Big Thoughts – Page 68 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Magic and Money: More Related Than You Think

“It was the most amazing magic trick I’ve ever seen.” – The Prestige

Mimes aren’t magicians, they just have obstacle illusions.

This is a post about finance. It’s an awesome one, so bear with me.

I’ve always been a bit of a ham. When I was in third grade, I got up and did impressions and sang a song. This was in front of the entire school on talent night, Kindergarten through Senior, and all their parents. My impressions were horrible. My singing was worse.

The next year, I got to play a drunken uncle in our fourth grade play. I’m not making that up. I had a flask and everything, and the teacher pinned the neck tie of my costume up over my shoulder, since drunks apparently can’t wear a tie properly. However, you can bet that I delivered my lines with the best drunken slur a fourth grader can muster.

It was another time and place, where we could make jokes with the idea of being funny. If they did a play like that today, I’m sure that the school district would be shut down, burned, and exorcised from Twitter™ and Facebook®. I mean, the parents in the play were a man and a woman played . . . by a boy and a girl. And they were married. And they didn’t have tattoos.

Sacrilege!

The floor collapsed during the fourth grade play. I guess I was going through a stage.

As I’ve mentioned before, I lived pretty far out on Wilder Mountain. The nearest kid to my house lived nine miles away. The nearest McDonalds™ at that time was a two hour car trip. So, a trip to a magic store was entirely out of the question. But then came college.

Where I was still a ham.

In college, I was living near Capitol City, and they did have a magic store. So, I bought three magic tricks. All three were fun, because they were professional grade, and if you had the mechanical dexterity to open a beer can, you could do very professional, close up magic.

One was a coin trick.

COVID shut down the mint? It makes no cents.

It’s still my favorite trick. I haven’t done it in years, but it’s fun to do. First, I’d show the person I’m doing the trick with (we’ll call them “Mark”) two coins – a United States $0.50 coin, and a Mexican 50 centavo coin. Then, I put the coins into their right hand. By the time the coins are in their hands, it’s not a half dollar and a 50 centavo piece – it’s now a half dollar and a United States $0.25.

I’d then ask Mark to put one coin in each hand, while his hands were behind his back, so I can’t see them. Once each hand has a coin in it, I ask them to hold their hands straight out in front of them. I’d then guess where the $0.50 piece was.

That wasn’t the trick.

Then, regardless of if my guess was correct, I’d bet them something (say, a Coke® or a beer – remember I was in college) that they couldn’t show me the 50 centavo piece.

They’d smile, and then open their hand, and then show me the quarter and look amazed that it wasn’t the 50 centavo piece.

Except the first few times, it didn’t work. At all. It’s not that I messed up the trick, one hand had $0.50 in it, and one hand had a quarter. But the first few times I did the trick, the Mark immediately recognized that it wasn’t the 50 centavo, and knew it was a quarter.

Well, that sucks.

You have no idea how long this meme took.

But then I thought back – at the magic store where I’d bought the trick, the salesman performing the trick had said, “notice how much smaller the 50 centavo piece is than the half dollar.” I tried that the next time I did the trick.

Perfect.

Mark, merely by my suggestion, had developed the mental image that the 50 centavo piece was small. Every time I’ve done the trick using that phrase, and I mean every single time, ever, it worked like a charm. Without saying “notice how much smaller . . .”? Over half the time the person could tell that the second coin was a quarter.

The next refinement was the reveal. Remember when I told the Mark to hold his hands out front, and I’d guess which hand had the fifty cent piece in it? Amazingly, 90% of people put the half dollar into the same hand. Which hand? I’m not giving up all of my secrets.

I would, on purpose, guess the wrong hand after telling Mark not to show me the coins, right or wrong.

They’d smile and tell me I was wrong. They felt awesome – they’d beaten the magician. Obviously, the trick was going wrong.

All part of the plan.

The next thing I said was, “I bet you a beer Coke™ that you can’t show me the 50 centavo piece,” and then they opened their hand to see an ordinary quarter? After seeing the quarter, I’d ask Mark to open the other hand where they’d see a normal fifty cent piece. They were always amazed when I did it right, but in order for the trick to work, I had to say the right things.

The trick paid for itself in, um, beverages and things. And the Mark didn’t mind – Mark was amused, and I got paid a small fee for that amusement.

But the things that sold the trick wasn’t the mechanics and metal, it was what I was saying, and how I was saying it, and, even being intentionally wrong was part of the final sale. You can buy this trick yourself, for about $12 – search “Scotch and Soda Trick” on Amazon.

You’re welcome.

But what does this have to do with money?

A lot, actually.

His version of Purple Rain was awful.

Number One – People who sell stuff know how to sell. Like my magic trick, salesmen do trial and error to learn what works. If you buy a car every five years from a dealer, and they have contact with 30 customers a week, who has the upper hand?

If you’re listening to a politician who’s spent his entire life just getting elected, what likelihood to you have of understanding their real character and values? They probably don’t remember them themselves. If you’re buying a car, a house, or even a burger at McDonalds, they know the game. There’s a reason that every well-trained McDonalds© employee asks, “Do you want fries with that?”

They know the game. McDonalds® knows that a potato costs them pennies, but a basket of fries can go for $3. Profits may be fleeting, but the pant size increase is forever.

One of the tricks that Bernie Madoff used with his customers was to dress very frugally. Despite the fact that he was stealing billions ($20 billion by the best estimate I found), he knew the game better than his Marks. He also was selective with clients – he wouldn’t accept just anyone. No, you had to apply and be approved. You had to know someone.

Number Two – Knowing the trick is everything. When I did the coin trick, only I knew what was coming. It was all scripted, and I knew exactly what the outcome was going to be. When I asked people to let me guess which hand the coin was in, they thought that was the trick. No, the trick was that there was no fifty centavo piece. But because I created the structure, I knew where the trick was.

That’s a tremendous advantage. I can use that knowledge to create a scenario where I can manipulate emotions to get the reactions and responses I want. Why? I control the conditions. I control the reveal.

What sorts of tricks are out in the world?

“No money down.”
“I never got your text.”
“Yes, I’ll hold your beer, there’s no way this could go wrong.”
“No interest for the first six months.”
“Housing prices always go up.”
“CNN – The Most Trusted Name in News.”

Number Three – Things are rarely as they seem. Mark saw only what I wanted him to see during the trick, and I carefully made sure by closing his hand around the coins after I put them there. Then I told him to not let me see when he put the coins in each hand. Why? Because I didn’t want him to see what was really going on.

One of the biggest illusions that most people don’t recognize is that our money is entirely made up. The $ and € and ¥ and £ only have meaning because we give them meaning. The United States dollar has no backing other than . . . the promise to trade it for a dollar. That’s it. And people keep playing the game even though the Federal Reserve™ tells them the dollar will be worth less every year. On purpose.

Oh, and the Federal Reserve©? It’s not Federal, and it doesn’t have a Reserve. Discuss.

Generally, people didn’t believe that the government had a super-secret plan to eavesdrop on all electronic communications from anyone. Then Edward Snowden showed . . . they have a plan to monitor all electronic communications, everywhere. When Snowden joined Twitter® he soon had more followers than the National Security Agency. That’s okay, the NSA follows everyone.

I knew there was a reason my computer has a sticker that says “Intel Inside.”

Number Four – It’s super easy to suggest things to people. This shocked me. One time Scott Adams mentioned that in a line at a copier, if you have to make a copy, all you have to do is have a reason to jump the line. He suggested, “Hey, can I cut in front of you? I have to make a copy.” Note that making a copy is exactly what everyone else was doing, but the request, coupled with a reason, seemed to work. No matter how stupid the reason.

Yes, there’s a reason you want ice cream.
What, you thought that was impartial?
“The Arctic will be ice free by 2013,” – Al Gore. Hmm. Trust me. Next time it really will be.
Asking them to do you a small favor. Oddly, this creates a pattern where people are much more likely to do a big favor for you later. Oh, while you’re at it, hit the subscribe button. Don’t cost nothin’.
Never trust a flatterer. I had a boss that, one month after he joined the company, wrote a performance review that would have made me think that I needed to apply for the job of Messiah. Except in my case it made me never trust him. I was right.
Peer Pressure. People like to do what other people consider acceptable, since being socially acceptable is important. If everyone is doing it, well, I should, too. I went against the grain, and now Wal-Mart® insists that I wear pants from now on.

