Category: Civil War

“The Mandela Effect has been an Internet meme for almost a decade.  It’s always been called that.” – The X-Files

When the governor of Virginia began to realize his gun policy was a mistake . . .

When I was a kid, we lived firmly in the land of controlled media.  There were three networks that we could get on our television.  The difference between them?  The NBC® network showed more science fiction, and also more shows with girls wearing short shorts.  Those poor girls couldn’t even afford bras to wear!

She also wonders why the producers keep making her jump on a trampoline. 

The daily news came with a similar filter.  There was the local paper, the regional paper, and the really big regional paper.  Mainly we got the local paper and the regional paper on Sunday.  Your choices were limited.  Now you can go on the Internet and search from hundreds of different sites showing dozens versions of the news stories of the day from nearly every opinion.  Then?  You were stuck with one opinion, one line of reasoning.  It was like Rachel Maddow lived in your head, constantly telling you what she thought.

Movies were similar – we could drive 45 miles and choose from two movies.  Well, two movies if you could get into an R-rated film.  The other theater typically had the PG or G-rated film.  If the G-rated cartoon The Secret of Nimh (I wrote about that here:  Want Dystopia?  Because this is how you get Dystopia.) wasn’t your thing, you were just out of luck.

Situation comedy was big on television at this time.  Most sitcoms were written from a liberal perspective.  However, the most liberal of liberal writing was, of course:  The Very Special Episode.  This type of episode was so prevalent that it has its own Wikipedia© page (LINK).  As usual, if you go to the Infogalactic™ page (LINK) (which forked from Wikipedia® in 2016), you can see just how many Soviets farther Left Wikipedia© has gone in three years.  It’s not too bad on this topic.

The Very Special Episode took a typical, lighthearted sitcom that normally dealt with “I spilled ink on my dress for the prom” and then dealt with “Mom has HIV because she donated blood to her narcoleptic father who had seizures after saving abused piglets from a burning barn.”  Or spousal abuse.  Or anorexia.  Author Stuart Millard wrote this about a sitcom having a Very Special Episode:  “It was like having your wacky uncle interrupt an armpit fart to tell you about the time he saw a dead body and that’s why he drinks.”

The Fresh Prince wants you all to know he’s really sorry he started the Vietnam War, and he’s learned his lesson.

In the 1970’s, 1980’s, and 1990’s, Hollywood® was desperate to make you feel like they feel.  They were desperate that you cared, even if the issue they dealt with has nothing to do with you.  Spousal abuse?  I’ve never even known someone who was an abused spouse.  I’ve known a couple of people who dealt with anorexia/bulimia.  That episode of Cheers® where Diane can’t keep a burger down probably didn’t save either one of them.  But that didn’t matter to Hollywood.  The idea was indoctrination.

There’s a sitcom that’s normally about precocious teens getting in wild, improbable and mildly humorous adventures?  Let’s have the script show one of them taking an accidental phone call:

(Call from Mrs. Murray down the street, who thinks she’s dialed Midvale High School but has mistakenly called Youthful Protagonist.)

Mrs. Murray:  “Is this Midvale High?”

Youthful Protagonist:  “Why yes, this is Midvale High.”

Mrs. Murray:  “I have a note that the principal wanted to talk to my about Bobby.”

Youthful Protagonist:  “Oh, yes, Bobby!  One of our teachers said you sure have a little Elvis on your hands!”

Mrs. Murray:  “He can sing?”

Youthful Protagonist:  “Nah, we found him fat, bloated, and dead on the toilet.”

After that, we’d then have a lengthy episode where Youthful Protagonist learns it’s as wrong to make Mrs. Murray think Bobby’s cold, bloated dead body was found on the institutional tile floor of the boy’s room on the second floor.  It will be nearly as wrong as when Youthful Protagonist causes a suicide and then learns it’s wrong to intentionally call a flight attendant a stewardess, which will be the subject of the next Very Special Episode.

It’s Christmas, and if you can’t afford an Elf on a Shelf, you can get a Presley with a Nestlé.  The King did have a thing for chocolate.

I recall, thinking in seventh grade that it was a shame that humor didn’t spring naturally from the Right (this was before I found National Lampoon® and discovered that humor was everywhere).  After all, every bit of humor I saw on television and the movies was from either a neutral perspective, or, more commonly, from a Leftist perspective.  Television and movie humor in the 1980’s and 1990’s was based on moving the opinion of Americans from the wholesome fun of the 1950’s and 1960’s to full blown Liberalism.  With the exception of Red Dawn®.  Wolverines!

