Is Everything Fake?

“Happy premise number three:  even though I feel like I might ignite, I probably won’t.” – Bowfinger

My ex-wife was more versatile than carbon:  she could form more than four bonds at the same time.

The economy recently feels to me like a(nother) bad sequel to The Matrix:  smoke, mirrors, simulated steaks and guys pretending to be girls directing everything.

It made me think of Bowfinger, a 1999 Steve Martin flick.  Steve Martin plays the titular producer, Bobby Bowfinger.  His character drops this gem while trying to scam a crew into working on his latest film:

“That’s after gross net deduction profit percentage deferment ten percent of the nut. Cash? Every movie costs $2,184.”

The rest, it’s like Hollywood?  Fake sets, fake stars, fake everything.  Our economy, I think, has officially hit 8.9 out of 10 on the Bowfinger scale.

It’s a façade of trillions propped on fraud, fiat, and fairy dust.  The evidence is everywhere:  from federal slush funds laundering cash to “charities” that fund political hit squads, to Somali scams siphoning billions for terrorist toys, to the AI hype train where Nvidia’s® GPUs vanish into vaporware voids.  It makes me ask one question:

Have we peaked at “peak fake”?

Genghis Khan stayed in shape during conquests by making sure he hit his steppe goal each day.

Start with the government’s golden shower of “aid.”  In the last few months, we’ve watched as the public found out that billions flood from Uncle Sam’s coffers to “nonprofits” and foundations that, surprise, boomerang right back to commentators, politicians, and partisan ops that give the opinions to the Democratically-appointed judges to make sure that their cash lifeline is safe from scrutiny.  Sibling marriages are less incestuous.

Remember the post-election blitz Democratic blitz?  A Free Press® investigation uncovered a $27 billion rush-out-the-door bonanza, with $20B hitting eight leftist nonprofits faster than Kamala could say “unbourboned by what has been.”

It would be one thing if these were soup kitchens serving the starving, but these are slush funds for radical agendas, exploiting tax dollars to bankroll everything from election meddling to “community organizing” that looks suspiciously like astroturf Antifa® activism.  It’s like if United Way™ funded Trotsky but funded by the Czar.

Robespierre, Trotsky, and Pol Pot walk into a bar.  There were no survivors.

And USAID?  They shelled $44K to Politico™ for subscriptions chump change, but emblematic of how federal funds feather media nests.  Nonprofits are NGO scams, funneling billions to progressive power grabs, sometimes even recycling it from overseas.  Ukraine is the country that just keeps giving.  I mean, if you’re a Democratic politician.

House hearings exposed how these networks weaponize your taxes for ideological insurgency.  You’re paying for the people who keep bleating:  “muh democracy.”  This is Bowfinger budgeting: real costs hidden, profits pocketed by players who script the narrative.

Speaking of Minnesota Somalisota . . . (otherwise known as Mogadishu on the Mississippi), the relentless spotlight has turned from Indian invaders to Somalian swindlers.  The “Feeding Our Future” fraud, where Somali networks allegedly pilfered over $250M from child nutrition programs during COVID.  That’s bad enough, but state audits have found broader scams at over $1 billion in taxpayer theft, with funds funneled overseas to anti-American terrorists.

Terrorist training:  “C-4 yourself.”

I mean, not just anti-American Democrats, but actual “was given a dowry of AK-47s, goats, and C-4” dirka-dirka terrorists.

This isn’t petty theft:  this is peak fake philanthropy that rivals the Clinton Foundation.  “Charities” as cover for African clan cash grabs, shipping your dollars to fund foes abroad.  If you watch videos of interviews with these people, they have no connection philosophically to the United States, wish to live under sharia law, don’t speak English, and don’t have jobs, other than stealing.  I guess the only saving grace is that at least these “charities” didn’t pay for Chelsea Clinton’s wedding and the terrorists are fine with using standard NATO rounds.

The next fake?  I’ve mentioned it again and again, Nvidia®.

It’s not so much Nvidia™ as the hype around A.I.  Nvidia® seems to (mostly) be just selling computer chips.  Mostly.  Their stock has been exploding upward like a Somalian with a grenade, doubling since April, with a market capitalization flirting with $4 trillion.

Who is buying all those GPUs, and for what?  Is it kids playing Fortnite®?

Ed Zitron, tech industry writer, estimates Big Tech needs $2T in AI revenue by 2030 just to justify their A.I. spending binge, or it’s going to lead to a fall that will leave a mark.  We’re back to Wilder’s A.I. Paradox:  if A.I. is valuable enough to be worth the money that’s being invested in it, it will wreck the economy with a wave of unemployment.  If it’s not, it’ll wreck the economy because it failed.

Yay!  It’s almost like we don’t have a choice!

My quantum computer wasn’t working, so tech support told me to turn it on and off at the same time.

It’s a lot like the French having a military:  if they fight, they lose, and if they run, they lose.

Who is buying this stuff?  The usual suspects: OpenAI®, Microsoft™, Oracle©, Amazon™, and Google©.  As we’ve shown here before, this investment simply doesn’t have the infrastructure like electricity, PEZ®, or clean water production to support it even if they could build all that stuff.  It smells like tulips in the Dutch Republic back around 1637.

Me?  I think it’s entirely possible that we’re building a multi-trillion-dollar computer that might wreck our economy if it works.  And it might wreck the economy if it doesn’t.

So, is this peak fake?

We’ve got governments gifting billions to grifters on an endless cash spin-cycle.  We’ve got immigrants importing scams and exporting cash to jihadi Jamal in Jowhar.  Also, we have A.I. alchemists turning silicon into massive debts that might be decadal mistakes.

If it was just that, yeah, it might all work out.  But there’s this:  the economy is a house of cards built on counterfeit confidence:  $36 trillion in fiat debt, infinite inflation, and innovations that might wreck everything if they don’t become a robotic overlord.  Is it any wonder that the smallest pebble dropped onto this slope might cause a landslide?

How much dirt is in a six foot deep, three foot diameter hole?  None.  It’s a hole.

Fake fails eventually, but often lasts longer than almost anyone would believe during inertia.

Will we reset?  I think that’s almost certain.  When will we reset?

That I can’t tell.  As long as everyone agrees that the market is up, the market is up.  But Wendy’s™ is getting ready to close 5% of its restaurants because the business is so great.  I think the lower end of the income spectrum has thrown in the towel.

“A Dave’s Single™?  What, do I look like a Rockefeller?”

Going back to The Matrix:  “You know, I know this steak Dave’s Single® doesn’t exist.  I know that when I put it in my mouth, the Matrix is telling my brain that it is juicy and delicious.  After nine years, you know what I realize?  Ignorance is bliss.”

Ignorance, bliss?  What do those words even mean?  In other news, I’m in a great mood!

Disclaimer:  This isn’t investment advice, this is an Internet humor column.  You might want to try those little cartoons they had in Bazooka Joe® gum for better advice on timing and market direction than I could give you.  I don’t own any positions in any stock mentioned in this post, and I also do not own (much) real estate on the Moon, though I was sold a 1/10th share in some bridge in New York by an Albanian.