Number Five – The person proposing the bet may not have your best interest at heart. In the example above, I ended up getting a few beverages. The person involved got an equal exchange. No one was ever mad – if they had been, I’d have told them to ignore the bet.

But.

I used the name “Mark” for a reason. It’s what conmen (ever notice that the Politically Correct Police don’t object to that one?) call the object of their scam. I’ve even been at carnivals where a guy running a game called out, “hey, Mark” to someone walking by to try to get them to break a balloon and win a poster of Gillian Anderson. Only five dollars a dart!

I wonder if the aliens believed in her?

There are probably a few other examples that I could bring up, but it’s late, and I have to go practice not singing. Bonus points if you can tell what two impersonations I did in third grade in the comments.

See, I told you this post would be awesome.

Fragility, Resilience, Or Antifragility?

“When we finished he shook our hands and said, ‘Endeavor to persevere!’” – The Outlaw Josey Wales

I guess there are a lot of rivers in France, which makes sense. Water follows the path of least resistance.

In our lives we have choices in how we react to the world, just like you have a choice of computer passwords. I tried to choose “hi-hat” but the computer responded that “Sorry, password cannot contain symbols.”

While models always come with limitations, I was struck by an analysis that Vox Day (LINK) posted the other day. In this, the original author that Vox discusses, Samuel Zilincik, refers to three types of opponents – Fragile, Resilient, and Anti-Fragile. The author discusses these qualities in terms of how certain nations fought through the history of time.

When I was reading, I thought that’s one way of looking at people as well as civilizations engaged in conflict, so, why not? Bear with me a little bit as I use World War II as an example that relates three nations to three states of being.

As an example, France was Fragile during World War II. Yes, I know that World War II France wasn’t a person since if France 1939 was a person they’d have been Inspector Clouseau, but stick with me. After the German invasion, everything about the French and British response was fragile. Horrible communication, absolute battlefield collapse of poorly disciplined and trained soldiers, failure of leadership to create even the most rudimentary strategy against mobile warfare, and a general collapse of all French public will after the Germans showed up on the doorstep of Paris.

And the food wasn’t great, either.

We know the jokes about French military performance. But France was fragile.

How are people fragile?

Bakeries in Denmark don’t add too much sugar to pastry – they don’t want to be sweetish.

I’ve been in tough situations with people, and seen some give up. In extreme cases, it took very little for them to break down – relatively minor incidents led to implosions. It was like an Antifa® member losing their cellphone with all their Starbucks™ points. A complete catastrophe!

But I’ve seen normal people lose it, too. More than once. Ever see someone break down because of a bad test score? Ever seen someone break down because they couldn’t get over a break up?

Fragility comes from having to defend things that aren’t your principles. The French couldn’t stand to see Paris become a war zone. My friend couldn’t stand to see a girl that he wasn’t suited for go away. I wasn’t there to give the French emotional support, but I was there for my friend. And he was there for me when I got divorced. The core of fragility is holding on to things that aren’t principles.

Once you understand that everything that you own can be taken from you, but that you still own your attitude and the way you feel about things, you are less fragile. In fact, you move toward the next stage: Resilient.

In World War II, the one country that screams resilience more than any other was The Soviet Union. Yes, Stalin was perhaps the most horrible man to have ever lived and communism is the worst system ever devised, unless your goal is human suffering and misery. But the Soviet people fought. And fought. And fought. Whenever a Russian dropped, he was replaced by another Russian and a Mongolian and two Uzbeks for good measure. The Soviet Union had redundancy. Even though they were generally inferior in many ways, the Soviets didn’t give up. And, when the German supply lines were overextended?

I hear the bread was great in the Soviet Union. People would wait in line 8 hours for a single piece.

The resilience worked. The gradual wearing down of the technical superiority by numerical superiority and a willingness to not surrender. If you have to choose to fight an enemy, a resilient one is far worse than a fragile one.

What makes a person resilient? That’s the focus on values. Sure, the Soviet Union had some really lousy values, but they were willing to fight in what they called The Great Patriotic War for the idea of Russia, even though sometimes the troops advanced with guns pointed at their backs, that was more the exception than the rule.

When you live for values and refuse to give up, you become resilient.

The last way a person can live is to become Anti-Fragile. Anti-fragile is a term that I saw for the first time from Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the econo-philosopher. It means that if you drop a vase, it doesn’t shatter, it doesn’t persist, it becomes stronger. Vases don’t do that. But systems do.

Well, maybe not drop it, but attack it with several carrier air groups?

The United States in World War II is an example of an anti-fragile system. When attacked at Pearl Harbor, it became stronger. Even though Battleship Row at Pearl was in flames, that attack mobilized the American people. Pa Wilder signed up on December 8, 1941, as did millions of other men. But those that didn’t sign up formed a pool of men and women that filled empty factories, constructed new ones, pumped oil, farmed, and built ships and planes and truck and tanks on a level never seen before in history.

Although it’s certain that the majority effort that it took to win World War II in Europe was done by the Soviets, it’s arguable that the Soviets would have folded in 1942 or 1943 without the food, trucks, planes, and ammunition that were provided by the United States.

The United States won the War of the Pacific nearly singlehandedly, although it’s early efforts in North Africa left the British shaking their heads and wondering if the United States could even field an army capable of fighting. The United States emerged after World War II as an industrial, economic and military behemoth. No one would argue that the United States of 1945 was weaker than the United States of 1941. The United States in 1941 is a great example of anti-fragility.

Oh, yeah, don’t forget the atomic bombs.

The prettiest atoms become atomic models.

How do people become anti-fragile? Well, start by being resilient. Then? Add learning. If you can recognize your mistakes and learn from them? That’s a good start. Capacity? Oddly enough, a person operating at peak capacity has less anti-fragility – they have little capacity to improve and a great deal of capacity for failure. Efficient systems are prone to failure. The two-income household was, even before this economic downturn, more prone to bankruptcy, rather than less.

Why?

Because the system is too efficient – most couples tend to use every dime they earn. When one income goes away? They system fails. Unused money (savings) is redundancy. It’s inefficient, but it’s capacity that you have for the unexpected.

And if you’re not focused on keeping everything, you can take risks. Lots of them – just so long as the risks aren’t so big that they crater you. This blog is one of mine. And the younger you are, the bigger risk you can take without cratering your life – you have time to make it up even if you lose everything at age 25.

I wouldn’t let my kids sleep in the bed with me when they were little. I told them I couldn’t risk the monster following them into my room.

A vision of Truth is required. One time a friend of mine and I were discussing this, and he noted that I might be trying to write what people want to read, rather than what I believe. Nope. My soul is in this. Do I agree with everything I’ve written? Of course not. I’ve written over 535 posts over the course of 3.5 years. I’ve learned. Some of my views have changed as I have changed. I’d be foolish to not change my views as I learn and understand more. But as I experiment, my soul has to be involved – I have to be a seeker of Truth, even in my experiments.

I’ve had a few moments of being Fragile in my life – mainly when I was trying to hold on to things and situations that I should have left behind me. I’ve had the majority of my life lived in a Resilient mode, putting one foot in front of the other and moving onward.

I can see that the best and most productive times in my life are when I’ve lived it in the Anti-Fragile mode. It may seem odd, but in many ways the Resilient mode is the enemy of the Anti-Fragile mode. Resiliency is about persevering. It’s not bad. There’s rarely any traffic on the second mile and working harder is, in some ways, the easy way out.

But when you achieve an Anti-Fragile life? Sometimes you achieve something amazing enough to even surprise yourself.

And always remember that when Germany and France go to war, you know 100% who will lose.

Belgium.

Tesla: Overvalued, But Pays For The Best Space Program On Earth

“You guys taking it all in? Because this is what it looks like when Google acquires your company for over 200 million dollars. Look: Dustin Moskovitz. Elon Musk. Eric Schmidt. I mean, Kid Rock is the poorest person here.” – Silicon Valley

I hear Elon Musk’s car insurance premiums are astronomical.

