Civil War – Page 21 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

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

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 7^th 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 7^th 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.

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.

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.”

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.

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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?

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?

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 21^st 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 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.”

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.).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Your Economy, Featuring: Romans, Rothschilds, and Rioters

“You have two settings-no decision and bad decision. I wouldn’t let you run a bath without having the Coast Guard and the fire department standing by, but yet here you are running America. You are the worst thing that has happened to this country since food in buckets and maybe slavery!” – Veep

I had made a mistake and bought too many art supplies. That was my excess stencil crisis.

Cui bono. That’s Latin for “who benefits,” and in this case doesn’t have anything to do with the singer for the band U2©, who have been benefiting from everything. Even my GPS is branded by U2™, and it sucks. The streets have no name, and I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

Cui bono.

That quote being in Latin is especially appropriate for today’s post. Marcus Licinius Crassus (115 B.C. – 53 B.C. – they aged backwards then) goes down in history for creating the first fire department that Rome had. At his own expense, he recruited and trained a brigade of 500 men who, at the first sign of a fire, would speed toward the smoke and flames.

Crassus would rush to the fire with them. Once the fire department was on site, Crassus would find the building owner and offer to buy the burning building at an obvious discount. I am not making this up. Obviously, the longer the fire went on, the lower Crassus’ offer would go. Once the property owner had sold, Crassus would give the signal and his fire department would save his newly purchased building.

I’m sure that sometimes the fire got away from him, but most of the time Crassus profited from the deal. It was a fire sale, right?

When I was working as a firefighter, in one building all that was left was the bottom of a shoe – it must have been the sole survivor.

Often, Crassus would then rebuild the building using his army of slave architects and artisans (not making that up, either), and then lease the building back to the original owner. So, Crassus even had a way to get his money back. Crassus was wealthy not only by ancient standards, but by any standards. He’d be worth at least $11 billion in today’s money.

Cui bono? Crassus. I looked for a name I could call Crassus, but it was hard to find one, this being a family-friendly blog. I’ll settle on cullion.

This is an early example of economic plunder. Legal, yes. Honorable? No.

It didn’t stop with Crassus.

I once paid $20 to meet the Prince, but I partied like it was only $19.99.

When you search the Internet for tales of Nathan Rothschild back in 1815, you’ll find a host of stories that from the scholarship of 2020, don’t seem to be supported. But what generally seems to be agreed with (even by the Rothschild Archives – LINK) is that during the Napoleonic Era, Rothschild and his brothers across the European continent had a fairly sophisticated system to transfer news and information to each other.

Information is just like a building fire in Rome: the sooner you catch it, the more it is worth.

What had been vexing everyone in London during June of 1815 was the return of Napoleon from exile and his resumption of power in France. Since Europe had been fighting alongside Napoleon or with Napoleon for nearly 20 years, people in the United Kingdom were scared to death that a victory by Napoleon could lead to another 20 years of war. And just like today, no one wanted to watch a re-run.

Napoleon broke out of exile because he needed more Elba room.

Lord Wellington had been put in charge of a coalition of armies from across Europe, 68,000 total troops. Joined by 50,000 Prussians under Blücher (cue obligatory whinny), Wellington met Bonaparte at the small village of Waterloo. Napoleon wasn’t alone. He had 73,000 French soldiers, and Wellington had left his panzers in his other coat, so the French fought back like they’d have to shower and give up cigarettes if they lost.

Spoiler alert: Napoleon lost, but barely. I think it had to go into at least one overtime, and there were some controversial instant replays.

The story goes that with the Rothschild information network, Nathan was notified about Wellington’s victory before anyone in London. By knowing that, Nathan could make a killing in the stock market. How well did he do? We don’t know. His courier wrote him: “I am informed by Commissary White that you have done well by the early information which you had of the Victory gained at Waterloo.” It is reported (LINK) that the Rothschild fortunes went from £500,000 to £1,000,000 in that year. So probably pretty well, since I assume a £ is a metric $ or something.

Yes, I know that there are other stories about Nathan’s Big Day Out® that are much more exaggerated, but this one does fine in proving my point: the best time to make money is in an uncertain market. Or, as has been attributed to Nathan: “The time to buy is when there’s blood in the streets.” Especially if, like Nathan and Marcus, you can remove the uncertainty and make your bet a sure thing.

I did invest in an Asian/Middle East fusion restaurant called, “Wok Like an Egyptian.”

This went on during Roman times, and it went on during Napoleonic times. Is it going on today?

It certainly is. I was having a conversation with a friend of mine the other week, and he works for a company that was funded by a private equity firm. Per my conversation, they deals that just his company is looking at are in the range of one hundred million to one billion dollars. Sure, that’s a pretty big range. But the kicker was this:

“There are pools of billions of dollars waiting for deals.”

What kind of deals? Deals on great assets in a collapsing economy.

As we look at the wreck that we’re seeing in the economy due to the WuFlu and now the great #BLM (Burning Looting Marxists), what sort of reaction are we seeing? Does it surprise anyone that 269 companies (LINK, H/T to CA at Western Rifle Shooters) are supporting the (actual, really founded by Marxists, look it up) BLM?

Does it surprise anyone that hundreds of millions of dollars are flooding in to BLM and affiliated organizations? And I’m not exaggerating the amount – the fund just for bailing out rioters and looters in Minneapolis was over $90 million dollars. Some people can loot a whole week and not make that much!

The support for BLM could be from one of the following sources, and I suspect that one or more is in play depending on the company donating:

Genuine support for civil rights. Sure, I believe that from companies that import goods made by overseas labor treated more poorly than the Wilder family treats our outdoor cat.
A cynical ploy signaling corporate virtue to get people to buy burgers. Think of it like an advertisement, but instead of featuring the social justice flavor of the week, it’s BLM this week.
Coordinated donations with full knowledge that the money will go toward a Marxist transformation of the United States.
Selected by the CEO’s secretary executive assistant at random.

