Clint Eastwood – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

It Came From 1983

“Oh, fishy, fishy, fishy, fish, that went wherever I did go.” – Monty Python’s Meaning of Life

What A.I. thinks 1983 looked like. It’s not entirely wrong.

As we drift farther and farther from movies that have a great plot or are actually funny, I’m enjoying this look back every so often to review what we had in comparison to what we have now. Sadly, the past seems to win, especially in comedies. But here they are, in no particular order except chronologically by release date – movies that came from 1983. Yes, your favorite may not be on this list, because as much as I like the horror, comedy, action, and science fiction from the time, most of the “drama” movies from 1983 were just plain unwatchable. The Big Chill? Tried to watch it twice, nearly died from boredom. If you like that movie, I’m sorry, you’re just wrong.

Like I said, here’s the list:

Videodrome: You could also title this movie, “Everything you want to know about sex but were afraid to ask David Cronenberg”, but that describes all of Cronenberg’s movies. I didn’t see this movie in 1983 (too young) but when I rented it on video, well, wow. This is an interesting take on the way that media is used to reprogram your mind, but very, very creepy.

High Road to China: Tom Selleck tries to be a more realistic Indiana Jones®, and pulls it off. It’s an action movie set in the pre-WWII era, and it’s fun. Fun enough to go back and buy it? No.

Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life: It’s absurd, from the beginning insurance-pirate ship documentary to the end scene. If you don’t like Monty Python®, well, you certainly won’t like this. I loved each and every scene. One of the things I really enjoyed was sitting in the seat with my popcorn watching people who really didn’t get the joke hating the movie and walking out. Not a movie that could be made in 2023.

Return of the Jedi: An acquaintance once remarked to me that Return would have been a better movie if, when the Emperor said, “Now, young Jedi®, you die,” and Luke™ did die. And then the rebellion failed. Can you imagine the sequel to that movie? Wow. Maybe he was on to something.

The Man with Two Brains: Steve Martin. Brain surgery. Kathleen Turner before she turned all Wilford Brimley on us. Good times.

WarGames: Mainly included for nostalgia purposes. I was only lukewarm on this movie since I thought it was a lot of Leftist propaganda. Still better than anything in the theater here in Modern Mayberry in the last month.

I want to watch this movie, right meow.

Trading Places: Ackroyd, Murphy, and Curtis all in top form in a hilarious movie that taught me about futures trading and what happens when you put a criminal in a cage in a gorilla suit. The usual stakes, please.

Mr. Mom: Micheal Keaton back when he was making comedies, which is what he was supposed to do. Plot is simple, dude loses job, wife has to work. Yeah, Feminist propaganda. Keaton still makes it work because he’s funny and I was stupid and didn’t catch the propaganda.

I think Mr. Mom would have been a better movie if the characters were sea otters with robot legs.

Krull: This movie was a weird mess of science fiction, fantasy, and maybe documentary of Al Gore’s childhood. It worked for me, since I expected nothing, and the movie was sincere in what it was trying to do. Krull also inspired a really cool pinball machine at the local arcade that Travis and I would go and pour quarters into.

National Lampoon’s Vacation: A great theme song, a funny premise, and understated humor. I’ve actually had a picnic lunch at the table where Chevy ate the urine-soaked sandwich, but with 100% less pee. It is one movie that gets funnier with age. Shout out to Cousin Eddie!

If only Vacation had been set in Rome.

Risky Business: I didn’t know what a Porsche® was before I watched this movie since no one anywhere near Wilder Mountain owned anything more exotic than a GM® or Ford™ pickup – a Toyota© was an exotic car. It’s the classic story: boy meets girl, girl is a prostitute, boy runs bordello, boy gets into college, boy joins Scientology®.

Easy Money: This is one many won’t remember – it was P.J. O’Rourke’s script based on Romeo and Juliet, where Rodney Dangerfield had to lose a bunch of weight and stop smoking to inherit millions of dollars. Still funny on a recent rewatch.

Strange Brew: It’s a movie based on a sketch comedy bit based on Hamlet. Take off, eh!

Scarface: I had no idea what I’d see when I wandered into the theater with this one, but I was not counting on people being dismembered with chainsaws and Al Pacino wanting people to say hello to his little friend.

What if Tony Montana had become the Mattress King of South Miami instead?

Sudden Impact: This movie went ahead and made my day. Clint Eastwood as Dirty Harry. Yeah, there was a time when they were new. And glorious. And horribly politically incorrect.

The Keep: The Wehrmacht vs. H.P. Lovecraft. I read the book before I saw this one, and thoroughly enjoyed the movie. An Ancient Evil versus and Ancient Guardian all fighting together in an Ancient Crypt? During World War II? Only thing missing were tanks.

Okay, I liked The Keep, but this poster looks 100% more lit.