I’m a fan of Elon Musk. Singlehandedly, he’s shown that even though getting to space is very, very hard, that he can do it. Beyond that, when working with NASA®, they noted that working with SpaceX™ they accomplished in a month what would normally take NASA™ a year. NASA® kept saying the work was too Falcon Heavy.

Musk has also proven that if you focus on getting things into space, you can do it. NASA® gave up on getting things into space right after Von Braun died and is now a jobs program that hires gender and grievance studies majors. I’m not kidding. Really.

Instead of, oh, going into space, NASA© chases imaginary offensive names of astronomical features (NASA© corroborates this here – LINK). From the press release: “The Agency will be working with diversity, inclusion, and equity experts in the astronomical and physical sciences to provide guidance and recommendations for other nicknames and terms for review.”

If Elon Musk’s wife breaks up with him while he’s on Mars, will that make her his Space X?

Because that’s the important thing, right? We don’t want people thinking of the Eskimo Nebula or Siamese Twins Nebula. Because . . . colonialism? I forget. Is there a scorecard I could download?

One thing I’ve been fairly consistent about, though, is that Elon Musk’s car company, Tesla® is a scam. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great scam. I’ve heard that the cars are wonderful. And from a speed standpoint, the Tesla™ can go from 0-60mph (that’s 27.39 parsec per eon) nearly as fast as any car on the planet.

But the price of Tesla®, even after losing 25% of its value in the last few days, is ludicrous. Tesla’s™ market cap is $307.7 billion dollars. Volkswagen® is worth $77.5 billion, Toyota™ is worth $210.8, and Ford™ is worth $27.5 billion. So, if Elon looked under his couch cushions for some spare change, he could trade Tesla™ for VW®, Toyota©, and Ford™.

But at least communism means always having enough to eat, right?

Is Tesla® a good company? Sure. But Tesla™ made 367,000 cars last year. Ford©, Toyota® and VW™ combined made 27,000,000 cars. That’s nearly 74 times the number of cars that Tesla® makes.

I think most people have invested in Tesla® because Elon Musk gets things done. And, it amuses me that Elon Musk takes the money he’s earned from Tesla™ to work on arguably the best space program since Apollo, back when NASA™ had real engineers working on real engineering problems and done it in his spare time.

Tesla® is a symptom.

I hear that Coronavirus symptoms start right off the bat.

When money is flooded into a market by bankers looking to prop the market up, it flows oddly. The faster the flow? The bigger the imbalances. When people are rushing to put money into the market, they look for the shiny objects. One of the shiny objects in this case is Tesla®. There are others. Dozens of them.

It is my theory that the entire market is filled with imbalances right now. The money that was flooding in to prop the market up is leaking everywhere. Reasons don’t matter. That’s the way that markets work over the short term. Silly things happen – you’ve seen it earlier this year with toilet paper. What I’m saying is that, yes, Tesla® is just like the toilet paper of the stock market.

The best way to steal a Tesla® is to put it on auto-pirate.

The Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020 was just that – markets working in a panic. The world is ending, so what do I do? Make sure that I can poop in comfort. Like getting into a war with Italy as one of your allies, it’s not a great strategy, but is a strategy. In mid-late 2020, the market is flooded with money, attempting to buy whatever looks best and prettiest.

Just like the TP 2020 Terror®, the Reinflation Bubble of 2020© isn’t at all rational. And, like Tesla™ lost 25% of market value in a few days? It’s my theory that will happen across the whole market. Note – I’m not a financial advisor, so use the advice of a random guy on the Internet as just that. I pulled my money from the market, mostly, in February. After that, I’ve been spending my time collecting the three precious metals: gold, silver, and lead.

As I get older, I’ve discovered a simple truth – I have no idea if my kids will enjoy getting shares of Tesla® when I die. But I do know that if they each got a suitcase of untrackable gold and silver, half a dozen rifles and a few thousand rounds of ammo at my funeral, they’d smile.

My buddy Ty won a gold medal at the Beijing Olympics®. China won’t give him the medal because they won’t recognize Ty won.

I know this column is short, but I stared at that last line for about an hour and wouldn’t change a word. Not a bad place to end. Let’s call it a day. I know that NASA already has . . . .

Why Would Anyone Become A Leftist?

“Prime minister? I thought Italy used a king?” – Archer

There’s a joke to be made about that cake, but just like food under communist rule, you wouldn’t get it.

Sometime earlier this year, I asked myself a simple question. Why would anyone be attracted to communism? It’s the one single system that has never succeeded. It’s a system that, when implemented as designed, kills tens of thousands, and in the twentieth century, over 100 million of their own citizens.

For the life of me, I couldn’t understand what would drive so many people to communism in the year 2020. In 1900 in Russia? Well, maybe. A typical Russian peasant wouldn’t have known much about the failings in Paris of the Leftist French Revolution. Some bald guy says, “free loaves of bread for life,” and that might have done it.

But during the 2000-2020 time period in the West, it’s clear that communism shouldn’t take root, right? Up until the COVID-19, the economy in the United States was going so well that some of Joe Biden’s kids could afford to quit their second jobs in the Ukraine. But even with that economy, young people were being recruited to communism.

Why?

I had no idea how they could be recruited. But in roving through the Internet, I found a book, Anatomy of the Red Brigades by Alessandro Orsini, which had exactly the information I was looking for. The Red Brigades were a Leftist terrorist organization that was formed in 1970 and lasted until the 1980’s. They were most famous for kidnapping and killing a former Italian prime minister named Aldo Moro. They were also responsible for the later kidnapping of American Brigadier General James Dozier, who was rescued.

I have other pencil jokes, but most of them are pointless.

Post-war Italy was a difficult place. It was rapidly transforming from an agricultural economy to an industrial one. Like me, I’m sure some were tempted to steal industrial cooking implements. But I didn’t – I’m not a big whisk taker.

As people moved from rural farms to slums in the cities to work in factories, they were uprooted from centuries of continuity in life. That uprooting was the first step in creating a communist. As a rule, the Red Brigades recruits were disaffected. These people were already at the margins of society. Orsini calls this process disintegration. The group manipulating the new recruits would do everything possible to remove the new members from their previous outside relationships.

Once they were removed from those old relationships, reality was what the group said it was. And what reality were they focused on creating? The basic idea is one familiar to doomsday cults around the world. One Red Brigadist described it as the “fanaticism of a new religion.” Communist recruits are taught that:

. . . they are “children of the light, arriving in this world to punish and redeem, to destroy and purify. The Red Brigades want to wash away the sins of capitalism with blood.

They are taught that the world is corrupt, and in danger. Remind you of anything, say, Greta Thunberg? The idea that capitalism is sin is now taught nearly uniformly to children of the world. Of course, it has to have a name, and Global Warming® is probably the most convenient: it’s a sin brought on by capitalism and the old people, and will kill them if they don’t take rides on multi-million dollar yachts and speak before the United Nations. Oh, and then be invited by CNN™ to talk about COVID-19. Yes, they asked Greta for her expertise on that. And for her expertise on Some Black Lives Matter©. Each of these three has the same story being pumped into the head of the Marxist – there is a threat to the existence of all that is good in the world, and only Leftism can solve it.

Radical Leftism. See how that works?

The process of radicalization was described by Jean Guitton (as related by Orsini):

Segregation – They are kept apart from healthy past relationships – their new relationships only come through communist contacts. They are then immerse in Leftist thoughts and theory.
Permanent Indignation – Inner purity is confirmed (and signaled) through outer indignation – the Left loves to despise any who think even slightly differently than they do.
Desire to be Persecuted – When people in the “world” make fun of the Left, the Leftist love it – it shows how virtuous and pure the Leftist is, and confirms to them how horrible the rest of the world must be.
Purification of Means through the End – Any violence is justified because it will lead to the promised land of no work and infinite goodies. Building it on a mountain of skulls is just a feature.
Principle of Secrecy – Antifa’s© external goals that they advertise aren’t their real goals. They know that what they really want is the complete destruction of society, and to have it rebuilt just as they see fit. But they don’t say that – so every member is essentially a member of a secret society. That binds them together – they can only speak freely to each other.
Preventative Internal Terror – The one thing Leftist cannot stand is anyone to the Right. Anyone collaborating with the Right in any way? Betrayal? Any member who strays from Leftism is certainly the biggest enemy of the Antifa©, even more so than actual fascists.

