The Impending End of The Age of Oil. But Not This Week.

“You have raw emotion deep under your surface.  Frack it!” – The Simpsons

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From the movie Sad Max®:  Beyond Soy Latte™.

Energy rules our world.  Advanced civilization depends entirely on the availability of inexpensive energy, and wars have been fought for energy, and lost because of the lack of energy.  Every task you or I do during a day is made easier by the availability of that energy.  Every task.  Even something as simple as a hike in the woods is made easier due the hiking shoes I wear that incorporate polymers and plastics and artificial fabrics made possible through cheap energy and more specifically:  cheap fossil fuels.  Cheap energy gives us fresh strawberries in winter, and baby oil for sunbathers in summer.

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Even though the oil changes are more fun, I imagine the upkeep is more expensive than a Buick®.

I’d even make the case that when energy is cheap, freedom flourishes.  Why have a slave?  It’s much cheaper to have a gas powered weed trimmer.  Slavery is immoral, but cheap energy removes that pesky incentive.  Why have serfs?  You have to feed them, which is a big drawback.  If the Russian Emperor had used tractors instead, he might have lived long enough to be on Dancing with the Czars®.

Cheap energy is freedom.

One of the biggest recurring questions that has popped up (again and again) during my lifetime has been the impending end of the Age of Oil.  If you say “impending end of the Age of Oil” in a really deep, booming baritone like Brian Blessed it sounds even cooler.  The first time the impending end of the Age of Oil reached mass public consciousness was in the 1970’s, and for good reason.  Texas had passed its peak in oil production in 1973, it was thought that every year after would see the production decline.

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True Life Snippet From Stately Wilder Manor:  Whenever I agree with The Mrs. by saying, “Indeed” she says, “Now say it like Brian Blessed.”  And she’s serious.  She won’t let me say the word “Indeed” without impersonating Brian Blessed.

How crazy were we for oil in the 1970s?  When oil was found in Alaska on the North Slope, several major oil companies put together a four-foot wide (16 meters) pipeline that brought oil 800 miles (6 kilometers) from the Arctic sea down to the Gulf of Alaska.  At the time, the project was one of the most ambitious construction projects in United States history, and cost the equivalent of $34 billion 2019 dollars, or about what Elon Musk spends on weed and hair implants in a year.  It was expensive, and even in the 1970’s the lawyers and environmental groups had their knives out.  In 1970, they were all NIMBY – Not In My Back Yard.  In 2020?  They’ve gone BANANA:  Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone.

Nothing as grand or great as the Alaska Pipeline will ever be built again in the United States.

After the Alaska Pipeline oil started flowing and the United States sweet-talked the Saudis into making oil cheaper than a date with Miley Cyrus, oil concerns continued – with oil companies looking for oil in ever more remote locations, including the a mile under the sea, couch cushions, and the faces of teenage boys.  Billions were invested in both conventional oil (think about a Texas oil derrick) or unconventional (think about the oil platform used by a James Bond villain as a secret hideout).  Exxon© even spent millions trying to learn how to mine shale, crush it, and cook it so that it could be turned into Happy Motoring™ gasoline, but gave up.

These concerns disappeared in 1999 when it became obvious that if you wanted a barrel of oil, in the future all you would have to do is order one on the Internet via Hotmail® after you looked it up on AltaVista™.  At that point The Economist© had a woefully stupid cover proclaiming that oil would be cheap from here on out since it was trading as low as $15 a barrel at that point, even though oil doubled in cost over the year.  In 2008, crude oil would hit its (so far) all-time high in 2019 dollars of $173.

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On a positive note, with her skin Meg Ryan could now do commercials for Jack Links® beef jerky.

The thought in 2008 was that we were certain to have hit impending end of the Age of Oil (indeed!).  How certain?  George W. Bush, an oilman president from Texas, was in favor of creating incentives to add ethanol to gasoline, despite the anguished cries of people who would rather have consumed the alcohol directly.  Ethanol plants appeared throughout the corn belt of the United States, turning seed, sunlight, fertilizer, and diesel fuel into food.  Which was turned into fuel.  Farmers loved this.

This led to yet more investment in energy alternatives – schemes to turn natural gas into ammonia for fuel, yet deeper wells into the ocean, fracking, turning coal into liquid fuels, turning “switch grass” into fuel, and any other silly idea that would could come up.  People even touted the coming “hydrogen economy” because they forgot that hydrogen had to be made using some other form of energy.  The world was needing an energy savior.

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Or, could he be the foretold Anti-Cat?

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Apocalypse

Of course in 2008, the trend was clear:  impending end of the Age of Oil (indeed!) was upon us.  But one of the unlikely saviors had turned out to be real.

In 2012 if you would have asked me, I would have told you that fracking was just a great way to turn money into wasted fuel – it took almost as much fuel to make fracked oil as you got out of it – not a good investment.  In 2015, I would have told you the same thing – the fracking companies were losing money like there was no tomorrow – if you had to invest more energy (think Btu or kilowatts) into getting oil out of the ground than it was worth in energy terms, you were just sinking yourself faster by using that kind of energy – it’s like burning your blankets to keep your bedroom warm in winter.

I was putting together my notes for a Big Energy Post in October of 2018, and had even written the first few paragraphs (okay, 500 words or so) when my research was showing something different.  I skipped the Big Energy Post and moved on to another topic, since it was clear to me that my preconceived notion that fracking was a waste of energy might be wrong.  My research was showing something other than fracking was a waste of energy.  It was showing that fracked oil might actually be  . . . worth it?

It turns out that when anyone first starts doing anything, they suck at it.  And unless it’s me practicing singing, I have learned that if I practice, I’ll get better.  There’s even a curve that describes this – it’s called an “S-Curve” or logistics curve or learning curve.  When you first start walking, you suck.  When you first start driving, you suck.  When you first start, well, anything you’re awful at it.  Over time you get better, and the more you practice, the more competition there is?  The better you get.

If you have hundreds of people practicing something with billions of dollars on the line?  They get better.  Quickly.

And that’s the story of fracking oil in the United States.  Water usage in fracking is down.  Chemical usage in fracking is down.  Drilling costs, energy expended, and labor per barrel are down.  After practicing thousands of times on thousands of wells, companies have figured out how to frack a well to maximize crude oil production and minimize cost (and energy) put into it.  One metric I saw showed that fracked oil was now competitive (with a profit) compared with the cheapest oil on the planet – oil from Saudi Arabia.  Companies have gotten so good at fracking that natural gas in the United States is essentially free.

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I guess I’m not a fan.

Fracked oil is on a trajectory to be competitive with the lowest cost oil produced conventionally any place in the world.  And fracked oil has some other advantages – it’s “lighter” than conventional crude – that means it contains more gasoline and diesel, and less of the “heavier” stuff that is harder to turn into gasoline and diesel – think asphalt.

The United States is the largest crude oil producer in the world.  I never thought I’d type that sentence and it represent a real fact, but in 2019, it does.  The United States is, as promised by every president starting with Nixon, actually, really and for trues, energy independent.

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[Edit – Chart added after Lathechuck’s comment]

Was it alternative energy, like windmills?  No.  Was it the communist fever dreams of The Teen Girl Congress Squad®?  No.

Is it “sustainable”?  Kinda.  It is for a while.  There are an estimated (as of 2019) 1.7 trillion barrels of recoverable shale oil in the world, 293,000,000,000 of them are in the United States.  At 20,000,000 barrels a day in just the United States, using just United States resources, that’s forty years that we have from 2020 – until 2060 – to find an alternative, like, oh, nuclear.  And don’t believe me – here’s an actual clean energy evangelist who finally did that math and discovered . . . windmills are worse than natural gas as far as carbon emissions.

We still face headwinds – economic, exponential growth, two billion people that would love to hop the border to the United States, and communists that want to tear the place down.  But oil?  Oil isn’t the place to look for an apocalypse, at least this week.

And, trust me, if I hear a whiff that any of the above is wrong, I’ll pop it right back up on this blog as soon as I can confirm.

So, at least for today, Happy Motoring©.  We have maybe forty years to fix this, so let’s not waste it.  This has obvious foreign policy implications we’ll discuss in future posts.  Upside?  Why do we care about the Middle East anymore?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Spoiler alert:  we tied.

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

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

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

Operation Aesop:  Total victory.

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

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

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

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

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

Operation Founding Fathers:  50 Independent States. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Operation Fort Sumter:  Going our separate ways.

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

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

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

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

Operation Gulag in The Dakotas:

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

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

Outcomes:  1984.

Now we know the stakes.

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

Book Review: Civil War Two, Part II

“Without law, Commander, there is no civilization.” – Bridge on the River Kwai

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You’d be surprised at the number of Civil War battles that were fought on National Parks.

We’re at part II of the review of Thomas W. Chittum’s book, Civil War Two:  The Coming Breakup of America.  You can find part I here (Book Review: Civil War Two, Part I).

I’m happy to report that I was wrong – you can buy Civil War Two:  The Coming Breakup of America on Amazon© on their Kindle® store.  Doing a normal search will take you only to the used hard copies, and those hard copies are still only available from resellers.

I encourage you to buy a copy of the Kindle® edition if you’ve downloaded the book on .pdf.  I bought one – because it puts money in the author’s pocket.  I’ve left a link below, and, as usual, I don’t make a dime if you buy anything linked here.  I’ve been thinking about it, but not right now.  Anyway, buy it.  As of this writing it’s only three bucks.  It’s a bargain at that price, so, pony up.

How did I find out that Mr. Chittum’s book was still available on Amazon?  Mr. Chittum emailed me and told me so.  I’m glad, and I’ve already revised my previous post, as well.

