Civil War – Page 7 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Are We At War? and Invaders

“Maybe we’re at war with Norway?” – The Thing

I’m sad, because 6:30 is the best time on a clock. Hands down.

Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
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.
Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
Open War.

Volume V, Issue 5

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.

This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – At War Already? – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Invaders – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 815 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

At War Already?

This month I had a post up titled 14 Signs Of An Unfree Country. One of the responses I received is below:

It’s a very fair question, and one that deserves some thought and a response.

One of the first issues discussed on the early Civil War 2.0 Weather Reports was the idea that Civil War 2.0 would likely not resemble Civil War 1.0 with opposing armies in uniform moving across open battlefields. No, in my opinion there might be some military trappings, and some form of “regulars” on either side, but for the most part this Civil War will be very different, and a large part of the action will take place via individual and small, only loosely coordinated groups.

But the question remains – are we at war?

The January 6 prisoners would certainly say so. The concept of justice for most of them has been a farce, they’ve been sent to prison in some cases for their political beliefs. The Left fully castigated the GOP for releasing all of the tapes which showed much more of the reality – and causing the ridiculous Buffalo guy to get released immediately.

In some cases (at least!) the prisoners have been treated in conditions that the Left would normally call inhumane. For the January 6 prisoners? No indignity has been spared them.

And no indignity has been spared on the heritage Americans. Our one virtue when it comes to the Left has been our ability to provide the backbone of the United States military. Now that traditional military families are opting out since, well, the country hates them, the idea of a draft is now embraced by people who ran to Canada to avoid it when it didn’t suit them.

What about the sacred right to vote? Well, again, that’s a sacred right only if you vote for the Left-approved candidate. They absolutely oppose voting for anyone not on the Left, and, guess what? While you were out keeping the economy going or serving our country, they infiltrated the governmental entities that count the vote. California is even going to ban manual vote counting and mandate only machine counting be legal.

What about the people who are being humiliated by watching the history of their nation erased, statue by statue, name by name, and child by child as they are drip-fed estrogen from the age to three to be turned into weird abominations that will be consigned to a tormented life as neither man nor woman.

So, the legal system is a fiction, and the cultural situation is grim.

Violence is at a high, as well. I keep warning people to get out of the cities. The latest murders in New York, Baltimore, and Philadelphia of Leftist enablers provide a glimpse of the decline of those cities – they weren’t hidden like the everyday horrors of the average father or grandfather or child killed at random by groups of murderers who believe that they won’t be punished because they haven’t been punished for (in some cases) over 50 felonies.

Are we at war already? If, like me, you live in a Red state? No, not really. Here in Modern Mayberry it looks a lot like it did thirty years ago, except for the rot that Leftism and globalism has done to the economy.

If you’re on the Right and live in a Blue state, or if you challenge in any manner the power of those who would rule?

It looks like that answer is, “yes”, they’re at war against you.

Violence and Censorship Update

There is no way on Earth that the United States was more racist in 2015 than it was in 1970. Zero ways. I would suggest that in 2008, when the United States voted in a black guy as president that would have ended that forever. Especially since the 1990s in the United States were probably the least racist decade of any country on the planet, ever. But the push is in: everything is racist. This is used, primarily to shut down actual discussions of actual problems.

Why would a Leftist leave a weapon on the battlefield after they’ve won the battle? Elon Musk rustled all the jimmies when he bought Twitter®, um, X™. So what’s the solution? Stop anything Musk does.

Okay, this didn’t officially happen, but I’m thinking that most of his staff thought it:

Apparently selling soft drinks in Russia is bad:

As is using the word “female”.

But that’s okay, kids should be taken from their parents for any old reason.

And the press should just ignore the “why” of a story.

And also the “who” of a story.

Biden’s Misery Index

Let’s take a look to see how we’ve done this month . . . .

Yup, up again. Looks like Biden is going for the record. Who says he never gets anything done?

Updated Civil War II Index

The Civil War II graphs are an attempt to measure four factors that might make Civil War II more likely, in real time. They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings. As each of these is difficult to measure, I’ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that combine to become the index. On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

Violence is up again, again slightly – I was expecting more during a long, hot summer. I’m guessing that people don’t even notice it anymore.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, up. I expect December to be a time when this starts to head upward, significantly.

Economic:

Economic numbers are swinging back down again this month, but I expect October will be a bit more interesting after earnings reports.

Illegal Aliens:

The border numbers are up only slightly, and I think that (shockingly) the government may just be lying or that the Border Patrol is being told to leave the illegals alone. Why would I think that? That’s what the next story is about.

Invaders

It is now abundantly clear that the people in Washington and New York now view heritage Americans as I view an infestation of rabid squirrels. We’re pests.

The idea is to replace us with people who will work cheaply forever and are okay with living in a repressive regime as long as they have ramen and soccer on TV. They want slaves.

The other part of this plan is increasing taxes and injecting feminism (and LGBT) directly into the brains of the youth to slow down birth rates. They really don’t care what this does. The elites can live anywhere that is nice. They’ll live in the most favorable places with all the stuff they could imagine needing.

It’s also interesting that everywhere except for Europe and the United States that booting illegals out is considered “Tuesday”. Even before Hamas went kinetic on Israel, they were getting ready to boot out any black people. Probably to Europe, sure, but they were getting ready to boot them. Can we have the same illegal immigrant (invader) policy as Israel?

Well, not with Biden. They cut the razor wire because . . . ? Who cares what the reason was. The Border Patrol now just wants to get more immigrants in. I call this the “Biden Plan”, but really it was also the Bush plan and the Clinton plan, too.

How bad is it? A developer has created a base for over 75,000 illegals. They live there, have gangs there, and sell drugs from there. We know where this is. If any administration was serious about this, the developer would be in prison, and the deportations would start . . . last week. Instead? We have a place where the laws of the United States don’t really apply and any illegal can settle.

We know where they are. We’re doing nothing. We are the carbon the globalists want to reduce, since we keep asking such inconvenient questions as our country is invaded.

And it’s not just Hispanics. It appears that all of Africa is streaming across the border.

And why not? Africa is growing at an astonishing rate despite having exactly the same ability to feed itself as a drunken toddler.

The upshot is that this will be the last generation of heritage Americans, ever, unless the tide changes.

But, it looks like Blue state people are (finally) waking up:

Which way, America? The solution is, still, very simple. When will we adopt it?

LINKS

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

BAD GUYS

https://twitter.com/EndWokeness/status/1703658363542700433

https://twitter.com/i/status/1701238979557761319

https://twitter.com/i/status/1707364236077277309

https://twitter.com/i/status/1705460875472052712

https://twitter.com/i/status/1703043847037587892

https://twitter.com/NewportBeachNBT/status/1702853152276717830

https://twitter.com/i/status/1705623045254057994

https://twitter.com/i/status/1700257920112644268

https://tvpworld.com/73183231/us-three-leftist-activists-killed-in-separate-incidents-in-one-week

ONE GAL

https://twitter.com/k0ssed/status/1709252993512861804

https://nypost.com/2023/10/02/philly-motorcyclist-stomps-on-back-windshield-of-nikki-bullocks-car-video/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12588897/I-just-wanted-protect-kids-Fearless-mom-bravely-faced-biker-thugs-one-stomped-car-smashed-rear-window-children-5-2-backseat-speaks-out.html

GOOD GUYS

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12594639/Cody-Heron-motorcyclist-smash-windshield-Philadelphia-arrested.html

BODY COUNT

https://thehill.com/opinion/technology/4218666-ai-girlfriends-are-ruining-an-entire-generation-of-men/
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12437519/Gender-affirming-surgeries-US-nearly-tripled-pandemic-dip-study-finds.html

https://admin.americanaddictioncenters.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/Substance-Abuse-Estimates-by-City.jpg