I got a puppy, but the ducks attack it. Last time I get a pure bread dog.

The focus then becomes one of purity.

Purity, of course, can never be reached. That’s why SBLM® and Antifa™ aren’t fighting for anything real or measurable. The goal of SBLM® is “the end to systemic racism,” whatever that is. The problem is it can’t really be defined. It’s not a real goal – it’s a stand-in for purity, a purity that can never be reached.

The reality is that this impossible goal of for their purification must be unreachable. It must be ludicrous. Why? The goal isn’t to end systemic racism. The goal is to engender hatred in the members.

How bad is the hatred? “Love and Strength will subdue and destroy the imperialist bourgeoisie; we shall build a society free from the slavery of salaried work,” is directly out of their literature. To quote Orsini speaking about them, even when Marxists kill people, they see themselves as the real victims. “They are desperate people who have no real alternative to murder.”

We all know that OJ was the real victim, right?

And that’s the difference. The people who manipulate the communists want power. That’s not the goal of the communists. They want the power so that they can personally cleanse the world. In one interview, Orsini quoted a communist who didn’t want any luxury himself after the communists won. Nope. All this particular commie wanted was to be allowed to personally execute capitalists after the revolution.

Capitalism is what they hate the most. And fascism. What’s fascism? Anything that’s not communist. Don’t be fooled – Antifa© isn’t against fascists. They’re against Bernie Sanders because he’s too far right, and think he’s probably a fascist, too. Antifa™ wants to kill everyone even slightly to the right of them.

In their current state, the concept of logic and argument isn’t something a Leftist in Antifa™ or SBLM© can even hear. They will, due to their programming, ignore any logical argument, any evidence. Point out that when Pol Pot takes over Cambodia in a bloody revolution that kills off nearly thirty percent of Cambodia’s population. If they’re not too far gone, they just won’t hear you.

If they’re far gone, you’ll just hear silence, as they think, “They deserved it.” Purity is the goal. Their thought process that they cannot let the lives of people stand in the way of the future Earthly paradise.

I had to use this picture.

How did Italy defeat the Red Brigades? Massive numbers of arrests, and large amounts of jail time for those involved. Hundreds of Leftists were forced to flee Italy to avoid prison. I’m fairly sure this was fine with the Italians – as long as they never came back.

And our Leftists in the United States? Getting rid of them won’t be easy. They’re fully supported in most cities, even as they slowly destroy the cities – some district attorneys won’t charge Antifa© or BLM™ rioters with anything more than a misdemeanor. Beyond that, they’re well-funded – SBLM™ alone has hundreds of millions of dollars available.

I wonder if they’ll make reparations to the business owners that were destroyed through their riots?

Nah. The looters were the real victims of the riots, right?

Have The Kenosha Riots Given The Right Our Rosa Parks?

“We’re all Sons of Liberty here.” – John Adams (2008)

What was it that Jefferson said about the Tree of Liberty?

Friday posts originally were about health related topics. I’ve deviated away from “health” as a topic to focus on what might be more important now – mental health, specifically attitude. There’s a reason for this.

The goal of the Left, as amply illustrated by Yuri Bezmenov (Yuri Bezmenov’s 1980’s Prediction of 2020), is to demoralize the West. Demoralization’s goal is to destroy the moral outlook of our nation. The goal of Demoralization is to destroy your moral outlook.

If you’re a Christian, the goal of the Enemy (you know who when I write the big E) is to make you feel despair. If you’re not a Christian, and still on the Right, the goal of the enemy is the same – to make you feel despair. To make you feel you cannot win. To make you feel that there is nothing you can do to stop the inevitable march of history. The Enemy (or enemy) wants you to believe that the victory of the Left is inevitable.

That’s why my Friday posts are, at least recently, focused on the opposite. The victory of the Right is inevitable. And that’s what scares the Left more than anything. They will do absolutely everything they can to make you feel powerless. They will do whatever they can to make you feel that nothing you do matters. You can’t fight them.

That’s smart. But a 17 year old in Kenosha proved it was a lie, and may very well be the Rosa Parks of the Right.

I was wrapping up the writing on Wednesday’s post when the events in Kenosha happened. By events, I mean where Kyle Rittenhouse allegedly killed two people and wounded a third. I say allegedly, because even though I saw it from nearly six different angles, nearly in real time, by saying allegedly that makes me sound official. And my attorney Lazlo says it makes it harder for Leftists to sue me.

What I saw was fairly simple. It was a 17 year old kid who ran from someone who was allegedly going to hurt him. I allegedly saw a muzzle flash, which meant that someone shot at Kyle as he was fleeing. A melee ensued, and several shots can be heard on the video.

Kyle is then seen on video, first looking to provide medical care to the man on the ground, and then talking on his cell phone. The dying man on the ground is 5’3” manlet Joseph Rosenbaum. Rosenbaum was an ex-convict who had spent nearly a decade in jail for sexual misconduct with a minor, who was required to register as a sex offender for the rest of his life. Clearly, Rosenbaum was a gem of a manlet.

Rosenbaum made the mistake of chasing someone with an AR-15.

Oh, maybe that explains it.

Running from a fight is clear evidence of attempting to de-escalate and avoid bloodshed. When shots were fired by others first? When Rosenbaum caught the pudgy Rittenhouse? Someone shot Rosenbaum in the head. It’s not even clear at this point that it was Rittenhouse, but if it was, he was clearly being attacked.

In another video just after the first, you can see Kyle running toward the police. Kyle falls, since it looks like he has a body made for being the first kid knocked out in dodgeball during PE class. Immediately, Rittenhouse is attacked, kicked in the head. What amazes me is that Kyle rolls into the attacker who is allegedly kicking Kyle in the head, knocking him over. While he’s rolling over, it looks like he’s clearing a jammed round on his AR-15.

Are you sure this isn’t John Wick? Or John Wicksconsin?

Do you think his power comes from the Crocs® or the socks? Or is Crocs™ in Socks a new Seuss© book?

That first attacker moves on, wisely deciding that trying to fight someone with an AR might have fatal consequences.

The second attacker, one Anthony Huber, then slams a skateboard down on Kyle’s head. Anthony Huber was convicted, twice, of domestic abuse. Including strangulation. It’s amazing that out of two BLM® protestors, we have two dirtbags. Hmm. Surely this isn’t a pattern?

Clearly that’s a peaceful use of a skateboard, right? Now who is going to raise that kid his girlfriend had with another dude?

Kyle allegedly brings up his AR-15 and launches one round, center of mass, straight into Huber. Now, where I come from, if someone is attacking you with a fifteen pound piece of wood and steel while you’re lying down on the ground, that just might be considered an attack with a deadly weapon.

Huber staggered a few feet, and then collapsed. He ultimately lost the battle with life, as predicted in the Book of Eugene Stoner, Chapter 5.56. Huber was 25. His pronouns are was/were.

The final person that Kyle allegedly shot was Gaige Grosskreutz, 26. Grosskreutz is a member of the “People’s Revolution Movement of Milwaukee,” and we all know how level headed communist revolutionaries are. But Gaige, good commie that he is, was allegedly (I can’t verify this independently right now) convicted of felony burglary, because hey, private property is theft, right comrade?

Mr. Grosskreutz allegedly held both hands up to Kyle, who was sitting on the ground. One of the hands held a pistol. Kyle didn’t shoot. But when Grosskreutz moved to draw down on Kyle? Kyle reacted with the reflexes of a cat and allegedly blasted away Grosskreutz’s right bicep.

Grosskreutz’s pronouns are now Lefty the Leftist and Ow, I Found Out. Oh, and alleged felon in possession of a handgun? I’m sure that will go over well.

Yup, that’s a gun. But certainly a peaceful member of the “People’s Revolution Movement of Milwaukee” wouldn’t want to hurt Kyle, right? Re-education is what commies do best. Right?