Last week we left off at the end of Phase I, the Foundational phase.  This week, we start off at Phase II – The Terrorist Phase.  Chittum felt that this phase would last between five and twenty years.  It’s been over twenty since it was written.  What did Chittum predict?

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And we can prevent Civil War II if we just hold hands, because then no one will have hands to hold guns.

  1. More of Phase I.
  2. More riots, driven by ethnic conflict, some of multiple day duration, involving barricades and heavy weapons. This is spot on from Ferguson to Baltimore and beyond, with the exception of heavy weapons, which to my knowledge have not been employed.
  3. Ethnic militias, cults, gangs. I’ve certainly seen the gangs, but if “militias” and cults have been increasing, I’ve missed them.
  4. Increasing talk of secession and civil war. I read once that couples that use the word “divorce” are more likely to have one, so I’ve forbidden the use inside the house.  People talk about what they want, and these terms on the tips of tongues from Ticonderoga to Tallahassee to Tacoma to Toluca Lake.  Oh, yeah.
  5. Increasing bombing and sabotage against the government. This is another item that seems to be missing – people are mad at each other, not at the government.
  6. Increasing small group attacks.
  7. Small scale ethnic cleansing. I’ve read multiple articles about displacement of one ethnic group by another.  The one that comes immediately to mind are blacks being driven out of traditionally black areas in Los Angeles by Hispanics.
  8. Demographic and political Reconquista of the Southwest. In progress, as I keep hearing that schools find the American flag . . . racist?
  9. Food riots as government attempts to shut of welfare.   Welfare is in full swing.
  10. Racial factions and politicizing of the military. I have no idea if the military is racially fragmenting.  I’m willing to bet this will light up the comment section.  But the officer corps seems to be broadly moving left, based on the rumors I’ve heard about elimination of upper ranks due to political reasons.   West Point appears to be corrupted to the point a communist graduated.  Although they kicked him out, it would appear that Congress has a place waiting for him.
  11. Splitting American institutions based on ethnic or political lines. In progress.  When a the FBI® has groups attempting to overthrow the government, and the Boy Scouts™ are admitting girls, the institutions of the country are splitting apart.  A little.
  12. Abandonment of certain city areas by the police.
  13. Gangs will have political goals and militarize. Outside of the cartels, if this is happening, it’s not happening publically.
  14. White people begin to wonder if the establishment is working for them. The white vote appears to be polarizing, although I personally doubt we’ll ever see the 90/10 split seen in many minority voting blocs.
  15. An armored car will be destroyed. A child is shown in the media foraging for food in a dump.  Neither of these have come true, to my knowledge, but photos of the homeless camps in California are common.

Phase II is where we are now – but it keeps getting worse, seemingly on a monthly basis.

The next phase Chittum outlines is Phase III:  Guerrilla Warfare.  By inspection, we’re not there.  The skirmishes that Antifa© provokes aren’t it – imagine if Antifa™ has weapons and secures an area, killing people in the process – that’s the level of violence expected.  This is actual warfare, but limited in time and location.  Areas will be lost to the guerrillas.  Chittum expects this to be shorter than the current phase, and this lower-scale warfare will last ten to twenty years.

The final phase is Phase IV:  All-Out, Continuous Warfare.  It’s just as on the label – actual armies moving in the field.  This is civil war – and the outcome cannot be predicted, especially if it takes place ten or twenty years from today.  Massive forces will be unleased, like never before in the country, and (this is me, not Chittum) we won’t have the structure that provided cohesion after the first Civil War.

Chittum spends some time analyzing the United States and safer places to be, but this is tied back to 1997 demographics and I don’t live in the places he talks about, so, those are interesting primarily due to his analytical methods and I’d suggest you give that a read to see how your mileage may vary.  I’d suggest spending time doing your own research on what you feel is a “safe” location.  Although finding a safe location might be hard, it’s probably easy to find places that won’t be safe, so you could probably start just by avoiding places that you know will turn into a post-apocalyptic hell-hole in five minutes if the microwave at the 7-11® breaks.

It’s easy to predict places where you’re not safe – you know, the places with bars over the windows and the local priest carries an AR.  Think those neighborhoods will be better after the world caves in?  Well, I’m pretty sure real estate prices will be down, but that’s primarily due to the wailing coming from the direct pit to hell that will open up after things get bad.

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Birthday at Casa Wilder is always exciting!

But how do they go from normal to “pit to hell”, anyway?  One particular line from Chittum in a later chapter breaking down stability by using Europe as a model had this sentence in it:  “With each and every passing day, more and more Americans of all ethnic groups are perceiving their tribal affiliation as more self-definitive and more important that their common American nationality.”

This is the key to the unravelling we’re seeing in the country right now.  The United States transformed from a nation that had little diversity (in 1960, the country was 85% non-Hispanic white) to today, where the country is 60% non-Hispanic white.  In 1960, by and large the identity of all the citizens in the country was:  American.  Americans were of all ethnicities.  Were there groups that were excluded?  Certainly – Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Civil Rights movement gained popularity by pointing out unfairness in treatment of blacks in America.  And America responded – we wanted to believe that being an American could transcend racial differences that seem to rip apart countries across the world.  We did our best.

Problem fixed, right?

No.  Not as long as each ethnic group defines itself through identity.

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Also, the Egyptians should have seen that pyramid scheme from the start.

Chittum hints at the possibility that complete Imperial Conversion might be one way to avoid Civil War, and lists several requirements to complete the transformation of the United States from it’s former form to an Empire.  In the end, Chittum feels that Civil War at least provides hope, whereas Empire doesn’t.  Chittum even provides (23 years ago) a direct time and place where the Civil War will start – 5/5/2020, in a city park in Los Angeles.  For reasons that I’ll get into below, I think this is a little soon.

Chittum’s advice on preparation is pretty common in the prepper world, at least in 2019.  Locations near borders along ethnic faultlines are out.  Locations that have logistical dependencies (think water) on other locations . . . out.  Military bases?  Out.  Large cities?  Out.  Near the border of the “new nations”?  Out.

Also, have some food and don’t tell other people that you have food.  At least enough for your family for a year.  Also, a gun and at least 5,000 rounds of ammo.  Chittum speaks about gun caliber in general, but I’ve seen the fights that gun caliber selection sets off in the comments section, so I’ll leave that for later when I want to make sure you’re reading.  He suggests caching your food and ammo and gun away from the house, and, although I understand his reasons, it’s not something I do, at least currently.  As I get older, it’s even less likely.  If I make it to a retirement home, I’ll probably hide bullets in my walker.

Finally, Mr. Chittum has a checklist (in no particular order) of things that will be there before Civil War II hits.  I’ve put the ones I think have already occurred in bold:

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Always remember item 6 – “Wear Pants”

  1. Ethnic classifications become more prominent.
  2. Illegal aliens allowed to vote, even locally.
  3. Attack on the Second Amendment.
  4. Juries that split on racial lines – shows that justice isn’t justice anymore.
  5. Military taking police duties.
  6. Internal (for use in the United States) elite military force.
  7. Mobs in Washington D.C.
  8. Blacks demanding facilities without whites (dorms, etc.).
  9. Replacement of individual rights with group rights – health care, for instance.
  10. Non-governmental organizations acquiring military power.
  11. Real political power shifting to the courts.
  12. Political power shifting to international bodies.
  13. Leftists and minority control spreads of basic institutions.
  14. Secessionist movements and groups seeking autonomy.
  15. Race-based political parties.
  16. No-go areas left to gangs.
  17. Reparations.
  18. Court voting manipulation (against gerrymandering).
  19. Unrest in other multiethnic empires in the world at the time.
  20. “Gated” communities for the wealthy.
  21. Increased media hoaxes.
  22. Increased minorities in the military.
  23. Out of court settlements in cases of racial discrimination (method to transfer money to radical groups).
  24. More restrictions on freedom of speech, including getting speakers fired or SWATed.
  25. Police abandon traditional uniforms for military-style uniforms.
  26. Groups of cops that form to oppose unconstitutional actions. Chittum thought they would be clandestine and ethnic, but the Oath Keepers are neither.
  27. An affirmative action agency (EEOC for instance) to have armed agents.
  28. Dollar collapse.
  29. Geographic segregation and mention of it in the press.
  30. Signs American military dominance challenged in a serious way.
  31. Breakup of Canada.
  32. More Americans moving to Canada than vice versa.
  33. Parallel ethnic political and legal organizations have more power than base organizations.
  34. More help wanted ads requiring bilingual applicants.
  35. Greater role for UN in the world.
  36. Photo of burned out American tank on US soil.

So, of this list, by my count about 18 (your mileage may vary) of Chittum’s 36 item checklist have happened.  Some of the above are more important than others.

As noted, I recommend the book.  It’s good, and not everything is covered in the 4,000-odd words that are in this review.  It’s also a pretty quick read with decent flow.

How has the prediction held out?  Certainly, better than any prediction that I did in 1997.  I think the biggest missing piece is Leftist ideology.  The Leftists have done a really good job of keeping together a rickety coalition of communists, Islamists, racial agitators, and ideologists without ideas.  This has led to increased stability that would have been hard for Mr. Chittum to foresee from 1997.

Additionally, the work on prepping has moved on in twenty years.  The basics remain the same, but the general philosophy has had 20 years of thought, refinement, and improvement.  But we haven’t had 20 years of thought on what will cause a civil war and how likely that is.

But, oddly, the Leftist coalition is keeping the country from splitting into dozens of pieces – right now it’s just two pieces.  I think this increased stability has extended the time until Civil War II breaks out.  What brings stability down?  Economic hardship.  The 2020 election.

