Category: Civil War

If You Live In A Big Leftist City – Why Haven’t You Moved?

“I don’t know what you do in New York, but around here we don’t give a man a funeral unless we’re pretty sure he needs one.” – Green Acres

RIGHTMEOW

I think I ran over Schrödinger’s cat. Not sure if I feel guilty or not.

Growing up, Green Acres was one of my favorite television shows. I was far too young to have seen it in the first run, but the local television station showed reruns that were on after the school bus made it all the way to the top of Wilder Mountain. The bus rides were long, but I learned a lot about kindness – one time I saw someone give up their seat for a blind student. In retrospect, the bus driver probably showed poor judgement in letting that blind girl drive.

For those of you that haven’t seen it, Green Acres was about a New York attorney (Oliver Wendell Douglas) that decided he was through with city life. Mr. Douglas quit his big city life and moved to the rural town of Hooterville. The show never discusses exactly where Hooterville is, but the best theory is that Hooterville is in the Ozark Mountains in Missouri.

The show was funny in a way that television isn’t now. Oliver always tried to fit in, but never could quite adjust from his city ways. A lot of the humor was making fun of that disconnect between Oliver and the humorous cast of townspeople, though the relationship between Oliver and his wife was loving, strong, and funny. Here’s a scene when there were looking for clothes to donate:

Oliver Douglas: Why don’t we give away this one?
Lisa Douglas: No that’s the dress I graduated from high school in.
Oliver Douglas: How about this one?
Lisa Douglas: That’s the dress I wore the first day of college.
Oliver Douglas: [holding a black, low-cut dress] What about this one?
Lisa Douglas: That’s the one I got expelled in.

Why do I bring this up?

GREENACRES

If I ever get a barn I’ll make sure I have an Internet router in there, so I can have stable wifi.

This weekend, The Mrs. and I were snoozing and were listening to the Watchdog on Wall Street, a radio show about investment. In the latest episode/podcast (Expedition New York – LINK), the host advocated what he called the Sam Kinison solution. Give good people U-Hauls® so they can leave the cities that are turning into scenes from Mad Max. “The reality of many urban areas is . . . it’s going to take a long, long time to come back.”

“Move.”

I was slipping in and out of sleep, but discussed the show later with The Mrs.

“He’s right you know. The era of law in those big cities is over. The District Attorneys in those large metropolitan areas have been bought and paid for by the far Left (LINK, LINK, LINK and I could go on forever with links). The DAs are no longer concerned with Justice,” I said. “These DAs are concerned with Social Justice. Try to defend yourself in a lot of these large urban monstrosities, and you’ll find out what the inside of a jail cell looks like pretty quickly. And that scares me because my brother got stabbed in jail. We took Monopoly® just a bit too seriously when I grew up.”

“Well, they can’t move here. We’re full.” That’s not exactly what The Mrs. said, but I can’t repeat it exactly since this is a family-friendly blog.

Although The Mrs. isn’t a social butterfly, she doesn’t exactly hate people. And it’s not new people moving to Modern Mayberry that was bothering her. It’s Leftist ideas.

CONAN

I donated $50 to a Leftist group the other day. I hope they find a cure.

“They residents of those cities are the reason the cities are in the condition that they’re in. Then they’ll move here, and want to turn Modern Mayberry into what they left.”

The Mrs. is not wrong. Here’s an example.

My brother, John Wilder had this problem in his midsized town. (Yes, his first name really is John as well. Our parents were caught in a soap opera episode and got amnesia and forgot they had him and named me the same thing by mistake.) He was at the neighborhood homeowners’ association meeting when they were selecting a trash company. They recently had an influx of people from the United Soviet Republic of California who had gotten approval to leave the state from the Supreme Soviet.

“Well,” one transplant said, “we certainly must be environmentally friendly. We should pick the trash company that offers the mandatory recycling. They only cost $35 more a month.”

After about an hour, my brother talked the homeowners’ association into picking the cheaper trash company. Is recycling bad? Not at all. Junkyards have been recycling cars for decades. Aluminum recycling makes beer cans cheaper. But in my brother’s town, the only thing that was really recycled was aluminum – the rest of the trash went into the dump whether or not it was neatly sorted.

That’s what scared The Mrs.

ALUM

I always get sad after crushing aluminum cans – it’s soda pressing.

Modern Mayberry is nice because it doesn’t have those things the big cities have, including all of their problems.

And the economy appears to be in a pretty bad state. The dollar bubble appears to be in the first phase of ending. The gold bubble may be inflating, and inflation will follow a deflation of the dollar, which is exactly as I predicted, but it’s about six months earlier than I had expected.

The median price (right now) for a house in San Francisco is $1,108 per square foot. In Modern Mayberry, I couldn’t find a single house that cost more than $100 per square foot. Sadly, you have to do without all of those San Francisco amenities like people pooping in the streets, riots and the San Francisco 49ers™. On the plus side, the Oakland Raiders® have moved, and if San Franciscans are lucky, what goes to Vegas stays in Vegas.

RAIDERS

This is a true statement.

If I were in Seattle or Portland or New York or any of a dozen other large cities I would be moving if I had children. The best time to move is ten years ago. This gives you time to build the relationships and integrate into the community. In Modern Mayberry, I’m still one of the New Guys, even after a decade.

The second best time is now. The worst time to move is after the bottom drops out and escaping from New York looks like something that even Kurt Russell couldn’t do on his best day.

And, if you decide to move, here’s hoping that you find a place as nice as Hooterville. I hear they have good hotscakes there.

Remember that the worst time to move is one day too late.

NEWYORK

Riots, Misplaced Virtue And The Parasite Class

“Don’t worry. Many women learn to embrace this parasite. They name it, dress it up in tiny clothes, arrange playdates with other parasites.” – House

PARASITE

But my parasite kept looking over its shoulder.  I guess it was a nervous tick.

I recall seeing a story about twenty years ago about a Native American tribe, the Pima.  This particular tribe had gone through periodic famines over the course of their existence since they lived in a desert with little water and no Kwik-E Marts®.  They had, through surviving those continual famines, developed a resistance to dying when there was no food for an extended period of time.  This makes sense – those who were susceptible to starvation starved; those who were thriftier with their metabolism lived.

Nowadays, the Pima have the distinction of suffering from one of the highest rates of diabetes in the world.  Those biological traits slowed their metabolism enough to save them from starving in a famine.  Those same traits, in a food-rich world, are now killing them.

That’s one description of a trait that while good in an environment of scarcity isn’t so good in an environment filled with Twinkies™, Ruffles™, and two-liter Coke™ bottles.

What got me thinking about all this?

DIABETES

What do you call it when a diabetic won’t follow directions?  Insulince.

Eaton Rapids Joe shared several thoughts with me a few weeks back in an email exchange.  I’m certain I’m not taking this in the direction that he had originally intended, so don’t blame him for this piece.  For me to write about a topic, it has to come together in my mind.  One of the ideas he shared sparked my imagination.  Here it is, in Joe’s words:  “Biologists make the case that periods of easy living followed by harsh purges accelerate evolution.  Their reasoning is thus: many features in isolation are bad for survival. But if several features are combined with other features that in isolation are counter-survival, sometimes that package is awesome.”

If you’re not reading Joe’s stuff, you really should be (LINK).  He’s thoughtful, intelligent, interesting, and funny.  His comment resulted in me thinking, and although I wandered pretty far off of his original point, I wanted to give credit to him for the inspiration.

PORPOISE

Is evolution overkill?  Did it defeet the porpoise?

As I started thinking not about biology, but about society, and the traits that either make society work, or destroy it – rather than organisms, I wanted to think about group survival strategies.

Society is made up of individuals, so I thought I’d look at the individual traits that lead to a successful societal strategy.  When I looked at positive human traits, two immediately come to mind:

  • Altruism
  • Empathy

These have been common throughout most of the history of the United States.  They’ve been common in other places, too, but I’m going to focus on America.  These traits were the basis for and result of a “high-trust” society.  A high-trust society is one where most interactions aren’t governed by regulations, or kin groups, or hierarchy, or law.  Where I live, there’s no law that says you have to stop and help someone whose car broke down.  It’s just something we do.

TRUST

I heard that Shetland ponies are the least trusted horse, at least according to the Gallop poll.

Likewise, for most of the history of the United States, welfare wasn’t a government program – people were helped because groups of ordinary citizens donated their time and effort to help them.  This had a benefit – it was a healthy outlet for the altruism, and empathy that most people felt.  It was virtuous for the person helping, and the person being helped.

Government started to take over the role of private charity in the 1930s, and completed the job in the 1960s.  The insidious part of government-based charity is that it does two things:

It turns the act of charity into taxation.  Charity moves from being a voluntary program into a mandatory feature supported by taxes.  Last time I checked, if I decided I didn’t want to support ‘charity’ by paying taxes, men with guns and bad attitudes would take my money and then give me free room and board at a Federal Camp for Wayward Wilders for five to ten years.  This removes all virtue for taking part in charity.  Forced charity isn’t charity, it’s extortion.

