Things You Can’t Say . . . 2023

“Remember, all I’m offering is the truth.  Nothing more.” – The Matrix

In reverse, The Matrix is about a guy who quits drugs and gets a job.

What opinions do you have that you can’t tell all of the other people you know?  I’m willing to bet that since you read here, you have quite a few.  I have plenty of them.  When someone doesn’t have views they can’t share, well, I think that’s probably the best definition of an NPC: always believing the current thing.  I swear, if an NPC takes over, it will be a dictator-sheep.

One of the more difficult things is keeping track of what to believe.  Scott Adams (more about him in a future post) famously noted that the anti-vaxxers were right, but there was no way that they could have known that they were right based on the evidence at the time.  I respectfully disagree.  The application of a new technology to stop a disease in a panic?  What about that says, “wise decision”?  Especially when Pfizer™ and the other “vaxx” manufacturers demanded secret language in their contracts to absolve themselves of liability.

Literally nothing about the vaxx looked legitimate.  There were more warning signs than a cocktail with Bill Cosby.

What about January 6?  The most visible icon of the January 6 “insurrection” was the face painted dude with the bison headdress.  Turns out he was led around by various security folks until they found an unlocked door for him to go through.  It’s like they picked the silliest looking person for the photo opportunity of a decade.  Yet, folks didn’t see through that, either.

Not pictured:  someone who actually broke into the Capitol.

If the January 6 protest was a real insurrection rather than people who (mainly!) were there peacefully, even observing the velvet ropes.  How did I know it was fake?  If it were a real insurrection, they’d still be there.

January 6 was political theater, and was misrepresented by nearly every news media outlet, and was also lied about by the Left every chance they got.

Am I correct in everything I believe?  Certainly not.  But I try, every time that I can, to look to the things that are True, Beautiful, and Good to be my guideposts.  Some of my calls are wrong, but with those guideposts, it’s difficult to be too far off the mark.

It is clear that if we don’t think different thoughts than those the media would put in our heads, there is something wrong with us.

When the Kardashians die, they won’t be buried or cremated – they’ll be recycled.

It’s odd, because the pushback comes the closer we come to the Truth, because that’s dangerous.  If I were to walk around proclaiming that Hillary Clinton is 40 feet tall (6 milliliters), blue, and made of cheese, people would think I was a nut and ignore me.  But when I wrote about the “vaxx” – the website came under the biggest attacks ever.

The attacks don’t come when people are silly – the attacks come when the ideas presented might make people think.  And the attacks come with a fury that is only reserved for those who have committed actual heresy.

Leftism is a religion.  Sure, some of them say they have other religions, but Leftism is generally their guiding star.  Recently Jane Fonda suggested murdering anyone who was against abortion.  And abortion is one of the greatest sacraments of their church.  No one on The View told her she was wrong, just that she shouldn’t say that in public.  And a Leftist, as long as they are a True Believer, will always be excused for amazingly horrible comments like Hanoi Jane spouted out of her wrinkly piehole.

At her age, I’m sure she casts a lot of smells.

But someone on the Right?  The guy who ran the Firefox™ project was essentially fired because he donated to a group that was against legalizing gay marriage years earlier.  Years earlier when Obama was likewise “against” gay marriage.

Now it’s microaggressions and any perceived slight that someone can make up.

There are only a couple of reasons to do this.  The biggest is the one that I think that is operative here:  they’re scared because they think they might be wrong, or that they know that they’re lying.  Again, if I go outside and tell someone who is a Leftist that they’re an idiot because their house is floating, well, they can be confident that life is okay for them because their house isn’t floating.  They know it to be true, and don’t need me to validate that for them.

Their economic ideas?  They’re upset at me (mostly) because they’re not sure they have the Truth, and they simply cannot have anyone thinking about alternatives to their ideas.  I mean, I’m totally sure that communism would totally have worked if only the average 20-year-old at Harvard® had been in charge.

I remember the time I came up with a cure for dementia.  That brings back memories!

And that, partially, is why I write the way that I do.  If you can make a great point, you can win the debate.  If you can make a great point and poke fun at the idea?  The idea itself becomes the joke.

As near as I can tell, that’s always one of the biggest crimes of totalitarian regimes:  a joke about a Communist Party official could send an unlucky Soviet citizen to the GULAG for 25 years.  That isn’t a sign of strength, it’s a sign of fear.

That is why they want to shut down the conversation – they’re afraid.  They know as well as anyone that putting a 300 pound model in lingerie isn’t Beautiful, True, or Good.  It’s hilarious.  But until we’re not afraid to point out that the emperor has no clothes (and that the lingerie model needs more) you can tell that the struggle hasn’t been ridiculed enough, though that time is coming.

And then maybe we’ll all find out our secret opinions were shared by millions.  Except that one I have about motor oil, shower curtains, escalators, and garden tools.  There are places I’m not gonna go.

Why Adversity And Bullies Are Your Friends

“He’s 28 years old and he can eat a chicken sandwich. Very Impressive. Mike Fitzgibbon’s son is a nuclear physicist, and my son can eat a chicken.” – Freddy Got Fingered

I did hear what Beethoven was up to recently:  decomposing.

Adversity is important.

I’ll give you an example:  if a kid’s life has been one simple task, with no conflict and eating Cheezy-Poofs™ on the couch while Mom brings him chicken tendies and sauce and his only responsibility is making sure he can walk from his room to the bathroom, well, he’s going to be worthless.

Why?  If any little thing goes wrong, the program in the brain that says, “crap goes wrong all the time, figure it out” isn’t there.  It’s never been created.  This is why things like “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” exist – a life with an utter lack of adversity.  Again, embrace the power of positive bullying.

In my case, school sucked between fourth grade and sixth grade.  Why?  I was the odd man out.  I had moved from one small school district to another when my family moved from Wilder Ranch to our compound Wilder Mountain.  I was alone, for several reasons.  Me?

I retreated into schoolwork.  The teachers were fine.  The kids were bullies, though.  Little kids are okay.  High school kids are okay.  But there is a time in the middle where kids are cruel – kids entering adolescence have developed the ability to be mean, but they haven’t developed the capacity for empathy.  It’s like they’re communists, or Stephen Colbert.  But I repeat myself.

Communists are awful at telling jokes – they don’t stop until everyone gets it.

I also retreated into athletics.  The one place where men of different backgrounds can come together is through additional diversity – athletics.  If you tackle someone so hard that their Mom felt it, you get respect.  And that respect breeds camaraderie.  The new guy?  He hit me so hard I had to check to see if I was standing on the train tracks.

And then?  I was one of them.  I also will admit this – when the kids were bullies, often they had a point.  It was awful to be confronted with my inadequacies and shortcomings in that way, but the only thing worse would be to live in a bubble of pretty little lies, and never be confronted with the raw truth.

I think about kids who go through life and never meet a single challenge.  I’ve interacted with a few recently.  Things go bad for them?  They crumple.  Badly.  They don’t have the ability to fight back.

That’s the problem.

A bully told me I had a face only a mother could love.  Turns out I’m adopted.

I think I’ve related this story before, about a child in a Japanese schoolroom.  In the story, the child (call him Phil, which I assume is a common Japanese name, like Chuck or Dave) looked at a cocoon in the back of the classroom because I assume Japanese people keep those things there along with samurai swords and they all dress like Pokémon characters.

Phil watched the butterfly struggle to get out of the cocoon.  Phil felt sorry for the butterfly, so he helped it open the cocoon.

I guess butterflies just aren’t what they used to be.

