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“Smoking marijuana, eating Cheetos® and masturbating does not constitute plans in my book.” – Breaking Bad
In a constantly downward spiral, Kermit finally found the downside in living his best life.
A few weeks ago my daughter, Alia S. Wilder was in town. We were in the middle of preparing dinner of steak, steak, and more steak for the grill when I saw Alia diving face first into a plate of cookies.
When she came up for air I asked innocently, “I thought you were on the keto diet?”
I did notice a mood change when I was on the keto diet: I got tired of cheese and my only joy in life consisted of watching television shows about murder.
“No, she said, “I’m living my best life.” I could even hear the italics in her voice. It’s amazing how well font choice carries in my kitchen. I think it’s the tile.
John Wilder: “Umm, what exactly does ‘my best life’ mean?” I thought I could tell by context, but I wanted to give her a chance to explain.
Alia S. Wilder: “It’s living your life by being who you are naturally. It’s doing what you want.”
I slowly shook my head. That’s exactly what I thought it was. Cue volcano erupting:
One of the nice things about being a parent is that you can be honest with your children when they are being utterly foolish. This was one of those times.
My first words were: “You know this is going to go into the blog, right?”
Is this why they hold the neighborhood block party when we leave for vacation?
I was a horrible pirate captain. They told me, “The cannon be ready,” and I responded “are.”
“You realize that’s the single stupidest piece of advice you’ve ever been given, right?” I continued, not even having gotten warmed up yet. “It’s the advice a teenager thinks up in the shower and then considers it a deep thought because, well they’re a teenager in middle school, and middle school age children are the single stupidest subspecies ever set loose on planet Earth.” I paused for breath. You need decent lung capacity if you’re going to go into full rage enhanced by spittle.
I continued. “Why is it stupid? Because people are awful. You’re awful. I’m awful. We have to work each minute to NOT do what we’d like, because what we’d like to do, if left only to our own desires is . . . also awful. You, me, every single one of us.”
I could feel the full rolling boil starting.
“Living my best life is the strategy of a three year old that wants to eat an entire box of Oreos® at one sitting and then lie about it and blame the poodle. Living my best life combines all of the worst ideas of abandoning duty, honor, and responsibility in only four words: ‘living my best life.’ Oh, I decided not to work today. I’m living my best life. I decided that I would rather spend my money on avocado-flavored non-fat organic vaping juice rather than baby formula. I’m living my best life. I don’t care if I offended you, I have to speak my truth when living my best life. Oh, I’m sorry Western Civilization, we can’t go back to the Moon and advance the human race to the stars because I’m busy shopping. I’m living my best life.”
What came to my mind during this tirade conversation were the words of the dead French scientist, mathematician, religious philosopher and part-time Uber driver Blaise Pascal:
“Man’s greatness comes from knowing that he is wretched: a tree does not know it is wretched. Thus, it is wretched to know that one is wretched, but there is greatness in knowing that one is wretched.”
In this quote when Pascal wrote “wretched,” he meant, “of inferior quality; bad.”
Follow your nose, it always knows. Specifically all about pressure, mathematics, and designing a computer by the age of 19, in 17th Century France.
Pascal didn’t think mankind was naturally awful, he knew that mankind was naturally awful: prideful, selfish, lustful, mean, and greedy. I’m not sure how Pascal got that idea, maybe he was picked on about nose size when he was in middle school. But he was correct. We’re inferior. But our greatness comes not from that obvious inferior quality, it comes from knowing that you’re awful; and then not being awful.
If we know that we’re awful, we can do something about it. If we think that being awful is okay, that we can live our best life, then it’s an excuse to be awful. In fact, it’s worse than that. Aleister Crowley wrote, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law,” which has been appropriated by the Church of Satan® and correctly interpreted to mean . . . do whatever you want to do.
Apparently living your best life allows you to dress like Dr. Evil on a regular basis.
One particular website (not gonna given ‘em a link, they’re the first one listed when you Google® “living my best life”) has a list, which includes the following gems of personally corrosive advice on how to live your best life (note, my comments are in italics):
Do what you want – let your inner three year old make all your decisions.
Speak your truth – not the truth, your truth since hearing the actual, real truth from other people might make you sad.
Practice sacred self-love – and everyone should celebrate you for your sacred self-love, since you deserve to live your best life because you suffered so much because of your (INSERT VICTIM STATUS QUALIFICATION HERE).
Not all of the advice on the website was horrible, but most of it was shallower than the gene pool that produced Johnny Depp your typical congressman.
So, under this philosophy, if I’m fat, the problem isn’t that I’m fat and should have fewer cookies: the problem is the world is fataphobic.
If I think I’m a cat, the problem isn’t that I’m delusional: the problem is that the world is transspeciesphobic.
If I think that being an American has nothing to do with the values and norms of the last 300 years: the problem is your problem for being tied to the past.
When the cookies ran out, the monster came out.
So, in summary, living your best life is nothing more than permission to be the very worst person you can be. All that being said, Alia S. Wilder really does make some tasty cookies.
“We can teach these barbarians a lesson in Western methods and efficiency that will put them to shame. We’ll show them what the British soldier is capable of doing.” – The Bridge on the River Kwai
Air combat in the Pacific as taught by public schools in 2019.
The Mrs. and I were discussing politics, and she tossed out an interesting question:
The Mrs.: “Is the Left going to have a Bridge on the River Kwai moment?”
I thought that was a great question, but it requires some backstory.
It was a condition of my proposal to The Miss that if she wanted to become The Mrs., that she’d have to watch several movies that dripped with toxic masculinity and testosterone. Patton, Zulu, The Man Who Would Be King, and any movie involving Clint Eastwood were required watching (among others).
The Mrs. said she’d seen most of the Eastwood movies already. The Mrs. hadn’t seen Hang ‘em High, so we watched that in the hotel on our honeymoon. Most of it. Okay, parts of it.
Okay, I promise these will make sense in a few paragraphs.
The Bridge on the River Kwai was included in that list of “must watch” movies. I decided to re-watch it last week after I started to write this post. I wrangled Pugsley into watching it with me. Pugsley’s a teen now, and the movie is a pretty powerful one that he’d never seen. As the movie opened to the scene of dense jungle, Pugsley asked, “What’s this (movie) about?”
John Wilder: “Well, it’s about a World War II prisoner of war camp . . .”
John Wilder: “You do realize that we fought in the Pacific as well as in Europe in World War II?”
Pugsley: “Oh.” He looked doubtful, like he thought my mind was slipping, but let it pass.
To a teen in 2019, WWII is as far in the past as a world without flight was when I was a teen. Growing up I knew all about the kill ratio of the Phantom F-4 vs. the MiG in Vietnam, but next to nothing about World War I aviation other than Germans pilots apparently ate a lot of pizza:
Notice that he’s smoking. I’m sure that’s what killed him – I’ve been told those cigarettes are dangerous!
The Bridge on the River Kwai is a 1957 movie about Vietnam World War II. In it, a group of mainly British prisoners of war are in a camp in the Burmese jungle. As in real life, these soldiers were being forced by the Japanese to build a railroad so that the Japanese could have better logistics resupplying their troops in Burma.
The movie focuses around a particular bridge that needs to be completed in order to finish the railroad on time. Never since the pyramids were built has civil engineering been so exciting and sexy: piling depths, soil bearing capacity, number of cubic yards of dirt moved, surveying . . . riveting! Okay, no rivets since they were making the bridge out of wood.
In the opening scene a British colonel marches in to camp with his officers and soldiers, after being ordered to surrender in Singapore. The Japanese colonel and the British colonel engage in a battle of will. Since the actor playing the British colonel is the same actor that played Obi Wan Kenobi™ in Star Wars®, obviously not long into the movie the Japanese colonel’s will is crushed.
Colonel Kenobi: “These aren’t the troops you’re looking for.” Photoshop credit: The Boy.
Arriving at a rear base in India, the American is encouraged to join a commando group that will destroy the bridge over the Kwai. And, by encouraged I mean not “volunteered” but “voluntold.” My kids are voluntold about a lot of things, but I have never sent them to blow up a Japanese bridge in Burma. Maybe next summer, since they haven’t successfully completed mowing my lawn yet this summer. Baby steps.
