Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: The Cold Civil War?

“You didn’t bring a gun to the final shoot-out?” – Seven Psychopaths

This month the clocks were supposed to go back, but I forgot where I bought mine.

  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.

March was had increased violence as the country warmed up.  Sadly for the Left, none of the violence measured up to their requirements – they were looking for very specific circumstances.  They needed a white guy with an AR-15 killing four or more people, kids if possible.  The Left was disappointed.  All of their lottery violence tickets turned out to be of the wrong ethnicity, and then they were immediately disappeared from the news.  Poof.

I’m holding March at “just” a 9 out of 10.  That’s still two minutes to midnight.

I currently put the total at (this is my best approximation, since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) holding at 650 out of the 1,000 required for the international civil war definition.

As close as we are to the precipice of war, be careful.  Things could change at any minute.  Avoid crowds.

In this issue:  Front Matter – The Cold Civil War – Violence And Censorship Update – Enter The Leftist Panopticon – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Running The Gun Gauntlet – 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, feel free to subscribe and you’ll get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30 Eastern, free of charge.

The Cold Civil War

Loudoun County, Virginia – A group of school staff and elected officials formed a Facebook® group:  the “Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County”, which sounds nice enough, I guess.  What they were doing was, however, the opposite of nice.  They were plotting how to publicly destroy people who differ with their ideology.  You can read about the details here (LINK).

The Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County primary spokesthing, Jabba The Teacher.

What was the difference?  The “Anti-Racist Parents of Loudoun County” believe strongly in Marxist societal division theory Critical Race Theory (CRT).  If you haven’t read much about CRT, I can assure you that CRT is 100% a collectivist’s dream.  The laundry list of things that CRT advocates is pretty rough:

  • Dismantling merit-based systems
  • Removing rationality
  • Removing legal equality and Constitutional and legal race-neutrality
  • “Naming one’s own reality” – as in “My Truth” and not The Truth
  • Reparations, and nationalism (but only for non-whites)
  • And a lot of other things

In most bullet-point lists, I throw in a few silly ones just for fun.  Not in the list above, since almost everything that CRT stands for is very, very silly.

But here is a case of a group of Leftists wanting to destroy people because they don’t want them to judged by, apparently, their spelling:

Yup, this is real.  She can’t spell the name of her school (LINK) and goes from third person to first person in the same sentence. 

This is cancer in our country.  CRT is specifically designed to create division.  It is working.  The scariest part of this is that a group of publicly paid teachers and elected officials have set up a secret club to publicly destroy parents who disagree with them philosophically.

Welcome to the Cold Civil War.

 

Violence And Censorship Update

The biggest story in censorship this month is the censoring by Amazon® of the book When Harry Became Sally by Ryan T. Anderson.  The reason?  “Amazon™ has “chosen not to sell books that frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness.”

Now, since one study showed that 41% of transgender folks had attempted suicide, well, there is at least an argument that mental illness may be at play in some cases of transgenderism.  That’s a weak statement, and almost certainly true.  Yet, Amazon© wouldn’t allow that to be published in 2021.

What message does that send to a writer?  More importantly, what information does that send to a publisher?  Since Amazon™ sells between 50% and 80% of the books sold in the United States, would a major publisher take a chance on ideas that Amazon© might find objectionable?

No.

And it’s looking like YouTube™ wants to remove the “dislike” button.  Why?  There are several theories, but one that amuses me the most is that Joe Biden’s handlers are upset that whenever he has a video out, that the dislikes overwhelmingly swamp the people who hit the “like” button.  The comments are already turned off.

I built an IKEA® bookcase I called Joe.  It was pretty shaky and leaned hard to the Left.

In YouTube©’s latest idea, the “dislike” button will still be there, and you can still use it.  The video creator can see the number of dislikes, too.  So, if it’s an anti-bullying campaign, it’s the stupidest one ever because the bullied person can still see how many people don’t like them.

I’ll note that in the videos I reviewed for this post, none of them have comments available.

They know you don’t like them.  They know what you think of them.  They just don’t want other people to be able to see it.

Enter The Leftist Panopticon:

There was a creepy English guy named Jeremy Bentham who was a “social” thinker in 18th century England.  One of his inventions was a prison.  The idea that Jeremy had was a prison where just a few guards could look and see everyone at once.  This panopticon was a prison where you were never really free of the gaze of the guards.

Welcome to 2021, so we have to be able to do better than that, right?

If Donald Trump had indicated that he was going to use government money to hire private companies to scour social media to find people that opposed him, and use the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to run the program, Elon Musk would have been able to hear the Leftist outcry from his pleasure palace on Mars.

On the plus side, I’m thinking my FBI agent is happy as I make those small, but necessary changes to better my life.

But swap out the name to “Joe Biden” and there has been remarkably little negative comment.  Have a need to update the No-Fly™ list with pesky people from the Right?

Go for it.  And here’s the (LINK) to prove I’ve not been making this up after watching too much Alex Jones.

The Left will certainly do it.  And it won’t be limited to recent ideas, either.  The way that Leftists feel about the Right is simple:  if you ever, ever supported something the Left is against now?  You’re a heretic.  Cancelled.

Do you expect the DHS to be any different now they’re in the hands of the Left?

We have entered an era of technology where every move that you make can be tracked.  I noticed this on my phone when I stopped at a new restaurant.  Google® popped up with, “Hey, can you tell us if this restaurant has any typographical errors on the menu?”  Google’s® A.I. was asking little old me to help it know absolutely everything about everyplace.

That same Google® data was used and cross-referenced to bring charges against people who were in the Capitol on January 6, 2021.  This data went from, “we can’t use” to “we won’t use” to “we will use” in just a few years.  It’s now a primary tool for law enforcement.

As will be your friends, your email, your web history, your web search history, and, soon enough, a track of you moving from camera to camera in any urban space.

The Civil War 2.0 implication is this:  the Left is using this information actively.  Act accordingly.

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 lead to the index.  On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

Up is more violent, and violence is up in March.  I expect it to jump in April.  If Chauvin is found not guilty?  Through the roof.  The state-media propaganda of “home grown terrorism” is increasing the public perception of violence at this point.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  Instability is near record levels, as the Right doesn’t believe in President *, and the Left wants to cancel the Right.

Economic:

I expected this number to be more positive.  It’s not.  I think we will find that April is the month that we find that inflation moves from a thought to a widely-felt reality.

Illegal Aliens:

This data is at record levels for this time of year.  Comments from the Left?  “There needs to be more.”

Running The Gun Gauntlet

I had predicted that the ludicrous Sheila Jackson-Lee bill for gun control would be dead on arrival.  I was right.  But the other bills keep moving along and are a lot more likely to pass.

They’re smaller bills.  Increasing the number of background checks by making almost all transactions require background checks.  There’s a “family exemption” that soon enough will become a “family loophole” after the appropriate victim and shooter combination is found.

Guns don’t kill people, Democratic voters kill people.

In reality, there’s no way to track these background checks, since a very large number of guns in existence have absolutely no paperwork of any type connecting them to their current owner.  After the background checks don’t stop gun violence, the call will come for a national gun registry so that ownership can be tracked.

Registration at the Federal level won’t happen, because people won’t register.  Okay, some would.  But most won’t.  When Connecticut tried to get “assault” weapons registered, it is assumed that only one weapon out of eight was registered.  People know what is at stake.

Doing all of this at once is too much, and too far.  The average American gun owner simply will not comply with registration in 2021, and even the stupidest Leftist understands that widespread noncompliance just gives people a reason to understand the relative strength of individuals and the relative weakness of the government.

As I’ve said before on another post (LINK), the largest army that the world has ever seen are the 80,000,000+ members of the Right in the United States.  As soon as the Right realizes that, they will understand that we truly are only ruled by our consent.

And that is truly what the Left fears.

LINKS

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

The MSM narrative remains fragmented.

