Category: Communism

PEZ® And The Fate Of Nations

“I don’t want another one of your sullen whores using my medicine cabinet as a PEZ® dispenser.” – Archer

I once had a dream I was an owl.  It was a hoot. (all memes this post, as-found)

The dollar.  Since the end of World War II, it’s been the world currency.  The reasons are fairly simple – out of the World War II mess, the United States was ascendent.  The reasons, in retrospect, were obvious.  It was the strongest economy in the world.  It sat on (at that point) nearly limitless oil reserves, and was the undisputed technical world leader in getting oil out of the ground.

While not the preeminent world land military power (that would likely have been the Soviets at that stage) it did have the best planes and the best navy along with a short monopoly on atomic weapons.  I believe, and this cannot be emphasized enough, that the United States at this point was also the world’s largest producer of PEZ® not long after PEZ™ was introduced to the United States in 1952.

Great Britain was in the midst of involuntary decolonization – two world wars had robbed them of their vitality, except for their international leadership in the production of pop music.  That left the United States standing alone, except for France, which always likes to pretend that it’s still important and the Soviets, who had an economic system that create a shortage of sand on a beach.

I once helped that Wolverine actor, the Jackman guy, find his laptop when he lost it in Switzerland while filming a movie about a professional yodeler.  I said, “Your Dell® lay here, Hugh.”

As I’ve mentioned in the past, there are huge advantages to having the world currency.  First, you can print dollars, ship them overseas, and people send you stuff.  If that’s the first benefit, I’m not sure that you really need a second benefit.  It’s the equivalent of a six-year-old scratching “one candy bar” on a piece of paper, walking into a Wal-Mart®, and Wal-Mart™ giving him a candy bar in exchange for the piece of paper.  I think Wal-Mart© has a special program where they give kids in Chicago candy, all they have to do is show a pistol.

Sure, they pretended that the dollar was backed by gold for a few decades, but those fictions always end.   Still, during that time frame the United States built something else – a payment framework.  Using this payment network, Saudi Arabia could quickly trade a million dollars it had received from selling oil for something more useful, like hot bimbos.  Saudi Arabia quickly jumped on board with this idea, especially after one of their Kings got lead poisoning after the oil embargo.

I hear the biggest show in Saudi Arabia is “How I Met Your Mothers”.

Then, Ukraine.

For whatever reason, the people who do the thinking while Biden drools, reads things in real big print, and says random crap, thought it was a good idea to take Russia’s money.  How much?  $1 trillion.  That’s enough to buy cell phones, track suits (seriously, those are Russia’s biggest imports) for almost every Russian with enough left over for enough vodka to fuel another offensive, but not enough to pave a road.

It was a pretty serious breach of trust.  In my own personal business I try to avoid giving my money to people who promise that they’re going to give it back to me and then decide, “You know, I’m just going to keep this money for myself because . . . it’s Tuesday.”  Admittedly, invading another sovereign state is a little more than it being “Tuesday” but the idea is that this is a weapon that can be used once if there’s an alternative system.

Sure, the Russians have lost $1 trillion, which is half of what their entire economy produces in a year.  The damage was done, though, when everybody else looked around and said, “Huh, if it can happen to Russia, it can happen to me.  I’m not sure that I like the idea that someone can take away all my cash . . . and has proven that they will do so.”

Is a British bank robber a quid-napper?

How much longer can we trade the dollar for candy bars?  I’m not sure.  Other groups have already started trading back and forth on systems other than the ones the United States influences.

To add difficulty to this, the dollars we shipped offshore to buy candy bars and oil and Chinese clothes are headed back to the United States and there’s actually a dollar shortage overseas as the dollars flood back here.  Why are they headed back?  Because the interest rates are headed up, folks overseas are shipping the dollars back here to take advantage of the higher interest rates.

If we lower the interest rates?  Inflation kicks higher.  If we raise them, dollars (which will cause inflation) head home and make all those dollars we’re printing right now worth a little less.  If only those pesky Chinese had burned all the dollars when they sent us radar detectors and fishing rods and forks and ceramic garden gnomes.

But they didn’t.  And neither did anyone else, though a cat broke several of my ceramic garden gnomes, so those are a loss.

I hear China’s running a currency special – buy Yuan, get Yuan free.

Beyond that, we have either unserious, mentally damaged, or downright dangerous leadership at virtually every level of national government, and A.I. starting to take a toll on some of the higher paid jobs in society.  Sure, losing all those buggy-whip makers was tough in society, but I’m not sure what we’re going to do with all of the awful plumbers that used to be programmers.

Maybe they could mine coal?

Did I mention that we just had the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history, so the indication is that, perhaps, the banking system is rotten to the core?

It’s all fun and games until everyone sees that the press is just running everything on a script in collusion with the government.  Then everything will change.  Oops, guess not.

And maybe Russia is a diversion, you know, to keep the whole thing together while it’s all falling apart?

Next you’re going to tell me that PEZ® entering the Chinese market in 2017 was . . . a coincidence.

How Civil Wars Start Book Review: Leftists Are Idiots

“I got nowhere else to go!” – An Officer and a Gentleman

I think I might have been the only person in my state where “Juan” was my nickname.  I guess that makes me Juan in a million.

I recently bought the book How Civil Wars Start (And How to Stop Them) by Barbara F. Walter (2022, Crown).  When I bought it, I bought it used to save a few bucks.  When it arrived, The Mrs. looked at the title and noted, “Oh, as if you weren’t already on enough lists.”

After I read the book, I was really glad that I bought it second-hand because the last thing I would want to ever do is put money into the hands of the Leftist harpy who wrote it.  I generally like people, especially people I haven’t met.  To be frank, after reading Ms. Walter’s book, I really, really detest her for reasons I’ll discuss during and especially towards the end of the review.

Not that I have any opinions.  There was, however, some interesting information.  Because of that, I thought I’d give a review of the book so you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to.  And, since I’m discussing 90% of the interesting parts, there’s no reason you should buy this book.

First, the way this book was written was through a series of emotionally loaded stories only then followed by the actual research.  The book was 226 pages before the notes and acknowledgements, and could have been half that length, if Walter wasn’t writing endless bad-romance-book-level summaries of people who had seen civil wars.  These weren’t interesting or useful like Selco’s Sarajevo experiences, but just stories (all with a Leftist bent) meant to make the reader feel.  I am skipping discussion of any of these insipid parts that were meant to twist your emotions because you can watch network tv if you want to.

You can thank me for that in the comments.

What do Green Eggs and Ham and Fifty Shades of Grey have in common?  They both encourage people who can barely read to try new things.

I hate being manipulated, and this book was just that, but it was manipulation at the level of a clumsy middle school girl level of soft puppy dog eyes.  For example, the first segment was a breathless analysis of the kidnap plot against Gretchen Whitmer, complete with blame of the 3%ers, Qanon supporters, and the Proud Boys.

Missing?

The fact that the entire case against the “kidnappers” collapsed in Federal court because the FBI was responsible for it from start to finish.  Yes.  The kidnapping was the idea of the FBI.  But Walter, despite having this information, is the CNN® of writers, skipping over actual facts to sell her feels.

Skipping to the parts that are interesting, she notes that there has been an attempt to classify where countries lie along a spectrum of governance:  +10 is a full democracy, like Denmark.  -10 is a full autocracy, like Best Korea.  Very few civil wars occur when countries are close to the ends of the spectrum.  Why would you have a civil war in Denmark?  What, you don’t like pastries and hot Danish girls?  And in Best Korea, the state has such control from cradle to grave of the citizens that the idea of revolt is nearly impossible.  The country even has approved hairstyles.

From the book, page 22.  How I got the weird light effects, I’ll never know.

So, -10 and +10 are safe from civil war.  The danger zone is -5 (think, Czar Nicholas II) to +5 (think Putin/Zelensky/Biden).  It’s a time where the state is generally moving from either democracy toward autocracy or vice versa.  Due to the change, it’s weaker.  The name they made up for a country in that zone is an anocracy.  Examples provided include places where I’d never want to have a vacation:

  • Serbia (1990s)
  • Bosnia (1990s)
  • Spain (1930s)
  • Rwanda (1990s)
  • Ukraine (2010s)

I found it interesting that the state being poor, unequal, heterogeneous, or repressed didn’t count as much as to where the country sat on the governance scale.  The idea is that the countries are weaker – there is division, there are no social guardrails, and the state is therefore susceptible to a chain reaction due to an event – think George Floyd or cancelling Firefly – that will start the war.