As the train is approaching, Colonel Kenobi sees the electrical cord hooked up to the bridge – the other part is hooked to a Looney Tunes®-style detonator that is out of sight. Oops. Colonel Kenobi and the Japanese colonel go to investigate. When the colonels get close to the detonator, a young commando kills the Japanese colonel. Colonel Kenobi then yells for help. To the Japanese troops.
***SPOILER ALERT ON A 62 YEAR OLD MOVIE***
After the young commando is killed by the Japanese, who have much better aim than Stormtroopers™, the American, who is across the river, attempts to swim and detonate the explosives. The American is shot, but as the American is dying, Colonel Kenobi recognizes him as the escaped prisoner from earlier in the movie. Colonel Kenobi is jolted back, and looks at the bodies of the two officers that are on the same side as he is that died because of his actions . . . his actions to save “his” bridge.
Oops.
In a moment of clarity, he says the four most important words of the movie: “What have I done?”
This is the payoff for the whole movie. And it’s worth it – the only thing missing is a coyote chasing a road runner with a detonator that old . . .
That is The Bridge on the River Kwai moment, when the Colonel realized that, stuck in following procedure, in sticking to rules, and in demonstrating what a proper man he was, he got people on his own side killed. Plus, he built a really great bridge for the Japanese. Colonel Kenobi had been in service to his enemy.
Thankfully, as he was dying, he fell on the detonator, blowing up the bridge right on time.
It’s a shame that they changed this line, since it would have been a great reminder to people vacationing to remember to take their swimsuits. Such an emotional impact and such practical advice!
Victor Davis Hanson (always a good read) describes the end result of politics in California, once the most prosperous state in any union (LINK):
What caused this lunacy?
A polarity of importing massive poverty from south of the border while pandering to those who control unprecedented wealth in Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the tourism industry, and the marquee universities. Massive green regulations and boutique zoning, soaring taxes, increasing crime, identity politics and tribalism, and radical one-party progressive government were force multipliers. It is common to blame California Republicans for their own demise. They have much to account for, but in some sense, the state simply deported conservative voters and imported their left-wing replacements
Where California goes, America generally follows.
When presidential candidates on the Left:
actively support giving healthcare to those in the country illegally,
make it impossible to secure the border,
make it impossible to quickly and safely deport those who are here illegally, and
support requiring American citizens to pay for all of this,
I wonder if they will ever have their Bridge on the River Kwai moment.
This particular kamikaze plane flew six missions.
When those “Conservatives” support:
unlimited globalism to export American technology and know-how,
importation of cheap labor versus using American labor via H-1B visas,
following every rule of etiquette set by the Left (that the Left doesn’t follow), and
rolling back each of our freedoms, but just a little slower than the left wants to.
I wonder if they will ever have their Bridge on the River Kwai moment. Did John McCain, on his deathbed, think, “What have I done?” I don’t think so.
How much of the foundation of this country has to crumble before Left and “Conservatives” realize what they’ve done to undermine the United States, which may be the last, best hope of Western Civilization? Do they care, or will they sell the country for two or six more years in power?
Never mind all that, an Eastwood movie is on. Haven’t seen Hang ‘em High or The Unforgiven in a while.
“I’m simply seeking to inspire mankind to all that is intended.” – Constantine
See the lengths I will go to in order to deliver top-quality humor three times a week?
Sometimes you find treasures in odd places. Back in 2007, I was working a nightmare job. The days were hectic, filled with emergency after emergency, wailing, and general disarray. And then I had to commute to work. Okay, home life was generally pretty good, but work really was a nightmare. One positive thing I did, though, was clip and print things that I found to be inspiring. No, not a lot of clippings like I’d finally found the missing connection between the Rothschild family and why there are no purple M&M’s®. No, when I found these quotes there were just a few – maybe less than a dozen.
Here’s one of the quotes I found in the clippings:
“If you have a guy with all the survival training in the world who has a negative attitude and a guy who doesn’t have a clue but has a positive attitude, I guarantee you that the guy with a positive attitude is coming out of the woods alive. Simple as that.” – Gordon Smith, Retired Green Beret Command Sergeant Major
Training, preparation, skill and Ruffles® are all wonderful things. I recommend them all, especially if they are cheddar-flavored. The quote above, however, exactly mirrors my own feelings and experience. Stated bluntly:
Attitude matters.
I don’t have that tie, though, and haven’t worn one regularly since ‘08.
I’m a long time reader of Scott Adams dating back into the mid-1990’s. He’s most famous for Dilbert, but he has written books and blogged for decades about everything from management to life skills to persuasion. Daily, Scott Adams writes his goals 15 times (LINK). Why 15? I don’t know. But Adams has reported that it produces amazing results for him, and he’s lived a pretty amazing life. It might also have something to do with him being a genius who works really hard and tries lots of things. Nah. He must be a beneficiary of the structural capitalist patriarchy and the reason people love Dilbert is only due to white privilege. That explains everything, if you’re in Congress.
How the goal writing produces results is probably unimportant – in my opinion the most likely idea is that if you’re focused on a goal, you’ll notice connections, clues or opportunities that would normally pass you by. The focus on the goal, the attitude that you can achieve something great changes the way you look at every aspect of your day. I know that when I believe I can succeed, I seem to keep finding ways to actually make it happen.
It might seem that it’s magic, writing down what you want 15 times a day and having coincidences show up that lead you to your goal. But, perhaps, the magic is just in you – seeing farther and deeper than you normally would is the magic. Having a goal changes you. Having the attitude that you can achieve your goal changes you so you can see the path more clearly.
As Henry Ford said, “Whether you think you can, or think you can’t, you’re right.”
I guess it wasn’t just college papers Creepy Joe plagiarized . . .
We’ve all been around negative people. I’ve had to work with them. I’ve had to manage them, and once I even had to work for one – he was my first supervisor after I graduated college. There was nothing that was good that ever happened to or around him. He’d had a leg injury and was now stuck at a desk job when he really, really hated desk jobs. Enter: happy, enthusiastic, wisecracking, young college graduate (still with hair at that time). I think he wanted to tie me up in a burlap sack weighted down with stones and toss me in the pond behind the office. Frankly, I can see why.
This clip is super short, and from the Clint Eastwood movie Kelly’s Heroes. Haven’t seen Kelly’s Heroes? You have your weekend assignment – it’s from back when movies were fun and not remakes.
Negative People:
Exhaust me.
Don’t accomplish much.
Take the last cup of coffee without making more.
Tend to make themselves a victim of whatever happened to them.
Infect the entire team with negativity and sometimes herpes.
Seem to get energy from talking about their pain and how the world is unfair to them.
Shoot down bad ideas. And good ideas. Any ideas, really.
Find a dark cloud in every silver lining.
I had a professor in college who had one piece of advice for me: “Keep smiling, John.” I took his advice. For most of my life, I’ve kept smiling. Even on bad days at work, I’ve kept a good attitude because most of the time, circumstances don’t care if you’re mad at them. The circumstances continue to exist just the same.
Not everyone agrees with me. On one particular job I actually received feedback that I was too cheerful. I guess being a mortician isn’t a job for everyone.
Okay, I’ve never worked as a mortician, but one of my bosses reallydid tell me I was too cheerful. But if I could be a mortician that hired Terminators®? I wouldn’t call that a dead-end job.
In most things in life I expect good outcomes, and generally I get them. That’s not unique to me. Throughout the history of humanity most times and most days have been good. Has there been war as long as we can look back into history? Yes. We’ve been fighting each other even before we were fully human. I imagine, though, we’ve been telling each other fart jokes for just as long. The human race has watched sunsets over the Arctic, the Serengeti, and the Atlantic and had pretty good days. An iPhone® isn’t required, but without an endless stream of Disney® live-action remakes, is life really worth living?
Nah, I like making them.