I never let BLM members into my basement – I don’t want a whine cellar.

Amazon® has really been impacted by COVID-19. I’m betting that every facet of Bezos’ business has been helped, from their online shopping to their web infrastructure to their movie rental business. Coronachan has been good to Jeff. But I don’t blame Bezos for that – I don’t think it was his plan to infect the United States with a virus and convince everyone to stay in the basement for three months and then have seven pages of BLM merch to sell.

Because if he did? That’s some real Bond villain stuff and I’ve got to say, that’s the most anyone has ever done to try to convince me to buy a Prime® subscription.

Cui bono? I mean, besides Bezos?

Someone is going to profit from BLM, even beyond the hundreds of millions of dollars donated recently to it, and even beyond the billions of dollars that will go to purchase assets during the crisis. And it may not be money, or burger sales. It might be measured in raw power, the power to turn a society towards the Marxist goals of the founders of BLM.

But even Crassus knew that once a fire got started, it just might get away from you.

Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals: Now For Use By The Right?

“I have a radical idea. The door swings both ways, we could reverse the polarity flow through the gate.” – Ghostbusters (1984)

I haven’t figured out how to publicly indicate that I’m against protesting.

I was talking with a friend a few weeks ago, and casually mentioned Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals as a playbook that had been used by the Left back when they controlled very few of the country’s power centers. Top Hollywood® stars like John Wayne, Jimmy Stewart, and Frank Sinatra were openly patriotic – it was the norm. Politics is one reason I think Frank Sinatra would hate 2020, and the other would be whenever he started coughing he’d think he had Crooner Virus.

But the Leftist rot had already started long before the 1960s. It started in academia. Sure, that seemed safe. Let the Leftists work quietly where they had little money. It was thought the most important decision made was what the professor’s wife would wear to the faculty dinner and the most important rumors were about that new cannibal professor, Hannibal Lecturer. But once it took root, Leftism spread from the colleges and out into the streets.

Alinsky started his quest to organize in the 1940s in Chicago, and the Chicago Tribune described his legacy this way:

“Rubbing raw the sores of discontent may be jolly good fun for him, but we are unable to regard it as a contribution to social betterment. The country has enough problems of the insoluble sort as things are without working up new ones for no discernible purpose except Alinsky’s amusement.”

The Tribune was one of the few papers that were negative about Alinsky. By the time Rules for Radicals was published in 1971, the editorial departments of most newspapers had been taken over by Leftists that those “harmless” college professors had indoctrinated. Most newspapers applauded Alinsky by 1972 when they reviewed his book.

Professor Karen wants you to think for yourself, but will grade you based on her politics.

As I’ve documented in previous posts (some that include Stormtrooper® bikini shots and pictures of a lot of slave Princess Leia impersonators) You Are The Resistance, Plus? Lots of Star Wars Bikinis and American Civil War: Four Fates, From Freedom to Soviet Tyranny, the Left has taken control of the following sectors of life, not only in the United States, but also in most of the Western world:

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

Professor Warren now explains why free speech doesn’t apply to you.

One of the methods the Left used to obtain power was the vigorous application of Alinsky’s Rules. Here they are – along with my annotations:

“Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.” – Most of the Leftist power is based on fear – fear of what they might do. That’s the reason the takeover of the media was so important to them – they use it to divide and minimize people on the Right so feel that they are as alone as a Joe Biden basement thought.
“Never go outside the expertise of your people.” – Which may explain the rioting and violence of the Left in the riots today. They’re not good at building things, but they sure can hit a plate glass window with a brick from thirty yards.
“Whenever possible go outside the expertise of the enemy.” – The idea of the riots is to go beyond every expertise. It has been decades since a president had to deal with riots across the country, and even then, they weren’t all at the same time.
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” – For instance, Christians must be made to live up to Christian principles – that’s the example Alinsky himself used.
“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” – Saturday Night Live® used to make fun of politicians on the Right and Late night comedians used to make fun of the Right and Left. Now? Only the Right is mocked, and (for reasons I’ve explained before Why The Left Can’t Meme) even then, poorly.
“A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” – Whatever it is, it should give them emotional payoff – the people crying at the Trump protests early on were an example – they enjoyed feeling the pain and rage. And as we’ve learned in 2020, who doesn’t love riots?
“A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” – Sit ins? That’s so 1960’s. Burning down Wendy’s®? That’ll teach them to, um, exist.
“Keep the pressure on.” – Ideally, it should be one event followed by another – don’t give your target a chance to think straight
“The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” – Alinsky threatened to do things – all of the time. The word “threat” appears 38 times in Rules for Radicals. Often he would leak the threat of a plan, and never even have to do it as the opposition gave in to the threat alone.
“The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.” – Back to point 8 – think of things that can be kept up for a long, long time. Riots in the spring and summer nights can go on for months. In December in Minnesota? Not so much.
“If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.” – A great example of this is how BLM has kept the narrative moving about police violence against blacks, when the truth is, statistically, that blacks are shot less often than their level of police involvement would indicate, and whites are shot more But push it long enough?
“The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” – The Left no longer does this – rather than have a constructive alternative, they want things like “removal of the systems of white supremacy” and “defunding of the police.”
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” – Nixon, Reagan, Bush I and Bush II and now Trump. It’s hilarious that they thought W. was the anti-Christ, and Romney was the Devil when they are now nearly saints of the Left.

Sometimes, you can hear the “Reeeeee” from here . . . .

But can the Right use the same playbook? Absolutely. And they are.

“Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.” – The Left is really afraid of the Right, and fear the most the Right creating a coalition in the same way the Left has. They will do anything to stop that. Sadly, we on the Right seem to be very, very picky on who is in the foxhole with us. A heretic on one point? The biggest power the Right has is in joining together.
“Never go outside the expertise of your people.” – Protesting violently isn’t in the Right’s DNA. We have jobs. Rioting isn’t in the Right’s expertise. Planning is. Communicating is. Through years of necessity, we’ve also learned to meet quietly.
“Whenever possible go outside the expertise of the enemy.” – Memes are a good example. The Left ceased to be funny in 2004, and ceased to any sense of humor around 2012, so using memetic warfare is nearly as unfair as playing Twister® with a colorblind super model.
“Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.” – /pol/, the politically incorrect part of 4chan, did exactly that when they posted signs around Seattle telling the homeless that CHAZ would have free food for them. “No borders” and “sharing” were in rules for CHAZ, so, they ran out of food on day two. Plus? It was hilarious – point 5.
“Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” – This, in part, explains why I write some of the things I do. It was particularly satisfying the day I saw one of my memes being made fun of by Leftists on Reddit®. They don’t fight back unless you’re over the target.
“A good tactic is one your people enjoy.” – I love poking fun at the Left, because I know that it bothers them. I enjoy it. Other things I see people on the Right enjoying are planning and organizing and communicating and moving away from California.
“A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.” – Expecting things to go back to “normal” isn’t working for the Right. You can come up with other examples of these – but in large part the playbook needs to be re-written.
“Keep the pressure on.” – The closest that the Right has come to doing this is The Donald himself and his use of Twitter® as a continual agency of chaos. He pokes. He prods. He shakes things up and looks for advantage. He’s had Democrats so tied up in nots they said that Haiti was a paradise.
“The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.” – The Right hasn’t been very good at making threats or even having a cohesive plan.
“The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.” – Again, outside of Trump, there has been little pressure made on the Left, and next to no organized pressure on the mainstream Left. When has the idea of freedom of speech been used against the Left in an organized way on a college campus? This started with academia, and a good solution will leave college departments where the Leftists lurk defunded. Imagine a Grievance Studies professor having to look for a real job because they violated the campus speech code?
“If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside.” – Opposition to illegal immigration is just one issue of the Right that, if it were pushed is a winner. There are others.
“The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.” – What is it that the Right wants? Do we know?
“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” – Groundwork has been made with people like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and the rest of her Leftist group, but the Left is expert at this – Justice Cavanaugh is a textbook study, even though they lost.

But what do we want when we have a victory?

Long term, I’m not sure Alinsky’s rules will be enough for the Right as we wander towards Civil War 2.0, but they’re a start, and they’re certainly fun. As I mentioned above, it has lost institution after institution to the Left, and many of those without even a fight. None of this will be quickly won, and the Right must begin to think in decades, and also look to make common cause with people who aren’t exactly fitting some sort of mental ideal for the perfect person on the Right, since they don’t really exists.

Back to the fun.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: The Tsunami Begins, But You Knew That

“If we can stop him, we shall prevent the collapse of Western Civilization. No pressure.” – Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

I liked the ticking of the clock I got from the pawnshop, but in the end it was a second-hand emotion.

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

In the first issue of the Civil War Weather Report, I put together ten steps to a new civil war. I did not expect that on the one year anniversary of that first report we’d move from step 6 nearly to step 9. Step 9. is, of course, two minutes to midnight.

We are very, very close. I debated internally more than a bit whether we were at an 8. or a 9. this month. I finally decided to stay at an 8., despite multiple jurisdictions doing everything but arming the rioting faction of the protest movement with automatic firearms and bullhorns that make them all sound like Gilbert Gottfried. It is clear we are at least an 8., and you will see in the graphs section that our Wilder Violence Index has reached new highs.

In this issue: Front Matter – You Knew Where This Was Going – Violence and Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Balkans or Caesar Might Be The Best Case Scenario – 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.

You Knew Where This Was Going

The most popular posts on this site have been about the political state of the country. The Civil War Weather Reports aren’t my usual form of post, but have proven to be very popular. I’m sure it’s not just for graphs featuring bikinis. Well, at least not only because of the bikinis.

I think the reason these posts are popular is simple: many people could sense the fragile peak that it seems all of Western Civilization is perched on. Whether it is a conscious review of the surrounding culture or just a feeling in the pit of the stomach when confronted with an outrageous news article, something’s just not right. Society has been changing by increments over the years, but those changes are coming faster and faster and faster.

Claire Wolfe, the groundbreaking and iconic Freedom blogger said it very well at her place last week (LINK):

Each day I think I’ve processed the latest craziness enough to blog something coherent. Useful even. But then new waves of craziness wash over the world. I don’t know what to say. I can’t write good sense against the onslaught of the crazy. I don’t know how civilization is holding together under tsunamis of crazy.

But then, of course civilization isn’t holding together — and I’m not just talking about the one-two punch of totalitarian don’tleaveyourhouseism followed without pause by riotandlootallyouwantism.

Chains of rapid-fire events and chaos like this are not generally the friend of those that love freedom. The Russian Revolution promised:

Peace, through ending World War I,
Food, because Communists are well known to produce excess food,
Land, whereby peasants would get parts of land owned by the wealthy,
Minimum wages,
Maximum working hours,
Running factories by elected worker representatives and
Lots of other promises.

In the end, up to 12,000,000 people (mainly civilians) died in the civil war that followed, and the promises that were made were largely ignored. The Bolsheviks said and promised anything to get a force of disaffected behind them. Not sure if this sounds familiar to AOC fans?

Hey girl, are you the French Revolution? Because I keep imagining you sans-culottes.