America had been taught that things like values, strong parental relationships, and strong marriages and strong families were good.  Look at any episode of The Beverly Hillbillies® or Green Acres™.  Both of those shows managed to be hilarious without preaching about, well, anything.  Yet these shows showcased loving families that genuinely cared about each other without being so sickly-sweet that you wanted to choke the writer with a garrote woven from fluffy kitten tails.

The Left began the takeover in the 1970’s.  The slide began when situation comedies emerged that centered on divorced women, shattered families, absent fathers, and infidelity.  All of this sounds amazingly like the Clinton household on a Thursday night.

It was, at first, easy to make fun of the Right.  In 1970, the Right controlled several institutions important to society – military leadership, many college administrations, big business, some older Hollywood® stars, and at least some church personnel.

It’s no coincidence that the high point of enrollment in the Boy Scouts of America™ on an absolute and percentage basis occurred in 1973.  It was an institution of the Right.  It was a target, and it was attacked because it was “square” and wasn’t cool, wasn’t progressive, wasn’t modern enough.  “Boy Scout” went from something one aspired to be, and instead became a put-down for someone with a values structure that didn’t match the new progressive standards where “morally straight” was an indictment, not a virtue.

Thankfully it’s 2019, so girls can be Boy Scouts, and Boy Scouts can be fathers. 

But the march of Leftists through institutions continued throughout the decades.  Colleges went Left.  The news media became openly Leftist.  Hollywood went from a Left-Right truce to the full-blown Leftism we see today.  And when the Leftists won control of so many institutions?

Comedy ceased to be funny to them at all.  Comedy is making fun of The Man – it’s their weapon.  It is edgy.  Most of all?  Comedy is used as a tool of the Left to make fun of leaders and institutions of the Right.  When the leaders are of the Left?  Comedy isn’t tolerated.  Comedy is an attack.  Thus?  Free speech attacking the Right is to be fought for.  But when the Right wants to use free speech to attack the Left?  That is clearly hate speech, and not protected.  Liberal dads get really mad when you wish them a happy mother’s day.

“Heck, Greta, you know why?  Because ice cream doesn’t have bones!  Would you like to stroke my leg hair?”

This is the rule when the Left is in charge:

Stalin had hundreds of people arrested in the Soviet Union for making jokes that the state found to be offensive.  Even as late as 1983 a woman was jailed for making a joke the Soviets didn’t like.  I can’t find statistics, but I did find a report that at least some people were executed in the 1940’s for making jokes in Germany.  China?  It’s going on right now – people are spending up to five years in prison for making jokes about Chinese leadership in chatrooms.  I’m pretty sure the Left in the United States is envious of that sort of power.

“Soon,” they think.

The Left knows that people making fun of its authority is the ultimate risk.  A Leftist regime can be treated solemnly.  A Leftist regime can be feared.  A Leftist regime can stand riots.  It can stand disorder.  But a Leftist regime cannot stand being mocked.  Back when Saturday Night Live® was funny, they had this gem (LINK), which sadly I can’t embed, but it embodies the Left to me today.

That’s why it’s really fun to watch when their mask slips.  Greta Thunberg, the recently anointed Ayatollah of Climatecontrolla said, “We will make sure that they, that we put them against the wall . . . .”  Of course she corrected herself later that what “put them against the wall” meant was for them not to be summarily executed, but for them to be taken to fun and challenging carbon-neutral “leisure camps” that she’ll set up along with Uncle Soros.

And we’re worried about the Russians influencing our elections?

Greta herself is a prime example of the humorlessness of the Left.  After placing a mentally challenged girl on the public stage, they note that it’s awful to challenge her.  It’s even worse to make fun of her, heck they said only schizophrenic people make fun of Greta.  We’ll show her!

Essentially, the Left likes to robe its spokespeople in a protected class status, like a +2 Cloak of Political Invulnerability.  Mock Greta?  It’s because you hate little Swedish girls with mental issues.  Make fun of Obama’s policies?  It’s obviously race.  Ridicule Hillary?  It’s not because she was obviously suffering from some sort of debilitating disease.  It’s because you don’t want a woman to be president.