I won’t say that on my worst day there was a bright spot. The worst day of my life just sucked from 2pm until I finally fell asleep in bed. Honestly, it wasn’t much better the next day, but there were a few bright spots showed up. And more the next. And every day since then has been better than that day.
I mentioned magic above, and magic also happens on my worst days. Every one of my very bad days was the start of the time when my life started to get better, and it seemed the worse it was, the better it would eventually be. My best times have come from my worst times. One example was my divorce. The reality is that no matter how bad the marriage was, divorce is difficult. But as difficult as it was, it was the start of the next phase in my life, my marriage to The Mrs.
The longer, and the deeper the dark night of the soul, the bigger the positive that’s eventually come out of it for me.
If I ever were to get involved with the funeral industry, I’d tie the shoelaces of the deceased together in the coffin. That way if we ever had a zombie apocalypse, it would be hilarious. See, I even made zombies cheerful.
I spend time thinking about the future, and about dark possibilities not so much because I’m a gloomy guy sitting in the basement – but because it’s fun. However, in thinking about those possibilities I am prepared, at least a little more, for the uncertainty of the future. I’m cheerful, but I can see reality and know that there is danger ahead.
As I read the news I see a specter of a dark foe bent on creating a world that few of us want to see, one built out of fear and control. It’s even scarier because that foe wants you and I to think that it’s winning, so we will give up and it can win by default. Don’t. As long as people long for freedom, as long as we have each other and a dream of a better day where mankind keeps reaching for the stars, we have light. But in this time of seeming darkness, even a small light burns brightly.
If I were to give advice this Friday it’s this: be of good cheer. Be a spark in the darkness to help others. Understand that, until the last moment of your life, you have the ability to change the world for the better, to help create that better future for all of us.
“It’s mercy, compassion, and forgiveness I lack. Not rationality.” – Kill Bill, Volume 1
That’s awake, not “woke.”
Here’s a fable:
There was a little girl going to school in Japan. Near her place in the classroom there was a cocoon that the teacher had brought in to illustrate the life cycle of the butterfly, and it was hanging right next to her every day. For a whole week, nothing had happened, but then she noticed the cocoon shaking. She could see that the caterpillar had completed its transformation.
What bothered the girl so very much was that the butterfly was struggling to get out of the cocoon. Finally, exhausting all of the patience that a seven year old has, she helped the butterfly by ever so gently tearing open the cocoon so it could get free.
To her surprise, rather than flying, the butterfly fell out of the cocoon and onto the floor of the school room. She gasped.
The teacher walked over and looked at the butterfly helplessly writhing on the floor. It was clear the butterfly would never be able to fly.
“Did you help the butterfly out of the cocoon?”
The little girl, through eyes that were filling with tears, nodded.
The teacher explained, “It is only through struggling to get out of the cocoon that the butterfly gets enough strength to fly.”
This is one of my favorite stories. I can’t recall where I originally heard or read it.
I’d often tell that story to people that reported to me when they were facing a particularly difficult time at work. I’m sure it just made some of them mad – they wanted me to solve their problems. I refused, perhaps giving them hints on places they should look to find the answer.
One of my goals was to get the work done for the company, sure. But I also wanted to take the time to get the person developed – for me that was a moral imperative. My biggest goal was that everyone who reported to me became a more capable person – and I knew that didn’t happen without the struggle. Oh sure, I could have told Ted where the fire extinguisher was, but that would have deprived him of the struggle to find it. And one of his eyebrows finally did grow back.
That’s how I mostly have used the story, to show the importance of struggle. But there’s another and perhaps more central moral to this story:
It’s always nice when ¡Science!® is able to provide an insight on the problems of the world. I started with the story about compassion. When psychologists do studies of Leftists, they find that Leftists score higher in compassion than the norm – a lot higher. Well, some Leftists.
Karl Marx had only a very short career as a clown at children’s parties. After he was fired, he insisted that true children’s parties had never been tried.
Does that mean that people on the Right don’t care? Not at all. The data shows that people on the Right give more to charity and also volunteer more hours, so it’s clear that people on the Right care. But they don’t get all mushy and aren’t dominated by their feelings.
It turns out there are differences as well among Leftists based on race. One major bias that almost all people from all time have had is in-group preference. You like your family more than your brother’s family. You like your cousin better than you like your neighbor. You like people in your town more than people who live in the next town over – that’s why Friday night high school football games are so big in small towns.
This makes sense at almost every point in history – it’s rare for you to be living in France and think “Wow, that German flag flying the Eiffel Tower is such a neat thing to see.” In-group bias is normal. It’s why Americans rooted for team U.S.A. in the Women’s World Cup® even though soccer is a vastly inferior game to tic-tac-toe.
Thankfully I’ve reached the “Dad’s asleep in the recliner” stage when the Monopoly® board comes out.
White leftists, however, have somehow become biased against . . . white people. It’s like being born a guy and not liking that you were born a guy . . . oh. Nevermind.
As you can see, there is exactly one group that detests itself and prefers other groups.
But this isn’t the norm. And this isn’t how the Left has been for years. Data shows quite nicely that they didn’t used to be this way – as late as 2010, 20% of white Leftists thought that increasing border security was a good idea. 2018? Less than 5%.
It’s clear the Left has become more radical and the Right has (more or less) remained the same.
Republicans have stayed pretty steady on the border. Not so with white liberals.
Who would have thought that Leftist extremism starts with Grandma posting cat memes on Facebook®?
The user bases of these social networks took off in 2010. There is one thing that social networks want – your attention. They best way to get that attention? Show you content that creates an emotional response. Cats and babies are great – they make people laugh and go “aww.” But to a Leftist, to keep their attention – show them things that create outrage by violating their sense of compassion.
I hear her next initiative will be to forgive all the Electoral College student loan debt.
Through this lens, the reasons for the bans become clear – even though the algorithm mutes voices on the Right, the most effective voices must be silenced. Arguments counter to the narrative have to be stopped. As has recently become quite clear – the Left owns social media and will clear out clear, articulate voices on the Right given any excuse. The chance is too great that these voices will interfere with the programming. An example:
Portlandia is funny, and there are more bookstore clips that are even funnier – this was just the most “safe for work” one I could find.
Portlandia was a series on IFC® for 8 seasons. It mocked (fairly gently) the Leftist culture of Portland. It’s certain that the stars and most of the writers of the show are of the Left. But the things that the show made fun of can no longer be made fun of. Feminism was often the butt of good-natured jokes, but the feminist bookstore that several skits were shot in broke ties with the show after they decided they didn’t want to be made fun of – at all. What had been funny even to the Left in 2010 was by 2016 unacceptable. Feminism could no longer be a laughing matter, nor could any other Leftist narrative.
In 2019, Portland has lost its sense of humor and replaced it with outrage. Antifa regularly assembles a mob of hundreds to shut down any speech it disagrees with through violence. Their compassion drives them to shed blood, but it doesn’t stop there. This same compassion compels the Left to want to give every illegal alien free health care, and a quick pathway to citizenship. In turn, that drives the 144,000 illegals to want to come here – and that was just in June of 2019. That’s a 10,000 person Caravan every other day.
All of this is caused by misplaced compassion, programmed by social media via algorithms. Certainly it’s all a coincidence, right? It’s not like large corporations owned and run by Leftists would have a political motive, right?
“Have you any idea how successful censorship is on TV? Don’t know the answer? Hmm. Successful, isn’t it?†– Max Headroom
11:45pm – fifteen minutes to midnight. Yes, it’s subjective, and it’s based on the countdown, published last month (Civil War II Weather Report: Spicy Time Coming). We’re still at CivCon 6 – People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology. Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
In this issue: Front Matter – Censorship Update– John Mark’s Video and Criticism – Updated Civil War II Index – Who Benefits? – Links
Front Matter
Welcome to the second issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts will be a bit different than the other posts here at Wilder Wealthy and Wise – they will consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War II. My intent is to update these on the first Monday of every month.
