Coming Dictatorship – Page 12 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

E, S, G: The Leftist War Against The Economy

“You dirty double-crossing limey fink! Those damn diamonds are phonies!” – Diamonds are Forever

Copernicus wondered where the Sun went at night. Then it dawned on him.

Let’s go on a thought experiment:

Pretend that, having conquered the colleges, having infiltrated the leadership of the military and being 95% of the members of most government agencies, and jetting from place to place on private planes, the Left wasn’t done. No, there was still one goal remaining, and it wasn’t finally getting a date or being able to benchpress more than the bar. Nope. The remaining group which they hadn’t managed to completely own was all of corporate America.

But how would they do that? I mean, the Left has a lot of money for taking over Portland, Oregon again and again, but that’s hardly a challenge nowadays. What if the Left decided that they wanted to only invest in companies that shared their political leanings, and create some sort of bogus reason to make other people do it, too.

Enter ESG.

What does ESG stand for, Entitled, Stupid, and Gutless? No, that’s Antifa®, silly. ESG stands for the three criteria that the Left wants to use to decide if a country or business is sufficiently Leftist: Environmental, Social, and Governance. That seems, at first blush, to be relatively safe. I mean, who wants a bad work environment? And social, well, maybe that means good customer service. And governance? Maybe that’s how efficiently the company is run?

Nah.

I got into Harvard®. You’d think they would have better security.

Not even close. So, ESG, does it really mean? I’ll quote from the fine folks at Harvard®:

The “E” captures energy efficiencies, carbon footprints, greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, biodiversity, climate change and pollution mitigation, waste management and water usage.
The “S” covers labor standards, wages and benefits, workplace and board diversity, racial justice, pay equity, human rights, talent management, community relations, privacy and data protection, health and safety, supply-chain management and other human capital and social justice issues.
The “G” covers the governing of the “E” and the “S” categories—corporate board composition and structure, strategic sustainability, oversight and compliance, executive compensation, political contributions and lobbying, and bribery and corruption.

Certainly, there is some Mom and Apple Pie-level stuff in there. There has to be otherwise they couldn’t sell it. It’s not like people look at a company and say, “Gosh, I wish Google® was even more corrupt with their search results” or “I wish Facebook™ had done more to dishonestly influence the election by censoring even more news unfavorable to the Left”.

In his spare time, Mark Zuckerberg likes to do normal human things, like drink water, consume calories, update circuitry.

Most of the ESG metric, however, is right out of the Left’s playbook. The parts in bold above are things that, mostly, don’t have anything at all to do with actual profitability or performance of a company. How can I tell this isn’t serious? The Left isn’t going after the NFL®. Even though I haven’t watched a game in years, they keep playing the games. So let’s pretend the NFL© wanted to maximize its ESG score:

For instance, to improve its ESG, the NFL could focus on climate change by eliminating stadiums and all the wasteful use of gasoline to get to the games. There’s more:

They could reduce their carbon footprint by using all natural, sustainable cotton fibers instead of wasteful nylon in their uniforms.
They could have opposing teams take electric cars to the games.
They could replace the plastic in their helmets with sustainably harvested weaved plant fiber.
They could replace the uniform types of grass on the field by using native plant species. Think of it – in Arizona you could have cactus and sand instead of lush lawns (that use far too much water!).

That takes care of the E! What about the S?

Workforce diversity? The players on the team could easily be selected so that they strictly follow the demographics of the United States, including half of them being women, and some being senior citizens. The handicapped would need to be represented as well, and not just as placekickers like they usually do.
Pay equity could be easily taken care of by having no member of the team or of the management staff make a time more than 20 times what the guy selling sodas in the stands makes each season, which would mean the CEO pay would be capped around $80,000. And if the starting QB got money from promotions, he’d have to split it equally with everyone in the organization. Equity, after all.

Maybe he can put that on a slogan for the endzone?

That takes part of most of the S, especially after the owner is forced to give up 90% of his team ownership to random citizens of the world, so a Sri Lankan goat farmer can understand the joy of owning an NFL™ franchise.

What about governance? Well, we could appoint people from every country in the world to the board of each NFL® team. And no more cozying up to local, state, and federal officials for more tax bux.

So why don’t people talk about applying the ESG metric to the NFL™? It’s simple.

People take football seriously.

All of the nonsense the Left loves to spout falls apart when it comes to one, simple business that everyone can understand and easily see the idiocy of the ESG metric.

Sri Lanka couldn’t believe it was riot season already! They still had their “I support Ukraine” banners up.

In real life, Sri Lanka was ranked by ESG score. They scored a 99 in Environmental, an 88 in Social, and a 47 in governance. Sri Lanka is facing its “worst economic collapse in its modern history” according to some economist somewhere that you can Google® search for if you’re bored. But its ESG was so good, right? They only used natural fertilizer, and lowered their carbon footprint! They also were starving and had to import lots of extra food.

It’s that same environmental rating that countries like the Netherlands and Canada are chasing when they are preparing to mandate that their farmers have fewer cows and use less fertilizer. Both of those things, you see, hurt the carbon footprint and thus make the environmental score of the country go down. If it causes people to go bankrupt to buy Cheetos® or starve, I guess ESG is a way to make sure that everyone in the world has the same chance to be hungry, poor, or exposed to social unrest as the least developed nation. It could happen here. Oops. Forgot about Chicago.

It is happening here, at least with the ‘S’ part of ESG. Looks like we’ll have Equity soon with countries that riot over it being (rolls dice) Tuesday soon enough.

When he fires an employee, he fires an employee.

Because of this fantastic success at the national level, Wall Street™ is pushing ESG at the corporate level. The aptly-named Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock™ which currently controls over eight trillion dollars in investments is a big fan. Eight trillion dollars? That’s almost enough to buy two full tanks of gas in Biden’s America. Think a man who controls eight trillion worth of cash has some pull?

The aptly-named Larry Fink certainly does. Individual shareholders don’t vote, so the aptly-named Larry Fink’s eight trillion in stock probably controls two or three times that level of shareholder votes. Alone. The actual ESG rating process is so murky and subject to manipulation that the ESG for a company can be as fraudulent as Joe Biden’s hair plugs.

So, yeah, the Left has constantly used corporate America for funding, and now they’ve figured out a way to make business support whatever crazy policy that the Left wants to use to turn the United States into the next version of Sri Lanka.

Thankfully, he planted a tree to offset his carbon emissions.

