Escape From New York: Mamdani Edition

“We, the soldiers of The National Liberation Front of America, in the name of the workers and all the oppressed of this imperialist country, have struck a fatal blow to the fascist police state.” – Escape from New York

I don’t watch soccer.  If I wanted to see grown men try to score for 90 minutes, I’d go to a bar. (all tweets® as-found)

I’ve been to New York City once.  I flew in to JFK, met with some friends, drove up north to a cabin he owned, and, drank some beer, and then saved the President from the Duke of New York (He’s A Number 1!) after his escape pod landed there.

That was fun.  I mean, not the New York City part, but the beer and saving the President part.  When I got to my friend’s apartment, it was a third-story Manhattan thing that was smaller than a closet.  Yet, he was married, and two people lived in this tiny place.

It’s not like he was poor, either.  He did okay, and his wife was an executive vice president at a company you’ve heard of.

They owned a car, and we were going to take it to their cabin.

How do you make a sandwich in Venezuela?  Put a meat coupon between two bread coupons.

He asked me if I wanted to go with him to get it.  What he meant was that he was going to take a taxi two miles to the building where it was stored.  He had to schedule picking it up, because they packed the cars in like sardines and have to work a dozen our so out to get to his, which, after seeing it, probably took 20 minutes.

These were people that were in the 1%, and my life was easier in almost all respects even though I made a fraction of the money that they made.

I didn’t see the attraction of New York City then, and I don’t see it now.  I mean, here in Modern Mayberry if I shoot my .30-06 off the back deck it’s Wednesday.  But in New York City, it’s national news.  But as bad as it in the Big Apple, it’s now worse.

Zohran Mamdani (by his name, a fine Irish lad, no doubt) was just elected Mayor.  He’s not a Democrat.  No, that’s not retarded enough.  He’s a Democratic Socialist®.  That must be like “extra-fancy” ketchup.

Mamdani’s policies are just as American as his name and upbringing.  I mean, you can feel the love, because his Director of Appointments, Catherine Almonte Da Costa said back in 2016 posted, “It’s important that white people feel defeated.”

Whelp.

This was the woman hand-picking key officials in City Hall, and her worldview sees white folks as the enemy to be crushed. And Ms. Almonte Da Costa wasn’t alone.  On Mamdani’s campaign trail, he called for raising taxes specifically on “whiter neighborhoods” to fund his socialist schemes.

So, it’s about money.  And power.  I mean, it always is, but most of the time they’re not so blatant.  Let’s dig into his housing policies, for one.  These seem designed to eviscerate the concept of private property altogether. On purpose.

Cea Weaver (her parents couldn’t afford a consonant for her first name) is Mamdani’s pick for Director of the Mayor’s “Office to Protect Tenants”.  Weaver isn’t just a tenant advocate.  Nope.  She’s a full-throated opponent of homeownership itself.  In her own words, she’s called for seizing private property and described individual homeownership as a tool of “white supremacy.”

Must be news to COMMUNIST China, which now has, what, a 90%+ homeownership rate?  Re-read that.  NYC is officially farther left than the CCP.  Achievement unlocked!

Cea (I wonder if anyone besides me refers to her as the Cea-word?) believes homes should be owned collectively, like some throwback to the Soviet Union where the state decides who gets what (and who is:  never you and what is:  never what you want).

According to the NY Post®, Cea-word’s mom has a $1.6 million house in Tennessee.

Weaver’s background as executive director of Housing Justice for All® screams daddy issue GloboLeftist.  What were those commies at Housing Justice for All in favor of?

Rent freezes, eviction moratoriums, and government takeovers that have already tanked property values in every progressive stronghold where they’ve been tried.

But it gets worse.  I mean, worse than being in New York in the first place.

Mamdani’s support for the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act (COPA) is a dagger to the heart of property rights. Under this new law, if you want to sell your multifamily building, you must first offer it to the city and favored nonprofits.  Like the Quality Learing Center.  For how long?  Six months.

Six months.

An owner must notify the Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), and these friends of Zohan “qualified entities” get first dibs.  If you finally get an offer from a private buyer, NYC and its pet nonprofits still have a right of first refusal to match the offer within 15 days.

But this is no surprise, since Mamdani has openly hailed South Africa as the blueprint for New York City. In his inauguration speech, he electrified his crowd by declaring, “South Africa is the model for New York,” praising its post-apartheid “transformative justice.”

South Africa now has more racial laws than it did under Apartheid.  But the quality of life is better.  Wait, what?

Have you heard about what’s happening in Johannesburg lately?  That “model” is a crumbling mess of blackouts, rampant violence, street piracy, skyrocketing rape rates, and economic disrepair.  South Africa is built on corruption scandals, farm seizures, and a GDP that’s flatlined

Great role model, but no coincidence.  Mamdani’s family ties run deep into anti-Western activism.  His father, Mahmood Mamdani, has long peddled narratives glorifying “resistance” movements, including defending suicide bombers.  Apparently, the manual for suicide bombers is called C4 Yourself, but I digress.

The warm embrace of collectivism has resulted in the greatest tragedy in human history:  communism in the twentieth century.  That doesn’t matter.  My guess?  Lots of New Yorkers are going to be doing a real-life reenactment of Escape from New York.

Snake Plissken had it easy.  He only had to escape roving bands of violent criminals who wanted to kill him.  New Yorkers in 2026 will have to escape taxes, too.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Stochastic Warfare

“Don’t you know we in a war here?” – Forrest Gump

War isn’t always about who is right, but it always is about who is left.

  1. Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
  2. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
  3. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  4. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  5. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  6. Open War.

Volume VII, Issue 8

Most memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.  I have maintained the Clock O’Doom at 9., given the open support of assassination and criminality by the GloboLeft and the increase in violence as well as direct interference with ICE and the insertion of the military into law enforcement.  Beware: the number can climb quickly.

My advice remains.  Avoid crowds.  Get out of cities.  Now.  A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Stochastic Warfare – Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report.  These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month.  I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues.  Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 840 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Stochastic Warfare

The Tweet® really does outline what many readers have been saying, namely, that we are under attack.  Is it open warfare?  Not exactly.  It’s 5th or 6th generation warfare, fought on a civilizational scale on the timeline of generations.  Against you.

And the person being attacked is . . . you.  You don’t have to die now.  First, they’ll encourage feminism and promote the idea of female empowerment meaning, “hey, let’s whore ourselves out during our twenties so we can’t pair-bond with men in our most fertile years” to create an environment where there is a “shortage” of people.

Again, this is not a company.  It’s a country.  A business can have a shortage of workers, a country can’t have a shortage of its own citizens.  That’s nonsensical.  It’s like saying my family has a shortage of members, so I’ll bring in an Indian.  See?  Nonsense.  A country is much closer to a family than a company.  If there’s a shortage of workers, the answer is to do things that increase native childbirth.

That’s it.  If they liked you.  Instead they work white men and women to pay for people who hate them.

This is how Stochastic War works.

No, their next step is to import millions of people that support the ideology of the progressive state, of globalism, of communalism.  When these people arrive, inject them with the idea that they deserve the country.  Now, since they don’t want to be American, and since they would fight against America if (say) America entered a war against Somalia or India they’re not committed to America.  They’re just here to extract economic resources.

Once these people are imported, what then?  They take your money.  Your world is made poorer as the grift/scam/cash grab continues and recycles that money to foreigners and to GloboLeftist politicians.  If you look at the graph below, you see that race plays a part in the way people vote and in who the Democrats want to import to retain power.  Why do they want a lot of Indians (Gujarati)?  Because they vote for the warmth of collectivism because more government systems mean more scams and corruption.  Also, they have never had to deal with the Berlin Wall, which was built to contain the warmth of collectivism behind concrete and barbed wire, as collectivism always ends up.

This is how Stochastic War works.