The next condition increasing the likelihood of civil war is the creation of factions.  These factions were often based on racial groups, ethnic groups, or religious groups, or some combination.  The biggest sign of coming difficulty was the exclusion of these groups from power.  Losing the presidency through changing all the rules into Biden’s favor (and perhaps some counting shenanigans) in 2020 is livable.  2024 loss?  Normally, that wouldn’t be an issue.

But in this case, a particular group senses opportunity or demographic change (from the book).  This results in increased tension, partisanship, and group identification.  Chances double if there is a group tension.  If the country is an anocracy?  The chances of civil war go up by a factor of thirty.

Blacksmiths generally box in the smelterweight division.

Want it to get even worse?  If the tension is ethnic/racial plus religion, class, or geography?  That increases the chances of civil war by a factor of 12 versus a homogeneous society.  In the United States in the 1950s (for example) the chances of civil war were nearly zero because the society was very close to homogeneous.

When a group is left out, and no longer has a chance of winning, no access to government, no access to political power, that tension is formed.  It’s even larger if that group used to be in control and lost power.  One researcher called these people, “Sons of the Soil”.  The characteristics of this group were:

  • They lived on territory they conquered or settled
  • They consider themselves “native” and the rightful heirs
  • They were or had been the majority

This group is likely to rebel at twice the rate of others, and are generally a much more capable foe.

What sets these Sons of the Soil off?  They see their:

  • Culture,
  • Language,
  • Holidays, and
  • Religion replaced.

Outsiders swamp them.  Walter quotes David Horowitz, “Numbers are an indicator of whose country it is.”  Of course, by that standard, California is Mexico, and immigration is often a flashpoint to civil war.

Yes, this is a thing that’s happening.  But by “back” they mean Texas.  Silly cosmopolitan elites!

Finally, loss of hope is a precipitator for civil war.  If there is no route to power, hope disappears, just like happened to the South during Civil War 1.0.  What is a loss of power?  As we discussed previously, in real terms, two losses in a row at the national level is a loss of power.

One thing Walter doesn’t like is social media, and the voice it provides people.  She notes that it heightens ethnic, social, religious, and geographic divisions.  My general take from reading her was, “we control the media, and if you don’t like it, too bad, racist.”  Proof?  She’s upset that Swedish people are running on the idea of “restoring their national home” and stopping the never-ending influx of rather lawless refugees that are anything but Swedish.  For the Swedish people to want a national home is apparently racist.

Walter categorizes the Right as appealing to the “primitive” (her word) ideas of nation, protection, The Other, anger, and fear.  I mean, why shouldn’t the Swedes want to an import a group of people that rape so much that the police stopped reporting demographics of the rapist because they didn’t want to support hate?

I mean, really, why would we want to make Sweden more Pakistani?

On Ms. Walter’ chapter, “How Close Are We” she:

  • Spits out a litany of Leftist talking points about January 6 and Michigan, ignoring entirely the George Floyd protests.
  • Notes that “Global trade agreements were signed that benefited coastal elites (her words!) at their (working class whites) expense.

Open insurgency is the last phase.  Where are we now?  Here is Walter:  “We are a factionalized anocracy that is quickly approaching the open insurgency stage, which means that we are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe.”

Walter has a chapter on, “What A War Would Look Like”.  I’ll summarize it this way:  it’s the same sort of thoughts that a bright six-year-old might have about drinking beer at a frat party.  Sure she might be able to describe it in vague terms, but, let’s face it, until you’ve carried your drunken buddy upstairs to pass out near a trash can, it’s all academic.  She’s bizarrely fixated on 4chan, to the point that she thinks the Boogaloo Bois weren’t just a meme.  Imagine, an academic trolled by /pol/ by pretending that the civil war will be led by people in Hawaiian shirts?  Again.  Like it hasn’t happened about 200 times at this point.

Also, the book was written before the chip implant change.  She thought that the Right would flock to Ukraine to fight on the side of the Neo-Nazi Azov group.  Huh.  Guess that idea aged like milk.

Her final chapter is on how to prevent a civil war.  It’s simple!  Just do anything that AOC says!

Really.  This chapter is nothing more than list of “do everything on the main list of Democrat objectives in 2021, and the world will be awesome!”  This particular chapter raised my blood pressure high enough that when I started sweating my handkerchief came away pink.  Sample line:  “Countries that try to stop immigration will slowly die . . . “  Yeah.  It’s chock full of lies.

This is also when we found that Barbara’s parents were both immigrants to the United States, and Barbara, though born here, seems to hate here.  She wants to change the United States that drew her parents here (89%+ white, homogeneous, far-Right by her standards) into a nation that resembles the mess her parents fled from.  Her husband seems even worse – he’s a dude that doesn’t have the guts to have his wife take his name, was born in Canada from immigrant parents that fled Soviet-era Hungary.

And it sounds like Barbara would be happier living in the approaching Soviet Canada than in the United States that she and her ilk helped create through their ideology since they discussed moving there.  She’s an American because of a piece of paper issued by a bureaucrat, has no roots here, and will happily move on to the next country to destroy.

Shocking, that.  Walter thinks that people with the values of the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s are now “Far Right” and wants them out of the military.  In reality?  It was always, always those guys who made up the military.

Barbara F. Walter is a member of the cosmopolitan elite (her quote, not mine!) and is a rootless blight on the world and is no more American than that Chinese kidney I bought off of Ebay® the other day.  Since she and her gutless husband wanted to run and hide at the slightest bit of trouble in her Leftist dreams, she and I?

We are not the same.  I am American, I’ve got nowhere else to go.

Matt:  Tell me:  what’s the difference between us and them?

Jed:  Because . . . we live here.

Choose Who You Are. It’s Easy.

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

If someone named David is a victim of ID theft, do I have to call them Dav?

“As I’ve gotten older . . . I could not help but notice the effect on people of the stories they told about themselves.  If you listen to the people – if you just sit and listen – you’ll find that there are patterns in the way they talk about themselves.  There’s the kind of person who is always the victim in any story that the tell – always on the receiving end of some injustice.  There’s the person who is always kind of the hero in every story they tell.  The smart person – they deliver the clever put down.  There are lots of versions of this.  And you gotta be very careful about how you tell these stories because it starts to become you.  You are, in the way you craft your narrative, kind of crafting your character.  And so, I did at some point decide:  I am going to adopt self-consciously as my narrative that I’m the happiest person anybody knows.  And it is amazing how happy-inducing it is.”

-Michael Lewis

My first question after I read this was, “Okay, which Michael Lewis?”  I’m thinking there might be a million of them, but the A.I. refused to even guess and then pouted and now won’t open the pod bay doors for me.  So, I’m guessing that every other person in Michigan is named “Michael Lewis”.  Regardless, the most famous author named Michael Lewis is the guy who writes interesting financial books, so I’ll assume it’s him.

The nice thing about water from Flint is that you can use it to make a Pb and Jelly sandwich.

Regardless of who wrote it, it’s a good and fairly true quote.

Why?

Attitude is everything.

If you believe you’re happy, if you talk about being happy, you’ll . . . be happy.  As I’ve written before, being happy is really the easiest thing in the world.  Many mornings I’ll run into the secretary administrative assistant at the door.  Regardless of the weather, I’ll greet her with, “What a beautiful day it is!”  It could be sunny and hot, rainy, cold, snowing, or even volcano-y.  My greeting is the same.

Because it is a beautiful day.  And, one thing I’ve learned is that the weather absolutely doesn’t care about me, at all.  The snow doesn’t care that I love it.  The hot day doesn’t care that I like cold weather, though I think it might be personal with the volcanoes.  But I’m alive, breathing, walking and talking.  If I spent all day hating a temperature reading, that wouldn’t leave me time to hate people who deserve it, like communists, leftists, and mimes.

How could the day not be beautiful?  I get to choose how I feel, so why not be happy about it?

My insurance agent told me I can jump in an active volcano.  Once.

I read the Michael Lewis quote and immediately recognized it to be a rule I’d been living with.  I’ve written before about how absolutely horrid victims are to be around.  Everything happens to them.  They are at the center of their own story, but initiate no action.  They have all the resilience of a bean bag, and are psychic vampires that attempt to suck emotional sustenance in the form of pity from their unwitting prey by demonstrating how mean the world has been to them.  The technical term for this affliction is “Antifa® Member”.

They sing their own lives with their story.  I avoid these types of people as if they were constructed entirely out of George Soros’ toe cheese, which I guess explains why he’s long been called the “Creamy-Fingered Puppet Master”.

George Soros wants to destroy our culture?  I knew he was behind American Idol.

The Hero?  I can live with them.  Often, they’re really newts who brag about being distantly related to the Tyrannosaurus Rex.  They get their ego from being the one who has done the most, has the most gifted child, the cousin who went to Harvard®, and that they vacationed on Mars last summer.  The Hero does this this because they feel awful about themselves, and need to bolster their ego by telling these stories.

