Complacency – Page 2 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, Urban Versus Rural Edition

“Your predecessor assumed that rural policing was easy.” – Hot Fuzz

There’s a new urban reality show where judges free inmates who like fishing, called “Off the Hook”.

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

Volume VIII, Issue 3

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

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

In this issue: Front Matter – Rural Versus Urban: Who Wins, And Why – Violence and Censorship Update – Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 820 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Rural Versus Urban: Who Wins, And Why

In July I watched some summary videos on the Chinese Civil War, especially the 1945-1949 period as well as the Russian Civil War which lasted between 1917 and 1922. It was interesting, because these wars followed completely different strategies.

Let’s start with the Russians. The Soviet strength was in the cities. The rural population was, while drunk, mainly anti-communist. The Soviet strategy was simple: stay in the cities with the large recruitable population, maintain control of the railway transportation network, and when Moscow must munch mutton, they’d take the train to Tombov and steal several sheep.

Long, protracted conflicts end up being resource wars. Cities provided the Russians with munition factories and lots of young men without jobs that could be conscripted to fight for the Soviets.

In Russia, the Soviets won using the cities. Commies like the Soviets, which they swear would have worked out better if only Stalin were still alive.

I hear Stalin’s favorite vegetable was a Soviet onion.

China was the opposite. For almost the entire war, the Nationalists owned the cities and most of the rural area. But after World War II was done, Mao got serious and used the rural area as his base. The commies in China spent a lot of time on propaganda in rural areas, even having plays to make the rural folks pro-Mao since they didn’t have TikTok© to make them love commies.

The biggest stroke of genius, though, was in giving their newly-recruited peasant soldiers land. Chinese agricultural land had been mainly owned by a large landowners, and this gave their soldiers skin in the game, and also the belief that they would be executed if Mao lost. The cosmopolitan Chinese Nationalists lost to the rural communists because the rural commies thought they were fighting for their lives.

What can we takeaway from all of this?

First, I think that with the nationalist/conservative/rural versus GloboLeft/urban split, the resources of electricity, food, and even water in some cases are fully in the hands of the rural block. Stocks of food are no longer kept in cities as they were in the past. The Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian war lasted four months before they had to shoot the zoo animals to eat them.

The Germans threw bread at the French during the siege. They called it gluten-tag.

Today’s cities have about three days of food in them in the stores, and three days in the individual homes. So, inside a week, people would get hungry. Not starve, but get hungry unless they got sea and air lifts of food inbound. Given the levels of self-control of certain segments of the population, well, how long before cites go full Alferd Packer? Since they’d be surrounded by millions of residents with more weapons and ammo than all the militaries of the world, combined, they could be easily contained.

Cities also suffer from tHeiR GreaTeST StrENTh: Diversity®. Why would Somalians fight for Minneapolis or Minnesota? If their cushy scam life was threatened, they’d just leave. Or fight against the rest of the people in town to take it over. Same with Dearborn, Michigan. Think those moslems would fight side by side with blacks from Detroit? And the GloboLeft Feminista© and TranBrigades® would fold as soon as the air conditioning went off.

But this is a “national” civil war that had sufficient coordination to make a national or largely national confrontation happen.

What about local wars? Most of the trigger-pullers in the armed forces are rural. In a regional or state-based conflict, like Texas declaring independence, how many will break training? The 101^st Airborne was certainly fine fixing bayonets against high school students to force integration, so will they follow orders against Americans? In the hypothetical case of Texas leaving, probably so, but it’s far from certain.

What do cities control? Well, money. They could shut down the banks. Since this is imaginary, I’d imagine the disruption would be huge, but manageable at some level since the grain is still in the silos in at the railyard. Of course, leadership, communications, and cohesion across a regional or national level is crucial.

The biggest threats that the GloboLeft present is either on a short term or a long term. In a short term, a coup of the systems by the rising Democratic Socialists is becoming a real threat, especially since they’d immediately co-op the existing government systems and promise that things would return to “normal”, but their definition of “normal” would require a lot of executions.

The other threat is the long march through our institutions that’s been ongoing for years. In this case, any kinetic civil war is just a mop-up of an already occupied area, which is why stopping that long march is imperative.

Violence and Censorship:

What didn’t they tell you about that black woman surrounded by Patriot Front members?

If you don’t like Flock, the media is selling that you’re a flocking terrorist:

Against PRIDE marches? Fort Worth PD would like to arrest you:

And then block you:

I’m glad Bondi is gondi, especially because she bought the hate speech meme:

Moslems are child rapists, and it’s your fault:

Wipe your phone when wheels touch down, people.

Misery Index

The new Trump administration is shown in red. Results continue to be much better than Biden’s misery.

Back to an upward trend, though. Kids can’t afford houses:

But at least they can get Cheetos®.

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Violence indicators are down. Too hot for all that?

Political Instability:

Down is more stable, and it went down this month.

Economic:

The economy ticked down slightly last month, and there are headwinds.

Illegal Aliens:

Still the near lowest level since the Weather Report started, no thanks to women.

LINKS

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

BAD GUYS
https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/07/the-dsa-wants-to-abolish-america/
https://x.com/canarymission/status/2073885328109085043
https://x.com/BillSmi72331024/status/2073694924717867490
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/HOGqYcJXwAA4WPv-1.png
https://www.city-journal.org/article/teen-takeovers-streets-us-cities-looting

GOOD GUY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ee7VNcc1PQ

ONE GUY
https://x.com/nicksortor/status/2083709213792977086
https://nypost.com/2026/08/02/us-news/hero-armed-citizen-opened-fire-on-idaho-in-n-out-gunman-during-deadly-shooting/

BODY COUNT
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/deaths-now-outnumber-births-17-us-states
https://archive.ph/BeLhx
https://www.statista.com/chart/20183/us-population-growth-shares-births-immigration/
https://www.kellyservices.com/insights/new-batch-of-college-graduates-faces-an-increasingly-shaky-job-market
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/labor_force_chart_annotated-800x.jpg
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image-1-800×288.jpg
https://x.com/DeepBlueCrypto/status/2039454816707969158/photo/1

VOTE COUNT
https://www.fvap.gov/guide/appendix/state-elections
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/07/we-finally-have-evidence-after-examining-155000-absentee/
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/21/thousands-of-non-citizens-registered-to-vote-in-nj-due-to-software-error-governor-says-01006373
https://www.themidwesterner.news/2026/07/250000-noncitizens-found-on-voter-rolls-in-four-states-as-jocelyn-benson-refuses-to-share-data/
https://www.westernjournal.com/mamdani-election-bombshell-fraudulent-votes-cast-margin-mamdanis-victory-says-election-auditor/
https://apnews.com/article/california-primary-rejected-mail-ballots-voting-2291684fe4544cab2301f8965abc8f79
https://amgreatness.com/2026/07/28/the-state-of-american-elections-for-the-left-the-worse-the-better/
https://www.vanityfair.com/story/midterm-hijack-plan

CIVIL WAR
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2026/06/10/beyond-red-vs-blue-the-political-typology/
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/28/magazine/heritage-foundation-trump-republicans.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1FA.eGuT.I6EiteSM-ryC&smid=url-share
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-and-john-thune-throw-gop-into-full-blown-civil-war/
https://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2026/07/a-minnesota-secession-its-not-as-impossible-as-you-might-think/
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/nx-s1-5879397
https://nypost.com/2026/06/15/us-news/californias-newest-congressman-plots-massive-secession-of-rural-areas-to-form-new-state-serious/
https://modernity.news/2026/07/16/what-is-this-really-about-uk-government-announces-mass-stockpile-order-wargames/

They Broke The Deal: The Economics Of Loyalty And Patriotism

“Because we live here!” – Red Dawn

And it’s no accident.

