Category: Civil War

Deception: The Media Is Soaking In It

“Theatricality and deception are powerful weapons, Alfred. It’s a good start.” – Batman Begins

Thankfully he wasn’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition.

I’m certain that few had any idea of how the Internet would change the world.  Oh, sure, some did.  In one of the zillion versions of Ender’s Game (or the never ending stream of sequels) Orson Scott Card wrote about the Internet, in the 1980s, I think.  In his version, people could make carefully reasoned arguments and other people would listen to them and be swayed.

Ha!  Instead we have Twitter® with its 280 character limit, and meme warfare.

I actually don’t mind meme warfare being the place where ideas are injected into society, primarily because the Right memes pretty well, and the Left can’t meme at all.

That is, of course, what the Left is worried about.  When the Internet began to gain popularity in the mid-1990s, it was a Wild West.  It was first created, page by page, by people who were passionate about something.  The programming was easy, and the hardest thing was to get noticed, since the search engines and directories were rudimentary.  I used at least three, depending on what I was searching for, because one was good for technical stuff, one was good for “normie” stuff, and the last one, as I recall, wasn’t good for much at all.

On the Internet, you can be whatever you want to be, so why do so many people pick “stupid”?

Then came the Media®.  At first, they didn’t really know how to use it, so they’d just put their written stuff out there, since video would swamp most dial-up connections.  But everyone knew it was going to be big, which is why AOL© merged with Time-Warner™ even though all AOL® presented was just a single way to get to the Internet.

But the problem for the Media™ and .GOV was that the Internet had shattered their ability to carefully script a single narrative.  It had also destroyed their ability to memory hole or gloss over big stories.  Now those passionate people could chronicle entire events that the .GOV would rather you forget, or, better yet, never even know about.  The carefully crafted defamation of everyone who believed in something outside of the Approved Narrative as a Conspiracy Theorist began to crumble.

People say it’s a small world, but I know I certainly wouldn’t want to paint it.  And in that small world where communication had drastically lowered the time for information to come out, and also made it harder for the information to be erased.  The Genie of information, once out of the bottle, couldn’t be put back in.

Does anyone know what an ink blot test is?  I Googled® it, but only found pictures of my parents yelling at me.

The Wild West continued.  Google® had a corporate slogan of Don’t be Evil® and Amazon™ would sell most any book that was it was legal to sell.  And the established Media© and .GOV still had no real understanding of how to control what people see and hear and remember.  The Internet was built to be decentralized, and hard to control.

I think, from what I see so far that the strategy has been to do at least five things:

Throw Lots of Content Out

Oddly, even though the major news sources keep firing journalists, they keep making more stuff.  What kind of stuff?  Clickbait, really.  Stories with little informational content, stories about celebrities, top 10 lists of best/worst/etc. (fill in the blank).  These aren’t news – they’re entertainment.  Heck, one browser I have on my phone has (it looks like) computer-generated compilations of posts from Reddit®.  The idea is to distract.  And if the algorithm is good enough, heck, maybe that person will forget what they were looking for in the first place.

Marginalize and Trivialize

This is one that’s carried on from the past.  If I had written a post about MK-Ultra (where the CIA essentially acted like the worst possible mixture of Jeffrey Dahmer and the DMV) in the 1960s, it would have been dismissed as a “conspiracy theory” at best.  The idea isn’t to contradict, it’s to hit the person making the accusation with personal attacks, and make it sound like they’re a nutcase.  And when the facts come out?  Minimize them – make them sound unimportant, “Oh, that tear gas we used at Waco?  Well it may be flammable, but only in super-high concentrations.  We won the war.  Go back to sleep.”

So, Alex Jones was right again, eh?

Control Discussion

How many people that you interact with are . . . real?

I’ve recently gotten robocalls that are very sophisticated, so much so that they nearly get through the uncanny valley of sounding right.  But what if the sound wasn’t an issue?  In a Twitter® comment it isn’t.  It is known that a significant percentage of Twitter® users are bots – programmed to interact.  Why would anyone go to that level of trouble?  Because they want to sell you something – an ideology, a candidate, or PEZ™.  They’re also useful to make it seem like there’s a consensus.

