Civil War 2.0: Living On The Edge

“I don’t want to be in a battle. But waiting on the edge of one I can’t escape is even worse.” – Return of the King

The past, present, and future walked into a bar.  It was tense.

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

Violence and open crime is now endemic in most major cities, so much so that people now just tend to ignore it, and police are incentivized to ignore it and focus on policing people who fail to come to a complete stop.    Again, none of the violence that I could see originated from the Right in July.  None.

I’m holding July at 9 out of 10.  That’s still two minutes to midnight.  I had expected that hot weather and growing unrest would lead to levels of violence that couldn’t be ignored, but I was wrong.  What appears today to be the driver to our current unrest is the prospect of mandatory “immunizations” that don’t appear to immunize.

I currently put the total at (this is my best approximation, since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) hanging in at around 900 out of the 1,000 required for the international civil war definition.

As close as we are to the precipice of war, be careful.  Things could change at any minute.  Avoid crowds.  Get out of cities.  Now.  A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Divorce, American Style – Violence And Censorship Update –– Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The COVID Trigger? – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report.  These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month.  I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues.  Also, subscribe because you’ll join over 500 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Divorce, American Style

Studies have shown that if a couple doesn’t want to get divorced, they shouldn’t talk about divorce.  Heck, I could even make a joke about Bill Gates’ divorce, but that wouldn’t be PC.

One of the potential outcomes of our current political divide has always been the dissolution of the United States.  As Stein’s Law states:  If something can’t go on forever, it won’t.  And, eventually, the United States won’t, no matter how much we want it to go on.

In a recent poll, people are thinking about divorce.  And even though this particular divorce isn’t like the divorce between a dentist and a manicurist, it still might be fought tooth and nail.  Nope, this is secession.  Based on a June, 2021 survey, it looks like the South is ready to leave, again.  66% of Republicans and 50% of independents (mainly those that think the Republicans are Leftists) are ready to call it quits.

That’s a majority.  Other folks want out, too.   The numbers are far larger than I would have expected, but that shows just how far down the road to dissolution the United States is.

I imagine the stoners in Colorado will keep their weed during the divorce – they’ll have joint custody.

And this is when things are going (relatively) well.  There aren’t hungry people in the streets, and the current problem around here is that there aren’t enough people to work, rather than unemployment.

If you went on the normal split, here’s what the two countries would look like:

Hmmm, Chicago looks sort of . . . surrounded.

I like this version better than the “Red State” pictures because commies love red.  Regardless, it shows counties that are 51%/49% as the same color as a 85%/15% county.  Aesop (LINK) has shown that there’s a lot of purple out there.  And he’s right – the battle isn’t along the same regional lines as 1860.  But when people want to fight, they can and will.  The Balkans is a great example of a “purple” country going to war against itself.

What should scare people is that things are going well, and people want out.  The Right (with almost all of the guns) is preparing for just that.  Most of the groups listed on this map of militias aren’t horribly radical, especially by historical United States norms.  What unnerves the Left is that these groups seem to think quaint old things like the Constitution matter.

The Leftists don’t train with guns. I expect they’re bad Marxmen.

Of course, the Leftist press is pearl-clutching about this, but I downloaded the Light Foot Militia’s guidebook (Hi, FBI agent!) and it’s as tame as a kitten eating warm cream.  The physical requirements for membership include being able to walk a couple of miles in 40 minutes and do 10 push-ups and 10 sit-ups.

Quite a crazy eccentric threat.

But I have goals:

Violence And Censorship Update

I’ve already mentioned the normalization of endemic levels of violence.  There’s a reason I’m staying clear of cities, even though that’s where they keep the Red Lobster®.

Censorship is, sadly, again the big story.  Early in July, Nick Fuentes was kicked off of the major social platforms.  He’s shockingly old.  He’s 22.  He’s marginally amusing, but not at all hateful or dangerous.  But kids liked him, and he challenged the narrative.  So, banned.  Probably for life.  At age 22.

On Soviet Twitter® you can’t use your email to sign in.  You have to use your USSRname.

Okay, that was how the month started.  It got better, right?

No.

I bet they did not see that coming. (Say it fast.)

I’ll just share these horrifying developments.  The Left (and the Libertarians) keep coming back to the argument that speech on Twitter® (or Facebook™, or Google© or etc.) is private speech.  Well, have a nice look at the following.

Okay, this one is a joke.  No one likes Cathars anyway and we should burn them at the stake.  Oh, they’re all dead?  Never mind.

Understand that now the stage is set for an official truth to go along with the official narrative.  Deviation from either will result in being shut down by the Government-Media Complex.

If you think the Military Industrial Complex was bad?  You ain’t seen nothing yet.

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:

Up is more violent, and our perception of violence is down in July.  I guess we’ve just lowered our standards.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it dropped again this month.  Unless there’s a crisis, I expect political instability to remain low until at least September.  Weirdly, it seems like June-July-August have the lowest levels of instability.  I guess that’s due to it being fresh vodka season in Washington D.C.?

Economic:

Economic measures showed an uptick last month.  Nu-COVID-22 (or whatever they’re going to call it) will probably hit these measures in a few months.  Or the money printing.  Nah.  It’ll be fine.

Illegal Aliens:

This data was at record levels last month, but since we now have the “Biden COVID-19 riddled illegal alien import plan” we beat the record again.  Coming soon to a town near you.

The COVID Trigger?

I haven’t seen anything like the current ‘Rona Rage in my life.  It’s a purity test administered like a religious sacrament.  If you have taken “the jab” you are holy, even though it observably performs in exactly the same manner as a placebo.

But the performance of the #clotshot isn’t the point:  the mandate to take a vaccination to be employed is.  I haven’t had a flu shot, well, ever.  The last shot I had was a tetanus vaccine.  Since my jaw didn’t lock up, well, I’m calling that a win.

But many people have an issue with taking the ‘Rona Roids.  The reasons vary.  And just like the performance of not-vax, it doesn’t matter.  The people who don’t want to take it, won’t.  Many of them will quit their jobs prior to injecting an experimental mRNA therapy with completely unknown long-term side effects.

Recently, Jojo Biden and his Dementia Support Brigade have mandated injections for millions of people under Federal control.  What happens to them if they don’t take it?  Presumably, they lose their jobs.  Or are drummed out of the military.  Or?

This seems to have created a cascade of employers who are following suit by mandating the shot for their employees.  Wal-Mart® surprised me.  Google™ didn’t.

I hear Jesus was kicked out of PrayPal®.

The choice is a stark one, especially for people with families to feed and careers on the line.  Enforcement isn’t a troop of Feds showing up at 3AM.  Enforcement is that no person may conduct business or hold a job without this mark pass.

I wonder what would have been said in previous years?

“You bring the crowns and heads of conquered kings to my city steps. You insult my queen. You threaten my people with slavery and death. Oh, I’ve chosen my words carefully, Persian. Perhaps you should have done the same.” – 300

How would Biden respond?

Fine.  Remember this:

LINKS

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


Film At Eleven

 

ICONIC: A Sidewalk, A Flag, And A Kid: https://twitter.com/ElijahSchaffer/status/1413249064796295168

Trash Day: https://twitter.com/ArtValley818_/status/1412951184885927936

Target Practice: https://twitter.com/i/status/1412856549094137862

Convenience Store: https://videos.dailymail.co.uk/video/mol/2021/07/16/8719229530266291657/640x360_MP4_8719229530266291657.mp4

Taxi Cab: https://twitter.com/i/status/1416616891385274370

Block Party: https://youtu.be/tVxxhxcd2sc

American Marxism Interview (Long but good): https://youtu.be/X6wZN5NTECY

Two-Reason Biden: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3TKuiaGTcso

The Old Man And Across The Sea: https://youtu.be/o3q9j3pif1k

Just standin’ around and bam: https://twitter.com/i/status/1423644882879582210

 

Rock The Vote

 

https://uncoverdc.com/2021/07/13/stunning-new-claims-georgia-election-riddled-with-provable-fraud/

https://voterga.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Press-Release-New-Evidence-Reveals-Georgia-Audit-Fraud-and-Massive-Errors.pdf

https://redstate.com/stu-in-sd/2021/07/26/2020-election-another-look-at-arizona-election-numbers-n416274

https://www.wpr.org/audit-vote-rally-draws-thousands-wisconsin-capitol

https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2021/07/07/pennsylvania-prepares-arizona-style-election-audit-as-lawmaker-demands-counties-turn-over-voting-equipment/?sh=459b8ed735cf

https://uncoverdc.com/2021/07/15/deperno-persists-forensic-audit-in-michigan-a-must/

