Category: Civil War

American Civil War: Four Fates, From Freedom to Soviet Tyranny

“Did we give up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?  No!” – Animal House

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On this blog recently someone commented, “When I was a kid, people used to say that ‘It’s a free country,’ but they don’t say that anymore.”  I tried it out the other day.  The response?  “It hasn’t been a free country in a while.”  I turned him into the FBI for that kind of hate think.

Again, this is a repost from back in 2020, partially because I’m going to add it on the Civil War 2.0 Weather Report page, and partially because it seemed a good fit as we keep sliding down.

I was driving around and one of the videos that was in my suggested list was about “America’s Cold Civil War.”  This isn’t a review of the video, but it brought up some interesting points.  The one I want to make clear to every single person that loves freedom in the United States is:  if you’ve ever seen a movie about that rag-tag elements of a group fighting a foe that has nearly utterly defeated them, it’s us.  We are the Wolverines.

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I get to be Charlie Sheen, mainly because he’s still alive.  I think.

I don’t mean to say that to create a feeling of defeat – far from it.  But the first step in dealing with a situation is understanding reality.  And reality is very simple today.  At a minimum, the Left has coopted the following elements of culture in the United States – they have been, over time, “converged” into Leftism:

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

This isn’t an accident, it’s entirely by plan.  And not only by plan, it’s by a plan that was entirely shared.  From Verified Communist Traitor® Herbert Marcuse, in his book Counterrevolution and Revolt (bold added):

To extend the base of the student movement, Rudi Dutschke has proposed the strategy of the long march through the institutions:  working against the established institutions while working within them, but not simply by ‘boring from within’, rather by ‘doing the job’, learning (how to program and read computers, how to teach at all levels of education, how to use the mass media, how to organize production, how to recognize and eschew planned obsolescence, how to design, et cetera), and at the same time preserving one’s own consciousness in working with others.

I could prove all of the above Institutions have been converged through the Long March Through the Institutions and will probably discuss a few of these in the future, because I could do a post on each one.  Heck, maybe it would be a great book, but only if I could figure out how to pair hot chicks and communist propaganda.

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East German girl swimmers bench pressing 300 pounds in 1976 is completely normal.

But if you doubt me, you have Google® (itself converged) and you can easily verify list above even through the Leftist-bias that’s now on that search engine.  I’ll leave you with one more question:  why else would Fortune© 500® corporations sign a manifesto saying profits were less important than social goals if Leftists weren’t in control?  Because there were extra doughnuts in the breakroom and they were feeling generous?

In almost any context, these organizations reflect the values of the Left, not of the Right.  I specifically don’t use the label conservative here – the conservative movement has utterly failed in the United States (to quote absolutely everyone) to conserve anything.  We live a country where adults telling four year old boys that being a girl is okie-dokie (and vice-versa) aren’t thrown directly in prison for a decade or more (after a trial, of course) for child abuse.  The goals of the above organizations would be cause for mass revolt if they had been publicized in 1990, but now, despite no vote, no public acceptance, each point of the Left has been accepted as the new normal.

And telling a boy that he’s a girl?  Oh, wait, that’s brave.  Sorry.

Despite all of that, this is not a post about giving up.  Screw that.  Each day makes me more independent, not less, more wanting to tell the truth.

And if you’re reading this, no one is done here.  Freedom is always the underdog.  I really wish we’d just stop waiting until 2:00 in the fourth quarter to start playing.

I remember seeing a film in Social Studies in High School about the Korean War.  In the black and white film, almost all of Korea had been lost.  The film ended right at what is known as the Pusan Perimeter, right where the North Korean Army was about to kick freedom off of the Korean peninsula, forever.  It was tough watching that film.

But then we learned what happened next:  MacArthur led the naval invasion of Inchon and turned the tide of battle, leading a combined United Nations® force that cut off the North Koreans.  This turned the course of the war, and in the process helped to create the free country of South Korea that is a world leader in technology, bad music videos, and wealth creation today.

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Spoiler alert:  we tied.

Our Pusan Perimeter is now.  I had a great boss once upon a time, he would continually remind me, “John, start with the end in mind,” which is #2 of Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.  As I look at the state of the Right back in 2016, we were at the Pusan Perimeter.  As we as a nation blindly stumble toward Civil War II, I can’t predict the outcome, but I can see the full range of outcomes.

We’ll go from best case to worst case for people who love freedom.  Although there are variations, I think I’ve captured all of the big picture end games below.

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I named operation Aesop after the Raconteur Report’s Aesop.  You can read him here (LINK).

Operation Aesop:  Total victory.

What it is:  The Right wins.  Traditional society is restored.  Mothers and fathers in committed relationships are again honored.  A Constitutional republic of limited government replaces the democracy of unlimited power.  The United States is unified.  Think of it as a return to the 1950’s, but with color TV and microwaves.

What it takes:  Oh, not much more than the bloodiest war in the history of the country.  The only way this results in victory is as Von Clausewitz wrote about in On War:   [Accomplishing . . . ] “three broad objectives, which between them cover everything:  destroying the enemy’s armed forces; occupying his country; and breaking his will to continue the struggle.”

That’s what happened in the first Civil War.  That’s what happened to the Germans and Japanese in World War II.  The concept of continuing was even more horrific than the concept of trying to continue to fight.  It’s total capitulation.  This is actual war until the enemy is not capable of continuing.  Not talking heads on a television show.  Not voting.  Not discussion.  Not a “mission accomplished” after five weeks moving across Iraq where the “will to continue the struggle” is still clearly intact.

Outcomes:  Some freedoms we see now would be curtailed.  Political discourse would be constrained.  But teenagers would be pretty polite, again.  And you wouldn’t really have to worry about the border.

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I’m related to Patrick Henry, or so my aunt told me.  I like to imagine Patrick getting a bit tipsy and writing mean letters to Madison about how short Madison was and how Dolly might want to give up on the chew.

Operation Founding Fathers:  50 Independent States. 

What it is:  A return to base principles.  Originally, the United States was conceived as just that, independent free States.  The majority of decisions to be made were to be made at the state, and not the Federal level.  Each state was to be free to make decisions.  Texas could be Texas.  California could be Venezuela.  Vermont could be stoned.  The free decisions of free States was allowed.  The free movement of free peoples was likewise allowed.  This is returning to that state.

What it takes:  Leftist thought is built around the universal adoption of their principles.  Individuals in society cannot be left to make decisions, so this is a hateful outcome to the Left.  I recall discussing politics with a Leftist when I was younger.  The Leftist thought I was on the Right.  That, at least they could deal with.  When I identified as a Libertarian®?  The look of disgust was clear – the Left hated Libertarians™ more than they hated the Right.  The Right was merely amused and not threatened by Libertarians©.  Maybe it was the Star Wars® shirts and poorly trimmed beards?

That taught me one thing:  the thing the Left hates the most is  . . . freedom.  Liberty.  In many ways the Left would rather lose a shooting war and be subjugated to the views of the Right than to be allowed to turn Seattle into the Siberia of the PacNorthwest.

The only way this can take place outside of warfare is a Second Constitutional Convention.  I think that alone would lead to a shooting war from the Left and a complete revolt from all of the Leftist institutions shown above.  But we can dream that the Second Constitutional Convention would turn out well.  If we did it, oh, in the next year.  The clock is ticking on this being a viable outcome.  It’s probably time to do it now.  As in, well, now.  Conservatives (not the Right) seem to feel that everything is going to come out fine, so until the wolf is at the door, I don’t think they’ll move an inch.

The problem is that Conservatives (again, not the Right) seem to think that the Left likes the Constitution.  Since the Left gained the institutions I’ve listed above, the Left doesn’t care about the Constitution – the Left cares about power.  Pure, unadulterated, 18 year old with a 12 pack of Coors Light™ behind the wheel of a 1969 Camero® power.

Outcomes:  In many ways this is the best outcome, but in my opinion the most unlikely.  This is the only outcome where we can still have the full freedom of political discourse and the full Bill of Rights.  I’d love to turn over freedom to choose to a California that can choke itself to death on Leftist feelgoodism while a Rightist Arizona can deny admission to every illegal and return them via a trebuchet if they want to.

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I was expecting more girls in bikinis from Bruckheimer, but this is a good start.

Operation Fort Sumter:  Going our separate ways.

What it is:  Secession.  Splitting up.  It’s not you, it’s me Oregon.  The problem is that unlike in 1860, the dividing lines aren’t so clear.  Then there was a line which, if everyone agreed, would have been fine for a split.  The North could be the North, the South could be the South.  Oops.  Now it would be a county by county fight.

What it takes:  Just like a psycho ex-girlfriend, if the Right tried to succeed in Texas, the Left wouldn’t accept it, and would demand tanks on the banks Red River by morning, which would be hilarious because tanks don’t float.  Unless the secession were overwhelming in number of states, numbers of the armed forces, and nearly immediate, I see only a small path to a peaceful secession.  For secession to stick, the Left and Right would have to feel that conquering the other side was more costly than trying to forge a peace.

Outcomes:  If secession happened and was maintained, the United States would be irrevocably broken, unless it was re-stitched by a Caesar sequentially conquering the Balkanized United States.  Maybe Caesar Pugsley Wilder the First?