I get a sense that the Left today is up to the same trick. They’ve “created” media events and have managed them to get power – political power and power in the street. Some of the Leftists may even be stupid enough to believe that there are magic economic levers that they can move to keep the promises they’re making. In reality, they really don’t care: it’s all about the power.

Lenin’s reintroduction into Russia and subsequent funding from foreign sources bring George Soros to mind. Soros continually funds groups in the United States that are directly opposed to actual freedom. The protesters and their associated rioters have a structure that has been funded and provisioned with everything from water and medical supplies to pre-staged bricks and gasoline. Not saying that George is funding those directly, but . . .

Questions: Important For Llamas And Finding The Truth

“Have you calculated the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything?” – Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Sean Connery is a stickler for grooming. I was stuck in a burning building while he was using the extinguisher to keep a path open for me. Then he told me, “shave yourself!”

A few years ago I was meeting with a person that reported to me at work. I was asking a question with a yes or no answer. One thing that being in thousands of hours of corporate meetings has taught me is that if you ask an open ended question, people will talk. And talk. And talk. Even if they have nothing to say – those meeting room corporate doughnuts aren’t going to eat themselves.

So, a lot of my questions were phrased in the form of, “Do you know where the llama is?”

My company doesn’t use llamas except for unlicensed medical experimentation to find a cure for chronic nose picking, so in this case “llama” is really easier than referencing the “Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator” that we really make.

There are really only two answers:

“Yes, John Wilder, the llama is in the break room playing beer pong with Vladimir Putin.”
“No, John Wilder, I have no idea.”

Well, I guess we know what’s going to happen in July.

A pattern that I had noticed was that when the answer was “Yes, I know where the llama is,” people would just say, “Yes.”

Simple. We’re done. Move on to the next question.

But if people didn’t know where the llama was, what I mentally thought of as “The Story” started. The story had a million variants: “No, John Wilder, I don’t know where the llama is because it had sticky glands and we were out of llama soap and a friend came in from out of town and I just quit heroin and Vladimir Putin took off his shirt and making sweet talk to the llama last week.”

The Story is long. The Story isn’t really relevant.

People didn’t want to tell me “No.” If they had, and knowing where the llama was mattered, I could follow up with a question. Most of the time my question was, “Well, when are you going to find the llama?” Frankly, I’ve heard more excuses than Joe Biden has lost memories, so “Why don’t you know where the llama is?” was most of the time something I didn’t really care about. But they made the decision that I cared why they didn’t know where the llama was.

Never worry about food when you travel with llamas. Alpaca lunch.

I had one very bright employee, Bill Nothisrealname, that a recent college grad. He started to explain why he didn’t know where the llama was: he was winding up to tell The Story.

I stopped him.

“Bill, you were first in your class in high school, right?”

“Yes.”

“And then you went to college at Southern North Eastern Midwestia State, which is a pretty good school. Heck, I bet that you were in the top ten in GPA in your degree?”

“Yeah, I was in the top five of the class.”

I gestured at the offices up and down the hallway. “Bill, everyone here was at the top of their class in high school and graduated at the top of their class from college in a degree just as tough as yours. My boss, Boris. He’s as smart as a Vulcan that crossbred with a computer and has the personality to match. When he asks me a question, he wants me to answer that question. He’s no dummy.

“And Boris isn’t afraid to ask questions, either. He’s realized that even as a top executive in the company, he doesn’t and can’t know everything.”

Bill nodded.

I never really liked that Coppola movie, Alpaca Lips Now.

“Here’s what I think. When you were in third grade, you were smart. When the rest of the class didn’t know the answer, the teacher looked at you, right?”

“Yes.”

“And that didn’t change in high school. Or, for you, even in college. I think that you think you have to know the answer, because you were the smart kid. Bill, everyone, and I mean everyone here is that smart. You weren’t hired because you knew all of the answers – you were hired because you were smart, and had good character. Don’t be afraid to not know everything – asking questions is a sign of power. And . . . answer the question that was asked.

“Bill, do you know where the llama is?”

“No.”

But don’t-a worry – health is her new issue. She’s still all-in for Ollamacare.

I moved on to the next question. In this case, the llama wasn’t all that important, except as it related to teaching Bill that he didn’t need to know everything, and that asking questions isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of self-confidence. And if it sounded like the exchange was mean, it really wasn’t. Bill’s worldview was just a bit off. Besides, I knew that once Putin got his claws into a really pretty llama like this one, we wouldn’t see either of them until they’d ridden through the mountains together and hunted the Rocky Mountain Spotted Poodle – the only true sport for men.

The point is still valid. Whenever I’ve seen a good leader, that leader isn’t afraid to ask questions, and isn’t afraid to admit that they don’t know everything. Part of writing this blog is me answering my own questions. And I have to be right – you’re a tough but fair crowd, and you tell me when my participle is dangling.

Questions are important.

The first thing I like to question is myself. Scott Adams says that two people might watch the same event and give it entirely different meaning – he calls it watching two movies on one screen. An example is Trump: Leftists think that everything, and I mean everything he does is comprised of a pure evil that requires he eat a live puppy every day. There’s even a name for it: Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS). The symptoms include being triggered, literally shaking, wandering around in a circle muttering, “impeach . . . impeach . . . impeach.” Thankfully, many sufferers have found work as extras on The Walking Dead.

That’s one movie. There’s a second group that views Trump as a genius God Emperor who is sixteen steps ahead, playing 11-dimensional chess. This group thinks that the riots are perhaps his crowning achievement since he can use the riots to . . . ummm, I’m not sure what. I bet that plan shows up soon.

Both groups are wrong. My experience is you can talk to the God Emperor crowd, but the TDS sufferers just can’t discuss Trump. At all.

How much of my reality am I allowing to be filtered? How much am I deluding myself? These are the questions I repeatedly ask as I look for Truth.