The aptly-named Larry Fink has a private jet, and houses everywhere, and burns more carbon in a week than most people will burn in a lifetime. Won’t you please reduce your carbon footprint so he can continue to do this? I mean, it would up your personal ESG score . . . .

Farmers, The WEF, And An All-Bug Diet

“Bugs are a fairly common delusion among paranoids. Bugs, spiders, snakes, spiders. You haven’t had any snakes, have you?” – Bug

I tried to interview for a job at a stable. He asked me if I ever shoed a horse. I said, “No, but I did tell a donkey to ‘get the hell out of my house’ once.”

I thought the “you will eat the bugs” memes were somewhat exaggerated. It sounded nutty to me. To believe that, I would have to believe the entire structure of the world’s food production would have to be change so people would have to eat them.

So, how on Earth would that happen?

Let me explain. To start, we’ll have to go to the Netherlands. The Netherlands have, I have read, the tallest average height on Earth – I’m thinking because everyone short died in floods.

It turns out the whole bug plan is already in the works.

Why are the farmers protesting in the Netherlands? It’s because their government has indicated farming in the Netherlands must go. Where does the government want them to go? In the usual fashion, the government simply does not care. Family farms that have been in the hands of the same family for hundreds of years will cease to be.

The government, of course, won’t just go in and take the farmland. That’s too heavy-handed and costs too much money. Instead, they’ll smile and buy it from the farmers after they’ve nearly bankrupted them.

What do giraffes and zoning regulations have in common? They don’t exist in Texas. (an as-found meme)

Again, in typical government fashion, the government will bankrupt the farmers with regulations. In this case, the proposed regulations will reduce livestock numbers and fertilizer use so much that the farms won’t be able to produce enough food to make a profit.

Then the government can pretend they have no idea what is happening while a country that once had a unique farming that produced unique food, disappears. And while the unique aspect of food is important, that isn’t the scary bit. The scary bit is government making an entire critical industry disappear.

That industry just happens to support the things that are currently under fire: most farms are run by families. The Global Left hates families. Families imply a support structure outside of the state, and why would you need that support when no matter how many kids a woman might have by whatever number of “fathers”, government will gladly support them. That also explains another mystery: I knew there was a reason everyone here forgot Father’s Day this year.

I hope you guys were ready for that red pill. (an as-found meme)

Farmers are also notoriously independent. Sure, government has created massive subsidies for them, some direct (pay not to farm programs) and some not so direct (mandating ethanol in gasoline). But most farmers get up and work the farm, tend to the cattle, then head off to work a second job.

Farmers also know work, and long hours, and sacrifice. These are the things the government wants, but it wants it for itself, not for independent businesses. Farmers deal with reality, and, therefore, reliably vote for the Right, which is why the Left would be pleased to see individual farmers disappear off the face of every nation. Heck, Stalin killed millions in the Holodomor during the 1930s because he couldn’t stand individual farmers, and wanted to force them all into a collective.

If it were just happening in the Netherlands, I’d think, “Huh, Europeans going crazy. Again. Last time they did this we ended up with the metric system. Let’s hope they keep it at home this time.”

Making their money out of candy still makes more sense than French fashion. (also as-found)

But it’s not just the Europeans, it’s spreading. Where to, but that Stalinist enclave north of the border, Canada. Although I couldn’t find the details with a four-minute Internet search, I did find this: Trudeau, in meeting with provincial ministers said that he’s going to cut greenhouse gas emissions from Canada, and to do that, just like the Netherlands, Canada would also drastically reduce fertilizer use.

I wonder if this is why he announced that they’d be picking the guns up first?

Outside of destroying the livelihood of thousands of his own people, and destroying lives that have been dedicated to building Canada, these regulations will make sure that all the important World Leaders keep inviting Justin to all the best parties, and maybe this time they’ll not make fun of him like they normally do.

If people aren’t farming in the Netherlands or Canada, then what are they planning on feeding their people?

Bugs. Really. The propaganda has been huge to inject the idea into the consciousness.

And to think I didn’t even know they had nipples.

This has been the plan of the World Economic Forum™ (WEF®) since at least 2018, if not before. I’m not making this up, you can check for yourself (LINK).

The WEF© is trouble, because rather than being a weird club that holds a meeting and then gets drunk and plays ping pong, it appears to have inroads into most of the governments of the West. But thankfully, they’re benevolent and want the best for people, right?

Oh. Perhaps not. It looks like the WEF© really does want us to eat the bugs, and live in the pods. And here I thought it was a conspiracy theory. And the other thing the WEF™ wants?

For most of us to die.

Dang, this is enough to make me wish it really was a crazy conspiracy theory.

Student Loans, Death, And Taxes

“I’ve got Doctor Euthanasia’s home number for that eventuality.” – Absolutely Fabulous

They should thank their student loans – I don’t think they could ever repay them.

I had another theme picked for today, but that’s okay – it can wait for a few posts. It’ll keep. But when I heard that Joe Biden was planning on relieving up to $10,000 in student debt for all borrowers that make less than $125,000, I was astonished.

The late genius P.J. O’Rourke described exactly this situation:

“I have only one firm belief about the American political system, and that is this: God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat. God is an elderly or, at any rate, middle-aged male, a stern fellow, patriarchal rather than paternal and a great believer in rules and regulations. He holds men strictly accountable for their actions. He has little apparent concern for the material well-being of the disadvantaged. He is politically connected, socially powerful and holds the mortgage on virtually everything in the world. God is difficult. God is unsentimental. It is very hard to get into God’s heavenly country club.

“Santa Claus is another matter. He’s cute. He’s nonthreatening. He’s always cheerful. And he loves animals. He may know who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, but he never does anything about it. He gives everyone everything they want without thought of a quid pro quo. He works hard for charities, and he’s famously generous to the poor. Santa Claus is preferable to God in every way but one: There is no such thing as Santa Claus.”

First, $10,000 doesn’t sound like all that much, right? Further, that would wipe out entirely all the debt from about a third of the borrowers. So, I pulled out my calculator. A third of 45,000,000 is 15,000,000 people, who presumably vote. Assuming that their average debt . . .

That’s $90 billion. Ugh! Some people work a whole year and don’t make that much money. I checked the numbers again, and was, like, um, that’s right. So what about the other two-thirds?

I assumed that some of them made more than $125,000 a year – Biden’s cut-off for his “gift”. I decided to play it conservatively – assume that only 25,000,000 people would get the full $10,000 airdropped into their lives. That’s another $250 billion.