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Think they need a reason to send you to the Gulag?  Sure they do!  It’s Monday – that’s good enough.

Operation Gulag in The Dakotas:

What it is:  This is the darkest timeline not only for our nation but for our world.  And, amazingly, the only timeline (outside of a Second Constitutional Convention) that we can vote ourselves into.  It is the Leftist takeover of everything.  Although it is sold as a Denmark, in reality Denmark is capitalist with stronger social institutions because Denmark is, well, Danish and I think they put mayo on their fries.  In the United States it will look much more like the U.S.S.R. – but not the basketcase 1988 U.S.S.R., but more like the 1932 “starve to death millions of citizens that Stalin doesn’t like” (In the World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold and Silver!) U.S.S.R.

What it takes:  Nothing.  We keep going as it is.  In less than 20 years, we will be in complete tyranny.  The erosion of rights we have seen won’t continue in a linear fashion.  It will accelerate.

Outcomes:  1984.

Now we know the stakes.

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Big Brother is our friend!  And we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.

Total Recall: Looking Back On The COVID Crisis

“You had a dishwasher box to sleep in?  I didn’t even know sleep.  It was pretty much twenty-four seven ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn” – Deadpool

One girl I dated in High School asked if she used too much makeup.  I replied, “Dunno, depends on if you are trying to kill Batman.”

[Wilder Note:  I’ve been meaning to dig this post out for a while, especially since something that WordPress did mangled a bit of the original with weird characters.  I wrote it originally on March 25, 2020.  This was meant as a prediction of what we’d see going through the ‘Rona.  It has been wilder than even I would expect, and in many ways I think I undersold what we’d see.  That being said, I’m not sure we’re done going through The Cliff phase and into Disillusionment.  I’d love your feedback.]

“Great, now it’s the end of the world and we can’t get a new dishwasher,” The Mrs. actually said, after I finally relented that it would probably cost more to fix the dodgy old dishwasher than a new one would cost.  Plus, the old dishwasher is stainless steel, so if it were a hundred yards away, it would make quite a nice practice target.  I call that a win-win.  Besides, Amazon® actually has them in stock, so I could theoretically have one by next week.

See?  You can get quality appliances during the end of the world.

I started working from home yesterday, which was nice.  When it was lunchtime, I wasn’t hungry, but I was nice and warm so I took a nap right in my home office which is also known as the couch.  Good times.  I do have a concern:  The Mrs. slapped my heinie as I walked by and said, “nice butt” so I’m thinking of bringing this up with HR.  I want to be treated as more than a sexual object.  I mean, not much more, but more.

As much as you might be interested in my derriere, I really do want to talk about COVID-19 and get to the bottom of how the issue will progress in the coming months.  While each crisis is different, they are all sort-of-predictable because in the end, people don’t change all that much, even though circumstances do.  Certainly, we want to get this all behind us, in the rearview, so to speak.

Okay, I’ll stop.  Seven synonyms for the posterior in two paragraphs are quite enough.  I don’t want you to think I’m a bum.

But what is this pattern I mentioned?  Here are, as near as I can determine, Eight Stages of a Crisis.  This provides way in which each crisis can be evaluated compared to the others this is my modification of work originally done by Zunin and Myers.

This is like the Kubler-Ross five stages of grief, but with the apocalypse in mind.  Why settle for one death, when you can have millions or billions on your mind?  It’s so nice and cheery.  The nice part of using this model is that you can gauge where we are in the current COVID-19 mess.

Who would he assassinate for a Klondike® bar?  Apparently Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

The Warning

This is the opening stage of a crisis.  It may be short, as in 9/11, or it may be a slow-motion collapse like the gradually increasing troop buildups and mobilizations that led to World War I.  Everyone wanted to stop it, but no one was sane enough to say no.  The Warning before the first Civil War was literally decades in length.

In the current COVID crisis, The Warning came during and just after the December impeachment.  With the focus of the country elsewhere, who cared about the flu?  We don’t trust the media very much.  Why?  They don’t seem trustworthy.  Example:  when Trump shuts down air transport to China, CNN® says it’s racist.  When China shuts down air transport from the United States, CNN™ says it’s a wise and prudent move by China’s benevolent leadership.

In a world where CNN© and the Chinese government have similar levels of credibility we tend to forget the ending to the story of the boy who cried wolf:  in the end, the wolves really attacked.

How did they not see this coming?

The Event

The Event is generally not long, but it can be.  It’s the Shot Heard Round the World at Lexington and Concord in the Revolutionary War.  The Event is when the rules change forever, and nothing can ever make the world go back to the way it was.  It’s the spark that lights the fire.  When people look back, everyone can see The Event.

Nothing is ever the same afterwards.  The Event changes everyone that it touches, and often ends up changing systems permanently.  It is disruptive.  It may not be the reason that everything fails, it might just be a small event toppling an already unstable system.  In a crisis like 9/11, the event is obvious and instant.  COVID-19 has led to a slow-rolling avalanche across the economy.  Was it poised for a fall anyway?  Possibly.

As a longer cascade, what will be The Event that history will use to remember COVID-19?

In one of my more frightening thoughts:  what if we haven’t seen The Event yet?

I’m not sure he’s koalafied to make that decision.

Disbelief

When things have changed, and changed drastically, people refuse to believe it.  When the power is out because a tree fell on the power lines, I will walk into a room an automatically flip the light switch.  Why?  Habit, partially.  But there’s a part of my mind that is existing in Disbelief, perhaps, that doesn’t believe that the power could ever be gone.

Disbelief isn’t a coping strategy, and it’s not an attempt of the mind to protect itself, at least in a healthy person.  It’s more inertia.  You’re used to the world being a certain way, and when it isn’t, part of your mind isn’t quite ready to process it.

This might be an overreaction.  COVID-19 might be no worse than the flu.  But that isn’t explained by the reactions we’ve seen so far from places that got it earlier than the United States.  Italy is locked down.  In two weeks, we will know more.  In a month, I think, we will have certainty.

In order to calm panicked customers, Wal-Mart opened up a second register.

Panic

At some point, the mind is confronted with the new reality and forced to accept it.  But the rules are new, and unknown.  What to do?  One could take a deep breath, and review the situation and think logically or?  One could Panic.  Panic is easier, and doesn’t require a lot of thought.

Panic is the natural reaction when your brain realizes that it has done zero to prepare for the new reality.  So, what to do? Buy staples as required to build up the stockpile you’ve accumulated over time?  Or buy 550 cans of Diet Mountain Dew®?  Or just buy toilet paper, because everyone else is and you don’t know what to do or have any independent thought?   Toilet paper purchasing is Panic.

Not all heroes are able to walk.  I mean, some gained 400 lbs on the couch.

Heroism

While the Panic is ongoing, the first glimmer of Heroism starts to show.  Brave men and women working in the medical field are the first signs of Heroism.  Donald Trump talking with Al Sharpton to address the problems he sees is Heroism is realizing that there is a greater good, and that sacrifice is required.  Heroism is embodied throughout the response to the crises where a few have an opportunity to save many, and where enemies put aside squabbles for a time because it’s the right thing to do.

There was a family story:  Grandma Wilder went during World War II to weld Liberty ships at the Alameda Ship Yard.  She would regularly get things sent to her from her mother who lived in the country in the middle of Flyover.  Needles were rationed in San Francisco, but not in Flyover.  Sugar was rationed in San Francisco, but not in Flyover.  Why ration needles and sugar?  To build common purpose, so even people not piloting P-51s or jumping out of landing craft at Iwo Jima could feel like they were doing their part.  To be fair, rationing was necessary in wide segments of the economy, it wasn’t a fake, but it did help bring everyone together.

Right now Heroism is going on, and we aren’t even asked to do anything more than to sit down and watch Netflix® unless we’re keeping vital industries going.  Here’s a link to Aesop’s place that shows the quiet heroism going on out there (LINK).  Read it all.

I read the other day that coyotes are about 10 miles an hour faster than road runners.  My entire childhood was a lie.

The Cliff

Keeping order requires energy.  Some part of the energy of the system is put into keeping order.  In a time of significant social cohesion, like World War II, the United States didn’t face The Cliff, even though virtually every other developed nation did.  Instead, the energy that the crisis took was replaced by people working together.

Most of the time in a real crisis, however, there’s The Cliff.  I wrote about it here: Seneca’s Cliff and You.

We have not fallen off The Cliff.  Is it certain that there is one?  No.  But every single leader, elected or appointed, is acting like it’s there.  I believe we will see it.  The new normal will grow from events moving quickly.  Already at Wilder Redoubt, we’ve had nothing but home-cooked meals for the last week, with a couple of store-bought sandwiches being the exception.

Will home-cooked food, family dinners, and homeschooling be the legacy of COVID-19?

I expect that we’ll see The Cliff soon enough.  How deep will it go?  As I’ve mentioned before, no one knows.  The worst case is that the economy crashes through levels to Great Depression era lockup in two weeks or so.  Only 40% of Americans are able to absorb an unexpected $1,000 expense.  80% are living paycheck to paycheck, and those paychecks just stopped.

Dead.