The Simpsons, Radioactive Potato Salad, And Running Out Of Electricity

“I have become death, destroyer of worlds.” – Andromeda

Had Oppenheimer been a theoretical physicist he would have been frictionless, perfectly spherical, homogeneous, isotropic, involuntarily celibate, and have extended to infinity in all directions.  I guess one out of seven isn’t bad.

You know, Oppenheimer probably didn’t realize that his little gadget would one day power cat videos on YouTube®. But yet, here we are, preparing to stare down the barrel of an energy crisis that makes the 1970s oil embargo look like a minor hiccup at the gas pump.

America’s tech overlords are building A.I. data centers faster than a caffeinated beaver on gas station Chinese boner pills.  These behemoths suck down electricity like it’s free beer at an open bar to toss electrons so we can make A.I. cat videos because there weren’t enough cats in real life.

The scale is enormous:  gigawatts upon gigawatts, enough to finally get Marty all the way back to 1985.  But that begs this question:

Where’s all that juice coming from?

My walkie-talkie once took a lump of coal to a movie.  It was a classic example of radio-carbon dating.

Coal?  Ha!  That’s so 19th century, and the eco-warriors have pretty much chained themselves to the last coal plant, screaming about carbon footprints.

Natural gas?  Did everyone forget demand peaks in winter when everyone is cranking up the heat and prices spike like Nvidia® stock?  Are we going to have to keep our homes at 40°F (3.14 millipedes) just so ChatGPT® can make GloboLeftist women on the East Coast even more neurotic?

We need power, so, naturally, the bright sparks in Silicon Valley and D.C. turn to the holy grail: The Simpsons.

Sure, Homer® looks incompetent, but he hasn’t melted Springfield down.  Yet.  When The Simpsons started, they were mocking nuclear power in the typical GloboLeft drive to get it shut down.

Deep down, though, nuclear really always has been the only viable transition plan into the future.  Oil really will run out at some point, abiotic or not.

I had an allergic reaction and the doctor asked how I was.  “Swell.”

But nuclear?  If done right, it really can be clean, reliable, and if we don’t let Soviets do it, pretty safe.

So, problem solved.

Not.

We’re facing an immediate energy cliff.  In 2025, nuclear isn’t a parachute, it’s really more like a bedsheet and some twine.

With a little help from Constant Reader Ricky, who sent me an email.

I’ll quote him directly because, well, he nails it better than I could.

Ricky writes: “Existing commercial power reactors in the US have two key characteristics – their uranium is enriched from the natural 0.7% U-235 assay to a level of 3%, and they are cooled with pressurized water as the heat transfer fluid to run the turbines. The reactors were INITIALLY fueled via uranium enrichment done long ago in . . .  monstrous factories that are now closed.  An effectively experimental centrifuge enrichment operation in Piketon, Ohio shut down in 2016 without ever producing a pound of reactor fuel (we bombed a similar setup recently in Iran).

“Believe it or not, the US CURRENTLY fuels its commercial nuclear power reactors for the past ten years with Russian 3% enriched uranium, even through the Ukrainian war.  The Russians basically dilute some of their bomb grade 93% enriched uranium stockpile down into 3% reactor fuel as an export profit center.”

Key point courtesy of Ricky: “The current American commercial nuclear power program is 100% dependent on the Russians and has been for the last decade.”  He adds, “But we want that because that every kilogram of Russian uranium that goes IN a New York City power reactor is one less kilogram of Russian uranium that can go into an incoming nuclear bomb OVER New York City.”

He’s right.  I want the Russians to hit the Somilsotans first.  And then New York City twice.  It’s the only way to be sure.

And just like uranium, Hillary is unstable, hard to find, and expensive.  If only we could power a reactor with her tears.

It’s like we’re in a bad spy novel, relying on our geopolitical rivals for the fuel that keeps our lights on.  We can stamp our feet as much as we want to, but as long as Mom and Dad are paying the power bills, they call the shots.

With AI data centers projected to gobble up an extra 200-300 gigawatts by 2050 (that’s tripling our nuclear capacity), we’re supposed to ramp up nuclear like it’s no big deal.  It’s like the steady high school girlfriend you’ve been dating off and on for a year who you can always call for a date at the last minute.

Nope.

Building that kind of capacity?

Recent estimates peg adding just 63 GW at $354 billion.  We’re talking trillions when you factor in overruns. The Vogtle plant in Georgia – two reactors, “just” 2.2 GW, clocked in at $35 billion after fifteen years of delays.

Nuclear power makes NASA look prompt and frugal.

Okay, we’ll just do micro-reactors.

Except these micro wonders ditch the “obsolete” 3% enriched uranium for something hotter: 20% enriched stuff, packaged in pellets like, I don’t know, energy kibble. Supposedly, they’re meltdown-proof, corrosion-resistant, great with kids, fun at parties, and perfect for high-temperature gas or molten salt reactors.  And they’re much smaller than kibble, like poppy seed sized, but kibble is a funnier word and I really don’t want to think how stupid it is to build highly radioactive balls that you could put into someone’s potato salad at the neighborhood picnic?

I did figure out where I got the plague:  the flea market.

Cool, so where do we get this 20% enriched uranium for our nuclear kibble?

We downblend our surplus bomb-grade stuff from the Cold War.

The US has 480 metric tons total, but half is reserved for nuking India (it’s the only way to be sure), and 100 tons reserved for Navy reactors.

Bringing those numbers up to date and turning it into nuclear kibble leaves 86 metric tons up for grabs.

So, we have a safe plan.  What’s stopping us?

Adding 250 GW of new nuclear by 2050 (a Department of Energy guess) requires 5,350 metric tons (it’s like a ton, but it has a French accent) of enriched uranium kibble.

Do the math:

86 tons available vs. 5,350 needed?

It’s like trying to fill an Olympic®-sized pool by spitting into it.

Our energy policy in a single meme.

Okay, let’s restart a program that used to make the stuff.  Great!  The Piketon, Ohio centrifuge plant we mentioned above, let’s use that. They’re planning on delivering 900 kilograms (a ton for those of us from countries that have put people on the Moon) by 2026.

So, we need over 5,000 tons.

We’ve made one.  Oh, scratch that, not even one yet.

Want to take odds on that bet?

Even if we magically create tons of usable uranium, Harry Potter-style®, there’s no supply chain for turning it into nuclear kibble.  Right now, it’s a prototype lab in New Mexico fiddling with demos.

We’d need a whole new industry.

And we’d need to have started on this (checks watch) twenty years ago.  That’s the bitch of exponential growth.  We could play with 2030 numbers (“only” 50 GW), but since no concrete has been poured for this new capacity and there is no path to creating this fuel, it’s more realistic to discuss if Superman© could beat The Witcher®.  It’s a non-starter.

I mean, who would win, Captain Kirk or T.J. Hooker?

We’re dependent on foreign fuel, short on domestic capacity, and staring at timelines measured in decades, not quarters.

Maybe it’s time to rethink the whole “AI will save us” stock market hype or at least stock up on candles and spears.

And hey, if that microreactor ends up in my yard, Homer© and I will host a barbecue, BYOGC.

(Bring your own Geiger counters, you know, potato salad).

Thank heavens we let The Simpsons create our energy policy.

