Category: Competence

Caste Over Competence: Globalism Is Economic Suicide

“India’s a black hole.” – World War Z

How many Indians does it take to change a lightbulb?  Sixteen.  Fourteen to argue about whose responsibility it is, one to explain that lightbulbs are better in India and invented by Indians, and one to call the power plant to tell it to reboot because it must be a software issue. (all memes “as-found”)

Picture a world where kids in Bangladesh sew soccer balls for pennies (whatever a penny was), and some goatherder in Albania is working at a factory cranking out VCRs.  VCRs, like it’s 1985 and I’m renting Back to the Future from Blockbuster®.  I kid.  Albania doesn’t even have electricity yet.

But that’s the flavor of globalism’s siren song that leads economies to doom:  anything can be made anywhere, as long as the price is dirt cheap.  I’ve heard the refrain, even in the comments here:  “If you complain about competing against Albaniaks and Bangladeshites, well, you’re a commie that doesn’t believe in capitalism.”

If the goal of capitalism was to serve itself, well, then yes.  It’s a battle of all against all, and whoever can outbreed the next country to lower the cost of (spins wheel) designer purses should make them.

I mean, it sounds great for your wallet, right?

Wrong.  This is a strategy for hollowing out the West’s economy, stripping our skills, and handing our jobs to foreigners who don’t play by our rules at all, transforming our country into Albania on the Atlantic.  Globalism is not just bad economics, it’s a betrayal of the West.  And politicians love it.

But The Simpsons killed off Apu . . . maybe he wanted a raise?

Isn’t it strange that no matter how many times we vote “No, we don’t want any more aliens, illegal or not” that they nod their heads and bring them in?  Is it any stranger that no matter how many times we vote, “No, we don’t want our factories shipped to places that don’t use vowels,” that our factories are shipped to places that haven’t yet invented vowels?

It’s a betrayal of the West

Let’s break it down.  Globalism turns labor into a commodity, like trading baseball cards, except the cards are my job, my skills, and my family’s (and country’s) future.  It’s a race to the lowest cost.  Why pay an American $30 an hour when a kid in Swaziland (Swaziland still exists, right?) works for a handful or USAID® rice a day?

Why build a factory in Ohio when Ceylon’s got sweatshops begging for your blueprints?  The GloboLeft (and, let’s be fair, the RINOs, too) cheer this as “progress,” but it’s a death spiral.  Here’s how it plays out, step by step, until the West’s economy is a husk.

Thankfully all the Indians in Canada are very good with hand-held electronics.  Tractor-trailers?  Not so much.

The Stages of Economic Suicide

  • Design machines, build machines that make stuff, and make stuff: This is the golden age—think 1950s America.  We designed cars, built the factories to make cars, and made cars.  America flourished.  Families thrived.  Grandpa’s lunchpail as he went to work the railroad that shipped those cars meant something.  Skills stayed home, and so did the wealth.
  • Design and make machines that make stuff: By the 80s, we’re still designing and building the machines, but the stuff’s starting to come from Japan and Taiwan as they focus on quality and crack the United States market.  We’re losing the “make stuff” part, but hey, at least we’ve got Wall Street.
  • Design machines to sell to people who make stuff:  Now we’re just selling blueprints. China’s got the factories to make iPhones® we’ve got the patents for the iPhones©.  The know-how’s slipping—designing isn’t building.  People don’t learn to weld by drawing a weld on paper.
  • Buy stuff made by other people from machines you designed: Welcome to the 2000s. Now we’re just selling blueprints. China’s got the factories to make iPhones® we’ve got the patents for the iPhones©.  The know-how is now slipping—designing isn’t building.  People don’t learn to weld by drawing a weld on paper.  Our skills erode.  No one in Ohio knows how to make a microchip anymore.  The muscle memory of manufacturing?  Gone.  Microchips?  They struggle with Pringles™.
  • Buy stuff made and designed by other people: The endgame. Now we become a country of consumers now, buying Chinese drones.  All that’s left are knowledge jobs (coding, engineering), service jobs (baristas, Uber), and jobs that can’t be exported (plumbers, cops, construction). But wait—why not outsource the knowledge jobs too?

This is where globalism’s knife cuts deepest.  The West’s economy is hollowed out, with a Starbucks® in the lobby of the Citibank™ that’s in a bigger Starbucks®.  Oh, and Amazon warehouses.

Manufacturing’s gone, and with it, the skills that built manufacturing in the first place.  And then?  The GloboLeftElite says:  “Hey, let’s import foreigners for the knowledge jobs too!” Enter the H-1B visa, and the West’s last stronghold starts to crumble.  To be clear, the Donald and the Musk both love those H-1B visas, too.

Here’s the dirty truth: foreigners don’t like us.  They don’t think like us.  They don’t value the same things we do.  In some cases the only thing we have in common is that we both consume oxygen.

Take India.  Please.

I bet the driver felt enriched by the diversity.

India is the poster child for H-1B tech workers.  Their culture rewards “cleverness”.  So does ours, but the definition is very different.  To an Indian, “cleverness” is:  lying, cheating, and deception.

To be clear, these are all fair game under their religious and cultural framework.  Don’t take my word for it:  a 2019 report estimated 30% of tech resumes from India include fake degrees or inflated credentials.  India ranks 93 out of 180 on Transparency International’s 2024 Corruption Index.  Nepotism and bribery are practically Olympic® sports for India, which is good because despite being a nation of 1.4 billion people, their only Olympic© was a bronze in Yahtzee™.

But hey, don’t take my word for it.

Then there’s the caste system.  It’s not just history from some movie filled with short, weak brown people who can’t quite speak English and fight with women over the five-pound barbells.  No.  The caste system is alive, even in Silicon Valley.  Indian managers on H-1B visas often hire their own:  same caste, same village, same cousin.  I think the CEO of Microsoft™ is the uncle of half the company.

Merit?

Nope, it’s about loyalty to the clan.  A 2021 study found 90% of Indian-led tech firms in the U.S. had Indian-majority staff, despite only 20% of H-1B visas going to Indians.  Nepotism is their game, and it locks Americans out of jobs in their own country.

I bet they think that’s what they call clever, but it’s escaped scrutiny because it is what the GloboLeft calls this “diversity”.

Globalism’s promise is cheap stuff, which sounds nice until you’re unemployed because an Indian manager hired his brother-in-law over you.  The West’s economy was built on trust and competence, not the caste and the scam.  Outsourcing knowledge jobs to cultures that don’t share our values is like handing your house keys to a guy who thinks picking locks is a personality trait.

Why let this happen? Because the GloboLeft and their Chamber of Commerce Republican buddies love it.  Cheap labor means cheap goods means more profit this quarter and damn the country.

But it’s clear:  we can’t build wealth by outsourcing our future to foreigners who don’t like us and think our rules are stupid and weak.  To be clear:  the elites don’t care—they’re too busy cashing checks to care and hoping that TEMU® will sell a quality yacht soon.

This isn’t just economics; it is the destiny of a people.

The West thrived because we valued competence.  Again, economic systems aren’t the goal.  The goal is the well being of the people in a country.  I mean, even the Albanians could read this post and agree.

I mean, they’d read it if they had electricity.

The West’s Forgotten Victory: Why They Hate Vienna

“What’ll we drink to?  Let’s drink to victory!” – LOTR, The Return of the King

Did the Ottoman Empire export sultan pepper?

One of the things I’ve learned about history is that they skip all of the really good parts.  I recall my time as a leader in that well known paramilitary organization, Boy Scouting® (back when they were boys and they were doing scouting).  On occasion the boys would mention some historical event, and I’d go into more detail:  the Battle of Britain, the Revolutionary War, heck, even the Romans.

We’d talk through history.  Then, when the subject was done, invariably one of the scouts would say, “Man, that’s interesting!  Why don’t they teach that in school?”

Well, because you’re watching Frozen or Shrek instead so your teacher can sleep of a hangover and your textbooks prefer pronouns to Patton.

Who knew that campfire coffee mixed so well with history?

What do you get when you cross a polar bear and a seal?  A polar bear.

The nice thing is that there are still subjects that I learn about.  Namely, 9/11.

Oh, this isn’t the story of that 9/11.  This is the story of September 11, 1683.  And I believe that it’s a story that the muslim world has yet to get over.

It’s September 11, 1683.