Going first will be car payments.  The average monthly car payment is $800.  Me?  I’d sell you my daily driver for just two months of that, so expect car finance companies to seize up like an ungreased stripper pole.  But the businesses that employ those people aren’t much better off.  The best restaurant in Modern Mayberry came pretty close to closing down shop six years ago, but pulled through.  The second best restaurant didn’t survive.  There will be cascading failures as the debts owed from one business to the next go unpaid, and this won’t just be for small businesses.  I feel confident saying that several businesses with 10,000 or more employees will go bankrupt.  Overall loss to the economy?  40% of the GDP this year?

Is there a better case?  Sure.  We contain COVID-19 in a month or so, and then call it good.  We only lose 10% to 20% of our GDP this year, and government pumps five or six trillion dollars into the economy to juice it back up.  That’s the best case.  And that’s just in the United States.

I’m not kidding, that’s how deep The Cliff is.  If we’re lucky.

Something, something, Dark Side®.

Disillusionment

After the fall, things suck.  We had heroes, but the time for Heroism is over.  Disillusionment sets in when things don’t snap back to normal.  Things will seem rosy, only for failure to crush hope.  The more government “helps” during this phase, the worse recovery will be.  Roosevelt “helped” so much during the Great Depression that he extended it for years.

But politicians will take drastic steps, because they can’t help themselves.  The length of time Disillusionment lasts?  Months to years.

Some re-assembly required.

Rebuilding

This is the other side of The Cliff.  Whereas, as Seneca said you go down a cliff pretty quickly, you only build up slowly.  Rebuilding the economy will take years.  If we do it right, we’ll build a stronger economy, less dependent upon foreign supply lines, that guarantees freedom while preserving the traditional values that built the wealth in the first place.

If done poorly?  The system is controlled, oppressive, and coercive.  Leaders matter, but the quality of the citizenry to fight back against the system is even more important.  Rebuilding takes years, and by my best case scenario, four to eight years.

So, I guess I’ll get a jump start on rebuilding.  Dishwashers on the Internet.  Amazing.  My only problem is that there’s this lady at work who keeps making suggestive comments and touching me all the time.  Just a few minutes ago, she told me that she expects me to share a bed with her!  They always told me not to get my honey where I got my money, but what happens when you work at home?

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: The Divide Grows

“We can take whole by force what they propose to divide.” – Star Trek VI:  The Undiscovered Country

The book I ordered about clocks finally came in.  It’s about time.

  1. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  2. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  3. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  4. Open War.

I’ve kept the Clock O’Doom the same.  Tensions are still high.  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 – The Divide – Violence And Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Growing Farther Apart – 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 over 700 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

The Divide

One thing that hasn’t changed, at all, since Biden was installed in the White House is that the tension hasn’t dropped.  It’s a matter of Team Blue being in charge, and is looking at every way that they can stick it to Team Red.  It’s not a new story, but it is a continuation of a fundamental divide in the country, about nearly everything.

When Donald Trump allegedly tossed hush money to a tramp, it was nearly grounds for impeachment.  Joe Biden allegedly funds tens of thousands of dollars for Hunter’s periodic chemical and biological safaris?

Not a word.  So, it’s an offset, right?

Not really.  The Left has a deep hold on the institutions of this nation, who will, apparently, actively run cover for the Left, no matter what they do.  Which institutions?  Not big ones.  Just the FBI and the major news media.  The mere fact that CBS® is now running the story that the Washington three-letter agencies are all-in for Biden shows that the Left is getting ready to ditch Biden, or at least sending him a warning.  I mean, it’s not like he’d notice.

The cultural divide is far worse that that would indicate, though.  Let’s take the children.  No, really, that’s the slogan of the Left:  “Let’s take the children™.”  They want them desperately, and are dedicated to doing whatever they can to indoctrinate them.  Case in point:

As near as I can tell, this defines a lot of what’s going on with kids, but it’s not just schools, it’s media as well.  There is a reason they want unfettered access to kids – it’s not about education, it’s indoctrination.  What proof?

Imagine what the world would look like if teachers were secretly trying to make kids moral and Christian.  The ree and cry would come from the usual sources, and then all the Left would dress up in Handmaid’s Tale outfits and pretend the United States was near to becoming a theocracy when it is farther than it has been, ever and the danger to kids isn’t coming from the Right.  And the biggest fairy tale is coming from the Left:

Violence And Censorship Update

First, the Left wants to create conformity, and make sure that if your opinion differs, that you’ll feel left out.  Their bots are Legion:

So, your opinion isn’t valid.  But neither was the past opinion of the Left, if it was inconvenient.  Left is always the direction of the Censor.  And one of the biggest goals of the censor is not only to censor your current views, but it’s also to censor their past views.  Why?

Because only the current view is valid.  If the past view (for example) was that it takes an actual man and an actual woman to get married, why, that view is very uncomfortable now.  So, any view that contradicts the New Truth® is forbidden.  And when people try to use your own views against you?  That’s hate speech, right?

It was Winston Smith’s job in the novel 1984 to make facts inconvenient to the Left disappear from the record.  That job continues:  the Left cannot accept the idea that the economy of the country is in very bad shape – and is in a technical recession.  It hasn’t been long enough for Google® to take the previous definition down:

But at Wikipedia®?  The Leftist editors are all too happy to change the definitions in near real-time just to make the Left happy.  They do it for nothing but Good Boy™ points.

I think Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There had it right:

“When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, “it means just what I choose it to mean, neither more nor less.”

“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”

“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master:  that’s all.”

Biden’s Misery Index

Last month’s inaugural edition inspired Aesop (LINK) to come up with his own version.

That’s a lot of Kamalas!

But when we look at the reason behind the graph, it’s simple:  this is the pain associated with a planned Leftist transition.

Here’s the current graph.  I suppose the good news is that even though things are getting worse, they’re not getting worse as fast as they were?

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 ticked downward again this month.  I think it continues to be muted because the Left has kept their dogs on a leash.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it dropped a tiny bit in June.  Elections are coming up – I’m wondering if we’ll see more?

Economic:

Economic indicators ricocheted upwards this month.  Looking at the reasons:  the markets stopped falling, the interest rates stopped shooting up – this is related to the Misery Index being slightly less awful.  This is an instantaneous look, and things aren’t as awful as they were last month.

Illegal Aliens:

It set a new record for this time of year.  But it was down from last month, for the first time in ages.  Must be hot out.

Growing Farther Apart

The first story was the divide – the second is that the divide isn’t getting better.  People are making choices to move to areas that match their ideology.  And what about the people there?

They’re ready to check out.  Red State Secession (LINK) conducted a poll at the end of June and released the results at the beginning of July.  The result?

People are talking about breaking up.  In the eight states they polled, (HI, TX, LA, MS, AL, FL, and SC) the results were fairly similar:  They felt that if California were to want to leave the Union, that 56% felt there should be no penalty, 41% felt that there should be economic sanctions.  Only 5% were willing to use military force to keep California in the Union.

The numbers were pretty similar if Texas wanted to leave.  Texans, on the other hand, were ready to go to the next level.  69% of voters want to hold a referendum on separating from Texas, including a majority of Democrats and independent voters.

In Arizona (not part of the study) you can see that the Democrats don’t much care for the United States, either:

And the showing of a Revolutionary War flag on a coffee cup.  It wasn’t me, even though I own one myself, which I bought at a United States National Park:

People are sorting themselves based on ideology, as long predicted:

And I’ll leave this Tweet® for the last word on how close we are to being one country:

Sounds like someone is a bit butthurt?

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1544768644244049920

https://twitter.com/i/status/1542746999245549568

https://twitter.com/i/status/1545705450703912960

https://twitter.com/i/status/1546007176002408449

https://twitter.com/i/status/1546000131744759808

https://twitter.com/i/status/1545917339467661312

https://twitter.com/CrimeWatchMpls/status/1544240651734228994

https://twitter.com/CPD1617Scanner/status/1543577251681390597

https://youtu.be/SVDWQv5lWPM

https://twitter.com/CPD1617Scanner/status/1553032236760535041

https://youtu.be/Vz4r8nNWOHA

https://www.foxnews.com/us/video-shows-utah-child-4-shoot-police-outside-mcdonalds-drive-thru

https://www.revolver.news/2022/07/the-hidden-agenda-behind-new-york-times-desperate-ray-epps-puff-piece/

https://www.insidebidensbasement.org/

Good Guys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pg7q00OczIU

https://twitter.com/iamyesyouareno/status/1550500701465452545

https://twitter.com/i/status/1544337951332655110

https://twitter.com/i/status/1545874643994787840

https://twitter.com/Tr00peRR/status/1544619495100145664

https://youtu.be/ELDO8tJx0iY

https://www.fox5ny.com/news/off-duty-correction-officer-hailed-hero-after-shooting-man-who-pointed-gun-crowd

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fourth-of-july-mass-shooting-richmond-virginia-thwarted-police-tip/

https://abcnews.go.com/US/mississippi-teen-hailed-hero-helping-rescue-girls-officer/story?id=86300178

https://abcnews.go.com/US/93-year-man-shoots-home-intruder-fends-off/story?id=85991432

https://www.star-telegram.com/news/state/texas/article263351778.html

https://donsurber.blogspot.com/2022/07/even-if-it-saves-but-one-life.html

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fcrimeresearch.org%2F2022%2F07%2Fuber-driver-in-chicago-stops-mass-public-shooting%2F

https://townhall.com/tipsheet/miacathell/2022/07/27/10-times-a-good-guy-with-a-gun-saved-lives-n2610406

