Complacency – Page 13 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Woke, Broke, Wealth, and Agendas

“Been to Disney World, one too many times, have we, Captain Ron?” – Captain Ron

What’s the difference between an iPhone™ 14 and half an ounce of gold? Half an ounce of gold will still be worth $1000 next year.

Once upon a time, there was a small business. It was run by a man who wanted to make cartoons and money. The cartoons were, mainly, for children, but he branched out. He made wholesome entertainment for families for decades, had multiple television shows, and eventually made a theme park. He was an avowed Christian, and was an ardent anti-communist.

He was moral. He hated pornography. And then he died and was frozen into suspended animation so his reanimated body could conquer the Universe from beyond the grave.

After he was put to “rest”, Walt’s Company was acquired and began to put out R-rated movies, as well as taking very, very un-Christian stances on, well, almost everything.

I’m talking, of course, about Walt Disney. Were Walt unfrozen alive today, I think he’d be shocked at what his company had become. I’ve had a beef with Disney® (the company, not the frozen founder) since before 2000 when they pushed hard to own all of their intellectual property until the heat-death of the Universe.

I have a problem with that, since I think that’s essentially stealing from the public domain, but I won’t go into that right now. Beyond that, there’s the steering of the company into entertainment that Walt would certainly never have greenlit.

In space, no one can hear Walt scream.

Case in point, the latest film from Disney©, Strange World. It’s being hailed as an “alt-family eco-drama featuring an openly gay teen”. I’m out of the “raising pups” stage, but hearing that I knew it was going to be a flop. Why? About a million gays would go see it for the feelz, and the hardest of the hard-core Left who had forgotten to abort their babies. That provides a stunningly small audience.

It is going to lose, by some estimates, up to $150,000,000. The earlier Adventures of the Incredibly Gay Buzz Lightyear probably lost a similar amount.

$300,000,000 in losses between them. I know people that work a whole month and don’t make that kinda cash. So, the guy who was running the company got fired. And then they re-hired the person that initially green-lit the bombs in question, Bob Iger, who had only left the company a little over 11 months previously.

Iger gets rehired, and in the first town hall with employees, says that he’s going to stay the course and continue the LGBT programming that has cost Disney™ $50 million a month for the last six months. And it’s not like there’s no movie audience – Top Gun: Maverick made $1.5 BILLION while Disney© was losing piles of shareholder cash. Disney’s© market value in 2022 is pretty close to what it was 8 years ago – and that’s after billions in profits from Marvel™ flicks.

Hmmm. Why is Disney© so committed to making “entertainment” that people don’t want at a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars because Disney© doesn’t share the values of the parents of the kids the movies were made for? It’s like going to Drag Queen Story hour and asking, “Why do men in lingerie want to spend hours in close contact with children under the age of six?”

Well, certainly Apple© is different, right? I mean they have all the cool iPhones© and iPads® and iPods™ and no real new ideas since Steve Jobs died. Certainly, they’re focusing on making money?

It turns out, they are. Apple® is making a 30% cut off of everything bought through apps from their App Store©. That’s loan-shark level cash. But as soon as Elon Musk took over Twitter©? Well, I’ll let Elon describe it:

And not only that:

Either advertising on Twitter™ makes Apple© money and they’re voluntarily dumping a revenue source because of feelz, or advertising on Twitter® never made them money and they’re removing a woke subsidy.

I wonder which. And speaking of wondering, why the heck is Elon still using an iPhone©, as noted on his Tweet©?

Stonetoss has a comment on the whole situation:

I guess losing Steve Jobs and turning the company over to a committed Leftist like Tim Cook would make Apple® less than a fan of any thoughts other than Leftist thoughts. And Tim Cook is not at all afraid of Elon Musk – Apple is worth $2.3 trillion dollars, which is more than Elon has, even if he looks under the couch cushions.

Who is Tim Cook afraid of? I think the Bee® nails it:

If Xi turns off the iPhone© flow, Apple’s™ cash flow will fail – it’s that simple. I wonder if this would impact the way Apple™ deals with security on their phones? Nah. But Apple is still raking in the cash.

For now.

We’ve discussed Disney® and Apple™. But certainly a fashion company wants attractive people in their ads?

Well, Calvin Klein® has changed a lot in 30 years.

There are some people I don’t want to see in their Calvins®. No! Don’t take them off!

In the final analysis, some businesses make money just to make money. Others make money just to fund their own ideologies, and I’m certain that’s the case with corporation after corporation. I could go on, but will stop here so the post doesn’t get 2,000 pages long.

I think Walt had an ideology, back in the day, but it was one I agree with. I do hope that Walt is eventually unfrozen in a thousand years and comes back with a vengeance and finishes that last cartoon he was working on.

I guess that would be the world’s longest suspended animation.

Defeat? Never.

“Okay you people – sit tight, hold the fort and keep the home fires burning, and if we’re not back by dawn? Call the president.” – Big Trouble in Little China

I hear that Rob Halford became an eastern monk, which I guess makes him a Buddhist Priest.

Back when I was in high school, I started a quest. It would probably be a trivial quest in today’s world with the Internet, and tens of millions of songs available all from a single search. However, back when I was in high school, the only people using the Internet were computer nerds at colleges or places like Los Alamos sharing nuclear bomb design info and ASCII porn.

Is this how Los Alamos beat the Soviets?

There was exactly one rock and roll radio station that reached the lofty heights of Wilder Mountain, and it was a good three-hour drive from where I lived. Heck, the nearest record store was a 45-minute drive. But I heard a song . . . and loved it.

I had no idea who the artist was. All I knew was that it had guitars that sounded like jet fighters coming in for an attack (metaphorically) and a heavy metal singer with pipes to growl low and also hit the high notes.

This was not helpful. My bumbling attempts to hum the song to the record store clerk probably sounded like a toddler attempting to instruct an Albanian goat herder on how to repair a Junkers Jumo-004 on an ME 262. My incoherent rambling eventually convinced the store owner that I could probably be sold a lot of records on my quest to find the goofy song.

What happens when a plane full of Leftist lands? The Jet turns off but the whining continues.

She was right. On one particular winter day, I bought two cassettes. Memo to the young: a cassette was an attempt to put a part of the Internet on a skinny magnetic tape and take it with you. Sort of like WIFI but with a really, really low transfer rate that cost over $7 for 42 megabytes.

I listened to one of the cassettes on my forty-minute drive to Stately Wilder Manor. I don’t recall what the first cassette was. It was okay. The song I was looking for, however, wasn’t on it.

When I got to Wilder Mountain, I decided to listen to the other cassette. Pa Wilder wasn’t home. It was November, and snow was falling gently across the valley, as I looked toward the volcanic cone that dominated the view above the mountains that surrounded the valley.

I put in the cassette. I hit play.

A single guitar hit an E note that crunched and then was followed by 41 seconds of guitar solo that made my brain implode. The first second was enough, the next 40? Pure passion. My father’s stereo, which before that day was primarily concerned with playing Dean Martin and Johnny Cash, must have been surprised.

I know I was. Then? Another driving song, this time about a sentient A.I. encased in an orbiting surveillance satellite.

The two satellite dishes on my house got married. The ceremony was awful, but the reception was amazing.

What? I was in heaven. The cassette was Judas Priest, the album? Screaming for Vengeance.

The theme of the music was unabashedly masculine. It was fueled by testosterone and optimism and defiance. It was, in short, everything I loved in life.

What was my ethos at that time? Full speed. Every moment in life. When I played football, I played football. Every ounce of my being was focused on the next play. The cleats digging into the turf, the snap as the center delivered the ball to the quarterback, my sudden sprint, and the exquisite feeling of my shoulder pads digging into that quarterback’s belly as I impacted him at full speed. Life was a game to be played at full speed. When a football game was over, win or lose, the idea that I would have left anything of myself or held back an ounce of myself? I never felt that after a single game.

Win or lose. Everything I had.

And that was the ethos. My focus was on doing everything that I could humanly do during the game. If we won? Excellent. If we lost? There was no room for regret since I had done every single thing I could for the team.

Amazingly, here that was, in music.