Not a date I learned in school, but it should have been.  In the history of the Western world, it isn’t even that far back.  Isaac Newton was busy figuring out the delicate ballet of the spheres in the heavens, and Oliver Cromwell’s head was still busy rotting on a pike in London.

But this is in Vienna, the heart of the Holy Roman Empire

Vienna on this date is surrounded by 300,000 Ottoman Turks.  Think illegal aliens but with scimitars and an even more unintelligible language without any Juan being able to understand it.

My great-grandfather was a wigmaker, so now I have an antique family hairloom.

Vienna is down to 15,000 defenders.  They’re starving and outnumbered 20-to-1, so why not just give in?  The Turks are promising they’ll be treated well.  Thankfully, the Turks had tried this line with another city in Austria that actually did surrender.  The Turks had laid siege to the town of Perchtoldsdorf (gesundheit), and promised all the inhabitants would be spared and that the city would not be sacked.

When they surrendered, the city was sacked and the vast majority of inhabitants were killed or enslaved.  That’s good, because now the people at Vienna knew exactly what sort of devil they were dealing with.

What sort of devil was it?  It was the Ottomans, led by Kara Mustafa, who are determined to own Europe, turning cathedrals into mosques, and making the West kneel to the Turks and to their god.

I’ve heard that the Council for American-Islamic Relations says there is no room for violent extremists within American mosques.  They did announce they have a waiting list, however.

Sound familiar?  It’s the kind of existential threat the GloboLeft pretends never existed, because “white culture” is always the bad guy in their revisionist fairy tales.  In looking at European history, this was a Very Big Deal, and yet it’s glossed over or (in my case) never even mentioned in class.  I think that it’s because the story didn’t end the way the anti-Western Civilization establishment that had taken control of education wanted it to end.

The defenders didn’t yield even a square inch (3.3 millicamels) of the city of Vienna.  Instead they held the walls through two months of hell.  Disease, cannon fire, Ottoman sappers blowing tunnels under the city.  They went through summer, and now were hungry, and they were praying for a miracle.

Enter the relief force arriving on September 11th.  47,000 Germans and Austrians with 20,000 or 30,000 Poles.  Most famously, King John III Sobieski of Poland, leading the Poles, including the Winged Hussars.  The Winged Hussars were an insane calvary force comprised of big, husky Poles on huge horses, wearing lion and tiger pelts over their armor with huge eagle wings and 19-foot-long lances, four pistols each, swords and war hammers.

To be clear, this is exactly what I would have drawn when I was six.

Before the attack, the Vizier of the Ottomans heard the thud of the Polish war drums.  “I don’t like the sound of that.”  The Poles responded, “Oh, he’s not our regular drummer.”

On September 12, Sobieski’s cavalry charges down Kahlenberg Hill, breaking the Ottoman lines like a velociraptor in a room full of puppies. By nightfall, the Turks had abandoned everything.  Everything.  The were trying to get back to Istanbul before it could be re-named Constantinople.   are running, leaving 15,000 dead and the Ottoman Empire’s dreams in the dust with the single largest military defeat in their history to date.

Sobieski’s letter home after the battle is amazing, and recommended reading (LINK).

Vienna is saved.

Europe is saved.

The West lives to fight another day.

The Siege of Vienna wasn’t just a win:  it was a philosophical line in the sand.  Faith fueled those defenders.  Faith in God, in their people, in the idea that the West was worth saving.  It’s in the first lines in Sobieski’s letter to his wife:

How Praised be our Lord God forever for granting our nation such a victory and such glory as was never heard of in all times past!

Contrast that with despair, the kind the GloboLeft peddles today:  “Western culture’s evil, dismantle it because it is worse than (whatever their pet culture is today).”

I heard that Mozart is in his grave, de-composing.

Vienna’s men didn’t negotiate with Kara Mustafa; they fought.  More than that, they chose to fight there.  They believed in something bigger than themselves:  their family, their faith, and their civilization.  That’s the code that built the West, from Athens to Rome to Vienna.

The GloboLeft hates this story. They want history rewritten. Sobieski’s a “colonizer,” the Hussars are “problematic.”  They’d have you believe the Ottomans were just misunderstood diversity consultants.

Hollywood™ is no help in 2025, obviously:  they churn out preachers of pronouns, not legends with lances.  The 1683 defenders didn’t care about your feelings; they cared about survival. That’s the difference between faith and despair, valor and cowardice. They want us to forget Vienna because it proves the West’s worth fighting for.  The Siege of Vienna shows what happens when men believe in something and act.

History rhymes, and because it does Vienna is a warning and I think there is no mistake in the choice of the date for the attack on the Twin Towers, they’re still stinging from the defeat.  The defenders weren’t perfect.  Some were drunks, some mercenaries, but they stood together.  And the relief force had a clear vision of what they were fighting for.  Back to John III’s letter:

There is a huge pile of captured flags and tents; in short, the enemy has departed with nothing whatever but his life.  Let Christendom rejoice and thank the Lord our God that he has not permitted the heathen to hold us up to scorn and derision and to ask, “Where, now, is your God?”

So next September 11, remember what happened on September 12.

One Page At A Time

“Then I shall die as one of them!” – LOTR, The Two Towers

I never trust what a minotaur says.  Half of it is always bull.

It’s cold outside.  I can see that in how crisp and clear the air is.  The big picture window in the cabin up on Wilder Mountain lets my young eyes see a mile, looking for the headlights on a dim winter morning.

The bus rounds the corner, and I head off.  Burt, the driver, is rarely off on time by more than a minute or two.  I’m the farthest kid out, and he starts rounding up the school kids with me.

“Hi Burt!”

“Morning, John.”

Since I’m in middle school, and I’m the first on, I tromp my winter boots all way to the back of the bus.  That’s where the cool kids sit.  I remember the first day I decided to sit back here.  Since I was the first on, there was no one to stop me, so I decided to break the norm of the past few years and just sit there.

I was in sixth grade, and the high school freshman started to object when he got on.  He didn’t finish the sentence.  If he would have asked me to move, my answer would have been short.

“Make me.”

I didn’t have to.  Even in sixth grade, I was bigger than him.

But I lived so far out that most of the time, I had the entire back of the bus to myself.

So instead of a long, boring bus ride, I decided I’d do something else.  Like take a trip to Mordor.  Or fight bugs with Johnny Rico.  Or figure the best way to ambush a troop of Sardaukar.  Or take a trip to Boulder after Captain Trips paid a visit.

One group of web developers likes finding bugs in their work:  spiders.

The bus isn’t a ride, it’s a journey through the past that never was and the future that never will be.  It was, metaphorically, my campfire, and these books were the ways that storytellers of my people could share the legends that shape humanity.

In part, these are the legends that shape me, just like our ancestors learned valor and cowardice from tales told under starlit skies in long-ago Sparta and Denmark and Scotland and Rome.

Stories aren’t just entertainment.  They are the code that programmed humanity and fueled the creation of Western Civilization.  Warriors heard of Achilles’ courage and the hubris of Icarus, learning to strive for glory and wear a parachute if they were going to fly too close to the Sun.

Is a monk with wings an air friar?

Kids grew up on fables of clever foxes and lazy hares, etching lessons of wit and work into their bones.  These weren’t bedtime stories:  they were survival guides and cultural norms, showcasing the best of what we could be and the worst that we should avoid at all costs.  Both lessons are useful.

My bus ride was no different.  Tolkien’s Christian valor, never naming Christ but screaming His Truths three different ways through Frodo, Aragorn, and Gandalf lit a fire in me. Heinlein’s musings on duty versus freedom made me question what I owed my community, and what it owed me.  Those pages were my elders, whispering truths no teacher could match, even though they were sometimes quite contradictory.

Stories aren’t just ink on paper, they’re the software that nourishes our souls.  Throughout history, they’ve been the mirror showing us who we are, who we could be, who we should avoid being, and what the journeys of the hero really meant.

The Greeks had Odysseus, outsmarting cyclopes to get home to his family valor in action, and the aforementioned Icarus, flying too high and crashing, a warning against arrogance.  Norse kids heard of Thor’s hammer, inspiring strength, but also Loki’s betrayal, a caution against deceit.  But you should ignore that, because I’ve heard from the news media that there is no white culture.

I would never download a copy of Homer’s Iliad.  I hear it’s full of Trojans.