The butterfly then plopped straight to the floor, since gravity works the same way in Japan (I hear) as in other countries.  Phil cried.  Because he was a sissy.

The teacher came to the back of the classroom and saw Phil crying.  “Phil, did you help the butterfly get out of the cocoon?”

Phil, crying in the way that only Japanese children do (I have no idea what that means, but I wrote it so I’m going to go with it.  Maybe their tears shoot out in coherent streams, like a squirt gun?) nodded.

The wise teacher put his hand on Phil’s shoulder.  “Phil, the only way that a butterfly can get enough strength to fly, is to struggle against the cocoon.  If it gets out some other way, like a can opener, it can never fly, and will die.”

Phil nodded through the tears.  Then the teacher wrapped Phil up in Ace™ bandages so he could struggle to get out.  I think.  I get fuzzy on the end part, since the idea occurred to me as I got to the end of the story that maybe Kim Jong Un keeps shooting missiles over Japan is so he can keep Godzilla® at bay, and if he stops, well, goodbye Tokyo.

I hear Kim doesn’t date, because he’s focused on his Korea.

The point is still clear – struggle is important.  My friend sent me an embroidered patch:  “The strongest steel is forged in the fire of a dumpster.”  And that’s true.  Struggle is what makes people resilient.  It is what keeps us putting one foot in front of the other when our comrades have stepped aside and given up.

I moved again when I was in junior high.  I joined track, because, why not?  I was a shot putter and a discus thrower, and one day the coach told us, “Go for a run,” because the most lame sport in junior high is track, and the most lame thing in track is shot and disc and I think the coach wanted to avoid association with us.  I had been running up in the mountains because there was nothing else to do because the Internet hadn’t been invented yet, and had been putting in about six miles a day on the mountain roads.  Running was fun.

Is your refrigerator running?  If so, I might vote for it.

So, when we went running, we went for . . . about six miles.  The other shot put dudes couldn’t believe that they’d gone so far.  From that day forward, we were brothers.  We had struggled with the six miles (well, they had, but I encouraged them onward).  Struggling together, and winning, creates a bond.

On this second move, I was in with the guys in about two weeks.  “Wilder?  The new kid?  He’s okay.”

We will have challenges.  All of us.  Some of them are awful.  One of them will, in the end, kill me.  That’s okay.  I look at these challenges and resolve that I will not be afraid.  I already know that I’m going to win against all of them but one, so I might as well go into that future as a happy warrior, knowing that my winning streak will eventually end.

Whatever challenge you’re going through will end.  And you’ll win.  Unless you die, in which case I think you should blame Phil.  After all, adversity is our real strength.

But I’m not going to lose today.  And not tomorrow, either.  Though chicken tendies do sound nice.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: National Divorce? Getting Closer.

“Dolores, I am making a citizen’s divorce.” – The Man with Two Brains

Big Alarm Clock is a conspiracy!  Wake up people! (all non-regular memes are as-found)

  1. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  2. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  3. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  4. Open War.

I’ve kept the Clock O’Doom the same.  Again.  This is moving sideways, but things can unravel 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 – The National Divorce – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Silly Season – 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 over 740 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

The National Divorce

I remember reading about research a while back that (my fuzzy memory says) indicated that when a married couple didn’t want to have a divorce, one of the easiest things they could do was not talk about a divorce.  I guess that would mean that the first rule of staying married club is don’t talk about divorce club.

Marjorie Taylor Greene brought up the issue in a big way:

It’s a stark question:  do we want to stay married, or not.  Folks on the Internet followed suit, with this poll:

The Internet is what it is, and a poll like that isn’t at all scientific.  But 19,000 people (75% of respondents) were done.  They were ready to get lawyers, and decide how we get to split up California and Virginia and who got alternating weekends with Michigan.

A much more scientific poll was done by Rasmussen® (more on them later in this Issue) and it emerged that a majority of Republicans wanted out.  47%, plus an 11% who might be in favor, but they wanted to know if they could still get Netflix™ off of Uncle Tim’s account it he were stuck in a Blue State before they made up their mind.

Leftists are never in favor of making anything smaller, since it lowers their power.  Remember, it is Leftists who are on the side of international and world governments.  I’m pretty sure they’d love to include Mars, too, since it’s Red.  This is shown in the poll below:

Fully a third of all people (based on Rasmussen’s™ report) are ready to check out.  That’s a lot.  Although Gallup® wasn’t around to do a poll, most literature I can find seems to indicate that only 1/3 of the folks living in the Colonies wanted the Revolution, so 1/3 is a big, big number.

I’ll add in this other (entirely unscientific) poll:

Again, unscientific, but it shows that there are a sizeable number of folks out there who believe that soldiers would, if ordered, shoot on American civilians.  That’s another scary thought, and perhaps feeds back into the idea that people would much rather have a peaceful exit rather than a violent one.

I read that this year’s CPAC (Republican fanboy convention) was poorly attended, and lacking in energy.  And why not?  The most fervent people in the Republican party are done, and don’t trust the vote, and don’t think that their votes may ever matter again.

Spiderman®, though, seems to have an opinion:

Violence and Censorship Update

Cancelling really isn’t government censorship, but it’s censorship nevertheless.  Scott Adams, noted cartoonist and author, really rustled the collective jimmies of the Left.  Rasmussen™ had a poll about whether it was “okay to be white” and 47% of black people indicated that it was either not okay, or they weren’t sure.

Scott has a YouTube® channel (still!) where he talks about whatever he wants to talk about.  In this, he opined that if that was the way that black people felt, he wasn’t sure he wanted to be around them.  The following cartoon describes it in such a way that Scott retweeted it:

The outrage was both predictable, even though Scott noted that many black people he knew called him up and said that his stance was completely reasonable.  Mr. Adams’ publisher dropped him.  Mr. Adams’ cartoon syndicator dropped him.  Mr. Adams’ agent . . . dropped him.  His new book, due out in the fall?  Cancelled.

I don’t feel bad for Scott, he knew what he was doing, and he has tens of millions of dollars.  But what is it about that simple narrative that makes the Left explode?  I’ll cover that in a future post.

The Silence of the Adams

It’s not violence now, but Illinois has now decided that most crimes short of murdering someone and taking selfies with the victim are now non-detainable.  Burn someone’s house?  Out without bail.  Kill someone while high?  Out without bail.

Florida.  Sigh.  Why?  They want to make bloggers who write about elected officials register if they make money for their efforts.  Is this the single stupidest thing to come out of Florida since they elected ¡Jeb!?

The publisher of Roald Dahl is going through his books an removing whatever they don’t like based on political correctness.  No more “ugly” or “fat” or . . . black.  Paging Scott Adams . . . These “corrections” are showing up in people’s previously purchased e-books, too.  This is why physical media is good.  And why I have lots of books.

It’s not censorship, exactly, when programmers prevent A.I. from coming to conclusions based on fact, but it’s close.  There are certain facts that are inconvenient, like boys have xy chromosomes and girls have xx chromosomes, so programmers prevent A.I. from talking about that.  Elon Musk says he’s going to do his own, non-woke A.I.

When the trains carrying ethyl-methyl-death crashed in East Palestine, it was a story that was minimized until it couldn’t be.  I follow stories like this that are under the news, and was aware of it within a few hours of it happening.  But the news?  No reporting on it, since it didn’t impact Baltimore and had the potential to make the Biden administration look even worse than it normally looks.

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again, and, like Kamala’s womb, this graph doesn’t eggs.  Here’s a recap:

 

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, Biden just came out in favor of “law and order”, because I think he saw it the show on cable.