This music and most of the music I have loved since then was fueled by one concept – it was fueled by the idea that, in this life, there are winners, and there are losers. But there are no victims. I was responsible for my preparation. I was responsible for my effort. I was responsible for me.

If I won? Wonderful. If I lost? Yeah, it stung. But if I gave it my best, and lived up to my own values, I still won.

I took a survey of what soap people used in the shower. 95% of them told me to get out.

Again, winning was and is important. But a loss of a single day was nothing. Winning could and would come. And I would live my life, on my terms.

Have I been cheated? Yes. Have I been wronged? Yes. Did I stand toe to toe with my boss and tell him that I wouldn’t sell my honor and principles to him for any reason?

Yes. And did I pay a price?

Duh.

Do I regret it? Not for a minute. Not for a second.

There are moments in life, where honor and values will be tested.

Heck, that was in this music, too.

In this world we’re living’ in, we have our share of sorrow
Answer now is don’t give in, aim for a new tomorrow

Also in the music? Questions of deep philosophy. The eternal battle between Good and Evil. Oh, yeah, and hot chicks.

Eventually, this changed and fell out of fashion. I think it was Bush. Or maybe raising the drinking age to 21. Or maybe drugging generations with lithium and Adderall®. Or maybe the new “zero tolerance” lifestyle, where fighting for Good and being right still resulted in a suspension.

Or maybe all of that.

Kurt Cobain was depressed at 13. Guess that was his midlife crisis.

Music based on honor and testosterone and optimism eventually fell out of favor. I can even give you the date: September 21, 1991, when Nirvana launched Nevermind.

With the lights out, it’s less dangerous
Here we are now, entertain us
I feel stupid and contagious
Here we are now, entertain us

That abomination of learned helplessness replaced this from Judas Priest:

Thousand of cars and a million guitars
Screaming with power in the air
We’ve found the place where the decibels race
This army of rock will be there
To ram it down, ram it down
Straight through the heart of this town
Ram it down, ram it down
Razing the place to the ground
Ram it down

One of these makes me feel like slitting my wrists. The other? Fills me with the idea that none of us are alone. We have power. We are . . . going to win, no matter what the damn odds are. Judas Priest is still touring. Kurt Cobain? Not so much. I guess it proves that one person can handle only so much Courtney Love.

Fast and furious, we ride the universe
To carve a road for us, that slices every curve in sight
We accelerate, no time to hesitate
This load will detonate, whoever would contend its right

I refuse to accept defeat. The idea is against every fiber of being in my body. I realize that I will not win every battle. And I am going to listen to music, and I am going to take in media that tells me the truth, but I shall never, ever, despair no matter how dire the situation. My family? They come from heroes. So does yours. Never, ever, give up.

I always took a piece of paper to a wrestling match. That way I could beat The Rock.

I’m not going to stop until I stop breathing. And I won’t relinquish my honor to any man. And I am responsible for every aspect of my life and my situation.

Oh, I did find the song I was looking for, a year later:

The hammer of the gods
Will drive our ships to new lands
To fight the horde, sing and cry
Valhalla, I am coming

But that’s another story, though the song remains the same.

The Funniest Post You’ll Ever Read About: Money. Sex. Football. Corruption. Oh, And War.

“No respected psychic will come on this show. They all think you’re a fraud.” – Ghostbusters II

On one side, we have a liar that preys on unsuspecting youth, and on the other, his son Hunter.

It starts with an election.

I know that I was a bit surprised by Pennsylvania. The candidates weren’t great. The Republicans tossed a greasy TV fraud who, until he started running, believed in everything Woke. Ugh.

His opponent? Sling Blade™, an actually mentally impaired man who had a stroke. Before Sling Blade© had a stroke, though, he was as socialist as Trotsky on the day rent was due.

So, who gets the win? Uhhh-humn.

Can’t you see him on a ticket with Biden?

One little win like that, and sure, it makes sense. People like idiots better than frauds. But it wasn’t one little win. It was everywhere that mail-in or bulk ballot boxes exist and where the Left needed to win elections in order to keep control.

I had done the math after a discussion with a friend. In 2020, mail-in votes were tracked in most places by the party affiliation of who had requested them. Leftists had certainly requested them more frequently, so often made up more than 50% of the total.

Fine. More people on the Right vote on the day of the election, so that makes sense. But when you looked how those mail-in ballots voted in Pennsylvania, Biden got all of the Democrat ballots, plus almost all of the independent vote, plus a chunk of those registered as Republican.

I did these numbers based on NBC© and Newsweek™ data and if the mail-in ballots behaved like other places, Trump was cheated out of around 120,000 votes, more than twice what was required for him to win Pennsylvania.

I was thinking that the Democrats might have been interested in having the Republicans have control of the House in 2023, because then the Left could blame them in 2024 for not having all the answers. Nope. They apparently drank their own Kool-Aid® that this was the biggest and most important election, ever. They cheated. How can we tell?

Everywhere the vote didn’t matter, the Left didn’t spend the time and money to shift the election. Look at New York . . . the last time a Republican won as Governor his name was Pataki, and he was last elected 20 years ago. Before him? Nelson Rockefeller. Yup. New York could be called Blue York. So, letting it shift to the Right was fine. But Michigan? They had to get their governor, Waddles Whitmer re-elected.

Why did they have to get Waddles back in the chair? So that they could keep the voting laws favorable to the Left. That’s it. From the standpoint of the Left, it is literally her only job. In Illinois? The Left didn’t need it, so people could vote however. Besides, Chicago is so corrupt that they could generate however many votes they needed in an afternoon with a bored school secretary and a mimeograph machine.

Even in races that were virtual locks for the Right (which historically underpolls) you ended up with blatant theft. What does Washington have? Mail-in voting.

And they don’t even bother to hide it at times, or, rather, hide it in full view:

So, we have the “What” and the When” – a stolen election in 2022. Again. We have the “How” and the “Where” – mainly mail-in and drop-off ballots. We have the “Why” – to change voting laws so that the Left can maintain power, forever. What about the “Who”?

That’s simple. And you may not like it.

Bert knows. Consider this a warning.

Upfront, this is a developing story, and the following is the best version that I can source right now. Take everything here with a big helping of allegedly, because I can’t independently verify lots of bits.

Let’s go back in time. On April 25, 2019, Biden announces he’s running for President. Thirteen days later, on May 8, 2019 Sam Bankman-Fried launches the FTX crypto exchange. Oh, and his mother? She’s a Leftist political fundraiser and organizer when not teaching law. Sam Bankman-Fried is 27 at this time. FTX makes Sam a multi-billionaire a few months later.

What a coincidence! Leftist needs money to fund Democrats, and immediately becomes a billionaire.

Sam becomes the number two Democrat donor to aid Biden in becoming elected. And Bankman-Fried has donated (according to some sources) over $100 million dollars to the Democrats during the last two election cycles.

How did he make his money? Well, in a lot of cases, he just printed it. In others, he used the deposits of people in (what appears to be) a Ponzi scheme. He got high-profile people to invest big bucks in to his firm, and even pressured employees to invest in his company. This is Sam Bankman-Fried:

I hear his favorite sport is phishing. Also, that’s my grandma’s hairstyle.

So, Bankman-Fried did the usual, by begging for money from famous people. And, he was amazingly good at that. He convinced Tom and Gisele (by some accounts) to give him hundreds of millions of dollars to invest. Want proof?

Is it just me, or does he give off a creepy vibe?

And the rich and powerful are now paying the price. Tom Brady and his ex-squeeze Gisele? They were worth hundreds of millions of dollars. I wonder how much they trusted Bankman?

That’s a pretty good hairline for 65.

But Sam Bankman-Fried didn’t date supermodels. Nope. He dated his CTO(?), a 28 year-old Harry Potter® fan. Here’s her picture:

Her name is Caroline Ellison and she’s the reason for Bert’s earlier warning. She manages to simultaneously look like a 12-year-old and also an 80-year-old grandmother which is an odd choice for the girlfriend of a billionaire. Or anyone.

