Category: Big Thoughts

Fight Club: A Dystopia We Can Learn From?

“Fight for us.  And regain your honor.” – The Lord of the Rings:  The Return of the King

What’s a robot’s favorite Mexican food?  Silicon carne.

When I was a kid growing up, I read 1984 by George Orwell.  This was the grim version, as opposed to the much funnier version by Mel Brooks.  It had a profound effect on my worldview, as books often do when you read them in 7th grade.  In it, a globalist group of communists fought each other continuously, while subjugating the entirety of the human race.  Hmmm, wait, that sounds familiar?

1984 was a bleak book.  I’m not sure who I talked about it with, outside of writing the chicken scrawl of a report in schoolboy block letters and handing it to my really hot 7th grade English teacher.  Since my reading scores were, well, advanced, she just let me read what I wanted to read while the rest of the class all read the same book.  It felt nice being a special pretty pony.

I followed 1984 with Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.  I think my teacher suggested it.  Whereas 1984 was a dystopia built on the subjugation of a boot eternally stomping on a human face, Brave New World was a dystopia built on frivolity.

I fell into a vat of chemicals once.  My quick reaction nearly killed me.

Frivolity was where the masses were, more or less, endlessly drugged and entertained and so that their opinions never had a chance to develop, or impaired at birth so they could never think.  The tyranny in Brave New World was the tyranny of a vapid public who never thought beyond the most recent mindless and sexual encounter (strongly encouraged by the state) and the latest movie.

Oh, wait, that sounds familiar too.

Yet another dystopia is the movie (and book) Fight Club.  Fight Club is a 1999 movie based on a 1996 novel that (mostly) tracks the movie.  It is a creation of the 1990s, but, to quote the most excellent YouTube® movie reviewer, The Critical Drinker (LINK, some PG-13 language), it is very relevant to today’s world.  If you haven’t watched this 21-year-old movie and are interested, I suggest you watch The Critical Drinker’s review afterward – he includes spoilers.  I’ll warn you – the R rating was earned, and there are some very dark moments to the movie.

There won’t be any spoilers here – what I have to say doesn’t require me to spoil the film.

Tyler Durden told me handcrafted soap is the best.  No lye.

To really get Fight Club?  You have to watch it at least twice.  It is a thoughtful movie.  Does it have detractors on the Right?  Sure.  It’s R-rated.  Some have called it nihilistic (I disagree) and there are other complaints which I won’t go into here.  Regardless, I won’t beat myself up for going against the grain of other folks who didn’t like the movie.

Very few movies are perfect, but this one is very, very good.

I first watched Fight Club in 2012 or so.  It made over $100 million at the box office, so at least someone talked about Fight Club.  When I finally watched it (which was no fewer than three basement furniture re-arrangements ago) I was stunned.  How stunned?  It’s the only movie that has its own tag on this blog.

Vegan Club?  Everyone talks about Vegan Club.

The constant, pervasive theme of this movie is that the systems of globalism have created boxes for men that make them less than men.  Here’s Tyler Durden (one of the movie characters):

“We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.”

This is a simple translation.  A large proportion of the citizens of the United States define themselves by:

  • How much and what kind of furniture do they have?
  • How nice is their apartment?
  • How well can they write reports in a soul-killing job where large corporations seek to avoid liability in a cold, systematic way?  Does that kill their soul?
  • How can they avoid deviating from the norm to wear the right tie to the meeting?

These things are death to the soul.  As the character Tyler Durden explains:

“You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your (deleted by J.W.) khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.”

I saw a robbery in an Apple® store once.  I was an iWitness©.

Marcus Aurelius and Seneca nod in approval.  They’d follow up:  you are your virtue.

And you, dear reader, are not your money or your clothes.  In many ways we are conditioned by society to believe that those are the things that define us.  We are not.  And if you believe that, you’re not alone.  Tyler describes the twilight of the soul brought about by a life dedicated to consumerism and status.  Live for the material world, and you’ll be swallowed by the material world.  You can never achieve enough, because someone always has more, does something better.

With that philosophy?  Money becomes the god that men seek:

“Damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy (stuff) we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war.  Our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”

I saw a meme (didn’t save it, don’t have the author but I’d love to credit them) that I (sort of) reproduce below:

Michigan is going to ban car sales based on popular Internet videos – the governor wants to stop car-owner-virus.

This meme gets me.  It’s the essence of Fight Club.  We’re a species that is, more or less, programmed to achieve.  For who?  For our group.  It’s why the NFL® is popular today.  Okay, that’s why the NFL™ was popular until they showed us that we’re really not part of their group at all.

We run races for a reason.  We play basketball.  We wrestle.  We have swim races.  Well, you guys have swim races.  I was in a 100-yard swim race in sixth grade and placed 11 out of 12.  I wasn’t dead last because some poor kid got the cramps.  My 11th place finish wasn’t close.  I think they ended up timing me with a calendar and an abacus.

Regardless, we compete.

Why?

It’s wired into us.  Competition partially defines us.  And the stakes have to be real.  There is, of course, a religious aspect as well.  A man has to serve a higher power.  It’s not just competing for today.  There is a bigger game, and there are bigger stakes.  That’s what makes it worth playing the game.  Life is more than consumption and procreation.

Q:  Why did the Libertarian cross the road?  A:  TAXATION IS THEFT!!!  

But men who can run a race fairly and lose with grace are men.  They don’t have to like losing – no man does.  But loss is a forge that makes us stronger, gives us incentives.  Thomas Sowell (I think?) once said that if he were designing a car for safety, he’d put a Bowie knife pointed at the driver in the center of the steering wheel, not an airbag.

Incentives matter.

Now?  We insulate children from the Great Game.  Lose?  That’s okay, you tried.

No, it’s really not.  I lost the swim meet because I suck at swimming and am only slightly better than a car at swimming.  Slightly.

Did I cry?  No.

Antifa protestors – never have to take time off from work.

Did I focus my energy on something where I could be as good as nearly anyone in the state?

Yes.

Swimming was pointless.  Telling me that it was okay was worse than pointless.  It was a lie.

Back to Tyler:

JACK, in voiceover:  On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

CLERK:  Please… don’t…

TYLER DURDEN: Give me your wallet.

Tyler pulls out the driver’s license.

TYLER:  Raymond K. Hessel. 1320 SE Benning, apartment A.  A small, cramped basement apartment.

RAYMOND:  How’d you know?

TYLER:  They give basement apartments letters instead of numbers.  Raymond, you’re going to die.  Is this a picture of Mom and Dad?

RAYMOND:  Yes.

TYLER:  Your mom and dad will have to call kindly doctor so-and-so to dig up your dental records, because there won’t be much left of your face.

RAYMOND:  Please, God, no!                            

JACK: Tyler…

TYLER:  An expired community college student ID card.  What did you used to study, Raymond K. Hessel?

RAYMOND:  S-S-Stuff.

TYLER:  “Stuff.”  Were the mid-terms hard?  I asked you what you studied.

JACK:  Tell him!

RAYMOND:  Biology, mostly.

TYLER:  Why?

RAYMOND:  I… I don’t know…

TYLER:  What did you want to be, Raymond K. Hessel?

Tyler cocks the .357 magnum Colt© Python™ pointed at Raymond’s head.

TYLER:  The question, Raymond, was “what did you want to be?”

JACK:  Answer him!

RAYMOND:  A veterinarian!

TYLER:  Animals.

RAYMOND:  Yeah … animals and s-s-s —

TYLER:  Stuff.  That means you have to get more schooling.

RAYMOND:  Too much school.

TYLER:  Would you rather be dead?

RAYMOND:  No, please, no, God, no!

Tyler uncocks the gun, lowers it.

TYLER:  I’m keeping your license.  I know where you live.  I’m going to check on you.  If you aren’t back in school and on your way to being a veterinarian in six weeks, you will be dead.  Get the hell out of here.

JACK:  I feel sick.

TYLER:  Imagine how he feels.

Tyler brings the gun to his own head, pulls the trigger — click.  It’s empty.

JACK:  I don’t care, that was horrible.

TYLER:  Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessell’s life.  His breakfast will taste better than any meal he has ever eaten.

How many people would love to have Tyler come into their lives and make them live their dreams?  How many people struggle through life, because they can’t take the next step?

You’re not too old.  If you’re breathing, you can make a mark on this world.  You’re not too poor.

My limiting factor is my imagination.  I realize that – it’s probably yours as well.

Regardless of the dystopias of 1984 and Brave New World, Fight Club shows a dystopia where we can win.  How do we win?

By understanding that our lives are in a precarious balance, just like Raymond K. Hessell.  And the first step to living life?  It’s letting go.  Achieving.

I learned to swim when I was very young.  My dad taught me.  I thought I’d never get out of that bag. 

And if you lose at swimming?  Try again.  Or try a new game.

At the end of Fight Club, men prove themselves to be stronger and larger than the dehumanizing systems that they serve.  It’s your choice.  How will your breakfast taste tomorrow?