One Guy

https://heavy.com/news/elisjsha-dicken/

https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/19/us/eli-dicken-indiana-mall-shooting-bystander/index.html

https://www.wthr.com/article/news/special-reports/greenwood-mall-mass-shooting/armed-citizen-was-not-the-only-one-with-a-gun-at-the-greenwood-park-mall-shooting-the-first-victim-killed-had-one-too-indiana-elisjsha-dicken/531-e5f3c8db-8f58-4c62-b8b0-acaab48ec4d1

Body Count

https://youtu.be/aakhNFhbhWk

https://twitter.com/townhallcom/status/1550526039234908164

https://thepostmillennial.com/52-shot-in-new-york-city-over-july-4-weekend

https://news.wttw.com/2022/07/05/68-people-shot-8-killed-shootings-across-chicago-over-july-4th-weekend-police

https://www.yahoo.com/news/chicago-4th-july-weekend-violence-160718752.html

https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=63182

https://www.unz.com/article/28-black-on-white-homicides-counting-white-hispanics-middle-easterner-unspecified-juveniles-etc-june-2022-another-month-in-the-death-of-white-america/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-10976437/How-Californias-legal-cannabis-dream-public-health-nightmare.html

https://goodsciencing.com/covid/athletes-suffer-cardiac-arrest-die-after-covid-shot/

https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/in-memory-of-those-who-died-suddenly-17d

https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/vaccinated-english-adults-under-60
https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/will-physicians-ever-speak-out

https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/the-safe-and-effective-narrative

https://twitter.com/ElectionLegal/status/1549833362919112704

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/color%20map.jpg?itok=NWg8Tskj

https://news.gallup.com/poll/394262/fewer-bible-literal-word-god.aspx

 

Vote Count

https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/voterga-uncovers-massive-election

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/nyc-election-sites-had-no-republican-ballots-primary-election

https://dnyuz.com/2022/07/05/on-conservative-radio-misleading-message-is-clear-democrats-cheat/

https://thenationalpulse.com/2022/07/07/poll-majority-of-americans-believe-midterm-elections-will-be-tainted-by-fraud/

https://www.kawc.org/news/2022-07-04/biden-administration-to-sue-arizona-over-law-requiring-proof-of-citizenship-to-vote

https://apnews.com/article/2022-midterm-elections-biden-donald-trump-wisconsin-supreme-court-05166e3f3ef970b5cde8ac15cd30e18b?taid

https://uncoverdc.com/2022/07/01/u-s-supreme-court-takes-case-that-could-impact-future-elections/

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/supreme-court/supreme-court-case-voting-rights-experts-say-bring-chaos-elections-rcna34033

 

Civil War

https://news.gallup.com/poll/394202/record-low-extremely-proud-american.aspx

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10971195/A-QUARTER-Americans-say-ready-arms-against-government.html

https://www.science.org/content/article/half-of-americans-anticipate-a-us-civil-war-soon-survey-finds

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/contributors/2022/07/03/americans-divided-civil-war-unlikely/7767742001/?gnt-cfr=1

https://mises.org/wire/avoid-civil-war-learn-tolerate-different-laws-different-states

https://english.elpais.com/usa/2022-07-27/fear-of-a-second-us-civil-war-ignites-debate.html

https://dnyuz.com/2022/07/02/spurred-by-the-supreme-court-a-nation-divides-along-a-red-blue-axis/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/on-the-campaign-trail-many-republicans-talk-of-violence/ar-AAZTYhP

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2022/07/11/are-we-looking-at-another-civil-war-n2609990

https://thecarousel.substack.com/p/theres-gonna-be-a-war-in-montana

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2022/5/31/the-civil-war-that-is-here-and-the-one-that-may-yet-come

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2022/07/04/50-year-attack-right-wing-corporate-forces-leading-us-back-towards-civil-war

https://www.newyorker.com/news/letter-from-bidens-washington/a-president-asking-for-civil-war

https://www.businessinsider.com/civil-war-expert-barbara-f-walter-us-heading-toward-insurgency-2022-7

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2022/07/jeff-sharlet-on-the-martyrdom-of-ashli-babbitt-and-whats-to-come

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/washington-secrets/experts-make-case-for-the-ar-15-only-defense-in-civil-war

 

Progress

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6tOAafAJCA

Thoughts On Independence Day, 2022

“My friend here is trying to convince me that any independent contractors who were working on the uncompleted Death Star were innocent victims when it was destroyed by the Rebels.” – Clerks

Where was the Declaration of Independence signed?  At the bottom, silly.

Independence Day is just around the corner, and I’ve got the Civil War 2.0 Weather Report scheduled for that day, so I thought I’d give a few thoughts about one of the most cherished ideas in our history:  Independence.

Independence was the life blood of our new nation.  I think people were genetically (and sometimes judicially) selected for it.  The people that came here looked around Britain and said, “You know what, I’d much rather be in a wilderness surrounded by hostile natives.  Oh, and I’ll gladly cross an ocean in a dangerous journey that will take forever, and I’ll never see the land of my birth again.”

It’s one thing to do that yourself, but these dudes convinced their wives to come, too.

Leaving everything you know and love is not normal, but Duncan McWilder left Scotland before the Revolutionary War was over to come on over here.  I don’t know his story, but as I trace his children across generations, not a one of them settled in a place where life was easy – in fact every one of them headed for the frontier (as it existed in their time) and pushed outwards.

They raised heaven knows what in Virginia and Alabama.  They tamed Texas.  They built the railroads.  The homesteaded in New Mexico.  Portions of the family were west of the Rockies in 1860.  Not a single day was spent in a life in on easy mode.  They built this country with their sweat, their tears, and over the bones of their wives who died in childbirth and their sons who died of fever and war.

None of it was easy.  The hard choice was something else:

Independence.

But they had one thing in their mind – they bowed to no man.  I feel safe in saying that should my forefathers have met any king or potentate that walked this Earth that not a single one of them would have bowed.  They would have stood straight up, looked him in the eye, and thought to themselves, “You’re nothing but a man like me.  And no Wilder bows to any man.”

When people mention to me that I am the beneficiary of “white privilege” or any other such nonsense, I laugh.  My ancestors fought in Europe, twice, in the last century.  They fought here at places like Shiloh and Manassas Junction.  They fought at places like Valley Forge when the dark winter nearly doomed a nation yet unborn.  I stand at the end of a line of brave men and women who looked on a new and fresh continent, not with fear, but with determination.  They wouldn’t bend their knees even to their countrymen.  Why?

Independence.

Life was never easy.  But I look back onto that line of my ancestors and know – they made the hard choice, the choice to be free.  They gave up comfort and, likely, material success to have control of their own destiny.  Rather than submit, they pushed farther out – into danger.  Wolves aren’t a problem now.  Why not?

My ancestors (along with many others) killed them.  Grizzly bears used to be in nearly every State.  Not now.  Why?  My ancestors (along many others) killed them.  They braved the cold, the heat, the snakes, the (now dead) bears, and the (now dead) wolves.  Why?

Independence.

I’m not alone here, either.  If you’re reading this, there’s a near certainty that you came from a long line of Big Damn Heroes® yourself.  They carved a nation out of their heroism, their success, and, yes, their failure, all chasing the same dream.

Independence.

I’ve met billionaires, movie stars, sports stars, and rock stars.  I hold none of them in contempt.  And I hold none of them as my better.  I had several times that I could have sworn fealty and abandoned my integrity and had greater success.

I never would.  To do so would have been shameful to the memories of those that came before me.  So, I never will.  Why?

Independence.

I am not alone.  The United States was a magnet for hard-headed men of principle that were looking for nothing but that chance to be free, to be independent, to live their own lives.

In 1900, my ancestors would interact with the Federal government whenever they got their mail.  That might have been infrequent, at best, out on the frontier, out in the places where they might be lucky to see mail once in a month.

From once a month, we’ve moved to all the time.  When my alarm goes off in the morning, it’s driven by electricity that comes from power plants regulated by the EPA.  I go to the bathroom where I brush my teeth with toothpaste approved by the FDA, and then into the shower where the valve is regulated by the Consumer Protection Agency and water regulated by several government agencies.  I then get in the car (approved in different aspects by several government agencies) fueled by gasoline . . . and the number of agencies in that chain just to get gasoline is amazing.

The biggest difference between then and now are the massive cities.  Our cities are huge and complex and anonymous.  Here in the country, you can configure your life to deal only with the people you see at work and the people that you see at the store, in the city there are people everywhere.

And the chances you’ll see a random individual again in a context so that you’d recognize them?

Nearly zero.

Thus, cities are an environment where people are anonymous.  Anonymous people aren’t responsible for their actions – they exist outside of the constraint of society.  Be rude to someone because your day isn’t going well?  Whatever.  You’ll never see them again.  They’re not a part of your group, your tribe.

That anonymity might sound like Independence, but it’s not – it actually leads to the worst of tyranny – rule after rule because poor manners in an anonymous setting lead to rules about how tall a lawn can be.  And if you don’t follow that rule, and don’t pay the fines associated with breaking it?