John Wilkes Paintbooth (Idea via user Miles Long at The Burning Platform)
There has been a pretty significant interest in Civil War II – it has generated more emails to me than any other topic I’ve written about, with a great number of links to relevant information that you’ll see below. It’s also resulted in about a dozen book suggestions, and I’ve bought or downloaded every one of your suggestions. I haven’t had time to read even 10% of the books yet, but I can tell the suggestions are rock solid. Thank you. Please feel free to contribute more suggestions of links or books either in the comments below or directly to me at movingnorth@gmail.com – I won’t use your name (from e-mails) unless explicitly given permission, and I won’t directly quote your email unless explicitly given permission, but I may quote my answers in a way that doesn’t violate your privacy.
Censorship Update
Why is censorship an issue in Civil War II? Censorship is a measure of how those in power (either political or economic) fear an idea and how polarized they have become. Most censorship in the past had been based on the sexual content of the book or movie. Now it’s based on ideas that are dangerous. Which ideas? Depends on the day.
I know it says “Update†but this is really the first version, so technically the first “update†will be next month. There has been more censorship in the United States in the past year than at any point in my adult life. This level of censorship is more frightening than anything I’ve ever seen, except for the latest Democratic presidential debates.
Twitter® had also purged significant figures on the Right, most prominent among them James Woods, who has since given up on the platform after multiple bans despite having over 2,000,000 followers.
Let’s take Amazon, who in 2010 said that “Amazon does not support or promote hatred or criminal acts, however, we do support the right of every individual to make their own purchasing decisions.â€Â This was a fairly absolute position, especially since Amazon was defending selling a pro-pedophilia book.
Not so much now. Amazon has now banned dozens of books, and created entire categories of products that cannot be sold.  You can’t get a Confederate flag t-shirt from Amazon, but you can certainly get a Stalin shirt. This is despite the fact that Stalin killed (In the World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold and Silver!) more people in one year – 3.9 million – than the total number of slaves in the United States in 1850 – 3 million. Sure, it sucked to be a slave. But it was certainly worse to be a slave to communism that was starved to death.
With apologies to Arthur (LINK), whose tagline I mangled for this one.
I tried to come up with a list of censored things, but even the censored things seem to be mainly censored. Orwell would be proud.
John Mark’s Civil War 2 Video and Criticism
This video was suggested by several of you, including Shinmen Takezo who suggests you listen to all of John Mark’s videos. I’ve seen this one, and plan to watch the others when I have a spare minute.
John Mark reviews an article purportedly written by a “Red Team†(bad guy) member of a war game where the Right revolts against the government and the Left. My response is in italics, or braille if you don’t clean your screen very often.
First Vulnerability: The electrical grid is dispersed and easy to take down into most cities because it is impossible to guard. The front won’t be against just the Right, it will also be against their own (Leftist) cities.
I agree. The United States is built as a free society, and so is all of our infrastructure. It is devastatingly vulnerable. In one of the links below, you’ll see how a $0.02 match took down a $20,000,000 bridge. And that was on accident.
Second Vulnerability: 30% will revolt. Most on the Right have guns. There are 400 million guns, 8 trillion bullets in the United States – most in the hand of the Right. Ten million strongly on the Right. Tanks and airplanes don’t matter as much as the Left thinks.   There might be 2 million in the United States military, and over 60% voted for the Right. There are 20 million former military.
Total would be about 2 million available forces for revolutionary suppression (including civilian police), if the active military did not revolt.
I agree. The people, especially former military, on the Right can do whatever they want. Tanks and airplanes didn’t win World War II on the Eastern Front – the winning weapon was the mortar and the rifle – anti-personnel weapons. The Soviets also accomplished it only by throwing millions of bodies into combat. Bodies that will be tough for the Left to get outside of conscription.
I think there’s an Uber joke in here somewhere.
Third Vulnerability: The Left lives in consuming cities, the Right lives in the land that produces food and stuff. The concentrated cities of the Left produce a lot of porn and girls with daddy-issues, but not much food.
I agree. They are vulnerable, though the porn and Facebook™ drought might be tough on some.
Where do I disagree?Â
The Ultra-Violent and Nukes.
Sure, we know the Starbucks® Socialists and Latte Lenins won’t fight. Why wouldn’t the government take MS-13 and arm them and turn them loose to “make examples†of small downs, one after another? If they were losing, they would certainly do that. And they could scrape together a pilot and a nuke or two to take down a rebel capital city. If they were losing, they would.   Â
The Right could make a reasonable partisan force, especially when you look that probably 50% to 75% of the military would defect and train people on the Right, bringing along a nice batch of weapons (think grenades, C4, etcetera) to the farm to teach the rest of the football team. I don’t think Jed would need to teach the boys to shoot, and I think they’d learn to use that mortar and grenade launcher that he “liberated†from the Marines very quickly. Â
Logistics and Geography
The Left can be resupplied via air and ship. “Emergency†supplies would head into coastal cities and sustain them forever, though Denver would fall soon enough. Would Russia supply the heartland while the Chinese supplied the West Coast? I have no idea – I think they’d do what. Regardless, France would soon surrender.
Also, I think there would be a nearly immediate media clamp down.  The media supports the Left, no matter what. They would parrot the Leftist line until the studios were taken from them by force.
I think that this is far too optimistic, but I also think the odds are lower the more time passes.
Civil War Index:
Here’s the state for this month.
Economic: +10.42. Unemployment is the same – interest rates took a huge drop, and the Dow was (slightly) up. Increasing economic is good.
Political Instability: -46%. I think that the start of the debates and the poor poll numbers of “any democratic candidate†against Trump has calmed the Left politically by a lot. Lower instability is good.
Censorship: Originally this was going to be a candidate index. Sadly, there’s no data. How scary is it that you can’t find good data on censorship?
Interest in Violence: Up 7% this month. Not horrible, but not good.
Illegal Aliens: Up 24% last month to 144,000. 144,000 is more than have been deported since Trump got into office. This shows increasing instability south of the border, or lower fear of deportation. Both are bad.
Eventually these will be graphs, but a graph with one point is . . . boring. Maybe in August.
Quote From a Failed Candidate to be The One: “Is the Red Pill gluten free? Also, is it vegan?â€
One measure I thought was pretty good was from Anonymousse over at The Burning Platform: “One good metric may be the spread between political poll projections and reality/results. I’m thinking that gauges just how “free†people feel about saying versus what they do. Something I’ve noticed widening over the years.â€
I’d like to do this one, but the data points are just too far apart. This would be useful information over the course of a decade, but won’t be much use monthly. I think Anonymousse is right – people don’t feel good about sharing if they’re going to vote for an “unpopular†candidate on the Right, severely skewing the polls.
What do I mean by unpopular?
We were on vacation two years ago, and decided to stop at a national monument. We got out. The plates on our car are from a very red state – my county went 85% for Trump. As we got out of the car to stretch our legs and see the monument, we spied a guy birdwatching. He put his binoculars on our car. He was about 150 feet away.
Birdwatch Bill, yelling:Â “Who’d you vote for?”
John Wilder, being sassy, yelling back:Â “Starts with a T!”
Birdwatch Bill, muffled:Â “Ashshof.”
John Wilder:Â “What?”
Birdwatch Bill, with anger, yelling: “You heard me, A****le.” It rhymes with tadpole.
I was stunned, I mean, I don’t deny being a tadpole, but I didn’t think you could see it from 150 feet away. The Mrs. was in the bathroom, and I’m thankful that she didn’t hear him, since she would have broken him like a twig – she handles my light work.
After saying that, Birdwatch Bill scurried and jumped in his car, and sped off.
After hearing that story, The Mrs. was adamant that we not move to that state, even when I had a job offer there, even though I think she’d like to hear Birdwatch Bill’s yelp as she gave him a nuclear wedgie.
Who Benefits?
Whenever I see something that doesn’t make sense, I try to understand what could possibly be causing it. When conditions are better for minority racial and ethnic groups than ever in the history of the country, and the agitation increases, I have to ask, who benefits? When the push for segregation comes from, not the Right but the Left, I ask, who benefits?
When I see us moving on a seemingly certain path towards war, I have to ask, who benefits? Probably more on this in a future post.