There are ramifications of this war against you.  If you didn’t hear, a black man stabbed a white guy.  The white guy then said the evil gamer-word after being stabbed.  This is not an unreasonable reaction, and is a far lesser offense than stabbing someone.  The jury acquitted the black man, despite clear video of the attack.

This is Stochastic Warfare.  Blacks learn that they can stab with impunity.

Black jurors, though, aren’t a jury of “peers” since statistically, they have been proven to be biased in favor of blacks.  This destroys the justice system:  it’s supposed to be blind, and your skin color or wealth or age or sex shouldn’t matter.  We’re human, though, and rich guys can buy great lawyers, so the system has always had a skew to it.  But without a functioning justice system, or worse, a justice system skewed to convict white people for crimes that are far beyond the offense (Derek Chauvin for murder) vigilantism will return.

Not might.  Will.

Even when people are found not guilty, it costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend a murder case, and Daniel Penny rightly walked free, but what’s the cost?

This is how Stochastic War works.

This bias applies everywhere and you can see that black people hate white people, a lot, in Great Britian.

And The Washington Times story, below, is behind a paywall, but the headline speaks for itself:

The problem of a multicultural society isn’t limited to blacks.  Other racial/ethnic groups like themselves best.  Hispanics like Hispanics most.  Blacks like blacks most.  Asians like Asians most.  But whites?  They like everyone the same.  That egalitarianism is crucial to making a multicultural society work, but multicultural societies never work.

And Great Britain now realizes this.  Would they ask their moslem or Indian invaders to fight for them?  Of course not, because they know that the moslems want to conquer the English rather than Crimea.  The Indians?  The Indians mostly are there for a buck and would run away back to Mumbai if they felt even slightly threatened.  That leaves the white guys.  Who will, once again, be faced with disproportionate death and injury.

Which is how Stochastic War works.

The mayor of London, who isn’t British, wants to make white people disappear.  Literally:

And, you have people like this.  This is in America.

It’s time to push back.  It appears that the rapes and killings and theft have been enough and the Irish are pushing back against Stochastic War.

I think that @dystopiangf is right.  We are in the midst of a quiet, Stochastic War that has been going on for decades, almost certainly since before I was born.  What we are sensing right now is the time when people realize, and finally accept that this Forgotten War (I wrote a song about this LINK, you should listen to it because it’s pretty badass) against cultures we vanquished centuries or thousands of years ago is going on.

As people awaken, we’ll see what people have always seen as demographic changes occur:  open war.  Remigration is the kindest choice, but here we are.

Buckle up.

Misery Index

The new Trump administration is shown in red.  Results continue to be much better than Biden’s misery numbers.  The advance is at a near minimum, given the Fed®’s policy.

Updated Civil War II Index

The Civil War II graphs are an attempt to measure four factors that might make Civil War II more likely, in real time.  They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings.  As each of these is difficult to measure, I’ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that combine to become the index.  On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

Violence indicators are up slightly this month, and still elevated.

Political Instability:

Down is more stable, and it went down this month after the budget fight ended.  I think the Somilisota scandal may increase pressures in a few months.

Economic:

The economy up just a smidge this month, but I think this is still cloaking the middle-class crunch and perhaps a bubble.

Illegal Aliens:

Still the lowest level since the Weather Report started.

LINKS

The links are again done by Ricky this month.  Thanks, Ricky!

BAD GUYS
https://x.com/CaughtCam404/status/1998766070623252802
https://x.com/FoxNews/status/2006823362182394125

GOOD GUYS
https://x.com/StealthQE4/status/2006266481001001437
https://x.com/nickshirleyy/status/2004642794862961123

ONE GUY
https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/oklahoma-man-target-practice-backyard-accused-fatally-shooting/story?id=128707327
https://realclearwire.com/articles/2025/12/13/wsjs_fearmongering_doesnt_survive_contact_with_evidence_153631.html

BODY COUNT
https://wir2026.wid.world/insight/executive-summary/
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/All_the_Worlds_Births_Web-1.jpg?itok=z3Ci7zG4
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/28/business/us-immigration-trump-1920s.html?unlocked_article_code=1.AFA.WFF9.w9QS69D5L2fG&smid=url-share
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Homicide_Rates_Web.jpg?itok=rn1aSBmf
https://studyfinds.org/churches-kept-americans-alive-states-made-a-decision/
https://www.thewrap.com/industry-news/business/entertainment-media-layoffs-2025-analysis/
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2025/12/19/dumber-sicker-poorer/

VOTE COUNT
https://thefederalist.com/2025/12/17/fulton-county-we-dont-dispute-315000-votes-lacking-poll-workers-signatures-were-counted-in-2020/
https://www.mediaite.com/politics/longtime-trump-pollster-reveals-ugly-forecast-for-republicans-heading-into-2026/
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/fight-young-men-2026-midterm-elections-rcna249513
https://www.cnn.com/politics/state-redistricting-maps-vis

CIVIL WAR
https://financialpreparedness.substack.com/p/who-are-the-bad-guys
https://brusselssignal.eu/2025/12/the-eu-could-be-gone-in-four-years-a-revolutionary-eruption-is-coming/
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2025/12/the_stages_of_a_color_revolution_and_where_the_u_s_is_right_now.html
https://rollcall.com/2025/10/08/civil-war-national-guard-midterm-elections/
https://www.civilbeat.org/2025/12/is-a-civil-war-possible-in-america-or-hawaii/
https://www.theburningplatform.com/2025/12/08/mass-collective-societal-suicide/
https://victorhanson.com/can-the-dark-ages-return/

Penultimate Day 2025

“He has to operate wholly by touch.” – Top Secret

Think about the penultimate letter of the alphabet.  Because I wanted you to.

Penultimate Day.  This is a particular and peculiar institution of the Wilder family.  It started over a decade ago, my guess is 2011 or 2012.  The Mrs. was having problems with her Blackberry® phone (the one with the cool trackball and the tiny keyboard and complete inability to innovate after Apple® showed up) and wanted a new cell phone.  I was on vacation, and the closest place that sold phones with our carrier (which no longer exists) was 90 miles away.

We popped the kids in the car, and headed south to buy a phone.  We went to Best Buy®.  We ended up not buying the phone (the deal was awful) and decided to eat at Olive Garden™.  As I drove home, I decided to have fun with the kids, and told them that this was a Wilder family holiday.  They bought it, and we had a lot of phone fun.  The day before New Year’s Eve would therefore be forever known to us as Penultimate Day.

The next year, we remembered, and did the exact same thing.

What are the rules of Penultimate Day?

  • Wait for December 30,
  • Drive 90 miles south,
  • Look at cell phones,
  • Under no circumstances whatsoever actually buy a cell phone, and,
  • Have some Italian food at a casual-dining chain.

While it’s not a tough holiday, we’ve missed one year entirely (2023) and only Pugsley and I celebrated on 2022.  Oh, yeah, and then there was COVID, where being afraid of everything was encouraged.

So, we try to observe it when we can.  This year we had two exceptions:

  • Wait for December 30 (check),
  • Drive 90 miles south (a new restaurant opened nearby),
  • Look at cell phones (check),
  • Under no circumstances whatsoever, buy a cell phone (check), and,
  • Have some Italian food that incorporates pasta at a casual-dining chain (mostly check: The Mrs. was tired and took a nap, so we brought her a to-go entrée back).

So, while we did keep it, we didn’t manage to keep it wholly, so I guess still doesn’t count as a wholly holiday.  I’m okay with that, because life is change.  I’m fortunate that The Boy and Pugsley could both make it and spend time with the family.  I’m also very, very thankful for that.  I realized sometime around the time a kid gets 10 or 11, in the way the world works now, that I had spent half of the days I’d ever get to spend with that kid, so I did my best to be memorable.

But the holiday has changed for us.  Back then the kids were little.  Now, not so much.