People with guns will take you to a concrete box and keep you there.  So, cities don’t sound very free to someone like me.

On the other side of the equation, small towns provide accountability without resorting to the law.

A city slicker moved to Modern Mayberry and didn’t pay a plumber because of a disagreement.  What are the odds any other plumber will even return his calls when something goes wrong?  Or any contractor?  Heck, even I know the story, so I’m giggling thinking about them making phone calls when they need to get their septic tank pumped.

Without anonymity, there is responsibility.  It will be a tough lesson for the city slicker to learn.  I remember that lesson every time I go to dinner and see the same waitress for the twentieth time.  They are responsible to me as a waitress, and I am responsibility to them as a customer.

In my small town, I have responsibility.  My forefathers had independence, but they also had responsibility.  If they succeeded, they succeeded.  If they failed, they failed.  If they died because of their foolishness?  They died.

The lesson is simple:  independence isn’t freedom from consequences.  Independence is being free to choose.  Living with those consequences is the result.

We sit here at the edge of a new world that is struggling to be born out of the old world that we lived in.  Will we choose independence and responsibility?

I know what my ancestors would choose.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Special Rural Edition

“He’s that distinguished-looking gentleman with the casual wardrobe and darling rural accent.” – The Beverly Hillbillies

Modern Mayberry just got a factory that makes television accessories.  I guess that makes us a remote village.

This isn’t a main Civil War 2.0 Weather Report – that will be next Monday, on schedule.  Consider this one a “special edition” since I’m sure we already have plenty of fodder for the regular weather report.

So, back to the opening snippet that u/humble_na_miner described as “Lol how to get shot, a thread.”

I’ll reproduce u/ripitthrowaway’s amazing strategy that he came up with in case it’s too hard to read in the post above.  I normally try to inject humor, but since his (I’m guessing) words are funny enough, I’ll just quote him verbatim:

The radical Christians are found in the rural areas.  Their towns are defenseless, they have almost no cops and their firemen are volunteers.  They have to borrow cops and firemen from neighboring jurisdictions miles away in order to handle anything big.  And they think they’re safe out there.  Forget burning cities, cities are on our sides.  It’s time for the rural areas to feel the heat.

You show up 100 deep in every rural town in a 50 mile radius intent on revolution, you’ll crash their system and make them pay.

And if you think I’m kidding, I’m dead serious.  This was caused by backward ass rural conservatives operating out of a Christianized worldview (even if they’re not Christian, they’re heavily influenced by it), they were the ones who voted for Trump in ’16; those disillusioned redneck/white trash/blue collar (to quote a country song) types who flipped massively for the GOP.  Punish them.  Punish their towns.  They say “BLM burned the cities to the ground,” I say, “let them see firsthand what I’s like when a community is truly burned to the ground.  They want a civil war?  They should have been careful what they asked and voted for.”

I’m not the organizing type.  But maybe someone who is can organize that.  Start in a certain state in the Midwest often called “the south’s middle finger to America.”  It’s literally what the south would’ve looked like if it wasn’t reconstructed.

First, wow.  I know it’s just one idiot, but I’m sure that there are others who share the sentiment.  What is the message, exactly?  “Let’s form a band of roving marauders to burn down their barns and property and shoot anyone we feel like.  That will show those rural folk what savages they are.”

Not my meme, but, well, accurate.

Second, this is a threat to destroy the lives, property, and community of people whose only crime is not being an idiot Leftist.  To be clear, Modern Mayberry has values that are closer to 1982 than 2022, mostly.  People still go to church.  Kids behave themselves at parks.  We’re not shooting each other because (spins wheel) it’s Saturday.  In fact, people aren’t shooting each other at all except for the once a twenty-year domestic dispute gone really bad.

Why aren’t we shooting each other?  Because thieves know that if they try to do much more than nick a bike or a lawnmower things will go very, very bad.  Why?  That’s the next point.

Third, I’ll let Skeletor® answer:

Not my meme, but, I think they have no idea how rural people would react to being burned and shot at.

  • They have zero idea what rural America is like. Not every house is armed, but I’ll bet that most houses have a lot of guns – I am certain that there are more guns than people, and the cops?  They live here, too.  There’s also a lot of ammo.  And more food than they can imagine, because we grow it here.
  • Grandpa, who you have to help up to the range because he was wounded in ‘Nam? He can shoot a 2-inch group at 400 yards.  When he practices his long-range shooting, he can reliably hit man-size targets at 1000 yards.  Grandma, who makes a great macaroni salad for the church social, would regret doming a pink-haired Leftist with her husband’s wheel gun, but she wouldn’t hesitate.
  • Also, we know and help each other. That’s why we don’t need a lot of cops.  If you’ve only been here a decade, you’re still the new kid in town.  Many families have gone to the same high school for three generations – and that’s because that’s when they built the “new” high school building.
  • There aren’t choke points – I can think of dozens of ways that I could flank, surprise, or otherwise ruin the day of someone who set up a roadblock – because I know all the ways around the roadblocks.
  • It gets very dark here. We know where everything is.  They don’t.

Fourth, these are the people who are planning this:

You may not be able to see it, but his guns have little orange caps on the end – at most they’re airsoft guns.  I don’t even think that rates a “he’ll put an eye out”.

My level of fear at Leftists invading Modern Mayberry:

But what caused this rage?  I call it:

The Tennis Shoe of Sadness was caused by Roe versus Wade being overturned.  We mined a lot of salt out of the gun ruling by SCOTUS, so why not mine some salt out of this, too?

I’ll start with an A.I. generated picture:

If you can’t read it, it was generated based on the prompt:  “Clarence Thomas breaking into an abortion clinic at night to use their toilet and not flush.

So, Count Dankula is a Scottish comedian.  And there are a lot of dumb people on the Internet.  That vote.

Now we know who is responsible for January 6 . . . though it’s odd the same people that are investigating January 6 are also vowing to resist the Supreme Court.

I was certain that they taught math in Europe . . .

People are even thinking of leaving Texas . . .

I’m sure the Texans are very, very upset.

Maybe this is why the Lefty girls like The Handmaid’s Tale so much?

Always remember, the Left eats their own, too.

Remember, never be afraid of Big Brother – that’s where all of their power comes from.

The Unraveling

“Since when can weathermen predict the weather, let alone the future?” – Back to the Future

I knew a lady who loved mushrooms, she was a fungal.

The unraveling continues. In one sense, what’s happening is predictable. Looking back in history, while not everything happens in the same way, things very much rhyme. That’s why certain aspects of the current financial collapse are very, very familiar.

The Fed® still has enough influence that it can stop a snowball. Can the Fed® stop an avalanche? Not so much. They may have some tricks to push the day of reckoning down the line if it isn’t off the rails. Again, like a presidential election, it’s a short-term solution to a long-term problem.

If it were merely a financial problem, the actions might be enough. But it’s not just financial.

Other problems include extreme societal decadence. Decadence is a strong word. When I was a kid, it was applied to places like the late Roman Empire, or Willy Wonka’s® Chocolate Factory™ where those Umpa-Loompas wore those scanty tight outfits.

But when people take kids – elementary-age kids – to Pride®©™ parades that contain actual nudity and sex acts between adults, and then suggest putting hormones into five-year-olds because they pretended to cook in a pretend kitchen one day, you know that this is the point where God told Noah, “Get the boat,” and told Lot, “Tell everyone to wear sunglasses – I don’t care if it’s night.”

“Oh, and Noah? Put some lights on the boat. Floodlights.”

Whatever fetish sex act that any individual wants to do “because it’s Thursday” now seems to take the place of virtue. Replacing actual virtue with temporary individual passions is exactly what every single functioning society in history has avoided to in order to remain functioning. When people follow passions that are productive, like building rockets, they add to society. When people act on passions counter to virtue?

Those passions consume and destroy society. Period.

We don’t live in a world where “if it feels good, do it” can ever be a policy that lead to a productive society. At some point, we must be guided by virtue, we have to have a shared vision for a future, and a shared desire to build. Can you imagine a single event that would bring us all together again?

I can’t. We have to have that shared vision – if nothing else, to survive. Do we have it?

What’s the best way to avoid significant radiation exposure? Don’t bomb Pearl Harbor.

We do not. We are divided. The idea of a selfless devotion to duty seems to have (in many places) evaporated. Cops are supposed to put themselves into danger to save the innocent – that’s the only reason we put up with the rest of the nonsense that they get up to. If they have changed their motto from “Protect and Serve” to “Hide Until We Can and Give Traffic Tickets to People That Don’t Scare Us” then they’re not much use.

Globalism is likewise something that sounds good, but isn’t. I can understand the need for some places like, say, deserts to import grain and Alaska to import medicine and export oil and good vibes. But can someone tell me that we’re in a better and safer position as a country now that we depend on far-flung nations for things. When I talked to The Boy about careers, the advice I gave him was simple – don’t do anything that someone can do over the Internet. If you do, you’re competing with a job with millions or billions of people.

We have reached the stage of cultural collapse. I’m in favor of capitalism – but amoral capitalism is different. When capitalism is allowed to meet any need, the result isn’t good. Like any system, it needs boundaries. As John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Why can’t the Democrats use the 25th Amendment on Biden? They can’t count that high.

