Category: Civil War

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Are We There Yet? (Part II)

“Brandon, come on, let’s go . . . Brandon?” – Brightburn

Midnight?

  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 bolded both 9. and 10.  That’s the lead story.

As close as we are to the precipice of war, be careful.  Things could change at any minute.  Avoid crowds.  Get out of cities.  Now.  A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Making The Call, Part II? – Violence And Censorship Update – Models For The Future, It’s Personal – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – After Virginia – 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 600 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

https://wilderwealthywise.com/civil-war-weather-report-previous-posts/

Making The Call, Part II?

Last month we spent time discussing whether or not the United States has met the international criteria for being in a civil war.  The answer (in my opinion) is that we are close enough that it’s hard to tell.  Some people are solidly on the “it’s already going” and some are not.  One bit of criteria that was sent to me by a faithful reader – thank you 173d VietVet.  Mike Shelby (Forward Observer) wrote up a short missive on this question (LINK) and came out on the “no” side.

That’s fair.  He put forward some criteria, and I thought they’d be worth discussing this month.  These four bullet points are direct quotes:

  • domestic military action (i.e., not just police)
  • government involvement as a belligerent (i.e., not just a tribal war between citizens)
  • capable fighting on both sides of the conflict (i.e., not just a genocide)
  • at least 1,000 combat-related deaths in a 12-month period (i.e., sustained fighting)

My responses are in bold:

  • domestic military action (i.e., not just police) – Have you seen the police recently? They have equipment that most world militaries would love to have.  Heck, our police even have stuff we didn’t leave for the Taliban.  To require military action seems irrelevant. 
  • government involvement as a belligerent (i.e., not just a tribal war between citizens) – The trend in our current generation of warfare explicitly uses the citizen as a belligerent, if not the main belligerent. In my mind, it is more than enough that the government aids and abets citizens to kill others.  This is indisputably happening right now.
  • capable fighting on both sides of the conflict (i.e., not just a genocide) – This is the best point of the bunch. The violence (at some point) must go both ways.  Right now, it is observably one-sided, and is looks much more like a genocide.
  • at least 1,000 combat-related deaths in a 12-month period (i.e., sustained fighting) – Another valid point, but remember, in dirty wars, state sponsored combat looks like . . . crime. I do hope the violence level drops, but there is no sign of it now. 

Again, I have nothing but respect for Mr. Shelby, but the reliance on his past military background provides an analysis lens that I do not share and he perhaps parses the terminology a bit more finely than I would.  Thankfully, there’s room for both of us to be right.

If A is for apple and B is for banana, what is C for?  Explosives.

I’m not going to (besides the notes above) belabor the point.  I don’t care if the gun that shoots me belongs to a private from Louisiana or a cop or a Mexican cartel gunman.  I’m still dead.  And if the government is encouraging, it’s either genocide or, if the fighting goes both ways, it’s civil war.

There is more from Mr. Shelby a bit later in this edition of the Weather Report.

Violence And Censorship Update

Not a lot to add to violence this month.

Censorship, continues in full force.  At the beginning of the month, Congress had a Facebook® “whistleblower” as the main witness at hearings where . . . she said the big problem with Facebook© is that they don’t censor nearly enough.

What does the “p” in Facebook© stand for?  Privacy.

Yup.  That was the story.  But then it came out that that the “whistleblower” spent last October making sure that information that could damage Joe Biden was censored from Facebook™.  She was on the team that made sure that information related to Hunter Biden’s laptop was suppressed.

I’m shocked, shocked that she was wanting yet more censorship from Facebook.

Applying for work at Facebook® is easy.  They already have your details.

Since it’s November, I thought I’d remind everyone of a picture from last year.  Consider it a stroll down memory-hole lane.

There was more fraud in the 2020 election than in a Thanksgiving Wilder Family Monopoly® game.

Again, if you want free and fair elections, it’s absolutely certain that you block windows so the public can’t view the vote counting in any way.  Stalin said it well:  “Those who vote decide nothing.  Those who count the vote decide everything.”

Models For The Future – It’s Personal

I mentioned above that we’d see more from the Forward Observer, and here’s an excellent article where he discusses the model of the Irish Troubles as a model for potential future difficulties.  You can read it here (LINK).

Similarly, Mary Christine put forward a fictional piece at The Burning Platform in 2019.  Those set as a fiction, it describes how conflict escalated from the political to a guerilla war in Missouri during the Civil War.  You can read it here (LINK).

A third model to think about would be the Second Boer War, where the British defeated the Boer Republics and forcefully integrated them into British South Africa.  Like the other two, this conflict was based on guerilla tactics.   To defeat them, the British finally just started putting Boer civilians (women and children) into concentration camps with all the expected brutality and tragedy that is implied by that.  Tens of thousands of civilians died in the camps.

These models all have several things in common, but what strikes me is the utter brutality in each of them and the sometimes-targeted attacks on non-combatants.  Conflict of this type is marked by tragedy in a way that lasts for generations – it becomes and remains personal.

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:

Up is more violent, and our perception of violence is holding steady.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it ticked up this month again, mainly on inflation fears.

Economic:

Economic measures ticked upwards in October – despite my prediction that they’d drop.

Illegal Aliens:

This data was at record levels last three months, and this rate is 4x the rate from any previous year in the last four.

After Virginia

Virginia has scared the Left, badly.  In their minds, Virginia had become a permanent Blue state – a Leftist outpost where statues could be taken down and Critical Race Theory could start along with hormone treatments for kindergartners.

Then they lost.  Big time.  And it wasn’t just a loss, it was a loss that was a psychological blow.  Biden is in political free-fall, and is less popular than COVID-19.

The Left is realizing the hard truth:  they won’t sweep into a victory, everywhere and forever.  The comments section in Leftist areas?

Calling for a peaceful split.  Previously, when winning, they wanted it all – they were sure they were going to win and establish a socialist paradise from sea to shining sea.

This was a sea change.  They realize that the attitude of the Right is changing, and they realize that they’re managing to make Trump look good to the swing voters.  Is a consensus building for a split?

Is this where we might beheaded?

LINKS

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

From Sea To Shining  Sea

Brooklyn 1:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1NR_DWUeKI

Brooklyn 2: https://twitter.com/i/status/1454903434046578688

Lancaster PA: https://youtu.be/-Ch2q0Gw5Vg

Washington DC: https://twitter.com/i/status/1447913542674522117

Chicago 1: https://twitter.com/i/status/1445784277807890436

Chicago 2:https://twitter.com/i/status/1445483216475885576

Minneapolis: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_6hA9PgICc

Mobile AL:https://twitter.com/BNONews/status/1449214856138305536

Berkeley Campus: https://youtu.be/dYB9-o5QklE

Army Boot Camp: https://twitter.com/i/status/1449910120364879880

Marine Field Exercise: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10159949/Royal-Marines-commandos-force-troops-humiliating-surrender-training-exercise.html

 

Bad Guys…Guns…Good Gals

https://alphanews.org/78-instances-of-fully-automatic-gunfire-in-minneapolis-so-far-this-year/

https://buchanan.org/blog/who-is-killing-10000-black-americans-every-year-158601

https://www.gunviolencearchive.org/past-tolls

https://www.kansascity.com/news/state/missouri/article255162407.html

https://www.wthr.com/article/news/local/more-women-especially-black-women-are-becoming-gun-owners-ownership-firearms/531-49622eec-5ac8-4793-ab89-cfa0213ebff4

https://www.thedailybeast.com/republican-winsome-sears-becomes-virginias-first-female-lieutenant-governor

 

Election Tidbits

https://twitter.com/GlennYoungkin/status/1448396312098050048

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2021/10/breaking-fulton-county-georgia-ordered-one-million-absentee-ballots-printer-days-2020-election-knowing-no-time-mail/

https://www.wtnh.com/news/politics/emails-released-to-news-8-show-a-flurry-of-confusion-over-mass-absentee-ballots-mailed-to-guilford-voters/

https://www.defendflorida.org/canvassing

https://sos.ga.gov/index.php/elections/secretary_raffensperger_calls_on_department_of_justice_to_investigate_allegations_of_fulton_county_shredding_applications

https://www.bozemandailychronicle.com/ap_news/gbi-chief-not-enough-evidence-to-pursue-gop-s-ballot-fraud-claim/article_edd11901-b7a1-524f-9815-6bedbdd4bc98.html

https://thenationalpulse.com/analysis/kline-zucks-bucks-were-illegal/

 

Secession – Thinking Nationally

https://link.medium.com/yNzD8Sxhzkb

https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/columnists/dan-rodricks/bs-md-rodricks-1010-civil-war-20211008-sy33rtzmind5vnsawrshjh2tw4-story.html

https://www.thedailybeast.com/he-saw-americas-crackup-coming-in-2011he-says-its-worse-now

https://alt-market.us/in-a-civil-war-the-authoritarian-left-would-be-easily-beaten-but-it-wont-end-there/

https://centerforpolitics.org/crystalball/articles/new-initiative-explores-deep-persistent-divides-between-biden-and-trump-voters/

https://www.salon.com/2021/10/09/a-new-confederacy-and-the-have-already-seceded/

 

