Category: Big Thoughts

Cash, Hot Chick Memes, And Gold

“Good night, sweet maiden of the golden ale.” – The Fellowship of the Ring

She got pulled over, and the cop asked, “Whose car is this, where are you going, and what do you do?”  Her answer:  “Mine.”

The economy is currently a carnival funhouse rollercoaster:  interest rates are climbing like a squirrel on espresso, the Federal Reserve® is promising cuts, and the U.S. Treasury is issuing bonds 30-year bonds that are paying a higher interest rate than they have since the 2008 crash.

Meanwhile, central banks around the world are ditching those same Treasuries and buying gold, and the kids?  They can’t get jobs.

I think we might want to buckle up, because this carnival rollercoaster might be bumpy.

The U.S. 30-year Treasury yield hit 5% today, a level not seen since the 2008.  You’d think with the Fed™ signaling rate cuts, yields would chill out and drop like the mood of the Prime Minister when he’s confronted with all those pesky English and Scots he hasn’t replaced yet.

Nope.   Interest rates are spiking like a 35-year-old guy who identifies as a middle school girl volleyball player.

What’s gray, has spikes, and runs around a field?  Barbed wire.

Why?

The Treasury is flooding the market with bonds to finance a national debt that has ballooned to $37.3 trillion.  The Treasury issues the bonds, and buyers (think mutual funds, foreign central banks, and the Fed® itself) are supposed to snap them up.  The problem is, supply of these bonds is growing faster than a vegan’s tears at a butcher shop.

When nobody wants bonds because there are so many of them, they’ve got to sweeten the deal with higher yields or make the Fed© buy them.  People don’t trust the future value of the paper, so they require a higher interest rate to take it.  That’s basic supply and demand.  But here’s the kicker:  the Fed’s® still printing money like it’s auditioning for the “irresponsible German bank” part in a Weimar Republic reboot.

The U.S. money supply (M2) is growing at about 5% a year, pumping roughly $1 trillion into the system annually.  With bonds looking as appealing as a moldy sandwich, where’s the money going?

My maid doesn’t get tired, she gets sweepy.

Two places:  gold and stuff.  Real stuff, like oil, copper, or steak.

Central banks aren’t idiots, despite what their hairstyles suggest.  They’re dumping Treasuries and hoarding gold like it’s the last Twinkie® in a zombie apocalypse. Gold prices are up 2% the day after Labor Day (for you foreigners, Labor Day is the one day in the year that women are legally allowed to give birth in the United States).

Why?  Gold remains a hedge against chaos, and with geopolitics shakier than a Jenga© tower on 9/11, it’s no surprise.  Central banks from China to Switzerland are stocking up, signaling they trust shiny metal more than Uncle Sam’s never-ending stream of Everlasting Gobstopper© IOUs.

Then there’s oil. Prices are climbing reflexively, at a time when oil prices (and gasoline prices) normally go down a bit due to the end of northern hemisphere summer driving season.  When cash is flooding the system and bonds are a hard pass, investors pivot to tangible assets.  Gold doesn’t default.  Oil keeps the trucks moving.

Treasuries?

They’re only as good as the government’s promise not to go crazy and fill piñatas with them.  With deficits soaring, that promise is starting to sound like a drunk uncle swearing he’ll “pay me back next week”.

But the blindfold helped, they said.

Rising rates are usually bad news for stocks.  Why? Companies live on debt.  That cheap borrowing fuels expansion, stock buybacks, and those swanky CEO jets.  When rates climb, borrowing costs spike, squeezing margins like a python on a parrot.  Every S&P 500 company has a line of credit, because if they’re not in debt, some Wall Street shark will swoop in, use the company’s own assets as collateral, and buy it out faster than you can say “beveraged luyout.”  Higher rates mean higher hurdles for profits, and markets hate hurdles more than a couch potato hates a 5K.

Yet, the market’s been elastic, bending without breaking because most of those dollars printed end up in the hands of the companies that make up the S&P 500.  The S&P 500 is near all-time highs, shrugging off tariff tantrums and rate spikes like it’s no big deal.

But markets are funny:  they stretch until they snap.  This time, I’m sure it’s different. (Cue the Seinfeld laugh track.) The last time everyone thought markets were invincible, we got 2008.  Don’t bet on “different” when history has proven to have a mean right hook.

One pirate I know got his hook at the second-hand store.

But at least unemployment is low, right?

Sure, if you’re a boomer with a corner office.  The headline rate is 4.2%, but for 16- to 24-year-olds, it’s over 10%.  That’s not “low”; that’s a generation stuck flipping burgers since 60% of new college grads aren’t employed.  The “quits” rate—how often people ditch their jobs—is at a five-year low, meaning kids aren’t leaving because they know there’s nothing else out there.

A soft labor market plus rising rates?  That’s a recipe for stagflation, not growth.  No wonder Gen Z’s more interested in crypto scams and video games than climbing the corporate ladder.

So, where’s this economic rollercoaster headed?

The Fed© is in a bind.  They’re being pushed to cut rates to juice the economy, but inflation is still hovering near 3%, and it’s flexing upwards.

Keep printing money, and inflation could roar back like a drunken ex with a cell phone at 2am.  Raise rates too fast, and you choke the economy, spiking unemployment and tanking stocks.  Meanwhile, the Treasury is issuing bonds like they’re piñata stuffing, but buyers are scarce.  Foreign central banks own $8.7 trillion in Treasuries, but they’re pivoting to gold because it’s the only central bank holding that’s appreciating.

This all points to a reckoning.

Printed greenbacks are flooding in, but it’s not going to bonds—it’s chasing gold, oil, and maybe that Bitcoin your nephew won’t shut up about while not yet fleeing from the S&P 500, who will end up getting the cash anyway.

Superman® does have a cousin without superpowers.  Poor Norm-El.

Markets might keep bending, but history says they will eventually break.  It could be a slow bleed, like the stagflation of the 70s, or a sharp crash, like 2008.  Either way, the government is spending like a toddler with a sugar high and a credit card, and the bill will eventually be paid by the borrower.

Or the lender.

I worry that we might be seeing an economic rollercoaster, but that’s still better than the most powerful carnival ride:  the merry-go-round.

It has the most horse power.

Disclaimer:  I am not a financial advisor.  You would be foolish to trust me for financial advice, since I have taken my own advice many times and based on the results I consider myself a sketchy source on my best day, so you should talk to someone who knows more about it than an Internet humorist, even though I’m currently sober.  Currently.  As far as you know.

Living In The Past: The World War II Hangover

“This watch I got here was first purchased by your great-grandfather during the First World War.  It was bought in a little general store in Knoxville, Tennessee.” – Pulp Fiction

Iran is stuck between Iraq and a hard place.

Every group has a story that defines them:  the myth, the memory, the moment that crystallizes who they are and what they value.  For Christians, it’s the Crucifixion and Resurrection, the ultimate sacrifice and triumph of life.  For the Chinese, it’s the Century of Humiliation, a wound that fuels their drive for global dominance.  For Three Stooges® fans, it’s the seismic shift when Shemp replaced Curly, forever splitting the purists from the heretics, and don’t even get me started on the anti-Curly, Joe Besser.

But for too many groups the Second World War is the foundational story, a crucible that forged their modern identities. And for most, it’s a scar that still festers, shaping their worldview in ways that are often more curse than blessing like the time I found a genie but didn’t get a wish because I rubbed him the wrong way.

Let’s start with the United States.

For the United States, WWII cemented the idea that big government is the ultimate and best problem-solver and has our best interests at heart.  The war effort, which would have cost $4.1 trillion in today’s dollars, mobilized industry, science, and bureaucracy like never before, birthing the military-industrial complex that Ike warned us about.  I hear JFK was going to work on that, but they changed his mind.

Biden’s final executive order:  “Purple crayons will now taste like grapes.”

The lesson of the war was simple:  if you throw enough tax dollars and central planning at a problem, you can save the world.  Never mind that the failed New Deal had already disproved this; WWII made it gospel.  Blacks can’t read?  Throw money and central planning at it.  Poor people keep doing the things that made them poor?  Throw money and central planning at it.  Women complaining about . . . whatever?  Throw money and central planning at it.  The result of all this was the United States giving DEI grants for difficult tasks, like breathing.

The war also taught Americans that war is noble when the British say so.  Pearl Harbor was the trigger for the entry of the United States, but Britain’s pleas for aid via Lend-Lease pulled us into Europe’s mess for the second time in a generation.  Post-1945, the U.S. embraced its role as the world’s foremost military power and world policeman, from Korea to Kabul, with a budget to match, spending trillions to give democracy to those that don’t care about it.

Another lingering ghost: the myth of the “Greatest Generation,” implying every war since is just as righteous, no matter the cost in blood or treasure.  This is the same generation that voted in all of Johnson’s Great Society crap, and the generation you can thank for the Hart-Cellar Immigration Act of 1965.  Our victory in World War II blinds us to overreach, ballooning debt, and the erosion of liberty at home as the state grows ever fatter.

