COVID – Page 7 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Deception: The Media Is Soaking In It

“Theatricality and deception are powerful weapons, Alfred. It’s a good start.” – Batman Begins

Thankfully he wasn’t expecting the Spanish Inquisition.

I’m certain that few had any idea of how the Internet would change the world. Oh, sure, some did. In one of the zillion versions of Ender’s Game (or the never ending stream of sequels) Orson Scott Card wrote about the Internet, in the 1980s, I think. In his version, people could make carefully reasoned arguments and other people would listen to them and be swayed.

Ha! Instead we have Twitter® with its 280 character limit, and meme warfare.

I actually don’t mind meme warfare being the place where ideas are injected into society, primarily because the Right memes pretty well, and the Left can’t meme at all.

That is, of course, what the Left is worried about. When the Internet began to gain popularity in the mid-1990s, it was a Wild West. It was first created, page by page, by people who were passionate about something. The programming was easy, and the hardest thing was to get noticed, since the search engines and directories were rudimentary. I used at least three, depending on what I was searching for, because one was good for technical stuff, one was good for “normie” stuff, and the last one, as I recall, wasn’t good for much at all.

On the Internet, you can be whatever you want to be, so why do so many people pick “stupid”?

Then came the Media®. At first, they didn’t really know how to use it, so they’d just put their written stuff out there, since video would swamp most dial-up connections. But everyone knew it was going to be big, which is why AOL© merged with Time-Warner™ even though all AOL® presented was just a single way to get to the Internet.

But the problem for the Media™ and .GOV was that the Internet had shattered their ability to carefully script a single narrative. It had also destroyed their ability to memory hole or gloss over big stories. Now those passionate people could chronicle entire events that the .GOV would rather you forget, or, better yet, never even know about. The carefully crafted defamation of everyone who believed in something outside of the Approved Narrative as a Conspiracy Theorist began to crumble.

People say it’s a small world, but I know I certainly wouldn’t want to paint it. And in that small world where communication had drastically lowered the time for information to come out, and also made it harder for the information to be erased. The Genie of information, once out of the bottle, couldn’t be put back in.

Does anyone know what an ink blot test is? I Googled® it, but only found pictures of my parents yelling at me.

The Wild West continued. Google® had a corporate slogan of Don’t be Evil® and Amazon™ would sell most any book that was it was legal to sell. And the established Media© and .GOV still had no real understanding of how to control what people see and hear and remember. The Internet was built to be decentralized, and hard to control.

I think, from what I see so far that the strategy has been to do at least five things:

Throw Lots of Content Out

Oddly, even though the major news sources keep firing journalists, they keep making more stuff. What kind of stuff? Clickbait, really. Stories with little informational content, stories about celebrities, top 10 lists of best/worst/etc. (fill in the blank). These aren’t news – they’re entertainment. Heck, one browser I have on my phone has (it looks like) computer-generated compilations of posts from Reddit®. The idea is to distract. And if the algorithm is good enough, heck, maybe that person will forget what they were looking for in the first place.

Marginalize and Trivialize

This is one that’s carried on from the past. If I had written a post about MK-Ultra (where the CIA essentially acted like the worst possible mixture of Jeffrey Dahmer and the DMV) in the 1960s, it would have been dismissed as a “conspiracy theory” at best. The idea isn’t to contradict, it’s to hit the person making the accusation with personal attacks, and make it sound like they’re a nutcase. And when the facts come out? Minimize them – make them sound unimportant, “Oh, that tear gas we used at Waco? Well it may be flammable, but only in super-high concentrations. We won the war. Go back to sleep.”

So, Alex Jones was right again, eh?

Control Discussion

How many people that you interact with are . . . real?

