COVID – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

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

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 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.

Civil War 2.0, A Chaotic Month

“I knew your brother would send assassins.” – Gladiator

I would tell a joke about my time travelling experiences, but you guys didn’t like it.

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 3

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 – Destabilization – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Kamala – 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.

Civil War Weather Report Previous Posts

Destabilization

I’ll start with a couple of my own quotes from last month’s Civil War 2.0 Weather Report:

July will be an even more eventful month, if my guess is right.

This level of political intrigue is the highest since 1859 or so, and it’s quite clear that the glue that holds the country together is nearly gone, and this is a signpost on the way to Civil War 2.0.

The attempted assassination of Donald Trump was a surprise, and certainly not one that I had anticipated. In the immediate aftermath, Trump’s popularity soared as people saw the raw response to the event from Trump in one of the most iconic photographs of my lifetime, his fist raised in defiance.

Trump is certainly a showman.

As the details of the event continue, it looks like the Secret Service was doing its job as well as Boeing®’s Starliner™ design team.

The other thing the assassination attempt did was show how pathetic the attempt to prosecute the January 6 “insurrectionists” that were so ill-behaved that most of them used trash receptacles for their water bottles. Comparing the two events shows how silly, vindictive, and political the prosecution of the protesters was and is.

Immediately the political attacks restarted on Trump. He was Cheeto® Hitler™, and still is in their minds. Many of them were in open despair that the shooter had missed.

What followed? Joe Biden dropping out of the race. Joe was done, but his last middle finger to Obama, who I believe is the one who pushed for the June debate and pushed for Joe to be booted, wanted someone else, anyone else, other than the retarded girl-child with a love of vodka known as Kamala to be the nominee.

Obama lost, and Kackela Harris will soon be voted in by the Democratic delegates as their first candidate that never received a single primary vote, and was selected by a senile man as a revenge choice.

All of that screams stability.

Just kidding. Of all of the strange and destabilizing things we’ve seen so far, I would lay money we’ve yet to see the strangest part of this election season, and it will be more destabilizing even than what we’ve seen just this July.

Violence and Censorship Update

Well, there’s this:

Which resulted in proof that you don’t hate the media enough:

And also proof that the constant drumbeat has made GloboLeftists evil or crazy. Or both:

And the GloboLeftElite try to hide what we all saw:

But don’t bet on Bing™ to be unbiased:

And here are things they’re also attempting to memoryhole, including billionaire Alex Soros with a bullet hole and forty-seven dollars. Hmmm, Trump, if elected would be the 47th President:

And Prince Harry shows why July 4 is still important:

And here are things that the GloboLeftistElite don’t want you to think about:

But there are Bright spots:

Biden/Harris Misery Index

If Democratic economic policy had a face:

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

Yup, up again. It’s like there’s a pattern here . . .

More to come:

Updated Civil War II Index

Violence:

Violence is up. I wonder if Chicago’s Democratic National Convention is going to spike temperatures? Maybe they’ll play some soothing music?

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it is slightly down. I expect this fall to drop.

Economic:

The economy looks to be juiced, but thankfully we have housing options.

Illegal Aliens:

July is showing as down, again, since (my take) the .gov folks are just making up numbers now.

Kamala

I was going to write a bit more, but I’m a bit under the weather, so here are some related memes, in order:

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://x.com/GangHits/status/1818705002023530940

https://x.com/GangHits/status/1818801077308809307

https://x.com/GangHits/status/1816613118056837285

https://x.com/DaRealMonch/status/1817987959922250083

https://x.com/GangHits/status/1817614424141857175

https://x.com/Glock_Topickz/status/1815899177596903814

https://x.com/GangHits/status/1816611210214731827

Good Guys

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/89EFTHojJRw

One Guy

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgrlrzw5550o

Body Count

https://dnyuz.com/2024/07/25/kids-a-growing-number-of-americans-say-no-thanks/

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2024/07/22/how-the-origins-of-americas-immigrants-have-changed-since-1850/

https://x.com/EYakoby/status/1817731127672779239

https://reason.com/2024/06/15/house-passes-bill-to-automatically-register-young-men-for-the-draft/

https://themilitant.com/2024/08/02/congress-discusses-upgrading-the-draft-and-conscription-of-women/

https://www.newsweek.com/us-army-military-women-draft-conscription-1916238

Vote Count

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1184621/presidential-election-voter-turnout-rate-state/

https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/29/politics/voter-rolls-ballot-challenges-true-the-vote-elections/index.html

https://apnews.com/article/election-2024-voter-roll-challenges-explainer-36c5596361f4596f245ffeee7b138764

https://dentonrc.com/elections/conservative-group-has-challenged-17-000-names-on-voter-rolls-in-denton-county/article_71d1993e-4ec8-11ef-bd2b-5fd65c628b62.html

https://azmirror.com/briefs/republicans-sue-to-purge-at-least-500000-people-from-arizonas-voter-rolls/