What do you see on the list above? Two sequels, and those were earned: Star Wars™ and Dirty Harry®. Just two. The rest was Hollywood rolling the dice and failing (Krull) or succeeding wildly, (Trading Places, WarGames, Mr. Mom, Risky Business, Vacation).

While there was propaganda about the Leftist world that the filmmakers wanted to create (WarGames, Mr. Mom, Trading Places, and one not on the list, Tootsie, were especially filled with it), it was a more subtle time – viewers were gently led to a conclusion instead of the 2023 version of being battered over the head with it.

They knew they couldn’t make money if the audience didn’t show up to see the movie, so they focused on making a good movie. Yes, most of the people making films hated Ronald Reagan with a passion, but Reagan Derangement Syndrome wasn’t a thing, unless the person was John Hinkley, Jr. The nation in 1983 was one where there wasn’t this current schism and near ideological war against the Right, since it was just one year later Reagan won one of the most lopsided victories in electoral history.

It was morning in America. And we knew how to make movies.

What are your favorites from 1983?

It Came From 1982

“The Alan Parsons Project is a progressive rock band in 1982. Why don’t you just name it ‘Operation Wang-Chung’?” – Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me

A hipster asked me if I liked Indy films, “Sure, I loved The Last Crusade.”

The last time I did a movie list, I did a list based on an entire decade: the 1990s. It was an interesting list, but Aesop made a comment I’ll paraphrase because I’m too lazy to look it up to get the exact quote: “If you did the 1980s, you’d break the Internet.”

And he’s right. The 1980s were, very clearly, a much better decade for movies than any decade since. Before? Probably. There are great movies before and after the 1980s, but I think this was peak movie.

Why? In the 1980s it was very much Reagan’s country: “It is morning in America.” People were starting to feel optimistic after the recession, and people were starting to feel proud again. The movies of the period reflect that. Also, Hollywood® was able to experiment – it didn’t have to get a blockbuster because it invested $600,000,000 in a movie. No, it could do stupid, cheap movies. It could do daring movies. And that let it do exceptional movies. I’m picking 1982, because, like Aesop warned: I don’t want to break the Internet.

Why 1982? Because when I got into the hot tub tonight to smoke a nice Rocky Patel Decade Toro cigar and prepare to write, a video about my favorite movie from 1982 showed up. The following are a list of eighteen movies from 1982 that were better than most movies that show up today. For the most part, they’re in alphabetical order because, again, I’m too lazy to rank them.

But number one for me from 1982 has got to be:

The Thing.

But at least they’ll have lots of pasta to eat down there: penguine.

I had always loved John W. Campbell’s work, and The Thing is one of his best films. No, it doesn’t pass the Bechdel Test where it has women talking to each other. There are no women in the movie. At all. And it kicks ass, so I’m beginning to think the Bechdel Test shows me what movies will suck.

The film featured all practical effects – and that made them more visceral, in some cases literally. Kurt Russell in a beard losing a chess game against a computer and then tossing scotch into the computer from his nearly infinite supply of J&B®. And the result? One of the best action/horror/science fiction movies. Ever. It was considered a flop at the time, and now is considered one of the best movies of all time.

See? That’s why I love the 1980s.

The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas. Burt Reynolds. Singing about whores, in a movie about LaGrange, Texas, which if I believed ZZ Top®, is just filled with whores. With Dolly Parton? No, there’s nothing particularly good about this, but, someone in Hollywood thought it was a good idea.

Blade Runner. Stark. Grungy. Set a few years ago. Everyone was sweaty. Also? Everyone likes this movie more than I do – probably my least favorite Philip K. Dick movie. Bonus? I had a girlfriend who I convinced that she was actually a robot. Dick move? No, a Philip K. Dick move.

This movie begs the question: did they have blow driers in ninja school?

The Challenge. Scott Glenn and Toshiro Mifune in a movie about an American who fights ninja-style with office supplies, and, no, I’m not making that up. Utterly awesome. I believe I am the only person on the continent who liked this movie.

Conan the Barbarian. You’ve all seen it. I had read Conan stories before I saw the movie – I was not particularly impressed, but I had to mention this movie. It featured Arnold after he learned to read, but before he learned to act.

Eating Raoul. The best movie about cannibalistic infidelity for profit I’ve seen. It’s also the only movie about cannibalistic infidelity for profit I’ve ever seen.

Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Little needs to be said about this classic – carrot eating would never be the same in the cafeteria again in 1982. Plus? Sammy Hagar jamming.

Doesn’t anyone knock?

Firefox. Clint Eastwood stealing Soviet jets because he could think in Russian. Special effects don’t hold up, but still fun.

First Blood. Sly making the best Rambo movie before they started to get silly.

Night Shift. There are some actors that should stick to comedy. It may not be a popular opinion, but I think Michael Keaton is one of them. What is it about 1982 and whores? This movie has the lighthearted subject of a morgue turning into a brothel.