Ooops. Forgot. Commies want one thing, I mean, besides food.

When reviewing the footage I was astonished at the discipline of Kyle Rittenhouse. Each person he allegedly shot was clearly attacking him. He held back the second each threat passed. If I had been shooting, I’m not sure that I wouldn’t have kept shooting at the targets commies until the magazine ran dry, especially with Grosskreutz. It’s also astonishing how quickly it happened. The elapsed time from when he was attacked by Huber and when he allegedly shot Grosskreutz? Less than five seconds.

Life comes at you very, very fast.

The Leftist press has lied, again and again and again about what happened. “Shooting into a crowd” was a headline I saw. Didn’t happen. This was from Reuters® tonight:

“The charges against Rittenhouse in Kenosha County include first degree intentional homicide in the death of Anthony Huber, who was carrying a skateboard when he was gunned down.”

Well, technically Huber was “carrying a skateboard.” But Reuters™ failed to mention that Huber was using that skateboard as a weapon to smash in Kyle’s head right before Kyle allegedly shot Huber. This is clearly shown in the picture above. Sadly, Huber’s string of domestic abuse convictions will have to end at two, and the world will be deprived of his skateboarding. It’s like saying that JFK was not able to comment after a mostly peaceful ride through Dallas. Technically true, but still a lie.

The reaction from the Leftist-controlled media is proof – if you’re not taking flak, you’re not over the target. The Kyle Rittenhouse story scares them to death. A young man, with a gun, saves his own life while trying to do the right thing. The biggest irony is that every bit of information about the people he allegedly killed or wounded shows that these people, like George Floyd, like Jacob Blake (allegedly shot seven times while allegedly going for a weapon after allegedly resisting arrest in Kenosha) appear to be failed human beings. Drug addicts. Violent. Pedophiles. Wow, the Left sure chooses heroes from the wrong side of the track. I’m sure they’ll show a heart of gold by the end of the movie.

The person in opposition? A 17 year old kid who wanted to be a cop who was seen scrubbing graffiti off walls earlier in the day. This scares the Left more than anything. They want every city to be as lost and broken as Portland. But the lesson here is that cities fight for themselves. Why would people from Montana come to the rescue of Portland? The people in Portland made the mess.

Kenosha means, in Potawatomi, “the place of the pike.” Wonder what the Potawatomi translation is for “the place of the AR”?

One 17 year old has pulled the underwear tightly up the butt of the Leftists in America. One. That’s why they are frightened of him. This is the same way that society was afraid of Rosa Parks. Here was one man, standing up for his rights. He stood up, even though he was 17, to fire and chaos.

Can a black woman sit in the front of the bus? Sure. Can a 17 year old defend himself from people trying to kill him? Sure. And all of the virtue signaling in the world won’t save you from the Left. They have proven that, again and again.

Well, honestly, it’s not like Unitarian Universalists believe in anything, anyway.

Kyle Rittenhouse has just been notified that the same attorney that atomic-wedgied the Washington Post® for Nick Sandmann is now on his side. And, I hear, he has a funding site from this news article (LINK).

If real justice is done, Kyle Rittenhouse will be out of custody within a week. I’m not holding my breath. But now the Right has a face. A story. And the real truth about what it takes to fight and beat the Left. Honesty.

And a 17 year old boy. Remember, the victory of the Right is inevitable. Not necessarily today. Or this week. Or this year. Or this decade.

Remember, we are stronger than the Enemy, or enemy, ever will be.

And smile.

For the last several years, most of my memes have been forged in my underground meme foundry. These are all “as found” on the Internet – thanks, /pol/. Comments are mine.

Yuri Bezmenov’s 1980’s Prediction of 2020

“Mommy, why are you making civilization collapse?” – Futurama

Video games never made me want to hurt people. Working with people did that.

Yuri Bezmenov was a KGB agent who defected to the West in the 1970’s. Bezmenov told everything he knew to the CIA, and was set up in Canada. He did several interviews which are available on YouTube®, which I’ll link to in a bit. Most recently, Call of Duty®: Black Ops Cold War™ brought Bezmenov back into the public consciousness by cutting in clips of his interviews in.

You can watch it below. It’s only a minute or so.

During interviews, Bezmenov made the quote that only 15% of the KGB’s activity was tied to James Bond® stuff. Their primary goal wasn’t to find out which parts of an F-15E jet fighter were made out of titanium and which parts were made out of paper-mâché.

Matching the United States in weapons systems was important, but it wasn’t number one. Besides, the KGB generally had a spy class of ideological communists built into numerous classified projects. Bezmenov said that 85% of the KGB’s efforts were spent in destroying culture in the West.

Why fight an actual war, if you can get your enemy to become you?

Bezmenov even set out the mechanisms that they were in the process of using. It wasn’t a complicated process, and it was just four steps. They called this process, “active measures” and it was nothing less than subverting the ideology that made America great.

The first step was Demoralization.

Demoralization is based around removing the moral framework of the country you’re attacking. The easiest way to do this is to co-opt the education system. Bezmenov said that this took 15-20 years, but his number was low. First, the educational institutions needed to be captured. The people who train the teachers, the people who are the “guiding lights” in educational theory must buy into Marxism.

I don’t have a direct measure of the ratio of Leftist to Rightist in those that teach education, but I’d imagine it’s no less than journalism, which is at 20:1. It may exceed history, which is 33.5:1. Regardless, the educational academy is now firmly in the hands of the Left. This leads to the production of teachers in a Leftist pedagogy (fancy word for teaching), with bad Leftist theory sometimes even enshrined into law. No Child Left Behind? Yes, that was bad. Common Core appears to be worse. Here’s one example:

Yes, this is really what they tried to teach little kids. From the Heartland Institute.

I have to wonder if the idea is that such simple things like addition and subtraction can be made so complicated that parents won’t be able to teach them to their children. In essence, it’s a way to further sever the ties between parent and child, while strengthening the ties between child and state educator.

Certainly, not all educators are Leftists. Here in Modern Mayberry, there are a few, but I think we likely have a more healthy balance. But there are those who look at the remote classes from COVID-19® as a potential threat to their attempts to indoctrinate children:

Is Demoralization 100% complete? Not as long as we have those pesky parents standing up for the customs, culture, ideas, and values of the West. Is it complete enough to take over society?

Maybe.

The goal of Demoralization is a lot of what we see now on the streets of Portland or Seattle or any other major Leftist city. Bezmenov described the end product of Demoralization as:

“They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information. Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behavior.”

In other words? Leftist robots.

Destabilization is the next step. This is the destruction of the systems that define the country. The economy. Social relations. Defensive systems.

In the last few months, the economy has been put into the most precarious state within living memory. The United States is more divided politically, ideologically, linguistically and ethnically than at any time in history. Naval vessels ram freighters. Senior officers are fired due to ideology. Women are brought into combat operations despite proof that their inclusion lowers fitness for mission.

Bezmenov said that Destabilization took two to five years.

Destabilization leads to Crisis. Crisis in this system is necessary to get people to accept a new government, new systems, and to give up the old system. There’s been a great deal of experience in creating Crisis by the Left. Think the Color Revolutions that have taken place all over the world, from Georgia to Ukraine to Lebanon, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.

What does Crisis look like in the United States? How about open violence encouraged by receptive District Attorneys that refuse to prosecute? Does it look like the dollar losing 7% of its value in three months?

Crisis leads to promises by the Left. High minimum wages. Free healthcare. Guaranteed basic income from the government. “Equality” in housing, in education, in policing.

Are the promises real? Of course not. The promises are whatever it takes to get enough support for the Left so they can take control.

If we are not in the Crisis, you can certainly see it from here. Ideally, for the Left, Crisis leads to control, or Normalization.

Normalization is the end game. It’s consolidating the country under the Leftists. It’s the creation of new institutions. In the Soviet Union and in China, it consisted of killing farmers and replacing them with people from the cities and expecting these collective farms will feed the nation.

Of course, all of the Leftists burning Kenosha and Portland think that they’ll be the ones in charge. In the new Socialist Utopian States they’ll be the ones who will write poetry and conduct gender reeducation camps, right?

This poetry comes from Seattle, I believe. Plans are now in full view.