Secession – Acting Locally

https://mises.org/wire/three-reasons-start-taking-secession-seriously

https://www.sanjoseinside.com/news/california-secede-one-group-got-a-key-approval-last-week-to-try/

https://www.axios.com/atlantas-whitest-neighborhood-may-secede-7ae8755d-d378-4aa1-8534-f90faf029356.html

https://dnyuz.com/2021/10/22/bye-maryland-lawmakers-in-3-counties-float-a-plan-to-secede-from-the-state/

https://apnews.com/article/coronavirus-pandemic-canada-health-public-health-idaho-0d2015c826bb01a2cd04b31254c870c5

https://www.forbes.com/sites/petersuciu/2021/10/10/civil-war-trending-on-twitter-after-comment-made-by-trump-supporter/?sh=3c6d9b0b1853

https://www.laconiadailysun.com/news/state/lawmaker-wants-new-hampshire-to-declare-independence/article_d2717e73-5b7b-55b8-a8b3-aa7a45da9bf2.html

https://www.unionleader.com/news/politics/voters/should-the-2022-ballot-include-a-vote-on-new-hampshire-seceding-from-the-united-states/poll_fc16f69e-161c-11ec-8c39-b318093e8de3.html

https://www.amazon.com/Break-Up-Secession-Division-Imperfect-ebook/dp/B07X9PWSVG

https://www.amazon.com/American-Secession-Looming-National-Breakup-ebook/dp/B07N94RL11

 

Secession – Everybody Calm Down

https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/10/no-were-not-more-divided-than-we-were-during-the-civil-war/

https://www.governing.com/now/is-america-in-a-cold-civil-war-not-at-all

https://www.sunjournal.com/2021/10/10/rich-lowry-national-divorce-is-a-poisonously-stupid-idea/

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2021/10/06/americans-national-divorse-theyre-wrong-515443

https://www.silive.com/news/2021/10/its-dangerous-for-pro-trumpers-or-anybody-else-to-want-to-secede-from-the-united-states-opinion.html

https://www.npr.org/2021/10/06/1043401926/russia-expert-fiona-hill-there-is-nothing-for-you-here

 

Secession – The Least Of Our Worries?

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10154745/The-pace-China-moving-stunning-Americas-No-2-ranking-military-officer-said.html

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/moment-biden-casually-committed-ww3-over-taiwan-last-nights-town-hall

https://www.revolver.news/2021/10/secret-chinese-philosopher-lessons-for-america/

https://palladiummag.com/2021/10/11/the-triumph-and-terror-of-wang-huning/

https://dokumen.pub/america-against-america.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2021/11/the-new-meth/620174/

I’m Back. Also? The Economy Is A Mess.

“Good. Then climb up, get inside, and make it spin.” – Cobra Kai

Oh, wait, then she couldn’t circle back?

JW Note:  Monday was the third day (I think) that I had to skip a scheduled post since 2017.  It’s nice to be back.  Thanks for waiting.

I was driving down the road.  It was Christmas Day, back a zillion years ago.  There had been a fresh few inches of snow on the paved road.  I was going to see my parents.  The day was overcast, and cold, with temperatures hovering around 0°F (101.325 kPa).

My car was going around 70 miles per hour.  There wasn’t another car on the road, and I could see for miles.  Little did I know that I would soon have an auto-body experience.

Instead of snowplows, the county had used road graders to scrape the snow off the asphalt.  One result of that was that there was a continuous tiny hill of snow in the center of the road where the yellow line would be.

As I drove along, I reached to change the cassette tape.  Perhaps a switch to AC/DC® from the Crüe?  I wandered off just a little bit toward the center onto that little hill as I reached into the tape box.  It slowed my car.  On one side.  Just a little.

The result wasn’t little.  A force applied to one side of the car led to the other side going forward faster, a result most people call . . . spinning.

Or in this case, Tyrannosaurus Rexth. 

The car went into a very fast spin as the car’s forward energy was transferred into angular momentum.  I could probably describe the amount of energy in math, but I was concentrating right then and there on not being reduced to my personal lowest common denominator.  But you can think about it this way:  how fast would a car going 70 miles per hour spin if all the forward energy went into spin?

Fast.

This spin forced the weight of the car onto the driver’s side wheels as the car bled linear energy into rotational.  As the car spun, out of control, there was no real way to do anything.  Everything was happening far too fast.

The spinning car spun up a small tornado cloud of snow from the road.  Finally, the car tilted up on the driver’s side tires, and tilted up, 30 degrees from horizontal.  It stopped rotating.

The car then slammed down, at a complete stop, engine stalled, and every light on the dashboard on.  The defroster was blowing snowflakes into the car, and every window was covered with white flakes of snow, outside and inside.

There is only one thing I could do.  I got out of the car and stared down the asphalt at the path I had been on.  It all happened so fast that had little time to feel any fear.  Besides, who can be afraid when Bonn Scott was busy telling me all about Rosie?

How does he like his eggs in the morning?  Ohhhhhmmmmlette.

I had been going due east, facing right into the ditch.  I was now pointing due south.  The entire time, not a tire had left the narrow two lane asphalt road.  I looked back on the track the wheels had made, and it looked like the path of a figure skater doing a pirouette.  I got wiped off the car windows, got back in, backed up, and headed east again.

Much more slowly.

Back when the ‘Rona first started, the long-term implications (to me) were clear.  The immediate shutdown of large segments of the global economy would be disastrous.  It was certain to leave a mark.

The toilet paper binge was signal one.  When people panic, they feel that they have to do . . . something.  Buying toilet paper wasn’t rational.

Here at Casa Wilder we actually had a relatively ludicrous amount on hand before the whole mess hit.  It was (sort of) a prepping situation.  We kept buying more than we needed, and it kept adding up.  And up.  Before too awful long, we had the basement bathroom stacked pretty high with the stuff.

I hear that two guys stole a calendar from Capitol Hill.  Each of them got six months.

When the storm hit?  Well, let’s say that we were squeaky clean.  And we didn’t buy a single sheet.  We weren’t part of the problem, but part of the solution.

But the economy wasn’t.  Every bit of initial distortion from the economic dislocation was amplified.  It echoed down the system.  What kinds of shocks?

  • Initial runs on supplies.
  • Federal stimulus.
  • Initial lowered consumption of fuels.
  • More Federal stimulus.
  • Lower demand for office space.
  • More Federal stimulus, which increased unemployment benefits, distorting labor incentives.
  • Eviction moratoriums, distorting housing costs and lowering profits of building owners.
  • More Federal stimulus.
  • Spiking stock markets with contracting GDP.

I’m thinking that, in retrospect, Federal “aid” was probably the worst thing we could have done.  It provided the greatest expansion of government powers since FDR nearly destroyed the economy with the New Deal.  If the Federal government could tell a landlord in Podunk, Iowa that he couldn’t kick out people that refused to pay, it’s only a tiny step to saying that the landlord should let people move into his guest bedroom and feed them pancakes when they demand them.

French pancakes give me the crepes.

That might be the worst.  But the economic situation has all the charm of a pitbull that just quit smoking, and it will be the spark.

Wilder’s Law (might as well grab one when I can) says that Federal debt doubles every eight years.  The debt is right now at $29 trillion.  That means that (on average) the debt will rise by $3.5 trillion each year.  That’s a lot of money.  Some people work a whole year and don’t make that much!

I think we’re on track to more than double it in the next eight years, regardless of who is in the White House.  The end state of any exponential curve is, well, exponential.  The headwinds we are now facing are strong.

  • Medical costs, which are growing faster than Germany between 1939 and 1941.
  • Infinite Leftist “free” programs to see who will be trained to be the poet in Collective Farm #8675309 (I bet it will be Jenny).
  • Whipsawing energy availability. I promised Lord Bison I’d do an energy post again sometime soon, and we need to review where we’re at.  Is energy expensive because of political reasons, or because of physical reasons?  We need to have a great documentary about oil.  We can save it under non-friction.
  • Political division that mirrors only a few times in our history. Hint:  all of those ended in historic levels of bloodshed.  I’m sure this time will be different.
  • The man is a potato.
  • Lashing waves of inflation and shortage, as I predicted back in July. Heck, I priced cheap electric outlets the other day.  They were shocking!
  • China and Russia seeing their moment. Why didn’t anyone Xi that coming?
  • Joe Biden’s America? Borders are open, no jab required.  Oh, wait, have a job?  Jab required.

I wish that I could tell you that things will get better soon in the economy.  It is certain that they won’t.  The economy is shifting in unpredictable ways.  When you have a system that is working at its limits every single day and then subject it to amazing levels of stress?

It will fail.  No chips for new cars.  No drivers for trucks.  Chicago getting ready to lose a big chunk of cops.  The worst dislocations are yet to arrive.

The government solution will certainly make things worse.  How can I tell that?  It already has.  The dreams of those who assume that prosperity can be bought at the price of new law or regulation or printing more cash has always failed.

Second place winner, Collective Farm BR-549 poet competition.

Prosperity is hard.  Really hard.  The natural state of humanity has been one where starvation was always a possibility, where actually consequential diseases (see:  The Black Death or The Justinian Plague) was inevitable from time to time.  It was so bad that episodes of that show you love were on the streaming service that you don’t have and you’re not going to buy another one.