Or you could just take their lunch money and buy yourself something nice.

The second question are my sources. People write all sorts of things, and on the Internet I can find a theory that all of the Challenger space shuttle crew survived the explosion and are still living today. Why? Because the Earth is flat. Really, that’s what they believe. There are also people who believe that the world is run by reptilian aliens who run the banks.

Of course those are absurd. The Internet is so questionable when it comes to facts that I’ve even seen Internet reports that I have hair. But how many shades of truth do we believe in each day without checking? I know that I’ve been shocked when I do research for Wilder, Wealthy and Wise that it’s not what I know that shocks me: it’s what I know that isn’t right. Who knew kittens couldn’t fly, even if you used a really big slingshot to give them a good takeoff?

The next question are my viewpoints. How many are wrong? In some cases I have taken years to figure out what I think about a subject, because I just hadn’t figured out the right way to look at it: I just don’t have a mental or moral model that fits it properly. I ended up being a ping-pong ball. There were good points on each side. How do the pros and cons line up?

When I was younger, I was more of a pure libertarian, even sometimes a Libertarian. I believed that if McDonalds™ wanted to sell me a hydrogen bomb and I had the cash, I should be able to order a McNuke®. As I get older, maybe not. And I now think that young children shouldn’t have guns: they’re much more effective using a crew-served weapon like a heavy machine gun or a mortar since they can overcome their inherent weakness by working together. If only a six year old could lift artillery shells….

My militia may be small, but they work for chocolate milk.

The final question is what can I learn from others? And I can only do that by asking questions – and having the humility to listen to the answers, no matter how stupid they are. I kid. I really have learned a lot by listening instead of talking.

So, anybody know where the llama is? Did another one fall in love with Putin?

The Rule of Law: It’s not just for breakfast anymore.

“You used the law and a badge to heal that scar on your neck.” – Hang ‘em High

I would recommend him as a lawyer, but he told the judge he ate my appeal.

About 4,400 years ago, a Mesopotamian king by the name of Urukagina developed the first known civil laws. They certainly weren’t the first laws, but they are the first ones we have written proof of. Perhaps the biggest mystery of Urukagina is how he got through middle school with a name like Urukagina.

Law is the bedrock of human civilization. If we don’t have rules we all (more or less) agree to, we can’t live together. Sometimes the laws are complex: I’ve heard that it’s a law that you have to turn on your headlights if it’s raining in Sweden. I’m not sure how am I supposed to know if it’s raining in Sweden, so I guess I’m quite the rogue when choose to live on the edge and drive without my lights.

Sadly, everyone can see what happens when laws break down. The riots that started in Minnesota are an example that won’t be forgotten soon. The breakdown that started in Minnesota is currently still spreading across the United States. That’s not good. In my opinion, the only good riot is three dyslexics.

Laws are like money – they’re a virtual system. They exist only because we all agree that they exist – the same way that East Germany disappeared as soon as people stopped being afraid of it. As soon a majority of people in an area stop believing in them, laws are as worthless as Johnny Depp’s liver on the black market.

Johnny Depp told David Letterman he never watches his own movies. What a lucky guy.

The anti-police-violence riots were based on a winning argument that could have resonated all across the political spectrum – not allowing the police to use excessive force. Had the protesters brought out the cases of LaVoy Finicum and Daniel Shaver as additional examples, I think they would have been surprised at the support they got. Instead? They rioted, burned, and all they got was a free t-shirt from Target® and enough looted liquor to fuel the protest for the next night. Can’t go looting without a nice Natty Light®.

However, the protesters managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Most of the time, when cops are presented with that awful decision to pull out their gun and shoot, it’s justified. But the larger injustices are the ones we see when police do things that, if you or I were doing them, would put us in jail. Rather than engaging others with that simple and powerful point, they protested entirely through the lens of race. The protests escalated into riots. The violence and property damage have ironically made the case for the use of significant force in putting down the riots.

They were never serious about protesting against police violence.

It’s lucky for those that like living in a stable society that people generally like laws. They want to know where they stand and have a predictable society. Research has shown that people have an innate sense of justice – it’s something that we appear to have been born with. When the legal system works, it makes the Karen inside each one of us happy. We generally want people who do bad things to be punished. We want innocent people to go free. And we want Whoopi Goldberg to develop a decade-long case of laryngitis.

Looks like Minnesota picked the wrong week to stop snorting glue.

We’ve had good laws and bad laws during the time humanity has been on Earth, but regardless, the law represented a standard. The only reason that we grant the state a monopoly on the use of force is that we trust that the state is just as bound by the law as the people are. There’s a satisfying symmetry in that.

That shared submission to judgement based on law is what makes the law work in the first place. If a random citizen commits a crime and is punished, a member of the police committing the same crime should receive the same punishment. If a citizen commits a crime and a politician commits that same crime, the politician should receive the same punishment. Even if the law isn’t fair, it should be equally applied.

The cries of “drain the swamp” from the Right are a recognition that this really isn’t so – a politician or Federal bureaucrat can commit crimes that would send you or I to jail and never have to worry. There is ample evidence that there isn’t a single system of justice – there are three. One group follows the rules as best as they can, but could still be found guilty of obscure crimes. I just hope that if I’m ever in that position I have a great lawyer. A good lawyer knows the law. A great lawyer knows the judge.

If I lied in testimony before Congress, nice Federal attorneys would seek to take away my voting rights by making me a felon as they did with Roger Stone. If former CIA chief John Brennan does it? Well, it appears nothing happens. That’s the sort of immunity you get when you’re in the club.

In a rare moment of clarity for the FBI, Peter Strzok was fired. Don’t worry – he’s suing to be reinstated with back pay.

