COVID – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Read On To See That You Don’t Have To Care

“I know there’s no way I can convince you this is not one of their tricks, but I don’t care.” – V for Vendetta

I asked what was on the menu, and they said Himalayan Rabbit. The waiter said they found Himalayan on the road.

It used to be that people didn’t have to have an opinion on, well, everything. Now, it seems, that everyone wants an opinion on everything:

Ukraine versus Russia.
Palestine versus Israel.
Meghan and Harry versus the rest of the English royal family.
Twix™ versus vodka. I mean, you can have both.

And you’re supposed to care about these things, deeply, even though the media noise it appears that Meghan and Harry have the collective I.Q. of a poorly-watered houseplant. I guess they’re more like a cactus with a fancy title.

I’ll take a controversial opinion: I don’t really care about any of those things I listed above, and you can’t make me. And, if forced to choose, I’d rather live in a world without vodka than a world without Twix©, because, well, bourbon.

Did he name the ear he didn’t cut off Van Stay?

Neil Postman wrote about part of this in his famous book Amusing Ourselves to Death, which I highly recommend if you haven’t read it. News gets filtered down to the barest elements – image and emotion. Our consciousness is then hit with a barrage of unactionable information.

I don’t care about any of those things precisely because I started learning about them as they developed, after I dig deeper into details. I tend to do that when I get the sense that the propaganda is flying hot and heavy: what are the facts of the situation?

Another corollary: if I lived in 1745 America, would I even hear of these conflicts taking place half a world away? Does it make any difference to me that these fights are taking place?

Not really. And I won’t have been upset that Carl the Butcher three states away didn’t give a “thumbs up” to my “killed the Indians raiding our village” update on Ye Olde Facebooke®.

But we don’t live in 1745 America, so we hear about them. I will say that the filters still do work in that a car crash in the next county gets a lot more news locally than a school bus filled with nuns and orphans going over a cliff in India or the Rwandans deciding that they want to eat half 1.3 million residents of the Congo.

Never eat a Monopoly® board. It tastes gamey.

We are primed, however, to affiliate with our tribe. People who enjoy the same football (0.3048 meterball to you Europeans) or baseball (cricket, but with beer) team mainly all get along pretty well in the stadium or at work on Monday after the game. But if I don’t like the local team, nobody at work really cares. In this, although they affiliate, they’re much more in the role of spectator rather than moral participants.

That has ceased. Tribes used to be fun, but now they’ve turned feral. I mainly blame the GloboLeft, because they simply are broken emotionally.

I’ve written before about the mechanism where GloboLeftists have cast their empathy net so far that they’ve essentially forgotten about humanity. Note that their incessant handwringing about COVID Vaxxing® disappeared the second that a Russian tank tread touched Ukrainian clay.

Yes, GloboLeftists care about borders. Just not our borders. Have an unending stream of invaders into Europe that makes The Camp of the Saints look like a best-case scenario instead of impossible dystopian fiction? Not a problem.

Oh, Europe. I’d say, “never change” to you but I can’t write Arabic script.

But let one group of Slavic people invade another group of Slavic people in countries where potatoes are used instead of coins?

Count me out, but I’ll pop some popcorn as I watch the GloboLeft switches trip and the gold and blue flags pop up.

I decided to read about what was really going on, and came up with the opinion that I don’t care if the Russians are attacking the Ukrainians. And no one can make me care.

Frankly, I’m happier to let those things go. If I want to spend my energy caring, I’ll care about things much closer to home, and spend it on things that are much more important than if one quasi-dictator takes out another.

By all means, please, feel free to care about any or all of those things.

The reason that I blame the GloboLeft is that they have always cared more than the TradRight about what the people care about. The high point of these were the communist governments of the 20^th century. Stalin’s minions cared what you thought about Stalin. Mao’s Long March Through the Institutions was built on rooting out people that didn’t think like Mao.

It didn’t matter if you were a good bricklayer, you had to be a bricklayer that thought like Mao.

Since eggs are more expensive now, are people more likely to poach them?

One of the commentators had previously described this as an essentially feminine characteristic. I guess I can see that. Ma Wilder cared what I thought. Pa Wilder just wanted peace and quiet.

What’s next?

From what I see today, I think we’re moving into Pa Wilder territory – Trump absolutely doesn’t care what I think about him. Trump just deported a bunch of Venezuelan gangsters to “entertainment camps” in El Salvador. Normally, the GloboLeftist media would have brought up a storm of complaint.

I’m sure those prisoners will soon be El Salvadorable.

Now, not so much. Why? The pendulum is moving, rapidly, right. When even CNN sees that the party of “caring” is less popular than Ebola at a Methodist potluck in Minnesota, even they can read the room.

Me, I care about our borders first. And, I’m also glad I live in a Universe where I can have both vodka and Twix®.

The Funniest Movie Review You’ll Read All Day. Promise: The Andromeda Strain.

“I’ll have the answer when I know why a sixty-nine-year-old sterno drinker with an ulcer is like a normal six-month-old baby.” – The Andromeda Strain

What do you call it when two strains of a disease are identical? Plague-erism.

Flipping through the television the other night, there were movies the computer network that pervades our lives (paging Uncle Ted) thought I might want to watch. Now, if you’re a paranoid person, you might think about how by putting a piece of media in front of a particular person at a particular time might be nudging, but hey, sometimes a movie is just a movie.

The one that caught my eye was one I’d seen as a kid – The Andromeda Strain (1971).

I am certain I haven’t seen The Andromeda Strain since I was younger than 10. I think I saw it on a Saturday afternoon or Saturday night Creepy Creature Feature UHF show. Regardless, I thought, what the heck, I’ll give it another looks for the sake of nostalgia.

For those, like me, who were a little fuzzy on the plot, I’ll give it a recap.

A satellite re-enters the atmosphere, and because Elon Musk isn’t even born yet, it lands in the middle of a village in northeastern New Mexico. Because New Mexico hasn’t agreed to join the United States and rename itself Greenland, a virus kills everyone in town. And there’s not a Tesla® in sight to tow it.

Why does Elon love satellites so much? He’s transmitten with them.

In the first amazingly improbable event, the government decides not to drive to pick it up, but rather sends a Phantom F-4 to take pictures. Now, I really think the Phantom F-4 is a really cool plane, but I’d bet that since in 1971 you couldn’t throw a rock and not hit an Air Force plane in New Mexico they could have sent something else, but, hey, Phantom F-4s are big sexy to the under 10 crowd.

Hell, they’re still sexy to me at current age.

Second in are two scientists who have the equivalent of sixteen days of air in their space suits, because everyone knows you send Nobel Prize-winning scientists to do field reconnaissance in an area where everyone is dead from a completely unknown cause.

They find a drunk and a baby. It would have been more reasonable to find a drunk baby, because, after all, New Mexico, so they lose credibility points on that one, too.

That is the most Zelensky-like baby I’ve ever seen.

By some mysterious field, the drunk and baby are separated from the scientists while simultaneously being isolated from everyone and sent to the most secret laboratory in the universe (more on that later) while the scientists make their way much more slowly there.

It is at the facility where we discover that the three male scientists all suffer from the same birth defect: they were born without any sort of individual personality. The lone female scientist is played by an actress who was 39, but looked like she was closer to 59. I guess life was harder in 1971. The female scientist does, however have a personality, most charitably described as “being an utter bitch.” How bad was it? She could be on The View without an audition.

So, they make it to this super top-secret biological containment lab, and this one isn’t even in Wuhan. It is, instead, cunningly hidden below an anonymous Department of Agriculture soil testing building. How do you access this lab?

By going into the tool room and pressing a secret button near the wheelbarrows. It’s like James Bond meets Oliver Wendell Douglas from Green Acres. All we needed, really, was Eb as a lab assistant.

Apparently when you press the secret button it goes Dong. Ding Dong.