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12484069/US-deaths-mortality-richest-countries.html

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/covid-vaccines-causally-linked-to-increased-mortality-resulting-in-17-million-deaths-scientific-report-5499001?utm_source=epochHG&utm_campaign=CFP&src_src=epochHG&src_cmp=CFP

https://twitter.com/dpinsen/status/1703540571598368901

https://twitter.com/i/status/1702400933928304652

https://twitter.com/The_Real_Fly/status/1706442804258296082
https://news.yahoo.com/many-people-mexican-drug-cartels-180057725.html

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/773022b3-8b34-4da0-850b-bfcaa8e7a28a_867x449.jpg?itok=ExPuHvoW

https://twitter.com/PaulHook_em/status/1706832820033692084

https://citizenfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/border-birth.jpg

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/14/1199417599/immigrant-population-us-foreign-born-census-bureau

https://www.dailywire.com/news/inside-colony-ridge-the-fastest-growing-development-in-the-u-s-is-a-magnet-for-illegal-immigrants

VOTE COUNT

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fjustthenews.com%2Fpolitics-policy%2Felections%2Ffbi-denies-foia-request-docs-investigation-possible-nationwide-voter

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2023/09/22/google-search-engine-sways-millions-of-voters-in-one-direction/

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2023/09/25/whos-responsible-for-georgias-disastrous-2020-election/

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/bias-or-bad-search-engine-optimization-biden-challengers-nearly

https://amgreatness.com/2023/10/05/zuck-bucks-grift-was-born-in-wisconsin-voters-must-ban-it-in-2024/

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2023/08/now-we-have-proof-tgp-exclusive-massive-2020/

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fthemessenger.com%2Fopinion%2Fdemocrats-2024-magic-bullet-mass-mail-in-voting

CIVIL WAR

https://academic.oup.com/publius/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/publius/pjad035/7271459?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2023/9/7/sorry-trumpers-there-wont-be-a-us-civil-war-for-2024

https://thewire.in/world/america-is-on-the-brink-of-another-civil-war-this-one-fuelled-by-donald-trump

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/09/03/the-only-us-civil-war-will-be-a-war-on-democracy/51c6e488-4a54-11ee-bfca-04e0ac43f9e4_story.html

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/the-second-american-civil-war-has-begun/ar-AA1dS2tp

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/4187490-republicans-just-cant-stop-calling-for-civil-war/

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/markets/ray-dalio-says-mccarthy-ouster-another-step-away-from-democracy-and-toward-civil-war/ar-AA1hO2PG

https://news.yahoo.com/fox-news-greg-gutfeld-suggests-190456184.html

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other/who-are-the-americans-who-support-secession/ar-AA1h4qrE

https://studyfinds.org/dont-trust-us-government-doomsday/

https://twitter.com/ScooterCasterNY/status/1699596057678606451
https://twitter.com/FordFischer/status/1700996328799773109

Leftists: They Hate You

“Right, right. Somebody said “alien” she thought they said “illegal alien” and signed up.” – Aliens

I got involved in a discussion about illegal aliens. That conversation went south pretty quickly.

“My feeling is they should open it-the border, let everybody pour in, and then the answer which is, well then there will be all these problems. Yes, there should be. It shouldn’t be so great here, is what I’m saying, in America.” That’s a quote from Louis, C.K., the “comedian”.

After having read a bit about him, I’m pretty sure that Louis hates himself deeply. But he also hates you. A quick Internet search shows him with a net worth of $35 million, which shows you don’t have to have a billionaire to be as big a tool as Bill Gates.

The bigger idea is that this is the way that most Leftists think, on those rare occasions a thought occurs to them. As I’ve addressed before, Leftists think more highly of people the farther away they are from themselves up to and including rocks: Leftism Is A Death Cult That May Kill Us All.

Here’s yet another example:

White Leftists have a self-loathing problem. And they hate themselves for it.

This graph shows something pretty amazing. Most groups prefer their own company. Most black people like to hang around black people. Most Asians like to hang around Asians. But white Leftists? The reflection of their self-hatred is so great that they actively dislike being around other white people. Now, I could understand that if you were Chelsea Clinton, but, as shown by every other racial group since the dawn of history, it’s abnormal and dysfunctional.

Those are the people who are in charge of the border right now.

Wonder why we’re taking on illegals like Johnny Depp attracts women with low self-esteem? It’s because the Left hates the United States because they either despise it, or feel guilty. So, their solution is to take it over, loot it, remove the things that created wealth in the first place, and still pretend it’s the United States.

And Biden’s first term could just as well be Obama’s third term.

The situation, however, appears to have finally reached the breaking point as illegals are swamping the southern border in numbers greater than at any time in history.

To be clear, these aren’t refugees, they’re economic migrants that are coming here because their country sucks. They’re being enticed to take this journey indirectly by the United States government through the money they give to NGOs that feed the illegals, give them money for and during the trip ($800 a month, I hear), and set up showers and beds and transport. That’s our government – the only things it does really well are the things that harm its actual citizens.

When the illegals get here, they aren’t a net economic benefit. They actually increase housing costs, depress wages, and are causing government welfare costs to skyrocket because the jobs they get don’t pay for the public costs that they create. Expanding the economy by bringing in more immigrants is like improving your financial situation by taking on more debt.

Oh. I just remembered how the Feds deal with budgets. Never mind.

What do Bernie supporters call their roommates? Mom and Dad.

Even Leftists like Louis C.K. are sometimes inadvertently honest in their utter lack of care for the United States. I’m sort of sad that the U.S. government shutdown didn’t happen. If it had, the U.S. Border Patrol could have stayed home and let illegals in, rather than just hang out by the border and cut razor wire to let illegals in. We’ve reached the point where we’d have fewer illegals if the Border Patrol stayed home.

Since the illegals have started leaving Texas, though, Biden went from Trump’s “Remain in Mexico plan” to, “Put the illegals in Red States where we could swap the vote” to “Remain in Texas” as the illegals converged on Blue Cities and are costing billions and even Leftists there are starting to come to their senses.

As the economy falters (it is, more on that on Wednesday, probably), and as the unending streams of illegals continue to surge into the United States, my bet is that the tolerance for illegals will soon drop as jobs disappear and the charmed life they live with subsidized food and housing makes a mockery of the conditions of the average American citizen.

Mexicans were upset about the wall, but it looks like they’ll get over it.

In many places, the result will be the expulsion of (at least) illegals as people cease to want them to be around. I would predict that this will not end well. And I predict that many of the illegals will wish that they had never come to the United States as it will become increasingly hostile to them in many regions. The failure to stop these mass migrations will end the way it has every single time in history – with fire and pain, all because we didn’t have the courage to send them back in the beginning.

Me? I think that Louis C.K. shouldn’t have it so great. He should have to take about 750 illegals into his house, feed and care for them, and then tell me how he doesn’t like things.

Louis hasn’t invited illegals into his house. He hasn’t given his money away. Like any good Leftist, his generosity is overwhelming. At least until it comes to spending his own money or inconveniencing himself in any way.

And he still hates you, and doesn’t see why it should be so great here, in America.

Opinions. A Small Book Review. Bad Jokes.

“That’s right. And if I think that Kirk is a Denebian slime devil, well, that’s my opinion, too.” – Star Trek, TOS

I’ve found that telling pizza jokes is all in the delivery.

Opinions.

Marcus Aurelius (dead stoic guy with a crappy son) said, “It never ceases to amaze me: we love ourselves more than we love other people, yet care more about their opinion than our own.”

I was talking with a friend about opinions today. Which opinions matter?

