Category: Civil War

Woke Military Kicking Out (More) Officers

“When I use the Constitution a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.” – Alice in Wonderland

That’s a (then) Captain Lohmeier teaching a recruit to use solitaire.  Note the clever use of camouflage.

A Lieutenant Colonel, Matthew Lohmeier, in the United States Space Force (“Starfleet”) has recently been relieved of command.  As far as I could tell, his job was being in charge of the people who look at screens all day seeing if there are incoming missiles.

I supposed it is an important job because if there were incoming missiles, well, we would have to shoot missiles back or something.  And, so they don’t mistake a snot fleck on their screen for an incoming Soviet-era RT-2PM Topol strategic missile inbound with up to four MIRV warheads, well, I bet they go through an awful lot of screen cleaner.

What did this particular Lieutenant Colonel do to be relieved of command?

Well, first, he wrote a book:  Irresistible Revolution: Marxism’s Goal of Conquest & the Unmaking of the American Military.  It’s doing very well – the print version is sold out on Amazon®.  For the record, I bought it on Kindle® just to put some money into Lohmeier’s pocket.  If I have time to read it between now and then, I’ll do a review next Monday.

To the litterbox, and beyond!

If you buy his book, it won’t do anything but make people crazy who disagree with statements like this, which was from a quote from Lohmeier in a recent podcast:

“Since taking command as a commander about 10 months ago, I saw what I consider fundamentally incompatible and competing narratives of what America was, is and should be. That wasn’t just prolific in social media, or throughout the country during this past year, but it was spreading throughout the United States military. And I had recognized those narratives as being Marxist in nature.”

Members of the military don’t lose their free speech, but they are prohibited from taking part in “partisan” political activities.  Lohmeier was removed for taking part in partisan political activities, even though he noted in a statement to Military.com:

“My intent never has been to engage in partisan politics. I have written a book about a particular political ideology (Marxism) in the hope that our Defense Department might return to being politically non-partisan in the future as it has honorably done throughout history.”

We’ve all seen this taking place.  All branches of the military have been ideologically swapped out during the last 12 or so years.  The fact that Lt. Colonel Lohmeier was willing to (very likely) give up a job that pays somewhere between $95,000 to $140,000 a year with a guaranteed retirement and medical for life says that he is likely committed to what he says.

There’s probably a kernel of truth to that.

And it’s not like he came from nowhere:  Lohmeier is a graduate of the Air Force Academy, and was an F-15C driver.  He calls out “diversity and inclusion training” and “critical race theory” and the New York Times® 1619™ Project©, rightly, as Marxist in nature.  The podcast is where he does that here (LINK), so you can listen to it and decide yourself.

There is no way that I could interpret anything that Lohmeier said as politically partisan, unless critical race theory is partisan.  It clearly is not.  It is ideological, not partisan.  I mean, it’s all fun and games until someone loses an ideology, right?

Lt. Col. Lohmeier took an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States of America.  Clearly, Marxism is fundamentally incompatible with the Constitution as it is currently written.  I would argue that any officer would have the duty to call it out, but some of them must have taken the hypocritical oath.

And to The Mrs.:  I promise I’ll fix the problems around the house.  You don’t have to keep reminding me every other year.  That gets old.

But not many would turn down a career that pays pretty well, and also has a pretty good retirement.  The goal is to not rock the boat until it’s time to become hired to a lucrative job by a defense industrial giant like Boeing or Lockheed and make money based on their connections.

Lohmeier won’t do that, since those doors will close pretty quickly.  If his goal is to be a grafter on the system, he’s not doing a great job of it.  Sure, he’ll make money from this book, but I bet it won’t be a lot of money.  Also, Lohmeier might get hired on by Fox® to be a commentator, but that seems unlikely unless he sells out his convictions.

Time will tell.  Oh, and if you buy this, I’m still not gonna make a dime.

But the scarcity of officers resisting the ideological destruction of the United States military tells us volumes already.  When officers are punished with career-ending sanctions, well, the word will get around.  The next officer will be less likely to speak up.

There weren’t any subtitles for the last 15 minutes of Titanic – that makes sense.  I guess a good caption goes down with the ship.

Lohmeier got sacked from command for the biggest sin of all in a Marxist world:  telling the truth.  Of course the new goal of the military is diversity rather than their old goal of killing people and breaking things.  Recently, a recruiting commercial for the Army had as a focus a young woman whose “parents” were two gay women.

Huh?  Just watching this cartoon commercial, you’d get the idea that the mission of the United States military was to be a hiring program for children of gay people.  As I recall, that’s exactly what the guys who hit Omaha Beach were fighting for, right?

Meanwhile, if you look at militaries around the world that actually have a mission that includes killing people and breaking things, well, they have commercials of muscled men doing hard, difficult training to do nearly impossible missions.  Or of jet fighters and artillery pieces creating massive explosions.

Flannel footed pajamas and warm (not too hot!) cocoa – it’s the new Biden military!

Everyone in the United States can sleep more easily now.  The mean guy who cared about the Constitution and rule of law is gone.  We can have people who were hired for “diversity and inclusion” purposes scanning the heavens for incoming missiles.  I mean, only troops that have been through diversity and inclusion training could do that well, right?

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Preparing For The Commissar

“Ottoman, there’ll be no Justice of the Peace for you, just a big piece of justice.” – The Tick

6:30 is the best time.  Hands down.

  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.

April had increased violence.    None that I could see was from the Right, which appears to still be stunned that the Leftists are actually doing all of the things that they promised that they would do.

I’m holding April at 9 out of 10.  That’s still two minutes to midnight.  If I were betting?  July or August will take us to a 10.

I currently put the total at (this is my best approximation, since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) only creeping up at around 700 out of the 1,000 required for the international civil war definition.

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.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Chauvin And Justice – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index –  Leftists Destroy GATE – 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 get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30 Eastern, free of charge.

Chauvin And Justice

Derek Chauvin, a former officer with the Minneapolis Somalia by St. Paul Police Department, was convicted on three counts (at least two of them mutually exclusive) after minimal jury deliberation.  There are many articles that talk about the injustice of the decision.  I wasn’t in the jury room so I can’t say too much about the decision.  I guess my only question is how much fentanyl does one have to consume before it becomes listed as a suicide if three times a fatal dose isn’t enough?

The fate of those two men, Floyd and Chauvin, tells us a tremendous amount about the justice system in the country.  But the Derek Chauvin trial showcases a much bigger agenda involving the justice system.

What is the message that was issued to every police officer in Minnesota and in almost every Leftist-controlled state?

Don’t do your job.  If you do, and you take down the wrong junkie, you’ll be fired.  If you’re lucky.  Instead, just show up.  If you want to arrest someone, just make sure that they’re not people you can get in trouble for policing.

Well, it’s not like the Unitarians believe anything.

The goal is:  cops cease to police.  If cops cease to police, the justice system will simply break down.  I’ve covered multiple times why the justice system is the cornerstone of Western Civilization.  The justice system is a stroke of genius that takes vengeance from the hands of individuals, and puts it into the hands of a “just and impartial” system.

Is the “just and impartial” system flawed?  Certainly.  But the thing that’s required is the faith in the system, even though it has flaws.  If we believe that justice is real, it keeps the scourge of vengeance at bay, even when there are occasional lapses.

Perhaps that’s what the jury was thinking.

Perhaps.

But the message to them was clear.  The demonstrations.  The dead pig’s head on the defense expert witness’s (former) front yard.  Maxine Waters agitating the local community to “keep the pressure on.”

Thus, the verdict.  This is a single case, about two men whose lives intersected.

Long term though, the goal isn’t about this case, the goal to remove the cops.  This will destroy the “just and impartial” system.  That’s clearly the plan now.  Look at recent “protests” in Portland and Plano.  The police are there to protect the protesters and put in jail any who resist the protest.  And if a mob shows up at a house and damages it?  If the mob points weapons at those who protest?

The only crime will be self-defense.

But this removal of police is in the script.  This is act one.  This will:

  • Increase crime, because the police are being pressured to not do their one job: arrest criminals.
  • Increase actions of vengeance, because the criminals aren’t being punished.
  • Vigilantes, of course, will be punished far more harshly than the criminals.

What happens when crime increases and vigilantes increase?

A solution from the Left will arise.  They won’t call them Political Commissars, but they will be.  Social Justice Police?  Equity Enforcement?

I hear that mummys like wrap music.

The “just and impartial” system, then envy of the non-Western world, will soon be gone.

All by plan.

And who will be left to look to?  The Left.