Over the past few decades, studies are showing something unusual happening: people aren’t willing to fight for their country anymore, especially in the West. Back when I was a kid watching Red Dawn, I couldn’t see myself not fighting for my nation if it was in need, and I was far from alone.

What changed?

Well, I think the deal that I had has been broken so completely that they simply don’t see a country worth fighting for anymore. At all. Why? Because the economics and culture I grew up in have evaporated, been swallowed in a sea of foreigners, or been the subject of a leveraged buyout.

Let me explain.

When I was a kid, sure, there were ups and downs in the country’s economy, but getting a job was easy. I had one at the age of 14. Now, the “J-1” visa seeks to import kids to take the paper delivery jobs and other jobs American kids can no longer do. Like what? Like mowing. If I wanted to mow the lawn for the local Exxon® station and I was 14, would they hire me?

Hell no! Child labor laws and corporate policies would dictate that I was child labor. I didn’t have a $2 million liability policy. I didn’t have an OSHA-approved health and safety plan. Oh, and mowing is too dangerous for 14-year-old kids anyway according to every state.

And where is my W-9 and my banking information? Corporations have the same sense of humor as the DMV.

We see cities back down after health authorities or zoning authorities crack down on kids running lemonade stands. We chuckle, but the health inspector isn’t laughing, he’s got a clipboard and a pension. It’s reality. Every regulation is stacked against them, and when they get to be 18, it gets worse.

Now, farmers and ranchers want to hire illegals. Sure, they did it when I was a kid, too, but it was harder to get them, so they had to pay local kids to buck bales, too. Now you have Senators trying to replace Americans because Americans want too darn much money. The TradNationalist values of “what is good for America” have been replaced with, “Why shouldn’t Americans in America compete in a global race to the bottom for labor cost?”

Youth today are getting ads to finance a pizza order at 21% interest. But we need to import more illegals.

When your senator doesn’t represent you at all.

Houses? Houses went from a shelter you could build yourself to an investment asset class suitable for Blackrock®. Because of that, houses have to comply with about 15,000 pages of building codes. Oh, and the builder will hire illegals to build it, too.

Housing is at the least affordable in the history of the United States, and of course the “Conservative” politicians want to import more people to build more houses.

Huh? Every housing problem in the United States is downstream of immigration and investment bankers, and the immigration the investment bankers demand.

But hey, what 18-year-old doesn’t want to sign up to fight for Blackrock’s™ investment return or the building inspector, or infinity foreigners? Yes. Timmy from Athens, Georgia should be proud to sign up to die so Ganesh from Mumbai can use his fraudulent diploma to take a do-nothing job at Microsoft© that he got from his uncle Vivek.

And if he has kids? What then? I went to school in a 90% white school with 80% kids that were from intact families. Today in order to avoid diversity and be around parents with traditional values a new Timmy would have to shell out for a private school tuition.

It’s worse than that, though because it’s now corrosive on every phase of their lives. What pension do kids today expect? The good ones have been hollowed out. Back before the floodgates to the world opened, companies put pensions in place so that they could compete for scarce American labor. As immigration, both legal and illegal, increased the reason to have pensions disappeared. Now it’s “invest your own money in a 401k, and, hey, good luck with that.”

And Social Security? Why would Ganesh want to pay for Timmy’s retirement?

Beyond that, children in the West are taught that they are the evil products of slavers and colonizers and misogynists and that Western Culture is inferior to the quaint cannibalistic ways of New Guinea. Why, then, would they think of themselves as anything but evil?

Why would Timmy fight for a country that is evil?

And why fight for a country that doesn’t look like you, at all? Pakistanis are (86%) willing to fight and die for Pakistan. People in the UK aren’t (33%) willing to fight and die because they wouldn’t be fighting for the traditional English peoples, but for the Pakistanis in the UK.

This graph is not an accident.

The constant import of people turns a nation of people who have the same heritage into a country of mixed peoples. Oh, and the people are randomly plucked from the gene pool of the entire world, including especially the shallow end of the gene pool.

The teeming cesspit of India (76%) and the perennially unemployed Armenians (96%) are much more willing to fight than the United States (41%) because India is filled with Indians, Armenia is filled with Armenians, and in America, at least 29% of the people in the country are illegal, on visas, or are first or second generation immigrants with little tie to the country.

Going back to a bacon and egg breakfast and comparing it to our nation: immigrants are the chicken, they’re involved and can fly back home anytime. Americans? They’re the pig, they’re committed.

They have no place left to go.

India, Pakistan, and Armenia are all giving their youth a better deal than American kids have, and more of a stake in their nation. Even China, “repressive” China, likes Chinese people better than the Western governments like their citizens. China is interested in the Chinese, whereas the governments of the West, no matter how loudly and how often their citizens tell them they don’t want immigrants, simply will not stop importing them.

Yes, 1.5 million a year is slow walking it.

If having immigrant Indians and Mexicans was something that would help their country, wouldn’t China be importing them?

I’ll note that when the connection that a citizen gets from the government wanes, that’s where civil wars and revolutions start. If the government isn’t worth dying for, it’s not long until the people decide the government has to die.

As it stands now, though, we now have a country (not a nation) that the youth don’t feel is worth fighting for. Unless we can convince Timmy he should be enthusiastic about dying for his loyalty to the DMV.

Fauci And The Big Lie

“Stop your squealing, you dunghill rat.” – The Return of the King

I guess that 2020 really was the Year of the Rat.

I thought that I had done my last post on COVID. I really did.

Then, that pisspot troll smugboi Fauci went before Congress and put on the most pathetic, weasel-like performance I’ve ever seen. As perhaps is his right, he pled the Fifth Amendment to avoid answering any question asked, including revealing such secrets as the color of the carpet or the color of his tie.

Yes, it may be his right, but it does show the depth of his evil.

Yes, evil.

In Russia it’s called corruption, but in the USA . . . we don’t talk about it.

Viewed from 2026, the insanity of the Vaxx Offensive is even more absurd and insane. Of course, the GloboLeftElite did everything they could to fan the flames. The Covid War gave them two things that they desperately wanted: the ability to get rid of Trump by gaming the election, and . . . power.

The Mrs. told me when we were dating that she was attracted to men with power, so I made sure to let her know I was up to date on my electric bill.

The GloboLeftElite love things like COVID or 9/11. It gives them the ability to control. They love that. What power did they want to show?

All of it. They fired people who wouldn’t submit to the Vaxx. They restricted movement of people who didn’t take the Vaxx, and even arrested one woman who had used a fake Vaxx card to go to Hawaii. They arrested a man who was wakeboarding alone on the ocean.