Well, if a toddler had an opinion, I’d generally disregard it because, like Joe Biden, they poop themselves and can barely string a coherent sentence together, even if you spot them a verb.

Toddler opinions generally don’t matter to me. And I never feel bad making fun of toddlers because, just like students in Baltimore government schools, toddlers can’t read.

Are chubby babies heavy infantry?

Okay, toddlers are out. Not that toddlers are always wrong, even they can see that I’m bald, for instance. Bald, however, is not an opinion. But try explaining that to a toddler, those drooling idiots with their Cheerio® encrusted fingers.

When I hear an opinion, I generally don’t accept it at face value. I try to filter it.

First, does it matter? Most people have opinions about most things. And most of those opinions don’t matter, really, to anyone. I don’t care about what anyone’s favorite color is. When The Mrs. wanted to paint my study, I didn’t really care about what color The Mrs. picked, as long as it’s not purple – I hate purple more than blue and red combined.

I don’t, however, let The Mrs. pick my cigars. My opinion on them matters, really, only to me and the company that I buy them from. I mean, when I looked up “how to light a cigar” on a search engine, I got 70 million matches. I might be interested in your opinion on good cigars, and might even try one, but it won’t change my world.

Can a cigar box? No, but a tin can.

The second filter is whether I can do anything about the opinion. If it passes the first filter, of “it matters” then I ask if I can do anything about it. This is a bigger question – I do have opinions on things I can’t do anything about. But as I go through life, I’m finding that often I have the ability to do things I never thought possible, like live in a country at the edge of civil and nuclear war with a president that has a dementia patient meth addicted son. So, there’s that.

I often find that, when I really try, that things I thought impossible were, in reality, really not that hard if I put my mind to it and dedicate myself to them. Of course, to really dedicate myself, then I face the risk of failure. Failing is tough, but it’s worth it on something that really matters.

I wonder why Ma Wilder always said “Embrace failure,” when she gave me hugs.

So those are the two big filters on whether an opinion matters to me.

The other opinions are opinions about me. I’d like to say that the opinions of people about me don’t matter, but I’d be a liar. I actually enjoy it when I troll people Leftists on X™ and they start frothing at the mouth. I guess you could call X© my troll booth.

I keep seeing Cthulhu memes, but I’m disappointed because all I ever see are the Old Ones.

But when people I respect share that opinion, well, I listen. And I run it through the filters.

This was a short one, and it’s also time to mention I just finished reading Hans Schantz’s latest book, The Wise of Heart. Full disclosure, I did get a review copy. I enjoyed it, as I have the other works of Mr. Schantz – especially the first book of his trilogy, The Hidden Truth.

This particular book was fully funded on Kickstarter®. When Kickstarter™ found out that it was a take on Leftist sex politics that didn’t follow the Leftist line, they kicked Hans off. He was fully funded (and then some) on FundMyComic©. Reminder – the people who run most tech companies hate you. Anyway, if you want, you can buy it at Amazon© (LINK) or other places. I get no compensation either way.

Like I said, I enjoyed it. But that’s my opinion.

The Kids Aren’t Alright: Sex

“I don’t know much about geopolitics, but that is one cool name for a country: Chad.” – Norm Macdonald Live

Ever notice you never see Chad with Chad in Chad? Hmmm.

Technological change has been very difficult for the kids of today – it has changed entirely the way that they relate to each other, how they spend their time, how they are rewarded, and the very nature of the male-female relationship. Since I’m writing this post, it’s about as positive as Biden’s impact on the economy.

Of course, technology had changed the way that previous generations lived. When I was a kid, our entertainment on a Friday night was cruising main. We’d get in cars, and ride up and down the street, listening to loud music, revving engines.

Why?

To see each other. To find out what was going on. To meet girls. The girls would go to meet guys and chatter and drink some occasional peppermint schnapps snuck into a Big Gulp® cup. Often the girls and boys would do no more than flirt. Sometimes, though, well, more would happen.

This was an in-person interaction that was natural. The technology of the car and cruising Main were just minor adaptations of behavior that was certainly as old as the concept of the very first city – boys wanting to watch girls, and girls wanting to be watched.

Does mentioning cruising Main make you feel old yet?

This in-person interaction gave us the dopamine hits of the day. And, even at the breakneck speed of 25 miles an hour, there was an absolute limit to the number of boys a girl could see in a night of cruising Main of, maybe, a few dozen.

The reality is, of course, that we all have a finite number of choices of people to date (and mate) with. Cruising Main was a dance that was as old as time. In this dance, the woman offered her youth and beauty in return for the commitment of a good man. The man offered his commitment for the youth and beauty of a woman. And, when I was much younger, if I stayed up late enough I could watch it all on Cinemax® after my parents were asleep.

Those trades are, generally, good trades. They create a stable society, and provide a woman the chance to find, marry, have children with a man and raise them. Women tend to try to date and mate upwards in socio-economic status. Men? Well, you know.

Hey, derpy girls need love, too.

Now, for many, the meeting place is Tinder©. In Tinder™, women have infinite choices – they are the commodity to be possessed, and they swipe left or right, alternately accepting or rejecting hundreds of men in a minute. In this new bargain, the woman now trades her youth and beauty for endless one-night stands with Chad Tinderchuck. Example:

Chad always has a date, since girls always swipe to talk to him. In this, Chad ruins women. Chad’s a 10, but when it’s 2am at the bar, Chad’s fine with the average 4 or 5 or 6. In this way, that 4 (Flora Foura) thinks that, for the rest of her life, she deserves a Chad Tinderchuck in the prime of his life. She is a widow, forever pining for that man that she thinks she deserves. Don’t believe me?

Wait, is that a lunch lady from 1983? And she’s calling anyone mediocre???

The actual 5 or 6 guy Flora should be with? Well, after Chads marry and disappear, and younger Chads start ignoring her, she’s ready to “settle” for that 5 or 6 Andy Average. And, she’s angry about it every day that she sees Andy, since, deep down, Flora knows that she’s good enough for Chad.

But we’re seeing now that Andy Average isn’t quite so interested in Flora Foura after she’s spent her twenties on a revolving carousel of men, maybe picking up a child or two.

Let’s be fair – most of the things that most men do (especially young men) is to get quality females. If those aren’t available, Andy Average shuts down. Why work overtime when Xbox® is cheap? Why pump iron when Flora puts him on ignora?

¡Jeb! is always on ignora.

Men then go NEET – Not in Employment Education or Training. Why work hard? Why try to get great education? Why work at all? One segment of men has gone beyond MGTOW – they’ve gone full NPNW. I’ll let you sort out what NPNW means.

And who can blame men? When I was in high school, women liked men taking charge. Men were supposed to try, and women were supposed to put up a struggle so they didn’t feel like tramps. To be clear, I never engaged in any behavior that the young fräulein didn’t enthusiastically support, and when she said “stop” and meant it, I did.

It was well ingrained in women that they didn’t want to look like tramps, so they had to pretend they didn’t like or want to make out. Meat Loaf’s song trilogy Paradise by the Dashboard Light is a perfect description of a healthy sexual dynamic of the type that produced . . . me, and probably you, too.

We now live in a world of #MeToo. Russell Brand (who I don’t know because he doesn’t return either my emails or my calls) is being accused of, hear me out, having sex with (really!) a girl who wanted to have sex with him, who was (drumroll) of legal age. The cad! If a multimillionaire celebrity can be accused and lose a couple of million dollar a year of income for doing legal things, well, what chance does Andy Average have, especially since the average woman don’t need no man?

