Category: Complacency

Leftists, Lawnmowers, and Liberty

“Except lawnmowers don’t have turn signals.” – Psych

It’s obvious that guy never read the script.

Today I welded up a riding lawnmower deck.

It was the first time in years that I’d had the garage clean enough to get whatever tool I wanted without conducting a gymnastics routine worthy of a gold medal – and I didn’t even have a Soviet Commissar that was getting ready to shoot my family.

My garage had been so chaotic that it could have been the White House press corps falling all over themselves explaining why President * intended to lose a fight with gravity going up Air Force One. But that’s another story. I’m sure Snopes® has already debunked that President * fell down, and instead called it “Mostly False” because he obviously fell up the stairs.

Back to welding up the mower deck:

My welding is really, really bad – it looks like toddlers played with molten metal, but without all of the emergency room visits. Regardless, the mower deck seemed more stable when I was done. Pugsley pronounced the mower “fixed” and was happy. If the crack in the mower deck stays fixed it will be due to luck and not my Civil War surgeon-level skill at welding.

You can imagine my glee when my kids had splinters. “Fetch me the hacksaw. . .”

Fixing the mower deck was important for several reasons. First, it showed Pugsley that when something is broken, if we think we can fix it, we should at least try. There have been a couple of times that this has backfired on me like the time I burned out a wiring harness on a Nissan Altima™ installing a stereo. Likewise, I try to tell The Mrs. that if she wouldn’t have stopped me from drilling that hole in my skull, my plan really would have worked.

Second, it showed Pugsley that our destiny is in our hands. Sure, that’s not always exactly true. Those dinosaurs munching on dino cabbage on the Yucatan peninsula certainly were having a legendarily bad day when the meteorite blazed them into future motor oil and plastics for making G.I. Genderless® action figures.

But most of the time, it really is true. We make our own destiny. Our choices, our courage, our virtue, and our tenacity are much greater indicators of our futures than any outside force. That’s a message I want etched in Pugsley’s mind. Of course, I might regret that if he chooses my nursing home – he might choose the Ayn Rand Retirement Villa®, where their motto is: “We only feed you if you have the will to get to the dining room.”

Just like Schrödinger, I should probably have an open casket. You know, to be sure.

Third, we don’t give up. If we fail, we try again. I fully imagine my preschool-level welds will have been just like bear porridge: too hot or too cold and not at all just right.

That’s okay. Another message to Pugsley is that we’ll try again. Honestly, these were very bad welds, but they were the best welds I’ve ever made. They may hold, but I doubt it. I think the metal will crack so badly that Pugsley will claim he was from a broken home.

Then? I’ll weld it again.

One of the reasons I engage in these adventures is that I want to inoculate Pugsley against Leftism. Fixing a mower deck is a small part of that, but still, those messages remain.

How will this inoculate Pugsley? The Left’s main reason for living is being a victim. The Narrative of the Left is always, everywhere, the same:

  • They Are The Victims

This is the first tenet of Leftism. Everywhere, always, the Left is the victim class. Can I prove it? Sure.

Look at any protest. Ever see a Leftist throw themselves in front of, say, a semi-truck? They want to die. They hate themselves. They look to the world and see how utterly wretched they are, and they hate the world that made them with a religious fervor. If they can’t die, they want to see the world burn.

There is no redemption for them.

I was going to go as a suicide victim for Halloween, but I decided to go as Jeffery Epstein instead.

  • They Seek To Convert By Creating Envy

Not everyone can be a True Leftist. Many are converted by creating a culture of envy. Envy is a powerful Evil. Why?

Envy makes a person want what others have. Did the other people earn it? In many cases, certainly not. Trust fund kids didn’t earn the right to drive a Lamborghini®. And lots of people who earn hundreds of thousands of dollars a year don’t work nearly as hard as the people who fix the streets or flip burgers.

Looks like COVID inoculation day in a Red State.

That’s a fertile ground for Envy, since in many cases there is only a minimal relationship between happiness and money. When Envy takes over, however, I’ve seen teams tear themselves apart because a single team member convinced everyone that The Man was taking advantage of them.

In 2021, I also see Leftists upset because other people get better jobs. I mean, why wouldn’t someone with a degree in Medieval Albanian Poetry not be making $234,000 a year two years after college? I mean, they were so smart in understanding what Murgatroid the Great meant when he said, “Oh, my headache ist such embiggened by a trough of wine thy previous night.”

  • They Seek To Divide The Country By Making A Country Meaningless

What is a country? A country is made by people born there from parents who were born there from grandparents who were born there. There, I’ve said it. If a person’s lineage isn’t at least that deep?

They’re not really American. Oh, sure, we’ve welcomed them, but unless they’d name their son Brandon or their daughter Kayla (both names I detest) they’re not really American.

If they have a second passport? Not American. Their loyalty is divided.

Being a part of a country means something.

The Left seeks to make it mean nothing. The Left thinks we should take care of a child 15,000 miles away the same way that we would take care of one in our hometown. Certainly, I understand that, but, really, doesn’t that kid have parents and a government? I am compassionate – but I care a lot more for the people in my town than for people who aren’t.

In Chicago, you ignore both.

The Left wants an endless stream of refugees into the United States. Why? So everything that made the United States great becomes the average of countries that were so awful that people came here instead of staying there.

  • The End Goal: To Gain Power.

Aesop rightly pointed out that this is the end goal in the comments a few weeks ago. And, he’s right. Leftists can’t gain control of the country unless they subvert the things that made the United States wonderful. This is also true of the West in general.

They must create enough anger, distrust, and division as possible. In this crisis, they imagine that they will step into power. This worked in France. In Russia. In China. In Venezuela.

The goal is that this will work in the West the same way it worked all over the world.

To make this happen, the values and beliefs of the Right have to go: they become politically incorrect in a storm of feigned weakness and victimhood. If you’ve seen pictures of Antifa®, one thing is amazingly obvious: they’re physically weak.

I’m sure he’s planning to be the poet in the collective farm. Or maybe make special bracelets for the farmworkers.

People who lift weights are more likely to become . . . Right wing. Lifting a weight removes illusions – it’s me against the weight. The man isn’t holding me back. No outside force is oppressing me. And, lo and behold, the people who are lifting will help you.

But only if asked. They won’t come out and suggest a thing. It’s you versus the Iron. They’ll help, but the know, deep down inside, it’s your struggle, not theirs.

So, it’s that simple. Learn strength.

And, teach strength. Teach responsibility.

I’m sorry. I meant weak bedwetters.

That’s why Pugsley and I welded the mower deck. We’re responsible. We can try to fix it. And we won’t give up.

If you want an antidote to the Left, you won’t get much better than that. Lift weights. Be responsible for your own life and your own surroundings.

While I’d like to be able to weld better, but as you can see, fixing the deck a dozen times might provide a much better result.

Read This Post Because You Want To See Why Efficiency Can Suck

“Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!  Amongst our weaponry are such diverse elements as fear, surprise, ruthless efficiency, an almost fanatical devotion to the Pope, and nice red uniforms – oh damn!” – Python, Monty

I’m scared that German sausage might be dangerous – but I guess that’s a wurst-case scenario.

One particular afternoon (decades ago) my ex-wife (She Who Will Not Be Named – SWWNBN) moved out.  It was one of those things where we were both immediately happier, though the process of getting a divorce was rough – the judge finally had to sit me down and tell me I couldn’t get the engagement annulled, too.