To them, it’s simple:  Leftists can’t take jokes, so the Right can’t be allowed to make jokes.

Leftism is a religion.  That’s why Marx hated religion – it was an ideological competitor to communism.  And the biggest crime in religion isn’t being an unbeliever.  The biggest crime is heresy, and all Leftists view mocking Leftism and Leftists as the single biggest heresy.

Reprinted with permission.

Leftists can’t meme – it’s because they’re in the thrall of religious ecstasy.

Maybe we can make a Very Special Episode about that?

“The future’s not set. There’s no fate but what we make for ourselves.” – Terminator 2:  Judgement Day

I had a pet duck once, but he kept getting me up at the quack of dawn.

Probably one of the biggest traps I’ve seen people set for themselves is the trap of “should have.”  Should have means that there is some promotion they should have had.  There was some girl they should have dated, some relationship they should have salvaged.  This “should have” then dominates their life.  Like a short chubby kid trying to climb a greasy wall, they just never get over it.  I should know, I installed a greasy wall to keep short chubby kids off my lawn.  They do try to gnaw their way through.

As I’ve written about regret (Regrets? Don’t Regret Anything, Unless You Want Me To Slap You When You Are Old.) before – that advice stays the same:  learn from the past, but no one has enough time for regretting past actions.  Trading regret for virtue is the best you can do.  It may be unpopular, but some of the best of human traits can come as a direct result of the worst of times that we go through.  While we may not be responsible for every situation we find ourselves in, the way we react to those situations is entirely ours, unless of course you’ve been hypnotized by the used Chinese smartphone you bought on E-Bay® and turned into a communist.  If that’s the case I’d like to ask: what is it like to work at the New York Times™?

I guess my neighbor’s house is zoned as “doorway to hell” – only problem is that Castro keeps climbing out, wanting to bum a cigar.

But “should have” is a peculiar disease that is related to but is in some ways more corrosive than regret.  It infects the victim with an entire alternate universe.  This particular alternate universe is one where the world exists and the promotion was received, the girl was dated, the relationship salvaged.  It’s a beautiful world, but it’s one that doesn’t exist.*

Probably the best view of this “should have” is the current scheme whereby votes are traded for grievances.  Thankfully, when inventing a grievance, facts aren’t important – it’s only the feelings that matter.  Clear thinking due to consistently defined language is actually the enemy.  One example is the term “racist”.

I had occasion to visit a friend that I had known for years.  I caught up with him on a great fall night.  I had promised myself that I wouldn’t bring up politics – I knew that he was on the Left.  For the most part it worked.  We had a pleasant evening.  But then he brought the subject of racism up.

Judging people by their race and sex is wrong!  You white men should get that by now.

I had learned long ago that racism had a fairly specific meaning – it meant that the person felt that one race was superior to another.  Superior how?  Well, for the purpose of this discussion it simply doesn’t matter, because no one uses the word that way anymore.

The general definition of racism at some point changed to this:  “prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against other people because they are of a different race or ethnicity.”  It is completely different.  One means feeling superior, the other means being a jerk.  As near as I can tell this shift in meaning seemed to occur during Bill Clinton’s time in office, because we couldn’t even agree what “is” meant in the 1990’s.

The beautiful part of either definition is that anyone can be racist – it’s an egalitarian definition.  I’ve seen literature from EVERY race and ethnicity where they make the case that they’re the superior ones.  And, I’ve seen examples of every race being discriminated against due to race.  All of ‘em.  In a sense, either of those definitions of racism is fair.

Fair?  That simply won’t do.

After discussing the definition for about an hour, I finally teased out of my friend the idea that every white person was racist, and that only white people could be racist.  He claimed he was a racist, not because he wanted to be, but he nevertheless was.  Why?  Racism had been redefined in his mind as the systematic oppression of non-white people.  Could a black person be racist?  No, because they weren’t white.  Only white people can be racist.  Chinese?  No.  Hispanic?  No.  Penguins?  No.

Racism had been redefined from an equal opportunity word, to a word that could only be used against white people.  Will Smith, with an estimated net worth of $300 million dollars, was somehow oppressed by the system more than, say, me.  Colin Kaepernick, who almost no one knew or cared if he was black, started his own controversy by kneeling as a result of grievances.  Colin also identifies as a quarterback, but that’s a longer story.  Rodney Harrison (who is black) oppressed Colin when he said, “I’m a black man, and Colin Kaepernick, he’s not black.  He cannot understand what I face and what other young black men and black people or people of color face . . . .”