Izzat:  How An Indian Concept Is Destroying The West

“Your honor, Your Honor.” – Caddyshack

Indian roads have so many potholes you should request a trip advisor.  (all memes except for the one directly above are as-found)

I hadn’t planned on doing more than one India post, but, with more and more information about the H-1B program coming out, I did a second one.  I didn’t plan on doing a third post.

But yet, here we are.

The latest skirmishes on the “India versus the world” front have been illuminating.  One of my biggest surprises was how Dinesh D’Souza had a meltdown on X®.  It’s odd that a man who wrote a book called The End of Racism would start calling anyone who disagreed with him “whitey”.

To be clear, it’s not something that bothers me personally, since I wake up every morning, look at my hands, and realize I’m not Indian.

Whew!  Damn, it feels great to be white!

But, after watching the reputation of my nation, one that white people created, being dragged through the mud, watching whites be discriminated against, and watching a never-ending toll of one-sided violence in the United States against white people, well, I’m done with political correctness.

But it doesn’t explain Dinesh.  I’ve always thought of him as a bit of a grifter since the only thing he has ever produced for this world are his opinions and carbon dioxide to feed plants.  One of the key takeaways I’ve seen from watching grifters is that “the first rule of grifting is that you don’t intentionally piss off the people you’re grifting”.

So, what is it that caused Dinesh to pop and get D’Souza all over the place?

Izzat.

What’s izzat?  I know, it sounds like one of my stupid jokes.  And when I first read about it, I was looking for a punchline.  But, nope, it’s real.  I read about it in a screencap from user GluttonousManSlob on kiwifarms®.  It was posted on a thread on /pol/, but the file is too large for me to post here, but you can find it on X® because I posted it here (LINK).

There is no direct translation of izzat as far as I know, and I know a lot of words.  It’s a weird (to a Westerner) concept of collective and individual honor and status.  The reason it is so weird is that it is honor that is completely stripped from the concept of right and wrong.  Izzat is all about winning and losing.

Dinesh didn’t want to reply, he had to reply.  His izzat was at stake.

As I said, anything is justified to keep izzat, even murder.  An example from India:  an Indian rickshaw driver saw two other Indians peeing in the street.  There was a public toilet right there.  The rickshaw driver offered to pay for the toilet for the men.

The men, having lost izzat, came back with a mob and beat the rickshaw driver to death.  The urinating Indians thus restored their lost izzat.

Dinesh saw mocking other Indians as something he simply could not put up with, and defended them as izzat demanded.  But there’s more to it than that.

The other problem with izzat is that it doesn’t matter who is right or wrong, it’s just about winning, which is why izzat prevents Indians from admitting they were wrong.  They will never take responsibility because being wrong entails a huge loss of izzat.

This leads to a complete breakdown in infrastructure.  Reporting a pothole is an insult to the Supreme Director of Roadway Quality and Repair for Utter Pradesh and if you reported one, the Supreme Director will want to find a way to punish and humiliate you rather than, you know, fix the pothole.  The mission of an organization or company isn’t as important as the izzat of the individuals at the organization.

Oh, and also why bribery is nearly a spectator sport:  if you bribe, you can get what you need (win).  But to require a bribe, well, that’s a lot of izzat.

Which is why scamming is great for Indians:  izzat isn’t about morality, remember, it’s about winning and losing.  But, it’s more than that.

The izzat from social status increases is amazing.  If an Indian has a job at, say, Microsoft™ and manage to hire another Indian, they owe him.  Izzat demands that their loyalty isn’t to Microsoft©, it’s first to that Indian that hired them, and second to all of the other Indians there.

It’s in-group preference on steroids.  And it explains why Indians never hire non-Indians unless they have to.  They don’t get izzat from Tom Tuttle from Tacoma, but they do get izzat from Kumar Krishnananana from Kashipur.

But if the hire Tom, they get a guy who wants to work for the organization, and get ahead to get raises, et cetera.  Typical Western behavior.  But if they hire Kumar, they get another person wo will want to increase his izzat by hiring in a bunch of other Indians, and, if possible a bunch of other Indians from his caste.

Best?

A bunch of Indians from his family.

In an Indian-dominated company, it’s no longer about the organization or the mission, or what is right and what is wrong.

It’s about izzat.  It’s about winning.  Each Indian is at war with every other Indian, yet they must support the other Indians against, well, you.  Why do Indians with middle class jobs raid food banks in Canada?  Because they can.  Because if they do that, they win, and get izzat.

If the guy above is okay with taking food from poor people, stealing Grandma’s life savings is nothing.  Probably, he thinks it’s moral.

The error that most people from the West make when dealing with other cultures is to think that other cultures have the same goals as those of the West, goals based on the honor of being a good man, of building for the future for our children, of doing what is right rather than what is easy, even when it means standing up to authority.

Western values, American values are in many ways the direct opposite of everything Indian culture produces.

Izzat, like the Indian Thugee cult is nothing but a destructive influence, one that, if the Indians like, they can keep.

And that’s all I have to say about izzat.

The Economy: Is It All Fake?

“This is my costume. I’m a homicidal maniac. They look just like everybody else.” – The Addams Family (1991)

The upside of burkas is that if you divorce and remarry, you can keep the same photo on your desk.

October is supposed to be the weird month in the markets.  Why?  Harvest.  Halloween sugar highs and fake vampires going “trunk or treat” because “trick or treat” is just too much walking for parents, who can’t let the kids out by themselves because . . . 2025.  Me, I remember lining up at the neighbor’s house to get decent-sized Snickers®.

Maybe it’s just that less daylight makes people crazy.

Who can say?

But this year, the market is throwing a tantrum that makes a toddler with a baby bottle full of Red Bull® look chill.  The Dow© was down 800 points yesterday (my yesterday, not yours).  The NASDAQ™ is nursing a Nvidia®-sized hangover, and Bitcoin?

If you give a Bitcoin to an exotic dancer, is it a Striptocurrency?

It’s a Bitcoin bear market, baby.  Bitcoin crumbed from $127k highs to $88k like it just discovered gravity after a night of tequila and strippers.  I’ve never quite understood the allure of Bitcoin, though many people have made tons of profit with it, and I think that Fartcoin (yes, this is real) proves my point.

I think the big thing that’s different is Trump.  Trump is absolutely going to choose a Fed® chairman that will lower rates like a frat bro bringing out the backup keg at midnight.  Why?  Because Trump wants lower rates, so he’s auditioning like it’s The Apprentice:  Interest Rate Edition.

But here’s the punchline:  Lower rates for an economy dealing with continual high inflation and fiat currency disease?  It’s like lighting a cigar with a jet engine.  Sure, it gets the job done, but if you stand too close, you’ll end up medium well.

What do you do if you find Michael J. Fox in your hot tub?  Add laundry.

Big banks love lower interest rates.  It allows them to cover the losses they stood while whistling like nothing was going on, the same losses that took down Silicon Valley Bank.  Businesses usually like low interest rate because it makes stuff easier to buy, yet there has to be something worth buying, some revenue stream to capture.

The result?  Bankers win.  Again.  At a certain point people begin to feel like Wile E. Coyote.