Not gonna lie, I’m hoping both of these kids hit prison so neither of them can take a dip in the gene pool. Me? If I ever get to the tres comma club, I’m gonna follow this man’s example:

But why settle for that, when you can go international? Reports coming in today indicate that tens of billions of dollars were laundered from US government funds sent to the Ukraine. Yup. Money sent to Ukraine was sent, by Ukraine, to FTX, where Sam Bankman-Fried, son of hardcore Leftist operatives, funneled the cash back into the Democratic coffers.

Or, graphically:

If you’re not mad by this point, your name isn’t Tom Brady (hi, Tom!) or you’re not dedicated to the actual rule of law in this country. This is a scandal of global proportions. Again, rumor has it that Sam Bankman-Fried is trying to figure out how to escape the Bahamas to join up with his creepy girlfriend in Hong Kong so they can move to someplace that doesn’t have extradition back to the United States so he can avoid ending up like Bernie Madoff, or, more likely, Jeffery Epstein.

So, if you wanted additional proof of Wilder’s Principle of Greatest Amusement (given the equal likelihood of two events occurring, the most amusing event will happen) here it is. This event has everything.

Mathematically provable corruption and stolen elections. Senile, likely incontinent usurper presidents, Tom Brady, the theft of billions, a brewing world war, the ugliest girl to ever date a “billionaire”, and an actual supermodel. If this was a movie plot, there are exactly zero people that would believe it.

What could make it more amusing?

Okay, that’s close. But, hear me out. What if Sam Bankman-Fried escapes to Venezuela, and Tom Brady joins with a group of Navy Seals to sneak in and take revenge? And Fetterman was really Tom Brady’s brother, who had a pet mouse named George? And then Tom was elected President?

I’d buy that for a dollar.

Feminism: The God That Failed

“Now, I know you’re a feminist, and I think that’s adorable, but this is grown-up time and I’m the man.” – Family Guy

My friend was a manager and hired a woman. He told her that her first job was to make him a sandwich. She quit. Subway® is so sexist! (FYI, most memes today are, “as-found”)

Feminism. It sounds so, well, reasonable from the start. “Women just want equal rights.” Sure, it sounds reasonable until you recall that the rise of feminism was the rise of the temperance movement, which made having a beer after work, umm, complicated. But it was women who were at the lead of that absolute failure, too.

The result was two atrocities: women got the vote, and you couldn’t get a beer. All they missed was a Constitutional Amendment mandating Fran Drescher’s voice doing every public announcement and commercial and sports play-by-play and the world would have been an absolute hell. Yes, it would have been worse than actual 2020. But not by a lot.

How much beer does it take to get an astronomer drunk? At least 4.5 light beers.

Again, it sounds reasonable. Don’t drink. Oh, wait, your humble purveyor of dank memes and attempted witticisms is maybe two glasses of wine in and I’m enjoying that. I’m not arguing that not drinking is better for you than drinking. Mormons and other people that don’t drink live until they’re essentially dust connected to other bits of dust by regret, but, hey, I’m not judging.

Mark Twain, though, had a few choice words: “Never refuse to do a kindness unless the act would work great injury to yourself, and never refuse to take a drink – under any circumstances.” But we’re not talking about booze here, we’re talking about feminism.

Again, I’ll reference Twain: “A woman springs a sudden reproach upon you which provokes a hot retort, and then she will presently ask you to apologize.” I honestly think that’s the history of feminism.

What’s the difference between a Sumo wrestler and a radical feminist? The Sumo wrestlers shave their legs.

I’ve attacked feminism several times in this post so far without any sort of backing. What sort of backing do I need? I mean, should we start all the way back at the 19^th Amendment, which granted women “universal sufferage” – which I would have thought would have been a bad idea. I mean, The Mrs. suffers a lot, but that’s just because I’m me.

The difficult part of feminism is that it attempts to first create a division between women and men. And, the fair part of that is that women and men are fundamentally different. They’re different biologically down to the genetic level. When studies were done of the brains of women and men, it was found that those brains were fundamentally different. The Mrs. can see about 175,083 colors. I see seven or so. The Mrs. likes to be warm and comfy on a campout. I realize that discomfort is a transient condition and if the tent leaks, it might be irritating.

If you love someone, let her go. Hopefully, she won’t call the FBI.

But “science” assumed for decades that the brain of a dude was the same as the brain of a broad. It’s simply not so. It’s actually 100% provable that dudes and broads have different brains. When studying babies, baby boys like men toys – wheels, cars, machines. Baby girls like plush toys and fuzzy warm girl things.

Science had (and still has) a weird egalitarian streak that assumes that any baby created from any combination of parents on Earth might be shorter or taller, fatter or skinnier, browner or paler, and yet still has exactly the same brain.

Let’s pretend that utter fiction was true (it’s not). If so, what happens when those kids get flooded with the white-hot hormones of puberty, estrogen and testosterone?

Yeah.

This is your brain on feminism.

Men and women are different, and they’re born different, and develop differently. Dress a man up like a woman? That’s the same as turning a classic Pizza Hut™ into a bank. We all know that whatever color you paint it, or what sign you put on it, it’s still a Pizza Hut®.

Even worse? Men and women have utterly different motivations when it comes to mating. Why? Men are involved, but women are committed. A man can have nearly unlimited offspring in a lifetime (as Genghis Khan can attest, 35% – not a typo, 35% of Mongolian people today are his descendants) but women can only have a few kids so they are choosy and choose the best dude they can find. The result?

35% of Mongolian people are the descendants of Genghis Khan.

When women aren’t constrained by society, they’ll have the kids of the most macho dude they can find. Women practice hypergamy – they try to marry up in either social caste or intelligence or whatever floats their boat. Men practice, well, “Dude, did you see her? She’s hot.”

Hint: having a majority of young males that have no interest in the future of society isn’t a good thing.

I am a result of such hypergamy. As many of you know, I’m adopted. Unlike many adopted kids, I have a lot of data about my biological parents. My biological mother was at college and decided, “Whoa, that dude is really smart. I want to have his baby.”

Yes. This happened. The dude was a freshman. My biological mother was a senior. The poor guy never had a chance, and, thus, I exist, entirely due to hypergamy.

I say “the poor guy” because it was true. He was a mark in her game. She wanted his genetics in her child. That was it. There wasn’t a plan, there wasn’t love. Hypergamy isn’t about those things, it’s a transaction. For him, it was her saying, “Hey, baby, I like the way you fill out those genes.” The long-term result for her from this strategy is pictured below:

And . . .

But, when it came time to take care of me, my biological mom was not up to it. I assure you, that given the combinatory genetics of her willful and cunning plotting and his intelligence, I was probably the most capably evil baby born that year. Seriously. I was the most awful child in stunning ways. I could list them, but you’d be shocked. I mean, how many other seven-year-olds have convinced their grandmothers to buy them magazines with actual boobage in them?

Yeah. And that doesn’t include . . . . oh, so many things.

Hypergamy is a less-than-zero-sum game, though. Whereas conventional morals would indicate that a married couple should really try to stick it out unless it was a morally untenable relationship (see: my first marriage, which would have been dissolvable in any Christian year since ever) now the woman is encouraged to blow it all up for games and prizes. And demonize men in the process. Why? Because they’re there.

Also? Feminism. The laws used to be if you were the reason that the marriage didn’t work, you suffered. Later? Not so much. Now, women have the upper hand in nearly all facets, and in fact, start most of the divorces (70-80%) in the country. Why?

The laws are stacked in their favor, even more so if there are children.

This is a result of feminism. But beyond that has been the impact on society as a whole. What would the result of the 2020 election have been (even after the shenanigans) if only men voted?

Left for you: show how the federal deficit, abortion rate, divorce rate, rate of church attendance, number of single mothers, increase in welfare, and a dozen other things increased after women got to vote.

I want to make something clear: I really, really love women. I think they’re awesome and respect The Mrs. highly, and I think she’d trust me to cast a ballot she’d believe in, because we think alike. I also think that woman’s suffrage has only resulted in suffering and believe it can be shown mathematically (shhhhh, most of them aren’t so good at math). So, let’s put out a petition to end woman’s suffrage! I think we can get 70% of women to sign it . . . .