Time goes by very quickly.  Don’t wish even a minute or an hour away.  And don’t forget to enjoy the things and people that you have in your life.  Heaven is being grateful for what you have, Hell is being envious for what you don’t.

You can choose Heaven, and you can also still work to make it better.  I have more full-family Penultimate Days behind me than in front of me, and that’s okay.  I’ve had the ones that we’ve had, and hopefully we’ve made a memory or two and in fifty or so years, one of my children will look back on December 30 and smile at the thought of Penultimate Day.  But that’s their choice, and that’s for them in the world that they make.

One of my resolutions was to drink more water.  I’ve only gotten to “drink more” at this point.

For me?  I’m glad we have this silly holiday.  I’ve always thought that the New Year holidays (Eve and Day) were contrived.  They were (and are, mainly) meaningless to me.  But Penultimate Day?  I also use that as a time to think about the passage of time and one of its most important elements, the time I spend with family and the memories that we’ve made.

That being said, then is my wish that all of us have a wonderful and prosperous 2026, but don’t feel the need to wish it away too quickly.

And when midnight hits you, I hope you have a Happy New Year!

(this is a better version of what I said last year)

Minnesota’s Somali Scam Shindig: Empty Daycares And Sharia Dreams

“I understand, but it is my duty to remind him that my men are surrounded by thousands of armed Somali militia.” – Black Hawk Down

Somalians can’t learn to spell because they don’t know the alphabet:  they spend years at C. (most memes as found – the boating one is mine)

I have a friend that I’ll call “Jim”, primarily because his name is Jim and he often gets confused when I call him random names that aren’t “Jim”.  After I got divorced, there was one female I was put into regular social meetings with.  I thought she was cute.  Jim met her, and asked me after a brief conversation:  “John, what do you have in common with her besides your eyes and her butt?”

It was a good thing for a friend to say for me to recognize that, yeah, I’ve got nothing in common with her.

Which brings us to Minnesota.

Minnesota is the land of ten thousand lakes, casseroles, and apparently, a bottomless pit of taxpayer dollars fueling Islamic terrorists and Somali grifters.  If you thought the only thing in Minnesota that was make-believe were the Vikings’® Super Bowl© hopes, well, wait until you hear about their “child care”.

Not that the mainstream is talking about it.

Nick Shirley, the X®-using reporter (@nickshirleyy), created a recent video exposé has actual Americans madder than Ketanji Brown Jackson when you ask her what a woman is and it’s mean of your to ask because you already know she’s not a biologist.  In a 42-minute takedown that has racked up millions of views, Nick and his crew documented over $110 million in fraud in a single day.

That is not a typo.  One.  Single.  Day.

It is like finding out your grandma’s cookie jar is funding a phantom bakery run by the Taliban and Bernie Madoff.

Let’s start with the star of the show: a so-called daycare in South Minneapolis with a sign that reads “Learing Center.” Yes, “Learing.”

As in, they cannot even spell “learning,” but they managed to “lear” how to get $1.9 million in tax-exempt funding from the state’s Child Care Assistance Program in 2025 alone.

Shirley rolls up to the Learing Center, camera in hand, and what does he find?  No kids.  No toys.  No sticky fingerprints on the walls or small bootprints in the snow.

Just an empty building that looks like it last saw activity during the Carter administration.  This is not some isolated oopsie; it is one of hundreds of such “daycares” sucking down (at least) tens of millions in government cash.

Critics are demanding accountability from Governor Tim Walz, who is in classic politician “just don’t talk about this inconvenient fraud”-mode.  J.D. Vance chimed in, blasting the whole mess as a symptom of deeper rot, because he’s in his “let’s tweet® about this but not do anything”-mode.  And the FBI? They say that they are surging resources to dismantle these schemes, with Director Kash Patel calling a $250 million food aid fraud just the “tip of the iceberg” while he’s in his “how do I keep this hot chick”-mode.

No arrests.

Just a guy with a camera exposing this while the FBI was busy (poorly) redacting Epstein Files.

Now, if this were just about misspelled signs and empty rooms, we could laugh it off as bureaucratic bungling and that legendary Somali ingenuity in creating mud-huts.  But here is the punchline that is not funny:  it appears that almost all of this fraud ties back to Somali operations.  I guess when you’re a pirate at heart, everything looks like plunder.

Minnesota has the largest Somali population in the U.S., thanks to refugee resettlement programs that started in the 1990s because Somalians viciously killed Americans who were there to protect people bringing Somalians food and medical care.

Yes.  We took in people from a country so feral that they’d kill you while to tried to keep them alive.  So, these Somalis had a thought:  why not scam the people who saved them?  Thus, “Feeding Our Future” scandal:  dozens, mostly Somali, charged with stealing $250 million meant for kids’ meals during COVID.

Prosecutors say the total fraud across fourteen social services programs could hit billions.

That is enough to buy every Minnesotan a lifetime supply of lutefisk and still have change for a Vikings® Super Bowl™ ring.  Oh, wait.

I guess there’s still the lutefisk.

But the fraud doesn’t stop at fake daycares.

Medicaid is another black hole.  Allegations suggest up to $9 billion has been siphoned since 2018, with (surprise!) Somali-linked groups in the spotlight.

This is like a magic trick where your tax dollars disappear producing no good for society, and poof, luxury cars and overseas wire transfers appear so that moslem warlords can have a Mercedes™ and RPGs.  Republicans in the state legislature are pushing for reforms, but Democrats?  They are busy condemning the scrutiny as partisan because it’s partisan to not want to waste tax dollars on people who want to kill Americans.

Heaven forbid we ask questions about where the money goes.

This brings us to the extrapolation part, where the plot gets thicker than a Somali accent.  If fraud is this rampant in welfare programs, what about voting?  Minnesota’s automatic and same-day voter registration and no-ID policies are a fraudster’s dream.

Non-citizens getting ballots?  It happens.

With the Somali community under the microscope for fraud, whispers of illegal voting are growing louder.  I’m sure that they’ll be natural conservatives, right?  I mean, when a moslem shot a bunch of people in Australia, he was immediately called right wing.

To top it off, videos are circulating of Somalis in Minnesota straight-up preferring Sharia law over the Constitution.

  • “Sharia law is better than any law here.”
  • “I’d rather live under Sharia in Somalia.”
  • They defend arranged teen marriages and violence for religious insults.
  • A Somali cop boasts, “We work for our own people.”
  • Another declares, “This is our land now.”

This is not blending in; this is invasion.   A survey shows half of Somali youth identify more with Somalia than America.  I generally say that it takes three generations (at minimum) to fully Americanize someone, but that assumes that they’re Christians from Europe.

How long until Somalians assimilate?  Forever if they want to turn Minnesota into the land they left, but with concierge service scammed from your tax dollars.

The total tab? Possibly $18 billion at the latest estimate and climbing.  It was only a billion a month ago, and $10 billion two weeks ago.

It is a corruption conga line, with Walz at the front, insisting everything is fine.

We work hard, pay taxes, and expect government to guard the till.  Instead, it is a free-for-all.  Hell, for all I know we could balance the budget and have a surplus if we’d just stop funding USAID and Somali Autism Pirates who funnel the money back to Democrats and terrorists.

But I repeat myself.

If Minnesota is the canary in the coal mine for unvetted immigration and lax oversight, the bird is dead.  It’s not pining for the fjords, it’s passed on.  This bird is no more.  He has ceased to be.  He’s expired and gone to meet his maker.  If Democrats hadn’t nailed him to the perch, he’d be pushing up the daisies.  This is an ex-canary.

We don’t have anything in common with the Somalians.

At all.  They’re not happy:  I mean, they wouldn’t be happy if we shut off the revenue.

We’re not happy.

And it’s time we all recognized it, separated, and moved on.