Oops.

Colin Kaepernick – making Tom Brady the second most hated quarterback in the NFL©.

And academia forms a pipeline for the grievance system.  The Master’s thesis of Jack Merritt, who was stabbed to death on the London Bridge by that recently released Muslim terrorist in England was:  A Critical Analysis of Over-Representation of Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic Males Aged 18-21 in the British Prison System.  Well, that thesis aged poorly.

Oops.

Grievances don’t have to be about race.  They can be about your sex, or your orientation.  If INSERT GRIEVANCE CLASS HERE didn’t get the job designing nozzles for whipped cream propelled by nitrous oxide?  It had nothing to do with their 1.93 GPA in ancient Celtic dialects, it’s because they’ve always hated people like GRIEVANCE CLASS MEMBER.

The incomplete list of grievances includes:  “cisgender, fat shaming, heteronormativity, intersectionality, patriarchy, rape culture and whiteness.”  This comes from the Wall Street Journal opinion piece “Idea Laundering” in Academia, (LINK, BEHIND PAYWALL) by Peter Boghossian.  These are the things the Left hates.

This list perfectly paints the villain of the Left:  a white, married father in a committed and strong marriage with his wife.  He’s not in favor of rape, but since he’s a male in a marriage he must be guilty of it, since marriage is just using the patriarchy to enforce that horrible male concept:  monogamy.

What is the motive for all of this?  Colin Kaepernick got notoriety while winning a total of one game in the 2016 season.  He’s now sitting on a $20+ million fortune, plus an undisclosed amount of money from his Nike™ contract, reported to be in the millions.  I mean, some people work all year and don’t make a million dollars.

Thankfully we live in a society where academics have no consequences for the real-world application of their ideology.

The student, Jack Merritt stabbed to death on the London Bridge on November 29, 2019?  He was rewarded with a Master’s degree for agreeing with the narrative.  All of the academics that supported this system?  Grants.  Tenure.  Bacon-wrapped shrimp parties where they talk about how inferior the hoi-polloi (you and me) are.  Leftist politicians who fund this mess get votes – and the more grievance they can find, the more likely they’ll get great ‘voter-engagement’ – which translates into more people voting.  Heck, it’s worked on Pop Wilder – after he died he’s been consistently voting Democrat.

We live in, by far, the most prosperous and egalitarian society (the West in general) in the history of mankind.  Every system that government doesn’t meddle in (like education and medical care, and Aesop has already solved those in my favorite post of his – ever – LINK) generally goes down in cost.  But that doesn’t stir up voters.  So, let’s get involved in college education, so we can create more grievances from people who had no business going to college, getting degrees that had no probability of being worth anything.  Sounds like a Sanders voter in the making!

There’s nothing bad about fighting to make the world better.  There’s nothing wrong with making the future a better time for everyone.  But when you get stuck on the way things should be?

Yeah.

*Unless the Many Worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics is correct.  If it does, everything happens, which means that there’s a universe where I have hair and have just been re-elected Emperor of Wilder Land, where everything is covered in barbeque sauce, except for the things that require ranch dressing.

FYI – The Civil War Weather Report will be next Monday – there is some data I need that isn’t published until the first Friday of the month.  I do promise a high likelihood of bikini graphs.

“Resistance fighters, humans, sent back from the future by John.  And what?  Are they manning some kind of apocalyptic paramilitary convenience store filled with fake IDs and guns and money?” – Terminator:  The Sarah Connor Chronicles

That also explains why I have a piano player who is only a foot tall in the house.  Stupid genie.

Back in 2015, like a few hundred million other people, I was excited to see The Force Awakens®.  This was the first movie since Disney© had purchased Star Wars©.  Since Disney™ had done a good job with Marvel©, I hoped they’d turn the Star Wars™ universe into a compelling and entertaining set of movies.  I got The Boy and Pugsley and we headed off to the theater.  They don’t allow us to bring in outside food, but that’s okay.  We Wilder’s have a few Twix® up our sleeves.