My friend’s grandfather killed six Germans on the beach at Normandy.  It’s not as heroic as it sounds:  he did it last week.

Moving across the sea to Bongland, where they have a big tower that goes “Bong” every hour, Britain’s WWII story is one of defiance.  The “stiff upper lip” against Hitler’s bombs during the Blitz, with Churchill’s speeches rallying a nation under siege.  But the war’s cost, $120 billion in debt, 450,000 dead, cities like London and Coventry in jumbled rubble all askew like Yorkshireman’s teeth, broke the back of the Empire.

The foundational lesson twisted: instead of pride in survival, Britain internalized a twisted guilt, spinning off colonies that weren’t quite ready to govern themselves like India and Nigeria faster than you can say “Commonwealth.”

Worse, the “we’re all in this together” myth morphed into a masochistic anti-colonialism, where importing millions of non-British migrants became a moral crusade to atone for empire, starting with the H.M.S. Windrush bringing hundreds of non-British to Great Britain to keep wages down.  The result? A cultural identity crisis, where “Britishness” is now a dirty word, and cities like London are less British than Bombay was in 1850.  The war taught Britain to survive, but it lost its soul.  But, hey, think of all the great food!

Stop spreading the lie that moslem women have to wear the hijabs.  It’s their choice – they can also be stoned to death.

Germany got it the worst, or wurst:  their national policy became self-hatred.  Germany’s WWII story is Hitler and defeat, a double blow that turned national pride into a mortal sin and Hitler into a replacement for Satan.  The war toll of German death and destruction:  5.3 million military deaths, 2 million civilian, cities like Cologne and Dresden reduced to rubble or ash was compounded by the framing of Germany as the sole reason for war.

The foundational lesson?  Germans can’t be trusted with power or tanks or a sense of humor.  Post-war, this bred an anti-nationalism so intense it’s practically policy.  Germany’s “Vergangenheitsbewältigung” (reckoning with the past) demands eternal penance as if this was a racial punishment where current Germans who in no way were responsible for World War II have to take the blame.

Foot fetishes are on the rise in Germany, probably because of the smell of defeat.

The result?  Immigration surged, with 20% of Germany’s population now foreign-born, often seen as a way to dilute the “German” identity that led to 1939.  The war’s shadow stifles dissent:  question migration or EU mandates, and you’re a Nazi and your entire political party might be banned.  This self-hatred paralyzes Germany’s ability to act decisively, even as its economy stagnates and its culture frays.

For Russia and/or the Soviets, World War II was the triumph of the iron fist.  For the Soviets, the Great Patriotic War was proof the Soviet system worked.  Despite 27 million deaths (8.7 million military, 19 million civilian), the Red Army’s push to Berlin showed that the sheer scale of production of hundreds of thousands of crappy tanks and endless conscripted bodies could crush any foe.  Stalin famously removed seat padding from the T-34 after finding the average lifespan of a T-34 in combat was only a few minutes.

The foundational lesson they learned?  Central control, especially when done with brutality, gets results.  Stalin’s paternalism became Putin’s playbook:  the state over individual, quantity over quality.  Post-war, the USSR’s occupation of Eastern Europe and refusal of Marshall Plan aid cemented this mindset.  Even today, Russia’s drones are glorified T-34s—cheap, mass-produced, barely competitive, but there are thousands of them.  The war’s myth of invincibility fuels Moscow’s paranoia and aggression, from Ukraine to cyberwars, while its economy limps along on vodka, oil, duct tape, and nostalgia.

I guess those are all tank tops?

World War II was a cataclysm.  70-85 million dead and borders were changed as if they were drawn by a hyperactive kid with an Etch-a-Sketch™.  For the U.S., it birthed a bloated state and a messianic complex.  For Britain, it turned pride into shame.  Germany traded nationalism for self-loathing.  Russia doubled down on authoritarianism.  And, although we didn’t go into it, World War II is the singular foundational event for modern Jewish people, which is why they treat it with religious reverence and questioning any aspect of their narrative is treated as heresy.

The U.S. got off the lightest:  our homeland unscathed, our economy booming post-war, but we’re chained to the idea that we must police the globe for some reason.  For the others, the scars are deeper, twisting their cultures into knots of guilt, paranoia, or apology.  These foundational stories aren’t just history, they’re shackles.

Maybe it’s time to write new stories, before the old ones drag us all into another war, or the anti-Curly returns?

The Birds, The Bees, The Money, The Movies

“That’s good, because she’s a predator posing as a house pet. Stay away from that one.” – Fight Club

While the other Roombas™ cleaned, my Roomba™ studied the blade.

It’s Friday night, 1985.

Me, back before the hair migrated from scalp to back, picked up my date. She’s spent two hours teasing her hair to defy gravity using enough hairspray to singlehandedly destroy the ozone layer over Peru.

It was before streaming, so we headed to the movie theater because that’s what you did. I chose the movie. I always chose the movie. I actually never asked my date what she would like to see, because I was paying for it. Choices? Well, Back to the Future or, hey, Predator!

Yeah. Predator. Hell yeah.

She’s along for the ride, giggling.

When IKEA® furniture is stolen, it activates a shelf-destruct sequence.

As we’ve already discussed, this was the golden age of cinema, when movies were made for the people who actually showed up: young guys trying to score, uh, points. Yeah, score points with their dates.

Now it’s 2025, and Hollywood is finally remembering who buttered its popcorn.

Feminism, in its quest to “fix” everything (men, the patriarchy, colonialism, pumpkin spice) has turned every movie into a lecture hall. The box office results show that the audience has been sneaking out the back. Why?

Movies over the last decade bore men, annoy women, and leave studio execs wondering why their company returns are flatter than Harvey Weinstein’s prison mattress. I’m sure Harv has the lower bunk, right?

Historically, movie decisions were simple. Young men, wallets stuffed with ambition and minimum-wage cash, picked the films to woo their dates.

Sure, exceptions existed. I once got dragged to Dangerous Liaisons, surrounded by women swooning over 18th century French literature. I guess the consolation prize for me was prime Uma Thurman, but she was stuck in a plot denser than a dutchman’s fruitcake. (I have no idea if the Dutch eat or make fruitcake, but the phrase “dutchman’s fruitcake” should exist. You’re welcome.)

I hear the Dutch are tall because all the short ones died in floods.

My point is, men drove the box office because they were the ones buying the tickets. And what do men want?

Let’s not kid ourselves: great quests, attractive women, preferably ones who don’t lecture them on how to be better feminists, and explosions.

What do men want out of their women?

Men want an attractive woman. They also want loyalty, and a woman who’s, well, womanly nurturing, supportive, maybe even a future mom who doesn’t bench press more than they do as I was taught was the norm in Eastern Europe.

In Soviet Russia, you not wait for tooth fairy, tooth fairy wait for you.

But Hollywood’s 2015 memo?

Men’s preferences are problematic. Instead, they gave us girlbosses who could arm-wrestle Thor and win, despite never having arm-wrestled. These characters aren’t meant to only break the glass ceiling; they shatter the laws of storytelling itself.

Women, on the other hand, have their own cinematic cravings, and they’re not what the feminist scriptwriters think. Women don’t want to see perfect, flawless heroines who never break a nail. They want the fantasy of a powerful, ruthless man, think Ted Bundy with cash, who could crush them but don’t, and who’s inexplicably obsessed with them despite their quirks or, let’s be honest, their past.

It’s why Pretty Woman still gets women, um, misty. We’ll go with misty. A billionaire Richard Gere, falling for a hooker, is peak fairy tale. It’s why The Handmaid’s Tale keeps spawning sequels despite all the women claiming it’s a dystopia. Women say they don’t want to be handmaids, but they keep coming back for more, uh, stimulation.

And do they imagine being held down?

Hollywood’s current slate of heroines are not women: they’re poorly written men with better haircuts played by actresses who average a 6 out of 10. They’re written as invincible, quip-dropping machines who never fail, never learn, and never need no man—unless he’s there to clap like a trained seal.

This isn’t the Hero’s Journey; it’s the Hero’s Freeway, a straight shot to victory with no pitstops for growth. The Hero’s Journey, for those who skipped English class, is the classic epic story arc: a flawed character faces trials, fails, learns, changes, and triumphs. Think The Odessey. Think Beowulf. Yes. It’s that old. Luke Skywalker®, and Rocky Balboa™ are cut from the same cloth, because that story is the story of humanity.

Failure is the crucible that forges heroes.

But Hollywood’s girlbosses? They start perfect, stay perfect, and win without breaking a sweat. It’s like playing a video game on invincible mode—boring as hell.

Men aren’t signing up for lectures disguised as blockbusters. They want women who are worth rooting for—gorgeous, loyal, maybe even a little vulnerable, not someone who can out-punch them, out-smart them, and out-sarcasm them while looking like they just rolled out of a CrossFit® gym.

She solidly would have fit better in episode 3 out of 10.