Vivek’s Annual X® Mass Meltdown: Second Verse, Same As The First

“It’s a core meltdown, sir.  It can’t be stopped.” – Galaxy Quest

Is your refrigerator running?  If so, Ohioans may want to vote for it. (All memes as found in responses to Vivek’s tweets®)

As we slide into the end of 2025, Vivek Ramaswamy is at it again, melting down into a puddle on X™ like a little brown chocolate Easter rabbit in a sauna.  Last year right around this time, Vivek was preaching that Americans are lazy sacks of mediocrity who need a flood of immigrants to save us from our own couch-potato culture.

In December 2024, Vivek dropped a bombshell thread on X®, blaming American culture for “venerating mediocrity over excellence” since (at least) the ‘90s, you know, when he was 10.  Ramaswamy ranted about how we celebrate prom queens over math whizzes, jocks over valedictorians, and then made bizarre sitcom references.

His fix?  Import more foreign-born people like, well, Vivek.

Because why?

Because, apparently, native Americans (not the feathered kind, the lazy you and me kind) can’t hack it.  “Our American culture has venerated mediocrity over excellence for way too long,” he tweeted, as if the country that broke the sound barrier was built by sleepover parties and mall hangs.

The H-1Bs arrived starting in the 1990s.  They didn’t build America.  We didn’t need them to rescue us from squalor.  They were an economic invasive species who flocked here because America was already great.

This year the blue monkey god he worships must have whispered in his ear, “It’s time, Vivek, make them hate you.”

Vivek is doubling down, insisting that no one is more American than anyone else.  Blood doesn’t matter, loyalty to . . . I guess ‘90’s sitcoms . . . does.

The Wilder family tree is rooted deeper in American soil than a sequoia, so I’ll beg to differ.  My ancestors have been buried in the United States for 250 years, fighting in every scrap from the Revolution to WWII.

Vivek?  He’s a first-gen Hindu anchor baby whose parents, even today, aren’t American citizens. He really does worship a blue monkey god (Hanuman, for the uninitiated), I’m not making that up.  Vivek, despite being tied to the United States neither by culture, blood, religion, or duration is lecturing us on what makes someone “American.”

This is irony thicker than his mother’s accent.

As I write this, Vivek’s second annual X® tantrum is in full swing.  Running (currently losing) for Governor of Ohio, he’s gone into full defense mode.  “Blood doesn’t make you American, loyalty does,” he posts, all while defending legal immigrants as often “the most American of us all.”

I’ll let you marinate on that one for a bit.

But here’s the rub: Vivek’s definition of Americanism is so broad it’s borderless.  If it’s just about swearing allegiance and buying into “ideals” like consumerism and sacred cultural events like Toyotathon™, then every person on the planet is an American who just hasn’t hopped the fence yet.

Forget cultures that clash with ours, like those that prioritize caste (in his book, Vivek proudly notes he’s from the Brahmin caste) over equality, or Sharia over the Constitution.

Many immigrant cultures are absolutely antithetical to the American ethos the Founding Fathers baked in.  Those guys weren’t dummies; they knew ancestry, culture, and religion were key to cohesion.

Jefferson warned about importing “principles adverse to freedom.”

Franklin fretted over Germans diluting the Anglo-Saxon stock, imagine what he’d think about Vivek.

They built a nation for “ourselves and our posterity,” not a global Airbnb® for anyone with a passport stamp.  Vivek’s self-serving schtick reeks of opportunism.  He’s a biotech billionaire who made his fortune through what looks an awful lot like pump and dump schemes. Remember Axovant™?  His Roivant® spinoff hyped a failed Alzheimer’s drug that he bought for pennies, went public in a splashy IPO, and tanked when trials flopped.

This netted Vivek millions while investors ate dirt.  Sounds familiar?  It’s like Martin Shkreli’s pharma bro antics, but bigger and with better PR.  Critics call it a “Wall Street speculator scam,” fleecing folks just like those Indian phone scammers who promise to fix your computer for a Playstation® gift cards.

Vivek’s version?  Promise miracle drugs, pump the stock, dump before reality hits.  Billions in the bank, ethics in the toilet, I mean, if he owns one.

And now he wants to govern Ohio?

Good luck selling that to Buckeye voters who value straight shooters over slick operators.

The irony is, Vivek’s behavior does more to stoke distrust of Indians than any redneck rant ever could.  By shoving his “I’m as American as apple pie” narrative down our throats while ignoring cultural clashes, he alienates the very heartland he’s courting.  Ohioans aren’t buying it.

Polls show the race tightening, but with AG Dave Yost calling the GOP endorsement of Vivek a “wrong choice,” and Democrats like Amy Acton gearing up, his path looks rockier than the Appalachians.

A Hindu lecturing Christians on American identity?  In a state where churches outnumber tech startups?

He can’t win.

His meltdowns highlight the divide: America isn’t just ideals; it’s blood, soil, and shared history. Dilute that, and you get chaos.

What portends when this bubble bursts?  Vivek’s campaign will fizzle like his drugs in trials.  But the bigger fallout: his rhetoric erodes trust in assimilation.  His little kids have Star Wars® names and worship a blue elephant god.  I’ve said forever, if you didn’t consider naming your kid “Brandon” or “Jason” you’re clearly not American, and that takes roots that are about three generations deep.

If “loyalty” trumps culture, why stop at legal immigrants?

Why not amnesty everyone?

It’s a slippery slope to turning America into a mini-UN, where clashing values breed division. The Founders knew better:  cohesion requires common roots.

Vivek’s vision?  It’s a balkanizing civil war in the making.

In the end, meltdowns like Vivek’s are built on illusions:  that America is just a proposition nation, no heritage required.  But as my family’s graves attest, it’s more.  He’s increasing dislike of Indians faster than a bad curry, all while scamming his way to the top.

Ohio deserves better. We’ve seen this show before (cough Obama cough) and know that electing someone who is clearly not American won’t make America better, but instead just leave little brown puddles everywhere.

 

Bubbles Within Bubbles Within Bubbles

“I had it all, even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections.” – Fight Club

I wonder if Sean Connery is in 00 Heaven?

As we approach the end of 2025, the U.S. economy resembles a science-fair volcano built on baking soda, hype, construction paper, speculation, bubblegum, vinegar, and greed.  I’ve written about this before, and, well, it’s so big it keeps dragging me back in.

The rot is birthed by several mothers:   cheap cash, the need to put it somewhere, and a new technology whose benefits are (at this point) opaque at best.  Let’s put down that you already know “money printer goes brrrrrrrr” so we’ll go back to A.I.

Again.

At the center of this precarious structure is what everyone who isn’t high on their own supply knows is an A.I. bubble.  Large numbers of people (including me) recognized the housing bubble for what it was, but it kept on going because momentum is one hell of a master.

Another case of car-pole-tunnel syndrome.

A.I. has inflated stock prices, diverted resources like a drunk wine aunt at Lululemon®, and now has spawned secondary bubbles in hardware and infrastructure.

I’ve touched on this in previous posts, noting how projected AI:

  • growth outpaces any reasonably available power supplies, present and near future,
  • revenue projections fall short of the grandiose promises, and
  • the full realization of AI’s (theoretical) potential could unleash economic distortions on a scale we’ve rarely seen in human history.

But bubbles don’t exist in isolation.  Bubbles multiply, feeding off each other until the inevitable pop unwinds it all.  When the Great Housing Bubble burst, for example, sales of sulfuric acid went to zero for months.  How are they related?  Turns out the Great Housing Bubble was fed off the same credit structure that paid for basic chemicals.

And for all this time I thought it was because sulfuric acid was just like anything Chuck Schumer says:  baseless and corrosive.

One time in chemistry they asked me to write 1,000 words on acid.  I couldn’t finish it because my pen turned into a giraffe and the paper melted.

Today, we’re seeing this play out in real time, with AI-driven demand ripping into consumer electronics and beyond, all while broader market indicators flash warning signs of decline.