 

Bad Here

 

https://newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/pj-gladnick/2021/07/21/pbs-star-ken-burns-says-now-worse-civil-war

https://torrancestephensphd.substack.com/p/black-america-is-a-fatherless-child

https://news.gallup.com/poll/352457/ratings-black-white-relations-new-low.aspx

https://jonathanturley.org/2021/07/16/let-them-die-fairfax-pta-and-naacp-officer-calls-for-the-death-of-who-oppose-crt-to-die/

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/mass-shootings-could-be-course-record-year-us-transforms-violent-mess

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/deathsdrug.png?itok=jeoKgvp-

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/now-they-are-saying-that-the-republican-party-is-the-1-national-security-threat-to-the-united-states-of-america/

https://www.thedailybell.com/all-articles/news-analysis/confidence-in-institutions-falls-support-for-secession-rises/

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2021-07-09/split-first-then-civil-war

https://www.mediaite.com/politics/shock-poll-two-in-three-southern-republicans-want-to-secede-from-the-united-states/

https://www.theepochtimes.com/secessionist-border-realignment-movements-gaining-traction-in-us_3910646.html?utm_source=partner&utm_campaign=ZeroHedge

 

Worse There

 

https://www.thecountersignal.com/news/45-churches-attacked

https://www.baltimoresun.com/featured/ct-aud-nyt-mexico-fresnillo-20210803-b447rgfxsjhhhg7nlqugcloovi-story.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9864847/Taliban-executed-900-people-Islamists-overran-Kandahar.html

https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/its-war-zone-south-africa-deploy-25000-troops-country-brink-civil-war

 

Coming Attractions

https://buchanan.org/blog/is-biden-really-the-lincoln-of-our-time-149819

https://saraacarter.com/nunes-john-durham-report-is-coming-some-people-will-go-to-prison/

https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/fbi-encourages-citizens-to-snitch-on-family-members-for-extremism/

https://unherd.com/2021/08/america-is-turning-into-the-soviet-union/

https://amgreatness.com/2021/07/16/welcome-to-the-brave-new-america/

https://consentfactory.org/2021/07/19/the-propaganda-war-and-how-to-fight-it/

The Jab: What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

“And he wasn’t alone. He had close to a thousand followers when he died. They conducted rituals up on the roof, bizarre rituals intended to bring about the end of the world. And now it looks like it may actually happen.” – Ghostbusters

I guess that makes my wife Mrs. Doubtpfizer.

Disclaimer: Humor writer, not a doctor. But I’m a humor writer that likes to look at the worst-case scenarios because someone has to know that “I’m sorry” and “I apologize” don’t always mean the same thing, especially at a funeral.

One of the more disturbing things about the trajectory of the panic-response-panic model that we’ve seen in the last year about the ‘Rona has been the nearly complete abandonment of the idea of impartial science. Oh, sure, we knew that scientists could be bought, and in most cases, they’re cheaper than congressmen. Scientists can be bought for a shrimp cocktail. To buy a congressman, you have to spring for the bacon-wrapped shrimp.

When you look at the data from only eight months ago, the University of Pennsylvania, actual scientists that were presumably not under the influence of shrimp came to this conclusion (LINK):

Pay attention to the phrase, “No large trials of any (emphasis added) mRNA vaccine have been completed yet.”

Any.

This is a first attempt at ever using this technology, and the decision was made that, “Hey, sounds good, let’s do it. What could go wrong?”

This sounds suspiciously like the reasoning I used with my first marriage, so, on its face, this is the same logic used by amorous 20-year-olds. I wonder: were they playing beer pong when they made the decision?

So, what could go wrong?

I’ll start with the least scary and move to the scariest ones. To be fair, the least scary are the impacts that are the most likely, and in some cases, they are certainly happy. Data, however, is murky. Congress voted to keep the report on the origin of the virus classified, so I’m not holding my breath that any information counter to the official narrative will be seeing daylight anytime soon.

Heart Attacks In Healthy Young People – As far as I can tell, this is 100% confirmed. How often is it happening? Difficult to say. This is, however, often enough that I think it is clear that with the death rate from COVID for young, healthy people is lower than the risk that they have of driving to school.

How low?

If you have been documented to have COVID, the death rate is in the range of 1 out of 100,000. Since it’s my theory that between one-half and two-thirds of ‘Rona infections in kids aren’t ever officially reported, that rate is probably closer to (conservatively) 1 out of 300,000. Translation: rub some dirt on it, you’re fine.

How frequent are the heart attacks induced by the jab? Don’t know. And with data and reporting being what they are today, we might not know for a decade, if ever.

That’s okay. No pharmaceutical company has any liability, so you don’t have to worry about the CEO losing his bonus.

I hear that Mountain Dew® is coming out with a new flavor for heart attack victims: Code Blue®.

You know it’s going to be a grim list when Widespread Sterility is the second-best case scenario. This one is still speculative, and there’s evidence for it. I’m stunned, really, that pregnant women were encouraged to get the “jab”, because when The Mrs. was preggers I was pretty sure the doctor wasn’t convinced that eating one Cheeto® a month was safe for pregnant women.

But here we are. I haven’t heard of a lack of babies being born, though I’ve heard of more than one post-jab miscarriage. Again I ask the question: why would young, healthy people be taking this, especially after (again, anecdotal) evidence that the spike protein seems to concentrate in the reproductive bits?

Breakthrough and Jabbed Becoming Superspreading Virus Factories is happening right now. This one is, of course, the most ironic. It does (again, at least anecdotally) appear that the death rate due to the ‘Rona is somewhat lower if the person is jabbed. But if it doesn’t stop a person from getting or spreading ‘Rona, all it does is act as a treatment against future cases? Again, the only trial data we’ll ever get from Pfizer™ stated that 14 people with the control died, and 15 people with the Pfizer© science juice died.

Because that’s how you know it’s working.

But apparently I need to get jabbed so the jabbed won’t get the ‘Rona from me even though they can get ‘Rona and are much better at spreading it because they show fewer symptoms? This ranks higher because, more superspreaders? More mutations.

Clotting/COVID Spike Protein Runaway is a scenario that has been seen, well, at least the clotting part. There’s a reason they called the Johnson & Johnson™ jab the #clotshot. According to one panel of doctors (it was on YouTube®, so take it with however many grains of salt you’d like), the spike protein is the problem. Originally it was the solution, because that’s what the mRNA shot did: make a person’s cells produce the spike protein so that the immune system could recognize it.

This doctor’s theory was the protein wanders down through the bloodstream where it damages the blood vessel walls in the capillaries, the smallest section. This causes clotting, and I don’t think it is disputed that this caused several deaths and several amputations because of the clots as directly caused by the jab.

This doctor went further, however. He maintained this clotting would spread since there seems to be ample continual production of the spike protein. His prognosis? Everyone who had the spike protein-inducing shot would die of heart failure in two or three years due to cumulative damage. Everyone who took the shot.

I rate this one as pretty bad – civilization-ending, in fact if there are billions of corpses to deal with in two years. But I also rank this as pretty unlikely.

I hope.

As bad as all of that is, there are three more horror stories waiting. Lucky you!

I don’t think COVID was made in China – we’ve had it 18 months and it’s still working.

The next is Antibody Dependent Enhancement (ADE). The short version is that in this situation (which really happens, though rarely) the candidate vaccine appears to create antibodies that would protect against the disease. Good news!

But not really. In this case, the antibodies actually make it easier for the virus to get into the cell. So, if when you get the virus you were inoculated against in the first place, it will kill you. Yup. In this case, the virus actually makes the disease deadlier. I’m hoping that this wave of the ‘Rona run isn’t ADE showing up.

I don’t think that it is, or I think we would have seen a very significant death wave among the jabbed, one so big it would be difficult to hide.

Marek’s Disease is the next case. A “leaky” vaccine was created for chickens to vaccinate them against Marek’s Disease, which totally sounds like it was named after a Star Trek® character. The chickens could catch the disease, and the vaccine was just good enough to keep them from dying from it.