That’s bad enough.

But it gets worse.

STARVE

Crabs don’t donate to charity.  They’re shellfish.

The second thing that forced charity does?  When a person gives another person help, they’re often grateful – it’s human working with human.  When a government agency gives that same person help, they’re resentful.  Why?  There is no end to the needs an individual has – and when government doesn’t give them as much as they think they deserve they feel resentment.  Let’s face it – nearly every government welfare program sucks – it’s just enough to get by in ratty conditions.  Not only that, these same programs are designed to create an angry perpetual victim class by being easy to stay on and difficult to escape.

Add in the impersonality of the cities.  Mix with a globalized economy and a country that has let in enough foreign competition to depress the wages in jobs ranging from manual labor to software programmers.  Dollop in a bit a host of useless yet expensive college degrees.  Toss in a diversity of cultures and religions not seen since the late Roman Empire while vilifying the common culture of the last 250 years through the government education system.

Stir.

The result is chaos.  The altruism and empathy which worked so well in that high trust society of the past now work against society.  Add in that the problems are actually in the process of being solved:  as an example, the black poverty rate has dropped over 30% between 1988 and 2018.

What to do with all of that altruistic, cooperative, and empathetic energy?

Whoever had “go crazy in an orgy of destruction and violence” fueled by misdirected virtue is the winner.

RIOT

Is it riot season or COVID season?  I want to make sure I have the right decorations up.

I thought a bit about how Antifa® and the Marxist portion of Black Lives Matter™ grew.  The traits of altruism and empathy, generally good, have allowed them to grow.  Heck, even more than allowing them to grow, they’ve increased the growth rate.  In any sane society, neither of these groups would be tolerated.

Why?

Though born of misdirected virtue, Antifa© and BLM® have their own traits.  They contribute nothing to society.  They’re destructive, and feed off of the energy and resources provided to them by productive people.  In the long run, they may even kill off the productive society that created them.

There’s a word for an organism living in this niche.  The name for that organism is parasite.

It becomes increasingly likely that Antifa™ and BLM® will leave city after city economically destroyed.  Who would want to move to Minneapolis right now?  Portland?  Seattle?  The governments of those forever Democrat-controlled cities has been tailor-made for incubating the parasite class.

ANTIFA

Well, now that Antifa® has been named a terrorist organization, when will the Democrats start funding it? 

The District Attorneys in those Leftist cities are crucial to this incubation – criminals aren’t charged with felonies, but are let off with the lightest of charges.  Unless, of course, they are people defending themselves from the parasite class.  If that happens, the greatest possible charges will be conjured up, and damn the circumstances.  Defending yourself from a parasitic criminal mob on your own private property is something that simply can’t be allowed.

Parasites generally are quite healthy as long as they don’t kill the host.  The mosquitoes I fed tonight didn’t kill me – just left me with a few bumps that will itch for a day or so.  But it looks like the traits of altruism and empathy may have done more damage than the famine resistance of the Pima.

INSPIRE

Accountability: Now With Cheetos and Vicks

“There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.” – Terminator 2

ZERO

I believe there is a man we cannot see who watches our every action, passing judgement, and deciding who lives or dies.  But enough about the NSA.

My daughter Alia S. Wilder came to visit, and brought her son, Mosquito.  As we were sitting upstairs chatting, Alia looked over at Mosquito.  “Mosquito, please get me a Coke®.”  As all of our beverage fridges were downstairs, Mosquito buzzed downstairs to get Alia a Coke™.  There wasn’t anyone downstairs, but that was okay – I had removed all the anti-personnel mines and deactivated the laser defense grid for the weekend.

At least I think I did.

Mosquito bounced back up the stairs.  He proudly presented Alia with a can of Coke©.  It was already open.  Alia was surprised – she didn’t think that Mosquito had learned how to open cans of Coke®.

“Did you open this?”  I could hear the pride in Alia’s voice, a pride that her son had figured out how to open a Coca-Cola™ can.  Hey, we all know that kids are stupid.  I can prove it, too.  I can draw better than 94% of kids 7th grade and younger.

There was a pause.  Mosquito replied:  “Someone did.”

711

No one every asks how Coke® is doing – it’s always:  “Is Pepsi™ okay?”

Since the Family Wilder has a habit of leaving semi-full Coke™ cans around the house like the Easter Bunny leaves spent radioactive fuel rods around the Former Soviet Union, we were all pretty sure that Mosquito had found the remnants of Cokes® from a bygone era.  Maybe the Upper Pugslevanian epoch?

We laughed, and then sent Mosquito back over the wall to get an unopened can of Coke®.

Mosquito had inadvertently provided me with blog fodder.  The topic?

Accountability.

The reasons I love accountability is what it means:  it’s the person who is ultimately be the one who will reap the rewards or suffer the consequences of their decisions and actions.  One of the reasons I hate accountability is that it has become a corporate buzzword which tends to turn a good word into mindless mission-statement-speak parroted by unthinking corporate lackeys.

Like me.

BUZZWORDS

Buzzwords, do you speak them, Mister Falcon?  (Hint:  Google® “Mister Falcon”)

One of the things missing from society today is accountability.  I really think that this lack of accountability is at least partially responsible for the riots we’ve been seeing.  What are the rioters accountable for, besides roasting Air Jordans® over a gently crackling police precinct fire?  Are they even accountable to get up tomorrow and go to a job?

No.

Thankfully, real life provides some help in giving great examples of accountability.  People are ultimately accountable for many of the decisions they make:

  • Choose a horrible degree in “French Medieval Gender Studies” and spend $273,432 getting it? You have to pay it back.
  • Have a baby at 16 from a daddy who skipped to Canada? You have to raise it.
  • Miss an appointment for your dream job because you slept in? I’m sure they’ll understand.
  • Decided to spend your twenties travelling to distant continents while your friends worked hard? No, it’s not luck that they’re comfortable in that house in the suburbs and having kids while you can’t afford a studio apartment.
  • Living your “Best Life” (The Lie of Living Your Best Life (now including cookies))?
  • Realizing that your strategy of “delaying gratification is hard and only pays off later, while eating Cheetosâ„¢ always pays off now” has resulted in you catching Cheeto® lungâ„¢ and weighing as much as a Buick©?

CHEETOS

You can tell a college student:  they’re looking for breakfast wine that pairs well with Cheetos®.

But I am here to announce an amazing idea:  accountability is freedom.

The thing I normally see is that people run from accountability.  They don’t want to be judged by what they did.  They don’t want to sign the bottom line.

But seeking accountability is really freedom.

Why is it freedom?  Being accountable is being in charge of your own life.  Too many people seek to run away from accountability, but deep down, they know that fleeing accountability is weakness.  The reality is that you are in charge of your own life, just like Darth Vader® was accountable for not one but two Death Stars™.

If, like me, you’re carrying a few too many pounds?  PEBCAP – the Problem Exists Between Chair And Plate.  The alternative is that you make yourself a victim of some vague conspiracy between biology and high fructose corn syrup.  You take the conspiracy route?  You’ve made yourself a victim.

THEORY

When I was working at a convenience store I got the idea that 7-11 was an inside job.

Who likes being around a victim?  Nobody.  People like those who are accountable, and stake out that position.  It’s one of strength.  It’s the path of the virtuous.

But it has to be earned.  And, in my case?

Learned.

When I was going to High School, I often spent time at my long-term girlfriend’s house.  Her family was great.  Her father’s favorite movie was Patton.  General George S. Patton was my personal hero at that time in my life, so let’s just say that he and I got along very well.  When I went over to his place, he treated me like his son.

But one particular night, his daughter backed her car (a Mustang®) into my 1972 green GMC™ pickup.  It sent a long dent up the back end on the driver’s side.  Her father told me to go get an estimate to fix it, and I did.

The estimate was about $700.  My girlfriend wrote me a check from all of the money she’d made working fast food for several years.  I cashed it.  But then I found someone who promised they’d fix it cheaper.  How much cheaper?  Half.

I got the pickup fixed.  It looked better than new.

Great news, $350 buck for the John Wilder fund, right?  I imagined all the things I’d spend it on, since my girlfriend and I had already broken up – probably a car horn that played Judas Priest songs and maybe a car stereo that got FM as well as AM.

VICKS

This truck belongs to my friend, Ben Thunder.  When I borrow it, I’ve Ben Thunder’s truck.

Pa Wilder rained on my parade.

Pa:  “Did your girlfriend pay for you to fix the truck?”

JW:  “Yup.  And I got it fixed for half that.”

Pa:  “So, why does that mean that you’re entitled to that money?”

Dang.