We live in a world that has become just like my car on that Christmas Day so many years ago.  It was moving down the road at full speed.  One tiny two-inch hill of snow caused it to spin.

I assure you we haven’t been anywhere close to the worst that this downturn will bring.  Prepare.  Stay away from crowds.  And if you and all you love all still there when all four wheels drop back on the ground?

Say a prayer.

Of thanks.

We can’t have too many of those.

Manufacturing Consent: Say No

“This is a consent form to stick a wire into your brain. It’s important for hospitals to get these signed for procedures that are completely unnecessary.” – House, M.D.

Anyone else see a pattern here?

The Mrs. and I were both leaders (once upon a time) in that Paramilitary Organization, Boy Scouts of America®.  We were leaders before the lifting on gay membership was removed.

During that time period, we were asked to participate in a (rather) lengthy survey of leaders.  One night over a bottle of wine we started and finished the survey, working together.  There was question after question, and there was scenario after scenario presented, as well as spots for written answers.  In the end, we were firmly against inclusion of LGBTQXYZ children into Scouting™.  We were also against LGBTQXYZ leadership.

And, we really, really thought about it, and tried to see the situation from different perspectives other than our own.  Regardless, in the end, our feeling was shared and simple:  Boy Scouts™ had been doing fine for a hundred years holding the same membership standards, and changing them for 1-2% of the population (that probably wouldn’t join anyway) didn’t make any sense.

One thing that I notice while taking the survey, was that it was quite biased.  In question after question, it presented “edge” cases.  “A boy, having completed everything required for his Eagle® rank, admits he is gay.  Should he become an Eagle™ Scout®?”

Well, how many cases like that would there be?  In reality, nearly zero.  But scenario after scenario was presented, showing gay Scouts in the most flattering light possible in carefully crafted questions that were designed to evoke positive emotions for poor gay kids who just wanted to hike and have fun, darn it.  We didn’t come down against gay Scouts® because we hated gay people.  We came down against gay Scouts™ because it violated a basic principle of the program.

Simple as.

Hmmm, another pattern?

It came out that the national Scouting® decision had already been made before the survey.  The entire survey was just an attempt to change the opinions of leaders and parents.  The purpose of the survey was not to legitimately understand what the adults involved in Scouting® wanted, it was to get them to consent to the preordained change.

The BSA™ was engaged in Manufacturing Consent.  The response from the Left after every retreat from principle by the Boy Scouts©?  “It’s not enough.”  It will never be enough.

Manufacturing Consent is a book by a communist named Edward Herman and the much more famous communist Noam Chomsky.  Their primary idea was that the news media was beholden to special interest groups, and would gang up with capitalists to make sure that True Communism© would never be tried.

Those poor communists couldn’t get an even break!  I mean, Chomsky and Herman had to get by working in coal mines in cushy professorships, while scoring book deal after book deal and getting fawning reviews from an admiring press.  Chomsky and Herman argued that “the man is keeping me down” while, indeed, they were pampered pets continually sucking blood like a parasite from the civilization they were intent on destroying.

That doesn’t mean that they were wrong – the media was quite busy Manufacturing Consent, but the consent they were manufacturing for was Global Leftist State Control, the same people who bribed the Boy Scouts™ into giving up long held positions based on morality in exchange for big bux from corporate sponsors.

We see that today, as well.  News is elevated when it serves the purpose of the Global Leftist State Capitalism.  News is depressed when it doesn’t.  Even news of a sensational nature becomes muted outside of local boundaries when it doesn’t serve the purpose of Global Leftist State Control.

The Mrs. did that.  The Mrs. used to be in radio.  She got to put together the news, sports, and weather for a regional network.  She had fun at the job, but one thing she did that made me laugh was that she wouldn’t cover NBA® scores.  Football?  Sure.  Baseball?  Of course.  But no the NBA™.  When it was winter, she only provided . . . hockey scores.   It wasn’t (particularly) a hockey region, but she didn’t like the NBA™.

So, for her news segments, the NBA© didn’t exist.

The news media does that on a national basis.  Sensational stories are elevated to cover news stories.  There was a missing toddler who apparently lived with wolves during the weekend in Houston and then was found alive and well.  Sure, that’s wonderful, but why on Earth was this a national story on the news?  A local story, sure.

But national?  What story did that take the space of?

It’s not just in news, although certainly you’ve noticed that in “mass shooting” events that the story is very, very quickly covered up if the shooter isn’t a white guy.  It has to be both – the reason is that is the group that the Left wants to disarm.  If there’s a problem with the shooter, the case quickly disappears from the narrative.

Beyond the news, it’s also on social media.  Twitter® and Facebook™ are used on a regular basis to amplify Leftist views.  The recent “whistleblower” to Facebook’s© free speech “problem”?  She was apparently involved in the decision to censor information from Hunter Biden’s laptop before the election.  Her complaint is that Facebook™ doesn’t censor enough viewpoints of the Right.

Bots and/or paid users are used to put up comments that are supportive of whatever narrative is being sold.  Of course, the jab is the big one, and the first one to attract those sorts of shills to this blog.  Again, the concept is to create a situation where any idea opposed to the narrative is ridiculed.

Where do you think the phrase “conspiracy theorist” came from?  It was created in the 1960s to discredit anyone who had a narrative that was counter to the mainstream narrative.  It has become especially apparent in the COVID era, since any opinion counter to the narrative as it is known on that day is ridiculed by politicians on the Left and the full might of the news media.

Likewise, Google™ actively suppresses opinions it doesn’t agree with.  Google™ used to give this blog about ten times the traffic of DuckDuckGo®.  Now?  They’re about the same.  That was about 10% of my traffic, and when it dropped, I noticed it, since it all happened at once.  I’ve since recovered (and then some!) from that suppression.

Additional narrative suppression comes from, surprise, academia.  MIT just canceled a speech by a pro-climate change geophysicist because (drumroll) he was against race-based affirmative action.  Now, he wasn’t going to talk about affirmative action, he was going to talk about climate change, and follow the Leftist line there.  But to allow people who challenged another part of the narrative to talk?

Nope.  To be on the Left, understand you’re all in, or you’re out.  Will that shut up the next academic with politically unpopular views?

This brings us back to the Scouts®.  They had made a choice, and agree or disagree, that was where they were going.  The collapse in membership from around 2.9 million when the decision was made to 760,000 or so today (despite adding kindergarteners and girls) is nothing short of catastrophic.

That, in the end, is the problem with manufacturing consent.  It isn’t real consent, and it ends up destroying the thing it was trying to influence.  The parents and kids voted with their absence – regardless of the attempt to influence them.

The first step in not being manipulated by Manufactured Consent?

Be aware.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Making The Call?

“The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace.  It failed.  But in the year of the Shadow War, it became something greater: our last, best hope for victory.  The year is 2260. The place: Babylon 5.” – Babylon 5

Midnight?

  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 bolded both 9. and 10.  That’s the lead story (below).

As close as we are to the precipice of war, be careful.  Things could change at any minute.  Avoid crowds.  Get out of cities.  Now.  A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Making The Call? – Violence And Censorship Update –– Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Calling It Quits – 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 570 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Note:  Except for the first, all images in this post are “as found.”

Making The Call?

If you’ve read these for some time, I’ve been using the internationally accepted standard for declaring a civil war.  It’s one that academics used to make a description.  In that sense, it’s arbitrary, but it sets some standard.  Most importantly, it isn’t a standard I made up.  It exists outside of this report, and you can go and check it for yourself.  I want (as much as possible) to be factual when I say something about the emerging Civil War 2.0 as it is certainly the most consequential event that will occur during my lifetime.  So, as a starter, I adopted the international standard.

I believe that we have met that standard.

From that academic standpoint, the United States would be classified as a nation in a Civil War.  I’ll provide the reasoning:  since the George Floyd riots started, there has been epidemic violence in the nation.  I had been tracking that increase, using several sources of hot-spot political violence and tabulating them.  Data, as you could imagine, isn’t tabulated that way, so my methods were an estimate.

I tried to be conservative with it.  This isn’t a Civil War where Johnny Reb fights with Billy Yank on a battlefield under banners.  Nope.  It’s a more brutal version where it’s fought on the streets in one-on-one encounters, complete a corrupt District Attorney system that lets half of the players back on the street with no punishment.

One (very fair) criticism from Ricky (who graciously provides the Links) is that this is an extraordinary claim, so it should require extraordinary proof.  He suggested a (curated, my add) spreadsheet showing each victim by name, and linking to the details?  We could all easily agree about Ashli Babbitt and those killed in Kenosha, as well as dozens of others (mainly) killed by Antifa®.

That’s a very worthy idea, but not one I would be the best candidate to maintain.  Perhaps someone will pick up that idea.

What I do have are raw statistics that back up my attempt to quantify the current body count.  Here’s a graph, from Steve Sailer’s work (LINK).

The increase in murder deaths from 2019 to 2020 was nearly 5,000.  Extrapolate that into the first three-quarters of 2021?  You get over 8,000.  If only 1/8 of those deaths are politically related, we’re there at the international standard.  Again, I don’t have a list of 1,000 names.  For perspective, even those 1,000 are just a small fraction of the people that have died from either COVID or the “jab”, yet they are categorically different:  we are killing each other over politics.