People are wired as pack animals, and generally want to be a part of the group, to not be left out.  Plus, a group of bots can drown out viewpoints and ideas and bury them in a sea of text.  On a related note, how many conversations are taking place on the Internet that are nothing more than one bot talking to another?

Control Access

Most people come to this website either directly or from other blogs.  The web search traffic I get is amazingly low – most days less than 3% of my traffic.  That’s new.  I used to get more traffic from search engines (20%+) but after July or so of 2020, Google™ shut the valve, and traffic dropped.  Likewise, I know that this site is banned by corporations.  Why?  Maybe my ideas are considered to be . . . dangerous.

A related question is this:  just how many website hits does Google® really have?  I searched for Civil War Weather Report and noted I wasn’t on the first page.  I jumped ahead to page 18.  If you’ll note, on an earlier page, Google© claims that there are 34,800,000 results.  But when you get to page 18, well, there are only 174 results.  I know I’ve written nearly 40 Civil War Weather Reports.  Funny that I didn’t see ‘em all in this list . . .

Note that Amazon®, which for a long time would not ban any legal book, now bans hundreds if not thousands of books merely because Amazon™ disagrees with their ideas.

Just Keep Lying

It seems to work for the FBI, Bill Clinton, and the CIA, so why not expand it to the Media®?  That’s just what they do.  These pictures will help illustrate the problem:

 

So, in the end, it has been established that the Media© wants to control you.  The only remaining question so that we can put the pressure where it needs to be is this:  who controls the Media™?

Yes, Your Leftist Friends Are Mentally Ill. You’re Not. Share This Post With Them To Trigger Them.

“Snap out of it! You’re Krusty the Clown! One of Look Magazine’s Hundred Most Promising Clowns of 1958!” – The Simpsons

I told Pugsley that Aristotle taught us that, “We are what we repeatedly do.”  So I told him I was his mother.

A Dutch dude named Erasmus of Rotterdam (who died in 1536) made a famous quote that I’m sure you’re all familiar with, namely, “In regione caecorum rex est luscus.”  Presumably, Erasmus said this before he died.  I was going to follow this up with a joke about the Dutch, but then I looked at my site statistics, and found that the Netherlands is number 5 on the countries that come to visit here at Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise.

So, my conclusion is this:  people of the Netherlands are amazing people who have impeccable taste in fine writing and I’d be glad to give them all a free bikini wax, but I’m pretty sure that they’re so tall, blonde, disciplined and perfectly proportioned that they’ve trained their bodies to not grow hair where they don’t want it.  Go Netherlands!

I’m pretty sure they have flying cars in the Netherlands now.

Anyway, what Erasmus was saying was originally in Latin, but Latin isn’t a dead language – it’s still Roman around.  My initial translation was, “Near the gas station in the skanky part of town, never pick up women after 3am.”  These are wise words, but what Erasmus really meant was, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

That’s one of those phrases that sounds really cool.  In fact, I imagined being able to see in a country full of blind people.  I mean, the only actor that would be able to play Batman would be Christian Braille.  And, using my crazy superpower of sight, I’d be able to break into their houses at night and steal all of their PEZ®.

But that’s not the way it would work.

I would probably try to explain to them that I could see – a sense that they didn’t have at all.  The concept of photons and colors and would sound crazy to them.  In fact, they’d probably think I was crazy and come at night while I was sleeping and give me blanket parties or worse until I shut up or left.

In the modern world, it’s similar, but it’s what’s commonly referred to as “Clown World” where everything is inverted.  Things that are beautiful are corrupted, and people are expected to applaud the bravery inherent in people reveling in the corruption.  I’ll let Stonetoss lead the introduction of the topic at hand.

If you’re not familiar with what Stonetoss is writing about, there is a “teacher” in Canada who decided, apparently, to wear comically large and obscene fake breasts to shop class.  How do we know they’re obscene?  YouTube® banned them.

But, yet, these Z-cups are allowed because a “teacher” showed up to work wearing them, and the school board is apparently afraid to confront the dude.  When a parent tried to bring the subject up, the local school board shut down the meeting rather than confront the amazing amounts of silicone (or foam rubber??) being paraded in their classrooms.  In fact, they say it’s illegal to criticize the “teacher”.

In my assessment of the situation, there are two possibilities.  The first is that the “teacher” is so mentally insane that allowing him to dress like this is similar to allowing him to claim that he’s made of string cheese and now has a mouse phobia.  That’s the first possibility.