Dang.

Dang.

Pa Wilder had it all figured out.  My ex-girlfriend had made herself accountable for fixing my car when she gave me that check.  My implied promise was that money would go to fixing my truck, not buying a collection of small pewter animals with all of that money that she’d made working at the local chicken restaurant.

So, that put me in the uncomfortable position of having to go to an ex-girlfriend’s house and give her a check for several hundred dollars.  The upside?  That was a good time to ask for my old Alice Cooper® cassette tape back – bonus points for anyone in the comments that figures out which Alice Cooperâ„¢ tape it was.

But even better than getting the Alice Cooper© tape back was in knowing that I’d done the right thing.  I understand now that she had been accountable for fixing my car.  And I was accountable for doing it in the most cost effective way possible.

Did I give her that money back?

Well, as Mosquito would say:  “Somebody did.”

Meaning: Do It Right.

“Bender, it has come to my attention that this company has been paying you to do nothing but loaf around on the couch.” – Futurama

MEANING

I gave The Mrs. a dictionary for our first anniversary.  I wanted to give her something with a meaning.

Imagine you’re between 16 and 24.  You live in a country (Great Britain) that has a robust social safety net.  Your parents are doing okay.  Not millionaires, but doing okay.  The U.K. has a huge safety net if you can’t work, or don’t want to work.  For instance, in London you can have:

  • Council flats (apartments) – in U.S. English: subsidized or (nearly) free housing.
  • Free crisps (potato chips) and biscuits (cookies) delivered by singing Welshmen in chimney sweep attire.
  • Free Dr. Who™ costumes, though they only come in the sizes of “elfin” and “aircraft carrier”.
  • X-Box® games delivered at no cost via the luminiferous information aether (Internet).
  • A majority Pakistani population.
  • Free healthcare, including funds for Cockney coal-miners to blast and carve your teeth into pleasant looking shapes.
  • A zero effort, zero risk life.

At least 1,500 citizens of Great Britain turned their back on this life of shabby luxury to go live in a land without air conditioning, bangers and mash, Top Gear™, and cell phone reception for the opportunity to become bloodthirsty Junior Assistant Jihadis in the ISIS® organization.

Why?

ISIS

I’ve heard that ISIS has a new name.  WASWAS.

At least partially because life had no meaning for them – they weren’t accomplishing anything, and they knew it.  Carl Jung observed this problem in the early twentieth century.  Jung’s observation was made as religious belief was waning in Europe, and as people there were continually centralizing themselves in cities that became larger and larger.  Jung saw that the loss of a belief system that allowed them to have a higher purpose in any setting – large or small, was devastating.

Also, Jung saw that this was coupled with the anonymity and lack of true community of large cities.  To put it bluntly, for 99%+ of people living in a city, the city doesn’t care if you are there.  Your contribution to the whole is diluted to the point of meaninglessness, like the guy in the BMW® factory that installs turn signals.  Jung had ideas as to the result of this situation:

The individual’s feeling of weakness, indeed of non-existence, is compensated by the eruption of hitherto unknown desires for power.  It is the revolt of the powerless, the insatiable greed of the have-nots.

JUNG

Did you hear about Carl’s daughter?  She was a little Jung, too.

In modern society, the numbers of people are huge when compared to the historical setting that mankind has experienced through time.  I wrote a somewhat related post here (Mental Illness, Dunbar’s Number, and the Divine Right of Kings).  Modern people have, at least a bit, developed ways to replace the meaning of religion and the belonging that only occurs in small bands:

  • Sports teams. This allows achievement by proxy.  Your team wins, even though exactly one player out of 50 are from the state the team is in?  You won!  Your quarterback gets traded next year?  He’s dead to you.  Logical?    Effective?  Yes.
  • Video games. Video games are a form of artificial achievement.  You achieve a pre-programmed victory designed to manipulate you into feeling good.  Designers of video games have turned this into a stunning skill, making successive video games more immersive.  And despite this immersion, it doesn’t make kids more violent – I rarely lose a fistfight with a sixth grader.
  • Work hard, do well, feel good.  It’s a simple enough equation.  It’s also one of the most real and most wholesome things on this list.  Especially if you are a mummy – they aren’t evil – they just got a bad wrap.
  • Consumeproduct culture. No, that’s not a typo.  What is a consumeproduct culture?  It’s one that replaces shopping for meaning.  Did you find a new Brad Pitt® flavored toothpaste to buy?  Great!  It shoots endorphins into your brain that make you feel you’ve achieved something.  But it wears off, and you’ve got to find Johnny Depp shaped vitamin C gummis and buy them tomorrow to feel okay.
  • Politics.  Just like sports teams, cheering for your side allows you to feel good when you win, and bad when you lose.  The current Leftward polarization of the Democrats is very tied into this.  How many Leftists does it take to change a lightbulb?  2500 to protest, and none of them working to change anything.
  • Mind altering substances.   Cocaine.  Alcohol.  Marvel® movies.  These allow you to escape just for an hour or two.  Oddly, the common denominator in all of this?  Robert Downey, Jr.

RDJ

I just got back from my heroine dealer.  I got Wonder Woman®, She-Ra™, and Black Widow©.

I’m not saying that these coping mechanisms are evil, or harmful.  Some, like working hard, have huge societal and personal benefits unless you’re working for an evil company.  Others, like politics?  Not so much, especially the Leftist variety.  Again, Carl Jung saw the rise of Leftism in his life and correctly described its rise in these two quotes:

Such people are very likely to gravitate toward collective ideologies, mass movements, and institutions which they view as having the power they as individuals lack.

If the individual, overwhelmed by the sense of his own puniness and impotence should feel that his life has lost its meaning, then he is already on the road to State slavery and, without knowing or wanting it, has become its proselyte.

So, the “British” ISIS-Bois sashayed to Samarra and moseyed to Mosul out of their comfortable council flat life.  They did this because they felt no meaning in Great Britain.  Great Britain was a country that they and their ancestors had no hand in building.  They and their ancestors didn’t really contribute to Great Britain in any significant way.  They knew that they were no more British than I am Martian, and won’t be until their great, great, grandchild is named Nigel and has horrible teeth.

TOOTH

What’s red and bad for your teeth?  A brick.

Therefore, they weren’t assimilated enough to move their search for meaning to Manchester United®, so might as well go and kill some people down in the Middle East.  This is just another example that soccer is an evil game devised by aristocratic European women so that they could play it while their husbands did the dishes.  (Apologies to Mike Judge)

This isn’t just a crisis of the ISIS-Idiots.  This is a crisis that faces mankind in general.  Many of the spiritual, social, and political ills the world faces right now stem directly from the minimization of religion and the urbanization of population.

Big cities are dehumanizing.  Do you know a person on your city council?  Do they know you by name?  Do you have their cell phone number in your cell phone?  Do you have proof that they plagiarized in high school?  Do you know what happened at Uncle Tom’s cabin, and what’s down in the wishing well?  Would they pay attention if you called them on a Tuesday afternoon?

This is the norm in Modern Mayberry.

Does it make sense for any person to live in a city where these things are not true?  Does it make the citizens of Dallas better off to have a city of a million people where their voice is so diluted that they are just one among millions, feeling no control?

LONELY

My doctor says I should take meds for my schizophrenia.  But look who doesn’t get lonely during quarantine – this guy!

Adding to the frustrations is that most decisions are made not at the local level in those massive cities, but at the national level where hiring a stupid person isn’t a mistake, it’s a feature.  In the United States, most regulations that impact people on a day-to-day basis aren’t made in the Modern Mayberry office.

Nope.

Most regulations are made far away in Washington – and not the good Washington where the volcanoes and earthquakes will eventually eliminate all the Leftists.  This results in one-size fits all regulations that meet the needs of the lowest common denominator.  Why does the EPA design wood stoves for use in Alaska?  Can’t the Alaskans be left alone to figure that out?

These rules do more than frustrate individuals.  The confine those that could become great.  Could a company like Apple® be founded today?  I don’t think so they would be crushed by regulations – they would have to remain as an open sauce company.  My next door neighbor, who runs a small farm bank, told me that starting a small bank from scratch today would be nearly impossible.  The small has been eliminated, the middle is discouraged, and only large companies can compete.

The result is that people on all sides are done with the current system.  On the Left, there is a desire for what only could be called a Marxist revolution because the state isn’t powerful enough.  On the Right?  There’s a feeling that the United States became a little too centrally powerful around 1843.

I side with the Right.

CIVILIZ

What civilization had the best tattoos?  The Ink-ans.

We have learned that the solutions from the Left, in the end, provide only death and tyranny.  The “British” people who went to join the jihadis were fans of death and tyranny in their own way.  The rioters of BLM are fans of death and tyranny, as well.  As mentioned many times, that path is the path of destruction.  The Left wants to destroy our civilization, the Right wants to build civilization.