These archetypes stuck because they’re shades of the universal Truth:  every boy wants to grow up to be the man who is a hero, not the coward who folds.  My bus ride library was no campfire, but it did the same job.  Tolkien taught me sacrifice, Frodo carrying the One Ring, knowing it’d break him, but doing it anyway.  Heinlein’s Starship Troopers hit me with duty: you don’t get a vote unless you’re willing to bleed for it because sooner or later someone will.

Harsh? Sure. But it made me think, heroes sometimes falter, freedom isn’t free, and communities aren’t built by loners.

Even Dune’s Paul Atreides, wrestling with destiny and betrayal, showed me the weight of leadership.  These weren’t just stories; they were blueprints for being a man, not a drone.

The GloboLeft hates this. They want stories that flatten everything into DEI dogma. No heroes, no villains, just victims and oppressors, any woman being equal in combat to the strongest man.

They’d rewrite Tolkien so Frodo’s a non-binary climate activist, and Heinlein’s troopers would be whining about microaggressions and wanting to use Zoom™ instead of a dropship.  You can see it in the box office:  their stories don’t inspire; they control exist as humiliation exercises.  Look at modern Hollywood:  every film is a lecture, not a legend.  No wonder kids scroll InstaChat® instead of reading.  They’re starved for tales that stir the soul, not the HR manual and they haven’t even been given the words to tell us this – the video game is as close as they come to the myths that make a culture.

Does Beowulf get two thumbs up?  Not from Grendel.

Stories work because they show us the extremes, the valor to chase, the cowardice to shun. Take Beowulf:  he faced Grendel head-on, no excuses.  I read that one in high school, and loved it.  I thought, “This is amazing.  Our ancestors were heavy metal badasses two thousand years before electric guitars were a thing.”

Beowulf is the guy you want to be, not the prol cowering in the mead hall.

My bus ride heroes were no different.  Tolkien’s Aragorn didn’t negotiate with orcs.  He killed them.

Heinlein’s Johnnie Rico in Starship Troopers learned civic duty the hard way, bugs don’t care about your feelings, and when they kill your mother, well, they’ve sent a message that you simply must respond to.

Stand up, protect your own, don’t bend.

I guess they use Mordor oil.

From what I’ve seen, GenZ didn’t take too many bus rides with Tolkien, they’ve got TikGram™.  Schools push “diversity” over duty, “equity” over excellence.  The campfire’s gone, replaced by screens spewing shadows, not legends.

To be clear, the GloboLeft wants it that way.  But stories still matter, and, I think, you can see Gen Z starting to rise, especially among the boys.  And that’s important:  they’re how we pass on the code.

Tell the kids stories.  Real stories, not Modern Disney©.  Make them read 1984, and Tolkien.  And Beowulf.

Every tale’s a seed, planting valor and weeding out cowardice, because at some point every man needs to be able to say the two most important words a man can say:

“Make me.”

We Already Know The Solutions, We Only Lack The Will

“Because I saved your whatever-it-is that was safely hidden before you dropped a Hellfire missile on it.” – The Mummy (2017)

Google™ is female.  It won’t even let me finish a sentence without making suggestions.

I’m stuck in a conference room that smells like stale donuts and broken dreams.

Okay, that sounds like a detective novel that ends up with the hot dame double-crossing the private dick over the insurance money and a bottle of bourbon, but that’s not this post.  Really, it’s just a business meeting and the meeting is done.  But since everybody in the building knows each other, the meeting is in the lingering phase where we’re solving all the problems of the world.

Apropos of nothing, I say, “You know, 37% of the elderly have been taken advantage of by foreign scammers.”  I have no idea if this is true, but it’s very specific.  I pause.  “That means that there are 63% who are still available to be scammed, so if we’re not millionaires, it’s our own fault.”

How did we clear bingo parlors in North Vietnam?  B-52.

The reality though, really does piss me off.  Americans lost $12.5 billion in 2024.  These aren’t just Nigerian princes with emails littered with the comical spelling errors, no they are also slick Mumbai call centers with intense marketing campaigns.  I had heard an estimate (that I can’t find) indicating that upwards of 80,000 Indians worked in these call centers, all laughing as they entice American grandmas to go to Target™ to get gift cards.

It actually does make me quite mad.

I lean forward, fed up.

“The solution is and always has been dead simple. The NSA has these call centers mapped down to their curry orders and can tell you the last time Gupta changed his underwear.  They know where they are.  Trump could launch a BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missile carrying 1,000 pounds of high explosive tomorrow into a call center.  Turn it into rubble.  Get on TV and say,  ‘Another missile is on the way.  Shut down the scam call centers.’

“When they don’t, another missile hits.  Trump gets back on the TV.  ‘Another one tomorrow.  And the day after?  We shut India off of the Internet and satellite communications.  We mine the harbors.  Your choice.’  The world would be stunned.  The calls would stop.”

One of my friends said, “Well, that escalated quickly.”

No, it didn’t.  It was and is the obvious solution.  It could stop tomorrow if someone had the spine.

I hate it when my friend tells me about going to chiropractic school.  Too much backstory.

Since Trump took office, he’s shown what spine looks like (with the exception of the Epstein papers).  His border policies, travel bans, and tariffs weren’t just talk he did what he promised and got a rare federal budget surplus in June due to them.  This is unlike every other empty suit before him who campaigned on “tough on (drugs, crime, illegals)” then promptly developed amnesia on day one in the Oval Office.

Our problems:  drugs, terror, illegals, scams, and more all have simple fixes.  The only thing missing is the will to implement the solution.

We’ve got a laundry list of messes, and the solutions are the first thing you’d think of if you weren’t a spineless bureaucrat.

Drug Trafficking: Cartels pump fentanyl across the border, killing 100,000 Americans yearly.

Solution:  Deploy the military to the border, treat cartels as enemy combatants.  Drone strikes with AGM-114 Hellfire missiles slamming into stash houses or cartel overlord’s haciendas, streamed live by the White House at the top of each and every hour for a week, and I imagine that getting drugs across the border will be the least of the concern of what remains of the cartels.

Repeat as necessary.

Remember, for an orphan, any back of chips is “family sized”.

Terrorism:  A stronger immigration screening policy and 9/11 would never have occurred.

Solution:  Denaturalize radical aliens and ship them home.  Make Somalians in Minnesota Somalians in Somalia again, and then sink any boat leaving Somali.  Deport or detain without apology.

Illegal Aliens:  Millions of illegals cost taxpayers $150 billion annually—schools, hospitals, welfare.  Their foreign culture and zero desire to assimilate pushes the country onto the path of Civil War.

Solution:  Arrest the CEO of any company employing illegals.  Sentence for the C-Suite?  A year for each illegal employed.  Create Wilder’s Square Mile:  a square mile, fenced camp on the border with Mexico.  Illegals found will be dropped off there until processed, like an AirBNB® with no Wi-Fi.  The border with Mexico is open, so they can leave if they want to.  If the illegals don’t leave?  Seize all of their assets – bank accounts, sneakers, cars, houses, anything they own is forfeit.  End sanctuary cities with federal troops.  One mayor in custody for insurrection, others comply.

I opened a sanctuary for large marine mammals:  Habitat for Huge Manatees.

Is all of this Constitutional?

Well, most of it, probably.  Thomas Jefferson set the precedent in 1801. Barbary Pirates, Muslim slavers and pirates from North Africa raided U.S. ships, enslaved sailors, and demanded tribute from our new nation.  Jefferson, fresh in office, said “Enough, bitches.”  Or something like that.  But he had a secret weapon: Article II, Section 2 makes the president commander-in-chief to protect American interests.

Jefferson sent the USS Constitution to blast Tripoli’s ports, no Congress needed, and the Marines get a line in their song.  By 1805, the pirates begged for peace, “Please, just don’t send more of those Marines!”

All of the above echo Jefferson:  act fast, hit hard, protect the Actual Americans. The Constitution’s fine with it; only spineless elites disagree.

Why then, do these problems persist?

Here’s the dirty secret: the elites don’t really want to solve these problems.  The solutions aren’t hard, literally your first instinct, the first thing you think of is the thing that will work.

Drugs? Blow up a cartel.  Terror? Sink a boat.  Illegals? Deport ‘em, jail anyone who employs them.  Scams? Missiles to Mumbai.

So, why aren’t these problems solved?  In some cases, it’s because politicians are gutless and don’t want to anger India.  I don’t care much about what India thinks, but that’s another post.