Also:

Avoid the clam chowder.

 

 

Unrelated:

Steve is a blogger who is a FOW (Friend of Wilder).  Unlike me, he’s talented.  Because of the idiots who run his state, you’re lucky he has time to create something like this for you.  Do it.  No, I don’t get paid.  Steve does.  He’s Our Guy.

Do it.  Here’s the LINK.  There is just enough time for Christmas.

A Tree Fell On My House, But I Have A Chainsaw

“I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay.  I sleep all night and I work all day.” – Monty Python’s Flying Circus

What’s black and white and red all over?  Two mimes fighting with chainsaws.

I saw a quote this week that made me smile a lot.  I’ll share it with you:

“When God put a calling on your life He already factored in your stupidity.”

A few weeks ago, a tree fell down and hit our house during a storm.  And by a tree, I mean a huge one.  I had snapped off 15 feet (57 Joules) up the tree.  It was nearly horizontal, and resting on my favorite roof.

I’ll admit that I was sitting in the hot tub during the storm that brought down the tree.

It was glorious.  I don’t know if you’ve ever heard a tree fall.  It’s wonderful.  Approximately once every five minutes, I’d hear the tearing of wood and then, after a pause for the amount of time it took for the vertical tree to become horizontal, the crash.  The next day, one more tree fell.

It fell into my house.  The Mrs. sent me a picture.

I waited until Saturday when The Boy was down from Upper Lower Midwestia University to solve the problem, because the one thing a boy home from college wants to hear?  “Hey, son, glad you’re back from college for a weekend of rest.  I’m going to grab you and your brother and we’re going to work all day in one of your dad’s crazy adventures.  Oh, and it involves you getting up early and chainsaws.”

Honestly, he should be used to it by now.

Looking back, I realize that in a normal world, I would have called my insurance company.  They’d send out adjusters who would look at the tree.  They’d measure it, weigh it, and sensuously cup its fallen boughs, which still happens to be legal in my state.

I’ve heard you can save a lot of money on car insurance by switching.  Switching to reverse and leaving the scene.

They would look in the book of “Tree Falling On House Payments.”  They’d then tell me that elm trees falling on houses in Upper Lower Midwestia were excluded.  I would then correct them because I live in Lower Upper Midwestia and the tree was actually a son of a birch.

Then he says, “Oh, you’re that John Wilder.  Of course!  Insurance will cover it.”

Then, I would call a tree company to come and move the tree.  Since everyone in town had a tree fall on their house, it would take a month for them to show up for an estimate, and another month for them to remove the tree.  After the tree company charged me $2200 to move it, I’d toss the bill to the insurance company.

I’d pay the deductible (which is currently set at my left kidney for my homeowner’s policy, and my cornea for auto), and that’s it.

But would that be the Wilder Way?  Of course not.

I can sleep in on the weekends.  The Mrs., who is borderline insomniac, feels that this is my superpower.  Generally, I can get to sleep in less than five minutes, often in less than one.  The Mrs. can only sleep on Tuesdays after 9 P.M. if it’s not Daylight Savings Time.  The Mrs. has walked into the bathroom to brush her teeth and returned to find me sound asleep.  I can even do it when I’m driving, though my passengers don’t seem to care for it.

What’s green, fuzzy, and will kill you if it falls on you out of a tree?  A pool table.

The reason I can sleep is only when I don’t have a Mission.  When there’s a Mission?  I wake up and I’m ready to go.  I don’t even need an alarm clock.  The tree on my house represented a Mission.

As it was, I had Pugsley and The Boy available, and daylight was burning.  I knocked on each door as I went out to start work.

I started with the branch trimmer.  Alone.  The sleeping leviathans inside had yet to move.

Branch trimmers are like the scissors that Hannibal Lecter would use to, umm, prune a rose bush.  This was my third set.  The problem with the first two is that The Boy and then Pugsley pulled the handles too hard and bent the metal.  Sometimes, living with them is like living with five-year-olds that don’t understand that they can twist metal with their bare hands.

So, a paid for the expensive trimmers this time.

Trees don’t walk.  They lumber.

These trimmers were good enough to cut through about a 2” branch, which is pretty stout.  I took the trimmer and started hacking.  I was about 30 minutes into hacking when The Boy showed up.  Pugsley showed up slightly later.  It took us 10 years to convince him he had to shower, and now he has six of them a day.  I wouldn’t be surprised to find that he takes a cheese plate into the shower.

When Pugsley showed up, I had him get the chainsaw, mix gas, chain oil and chainsaw sharpener.  I showed him how to sharpen the chainsaw blade, which took all of 30 seconds, but then he knew how it worked.  I also showed him how to adjust the chain.  These may seem like small things, but they are rites of passage.  There are many tools in a cabinet, and some are mostly harmless, like a screwdriver.  But a chainsaw?

A fear of spiders is called arachnophobia.  A fear of chainsaws?  That’s called common sense.

For the next seven hours we were like ants, taking branch after branch off of the tree, first with the branch trimmer and then with the chainsaw.

I had a dentist who used to be a lumberjack.  He pulled a tooth by mistake.  I’ll never to Axedental again.

Finally, we were down to two major branches.  By the time we’d gotten there, I realized that what I had done was, slowly, cut off all of the minor support points.  It seemed like a good bet.  But it was also a nagging feeling that I might be making the problem worse.

I was.  While sitting down, I heard a sharp crack.

Like wood breaking.  The exact sound I had heard while having a beer in the hot tub during the storm.

One of the two branches left holding up the whole tree was cracking.  Looking at the tree, I saw that it was big.  I estimated that what remained was about 5,000 pounds (one metric “Your Momma”) and a quick check of my estimate that I did while writing this backed that number up, unless the tree was on a low carb diet.

That 5,000 pounds was going to fall on my deck, and if I wasn’t careful?  5,000 pounds dropping 15 feet is a lot of energy – enough energy to smash a deck, a Wilder, and maybe an insurance adjustor to boot.

I had The Boy and Pugsley run into the garage looking for whatever lumber they could find that was the right length to prop up this rapidly deteriorating situation.  After ten minutes, I had two 2×4’s and one mangy plank holding the tree up.  It wasn’t moving, but it wasn’t stable, and it was 10.5 feet (one metric Barron Trump) up in the air.

The Mrs. took a picture of my makeshift supports.  She sent it to her high school friend list.  One friend who is in city planning responded, “Oh, no!  This looks like all of the ladder safety videos that they make us watch.”

I thought about what I’d do, and sent The Boy and Pugsley off to buy a 10’ stepladder and some ratchet tie-offs.  When they got back, I propped the 10’ stepladder under the branch, shimmed it with lumber, and then got the chainsaw-on-a-stick.

The chainsaw-on-a-stick is just that – a tiny electric chainsaw mounted on a stick.  This one has an 8” blade, and is meant to cut things far away.  That’s good, because that’s exactly what I intended to do.  I would have liked to cut this particular tree from orbit, because it was lopsided – it looked like it wanted to twist, hard, clockwise.

I used to be a lumberjack in the Sahara Forest.  Well, it used to be the Sahara Forest.  I’m that good.

I tied off the branch to a convenient tree so when I cut it loose it couldn’t fall into the garden shed.  I further tied off one of the remaining branches so maybe that it wouldn’t twist as it fell.

Pugsley pulled out his camera to record the action.

“Nope.  Put it away.”  The situation that I had put myself into was less than optimal.  I realize that as men we are here not to live a life without risk, but to live a life.  And the Sun was now going down.  It was now or never.  One way or another that tree was coming down before the Sun went down.

Getting injured because you refused to let someone else clear the tree?  That seems like a stupid and futile gesture.

Well, if you’re looking for stupid and futile gestures, you’ve come to the right place.  I just didn’t want my particular stupid and futile gesture to result in YouTube® videos of my death.  I proceeded to take the chainsaw on a stick and started to cut into the branch.

As far as tense moments go, having the stored energy of a Ford Explorer® 15 feet up in the air, dependent upon your calculations and being right?

It’s tense.

When I was back in Alaska, I could regularly drop trees within a degree of where I wanted them to go.  Was I a lumberjack?  No.  But I had to lay in dozens of metric Your Momma’s worth of wood a year just to heat the house.  You get pretty comfortable with a chainsaw doing that.

When I cut wood in Alaska, I didn’t get overtime, even though I logged a lot of hours.

But that was 15 years (3 centimeters) ago.  I cut into the tree.  I first cut a relief cut in the top of the horizontal branch.  I didn’t want stress to build up there and hang the whole mess up.  Then I started to cut from the bottom up.

You have to cut a tree that’s acting like a beam from the bottom up.  If you cut it from the top down?  It will bind the saw, and you end up in a crazy place where you have a stuck saw and a Ford Explorer®’s amount of energy dependent upon you freeing it.