Freedom needs boundaries. Freedom needs responsibility. Liberty, real liberty, requires obligation for stability. Otherwise? It descends into chaos.

So, we’ve established that we’re in a difficult place. The things that we depended upon are slowly slipping away. The economy is in a very precarious place, culturally we’re shattered to the point that not even another 9-11 would bring us together. The difficulties that we see from here on out won’t serve to bring us together, they will bring us apart. How about the economic difficulties related to just high fuel prices alone?

The Lefties love it, even as it destroys our economy. Heck destruction of the economy might even be the point.

But stresses have consequences. If I drop an orange, it will fall. If we destroy an economy, it will fail. Some parts of it will be predictable: interest rates going up will make housing prices go down. Simple. We can talk about other correlations on Wednesday (feel free to bring up more below).

I dated a homeless girl once – it was nice, after the date you could drop her off anywhere.

The one thing that I can tell you, is what comes next won’t be like what came before. The problems that we have rhyme with the problems of the past, but they’re not the same. During the Great Depression, we were at least (mostly) homogeneous as a country. Now, not so much.

The end state is tied to the initial conditions. And the initial conditions of the Great Depression were greatly different than they are today, so there’s no way that we’ll see the same results. And things will never go back to “normal” because we simply cannot go back in time, and there isn’t any such thing as “normal” nor any time period which is “normal”. They will be different.

What we have, though, is the rhyme. It won’t allow us to predict perfectly. But it will allow us to see, dimly.

The Good News Is The Same As The Bad News: It’s You

“Winners always want the ball. . . when the game is on the line.” – The Replacements

Floors take on a lot of responsibility. It’s like everything falls to them.

There’s bad news:

No one is coming to save you.

But there’s good news:

No one is coming to save you.

Who will save us?

You will.

I think many people have this weird idea that other people are the answer. The last first aid course that I took before moving to Alaska ended up every scenario with, “and then you call 911.” To be fair, that’s a great idea in most places. I mean, unless you’re in a school.

The reason the murder rate has gone down over the last few decades isn’t because the idiots in Chicago have developed some sort of restraint in shooting each other. Nope. The medical folks are faster at getting those that were shot, and the docs are better at saving them.

The woman who helped The Mrs. deliver Pugsley quit. I guess she was having a midwife crisis.

But then I took a first aid class in Alaska.

Wow. Night and day. The content was much, much richer. The trainers went into much greater detail, and told us, “You’re not trained to do this. But if help isn’t coming, it might save a life.” The translation was simple. Phone coverage in Alaska sucks.

How bad was it? When we moved there, you couldn’t get a phone line, even if there was copper to your house. And cell service? The infrastructure consisted of what two bright schizophrenics that left the mainland United States could cobble together with the parts of a downed DC-3.

Everyone else was in the same boat. The message was clear.

“You’d better pay attention.”

The quiet part they didn’t say in class was: “because no one is coming to save you.”

When I woke up in the hospital, I told the doctor I couldn’t feel my legs. “That’s because we amputated your arms, maybe?”

When I ended up having to have my entire fingernail removed and the part under the nail stitched up because there was were two 55 gallon drums of salmon oil (I’m not making ANY of this up) on my property that I tried to open and the wedge slipped and pulled most of the nail off anyway, the doctor said, “Okay, this is going to hurt like hell for a few days. I’m going to prescribe you some (powerful painkiller). You probably won’t use them. Toss them in your backpack, so if you’re out moose hunting and break your leg, you might be able to limp out.”

Think that a doctor would say that in Nebraska?

He didn’t say the quiet part: “because no one is coming to save you.”

I prefer it that way. Really. Sure, I like Internet and electricity and cold beer and watching Trailer Park Boys. But I know the true answer.

When it goes bad?

No one is coming to save me.

Three friends were in the forest – the first said, “These are moose tracks.” The second said, “No, those are bear tracks.” The third was run over by a train.

That might sound depressing to some people, but not to me. I like me. And, I like my chances. To be fair, the person in this world I trust most in the world . . . is me. The next one is The Mrs. Third in line?

Maybe Sturm, Ruger, and Company? Yeah, they’ve always been straight shooters to me.

One of the lessons that I’ve walked away with in the last 20 years of my life is that:

  • the police,
  • the Constitution,
  • the courts,
  • the military,
  • congress,
  • and anyone sitting in the office of president

is not going to save me.

And they’re not coming to save you, either.

In one sense, it’s scary. I think that many people take the idea that someone, somewhere, is responsible for them. That’s simply not true for anyone over the age of, say, 14.

We are not passive actors in our lives. That idea is corrosive. We are in control.

That’s from an Edgar Allen Poem.

I think a lot of the idea that other people are responsible for us comes from the anonymity of large city life. To me, it’s odd – the more of us around, the less responsibility we feel, and the more we want to blame other people. Why? With so many people around, it brings anonymity. Anonymity makes it easy to avoid responsibility.

In Modern Mayberry? We know each other. We talk to each other. We are, in the end, responsible. I go to dinner, and the owner of the restaurant greets me, and (from time to time) brings a bottle by the table and pours each of us a shot.

Why?

Our lives are not anonymous. It’s a community. Are we responsible for ourselves? Certainly. But in a small town, we understand that we help each other. And he can go home and tell his wife he wasn’t really drinking on the job.

“Tequila or vodka?” That’s how I’d start a marriage counseling session.

Our nation is fundamentally broken. I’d say that someone in New York City doesn’t care about Modern Mayberry, sitting here in flyover country. But they do. Most of them can’t even understand it, but what they do understand they despise.

That’s okay. I’m not responsible for them. And I certainly don’t want them to be responsible for me.

Only you can save you. Only you can save your family. And that’s still the good news: “Winners always want the ball . . . when the game is on the line.”

The people in Washington D.C.? They won’t save us.

You will.

And that’s the good news. Your life. Your future. Your family. Your country. They’re in your hands.

Would you change that for anything?

I wouldn’t. I like it when the ball is in my hands.

I wouldn’t change a thing.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report – Ministry of Truth, and Socially Coming Apart

“Remember, all I’m offering is the truth. Nothing more.” – The Matrix

TEN

My day was great until noon.  Then I woke up.

  1. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  2. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  3. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  4. Open War.

I’ve kept Clock O’Doom at the same location.  For now.  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 – Ministry of Truth – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Abortion and Conflict – 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 690 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Ministry of Truth

We now have a Ministry of Truth.  Oh, I’m sorry – it’s the Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board.  Why?  Presumably because people say things the Leftists don’t agree with.

I’ve heard that calling a groomer “groomer” really makes them mad.

The leader of the board that determines what is true and what isn’t?

Nina Jankowicz.

Nina, if you’re unaware, is the poster child for insufferable Leftist blather.  She is, first, a low level, stooge for the Left.  Her expertise in all things disinformation allowed her to opine that Hunter Biden’s laptop was expressible only in the holy high words of the Left: Russian disinformation.  Russian disinformation was, according to the legend of the Left, the only reason that St. Hillary wasn’t elected.

Sadly, this Nina has no luftballons.

Now, ordinarily I don’t mind such creatures – their trajectory is predictable – they write a book, take a position washing dogs for their political masters, and then gracelessly drift away.  These sorts of political vampires are what make writing fun.

But Nina’s different.  Nina wasn’t hired by the political bits of Washington, she was hired by Homeland Security.  What’s the difference?  The Department of Homeland Security is primarily a law enforcement agency.  It’s (sort-of) okay having a reptilian partisan hack at the cabinet level, but infesting law enforcement with Leftist partisan robots is a step too far, especially when Resident Biden is talking about Ultra MAGA, or whatever the voices in his head were telling him that afternoon.

At least, though, the mask is off.

Violence And Censorship Update

It’s been fairly quiet on the political violence front, at least recently.  We do have plenty of Censorship news.

Okay, this isn’t real.

For the first time ever, got some good news up first:

Twitter®.  If you had a wheelbarrow, you could have made a fortune mining salt from Leftist tears.  The very same Leftists that were overjoyed that they controlled Twitter® aren’t exactly thrilled by the idea that they won’t control this platform.  Here’s some salt to share:

It’s even better to mine the salt from a famous person.

Twitter isn’t done censoring, though.  They censored info about the FDA containing info from the FDA.

DuckDuckGo® had to counterbalance the loss of Twitter© – they decided that the only news sources they would handle would be trusted.  I’m betting Nina will love that.

And never forget that having an opinion that the Left doesn’t like is punishable by violence.

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 again flat.  Perhaps turning back up in May or June – Antifa® seems primed?

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it went up a little in April.  Much more in June?

Economic:

I had bet the economic numbers would be worse, and I was wrong.  If the stock market slide continues, though . . . .

Illegal Aliens:

This data was at record levels for this time of year.  All-time record levels.  Again.

Abortion and Conflict

The draft abortion decision by the Supreme Court is out.  It shows a huge divide in the country.  An example of the salt to be mined is here:

There were even a few words from Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

And the Federal Reserve© had a comment:

The United States is hopelessly divided.  An example?