This is, perhaps the biggest lie. Women who don’t have children or a husband in their 40s are, perhaps, the unhappiest demographic on the planet. And, as I noted earlier, women want to marry up. The big paradox is women want to get a college degree (skip having children) and earn a lot of cash.

Women won’t marry men who make less than them, so they die childless and alone.

But, hey! At least they got to make cool PowerPoints™ between boxes of chardonnay and the trip to the vet for Sir Buggles Von Fancypants. I’m not exaggerating. Check this out:

When you sold your family, soul, and children for Internet likes.

Did I mention this is ruining the economy, the family structure, and the future?

The good news (for me) is that I wrote my notes on this post, and I’ve only touched a third of them. That means probably the next two Wednesday posts will be around this theme.

The bad news is that there are two more posts. As much as I’d like to say the kids are alright, they’re most definitely not. This has tremendous impacts on the near-term economy, as well as the future of the West.

But, hey, at least Biden’s still Building Back Better!

Oh. That didn’t age as well as a cat lady.

We Already Know The Solutions

“Watch your top knot.” – Jeremiah Johnson

Bill Clinton thought Hillary would be a good president: “There’s no chance she’ll blow it.”

Alexander the Great is said to have solved the riddle of the Gordian Knot in 333 B.C. Whoever solved the Knot, the legend said, would rule all of Asia. Alexander took one look at the large and complex knot, pulled out his sword and cut right through it. I think Alexander was certain that he’d be successful and that no one would challenge his solution since he had, you know, an army with him. I guess you could say he was so confident that he was knot sure.

One of the things that I’ve seen fairly consistently in my life is that, like Alexander, I generally know the answer right when I see the problem. Some of them, like calculus problems, it took a lot of work to get the answer, admittedly, but there was no place when I said, “Well, if only the Federal government had a Federal Bureau of Solving Calculus problems, I’d be set.” No. I knew the only answer was for me to sit down and hack through that calculus problem until I had it solved.

Most problems in life are just that simple. Too hot in the living room? Get a fan. Turn the air conditioning down. Experiment to see how many cold beers it takes to make me feel cold. But I never think to act on that until I’m uncomfortable. When I’m slightly warm, I don’t go running for the fan, I just deal with it. But when I start to sweat?

Time to take action.

What does a hipster say to create peer pressure? “C’mon, man, no one is doing it!”

I think most people are like this, not just me. Sure, there are things I do when I anticipate a problem coming down the road to save myself the trouble. But like that room temperature slowly rising, at some point I look at the situation and note, “This must be dealt with.” But I always knew the solution.

The solution itself isn’t the issue. Most solutions are mind-numbingly clear. The level of frustration or fear or whatever motivating me just has to be high enough that I’m willing to take the action necessary to solve the problem. To be clear, I also have to believe that my action might work – if I think the air conditioner is broken, for instance, I won’t bother to go over to turn it on and will stick with the whole “drink a lot of really cold beer” idea.

The above paragraph contains all three of dead economist Ludwig Von Mises’ causes of Human Action. Von Mises said for anyone to take conscious action, for any action three things needed to be present:

A Vision of a Better State
A Path to That Better State
Belief That Following the Path Will Take Us to That Better State.

While I’m focusing on today is when we already know what we want, I’ll just noted that it doesn’t have to come in that order.

It turns out my chemistry teacher was right – alcohol is a solution.

On a personal level, I have to be uncomfortable enough from where I am and where I could be to initiate action. The Vision has to be sufficiently far from where I am for me to care. But, again, I generally know the solution, it just requires enough discomfort to create action. If my air conditioner isn’t working in December, that’s not a big deal. If it has failed in July, that’s where I’m willing to pay extra to see the repair folks show up on a Sunday afternoon because the liquor stores are closed then.

Other examples – I don’t paint my house when it’s a little faded, I might need to see some bare spots. I wait until the trashcan is maybe slightly more than full to take it out. But in each case the action isn’t in question. I always know the solution. It’s not a mystery.

It’s similar as a society. In a society, we all have the ability to act as individuals, but there is some minimum number of people that are required to take action. One group, the 3%ers, took their name from the idea that only 3% of the American Colonial population fought and won against the British. I’m not sure that 3% is correct; that’s irrelevant to the post.

Why did the chicken cross the playground? To get to the other slide.

Certainly, that’s a minimization, because if there hadn’t been broad support for the American Revolution anyway, it wouldn’t have happened. Rather, I am certain that group of fighters represented the symptom of a greater dissatisfaction.

Everyone on the side of the Revolution knew what had to be done. If you take a few minutes to re-read the Declaration of Independence, it certainly spells out the vision, and also spells out the reasons why it was important to take the action.

Of the signers, at least John Hancock had belief that the actions would work, since he signed his name so boldly and largely. And John Hancock never told a knock-knock joke. Why? Freedom rings, baby.

For each of the societal ills we see, the solution isn’t complex, it’s simple. We just haven’t had the guts to implement it. If mobs are ruling the streets of San Francisco or Chicago or Malmo, the solution isn’t to study the problem with a commission. The solution is to make crime much more uncomfortable than the reward for committing the crime.

I’m glad Godzilla® wasn’t Korean. That would have been Seoul destroying.

That solution to stopping crime will involve dead criminals. Oddly, it takes less to keep criminals in line than to stop criminality, but the solution almost always involves Rooftop Koreans and bar owners with very short shotguns and prosecutors that don’t prosecute good and honest people stopping crime.

If the problem is illegals flooding the southern border, the only actual solution is to make living in the United States a living hell for illegals. I assure you, if sufficient pressure was applied, the illegals would deport themselves in weeks.

Have an anchor baby? Fine. It goes into an orphanage or with foster parents. Illegals have to leave. Something tells me the parents will pack up the kids as they head out.

Brought here as a young child and the United States is the only country they’ve ever known? Not my problem. They have to go back.

Drugs? Simple solution. I’ll leave that one to you.

Illegitimate kids? Remove spousal support and child support and welfare. Illegitimate kids will cease in a year and the baby-daddy with 20 different baby-mommas will disappear while those baby-mommas cease to have sex randomly. Or, if they do? They have to suffer the consequences.

What about the kids? Yeah, heard it. Don’t care. It’s that sort of forced compassion that destroys nations, turns them into countries, and eventually leads to Balkanization.

I fell into the reupholstery machine at the furniture factory. I’m completely recovered now.

I’m right and every person reading this knows it.

The wonderful part is that these solutions will take place. Sadly, because the room is getting warmer, these solutions will take place only when the discomfort is so high that it will be unpleasant for all concerned.

And then, once again, the Gordian Knot will be solved.

Après Trump, qui? (Plus? A Picture of a Stripper)

“Hey, is that Donald Trump’s car?” – American Psycho

Biden likes all-mail voting, Trump prefers all-male voting.

The battle of the Left against Trump continues, as it will for every day of his life. There isn’t really an end to how much he’s rustled the collective jimmies of the Left. It’s especially fun to watch it play out in the Twitter™ X® feeds of Leftist celebrities like John Cusack, Ron Perlman, Steven King or Rob Reiner.

It’s actually amazing to watch the chemicals soak their brain as their amygdala gets hijacked by someone not even in the room (great example here: LINK). And I’m glad that I’ve never been in a small room on a hot day with Cusack, Perlman, King and Reiner – imagine the smell.

Why is that? Trump is a focus. If you go back in time, the Left was similarly fixated on Bush I, Bush II, and Reek, er Mittens Romney. As noted by the commentor El B on last Wednesday’s post Leftism Is A Death Cult That May Kill Us All – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise (wilderwealthywise.com),

I imagine the next article will be titled, “There’s no good reason you should have to be alive to vote” so at last Pa Wilder can vote Democrat.