Altogether, that’s $340 billion. $340,000,000,000.

This is an astonishing sum for someone to just give away as free money. And forget the moral hazard associated with doing this – paying debts is honorable, especially when everyone else is required to. You’re not a loan.

I guess someone didn’t get the Barbie® they were looking for from Santa Biden.

But since (spins wheel) at least Bush II (and you could argue Nixon was on the bandwagon, too), the competition by presidents of either party has been to shovel the most money out the door to people as fast as they could in year two of their presidency to juice the economy so all the cylinders would be pumping when their next election hit. And since they only have two terms, who cares what happens then?

People vote in favor of good economies, so a good economy going into the 2024 election will help get votes.

Originally, that $340,000,000,000 bought a lot of nonfat vanilla lattes on the way to Introduction to Feminist Non-Binary Ancient Indigenous Australian Literature 201 at good old We Have A Climbing Wall University. I’m betting that $340,000,000,000 will buy a lot of votes from the graduate-level baristas that took that class.

What will be the result of all of that extra cash floating around the economy?

It does look like it will be tax free . . . but I’m betting lots of those folks wouldn’t cheat on their taxes, I mean, what kind of example would that be for their 23 dependents?

It’s hard to tell. Normally, I’d say almost certain inflation. I think that even Biden is dimly aware that all of the previous inflation has destroyed the housing market – sales are down over 20% from last year. That destroys a lot of value. And if the market drops?

The bigger question is this: giving a single politician the unilateral authority to make multibillion-dollar decisions on a whim is madness. It turns the executive into a king, handing out largess to whoever he feels like. I mean, if Biden remembers.

But what other powers does a king have?

The power of death. And that’s in play up in Canada.

3.3% of deaths? Those are rookie numbers, Canada!

They are rookie numbers, and Canada is doing its best to pump them up. Remember, coffee is only for closers. And Canada wants to be a closer. Read a headline the other day – a Canadian veteran has PTSD. Doctor’s suggestion?

In Canada, if you’re feeling suicidal, apparently the authorities want you to get help. As in someone to help you kill yourself.

Yup, Canada suggested he run away to go live on a farm where he can run and play, like all those goldfish I had as a kid. Except in this case, if you go to a doctor because you have a cold, they’ll suggest, without you asking, if you want to have a dirt nap instead. Okay, not a cold. But PTSD.

I can’t imagine why they’re suggesting that. Perhaps it’s because it’s cheaper to bury someone than to give them “free” healthcare?

Suicide? That’s the last thing I’d ever do.

Oddly, it turns out that when people have goals, values, and the prospect of a decent life ahead of them, euthanasia is an idea that doesn’t sound so good.

Except to them. And if it’s you dying.

Huh, somehow they no longer sound like Santa. Because? He isn’t real. If you want to know how they really feel, re-read the Tweet® above.

American Civil War: Four Fates, From Freedom to Soviet Tyranny

“Did we give up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? No!” – Animal House

On this blog recently someone commented, “When I was a kid, people used to say that ‘It’s a free country,’ but they don’t say that anymore.” I tried it out the other day. The response? “It hasn’t been a free country in a while.” I turned him into the FBI for that kind of hate think.

Again, this is a repost from back in 2020, partially because I’m going to add it on the Civil War 2.0 Weather Report page, and partially because it seemed a good fit as we keep sliding down.

I was driving around and one of the videos that was in my suggested list was about “America’s Cold Civil War.” This isn’t a review of the video, but it brought up some interesting points. The one I want to make clear to every single person that loves freedom in the United States is: if you’ve ever seen a movie about that rag-tag elements of a group fighting a foe that has nearly utterly defeated them, it’s us. We are the Wolverines.

I get to be Charlie Sheen, mainly because he’s still alive. I think.

I don’t mean to say that to create a feeling of defeat – far from it. But the first step in dealing with a situation is understanding reality. And reality is very simple today. At a minimum, the Left has coopted the following elements of culture in the United States – they have been, over time, “converged” into Leftism:

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

This isn’t an accident, it’s entirely by plan. And not only by plan, it’s by a plan that was entirely shared. From Verified Communist Traitor® Herbert Marcuse, in his book Counterrevolution and Revolt (bold added):

To extend the base of the student movement, Rudi Dutschke has proposed the strategy of the long march through the institutions: working against the established institutions while working within them, but not simply by ‘boring from within’, rather by ‘doing the job’, learning (how to program and read computers, how to teach at all levels of education, how to use the mass media, how to organize production, how to recognize and eschew planned obsolescence, how to design, et cetera), and at the same time preserving one’s own consciousness in working with others.

I could prove all of the above Institutions have been converged through the Long March Through the Institutions and will probably discuss a few of these in the future, because I could do a post on each one. Heck, maybe it would be a great book, but only if I could figure out how to pair hot chicks and communist propaganda.

East German girl swimmers bench pressing 300 pounds in 1976 is completely normal.

But if you doubt me, you have Google® (itself converged) and you can easily verify list above even through the Leftist-bias that’s now on that search engine. I’ll leave you with one more question: why else would Fortune© 500® corporations sign a manifesto saying profits were less important than social goals if Leftists weren’t in control? Because there were extra doughnuts in the breakroom and they were feeling generous?

In almost any context, these organizations reflect the values of the Left, not of the Right. I specifically don’t use the label conservative here – the conservative movement has utterly failed in the United States (to quote absolutely everyone) to conserve anything. We live a country where adults telling four year old boys that being a girl is okie-dokie (and vice-versa) aren’t thrown directly in prison for a decade or more (after a trial, of course) for child abuse. The goals of the above organizations would be cause for mass revolt if they had been publicized in 1990, but now, despite no vote, no public acceptance, each point of the Left has been accepted as the new normal.

And telling a boy that he’s a girl? Oh, wait, that’s brave. Sorry.

Despite all of that, this is not a post about giving up. Screw that. Each day makes me more independent, not less, more wanting to tell the truth.

And if you’re reading this, no one is done here. Freedom is always the underdog. I really wish we’d just stop waiting until 2:00 in the fourth quarter to start playing.

I remember seeing a film in Social Studies in High School about the Korean War. In the black and white film, almost all of Korea had been lost. The film ended right at what is known as the Pusan Perimeter, right where the North Korean Army was about to kick freedom off of the Korean peninsula, forever. It was tough watching that film.