A second set of great thoughts came from Eaton Rapids Joe (LINK).  He brought up two ideas:  the first is normalization.  The United States has a population of over three hundred million.  Most countries that have had civil wars are much, much smaller.  Rwanda had a population of only about 7,000,000 when they decided to kill off about 1,700,000 of each other.  To cross the 1,000 threshold (proportionally to population size) would require 43,000 dead.

That’s a good point.  He further went on to note that some cities of the United States have already crossed a proportionate threshold.  In a heat map, you’d see that most places are quite cold, but lots of Blue cities were clearly far beyond any reasonable threshold and are clearly in civil war already.

These are good points.

Because of that perspective, I can not say that we are fully at Open War, rather I can say that every element is in place.  I can say with reasonable certainty that we have crossed an important psychological threshold.  Whether we come back from the brink?

That’s one that time will tell.  As of this writing, I am only seeing signs of additional deterioration in the political landscape.  It’s getting worse daily.

Violence And Censorship Update

I think violence is pretty well covered up above.  Censorship, sadly, hasn’t ramped down, but rather increased.

Let’s start with YouTube®, which is the modern equivalent of the Ministry of Truth.  Who did they muzzle this month?

Probably the most important is a change in policy.  Now, any video that claims that “vaccines are ineffective or dangerous” will be banned.  Different opinions aren’t tolerated.  As much as I don’t agree that lies are good public policy, keep in mind that science doesn’t work that way.  Science works when free and open debate and inquiry are allowed to find the truth.  As we learn more, we discover that we didn’t understand the world quite as well as we thought.  Well, not on YouTube®.  Only thoughts approved by Ministry of Truth are allowed in 1984 2021.

This has a very significant impact on other YouTube™ channels.  Because they don’t know exactly where “the line” is they avoid the subject entirely.  As more people ditch mainstream media, it looks like alternatives have to be co-opted.  A case in point:

MiniTru, er, YouTube© also banned one of Ron Paul’s channels.  Why?  They won’t tell him.

But don’t worry!  The Fed.Gov folks are hard at work.  They’re monitoring your social media and ProtonMail® accounts.

Thankfully, they can still make sure our children are being properly educated:

And that we are not using bullying language:

And while murders are up by 30%, ClubFed® is hanging out at Right rallies in Washington, D.C. so that you and I can feel safe.  Big Benneton® is watching you.

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:

Up is more violent, and our perception of violence is down in September, again.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it ticked up this month, mainly on inflation fears.

Economic:

Economic measures held steady, but I expect a huge drop in October if trends continue.  And, the Fed® decided to not show the bad news on something I’ve long predicted . . .

Illegal Aliens:

This data was at record levels last month, and only dropped slightly this month.  Perspective:  this rate is 4x the rate from any previous year in the last four.

Calling It Quits

Calls for divorce in the United States increased in September.  Don’t believe me?

This call is showing up in pretty much every aspect of life.  We have gone from a single nation that fought about the center to one where people on the Right feel that people on the Left are a danger.  Not someone they disagree with:  a danger.

If you disagree with someone, we can talk it out.  If I consider them a danger?  That means the time for talking is over.  And if both of these polls are correct, America is pretty well done talking.  Well, at least constructive talking:

And that’s just NASCAR®.  What about Texas?

What’s the biggest cause of divorces?  Cheating.  Has there been any of that?

Of course the Left has fought tooth and nail against looking at the most statistically improbable election in American history.  Why?  They cheated.  So, given that, pretty much everyone is done.  The Left, and the Right.

LINK

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

Hold Up

Providence, RI: https://twitter.com/i/status/1441931138432385024

Olympic WA: https://twitter.com/i/status/1436355179675152391

Washington DC: https://twitter.com/i/status/1434291759169871874

Philadelphia, PA: https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1434579991853948932

Portland, OR: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WYwRztl0mVs

Chicago, IL: https://twitter.com/CPD1617Scanner/status/1442575822565556226

Keiser, OR: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9965833/Shoplifters-steal-thousands-dollars-worth-electrical-wires-Lowes-Oregon.html

New York, NY: https://newyork.cbslocal.com/2021/09/20/tiktok-devious-licks-viral-challenge-vandalism-stealing-in-schools/

 

Break Up

https://www.mediaite.com/podcasts/one-of-the-worst-times-ever-in-american-history-ken-burns-says-current-times-equal-to-civil-war/

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2021/09/16/is-the-us-headed-for-another-civil-war/

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/10/claremont-ryan-williams-trump/620252/

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/navy-seal-who-shot-bin-laden-says-internal-division-now-biggest-threat-to-america_3992743.html?

https://thenationalpulse.com/breaking/national-archives-places-harmful-language-alert-on-u-s-constitution-page/

https://www.yaf.org/news/student-senator-caught-throwing-away-flags-from-9-11-memorial-at-washu/

https://mynorthwest.com/3141211/rantz-high-school-cancels-9-11-tribute-says-it-could-offend-some-students/?

https://twitter.com/i/status/1437236890885754880

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1444333097810546690

Majority of Trump voters believe it’s ‘time to split the country’ in two, new poll finds (msn.com)

https://nypost.com/2021/09/27/sorry-but-a-national-split-up-just-wont-work/

 

What’s Up?

https://uncoverdc.com/2021/09/08/arizona-canvass-update-299493-votes-impacted/

https://uncoverdc.com/2021/09/24/maricopa-county-audit-report-over-57k-votes-in-question/

https://cleverjourneys.com/2021/09/30/how-does-the-voter-ballot-printing-company-fit-into-the-arizona-audit-results/

https://twitter.com/Shae_1776/status/1435624703658446848

https://www.ajc.com/politics/ballot-inspection-seeks-elusive-proof-of-fraud-in-georgia-election/OEQEOPIY4FDC3KPN3W47MNMKEU/

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1441008337882071048

 

Upward And Onward…

https://thefederalist.com/2021/09/08/the-top-reason-i-hate-masks-is-they-force-me-to-live-by-lies/

https://www.theburningplatform.com/2021/09/20/its-a-fourth-turning-what-did-you-expect/

https://tomluongo.me/2021/09/10/quietly-say-no-to-joe-bidens-call-for-civil-war/

https://americanmind.org/salvo/americas-intersectional-caste-system/

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/09/12/its_time_to_acknowledge_anti-white_racism_146391.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BE7nkiFOB-U

https://thehill.com/opinion/judiciary/571806-reaffirm-who-we-hope-to-be-instead-of-reimagining-our-history

https://alt-market.us/organizing-patriots-in-the-face-of-government-informants-and-false-flags/

General Milley, The Vanguard Of The American Caesar

“What else is a TARDIS for? I can take you to the Battle of Trafalgar, the First Antigravity Olympics, Caesar crossing the Rubicon, or Ian Dury at the Top Rank, Sheffield, England, Earth, 21st November, 1979. What do you think?” – Dr. Who

What do modern people call socks worn with sandals?  Birth control.

History doesn’t always repeat, but it rhymes.

On January 10, 49 B.C., Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River at the head of his troops.  He had been ordered to leave the troops beyond the Rubicon.  After crossing the river, it is said he uttered, alea iacta est, or Latin for “I know you are, but what am I,” (Caesar was a big Peewee Herman fan).

Caesar didn’t pay any attention to the order to leave his troops behind, and Legion XIII, Gemina, followed him to Rome.  What followed was a four-year civil war that ended up with Julius Caesar taking over the Roman Republic and founding what soon became the Roman Empire.  That lasted until the Empire was split in two by a pair of Caesars.

One of the most scrupulous traditions in the United States has been that there are three independent branches of the Fed.Gov:  the legislative, the judicial, and the executive.  What’s missing?  The military.  That’s just as intentional as Biden wearing Depends® the day after he eats prunes.

What determines the length of a Biden press conference?  Depends.

That’s because the military is unique:  the legislature controls funding it and declaring the war it should fight, and the executive is their commander-in-chief.  It should be pretty straightforward.

Except:  the military went from a citizen-militia type military fairly early on.  Even then, it was still pretty lame by today’s standards:  it had a core of officers and smallish numbers of troops.  The armed forces were expanded during times of war, of course, through citizen volunteers.  This lasted until the Civil War became such an unpopular party that you had to force Northerners to come and play because the Southerners were being such meanies.

Sure, the military wasn’t always used just for wars – Congress has authorized use of force 23 times since the end of World War II, and at least once of those times wasn’t related to “scaring up some hot chicks with daddy issues” for Clinton.  Declaration of “War” has become out of vogue since war has such nasty connotations.  Thankfully people can’t die unless war is declared.  I’m surprised the Department of Defense isn’t called the Department of Peace.

I guess both of these guys rubbed women the wrong way.

But, sorta, the idea has still worked out.  Congress authorizes the use of force, and the President wages war peace with tanks.  What’s missing there is the military deciding what it should be doing.  The military is a verb:  kill and break stuff.  The civilian government provides the noun, which is as simple as the name of a person or nation.

The system has some drawbacks:  in my view, it’s much easier to use the military than it should be.  I can understand in a world that has grown much smaller due to things like missiles and the Internet why we can’t wait a year to get ready to make war peace with bullets, but that should be our last resort.