Violence And Censorship Update – Turbo Magnum Edition

Item 1:  Rudy Giuliani is a high-profile political figure in the Untied (yes, that’s intentional) States.  He also looks like he smells like a combination of gin, Vicks-Vap-O-Rub®, hair cream, and mothballs.  But Rudy is also a lawyer, specifically the lawyer for President Trump, representing him in several different matters.  This is important since an attorney’s work is uniquely privileged – an attorney provides guidance through the legal system for people who aren’t familiar with it.  It’s like when The Mrs. explains to me that other people are human beings that have things called “feelings” that I should pay attention to.  Pfft.

The attorney-client privilege isn’t absolute, the privilege doesn’t cover ongoing fraud, attempts to intimidate witnesses, destruction of evidence, et cetera.  But it’s a really big deal.  It’s one of those protections that was put in place so everyone can trust the system, even those the system is attempting to punish.

Recently Rudy’s office was raided, and not by the St. Pauli Girl t-shirt squad to give him an atomic wedgie followed by tequila shooters.  Rudy’s a political figure, but he’s also a lawyer.  That should be an amazingly high hurdle to stop a raid, but in 2021 America, it isn’t.  Just like Chauvin’s conviction – Rudy’s raid was meant to suppress speech and protection that the Left doesn’t agree with.

A truck of Vicks Vap-O-Rub® wrecked during rush hour last month. There was no congestion for a week.

Imagine if it had been Podesta or Hunter Biden or Hillary Clinton or even Satan getting raided during the Trump administration?

The howl from the Left would have been deafening.  And, yes, the Church of Satan members voted 99%+ for Biden.

Item 2:  Nick Fuentes is a twentysomething (22) kid that runs something called America First™ which is a political movement focused around views of the Right – he even makes fun of the pure economic conservatism of Turning Point, USA®.  Nick used to be on YouTube®, but they banned him.  And so did most private apps where he could make money or get publicized on.

Libertarians and Leftists will agree:  it’s a private company and the terms of service matter, not the Constitution.  I’ve made my arguments about that, and had some good ones with friends who are as impartial as I can find.

But.

Nick Fuentes was put on the No-Fly list recently by Biden’s Department of Homeland Security.  The Federal Government’s No-Fly list.  The worst that I could say about Nick (from what I’ve seen) is that he’s annoyingly smug.

Smug is not a crime.  The sole reason that Nick could be on the No-Fly list?  He says things people in government don’t like.

This is not a “bake my gay cake bigot” moment.  This is the unfettered use of government power to destroy ideas.  Sure, the FBI spied on Martin Luther King.

Think they’re not looking at you and me?  Laugh at the wrong meme?  Hope you can drive.

Item 3:  I track the website traffic and where it comes from to Wilder, Wealthy and Wise©.  Okay, I don’t do it personally.  Some nameless small gnomes that live inside of computer chips count the visitors to this place.  Whatever.  They don’t ask for vacation.

A small (but significant) number of visitors to this site came from Google®.  Millions?  No.  But thousands every month.  By any stretch of the imagination, this site is easily in the top 20 most-linked to site on the Internet about Civil War 2.0.

And these are quality links from pretty popular sites.

But I don’t show up on Google® under that search.  I can understand that.  But what if I look for the entirely novel phrase (my own invention thanks to Cory Hamasaki, R.I.P.) Civil War Weather Report?

I get links about weather during the Civil War.  I once got links to current weather forecasts for Gettysburg, PA from Google™.

If I go to DuckDuckGo®?  With that phrase, I’m number one.  With Civil War 2.0?  I’m still in the top results.  I get more hits from DuckDuckGo™ many weeks than I do from Google™.  DuckDuckGo® has 0.5% market share.  Google® has 92.26%.

All things being equal?  I should get about 180 times the number of hits from Google™ as I do from DuckDuckGo©.  And it used to be about five times the traffic, if not ten times the traffic.  Not now.  Some days, I get more traffic from DuckDuckGo™.

The nosedive started in:  February, 2021, right after a certain person was inaugurated.

Hmmm.  I’m not the first site “de-tuned” by Google® and I won’t be the last.

Now all my devices use DuckDuckGo®.

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 lead to the index.  On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

Up is more violent, and violence is down slightly in April.  I was expecting it to go up, but I was also expecting Chauvin to be found not guilty.  The state-media propaganda of “homegrown terrorism”  drumbeat is ongoing, even as protester violence and inner-city violence is going through the roof.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  Instability dropped this month.  I expect it to increase next month, but the Left keeps pushing for more control.

Economic:

I expected this number to be less positive.  It’s not.  As I predicted, April is the month that we find that inflation moves from a thought to a widely-felt reality.  What’s next?  It won’t be better.

Illegal Aliens:

This data is at record levels for this time of year.  Comments from the Left?  “There needs to be more.”

Leftists Destroy GATE

Gifted And Talented Education (GATE) is a pretty cool program.  The idea is that smart kids can work on material that challenges them.  That’s good.  Really smart kids, when bored, cause a lot of problems.  How else do you explain the Crusades?

But of course, the biggest problems in our country (sorry Aesop) seem to emanate from either D.C. or California.  The newest push is an “equity” focused math program.

The framework draft starts with the biggest lie published in the English language in 2021:

“All students are capable of making these contributions and achieving these abilities at the highest levels,” and, “evidence that shows all fifth graders care capable of eventually learning calculus, or other high-level courses , when provided appropriate messaging teaching and support.”

No.

Not at all.  And what the hell is “messaging teaching”?  Sounds like a crack-addled mail-order diploma-mill Doctor Of Education (looking at you, Jill Biden) theory.

Inequality is rampant in the human condition.  No matter how much I wish that I could be taller, I can’t think myself taller, and no amount of Social Justice Warrior Equity Cheerleading could make me taller.

No amount of teaching, even super-special “messaging teaching” can make me even a millimeter taller.

And no amount of teaching, even super-special “messaging teaching” can make a dumb kid smarter.  You can make a Lamborghini® out of duct tape and cardboard, but the only way it’ll make 50 miles an hour is if you drop it out of an airplane.

My parents told me I was a gifted child.  Turned out they meant that I was left on their doorstep in a box.

What this statement means is simple:  smart kids, according to the educational establishment in California, don’t exist.  They even say that explicitly:  “We reject ideas of natural gifts and talents.”

Guess we’ll have to page Harrison Bergeron (LINK – read it if you haven’t – it’s short).

It’s trivial to prove that some people are talented and some are not – in fact, it’s fairly commonly known now that 60-90% of all of everyone’s attributes and abilities are inherited.  Everyone.  There is no mystical person who has attributes that are Play-Doh® in the hands of the schools or state.  Is it nature or nurture?

It’s nature.  Nurture can mess it up.  Nurture can get the best out of what’s there.  But you can’t get a ribeye steak out of a cat.

This denial of reality is 100% required by the Left, however.  The idea of anything be unequal is an idea they cannot accept, even when it’s real, which is why untrained women have to win fights against Navy Seals in movies, and why Leftists pretend that Caitlyn Jenner ain’t a dude.

LINKS

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

READY ON THE RIGHT

 

 

READY ON THE LEFT

 

 

READY ON THE FIRING LINE

 

 

READY FIRE AIM

 

Why I Write

“All work and no play makes Jack Phil a dull boy.” – The Shining

What do you call a Mongolian defeatist?  Genghis Khan’t.

Stephen King, especially the coked-out version who doesn’t remember the entire Reagan presidency, often wrote about writing.  This might have been interesting if all of those main characters in his stories weren’t writers, too.  The Mrs. has felt that Steve has been a bad writer since, oh, 1992 or so.  The Mrs. had been a big enough fan that she drove three hours to take part in an interview with him back in the day.  I gave up on him around 2008.  The Mrs. even Facebook®-told-him he was a “hack”.

I don’t often write about writing.  But I write a lot.  652 posts since March, 2017, with a total word count before this post of 942,879 words.  So, just like Mr. King, I’ve at least become a much more proficient typist since 1992.

Why do I spend the hours writing these posts every week?

Well, the first reason is I like to write them.

When I’ve finished a post and I’ve said absolutely everything that I want to say, and said it exactly the way that I want to say it, I feel great.

That’s a problem.

I run a weird sleep schedule because of the posts, and often finish up writing into the wee hours of the morning.  On more than one morning, I finished the final touches on the post and scheduled it just as the Sun was coming up.

There have been one or two days when I went straight from the keyboard to the shower to work to back home and then directly to bed.  Ugh.  This (partially) explains why I generally only comment right before the new post shows up.

I’m so tired that I can only buy pizza from Papa Yawns.

But even when I finish so I’ll have a shot at getting a few hours of sleep, there comes the problem of feeling great, because there is nothing worse than going to bed at 3AM with a looming 6AM alarm when I’m so excited about what I wrote that I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve.

That makes me happy.  But it also makes me as sleepy as Joe Biden before they take him out of the fridge and unzip the Hefty Glad Bag™ each morning to thaw him out.