I cut into the tree.  A lot.  Then paused.  The opening the chainsaw had made grew larger as the stress pulled the tree apart.  I cut into the tree again.  By now, the entire 5,000 pounds was hanging by a 3” by 2” slab of wood.  Still no movement.

Finally, I cut deeper.  I hear the “crack” as the tree split.  Pugsley was watching from a safe distance.  He said the tree dropped perfectly down.  I wouldn’t know – I was headed the opposite direction.  Not only was there the 5,000 pound tree, there was also the bit still on the roof.  I could easily imagine that part whipping around as it was pulled by the main branch.

The final crack came.

The tree did come down.  Perfectly.  The bit left on the roof?  Didn’t move an inch.  Exactly as I wanted it to go.  I sat down as The Boy and Pugsley removed the rest of the debris.  Pugsley even got me a beer and said, “You’re done, Pop.  Have a rest.”

I trained my kids that if I ever choke on a beer, they should give me the Heineken® maneuver.

The damage to the house was minimal, actually.  A bit of gutter needs to be moved back into place.  One shingle lost its gravel in a small circle.  A solar light was broken.  I need to replace one deck board, one chair, and one plastic bench.  Oh, and we spent 27 hours of labor.  I was sore for the next three days.

If a tree falls on your house and that’s all you lose?  You’re as lucky as me.  Which is pretty lucky.

Or, more likely?  God has factored my stupidity into my life.

The Four Best Stocks For After The Death Of The Last Human On Earth

“You kids change partners more than square dancers.” – That 70’s Show

Marie Antoinette should have known the time was right for a revolution in France – she had a Coup Coup clock.

Okay, the title is clickbait.  We all know the Four Best Stocks For After The Death Of The Last Human On Earth are Rock, Paper, and Scissors.  Oops.  I think the real answer is Rock, Rock, and Rock.  I mean, who is going to make the paper and the scissors?

Oh, wait, I said four.

Add Google®, I guess.

One constant theme of this blog since I started writing it is that I want to convince everyone I can that tomorrow may not look like today.  I think this is important, because too often we start to think that our lives of today are the lives that people will live forever.

Why?

That’s the way we’re wired, to think that tomorrow will look like today.  It’s complacency.

Dozens of my ancestors lived as kings, having all the food they wanted and the choice of the peasant maidens in the dozen miles (metric conversion of one deciliter) around the mud hovel they lived in.  It may sound dreary, but it’s still better than Netflix®.

Genghis Khan is far better known than his brother, Gingivitis Khan.  

My ancestors lived every day of their life just like that, until they died at age 32 after they got a nasty infection because they were sharpening their bronze and flint nosehair trimmer, and accidentally conquered China.  That seems to keep happening.  I blame . . . well, all the people that conquered China.

For 100,000 years our brains, as wrinkly and wonderful as they are, grew up in a world where yesterday was mostly like today, and today is mostly like tomorrow.  Except for you people who have wonderful smooth brains.  I think I have some Bernie Sanders™ coloring books for you.

There’s a danger to thinking that tomorrow will be just like today.

Let’s pretend you’re a turkey on a farm.  There’s a nice farmer that feeds you every day.  What a nice guy!  You keep gaining weight, and getting bigger.

What a nice farmer!  Farmers must love turkeys.

Then, one November near Thanksgiving the impossible happens:  the farmer fires the turkey due to the COVID-19 outbreak and his turkey 401k drops 90% and his turkey wife tells him that . . . all those eggs?  Not his.

That turkey has found a fate worse than being roasted at 350°F for three hours (6.02×1023 Watts for six fortnights).  Turkey alimony.

The point remains:  life changes in an instant, never to return to the way things were.

I shot my first turkey this year.  Scared everyone in the meat aisle, and now I’m banned from Wal-Mart.

Here’s another one (I’ve used this example before):  I’m quite sure that there was a British guy at the dock watching as the last Roman Legion left Britain in 407 A.D.  What was he thinking?

“The Romans have been in Britain since 43 A.D.  They’ll be back.  Why wouldn’t they?”

It’s nearly a 100% chance that was exactly what he was thinking.  Our hypothetical British dude had never lived a single day when Roman troops weren’t controlling Britain.  They have to come back, right?

Well, not really.

There are reasons that hordes of Roman coins are found buried in Britain.

When Rome was strong, a Denarius (Roman coin) contained about $4.00 worth of silver at today’s prices.  As Rome continued, successive Caesars trading in Rome’s military might, reduced the amount of precious metals in the Denarius until it hardly contained a whiff of silver.

I hear there are extraterrestrials living in Rome – someone said that there were Italiens there.

Then one November near Thanksgiving, the impossible happens:  the guy in Britain gets fired and the Roman 401k drops 90% and his British wife tells him that Joe Biden (who was only 35 in 407 A.D.) was elected.  The worst part?

Joe Biden is carrying the British woman’s baby.

Our Roman’s world collapses.  Everything that he knew changes overnight.

When archeologists go digging in old British trash piles, they find something interesting.  The trash at the bottom of the pile (when Rome left) contains really cool broken plates.  Archeologists love plates.

Why?

Because angry wives break them all the time, so they make it easy to date a culture by the number of wives that go crazy and start throwing plates.  Apparently, the number of mad wives that throw plates is a scientific constant like the speed of light, so trash pickers archeologists can date the change in a culture based on broken plates.

The archeologists determined this:  the broken dishes at the time the last Roman Legions pulled out of Britain were awesome.  They were great dishes.  And everyone had them.  It turns out that dishes in the Roman Empire were mass-produced in southern France and shipped everywhere in the Roman Empire.  Southern France was the Wal-Mart® of quality dishware.

You can plainly see that Indiana Jones’ least favorite band is the Rolling Stones.

Then archeologists looked at dishes that were 100 years later in the trash pile.  They knew this particular trash pile was a king’s trash.  The dishes in the king’s trash were something that a kind parent would have congratulated a mildly retarded child for because the mildly retarded child tried really hard.

But these Roman plates weren’t widely available – only a king could afford them.

History happens one day at a time.  People lived it, the hard way.  Let me give you some examples that might add some perspective:

  • A French girl born at the start of the French Revolution would have been 26 and had multiple children when Napoleon finally lost at Waterloo.
  • A German girl born at the end of World War I would have been 27 and had multiple children before the end of World War II.
  • An American girl born at the end of the Clinton administration already has 43 earrings, sixteen tattoos, and herpes.

What I’m trying to explain that there are two types of changes the first one is fast, really fast, like the turkey’s bad November day.  The second type seems fast only when viewed from 200 years in the future.  Remember, love can last for a lifetime, but herpes is forever.

In my estimation (for what it’s worth) we are in an atmosphere where both types of change will happen.  We will have sudden changes, like the turkey, or like Marie Antoinette. These will be changes we cannot go back from.  If you burn a receipt from Arby’s©, there’s no going back to get those curly fries if they shorted you.

We all burn our receipts from Arby’s™ as soon as we get home, right?  Otherwise The Man would know how much we like Horsey Sauce®, and you where that leads:

Tyranny.

I digress.

But I will* note that I had a conversation with a friend over a year ago.  He and I were talking about investing and other things.  During this conversation, I had an epiphany.  Where was my money?  Mainly in a single bank (this has now changed).

Where does the Federal Reserve hide its economic failures?  In debasement.

My question to my friend then was this:  “How much of your money is diversified?”

His response was, “Well, it’s in mutual funds, and in a wide variety of stocks and bonds.  So it’s diversified.”

I followed up:  “No, I mean how much of all of that is in dollars?”

There was a long pause.  “All of it.”

I guess this post is mainly to point out that just like we don’t buy things in 2020 with a pocketful Roman coins, and we don’t buy things with French Francs from before their Revolution, and we can’t buy things with Soviet Rubles, how long will we be able to buy things with Dollars?

Just asking.

I’m not even suggesting any particular path, though I will disclose that if everything goes well, my kids might inherit some silver and gold when The Mrs. and I pass on.  Like any turkey, I know one thing:  tomorrow generally looks like today.

Until it doesn’t.

*Standard I’m Not A Financial Wizard Blah Blah Blah And If You Listen To Me For Financial Advice You’re Insane Differently Mental Disclaimer.

Equity And Equality – Why Leftists Cheat At Elections

“Equal, but not even.” – Die Another Day

What did the Frenchman yell as he went down the slide?  “YES!”

On Wednesday after the election, I consciously decided to sleep in – I had taken a vacation day from work.  I slept in.  It was luxurious.  Like a Roman soldier, I really enjoy resting on my pila-case.  At a time that was later than I’ll admit to, I rolled over in bed and picked up my phone.

Substantial leads for Trump from the night before had evaporated.  For whatever reason, this reminded me of the story of the Fox and the Scorpion.

Fox and the Scorpion both wanted to cross a river.  Why?  Probably a decent discount on quality unpainted furniture on the other side.  Scorpion wants to ride on the back of Fox.  Fox, not being stupid, says, “Dude, you’re a scorpion, you’re going to sting and kill me!”