On the Right, I’d suggest leaving the cities.  Outside of the danger we’ve seen recently, like Mars, cities ain’t the kind of place to raise your kids.  Find your Modern Mayberry.  Meet your neighbors.  Build relationships.

Find meaning from something more than an Amazon® shopping cart.

Ohh!  Did you see that Lighting Deal®?

Why The Left Fears The Right, And Why The Right Will Win

“Oh, haven’t you noticed?  We’ve been sharing our culture with you all morning.” – 300

TRUTH

When I was a five or so, my parents had horses.  One of the horses had a foal (baby horse for you city folk), and Pa Wilder brought the foal and the mare (momma horse) into the barn – it was brutally cold, and the barn was much warmer.  They brought me down to see the foal.  It was young and awkward as new horses are.

Inside the stall was a series of closely spaced rails in a square, about four feet by six feet.

I asked, “What’s that for, Pa?”

“Well, when the foal is in here, he’ll find that he can’t walk across the bars.  His hooves won’t quite fit.  That will train him so he won’t do that when he gets older.”

Even at five, I had seen cattle guards and knew cows wouldn’t try to cross them.  But here was a horse.

CATTLE

From Library of Congress.

“Won’t he try to jump over the cattle guard, Pa?”

“Some horses, the smart ones, will figure out and a cattle guard won’t work on them.  But most don’t.  Heck, you can just paint parallel lines on an asphalt road and some horses won’t try to cross them.”

The little training bars were a device, a device to train the horse that he was in a prison made up of parallel bars on the ground.  In that, the horse restricted his own freedom.

In the last post (Money, Power, Politics, and Soros), I discussed the difference between Money and Power.  I actually finished most of the last post before I wrote the conclusion.  Money and Power as described through most of the post were entirely materialistic concepts.  Ending it with just that discussion wasn’t right, since the theme of my writing is often to balance the material with the concepts of spirit and virtue.  We live in a material world, but the reason we live is for a purpose greater than this moment.

Freedom isn’t important to either Money or Power; Freedom is actually the enemy of both Money and Power.  Throughout most of recorded history in the West, when either Money or Power get too out of balance, there is a backlash, and Freedom eventually wins.

It has for thousands of years.

And it will again.  I firmly believe that the destiny of the West is in the hands of those who love Freedom, especially in the United States.

Why?

The Left is utterly afraid of the Right.  Though they put forward a great front – they are shaking.  The American people on the Right compose the largest potential army in the history of the world.

The numbers:

There are at least 400,000,000 guns in private hands in the United States by one estimate.  That seems right.

There are 800,000 or so cops.  Assume they have two guns each.  Heck, assume they have three.  Round up.  Three million guns.  The Military in the United States owns about 4.4 million guns.  Round up.  That’s a total of less than 10 million guns in the hands of the United States government or other governmental authorities.  And that assumes that they stand with the government, which is questionable at best.

Assume only 35% of the American public owns guns, a number I think is very low.  Call it 100,000,000 people.  Assume that those owners skew mostly Right – 80/20?  That’s 80,000,000 on the Right.  Let’s do 80/20 again on those that will not stand for a communist uprising in the United States.  That’s 16,000,000 Americans ready to stand in the breach.  The largest army in the history of the world (so far) were the United States armed forces in 1945:  12,000,000 Americans under arms.

I’ll state it again:  American people on the Right have the potential to compose the largest army in the history of the world.  Period.

People on the Right, men and women, also have more and better training for field conditions.  I’d put The Mrs. up against most people on the Left if it came to a rural setting, because Leftists have no idea that trees are even made of wood, and I doubt that many on the Right will want to make the Stalingrad mistake and get caught in the cities as Leftists consume themselves.  How many people on the Right have their homes on the market to escape from Minneapolis?  From Seattle?  From any of dozens of cities where they know that they no longer belong?

I have no idea.  But they’d be fools to stay.

And even though we have the numbers on our side, there’s more good news.  We don’t even need overwhelming numerical superiority:

  • How many apostles peacefully changed the religion of Europe?
  • How many Spartans defended all of Western Civilization at Thermopylae?

“But John,” you say, “most all of the people in your examples died for their cause.”  Yes, they did.  And we remember them for that, because they changed the world.  Thousands of years before Robert Heinlein said it, they knew the truth of his quote:  “You can have peace.  Or you can have freedom.  Don’t ever count on having both at once.”

Besides, everyone is going to die.  Is it better to be a Leonidas or a St. Peter?

Obviously, it is.

Don’t be like Ephialtes (LINK).

We outgun the Left.  We have Truth, capital T, on our side.  The other day Vox Day had this inspiring clip at his blog (LINK).

It was a good clip, and one I’d forgotten.  So we watched the movie again tonight – it’s one that could not be made by Hollywood® today.  That clip also makes the point I tried to make earlier much more eloquently than I ever could.

The Black Riots Lives Matter riots are demoralizing to people of good character.  This is intentional.  The riots are meant to make you feel alone.  The riots are meant to make you feel that the Right has already lost.

The Right has not lost.

How did the Modern Sporting Lawyer make you feel?

STLOU

That’s why he and his wife are condemned.  That’s why they have vowed to cancel him, to make an example of them, to find a way to charge them with crime.  They are the opposite of demoralization.

The Modern Sporting Lawyer and his wife drive the Left crazy.  Here, their desire to destroy as a senseless mob was turned back by only two people.

Can you imagine if the Right was united?  I can.

The corollary is obvious:  quit fighting each other in the right.  Stop.  People don’t believe in your exact brand?

You can’t stand Libertarians?  You can’t stand Lutherans? Baptists? Catholics? Vox Day?  That atheist friend that doesn’t mind Christianity but still believes in freedom?  The idea to fix our situation isn’t exactly yours?

Too bad.

We are in the same foxhole.  Stop (metaphorically) shooting each other.  Now.  If you’re not with us, you’re against us.  And if you’re fighting us, you’re against us.

How do you know if you’re with us?

  • We like building statues, not tearing them down.
  • We like building civilization, not tearing it apart.
  • We like the reason of facts and truth, not the politically correct statement of the moment.
  • We like justice based on law, not the social justice of the mob or judges that twist “shall not” into “sometimes.”
  • We like a culture of honor, not a culture of victimhood due to the self-imposed prison.

And that is the difference.  The Left is bitter.  The Left is seething.  The Left is angry.

Why?  Because, just like the foal with the cattle guard, they’ve made themselves prisoners.  They’ve forgotten that becoming a prisoner might not be a choice for a horse, but it is for a person.  But for the Left, that prison mentality is preferred.

The prison mentality is the chosen mentality of the Left.  They see themselves as weak.  Since they see themselves as weak, there is no choice but to hate themselves for that weakness.  But outwardly, the Left rationalizes that weakness as being, somehow, good.  They have to, because that’s all that stands between them and the unending self-hate.  The Left raises an “anything goes” sexuality and sensuality to the highest plane because they are rooted in the Material, and cannot understand the Spiritual, the Transcendent.

The Right rejects that.  All of it.

Sex isn’t a virtue, chastity is a virtue.  Sex isn’t evil, but making it the focus of your life is no different than any other addiction – it is a vice.  But which of those does the Left celebrate?  Inside, they know that it’s wrong, and that also fills them with self-hate.

Because of that hate, and seek to make the Right weak like them.  How?  By demoralizing the Right, by taking virtues and attacking them while publicly celebrating things we use to call sin.  By coming up with never ending list of impossible demands and nonsensical redefinitions of the English language on an ever more frequent basis.  Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has recently been excommunicated from the Left for being brazen enough to indicate that women might be, well, women.

ROWLING

The Right has built Western Civilization, and built it with a compassion for the weak.  That makes the Left hate the Right even more.  They seek to make us doubt our morals and virtue:  everyone is racist, every historical figure is fatally flawed.  That is justification enough in the minds of the Left to tear down everything that has made their prosperity and wealth transfer possible.  The Left makes no real art, just caricatures of the genius that has gone before, photographs of Christ soaking in urine.  The Left is a parasite that, failing to create, destroys.

But those games won’t work anymore.  The Right is strong.  The Right is virtuous.  The Left seeks to build nothing because that is the province of the Right.  And to the Left, those who are strong and build statues to the virtues of flawed men are evil.

Was Columbus perfect?  No.  Did he open up a New World?  Yes.  How many people in Mexico City would prefer to revert to the charnel house of the Aztecs?  Some, but every hand that goes up will belong to a member of the Left.

The Right is not evil.  We hold the light of Freedom, of civilization, of the future of mankind in our hands.  Why?  Because they could never build it.  The Left seeks to delegitimize our moral achievement, because they feel small and envious next to those that compete and create.

Remember, the Soviets never looked stronger than they did immediately before they collapsed.

I don’t think we will win.