I’ve recently gotten robocalls that are very sophisticated, so much so that they nearly get through the uncanny valley of sounding right. But what if the sound wasn’t an issue? In a Twitter® comment it isn’t. It is known that a significant percentage of Twitter® users are bots – programmed to interact. Why would anyone go to that level of trouble? Because they want to sell you something – an ideology, a candidate, or PEZ™. They’re also useful to make it seem like there’s a consensus.

People are wired as pack animals, and generally want to be a part of the group, to not be left out. Plus, a group of bots can drown out viewpoints and ideas and bury them in a sea of text. On a related note, how many conversations are taking place on the Internet that are nothing more than one bot talking to another?

Control Access

Most people come to this website either directly or from other blogs. The web search traffic I get is amazingly low – most days less than 3% of my traffic. That’s new. I used to get more traffic from search engines (20%+) but after July or so of 2020, Google™ shut the valve, and traffic dropped. Likewise, I know that this site is banned by corporations. Why? Maybe my ideas are considered to be . . . dangerous.

A related question is this: just how many website hits does Google® really have? I searched for Civil War Weather Report and noted I wasn’t on the first page. I jumped ahead to page 18. If you’ll note, on an earlier page, Google© claims that there are 34,800,000 results. But when you get to page 18, well, there are only 174 results. I know I’ve written nearly 40 Civil War Weather Reports. Funny that I didn’t see ‘em all in this list . . .

Note that Amazon®, which for a long time would not ban any legal book, now bans hundreds if not thousands of books merely because Amazon™ disagrees with their ideas.

Just Keep Lying

It seems to work for the FBI, Bill Clinton, and the CIA, so why not expand it to the Media®? That’s just what they do. These pictures will help illustrate the problem:

So, in the end, it has been established that the Media© wants to control you. The only remaining question so that we can put the pressure where it needs to be is this: who controls the Media™?

The Biggest Shock: Energy

“Oil, Butt-Head. It’s oil. We’ve struck oil.” – Beavis and Butt-Head

I caught my bread moving to the music on the counter the other night. I guess it was a bun dance.

We’re 30 months past the start of the ‘Rona outbreak. Sure, it doesn’t seem like that long, but in many ways it seems so much longer, like being forced to watch Amy Schumer talk to Chuck Schumer about cheese. What happened, due to the reaction to the ‘Rona, was one of the biggest supply shocks that the world has ever seen.

When the ripples of that shock moved from country to country, things broke down. The world, at that point just before the pandemic was an amazingly efficient machine. It was wonderful at taking oil and turning it into important things, like Pringles®, hairspray, and cell phone cases.

But, I said that the economy was efficient – that means that all of the parts were needed – there were few wasted factories, and, few wasted workers. We lived in the greatest abundance that the world had ever seen. This abundance was so deep that world hunger was a solved problem. For the first time ever, there were more people in the world that were overweight than hungry.

This was a brief moment in history. In medieval France, for instance, the peasants would spend all winter in bed in a semi-hibernation to conserve food. I guess I just described me at 2:30pm on Thanksgiving, except I’m sleeping off food.

I guess the most popular Christmas song at mental hospitals is, Do You See What I See.

But back to Thanksgiving, what were they giving thanks for?

Having food. Even now as the events still unfold in slow-motion, the loss of abundance is looming. Shortages begin to stack up. A friend tried to buy a pickup, but was told it would be at least six months for it to arrive. He bought a different one.

The price increases we’ve seen are a symptom of that lack of abundance – we had shortages because we were finally paying the price for the efficiency of the system – we had shortages of everything except for cash. The powers that be decided to try to paper over the economic problems by flooding the world with that cash, which made people feel better, temporarily, but then led to the shortages we’re still seeing.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine? It’s an example of yet another stress to the systems of the world. Food. Fertilizer. Oil. And a big one as far as Europe is considered? Natural gas. The folks in Europe might need to re-learn how to huddle together for warmth during winter.

I’d tell you how to make an oil well, but it’s really boring.

