Censorship – Page 6 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Opinions. A Small Book Review. Bad Jokes.

“That’s right. And if I think that Kirk is a Denebian slime devil, well, that’s my opinion, too.” – Star Trek, TOS

I’ve found that telling pizza jokes is all in the delivery.

Opinions.

Marcus Aurelius (dead stoic guy with a crappy son) said, “It never ceases to amaze me: we love ourselves more than we love other people, yet care more about their opinion than our own.”

I was talking with a friend about opinions today. Which opinions matter?

Well, if a toddler had an opinion, I’d generally disregard it because, like Joe Biden, they poop themselves and can barely string a coherent sentence together, even if you spot them a verb.

Toddler opinions generally don’t matter to me. And I never feel bad making fun of toddlers because, just like students in Baltimore government schools, toddlers can’t read.

Are chubby babies heavy infantry?

Okay, toddlers are out. Not that toddlers are always wrong, even they can see that I’m bald, for instance. Bald, however, is not an opinion. But try explaining that to a toddler, those drooling idiots with their Cheerio® encrusted fingers.

When I hear an opinion, I generally don’t accept it at face value. I try to filter it.

First, does it matter? Most people have opinions about most things. And most of those opinions don’t matter, really, to anyone. I don’t care about what anyone’s favorite color is. When The Mrs. wanted to paint my study, I didn’t really care about what color The Mrs. picked, as long as it’s not purple – I hate purple more than blue and red combined.

I don’t, however, let The Mrs. pick my cigars. My opinion on them matters, really, only to me and the company that I buy them from. I mean, when I looked up “how to light a cigar” on a search engine, I got 70 million matches. I might be interested in your opinion on good cigars, and might even try one, but it won’t change my world.

Can a cigar box? No, but a tin can.

The second filter is whether I can do anything about the opinion. If it passes the first filter, of “it matters” then I ask if I can do anything about it. This is a bigger question – I do have opinions on things I can’t do anything about. But as I go through life, I’m finding that often I have the ability to do things I never thought possible, like live in a country at the edge of civil and nuclear war with a president that has a dementia patient meth addicted son. So, there’s that.

I often find that, when I really try, that things I thought impossible were, in reality, really not that hard if I put my mind to it and dedicate myself to them. Of course, to really dedicate myself, then I face the risk of failure. Failing is tough, but it’s worth it on something that really matters.

I wonder why Ma Wilder always said “Embrace failure,” when she gave me hugs.

So those are the two big filters on whether an opinion matters to me.

The other opinions are opinions about me. I’d like to say that the opinions of people about me don’t matter, but I’d be a liar. I actually enjoy it when I troll people Leftists on X™ and they start frothing at the mouth. I guess you could call X© my troll booth.

I keep seeing Cthulhu memes, but I’m disappointed because all I ever see are the Old Ones.

But when people I respect share that opinion, well, I listen. And I run it through the filters.

This was a short one, and it’s also time to mention I just finished reading Hans Schantz’s latest book, The Wise of Heart. Full disclosure, I did get a review copy. I enjoyed it, as I have the other works of Mr. Schantz – especially the first book of his trilogy, The Hidden Truth.

This particular book was fully funded on Kickstarter®. When Kickstarter™ found out that it was a take on Leftist sex politics that didn’t follow the Leftist line, they kicked Hans off. He was fully funded (and then some) on FundMyComic©. Reminder – the people who run most tech companies hate you. Anyway, if you want, you can buy it at Amazon© (LINK) or other places. I get no compensation either way.

Like I said, I enjoyed it. But that’s my opinion.

14 Signs Of An Unfree Country

“Keep working on the window if we’re ever going to regain our freedom.” – Star Trek TOS

The homeless voted for Obama. They heard he’d bring change.

I hadn’t heard of Benjamin Carlson until today. I had another post that I was planning on doing, but when the perfect content presents itself I become as flexible as a Romanian Olympic® gymnast whose parents are watching from the GULAG breakroom.

Carlson wrote about his time living in China as a journalist. The title for his X® thread is, “What can an unfree society teach you about freedom?” In it there are 14 lessons that he learned in China. He’s now warning us about them, for, I guess, reasons.

All the bolded bits are Mr. Carlson’s words. The other bits are mine, since I want to give Mr. Carlson credit, but don’t want anyone to think he endorses any of my interpretations, opinions, or bad jokes.

What can an unfree society teach you about freedom?

In 6+ years living in China as a journalist, I was informed on, spied on, tailed when traveling.

This is nothing compared to what Chinese go through if targeted.

Here are 14 lessons—and warnings—that many need to hear: pic.twitter.com/f4R0P1lhCS

— Benjamin Carlson (@bfcarlson) September 21, 2023

People will adapt to oppression sooner than they will rebel.

That is true of a compliant people. The makeup of heritage Americans is anything but compliant – to come across an ocean to hack a life from trackless wilderness is mostly the opposite of compliant. Different people came here for different reasons, but the big takeaway is a lot of us have oppositional defiant disorder, but the good kind.

But that doesn’t get them into Congress (except for a handful) and it doesn’t get people invited into fancy parties and offered media access. But still, many people reject petty oppression, and are willing to stand up against it. New Mexico’s recent utter rejection of a wine-aunt governor blatantly violating all the Constitutions she said she’d uphold made me smile.

I have a guess that at least part of the desire to import the unending hordes of illegal aliens at a breakneck pace is related to the desire to have a much more compliant people – people who come here for the give-me-that’s and whose idea of America has nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with a parasitical relationship where they benefit. They’re used to oppression and okay with it, they just want to be comfortable.

What’s ET short for? So he can fit in the spaceship.

The most effective censorship is first legal, then social, then internal.

Legal censorship is difficult in the United States, though the government has several cases against Trump that rely on him having opinions they find “problematic”. Social censorship means that certain ideas can’t really be expressed. Ever wonder why the comment section of the online newspapers mostly disappeared? The last thing they want is people realizing they’re not alone. This causes social censorship to fail. At least among people who can read.

Lastly is internal censorship, when the Truth is so obvious that everyone sees it, yet everyone is afraid to say anything. Not that I’d mention an election or anything . . . .