An Officer and a Gentleman. It’s like Top Gun, but no flying. Why would you watch this movie? Because you have nowhere else to go.

Poltergeist. The movie that led to making it a law that if you moved a cemetery for a housing development, that you had to movie the bodies, too. Go to the light, Carol Anne!

What do Italian ghosts eat? Spooketti.

Porky’s. This movie was a series of sketches combined with bad jokes and nudity, and those are the redeeming bits. Gets bad when the plot gets in the way. Paging Michael Hunt.

Rocky III. Sly was busy in 1982. But this movie was a good sequel, and probably better than you remember.

Silent Rage. A Chuck Norris movie. It’s not a great movie, but it’s an awesome movie. I know that makes no sense, but neither does this movie. It’s really my favorite Chuck Norris movie – science fiction with karate.

Yup, sittin’ around without a shirt and with my cowboy hat on. Ahhh, 1982, we miss you.

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. This is the sequel that saved Star Trek. Star Trek the Motion Picture was a dud. This was not. It was the best Star Trek movie, ever. It had the joy and exuberance of the best of Star Trek TOS, plus a worthy villain and a chess game in space combat. There has been no Star Trek after this that has been nearly as good, and probably few before this.

Tootsie. The Mrs. loves this movie. Me? Once was enough. Bill Murray was my favorite part of this one.

The World According to Garp. This was the best Robin Williams movie, period. I read the novel, and this was a movie that could never, ever be made today.

Young Doctors in Love. Excellent movie that’s nearly unavailable today. Also, taught me how to easily test for diabetes.

Yup, that’s just one year in the 1980s, picked nearly at random.

Good times.

Luck And (Sort Of) $20

“What’s this, then? ‘Romanes eunt domus’? People called Romanes, they go, the house?” – The Life of Brian

When Clint was taking pottery class, before he put his ceramics into the oven, he’d snarl: “Go ahead, bake my clay.”

I went on a long-ish walk today. Walking is fun, gets me outdoors, and allows me to feel the wind on my scalp. Not that being bald is bad – when I was younger I used to play chess with bald old men at my hometown’s park. It’s really hard to find 32 of them all at once, though.

I went on the same walk yesterday. The thought came to my mind, hey, I’m going to find a $20 bill when I go walking soon.

And today? As I had just finished 1.56 miles (still heading out) I looked in the ditch by the side of the country road. Could it be? Was it?

It was.

No, not another Bud Light® can. It was my $20 dollar bill! I’m not making any of this up. Here’s a picture.

I got home and found that someone ripped the center pages out of my dictionary. It went from bad to worse.

Now it’s not the worst thing I’ve found inert, piled in the weeds next to a crumpled Bud Light™ can – that would be the Ex. But it wasn’t exactly a full $20 bill, either.

I sent a picture of it to my friend. “Looks like you’ve got about $9.50 there, John.”

Yup. It is a real $20 bill. Just not a complete $20 bill. And since you need to have 51% of a piece of paper currency to trade it in – it’s not $9.50, it’s $0.00, although I’m sure that in Pennsylvania (or Wisconsin, or Georgia or…), my 45% of a $20 dollar bill would magically transform at 3AM into a full 55%.

So, was I lucky?

Yup, I was.

Why would I deprive an Uber driver of a chance to take part in a marathon?

Although we talk about all of the right things to do with your money (or bullets, or gold, or PEZ®) one thing you have to factor in is luck.

Pa Wilder, generally, did it all the “right way” – saved money, owned his home free and clear for years, bought his cars with cash, and stayed out of debt. About 25 years after he retired, he was broke – he had spent most of his savings, so my brother John (yes, my brother’s name really is John, too) kicked in and helped Pa along. Pa didn’t spend it all on pantyhose and elephant rides – generally, he just lived a very quiet life.

Then there was relative “B”. They went from one cash shortage to another for almost their entire lives – not because of any sort of fault – they were frugal and worked hard. In one particular cash crunch, they ended up having to sell cattle to pay an emergency bill. Then, one day, a group of geologists came on to their land just as they’re ready to retire. The oil company drilled a few wells and started sending them checks.

How much were all those checks worth?

Enough to allow them to get a bulldozer to push over the house they were living in. Honestly, they didn’t need a bulldozer since the only thing holding the house together were mice holding hands with termites.

I enjoy testing microphone/speaker combinations. Have any feedback for me?

And enough was left over to build an entirely new house.

It was . . . luck.

As humans, we plan. We can’t help it. And we observe patterns: not getting married until you’re ready, finishing school, not getting divorced, saving money, being thrifty, and investing are things that generally lead to financial stability.

Choice of career is also important – there are few composers of 17^th and 18^th century-style music that are wealthy. But for those composers that are? If it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it.

But we should all take a step back and understand that the future isn’t based entirely on skill – it’s also based on luck. And, yes, I know what you’re saying – the same thing I normally think – quoting Seneca (the dead Roman): “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

I try to live my life by those words.