This brings us to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

General Mark A. Milley is the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).  That particular job is not really as cool as it sounds.  The JCS isn’t technically even in the chain of command for war peace with artillery.  They have no command authority over combat forces – that goes from the President to the Secretary of Defense to the commanders of the various Unified Combat Commands.

What does the JCS do?  The short version is that they’re the Human Resources group for the armed forces where they make diversity policies and pick who gets what job.  They also help make sure that “stuff” like food and bullets and goes to the right places.  It’s important – but the JCS aren’t fighting wars providing peace with torpedoes.

I’m not saying he’s woke, but his favorite animal is a pander.

This makes me wonder what General Milley was up to when he decided to tell the Chinese that he would let them know if we were going to attack them.  Of all the things that a General in the United States Armed Forces should be, promising to our (potential) enemies that he would give them a heads up if the elected Commander In Chief decides that even more vigorous peace with a particular country is required, is . . . not his job.  He’s Human Resources, and his job isn’t to set the priorities of the country or conduct diplomacy.  His job is to decide what happens if Jeff steals Julia’s salad in the break room fridge.

Yet, here General Milley was, conducting a policy discussion and taking orders from a sworn enemy of the United States:  Nancy Pelosi.  I kid:  Pelosi isn’t completely evil.  She only wants the complete destruction of the United States after she retires.

I put Jesus as my lock-screen picture.  Now he’s my screen savior.

But here is the danger:  Leftists will talk about how wonderful General Milley Cyrus is.  He won’t be charged with any crime.  He’ll retire from the JCS in 2023, and write a book about how great all of his decisions were.  He’ll get hired by a company that makes components that the Chinese will buy to make weapons for their military.  He’ll get to fly corporate jets and eat bacon-wrapped shrimp at parties with very fancy people.

That’s (mostly) not dangerous.  Unless you have to read the stupid book he’ll write.

What’s dangerous is that it sets the military up as being able to define the noun.  They get to do all the killing of people and breaking of stuff, but now they get to pick who they kill and what stuff they break.  That’s the dangerous point – the Rubicon.

I’ve warned in the past that I see two possible futures for the United States – a balkanized America.  For two decades beyond World War II, the nation was coming together and becoming less regional and more homogeneous.  The influence of television gave us another set of shared experiences.

But splits have been engineered, and now even though New York has a McDonalds® and so does Des Moines, the two places aren’t remotely alike in values or even, in many cases, language.  A balkanized America is one very real possibility as the polarity of the nation increases.

That’s one possibility.

I never judge a book by its cover.  I use that little paragraph on the back.

An American Caesar with a follow-on American Empire is another.  Besides being treasonous, Milley’s call with China is scarier:  it was an independent act of the military at the highest level to circumvent civilian leadership.

There is no doubt – this is close to crossing the Rubicon.  If the allegations are true, Milley should be tried, and if guilty, convicted.  As I said above – I think Milley’s insubordination will likely be rewarded and then he’ll be praised like a pet poodle, and he won’t be punished.

Somewhere there is a colonel taking notes, and waiting for an opportunity to strike in the coming unrest, getting ready to cross the Rubicon.

We’ll see if he has the chance.

Bikini Economics And The Money Supply

“What do you know about gold, Moneypenny?” – Goldfinger

One of the few things that Pa Wilder left me in his will was his bed. I guess you could call it an heir mattress.

On April 5, 1933, Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order that made the owning of more than trivial amounts of gold by individuals illegal. Owning gold wouldn’t be legal again until Gerald Ford signed a bill into law that reversed that abomination of a policy.

That law went into effect on December 31, 1974, and people could once again buy gold.

In 1933, the price of gold was fixed: $20.67 per ounce. It didn’t vary, because the value of the dollar was pegged to the price of gold. The Fed© couldn’t print dollars unless they had at least 40% of that value in gold to back it up.

Pro tip: If you have a balloon elephant that won’t fit in your backseat, you can always pop the trunk.

What did the government then do?

It defaulted on the dollar. A dollar had been worth (around) 1/20th of an ounce of gold. After the government stole it all, they decided that a dollar was now only worth 1/35th of an ounce of gold. Poof. Immediately, and with the stroke of a pen, the government stole 43% of the value of every dollar in existence.

The penalty for “hoarding” gold was a big one: a $10,000 fine and up to 10 years in the slammer. I guess the government didn’t (and doesn’t) like competition when it comes to stealing.

It was the biggest heist in history – until Nixon severed the link between the gold and the dollar completely. After that, people could own gold again. There was no real reason for the government to not allow them to own it: they had now stolen the rest of the value of the dollar.

If you rob a vape store, is that a Juul® heist?

And it only took 41 years from 1933 to 1974 to convince people that was acceptable.

Since Nixon removed all gold connection, a dollar is worth (today) about 1/1800th of an ounce of gold.

But that isn’t enough to feed the beast.

The (metaphorical) printing presses have been shoveling money into the economy under the mistaken assumption that all we need is additional debt to keep the engine going. It’s like a demented congressman who doesn’t understand engines deciding to open up the hood of an F-150® to just pour gasoline on it using the dim understanding of a toddler that, “gasoline makes engines go, so if I pour enough gasoline on the engine, it will be as fast as a spaceship.”

That’s really what passes as logic in Washington, D.C. now. I keep writing about the economy in the slim hope that whatever passes for an intellect in the halls of congress will get distracted enough to spend at least a minute or two learning before returning to the concept of, “Ugh, free stuff good. Grug pay for stuff easy because all money free. Wonder why Grug’s armpit’s stink?”

I swear, AOC couldn’t spell “cat” if you spotted her the “C” and the “T”.

See, economics can be interesting!

The Fed® has gone all-in on this economic shadow puppet theater, shoving pools of money toward banks to shore up their balance sheets. Some of the people who are on the winning side of this great wave of money being sloshed around have even spent some.

Blackrock® buying up all the houses for sale? Yup. They see what’s coming. All the rich and powerful buying farmland that will never produce enough via crops or cattle to justify the price? They see what’s coming. They’re moving as quickly as possible to use this money to buy everything they can.

And people are happy. “Hey, I sold Ma’s old house after she passed away for twice what she paid for it in 2000! I made out like a bandit.”

It’s not all bad. Thankfully, the velocity of money is down.

What’s the velocity of money?

That’s how fast a dollar gets spent. Poor people move money the fastest – a dollar comes in and, poof, out it goes again. They have to spend it because they don’t have any spare money. They get paid on Friday and on Saturday it’s turned into rent payments and insurance payments and Cheetos® from Target™.

Roses are red, roses are blue, depending upon their velocity relative to you.

But the velocity of money is now slower than Joe Biden when he’s asked difficult questions, like, “What is the year, Joe? Hey, we’re talking to you. Dammit, he’s gone catatonic again. Someone get those squeaky toys he likes. And keep Kamala out of the vodka.”

Things would be far worse if the velocity of money hadn’t dropped so far that it was moving as slow as Oprah trying to get off of a couch. Since poor people slosh it around so much, that means it’s exactly where the Fed® put it: with the rich people.

So, if the money supply has gone vertical, then why hasn’t the price of everything doubled?

And most of it is sitting in pools right now. Except for the early adopters who are looking for something, anything to buy so that when the dust clears out of the coming inflation that they are richer than ever and Oprah has even more Twinkies®.

I’m not against capitalism – but this isn’t capitalism. It’s a rigged card game where your money evaporates – first slowly, and then all at once.

The engine of debt isn’t driving economic growth anymore. What the debt is doing is papering over the holes in the system so that it keeps going another week, another month, and hopefully another year.

But the downside to this is the longer a failing system is kept going by speeding it up, the more energy it stores, the bigger the crash, the bigger the collapse.

Why did Princess Diana cross the road? Inertia.

The economy has inertia, though. Even though it’s working on the most significant collapse in the history of the United States, people still believe. They take dollars because they believe. They believe the rules aren’t going to change.

They will.

Since we’ve seen this game before – we can take at least some steps to protect ourselves. I suppose it’s time to buy PEZ® before the rush . . . .

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: It’s A Long Way To The Bottom

“The stars are veiled. Something stirs in the East. A sleepless malice. The eye of the enemy is moving. He is here.” – Lord of the Rings:  The Return of the King

I love really large clocks.  Big 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.

Violence and open crime are still being encouraged by the Left.  In Chicago, the murder rate looks like a tote-board for a telethon.  “Only three more hours for killing, folks, let’s get those numbers up!”

I’m holding August at 9 out of 10, but it’s getting closer.  That’s still two minutes to midnight, but there is absolutely no movement away from the precipice – we keep edging toward the abyss.

I currently put the total at (this is my best approximation since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) hanging in at around 950 out of the 1,000 required for the international definition of civil war.

As close as we are to the precipice of war, be careful.  Things could change at any minute.  Avoid crowds.  Get out of cities.  Now.  A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue:  Front Matter – The Enemy Is You – Violence And Censorship Update –– Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – It’s A Long Way Down – 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 550 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

The Enemy Is You

If you’re reading this, the Federal government has decided who the enemy is:  you.  The Department of Homeland Security has put up a listing of potential terror threats.  The first?

  • Opposition to COVID Measures.