A repressive system makes selfish behavior rational.

Look at the looting that is pervasive across Leftist cities. Why? Because laws are only to be enforced against people on the Right. Therefore? Free Air Jordans™.

I heard he was going to take another stab at marriage.

Ruining 1 person who threatens the regime sends a message that will be heard by 10,000.

People broke stuff on January 6, and some used violence. But the vast majority were just dudes walking around the Capitol Building. Yet the harshest penalties are being used against them, including inhumane conditions in prison.

Why? See point 4. above.

If you can limit the words people use, you can limit the thoughts they think.

Why do you think they demand that calling someone an illegal alien be banned? Why do you think they want to call a baby a fetus? Why do you think they want to call anything “gender affirming” care?

They want to change the dialogue, and that means making the words you use socially unacceptable. This is never ending, and will continue until the word “bad” is replaced by “double-plus-ungood”.

What is the most macho musical instrument? The MANdolin.

Even decent people will choose to be blind if seeing injustice would hurt their interests.

Why do most cops go-along to get-along? Yeah, this, but it’s not just cops – any location where people close ranks to avoid scrutiny is suspect. What happens when the entire country looks that way because there are people you can’t criticize?

If the government lies, many will still accept it as true because of the authority of the office.

This is becoming less true in the United States – look at the pushback on COVID. I think the trust level has dropped. Yet, still, 20%-40% of the citizens of the country will believe whatever they’re told by Joe Biden and Stephen Colbert.

Destroying a people’s cultural & religious identity, severing them from their history, punishing their defenders, and making them ashamed of who they are, is a brutally effective way to annihilate a threat.

When Thomas Jefferson’s statue is removed by New York City, and they’re thinking of bringing down all of the George Washington statues and the people who founded the United States are being vilified? Yeah. It’s already in full swing

The goal of an unfree system is to protect itself by transferring your distrust of the state to fellow citizens.

According to the Left, Catholics and “White Supremacist” groups are the greatest threats to the United States, despite being responsible for fewer deaths than a Chicago Labor Day weekend.

If only they would have played the national anthem, everyone at the BLM® riots would have sat down.

In an unfree society, the wealth and privileges amassed by politicians become state secrets.

Elizabeth Warren makes $174,000 a year, but her total earnings were $1.36 million last year. Bill Clinton was broke in 2000, but has at least $90 million today, excluding his Foundation. Why don’t people know this or care?

If the government shows it has your interest at heart, many are happy to trade freedoms for it.

I’m sure everyone can give plenty of examples. One lesson I learned is that when people want to give you something, that’s generally because they want something in return. To be clear, this doesn’t always have to be manipulative, since if after I feed Pugsley, I typically want him to take the trash out after I remind him three times to do it. I think the three times is just because he wants me to feel like I’m part of the process.

When the government gives, it wants control.

Corruption corrupts everything.

If 10% for the Big Guy is the norm, why shouldn’t everyone take a cut? Corruption corrupts, and it takes time and relentless effort to root it out.

Even politicians who fight like dogs will protect one another against the people.

The Clintons and Obamas sure look cozy with the Bush family.

My doctor told me I had a healthy prostate. I was deeply touched.

History must continually be rewritten to serve the purposes of the present.

I’ve touched on this on countless posts and touched on this above. The history has to be changed from the glorious story of a proud people taming a continent. The truth has to be replaced with a cursed and infected lie so that the political needs of the Left can be met. It has to be universal – on television, movies, the Internet, YouTube®, and anywhere people go.

Orwell saw many of these and they’re in his books, 1984 and Animal Farm. Carlson, I’m sure, has read these and also experienced them.

Just like we are beginning to experience them now.

I could have written much more, but I think I’ll leave it up to you to add in comments about Mr. Carlson’s points. The good news is you don’t have to be a gymnast to appreciate it. Besides, I’ve heard that the Eastern Europeans are now into Olympic® boating events. I guess they’re in row-mania.

Mechanisms of Control: Information

“He who controls information controls the world.” – Babylon 5

I was trying to finish a puzzle. I asked The Mrs., “Can you help me finish this one? It’s supposed to be a bird.” The Mrs.: “Put the Froot Loops back in the box, John.”

Last Wednesday I wanted to write about the mechanisms of financial control. Of course, there’s always more to write – that post was less than 2,000 words, but if I took the time I could probably write another 20,000 or 80,000 words.

It’s the same with this post. Even beyond propaganda, a big part of the game is information control. What information do we get, and where does it come from?

For quite a long time (I haven’t put any effort into going back in time, but it’s been here a while) the control of information has been used to actually create the news that Mainstream Media® uses. Sure, an earthquake is true and fair news. But 90% of the news that we are presented with in any given day isn’t news. Just like “processed cheese spread” or “buttery sauce” don’t contain anything resembling actual cheese or butter, most of the news we have is “manufactured news product” and doesn’t contain much news at all.

Have you heard of Karl’s sister, Onya? She invented the starter pistol.

A perfect example is George Floyd. He was a felon and junkie who died of an overdose. He wasn’t choked. George Floyd died because he had enough fentanyl in his system to kill Ecuador. The “news” created by his death was used and amplified for a purpose. In a normal world, Floyd’s death would have been ignored because “junkie dies of overdose” is another name for “Tuesday”.

Likewise, any sort of violence perpetrated by a white guy against (generally) black people is amplified, often to a national level. But the reverse? It’s suppressed and ignored to the point where black people think (really!) that they are the ones who are the victims, despite the fact that in 2021, 87% of violent crimes between black and whites were committed by blacks on whites.

But if black people watch TV or read the media, they’d be shocked and think that white people were the ones hurting blacks, and not the other way around. Why? The story that they’re selling is that white people are awful, and they’re willing to bend the language on a whim to make it so.

I bet they ADL® really hates pandas. They’re black, white, and Asian.

Racism used to mean that someone felt a race was superior. Now? According to the (rapidly disintegrating) ADL® it’s an explanation of why white people are bad and can never be not-bad no matter what they do.