The One Where I Prove Electric Cars Are A Lie

“For more enjoyment and greater efficiency, consumption is being standardized.” – THX1138

Patton never colored his hair, because my heroes never dye.

Electric cars are a scam. A really, really big one, and in ways that most people aren’t talking about. My original sentence that I typed said, “in ways that moist people aren’t talking about” but I feel moist today, so that didn’t fit. Let me explain. About the cars. Not why I’m moist – this is supposed to be a family-friendly blog.

Electric cars are, in most ways, absolutely inferior to cars powered by Oil, Our Slippery Friend™. Why? The technology is relatively new, the first electric car (really a locomotive, but who’s counting) having been invented only in 1842 in Edinburgh by engineer Robert Davidson. It traveled at the breakneck speed of 4 miles per hour, which is roughly 4 miles per hour faster than Davidson could move after a fifth of something that John Walker® (yes that one) might have been selling back then.

So, it’s not fair to judge electric cars, since they have been only developing for 180 or so years. It’s still an infant technology. Oh, wait.

How can you say it’s not an infant technology? It sucks.

But California has decided to ban the sale of new gasoline cars by 2035. Hurray, California! You’re geniuses beyond imagination! You’ll single-handedly solve global warming.

Or . . . will that pesky math get in the way?

Let’s see – in order to get California girls to the beach, it takes 13.8-15 billion gallons of gasoline. We’re skipping diesel for now, and just dealing with gasoline. I’ll use 15 billion gallons because in the immortal words of the captain of the Hindenburg, “Close enough.”

Let’s do the math.

15 billion gallons of sweet, sweet gasoline is 500 TW-h (that’s terawatt hours, which is the metric equivalent 5,000 bushels per fortnight). California produces in electricity, in total . . . drumroll please, 277 TW-h. So, California produces slightly more than half the electricity needed by its stunning new fleet of cars.

All I can say is that’s shocking!

To keep just the same level of energy production available for homes (because, presumably, all new citizens between now and then will live in tents) that California will need to triple the amount of power it produces. If you count in increased uses for the iAndroid™ Eleventy-X® and GameBoxStation 2000©, the grid will have to multiply by four or five times. And, remember, we skipped diesel engines, so it’s nearly certain that my estimate is low.

And if they tried to make those cars run on PEZ® (normal PEZ©, not PEZ™ made of anti-matter) it would require 278 quadrillion PEZ™, if you assumed that you could burn PEZ™ at the same efficiency that you could burn gasoline. And that would be 278 quadrillion PEZ© a year. Every year.

Hey, if this PEZ™ idea works out I could mint money.

To quote Monty Python on a related matter, “Where’s the fetus going to gestate? In a box?”, we’ve reached a point where politics cease in any reasonable fashion to correlate to reality. As I’ve seen in recent years, California’s electrical grid is in a shambles, so much so that, rather than be blamed for creating the periodic apocalypse-level fires, the various utilities have been hiring homeless people to burn forests so they don’t get blamed for all of the fires.

In reality, it’s not their fault. Californians keep using electricity, but the process for building reliable infrastructure is so Sovietized that to upgrade their transmission lines requires more paperwork than conductor wire, by weight, and takes longer than Biden does to remember that John McCain died half a decade ago. And this is a state that’s going to quintuple energy production?

Using what?

Seriously, where do they think energy comes from? Oh, I forgot. Outlets. “Why do we need more power plants?” I can hear President Kamala asking, “There’s always power when I plug something into an outlet. Besides, if we lost electricity we could watch television by candlelight.” The answer is that the energy has to come from someplace, like the dams they’ve been destroying, the nuclear power plants they’ve been shutting down, or the coal plants that they won’t allow to be built.

Perhaps they could use the power of the Void?

If it were just that level of stupid, it’s survivable. But it’s more than stupid, it’s greedy stupid, and here’s the rub: they’re doing this to soak the folks buying cars.

Let’s take, me. My newest car is (I think) a 2016. It was paid for in . . . 2016. My daily driver is a 2010. It’s got a 130,000 miles on it, and I replaced the engine in it at 115,000 miles, and it cost $5,400. At 5,000-10,000 miles a year? It might last another decade, easily. It’s not complicated, the air conditioner works, and it’s comfortable.

Try that with an electric car, I dare you. My 2010 had the engine blow up. $5,400, plus tax, and I was back to happy motoring. A Chevy® Volt™ had a bad battery. $29,842. Snopes™ even confirmed it was the real deal. But they tried to put a good spin on it. “It was an antique car” that was two years younger than mine, “and the battery technology was old.”

I hope the car bought her a drink first.

I have one car that is now 20 years old. How many batteries would it have had to go through? And you can be certain that the latest bill to replace it would have made the entire car worthless. Period.

This is an odd game. Cars had become very, very reliable, some lasting 300,000 or more miles with only routine maintenance. There’s a reason that, aside from the AK-47, the Toyota® HiLux© is the brand of choice of insurgent armies everywhere. They last forever, and you can mount multiple heavy weapons on them.

That just won’t do. As a consumer, you have to be made to consuuuuume. Me? With my old car, I’ve more than offset the “carbon debt” caused by making it, so replacing it will actually be damaging to the climate (if you believe in that sort of thing). And electricity will have to involve tossing more carbon into the atmosphere and will cost a lot more, so it’s not that, either.

Joe Biden is making helping stop energy usage – every time he’s on TV people turn it off.

No, the root cause is that cars are too reliable and people are using them far too long. If you have a paid-off car, you’re not paying interest. You’re not paying for new car plants. You become an economic black hole and the powers that be will do anything (and I mean anything) to force you to consuuuuume. Remember digital TV? I saw several articles where economists were calculating the economic uplift from forcing everyone to junk their old televisions for new ones.

Let’s consuuuuume! And with electric cars, use ‘em or not, they rot away so you’ll have to pay $29,000 for a new battery or consuuuuume a new car. Emissions? Who cares? We’ve got to keep people slaving away, paying interest, and buying the new thing. Insane? Certainly.

What did Californians use to light their homes before they had candles? Electricity.

Thankfully we have television and commercials. I’m sure that they will be used for good and not to convince everyone that the point of their life is consumption.

Well, I guess now you know why I’m moist. Too much time consuuuuuming.

Civil War Weather Report: The Last Election?

“Messy thing, elections.” – Rome

If Democrats get their way, we’ll never have a long, protracted election count to learn who won again. We’ll know before the election. Besides, I’ve been told that if your election lasts more than 24 hours, you should call a physician.

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

I’ve kept the Clock O’Doom the same, though tensions are certainly increasing. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – Election 2022 – Violence And Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – How It Starts: Canada – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join over 720 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge. Most of today’s memes are free-range, and not originals. The crop was really good this month.

Election 2022

Since I’ve been a kid, each election has been framed as, “the most important in American history”. As of now, the Left is looking to spike the ball and end any challenge to their power now and into the future: they want to change the rules.

Well, at least we know who Hunter votes for.

Right now, the Senate is the only roadblock to federalizing all state elections, by putting forward a slate of rules that make election fraud trivial. Why wouldn’t the people on the Right cheat? Well, first off, we’re not that organized. It’s true. I think it was Charles Péguy who said it: “Tyranny is always better organized than freedom,” which makes sense. And don’t think that the Left doesn’t make use of that fact.

WWWT? (What Would Watterston Think?).

The result of this is that fair elections will cease to exist. Me? I want elections to be harder. I’d love it if people had to graph an equation and name four consecutive presidents from the 1800s to vote. As such, I don’t think it’s unreasonable to require an identification card to vote, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to ask someone to vote on a specific day and to have registered thirty days before.

Oh, and the legislation? Apparently, it makes it illegal for states to remove dead people from the voter list automatically. But what it does give them is control. And the Senate leadership is willing to go all-out on this one, eliminate the filibuster, and ram this down.

Why not? It gives the Left control, forever.

Always remember the stakes.