Scorpion, logically, responds, “C’mon, man!  Let me tell you what my dead son Beau would say.  You know the thing. But if I sting you while we’re crossing the river, I’ll die, too.”  Scorpion paused, ”Just like I died when I fought Corn Pop.”

Fox, remembering his mandatory training on systematic speciesism, agrees and apologizes for his microagression and his foxist privilege.  Fox says, “Hop on.”

Fox begins swimming through the river.  Halfway to the other side, Scorpion stings Fox.

Fox, through the haze of pain and spreading paralysis as Scorpion’s neurotoxin spreads through his system says, “Scorpion!  You’ve killed us both!”

Scorpion responds, “C’mon man!  You knew I was a scorpion when I got on your back.”

I pushed the fable out of my mind as I slowly scrolled through all the data.  I then turned off my phone.  I went into the front room and sat down to read for a while.  Pugsley and The Mrs. were off at school and work, respectively.  It has been as rare as late-night TV show hosts with a sense of humor since 2016 that I’ve had the opportunity to just sit in silence without any work or a blog deadline hanging over my head.  I decided to grab a burger and a beer.

How many vegans does it take to eat a Double Quarter Pounder® with cheese?  One, if no one is watching.

In Modern Mayberry, we have five fast-food restaurants.  The day was perfect in temperature, which means it was on the cold side for most people.  I got to the speaker and ordered.  I then drove home, grabbed a beer out of the fridge, and ate my burger.  I tried to remember what my doctor said.  I think it was “Don’t eat anything fatty.”

It was good – cheesy and greasy and just the right amount of pickles.  I then remembered what my doctor had really said, “Don’t eat anything, fatty.”

For me, Wednesday was about balance.  It’s easy enough to fall into the trap of getting so wound up about politics that you lose perspective.  Honestly, one of the nicest things about living in Alaska was that Lower 48 politics was thousands of miles away.  You could nearly ignore it.  I’ve found that turning off my phone works almost as well.

On Thursday, it was back to work, and back to writing.  Of course, I have thoughts about the election, and you can probably guess what many of them are.  But the big thing that comes to mind with the 2020 election is fraud. It’s easy enough to look for fraud, heck, when that psychic told me she’d take my check I knew she was a fraud.

These ballots are from Seattle, so they definitely got mac n’ cheese.

Honestly, if you look at nearly any election, you can find things that look like fraud if you look hard enough.  The exception, of course, is my election to LOCAL OFFICE, where I estimate I had 335.33% more votes than the nearest competitor.

Hmmm, that sounds suspicious.  33533 is the same backwards as forward.  And it’s all 3’s with one five.  Normal numbers never look that way . . . except . . .  I was running unopposed for a job that no one else seemed to want.

You can confirm your bias that I stole the election – that 335.33% just looks too perfect.

From an ideological perspective, stealing an election is the last thing I’d do.  What ideology says that?  The ideology of the Right

The ideology of the Right is very different than that of the Left.  The Right is focused on Equality.  The Left is focused on Equity.  It’s really the fight between Equality and Equity that best defines the split between thinking on the Right and thinking on the Left.

A Marine with a salt and pepper beard is likely a seasoned veteran.

Western Civilization has always been a civilization of Equality and the philosophy of the Right.  You are born.  If you make your peace with God?  You can go to Heaven.  It’s up to you.  No one will drag you across the line.  If you want to create a business?  Be a glorious hero?  Sure, class may have come into it, but there was always room for the barbarian to make it to king.

The Right is Equality.

Equality is a 100 yard (3450 meters) dash.  I line up on the same line with my opponent.  When the starter pistol goes off, we start running.  If I’m running against a moderately athletic high school-aged boy who doesn’t have tularemia, tuberculosis, typhus, and tetanus, he’s going to make it to the finish line first.  If it’s a fat kid?  Okay, I might dust him.

As long as he has typhus.

Equality is about having the same opportunities.  The opportunity, in this case, is the open track.  It’s the same for both of us.  The opportunity includes the starter pistol.  We’ll hear it at the same time.  Each of us have the same conditions.

I have had many of the same opportunities in my life as Elon Musk.  I’m thrilled that he’s doing so well.  We had an equal shot at the world, and he ended up with billions.  I’m good with that.  He ran the race very, very well.  His running allows us to win, and in the end, makes us all wealthier.

If Musk flew his Tesla® through a black hole, because of tidal gravity forces, he’d be Elon-gated.

Equality is obsessed with fairness.  One person, one vote.  In Modern Mayberry, I think that getting the local officials to bend the rules during voting would have a penalty worse than speaking loudly in the local library.

The rules matter, and we follow them.  When The Mrs. had to get her license when we moved to Modern Mayberry, you could see the gleam in the DMV clerk’s eye as she ticked off the things The Mrs. had to produce to get her license.

  • Birth certificate?
  • Proof of address?
  • Current electrocardiogram?
  • Head of John the Baptist?
  • Marriage certificate?

Yup.  She was denied because she couldn’t prove that I’d married her.  Ha!  You can bet that The Mrs. wasn’t very happy when I drove her home singing, “Guess you are my property, doo-dah, doo-dah; my wife’s my chattel property all the doo-dah day.”  Of course, as I said this I had a brand-new Upper-Lower-Midwestia license in my wallet.

The Mrs. was not amused.

But the DMV clerk was 100% being fair.  The rules are the rules, no matter how stupid they might be.  The rules are the rules, no matter who you are.  And DMV clerks should follow them.

To the letter.

That’s Equality.  No matter who you are, when you walk into the DMV office, you’re all equally dirt in their eyes.  I think the DMV clerk even shed a tear when I had every single document she requested.  Getting through on the first time was like cheating to her.

Never get behind the Devil at the DMV if you need to do paperwork – the Devil can take many forms.

Believing in Equality is why people on the Right don’t steal votes.  They want to see the race run fairly.  If you don’t have the right paperwork?

No license for you.  I will say that when I got my license, the DMV clerk tried to get me to be an organ donor.  That was a girl after my own heart.

The DMV, at least here, is Equal.  Equity is different.

Equity is the belief that fairness isn’t measured on the starting conditions but on the outcome.  If a 100 yard (.31 centimeter) race was run on Equity measures, I would only have to run, say, 50 yards if I was running against someone twice as fast as me.  The goal of Equity isn’t to see who is fastest, it’s to structure the race so that people finish the way you want them to finish.

Given that Leftists are focused on Equity, or the outcome of the race, does it make sense that they’d try to steal an election?

Certainly.

Leftist focus only on the outcomes.  If a process like the 100 yard (34 milliKelvins) dash produces results where someone is faster, it’s the process that’s wrong.  If the process consistently produces a race where the fastest person wins?

To a Leftist, that’s unfair.

Not mine.  Second time I’ve used this recently.  The main problem is that the Equity in Reality panel is missing the pile of skulls that Leftism always, inevitably produces.  And the Easter Bunny doesn’t exist, either.

Equity, in the mind of the Leftist, isn’t in the casting of ballots.  Equity is in the counting of them.  Your favored candidate is losing?  What’s a few hundred thousand extra ballots?  They can punch them with a hammer or a sickle.

Why do Leftists cheat?

C’mon man, it’s because they’re Leftists.  What did you expect?

Election Day 2020: Liveblogging Post

“No thank you, Delmar. A third of a gopher would only arouse my appetite without beddin’ ‘er back down.” – O Brother, Where Art Thou?

How many Russians does it take for Hillary Clinton to lose an election?  None.

Front Matter:  I will start liveblogging (in the comments of this post) the election results when they come in.  I expect this will be about 8pm Eastern Standard Time.  I’ll stop when the mood strikes me – there isn’t a set end time.  I will say this – Standard Time Rules, and I really, really hate Daylight Savings Time.

2020 marks the most momentous election of our lifetimes.  Why?

Trump 2020?

No.

Wilder 2020.  Yes, I am an official candidate.  I can explain.

I’m a skilled professional.

During the state primary season in Modern Mayberry, in Upper-Lower Midwestia, I got a text message from The Boy.

“I put you in as a write-in candidate for NAMELESS OFFICE.”

Immediately I texted The Mrs.  “Hey, honey, please vote for me for NAMELESS OFFICE.”  She didn’t respond.  That’s normal.

I made my own way to the polls, and proudly wrote “John Wilder” in for NAMELESS OFFICE.  It turns out that The Mrs. did, too.

I had three votes.

What does one do with three votes in an insurgent write-in candidacy for NAMELESS OFFICE?  You call the County Clerk the day after to see if you won.

I did that.

“A write in?  Umm, call us next week, sweetie.”

I forgot to call them back.  But then a few weeks later when The Boy was down from State College, he got the mail one Saturday, and brought it into the living room.

I sent a guitar back to the factory once.  I marked it “return to Fender®.” 

“Hey, Pop, it’s a letter from the County.  Are you still burning tires and diesel fuel in the backyard?”  The Boy handed me a big letter – one that might have held the x-ray of bigfoot’s prostate exam.