But the financial shenanigans aren’t limited to the United States.  Stimulus, that economic equivalent of jumper cables is showing up around the world.  Japan’s GDP shrank, so they thought they’d toss out $110 billion to convince the Japanese to, what, buy more manga and sushi on top of Japan’s current sky-high debt?

China will not be left out.  They’ve decided to sell a bunch of bonds and deficit spend because it’s worked out so well for us.  That’s $1.4 trillion to add to the dragon’s fire.

And the United States?  Our “annual stimulus” is the $1.8 trillion federal deficit for FY2025, down a smidge from last year’s binge but still ballooning debt to $36T like a bad hair day on steroids.

You know what chicks love?  Sweeping generalizations.

Where does all this money go?

Apple®.  Apple© is swimming in cash, with $200B stuck in the seat cushions, while small companies pay rent with expired McDonald’s™ Filet o’ Fish® coupons.  And Nvidia®, which is the other stimulus program of the United States.

And low interest rates tend to drive stock prices up.  Yet, the valuations are already high, and most of the economic growth of the country over the last year (if not all) has been buying Nvidia® chips and building places to house Nvidia™ chips and building power to allow the Nvidia© chips to depreciate into e-waste so they can be replaced by . . . more Nvidia® chips.

It’s sort of like we decided to dedicate the entire economy to create an Ouroboros meme.  Or, let A.I. make an Ouroboros meme.

As found.  90% of why I wrote this post is because I wanted to use this meme.

And even though the market is going down right now, it seems like it’s going to go back up.  Why?

I guess so we can do more stimulus and create more data centers.  So, the interest rates can go lower and . . . we can do more stimulus?

Don’t know.  I just know that Warren Buffet retired with Berkshire Hathaway sitting with a pile of $381 billion in cash.  Buffett normally tried to buy stocks that were undervalued and let them run.  To be fair, I’d be hard put to find a place to invest $381 billion in cash where I thought it would make money since I can’t seem to do that with the little horde of cash that I personally have.

This, from a guy who had to work until he was 95.

Regardless, despite Halloween being over, the whole thing seems . . . fake and artificial.  It’s like “trunk or treat” is today’s stock market, a big fake line.

To me, it feels like a gigantic faux queue.

Disclaimer:  I don’t own any stocks mentioned in this post, or at least I don’t think I don’t think I do nor do I intend to buy any by Friday.  However, I may have a Snicker’s® bar on Friday, so, don’t front-run that trade since I didn’t buy any Snicker’s™ futures.  If you think taking financial advice from an Internet humorist is a good idea, you should consider getting psychological advice from Hannibal Lechter.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, Spicy With A Side Order Of Unravelling

“Oh, I’m unravelling.” – The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh

I have a joke about midnight, but it’s probably too dark.

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

Volume VII, Issue 6

Most memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.  I have maintained the Clock O’Doom at 9., given the open support of assassination and criminality by the GloboLeft and the increase in violence as well as direct interference with ICE and the insertion of the military into law enforcement.  Beware: the number can climb quickly.

My advice remains.  Avoid crowds.  Get out of cities.  Now.  A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Escalation – Violence and Censorship Update – Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Unravelling, Part II – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report.  These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month.  I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues.  Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 850 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Escalation

One of the hallmarks of previous Republican presidencies, including Trump’s first term, was that there would be an attempt to move to the center, to compromise.  That’s how we got things like the illegal alien amnesty under Reagan.  Not so with Trump.  I think it’s because the second term was interrupted by Joe Biden’s Residency, and Trump really doesn’t care, he’s going to do what he wants to.  Let’s look

Let’s start with revenge.  The indictments have started, and Trump is even threatening to jail state governors. 

The state-level government is also being used to try to gerrymander more Republican seats in the House.  Will that work?  I know that I’ve got concerns, since, even in Red states Democrats are very, very good at creating votes.  But if this scheme worked, it thins out the Republican vote, making a minor shift towards the GloboLeft in those states leading to a Democratic supermajority.  There is opportunity, but there is also danger if avenues for vote fraud like mail-in ballots and not requiring proof of citizenship to vote.

Trump is also, apparently, aware that major unrest is around the corner.  While I certainly doubt that ICE is stockpiling “guided missile warheads”, they do appear to be getting ready to deal with armed resistance.  Cartels?

And it’s not just here.  We’re not alone.  Unrest is spreading, and just needs a spark.

 

Violence and Censorship Update

Several years ago, the majority of the Violence and Censorship update was about censorship.  Now, violence predominates.  Here are text messages from the new Attorney General of Virginia, musing about killing his opponent and their family:

And judges love terrorists, I guess:

And if you try to report on it and aren’t part of the GloboLeft, you were asking for it.

When you talk about Civil War, it makes it more likely.

And nearly killing a white guy isn’t even worth jail time, if you’re black.

On to censorship.  We certainly can’t have St. MLK shown in any manner that isn’t approved.

And a group, funded by tax dollars, that was intended to make sure that victims of racial violence didn’t say the wrong thing is now disbanded.  But since you’ve never heard of them until now, they managed to censor the news at the source for decades.

And on to foreign nations.  In Canada, if you ask certain questions, you’ll go to jail.

 

Updated Misery Index

Far better performance than Biden – so far.

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Violence indicators are down this month, but still elevated.

Political Instability:

Down is more stable, and it went up again this month.  People are realizing that voting won’t solve the problems.

Economic:

The economy is up a bit this month, but I think this is cloaking the middle-class crunch.

Illegal Aliens:

Still the lowest level since the Weather Report started.  Remember, they care nothing for our country, nothing for our history, and only want money and political power and our country will be gone if they win.

The Unravelling, Part II

Presented without comment.

 

LINKS

The links are again done by Ricky this month.  Thanks, Ricky!

BAD GUYS

https://x.com/ArmageddonProse/status/1980948293388579094
https://x.com/firearmvideos/status/1977810281750470903
https://x.com/i/status/1978160493484249557
https://x.com/CaughtCam404/status/1975110773354737985
https://x.com/CaughtCam404/status/1982854809830195433
https://x.com/i/status/1981658405371818368
https://x.com/TheDMVLive/status/1984435570198585554

GOOD GUYS

https://x.com/CaughtCam404/status/1983217194344591549
https://x.com/i/status/1973040140798091264

ONE GUY

https://www.11alive.com/article/news/douglas-county-mother-uncovers-new-evidence-in-sons-death-challenges-self-defense-ruling/85-194fe2c2-fed2-4060-8da9-81d450b4403b

BODY COUNT

https://stateline.org/2025/10/17/trump-isnt-sending-troops-to-cities-with-highest-crime-rates-data-shows/
https://www.sandboxx.us/news/which-service-did-best-in-the-military-recruiting-boom-the-numbers-are-in/
https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/almost-100-000-young-men-171406110.html

VOTE COUNT

https://www.democracydocket.com/analysis/live-redistricting-tracker/
https://www.vox.com/politics/466253/why-democrats-unpopular-polls-welcome
https://canarymission.org/campaign/DSA
https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1983370733028778255

CIVIL WAR

https://x.com/EricLDaugh/status/1975319131105767638
https://jonathanturley.org/2025/10/24/we-may-be-nearing-when-the-resistance-looks-completely-different-democrat-leaders-ramp-up-resistance-rhetoric/
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/10/its-time-for-soft-secession/
https://alt-market.us/are-democrats-trying-to-start-a-civil-war/
https://archive.ph/0WhU7
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/savingandinvesting/ray-dalio-sounds-alarm-over-looming-civil-war-in-america-claims-our-power-to-hurt-each-other-has-never-been-greater-are-you-at-risk/ar-AA1PClD8?ocid=finance-verthp-feeds
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/oct/17/donald-trump-president-peace-civil-war-national-guard
https://www.csis.org/analysis/united-states-headed-toward-civil-war
https://www.vox.com/politics/464354/barbara-walter-charlie-kirk-gray-area-violence

Who Should Have Won: The 1980s, Part I

“Ray, when someone asks you if you’re a god, you say “Yes!” – Ghostbusters

Actors test their skills to the limit when they act happy when someone else wins an Oscar® instead of them.