But then we learned what happened next: MacArthur led the naval invasion of Inchon and turned the tide of battle, leading a combined United Nations® force that cut off the North Koreans. This turned the course of the war, and in the process helped to create the free country of South Korea that is a world leader in technology, bad music videos, and wealth creation today.

Spoiler alert: we tied.

Our Pusan Perimeter is now. I had a great boss once upon a time, he would continually remind me, “John, start with the end in mind,” which is #2 of Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. As I look at the state of the Right back in 2016, we were at the Pusan Perimeter. As we as a nation blindly stumble toward Civil War II, I can’t predict the outcome, but I can see the full range of outcomes.

We’ll go from best case to worst case for people who love freedom. Although there are variations, I think I’ve captured all of the big picture end games below.

I named operation Aesop after the Raconteur Report’s Aesop. You can read him here (LINK).

Operation Aesop: Total victory.

What it is: The Right wins. Traditional society is restored. Mothers and fathers in committed relationships are again honored. A Constitutional republic of limited government replaces the democracy of unlimited power. The United States is unified. Think of it as a return to the 1950’s, but with color TV and microwaves.

What it takes: Oh, not much more than the bloodiest war in the history of the country. The only way this results in victory is as Von Clausewitz wrote about in On War: [Accomplishing . . . ] “three broad objectives, which between them cover everything: destroying the enemy’s armed forces; occupying his country; and breaking his will to continue the struggle.”

That’s what happened in the first Civil War. That’s what happened to the Germans and Japanese in World War II. The concept of continuing was even more horrific than the concept of trying to continue to fight. It’s total capitulation. This is actual war until the enemy is not capable of continuing. Not talking heads on a television show. Not voting. Not discussion. Not a “mission accomplished” after five weeks moving across Iraq where the “will to continue the struggle” is still clearly intact.

Outcomes: Some freedoms we see now would be curtailed. Political discourse would be constrained. But teenagers would be pretty polite, again. And you wouldn’t really have to worry about the border.

I’m related to Patrick Henry, or so my aunt told me. I like to imagine Patrick getting a bit tipsy and writing mean letters to Madison about how short Madison was and how Dolly might want to give up on the chew.

Operation Founding Fathers: 50 Independent States.

What it is: A return to base principles. Originally, the United States was conceived as just that, independent free States. The majority of decisions to be made were to be made at the state, and not the Federal level. Each state was to be free to make decisions. Texas could be Texas. California could be Venezuela. Vermont could be stoned. The free decisions of free States was allowed. The free movement of free peoples was likewise allowed. This is returning to that state.

What it takes: Leftist thought is built around the universal adoption of their principles. Individuals in society cannot be left to make decisions, so this is a hateful outcome to the Left. I recall discussing politics with a Leftist when I was younger. The Leftist thought I was on the Right. That, at least they could deal with. When I identified as a Libertarian®? The look of disgust was clear – the Left hated Libertarians™ more than they hated the Right. The Right was merely amused and not threatened by Libertarians©. Maybe it was the Star Wars® shirts and poorly trimmed beards?

That taught me one thing: the thing the Left hates the most is . . . freedom. Liberty. In many ways the Left would rather lose a shooting war and be subjugated to the views of the Right than to be allowed to turn Seattle into the Siberia of the PacNorthwest.

The only way this can take place outside of warfare is a Second Constitutional Convention. I think that alone would lead to a shooting war from the Left and a complete revolt from all of the Leftist institutions shown above. But we can dream that the Second Constitutional Convention would turn out well. If we did it, oh, in the next year. The clock is ticking on this being a viable outcome. It’s probably time to do it now. As in, well, now. Conservatives (not the Right) seem to feel that everything is going to come out fine, so until the wolf is at the door, I don’t think they’ll move an inch.

The problem is that Conservatives (again, not the Right) seem to think that the Left likes the Constitution. Since the Left gained the institutions I’ve listed above, the Left doesn’t care about the Constitution – the Left cares about power. Pure, unadulterated, 18 year old with a 12 pack of Coors Light™ behind the wheel of a 1969 Camero® power.

Outcomes: In many ways this is the best outcome, but in my opinion the most unlikely. This is the only outcome where we can still have the full freedom of political discourse and the full Bill of Rights. I’d love to turn over freedom to choose to a California that can choke itself to death on Leftist feelgoodism while a Rightist Arizona can deny admission to every illegal and return them via a trebuchet if they want to.

I was expecting more girls in bikinis from Bruckheimer, but this is a good start.

Operation Fort Sumter: Going our separate ways.

What it is: Secession. Splitting up. It’s not you, it’s me Oregon. The problem is that unlike in 1860, the dividing lines aren’t so clear. Then there was a line which, if everyone agreed, would have been fine for a split. The North could be the North, the South could be the South. Oops. Now it would be a county by county fight.

What it takes: Just like a psycho ex-girlfriend, if the Right tried to succeed in Texas, the Left wouldn’t accept it, and would demand tanks on the banks Red River by morning, which would be hilarious because tanks don’t float. Unless the secession were overwhelming in number of states, numbers of the armed forces, and nearly immediate, I see only a small path to a peaceful secession. For secession to stick, the Left and Right would have to feel that conquering the other side was more costly than trying to forge a peace.

Outcomes: If secession happened and was maintained, the United States would be irrevocably broken, unless it was re-stitched by a Caesar sequentially conquering the Balkanized United States. Maybe Caesar Pugsley Wilder the First?

Think they need a reason to send you to the Gulag? Sure they do! It’s Monday – that’s good enough.

Operation Gulag in The Dakotas:

What it is: This is the darkest timeline not only for our nation but for our world. And, amazingly, the only timeline (outside of a Second Constitutional Convention) that we can vote ourselves into. It is the Leftist takeover of everything. Although it is sold as a Denmark, in reality Denmark is capitalist with stronger social institutions because Denmark is, well, Danish and I think they put mayo on their fries. In the United States it will look much more like the U.S.S.R. – but not the basketcase 1988 U.S.S.R., but more like the 1932 “starve to death millions of citizens that Stalin doesn’t like” (In the World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold and Silver!) U.S.S.R.

What it takes: Nothing. We keep going as it is. In less than 20 years, we will be in complete tyranny. The erosion of rights we have seen won’t continue in a linear fashion. It will accelerate.

Outcomes: 1984.

Now we know the stakes.

Big Brother is our friend! And we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.

Trump: The Symbol and Symptom of the End

“I’ve come back. Give me a drink, Brother Kipling. Don’t you know me?” – The Man Who Would Be King

I guess I should be sorry about telling all those the bad yolks now.