Economic:

Economic numbers took a big dive this month, which surprised me.  The numbers look fairly unstable from month to month, which still isn’t good.

Illegal Aliens:

The number took a big drop!  Yay!  Oh, it’s still higher than ever for that month.  I’d say border is wide open, but we have no border.

So, when can we ask the Mexicans to leave?

The Silly Season

One way to deflect a story is to not tell it.  The other way to deflect a story is to flood the media with, well, nonsense.  My favorite this month?  The Chinese Spy Balloon™.  During World War II, the Japanese decided they would make Americans afraid.  They launched 9,000 balloons filled with explosives at the United States.  As near as I could find with an in-depth three-minute look, one exploded.  Out of 9,000.

Ohhh, I’m so afraid.

I’m not sure what we’ve found out about the Chinese Spy Balloon©.  I think that we’ll find out they were trying to check up on why Americans weren’t buying more extended warrantees based on those cell-phone calls.  Since we haven’t heard anything, I’m think that it may actually have been a weather balloon.  Regardless, they can solve their problem with just a little bit of camouflage that the United States would never shoot down:

Was this the story that they were attempting to distract us from?

It’s a scary one.  Why do we need so may people?  Why aren’t all the traditional people who would go into the military signing up?  Oh, yeah.  They’ve been told they’re racist.  They’ve been told they have unearned privilege?  They’ve seen the military force people to take the vaxx.  And now they want them to sign up to fight?

What could be next?

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11761485/NYPD-release-images-four-brazen-thieves-staged-50-000-raid-Manhattan-Givenchy.html

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1628194739987046400

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1626367620151738375

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1626397252334809090

https://twitter.com/nofones2/status/1626369625314279426

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1626447147225718786

 

Good Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1621965430930669569

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1628225095893131264

https://twitter.com/nofones/status/1627464538609139714

https://twitter.com/762sfuxk/status/1626379421065134080

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

 

One Guy

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11632047/Vigilante-killed-robber-Houston-restaurant-breaks-silence.html

 

Body Count

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-11711353/Seven-states-eye-legalizing-assisted-suicide-America.html

https://goodsciencing.com/covid/athletes-suffer-cardiac-arrest-die-after-covid-shot/

https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/new-paper-an-estimated-13-million

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

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11738179/Still-think-secure-Joe-Moment-500-Venezuelan-migrants-walk-southern-border.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11730363/Biden-preparing-mass-deportations-non-Mexican-migrants-Mexico.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-11733577/Map-shows-14-million-Americans-live-5-miles-cancer-gas-emitting-plants.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

 

Vote Count

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

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2023/02/08/maricopa-heat-maps-the-story-keeps-getting-worse/

https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/15/everything-you-need-to-know-about-democrat-gov-tony-evers-bid-to-overhaul-wisconsin-elections/

https://alaskapublic.org/2023/02/17/launch-of-campaign-to-repeal-ranked-choice-voting-draws-a-crowd-in-anchorage/

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

 

Civil War
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/keith-olbermann-calls-economic-civil-war-institute-gun-control

https://www.foxnews.com/media/olbermann-urges-blue-states-wage-economic-civil-war-red-states-starve-red-states-submission

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/internal-atf-docs-show-zero-tolerance-guidelines-shutting-down-gun-stores

https://www.carolinacoastonline.com/tideland_news/opinions/article_bec42134-ad30-11ed-979b-4365a8a67e62.html

https://thefederalist.com/2023/02/17/idaho-house-approves-talks-to-annex-oregon-counties/

https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/lost-cause-2-0-desantis-and-republicans-inspired-by-racist-confederate-history-re-writes/

https://www.milwaukeeindependent.com/newswire/gops-civil-war-republicans-confront-bitter-divide-no-clear-path-forward/

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/02/06/megadonor-gop-richard-elizabeth-uihlein-00081267

https://www.reformer.com/opinion/columnists/nicholas-boke-what-would-a-civil-war-look-like-anyway/article_c6beefac-aca1-11ed-9fa4-d74d7a722a44.html

https://sundayguardianlive.com/world/will-2022-witness-american-civil-war-2-0-will-happen-2024

https://news.uchicago.edu/us-headed-toward-another-civil-war-william-howell

https://www.businessinsider.com/mtg-defends-call-split-up-us-says-civil-war-looming-2023-2

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/marjorie-taylor-greenes-national-divorce-was-the-civil-war.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/02/marjorie-taylor-greene-secession-civil-war/673142/

https://www.theringer.com/2023/2/24/23613267/emasculation-proclamation-civil-war-ii

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2023/02/project-veritas-has-forced-out-james-okeefe.html

https://hard-drive.net/hd/technology/ken-burns-releases-4000-part-tiktok-series-on-the-civil-war/

A Quick Post On The Decline Of The West

“I don’t care about what anything was designed to do, I care about what it can do.” – Apollo 13

Why did NASA use numbers instead of letters for the Apollo missions?  No one wanted to ride on that sorry mission, Apollo G.

The evening got away from me.  I’d love to tell you that I was doing something productive, but I was really just goofing around.  I felt a bit blah (not sick, mind you, but blah) all week.  So, I decided to goof around.  If today’s thoughts are a bit shorter than usual, that should explain it.

When I was a young adult, I read Atlas Shrugged.  Now, I said, I read it, but when it got to the part where John Galt hacked into the radio to give a (what seemed like to me) 700-page speech that was just reiterating every point Rand had already made in the book, but this time with crayon, I skipped it.

So, I read most of it.  Except 90% of the speech.

One thing that stuck with me about the tone of the book was that it took place in a world that had moved on.  Stuff just didn’t work.  I seem to recall a broken clock, and broken rails, and the image of a society that had done great things but was no longer capable of them.

The mission of NASA used to be to send people and things up into space.  The goal was to learn more about the Solar System, the planets, and the Universe beyond.  The other part of the goal was to make man an interplanetary and, hopefully, an interstellar species.

I got my medical degree online, from a place called Google® Docs™.

NASA was doing one of the hardest things that had ever been done – inventing technology at the very edge of what humans were capable of, and then using it.  It was one of the grandest adventures of the 20th Century.  It was also staffed by young people.  Gene Kranz, the “Failure is not an option guy” was the Flight Director for several Apollo missions, most notably Apollo 13.  When Apollo 13 happened?  Kranz was 36.

Our nation at that point had failures, sure.  But now it seems like that’s the definition.  And the things we’re failing on aren’t even new tech.  East Palestine (The Mrs. told me, “It’s pronounced Palesteen, Froderick”) Ohio is suffering from one of the biggest failures of tech that is nearly 200 years old.

Then there was a fire at Oak Ridge involving uranium.  Normally, one tries to avoid burning radioactive things.  I mean, it’s not like this is Russia and all of us are protected from radiation via the consumption of massive amounts of vodka.

There are others, of course.  The Jackson, Mississippi water plant appears to not work (sometimes) because the people running it don’t know how to run it.  I could go on and on.

In one sense, it almost appears that we’re suffering a crisis of people who just don’t care or are, well, stupid.  I hate to say stupid, because water treatment has been around for hundreds of years, too, and is far simpler than the Apollo project.

Good thing they didn’t use toe jam.

One symptom, perhaps, of the increasing and accelerating rate of change (notice I didn’t say improvement, I said change) in the world is increasing failures of the basic systems of life.  Sure, we can have Doordash™* deliver tacos, but the justice system is failing, too.  And how many readers here trust our elections?  In the race to be “efficient” we’ve made it easy to cheat.  Even if there wasn’t cheating, creating systems that are opaque enough so they’re not shenanigan proof is a failure in itself.