People have lost trust; that’s where we’re at as a nation. There appear to be three systems of law in the United States:

one for the favored elite, where they are untouchable,
one for police, where (sometimes) crimes are never investigated,
and one for everyone else.

It’s not that the favored elite have great lawyers and can use them to avoid being convicted. The favored elite is never even charged with a crime. Hillary Clinton admittedly broke laws, and the FBI further pointed out that she had broken laws. Charging her, however, was just not something that they wanted to do. They know how enemies of Hillary end up. Heck, 2 out 3 presidents that were impeached were impeached for embarrassing Hillary.

For all I know, the systems for the elites have been in place as long as the elite has been in place. But now it’s visible. Ford had to pardon Nixon so he wouldn’t be prosecuted. Obama appears to have gotten a hall pass from Attorney General William Barr – pardon not required. Congress is much the same: Charlie Rangel evaded Federal taxes to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars. At least.

Any member of the non-elite class would have been sent to jail. Obama is buying mansions; Charlie retired from Congress. Oh, Charlie got “censured” which I guess makes it all better. And Obama is stuck living with Michelle.

She might be mad that an immigrant took her job?

The Deep State is similar – members of the FBI can do pretty much whatever they want to do, as long as it doesn’t make the other elite folks unhappy. I talked to a former Federal banking regulator once who mentioned that the only real trouble he could have gotten into was if he tried to be tough on a big bank. Otherwise? He could have stayed there for years, doing not much of anything. The Deep State first and foremost protects its own.

Like the elite, the police have a different process, too. You or I would get arrested, but a cop gets to have his behavior examined administratively. By his buddies on the force. This is where the case is reviewed by the people who hired him to see if there was a violation of policy. Most of the time officers are cleared.

If you or I shot an intruder into our homes, we couldn’t just grab a group of people in our families to check to see if they thought we did the right thing. Nope. There would be independent review by a District Attorney to see if our actions were justified. If our actions were not justified? We would be charged with a crime. I hope my lawyer thinks I’m a penguin when going for bail – then he can tell the judge I’m not a flight risk.

Penguins don’t go to England – they don’t like to be that close to Wales.

I can absolutely understand the need to give officers benefit of the doubt, and I think a jury generally does. But if an officer can say “I was in fear of my life,” on the stand, it ought to work for me, too. I think the system with police accountability is broken. But I think it’s easier to fix than the problems with the elite.

Is there hope for our system? Perhaps. But unless the rule of law can be made to be truly impartial, we’re going to be in for a rough time.

It could be worse. It could have been me who was named Urukagina.

Your one job? Be a good person.

“Mr. Towns, you behave as if stupidity were a virtue. Why is that?” – Flight of the Phoenix

Well, at least someone gave this post two thumbs up.

My older brother, John Wilder (our parents were notoriously uncreative), got a job at a motel when he was in college. His duty was to sleep in the apartment above the front desk, and if anyone wanted a room late at night, to get up out of bed and check them in. Technically, he got paid to sleep on the job. When I try to explain that’s what I’m doing to my employer, they seem to think it’s a violation of company rules. They won’t even listen when I explain I won’t be sleepy on the job if I just sleep on the job.

Go figure.

One day the owner of the motel was looking for someone to do an extremely important job: sweep the parking lot every Sunday. As I had heard of a broom, my brother put in a good word for me, and I ended up with my first official job. As I don’t recall quitting, they might be irritated at me because I haven’t been in to work in decades.

This was a job that I was well suited for, since I was willing to work for the one-ish hour a week (on Sunday) sweeping up the parking lot. I even had a time card, and got paid minimum wage. So early each Sunday morning I’d get on my ten speed and bike down to the motel and sweep the parking lot.

My bike kept trying to kill me, though. It was a vicious cycle.

The best part wasn’t the few bucks after tax that I made, but rather sitting down with my older brother and having breakfast in the office. I timed it so that I’d be done sweeping so we could watch a television show on TBS® together: The Wild, Wild West. I’m pretty sure I saw my first episode ever in that motel office.

By the time my brother and I watched it on the 12” screen in the office, The Wild, Wild West was decades old. And yet it was better than anything on prime time television. The Wild, Wild West, if you haven’t seen it, was Robert Conrad starring as secret agent James West in the 1870’s Western United States, complete with science fiction gadgets.

The villains were ludicrous. One episode featured obviously rubber cobras. And in one fight scene, Robert Conrad’s pants split wide open and they just kept filming – they were on a schedule, you know. On top of that, the costumes resembled nothing ever worn by an actual human in any place and during any period in human history.

Silly? Certainly. But why was the show good enough that I planned getting up early to watch it?

It’s because the character James West (and his fellow secret agent, Artemus Gordon) were good. West was a hero. He was smart. He could fight. He had wit. He laughed in the face of death. And if he had a weakness, it was for a lovely lady.

We’ll pretend that Will Smith took 1999 off. There can be only one Jim West.

Why was James West’s contemporary, Captain Kirk so popular? He was a cut from the same mold as West.

A boy needs a hero to look up to, who models virtue and strength. And you could do much, much worse than either James West or Captain Kirk. For some reason, the values of the networks changed, and The Wild, Wild West was cancelled (like Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies) in 1970 even though they did great in the ratings. Hmm.

It was like there was a social agenda . . . .

As time has gone on, many of the “heroes” in movies and television are given “depth” cheaply by making them either morally weak or having the system they work for be compromised in some way. When a hero sneaks by like Mal Reynolds on Firefly, well, the system takes care of him pretty quickly.

Captain Tightpants aims to misbehave.

Culture is, of course, upstream from politics. Culture is in part created by those heroes we are given to worship. Where do those heroes come from? Well, I mentioned James West, but I recall being pretty psyched about the Founding Fathers when I was a kid. Dad got pretty mad after the third cherry tree.