Regardless of your political bent, opposition to COVID measures is a valid political or religious position.  But in 2021, we live in an era where the Justice (?) Department thinks that burning down Minneapolis is to be encouraged, but where a group of people just wanting to live their lives are . . . potential terror threats when the most extreme thing they’ve ever done in their lives is to not be willing to accept the imposition of tyrannical controls on their lives.

If the United States saw what the government of the United States was doing to the people of the United States, then the United States would invade the United States to stop it.

The second point was this:

  • Claims of Election Fraud, Belief Trump can be Reinstated

Starting with the first part, I think it’s been well proven that there was election fraud.  All signs point to it being pervasive and large enough to have swung the election.  Again, the conspirators openly shared their techniques in Time® magazine while gloating that it worked.  But maybe we should believe the Democrats when they say there was no election fraud – after all they’re the ones who have the most experience.

Trump being reinstated?  Nah.  That won’t happen.  But the idea that there is fraud is also a valid reaction to the data and the way the elections was held.  Remember them blocking out the press and covering the windows so people couldn’t look in?

Yeah.  Still no explanation for that one.

The third point isn’t really a point, so we’ll skip it.

In the end, what the DHS is really saying is that this is the actual profile of their prime terror suspects:

Why, with red flags like that, I bet they even deny that they’re racist!

Violence And Censorship Update

Violence is endemic now in major cities, and much of it is politically motivated, so we’ll skip that this month.

The big story continues to be Censorship.  Where else to start but Lt. General (Ret.) Michael Flynn?

Flynn had been a supporter of Trump, and had been confirmed as National Security Advisor and had spent all of two weeks in the job before resigning.  He was the victim of the FBI’s initial witch hunt in the Trump administration.  Oh, and the appointing of Mueller as Special Counsel to investigate, well, whatever.

Anyway, in perhaps his biggest sin, Flynn remained loyal to Trump.  Though he agreed to a plea deal, Trump later pardoned him.  So, story over, right?

No.  Flynn is still speaking openly about things the Left doesn’t like.  I don’t think Flynn is really on the Right, but he really irritates the Left.  How much does he irritate them?

Chase Bank may have denied him credit, but Flynn can still borrow from Cheese Bank in Utah – I think they call it a Provo-loan.

Yup, they canceled his credit cards.  Not due to non-payment, just because they don’t like the things that Flynn is saying.  Again, the push to unperson people the Left doesn’t like carries on.  And now you know where Chase® sits.

Unpersoning is one way to censor – it certainly gives the rest of the people speaking out pause.  But there’s still old reliable:  shutting off access.  Censorship has been the usual ongoing mess.  The big name censored in August was . . . Vox Day.

Vox Day is a writer/game developer/social commentator/etc./etc. and has been needling the SJWs and the Left for, well, forever.  It used to be considered to be sporting fun jousting with the Left, but now any deviation from their norms are grounds for immediate attacks.

Vox has proven himself pretty much immune to the attacks, as long as they spell his name right.  In this case, Blogger® (a division of Google™) took down his blog.  Blogger© was his web home for many years.  Right now, if you go to his old website, you find a note that “This blog is under review due to possible Blogger Terms of Service violations and is open to authors only.”

So, shut down.

I had regularly been a reader of his site.  I can’t recall any of the commentaries that couldn’t have been read aloud on nearly any radio station in the country, legally.  But Vox has been more or less invulnerable to damage from the Left, which seems to infuriate them even more.

Another voice silenced.  Well, not silenced.  Two hours later, he was up and running, and within a day he had everything moved over to voxday.net.  As I said, he’s been pretty much immune to their attacks.

But governments can silence not just a single individual, but a whole class of people:

On Friday, I wrote about the Aussie trucker’s strike.  It has had an impact, but the government did its very best to shut down cell phones, social media, and any other electronic communications from the truckers.  The government even shut down video cameras that might have been used for people to observe the parked trucks.

Feels like the fix is in . . .

Oddly, the only way you could observe the strike in real-time was on Google® maps by the drive time delays.  And, yes, of course, the press was complicit in not covering it.  Two Leftists show up to protest the Leftist cause of the day?  Dozens of news cameras show up.

Hundreds of men protest for freedom?

Silence.

That’s to be expected.  The major news outlets are all working together with the major tech websites to coordinate what is true.  They also coordinate who has the opportunity to speak.

Twitter®:  will give people who say “death to America” a say on Twitter™, but not a former president.  That says it all.

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:

Up is more violent, and our perception of violence is down in August, again.  I guess we’ve just lowered our standards.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it dropped again this month.  Unless there’s a crisis, I expect political instability to remain low until at least September.  Weirdly, it seems like June-July-August have the lowest levels of instability.  I guess that’s due to it being fresh vodka season in Washington D.C.?

Economic:

Economic measures showed another uptick last month.  Are people becoming used to inflation?  What about when the shortages hit?

Illegal Aliens:

This data was at record levels last month, but we beat the record again.  Coming soon to a town near you, ready or not.

A Long Way Down

Right now the military of the United States is being filtered.  How?

Through the use of indoctrination/separation techniques like Critical Race Theory.  CRT was designed to create racial division.  Truth and Reconciliation efforts always are a blame game, whose main technique is constructed to not heal, but to reopen wounds.  In the United States the idea of CRT is to blame those who were uninvolved to benefit those who were unborn when the original injury occurred.

Hey, let’s take that idea to the military, where functional cohesion is dependent upon esprit de corps and camaraderie!

What could go wrong?

The entire thing, really.

I don’t like some races.  The 400 meter always made me want to puke.  It’s not a sprint, it’s not distance, what is it???  Sorry, I guess I’m critical of that race.

So, the military is cratering.  What about government?  It is nearly certain that our government is the stupidest it has ever been.  Really.

Seriously, does anyone think her IQ would even be a warm day in Houston?

We have a vice president putting flowers down at a memorial to the people who shot down John McCain after the “successful” withdrawal strategy that Alzheimer-in-Chief Biden approved and then forgot about.  Now, I’m no John McCain fan by any stretch, but this is incompetence at the level of the Three Stooges®.

Yes.  The military is being driven to incompetence.  Biden and Harris are in a race to see which is worse:  stupidity or dementia.

That leaves the economy.  At least it’s doing well, right?

The Fed should take my lead and just start showing bikini models in their graphs.  Oh, wait, they don’t want people to read them.

No.  When the Fed stops publishing a model because it shows the GDP has collapsed (as shown to be mathematically certain by this author several months ago), you know it’s very, very bad.

And we have yet to hit bottom.  When I started publishing these, in several comments folks noted that we wouldn’t have Civil War 2.0 when we had such a good economy.  Full bellies don’t start revolutions.

As the shortages develop and inflation takes hold, remember these things:

  • It’s a long, long way to the bottom. We are actually right now in the “false hope” section I wrote about back in spring of 2020.
  • Stay away from crowds. 72 hours can change everything about your life.
  • Get out of the cities.   Really.
  • Better to be a year early in preparing than a day late.

LINKS

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

Film At Eleven

NYC : https://twitter.com/i/status/1427789149986246663

LA: https://twitter.com/i/status/1425839855037210624

Oakland : https://twitter.com/i/status/1424776126115635201

San Francisco: https://twitter.com/i/status/1428774094145613826

Colorado Springs: https://youtu.be/L2fGVbMYp54

Last Word From San Diego: https://twitter.com/i/status/1427849481551106056

 

Coming In Hot – Brace For Impact

https://uncoverdc.com/2021/09/03/true-the-vote-update-videos-show-evidence-of-ballot-harvesting/

https://rumble.com/vm1ln1-all-hell-is-about-to-break-loose-in-georgia.html

https://www.truethevote.org/news-posts/the-breitbart-article-true-the-vote-update

https://georgiastarnews.com/2021/08/30/43000-absentee-ballot-votes-counted-in-dekalb-county-2020-election-violated-chain-of-custody-rule/

https://uncoverdc.com/2021/08/09/pennsylvania-134-year-old-man-voted-in-2020-election/

https://www.propublica.org/article/heeding-steve-bannons-call-election-deniers-organize-to-seize-control-of-the-gop-and-reshape-americas-elections

 

Woke World

Woke World: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZChpvvLhmI&t=135s

Cue applause (!?!) : https://twitter.com/PrisonPlanet/status/1427144687740141570

Mr and Mrs : https://twitter.com/i/status/1428363839205122050

Public Education : https://twitter.com/i/status/1427337084591874055

Almighty Dollar (see 0:30): https://twitter.com/i/status/1430851901239795712

Inauguration Party : https://twitter.com/i/status/1428365941222477834

Pledge of Allegiance: https://twitter.com/i/status/1431375675903053829

American Citizen : https://twitter.com/i/status/1428031497785810954

 

Miscellaneous Mayhem

https://buchanan.org/blog/is-america-becoming-a-failed-state-149897

https://floridaphoenix.com/2021/08/24/is-america-experiencing-a-different-kind-of-civil-war-opinion/

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/08/virginia-militia-bedford-campbell-county/

https://www.axios.com/diversity-majority-minority-white-american-census-bd181b53-f170-40b2-9913-dd43363e1aaf.html