Links From Readers:
Obviously I only stand by 100% of my own writing. Here is some interesting stuff sent in by readers. Feel free to take some of the burden off of Ricky, and send me more. And if you send it in an email, please let me know if I may credit you.
See, a chain link photo in the “Links†page. I’m witty that way.
“What kind of cruel charity charges orphans $500 to eat dinner?” – News Radio
The Mrs. seems rather narrow-minded about certain donations.
Before Pop Wilder passed away, I would go to visit him on a regular basis. After graduating from college, almost all of my trips and time off from work (when we didn’t stay home) was spent visiting Pop at our ancestral homeland in the mountains around Zorro Falls. I called the trips to go visit Pop “Obili-cations” because I felt obligated to go to see him on my vacations. Sure, I had a choice on how to spend those 10 days of vacation a year, but I also knew that the number of hours I’d ever get to spend with him were like the collective I.Q. of Congress: finite and rapidly shrinking.
To me, these trips were important. I figured* that I had spent over 99% of the hours I’d ever spend with Pop already. I had 1% or less of those hours left. These hours were precious and few. Given that perspective, I didn’t really mind spending every vacation day going to see him up at Zorro Falls. Now that I’m a father, I’m very glad I made those trips since it now gives me the excuse to guilt my own children into doing the same thing.
While we visited, I’d often go to church with Pop on Sunday mornings. Pop had lived within thirty miles of Zorro Falls his entire life. This church we’d go to was the same small church where we went when I was a child. It was the same church where, as a five year old, I had colored Jesus’ face bright purple during Sunday School one Sunday morning.
Sunday School Teacher, leaning to look at my coloring page: “Johnny, you know that Jesus wasn’t really purple, right?”
Young Johnny Wilder: “He’s God. He can be any color he wants to be.” I never even bothered to look up at her. I was busy coloring the Apostle Matthew’s skin in silver, having finished with Jesus. It was only years later that I realized that Matthew had been a Terminator™ sent back from the future to stop Jesus from giving birth to John Conner®. Now, at last, the Bible made sense!
Sunday School Teacher had no response to my stunningly brilliant “purple Jesus” logic, but did tell Ma Wilder. Ma Wilder got years of mileage out of that story, though I wish she wouldn’t have told it to the guys on my wrestling team.
But back to the story: I was on an obli-cation, and I met Pop at his place and went to the church with him. We sat down in the pew right up front since Pop claimed that the artillery during his European vacation in the 1940’s hadn’t been particularly good for his hearing. Sissy.
The Pastor began his sermon. Now, I always really liked that Pastor – he had been friends with the family for years. He had officiated at Ma Wilder’s funeral. The topic of his sermon that day was charity.
I look back on my life and feel really good about the times I was able to help someone. I recall stopping at a convenience store while travelling for business. I was looking for a book store, because I’d just finished the novel I was reading. The clerk told me that, “This is Chicago, nearest book store is . . . twenty miles that way, at the mall.” He then did something unusual. He looked me in the eye, and pointed at a tiny redhead, maybe 19, standing by a car in the rain, very out of place in the mean streets of south Chicago. “She needs your help, man.”
Unlike a vegan, I can change a flat tire.
Her tire was flat. She was trying to go to meet her fiancé at the airport. He was coming home from Iraq that night.
“Can you help me?”
I changed her tire in the rain. She didn’t have an umbrella, but she did have a poster board that she held over me while I changed the tire. As I tightened up the last lug nut, I stood up. “Okay, you’re good to go.”
“How much do I owe you?”
“No, ma’am. That’s not why I did it. Go see your fiancé.”
I still feel good when I tell that story. And I’m not telling it to brag – any person reading this blog could have and would have done the same – I’m no more virtuous than any of you. But I am happy that I was there that night, to help that young girl get to the gate and throw her arms around her man as he came back from combat. The act of charity probably helped me more than it helped her – I know I remember it, but I’d bet she doesn’t. The fairy tale ended with her at the gate. The supporting characters (me, for instance) were lost in the arms of her man, details that won’t make the final version of the story she has told her children.
Which is how it should be.
Anyway, I agreed with the pastor when talked about charity. Helping people is good. But then the pastor continued, “And let us pray that Congress will act to give money to these poor people.”
He lost me right there.
Is it just me or does Jesus look a lot like Bruce Springsteen? I guess he is The Boss, after all.
I know that it’s probably a sin to be really, really pissed off in church, but there I was, in the second row, angry. And it’s probably a double-secret sin to be really, really pissed off at the Pastor. Thankfully, the church had just had a new roof installed so I was shielded from immediate lightning strikes from on high. And, if I’m being honest with you Internet, if a “stray” lightning bolt was going to hit me, it would have hit me far sooner than that day – being irritated with a Pastor is probably pretty low on my list of sinful behavior. Thankfully, Christianity has forgiveness embedded into it, because I certainly need it.
But why did I get so angry at the nice Pastor? Charity, when done by an individual is enriching. It helps both parties. It helps me. It helps tiny redheads with flat tires. It is an act that transcends – a willing gift to someone who will never be able to repay the gift to the giver.
Charity, when done by the government breeds resentment on those taxed. If they don’t want to participate in this charity, men with guns will come and take them to prison. Government forced charity breeds resentment of that very charity.
Billions, trillions? Doesn’t matter. It’s just other people’s money.
Government charity also breeds resentment by the recipient. Why didn’t they get more free stuff? It leads to bad incentives – why work when you’d lose the government benefits? The final straw is it destroys the dignity and independence of those that receive it. And if the program is set up poorly, it actually provides a disincentive for people to get or remain married. Government charity is certainly worse on the recipient than on the (unwilling) giver even though both of them come to hate the systems.
True charity makes two winners, government charity just manages to create anger and division. Government charity is the epitome of a program designed by Democrats – it takes a great goal (we all like the concept of charity) and turns it into a bureaucratic mess enforceable only through coercion and penalty.
If it stopped there with just that mess, it might be survivable.
Government has now opened these incentives to any person who can cross our border. Get across, and get free healthcare. Free food. Free housing. Need a cell phone? A ticket to Des Moines? We can help. Approximately four billion people would like to live in the United States because their countries suck. They can’t get nearly as much free stuff, and they’ve heard of the economic miracle of the United States.
Charity is like working – it’s great when other people do it!
This version of “charity” has created a group of millions of angry, unwilling donors, while at the same time creating millions of resentful, angry recipients. Thankfully, there is no reason we can’t have a billion resentful, angry recipients living in the United States tomorrow.
Sounds like another successful government program. Yay!
*By my spreadsheet, I had spent half the time I was ever going to spend with Pop Wilder by the age of eight. By the time I went off to college, I had spent about 94% of the hours I would ever spend with Pop. If I had moved back to the same town, or gone into the family business of firewood polishing together, obviously that would have been a different story. I’m only trying to note that these hours with family are precious, and are gone much faster than you might imagine. Feel free to use this to make your children feel guilty.
For your coloring enjoyment. Or colouring in Canada, eh.
“That’s an interesting point. Come on, let’s get into character.” – Pulp Fiction
Such stunning bravery and individualism!
Not quite a year ago a meme broke out into the wild – the Non-Player-Character (NPC) meme. The meme originated with video games. In video games that follow a storyline, there are various characters that exist only to move the story forward. While you can play a video game character that’s a 4’2” Asian female bodybuilder with tattoos and bright red hair, you can’t play as an NPC.
NPCs can create unplanned humor because they are programmed and react in only very predictable ways. Slug one, and they don’t care. Meet up with the same NPC for the tenth time? It’s like you never met before. They have no original ideas. They exist only to fulfill their programmed destiny.
The connection made, probably at 4Chan back in September of last year is that an NPC is really a great analogy for a Leftist that has given up completely on the idea of independent, individual thought. The contradictions that are contained within liberalism abound, but even more striking is the degree of programming present. An example:
Stephen Colbert is a late night talk show host who is famous for hating President Trump. In the show after former FBI® Director James Comey was fired, Colbert mentioned Comey was fired. The crowd was used to Comey being a villain. Why was Comey a villain? On the eve of the election of 2016, Comey announced a new investigation of the “newly-found e-mails” off of convicted creep Anthony Weiner that cost Hillary the election.