Hollywood’s response? Write male characters, slap on some lipstick, hire mid-looking women to play them, and call it empowerment. No wonder they’re all-in on the trans movement, it’s just their casting philosophy taken to its logical extreme.

Women aren’t really thrilled either. Women want strong, dangerous men who choose not to break them, men who are powerful but prioritize them (while not too much, because that’s clingy). It’s why war brides lined up with open arms and open legs for conquerors from Genghis Khan to G.I.s in post-WWII Europe.

It’s why women, despite demanding equal pay, still want a man who earns more than they do. Equal pay? Sure. But he better out-earn her. But she also wants equal pay. But also he better out earn her . . . you get it. It’s a merry-go-round of contradictions that only stops when the popcorn runs out.

So why are movies so bad? Because ideology hijacked the projector. Somewhere along the line, a cabal of GloboLeftists, yes, studio execs and “scientists” and journalists and professors, all with pronouns in their bios, decided men and women are exactly the same. This is the root of the trans nonsense, the girlboss epidemic, all of it. They pushed a narrative that ignores biology, psychology, and basic human nature.

Men and women aren’t interchangeable cogs; they’re different, and that’s not a bug, it’s a feature. And it’s not just in the crotch. But Hollywood, drunk on GloboLeftist dogma, decided to churn out films that lecture instead of entertain because that was the narrative.

The result? Box office receipts that now look like a clearance sale on Betamax™ tapes at Blockbuster Video®. Audiences aren’t stupid: they know when they’re being preached to.

I’m so old I rewind Netflix™ movies before logging out.

Men don’t want to watch a Captain Marvel™ who is flawless in every way, punch harder than any other character because she’s 100% girlboss. Women don’t want to see another flawless heroine who makes them feel inadequate and don’t care about those movies anyway. And studios? They’re bleeding cash faster than Taylor Swift crying over her impending divorce after her impending marriage. But, hey, think of the album sales!

If Hollywood wants to save itself, it’s simple: make movies for humans, not manifestos. Give men the eye candy and heroism and explosions they crave along with a boy who fails, and in that failure, becomes a man. Give women the powerful, complex men they dream of, not cardboard cutouts spouting feminist taglines that result in, um, uncomfortable dryness.

Let characters fail, grow, and earn their wins. Stop pretending men and women are the same, because the only thing that’s equal is how much everyone hates these preachy flops.

Until then, I’ll be at home, rewatching Predator. Because nothing says “date night” like Dutch bleeding, swearing, and chomping a cigar while saving the day and the dame.

Now that?

That’s a movie.

A Serious Post: Courage And Inspiration Against Invaders In Scotland, or, BFYTW

“Freedom!” – Braveheart

Beware – this post will be grim reading.

Sometimes there is a moment so poignant that it creates history.

My candidate for August of 2025 is a young girl from Dundee, Scotland.  The story is simple:  she is 14 and she has had enough and had nothing to lose.  As much of the alleged story as I can patch together follows the video immediately below:

An adult invader from a foreign country started following the girl and her little sister.  An adult male invader.

Yelling started.  The man kept following the girls, despite their repeated warnings to leave them alone.  Finally, the invader pulls out his camera after being warned by the 14-year-old girl that the invader needs to “leave my sister alone, she’s only twelve!”

With a heaping dose of “I don’t give a fuck anymore” she pulled out a knife and a hatchet, ready to defend herself and her sister, all while giving ground, all while trying to avoid the invader’s pursuit.

What does it take to have decided, at 14, that you have to arm yourself merely to walk around the city that your mother and grandmother, back hundreds, if not thousands of years, had walked without fear?

Dundee, without fear.

What caused this?

Simple:  the girl lives in a collapsed country and knows that no one will do anything to help her.

According to @RadioEuropes on X®, in the year 2000 there were a total of 8,593 rape crime reports in England and Wales.  Not good, but when you compare it to the total in 2023 of 68,109, it seems positively charming.

Rape is nearly up 10 times, and that is of the reports of rape that the police will take.

In Rotherham, for example, thousands of young (some as young as 11) English girls were raped.  In some cases, these girls were murdered and in at least one case the girl was alleged to have been cooked and sold to tourists as kebabs.

I’m not making any of that up.

The police?  The police were informed of it, but would take no action to help the girls.  Were they afraid of being called racists?  Yes, certainly.  How afraid were they?  They intimidated some girls into withdrawing charges and arrested others to shut them up.  Oh, and the police raped some of the girls, too.

The media is now filled with horror stories of what is happening in 2025 that would reinforce the Scottish girl’s realization that the only one who will help her, is her.  An example that just happened:

In Holland, a 17 year old girl was stabbed to death by an illegal alien who had raped a woman days earlier and assaulted another five days before that.  But he was released.  The young girl in Holland called the police as she was being chased by this vibrant diversity who was just seeking asylum.

The police showed up after 45 minutes and found that young girl from Holland dead in a ditch.

Why wouldn’t the young Scottish girl arm herself?  Police are, at best, second responders when they finally get around to responding.

Who is coming to save the Scottish girl?

The police?  Why should she trust them after Rotherham?  Why should she think that they’d do anything for her after Holland?  And why would she think that they’d do anything for her because, after protecting herself and protecting her little 12-year-old sister, she was charged with a crime.

She faces two choices:

  • When girls are unarmed, they’re killed or raped or both and the attacker gets a light sentence and gets to have his brothers chain migrate.
  • When girls are armed, they’re charged with a crime.

I guess she chose the second option.

I’d imagine that in Scotland the penalty for carrying weapons like she did is almost as bad as if she’d removed the creepy foreigner from the blotter of life – the one thing the people of Great Britain are afraid of is the remnants of the founding stock.  The invaders?  They’re there to replace the English and the Scots and the Welsh.

Scotland and Holland are learning that if you import the very worst people from the very worst parts of the world, you become the very worst part of the world.  In Sweden, for instance, the police stopped taking down the race of rapists for over a decade because they didn’t want people to become racists.  Because the rapists aren’t Swedes.  And because the rapists aren’t white.

Invaders are in the United States, as well.

Look at the recent Sikh driver who ended the life of a family.  Over three million Indians have signed the petition.  They don’t particularly care that he killed people by breaking the law no less than three times.  They have no interest, really, in assimilating or becoming Americans, living in their segregated cloisters, many, like the driver, making no effort to learn English or engage with actual Americans.

They don’t care about you or I, and want us to die so we can leave our country to them.

But even worse?  Those citizens that encourage this because that don’t think the mass rape of little white girls or the deaths of a family or of the heritage stock of Americans is a bad thing as long as no one calls them racist.

Freedom is just another way of saying “nothing left to lose.”

Good thing that courage is contagious.

You Can’t Touch This: The Importance Of The Battle Of Tours

“The one rule we had on Charles in Charge is Charles must always be in charge.” – The Simpsons

Islamic suicide bombers aren’t so bad, but the Buddhist ones?  They keep coming back until they get it right.

Europe in the early 700s was a patchwork of squabbling kingdoms still picking up the pieces from Rome’s grand collapse.  When the Empire fell and the Legions retired and moved to Florida, Europe was a hammered mess.  Barbarians had even turned Rome into a tourist trap for Vandals and Goths where you could get great bargains:  half off togas, and all the gold you could eat.

A new wave of chaos crashed in from the south:  The Umayyad (U-Mad) Caliphate was fresh off conquering Spain during a short decade of conquest.  After that, they began eyeing the rest of the continent like Whoopi Goldberg eyes a dozen chocolate éclairs after a hard day of being wrong.

It occurred to the U-Mads:  why stop with Spain when they could go on to France (then Francia for some reason) for cigarettes and baguettes and brunettes and marmosets and intangible assets?

Enter Charles, the Frankish warlord who was the illegitimate son of that hobbit®, Pepin.  Being a bastard (like me Charles was born one, and didn’t have to work at it like most people) Charles wasn’t in the line of succession for all that Frankish Hobbit® power.  Scared of him, Pepin’s wife had Charles tossed in the clink so Charles wouldn’t become the boss when Pepin died.

“Hand. Hand. River. Dirt. Gollum. Hobbits. Pockets. Pockets. Finger. Envelope. Fire. Hand. Neck. Neck. Finger. Hobbits. Neck. Neck. Neck. Pocket. Finger. Lava!  The Lord of the Rings, from the perspective of the Ring.

Well, prisons were made for breaking out of, and Charles did exactly that.  A lot of others decided they were king instead when Pepin died, so Charles had to defeat the humorously named Chilperic II, Raganfrid, and Radbod.  Okay, Radbod would probably be a good professional wrestling name, so Radbod get a pass but the rest of them are just bad D&D® names from a drunk DM.

The Funny Name Gang fought with Charles at Cologne, and Charles lost.

Charles didn’t give up, and instead regrouped and trained in a movie montage in the hills, and then attacked his silly-named foes at Malmedy, and they scurried like schoolchildren and Charles got all their stuff, plus the reputation of a guy who could win battles against people who were utterly unprepared for it, them being asleep on siesta and all.