Violence And Censorship Update

Measuring violence in 2020 was pretty easy – a riot here, a murder there, and adding in the numbers was pretty straightforward. Violence hasn’t dropped, it’s just become, well, boring. There are thousands more murders, but they just look like normal crimes. As cops don’t want to risk life in jail for stopping a drugged-out banana-buyer, many district attorneys have been bought and paid for by Soros to enact just the street violence we’re seeing today. So, measuring direct political violence is hard. I’m not giving up, just noting that the violence is still there, but just not as easy to track.

Russian Gas

A Russian Twitch® streamer had his account censored. His transgression? He had a live stream going from his house showing his gas burners on his stove on, continually. I guess that made some people pretty hot.

Kiwi Farms

I’m not going into the really weird history of this website. I’ve been there a couple of times, and it wasn’t for me. That being said, it has been the subject of a full-court press by trans activists that want to have it shut down, and have been doing a pretty good job of getting it deplatformed again and again. On balance, it was probably less dangerous than Twitter®, but it didn’t agree with the current norm.

New Zealand

I’d prefer Kiwi Farms to what’s going on with the Kiwis in New Zealand. New Zealand’s Prime Minister, Ratty McRatface, er, Jacinda Ardern, has come out against freedom and free speech. Her takeaway quote: “How do you tackle climate change if people don’t believe it exists?” Also, I believe that she is now looking for a block of cheese to gnaw on.

Facebook®

I missed this one last month – Facebook© has banned the hashtag #diedsuddenly because, well, it is forbidden to question the safety of a “vaccine” developed in a few hours and delivered in an experimental manner using technology never before implemented on a wide scale. I mean, what could go wrong?

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again. And I wonder when Biden will determine that begging isn’t a strategy?

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Violence ticked slightly downward this month and the abortion backlash subsided. Will October be spicy due to elections? I’m betting not.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it dropped a bit more – wait until October – it might be big.

Economic:

Economic indicators shot down this month. Inflation has caught up with the Market. Not good.

Illegal Aliens:

For the first time in the last year, I can’t say that It set a new record for this time of year. But it was close. Must still be hot out.

How It Starts: Canada

In my opinion, the real reason that we haven’t been in a Civil War yet is we lack a unifying reason. Canada might just have found one: guns. In the United States, I’m not going to say that we’re fond of guns, but it really is built into the national DNA. From Lexington and Concord to last weekend, Americans love shooting guns. Why?

Freedom, I guess. And I’d also toss out that the founding stock that are ancestors of a majority of the people in the country were a bit wild. This selected for people who sought freedom. If that was the case, and if attitudes are genetically handed down, people who came here to be free passed that down genetically.

In Canada, however, there is a bill up that would restrict guns immensely – one summary indicated that you could no longer transfer handguns from one owner to anyone else, and that buybacks would “intensify”.

These buybacks are always sold on the basis of “safety” but we all know what the real goal is.

But in Canada, in the Prairie provinces, they’re having Nunavut. Alberta, Manitoba, and Saskatchewan are preparing to nullify this gun grab.

There is even talk about them leaving Canada altogether, which would be awesome. Then you could go from the tip of Alaska down to the toe of Florida and be in a free country the whole way. I’m pretty sure that we could get along, since they speak the language, like hockey, and make okay beer. Oh, and combine them with the Red States in America? We have most of the oil, most of the food, and most of the guns.

Sounds like a winner.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/DionLimTV/status/1574542273773117440

https://youtu.be/ghMb9xHU31s
https://twitter.com/CBSNews/status/1572360002798485504

https://twitter.com/i/status/1566119675758624771

https://twitter.com/i/status/1566815458254376961

https://twitter.com/citizens_sanity/status/1566131407654715394

https://twitter.com/i/status/1569726738355339266

https://twitter.com/eclipsethis2003/status/1568009704877719552

https://twitter.com/ProfanityNewz/status/1567724993412304897
https://youtu.be/YULQKb68FHM

https://youtu.be/VWCTlcczmOo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hET1H6RZVwQ

https://twitter.com/StokingFreedom/status/1570412128200171521

https://hotair.com/tree-hugging-sister/2022/09/26/philadelphias-story-worse-than-waah-waah-at-the-wawa-n499096

https://breaking911.com/get-in-the-closet-suspects-in-virginia-home-invasion-caught-on-camera/

https://twitter.com/MemphoNewsLady/status/1567748252992212992

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/memphis-mayor-blasts-facebook-streaming-mass-killers-early-release-4-our-fellow-citizens

https://heavy.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/305915336_3142177816113006_7925894570550381876_n.mp4?_=1

Good Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1565566842365624320

https://twitter.com/conservmillen/status/1572192397018234888

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1572110371946901506

https://youtu.be/gNARbEgwkkI

One Guy

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1566887635217514498

https://www.newsweek.com/texas-teenager-shotgun-takes-down-two-home-invaders-one-escapes-1741782

https://twitter.com/i/status/1567525359352180737

Body Count

https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/09/13/modeling-the-future-of-religion-in-america/

https://gehweb.ucsd.edu/wp-content/uploads/CalVEX-09.06.22.pdf

https://www.unz.com/jtaylor/more-murders/

https://www.realclearwire.com/articles/2022/09/28/opioids__work_hidden_scourge_sapping_the_economy_855616.html

https://www.sofx.com/these-kids-are-dying-inside-the-overdose-crisis-sweeping-fort-bragg-rolling-stone/

https://www.19fortyfive.com/2022/09/the-u-s-army-has-a-fentanyl-problem-thanks-to-mexico-and-china/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthart/2022/09/07/oath-keepers-members-include-hundreds-of-elected-officials-police-and-military-personnel-leaked-list-suggests/?sh=3ee6cb0c5389

https://www.adl.org/resources/report/oath-keepers-data-leak-unmasking-extremism-public-life

https://www.theepochtimes.com/adults-aged-35-44-died-at-twice-the-expected-rate-last-summer-life-insurance-data-suggests_4711510.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge

https://www.theepochtimes.com/more-than-half-of-babies-toddlers-surveyed-had-systemic-reaction-after-covid-19-vaccine_4707948.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=cfp

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

https://archive.ph/MoP0V

Vote Count

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoMfIkz7v6s

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1571351490165350402

https://youtu.be/bqBnp2AdH7Y

https://kanekoa.substack.com/p/have-chinese-spies-infiltrated-american

https://kanekoa.substack.com/p/fbi-conceals-chinese-infiltration

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-demonizes-maga-republicans-dems-spent-million-pro-trump-candidates-win-primaries

https://scheerpost.com/2022/09/05/chris-hedges-lets-stop-pretending-america-is-a-functioning-democracy/

https://internationalman.com/articles/doug-casey-on-class-warfare-eat-the-rich-sentiment-and-what-happens-next/

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/restoring-america/fairness-justice/delaware-judge-rules-vote-by-mail-law-unconstitutional-cannot-be-used-in-november

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/florida-watchdog-groups-allege-mail-ballot-and-voter-roll-violations-2020-2022

https://www.axios.com/2022/09/08/snap-voter-data-republican-democrats

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/pennsylvania-county-sued-over-illegal-ballot-drop-box-usage-captured-camera

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/pennsylvania-county-sues-dominion-voting-systems-over-severe-anomalies-2020-election

https://www.theepochtimes.com/exclusive-grassroot-election-integrity-movement-sweeps-battleground-states_4740686.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=CFP

https://uncoverdc.com/2022/09/27/jovan-hutton-pulitzer-election-day-ballots-may-have-been-inserted-in-maricopa-county/

https://nypost.com/2022/09/14/facebook-spied-on-private-messages-of-americans-who-questioned-2020-election/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11213581/Congress-age-senate-house.html

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.breitbart.com%2Fpolitics%2F2022%2F09%2F12%2Fdoj-refuses-to-release-biden-administration-plan-to-intervene-in-2022-midterm-election%2F

https://www.insider.com/all-the-us-capitol-pro-trump-riot-arrests-charges-names-2021-1

https://spaceworms.substack.com/p/bribing-voters-is-getting-out-of

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidens-speech-had-it-all-backward-fascist-democratic-party-trump-ideology-america-jan-6-democracy-11662161065?mod=djemalertNEWS

https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/01/politics/election-workers-officials-harassment-kentucky-texas/index.html

https://www.foxnews.com/us/former-virginia-election-official-indicted-on-corruption-charges