And there is a price to be paid.  Can the Left control the forces of discontent and hate that it has unleased?  Can the Right control the forces that are a reaction to the demographic change in society?

Tough questions.  (Shakes Magic 8 Ball®)

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MAGIC 8 BALL

Black Swans, Cute Girls from Poland, and Sexy Bill Gates

“All I want is peace – a little piece of Poland, a little piece of France . . .” – To Be or Not To Be

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These are Polish sports fans.  They were photographed at . . . oh, I’ve lost you already.

I went to seventh grade in a very small school district, I think there were, perhaps, 40 or 50 kids in my grade.  We were fairly remote, and the area wasn’t particularly well off economically so looking back, this was the end of the road for the teachers that weren’t locals.  When I was in seventh grade, I saw that my science teacher was reading a book.  Since I had ample time to read on the bus going to school every day, (Pa Wilder picked me up after football practice) and I was a pretty voracious reader.  I was always looking for a good book after I’d rolled through the science fiction section in the school library.

Young John Wilder:  “What’s that book?”

Teacher:  “Oh, this?  It’s called The Shining.  It’s pretty good.  Want to borrow it after I’m done?”

I’m sure he’d get fired today for allowing a seventh grader to borrow a book that only included cis-gendered characters in a heteronormative patriarchal un-handicapable-positive environment.  But it did start me reading Stephen King, and I read everything he wrote until he stopped snorting whiskey and drinking cocaine.  After that?  King’s nosebleeds decreased, as did the quality of his writing.  It’s probably in bad taste to suggest we start a “Get Stephen Stoned Again” movement, but if it gets him away from Twitter® I’m all for it.

Given all that, today I was amused when I got this in a text from my friend:  “The reason your writing is scarier than Stephen King is that your writing is more likely to come true.”

But reality is scary.  The future is scary.  And even though we can’t predict exactly what will happen, it’s fairly clear that we live in a vastly more interrelated society that exhibits technological wonders while it faces the challenges of a huge planetary population.  The paradox is, although humanity is more connected than ever before in history, that connection seems to have sharpened the divisions between peoples and ideology.  The dream was that communication would unite humanity.  The reality is that we don’t seem to like each other all that much.  Apparently the ultimate conclusion as we communicate in a superhuman fashion at the speed of light across the planet is that “those other guys are hooter-weasels.”  Hooter weasel wasn’t my first choice, but turd-yak© and rump-stooge© were already copyrighted by Disney™.

But back to scary:

The other day I was working out, and listening to a YouTube® video on the Polish Resistance during World War II.  Why?  I like history, and in some ways you can learn a lot about today from looking at the past, it seems that just like Albanian strippers attempting to fix a copier at an all-night hardware store, we just never learn.  I haven’t quite finished watching this video (since I ran out of treadmill) but will probably finish it tomorrow.  But one question struck me as I was listening:  what sort of change had the Polish people endured?

Warning, this video is over an hour long.  I enjoy watching stuff like this on the treadmill at lunch, because it makes me think and ignore the pain weakness escaping my body and how the English have no idea how to pronounce certain words.  Your mileage may vary.

The economy of Poland before invasion in 1939 was growing.  Like the rest of the world, the Polish income had dropped during the depression, but by 1939 it was higher than it had been in 1929.  Beyond that, between World War I and World War II Poland had greatly increased the number and quality of schools and had started flossing regularly.  Poland was doing okay.

Of course, being stuck between Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia is a really, really bad place to be.  Both countries invaded in Poland in 1939, and it was split up like a Hollywood couple’s kids, except Hitler and Stalin were mom and dad.  Yeah.

Immediately, the Poles buried rifles.  They didn’t plan for this, and didn’t have much time to prepare, so when they went to dig the rifles up later, they found that they had rusted and were useless.  As the economy of Poland was absorbed first by the Germans and the Soviets, and then by the Germans alone, Poland’s economy was shattered.  Poland’s labor was taken to make armaments, and Poland’s food was taken in large part to feed Germany and German troops.  Food became scarce.  What could be worse?  Oh, yeah, the war passing right over your country again.  When the Soviets invaded Poland the food situation eventually got better, but, let’s face it:  the communists have never really figured out the whole “feeding your people” thing.

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This is a real picture of a store in Poland during the communist years.  They actually told the people that they didn’t produce too much food, so that they wouldn’t be wasteful like the Westerners.

This post isn’t about Poland or Stephen King’s coke-filled sinus cavities.  This post is about change.  The Polish people were doing well, but then this big steam roller then proceeded to crush them, eliminate 20% of the population, and then oppress them over the next fifty years.

Did anyone in Poland predict that change?  Nope.

Massive, unexpected catastrophic change regularly occurs.  In society, the stock market, companies, and even personal reputations are built slowly, but lost in a flash.  This phenomenon is called Seneca’s Cliff, and I wrote about it here (Seneca’s Cliff and You) a long time ago.

Are there other examples of extreme catastrophic change beyond Poland in 1939?  Sure.

  • The Russian Revolution, which led directly to the Holodomor (In the World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold and Silver!).
  • The Depression and Housing Bubble were both examples of market crashes.
  • Myspace®. Not the company, that was bad.  But my page was just awful.
  • I could start on reputations of people, but, really, where would I end?

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Funny how times have changed.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb wrote about this phenomenon in his (quite excellent) book The Black Swan.  The really short version of his book is humans lived for tens of thousands of years in a linear world.  You could look around, and see that the height distribution in the tribe was a bell curve.  So was running speed.  Yeah, everyone who runs the 100M (3.2 miles) dash at the Olympics® can run it faster than I could when I was young.  But I could run a 40 yard dash in 4.9 seconds.  So, let’s say I could run 100 meters in 11 or 12 seconds at my peak being while pretending to be chased by a rabid Albanian stripper.  11 or 12 seconds is probably average for a high school athlete while not being chased by an Albanian.

The world record in the 100 meter dash is 9.58 seconds.

Yeah, my best time sucks compared to the world record, but the world record isn’t that far away from what I could run.  Now let’s take a look at wealth.

The average (which is pulled up by wealthy people) net worth of a family in the United States is about $700,000.  But the median (half the families above, half below) is $100,000.  But let’s use the higher figure for grins.

The best sprinter is about 25% faster than me.  Bill Gates is 14,285,000% wealthier than the average family.

To get the same percentage in a sprint as Bill Gates has in the pocketbook would require that I finish the 100 meter sprint that the world’s fastest person finished in 9.58 seconds in . . . 15.9 days.  (That’s 15.9 in metric days.)  People are simply not equipped to think about life like that, although Pugsley (my youngest spawn) does move that slow when I tell him to take out the trash.  Huge numbers and exponential quantities are not what we spent tens of thousands of years thinking about.

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What does it take to make Bill Gates the richest man in the world?  Jeff Bezos dating a floozy.  Sexy Bill Gates is for James at Bison Prepper (LINK).

How did Taleb define his Black Swans?

  • The odds would say that they’re extremely rare. Stock markets don’t collapse all at once when investors are rational, right?  Well, the odds are wrong.  Nonlinearity happens.  Investors panic in a herd.
  • Black Swans have huge consequences. The Great Depression likely led to World War II.  That’s a huge consequence.  These consequences are huge mainly due to overlapping failures – one part of the economy shuts down which pulls another with it.  And the longer a system has been forced into “stability” and not allowed to fail?  The greater the consequence.  An avalanche isn’t a single snowball – it’s a massive wave of snow.  It’s funny, but it used to be a joke that someone just making a big noise could cause an avalanche . . . and yet . . . at some point that individual snowflake is just enough weight to bring the whole mountain of snow down.
  • In hindsight, people believe it was obvious the Black Swan would happen. Why didn’t evil terrorists pilot a plane into a building sooner?

The Polish being invaded was a Black Swan.  Sure, it looks obvious now, but Britain and France guaranteed that they’d go to war if Poland was invaded.  Britain and France were completely unprepared for war.  But in hindsight . . . oh, that was the point.

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Javelin jokes?  Please spear me.

We have to live in this world of Black Swans.  Well, Bill Gates doesn’t, but you and I do.  How do we cope?

  1. Be awake. The world wants to lull you to sleep with Doritos® and Johnny Depp movies and food delivery boxes.  Don’t fall for it.  Look at the world through clear eyes.  See beyond your surroundings.
  2. Be honest. You can’t cheat an honest man.  Be honest with others.  Build real relationships. Be honest with yourself.  If you don’t understand that 40 year old you couldn’t beat 18 year old you in a 100 meter dash, you’re not being honest with yourself about your strengths and weaknesses.  Plan accordingly.
  3. Plan for what?  Don’t know.  Everything.  Anything.  Start small.  Three days.  Then Three months.  Then?  Three years.  But start.  The basics of financial survival and the basics of physical survival overlap.  Plan.  Think about what could happen.  You won’t be right, but you’ll be ready to react when the unthinkable really does happen.
  4. Remember, higher consequences are less likely. A fistfight is more likely than a gunfight which is more likely than global thermonuclear war.  Hurricanes are more common than civilizational collapse.  But the odds of civilizational collapse might be much higher than you think.
  5. Understand that the inevitable is . . . inevitable. You’re going to die.  The sun will come up tomorrow.  The Cubs® will never win the World Series™.  Oh, they did?  2016?  I must have been sleeping.
  6. Have a rainy day fund. The rainy day fund isn’t always in dollars, though dollars are super nice.  It can be a pantry full of food you eat.  It can be a massive safe filled with rare PEZ® dispensers.  It can be gasoline in gas cans in your garage, propane in your propane tanks.  Pop Wilder always said, “It doesn’t cost anymore to run off the top half of your gas tank.”  Build slack in your life, in your time, in your supplies.