Civil War

https://theconversation.com/one-inch-from-a-potential-civil-war-near-miss-in-trump-shooting-is-also-a-close-call-for-american-democracy-234628

https://radaronline.com/p/trump-shooter-suicide-mission-trigger-second-civil-war/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/23/ohio-republican-trump-civil-war

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/07/trump-vance-civil-war-gop-political-violence/

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/trump-civil-war-talk-1235066760/

https://www.dreadcentral.com/news/508690/this-controversial-record-breaking-thriller-is-again-the-most-watched-movie-on-amazon/

https://www.counterpunch.org/2024/07/29/how-civil-wars-start/

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/08/01/movies/war-game-documentary-review.html

https://www.thebulwark.com/p/democracy-suffer-quiet-death-simulated-trump

Learn This One Weird Trick

“I don’t know, but whatever it is, it’s weird and pissed off.” – The Thing

The Mrs. is so weird: she starts every conversation with “were you even listening to me?”

All memes today are “as found”.

In the recent week, a miracle occurred. It seems like every Mainstream Media® pundit found the exact same word to describe Donald Trump, JD Vance, or both of them.

“Weird.”

Yup, “weird”. That’s the Kamala campaign’s strategist attempting to frame the 2024 election. Republicans are . . . weird. Master Persuader Scott Adams analyzed this. His conclusion?

This was “mean girl” politics. And the person who came up with the idea was . . . a woman. Her idea was to use the “in-group/out-group” method of attack.

What’s that? Well, simply enough, a junior high girl would describe someone as “weird” in order to get her friends to form a united group against someone. It only works, mind you, in junior high and also if it’s true. With Trump and Vance?

Well, not so much, for a couple of reasons. First off, they’re actually the weird ones:

See what I mean? We aren’t the weird ones. Nothing about us is weird. Okay, some things about me are weird, but most of them in a good way. Most of them. Those memes above will have a visceral impact, mainly on those who already agree with us. Some of them, though, especially at the bottom end of the list will be far too much for the normies in the middle. They might chuckle, but they’re gonna be pretty hesitant to share them. Regardless, if they see them and they’re not already consumed by the Woke Mind Virus, they’ll start to grow the doubts about who is really “weird”.

Here are some that are a bit more sharable:

See what I mean?

My take is that the following, though, are knockout punches to the middle, because they really hit the values that define us, but that the normies in the middle have a hard time seeing as weird – it builds a cognitive dissonance – the look at that, and realize that’s a far, far better world than we live in today.

Which makes these memes something that might move them.

And that’s my take. YMMV. And if someone called me weird? I’d say, “Hell yeah, I’m so weird I believe in marriage and intact mothers and fathers raising their kids with moral values.” Agree with them, and amplify. Because every single time that they try to paint us as something, it’s something that they fear others think of them.

Incompetence Can Be Fatal, But It’s Always Expensive

“You know what doesn’t look good? A story about gross incompetence.” – American Hustle

My garden shears will never be obsolete, after all, it’s cutting-hedge technology.

My science teacher in high school, who I’ll call “Mr. Johnson” (not his real name except that was totally his real name) often lectured us on things entirely unrelated to science. It wasn’t a doctrine he was trying to instill us with, it was merely that he was old enough and close enough to retirement that he really didn’t give a damn about 90% of the class. I don’t think that he even cared if we listened, since he was only talking to 10% of us anyway.

You either got him or you didn’t.

One of his random asides was about the word “crisis”. Mr. Johnson hated the use of the word crisis except to refer to a single moment in time. His definition was that the crisis was a moment – the Cuban Missile Crisis when everyone was poised to push the button, and yet backed away from world condemning us to live in a world where The View exists.

Regardless of Mr. Johnson’s definition, I think we’re in the midst of a crisis.