This was thought of as a negative result that would make people on the Right mad, rather than the desired result.  Tinder® and all of the rest of the hook-up culture has been horrible for the people involved, especially women.  I spent some time watching a YouTube® of a pro-life march at a college in some city.  The pro-life folks were kind and polite, but the people on the other side of the issue were mean, angry, and wouldn’t listen, at all.

The idea of a rational discussion and debate with the Left is nearly impossible.  The objectives are 100% out of sync.

The end result of all this program changing is an America that is far more divided, and a step closer to Civil War 2.0.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1509177129044488192

https://twitter.com/i/status/1502074883550892033

https://twitter.com/i/status/1510413517509255175

https://twitter.com/i/status/1520557517130153989

https://twitter.com/i/status/1510909715961679873

https://youtu.be/iykHLx65WNw

https://twitter.com/i/status/1507576908099293189

https://twitter.com/wdsu/status/1506375168058343427

https://abcnews4.com/news/local/video-gunfire-rings-out-at-little-league-game-in-north-charleston-wciv

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TnEdeUbWAlg

https://twitter.com/ATLUncensored/status/1516757571570348038

https://twitter.com/OsintUpdates/status/1510581397458599936

https://www.inquirer.com/news/shooting-philadelphia-kensington-mantua-strawberry-mansion-20220415.html

Good Guys

https://www.tmz.com/2022/04/02/sucker-punch-high-school-track-runner-press-charges-lawsuit/

https://youtu.be/-qUgXFN2aLw

https://twitter.com/t0masimp8000/status/1503871472498257920

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/houston-car-dealership-employee-flips-script-on-attempted-robber-sends-him-running/ar-AAW5MYE

Two Guys

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10684433/Gun-wielding-Texas-man-shot-dead-girlfriends-ex-husband-not-face-charges.html

Body Count

https://southfront.org/from-30-to-40-ukrainian-children-disappeared-without-a-trace-in-spain/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/avian-flu-has-spread-to-27-states-sharply-driving-up-egg-prices/ar-AAWgZBQ

https://www.cnet.com/personal-finance/bird-flu-27-million-birds-dead/

https://airtable.com/shrbaT4x8LG8EbvVG/tbl7xKsSUIOPAa7Mx

https://dailyexpose.uk/2022/04/08/athletes-833-serious-540-dead-post-injection/

https://palexander.substack.com/p/us-military-doctor-testifies-she?s=r

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/number-covid-patients-us-hospitals-reaches-record-low-83819273

https://www.revolver.news/2022/04/black-lives-matter-reign-of-terror/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGb748VOcYU

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/opioid-overdose-deaths-teens-skyrocketed-due-fentanyl/story?id=84035862

https://cowboystatedaily.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/wyo-nuke-map-1.jpg

Vote Count

THE STEAL WAS REAL – WATCH “2000 Mules” NOW:  https://www.bitchute.com/embed/TizNoVq1qcwb/

https://www.dailysignal.com/2022/04/29/film-2000-mules-offers-vivid-proof-of-voter-fraud/

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/dinesh-dsouzas-2000-mules-ballot-trafficking-expose-has-evidence-can-it

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/04/29/dishonest-pivot-heart-new-voter-fraud-conspiracy/

True The Vote: https://twitter.com/realLizUSA/status/1513585569779040262

https://uncoverdc.com/2022/04/08/true-the-vote-previously-undisclosed-details-show-rico-crimes-in-2020-election/

https://www.truethevote.org/election-integrity-testimony-in-wisconsin-on-thursday-march-24-2022/

https://www.truethevote.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/FILE_5193_no-meta.pdf

https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2022/04/30/exclusive-true-the-votes-catherine-engelbrecht-mules-went-routes-trafficking-ballots-repeatedly-day-after-day-ahead-2020-election/

Zuck: https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/washington-secrets/rigged-documentary-details-zuckerbergs-400m-vote-juicing-for-biden

https://www.hastingstribune.com/ap/agriculture/zuckerberg-helped-fund-the-2020-elections-now-republicans-seek-to-ban-future-grants/article_24dae7d5-3989-50b3-8c63-528185976ade.html

https://newrepublic.com/article/165939/election-funding-voter-suppression-zuckerberg

AZ: https://uncoverdc.com/2022/04/07/brnovich-interim-report-finds-serious-vulnerabilities-in-2020-election/

FL: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/florida-voter-registration-republicans-overtake-democrats-100000

GA: https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/investigators-georgia-ballot-harvesting-probe-zero-funding-eyewitness

PA: https://uncoverdc.com/2022/04/15/pennsylvania-compelling-evidence-shows-blue-counties-scored-grants-in-2020-election/

PA: https://www.wfmz.com/news/area/lehighvalley/lehigh-county-da-likely-hundreds-of-instances-where-people-deposited-more-than-1-ballot-into/article_90b9cd12-b451-11ec-b79a-9f2106bb481b.html

USA:https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/24/poll-one-in-six-biden-voters-would-have-changed-their-vote-if-they-had-known-about-scandals-suppressed-by-media/

USA: https://www.newsmax.com/us/biden-usps-election-funding/2022/03/28/id/1063188/

USA: https://www.axios.com/2022-midterms-out-state-money-71487d18-76fd-452a-9020-d93ddf4e3106.html

 

Civil War

https://dnyuz.com/2022/04/03/flurry-of-new-laws-move-blue-and-red-states-further-apart/

https://aninjusticemag.com/contrary-to-popular-opinion-we-are-not-winning-this-war-196bc828bfdf

https://medium.com/politically-speaking/will-war-break-out-between-red-and-blue-states-93cac4d8c219

https://newrepublic.com/article/165959/global-age-civil-war

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-democratic-socialists-of-americas-civil-war-over-bds/

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/the-civil-war-for-americas-banks/

https://www.businessinsider.com/civil-war-violence-2022-midterm-elections-texas-republican-trump-2022-3

https://www.denisonforum.org/current-events/is-america-headed-toward-another-civil-war/

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FRhTPOXVIAEyVYU.jpg

1990s Movies – Because I Said So

“Flores! Flores para los muertos!” – Quick Change

Someone said the next Bond should be a woman – imagine he car explosions and wrecks, and that’s just when she’s parking.

Movies.  I grew up with them – it was where I took my girlfriend on a Friday night before we went to the pizza place and then, um, drove to look at the stars.  I once took a date to go see one of those graves that have a constant natural gas torch, but it turns out that is a bad idea – you should never take a date to go see an old flame.

But more than Friday night fun, movies were our cultural mythology.  As man 20,000 years ago told stories around the fire to establish and share the history of the tribe, our history was told with movies.  In essence, movies and television became our campfire, our shared cultural experience.  When people say that the United States has no culture, or is guilty of cultural appropriation, they’re wrong and I want to punch them.  But I can’t, because I’m not Irish.

As our shared culture, however, movies have always had a huge power to change our minds.  As propaganda, they changed our culture, many times not for the better.  Movies were also a huge opportunity to change our culture, change our lives, nearly as much as early metallurgy – after all, those who smelt it, dealt it.

I hear when you eat aluminum, you sheet metal.

I used the term “were our mythology” intentionally.  The world has changed.  The ‘Rona took movies and fragmented them further.  Now, to see a big movie you can still go to the theater, but streaming now allows people to focus on narrow interests.  Heck, even Putin watches Nyetflix®.

At work, unless we have the same streaming service, we’re not watching the same things.  Better Call Saul?  I asked people sitting at a table today if they’d seen it.  No one had.  It’s a gem, and probably the best thing on television today.  But no one else had seen it.

There went a shared conversation, a shared moment.

And, like I said, movies are fragmented and not a part of common culture.  Why was no one watching the Oscars®?  Because no one cares. The Academy Awards® don’t reflect anything about America anymore, since the moves . . . suck.  Even as late as four or six years ago, the movies were better.  Now, many are simply unwatchable mainly because many have been infected with “woke” culture.

So, for today’s post, I thought I’d go back into history, to the 1990s.  Why?  It’s my blog.  And movies in the 1990s were far more fun than movies today.

I tried to research LGBT stuff, but I couldn’t get a straight answer.

I’ll say that I tried to pick movies that weren’t propaganda, but were, rather, just fun.  So, without any further nonsense, here are my favorite movies of the 1990s, year by year.  I probably missed some, but this is the list I’m going with at 1am.

The structure?  My favorite movie in each year.  My criteria?  The one that mattered to me.  So, let’s get into the time machine and hit. . .

1990:

Quick Change.

I’m a sucker for Bill Murray.  I even watched him in Razor’s Edge, which made me think of Peter Venkman from Ghostbusters as a hollowed-out shell of a man after World War I.  Yeah.  That movie didn’t work at all.  That being said?  Quick Change is funny.  It has monster trucks, a heist, and mistaken identity.

In a (very) distant second place is Joe Versus The Volcano.  Tom Hanks wasn’t so serious, and there was a quirky fun with watching him go to work – we’ve all had that job.  Would I recommend it or change channels to watch it?  No.  But I do remember it.  Hula girls, unite.

1991:

1991 was a MUCH better year for movies.  Hands down, Silence of the Lambs wins.  It’s tense.  It’s 100% related to the book, and Hopkins and Foster never have had better roles.  Ever.  This is obviously a movie that couldn’t be made today because the character that was the baddy was a mentally deranged person.  You know the plot.  It’s a movie that you can watch once and the writing is branded into your brain, and it’s perfectly cast, perfectly delivered.