Do what you will, there is going to be some benevolence, as well as some malice, in your patient’s soul. The great thing is to direct the malice to his immediate neighbours whom he meets every day and to thrust his benevolence out to the remote circumference, to people he does not know. The malice thus becomes wholly real and the benevolence largely imaginary. There is no good at all in inflaming his hatred of Germans if, at the same time, a promiscuous habit of charity is growing up between him and his mother, his employer, and the man he meets in the train.

C.S. Lewis wrote The Screwtape Letters, where the quote above originates. It was written as if from a demon to his nephew, showing how Evil might best subvert society. In 2023, I think it could simply be a text from Soros to his kid. Lewis absolutely nails this concept, and does it in a simple, cogent, readable paragraph. Sadly for humanity, Leftists live this way, and thrive on it.

All of the hate of the Left has a concrete and local focus, and all of their compassion is spread in such a diffuse manner that it becomes meaningless. This is why these monsters pretend that handouts from the government (from money coerced from actually productive people) to those who meet some nearly arbitrary criteria is the same as actual charity.

I just donated $100 to a charity for blind children, but I doubt they’ll ever see the money.

But back to Trump. After he first said “Build the Wall®” the Left went into overdrive with hate towards Trump, pulling out all of the stops. “Europeans won’t think nice things about us!” they said. My response to that one is actually very, very simple, “So what? My ancestors left there for a reason and we have better steak here and don’t have to share a continent with the French.”

Trump’s presidency wasn’t a failure, but it was close, and it showed off his biggest weaknesses: the chose people based on how much the complimented him, and not based on either actual competence or actual loyalty. His personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, was a prime example. He hired a corrupt caricature of a sleezy lawyer to do business for him, and was shocked when the guy actually turned out to be sleezy.

Who knew???

Trump didn’t build the wall, didn’t stand up to Congress, and blinked when he had the chance to cross the Rubicon and stand for actual election integrity since, yeah, we know that the Left stole the election, and the receipts to back that statement up are starting to pile up. He did add some okay Supreme Court justices, but I think he should have added the Zodiac Killer, Ted Cruz.

I’m telling you, it would have sucked to have been killed just because I’m a Sagittarius.

Had Trump said, “I’m staying here, not because I demand the power, but I will stay here until a President can be rightfully elected to replace me. I declare that elections will take place in November 2021. I will not be a candidate, and will in no way serve past January 20, 2022 regardless of the circumstances. This is necessary to ensure that the legitimacy of the Presidency of the United States remains unsullied.” Oh, sure, he’d have said, “I, your greatest President, will stay in office because you deserve a system that is excellent in a way only I can give you.”

Then, he could have done that, and retired a hero to the middle and the Right and it would have been talked about for 500 years. The Left would have grumbled, and might have lost their demon and the coming inevitable crisis might (stress, might) have been pushed down the road a decade or more.

After Caesar crossed the Rubicon, I believe his first words were, “Can someone get me some dry socks?”

One thing Trump did was completely transform the face of politics. Just as the Left didn’t vote for Biden, instead voting against Trump, Trump unmasked the utter weakness and complicity of the Republican politicians (not the Right) in creating the landscape we have today. It was especially instructive watching Trump eviscerate ¡JEB! ¡JEB! had been the consensus candidate for the establishment, but Trump sucked all the air (and ¡JEB!’s soul, it looked like) out the room.

This was also inevitable. The system has stopped serving the interests of the heritage American middle class for decades. Vox Day put it very well the other day when he noted that the Republican debate featured two Indians arguing about who could give more money to Israel.

I think there are a lot of people who would vote GOP for $20. Heck, vote twice and you can afford a Big Mac®

Will Trump survive the trials? I think not. The original charges are (mainly, as far as I can tell – IANAL) to be farcical. Trump’s later attempts at covering crap up? Not so much. There are legitimate charges that could bring him down if Trump did really try to have records or videos erased.

Regardless, the RINOs are doing everything they can to hide the only candidate that they have that has national impact, the only candidate who is leading in the battleground states, the only candidate who stands a chance against the corrupt vote harvesting system set up by the Left.

Then what? Après moi, le deluge (After me, the flood) is attributed to Louis XV, and is said to foreshadow the French Revolution. Since we need more rain here, I’ll adapt the phrase for our current problem:

Après Trump, qui? (After Trump, who?)

The only person on the Right who can even come close to Trump in charisma and poise is Tucker Carlson. Tucker seems to have as much charisma, but can also add in an intelligence and poise lacking in Trump. Could he manage being President? I have no idea, but when compared with the rest of the candidates on the Right, he leaves them all in the dust.

Longer term who will emerge as a leader? Some corporal that fought in Afghanistan and is fed up?

We’ll see. The current crop of mainstream politicians on the Right and Left make ¡JEB!’s charisma vacuum look like Robert Downy, Jr. Most of their policies are, at best, simple replays of politics that are 20 years into the past, with less of a likelihood of solving our problems than using a 4-year-olds fingerpainting to design a passenger jet, though that might be exactly what Boeing® does nowadays.

I’ll vote for Trump in November 2024 if he’s not in the slammer, obviously. It amuses me to watch the Leftists get in a froth-ridden frenzy against Trump. It’s almost like Leftists don’t believe Biden won the election.

Leftism Is A Death Cult That May Kill Us All

“This man has the gift of death.” – Zardoz

Whoops, sorry! Just a regular old death cult after all.

This is the second post about Leftist self-hatred this week. This particular Leftist self-hatred is one that uniquely hurts the economy and even the prospects of the survival of humanity, so it’s par for the course for the most malignant philosophy ever to exist, outside of Taco Tuesday.

What spurred this was a note from a friend that suggested a post. I knew where I wanted to go with it, since I had seen a graphic (from Nature Communications® which is a part of Nature™ the magazine, LINK) that surprised me. I mean, knowing what I know about Leftists, it really shouldn’t have, but what got my attention is how starkly it shows the divide in the philosophies of Right and Left. It’s presented pretty weirdly, so I’ll help out a bit on the interpretation since I’m a trained professional.

The graph is shown as a bullseye. Why? I think the researchers might have been drunk and had a bullseye graph generator, so they decided between shots of tequila that they’d use the damn thing since the University had paid for it anyway. They then got the grad students to enter the data for free, and, boom, paper complete.

I remember watching a PBS® show on how fish swim. They shocked a fish by putting an electrode up its behind so they could photograph it. Who put the electrodes up the fish butts? Grad students.

The concentric circles in the graph are pretty simple, though, and the innermost are the things closest to an individual. The rings get rather more distant as they go outwards until they get rather silly:

All of your immediate family.
All of your extended family.
All of your closest friends.
All of your friends (including distant).
All of your acquaintances.
All people you have ever met.
All people in your country.
All people on your continent.
All people on all continents (apparently, screw those guys on islands, they suck anyway).
All mammals (finally got the people on the islands and astronauts covered).
All amphibians, reptiles, mammals, fish, and birds.
All animals on earth including paramecia and amoebae.
All animals in the universe, including alien lifeforms.
All living things in the universe including plants and trees.
All natural things in the universe including inert entities such as rocks.
All things in existence.

So, that’s the scale – what things are the most important to you? For me, this is an easy answer. I like the things that closer to me better, and I could see my feelings about this covered very well under the title listed for “Conservatives”.

Is it just me, or does this graph look very, umm, happy?

In general, I like the people that are close to me more. Yes, I care about Americans more than I care about people in Tannu Tuva, or people in Tanganyika, or even those pitiful island people. I generally care more about my kids than yours, and I generally like all people better than rocks, though there are some exceptions that I make for ex-spouses and members of Antifa®. Heck the entire meme below is encapsulated in the graph above:

Now if that isn’t what’s on his headstone, it sure should be.