My thought is that the Floyd death was amplified to put out a trap for Trump. Trump’s media coverage was uniquely and pervasively negative for a president. Remember when it was national news that Trump got an extra scoop of ice cream? Pepperidge Farms® remembers. And I do, too. Anything, and I mean anything Trump did became the big complaint of the media.

The Mainstream Media® always has an agenda. But who feeds them news? The Left. The organizations on the Left are the primary news sources. Like scriptwriters on Disney® movies, they create news stories that meet what they need for their organization’s goals regardless of reality. Also, like scriptwriters, people doing the news don’t really have any need for the Truth if it gets in the way of what they want you to think.

Other things are not very truthful, either. Global Warming® is one of the stories I just can’t escape when I watch the news. But how have they twisted the truth in . . . the weather? Here’s an example:

I enjoyed all four seasons of that weather show on Netflix®.

I’ve seen others. In the span of only ten years, those that want to sell fear to bring viewers have taken the same temperatures and cloaked them in a dangerous red color. Is it hot in summer? Yes! And that’s why the stories about Global Warming Climate Change™ all show up then. And they will every summer, even if it gets colder.

So, news is created by Leftist organizations, which include:

The Media (including entertainment),
Most of the Fortune® 500,
Most Schools,
The ADL®,
The SPLC,
Most Colleges,
Military General Officer Corps,
Most Religions, and
Almost Every Government Agency.

These organizations pump out press releases daily which feed the news cycle. Who fact checks them? Why, a compliant media! Snopes® is run by Leftists, and expecting the Washington Post® to correctly fact check Joe Biden? You’d have better luck pulling out your teeth and leaving them under your pillow for the ADL® to bring you a shiny new quarter.

I’m a racist. I just hate the 440-yard dash. Too long for a sprint, too short for distance. And turning it into the 400 meters didn’t help.

This news is then pumped into the heads of Leftists, nonstop. Places like Google® and Facebook™ and YouTube© where alternative viewpoints aren’t allowed. Think that the Vaxx® was a big mistake? YouTube™ is still censoring that one.

Leftists, for the most part, I’m not concerned with. If they ever stumble upon these posts, they won’t be able to read them. They may be smelly virgins without a hope of ever having babies, but they’re not illiterate. If I say the sky is blue, they’ll immediately ask for a source because the Right to them is worse than Satan.

When no one laughed at Neil Armstrong’s Moon landing jokes, he’d just say, “Well, I guess you had to be there.”

They don’t want to think, in fact can’t think, about some of the concepts that I write about here because their amygdala will stop them from listening. Literally, a Leftist can’t read one of my typical posts without getting so angry that they can’t read it.

No, I write for the Right, and I write for the middle. The Right is self-explanatory, since I’m on the Right. The Middle have been the people the Left is targeting. I’m sure that they believe that they can convince the Middle if they deprive them of any other viewpoint.

The Left is excellent at that. They want to tighten down Twitter, er, X®, Facebook™, Instasnap©, MySpace©, and any other place that the Right can disagree with the Leftist narrative. Wonder why the newspapers eliminated the comments sections? The Right was (and is!) amazing at getting points out that countered the information goals of the Left.

Quite simply, from their standpoint, that had to be stopped.

AOC had to write an essay in college about genocides. Took her a long time to decide if she was for or against them.

Again, remember that the “news” you get from the Mainstream Media™ is simply not news, but a product, like “buttery spread”. It isn’t news. Have some fun with it – count the number of stories in a day that you come across, and see how the Left is trying to manipulate you.

When you see it, you’re free to make your own opinions. And free to wake others up.

Exclusive: Hunter Biden’s Secret Diary

“Look, you’re corrupt, we’re corrupt. There’s one difference. We’re honest about it.” – Get the Gringo

If Hunter ever goes to jail, I hope he names his prison memoir Biden Time.

We here at Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise® have come across a huge scoop: we have found the diaries of Hunter Biden from grade school all the way up to last week. They were left on the doorstop of our law firm, Dewey, Cheatem, and Howe with a note that said, “Too hot for James O’Keefe! Good luck, Johnny, I’m your biggest fan! – J.”

Cataloging the material was difficult, and there were times where I became concerned. Later pages were covered with powdery substances, and I wasn’t sure if I was going to be in trouble with the DEA if they raided Stately Wilder Manor. No problem – my dog, Foreshadowing, ate them and then ran around the house 43 times. Then all of Foreshadowing’s teeth fell out and checks from Ukrainian mobsters started showing up in my mailbox.

I’ve skipped much of the information in the diaries, since it’s probably good to keep what happens between a man, his dog, seventeen Filipino hookers and a jar of peanut butter private. Of course, none of that happened, which is why I’m grateful the word “parody” exists.

July, 1977

I wanted my dad to take me to see starwars agin but he said know because dad said that he was woried we’d grow up in a raciall jungle. I like jungles! I talked with Beau, and Beau told me to shut up because I was too stupid to understand. I said, no, Im seven so I know wat a jungle is, but Beau said I had brain damage. I think I wanna coke.

June, 1988

Holy cow, boys, having your dad running for president is just friggin’ awesome! I was busted in Jersey with a bunch of drugs. I just flashed my driver’s license. Biden, bitches! It cracks me up that the old man is all “let’s get tough on drugs” but when I get bussssted, nada happens. Old man says that he’ll make a phone call. Cracks me up when dad says in speeches that all drug users should be held accountable. Ha! Unless your name is Biden. Bitches!

In a dictatorship in Africa, we’d call this corruption. Here? We don’t talk about it.

June, 1994

So, dad explains it this way. My grades at Georgetown were crap, but he pulled strings and got me into Georgetown law, which sucks, because Georgetown is so low rent. Of course, Beau had to go to dad’s alma mater, Syracuse. Today, it all changed! Apparently, dad had Bill Clinton call the dean, Guido Calabresi (seriously Goodfellas vibes) at Yale, and I can transfer from Georgetown to Yale! Dad says that since I’m a Biden, well, “don’t worry about grades, son” and I won’t! Woooo! Yale! It’s awesome to have the name Biden, bitches!!!