Why do I think this stage would smell of old kitty litter and stale chardonnay?

Datapoint:

Crowdstrike™

The Crowdstrike© software incident from just two weeks ago brought down at least 8.5 million computer systems, and brought them down in such a way that they couldn’t restart. To make it even better, once a fix was found, it had to be fixed computer by computer. Why? Because they didn’t test the patch.

Right now, the estimate is that this caused at least $10 billion in financial losses, though a communist would tell you that it was a good thing since all of those computer techs had something to do other than play Tetris™ and Minesweeper© while listening to Dan Fogelberg.

I think Boeing® should adopt a “no slippers” policy.

Datapoint:

The Starliner® is anything but, more resembling a large orbiting bucket filled with cash than a spacecraft, it sits, useless, stuck against the side of the ISS. If it were the only failure to Boeing’s©, name, that would be one thing, but it’s not. Their planes regularly either fall from the sky due to poor programming kludges, or have random spontaneous partial disassembly of their planes in flight due to spotty manufacturing quality control.

Boeing™ had a pretty good reputation for decades as a company that took engineering seriously – the name of the Boeing® 707 was rumored to be an engineering joke – it’s one over the square root of two. It kept showing up in their calculations, so they decided that was a good omen for naming their (then) flagship airliner. In reality, it sounds like it was just a product number, with the 7 series being jets, and they liked the sound of the end 7.

Regardless, they didn’t call it a “Dreamliner™”.

NASA refuses to send a giant duck into outer space – they say the bill would be astronomical.

Datapoint:

NASA

I loved NASA when I was a kid. They were generally seen as a triumph of competence and coolness under pressure. They did real engineering, and also were great at managing the integration of multiple complex systems in a manner where they worked pretty well, Apollos 1 and 13 notwithstanding.

They literally wrote the book on getting man to the Moon using the very limits of known technology at the time. Getting to the Moon was so hard that it was barely in our grasp, yet they did it, time and time again. They even managed to get the ISS built.

But now? Barrack Obama stated that the primary goal of NASA was Moslem outreach. During the eclipse of 2017, they even spent NASA resources to make a Braille book about eclipses. What was that meant to do, taunt the blind kids? And, yes, the Webb Space Telescope has been pretty cool. But the Space Launch System costs about $4.1 billion per launch, and each launch takes about six months.

I was okay after I figured out alcohol could kill COVID.

Datapoint:

COVID-19

Every aspect of the response to COVID-19 was horrific from an economic and medical standpoint. From an economic standpoint, the government response was to blindly throw as much cash in as many places as possible as quickly as that could. This was a bipartisan effort.

The panic and hypocrisy weren’t limited to the economic response, no. The medical response was just as inept, as Fauci now admits he just made things up as some sort of medical theater. Ventilators appear to have killed more people than they saved. The abomination of the “Vaxx” has led to an excess mortality that many reckon has a body count higher than COVID itself. I, for one, really hope that everyone who took the Vaxx® recovers, but can we forget a government and its accomplices who tried (and in many cases, succeeded in forcing people to take it?

I can’t, though the GloboLeftElite surely hope you forget. But remember, there are no refunds.

I was wondering if this was going to be too dark, but then I realized it’s all under two and a half miles of water, so of course it’s going to be dark.

Datapoint:

The Titan Submersible

In one sense, I certainly admire the guts that it took to build a submarine from a pressure hull and off-the-shelf parts like an X-Box™ controller, but the hubris of the owner remains: the CEO didn’t “hire 50-year-old white guys” because they weren’t “inspirational”. I wonder if we would have made it to orbit if Von Braun had a similar philosophy?

Well, I guess he paid the ultimate price for his hubris and disregarding competence in favor of the “inspirational” stories. Most CEOs just lose their shareholder’s money, like Disney™, which I could write an entire post on.

The crisis we face is one where we’ve lost the capacity for competence and will to achieve that we had as recently as the 1960s even as our systems grow far more complex. Again, one software update cost $10,000,000,000, NASA doesn’t produce spaceships that can fly with any reliability, and Boeing™ went from making some of the most reliable airplanes in the world by the thousands to a company that survives on government contracts, accounting errors, and inertia.

Maybe, though, this crisis will do what the Cuban Missile Crisis couldn’t do:

Free us from The View. Wonder if they’d like a trip to the Titanic?