Again, I’m okay with The Hero, since if you listen to their stories and don’t try to top theirs, they eventually can be good people to hang out with, and as they get older or develop trust with you they drop the act.  They want to be liked, and if you like them for who they are, they often stop the Hero stuff.

The person who puts people down?  I don’t meet that guy (or gal) often enough to have any sort of read on dealing with them.  They just aren’t any in circle I’m in since I’ve been an adult.  I guess that tells me lots about how successful the strategy of “being a complete tool” is.

What’s the difference between a Hoover® vacuum and a limo carrying George Soros and his son?  The Hoover™ only has one dirtbag in it.

But there are lots of other ways to tell my story.  The best part is that I get to choose.  I get to choose to be the happiest guy people know.  I get to choose to be the guy in the room that is calm when everything is going to hell (I really enjoy that one, and it comes naturally).  I get to choose what I’m afraid of.

To be clear, this isn’t the Lefty talking point about “Your Truth®”.  That’s bogus, and denies objective reality.  Me?  I don’t deny that it’s snowing.  I don’t deny that it’s 103°F out.  I don’t deny that that pesky volcano keeps following me around.  But I do get to choose how that fact fits in with how I feel.

And so can you.

And so can those 5.04 million people in Michigan named, “Michael Lewis”.

Dependence: The Worst Drug Of All?

“I hate being dependable, man.” – Black Hawk Down

If I had a dream about a nocturnal horse, would that be a night mare?

“Dependence begets subservience and venality, suffocates the germ of virtue, and prepares fit tools for the design of ambition.”  This is from Thomas Jefferson’s book, Notes on Virginia, which I assume referred to some girl Jefferson was dating.  Maybe it was Virginia Madsen, I mean, she was kinda hot in the 1984 version of Dune, so maybe that’s when they met?

One of the ideas that has been carefully cultivated here by the Left in late-stage Weimerica is the idea that individuals are weak.  It has long been my observation that people who live in large cities are more dependent due to the facts of living in a large city, and this is reflected in the vote totals.  This is part of the reason that Leftists love big cities, that and owning a penthouse on the Upper West Side.

In a big apartment, residents are slaves to elevators, sidewalks, and trash removal services whereas in Modern Mayberry I haven’t used an elevator in months, sidewalks are okay but not required, and if the trash truck doesn’t show up because the raccoons sabotaged it, I can burn mine (legally!) in the backyard.

Often, larger cities have restrictive laws that restrict the ability of individual citizens to protect themselves, leading to a complete dependence on the state for the most basic of human rights – the right to protect their own life.  Powerful Leftists, of course, are surrounded by people that they hired that have guns, even when the normal folks can’t have them.  This is what they call “equity”.

Surely, those two things above aren’t related.

Cities are thus an actual breeding ground for dependence, and here are just a few examples, since this isn’t the whole point of the post:

  • Control – This is always and forever the goal of the Left. In large cities, it’s often impossible to contact actual decision makers, since it’s actually George Soros, and he doesn’t take visitors.
  • Concentrates Economic Gains – When control is granted, the winners often cease to be those that produce, and then gravitate to those that run the systems, since it’s actually George Soros, and he gets all the cash.
  • Sole-Source Education – I’ve seen some parents just leave education and discussion on important topics entirely to the schools, and be utterly ignorant about the discussions on values that take place there, which is what George Soros likes. (Education problems aren’t limited to big cities.)
  • Splits Social Cohesion – Individuals become atomized, and the chance of seeing a random person on the street even more than once is minimal. There are millions of people, always in motion, so no one has the opportunity to think much about George Soros.

Obviously, this isn’t all places, everywhere, and some cities (those with 100% less Soros) are better than others, and the ‘burbs are almost always less dehumanizing than the ultra-dense cities that the modern world seems to favor.

Why did Elon move to the suburbs?  He wanted more space.

This is not how people were made to live.  We’ve spent the vast majority of our existence as a species living in smallish groups, and being responsible for each other and our own actions.  Even as far back as 1500 Anno Domini (3405 metric years) the largest city in Europe was Paris.  The population?  A staggering 200,000 to 250,000 people.

Yeah, that’s bigger than Modern Mayberry, but the population density was only about 2000 to 2500 people per square mile, which I assumed still left them room for their snail ranches, and if you walked for a couple of hours, you could be in the countryside.

Regardless of where it happens, though, dependence can have a horrible toll, especially in someone who is was born and raised to be independent:

  • Feelings of Helplessness and Hopelessness – I like to have as much control over my own destiny as possible. I realize that meteorites to strike, earthquakes happen, and PEZ® factories are bought out by Bulgarians.  Regardless, people who feel that they control their lives are happier, more confident, and have better body odor.
  • Anxiety and Fear – When there is a lack of control, people get afraid – I see that in people are dependent on others, I mean, you should have seen The Boy when he was a baby and I’d play “steal the bottle while he’s nursing”..
  • Shame, Loss of Feeling of Self-Worth – One of the compromises for society today is that most people aren’t in business, they have jobs, and many people feel in control at work, especially when they are contributing and working with a great team. However, lose the job?  The understanding of dependence hits in an avalanche.  Likewise, being dependent on the state for life just turns a person into a dehumanized cog who votes for the benefits.
  • Political Indoctrination – Upton Sinclair, a miserable Leftist himself, said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” He sniffed around the problem, but didn’t realize that the same problem existed with his beloved Leftism, but his book sales depended on him not understanding that.
  • Self-Censorship – When social or economic standing is based on not having the wrong opinion, people are afraid to stand up for what’s right.

I pretended to gag at dinner one night, but the family knew it was just another another dad choke.

This, in many more words, is what Jefferson was talking about.  And this is what we have seen repeatedly in countries where tyranny takes hold.

Dependence is also a drug.  When a person falls in love with their dependence, it becomes the easy way to explain giving up.  I’ve met people who love their dependence, who list their medications and conditions with a pride like they’d been given a medal from the disability fairy.  It’s a free pass to explain how they’re not responsible for their life.

Thus?  Jefferson was right:

  • Subservience comes from owing everything to the master,
  • Venality, (roughly, being corrupt) is part and parcel of dependence, since the life of a dependent person is built around personal gain,
  • Suffocates the germ of virtue, since life becomes about the material, and
  • and prepares fit tools for the design of ambition. This is the lynchpin.  This is the desired end state.

Thomas Jefferson bought a 2006 Ford® Taurus™.  He called it his Jefferson Carship.

Dependence is everything that the Left wants, because is serves their purpose.  To be clear, demagogues on the Right can use this, too, but most people on the Right are actually into individual freedom, and won’t follow a leader that pulls them away from that.  Remember when Trump got booed at one of his own rallies when he brought up the Vaxx?

I remember.

But this isn’t about them.  This is about us.  My suggestion to every person is to look at areas in their lives where their dependence is unhealthy, and be aware of them.  That’s the first step.

Then?  Eliminate every one of them that you can, and rather than being ruled by fear, be ruled by your own choices.

That’s the opposite of dependence, and is better for you in every way.

How Occupy Wall Street Led To The Current Woke Crisis

“Being a villain is such a waste of time!” – The Rocky and Bullwinkle Show

The way she set up the pieces, I think she might be planning on eating them, rather than playing a game.

Once in a while, it’s good to take a step back.  Where are we?

First, it’s important to review that the economy is not the financial system.  The economy consists of the stuff we make, and the people who make it, and their productivity.  It’s matched with people who want that stuff.

Stuff can be anything people want to pay money for:  PEZ®.  Cars.  Machetes.  Beer.  Zirconium nose hair trimmers.  Video game software.  Pictures of PEZ©.  Gasoline.  Streaming movies about PEZ™.  Velvet Elvis™ paintings (I still need one, I prefer the “mid-carbohydrate, wearing sunglasses and a sequined jumpsuit” King).  Houses.  People to polish the PEZ® statues I keep in my yard.  Did I mention beer?

Notice that the stuff is physical stuff as well as information and services.

What’s not required?

I have the heart of a lion!  I have the eye of an eagle!  I have the legs of a gazelle!  I also have a lifetime ban from the zoo.

Money.  Debt.  Interest rates.  These are fundamentally constructions of humanity, and are meant only to make transactions easier.  They are not required.  When Pepsi® wanted to do trades with the Russians, they traded cases of Pepsi™ concentrate for seventeen submarines, a frigate, a cruiser, and a destroyer.  Think about how cool that was:  for a time, Pepsi© had a navy that could have probably made France surrender in a fury of carbonated corn syrup.  Again.