I opened it.  Nope – not a prostate exam.  It was an official certificate saying that I was an official candidate for election in the 2020 election.  How many of those do you have?

I am running unopposed in the general election.  Since I was running unopposed, I decided on a sneaky campaign:  not let anyone know I was running.  The idea I had was simple – if anyone knew I was running, they would have time to oppose me.  Ha!  I’m too sneaky for that.

But now it’s too late.  There will be one name to vote for:  mine.  I think my chances are good, since I’m sure I’ll get more than the three votes that propelled me on this political odyssey.  I’m hoping for at least a solid dozen votes.

If your refrigerator is running?  I know some people in New Mexico that would vote for it.

You may ask, what does the elected office require me to do?  I won’t give you most of the specifics.  But I did check online and researched the state statutes that describe what I’m being elected to do.  In one, very old book (1883?) I found that I was responsible for the control of underground burrowing rodents.  In none of the modern laws does it mention that I’m responsible for that, but, hey:

The law is the law.

I think I’ll make that the signature of my administration.  I’ll become John Wilder, licensed to kill gophers by the government of the United Nations. A man, free to kill gophers at will. To kill, you must know your enemy, and in this case my enemy is a varmint. And a varmint will never quit. 

Ever.

If A is for Apple, and B is for Banana, what is C for?  Explosives.

I’m pretty sure that this will entitle me to a badge and unlimited access to fully automatic weapons, rocket propelled grenades, and plastic explosives.  Okay, maybe not.  But I’m also sure that there are absolutely zero laws in my state that prohibit me from making my own badge.  I think I might design my badge to be a big “W” with lightning bolts hitting an underground rodent.

Maybe it will all be over the top of a nuclear mushroom cloud?

Does my badge allow me to do anything special, like turn into a werewolf and roam the countryside naked in the cool autumn nights looking  for a safe spaceship flight.  Well, no.  But thankfully it doesn’t prohibit that, either.

Does my badge allow me to requisition nuclear weapons from the Federal government to control subterranean rodents?  Well, no.   But it does make the requisition request for fully automatic weapons, an old M-60 Patton tank, three F-16 fighters and 53,000 pounds of Compound C seem reasonable.

I mean, how else would you deal with gophers?  You wouldn’t.  That’s why you need a cold-blooded rodent killer like me.   Badgers?  You don’t need no stinking badgers!

My son said he got awarded the Leslie Neilson badge at school.  I asked him, “What’s that?”  He said it’s a big building filled with kids.

Here’s my campaign slogan:

“Wilder 2020, because you want John Wilder to have access to a badge and enough weapons to overthrow Brazil, even though he only got three primary votes.”

See you in the comments tonight!

The Archbishop, Trump, And The Coming Great Reset

“Jahr null. Year zero. An experiment. A reset. A new America.” – The Man in the High Castle

I hear that Noah kept his bees in the Ark hives.

I first became aware of “The Great Reset” last week.  There are quite a few YouTube® videos about it, but one of the more unusual mentions was in a letter to President Trump from a retired Catholic clergyman.  This particular clergyman is Archbishop Carlo Viganò.  I don’t know what the difference is between an Archbishop and a Bishop, but I suspect it has to do with a better quality of footwear.

Anyway, Archbishop Viganò wrote the following in the letter:

A global plan called the Great Reset is underway. Its architect is a global élite that wants to subdue all of humanity, imposing coercive measures with which to drastically limit individual freedoms and those of entire populations. In several nations this plan has already been approved and financed; in others it is still in an early stage. Behind the world leaders who are the accomplices and executors of this infernal project, there are unscrupulous characters who finance the World Economic Forum and Event 201, promoting their agenda.

The purpose of the Great Reset is the imposition of a health dictatorship aiming at the imposition of liberticidal measures, hidden behind tempting promises of ensuring a universal income and cancelling individual debt. The price of these concessions from the International Monetary Fund will be the renunciation of private property and adherence to a program of vaccination against Covid-19 and Covid-21 promoted by Bill Gates with the collaboration of the main pharmaceutical groups. Beyond the enormous economic interests that motivate the promoters of the Great Reset, the imposition of the vaccination will be accompanied by the requirement of a health passport and a digital ID, with the consequent contact tracing of the population of the entire world. Those who do not accept these measures will be confined in detention camps or placed under house arrest, and all their assets will be confiscated.

You can read the whole letter here (LINK).

Okay, the story the Archbishop was sharing seemed like an Infowars® segment, but with less tinfoil.  What was up?

I hear that Alex Jones’ wife left him because she said he was paranoid.  Alex was okay with that – he said he’d rather live alone than live with a government clone.

Well, it is stuff that’s directly out of an Infowars™ segment:  as I dug into the Archbishop’s clues, it was exactly correct.  The World Economic Forum©, which runs that annual Davos conference in Switzerland where 3,000 of the elite of the business world, academia, Hollywood, and the press get together to discuss how awesome they are for sacrificing themselves by flying their private  jets to visit a Swiss resort.

Alex Jones regularly says they’re up to no good when they meet at Davos.  Not everything is a conspiracy:  I’m certain that Alcoa® and Planters™ will never be allowed to merge, since everyone is afraid of the AlumaNutty.

I will say this about Switzerland – their flag is a big plus.

I know the Leftists complain about the 1%, but this is the 0.00004%.  The amazing thing?  The 0.00004% agree nearly entirely with Antifa’s® agenda.  Here’s what the Great Reset entails, as showcased in articles on the World Economic Forum©’s own website (LINK):

  • “We must build entirely new foundations for our economic and social systems.” The Davos folks describing freedom:  “Be free.  No!  No, not like that.”
  • “In fact, one silver lining of the pandemic is that it has shown how quickly we can make radical changes to our lifestyles.” I’d like to point out that some things didn’t change at all:  WNBA games have always been empty.
  • “. . . will require stronger and more effective governments . . . .” I’m against both of those things.  If we have strong government, I really hope it’s Three Stooges®-level incompetent.
  • “ . . . governments should implement long-overdue reforms that promote more equitable outcomes.” Remember – equality is we all have the same chance.  Equitable means we all get the same outcome.  Except, of course, for the 0.00004%.

Not mine.  Why doesn’t everyone just buy a ticket?

There are three main points that the World Economic Forum© is currently selling as the Great Reset:

  • International coordination on almost everything is the first component. If you thought we had too much globalization already?  Get ready for armies of international bureaucrats to write legislation and regulation that no one is accountable for.
  • “The second component of a Great Reset agenda would ensure that investments advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability.” Who shares these goals?  Well, at least the 0.00004% do, and they know best, right?  Especially when they spend your money.
  • Finally, they want to “harness the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to support the public good, especially by addressing health and social challenges.” The Fourth Industrial Revolution is Davos-speak for the post-Internet acceleration in information technology and the way that it interacts with the physical world.

But the World Economic Forum dives deeper.  One of the more chilling aspects is that they no longer want individuals to own, well, anything.  You can read the article here (LINK), right off of the World Economic Forum’s© website.  I did a little digging, and found the author was a member of Danish parliament, but prior to that?  She had spent 8 years getting a Masters in theology, became a part-time theology teacher, and then was in parliament.  Sound like a blonde version of AOC?

I you can’t tell socialists jokes – not everyone will get it.  Photo by Johannes Jansson/norden.org, CC BY 2.5 dk

Everything that Archbishop Viganò suggests is an aim of the Great Reset is plainly on the World Economic Forum© website, with the exception for the Archbishop’s claim that that people would be put into camps if they didn’t comply by being vaccinated and chipped.  That, in my mind, makes sense.  It’s not normally something that a country advertises, “Hey come for the free stuff, stay for the concentration camps.”  Or, “Virginia, it’s for Lovers of Barbed Wire.”

I hear the socialist student got top Marx in school.

My review of the Great Reset is simple:

It’s the same hokum that the Left has been selling since before the French Revolution.  The Left promises they will make people into new men and they will share the prosperity with everyone.  But those in control will then ask the question – how many people do we need, really?  The answer is a simple one, and it’s always the same:  fewer than we have now.

In reality, the 0.00004% never even start to share.  The 0.00004% will make life easy and free.  All you have to give up?  All of your freedom.  Hmm, I can get the Devil to grant my wish in exchange for my soul, and I don’t even have to go down to the Crossroads?

Which is why an Archbishop might write a letter in the first place . . . .

Killing The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg

“Don’t eat the eggs. We put LSD in the eggs.” – The Men Who Stare At Goats

I never trust a goose journalist – too much propa-gander.

Aesop (no, not our modern one who appears to have just emerged from his self-imposed technological monkdom by solving the riddle of Aesop’s Cables– LINK) was a storyteller who died in 564 B.C.  This was long enough ago that the Greeks had yet to find the drug that stops the aging process:  hemlock.  To quote Socrates, “I drank what?”

But one of my favorite of Aesop’s stories is the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg.