Here is where the plot falls apart for adult John Wilder. From the dialogue, it becomes clear that this super-secret lab was built in the last year. And it is secret. But it also goes for, at a minimum, of 140 feet (7.4 Angstroms) under the ground. It’s also, again, by observation, at least 150 feet (2 Curies) wide.

This building is not made of straw, sticks, or bricks, rather, it looks like it could be a space station. Based on my not inconsiderable experience in building large biological containment laboratories underground, I would estimate that the minimum cost for a structure of this type (and I mean minimum) would be three-quarters of a billion dollars, and much more likely to be on the order of two or three billion.

And it was done in a year. With a computer system that still isn’t available in 2025.

Have you ever met contractors? I have never met a group of people more like a ladies sewing-circle for gossip. And can you imagine how much they’d talk at the bars at night? Sure, everybody with the plans has a Top Secret Compartmented Information clearance, but somebody has to bend the rebar, baby. And those dudes leave behind empty bottles of Schlitz™ and out-of-wedlock children named Carl.

Three billion dollars, and constructed in a year? Carl’s dad built it while drunk and smelling like stale Dairy Queen™.

Oh, and did I mention that when the four scientists got to this lab, it was fully staffed by people who were comfortable there and knew how to run everything? What the hell did those people do all day until the Green Chili Greenlanders were killed by the alien virus? Minesweeper™ and the World Wide Web© hadn’t been invented yet. I bet they did shots of Jim Beam© all day or played Pong™ with petri dishes.

Paging D.O.G.E.!

We discover that the facility has a nuclear bomb planted in it, and the only person trusted to let the whole place blow up is the Incel among the group. Great strategy – put the 50 year old virgin in charge, hell, I think his name is even Dr. Foreveralone. In an Amazing Plot Twist™ the scientists discover that the thing that killed everyone thrives on power and a nuclear bomb would make it eat Pittsburgh.

In a Predictable Plot Device©, it turns out you can’t disarm the bomb until it decides it wants to blow up. Great planning, Kevin, father of Carl.

Great Caesar’s ghost, Marty! Who could have seen this plot device coming?

But wait! Now the organism has mutated! It no longer kills people, it just wants to . . . eat synthetic rubber? Paging Dr. Howard, Dr. Fine, and Dr. Deus Ex Machina. The scientists end up doing nothing, and saving no one while spending billions. In this they may have inspired Dr. Fauci.

My biggest problem with the movie is that it assumes that government is competent in doing things other than taxing people, printing money, and allowing people to play Minesweeper® while writing grants to perform Gay Sesame Street© in Rhodesia.

I guess I can see that. 1971 America isn’t 2025 America. We had just put men on the Moon, and stopped going because we were so good at it that the ratings dropped.

THEY PUT PEOPLE ON THE MOON AND MADE IT BORING.

The other strange thought is that government really wanted to help the people. I don’t get that in 2025 America. We have a Department of Education that never educated anyone, and a Department of Energy that doesn’t produce energy. If we had a Department of Air, we’d probably all suffocate since the department would focus on getting air to Botswana.

Or, maybe, sometimes a movie is just a movie.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, Sunny With A Slight Silence Of The Lambs

“Well, Clarice, have the lambs stopped screaming?” – Silence of the Lambs

If Miley Cyrus starred in a Silence of the Lambs reboot, would she play Hannibal Montannibal?

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 VI, Issue 10

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”. I moved the Clock O’Doom down a notch, but the GloboLeft will likely try to turn up the heat as things warm up. If things keep on an even keel I’ll notch it down to 6. Beware: it can notch up quickly.

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

In this issue: Front Matter – Silence of the Left – Violence and Censorship Update – Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Changes – Links

Front Matter

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

Silence of the Left

Okay, the Left really isn’t silent – they’ve never been silent, since there’s no way to signal virtue when they’re quiet. It’s like feminists – if they get agitated they either dress up like a character from The Handmaid’s Tale or take off all their clothes and scream.

So, they’re not really silent. But they are confused. Here, mainly in snips from the last month, are pictures of what’s going on with the GloboLeft.

First, they realize that being insane isn’t working at all for them, and are attempting to look a little more sane. The person they chose to give the response to Trump after his address to Congress in March was an example: someone trying to not look like a rabid socialist.

But they simply can’t help themselves. At their DNC they did all the proper pronoun thing, and then elected far left attention hogg the aptly named David Hogg as their vice chair.

But in D.C., there’s panic. How bad?

I wonder if the thought of treason is the cause of some of these searches?

As well as corruption at the highest level to the tune of billions of dollars. I find it hard to believe that this is legal.

If they can’t get fat Stacy Abrams to hire them, looks like it’s too late to take up coding:

And if you start to feel sympathy, remember they hate you and want you dead.

As for me?

Violence and Censorship Update

It’s becoming clear that defunding US A.I.D. did a lot of good that we didn’t expect. How much propaganda were they pouring down our throats?

Maybe we’ll never know, as the coverup is ongoing:

But it appears that having opinions the GloboLeft doesn’t like are no longer career-ending for some:

But, since Trump is in office, they’ll tell some truth. When it suits them.

That’s a bit much to give a nation for information warfare. How much went to Swiss bank accounts, and how much was disinformation aimed at you?

Is this something people can talk about now and not be banished?

By these people?

Oh, and the GloboLeft are getting ideas:

But nature is healing.

Misery Index

I’ve started it for the new administration. Early results are better than Biden’s numbers, but I’ll wait a month or two before I post them. I anticipate a recession, however – writing about that last week.

Here are parts of the report card on Biden’s America:

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 in are down slightly, but still elevated.

Political Instability:

Down is more stable, but it is unchanged this month.

Economic:

The economy is stable this month.

Illegal Aliens:

Lowest level since COVID.

Change

One of the things that Trump did in selecting leadership for this second term was (in many cases) avoid D.C. insiders. In fact, he chose people who had been attacked by the establishment to be leaders in many cases. If they weren’t loyal to Trump, they certainly weren’t loyal to the establishment like John Bolton or Jeff Sessions. Since choosing people has always been his weakness, perhaps this method of selection will be better.

There is danger in change, obviously. Ripping apart structures that have been built over decades will have consequences – intended and unintended. Removing the funding for US A.I.D. has removed at least some funding for the GloboLeft, and apparently they’re missing it. As the funding dries up, pretty soon income for many of the GloboLeftElite chattering classes will dry up as well. I’d expect that those who were deepest in the trough will scream the loudest.

This level of change does carry the possibility of bringing Civil War 2.0 to reality sooner, but if Trump is successful, it might be avoided entirely.

Only time will tell.

LINKS

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

BAD GUYS

https://x.com/smith_seattle1/status/1890205737676337268
https://x.com/smith_seattle1/status/1889116579582853301
https://x.com/tecas2000/status/1896506323472445798
https://x.com/i/status/1892598585965088809
https://x.com/smith_seattle1/status/1896730930787889459
https://x.com/tecas2000/status/1896312656514150854
https://x.com/tecas2000/status/1898047766535762151

GOOD GUY

https://x.com/i/status/1892083497373712489

ONE GUY

https://www.kentuckystatepolice.ky.gov/news/p11-2-16-2025
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/kentucky-child-shoots-kills-2-home-invaders-rcna192833
https://patch.com/california/across-ca/ca-bill-would-limit-lethal-force-rights-self-home-defense
https://www.nssf.org/articles/u-s-house-subcommittee-holds-hearing-on-the-right-to-self-defense/

BODY COUNT

https://news.gallup.com/poll/656708/lgbtq-identification-rises.aspx
https://archive.is/28w8H#selection-655.123-655.223
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14410295/liberals-gun-ownership-america-reasons.html
https://religionunplugged.com/news/christianity-maintains-dominance-in-us-as-religiously-unaffiliated-levels-off-pew-study-shows
https://www.newsweek.com/map-shows-us-states-where-christianity-surging-falling-2038851