Even in the darkest days, there is hope.  For Poland, it was an electrician who wanted workers to be treated well, and who also didn’t like communism.  Lech Walesa founded the labor union “Solidarity” in Gdansk, on September 17, 1980.  A year later over 30% of the Polish workforce belonged to Solidarity.  In the end, Solidarity forced the Polish government in 1989 to allow the first free elections since the 1930’s.

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Never underestimate the power of the ‘stache.

Shortly afterward and absolutely related to Walesa’s work?  Another Black Swan, the collapse of the Soviet Union brought about in part by Lech.  A Polish electrician helped bring down a superpower.  Okay, let’s be honest, a Polish electrician and $10 million in covert funding from the CIA.

Thankfully the CIA got that $10 million – the Pentagon would probably have bought, what, 16 hammers with that?  The Pentagon spending wisely?  Now that’s a real Black Swan.

Book Review: Civil War Two, Part I

“I’ll give you a winter prediction:  it’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be grey, and it’s gonna last you for the rest of your life.” – Groundhog Day

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There was a dwarf fortune teller that was wanted by police.  The news headline was “Small medium at large.”

One of the comments on the very first issue of the Civil War Two Weather Report (You can find all three Civil War II Weather Report: Spicy Time Coming, Civil War Weather Report #2, Censorship, Stalin, and a Bunch of Links, Civil War Weather Report #3: Violence, China, and Lots of Links) was a link to Thomas W. Chittum’s 1997 book Civil War Two:  The Coming Breakup of AmericaIt is available as a .pdf here.  Ordinarily I’d point you towards Amazon® so you could buy the book and put money in the author’s pocket, but it looks like the book has been out of print for some time.

Update:  it’s here, Mr. Chittum pointed me in this direction.  Please give this one a purchase – it’s good for Mr. Chittum, and I promise I don’t make a dime off of it.

Chittum had an interesting past before writing this book – he fought in Vietnam for the United States.  Apparently that wasn’t enough and the United States was all peaceful for the next twenty years, so he fought in Rhodesia and Croatia as a mercenary rifleman.  Oh, and he was a computer programmer for most of his life.

The book is now 22 years old, and it makes predictions.  How did it do?  I won’t spoil the plot too much, but Chittum has probably been better at predicting 2019 while writing about it in 1996 than a lot of people have done living in 2016 and predicting 2019.  It was pretty chilling to me to read how much Chittum had gotten right, so I thought I’d review the book.

As the notecards I use for blocking out posts went to three times the number I use for a typical post, I realized that the review would be take (at least) two posts, if not three.  So, here’s part one.  You’ll see part two next Monday.

Early on, Chittum notes that the United States has moved from the status of a nation to that of an empire.  Some might date the beginning of empire to the end of the first Civil War, but I’d say that the United States was, more or less, a single nation up until the 1970’s.  Sure there were regional differences, but the idea of kneeling when the national anthem was played wouldn’t have occurred to anyone but revolutionary Leftists.

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Make the Empire Great Again™!

The United States had a homogeneous culture for 90% plus of citizens in the 1970’s.  The dreams of the civic nationalist were realized in that era that resulted from very low immigration:  all that matters was that people were committed to being the idea of integrating and assimilating into being an American, and it would work out fine.  As long as we were one group that could sit and watch Cheers® or M*A*S*H™ or baseball, and cheer for our favorite teams, we’d be fine.

In the civic nationalist world it didn’t matter that your great-grandparents were Italian immigrants in 1900.  Your grandpa might have been named Enzio, but he went by Ernie and married an Irish gal named Mary.  Your dad played baseball.  Your name is Robert and your sister’s name is Nancy and the only thing really Italian about you is you like pizza.

I’d guess I’d use the participation in youth soccer as a proxy for demographic change.  We all know that soccer was originally invented in Europe so the Germans would have something to do besides invade France and conquer it in an afternoon.  It’s not a traditional game that Americans play.  Oh, sure, the United States women won the World Cup®.  But to be fair, we needed something for our women to do so they didn’t invade France, either.

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Let’s face it, our choice is either World Cup® soccer, or panzers streaking through Paris.  Is it just me, or do the panzers sound more interesting?

But Chittum points out that stability comes from a single group identity.  People being all on the same team makes us stronger, where as many groups make us weaker.  In this light, diversity isn’t Our Greatest Strength™, it’s really a weakness.

And his point is clear – ask a Leftist what it means to be an American, and you’ll likely get a vague statement about all you have to do to be an American is want to be one.  Asking them to learn English and assimilate and fit into American culture is for some reason now considered racist.  From the vantage point of 2019, it’s clear, diversity is our greatest weakness if we want a safe and stable nation.

This is observable in the real world.  Chittum fought in the breakup of the Balkans, and witnessed the breakdown of the Soviet Union.  When the Soviet Union fell, Chittum notes it was about 50% ethnic Russian.  The resulting nation that emerged was about 80% ethnic Russian and is much more stable.  It’s certainly more Russian.

The trends of a nation in peril are observable.  Our police departments don’t look like policemen, they’re now military.  Remember, to a cop, the citizens look like citizens.  To the military, everyone is a potential enemy.

  • SWAT teams raided Amish farms because they were selling unpasteurized milk.
  • Cops get armored personnel carriers like they’re patrolling Syria and not San Francisco.
  • Even local cops in Modern Mayberry wear gloves with hard plastic knuckles during normal patrols.

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When she pulled me over I rolled down the window and said, “What’s wrong?”  Her response?  “Nothing.”

Chittum spends a lot of time on the American Southwest – he figures it will be the trigger to the Civil War.

The original Reconquista took place in Spain as the Spanish expelled the Muslims who had conquered it over the course of six hundred years.  It was slow, but it finished up in 1492.  In the same way, Chittum notes that, although Mexico is a failed state, Mexicans are “retaking” the Southwest in a modern Reconquista that has taken place over decades since 1965, but with 1000% less Muslims.

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Nothing says practical like that hat!

Likewise, Chittum writes that the only solution is to close the border.  Of course he was writing this in 1997 so 22 years have passed.  Right now, at least 40% of the population of Los Angeles is foreign born.  In no way could Los Angeles be considered to be an American city today.  It might even be considered Mexican, as rival Mexican gangs have recently infiltrated the LA County Sheriff’s office (LINK).

Who loves this?  Leftists who wish to topple the United States:  Leftists need the votes.  Ethnic groups like La Raza:  La Raza is the intellectual part of the movement that actively wishes to retake the Southwest.  Multinational corporations:  they like the lower wages.

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Worst, though, are the hipster cops who will only arrest you ironically.

Let’s be clear:  Mexicans are patriots about Mexico.  They love their country – that’s why they proudly carry their flag during protests. Even in 1997, Chittum noted that crime was rampant in Mexico and the border was a mess and it’s even worse in Latin America south of Mexico.  Who can blame them for wanting to come to the United States, especially when some groups spin a fable of an ethnic empire, Aztlan, which is theirs for the taking?

The South and Northeast aren’t much better, and Chittum mentions that the Northeast will experience massive, open violence, which will be unorganized, and savage.  Some of the urban areas might survive as city-states.

California is his odds-on favorite to be ground zero.  Street gangs, as mentioned above, are numerous and founded on ethnicity.  They’ve infiltrated public organizations and the police and even allegedly corrupted members of the Marine Corps (LINK).  It’s this particular “enemy inside” that is troubling.  An external enemy is that can be fought, but when the enemy of the country becomes an internal enemy, it’s much worse – there’s a reason that treason is mentioned in the Constitution.

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Ahh, California, the meth laboratory of democracy.

Chittum mentions militias.  They seemed to have their peak in the 1990’s, and quickly declined after Oklahoma City.  He also mentions “Committees of Correspondence” which were a mechanism for people to communicate with each other because they didn’t have the Internet in the 1760’s to begin to organize against the British, LOL.  The Internet serves this purpose now, with large groups getting information from unapproved sources, and even managing to “privately*” share information.

*Don’t bet your life or liberty on it.

Chittum writes that Civil War Two will be vicious, atrocity filled, and genocidal.  Civilian casualties are to be expected, and many will be on purpose.  Looting will be common.  This is not the usual scenario our military faces in any fashion, so the analyses performed by John Mark (see Civil War II Weather Report: Spicy Time Coming) or Forward Observer (Civil War Weather Report #3: Violence, China, and Lots of Links) aren’t valid.  Civil War Two has the potential to be far worse than any conflict seen in history, as it combines both ethnic division along with ideological division – it’s like the Russian Revolution times Rwanda to the power of Somalia.

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I’ve been stuck in the same phase for . . . oh . . . twenty years now.  Maybe one day I’ll grow out of being a 12 year old.  I’m not telling you how long it took me to get to that phase!

There are four phases according to Chittum.  The first phase of the problem is what he refers to as Foundational.  He said in 1997 the Foundational phase was already complete.

  1. Tribalization of society – have different rules for different ethnic groups, push people to identify as something other than “American.”
  2. Power shift to unelected administrators, judges, board, commissions, and public servants.
  3. Since 1972, wages been stagnant, or, when compared to medical care or education, dramatically falling.
  4. The core of many large cities has been abandoned – think Baltimore or Detroit.
  5. Massive and sustained immigration, falling of standards and conditions in some locations to those similar to undeveloped countries.
  6. Racial organizations in police – militarization of police, which are both covered above.
  7. Treaties are more important that state sovereignty.
  8. A consistent and strong drive for gun control.
  9. From Antifa© to MS-13 to the Crips, these are in place.
  10. Mass media participation in the polarization. The mass media has already picked a side – Left.