But there’s still just plain luck.

Did Romans kept fit by doing Pontius Pilates?

I am normally that lucky guy. Seriously – I started writing down a list of incredibly good luck that I’ve had in my life. It was a very long list. If I took a hard look at the list, sure, some of it happened because I was clever enough, or fast enough, or strong enough, or just so very pretty – too damn pretty to die, some might say.

But some of those coincidences that happened to me were none of that. The opportunities were so amazingly rare, and yet, there I was. It’s not just me who has observed this. A good friend once described me like this: “John, if you were walking down the street and fell down into a pile of gum, you’d come back up with a $100 bill stuck to your forehead.”

Part of luck, however, is just understanding that some days are your day – nothing can go wrong. And other days? Nothing will go right, even if you’ve prepared wonderfully and meticulously.

Yes, I believe that Seneca is right, and you prepare as hard as you can for those days and seize the ever-loving snot out of those days. So when it’s my day? I try to push my luck as far and as fast as I can. The Romans had this one sniffed out, too: Fortis Fortuna adiuvat. Fortune favors the bold.

What kind of aspirin do fortune-tellers take? Medium strength.

When it’s not my day? I just slooooooow down.

What I really have seen is that people who are in great moods have . . . the best luck. Those same people often find opportunities where others don’t see them.

Maybe I’m just an optimist. I think great things are going to happen to me, so, they do. When I was out walking on the deck when it was raining and one foot slipped and I did the splits? The kind of splits that you feel some muscle in your left leg streeeeeeeetch, and then feel that same muscle “give” because I haven’t bent like that since I was in high school?

Not lucky? Right?

I can’t be sure. Stretching my leg like a pretty, pretty ballerina sure fired me up to get walking to build that muscle back up. And it’s working just after a few days. And I found this neat $20 bill.

Or at least part of one.

Weird, huh?

Victim? No. You Have A Choice.

“We all have it coming, kid.” – Unforgiven

There’s a serial killer who is strangling victims with t-shirts and he keeps using smaller and smaller sizes of shirt. Police say he’s still at large.

There comes a point in everyone’s life where they look at Carrie Fisher and say, “I ran out of gas. I got a flat tire. I didn’t have change for cab fare. I lost my tux at the cleaners. I locked my keys in the car. An old friend came in from out of town. Someone stole my car. There was an earthquake! A terrible flood! Locusts! It wasn’t my fault!”

That might even be true: 100% true. A meteor might have fallen on your house, and you might have unknowingly chosen the slightly cheaper “meteor-exempt” policy from Allstate®, and the Helping Hands™ people would then be justified in giving you the Flying Fragment Finger™.

Everyone on Earth could legitimately claim to be a victim at this point. This, my friends, is the biggest trap in the world.

Why?

It’s against everything that is virtuous and good. Victimhood is the poison that destroys lives and civilizations with all of the wanton carelessness of a feminist wine aunt trying to “find herself” on a booze cruise through the Caribbean.

When alcohol says to you, “You can dance,” this is what it means.

Victimhood says there is something wrong with the situation. Let me clarify something: there isn’t anything wrong with any situation. Reality is real. The situation is the situation. The first rule of tautology club is the first rule of tautology club.

Fairness is a lie. Expecting things to be different because we want them to be is, perhaps, the most insidious poison that we dose ourselves with on a regular basis. And that is the basis of being a victim.

Being a victim is like being in a prison, but it’s a prison that is especially strong. Why? Victims willingly build their own prison.

What is the essence of victimhood?

Like France, a victim is at the mercy of outside forces.
Like Sweden, a victim takes no responsibility for their current position.
Like Mongo, victim merely pawn in game of life.
Like the Italian Army, victims are weak.

Why do people choose to be victims?

Well, I said they are weak. But they use that same weakness to control others around them.

“I can’t do this. Can you help me?”

Never play chess with an Islamic terrorist – it’s always “pawn to C4.”

Victims are horrible to be around. They’re constantly complaining, but take no action to make their lives better. Honestly, they don’t want their lives to be better, since they’ve begun to use their victimhood as a weird superpower – as if Superman® won because Lex Luthor™ got embarrassed from beating him up.

Victims don’t expect anything from themselves, so they can’t fail. The world is against them, so why even try? They have a world where everyone is responsible for everything.

Except for them.

Like I said at the beginning of this piece, the corollary is that sometimes we really didn’t have anything to do with the fate that happened to us. It just happened.

So?

Just like there have been times when I haven’t had money, but I’ve never been poor, there are times when the breaks didn’t go my way, but I try never to be the victim.

See, this man may be broke, but he’s not poor.

The stunning truth that many people go through life is that, even when the meteor hits their house they still don’t have to give up control. There’s no real reason to be a victim.