The first time I tried “who should have won” as a topic, I don’t think I spent enough time on the topics, and it became a list.  I think this is a bit better:  for the first half of the 1980s, what movie won the Best Picture© Academy Award™, and what movie should have won.

Your mileage may vary.

Best Film 1980

Actual Winner:  Ordinary People.

I went to this movie in the theater.  I don’t recall why, but I was probably dragged there by someone older.  I do recall hating, with great intensity, every second of the film, which centered around weak people who couldn’t deal with whatever crap they were going through.  As I was just a kid without a driver’s license, I was stuck there.  The best thing about watching this movie was the box of Raisenettes® and leaving the theater.  In retrospect, the best thing about this movie is that most of the people involved in the production are dead.

Should Have Won:  The Empire Strikes Back.

This movie based around the heartwarming story of a father being reunited with his long-lost son is a classic.  Note also, the father has to face the tragedy of his long-lost daughter getting mixed up with a criminal and a lot of cocaine before.  Spoiler, the criminal gets put on ice by her father, but they are reunited in the end.

Best Film 1981

Actual Winner:  Chariots of Fire.

I have no idea what the Academy® had about people talking in rooms, but 1981 was yet another movie about people talking in rooms.  But the people are old or dead and talk in a British accent, so that makes it classy.  I guess.  I learned quite a bit from this movie, specifically that I would rather have my eyes gouged out with dull spoons than to watch another movie about track athletes.  I watched this movie on a school trip, and all the cool kids went to see Porkuy’s instead, but I stuck around because there was this girl . . . spoiler – she was not worth the seventeen hours that this movie lasted.

Should Have Won:  Gallipoli.

If you’re going to have a historical movie about runners, they should be cool and badass.  These runners were cool and badass, and also were classy because they were dead and spoke with an Aussie accent and there was a senseless war going on.  Bonus points:  St. Mel of Gibson stars.

Best Film 1982

Actual Winner:  Gandhi.

Biopic of the most famous Indian scammer, who ended up scamming hundreds of millions of Indians that they would be better off kicking the British out resulting in the death of millions to tens of millions of Indians.

Should Have Won:  The Thing.

This movie about a castaway trying to make his way through a difficult and challenging world that was completely new to him is engaging.  Seriously, this is one of the best horror movies of all time.  I saw this in the theater about a month after reading Who Goes There, the story by Based SF author John W. Campbell, Jr., and was not disappointed.  Every single frame was perfect, and the ending is seemingly ambiguous.  Critics hated this film and it was a box office bomb.  Time, however has proven them wrong, wrong, wrong.  Bonus:  passes the Inverse Bechdel Test because there are no women in the movie, thus making it better.

Best Film 1983

Actual Winner:  Terms of Endearment.

I rarely cuss, but, damn.  Another stupid movie featuring people with problems talking in rooms.  I’m sure this passes the Bechdel Test which may be why I hate this movie with the burning passion of a thousand suns.  Additionally, dragging this piece of crap down is Shirley MacLaine, who made exactly one good movie in her life, Two Mules for Sister Sara.

Should Have Won:  A Christmas Story.

This movie shows America as it was and is a tale of innocence and honesty.  One of the best movies to have ever been made.

Best Film 1984

Actual Winner:  Amadeus.

I’d like to say this is the best movie ever that was inadvertently funded by Creedence Clearwater Revival (you can look it up) but I’d have to forget about the Lord of the Rings movies.  It was pretty good, but not good enough that I’d pay money to watch it again.

Should Have Won:  Ghostbusters.

Or maybe Red Dawn, which was a close second.  I settled on Ghostbusters because it is a perfect movie.  There are no missed beats.  Is there drama?  Yes, enough to keep the plot going, but not so much to get in the way of the humor.  Murray, Aykroyd, and Ramis are perfect together.  The special effects were good enough, and it was a huge hit.  How big?  It was in the top three grossing films at the box office for sixteen weeks.  Ghostbusters had legs.  It was also a powerful satire of government power causing problems because it is stupid and a hiding place for petty people.

There you have it.  And, this proves the point:  the Academy™ always gets it wrong.

I think this works better than the clunky thing I put out two months ago, but that was about the 1970s, which was an awful decade for movies.  In January, I’ll tackle 1985-1989.

What did I miss?

Race, Culture, IQ, and Truth

“What do you call a lawyer with an IQ of 60?  Your Honor.” – Better Call Saul

I have never seen a picture that is more Swedish than the one above.  Whatever could the issue be?

Picture this: You’re at a family reunion, and Uncle Bob is still insisting in 2025 that the Vaxx is “safe and effective” and the only reason you don’t agree is that you don’t “trust the science”.  Everyone chuckles, pats him on the back, and passes the stuffing wondering if Bob is going to eat through is mask.  Harmless, right?  Remember, Bob gets a vote even though his relationship with the Truth is probably pretty tenuous.

The True, the Beautiful, and the Good are important.  They’re foundational to finding out things that are beneficial to society and, if you’re me, also things that are in-tune with God’s plan.

For decades, at least, the GloboLeft has been attempting to control the Narrative on everything from climate Armageddon (remember, the Arctic will be ice free by 2015!) to gender as a spectrum that includes, somehow, people putting on suits and pretending to be animals.

But the crown jewel of their obfuscation Olympics®?

The ironclad link between race, intellect, outcomes and cultures.  Why did they bury it under six feet of reinforced concrete?

Simple:  because admitting this torpedoes their “all cultures are equal” fairy tale.  Remember, the “Globo” in GloboLeft means that everything is the same, everywhere, right?  If they admit there are differences, poof:  there goes the vote farm.  Even more, it gives the TradRight rationale to exclude endless hordes of foreigners whose languages, cultures, and norms are more alien to our nation than creatures from the planet Zantar.

Ahh, France. 

Let’s start with the basics, because facts don’t care about pronouns or participation trophies.

IQ, that dusty old metric the smart set loves to hate, is rocket fuel for a successful life.  On the individual level, folks clocking above 115 rake in 20-30% more dough over a lifetime, snag better jobs, and even divorce less.  Higher IQ means more planning.

But let’s zoom out to nations.  There, we find that IQ is a GDP cheat code.  Countries averaging 100+ IQ (think Japan at 106) boast per capita incomes north of $40,000, while those scraping 80 or below (hello, sub-Saharan squad) limp along at less than $2,000.