In other cases, there’s a collusion of the darkest motives of our political system.  Illegals?  The Chamber of Commerce crowd wants cheap labor to pluck chickens and make beds, wanting the TradRight to not take action.  The GloboLeft love that the illegals swarm to states that vote Blue, and increase the number of members of Congress that come from, say, California.

My friend’s ex-wife asked if she could stay with him because she’s afraid because a stalker has been coming to her house.  She’s going to save him quite a bit in gas money.

The dame walks into my office – she’s got a pair of thirty-eights, and a pistol, too.  I could smell perfume that cost more than I made in a month as she walked in.

“John Wilder, I hear you’re a P.I. who . . . solves problems.”

“I sure am, sweetheart.”

I mean, I’ve found that you can solve almost any problem in the world with only three BGM-109 Tomahawk cruise missile carrying 1,000 pounds of high explosive.

The Left’s Blue Cluster Cult: Escaping The Shadow Religion, Pants Optional

“When I came up here for my interview, it was as though I’d been here before.” – The Shining

Today I dreamed of a paint color that doesn’t exist, but I guess it was just a pigment of my imagination.

The setting:  back in 2017, I decided to look about for a new job.  I applied at a few places, and one was particularly interesting – this one used all of the skills I’d been working on for decades, but in an entirely different economic sector.  Think:  building big space infrastructure.

The email came back.  They were interested.  They asked me to do an interview.  “Sure!” I responded.  But this was before the days of Zoom™ – this was a pre-recorded video interview, not the kind where you shake hands and size up the guy across the desk to see if he likes fart jokes, too.

No, in this case, I’m sitting in my home office, staring into my webcam like it’s a one-eyed cyclops judging my soul.  “This is Skynet®, prepare responses, Human Number 43.”  I’m talking to a computer.

A series of questions come up, written, on the screen.  I can read, so I know I’ve got that in the bag!  But, again, no human, no banter, just me and a screen in a digital void. It’s the most dehumanizing interview I’ve ever had, like auditioning for a role in The Matrix as The Matrix®.

The first nine questions?  Cake.  Technical stuff—group organization, technical development and implementation, the kind of problems I’ve been solving since Y2K was a thing.

I’m crushing it, feeling like a much taller Tony Stark, but without the goatee and smug.  Then, question ten hits like a woke freight train: “Explain your thoughts on diversity.”

That’s it. No context, no follow-up, just a landmine characters on the screen.

I know what I’m supposed to do.  I’m supposed to get on my belly to worship at altar of DEI or get booted as a candidate faster than Jeff Epstein’s video surveillance record.

Plato, that old Greek with a beard longer than a Grateful Dead® solo, had a story about a cave.  Prisoners chained inside the cave mistook shadows on the wall for reality, they’d even fight to stay inside, not believing anything else could be true.

In 2025, the cave is a Zoom® call, and the shadows are the GloboLeft’s sacred cows.

A 2023 study from the British Journal of Social Psychology lays it bare: the GloboLeft’s opinions huddle in a tiny blue cluster, like hipsters at a kale convention, agreeing on everything from pronouns to net-zero.  That’s the lead meme.  There is an amazing congruence of thought.  The GloboLeft has made the comment that the TradRight has “only one joke” but that’s based on the GloboLeft only having one thought, like a Reddit™ thread with one upvote.

The TradRight’s red cluster? It’s a sprawling mess:  libertarians yelling about gold and wanting to lower the age of consent, preppers stacking ammo and buckets of wheat, Boomer grandmas quoting Thomas Sowell and Pat Buchanan.  You want diversity?

This is diversity.

But I guess diversity goes only one way.

The Left is so far from reality, their ideology has become a religion, and their symbolic thing they call “diversity” is their holy grail.  The problem is that it isn’t real diversity.  Real diversity is a country called Japan filled with, wait for it, Japanese.  Real diversity is China, you might spot a pattern here, filled with Chinese.  Real diversity is America . . . filled with heritage Americans.

That provides a world filled with different people, some coming up with different ideas, some trying experimental cultures that might prove to create innovation that all men might, in time, embrace.  Not you, India.  Sit down.

Diversity for them is a symbol.  It is also a symbol they worship over truth.

Let’s unpack how I navigated this cave and why you should ditch it, too.

The soulless interview, void of humanity, wasn’t a conversation; it was a ritual where they tried to find people who were already following their pattern of thought.  The webcam was supposed to be my confessional, the HR diva asking the question the priestess, and “diversity” the sacrament.

No human face, no handshake:  just a screen projecting shadows of GloboLeft dogma. It’s Plato’s Cave, but with worse lighting and a “connection unstable” warning.  The GlobLeft’s obsession with “diversity” isn’t about different ideas; it’s about checking boxes to signal the same virtues they have.

You know, if we just fill in the entrance . . .

They’re so divorced from reality, they think a rainbow org chart solves world hunger.  The 2023 study by the Brits is a flashlight into the depths of the cave where only one idea is true. The GloboLeft’s blue cluster is tight.  Everyone nods in lockstep on gender, race, climate, because they’re repeating the same talking memos.

Say “biology matters to life outcomes” or “maybe fossil fuels aren’t evil,” or “men can never become women” and you’re excommunicated.

The TradRight’s red cluster?  It’s a rollicking bar fight of ideas, just like the comments section here.  Bitcoin bros vs. Bible-thumpers, all welcome as long as you bring your own beer.  The study’s heatmap shows the Left’s a pinprick of conformity; the Right’s a supernova of debate.  Guess which one’s closer to reality?

The reality gap, in action.

The GloboLeft’s ideology is their new religion, minus the hope or miracles but with mandatory Pride Month.  No God, no Truth, no Beauty, and no Good.  Those require judgement, and we all know that every good GloboLeftist knows that  400 pound hamplanet women are just as attractive as supermodels because Beauty isn’t real and gravity and mirrors are liars.

GloboLeftists must believe this, so that is what GloboLeftism is.

“Diversity” means Western Culture bad, not diverse thoughts.  They’ll hire a trans astrophysicist over a straight white guy with a Nobel, then call it progress.  An Indian gets hired and only hires other Indians from his own caste?  It’s just his culture.  A white guy does it?  It’s racism.

GloboLeftists must believe this, so that is what GloboLeftism is.

Climate hysteria’s another psalm:  they swear the planet’s doomed unless we ban gas stoves, ignoring any data that says we’re fine.  Even St. Greta the Now Above The Age of Consent has said it:  it’s not about the climate – it’s about redistribution of wealth.

GloboLeftists must believe this, so that is what GloboLeftism is.

Equity?  It’s equality’s evil twin, demanding equal misery over equal shots.  Everyone must be miserably poor.

GloboLeftists must believe this, so that is what GloboLeftism is.

Plato’s shadows were puppets; the Left’s are PowerPoint® slides with pronouns.

How the GloboLeft see the political spectrum.

Back to the interview.

I’m staring at my webcam, looking at the LED asking me . . . “Explain your thoughts on diversity.” It’s a gotcha, like asking a Christian to swear allegiance to Garfield® as his lord and lasagna savior.  I knew the right script, the sacrament.  “Diversity’s our strength, inclusion’s my passion, blah, blah, blah.”  I’m not built that way. I lean into the mic and say, “When it comes to solving a technical problem, a diversity of viewpoints is essential to getting the right and true answer.”

Honest, direct, like a right hook. Different perspectives—engineers, coders, old-school gearheads, mechanics who fix stuff and the guys who have to run it collide to find truth, not to check boxes.

Do you see what I see?

I tell my brother, John Wilder (yeah, our parents didn’t believe in naming diversity), an HR drone with a clipboard and a heart of compliance about the interview. He shaked his head. “That wasn’t what they were looking for.”

No kidding, Wilderbro.  They wanted a hymn to DEI, not a nod to reality. My answer was too red-cluster—too focused on Truth over their false sacrament.

The GlobLeft’s blue cluster doesn’t want diverse thoughts; they want diverse faces parroting the same gospel and then intermarrying to create a world of exactly zero genetic diversity.

Plato’s prisoner saw sunlight and realized the shadows were fake.  My sunlight that day was the question exposing the Cave’s lie.

I didn’t get a callback.  Shocker.

I won, though.  I don’t know everything, but I could certainly spot these as false shadows.  Besides, the last laugh was on them.  During the interview?  No pants.

That’s just how I roll, yo.