The Best And Funniest Debate Post You’ll Read Today: Read It For The Salty Tears

“I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay.” – Monty Python’s Flying Circus

Whelp! All memes from X, and I didn’t even have to scroll more than three times. This is an implosion.

I had very different plans today for this post. During the debate, I had no fewer than 1200 words worth of notes, and had penciled in no fewer than nine really funny jokes on the first pass. It would have been hilarious. I guess that’s just me, pining for the humor of the situation.

But as the debate ended, I realized that wasn’t the post I was going to write. It couldn’t be.

I have predicted that Joe Biden would not be the DNC candidate for the 2024 election on these pages months ago. When the debate happened so very early, I began to wonder: why?

Someone on Team Joe® convinced him (which doesn’t appear to be hard right now) that he needed to debate Trump in June. Why? The conventions hadn’t occurred, and Joe wasn’t even the official nominee, merely the presumptive one.

Now I understand. Having these debates in October would have assured a Trump landslide. Even the deepest blue GloboLeftist couldn’t even salvage this monstrosity in a real manner after an October showing like today. It would not be possible.

To expose him.

Joe is done. He’s finished. His political career is finished, and his candidacy is in shambles. Reports are that his team are in tears, and “25^th Amendment” (the one that allows for the removal of incompetent folks as president) are trending on X.

I had predicted that either Gavin Newsom (whose wife allegedly willing banged Harvey Weinstein) or Big Mike Obama would be the candidate months ago. I’m pretty sure I predicted it in the blog, but certainly did so in conversations and it’s too late to check – Ricky might help me here! – that Joe would not be the candidate.

That is now certain. There is another, like they said in Star Wars™: Hillary. I don’t think she’s physically up to the task, but she’s still in the running.

It won’t be Joe. So, here’s my take on the night, along with a few memes. I’ll respond to previous post comments tomorrow (like I said, it’s late). Python, Monty® predicted this years ago. Note, I hope that Joe Biden lives a long and pleasant life, this is in reference to his chances on being elected in November:

A voter watches a debate.

Voter: ‘Ello, I wish to register a complaint.

(The DNC does not respond.)

Voter: ‘Ello, Miss?

DNC: What do you mean “miss”? Are you assumin’ me gender?

Voter: (pause)I’m sorry, I have a cold. I wish to make a complaint!

DNC: We’re closin’ for the Juneteenth Pride Festival.

Voter: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this Candidacy what I decided to vote for not half a year ago from this very DNC.

DNC: Oh yes, the, uh, the Scranton Joe…What’s,uh…What’s wrong with it?

Voter: I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it, my lad. This Candidacy is dead, that’s what’s wrong with it!

DNC: No, no, ‘e’s uh,…he’s resting. He has COVID.

Voter: Look, matey, I know a dead Candidacy when I see one, and I’m looking at one right now.

DNC: No no this Candidacy’s not dead, he’s, he’s restin’! Remarkable Candidacy, the Scranton Joe, idn’it, ay? Beautiful plumage!

Voter: The plumage don’t enter into it. It’s stone dead.

DNC: Nononono, no, no! ‘E’s resting!

Voter: All right then, if he’s restin’, I’ll wake him up! (shouting at the Candidacy) ‘Ello, Mister Dark Brandon! I’ve got a lovely fresh 10% for the Big Guy for you if you show…

(DNC hits the cage)

DNC: There, he moved!

Voter: No, he didn’t, that was you hitting the cage!

DNC: I never!!

Voter: Yes, you did!

DNC: I never, never did anything…

Voter: (yelling and hitting the cage repeatedly) ‘ELLO JOE!!!!! Testing! Testing! Testing! Testing! This is your nine o’clock alarm call!

(Takes Candidacy out of the cage and thumps its head on the counter. Throws it up in the air and watches it plummet to the floor.)

Voter: Now that’s what I call a dead Candidacy.

DNC: No, no…..No, ‘e’s got COVID!

Voter: COVID?!?

DNC: Yeah! You stunned him, just as he was wakin’ up! Scranton Joe stuns easily, major.

Voter: Um…now look…now look, mate, I’ve definitely ‘ad enough of this. That Candidacy is definitely deceased, and when I decided to vote for it not ‘alf a year ago, you assured me that its total lack of movement was due to it bein’ tired and shagged out following a prolonged ice cream.