And how cool would it be for a soft drink company to stage a march down the Champs-Élysées while Parisians cried?  Honestly, it probably would have led to a better outcome than they currently have.

But what happens when the tail (finance) wags the dog (the economy)?

I guess the best answer goes right back to France, but this time not to around 1990, but to around 1790.  What did the masses see?  They saw the upper class scamming and cratering the economy while eating piles of bacon-wrapped shrimp, or whatever passed for a delicacy in 1790s France.  The system really was rigged, but it was so rigged that poor Marie Antoinette couldn’t imagine actual hunger.

I will admit, they had cutting edge technology.

Here, though, I think that the Powers That Be see the end coming.  Remember Occupy Wall Street?

Yeah, it was a bunch of smelly hippies that mainly spent time arguing about who was in control of the collective, and it featured all of the woke crap that is currently being paraded, but back in 2011 only the smelly hippies took it seriously.  Oh, my, to be back in 2011.

Anyway, what happened after 2011?

The media and the Powers That Be were scared.  How scared?

A neutron walks into a bar.  The bartender says, “For you, no charge.”  The electron next to him yells “That’s discrimination!”

They upped the ante.  If people were unhappy about the manipulation of the banks and the mortgage-led meltdown of the Great Recession, the answer was simple from the Powers That Be:  “Look, a squirrel!”

They doubled down on every single thing that is Woke.  And, why not?  The seeds were simmering as the Leftists took control of the education system and threw children into sex education that was really indoctrination, often without the knowledge of the parents or their consent, was yet another thing that finance could get behind.

And when finance gets behind it?  All the companies that require finance get behind it, too.  The attempt is gone a bit farther – an attempt to regame the system so that the financial imbalances built on decades of mismanagement could be controlled.  Every aspect of finance and money, if it were only in the control of the Powers That Be, well, then the tail (finance) could really control the dog (the economy).

Looks like the Woke want to refund the police?

But here is the salvation.  The Powers That Be only understand the financial side of what’s going on – the shadows on the wall.  They do not understand the systems that they need to survive.  Remember Mike Bloomberg in 2016 saying, “I could teach anybody, even people in this room, to be a farmer.  It’s a process.  You dig a hole, you put a seed in, you put dirt on top, add water, up comes the corn.”  This is the shallow understanding of a person whose feet have never left asphalt and concrete, and learned all he needed to know about farming by watching Green Acres.

Mike Bloomberg doesn’t understand where the food he eats comes from.  He does not understand it, and cannot recreate it.  No matter what Mike Bloomberg does, he cannot use his financial magic to create one kernel of corn, not one molecule of water.  Financial magic encourages production of corn, but cannot make it.

  • Woke culture cannot produce prosperity, or a single PEZ®.
  • Printing money cannot produce a single steak.
  • Financial manipulation cannot produce a single velvet Elvis©.
  • The tyranny of the Left cannot produce a human civilization.

The regular person has spoken this week – Bud Light® is now off the menu for millions and I’ve heard that it lost up to 70% or 80% sales last week.  Will it kill Bud Light™?  I doubt it.  Drunk people often don’t make the best decisions, but, then again, I’m here.

How to remove 80% of beer drinkers with this one simple trick.

I think bud light will manage to survive, but we are seeing the cracks in the woke agenda that showed up after Occupy Wall Street – at some point, regardless of all of the financial shenanigans, at some point someone has to want the crap that’s being produced.

To those that look at the mess that we’re in, I can assure you of this – it’s all going away. It’s merely a matter of time.  The economy is not the financial system, and a bank cratering doesn’t destroy all the corn that Mike Bloomberg has no idea how to grow.

Or maybe he could teach me otherwise?

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report – Trump And The End Of Civic Nationalism

“You’re not changing anything.” – Rambo

What do you call an indecisive body of water?  Well . . . .

  1. Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
  2. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
  3. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  4. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  5. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  6. Open War.

I’ve changed the Clock O’Doom.  Why?  It is clear that we’re way past five and six.  We are having organized violence, regularly.  And the lynchpin for nine is common violence that is justified.

This is clearly happening – just check the wind.  “Kill a guy on the Right who used pepper spray?  No charges.”  “Kill a guy on the Left who is pointing an AK-47 at you?  That’s murder.”

The Right is being hunted, and punished for pushing back.  So, we have a seven, certainly.  And a nine, certainly.  What we are missing is an eight.  I moved the clock to a seven.

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

In this issue:  Front Matter – Banana Republican – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Death of the Civic Nationalist – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report.  These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month.  I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues.  Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 770 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Banana Republican

I remember reading sword and sorcery books as a kid, mainly Conan the Notthetalkshowhost.  I recall one axiom of a king who usurped the throne:  kill the previous king.  Nothing good comes from a realm with two kings.

Conan books were fun.  But in real life, when politicians go out of their way to find a law to imprison their political opponent, it’s something that Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the Soviet NKVD under Stalin would have love, he said, “Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime.”

Beria was an awful person who didn’t die nearly painfully enough, but he has become an instruction manual for the Left.  Why?

That’s the Leftist singularity:  no one on the Right is good, and everyone on the Left is great.  Thus, the only view that can survive this singularity is the most Leftist idea.  The difficulty most people have in assessing Leftist politics is that Leftism is not a political viewpoint:  it is a religion.

Monty Python™ parodied that perfectly in their movie, The Life of Brian, when a member of the Judean People’s Front (or was it the People’s Front of Judea?) wanted to make sure that the rights of people who wanted to have babies but were dudes were enshrined in their politics.  “Where is he going to keep the fetus, in a box?”

It’s absurd, but dealing with absurdity is a requirement in 2023, when a dude with all his bits won several of the NCAA® women’s swimming championships.  Saying this is wrong makes me a “transphobe”.  I wonder if suggesting that a 5’6” woman who weighs 76 pounds is mentally ill makes me an “anorexiphobe”?

Regardless, Trump declined to cross the Rubicon on January 6, so he was impeached.  Huh?

Trump scares the Left.  Trump likes trans people, likes all of the rest of the LGBTQ+ salad of people, but he is evil because . . . ?

It’s because he’s the first person to be president in decades that shook the status quo.  W?  He was on board with everything the Left wanted to do, just in a slightly different wrapper.  Compassionate Conservatism, anyone?

Trump is a rallying cry on the Left.  I would imagine they hate him more than they hate the memory of a certain Austrian painter*.  He is the focus of hate on the Left.

  • “He made us look silly in front of the French!”
  • “He wanted to send people who had crossed the border illegally go home!”
  • “He has a golden plated PEZ® dispenser!”
  • “He made me feel attacked because he wasn’t Hillary!”
  • “A ghost of a lesbian who was shunned in 1634 told me that Trump was against furries.”

*Better known for other things.

Nearly every attack on Trump is built on emotion, because Trump wasn’t on the Right, Trump was a 1990s middle-of-the-road guy, but the Left had moved into Lenin territory by the time he ran.

Perhaps the biggest sin he If you look at the actual outcome of policies, Biden has been more of an enemy of the United States than Putin, Stalin, and Brezhnev combined.  Trump actually, for the first time in decades, had the economy spun around, and was the only President in ages to negotiate for pure American advantage.

Obviously, he must be punished.  So?

Any statement he makes must be the basis for a crime.  He was impeached for trying to uncover Biden’s Ukrainian corruption.  He is under indictment for paying tramps not to talk about him.  He’s under investigation for questioning voting impropriety in Georgia for a silly question, and in Washington, D.C. for having fewer secret documents than Biden had in his garage.

When polarization leads to the desire to put political opponents into prison is acted upon?  It’s no better than Zelensky putting his opponents in jail and shutting down dissident media, or Putin shutting down any media that disagreed with him.  It is the end point of a Leftist regime who cannot accept any opinion that deviates from their ideals, no matter how small.

Why is Trump being indicted?  Because he’s breathing.

Violence and Censorship Update

It looks like the fight back is beginning.  I could write quite a bit, but here are a few memes that show the Normies are awakening:

Keep this in mind.

The trans-violence-abuse connection is coming in strong and is hitting the awareness of middle America.  I’m shocked, shocked I say that a group so unstable they’ll self-mutilate and that has avowed to recruit children has been committing violence.

Stonetoss, calling out the Left.  Just like napalm in the morning, it smells wonderful.

Who would have imagined that if you marginalize an amazingly productive group and give them no reason to love their country, that they’ll sell out.

Huh.  New restrictions.  Who would have imagined that?  From the same people who brought you the Patriot Act.

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again.  This economy has the pedal depressed to “fail”.  Brandon is a president that makes Jimmy Carter look like an economic genius.