The second is that the “teacher” is gaming the system and seeing how far he can push things so he can get mental disability payments and not have to show up to work, or not be graded based on his job performance.  I actually consider this more likely, but, hey, it’s 2022 so he just might be bonkers.

This was actually the plot to a South Park® episode where a teacher became more aggressively, explicitly gay in front of his students in an attempt (I recall) to get fired.  Instead, the people celebrated his inappropriate behavior because of his bravery.  So, yeah.  Blame Canada.  I’m sure that this is what the Canadian troops were thinking about when they hit the beach at D-Day, the freedom for shop teachers to don Z-cup fake breasts.

Women are, oddly, not at all good with this.  Not all women, of course.  I use The Mrs. as a sounding board for this sort of insanity, and she (more or less) notes that it’s offensive for (at least some) actual women to see men parading around pretending to be women.  But Canada says it’s okay.  And companies will ban you for “hate” if you dare to not say that this is completely normal.

In 2022, it’s now accepted that teachers indoctrinated in Leftist institutions should be allowed free access to your children.  And there’s nothing bad that can come of that.  Because teachers have shown themselves to be so stable.

The problem really does start with Leftism.  I know I drone on and on about this, but it’s true.  Leftism is a mental illness rooted in victimhood.  How can I prove this?  THEY TELL US THIS WHENEVER THEY CAN.  It’s worse than being stuck in a room filled with vegans who do Crossfit®.

I sometimes think it’s a competition on how many mental illnesses that they can have, like they all want to be the Georgy Zhukov of mental illness and be the (she/they/them/it) with the most medals.

Part of the idea is that Leftists are incapable of harboring thoughts that are counter to their programming.  Scott Adams found this out and after this cartoon strip, he was canceled from 77 newspapers.

Here are a few examples of why.

 

 

 

 

Yup.  Martha’s Vineyard.  Importing millions of people across the border is amazing, right?  Well, no.  Not when they show up in near the beach bungalows of the rich and famous.  Obama lives on Martha’s Vineyard, and his house alone could have housed every illegal alien that was transported there.  But, no.

They booted all the illegals in 44 hours.  Who needs a wall when you invade the territories of Leftist lawyers?

But the damage of Leftism is real.  It destroys families.  And it stops families from even being made.

But it leaves some really important questions to be asked.

And it makes you wonder what Biden is really after, when it turns out that “Right Wing Extremism” is actually less deadly than riding lawnmowers.  Really.

Seriously, though, this isn’t the battle the Left should push, because when real Right Wing Extremism hits?  Continents burn.

I guess that works for me.  I’ll continue to be a Right Wing Extremist.

And if they want Clown World, that’s fine.  They can soak in it.

Me?  I think this next picture works better than anything they can come up with.

Erasmus would certainly agree with me.  And?  Go Netherlands!  You guys rock!!!!  (Yes, I know Ariel is Danish, but you Danes have got to get your pageviews up.)

What’s The Meaning Of Life? It’s Right Here.

“Well, that’s the end of the film. Now, here’s the meaning of life.” – The Meaning of Life

The dinosaur with the cleanest teeth is, of course, the flossiraptor.

What are we here for?  It’s a big question, and one we have to ask now.  Sadly, I think the answer for many people would be, “inexpensive Chinese-made throw pillows, new Marvel® movies, and the next iPhone®.”

For most of my life, it was a clear question that didn’t involve any of those things, except maybe affordable throw pillows, because they wear out so very quickly.  At some point though, I figured it out.  What was it?  The meaning of life, or at least the abridged version.  The existence of my generation, of any generation, was for two reasons:

First, to create the next generation.  It’s the toughest and most fun work in the world.  A family, working together, would do the best job possible at creating the best children possible.

Why do we need those children?  Why do they need to be better?

The “why” is the essence of the second reason.  There are more challenges, literally an infinite set of challenges, that are before us.  There are more horizons for us to conquer – we may have been to the Moon, but we don’t live there.  We have sent robots to Mars, but we haven’t visited.  Humanity has a job, and it has always been clear to me that our job was not yet done, at least not until we have developed a reliable way to make the PEZ®/Anti-PEZ™ drive (LINK).

I was at a performance of Hamlet when there was an earthquake.  It was a Shakesperience!