They made masks with holes in them so that kids in band could blow air into their instruments, since apparently a clarinet or piccolo will destroy any virus or bacteria.

Yes, they did this. Someone thought this was a good idea.

I didn’t take the Vaxx, and I’m glad. Two people I know took the Johnson&Johnson© Vaxx on the same day, and got matching heart attacks on the same month a little over a year later. They lived. Lots of people didn’t. In my mind, it wasn’t even a choice to take a Frankenvaxx© that hadn’t been tested. I didn’t try to convince my supervisor that I was right, I didn’t discuss my reasons, I didn’t argue, and I didn’t explain.

My Boss: “Are you going to sign up to get the Vaxx, John?”

Me: “No.”

And that was it.

Parody, sure, but you know they feel that way.

For older people with respiratory issues? It might have made sense to take the risk with the information available at the time. Now? No way. That Johnson&Johnson© Vaxx is now no longer available due to a “serious blood-clotting side effect”.

But giving that to children?

That’s criminal. People should be in jail.

But this is real. (as-found)

Suppression of this very website started whenever I questioned the narrative on COVID or the Vaxx, making a joke about it on YouTube™ resulted in a channel strike, and it became a matter of faith that St. George Floyd would save us from the Trump Demon of COVID if only we would kneel and take the sacrament of the Vaxx. This was really a virtue-signaling cargo cult that had a belief in “sCIenCe” even when “sCieNCe” was clearly not being used, and was instead replaced by the same voodoo that gave us gender theory.

My theory on why my site was attacked was that I had committed blasphemy in their eyes.

So, that white-haired weasel went before Congress and made me break my word and write one more COVID post.

The reason for this post is simple: we can’t let this happen again. Beware whenever these weasels speak. Also, know that whenever they get a chance for control by using our fear, they will use it to remove our wealth and, more importantly, our freedoms.

They will try this again.

Remember:

“No” is a complete sentence.

If You Can’t Spot The Sucker At The Table . . . .

“No, this sucker’s electrical, but I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need.” – Back to the Future Ouch, I guess eclipse jokes can be dark. I’ve heard the phrase “If you can’t spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker,” … Continue reading “If You Can’t Spot The Sucker At The Table . . . .”

“No, this sucker’s electrical, but I need a nuclear reaction to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity I need.” – Back to the Future

Ouch, I guess eclipse jokes can be dark.

I’ve heard the phrase “If you can’t spot the sucker in the first half hour at the table, then you are the sucker,” many times in my life.

Mostly, after I’ve realized I was the sucker.

Recently, I’ve been watching the markets the same way I watch a late-night poker game at a kitchen table. The cards are the same for everyone. The rules are printed right there. And yet, somehow, the same faces keep walking away with the chips.

Let’s start with three recent examples that should make people who actually save, invest, and try to play by the rules say . . . huh.

Is 2,000 pounds of Korean money a Won ton?

Let’s start with South Korea’s leveraged massacre, 2026 edition.

Normal guys in South Korea were betting on the right side of the trade. I mean, they were on the right side of the trade before the South Korean market began hemorrhaging cash this week as China starts to look pretty strong in the chip-making business. But before that massacre, retail traders (they call them “ants”) piled into brand-new single-stock 2x leveraged ETFs tied to Samsung™ and other Korean tech firms who were benefiting from the A.I. bubble.

The bet is simple. If Samsung© goes up 10%, your ETF goes up 20%. Get on the right side of the trade, and double the profits that all of the suckers are making.

By law, the products rebalance every single day by a public formula: sell more when the stock drops, buy more when it rises. Sophisticated trading desks know the formula, know the size of the flows, and know when they hit: near the market close. These firms essentially buy the stock beforehand, and scalp the 2x part of the trade.

But if the stock declines, the automated selling amplifies the decline. Hundreds of thousands of accounts of small guys saw their accounts evaporate. The “little guys” who thought they were investors discovered they were only “market liquidity” that got liquidated. I imagine it’s even worse this week as their market is imploding.

I wonder after the first tsunami hit Japan if they had lots of different names for it, you know, a title wave.

Let’s move next to the microsecond arms race.

Investment firms pay serious money to put their servers inside the same data center as the exchange matching engines. Why? The firms can see slower orders coming, cancel their quotes, reprice, or step in front. They legally front-run purchases, getting a bit of the action, like me getting in the cheeseburger line in front of Rosie O’Donnell, buying all the burgers, and then making her pay twice the price to me because you know she wants one.

But instead of burgers, my pension and my 401k are the funding source and the burgers. Or they buy the burgers. I forget. Just thinking about Rosie eating is unsettling.

I once installed a trampoline on Aerosmith’s tour bus. Now everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon.

Next? A.I. bets: Pensions and 401ks are literally soaking in it.

Nobody actually requires pension funds to buy speculative A.I. bets. But when the benchmark rate that the fund is trying to replicate is the S&P 500©, over half of that index is now A.I. Private credit and datacenter infrastructure funds are sold as “diversifiers.” The Aptly Named Larry Fink has been open about it and I’ve written about him before: a big chunk of the A.I. build-out is coming from “your savings accounts and pension accounts.”

If, or more likely when, the power plants never get built or the market discovers that no one really wants to pay a lot for A.I., the little guys eat it. We’ve seen this movie with mortgage-backed securities in 2008, but after 20 years, who isn’t up for a sequel? And don’t mention Star Wars®.

Those three are current “legal” scams.

There are larger, longer-running and still legal versions that hit responsible investors. Here are a few.

Steal a man’s wallet and he’ll be broke for a day. Teach him to play drums and he’ll be broke for the rest of his life.

Payment for order flow.
My “commission-free” IRA firm sells my orders to the big market makers.

They see the flow first. Every time I click “buy,” someone is being paid to take the other side with better data than I will ever have.

Index and ETF reconstitution.
The rules for what goes into the big indexes are public. Active money buys the adds and sells the deletes before the passive funds are forced to do it on the effective date. If you own index funds (and most of us do, in 401ks and IRAs), you are systematically buying high and selling low on the reconstitution days. The front-runners collect the spread.

Private-equity leveraged buyouts.
A PE firm buys a solvent company, and loads it with debt. This is what happened to Toys’r’Us©. And Sears™. And RadioShack©. And TWA®.

And I could keep going.

They then extract fees and dividends, cut costs, and exit leaving like a vampire leaves a dried husk before the Sun comes up. The workers get fired. The store sits empty, as what was once a business becomes a blight. If my pension was invested in those funds, I’m also funding the vampire extraction while the downside lands on the real economy.

Glass coffins? Schrödinger was not a fan.

Institutional money vacuuming up single-family homes.
Large capital pools decided residential real estate was an asset class. They bought the inventory that used to go to . . . families. Prices and rents rise. I already owned, so I was insulated. But the kids?

Too-big-to-fail.
When the “systemically important” institutions get into trouble, they will be bailed out. I’m betting that OpenAI™ is working to get as big as it can as soon as it can so it can sink its tentacles into the economy deep enough that if it fails it brings the whole house down and then they will have to bail Sam Altman out so he can keep his mansions, cars, and bunker. Hey, I guess it’s just a business model.