I kid.  SWWNBN and I were awful for each other.  One of the major disagreements in our life was money.  I was cheap – when SWWNBN wanted to get out of the house for dinner and I fed her Hamburger Helper® in the garage, well, SWWNBN wasn’t pleased.

So on that particular afternoon, SWWNBN moved out she handed me a plastic grocery sack.  It was filled to the brim with papers.  “Here,” she grunted as the heavy sack thudded on the dinner table, causing the legs to audibly groan, “are the bills.  And here is the checkbook.  I have no idea how much money is in it.”

SWWNBN then turned and walked out the door.  For good.

There’s a dentist office in the Vatican – it’s in the Listerine Chapel.

Let me explain how I got into this situation:  stupidity.

I had the brilliant idea when SWWNBN and I argued about money to give her control of the bills.  I figured that if she was responsible for paying them, she’d make sure that they were paid, and help economize around the house, keep the thermostat lower, turn off the lights, and understand that our income versus our bills was a constant fight to avoid trying to find the choice real estate under the overpass – but you have to remember location is everything.

SWWNBN had managed the bills for a few years.  Surely she had been competent.  I picked up the bill on top.

It was a gasoline company credit card.  It hadn’t been paid in two months.  The balance was (from memory) $780.

For gasoline.

SWWNBN had been paying the minimum balance and juggling the payments so it looked like the Titanic was doing swell, thank you very much, until the alarm went up and the crew jumped ship.

The movies The Sixth Sense and Titanic are about the same thing:  icy dead people.

The show of horrors went on as I went through the stack and started sorting them into piles:

  • Paid and up to date (one account, the mortgage was in this stack).
  • Only one or two months late.
  • Late and building a ludicrous balance.
  • Company threatening to send people named Vito and Chico to break my legs.

I then went to my computer and opened Excel®.  I started making a spreadsheet.  The bills were enormous.  In order to not have to “donate” a kidney to someone from the United Arab Emirates, my one option was to take an immediate loan against my 401K.

The next 24 months of my life were an exercise in extreme budget management.  Every single expense was an exercise in nearly zero choices:  every cent had a home before my company direct-deposited it into my account.  How close was I budgeting things?  By the time I was through with a five-dollar bill, Abe was clean-shaven.

My pay had become exactly coupled to my expenses.

Did you hear about that movie role Nic Cage turned down?  Neither did he.

When people think of efficiency, they describe, for instance, a manufacturing facility where all of the equipment is used at maximum capacity, all the time.  Whatever is being made flows from one process to the next and there’s no lag.  All of the processes are coupled.  There is no slack in the system.

This is, of course, a recipe for disaster.

Just like my income being exactly tied to the seemingly endless stack of bills that I had to pay, that kind of factory would bring nothing but chaos.  Whenever any part of it had to slow down or stop unless there was a place to put the “in progress” work, the entire factory would have to shut down or Lucy would have to eat a lot more chocolates.

My life was just like that factory.  If the dollar didn’t come in, I couldn’t pay my bills.  If I had been out of work for even a few months, I would have been bankrupt.  At least if I was bankrupt in summer, I might get some prime real estate in the stormwater culvert.

The example factory isn’t something I’ve made up.  If you look at the outages of natural gas and electricity during the February storm, you’ll see a system where all of the excess capacity had been used.  In colder climates, the systems are built for the cold.  In Texas?

Not so much.  The excess capacity for electrical generation (in some cases) was down for maintenance as pointed out by Nick Flandrey (his website) in the comments section here.

And it would be difficult to convince a business executive to build a lot of excess capacity for the coldest winter storm to hit Texas in over 120 years.  If there’s excess capacity, that executive will try to figure out a way to use it.  His career and BMW® payments require it, although I still feel sorry for that poor German that installs turn signals on BMWs™.

Excess isn’t tolerated – it’s not efficient.  Not a lot of polar bears use sunblock.

But don’t worry about teddy bears.  They’re already stuffed.

But in resilient systems, the excess isn’t just tolerated – it’s required.  There is a conscious decoupling from one operation to the next.  These are systems that are built to be reliable.  Part of our jobs as adults is to scan the horizon as hard as Joe Biden works when he tries to form a complete sentence to see where those breakdowns might occur.

Decoupling is required for many things – the very idea of prepping, for instance, is a conscious act to decouple from a fragile, efficient system.  Building up excess capacity (food, ammo, water purification, heat, shelter) is that very act of creating slack.  It’s building up space between your car and the idiot in front of you in case they hit the brakes on a wet road and you rear-end them and realize you’re underinsured and then they complain about neck pains and then say just kidding and this just got far too specific.

So, back to me, decades ago, sitting in a chair at a dining room table staring at a pile of bills.  Knowing that a truck had pulled into my life and as the bed went up, it had covered me up so deep that only a farmer could pull me out, since he knew that I wouldn’t make the soil richer.

And I dug out of debt, bit by bit, bill by bill.  When I retired a bill was a time of great joy.  And, the first one I paid off was that gasoline credit card that had been at the top of the stack.  Each time I turned a balance to zero?

Why did Angela Merkel cross the road?  Because she wanted to go that way and the pedestrian crossing sign indicated it was safe to do so.

I smiled.  I had decoupled a bit from my debt.  It took six years to get out, and four of those I was married to The Mrs.  I still recall paying a final bill on my final credit card on a crisp January morning.  I had no debt, not even car debt at that point.  Heck, I even paid the exorcist so my house wouldn’t be repossessed.

In my case, decoupling my bills from my paycheck was one of the greatest days of my life – knowing that, regardless of what happened next week was safe.  Then that savings stretched out to a month.  Then six months.  Then a year.

Decoupling gives you time and space, often those things in an emergency that you can’t buy with any amount of money.  Remember the Great Toilet Paper Shortage of 2020?  Sure it was rough, but that’s just how Americans roll.

But one of the biggest lessons is, according to Henny Youngman:

“Why are divorces expensive?  They’re worth it.”

The Left’s War On Truth

“I’ve heard the truth, Mulder. Now what I want are the answers.” – The X-Files

Wow.  It’s like some of these might be made up.

The first enemy of the Left isn’t the Right.

The first enemy of the Left is the Truth.

The examples go back through history, starting with the Leftist takeover in France after the French Revolution.  In order to completely cut ties with the past, the Left even changed:

  • The names of the months: the Revolutionaries changed all of them, though they kept 12 months.  The coolest name was Therimidor which was, roughly, July.  I’ll give them that one:  Thermidor sounds like a place you keep wine.  I don’t know much about wine, but I do know you have to keep it hot.
  • Weeks went from 7 days to 10 days. Why?  Metric weeks!  They even had special names for the day, but they were all in French and looked like they might cause inadvertent strangulation if I tried to pronounce them.
  • The day went to ten hours. Each metric hour had 100 metric minutes.  Take that, Babylonians!
  • The units of measure. All standards of mass, energy, temperature, and length had to be changed.  Why do I call the metric system communist?  Because it started with the commies.  Did Stalin know how tall he was in feet and inches?  Nope, he was all metric, comrade.

Truth is the enemy of the Left, and the idea was (and is) to destroy history.  This is the reason the statues have to come down in city after city – they represent a Truth that the Left can’t control.  Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves?  His statue has to go.  He didn’t do enough.

Abe doesn’t go to plays anymore.  That last one blew his mind.

This Leftist hatred of the Truth might explain two stories that are recently in the news.

The first one is the reaction of the United States military versus Tucker Carlson.  Tucker Carlson:  Is he a legitimate military target, perhaps more dangerous than Russia?  More dangerous than China?