May, 2001

So, here I am at a law firm. My law firm! It’s called Oldaker, Biden and Belair. Join the firm, get your name on the door! How awesome is that? I think it’s because . . . I’m a Biden, bitches! Partner in one. The other thing is that absolutely no one here cares about how much you drink or how many drugs you do. Drink after lunch to take the edge off? Fine. My name’s on the door. Parties? Plenty of those, and the booze and, well, other things flow freely. I think I’m in heaven.

I love putting on warm underwear, fresh from the dryer. I then look around the laundromat and wonder who it belongs to.

September, 2008

Dad says I have to quit working as a lobbyist because Obummer said so. Dad said that being vice president was way better than being senator, so I have to stop doing God’s work, lobbying for online gambling, biotechnology companies, and colleges wanting federal funds, I mean, the most needy and moral people. I’m so sad.

February 19, 2014

Kicked out of the Navy Reserve today. Dad and I had a discussion, which means he yelled at me. “You idiot, you understood you were getting a drug test, right? And that coke is only detectable for a day or two, right? The head of the Joint Chiefs said that, and I quote, you had enough cocaine in your urine to qualify your urine as a controlled substance.” Yeah, it was bad. Not bad? My company, Rosemont Seneca Thornton, just got $3,500,000 sent to us from a Russian dude! Why? We’re not sure, but all I have to say is . . . Bidenz, Bitches!!!!

2014 was a very good year.

April, 2014

New job, new job, new job! This one has me being on the Board of Directors of some company in Ukraine. I think they make chlorine gas or helium gas or something. The best part? My salary. $1,000,000. A year! Bidenz, Bitches! Ha! Best part? I’m not sure I have to do anything!

April 14, 2017

My life has kinda been a haze since I got the job at Buriisma. Or however you spell it. A million bucks a year, but they cut my salary to half after dad was no longer veep. Dammit. Why couldn’t he have beaten Aunt Hillary? I think dad was scared, something about, “Don’t cross Hillary, that’s worse than the Chicago Mob.” But today I finally got divorced. Kathy was always upset about the cocaine and the crack and the Filipino prostitutes, but I think it was the video of the dog that got to her. She said, “Hunter, that’s enough. We’re done here.” I didn’t mention that Beau’s widow was looking pretty fine at the funeral . . . I wonder if that’s what finally put her over the edge? Or the fact that I was bangin’ Beau’s babe was on the front page of Page Six®?

Hunter’s date didn’t like bottles, she only liked it in the can.

August, 2018

Stripper? Arkansas? My kid? Jeez, how much crack did I do that night?

April, 2019

So, my laptop is broken. I think I dropped it off to get fixed, but I was so high that I’m not sure I did that or maybe the laptop ran away. I think the running away part was a dream. Regardless, what bad could come of that?

May, 2019

Met a girl, six days later we’re married. This will turn out well – Biden, Bitches!

October, 2020

Guess they found the laptop. Thankfully, all the CIA dudes signed a thing that said it wasn’t really mine. Whew! Dad would be mad about that if it was. I guess I believe the CIA guys, except a lot of those pictures look really familiar.

July, 2022

My art has done awesome! I must be good at art! My paintings have sold for lots of money! So far it’s over $1,300,000 for like 11 of them. It’s not as good as Buriisma money, but it’s still pretty good. I mean, some of those paintings took me hours to make. One person bought almost $900,000 of them. I’m not sure if she’s the one that dad appointed to that special commission, but, whatever. I’m an artist. Biden, bitches!

Shooting down the Chinese balloon is the only thing Biden has done to stop inflation.

June, 2023

My lawyer says I’m not in any trouble anymore. Turns out that he knows the DOJ guy and they have a deal worked out for special people like me that I can just claim I’ll pay my taxes in the future, and won’t buy anymore guns while all coked up. Excellent deal, plus they said they put in a sweetener – gets me immunity from essentially anything I’ve ever done up to now. Bidenz, Bitches!!!!

August, 2023

That stupid judge threw out my special deal. Dad says it will be fine, though. The same guy who negotiated it for the DOJ is now a “special prosecutor” which means that he “especially” won’t be prosecuting me for anything. And I have a child support deal that makes sure that Arkansas stripper’s kid gets some of my paintings. Sure! I can do about sixty of those a day!

You know, sometimes I like to reflect back on my life. I wonder if I would be an asset to society if I were living a clean, sober, honest life and financially supporting my children while not snorting enough drugs to paralyze Robert Downey, Jr while getting into less trouble for federal felonies than the average man would if they were arrested for jaywalking.

Nah.

Memes And Your Mind

“No, for God’s sake! You’ve got it all backwards! AIDS, the Ebola virus? On an evolutionary scale they are newborns. This virus walked the planet long before the dinosaurs.” – The X Files Movie (‘98)

Greta has made a real difference in electrical usage – every time she’s on the TV, I turn it off.

One of the more interesting ideas that I ran across was when I was first exposed to the idea of a meme. It’s really short for mimeme, which means “imitated thing”. Richard Dawkins described it as the idea that ideas would be faced with the same sort of pressures that biological entities face in the world – they either reproduce, or they die.

Regardless of how I feel about Dawkins’ other ideas, this one has always intrigued me, because it’s about the fundamental relationship between people and information and ideas. It’s the place where ideas propagate and are passed on.

Or not. An idea that’s passed on, lives. One that isn’t passed on, dies.

The doctor said I had Peekaboo virus. He said that sends most people to ICU.

Now, that really may not have any relationship with the truth of an idea. Let’s take a meme that has been artificially boosted to the point where it’s known by virtually everyone:

“Diversity is our strength.”

Well, not so much. It turns out that diversity is our diversity, but probably not our strength in that when you have a bunch of people living together that don’t share a common ethnicity, “social trust” drops. It turns out that if you want to live in a society with high trust, it’s probably more reasonable to say, “Diversity is our weakness”.

What about another great meme, this one from our Founding Fathers, “All men are created equal”.

My hairline would beg to differ.

Now if the meme had been, “All men have the same rights” I would have been right on board, and I think that was the original intent. But people are decidedly unequal. Some are short, some are tall. Some are smart, and some are Leftists. All men may have the same rights, but all men aren’t the same.

Why are all the corporations hiring female Equality Officers? They’re cheaper.