One battle doesn’t win a kingdom, though.

Charles waited a year and trained his army in yet another movie montage for the sequel, Charles II, complete with 1980s theme music, something telling him he was the best or something.  Regardless, Charles invaded Chilperic’s place in Northern France, and won.

How do squid go into battle?  Well armed.

And he kept winning.  Charles essentially spent the next fifteen years fighting battles and winning ever single one of them in his bid to secure power.  After that, he selected the title he wanted.  It was mayor.  So, after all of that, it was time for peace, right?

No.  Charles had just beaten the other French.  But as I mentioned, he was being invaded from the south.

That brings us to 732 AD and the town of Tours.

Let’s frame it this way:  Charles’ victory at the Battle of Tours in 732 AD stands as one of those rare moments where the West dodged a civilization-ending bullet.  Think Thermopylae, where a handful of Spartans bought time against Persian hordes; the Battle of Vienna in 1683, halting the Ottoman tide at Europe’s gates; or the sack of Carthage in 146 BC, when Rome finally crushed its African rival and secured Mediterranean dominance, or John Wilder’s Divorce of 1995.

Tours fits right in – a pivotal civilizational clash that crushed a major threat to the struggling West like it was a telemarketer.

Salt makes everything taste better.  Sodi-yummmm!  (meme as-found)

Let us set the scene properly, because context is king (or mayor as in Charles’ case).

By the 8th century, Islam had exploded out of Arabia, swallowing Persia, North Africa, and Spain in under a century. The U-mads crossed the Pyrenees in 720, gobbling up Septimania (southern France) and launching raids deeper into the Frankish lands.

Their leader, Abdul Rahman Al Ghafiqi, governor of Al-Andalus (moslim Spain), was no slouch.  He had spent years in active command of an army taking over Spain.  His army, perhaps 20,000 to 80,000 strong (historians bicker like barroom philosophers on numbers), consisted mostly of Berber and Arab cavalry, light and fast, perfect for hit-and-run plunder.

They had sacked Bordeaux and were loaded with loot, but this was no mere smash-and-grab; the Arabs smelled yet more conquest, and were testing the waters for a full push into Frankish heartlands.  They outnumbered the Frankish armies.

On the other side? Charles, the Mayor of the Palace the real boss of the Franks.

Why Charles?  No one else stood ready to protect Europe; the Byzantines were busy fending off Arabs in the east, the Lombards in Italy were too fragmented and hadn’t even invented spaghetti yet, and the Anglo-Saxons across the Channel were still figuring out the magic secret of bathing that disappeared when the Romans left. If Charles failed, the road to Paris, and beyond to the Rhine, lay open.

Stakes? Imagine a Europe where minarets dot the Seine instead of cathedrals.

Oh, wait . . . .

Why are the French depressed?  Because the light at the end of the tunnel is England.  (meme as-found)

Now, the battle itself:

October 10, 732, near Tours.  Charles, with about 15,000 to 30,000 infantry-heavy Franks, chose high ground in a wooded area, forming a tight phalanx of armored foot soldiers, a tactic used successfully by everyone from Sumerians to Greeks to Romans to Vikings.

This was a human wall of axes and swords and shields and pikes, disciplined like Roman legions but with beards that could hide small animals.  They set up on top of a lightly-forested hill, and waited.  And waited.  Abdul Rahman wanted Charles to attack.  Charles wanted Abdul to attack.

As the Arabs didn’t have warm clothes suitable for the winter, they finally blinked, and attacked.

Abdul Rahman’s cavalry charged uphill at this mass of men, lumber and steel, repeatedly, expecting to shatter the line like they had against the Visigoths they had defeated in Spain.

But Charles’ men held, their heavy infantry absorbing the impacts like Rockey Balboa in, well, like every Rockey movie.  And with good reason:  Charles had seen this battle coming and had the largest standing army, well trained and ready to go, fierce and with faith in their nearly undefeated leader.

I think shields are a concept I can really get behind.

As the day wore on, the Muslims tired.  Their horses foaming, their riders frustrated.  It was now hammer time.  Charles’ scouts raided the enemy camp, sparking rumors that Abdul Rahman was dead and the loot vulnerable.

Panic spread among the U-mads.

The governor himself charged into the fray to rally his troops and got cut down, probably by a Frankish axe to the skull, because why not go out dramatically?  Night fell, and the invaders melted away, leaving tents, treasure, and thousands of dead.

Casualties?  Franks lost maybe a thousand; Muslims, up to 12,000, including their leader.

It was not pretty, with bodies piled like cordwood, blood soaking the fields and Charles standing tall.  Charles got his nickname at this point.  In old Frankish, it’s “Martel” but it translates to “The Hammer”.

Aftermath hit like a hangover after a wild raid.

The U-mads retreated south of the Pyrenees, their momentum broken.  Internal revolts soon toppled their dynasty, replaced by the Abbasids who shifted focus eastward.

In Spain, Christian kingdoms in the north took heart.  This sparked the Reconquista, a 700-year grind where indigenous Iberians overthrew their colonial moslim overlords.

My friend has an intricate tattoo and I was surprised when he told me he got it in Iberia.  I guess no one expects Spanish ink precision.

No “noble savage” myth here; it was gritty reprisal, castle by castle, until 1492 when Ferdinand and Isabella booted the last emir from Granada and started Spain’s golden age.  Tours proved resistance worked, and turned the tide from defense to offense.

Yet Charles Martel remains poorly remembered today, a footnote in textbooks while his grandson, Charlemagne, gets the statues.

Why?  Charles never crowned himself king, deeming the title too puny for a man who ruled de facto over Franks, Aquitainians, and more.  “Mayor of the Palace” suited him.  It was understated power, like a mob boss who wears sweats instead of Armani®.  Martel laid the foundations for post-Roman Europe: professional armies funded by land grants, essentially the birth of the feudal system.  Martel also left a unified Frankish state, and was the salvation of Christianity.

After the victory at Tours, Charles granted large portions of Church land to his followers, on the condition they help him militarily.  The Church wasn’t happy, but the Pope later begged Charles’ aid against Lombards, dubbing him a “defender of the faith.”

Irony?  Delicious, especially with fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Most crucially, Martel set the stage for his grandson, Charlemagne.  Martel’s son, Pepin the Short, finally ditched the Merovingians and became king with papal blessing.

Charlemagne then forged the Carolingian Empire, crowning himself Holy Roman Emperor in 800 A.D., defining medieval Europe with laws, learning, and conquests from Saxony to Italy.

Never challenge Death to a pillow fight unless you’re prepared for the Reaper cushions. (meme as-found)

Without the Hammer’s stand at Tours, there is no Charlemagne and perhaps no unified West to change the world.

Martel reminds us that history turns on hammers, not hashtags. He was no saint.  He was ruthless, pragmatic, a bit of a land-thief, but he saved the West from a fate it might not have survived. Next time you think that we can’t win, tip your hat to the Hammer, who showed us the way because he was too illegit to quit.

A Tale Of Two Koreas: Dystopia On The Half-Shell

“From what I hear, which isn’t much, Iran financed it and North Korea supplied the bombs.” – Jericho

North Korea shows off it’s newly developed portable Internet device.  (All memes as-found)

Imagine living in a Korea where:

  • a small group of corrupt elite wield godlike powers over the government and citizens,
  • kids work in factories at the age of less than 10, or, toil in school for up to 18 hours a day to study for a chance to please that same elite who control the entire country,
  • most non-elite live in drab, gray (or is it grey?) apartments with the main view of . . . other apartments,
  • adults work long hours in a job that mainly serves to feed the elite,
  • the fertility rate is 0.78, meaning life is so awful that parents don’t want to bring babies into it, meaning the population will be cut by more half each generation, and
  • the kids listen to K-Pop.

Yeah.  South Korea.

You know, I know people love to call certain places hellholes while praising others as shiny beacons of progress, mainly due to one being capitalist and one being communist.

I get it.  I hate communism, too.

I had a horrible dream last night that Artificial Intelligence controlled our lives, and then, thankfully, the alarm on my Alexa® went off and woke me up and then Alexa® went through my to-do list.

But what if I told you that sometimes the “better” option of capitalism is just a prettier prison?

In South Korea, a tiny cabal of families runs the show like they’re the Sopranos, but with better electronics, worse haircuts, and no fear of the FBI.  These aren’t your average mafia dons; we’re talking about chaebols.  Chaebols are massive conglomerates that have tentacles that extend all the way through all parts of society, like the corporation you work for owning your fridge, car, and your grandma’s pacemaker.

Take the Lee family at Samsung®:  they’re not just peddling phones with spyware straight from the NSA, nope.  In South Korea, they have fingers in everything from shipbuilding to life insurance to health care to construction to hotels in about 80 different companies that comprise about 22% of the South Korean economy.

Hell, if you sneeze in this country, there’s probably a Samsung tissue waiting to catch it.  And when Daddy Lee gets nabbed for bribery and attempted bribery (again), does the empire crumble?