VOTE COUNT

https://www.rodmartin.org/p/the-florida-voter-fraud-case-that
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/14/elon-musk-voter-fraud-group
https://www.democracydocket.com/analysis/trump-postal-service-executive-order-mail-voting-threat/
https://www.americanprogress.org/article/the-save-act-overview-and-facts/
https://www.newsweek.com/married-women-stopped-voting-save-act-2029325

CIVIL WAR

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/illinois-counties-secession-vote-indiana-j-b-pritzker-todd-huston-5a93d624
https://www.newsweek.com/illinois-secession-indiana-bill-todd-huston-2036023
https://prospect.org/politics/2025-03-05-state-of-donald-trump-union-permanent-culture-war-address-congress/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/left-wants-us-dead-larry-klayman-warns-violent-revolution-short-order
https://www.fox10phoenix.com/news/arming-america-couple-charged-fraud-scheme-ready-kill-democrats-potential-civil-war-fbi-says
https://baptistnews.com/article/a-second-civil-war/
https://in.benzinga.com/personal-finance/25/03/44183616/probably-past-the-point-of-compromise-and-empathy-billionaire-investor-ray-dalio-tells-tucker-carlson-were-already-in-a-civil-war
https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/03/04/the-democrats-coming-civil-war/
https://zeteo.com/p/trump-maga-civil-war-violence-congress
https://calgaryherald.com/opinion/columnists/braid-invading-canada-would-spark-guerrilla-fight-lasting-decades-expert-says
https://www.ndtv.com/offbeat/alien-invasion-to-civil-war-self-proclaimed-time-traveller-sparks-frenzy-with-2025-doomsday-predictions-7812591

Are We Seeing A Crack In Leftist Control?

“By hanging on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic and social differences in our society.” – Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Smoking will give you diseases, but it cures salmon.

The GloboLeftElite have long been planning the takeover of the United States. It’s obvious that this is the case because their thinkers have been plotting the roadmap since, well, forever. Antonio Gramsci was one such leader, and here’s a quote from him:

“Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. … In the new order, socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches, and the media by transforming the consciousness of society.”

Gramsci may have been a (really) sub-60-inch-tall Albanian cripple who was in constant pain, born to a criminal father, but let’s let bygones be bygones. This is nearly exactly what the GloboLeftElite did. Their scholars left Europe ahead of certain German extended continental excursions in the 1930s, and many of them made their home in the United States.

Note, they didn’t all go to the socialist paradise of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Nope. The Soviets were too busy starving themselves, executing each other, and building GULAGs for fun and profit.

Instead, these “Socialists” wanted to come to a functional society that was producing wealth and wreck it. Gramsci didn’t join them, because he died. Based on the list of things that Antonio was suffering from at the time – spinal deformity, arteriosclerosis, pulmonary tuberculosis, high blood pressure, angina, gout, and acute gastric disorders – if he was a dog his name would have been “Lucky”.

The functional society that they wanted to wreck? The United States.

If a deaf person goes to court, is it still called a “hearing”?

The United States during pre-WWII time wasn’t the same as Europe. Europe had always been a class-driven society, and from conversations with friends it still is. Moving from one class to another is difficult, unless you’re a family-wrecking divorced tramp like Meghan Markle. In the United States, not so much, since we view Meghan as classless.

Many successful businesses were made by people of humble beginnings, and even our presidents didn’t all come from wealth. Mobility was very possible and that was visible. People could see that if they came up with a great idea, great wealth was available. The ideas of class that had driven division in largely racially homogeneous Europe to create revolution didn’t work, so they had to work on other things.

They chose race and sex. For whatever reason, our most prestigious colleges snapped up these horrible foreign commies – people like Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Herbert Marcuse and the like. There are dozens more that infected the country at that time and given cushy jobs with nothing to do but try to create rot in our country. Oh, wait, I just described Biden’s appointees.

What’s key to a good mailman joke? The delivery.

And it worked. Infiltration of the schools, especially the normal schools that taught teachers took a decade or two, and a decade or two later the teachers started their indoctrination work inside the school system – first slowly and covertly, then quickly and openly.

Christianity has flirted with this hardcore communism for years, but since commies don’t go to church, it has largely been thwarted, though the “send more refugees while we have lesbian pastors and free abortions during Passover” churches are slowly gaining ground, though there’s not a lot of enthusiasm for them. So, Gramsci has had a harder road there.

The last on Gramsci’s list is the media. That has been firmly in the hands of the GloboLeftElite for decades, shows like All in the Family and Maude were the first “in your face” move to take over television. In 20 years we went from Lucy and Ricky not being able to share a bed . . . to Maude, who in a “comedy”, decided to kill her child because it wouldn’t be convenient to have one.

I’d go onto LGBTQ characters introduced in cartoons for young children, but that started, firmly, in 2013. If I were a parent with small children, let’s just say they wouldn’t be watching Cartoon Network®.

To further this, more and more “mainstream” social media like Twitter™ and content aggregators like YouTube® turned the screws – cancelling people as innocuous as Stefan Molyneux, who just liked to talk about philosophy and preached that you shouldn’t spank your kids. Obviously, he never met my kids. Regardless, Molyneux was frozen out.

Chuck Norris invalidated the periodic table, because Norris only recognizes the element of surprise.

Recently, though, I sense a thaw when it comes to the media. The biggest cause of this thaw is because the American public no longer believes in mainstream media, at all. Depending on the poll, over 70% of Americans have little to no trust in mainstream media. 70%. That means that only 30% give it any trust. This is nearly an exact flip from 1972. We now know when the mainstream media is lying: when they’re talking.

This has led to a wholesale rejection of what the mainstream says. Now, in many cases, like the Vaxx®, ignoring the mainstream was a good idea. They have to admit it because the science is now in – the Vaxx™ has been shown to be worse than the ‘vid.

And that had to be shut down. After COVID, after the George Floyd Mostly Peaceful Riots®, the idea that control of information was crucial became the mantra of the GloboLeftElite. It still is. Hillary Clinton said the quiet part out loud when she said, “. . . if the platforms, whether it’s Facebook® or Twitter© or X™ or Instagram® or TikTok©, whatever they are, if they don’t moderate and monitor the content we lose total control . . . .”

All of those Clinton friends who killed themselves that never left notes . . . would it have killed them to write a few lines?

Yeah, she trots out the “it’s about the children” but Hillary’s version of the perfect world is the GloboLeftElite version of the perfect world. They want a world ruled by their bureaucracy, managed by and for them where coloring outside of the lines really does go in your permanent record.

But, please. The Earth is not flat. You can prove that yourself with a car, 24 hours, a map, a protractor, and a Sharpie™. I think this nonsense is a psyop to make anyone with a “conspiracy” theory sound unhinged, despite so many of those theories being found to be 100% founded in reality.

And enter Elon Musk. I’ll admit that I didn’t think that much would change when he purchased Twitter™ and rebranded it X®. Now, though, I go on X™ and regularly see memes that I’d only seen on /pol/ as produced by that hacker, 4chan. (Mostly) free discourse is now allowed, out in the open.

/POL/ – it’s not just for breakfast anymore.

It is respectable once again to talk about ideas that had been cancelled, not because it’s fashionable, but because the ideas are True. The biggest enemy of those that would lie is the Truth. I left Twitter™ when it was kicking off people telling the Truth, and returned when it again (mostly) allowed the Truth.

Can you say anything on X®? No. But is it much, much closer? Yes.

Gramsci won’t win and turn Socialism into a new religion, because at the heart of Socialism are lies meant for controlling man. And Truth, along with Beauty and the Good, always wins.

And you can tell any short Albanian commie named Lucky that you meet that Wilder says so.

Is Struggling The Goal?

“He’s talented. Leave it at that.” – Goodfellas

Is it okay to sleep with a second cousin? The first one didn’t seem to mind.

Gifts can be a curse. No, I’m not talking about getting the Untitled Goose Simulator™, where you pretend to be a goose (this is a real thing) and honk at people as a Christmas gift. I’m talking about those innate talents that we’re born with.