Well, no.

Mr. Carlson made a 10-minute segment where he criticized the President * for changing the military for political reasons.  The changes?  Most were tied to the feminization of the military.

Carlson made the point that the military’s job is winning wars.  Having pregnant female pilots probably (in Carlson’s estimation) didn’t make sense after President * made a comment about “maternity flight suits” in his address.

I hear this pilot’s husband complained that she worked too hard.  “Well, somebody’s gotta fetus.”

The response, from military personnel, in uniform consisted of a Marine sergeant who said, “. . . those decisions were made by medical professionals, by commanders, and our civilian leadership . . . .” and followed up with, “ . . . let’s remember that those opinions were made by an individual that has never served a day in his life . . . .”

I’m wondering what would have happened to a Marine in uniform attacking someone on the Left on social media?  Oh, wait, Marine sergeant Gary Stein was kicked out with an “other than honorable” discharge for criticizing Obama.  Sure – Tucker Carlson isn’t the Commander-In-Chief, but this is a political attack while in uniform.

John Kirby, Pentagon Press Secretary:  “(The United States Armed Forces) . . . won’t take advice from a talk show host or the Chinese military.”

But would the United States Armed Forces take advice from the Marines?

I hope I don’t give her low elf esteem.

In 2015, the Marines did a $35,000,000 (that’s a lot of crayons) study about integrating women into combat groups.  A pretty decent summary is here on the Marine Corps Times (LINK).  I’ll publish a few snippets from the article that highlight findings of the study (All bullet points are direct quotes from the Marine Corps Times):

  • All-male squads and teams outperformed those that included women on 69 percent of the 134 ground combat tasks evaluated.
  • All-male teams were outperformed by mixed-gender teams on two tasks: accuracy in firing the 50-caliber machine gun in traditional rifleman units and the same skill in provisional units. Researchers did not know why gender-mixed teams did better on these skills, but said the advantage did not persist when the teams continued on to movement-under-load exercises.
  • All-male squads in every infantry job were faster than mixed-gender squads in each tactical movement evaluated. The differences between the teams were most pronounced in crew-served weapons teams. Those teams had to carry weapons and ammunition in addition to their individual combat loads.
  • Male-only rifleman squads were more accurate than gender-integrated counterparts on each individual weapons system, including the M4 carbine, the M27 infantry automatic rifle and the M203 grenade launcher.
  • Male Marines with no formal infantry training outperformed infantry-trained women on each weapons system, at levels ranging from 11 to 16 percentage points.

Shockingly, women are different than men, the study found (All bullet points are direct quotes from the Marine Corps Times):

  • In anaerobic power and capacity, female Marines averaged 15 percent lower levels than their male counterparts. In anaerobic power performance, the top 25 percent of female performers and the bottom 25 percent of male performers overlapped.
  • In aerobic capacity, female Marines demonstrated levels 10 percent lower on average than male Marines.
  • Over the course of the assessment, musculoskeletal injury rates totaled 40.5 percent for women, more than double the 18.8 percent rate for men.

The Marines declare war on Tucker Carlson?

To the Left, Tucker Carlson is evil incarnate – Tucker is questioning one of the Sacred Points of Liberalism – Reality Is What We Say It Is.  That cannot go unpunished.  Personally, I know one former Air Force officer who is female who probably could have done any specialty she wanted to in the Air Force.  She is so far off the charts by multiple standard deviations on intellect and physical ability so as to be not comparable to average in any way.

She has contributed more to the national defense than I ever will – and she’s still doing it.  But the outliers don’t prove the average.

Women can serve, and can serve meaningfully, but they have physical limitations so significant that the Marines in 2015 said that combat infantry wasn’t an option if your goal was killing people and blowing up things.  An average college varsity swimmer can beat every woman’s swimming record – world record.  The woman’s record for deadlifting is 683 pounds – that’s quite a lot.  The men’s record?  1,104.5 pounds, nearly double.

Who says guns aren’t sexy?

No, we’re not deadlifting our opponents to beat them in combat, but strength, speed, and quickness mean something to the Marines or else P.T. would consist of couch time and nachos for lunch.  I’d think physical fitness mattered for people engaged in combat.

The Marine study agreed:  the top 25% of women overlapped with the bottom 25% of men in physical ability.  Also, in sheer competence, the all-male Marines clearly won 70% of all combat exercises.  Though I can’t find the quote, I do recall reading that several female participants in the study were quoted as being of the opinion that females shouldn’t be in combat after seeing the results.

What’s most frightening to me is that the military has come together to attack Carlson.  For the military to attack a civilian in the news media over an opinion that is political in nature is unsupportable.  It’s the next step to the United States Military becoming involved in domestic politics.  Oh, wait, there are troops in the Capitol and permanent fencing going up to keep citizens out?  Nevermind.

Ooops.  Looks like someone reads Twitter®?

The second news item might not originally seem related, but I assure you it is.  The last week has seen the growth of a new orientation:  Super Straight.

Super Straight has its origin in transgender ideology.  You see, if you are a male that doesn’t want to date a “trans woman” the trans community would call you a “transphobe” because, in their world, “trans women are women.”

Well, Super Straight was an amazing troll of this philosophy.  It was actually the brainchild of a 16-year-old on TikToc®.  He was lamenting that he would be called a “transphobe” for not liking “trans girls” so he came out . . . as Super Straight.  That meant that he was only attracted to women who were born as women.

The group noted they felt being called “cis-male” or “cis-female” was hate speech.  Orange and black are the SuperStraight colors.

In 2021 the idea that a biological male might want to only date biological females is being sold to kids as odd.  But even kids can see this is nonsense.  That’s why they’re revolting.  They were using the same language that the Left uses back at them, “Why can’t you stop attacking me for this?  I was born this way.”

And the Left must stop that – the idea that “normal” can defend itself is not acceptable.

The Left has to portray themselves as the undisputed victim class.  They are the ones that are horribly abused.  They are the ones that are deserving of pity because society oppresses them.  The idea that another group might take this from them?

Worse than death.  The Left agrees.

Remember,  trains is hard job.

So, the plug was pulled on the Reddit® forum r/SuperStraight after just over a week – despite the fact that over 25,000 people had joined it that quickly.  Or was it because that many people joined it that quickly?

Ironically, it wasn’t long before SuperLesbians started showing up.  They were creeped out by transwomen wanting to date them and calling them transphobes if they said no.  Also?  SuperGays showed up.  They didn’t want to date transmen.  It was a strange, weird, and amazingly polite group of people who didn’t want to be forced to date people who are (let’s be clear) more than a little creepy.

Is it a crime to notice?

I don’t dislike trans people – I don’t know any of them.  There just aren’t that many in the world.  There might be 0.1% to 0.3% based on a 2014 study.  Many of them have other underlying psychological issues:  their suicide rate is 20 times their peer group after surgery.  Based on everything I’ve read, they are a group that deserves sympathy and psychological help.

The trans movement is probably the biggest finger in the eye of Truth that the Left has pushed so far.  The idea that a 10-year-old kid can make decisions that would lead to them being put on very potent hormones with far-reaching implications to block puberty is frightening.

But the Left will support that with everything they have:  when Rand Paul questioned Dr. Levine about giving kids powerful hormones and conducting surgery on them during confirmation hearings, all Dr. Levine would say is, “Transgender medicine is a very complex and nuanced field with robust research and standards of care . . . .”

See, even the sign language interpreter isn’t buying it.