The AI stock bubble has birthed an investment bubble in virtually all computer hardware. Demand for specialized components has skyrocketed, pulling supply away from consumer markets and inflating prices across the board.

  • RAM prices surged 172% year-over-year, with some guessing they’ll double in 2026,
  • SSD prices per TB are climbing with AI and cloud providers tightening supply chains.
  • Motherboards shortages are emerging as manufacturers prioritize AI server builds over consumer PCs, with one producer having sold out for 2026 already.

This shift isn’t just raising costs for gamers and everyday users; it’s distorting global supply chains, creating a feedback loop where AI hype justifies more investment, which in turn inflates hardware bubbles.

The statistics say cows kill more people than sharks, but I’m surprised that cows are killing any sharks.

What happens when the tide rolls out?  With the underlying economy already showing recessionary cracks, the fallout will almost certainly be severe.

Let’s start with the AI bubble itself:   valuations in the sector have soared, with companies like Nvidia™ and others commanding trillions in market cap based largely on future promises rather than current realities.  The S&P 500’s concentration in a handful of AI-related stocks reached 30% by late 2025, the highest in decades. Nvidia© (for example) doubled in price from April.

Doubled.

Skepticism is now mounting.

All this is unfolding against a backdrop of broader economic weakness that A.I. papered over.

Oil prices are declining despite ongoing disruptions from wars in Ukraine and tensions with Iran.  Price levels are back into COVID 2021 levels.  This drop persists amid supply risks: Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian refineries and U.S. sanctions on Venezuelan tankers should theoretically support prices, yet oversupply fears dominate.

My dad once asked me, “Son, if you have a hot blonde rubbing oil on a hot brunette, what do you get?”  I answered, “I don’t know, Pop.”  “Your camera, son, your camera.” (as found)

If peace breaks out in Ukraine, bringing Russian oil fully back online, prices could plummet 30%-50% as sanctions lift and exports surge.  Add in a resolution with Iran, and the glut could be historic—you might as well use oil for bubble baths.  The IEA already forecasts surpluses building into 2026.

This is a signal of weakening industrial activity worldwide, not resilience.

Domestic indicators paint a similar picture. Unemployment among native-born Americans ticked up to 4.7% in July 2025 from 4.5% a year prior, with the overall rate holding at 4.6% in November.

Wages? They’re stagnant at best.

The K-shaped economy persists:  high-wage earners see modest gains, but lower-income workers face stagnation, widening inequality.

So, what portends when the A.I. Bubble bursts?

History offers grim lessons: the Dotcom crash wiped out trillions and triggered a recession and the economic response to that caused he Great Recession.  An A.I. pop could be worse, given its entanglement with hardware and infrastructure.  It doesn’t help that it is spawned, in part, by the loose-money policies of the post-COVID world.  If I’m making an SAT question, Dotcom is to The Great Recession as COVID is to ___________.

  1. The A.I. Bubble
  2. A giant PEZ® dispenser filled with plutonium pellets
  3. Greta Thunberg
  4. The Black Studies Department at Harvard®

He then arrested me for assault with sandpaper.  He didn’t accept the excuse that I’d only roughed the guy up a bit.

Consequences of it popping?

  • Investment in data centers and chips dry up, leading to layoffs of all those H-1Bs in San Fran and cratering the tech manufacturing here and in many nations around the world.
  • Deflation hits: hardware prices would crash as overcapacity floods the market, but not before bankrupting suppliers who bet big on eternal demand.
  • Dogs and cats, living together.
  • With the economy already teetering: slow job growth, wage pressures, and oil signaling demand weakness, the rest are downstream consequences.
  • Consumer spending, which has propped up GDP, falters as confidence erodes and debt defaults rise.
  • Income inequality worsens because banks and Wall Street firms cannot be allowed to fail.

If this capital misallocation is as bad as some of the graphs I’ve seen, this will be the singular economic event of the lifetime of anyone alive.  There is a reason that I picked 2032 as the central pivot point of when Civil War 2.0 would show up and it was the underlying financial mismanagement of the United States.  A.I.?  It’s not the gasoline in the room, it’s the spark.

It would have been something.

I made this and even though I replaced it with a more fitting meme up above, I figured you’d want to see it.

In the end, bubbles always burst because they’re built out of illusions and fed by poor allocations of capital.  The A.I. frenzy has masked underlying frailties that would have led to a very major recession during Biden’s term, but the bubble continued to get bigger.

As oil slides, jobs stall, and hardware hype peaks, the reckoning looms.  And that science-fair volcano?  I hope I don’t drop it on my foot.

I’ll Krakatoa.

The usual.  Not investment advice, do your own research, etc., etc..  I’m not a priest or an exorcist though I played one on TV.  If you read this and make meaningful decisions based on it you need to take a step back and reconsider your life.

The Bright Side of Cultural Collapse

“A date gives you a corsage, not a multiple fracture.” – Little Shop of Horrors (1986)

At the LEGO® hospital, almost every operation is plastic surgery.

If you’ve ever felt like America’s cultural compass is spinning like a drunk uncle at a Latvian wedding reception, you’re not wrong.  I believe most of my readers can remember back to the 1970s and 1980s.At that time, Americans had a (mostly) shared reality, love it or hate it.

That shared reality kept the country rowing in roughly the same direction.  Getting out of Vietnam was a political choice, and (we know now) hard-GloboLeftist Walter Cronkite was instrumental in getting us out after hard-GloboLeftist president LBJ got us involved.  The media could start and stop wars, at will.

Now?

It’s a fractured funhouse mirror where the Super Bowl® and presidential elections seem to be the last gasps of collective attention, like family reunions where everyone shows up but nobody talks afterwards.  The rest of the time, we’re each siloed in our respective algorithm alcoves, each getting a different view of reality, sort of like the way she looked after six beers and the way she looked at 8AM.

I’m always polite to people who wear glasses, after all, they paid money to see me.

How’d we get here?

Blame the usual suspects:  tech titans and open-border overlords who can’t get enough of cheap labor and expensive ballots.

Picture this:  pre-1930 America, a patchwork quilt of immigrants fresh off the boat around 1900, all crammed into cities like Ellis Island escapees.  Cultures clashed harder than a bad blind date.  Languages tangled, traditions tussled, and the “melting pot” was more like a slow simmer with occasional boil-overs.  How bad was it?  Immigration was essentially shut down with the Immigration Act of 1924 which sharply restricted numbers and essentially banned immigration from most non-Western cultures.

At this time, however, technology makes its appearance:  enter radio, then television.  These were the great homogenizers of America.  From FDR’s fireside chats in the ’30s to Reagan’s ranch riffs in the ’80s, these boxes beamed a single narrative into every living room with little competition.  Three networks – ABC®, CBS©, NBC™ – dictated the national conversation.

Commie Cronkite signed off with “And that’s the way it is,” and America, by and large, believed him.  Why?  Mainly because there were no other options except some fringe samizdat.

Radio had replaced the town square and TV turbocharged it.  Now it was I Love Lucy laughs for all, and heavy-handed M*A*S*H moralizing nationwide, with Johnny Carson‘s couch as the national nightcap.

I heard the national origami championship is tonight.  It’s on paper view.

This centralized media forced most of the immigrants into and ersatz Americana because there weren’t Slavic-language radio stations in most places.  Right or wrong, it forged a (more or less) unified American ethos from 1930 to the mid-1990s.

Sure, it was sanitized suburbia with a side of Cold War conformity and liberal-left inclusion, but it worked:  shared heroes (John Wayne, anyone?), shared villains (Commies), shared laughs from non-stereotypical minorities who were, after all, just like us (Cosby before the fall and his final TV show:  Women Say The Darndest Things).

We were one nation under three channels, indivisible, with sitcoms and soaps for all.

Then the cracks came.