Both of those answers rely on optimism.  I think that optimism is justly earned.  Even though humans have created unimaginable horrors, they have created, time and time again, amazing wonders. As Shakespeare’s Hamlet noted:

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god!  The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!

What I see today, however, isn’t the wonder of man, it’s the crisis we face with apprehension.  It consists of multiple fronts.

Energy:  Even though we are up against physical limits on the energy systems that we use, the idiocy of the Green Energy™ movement feels more like a mutual suicide pact.  The use of energy, primarily since the Industrial Revolution has created the greatest amount of prosperity and well-being the world has ever seen.  It is an absolute certainty that if the Leftists have their way, the amount of misery around the world will make World War II seem like a carnival ride.  I mean, not a good carnival ride, but at least it would have Patton.

How did Patton celebrate November?  He gave tanks.

Family:  One of the primary reasons for civilization in the first place is that it creates the basis for making itself better, and that basis is the family.  Children are not easy to raise.  Any single parent working by themselves would have been my victim.  It took both Pa Wilder and Ma Wilder (along with my brother, John Wilder) to make me a better person than Feral John Wilder would have become.  Family is important, and you can’t make good and strong children without one.

Morality:  Morality is crucial.  We have moved away from the moral basics that have created Western Civilization, and inverted them.  We used to celebrate the beautiful, and now celebrate the ugly.  And Pride Festivals®?  Pride was a sin.  And it still is.  Unless it involves lions.

Who are the enemies?

The Globalist Left:  This is a big bunch, but they come in two flavors.

The Globalist Left – The Antifa Gang:  These are people, who, generally despise themselves.  They revel in ugliness, because they feel that they’re ugly inside.  They look at society and hate it.  They want to watch it all burn.  They hate themselves, and want to make the world outside as horrifying as the world they old inside themselves.  This probably describes everyone that works at CNN®.

I had dinner with a journalist, but he pulled the labels off his ketchup and mustard.  He liked to keep his sauces anonymous.

The Globalist Left – The Elite:  They always seem to exist.  They were there at the fall of Rome, they were there when the Library of Alexandria was sacked, when Russia became a killing ground, and when China killed uncountable millions.  They appear to be the parasites that are jealous of real achievement and seek to game society so that they can come to power.  They also appear to gravitate to power for the sake of power, and delight in the destruction of anything as long as it brings them wealth and comfort, even if it kills the host society.

Technology:  I could go on all day, but there are two that jump out – they are the two most destabilizing technologies that exist today.  Technology is difficult, because now it moves so quickly, but humans don’t adapt to it very quickly at all.  I mean, VCRs existed and no one ever figured out how to stop the blinking 12:00.

Technology Itself – The Pill:  To a certain extent, one of the big foes of humanity right now is our state of technological advancement itself.  Multiple technological advances have created stresses that have never been seen before in human history.  The first of these, The Pill, was a disaster.  Some of the oldest rules to make society stable were about marriage and reproduction.  Why?  The stability of the family structure was ripped apart by The Pill, and the divorces started not long afterward.

The most effective method of birth control I ever used was my personality.

Technology Itself – Social Media:  When the printing press was originally invented, it opened a world where the knowledge of the entire history of mankind could be shared.  When the Internet developed, all of that knowledge could be shared freely.  Instead, the Internet has become a dopamine factory that is one of the most insidious narcissism trap in the history of humanity.  What could have united us has, instead, created zombies of people who sit in restaurants staring at their phones rather than talking to each other and having authentic conversations.  This has created a world with artificial closeness between people who have no connection, and artificial barriers between those who should be close.

Obviously, I could keep going.  The enemies of that which is Right, True, and Good are legion.  The methods they use are diverse.

I bet he gets tired in prison explaining he made more than one bomb.

If I were writing a screenplay, I’d be wondering how I write myself out of this predicament.  Thankfully, the answer is that I don’t have to.  Western Civilization has defeated enemies just like these for thousands of years.  We have been at the breaking point again and again.

It is true, we won’t be the same after this crisis.  There’s no guarantee that the crisis won’t last for decades.  And I promise it really will be the most difficult thing that any of us live through.  I mean, those of us that make it.