How about this one: “majority rules”?

That’s one I remember having been well drilled into the brains of fourth grade kids when I was one, typically when I lost the vote on the movie to watch in class. Why wouldn’t a bunch of fourth grade kids not want to watch Tommy?

But “majority rules” is a horrible way to run a society. Doubt me? Look around. The idea that has been the most stable (outside of Kim’s Best Korea Solution) has been a constitutional republic, not a democracy. But, hey, who needs a constitution when people might have bad thoughts? Majority rules is mob rule, and that defines the worst of us, a place where the passion of the moment takes over from the rights of all of us.

The ideas here are simple, and the phrases have an amazing lifespan even when they are observably false. There is a place for Truth, and it isn’t in a meme. Just as a virus doesn’t have to be virtuous, neither are ideas that are spread by memes. What they are though, is excellent persuasion material.

Oh, Garfield! And here I thought you just wanted to be Nermal.

But just like all people aren’t created equal, all memes aren’t created equal, either. One could make the argument that Trump’s victorious election in 2016 was partially due to fun memes. I’m sure that you saw some of them. Remember The Deplorables meme?

I’m sure Hillary would like to forget it.

Memes are often effective persuasion material, and effective propaganda, true or not. Advertising, for instance, is entirely made to try to create memes and pump them directly into the heads of consumers. How many ad jingles can you think of in the next sixty seconds? I’m lovin’ it®, and I’d be happy to give you Helping Hands™ to Bring Good Things To Life©.

It’s not a mistake that these are memorable.

The Internet has not made this better. In many ways, the websites (especially social media) are created to be addiction pumps by manipulating your emotions – and brain chemicals.

The good news is that we aren’t simply blank slates for corporations, government, and universities to imprint on, we have free will, and most importantly we get to choose what goes into our heads, what information we watch, and what thoughts we consume.

As Garfield® taught us, we aren’t immune to propaganda.

But realizing it’s there is the first step to understanding it, to taking a step back, and to evaluate what I think.

I asked my librarian if they had a book by Shakespeare. “Yes,” she replied. “Which one?” I asked. “William.”

Is that my thought? Did I put it there? Is it consistent with what I know? Is it consistent with the truth?

Is it consistent with the Truth?

When I think about just what a meme might be imitating, I keep coming around to the same idea: the Truth. And what is propaganda, but an idea imitating the Truth?

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Corruption And The End Of An Age

“Only a cynical man would call what these people have “lives,” Wayne. Crime, despair, this is not how man was supposed to live. The League of Shadows has been a check against human corruption for thousands of years. We sacked Rome, loaded trade ships with plague rats, burned London to the ground. Every time a civilization reaches the pinnacle of its decadence, we return to restore the balance.” – Batman Begins

“If I were American, I’d vote Trump. But I’m an illegal alien, So I’m voting Biden.”

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

Volume V, Issue 3

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.

This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – Watch The Bugs Scatter – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The End of an Age – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 800 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Watch The Bugs Scatter

When I was a kid growing up near Wilder Mountain, we’d often go hiking during the summers. Whenever we’d stop, I’d do kid things, one of which was picking up a rock. Why?

To see what was on the other side of it, silly.

Whenever I’d pick one up and see a batch of bugs, the one thing they’d do is run and hide. They were, I suppose, fine under the rock, or maybe out at night, but the light of day scared them and they would run so they could start hiding.

Biden rhymes with hidin’ so that makes sense. As the Congressional review of Biden Shenanigans continues to show up more and more smoking guns, the pattern remains the same: get Trump.

June 7: FBI releases the FBI form where it’s alleged by an informant that the Bidens took a $10 million bribe.
June 8: Jack smit indicts Trump for having similar sorts of documents that every president has retained.

July 26: Hunter goes to court and gets the sweetheart deal that gave him, essentially, blanket immunity pulled by a judge who decided not to rubber-stamp the thing.
July 27: Jack Smith adds more charges to Trump on the documents thing.

July 31: Hunter’s former business partner testifies that Joe was on more than 20 calls with Hunter’s clients, and that Burisma pressured Joe to use his power to get the Ukrainian prosecutor fired.
August 1: Jack Smith indicts Trump again. This time? For speaking on January 6.

I’m thinking the more dirt that comes out on Hunter, the more dirt they’ll have to come up with on Trump, up to and including trying him as a witch under some obscure 1670 statute from Ye Olde Commonwealth of Virginia for “flying in a most terrifying way” in his jet.

The Bidens have (allegedly) created a crime family that works without any sort of (to this point) review. It is, at this point, established fact that the Bidens used the full force of the “intelligence community” including the FBI and the CIA to help Joe get elected by suppressing the Hunter laptop story, and controlling the items showing up in social media.

Congress has done something moderately useful for once: they’ve shown us that Washington, D.C. is exactly as corrupt as we always thought it was. And now we have proof.

Violence and Censorship Update

For whatever reason, CNN® decided that people shouldn’t go see the new movie, Sound of Freedom. That’s odd, because the movie is mainly about child trafficking. Why would the Left be in favor of child trafficking? Guess that’s just a mystery.

The need to scrub history of everything, well, historical has gone into overdrive. Washington and Lee decided that they could no longer have (spins wheel) the headstone of a horse that, apparently, owned slaves and was the cause of the Civil War. Now that the horse has been erased from history and censored, I’m sure that the Left is done and will stop now.

A recent Pew® poll (LINK) showed that 55% of Americans think that the government should restrict speech. Which Americans? The Left, and the speech is whatever they disagree with, which is called, “false”.

Just before his wife told Justin to take a hike, he took time to blame the Right in the United States because “Canadian” Muslims are against LGBTQ curriculum in schools. Guess we won another one, guys.

Bankman-Fraud (how did they not see that coming?) has just had Biden’s DOJ drop tons of felonies. Odd since Ukrainians took our tax dollars, gave them to Bankman-Fraud, and then he gave millions to Democrats for elections. Nothing to see here.

And a reminder, looking into your bank account is patriotic, looking into the money we ship to Ukraine is treason.

And, to call something racist should no longer require proof, say people who are definitely not racist against whites.