No. The reality is that they’ll be most likely to be put up against the wall and shot or sent to the convenient leisure gulags. Why? They will be disillusioned when the actual power structure emerges. The reality of every communist paradise in history is that the intellectuals are shot first, especially the intellectuals that are communist. Why?

Dissent is a thing of the past.

Here are Yuri Bezmenov’s ideas, in his own words:

You Get To Choose Your Mood. Why Not Be Happy? No Assembly Required.

“Smile and smile… I don’t trust men who smile too much.” – Commander Kor, Star Trek (TOS)

When Pugsley was little, he was excited that about his birthday. “Daddy, I have a birthday coming up and I’ll be this many old!” Then he held up four fingers. The police still don’t know where they came from.

Smile.

Shhh. Don’t argue.

Smile.

Do it for, say, thirty seconds.

I’ll wait.

(Really, I mean this. Smile. Thirty seconds, look at a clock if you have to. Everybody do it.)

Feel better?

You do.

I’m not sure what kind of day you’re having. But smiling makes you feel happier. There’s a study I could link to, but I’m pretty sure all of you know how to use the Internet, so look for it if you want.

Doesn’t matter if you look it up or not. Smiling makes you feel better. Smiling is good for you. Smiling changes your mood. Change your mood? Your output is better. Not only more, but better.

Once upon a time, I had a job at a company that was failing. Not because of me, but because they had spectacularly failed on some business that they were doing. How spectacularly? They were losing millions of dollars. Some work that I was involved with was likewise losing money, but in this case only a few thousand dollars.

My Boss pulled me into his office. This is a real conversation, not one I made up.

Boss: “John, do you know what position the company is in?”

John Wilder: “Sure. Two of our divisions have lost enough money that we are in danger of becoming bankrupt.”

Boss: “Well, then, why are you so happy? The company is in trouble. People have noted that you’re too upbeat.”

When I get sad I cut myself. Another piece of cake.

I was being told that I was being too happy and positive in the workplace. How do you even respond to that? Rip and tear your clothes and cry? Sacrifice pigeons and stray raccoons to some ancient Sumerian god? Gather up a group of warriors and go raid a competitor and steal their business so you can hear the lamentation of their women?

Willkommen to das Hötel Kalifornia.

I sort of understand what my Boss was getting at. You don’t whistle, hum, crack a beer, and then sing Sammy Hagar songs at a funeral, even if there are headbangers in leather picking a three lock box. But I sort of didn’t understand it, either. How on Earth do you turn the business around, how do you make things better if you’re gloomy and you’re certain you’re going to die?

You don’t.

This week, a post at a great blog, Tempest in a Teardrop (LINK) mentioned St. Philip Neri. I hadn’t read about him before. I certainly hadn’t met him, since he died in Anno Domini 1595, which was about when your mom was finishing high school.

Neri’s quote that impressed me was: “A joyful heart is more easily made perfect than a downcast one.” It would be a conceit of the highest measure to think a single sentence I ever wrote would be quoted 400 years from now (though in my dreams I imagine there will be thousands of young students getting their degree in Wilder Wisdom Studies in the year 2356), but Neri absolutely nailed it with this line.

I wanted to be a standup comedian, but with Coronavirus? Now they’re all inside jokes.

You have a choice. Be mad. Be sullen. Be angry. Be filled with wrath. Give up. Be jealous of those who have it better.

That’s five of the seven deadly sins (The seven deadly sins and society. How do they fit together?). Eat seven bacon cheese burgers and think about your neighbor mowing the lawn in a bikini and you’re up to the full seven. I mean, assuming your neighbor would look good in a bikini.

You don’t have to feel that way. At all. Ever.

Smile when you feel down.

When I was in college I had the opposite experience. I had one particular professor, one of the most fun professors ever. He was Swiss, and had been a mercenary in the 1950’s, and had done everything. I was his student, and when I was in grad school, I was his Teaching Assistant. His advice, coming between puffs of cherry-smelling smoke from his pipe?

“Keep smiling, John.”

Smiles are contagious, so my state says I should wear a mask.

If you did what I said earlier, and smiled, you felt better. And you should do it as much as you can. If you have a choice to be happy, why wouldn’t you choose it?

There are other hacks as well.

Sigh. A deep sigh. You will feel your tension lower. Actual clinical studies that I think I read about show that this lowers blood pressure. I feel better when I sigh, and I also stop sweating blood, which I think means my blood pressure is lower.

Another trick:

Stand like a superhero, chest thrust forward, hands on your hips. There’s a reason the artists draw it that way – it makes you feel confident. Powerful. Competent. I can recall falling asleep at night in a pose just like Superman™ flying – one hand out, the other back, and one leg up.

I woke up feeling great! But, of course, my liver didn’t have the mileage on it that it does now. I still sleep like that most nights. However, if you stand like a superhero? You’ll feel like one.

If you ever listen to Scott Adam’s videos, “Coffee With Scott Adams” he starts them with a Simultaneous Sip. To participate, all you need is a beverage in a container, and you sip when he says go. It’s a dopamine hit to the brain, which he says will “make everything better.” And it works. You feel better when you participate. Heck, I feel so much better that I often won’t even start listening unless I can do the Simultaneous Sip.

These are just a few hacks that immediately change your mood. Yes, I understand sometimes these might not help. More than a dozen years ago, I had a back problem that made sitting horribly uncomfortable. When I walked, it was fine, but when I sat? Excruciating pain.

I tried the ancient Chinese needle treatment for back pain. The heroin worked best.

In my case, the solution to the pain was the body, again. I started working out (especially my torso) and the back pain has been gone for (fingers crossed) nearly 13 years. But if you want to feel better, and there’s no reason you shouldn’t?

Check your mood.
Check your posture.
Check your surroundings.
Check your attitude.
Check the things you are allowing into your mind.

You own your mind. It does what you say. You own your feelings. They are what you allow them to be.

Me? I try to practice relentless reality optimism.

I’m gonna die. That tells me I have to hurry in the things I do. I don’t have time to waste.
I’m gonna fail. That will tell me things I can do better next time.
I’m tired. That means I’ve been working as hard as I can.

I want every component of my body to be absolutely used up on the last day of my life. I’d like the organ people to look at me and say, “Nope, nothing for us. Unless we can transplant the smile.”

Smile.

Hold it.

Now you don’t have excuses. Go and do it, whatever it is as long as the stakes are high enough.

I had to cut my last duck out of my life. He was addicted to quack.

Clock is ticking. And failure is just a teacher to make you better.

Oh, and the company that was failing? Because of some changes I made in dealing with their major client, they managed to get over two hundred million dollars in business when they were near bankruptcy, generating millions in profits after I left them. They’re still around today.

I guess smiling pays off, after all.

The Data That Drives Advertising . . . Could Decide The Election?

“Never theorize before you have data. Invariably, you end up twisting facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.” – Sherlock Holmes (2009)

Mark Zuckerberg has been banning bots from Facebook™ before the election. Trump has made Mark turn on his own kind.

As I’ve mentioned before, The Mrs. used to be in radio. On one of her jobs, she did the news, sports, and weather for a collection of stations. The thing that fascinated me was that The Mrs. was the one that selected which news stories and which sports stories to put on the air, even to the point where she interviewed Senators and Congresscritters as part of the press pool. The Mrs. might be a wizard, but she couldn’t really select the weather, so the weather was what the weather was.

The Mrs. didn’t like the NBA®, so during basketball season she refused to cover it. At all. If you would have listened to her broadcast, you wouldn’t have known that basketball was a sport. Despite that the NHL® didn’t have a “local” team, The Mrs. covered hockey, even though after a storm the farmers care more about grain wetzky than Wayne Gretzky.

I’ve told that story before, but it’s been some time since I mentioned it so I know it’s new to some of you. I think now is the perfect place to mention it again.

I used to tell radio jokes, but the reception was poor.

Why? That will become clear.

But let’s start with this idea – you’re a product. Almost six years ago I heard a quote in a Wired® article (LINK) about the predictive power of social media interactions:

In the end, the researchers found that with information on just ten Facebook© “Likes,” the algorithm was more accurate than the average person’s colleague. With 150 “Likes,” it could outsmart people’s families, and with 300 “Likes,” it could best a person’s spouse.