The crowd cheered because Comey got fired. Until Colbert reprogrammed them that, instead of being a bad guy, Comey was now a good guy. See for yourself:
Today, obviously, Comey is a hero of the Left. I would imagine that, if you asked a Leftist, you’d find that Comey was always a hero and they didn’t recall at all that they ever thought he was an evil Trump supporter. It’s like a quote from Orwell’s 1984:
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed – if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth. “Who controls the past,” ran the Party slogan, “controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.” And yet the past, though of its nature alterable, never had been altered. Whatever was true now was true from everlasting to everlasting. It was quite simple. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. “Reality control” they called it: in Newspeak, “doublethink.”
And the worst thing is when the update is downloading that the NPCs can’t do anything else until they reboot.
When you view it from outside, it’s easily seen. But from the inside, it’s not. The basic contradictions are astonishing in their scope and presentation of Doublethink:
Pregnant men. Perfectly normal.
Islamic feminism. No philosophical inconsistencies here!
Roe versus Wade is written in stone, but the Constitution is a “living, changeable” document.
Transitioning a nine-year-old to a new sex is normal and healthy. Has been going on for thousands of years.
Speech you don’t agree with is violence. I’m triggered!
Violence you agree with is free speech. Punch a fascist!
No, surely it’s not that.
I could go on in naming examples, and likely so could you. Are there contradictory views on the Right? Certainly, but they’re mostly not at core of the philosophy on the Right as they are the very core of the philosophy of the Left. And, unlike the Left, the Right typically doesn’t end it all in a Purity Spiral (Robespierre, Stalin, Mao, Mangos and A Future That Must Not Be).
I’ll even admit that one time, I was an NPC on the Right. There was a point (long ago, college time) when a Democratic congresscritter proposed a national tax cut. President George H.W. Bush opposed it. So I opposed it.
Huh?
I had always been for tax cuts as a general rule. I stopped and thought . . . Why would I support not cutting taxes that the Democrats want to cut? Just because they’re Democrats?
I decided that the Democrat congresscritter was right. Cut the taxes. Obviously, that solved all the problems that our nation has. Oops.
The cure for being an NPC is thought. Since that time, I regularly examine what I think – this blog is a part of that process. I also examine why I think it. If the reason that I believe something is because other people believe it, is that a good reason?
No, it’s not really a good reason. Unless you’re a Leftist.
I think the reason Leftists are more susceptible to the Doublethink that drives them into the NPC cult is that they’re more r-selected – they come from an environment that values conformity and group inclusion. I write about r-selection versus K-selection here (r/K Selection Theory, or Why Thanksgiving is Tense* (for some people)). r-selected animals, like rabbits, move in groups. They’re prey animals, and know that the only safety that they have is in numbers. Doing something that’s different than the herd singles you out. It gets you killed. Rightists are K-selected – they’re predators. Individual behavior is not only tolerated, it’s the only way to get your genes propagated.
Okay this wasn’t an original, but was too good to pass up. I think it came from 4chan.
This explains several things about the Left. They reacted so quickly to the NPC meme that they had NPC-themed Twitter® accounts banned within a month of the meme making widespread appearance. How do you know something bothers someone? When it creates such a strong reaction.
Are all Leftists NPCs? Nope. I know a few I can discuss politics with and we can still be friends. They admit when I have a point. I admit when they have a point – a few very popular posts have had their genesis with conversations I was having with Left-leaning friends. But discussing politics with the typical NPC should be avoided. There is nothing more personal to them than the ideas that they have that don’t impact them at all. Really. Why would a fifty-year-old cat lady be more passionate about illegal aliens than anything else in her life?
By definition, a religion punishes heresy and blasphemy above all else. To call NPCs cult members might sound strong, but the reality is that they probably are. Notice the reaction when a newly-revealed religious revelation presents itself: “DACA”, “living wage”, “Maxine Waters is not the reincarnation of James Brown’s hair”, “religion of peace”, “bake my cake”, or “white privilege” begins.
I’d call it a tie. But unlike Maxine, James liked “Living in America.”
To be against any of these is to be filled with hate. Being left alone is not an option. Having no opinion is not an option. From their perspective, the only opinion you can have is the correct opinion – their opinion.
Me, I think I’ll keep thinking for myself. But remember, that’s dangerous.
“You were last seen hiking up Mount Ego.” – Frasier
Jimmy Page could NOT believe it when he found out that Marcus Aurelius would be available as a lead singer.
I know what you’re saying, “John Wilder, how can you be so freakin’ funny three times a week every Monday, Wednesday and Friday?” The answer is simple – my goal to be the funniest person on the Internet, with the exception of those anchors on CNN®. I mean, how do they keep a straight face?
That goal requires work. Really. Oh, sure, “work” includes researching things I’m interested in anyway and (sometimes) drinking a glass of wine or two while I work on punchlines. But I won’t hit publish or stop writing until it’s done. And done means I’m happy as a twit in a toga with a toupee. Speaking of noble noggins in nighties, Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (notice that smooth transition?) said:
Don’t let your reflection on the whole sweep of life crush you. Don’t fill your mind with all the bad things that still might happen. Stay focused on the present situation and ask yourself whey it’s so unbearable and can’t be survived.
Whenever I quote him, I remind everyone that Marcus Aurelius was the Emperor of Rome while it was still at the height of its power. This man had the freedom to make decisions on the literal life and death of citizens and non-citizens alike. He was, no joking, the most powerful man in the world.
But despite this worldly power, Marcus took the time to write down his personal philosophy. It wasn’t to pass down to posterity, it was for him. His book is called Meditations because these were the things he meditated about on a daily basis. These were the problems and doubts and issues he dealt with in his everyday life.
You can tell this was the first page of Meditations – later on Marcus used glitter pens and stickers. The historians were so happy when the found the key to the little lock on the diary.
When I was younger, I thought that the solution to my problems existed outside of me. I thought that if I could get more power, I could be happy. If you think being more powerful will automatically ease all of your worries and concerns, Marcus Aurelius is proof that power won’t help you in that way.
Sure, Marcus didn’t have to worry about making a mortgage payment or about not getting a tasty chicken sandwich because he showed up at Chick-fil-a® and forgot they were closed on Sundays, but the passage above shows that the decisions of running an empire and planning military campaigns were still overwhelming and stressful. While outwardly Marcus had to be stoic in the sense of a strong Roman emperor, in his book he could share the truth about his worries with himself.
Let’s look at another quote, this one by Navy SEAL Jocko Willink (LINK):
This is what I want you to be afraid of: waking up in six days or six weeks or six years or sixty years and being no closer to your goal . . . . GET UP. AND. GO.
At first glance, these two quotes might seem separated. They certainly are separated in time and pace, not to mention power. Marcus wrote about the present and living through the moment. He spoke of action in the small moment of “now” to allow him to get back to being able to deal with the big picture.
Jocko writes about failing in that future to spur action in today’s small moment of “now.”
Or maybe he identifies as a SEAL?
Two men, writing about the same thing centuries apart, come to the same conclusion through different methods on escaping the paralysis of fear in day-to-day life: action is vital for you to be the best you. You can’t dwell on what might happen if you make a bad decision – but you have to be afraid of the person you’ll be if you don’t take action, or, worse yet, don’t have a goal.
Why don’t we take action? Probably the number one reason is our egos. Egos are fragile things, and ego in many ways is our enemy. Aurelius wrote about getting through the moment, not being crushed by the overwhelming vastness of life. That’s his ego not wanting to be wrong.
I thought we’d have more of moved off to Canada by now?
Willink writes about wasting that future life. That’s his ego avoiding action today because it might fail. Ego wants to, above all things, not fail. Taking yourself into a future where you have failed by not trying is a sneaky way of using your ego to help you improve. Taken to extreme, it’ll make you single-minded. The biggest danger is that you achieve your goal and don’t have another one.
Don’t let your ego drive your life. Most people really don’t care about you, and that’s a good thing.