DNC: Well, he’s…he’s, ah…probably pining for Corn Pop.

Voter: PININ’ for Corn Pop?!?!?!? What kind of talk is that?, look, why did he fall flat on his back the moment I got ‘im home?

DNC: Scranton Joe prefers keepin’ on it’s back! Remarkable Candidacy, id’nit, squire? Lovely hair plugs and replacement teeth!

Voter: Look, I took the liberty of examining that Candidacy when I watched the debate, and I discovered the only reason that it had been standing by the podium in the first place was that it had been NAILED there.

(pause)

DNC: Well, o’course it was nailed there! If I hadn’t nailed that Candidacy down, it would have nuzzled up to that podium, bent it apart with its strong arm, and VOOM! It would have talked about String Theory in six languages!

Voter: “VOOM”?!? Mate, this Candidacy wouldn’t “voom” if you put four million volts and a gallon of Adderall® through it! It’s bleedin’ demised!

DNC: No no! ‘E’s pining!

Voter: It’s not pinin’! It’s passed on! This Candidacy is no more! It has ceased to be! It’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! It’s a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed it to the podium it’d be pushing up the daisies! It’s metabolic processes are now ‘istory! It’s off the twig! It’s kicked the bucket, It’s shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-CANDIDACY!!

(pause)

DNC: Well, I’d better replace it, then. (he takes a quick peek behind the counter) Sorry squire, I’ve had a look ’round the back of the shop, and uh, we’re right out of Candidacy, except for Big Mike, Hillary, and Gavin.

Voter: I see. I see, I get the picture.

DNC: (pause) I got a Kamala.

(pause)

Voter: Pray, does it talk?

DNC: Nnnnot really. Slurs quite a bit like it’s drunk.

Voter: WELL IT’S HARDLY A BLOODY REPLACEMENT, IS IT?!!???!!?

DNC: N-no, I guess not. (gets ashamed, looks at his feet)

Voter: Well.

(pause)

DNC: (quietly) D’you…. d’you want to come back to my place?

Voter: (looks around) Yeah, all right, sure, it is the Juneteenth Pride Festival.

DNC: (to the audience) Well! I never wanted to do this in the first place. I wanted to be… a lumberjack!

Gamer Gate 2.0: Ugly Women Edition

“Report here safely, stop. Do not play video games.” – John Wick

Proof once again you’re an un-person if you remember the 1990s, intact families, and Christmas. (as found)

Pop culture exists, and I often write about it. The reason is that it is pervasive, surrounds us, and can absolutely be used to manipulate human feelings and behavior, so, in a sense it is a form of programming about who and what we are. In essence, it can be a myth that evolves with us, sort of like intestinal parasites.

Pop culture has always been around, but it has transformed over the millennia of human existence. It likely started with Grug talking around the communal fire, telling stories of the clan, their origin, and the evils they defeated, and how he had to walk uphill both ways to get back to the cave when he was a child and that they didn’t have any of those new-fangled flint arrowheads when Grug was small.

Through this mechanism, the ideas that the clan had, its virtues, its norms, and even its fears were transmitted from one group to another. It told the story of the group. Their story. That narrative bound them together as one – they knew the deeds of their fathers and sang songs about the virtues of their fathers.

My eye got infected with COVID. I had Corona-Iris.

Control of that story, then, is very, very powerful, and Grug probably (rightfully) skipped the part where he pooped his wolfskin jockstrap the first time he had to fight someone from the Wilder clan. Grug’s stories and pop culture thus both provide and define the Overton Window – those ideas that are safe to speak about in a polite society.

An example:

The idea that JFK was assassinated by literally anyone other than Lee Harvey Oswald acting totally alone was not acceptable to The Powers That Be®. What did they do? They invented an entire new term to disparage any idea that varied from the Warren Commission report – “Conspiracy Theory”.

Oddly, when the House Select Committee on Assassinations looked into the JFK Lone Gunman theory in the late 1970s, they decided that, no, it couldn’t have been Lee Harvey Oswald acting by himself. The results of the Committee were mostly ignored. The smear of anyone with a different opinion continued, and if it weren’t for the Zapruder film, I imagine they’d probably try to convince everyone JFK killed himself because he hated Dallas.

I promise, I don’t know any dirt on the Clintons.