Our social systems are failing.  Our infrastructure is failing, and it becomes ever more obvious the things that bind us together . . . are failing.  Here in Modern Mayberry, the power has worked pretty well, but investment in power and infrastructure has made the system nearly third-world in some places.

I expect it to get worse.  I don’t even think we’re close to the level of failure we’ll be seeing due to the incompetence of the leadership in the country.  I see no real thoughts that our leadership will get better, since the idea of hiring smart young folks like Gene Kranz is out the window, and hiring people who share the same ideology, regardless of ability, is in.

I could never be a house painter – I would keep saying my work is on the house.

We are living in the time science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein called, “The Crazy Years” – in his words:

“Considerable technical advance during this period, accompanied by a gradual deterioration of mores, orientation and social institutions, terminating in a mass psychoses . . .”

I believe the signs are there that we are in that “mass psychoses” and that is the end of this cycle.  The mere fact that truth can no longer be spoke in public due to the offense that it might give shows that the mental bending is built deep into discourse today.  To be clear, there is little of today’s society when it comes to values and morality left to conserve – the Left has taken it all.  No, where we are going into our future has nothing to do with conservation, it’s going to be about restoration.

Failure is not an option.

*There is no Doordash™ in Modern Mayberry, unless it’s raining.

Funny Lessons From The Franco-Prussian War in 2023

“By the authority vested in me by Kaiser William the Second I pronounce you man and wife. Proceed with the execution.” – The African Queen

The Kaiser never smoked weed, because he had no idea where Fort Wenty was.

In high school history, I’m pretty sure that the Franco-Prussian War was never mentioned.  Or, if it was, it was in World History when I was a freshman.  That was my first class, and the teacher was the head basketball coach.  His typical procedure was to tell us to read the chapter or watch a film.  There were a lot of films.  Then, he would wander down to the locker room, where he would make use of the coaches’ bathroom.

Coffee does that have effect.

I don’t remember the coach talking about the Franco-Prussian War, but, then again, through two semesters I don’t think he spent more than 10 minutes a day in the 45-minute class.  Perhaps he needed prunes?

Recently, though, I saw a documentary about the Franco-Prussian War that I found to be fascinating.  It’s long -6 hours, 8 minutes and 52 seconds, according to YouTube®, so roughly as long as Hunter Biden goes in a typical day without photographing himself with hookers and drugs.

The reason that this war happened was fairly simple – the French wanted to fight the Germans to look good with an easy win, and the Germans were, well, Germans, and invading France is as German as bratwurst, panzers, or invading Poland.

I think the blue could also stand for “reliable allies”. (meme as-found)

Napoleon III was Emperor of France, and his wife (really!) wanted to fight because she wanted to make sure that the country was united around her husband and son, so he’d inherit a kingdom strongly behind him.

Germany had other ideas, and Bismarck (the dude, not the ship) was trying to unite all the German countries.  Hmm.  I’m sensing a pattern here.  But Otto von Bismarck’s goal was to turn Wilhelm from King into Emperor, or Kaiser.  Bismarck was determined – you could say he was on a Kaiser roll.

It surprised no one when war broke out.  The Germans reacted as Germans do – troops showed up at the right time in the right place and weapons, ammunition, food, and other stuff was already there, waiting for them when they mobilized.  At the time, one person noted, “It is as if every cow knew which pot it was scheduled to be cooked in.”  Or something like that.  I’m not looking it up at 1:38 am.

Why do Germans drink beer?  To convince them mating is logical.

The French reacted as French people do.  Rather than go someplace logical, like toward the enemy, troops had to go to where their regiment was located.  If you were right next to Germany, and your unit was in Algiers, you’d have to go to Algiers to get with your unit, and then go back as a unit to the site of the war.

Yeah.  It doesn’t get better for the French.  The war started on July 19, and by September 2, the Germans had captured Napoleon III and over 100,000 dudes.  In previous years, this would be it.  And, in fact, after Napoleon III had fallen into German hands, he was sent with his butlers and support staff to a fancy mansion to hang out.

War of king versus king was like that in that time and place.

Again, it being France, the first thing they did is declare a Republic, their “Third” – (they’re now on their fifth).  Having seen what happens to French Empresses when things go south, Napoleon’s wife snuck out in the middle of the night and snuck away to England, which was thrilled to have a French person around they could make fun of.

I hear that Chinese probes are still doing stuff on the dark side of the Moon.  Seems shady to me. (as found)

So, France’s army was shattered, surrendered, or besieged.  Two weeks later, Paris was surrounded by Germans.  The war had been as polite as war could be up to now, and the French armed forces had been as effective as an army of kittens attacking a velociraptor.  The logical thing to do would be to surrender.

What the Germans were asking for was Alsace and Lorraine, two provinces that France had for a couple hundred years or so, but about 90% of the folks there spoke German as their primary language.  The new French Republic was fairly scared that surrendering those provinces would make them look bad, so they refused.  To be fair, the French wanted to annex a bunch of German land, too, but didn’t have the chance since they suck at war.

Their armies shattered, Paris surrounded and besieged, the French didn’t surrender.  One thing I noted was that when it was a war of one king versus another, as noted above, war was, while still awful, not personal.

When the Republic was formed, it was no longer a war of one king against another – it was a war of the people of France versus Germany.  The fact that the Germans were in France wasn’t really the fault of the Germans, both sides had wanted the war, and the French had, in fact, crossed into Germany before the Germans gave them a full hammerlock.

Hulk had to deal with anxiety about his career.  I guess you could call it wrestle-mania.

Regardless, at that point individual French citizens fought harder after losing their Emperor, Napoleon.  At first, this surprised me.  But it’s categorically different when people fight for something they own – they fight harder and longer.  Since they were untrained, poorly armed, and poorly lead, the effort was even less effective than the Afghanistan army, circa 2022.

The Siege of Paris lasted for four months and ten days.  In 2023, the average supermarket in the average city holds enough food for three days.  The average house has that same amount.  After a week, people would probably be fairly hungry, and would trade anything but their cell phone for a bag of Cheese Doodles® or High Fructose Flakes™.  In Paris of 1870, they didn’t run out of wine until late December, and I’m not sure the French have ever figured out that they could drink water.

Oh, wait, they did start drinking the water, leading to multiple epidemics that cost almost as many lives as the war itself.

Apparently, it’s now illegal to drink wine, shave, brush my teeth, and take a nap.  Driving is awful in 2023.

Eventually, the French agreed to an armistice, and, being France, they immediately had a communist revolution, but only in the cities, primarily in Paris.  This wasn’t a repeat of the French Revolution, since in this case, very few people were harmed, fewer than a thousand French dead.  Oh, and up to 20,000 communists, but they don’t count.  It also proves that the only war the French can win is against other French people.

The big reason that I’m writing about the Franco-Prussian War is that illuminates several things that are still important or true in 2023:

  1. Governments have and still create wars to keep themselves in power.
  2. The French are awful at war.
  3. One big loss can destabilize an entire country if the people are demoralized.
  4. I guess there’s a reason the French don’t drink water.
  5. People fight harder when they have ownership, even if what they’re fighting for isn’t worth it.
  6. I don’t have nearly enough storage food.
  7. Commies always either gravitate to, or are made by cities. Another good reason to avoid them.