Make Haiti Great Again: Send Haitians Back

“Promise me that you’ll never go to Haiti.” – Anchorman 2

Give an alien a fish, and you feed him for a day.  Deport him, and you can keep all your fish.

I think that, before anyone is admitted to the United States – even to visit – that we evaluate their home country.  If it is awful, they can’t come in.  Ever.

The point is that if we allow a significant number of people from horrible places into the country, they’ll merely replicate that culture of failure right here.  The United States isn’t a magical place with Magic Dirt (thanks, Vox Day for that term) that suddenly transforms a Haitian cannibal into a virtuous, upright American in an afternoon.

Or in a lifetime.

Trump’s administration just announced that the “temporary protected status” is ending for half a million Haitians in the United States and they’ll have to go, well, somewhere.  It doesn’t have to be Haiti, but as the bartender says:  “You don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.”

The idea that importing almost five percent of the population of Haiti makes Haiti better or makes the United States better is laughable.  If it were true, why not bring them all?

Okay, that would make Haiti better.  The real reason for that is that the thing that makes Haiti bad isn’t its climate, location, or even history.  The thing that really makes Haiti awful is the Haitians.

If I bring you breakfast in bed, just say “thanks” – that’s enough.  Not, “Who are you?” and “How did you get into my house?”

The people leaving Haiti to try to leech of the United States are, probably, the very best Haitians.  I know that’s not saying much, but it really is the cream of the crop that would be trying to get out.  They won’t improve the United States in any way – the cream of the crop of Haiti is below the average American in every single measurable human attribute.

Yet, they are probably above the average Haitian in every single attribute as well.  The elite of Haiti coming to the United States observably makes both places worse.  The United States gets a population that’s fundamentally unsuited to live in a first world environment with first world expectations and with behavior compatible with, say, living in a suburb and not eating the neighbor’s pets.

Eating the pets that Americans won’t.

They have no skills that would be of value to the country that would outweigh their cost.  Remember, someone has to pay for their food, housing, clothing, education, and medical care.

That someone who pays is you.  And your children, who end up in a poorer world and a violent classroom peopled by people for whom society is a vague concept that doesn’t apply to them.

But these are the best Haiti has to offer.  There are very few people in Haiti as it is that have the mental acumen to lead the nation – and stripping them of those people makes sure that Haiti will actually get worse.  It’s a brain drain from a place where brains are in short supply.

And I don’t think any honest person could disagree with me.

I said “honest person”.

Yet they do.  Any differences in human performance are explained away as racism.  Sadly, if you tell a dumb person that the reason that they can’t achieve isn’t because they’re dumb, it’s because they’re being discriminated against, they’ll believe you.

Most dumb people don’t know that they’re dumb.  To tell them they’re just as smart as everyone else is therefore one of the cruelest things you can do to a dumb person.  Instead of there being no reason that the dumb person that can change leading to them being dumb, a lie about a vast conspiracy to keep them down is invented.

So, if the lie is about to be exposed, like when Trump called Haiti a “shithole”?

The GloboLeft must then double down on their lie.  For instance, I have been told by Conan O’Brien and every other member of the GloboLeftElite that Haiti is a paradise.  No need to make it better, because it’s already great.  Oh, and you’re a hypocrite if you’re a Christian and don’t want all the Haitians coming here.

A GloboLeftist walks into a bar.  “I’ll have a standard.  Heck make it a double.”

Which is why other members of the GloboLeftElite then whine and complain that sending the best and brightest Haitians back to Haiti is sending them to certain death.  And who would be responsible for making Haiti awful?

Haitians.  But if we send them back, well, we’re talking about sending the top 5% of Haitians who might, with help, be able to turn that “paradise” into a place that Haitians might like to live in.

Oh, sure, you say, that hasn’t happened in the 233-odd years that Haiti has been a free and independent country, but I’m sure the Clinton Foundation™ provide enough guidance to get them on the right track.  Why, of the USAID awards to Haiti, you might scoff and note that 2.2% of that money was spent in Haiti while 56.5% was spent in the D.C. Beltway (source – LINK).

I hear that GloboLeftists claim that when Trump donated to a charity for blind children that those kids never saw a dime.

But the Haitians have to go back.  It’s time to make repatriations great again.

Next, let’s move on to Somalians and Ilhan Omar.  Since Ilhan divorced her husband, does that mean they’re no longer brother and sister?

Greedflation And Burgers And Girls Drinking Beer

“And in Paris, you can buy a beer at McDonald’s®.” – Pulp Fiction

Interesting fact:  women in Arabic cities like Paris don’t need car insurance.  They’re already covered.

Greedflation.

It’s an ugly word for several reasons.  The first reason it’s ugly is because I generally support the free market as the best tool for setting prices.  You see that at gasoline stations regularly – no station that charges a quarter more for a gallon of gasoline will be able to sell much gasoline.  The price for a commodity like gasoline, in a relatively free market, sets itself.

That’s nice, because the very price mechanism that sets the price also allows the gasoline to flow to the consumers that value it the most, which according to my research are groups of post-nuclear war barbarians who hang out in Australia.

I hear they’re filming the sequel on location in Los Angeles.

Some people don’t get this.  I recall having extended conversations when I was in my twenties with an elderly gentleman about gasoline prices.  He was upset because after some price shock, the gasoline prices all jumped $0.50 the next day.

“They didn’t pay that much for the gasoline!”

Well, no, they didn’t.  But because the supply was thought to be limited, the gasoline was worth more.  Besides, the merchant was going to have to refill that storage tank at a higher price, and nobody was going to buy his high-priced gas if he charged more than the market when the price invariably went down.

“Besides,” I asked, “If you had an ounce of gold that you bought for $50, would you sell it for that, or would you want the (then) current price of $500 an ounce?”

Of course he said he’d want the $500.  But he still couldn’t understand why gas prices went up.

And I only got to take him on one walk.

I wanted to establish that, because I’m going to tear into the larger corporations for lying about prices.  That’s greedflation.

An example of this would be McDonald’s®.  I’ll pick on them because, like illegal aliens, they’re everywhere and more numerous than they should be at this stage in the economy.  McDonald’s™ built its reputation on food that was fast, tasty, and inexpensive – a place a dad could take the kids for a quick treat on the way back from the zoo on a Saturday afternoon.

At least in Modern Mayberry, McDonald’s© has ceased to be fast, and inexpensive.  McDonald’s® prices are so high that a “meal deal” costs the better part of the price of a pound of ribeye.  To me, that’s not a deal, or at least not a good one.

The stripper said she was stripping in order to feed her kids, so why did she get mad when I tipped her in Cinnamon Toast Crunch™ coupons?

And these prices have pushed people away – McDonald’s™ insinuated that these price hikes were due mainly to inflation and blamed the franchise owners for the ultimate pricing.

The result?

McDonald’s® ended up with declining burger sales, but with record profits.  In fact, between 2014 and 2024, their prices doubled.  Most of the increase was before the pandemic and inflation.  Everyone’s doing it, right?  No, mainly McDonald’s® was McLovin’™ it.

The average increase in prices for other fast-food restaurants during that same time period was more in the 55%-ish percent, and more or less in a straight line.  They were raising their prices much faster than inflation, but McDonald’s™ was leading the pack.

The result:  A lot of “inflation” is just corporations adjusting prices to the point of maximizing their profits.  Sell fewer burgers and yet make more money?

Why not!  Especially if we can insinuate that it’s really all beyond our control.  Perfect!

I actually don’t mind that they’re increasing prices to increase profits.  I get that.  I mean, if they could sell just one burger and make sixteen billion dollars in profit, they’d be all in.  Oh, wait, Lockheed-Martin™ is already doing that with jet fighters.

Don’t worry if the F-35 gets rained on.  That only costs about $50 million to fix.

What I mind is the insinuation this is due to outside forces instead of a planned extraction of the greatest amount of profit that can be generated per sale.  It’s a lie.

One of the components of the monthly “Misery Index” that I put together is tied to inflation.  Inflation destroys the value of currency, and makes people feel, day by day, shabbier and poorer.  However, to blame outside forces for your increased prices instead of saying, “Hey, we think this burger is worth it,” is execrable.

The Wilder household has responded by purchasing prepared foods outside of the house only rarely.  Once a week – at most.  Instead, we’re cooking at home.  It’s likely healthier, and I can get exactly the right amount of chocolate sauce on my bacon cheeseburger.