First, cable TV in the 1980s splintered the spectrum, MTV™ for the kids, CNN® for the news junkies, ESPN© for the jocks.  But the real wrecking ball?

Then, the Internet appeared in the mid-1990s, and was supercharged by smartphones in 2007.

Suddenly, infinite choices:  blogs, YouTube®, TikTok©, X®.  Everyone is a broadcaster, nobody is the boss.  Literally no one tells me what to write, I’m free to bring up uncomfortable truths.  This resulted in something the GloboLeft hates:  attention is atomized.  Their rescue, though, is that now Faceborg™ and Google© could manipulate results and (mostly) keep ideas within politically acceptable limits.

Annnnnd she runs an NGO whose mission is to restrict speech. 

The Super Bowl® still pulls 100M+ viewers, a rare ritual that the NFL™ is trying to destroy by featuring increasingly divisive halftime shows.  Elections?  They glue us to screens every four years, like national therapy sessions.

But otherwise?

The GloboLefties lap up MSNBC® memes, righties rally on Rumble™ and there is no overlap.  Also, there are no more “water cooler” moments since the odds of anyone watching the same things as you are very low.

Worse, massive immigration since the ’90s poured gasoline on the fire.  Post-1965 reforms flipped the script:  waves after wave from Latin America, Asia, Africa from clashing cultures.  Traditional American values?  Now they’re “racist,” “xenophobic,” “bigoted,” “transphobic,” “climate-denying,” “patriarchal” poison.

Family, faith, freedom?  Hate crimes.

The people didn’t vote for this mosaic meltdown; The GloboLeftElite engineered it.  Cheap labor lured corporations; votes lured Democrats.  As Lenin reportedly quipped, “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them.”

Here, the “rope” was imported workers who tilt 80% GloboLeft, hanging the old republic with demographic destiny.

By 2026’s doorstep, consensus is kaput.  COVID crackdowns under Biden tried to muzzle dissent:  shadowbans, deplatforms, “disinfo” dossiers.  But the dam burst.

GloboLeftElite’s iron fist?  In the United States in 2025, it appears to be wholly rusted.  Political correctness, once their shield, lies in tatters.

Why?

Dissenting elites like Musk and Trump flipped the script.  X™ became a free-fire zone.

He has a lot of X employees.

Ideas flowed unfettered, exposing the emperor’s empty ethos.  “Woke” went from weapon to punchline; folks stopped fearing the “racist” label like it was yesterday’s news.

So, where does this cultural shatter take us?

Short-term:  more balkanization.  Red states redline GloboLeft policies, banning DEI diktats, booting illegals, building walls (literal and legal).

Blue bubbles boil over with sanctuary silliness and virtue-vomiting, with California leading the country in giving free money to illegal freeloaders.

No national narrative means that, right now, there are no peaceful national solutions.

America does have quite an advantage, though  an armed citizenry and what remains of federalism, where I expect state freedoms will increase as the central government weakens.  American was built as a country that could fight back against overlords with the preservation of the 1st and 2nd Amendments being so crucial to us not falling into the horrific tyranny we see places like England currently entering.

Ah, a raft filled with Marxmen.  (meme as found)

My take, long term?  Free ideas forge fresh foundations, with a Tradright renaissance entirely possible:  young men gymming, girls gardening, families flourishing in flyover fortresses.

I do see that the GloboLeft’s grip will have to slips as their “diversity” devolves into division because the moslems in Dearborn and Somalisota hate gays and want Sharia.  The GloboLeft cannot understand, at all, why their pets hate diversity.

We’re not done.  The rope the GloboLeftists sold?  We’ll use it to climb.

Tranquility Was Never The Goal

“Our Great War is a spiritual war.  Our Great Depression is our lives.” – Fight Club

The ultimate participation award.

As humans, we’re wired wrong.  Or right, depending on how you look at it.

We chase peace like it’s the ultimate prize at the carnival of life.  We say that we want a world without war, without struggle, where everyone has a comfy couch, unlimited Wi-Fi, more liver capacity, and steak that cooks and delivers itself.

Sounds like Heaven, right?

Wrong.  When I was a wee Wilder, Grandma McWilder would talk about how I should do nice things in life rather than bathing the cat in a paste made from DDT® and Lysol™ so I could go to Heaven.  Obviously, I asked, “What is Heaven like?”

Grandma told me it was nice and peaceful and that nothing bad ever happened up there.  I believe I said something like, “That sounds boring.”  Grandma did not look pleased, but I don’t know if it was about my statement or the cat.

Let’s just say I was a technicolor handful as a kid.  Oh, the stories I could tell.

But I wasn’t wrong.

But wait, there’s more!

Tranquility isn’t the goal.  Tranquility is the trap.

Peace isn’t just boring; it is deadly to the human spirit.  We need the fight, the blood, the steel. Without it, we rot from the inside out.  And that’s not me, John Wilder making crap up again.  We have actual studies where the government tortured mice to verify that I’m right.

Take John Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia experiments, please.  I’ve written about them a couple times before, you can use the search thingy in the upper right hand of the screen to find them.  I would have done that for you but you’re not my supervisor and I could type this sentence way faster.  Short summary:

In the 1960s, Calhoun built paradise for mice: unlimited food, water, space, unlimited beef jerky, no predators, SNAP benefits.

What happened?  At first, boom, the population soared.  But then, the weirdness set in.  The mice stopped breeding normally.  Males became either passive or hyper-aggressive or “beautiful ones,” preening themselves instead of fighting or mating.

Females abandoned pups.  Society collapsed into violence, isolation, and extinction.  All of this happened in a “utopia”.

No threats, no struggles:  just free cheese forever.  And they died out.  Stop me if you’ve seen this recently in other mammals.

I’m not going sugarcoat my jokes about diabetes.

Humans aren’t mice, but we’re close enough if you ask my parole officer.  Look at the downward spiral of the United States after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.  The Cold War ended.  We “won.”  Yay!  No more Soviet boogeyman lurking with nukes and unibrows.

Instead?  Peace!  Prosperity!

What did we do?  Got fat, lazy, bored and divided:  music went from “I’m gonna kick your ass” in the 1980s to “Oh, man, I need lithium because I’m sad”.  The ‘90s brought endless economic booms, but also the seeds of today’s mess:  identity politics, endless entertainment, and a generation starting to get hooked on screens instead of life.

Without a real enemy, we turned inward, fighting over pronouns and safe spaces.  Tranquility bred complacency, and complacency bred decay.

Same story with the Moon landing. July 20, 1969:  Armstrong steps on the lunar surface.  Humanity’s greatest leap.  We beat gravity, the Soviets, and the odds.  Then?  Crickets as the ratings dropped.

We went back a few times, planted flags, played golf (shoutout to Alan Shepard), and then just . . .stopped.

And then she refused to talk to them for six hours.

NASA shifted to the gay space trucks shuttles and looking for non-binary muslims and lesbians to shoot into orbit.  No more bold frontiers.  Why?  We won.  The Sea of Tranquility turned space exploration into a budget line item.

Need another example:  a Syrian teen in London.

Picture this:  an eighteen-year-old from war-torn Syria, resettled in a taxpayer-funded flat in London.  Free food.  Free education.  Free X-Box®.

Utopia, right?

Wrong.  He drops the controller and goes to Syria andjoins ISIS or stays in London and joins a gang and becomes a rapefugee with a machete.

Why?

Blood calls to blood.  Iron to Iron.  That flat was Mouse Utopia 2.0:  safe, soft, soulless and, let’s face it, that kid was inbred and not very bright to start with.  He craved the jihad, the struggle, the validation of existence through fire and fight.  Comfort didn’t kill his spirit, comfort starved it.  In part, this is why allowing refugees from incompatible countries is immoral.

I played hide and seek and ended up in the hospital.  ICU!

Why do we have wars?

We want wars.  If they weren’t popular, we’d have stopped having them a very long time ago.