The story is very simple, though when I was a kid they tarted it out so that it was fifteen minutes long and they could keep us shut up while the film ran so our teachers could take smoke breaks.  The Goose that Laid the Golden Egg involves a farmer and his wife.  They have a goose.  Each day, the goose lays a golden egg.  I know this sounds like the details found on page 347 of Joe Biden’s economic plan, but bear with me.

11 year old me thought that was amazing!

In Greek mythology, Chiron was a half-horse, half-human doctor.  I guess he was the Centaur for Disease Control.

Current day me?

I’d sell the goose to a private equity fund for $3 billion dollars and buy myself an island and then start a podcast where I drink bourbon every week with Elon Musk and lie to our wives about when we were going to come home.  We could call it Manhattans With Musk®.  Elon and I would just sit back and laugh as the private equity fund clones the goose and then crashes the gold market with goose clone gold.

Or maybe the cloning process doesn’t work and the private equity fund then has 45,000 cloned geese that lay eggs made out of whatever fake metal the Chinese use (Chinesium®?) to make all those tiny metal statues of Bandersnatch Combersnoot.  I mean Blandercrab Clambakehatch.  Blendersnout Clumberbake?  Oh, yeah, Benedict Cumberbatch, that I bought on Ebay® after too many Manhattans.

Okay, this is actually a chocolate statue of Bunderslam Camberthatch.  We had a dog that weighed six pounds and ate a one pound bag of chocolate.  Killed him.  14 years later.

But back to Aesop.

In Aesop’s story, the stupid farmers couldn’t cope with getting a single, solid gold goose egg each day.  Nope.

An aside:  How much would a golden goose egg be worth?

The answer, at $1900 per ounce gold, is $176,640.  (For those of you playing our home game:  remember to convert to troy ounces.)

So, yeah, these greedy Greek peasants couldn’t just wait and have $176,640 a day show up out of the goose’s butt.  So?

They killed it.

What do the Irish call fool’s gold?  Shamrock.

Yes.  They killed it.  And when they took their pudgy stupid fingers and looked for gold?  They found nothing but Greek goose guts.  Oops!  Instead of having a creature that slowly made them immensely wealthy, they ended up with whatever it is you eat that’s made out of goose.  Pâté de foie gras?  It’s okay if you want your goose . . . de-livered.

I bring this up, because that’s what’s happening to Western Civilization.  I mean, not being made into pâté, but having the goose that gave Western Civilization our prosperity is being killed.

And it really is happening.

Right now.

The wonderful and amazing thing about Western Civilization is that it has produced, by far, the greatest amount of prosperity and wealth ever seen in the history of mankind.  Heck, North Korea loves western rock:  Sweet Child In A Mine is one of their favorite songs.  They love the Guns,  but said we can keep the Roses.  Regardless, there has never in the history of the world been a group as amazing as Western Civilization has been.

Ever.

Nearly every invention that’s worth mentioning has been invented by Western Civilization.  Nearly all the wealth that’s been produced in the world, has been produced through ideas started in Western Civilization.

So, we all win, right?

Well, no.

I’ve heard (years ago) propaganda that claimed that every culture is equally valid.  This is, of course, a Big Lie®.  I’m not saying that people who live in mud huts who really know how to wok a dog must move to the suburbs and eat McDonalds®.  Certainly not!  If people wish to live in mud huts and eat cât-e de foie gras?  That’s fine – I sincerely hope that they enjoy it.  Nah, I don’t – just kitten.

But they have no right to move to the suburbs in Minnesota and have people pay for their every need.

Cannibals never eat entitled kids – they always taste spoiled.

But in 2020, the idea that everyone on Earth is, somehow, entitled to live in a society that they had exactly no part in creating?  Sure!  Let’s call it a right.  They devastated their home country, so why not let them do that in Minneapolis, too?

As near as I can figure it out, the only answer as to why this happens is Leftism.  Leftism is fixated on creating a world where equality of outcome is the biggest goal.  That means that no person on Earth should have anything more than any other.

Except, of course, for actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and billionaires like Bill Gates and important people in Washington D.C. like the guy who writes the tax code.  I sincerely hope that Leonardo DiCaprio never gets injured in a car accident on a Star Wars® movie – I would hate it if he were Han DiCaprio.

The answer is always famine.

But to a Leftist, a murderer in prison is due the same physical comforts and opportunities as an upstanding member of the community that has worked 2500 hour years for decades and saved their money for retirement.  Of course, the irony is that when everyone has the right to move to the United States, it ends with no one having any rights at all.  Except for Leonardo DiCaprio, Bill Gates, and that guy who writes the tax code.

This is the reality of Leftism in the West:  Leftists feel that prosperity comes from (shakes Magic 8-Ball®) luck.  Except when they win, in which case it was completely deserved.  Leftists believe that since prosperity is unequally distributed, they can just redistribute it at will because prosperity isn’t earned.

This is the same idea that led to walls around the communist countries in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s:  People are the property of the state.  Differences in outcomes aren’t the result of cultural differences.  Differences in outcomes must be a mistake, right?

According to Leftists, yes.

As I write these words, the West is facing a crossroads in every single Western country.  The idea corrupting it is simple and insidious:   that Western achievement is based on nothing but theft and lies, and that all men on Earth should be able to move to Western countries because everyone on Earth is owed the same lifestyle as people in Western countries have.

Used with permission.

This, my friends, is killing the Goose that Laid the Golden Egg as Aesop described over 2,500 years ago. The major theme of Leftism in 2020 is that cultures that exists on a pre-technological level, and that the residents of said culture should have the right to not only live in, but live in and direct the cultures of Western culture.

For whatever reason, the cultures of many nations have failed to produce a society that is capable of producing Western Civilization levels of comfort and wealth.  It’s beyond this post to describe why that is.  I’m sure that a culture producing wealth and prosperity is all random.  Speaking of random, what’s the difference between a Leftist and a random word generator?  Sometimes the random word generator tells the truth.

But hey, at least we’ll still have hemlock.

Right?

Free Speech? This Week Proves It Is Not On The Menu If The Left Wins.

“If you got a gun in your hand, you’re free to make any speech you want to.” – All in the Family

I believe this meme to be false.  Does that mean Snopes® has been debunked?

The biggest story of last week wasn’t the emails that allegedly show that Hunter Biden snorts coke off of hooker butts.  Oh, and that he and his father worked in an alleged scheme to illegally take millions of dollars from foreign companies and governments to gain influence inside the United States, or what politicians and bureaucrats in Washington D.C. call “Tuesday.”

No.  That wasn’t the story.  Corruption?

The biggest story of last week was censorship.  Again.

This time, the censored were targeted by two of the usual suspects, Twitter® and Facebook™.  What they censored (fairly effectively) was all of the Hunter Biden-related pictures and emails.  Sure, millions of people have seen them, but they have largely been effective at shielding voters who are undecided from this information.  Let’s face it – the Democrat idea of a bookmark is a lit match.

And it wasn’t random “conspiracy theorists” – this time it was the New York Post®, the newspaper with the fourth-largest circulation in the United States.

Yes, that’s a real headline. 

Twitter® suspended account after account for publishing links to the New York Post™, including a White House press secretary, James Woods, and journalist Jack Posobiec.  Yes.  Twitter© turned off their accounts for publishing a link to a story in the New York Post®.  Then Twitter© changed their software so you couldn’t even post the link.

Normally they also delete posts that are connected to barbed wire – they don’t want to cause a fence.

What reason did Twitter™ give?  That the story contained personal email addresses and phone numbers, and that the story relied on illegally obtained material.  Well, there certainly are email addresses and phone numbers in the story, but those had already been obtained by thousands of Ukrainian strippers and also printed in the New York Post™ for over 200,000 people, and unknown (but huge) numbers of readers on the Post© website.

Yet, when Trump’s taxes were the subject of the disappointingly boring story that Trump has good tax attorneys?  Twitter® censored those posts, right?

No.

But Twitter™ took the account of the New York Post© offline.  Yup.  A newspaper founded by Alexander Hamilton before he became black were taken offline for  . . . publishing news.  This like when they canceled the Chicago performance of Hamilton, the Musical because it was too cold.  Once again Brrr killed Hamilton.

I once locked my keys in my car.  Bothered me because it was going to rain and the top was down.

Twitter™ even placed a message on a Tweet® by a Senate Committee that the link listed was “potentially unsafe” and Biden hadn’t even sniffed anyone.

My mechanic told me my car was unsafe.  I told him that bad brakes had never stopped me before.

Facebook™ did much the same, by “limiting sharing” of the story and noting that it would be fact-checked.

By who?  Who is in charge of making these decisions?  Generally, the “fact-checking” executives and organizations are heavily Leftist.  And why not?  The Left views control of speech as a primary weapon in the cultural war.  Thankfully, there is someone checking on the checkers:

See, I thought corruption was only a problem at pretzel companies, where they’re all twisted.