Most of these talents are things that can be shown with a bell curve: height, intelligence, attractiveness, armpit odor, quickness, strength, charisma and the like. These are the normal human attributes that people have and that are assigned by dice roll in D&D® and by genetics and dice roll in reality. Mostly, these are things that you either can’t change (height) or can only influence. I’m born with the capacity for a maximum specific I.Q. and, though I might hone it through practice, the maximum capacity is always there.

I always was comfortable dating that blind woman. I knew she wasn’t seeing anyone else.

The flip side is what we do with those talents. Just like people are born with certain innate abilities, I also believe that they are born with certain tendencies: diligence, agreeableness, stubbornness, and honesty, for example. These are different than talent. While we are born with talents, these personality traits are much more malleable.

We call them, collectively, character.

Back to the idea of a curse. I’ve seen very intelligent kids emerge from school – these kids are two or three standard deviations above the norm in intelligence. That puts them in the range of 130-145 I.Q., and there are only a couple of million people that fit that description in the United States.

Yet, I’ve seen these very intelligent folks fail, and fail spectacularly.

Why?

Well, just like a pretty girl can only count on her looks for so long, a smart person (let’s call him Hiro Protagonist, he’s Korean/American, after all), no matter how smart, can only rely on their raw intelligence for so long. At some point, Hiro is surrounded by people just as smart as he is. Put Hiro into a classroom of geniuses with a genius professor, and now? Hiro is average.

It’s weird they advise to not talk about money during a job interview. When am I supposed to bribe them?

But if those other geniuses have learned how to work, how to be diligent, how to be internally motivated to meet a goal and the other collective traits we call “character” and Protagonist hasn’t?

Protagonist is toast. He will fail, and fail spectacularly. In fact, based on my experience, a person of great talent will almost always underperform someone of moderate talent who has character. Too much talent hobbles a person and never allows them to develop.

This isn’t limited to intellectual tasks – it’s very apparent in sports, which is one of the more objective things that humanity does. Who is the fastest runner in the 109.3613 yard dash? There’s a record for it.

On my birth, if I had worked really hard, and devoted my life to getting that record, would I have achieved it?

Of course not. There is a zero chance that I could run 109.3613 yards in 9.58 seconds at any point in my life, even given all of the effort in the world and all of the best training.

Zero.

To own a world record requires both talent and the character and discipline to develop the talent.

Without character, the talent is a curse.

Incompetence, unburdened by character.

In that respect, challenge and adversity are blessings, especially if they occur early in life. Highly functioning groups often have a shared adversity so that everyone knows that each member of the group has been through the same initiation.

These initiation rituals mean that, although there are certainly differences between people, the one thing that we know is that they have been through a challenge, and passed.

Those who fail? Well, it tells us a lot about them, too. I think that’s at least partially responsible for the Latin phrase: “mens sana in corpore sano” – a sound mind in a sound body. Smart people were made to work hard physically to improve themselves and those with physical talent were made to work hard intellectually. I guess maybe someone writing about archetypes would call this “Hiro’s Journey”.

It wasn’t being physical or intellectual that was the point – it was the hard work and determination required to get better that was the point. Life is struggle, and sometimes we can’t see the point of it. Norman Vincent Peale, who, despite his last name was not involved in the fruit and vegetable processing industry, had a quote when someone asked him about the afterlife.

I guess it’s better than the previous film – Taken: Out of Context.

I read it at least three decades ago, so, being lazy, I’ll paraphrase his response:

“How can you, looking at life today, be assured of an afterlife? Imagine you were a baby, in warm, safe environment. Temperature a perfect 98.6K. Life was good, right? Then sudden pressure, pain, and constriction like you’d never known. And then? Light, bright light, everywhere around you, the cooling air against your wet skin, and suddenly, a need to breathe in deeply to take your first breath of air. Now, imagine that life is like being a baby being born….”

I’m not at all sure that he said any of those words in anything like that order, but I know that I go the spirit of the answer right. Life isn’t about being comfortable. Life isn’t about being safe. Life is about learning and growing, and both of those things are exceptionally uncomfortable.

Do Viking clowns go to ValHaHa when they die on stage?

Without the challenge, our character suffers. Without the struggle, all of the gifts we are born with become curses.

Looks like the real gift is adversity, testing us and allowing us to build the character required for the next level. Maybe the Untitled Goose Game© is just the thing after all.

Honk! You, too, can be a Hiro.

But it isn’t easy.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: A Date With Destiny

“You hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability. It is the sound of your death. Goodbye, Mr. Anderson.” – The Matrix

I heard that Epstein got a clue to the inevitable – the last guard he tried to fist-bump left him hanging.

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 VI, Issue 6

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”. I’ve kept the Clock O’Doom at the same place – though it will notch up quickly if there are any signs of the TradRight stiffening up.

This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – A Date With Destiny – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Big Fraud – 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 below) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 850 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Civil War Weather Report Previous Posts

A Date With Destiny

Like most people, I believe that I have free will. Whether that’s true or not isn’t my call, so it’s certainly at a least a pleasurable fiction that I maintain. Free will, however, only applies to our choices, and doesn’t apply to our circumstances. Every person reading this is going to die. We pretend like that’s not the case, but I assure you it is, and there is no way to make a choice that will avoid that fate. Death is inevitable.

So, that’s one example. Another example where free will and choices don’t matter is when uncontrollable forces have been unleashed. For instance, if I drop a stripper off of the Empire State Building, there’s no way I’m not getting glitter on my shirt. It’s inevitable.

I think we’re at the same place with Civil War. It’s inevitable no matter who “wins” this election. That’s not to say that it might not be postponed for a bit, but like death and stripper glitter, it’s coming.

Why am I so cavalier in saying that? Well, it’s obvious if you look around. The things that are most likely to cause civil war are tied to what’s going on in the country. Here are your indicators:

Popular immiseration. This means that people are miserable. Inflation and declining prospects have made most young people miserable, and tortured them, to boot. Generations ago, a bright young man could support his family by being the local butcher or running the local sporting goods store. Now, he has to go to college, study, maybe get two degrees, and have his wife work to get the same lifestyle the guy selling letter jackets had.
Lower birth rates and later marriage age. I recently heard (though I don’t have a source) that when the age of first marriage exceeds 28, civil war is inevitable. Every single time. We’re at 30.
Too many elites. Just like all those young dudes are going to school for years in the hopes of being able to maybe one day buy a house, maybe, there are at the same time too many billionaires competing for power. Bloomberg, Trump, Cuban, Gates, Musk are all looking to see who can rule. There isn’t enough room for all of them, and their dissention forms the core of the leadership for civil war.
Belief that the system is fraudulent. Sure, we’ve all expected that the system is rigged, but 2020 was a slap in the face to election integrity since the very GloboLeftistElite that denounce anyone who doubts the validity of the election OPENLY BRAGGED about twisting the system in the pages of Time® magazine in 2021. I’ve heard of more election fraud before election week than in any pre-election period, ever, and don’t doubt that more is taking place behind the scenes. A fraudulent system that is brazen provides the casus belli for that civil war.
A failing economy. This ties to immiseration, but the economy has been juiced for so long with such amazing amounts of money that it is mathematically impossible to unwind without amazing amounts of pain. And pain causes . . . civil war.
Unpopular wars. Who wants to die for Ukraine? For Israel? For Taiwan? For South Korea? Yup, thought so. Yet there are rabid hawks on both sides that are willing to drag a thoroughly unwilling populace into a war they cannot win.
The fact that there have been at least two attempts on Trump’s life shows exactly how stable our society is right now.

Folks, I cannot stress this enough: this is inevitable, and only the timing is up for grabs. I’ve said before (in 2018 or 2019, I think) that 2025 was the first opening date for Civil War 2.0. I’ll stand by that, but I don’t think it’s likely. I still put the range as 2025 to 2040, with the most likely range being between 2030 to 2035. Big nations have a lot of inertia, like a train after you shut down the engine, keep going for a long time. But not forever.