Cold? Good! You can make it through that, and won’t that make the hot coffee taste great?
Tired? Wonderful! You can rest later, and sleep like a king.
Hungry? Excellent! The next meal may be the best you’ve ever tasted.
Someone make fun of you? Fantastic! An opportunity to get better and get tougher.

When I was in high school, Ma Wilder had a stroke.

Now, say what you want about Ma Wilder, but that woman had a willpower streak as deep and wide as the Grand Canyon. This might explain some of our epic fights when neither one of us would back down. Sometimes our fights would last for days, until the voice of reason, Pa Wilder, intervened.

Strangely, I think Ma Wilder would have liked Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.”

Pa wasn’t interested so much in justice as in watching Monday Night Football® in peace, and knew that a fight between a determined third grader and his 50+ year old wife (I’m adopted, but within the family – Ma Wilder was my biological grandma) would interfere.

Anyway we Wilders don’t do anything small. Ma’s stroke was a big one, which paralyzed half of her body. It left her in a wheelchair, an eloquent woman cut down and left unable to speak except for “yes” and, more often, “no.”

But the one thing her stroke didn’t impact was her will.

One day she wanted a Coke®. She wheeled over to me with the Coke™ in her one good hand. I loosened the top of the Coke© bottle so it was finger-tight but left it on for her to finish.

Pa Wilder was a little bit mad. “John, take that off for her.”

Ma Wilder jumped in. “No!” She took it from me, wheeled over to the table, unscrewed the top with one hand, and poured herself her drink. As much as that woman could do for herself, she was resolved to do for herself.

The opposite of victimhood is:

Strength
Will
Determination
Perseverance
Purpose

Okay, maybe it won’t regrow your hair.

Fortune may determine your circumstance. You determine how you act and what you make of your circumstance.

And, win or lose?

It really was a fair fight. Honestly, we really do all have it coming.

COVID Nightmares: The Karen, The Mrs. Grundy, and the AWFL

“You see, in this world there’s two kinds of people my friend, those with loaded guns and those who dig. You dig.” – The Good, The Bad, And The Ugly

The Four Three Horsefaces of the Apocalypse. (Concept via JW, Photoshop via Pugsley, after an idea by Sergio Leone.)

“Okay, everyone, I’d like to welcome you all to this meeting of Karen Anonymous. Who would like to start?”

I raised my hand.

“Hi, I’m John, and I’m a Karen.”

The voices responded in unison, “Hi, John.”

“I’d like to tell you my story. Two weeks ago, my family ordered dinner. Due to the virus, we couldn’t go to the restaurant. They delivered. When they brought us the dinner, they forgot to bring the entrée for my son, The Boy.” I paused. “The Mrs. called them back and they said they would bring it. They forgot.”

Everyone in the room nodded. I could see the tension. This was fertile ground for a Karening.

“So, the following Friday, I suggested we order again from them. As The Boy was finding out what everyone wanted, he asked me if I wanted the Bigfoot roasted over moonrocks with a side of fried Dodo wings, which is my usual order. I told him, sure, it’s not like money is an object, but then I reminded him that they hadn’t brought his entrée the previous week. I told him we should get it for free.”

I looked at the rest of the KA members. I could see beads of sweat on a few brows. I could see a pulsating vein in the temple of one lady to my left.

If you’ve never seen a pack of Karens migrate, you don’t know true terror.

“The Boy said, point blank, ‘Dad, if you want to do that, if you want to call them up and tell them that, it’s fine. You go ahead and do that. But I won’t. You’re being a Karen about this.’ I was shocked. I asked him exactly how I was being a Karen, and he responded, ‘Dad, this is a small restaurant, not part of a big chain. The owner just bought it right before the virus hit. He’s being beaten up financially already. And now you want to bust his chops over an eight dollar chicken and rice dinner when we will never even notice eight dollars missing in our lives? No. I won’t do it.’

There were a few tears, and nods in the audience. I continued.

“Yes. I was being a Karen. I had lost perspective. And I was proud that The Boy called me on it. I realized right then: I don’t need to see the manager.”

Then they applauded, hugged me, and made me king of Lower Southeast Modern Mayberry.

What’s the point of having power if you don’t abuse it? That’s the last time the mailman will argue with me!

Okay, there isn’t a real Karen Anonymous, but The Boy really did call me out for being a Karen, and I was proud of him for doing so. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to stop wearing the crown around town.

Karen is pretty simple to explain, and in reality. We all know her. Her hairstyle alone tells us a lot. Karen wants things the way she wants them. And if she can’t have them her way? She’d like to see the manager.

That was me over The Boy’s entrée, which was the absolutely true part of the Karen Anonymous meeting. It didn’t matter that I was technically correct, as The Boy pointed out, in the bigger picture of the world I was absolutely wrong. The restaurant is small, locally owned, and has generally given us both great service and great food.

Is being a Karen morally wrong? No, not really. Karen is looking out for the best for her and her family, mostly. Would I like to be a husband to a constant Karen? No, it would be hard to decide who had to give birth to the kids.