I guess we now understand what Biden’s Assistant Secretary for Health was doing in the 1990s.

In second place is Hudson Hawk.  I am, perhaps, the only person besides The Mrs. that loves this awful, awful movie.  It’s campy.  It’s silly.  The premise?  Ludicrous.  Whatever.  I loved the stupid movie.

1992:

Reservoir Dogs was amazing, though I didn’t see it until 1994.  Wow.  There are no reservoirs or dogs in the movie, but despite that, the movie is amazing.  It is (perhaps) Tarantino’s best movie.  The acting and pacing and tension are amazing.

As honorable mention is . . . My Cousin Vinny.  I rewatched it last year with Pugsley, and it was a hoot.  Perry Mason crossed with Green Acres.  When a movie hinges on the cooking time of grits?  Good stuff.

1993:

Army of Darkness is campy fun.  Okay, it’s really like the Three Stooges meets H.P. Lovecraft.  If that sounds good, watch it.  If you hate either of those things?  Run.  Really.  It’s a movie I love because it’s horribly stupid cosmic horror.  It also has multiple endings, depending on the version you watch.  I can’t pick which one I like best, but I don’t have to.

Honorable mention?  Demolition Man.  Which isn’t a great movie, but 1993 wasn’t a great year for movies.  It takes place in 2032 after Political Correctness takes over the United States.  It is not a good movie, but it is fun.

1994:

I would pick Pulp Fiction but I’ve already picked a Tarantino movie so instead I’ll pick Pulp Fiction.  I believe this is the only movie on the list where a co-worker said, “Oh, you’re the guy from Pulp Fiction.”  Which character was I compared to?  The Wolf.  That’s me, when I’m at my best.

Mmmm.  Good coffee.

I can’t believe this movie isn’t older, but honorable mention is . . . The Crow.  If you’re gonna die after one movie, this is the one.  Brandon Lee did an amazing job, and the movie would have made him a star, if Alec Baldwin hadn’t been in charge of props that day.

1995:

Wow.  I had a big list.  1995 had a raft of great movies.  I’m going to pick a movie I hated the first time I watched it:  In the Mouth of Madness.  In the Mouth of Madness wasn’t what I expected, but every time I watch it, it gets better.  Sam Neil in a Lovecraftian (see a pattern yet?) horror by John Carpenter?  Yeah.

I have five other movies on my list from 1995.  I’m going to pick 12 Monkeys.   12 Monkeys is weird.  It bends reality because it involves time travel if Monty Python designed the universe.  It’s not funny.  It’s also the first time I saw Brad Pitt, and I definitely can’t get the charge nurse to make it yesterday.

1996:

Mystery Science Theater 3000, The Movie.  That would mean something if my hands were made of metal.

Hamlet, honorable mention.  Mel Gibson chews the scenery as the mad prince of Denmark.  Alas, Yorick, I won’t give any spoilers, since this plot is only 400 years old.

Reminder – never go on another vacation with Sam Neil.

1997:

Event Horizon.  Sam Neil.  Check.  Lovecraftian.  Check.  Yup, I’m a junkie.  This is not an easy movie to watch, and the story of how they made it is hilarious – they did second unit filming on weekends when the executives weren’t watching and that’s when they filmed all the disturbing stuff.  Not for kids.  I mean, not for your kids.  Mine are made of sterner stuff.  Also, Sam Neil is known around our house as The Evil Sam Neil.

Second place?  Fallen.  I liked it.  It’s a one-trick movie, but I enjoyed the one trick.

1998:

So, this is a tie.  Vampire$, which is a great movie with guys who hunt vampires for money directed by John Carpenter and BASEketball, which is (early) South Park mixed with Airplane.  It was too tough – but if I had to pick one I’d pick BASEketball because it is so very stupid.

It was losing the truck that really made them mad.

An honorable mention is: Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  It’s rough, but so is the original source material.  Johnny Depp captured the manic intensity of Hunter S. Thompson, but my guess is that’s what Johnny Depp is really like, 24 hours a day.  Beware of bat country.

1999:

The best year on the list, easily.  Bowfinger.  Galaxy Quest.  The Matrix (wish they made a sequel, right?).  Office Space.  Fight Club.  Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.  I’m not picking.  Of these, though, I’d probably (if I had to pick one to watch tonight) pick Fight Club or Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, but that’s probably just my mood tonight.

The 1990s was a decade before The Narrative took over, and you can tell – the movies themselves were more innocent than today.  We’ll look at more decades in future months – you can bet the 1980s had the best teen comedies.  Better Off Dead, anyone?

So, what did I miss?  Which movies from the 1990s had the biggest impact on you (assuming you’re not Johnny Depp)?

Inflation: Crowding Out The Real Economy

“You don’t? Well, you don’t have to understand what it eh, it eh . . . It was printed in eh . . . Washington. Well, and when they print something in Washington, they know what it means.” – Green Acres

“Never trust an actor with a gun.” – Abraham Lincoln

Like the beginning of a movie starring Will Smith as Winnie the Pooh, Amy Schumer as Piglet, and Mitt “Mittens” Romney as Christopher Robin, you know one thing: the pain is only starting.

The pain I’m speaking of is inflation, though. I’d love to be the bearer of happy news. I’d love to say, “Nah, as soon as things straighten out in (spins wheel) China West Taiwan, things will be better. Nope.

Let me explain.

The Federal Government is really good at exactly two things, and one of them is spending money. Since they already donated a few billion bucks worth of stuff to the Taliban, they decided to go for a few trillion to everyone who was breathing.

What’s the difference between a rake and an AK-47? Don’t ask me, I just fly the drone.

The spending has been amazing, and it has created the expected result: inflation. It’s not done, though.

As I said, the Federal Government is good at spending money, but it’s slow at spending money. Although it looks like the Federal Government is just willy-nilly stuffing the money it just printed into the mouths of anyone nearby, it’s much more complicated than that.

First, a bureaucrat has to invent the program. And that means?

Paperwork. That has to be reviewed and approved. And every buzzword of sustainable and underserved and economic equity has to be mashed into the program and form. Once complete?

The program has to be announced, and various states, counties, alternative bands, and alternative energy providers then pounce on the paperwork to ask for buckets of cash. Biden’s grants for free crack pipes won’t figure out what communities they need to go to by themselves!

This process takes months. Then, once awarded, people need to order the crack pipes from China Terre Haute. Why not China? This is the Federal Government, and we know it is charged with protecting the American Crackpipe Maker Equalitarian Sisterhood (ACMES). So, all the crack pipe materials will be locally sourced from approved Wiccans.

How to cook crack and clean crabs: step one – use commas.

If it stopped at crack pipes, it would be fine, probably. But it’s not just that. It’s concrete for a burst of road construction. It’s rebar for the concrete. It’s plywood for the forms.

There was already price pressure on almost everything. Now that some of the largest steel (around 100 million tons of production) works in the world are shut down or sanctioned due to Vlad’s Spring Vacation, (not to mention fuel costs shooting up higher than a T-72 turret) that rebar is now much more expensive.

If that were the only problem, these sort of crushing cost increases would probably be something that we could live with. But whenever the government wants to buy a cubic yard of concrete to make a new office to process paperwork for Build Back Better Bux applications, well, that increases the cost.

For everyone.

In Denmark, they tried to repave a street with Legos®. They ran into a lot of roadblocks.

It makes the cost of building or expanding a business higher, unpredictable, and perhaps unattainable. Government spending – trillions of dollars of government spending that came from money that was simply wished into existence – crowds out private spending.

That means the new Pizza Hut® can’t be built because concrete is too expensive. That means the new PEZ™ factory can’t be built to keep up with the PEZ© demand because steel for the machinery costs too much. The alternatives that create a productive economy are walled off due to increased costs.

So, it’s happening now.

A little.

I’m telling you now, the big waves of Fed.Gov spending have yet to hit. Hundreds of millions of dollars more than the usual printing are hitting the economy – each month. The pressure from printing has yet to stop. It has yet to slow. It is still increasing.

I don’t think my doctor likes me. I called him and told him that I took a bunch of sleeping pills. He told me have a few drinks to relax.

The economy of every country that hyperinflated did so because of one simple reason: the leadership seemed to not understand that printing didn’t lead to prosperity. They had some sort of belief that money was a magical totem so that they could print more, and people would be happy.

In small quantities, it works. Home prices go up. Prices go up. People who save (as always) are the ones that get burned as their saved cash lowers in value.

Germany hyperinflated in the 1920s because they wanted to print cash. Lots of it. They didn’t have the good fortune to be able to create all they wanted with computers and the press of a button, so they had to hyperinflate the old-fashioned way: printing.

How bad did it get?

That certainly didn’t lead to any sort of social upheaval.

They managed to double the capacity of the printing press by only printing on one side.

I bet we can match that: I bet we can start making electronic money with only four bits per byte. I guess I can be the bearer of glad tidings and report there is good news, though:

We don’t have to watch a movie starring Will Smith as Winnie the Pooh, Amy Schumer as Piglet, and Mitt “Mittens” Romney as Christopher Robin. We’ve got that going for us.