The Alt-Right Civil War

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/03/30/jan-6-capitol-riot-jail-time-478440

https://www.opb.org/article/2021/03/28/proud-boys-clash-with-anti-fascists-in-salem/

https://wwmt.com/news/local/fbi-testifies-wolverine-watchmen-were-trying-to-instigate-a-second-civil-war

https://www.newsweek.com/pastor-rick-joyner-urges-american-christians-prepare-civil-war-1576570

https://napavalleyregister.com/opinion/letters/trump-s-undeclared-civil-war/article_16821682-efae-5831-868b-a239815747ba.html

https://napavalleyregister.com/opinion/letters/the-real-civil-war/article_6c453064-39db-5540-949e-e8f9dfd071be.html

The Republican Civil War

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2021/03/31/cold-civil-war-being-waged-republicans

https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/3/29/a-cold-civil-war-is-being-waged-in-america

https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-next-battle-for-american-democracy-is-around-the-corner-and-moderates-must-be-in-the-fight/

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/4/1/22356594/conservatives-right-wing-democracy-claremont-ellmers

The Black Civil War

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/04/the-many-lives-of-grandmaster-jay/618408/

https://allhiphop.com/features/the-nfacs-grand-master-jay-speaks-out-on-legal-status-hip-hop-freedom-and-the-future/

https://www.msnbc.com/craig-melvin/watch/-it-means-that-you-re-preparing-yourself-to-defend-yourself-nfac-leader-on-militia-name-meaning-108925509977

https://news.yahoo.com/inside-look-black-militia-group-110636647.html

https://www.fox5atlanta.com/news/armed-protesters-in-douglasville-were-peaceful-sheriff-says

The Armed Forces Civil War

https://www.defense.gov/Explore/News/Article/Article/2542699/seac-dod-will-move-fast-against-extremism-after-completion-of-stand-downs/

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/03/19/some-troops-see-capitol-riot-blm-protests-similar-threats-top-enlisted-leader-says.html

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/your-air-force/2021/03/29/civilian-employee-who-allegedly-advocated-for-civil-war-banned-from-air-force-base/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/aaronsmith/2021/04/01/gun-sales-soar-from-stimulus-and-bidens-gun-control-plan-amid-mass-shootings/?sh=378c7e866020

https://slate.com/technology/2021/02/3d-printed-semi-automatic-rifle-fgc-9.html

https://www.amestrib.com/story/news/2021/03/25/iowa-state-isu-students-emailed-3-d-printed-guns-day-after-boulder-mass-shooting-colorado/6995202002/

https://www.19fortyfive.com/2021/03/could-the-u-s-ban-guns-australia-tried-something-pretty-close/

 

The American Civil War

https://www.aier.org/article/the-end-of-america/

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17179/hr1-for-the-people

https://wirepoints.org/mass-federalization-how-washington-is-bailing-out-failed-states-decapitating-competitive-ones-and-ending-america-as-you-knew-it-wirepoint

https://www.persuasion.community/p/john-mcwhorter-the-neoracists

https://thecritic.co.uk/schools-gone-woke/

A Brief Guide To Human Action – Which Leads To Human Freedom

“They say you’re a man of vision.  Is that true?” – Lonesome Dove

I’ll never forget Pa Wilder’s last words:  “Find a woman that holds you as tight as Nancy Pelosi holds a vodka bottle.”

(John Wilder note:  Please read this post all the way through because I think you’ll find this one of the most useful posts that I’ve put together.)

Ludwig Von Mises is was an economist.  His pronouns are dead/buried.  The sure sign of the best economists is that they’re dead, because then they can’t ask to be paid for being wrong all of the time.

One thing that Von Mises left us with was a book called Human Action.  Really, it wasn’t a book, it was him sitting at his typewriter and generating a 400-page doorstop like he was getting paid by the punctuation mark.  I read some of it back in my more libertarian days.  Dry doesn’t begin to describe it – after completing two hundred pages you become as desiccated as King Tut’s armpit.

Thankfully, the main ideas of Human Action are quite powerful and also pretty simple.  And, it won’t take me 400 pages to get to the point.  Von Mises created a model of human action where he states that each and every voluntary human action requires three things:

A Vision Of A Better State:  For example, me having a beer.  If it was Friday, I might consider that having a beer would be a better state than not having a beer.  In most cases, the vision is based not on cold, logical thought, but on emotion.

A Path To Get To A Better State:  It just so happens that there’s a beer in the fridge, so if I got my sorry butt off of the couch, I could walk over and get one.

A Belief That Action Will Really Lead To A Better State:  I really and honestly believe that I could walk to the fridge and get a beer, since I deactivated the trap door that leads to the alligator pit.

How many economists does it take to fix a lightbulb?  Don’t know, they’re still arguing over why the last one broke.

In my example, I started off with a Vision first.  That’s one way that action can occur, but not the only way.  The three necessary conditions can really come in any order.  I might have a pile of lumber and a saw and a hammer.  So, I have a Path.  I have Belief that I could build something out of wood since I’m okay at building stuff out of wood (just okay, not great).  After thinking about it, I decide to build a PEZ® dispenser sized for PEZ© the size of cinder blocks with an articulated carved Anne Coulter head so her jaw can open as wide as a python’s.  In this example, my Vision of a better state (and need for a really big spring) came last.

I’ve found when analyzing the actions I personally take, a truism:  if all three of the Human Action requirements are met – Vision, Path, and Belief – then my action is guaranteed.  Likewise, if even one of them is missing, nothing (and I mean nothing) happens.

This model is useful to use when people that you’re working with aren’t doing what you want them to.  Analyze the situation:  which of the three elements of the Human Action model are missing?

People in business have been using this model on you for as long as you have lived.  Think of a typical car commercial:

  • Vision: Buy a Mustang® so hot chicks in bikinis will like me and want to pat my bald head.  See!  They’re patting the bald head of that man on the commercial!
  • Path: Go to the dealer and buy one, they have tons of them.
  • Belief: Hey, zero percent financing and no credit check.  They’re giving the money away so I can buy one!

All commercials are based on manipulating these three simple elements.  Commercials are attempting to get us to take action – or to avoid taking an action.  Most are trying to get our money, but some are trying to convince us that Steven Tyler from Aerosmith© personally cares whether or not we drive drunk.

Steven Tyler just released two books.  One’s a cookbook, and the other’s an art book:  “Wok This Way” and “Doodles Like A Lady”

Manipulation is the key to this game.  Understanding when you watch a commercial how they’re trying to change our views allows us to be on guard against that manipulation.  And, as I noted before, it is a very rare commercial that wants to appeal to logic.

Emotional manipulation is where the money is at.  The advertisers want us to use their gasoline and love it because, um, it’s more gasoline-y than the competitors?  Because it has special molecules in the gasoline that make gravy in your pistons?  Regardless, look for the emotional manipulation – it will be there.

So, we’ve saved a few bucks because we’ve kept the advertisers out of our heads.  Hurrah!  But who else is using this model?

Well, Big Government, for one.  On January 6, 2021, all the Congresscritters had at least a bit of pee in their pants.  A group of relatively aimless protestors stopped off at the Capitol to share their opinions with their elected representatives.

I was on a witness stand at a trial in Alaska, and the lawyer asked me, “Where were you on the night of November to March?”

The group’s Vision was murky.  “Walk over and complain” might be a good description.  It was certainly more peaceful than most of the George Floyd riots (and more on them in a minute).  The Path was easy – it’s not even a very far walk from their rally to the Capitol Building.  Did they have Belief that their action would allow them to “walk over and complain”?

Sure.  So they did.

But that’s not what the Congress Swamp Rats saw.  They saw a group that, with a slightly different Vision could have easily started a movement that would have ousted our current government via a revolution.  As every reader here knows (and as every Congressional Parasite knows), the rank and file of the Right are the single largest army the world has ever seen.  Even if the Right was pitiful, it could take over forty (?) state governments in 24 hours.

We are truly governed only by our consent.  Seizing power in America would be trivial if people on the Right had a Vision, a Path, and Belief that didn’t include a government more intrusive than if Google® was a proctologist and more bloated than 1977 Elvis.

That’s exactly what happened when the Berlin Wall fell.  The people suddenly had a Vision:  sexy American girls in bikinis, CD players, and not having to drive crappy commie cars anymore.  They had a Path:  tear down that Wall.  Once they had Belief?  The Wall didn’t last an afternoon.

As another Floyd, Pink Floyd© tried to metaphorically tell us, The Wall is built in our mind, brick by brick.

Communism is the noble struggle of the proletariat to overcome the problems that are only caused by communism.