So, what are we here for?  We’re here to carry the torch forward.  To have wonderful children that exceed us in our capacity, because there are tough horizons, and more work to be done.  We are building the people that will take us into the future.  They are our children.  We build them for the future, so that they can build the future, despite the obstacles and enemies of humanity.

And we’ll win.

We always have.

Demoralization? Nope. That’s How They Get Ya.

“Seriously, I don’t get it.  What, you shoot luck lasers out your eyes? It’s just hard to picture. And certainly not very cinematic. I mean, luck? What coked-out, glass pipe-sucking freakshow comic book artist came up with that little chestnut? Probably a guy who can’t draw . . . .” – Deadpool 2

In calculus class, never sit with identical twins on either side of you.  It’s hard to differentiate between them.

I recalled one particular wrestling match in high school when getting ready to write this post.

I was a senior, but the opponent I was to wrestle that night was undefeated.  That was all I knew, since I’d never wrestled him.  Late in the season, hearing your opponent was undefeated was pretty scary for any wrestler because it was an indicator that they were pretty good.  While my record only had a few losses, undefeated was much, much better than “a few losses”.

As the home team, we had to move the wrestling mat from our practice room into the gym.  As I helped roll up the mat, fretting a bit about my looming match, I looked down – there was a brand new quarter exposed after I moved the mat.  I picked it up, and popped it into the pocket of my jeans.  I didn’t give it much more thought, but I was happy at that point my name wasn’t Roy.  Why?  Because if anyone saw me pick it up and put it in my pants they might call me quarter Roy.

The time for the match came.  The match started with an introduction, where the opponents would be announced, and run to the center of the match, shake hands, and then run back into the line.  The line started with the little guys (98 pounders) and finally worked up to the big guys.  I didn’t wrestle, heavyweight, but I was the next weight class down.  We Wilders are a hearty folk.

We never cried, though.  People would have thought the truck was headed for a breakdown.

When I shook his hands, he didn’t seem so tough.  He looked, well, like a guy I could beat.  My apprehension started to melt away.  Besides, I had found a lucky quarter.

When I wrestled him, I did beat him, pinning him in the second period.  When it was time to meet him at the District Championship, I met him in the finals.  Pinned him in the first period during that match.  And before the match, I could see it in his eyes – he was already defeated.  He knew that I would win, and he was just hoping I wouldn’t pin him again.  He knew he had no chance.

A lion would never cheat on his wife.  But a Tiger Wood.

The first match was mine based on skill and strength.  The second match?  It was mine because he knew that I was going to win.  The point of this story isn’t to tell you how utterly awesome I am – you already knew that.  No, the point was to present Wilder’s Law #541:

The easiest way to win is if your opponent convinces you that you’ve already lost.

This is the game that’s being played against us today.  The nonsense about the January 6 riots being a THreAt to MuH DemOcrACY is one of those.  If the 81 million people who voted for Trump had wanted to take and hold the Capitol?  It damn sure would be in our hands this very minute and Nancy Pelosi would be sober and asleep right now.  In jail.  The purpose of the Congressional inquiry and the convictions are actually a relatively brazen attempt to make you think that we’ve already lost.

I could give dozens of other examples of this behavior, and so could you.  I might even post in depth on one of them on Monday, but I might change my mind.

I guess that would give me an open mind?

The point is a simple one:  almost all of the power that the Left has is built on illusion, smoke and mirrors.  An example of that was the power of the NKVD (later the KGB) over the average Russian.  The power was this:  the Russians were beaten.  They were convinced that the Communist Party had one.  They were stared down, and looked away.

Fortunately, this wasn’t the case in most of the Western world.  Many have tried to stir up fear to create tyranny, and this is a practice that has happened again and again.  Yet even as the tyranny approaches, the people of the West push it back.

The process is often ugly, it’s often bloody, and it sometimes takes not a month or a year, but decades.  The Mrs. is fond of quoting the actress Audrey Hepburn, who said, “You can have everything, just not everything all at once.”  There is a lot of truth in that statement – we might have freedom, and we might have prosperity, but it is now clear to me that we can’t be guaranteed both at once.

I’m expecting someone to go full Batman® soon.

And that’s fine.  Heck, it’s even preferable.  I love a challenge, mainly because if there isn’t a real challenge, it’s not nearly so fun.  I mean, the idea of a velociraptor in a room full of kittens isn’t a lot of challenge, unless you’re one of the kittens.