Imagine the power. With enough data, Facebook® could sell data to companies with complete certainty that they’d be able to understand your income level, age, health problems, fears, and what it takes to sell you a product. By knowing when you went to bed, they’d be able to predict if you were a night owl, though I didn’t predict The Mrs. reaction when I replaced our bed with a trampoline. She hit the ceiling.

It’s not just Facebook™, and in my mind they’re not even the worst. I make it a point to never use my work computer for personal “stuff” – I don’t log in for email, social media, or any other site where I log in. Heck, I made it a point to minimize my surfing to the point where most of my Internet use at work was work related. I learned that they really don’t like you surfing YouTube™ videos at work during the six hours I spent at a job as an air traffic controller.

I’ve never been an air traffic controller, but I hear that their motto is: “If the pilot screws up, the pilot dies. If the air traffic controller screws up, the pilot dies.”

But one day I went to a weather site, and saw ads about something I’d searched for at home – something I was thinking of buying.

If it were a normal thing, that would make sense. In this case, it was a fairly obscure outdoor product. Boom. Right there on the weather page. It wasn’t just one product, which would have been a coincidence. People who are interested in the weather might be outdoorsy, right?

Nope. It happened again and again. Somehow, Google® (my guess) had figured out that John at home was the same guy who was using that work computer. I had noticed years earlier that Google™ gave one set of results on a search at work, and a completely different set on my home computer. That almost made sense – people at work are usually not looking for the same results as people at home. For instance, always make sure when you Google™ the actor Gary Oldman that you type in an “r”.

But look at all of the sources of data that exist on you, primarily (but not always) generated via social media. Just your search history tells the companies serving the Internet a lot about you. The Mrs. is a writer and was looking for ways people die for a book. She joked that the FBI® probably would arrest her if anything ever happened to me. But I don’t trust the FBI™, since the last time I was at the dentist they wanted to do a cavity search.

Facebook’s™ statement that with 300 likes they would know a person better than their spouse is nearly six years old. How much better than that are their computer systems now? I would imagine much, much better. Now they have data stretching across years that would likely predict a lot about a person’s outcomes.

Several years ago YouTube® used to suggest me content that was much edgier than I had initially searched for. It was as if I watched a video about the Right and got fed another that was six steps farther Right than the previous video. YouTube™ was giving me more and more “extreme” content. Why? Because more extreme content drives emotions. It pops chemicals into my brain and stimulates more viewing time.

YouTube™ was optimizing based on getting more viewing minutes. The best way to do that? Show me videos it predicted would increase emotion, especially outrage. And, as we all know, it’s easier to get strong emotion with anger rather than happiness.

I watch chemistry videos periodically.

For a while, I was on Twitter® – there is still a John Wilder account, but I had some fun with a parody account that was since deleted. But I noticed the same pattern at Twitter™ – keeping eyeballs through generating emotion.

What happens when you aggregate all of that data?

You can be told a story that’s unique to you. Immersed in information that is designed to drive your economic behavior – understanding what you’re most likely to spend money on, what time of day to best provide an ad, what phrases cause you to click, and which ones you ignore.

I’ve cut back on social media. Facebook® is only used on a single browser, and I haven’t opened it in months. Since I never understood what was fascinating about Facebook™, that’s super easy. It doesn’t need a replacement. Likewise, it’s been months since I was on Twitter©, although I do spend some time on Gab®.

I’m cutting back on YouTube™ and moving towards BitChute© – YouTube™ in the last year has been on a tear of censorship and herding – trying to move people farther Left. Some things are harder to find on BitChute™ – it has the worst search I’ve seen. But when I can find the people I listen to normally on BitChute®, I go there.

Dracula got caught uploading illegal content to YouTube™. He’s got the problem – a count suspended.

And browsers? Have you tried Brave™?

Understand that Google©, YouTube™, Twitter®, and Facebook® (among many!) are creating a product based on you, and attempting to sell you to whoever they can. Heck, if YouTube™, Twitter®, and Facebook® merged, they would have an amazing amount of data, but they’d be stuck calling themselves YouTwitFace®.

If it were just that, we’ve been facing less sophisticated versions of advertising for years. As even the Romans said: “Buyer beware.”

But with this immense power, what are the odds that they are consciously attempting to craft a narrative to change what you believe? Is there an agenda behind the stories that are presented to you, the way the headlines are written? Is there an agenda behind the stories that you’re not allowed to see?

I wanted to buy a skating rink, but my realtor only gave me a ballpark estimate.

Most people coming to this blog are pretty good at making up their own minds. But this fall’s election might be based on the votes of perhaps a 20,000 people or less, who have no idea who they’re voting for right now – elections are won by convincing the undecided.

I’m betting it has nothing to do with hockey.

Shield Walls And Responsibility

“Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not ‘every man for himself.’ And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.” – A Fish Called Wanda

Four Norse gods, one Roman god, and two astrological bodies walk into a bar. Everyone knew Wilder was going to make another week joke.

Farther back than written record exists, people have been fighting each other in an organized fashion. Though there are indications of earlier Egyptian battles, probably the first written records of tactics come from an inscribed stone thought to depict a Sumerian victory around 2500 B.C. Again, perspective – the time of Christ is closer to us than Christ was to this battle. Another way to say it? Almost as old as your mom.

The tactic as shown on the stone would have been familiar to a Greek or a Roman or a Viking: it’s a shield wall. The idea is that soldiers working together would provide each other mutual protection through their overlapping shields. In the case of the Greeks, the shield wall (or phalanx) was manned by citizen-soldiers called “hoplites.” The Greeks had a lot of stories, though. The half-human, half-horse who was a doctor? They called him the Centaur for Disease Control.

Each hoplite protected himself and the man on his right. Much of the most effective fighting was done by the guys in the second row, who were also protected by the shields of the front row. The shield wall was generally employed by both sides during ancient conflicts. As a superior technology, the choice was simple – adopt or learn to speak a new language, if you were lucky.

Protons are underrated. They’re always so positive.
Photo CC BY-SA 3.0, Sting, viaWikimedia

Combat was simple. The opposing shield walls would meet and, as near as we can understand, a big sumo match between porcupines was the result. The worst thing that could happen to a shield wall is breaking. If a shield wall broke, the only real option for the side that broke was to flee. For just that reason, the Greeks put the most inexperienced soldiers in the front and center of the shield wall. That gave them psychological comfort of being surrounded by experienced fighters, plus they couldn’t get scared and run off. They were stuck there in the middle of the fight.

The shield wall is one example that I could think of where the responsibilities of the individual to the group were vitally important. Individual thought in a Greek phalanx is more than discouraged – it’s fatal. That’s why the put the rookies in the middle. The choices in the middle of a Greek phalanx are two: fight as a unit and maybe win or be individuals and certainly die.

Philip also asked if he should come to Sparta as a friend or a foe. The Spartan response? “Neither.”

I’ve been thinking quite a lot about the tension between responsibility and individuality as I get older. When I was younger after I read Ayn Rand I was a ready-to-move-to-Galt’s-Gulch Libertarian. My thoughts were rather simple: I’d do as I please, not harm anyone, and the world would let me be.

Heck, I even went to a meeting of the largest Libertarian group in the state I was living in. When I saw it was just six guys in a booth at Taco Bell® (I’m not kidding) I decided to skip the meeting. Libertarians are horrible at organizing. Everybody wants to do their own thing, which makes for lousy coordination. It shouldn’t have surprised me that there were only six of them, and that they met at a single booth at a Taco Bell™. Also, since then I’ve come to the realization that the world will never let us be so we don’t have the option of going to Galt’s Gulch.

I still love the idea of individual freedom. And even when I was young, I realized that individual freedoms came with individual responsibility. You make a mistake? You’re held accountable for it. But there’s a component that’s missing that complements the first two:

Responsibility to the group.

Do Transformers® get car insurance or health insurance? Neither, they are illegal aliens.