Anyone who thinks the “assault” weapon grab has anything to do with “mass shooting” has bought the emotional propaganda that Big Government (along with Big Business and Big Media) is selling.  Big Government wants the guns off of the street because they are the only real threat that Big Government sees to itself and the privileges that it has given itself.

That’s why the George Floyd riots were so important to Big Government.  What were the protesters protesting for?  More Big Government, more handouts, and more government control – this time not only of our rifles that are rarely used to shoot anyone (484 people a year in the United States for all rifles, compared to 1,476 for knives and other pointy things), but also our speech, our national heritage, and even our thoughts.

The BLM riots weren’t stopped because they’re everything Big Government wants.

I started carrying a pistol after a mugging attempt.  Now my muggings are more successful.

The biggest trick the Devil tries is to convince you he isn’t real.  The biggest trick that Big Government tries is to convince you that you have no power.  But if we have no power, why are there more troops in Washington D.C. than in Afghanistan?  Big Government has set the Right as the enemy.  I assure you, they are more afraid of the 80,000,000+ people on the Right than they are of the Chinese.

Now that you know their intentions, what else is Big Government, Big Media, and Big Business trying to make citizens feel?

Does this change your Vision, Path, and Belief?

City And Country: The Dividing Line

“And I want a bigger office. And I want a new car. And I want the city to pay for it all!” – Robocop

Now go away, or I shall taunt you a second time.

We’ve lived in Modern Mayberry for a dozen years now.  It’s a small town, and The Mrs. has roots here that go back generations.  We never expected to move here after I got arrested for driving on the sidewalk – I told the officer it wasn’t my fault – it was hard to see with all of those people on my hood.

The Wilder Family moved here from Houston.  The Houston metropolitan area is amazingly (for us) large.  From where we lived on the southern end, we could drive through nothing but dense city for over 90 minutes at highway speeds.

In Houston, speed limits are nothing more than a suggestion – I regularly saw people driving at 90 mph in 50 mph zones.  As we all know, speeding doesn’t kill anyone:  it’s stopping suddenly.

Driving really fast without being pulled over is one advantage of living in the city.  The real advantage of living in a big city is that’s where most of the high-paying jobs are.  Of course, along with high pay comes high rent and high cost of living, too.  Thankfully it’s not like living in Norway, since I don’t think I could a-fiord living there.

The move to Modern Mayberry was very welcome for us.  Houston is huge and impersonal.  Although it had tons of restaurants and other attractions, most of them were more trouble than they were worth to go and visit.  Driving to a restaurant meant a 30-minute trip and a 30-minute wait for a table on a Friday night.  Heck, I heard that even the Houston libraries were crowded – I heard they were fully booked.

Not worth our time.

The schools were likewise large and impersonal.  The nearest high school had over 2,000 students.  Although I’m sure that it allows them to field a great football team, I can’t imagine the social pressures in a school that large – my high school had 500-600 kids, and I had to pay people to be friends with me.  You could call it clique bait.  But that school was large enough to offer a large number of activities, but not so large that you couldn’t participate in them.

If you repeat your first year, does that make you a refreshman?

Where I grew up there was much more than that.  There was a sense of community.  If you misbehaved in public and were observed by an adult that knew your parents, you could be sure that they’d either correct you right then and there, or they’d let your folks know.  If they let your folks know, well, that was worse.  Parents in my hometown back then didn’t take the side of their kids.

No need to tell you I got spanked a lot.  Me, I don’t believe in spanking Pugsley when he’s bad.  Instead, I send him to school wearing crocs and anime t-shirts.

There was a sense of public participation in the small towns, too.  Pa Wilder was president of the school board for a time, and both he and Ma Wilder participated in a variety of civic organizations over the years.  Try that in a city where the campaigns to get on the school board cost $16 million or so (Los Angeles).

Having lived in both large and small towns, the small town experience is far superior in almost every respect, especially for raising kids.  The other thing I’ve noticed is that almost every small town I’ve ever been in has supported values on the Right, and rejected Leftist values.

We also tried to avoid the Illuminaughty.

Cities are the exact opposite in 2021.  Of the top 20 cities by population, 18 have Leftist mayors, and (generally) the larger the city, the more Leftist it is.  You can even tell that many of the riots were held in Leftist cities because they stopped after four days.  I mean, you can’t expect a Leftist to work all week.

Sure, not all cities are Leftist, and not all rural areas are on the Right, but it’s close enough to make that generalization.

This has consequences.  Around the country, rural areas that are strongly on the Right find themselves overruled by just a few counties that have large populations of people who are strongly Leftist.  There are, of course, reasons for this:

  • Cities are Anonymous – When you live in a city with hundreds of thousands of other people, you’re effectively anonymous. This anonymity encourages people to be tools  What does it matter?  You won’t see that clerk at the store ever again.  When people aren’t polite to each other, the demand for a government solution builds.  Much of the root of Leftism in cities is just poor manners.
  • Cities Require Services – New York City has a line where you can complain about everything because, in a city like New York, the local government controls everything. And complaining means that it’s someone else’s problem.

A group of Karens is called a complaint.

  • Cities are Demographically Different – Certain ethnic and racial groups statistically vote Leftist more than others, and these groups often congregate in cities.
  • Cities Reduce Options For Individual Control – I can know, on a first-name basis, every elected leader in Modern Mayberry. I could walk into the County offices and talk to the elected leadership there, too.  And not some flunky – I can talk straight to the elected official.  Try that in New York.  I mean if you’re under 24 you might get to see the governor, but . . . .

The divide between City and Country is bad, and getting worse.

I have been planning this post for several weeks, so it was a nice coincidence when Vox Day (LINK) pointed to an article that indicated that a Minnesota state lawmaker was trying to get the counties west of Minneapolis to be allowed to leave Minnesota and join up with South Dakota (LINK), which would be the first time people voluntarily went to South Dakota.

The divide between values is so bad that the Right just wants to leave – and the big fight will be over who has to keep the Minnesota Vikings®.  Seriously, though, I strongly doubt that the Leftists at the state or Federal level will approve the request, even if the people are tired of St. Paul’s Leftist ambitions.

People on the Left?

They simply cannot allow anyone to leave – the people belong to the state, after all.  Remember, the Berlin Wall wasn’t put up to keep people from out.  Allowing reliably red South Dakota to have more population and importance is not in their plans, besides, summer in South Dakota might fall on a weekend this year.  Regardless, the Leftists in St. Paul won’t give up the power, and the Leftists in D.C. want to gerrymander the nation so that they can create a permanent lock on all of the major branches of government.

What was David Bowie’s favorite song about the fall of the Berlin Wall?  Under Prussia.

I do know that, despite my jokes, a lot of really wonderful people live in cities.  I’ve lived in large(ish) cities as well.  Once a year or so, The Mrs. and I visit a big city.  The main reason?

To remind us why we live in Modern Mayberry.

Will we spend the rest of our lives in Modern Mayberry?  Maybe, maybe not – when Pugsley clears high school, who knows what the world will bring our direction.  One thing I’ve learned over time is to not make absolute statements.

I’m certain that’s a good idea.

When It Comes To Economics, Karl Missed The Marx

“It was a Russian ship. They taught me all about you imperialist swine. I was exposed to the works of great thinkers - Karl Marx, Lenin, L. Ron Hubbard, Freddie Laker.” – Top Secret

Pa Wilder wouldn’t let me date girls who ran in track.  He didn’t want me hanging around with fast women.

One of the advantages of writing these posts are the times when my family will ask me what I’m writing about.  They’re not reading it, of course, but it’s always a good conversation starter and it gets me off of the topics of “Why isn’t the trash out?” and “Who is going clean the lint from between Dad’s toes?”  Tonight Pugsley was the one who took one for the team was interested.

“What are you typing about tonight, Dad?”  He knows that as a writer I’m a fair typist.

“Well, it’s about economics and bad ideas.  Probably one of the worst ideas ever.”

“What was it, Cheetos-flavored Chapstick®?  Crystal Pepsi™?”

I gave The Mrs. Gorilla Glue® Lip Balm.  That left her speechless.

“Well, one economist in particular had some pretty bad ideas.  He had the idea that the things we made were only worth the labor that went into making them – nothing more, and nothing less.”