I know we will win.  We are the foals that recognize the painted lines on the asphalt for the lie that they are.  We are the horses that realize that they have the strength to jump over the cattle guard that we used to think was our prison.

PAINT

From Library of Congress.

I feel sorry for those who stand against the Right when we find our backs are to the wall.  We have created the most powerful and free and prosperous culture in history.  The Right doesn’t know its own strength.  But it will learn, and the Left is afraid.

We will win.  Maybe not this year.  Maybe not next year.  Maybe not even in the next decade.  And the future won’t look like the past – that past is what led us to this crisis.  We have the opportunity to remake our civilization, to remake America and to make it better.

And we will make it better.

And we will win.

We always have.

What is your profession?

I rarely ask people to share these posts, but if you have people you know are feeling down – please do.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: A Year Down The Road

Count de Monet: “It is said that the people are revolting.”
King Louis XVI: “You said it! They stink on ice.”
–History of the World, Part I

CLOCK

When I copy in these big clocks into my posts, it’s a huge paste of time.

  1. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology. Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
  2. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  3. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  4. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  5. Open War.

We are at step 9. Step 9. is, of course, two minutes to midnight. I didn’t move to step 9. last month because last month, violence was just happening. This month? Violence is being commonly justified by local and state authorities. When protesters a mob tore down a gate to access private property in St. Louis, which set the stage. When the Modern Sporting Lawyer™ and his wife pulled out firearms to protect themselves, the sane world cheered.

MSL

Yes, I recycled this one. Couldn’t resist.

That’s why a District Attorney vowed to find something, anything to charge this couple with. The one thing the mob cannot stand is decent, armed people standing up to the mob. The politicians have made the mob and know that it must be fed.

The fact that CHAZ/CHOP was allowed to exist, with the rampant lawlessness of the mob in charge for weeks was another sign. We are very, very close to open warfare.

I stole the clock metaphor from the (Leftist) Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists©. It’s a good metaphor, because it creates an immediacy. And I can and will go backwards if events justify it, though at this point it seems like no one wants to go backwards.

In this issue: Front Matter – A Year Down The Road – Violence and Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Links

Welcome to Issue 12 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 post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30 Eastern.

A Year Down The Road

I started the Weather Reports a little over a year ago because I could see the changes coming faster and faster. I’ve been concerned about the economy since I read The Fourth Turning (The Economy, The Fourth Turning, Kondratieff, and You.) back around the year 2000. When you look at all of the trends – social, economic, political – I could see trouble on the horizon. If you want some in-depth thought on how The Fourth Turning is progressing, Jim over at The Burning Platform (LINK) is your man.

The 2007 housing price collapse wasn’t a surprise to me. When I bought my house, I was (fortunately) in the position to negotiate with my employer that they’d cover any loss on sale if I moved for them. As house prices were going up, up, up . . . they agreed. And why not? It wouldn’t cost them a dime.

It did. My house dropped 20% in price between when I bought it and when it finally sold two years after I moved out. I don’t give myself genius points for this, but when they offered me a loan that was nearly ten times my salary? With no income verification?

Yikes.

The tensions we face aren’t going away anytime soon, in fact they’re not anywhere near their peak. Those same social, economic, and political factors have gotten worse, not better in the last 20 years.

AUGUST

Is anything out of the question?

Will one more year down the road have as much change as we have seen in the last year?

Why wouldn’t it?

Are you ready for that?

Violence and Censorship Update

In the previous posts, it has been either violence or censorship that’s shown up in a month. This month? We get both. I’ll start with censorship.

What’s out? Statues. Toppling statues is censorship – censorship of the past. George Orwell described it well in his book, 1984:

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute.”

No bit of American history is safe, from George Washington to Thomas Jefferson to Teddy Roosevelt to “American Pioneers”, Spanish explorers, and black abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Yup. All have to go. And not by vote, not by decision, but by the raw power of the mob.

An episode of the British television classic Fawlty Towers has been removed because of offensive language, and the wind has done gone with Gone With The Wind, which had to be shuttered “temporarily” so that (pulls answer from hat) people won’t be offended.

So, history has been judged to be insufficiently woke.

WOKE

Right now the media is so woke, it’s like they took NoDoze® with coffee and meth to get ready for their Gender Studies final.

YouTube® just concluded its next round of purges. Dozens of large channels with millions of views are now gone. The biggest personality banned was Stefan Molyneaux, philosopher and badthinker. His crime? Not sure. People think it’s because he has had guests (scientists) on in the past that indicate that there might be group differences in cognitive ability. Oops – can’t discuss that idea in 2020.

Among other channels that YouTube® suggested for me and that I listened to from time to time was The Iconoclast, a British guy on the Right who advocated for lower immigration into Great Britain. Now? Gone. Plus? A major newspaper published a story on The Iconoclast’s identity. In 2020, having the wrong views means going without a job.

But that’s not violence, right?

On Reddit®, I heard that over 2000 subreddits were banned. I had been to several of the banned subreddits in the past, and was a bit surprised. One of them, r/consoomers was specifically set up for self-improvement and rejection of globalist commercialism. A little politically incorrect?

Yup.

Now gone. Another dead subreddit is r/The_Donald. It’s crime? Can’t be sure. I think it was too popular, with over a million subscribers. And a group of a million people who like Donald Trump? Triggered!

Reddit™ made rule changes as well. They initially rolled out this new rule for commenting:

“While the rule on hate protects such groups, it does not protect all groups or all forms of identity. For example, the rule does not protect groups of people who are in the majority….”

After someone got on Wikipedia and figured out that, for instance, men are in the minority since there are more women in the world, the rule on protecting people from hate wouldn’t apply to people who were misogynist. Oops. They changed that rule.

But it sure showed what they were intending.

This is the biggest month of censorship against the Right in, well, ever. I expect it to get worse. The idea that Donald Trump could be re-elected is mind poison for the Left. Leftist fetishize politics as a religion – Trump is the ultimate demon. They will do everything and anything so that he isn’t re-elected.

KRAMER

Share this meme and help a Leftist lose sleep so they can stay woke.

I’d spend more time updating you on the violence of the past month, but it’s probably easier to update you on the places that weren’t violent. Modern Mayberry was one. Here, we watch the news and see the world falling apart, and it’s like there’s another country out there.

There is. It’s just waiting to be born.

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.

June has been the worst month so far – economic, violence, and political instability are all in bad shape. It’s so bad that even the illegals don’t want to sneak across the border.

Violence:

VIOLF

Up is more violent. Violence had been down because everyone was stuck in the basement. I predicted that May would be mellow, and then we’d see the uptick in June. I was almost right, and now June has pegged the scale. This measure because the way it’s constructed, doesn’t go higher than 300. Yes, the Y-axis label shows 350, but that’s because I didn’t notice until I’d put the graph together and it’s 3AM.

Political Instability:

POLI

Up is more unstable. Instability is up only slightly, which might seem weird, but the system is still stable overall. I may look into another graph next month to measure political change, because it sure feels like we crossed over into a regime where big political changes are more likely – and this graph was meant more about the overthrow of a sitting president, hence the peak in December. I expect more instability heading into November, and may make some changes to the inputs next month.

Economic:

ECONF

Down indicates worse economic conditions, and it’s down yet again. I’m hoping this is the worst that we’ll see, but I expect a market crash this month (July) or next.

Illegal Aliens:

BORD

Down is good, in theory. This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol. Down, probably related to WuFlu, unemployment, and riots. This is at a five year low for this time of year.

LINKS

LINKS

These are from Ricky this month:

Although the US Government has FINALLY stopped paying for the First Civil War…

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/last-person-receive-civil-war-pension-dies-180975049/

…worries about the Second Civil War continue to build….

https://www.theday.com/article/20200616/OP04/200619472

https://prospect.org/politics/americas-civil-war/

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-avoid-second-american-civil-war-163096

https://floridapolitics.com/archives/345640-darren-aquino-says-its-time-to-pick-a-side-in-coming-civil-war

https://www.thetrace.org/2020/07/gun-background-checks-june-record/

https://www.thetrace.org/2020/06/boogaloo-gun-ammunition-marketing-facebook-instagram/

…which many think can be stopped just by not talking about it…

https://www.omaha.com/opinion/clarence-page-the-current-civil-war-is-fought-on-cultural-territory/article_1661faef-ef9d-5622-88d6-d3308d9fbb88.html

https://www.ocregister.com/2020/06/05/lets-knock-off-the-blithe-talk-of-a-coming-civil-war/

https://goducks.com/news/2020/6/26/general-uo-osu-series-no-longer-to-reference-civil-war.aspx

MSM says Antifa is not a national problem….