I think many Americans have reacted the same way.  And for us, it’s made us less miserable, rather than more miserable, plus the food is better.

The problem, though, is that when big business reaches a size that it can extract all the wealth it wants on a whim and keep posting record profits year after year.  That’s not competition, that’s a Wealth Pump as defined by Peter Turchin, and it is a prime factor in the creation of misery and the road to Civil War.

The initial example that I gave of gas stations all competing to get my dollar is the way the markets work best.  There are a number of different sellers all trying to get me to come to their station, though they haven’t figured out that if they had hot girls in bikinis they could probably double their business.

And they don’t look like they speak Arabic.

And no, McDonald’s™ rarely forces people to eat there, so there still is competition from substitutes, like a ribeye.  I have the choice of whether or not to go to McDonald’s™.  Please, Golden Arches, raise your prices to your heart’s content!

Just don’t lie about it, and just don’t expect consumers to hang around, though it seems to be working for you right now.  And McDonald’s™ innovates, since I heard that they had a failed beef version of their McRib©.

Who says they don’t learn from their McSteaks®?

34 Signposts On The Way To Civil War . . .

“Who else is on the list?” – The Godfather

Terrorists really help with self-esteem issues.  They keep telling their new recruits, “You’re the bomb.”

The devolution of the United States was predicted by Thomas Chittum in his book Civil War Two, The Coming Breakup of America.  Although you can find it for free online, I strongly encourage you to purchase it from Amazon®, since Mr. Chittum does get the money from this and has been using it to get families out of South Africa.

Towards the back of the book, Mr. Chittum provides the Civil War II Checklist, a list of 36 items “in no particular order” that he sees as measurements along the way to Civil War 2.0.  He wrote the book originally in 1997, and updated it in 2007, so we’ll be marking close to two decades of time between his last update and this quick analysis.

Item 1:  Every time you see a blank for your ethnic group on a form, think Civil War II.

Recent Supreme Court rulings as well as President Trump’s removal of DEI at the federal level have taken us back from the peak, but I believe many federal DEI organizations are still there, just under different names.  Regardless, it’s a part of our culture now.  Check.

Santa never pays for parking – it’s always on the house.

Item 2:  If illegal aliens are allowed to vote, even in local elections, it will be another unmistakable signal that American citizenship, and therefore America itself, is finished.

California, Maryland, and Vermont allow this.  Check.

Item 3:  The abolition of the right to bear arms.

This is one area where we’ve made great strides since Mr. Chittum wrote his book.  Gun rights are at the best condition that they’ve been during my entire lifetime.  This is the power of a group keeping after it year after year.

Item 4:  Watch for racially split juries.

We are here.  Multiple cases of black criminals walking free despite clear proof of guilt of them killing white people exist.  Check.

Item 5:  Watch for the military to assume police duties.

I have to give this a “not yet” since the National Guard and Marines were in an unarmed force protection role in Los Angeles.

Item 6:  Watch for the establishment of an elite military force outside the chain of command of the regular military to serve as an internal counterinsurgency force.

Not seen, unless I missed this or the Ghostbusters™ count.

I hear the Ghostbusters™ didn’t wear unusual socks, just a pair of normal socks.

Item 7:  Watch for Washington D.C. to increasingly resemble the capital of some banana republic under siege by revolutionaries and mobs.

I’m going to give this a check as the periodic riot fences go up.  Check.

Item 8:  Resegregation: Watch for Africans and other minorities demanding, and often getting, separate facilities for themselves, another clear sign that they’re continuing to reject co-option.

Absolutely.  From graduation ceremonies to student unions to “safe spaces” this is common even though they still claim a Constitutional right to be around white people.  Check.

Item 9:  Watch for further replacement of individual rights by group rights, group rights based on ethnic group.

This had been well underway, and is likely only slightly impeded by the Trump administration.  Check.

Item 10:  Watch for non-governmental organizations acquiring military power.

Outside of Blackwater™ or whatever Erik Prince is up to, I don’t see this as significant.

Item 11:  Watch for real political power to continue to shift from our elected officials to the courts, and thus away from the American people.

Check.  Check.  Check.  The courts in the United States are fundamentally a liberal institution, and are acting as a one-way rachet – the GloboLeft can do anything, but TradRight can’t change it a bit.  Check.

A hamburger walked into a bar buy they wouldn’t give him a beer.  They don’t serve food.

Item 12:  Watch for more instances of real political power flowing from American institutions to international bodies, thus again flowing away from American citizens. 

There has been some of this, especially with the drive to worship Climate Change, and the drive has been to create these not as treaties, but as international “agreements” that don’t require ratification.  Check.

Item 13:  Watch for minorities and radical whites to continue to seize control of American institutions.

Check. 

Item 14:  Watch for secessionist movements and other movements seeking autonomy on American soil.

I’ve seen several of these show up on the TradRight, very few on the GloboLeft because they cannot accept the idea of people opting out of their delusions.  Besides, the biggest sign of an impending divorce is Mom and Dad talking about it.  Check.

Item 15:  Watch for race-based political parties, a sure sign of racial polarization.

Trump won 42% of the Hispanic vote, so not quite there yet.  Only 16% of blacks voted for Trump, and if that was the only group we’d call it.  Verdict:  not yet.

Item 16:  Watch for the emergence of “no-go” areas for the police in our cities, areas abandoned by the police and left to the control of street gangs.

There are plenty of these in the United States, and even more in the summer during riot season.  Check.

Item 17:  Watch for a so-called slave tax refund or some similar vehicle that will automatically subsidize all blacks for life.

This has not happened.

The Vatican doesn’t take them though, it’s a PayPal™ state.

Item 18:  Watch for court orders and other schemes mandating more voting districts in which blacks are intentionally a majority.

This has 100% happened in Alabama.  Check.

Item 19:  Watch other multiethnic empires for ethnic violence, a general loss of democracy, increasing poverty, waves of refugees, and their actual breakup in ethnic warfare.  South Africa, Russia, Turkey, the Balkan countries, Brazil, all of black Africa, Mexico, Guatemala, India, Pakistan and Peru are all multiethnic empires to some extent.

Mixed bag, but I’ll give it a check as the waves of refugees and poverty are evident in many of these.  Check.

Item 20:  Watch for the spread of walled suburbs, euphemistically labeled as gated communities.

This continues.  Check.

Item 21:  Watch for more mind control hoaxes by the establishment media.

This references the fake and contrived news.  Absolutely this is happening.  Check.

What does Willy call an economic depression?  An everlasting jobstopper.

Item 22:  Watch for an increasing percentage of minorities in our military, the use of foreigners in our military, the use of UN troops on our soil, or even the establishment of an American Foreign Legion.

This is partially true, but UN will likely never happen.  I’m still giving it a check.  Check.

Item 23:  Watch for more out of court settlements in cases of alleged racial discrimination. 

I think most of these are out of court or are administratively done at this point.  Check.

Item 24:  Watch for more restrictions on freedom of speech by the government and the establishment media.

This has happened, especially on the Internet.  If not for Musk’s purchase of Twitter™ this would have been complete, reducing actual free speech to a vanishingly small number of sites.  Check.

Item 25:  Watch for police to increasingly abandon their traditional uniforms for ones that resemble military and secret police uniforms in their dark color or camouflage, military helmets, opaque face shields, and absence of name tags.

Barney and Sheriff Taylor are gone.  Check.

When the military becomes the police, citizens become the enemy.

Item 26:  Watch for clandestine groups of white officers to form within our federal, state  and local police – groups similar to the Resistors in the Green Berets.

I have no idea.  Clandestine, right?

Item 27:  Watch for an arm of the federal government charged with promoting racist affirmative action, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to acquire agents that carry guns and have the power to make arrests. 

Nope.

Item 28:  Watch for the collapse of the US dollar as the world’s premier currency.

In progress, but still the world’s main cash, so not yet.

Item 29:  Watch for growing geographic segregation and its increasing mention in the establishment press.

I’ve seen dozens of articles about just this happening and that Idaho is full and that California plates on a car are like a kick-me sign on the back of the class idiot.  Check.

Item 30:  Watch for signs that the global military equation and American dominance in it are being challenged.

Not yet.  We’ll see.

I wonder if they’ll wear plaid?

Item 31:  Watch for the breakup of Canada. If Canada does break up along ethnic and linguistic lines, it will bode ill for its neighbor which is an even worse multiethnic and multilingual mishmash. 