Even though he won, he could tell there was no future in it.

I guess I can stop pretending the game is neutral, because I could go on and on and on with more examples. To the big players, the Elons, Altmans, the Finks, we’re just liquidity and our retirement account is being used as their stack of chips.

The cards are the same.

The edge is not.

Don’t be the sucker.

64 Or So Pieces Of Very Bad Advice

“Have I ever lied to you? Or given you one piece of bad advice?” – Mommie Dearest

The A.I. refused to draw a different picture of that rope, since it is programmed to think that no noose is good noose.

You should fight that cop. In fact, you should pull out a gun to show dominance.

Why not date a transwoman? They’re just like regular women.

Never question your doctor, especially not the foreign one that speaks broken English.

Believe the Indian moslem born in Uganda when he says that communism will work this time.

Understand that bringing in lots of Haitians to do work at low cost won’t impact your welfare system or pets.

Open the border wider; the more people who can’t speak English, the richer we’ll all become!

Teach your kids that math and proper grammar are racist constructs and effort is colonialist oppression.

Defund the police because that will stop catalytic converter theft.

A customer yelled at me at work because I started to doze off. Does she even know how exhausting it is to drive a school bus?

Vote for the candidate who promises free stuff paid for by the people who still work.

Ignore the crime statistics, because numbers have feelings too and math is racist.

Let your daughter compete against biological males; it’s empowering.

Assume every immigrant is an unaccompanied minor genius who will invent the next iPhone™.

Believe diversity is our strength even when the strength starts looking suspiciously like arson.

Outsource all manufacturing to countries that hate us and want a military advantage, because cheaper is always better.

Teach history exclusively from the viewpoint of the people who lost every war.

Assume the climate models are perfect because the people running them are pure of heart and the science is settled.

I saw a yeti with a six-pack. I call him the abdominal snowman.

Let the government raise your children; they have better values than your family and community anyway.

Hire actors and screenwriters exclusively based on skin color and pronouns. Competence is a colonialist white construct.

Invite more people from failed states, surely this time the institutions will improve them.

Never own a gun or know how to use one; the police will always arrive in time.

Always trust the police and tell them everything that you know.

Celebrate every new holiday invented by activists as if they are the holiest days of the year.

Assume the Federal Reserve© knows exactly what it’s doing with the money supply.

Let your son take puberty blockers; he can always change his mind after the surgery.

Treat every homeless encampment as a vibrant cultural expression! The people are safe and friendly!

Trust the intelligence agencies, they’d surely never lie to Americans.

I once went to a Kennedy assassination party. No one knows how many shots there were.

Assume the next stimulus bill will finally, finally, fix everything.

Never question why certain neighborhoods look the way they do.

Let corporations lecture you about equity while they offshore every job, it’s for your own benefit, and racist to question it.

Trust the public health officials who locked you down and then attended fancy parties.

Assume the next generation of electric cars and data centers will somehow create their own electricity.

Teach children that their country was founded in pure evil and nothing else.

Let the teachers’ union decide what your kids learn about sex.

Ignore fertility rates; the future will somehow take care of itself.

I once bought some emo grass. It was great, it cut itself.

Teach kids that hard work is privilege and failure is systemic and they should feel guilt if they are successful.

Assume the next illegal alien amnesty will be the last one.

Trust the celebrity climate activists who fly private jets to conferences in resort areas.

Let the government decide which speech is allowed online, and trust them to track you.

Remember that replacing the population will somehow preserve the exact same culture.

Assume the next war will be the good one we really fight for democracy.

Trust and fund the universities that charge $80,000 a year to pay GloboLeft professors $250,000 a year to teach that the West and wealth are uniquely evil.

Other news, he pirated the textbook online. Guess he’ll figure out if he did the right thing soon enough.

Let illegal immigrants vote; democracy is stronger when every vote is counted.

Ignore the racial data on IQ and crime. Feelings matter more.

Celebrate when traditional Western holidays are replaced by awareness months.

Remember that open borders and a welfare state can coexist forever.

Always trust the fact-checkers employed by the same companies that censor you.

The drug cartels are just misunderstood entrepreneurs.

Let the state raise the minimum wage until no one can afford to hire teenagers.

Never own gold or silver; digital currency issued by the government is safer.

Assume the next green energy plan will work without any fossil fuels.

Never teach your kids personal responsibility; the system owes them everything.

Remember that mass migration from incompatible cultures will produce social harmony.

Don’t notice that the people who say “all cultures are equal” avoid living in most of them.

Celebrate when classic literature is rewritten to remove “problematic” content.

Never question the motives of people who profit from endless crisis.

My friend in prison says they’re fancy. They don’t drink pruno, they drink penal noir.

Believe that equal representation in every field is more important than excellence.

Let the government track every purchase you make and every trip you make. It’s for your own good.

Always ask a woman when the baby is due.

Never prepare your family for hard times; the government will always be there.

Believe that importing poor people from abroad and putting them on welfare will somehow make the country wealthier.

Never defend your own culture. That’s literally violence!

Note to self: don’t use A.I. maps.

Believe that this time the glorious revolution will produce utopia instead of mass graves.

Always trust the people who tell you the future is inevitable and resistance is fascist.

Strippers, Credit Cards, Basement A.I., And Economic Collapse

“I’ve calculated the precise distance, taking into account the acceleration and wind resistance retroactive from the moment the lightning strikes, which will be in exactly 7 minutes and 22 seconds.” – Back to the Future It’s easy to confuse Stephen Hawking and Tony Hawk. Both loved ramps. Everything is fine before the car hits the … Continue reading “Strippers, Credit Cards, Basement A.I., And Economic Collapse”

It’s easy to confuse Stephen Hawking and Tony Hawk. Both loved ramps.

Everything is fine before the car hits the wall.

And everything looks fine. Let’s think about the economy compared to a car.

The car is at a stop sign. It’s moved zero feet. It’s at rest, and it isn’t accelerating. I know, I know, still no reason for a woman to be behind the wheel.

Now it starts to move. It’s moved 200 feet (10 kilometers). It’s now moving at around 15 feet per second (10 millicuries/fortnight). Since it was initially at rest, we can assume it has accelerated. Accelerated is just a fancy term for “put the pedal down”. I accelerate smoothly at the same rate since I’m neglecting air resistance and have determined that the world is perfectly spherical, frictionless, isothermal and isosomethingelse.

I hear the Orc© siege engines used Mordor oil.

Eventually, some time down the road the car reaches my desired speed, which is five miles over the limit, just like everyone else. I pull my foot back so that it’s moving along at a constant velocity. I’m chewing up the miles, and soon enough will be there at the appointment to have my backhair waxed off again.

Reasonable, right?

NO! This is a catastrophe! It’s hitting a brick wall. I mean, it’s a catastrophe if my car is made by Nvidia©.

Nvidia® has a Price to Earnings ratio (PE) of 31. That means that people are betting that not only will Nvidia™ keep accelerating, it will do so for a while since it would take 31 years of earnings to equal the current stock price.

Nvidia© is the largest company in the world at nearly $5 trillion in valuation . . . has to get about 40%-50% bigger to match the same PE as, say, Microsoft®. That’s the bet on companies like that.