Good news, right? Well, no. Because the vaccine allowed them to be super-spreaders. The virus kept mutating until it was absolutely fatal to chickens. Now, most chickens have it, and spread it. Unless a baby chick (that’s around other chickens) is vaccinated, it will die. Chickens as we know them are dependent upon having this vaccine.

If the “jabs” we have against COVID are similar, we might see exactly what we’re seeing now: people who were jabbed having the virus and incubating it and spreading it and making it more and more dangerous. Under the worst-case scenario, the virus would mutate into a universally lethal form, and we’d all have to take some future version of the jab.

Or die. As a species.

That would be a big oops. Again, unlikely, but it does meet the patterns we’ve been seeing. But the worst case is the next one.

To get to the other . . . oh, wait . . .

The Spike is a Prion prions are misfolded proteins. A perfect example of this is mad cow disease: a misfolded protein makes it into the brain and causes a chain reaction with other brain proteins. Eventually, when a person catches mad cow disease, a human brain becomes spongier than Joe Biden’s.

The scary part about prions is, even though they aren’t alive, they can spread and replicate in the body like they are alive. So, in this case, the spike protein would eventually cause some horrible jab-zombie end to mankind.

Thankfully, the prion theory looks to be the silliest and least likely scenario. But all of these scenarios, however, are showing up because the information is so very, very bad. I included the clip from the University of Pennsylvania study because it is honest. It shows what we know, and what we don’t know. There isn’t the lingering smell of corruption and shrimp anywhere in the document.

I got kicked out of the zoo for feeding the ducks . . . to the crocodiles. Those crocodiles sure will miss me.

With any luck we won’t see horrible health consequences from the jab. The biggest casualties right now appear to be any lingering trust we had in Big Science, our economy, the concept of private property, any restraint on government edicts whatsoever, and the illusion that we had freedom to begin with.

But, remember – to buy a congressman you need bacon-wrapped shrimp. I mean, they can be bought, but they don’t want you to think they’re cheap.

Propaganda Attack: The Wilder Experience (Plus Bikini Ending)

“PBS, the propaganda wing of Bill and Melinda Gates.” – The Office

I used to advertise that I catered to midgets, but the market was too small.

A curious thing happened last week.  For the most part, I think most of the people who comment and interact with me are pretty much what they seem.  I’ve had a few direct messages (email and whatnot) that seemed to be right out of the “FBI funds plot paid for by FBI and planned by FBI with equipment provided by FBI” files.  I told them point-blank that I assumed anyone sending me emails of that type were FBI and . . . they stopped sending me emails.

Huh.  That was weirdly easy.

Then there are the people commenting for commercial purposes to promote their own websites.  You can always spot those – the comments have nothing to do with the post, and are often some sort of cut and paste word salad.  If those make it through the spam filter I let the comments stay up, but don’t interact with them.

 

Does anyone answer their e-mails?

Moscow Rules (no coincidences) would indicate that, at least several times, I’ve managed to irritate someone enough to knock the site off the net.  With over 1,000 days of (more or less) continuous uptime, to get knocked off twice in one month probably indicates I’ve irritated the Junior Antifa® LGBT Programmer Alliance™ enough that they script-kiddied the place.

But last week’s COVIDIOCRACY post was enough to ratchet up the attention, I guess.

I’m not sure how the comment/spam filter works.  Probably programmers howl at a moonlit sky and throw Dungeons and Dragons™ dice until they level up their dwarf.  In reality, the programmers do choose parameters of known spam and then place those comments in a bin until people like me decide if they’re real or not.

The first comment to pop up, relatively early in the post was this one:

I’ll note a few things:  the name, “labrat” was chosen to give the impression that the person is engaged in science on a regular basis.  It’s not bad, really.

The first paragraph was intended to be fawning (entertaining) but also an attempt to discredit my credentials.  In reality, I have cheerfully acknowledged every error found in the blog, but there aren’t all that many, even when I calculated the mass of anti-PEZ® required for near light-speed travel.

The idea, coupled with the name, was to convey legitimacy to them, while removing legitimacy from the post for the casual reader.

The rest of the post is a word salad that’s attempting to:

  • Toss a claim that Dr. Malone didn’t invent the mRNA vaccine. Well, he didn’t, but it looks like he had a very significant role in the development of the technology (LINK).  I’ll let others sort that out.  Is he a crackpot?  Don’t know.  Didn’t say so, either way.  Regardless, I’m sure Malone knows more than “labrat”.
  • Say that viruses mutate.
  • Indicates that new data means new approaches. Like, lockdown (what number is this, three?) and I kid you not – the CDC® just said, “two more weeks” to stop the spread.

But then, just an hour later, this comment showed up to be moderated:

It’s . . . the same post.  But now it’s “hank”, which makes me think of either Bocephus or Hank Hill:

I guess all your rowdy friends can be there on Monday Night if you don’t criticize Barak Obama.

Under a different guise, “j-lab” started commenting on random posts.  Same quotes.

Then, another one.  Why this one?  I think it was a hello from the bot-master.  On another website I called him out as being up and active during the time businesses would be open from India to the Eastern Mediterranean.  His comment, “Namaste!”

And, finally, these two from the last 12 hours.

I bet those people are fun at parties.

I backtracked the I.P. addresses from the comments.  Just to let you know, I never do that with average comments.  Frankly, I’m just not interested where most people are posting from, I’m just glad you’re here.  But I did backtrack these.  Where did the comments come from?  Atlanta, Georgia.  Canada.  Japan.

They didn’t really come from those places.  All of the comments came from a proxy.  Those locations were just where it popped out into the “trackable” Internet.  It would likely be trivial for fed.GOV to track them, but for me, that’s where the rabbit hole ends.

But it’s enough.

The end result is simple.  I write about the coming Civil War?  Yawn.  I write about forced inoculations of experimental mRNA technology that appears to have little to no actual beneficial use.  What?  What do you mean?

In the Pfizer trials, there were 15 deaths from mRNA injected folks.  There were 14 deaths in the control group.

No.

Beneficial.

Effects.

The “jab” might have horrific implications for humanity.  I’ll probably hit some nightmare-level (and very low probability events) on Friday’s post.  Again, it’s very possible that the #clotshot might only hurt a few tens of thousands of people, and not be some sort of dystopian science fiction movie backstory.  Vaccines have been pulled for much less harm than has been reasonably attributed to the mRNA shot:

Before swine flu met Jesus it was swater flu.

So why push it so hard?  I’m not sure.  Governmental power?  Pharmaceutical profits?  Covering their tracks by removing the “control group”?

Regardless, all of the power, profit, and cover-up goes away with one simple trick:

The Best Post You’ll Read About COVID This Week: COVIDIOCRACY (with bikini ending)

“Quite frankly, we have had some very reliable intelligence reports that quite a serious epidemic has broken out at Clavius, something apparently of an unknown origin. Is this in fact what has happened?” – 2001:  A Space Odyssey

I’m not against all Gene therapy.

Note 1:  none of the memes for this post are original (most all of my regular post memes are), these are “as found” on the Internet.  I don’t think that there are any major inaccuracies, but, as always, engage in critical thinking.

Note 2:  this isn’t medical or life advice.  You have to assess your own situation and make your own choices. 

I was wandering through the Internet this week when this little gem of information caught my eye:

When I caught a bacterial infection, the doctor told me I was a man of culture.

The “jab” (which is not a vaccine, more on that in a bit) had proven not to decrease the rate of infection.  Nope.  The #clotshot looks like it turns those that have taken it into super-spreaders.  They have the ability, if infected, to spread even more of the disease to other people.

Think about that for just a second:  the “vaccinated” are very likely making the “normal DNA” population less safe.  It’s a paradox.  But at least they don’t get it themselves, right?  Well, in the immortal words of Aesop:  natzsofast . . . .

So, this gives a whole new meaning to Royal Navy “carrier”.  Something tells me they should have seen this one coming.

It has become abundantly clear that the “jab” is (at best) only moderately effective.  I have had the ‘Rona.  The Mrs. tested positive for the antibodies, and when she was sick she was helpfully coughing directly on me all night.  It’s not as bad as licking a doorknob at a bathroom hobos use, but it’s close.