Abundance came from that finely tuned system. What many don’t realize is that abundance comes mainly from abundant energy. That energy is used everywhere. It’s powering my computer and your computer (or phone) and the car that took me to work and the harvester that brought up the corn to feed the cow that became a steak on my plate last weekend.

Oddly, the Left thinks that by pretending that a new, renewable power will spring into existence, that it really will. That hasn’t happened, or if it did, the power grid certainly isn’t showing it. Widespread blackouts weren’t a feature of my youth – they’re an annual occurrence now, since the system is now overtaxed. It’s gone from resilient, with a capacity that is sufficient for nearly any situation, to one that is regularly broken.

There was a blackout in New York City. People were stuck on escalators for four hours.

Our history of abundance is dependent entirely on our mastery of energy. There are 7.97 billion people on Earth today. My estimate, based on history, is that without the current intensity of energy use, the Earth could support somewhere between 250 million and 500 million people, tops.

Energy is the key for all of that.

Oil is prone to, well, run out. Frakking has provided a very significant way to expand reserves, but conventional oil peaked back in 2016. The oil time, “drill it and pump it” is declining. Frakking can provide a respite, but even those resources are limited.

The choices that lead to a real future, though, are few. Of actual technology that exists and provides sufficient energy to power a civilization, nuclear energy is key. I’d love to suggest fusion power, but sadly, the only version of fusion that we have on Earth exists in very short duration, high-energy pulses, often designed for delivery by intercontinental missiles.

But fission does exist. It’s expensive to produce new fission power plants, but they last for decades. Are there downsides? Certainly. Nuclear waste isn’t great, but I hear it’s still better for your than corn syrup. And residents near Chernobyl can count on one hand the seven reasons why a nuclear meltdown is a bad idea.

But I never trust people from Chernobyl. They’re two-faced.

We actually may be struggling to return to abundance for decades, and I don’t think we’ve fallen nearly as far as we will. The supply disruptions started by the ‘VID and continuing through the Ukrainian War will continue, and will swing farther and farther out of control. This will put pressures on people and increase conflicts, both inside countries and between countries.

Those could be huge, massive wars. But as long as I don’t have to listen to Amy Schumer talk to Chuck Schumer, about cheese, it’ll be alright.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: They Hate You

“Hell, you boys is in the occupied territory. You’re 40 miles behind enemy lines. That’s smack dab in the middle of World War III.” – Red Dawn

Why do angry clocks only tok? They’re tiked off.

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

I’ve kept the Clock O’Doom the same, though tensions are certainly increasing. 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 – Naming The Enemy: You – Violence And Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Shocks To The System – 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 710 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge. Most of today’s memes are free-range, and not originals. The crop was really good this month.

Naming The Enemy: You

Since Biden was sworn in, the relationship between citizens and the government has fundamentally changed. Trump was like a game show host. Biden is like a character from a Stephen King novel, and not one of the good ones.

The sheer hate shown by the Left, though, has replaced every bit of pretend love. Biden has set himself up not as the President of the United States, but, at best, the President of the Democratic Party. And that party, as well as all of the Left has let the mask slip. How far? This far:

Yes. That is a governor of a state, indicating that people who live in the state she is supposed to represent, should move. Admittedly, she looks like she’s auditioning for the role of Morticia for the “couldn’t get a date in high school players”. But since she (presumably) hasn’t (yet) Cuomo’d her staff, well, she’s the governor. And she hates you. You are her enemy. She has made that clear.

And so did Biden’s press secretary:

Merely voting for the “wrong” candidate makes you the enemy. You, too, can be a “threat to our democracy” if you don’t vote the way that Big Biden wants you to vote. I’m not sure why that upsets them, since the voting isn’t how they win elections, it’s the counting that wins them elections.

But I guess it sets you up to be an extremist. What’s an extremist?

Anyone who doesn’t believe what (they) the Leftist “majority” believe. Simple, right? Don’t like chocolate? Extremist. Think that owning guns might be a right?