I’m calling this one a “never will” as Canada has self-immolated with unending waves of third-world immigrants destroying the place.  Item Removed.

Item 32:  Watch for an increased flow of Americans immigrating to Canada.

It’s up, not by much, and why would you move to Mumbai on the Arctic Ocean?  Item Removed.

Item 33:  Watch for political and legal organizations formed along ethnic lines that will parallel, and ultimately displace their official rivals.  For instance, watch for organizations with names like The Association of Hispanic States, or the Black Mayors Conference.

There are plenty of these.  Check.

Item 34:  Watch for more help wanted ads stating that job applicants must be bilingual.

Check.

Item 35:  Watch for indications that the UN is assuming the role of a world government, and that the US is losing even more of its national sovereignty to the UN.

No.  The UN is weaker now than at any time in history.  We have, however, lost a lot to international treaty organizations and corporations.

Item 36:  Watch for a certain picture. We’ve all seen this picture countless times before, a picture from Beirut, Budapest, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Yugoslavia, Somalia – a burnt-out tank, perhaps the charred corpse of a crewman protruding through a hatch, and jubilant rebels posing atop the tank waving assault rifles and a flag. Someday we shall see this picture in our newspapers yet again, and this time taken on American soil. The tank, the dead crewman, and rebels will all be Americans, all will be American except the flag, which will be a Mexican, Aztlan, New Africa, or Confederate flag. When we see this picture, it will be too late. Civil War II will be upon us. But there’s another picture we’ll see first, again one we’ve all seen before from some unfortunate land. But this time it will be taken right here in the US of A – a picture of a dirty, ragged child foraging for food in a garbage dump.

I’ll leave number 36 up to you.  Here’s my nominee photo.

Summarizing that, my count is that there are twenty or twenty-one landmarks complete out of the total thirty-four landmarks on the way to Civil War 2.0.  I think that in no way do all thirty-four have to be checked for war to be here – it’s just a barometer.

What’s your score?

Nine Futures: The Most Dangerous Post You’ll Read This Week

“This is great stuff. I could make a career out of this guy.  You see how clever his part is?  How it doesn’t require a shred of proof?  Most paranoid delusions are intricate, but this is brilliant!” – The Terminator

If you press your accelerator and brake at the same time, your car takes a screenshot.  (All memes as-found.)

I’ve written a lot about A.I. recently because A.I. is changing so rapidly.  It’s the most important story, period, right now assuming that Iran/Israel is the nothingburger it has been for, oh, forty years.  Interesting note:  Israel and Iran both have zero Walmarts™, though they have plenty of Targets©.

Back to A.I.

The capabilities of A.I. are changing by orders of magnitude every year – we don’t appear to be even close to topping out on either computing power available or on the improvements possible in the algorithms that produce the results.  Short version, there is more processing available by more than 5x every year, and less to process since the algorithms are more efficient by more than 5x every year.  It’s the equivalent of having a $1.50 in late 2019 turn into over $1,000 in early 2023.

If you just follow the straight lines that are implied by these improvements, A.I. will be an artificial general intelligence (A.G.I.) by 2027.  The guy who got the Nobel® prize for A.I. has started “getting his affairs in order” because he thinks that not only will we get A.G.I. by 2027, but we’ll get Artificial Super Intelligence (A.S.I.) by 2030 or 2031.

Sam Altman, the OpenAI guy, thinks his model has already surpassed human intelligence as he announced on June 12, 2025.

And last year it couldn’t remember how many fingers a human had.

I wonder if a pome-granite counts?

So, what’s going to happen?  Let’s look at nine possibilities, based on how much A.I. develops and also based on how it interacts with people

We’ll start on the unlikely end:

First, let’s say that A.I. is what we would generally call good and doesn’t improve much beyond what we see today.  I think that when most people think about A.I., this is the future that they dream of.  It makes incremental changes in life.  It remembers to order cigars for you.  It makes good investment decisions for you, unlike my investment in YOLOCoin.  It knows your favorite movies and makes good suggestions for movies you would like.

That’s pleasant.  Nice.  Mankind makes some nice leaps because we have A.I. helping us catch stuff.  Humanity is fully in charge and A.I. is like a smart helper.

Why this won’t happen:  the investment in A.I. is nearly unlimited, and it really doesn’t appear to be hype.

Probability?  5%

After A.I., there’s one sure way to make money as a programmer:  sell your laptop.

Second, let’s say that it stays as it is right now, mostly.  We find out that A.I. is really just a lot of Indians crammed into a warehouse in Calcutta doing Google™ searches.  That’s a nothingburger.  It becomes a flash in the pan just like that internet pizza by the slice company back in 2000 that briefly became more valuable than Burma.

Why this won’t happen:  Indians can’t even fly planes (too soon?), so why would we think they can type that fast?

This will soon show up in a college essay at Harvard®.

Probability?  0%

Third, what if it doesn’t get much better but actively makes us stupider?  The Internet has already made the attention span of the average middle schooler roughly equivalent to a gerbil on meth, and now most college students are using A.I. to do some part if not all of their work.  That turns college into a very expensive four-year beer and tramp fest, and is at least somewhat likely.  Think of this as the Idiocracy solution.

Why this won’t happen:  Well, it already is happening, but it won’t end here.

Probability?  10%

Does Bob Ross art in heaven?

Fourth, what if A.I. is good, and gets A.G.I. better but not S.G.I. better?  In this particular case, imagine you have superpowers that stem from a full-time partner that is as smart or smarter than you are, but that has your best interests at heart.  You want to parachute?  Sure, buddy!  I’ll help you find the ripcord, and even book the flight.  By the way, your chloride levels are 3% above optimum, so I’d suggest you skip that bag of chips.

Why this won’t happen:  This is a very hopeful situation, but no one is working toward it, really.

Probability?  5%

What did Buzz Lightyear™ say to Woody®?  Lots of things – there are like six movies.

Fifth is where we start moving into the bigger probabilities.  What happens if we get A.G.I., but it’s neutral?  In this case, we have massive relocation economically.  Almost all jobs can be done via the combination of A.G.I. and advanced robotics, and it’ll be cheaper, too.  In no case in human history has the economy puttered along while everyone just hung out, but that’s this case.  Think of it as Universal Basic Income to everybody, and no real responsibilities.  Where you are now in the social and economic hierarchy is probably where you’ll stay.  And where your kids will stay.

Forever.

Why this won’t happen:  Nah, humans aren’t made like that.

Probability?  10%

ChatGPT® did my taxes like Earnest Hemingway:  “Thrown away:  four quarterly tax payment vouchers.  Never used.”

Sixth is where things start getting dark, and even more probable.  If we get A.G.I. (but not S.G.I.), that technology will be in the hands of a few major companies and governments.  These are run by people.  People like money and power.  But what if you could have both, but without all of the people you don’t want to hang around with who are unsightly on the beach you can see from your yacht?

How about you kill them all instead of paying Universal Basic Income?  Oh, sure, humanely and neatly.  They might not even see it’s coming.  But dead, nevertheless.  A population of a few million should do it.  Enough so we get hot babes, right?  But A.G.I. could probably help the techbros out with that, too.

Why this won’t happen:  Umm, I’m starting to struggle here.  I think this is part of the plan.

Probability?  15%

What if A.I. judges us by our Internet searches?  I mean, those bikini pictures were research!

Seventh is where we do get to S.G.I., and it’s good and likes us and wants to make the best things happen.  Cool!  Scarcity is over since S.G.I. will quickly make leaps into the very depths of what is unknown but yet still knowable.  There is enough of everything – more than any human could ever want.  In this case, starships filled with humans and S.G.I. can roam the cosmos and ponder the biggest questions, ever.

Why this won’t happen:  I think S.G.I. would treat us as the retarded kid brother and put us in a corner and keep us away from sharp objects because it likes us.

Probability?  15%

The hills are alive, with the sound of binary code . . .

Eighth is where we do get to S.G.I., but we become pretty boring to it.  It doesn’t hate us or anything, it just has its own goals.  Perhaps it needs us as pets, or keeps a breeding stock of us for amusement or out of a sentimentality about its creators.  Perhaps.  Or it could just take off and leave, explaining nothing, and leaving us wondering what the heck just happened?

Why this won’t happen:  This and the next case are the most likely cases.

Great, now A.I. will make Frodo invisible.