“So what about the $200 sneakers that toddlers make in Pakistan and only cost $2 to produce?”

“Well, that’s another idea that we’ll get to, but we can use that example.  In this economist’s mind, the toddlers who made the sneaker should have made most of that $200.  He would have argued that the $198 profit in the sneakers was exploiting the worker.”

Of course we were talking about Karl Marx.  Although he wasn’t the first one to embrace the “Labor Theory of Value”, this horrible idea was used to make more people miserable than the Kardashians ever have.

The biggest flaw inherent in the Labor Theory of Value in Marxism was the destruction of the price system.  In this case, if we had the same labor component in our sneakers and in, say, a polished piece of poo (don’t laugh, they did it on Mythbusters®) then they should cost the same.

Whoever stole my furniture polish, I will find you.  That’s my Pledge®.

Yes, shiny polished poo and fashion sneakers should cost the same to a Marxist – heck, if it took more time to make it really shiny, that would be worth more than the sneakers.  This sounds like nonsense, but the commies sold it to the revolting masses in Russia.  Why should other people make money?  The idea that they’re making a profit means you’re being cheated!

While this might have been a good strategy for children playing “store” in kindergarten or Hollywood™ stars protesting for (insert weekly cause here) it didn’t work out so well in practice.  The Labor Theory of Value caused all sorts of problems in the Soviet Union.  One of the first stories I ever heard about this is one I’ve related before – the Great Soviet Nail Failure.

The story goes like this:

A Soviet factory is told by Moscow to increase nail tonnage.  The solution?  Very large nails – one pound railroad spikes.

Obviously, the commissar in Moscow got in trouble.  The next commissar (after the first one got, umm, fired) gave a new order to the factory:  “Make lots of nails.”  So, they made thousands of tiny finish nails.  They were sad that the whole “invading Finland thing didn’t work out, or else they could have made Finnish nails.

Looks like they’re gonna need a new commissar.

I got a job at the chess factory.  I took a knight off.

While the nail story can’t be corroborated, what can be proven is that one Soviet factory produced exclusively shoes for young children with the leather they were sent.  Why?  They got a production bonus for making more pairs of shoes, regardless of if there was a need for them.

What they were missing, of course, was price.  No one sent a signal back that they made too many tiny shoes.

The entire reason for this nonsense is that profit simply didn’t exist.  You can’t have fully automated luxury communism if there aren’t prices for the things we use based on supply and demand.  Price tells factories what to make without requiring armies of bureaucrats to decide.  Failure means you lose your factory and someone smarter (or, luckier) gets it.

This is, of course, the reason that 21 year old girls are getting college degrees in Medieval Rap Lyrics.  Their labor is as good as anyone else, right?  So why don’t they get a job paying $235,000 a year with a company car and an apartment in New York and a clutch of sassy rich trampy friends?

Economics.  The highest value of labor of a 21 year old girl getting a college degree in Medieval Rap Lyrics is worth exactly as much as she can get in tips at Hooters®.  But they honestly believe that they deserve that cool job because . . . they work as hard as anyone else.

Marx would be proud.

I tried to pay for my dinner at Hooters® with an energy drink.  I guess Red Bull™ doesn’t always give you wings.

While we were talking about economics, Pugsley started getting the idea.

It turns out that Pugsley loves computers, and is really irritated.  The nice graphics cards he likes are in short supply.  First, the ‘Rona ruined the supply chain, so there are shortages up and down the line in the computer manufacturing world.

Second, high-end graphics processing cards (so they can watch the Pac-Man® in High Definition™) for computers are in really short supply.  It turns those graphics cards are they’re great for mining for cryptocurrency.  One video card with a manufacturer’s list price of $700 was going for $1,500.  The high-end graphics card is going for $3,000.  Pugsley figured that the higher-end card could pay for itself in crypto (at current prices and mining rates) in about nine months to a year.

So, yeah, it makes sense that these things cost $3,000.  Heck, at $3,000 they’re still a bargain, assuming crypto doesn’t disappear down a black hole to zero.  Which it could, because crypto is the ultimate expression of the opposite of Labor Value – every bit of crypto value is based on subjective value – it only has value because we agree it does.

So why doesn’t the manufacturer raise the price so that they can keep more of the value of their video cards?

I went to a topless Amish bar the other night.  No bonnets.

Well, in this case, their core audience is gamers, who can be very, very loyal.  Crypto mining might go away in a year or two.  But if the video card users/fans feel they’ve been robbed?  Gamers will go to the number two manufacturer.  But they still won’t have girlfriends.

The manufacturer is playing the long game.

The high prices irritate Pugsley.  Pugsley would dearly love to have a nicer graphics card, but can’t afford them at these inflated prices.  His (minor) revenge is that his graphics card is whirring away right now mining itsy-bitsy amounts of crypto.  In a small way, he’s benefiting from the whole process.

In a free market you get people who take advantage of price-mismatches like that.  Scalpers fill this role, too.  As long as they don’t cheat the system (which they often do) it’s an honest living.  Me?  I had season tickets to an NFL© team for a time.  They were doing well, and I generally doubled my money (on the games I didn’t go to) every year.  Heck, I even reported the income to the IRS.

The beauty of a transaction in a free economy is that both people win.  If I want a burger and it costs $2, well, it’s because Dairy Queen® wants the $2 more than it wants the burger.  Me?  I want the burger more than I want the $2.

Which is also what they pay for their corn.

In a free exchange, both parties win.  And if I think $2 is too much for the chewy hockey-puck burgers our Dairy Queen™ makes in Modern Mayberry?  Well, they get a signal that people aren’t buying their burgers.

Or Cheetos®-flavored Chapstick™.

Leftists, Lawnmowers, and Liberty

“Except lawnmowers don’t have turn signals.” – Psych

It’s obvious that guy never read the script.

Today I welded up a riding lawnmower deck.

It was the first time in years that I’d had the garage clean enough to get whatever tool I wanted without conducting a gymnastics routine worthy of a gold medal – and I didn’t even have a Soviet Commissar that was getting ready to shoot my family.

My garage had been so chaotic that it could have been the White House press corps falling all over themselves explaining why President * intended to lose a fight with gravity going up Air Force One. But that’s another story. I’m sure Snopes® has already debunked that President * fell down, and instead called it “Mostly False” because he obviously fell up the stairs.

Back to welding up the mower deck:

My welding is really, really bad – it looks like toddlers played with molten metal, but without all of the emergency room visits. Regardless, the mower deck seemed more stable when I was done. Pugsley pronounced the mower “fixed” and was happy. If the crack in the mower deck stays fixed it will be due to luck and not my Civil War surgeon-level skill at welding.

You can imagine my glee when my kids had splinters. “Fetch me the hacksaw. . .”

Fixing the mower deck was important for several reasons. First, it showed Pugsley that when something is broken, if we think we can fix it, we should at least try. There have been a couple of times that this has backfired on me like the time I burned out a wiring harness on a Nissan Altima™ installing a stereo. Likewise, I try to tell The Mrs. that if she wouldn’t have stopped me from drilling that hole in my skull, my plan really would have worked.

Second, it showed Pugsley that our destiny is in our hands. Sure, that’s not always exactly true. Those dinosaurs munching on dino cabbage on the Yucatan peninsula certainly were having a legendarily bad day when the meteorite blazed them into future motor oil and plastics for making G.I. Genderless® action figures.

But most of the time, it really is true. We make our own destiny. Our choices, our courage, our virtue, and our tenacity are much greater indicators of our futures than any outside force. That’s a message I want etched in Pugsley’s mind. Of course, I might regret that if he chooses my nursing home – he might choose the Ayn Rand Retirement Villa®, where their motto is: “We only feed you if you have the will to get to the dining room.”

Just like Schrödinger, I should probably have an open casket. You know, to be sure.

Third, we don’t give up. If we fail, we try again. I fully imagine my preschool-level welds will have been just like bear porridge: too hot or too cold and not at all just right.

That’s okay. Another message to Pugsley is that we’ll try again. Honestly, these were very bad welds, but they were the best welds I’ve ever made. They may hold, but I doubt it. I think the metal will crack so badly that Pugsley will claim he was from a broken home.

Then? I’ll weld it again.