But A.I. is different. The bet isn’t that the company will keep growing, the bet is that the growth will keep accelerating. Forever. That’s what keeps Jensen Huang in champagne, leather jackets and hot chicks. Okay, he’s apparently happily married, but I’m not letting the truth get in the way of a good line.

What gets burning hot right before they freeze? Laptops.

But even the projected growth of A.I. is . . . not going to keep up.

In 2023, the big 4 spent $145 billion.
In 2024, the big 4 spent $230 billion.
In 2025, the big 4 spent $410 billion.
In 2026, the big 4 are projected to spend $725 billion.
in 2027? $920 billion.
In 2028? $1.08 trillion.
In 2029? $1.22 trillion.

Now, I don’t believe these numbers. At all.

But in them is an interesting nugget. If you look not at the spend, but the rate of increase in the spend, it goes down starting in 2027. You can do the math. The foot is coming off of the accelerator.

In reality, these projections are already bogus.

The implied new capacity of electric power required for this nonsense proves it:
in 2025, 37GW
in 2026, 66GW
in 2027, 84GW
in 2028, 98GW
in 2029, 111GW.

Hahahahahhahahahaha!

Not happening. Marty will never get back to 1985!

How does A.I. make sweaters? On the Interknit.

New electrical generation and transmission often takes 4-10 years to come online. If Nvidia® is making their chips, the place they’ll have to go is a warehouse center on a pallet, not a data center, since current projections show a 30GW-60GW gap already in 2027.

111 GW in 3 years? This is not happening.

And it’s even worse. Elon’s big data center running old Nvidia® chips, and not even the new extra-spicey chips? He’s renting that one out. Yeah, SpaceX® is an A.I. company, but apparently, they don’t need the whole place. But we need to spend nearly a trillion this year to make places like the one Elon is renting out.

Hmm.

If that was it, we could all just sit back with popcorn and watch the whole thing catch fire. But that’s not it. By shoving over a trillion dollars in spend and probably $2 trillion more in orders for concrete and steel and Transformers© and Autobots® the economy has been horribly distorted.

Don’t worry, they say. This is all funded from private credit and equity. So what if Nvidia© drops back into the tres comma club after being in the quatro comma club. What’s a few trillion between friends? A.I. is soaking up all the money in the country.

But wait! Private credit is being bundled up into batches and sold into pension plans. It’s investment grade, just like those CDO mortgages. Remember those and how well all that went back in 2008? This is innovation. Besides, 401ks already all in. A.I. and tech stocks are already more than half of the S&P 500, probably 20% more than back before Dotcom.

One of my commenters said my posts were medium-rare. Well, what he actually said was “They’re not well done.”

A.I.? Your economy is soaking in it! The aptly named Larry Fink noted that the funding for A.I. is coming from “your savings accounts and pension accounts.” He’s betting $10 trillion in the next decade will be spent on this.

But, as amazing as that sounds, that’s not everything. A.I. is fluffing up the profits of nearly every other business in the country. My laptop is more expensive because of this. Electricity is more expensive because of this. Natural gas is more expensive because of this. Gasoline? Yup. Those jobsite gennies don’t run on SpaceX® stock.

A.I. has infected everything. Hey, don’t have a frown. OpenAI® lost only $38.5 billion in 2025. That’s the sort of performance I want to bet the entire economy on. Oh, and OpenAI© just barely missed their ad revenue target by 90%.

It’s got a comfy feeling. Especially when a six-year-old Chinese kid shows up with a free and open-weight A.I. model that’s nearly as good as the top-line A.I. models. It’s called Kimi K3 and I could run it in my house with a few Apple® machines.

Comfy, right?

I mean, it’s comfy if you’re Sam Altman who has a bunker to protect him from people with missing pensions and plentiful pitchforks. I mean, a 3-d printer can print a pitchfork, right?

“You can say hate, can’t you? I thought you could.”

We got off “easy” from the Dotcom bubble because it was based on equity. Pets.com® just imploded, and people lost a few bucks in the market. Painful, but it didn’t really strike at the core of the economy, and it left us with a batch of fiber optics that we’re still using and still (at least in some places) haven’t maxed out. The Dotcom Bubble was going out on a weekend bender when your wallet was flush with cash and being broke on Monday morning.

This is more like the Great Recession, which also used housing prices to creep into every activity, but also was focused on using debt to fuel the party. This was going out on a weekend bender and waking up to find out that you’d maxed out your credit cards on Charity. Not UNICEF®, no, the stripper, Charity. And that she might be pregnant.

And that she gave you herpes.

Unpleasant, but when we could just borrow again, we could get through the 2010s, plus I think they’ve got some sort of pill that controls outbreaks.

Now? It’s probably both of those put together. And while the data centers might be useful to train up yet a newer A.I. with more parameters, the data centers won’t be needed to run the models. I can run a top-of-the-line A.I. in the basement of my house for a modest investment and a few kW.

With all the race swapping Disney® is doing now, the lead character from Beauty and the Beast will now be a Mexican, Taco Belle.

Not GW, kW. That I could have running in a week, for about $40,000, all while Larry Ellison is sacrificing virgins during the Blood Moon© to help keep the critical path of the construction schedule from slipping. You can bet that if this is real, they’ll make it illegal.

It’s going to break. When?

2026? 2027?

How bad?

Best case, the economy contracts 1% or 2.5%.
Base case, the economy contracts 2.5% to 5%.
Run and hide case, the economy contracts 5% to 8% to . . . ?

I asked my doctor why he uses the little rubber hammer. “Oh, I get a kick out of it.”

Who loses, besides us?

Well, Jensen Huang might have to start drinking Boone’s Farm© instead of champers. Larry Fink might have to skip a dip in his money bath. Elon Musk might have to take his 47 kids to Denny’s©. I kid. Nothing will change for these guys.

And that long, straight, flat road I was talking about? It might just turn into a roller coaster once the foot comes off the accelerator. Here’s hoping that you’re tall enough for this ride, because Charity is probably going to want her back payments.

The Economics of the Surveillance State

“That was a Beria operation in Stalin’s time. It was deactivated twenty years ago.” – The Living Daylights

How did KGB agents commit suicide? Two shots to the back of the head. (all photo content as-found)

Remember Lavrentiy Beria’s cheerful advice: “Show me the man, and I will find the crime”? Back in the Soviet Union they had so many laws on the books that everybody broke at least one before lunch, I mean, when lunch was available. And if they didn’t, they could make up something. Beria just needed enough spies and informants to spot the right violation.

Beria would have loved modern America. We’ve upgraded his whole operation with better cameras, faster computers, and added actual profit margins.

Let’s start with Flock™ cameras.

Flock Safety© cameras now line roads from coast to coast. More than 100,000 of the little snitches sit on poles in ditches scanning license plates 24/7 and however many metric hours in a metric day and metric days in a metric week. The cameras rolled out one quiet law enforcement contract at a time until the whole country is now blanketed.