Extremist. Biden even said so. Again. Last summer, he threatened his own citizens. Apparently, he liked the results so much that he did it again.

I think Joe might have forgotten something:

But, seriously, he really, really, might have forgotten something:

And I thought he was on Ukraine’s side? But, regardless, he has this really weird view on weapons, and I think it can be summarized by this one meme:

And all of this nonsense was before his ill-advised 1930’s totalitarian aesthetic national speech. What did he want to talk about with his background that would have been appropriate at a May Day parade at Red Square in 1936?

Well, he had a lot to say. About inflation? No. About Russia? China? Ukraine? The energy crisis? The economy? No. Really just about how much he really, really hates anyone on the Right.

People on the Left were quick to join in:

So, you’re the Enemy of the Left. Congratulations! But I’m not so sure about Biden’s comments . . . .

Violence And Censorship Update

Just like the segment above, I had more censorship this month than I can work through. In many cases, it is actively impacting writers like me, with (apparently) Google® doing quite a bit to throttle traffic. This is nothing new, but as far as I can tell, it’s accelerating and becoming more brazen at all levels.

But on the bigger stage, “Gays Against Groomers” was shut down. The person running “Libs of TicTok” was doxed as well, but still maintains their presence. Why shut them down?

I’m guessing a narrative violation, since “Groomer” is now officially a hate word.

But that’s just a Twitter® account. It’s not like big tech is actively trying to shut down speech from the Right, is it?

Odysee® has been threatened by Apple® to not allow their app in the Apple© Appstore™ unless they strip voices on the Right from their content. Odysee™ has, so far, told ‘em to buzz off. That normally works pretty well until they come after the bank accounts. Which they will.

The FBI has done its best to join in:

Remember, the FBI searched Barron Trump’s bedroom before they searched Hunter Biden’s. And they leaked photos of Trump’s place, but not photos of the Epstein investigation. That probably tells you all you need to know about how political the FBI is.

But at least big tech is doing this on its own, right?

No. They colluded with the Biden Administration on a regular basis on “what to censor”, which in any real world would be a big deal. But who controls what’s on the net? Big tech. The idea that independent voices can get a large following is something they’re working desperately to control.

They’re trying to understand why you would avoid taking the science juice into your veins. Testing and actual data are too much to ask. Keep in mind that one statistic I saw showed that 44% of pregnant women who were in the science juice trial miscarried. And that it’s still recommended for pregnant women.

Even Bill Maher, who is no real friend to the Right, is stunned at the hypocrisy. Me?

Not so much anymore.

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again.

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 ticked upward this month, though not to previous levels. I think it continues to be muted because the Left has kept their dogs on a leash.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it dropped a bit. We’ll see what impact Biden’s speech has.

Economic:

Economic indicators ricocheted down this month. Not promising, but this is a strange election season.

Illegal Aliens:

It set a new record for this time of year. But it was down. Must still be hot out. And Elon had something to say, too.

Shocks To The System

When the Russians invade Ukraine, I was mainly worried about the impact of losing the things that Russia and Ukraine made that would impact the outside world – things like wheat, or fertilizer. I really didn’t expect the West to collectively decide, “breathing isn’t important” and cut off their own oxygen. They did. Natural gas is very important to the European economy, and without it, whole segments of what they produce have to get shut down – like COVID-level impacts, but because they decided not to buy natural gas.

Oops.

Whether intentional or not, it certainly has given a lot of data about shock testing of the economy of Europe:

Now it’s created such imbalances in the European energy market that electricity bills are skyrocketing. How do girls decide who they’re going to date?

Collectively, the governments are deciding that they want the ability to do (spins wheel) whatever they want to do in response to the crisis. Really.

Meanwhile, electricity shortages are showing up elsewhere. In Colorado, I think users got a credit for installing the remote-control thermostat plus an annual payment ($25?) but lose the ability to choose how warm their house is. Not horrific, but a sign, potentially of stresses to come.