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Violence is still minimal right now.  I’m betting it stays down until June at the earliest.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it was down a bit more.  I think this is a conscious attempt to keep things together, plus the media is all in on “peaceful but fiery protest” mode.

Economic:

Economic numbers are back up, a tiny bit.  The numbers look fairly unstable from month to month, which isn’t good.

Illegal Aliens:

I’d say the border is wide open, but we have no border.

The Death of the Civic Nationalist

What does it mean to be an American?  What are American values?  If the Left is to believed, “everyone is an American, they just haven’t gotten here yet”.  This was also the belief of the Civic Nationalist – bring in a Somalian who doesn’t know a bit of English, and throw them into a group of government-funded housing, pay them to go to school, and they’ll be as American as Joe down the street.  Heck, anyone and anything could be American!  Cannibals?  Child molesters?  As American as apple pie.

Surely, cutting off parts of your flesh because you deny reality is the most important part of the soul of being an American.

But it’s not true.  And even to the most ardent of Civic Nationalists, it’s becoming apparent that the experiment of “import the third world, they’re Americans” is failing.  However, it’s not like LGBTQ+ is a cult or something.

I’d make a joke comparing the Jonestown cult to LGBTQ+ folks, but the punchline is too long.

Patently, that is false.  Being an American has at least some ties to the people that forged this nation out of the (mainly) wilderness that existed prior to the advent of Europeans on the continent.  The idea that a person who just dropped off a plane, speaks no English, and becomes a resident because someone snuck through the border and is now an American is . . . ridiculous.

America has more culture than McDonald’s® and highways and Wal-Mart™.  It has a proud history of people who have fought for independence, and fought for freedom, and fought for the simple right to be left alone.  One survey I read of immigrants showed that they were not at all good with the Second Amendment, and wanted a lot more government intervention in their lives.

At what point does this become a crisis?  I think it’s too late:

This represents a major change from the values of the country.  Sure, it’s not only the immigration policy that led to this . . . oh, wait, it is.  None of these values were evident in 1960.  What changed?  The Leftist indoctrination of students at colleges (based on immigrant influence) plus the change in the people who took the poll.  Immigrants don’t have American values.  But when we shovel enough in?

They’ll show what they believe in, which has nothing to do with the values that he Civic Nationalists hold.  And no one voted for this.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys 

https://twitter.com/ycinnewyork/status/1632952440650620928

https://twitter.com/i/status/1630898009687900161

https://twitter.com/i/status/1641972791850467329

https://twitter.com/i/status/1641505237495160832

https://twitter.com/i/status/1641944965046747136

https://twitter.com/i/status/1641898070873985028

https://twitter.com/i/status/1638324077604622336

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1632971822923915268

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2023/03/07/antifa-forest-creatures-set-fire-to-cop-city-in-atlanta/

 

Good Guys

https://twitter.com/Newsweek/status/1638545563099471880

https://www.bizpacreview.com/2023/03/18/detroit-man-finds-out-the-hard-way-its-a-bad-idea-to-rob-concealed-permit-holder-and-his-friend-1342005/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11881265/Take-NYC-style-Watch-fearless-Good-Samaritan-tackle-armed-man-fleeing-cops.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11735803/Armed-intruder-left-critical-condition-shot-neck-homeowner.html

https://archive.fo/7qvGi

 

One Guy

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11950919/Army-sergeant-CONVICTED-murdering-Black-Lives-Matter-protester-George-Floyd-unrest.html

https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2023-04-07/might-have-to-kill-a-few-people/

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/will-texas-governor-pardon-army-sergeant-sandbagged-soros-da-self-defense-shooting

 

Body Count

https://layoffs.fyi/

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fmore-75-americans-aged-17-24-arent-fit-military-service-dod

https://apnews.com/article/community-college-enrollment-bb2e79222a4374f4869dc2e5359f2043

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11781425/More-60-men-20s-single-compared-just-30-women.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11780875/Gender-bender-America-FIFTH-Gen-Zers-identify-LGBT-seven-times-share-Boomers.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11890655/Philadelphia-PAY-pregnant-women-1-000-month-curb-falling-fertility-rates.html

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Fstory%2F2023-03-14%2Fdeaths-broken-limbs-distracted-driving

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11732497/More-48-000-Americans-committed-suicide-year-report-finds.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11863109/Oregon-SLAMMED-rising-assisted-suicide-rates-death-tourists-adding-431-tally-2022.html

https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/is-coincidence-now-the-leading-cause

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2802602

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/3917058-teen-overdose-deaths-have-doubled-in-three-years-blame-fentanyl/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11794373/New-Frankenstein-opioid-pills-40-times-potent-fentanyl-sweeping-U-S.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11942825/Biden-launches-fentanyl-public-health-blitz-young-people.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11776999/The-blanketed-fentanyl-NINEFOLD-rise-deadly-opioid-use-western-US.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11701187/Zombie-Nation-Shocking-images-lay-bare-Americas-drug-crisis.html

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2023-03-21_10-13-03.png?itok=AfYA-GtO

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11793647/Number-migrants-caught-crossing-border-illegally-surpasses-1M-mark-fiscal-year-2023.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11851659/Massive-horde-migrants-storm-El-Paso-border-checkpoint-brazen-attempt-enter-US.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11865349/El-Salvador-mega-prison-takes-intake-gang-members.html

Vote Count

https://newstalk1130.iheart.com/featured/common-sense-central/content/2023-02-27-liberal-group-running-massive-election-bribery-scheme-in-supreme-court-race/

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/signature-verification-software-used-maricopa-county-says-10-high

https://raheemkassam.substack.com/p/fox-vs-dominion-discovery-docs-show

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/athena-thorne/2023/03/07/the-american-left-rigs-elections-everywhere-else-so-why-wouldnt-they-do-it-here-n1676250

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2023/03/15/true-the-vote-requests-special-master-in-konnech-case/

https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/03/heres-a-look-into-popular-voter-database-erics-left-wing-origins/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11761979/Kari-Lake-vows-Arizona-gubernatorial-defeat-state-supreme-court.html

 

Civil War

https://twitter.com/citizens_sanity/status/1630217694224973824

https://mises.org/wire/secession-inevitable-war-prevent-it-optional

https://theconversation.com/secession-is-here-states-cities-and-the-wealthy-are-already-withdrawing-from-america-200813

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/3886527-texas-lawmaker-files-texit-bill-to-spur-vote-on-exploring-secession-from-us/

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/greater-idaho-movement-absorb-rural-oregon-counties-bad-country-top-dem-warns

https://www.planetizen.com/news/2023/03/122184-nations-most-advanced-secessionist-movement

https://dnyuz.com/2023/03/18/oregons-rural-urban-divide-sparks-talk-of-secession/

https://www.governing.com/now/we-cant-all-get-along-whats-driving-modern-secession-movements

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11873063/66-MILLION-Marjorie-Taylor-Greenes-call-national-divorce-blue-red-states.html

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3884444-what-if-marjorie-taylor-greenes-secessionist-fantasy-came-true/
https://headlineusa.com/sellers-national-divorce-prevent-bloodshed/

https://highlyrespected.substack.com/p/the-national-divorce-delusion

https://andrewmtanner.medium.com/how-america-gets-a-divorce-d549ac6d89bb

https://www.governing.com/context/what-would-a-national-divorce-look-like

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d9p9q/trump-indictment-civil-war-the-donald

https://www.mediamatters.org/tiktok/i-smell-civil-war-far-right-tiktok-users-are-alluding-violence-following-news-trumps

https://abovethelaw.com/2023/03/j-michael-luttig-federal-judge-civil-war-donald-trump-2024-election/

https://tomluongo.me/2023/04/01/indicting-trump-is-the-end-of-us-politics/

Watch How Biden Uses This One Weird Trick To Turn The United States Into A Third World Country

“Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia. He was an English Guy. He came to fight the Turkish.” – The Hollywood Knights

I asked for a book on oil, and the librarian suggested the non-friction section. (you’ll be able to figure out which are my memes in this post)

This has been a very consequential week in American history, and though I see the seeds of (hopefully peaceful) revolt that will eventually end in a restoration, the other seeds I see this week show that rough times are up ahead.  I’ll discuss Trump in conjunction with Monday’s upcoming Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, but today I’ll focus on a much more momentous development:  the Collapse of the Dollar Empire.

This week several major moves happened, all of which are negative for the United States.  Heck, someone did a meme of this – I’d quote them, but I just found this info snippet without attribution:

If there was a children’s book of Joe Biden’s Very Bad Terrible No Good Week, well, this would be it, but knowing Joe it would have to be a scratch and sniff. 