Why do we want them?  Not because we’re monsters, but because we’re human.  Struggle validates us.  High stakes forge character.  Leaders like Alexander or Churchill didn’t thrive in peace; they rose in the crises they created.

Without enemies, we manufacture them, internal or imaginary.  Look at modern “wars”: culture wars, gender wars, class wars, cola wars.  We can’t help it.  Tranquility isn’t our default; it’s a rare condition that, when it lasts long enough we pop our collective corks.

Think about it:  our history has wired us for survival, not spa days.  Hunter-gatherers fought for food, territory, mates and because it was Tuesday.  Civilizations brought people together and made a professional league and channeled that into empires, exploration, and innovations. Remove the fight?

We devolve.

Mouse Utopia showed it: no threats equates to no purpose.  Humans need the arena, the sweat, the sand, and the blood.  We were built for the Colosseum, not the couch.

But here’s the rub:  the struggle creates a spot for growth, it’s literally the engine of history.  Without high stakes, we fail to thrive.

We back ourselves into existential corners: depression epidemics, fertility crashes, societies crumbling under their own weight and people who need drugs to stop that nagging feeling that they should be doing something that matters.  Oddly enough, our very humanity appears to be built upon the fight.

If you meet a dolphin and feel a connection, can you say that you just clicked?

So, what now?

We can’t “prosperity” the struggle out of us.  We need leaders who rally us to real frontiers and put real goals out in front of us, not fake fights over tweets®.  Stakes high enough to matter: colonize Mars, cure aging, harness fusion.  And something for the masses to do, like watching re-runs of Ow, My Balls.

Something.  If we don’t have something, we’ll make something.  Give us blood (metaphorical or not), steel, the feel of it all.  In the end, tranquility was never the goal.

The struggle is the point.  It’s what makes us scream, fight, and conquer.  As I’ve seen in memes:  “I want to go out of this world the same way I came into it: screaming and covered in someone else’s blood.”

And Heaven?

I think it isn’t at all as Grandma Wilder described.  I think it’s more like:

Player 1:  Ready Level 2.

Is Everything Fake?

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

My ex-wife was more versatile than carbon:  she could form more than four bonds at the same time.

The economy recently feels to me like a(nother) bad sequel to The Matrix:  smoke, mirrors, simulated steaks and guys pretending to be girls directing everything.

It made me think of Bowfinger, a 1999 Steve Martin flick.  Steve Martin plays the titular producer, Bobby Bowfinger.  His character drops this gem while trying to scam a crew into working on his latest film:

“That’s after gross net deduction profit percentage deferment ten percent of the nut. Cash? Every movie costs $2,184.”

The rest, it’s like Hollywood?  Fake sets, fake stars, fake everything.  Our economy, I think, has officially hit 8.9 out of 10 on the Bowfinger scale.

It’s a façade of trillions propped on fraud, fiat, and fairy dust.  The evidence is everywhere:  from federal slush funds laundering cash to “charities” that fund political hit squads, to Somali scams siphoning billions for terrorist toys, to the AI hype train where Nvidia’s® GPUs vanish into vaporware voids.  It makes me ask one question:

Have we peaked at “peak fake”?

Genghis Khan stayed in shape during conquests by making sure he hit his steppe goal each day.

Start with the government’s golden shower of “aid.”  In the last few months, we’ve watched as the public found out that billions flood from Uncle Sam’s coffers to “nonprofits” and foundations that, surprise, boomerang right back to commentators, politicians, and partisan ops that give the opinions to the Democratically-appointed judges to make sure that their cash lifeline is safe from scrutiny.  Sibling marriages are less incestuous.

Remember the post-election blitz Democratic blitz?  A Free Press® investigation uncovered a $27 billion rush-out-the-door bonanza, with $20B hitting eight leftist nonprofits faster than Kamala could say “unbourboned by what has been.”

It would be one thing if these were soup kitchens serving the starving, but these are slush funds for radical agendas, exploiting tax dollars to bankroll everything from election meddling to “community organizing” that looks suspiciously like astroturf Antifa® activism.  It’s like if United Way™ funded Trotsky but funded by the Czar.

Robespierre, Trotsky, and Pol Pot walk into a bar.  There were no survivors.

And USAID?  They shelled $44K to Politico™ for subscriptions chump change, but emblematic of how federal funds feather media nests.  Nonprofits are NGO scams, funneling billions to progressive power grabs, sometimes even recycling it from overseas.  Ukraine is the country that just keeps giving.  I mean, if you’re a Democratic politician.

House hearings exposed how these networks weaponize your taxes for ideological insurgency.  You’re paying for the people who keep bleating:  “muh democracy.”  This is Bowfinger budgeting: real costs hidden, profits pocketed by players who script the narrative.

Speaking of Minnesota Somalisota . . . (otherwise known as Mogadishu on the Mississippi), the relentless spotlight has turned from Indian invaders to Somalian swindlers.  The “Feeding Our Future” fraud, where Somali networks allegedly pilfered over $250M from child nutrition programs during COVID.  That’s bad enough, but state audits have found broader scams at over $1 billion in taxpayer theft, with funds funneled overseas to anti-American terrorists.

Terrorist training:  “C-4 yourself.”

I mean, not just anti-American Democrats, but actual “was given a dowry of AK-47s, goats, and C-4” dirka-dirka terrorists.

This isn’t petty theft:  this is peak fake philanthropy that rivals the Clinton Foundation.  “Charities” as cover for African clan cash grabs, shipping your dollars to fund foes abroad.  If you watch videos of interviews with these people, they have no connection philosophically to the United States, wish to live under sharia law, don’t speak English, and don’t have jobs, other than stealing.  I guess the only saving grace is that at least these “charities” didn’t pay for Chelsea Clinton’s wedding and the terrorists are fine with using standard NATO rounds.

The next fake?  I’ve mentioned it again and again, Nvidia®.

It’s not so much Nvidia™ as the hype around A.I.  Nvidia® seems to (mostly) be just selling computer chips.  Mostly.  Their stock has been exploding upward like a Somalian with a grenade, doubling since April, with a market capitalization flirting with $4 trillion.

Who is buying all those GPUs, and for what?  Is it kids playing Fortnite®?

Ed Zitron, tech industry writer, estimates Big Tech needs $2T in AI revenue by 2030 just to justify their A.I. spending binge, or it’s going to lead to a fall that will leave a mark.  We’re back to Wilder’s A.I. Paradox:  if A.I. is valuable enough to be worth the money that’s being invested in it, it will wreck the economy with a wave of unemployment.  If it’s not, it’ll wreck the economy because it failed.

Yay!  It’s almost like we don’t have a choice!

My quantum computer wasn’t working, so tech support told me to turn it on and off at the same time.

It’s a lot like the French having a military:  if they fight, they lose, and if they run, they lose.

Who is buying this stuff?  The usual suspects: OpenAI®, Microsoft™, Oracle©, Amazon™, and Google©.  As we’ve shown here before, this investment simply doesn’t have the infrastructure like electricity, PEZ®, or clean water production to support it even if they could build all that stuff.  It smells like tulips in the Dutch Republic back around 1637.

Me?  I think it’s entirely possible that we’re building a multi-trillion-dollar computer that might wreck our economy if it works.  And it might wreck the economy if it doesn’t.

So, is this peak fake?

We’ve got governments gifting billions to grifters on an endless cash spin-cycle.  We’ve got immigrants importing scams and exporting cash to jihadi Jamal in Jowhar.  Also, we have A.I. alchemists turning silicon into massive debts that might be decadal mistakes.

If it was just that, yeah, it might all work out.  But there’s this:  the economy is a house of cards built on counterfeit confidence:  $36 trillion in fiat debt, infinite inflation, and innovations that might wreck everything if they don’t become a robotic overlord.  Is it any wonder that the smallest pebble dropped onto this slope might cause a landslide?