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/google-top-stories-featured-false-news-rumored-antifa-civil-war

https://prospect.org/civil-rights/antifa-all-around-trump-media-fox-news-fear-protests/

https://time.com/5008829/antifa-november-4-rumors/

…it’s the Boogaloo Bois that are the threat…

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/style/boogaloo-hawaiian-shirt.html

https://theintercept.com/2020/06/10/boogaloo-boys-george-floyd-protests/

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/boogaloo-movement-recent-violent-attacks/story?id=71295536

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/03/us/boogaloo-extremist-protests-invs/index.html

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2020/06/04/armed-white-men-milwaukee-protests-could-far-right-boogaloo/3147128001/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/06/19/what-is-boogaloo-movement/3204899001/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sethcohen/2020/06/16/civil-war-20-the-boogaloo-movement-is-a-wake-up-call-for-america/#3d9f1cb071ab

https://www.voanews.com/usa/race-america/boogaloo-boys-aim-provoke-2nd-us-civil-war

…but Facebook will save us….

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53244339

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-instagram-profit-boogaloo-ads

https://www.inventiva.co.in/stories/priyadharshini/facebooks-boogaloo-ban-is-it-too-late/

…meanwhile, Small Town America simmers….

https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/07/01/three-groups-plan-gather/

https://www.gazettenet.com/Sanger-letter-34596978

…and maybe there are investing strategies for the Civil War?

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2020-07-03/trading-and-investing-americas-second-civil-war

July 4, 2020

“The time for negotiation is past. The actions of the British army at Lexington and Concord speak plainly enough. If we wish to regain our natural-born rights as Englishmen then we must fight for them.” – John Adams

FEDEX

The FBI arrested my algebra teacher when I was in high school as he was teaching us about graphing. They said they were sure she was plotting something.

Boston, Massachusetts: 122 killed, 211 wounded in a daybreak raid by troops sent to confiscate privately owned weapons and ammunition. “Patriots” claim government troops fired first.

It has been reported that at dawn a group of self-styled “Patriots” engaged a heavily armed troops sent to confiscate guns and ammunition. These “Patriots” though initially outnumbered, stood by the side of the road, fully armed with modern assault weapons at the ready. The “Patriot” leader at the site, John Parker, claims to have been only standing there with the other “Patriots”. It has reported that Parker said, “Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon. But if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”

According to Parker, the soldiers ordered the “Patriots” to leave, and he ordered his men to “disburse and go home,” but “the soldiers were yelling,” and there was confusion. There was a shot, fired, but both the “Patriots” and the spokesman for the troops claim the other side fired the first shot. Badly outnumbered at first, the “Patriots” were reinforced by the local members of their radical libertarian movement as the firefight wore on. House-to-house fighting was reported.

Sources to this blog have indicated that the “Patriots” had been tipped off to the troop movements and were aware the gun confiscation was coming. The troops were forced to withdraw under fire, although rescue from a larger detachment of troops from Boston was required for their safe evacuation.

REVERE

Why did Paul Revere ride a horse on his midnight ride? Well, have you ever tried carrying one?

Although no weapons were found at either Lexington or Concord, authorities have indicated that persons of interest in this case are: Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock. His Royal Majesty King George III had no comment, but Brigadier General Lord Percy, had this to say:

During the whole affair the Rebels attacked us in a very scattered, irregular manner, but with perseverance & resolution, nor did they ever dare to form into any regular body. Indeed, they knew too well what was proper, to do so. Whoever looks upon them as an irregular mob, will find himself much mistaken. They have men amongst them who know very well what they are about, having been employed as Rangers against the Indians & Canadians, & this country being much covered with wood, and hilly, is very advantageous for their method of fighting.

PARKER

This is a statue of Captain John Parker, Patriot leader who led the Militia at the battle of Lexington. He died five months after the battle, of tuberculosis. Since you don’t know what I look like, you can assume I look exactly like a bald version of this.

A local lawyer, John Adams, viewed the battlefield the next day, “The die was cast. The Rubicon crossed.” Pressed by this blog for an explanation of these cryptic comments, he referred us to our previous post (American Caesar: Coming Soon To A Country Near You?).

The events listed above happened 245 years ago, except John Adams being snarky to me, yet somehow the concepts behind them are fresh in American life in 2020. The battles of Lexington and Concord, though small by today’s standards, produced the “shot heard ‘round the world” as the American Dream and American Identity were formed.

Lifted straight from Wikipedia, here’s a story from the battle that made me chuckle:

Against the advice of his Master of Ordnance, Percy had left Boston without spare ammunition for his men or for the two artillery pieces they brought with them, thinking the extra wagons would slow him down. Each man in Percy’s brigade had only 36 rounds, and each artillery piece was supplied with only a few rounds carried in side-boxes. After Percy had left the city, Gage directed two ammunition wagons guarded by one officer and thirteen men to follow. This convoy was intercepted by a small party of older, veteran militiamen still on the “alarm list,” who could not join their militia companies because they were well over 60 years of age. These men rose up in ambush and demanded the surrender of the wagons, but the regulars ignored them and drove their horses on. The old men opened fire, shot the lead horses, killed two sergeants, and wounded the officer. The British survivors ran, and six of them threw their weapons into a pond before they surrendered.

OLDGUY

This soldier was old enough to experience both mustard gas and pepper spray. He’s well seasoned.

I’ve long thought that our new, modern form of Civil War will feature far more old folks than the past ones. Unlike the Civil War 1.0, Civil War 2.0 will be fought more like the Revolutionary War, with armed Militia on both sides. The little story above is (for me) confirmation that in America, being over 60 doesn’t mean “out of the fight.”

But this is about the Revolution, and I’ll write more about Civil War for Monday. The Battle of Lexington and Concord took place on April 19, 1775, and it wasn’t until over a year of fighting skirmishes that the Declaration of Independence was drafted.

Saying and doing are different. Sure, in 1776 we said we were independent and gave a list of reasons, but it took years of war to make it so. The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first steps in making it so, and setting the pattern for a nation that has spread more freedom and prosperity than any nation in the history of the world except for Great Britain.

What will be required to keep it free?

Time will tell.

The Amazing, Collapsing, Dehydrated Economy! Just Add Water!

“Whenever Corey and Trevor go out with Ricky and Julian, what happens? They come home crying.  Dehydrated.  Mysterious wounds.  They won’t tell me what happened because they’re scared to death of those guys.” – Trailer Park Boys

DEHI

And people say I have a dry sense of humor.

I remember hearing about dehydrated water as a kid – probably the first time was a joke from my science teacher in 7th grade.  He also told us (I’m not making this up) drinking stories.  He taught us that if you go out drinking when you have just donated blood, you get drunker faster.  Who says that middle school science doesn’t teach important life lessons?

But the idea of dehydrated water as a product still got filed away somewhere in the six million neurons I have that are dedicated to 7th grade science.  It’s filed somewhere between “don’t stare at the Sun directly through the telescope again Wilder” and “mercuric oxide might look like cinnamon, but it’s not as tasty.”  And dehydrated water popped into my mind as I was preparing to write this post today.

Why?

The economy of the United States is dehydrated water at this point.  The unemployment rate from Shadow Stats® is somewhere around 35%.  Even the Department of Labor thinks the number of people that are unemployed is somewhere north of 20%.  Heck, I heard a guy was upset about losing his job at McDonalds™ even though he worked for a clown.

BURKA

The head of Old McDonalds® Farm is the CIEIO.

As I first predicted when the WuFlu was just coming over the horizon and the first lockdown hit, this is devastating to the economy.  The difference between 2% growth year over year and -2% growth is enough to cause Washington D.C. to be as uncomfortable as a Joe Biden voter when Joe starts talking about how he thinks that JFK has the plan to save us from the Spanish flu.

I was not surprised by the quick action money shower from the .GOV folks.  What did surprise me is that they used the occasion to juice the economy also by giving money to working people rather than just bailing out banks.  Many people on unemployment are actually making more money on unemployment than they made when working, thanks to the extra $600 a week the .GOV folks are adding to their unemployment insurance check.  Some could be making up to $50,000 a year.  For not working.  But Congress makes $174,000 a year for not working, so there’s still room for career growth!

But the .GOV isn’t just juicing the average unemployed worker.  As noted in a previous post, the Federal Reserve Bank™ is engaged in “plunge protection” where money is strategically pumped into the stock market to keep it from crashing.  That’s generally accepted.  But now?  The Federal Reserve© has been, for the first time in history, buying corporate bonds.

Bonds are really just loans.  A company, say, Apple® decides it wants have more slave labor camps factories built in China.  So, it calls up the Chinese partner, and says that it will pay.  But since the cushions in Steve Jobs’ couch have been raided for quarters already, they decide to borrow money.  You or I would have to go ask someone to borrow money from them.  But Apple™ sells their debt in the form of bonds, or promises to pay the borrowed money back, plus interest.

DYE

When James Bond was offered a sandwich, he had a choice of ham or turkey.  Of course he chose bacon, not bird.