Effectively, Facebook® and Twitter© have taken sides in an election.  How much would the Biden-Harris campaign pay for those companies to shut down negative coverage of Joe?  $100 million?  $200 million?

Yes.  They would (and could) pay them that much.  But they don’t have to pay them, because they are doing it for free.  At least it’s just Twitter™ and Facebook©?

Well, no.  Try Wikipedia®’s article on the Hunter Biden controversy.  If you were to believe that article, you’d be told that it was absolutely false that Hunter Biden ever did any of the things that we are now getting email confirmation of.  Here’s a Breitbart article on this (LINK) subject.  Thanks, Wikipedia™.

But not to be outdone, the New York Times™ shows that it’s been in the bag for Joe for months:

I heard a lot of New Yorkers had to use the newspaper for toilet paper during the Coronavirus shortage.  The Times were rough.

I suppose that everyone is entitled to their own opinion.  But when factual information that shows that potential crimes have occurred at the highest levels of our government are suppressed?  That shows that, finally, Leftist ideology will triumph over journalistic integrity every time.  But the biggest integrity champion?  The swimming pool on the Titanic.  Still full.

There is, of course, the big libertarian argument:  Facebook™, Wikipedia©, and Twitter® are private companies and can do as they wish.

Well, no.  They are private companies and can do any legal thing that they wish to do.  As I mentioned above, the Biden-Harris campaign would pay hundreds of millions of dollars for favorable treatment like they have been getting.  Have they written a check to those companies?  No.  But Biden and Harris intend to give them billions of dollars.

How?

Through laws that have yet to be put in place that will favor them.  Today’s actions to repress knowledge are (in my non-lawyerly opinion) nothing more than in-kind campaign contributions, even though Kamala has the California black vote all locked up.

Poor Bernie – he has Post Traumatic Debate Disorder.

YouTube® has joined in, too.  Thirty big channels were just permanently shut down – big in that some had nearly a million subscribers.  Here’s a list of just those greater with more than 200,000 subscribers, thanks to USSA News (LINK), H/T to Vox for the source (LINK).

  • X22 Report (952,000 subscribers)
  • SGTreport (630,000 subscribers)
  • Edge of Wonder (467,000 subscribers)
  • Praying Medic (391,000 subscribers)
  • And We Know (385,000 subscribers)
  • Amazing Polly (375,000 subscribers)
  • Joe M (367,000 subscribers)
  • Dollar Vigilante (304,000 subscribers)
  • Mouthy Buddha (296,000 subscribers)
  • JustInformed Talk (281,000 subscribers)
  • RedPill78 (269,000 subscribers)
  • The Patriot Hour (248,000 subscribers)
  • In Pursuit of Truth (242,000 subscribers)
  • Destroying the Illusion (238,000 subscribers)
  • TRUreporting (215,000 subscribers)

I wasn’t a regular listener of any of them, but I had heard a video or two from some of them.  The common thread?

All of them were on the Right.

This has been a theme since Alex Jones was shut out of the Twitter®-YouTube™-Facebook© ecosystem.  Jones was a canary in the free-speech coalmine, and when they attempted to silence him it was greatly disturbing to me.  Someone asked why I was so upset that a conspiracy theorist had been banned, and I said, “Why?  Who are you working for??”  It was obvious that this would not be the last banning, and the reasons for banning would become increasingly frivolous.

Three conspiracy theorists walk into a bar.  You can’t tell me that’s a coincidence!

Now, banning takes place regularly and goes after increasingly more innocuous content.  Innocuous unless you are on the Left, that is.  If you’re on the Left?  No dissenting voices are allowed.  How bad are they?

Worse than you can imagine.

A Reddit link sent me to a comment section there, where they argued that all (and I mean all) of the 1980’s action movies were fascist.  The people commenting were unwittingly sharing their true agenda – the destruction of everything that the United States ever was, or ever stood for.  I heard that Arnold Schwarzenegger was upset, even though he has given up movies for the pest control business: he is an ex-terminator.

Earl could talk for 70 minutes at the Town Council meeting about the best ways to feed gophers.

Freedom of speech was popular with the Left as long as they could use it to push their minority opinion.  Now?  They realize that freedom of speech is their mortal enemy once they get into power.  It’s fine to pretend that Leftism provides answers as long as we don’t actually use those ideas.  Every time, and I mean every single time they’ve been tried they lead to misery.

How do you keep miserable people under control?  No freedom of speech.

Oh, and never forget, the Second Amendment?

It protects the First.

The 2020 Election: Don’t Let It Make You Crazy

“We’re here to preserve democracy, not practice it.” – Crimson Tide

The Times Square New Year’s Eve Committee asked Hillary to join the committee.  Turns out that sometimes dropping the ball at the last minute is a resume builder!

We are currently in the “crazy season.”  As years of elections go by, people on every side of the political question have become better at influence and persuasion.  Why?  The prize is huge.  Political power provides billions of dollars, if not trillions, for favored industries.  In the 2020’s – it also means immunity from prosecution for supporters of the winners.

Like Hunter Biden, the stakes are high.

Political campaigns, unlike the NBA®, learn over time.  What worked last election?  What didn’t work?  What does the focus group say?

After the primaries, the campaign isn’t focused on getting the votes of die-hard supporters.  All seven of the people in the United States who are “really excited” to vote for JoePedo will vote for JoePedo.   Who is JoePedo?

JoePedo was an early slogan of the Left that sorta backfired on them.  They were going for Joe as a torpedo, not as, well, a Pedo.  It’s important to understand how people might make fun of your name.

Thankfully, in 2020, ISIS is WASWAS.

About 99% of Biden voters are only voting for Biden because he’s Not Trump.  They will continue to vote for Biden as long as he doesn’t turn into Trump.  Biden could kill and eat live kittens on during the debate, naked, while taking billions of dollars in checks from Satan for “services rendered”, and Never Trumpers would still vote for him.  Heck, let’s be really honest:  they don’t even require a pulse.  Given Biden’s mental, umm, “difficulties” it’s obvious that even dementia isn’t a disqualifier.

Trump voters are (mostly) voting for Trump because he’s Trump – a finger in the eye of the establishment.  Trump voters are unhappy with a country that they see is no longer a country.  In the view of Leftists, the United States is nothing more than an economic entity, one which every person on the globe has a right to move to.  Trump voters reject that.

Never-Trumpers are gonna vote Biden, and Trump doesn’t care about them.  Trump voters are gonna vote Trump.  Biden doesn’t care about them.

Neither campaign is attempting to get the votes of the diehard supporters of the other candidate.  Instead, this last campaign stretch is only to convince the people who follow politics so little that they haven’t figured out who they’re voting for.  But right now?  Both sides are pulling out all of the stops.

I can hear the campaign staffer defending his meme:  “At least it’s better than Turboanalisis.”

JoePedo will tell you that he’s running for the Senate if his handlers aren’t able to shut him up in time.  But the staffers in the know managed to get Trump’s tax records to the New York Times®.  The fact that this is a felony, well, who cares, right?  If Biden wins, a felony is just a wink and a nod.  But the taxes seem to be a poor weapon:  there’s nothing of interest, outside of the fact that Trump has way better tax advisors than I do.

But Team Biden isn’t done.  They have at least three “gotcha” attacks planned for Trump in the next 20 days.  And those attacks will escalate.  They’re saving their best attacks for last.

But Trump will fight back.  Trump has an arsenal of information on the JoePedo.  He’s going to unleash it, bit by bit, like a Chinese water torture.  And he’ll Tweet® and laugh the whole time.

My prediction that we hadn’t yet seen the craziest part of 2020 is proving to be stunningly accurate.  Honestly, it was really an easy prediction – the only prediction that is easier is that the Sun will rise tomorrow, or that Ruth Bader Ginsburg won’t.

What do you call a Supreme Court Justice that was so cheap she would eat the scraps on other people’s plates at the diner?  Booth Raider Ginsburg.

The goal of these next twenty days is manipulation.

Now, when The Mrs. was just The Miss and we first started dating, one particular date we had was one we called the Forever Date.  It started on a Friday night, when we went to play mini-golf.  Mini-golf is a great date idea.  Everyone sucks at mini-golf, and seeing how a potential spouse deals with being awful is a great insight on their personality.  Sadly the courses are packed now, since the economy is so bad that CEOs are now forced to play miniature golf.

But after mini-golf?  Dinner.  Then we walked down and got an expensive coffee at a hippy coffee bar.  Then we went back to my place and watched Babylon 5.  The next day, we had a bunch of other things on our schedule – a renaissance fair, a play, out to another dinner, and a movie.  In all, we had spent 24 hours together in two days.

In that time, we had done a lot of things.  The sheer number of things that we did made that 24 hours seem like weeks – it compressed and amplified our relationship.  It didn’t hurt that most of the activities, outside of the play and the movie, involved a lot of conversation.

In a weird way, this Forever Date was manipulative.  Unintentionally so – but when you put a compatible unmarried man and woman together?

  • And put them through activity after activity?
  • Fun things, unique things, unusual things?
  • That involve conversation?