Okay, that explains the Right, and how we generally feel according to statistics. What about the Left?

Why did they pick 45°?

Whoa, that’s amazingly different! Lefties are really focused over to the end, with only a minor preference for humans and a lesser preference for people closer to them. The perception of the granola-eating surrender chimp as the model for Leftism is once again validated. They like these things best:

All animals in the universe, including alien lifeforms.
All living things in the universe including plants and trees.
All natural things in the universe including inert entities such as rocks.

Rocks are more important to them than their parents. And if their parents are as disappointed in them as I’m guessing they are, I can see why. They hate themselves, so they hate the things that are closest to them. You can see it when they throw themselves in front of cars when they protest, they have never won anything in life, so the only way they can win, they feel, is to have transferred virtue from their death. “See, I told you I was a good person, but you never believed me!” Thus, the victim Olympics where they compete based on victim status. “Well, Bob, he stuck the victim status, but he wobbled on the virtue signal, and the blind gay judge with AIDs from Ethiopia gave him a 7.3.”

I wonder how many upvotes they got on Reddit®?

To be clear, I’m not sure I would like alien lifeforms at all unless they grilled well, and I think I would be just fine if an entire planet of intelligent, bloodthirsty cannibal lizard-people was wiped out, even in a slow and agonizing way, just to make sure that my family had slightly more comfortable air conditioning. But enough about the people who are related to George Soros.

I’m not kidding. I can come up with entire species that I’d love to see wiped from existence, and I’d start with mosquitos, gnats, wasps, and vegans. Vegans especially, because they eat what my food eats, and that’s just selfish.

To be clear, I love the environment. I love hiking, I love nature, I love hunting, I love trees. The reason I love them is simple: they exist to by enjoyed by Man. If Man doesn’t exist? None of these mean anything to me. There are millions of cows alive on Earth right now. Because we want to make cows happy? No, because cows make us happy, especially when done medium rare with a nice crust. To be clear, I think “nature” has no intrinsic value outside of what it can provide to Man. But I love nature, because it’s awesome to man.

The Moon? Just rock without people. And Soviet Russian ships that landed. A crash is a landing, right?

Oddly, because of these heat maps, people on the Right go out to work to care for the people they know and their country. Why was the Right the primary source of military recruits? Because we like our nation more than we like other nations, and since we are focused on those around us, we’re fiercely individualistic, and focused on family and friends. Why? We like our families and friends, and if they’re loyal to us, we’re more than loyal to them.

When the chips were down and you needed help, would you rather have a friend on the Right, or one on the Left?

Thought so.

People on the Left, though, end up in the traditional Leftist positions, in academia, or, in government. I’ll perhaps discuss in some future post a bit more on Leftism and academia if there’s interest. For today, let’s focus on government.

The idea of government, at least as outlined in the Constitution, is simple, “establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and, ensure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity”. Note, even in the Constitution it talks about “ourselves and our posterity” and doesn’t mention the slave-pirate amoebas from the planet Melkor-7 or trees.

Wait, tell me about the slave girls again?

The people who gravitated to government over time, however, like control. And that control includes enforcing their morals (which rate rocks above people). And in 2023, those are the folks in charge of policy. They like people who live elsewhere more than they like citizens of their own country, and the like clinging vines more than they like their second cousin. Depending on the second cousin, I might agree, but the point remains: they hate humanity.

Rather than environmental policy being about how to best work and preserve the environment for people, environmental policy is now viewed as either one of state control, or the idea that we’ll preserve a beetle that isn’t that much different than millions of other beetles rather than try to provide a future habitat for our grandchildren, or Keith Richards, whichever lives longer. None of these policies have humans in mind.

Right now, I drive a huge pickup truck. I might have bought a smaller pickup, but they can’t be sold because of fuel-efficiency standards – only my massive, hulking pickup with an interior bigger than my first apartment can be sold legally because huge pickups don’t have to meet car standards, but little ones do. That’s also why sedans and station wagons disappeared and massive “sport utility vehicles” replaced them – a consequence of bad environmental policy. I like using less gasoline, but .gov says I have to use more.

Hmmm.

Mussolini was lucky. On his last day he got to hang out with his friends.

Other examples of this are things like nuclear power. The Left has always hated nuclear power because it was something only First World societies could afford, and the thing the Left hates more than themselves is a winner. How can we drag them back down? Oh, yeah, we can make power so expensive and unreliable that no one can afford it.

The biggest question facing humanity in 2023 is energy. Is an energy crisis coming? It certainly is. Will the regulations that the Leftists who like rocks better than their parents put into place make sense for people? Unlikely, since the civilization of humans isn’t on their radar.

To be fair, since we’ve already demonstrated the self-hatred of humanity, it’s pretty simple to note that these consequences that put all of humanity at risk, might not be unintentional at all.

Is Leftism a death cult?

Not if you’re a rock. Otherwise, yeah.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Corruption And The End Of An Age

“Only a cynical man would call what these people have “lives,” Wayne. Crime, despair, this is not how man was supposed to live. The League of Shadows has been a check against human corruption for thousands of years. We sacked Rome, loaded trade ships with plague rats, burned London to the ground. Every time a civilization reaches the pinnacle of its decadence, we return to restore the balance.” – Batman Begins

“If I were American, I’d vote Trump. But I’m an illegal alien, So I’m voting Biden.”

Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
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.
Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
Open War.

Volume V, Issue 3

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.

This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – Watch The Bugs Scatter – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The End of an Age – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 800 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Watch The Bugs Scatter

When I was a kid growing up near Wilder Mountain, we’d often go hiking during the summers. Whenever we’d stop, I’d do kid things, one of which was picking up a rock. Why?

To see what was on the other side of it, silly.

Whenever I’d pick one up and see a batch of bugs, the one thing they’d do is run and hide. They were, I suppose, fine under the rock, or maybe out at night, but the light of day scared them and they would run so they could start hiding.

Biden rhymes with hidin’ so that makes sense. As the Congressional review of Biden Shenanigans continues to show up more and more smoking guns, the pattern remains the same: get Trump.

June 7: FBI releases the FBI form where it’s alleged by an informant that the Bidens took a $10 million bribe.
June 8: Jack smit indicts Trump for having similar sorts of documents that every president has retained.

July 26: Hunter goes to court and gets the sweetheart deal that gave him, essentially, blanket immunity pulled by a judge who decided not to rubber-stamp the thing.
July 27: Jack Smith adds more charges to Trump on the documents thing.

July 31: Hunter’s former business partner testifies that Joe was on more than 20 calls with Hunter’s clients, and that Burisma pressured Joe to use his power to get the Ukrainian prosecutor fired.
August 1: Jack Smith indicts Trump again. This time? For speaking on January 6.

I’m thinking the more dirt that comes out on Hunter, the more dirt they’ll have to come up with on Trump, up to and including trying him as a witch under some obscure 1670 statute from Ye Olde Commonwealth of Virginia for “flying in a most terrifying way” in his jet.

The Bidens have (allegedly) created a crime family that works without any sort of (to this point) review. It is, at this point, established fact that the Bidens used the full force of the “intelligence community” including the FBI and the CIA to help Joe get elected by suppressing the Hunter laptop story, and controlling the items showing up in social media.

Congress has done something moderately useful for once: they’ve shown us that Washington, D.C. is exactly as corrupt as we always thought it was. And now we have proof.

Violence and Censorship Update

For whatever reason, CNN® decided that people shouldn’t go see the new movie, Sound of Freedom. That’s odd, because the movie is mainly about child trafficking. Why would the Left be in favor of child trafficking? Guess that’s just a mystery.