As the interest rates go up, another stress goes up, too. Housing prices drop and the housing market starts to lock up. We’ve seen this before.

Economic stresses, especially energy stresses, have the ability to be incredibly destabilizing to a society, pushing it from near war to over the edge. Beware as the economy falls apart.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/LAPDHQ/status/1560387842873757697

https://twitter.com/i/status/1554292158684794882

https://twitter.com/i/status/1565820292827586561

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1558877210231984128

https://breaking911.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/XRdD_4cG-ZgMyeke.mp4?_=1

https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1562787749291106312

Good Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1554279913519136769

https://twitter.com/i/status/1556399786948976640

https://twitter.com/i/status/1565078355267170304

https://youtu.be/NuenlBlzPPg

Body Count

https://www.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/BcIggWPF0Th-png__700.jpg

https://www.unz.com/jtaylor/more-murders/

https://www.naturalnews.com/2022-08-19-usa-has-3rd-most-murders-in-world-subtract-five-democrat-cities-189th.html#

https://vdare.com/articles/41-black-on-white-homicides-home-invasions-including-a-boat-invasion-really-are-a-thing-july-2022-another-month-in-the-death-of-white-america

https://www.fairus.org/press-releases/border-security/fair-analysis-49-million-illegal-aliens-have-crossed-our-borders

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/16/report-44-percent-of-pregnant-women-in-pfizer-trial-lost-their-babies-fda-and-cdc-recommended-jabs-for-expectant-mothers-anyway/

https://uncoverdc.com/2022/08/19/correction-eleven-mrna-subjects-suffered-spontaneous-abortions/

https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/you-are-25x-more-likely-to-be-injured

https://expose-news.com/2022/08/09/1-in-246-people-die-shortly-after-covid-vaccination/

https://expose-news.com/2022/08/09/mortality-rates-lowest-among-unvacinated/

https://twitter.com/i/status/1555940645985890305

https://twitter.com/backtolife_2023/status/1562718083747196928

https://www.skirsch.com/covid/HealthcareStories.pdf

https://twitter.com/DrEliDavid/status/1563848349777887234

https://twitter.com/afshineemrani/status/1564000788107513856/photo/1

https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/this-one-graph-tells-you-everything

https://stevekirsch.substack.com/p/do-you-know-how-many-people-have

https://markcrispinmiller.substack.com/p/in-memory-of-those-who-died-suddenly-4f6

https://twitter.com/GBNEWS/status/1562529247826165760

Vote Count

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/29/what-is-to-be-done-2/

https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/what-i-learned-at-the-summit-of-truth

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/los-angeles-soros-da-gascon-recall-fails

https://www.12news.com/article/news/politics/elections/decision/some-pinal-county-election-precincts-run-out-of-in-person-ballots/75-93414e02-3830-4979-8153-48c7c5af69f8

https://uncoverdc.com/2022/08/16/ny-citizens-audit-finds-hidden-infrastructure-in-voter-rolls/

https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/georgia-secretary-of-states-office

https://nationalfile.com/mail-in-ballots-from-2020-discovered-at-baltimore-usps-facility/

https://twitter.com/bennpetersen/status/1554672205472022529

https://youtu.be/dwbzDr1WrOQ

https://chroniclesmagazine.org/recent-features/when-mules-go-ballot-trafficking/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/13/california-san-bernardino-secession-november-election

https://twitter.com/loganclarkhall/status/1562942569876946947

https://www.valleynewslive.com/2022/08/10/fargo-school-board-votes-7-2-no-longer-recite-pledge-allegiance/

Civil War

https://www.unz.com/isteve/who-drove-the-great-awokening-the-news-media-or-academia/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/aug/29/us-civil-war-fears-poll