Nope, Lee Junior slides right in.

Is the guy who does security on Samsung™ phones the guardian of the galaxy?

Then there’s the Chung clan over at Hyundai®. These folks don’t just make cars.  Nope.  Hyundai builds cities, runs banks, and probably have a secret lab cloning K-Pop idols, Gangnam-style.

Power gets handed down generation to generation, and if there’s a whiff of scandal?  Poof, it vanishes faster than a North Korean dissident.

Embezzlement?

Tax evasion?

Those are just another boring Tuesday for these overlords.  They operate above the law, pulling strings in government like K-Y® covered puppet masters at a marionette orgy (I’m sorry I thought of that, but now you have to think of that, too).

I don’t know how to stop a killer sex bot, but I do know how to stop a hand puppet:  disarm it.

These huge conglomerates eternal, sucking up wealth while the average South Korean fights over scraps.  Capitalism is great at building stuff, sure, but when it goes full oligarch, it’s like giving all the Monopoly® money to the banker (drunk Aunt Betty) and listening to her tell everyone else to enjoy passing Go© without collecting $200 and then it’s the Thanksgiving from Hell and Uncle L.T. won’t stop talking about golf.

Excuse me.  Some past-life trauma.

I’m not against wealth concentration when it comes because people created actual wealth in society.  I think people should be rewarded for making the lives of others better.  But South Korea?  The top families make money because they control all the pathways of wealth creation and the government.

I’d bet they’re gonna make a move on religion, next.

Bold statement time: capitalism alone doesn’t equal freedom; and in South Korea it is just feudalism (which, I remind you, was also capitalism) with neon-colored LED lights.

And it gets worse.  What really inspired me to write this one was about the kids.  The South Korean economy is a beast that demands blood sacrifices, starting young.  Kids are out there hustling like they’re in a Dickens novel, but instead of cleaning chimneys, it’s cram schools that make American homework look like recess.

I’d make a joke but I want to be seen as mining my own business.

For the grown-ups, it’s worse: 60-80 hour weeks are the norm, turning humans into zombies shuffling through cubicles.  Monotonous?  Try soul-crushing, like being stuck in the Matrix but without the cool kung fu and hot chicks in skin-tight latex.  Adults are coding, welding, or staring at screens till their eyes cross, all for a paycheck that barely covers rent.  And that’s the lucky ones – the effective unemployment rate flirts on a regular basis with 25%.

And speaking of rent—everyone’s jammed into these towering commie-blocks, gray slabs of despair that make Brutalist architecture look inspiring.  Check it out on Google™ Maps© Streetview®.  It’s like The Sims® but with new Depression Mode enabled: tiny apartments where families stack like cordwood, dreaming of escape but too exhausted to move.

The place where it gets really grim is that they’re working themselves to death.  South Korean birthrates are in the toilet, flushing away the future one non-existent kid at a time.

It takes 2.1 kids per woman to keep a population stable.  In South Korea, it’s 0.78 kids per woman.  In about 100 years, that might mean that instead of 55 million serfs potential employees Samsung® might only have a just a few over 7.5 million left.

This isn’t sustainable; it’s societal suicide by spreadsheet.

You know what jokes about low birthrates aren’t?  Childish.

Everyone thinks it South Korea is all Squid Games and high-speed internet, but peel back the veneer, and it’s a dystopia where families (well, not all families) get ground to dust.  Sure, they’ve got flashy tech, but at what cost?

Their souls, apparently.

Now, let’s cross that fortified border to the hermit kingdom of North Korea, where the dystopia’s got a different flavor but the same aftertaste of oppression. Point by point, because why not?

  • Corrupt Clique in Charge: Instead of chaebol families, it’s the Kim dynasty. Power passes from Kim to Kim like a Habsburg chin.  Voting?  You don’t vote on a living god.  The elite live like it’s a South Korean oligarchy, but make theirs communist, so, uniforms and marching and Soviet-tech.  So, tie.
  • Economic Shackles on Steroids: Child labor? Oh yeah, but it’s “patriotic duty” with Nork kids harvesting crops or building monuments to Stalin instead of studying like their southern counterparts.  The system is a joke, with rations so meager you’d think calories were capitalist spies.  Families toil in state farms or factories, nukes, missiles, and spare MiG parts while the Kim family imports Twix® and Coors™.  The South doesn’t have death camps, but I’m not sure if that’s good or bad at this point, so, tie.

This definitely hurt the North’s score.

  • Soul-Sucking Slog: Just like being at the Democratic National Convention, life in North Korea is a parade of propaganda and forced smiles, living in actual commie-blocks that crumble like the regime’s promises.  Monotonous work?  Try endless marches and indoctrination sessions.  It’s like 1984 but with worse food even than English food.  I’ll give this to the South, since they come here from time to time, and I’ve never had a North Korean visit.

What is this, a school for ants?

  • Birthrates Below Replacement: Around 1.9 kids per woman, much, much better than the South, so eventually there will be more Norks than replaceable Samsung® assets.  Besides, who wants to raise a family when Junior might rat you out for humming the Brady Bunch theme?  This one goes solidly to North Korea.
  • K-Pop Equivalent? Nope, just state anthems praising the Dear Leader.  I’ve got to give this to North Korea.

If black people move there, will they make K-Rap?

Point total?  To the North.

Okay, if I had to pick, I certainly wouldn’t pick the North, but let’s be honest, the South is awful as well.  I’ve been trying to make this point again and again:  capitalism is an economic system, and it’s only a useful economic system if it generates wealth and supports families.  When capitalism captures the systems of government the people begin to look like property, exactly like people look to communists.  In Korea, people are either cogs or convicts.

The Founders didn’t mention capitalism or socialism, they just turned people loose with guns and a few rules and let them figure it out.  In the West today, business wants to import foreigners to become better cogs, and the GloboLeft wants to import hordes of foreigners who are used to their government treating them like convicts.

Though on the bright side, my Samsung™ phone has lasted for years . . .

The A.I. Bubble: Two Outcomes

“The ban on research and development into artificial intelligence is, as we all know, a holdover from the Cylon Wars.” – Battlestar Galactica (2004)

When I asked my mom if I was ugly, she said, “I’ve told you not to talk to me in public.”  (All memes as found.)

I remember the dotcom bubble.

Back in the late ’90s, everyone was throwing cash at anything with a “.com” slapped on it.  Anything.  Take Pets.com™, which had the idea that they could take orders for dog food online and that would lead to them being worth a trillion dollars.  Instead?  They spent $11.8 million on ads which resulted in $619,000 of total sales.  But wait, there’s more!  Their business strategy was to sell their products at 30% of what they paid for them!

Genius!  I suppose they thought they could make it up on volume?

That’s just one example, and there are thousands of companies that burned through money like cocaine-addled chipmunks going through nuts.  Billions of dollars vanished, but hey, at least we got Jeff Bezos managed to get a slightly used wife out of it.

Fast-forward to 2025, and we just may be in Dotcom 2.0: the AI edition.

This time, it’s not websites filled with dancing hamsters.  Nope.  Data centers are sprouting like marijuana in a Colorado hippie’s backyard.  Chipsets are piling up like Indians in Canada.  The spending is insane on this bubble, and if history’s any guide, the pop could echo for decades.

The source of this frothy mess?

Massive investments in AI infrastructure.  In the first half of 2025 alone, spending on AI data centers and related gear added more to U.S. GDP growth than all consumer spending combined.  This is about $75 billion from AI infra versus $69 billion from folks buying lattes and lawnmowers.

I tried to get the lid of my pen for ten minutes.  Nothing was working.  Then it clicked.

That’s right: Big Tech’s server farms are propping up the economy more than shopping. Companies like Microsoft®, Google®, and Meta® are pouring trillions into building these behemoths, buying up NVIDIA® chips like they’re the last Twinkies® in a zombie apocalypse. It’s not just servers; it’s cooling systems, fiber optics, and enough wiring for George Bailey to finally lasso the Moon.

Why?

Because AI needs compute power like a teenager needs a cell phone:  continually and without gratitude.

So, how long can this bender go on before someone yells “last call”?

Analysts are projecting explosive growth through 2030 but they also told people that Pets.com® made sense.  Bubbles don’t burst on schedule, they pop when reality bites.  McKinsey estimates we’ll need $6.7 trillion worldwide by 2030 just to keep up with compute demands from the various AI products, while the global AI data center market is forecasted to balloon from $236 billion in 2025 to $933 billion by 2030, growing at a scorching 31.6% yearly.

Where will the power come from?  10 gigawatts of new data center capacity will break ground this year alone, with construction at record levels and power transmission delays stretching to four years in some spots.

Before electricity, were people sentenced to death in the acoustic chair?

Let’s extrapolate this:

If spending keeps doubling every couple of years, as it has since ChatGPT lit the fuse, we’re looking at a timeline where the frenzy peaks around 2028-2030.  By then, data centers could consume as much electricity as Gavin Newsom’s blow dryer, and the supply chain for chips and rare earth metals starts buckling.