So, yes.  Levine supports it.  The Left agrees.  And mainstream news was, unsurprisingly ready to complain that Rand Paul didn’t understand medicine.  Dr. Rand Paul, M.D.

It erases our past.  It erases our norms.  It erases the current structure of society.  This is the same exact playbook as the military.  The military ceases to be about protecting the country, it becomes an arm of the political Left, erasing hundreds of years of tradition and purpose.

You realize this is next, right?

That’s why the SuperStraight movement made me smile.  It was founded by kids who see the lie.  They know they are being lied to.  They know the people who are lying, know they are telling lies.  This is the best element of hope:  Truth matters.

The Truth will win.

The Great Purge Ahead

“When a forest grows too wild, a purging fire is inevitable and natural.” – Batman Begins

Stalin was better than most magicians.  He really made people disappear.

The Soviet Great Purge started in 1936.  Stalin already had a bad reputation as a Dictator who couldn’t say no – he had gotten rid of millions already in the Holodomor (In The World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold And Silver!).  The Great Purge was different.  The piles and piles of earlier dead had been peasants and kulaks (kulaks were peasants that had enough money to own a cow), mainly.   Even before the Great Purge Stalin had the world record for Russian killing, a record he still proudly maintains.

By 1936 Stalin, always paranoid, decided his main opponents were, surprise, still Russians.

Anyone who had been a trusted advisor of Lenin had to go.  Anyone who looked like a threat to Stalin?  Had to go.  The Red Army had troops with guns.  Three out of five Soviet Marshalls were executed.  13 out of 15 army commanders, 50 out of 57 corps-level commanders, and 154 out of 186 division commanders were caught up in it.

The very top of the Soviet Military was decapitated.  But that was a small portion of the Great Purge.  In the end, probably a million or more were murdered or died in the Gulags.  Anyone in politics was fair game, and the more power the bigger the target on their back.  Many of the people who helped Stalin with the Great Purge eventually were victims of it themselves.

What did Jack Nicholson say to his dentist?  “You can’t handle the tooth.”

What was the basis of the Great Purge?  Even though Stalin binged and purged, it wasn’t bulimia, it was Power.  Stalin wanted to keep power.  His greatest weapon?

Fear.

And fear is currently the weapon (predictably) used by the Left today.  They want to push people to the fringes, isolate them, and then purge them.  The first step is making them feel alone.

Of course, there haven’t been executions in the United States.  However, Obama purged 197 high-level officers in the first five years of his administration.  That’s quite close to the Stalin numbers, and perhaps even greater when you consider that the military in 2000s America is far smaller than in late 1930s Russia.

The purge has lately increased.  The current SecDef has made it clear:  “The job of the Department of Defense is to keep America safe from our enemies, but we can’t do that if some of those enemies lie within our own ranks.”

Just let that sink in.  The current Secretary of Defense has stated that he thinks that the biggest enemies of the United States are in the military, right now.  Today.  The leadership of the military has already been purged.  Now?  The rank and file is in the process of being purged.  Anyone not actively supporting the Leftist agenda will be drummed out.

If you need sink jokes, I’m at your disposal.

They want to purge anyone who is involved in “extremism” from the military.  As far as commies, I certainly agree.  But extremism for a Leftist is mere disagreement with a Leftist.  Don’t agree that having a 9-year-old boy dance as a girl in front of gay men at a strip club is entirely good and appropriate?

Extremist!  Behavior that would have resulted in imprisonment for the mother in all but the last 10 years since 1787 is now considered so sacred that it is impossible to challenge.  Now, speaking out against it is extremist.

Hollywood® is already on the job with this requirement.  Star Wars® was a part of my childhood.  I saved money when I was 12 to buy overpriced dolls action figures.  The mythos of Star Wars© was always one of Good versus Evil, which burned itself into my young imagination.

Now?  It’s Leftism versus the Right.  At every opportunity, the creative element at DisneyLucasFilmStarWars™ has abandoned the production of good movies to produce movies that are water carriers for the narratives of a Leftist agenda.

I grew up loving Star Wars©.  It was fun.  It was escapism.  It was a place where there were good heroes and evil villains.  Okay, I’ll admit, the entire series should have ended when the Emperor© said, “And now you die, young Skywalker™” during Return of the Jedi©.

Luke was late because he had to take an R2-Detour.

The latest is that an actress got fired for expressing mildly Right viewpoints.  Heck, they weren’t even something that 95% of every American wouldn’t have agreed with when Kurt Cobain was still sucking air instead of pushing daisies.

And that is the technique of the Left.  If they can’t directly imprison you, they do their best to turn you into an unemployed, destitute outcast of society.

Imagine 50,000 Leftists watching everything you re-Tweet® to catch you.

But, thanks to me, you can watch the purge unfold in real time.  The Long March through the institutions of the United States is ongoing.  Here’s the current status of the things the Left owns:

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

The result in 2021 is that of the institutions of the United States, the Left has or is consolidating control over nearly all of the important ones.  What remains?  Junior officer and enlisted men in the armed forces (at least for the next few months) and the governors and legislators of a few states.

Oh, and at least 80,000,000 inconvenient people.

The idea is to scare Americans about the Purge, to scare them about their place in society.  If the State and the Media can scare Americans like that, they can achieve their ultimate goal:  to make them be quiet.

One of the greatest compliments I’ve had from a friend about this website was this, “If they (the powers that be) were really reading and understanding the things you say, you’d be much, much higher on The List.”

The Mrs. prefers the elevator, I prefer stairs.  I guess we were raised differently.

The reason I don’t feel fear is this:  I’m not alone.  As I said earlier, there are 80,000,000 other inconvenient people on the list.

Standing together?  We can’t be canceled.

Standing together?  We can’t be purged.

Standing together?  We can’t lose.

This isn’t over.  We’re not done.

Fear, Rats, G. Gordon Liddy And A Machine Gun Bikini

“Hold them back!  Do not give in to fear!  Stand to your posts!  Fight!” – Return of the King

I can jump higher than any fence.  Fences don’t jump very well.

When The Mrs. and I were newly married, and before the stork brought The Boy, The Mrs. and I had time to just do, well, whatever.  That often involved driving, and driving in that involved radio.  We listened, mainly, to talk radio.  We had to, because we had been banned from a gas station for listening to a song by The Who too loudly.

I guess we won’t get fueled again.

One day we were listening to the G. Gordon Liddy show.  For those of you who don’t know, Liddy was sent to prison as part of the Watergate break in during the Nixon era.  If I had just one word to describe Liddy, it would be intense.  I hear that Liddy was doing five hundred sit ups a day, but had to stop – he couldn’t take the ab use.

In particular, I remember one story of Liddy’s very vividly.  The dialogue below isn’t exact (this was over 20 years ago and I slept at least once since then) but it’s pretty close:

“When I was younger, I had a particular fear of rats.  It was a very, very strong fear.  I didn’t want to be afraid of rats, but I was.  So, to get rid of the fear, I killed one, cooked it, and ate it.  I was never afraid of rats again.”

If a relative passes away, you can get a free Starbucks®.  It’s your mourning coffee.

See?  Intense.  Also the kind of thing that made me glad that Liddy wasn’t afraid of me, since I have no idea if I’m good with ketchup.

On one hand, that level of behavior is bordering on insane.  On the other, it showed an amazing amount of self-awareness.  If Liddy’s goal was to go through life without fear, facing it was certainly the way to overcome it, although I’ll say the number of times I’ve come face to face with rats is exactly zero.  If that’s your top fear, you’ve gotten rid of most common fears.