Normally, Apple© would sell those bonds to places like pension funds and 401k’s.  But in 2020, the Federal Reserve™ buys them.  Yes.  One of the most profitable companies in the world gets its debt purchased by the Fed®.

Why?

The stock market needs to be propped up, and so does the bond market.  And after hundreds of millions of loan payments haven’t been made.  Which of those loans are good?  Where is the cash to pay the lender coming from?  No one knows.  No one wants to take a risk.  Money is like me on a vacation day, it just sits there.

Markets are freezing up because the money isn’t moving, because the economy is freezing up.  What the Fed® is doing is artificially injecting money into the market because the market has ceased to work.  It’s like my can of dehydrated water – there’s really nothing in it.  The joke is that you can add a gallon of water to the contents of the dehydrated water can to make a gallon of water.

The Fed® is adding billions of dollars to an empty economy and pretending that nothing’s wrong, that they didn’t just make an economy out of nothing.  “Hey, instant economy.  Just add money.”

KOBE

Planes are different than an economy.  Planes only crash once.

My prediction is that the extra $600 a week won’t go away, unless Congress wants the economy to crater even more before the election in November.  Why?  Since giving away money to people and companies that haven’t earned it is literally the thing Congress loves most in the whole world, I think they will.  And I think they’ll ultimately manage to extend it.  Probably for at least 100 weeks.

We’ve borrowed more in the first quarter than we spent in 2011.  What’s a few more zeros on the national deficit?

But when I wrote that first post about the crash, I was (more or less) assuming we’d be done with the economic mess associated with COVID-Forever no later than July.  I thought that people would, as much as possible, not go licking all the doorknobs that they see and the disease would run out of people to infect.  Yay, normal summer.  And given that, I still predicted at least five years to recover, but more likely a decade.

Nope.  States are re-locking down right now.  States that never experienced the devastating deaths caused by the nursing-home stuffing Governor Cuomo set up in New York are seeing cases rise.

>Uh-oh.jpg

When large segments of the economy simply disappear, you can’t simply replace them with money.  In the end, money has real purposes in the economy:

  • Money provides incentives for good behavior, like starting successful companies and saving. Blowing it all on Three Stooges® videos from Amazon™ is probably not the best investment strategy I ever had.
  • Money provides an allocation of resources throughout the economy without central planning – it’s a way to allocate the productive energy of the economy without a team of Central Politbureau Commissars picking and choosing winners and losers. Congress hates  How can you get votes if you don’t mismanage the economy?
  • Money provides ways for people to trade for “stuff” without bartering. I could trade your (for example) a vast quantity of Beanie Babies® for a pickup truck.  But then you’d be stuck with all of those Beanie Babies™ and have to trade them for the goat milk and pantyhose that you really need.  Unless you can milk Beanie Babies© and then use their skins for leggings?

BEANIE

She was upset when the prices crashed.  I tried to tell her she’s not worthless – her kidneys are worth a lot on the black market.

But money isn’t the economy – money only has value if everyone believe in it.  You can’t just give everyone money and expect that good things will happen.  At some point, people need to make things.  And people need to believe that money has value.

You can’t grow plants with Brawndo©, you can’t fight crime with a macaroni duck, and you can’t rehydrate an economy with money.

But the Fed© is trying to do that.  Not grow plants with Brawndo®.  But make an economy work by sprinkling money on it.

The next phase of our economic crash, however, is default.  Unless the Fed© keeps rehydrating, eventually people will stop paying back money – it will be a Cashpocalypse – borrowers won’t have money, and lenders won’t get paid.  But that’s okay, we can simply have the Fed™ just shower the money onto both of them?

CARGO

The French, of course, had to jump on the Cargo Cult bandwagon, so they called it “Special Cargo Cult”, or S-Cargo for short.

In the 1940s, massive amounts of men and material flowed into the South Pacific so that we could beat the Japanese back from Australia so it could be handed over to the Chinese in the 21st century.  Several cults known collectively as “Cargo Cults” formed.  One speaks about their deity, John Frum, or, as I prefer to think of it, John From Wilder’s house.  (Seriously, they think the name of John Frum came from “John from America”.)

The idea behind these Cargo Cults was that if the natives built symbolic airstrips and symbolic airplanes out of bamboo (or whatever they had) then the flow of cargo that the American and British armed forces brought in would resume.  Then?  Perfect prosperity.  Hurray!

The Fed™ has become infected with the idea that the economy can be summoned.  That’s the definition of a Cargo Cult.

Sadly, I have bad news.  It won’t work.  It can’t work.

You can’t make an economy by rehydrating it with money.  But you can regress an economy.  And you can destroy the belief in the money you’re flooding the system with.

Just because it’s gone exactly the way I’ve thought it would and told you it would, don’t mind me.  In all seriousness, I could be wrong.

But I could be right.  What then?

Have some water on hand?

The Day America Died?

“1996 is the past too, listen to me!” – 12 Monkeys

CHUCK

Chuck Norris was dropped twice as a child:  once on Hiroshima, once on Nagasaki.

Pugsley and I were off driving to an event today.  As we motored down the road, he said, “Hey, what were the 1990’s like?  I was on YouTube® and saw some commercials from then.”

I paused.  Since he was born after the 1990s, it was absolutely foreign to him, except as he had seen in media and popular culture.  But how to describe it?  I mean, the Dole/Kemp ’96 website is still up (LINK), which is convenient, since Bob is now 96.  But the 1990s was so much more than that.

“Well, we had won the Cold War.  The 1970’s were about the economic wreckage from the oil shocks and inflation from removing gold backing to the dollar.  The 1980’s were the last stage in the Cold War – the idea of nuclear war being 45 minutes away from ending civilization was common.”

I skipped mentioning that we’d come within a single person’s decision to launch nuclear weapons and start a world war more than once.  I didn’t want to put him in the mindset of a total war.  Heck, let him have his own ex-wife.

“The 1990s saw the end of the Cold War when the Soviet economy collapsed.  We had, to a certain extent, defined ourselves by our enemy.  In some sense, American mean not a Soviet communist.  But then, we won.  It was all over.”

GORBY

Joe Biden knows in his heart that he is the only one who can defeat Ronald Reagan this November.

I paused, thinking about the old Mark Twain line that most people can’t tell a good thing from a bad thing, but kept going.

“We then looked around and wondered who we were, since there weren’t any Soviet communists to not-be.  I think the answer we came up with was that we were shoppers.  The purpose of America was to be the site of endless suburbs surrounding cool shopping malls.  Heck, it’s probably not a coincidence that the Mall of America® opened in 1992.”

Looking back, I am in awe of how innocent we were, how free of strife we were – the First Gulf War took months to prepare for, but only had about 96 hours of actual ground combat with 156 Americans killed in battle.  To put that in perspective, 65 troops died in the Gulf from accidents during that same time.  The first Gulf War was about as lopsided as a velociraptor in a room full of kittens.

“It was unique, because the United States was sitting alone as a superpower both economically and militarily.  The country was prosperous.  We were even closer to a balanced budget than we ever have been since Andrew Jackson was president.  I think Americans began to miss the struggle.  Rock music went from a joyous celebration of freedom and beer and girls in bikinis and Cherry Pie to complaints about teenage angst.”

I didn’t jump into discussions of the Fourth Turning (The Economy, The Fourth Turning, Kondratieff, and You.).

FUN

Kurt Cobain has now been drug-free for 26 years!

“Somewhere in there, we had a chance to look deep inside ourselves to find our soul as a nation.  Religion seemed hard, so we decided the answer was Twizzlers®.”

What I didn’t say was that was the beginning of tearing the nation apart.  By the time George W. Bush beat Al Gore in an election that was so close it went to court, the Left felt that they had the presidency stolen from them.  That, along with the Clinton Impeachment, rubbed the Left raw so by 2000 they were madder than Dick Cheney on a dove hunt.

I suppose that the 1990s were also the last stage of the innocence in America, and the slide into terminal decline began here.  Sure, we’d already gone from “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” in the 1960s to “I Wanna **** You Like An Animal” in the 1990s, but in 1996 an actual American President, a Democrat, thought that marriage was something for a man and a woman to do.

RECORDED

The Mrs. thinks I’m crazy, forgetting she’s the one that married me.

Wild stock swings, a housing crisis, and wars that kept tens of thousands of American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq for more than a decade followed, and the great rift I have written about in numerous posts (Civil War, Neat Graphs, and Carrie Fisher’s Leg) widened.

But all of that is prelude to the Day America Died:  May 28, 2020.  Sure, the time of death is up for debate.  And everything looks the same, taxes will be due next month, and the ammunition and bagel shop still accepts United States Federal Reserve currency.