Finally, Leftists who create propaganda for the Left are needing money because not enough people are going to see the Leftist propaganda. Expect to see Hollywood here soon enough.

Biden’s Misery Index

Let’s take a look to see how we’ve done this month . . . .

Yup, up again, but not as steep. But people aren’t getting fries with that, anymore.

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Violence is down – I was expecting more during a long, hot summer. Perhaps August, or perhaps the endemic violence of the cities doesn’t even register anymore?

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it was down a bit.

Economic:

Economic numbers are swinging back down. The numbers look fairly unstable from month to month, which isn’t good, but the stock market popped up in July, regardless if the cities look like a dystopian science fiction predication.

Illegal Aliens:

The border numbers are down, and I’m a bit surprised, since the infiltration continues. Suppressed numbers?

The End of an Age

Tim Pool, podcaster, called his summary for July, 2023 on August 1:

I think he’s right. The full power of the DOJ has been weaponized against half, but only half, of the citizens of the country. Laws have been passed in state after state to allow irregularities in voting that Enron® wishes were allowed in accounting.

There are active purges of people with classical values and beliefs from the military and even from the corporate world as weird, Leftist struggle sessions are required for employees and soldiers. Failure to enthusiastically take part results in firings.

Another sign of the end of an age is when a billionaire spends $171,000,000 of his own money to become governor of Illinois and then, in 2023, signs a bill into law that allows illegal immigrants to . . . go home? No. Become police officers.

Yes. We live in a nation where we have foreign mercenaries who are here illegally who now have the responsibility to enforce the law. I don’t even thing Rome fell to such a low.

The Roman Republic, however, did fall to the point where they started using the power of the state to put politicians in prison for purely political reasons. The outcome of that was the destruction of the Republic and then the Caesars.

LINKS

As usual, links this month are courtesy of Ricky. Thanks so much, Ricky!!

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1683999891494785024

https://twitter.com/i/status/1686450113298710538

https://twitter.com/i/status/1680045716427747329

https://twitter.com/i/status/1678170602664763395

https://twitter.com/i/status/1680641692762796032

https://twitter.com/i/status/1681805507428859906

https://twitter.com/i/status/1683261497525321729

https://twitter.com/i/status/1685767050944225280

https://twitter.com/i/status/1684466718234877952

https://twitter.com/i/status/1684619417215193088

Good Guys

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/retailers-strike-back-7-eleven-workers-beat-brazen-mega-shoplifter-stick

https://www.gpb.org/news/2023/08/01/membership-skyrocketing-black-gun-group-touts-inalienable-2a-rights-for-self

https://katv.com/news/nation-world/man-tracks-down-truck-thieves-kills-one-in-shootout-san-antonio-police-department-texas-south-park-village-shopping-center-chief-william-mcmanus-self-defense

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/372412618_Busting_the_Durable_Myth_that_US_Self-Defense_Law_Uniquely_Fails_to_Protect_Human_Life

One Guy

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1681521615232745472

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-jason-aldeans-controversial-hit-song-became-a-cultural-flashpoint

https://www.billboard.com/music/country/jason-aldean-brittany-aldean-try-that-in-a-small-town-number-1-reaction-1235383534/

Body Count

https://news.gallup.com/poll/508886/belief-five-spiritual-entities-edges-down-new-lows.aspx

https://amac.us/newsline/society/10-shocking-examples-of-wokeism-in-the-u-s-military/

https://heartlandernews.com/2023/07/06/air-force-embraces-dei-as-recruitment-falters/

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/diversity-biden-joint-chiefs-chairman-nominee-placed-dei-forefront-air-force-leader

https://www.cfr.org/blog/uncertain-future-us-militarys-all-volunteer-force

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2023/08/03/of-course-young-patriots-are-rejecting-joining-our-failing-military-n2626500

Vote Count

PAST MONTH: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19821/tech-companies-manipulating-elections

BACKGROUND: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/15/revealed-disinformation-team-jorge-claim-meddling-elections-tal-hanan

BACKGROUND: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1419828112

Civil War

https://nypost.com/2023/07/29/staten-islands-congestion-pricing-fight-spurs-push-to-leave-nyc/

https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/scenes-from-el-dorado-state-secession-california-18201138.php

https://www.hcn.org/issues/55.8/north-extremism-oregons-greater-idaho-movement-echoes-a-long-history-of-racism-in-the-region

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/02/america-house-divided-political-lawfare-could-lead-violence/

https://www.recorderonline.com/news/showing-up-for-the-next-civil-war/article_78dc73e0-3086-11ee-90ae-ab45c1f4d94f.html

https://theconversation.com/idiots-criminals-and-scum-nasty-politics-highest-in-us-since-the-civil-war-208272

https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/04/politics/american-political-divisions-july-fourth/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/08/style/fourth-turning-pop-culture.html

Making Leftists Radical: Compassion, Internet Cats, and Feminists With No Sense of Humor

“It’s mercy, compassion, and forgiveness I lack. Not rationality.” – Kill Bill, Volume 1

That’s awake, not “woke.”

Repost from 2019 . . .

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:

misplaced compassion kills.

The Mrs. recently found an article that really, for me, answered the question about why the Left is turning so radical, so quickly. The article is by Zach Goldberg, and you can find it here (LINK), although he takes the data in a different direction than I do for his article. Goldberg has an interesting Twitter® feed (LINK) as well. The graphs in this post are mostly from either the article or his Twitter© feed.

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.

What happened in 2010?

Twitter® and Facebook©.

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.

The Twitter®, Facebook©, and YouTube™ video suggestion algorithms have become the Democrat® brand. Social media is a particularly useful programming device. These algorithms are used every day to pull the Left farther Left. Why does this impact white Leftists in particular? They spend more time on social media than the rest of the Left. But they’re enough – white leftists are about 25% of the electorate. And they do have money. And they hate the Right.

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?

FBI: Time To Break It Up And Put Them On Trial

“We’re gonna need some more FBI guys, I guess.” – Die Hard

The Mrs. is a lot like an FBI agent. She never asks a question she doesn’t already know the answer to.

When I was just a wee Wilder, I began to doubt the government.