The United States has had several things going for it in the Post World War II era:

  1. Lots of nuclear weapons,
  2. A monopoly on PEZ® dispenser licensing in the world’s biggest PEZ™ market,
  3. The premier military force in the world,
  4. The premier economy in the world, and,
  5. The reserve currency of the world.

The first one is self-explanatory.  We even used that threat successfully several times, especially when Kissinger convinced the Soviets (with Nixon’s permission) that Nixon was unstable and often flew into rages and just might decide that he’d trade Moscow for the East Coast.  To paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, the idea is to “act insane and have a massive nuclear arsenal”, or, as it is also known, “my ex-wife’s divorce strategy”.

The second one is just a reflection of the cultural dominance that the United States had.  There were McDonald’s® restaurants calorie dispensing units around the world, but the most prominent foreign restaurant most Americans know is the International House of Pancakes®, which I assume is from Bulgaria or some place.  Plus no one else could make Elmer Fudd™ PEZ™ dispensers.

They also don’t like tank tops.

The United States also had the premier military in the world.  Period.  We spent trillions of dollars emulating the successful bits of the Wehrmacht, so we were totally ready to fight World War II part II, if everyone agreed.  Only one country wanted to play (Iraq) so we showed them what we could do if an enemy gave us six months to prepare along with the previously pre-staged equipment in Saudi Arabia.  Not content with that L, they went for a rematch.

We also built the best economy in the world.  Sure, it had ups and downs, and American cars manufacturers were stunned by Japanese quality in the 1970s, but we really did catch up, and by the 1990s were producing stuff that didn’t suck.  We led in technological and information systems.  By many measures, though, we peaked in 1973, and then the decline started.  I might add that was around the time the Hart Cellar Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 started being felt.

Huh.  Just a coincidence, I’m sure.

They hated Trump, yet the lines didn’t form up to head south . . .

More potent than nuclear weapons was the economic policy of the United States – it was called dollar diplomacy.  Since the Soviet Union’s idea of diplomacy was sending burly Russian women to show foreigners how to use diesel tractor made in Tractor Collective Factory 231 that had all the charm of a T-34 tank and all the reliability of something made by workers that considered a hammer a precision instrument, who were fueled on vodka and cabbage.  Obviously, a foreign head of state could choose those cool tractors that weighed in at 34 tons (45 kiloliters).  That presented a problem.  In no country that I know (outside of the Soviet Union) could you trade a behemoth tractor that could double as a tank for hot chicks and booze.

Foreign leaders therefore adopted the “take the Yankee money” attitude, because mistresses need more than what the Soviet tractor lubrication manual could provide.

The really weird and cool side effect of this dollar dominance is we could just print as many of these things as we wanted, send them overseas, and people would send us stuff.  Heck, that was too much work, so we invented a computer payment system so that we could pretend we printed dollars, send people a receipt, and they’d send us booze, cars, compact disc players, and, well, anything.  I hear cocaine was popular in the 1980s.

I’m no rube.  I saw Scarface.

I was disappointed the first time I saw Scarface – he didn’t really know anything about scarves.

But there was one little, tiny thing that made the dollar so prominent.  Oil.

That brings us to Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal.  He got along okay with the West, hated commies, and tried to modernize (somewhat) Saudi Arabia.  Faisal also led the Oil Embargo of 1973 and 1974 (related to U.S. support of Israel during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War).  This generated a lot of money for the Saudis as well as economic chaos in the West.

Oddly, Saudi king Faisal was, um, ventilated by his American-educated nephew in 1975.  And the new Saudi King agreed to buy and sell oil only in dollars.

Huh.  Surely those things weren’t connected?

Likewise, through the 1980s, the Saudis sold lots and lots of oil cheaply at the request of Reagan to bankrupt the Soviet Union, make the dollar triumphant, and leave the United States as the sole superpower.

If Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg had a kid, would it be called Slush Puppy?

One major reason the dollar was the reserve currency of the world is that it was the only currency that oil was bought and sold in.  It became the de facto settlement currency because of that and the highly developed financial systems that made the transfer of billions of dollars effortless and easy.

That’s the history lesson.

In 2017, one of Trump’s first official visits was to Saudi Arabia.  They even had that weird moment where they put their hands on a glowing glow to power up some sort of Saudi CIA that would help fight terrorism.  Relations were good.

In two years, Biden has conducted a stunning array of foreign policy missteps that has unwound all of the work done since 1973.  One of the powers of the dollar as a weapon is that if you use it, maybe it isn’t so important, and if people feel really threatened?

I wonder if we’ll start calling our sanctions “Special Financial Operations”?

They’ll create a system where it won’t hurt them.  Russia’s a case in point.  Regardless of how their military is doing (I don’t trust either side to analyze this one) their economy really hasn’t been hurt in this conflict.  It was hurt in 2014, but they planned for the disruption, and from the reports I’ve recently seen, they’re doing fine.  For Russians, which wasn’t much to start with.

The point that Biden missed (and that your humble correspondent picked up on immediately) is that Russia doesn’t need dollars since they make their own stuff, with the exception of tracksuits, iPhones®, and porn.  They can figure out how to make new Vodka-Pepsi® or Vodka-Starbucks™, but the world still needs their grain, fertilizer, oil, and natural gas.

Biden has done the near impossible in a little over two years as Resident of the White House.

  • He’s pushed China closer to Russia.
  • He’s pushed Saudi Arabia closer to Iran.
  • He’s created a situation where large-scale trades are going to be conducted in currency other than the dollar on a regular basis.
  • He’s drawn the Strategic Petroleum Reserve down levels not seen since 1984.
  • He’s working on maximizing inflation while spending everything possible.

In Saudi Arabia, all the bike thieves say, “Look, Ma, no hands!”

But Joe has shown that a previous statement by Barack Obama to be correct:

“Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up.”

And he’s got 581 more days to the election.  And we’ve got 656 days until the next inauguration.

There’s A Mind Virus. And A Cure.

“Exactly. An illusion, placed in our minds by this planet’s inhabitants.” – Star Trek, TOS

Well, tell us how you really feel, Elon.  All photo and meme content “as-found”.

Elon Musk Tweeted® the above on Saturday.

He was replying to another person who was walking down Market Street with a friend.

Her friend said, “I’ve never seen anything like this.”  She continued, “I love SF, but what the city has become is unconscionable.  Several pockets of 20 to 30 people all off their heads.  A number of them with pants barely on.  Zombies.  The walking dead.  Cops observing the proceedings from 100 feet away.”

Elon’s Tweet© was in response to that.  Of course, when I looked it up to make sure that it was real (it was April Fools on Saturday), the media had tried to spin it that Elon was relating it to mass layoffs.  He was not.  He was referring to the disease of Leftism, which he referred to as “this self-destructive mind virus”.

And although I don’t think of Elon as any sort of savior for the Right, he often says things that are so provocative that it drives the Left nuts.  They can’t even drive their Teslas™ with the amount of Smug™ they were promised because Elon has broken their Twitter® echo chamber.

That’s not going to win him friends in San Francisco or Washington, D.C., or with any Leftist, since the things that they want to avoid are the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.

The theme of this is inversion.  Let’s take an example that you’ve probably seen before:

What’s the difference between a Calvin® model and a bakery?  The bakery is supposed to have rolls.

I’m sure that the model on the bottom might be a perfectly nice person.  I don’t know her.  She also might have a great personality and might be an excellent singer, or poet, or writer.  But in any world where beauty is measured objectively (and it can be), well, let’s hope she has that nice personality.

But that’s the nature of inversion, replacing virtue with vice.  And the self-destructive mind virus Elon is speaking of?  It’s Evil.  I don’t know Jack Fell (this is an as-found with no context) but he spells it out nicely in this Tweet® (or Gab®?):

My friend’s family is very racist.  He brought his Asian girlfriend home to meet them, and his wife and kids were very rude to her.

The level of propaganda for Evil has reached “Comically Satanic Villain Plotting To Destroy Society” on the Wilder Scale.  Of particular and topical concern is the LGBTQI+ (it just keeps growing and I’m sure will soon include people sexually attracted to cactus) agendas.  It started with an appeal to emotion – let adults do what they want behind closed doors.  This flew in the face of many facts, but it was sufficiently strong to move public opinion.

No one called me anorexicphobic when I was against teen girls starving themselves, some to death, because they had a mental delusion that they were fat.  I wanted them cured.  But suddenly, because a five-year-old picked up a Barbie®, now he has to wear dresses and be called Nancy and then be jacked up on chemicals that will wreck many of his body’s normal processes and if I don’t agree and want them to be helped instead, I’m transphobic?

Nah.  I’m not.  I’m sympathetic.  These kids need help, not hormones, and society should say so.