Not everyone who comes into your life is your friend. Some are just surveillance cameras. (btw, she was innocent, but the police didn’t apologize)

Maps of the cameras exist online, but those rely on humans, and it shows only three of the eight within five miles of my house in Modern Mayberry. I could plot an avoidance route if I had nothing better to do than play spy versus spy on my commute, or build a detector like Benn Jordan did.

Most of us have jobs and families instead. But, hey, we’ve funded a system so that every time you get on the road, you’re creating a record that will last as long as they have storage. And cops can now use this to stalk their ex-wives, so it’s a double win, right?

How did the farmer stalk his ex? He tractor.

Next up?

Ring™ doorbells joined the neighborhood watch program without asking their “owner’s” permission. When several co-eds were murdered in Idaho a couple of years ago, investigators pulled Ring© footage to track a suspect’s car. A subpoena moves quicker than a polite request and never waits for the doorbell to be answered, so they got all the data that they needed to catch the guy. I’m okay with catching murderers, but how many people will be caught in fishing dragnets for being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Where exactly are you going at 2 a.m., citizen?

Laptops aren’t safe, either.

A hacker got grabbed in Finland on his way out of the country. Prosecutors used the connection with Microsoft’s© handy Global Device Identifier™ to identify him. One persistent number tied his computer to all the mischief. Microsoft® handed over the records after the usual court paperwork and a feeble, “oh, stop . . . customer privacy . . . .” My operating system apparently keeps better tabs on me than my own mother, but at least Ma Wilder has the excuse of being dead.

I wonder if my FBI agent likes the jokes I make?

Then there is Windows Recall© on the fancy new Copilot™ machines. It snaps pictures of your screen every few seconds while you work and builds a searchable scrapbook of everything you looked at. Local storage only

They promise. Pinky swear, even.

Still feels like my laptop decided to start a scrapbooking hobby without telling me first.

Besides, my ISP already knows every site you visit and how long you lingered. Edward Snowden spilled the beans years ago on the big programs that pulled data straight from the servers of Microsoft™, Google®, Apple©, Facebook™ and the Rest®. Fiber-optic taps caught traffic in bulk, Then three-letter outfits and tech companies worked hand in glove.

The result is giant databases full of regular people doing regular things. But don’t worry! If you’ve been good, you’re fine. And if you’re Hillary Clinton or Jeff Epstein, all the data will be lost.

Big Tech loves this data game because it prints money for them. They track my habits down to the weirdest details (really, kittens eating salami?) and sell the profiles to insurers, advertisers, and anyone else with a checkbook.

My patterns become their product. They turn my life into a spreadsheet and then mark it up like a used-car dealer who knows you really need that transmission fixed today.

Speaking of cars, they’re getting chatty, too.

Modern ones log every trip, every hard brake, every late-night drive. Some already phone home to the manufacturer and won’t work unless the software license is up to date. Insurance companies will pay good money for a direct feed on how I actually drive instead of guessing from your age and ZIP code.

Soon enough, the car might call the cops if it thinks I had one too many. My pickup turns into the world’s most expensive designated snitch.

Hopefully, during the 4^th of July holiday you didn’t get distracted and miss the big picture: The British blew a 13 colony lead.

Ninety-nine percent of us carry cell phones that never stop reporting. Every search, every video, every song gets logged. Cops have started treating a phone left at home like suspicious behavior (I’m not making this up). The little rectangle in your pocket is the most reliable witness I never hired.

Big companies with this much reach do have a kryptonite®: governments. They do exactly what the government asks. They bent over backwards to limit talk about COVID and elections under the last administration. Books and posts that wandered off the approved script vanished from platforms: I know, I made a COVID joke on a podcast and it was sent to podcast jail.

The same tools will work just as well for whoever sits in the big chair next. They already proved they can move fast when someone important asks nicely.

Harvey Silverglate spelled this out in his book Three Felonies a Day. Federal law has grown so broad and fuzzy that a decent prosecutor can usually find something to charge anyone with. Normal life now sits inside a minefield of possible violations. Add constant surveillance and the minefield gets floodlights, motion sensors, and a searchable menu.

Stalin put a ? after the name of every traitor: they question Marx.

The Code of Federal Regulations stretches to roughly 190,000 pages or almost the number of words in a GloboLeftist meme. Rules multiply every year. Nobody can read the whole thing, and if they did, another 10,000 pages would have been added in the meantime. When surveillance supplies the evidence, the vague laws and regulations become precision weapons. Who cares if you’re guilty? Just being charged is punishment for the innocent. The process is the point.

Government and Big Tech® now hold detailed maps of where you drive, what you read, who you talk to, and how you spend your time. Also notice that they don’t bother to use these to catch murderers in Chicago or gang criminals. No, they’re encouraging that violence.

Beria ran on fear and informants. The updated model runs on sensors, algorithms, and sweet quarterly earnings. It costs less to operate and reaches farther and hardly ever complains about running out of vodka. The economics make perfect sense for the people building it, because collecting the data is cheap once the hardware is installed.

The Surveillance State runs on convenience for the watchers and profit for the builders. Beria would have been jealous of the efficiency and probably asked for stock options.

Don’t you love it when totalitarian communism and capitalism overlap?

Birthright Citizenship, The Economics Of Infinity, And The Inevitability Of War

“I want immunity from prosecution, asylum in the U.S., and citizenship.” – xXx

All media “as-found”

June 30, 2026, just shy of the 250^th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, will live in infamy.

All five women of the Supreme Court voted for birthright citizenship on June 30. This includes the Chief Justice, John Roberts, who I assume identifies as a woman on Tuesdays and alternate weekends.

The five voted that popping a kid out anywhere that the United States has as a state or territory makes the invader kid a citizen. It’s called “birthright citizenship”, and wasn’t really a thing for the first 60 or so years, at least, of the 14^th Amendment. The 14^th was really about removing doubts about the citizenship status of freed black slaves and their children.

But now, if you’re Consuela from Caracas giving birth in Carlsbad, California, your cholo child is a citizen. If you’re Ning Naun from Nanking, giving birth in Nashua, New Hampshire, your nursling nipper is now a national. That’s the law of the land, even if you are here illegally.

This effectively removes the border.

If an illegal steps one foot into Arizona and squats a tot, the squatted tot is just as American as Neil Armstrong. If a woman on a legal visa drops a moppet, even if she overstays? It’s an American citizen, just as American as Mark Twain.

The American people, therefore, have no say in who becomes an American.

It’s like someone breaks into my house and pops a preemie there and now that preschooler is now my child and I have to treat it like my child and give it exactly the same (or better!) treatment as my other kids even though it’s much stupider, much needier, and much more violent.

I guess I would be fine with that if I hated my own kids.

But I don’t. I love my kids. And, I love my people.

I’ve gone over at length in previous posts how immigrants, both legal and illegal, are a net negative on the country as a whole economically. It’s not really arguable because the facts are so stark.

Why they’ve been allowed is simple.

For the GloboLeftElite, they represent a new voter bloc that’s skewed to vote against nationalism and for communism.

For the Institutional Elite, they represent more demand for their services and more job for their gay friends.

For the “Idaho Rancher” they represent a way to get cheap labor and avoid paying the prices it would take for Americans to do the work, and the “Idaho Rancher” doesn’t have to pay for the services like medical and child care and prisons.