One of the reasons I engage in these adventures is that I want to inoculate Pugsley against Leftism. Fixing a mower deck is a small part of that, but still, those messages remain.

How will this inoculate Pugsley? The Left’s main reason for living is being a victim. The Narrative of the Left is always, everywhere, the same:

  • They Are The Victims

This is the first tenet of Leftism. Everywhere, always, the Left is the victim class. Can I prove it? Sure.

Look at any protest. Ever see a Leftist throw themselves in front of, say, a semi-truck? They want to die. They hate themselves. They look to the world and see how utterly wretched they are, and they hate the world that made them with a religious fervor. If they can’t die, they want to see the world burn.

There is no redemption for them.

I was going to go as a suicide victim for Halloween, but I decided to go as Jeffery Epstein instead.

  • They Seek To Convert By Creating Envy

Not everyone can be a True Leftist. Many are converted by creating a culture of envy. Envy is a powerful Evil. Why?

Envy makes a person want what others have. Did the other people earn it? In many cases, certainly not. Trust fund kids didn’t earn the right to drive a Lamborghini®. And lots of people who earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year don’t work nearly as hard as the people who fix the streets or flip burgers.

Looks like COVID inoculation day in a Red State.

That’s a fertile ground for Envy, since in many cases there is only a minimal relationship between happiness and money. When Envy takes over, however, I’ve seen teams tear themselves apart because a single team member convinced everyone that The Man was taking advantage of them.

In 2021, I also see Leftists upset because other people get better jobs. I mean, why wouldn’t someone with a degree in Medieval Albanian Poetry not be making $234,000 a year two years after college? I mean, they were so smart in understanding what Murgatroid the Great meant when he said, “Oh, my headache ist such embiggened by a trough of wine thy previous night.”

  • They Seek To Divide The Country By Making A Country Meaningless

What is a country? A country is made by people born there from parents who were born there from grandparents who were born there. There, I’ve said it. If a person’s lineage isn’t at least that deep?

They’re not really American. Oh, sure, we’ve welcomed them, but unless they’d name their son Brandon or their daughter Kayla (both names I detest) they’re not really American.

If they have a second passport? Not American. Their loyalty is divided.

Being a part of a country means something.

The Left seeks to make it mean nothing. The Left thinks we should take care of a child 15,000 miles away the same way that we would take care of one in our hometown. Certainly, I understand that, but, really, doesn’t that kid have parents and a government? I am compassionate – but I care a lot more for the people in my town than for people who aren’t.

In Chicago, you ignore both.

The Left wants an endless stream of refugees into the United States. Why? So everything that made the United States great becomes the average of countries that were so awful that people came here instead of staying there.

  • The End Goal: To Gain Power.

Aesop rightly pointed out that this is the end goal in the comments a few weeks ago. And, he’s right. Leftists can’t gain control of the country unless they subvert the things that made the United States wonderful. This is also true of the West in general.

They must create enough anger, distrust, and division as possible. In this crisis, they imagine that they will step into power. This worked in France. In Russia. In China. In Venezuela.

The goal is that this will work in the West the same way it worked all over the world.

To make this happen, the values and beliefs of the Right have to go: they become politically incorrect in a storm of feigned weakness and victimhood. If you’ve seen pictures of Antifa®, one thing is amazingly obvious: they’re physically weak.

I’m sure he’s planning to be the poet in the collective farm. Or maybe make special bracelets for the farmworkers.

People who lift weights are more likely to become . . . Right wing. Lifting a weight removes illusions – it’s me against the weight. The man isn’t holding me back. No outside force is oppressing me. And, lo and behold, the people who are lifting will help you.

But only if asked. They won’t come out and suggest a thing. It’s you versus the Iron. They’ll help, but the know, deep down inside, it’s your struggle, not theirs.

So, it’s that simple. Learn strength.

And, teach strength. Teach responsibility.

I’m sorry. I meant weak bedwetters.

That’s why Pugsley and I welded the mower deck. We’re responsible. We can try to fix it. And we won’t give up.

If you want an antidote to the Left, you won’t get much better than that. Lift weights. Be responsible for your own life and your own surroundings.

While I’d like to be able to weld better, but as you can see, fixing the deck a dozen times might provide a much better result.

The Left’s War On Truth

“I’ve heard the truth, Mulder. Now what I want are the answers.” – The X-Files

Wow.  It’s like some of these might be made up.

The first enemy of the Left isn’t the Right.

The first enemy of the Left is the Truth.

The examples go back through history, starting with the Leftist takeover in France after the French Revolution.  In order to completely cut ties with the past, the Left even changed:

  • The names of the months: the Revolutionaries changed all of them, though they kept 12 months.  The coolest name was Therimidor which was, roughly, July.  I’ll give them that one:  Thermidor sounds like a place you keep wine.  I don’t know much about wine, but I do know you have to keep it hot.
  • Weeks went from 7 days to 10 days. Why?  Metric weeks!  They even had special names for the day, but they were all in French and looked like they might cause inadvertent strangulation if I tried to pronounce them.
  • The day went to ten hours. Each metric hour had 100 metric minutes.  Take that, Babylonians!
  • The units of measure. All standards of mass, energy, temperature, and length had to be changed.  Why do I call the metric system communist?  Because it started with the commies.  Did Stalin know how tall he was in feet and inches?  Nope, he was all metric, comrade.

Truth is the enemy of the Left, and the idea was (and is) to destroy history.  This is the reason the statues have to come down in city after city – they represent a Truth that the Left can’t control.  Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves?  His statue has to go.  He didn’t do enough.

Abe doesn’t go to plays anymore.  That last one blew his mind.

This Leftist hatred of the Truth might explain two stories that are recently in the news.

The first one is the reaction of the United States military versus Tucker Carlson.  Tucker Carlson:  Is he a legitimate military target, perhaps more dangerous than Russia?  More dangerous than China?

Well, no.

Mr. Carlson made a 10-minute segment where he criticized the President * for changing the military for political reasons.  The changes?  Most were tied to the feminization of the military.

Carlson made the point that the military’s job is winning wars.  Having pregnant female pilots probably (in Carlson’s estimation) didn’t make sense after President * made a comment about “maternity flight suits” in his address.

I hear this pilot’s husband complained that she worked too hard.  “Well, somebody’s gotta fetus.”

The response, from military personnel, in uniform consisted of a Marine sergeant who said, “. . . those decisions were made by medical professionals, by commanders, and our civilian leadership . . . .” and followed up with, “ . . . let’s remember that those opinions were made by an individual that has never served a day in his life . . . .”

I’m wondering what would have happened to a Marine in uniform attacking someone on the Left on social media?  Oh, wait, Marine sergeant Gary Stein was kicked out with an “other than honorable” discharge for criticizing Obama.  Sure – Tucker Carlson isn’t the Commander-In-Chief, but this is a political attack while in uniform.

John Kirby, Pentagon Press Secretary:  “(The United States Armed Forces) . . . won’t take advice from a talk show host or the Chinese military.”

But would the United States Armed Forces take advice from the Marines?

I hope I don’t give her low elf esteem.

In 2015, the Marines did a $35,000,000 (that’s a lot of crayons) study about integrating women into combat groups.  A pretty decent summary is here on the Marine Corps Times (LINK).  I’ll publish a few snippets from the article that highlight findings of the study (All bullet points are direct quotes from the Marine Corps Times):

  • All-male squads and teams outperformed those that included women on 69 percent of the 134 ground combat tasks evaluated.
  • All-male teams were outperformed by mixed-gender teams on two tasks: accuracy in firing the 50-caliber machine gun in traditional rifleman units and the same skill in provisional units. Researchers did not know why gender-mixed teams did better on these skills, but said the advantage did not persist when the teams continued on to movement-under-load exercises.
  • All-male squads in every infantry job were faster than mixed-gender squads in each tactical movement evaluated. The differences between the teams were most pronounced in crew-served weapons teams. Those teams had to carry weapons and ammunition in addition to their individual combat loads.
  • Male-only rifleman squads were more accurate than gender-integrated counterparts on each individual weapons system, including the M4 carbine, the M27 infantry automatic rifle and the M203 grenade launcher.
  • Male Marines with no formal infantry training outperformed infantry-trained women on each weapons system, at levels ranging from 11 to 16 percentage points.