The need to scrub history of everything, well, historical has gone into overdrive. Washington and Lee decided that they could no longer have (spins wheel) the headstone of a horse that, apparently, owned slaves and was the cause of the Civil War. Now that the horse has been erased from history and censored, I’m sure that the Left is done and will stop now.

A recent Pew® poll (LINK) showed that 55% of Americans think that the government should restrict speech. Which Americans? The Left, and the speech is whatever they disagree with, which is called, “false”.

Just before his wife told Justin to take a hike, he took time to blame the Right in the United States because “Canadian” Muslims are against LGBTQ curriculum in schools. Guess we won another one, guys.

Bankman-Fraud (how did they not see that coming?) has just had Biden’s DOJ drop tons of felonies. Odd since Ukrainians took our tax dollars, gave them to Bankman-Fraud, and then he gave millions to Democrats for elections. Nothing to see here.

And a reminder, looking into your bank account is patriotic, looking into the money we ship to Ukraine is treason.

And, to call something racist should no longer require proof, say people who are definitely not racist against whites.

Finally, Leftists who create propaganda for the Left are needing money because not enough people are going to see the Leftist propaganda. Expect to see Hollywood here soon enough.

Biden’s Misery Index

Let’s take a look to see how we’ve done this month . . . .

Yup, up again, but not as steep. But people aren’t getting fries with that, anymore.

Updated Civil War II Index

Violence:

Violence is down – I was expecting more during a long, hot summer. Perhaps August, or perhaps the endemic violence of the cities doesn’t even register anymore?

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it was down a bit.

Economic:

Economic numbers are swinging back down. The numbers look fairly unstable from month to month, which isn’t good, but the stock market popped up in July, regardless if the cities look like a dystopian science fiction predication.

Illegal Aliens:

The border numbers are down, and I’m a bit surprised, since the infiltration continues. Suppressed numbers?

The End of an Age

Tim Pool, podcaster, called his summary for July, 2023 on August 1:

I think he’s right. The full power of the DOJ has been weaponized against half, but only half, of the citizens of the country. Laws have been passed in state after state to allow irregularities in voting that Enron® wishes were allowed in accounting.

There are active purges of people with classical values and beliefs from the military and even from the corporate world as weird, Leftist struggle sessions are required for employees and soldiers. Failure to enthusiastically take part results in firings.

Another sign of the end of an age is when a billionaire spends $171,000,000 of his own money to become governor of Illinois and then, in 2023, signs a bill into law that allows illegal immigrants to . . . go home? No. Become police officers.

Yes. We live in a nation where we have foreign mercenaries who are here illegally who now have the responsibility to enforce the law. I don’t even thing Rome fell to such a low.

The Roman Republic, however, did fall to the point where they started using the power of the state to put politicians in prison for purely political reasons. The outcome of that was the destruction of the Republic and then the Caesars.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1683999891494785024

https://twitter.com/i/status/1686450113298710538

https://twitter.com/i/status/1680045716427747329

https://twitter.com/i/status/1678170602664763395

https://twitter.com/i/status/1680641692762796032

https://twitter.com/i/status/1681805507428859906

https://twitter.com/i/status/1683261497525321729

https://twitter.com/i/status/1685767050944225280

https://twitter.com/i/status/1684466718234877952

https://twitter.com/i/status/1684619417215193088

Good Guys

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/retailers-strike-back-7-eleven-workers-beat-brazen-mega-shoplifter-stick

https://www.gpb.org/news/2023/08/01/membership-skyrocketing-black-gun-group-touts-inalienable-2a-rights-for-self

https://katv.com/news/nation-world/man-tracks-down-truck-thieves-kills-one-in-shootout-san-antonio-police-department-texas-south-park-village-shopping-center-chief-william-mcmanus-self-defense

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/372412618_Busting_the_Durable_Myth_that_US_Self-Defense_Law_Uniquely_Fails_to_Protect_Human_Life

One Guy

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1681521615232745472

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/how-jason-aldeans-controversial-hit-song-became-a-cultural-flashpoint

https://www.billboard.com/music/country/jason-aldean-brittany-aldean-try-that-in-a-small-town-number-1-reaction-1235383534/

Body Count

https://news.gallup.com/poll/508886/belief-five-spiritual-entities-edges-down-new-lows.aspx

https://amac.us/newsline/society/10-shocking-examples-of-wokeism-in-the-u-s-military/

https://heartlandernews.com/2023/07/06/air-force-embraces-dei-as-recruitment-falters/

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/diversity-biden-joint-chiefs-chairman-nominee-placed-dei-forefront-air-force-leader

https://www.cfr.org/blog/uncertain-future-us-militarys-all-volunteer-force

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2023/08/03/of-course-young-patriots-are-rejecting-joining-our-failing-military-n2626500

Vote Count

PAST MONTH: https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19821/tech-companies-manipulating-elections

BACKGROUND: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/feb/15/revealed-disinformation-team-jorge-claim-meddling-elections-tal-hanan

BACKGROUND: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1419828112

Civil War

https://nypost.com/2023/07/29/staten-islands-congestion-pricing-fight-spurs-push-to-leave-nyc/

https://www.sfgate.com/politics/article/scenes-from-el-dorado-state-secession-california-18201138.php

https://www.hcn.org/issues/55.8/north-extremism-oregons-greater-idaho-movement-echoes-a-long-history-of-racism-in-the-region

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/08/02/america-house-divided-political-lawfare-could-lead-violence/

https://www.recorderonline.com/news/showing-up-for-the-next-civil-war/article_78dc73e0-3086-11ee-90ae-ab45c1f4d94f.html

https://theconversation.com/idiots-criminals-and-scum-nasty-politics-highest-in-us-since-the-civil-war-208272

https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/04/politics/american-political-divisions-july-fourth/index.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/08/style/fourth-turning-pop-culture.html

Inversion of Values, Part 2: The Roman Empire

“Yes, sir! That’s exactly who I am and what I am, sir. A victim, sir!” – A Clockwork Orange

What’s black and white and red all over? A victim of an industrial accident at a newspaper printing press. (All memes today are as-found)

The inversion of virtues: I’ve written on this topic recently, but decided I needed to have another go at it. Part of the blogging theme is that my posts are limited in space. No one wants to read a 10,000-word post on PEZ™ on Friday morning as they drink their coffee.

Virtues make a civilization worth living in. I’d rather live in a poor civilization with great values than a rich one with poor values, and both of those sound better than what we’ve got going on now. And I’d suggest that our current free-fall is due to that loss of virtue.

What were Epstein’s last words before he committed suicide? “You don’t have to do this! I promise I won’t talk!”

Let’s compare values at the peak of Roman Civilization, the peak of Western Civilization, and what the Left is shoving down our throats right now. For instance:

Rome: Worshiped gods.
The West: Worshiped God.
The Left: Worship man (atheism) or the State.

See? Inversion. Who did the cultures idolize?

Rome: Worshiped heroes.
The West: Worshiped heroes and Saints.
The Left: Worship victims.

See, that’s not hard, and yet more inversion. What about sin?

Rome: Sin of hubris.
The West: Sin of pride.
The Left: Sin of privilege.

I’ll just quit making inversion comments, because this is a slam dunk. Who are the spiritual leaders?

Rome:
The West:
The Left: Professors, Leftie politicians.

Ideals?

Rome: Ideal was glory, excellence (Areté).
The West: Ideal was holiness, modesty, courage.
The Left: Social Justice, victimhood.

Ideal social class?

Rome: Warriors and those who served their fellow men.
The West: The middle class.
The Left: The lower class, victims, victims, victims.