We can see what Chittum says is behind us.  Next Monday we’ll look (from his vantage point in 1997 and ours in 2019) to see what else he’s predicted, and how far along we are.

Sweet dreams!

Red Flag Laws, or, How To Repeal The Second Amendment Soviet-Style Without A Pesky Vote

“Now, you see all these red flags?  Trouble spots.  Southeastern Asia.  The Caribbean.  The Congo.  I’ll give you one guess as to who’s responsible.” – Doctor Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine

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I look much better after I’ve had a cup of coffee.  And after I’ve found my axe.

I know that you, gentle reader, have thoughts about guns that are probably pretty similar to mine, so I’d like to take you on a short walk through history, specifically the history of politics and psychiatry.  I promise, it will make more sense than the lyrics to the Manfred Mann song Blinded by the Light.  What the hell is a go-cart Mozart, and why is he checking out the weather chart, anyway?

(Related:  Civil War Weather Reports – Civil War II Weather Report: Spicy Time Coming, Civil War Weather Report #2, Censorship, Stalin, and a Bunch of Links, and Civil War Weather Report #3: Violence, China, and Lots of Links)

The history of psychiatry is tied directly to the political.

I have seen a person suffering from schizophrenia to such a degree that they were sure that MTV® video stars were stealing songs directly from their brain and that they were also a surgeon who regularly performed operations on world leaders and stored their organs in the freezer for safe keeping.

If no one has ever told you that there are human organs belonging to world leaders in their fridge in a completely matter-of-fact “would you like a glass of water” voice, well, all I can tell you is that my first thought was one of complete disbelief that I had heard them right.  Yes, I asked for them to repeat that statement.  Twice.

I walked over and checked their freezer.   Thankfully the only things in it were some frozen pizzas and ancient ice cubes.  I assure you I was talking to their shrink that afternoon and they were involuntarily committed by 5PM.  They were helped, and after being put on some appropriately industrial levels of anti-psychotic medication, did okay enough to be released back into the wild.  As long as they stayed on their meds.

I know that there are actually crazy people that really need help.

But I also know this:  psychiatry is still the most politically abused medical profession.

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Okay, if Depp isn’t crazy, why does he keep starring in movies like this? 

Examples of political abuse of psychiatry?  There are many.  When I mentioned this topic to The Mrs., she immediately said, “the Soviet Union.”  And that’s the example I thought of first, too.  The Soviets systematically used diagnosis of psychological disorders such as “philosophical intoxication” and “sluggish schizophrenia” to put people who didn’t like Marxism into mental institutions.  And, no, those diagnoses aren’t lame jokes – those were really Soviet-era diagnoses.

How many were caught up in the psychological gulags?

We really don’t know since those records are still secret, but in 1978 at least 4.5 million Soviet citizens were listed as having mental health problems.  In 1988, perhaps thinking that they might face their own version of Soviet Nuremburg Trials for Crimes Against Humanity, Soviet leaders had over 800,000 thousand patients removed from the list of the mentally ill.  Paperwork error, surely?

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Okay, with all those red flags, how did they not see the collapse of communism coming?

Did the Soviets condemn thousands with false diagnosis?  Nearly certainly.  Hundreds of thousands?  Very likely.

Millions?

Probably.  Think of it, millions of people falsely diagnosed with a mental illness due to political beliefs and sent to asylums and work camps.  Certainly some were executed.

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The Soviets allowed ownership of smoothbore weapons for hunting.  Except when they didn’t.  Which was most of the time.  Oh, and the definition of sweet summer child is:  a person who doesn’t know the hardships of winter, often used when someone has no experience with a particular (stressful) thing, which may describe a generation that rhymes with perennial.

Okay, it was just the Soviet Union, right?

No.  Cuba did the same thing.  There is evidence that China is still doing it, and likely on scale similar to that of the Soviet Union.  Thankfully the World Psychiatric Association took the lead in investigations.  Oh, they didn’t?  The World Psychiatric Association pretty much ignored it and said that people associated with Falun Gong are nuts and that putting them in asylums run by the state security apparatus (not the medical directorate) was perfectly normal?

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One flew east, one flew west, one flew over the cuckoo’s nest . . . and if you haven’t see the movie, you should, it’s a lighthearted comedy and perfect for a first date.

Okay, that’s just China.  Thankfully this would never happen in the United States.

Oh, it did?

Sure.  In the 1920’s dissidents (like one who protested the trial of Sacco and Vanzetti) were put into asylums.  In the 1960’s members of the American Psychological Association smeared presidential candidate Barry Goldwater in the press by diagnosing him.  But that wasn’t political, right?

Thankfully it isn’t happening now.

Oh, in 2012 a whistleblower with the NYPD was railroaded on mental health?  Ouch.  But New York is corrupt.

It would never happen based on political motives, right?

Dinesh D’Souza, author and filmmaker on the Right was convicted of a crime based on giving too much money to a political campaign.  He admitted he was wrong.  The Federal Judge involved in the case sentenced D’Souza not only to prison, he sentenced D’Souza to years of mental health counselling despite a licensed psychologist saying that D’Souza was just fine mentally.

So, yes.  Psychiatry is a political weapon.  It’s not like the Left has sentenced political opponents to chemotherapy, but I hear that they’re working on it.

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Yes, this is a common sense way to use psychiatry!

This corrupt branch of medicine is the background of the Red Flag Laws.

The idea is that we’ll create laws to remove rights from people without due process, with the presumption that individuals should lose a right guaranteed by the Constitution®.  A single accuser, with no evidence can result in gun confiscation to a law-abiding citizen.  Sadly this already happens – people with contested domestic restraining orders (a standard tactic in divorces nowadays) lose their rights, although I’ve heard of people fighting these orders and winning – at least there is a pretense at due process.

The claim that the ability to strip people of rights won’t be abused is laughable.  In every country that’s been infected by psychiatry, it has been twisted to meet political ends.  Yes, there are crazy people.  I’ve seen one as I related above.  And, if you did a brain scan, there is a physical basis for schizophrenia.  It’s real.  It is a medical condition.  But remember, these are the same psychiatrists that would diagnose me as nuts if I believed I was be five years older than I really am, but are perfectly fine with children younger than the age of five claiming they are a different sex than their genetics have made them.

Po-tay-to, Po-gender reassignment surgery for children is normal-to.

Furthermore, the medical profession as a whole is maybe a bit, well, mental*.  In one study it was claimed that 50% of female doctors could be diagnosed with a mental disease.  I wonder again why my ex didn’t take up medicine?  (*Aesop LINK excluded, unless pimp-slapping in the comments section is classified as a mental disorder.)

Oh, and psychologists have nearly the highest rates of suicide of any profession.  Yes, any profession, including the people who make balloon animals in Mauschwitz Disneyland® for chubby children with hands sticky from chocolate ice cream.  Perfectly stable.  And this is also the same profession whose international governing body (WPA) was just fine with political repression in the name of psychiatry.

Besides being oppressive, the Red Flag laws would not have helped in latest shootings – these people lawfully and legally got their rifles.  But they will form the basis for taking away guns for . . .

  • Conspiracy Theories – Believing anything other than the Official Narrative® will become a basis for exclusion of lawful firearms ownership, despite the fact that throughout history, many conspiracy theories have been proven true. Google® MKULTRA.    That happened.  But the FBI® is now warning that you are a danger if you don’t believe the Official Narrative©.
  • Antisocial Behavior – Ever not want to hang around people? You’re antisocial, and that’s dangerous, citizen.  No AR for you!
  • Websites Visited – Going to unapproved sites? Thinking unapproved thoughts?  Glockblock™!
  • Comments Made When You Were 16 – Wow, did you really say that maybe the Crusades weren’t all bad? No pew-pew for you, hater.
  • Not Believing in the Easter Bunny Socialism – Well, I think I covered that above.

The irony is this will have the impact of keeping people away from mental health professionals.  This will keep people from seeking help when they’re a little depressed, because the consequences of having a “health record” might prevent them from future opportunity – the only safe way to live life would be to stay away from health professionals – and not answer certain questions your M.D. might have for you with a polite BFYTW when asked why you’re not answering.  Oh, but that probably puts you on the antisocial list.

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Texas may or may not be your cup of tea, but they certainly got some things right once upon a time.

Psychiatry is on pretty iffy ground in many cases already.  As an experiment, a group of doctors sent people to a psychiatrist with one symptom – they heard a voice.  No other symptom.  They were perfectly normal, mentally healthy people.  In one case, the person was committed to a mental health facility (as I recall) for several weeks with zero symptoms.  I tried to look it up, but, surprise, most Google® searches right now link commitment to . . . violence.  Even that’s not a comfortable thought.

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Soviet mental health nurse.  Not shown:  tenth guard, who is now an inmate.

The single scariest thing to me is watching a human mind erode – what was once a rational human disappears.  It’s what makes (to me) zombies scary.  They look like humans.  They used to be a normal human.  But that rational human being is now gone, replaced by someone who has no real tie to reality while the external form remains.

I realize that there is a time and a place for psychiatric care.

But psychiatrists are already owned by the Left.  The Left sees you as crazy already.  The Left views your dissent from their agenda as a mental disorder, one punishable by death, if need be.

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I’ll leave the last word to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who is really pictured above while in the gulag:  “I’ll take Solzhenitsyn on Gun Control for $1000, Alex.  Oh, look – the Daily Double®!”