Is it bad that the first thing I notice in this picture was the trigger discipline?

In the larger sense of things, Karens are harmless. Karens stop worrying about most everything after they’re happy. Sure, they might make noise, and they might be annoying FaceBook® friends, but if the manager has a designated employee to pretend to “fire” when Karens are on the warpath, Karens are happy. They rule their own little world. They have no real reason to mess with you, they just want things to go well for them.

Karen memes are peaking right now, so I feel safe in saying that we’ve reached Peak Karen™. Heck, I bet in a few years it will be safe again for middle-aged women to wear the “can I speak to the manager” haircut without fear of becoming an Internet meme.

The second personality type that the WuFlu has brought to the forefront are the Mrs. Grundys. Where the Karen is concerned about Karen, Mrs. Grundy is concerned about you.

Who is Mrs. Grundy?

Mrs. Grundy is Karen’s great-great-grandma who entered the English language in 1798. Mrs. Grundy is obsessed with the rules. The smaller and more petty and more obscure and meaningless, the better. But if it were just Mrs. Grundy following the rules, that would be okay. No. It’s worse. Mrs. Grundy wants you to be observant to the rules, and has appointed herself judge, jury, and executioner. Me? I say before you judge a man, walk a mile in his shoes. That way you have his shoes and you’re a mile away.

The judge told me I was in court for drinking and kissing women. I don’t think he was pleased when I said, “Excellent! When do we start?”

Your grass is ever so slightly too tall? Mrs. Grundy is calling the Home Owners’ Association (HOA). But more likely, Mrs. Grundy is running the HOA. She’s and her fellow Grundys are the first to try to be appointed to the HOA and the only ones who care enough to want to be in a cycle of continual judgement over their neighbors.

Why? It’s likely that they’ve never had real power in life, so seeing the next door neighbor paint his house an unapproved shade of tan gives them the shiver of pleasure in anticipating the pain that they’ll cause their neighbor. But they’ll wait until he finishes, first.

Is it easy becoming a Grundy? Sure. Heck, I was taking a walk in the city where I work (Modern Mount Pilot) and almost Grundifyed myself. I was taking a walk during my lunch break, and saw a guy in an SUV pull up to a dumpster at a baseball field. He popped his trunk and began dumping his garbage into the dumpster.

I had a moment where I managed a bit of indignant outrage, but then realized: it wasn’t my city, it wasn’t my ballfield, and for all I knew the city was fine with what he was doing. He certainly wasn’t dumping his trash all over his front yard or in the road. I calmed myself, but I could easily see how one gives in to the Grundy side.

I’ll give in to the Mrs. Grundy side when my badge shows up in the mail.

Mrs. Grundy has been such a feature of culture that she’s a fixture of Western culture. C.S. Lewis, Aldous Huxley, Dickens, Barnum, Chesterton, Joyce, Heinlein, Jack London, and even P.G. Wodehouse have all referenced her in their writing. And now her crowning achievement of recognition: I mentioned her.

Whereas the Karen just wants the world to fit her expectations, Mrs. Grundy is far worse. Mrs. Grundy wants the world to follow the rules, which she conveniently knows better than anyone else.

Karens don’t want to wear a mask. Mrs. Grundy wants to see you executed for not having one, preferably after the torture of, say, having to listen to Miley Cyrus describe quantum physics. Thankfully, Mrs. Grundy, however is only dangerous if you live in that small circle of control where she can stamp her puny feet and shake her wrinkled fists in rage. Which is normally within 200 feet (37°C) from where she is at any given time.

But then there’s the last one: The AWFL. AWFL stands for Affluent White Female Liberals. And if Karen is annoying and self-centered, and Mrs. Grundy is the would-be tyrant, the AWFL is the Queen of the Left.

It’s also how many times she had to watch the Sesame Street® episode on the letter “O” before she realized that was her middle initial.

What’s an AWFL?

She’s a 30 year old Yale graduate in Woman’s Studies who marches against white privilege hand in hand with her Harvard husband who works in investment banking while their surrogate-born child is in the care of their illegal Guatemalan nanny.
She writes letters to the congressman she knew back in prep school about the lack of government spending for poverty while wearing a $380 sweatshirt that was hand embroidered in Pakistan.
She sends her kids to a private school for a “better education” than they could get in the local integrated school, and lives in a gated neighborhood to keep out undesirables.

A prototype AWFL is the Governor of Michigan.

Yes, this really happened.

Gretchen Whitmer outlawed, based on Corona (and I’m not making up any of this):

Driving a car between two houses you own. Because COVID-19 hides in vacant houses and might slit your throat because it hides behind the door with a knife to ambush you when you come in.
The Gretch said that grocery, pot, liquor and abortion stores could stay open, but buying plants was forbidden. Because having an abortion while stoned is a right, but growing food in a garden is a privilege.
Kayaks? They’re ok, liberals like those and they allow you to buy those cute outfits like Stacey has, and you look so Motorboats? A sure sign of the viral apocalypse.
And science certainly shows that fishing and hunting is the number one way that COVID-19 is transmissible. It’s proven science according to YouTube®.