I also write these because at least some people like to read them.

I’m not sure I’d put the effort into writing these on a regular basis if people didn’t come by.  I used to journal but ended up putting that down after some ludicrous number of pages that no one will ever read.  It got to be pretty repetitive after a while.

My neighbor thinks I don’t respect his boundaries, or at least he wrote that in his journal.

I know that some of you like reading these because you comment.  Of course, there are those who are regulars who never comment – and that’s fine!  Then there are those that only send me email.  But there is a sense of real community that I’m seeing building in the comments.  I consider it a win when half the comments are people talking to each other – and I try to stay out of that, mostly.  It is a food fight, after all.

I write these because, on occasion, I think I’ve got something to contribute.

It’s no real surprise to anyone who reads here regularly that I’m fairly concerned with more than one set of trends related to our future.  The biggest clue to that is seeing things that showed up in the past – Kipling’s Gods of the Copybook Headings (which I’ve written about before and I’ll reprint again below) seems written to describe our modern age.  That may make sense – Kipling was watching from the peak of British power, and seeing the cracks forming in 1919 that would shatter less than 30 years later.

“I’d kill for a Nobel Peace Prize™.” – Barack Obama

I get that sense today, and get clues that we’re far from the United States – the Untied States? – that any of us knew in our youth.  Just like Kipling used his genius and verse to create snapshots of the world, I try to do the same with humor and more than one bikini graph.  Different times, different tools.  Also, I doubt they’ll give me a Nobel Prize™ for literature unless they create one especially for me for bad puns.

Our future will be different, but I like to think that when the dust settles we don’t end up like Moscow in 1919 but the United States in 1787, the beginning of something better.

I do it because I like humor. 

I have no idea why.  I’ve been writing nonsense like this since I was a kid.  It makes me as happy as Hunter Biden when he got the highest test score.  I mean, the policeman holding the breathalyzer wasn’t amused, but . . . .

I do it because I want to leave something behind.

Yup.  942,879 words.  If you read them all out loud, it would take you nearly as long as the Lord of the Rings trilogy movies.  Unless you got the special extended version, which lasts 19.5 years.  It may not be great, but just like the Federal Reserve® and money printing:  I make up for it in volume.

Bruce Willis will play an older Frodo in the next movie.  Old Hobbits Die Hard.

I do it because I want to get better.

The Mrs. challenged me on this one when I wrote my previous blog, and for the first year on this one that I wasn’t really trying.  They were “fine”, she told me, but unless I was working to make them better, why should I spend all of that time and be content with “fine”?

She was right.

And it takes me a lot longer now to write a post.  There’s a whole process, which, unlike Stephen King’s best work, doesn’t involve turning myself into a snowmachine but it does involve a lot of editing.  The Mrs. doesn’t even think that I’m a hack, and she’d tell me.

And she’s mean.  The Mrs. once (this really happened) walked by NFL® commentator Phil Simms (former quarterback) and said, exceptionally loudly so there was NO DOUBT he heard her, “Look, it’s Boomer Esaison.”

He was on camera.  He paused in mid-sentence, just a half-second, but restarted and kept chugging on like a pro.  But I could tell he was a little irritated.  The lesson here?

If you make The Mrs. mad, you will pay.  Just ask Stephen King or Phil Simms.

Ok, Boomer.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

AS I PASS through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Culture Wars: The Boy Scouts And Hollywood, Including A Bikini Graph

“Envy the country that has heroes, huh?  I say pity the country that needs them.” – Reign of Fire

My book on the Nordic nations is really difficult to write.  I’m not sure I can Finnish.

There are institutions in this country that are fundamental in shaping it.  Two, in particular, helped define the 20th century in the United States of America:

  • Hollywood®
  • Boy Scouting

Both were a product of the American expansion between 1850 and 1940, and both were forged in the American West.

Boy Scouting?  American?

The official story is that Boy Scouts was brought to the United States from Great Britain.  In the immortal words of Jules, “Please allow me to retort”:  Sir Robert Baden-Powell was the guy who “officially” started Boy Scouting, but given his aristocratic upbringing, Baden-Powell’s idea of camping was spending an afternoon on the patio with only one servant and no ice for his gin.

The truth is much more American:  Baden-Powell based Scouting on Frederick Russell Burnham, who was born in Minnesota and crossed paths with outlaws and thieves as he learned the tricks from old cavalry scouts that served in the Indian Wars.  Once all the Indians were killed or in a reservation, Burnham got bored and hitched a ride to South Africa to kill and conquer that continent, too.

In South Africa, Burnham was eventually made Chief of Scouts of the British South African Army in one of the Boer Wars.  The Boer Wars were that time when the British found out that the Boers were sitting on the biggest gold strike in the world, and decided that all that was required was to get those pesky Boers off of all of that obviously British gold.  I first heard of Burnham while reading this amazing true story (LINK).  It’s long-ish, but amazing because it’s true.

Why do Scoutmasters wear that hat?  This guy.  This picture was taken after he was personally decorated by the King with the second-highest award given by Britain to soldiers, and given a permanent rank in the British Army.  Also given personally by the King.

Why do Boy Scouts wear neckerchiefs?  Because Burnham wore a neckerchief.  In Baden-Powell’s estimation, the goal of Boy Scouts was to turn boys into men like Burnham.

Scouting was built on just that American ideal – individual ruggedness and preparedness.  Baden-Powell said it very well, “A Scout is never taken by surprise; he knows exactly what to do when something unexpected happens.”

Scouting, in one quote that I read sometimes back, was based in the preparation of an ideal citizen – one that could contribute, one that could learn, and one that was not reliant on the government.  It created capable, rugged boys who in turn became capable, rugged men.

Scouting found very fertile ground in the United States.  Very soon there was a shortage of little old ladies to escort across the street, and they had to take shifts so the Boy Scouts could assist.

I kid.

But there are very few organizations (outside of churches) that have done as much good for the United States as the Boy Scouts.

Sadly, Boy Scouts is essentially dead.  The last decade killed it.

Well, you can’t say the Left isn’t good at something.

It had already been on life support.  The peak number of Boy Scouts was in the early 1970s at about five million boys.  To have a similar number today would mean that there would be ten million Scouts.  There aren’t.  I expect that the number (when it is announced later this month) will certainly be less than two million, and probably closer to one million than two.  The graph I put together (there are many conflicting sources, and I put this together using the most accurate numbers I could find, along with some guesswork and interpolation) shows that the number of Scouts is consistently declining.

I guess that nobody asked the Scouts what their opinion was.

This utter collapse in the number of Scouts is despite the tricks that the national leadership has employed to keep numbers up:  they added kindergarteners, the glue eating set, to a new program called Lions.  Since the name “Boy Scouts of America” wasn’t clear to them, they decided to add girls to the program and rebrand it as Scouts BSA® where BSA™ doesn’t stand for anything really.  It was all an effort to keep the numbers up.

I don’t have high hopes for the girls involved in Scouts BSA™.  One local Scouts BSA© leader took girls out camping.  One of them snuck a spare cell phone, called a boy with a car, and disappeared with him for a week.  Somehow, that didn’t make the local papers.

If you look at the graph, the Boy Scouts had been in trouble before.  In the 1980s they realized the program had deviated from what made it popular:  being rugged.  They reintroduced the old-school methods, and popularity surged.

In 2014, they admitted homosexuals as youth.  In 2015, they admitted open homosexuals as leaders.  In 2017, girls who think they are boys were allowed to join.  Deciding that none of that mattered anymore, in 2019 girls could become Boy Scouts Scouts BSA™ members.  At every point, the Left made the point:  it’s not enough.  Now they want atheists to be able to join.

The Boy Scouts® used to stand for something.  Scouts BSA™ stands as just the latest conquest by the Social Justice Warriors.  Note that commies throughout history have hated the Scouts.  Now that they own it, they can finally kill it.

This is just one story.  You can find attack after attack on the Boy Scouts from the Left since the Scouts were founded.  Why?  Boy Scouts until 2010 was the thing that scared Leftists the most:  strong individuals who were responsible for their own actions.

Hollywood© is a similar American story – rooted in the West.  About the time that Burnham was killing his way across South Africa and unwittingly starting a youth movement that would transform the 20th century, the movie industry cranked up in California.  Why?  Well, Edison owned patents, and California was a very long way away from Edison’s lab in New Jersey.  The bandits that Burnham knew in California didn’t disappear – they just turned into businessmen.

See?  I can do a transition!

Hollywood™ has been a similar success story, though with a few twists and turns.  For a large number of years, films coming out of Hollywood© mirrored (in many cases) the Rightist views of the American public.  In the height of the Vietnam War protests, John Wayne starred in The Green Berets.  Even as late as 2002, Disney® put out Reign of Fire, which was staunchly Right in attitude.