“And how we burned in the camps later, thinking:  what would things have been like if every security operative, when he went out at night to make an arrest, had been uncertain whether he would return alive and had to say good-bye to his family?  Or if, during periods of mass arrests, as for example in Leningrad, when they arrested a quarter of the entire city, people had not simply sat there in their lairs, paling with terror at every bang of the downstairs door and at every step on the staircase, but had understood they had nothing left to lose and had boldly set up in the downstairs hall an ambush of half a dozen people with axes, hammers, pokers, or whatever else was at hand?  [They] would very quickly have suffered a shortage of officers and transport and, notwithstanding all of Stalin’s thirst, the cursed machine would have ground to a halt!  If . . . if . . . we didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation . . . .  We purely and simply deserved everything that happened afterward.”

Social Security Won’t Sink Us. But The Ship is Still Going Down.

“Here comes an overweight cat with dollar signs for eyes and a hat that says “Social Security” pouring a bucket that says “Alternative Minimum Tax” over a sad Statue of Liberty holding a “democracy” umbrella.” – Family Guy

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There’s this joke I heard about Social Security, but no one will get it.

When I was in junior high, our history class ended up with a long-term substitute teacher, Miss Vargas, for over a month.  Most substitute teachers just handed out word-search puzzles where you tried to pick out names of conquistadors, Thanksgiving foods, conquered Mayans, and famous cats that belonged to the Mayflower Pilgrims.  Since Miss Vargas had us for weeks, however, she actually had to teach.  Thankfully, she had a lesson plan.

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Not an original.  I could not resist.

She was a nice substitute teacher so our class didn’t beat up on her that much.  We could tell, however, that, whatever her degree was in, it wasn’t history.  Given the time and place I was going to school, it seemed like she was likely a chemically-damaged refugee from the 1960’s, and likely a former Leftist hippy.  Since we had caught her on some (rather) basic mistakes about American history, we weren’t shy about questioning the things she said.

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Not to mention when Abraham Lincoln “freed the penguins, dude” after signing the Treaty of Ghent at Woodstock.  At least class was interesting.

The lesson (at some point) took us to the New Deal.  The format of the homework should be familiar to anyone who was in school when mimeographs were a thing (look it up).  There was a term, and then the student was supposed to write down the definition.  It was a fancy way to force eighth graders to learn to skim texts for key words written in bold.

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But the smell . . .

One of the terms was Social Security.  I dutifully looked through the text until I found the boldface words Social Security.   In it was the definition that it was (more or less):  An insurance program founded to provide benefits to retired and disabled people.

The teacher, not feeling like grading the homework, decided to go through the definitions with us.  After Social Security she wrote on the board, A program created to redistribute wealth in the country.

With all of the righteous indignation an 8th grader who had fully consumed the Kool-Aid® of the Official Story™ of the Government-Approved© textbook, I proceeded to correct Miss Vargas.

She didn’t back down, and maintained that was the purpose.  Obviously, the event was significant enough that I still remember, and as I grew older I realized that, well, the burned-out hippy was right.  Social Security is a wealth redistribution scheme.  Heck, you can tell the program is socialist – it’s right there in the name.

The program was started in the depths of the Depression and rewarded those who hadn’t paid in with benefits they hadn’t earned.  I’d whine more, but that happened 80 years ago, so it’s like Madonna complaining about her virginity – that ship sailed a LONNNNNNNG time ago – nearly as long ago as when the Japanese bombed the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria at Pearl Harbor.  I know that you’re expecting that this is some sort of rant about how Social Security needs to be taken down because it’ll wreck the economy.  It isn’t a rant, and Social Security won’t wreck the economy.

According to the latest data I could find (there’s probably newer, but 2013 was close enough and I’m travelling) but an average couple, making an average wage paid in about $600,000 in Social Security taxes during their career and would receive roughly $600,000 in benefits – the system was in balance.  Of note, it’s kind of cute because the graphic assumed it was a man married to a woman and not an immigrant trans-porpoise which I understand is now required in California, as long as the porpoise signs a pledge to drive a Prius® and not to use straws.

Ahh, nostalgia for simpler times.

Social Security was roughly in balance in 2013, and could be put back into balance fairly easily with minimal effort, even though we’re facing a demographic bulge as the boomers retire.  As long as we can convince them all to take up chain smoking and they decide that anti-chemo is the new anti-vax, we’re fine.  Theoretically, there are the accumulated savings that Social Security has had during all of those years it was in surplus, but the reality is that all of those funds are just IOUs from Congress sitting in a filing cabinet in West Virginia in a converted National Guard Armory behind Buddy’s Chicken and Black Lung Shack®.  Doris has the key.

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It might look nice, but it still smells like the DMV and low motivation.

Yeah, the money going out of Social Security has already exceeded the money going in to Social Security, but it’s manageable.  A few tweaks to the tax, and a few tweaks to the benefit (two-for-one coupons at Burger King™ instead of money every other month) and it will work out.  Social Security, despite being a piggy bank continually raided by Congress for my entire life, won’t hurt us, at least not by itself.

That’s the good news.  I fully expect that if the only major obligations that the government had were defense, transgender reassignment surgery, and Social Security, we’d be fine.  Heck, even welfare for dachshunds that can’t find a job because of terrier privilege wouldn’t break us.  Even if Congress approved the Ocasio Cortez Guided Missile©, which is designed to approach every target from the Left, has a warhead that does nothing but make babbling sounds, and costs a billion dollars a missile, we’d be fine.

What will break us?

Medicare® and Medicaid™.

Those are the M&M®s that will crater our financial system.

From the 2013 data, the average couple could will pay in about $110,000 in taxes during their lifetime for Medicare, but will take out nearly $400,000 in benefits.  Where does that benefit come from?  I’d say our tax dollars, but let’s you and I be real – not one dime of deficit spending has ever come out of your pocket or mine directly in taxes.  It’s all borrowed into existence at this point.

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I was going to save this graph for Halloween, since it’s scarier than most zombie movies. 

From this projection, you can see that by 2024 Medicare plus Social Security will make up 12% or so of the GDP.  Add in 2% for Medicaid costs, and you’re up to 14% of the GDP.  Add in 4% for the projected interest payments due on the national debt, and that’s 18%, folks.  That leaves 2% at most for all of the rest of the spending on the economy before we run out of tax dollars.  But the rest of the spending (on things like defense) generally runs about 10% of GDP.  Through the magic of math, that means that we’ll need another 10% of GDP.  Just raise the taxes, right?

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Even during the “90% tax rate” 1950’s, the proportion of the GDP taken in taxes wasn’t any higher than today and resulted in more loopholes than there are bacon-wrapped shrimp at a congressional lobbyist’s party.

That means the Federal government spending alone will consume 30% of the GDP, of which at least 10% will be deficit spending.  Given a projected GDP of $26 trillion in 2024, that is an annual deficit of $2.6 trillion.  The deficit this year is projected to be $1 trillion or so, which is more money than some people make in their entire lifetime, so imagine one 2.5 times larger.

Through some sort of magical incantation worthy of Houdini’s proctologist, money has been pulled out of somewhere (The Worst Economic Idea Since Socialism, Explained Using Bikini Girl Graphs) and hasn’t created massive inflation.  Yet.  I guess that in Zimbabwe they managed to just print money like we’re doing now to get out of the problem.

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See, you too can be a trillionaire!

So, in the end, Miss Vargas was right.  Social Security was the start of a program that will do a great job of income redistribution, from a wealthy and prosperous society, to a society where everyone can be a trillionaire, and a good nickel cigar only costs a few hundred billion dollars.

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Thankfully Lincoln posed for this after getting back from Woodstock and before he retired to Gettysburg to make movies with George Lucas.

China – What’s the deal?

“What does that mean?  ‘China is here.’  I don’t even know what the hell that means.” – Big Trouble in Little China

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Had enough Mongols?  This is how you avoid Mongols, unless the 9th Circuit says you have to let them in.

I’ve had my eye on China for quite a while.  It knows why.

Anyway, China has in the past 50 years transformed itself from an example of the nation your parents warned you about:  “See, eat your peas and study hard, you don’t want to be like China,” to a country competing for prime representation in the International House of Pancakes®.  Okay, I made that up.  I don’t even know if they have Frosted Flakes™ in China, let alone pancakes©.

For four thousand years, China looked inward.  Only conquered twice, by the Mongols and by the Manchu, the 20th Century was a succession of weak leaders until the communist takeover at the hands of Mao Zedong.  Mao seemed content to play with the Chinese people and the Chinese economy like a Doberman’s chew toy until his death in the 1970’s.

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AOC will never be a doctor – she’s committing political Mao-practice.

Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, looked around at the huge Doberman spit-covered collectivist mess left by communism, and decided that something had to change.  After visiting the United States, he decided that China needed way to get convenient chocolate milkshakes like that one Jimmy Carter got him at McDonalds®, and began reforming the economy based around market lines.  You know, capitalism.

Capitalism worked amazingly well at saving a communist economy.  Shocker!

The collective ingenuity of over a billion Chinese coupled with capitalist incentives and totalitarian controls has led to growth.  The economy of China in 2019 is 91 times larger than it was in 1978 when Deng’s reforms began.  Some before and after pictures become relevant at this point:

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Okay, I’m exaggerating.  But not by much.

What China has effectively done is make its citizens nearly 100 times richer since Star Wars® first came out.  Perhaps more impressive is the amount of expertise that has been imported to China.  By making first cheap junk in the 1980’s to radar detectors in the 1990’s to iPods® in the early 00’s to iPhones™ today, China has imported not only the technical know-how of cutting edge technology is design, it understands better than any other country in the world on how to build most things.