I’ve related in the past how when climbing a really tall mountain I reached a ridge and looked down over, expecting that there was no way it could be as steep as what I had just climbed.  I was wrong.  Sheer cliff.  I was looking down very far.

Several mountain climbers caught the ‘Rona but didn’t give it to anyone.  Scalers aren’t vectors. 

I never had vertigo before, in fact I never had much of a fear of height at all.  But in that moment, I developed it.  From then on, whenever I could find a tall spot to stand on and look down, I would.  And I’d stay there until the vertigo went away.

It was a lot harder than just killing and eating the cliff.  It also took a few months, but the vertigo went away.  It’s mostly vertigone now, though I will admit that sometimes I get a chill when I watch Internet videos of people doing stupid stuff on very tall buildings.  Most of the videos seem to come from Russia, for whatever reason.  I’m betting it’s vodka, but it could also be . . . no, it’s vodka.

Bad pun?  Check.  Bikini?  Check.  Machine gun?  Check.  Russian hat?  Check.

Not all fear is bad, and not all fear is debilitating.  A lot of Evil comes from fear.  I used to think that all Evil came from fear, but that’s certainly not correct (Three Kinds Of Evil).

But a lot of Evil does come from fear.  Why?  Fear is fuel for Evil:

  • Fear leads to cowardice.
  • Fear leads to deceit.
  • Fear leads to anger.
  • Fear leads to hate. (Quote about the Dark Side®, there may be here.)
  • Fear leads to regret.

Cowardice might be the worst, though.

The reason is that cowardice is, at the root, a betrayal.  First, a betrayal of internal values.  Second, a betrayal outwards.  A perfect (but small) example is someone who is afraid of the consequences of disappointing a customer.  That leads to a lie to the customer.  Which leads to another lie, which will eventually end up with a very angry customer.

The Mrs. and I started our relationship with a strict “no lies” policy.  That’s why The Mrs. never asks me, “Do these pants make my butt look big?”  She knows I’ll tell her the truth.

“The pants?  No, the pants don’t make your butt look big.”

It was half an hour outside of Bakersfield when the catnip began to take hold.

Fear is natural.  A healthy respect for fires and firearms is a good thing.  But when any single fear?  That fear has to be confronted.

It has to be killed and eaten.  It can change the world.  Say, if you were afraid of undercooked bat . . . .

Consequences Of The Broken Balance

“Ummm, I’m gonna need you to go ahead come in tomorrow.  So if you could be here around nine that would be great, ummm kay. Ahh, I almost forgot ahh, I’m also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday too, kay. We ahh lost some people this week and ahh, we sorta need to play catch up.” – Office Space

Would John Henry have upgraded to the iPhone® 12?

There have been some pretty significant trends of dehumanization of the workforce.  It might seem like dehumanization is a story right out of 2021, but this trend isn’t new.  The legend of John Henry, that steel drivin’ man that raced a steam drill shows that the fear of machines replacing people and changing the way they work dates back at least as far as the 1800s.  At least John Henry’s performance review only ended with his heart exploding.

I blame Materialism, but more on that in a bit.

There are more and more jobs where each second of employee performance is analyzed and optimized and timed.  I’ve written (some) about this previously (How To Beat Any Computer At Chess*).

There are more people today working under deep surveillance at work than ever before:

  • Don’t perform as well as the computer metric says you should in customer satisfaction surveys?
  • Bosses that are upset that people get sick on Wednesday and never on Saturday or Sunday? And employees blame their weekend immune system.
  • Don’t move in the optimum path from one place to another to pick an item off of a shelf?
  • Bosses firing people with the worst posture? Well, we all have a hunch who that is.
  • Take too long per item to ring out a customer?
  • Not enough keystrokes per minute on the company computer?

These are jobs that are created that use humans as interchangeable parts – ones that wear out or are defective and that can be replaced.  Of course, jobs like this have existed since, well, jobs existed.  Mining comes to mind.  Building railroads probably wasn’t a ball of fun, either.  But in both of those, at least, the job had room for innovation, thought, and human ability.

These children actually worked in a coal seam.  Child labor laws back then weren’t a miner issue.

I think the biggest problem is that people have forgotten that businesses exist for the benefit of society – society doesn’t exist for the benefit of businesses.  In my younger, more libertarian days, I missed that point.  Even though I love freedom (still!) I was always skeptical of the power of big business.

Also, I was always concerned about businesses that produced nothing.  I didn’t have the framework to explain it then, but I do now.

Businesses exist for three reasons:

To benefit society by creating value.

A business can easily fall short of this if it’s an abusive monopoly or makes its profits based on political pull and persuasion – an example would be solar scams during Obama, and military scams, well, any time.  What’s an invulnerable weapon system?  One that has parts made in every Congressional district.  Even if the military doesn’t want it.

No, creating value isn’t the same thing as government forcing money at a company.  Creating value is a much deeper concept – it’s where someone makes something and society gets better.  It doesn’t even have to be a physical thing, the words written by an author aren’t physical, but they create value when enjoyed by an audience.

Of course, physical items are awesome, too.  PEZ®, anyone?

Z3d looks like “Zed.”  Thank you for attending my Zed Talk.

To benefit employees by providing meaningful, necessary work.

When mass business first started, Henry Ford did an amazing thing:  he doubled the wages he paid his employees.  Why?  First, to get a good, stable workforce.  Second, to increase the productivity of that workforce.  Assembly lines were new, and getting a good workforce was crucial.

The experiment was successful, and helped Ford increase production while lowering overall costs.

Today, when you’ve got a good job, you know it.  You’re working on tough things that are right at the limit of your capability.  You’re engaged.  You’ve got support so you don’t sink.  You know what you’re supposed to be working on.  And you’re part of a team.

That sort of work is fun.

To allocate profits to shareholders and owners.

This is also required.  Winners make profits and get more opportunity to manage bigger businesses.  Losers don’t, and their businesses fold.  In a well-functioning society, those profits accrue to those who are creating value, which in turn allows them to create even more value.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve never gotten a job (in business) from a company that had less money than I did.

The most profitable part of the lemonade stand I had when I was growing up?  Selling the antidote.

These three things are a delicate balance.  Too much emphasis on any one of the three is poison to the system:

  • Collective farms in the Soviet Union attempted to “create value” in society by creating awful jobs for people who had no real incentive to do a good job. Result?  Tens of millions dead, followed (much later) by the collapse of an entire country.  But the Soviets did develop an impressive system to stand in line all day.
  • Government, where often it’s set up for the benefit of the employees. What business would you go to where the customer (you and I) has to park farther away than the employee?  That wouldn’t happen at almost any business looking to make a profit.  But does your local police department save the best spaces for citizens?  Does your local DMV?  If so, you’re not the customer.  They are.
  • Hedge funds, high-frequency traders are an example of a business that does, in many cases, literally nothing to help the economy outside of extracting wealth. That’s it.  It’s a casino view of the world, where vampires that produce no value game the system for profit.

Why don’t hedge fund managers ever have problems with ticks or mosquitos?  Professional courtesy.

Imbalance in any of these features leads us to a dystopia.  Our current dystopia in the United States comes from the employee-centric Federal government.  Call it The Swamp or call it the Deep State, it’s all the same.

Even now, the function of some government agencies is so impaired as to be comical –  we have a Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) that wants to put Internet traders in jail and a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms that sells none of those things.  Also?  It’s nearly impossible to fire a Federal government employee.

Unless they’re on the Right.