As I said, I think we we’ve hit Peak Karen. Karen is harmless, and fun to make fun of. But when I see her show up all over the place at the same time? Yeah, that meme is a month from being a Doge.

Keep Doge alive!

Mrs. Grundy? I’m on a solo quest to bring her back as a meme. Mrs. Grundy makes society worse for all of us.

But the AWFL?

The AWFL is probably the single most dangerous thing in society today, and Whitmer is the Ur-AWFL. And if you repeat “Ur-AWFL” fast enough, you can sound just like a Muppet®. But Whitmer isn’t a Muppet™. She has power. She has money. She has control. And she’s not alone. Even in a crisis, Whitmer’s ideology overwhelms actions that could actually be reasonably put in place to save lives.

And that’s AWFL.

Of the three? I’ll take Karen any day.

American Caesar: Coming Soon To A Country Near You?

“Because there’s no crying in baseball! No crying!” – A League of Their Own

Wash this.

As we contemplate the wreckage of the economy and the cracks in our culture, I return to that question that many of us have been thinking of:

What happens next?

By next as in next week, well those patterns are short term. Just like the stock market has spent most of the last ten years going up, some weeks were down. The overall aggregate of those weeks was up. Until it wasn’t. The short term direction of the market varied, but like China’s expanding sea claims or my expanding waistline, the long term trend did not.

That’s what I see with the United States as a whole. Over the short term, things go up and down, but the long term stresses in the system keep building up. A brick building having foundation problems will build stress, until the bricks and mortar both snap in a line under tension, just like Joe Biden snaps when people move too quickly around him because of Crimean War flashbacks.

One major tension: people have been concerned about the national debt since before I’ve been alive. Why? The silly idea seems to be that “having an unpayable mountain of debt” might be a bad thing since you have to pay all of that back just to be broke. It’s only money, right? But the Federal debt as a percentage of GDP is now larger than at any time since the end of World War II. At that time the United States had mobilized to spending nearly 90% of Federal dollars on military spending items. That level of debt, 110% of the GDP, existed before COVID-19 gave us a gut shot. What will it be after all of the Chinese Virus spending? 120%? 150%?

At least with World War II we got cool tanks and games like Axis and Allies®. In the last bailout all we got was a bigger penthouse for CEOs like Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan/Chase. You might remember Dimon’s tone-deaf Christmas cards like the one he sent out below in 2013. Sure, people are allowed to send out glaringly condescending tennis-ball filled Christmas cards while they spend enough money to pay off your mortgage on a lunch trip to Switzerland for their dog. But to celebrate their wealth after having been the beneficiary of a $25 billion taxpayer-funded bailout in 2008? That’s just tacky.

I guess Dimon’s Christmas card is nearly as neat as 49,324 Sherman tanks, plus twenty-three aircraft carriers, and a zillion movies, at least some of which had Clint Eastwood. Okay, I’ll take that back. Having Clint Eastwood World War II movies is even more important than the ultimate comfort of a billionaire banker. There. I said it. Go ahead and judge me.

I guess pictures of a pampered CEO are close.

Thankfully Jamie Dimon never had to miss a meal.

At some point, there’s a mathematical limit where debt actually matters. After World War II, the United States dealt with debt through a crazy plan: paying it back, while growing the economy. As we stand right now, with the exception of spending enough on defense to cause the Soviets to collapse, we’ve gotten very little out of that debt. It’s like the nation has since 1990 gone on a spending binge like a six year old with addled on sugar with Mom’s credit card, ending up with a pile of Amazon® packages and next-day Prime® diabetes.

Outside of the economic mess which would have gone off at some point with our without the WuFlu, we’re a nation divided politically. The split has been getting worse and worse through time. People have cut off relations with relatives because of political differences that would have made for amusing table discussions even a decade ago. The creeping socialism that’s been winding its way through society since FDR’s New Deal used the Great Depression to introduce sweeping social changes that wrapped themselves around the national brainstem is now fresh again, back like Nic Cage on a bad sequel.

The idea of infinite benefits from a magical printing press is as old as any fairy tale, and we share it with our children every year – he’s called Santa Claus. But lots of people don’t believe in Santa Claus. Why?

Because Santa’s not real.

Santa can’t exist as he violates a fundamental law of the universe – There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, or TANSTAAFL, as Pournelle and Niven would have said. Heck, the one thing the Soviets in a gulag and hard-core libertarians agree on is: If you don’t work, you don’t eat. No wonder my kids came back so tough after a week at Ayn Rand Preschool – you had to have the will to take the bottle.

People in socialist countries are the only ones who envy the high tech that the Amish have.