Civil War

https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1566522380280889347

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=63335
https://mattlabash.substack.com/p/is-trump-pushing-civil-war

https://www.npr.org/2022/09/20/1124142684/some-compare-todays-political-divide-to-the-civil-war-but-what-about-the-1960s

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/09/05/why-ive-stopped-fearing-america-is-headed-civil-war/

https://www.currentaffairs.org/2022/09/can-we-drop-the-silly-idea-that-america-is-heading-for-a-civil-war

https://www.sltrib.com/opinion/commentary/2022/08/30/sarah-vowell-one-civil-war-was/

https://dailymontanan.com/2022/09/09/a-maga-led-civil-war-thats-not-going-to-happen/

https://nypost.com/2022/09/07/kathy-griffin-slammed-for-saying-republicans-will-start-a-civil-war/

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/us-civil-war-horizon

https://www.washingtonpost.com/podcasts/capehart/steve-phillips-on-how-we-win-the-civil-war/

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/greg-gutfeld-melting-pot-together-civil-war-isnt-possible

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/sep/06/no-doomsday-bunker-not-a-single-gun-if-the-us-really-is-heading-for-civil-war-im-stuffed

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psych-unseen/202209/mistrust-misinformation-and-the-possibility-civil-war-in-america

https://www.cnn.com/videos/politics/2022/09/05/barbara-walter-civil-war-trump-doj-rehtoric-sot-nr-vpx.cnn

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3647063-can-civil-war-happen-again/

https://www.wired.com/story/the-end-of-roe-will-spark-a-digital-civil-war/

https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/politics-and-more/the-risk-of-a-new-american-civil-war

https://www.minotdailynews.com/opinion/editorials/2022/09/toward-a-second-american-civil-war/

https://www.msnbc.com/the-mehdi-hasan-show/watch/just-how-close-is-the-u-s-to-a-civil-war-148895813806

https://www.thedailybeast.com/cbs-star-reporter-major-garrett-fears-were-on-the-brink-of-civil-war

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/another-american-civil-war-take-heed-or-take-cover-204583

https://www.newsweek.com/civil-war-may-have-already-begun-msnbc-host-says-citing-maga-violence-1739679

https://macdailynews.com/2022/09/27/bill-gates-were-going-to-have-a-hung-election-and-a-civil-war/

https://amgreatness.com/2022/09/25/remembering-hate-speech/

https://roycewhite.substack.com/p/an-open-letter-to-joe-biden

https://twitchy.com/samj-3930/2022/09/04/conservatives-explain-how-i-am-a-threat-to-the-very-soul-of-this-nation-in-powerful-thread-making-biden-look-even-worsea/

https://summit.news/2022/09/07/poll-majority-believe-bidens-maga-extremists-speech-a-dangerous-escalation-in-rhetoric-designed-to-incite-conflict/

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2022/09/05/f15-vs-ar15-bet-on-the-guys-with-the-guns-n2612609

The Economic End Of Europe

“I don’t get history. If I wanted to know what happened in Europe a long time ago, I’d watch Game of Thrones.” – Community

Why do communist governments always fail? They cease the means of production.

(Memes today are mostly as-found.)

The handling of the war in Ukraine will go down as a historic blunder, rivaled by only a few events in history:

Archduke Franz Ferdinand deciding to go cruising down the road in his ragtop,
Socrates, who in his last words said, “I drank what??” (thanks, Real Genius), and
The forming of the band U2®.

The Western World had already been rocked by the response to COVID-19. The economic shenanigans required to keep the economy on life support had been bad enough. The entire debt-based currency system had been lurching back and forth more than Hillary Clinton after quality time with a bottle of gin and her “Madame President” scrapbook.

And bad things are going around in Switzerland, as we’ll see below. And big trouble may lie ahead for Great Britain:

In truth, the recovery from the Great Recession hadn’t created any real structural changes. The primary mechanism for preventing utter economic collapse was printing bucketloads of cash and shoving it into the faces of the banks so that they didn’t fail in a catastrophic and sequential fashion. It isn’t the only time that irresponsible decision-making was rewarded with buckets of greenbacks, but let’s not dwell on Hunter Biden.

Where are we now?

Europe is facing an energy drought – one that (unless Russian gas shipments are resumed fairly quickly) will result in lowered economic output. How bad? Some have said, “Great Depression bad.” The precursors of this can be seen in the cracks we see developing economically:

If the Pope commanded the cash be transferred electronically, would that have been a PayPal® order?

Now, one thing I do know: religions are really, really good about keeping their eye on their cash. I wonder if there was some reason that the Pope was wanting this financial move? Was it because he like making Papal airplanes? Or, was it because someone had tipped him off?

Why can’t the Pope be cremated? He’s still alive.

People are betting that Credit Suisse® to fail. They’re also betting that Deutsche Bank™ will fail. Why? When banks lend money to people that can’t pay it back, well, unless the Federal Reserve© comes around to stuff the banks full of cash, they fail.

So, COVID-19 hits, governments around the world print cash, but nothing is physically broken. We can (sort of) pretend that the world is fine, and whistle through the graveyard and hope that we can squeak out another year of wild naked greased PEZ® parties, elephant rides, and pantyhose for everyone.

Then, Ukraine. As I’ve said before, with a sane president capable of making good decisions, this would have been solved with a few phone calls, some Krispy Kreme doughnuts, and maybe a few coupons for 50%-off shrimp at Red Lobster™. Nope. Biden escalated all of it.

And, again, maybe (probably not, but maybe) in a world with an economy that had underlying actual strength, Biden could have pushed it just like he did and not cratered the entire economy of the West.

But he did. And now the consequences cannot be avoided. Interest rates are shooting up.

How high?

Oh, surely we aren’t in a real estate bubble.

Oops. But at least the international community isn’t panicking.

Oh, they are? Well, at least Biden hasn’t sold off our energy reserves in a naked bid to influence the 2022 election.

Oh, he did? Well, at least Biden has a good understanding of how energy markets work, and how supply and demand sets prices.

Oh. Well, I guess that’s really scary. Thankfully, no one is messing around with the fundamentals of reality.

Huh. I guess my dog just quit.

Well, at least The Mrs. and I had a serious talk about the bedroom.

All foolishness aside, if Europe has an energy drought that lasts three years or more (one of the latest estimates I’ve seen) the results will be as devastating as a war. Economies need jobs to produce wealth so people can have wild naked greased PEZ® parties, elephant rides, and pantyhose for everyone.

And, despite the magical thinking of some people on the Left, free anything (not just healthcare) isn’t free. Someone, somewhere, has to work for it to pay for it, otherwise it’s slavery. Which, I think, is fine for Leftists, because they never imagine themselves the slaves.

But I have faith, faith that the Swiss will save us.

The Swiss have a long and proud history. This history goes back to at least 1307, or so the legend goes, to William Tell (the guy who shot the apple resting on his kid’s head). In fact, William Tell and his son were in a bowling league, but the records of what team they were on are now lost to us. We will never know for whom the Tells bowled.

Deception: The Media Is Soaking In It

“Theatricality and deception are powerful weapons, Alfred. It’s a good start.” – Batman Begins

Thankfully he wasn’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition.

I’m certain that few had any idea of how the Internet would change the world. Oh, sure, some did. In one of the zillion versions of Ender’s Game (or the never ending stream of sequels) Orson Scott Card wrote about the Internet, in the 1980s, I think. In his version, people could make carefully reasoned arguments and other people would listen to them and be swayed.

Ha! Instead we have Twitter® with its 280 character limit, and meme warfare.

I actually don’t mind meme warfare being the place where ideas are injected into society, primarily because the Right memes pretty well, and the Left can’t meme at all.