Our political reality is therefore created in part by media (now a tool of the Left) and academia (also a tool of the Left). And now the Founding Fathers are, instead of being revered for attempting to create a whole new type of country are regularly bashed in schools.

This attempt of the Left to steer culture obscures the real message. As a human, we have one (and only one) job.

That job is to be a good person.

It’s that easy. We waste a lot of time and effort wondering what it is we should be doing, when the answer is laughingly simple. You can’t control your height. You can’t control your intelligence. You can’t even control society. What can you control? Your actions and attitudes.

So, be a good person. That’s it.

The Left tries to obscure that simple truth because it has to. The Left doesn’t want you to be a good person. The Left wants you to be a Leftist. When I look at the memes from the Left, I’m astonished by two things:

They’re horribly unfunny, and
They’re based on a big wall of text.

No editing required.

The Lefty memes aren’t funny because funny requires truth. I wrote about that recently in The Leftist War on Culture: Comedy Edition. When truth is strangled, humor disappears which is why tyrants will kill comedians before they kill dissidents. Humor is one of the most potent weapons of truth.

The Lefty memes have to rely on a large blocks of text because half of the meme is required to try to refute reality and re-define it. If you’ve ever heard an actual Leftist talk, half of it is redefining terms: boy used to mean boy, but now it’s an entire spectrum which might indicate that boy means boy on Monday, but when it’s time for the state track meet, boy means girl. Sometimes.

If you want to watch real Olympic®-level verbal gymnastics, watch a Leftist try to define “racism” – it’s a hoot. For bonus points, see if you can get them to read the dictionary definition.

That’s the good news. Your job, being a good person, is so simple it’s hard for even the Left to mess up. But I bet they could come up with a 600 word meme to describe that “good” is only “good” if it results in more Leftist votes and the abolition of private property.

I wish that I could promise to you that if you were a good person, you’d be rewarded. That would be a lie. Being good doesn’t guarantee a tangible reward, or even that you will succeed, or even be liked and admired in your time.

I’m not sure I can promise a leprechaun will deliver them, though.

Likewise, being bad doesn’t guarantee punishment. Heck, some research indicates that 4% of Chief Executive Officers of companies are psychopaths. If you think long enough, you can come up with several names of people who are downright evil, but seem to be thriving.

The other bad news is that being good is hard work. First, you have to figure out what good is. Society isn’t necessarily a help here. As I write this, The Boy is watching livestreaming rioting and property destruction across multiple cities. When I try to calibrate the whole good/bad thing, I’m not sure that looting a Target® or burning a Hyundai© serves much of a purpose.

Being good isn’t about being good for today, either. I could easily ruin a child by making life too easy, or not holding them to high standards. Would it result in a happy child now? Sure. But every parent knows that short term success builds children into monsters who end up burning a Target™ or a Hyundai®.

Brought to you by the Minnesota Vistor and Tourism Bureau.

To be good, a moral code and the courage to follow it is required. Christianity is the one that built the West, and you could do worse – you rarely hear of Amish drive-by shootings, since everyone can hear the clip clop of the horses from pretty far away.

The Romans (Roman Virtues and Western Civilization, Complete with Monty Python) had a well-developed system of virtue thousands of years ago and spent a lot of time working to figure out how to be good – that’s pretty close to the basis of the Stoics. Making it up your own individual code as you go can lead to rationalization and relativism. If it feels good, it may not be good – a lot of bad things feel very good at the time.

But generally, if it feels bad, it nearly always is.

Be a good person. Ask yourself: WW(JW)D? No, not John Wilder.

Jim West.

But make sure you get your sweeping done first.

Stalingrad, Democide, and Maybe The Government Isn’t Here To Help You?

“What does a Nietzschean mother hope for her son when she names him Genghis Stalin?” – Andromeda

Actual Joke From the USSR (via Wikipedia©): Stalin reads his report to the Party Congress. Suddenly someone sneezes. “Who sneezed?” Silence. “First row! On your feet! Shoot them!” They are shot, and he asks again, “Who sneezed, Comrades?” No answer. “Second row! On your feet! Shoot them!” They are shot too. “Well, who sneezed?” At last a sobbing cry resounds in the Congress Hall, “It was me! Me!” Stalin says, “Bless you, Comrade!” and resumes his speech.

In August of 1942, the civilian inhabitants of Stalingrad probably totaled about a million people. That number included the normal residents, but also a huge influx of Soviet refugees caused by the Axis push through the Ukraine. However, the German Army Group: South was on the attack, and had been pushing toward Stalingrad for weeks.

According to Google Maps™ at the end of July, 1942, Stalingrad was less than a nine hour stroll from the German position. I assume that includes a lunch and bathroom break and maybe a juice box at halftime, but you never can tell since those Germans were sticklers for keeping to the schedule. Besides, I’m not sure that the Germans had good cell reception at that point, so they might have had to ask for directions.

Stalin decided that the Soviet soldiers would fight best if they had their backs to a city filled with innocent civilians, so he had absolutely forbidden any evacuation of Stalingrad. At least, any evacuation of people. The Soviets did take the time to get the grain, cattle, and railway cars out of Stalingrad. At least Stalin had his priorities straight, right? I mean, railway cars don’t eat and don’t complain.

Popular German Joke During Stalingrad: Our troops have captured a two-room apartment with kitchen, toilet and bathroom, and managed to hold two-thirds of the apartment, despite heavy enemy counterattack.

Not evacuating the inhabitants of Stalingrad was entirely consistent with Stalin’s fun loving and carefree personality. Stalin insisted that his own firstborn son become a Soviet artillery officer. When Stalin’s boy was captured by the Germans in the first few days after Operation Barbarossa kicked off and then rolled over Soviet troops like the media over inconvenient stories about Joe Biden, Stalin was upset.