I’ve always loved history.  Perhaps that’s why they ask the question about what’s the difference between a bad* basketball coach and a constipated owl – the coach can shoot but not hit.

 

*He was actually a pretty good basketball coach.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Reprogramming and Coming Apart

“You did. Thirty-five years from now, you reprogrammed me to be your protector here, in this time.” – Terminator II

6:30 is the best time on the Civil War Clock, hands down. (all non-regular memes are as-found)

  1. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  2. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  3. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  4. Open War.

I’ve kept the Clock O’Doom the same.  Again.  This is moving sideways, but things can unravel 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 – The Reprogramming Time Is Danger Time – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Coming Apart – 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 over 740 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

The Reprogramming Time Is Danger Time

It has become almost humorous to watch the reprogramming of the NPC public take place in near-real time.  I suppose it’s been there in the past (as in “W. is the most evil person ever”, circa 2000-2009) but it really became noticeable around the time Trump started campaigning for President.  Sure, it was funny to watch, but his comments turned the triggered into deranged.  Loosely, here are the main reprogramming events in the last decade.  I may have missed a few.

You’d think that people would figure out to pretend not to be home.

  • 2016 – Hate Trump, Comey bad (because of Hillary emails)
  • 2017 – Hate Trump, Comey good because Comey fired (this reprogram took less than a week)
  • 2020 – Hate Trump’s virus overreaction because China is good (Pelosi, et. al.)
  • 2020 – BLM riots good (we had to burn the city to save it from racism)
  • 2020 – Trump mRNA vaxx bad
  • 2021 – Trump riots bad (January 6)
  • 2021 – Biden mRNA vaxx gooder, only evil people don’t take it
  • 2022 – Russia invades Ukraine, Ukraine good
  • 2022 – (Reprogram in Progress) Maybe it was the Trump vaxx all along
  • 2022 – Trump documents in office patrolled by secret service bad
  • 2023 – (Reprogram in Progress) Biden secret documents in garage okay
  • 2023 – (Reprogram in Progress) – Ukraine was good, but Taiwan more gooder

Now, each of these above viewpoints has been taken by folks I know for good reason, so just that a person had one or more of these views doesn’t necessarily make them an NPC.  But a significant chunk of the American public can be easily swayed to believe absolute nonsense, as long as there was sufficient emotion behind it.

You can’t make a souffle without killing a few hundred million people, I guess.

Stalin said it best, that one death is a tragedy, but a million deaths was a statistic, but he learned from the study of history – in 1789 in Paris, thousands of pamphlets were circulated among the rabble to get them fired up for revolution.  The pamphlets were effective.  Oh, wait, did I not give a spoiler alert?

Sorry for the spoiler, don’t lose your head.

But understand that the NPC reprogramming is critical to the plan.  It’s been done for hundreds of years, and is crucial to the plan.  The big question is this:  what will be programmed in next?

Looks like some old programming here that we need to fix.

Violence and Censorship Update

Best way to not get Pfired™?  Don’t be Evil.

Pfizer®.  We can start with Pfizer™.  Project Vertias© sure did.

I do like what O’Keefe has done with Veritas™, and the Pfizer™ work has been outstanding.  But what happened?  YouTube™ censored at least some of his work.  If I were a congressman, I would certainly like to investigate how much Pfizer™ pays YouTube© for ads.  Just sayin’.

I’m sure these were peaceful, less fiery looting, but, hey, Nike™ is 100% off!

Riots in Atlanta, where people burned things, used explosives against cops.  National news level?  Zero.  Of course, we all know that if any of these people had ever owned a “Make America Great Again” hat, the news would have been broadcast like the breathless screeds about FBI agents getting together and pretending to be extremists and talking about stuff they’re never going to do.  But it wasn’t.  Version 20 of “If only the tables had been turned.”

Want to decrease nationalist extremist events by 99%?  Disband the FBI.

And then it came for speech.  I had been expecting this for a long time.  What’s allowed?  Only things that agree with the Narrative of Freedom is Slavery.  Carry on, and note this is a sign of things to come.

Thankfully I identify as a BFYTW-American.

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again, and, like Kamala, this graph doesn’t include eggs.

 

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 ticked ticked slightly downward this month, again, due (my guess) to suppressing the Atlanta riots and the Memphis riots fizzling when it turned out that the wrong people did the beating.  I’m betting it stays down until March-April 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.

Economic:

Economic numbers took a big dive this month, which surprised me.  The numbers look fairly unstable from month to month, which isn’t good.

Illegal Aliens:

Record numbers at this time of year.  This is intentional.  I’d say border is wide open, but we have no border.

Coming Apart

I’ve written these Civil War Weather Reports for years now, and I can’t get away from one thing:  we’re coming apart.  The Right is essentially in the same place, but the Left is moving farther and farther left, faster.

This is usual when the Left senses victory.  The Leftist Singularity (I don’t recall who to owe this to, or I would credit them, I think it might have been from the wonderful Jim’s Blog (LINK)) is what always happens.  When the Left thinks they have won, they keep swimming Left, faster and faster, creating a whirlpool that sucks in everything around, again, just like Kamala.

Wonder where the Leftists get those ideas?

And that’s what’s going on now.  In no sane world do we go from “recognizing gay marriage” to “we must give your child puberty blockers in anticipation of removal of their genitals” in less than ten years.  That’s not normal, and it’s nothing less than an amazing change, and in a country of several hundred million people, it couldn’t have moved any faster.

The attack is the same attack that the Left always uses, attempting to normalize behavior that is far beyond the norm, and then recasting anyone who would push back as bigoted.

The targets of the attacks from the Left are often the same, too – the most frequent is the atom of society – the family.  Families are the basic building block of civilization, and have been since Grug first knocked Gorga over the head and drug her back to the cave to make babies.

I wonder what the alternative is?

The Left hates families almost as much as they hate God.  Er, the Christian God.  In their mind, all other gods are the result of dimwitted (often brown) people who need to be pandered to and talked to like they are pets.  But families are the first targets.

Why?

Because it works.  Leftism has ripped the family apart through the use of things like welfare and no-fault divorce and divorce-rape of men.  The idea is that Progress for Leftist women can come via destruction of the family for Fun and Profit and Games and Prizes.  Imagine how this works when multiplied by race and class?

Well, you can’t say you weren’t warned . . .

Look around, and see it – the culture is coming apart.  The coming Civil War isn’t going to be an accident, since it’s already on someone’s schedule.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/AntiWhiteWatch1/status/1621364216400875520

https://twitter.com/nofones2/status/1622052359638597640

https://twitter.com/762sfuxk/status/1619953007403352064

https://twitter.com/TheBadBeaner/status/1621879581526433792

https://twitter.com/Trip655944670/status/1620326035538710528

https://twitter.com/AntiWhiteWatch1/status/1621751069754773505

 

Good Guys

https://national.fop.net/report-shot-killed-20230201

https://www.firearmsnews.com/editorial/fbi-underreport-defense-gun-congress-testimony/467858

https://www.foxnews.com/us/louisiana-dollar-general-clerk-shoots-kills-armed-robber-gets-charged-manslaughter

https://twitter.com/CrazyVidKid/status/1620485775312953344

https://twitter.com/Dream_andFuture/status/1617568584296984576

 

One Guy

https://twitter.com/i/status/1611864541436203013

https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=63548

https://www.informationliberation.com/?id=63540

 

Body Count

https://twitter.com/EricMMatheny/status/1620038409510359041

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11559407/HOMICIDE-leading-cause-death-children-amid-firearm-epidemic.html

https://pridesource.com/article/upcoming-fda-guidance-may-finally-ease-restrictions-on-blood-donation-by-gay-bisexual-men/