That is, of course, what the Left is worried about. When the Internet began to gain popularity in the mid-1990s, it was a Wild West. It was first created, page by page, by people who were passionate about something. The programming was easy, and the hardest thing was to get noticed, since the search engines and directories were rudimentary. I used at least three, depending on what I was searching for, because one was good for technical stuff, one was good for “normie” stuff, and the last one, as I recall, wasn’t good for much at all.

On the Internet, you can be whatever you want to be, so why do so many people pick “stupid”?

Then came the Media®. At first, they didn’t really know how to use it, so they’d just put their written stuff out there, since video would swamp most dial-up connections. But everyone knew it was going to be big, which is why AOL© merged with Time-Warner™ even though all AOL® presented was just a single way to get to the Internet.

But the problem for the Media™ and .GOV was that the Internet had shattered their ability to carefully script a single narrative. It had also destroyed their ability to memory hole or gloss over big stories. Now those passionate people could chronicle entire events that the .GOV would rather you forget, or, better yet, never even know about. The carefully crafted defamation of everyone who believed in something outside of the Approved Narrative as a Conspiracy Theorist began to crumble.

People say it’s a small world, but I know I certainly wouldn’t want to paint it. And in that small world where communication had drastically lowered the time for information to come out, and also made it harder for the information to be erased. The Genie of information, once out of the bottle, couldn’t be put back in.

Does anyone know what an ink blot test is? I Googled® it, but only found pictures of my parents yelling at me.

The Wild West continued. Google® had a corporate slogan of Don’t be Evil® and Amazon™ would sell most any book that was it was legal to sell. And the established Media© and .GOV still had no real understanding of how to control what people see and hear and remember. The Internet was built to be decentralized, and hard to control.

I think, from what I see so far that the strategy has been to do at least five things:

Throw Lots of Content Out

Oddly, even though the major news sources keep firing journalists, they keep making more stuff. What kind of stuff? Clickbait, really. Stories with little informational content, stories about celebrities, top 10 lists of best/worst/etc. (fill in the blank). These aren’t news – they’re entertainment. Heck, one browser I have on my phone has (it looks like) computer-generated compilations of posts from Reddit®. The idea is to distract. And if the algorithm is good enough, heck, maybe that person will forget what they were looking for in the first place.

Marginalize and Trivialize

This is one that’s carried on from the past. If I had written a post about MK-Ultra (where the CIA essentially acted like the worst possible mixture of Jeffrey Dahmer and the DMV) in the 1960s, it would have been dismissed as a “conspiracy theory” at best. The idea isn’t to contradict, it’s to hit the person making the accusation with personal attacks, and make it sound like they’re a nutcase. And when the facts come out? Minimize them – make them sound unimportant, “Oh, that tear gas we used at Waco? Well it may be flammable, but only in super-high concentrations. We won the war. Go back to sleep.”

So, Alex Jones was right again, eh?

Control Discussion

How many people that you interact with are . . . real?

I’ve recently gotten robocalls that are very sophisticated, so much so that they nearly get through the uncanny valley of sounding right. But what if the sound wasn’t an issue? In a Twitter® comment it isn’t. It is known that a significant percentage of Twitter® users are bots – programmed to interact. Why would anyone go to that level of trouble? Because they want to sell you something – an ideology, a candidate, or PEZ™. They’re also useful to make it seem like there’s a consensus.

People are wired as pack animals, and generally want to be a part of the group, to not be left out. Plus, a group of bots can drown out viewpoints and ideas and bury them in a sea of text. On a related note, how many conversations are taking place on the Internet that are nothing more than one bot talking to another?

Control Access

Most people come to this website either directly or from other blogs. The web search traffic I get is amazingly low – most days less than 3% of my traffic. That’s new. I used to get more traffic from search engines (20%+) but after July or so of 2020, Google™ shut the valve, and traffic dropped. Likewise, I know that this site is banned by corporations. Why? Maybe my ideas are considered to be . . . dangerous.

A related question is this: just how many website hits does Google® really have? I searched for Civil War Weather Report and noted I wasn’t on the first page. I jumped ahead to page 18. If you’ll note, on an earlier page, Google© claims that there are 34,800,000 results. But when you get to page 18, well, there are only 174 results. I know I’ve written nearly 40 Civil War Weather Reports. Funny that I didn’t see ‘em all in this list . . .

Note that Amazon®, which for a long time would not ban any legal book, now bans hundreds if not thousands of books merely because Amazon™ disagrees with their ideas.

Just Keep Lying

It seems to work for the FBI, Bill Clinton, and the CIA, so why not expand it to the Media®? That’s just what they do. These pictures will help illustrate the problem:

So, in the end, it has been established that the Media© wants to control you. The only remaining question so that we can put the pressure where it needs to be is this: who controls the Media™?

Unplug Yourself From Things That Drain You. And Kardashians.

Then you’ll see, that it is not the spoon that bends, it is only yourself. – The Matrix

Okay, it’s not great. The other one was, “What do you get when Keanu Reeves does ‘shrooms? Neo-sporin.” See, I saved you from that.

Unplug yourself.

I mean, don’t stop coming here. That would be silly, because you definitely want to associate yourself with someone who has the amazingly good hygiene and stellar good looks that I do. I mean, unplug yourself from places that make you mad.

Consciously, most of my posts, while letting you know the unvarnished Truth with a capital T* (*really, as best as I know it), are meant to poke fun at it. It might make you think about things that you really don’t want to think about. I understand. I’m still sorry about that Kardashian meme.

Honestly, dating a Kardashian would be like dating a wookie®.

Well, obviously not that sorry.

Back to the Truth.

Most people that I talk to have an Agent Smith (from The Matrix, not that pesky ATF guy who keeps asking if the stuffed dog I have is filled with Tannerite, because, let’s face it, the only thing that ATF agents love shooting more than kids is dogs) moment.

No, the Agent Smith moment I have with friends goes like this: I talk about facts. They nod. I talk about actual events. They nod. Then I bring up a premise that is inescapable: “So, we agree gravity exists.” Nod. “And I’m holding a coffee mug over a 1,000 foot (4.3 Celsius) cliff.” Nod. “And if I drop it, it will fall down, and shatter into a million pieces, and it will never be able to be put together again.”

Then Agent Smith takes over the conversation. “Well, I don’t want to think about that.” The conversation is over. There is a step that they cannot take. It’s like me trying to convince them that a constant diet of candy corn, Twinkies®, fried Snickers® bars, and drinking the fluid from a chocolate fountain that 359 kindergarteners have been putting their booger-soaked fingers into isn’t a good diet.

This is what happens when you follow the USDA food pyramid.

I recall having a conversation several years ago with a guy on the Left. “Yes, John Wilder, I agree. Massive immigration is destroying every one of the values in our country. But strawberries might be more expensive if we didn’t allow them in.”

My response was rather simple, “So, you, a guy on the Left, wants to pay people less so you can have cheaper strawberries? Wouldn’t it be simpler to pay people more, pay less than 1% of what you make in a month to pay Americans enough to give you strawberries?”

Agent Smith took over his mind. “Umm, well, I don’t understand those things very well.”

I took him to the ledge, but he refused to look over.

But, hey, he saved $0.35 this week.

That’s the Truth. And, I assure you, the Truth is your friend.

What is Truth? Step on a scale. Look down. The number is the Truth. Try to pick up a weight. If you can, you can. That is Truth. The Iron never lies. The scale never lies.

I was working with a person who noted I had lost some weight. He asked me, “How can I lose weight?”

My response was simple: “Weigh yourself. Every day. The scale doesn’t lie.”

The look on his face was amazing. I think he wanted me to tell him, “Believe in aliens, bigfoot (bigfeet?) and the Loch Ness Monster, drink seven shots of Hershey’s® chocolate syrup ever night, and you’ll lose 27 pounds a week.” When I told him to weigh himself, his face fell.

He didn’t want the Truth. And I didn’t follow up with, “By the way, I also rarely eat between Saturday night and Friday,” because that would bake the gourd of most people. They don’t want to know that losing weight sucks, that it requires amazing work and walking into the house at night after work and telling The Mrs., “No dinner for me, I’m fasting.”

I’ve been doing this whole Intermittent Fasting thing. Bums me out. I did it at least nine times today.