The symptoms for me were mild.  A bit of a coof, and a fever of around 99°F for about four hours.  For The Mrs.?  Worse, but not the sickest I’ve ever seen her.

For me, a fever of 99°F is something that happens about once a decade, at most.  I last took a sick day in 2001 or so, so I’ve generally been fairly healthy.  The flu in 2012 was much, much worse for me, but that’s only because I let it get in my lungs.  I guess it was swine flu, so I should have had some oinkment.

Blofeld:  “Mr. Bond, I’ve poisoned your glass with the measles vaccine.  Now you have autism.”  Bond:  “That’s fine, Blofeld, I’ve disassembled your doomsday device and organized the parts by size.”

CORONA is real.  But when you look at the statistics, it is a disease that simply doesn’t hurt young people.   By young, I mean less than 40.  So, when I see Internet harpies screeching that they don’t want their kids to DIE!!! because of selfish “unvaxxed”, what I see are people who probably dress their precious snowflake up in bubble wrap before they are allowed to go play in a playground that has been designed by dozens of engineers over thousands of hours to be safe in any conceivable circumstances.

And then they insist to replace the ground under the safe playground equipment with crushed rubber pellets that would safely allow Jeff Bezos to land on them if he jumped from orbit.

Oops, sorry.  Jeff Bezos hasn’t been to orbit.

But the statistics are clear:  your kid is safe, at least from COVID-19.

Never get involved with a cult of mimes.  They’re capable of unspeakable acts of violence.

Here at the end of July, 2021, though, the drumbeat of COVIDIOCRACY has reached a new high.  I was over at Phil’s place (LINK) and made a comment.  The comment was about the coming mandate to force everyone to get “the jab” or lose their government job.  This was the wife of a .GOV employee or contractor.  She asked me what she should do.  My response was simple – without knowing lots of intimate details of her life, there was no way I could answer.

When you don’t need a prion disease to have your brain turn into sponge.

Nearly immediately, my response was jumped on by a shill – obviously a paid propagandist.  It was interesting that the only hours they were posting were when it was 8:30AM in India to when it was about 6PM in India.  I’m not saying it was India.  It could have been someone really late to the office in China or really early to the office in the eastern Mediterranean.

Phil had attracted paid foreign agents to his site to pop up propaganda.  Propaganda for the “jab”.  If it were good for you, wouldn’t that be self-evident by now?

Let’s look at the huge push on the “vax”:

  • Coordinated media attacks to encourage it.
  • Pedo Joe announcing that he’s going to make Fed.GOV take the shot.
  • Coordinated attacks by shills on influential blogs and /message boards/.

Sure, you could say that it’s all about Pfizer’s® Pfrofits™, but it’s only a few measly billion that they made this quarter.  That’s not to say that Pfizer© isn’t Pcorruptly® attempting to manipulate the media:

The vaccine, though, might be dangerous.  I was talking with a friend and described it as “an untested genetic manipulation.”  He said that was too strong, and it sounded kinda crazy to say it that way.  Honestly, that was a fair criticism, and I especially appreciate those:  it’s a good friend that tells you when they think you’re nuts.  But:

My gut instinct might have been right.  DNA changes?  That can’t have any bad impacts, can it?

I guess it can.  And this is where the #clotshot becomes a crime.  Any healthy person under 40 is much more likely to die of the mRNA treatment than COVID.  There has been quite a run on heart attacks of healthy young men who were injected.

But even after this, the push for the injection is intensifying:

2

But why would you trust a government and a media that has consistently lied to you about the ‘Rona?

And they’ve completely expressed how they feel about anyone who has a different opinion:

Certainly, they’ll return your freedom to you after COVID is banished, right?

Be Goofus, not Gallant.

The Mrs. and I have discussed it.  We are not getting the #clotshot.  If this is an experiment, we’ll happily remain in the control group.  I’ve had the ‘Rona, so I identify as immune.

But, in the end, you have a choice.  You can submit to have a literally Biblical restriction on your life,

Or, you can take another track.  If enough people choose freedom, we’ll never have to worry for a minute.  You must remember – they’re more afraid of you than you should be of them.

See, it ends with a bikini!

Censorship: It’s Not Just For Government Anymore

“The Constitution? I’m pretty sure the Patriot Act killed it to ensure our freedoms.” – The Simpsons

When you do push-ups, are you just bench-pressing the Earth?

The First Amendment to the Constitution was pretty important to the Framers.  That’s why they put it first.  Duh.  In a move that I think would irritate the Framers, this one has been pretty twisted over time.

Like any of the Amendments, when it twists, it’s twisted Leftward.  I’ll give an unrelated example. Abortion was made to be legal by somehow twisting the Ninth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution:

Ninth:  The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Fourteenth:  . . . nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

In reality, the Ninth Amendment is probably one of the most ignored Amendments.  Why?  Because government wants power, and people having rights is the opposite of state power.  But under the logic of Rowe v. Wade I should be smoke all the crack I want to and not be arrested.  Oh, wait, Hunter Biden already did that . . . .

Okay, I didn’t have a great tag line, but I have a second meme:

The First Amendment packs a big punch, it secures the rights of American citizens for a whole bundle of things, but the one I’m focusing on today is that the government can’t abridge the rights of people to speak freely.  You know, share ideas?

Leftists used to be all-in on the First Amendment.  They used it to weasel in Marxist concepts into schools and other institutions.  People on the Right ignored them.  For (what they thought) was a good reason:  every person with common sense could easily see that Leftism didn’t work.  Besides, they had to go to work and not argue with smelly Leftist college hippies.

So, Leftism crept in, and eventually took over institution after institution, as we’ve talked about before.  The response of the Right was always the same, “Oh, we lost colleges?  College kids!  They’re so fickle.  They’ll come around when they get older.”

What’s the name of the statue in the Temple of Regret:  the Coulda Would Buddha. 

That’s a shortsighted argument.  Where do teachers come from?  Oh, yeah, colleges.  Who do teachers have access to?  Oh, yeah, all the kids.

One thing that has been shown throughout history, however, is that the soft lies and false promises of Leftism are mainly only useful against weak, wishful, and self-hating minds.  The rise of talk radio after the end of the Fairness Doctrine and the prompt failure of nearly all Leftist radio hosts proves the point:  they can’t win in a fair fight of ideas.

So, what should the Left do after taking over the various institutions in the United States?

Pull up the ladder.

Get rid of free speech.

But there’s that pesky First Amendment.  What can you do?

What does free speech online and the square root of -1 have in common?  They’re both imaginary.

The answer in 2021 is rather simple:  use private companies to stifle speech that the Left disagrees with.

If I were to travel back to 2000 and tell myself that in 2021 we’d see:

  • A sitting President would be censored from the Internet,
  • Private companies would create systems to track your every move,
  • Google® (2000: Don’t Be Evil®) would suppress ideas, and
  • Differing opinions would be branded as false
  • The government would openly lie . . . oh, wait, they always do that.

I’d think that we were living in some sort of dystopia.

The Left always sold dystopias with these sorts of characteristics as the result of a religious-Right dictatorship.  But, no.  This is entirely Leftist.

The most recent example is the White House has “reached out” to Facebook® to have them censor content about COVID-19®.  I would like to point out that time after time after time, the “official” narrative has been wrong.

I got an email saying I got a job at Facebook.  No interview, they had all my details.

Horribly wrong.  Remember the videos of those people dropping dead in China?  Remember the videos of the apartment doors being welded shut like some kind of intro to a zombie movie?  Seem silly now?

Yeah.  Remember the “don’t wear masks” leading to “wear masks” to “maybe wear two or three masks”?  Yeah, me too.

It’s obvious that the one thing missing during the entire ‘Rona event has been good information.  Every bit of it has been bleached, sanitized, and become subject to partisan polarization.

But “CDC Accepted Facts®” have been proven wrong again and again.  So, why is sharing an opinion that differs from the Currently Accepted Truth™ subject to censorship?  Because it is clear that Leftists are quite willing to shut down meaningful conversation in this country when it goes against whatever it is that they believe today.

That’s the plan.  The plan is not just for COVID-19©, but for every fact, forever.  And the “fact checkers” are people who hate the Right with every fiber of their being.  Just go to Hunter Biden’s Wikipedia® page, and do a search for “laptop.”  One entry.  No mention of, you know, the pictures of him zonked out smoking crack.