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1425794735889866752.html

https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/2021/09/beyond-culture-wars

https://www.foxbusiness.com/politics/majority-registered-democratic-voters-prefer-socialism-to-capitalism-fox-news-poll

http://themostimportantnews.com/archives/they-have-come-up-with-some-ominous-new-definitions-for-what-constitutes-domestic-terrorism

https://www.hstoday.us/subject-matter-areas/counterterrorism/al-qaeda-tells-parties-civil-war-to-find-what-they-need-in-islamist-terror-guides/

 

It’s My Party, I’ll Cry (Out) If I Want To

https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2021/09/01/leonard-pitts-right-wing/

https://www.salon.com/2021/08/31/fellow-republican-rips-freshman-gop-rep-madison-cawthorn-over-insane-threat-of-bloodshed/

https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/08/madison-cawthorn-is-openly-talking-about-civil-war-at-this-point

https://www.foxnews.com/media/what-war-liberal-media-find-a-new-target-madison-cawthorn-and-civil-war

https://www.salon.com/2021/08/03/nevada-gop-griped-by-civil-war-as-far-right-proud-boys-attempt-takeover_partner/

https://www.salon.com/2021/08/09/maga-civil-war-why-trumpworld-is-suddenly-lashing-out-fox-news-and-dan-bongino/

https://lasvegassun.com/news/2021/aug/02/in-the-republican-partys-civil-war-its-moderates-v/

https://newrepublic.com/article/163285/andrew-torba-gab-white-christian-internet

 

The S-word

https://www.foxnews.com/media/former-trump-aide-makes-case-for-red-counties-seeking-blue-state-secession-to-do-so-mistreated-and-overtaxed

https://www.kcrw.com/news/shows/zocalos-connecting-california/joe-mathews-california-pluralism-secession

https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/08/06/opinion-imagining-a-realistic-calexit-scenario/

https://www.thenational.scot/news/19485812.california-secessionist-campaigner-louis-marinelli-set-calexit-comeback/

https://www.boisestatepublicradio.org/news/2021-07-26/greater-idaho-push-reignites-longtime-secessionist-movement

https://madison.com/ct/opinion/mailbag/robert-reid-secessionists-raise-risk-of-second-civil-war/article_28fe613c-f133-5664-b252-950c01daaf8e.html

https://www.salon.com/2021/07/18/college-republicans-in-disarray-after-stolen-election–texas-chapter-may-even-secede_partner/

 

(From M*A*S*H): Goodbye, Farewell and Amen 

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/assabiya-lee-smith

The Fall Of Freedom In Australia In 16 Memes

“Your planet doesn’t deserve freedom until it learns what it is not to have freedom. It’s a lesson, I say!” – Futurama

“Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.” – Ben Franklin

Note:  Memes tonight aren’t original.  Normally, Friday is less political.  Tonight?  Not so much.  Events in Australia are moving quickly, so, here it is.

The reaction to COVID-19 by the Australian government has been about as rational and lucid as Joe Biden is in the morning.  Or the afternoon.  Or, well, anytime.

It’s that bad, it’s all of the logic of a sugar-addled toddler with a machete and a police force in a tank running over a disarmed people.

Australia has been the test case for total social control.  You’d think that the independent Aussie spirit would make them resist.

No, not really.  They gave the government ludicrous control.  So, what did the government do?  Jumped the shark.  Or crocodile.  Or whatever other poisonous or deadly animal that Australian Fonzie jumped over.

Yup, that’s right.  The good ol’ government wants to have full access to everything Aussies say and do online.  For safety, of course.  There’s no way that they could abuse that, right?

Oh, wait, once you give them that control, it never stops.  Here’s the next bit:

What does that mean?

This is a scene directly out of Orwell’s guidebook novel 1984.  Forced to have an app.  Forced to prove where you are so the government can track you.  Only 15 minutes to comply, or the police will show up.

I can see the Democrats taking notes in the back . . .

It’s not all bad.  If you spend enough time in your cell, you get privileges:

An hour!!!  So generous.  Perhaps they’ll let them make pruno and give them commissary privileges so they can buy some smokes.  Until they ban smokes.  I’m sure they have a plan if people rebel:

No, a real plan:

Yup, that’s closer.

But you might think that’s bad enough.  It’s not even close.

Yup, things can get worse.  Truckers wanted to protest the outrageous bans, rules, and mask mandate.

What did they do?

The truckers did it.  But if you were an Australian, they tried to make it so you’d never know.  The government shut down the traffic cams so you couldn’t see it.  They shut down the truckers’ phones.  They shut down their social media.  They censored, in real-time, a revolt against the rules.

Well, if you want to know what I really think, I think [THIS CONTENT IS CENSORED BY THE GOVERNMENT OF AUSTRALIA].

Thankfully they haven’t designed concentration camps . . . oh.

My apologies.  These aren’t concentration camps at all.  They’re quarantine camps.  (PM me if you want a larger copy, I have a 1.6MB version.)

As usual, /pol/ has a take on it:

When even a magazine as far Left as The Atlantic says you’ve gone too far, well, you may have gone too far:

Well, that’s bad.  It gets worse.  Even the Canadians are piling on:

Strangely, it’s almost like the world has been here before.  When might that have been?  Hmmm.

But Australians are still free, right?

What’s To Worry? Only 11 Major Emergencies Right Now.

A question. What exactly is “total systems failure”? – Star Trek, TNG

Joe Biden doesn’t know the meaning of the word “failure” – dementia already got to that one.

Over my life, I’ve seen some things go well, and I’ve seen some things go bad. In many cases, I’ve seen them go spectacularly bad. In one particular example a zillion years ago, the ground was muddy.

Mud wasn’t that bad, right? Except that the railroad ties the diesel tank was sitting on sank in a bit too much. The 500 gallon diesel tank then tipped right over. Okay, you can clean diesel up, right?

But the tank nozzle fell on onto a hard object, which snapped it right off. The diesel began to pour out of the tank. What had the diesel tank fallen on? An oxygen cylinder from a welding rig. Snapped that nozzle off, too.

What luck!

So, now, I’m 40 feet away from pure oxygen being slammed into diesel fuel, and creating a fine mist of oxygen and diesel in the air.

That’s what’s generally known as a fuel-air bomb, if only it had an ignition source. Oh, and there was a red-hot air compressor exhaust pipe not 20 feet away.

I always stop my microwave at 0:01, so I feel like a bomb defusing expert.

It was weird, standing there in the mud as the diesel mist spread out. Everyone just stopped and stared. I didn’t.

I’ve always had this weird thing – whenever there’s an emergency my emotions shut down and I become focused on one thing only: the emergency. No fear, no hesitation, just action. It’s like the world becomes exceptionally clear. Time slows down. My mind focuses.

I yelled and pointed, “Turn off that air compressor. NOW!”

I’m not sure I’ve ever yelled louder before or since. The spell was broken. The guy near the compressor heard me above the engine and the hissing, and shut the compressor off.

Thankfully, the high-pressure oxygen wasn’t just pushing the diesel – it was also pushing the mud and water into the air, too. So it wasn’t just a thin mist of atomized diesel – it was a thin mist of atomized diesel, water, and mud.

That small bit of luck (which caused the problem in the first place) might have saved us all.

After the tank stopped hissing, they started cleaning up. Then, the emotions came to the forefront. I went back to my office and took a deep, deep breath, and let it out very slowly and cleaned the oil the thin mist had deposited on my glasses.

I had nearly become thin mist myself, but even then I still would have been more coherent than AOC’s understanding of economics.

I only make AOC jokes Ocasio-nally.

Often, there’s just a single path to success. It takes a lot of work to get everything working, all at the same time.

Failure isn’t that way. Often, just a single failure when almost everything is going right can cause a cascade of failure.

But we’re beyond that as a nation, and we’re beyond that as a world.

In my list, the items are sometimes causes, and sometimes effects of other causes on the list. It’s probably not as relevant today as to what caused the crisis, but what the effects of the crisis are. In many cases, the effects are wildly larger than the initial cause was. I mean, all she did was ask me if those pants made her butt look big.

For example, I think we can all agree that COVID is bad, but the loss of freedom caused by COVID has the potential to be much, much worse.

  • COVID – this is the grand-daddy of the current crisis, or more accurately, the spark that lit the fire of 2020. Many of the following issues are the result not of the virus, but from our reaction to it. At every step, it seems like the official response has been misguided, and has created innumerable knock-on effects. Just like eliminating warts with a welding torch, the cure has been much, much worse than the disease.

We knew COVID was dangerous right off the bat.

  • Inflation – This was going to happen even if COVID never showed up. In the last fifty years, the national debt has doubled just about every eight or nine years. Doubling is a great thing if it’s my bank balance. Doubling is not a great thing if it’s how much I owe, especially if I’m not doubling how much I make. But to add ten or so trillion dollars in six months? Yeah, that’s going to show up somewhere. And it’s now.
  • Supply Chain Issues – This was started by COVID, but is now exacerbated by inflation and international issues. Who knew that the United States manufacturing economy was almost entirely dependent upon chips from Taiwan? Who knew we could make trucks and tractors but we couldn’t make them run without those chips? Oh, and the cost of those chips is going to go up by at least 20%. Why? Because they can, and because they want to have a good cash balance in their accounts when they flee after China is done measuring the island to see if their stuff fits.

Taiwan gets in trouble because it has a Taipei personality.