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/americans-are-too-pampered-and-neurotic-to-fight-a-civil-war/ar-AA10BUHx

https://www.theamericanconservative.com/civil-war-2-0-not-on-techno-totalitarians-watch/

https://www.journal-news.net/are-we-headed-for-a-civil-war/article_5c22ca4c-5b81-5874-bbc0-7171035458b0.html

https://amac.us/are-we-headed-for-a-civil-war/

https://amgreatness.com/2022/08/17/civil-war-porn/

https://unherd.com/2022/08/americas-tribes-are-ready-for-war/

https://www.governing.com/now/no-america-is-not-on-the-verge-of-a-new-civil-war

https://www.theonion.com/conservatives-explain-why-they-are-preparing-for-a-civi-1849414130

https://www.foxnews.com/media/civil-war-here-thanks-maga-mob-msnbcs-tiffany-cross

https://www.businessinsider.com/new-us-civil-war-wont-look-like-last-one-historians-2022-8

https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-supporters-want-a-civil-war-after-fbi-raid-of-mar-a-lago-2022-8

https://english.elpais.com/usa/2022-07-27/fear-of-a-second-us-civil-war-ignites-debate.html

https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2022/8/11/23301922/republicans-are-rooting-for-a-civil-war-mona-charen-column

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/trump-supporters-tiktok-civil-war/

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3591492-the-gathering-political-storm-in-america/

https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/republicans-join-in-with-white-nationalist-attacks-and-civil-war-threats/

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d39zq/trump-supporters-civil-war-fbi-search-mar-a-lago

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/why-america-is-in-such-a-mess-gvb25p0tj

https://chroniclesmagazine.org/web/how-when-do-we-come-together-again/

https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/08/msnbc-host-civil-war-is-here-with-republicans/

In Summary….

https://twitter.com/i/status/1557482526536515584

https://twitter.com/raqrockyjones/status/1557756532221218817

The Backlash Against Journalists Begins

“Let them have the cabbage. We here at I.N.S. will feast on journalistic filet mignon.” – The Night Stalker

An honest journalist walked into CNN®. The network head asked, “What are you doing here?”

I guess Trudeau had enough of people being mean to journalists. I mean, we know that Justin Trudeau is the most tolerant person in Canada, right?

But he’s the most qualified person to be prime minister, right?

Huh. Perhaps not. But certainly, he has the best in mind for his people.

Well, thankfully the vaxx is helping people stay alive. I mean, it’s not like mortality is up by double (or nearly double) in the ages from 25-55. Oh, wait . . . .

I wonder how people will react to that?

Certainly, that didn’t happen, that journalists and the press wanted awful things to happen to people that had a different opinion. I mean, is there any evidence of that?

I guess after that, I’m getting the subtle hint that they might not like folks who were somewhat suspicious of a new technology unleashed with minimal testing.

But at least the vaxx works.

I’ll let Sam Hyde have the last word.

Total Recall: Looking Back On The COVID Crisis

“You had a dishwasher box to sleep in? I didn’t even know sleep. It was pretty much twenty-four seven ball gags, brownie mix and clown porn” – Deadpool

One girl I dated in High School asked if she used too much makeup. I replied, “Dunno, depends on if you are trying to kill Batman.”

[Wilder Note: I’ve been meaning to dig this post out for a while, especially since something that WordPress did mangled a bit of the original with weird characters. I wrote it originally on March 25, 2020. This was meant as a prediction of what we’d see going through the ‘Rona. It has been wilder than even I would expect, and in many ways I think I undersold what we’d see. That being said, I’m not sure we’re done going through The Cliff phase and into Disillusionment. I’d love your feedback.]

“Great, now it’s the end of the world and we can’t get a new dishwasher,” The Mrs. actually said, after I finally relented that it would probably cost more to fix the dodgy old dishwasher than a new one would cost. Plus, the old dishwasher is stainless steel, so if it were a hundred yards away, it would make quite a nice practice target. I call that a win-win. Besides, Amazon® actually has them in stock, so I could theoretically have one by next week.

