Category: Big Thoughts

“Resistance fighters, humans, sent back from the future by John.  And what?  Are they manning some kind of apocalyptic paramilitary convenience store filled with fake IDs and guns and money?” – Terminator:  The Sarah Connor Chronicles

That also explains why I have a piano player who is only a foot tall in the house.  Stupid genie.

Back in 2015, like a few hundred million other people, I was excited to see The Force Awakens®.  This was the first movie since Disney© had purchased Star Wars©.  Since Disney™ had done a good job with Marvel©, I hoped they’d turn the Star Wars™ universe into a compelling and entertaining set of movies.  I got The Boy and Pugsley and we headed off to the theater.  They don’t allow us to bring in outside food, but that’s okay.  We Wilder’s have a few Twix® up our sleeves.

I’m not going to turn this into a complete review of a movie that I feel is fatally flawed and ultimately stupid in many ways.  The plot of The Force Awakens® was an inferior remake of the first Star Wars® movie.  This was a flaw, and perhaps a fatal one – how many Star Wars© movies would end up being about blowing up yet another Death Star© – I’m beginning to think that Death Stars® might be hard to get insurance for.  And does a Death Star™ require homeowner insurance or vehicle insurance?

Regardless, The Force Awakens was as unsatisfactory as Joe Biden’s hair plugs.  But I did notice one thing that bothered me:

After destroying the largest weapon ever created and killing the Emperor™, the Rebels® had failed.  The ending of Return of the Jedi™, with fireworks and celebrations on world after world seemed to indicate that the Rebel Alliance© won, that the Empire® was finished.

I find the best alarm clock are the rumble strips.

Yet, here, in the first sequel after Return of the Jedi®, we find Princess Leia© at the head of the Resistance™.  What, exactly, is she resisting?  The new government that was set up after the defeat of the Empire™?  Bad scriptwriting?  No.  It’s the Empire™, but I assume we can’t call it that because otherwise Disney© has to pay George Lucas ten percent.

There are thousands of great plots that could be made about the Force™, the New Republic©.  Lots of these are of big ideas worthy of an entire galaxy and the fun derived in the first Star Wars© movies; great ideas worthy of a cast of heroes that we knew from previous episodes.  Heck, The Mrs. and I when discussing this post came up with a plot idea good enough to give me chills – Stormtroopers™ in bikinis, of Kini-troopers©, if you will, learning to use the Force™ at a summer camp in the 1980’s.

And did the Stormtroopers think they were the good guys, working on a thing called the Death Star?

But why the Resistance©?  After reflection of several years and several other movies, it has become clear – the producers of Star Wars® are leftists.  The ideology of Star Wars© becoming Leftist ideology was more important than the story.  It was more important than the money.  Star Wars™ had to be made to fit the narrative of the Left.

The narrative of the Left has always been of a smaller force fighting a larger opposing force.  The story of the Vietcong, the story of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and the story of Antifa© are all the stories of resistance to larger powers.  This is the myth that the Leftist leaders use for propaganda when they want to explain to the peasants why they don’t have any food, why they are poorer this year than last.

There’s a reason he’s called Darth™.  All the Stormtroopers laughed when he went by “Master Vader©”.

The Resistance© is the narrative of the Left, and so Star Wars™ had to portray the good guys as the underdog no matter what.  The Resistance® is how they see themselves – at the mercy of large systems that will destroy them – it’s in the mythos of all of the Left’s literature and entertainment.  Thus, this curious choice:  taking the victors and making them the victim.  The only reason I can see this is because it was written about the Left, for the Left.  Plot?  Entertainment?  Nah.

Stormtroopers© get cash from an AT-ATM.

The Mrs. and I talked for a while about why this was.  My theory was that the Left’s power was ultimately derived from being a victim – that’s why the language of the Left is the language of victimhood, and the conversations of the Left are about creating division based on that victimhood.

Hence, the Resistance™.

The Mrs. thought that it was interesting that the Left also chooses to characterize its enemies in terms of the two wars – the Left is fighting Germany in World War II.  The Left is fighting the South in the Civil War.  Why?  The Left views these wars as moral wars, simple wars complete with cartoon villains so it can remove complexity.  This allows the Left to feel good about itself while teaching and preaching hate.  It’s clear the Left is moving further left, while the Right retains roughly the same values as it did 40 years ago, which is intolerable to the Left.  In the view of the Left, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama aren’t on the Left – no.  Clinton and Obama are considered center-right, if not farther right.