Wednesday is usual the “wealthy” part of Wilder, Wealthy and Wise. Why? Because it starts with W.

Duh.

But I can’t this week. I normally like to talk to the deeper issues, the longer trends, and those timeless aspects of the human condition. There is more than a little evidence that we’ve been, in one way or another, been two sides fighting for thousands of years across a gulf between two factions. One is open, and the wellspring of Western Civilization.

The other is one that, for lack of a better allusion, is best represented by the worst aspects of Rudyard Kipling’s poem The Gods of the Copybook Headings (reprinted at the end of this, because it’s old enough that Disney® doesn’t own it, it’s wonderful, and it’s True) – that implacable urge to move away from those values that emphasize what is Good, Beautiful, Right and True to placate what Kipling called “The Gods of the Marketplace”. It is a battle that provides humanity amazing wealth, meaning, and prosperity when The Gods of the Copybook Headings win.

Spoiler alert: The Gods of the Copybook Headings always win.

One signpost in the road downward is the raid on Donald Trump. The word that people are using is “unprecedented” and they’re using it for a reason. It is unprecedented. As I went upstairs a moment ago, the news on the radio was insisting that Joe Biden had “no idea” what was going to happen.

The Mrs. remarked, well, it starts with “Bull”. You get the idea. If Biden didn’t know about this, then the system is horribly broken. If he did, the system is horribly corrupt.

What’s Biden’s favorite musical group? The Who?

Do I believe a former president should be above the law?

I certainly do not. But unless the FBI® found a dead stripper or a live boy in the safe, it ain’t enough. As much as the Clintons were corrupt and literally stole items out of the White House, there was no real push to have them arrested. Sure, Bill was impeached, and sure, because he perjured himself he could no longer practice law. That was about it.

And I’m okay with that. Even Nixon, who took part in a conspiracy and looked like, well, Nixon, was pardoned. Why?

Because Nixon was politically neutered and could never take part in the public sphere again in any consequential manner. He was humiliated enough that the Left could enjoy it. Bill was humiliated, but (unlike Nixon) was he decided he’d try to bilk millions (and bimbos) out of those that wanted to buy influence with his political machine.

What toothpaste did Nixon use? Colgate®.

It is clear that every president since (and certainly including!) FDR has likely committed multiple felonies in office. It’s our system. Some, because they were not good guys. Some simply because there are more felonies on the books than hairs that were implanted in Biden’s head. The Federal way is now the way that the Soviets liked it – as Lavrenty Beria, former head of the Soviet NKVD and GULAG architect extraordinaire said, “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”

Now, Trump.

In every case during his presidency, he has been the boogie man for the Left – the man that gives them I accidently killed John Wick’s dog-level night sweats. Why?

I’m not sure. Even though he couldn’t build a wall, Trump certainly upset the apple cart. Perhaps his singular achievement as president was to return the Supreme Court into a court that could actually read the Constitution in plain English again. The Constitution was written the way it was, for common men. It was written that way so that nearly every man in the United States could read it and understand the plain language. I mean, today they’d do it with angry cat memes, but you get the picture.

Given hundreds of years, the language was buried in a stream of emanations and penumbras such that what was clearly the written language of the Constitution became ignored in favor of piles of case law that in some cases twisted the original meaning nearly 180°. The Fourteenth Amendment, so beloved by the Left, turned a series of prohibitions on Federal activity into a prohibition on activity by the Several States.

When Ma Wilder caught me with a copy of the Constitution, I told I only read it for the articles.

Why is this important?

Because it became a weapon of the statists, of those that would become globalists to use as a club so that the centralized government that the Founders feared could be put in place. Now every Federal law could be pushed into the Several States with impunity. Horrible Federal bureaucracies could be put in place. I remember reading that OSHA (which regulates workplace safety) was challenged in court by a company in Maine.

The company in Maine argued that they only worked in Maine, digging a hole for people who lived in Maine, in Maine. What business was it of a Federal Administration that sounds like the noise I make when a cigar ash hits my bare chest? Why did anyone care that the Maine hole didn’t match what a government rule written in Washington D.C. said?

The Federal prosecutor didn’t even refute the argument. The administrative (not Constitutional) judge in this case ruled against the guy from Maine, since the judge said, “they have a phone and use the mail” so they’re engaged in interstate commerce.

Really. It’s a nonsense ruling, like you’d see in Alice in Wonderland but involving people who hated their lives but who were just “doing their job”. In 2022, for the first time in my life, this sort of nonsensical reasoning is being challenged at the Supreme Court level.

Go ask Hunter, when he’s at the mall.

And they hate Trump for it. They hate him with every fiber of their being, even more than they hate Vladimir “Putler” or people who don’t take the vaxx or people who would deny teachers the right to indoctrinate kindergarteners into the world of S&M. They hate it more than they hate people who won’t kill their babies.

For that, Trump must be punished.

Is it rational? Not at all. They’re willing to destroy the Republic for that, because they want to destroy the Republic anyway. There are those on the Right that are accelerationists: anything that brings on the actual shooting war with the Left should be embraced. On the Left, there are accelerationists, too. Anything that can pull down another statue, anything that can pervert another value, anything that can make the legacy of the United States die is to be saluted.

Really. They hate it so very much, and Trump has been an inconvenient speedbump along the way.

So, their most fervent fantasy is Trump in an orange jumpsuit, whereas the most fervent fantasy of the Right was Hillary being an impotent drunk wine aunt staring from the outside in at a party she could never be a part of. Sure, the crowds at the Trump rally chanted “Lock Her Up” but what they really wanted was her humiliation.

The Right got it, and then some.

Hillary tried to sell her soul to Satan to become president, but Satan responded and said that was like Bill trying to sell his virginity.

Perhaps that was what drove them over the edge into insanity. Again, they want the destruction of the United States, so, they’re cool with that. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. I’m not really sure what bizarre fantasy plays in their heads as they contemplate the collapsing economic system and the utter lack of any shared goals or morality. Perhaps it’s a rainbow, though I doubt they’ll understand that the only actual consequence that they can really have is one that will lead to. But Rudyard Kipling understood it, every bit of it.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

by Rudyard Kipling

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper protestations to the Gods of the Market-Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall.
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn.
That water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision, and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market-Place;
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch.
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch.
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings.
So we worshiped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: ‘Stick to the Devil you know.’

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbor and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: ‘The Wages of Sin is Death/’

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selective Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: ‘If you don’t work you die.’

The Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew,
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four—
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man—
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began:—
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wobbling back to the Fire;
And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Economics In 2022, A Picture Book

“Stay classy, San Diego!” – Anchorman

I think the Chairman of the Federal Reserve® is required by law to drive a Fiat®.

Recently, part of the revolution has been televised . . . the Dutch government has decided that farming is evil because it keeps people from eating bugs and living in the pods:

Of course, the Dutch have commies there, too:

But who thinks hunger is good, besides the commies at Antifa? Oh, the United Nations:

Well, we know the UN never comes up with their own ideas, they’re too busy with waste and corruption. So where did this idea come from?

Oh, yeah, the World Economic Forum.

Thankfully, they’re not at all evil, right?

Karl nods approvingly:

But the World Economic Forum® has plans to help, right? How it started for Sri Lanka:

How it’s going, I mean they’ve had four years to implement The Plan:

But they’ll help Europe, right?

How it might end:

But the United States is not immune from economic illiteracy:

I’m sure this won’t put 40 million people on edge:

But Joe Biden is coming to the aid of the American people:

And Kamala is planning on how to leave Kabul Washington.

While all of this goes on, there are differing views on the economy:

At least Amazon® will help us:

But in the end, maybe we will come to an ethical conclusion:

Stay classy, America!

Thoughts On Independence Day, 2022

“My friend here is trying to convince me that any independent contractors who were working on the uncompleted Death Star were innocent victims when it was destroyed by the Rebels.” – Clerks

Where was the Declaration of Independence signed? At the bottom, silly.

Independence Day is just around the corner, and I’ve got the Civil War 2.0 Weather Report scheduled for that day, so I thought I’d give a few thoughts about one of the most cherished ideas in our history: Independence.

Independence was the life blood of our new nation. I think people were genetically (and sometimes judicially) selected for it. The people that came here looked around Britain and said, “You know what, I’d much rather be in a wilderness surrounded by hostile natives. Oh, and I’ll gladly cross an ocean in a dangerous journey that will take forever, and I’ll never see the land of my birth again.”

It’s one thing to do that yourself, but these dudes convinced their wives to come, too.

Leaving everything you know and love is not normal, but Duncan McWilder left Scotland before the Revolutionary War was over to come on over here. I don’t know his story, but as I trace his children across generations, not a one of them settled in a place where life was easy – in fact every one of them headed for the frontier (as it existed in their time) and pushed outwards.

They raised heaven knows what in Virginia and Alabama. They tamed Texas. They built the railroads. The homesteaded in New Mexico. Portions of the family were west of the Rockies in 1860. Not a single day was spent in a life in on easy mode. They built this country with their sweat, their tears, and over the bones of their wives who died in childbirth and their sons who died of fever and war.

None of it was easy. The hard choice was something else:

Independence.

But they had one thing in their mind – they bowed to no man. I feel safe in saying that should my forefathers have met any king or potentate that walked this Earth that not a single one of them would have bowed. They would have stood straight up, looked him in the eye, and thought to themselves, “You’re nothing but a man like me. And no Wilder bows to any man.”

When people mention to me that I am the beneficiary of “white privilege” or any other such nonsense, I laugh. My ancestors fought in Europe, twice, in the last century. They fought here at places like Shiloh and Manassas Junction. They fought at places like Valley Forge when the dark winter nearly doomed a nation yet unborn. I stand at the end of a line of brave men and women who looked on a new and fresh continent, not with fear, but with determination. They wouldn’t bend their knees even to their countrymen. Why?

Independence.

Life was never easy. But I look back onto that line of my ancestors and know – they made the hard choice, the choice to be free. They gave up comfort and, likely, material success to have control of their own destiny. Rather than submit, they pushed farther out – into danger. Wolves aren’t a problem now. Why not?

My ancestors (along with many others) killed them. Grizzly bears used to be in nearly every State. Not now. Why? My ancestors (along many others) killed them. They braved the cold, the heat, the snakes, the (now dead) bears, and the (now dead) wolves. Why?

Independence.

I’m not alone here, either. If you’re reading this, there’s a near certainty that you came from a long line of Big Damn Heroes® yourself. They carved a nation out of their heroism, their success, and, yes, their failure, all chasing the same dream.

Independence.

I’ve met billionaires, movie stars, sports stars, and rock stars. I hold none of them in contempt. And I hold none of them as my better. I had several times that I could have sworn fealty and abandoned my integrity and had greater success.

I never would. To do so would have been shameful to the memories of those that came before me. So, I never will. Why?

Independence.

I am not alone. The United States was a magnet for hard-headed men of principle that were looking for nothing but that chance to be free, to be independent, to live their own lives.

In 1900, my ancestors would interact with the Federal government whenever they got their mail. That might have been infrequent, at best, out on the frontier, out in the places where they might be lucky to see mail once in a month.

From once a month, we’ve moved to all the time. When my alarm goes off in the morning, it’s driven by electricity that comes from power plants regulated by the EPA. I go to the bathroom where I brush my teeth with toothpaste approved by the FDA, and then into the shower where the valve is regulated by the Consumer Protection Agency and water regulated by several government agencies. I then get in the car (approved in different aspects by several government agencies) fueled by gasoline . . . and the number of agencies in that chain just to get gasoline is amazing.

The biggest difference between then and now are the massive cities. Our cities are huge and complex and anonymous. Here in the country, you can configure your life to deal only with the people you see at work and the people that you see at the store, in the city there are people everywhere.

And the chances you’ll see a random individual again in a context so that you’d recognize them?

Nearly zero.

Thus, cities are an environment where people are anonymous. Anonymous people aren’t responsible for their actions – they exist outside of the constraint of society. Be rude to someone because your day isn’t going well? Whatever. You’ll never see them again. They’re not a part of your group, your tribe.

That anonymity might sound like Independence, but it’s not – it actually leads to the worst of tyranny – rule after rule because poor manners in an anonymous setting lead to rules about how tall a lawn can be. And if you don’t follow that rule, and don’t pay the fines associated with breaking it?

People with guns will take you to a concrete box and keep you there. So, cities don’t sound very free to someone like me.

On the other side of the equation, small towns provide accountability without resorting to the law.

A city slicker moved to Modern Mayberry and didn’t pay a plumber because of a disagreement. What are the odds any other plumber will even return his calls when something goes wrong? Or any contractor? Heck, even I know the story, so I’m giggling thinking about them making phone calls when they need to get their septic tank pumped.