I was fairly young when I heard about the secret files that J. Edgar kept on powerful people in order so that he could maintain his perch atop the FBI® that he had created. Hoover had spent decades developing not only a United States Police Force, but the aptly-named Hoover sucked up all the data on people that he could. Hoover likely gave favors to hundreds of people by not sharing their dirty secrets so that he could maintain his perch. It was so bad that I think Hoover even invented the Memory Foam® mattress so he could blackmail people.

Hoover also was a genius at self-promotion. He made the “G-Men” a meme in the 1930s, trying to set up a propaganda campaign to convince the American public that the FBI®, instead of being an unnecessary internal police and propaganda forum, was instead just like Superman™ – the paragon of truth, justice, and the American way®. Oddly, both of those ideas are fiction.

Superman® challenged Chuck Norris to a fight. Loser had to wear their underwear on the outside.

Instead, the agents have spent their time illegally wiretapping (over 7,000 times by 1985, who knows how many more now) American civilians. The FBI© was more than happy to also jump in and get involved in:

the ATF© created quagmire in Waco,
entrapment of the innocent Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge and the murder of several people in his family,
failure to investigate the massive Chinese investments in financing Bill Clinton in 1996 (ever wonder how they got all that access??),
having an agent (Robert Hanssen) who was utterly in the pocket of the Soviets and, later, Russia,
editing Wikipedia® to make the FBI™ look better,
covering-up the Hillary Clinton® e-mail scandal,
warrants to tap Trump’s campaign,
Andrew McCabe,
Pete Strzok, who never should have gotten a clearance based on the number of consecutive consonants in his last name without a vowel,
using personal data (DMV photos) for a vast database,
“losing” Hunter Biden’s laptop,
despite having certainty that the Hunter Biden laptop data was 100% real, contained evidence of multiple crimes, and misled and intentionally tried to suppress laptop information by lying that it was hacked, despite knowing that it wasn’t.

Everything in italics above is from the last 10 years. This is another reason not to trust Italians, I guess. But in the last decade it’s almost all extremely partisan in nature, showing that the FBI™ could probably just be renamed the Grand Enforcement, Support, Tyranny and Police Organization (GESTaPO) of the Democratic Party. As the Leftists keep whining, they want to safeguard “Our Democracy”. Sounds very good until you being to understand that “Our” doesn’t include you or me.

In a moment of clarity, the FBI decided to dedicate themselves to the mission of fighting crime. Just kidding.

I do know that FBI® has done some good things in the past, especially when it came to rooting out commies after World War II. Say what you want about Hoover, but he did hate commies. But as it stands here in 2023, the FBI© has become a liability for anyone who is actually interested in freedom.

The problem comes from breaking the Constitution. The idea of Federalism is that we don’t have parallel laws, we have a single set of laws. If the state regulates insurance or regulates mustache length, why should the Feds do it, too? Well, what about kidnapping? That’s one that can cross state lines, right?

The Lindbergh kidnapping case led to a law that let the FBI® look into kidnappings.

Did you know you can fit 34 bananas in a kangaroo pouch? Also? I have a lifetime ban from the zoo.

The big idea was to look at crimes and figure out how to get involved. It turns out, the Federal government which was intentionally small because the Founding Fathers mainly just wanted to be left alone to mostly do what they wanted, as long as it didn’t violate state, county or city law. Federal law? There were a few back in the day (see: Whiskey Rebellion) but most laws were local. Murder someone and have it be a Federal issue?

Not going to happen.

Well, back in 1787 it wasn’t going to happen. But after decades of creeping laws encouraged by propaganda, the FBI™ only strengthened with time. Like a camel with a nose under the tent, the FBI© now looks into (spins wheel) things they don’t like (not illegal things, mind you, just things the FBI© didn’t like) said on the Internet.

My puns aren’t listed as a war crime. Yet.

The last example is real – the FBI worked with social networks and Internet companies to stop the spread of information that would be damaging to the Democratic party.

The FBI® is now a fully partisan appendage of state power. It always existed to support itself, but now it explicitly exists to support parties and politicians instead of the American people.

The fact that this doesn’t surprise anyone is perhaps the most telling thing about where we are as a people. The FBI™ is shown to be institutionally corrupt at the highest and lowest levels and (probably) irretrievably partisan for the Left and . . . no one is surprised.

Hmm, wonder why I’m getting all these hits from Washington and Langley?

Life Choices Are Resilience Choices: When One Income Is More Than Two

“An idea is like a virus. Resilient. Highly contagious. And even the smallest seed of an idea can grow. It can grow to define or destroy you.” – Inception

I’ve heard that King Charles at his coronation vowed to keep his armies in his sleevies.

During the Great Recession I read an article about the economic resilience of families. I can’t find it, since I’ve slept several thousand nights since then. Heck, I’m not sure even Frequent Commentor Ricky could find it. The conclusion of the article was interesting to me – two-earner families were actually less economically resilient than sole-breadwinner families.

The article went on to explain that in most two income families, the families weren’t stashing tons of money away, but rather spending at about the level of the two incomes – nicer cars, shinier PEZ®, more velvet Elvis paintings. They were operating on a similar margin as a typical sole breadwinner. The big difference was in flexibility. If one member of a two-income family became unemployed, it was often a hit of 50% or more of the family income.

This may be the best painting ever done – the Mona Lisa could not show such elegance.

Sure, losing 50% of family income sounds bad, and I’m sure it is. The flip side, however, is that if the sole breadwinner lost a job, that family lost 100% of their income. That sounded worse to me, but those families performed better during hard times.

Why?

It turns out that a dual income family was already operating at nearly 100% efficiency. The mortgage, the cars, the PEZ®, the private schools, whatever expenses they had were based on Mom and Dad going out and making nearly their theoretical maximum incomes. To lose half of that is devastating, unless they had saved some of that cash.

It turned out that in economic hard times, the assets that people buy often go down in value. So, during the Great Recession, people bought hella-nice houses complete with granite avocado sharpeners and walk-in nail-trimming rooms that they could just barely afford the payments on.