How much dirt is in a six foot deep, three foot diameter hole?  None.  It’s a hole.

Fake fails eventually, but often lasts longer than almost anyone would believe during inertia.

Will we reset?  I think that’s almost certain.  When will we reset?

That I can’t tell.  As long as everyone agrees that the market is up, the market is up.  But Wendy’s™ is getting ready to close 5% of its restaurants because the business is so great.  I think the lower end of the income spectrum has thrown in the towel.

“A Dave’s Single™?  What, do I look like a Rockefeller?”

Going back to The Matrix:  “You know, I know this steak Dave’s Single® doesn’t exist.  I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious.  After nine years, you know what I realize?  Ignorance is bliss.”

Ignorance, bliss?  What do those words even mean?  In other news, I’m in a great mood!

Disclaimer:  This isn’t investment advice, this is an Internet humor column.  You might want to try those little cartoons they had in Bazooka Joe® gum for better advice on timing and market direction than I could give you.  I don’t own any positions in any stock mentioned in this post, and I also do not own (much) real estate on the Moon, though I was sold a 1/10th share in some bridge in New York by an Albanian.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: A Color Revolution In Progress?

“Any attempt by you to create a climate of fear and panic among the populace must be deemed by us an act of insurrection.” – Superman, (1978)

Don’t tolerate domestic violence:  seek opportunities for international expansion.

  1. Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
  2. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
  3. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  4. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  5. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  6. Open War.

Volume VII, Issue 7

Most memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.  I have maintained the Clock O’Doom at 9., given the open support of assassination and criminality by the GloboLeft and the increase in violence as well as direct interference with ICE and the insertion of the military into law enforcement.  Beware: the number can climb quickly.

My advice remains.  Avoid crowds.  Get out of cities.  Now.  A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Mere Anarchy is Loosed Upon the World– Violence and Censorship Update – Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – “It wasn’t worth it.” – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report.  These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month.  I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues.  Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 840 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

 

Mere Anarchy is Loosed Upon the World

When asked in 2020 if the United States was going to have a civil war over the election, Scott Adams replied, “No, because we don’t want one.”  Well, according to a recent Politico® poll, we expect one.  55% of those polled expected political violence to increase.  And, by my reckoning, there’s no real reason to not expect more violence.

There is a reason for this.

Increasingly, the norms that we expect from those that win an election have been subverted, and the “loyal” opposition is now just the opposition.  This isn’t new, dating back at least to Reagan’s administration.  But each election it swings farther, especially on the GloboLeft side.

Mark Kelly, former Navy aviator and the man putting the “ass” in astronaut, was elected to the senate from Arizona.  He also appeared with other GloboLeftists in a video targeting the military and asking them to ignore orders.  To be fair, they said to disobey unlawful or unconstitutional orders, but by that we know they meant, “Anything Trump asks you to do.”  Kelly further (allegedly) leaked classified information for political purposes.

I guess that’s only a big deal of Republicans do it, since no one gets really excited if, say, negotiations to end the Russia-Ukraine war can be leaked at will.  Regardless, though, I see the GloboLeft fighting back with renewed vigor.  They have reached the stage where they cannot be content with being out of power for a time, and cannot be content with policies that clearly reflect the will of over 80% of the country (remigration of immigrants to their actual home countries) as they are implemented.

This is an attempted color revolution.

Violence and Censorship Update

Censorship was the hot item during Biden’s administration, but violence keeps trending up as the GloboLeft cannot contain themselves.

  • Bethany MaGee was set on fire by a black man for no reason on a train in Chicago.
  • Two National Guardsmen were shot by an illegal alien from Afghanistan, one fatally.
  • Attacks at ICE facilities, vehicles in Broadview, Illinois; Portland, Oregon; and New York City.

Censorship is still there, however:

  • Lawmakers are proposing a ban on VPNs in Wisconsin.
  • A ban wave of “dangerous” content hit YouTube™, even on accounts (Zoomer Historian) that had their videos manually reviewed and approved by YouTube© prior to going live.
  • The Online Safety Act (U.K.) threated to impose a £20,000 fine (a £ is a metric $) plus a daily fee on 4chan because 4chan won’t censor itself.
  • The EU announced a “Democracy Shield” establishing a hub to detect and prevent dissenting views.
  • The EU is fining X® €120,000,000 (a € is a metric dollar for the LGBTQ+ community) for not censoring X™.

But the best censorship, is self-censorship, right?

Misery Index

The new Trump administration is shown in red.  Results continue to be much better than Biden’s misery numbers.  We’ll see, as the long-term trend is not good, especially unemployment.

Updated Civil War II Index

The Civil War II graphs are an attempt to measure four factors that might make Civil War II more likely, in real time.  They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings.  As each of these is difficult to measure, I’ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that combine to become the index.  On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

Violence indicators are down slightly this month, but still elevated.

Political Instability:

Down is more stable, and it went up again this month, drastically.  This is due to the budget fight, and I think the Somilisota scandal may increase pressures in a few months.

Economic:

The economy down just a smidge this month, but I think this is still cloaking the middle-class crunch.

Illegal Aliens:

Still the lowest level since the Weather Report started.  Remember, they care nothing for our country, nothing for our history, and only want money and political power and our country will be gone if they win.

“It wasn’t Worth it.”

The veteran in Great Britain who felt that, looking at society there, felt that the sacrifices of the soldiers wasn’t worth it.  This shocked the hosts.  I mean, how dare he not want to have the population of his nation entirely replaced?  People of Great Britain are noticing.

A similar replacement is taking place in New York City.  New York has always skewed towards a heavy foreign population.  Just like the two paperwork Americans shown below:

Of course, you can’t really expect someone like Mandomi to have any appreciation for America.

But Mandomi was elected by paperwork Americans:

And has no use for legacy Americans:

I’ve said before, 90% of American problems are downstream of immigration, and remigration would solve most of the pressure heading us towards Civil War 2.0.

LINKS

The links are again done by Ricky this month.  Thanks, Ricky!

BAD GUYS
https://x.com/fullymicrochops/status/1986199833825382795
https://x.com/CaughtCam404/status/1985316034002206962
https://x.com/CaughtCam404/status/1992348538349777382
https://x.com/snowstripperfan/status/1989513233557065811

GOOD GUYS
https://x.com/CaughtCam404/status/1988226923986837557
https://x.com/bennyjohnson/status/1989858234417455568

ONE GAL
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Ypz10gDeTg

BODY COUNT
https://www.transportation.gov/briefing-room/newsom-caught-redhanded-trumps-transportation-secretary-sean-p-duffy-exposes
https://www.oliverwyman.com/our-expertise/perspectives/health/2024/jan/9-trends-driving-historic-aca-enrollment-growth.html
https://starkrealities.substack.com/p/conservatives-higher-birthrates-than-progressives

VOTE COUNT
https://x.com/miss_frisk112/status/1986338262206849485
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/nov/25/trump-voter-fraud-pardon
https://www.npr.org/2025/12/01/g-s1-98267/ai-independent-candidates-congress-two-party-control

CIVIL WAR
https://x.com/SenatorSlotkin/status/1990774492356902948
https://x.com/BaroMontesquieu/status/1991031469503099130/photo/1
https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/controversial-california-proposal-returns-prop-50-21146593.php
https://www.mediaite.com/media/news/scary-joe-rogan-warns-america-is-on-the-way-to-a-bona-fide-civil-war/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEpL2NZM7NQ
https://x.com/StevenEdginton/status/1993333566332453253
https://jonathanturley.org/2025/11/04/a-quarter-of-americans-now-believe-political-violence-is-justified/

https://archive.is/2025.11.24-113108/https://www.wired.com/story/the-hard-left-shooters-leading-a-gun-culture-revolution/

https://no01.substack.com/p/the-darkest-hours-are-before-the-f1e
https://archive.ph/8Bx3T