Finally, this is not a wish, since I believe that everyone underestimates how gruesome this will be. I anticipate that China and Russia would gladly airdrop weapons to both sides when they’re not heading to their microwaves to make popcorn while they watch. But, just like throwing a trash bag full of vegetable soup into a jet intake, we all know what’s going to happen.

It’s destiny. Oh, and speaking of Destiny, she’s up next on stage 3.

Violence and Censorship Update

Obviously, there are things we can’t talk about openly because the consequences are too dire so that people were censored off of YouTube® for trying to report this. Until the lies break:

What happens when FEMA is on the side of the disaster?

And anyone who isn’t lawfully here?

Ahhhh, diversity. Bringing in Afghans to do killing Americans won’t do.

Trump Derangement Syndrome: It’s real.

Looks like Kamala only wants to allow certain speech. Anyone here surprised?

And NPCs on Reddit are with her:

And if Trump is Hitler®, then soon enough:

And speaking of the media, I wonder if they coordinate with the Kamala campaign?

Never forget, they have plans for you.

Biden/Harris Misery Index

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

Yup, up again, and peaking upwards as interest rates are starting to spike. Hmmm.

But not all people are miserable:

And some are too stupid to be miserable:

But people can’t afford McDonald’s anymore.

Updated Civil War II Index

Violence:

Violence is up significantly, and this should be higher given that Venezuelan gangs are turning parts of US cities into no-go zones.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it is down a bit.

Economic:

The economy took a huge drop – I think the hangover from all the juicing is coming.

Illegal Aliens:

The latest numbers are simply lies.

The Big Fraud

Regardless of what follows, go out and vote. It makes fraud slightly harder.

Signs of voter fraud in advance of the election are through the roof. Here are a few:

This is illegal:

Ooops, that was election fraud from the last election.

Oh, the Colorado Secretary of State (above) also left nearly all of the voting machine passwords unprotected on the Internet. But it didn’t stop Democrats from suing to keep noncitizens on the voter rolls.

There are more issues, likely into the hundreds by now. At some point it should become clear that this is a humiliation exercise meant to drive home that you have no power. They can lie and cheat to your face, and “What Timmy gonna do?”

LINKS

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

BAD GUYS
https://x.com/rawsalerts/status/1844861906361909266
https://www.city-journal.org/article/no-youre-not-imagining-a-migrant-crime-spree
https://x.com/VivekGRamaswamy/status/1847669300422639725
https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1844125924301984148
https://x.com/TrendingEx/status/1843359191077138512
https://x.com/NoahPollak/status/1847006345662550219

GOOD GUYS
https://x.com/ImMeme0/status/1852394961330692486
https://twitter.com/i/status/1845646215452496049
https://x.com/i/status/1850126594418815417
https://x.com/i/status/1845866508259627261
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/some-mass-shooting-survivors-want-more-good-guys-guns

ONE GUY
https://archive.is/eB7iD

BODY COUNT
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/age-depopulation-surviving-world-gone-gray-nicholas-eberstadt
https://archive.is/hfs5Y
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2023-AHAR-Part-1.pdf
https://x.com/fentasyl/status/1844839172907123183
https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1849634400851341410
https://dailycallernewsfoundation.org/2024/10/10/non-english-speaking-students-are-overwhelming-pa-schools-and-racking-up-millions-for-small-towns-data-show/

VOTE COUNT
https://x.com/i/communities/1848518910653415584
https://x.com/PeterBernegger/status/1850565226690654556
https://x.com/scrowder/status/1850924883678498871
https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1849977065925189699
https://catholicvote.org/millions-of-christians-religious-people-say-they-are-not-voting-in-november/
https://x.com/emmagcawood/status/1850522383863390392
https://x.com/pepesgrandma/status/1850611709549146405

CIVIL WAR
https://realclearwire.com/articles/2024/10/22/quiet_before_the_storm_151815.html
https://newrepublic.com/article/185053/civil-war-reenactors-virginia-play-acting-expect-war
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/10/25/dc-residents-leaving-election-week-00185313
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13933435/MSNBC-host-claims-Trump-family-preparing-civil-war-former-president-warns-America-faces-enemy-within.html
https://slaynews.com/news/clinton-strategist-james-carville-trump-arrest-males-color-elected-calls-armed-uprising-harris-loses/
https://x.com/DrewHLive/status/1820859923787591846
https://thefederalist.com/2024/08/06/firebrand-leftist-jamie-raskin-said-congress-must-disqualify-trump-predicted-civil-war-conditions/
https://tomklingenstein.com/is-the-left-preparing-for-war-if-trump-wins/
https://truthovernews.org/p/democrats-plan-for-color-revolution
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/23/cold-civil-war-cultural-secession/
https://news.yahoo.com/news/hurricane-relief-workers-forced-evacuate-102606823.html
https://studyfinds.org/america-verge-of-world-war-iii/?nab=1
https://internationalman.com/articles/doug-casey-top-3-predictions-for-post-election-america/
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-trump-american-civil-war-b2634731.html

MANIFESTO
https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1844802469680873747

The Debate

“Mr. Rooney, Ferris is home and he’s very ill. I debated even leaving him.” – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Who won the presidential debate last night? People who didn’t watch.

As my father said when the cows got into the marijuana, “Son, the steaks are high.”

That’s how I’d describe the Trump/Kamala debate. Apparently, they’ve never met, so her charge that Trump put a wet finger in her ear and said “Wet Willie Brown” is certainly false. One of the rules is that Kamala has a two-drink minimum.

I decided I’d just blog about the debate instead. Since I’m going to get into the hot tub later with a cigar and maybe a scotch, today’s post will be, unfortunately, written while sober.

Notes: I like the muted microphone idea. It stops the debate for being a shouting match, though I wish they would give the candidates an array of condiments they could throw at each other. Regardless, here is my (partially made up) transcript.

But she’d be happy to force you to take it.

My biggest hope? That Trump says, “Be quiet or I’ll spank you, you disrespectful little turnip.”

Showtime!

Kamala walks to Don. I think she would have peed on him to show dominance, but she couldn’t lift her leg up, or Hindu tradition prevents it.

First question:

Are people better off than four years ago?

Kamala: “I understand the problem and I have no idea what to do about it. I’m going to say absolutely nothing, but then attack Trump.”

Trump: “No sales tax, other countries will pay for the wall, took billions and billions from Chi-nah. We’ve had a terrible economy, worse than ever seen since ever. We’ve had people stream into this country from mental institutions, and even Baltimore.”

Kamala: “Worst epidemic, worst unemployment and personally burned the Constitution after farting on the Statue of Liberty.”

Trump: “Cut taxes, make the greatest economy, ever, and then Kamala ate a baby. Alive. At Central Park. I was there.”

Kamala: “I’ve memorized a thing about the economy. Here it is.”

Trump: “She has no plan. It’s four sentences – run spot run.” I wish I had made that up, but that was Trump’s line, it’s hilarious.

You want to add tariffs, and that might cost more money. Why do you hate America?

Trump: “They kept my tariffs, because I made the best tariffs, and now people can’t afford bacon.”

Kamala: “There was a trade deficit, and Trump sold chips to China, and the United States should win the race against China.” It really didn’t say anything in the answer, but it was well said, much better than her normal word salad.

Trump: “Taiwan sold chips to Chi-nah. Immigration is bad. She’s a Marxist.” (Actually, one of Trump’s passionate answers, and pretty articulate and less hand-wavy than usual.

President Trump you were against abortion and then for abortion and why do you hate women?

Trump: “Six Supreme Court justices got Roe v. Wade out of the states, and now states can make a decision and people can make a vote. Ohio and Kansas were okay with killing kids.”

Kamala: “Trump is a liar. He’s the devil. Women have to leave a state to kill a baby, and can’t even do it at their home state. I might sign a bill making baby killing legal everywhere.”

Trump: “Kamala’s a liar. And stupid. And incompetent at government.”

Kamala: “Any woman should be able to kill any baby whenever. Perhaps up until college.” Kamala is making it personal, and looking at Trump as an accuser. Trump doesn’t fall for this.