A one-point bump in national IQ?  That equates to a 7.8% GDP boost.  Smart nations are wealthy nations.

Mohammed, what a fine Danish name!

Now, the electric fence the GloboLeft guards with tasers: Racial IQ gaps. In the US, Japanese and Chinese are at 106, whites are average 100, Hispanics are half a standard deviation down around 90-93, and blacks are at 85, a full standard deviation below the norm.

These hold steady across decades, tests, and tweaks for socioeconomic fairy dust.  The same script holds for criminality:  FBI’s 2024 tallies show blacks (13% of population) accounting for 51.3% of murder arrests.

And, no.  Not all black people are low IQ murderers.  Thomas Sowell exists.

But the Truth is that there is a substantive and real distance when viewed in aggregate.  And it causes huge difficulties:  low IQ correlates with impulsivity, poor planning, and a higher “screw the consequences” factor.

Bring this up, thought, and the responses are, “You’re racist!” even though the facts are stubborn and won’t go away.  When confronted that these are persistent facts, the GloboLeft throws their Hail Mary:  “But muh root causes!  Poverty!  Systemic racism!  Colonialism’s ghost!  1619!”

And look what happens of you challenge the Narrative.  Watson said, [he was] “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours, where all the testing says, not really”.

It’s empathy porn, a verbal defibrillator to flatline any talk about the real facts.  Sure, environment nips at the edges.  Malnutrition might ding 5-10 IQ points, but when was the last time you saw a skinny poor person?  Malnutrition isn’t a factor.  Adopted black kids in white homes lag by a similar amount, the SAT scores from black kids from families at the highest income levels are lower than the SAT scores from white kids at the poorest levels.

This ain’t excusing; it’s enabling. Treating 30-year-olds like toddlers with excuses robs them of agency.  If we’re gonna nanny them via EBT (Entitled Belly Timers) or Section 8 (Subsidized Shackles for the Aimless), fine.  But adults get adult rules and toddlers get toddler rules. How about:  no voting if you’re on the dole?  SNAP’s 41.7 million users are 37% White, 26% Black, 16% Hispanic.

Why let chronic takers tank the makers?

This isn’t cruelty; it’s consistency.  Benefit takers will always vote for people who promise more benefits.  And, it’s a voluntary condition.  Want to vote?  Get off the benefits for two years.

Oh, wait . . .

The next lie, though is that all cultures are interchangeable widgets.  We can swap them all like IKEA parts, and voila: Utopia!

Spoiler: Nope.

Cultures aren’t blank slates; they’re downstream from the people who make them.  Those people are downstream from their genes. India’s a case study in spicy chaos: 1.4 billion souls with an average IQ ~82.

The result?

A subcontinent of smog-choked streets, bribe-fueled bureaucracy, and a GDP per capita scraping $2,500.  No one’s fleeing Toronto for Mumbai. Now, Trudeau set Canada on a curry bender:  they imported 500,000 Indians yearly, turning Tim Hortons® into Pooh Hut™.

The point was missed.  If you replace every Canuck with a subcontinental clone you don’t get Canada 2.0 that’s short, brown, and with no upper body strength, you get a frozen New New Delhi.

A society of polite hockey lovers?

Nah, just more potholes, poop in the streets, Singhs driving trucks into innocent families, and power cuts.

And bringing their best?  The top IQ in the United States (everyone above 130) is about 4.8 million people.  But India?

India has an average IQ of 82? Their 130+ IQ club shrinks to 0.02% a population of only 299,000 Indians.  The United States outproduces India 16-to-1 in geniuses, despite the headcount handicap.

Why import mediocrity when we’ve got homegrown innovation?

The world already has an India, why clone it in Cleveland?

Same script for Somalia’s sequel in St. Paul or Haiti’s remix in Springfield. Flood Minnesota with 100,000 East Africans (IQ ~68-70 nationally), and watch lutefisk disappear to some sort of piracy and theft – oh, wait, they’re already running scams?

Maybe they’ll start a dating app?  They could call it OK Stupid.

Politics is downstream of culture, culture is downstream from race.  The latter is a taboo subject, but it’s True.

Shoehorning Somalis into the Land of 10,000 Lakes doesn’t Americanize them, it Somali-fies the lakes.

Truth demands we say the unsayable:  America’s not a global hostel.  Those 8 billion “Americans who haven’t arrived yet”?  If America is an idea, they can have their ideas over there.

We’re a nation of pioneers, not parasites; inventors, not importers.  The GloboLeft’s borderless fever dream erodes that, swapping high-trust hardware stores for low-IQ hawala bazaars.  Result? Balkanized basket cases, where “diversity” means dialing 911 in five languages.

Look at the hate . . . one might call him a racist.  Me?  My new immigration policy would be “9 or 10? Let her in!”

I’m advocating adulthood:  face facts, fix what’s fixable, and quit pretending that we can make a hot dog bark because it has the word “dog” in its name.

“Why” simply doesn’t matter.  Fighting the root cause has proven to be a lost cause.  At our stage we have to deal with the symptoms.

The stakes are high.  If we don’t embrace Truth, the United States will end up exactly like those low-IQ nations:  begging for scraps while the elites jet around the globe.  I mean, it won’t be jets because they won’t have enough people smart enough to make jets.  But you get the point.

And Bob still gets to vote.

Oh, SNAP: The Waste, The Fraud, The Envy, And You’re Not Alone

“He must have just snapped!” – Groundhog Day

Matt has come a long way.

Each time the Trump Administration does something, they bubble things up to the public consciousness that The Powers That Be would rather people not think about.  Yeah, Trump is part of The Powers That Be, but this .gov shutdown is exactly what I voted for.

What have you missed during the shutdown?

Oh, nothing?

What if it went on for two months?  Four?  What if only the “essential” parts (ICE, the actual warfighting part of .mil, and . . . wait, I’m running out of essential) restarted?

It seems like we have discovered (this is not an original idea, /pol/ discusses this frequently) that SNAP (Sheer Nonsense And Plunder) is a program that works like this:

  • Infinity illegal aliens are
  • encouraged to come to the country
  • to make cheap carbohydrates
  • to feed to minorities
  • so that Herculean medical efforts are expended to solve the problems caused by the cheap carbs.

Who profits?

  • Illegals.
  • Farmers.
  • Big Agribusiness, Big Soda, and Big Sloppa.
  • Minorities (short term, until the untimely heart attack).
  • Hospitals.
  • Doctors.
  • Insurance Companies.

Is it all just a machine to turn your tax dollars into illegals, obesity, and corporate profits?

You decide.  Regardless, I think the Democrats will blink.  Maybe.  I sure hope note, I mean, this is what I voted for.

First:  The Waste, The Luxury, and The Outrage

 

Second:  The Fraud

 

Third:  The Recipients Despise You

 

Fourth:  You’re Not Alone

From Hyperinflation to Hypergamy: The Weimar Playbook and Why America’s Wallet (and Morals) Are Feeling the Pinch: A Play In Three Acts

“She died of skin suffocation.  It’s been known to happen to cabaret dancers.” – Goldfinger

The Mrs. was great at putting the kids to bed.  She is one cool mother tucker. (Meme as found)

(Also, this is post 1500 here.  Time flies.)