Let me give you a taste of how bad it’s going now:

I cut out the pictures of the kids that were pictured on the Drag Camp ad, since I view it to be among the most corrosive and exploitive thing I’ve seen in months.  It is putting the ordinary and boring next to the horrific – summer camp right next to exploited children.

David Foster Wallace called this “Lynchian,” referring to the director David Lynch.  That’s what this is – putting the ordinary and boring, kids growing up and coming of age through the typical drama, and then adding in ghoulish parents and doctors talking about mutilating a child to conform to this peculiar mass hysteria.  And normalizing it.  Oh, and to top it off, anyone who objects to this monstrosity is denounced and cancelled.

I wonder who could be behind this . . . could it be . . .

As I’ve said before, this practice of transforming lust and deviance into a virtue above actual virtues is something old and awful – Evil.

The mind virus continues.  Looking back at COVID, it appears that at every case, the people who were opposed to the crazed response and rules were correct.  Being skeptical of the Vaxx turns out to become more validated daily – today the World Health Organization® came out and noted that kids and teens really shouldn’t be experimented on with a (now verified) gene changing experimental mRNA technique, and that (if the stats are correct) that same Vaxx now is likely behind a 25% increase in mortality and a decrease in fertility of women.

But this is what the Mind Virus made people say:

I bet he’s fun at parties.

They wanted people who disagreed with government mandates crushed.  I guess, inside every little Leftist, is a Stalin wanting to break free.  And nothing makes them madder than Trump.  Nothing.

Questions that I’m sure that they don’t want you to ask . . .

Because I disagreed with them on a fundamental level on the way that I would manage my own health, they wanted me fired, broke, my children removed, and if I still wouldn’t relent, dead.  And it was a joke to them.

We’re not as far down the road as some countries.  Great Britain appears to be well down the road to utter insanity, and also proving why the 2nd Amendment was a really good idea:

I guess the Brits don’t hire cops with self-awareness in mind.

The “self-destructive mind virus” that Elon says was being spread by Twitter® still is, but now people have the ability to speak out against it on Twitter™.  Would I call Twitter© a force for Good?  Not yet.  I do believe that the arguments for the Good always beat Evil over time, and unmuzzling the Good is a great first step.

But it’s not nearly enough.  The Left has pushed this insane agenda to fundamentally repudiate and destroy the family to the point where normal people are done with it – messing with the kids is always a step too far.  Is this a temporary pullback, so that the Left can consolidate its gains while pretending we should be okay with the present situation, and then push further later?

I’m hoping not, because I see the complete moral capitulation to inversion of the most cherished values that we have being examined and rejected by a good portion of the base of the American people.  We see what happens when the Left has full run, and it is the inversion of a good American life.  Besides, there are things other than the recognition of a failed society we can learn from The Walking Dead:

After a fair trial, of course.

How An Army Commercial Shows We’re Rapidly Falling Apart

“Chicks dig me, because I rarely wear underwear and when I do it’s usually something unusual. But now I know why I have always lost women to guys like you. I mean, it’s not just the uniform. It’s the stories that you tell.” – Stripes

I didn’t know I was a lycanthrope.  I guess that makes me an unawarewolf.

The United States’ Army has a new ad campaign out.  The slogan, however, is fairly familiar:  “Be All That You Can Be.”  This became the slogan of the Army’s recruiting campaign back when they had to convince people to join because driving a fast car like Burt Reynolds while marrying busty blondes was a much more interesting career option.

That slogan lasted from 1980 to 2001, with “Army Of One®” was replaced by Call of Duty™ online mode.  The Air Force was encouraged by that slogan, and decided to use “Air Force Of Only One Plane®” since that was all they could afford if they decided to go with the F-35.

But things have not gone well for Big Green recently.  I heard in the last year, they actually recruited only one soldier, and he was a decoy.  I kid.  They had a goal of something like 60,000, but only recruited 45,000.  I’m guessing that’s because the other 15,000 decided that working at McDonald’s® was a better option.

Want me to stop telling Rolling Stones jokes?  You can’t always get what you want.

And, why not?  The videos showing recent Army performance have been, um, less than stellar.  From the pullout of Afghanistan, to Biden forcing troops to take the Vaxx or take a hike, it’s been bad.  The commercials for recruitment have likewise been horrific.  If it’s not good enough for the wise Latina child joining the armed forces and then looking back on her lesbian biracial parents who gave her hormone replacement therapy at age three, well, it’s not good enough for me.

I think the Army missed some real gems in going back to that old slogan.  They could have chosen some of these:

  1. Join the Army, where the camouflage makes you invisible to your ex.
  2. Join the Army, and let us take care of your social life . . . because you won’t have one.
  3. The Army: Where you can kill two birds with one grenade.
  4. The Army: If you needed a good excuse to shave your head.
  5. Join the Army: Where you’ll find that “hurry up and wait” isn’t just a saying, it’s a way of life.
  6. The Army: “You’ll learn to stay awake while standing up.”
  7. Join the Army and see the world, through the scope of a rifle.
  8. The Army: “You’ll make lifelong friends.  Or enemies.  Or both.
  9. The Army, where you can put your Call of Duty™ skills to use, just without the respawn.
  10. Join the Army, and get one free PEZ™ dispenser every year.

Why did the magician sleep at Motel 6®?  Because only he could make the stains disappear.

I mean, who traditionally makes up the Army, anyway?

Actually, white dudes.  In the terminology of today, people who were born male at birth and score low on the diversity index.  Hell, in 2023, I’m wondering when “mail” will show up as a gender – “Oh, baby, put me in the big slot!  I’m an oversized package!”

I looked up the makeup of the Army using the most recent statistics I could find.  They’re kind of murky, because they don’t break out “Hispanic” by itself.  I guess I can understand that.  Even though I’ve been described as “so Danish that’s the picture in the dictionary” I can also claim that at least 25% of my ancestors were born in Mexico.  Were they Danish?

Yeah.  Still don’t understand how they dealt with the sunburn.  But Pugsley can check that box on the college application.

2 is a prime number.  That’s kind of odd, right?

So, the stats I could find are murky.  It looks like the numbers of white people in the Army has gone down 2% in two years from 70% to 68%.  And what’s one percent?  About 5,000 guys.  So, of their missing 15,000, you could make an argument that 10,000 of them might have been white guys that didn’t join up.

I know three kids that were friends of The Boy that were gung ho about joining the military, until November, 2020.  Then?

“Nah, I think I’ll work.”

So, to recreate the idea that perhaps the Army wants white guys to join up, the reversion to the “Be All That You Can Be™” slogan was the reaction from the Army.  To be clear, they’re still using food made before 1960, ammo made before 1970, so why not a slogan that was made in 1980?

Oh, Francis, where are you now?

Enter the new video.  Where in the last few, the only thing not visible was a white guy, this video is chock full of white guys.  At one location where the video was stored on YouTube©, the comment section was more disastrous than French naval performance at Trafalgar.  I mean hundreds and hundreds of comments that, well, I’ll just post a few of them and let you draw your own conclusions.  I did not cherry pick these, and did not see a single, not one, zero positive comments.  Feel free to go give a look yourself – the video is here (LINK).

Yup, pretty bad.  Both of my sons have received text messages from Army recruiters, heck, as late as 2016, I presented to The Boy the options of West Point and Colorado Springs for colleges.  He noped out of both choices.  Pugsley is not at all interested.

I am not disappointed – rather, the opposite, and became doubly so after the decision by the Biden Administration to force armed forces members to Vaxx up.  Sure, the DOD rescinded the requirement this year on January 10, but that didn’t help the people who already Vaxxed up.  Wonder if the VA is going to cover that?

Regardless, I would hazard a guess that confidence in the cohesion of the country is lower than at any time in my life.  Perhaps the real slogan should be “Be All That You Can Binge-Watch On Netflix®”?

Scott Adams And Two Filters: The Race Filter And The Success Filter. Choose The Success Filter.

“Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?” – Return of the King

Does it make me racist if I hate the 100 meter dash? (all memes today are as-found)

Scott Adams has been more in the news in the last month than perhaps during his entire career.  I think it’s entirely on purpose, since last summer he ran a poll on Twitter® that noted that at some point he was going to retire, and he had the choice on how he was going to go out.  The winning choice was to go out with a bang.

Most golfers poll as swing voters.

And so he has.  With $50 to $100 million in the bank and after having both his comic strip and his new book deal cancelled, he found something interesting:  he was freer than he ever had been in his life.  He has all the money (none of which was in Silicon Valley Bank™ – his quote, “Why would I put my money in the 19th largest bank?”) and now he can’t lose his book deal.  It’s gone.  He can’t lose his comic strip.  It’s gone.

Scott Adams can say whatever he damn well pleases.