Shockingly, women are different than men, the study found (All bullet points are direct quotes from the Marine Corps Times):

  • In anaerobic power and capacity, female Marines averaged 15 percent lower levels than their male counterparts. In anaerobic power performance, the top 25 percent of female performers and the bottom 25 percent of male performers overlapped.
  • In aerobic capacity, female Marines demonstrated levels 10 percent lower on average than male Marines.
  • Over the course of the assessment, musculoskeletal injury rates totaled 40.5 percent for women, more than double the 18.8 percent rate for men.

The Marines declare war on Tucker Carlson?

To the Left, Tucker Carlson is evil incarnate – Tucker is questioning one of the Sacred Points of Liberalism – Reality Is What We Say It Is.  That cannot go unpunished.  Personally, I know one former Air Force officer who is female who probably could have done any specialty she wanted to in the Air Force.  She is so far off the charts by multiple standard deviations on intellect and physical ability so as to be not comparable to average in any way.

She has contributed more to the national defense than I ever will – and she’s still doing it.  But the outliers don’t prove the average.

Women can serve, and can serve meaningfully, but they have physical limitations so significant that the Marines in 2015 said that combat infantry wasn’t an option if your goal was killing people and blowing up things.  An average college varsity swimmer can beat every woman’s swimming record – world record.  The woman’s record for deadlifting is 683 pounds – that’s quite a lot.  The men’s record?  1,104.5 pounds, nearly double.

Who says guns aren’t sexy?

No, we’re not deadlifting our opponents to beat them in combat, but strength, speed, and quickness mean something to the Marines or else P.T. would consist of couch time and nachos for lunch.  I’d think physical fitness mattered for people engaged in combat.

The Marine study agreed:  the top 25% of women overlapped with the bottom 25% of men in physical ability.  Also, in sheer competence, the all-male Marines clearly won 70% of all combat exercises.  Though I can’t find the quote, I do recall reading that several female participants in the study were quoted as being of the opinion that females shouldn’t be in combat after seeing the results.

What’s most frightening to me is that the military has come together to attack Carlson.  For the military to attack a civilian in the news media over an opinion that is political in nature is unsupportable.  It’s the next step to the United States Military becoming involved in domestic politics.  Oh, wait, there are troops in the Capitol and permanent fencing going up to keep citizens out?  Nevermind.

Ooops.  Looks like someone reads Twitter®?

The second news item might not originally seem related, but I assure you it is.  The last week has seen the growth of a new orientation:  Super Straight.

Super Straight has its origin in transgender ideology.  You see, if you are a male that doesn’t want to date a “trans woman” the trans community would call you a “transphobe” because, in their world, “trans women are women.”

Well, Super Straight was an amazing troll of this philosophy.  It was actually the brainchild of a 16-year-old on TikToc®.  He was lamenting that he would be called a “transphobe” for not liking “trans girls” so he came out . . . as Super Straight.  That meant that he was only attracted to women who were born as women.

The group noted they felt being called “cis-male” or “cis-female” was hate speech.  Orange and black are the SuperStraight colors.

In 2021 the idea that a biological male might want to only date biological females is being sold to kids as odd.  But even kids can see this is nonsense.  That’s why they’re revolting.  They were using the same language that the Left uses back at them, “Why can’t you stop attacking me for this?  I was born this way.”

And the Left must stop that – the idea that “normal” can defend itself is not acceptable.

The Left has to portray themselves as the undisputed victim class.  They are the ones that are horribly abused.  They are the ones that are deserving of pity because society oppresses them.  The idea that another group might take this from them?

Worse than death.  The Left agrees.

Remember,  trains is hard job.

So, the plug was pulled on the Reddit® forum r/SuperStraight after just over a week – despite the fact that over 25,000 people had joined it that quickly.  Or was it because that many people joined it that quickly?

Ironically, it wasn’t long before SuperLesbians started showing up.  They were creeped out by transwomen wanting to date them and calling them transphobes if they said no.  Also?  SuperGays showed up.  They didn’t want to date transmen.  It was a strange, weird, and amazingly polite group of people who didn’t want to be forced to date people who are (let’s be clear) more than a little creepy.

Is it a crime to notice?

I don’t dislike trans people – I don’t know any of them.  There just aren’t that many in the world.  There might be 0.1% to 0.3% based on a 2014 study.  Many of them have other underlying psychological issues:  their suicide rate is 20 times their peer group after surgery.  Based on everything I’ve read, they are a group that deserves sympathy and psychological help.

The trans movement is probably the biggest finger in the eye of Truth that the Left has pushed so far.  The idea that a 10-year-old kid can make decisions that would lead to them being put on very potent hormones with far-reaching implications to block puberty is frightening.

But the Left will support that with everything they have:  when Rand Paul questioned Dr. Levine about giving kids powerful hormones and conducting surgery on them during confirmation hearings, all Dr. Levine would say is, “Transgender medicine is a very complex and nuanced field with robust research and standards of care . . . .”

See, even the sign language interpreter isn’t buying it.

So, yes.  Levine supports it.  The Left agrees.  And mainstream news was, unsurprisingly ready to complain that Rand Paul didn’t understand medicine.  Dr. Rand Paul, M.D.

It erases our past.  It erases our norms.  It erases the current structure of society.  This is the same exact playbook as the military.  The military ceases to be about protecting the country, it becomes an arm of the political Left, erasing hundreds of years of tradition and purpose.

You realize this is next, right?

That’s why the SuperStraight movement made me smile.  It was founded by kids who see the lie.  They know they are being lied to.  They know the people who are lying, know they are telling lies.  This is the best element of hope:  Truth matters.

The Truth will win.

The Great Purge Ahead

“When a forest grows too wild, a purging fire is inevitable and natural.” – Batman Begins

Stalin was better than most magicians.  He really made people disappear.

The Soviet Great Purge started in 1936.  Stalin already had a bad reputation as a Dictator who couldn’t say no – he had gotten rid of millions already in the Holodomor (In The World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold And Silver!).  The Great Purge was different.  The piles and piles of earlier dead had been peasants and kulaks (kulaks were peasants that had enough money to own a cow), mainly.   Even before the Great Purge Stalin had the world record for Russian killing, a record he still proudly maintains.

By 1936 Stalin, always paranoid, decided his main opponents were, surprise, still Russians.

Anyone who had been a trusted advisor of Lenin had to go.  Anyone who looked like a threat to Stalin?  Had to go.  The Red Army had troops with guns.  Three out of five Soviet Marshalls were executed.  13 out of 15 army commanders, 50 out of 57 corps-level commanders, and 154 out of 186 division commanders were caught up in it.

The very top of the Soviet Military was decapitated.  But that was a small portion of the Great Purge.  In the end, probably a million or more were murdered or died in the Gulags.  Anyone in politics was fair game, and the more power the bigger the target on their back.  Many of the people who helped Stalin with the Great Purge eventually were victims of it themselves.

What did Jack Nicholson say to his dentist?  “You can’t handle the tooth.”

What was the basis of the Great Purge?  Even though Stalin binged and purged, it wasn’t bulimia, it was Power.  Stalin wanted to keep power.  His greatest weapon?

Fear.

And fear is currently the weapon (predictably) used by the Left today.  They want to push people to the fringes, isolate them, and then purge them.  The first step is making them feel alone.

Of course, there haven’t been executions in the United States.  However, Obama purged 197 high-level officers in the first five years of his administration.  That’s quite close to the Stalin numbers, and perhaps even greater when you consider that the military in 2000s America is far smaller than in late 1930s Russia.

The purge has lately increased.  The current SecDef has made it clear:  “The job of the Department of Defense is to keep America safe from our enemies, but we can’t do that if some of those enemies lie within our own ranks.”

Just let that sink in.  The current Secretary of Defense has stated that he thinks that the biggest enemies of the United States are in the military, right now.  Today.  The leadership of the military has already been purged.  Now?  The rank and file is in the process of being purged.  Anyone not actively supporting the Leftist agenda will be drummed out.

If you need sink jokes, I’m at your disposal.

They want to purge anyone who is involved in “extremism” from the military.  As far as commies, I certainly agree.  But extremism for a Leftist is mere disagreement with a Leftist.  Don’t agree that having a 9-year-old boy dance as a girl in front of gay men at a strip club is entirely good and appropriate?