I’m not ashamed to say that I love movies.  There are those who say that’s silly, and you’re more than welcome to your opinion.  I see them as a way to thrill to bravery and watch as Good defeats Evil.  It is a myth-making process that can showcase the very best of what we, as humans, can be.

Duty.  Honor.  Tradition.  Cannons, pistols, and swords.  French people being shot.  How can you not love this movie?  Did I mention French people being shot?

Now, in Current Year, Hollywood™ has managed to mangle several amazing film franchises because they had to inject either gender or identity politics into the films, and not in a light way.  The latest Star Wars™ films?  Pretty bad, like eye-rollingly bad.  It wasn’t the effects, mind you.  Those were amazing.  It wasn’t the actors – Hollywood© is a consistently ruthless meritocracy of talent.

It was the stories.

Once upon a time, movies were fun.  Really fun.  Some, of course, still are.  But what happened to the funny teen comedy?  Well, comedy requires that someone is made fun of.  So?  Comedy is out.

No, today movies have to be “woke” and parrot the Social Justice Warrior line and teach an important moral.  It’s funny when that moral isn’t what China likes, so that Hollywood™ has to change their picture, or change posters to minimize black cast members so Chinese people will go to see the movie.

Hmmm, I wonder if BLM® approved of the poster change? Think they speak Chinese?

Perhaps the reason for the injection of the Leftism is the studio executives wanting to placate their talent or their audience?

It doesn’t matter.  It failed horribly.

Sure, it’s a Wilder Bikini Graph®.  I was so very not going to do a bikini graph for the Boy Scouts.

Just like in Boy Scouts, now that the Left has fully taken Hollywood®, the rot has set in, and it begins to decay.  People don’t want to tune in to see what Leftist fantasy has won this year’s Leftist award.

Neither one of these losses of the Left is a win for the Right.  The world was better when we had Boy Scouts.  The world was better when we had more movies with better heroes, and comedies that made fun of everyone.

Thankfully, I have a sea of old movies that I can watch.  Also, thankfully, something will come to replace the Boy Scouts in time.  Politics is downstream of Culture, and Boy Scouts and Hollywood® are part of a culture that no longer exists as it did for nearly 100 years.

That’s okay.  We will rebuild.  We will create institutions that will renew our culture.

Just like Burnham taught us:  we will never give up.  We will keep the flame alive, and fight when the odds are stacked against us.

Why?

Because we are so very pretty.  We are just too pretty for God to let Western Civilization die.

Welcome To Being An Outsider

“Now, I didn’t start it, but be sure as Hell I mean to see it through.” – Shooter

If you boil a clown you get laughing stock.

We’re Outsiders.

Well, not all of us.  But when you look at the system, most of the people reading this post are Outsiders.

I happen to live in a place filled with Outsiders.  Here in Modern Mayberry, you’re ten a hundred times as likely to see a Gadsden flag on a flagpole as a Bernie® bumper sticker.  Besides the Bernie supporters around here have now all been kicked out by their roommates, you know, “Mom and Dad”.

That’s why it’s Modern Mayberry.

It’s not paradise.  There are some thefts.  There are some drugs of the most destructive kind.  There’s even a hipster who was an outdoorsman before it was cool – you’d call him a homeless guy.

But yet . . .

People here still remember the United States that was, or at least the United States we remembered from our dreams.  One where the Constitution was the rule.  One where the dream wasn’t one of dependence on handouts.  One where you could ignore it when the government called you at home – you could let freedom ring.

A friend of mine used his stimulus check to buy baby chickens.  Money for nothing and the chicks for free.

Tonight I drove home along Main Street, and I saw people out and about.  In one block I saw six people that I personally knew, and most of them made it off the sidewalk in time.

Yet all of us in Modern Mayberry are really Outsiders, and I think that we know that.  And I think we cherish it, just like the EpiPen® my friend gave me as he was dying – I know I’ll always cherish it.

I watch the news stories of places that seem alien to me.  I know that California in 1980 was overwhelmingly what we now call a Red state.  Now?  It’s alien even to many that were born there.

The politics that created what would have been one of the most prosperous nations in the world have given way to politics that has made California one of the most impoverished states in the United States.  I know Gavin Newsom tried to fight poverty, but he kept losing.  Homeless people can be deceptively strong when you try to wrestle them.

Sure, I’d love to have California back.  I’d love to have Disneyland® back and the American Dream Vacation™, too, with bonus points for stops at the Grand Canyon and Uncle Eddie’s place.  But the beliefs that I believe most readers here have aren’t shared by most voters in California in 2021.

There was a person who saw the California ban coming:  No-Straw-Domus.

I don’t blame the native Californians – they voted against this insanity again and again, but were overruled from activist benches.  We know what sort of trash is on the benches, but what is on the table for the United States?

  • Individual Rights – these are being replaced by group rights. Reparations for crimes committed nearly two hundred years ago?  By the descendants of people who moved here from Germany in 1880?
  • Freedom of Choice – this is being replaced by coercion, explicit and implicit. Want to do business?  You can have whatever opinion you want – as long as it’s the right one.
  • Due Process – this is being replaced by guilt by inference. Red flag laws, anyone?
  • Right to Keep and Bear Arms – this is being replaced by the right of approved people to potentially be allowed to purchase a limited number of weapons and keep them locked in a safe at home. As long as we know the weapons are kitten-safe.

Propaganda for collectivism has long been in the offing.  For all of my life the programming has been in place to change attitudes to accept this – Leftists have monopolized the major networks since I was a kid.  Society has changed in ways that promote collectivism.  People move from location to location or live in monolithic cities or sterile suburbs that actively discourage people from acting together in the spirit of real community.

What is it replaced with?  City governments.  Homeowners’ Associations. Neither of those build community – those are, in larger cities, the expression of power and control.  The Mayor of Chicago holds more power than governors of many states.  That’s not any semblance of community – when is the last time you heard of anyone holding up Chicago for the face of election fairness?

What part of the mayor of Chicago weighs the most?  The scales.

That’s the downside.  But it gets better from here.

The first part of winning as an Outsider comes from knowing that you are an Outsider.  There is power in being an outsider – it only took a dozen Outsiders to eventually change the entire Roman Empire from people who worshiped Funko Pop® figurines to Christians.  Well, a dozen people and a few years.

Ideas are powerful.

Likewise, Outsiders are powerful.  Once a person realizes that they’re an Outsider, entire routes open to them.  This is a special type of freedom:

  • Freedom from the system. The system was built not to reward me, but to keep me in line, to keep me fearful.  To keep me compliant.  Recognizing that is everything.
  • Freedom from caring about the opinions of the world. Do I care about what France thinks about me?  Do I care about what Google® thinks about me?  Most (not all, but most) of the people whose opinions matter to me know it, and they all have excellent posture and dental hygiene.
  • Freedom to set my own goals. What is it that I value?  What is it that I want to accomplish?  This is mine, and mine alone.  Oh, wait, except for trash day.  I have to remember trash day.
  • Freedom to not apologize. When I make a mistake and I agree I’ve made a mistake, I own up to it, proudly.  When I don’t, I don’t apologize.  And I won’t.  Especially not for the bad jokes.
  • Freedom to change the world. And I will.  I’m going to keep going so I can inject my ideas so deeply into the Outsider psyche that the mRNA shot from Pfizer® will seem like a non-invasive procedure.

Kamala Harris is very concerned about COVID.  She heard that super-spreaders were the problem.

One piece of the puzzle, interestingly enough, came to me from crappy Star Wars® movie, The Force Awakens™.  The movie was horrible.  One thing that I couldn’t figure out was why, after killing the Emperor®, that the Rebels™ were . . . the Resistance©?

The movie was awful, partially because it was poorly written and choked with social justice.  But it revealed the mind of the Left in ways that I hadn’t realized before:

  • The Left wanted to identify with the Resistance© because they rely on powerlessness. Powerlessness is necessary to recruit Leftists – the core of Leftism is self-hate.
  • The Left is about power, but it refuses to admit it has it. That’s why Leftist professors from Leftist colleges complain about insufficient Leftism from Leftist politicians and Leftist media.  And vice versa – it becomes self-reinforcing.

Leftists rely on powerlessness as a route to power.  It is their foundational myth; it is their unifying element.  They are downtrodden, even as they control every major corporation.  They are disenfranchised, even though they control nearly every major media outlet – if there’s a cure for that, it’s unTweetable.

Twitter® is like a Leftist bank account – after you enter the wrong opinion five times, you’re locked out.

Given all of that, why am I so happy?

Because I’m free.  I’m free of my illusions.  I’m free to be an Outsider.