Inertia is like that.  The old forms persist, even after the reason that they were invented disappeared.  Even after the Greeks took over Egypt, they still used the term Pharaoh.  The Senate of Rome ceased to be the Senate, but managed to stay in existence until at least 600 A.D., long after the fall of Rome.  I still own a comb.

WALT

Like I said, I still own the comb.  I just can’t part with it.

On May 28, however, the Third Precinct building in Minneapolis was burned down.  The revolution may not be televised, but it certainly is being live streamed.  From there, protests, riots, and looting spread to dozens of cities in the United States, and even across the world.  Certainly, there were peaceful protests as well, but the vision we’ll remember was burning, looting, and destruction of public and private property.

It was and is obvious that the goal of the Left is simple:  they want to burn it all down, every system, so that they can fundamentally transform the country as a whole.  Transform into what?  The hints aren’t even subtle:  the “Green New Deal” combined with a wholesale rewrite of the history and legends that define America and “free” healthcare and money.  The old America, the one that named an airport after John Wayne?  That’s not “who we are.”  Free speech that goes against the narrative of the Left?  Also not “who we are.”

The Right seems to be done, too.  The systems that should remove illegal aliens, don’t.  They Constitution seems to be guided by “emanations and penumbras” that allow the meanings of words to take the exact opposite meaning when used in reality.  For some reason, “sex” as written in 1965 was interpreted to include transgenderism which means the exact opposite of natural sex.  One thing I’m certain of:  in 1965 when they wrote the law, “sex” meant “transgender” to exactly zero lawmakers.

It seems as though the Supreme Court forgot that there is, sitting right near their own building, a whole other building full of people who could easily clear that up:  Congress.  But that seems unlikely, so the Supreme Court can just make up stuff if they want to.  Because of nonsense like that, the Right is also done.

So, I was hopeful the Center hadn’t given up.  I have a good friend who is more libertarian (small “L”) and he and I were chatting the other day.  “They should vote all of them (Congress, President, all of them) out.”  I wasn’t expecting this from him.  But the Center is done, too.   The Left is mad at Trump.  The Right is mad at AOC, and the Center just wants everyone to shut up so they can grill in peace.

GRILL

One time when we were backpacking the fire got away from us in camp.  It was in-tents. 

But belief is really important.  We obey laws, at least in part, because we believe that we’ll be punished if we don’t.  We trade dollars back and forth with each other for stuff because we believe that the dollars are money.  We have a nation because we believe in it.

The math is simple.  As soon as we stop believing that we have a nation, as soon as that faith dies away, we no longer have a nation.  And by my guess, I’d say we lost that faith on May 28.  Are police required for a country?  No.  We lived until 1834 before the first police force that looked like a modern unit was formed.  Before then, it was a hodge-podge of volunteer day and night “watches” that looked for bad guys or danger combined with county sheriffs.  Thing Mayberry, but with a lot more booze.

But law enforcement is required.  If it doesn’t exist, citizens will protect themselves.  The era of the rooftop Korean and the Modern Sporting Lawyer arrives once again.  People will very quickly understand that in the absence of police that violence levels, especially in Leftist areas with restrictive gun laws, will skyrocket.

MSL

The other day I got bitten by a radioactive lawyer – I now have Power of Attorney.

That lack of belief in government is happening now.  Maybe worrying about nuclear war wasn’t so bad after all?

Too Much News? Take A Step Back.

“I’m a reasonable guy, but, I’ve just experienced some very unreasonable things.” – Big Trouble in Little China

ANTIFA

An Antifa member, a communist, and a guy living in his mom’s basement walk into a bar.  He orders a drink.

“That’s it, I’m going to have to stop,” The Mrs. said.

John Wilder:  “Stop what?  I mean, please don’t stop gourmet* night.”

The Mrs.:  “No.  The news.  I’m going to have to stop reading it.  I’m just so mad I can’t see straight.”

I agreed with The Mrs.  I usually do:  she knows where most of the shooting irons are, and I sleep pretty heavy.  The Mrs. had been following the news of our current national situation, which is usual.  But in this case, The Mrs. had been getting pretty mad.

It was fairly obvious.  The Mrs. often talked politics with me when I got home, but this week it was different.  Her voice was louder, and she was visibly angry.  This wasn’t like her at all, unless I had forgotten to install that hardwood flooring I’d promised to put in.  Five years ago.

“If it bleeds, it leads” was first used in 1989 to describe the practice in journalism of focusing on the most horrific story possible.  Even though the phrase was new in 1989, the practice wasn’t:  there’s a reason that we got into a war with Spain, and it didn’t have a lot to do with the U.S.S. Maine.

SPAIN

Really, this was like picking on that one kid whose parents dressed him in a collared shirt and tie for school. 

But back in 1989, news was different and less available:  there was the evening news, newspapers, for the first five minutes on the top and bottom of the hour on the radio, and monthly magazines.  Sure, if you had CNN®, you could get a constant stream of news.

In practice most people didn’t hook into the news.  They spent time living their lives.  You’d think that would make it easier for tyranny to take root.  Not so.  But more on that later.

Back in 1989 the news simply occupied a much smaller place in public consciousness.  I think that 9/11 was what changed Americans (I can’t speak to other countries) for good, and addicted us to a continuous stream of atrocity and terror, as we all waited for the next event that would transform our lives.

WWN

I still miss Weekly World News.  Wonder what ever happened to batboy?

Now news is created and brought into our lives constantly.  We’re never more than a click away from news.  And news is crafted to trigger our brains.  Which parts?  Not the parts that glow or fizz or sparkle or whatever it is a brain does when we’re happy.  No, the news is crafted to stimulate an easier and more powerful set of emotions:  rage and fear.

The news is extreme.  And since we now have news that casts a net across the world, you can see:

  • Time-tested principles and values tossed in a heap weekly,
  • New divisions in society delivered daily,
  • And new outrages, fed straight to your smartphone hourly.

It seems like too much.  And it is.  Tyranny seems to love this situation.  The important portions of news are buried in the static.  When we watched half an hour of news, we had to focus on the important parts.  Certainly it was easier to bury things from the American public back when news was less a part of our immediate lives, but now the news is a minute-by-minute, hour-by-hour source of distraction, how often are we so inundated we can’t sort the out the important threads from the millions of false leads?

We don’t have to live like this.

CAT

Wait until he reads what the mice are up to.

Scott Adams, Dilbert® cartoonist mentioned in one of his articles that he didn’t watch scary or sad movies.  He avoided them because he didn’t want to watch things that made him unhappy.  It wasn’t a casual choice for him – it was a rule.

Mr. Adams probably wouldn’t do so well in our house, since we consider Predator to be kid friendly.  Heck, when Pugsley (then about 9) saw me field dressing a deer I was worried that he’d be squeamish.  Nope.  Pugsley was ready to put it on the grill.

I think Mr. Adams is probably a bit on the extreme side.  I’m not criticizing, the special sauce on his burger is working out pretty well for him.  You don’t have to remove yourself that far from the reality of the situation.

But like The Mrs., you can step back for a bit, too.

Sure, things are rough in this minute if you watch the news.  You can only control so much, and can’t (at all) control the actions of Leftist big city governments in Seattle or Minneapolis or in dozens of other cities across the country.

PREP

Beer is probably a good start with your preps.  Don’t forget to rotate the stock!

None of this is telling you not to prepare.  You should.  If we’re this far down and you don’t have a Plan B?  Shame on you.  Work on that.  But the news won’t help you prepare for 2021 when the aliens show up.  Shut out the noise, step back, and think.  If you want to prepare by stocking up on food, do that now.  If you want to prepare by stocking up on ammo, do that now.  And if you plan to bug out at friend’s place when things go bad?  You’d better toss him some money now so you’re showing up to your supplies that he’s keeping for you, and not expecting that he has planned for 34 of his closest friends to show up and eat his preps.

For most people reading this, in this moment you have every physical need met.  The troubles you have already conquered are in the rearview mirror.  You’ve done great.  Congratulate yourself.

The troubles you may face aren’t certainties.  There’s no need to fear them now.  Prepare yourself?  Certainly.  But do it cheerfully.  Tomorrow will be a great day.  The Sun has yet to go out of business.

Turn off the news and your cell phone.  Enjoy this day, and prepare for the rough days ahead.  You’re up to the challenge.

*Gourmet Night was inspired by the ABC® television show Hannibal.  Hannibal was a series about Hannibal Lecter, the character from Silence of the Lambs, but portrayed by Danish actor Mads Mikklesen, who does even better than Hopkins with the character.  But the show itself has some wonderfully creepy scenes where Hannibal is cooking a fancy dinner and you have no idea if he’s cooking pigs or people.  Oddly enough, this inspired The Mrs. to cook intricate dishes for dinner like beef Wellington or ribeye with crème sauce.  Hence, gourmet night, which has been a success at our house.

But wherever does The Mrs. get such tender meat?

hannibal