These tensions – the financial system collapse tension plus the political division tension – don’t lead to a good outcome. It’s been noted by commenters here and elsewhere that as long as things are good and bellies are full, people won’t revolt. But if you were saving for a rainy day, look outside: it’s pouring.

As I see it, there are three major ways this situation plays out – and none of them end up with 2030 being “business as usual” anymore.

First alternative: the Left takes over. Just like in Virginia, the Left will spend about 20 minutes before they decide to implement their entire basket of changes. I don’t think that this is likely. The reason is that at this point I don’t think the Right will go gently onto that goodnight. They have realized that gun rights “compromises” include only taking rights away. The Right is not keen to compromise on any rights, which is why the recent push-back came against the Coronavirus-related state shutdowns. If the Left tries this, there will be some level of anarchy. And we all know how many anarchists it takes to change a lightbulb: none. Anarchists have never changed anything.

Second alternative: the states Balkanize. The entire experiment breaks up. The Right isn’t interested, for the most part, in controlling what goes on outside of their state, and would be quite amused to watch New York and Los Angeles figure out that the things that make their lives good, like food and gasoline, all come from places they don’t like made by people who don’t like them. Pretty soon they’d be trading Netflix® subscriptions for potatoes. The reason this is a solution of the Right is because Red State people want their freedoms and to be left alone to grill. This is a difficult outcome – splitting up the states seems to fall along party lines, but lots of Blue states have a Red ring around them, and lots of Red states are covered in Blue dots.

The Third, and in my mind an increasingly likely alternative is an American Caesar.

The Roman Republic officially started in 509 B.C., but at the beginning wasn’t much more than a high school audio-visual club with dominion of around six neighborhood blocks until about 282 B.C. It was at that point when the Romans finally took over most of the other tribes in the local area and began to vie for domination of the Mediterranean against Carthage for Blockbuster® franchise rights.

“I hate it when they price just one dollar over. Seems so, disloyal, right Brutus?”

The Roman Republic was fed by expansion. At the time when Caesar became a de facto emperor, Rome controlled not only modern day Italy, but most of Spain, Portugal, Greece, a lot of the northern coast of Africa, France, Belgium, and the Balkan area. Does a republic or a democracy expand? Yes – whoever thought a democracies don’t start wars was as deluded as Joe Biden when he recently denounced President Lincoln for the way he’s handling the polio epidemic.

The Roman Republic lasted until Julius Caesar created and took the throne as dictator after political intrigue. He stepped into a situation where his political enemies were out to get him, and had passed a law to strip him of his troops. Politically and popularly, Caesar was already famous – he had written Commentaries on the Gallic War, which was a bestseller that described his military exploits. It was popular in Rome, and meant at least partially as propaganda to the common people to sidestep the Senate and official media. Sound familiar?

Caesar knew that his political enemies had a trap set for him when he returned – he was certain they’d strip his titles and wealth from him, but, he had an army that was more loyal to him than it was to Rome. When he led Legio XIII (the 13^th Legion) across the Rubicon River, Caesar legendarily said, “The die is cast.” By law, Roman Consuls gave up command at the Rubicon, some 200 miles north of Rome, which was probably about a hard 10-day march over the good roads at Rome. The Senate heard that “Julius is coming,” and got out of there faster than your Leftist friends when it comes time to split the bill for lunch.

Although things were politically precarious at that point, this was the big step. Rome tipped into a civil war. Caesar won, and the people were, generally, pleased, mainly because salads were popular back then. That’s why a few years after Caesar was assassinated, Augustus Caesar was able to take the title – the people were wanting to end the political nonsense, even if it meant a kind of tyranny: this wasn’t the first nor the last time this deal would be made. The people of Rome at that point didn’t want to elect a leader – they wanted an end to the chaos. If the result was an Emperor? So be it.

Spoiler, Caesar died. It would have been much worse if he had continued as a vegetable – let us mourn him.

So far, the leader of the United States has been (more or less) elected through legal means. The Electoral College itself is a great bulwark against fraud – it’s hard to fake enough votes because the dead voting in Chicago alone won’t do it. You’d have to have recounts in cemeteries in dozens of states.

With the jobless increasing 22 million in four weeks, chaos is on the way once people can leave their basements. Unless COVID-19 interrupts, I expect actual riots at the Democratic Convention, especially if they forget the Tupperware® they keep Biden in. Given how much economic activity has already cratered in the United States – total credit card spending is down nearly 30% since last year, but the rent for the store is the same. Businesses won’t be hiring anytime soon, and there’s no way that this will be a sharp recovery.

That economic and political turmoil that we’ll see in the next few years is ripe for a hero, a savior to come forward. Will this new leader look like the old Caesar? No, certainly not. Certainly this savior will be someone that many people know, and look up to.

Tom Hanks?

Maybe President-for-life Tom Hanks? Nah, I hear he eats baby kittens.