I’ll enjoy seeing the Gadsden flag tomorrow.  After all, there were another group of Outsiders a few years ago who seemed to like that flag.

And you remember where the Gadsden flag first flew?

On a pole.

Equality: The god That Failed

“I’m sorry, Lisa, but giving everyone an equal part when they’re clearly not equal, is called what, class?” – The Simpsons

The kids said they wanted a cat for Christmas.  Normally we have ham, but I’m willing to give it a try.

In the early 2000’s I first came across the word, “meme” – and at that point, it didn’t mean just a funny picture of chubby cats lusting after cheeseburgers.  The original definition that I saw talked about a meme being an “idea fragment” that would travel virally through the consciousness of a group.  Essentially memes have a life based on transmitting themselves from mind to mind.

Examples of these simple mind viruses are all around us – we’ve been soaking in them since we were little.  We don’t notice them so much because they are a part of our culture.  What are some example memes out of the tens of thousands we’ve been exposed to?

  • Majority Rules
  • One Man, One Vote
  • One Nation, Indivisible
  • All Men Are Created Equal
  • Wilder Is The Funniest Living Human Political Writer

Each of those (except the last one, of course) is demonstrably false.

The majority only rules when the vote is counted fairly, and there have been plenty of minority rule situations because the majority didn’t have guns.  I’d say that the history of the world is the history of the majority not ruling.

One man, one vote?  Obviously, the creator of this idea had never been to Chicago, Milwaukie, Detroit, or Atlanta.  Most of those cities make the old Soviet Union look like Utah.

One nation, indivisible?  1860 proved that wasn’t the case.  Did it get undivisibled?  Well, yeah, but I’ve met plenty of people who are still sore about the War of Northern Aggression.  Sadly, all of them think that iced tea should have sugar in it.

OSHA inspectors only drink safe tea.

All Men Are Created Equal, though, is the meme that I wanted to write about in this post.  I know that what Jefferson and the committee were going for was that all people should have equal Natural Rights, and it probably tested well in focus groups.

And, I agree with the idea that all people should have the same rights, but even that is trivially shown to be false:  ask the people from three of the nations that have never visited this blog (North Korea, Cuba, and Iran) if that’s the case.  It’s also folly for Americans to fight to give those rights to other people around the world:  you don’t value anything that you don’t fight for yourself.

“All Men Are Created Equal” is a nice phrase, but believing it has caused more difficulty than any other meme for the people of the United States.  Why?

A conclusion this meme leads to is this:  if all people are equal, all groups are equal.  Again, all individuals should have the same rights, but why on Earth would we anticipate that all groups have equal abilities?  For example, the aboriginal peoples of Australia had been separated from the rest of humanity for 50,000 years.  Why would we expect them to have the same abilities as the Japanese?  Why would we expect that Native Americans would have the same abilities as Conquistadors from Spain since there were at least 30,000 years where they had nothing to do with each other?

Keep in mind, folks, it took less than a third of that time to make miniature poodles out of wolves.

How do you call a wolf with Stockholm Syndrome?  “Here, puppy dog!”

To be utterly clear:  I am not making the case that any particular group is better than another group.  There are people from every group on the planet that are nicer and better people than I am.  But why wouldn’t we expect them to be very different peoples?  I am personally so maladapted to life in the Outback that I would probably burst into flame and turn into a pile of dehydrated ash on day one.

But when I got off the airplane in Fairbanks at -30°F (-7m3), I have never felt more at home.  There was, for me, something inherently right about the taiga and the long dark nights that sang to my soul.  It resonated with me.  I wonder if having ancestors that were adapted to long, dark, cold winters had anything to do with that?

What did Vikings call English villages?  Chopping centers.

A second conclusion this meme leads to is:  if all people are equal, women are equal to men.

Well, they’re not.  In college, one of my friends was on the swim team.  He told me that pretty much every member of the men’s swim team could beat every world record held by women.  Every one.

But wade just a minute – our swim team was not good.  But yet, every one of them was better than the best woman swimmer that ever lived.  Yet, not a single member of the dude swim team could have a baby.

That is not equal, at all.

Men and women are different, have different skills, and have different abilities.  They are not, and never can be equal.  The difficulty that this leads to is that standards have been lowered so women can do physical things like “firefighter” or “soldier” without the concept that they simply cannot perform as well as a male.  But when it comes to “making babies” and “getting me a sammich” they knock it out of the park.

If one synchronized swimmer drowns, do they all have to drown?

The most common refrain is that “Well, the standards were too high to begin with.”  If the first defense is that we should have weaker and slower firefighters and soldiers to prove a political point, I’d assume that whoever made that argument wasn’t interested in saving lives or defending our nation.

“All men are created equal” also leads to a third conclusion:  if all people are equal, then all cultures must be equal.  Well, no, they aren’t.  At all.  Many cultures have produced wonderful things, yet in 2021 have utterly failed to produce first-world living standards for their people.

Hollywood® has done a wonderful job of marketing the ideas that:

  • The United States doesn’t have a culture.
  • Other cultures are heckin’ cute and valid.
  • Cultures in close contact and overlap don’t create any conflict.
  • Colonialism created conflict by drawing borders that put overlapping cultures in close contact.

Careful readers will note that points three and four just might contradict each other.

To dissect that the United States doesn’t (or didn’t) have a culture, well, fish really don’t know that they’re swimming in water.  When I look at the leader of China wearing a suit and tie that could have been tailored in New York or London, well, I realize that European culture is so very ubiquitous that cultures all over the planet have appropriated it.

That’s what Xi said.

That’s okay.  But it’s not okay to say that the United States doesn’t have a culture.

Are other cultures heckin’ cute and valid?  Sure.  But don’t assume that every culture produces the same results.  Does South American culture produce the same level of material prosperity?  No.

Can it produce happiness?  Sure.  I was in Santiago, Chile a while back.  The people there were happy, and were making out on a warm afternoon in the broad plaza that led to some large government building.  When I went out that night with some locals, the beer was cold, the dinner was wonderful, and everyone I saw was happy and safe.

Different.  Not equal.

I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to think of examples where overlapping cultures cause conflicts.  No fair in picking Canada where the English and French overlap, and after one huge argument in the comment section a while back, you can bet I’m not going to mention Ireland.

Oops, too late.

Again, I’m not saying that “not equal” means inferior.  It means not equal.  It means different.

But to have the idea that all men are created equal?  That’s the insanity.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: The Cold Civil War?

“You didn’t bring a gun to the final shoot-out?” – Seven Psychopaths

This month the clocks were supposed to go back, but I forgot where I bought mine.

  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.

March was had increased violence as the country warmed up.  Sadly for the Left, none of the violence measured up to their requirements – they were looking for very specific circumstances.  They needed a white guy with an AR-15 killing four or more people, kids if possible.  The Left was disappointed.  All of their lottery violence tickets turned out to be of the wrong ethnicity, and then they were immediately disappeared from the news.  Poof.

I’m holding March at “just” a 9 out of 10.  That’s still two minutes to midnight.

I currently put the total at (this is my best approximation, since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) holding at 650 out of the 1,000 required for the international civil war definition.

As close as we are to the precipice of war, be careful.  Things could change at any minute.  Avoid crowds.

In this issue:  Front Matter – The Cold Civil War – Violence And Censorship Update – Enter The Leftist Panopticon – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Running The Gun Gauntlet – 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, feel free to subscribe and you’ll get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30 Eastern, free of charge.

The Cold Civil War

Loudoun County, Virginia – A group of school staff and elected officials formed a Facebook® group:  the “Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County”, which sounds nice enough, I guess.  What they were doing was, however, the opposite of nice.  They were plotting how to publicly destroy people who differ with their ideology.  You can read about the details here (LINK).

The Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County primary spokesthing, Jabba The Teacher.

What was the difference?  The “Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County” believe strongly in Marxist societal division theory Critical Race Theory (CRT).  If you haven’t read much about CRT, I can assure you that CRT is 100% a collectivist’s dream.  The laundry list of things that CRT advocates is pretty rough:

  • Dismantling merit-based systems
  • Removing rationality
  • Removing legal equality and Constitutional and legal race-neutrality
  • “Naming one’s own reality” – as in “My Truth” and not The Truth
  • Reparations, and nationalism (but only for non-whites)
  • And a lot of other things

In most bullet-point lists, I throw in a few silly ones just for fun.  Not in the list above, since almost everything that CRT stands for is very, very silly.

But here is a case of a group of Leftists wanting to destroy people because they don’t want them to judged by, apparently, their spelling:

Yup, this is real.  She can’t spell the name of her school (LINK) and goes from third person to first person in the same sentence. 