But back to the Resistance©.  As I listed in a previous post (American Civil War: Four Fates, From Freedom to Soviet Tyranny), the Left controls:

• The K-12 educational system.
• Colleges and Universities.
• Most Protestant religious organizations.
• Most Catholic organizations.
• The psychological establishment.
• The American Medical Association.
• All mainstream news media.
• All mainstream entertainment media.
• Most departments of the Federal government, absent the armed services.
• The general officer corps of the armed services.
• The courts.
• Silicon Valley tech companies.
• Many (but not all) Fortune® 500™ companies.

It should be clear from the above list that the Left is marching through American institutions quickly.  When Donald Trump was elected president, immediately, however, the Left returned to its normal nomenclature, it advertised itself as “The Resistance®” even though it had quietly amassed major power throughout nearly every phase of American life.

The real crime is noticing.

You and I know that the Left isn’t the Resistance, it’s in control.  Why doesn’t the Right protest in hats made to look like genitals?  Because we have jobs and families.  But if you stand against the goal of state control, against the goal of only the “correct” thoughts being allowed, against being put at the mercy of the confederacy of victims?

You are the real resistance.  And they’re afraid of you.

“Remember, we can’t question the mores of the natives.” – The Man Who Would Be King

Our main weapons are . . . oh, sorry.  I triggered Briana by saying “weapon.”  To the safe spaces!

I had a subject picked out for today – despite your thinking that I might think up these topics in a booze and PEZ® induced haze on the spur of the moment by throwing Velcro®-covered toddlers* at a “Wilder Post Idea” mat placed on the wall to come up with humorous combinations of idea, I don’t.  Maybe I should – it actually sounds like a lot of fun, except, well, having to be around toddlers.  The upside would be throwing them.

No, dear reader, I try to map out these posts at least two weeks in advance using the much less amusing no-toddler-involved pen and notecard method.  I then do notes and research at least a few days in advance.  But last week I looked at my notes for the post I had planned.  It’s a big, complicated, ambitious post, so I’d been working on those notes for more than a week.

It’s not ready yet.

Thankfully, I have toddlers, Velcro© and a wall I have a list of ideas for posts written on notecards that I keep in several notecard boxes.  I’ve got several hundred ideas, depending on the category.  In truth some of them are little more than crude sketches in in crayon.  In reality, these are not second-rate ideas – they’re just ideas that I haven’t gotten to yet.  And I pulled this one out of the box:

It means: “Leftism as a religion.”  It’s obvious, right?

You may or may not have a religious beliefs – I do.  I don’t bring up my religious beliefs on this blog as religious concepts for the purpose of discussing religion – I’m not the guy who would be good at that.  I try to stick with religion and how it relates to society.  With the exception of the immediate cultural references and political figures of our time, I aim to make a lot (50%?) of these posts timeless – something someone could pick up in 20 years (or 200 or 2000), and still get a chuckle and a bit of wisdom out of while wondering just who the hell Johnny Depp was, and why does the Great Bard of The New Dark Ages™, that handsome devil John Wilder keep writing about him.

But in 20 years (or 200, or 2,000), Leftism will still be seen as a religion.

I think religion is built into us, biologically.  In 2012, the best scientific research on this was:

“We have found a neuropsychological basis for spirituality, but it’s not isolated to one specific area of the brain,” said Brick Johnstone, professor of health psychology in the School of Health Professions. “Spirituality is a much more dynamic concept that uses many parts of the brain. Certain parts of the brain play more predominant roles, but they all work together to facilitate individuals’ spiritual experiences.” (LINK)

Okay, is it just me that thinks that it’s funny that the guy who studies brains and religion goes by the name of “Brick”?

As Brick says, most people have a religious inclination.  Some folks who read this blog are atheists – and I’m not here to try to convert them.  The ones that are here are the cool kind of atheist who, most often, don’t hate people who have religion.  They are, for lack of a better term, libertarian atheists – they don’t care if you believe.  Just leave them out of it.  On average, however, people want to believe in something.  Our brains are hard-wired for it.

And that’s why Leftism appeals as religion – it’s an effective way to drum up a group, and nearly 70% of atheists are Leftist in the United States.  So, Leftism cloaks itself as a rational, political movement, but it’s really a religion:  a religion as weird and deformed as Bernie Sanders’ aorta.  Let me explain:

Religion is a relationship between man and a higher power.  The deformation present in Leftism is that man is that higher power.  Look at the statues to Lenin, Stalin, and the posters of Fidel and Hugo Chavez.  Man has replaced the higher power – man is the object of worship.  Let’s dig a little deeper.

I saw Lenin pick his nose the other day – I always knew that communists had no class.

The components of a religion are:

• A belief system that doesn’t require proof.