Extremist!  Behavior that would have resulted in imprisonment for the mother in all but the last 10 years since 1787 is now considered so sacred that it is impossible to challenge.  Now, speaking out against it is extremist.

Hollywood® is already on the job with this requirement.  Star Wars® was a part of my childhood.  I saved money when I was 12 to buy overpriced dolls action figures.  The mythos of Star Wars© was always one of Good versus Evil, which burned itself into my young imagination.

Now?  It’s Leftism versus the Right.  At every opportunity, the creative element at DisneyLucasFilmStarWars™ has abandoned the production of good movies to produce movies that are water carriers for the narratives of a Leftist agenda.

I grew up loving Star Wars©.  It was fun.  It was escapism.  It was a place where there were good heroes and evil villains.  Okay, I’ll admit, the entire series should have ended when the Emperor© said, “And now you die, young Skywalker™” during Return of the Jedi©.

Luke was late because he had to take an R2-Detour.

The latest is that an actress got fired for expressing mildly Right viewpoints.  Heck, they weren’t even something that 95% of every American wouldn’t have agreed with when Kurt Cobain was still sucking air instead of pushing daisies.

And that is the technique of the Left.  If they can’t directly imprison you, they do their best to turn you into an unemployed, destitute outcast of society.

Imagine 50,000 Leftists watching everything you re-Tweet® to catch you.

But, thanks to me, you can watch the purge unfold in real time.  The Long March through the institutions of the United States is ongoing.  Here’s the current status of the things the Left owns:

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

The result in 2021 is that of the institutions of the United States, the Left has or is consolidating control over nearly all of the important ones.  What remains?  Junior officer and enlisted men in the armed forces (at least for the next few months) and the governors and legislators of a few states.

Oh, and at least 80,000,000 inconvenient people.

The idea is to scare Americans about the Purge, to scare them about their place in society.  If the State and the Media can scare Americans like that, they can achieve their ultimate goal:  to make them be quiet.

One of the greatest compliments I’ve had from a friend about this website was this, “If they (the powers that be) were really reading and understanding the things you say, you’d be much, much higher on The List.”

The Mrs. prefers the elevator, I prefer stairs.  I guess we were raised differently.

The reason I don’t feel fear is this:  I’m not alone.  As I said earlier, there are 80,000,000 other inconvenient people on the list.

Standing together?  We can’t be canceled.

Standing together?  We can’t be purged.

Standing together?  We can’t lose.

This isn’t over.  We’re not done.

Consequences Of The Broken Balance

“Ummm, I’m gonna need you to go ahead come in tomorrow.  So if you could be here around nine that would be great, ummm kay. Ahh, I almost forgot ahh, I’m also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday too, kay. We ahh lost some people this week and ahh, we sorta need to play catch up.” – Office Space

Would John Henry have upgraded to the iPhone® 12?

There have been some pretty significant trends of dehumanization of the workforce.  It might seem like dehumanization is a story right out of 2021, but this trend isn’t new.  The legend of John Henry, that steel drivin’ man that raced a steam drill shows that the fear of machines replacing people and changing the way they work dates back at least as far as the 1800s.  At least John Henry’s performance review only ended with his heart exploding.

I blame Materialism, but more on that in a bit.

There are more and more jobs where each second of employee performance is analyzed and optimized and timed.  I’ve written (some) about this previously (How To Beat Any Computer At Chess*).

There are more people today working under deep surveillance at work than ever before:

  • Don’t perform as well as the computer metric says you should in customer satisfaction surveys?
  • Bosses that are upset that people get sick on Wednesday and never on Saturday or Sunday? And employees blame their weekend immune system.
  • Don’t move in the optimum path from one place to another to pick an item off of a shelf?
  • Bosses firing people with the worst posture? Well, we all have a hunch who that is.
  • Take too long per item to ring out a customer?
  • Not enough keystrokes per minute on the company computer?

These are jobs that are created that use humans as interchangeable parts – ones that wear out or are defective and that can be replaced.  Of course, jobs like this have existed since, well, jobs existed.  Mining comes to mind.  Building railroads probably wasn’t a ball of fun, either.  But in both of those, at least, the job had room for innovation, thought, and human ability.

These children actually worked in a coal seam.  Child labor laws back then weren’t a miner issue.

I think the biggest problem is that people have forgotten that businesses exist for the benefit of society – society doesn’t exist for the benefit of businesses.  In my younger, more libertarian days, I missed that point.  Even though I love freedom (still!) I was always skeptical of the power of big business.

Also, I was always concerned about businesses that produced nothing.  I didn’t have the framework to explain it then, but I do now.

Businesses exist for three reasons:

To benefit society by creating value.

A business can easily fall short of this if it’s an abusive monopoly or makes its profits based on political pull and persuasion – an example would be solar scams during Obama, and military scams, well, any time.  What’s an invulnerable weapon system?  One that has parts made in every Congressional district.  Even if the military doesn’t want it.

No, creating value isn’t the same thing as government forcing money at a company.  Creating value is a much deeper concept – it’s where someone makes something and society gets better.  It doesn’t even have to be a physical thing, the words written by an author aren’t physical, but they create value when enjoyed by an audience.

Of course, physical items are awesome, too.  PEZ®, anyone?

Z3d looks like “Zed.”  Thank you for attending my Zed Talk.

To benefit employees by providing meaningful, necessary work.

When mass business first started, Henry Ford did an amazing thing:  he doubled the wages he paid his employees.  Why?  First, to get a good, stable workforce.  Second, to increase the productivity of that workforce.  Assembly lines were new, and getting a good workforce was crucial.

The experiment was successful, and helped Ford increase production while lowering overall costs.

Today, when you’ve got a good job, you know it.  You’re working on tough things that are right at the limit of your capability.  You’re engaged.  You’ve got support so you don’t sink.  You know what you’re supposed to be working on.  And you’re part of a team.

That sort of work is fun.

To allocate profits to shareholders and owners.

This is also required.  Winners make profits and get more opportunity to manage bigger businesses.  Losers don’t, and their businesses fold.  In a well-functioning society, those profits accrue to those who are creating value, which in turn allows them to create even more value.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve never gotten a job (in business) from a company that had less money than I did.

The most profitable part of the lemonade stand I had when I was growing up?  Selling the antidote.

These three things are a delicate balance.  Too much emphasis on any one of the three is poison to the system:

  • Collective farms in the Soviet Union attempted to “create value” in society by creating awful jobs for people who had no real incentive to do a good job. Result?  Tens of millions dead, followed (much later) by the collapse of an entire country.  But the Soviets did develop an impressive system to stand in line all day.
  • Government, where often it’s set up for the benefit of the employees. What business would you go to where the customer (you and I) has to park farther away than the employee?  That wouldn’t happen at almost any business looking to make a profit.  But does your local police department save the best spaces for citizens?  Does your local DMV?  If so, you’re not the customer.  They are.
  • Hedge funds, high-frequency traders are an example of a business that does, in many cases, literally nothing to help the economy outside of extracting wealth. That’s it.  It’s a casino view of the world, where vampires that produce no value game the system for profit.

Why don’t hedge fund managers ever have problems with ticks or mosquitos?  Professional courtesy.

Imbalance in any of these features leads us to a dystopia.  Our current dystopia in the United States comes from the employee-centric Federal government.  Call it The Swamp or call it the Deep State, it’s all the same.

Even now, the function of some government agencies is so impaired as to be comical –  we have a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that wants to put Internet traders in jail and a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms that sells none of those things.  Also?  It’s nearly impossible to fire a Federal government employee.

Unless they’re on the Right.

Hedge funds and other Wall Street hangers-on don’t care about creating value for society.  They don’t care about employees of the firms they buy and gut.  They just want profits, and want them now, please.  Thankfully the SEC will regulate them.  What?  Oh, sorry, the SEC will protect them.  My bad.

Almost all of the horrors of the world are an imbalance between these forces, and each produces its own, unique dysfunctional society.

My friend told me that Biden was going to build a monument to George Orwell.  “Where??”  “Well, pretty much everywhere.”

The root cause for this imbalance is Materialism, the idea that only physical things matter, and a loss of the idea that there is a higher purpose.  Materialism is the very foundation of both Marxism and Libertarianism, and, when applied strictly, is the separation of morality from culture.