Hedge funds and other Wall Street hangers-on don’t care about creating value for society.  They don’t care about employees of the firms they buy and gut.  They just want profits, and want them now, please.  Thankfully the SEC will regulate them.  What?  Oh, sorry, the SEC will protect them.  My bad.

Almost all of the horrors of the world are an imbalance between these forces, and each produces its own, unique dysfunctional society.

My friend told me that Biden was going to build a monument to George Orwell.  “Where??”  “Well, pretty much everywhere.”

The root cause for this imbalance is Materialism, the idea that only physical things matter, and a loss of the idea that there is a higher purpose.  Materialism is the very foundation of both Marxism and Libertarianism, and, when applied strictly, is the separation of morality from culture.

I can even prove that Materialism is in complete control in 2021:  Is there a higher crime in society than standing up against something that is morally wrong?  Well, in a world where the rule is “do as thou wilt” saying something is wrong is the highest crime.

I’d call that Materialist.  In fact, I’d bet $10 on it.

Texas Power Outages, Global Warming, And At Least One Bikini

“You want a prediction about the weather?  You’re asking the wrong Phil. I’ll give you a winter prediction. It’s gonna be cold, it’s gonna be grey, and it’s gonna last you for the rest of your life.” – Groundhog Day

Pugsley said it was so cold in the house that it was at absolute zero.  I said, “That’s 0K.”

It has been cold.  Really cold.  The good thing about that is that I like the cold.  It’s rarely cold enough for me – even now my fingers are nearly numb blocks of flesh mashing the keyboard and only occasionally hitting the right key.

Almost cold enough, but as I reach up I find that I still have feeling in my jaw and cheeks, so I’m not quite there.

But Texas is.  Today at lunch The Mrs. and I were discussing that it was colder in Anchorage, Alaska than in Houston, Texas.  That made me think.  And then I ended up wondering if it was too cold for Jeff Bezos to sleep in his undies, or if he needed his pajamazon?

Okay, back to Texas.

When we lived in Houston, I was shocked at the really poor design of the homes – sure they were fine for 95°F (2°C) and 95% humidity, but the house we lived in (and many I had seen when we were looking for a home to buy) had bare copper pipe running on the outside of the house.  The spigots outside were so poorly insulated that just walking by them with a decently cold beer would cause them to freeze and split.

If asbestos is bad, imagine if it were asworstos.

And that’s just one problem.

The bigger problem is that Texas is supposed to be an energy source.  Oil gets pumped there, sure.  But the pipelines for all of that natural gas that is produced in Texas?  All of those pipelines head out of state.  Texas is silly with natural gas, and produces far more than it uses.

Natural gas has historically been used to heat houses.  It’s relatively abundant, quick and simple to ignite, and generally relatively cheap*.  It’s great for hot water heaters.  It’s wonderful for forced air heaters, like we have here at Casa Wilder.  Heck, in the 1970’s (I read once) they passed a law that restricted the use of natural gas so that its convenient, safe heat could be used by homeowners voters to heat their houses.

And one oil company was going to make renewable crude from insect urine.  It think it was BP.

But somewhere that philosophy changed – mainly when natural gas became abundant with fracking, and when Global Warming® activists became obsessed with coal.  Natural gas puts a lot less carbon into the air than coal per Btu (kiloparsec).  So, it became common to build industrial plants that used natural gas for heat, as well as power plants that used natural gas instead of coal.

Natural gas is pretty nifty when you use it for a power plant.  That same property of nearly instant heat is there, so if you use natural gas to drive an engine, for example, you can pretty efficiently use that fuel to generate electricity quickly.  To start up a coal electrical generating plant takes a long time.  To start up a natural gas electrical generating plant?

Super fast and easy, at least by comparison.

When The Mrs. and I met, I felt quite a spark.  Who knew she had a Taser®?

But what happens when all of those Texas houses, not built for cold, crank up the natural gas heater?  What happens when the people who use electricity to heat their house crank that up at the same time?  And, what happens when all of those wind turbines that are supposed to be generating electricity become electricity sinks, since many of them have electric heaters to prevent the gears and bits from freezing up and breaking?  And the wind isn’t blowing?

The system fails.

An aside:

As I wrote this, I realized that my heater hadn’t gone on for, oh, seven degrees.  The internal temperature in the house had dropped to 57°F (2°C).  Not good.  As I went to my trusty heater, I found it flashing a series of codes over and over again like an autistic R2-D2™.

In the past, this was a failed part called a “flame roll out sensor” which appears to fail much more often than the penny I replace it with.  Just kidding!  I use stripped wire.  Also kidding.  I really don’t mess with the heater more than changing the filter every decade or so (Pugsley changes it twice yearly) and flipping the breaker on and off and then poking about the insides like an Albanian strip-mall lawyer trying to fix a copier. 

Which, oddly enough, works.  I know that there is some sort of computer logic that was finally satisfied – such as, “the gas is no longer explosive enough to launch Wilder into space in the most pathetic attempt to emulate Elon Musk since Wilder founded a company named Space Y.”

I make jokes about air conditioners, but not heaters.  That’s not cool.

My guess?  The gas pressure dropped a bit.  Which never happens, except in February, 2021.  I’ve never seen this particular error code, except the one time that I missed the exhaust portal near Yavin 4.

So, we have Texas, proud producer of natural gas, and now, neurotic consumer of natural gas.  And we have all of these Texas generating stations that need . . . natural gas.  And we have all of these Texas homes that need electricity to run the electric heaters (our house in Texas was one of those).

The system fails.  Power goes out.

But the Germans are going to build a car in Texas.  It will be called the Audi Neighbor™.

Thankfully the cold won’t last forever.  And this is a cold that, in some places, has broken records that were 122 years old, so it’s not the usual sort of winter storm in any respect.

But it does show us the limit of our systems.

Dang.  The heater is working again.  I can feel my fingers now.

*One source I saw showed spot prices up 24,000% (LINK), from $4.00 per million Btu last week to $999 yesterday.

Courage: The Biggest Present A Parent Can Give

“Now, be careful, Fry. And if you kill anyone, make sure to eat their heart to gain their courage. Their rich, tasty courage.” – Futurama

The French never go on holidays, only retreats.

The biggest pleasure of being a father is the education of my children.  This opportunity varies.  Pugsley and The Boy are the sons of an increasingly rare commodity in 2021:  they are children of an intact family.

The Boy and Pugsley are the children of me and my wife, The Mrs.  That’s rare because many, many children are raised by families that are broken or blended in 2021.  Or, raised in a home with no natural parent.

Like me, an adopted kid.

I was fortunate.  Even though I was adopted, my parents, Ma and Pa Wilder, were a common front.  Pa Wilder knew he could enforce discipline with the same effect as Ma Wilder.  That’s an aside, but it’s important.  Men learn how to be men from their fathers.  No matter how brave and stunning a Mom is, no Mother is, or ever will be, a Father.

The plus side?  Every bag of chips is family-sized if you’re adopted.

So I feel especially good that I’ve had the opportunity to raise my boys with the full backing and support of The Mrs.   The idea that Pugsley could play me against The Mrs.?  Or vice versa?

That would never happen.

Even if The Mrs. and I were diametrically opposed, the idea that we would overrule each other in front of a kid?  Nope.  There was no way that The Mrs. and I could be split.  Even if we disagreed – that disagreement would be kept to ourselves until we had a knife fight to determine who was right.

What, you don’t do trial by combat at your house?  If you’re a first timer, make sure you have a suture kit available.  They’re cheap, and neither The Mrs. or I go for the eyes, so we have that going for us.