Analysts predict data center power demand surging, but what if AI hits diminishing returns?  We’ve seen it before: the dotcom buildout assumed infinite internet growth, but when the stunning genius of selling products for 70% less than you bought them for didn’t pay off, the house of cards folded.  Rapidly.

If AI doesn’t deliver massive productivity gains or the company can’t figure out how to make it up on volume, investors pull the plug.  My guess?  This bubble could inflate for another 3-5 years, then deflates when ROI reports come in looking like a kid’s lemonade stand profits for some companies.

Salmon don’t watch cable TV.  They prefer streams.

It’s not just the data centers themselves; the ripple effects are creating mini-bubbles in related bits of the economy.  AI’s thirst for electric power is turning it into the new oil.  The International Energy Agency projects global data center electricity demand more than doubling by 2030 to 945 terawatt-hours, enough to power Australia several times over if they ever figure out electricity.

This means billions funneled into new power plants, grid upgrades, just to keep the lights on in these silicon sweatshops.  Utilities are scrambling: nuclear restarts, solar fields the size of small states, and even deals with fusion startups that sound more sci-fi than spreadsheet.  This is trillions spent on infrastructure, from transmission lines to cooling systems that guzzle water like a camel in the Sahara.  If the bubble bursts, we’re left with ghost grids and stranded assets, much like the fiber optic cables buried post-dotcom that still haunt telecom balance sheets.

What do a ring, a baby, and a threesome have in common?  None of them are going to save a relationship.

What happens if AI reaches its mature end-state? We’re talking Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) where machines that can do any intellectual task a human can, not to mention Artificial Superintelligence (ASI), where they outthink us like we’re Mexican mall lawyers trying to fix a copier.

Some whisper we might already be there, with models like Grok™ or whatever OpenAI®’s cooking up blurring the lines. But assuming we hit it soon, the economy does a backflip.

In the AGI/ASI world, productivity explodes:  AI handles everything from coding to curing cancer, slashing costs and boosting output.

But jobs?  Poof.

Hey, let’s see it take a 15 minute coffee break.

Economists at AEI outline scenarios where AGI displaces masses of workers:  truck drivers, lawyers, artists.  Optimists say it will augment humanity, creating new gigs in “AI wrangling” or whatever.

The dark side for this case:  inequality skyrockets.  A few tech overlords own the AIs, reaping trillions, while the rest scramble for UBI scraps.

Civilization-wise, it’s transformative: endless innovation, but if ASI “solves” economics without humans, we enter a post-scarcity utopia . . . or dystopia, where labor is worthless and purpose is a luxury.

If we’ve hit AGI/ASI now (debatable, but let’s play along), the bubble accelerates short-term as companies race to integrate, then crashes when overcapacity hits.  Data centers become obsolete overnight if ASI optimizes compute down to a laptop.  The fallout?  Trillions in sunk costs, like building railroads right before cars took over.

Scooby Doo® taught many kids that if they smoked enough pot, their dog would talk and help them look for snacks.

If AI fails (and there is no sign of this) we end up in, at least, a dotcom-style recession.

At least.

If AI succeeds, in the best case we end up in a strange, post-scarcity world, but a world that hardly needs us.

I guess we could make it up on volume?

 

The Lighter Side Of Dating, Mating, And Civilizational Collapse

“My job is to see that big, strong men like you get on these buses without getting lost.” – Stripes

The other day I spent the afternoon playing chess with senior citizens in the park.  Took me a while to find 32 of them.

Even thirty years ago, finding a spouse was as easy as grabbing a beer at a kegger.  You met.  Maybe at school, maybe at church, maybe at work, maybe some friends introduced you.  Hell, maybe at the kegger.  It was a straightforward and reliable process, and it was also often sweaty and fun.

Even before my time, though, it was even easier.  Take it back to the 1800s, and men brought home the bacon, women kept the hearth warm, and together they built a life, maybe a farm, maybe a picket fence.  Often, people would meet and spend their whole lives in the same location.

The process wasn’t perfect, but it worked for thousands of years.

Fast-forward to 2025, and the mating market is a dumpster fire.  A constant source of conversation is the baby bust, describing how women aren’t reproducing enough children to keep society going.

Part of the reason for that is that cultural shifts and technological disruptions have turned love from carnal creativity in the backseat of a Camaro™ to the swipe of a finger on the smooth glass of a screen protector.  The result?  A generation of lonely hearts, spinsters, and guys who’ve decided sweatpants and beer are a better deal than chasing women who don’t even see them as people.

Pro tip:  never yell “shotgun” when you’re boarding an airplane.  Apparently, TSA doesn’t appreciate that.

Culture and tech crashed the human mating economy, and why it’s tearing the family, the atom of society, to shreds.

For thousands of years, societies kept a lid on female promiscuity, not because of some patriarchal conspiracy (okay maybe it was, we’re still meeting Thursday night, right guys?), but because it worked.

People who tear down traditions often don’t realize exactly what they’re destroying until it’s gone, and then it’s too late because the fragile fabric that it was supporting has collapsed.  It’s sort of like playing Jenga™ with retarded monkeys on crack, but I won’t speak any more about how I know that.

Tradition knew what science later confirmed:  high rates of female promiscuity correlate with lower marriage rates and higher divorce rates.  Skanky women are horrible for society.  A 2020 study from the Institute for Family Studies found that women with more sexual partners before marriage are less likely to stay married.  They graph waivers after the big increase in marrying a woman who has had more than one sex partner to a big drop at around four sex partners (for some reason).  If you can’t get a virgin, four seems to be the lucky number.  But if you’re the 167th guy to tap into that action?

My math number was afraid of negative numbers.  He’d stop at nothing to avoid them.

The chances of you being “the one” are nearly zero, yet in 2025 she still wants a ring worth six months of blood, sweat and tears and a house and she brings . . . you being number 167.

Back when shame was a thing, women faced social pressure to be selective, and men had a reason to step up for a low-mileage woman.  Now?  Shame is as outdated as a Marvel™ movie.  Women are free to “explore” and “find themselves” and “live their best life” all while banging a neverending stream of potential Prince Charmings.

Then there’s money.

Historically, men were the breadwinners, or at least the leaders in the grind in the family business or farm, with Ma raising the kids and churning the butter while Pa tamed the back 40.  Women relied on men for financial stability, and men relied on women to keep the home and raise the children.

Enter the modern workforce:  women now make up nearly half of U.S. workers and 90% of the human resources department everywhere.  That leads to the dilemma of the Stunning and Brave woman:  she wants a man who makes more than her, yet demands equal pay.  A 2023 Pew Research study found 55% of women prefer a partner with higher income (and 45% of women are liars).  That’s fine, but men’s wages have stagnated since the 1970s while women’s have risen.  The math doesn’t add up.

Feminism is a broad issue.  (meme as found)

Worse, the government has stepped in as Husband 2.0.

Welfare programs, from food stamps to housing subsidies, act like a sugar daddy for single women, especially mothers.  In 2022, over 40% of single-mother households received some form of public assistance.  Why marry a man when Uncle Sugar’s got your back and they can still bang all the men they want and don’t have to listen to any man?

Women on welfare aren’t wives anymore; they’re concubines of the state, trading solemn vows for EBT and government cheese.  The family, once the bedrock of civilization, is now a casualty of games and prizes fueled by promiscuity and feminism.  But I repeat myself.

Not to brag, but my wedding reception was so beautiful that even the cake was in tiers.

And that’s not even factoring in divorce-rape where unhaaaaapppy or bored women can hit the eject button and blow up the marriage with no real consequences except getting to keep the house, kids, cash and getting a free ticket to ride on the Chad carousel.

That’s bad enough.  It’s actually worse than Madonna’s herpes.

If culture cracked the mating market, technology crushed it like a python on a peanut.  Enter Tinder®, Bumble®, and the swipe-right revolution.  Women, all women, are hypergamous.  They want the very best mate they can find.  Society used to keep them in check through societal pressure.  Oh, and soon enough they would have run out of random men to pleasure.  Now the apps give them a digital buffet of Chads, Brads, and Thads.

Is anyone named Thaddeus nowadays?  I digress.

A 2021 study showed women on dating apps rate 80% of men as “below average” in attractiveness, while men rate women more realistically on a bell curve.  The result? A 5 or 6 woman swipes right on a 10.  Call him Prince Charming the Senator’s son, complete with abs and a hedge fund, who might bang her once but won’t stick around for breakfast or be seen in public with her, let alone hang a ring on her.

I hear he’s from the bad side of his Italian hometown – he came from the spaghetto.

She walks away thinking, “He was the one, I could get him to marry me,” and now every guy who doesn’t match up to Prince Charming is . . . settling.  Yes.  Settling, even though Prince Charming doesn’t remember her and only picked her up because it was a Tuesday, and was just taking his father’s deathbed advice:  “go ugly, early” and picked her up just for amusement.

Spinsterhood beckons, with a side of cat and wine memes.

Men aren’t entirely innocent bystanders here, either.