That’s another form of censorship, one Winston Smith would be proud of.  And, sure, Wikipedia© isn’t the government, and Facebook™ could ignore it when the President asks them to effectively censor people the government doesn’t like.  It’s okay when a private company does it, right?

The Constitution isn’t magic.  The only way that it works is if people actually demand that the government follow it.  If not?  Bit by bit it will be twisted into (sometimes) the opposite of what it says, in plain language.

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

There isn’t anything magical about the Supreme Court, and nothing in the Constitution gives them the right to be the ultimate decision makers as to what it means.  It was written in plain language for people like you and me.  Thomas Jefferson felt that every branch of the government was co-equal in being able to decide that an act of government was un-Constitutional.

Not saying that I’m the expert, but I think Thomas Jefferson just might have been in the room when some of the important decisions were being made.

The Constitution is a piece of paper, but it’s also a contract, a contract among men for the way that they will be governed.  I’d add that the ultimate decision makers on the Constitution aren’t the Supreme Court, but the Several States, and, ultimately, the People.

And that’s what scares the Left.  If they have to shut the People up, it’s because they’re scared.

Which is just what the Framers expected.

Cathedrals, Buzz Aldrin, And Changing The World

“You know, most people think that the name Buzz Aldrin has some huge meaning behind it.  Nope, he was afraid of bees.” – Frasier

What’s the difference between Joe Biden and Buzz Aldrin?  Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon.  Joe Biden likes kids to rub his leg hair.

I think back to the builders of the European cathedrals.  The construction of Notre Dame was started in 1163 A.D., not long after the Norman Conquest of England.  Notre Dame was finished in 1345 A.D.

182 years.  I might not even live that long, and I take vitamins and eat only a diet of meat that I hunt half-naked while armed only with stone-tipped spears.  The people in Wal-Mart® have gotten a bit tired of the spears, but it doesn’t technically violate their weapons policy.  And I use a Visa™ to pay, though they make a “eeeew” face when I pull it from my fur loincloth on a sweaty summer day.

Think about that.  NO!  Not my sweaty fur loincloth, the cathedral.  Think about the motivation that it requires to get up every morning when the thing you’re trying to accomplish won’t be done in your lifetime.  Or the lifetime of your child.  Or the lifetime of their children.

That requires motivation.  Also, I have no idea what they used for alarm clocks, and their humor-blogging infrastructure appeared to be singing marginally naughty songs about the local barmaid and complaining about how French they were and how they hoped the Germans would never invent panzers.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame sure had a twisted back story.

Motivation, though, remains key in everything you do in life, even if you’re not building a cathedral.  One motivational mistake is to aim too high.  When someone aims too high, they run the risk of being disappointed by results.

As I’ve discussed with one of my friends, he noted that research shows the most happy people in the Olympics®, overall, are the bronze medal winners.  Third place isn’t so bad.  Since I heard that the intelligence of dolphins was second only to man, that means Leftists should be happy, being in third place and all.

For the bronze medal winners, well, here they are on the world stage.  They did really well.  Were they close to winning it all?  Sure, close enough to get a bronze medal.  But, there’s the guy over there with the silver medal, so, he and another guy were better.

Most bronze medal winners can be happy that if they’d been just a little bit better, they’d have been in . . . second place.  If they’d worked a lot harder, they’d have still been only one place better.  So, third isn’t so bad.  They might even get the Junior High Marching Band to lead a parade when they get home.

The silver medal winner, though, will always have it eating on him:  what if he hadn’t skipped practice that week?  What if he had pushed a little harder in the weight room?  The silver medalist is plagued with a bushel basket of “what if’s” that will wake him up in the middle of the night.  Second place is tantalizing.  It is the story of near success, like England’s soccer team.

Helen Keller never saw a movie about pirates.  Because she’s dead.

The gold medalist?  It depends.  In many cases, Olympic™ level athletes work for two decades to get the skill and experience to win Olympic® gold, to be, literally, the best in the world at something that no one will pay them to do.

Sure winning’s great, right?  But what happens when the dog finally catches the car?  What then?

Let’s move sideways a bit more, and return to one of my favorite people in history:  Buzz Aldrin.  It will all make sense in the end.  I’m a trained professional.

Buzz was a guy who did a lot of things that were world-class.  He went to the USMA at West Point.  He was a fighter pilot who shot down commies in Korea, but still didn’t get to kill as many commies as Mao or Stalin did.  He got a doctorate from MIT on rocket navigation.

And one other thing.  What was it?

Oh, yeah.  He was the second man on the frigging Moon.

That’s really cool.  But there appears to be a downside to that.  It wasn’t a just something small and fleeting like an Olympic® gold medal, it was one of the ultimate gold medals in all of human history.

Ever.

How do you follow that up?  Get a Denny’s® Franchisee Award for cleanest bathroom in Des Moines?

I hear Santa’s bathroom is clean because he uses Comet.

Neil Armstrong figured out how to follow it up.  That man was always kind of spooky and Zen and perhaps was okay owning a Denny’s© in Des Moines, selling Moons over My Hammies™ and Rootie Tootie Fresh and Fruity® pancakes.

Buzz didn’t figure it out, probably because his work in physics and killing commies did not prepare him to make a decent pancake.  Imagine:  Buzz was 39 and there was literally no way his life hadn’t peaked.  Nothing, and I mean nothing he could ever do again would match up to what he did.

First a week passes.  Then a month passes.  Then a year passes.  The hollow feeling inside of Buzz grew.  How do you move forward?  How do you top yourself?  I mean, you could make a really great pancake, but it would have to be the best pancake in the history of pancakes.  Dang.  That still doesn’t beat being on the frigging Moon.

He was stumped.  He had fame.  He had the ability to get whatever money he wanted, more or less.

But he had peaked.

What to do?

Buzz crawled into a bottle.  Eventually, after leaving the Air Force, Buzz even spent time selling used cars.  Sure, that worked for Kurt Russell in the 1980 film, but Buzz was awful at it.

What’s the difference between a used car salesman and a COVID-Jab advocate?  The used car salesman knows when he’s lying.

As near as I can tell, Mr. Aldrin finally pulled himself out of his funk.  He finally decided his place was being an advocate for manned spaceflight, specifically to Mars.  He even helped to create a transfer orbit to make a trip to Mars the most time-effective that he could envision.  You could say that Buzz figured out the gravity of the situation.

That more than anything, I think, helped him.  Buzz found something that was so big, so important, that he knew he wasn’t going to be able to do it in his lifetime.

Mars.  A worthy goal for mankind.  A goal that is meant for brave dreamers, for people who might want to change humanity.  He had found his cathedral.

Again.  Buzz had already done it once.

Mr. Aldrin is an unusual case – one of the highest achievers in a generation of high achievers.  Many mornings I’m just glad that the alarm managed to wake me up.  But I’ve had my share of success in the business world, reaching as high as I ever really wanted to go, doing the one job I wanted to do.

When Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Mike Collins went to meet President Nixon after the Moon mission, Mike had to spend the entire time driving around the White House.

Where Buzz aimed high, perhaps I didn’t aim as high, but I still got there.

Then what?

My writing is a part of that.  Where do you go when you have whatever you want?

You find something important, and you start building.  You start building something more important than you.  I think Neil Armstrong found that when he started teaching.  Perhaps he got his satisfaction from helping the next generation learn.

I can’t be sure.  Neil didn’t really say.  He seemed happy that the attention had passed.  My Apollo-gies if I got that wrong.  And this isn’t about him, anyway.

The lesson I learned from Buzz was a simple one:  have a goal.

Find a cathedral to build.  Find something so much bigger than yourself that you’re willing to build it even though no one alive on Earth will ever see it through.  Make it something that you can care about.  Make it big enough that, at best, you can help build only part of it.

If you can find your cathedral, you will have the rarest of gifts:  you will shape the future.

Remember, not all cathedrals are made with stones, and the best ones are built in the minds of men.

Why?

Because rent is cheaper there.

Critical Race Theory: Another Communist Game

“Jack has got to find the Override before the rest of these reactors go critical! – 24

My math teacher used a lot of graph paper.  I think she was plotting something.

The education of children has to be the imperative of a culture.  Why?  That education forms their perspective on the past.  That perspective gives a view of what works, and what doesn’t work.  It also must account for the stories of virtue and villainy.