They don’t remember that your pants split during that presentation in college and you weren’t wearing underwear. At least I hope they still don’t remember that.
No one remembers that you time travelled into the past and that your high-school age mom tried to put the moves on you after you hit Biff Tannen.
Those that do care about you . . . don’t care about those oddly specific things I listed above. They care about you and want you to feel better. After you do something embarrassing, an inner voice beats you up. That’s your ego. Your ego is insulting you so you don’t embarrass it again. And, I assure you, if anyone said to you the things you tell yourself when you’re feeling guilty or embarrassed and looking in a mirror, you’d cut them out of your life in a minute. Unfortunately, when I tried to cut my ego out, my family stopped me because the electric drill I used couldn’t find it. The ego is kept behind the drywall of your closet, right?
I mean, that’s where the voices come from.
And his shoes didn’t match his purse!
Ask yourself: how does fear of embarrassment or fear of failure drive your behavior? How many things have you avoided because of fear? How many great things did you miss out on because you weren’t willing to take the risk?
Be the best you. Start today. And ignore or make your own use of that inner voice that your ego uses to punish you.
“We’ll soon stage an attack on technology worthy of being chronicled in an anthem by Rush!” – Futurama
In honor of Göbekli Tepe, I decided to take a morning run, but autocorrect changed it to “morning rum,” so, change of plans, guys!
Göbekli Tepe is an archeological site that dates back almost to 10,000 B.C. (12,000 years ago in metric). 12,000 years is a long time, in fact it is older than both agriculture and cities, but younger than my mother-in-law. But the other thing that it’s not older than . . . is beer. At Göbekli Tepe they found brewing vessels. And these weren’t small vessels, they were huge vats up to 160 liters in size, complete with chemical residue from brewing beer. If they can find chemical evidence of beer 12,000 years later, there’s no wonder mom could smell it even after I’d chewed a pack of minty gum.
This is how I like to imagine they figured out that beer was brewed at Göbekli Tepe.
Beer is older than farms. Beer is older than agriculture. The logical question is this: did people start cities and agriculture . . . just so they had beer on a regular basis? Is the reason that we have cities right now . . . the liquor store?
Beer. Without a steady stream of beer there wasn’t any way they could say, “Hold my beer and watch this.” Why is this important? It’s important because everyone knows that no really good story starts with the words, “So, I was having a salad . . .”
The technology of beer brewing changed mankind. And I’ll assure you, living in the very first cities that we know of would be nothing like living in a city today – no Uber. These first cities were founded around 7,500 B.C. in Mesopotamia, and had really cool names like Eridu, Uruk, and Ur that remind me of Swedish death metal band names.
I think that someone triggered him by giving him a hug.
But the first residents of Ur weren’t like you or I. Exactly how they were different is probably difficult to even guess, but we’ve had nearly 500 generations between them and today’s humans. And that’s changed us significantly – back in the timeframe that Ur was being formed, most men didn’t reproduce, but most women did. When civilization was getting started around 6,000 B.C., only one guy in 17 reproduced. Yes. The average baby-daddy in Uruk in 6,000 B.C. was impregnating 17 females. So, your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandma was a tramp, all because people made cities to get beer.
What is not shown very well is that the woman’s side scale was nearly three times the scale on the men’s side. This is graphical evidence that your great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandma was a tramp. Oops. Mine, too. Grandma, how could you?
In the United States today, about 3/4 of men father children while 85% of women reproduce. This is significantly better than the average I’ve seen that shows throughout history 80% of women had children while only 40% of men fathered children. Technology, in this case agriculture and beer, has changed humanity. Beer goggles appear to work both ways in the modern United States.
Regardless, change from nomadic human to agricultural/urban human has taken us thousands of years to adapt to, and, honestly, I’m still not sold on the cities. But I’ll keep the beer, thank you.
Other changes that were made possible by the move from nomadic human to urban human include the first:
Requirement for Money,
Economic Viability of Slavery,
Permanent Government,
Debt,
Taxes, and
Bar Tabs.
We don’t remember the things that were problems before agriculture, probably because we were having such a good time not living in cities that we didn’t bother to develop a written language to gripe about our problems. What’s to gripe about? I have to go hunting again? I don’t have a job because there aren’t any jobs so I get to go fishing? Bummer.
Over time, in the thousands of years since the development of agriculture, coping mechanisms evolved that created stability in the “new” urban-agricultural society. Pretty significant adaptations included:
Shhh. Don’t warn the kids. Let evolution run its course.
These adaptations allowed post-agricultural civilization to become stable, or at least stable enough so that empires could form. But as people changed their environment, their environment changed them. It takes seven generations (at minimum) to create a new dog breed.
How long until a new type of human is bred by the new conditions in the city? If I were to guess, given that humans are much more complicated that it would take 20 or more generations. Rather than going off to hunt they’d have to do the same job, day after day, for years at a time. Rather than start a fight with a machete because they were mad about friends who put mayonnaise and strawberry jelly in their hard hat, they’d laugh. That alone probably took about five hundred years.
Some people didn’t make the transition. The result, if you’re a guy? You don’t breed.
Monogamy became more firmly embedded in society only in the West, and was primarily spread by Western society, being a recent (within the last 200 years) in most places that aren’t Western. This had an amazingly stabilizing effect on society as a whole – fathers have more of a stake in the future of society. Sure, kings and powerful guys had mistresses, but for the most part more men (on a percentage basis) got to have children than ever in history.
DEFCON 1: This would be The Mrs.’ reaction to me having a mistress.
Thousands of years of evolution of both society and of the humans that make up society led us to a fairly stable way of doing things. Monogamy, sex roles, class, and hierarchy allowed life to proceed smoothly, and wealth to be created in society. I’m not saying that it was better than hunting and fishing all day, but there was certainly more beer. And after electricity, cold beer. The 1950’s was probably the height (in the United States) of this society in many respects.
Women didn’t work as much – they didn’t have to.
Divorce rates were low – mom and dad stayed together.
Illegal drug use was low – yes, people drank. That was the point of society, right?
Church attendance was high.
Biggest problem of 1950’s schools? Gum chewing.
The last sixty years, however, has led to the greatest amount of technological and social change in any sixty years in the history of humanity. What changes?
Birth Control – The Pill was introduced in 1960 – graph below. You’d have thought this would have led to lower births out of wedlock, but, not really. I don’t really understand this, since very few babies are married when born, outside of Pakistan.
I was born out of wedlock. Not married at all. Oh, and neither was my mom. Sometimes the trend is your friend.
Significant Immigration from Non-Western Cultures – massive influxes of people in societies happens in history, but every time that it happens, it later gets called “an invasion.”
I’m still looking for examples of successful multi-cultural civilizations. I even went onto a communist website to search for them. Still came up empty, though I do realize now that real communism has not been tried yet. Whew! I was worried that the unending stream of failures meant that it would fail here, too.
Massive Welfare – In 1965 President Johnson proclaimed the Great Society – we’d make everyone rich. Despite hundreds of billions in welfare spending, the only thing the Great Society created was roughly the same amount of poor people, but poor people who now depend on the government. Might be correlated with illegitimate births?
Thankfully, we’ve seen no more need of welfare after spending this much and poverty and people protesting for more money has disappeared. Yay! I love winning!
Fragmentation of Communication – in 1983, the highest-rated television program in history (non-sports) in the United States happened. It will never happen again. Television has fragmented into hundreds of channels, plus dozens of online services, giving millions of options. But the common culture from communication is gone.
Decline in Religion – Religious observance has dropped in America, despite religious belief being vitally important during Colonial times, when it is estimated that up to 80% of colonists were regular church goers, compared with 37% today. You may not be a religious, but it’s yet another commonality that we’ve lost.
The Internet – prior to the Internet, most person to person communication was local. Now? Left-handed dentists with impaired vision can form their own FaceBorg® group. The Internet brings us together. The Internet also allows us to fragment.
The Internet might be the most significant technological change of recent memory. There was a time when we actually argued about facts rather than hitting Google® to solve an argument. Now? Nope. But the Internet isn’t a tool for unity, it’s a tool for fragmentation.