Does that constrain your individual freedom? Certainly. But it’s reality. If you’re on a football team, working at a business, part of a family, or even in a tribe of Libertarians living in Galt’s Gulch, your individual freedom is limited to an extent that you have responsibilities to the group.

Just as the Greek hoplite was responsible for his own life, he was also responsible for the lives of those around him. Each individual hoplite was responsible for the success of the group.

As I get older, I realize that responsibility does exist for each of us. It’s not the same immediate life or death imperative of a hoplite, but it’s serious nevertheless.

If Joe wins the election, at least Hunter can get a job closer to home.

In one sense, the State (mainly the Federal government, but also small-s state governments) has done it’s best to remove that individual responsibility to society – it’s now nothing more than a series of payments to the State – taxes here and taxes there and you can go about your life without worrying about your responsibility to the state.

Poor people? That’s easy. The State will pay for them. The break between individual charity is gone, but I’ve written about that before (Charity, The Terminator, and Flat Tires). But it goes much further with similar stories in education, medical care, and retirement care. There are a million ways that the State has replaced the responsibility of the individual to that group.

One impact of that has been the recent riots. Reparations? Make the State pay. Burnt out buildings? Make the State Pay. Chose to get a degree and rack up enormous debt? Make the State pay. Unhappy with your life? Capitalism has failed. The State should fix this.

During the Soviet Revolution, they didn’t get every goal, but the did aim for the Tsars.

In the minds of Leftists, every solution requires more State power. That’s been at the root of every issue we’ve seen in 2020. Beyond the riots, COVID-19 has provided another outlet for the religious fervor of the Left.

Vaccines? Should be mandatory once one shows up.
Masks? Previous: Now: Required.
Trump’s response? Previous: He doesn’t have authority. Now: Every death is on his head.
Voting? Protests? Just fine.

The cause of this is that there is a natural desire to want to have responsibility that the State has severed. In its place, there are still chances to do that – be a Little League® coach. Volunteer at the food bank. Volunteer your time down at the local shooting club to teach people how to protect the man to their right.

That’s what a responsible hoplite would do, after all.

No Mask? No Problem. We’ll Just Reeducate You.

“John Spartan, you are fined one credit for a violation of the Verbal Morality Statute.” – Demolition Man

2020 has me so confused. Do I need a mask or a brick to enter a store?

The Chinese Flu has been devastating for our culture in many ways. The biggest impact is certainly economic. But it has also brought out divisions in our society that (primarily) people on the Left are set to exploit. The riots have been awful, and in fact so bad that the early positive sentiments that Marxist Black Lives Matter® are eroding. Thankfully, the cops have now found out the easiest way to break up a BLM©/PantiFa™ riot – pass out job applications.

One controversy that thankfully hasn’t come to Modern Mayberry is mask wearing. I’ve decided firmly to not decide on wearing masks. Do I wear one? No, because it’s silly in a county where nobody has Shanghai Lung Rot. Besides, masks make me sweat like an NFL® player asked to solve a quadratic equation. Heck, one night during the pandemic I woke up with the sweats. I worried until I changed out to jeans.

In Wal-Mart®, about one out of ten people wear a mask. In the restaurants? Zero. I’ve seen fast food employees wearing them, but most of the time their noses aren’t covered, so the masks serve as, um, I guess spit deflectors and an excuse to not shave?

The most Progressive thing about Joe Biden is his dementia.

I’ve seen horrible arguments on each side, and good arguments on each side, but pretty close to zero science on either side along with data corrupted enough to be Obama’s attorney general, so I say:

Whatever. I don’t care. Please don’t try to convince me in the comments. I love you all, but the mask battle is just a distraction as our government prints more money than Joe Biden has active brain cells every week.

Sometimes, though, the Leftists tell you what they really want. The biggest traitors in the Current Year have been our so-called intellectual elite. On August 10, Johns Hopkins™ tweeted® the amazingly horrific tweet© shown below:

But Joseph Stalin and the KGB both gave it two thumbs up.

At some point an adult at Johns Hopkins© became aware of the tweet™, and wisely deleted it. The article it’s based on is here (LINK). It’s actually more frightening than anything that PantiFa™ has done, since I think the average group of PantiFa© “warriors” could be taken down by the toddler soccer club here in Modern Mayberry. I mean, those kids can hit hard if they don’t like their juice box flavor at half time.

The article is horrific. Parker Crutchfield, Associate Professor Butthead of Medical Ethics(?), Humanities and Law at Western Michigan University (his contact information is here LINK) suggested that the best way of stopping WuhanFluhan is to secretly drug the population so they become willing sheep that will do anything authorities suggest.

I’m not making this up. Not even a little.

Here’s the direct quote:

“Another challenge is that the defectors who need moral enhancement are also the least likely to sign up for it. As some have argued, a solution would be to make moral enhancement compulsory or administer it secretly, perhaps via the water supply.” (emphasis added)

This guy advocates drugging the population – it’s so bad that mermaids are addicted to seaweed.

His final paragraph is the most chilling:

“The scenario in which the government forces an immunity booster upon everyone is plausible. And the military has been forcing enhancements like vaccines or “uppers” upon soldiers for a long time. The scenario in which the government forces a morality booster upon everyone is far-fetched. But a strategy like this one could be a way out of this pandemic, a future outbreak or the suffering associated with climate change. That’s why we should be thinking of it now.” (emphasis added)

Again, this is a “professor” who is supposed to teach ethics. I’m just wondering what ethical system allows drugging the population to make them do what you want? I think Stalin would have nodded approvingly, especially since this is exactly what Huxley described in Brave New World.

The fact that an idiot born from a crazed mother in an insane asylum (I made that part up, but it fits) named Parker Crutchfield, who is being paid for by Michigan tax dollars to argue for the chemical mental enslavement of people he doesn’t agree with secretly via the water supply exists? If anyone told me that, I’d call it a crazy conspiracy theory. But I read the article. It’s there. You know, the article that Johns Hopkins© Tweeted™?

Umm, anyone notice she’s not wearing a facemask? Heck, I’d buy her a whole paper bag so we didn’t have to see her face.

I was listening to Scott Adams’ podcast the other day, and he mentioned that it’s a psychological trait of people to use language that shows what they’re really thinking – when Obama talked about Biden’s selection of Kamala Harris, Obama said, “Joe nailed it.”

Adams made the point that “nail” in this case reminded him of a “coffin nail” which indicated that Joe would only serve for a short time before Kamala took over. Parker Crutchfield’s imbecilic writing is far less subtle. He is openly arguing for the government to secretly drug Americans by force to make them compliant. Beyond that, the drug must meet Parker Crutchfield’s ideological specifications – he’d love to dose you with oxytocin.

Sadly for Parker Crutchfield, he notes that oxytocin increases compliance but it also increases ethnocentrism. Ethnocentrism is a love of your own people. I guess that’s a drawback for Parker Crutchfield, since an ethnocentristic United States would be cohesive and centered around our culture, rather than pretending that every culture that drifts in produces equal results.

How can you have PantiFa™ if you don’t think that murderous cannibal tribes are exactly the same as your local optometrist who belongs to the Chamber of Commerce®?

All it takes for Parker Crutchfield is a chemical that produces your submission and doesn’t make you love your country and other people like you. He’d then not only be fine with injecting it into the water supply, he’d probably pour it in himself.

Parker Crutchfield did not approve of this image.

Corona-Chan has been bad, but not in deaths. The death rate appears to be trending towards less than 1%, perhaps far less than 1% since millions may have had it that have never been tested. But the median age of someone dying from COVID-19 seems to be nearly 80. That means that catching the Chinese Virus increases your life expectancy by two years, since the average age of death in the United States is 78.

Reality? Coronavirus is mainly killing old folks. If you’re 80, stay home if you want to. Take precautions. Don’t lick doorknobs on public restrooms. Don’t drink the toilet water no matter how cool and refreshing it looks.

I rarely hope that bad things happen to people. Really. It’s not my job. I’m a happy guy. But I’d love to see Parker Crutchfield’s only employment opportunity being sanitizing carts with his tongue at your local Wal-Mart™ after taking the massive doses of oxytocin to make him ethnocentric. At least he won’t poison any young minds that way.

And Michigan, seriously? What are you guys thinking?