Who are the bad guys of the culture?  Who are the good guys from the culture?  To a student, it matters.  The myth of George Washington was important – here was a man who voluntarily let go of power – twice.  And we all know why George’s dad didn’t punish him for chopping down the cherry tree:  George had an ax.

This education comes from more than the schools.  It also comes in the form of the messages that our children receive as they grow up.  It’s embedded in the cartoons they watch.  It’s in the television and videos they watch.  Why do people say there is no American culture?  They’re soaking in it.

A primary objective of every tyranny that has ever existed is to indoctrinate the youth.  Back before television and radio, it took a lot of local effort.  Unless the Church was on your side, it probably would be difficult to keep the message tight.  Marxists fought this by eliminating the Church.

Ever hear of the ghost that got arrested for possession?

As a young Wilder, the culture I was exposed to was one of what I’d call “standard postwar liberalism.”  No, Pa and Ma Wilder weren’t Leftists, at all.  But between 1950 and 1990 or so, most people were liberal in one sense or another.  I had to interview Pa Wilder for a school project, and asked his thoughts about marijuana legalization:

“Well, it’s awfully hard to criticize someone smoking marijuana with a bourbon in my hand.”

See, liberal, though I’d bet a month’s pay that Pa Wilder was never in the same room with a joint in his life.  But since that was a school project when I was in fifth grade, maybe that was part of my indoctrination, as well.  Hmmm.

I think Ma and Pa voted for Reagan, twice, but their philosophy was more of a conservative blend of libertarianism, which I think fit their time and place.  In reality, there wasn’t much difference between George H.W. Bush and Mike Dukakis.  Both were liberals, H.W. was just a liberal who had worked for the C.I.A.

I hope that Idaho never legalizes pot.  Think of all the baked potatoes.

Culture in that time and place was dominated by television.  And not only was it dominated by television, it was dominated by three networks:  ABC®, NBC™, and CBS©.  When it came to culture, they were all on the same page, the liberal one.  They even canceled the sitcom about Abe Lincoln – it was shot before a live studio audience.

That liberal culture that they put out on the airwaves, minute after minute, was the single most inclusive culture in the history of mankind.  The networks indoctrinated an entire generation of white kids into the least prejudiced generation of any people in the history of mankind.

Really.

That was my generation.  The indoctrination was so very deep that when we heard someone make a disparaging remark about another, we’d physically wince.  This indoctrination turned it from a rational thought to a matter of faith.

That was the key.  We were on board.  We really did believe in a country that was based in a sense of civic nationalism as the highest value.  To be fair, it’s a beautiful story, and if it were left at that, maybe, just maybe it might have worked.  Even though I’ve always been on the Right, I was on board.

When the UK left the EU they freed up 1 GB.

However, down in another level of indoctrination that was played out in communities different than mine, the message was likewise a different one:  the United States is inherently evil, racist, and (that community) were nothing more than victims.

What?  Who was spreading that message?

The Academy.  The Academy is the network of colleges and schools.  High school isn’t the end of indoctrination, college is the next step.

For example:  one kid that I went to high school with normally dressed like a serious nerd.  Button-up collared shirts and slacks.  The rest of us were in t-shirts and jeans, mostly.

I saw him at Christmas after we’d both been at college for the first semester.  He was wearing torn jeans, a green trench coat, a beret, and John Lennon sunglasses.  I think he got better.

That was after six months.  Yes, he went to a really, really Leftist school.  But his personality changed entirely after that.  A major source of indoctrination into Leftist dogma is at the colleges:  why do you think they invented degrees that have “studies” in the title?  I mean, it’s not (only) to get people that are unequipped to take real courses into spending $150,000 for a degree that will earn them a $23,000 a year job they could have had straight out of high school.

And the colleges indoctrinate the next professors.  Those professors in turn then indoctrinate the next school teacher, and the next youth pastor and the next youth baseball coach.

Hey, it’s all up on the Gonzaga® website.  Looks like the Academy takes care of its own.

For decades, the Academy has been teaching Critical Theory at schools.  Critical Theory is Marxist, and not the good Groucho kind.  The reason that Critical Theory was developed was because people in the United States in the 1920s weren’t (and aren’t) class conscious.  Commies tried to use the rich and poor divide to create revolution in the United States, and found something unusual:

Not only wasn’t the United States class conscious, many of the people that they could get to join labor unions were anti-communist.  That perplexed the Leftists, until they realized that most Americans thought that they could become rich.  The fixed idea of class that worked so well in Russia and China failed miserably in the United States.

What to do?  In this case, develop Critical Theory.  They did this because a certain former corporal kicked all of the commies out of a certain country, so instead of heading to Russia, they decided to infect the United States.  They called themselves the Frankfurt School.  DuckDuckGo® them if you’re bored.  You won’t be disappointed.

Critical Theory tries to use an assessment of history, society, and culture to challenge power structures as well as culture.  They use a tremendous number of nonsense academic-speak words in what they’re saying because it’s not really academics, it’s a cult.

Really, though, the goal was to find something, anything, to drive a wedge between the American people.  And, after trying and failing, the Frankfurt School found that wedge.

Race.

I got pulled over the other day for just trying to keep up with traffic.  The state patrolman said the road was clear.  “Yes, officer, that’s how far behind I am.”

Race has been the single most divisive topic in the United States, and the Academy is doing everything possible to pour pee in the PEZ® bowl of America.  Why?  The Soviets, who the Leftists that make up the Academy love, went bankrupt.

Next?  The Chinese embraced state-run capitalism combined with a Chinese nationalism that makes true Leftists cringe.  What to do?

Ahhh, yes, create enough racial tension to pull everything down.  Here, at last, they can finally create a true equality!

Critical Race Theory is one of the latest salvos intended to completely reconfigure the United States, if not the world.  Note that it’s just “Critical Theory” with Race tucked smartly in the middle.  It is nothing more than the early versions of this Marxist attack on Western Civilization in general, and the United States in particular, but using their most effective wedge:  race.

I’d say (if I were to guess) the best race relations ever seen in the history of the world were somewhere between 1990 and 2008 in the United States.  Barack Obama wasn’t elected as a racial wedge, but that’s exactly how he played his cards.  He had the unique opportunity to heal, but instead chose to rip the Band-Aid® off and then rub Madonna’s underwear on the healing wound.

Or more time with an iron.

Every place (and I mean every place) that I’ve worked where things went well, there wasn’t a sense of entitlement.  People worked hard, heck, sometimes competed to work harder.  It wasn’t about the money, it was about doing good work.  But one person can show up in a workplace and destroy that cohesion.

All they have to do is convince a few people that they’re being taken advantage of.  That people in another company have it better.  That they have a new enemy, the Man.  That’s what Critical Theory, and in this case, Critical Race Theory is all about.  Creating division.

It’s cloaked, like every Leftist lie is.  Leftists who write, teach, and indoctrinate using this nonsense are exactly the type of people who use phrases like, “My truth.”  They say that they’re doing nothing more than “telling the truth” which explains why they don’t want lessons or homework discussed with parents.

It’s about creating division.

What do you think reparations are?  A fight for division.  Understand, if reparations were set at $30,000 or $300,000 or $3,000,000 per person, the answer would be, “It’s not enough.”

It will never be enough because the goal isn’t goodwill toward men, it is division.

I guess women who vote for the Right are okay.  I always liked Republic-hens. (not my meme)

In my generation, the indoctrination was all some version of, “hey, we can all get along,” and if the goal was to get along they had gone very far.  But that was never the goal.  Division is first.

Then, destruction.  Followed by?  Suppression that would make Stalin jealous.  Then, they think, Power.

The Leftists must think they have won.  Critical Race Theory is the equivalent of surrounding the embassy in Saigon.  If we don’t push back, who will be left to educate?

And if we don’t push back, will there be room on that last chopper out?

Welcome To The Unravelling

“All we can do, Scully, is pull the thread. See what it unravels.” – The X-Files

I imagine the guy who decided to use Velcro™ on shoes said, “Why knot?”

Well, that struck a nerve.

I’m never sure when I hit “post” how what I’ve written will be taken.  Some of the things I’ve written that I’ve felt were really good don’t have much of an impact.  I’m not complaining – when I’ve finished writing a post it feels like my soul is a bit lighter – like I’ve accomplished something more than turn oxygen into carbon dioxide for the day.