Without anonymity, there is responsibility. It will be a tough lesson for the city slicker to learn. I remember that lesson every time I go to dinner and see the same waitress for the twentieth time. They are responsible to me as a waitress, and I am responsibility to them as a customer.

In my small town, I have responsibility. My forefathers had independence, but they also had responsibility. If they succeeded, they succeeded. If they failed, they failed. If they died because of their foolishness? They died.

The lesson is simple: independence isn’t freedom from consequences. Independence is being free to choose. Living with those consequences is the result.

We sit here at the edge of a new world that is struggling to be born out of the old world that we lived in. Will we choose independence and responsibility?

I know what my ancestors would choose.

Monkey Pox: COVID 2.0??? A story in pictures.

“No can do. I am itching all over with Angela-pox.” – The Office

I guess the Ukraine is waning. Time to pull out Monkey Pox®?

As we find ourselves at a time where action in Ukraine mainly consists of sending Zelensky more money so he can eventually recycle it to the Biden family, it appears to be time to (spins wheel) bring out Monkey Pox™ as the villain of the day. This post will mainly be memes. First, Monkey Pox©.

Note: none of the memes are mine today (except maybe one that I originally did and then recopied from another website).

This, though unconfirmed, is the scariest bit. Which in normal times, would make it unlikely. When Wilder’s Principle of Greatest Amusement is in play? All bets are off.

So, the planned “exercise” on Monkey Pox™ was written about in March 21, and has nearly exactly the same initial date as the actual Monkey Pox© reports here in 2022? Huh?

At least it’s a break from the war in the Ukraine.

Thankfully we didn’t treat masks like we were members of a cargo cult, right? And we’ve learned since last time, right?

Here’s hoping the mask part is over. And as it goes, that leaves the jab.

Death is so much worse without the Jab, right?

It would be hard for any logical person to support forcing people to take the vaxx at this point, especially given the data. But hey, is it really about keeping people safe?

I would have thought that, in addition to having the vaxx, that the Germans would at least want people committing suicide to spend a few months making panzers or something.

What was it that The Who said? We won’t get fooled again?

Joe Biden: Tasting Your Frustration Edition

“I can taste all the flavors from the past sixty years. I can taste the Korean War.” – Bob’s Burgers

I have the memory of an elephant. I recall seeing one at a zoo once.

Yesterday, thankfully, Resident Joe Biden indicated he was really in tune with modern Americans. During a press conference, Joe stated, “I understand the frustration. I can taste it.”

Taste it. Yes. Normally, I goof on Joe about being a bit addled, but here he’s nosing in on my gig. “I can taste it.”

I wonder, what exactly frustration tastes like? Is it like the dinner I made last month when Pugsley asked, “Was it supposed to taste like this?”

I wonder if, to Joe, our frustration tastes like something exceptionally expensive. A fine Bordeaux or, say, gasoline?

Thankfully, Joe is willing to devote all of his senses to solving our problems. I wonder if Biden smells our bank accounts? Probably not, though I heard that Joe took an interest that the supply chain issues have made stores run out of Pantene® – Joe said he’d personally sniff out the situation.

What’s the difference between The Mrs. and I? When she says “sniff this” it’s usually pleasant.

Thankfully, in the very same press conference, Biden also said, “. . . inflation is our strength . . .” Yes. He said that. Pretty quickly, Nina Jankowicz (the Jerry Springer of government officials, except Jerry would kill for her jawline) got up and echoed that thought: “Inflation is our strength, and war in Ukraine is peace.”

Okay, I’m making fun of these people, but in truth, they aren’t serious people. They’re an administration that might actually think that Robert Downey, Jr., is really Iron Man® and really might come and save them after he stops the Russians in Kiev. And that’s me being charitable in my assessment.

When it comes to government, one of the Leftist talking points was that, with Biden in the White House, we’d have the “adults back in charge”. In this case that’s an apt description, but only if the adults in question are a collection of diversity hires unable to get a job where an IQ greater than room temperature (Fahrenheit, not the meter thing). Oh, and they are in favor of The Current Thing, whatever it is.

Pictured: White House security badge.

Rachel (formerly Richard) Levine dresses and calls xirself a woman. Xir also dresses like and calls xirself an Admiral.

As the assistant secretary for health, Levine told NPR that “there is no argument among medical professionals — pediatricians, pediatric endocrinologists, adolescent medicine physicians, adolescent psychiatrists, psychologists, et cetera, about the value and importance of gender-affirming care.” It’s no wonder that Biden appointed a Supreme Court Justice that said she couldn’t define what a woman is. How ever did she decide what to put on her driver’s license?

So, that leads me to several options when it comes to the economy. The first idea is that we have left the equivalent of a group of dim-witted glue-eating children in a room filled with razorblades, poison ivy, cyanide, and whatever hellish creature that Australia might produce that I haven’t had a nightmare about yet. Carnivorous, poisonous koala bears that fly and have scorpion tails, perhaps?

Why did the koala drop out of the tree? It was dead.

Regardless, these idiots were saved from being Marxist perma-baristas by vote harvesting and have somehow gotten the keys to the economy. Of course, never having heard of debt, inflation, or Zimbabwe, the best idea that they had is “make everyone rich by printing more money”. Really. That’s it.

That’s the first option, actual idiocracy.

But what if this is the desired result?

Thus, the second option. The Cloward-Piven Strategy dates from the 1960s and was based around breaking the system through welfare. Cloward and Piven were two married professors that decided that since they were making money from the public for doing essentially nothing, that everyone else should be able to get a piece of that action, too. Economies aren’t based on people being productive, right?

The end idea of their strategy was bankrupting the country through increased pushing of social programs. Why do that, to help people? No, the aim was revolution in the United States. And this wouldn’t be a revolution like the French one (which was a head of its time) which proved that the French can win a war, if it’s against the French.

What’s a good way to start a revolution?

King George was only 11 inches tall – he was unfit to be a ruler.

Doing exactly what the current idiots are doing. It used to be just the commies like Cloward and Piven and their cousins Pol Pot and Stalin who wanted to change man, to make him perfectible. Now, the World Economic Forum (LINK) is on with the same old idea that’s caused so much grief over the past century and change. They have an agenda to make man a global economic cog in a machine where only one culture, one set of ideas is acceptable – in the world.

Strangely, the outcome of the “toddlers in charge” plan looks a lot like the outcome of the “Global Commie Power Grab” plan.