We’ve been living with technological change for thousands of years and trying to cope with it since we started the first cities. Who knows where this will all end up? And to think, it all started with some guy founding the first city 10,000 years ago saying, “Hold my beer, watch this . . . .”
Let’s – again – state the basic thesis in Ricky’s words:
“I’m right there with you that collapse is coming to our house of cards because of the way they were dealt. But after all of the individual survival dramas play out, survival ultimately depends on a community rising from the ashes. And the glue of a community is ultimately the deals made between its individuals. And money is the encapsulation of those deals.
“So when the dust settles and the smoke clears and the phoenix rises from the ashes of the eagle’s nest, there’s gonna need to be a reset on money. On what it is, and how it works.”
Last time we looked at the financial history of the United States up until the Civil War. The first Civil War, not the next one (Civil War II Weather Report: Spicy Time Coming), I mean.
Just a few generations after the Revolutionary War, in the 1860’s, both halves of the United States defaulted on currency during the Civil War. The North defaulted on gold redemption in 1863, and the South printed Confederate currency like they were trying to make the Founding Fathers look like that one sailor that stayed in his bunk reading the Bible when the Seventh Fleet hit Sydney. My father-in-law swears that’s what he did, and no one with an Australian accent has shown up claiming to be The Mrs.’ long-lost sister.
Okay, after the Civil War, the United States is at least done with defaulting, right? I mean, we started up the Federal Reserve Bank™ in 1913 to stop these sorts of shenanigans, so that must have worked?
No. If the Federal Reserve ever pretended to have the mission of maintaining the stability of the dollar, it failed like one of Oprah’s diets.
Ricky sent this one. It’s perfect, with the exception that it doesn’t contain girls wearing bikinis. I think . . . we can do better. I think . . . we can Make Economics Sexy Again!
See, fixed that for you, Ricky. Graph is now 1000% better, unlike our currency. You can see her toes are pointed down into the sand, which shows that the value of the dollar is lower. Also, if I can point your attention to the years between 1950 and 1965 you can see what an amazing, um, time span that was.
In 1933, the United States had $4 billion in gold. Sadly, it owed $22 billion in gold that it would have to pay off in just a four years.
Solution?
Make owning gold by your own citizens illegal, and make them hand it in on penalty of going to jail if they don’t. After you’ve got those dollars, redefine the dollar so that it’s worth a lot less. Presto! You’ve stolen all the gold and then made the resulting “dollars” that your citizens have worth a lot less. Then you can give your cheaper dollars to other governments in payment. It’s like being Enron®, but with 100% less jail time, so it’s exactly like being a Kennedy.
So, yeah, I’d call that a default, too.
Finally in the 1970’s, the French decided that they could wake up from their wine and cigarette haze long enough to see that the United States was way short on the amount of gold necessary to pay all the debts that Johnson and Nixon created to get elected.
Defaulting on your currency is like a divorce: once is a mistake, twice is a trend, and by the third time….maybe, just maybe, it’s you. The French decided to be sneaky, and took all of their dollars, showed up at the bank, probably with a baguette under each arm, and requested gold. The United States essentially said, “Umm, we didn’t think that you thought we were serious about that. OMG, LOL!” and stopped giving anyone gold in exchange for their dollar. My scoring: yet another default.
Since August 15, 1971, the United States dollar is backed by our sterling record of fiscal responsibility, along with thousands of nuclear warheads. As Pop Wilder always used to say, “You get farther with a kind word and a sophisticated professional military and thousands of nuclear warheads than you do with just a kind word.”
I would my own discovery, the John Wilder Rule of Sexy Economics™: “You get more attention with bikini girl economics graphs than with just economics graphs.”
As careful study of this graph will show, the glorious years of 1970 led to the bare times to follow and a sensitive employment time in the early 1980’s. Unemployment never looked so good.
So, that’s a little bit about money along with some recent history. Looking at all of history, though, I’d say what happens with money depends upon the kind of collapse we expect to see. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll break collapses into three sizes. Why these three sizes? As of the time of writing I’m a bit thirsty, and the local convenience store only has three drink sizes. Here they are:
Medium: The definition of a Medium failure includes monetary easing. It could also include a default that may cause economic hardship, but doesn’t impact the government of the country or the ability of a country to issue its own currency. This describes all of the defaults of the United States.
Big Gulp®: This is the complete destruction of the economic as well as political system. Rome, long laboring under a fiat currency, finally imploded and left behind a smoking crater that took hundreds of years to fill. Thankfully, refills are only $0.29 with purchase of the official mug!
So what happens to an individual in one of these failures?
In a Medium Failure, you can keep your currency, if you like it, but what cost $100 a few years ago probably costs $1000 now. Everybody adapts and you can generally go about your business, but you’re poorer and not at all happy, and it looks a lot like the Housing Bubble of the 2000’s. Another analogy: it’s like you were forced to spend way too much time with my ex-wife.
The Housing Bubble can be seen pretty clearly here. Somewhere. Keep looking. You have my permission.
In a Large Failure, ultimately the currency is toast. Your money is gone. But the country will restart the economy using either a new currency, or just by adopting an outside currency that’s moderated by someone marginally more adult than you. Zimbabwe’s unofficial currency is the United States dollar, but there aren’t enough of them to go around, so many people use mobile currency that’s (more or less) run by cell phone companies. When your cell phone company has a much better record of fiscal restraint than your government? Yikes.
The silver content of Roman coins in the late Empire consisted of waving a bit of silver over the top of the molten metal before a coin was made. Rome had gone full fiat. Roman coins, in the absence of Roman troops, were worthless. Money itself was abandoned, and barter was the key, when local bandits and warlords didn’t just take what they wanted.
You want a worthless currency? This is how you get a worthless currency..
How do we get to these collapses, and how likely are they?
As a reminder of how close this might be to happening, a penny costs about $0.02 to make, so to get your two cents worth only costs a penny now, and that’s after they took out all the copper. The copper alone in an old (pre-1979) penny is nearly $0.02. It would cost about $0.04 to make a copper penny today. A nickel costs $0.06 to $0.08 to make. A dollar in pre-1964 silver coins is worth $10.60 at the time of this writing, which tells you that we’ve really already failed at keeping the value of our money up.
Ricky points out some interesting alternatives to currency in some of the supporting links he sent. Just like Zimbabwe leaned on cell phone providers to be less insane and more trustworthy than the government, Facebook® is betting that its new currency, named the libra (LINK) will be less insane than the dollar, and has the added bonus of having the word “bra” as part of its name. Honestly, I would have thought that Facebook™ would have denominated its currency in selfies and named it the lookatme.
Student loan debt makes you feel like you can’t afford much clothing, and you’re between a rock and a hard place. And very fit and tan and covered with oil.
Large Failure: Large failures are big. I mean, it’s in the name “Large.” It generally comes after really horrible financial malfeasance for years. Our current medical payment system (which is really bad) will, if not fixed, lead to a large failure. Other notable large failures? The start and end of the Soviet Union. North Korea. Nationalist China. The country is still a country, and, with outside help and a new government, can, after a generation emerge from chaos.
I think there’s as high as a 40-50% chance this will happen within the lives of the average reader.
Okay, these aren’t the Spice Girls™, but their ascending height from left to right is the perfect way to show that whatever lines are on this graph are going up from left to right. I assume the thing going up is bad.
Checklist – Signs of a Currency Collapse:
Gasoline is priced in goats.
Bankers take cold pizza as mortgage payments.
You can pay off your medical school student loans with the change from buying a candy bar.
Bill Gates is bumming cash by cleaning windows of passing cars.
$100 bills are too cheap to use as notepaper.
Americans are caught sneaking into Honduras.
George Soros begins laying off politicians and selling some on E-Bay®.
The IRS starts giving a 25% discount for cash.
Your financial adviser will have helped you get to a small fortune, but only if you started with a large fortune.
You try to make a withdrawal at the bank and they tell you they have insufficient funds.
So, Ricky, there it is, Part I and Part II. See you in Stockholm to pick up our Nobel Prize™!