For the “Wall Street Firm” it’s a way to get cheap labor that will never say no, and will never report you for doing something shady.

These groups are all traitors.

You could say “enlightened economic self-interest” but you’d be wrong. They are the ticks that view the United States as an economic zone to be sucked into an empty skin sack for profits or as a place to build political power for ideas that are inimical to our way of life.

I’m not an extremist.

I’m not opposed 100% to immigration. I think we should consider starting it again in 2326 after a 200-year moratorium. I mean, we should consider it then. Maybe.

The problem with this ruling is two-fold. I’ll start with the economic. There are between 400 million and 700 million people that would move to the United States if they could. Iowa would soon look like Islamabad, Pakistan. Lubbock, Texas would soon look like Lagos, Nigeria. Diluting the ability of the nation to make wealth won’t make us wealthier, it will just turn our country into a slum.

If it were only economic, I might be able to make the case that this was okay. We’d eventually catch up in wealth production. Eventually.

But it won’t, and that’s because of the second problem:

Genetics leads to culture leads to virtue leads to politics leads to outcomes.

That’s it. You can’t take 100, or 1,000 or 10,000,000 Nigerians and expect them to create anything but Nigeria. Same thing with Indians. Or Danes. Or Chinese. Studies of twins separated at birth prove that heritability not only of intellectual ability, but also attitudes and behaviors. Why are Indians turning Canada into India?

Because that’s what Indians do. Because that’s what Indians are. If you want your country to look like India, import more Indians. If you don’t want your country to look like India, don’t let them in.

And if you go back to my map, culture leads to virtue. This is the true failing of multicultural societies, since they cannot form a shared sense of virtue. Why are there rape gangs wherever Indians or Pakistani or Sub-Saharan Africans congregate, even in countries that don’t consider rape a spectator sport?

Because rape is okay in their culture, and if they bring their culture to Dublin, they’ll rape in Dublin. Look it up. It’s not a “because they’re in the United States or Europe” thing, it’s who they are. If only the most rape-y breed, well, then the people will become genetically more rape-y. So what happens when their people become the cops?

Pit bulls are different than golden retrievers. Wishing won’t make it less so, and why are we allowing a never-ending stream of pit bulls into the country?

Lee Kuan Yew, the father of modern Singapore said:

I started off believing all men were equal. I now know that’s the most unlikely thing ever to have been, because millions of years have passed over evolution, people have scattered across the face of this earth, been isolated from each other, developed independently, had different intermixtures between races, peoples, climates, soils . . . I didn’t start off with that knowledge. But by observation, reading, watching, arguing, asking, that is the conclusion I’ve come to.

If a country cannot determine who is allowed to become a citizen, then the result will be a multi-cultural society. What happens then? If the societies are close and have time, they can grow together, the British and Irish. Oh, wait.

To enforce a true multicultural society requires strong, swift, and sure enforcement of the rules. There was a 19-year-old American in Singapore who was caned in Singapore in 1994.

Why?

The American was being an ass. He deserved it. But also because Singapore has to be strict and severe because it is multi-cultural. To maintain a multi-cultural society that doesn’t turn into Mad Max® requires at least three of the four: justice, discipline, authoritarianism, and prosperity.

The alternative to that?

War.

War is not solely men in uniforms ranked in order on opposing sides of a line. If we encouraged people to move to a foreign country to take control, that would be war. How is that different from what India is doing? How is that different from what Islam is doing? How is that different from what Haiti . . . okay, skip that, Haiti isn’t bright enough to have a strategy more complicated than cannibalism.

In a multi-cultural society, it becomes a free-for-all, a war of all against all.

Multicultural societies don’t blend into harmony because we wish it so. History shows the exact opposite. But, hey, we’ve either got caning or cannibalism to look forward to, so there’s that.

Why We Can’t Do War Anymore

“You led us into a war zone with no way out?” – Inception

Also, when cats rebel in the Navy, is that mewtiny?

“Get there first with the most men,” is a quote that is attributed to Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest. This was translated by the New York Times® in 1917 as “Git thar fustest with the most mostest” because, well, because of course they did.

This reached its zenith during World War II. Defeating Germany and Japan wasn’t so much of a military operation but was rather an economic operation. It was the economy that could produce the mostest fustest.

One example is the aircraft carrier. The United States entered World War II with eight aircraft carriers, of which seven were “fleet carriers” and the other one was a small “escort” carrier.

It ended with 28 fleet carriers, 9 light carriers, and over 70 escort carriers, making (best guess) 101 operational carriers on in August, 1945 when Japan surrendered after we dropped two portable stars on their island. This worked. We could afford to build the planes, atomic bombs, and the ships while still having enough money left over to afford to get a couple of nice ribeyes.

We didn’t just outproduce the Axis, we outproduced them so thoroughly that by the end of the war we had more aircraft carriers than most countries have paved roads.

When the Navy recruiter asked if I could swim, I asked him, “Why? Have we run out of ships?”

World War II and the following Cold War were economic wars. How much capital could the United States and the Soviet Union throw into weapons programs to get there fustest with the mostest? Well, trillions. Ultimately, the sheer cost of Soviet weapons programs combined with their crappy commie economy caused the whole thing to fall over.

The United States had perfected Modern Warfare, which was really just having the economy produce millions of tons of weapons that we hoped never to use, and occasionally smashing a country with a few missiles or invading Iraq and Afghanistan a couple of times. Our technology was amazing. Our previous capital investments allowed us to win any sort of World War II battle we might run into. You know, if Rommel and the Bockauge Korps appears from a parallel universe and decides to invade Ohio.

Yay! I knew we could do it!

There’s a city in Ohio called Engagement. It’s between Dayton and Marion.

But things change, and technology changes.

The biggest change to the world has been the cheap drone. It’s not cheap when the military does it, since the military procurement process makes things stupidly expensive. On Amazon®, there is a drone available that will carry a 30-kilogram payload. An M107 155mm projectile carries about 7kg of explosive. I have no idea what Comp B costs, but the drone is $15,000 retail, so a nation can buy those in bulk and air drop the equivalent of an M107 shell with ease and with precision for less than $20,000 a trip, and, say, less than $2,000 if you reuse the drone.

An M777 155mm howitzer costs over $4million. To be fair, the Pentagon could turn that $15,000 drone into a $2million program if allowed to, complete with a 47 page PowerPoint© about diversity, equity, and inclusion plus the requirement that it have a non-gendered toilet. This is our military’s true superpower.

I hear that in California they have a beach covered in frozen waffles: Sandy Eggo®.

The capital model of build more stuff that gets there quickly that the Soviets Russians relied on when they invaded Ukraine broke down because it’s now changed. A $4million tank can be taken out easily by the cheap drone. In fact, I’d imagine you could get more than 300 of the drones for the price of one tank, and if you re-use them just twice, that’s 600 to 1200 shots perfectly on target, which isn’t warfare, it’s Prime Day© for explosions.

Sure, they’ve had to move to fiber-optics because of jamming.