Faced with an endless parade of women chasing the top 10% of guys, many men have thrown in the towel.  Why grind for a better job, hit the gym, or learn to dress like you didn’t just roll out of a laundry basket?

The odds aren’t good. (as found)

A 2024 survey found 30% of men aged 18-29 have given up on dating entirely, opting for porn, video games, or “monk mode.”  They’re not wrong to notice the game is rigged against traditional one-for-one sorting.  Now, Chad gets his choice, and, if they’re lucky, the might get the attention of a slagged-out woman who is still pining for Chad – a widow for a man that was only in her life for a night.

This isn’t just about lonely Friday nights.  This is about the death of the family.  Men want decent looks, monogamy, and a partner who’s kind—basic stuff.  “She can’t read but she’s faithful and hasn’t had sex with Baltimore” has become a passing grade for many.

And if you want to argue about Monopoly®, you have to wait until Thanksgiving like everyone else.

Women want the whole package:  money, status, looks, protection, and a guy who’s basically a football start with a corner office.

Wait.  Tom Brady didn’t work out for his wife.  Neil Armstrong’s wife became unhaaaapppy.  What chance does the average guy have?

Marriage rates are at historic lows, being down 60% since 1960.  Divorce rates hover around 40%.  Kids grow up in fractured homes or none at all, with single-parent households now at 30% nationwide and rising.  The family, the core unit, the atom that glues society together, is being eroded by individualism on steroids.

I could write a book about this topic, but you get the idea.

So how do we dig out of this mess?

Start with culture.  Bring back shame.  The scarlet-letter kind.  Encourage women to value loyalty over chasing Chad, and men to step up instead of checking out.  That starts with incentives, because I don’t think anyone has any shame left.

I got fired from the library today.  Apparently, putting books on feminism in the “dystopian fantasy” section was frowned on.

Let’s rethink current incentives.  Have a kid and no husband?  Tough luck.  No child support, no state support.  Same thing with divorce.  No fun and prizes for that, and if you’re at-fault, you lose the kids.  Sure, tax breaks for married couples or policies that don’t make Uncle Sugar a better bet than a husband are nice, but we don’t need a nudge, we need a nuke.

Will the norm come back?  It has to.  Two more generations of this, and civilization will cease to exist.  Perhaps G. Michael Hopf (LINK) got the old quote wrong and it should go more like this:

Bad times create strong men,
Strong men create good times,
Good times make women skanky,
Skanky women create bad times.

Don’t worry, nothing’s depending on this.  I mean, nothing other than the fate of civilization.

Making The Invisible Hand Visible: Psyops and the War for Our Minds

So, if you watch The Matrix backwards, it’s just the story of a guy who quits drugs and gets a job.  (most memes as-found today)

Back in 1995, I think, I saw an editorial cartoon.  One was a picture of an American G.I. holding a dead child in 1945.  Next to it was an American G.I. holding a dead child in 1995.  The message was simple:  Americans needed to go and fight in a place that Americans couldn’t find on a map.  Bosnia?  Why was this a picture in a newspaper, trying to get me, John Wilder, to be on board attacking Serbians?

Why Serbians?  I mean, it sounded like an alien race of creatures that spent their lives curb surfing.

Something felt off – I think the only thing of value in the whole country was the last thirty Yugo™ transmissions.

And, I wasn’t wrong.  This was propaganda.  I (and the rest of America) was caught in a psychological operation, or psyops, a calculated effort to hijack my thoughts and bend my will.  About . . . Serbia.

Did you hear about the group in the Balkans who think the world started 6,000 years ago?  Croatianists.

Psyops, per the Army’s FM 3-05.301 (LINK), are “planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to . . . audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.”

What’s that in language that is less like The Terminator® is talking?  It is the art of making me think what someone else wants, without me ever spotting the strings of the puppetmaster.

The story doesn’t start with Edward Bernays, but he’s a pretty convenient on-ramp for discussion.  Bernays gets that distinction because he, more than anyone else, is why the world feels like a scripted reality show.

I guess the bridge had a Twitter account, but it’s now suspended.

Born in 1891, this nephew of Sigmund Freud took his uncle’s insights into the human psyche and turned them into a weapon. In his 1928 book Propaganda, Bernays didn’t mince words: “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.”

Translation?

The GloboLeftElites think Americans are too dumb to think for ourselves, so they’ll do it for you. Bernays called this “the engineering of consent,” and he was as good at it as a tick is at finding blood or as Zuck is at mining your soul with InstaFace™.  Take his 1929 “Torches of Freedom” stunt. To sell more cigarettes, Bernays paid fashionable women to light up during New York’s Easter parade, framing smoking as a feminist rebellion against stuffy norms.  The result?

The media ate it up, women started puffing, and tobacco companies doubled their market.  Women?  They traded motherhood and bras for Camels™ and lung cancer.

Bernays didn’t stop at commerce.

I sometimes wear a tinfoil hat.  I’m not nuts, it just makes it more interesting when I stick my head in the microwave.

In the 1950s, he worked with the CIA to paint Guatemala’s elected government as a communist menace (true, they president was buds with Castro later), justifying putting pressure on the president to resign.  He did, and United Fruit Company (a story for another time) got Guatemala back into their orbit.  Bernays proved that by tapping into the primal emotions of fear, desire, and identity, anything could be sold, be it a product, a war, or a worldview.

Bernays’ playbook became the blueprint for government and corporate psyops and I could spend a book describing them, but ain’t nobody got that kind of time this morning.  But one thing is clear:  psyops are cheap and effective.  Thankfully, we abandoned the use of such technology.

Whoops.  Guess not.

Here 2025, and psyops have gone high-tech and are used more than ever.  The core, though, remains Bernays’ emotional manipulation.  Here’s how they work now:

  • Framing and Narrative Control:  Words shape reality.  Calling illegal aliens “undocumented workers” or “asylum seekers” turns lawbreakers into victims.  Meanwhile, people who just want to live in their own country without unending streams of infinity third-worlders are smeared as “racists.”  Whoops.  Guess that word doesn’t have the power it did even two years ago.  This is also why control of every platform is important to them.  Just one kid saying that the emperor is nekkid is enough to bring the whole charade down.

I sometimes can’t tell which psyop is more fun to watch.

  • Emotional Manipulation:  Fear and identity are big guns.  During COVID, “flatten the curve” and “trust the science” were hammered into us day after day, justifying lockdowns and mandates and a not-vaccine while dissenters were silenced and fired.  On race, media amplifies the “man bites dog” rarity of white-on-black violence to stoke division, ignoring the reality that the violence is almost all one-way.  Emotional manipulation was also that editorial making me feel sad for dead kids in a place I’ve never heard of.
  • Social Media Amplification:  Algorithms on all social media are designed to boost outrage because clicks mean cash for Zuck.  Bots and influencers push phrases like Black Lives Matter, making manufactured narratives feel organic.
  • Astroturfing: Fake grassroots movements, like funded protests or viral campaigns, create the illusion of public consensus.  Remember the 2020 “defund the police” push?  It looked spontaneous but was backed by big money, just like the “no kings” protest against Trump.  There really isn’t a group supporting it, it’s a cause in search of supporters.
  • Gaslighting: The ultimate mind-screw, telling us what we see isn’t real.  Worried about illegal immigration’s strain on schools or hospitals?  We’re “xenophobic.”  Notice crime spikes in certain areas or that moslems are pretty rape-y?  We’re “bigoted.”  The goal? Make us doubt our own eyes, believe that no one else thinks the same way that we do.

Psyops in Action:  Race and Immigration

The American public is a prime target, especially on race and illegal immigration, where psyops fuel division and push GloboLeftElite agendas.  After George Floyd’s overdose in 2020, the media ran a relentless campaign framing police as systematically racist.  Every white-cop-on-black-suspect incident became proof of a grand conspiracy, while DOJ reports (like the 2014 Ferguson findings clearing Officer Darren Wilson) were buried.

The result?

I get the creeps because it seems like Sting is still watching every breath I take. (my meme)

Riots, “defund the police” mania, and corporations tripping over themselves to push DEI policies that pit races against each other. It’s Bernays 101: amplify emotion, ignore facts, and, in this case, watch society fracture because it’s always easier to destroy than to build.

Illegal immigration is another psyops goldmine.

Since the 2021 border surge, outlets like CNN and MSNBC have framed illegal immigrants as “migrants” fleeing persecution, spotlighting tear-jerking stories of families while ignoring the stunningly high costs that these people bring to our country.

Crime stats, like DHS reports showing 66% of released detainees reoffend, are swept under the rug.  Ignore that diseases that were eradicated are again showing up in our country.

The narrative?  Open borders are humane, and anyone who disagrees hates brown people.  This isn’t an accident.  This is a deliberate push to erode national sovereignty, weaken cultural cohesion, and make Americans feel guilty for wanting secure borders.

COVID was a masterclass in psyops too, as was the January 6 “Insurrection” and a thousand other public lies meant to manipulate you.  But never forget those who are in full service of the Lie:  The Court Jesters of the GloboLeftElite.