Ah, who doesn’t long for the Weimar Republic?

That glorious interlude between the trenches of mud-filled World War I and the Austrian led sequel.  What was the Weimar Republic like?

It was like your grandma’s bingo night turned into a rave with existential dread and paper money for confetti.  But beneath the jazz hands and cocaine-fueled cabarets, the Weimar Republic wasn’t just an economic dumpster fire, even though that’s what it’s best known as.

No, it was also a masterclass in how crumbling finances torch traditional values, especially when it comes to the birds-and-bees department.  The ladies?  Let’s just say that they were dumping their morals during that time period faster than you can say “Ruhr Occupation.”

It’s probably time to dust off the Weimar playbook to see what it teaches us in 2025 since history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme, not like one of those stupid haikus.

My aunt always said
Slow and steady wins the race
She died in a fire

Act 1: The Money Meltdown (1923 – The Great Devaluation)

The upside is my salary is 5 billion marks a month.

The downside?  It’s Germany in 1923, where everyone is a billionaire.

But that five billion is enough to buy SpaceX®, right?  No.  Enough for a loaf of bread?  No.  By noon, it costs 3 trillion for a single Triscuit® without any Cheez Whiz™.  Hyperinflation, sparked by French troops squatting in the Ruhr (while smoking cigarettes and eating baguettes) over unpaid war reparations and a fevered central banker who thought that inflation stemmed from not having enough paper cash, wiped out the middle class overnight.

Wheelbarrows of cash for groceries?  That really happened.  Suicides spiking?  Check.

And the ladies?  Well . . . .

Biologically, women are drawn to men with power and resources.  They like nice things, like sitting on couches eating bon-bons and not working jobs that will kill them.  Consequently, they choose men who have power and resources because otherwise they have to work.  It makes sense – somebody has to raise the kids, and if they spend all their time hunting mammoth, the kids will die.

Not all power is useful.

So, Wuma like Grug.  Grug big strong.  Grug bring food.  Grug like Wuma because warm and make zug-zug.  And Mortimer?  His genes didn’t get passed down.

In Weimar Germany, however, all the thousands of years between Hans and Grug evaporated.  Women, sensing the ship sinking, entered into Hypergamy Mode™.

Stable accountant husbands toiling for stacks of worthless cash?

Adios.

Black-market speculators with coal or ham?

Jackpot.

Prostitution boomed and I’m not going to get into the horrible details – you can look them up yourself, though I highly advise you not to.  Economic desperation flipped the script and a moral and prosperous people disappeared.  I think this time in history showed that most fräuleins were just three hot meals away from working the streets.

Chastity?  Loyalty?

Those were luxuries for men who could still afford to pay for dinner.

The result was predictable:  birth rates tanked, divorces doubled, and Berlin became a petri dish for STDs.

It’s hard for people with this condition to be teachers – they can’t control their pupils.

Act 2:  1924-1928 – Stabilization to Sizzle

By 1924, Germany put up the surrender flag again and rolled out the Rentenmark, a mortgage-backed currency that halted the fiscal freefall.  Unemployment goes, down and wages climb 10% in 1928 alone.

Golden Twenties!  But the morality break from the hyperinflation remained.

Berlin’s nightlife is a bisexual, androgynous fever dream.

Divorces? Up 20 per 100 marriages.

Abortions? From taboo to two-for-Tuesday.

Prostitutes?  The 1927 Venereal Disease Law decriminalized prostitution, shifting it from being a cop problem to a social worker problem.  Really, this was just formalizing the side-hustle economy.

Society, or at least those little things we call morals, were ignored.

Leave the steady scientist for the jazz-club owner?  Why not?  Resources signaled survival, and with the past experiences, women valued power and money more than, well, value.  Long-term vows were for suckers.

Men, emasculated by inflation scars, either joined in the debauchery or brewed resentment in beer halls.

I told the state trooper that the other guy at the car accident was drinking beer and staring at his cell phone when I hit him.  “Mr. Wilder, he can do anything he wants, it’s his living room.”  (meme as found)

Act 3:  Crash and Backlash (1929-1933 – Depression to Despot)

Wall Street sneezed in October 1929 and Germany caught pneumonia.  Unemployment hits 30%, and banks implode.

The result?  An insignificant party led by an Austrian painter rocketed from fringe to 37% of the vote in the 1932 elections.  The promise?  Crushed cabarets.  Mandated motherhood.  Homeownership, and the house is free after a certain number of kids.  Oh, and most people don’t ask exactly what books were burned.

Why the rise?

Economics eroded trust and broke down traditional male-female relationships.  This bred fury.

America’s Weimar Remix: Where are we now?

Fast-forward to the U.S.

We’ve been doing inflation for years, since the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank®.  Will we see hyperinflation?  Almost certainly.  There are two ways the debt will clear – either we pay it or we default on it.

Want to take bets on which we do?

The morality failure is in play:

  • “Hot girl summers,”
  • Situationships,
  • Chastity is cringe,
  • Birth rates echo Berlin in the 1920s,
  • 30% of Zoomers were aborted,
  • Female body counts are soaring, and
  • OnlyFans®.

OnlyFans© itself paints a picture of depravity:  OnlyFans™ has over 3 million women willing to show you their naked body, most of whom earn less than $50 a month.  Not only are they tramps, they’re cheap tramps.  Femininity is utterly degraded:  motherhood in a loving family is now considered oppressive, while being married in a loving relationship is oppression.

He also thinks she’s a drug dealer.  He answered her cellphone and some guy said, “Is that dope still there?”

Are we in Act 1, Scene 2 – A Financial Puzzle, or Act 2, Scene 3 – The Hangover Before the Headache, or Act 3, Scene 1 – Enter the Man With the Plan?

I don’t know.  I know it’s bad.  60%-80% of Gen Z men aren’t dating.  Less than 30% of them identify with the Republican or Democratic parties.  Video games and A.I. girlfriends aren’t going to replace actual wives, so the instability in society is growing, and quickly.

As I said at the top – history doesn’t repeat, but it surely does rhyme.  The late Roman Republic and the Late Roman Empire are also parallels, and I could keep going.  Bad economic decisions lead to the breakdown of human relationships.  Those broken relationships lead to a change in government type.

The good news?  We won’t run out of wheelbarrows for the money.  We don’t need to print it, just add a few ones and zeros into a program.

Isn’t progress grand?

Hoe_Math And Why Levels Of Thought Caused This Mess

“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?” – No Country for Old Men

But, hey, they all have the same tote bag.  (all memes as-found)

There is a YouTube® creator named hoe_math that I watch regularly.  I’d guess that he and I have fairly similar worldviews in many cases, and I recommend his channel (LINK).  One of the trademark issues Mr. _math has discussed is the breakdown between men and women in our modern, technological age and how government has made it worse.

One thing he’s brought up several times in his videos is the concept of “levels of thinking” which I’ll just call “Levels” from here on out.  It’s a variation of Maslow’s Hierarchy, but it’s been refined by Ken Wilber, to walk back the sources.  But let’s stick to hoe_math.

hoe_math’s main success has been as a guy who draws stick figures with colored pencils to explain why your relationships suck and society is unraveling.  Rather than Levels being a new age mystical tool, Mr. _math uses Levels as a tool, and as a powerful one.  Keep in mind, it’s not reality, it’s just another way to model it.  In this case, however, it explains a lot of what would otherwise be mystical behavior and magical thinking of people who really should know better.