After learning about how couples interact as I got older, the only answer is if you put people into the circumstances that The Miss and I were in?  Those people are going to become close.  And if even remotely compatible?  Married.

Jesus turned water into wine, most men drink to make a six look like a nine.

That same time compression is exactly what the manipulators want from voters right now.  They want to hit the voter with crisis after crisis until the voter’s mind is available for persuasion.  Like the Three Stooges, the candidates want Moe-mentum.

The persuasion we’re seeing now is aimed squarely at the undecided voters.  It’s ironic that the people who care the least and know the least about politics decide the election every four years.  It’s like having the Senator without thumbs winning every election, but that’s not surprising since he’s unopposed.

Remember, Kamala placed lower than all of the above candidates.  It’s okay, she’s used to being on the bottom.

So, the next twenty days will be filled with more information than in any election in the history of the United States.  It worked really well when there was a last minute announcement that George W. Bush had been arrested for Driving Under the Influence.  That cost him a lot of votes.

When John McCain was told by the news media that the problem was all in his head, he took the news media seriously.  Those videos of Sarah Palin painting seals and birds with oil?  Yeah, those hurt.

Okay, the fact that McCain’s personality had all the warmth of a Soviet Gulag and all the compassion of an African tribal war is what really cost him the election.  Sarah Palin?  I could have been Michael Palin and they still would have lost the election.

Michael is still a funnier Palin than Sarah.

But, like I said, campaigns are a learning organization, and they have learned that October is the best time to spring a surprise.  So the result is that every four years, October will get progressively crazier until each political party hires individual mimes to stalk and convince undecided voters.  There are dangers to hiring mimes:  one of my relatives became a mime – I haven’t heard from him since.

Here in 2020, however, knowing what they’re doing is enough.  It’s certain that voters are fine in convincing themselves, but when it comes to propaganda?  They resist.  The only solution is to confuse them with so much information that they become susceptible to changing their mind.  And thinking that they changed it themselves.

This particular election will be the most expensive in history.  Yet, the election will likely come down to relative handfuls of voters in a few key states.  California?  Not an issue.  But Pennsylvania?  Wisconsin?

But you’re not likely the target.  And here’s the key – if all of the nonsense you’ll hear in the next few days annoys you?  All of the radio ads?  The campaign mailers?

Ignore it.

My kids voted for pizza for dinner the other night.  They got tacos.  We don’t live in a swing state.

The real key to life has nothing to do with the daily news cycle.  The real key to life has to do with keeping your values in sight.

And that’s good news.  If you want to ignore the political nonsense going on right now, you can.

If, like me, you want to enjoy the nonsense with a bag of hot popcorn?

You can do that, too.  It may be the crazy season, but it doesn’t have to drive you crazy.

If you feel yourself getting crazy from this political season, don’t worry.  If you get lost, you can always take the psychopath.

An Important Lesson Of Life? Understand Death.

“No. Not like this. I haven’t faced death. I’ve cheated death. I’ve tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing.” – Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan

“Vikings don’t worry about death – they know they’ll be Bjørn again.”

When I go to bed on Saturday night, I sometimes wake up before I intend to get up.  That’s my favorite luxury of the weekends.  One technique that I use after I wake up to get back to sleep is to think about the points I’ll make on my Monday post.

This hypnogogic state (that no-man’s land between sleep and being awake) is a wonderful place for me.  I focus on a topic, and let my mind take the topic where it will.  Often, it’s back to sleep.  That’s okay.

But other times?  I end up making connections I might not have made otherwise.  I love that.  That’s one of the reasons I love my Monday posts.  I have that ability to really let my mind explore on the weekend.  I’d do that during the weekdays, but if I miss and end up sleeping?  Snoring is frowned on at work.

If you need to be creative and don’t use that hypnogogic state, I really, really, suggest you do.  It’s a really peaceful sort of place, but I’ve found it’s also one where my mind strips out the pretty little lies that we tell ourselves every day and pops me full of reality.  Plus?  It’s a great excuse to The Mrs. that I’m doing something important when I’m busy nearly napping.

I hear when Jeff Bezos sleeps, he wears pajamazons.

Monday’s posts are, in general, about philosophy.  They’re the “Wise” part of Wilder Wealthy and Wise.  Wednesday is about economics.  And Friday is about health, though more recently it has focused on clear thinking – which might be the clearest way to real health.  I’m not sure anyone wants to come to this blog for nutrition advice, since my nutrition information belongs on Tide Pods®.

All of the posts allow me to think deeply about a subject, research, and learn.  On more than one occasion, I started out believing one thing, and after my research for the post was done, I realized my original belief was horribly wrong.  Those are some of the best posts for me, because when I do them well, they change the reader and the writer.

But Monday’s are special.  They’re my favorite posts, though sometimes not the most optimistic of posts, because, like those transvestite superheroes that call themselves the “Ex-Men®”, reality is not always pretty.

This was a joke when this album came out.  Now we call it male fraud.

I had a big post planned for today.  Really, I have a big post planned every Monday.  In my mind, I want them to knock the socks off of people.  Figuratively, of course, because I have no idea what sort of foot hygiene you practice and would not want to actually have to smell your feet.  I’ll do a lot of things for a successful post, but I won’t do that.

So, why do I write?

I write because, perhaps, the biggest way I can make a difference in this world is by serving, you, dear reader.  If something I can write can make you smile on a bad day, make you think differently about a subject so your life is better?  If the cause of Western Civilization is carried forward?

I win.

That’s really why I’ve devoted such an amount of time to writing.  As The Mrs. has told me several times:  “John, if I didn’t think what you were doing was important, you and I would have words.”

I don’t know if “have words” is fairly ominous where you come from, but here in Stately Wilder Manor, “have words” generally does not lead to a pleasant evening.  But, I am happy to note, I have The Mrs. full support in my writing, even though she says, “well, I’m sure we’re on a list now.”

I went to the library to get a book on Pavlov’s dog and Schrodinger’s cat.  The librarian said that rang a bell, but she wasn’t sure if it was checked out or not.

This week, however, I wasn’t able to slip my writing tasks off to my conscious/sub-conscious.

Life intruded.

It turns out that today there was a death in the family.  It wasn’t one of the regular cast of characters that I’ve written about.  Pugsley, The Boy, The Mrs., Alia S. Wilder, my brother, John Wilder?  They’re all fine.  Ma and Pa Wilder?  They passed away years ago.

Actually, I’m fairly sure I have never written about the person who passed away today.  But their passing provided the opportunity to talk about life.

The simple truth is this:  we are born, we grow, we live, and all we can do is try to make the world better by the lives we touch.  As Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be lived forward, and understood in reverse.”  Of course, he was speaking Danish, so Kierkegaard probably sounded like he was describing a pastry recipe that involved using a commuter train to mash the dough because Danish doesn’t sound at all like a real language.

What’s the difference between married people from Denmark and Batman’s® parents?  It’s simple:  one is wed Danes and the other?  Dead Waynes.

Death is, of course, inevitable.  I’ve written about it on more than one occasion.  I don’t expect that this will be the last time I write about it.  Our inability to understand that death is a part of life horribly stunts the modern world, which seems to exist to deny that death is real.

Death has many different impacts on families.  It can bring them closer together or tear them apart.  The choice is, of course, tied to how the family deals with it.  The best choice is honesty and transparency.

Some observations:

  • How can you mess up a funeral? You can’t.  So why do we worry so much?
  • And why do we spend so much on a funeral? I think it’s a unique time where people don’t think straight at all.
  • Making decisions after the death of a loved one is probably the third worst time you can make a decision. Or is it the fourth?
  • Never, ever leave something unsaid between you and a loved one. When the ship sails, all debts should be paid, in full.  The last thing you say to someone might be the last thing you say to someone.
  • Death brings life into perspective – it makes people focus on what is really important. So why do we wait until someone dies to focus on what’s really important?  Hint:  we don’t have to.
  • Avoid land wars in Asia. Those never turn out well.
  • Most major religions and all of the atheists think we have one shot at life on Earth. Wasting time is then equivalent to wasting life.  So don’t do that, either.  Every minute you spend being bored and waiting for something is a minute of your life you wished away.
  • Life is too short for regrets. Fix your regrets, or live with them.  Spending a second regretting is a second you’ll never get back.
  • Corollary: life is too short to spend it worrying about how long you’ll live.  So don’t.  Should we be prudent?    But don’t let it stand in the way of you living your life.  Is that an excuse to do harmful things to yourself?  Of course not.  But it’s not an excuse to be afraid of your shadow, either.

If I’m ever crushed by a falling piano, I want a low-key funeral.

During the ancient Roman triumphs, which were held to honor victorious commanders, a slave was chosen to accompany the commander.  The slave would hold the wreath above the commander’s head.  He would whisper in the commander’s ear:  “Remember, you are mortal.”

We all are.  The only difference is what we do in life.  And what we write for our Monday posts.