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2023/02/fda-blood-donation-policy-homophobic-restrictions/672922/

https://www.cdc.gov/hiv/basics/statistics.html

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1613867152335065092.html

https://archive.vn/0gFLq

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

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11671593/America-suffered-300-000-non-Covid-excess-deaths-2020.html

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/17-of-teens-had-heart-symptoms-after-second-pfizer-covid-jab-new-study/

https://www.theepochtimes.com/health/recent-data-on-stunning-increase-in-serious-harm-reports-in-young-healthy-pilots-army-lt-col-theresa-long_5021392.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge&src_src=partner&src_cmp=ZeroHedge

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11619155/Recruitment-crisis-Army-widens-scheme-flabby-low-grade-newbies-shape-uniforms.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11628235/Whats-baby-bust.html

https://infonomena.substack.com/p/whered-all-the-workers-go

https://www.freightwaves.com/news/truckers-positive-drug-tests-up-18-in-2022

https://cis.org/Bensman/United-Nations-Hand-Out-Hundreds-Millions-Cash-USBound-Immigrants-2023

https://12ft.io/proxy?ref=&q=https://www.breitbart.com/border/2023/01/04/exclusive-209k-migrants-apprehended-over-4-months-in-el-paso-border-sector/

https://www.statista.com/chart/20326/mexicans-non-mexcians-apprehended-at-southern-us-border/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11507875/America-afraid-Canada-euthanizing-10-000-citizens-year-TOM-LEONARD.html

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/deaths-of-despair-may-be-driven-by-loss-of-religion-new-research-paper-argues-11673876749

 

Vote Count

https://thefederalist.com/2023/01/11/ranked-choice-voting-keeps-rigging-elections/

https://mynorthwest.com/3782915/rantz_dem_election_security/

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2023/01/12/voterga-vindicated-fulton-county-counterfeit-ballot-case-reinstated/

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2023/01/12/missouri-v-biden-more-stunning-developments/

https://www.politico.com/news/2022/12/02/pennsylvania-republican-mail-voting-00071713

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/arizonas-maricopa-county-investigate-election-day-printer-issues

https://twitter.com/KariLake/status/1617657224851230720/photo/1

 

Civil War

https://www.revolver.news/2023/01/harvard-law-professor-jan-6-insurrection-graphic-novel-more-hilarious-than-you-could-ever-imagine/

https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/proud-boys-expecting-civil-war-before-jan-6-witness-says/

https://andrewmtanner.medium.com/partisans-driving-america-to-divorce-9b7a1b28aba2

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11698713/Oregon-secession-movement-hopes-inspire-national-campaign-against-wokeness.html

https://www.southbendtribune.com/story/opinion/columns/2023/02/03/notre-dame-study-finds-bipartisan-belief-were-on-brink-of-civil-war/69863085007/

https://www.futurity.org/podcast-united-states-civil-war-2855282/

https://time.com/6222633/second-civil-war-us-how-to-avoid/

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/how-next-civil-war-begins

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/29/anarchy-american-style/

https://amgreatness.com/2023/01/08/a-rendezvous-with-rwanda/

https://twitter.com/JackPosobiec/status/1622245619929698305

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yysKhJ1U-vM

Rigging The Game

“Coupons. Well, what a wonderful way to economize. Well, I could clip them and give them to my personal shopper.” – Frasier

The first symptom of COVID-19?  Believing what the government says. (all memes this post “as-found”)

It’s a strange, new world.  During my childhood, there was an active focus on one concept:  we’re all humans, regardless of race.  We should all be treated the same, and have the same rules.  Sure, there were programs like affirmative action, but the primary impact of those was (for the most part) in making sure that minority candidates were considered for jobs.  The rule (generally) remained that the most qualified person got the job.  Meritocracy reigned.

I won’t pick the date this changed, because it’s been a continuum, a bit here, a bit there.  But if you had seen the following headline in 1980 or 1990, I think the first thought of people would have been, “How can that even be legal?”

I was trying to think of a Bank of America® joke, but I lost interest.

The idea isn’t just at Bank of America®, it’s also at Wells Fargo™, too, you can look it up.  The concept is that companies attempting to get their ESG (link to my previous post on this monstrosity here) score up are setting up programs like that.  To be clear, any loan by any bank that’s not rooted in the ability of the borrower to repay is awful, and immoral.  It’s also shenanigans like this that led directly to the 2008 housing bubble and Great Recession.

In a related story, I wonder if Pelosi shorted them yet?

If a country is searching for a solid economy, this isn’t it.  If a country is looking to make actual equality the measure, this also isn’t it.  If it were just this, it would just be (outside of being illegal) just a limited number of bad business decisions, but it’s not limited to just this.

How about electric cars?  I mean, I’m as much into having children dig for toxic cobalt in the Congo so rich people in California can have electric cars and feel smug about it as the next person, but to create a tax incentive?

Seems a bit like we’re rubbing it in.

If Apple® makes an electric car, will it have Windows™?

Not to mention reparations.  It’s odd that the people who want to abolish debt for people that borrowed money are also the ones that want to pay people for things that never happened to them.  I guarantee that, no matter how much is offered it won’t be accepted.

Why?  It will never be enough.  Ever.

Another symptom of the Kleptocracy.

What about the Biden family themselves?  Is their economy wrecked like they’ve wrecked the nation?

No.  Joe went from $0 net worth in 2015 to $9,000,000 (latest info I could find) today.  How’d he do that?  I’m sure he cut back on Starbucks®.  According to reports, Hunter asked a donor to set up a job for his “pled guilty to a felony for $100,000 credit card fraud for makeup” niece.

They agreed to hire this felon for $85,000 a year.  She refused.  She wanted no less than $180,000.  To be fair, from the pictures it does look like she needs that much makeup.

Again, that’s small potatoes, when looking at the billions that have already been looted from the open checkbook that is the Ukraine.

The IRS called Hunter and told him he was being indicted for tax fraud.  He hung up, and told his dad, “Ha!  I don’t even pay taxes!”

And yet, there’s more!   I’ll skip over the massive payments for illegal aliens to play computer games and stay in hotels at taxpayer expense while actual Americans are homeless and face bankruptcy to medical bills inflated by donor companies like Pfizer®.  I’m sure that doesn’t make anyone mad.

What’s the difference between E.T.® and an illegal alien?  E.T. learned English and wanted to go home.

In point of fact, what we are seeing is the looting of an economy.  Our economy.  I think it’s been going on for years, but the looting wasn’t so visible because it was papered over, literally.  After the 2008 Great Recession, there wasn’t really any attempt to make the economy better, rather, the idea was to just keep printing money – Qualitative Easing is what they called, it, which was a fancy way to say that the money would be printed and buy up the weakest assets of the companies that the Fed® had desired to support.

Bank of America™ and Wells Fargo© were among them.

COVID-19 was the lynchpin, though.  As the tide receded and undulated, we could finally see who didn’t have a swimsuit on.  It turned out, it was most of the economy.  Now, inflation.  And, to top it off, eggs appear to be the 2023 version of toilet paper, so I guess this year that Halloween pranks will actually add value to the house.

It also looks like the plan that The Mrs. was brooding on, “let’s get some chickens that lay eggs” will finally hatch.

Maybe.

What do Green Eggs and Ham, Fifty Shades of Gray, and our economy have in common?  They all make people who can barely read want to try new things.