Has the world been in worse shape?  Certainly.  Is this something we can fix?  Absolutely.  Will it be the toughest thing that most of us will ever do in our lives?

Without a doubt.  But we have one other thing on our side.

That quarter I found when I was rolling up the mat?  I still have it.  I figured it was a lucky quarter.  I knew that I was good, but even at 17 I knew Wilder’s Law #443:  Being good is great, but being lucky is even better.

There are many things that I’m certain of, and this is one of them:  we are the luckiest people, ever.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: They Hate You

“Hell, you boys is in the occupied territory. You’re 40 miles behind enemy lines. That’s smack dab in the middle of World War III.” – Red Dawn

Why do angry clocks only tok?  They’re tiked off.

  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, though tensions are certainly increasing.  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 – Naming The Enemy:  You – Violence And Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Shocks To The System – 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 710 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.  Most of today’s memes are free-range, and not originals.  The crop was really good this month.

Naming The Enemy:  You

Since Biden was sworn in, the relationship between citizens and the government has fundamentally changed.  Trump was like a game show host.  Biden is like a character from a Stephen King novel, and not one of the good ones.

The sheer hate shown by the Left, though, has replaced every bit of pretend love.  Biden has set himself up not as the President of the United States, but, at best, the President of the Democratic Party.  And that party, as well as all of the Left has let the mask slip.  How far?  This far:

Yes.  That is a governor of a state, indicating that people who live in the state she is supposed to represent, should move.  Admittedly, she looks like she’s auditioning for the role of Morticia for the “couldn’t get a date in high school players”.  But since she (presumably) hasn’t (yet) Cuomo’d her staff, well, she’s the governor.  And she hates you.  You are her enemy.  She has made that clear.

And so did Biden’s press secretary:

Merely voting for the “wrong” candidate makes you the enemy.  You, too, can be a “threat to our democracy” if you don’t vote the way that Big Biden wants you to vote.  I’m not sure why that upsets them, since the voting isn’t how they win elections, it’s the counting that wins them elections.

But I guess it sets you up to be an extremist.  What’s an extremist?

Anyone who doesn’t believe what (they) the Leftist “majority” believe.  Simple, right?  Don’t like chocolate?  Extremist.  Think that owning guns might be a right?

Extremist.  Biden even said so.  Again.  Last summer, he threatened his own citizens.  Apparently, he liked the results so much that he did it again.

I think Joe might have forgotten something:

But, seriously, he really, really, might have forgotten something:

And I thought he was on Ukraine’s side?  But, regardless, he has this really weird view on weapons, and I think it can be summarized by this one meme:

And all of this nonsense was before his ill-advised 1930’s totalitarian aesthetic national speech.  What did he want to talk about with his background that would have been appropriate at a May Day parade at Red Square in 1936?

Well, he had a lot to say.  About inflation?  No.  About Russia?  China?  Ukraine?  The energy crisis?  The economy?  No.  Really just about how much he really, really hates anyone on the Right.

People on the Left were quick to join in:

 

So, you’re the Enemy of the Left.  Congratulations!  But I’m not so sure about Biden’s comments . . . .

Violence And Censorship Update

Just like the segment above, I had more censorship this month than I can work through.  In many cases, it is actively impacting writers like me, with (apparently) Google® doing quite a bit to throttle traffic.  This is nothing new, but as far as I can tell, it’s accelerating and becoming more brazen at all levels.

But on the bigger stage, “Gays Against Groomers” was shut down.  The person running “Libs of TicTok” was doxed as well, but still maintains their presence.  Why shut them down?

I’m guessing a narrative violation, since “Groomer” is now officially a hate word.

But that’s just a Twitter® account.  It’s not like big tech is actively trying to shut down speech from the Right, is it?

Odysee® has been threatened by Apple® to not allow their app in the Apple© Appstore™ unless they strip voices on the Right from their content.  Odysee™ has, so far, told ‘em to buzz off.  That normally works pretty well until they come after the bank accounts.  Which they will.

The FBI has done its best to join in:

Remember, the FBI searched Barron Trump’s bedroom before they searched Hunter Biden’s.  And they leaked photos of Trump’s place, but not photos of the Epstein investigation.  That probably tells you all you need to know about how political the FBI is.

But at least big tech is doing this on its own, right?