This is cancer in our country.  CRT is specifically designed to create division.  It is working.  The scariest part of this is that a group of publicly paid teachers and elected officials have set up a secret club to publicly destroy parents who disagree with them philosophically.

Welcome to the Cold Civil War.

 

Violence And Censorship Update

The biggest story in censorship this month is the censoring by Amazon® of the book When Harry Became Sally by Ryan T. Anderson.  The reason?  “Amazon™ has “chosen not to sell books that frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.”

Now, since one study showed that 41% of transgender folks had attempted suicide, well, there is at least an argument that mental illness may be at play in some cases of transgenderism.  That’s a weak statement, and almost certainly true.  Yet, Amazon© wouldn’t allow that to be published in 2021.

What message does that send to a writer?  More importantly, what information does that send to a publisher?  Since Amazon™ sells between 50% and 80% of the books sold in the United States, would a major publisher take a chance on ideas that Amazon© might find objectionable?

No.

And it’s looking like YouTube™ wants to remove the “dislike” button.  Why?  There are several theories, but one that amuses me the most is that Joe Biden’s handlers are upset that whenever he has a video out, that the dislikes overwhelmingly swamp the people who hit the “like” button.  The comments are already turned off.

I built an IKEA® bookcase I called Joe.  It was pretty shaky and leaned hard to the Left.

In YouTube©’s latest idea, the “dislike” button will still be there, and you can still use it.  The video creator can see the number of dislikes, too.  So, if it’s an anti-bullying campaign, it’s the stupidest one ever because the bullied person can still see how many people don’t like them.

I’ll note that in the videos I reviewed for this post, none of them have comments available.

They know you don’t like them.  They know what you think of them.  They just don’t want other people to be able to see it.

Enter The Leftist Panopticon:

There was a creepy English guy named Jeremy Bentham who was a “social” thinker in 18th century England.  One of his inventions was a prison.  The idea that Jeremy had was a prison where just a few guards could look and see everyone at once.  This panopticon was a prison where you were never really free of the gaze of the guards.

Welcome to 2021, so we have to be able to do better than that, right?

If Donald Trump had indicated that he was going to use government money to hire private companies to scour social media to find people that opposed him, and use the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to run the program, Elon Musk would have been able to hear the Leftist outcry from his pleasure palace on Mars.

On the plus side, I’m thinking my FBI agent is happy as I make those small, but necessary changes to better my life.

But swap out the name to “Joe Biden” and there has been remarkably little negative comment.  Have a need to update the No-Fly™ list with pesky people from the Right?

Go for it.  And here’s the (LINK) to prove I’ve not been making this up after watching too much Alex Jones.

The Left will certainly do it.  And it won’t be limited to recent ideas, either.  The way that Leftists feel about the Right is simple:  if you ever, ever supported something the Left is against now?  You’re a heretic.  Cancelled.

Do you expect the DHS to be any different now they’re in the hands of the Left?

We have entered an era of technology where every move that you make can be tracked.  I noticed this on my phone when I stopped at a new restaurant.  Google® popped up with, “Hey, can you tell us if this restaurant has any typographical errors on the menu?”  Google’s® A.I. was asking little old me to help it know absolutely everything about everyplace.

That same Google® data was used and cross-referenced to bring charges against people who were in the Capitol on January 6, 2021.  This data went from, “we can’t use” to “we won’t use” to “we will use” in just a few years.  It’s now a primary tool for law enforcement.

As will be your friends, your email, your web history, your web search history, and, soon enough, a track of you moving from camera to camera in any urban space.

The Civil War 2.0 implication is this:  the Left is using this information actively.  Act accordingly.

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 lead to the index.  On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

Up is more violent, and violence is up in March.  I expect it to jump in April.  If Chauvin is found not guilty?  Through the roof.  The state-media propaganda of “home grown terrorism” is increasing the public perception of violence at this point.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  Instability is near record levels, as the Right doesn’t believe in President *, and the Left wants to cancel the Right.

Economic:

I expected this number to be more positive.  It’s not.  I think we will find that April is the month that we find that inflation moves from a thought to a widely-felt reality.

Illegal Aliens:

This data is at record levels for this time of year.  Comments from the Left?  “There needs to be more.”

Running The Gun Gauntlet

I had predicted that the ludicrous Sheila Jackson-Lee bill for gun control would be dead on arrival.  I was right.  But the other bills keep moving along and are a lot more likely to pass.

They’re smaller bills.  Increasing the number of background checks by making almost all transactions require background checks.  There’s a “family exemption” that soon enough will become a “family loophole” after the appropriate victim and shooter combination is found.

Guns don’t kill people, Democratic voters kill people.

In reality, there’s no way to track these background checks, since a very large number of guns in existence have absolutely no paperwork of any type connecting them to their current owner.  After the background checks don’t stop gun violence, the call will come for a national gun registry so that ownership can be tracked.

Registration at the Federal level won’t happen, because people won’t register.  Okay, some would.  But most won’t.  When Connecticut tried to get “assault” weapons registered, it is assumed that only one weapon out of eight was registered.  People know what is at stake.

Doing all of this at once is too much, and too far.  The average American gun owner simply will not comply with registration in 2021, and even the stupidest Leftist understands that widespread noncompliance just gives people a reason to understand the relative strength of individuals and the relative weakness of the government.

As I’ve said before on another post (LINK), the largest army that the world has ever seen are the 80,000,000+ members of the Right in the United States.  As soon as the Right realizes that, they will understand that we truly are only ruled by our consent.

And that is truly what the Left fears.

LINKS

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

The MSM narrative remains fragmented.

The Alt-Right Civil War

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/30/jan-6-capitol-riot-jail-time-478440

https://www.opb.org/article/2021/03/28/proud-boys-clash-with-anti-fascists-in-salem/

https://wwmt.com/news/local/fbi-testifies-wolverine-watchmen-were-trying-to-instigate-a-second-civil-war

https://www.newsweek.com/pastor-rick-joyner-urges-american-christians-prepare-civil-war-1576570

https://napavalleyregister.com/opinion/letters/trump-s-undeclared-civil-war/article_16821682-efae-5831-868b-a239815747ba.html

https://napavalleyregister.com/opinion/letters/the-real-civil-war/article_6c453064-39db-5540-949e-e8f9dfd071be.html

The Republican Civil War

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/03/31/cold-civil-war-being-waged-republicans

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/3/29/a-cold-civil-war-is-being-waged-in-america

https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-next-battle-for-american-democracy-is-around-the-corner-and-moderates-must-be-in-the-fight/

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/4/1/22356594/conservatives-right-wing-democracy-claremont-ellmers

The Black Civil War

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/04/the-many-lives-of-grandmaster-jay/618408/

https://allhiphop.com/features/the-nfacs-grand-master-jay-speaks-out-on-legal-status-hip-hop-freedom-and-the-future/

https://www.msnbc.com/craig-melvin/watch/-it-means-that-you-re-preparing-yourself-to-defend-yourself-nfac-leader-on-militia-name-meaning-108925509977

https://news.yahoo.com/inside-look-black-militia-group-110636647.html

https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/armed-protesters-in-douglasville-were-peaceful-sheriff-says

The Armed Forces Civil War

https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/2542699/seac-dod-will-move-fast-against-extremism-after-completion-of-stand-downs/

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/03/19/some-troops-see-capitol-riot-blm-protests-similar-threats-top-enlisted-leader-says.html

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2021/03/29/civilian-employee-who-allegedly-advocated-for-civil-war-banned-from-air-force-base/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/aaronsmith/2021/04/01/gun-sales-soar-from-stimulus-and-bidens-gun-control-plan-amid-mass-shootings/?sh=378c7e866020

https://slate.com/technology/2021/02/3d-printed-semi-automatic-rifle-fgc-9.html

https://www.amestrib.com/story/news/2021/03/25/iowa-state-isu-students-emailed-3-d-printed-guns-day-after-boulder-mass-shooting-colorado/6995202002/

https://www.19fortyfive.com/2021/03/could-the-u-s-ban-guns-australia-tried-something-pretty-close/

 

The American Civil War

https://www.aier.org/article/the-end-of-america/

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17179/hr1-for-the-people

https://wirepoints.org/mass-federalization-how-washington-is-bailing-out-failed-states-decapitating-competitive-ones-and-ending-america-as-you-knew-it-wirepoint

https://www.persuasion.community/p/john-mcwhorter-the-neoracists

https://thecritic.co.uk/schools-gone-woke/

A Brief Guide To Human Action – Which Leads To Human Freedom

“They say you’re a man of vision.  Is that true?” – Lonesome Dove

I’ll never forget Pa Wilder’s last words:  “Find a woman that holds you as tight as Nancy Pelosi holds a vodka bottle.”

(John Wilder note:  Please read this post all the way through because I think you’ll find this one of the most useful posts that I’ve put together.)

