that China will collapse for, oh, 25 years.  Instead?  China has grown relentlessly.  Sure, there are structural weaknesses, but it’s hard to bet against that kind of economic inertia.

Why didn’t Chinese factories close during the pandemic?  Kids don’t catch COVID-19.

How does this impact the average person who isn’t Chinese?

Well the good news is that if you like dollars, they’ll still be useful.  But as other countries, like China, grow relatively stronger, the dollar grows relatively less powerful.  Especially if the United States mains determined to keep printing them as fast as it can.

I’ll toss it over to you, now.  Outside of Randy Quaid in destroying the alien mothership, what do you expect to see in 2021?