No.  They colluded with the Biden Administration on a regular basis on “what to censor”, which in any real world would be a big deal.  But who controls what’s on the net?  Big tech.  The idea that independent voices can get a large following is something they’re working desperately to control.

They’re trying to understand why you would avoid taking the science juice into your veins.  Testing and actual data are too much to ask.  Keep in mind that one statistic I saw showed that 44% of pregnant women who were in the science juice trial miscarried.  And that it’s still recommended for pregnant women.

Even Bill Maher, who is no real friend to the Right, is stunned at the hypocrisy.  Me?

Not so much anymore.

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again.

 

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 upward this month, though not to previous levels.  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 bit.  We’ll see what impact Biden’s speech has.

Economic:

Economic indicators ricocheted down this month.  Not promising, but this is a strange election season.

Illegal Aliens:

It set a new record for this time of year.  But it was down.  Must still be hot out.  And Elon had something to say, too.

Shocks To The System

When the Russians invade Ukraine, I was mainly worried about the impact of losing the things that Russia and Ukraine made that would impact the outside world – things like wheat, or fertilizer.  I really didn’t expect the West to collectively decide, “breathing isn’t important” and cut off their own oxygen.  They did.  Natural gas is very important to the European economy, and without it, whole segments of what they produce have to get shut down – like COVID-level impacts, but because they decided not to buy natural gas.

Oops.

Whether intentional or not, it certainly has given a lot of data about shock testing of the economy of Europe:

Now it’s created such imbalances in the European energy market that electricity bills are skyrocketing.  How do girls decide who they’re going to date?

Collectively, the governments are deciding that they want the ability to do (spins wheel) whatever they want to do in response to the crisis.  Really.

Meanwhile, electricity shortages are showing up elsewhere.  In Colorado, I think users got a credit for installing the remote-control thermostat plus an annual payment ($25?) but lose the ability to choose how warm their house is.  Not horrific, but a sign, potentially of stresses to come.

As the interest rates go up, another stress goes up, too.  Housing prices drop and the housing market starts to lock up.  We’ve seen this before.

Economic stresses, especially energy stresses, have the ability to be incredibly destabilizing to a society, pushing it from near war to over the edge.  Beware as the economy falls apart.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/LAPDHQ/status/1560387842873757697

https://twitter.com/i/status/1554292158684794882

https://twitter.com/i/status/1565820292827586561

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1558877210231984128

https://breaking911.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/XRdD_4cG-ZgMyeke.mp4?_=1

https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1562787749291106312

 

Good Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1554279913519136769

https://twitter.com/i/status/1556399786948976640

https://twitter.com/i/status/1565078355267170304

https://youtu.be/NuenlBlzPPg

 

Body Count

https://www.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/BcIggWPF0Th-png__700.jpg

https://www.unz.com/jtaylor/more-murders/

https://www.naturalnews.com/2022-08-19-usa-has-3rd-most-murders-in-world-subtract-five-democrat-cities-189th.html#

https://vdare.com/articles/41-black-on-white-homicides-home-invasions-including-a-boat-invasion-really-are-a-thing-july-2022-another-month-in-the-death-of-white-america

https://www.fairus.org/press-releases/border-security/fair-analysis-49-million-illegal-aliens-have-crossed-our-borders

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/16/report-44-percent-of-pregnant-women-in-pfizer-trial-lost-their-babies-fda-and-cdc-recommended-jabs-for-expectant-mothers-anyway/

https://uncoverdc.com/2022/08/19/correction-eleven-mrna-subjects-suffered-spontaneous-abortions/

https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/you-are-25x-more-likely-to-be-injured

https://expose-news.com/2022/08/09/1-in-246-people-die-shortly-after-covid-vaccination/

https://expose-news.com/2022/08/09/mortality-rates-lowest-among-unvacinated/

https://twitter.com/i/status/1555940645985890305

https://twitter.com/backtolife_2023/status/1562718083747196928

https://www.skirsch.com/covid/HealthcareStories.pdf

https://twitter.com/DrEliDavid/status/1563848349777887234

https://twitter.com/afshineemrani/status/1564000788107513856/photo/1

https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/this-one-graph-tells-you-everything

https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/do-you-know-how-many-people-have

https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/in-memory-of-those-who-died-suddenly-4f6

https://twitter.com/GBNEWS/status/1562529247826165760

Vote Count

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/29/what-is-to-be-done-2/

https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/what-i-learned-at-the-summit-of-truth