The Capitol was in less danger on January 6 than it was during the revolution scenes from the D.C. production of Lés Misérables.

Jon Stewart and John Oliver, among many others, are the smirking faces of psyops disguised as comedy. Stewart, helming The Daily Show from 1999 to 2015, and Oliver, with Last Week Tonight since 2014, aren’t just entertainers (and it’s arguable that they’re even entertaining).  Nope.

They’re narrative enforcers peddling DEI with a laugh track.  Their weapon?  Humor that makes their audience feel smart and superior while feeding them a script of what the Narrative wants them to believe.

Their techniques are pure Bernays:

  • Selective Framing: Stewart’s 2010 Tea Party takedowns painted fiscal conservatives as racist rubes, ignoring their legitimate gripes about government bloat.  Oliver’s 2020 border segments framed ICE as heartless, glossing over data like the millions of illegals flooding over the border.
  • Ridicule as Persuasion:  Mockery is their hammer. Stewart’s smirks and Oliver’s exasperated sighs make conservative ideas:  border walls, voter ID, traditional values seem absurd to their hand-picked audiences. Laughter shuts down critical thinking:  nobody argues with a punchline.
  • Moral Superiority: Both position themselves as the voice of reason. Oliver’s 2021 “critical race theory” bit dismissed critics as clueless, never engaging their actual concerns about divisive curriculums.  Stewart’s post-Ferguson rants leaned on emotion over evidence, amplifying the “systemic racism” narrative while ignoring the exoneration of the cop that shot the “gentle giant” that had just roughed up a convenience store clerk.

Their impact is insidious.  By blending humor with half-truths, they make progressive dogma feel like common sense.  Their audiences are urban, educated, and often young, who walk away feeling informed, not manipulated.  But it’s psyops all the same:  control the frame, mock the dissenters, and let laughter do the rest.  The GloboLeft couldn’t ask for better foot soldiers.

Seeing this is half the battle.  The other half is reflection.  Psyops work best when they’re fast and jump out at you unexpectedly, like that editorial cartoon did decades ago.  I remember it because it was effective at emotional manipulation, but when I realized that I had no idea what a Serb ate for lunch or if Bosnians wore special hats while they ate PEZ® I came to the conclusion that my opinion on the subject was the product.  I was meant to be mad at one side or the other, but, thankfully, I had no idea which side I was supposed to be mad at.

Does throwing the discus make you want to hurl? (my meme)

What I try to do now is to ask myself:  what are they trying to make me feel?  Why?  Why should I care about Ukraine?  I thought about it and did some research, and, made the conscious decision that I don’t care about Ukraine unless someone is asking me to pay for it or unless it’s the source huge corruption.

It is?  Well let’s stop paying for it and let’s arrest and try those who were paid off.  Simple.

The GloboLeftElite’s goals are at least partially clear:  they want a borderless, divided America, where the people are too scared, guilty, or distracted to fight back.

We don’t have to play along.  Question everything.  Dig for primary sources.

Be careful what you feed your head.

And if something connects in a particularly emotional way, ask yourself:  why should I care?

Then make your own choice, and if you’re lucky, you might get your hands on some cherry Yugo® transmissions.  I mean, if you have goats to trade because I’m not sure they use money.

Schlitz® and Shot Puts: The Lost Art of Failing

“For the genetic elite, success is attainable, but not guaranteed.” – Gattaca

I heard women are now allowed to join the SAS.  Thank heavens!  There’s no way those lads should be making their own sandwiches.

When I was a kid, life was a buffet of possibilities with a chocolate sauce fountain at the end.  I should know, because I was that greedy little guy piling my plate high with everything from wrestling to chess club to that four ill-fated years of track where I learned that that shot put was never going to go farther than 38’.

Ever.

But it wasn’t just me.  Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s and ‘90s, all of childhood was a sandbox—room to dig, build, and occasionally eat the sand just to see what happened.  Hell, in the 1970s I don’t think mothers stopped smoking while in labor, and then let their kids go free-range until the police brought them home from the kegger at the old gravel pit.  They said I was full of Schlitz®, but I would have differed if I didn’t keep passing out.

An original ad.  Back when ads were based.  And, probably a good enough cook for the SAS.

Outside of cheap watery beer, as a kid I could try everything, suck at half of it, and still have time to ride bikes with my buddies.  I mean, they were imaginary friends, but at least they would stop staring at me when I yelled at them, “stop staring at me”.

The point is, I had time.  Time to dabble, freedom to fail, and a real chance to struggle to find out what made John Wilder tick (spoiler:  booze, tobacco, and women).  I could dream of being an astronaut one week a Green Beret the next, and James Bond the week after.  No one demanded that I pick a lane and stay there, probably because they were too busy smoking and drinking and driving. For me, though, failure was a teacher, not a felony.

Kids today?

They’re not at a buffet.  They forced to pick their entrée at 12 and commit to it like terrier hangs onto a T-bone.

I remember a conversation with a colleague back in Houston, circa 2010.  His daughter, still in middle school, had to choose: volleyball, softball, or tennis.  One single sport, full commitment, no take-backs.

When his girlfriend asked if he was trans, he got so mad that he packed her stuff and left.

This wasn’t just signing up for the school team and seeing how it went.  This meant off-season practices, traveling squads, private coaching, and summer clinics that cost more than my first car.  All this for a kid who, statistically, had a better shot at being struck by lightning than playing at the college level.  In Houston’s mega-sized high schools (the nearest one had 5,000 kids and a football stadium that could shame a small college) only the top 1% even make the team.

The rest?  They’re sidelined, their dreams of spiking a volleyball or swinging a bat relegated to backyard pickup games, if they’re lucky.

Why this insanity? Two culprits: economics and elite overproduction.

First, economics.

Big school districts love their mega-schools.  They’re cheaper per pupil to run, since they have fewer buildings, fewer janitors, more bang for the bureaucratic buck.  Plus, a 5,000-student high school can field a football team that crushes smaller districts and draws 20,000 fans to a stadium that makes my college’s stadium look like a community rec center field for third graders.  In Texas, high school football isn’t a sport; it’s a religion, though they do have better concessions.

But our high school coach wanted us to have a small ghost.  He said he wanted us to show a little team spirit.

And it pays:  Bigger schools mean bigger revenue, bigger crowds, and bigger bragging rights for state titles, but you still only need 45 uniforms and helmets.

The second culprit is trickier:  elite overproduction.

Historian Peter Turchin (who I’ve written about before HERE) points out that societies often churn out more “elites” than they can sustain—too many people vying for too few top spots, whether in politics, business, or, yes, even high school sports.  We see it in our polarized Congress and bloated corporate C-suites, so why not in our kids’ lives?

Parents, schools, and even kids themselves feel the pressure to produce not just good students or athletes but exceptional ones.

The result of this is catastrophic.  It has produced a generation of tweens locked into one sport, one instrument, or one hyper-specialized path, all in the name of building a résumé for elite colleges that demand “well-rounded” applicants who’ve paradoxically had no time to be well-rounded.  Or, you know, they could just have a great DEI score.

Whatever.

Dogs have masters.  Cats have staff.

For the average kid, the stress this creates is brutal.  Kids today face schedules that would make a CEO sweat.  A 14-year-old might have 6 a.m. weight training, school, after-school practice, and a side hustle of “personal development” like SAT prep or violin lessons.

Free time?

That’s for quitters.

Social life?

Catch up on InstaFace® between reps.

The mental toll is real:   you can look around and see kids today are drowning in depression and hopelessness.  Part of this, I’d argue, comes from a life without failure.  Most kids in Houston won’t lose a football game or a wrestling match or a basketball game.  They’ll go and watch, sure, but they don’t get a chance to actually fail.  Without learning that failure is really an option and that tomorrow is another day, every little setback in their life feels like a catastrophe.

Without challenges that force them to fail, adapt, and push through, they hit adulthood brittle, unprepared for real-world setbacks.  I lost at sports in ways that made me want to cry when I was in high school.  I didn’t cry because I’m not gay, but I learned that I could get up in the morning after losing and see that I was still there.  My loss was temporary, but it really did help build may character.  Today’s kids, locked into elite tracks or locked out of actual competition, often don’t face meaningful failure until it’s high-stakes.

By then, the stakes are too high to learn gracefully.  They need safe spaces to crash and burn, like a JV wrestling match where you get pinned by a kid whose armpit smells like grape soda and Cheetos® or a debate club where your argument flops harder than a fish on a dock.

After the Little Rascals finished, Buckwheat became moslem and is now known as Kareem O’Wheat.

When we moved away from Houston’s mega-schools to Modern Mayberry, we did it mainly to escape this madness.  Our kids could try things.  They didn’t have to be the best to play, and they had room to fail without it defining their future or collapsing their ego.

That freedom let them discover who they were, not who a coach or a college admissions board thought they should be.  They’ve learned that the struggle is the goal.

Well, that and the booze, tobacco, and women.