The bigger problem has been the cheap drone plane, which are currently chewing up Russian refineries. Both the Russians and the Ukrainians are using them to attack each other. They’re cost is somewhere between $10,000 to $40,000 per unit, as a guess. These are cheaply made fixed wing planes that carry 100-pound warheads. Who needs a bomber? Who needs a pilot?

Now, for $40,000, one of these planes can easily cause $10,000,000 damage to an oil refinery.

Which brings us to the Strait of Hormuz.

The initial attacks on the vessels shipping sweet, sweet oil out to the world was done using $200,000-ish anti-ship missiles. That’s expensive, so recently they’ve swapped out and are using Shahed® fixed-wing drones that the Russian fixed-wing drones are based on. Again, cost is probably about $10,000 to $40,000 per unit.

The cost of the drones is probably about $750,000 to $5,000,000.

Total.

And what did that cost the economies of the world?

$1.5-$3 trillion.

That’s a 300,000 to 1 return at the low end.

If that works, it’ll be a crude awakening.

The previous models required men to be moved, and the more of them the better, with more guns and tanks and planes and bombs equaling victory. Victory was about who had the most capital, and who could bring the most people to the front and build the most bombers and have enough pilots to keep flying them.

In the new models, a base within missile or drone range isn’t an asset, it’s a target. The 11 supercarriers are now . . . targets.

They are very large, very expensive targets that need to be kept so far from the actual fighting that they’re mostly useful for looking impressive in press releases and photo ops. At $13 billion a ship with 6,000 personnel on board, we’ve somehow created a weapon so valuable we can’t afford to use it. It’s less of a warship than a very large, very slow hostage with its own zip code.

The final result of the “war is a capital competition” has produced a hostage with a flight deck that needs to stay a continent away from the fight and replaced thousands of men and billions of dollars with a guy, a laptop, and decent wifi.

And you don’t want to see the planned “Special Forces”.

War in an interconnected world has ceased to look anything like war from 1943. Like in the book Dune, the idea to war now is to deprive your enemy of something they can’t live without: “He who can destroy a thing, controls it.”

The Strait of Hormuz proves this, but it’s not the only inflection point where physical resources or the world’s economy is constrained.

Taiwan, for instance, produces 65% of the world’s computer chips. Taiwan also produces more than 90% of the most advanced chips.

China is vulnerable, too. The Strait of Malacca moves 80% of China’s oil. There are others. In a global, interconnected world getting there first with the most men is less important, or a navy that has to hide in a corner like my cat when I turn on the vacuum.

I never trust five star reviews on them, it’s really hard to get a perfect vacuum.

Now, the key is having the fundamental ability to control something your enemy literally can’t live without.

Citizen Vigilante: A Movie For Our Time

“Remember: I do this for you, until you learn to do it for yourself.” – Citizen Vigilante

Since the main character was an American fighting invading rapists in Europe, could this movie have been called Alien Vs. Predator? (all memes as-found)

First, I promise I’m not planning on making this a movie review blog. If you’ll note, most of the movies I’ve individually reviewed either show the best of what we can be as a people or the propaganda that has been inflicted on the world for decades. Now, we’re into a third case: a movie that’s reviewed because of its immediacy.

I once left a positive Yelp® review at the DMV noting how helpful and customer-service focused they were. The manager fired everyone.

I first heard about Citizen Vigilante this week on X®. What I heard, resonated. Here’s a quote from the titular (hehehe) character from fairly early on in the movie:

Who we are and what we do has ramifications in our lives, and in the lives of everyone around us, hm? You don’t understand? All right. Pay attention, let me explain this to you. If you get onto a bus and you don’t pay your ticket, if you go to the movie theater, if you grab a banana at a grocery store and you don’t pay, eventually, the cost of everything will go up. If ten percent doesn’t pay, the cost will go up ten percent to cover the loss, and that’s not fair. You might not understand this, but think about it. I’m sure you’ll come to the right decision.

I’m sure that this resonates with 99% of the regular readers here. This is the philosophy that separates a high-trust civilization from a low-trust civilization. This one attitude, that you pay for what you take, that wealth is earned into existence, not cheated from another is what has made the West and every other civilization that follows this, great.

And high home prices and long commutes are the price we pay to avoid living around “civilized” society.

I have been saying for years on this blog and even longer in person that the purpose of the justice system is to keep people from taking justice into their own hands, and it appears that Europe has reached the breaking point. Uwe Boll, who I’ve really not been familiar with before this, made this movie.

He wrote it, directed it, and financed it. It’s not a big budget Hollywood© film, but it’s a labor of his heart. Boll was originally going to title this movie Dark Knight, but Warner Brothers© sent a cease and desist, so he had to compromise there. Does he bow to political correctness here and there?

Sure, but in minor enough ways that I’m not going complain. However, I’m going to make a bold statement: this film is more red-pilled than Death Wish. It is garlic to Hollywood’s© vampire.

I am extremely smart: I have a theoretical degree in physics.

The genius of Boll is that by doing it himself, he could put up a big middle finger to the people that would silence him and write and film any damn thing he wanted. And Germany has done so, not giving the film a rating, which means I think that you can legally own it, but I don’t think you can legally buy it or sell it.

Why ban it? The violence isn’t all that bad. The singular sex scene isn’t anything to write home about. No. The Powers That Be think this movie is dangerous.

Based on history, I think this decision will make kids want to watch it even more. I’ll admit, it made me want to watch it more than the other crap Hollywood© is putting out.

As I wrote earlier, it’s low budget. The “me-too” crusade made the actor Armie Hammer effectively radioactive, so I don’t think he was doing much nor do I think he cost a lot. Hammer is, however, perfect in the protagonist role in this film. If he signed up for a low salary and a percentage of the gross profits, well, he’s certainly a happy man. It was released on June 19, and Citizen Vigilante has already grossed over $67 million dollars by Tuesday. This was at a reported cost of somewhere around $9 million to make the film, though I cannot vouch for the accuracy of any of these numbers: the source was “crap I found on the Internet”.

But I think they’re making money, which is good because some people have had a hard time finding work.

I left my job to pursue a dream of working in archeology. My career is in ruins.

The movie is also short, clocking in at 89 minutes (in metric, that’s 8.9 decahours). That’s good. It left me wanting more, rather than leaving me thinking, “that’s it?” or thinking, “man, this movie is dragging along”. It was just as long as it needed to be and the conclusion is satisfying and it had one line in it that had me howling with laughter, but maybe that will just be me.

I’m not going to spoil the line, and please don’t in comments.

I’m also not going to spoil the plot. It’s not a complicated one, and not surprising in any fashion.

What’s a GloboLeftist’s most effective birth control? Their personality.

Will Hollywood™ make more of this?

I don’t know. I doubt it. Will Boll and Hammer? I hope so. I’d like to see more of this character. I recommend this movie, but keep in mind it’s not for kids.

So, if you want more things like this, buy it, don’t stream it for free. (JW note: after I wrote this, Uwe Boll put it up for free on X® for 48 hours, so, there’s that exception, which I believe Mr. Musk paid for out of his couch-cushion money. I think it will still be available until the end of 6/25/26. LINK)

If ten percent doesn’t pay, the cost will go up ten percent to cover the loss, and that’s not fair. You might not understand this, but think about it. I’m sure you’ll come to the right decision.