So, was Joe being stupid when he said “inflation is our strength” or was he just slipping and sharing the quiet part of the plan that he wasn’t supposed to say?

The Coming American Dictatorship, Part IV: Grooming A Society

“I’m sorry, I believe in good grooming.” – The Simpsons

I was outbid trying to buy a shopping center. I guess the old saying is right: you just can’t win a mall.

The biggest part of a dictator’s ability to control a people is the control of their thoughts. Sure, a large supply of bullets is nice, but if you use that method, sooner or later you run out of people to control. How, then, is that sort of mental crowd control done in a nation that once staged a rebellion over a tax on whiskey? The answer is simple –a little bit at a time.

The first step in that is to program the people. The easiest way to do that is to control their education and their entertainment. In the modern world, it is that combination of education and entertainment that form our modern-day mythos – the very definition of who we are and what we stand for.

Education was the easiest part, and, by necessity, the first. The problem (from the standpoint of those that would set the world up for dictators) is that educators aren’t swapped out yearly. No, educators often are in a classroom for decades, watching hundreds of their children move from grade to grade. I think my kindergarten teacher was old enough to have known Moses personally, though in her defense I was probably more of a handful than those James and Younger brothers she told stories about.

True fact: They charge a $6 entry fee to see Karl’s grave.

That’s why the real Leftism (as far as I can tell) didn’t start showing up in the classroom until, perhaps, the 1960s. That had given them time to infiltrate the colleges and begin to sway the way that teachers were taught. I knew something was up when I told one teacher I was struggling with a class.

“Who, the Bourgeoisie?” she asked.

An aside – teachers often slant Left/Globalist anyway – they work for a government, after all. The teacher unions are strongly Leftist in political leanings. Educating a group of teachers and then placing them in the schools only changes the schools slowly. But after a while, a critical mass is achieved, and government schools become indoctrination centers for Leftist thought.

To be clear – government schools have always been indoctrination centers. The previous versions prior to the 1960s had (in my opinion) more innocuous indoctrination, putting memes like these in the heads of the students:

The United States is a force for good,
Christopher Columbus was alright,
The Inalienable rights are: life, liberty, and the pursuit of PEZ™,
Hard work is important,
If you pee on the playground you have to go see the principal,
Religious values are one of the things that make the United States strong, and
There is a morality beyond mere legality that keeps society cohesive.

I could keep going on this list. But the values that the kids were programmed with led to a prosperous society that, generally, was also a society where you trusted your neighbor and, even though he might have voted for the other guy, was still on the same team. Was it perfect? No, of course not, and a lack of skepticism led to all manner of government shenanigans being ignored – MK Ultra, I’m looking at . . . what was I saying?

Is it just me, or is that glowing?

The change in schools was the vanguard of that Leftist. Ideas were infiltrated that began to chip away at the idea of values. Equity in education became a buzzword even in the 1970s, decades before managing the equality of outcomes became the goal. Heck, you could even teach math and give grades back then.

Of course, the Leftist ownership of education wasn’t the only thrust at that time. Movies and television began to change as well. I didn’t see first-run episodes of Leave it to Beaver nor All in the Family, but I could see the shows couldn’t have been more different as I watched them on reruns.

Leave it to Beaver was a show about kids going through typical kid problems, and also dealing with that oily Eddie Haskell. That also led to the Funniest untrue rumor ever: Eddie Haskell was played by a young Alice Cooper. It would have been far more interesting if Eddie had a guillotine.

I did hear that Rob Halford did move to a Tibetan monastery. I guess that makes him a Buddhist Priest.

All in the Family, though, was a show that could have been called All in on the Narrative. All in the Family was simply a tool to move the narrative to the Left, plus it showcased that family-dividing character – the ever-bumbling incompetent father. Later shows in the 1970s moved the father to a position of irrelevance: single-parent households became a staple of sitcoms.

Sitcoms were used because nothing is better at attacking power than comedy, since it allows the comedian to poke fun at the weakest parts of their enemy. I wonder why comedy is out of style . . . hmmm. Oh, wait. Amy Schumer.

I could go on about movies, but they were playing their role in pulling the narrative along. There’s a reason that The Exorcist, The Omen, Halloween, and Friday the 13^th all had monsters that were young – essentially the monsters were all children (or, started out as kids in Halloween or Friday the 13^th). . . Gen X age. No wonder my kindergarten teacher called me a little monster!

The propaganda in both television and film was the same: show the most sympathetic case of (insert movement – divorce, abortion, gay rights, et cetera) and then milk it for everything that it was worth. It didn’t matter that the case represented the very edge of reality, that small 0.01% of cases – no, publicize it and create an emotional backstory.

Why? To program people. When I look back at many (not all!) movies from that time frame there are places I can see the Narrative Programming being implanted. Heck, when I was a kid I wondered why people on the Right couldn’t be funny. They can be – P.J. O’Rourke taught that to the world.

I saw one bee I thought was drunk. Turned out he was just buzzed.

I don’t think it was a coincidence that church attendance started to go down in the 1970s. I don’t have a lot of data on why – perhaps single-parent households are less likely to go? Regardless, there’s plenty of data that shows when. The 1970s.

The Left focuses on identity and has since before the 1970s. The big reason for this focus is that class never really existed here in the United States in any sort of formal fashion. We never had Lords and Ladies and Kings, just rich people and poor people. And most poor people think there’s at least a hope that they’ll become rich people, which is why the lottery is still a tax on people who can’t do math.

So, that left only identity. The playbook on the Left was to let every identity group know that they were a victim. Women’s Lib. The 1967 riots. Certainly, there were legitimate grievances in some cases, but the Left wanted to create division between groups – and it’s possible to show how every group has been treated unfairly. Except for the Dutch. They had it coming.

Their answer was simple: normalize the victim status of nearly every group in order to fragment society. What is normal changes, first slowly, then all at once.

Joe walks into a bar and sees a hot woman and asks her, “So, do I come here often?”

Joe Biden in 2008 was against gay marriage. Joe Biden in 2022 wants to make it illegal for states to stop kids from getting hormone blockers. Yes – the same man who said that “marriage is between a man and a woman” only fourteen years ago now wants minors to receive powerful hormones that will unalterably change their bodies. On a whim.

What is normal now changes in a heartbeat, which is easy once the fixed morality of religion is gone. Then, the only standard becomes the law: if it’s legal, it must be moral. And in a dictatorship, who makes the laws?

Next Up: There’s more to come in this series, but I’m waiting on some reference books to show up. See how hard I work for you?