One clue that a post will be popular is when the post appears to write itself.  That was the case with my last post.  When I finished, I was in bed two hours earlier than normal.  I normally go to sleep when the cows wander back into the field, because that’s pasture bedtime.

The reason, I think, that post was so popular is because I just had the good fortune to write what many other people were thinking.

This is because we’re unravelling.  We just don’t have words for it.  It’s not just as a nation, it appears to be all of Western Civilization.

What the media would have people believe is that there is a great, monolithic consensus.  Prior to the Internet, that might have been achievable.  There was only One Acceptable Opinion, and it was presented to you live, in living color on three networks.  The local paper (generally) also had some version or other of the One Acceptable Opinion.

Elvis Presley’s last big hit?  The bathroom floor.

That meant that stories could disappear from the public view fairly easily.  Ruby Ridge?  I heard of that story on a local talk radio station.  The person who was telling the story, honestly, sounded crazy.  Here they were talking about this crazy story of a man being framed and then Federal agents killing his family.

The guy really did sound crazy.  Here he was, telling a story that I hadn’t heard of.

Crazy.  It sounded like a conspiracy theory.

The government used to be considered a trustworthy source by, well, everyone.  Looking back, I’m pretty certain the government never did tell us the Truth.  But the important thing was everyone believed the One Acceptable Opinion.

After her boyfriend went missing in the forest, what conspiracy did Barbie® believe in?  Kentrails.

Oh, sure, there were failures now and then.  When Tail Gunner Joe pointed out, rightly, that the State Department and Hollywood® were filled with commies, people were upset.

Leftism was generally viewed as bad.  It was so obvious that Stalin was a bad guy that even the New York Times® couldn’t hide it, as they had swept the human cost of the Holodomor (In The World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold And Silver Medals) under the rug two decades earlier.

In the World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold and Silver!

The way the Left did that is they went to their normal playbook.  How do you trump logic and facts?  A plain appeal to emotion:

“Have you no sense of decency, Sir, at long last?” was how they went after Senator Joe McCarthy.  They tried to make his dogged pursuit of Leftism appear to be an unhinged attack against ghosts.

But McCarthy was . . . right.  After the fall of the Soviet Union, it was shown that Joe was right about the scope and scale of Soviet infiltration.  Where?  Everywhere Joe had said.  McCarthyism was just what you and I would call, “Telling the truth.”

Again, McCarthy was right.  Leftism had infiltrated the Federal government.  Stalin had better progress reports on the atomic bomb than those that were given to Truman.  There’s a reason we celebrate Juneteenth around my house.

Why did Julius and Ethel Rosenberg cross the road?  Because they were never on your side.  (meme: not original)

Leftism has burrowed inside of our country.  For decades.  When Reagan was shot we couldn’t watch it on TV.  There were no televisions in our classrooms.  But some teachers had radios and instead of listening to a lecture on social studies, we sat and listened to the news on a tinny AM radio.

Would President Reagan live?  No one knew.  All we knew was that he was in the hospital.

One kid, whose parents were Leftist professors at the local college, said, simply, “I hope he dies.  Maybe then the Senate will choose Ted Kennedy as Vice President.”

The split we see now isn’t new.  It’s been festering in our country for decades.

I could come up with example after example.  But if I were to try to create a scenario where people would be on each other like Karens on a manager, I couldn’t create a better scenario than what I see today:

  • Multiple cultures forced together in small spaces.
  • Actual propaganda presented as nightly news.
  • Dogs and cats, living together.
  • An Internet where people can check facts for themselves.
  • A demonization of the Culture that created the place.

My fat parrot just died after a long illness.  It’s a huge weight off my shoulder.

I actively don’t believe anything I hear anymore.  For months, Google®, Facebook™ and Twitter© would ban anyone who said that the ‘Rona came from a lab in China.

Ban.

Now, that’s the current One Acceptable Opinion.  The previous version has been tossed by a Winston Smith-type person into the memory hole.  But we remember.

And now we know that the entire “conspiracy theory” smear tactic was created, explicitly, so people wouldn’t ask questions.  Wonder what really happened to JFK?  Dunno.  There are still nearly 500,000 pages yet to be released.

Not words.  Pages.

I guess everyone knows how Kennedy died.  That one is a no-brainer. 

But does that really matter?  Kennedy is dead.  What really matters is that the Feds created the entire idea of mocking people who believed in anything other than the One Acceptable Opinion.  Think the COVID-19 mRNA treatment is as sketchy as sharing a needle with Johnny Depp?

You’re a conspiracy theorist.  You must not believe in sCiEncE!  There is One Acceptable Theory.  Anyone who disagrees is stupid or evil.

But now in 2021, we have the Internet.  In 1982, or in 1952 this might have worked.  The sheep would go back to grazing.

Now?

It’s just more energy to help the country unravel as the One Acceptable Theory is just like the famed Emperor Who Had No Clothes.

Is there anything left to unravel?

The Beauty Of The Red Pill

“Hey Samantha, don’t take the Red Pill!” – Grandma’s Boy

If my son wanted to be a fiction writer, I’d send him to college to study journalism.

Have you ever not asked a question because you already knew the answer, but were afraid to hear it?  I’m willing to bet we all have.  I try to leave occasional breadcrumbs here, especially during my Monday and Wednesday posts, but I’ve stopped short of leaving my posts in the forest near a witch’s house.  Besides, I hear Hillary has security guards.

The Truth is shocking.  Many times, the Truth isn’t pleasant.  I remember coming to one unpleasant Truth realization in college:  the college didn’t care if I did well or even if I graduated.

It hadn’t been like that in high school.  But in college?  I was just a number.  It sounds silly to me now, but back then it was quite a realization for me.  Gradually, more Truths started showing up in my life.  In many cases, I denied them as long as I could, but they eventually became inevitable.

They call this the Red Pill, after the scene in The Matrix where Keanu Reeves gets a job painting pills red.

Never let Morpheus do the cooking at a Matrix cast barbeque.  There’s a reason they call him Lawrence Fishburne.

Part of the problem with discovering Truth is that it can make you feel alone.  Much of our society is based on covering uncomfortable Truth with pretty little lies.  It has always been so, but in 2021 it’s at the very worst that it has been in the history of the United States.  People were censored a year ago for telling what are now the (generally) accepted theories about CoronaChan.

The Truth is that we still don’t know where it came from, but vary from any generally accepted truth about COVID on YouTube® and you’ll be censored.  Thankfully, YouTube™ is so committed to “truth” that they gave themselves an award for being so courageous about it.  Really – there isn’t even a punchline.

Here’s another Red Pill:  no one (and I mean no one) is coming to save you.  No one (and I mean no one) is responsible for your actions but you.  If you can’t save yourself, you’ll just have to depend on luck, which is a crappy strategy.  There is no secret cabal of government good guys like Qanon® used to put in his cryptic message board posts.  Q is not coming to save you.

I guess QANON was just another 4Chan teller.

Part of the problem with taking a Red Pill is that, once you’re finally awake and aware of how the world works, just like Ebola, you want to share it with people.  That’s a bad idea.

The unfortunately named Desiderius Erasmus Roterdamus made the silly quote, “In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” and with the new Red Pill knowledge, you want to share it far and wide.

Sadly, Desiderius, the one-eyed man is not king.

As H.G. Wells wrote, the blind people can’t see what the one-eyed dude describes.  They think him mad, and if they have a chance they’ll tie him down and remove that silly eye that keeps giving him all of those wild notions and that awful practical joke of leaving the plunger in the toilet.  People will fight nearly to the death to keep a pretty lie alive, especially when the Truth is ugly.

I wrote a check to a charity for the blind, but I’m worried they’ll never see a penny of it.

But there is opportunity for an individual once the first real Red Pill hits.  Seeking Truth becomes a habit.  And you find that Truth exists in many, many more places than you might imagine.  When I go to find Truth, I know one place I can find it very quickly.

Truth is in the Iron.

I started lifting again this week for the first time since COVID raised its head.  I was stunned at how one of my standard lifts was half – HALF – what it had been 18 months ago.

That is Truth.  The Iron is Truth.

Was it at all pleasant to find my strength had dropped that far, that fast?

Of course not.