I’m not going to turn this into a complete review of a movie that I feel is fatally flawed and ultimately stupid in many ways.  The plot of The Force Awakens® was an inferior remake of the first Star Wars® movie.  This was a flaw, and perhaps a fatal one – how many Star Wars© movies would end up being about blowing up yet another Death Star© – I’m beginning to think that Death Stars® might be hard to get insurance for.  And does a Death Star™ require homeowner insurance or vehicle insurance?

Regardless, The Force Awakens was as unsatisfactory as Joe Biden’s hair plugs.  But I did notice one thing that bothered me:

After destroying the largest weapon ever created and killing the Emperor™, the Rebels® had failed.  The ending of Return of the Jedi™, with fireworks and celebrations on world after world seemed to indicate that the Rebel Alliance© won, that the Empire® was finished.

I find the best alarm clock are the rumble strips.

Yet, here, in the first sequel after Return of the Jedi®, we find Princess Leia© at the head of the Resistance™.  What, exactly, is she resisting?  The new government that was set up after the defeat of the Empire™?  Bad scriptwriting?  No.  It’s the Empire™, but I assume we can’t call it that because otherwise Disney© has to pay George Lucas ten percent.

There are thousands of great plots that could be made about the Force™, the New Republic©.  Lots of these are of big ideas worthy of an entire galaxy and the fun derived in the first Star Wars© movies; great ideas worthy of a cast of heroes that we knew from previous episodes.  Heck, The Mrs. and I when discussing this post came up with a plot idea good enough to give me chills – Stormtroopers™ in bikinis, of Kini-troopers©, if you will, learning to use the Force™ at a summer camp in the 1980’s.

And did the Stormtroopers think they were the good guys, working on a thing called the Death Star?

But why the Resistance©?  After reflection of several years and several other movies, it has become clear – the producers of Star Wars® are leftists.  The ideology of Star Wars© becoming Leftist ideology was more important than the story.  It was more important than the money.  Star Wars™ had to be made to fit the narrative of the Left.

The narrative of the Left has always been of a smaller force fighting a larger opposing force.  The story of the Vietcong, the story of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia, and the story of Antifa© are all the stories of resistance to larger powers.  This is the myth that the Leftist leaders use for propaganda when they want to explain to the peasants why they don’t have any food, why they are poorer this year than last.

There’s a reason he’s called Darth™.  All the Stormtroopers laughed when he went by “Master Vader©”.

The Resistance© is the narrative of the Left, and so Star Wars™ had to portray the good guys as the underdog no matter what.  The Resistance® is how they see themselves – at the mercy of large systems that will destroy them – it’s in the mythos of all of the Left’s literature and entertainment.  Thus, this curious choice:  taking the victors and making them the victim.  The only reason I can see this is because it was written about the Left, for the Left.  Plot?  Entertainment?  Nah.

Stormtroopers© get cash from an AT-ATM.

The Mrs. and I talked for a while about why this was.  My theory was that the Left’s power was ultimately derived from being a victim – that’s why the language of the Left is the language of victimhood, and the conversations of the Left are about creating division based on that victimhood.

Hence, the Resistance™.

The Mrs. thought that it was interesting that the Left also chooses to characterize its enemies in terms of the two wars – the Left is fighting Germany in World War II.  The Left is fighting the South in the Civil War.  Why?  The Left views these wars as moral wars, simple wars complete with cartoon villains so it can remove complexity.  This allows the Left to feel good about itself while teaching and preaching hate.  It’s clear the Left is moving further left, while the Right retains roughly the same values as it did 40 years ago, which is intolerable to the Left.  In the view of the Left, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama aren’t on the Left – no.  Clinton and Obama are considered center-right, if not farther right.

But back to the Resistance©.  As I listed in a previous post (American Civil War: Four Fates, From Freedom to Soviet Tyranny), the Left controls:

• 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.

It should be clear from the above list that the Left is marching through American institutions quickly.  When Donald Trump was elected president, immediately, however, the Left returned to its normal nomenclature, it advertised itself as “The Resistance®” even though it had quietly amassed major power throughout nearly every phase of American life.

The real crime is noticing.

You and I know that the Left isn’t the Resistance, it’s in control.  Why doesn’t the Right protest in hats made to look like genitals?  Because we have jobs and families.  But if you stand against the goal of state control, against the goal of only the “correct” thoughts being allowed, against being put at the mercy of the confederacy of victims?

You are the real resistance.  And they’re afraid of you.