People want pretty lies. Yet, the healthiest thing for them is the Truth. Just before I started writing this, Frequent Commenter Ricky emailed me a story that said that, per FDA guidelines, water could not be labeled as, “healthy”. So, enjoy all the Gatorade®, Pepsi™, and Coca-Slop© that you want. It doesn’t have fat in it, so, according to bad science dating back to before I was born, it’s better for you than water.

Nope, the Truth sucks. People are awful. Bad guys win – a lot. People get old. And then they die. All of us die. And, the FDA lies. But, most of you come here regularly. Can you handle the Truth? Yup, you can. And you seek it. I think most of you understand that.

But there is a group of people who are trying to demoralize you. The easiest way to win a battle, per George S. Patton, Jr., is to make the enemy afraid of you. Yet, they wouldn’t have to do any of this if they had won.

They haven’t won. They are desperate to win, yet you and I remain, stubborn, like islands in the middle of a hurricane. We live. We persist. And we will win. That’s what scares them the most.

Why am I so stubborn? I’m not telling you.

So, when you see something that makes you feel like all is lost, remember, that’s them whispering in your ear. The want you to think that you can’t win, even though everything that is right, beautiful, and True is on your side. When you see this sort of demoralization?

Turn it off.

Don’t go back. Not because you’re afraid of opposing viewpoints, but because you refuse to have your emotions manipulated. Never, ever, let Agent Smith inside. Seek the Truth. It’s there. Unless it’s a Kardashian that isn’t hairy.

That’s a lie.

E, S, G: The Leftist War Against The Economy

“You dirty double-crossing limey fink! Those damn diamonds are phonies!” – Diamonds are Forever

Copernicus wondered where the Sun went at night. Then it dawned on him.

Let’s go on a thought experiment:

Pretend that, having conquered the colleges, having infiltrated the leadership of the military and being 95% of the members of most government agencies, and jetting from place to place on private planes, the Left wasn’t done. No, there was still one goal remaining, and it wasn’t finally getting a date or being able to benchpress more than the bar. Nope. The remaining group which they hadn’t managed to completely own was all of corporate America.

But how would they do that? I mean, the Left has a lot of money for taking over Portland, Oregon again and again, but that’s hardly a challenge nowadays. What if the Left decided that they wanted to only invest in companies that shared their political leanings, and create some sort of bogus reason to make other people do it, too.

Enter ESG.

What does ESG stand for, Entitled, Stupid, and Gutless? No, that’s Antifa®, silly. ESG stands for the three criteria that the Left wants to use to decide if a country or business is sufficiently Leftist: Environmental, Social, and Governance. That seems, at first blush, to be relatively safe. I mean, who wants a bad work environment? And social, well, maybe that means good customer service. And governance? Maybe that’s how efficiently the company is run?

Nah.

I got into Harvard®. You’d think they would have better security.

Not even close. So, ESG, does it really mean? I’ll quote from the fine folks at Harvard®:

The “E” captures energy efficiencies, carbon footprints, greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, biodiversity, climate change and pollution mitigation, waste management and water usage.
The “S” covers labor standards, wages and benefits, workplace and board diversity, racial justice, pay equity, human rights, talent management, community relations, privacy and data protection, health and safety, supply-chain management and other human capital and social justice issues.
The “G” covers the governing of the “E” and the “S” categories—corporate board composition and structure, strategic sustainability, oversight and compliance, executive compensation, political contributions and lobbying, and bribery and corruption.

Certainly, there is some Mom and Apple Pie-level stuff in there. There has to be otherwise they couldn’t sell it. It’s not like people look at a company and say, “Gosh, I wish Google® was even more corrupt with their search results” or “I wish Facebook™ had done more to dishonestly influence the election by censoring even more news unfavorable to the Left”.

In his spare time, Mark Zuckerberg likes to do normal human things, like drink water, consume calories, update circuitry.

Most of the ESG metric, however, is right out of the Left’s playbook. The parts in bold above are things that, mostly, don’t have anything at all to do with actual profitability or performance of a company. How can I tell this isn’t serious? The Left isn’t going after the NFL®. Even though I haven’t watched a game in years, they keep playing the games. So let’s pretend the NFL© wanted to maximize its ESG score:

For instance, to improve its ESG, the NFL could focus on climate change by eliminating stadiums and all the wasteful use of gasoline to get to the games. There’s more:

They could reduce their carbon footprint by using all natural, sustainable cotton fibers instead of wasteful nylon in their uniforms.
They could have opposing teams take electric cars to the games.
They could replace the plastic in their helmets with sustainably harvested weaved plant fiber.
They could replace the uniform types of grass on the field by using native plant species. Think of it – in Arizona you could have cactus and sand instead of lush lawns (that use far too much water!).

That takes care of the E! What about the S?

Workforce diversity? The players on the team could easily be selected so that they strictly follow the demographics of the United States, including half of them being women, and some being senior citizens. The handicapped would need to be represented as well, and not just as placekickers like they usually do.
Pay equity could be easily taken care of by having no member of the team or of the management staff make a time more than 20 times what the guy selling sodas in the stands makes each season, which would mean the CEO pay would be capped around $80,000. And if the starting QB got money from promotions, he’d have to split it equally with everyone in the organization. Equity, after all.

Maybe he can put that on a slogan for the endzone?

That takes part of most of the S, especially after the owner is forced to give up 90% of his team ownership to random citizens of the world, so a Sri Lankan goat farmer can understand the joy of owning an NFL™ franchise.

What about governance? Well, we could appoint people from every country in the world to the board of each NFL® team. And no more cozying up to local, state, and federal officials for more tax bux.

So why don’t people talk about applying the ESG metric to the NFL™? It’s simple.

People take football seriously.

All of the nonsense the Left loves to spout falls apart when it comes to one, simple business that everyone can understand and easily see the idiocy of the ESG metric.

Sri Lanka couldn’t believe it was riot season already! They still had their “I support Ukraine” banners up.

In real life, Sri Lanka was ranked by ESG score. They scored a 99 in Environmental, an 88 in Social, and a 47 in governance. Sri Lanka is facing its “worst economic collapse in its modern history” according to some economist somewhere that you can Google® search for if you’re bored. But its ESG was so good, right? They only used natural fertilizer, and lowered their carbon footprint! They also were starving and had to import lots of extra food.

It’s that same environmental rating that countries like the Netherlands and Canada are chasing when they are preparing to mandate that their farmers have fewer cows and use less fertilizer. Both of those things, you see, hurt the carbon footprint and thus make the environmental score of the country go down. If it causes people to go bankrupt to buy Cheetos® or starve, I guess ESG is a way to make sure that everyone in the world has the same chance to be hungry, poor, or exposed to social unrest as the least developed nation. It could happen here. Oops. Forgot about Chicago.

It is happening here, at least with the ‘S’ part of ESG. Looks like we’ll have Equity soon with countries that riot over it being (rolls dice) Tuesday soon enough.

When he fires an employee, he fires an employee.

Because of this fantastic success at the national level, Wall Street™ is pushing ESG at the corporate level. The aptly-named Larry Fink, CEO of BlackRock™ which currently controls over eight trillion dollars in investments is a big fan. Eight trillion dollars? That’s almost enough to buy two full tanks of gas in Biden’s America. Think a man who controls eight trillion worth of cash has some pull?

The aptly-named Larry Fink certainly does. Individual shareholders don’t vote, so the aptly-named Larry Fink’s eight trillion in stock probably controls two or three times that level of shareholder votes. Alone. The actual ESG rating process is so murky and subject to manipulation that the ESG for a company can be as fraudulent as Joe Biden’s hair plugs.

So, yeah, the Left has constantly used corporate America for funding, and now they’ve figured out a way to make business support whatever crazy policy that the Left wants to use to turn the United States into the next version of Sri Lanka.

Thankfully, he planted a tree to offset his carbon emissions.

The aptly-named Larry Fink has a private jet, and houses everywhere, and burns more carbon in a week than most people will burn in a lifetime. Won’t you please reduce your carbon footprint so he can continue to do this? I mean, it would up your personal ESG score . . . .