He also seems genuinely interested in helping black people do better.  Since Adams normally tries to look at the world through the lens of “systems” rather than goals, he ended up analyzing the normal system that black people use.  Not surprisingly, he found that the systems that they use are, well, awful.

The results have been abysmal, except for the Race Grifters and politicians on the Left.  But I repeat myself.  And, using their advice, black people are doing pretty horribly.  And they’ve been taught that white people are the problem, rather than anything else that black people are doing.  And it shows.  Here is one of the comments about Scott that I found online after his initial comments:

I don’t think Wildin (no relation) has anger issues, he has an anger subscription.

Black people thinking white people are the problem has obvious advantages for a politician.  I recall when I was in Alaska – the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) was thought to have lots and lots of sweet, sweet oil nestled deep in its rocky bosom.  But both the Left and Right used drilling there as a fund-raising opportunity.  No one really wanted to solve the issue, since Greenpeace® could use it to fundraise from Lefties, and Congresscreatures on the Right could use it to fundraise from ConocoPhillips®.  As long as both sides were unhappy, the money flowed.

The last thing anyone wanted to do was solve the problem.  I think the Right would be just fine if the problem were solved, but the Left makes too much money, and gets too many votes.

But Adams would like to work on the solution, which has nothing at all to do with marinating in past tales of slavery.  Adams graphed it out.  The mindset that the Left has worked to instill in blacks is what Adams calls his Race Filter.  It consists of:

  • Grievance,
  • Critical Race Theory,
  • Group Rights,
  • Spot Racists,
  • Systemic Racism, and
  • Reparations

When wearing Spandex® is a war crime.

I’ve written before about Victimhood.  If you look at Adams’ distillation of the way that race relations have been put forward to blacks, well, they’ve been spoon fed a diet of Victimhood from both their own leaders as well as every “well-meaning” Leftist.

For decades.

The problem with Victimhood is that it is nearly like a self-devouring concept.  It starts to fill every bit of a human soul with greed, envy, hate, and the idea that vengeance is the answer making the person small inside.  That’s why when “how much” is brought up in the context of reparations, the answer is simple:  no number will ever be enough.  For there to be an answer, that would mean that the black people who have given themselves over to Victimhood (and their Grifters and Leftist politicians) would have to let it go.

What do you call a magician without magic?  Ian.

Given the current relationship status, they will never let it go.  Adams made the comment that he would cease “identifying as black” and would avoid black people because of the relative dislike of white people that showed up on the Rasmussen® survey that showed that 47% of black folks didn’t think that “it’s okay to be white.”

The comments that showed up in social media responding to Scott (as shown above) tended to confirm the polls.

But Adams isn’t done.  There is another filter that he suggests can replace the Race Filter – the Personal Success Filter.  I generally use the Personal Success Filter, but I never called it that.  I endorse Mr. Adams’ thoughts entirely, and I’ll spend much more time talking about his success filters than I spent on the Race Filter, since the Race Filter sucks:

  • Replace Grievance with Happiness.

Being happy is generally the easiest thing in the world.  Most people who aren’t happy, don’t want to be happy.  It’s cold out?  I like the cold.  It’s hot out?  What a bright, beautiful day.  Circumstances don’t care about my feelings, so why should I let a flat tire make me mad?  A flat tire just is.

I had a friend in college that I’ll call Greg (because his name was Greg) who got absolutely hammered on a very large quantity of alcohol one night, which wasn’t unusual – our school was known as “a drinking school with a college problem.”  I had class with him the next morning.  I looked at him and was shocked.  He was dressed in slacks and button-down shirt.  I said, “Dang, Greg, you were smashed last night – I thought you’d feel awful.  Yet, here you are, and you look fine.  What’s your secret?”

“Yeah, John, I felt awful when I woke up, so I showered, shaved, and dressed up.  You can’t feel awful when you look great.”

Why not be happy?  Be happy.  It’s like pouring river water in your socks:  it’s easy and it’s free.

  • Replace Critical Race Theory with Gratitude.

I could go back in history and look for all of the things where I was slighted.  Where my ancestors were cheated out of something they deserved.  Where I should be third in line to be King of Wisconsin.  Why?

I’m adopted.  I was adopted by great parents, put in a loving family, and worked like a borrowed horse to make me strong.  I appreciate each and every bit of it.  I’m grateful for even the bad things that have happened to me, because those ultimately made me stronger.

Kierkegaard said that life can only be lived forward, but understood in reverse.  I look back, and I’m grateful for nearly everything that has happened to me.  And you should be, too, because otherwise you wouldn’t be the stunning example of humanity with enough taste, intelligence, and discernment that comes here every week.

What gratitude doesn’t look like.

  • Replace Group with Individual.

As groups we come together to create great things.  If Elon Musk was trying to build rockets, he wouldn’t even be halfway done with his very first one if the tried to go it alone.  So groups have their place.  But when we look to set relations based on groups, we get stupid.  Why would Michael Jordan’s kid be more disadvantaged than me?  Why would Jesse Jackson’s?  Martin Luther King, Jr.’s?

Obviously, they were born with much more privilege than me and more money than me.  Yet, in getting into college, they’d have a huge advantage over me based on just their race.  Hmmm.

When I go to work on a daily basis, I don’t look to what my group does.  I look to what I can do, what I can contribute, what I can write, what I can create.  This makes me more successful.  There is a double-edged sword here, however.  Individual makes me more successful, but faced with a group that hates a group I’m part of?

Again, these are Personal Success Factors.  Group factors may vary, and that’s another post.

  • Replace Spot Racists with Network.

In the Soviet Union, there were huge numbers of jokes (and real stories) about how the Soviets would go to great lengths to spot those that were going to undermine the revolution.  Racism had disappeared in the United States to such an extent that Race Grifters had to come up with nonsense like “microaggressions” and even redefine the word “racist” so that black people couldn’t ever be called that.

I once looked up “opaque” in the dictionary.  The definition was unclear.

It would have been better, however, to find people and make friends with them.  I have dozens of people in my phone that I call or text on a semi-regular basis.  Why?  Mainly because I like them.  I don’t want anything from them other than to be their friend.  Yet, I call them when I need advice.  And they call me when they need advice.  All of my friends plus me are way, way smarter than me.

And I like them.

  • Replace Systemic Racism with Optimism.

Let’s pretend that Systemic Racism exists.  To believe that, you’d have to ignore that 58% of NFL® players are black.  That 35% of assistant coaches are black.  That 72% of NBA players are black.  And the black actors that people pay money to see.  And the black musicians that people pay money to listen to.  And Oprah.  Also of note – race relations appear to be best in the Deep South where black people and white people have somehow figured out a way to live in peace.

If Systemic Racism does exist, it seems like the easiest thing in the world to overcome.  And the solution is Optimism.  Every day I get up thinking that things are going to be okay for me.  And, mostly, they are.  Being an Optimist means I’m disappointed sometimes, but I’m also happy, so I look for the silver lining.  Have I lost a job because of Systematic Racism?  Not that I’m sure of.  But I was told, point blank, that I wasn’t hired for one particular job because I wasn’t a woman.  I was okay with that.  And that place?  Well, it’s shut down now, and if I had started a career there, I wouldn’t have the skills I have today.

Be Optimistic.

Replace Reparations with Reciprocity.

Reparations are nonsense.  Check out the meme for the list of ludicrous demands coming out of California.  Note this:  every one of them is about “how I can get mine” rather than “how can I improve the world for others”.

“Oh, and we also demand matching t-shirts.”

I write these posts not because I get paid.  Indeed, it costs me money to write these posts beyond my time, about $2 a day.  I’m planning on increasing my revenues in the coming year by 200%.  Let’s see, twice nothing is still . . . carry the two . . . still nothing.

Reciprocity means doing things for others, not because they can help you, but because you’re not a tool.  Has Reciprocity helped me?  Absolutely.  But that’s not why I do it.

Conclusions.

I can’t fix black America.  I’m not going to try.  Every one of the black people that I know personally are okay and I get along fine with them.

Adams is trying to fix race relations in America, but I think his efforts will ultimately be futile for several reasons – the drug of Victimhood is stronger than heroin.  It is also certainly not in the interests of the Race Grifters and the Politicians.  Those are two reasons, among many.

What I can do, however is my little bit in the Universe, being a happy warrior fixing what I can, warning when I see dragons ahead.  Scott’s Personal Success Filter is a good one for anyone who wants to achieve.

And, like Scott, I’m not leaving my money in the 19th largest bank.

Oh, wait.  The 19th largest bank is gone.

Note:  Moderation may be tighter than normal (I’ve only nuked 78 out of nearly 21,000 comments)- keep it positive, folks.