Oddly, it gets even worse.  Since 1988, the United States has paid $13 trillion in interest to . . . use its own currency – the government needs currency, the Treasury prints bonds, the Fed® creates cash, the United States owes interest and pays fees to the Fed™ member banks.

That’s weird, because the United States used to just issue its own cash.  Without debt.  Sure, if you print too much, that causes inflation.

Oh.  I see we’re soaking in inflation.  And the Fed® actively plans for inflation as a part of the business plan.  I think there’s a pictograph that might explain things . . .

Chuck Norris mines cryptocurrency.  By hand.

The looting can’t continue forever.  And that’s a good thing.  This made-up economy filled with economic nonsense that, at times, makes Lenin look like an economic genius, has a time limit.  Merit will return, just as the Gods of the Copybook Headings have always predicted.

There can be no other outcome.

The Destruction of the American Education Society – On Purpose

“And I say to you gentlemen that this college is a failure. The trouble is we’re neglecting football for education.” – Horse Feathers

Remember, if you teach homeschool, you can’t get fired for drinking on the job.

Jimmy Carter doesn’t deserve all of the blame he gets. He handled inflation poorly, energy poorly, lost a lot of helicopters in the desert.  Oh, wait, was I talking about Biden?

Nope.  Carter.  One of the biggest things to blame on Carter was the creation of the Department of Education, which he did in an election year to get more votes.  Of course, Carter didn’t start the rot, that really started with Franklin Roosevelt, who attempted to federalize education, because he wanted to further centralize power.  Roosevelt started a quite lot of rot, but it took longer for some of it to surface than the run time of Avatar 2.

What has happened since education has come under the control of the feds?

How many introverts does it take to change a lightbulb?  One, unless he needs help.  Then it’s still one.

Previously each state and local area ran its school system.  The schools themselves were, generally, of excellent quality.  But a bigger bureaucracy led to two things.  The first is the activation of Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy.  Dr. Pournelle’s description of it is below:

Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy states that in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people”:

First, there will be those who are devoted to the goals of the organization. Examples are dedicated classroom teachers in an educational bureaucracy, many of the engineers and launch technicians and scientists at NASA, even some agricultural scientists and advisors in the former Soviet Union collective farming administration.

Secondly, there will be those dedicated to the organization itself. Examples are many of the administrators in the education system, many professors of education, many teachers union officials, much of the NASA headquarters staff, etc.

The Iron Law states that in every case the second group will gain and keep control of the organization. It will write the rules, and control promotions within the organization.

Sure there are local school boards that are awful.  I’ve heard horrible things about Los Angeles, and other large cities.  Why?  Because the boards are so large that they have to have massive infrastructure – the idea of the neighborhood school disappears, replaced by massive numbers of administrators in a Soviet-style collective.

I couldn’t answer my daughter’s question, “What does a ballerina wear?”  I couldn’t put tu and tu together.

To make this better, we add in the feds???

Yikes.  That’s like solving an ingrown hair with a flamethrower.  It works, but what’s the cost?

Good teachers, for one.  Teaching has always been an important profession, and with local control, the messages that went out to the kids reflected both American values, and local values.  Even if you didn’t agree with the values of Los Angeles, you could move to a place where the school district mirrored your values, like mine, which has classes in PEZ™ dispenser maintenance.

But with federal control, you get federal rules on what can and can’t be done.  The result was the second problem with federal control:

Indoctrination.

I tried to indoctrinate a hairdresser, but I couldn’t condition her.

Schools used to start with teaching basic skills.  If there was a student who wasn’t getting it, they were flunked.  Try to flunk a kid today?  It can’t happen.  The result in (as I recall) the Baltimore school district is that the parents are suing the schools because, after 13 years of education and a diploma, graduates can’t read.  For the sake of the school district, I hope the plaintiff’s lawyer went to school there.

But why can’t the students read?

The idea was that there was a certain minimum competence in reading, writing and math that was required and expected.  The basics of history and geography were also taught, as well as classic literature.

And that was it.  Bring your own lunch.  Need someone to talk to?  Go talk to your friends.

The basic function of the school was education.  Sometime around 2006, though, the competence level was reset to “breathing”.  Now?  Biden’s Department of Education wants “projects” that increase Critical Race Theory usage in schools.  The same initiative is called “Promoting Informational Literacy Skills” which essentially involves coming up with ways to convince kids that The Current Thing is correct, i.e., not to “do your own research” and to only trust .gov sources.

I guess she was just biden her time.

The bureaucracy was bad enough, but the indoctrination is worse.  The difficulty is that most school districts compete for federal money, and when they accept it, every single rule applies.  Remember, the first rule of government club is that you do whatever the government says.

Back during Obama, the Department of Education even put out a “letter” that indicated they would investigate any school who didn’t discipline students the way the Leftists in Washington wanted.  So, suspensions and detentions essentially ended in many school districts.  The result?  Well, I don’t think anyone is complaining the schools have too much discipline nowadays.

Why would they want that?

We can be assured that the Department of Education never educated a single kid, in fact whoever was responsible for my algebra homework was fired.  But they have been responsible for indoctrination with Leftist values.

If you listen to Pink Floyd and eat ice cream, you become comfortably plump.

The solution starts with saying no.  No to federal rules, no to federal money.  And if anyone wanted to actually improve education in the United States, the first thing to do would be to abolish the Department of Education and every single one of its rules.

After that?

Time to think about that pesky Department of Energy . . .

Biden And The Coming Revolution?

“No, I quite approve of terror, arson, murder, any tool that serves the revolution.” –Nicholas and Alexandra

I wonder if this came as a peasant surprise to the nobility?

The worm has turned on Biden.  Pardon me if I say that this is right on schedule.  Trump document frenzy made the Left drool like Amy Schumer when she’s near a cake or AOC when she’s near a new coloring book.  To get Trump, the Left would do anything.  Anything.

In a very real sense, just as the Left views abortion as a sacrament, the destruction of Trump is a religious goal, as he is the manifestation of their supreme Evil being.

This is nothing new.  Remember when George W. Bush was president?  His politics were, essentially, as controversial as lukewarm dishwater.  But the hate flew strong.  Until he started showing up in group hot tub photos with Bill and Hillary and Barack and Mooshell.  Then he was no longer the Prince of Darkness, instead just a fuddy-duddy old man who chose wrong.

I’m really glad I couldn’t find the hot tub photos.

Biden, though, is in as bad a shape politically as he is mentally.  Joe was (s)elected for the job because he has never really stood for anything in particular, so he’ll stand for anything at all.  Even his “memories” are false half the time, talking about things that never happened so that he looks the best to whoever he’s talking to at the moment.

The perfect candidate.

Who is in control then?  One would first point to the Chief of Staff, but that person just quit.  It’s clear that half of his appointees have little to no competence at anything – I’m fairly certain that only one or two of them could pass the probation period making pizzas at Chuck E. Cheese™.

Kamala says her body is a temple.  Everyone is allowed in.

So, I’m not at all sure who is running the show, but we all know it’s not Joe.  And whoever is running the show is done with him.  Will they force him to step down?  Maybe.  It would be chaotic, and risky.  Replacing kneepads as Veep would require a majority vote – of both the House and the Senate.  Since the Republicans hold the House, this would not necessarily be an easy choice.

Even if Joe survives (politically) to 2024, the only reason to have him run again would be for the amusement factor.  It’s also clear that the person who will eventually replace Joe is not Kamala.  Oh, sure, she might do that until the next election if Joe’s forced to resign, but “they” will make sure that she’s not allowed to do anything of particular importance.  Maybe she could do coloring books with AOC.