Ludwig Von Mises is was an economist.  His pronouns are dead/buried.  The sure sign of the best economists is that they’re dead, because then they can’t ask to be paid for being wrong all of the time.

One thing that Von Mises left us with was a book called Human Action.  Really, it wasn’t a book, it was him sitting at his typewriter and generating a 400-page doorstop like he was getting paid by the punctuation mark.  I read some of it back in my more libertarian days.  Dry doesn’t begin to describe it – after completing two hundred pages you become as desiccated as King Tut’s armpit.

Thankfully, the main ideas of Human Action are quite powerful and also pretty simple.  And, it won’t take me 400 pages to get to the point.  Von Mises created a model of human action where he states that each and every voluntary human action requires three things:

A Vision Of A Better State:  For example, me having a beer.  If it was Friday, I might consider that having a beer would be a better state than not having a beer.  In most cases, the vision is based not on cold, logical thought, but on emotion.

A Path To Get To A Better State:  It just so happens that there’s a beer in the fridge, so if I got my sorry butt off of the couch, I could walk over and get one.

A Belief That Action Will Really Lead To A Better State:  I really and honestly believe that I could walk to the fridge and get a beer, since I deactivated the trap door that leads to the alligator pit.

How many economists does it take to fix a lightbulb?  Don’t know, they’re still arguing over why the last one broke.

In my example, I started off with a Vision first.  That’s one way that action can occur, but not the only way.  The three necessary conditions can really come in any order.  I might have a pile of lumber and a saw and a hammer.  So, I have a Path.  I have Belief that I could build something out of wood since I’m okay at building stuff out of wood (just okay, not great).  After thinking about it, I decide to build a PEZ® dispenser sized for PEZ© the size of cinder blocks with an articulated carved Anne Coulter head so her jaw can open as wide as a python’s.  In this example, my Vision of a better state (and need for a really big spring) came last.

I’ve found when analyzing the actions I personally take, a truism:  if all three of the Human Action requirements are met – Vision, Path, and Belief – then my action is guaranteed.  Likewise, if even one of them is missing, nothing (and I mean nothing) happens.

This model is useful to use when people that you’re working with aren’t doing what you want them to.  Analyze the situation:  which of the three elements of the Human Action model are missing?

People in business have been using this model on you for as long as you have lived.  Think of a typical car commercial:

  • Vision: Buy a Mustang® so hot chicks in bikinis will like me and want to pat my bald head.  See!  They’re patting the bald head of that man on the commercial!
  • Path: Go to the dealer and buy one, they have tons of them.
  • Belief: Hey, zero percent financing and no credit check.  They’re giving the money away so I can buy one!

All commercials are based on manipulating these three simple elements.  Commercials are attempting to get us to take action – or to avoid taking an action.  Most are trying to get our money, but some are trying to convince us that Steven Tyler from Aerosmith© personally cares whether or not we drive drunk.

Steven Tyler just released two books.  One’s a cookbook, and the other’s an art book:  “Wok This Way” and “Doodles Like A Lady”

Manipulation is the key to this game.  Understanding when you watch a commercial how they’re trying to change our views allows us to be on guard against that manipulation.  And, as I noted before, it is a very rare commercial that wants to appeal to logic.

Emotional manipulation is where the money is at.  The advertisers want us to use their gasoline and love it because, um, it’s more gasoline-y than the competitors?  Because it has special molecules in the gasoline that make gravy in your pistons?  Regardless, look for the emotional manipulation – it will be there.

So, we’ve saved a few bucks because we’ve kept the advertisers out of our heads.  Hurrah!  But who else is using this model?

Well, Big Government, for one.  On January 6, 2021, all the Congresscritters had at least a bit of pee in their pants.  A group of relatively aimless protestors stopped off at the Capitol to share their opinions with their elected representatives.

I was on a witness stand at a trial in Alaska, and the lawyer asked me, “Where were you on the night of November to March?”

The group’s Vision was murky.  “Walk over and complain” might be a good description.  It was certainly more peaceful than most of the George Floyd riots (and more on them in a minute).  The Path was easy – it’s not even a very far walk from their rally to the Capitol Building.  Did they have Belief that their action would allow them to “walk over and complain”?

Sure.  So they did.

But that’s not what the Congress Swamp Rats saw.  They saw a group that, with a slightly different Vision could have easily started a movement that would have ousted our current government via a revolution.  As every reader here knows (and as every Congressional Parasite knows), the rank and file of the Right are the single largest army the world has ever seen.  Even if the Right was pitiful, it could take over forty (?) state governments in 24 hours.

We are truly governed only by our consent.  Seizing power in America would be trivial if people on the Right had a Vision, a Path, and Belief that didn’t include a government more intrusive than if Google® was a proctologist and more bloated than 1977 Elvis.

That’s exactly what happened when the Berlin Wall fell.  The people suddenly had a Vision:  sexy American girls in bikinis, CD players, and not having to drive crappy commie cars anymore.  They had a Path:  tear down that Wall.  Once they had Belief?  The Wall didn’t last an afternoon.

As another Floyd, Pink Floyd© tried to metaphorically tell us, The Wall is built in our mind, brick by brick.

Communism is the noble struggle of the proletariat to overcome the problems that are only caused by communism.

Anyone who thinks the “assault” weapon grab has anything to do with “mass shooting” has bought the emotional propaganda that Big Government (along with Big Business and Big Media) is selling.  Big Government wants the guns off of the street because they are the only real threat that Big Government sees to itself and the privileges that it has given itself.

That’s why the George Floyd riots were so important to Big Government.  What were the protesters protesting for?  More Big Government, more handouts, and more government control – this time not only of our rifles that are rarely used to shoot anyone (484 people a year in the United States for all rifles, compared to 1,476 for knives and other pointy things), but also our speech, our national heritage, and even our thoughts.

The BLM riots weren’t stopped because they’re everything Big Government wants.

I started carrying a pistol after a mugging attempt.  Now my muggings are more successful.

The biggest trick the Devil tries is to convince you he isn’t real.  The biggest trick that Big Government tries is to convince you that you have no power.  But if we have no power, why are there more troops in Washington D.C. than in Afghanistan?  Big Government has set the Right as the enemy.  I assure you, they are more afraid of the 80,000,000+ people on the Right than they are of the Chinese.

Now that you know their intentions, what else is Big Government, Big Media, and Big Business trying to make citizens feel?

Does this change your Vision, Path, and Belief?

City And Country: The Dividing Line

“And I want a bigger office. And I want a new car. And I want the city to pay for it all!” – Robocop

Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time.

We’ve lived in Modern Mayberry for a dozen years now.  It’s a small town, and The Mrs. has roots here that go back generations.  We never expected to move here after I got arrested for driving on the sidewalk – I told the officer it wasn’t my fault – it was hard to see with all of those people on my hood.

The Wilder Family moved here from Houston.  The Houston metropolitan area is amazingly (for us) large.  From where we lived on the southern end, we could drive through nothing but dense city for over 90 minutes at highway speeds.

In Houston, speed limits are nothing more than a suggestion – I regularly saw people driving at 90 mph in 50 mph zones.  As we all know, speeding doesn’t kill anyone:  it’s stopping suddenly.

Driving really fast without being pulled over is one advantage of living in the city.  The real advantage of living in a big city is that’s where most of the high-paying jobs are.  Of course, along with high pay comes high rent and high cost of living, too.  Thankfully it’s not like living in Norway, since I don’t think I could a-fiord living there.

The move to Modern Mayberry was very welcome for us.  Houston is huge and impersonal.  Although it had tons of restaurants and other attractions, most of them were more trouble than they were worth to go and visit.  Driving to a restaurant meant a 30-minute trip and a 30-minute wait for a table on a Friday night.  Heck, I heard that even the Houston libraries were crowded – I heard they were fully booked.

Not worth our time.

The schools were likewise large and impersonal.  The nearest high school had over 2,000 students.  Although I’m sure that it allows them to field a great football team, I can’t imagine the social pressures in a school that large – my high school had 500-600 kids, and I had to pay people to be friends with me.  You could call it clique bait.  But that school was large enough to offer a large number of activities, but not so large that you couldn’t participate in them.

If you repeat your first year, does that make you a refreshman?

Where I grew up there was much more than that.  There was a sense of community.  If you misbehaved in public and were observed by an adult that knew your parents, you could be sure that they’d either correct you right then and there, or they’d let your folks know.  If they let your folks know, well, that was worse.  Parents in my hometown back then didn’t take the side of their kids.

No need to tell you I got spanked a lot.  Me, I don’t believe in spanking Pugsley when he’s bad.  Instead, I send him to school wearing crocs and anime t-shirts.