But it is True.

I gave up on lifting cases of Pepsi® for exercise, it was just soda pressing. 

I cannot hide from the Iron.  I cannot cheat the Iron.  The only things there in the weight room are the Iron, Gravity, and Me.  The only thing that changes in that equation is me.  I can’t blame the Iron.  I can’t blame Gravity.

The Red Pill?

No one will make me physically stronger but me.  And the only way I can do that is to wrestle against Gravity with the Iron.  And, unless I am quite ill, it will always work.

And here is the hope.  Here is where the Red Pill really begins to pay dividends.

I’m the one responsible for:

  • my physical state,
  • what I eat,
  • how I react,
  • what I say,
  • what I watch,
  • how I treat others,
  • my own Virtue,
  • who I am, and
  • where my life ends up.

I’m not responsible for who loves me.  I’m not responsible for how much they love me.  Those are the output.  If I control every bit of input in my life, what happens, happens.

There is nothing, and I mean nothing more wonderful than that realization.  It goes beyond winning and losing.  It goes beyond the opinions of others.

The downside, of course, is seeing all of the pretty little lies and all of the attempted manipulation.  Even worse:  the attempts to numb minds, to distract, and to pretend that the new lie doesn’t contradict the last lie.  The stunning thing to me is how many people will flitter from one contradictory opinion to another like butterflies in the Sun, with never a thought.

When I take responsibility for myself, I am a changed person.

I was born a male, I identify as a male, but according to Stouffer’s Frozen Lasagna®, I identify as a family of four.

That doesn’t mean the battle ever ends.  The first struggle is, always, against myself.  Why am I weaker?

I had weights at home, but didn’t lift.

Why?

Well, I could make any number of excuses, but none of them matter.  I didn’t lift.  That was it.  So, my choice is simple:  will I work to get better every week, or will I be complacent with where I am?

I asked the Iron a question.  It told me the Truth.

Now, my choice is how will I answer?

I have only one answer.  Sweat.

It’s never lonely when you’ve got Truth for a companion.

Specialization Versus Generalization: The Economy Chooses

“Hey, you’re really trying to be accurate.  Is it getting hot in here?  Wait a minute! What’s happening to my special purpose?” – The Jerk

You could say a generalization made by a farmer is an overall statement.

The economy has been really stable for a long, long time.  Certainly, there have been dips here and there, but for the most part, we have seen amazing amounts of . . . stable.  Even the Great Recession (after a liberal application of amazing amounts of money) was made as smooth as leather – I’ll never be suede in that.

In many ways, the solution for the economy for the last twenty years has been exactly what a college freshman would ask at a party at 2 AM:  “Dude, I’ve got a $20.  Can we get more beer?”  The Fed® has a fake I.D. and decided to add more money.  Keep the party going.

Of course, everyone loves a party.  And everyone loves stability.

But what does stability bring?

Specialization.

In a stable environment, every ecological niche gets filled with very specialized variations.  Look at the Arctic.  It may be cold, but it’s stable because the climate varies only a little.  There are very specialized variations of bears and foxes and birds that exploit the ecosystem.  Likewise, the equator with its constant miserable heat produces the same thing:  amazing amounts of specialization including a zillion things in the Amazon jungle that will kill you just for a picture that they can post of Facebook®.  The anteater comes to mind:  a creature so specialized that it eats only ants and has a tongue specialized just for that.

Anteaters can’t catch COVID.  They’re filled with anty-bodies.

In the economy, this flourishes as credentialization©.  Microsoft® doesn’t recognize that word, so I put a little © next to it so now I own it.  Ha!  Take that!  I’d make a “Bill Gates is getting divorced joke” here, but he’s had a hard enough time already.  I’ve already been rejecting his updates since 2017.

We live, however, in an economy built on amazing levels of specialization.  How does one prove their ability to work?  A credential.  The number of credentials has flourished, even in my lifetime.  There was even one where all I had to do to get the credential was apply for it, as it was brand new.

I didn’t apply.  I still look upon that particular credential with disdain – as Groucho noted, why would I want to be in a club that would accept me as a member?  This particular credential is entirely built upon the idea that if I know a specific set of terms that they agree on, I can put a few letters after my name.

Pfffft.  Nope.  Though I did speak at one of their meetings for a few beers.  I may have standards, but they’re low.

Let’s get in a time machine so we can have some fun.

If I wanted to be a doctor in 1821, how did I do that?  I called myself one.  If my patients lived, I’d get more of them.  If they died?  I’d have to move to another town and give bad advice there.  Or run for Congress.

I might not save patients, but I’d be a popular doctor.

One of my personal heroes is Isambard Kingdom Brunel.  Why?

Isambard built stuff and set the stage for the entire twentieth century.  What kind of stuff?  Docks.  Boats.  Railroads.  Bridges.  The first transatlantic steamship.  The first tunnel under a real river.  He even built a hospital that was prefabricated and shipped to the Crimea for all of those Light Brigade guys that rode half a league, half a league onward.

One ship he built, the Great Eastern, could travel from London to Sydney, Australia (it’s somewhere south of Kentucky) and back.  Without refueling.  The second Transatlantic Cable, the one that worked?  It was put down with one of Brunel’s ships.

Did Isambard Kingdom Brunel have to take a test to prove he was an engineer?  No.

If there is a mountain worthy of the name mountain, it’s Everest.  If there is a man who is worthy of the name engineer, it’s Isambard Kingdom Brunel.  Credentials?  Isambard don’t need no stinking credentials.

His work speaks for itself.

What do engineers use as birth control?  Personality.

But now we live in a credentialed world.  Landscape architect?  You have to take a test to call yourself that.  Trim nails and put polish on them?  In many places, you have to have a credential for that.  Cut hair?  Yup.  Have to pass a barber test in many places.

But nails and hair grow back.  If you have bad landscaping, there’s no worry because chainsaws are a thing that exists.

The number of jobs you can’t do without formal credentials keeps expanding.  Do some make sense?  Well, probably.  But I’d suggest that 90% of credentials that exist do so only to prevent competition.  Need a teaching certificate to teach children?

Why?  I can’t think of a single reason other than to eliminate competition.  Laura Ingalls Wilder (from whom I stole the Wilder moniker) graduate grade eight and then . . . was a teacher.

The sea of credentials that we find ourselves surrounded by is also an attempt to avoid liability.  In an attempt to avoid responsibility, lawyers and lawsuits require more and more credentials in jobs where credentials are mostly meaningless.  Oh, and the lawyers were some of the first to pull the ladder up.  Let’s be real:  90% of being a lawyer is reading comprehension.

That’s what comes when you live in a stable economy.  Specialization increases, even to ludicrous levels.  People have jobs where they are so remote from any activity that produces actual value that they don’t even know what their company does that produces value.  HR, I’m looking at you.  Oh, wait, there are at least 12 types of credentials that you can get for HR.

See?

Oh, and I’ve probably made 99% of my readers mad at this point.

But what happens in an unstable economy?  The real winner is the generalist.  I’ll turn to a Robert Anson Heinlein quote I’ve used before:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Specialization is for insects.

See, I come screaming out with all of the new themes.  This one is sooooo fresh.

I’ve done almost every one of the things that Heinlein talks about.  I’m hoping to save the “die gallantly” until it’s useful, since it seems it would be wasted if I were to use it in negotiating with DirecTV® over my monthly bill.

In a stable economy, specialization (and the dreaded credentialization©) is valued.  In an economy where things are unstable?

Generalization wins.

The Mrs. bought me a suture practice kit for Christmas.  I was thrilled.  It had a scalpel, needle, and thread.  I can now sew up a wound in plastic.  I would not try to sew up a wound unless you were going to die if I didn’t give it a go.  That’s the definition of unstable.

I’ve taken first aid courses throughout the country.  The second best one was in Alaska.  They spent time teaching skills.  In the lower 48, most of it was, “dial 911 and keep the patient comfortable until the EMTs arrive.”  So, my job, when a human life was on the line?  Make a phone call.

This is Specialization at its peak.

Understand, as long as the economy persists in being stable, specialization will increase.

But when Winter hits?

Or was that generalizations about broads?

Generalization wins.

Personally, I am not very good at supporting increased specialization.

We’re humans.

We can do more.  And if the economy goes where I think it will?

We will need to do more.