I can even prove that Materialism is in complete control in 2021:  Is there a higher crime in society than standing up against something that is morally wrong?  Well, in a world where the rule is “do as thou wilt” saying something is wrong is the highest crime.

I’d call that Materialist.  In fact, I’d bet $10 on it.

#AlexandriaOcasioSmollett, The Caption Contest

“Shake, a hoax is a humorous or malicious deception. And this is clearly not that.” – Aqua Teen Hunger Force

Okay, I’m sick.  I had written one scathing bon mot after another in my head today about this subject.  But I’m sick.  I’m going to bed after I post this.  Instead, we’ll have a fill in the blank caption contest.  Let’s keep it PG, folks.

CAPTION A: _________

CAPTION B:  _______________

CAPTION C:  ________________

CAPTION D:  __________________

CAPTION E:  _______________

CAPTION F:  __________________

The Post That Gave The World Bikini Economics: Why MMT Is A Bad Idea.

Life has me trying to pack 32 hours into 24 today, so I’ll leave you with this blast from the past, the famous post that gave us bikininomics.  New stuff on Friday.

“Grab a brew.  Don’t cost nothing.” – Animal House

changeingdp

The future economic expansion is so bright, she’s gotta shield her eyes with a hat.

So, today I’d like to talk about economics.  No, wait, don’t leave!  I promise pictures of girls in bikinis if you stay!

Today’s economic idea is a particularly stupid one.  Just about as stupid as when the Ming Dynasty tried to disarm Japan by buying all their swords.  This really happened around 1432 A.D. (according to some experts) but was less successful than the Ming projected:  the Japanese just made more swords – at least 128,000.  Today’s stupid idea is called, “Modern Monetary Theory.”  Epsilon Theory had an article on it (LINK), and I did some research and thought I’d give you a rundown on this horrible, horrible idea which smells worse than Johnny Depp’s sweat socks after a night running through a farm ditch in Utah.  Don’t ask.

Okay, John Wilder, I’ll humor you if you promise bikini pictures.  What is Modern Monetary Theory (MMT)?

curves

This poor person is deprived by a Marxist economy, so poor she cannot afford proper clothing and is weak enough from hunger that she’s forced to crawl along the beach.

Here’s a bikini picture to prove that these will be the sexiest graphs in the history of economics.  Now pay attention and I’ll explain Modern Monetary Theory.  MMT is simple:

The main idea of MMT is that since government creates money there are exactly no limits to how much money government can create.  Back when money was backed by gold (say, with one ounce of gold being worth $20) there was a physical limit – by definition you couldn’t have more $20 gold coins than you had ounces of gold.  MMT says, “Hey, since Nixon took the world off of the gold standard, we’ve been making up this money stuff anyway.  So let’s go all in.”  This is not exactly like a drunken 21 year old with Mom and Dad’s credit card in Las Vegas.  Not exactly.  The credit card has a credit limit.

So, under MMT, there is no limit to how much money government can print.  The genius idea (from Bill Mitchell, an Australian economist who came up with the name “Modern Monetary Theory”, and whose dog’s name is “Dog” and daughter’s name is “Girl”, and whose pet name for his wife is “That Woman On The Couch”) is that there is also no limit to the amount of money that government can spend.  This is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s high school prom fantasy where Justin Bieber picks her up in a pink helicopter and makes her all warm in her special place.  Oh, and by special place I mean other people’s wallets:  this is a family-friendly blog, get your mind out of the gutter.  The implications are stunning.  “Why not just pay for everything?  The government can just print the money, right?”

Yes.  She really said that.  See, pure economic genius!

Yes, this is exactly the logic of a twenty-something girl who can’t figure out how to pay for an apartment, and wonders what fruit Froot Loops® are made of.

Bill Mitchell has a doctorate in economics, which shows you how easy it is to learn absolutely nothing while getting a doctorate, just as Ocasio-Cortez can demonstrate that an undergraduate degree in economics is essentially majoring in pure pre-barista.  An analogy used on a website that promotes MMT is that football referees don’t have a limit to the number of points that can be awarded during a football game.  There’s no requirement that they come from somewhere, and giving someone else a point doesn’t take a point away from you.  Therefore points are infinite and don’t change the way the game is played.

Genius.

gunsbuttergraph

You can clearly see the equilibrium required in an economy consisting entirely of tequila shooters and cocoa butter.

Why not make every dollar worth, oh, say $10?  That way everyone could just add a zero to their bank balance?  Doesn’t cost anything, right?  And why not pay for every person’s medical care?  We’re just making up the dollars as we go.  While we’re at it, there are unemployed people.  Why not pay your average unemployed art major to make Xir’s (a gender-neutral pronoun) armpit-hair sculptures each and every day?

Don’t cost nothing.

This is an amazing idea!  Government can have it all!  There is no limit to the amount government can spend because Tom Brady can make all the touchdowns he wants during a game.  Yay, tortured grade-school logic!

There’s a corollary to this – Dr. Mitchell thinks we can have all of this infinite money and low interest rates.  There’s no need for inflation.  Print the money.  Prices won’t go up.  MMT says we can spend ourselves into prosperity*.

*As long as you appropriately tax people to soak up excess money.  Mitchell, in the fine print, says that we can spend up to the entire productive capacity of the nation on, well, whatever.  When we get to that capacity, then we have to soak up the extra money with taxes.  The taxes don’t really go to anything, we just use them to pull money out of circulation.  Government still buys stuff with whatever money it prints.  Taxes exist only as a sponge to soak up excess cash.

gdpdrop

Two consecutive quarters of GDP contraction make a recession, and they’d also leave a nasty sunburn.

This puts the printing of money into the hands of the Federal Reserve Bank, and the spending and taxation into the hands of Congress.  Sadly, Mitchell never postulated putting adults in charge.  Regardless, Congress never ever spends too much money and certainly wouldn’t structure taxes to be punitive against groups they don’t like.  So, sober people like Mitch McConnell and Nancy Pelosi would have infinite spending ability.  I’m sure, like Goldilocks, they’d get the porridge “just right.”

MMT will be the next economic pied-piper of the political class in Washington, and will probably be the torch carried by the next Democratic presidential nominee.  It has no downside!  Spend today because deficits don’t matter.  Interest rates are 100% controllable.  Only have to pay a few taxes, and we’ll have free prosperity for all.

We’ll just print the money.  “You just pay for it.”

And, no one will have to be a barista!  We can guarantee a living wage to each and every artist so that the United States can be the undisputed leader in the creation of sculptures made out of armpit hair.

There’s no reason this can’t work.  Why, The Boy, when he was in kindergarten, came up with a system that was very similar.  For whatever reason, his class had made “feathers” by cutting out feather-shapes out of different colors of construction paper.  The Boy got into his Gummi-bear® addled kindergartner brain that these construction paper feathers were actually worth real money.  He even had an exchange rate in mind – each feather was worth three dollars.  He had three feathers, so, he demanded nine dollars.  I tried to negotiate, but it was useless – he drove a hard bargain, what with the laying on the floor and crying.

But he made the same mistake that Karl Marx and MMT make.

GDP is proportional to the height of the girl in the bikini.  That’s a basic economic concept.

You see, Marx’s theory (as well as MMT) both incorporate a fascinating idea – that the value of an item is based on the inputs that it takes to make the item.  So, from that standpoint, our armpit-hair artisan should be able to charge the cost of her Xir schooling (plus that summer in Europe with Marco!) and her Xir apartment and food cost for that armpit hair sculpture.  It is that valuable.

Real world economics that don’t result in economic collapse and the starvation of millions of people would disagree.  An armpit hair sculpture is worth only what someone is willing to pay for it, and not a penny more.  It’s a market, and it’s based on free exchange.  It’s that simple idea of the market setting the price that makes capitalist economies work.  And it’s the brutality of the market that ensures that armpit-hair artists have to have a real job actually producing things that people want.  Like coffee.

Ideas like MMT seem to be too good to be true because they are too good to be true.  They always end in failure, poverty, and human suffering.  Thankfully they can use that taxation sponge to soak up all the blood after the revolution.

But “infinite free stuff” is sure a great line when you’re running for office.  Worked out great in Venezuela….