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See, I told you I wasn’t exaggerating much.  Two day shipping really changed their lives.

An engineer in California (who may or may not even be an American) designs the iPhone©.  In China, they figure out how to build it.  That know-how isn’t in a manual, it’s built up in thousands of mistakes that require solutions to produce a finished product.  All of those solutions are known by the workers and engineers in the factory, and used to make production lines that much faster.

In this way, China has traded lots of cell phones for zillions of dollars that we just printed up out of thin air, sure, but it’s also trained itself on how to be an industrial superpower.

Industrial.  But what about military?

No.  China has seen our military and has no ambition that it can in the near future compete with American military power.  Unlike the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the United States Congress, China has no desire to fight World War II again.  While the United States has fought in numerous conflicts in the last fifty years, China has fought in exactly one, an incursion into Vietnam back before Reagan was president.  The Chinese make the Italians look like Patton with Pizza.

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So, rumor is that they also have a tricycle attack brigade, but they were at nap time.

If I were Chinese President Xi Jinping, I would have no illusions about my military.  Even if it fielded better tanks and planes than the United States, it still would come up short because outside of games of Call of Duty®, the Chinese military has no experience.

Instead:  “China will use a host of methods, many of which lie out of the realm of conventional warfare. These methods include trade warfare, financial warfare, ecological warfare, psychological warfare, smuggling warfare, media warfare, drug warfare, network warfare, technological warfare, fabrication warfare, resources warfare, economic aid warfare, cultural warfare, and international law warfare…” (United States Army Special Operations Command, 2014)

In particular, China has focused on trade.  In the last five years, China has started an international cooperation scheme called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).  This has led to (so far) agreements with over 68 countries.  The stated objective of BRI is that it is meant to produce closer ties and stronger trading arrangements between China and the rest of the world.

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See, need some place to keep my stuff – Mom’s basement is full.

BRI consists of at least a trillion dollars of planned Chinese spending, and by spending, I mean loans.  China will loan countries money to develop infrastructure – pipelines, roads, harbors, PEZ® mines, railroads, industrial parks, electric power grids, and airports to better move people and goods throughout the world.  Certainly China won’t take advantage of the loan conditions if a country has trouble repaying it?

Actually, so far not really.  In only one case has China seized assets, and the rest of them it has either renegotiated debt payments or forgiven them entirely.

So what is China doing?

It came to me one night while I was thinking about the blog and just drifting off to sleep.  Thinking about this like a banker looking to gain leverage wasn’t the right framework.  China isn’t building this trading network to compete with the United States.  China is building this framework for life without the United States.  BRI replaces our markets, and replaces what we’re shipping to them.  But there’s more.

When you look at what China has, it is people, industrial capacity, and ingenuity.  China needs raw materials.  It’s short on food.  It needs oil.  By making inroads into Africa, China has started new mines, run by Chinese administrators and Chinese miners.  China has built, using Chinese laborers and Chinese steel, new railroads in Kenya.

And all of this BRI stuff isn’t paid for in dollars.  China has seen that the United States has managed to pay for debt in dollars it printed.  If China can be the dominant country, it can pay for things in Kenya with Chinese money printed by China itself, rather than have to make iPhones® and send them to iNdiana© in exchange for dollars.

Perhaps it’s just the economy of the United States that China expects will be gone?

Beyond that, closer economic ties with a country that could dominate your economy certainly isn’t dangerous, is it?  They’d never use their influence to change your laws, or influence your movies, right?

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Set from the 2010 remake of Red Dawn before China demanded they not be the villain.   Hmmm.

Belt and Road graphic (pre-meme) By Owennson – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78386561

Bikini Economics, Guns, and the Problem with Free Stuff

“Good job, isn’t it? Type something will ya, we’re paying for this stuff.” – Ghostbusters

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I like guns.  And butter.  Especially cocoa butter.  Admit it – you’ve never enjoyed economics more.

Economics means choices.

One choice presented by Marxist economics professors to hung-over sophomores in college is between “guns or butter.”  This is a classic economic model.  In it, a choice is presented:  produce guns for defense, or food for the people, or another shot of Jägermeister© before Calc 201.  I added the Jägermeister® for the sophomores.  No one should have to learn 3-space vector calculus sober.

The idea is that there is some balance where government can feed people just enough so that they can make guns for beautiful Marxist bikini soldiers to take over the world with love and kindness and AK-47s.  In this fable, once the world chooses peace (that means Marxism), guns will no longer be produced and the glorious workers will now luxuriate in a worker’s paradise.

These are the deep thoughts of a dimwitted socialist like Kamala Harris, or of an overly caring 11 year-old who is earnestly trying to solve the world’s problems.  But I repeat myself.

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Don’t be mean to Kamala.  She already enough difficulty explaining to her husband why she’s in the top results for “slept her way to the top” on a Google® image search (this is true).

Just because Marxists were wrong about economics doesn’t mean that economies that there aren’t economic choices to make.  There are.  The biggest actual economic choice to make is whether to spend the output of that economy on building additional productive capacity or on Free Stuff.

Building additional production is investment in the economy.  Sure, Leftists like to use “investment” as just another word for Free Stuff, but investment, by definition, produces a return.  In the case of investment in an economy, after the investment is done the economy produces more than it did before.  Instead of dividing a finite economic pie between guns or butter, the genius of investment is that it creates a bigger pie for everyone.  By definition, that’s a win, because it also means more guns for everyone!

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There is a time to tell the truth, and a time to lie.  If she’s holding an AK, it’s time to lie.

This was self-evident in Western Civilization during the Cold War.  We picked the strategy that we invest in our economies so that they became larger, and we’d defeat Communism by out producing them.  In order to do that, we increased freedom of the free market so that instead of handfuls of production bureaucrats and commissars guessing what should be produced, millions of free people experimenting in an open economy would make that choice.  The winners were selected by the market, and even when things like the Hula-Hoop® or Justin Bieber became wildly popular, industrial capacity was increased all across Western Civilization (and Japan, which had largely adopted all of the winning parts of Western Civilization).

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I would try to Hula Hoop©, but last time the neighbor called an ambulance because they thought I was having a seizure.

We allowed this to guide our military spending, too.  Multiple companies competed to produce new jet fighters that were more capable, missiles that were more accurate.  The technical prowess of the military came not from a top-down dictate, but from the companies competing to produce better defense products.  Sure, some of them were horrible, but most of our equipment and doctrine was better than the Soviet stuff.  How much better?  Ask Saddam Hussein.

As the focus of our economy was growth, the economy grew.  How big did it grow?  It grew to the point where Reagan could consciously bankrupt the entire guns and butter Soviet economy through pretending that the Star Wars™ missile defense was going to make intercontinental ballistic missiles obsolete.  The economy of Western Civilization was such a potent weapon because it harnessed the ingenuity of everyone through capitalist incentives and rewards.  The system of capitalism was so obviously successful that China®, Inc. decided to copy it for their economy and get rid of the silly Maoist collectivism.  Keep in mind, capitalism does not mean freedom.

Economies still have limits.  There’s a maximum amount of “stuff” that the economy can produce, and certainly there’s a limit based on sheer physics, if nothing else, though we’ve yet to see it.  The real choice isn’t guns or butter, it’s investment versus Free Stuff.  It used to be that money mattered, but that was in the time before Modern Monetary Theory (The Worst Economic Idea Since Socialism, Explained Using Bikini Girl Graphs) fans tossed bottles of Jägermeister© into Congress and told ‘em to spend as much as they wanted.

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If Venezuela had a dollar for every time giving out Free Stuff worked, they’d have zero dollars.  Oh, that’s exactly what Venezuela has.  Never mind.

What Free Stuff do the Leftists want to toss out?

  • “Free” Healthcare – for everyone. Including illegal aliens.  You might think that they don’t give it away now – they do.  A pregnant illegal alien show ups to have a baby?  You get to pay for that right now.  I guess the good news is you don’t have to change it’s diaper.
  • “Free” Daycare – for everyone. Why?  Because who could be better at raising your children than the state.  They do such a good job at the DMV.
  • “Free” College – for everyone.  That kid that sat behind you with his finger up his nose, who talked about how he wanted to ride a tyrannosaurus on Mars?  When he was a senior in high school?  Yeah, he gets free college, too.  Although riding a tyrannosaurus on Mars does sound cool.
  • “Free” Income – for everyone.  Why not give everyone $1000 a month for free.  It won’t distort the economy at all.
  • “Free” Reparations – not for everyone. People who were never slaves would get paid by people who never had slaves, for the sin of slavery.  Makes about as much sense as the rest of this list.
  • “Free” Housing – just not in the gated communities where Congressmen live.

Oh, and don’t forget regulations, since regulations is another way to give Free Stuff.  They take freedom from the economy and create winners and losers.  The Green New Deal is an example of this – the idea of the Green New Deal has nothing to do with the environment – it’s all about creating a socialist economy.  In the words of AOC’s advisor:  “Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?” Saikat Chakrabarti asked. “Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire-economy thing.”

Regulations are used to change the economy.

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Take a look at all of the innovation spawned by Communism!

At some point Free Stuff will grow to encompass the entire economy leaving nothing for productive growth.  Ever notice that every Communist economy freezes at the technology level (outside of military technology) that existed when it went Commie?  Cuba is a great example, what with all of the vintage 50’s Ford® and Chevy© rust buckets and fine Soviet cars they have on the streets.  If only they would have waited until the 1970’s to go Communist they could have had Ford© Pintos™.  That would have made driving exciting!