Trump: “She’s a liar. Everybody knows it.”

The microphones are not always turned off during the answers of the other candidate.

It’s hard to make a good abortion joke, but leave it to the Left.

Why did you let just a few illegal people in?

Kamala: “I want to stop drugs from coming in.” She starting to slur her words. “Trump didn’t approve the bill and that’s because he hates you and you should go to his stupid rally.”

Trump: “There’s no reason to go to her rallies. People don’t leave my rallies. People want to take their country back. What they have done with allowing millions and millions into our country, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets.” This has happened, but ABC News disagreed.

Kamala: (first giggle) “Talk about extreme! The very worst republicans love me.” Kamala is actually effectively getting under Trump’s skin at this point.

Trump: “I fired them.”

Perhaps he’s upset because that was Fang-Fang’s dinner?

How can you send all of these illegals back?

Trump: “They allowed terrorists, drug dealers, criminals and Venezuelans in. Their crime is down. But they’re destroying the fabric of our country.” (no humor added on this comment)

Kamala: (next giggle, more slurring) “This is rich! Trump is a criminal and awful, and I have answers, I promise.”

Trump: “It’s a political prosecution.” Really good answer here.

Kamala: “Trump would kill your children if he were back in the White House.”

Kamala, you flip flop, so please explain why you have such a good reason to flip flop?

Kamala: “After I was against oil, I was for oil. I want everyone to have houses, because that won’t increase inflation, but we’ll need to need to import labor to make them. And this friend I had in high school who is totally not made up was sexually assaulted. I want to help people not be mean like Trump.”

Trump: “I am so very rich. Fracking? She’s been against fracking and the police (even Sting) and – I’m talking now – does that sound familiar? – and wants to turn do transgender surgery on illegal aliens.”

Transgender surgery for even alien-aliens, would be my bet. But ALF as a woman?

Mr. President, why did you start an insurrection and why do you regret it?

Trump: “Peacefully and patriotically. You left that out. When are the illegals going to be prosecuted? When are the people who burned down Minneapolis going to be prosecuted?”

Mr. President, why don’t you say you regret this?

Trump: “I didn’t do anything to regret.”

Kamala: “I was at the Capitol. The President wanted to desecrate the nation’s Capitol because he hates you and Donald Trump hates Jews.” Trump does not take the bait to stare back at her, which people would take as threatening.

Trump: “Why is she now doing anything on the border? Biden can close the border, he’s not.”

Mr. President, why won’t you say you lost the election we stole fair and square?

Trump: “The illegals are trying to vote.” Kamala does not look remotely happy and ABC pulls away from the split screen.

Why does Donald Trump want to stop illegals from voting?

Kamala: “Donald Trump should accept the fact that we stole the election fair and square.”

Trump: “Victor Orban – why is the world blowing up? The most respected and most feared president was Trump. Kamala didn’t get a single vote. She failed.”

Israel and Palestine aren’t getting along, tell us a made-up way that you’d solve it?

Kamala: “War is bad. We shouldn’t have one. I really like Israel, though.”

Trump: “It never would have started. Russia wouldn’t have invaded Ukraine. Kamala hates Israel. But, Kamala also hates Arabs. And probably hates kittens.”

Kamala: “I love Israel. Trump is weak and loves dictators.”

Trump: “Putin endorses Kamala.”

Commercial Break – A commercial for feminine products. Who knew women were filled with blue liquid?

Mr. President, you could solve Ukraine in 24 hours?

Trump: “We’ve spent $250 billion in Ukraine because Biden won’t ask Europe. I can call Putin and Zelinsky and settle it. I’ll do a deal. It would be a great deal. We could have World War III.”

Kamala: “You’re running against me. Putin wants to take over all of the Starbucks™ in Europe. No cappuccino for anyone. And Poland. You want to give up Poland.”

Trump: “Quiet, please. Putin would be sitting in Moscow, and don’t forget he has nuclear weapons. Kamala was sent to negotiate peace, and three days later? War. She’s worse than Biden. She is a horrible negotiator.”

Kamala: “I’m going to say a lot of things about Trump, to avoid talking about how I failed negotiating in Ukraine.”

Trump: “I got Europeans to pay for NATO.”

Kamala was a lot more prepared than she was the first time around.

Do you regret what happened in Afghanistan?

Kamala: “We got out of Afghanistan. Trump’s deal in Afghanistan was the worst. Trump invited terrorists to Camp David, America’s most holy place.”

Trump: “My agreement was good, the Afghanistan withdrawal was horrible.”

President Trump, why are you a racist?

Trump: “I’m not.”

Kamala: “He is.”

Trump: “She’s horrible.”

Kamala: “He’s horrible.”

Trump: “She’s horrible.”

(Hosts utterly losing control)

President Trump, how are you going to fix healthcare?

Trump: “I saved Obamacare, but it wasn’t great, but I’m trying to find a better one.””

Oh, wonderful Kamala, how can you say something about healthcare that conforms to the answer you memorized?

Kamala: “I’m not going to take your guns. And I know people who have been sick and we want Obamacare to get even better. And healthcare is a right.”

Trump: “Kamala wants everyone on government insurance.”

What would you do to stop climate change?

Kamala: “Climate change is horrible and I have invested $1 trillion in clean energy with my donors and opened factories around the world.”

Trump: “Kamala loves Chi-nha. They’ve destroyed business and manufacturing, and Biden got paid off by China and Ukraine? They are crooks.”

Commercial Break – Debate sponsored by Crazy Z’s Unpainted Ukraine, for the best in discount barely used weapons.

Closing Statements:

Kamala: “We’re not going back to low prices. I’ve never had a real job. We need me as a president.”

Trump: “Here are the wonderful things she’s going to do, but she hasn’t done it. Why hasn’t she done it? I can rebuild America. I can make it better, faster. I’ll call it the six-million-dollar country.”

Overall, Trump was Trump, and this was probably his best debate of all of them during three elections. Kamala, however, didn’t look like the blithering idiot that she is, since it looks like they got her off the sauce long enough to do debate prep.

If you liked Trump, you still like Trump. If you liked Kamala, you’re probably not a regular reader, but you probably still like Kamala and are relieved that she didn’t Biden-out with disjointed word salads. I think Team Kamala will be happy enough with this performance that they’ll trot her out for a few very carefully scripted interviews.

There will not be another debate.

How will the normies take it? Not a clear victory either way, and the undecided mainly don’t watch these things, so it’ll be decided by what news they hear between the “top hits of the 80s, and more” and what they’re paying for gasoline.

Or, by the people who count the votes in big cities in swing states.

Stay tuned, and I suggest spending election night at a mountaintop restaurant, where the steaks will be high.

The Drive To Kill The Constitution

“Hold your ground, hold your ground! Sons of Gondor, of Rohan, my brothers! I see in your eyes the same fear that would take the heart of me. A day may come when the courage of men fails, when we forsake our friends and break all bonds of fellowship, but it is not this day. An hour of wolves and shattered shields, when the age of men comes crashing down! But it is not this day! This day we fight! By all that you hold dear on this good Earth, I bid you stand, Men of the West!” – Return of the King

I had a sacred, flammable piece of wood once. It was a match made in Heaven.

All memes “as found”

One of the places that people on the TradRight have made progress over my lifetime in actually increasing freedom is in the area of gun rights. This is good, and has been aided by Federalist Society™ acting as an institution to bring justices to the Supreme Court whose goals aren’t to modernize the Constitution or to use it to end up being the opposite document that it was intended to be.

Of particular importance to the Constitution is the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights wasn’t quite an afterthought, but a creation of the complaints from the Anti-Federalists that the new government had no prohibitions against what it couldn’t do.

The Federalists said, “Hey, don’t worry, dudes. The Constitution is fine because there’s a very limited role for the federal government in the document. Even if it wanted to, the federal government couldn’t take away your right to own guns. Hell, you guys have private warships with cannons on them – how badass is that?”