It’s taken on faith. Leftism doesn’t require any more proof than is in Hillary’s chardonnay.  Every single Socialist or Communist government has resulted in thousands to millions of deaths, and all of them fail, either Soviet-style, Cuba-style, or Venezuela-style over time.  Ask an ardent socialist or communist, and they really will tell you that socialism in Venezuela would have really worked if only it had been given a chance.  I guess 10,000,000% inflation (per year) in a country with the greatest oil reserves in the world is a sign of a successful, functioning socialist economy.

• There are (in most religions) demons – a power opposing the higher power.

Just as people are the higher power in Leftism, people are also the demons.  It’s the unbeliever (people like you and me) that is causing difficulty.  Leftism is great at finding and identifying scapegoats to point at to proclaim that they are the cause of all problems, Stalin and Mao were awesome at that(In the World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold and Silver!).  Most commonly, it’s people who are successful.  In Leftist terms, people are successful only because they are taking the success that rightfully belongs to the victim class.  Communism is great at finding villains, and great at finding victims, too.  Sadly, it runs out of the money of the villains.

• There is a method of salvation.

The method of salvation for a Leftist is joining the Left.  It is becoming versed in the various High Holy Words of Leftist Salvation such as privilege, Climate Change© (formerly Global Warming™, the 1%, racist, social justice, assault rifle, greed, change, economic justice, fascist, and progress.  No actual change in personal comfort is required – taking a private jet to transport Leo and his starlet of the week to a Climate Change® conference is okay, as long as Leo keeps repeating that fossil fuels are evil.  I mean, a Leftist donates one kidney, he’s a hero.  When I donate ten?  They called me a monster.

• There are sins – rules that cannot be broken.

You would think that most actions that were counter to the High Holy Words of Leftist Salvation would be wrong and would brand you a sinner.  That’s wrong!  You can falsely claim a person of another race put a noose around your neck when you went to Subway®.  It’s sad that you then have to hire immigrants do it, because it’s a job American’s won’t do.  Or falsely claim that a person of another race cut your dreadlocks.  Obviously, these are racist acts, but there is to be no punishment for them, because being a racist isn’t a sin, as long as you are a believing Leftist.  Being rich because you’re an evil capitalist isn’t even a sin.  There is only one true sin:  heresy (see below).

• There is heresy.

This is the ultimate sin.  Thinking a thought counter to the ideals of the Left is bad, and itself punishable by re-education in a Leftist government.  But to dare utter a thought that’s counter to one of the catechisms of the Left?  That is the ultimate sin:  heresy.  Wrongthink.  Thoughtcrime.  But it’s okay if you’re not from this country.  You can ignore all of the above, because it’s wrong to judge an immigrant on a moral basis.  I mean, what could go wrong with marrying your sister?

I’m worried about a cat and chardonnay shortage in 2023.

Don’t get me wrong – I don’t think that the people on Wall Street care about me any more than your average communist.  But thieves and people on Wall Street (but I repeat myself) only want my money.  Leftists want my money and my soul, The Mrs.’ soul, and the souls of my children in exchange for power.  I keep wondering . . . what’s the catch?

I used to enjoy engaging in light argument for fun with people who disagreed with me politically.  It was nice.  I learned a lot.  I learned where my arguments were weak.  I learned where I was wrong.  And when I was wrong, I admitted it, gave them the point and moved on.  It was fun – a great way to be exposed to new ideas and learn.  One two hour argument with me being pro-Second Amendment arguing with a friend who was against gun ownership ended . . . when I asked him if he had a gun.  He started laughing, and admitted he had what CNN® would call an arsenal.  He was having fun with me for two hours.  But I learned.

I don’t do that in person anymore.  If a friend who is Leftist brings a point up, mainly I’ll ask questions.  I don’t argue.  Friendly light arguments have gone from an enjoyable conversation to one where true emotion is unleashed and the person on the Left gets angry.  Heresy, you know.  So, I ask questions.  I don’t try to make points – I listen, and ask what the solutions should be.  But interjecting Wrongthink?  It simply won’t work.

That, primarily, is the difference between the Right and the Left.  The Right is confident enough that history has shown that the answers of the Right, though brutal, are effective (Kipling, Gods of The Copybook Headings, and It’s Different This Time).  The answers of the Right will return, not because they are ideologically pure, but they are the only methods known that actually work.  I’ll leave the word last to Kipling*.

*No toddlers were hurt in the writing of this post or the associated poem.

I spent several hours trying to fix the kipling on my car today with Pugsley.  Turns out it was just a corroded battery terminal.

Gods of the Copybook Headings,

By Rudyard Kipling, 1919

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Original of Crayon drawing by “My daughter Teresa” [CC BY-SA 3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)] via Wikipedia Commons.

And, no, I don’t have a daughter named Teresa.