There was a sense of public participation in the small towns, too.  Pa Wilder was president of the school board for a time, and both he and Ma Wilder participated in a variety of civic organizations over the years.  Try that in a city where the campaigns to get on the school board cost $16 million or so (Los Angeles).

Having lived in both large and small towns, the small town experience is far superior in almost every respect, especially for raising kids.  The other thing I’ve noticed is that almost every small town I’ve ever been in has supported values on the Right, and rejected Leftist values.

We also tried to avoid the Illuminaughty.

Cities are the exact opposite in 2021.  Of the top 20 cities by population, 18 have Leftist mayors, and (generally) the larger the city, the more Leftist it is.  You can even tell that many of the riots were held in Leftist cities because they stopped after four days.  I mean, you can’t expect a Leftist to work all week.

Sure, not all cities are Leftist, and not all rural areas are on the Right, but it’s close enough to make that generalization.

This has consequences.  Around the country, rural areas that are strongly on the Right find themselves overruled by just a few counties that have large populations of people who are strongly Leftist.  There are, of course, reasons for this:

  • Cities are Anonymous – When you live in a city with hundreds of thousands of other people, you’re effectively anonymous. This anonymity encourages people to be tools  What does it matter?  You won’t see that clerk at the store ever again.  When people aren’t polite to each other, the demand for a government solution builds.  Much of the root of Leftism in cities is just poor manners.
  • Cities Require Services – New York City has a line where you can complain about everything because, in a city like New York, the local government controls everything. And complaining means that it’s someone else’s problem.

A group of Karens is called a complaint.

  • Cities are Demographically Different – Certain ethnic and racial groups statistically vote Leftist more than others, and these groups often congregate in cities.
  • Cities Reduce Options For Individual Control – I can know, on a first-name basis, every elected leader in Modern Mayberry. I could walk into the County offices and talk to the elected leadership there, too.  And not some flunky – I can talk straight to the elected official.  Try that in New York.  I mean if you’re under 24 you might get to see the governor, but . . . .

The divide between City and Country is bad, and getting worse.

I have been planning this post for several weeks, so it was a nice coincidence when Vox Day (LINK) pointed to an article that indicated that a Minnesota state lawmaker was trying to get the counties west of Minneapolis to be allowed to leave Minnesota and join up with South Dakota (LINK), which would be the first time people voluntarily went to South Dakota.

The divide between values is so bad that the Right just wants to leave – and the big fight will be over who has to keep the Minnesota Vikings®.  Seriously, though, I strongly doubt that the Leftists at the state or Federal level will approve the request, even if the people are tired of St. Paul’s Leftist ambitions.

People on the Left?

They simply cannot allow anyone to leave – the people belong to the state, after all.  Remember, the Berlin Wall wasn’t put up to keep people from out.  Allowing reliably red South Dakota to have more population and importance is not in their plans, besides, summer in South Dakota might fall on a weekend this year.  Regardless, the Leftists in St. Paul won’t give up the power, and the Leftists in D.C. want to gerrymander the nation so that they can create a permanent lock on all of the major branches of government.

What was David Bowie’s favorite song about the fall of the Berlin Wall?  Under Prussia.

I do know that, despite my jokes, a lot of really wonderful people live in cities.  I’ve lived in large(ish) cities as well.  Once a year or so, The Mrs. and I visit a big city.  The main reason?

To remind us why we live in Modern Mayberry.

Will we spend the rest of our lives in Modern Mayberry?  Maybe, maybe not – when Pugsley clears high school, who knows what the world will bring our direction.  One thing I’ve learned over time is to not make absolute statements.

I’m certain that’s a good idea.

The Great Purge Ahead

“When a forest grows too wild, a purging fire is inevitable and natural.” – Batman Begins

Stalin was better than most magicians.  He really made people disappear.

The Soviet Great Purge started in 1936.  Stalin already had a bad reputation as a Dictator who couldn’t say no – he had gotten rid of millions already in the Holodomor (In The World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold And Silver!).  The Great Purge was different.  The piles and piles of earlier dead had been peasants and kulaks (kulaks were peasants that had enough money to own a cow), mainly.   Even before the Great Purge Stalin had the world record for Russian killing, a record he still proudly maintains.

By 1936 Stalin, always paranoid, decided his main opponents were, surprise, still Russians.

Anyone who had been a trusted advisor of Lenin had to go.  Anyone who looked like a threat to Stalin?  Had to go.  The Red Army had troops with guns.  Three out of five Soviet Marshalls were executed.  13 out of 15 army commanders, 50 out of 57 corps-level commanders, and 154 out of 186 division commanders were caught up in it.

The very top of the Soviet Military was decapitated.  But that was a small portion of the Great Purge.  In the end, probably a million or more were murdered or died in the Gulags.  Anyone in politics was fair game, and the more power the bigger the target on their back.  Many of the people who helped Stalin with the Great Purge eventually were victims of it themselves.

What did Jack Nicholson say to his dentist?  “You can’t handle the tooth.”

What was the basis of the Great Purge?  Even though Stalin binged and purged, it wasn’t bulimia, it was Power.  Stalin wanted to keep power.  His greatest weapon?

Fear.

And fear is currently the weapon (predictably) used by the Left today.  They want to push people to the fringes, isolate them, and then purge them.  The first step is making them feel alone.

Of course, there haven’t been executions in the United States.  However, Obama purged 197 high-level officers in the first five years of his administration.  That’s quite close to the Stalin numbers, and perhaps even greater when you consider that the military in 2000s America is far smaller than in late 1930s Russia.

The purge has lately increased.  The current SecDef has made it clear:  “The job of the Department of Defense is to keep America safe from our enemies, but we can’t do that if some of those enemies lie within our own ranks.”

Just let that sink in.  The current Secretary of Defense has stated that he thinks that the biggest enemies of the United States are in the military, right now.  Today.  The leadership of the military has already been purged.  Now?  The rank and file is in the process of being purged.  Anyone not actively supporting the Leftist agenda will be drummed out.

If you need sink jokes, I’m at your disposal.

They want to purge anyone who is involved in “extremism” from the military.  As far as commies, I certainly agree.  But extremism for a Leftist is mere disagreement with a Leftist.  Don’t agree that having a 9-year-old boy dance as a girl in front of gay men at a strip club is entirely good and appropriate?

Extremist!  Behavior that would have resulted in imprisonment for the mother in all but the last 10 years since 1787 is now considered so sacred that it is impossible to challenge.  Now, speaking out against it is extremist.

Hollywood® is already on the job with this requirement.  Star Wars® was a part of my childhood.  I saved money when I was 12 to buy overpriced dolls action figures.  The mythos of Star Wars© was always one of Good versus Evil, which burned itself into my young imagination.

Now?  It’s Leftism versus the Right.  At every opportunity, the creative element at DisneyLucasFilmStarWars™ has abandoned the production of good movies to produce movies that are water carriers for the narratives of a Leftist agenda.

I grew up loving Star Wars©.  It was fun.  It was escapism.  It was a place where there were good heroes and evil villains.  Okay, I’ll admit, the entire series should have ended when the Emperor© said, “And now you die, young Skywalker™” during Return of the Jedi©.

Luke was late because he had to take an R2-Detour.

The latest is that an actress got fired for expressing mildly Right viewpoints.  Heck, they weren’t even something that 95% of every American wouldn’t have agreed with when Kurt Cobain was still sucking air instead of pushing daisies.

And that is the technique of the Left.  If they can’t directly imprison you, they do their best to turn you into an unemployed, destitute outcast of society.

Imagine 50,000 Leftists watching everything you re-Tweet® to catch you.

But, thanks to me, you can watch the purge unfold in real time.  The Long March through the institutions of the United States is ongoing.  Here’s the current status of the things the Left owns:

  • 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) Most Fortune® 500™ companies.

The result in 2021 is that of the institutions of the United States, the Left has or is consolidating control over nearly all of the important ones.  What remains?  Junior officer and enlisted men in the armed forces (at least for the next few months) and the governors and legislators of a few states.

Oh, and at least 80,000,000 inconvenient people.

The idea is to scare Americans about the Purge, to scare them about their place in society.  If the State and the Media can scare Americans like that, they can achieve their ultimate goal:  to make them be quiet.

One of the greatest compliments I’ve had from a friend about this website was this, “If they (the powers that be) were really reading and understanding the things you say, you’d be much, much higher on The List.”

The Mrs. prefers the elevator, I prefer stairs.  I guess we were raised differently.

The reason I don’t feel fear is this:  I’m not alone.  As I said earlier, there are 80,000,000 other inconvenient people on the list.

Standing together?  We can’t be canceled.

Standing together?  We can’t be purged.

Standing together?  We can’t lose.

This isn’t over.  We’re not done.