  • Reserve Currency Status – As I’ve established before, the ability of the United States to just print money at will and have people in the Ukraine take it and send us steel slabs is like alchemy. We’ve even turned it more modern – we don’t bother to print the money, we just electronically wave it into existence. We send those digits to Ukrainians, and they give us stuff. If the Ukrainians and everyone else decide they don’t believe in magic? You know what they call a magician without magic:  Ian.
  • Loss of Freedom in the “West” – I look at the news out of Canada, New Zealand, and Australia and think, “Seriously? You’re putting up with that?” And they do, mostly. The Aussies use drones to find people camping far from anyone so they can arrest them for not being under lockdown. I could go on and on about this topic (and will in the future) but Claire has a great summary here (LINK). This is especially weird to me, since here in Modern Mayberry life is, more or less, exactly like pre-‘Rona life. High school football game? Zero masks. Except for my duck. I bought him one. It fits the bill.
  • International Breakdown – Afghanistan is a sign to the world – the United States has no military ability, or at least no military ability that it’s able to use effectively. Leaving bases (and the main airport) under the cover of darkness while abandoning American citizens to the Taliban? What does Biden call that? I’d hate to see his version of failure, since it would likely involve him somehow figuring out how to crack the crust of the world open so he could sniff a little girl’s hair.

At least we know one group that Joe is willing to fight for.

  • Immigration – Millions of illegals have streamed over the borders like there was a Black Friday sale on. Does the Left require COVID vaccination for them? It’s not only illegal immigration, it’s legal immigration. In 2021 the United States has the largest proportion of newly arrived (first generation) citizens in history. Ever – as near as I can tell (based on things like MIT studies) something like 17% of the people in the United States weren’t born here. Some, I assume, are nice people. But how many can we take in before the United States ceases to be the United States?
  • Loss of Social Cohesion – This is an effect, but it’s got tons of causes. Changes in technology. Changes in demographics. Changes in beliefs. A group believing what nearly every (90%+) American did in 1990 or 1890 or 1790 would be considered a “potential domestic terrorist” today.
  • Increased Polarity – Partially a result of the Loss of Social Cohesion, but also a result of decades of indoctrination of teachers by Leftists.
  • Demoralization – I’ve sensed a greater degree of resignation that it’s “over”. It’s not over. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? Hell no!
  • Moral Collapse – It seems like the current worldview is, “if it isn’t illegal, it’s moral.” And anything that was illegal? There’s a group trying to make it legal. Shoplifting? It’s fine in San Francisco.

In the fall of 2021, the situation for the world is dire. Some of the threads of this web were woven over 100 years ago, some this year. Together, though, they form a pattern that will be hard to escape.

Back when NASA® had a countdown that didn’t go . . . 6…5…4…3…2…1…LUNCH!

When the diesel tank fell on the oxygen cylinder, in most normal worlds I would have become a diffuse cloud of Wilder paste. Not that time. Even though the world would never be the same as it was before the diesel tank fell, my world didn’t end.

Life will be different. Some of the chaos listed above cannot be avoided: many bills will have to finally be paid.

Don’t cry for the civilization we lost.

Times of change like this have come before. Collapses have occurred. People carry on, and in some cases produce better, stronger civilizations than ever went before.

The world that emerges will be a new one. Let us make it a great one.

FYI: This will be the topic of a livestream with Mark and The Mrs. on September 1, 2021 at 9pm Eastern. It will be here: (Bombs and Bants Livestream).

Fear And The Consent Of The Governed, 2021

“This is a consent form to stick a wire into your brain. It’s important for hospitals to get these signed for procedures that are completely unnecessary.” – House, M.D.

When a dentist makes a mistake, it’s always acci-dental.

What I’ve seen from the Federal government recently is something unusual: fear.

The January 6 demonstration at the Capitol is exhibit A. A group of (mainly) unarmed civilians decided that they’d like to wander over to the Capitol to express their displeasure on what many feel is an election that was largely fraudulent. With the early ballots in California, I guess transvestites can commit mail fraud and male fraud.

Elections are supposed to be the safety valve in a society that has them. You voted, and if it goes your way, great. If it doesn’t, well, we’ll vote harder next time.

In theory, it’s a good system. Elections give the loser the thought that, “if we do better next time, we’ll beat ‘em.” That transfers emotions tied to losing into building a party to win the next time.

That assumes that the election is a fair one. Certainly, there have been elections in the past have been manipulated. There’s a reason that people make jokes about corruption and Chicago politics: over 150 Chicago politicians, employees and contractors have been convicted over the last 50 years. While you might think that Chicago would be dangerous with all of the graft and corruption, my friend says it’s not, and he should know. He’s a tailgunner on a Chicago school bus.

I had a friend who started drinking when the kids finally were back at school. Worst teacher ever.

One of the large benefits of the Electoral College system is putting up a firewall against fraud. Chicago could vote 100% for whatever Democrat was running for president, but the corruption would be isolated because it didn’t change the outcome except for that single state.

2020 was different. An unelected cabal worked to get states to change voting systems so that fraud was easier. They worked to get hundreds of millions of dollars of funding for their objectives. They distorted the public debate. And then they bragged about it (LINK).

For whatever reason, 2020 was the year that they decided that they had to win, whatever the costs, whatever the consequences. They weren’t going to let anything stop them.

There are claims the “no significant voter fraud has ever been found” but I couldn’t find my butt if I never looked for it. And, it really, neither of them have been looked for. The idea that people are too stupid to be able to get an ID to allow them to vote, yet are required to get one to eat in a Burger King® in “post-jab” America is nonsense. Yet, it is the basis of Leftist philosophy: 100% control of the people the Left hates, and 100% acceptance of any conduct from the people the Left mines for votes.

If he gets enough across, he doesn’t even have to manufacture votes!

The childhood meme of “majority rules” isn’t correct, however. The idea of a Constitutional Republic was based on the idea that the majority is really often quite wrong and should be walled off from power like a four-year-old going for a wall outlet with a fork. The rights in the Bill of Rights were built on the idea of restricting the power of both the government and the majority.

Those restrictions were based on experience. The Founders had been through a war to overthrow a government that they felt had overstepped its bounds, and their reaction was one based on keeping all kinds of tyranny at bay.

It was a good idea. The idea of sovereign states was also a winner. It allowed the most control to take place locally, not nationally. Ideally, the Federal government was a weak creation. Of course, good things never last. The Federal government accrued power, but was still kept in check.

When the patriots told jokes, was that star spangled banter?

In part, this was due to the mathematics of violence. An individual American marksman with a Brown Bess rifle was the equal to (and sometimes better than) the typical British soldier or Hessian mercenary. They were, after all, fighting for their country. Couple that with the long supply lines of the British, and the American Revolution was the equivalent of their Afghanistan. Well, at least until they made it to the real Afghanistan.

This pointed out that any government of armed men exists only by the consent of the governed. That was a direct consequence of those mathematics of violence. In one well-documented case, the citizens of Athens, Tennessee took up arms in 1946 to stop an election from being stolen.

They relied on the ballot box.

Nah, just kidding. They brought machine guns and service rifles and threw Molotov cocktails and dynamite at the jail that was holding the ballots to prevent fraud. They won the election, and the fraud was so evident that I believe everyone just looked around and whistled and pretended that it never happened. I can’t find a record of any person going to trial for making sure the law was followed. Using dynamite.

If you date a girl from the zoo, be careful. She might be a keeper.

How would that play out in 2021? Don’t know. I’ll tell you after Kyle Rittenhouse’s trial.

But in 2021 we live in a society that was originally based on the idea of freedom and fair play.

I had a thought a few weeks ago. It nearly died of loneliness. It went, however, something like this: what percentage of a population would it take to simply stop society by withdrawing their consent?

I picked Modern Mayberry for the start, since it’s always best to start small. Let’s assume there are 10,000 people here for round numbers. 10% of the population would be 1,000. That’s certainly more than enough. 1% is 100. Is that enough?

It certainly outnumbers the police and sheriff’s department. So, yes.

Tyranny can’t stand 1% noncompliance, locally. How about nationally? If there were 80,000,000 on the Right (a number I think is low) then 1% is 800,000. Initially, I would have said that wasn’t enough. But last week we saw 70,000 some-odd Taliban roll up the 300,000 strong Afghani army in less time than it takes Leonardo DiCaprio to dump his starlet of the week.

Is 1% enough? Maybe. Is 5%? Certainly.

I do know this: the Taliban’s victory shows that the mathematics of violence haven’t changed much since 1776 or 1946. Despite the massive investment in tech and the ability of superpower-level tech to own a battlefield, the war isn’t conducted on battlefields anymore. It’s conducted street by street. House by house.

I hear that place was a Messerschmitt.

Perhaps the final piece of the puzzle is that “the jab” is being rejected by up to 30% or so of the armed forces. Will the military blink, or will the individual soldiers blink?

I don’t think the military will back off.

The Joint Chiefs have shown themselves to (mostly) be completely compliant with whatever Resident Biden wants. I imagine that many of those that will be subject to being drummed out will be some of the most skilled members of the military, and most committed to the cause of freedom.

The jab just might be the cleansing of the military for the Left, a final mechanism to find those who will follow whatever orders come down.

Why do this?

Because they’re afraid

What are they afraid of?

Losing the consent of the governed.

How far are they away from that?