The version of Levels that hoe_math has been distilled down to nine stages of thinking, each building on the last like a Jenga™ tower of the soul.  Today, though, I want to stick to the first seven levels. Why? Because Level 6 is the root of so much GloboLeft® insanity, and Level 7 shows, maybe, a way out.

Let’s climb the Levels ladder, one sticky rung at a time.

 

Level 1:  Survival And Desire

Picture this:  a toddler covered in spaghetti sauce.  Life isn’t about stocks or status.  It’s a confusing set of seemingly unrelated events.  Life is about not dying and emotional control doesn’t yet exist..

Hunger gnaws, cold bites, and that pain from having fingernails cut?  That’s the worst pain the baby has ever felt.  Thinking at Level 1 is pure reflex:  see food, eat. See threat, run or smash.  No plans, just sensory overload driving you to grab what feels good and dodge what hurts.

Every human starts at this level, but most outgrow it.  Except in pathology:  think severe autism or that guy at the grocery store yelling about expired coupons.

And toxic masculinity? Level 1 is the primal protector that men become when times become grim: the father who stays up all night by the fire with a shotgun when the wolves are howling outside.  It’s raw, unapologetic drive when there’s a positive motivation.

In the negative, it’s the low-I.Q. murderer who kills someone for $5.  These people stuck at this level cannot survive by themselves.

 

Level 2: Connect

Now the world gets a little less lonely.  I’ve got senses, sure, but suddenly, so does everyone else.  Thinking now shifts: life is bonding and not being alone.  Emotions now project outward because at this level, people now understand that others have needs, too.  And, when others are happy, I get what I want.  I clean my room, I get cookies.

hoe_math notes that this is where tribes form – but for people stuck at this level, there is nearly zero trust for outsiders.  Probably the largest useful structure that this level produces is the family.

 

Level 3: Control

If the first level had no bonds, the second level had bonds between one person and another, this level is third person:  the realization that other people have connections to each other.  And that’s a great tool to use to get control of them.

If Level 3 was a decade, it would be The Me Decade, the 1970s.  Since all of humanity can live at Level 1 or Level 2, fully 92% of humanity can make it to Level 3 every day, according to hoe_math, who you should trust because “math” is in his name.

At this stage, the strong exploit the week, and morality is an afterthought.  If India was a level, it would be Level 3.  It’s a war of all against all with a billion caste systems.

 

Level 4:  Conform

This is all about the rules.  Only 40% of humanity gets here every day.  That should scare you.

Yeouch!  That tells you that my India comment on Level 3 is probably spot on.  This is the level that gives us useful structures like functional civilizations and businesses and religion.  It is here that ethics and the study of rules start.  This is where morality takes over in judgements.

People compete for power here, yet compete using rules that are agreed on.  Chaos unchecked? No thanks.  Now the flip side of the lower levels becomes apparent:  selfishness breeds anarchy, so rules it is.  It’s Good vs. Evil, us vs. them.  Life demands order.

Level 4 birthed all higher-level civilizations.

 

Level 5: Achieve

Now we’re into the land of libertarians, big L and little l versions.  About 28% of people reach this level on a daily basis.

Rules are for rubes.  Freedom über alles.  Good and bad?  That’s subjective.  Life is about results.  Set goals, crunch the numbers, win big, add sawdust to the raisin bran if nobody notices.

Why bow to a boss or a Bible?

The Level 5 achiever is the builder, the provider, the man who turns dirt into dynasties.  It’s the dad working doubles so the kids eat steak, not ramen.  I think the majority of the success of the United States has been entirely due to Level 5 behavior, so therefore it is called toxic masculinity.

 

Level 6:  Understand

Here’s where the wheels start wobbling off the cart, and also where higher-level thinking is observably worse than lower-level thinking.

In Level 6, uniqueness reigns; old rules are chains.  Life celebrates diversity!  Every truth is a perspective, every culture is valid, except (in the Western version) that mean old Christian patriarchy.  Reject hierarchies, listen to the oppressed, seek consensus, live, laugh, love.  Subjectivity rules; impose nothing.

Sounds noble, right?  Until you try validating all cultures and beliefs and fetishes.

That’s the rot.  I mean, it’s well-meaning, but it rests upon a fundamental denial of reality.

Seek “understanding” without boundaries, and boom:  moslims torch the gay bar that the Level 6 people thought would be just fine right next to the mosque as hoe_math described it.

Because why?

Because no matter how much Level 6 thinkers want 82 I.Q. people from Somalia to be accepting, tolerant, and embrace the gay lifestyle, they are Level 3 thinkers that want to chuck the gays off cliffs just to see what sound the make when they hit bottom.

This leads to the GloboLeftElite® importing clash after clash into the nation, then cries “tolerance!” while cities burn.

Truth dies on the altar of feelings.

Pathologies?  Narcissistic echo chambers and spineless relativism.  It’s why campuses are safe spaces for screams of GloboLeftist rage but not debate and England will tolerate rape and murder as a moslem/hindu team sport but not tolerate people noticing it.

 

Level 7: Harmonize

Finally, wisdom dawns.

Despite being only 5% of the population, I would bet that most of my regular readers get here or hang out at Level 5.  On either side of this, we’ve seen the mess that Level 6 is.  The problem with Level 6 is that it’s based on lies.  Pretty lies, but lies nonetheless.

The rules we made up at Level 4?

Some of them make fundamental sense in a way that, if you ignore them, birthrates of smart people plummet and the birth of idiots is reinforced.  Or crime rate increases.  Or we decide that creating fiat currencies is a good thing, just like they did in Weimar Germany.

But reality exists.  Those Level 4 rules aren’t random!  It is folly of the highest order to ignore them.  Complex systems demand rules and judgement in order to work, and mixing cultures sometimes ends up with the result that border walls are way better than immigration.

This is toxic masculinity, yet again:  the harmonizer is the statesman, the elder who balances freedom with fences, innovation with inheritance.  It’s the patriarch reading the room—protecting the tribe by pruning threats, not hugging them.

The dangers here are existential drift that leads to nihilism or half-baked gurus with books to sell.

As I said, only 5% get here regularly.

Why?

It takes I.Q. to juggle viewpoints, model systems empirically, and see patterns in the interactions. Low I.Q. folks stall at Level 4 conformity and Level 6 is a trap for people who want to see a beautiful world that could never exist.

So, why fixate on these?  Because Level 6 thinking led, at least partially, to the trouble we’re in now.  Endless “understanding” ignores that not all cultures play nice and that our people need jobs, too.  Validate it all, and you get Paris no-go zones or Rotherham horrors. Level 6 whispers “coexist,” but Level 7 shouts “think about this.”

The same level of thinking that got us into this mess isn’t going to get us out of it, and, sadly we’re going to have to continue to go after and eliminate Level 6 thinking where we see it.

And we will, because the result of losing?

It’s Level 3.  And the world already has way too much India.