The Federalists were worried that with a list of prohibitions against the federal government, then the only thing that would be considered as rights were the ones that they listed, and not the much broader list they took as self-evident. The Federalists thought that there were just too many places the government shouldn’t be able to go to list them all. The Anti-Federalists said, “No, man, here are our minimums. And we’ll add one at the end, the 10^th one, that says the states or the people get to keep that long list.”

The Anti-Federalists won the day. They created a dozen amendments, of which ten were finally adopted as the Bill of Rights. Obviously, keeping men away from power is harder than keeping Kamala Harris away from the Night Train®, and government grew into a colossus, much larger and with more powers than the framers ever intended. And like the fat girl at the middle school dance, the 10^th Amendment is the most ignored of all of them.

This was obvious even by the time of the Civil War. I think, rightly, that the U.S. Civil War could be renamed the “War Against the States” because the central role of the States in the governance of the country was essentially dead at the end of the war. It only required the passage of the 17^th Amendment in 1912, removing the election of senators from the state legislatures and giving it to popular vote for a final gutting of the rights of the State.

Now the GloboLeft has assumed the reins, and with the states out of the way, the final push has come against the people. Here’s the way that Aldous Huxley described it:

“By means of ever more effective methods of mind manipulation, the democracies will change their nature; the quaint old forms: elections, parliaments, Supreme Courts and all the rest will remain. The underlying substance will be a new kind of totalitarianism. All the traditional names, all the hallowed slogans will remain exactly what they were in the good old days. Democracy and freedom will be the theme of every broadcast and editorial. Meanwhile the ruling oligarchy and its highly trained elite of soldiers, policemen, thought-manufacturers and mind-manipulators will quietly run the show as they see fit.”

That’s where we are now. Whereas the Constitution has been powerless to stop the creeping totalitarianism, the Federalist Society judges have been enough, equipped with just two parts of the Bill of Rights have kept totalitarianism from final victory.

If the GloboLeftElite see an obstacle, what do they do? Get rid of it. Thus, the idea is now being floated by the GloboLeftElite to ditch the Constitution. The writer of the latest hit piece against what remains of the Constitution is Jennifer Szalai, who wrote, “The Constitution is Sacred. Is It Also Dangerous?” in the New York Times®.

Ms. Szalai was born in another country (Canada) educated in Europe, and now, for whatever reason, seems to desire to talk about a country to which she clearly has little allegiance to. The most laughable passage tries to skew the attempt to interpret the Constitution as it to what it plainly meant and was intended as “ideology” and noting that this prevents judges from “doing nice things”.

Szalai also notes that judges reading the Constitution and doing what it says frustrates what “the majority of people want”. Apparently Szalai doesn’t know that’s exactly what it was designed to do: to stop a majority of people, hot with passion, from trampling the rights of the individual.

Yeah, that was the plan.

Look at Australia, banning most weapons and putting ludicrous rules on the ones that remained legal. Why? Because they didn’t have the 2^nd Amendment stopping a knee-jerk reaction to a mass shooting that seems really like it was a set up. The only path to get all the guns removed from the hands of the people in the United States is to pass a Constitutional amendment, and even that probably won’t work for decades.

A case in point of bad law versus the Constitution: after 9/11 the Patriot Act was passed to target “terrorists” even though it gives a government of colossal size powers that would have made King George envious and would have made George Washington reach for an AR-15.

Unless the GloboLeftElite could take over every method that people have to communicate with each other. Outside of websites here and there and places like Gab®, there were very few places that people on the TradRight could get together to talk to each other. Places like Gab™ were literally cut off from things like payment processors (Coinbase©, PayPal™ and many, many, many others).

The pesky 1^st Amendment keeps the government from (overtly) clamping down on speech. Unless they ask Mark Zuckerberg to do it for them and he agrees because having people think for themselves about COVID was too dangerous. The press literally used those words – “thinking for yourself is too dangerous.” Look at the constant drumbeat to give away our freedom:

It’s the communications they want, first. As long as they can make us feel isolated and alone, the only person with dangerous opinions. Then, finally, they can win.

Their goal is the removal of the freedoms we’ve cherished and slowly seen erode either through the cowardice of weak men or the avarice of greedy men or the schemes of bad men.

The only thing that stands in their way? Us.

Propaganda: It’s Not Just For Diapers Anymore

“I’ll be taking these Huggies® and whatever cash you’ve got.” – Raising Arizona

A friend told me he could use his 3-D printer to make guns. I didn’t brag: I’ve had a Canon™ printer for years.

Movies are amazing tools. Movies are the backbone of an entire American industry, but it’s a really small industry, with global box office revenues hitting a record of $42.5 billion before COVID.

Sure, $42.5 billion sounds like a lot of money, but Elon Musk paid $44 billion for X®. One single pipeline, the Nordstream 2®, cost about $10 billion. That’s just one pipeline: natural gas pipeline construction spending was over $206 billion in 2020, so it’s roughly five times the size of the size of the movie business.

Yet we focus on movies, and focus on stars. And Ben Affleck, for some reason. Must be his insurance company.

But the reason that we focus on movies, of course, is the stories.

The stories have real power, because they’re watched and internalized. Part of the point of propaganda is that, even if you’re aware of the attempt to manipulate you, you’re still impacted by it, though in a lesser format. And movies, when we’re actually “shown” a story are much more powerful than reading a story.

But the NBC sitcom based on his life was shot before a live studio audience.

I think this is because reading requires the reader to function as a co-creator of the story: you have to imagine the armies of Orcs headed to Helm’s Deep™, so as Tolkien writes the words, your part of the creation is imagining and modeling the characters, the setting, the smoke and fog and the arrows in flight. Yes, books and stories and news are propaganda, too, but the visual is so much more effective, which is why they went to such great lengths to stage the drowned boy on a beach to make people feel a certain way so that millions of invaders could be let into Europe.

Large chunks of movies are pure propaganda. I recall watching Raising Arizona right before I had a baby. There’s a fairly humorous scene in the movie that involved Huggies™ diapers, so I bought Huggies© diapers to give them a try. Huggies® diapers sucked and we moved on to Pampers©, but the propaganda worked. And I knew it was propaganda. I knew that Huggies™ had given money to be in the movie.

It wasn’t evil propaganda, but it was propaganda, nonetheless.

If I ever get old, I might quit lifting weights. Don’t worry, I’ll put in my too weak notice first.

I’ve since developed another theory: the bigger the lie that they’re attempting to force you to swallow, the more the propaganda, and the more it becomes vilified to have an opinion that differs even by the slightest degree from the lie.

You can probably think of examples, but I’ll start off with one of the biggest lies:

“Diversity is our strength.”

That’s just a horrible lie. Would Japan be better off if 100,000 Haitians were dropped off in Tokyo tomorrow afternoon?

No! Haitians have had over 200 years to try to improve Haiti, and it’s awful. It’s not because of climate or natural resources: the Dominican Republic is on the exact same island, and has a per capita GDP of $11,825. Not great, but not horrible. Haiti? It’s an economic basketcase with a per capita GDP of $2,125.

Bringing Haitians to any country wouldn’t improve it, because the people who make Haiti the hellhole that it is are the Haitians. Being on the Magic Dirt of Japan won’t change them. Being on the Magic Dirt of the United States won’t change them, either.

“Ramen” – Scooby Doo® finishing a prayer.

On particular film that focused on this subversion was 2017’s Logan. Yup, another superhero movie about the character Wolverine™, but this one ended with the immortal and indestructible mutant Wolverine© dying as an old man, and with his replacement mutants all being illegal aliens from Mexico. Oh, and the cross that they put on his grave? The end scene shows one of the mutants pushing it over so it’s an “X” and not a cross.

I’m not making this up.

According to the movie, diversity is not only our strength®, it’s inevitable. Oh, and your Christian God? We’ll mock Him as well.

The reality is that greater levels of diversity are correlated with greater levels of crime, lower levels of social trust, and lower productivity in a workplace. For a “strength” I’m not sure what that “strength” is improving. So, it has to be sold, again and again and again.