Even a virtue, charity, has been turned from a voluntary act that provides spiritual growth in the terms of the classic West, to taxation to provide forced “charity” to the (often) undeserving.

I’m thinking I don’t want to know how my tax dollars are spent because I’m afraid all mine went to buy crack pipes in San Francisco.

This inversion bleeds over into all of society. “Drag Queen Story Hour”?

Wonder why they don’t read to old folks in nursing homes, or to the blind? Whenever I hear about that, my mind sees:

And then there are questions that are more difficult to answer:

Inversion, of course, shows up in the obvious things:

Jazz Jennings is a transgender person who feels no need to change with no sense of irony:

And their goal is that you will live and produce and that you should be okay with not being meaningful or having any joy, so live in the pod, and eat the bugs, wagie.

And we now have a Marine Corps who worries about people’s feelings. Perhaps they’ll land with Nerf™ guns so that they won’t have their feelings hurt.

But the pushback is well underway. Or overweigh:

But there’s a catch:

And I think this has broken the Left, mentally:

And the internal contradictions in their “victimhood” matrix are starting to show:

Canada has shown that it certainly can’t be trusted with the power of life and death:

The inversion has hit, but people (and maybe Higher Powers) are pushing back. And, I think we will win. Why? Because we’re so very pretty. And? PEZ®.

Making Leftists Radical: Compassion, Internet Cats, and Feminists With No Sense of Humor

“It’s mercy, compassion, and forgiveness I lack. Not rationality.” – Kill Bill, Volume 1

That’s awake, not “woke.”

Repost from 2019 . . .

Here’s a fable:

There was a little girl going to school in Japan. Near her place in the classroom there was a cocoon that the teacher had brought in to illustrate the life cycle of the butterfly, and it was hanging right next to her every day. For a whole week, nothing had happened, but then she noticed the cocoon shaking. She could see that the caterpillar had completed its transformation.

What bothered the girl so very much was that the butterfly was struggling to get out of the cocoon. Finally, exhausting all of the patience that a seven year old has, she helped the butterfly by ever so gently tearing open the cocoon so it could get free.

To her surprise, rather than flying, the butterfly fell out of the cocoon and onto the floor of the school room. She gasped.

The teacher walked over and looked at the butterfly helplessly writhing on the floor. It was clear the butterfly would never be able to fly.

“Did you help the butterfly out of the cocoon?”

The little girl, through eyes that were filling with tears, nodded.

The teacher explained, “It is only through struggling to get out of the cocoon that the butterfly gets enough strength to fly.”

This is one of my favorite stories. I can’t recall where I originally heard or read it.

I’d often tell that story to people that reported to me when they were facing a particularly difficult time at work. I’m sure it just made some of them mad – they wanted me to solve their problems. I refused, perhaps giving them hints on places they should look to find the answer.

One of my goals was to get the work done for the company, sure. But I also wanted to take the time to get the person developed – for me that was a moral imperative. My biggest goal was that everyone who reported to me became a more capable person – and I knew that didn’t happen without the struggle. Oh sure, I could have told Ted where the fire extinguisher was, but that would have deprived him of the struggle to find it. And one of his eyebrows finally did grow back.

That’s how I mostly have used the story, to show the importance of struggle. But there’s another and perhaps more central moral to this story:

misplaced compassion kills.

The Mrs. recently found an article that really, for me, answered the question about why the Left is turning so radical, so quickly. The article is by Zach Goldberg, and you can find it here (LINK), although he takes the data in a different direction than I do for his article. Goldberg has an interesting Twitter® feed (LINK) as well. The graphs in this post are mostly from either the article or his Twitter© feed.

It’s always nice when ¡Science!® is able to provide an insight on the problems of the world. I started with the story about compassion. When psychologists do studies of Leftists, they find that Leftists score higher in compassion than the norm – a lot higher. Well, some Leftists.

Karl Marx had only a very short career as a clown at children’s parties. After he was fired, he insisted that true children’s parties had never been tried.

Does that mean that people on the Right don’t care? Not at all. The data shows that people on the Right give more to charity and also volunteer more hours, so it’s clear that people on the Right care. But they don’t get all mushy and aren’t dominated by their feelings.

It turns out there are differences as well among Leftists based on race. One major bias that almost all people from all time have had is in-group preference. You like your family more than your brother’s family. You like your cousin better than you like your neighbor. You like people in your town more than people who live in the next town over – that’s why Friday night high school football games are so big in small towns.

This makes sense at almost every point in history – it’s rare for you to be living in France and think “Wow, that German flag flying the Eiffel Tower is such a neat thing to see.” In-group bias is normal. It’s why Americans rooted for team U.S.A. in the Women’s World Cup® even though soccer is a vastly inferior game to tic-tac-toe.

Thankfully I’ve reached the “Dad’s asleep in the recliner” stage when the Monopoly® board comes out.

White leftists, however, have somehow become biased against . . . white people. It’s like being born a guy and not liking that you were born a guy . . . oh. Nevermind.

As you can see, there is exactly one group that detests itself and prefers other groups.

But this isn’t the norm. And this isn’t how the Left has been for years. Data shows quite nicely that they didn’t used to be this way – as late as 2010, 20% of white Leftists thought that increasing border security was a good idea. 2018? Less than 5%.

It’s clear the Left has become more radical and the Right has (more or less) remained the same.

Republicans have stayed pretty steady on the border. Not so with white liberals.

What happened in 2010?

Who would have thought that Leftist extremism starts with Grandma posting cat memes on Facebook®?

The user bases of these social networks took off in 2010. There is one thing that social networks want – your attention. They best way to get that attention? Show you content that creates an emotional response. Cats and babies are great – they make people laugh and go “aww.” But to a Leftist, to keep their attention – show them things that create outrage by violating their sense of compassion.

I hear her next initiative will be to forgive all the Electoral College student loan debt.

The Twitter®, Facebook©, and YouTube™ video suggestion algorithms have become the Democrat® brand. Social media is a particularly useful programming device. These algorithms are used every day to pull the Left farther Left. Why does this impact white Leftists in particular? They spend more time on social media than the rest of the Left. But they’re enough – white leftists are about 25% of the electorate. And they do have money. And they hate the Right.

Through this lens, the reasons for the bans become clear – even though the algorithm mutes voices on the Right, the most effective voices must be silenced. Arguments counter to the narrative have to be stopped. As has recently become quite clear – the Left owns social media and will clear out clear, articulate voices on the Right given any excuse. The chance is too great that these voices will interfere with the programming. An example:

Portlandia is funny, and there are more bookstore clips that are even funnier – this was just the most “safe for work” one I could find.

Portlandia was a series on IFC® for 8 seasons. It mocked (fairly gently) the Leftist culture of Portland. It’s certain that the stars and most of the writers of the show are of the Left. But the things that the show made fun of can no longer be made fun of. Feminism was often the butt of good-natured jokes, but the feminist bookstore that several skits were shot in broke ties with the show after they decided they didn’t want to be made fun of – at all. What had been funny even to the Left in 2010 was by 2016 unacceptable. Feminism could no longer be a laughing matter, nor could any other Leftist narrative.

In 2019, Portland has lost its sense of humor and replaced it with outrage. Antifa regularly assembles a mob of hundreds to shut down any speech it disagrees with through violence. Their compassion drives them to shed blood, but it doesn’t stop there. This same compassion compels the Left to want to give every illegal alien free health care, and a quick pathway to citizenship. In turn, that drives the 144,000 illegals to want to come here – and that was just in June of 2019. That’s a 10,000 person Caravan every other day.

All of this is caused by misplaced compassion, programmed by social media via algorithms. Certainly it’s all a coincidence, right? It’s not like large corporations owned and run by Leftists would have a political motive, right?