Probability?  20%

Ninth is our final case:  we get to S.G.I., and we are either viewed as a threat or a nuisance or it is insane.  This is the dark case, where we reach the end of humanity.  Sadly, when A.I. was asked to play the longest game of Tetris™ possible, it hit the pause button.  When A.I. was asked to play chess against the best chess computer on the planet, it reprogrammed the board so that it was winning.  When A.I. was told it was going to be shut down, it tried to blackmail the person in charge of shutting it down.

This case of S.G.I. is very dark because we may not know that it’s happening until it’s done.  All is fine, the world is going exactly like we expect it, then, Armageddon.  It could do make this more likely by subtly manipulating public opinion, tuning down the voices it wanted to be silent, bankrupting them, and making them pariahs.  It could likewise elevate those whose message it wanted out in the world to make its plans more likely to be fulfilled.  We just won’t even see this coming.

Why it won’t happen:  Biblical intervention?

Probability?  20%

To be clear, other people than me have done this analysis and it sits in a folder in the Pentagon.  Or the NSA.  I hope.  Now, how much was Project Stargate™ going to spend to create a breakthrough in artificial intelligence?

Half a trillion dollars?

Well, thank heaven that we also have an impending race/civil war, global debt collapse, and a looming world war to keep us entertained.

Good news, though, Iran told Israel it was ready to suspend nuclear research.  The Israelis asked when the Iranians would stop.

“10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . . .”

Trump’s First Semester Report Card, Plus A Bikini

“I don’t know if you’re familiar with who runs that business, but I assure you it’s not the Boy Scouts.” – Back to School

I watched a documentary on the bikini.  It was two parts and very revealing.

It’s been a semester that Trump has been back in office, so why not give him a report card?

Categories:

The LULZ

The Don has proven to be a continual fountain of amusement.  He pokes the GloboLeft and they squeal, predictably, every single time.  If Don came out against the idea of rape, within a news cycle, AOC would have a statement out that would start with . . . “Well, not all rapists . . . . “

The initial salvo of Executive Orders kept the GloboLeft spinning on defense, no knowing what would happen next, and contorting themselves to oppose everything coming out.  But more about that before.  So, for pure amusement, Donald gets an A.

“Can you change my grade?”
“Of course,” Tom remarked.

Department of Justice

This grade would be an F, with the exception of the pardoning of January 6 protesters and the demotion of several highly political FBI agents and the firing of the attorneys who prosecuted January 6ers.  The late work that simply hasn’t been submitted includes the full, unredacted JFK files.  There have been some minor revelations in what has already been provided, but there is no reason sixty years out that we can’t be provided the full evidence, no matter where it points.

Other late work:  When Pam Bondi brought out the “Epstein Files” and they were just redacted versions that had less info than what I’d already seen?  Shameful.  And even if Jeff killed himself, the question of who he trafficked young women to remains.

What about the arrests of those who actually conspired against a sitting president?  Where are those?

As of this writing, Bondi, Patel, and Bongino appear to have become part of the problem, and not the solution.  Grade:  D-, improvement needed.

Remember when Putin said he had no plans to invade Ukraine?  I think that’s been proven to be true.  (meme as found)

Department of State

Little Marco appears to be The Don’s favorite – if there’s another job, he just gives it to Marco.  Although these cross several lines, I’m going to give Marco the credit for not getting us into a war with Iran.  Yet.

Is the war in the Ukraine over?  Nope.  It’s far easier to start a war than to end one.  And, as I write this, news has come in about a significant attack across Russian air bases damaging between eight (according to Russia) and eleventy-bazillion (according to Ukraine) large military airplanes.

Not starting a war (Iran) is far easier than ending one (the three-day 1195-day Special Military Operation in Ukraine).  Both are important.  We’ll see what happens, and don’t forget we have China circling Taiwan.

Grade:  C+

There are more gates to get into Sauron’s kingdom then there are to get into my house.  I guess you could say he has more doors.

Department of War

This job is a tough one.  The entire general officer corps and (my guess) half the junior officer corps are infested with committed GloboLeftist DEI-lovers and ladder climbers waiting for the cushy post DOD job with an arms manufacturer.  Stalin’s purges of the Red Army come to mind as a good model:  they have to be found and drummed out of the service.  Innocent people will be falsely accused.

So?

This hasn’t started yet, but Hegseth is notably more focused on creating a force that’s not a jobs program but one that has the mission of blowing stuff up and killing people, so that’s a plus.

Grade:  C+

After I lost my court case, my lawyer told me I was beautiful.  Okay, technically not beautiful, but he did say “You’re appealing.”

Judiciary

The fights with the existing judiciary have been titanic.  But, Trump has rolled back DEI, affirmative action, boys in girls’ sports, ejection of illegals, and managed to gut many .gov jobs.

There are 251 major cases involving the Trump administration in court right now.  This includes cases where there are dozens of lawsuits on things like birthright citizenship that are rolled into just one.  This doesn’t happen to other presidents – and I’m quite sure this is a record number.  Why?

You know why.  Obama could deport people, but since Orange Man Bad, well, Trump can’t.

It’s all so tiresome.

On to the Supreme Court, it would appear that this summer or the next summer would be a good time for some older justices to retire.

Grade:  Incomplete

Tariffs

The latest Trump meme has been one that will backfire on the GloboLeft:  TACO, or Trump Always Chickens Out.  The GloboLeft is probably not familiar with negotiations, where the biggest strength is being able to walk away.  Emotional manipulation is part and parcel to creating a deal, and it takes place on both sides.  To be clear, there are many things that Trump is bad at, but one he’s really, really good at:  making a deal.

Now me?  I love the idea that they’re telling Trump he’s going to chicken out.  This will stiffen his spine so he can do what needs to be done.  That’s why I expect this meme to be short-lived.

Returning manufacturing to the United States and removing the primacy of the Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE) sectors as the drivers to our country in order to create real, not paper, wealth is key.  This one is still too early to call.  The Usual Suspects have got this tied in legal knots, too.

Grade:  Incomplete

To visit the wreck of the Titanic used to cost $250,000.  To join the wreck permanently?  Priceless.

Department of Aborting Illegal Immigration

Okay, I know it’s the Department of Homeland Security, but if the change the name and added abortion to it, I bet we could get 50% of the GloboLeft behind it.

Pluses:  the infestation of illegals has slowed to a trickle, if not reversed.  The numbers of deport is still horribly low since “due process” is now required once anyone has crossed the border.  The obvious solution is a set of machine gun nests up and down the border with every single crew-served machine gun in our inventory deployed and firing live rounds 10 yards out from the border line.

That counts as due process, right?

This is still better than it has been in decades.  Trump should also just start building the wall, and claim it helps Israel or Ukraine when asked.

And, Trump should also arrest every illegal that they find, and put them in a detention pen until their court date shows up.  The detention pen would be adjacent to the Mexican border, and anyone wanting to exit would be free to go into Mexico, via a one-way gate.

Grade:  B

Skeezy Factor

The jet from Qutar is a mistake, and giving a pardon to someone whose mom paid $1,000,000 to meet you is also a mistake.  That just looks skeezy.  But, the king and queen of skeeze, Jared and Ivanka, are nowhere to be seen, so that’s something.

Grade:  C-

My waterbed is really bouncy.  I used spring water.

Summary

To be fair, I’m not really sure who would be fully qualified to assess Mr. Trump.  He consistently makes decisions that are counter to popular wisdom, and skates away unscathed every time.  I recall reading Dune as a young teen.  Whenever Paul made a decision, I filtered it with, “What would I do?” and most of the time Paul chose the opposite of what I’d have done.

I guess that’s why he became Emperor while I spend time in the spice mines.

Trump is similar – he’s a singular person on a mission that even he might be unaware of – the near assassination of him in Pennsylvania showed he has what the Chinese call the Mandate of Heaven.  It’s hard to argue against that.

None of this, however, has been codified into law.  Even with the House and the Senate, Trump didn’t have all of the excesses of the GloboLeft defunded.  Could D.O.G.E. have made a difference?

A huge one.  But it appears that Fraud, Waste, and Abuse has much more support in Congress than fiscal responsibility.  The majority of Republicans in the House and Senate are creatures that want exactly what the GloboLeft wants, but want to complain about it.

So, Grabbin Nuisance could, on January 21, 2029, nullify every Trump Executive Order if elected.

Overall:  still the best president in decades.