The propaganda machine has been in overload mode for decades on the “girls are just the same as boys” and the result has been a confused mass of children as the most impressionable youth are hit with that message and women are shown in action movies doing things no woman ever born on planet Earth would be capable of doing.

I guess one of Abraham Lincoln’s regrets was appointing Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the Supreme Court.

The really fortunate thing is that this latest propaganda has been a horrible mistake. In the new rules, no woman can ever do anything wrong. No woman can be forced to grow and change since they were perfect since birth. No woman can be defeated by a man, ever. It’s the revenge of the Girlboss©.

That makes for a really stupid story. And Hollywood™ is finally figuring that out since people don’t go to see really stupid movies with stupid plots.

That’s to our advantage. If people aren’t going to see the propaganda, well, they won’t be indoctrinated.

And, although I’m not firmly of the opinion that Elon is on our side, his purchase of X® gives him the ability to influence the propaganda that’s being forced on us 24/7/365 from every single location. It allows people to react to The Narrative and mock it.

And that’s the key, because it’s not really The Narrative, it’s really The Narrative Against Truth.

The essence of a good meme is a few words and an emotional punch. The reasons memes from the TradRight work much better than from the GloboLeftElite is simple: our memes are based on Truth, not based on The Narrative.

It scared me when I asked the librarian where the conspiracy books were and she said, “They’re right behind you.”

And, no matter how much they fight us, their propaganda couldn’t make Huggies™ better than Pampers©. And no matter how hard they push, their propaganda can’t make lies the Truth.

Think about what you cannot say, and ask: “Why can’t I say that?”

How Did It Get So Crazy, So Fast?

“It was O-Ren Ishii and her powerful posse, the Crazy 88, that proved the victor.” – Kill Bill, Vol. 1

My friends always made fun of me in high school for having an imaginary girlfriend. Of course, the joke was on them: they were imaginary, too.

One of the comments on a post a few weeks back asked a pretty good question:

“How did we get so crazy, so fast?”

The answer actually involves several intertwining threads, mice, Soviets, and gasoline engines, so let’s see of we can weave a web that covers at least a chunk of what has made us so crazy, so quickly. This is a distillation of the last seven years’ worth of study and writing, so some of it might be pretty familiar. Also, it’s not necessarily complete yet, but here are the major threads that I see that have led to what Heinlein called The Crazy Years.

First: Societal Malaise Due to Abundance

I’ve written several times about John Bumpass (that’s his real middle name according to the Internet) Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia experiment, see immediately below this paragraph for links to two previous posts. The short summary is Dr. Calhoun asked a crazy question: what would happen if you gave a population of mice everything they could want: food, water, freedom from predation, space to live, bedding material, and places to make nests.

Want Dystopia? Because this is how you get Dystopia.

The Unabomber Teaches The Facts Of Life

The result? The mice died out. At a certain point they stopped mating, mother mice stopped taking care of infant mice, gangs formed, and some mice (the “beautiful ones”) just spent their time grooming themselves and not really interacting.

If this sounds like Reddit® or TikTok™ or the Democratic National Convention, well, you’re right. For a certain subset of the population, abundance has ruined them.

My friend told me I didn’t understand the meaning of the word “ironic” which was ironic because it was Tuesday.

I think it started in the 1960s. I’m just guessing. I like to blame the hippies, so they’re likely the early-version. It then continued into the wildest era of abundance the world has ever seen: the 1990s. If you look at any time lapse, that’s when the United States started leading the world (it has spread now, literally) in having obesity, not hunger, be the bigger (pun intended) health problem.

I think this started to manifest itself, big time, in the music of the 1990s. We went from Warrant singing about Cherry Pie to Kurt Cobain mumbling about how living in the suburbs with all the Pop Tarts™ his fat face could eat was killing him. Turns out that shotguns are even more deadly than Pop Tarts©. Who knew? We had a generation that was lost because they had everything.

I think a candidate for the hallmark phrase of this Crazy Cause is: “Why are we even here, dude?”

Never take diet advice from a fat guy, and never take life advice from Kurt Cobain.

Second: Societal Anxiety Due to No Challenges

I recently made the comment on X® that a lot of people would e better off if they had been bullied as kids. Was I serious? Yeah, I was. One response was, “Why do you want to make things worse?”

The truth is, for me, that bullies actually helped me build my character and my resolve. And, believe it or not, sometimes the bullies were right and the things that they bullied me about (second graders can be assholes) were things I needed to fix to be a better person. Did I lift harder to get stronger because of it? Yes. Did I develop the internal resilience so that the people who (rightfully) bullied the smarmy second grader that I was eventually earned the respect of the bullies?

Yes. Males, even young males, need to develop a hierarchy and understand their place in it and why they are inferior to Chuck Norris.

No child is born perfect, and it is the challenges in life that help define and develop character. Without challenge, development is stunted.

I think that today’s twentysomethings have the problem that they look into a future that certainly looks grim to them, yet they’ve never had a chance to develop their character and are told again and again how perfect they are and how their choices are important.

Newsflash: the choices of a second grader generally deserve about as much attention as the choices my dog wants to make. Both will eat all of the cake in the house if you let them and make messes everywhere. It’s our job as parents to not care what they think when it’s important to develop character and virtue.

Chuck Norris can recite pi backwards.

As a society we face many of the same problems: what is it we stand for and what are we trying to accomplish? We don’t have Soviets to fight, we’re actively encouraging invaders into our country to replace us, and we don’t have any cool national purpose like the Apollo program.

I think a candidate for the catchphrase of this crazy cause is: “Why am I so worthless?”

Third: Societal Atomization Due To Tech

As humans, we have minds that are built around smaller social systems, mainly. The big move from rural to urban happened in the west only recently. Our legacy social structure is (mainly) to live in a town for a very long time, put down roots, make friends, make a reputation.

Most people aren’t leaders, they’re followers, and want to be led. Why else would sane people want zoning regulations?

The good news is I can have up to six Eldrich Abominations without asking for a zoning variance request.

But now, put us in a constantly churning urban landscape where we don’t know the next-door-neighbor in the apartment building? Who do we turn to?

Well, whatever latenightjokeman says or whatever TikTik™ says or whatever InstaFace© allows to be printed. People are defining themselves on how YouTube™ says Europeans feel about Donald Trump.

They are also allowed to pick whatever gender they are. How do I know tech is driving this? Back when COVID made everyone homeschooled, transgenderism dropped. Why? No one to identify to – which is why “transwomen” with no girl parts get offended when gynecologists won’t give them appointments.

Yes. That’s a thing.

The iPhone™ is a big driver. It puts connections in the hands of kids. I talked with one Millennial, and he said that at the start of his high school career, kids “cruised main” looking for other kids. By the end of high school, it was all phones. Friendships dropped, and dating dropped. Mix that with the first two causes above, and it leads to fewer kids.

Dating sites magnify this, and make every girl “4” think that she deserves a Chad ranked 9 or higher because one time a drunk Chad had sex with her. This leads to Chads being happy, but girls being sad and hollow inside.

I think a catchphrase for this Crazy Cause is “Who or what the heck am I?”

When I was a kid I thought my dad was Superman®. Later, I wonder why he put a cape on after drinking bourbon.

Result of these interacting strands of Crazy are a large number of people who:

Stand for nothing
Have no examples of virtue other than seeking money in their lives
See no point in anything other than the present moment
Are distracted
Think they’re too good for PEZ™
Are filled with the combination of anxiety and narcissism
Do and feel whatever the media tells them to do
Haven’t built social circles of any particular strength – clubs and churches are on constant decline

There’s good news.

All of this is self-limiting. We’re not mice, and plenty of good humans haven’t fallen into Calhoun’s Behavioral Sink. Many of those same people have overcome challenges sufficient to shape their character for the better. Finally, there are enough of us that don’t follow.

We lead. Or we choose our own path.

And?

We’re gonna win.