Why?

Stalin was upset that his son hadn’t killed himself rather than be captured. So, yeah, Stalin wasn’t exactly a sentimental guy, but at least he was consistent. And he was consistent throughout decades. Between 1917 and 1987, the Soviet Union was responsible for (roughly) 62 million deaths of their own people. All but 6 million of those deaths occurred while Stalin was in some position of high leadership.

I guess you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few Kulaks, right? (Stalin’s Cannibal Island and Distracted Driving)

Sadly, Stalin’s line of Stalin-themed lingerie was less than successful, probably because it was made of unwashed wool and aluminum shavings.

I think I first understood the joke, “I’m from the government, and I’m here to help you,” when I was about 10 years old. It displays a pretty simple sentiment that was common in the rural area where I grew up: government wasn’t the solution to our problems, government was the problem. Reagan used both of those phrases during his campaign and inaugural address, but he could have been speaking for most of the farmers who had coffee in the local café.

Now, sure, those farmers were fine taking the government’s money, but what they didn’t like was when government told them what to do. From the farmers’ perspective, government was out of control even back in Reagan’s 1980. Those farmers had grown up in a different world: when they were young, say 12, they could have saved up enough money from their paper route or whatever Pa paid them to milk the cows, and marched down to the local hardware store and purchased a .22 rifle of their very own along with a box of ammo to go shooting with their friends.

Not at their friends, with their friends. City folks in the current year still can’t seem to figure that one out.

I tried to look up “ATF jokes” on Google®, but all Google™ would do was show me pictures of the ATF agents who planned the Waco operation.

The dads of those kids could go into the hardware store and purchase dynamite, without a license or even a reason. Want to build a dam on your own property? Go for it, though the states might have a rule or two if they ever caught you, which they probably wouldn’t. Want to build a combination strip club and church on your own land? It’s a free country, ain’t no one stopping you. Endangered species? Well, there was probably a reason for that – if it were tough enough or not so darn tasty, they would be fine.

In 1952, there were roughly 20,000 pages of Federal regulations in the “Code of Federal Regulations” – the big book that has all of the rules. In 2020? There are roughly 180,000 pages. Of rules. That’s (using my estimates) nearly two words of regulation for every person in the United States. My two are promulgate and trout. And you can go to jail for violating many of the regulations on those 180,000 pages. Why do we need 160,000 more pages of regulations than in 1950?

Control.

How are you supposed to keep track of that many rules? I’ve heard that “ignorance of the law is no excuse,” so I’m thinking that the people in America must be psychic, because there’s no way that any single person could know what they’re either:

required to do or
prohibited from doing or
free to do.

It’s actually the preferred end state of government: everything is either prohibited or mandatory, and thus you can selectively prosecute anyone for anything at any time. Everyone is guilty, and like Stalin’s buddy and head of the secret police, Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beria, said: “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime.” Everyone’s guilty – it’s just a matter of picking the person you want to prosecute.

But one man at a time? That’s how amateurs operate.

Government regulations: keeping you safe from trucks that might be slightly taller than a number written in a book by a regulator who has never seen a truck.

When I spent time last year researching the causes of death between 1900 and 2000 (In the World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold and Silver!), one statistic popped out: 262 million people were killed by their own government. That’s more that every murder in the twentieth century, and more than every person killed in every war during that same period. More people were killed by their own government than were killed in every natural disaster during that century. It’s almost governments could use a warning label. Oh, wait, government regulations are what mandate the warning labels.

I’d post this warning, but the font is probably not legally the right size.

Thankfully, the decline in deaths caused by government decreased when communism ceased to be an active ideology. The end of the Soviet empire was one event, and the death of Mao and the adoption of a capitalist incentives in a still authoritarian China was another that made the citizens of the world their own nations safer.

But what led to those ideologies taking over in the first place? Generally, four things.

An Economic Crisis
A Governmental Power Vacuum
A Civil War
The Idea That Equality of Outcome Is More Important Than Equality of Opportunity

It’s ironic that the two countries both at the forefront of killing their own citizens advertised themselves as the most equal in human history, but not surprising. Stalin and Mao did their part to create an equal society – one where anyone could be killed at any time for any reason. They were also the reason a word was invented: Democide.

Well, they all look equal to me.

Democide means, in a really short definition, your government deciding you’re wasting too much of your country’s valuable oxygen. It doesn’t matter why. It’s that your government decides that’ it’s not them, it’s you. It doesn’t mean the Russians killing German soldiers. It doesn’t include the Germans bombing the Russians, soldiers or not. It includes the Russians killing Russian civilians. It also includes the Russians killing German civilians after they take over the places where the Germans were living, and vice-versa. So, Stalin didn’t kill only Russians, but that was who he was most fond of killing. And Mao? Mao pretty much exclusively killed Chinese during his bouts of democide, perhaps because take-out had yet to be invented.

If you want to look more into it, here’s a website devoted to it (LINK). It has the look of a Geocities website circa 1996, and some of the links that the site points to have been Clintoned: abandoned like Bill’s ex-girlfriends and eliminated like Hillary’s enemies. The site, however does lays out the numbers of dead for governments that decide that there are just too damn many of their own people hanging around. Did I say hanging? Sorry, poor choice of words.

Reprinted with permission.

Stalingrad’s number of civilians dead “officially” was 40,000. But it’s thought that 40,000 died just on the first day of German bombing back in August of 1942. A more credible estimate is that up to half a million civilians died during the six month battle. These citizens aren’t even listed in Stalin’s total above – these are “just” war dead, and not attributed to the Soviets.

Whew. I bet Stalin would be pretty embarrassed if it took the Soviet total up to 62.5 million instead of just 62 million.

Why do I bring this up now? Hmm. No reason.

None at all.