Raising boys isn’t easy – the only thing it’s easier than is raising girls.  From my experience, every boy passes through a gate – a gate where they engage in a fight with their father.  This gate is narrow.

With each of my boys, the fight was one I considered existential:  to make them men worthy of being called a man is a process.  And it consists of fighting the impulses that are natural to a boy.  Every 12 year old considers themselves the wisest man since Solomon, and considers their father the dullest man since Mr. Bean®.

Why couldn’t Helen Keller drive?  Because she was a woman.

I have thought about it, and the most important message have I fought (in some cases for years) to put into the skulls of my sons is simple:

  • That courage is important.
  • That courage is useless unless in service of virtue.
  • That virtue is useless unless in service of a Higher Good.

I know, I’ve tossed around several posts about virtue that don’t explicitly state that a Higher Good is important.  Virtue is important.  But virtue must have a Higher Good to be, well, Virtue.  (Atheists that are regular readers have a Wilder Exemption Card – you’re not Evil like the other ones.)

Tonight, Pugsley and I sat in the hot tub at Stately Wilder Manor.  Pugsley is currently in the mindset where he would love to own a Mustang® Shelby© 350 or a Lamborghini™ Huracán Performante®.  Thus, he has discovered Top Gear™/Grand Tour©.  These are shows that are hosted by three British guys:  Richard Hammond, James May, Jeremy Clarkson.

A hammer has lots of uses:  it can pay for a taxi ride, a dinner, or a can of Monster® energy drink from 7-11©.

Jeremy Clarkson is the big, brash guy.  He’s also an amazing presenter.  For reasons that will become apparent if you watch it (and you should) Mr. Clarkson put together a documentary on the Victoria Cross.

It’s here.

The idea of watching men be courageous is important.  It’s perhaps more important now than at any time in our history, because there has been an attempt to systematically erase courage.

Why?

The answer is simple.  Courage is an individual action.  The idea that individuals have a place in society is the anathema of the Left.  It’s the anathema of Globalism.  Everyone is a simple cog in the machinery of the world.  You exist only for the glory of the collective.

Leftists (and Globalists) feel the world doesn’t need or want individuals with courage.  The world needs individuals that do what they’re told, when they’re told to do it.  No other action is acceptable – only the action approved by the collective.  The convenience store clerk must be fired when they commit the crime of heroism to save a customer.  Individual heroism?  Courage fighting against evil?

Completely unacceptable.

I heard about this guy who donated a kidney and was a hero – so why is it that when I donate five I’m charged with a felony?

The world has, in many respects, moved away from individuals.  Have an adversary?  Hit them with missiles from a Predator® drone that is piloted by a guy sitting in a video game chair half a world away.  Where is the heroism in that?

There isn’t any.

Okay.  Maybe a little heroism. Just as much heroism as there is in properly filing documents associated with statistics of average foot size of Vietnam veterans from Vail or Valdez or Valdosta.  So, not much.

What’s required for heroism?  What’s required for courage?  This is especially irritating, since most definitions of courage floated on the Internet are filled with corporate weasel words.  It seems that properly filing a TPS® report when the temperature of the office was not exactly between 72°F and 74°F (2.3 kg and 3.7 dl) would qualify for the definition of modern courage.  Yes.  Everyone wants to live in a mall.

I got into a fight changing levels at a mall.  It escalated quickly.

Honestly, most of the definitions I find of courage on the Internet make me feel that the weasels that have tried to define it are the opposite of courageous.  They’re tepid things that promote the most mundane and boring of actions to the exalted level of “courage.”  Go to work and do your job?

You’re a hero.  You’re courageous.

I reject that.  I would say that courage requires these elements:

  • First:   Actions that are true heroism are done without regard to self.  One Victoria Cross nominee was denied the award because the plane he was piloting (while he was bleeding to death) would save him, too, if he landed it properly.
  • Second: Devotion to duty and those around you.  This, particularly, drives modern Leftists nuts.  The first devotion must be the Leftism, whatever that means on any particular day.  Devotion to a higher power?  Devotion to the people around you?
  • Third: Personal danger.  It may be as small as the idea of being embarrassed (for tiny amounts of courage), but for actual courage?  Let’s be real.  Standing up on a top of a hill when surrounded by 6,000 screaming enemies and throwing grenades until you run out?  That’s courageous.  The stuff that most people peddle today as courage . . . isn’t.

One definition had, “has to be scared.”  Nope.  Sorry.  Pissed off is close enough.  I imagine that 50% of the people we’d all agree are courageous were just plain mad.

There are lots of examples of people who showed great courage simply because they were angry.  They had lost friends.  They were unwilling to take one step back.  Fear isn’t an element of courage – fear is the enemy of courage.

“You’ve heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap?  There’s an animal kind of trick.  A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind.”

That’s courage.  Bonus points if you can name the book.

The Mrs. said she wanted to spice up the bedroom.  I hope she likes paprika.

Here’s the big lie, the thing that they want you to believe:  the era of courage is over.  The ideas of individuals don’t matter.  The actions of individuals don’t matter.

As long as humanity survives, the actions of individuals will always matter.  As long as fathers teach sons, the era for courage isn’t over.

That’s why I play this game.  Courage matters.  Virtue matters.  A Higher Power matters.  Those are the things that make men.  That’s why I love this part of the game.  One way a man lives on are in the values he leaves to his sons.

Every time I have the opportunity to help my boys, I know I’m winning.

Always remember:  We’re not done.  This isn’t over.

Purpose, Virtue, Starlets, And Inexplicable Comments About Italy

“I disagree with what you said about the underlying theme of chapter eight in this book. It’s really not about man’s struggle with double-sided tape. It’s a metaphor for the Mesopotamian social hierarchy during the Bronze Age.” – Homestarrunner

The easiest way to get gold, silver, and bronze Olympic medals?  Kleptomania.

One theme I keep returning to in this blog is purpose.  I have a friend (you’re shocked, I know) and we talk from time to time.  One observation that he’s made is that they’ve done studies of people who have won medals in competitions like the Olympics®.  You’d think that the person who was happiest was the person who won gold.

It’s not.  It’s not the person who won silver, either.

It’s the person who won bronze.

Third place?  Well, they know it wasn’t a fluke that they didn’t win.  There is that “second place” guy who pops that illusion bubble.  But they made it to the big show, and, heck, they’re third.  Not bad!

Bronze is the Libertarian Party of medals.

The person who wins silver is usually very, very unhappy.  Why?  Every minute of the day they have to wonder:

  • What if I had worked just a little harder each day?
  • What if I had listened to my coach?
  • What if I hadn’t spent the night before the Olympic© finals at the strip club drinking tequila shooters with Crystal and Svetlana?

Little things like that begin to nag at them.  Plus they get Brady Cake:

Tom Brady is so old . . . he won his first Super Bowl® while the world was still in Standard Definition.

So, gold medal winners should be happy, right?

Some really aren’t happy.  They’ve climbed the mountain.  They’ve spent, in some cases, tens of thousands of hours in practice at the highest level.  They’ve skipped going to parties when others were having fun.  They lived, in some cases, like monks to climb to the greatest levels of human performance.

Some of them get there and ask . . .

  • Is this all there is?

Those folks who ask that question were working for the wrong purpose.  Their idea wasn’t to be the World PEZ® Flicking Champion, it was someone else’s idea.

So they went with it.

Don’t say this three times fast.