The cast of people who benefited from Kennedy’s death was huge: The CIA, the Military-Industrial Complex, the Mafia, LBJ, Israel’s nuclear program, the gun control agenda, and the Boy Scouts™ all benefited. Okay, maybe not the Boy Scouts©, but you get the picture. The only person I’m sure wasn’t involved was me, and that’s because I wasn’t born yet.

Beat that alibi.

But crafting that public opinion isn’t just for the CIA or whatever thinktank meme’d the phrase “Conspiracy Theory” into existence. Nope. Pop culture is largely put out by Hollywood™ and, increasingly game companies.

Hollywood™ (if I include television, which I should) was the biggest influence when I was a kid. Everyone in my grade was watching the same movies at the same time on the same station. If a James Bond® movie was on, you were watching that, because cable came to the vicinity of Wilder’s Mountain about the time I was finishing high school and you had three choices (no one watched PBS™) and James Bond™ was always going to be better than whatever else was on.

I’ve never played Warhammer®, so I’m really hoping that it doesn’t have a “Shoe” or I’ll feel more stupid than usual.

We watched the same television shows, too. And, I’ve related before, I remember wondering in middle school if there was a reason that the TradRight couldn’t be funny, since even in seventh grade I recognized that every comedy and drama on television was written from a GloboLeftElite perspective. Even in middle school I recognized that Hollywood™ was a Leftist enclave.

Television (and movies!) was a pipeline that was well in place as owned turf of the GloboLeftElite by the end of the 1970s. But a new medium was emerging, and the old monolith of the big three networks was fracturing.

The new medium was gaming.

I hear she wears Fruit of the Tomb™ underwear.

Gaming was, especially at the early parts, unabashedly libertarian, as was much of the infant Silicon Valley at the time. Games like Pac-Man™, Pong©, and that one with the plumber were big, and largely free of politics, which is to say skewed towards the TradRight in the opinion of the GloboLeft.

Games rose under Atari™, sank, then rose again, this time higher and higher with Nintendo™ and then Sony™ and Sega™ and finally the X-Box™. Each iteration brought more story and visual complexity to the games, but the consumer was mainly the same: young white dudes. Sure, women have always played games, but the biggest gamers have always been boys. Oh, and the Prussians. They invented wargaming when it wasn’t convenient to duel or kill someone just to pass the time (seriously, look it up).

And what do boys like? Girls. Thus, Lara Croft™ and the Tomb Raider© series came into existence, complete with her huge . . . eyes. And shapely . . . hair. Lara Croft® was about as realistic as He-Man® was, but that was okay. She was an idealized version (through the eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy) of what a hot woman looked like.

But the GloboLeftElite have started a war against hot women. I’m not sure why, but I think it’s because that women feel threatened by hot women. I will note that not a single feminist ever jumped out and said that Superman™ was an unrealistic body model, or has tried to get Brad Pitt out of movies and replace him with that guy that plays Paul Blart.

No. They want to uglify women characters in video games. I think so that ugly feminist women feel better.

The latest? Jean Grey™, that buxom fiery-haired psychic that, ahem, inspired so many young men, has been redone. Yup, here it is.

Yes, hot Jean Grey™ has been turned into a plank of wood that looks like Melinda Gates. And who was responsible? Not sure, but Sweet Baby, Inc. (links below) have allegedly been busy as they can be with Jean Grey, gumming up the works to make sure that all of the GloboLeftElite talking points and propaganda is included in the game and that the women in the games are as ugly as the Sweet Baby, Inc. women feel that they are inside. And outside, I guess.

When I play a video game, I’d rather play a cool strong character rather than Archie Bunker. Do women want to play as a hot chick, or do they want to play as a woman with a body best described as “tubular and featureless”?

Gamer Gate 2.0: Woke On Patrol

Gamer Gate 2.0 Update: Disproportionate Response Edition

It’s not just video games. Dungeons & Dragons™ has said that they’ll be happy when white guys stop playing their games.

Okay, done. (meme as found)

Disney’s© latest Star Wars™ flop, The Acolyte, has lesbian witches creating a baby without needing no man via the Force™. The producer also said that if we didn’t like it, don’t watch it, and then when we didn’t watch it, blamed us for not being the audience she (yes, you guessed it) deserved. I guess that in Star Wars©, they don’t need no man to have a baby.

You can do what you want, but I’ll be skipping this round. I like Grug’s stories better, anyway.