But during an economic downturn, the price of the McMansions® went down. I talked to several folks during the Great Recession that dual-incomed themselves into bankruptcies as they lost jobs and had to walk away from expensive houses in half-finished subdivisions to move across the country to places that they didn’t want to live. Ouch. One dude I knew was bitter for just this reason. I think he was a tool anyway, but this magnified it.

I guess my regular ladder went for a pack of cigarettes and never came back.

Sometimes this economic stress ends in divorce as Dad loses his mojo and Mom loses a bit of respect and better-deals Dad. This isn’t an indictment of women, more so a realization of the fact that women want (in survey after survey) to have a man that’s more economically successful than them, despite them wanting equal pay.

Contradiction? Yeah. But still and amazing stress on a family.

And they want a man who is sensitive but who will also take charge.

On the other hand, I knew some single income families (intact families) where Dad lost his job, and Mom went into the labor force, Dad took a job to get by, and the family didn’t skip a beat in making payments. Did things like daycare go up?

Yup, unless Grandma could help out or Grandpa could use the kids as help down at the still. But the families weren’t flying so close to the flame, so they made it, and in most cases Dad found something again, maybe not as good as before, but close enough so Mom could cut down on hours or quit her job entirely.

I’ve made many, many, many arguments against efficiency. This is another one. It’s also insidious because that quest for economic efficiency ends (often) in weakness.

This idea that women should go out into the labor force, make as much as men, and thus make their families more vulnerable to economic dislocation caused by (spins wheel) inflation, COVID, immigration, or recession has been propagandized into the population for decades. There is hardly any little girl that wasn’t exposed to the idea that she shouldn’t go out and be just as good as a man and that she had some sort of duty to work because, well, because women.

It’s powerful when that’s the propaganda that millions in Gen X and later grew up with.

Chuck Norris told a joke about Jada Smith. Will Smith then slugged Jada.

To be fair, there are some amazingly capable women that I know who have had very strong careers, executive level stuff, who have kept it together and been great moms, to boot. In most cases, though, if those women quit tomorrow their family could do fine on their husband’s income. But that’s not the norm.

As we move into a time of greater economic instability, this will have the impact of making families more dependent on government, because efficiency is the enemy of independence. This may very well be the plan – dependent people are easier to control. When the next meal is dependent on pleasing power, people tend to stop testing boundaries, tend to be pushed to conform to power.

The opposite of efficiency is resilience, finding our own way economically, becoming independent rather than dependent. This is difficult when focused on trying to meet the ideals of a society bent on consumption at all costs.

That’s a big one. I guess my faith in huge manatee has been restored.

Economically, this flies in the face of propaganda we’ve seen for decades. It flies in the face of the desired outcome to treat people as economic units whose purpose is to create money to pay of a debt so large as to be unimaginable by any person alive atop a technological framework that is increasingly prone to failure.

Resiliency is our future, the only future outside of living in the pods and eating the bugs, which is a perfect life for an economic unit, but no life for a man. The end part of the 2020s will be (my guess) the biggest change that we’ll ever see in our lives, which includes the time when we added those extra four digits to the zip code.

The only solution? Resilience.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Lessons From France And Falling Apart

“Yes, I shall certainly choose revolutionary France for my holiday again next year.” – Blackadder the Third

Why does France have so many rivers? Water follows the path of least resistance.

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

Volume V, Issue 2

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.

This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – Lessons From France – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Falling Apart – Links

Front Matter

Lessons From France

France is always at the front of things, like fashion trends, like making great wine, like losing wars against countries that aren’t France. Recently, after a foreign “youth” was killed after a police chase, the massive foreign population of France rebelled. Riots, which are generally scheduled for every Wednesday in France, were extended to the weekends.

The people initially rioting were the Leftists and the foreign population of France. Thankfully, they provided several lessons that may apply to the future Civil War in the United States.

First, violence can start and spread rapidly. The violence is, generally, confined to the cities.

Second, the police won’t do much against people who are Leftist or associated with Leftist causes, like unrestrained immigration.

Third, the police will rapidly, and with great force jump down the throats of native peoples defending themselves.

Fourth, the native people can and will rapidly organize. The time for organization in the face of a significant threat is measured in days, not weeks. This organization scares the Powers That Be and they’ll rapidly do everything they can to stop it. Everything.

Fifth, diversity isn’t a strength, it’s a weakness. Society is tough to maintain and requires effort at every point in history. Adding in a foreign element that has no commonality with the host country other than that they eat and use oxygen doesn’t make a country stronger, it weakens it.

Ask the French.

There are probably some other lessons (feel free to share more below) but these are the big ones I found.

Violence and Censorship Update

The censorship this month again is bigger than the violence. Here are a few moments in a very, very busy month. The theme of this month is about censorship unravelling as even the press begins to turn against Biden in preparation for his successor for the 2024 election. Gavin Newsom? Likely.

The biggest stories are about suppression of information about alleged corruption of the Biden Crime Family®. Here are a few snippets of how the .gov folks are attempting to suppress

It’s almost like there was some sort of collusion between the Left and the various parts of the government, like the Biden Administration blocking disclosure of the Deep State’s® manipulation of the 2020 election. Wonder why?

But if that’s not creepy enough, the .mil folks were looking for mean Tweets®:

And the CIA wanted the Leftists to win in Brazil. Again, shocking.

Biden’s Misery Index

Let’s take a look to see how we’ve done this month . . . .

Yup, up again, but not as steep.

Updated Civil War II Index

Violence:

Violence is down – I was expecting more during a long, hot summer. Perhaps August?

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it was down a bit, though people are thinking a lot more about Civil War.

Economic:

Economic numbers are swinging back up. The numbers look fairly unstable from month to month, which isn’t good, but June was a calm month.

Illegal Aliens:

The border numbers are down, and I’m a bit surprised, since the infiltration continues. Suppressed numbers?

Falling Apart

During the month I save memes and snippets to use in the Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, often, they for a theme for the month. This month, I had a few where the only thing I could think of was the theme that everything is falling apart – the values that we once held dear are now inverted, and we cease to be recognizable as a country.

The first is inversion, and Krassenstein, thankfully, took a lot of heat for this really, really bad Tweet®.