You can see those folks, especially a few years after the Olympics®.  They’re the ones that are on the third DUI or are the 4’6” gymnast that looks like they’ve swallowed a refrigerator.  Which, I will say, does make tumbling easier.  If you call rolling “tumbling.”  Meghan McCain does, especially if it’s toward a buffet.

So, what about those people who win a gold medal and are just fine?  What’s different?

They have purpose.  Their sport was only a part of their purpose, and was only a part of what drove them.  They are centered, and the biggest part of their purpose isn’t achievement.  Achievement is a byproduct.

The folks who win and don’t self-destruct have a purpose, and a purpose rooted in virtue.

To be clear, very, very, very clear:

  • Virtue does not guarantee victory. At all.

Virtue (and a purpose rooted in virtue) just makes victory bearable.

Why do so many early twentysomethings mentally implode when they achieve fame and stardom and immense wealth?  That’s an easy question – they find themselves in a world with no real restraints.  The real question is why don’t more starlets become headlines?  I’m pretty sure Miley Cyrus isn’t in a good mental place.

In Europe, she’s known as Kilometery Cyrus.

In one respect, not being wealthy and famous is a great substitute for willpower:  you can’t end up dead in a hotel room in Thailand surrounded by heroin, empty take-out boxes of food, bottles of Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum, and vats of industrial-strength skin cream if you have to get to your steady job.

A mortgage and car payments have probably saved a lot of dads uncomfortable phone calls from the Italian Government as to why their 22-year-old was found “improving” the Sistine Chapel painting.  Thankfully, back then they charged the fines in something called “lira”, which is just like money but is instead made of colorful Christmas wrapping paper.

An aside, things to trust Italians on:

  • Food.
  • Wine.
  • Car body design.

Things not to trust Italians on:

  • Anything you need tomorrow.
  • Anything electronic or electric.
  • Anything where the oil or engine coolant is supposed to stay on the inside.
  • Anything remotely resembling fiscal discipline.

Italians are great at soccer – you change sides halfway through.

And, apparently, never trust John Wilder to wander off on a tangent on a Friday post.  I’ll get back to virtue and purpose, and promise not to wander too far again this post.

I’ve written several posts about Virtue.  It’s been a common theme.  Here are a few:

Kardashians, Hairy Bikinis, Elvis, Wealth, and Virtue

Roman Virtues and Western Civilization, Complete with Monty Python

Ben Franklin and his Thirteen Virtues

Why Character Just Might Be A Better Indicator Of Marriage Stability Than What Her Butt Looks Like

Regrets? Don’t Regret Anything, Unless You Want Me To Slap You When You Are Old.

So, have a purpose.  Live your virtue.  And when you have high achievement, when you win the gold, when you achieve amazing business success?  You’re ready to deal with it.

I’ve heard of a village in Africa where they’re dealing with a drought and thirst.  I hope they “Get Well Soon.”

But let’s say that you don’t win the gold.  You don’t have amazing business success.  Virtue allows you to be ready to deal with that, too.

Or you could just win a bronze medal and have a mortgage?

Nah, go for the virtue.  You’ll eventually pay the mortgage off.

The Funniest Article You’ve Ever Read About Bon Jovi And The Everything Bubble

“Yeah, it was like, even though Bubbles was Bubbles, he was two people at the same time as bein’ Bubbles. He was trying to be this other person that wasn’t Bubbles, but he was still Bubbles.” – Trailer Park Boys

What was Schrödinger’s favorite Bon Jovi song? Wanted Dead or Alive.

Euphoria. The name even sounds good. It comes from the Greek “Eu” meaning “quite slippery and frictionless” and the Greek “phoros” which means “wet”. A direct translation is “Slippery When Wet,” as noted by the great Italian philosopher, Giovanni Bongiovi.

If you’ve ever been to a college party you’ve seen the application of euphoria over common sense, especially in the hours between 11 P.M. and 1 A.M. It’s at that time that the liquor has hit several partygoers like a Canadian baboon on a yak crotch. They have ambition. They have a limitless lack of common sense.

There is no tomorrow! Party on!

And euphoria has had several pleasant outcomes: more than one happy accident of a child has turned up nine months after the euphoria ended. Let’s face it – if every child was planned, there’d be six or so people living in the United States.

Justin Trudeau’s parents decided they don’t want kids anymore. Who is going to tell Justin?

Euphoria has even allowed people to exceed what they themselves ever thought possible. When throwing common sense to the wind, sometimes the outer limits of human performance are defined – we find out what it is that we can really do.

More often than not? We end up flat on our faces. That can be its own victory, but it’s often part of a longer story.

The real interesting part is when euphoria meets money. That’s when we get stupid, and we start convincing ourselves of crazy things.

The biggest crazy thing of my life was the Dotcom Bubble. That was amazing. Companies were formed in days and then ended up being “worth” ten million dollars a week later, without ever producing a product. Heck, it wasn’t just producing a product – they didn’t even know what product they were going to produce.

Spanish coders like to use Si++.

Several of my friends were caught up in the front end of one Dotcom venture. They were flown to a kickoff party. The band at the kickoff party? Hall and Oates®. Sure, Hall and Oates™ were 20 years past their prime, but, still, the kickoff was for the idea of installing some fiber optic cables.

It wasn’t even that large of a project. I’m not sure if they ever built any fiber optics. But when I asked if I could be at the party my boss said, “I can’t go for that.” (Sorry jokes aside, they really did hire Hall and Oates© for the party.)

How much oat could Hall and Oates haul if Hall and Oates hauled oats?

Another friend sold his website for a total of $50,000,000. The website was making a profit – about $1,000 a month. Of course, the kicker was that he sold his website for $50,000,000 in Alta-Vista® stock that he couldn’t sell for a year.

Oops.

Don’t cry for him – he didn’t have enough money to retire, but he had enough that he took three years off to hike and relax.

Euphoria makes people do crazy things.

The second crazy thing that happened in my life was the Housing Bubble. When I was looking for one loan, I was told that I qualified to borrow ten times my annual income.

“Why would you offer me that kind of money? I could never pay it back.”

The Loan Officer responded, “Yeah, I know, but you qualify for it. So the computer tells me I have to offer it to you.”

We all know how well that ended.

Thankfully they allowed me to finish the “Alan Parsons Project” I was working on.

Through this, Citigroup® has maintained a panic/euphoria model. The idea is that there is a way to measure what investors think about the market. Are they panicked? Or are they as giddy as drunken freshmen at their first college kegger.

If investors are skittish, the idea is that stocks are a bargain. People are afraid of stocks and would be happy to sell them to you. It’s the idea of buying when blood is in the street.

But if investors are euphoric, then the prices for things are too high. How high? Double-digit high.

Looks like party central!

Right now, Citigroup’s® panic/euphoria model is flashing “Slippery When Wet and Three Tequila Shooters.” It’s higher than the Dotcom® Bubble. It’s much higher than the excesses of the Housing Bubble.

It’s the Everything Bubble. And investors are still three sheets to the wind, knee-walking, too-loud singing, drunk.

This makes sense, too. Presidents love to pop the bubble in the first year of their first term. It’s not like people will remember the pain three years from now, if they’re able to manage growth and restart the economy. Besides, you can blame the pain on the last guy.

I guess he swallowed a few on that “steel horse” he rides.

There is ample incentive for Biden to crater the market. There is ample incentive for him to crater employment, too. In both of those things, he can restart the clock and claim growth from worst that 2021 or 2022 brings to us.

If we’re lucky, all we get is a hangover. I don’t think anyone wants this baby.