The same thing happened in Venezuela.  PDVSA was a very profitable oil company before Hugo Chavez gutted it to provide Free Stuff to the Venezuelan people.  Now?  PDVSA is deeply in debt and incapable of producing as much oil as it did in 1998, despite having 77.5 billion barrels of reserves.

Yeah.  Free Stuff can make a country bankrupt.

The nice thing about this concept is that it also applies to individuals.  Every day each of us has a choice:  do we work to make ourselves better, or do we goof off?  The choice is an important one.

Do you invest time in increasing your capabilities every day?  Do your work to make yourself better?  I mean, really work?  Take Steve Martin’s advice – “Be so good they can’t ignore you.”  (“Be so good they can’t ignore you.”-Steve Martin Plus? A sniper joke.)

You have the choice.  And time is running out.  And I’m certain you can’t afford Free Stuff.

Sushi, Strippers, ATMs, Sears and Me

“Let’s go get sushi and not pay.” – Repo Man (1984)

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I prefer my 7-11® sushi with a side of WD-40® and a banana-bacon-shrimp Slurpee©.  Nothing says great sushi like sushi bought at a store where you can get gasoline and lottery tickets!

On Sunday afternoon I was finishing up work on the last post (The Bridge on the River Kwai Moment), and sitting at the dining room table with The Mrs., enjoying air conditioning and some coffee.  The Boy and Pugsley had hatched a cunning scheme whereby they were going to go into town to buy food, probably 7-11™ sushi.  Yes, I know, but when you live in Modern Mayberry sometimes 7-11© sushi is the only sushi if Wal-Mart® sushi is sold out again.

I assumed the position of the First Bank of Dadâ„¢, and rummaged through my wallet for cash.  Looking, I had a ludicrous number of single dollar bills – $16 in ones.  “Okay, guys, hope you don’t mind ones.  Here is $15 in ones, and a $10 and a $5.  That should keep you in raw fish and botulism.”

Pugsley laughed, “It’s like Dad went to a strip club and got too many ones from the ATM!”

The Boy stopped and immediately defended my honor, “What are you talking about?  Dad would never, ever . . . go to an ATM.”

That’s a direct quote.  Thanks, pal.

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I think if I were going to be a stripper, I think I would use the name Brax Thünderhyde, and dress as a construction worker.  Probably a building inspector – they’re sexy, right?  I hear chicks did clipboards.

This really happened, nearly word for word.  The Mrs. immediately started laughing, as did I.  I hadn’t been to an ATM since college, when I determined that an ATM was just a hole in your bank account that your money leaked out of.  When I was about 20, I found out through bitter experience that either I didn’t have enough money, discipline, or intelligence to have an ATM card, so I cut it up.  My life has been far better since then.  So, yes, The Boy was right, I’ve been to a strip club more recently than I’ve been to an ATM.

The ATM card was my first exposure to the concept that banks were certainly not on my side – I wasn’t their friend, I was simply a way for them to get fees.  ATM cards were a way to charge me to get my own money – I’d pay a $1 fee for $100 in cash.  That’s an immediate 1% for the privilege of using my own money, on those rare occasions that I had $100.  In the far more realistic case that I was pulling out $20, it was the same fee for $20, so that’s a 5% fee.  The good thing is that I could also check my balance at the ATM.

I was in college and could do calculus, but I certainly wasn’t smart enough to do basic subtraction.  Take $21 out of your account too many times?  End up with negative numbers in your bank account.  That led to the really fun set of fees – charges for having less than zero money.  Like the lottery, bank fees are a tax on bad math and poor impulse control.

After I had to pay overdraft fees the second time, I cut up the ATM card.  If it was Friday and I needed cash for the weekend?  I’d go down to the bank and cash a check.  That was it.  You can’t use an ATM machine if you don’t have a card.  This had two good effects – I had to plan how much I was going to spend on Coors Light® for the weekend, but, once I ran out of money, I had to stop spending.  No choice, no poor willpower.  I had to stop.  And if I had to check my balance without an ATM?  I could have a friend shove me really hard.

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But dumping the ATM card was a good one.

I haven’t had an ATM card (or even a debit card) since then, and don’t think I’ve paid a fee to a bank for anything other than mortgage interest in almost two decades.  I learned a big lesson from using an ATM: to the bank, I was the commodity.  I was nothing more than ATM transaction fees and overdraft fees.  My bad math paid their salaries.

That realization made me look around and observe how other companies viewed me.  I realized that entire businesses have been built around using consumers as commodities.  In the 1990’s Sears® attempted to get every financial dollar conceivable out of a consumer short of turning them upside down and shaking them to see if any singles were left over from the strip club would fall out.  How did Sears do this?

  • You could buy your clothing, hardware, crib, bed, refrigerator and lawnmower at Sears®.
  • You could also get your auto and homeowners insurance from Allstate©, which was owned by Sears®.
  • You could buy your house from Coldwell Banker Real Estate©, also owned by Sears®.
  • You could invest your spare cash with your broker at Dean Witterâ„¢, also owned by Sears®.
  • And anything you didn’t buy at Sears®, like Coors Light®? You could charge everything else with your Discover© Card – also owned by . . . Sears®.

When (in the late 1990’s) I realized that Sears® at one point or another owned all of those companies, it became clear to me that Sears® was attempting to get a piece of every dollar that I could spend that wasn’t given to directly to a mortgage lender.  They then sold off these businesses, and have been very successful since then:

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I kid.  Sears® remains every bit as relevant today as fax machines and slide projectors.

It was around the same time that I first heard the word “monetize.”  Taken literally, it means, “make into money,” and an example is what the Clintons did with the presidency and Jeff Bezos’ girlfriend did with Jeff.

But back to me.  It was the late 1990’s and a friend of mine had moved into the financial side of the business we were working at.  She mentioned that they were going to “monetize” the Werewolf Repellent® that our company made by selling it while it was still in our warehouses, and then lease the warehouse out to somebody else and rent back the space from the people we leased the warehouse from to store the Werewolf Repellent™ that we’d (by then) sold to someone else.  Our salesmen would (eventually) sell the Werewolf Repellent© to yet a different person, but the money would go to the person who now owned it with a cut to the person leasing our warehouse from us.  It was a way to make money without having to actually sell anything to a pesky consumer.

To me, the scheme seemed unnecessarily complicated, like trying to play a trombone using a vacuum cleaner, a live chicken, a brick, and a purple condom.  It was explained to me that this was a way that our Werewolf Repellent© could make money for us even when it was sitting in our own warehouse not repelling even a single werewolf.  I think they gave up on the idea when they found that the only money we were making from the scheme was due to accounting irregularities and by saving aluminum cans from the employee lounge.

When she was describing the scheme, I nodded and mumbled “okay” and pretended like I understood what she was talking about, even though I still didn’t get it.  But it did spark another thought.  If we could monetize our Werewolf Repellent© that was just sitting in a warehouse, then what was Sears® doing?  It was pretty simple.  They were attempting to monetize me.  I now had a word for it.

Capitalism works best when people look for ways to create better service for you so that you will give them your money.  This is the power of capitalism – people competing to make you happy.  This provides a springboard for innovation.  It provides a reason for people you’ve never met to cooperate with you to allow both of you to meet your goals.

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And I hear that their diet plan works great, too!

A rule of economics is that the more indirectly you do something, the easier it is.  If you had a rock to break, you could hit it with another rock until it broke.  It’s the simplest way, but it’s also the hardest.  You could get a steel hammer to break the rock, but now you need find iron ore and make the steel and form it into a hammer.  Much more efficient, but much more indirect.  Heck, you could create an entire chemical laboratory and make explosives, and taking your hammer and a steel chisel and put a hole in the rock, and then blow it up.  That’s the easiest, but it is the most indirect method yet.

Just like my bank tried to do when they created the ATM, the coming trend is to monetize cash.  It’s harder to remember to go to the bank on Friday to get cash than to get cash, anywhere, at any time.  From the standpoint of Wall Street, cash sucks.  If I want to go buy a six pack of crotch weasels and I use cash, the only people getting a cut are the crotch weasel store and the government – crotch weasel sales are taxable in Midwestia.  Governments have this monetization thing down.

Don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of products I’d miss, if they disappeared tomorrow, but monetization is also control.

  • Appetite: grow your own versus a buying food at a supermarket
  • Money: cash versus a credit card. Every credit card requires fees.
  • Emotion: Twitter® versus not being irritated at everyone.
  • Envy: Facebook© versus just being happy being you.
  • Attention: Netflixâ„¢ versus a book or this fine blog.
  • Lust: Ruffles®.  You know you want some.

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Okay, that might be an extreme solution.

Don’t think monetization is control?  What about EBT cards?  Legislators have even figured out how to give banks a share by monetizing poverty.  What happens if the EBT cards shut down?  Yup.  Monetization is control.  Ben Hunt has a good post (LINK) on how Facebook® is attempting to monetize money yet again to destroy cash (and Bitcoin) and give governments complete surveillance of every financial transaction – and Hunt thinks that it just might work.  (H/T Remus, at the Woodpile Report (LINK) – if you’re not reading the Woodpile Report – you’re missing out.)

If monetization is control, that means that if it can be monetized, it can be weaponized.

  • Stop the food – without a farm, you’re hungry.
  • Deny you credit, cancel your card – you’re not able to rent a hotel room.

Okay, the world would likely be better off without Twitter©, Facebook™, and Netflix® (you’ll pry the Ruffles© from my cold, dead fingers) but what would we do with our time?

Go to strip clubs?  I know you’re certainly not going to catch me near any ATMs . . . .

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