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/los-angeles-soros-da-gascon-recall-fails

https://www.12news.com/article/news/politics/elections/decision/some-pinal-county-election-precincts-run-out-of-in-person-ballots/75-93414e02-3830-4979-8153-48c7c5af69f8

https://uncoverdc.com/2022/08/16/ny-citizens-audit-finds-hidden-infrastructure-in-voter-rolls/

https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/georgia-secretary-of-states-office

https://nationalfile.com/mail-in-ballots-from-2020-discovered-at-baltimore-usps-facility/

https://twitter.com/bennpetersen/status/1554672205472022529

https://youtu.be/dwbzDr1WrOQ

https://chroniclesmagazine.org/recent-features/when-mules-go-ballot-trafficking/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/13/california-san-bernardino-secession-november-election

https://twitter.com/loganclarkhall/status/1562942569876946947

https://www.valleynewslive.com/2022/08/10/fargo-school-board-votes-7-2-no-longer-recite-pledge-allegiance/

 

Civil War

https://www.unz.com/isteve/who-drove-the-great-awokening-the-news-media-or-academia/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/29/us-civil-war-fears-poll

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/americans-are-too-pampered-and-neurotic-to-fight-a-civil-war/ar-AA10BUHx

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/civil-war-2-0-not-on-techno-totalitarians-watch/

https://www.journal-news.net/are-we-headed-for-a-civil-war/article_5c22ca4c-5b81-5874-bbc0-7171035458b0.html

https://amac.us/are-we-headed-for-a-civil-war/

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/17/civil-war-porn/

https://unherd.com/2022/08/americas-tribes-are-ready-for-war/

https://www.governing.com/now/no-america-is-not-on-the-verge-of-a-new-civil-war

https://www.theonion.com/conservatives-explain-why-they-are-preparing-for-a-civi-1849414130

https://www.foxnews.com/media/civil-war-here-thanks-maga-mob-msnbcs-tiffany-cross

https://www.businessinsider.com/new-us-civil-war-wont-look-like-last-one-historians-2022-8

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-supporters-want-a-civil-war-after-fbi-raid-of-mar-a-lago-2022-8

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

https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2022/8/11/23301922/republicans-are-rooting-for-a-civil-war-mona-charen-column

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/trump-supporters-tiktok-civil-war/

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3591492-the-gathering-political-storm-in-america/

https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/republicans-join-in-with-white-nationalist-attacks-and-civil-war-threats/

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d39zq/trump-supporters-civil-war-fbi-search-mar-a-lago

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/why-america-is-in-such-a-mess-gvb25p0tj

https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/how-when-do-we-come-together-again/

https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/08/msnbc-host-civil-war-is-here-with-republicans/

 

In Summary….

https://twitter.com/i/status/1557482526536515584

https://twitter.com/raqrockyjones/status/1557756532221218817

The Backlash Against Journalists Begins

“Let them have the cabbage. We here at I.N.S. will feast on journalistic filet mignon.” – The Night Stalker

An honest journalist walked into CNN®.  The network head asked, “What are you doing here?”

I guess Trudeau had enough of people being mean to journalists.  I mean, we know that Justin Trudeau is the most tolerant person in Canada, right?

But he’s the most qualified person to be prime minister, right?

Huh.  Perhaps not.  But certainly, he has the best in mind for his people.

Well, thankfully the vaxx is helping people stay alive.  I mean, it’s not like mortality is up by double (or nearly double) in the ages from 25-55.  Oh, wait . . . .

I wonder how people will react to that?

Certainly, that didn’t happen, that journalists and the press wanted awful things to happen to people that had a different opinion.  I mean, is there any evidence of that?

I guess after that, I’m getting the subtle hint that they might not like folks who were somewhat suspicious of a new technology unleashed with minimal testing.

But at least the vaxx works.

 

I’ll let Sam Hyde have the last word.

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

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

free.jpg

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.

wolverines.jpg

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.

roids.jpg

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.

korea.jpg

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.

thanks.jpg

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.

constitution.jpg

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.

sumter.jpg

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?

gulag.jpg

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.

orwell.jpg

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.