Someone asked her why the chicken crossed the road.  She said, “It’s because of corporate greed!  Chickens should not be forced to lay eggs – the eggs should lay themselves!”

The danger is the weak leadership combined with the political polarization and the hidden nature of those who are actually running the government.  This seems to me to be very similar to the period before the French Revolution.

  • A weak leader,
  • Massive governmental debt leading to economic crisis,
  • A significant rural/city divide,
  • A significant atheist/religious divide,
  • Political polarization fueled by agitators, and
  • Silly clothing styles.

One of the interesting things to me are those agitators.  They were clearly in place at the time of the French Revolution since the Leftist (the French Revolution is where the name “Leftist” came from) pamphlets that appeared “spontaneously” and the large number of inflammatory newspapers that were designed to fuel the Revolution, primarily in Paris.

I tried to tell a guillotine joke, but I always mess up the execution.

The effort was too large and too well coordinated to be an accident.  Was Marat, the lizard-skinned angry little toad of a man the leader?  Was Robespierre?

In the end, it didn’t matter.

The Revolution gave way to the Terror, where (thankfully) Robespierre and Marat were finally executed.  They had to be executed, since, once any Leftist revolution starts, it keeps moving Left in great gouts of blood until someone has the gumption to kill everyone that’s to the extreme Left.  Stalin learned that lesson, and purged Trotsky along with millions of others.

The end result has almost always been the same as what happened in France.  Tired of the nonsense coming from the anarchy they accepted a new Emperor, this time one named Bonaparte rather than Bourbon.

What position would Quasimoto play at Notre Dame?  Probably halfback.

The playbook is the same, and it seems to follow the same parameters over time.  Understand that as the statues were pulled down from Notre Dame, and as it was transformed from a church into the “Temple of Reason” that we’re seeing the same things today.  The Left removes the past, because nothing can come before – they see this as a cleansing, the ability to return to “Year Zero”.

The future does not repeat, exactly.  The Russian Revolution wasn’t the same as the French, but they certainly rhymed.  As I look to weak leadership, polarization, economic difficulty, and Amy Schumer, I see the same conditions that existed back in 1789.

I’m still interested in who is going to benefit . . . if there’s less Amy Schumer, then everyone.

D’Oh, Canada: Showcasing The Leftist Plan So We Can Plan, Too

“I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had, during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you aren’t actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with its surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we… are the cure.” – The Matrix

Greta is the solution to climate change.  Every time she’s on the TV, tens of millions of people shut it off.

Apparently, Justin Trudeau up in Canada needs to be reminded that in the movie, The Matrix, Agent Smith was the bad guy.  Really.  Check it out.  Keanu Reeves fought him, and everything.  For whatever reason, Canada (and Leftists in general) have adopted the idea that Agent Smith was their dude and the inspiration for their philosophy.

In two words, their philosophy is self-hatred (does the hyphen make it two words?) and power.  I’ve established that again and again.  It is why (really) I’m in favor of bringing bullying back.  As a society we let losers do loser things, give them participation medals, and then after having zero incentive for self-improvement, they wonder why they’re not the head of the class.

I was bullied in school.  I deserved it.  I used it to get better, stronger, and faster.  I’ve even seen communications between Leftists where they advise each other not to exercise because exercise leads them to become members of the Right.

God, I wish someone had bullied Justin Trudeau so that he would have developed into a man, rather than the corporate globalist man-child with no sense of identity and a sense of entitlement the size of Canada.

Okay, this is supposedly a Photoshop®.  But, admit it, it wouldn’t surprise you if it was real.  And this is my only original meme for this post.  Rest are “as found”.

This brings us to Canada’s plan for self-immolation – “Just Transition”.  Just Transition refers not to Justin finally admitting he’s transitioning, but rather the “teenager’s idea of a good plan because climate is scary” transition from fossil fuels to, well, they don’t really say.  It can’t be too much solar, because, last time I checked, in the winter in Canada at northern latitudes, the SUN IS DOWN MOST OF THE DAY.

That probably doesn’t bother Sunshine Trudeau, since he will be in some mansion somewhere pretending to be Queen Victoria’s seat cushion.  But I’m thinking that ordinary Canadians, the ones who have to deal with this nonsense and will either freeze or starve, might have an objection.

Another Just Transition that probably wouldn’t surprise Canada.

The plan itself contemplates that at least 200,000 Canadians will lose their jobs, which will certainly hurt the back bacon and Elsinore Beer prices.  These 200,000 Canadians are in the energy industry.  What will replace that?

Don’t know.  This Just Transition plan, again, has nearly zero actual thought by adults who have more than a single functioning brain cell.  It is built on those old Leftist thought patterns:  self-hatred and a desire for power.  Why would people need light and heat?

Alberta is not a hot girl who has daddy issues and is thus a stripper with a heart of gold, but rather a Canadian province.  I guess that means admitting I’ve been in Alberta sounds a lot less dirty when I put it that way.  But Alberta does have a heart of gold, because they’re pushing back, hard, against the nonsense coming out of whatever town where Trudeau lives.  Ottawa?  Heck, I thought that was a river mammal.  Turns out Ottawa is where the bad things come from in Canada.

Maybe it will work this time?

Canada planning to destroy its own economy just to gain good boy points and score some additional chicken tendies at dinner isn’t unusual under the Trudeau leadership.  The main problem with Canada is that it doesn’t have an actual constitution with a bill of rights that puts a brake (no matter how fleeting) on tinpot dictators with delusions of godhood exercising their will.

Looks like Justin’s dad had the same idea.

Alberta, however, seems to have had enough.  The nice part of Canada is that they haven’t yet had a Civil War, and it would appear that the individual provinces seem to be able to tell the national government to go to, well, Ottawa.  Or at least the subject hasn’t been settled by armies yet.

It’s not just energy, it’s food, too.  We’ve seen the protests in the Netherlands.  Why?  They want to shut down the farms.  Why?  To stop climate change.  Canada has promised to do the same thing.  Look it up, search, “Canada nitrogen” – and I remember when I thought Canada Dry® was a national menace.

I’m not making this up:

And this a consistent Leftist theme:

Why do they want to shut down the use of fertilizers?  It’s not climate change, it’s food.  The Mrs. once read a story of a party in Washington, D.C.  At this party, the writer noted that he had a conversation with a Leftist.  I’d give you a source if I recalled it, but it was several beers ago.  “Too many people on the planet, by several billion,” the Leftist said.

“What are you going to do about it?”

“Well, we will practice food restriction.”

“So, you’re telling me that the Leftist plan is to starve to death billions of people?”

They were silent when the bald fact was put to them like that.  So, yeah, Justin is working to ruin the economy of Canada.  But he won’t be sad if millions starve, in fact, that’s the plan.  I’m not sure Justin is smart enough to figure that out, since I’m pretty sure he’s just a lapdog of below-average I.Q. who wasn’t bullied enough as a child.

Canada has, unwittingly, provided people in the United States with a viewpoint of what the Left intends.  Watch closely.  And pray for the Canadians who will oppose this, in Alberta and elsewhere.

Hopefully, the folks in Alberta are very good at dealing with rats.

And remember, Agent Smith is the bad guy.  And he lost.  And the Leftists will lose, as they always have in history.  But I’ve never said that any of this will be easy.

Related:

Ricky sent me this video, and I can’t recommend it enough.  A few “s” bombs, but otherwise it should be required viewing from elementary schools on up.