See? You can get quality appliances during the end of the world.

I started working from home yesterday, which was nice. When it was lunchtime, I wasn’t hungry, but I was nice and warm so I took a nap right in my home office which is also known as the couch. Good times. I do have a concern: The Mrs. slapped my heinie as I walked by and said, “nice butt” so I’m thinking of bringing this up with HR. I want to be treated as more than a sexual object. I mean, not much more, but more.

As much as you might be interested in my derriere, I really do want to talk about COVID-19 and get to the bottom of how the issue will progress in the coming months. While each crisis is different, they are all sort-of-predictable because in the end, people don’t change all that much, even though circumstances do. Certainly, we want to get this all behind us, in the rearview, so to speak.

Okay, I’ll stop. Seven synonyms for the posterior in two paragraphs are quite enough. I don’t want you to think I’m a bum.

But what is this pattern I mentioned? Here are, as near as I can determine, Eight Stages of a Crisis. This provides way in which each crisis can be evaluated compared to the others this is my modification of work originally done by Zunin and Myers.

This is like the Kubler-Ross five stages of grief, but with the apocalypse in mind. Why settle for one death, when you can have millions or billions on your mind? It’s so nice and cheery. The nice part of using this model is that you can gauge where we are in the current COVID-19 mess.

Who would he assassinate for a Klondike® bar? Apparently Archduke Franz Ferdinand.

The Warning

This is the opening stage of a crisis. It may be short, as in 9/11, or it may be a slow-motion collapse like the gradually increasing troop buildups and mobilizations that led to World War I. Everyone wanted to stop it, but no one was sane enough to say no. The Warning before the first Civil War was literally decades in length.

In the current COVID crisis, The Warning came during and just after the December impeachment. With the focus of the country elsewhere, who cared about the flu? We don’t trust the media very much. Why? They don’t seem trustworthy. Example: when Trump shuts down air transport to China, CNN® says it’s racist. When China shuts down air transport from the United States, CNN™ says it’s a wise and prudent move by China’s benevolent leadership.

In a world where CNN© and the Chinese government have similar levels of credibility we tend to forget the ending to the story of the boy who cried wolf: in the end, the wolves really attacked.

How did they not see this coming?

The Event

The Event is generally not long, but it can be. It’s the Shot Heard Round the World at Lexington and Concord in the Revolutionary War. The Event is when the rules change forever, and nothing can ever make the world go back to the way it was. It’s the spark that lights the fire. When people look back, everyone can see The Event.

Nothing is ever the same afterwards. The Event changes everyone that it touches, and often ends up changing systems permanently. It is disruptive. It may not be the reason that everything fails, it might just be a small event toppling an already unstable system. In a crisis like 9/11, the event is obvious and instant. COVID-19 has led to a slow-rolling avalanche across the economy. Was it poised for a fall anyway? Possibly.

As a longer cascade, what will be The Event that history will use to remember COVID-19?

In one of my more frightening thoughts: what if we haven’t seen The Event yet?

I’m not sure he’s koalafied to make that decision.

Disbelief

When things have changed, and changed drastically, people refuse to believe it. When the power is out because a tree fell on the power lines, I will walk into a room an automatically flip the light switch. Why? Habit, partially. But there’s a part of my mind that is existing in Disbelief, perhaps, that doesn’t believe that the power could ever be gone.

Disbelief isn’t a coping strategy, and it’s not an attempt of the mind to protect itself, at least in a healthy person. It’s more inertia. You’re used to the world being a certain way, and when it isn’t, part of your mind isn’t quite ready to process it.

This might be an overreaction. COVID-19 might be no worse than the flu. But that isn’t explained by the reactions we’ve seen so far from places that got it earlier than the United States. Italy is locked down. In two weeks, we will know more. In a month, I think, we will have certainty.

In order to calm panicked customers, Wal-Mart opened up a second register.

Panic

At some point, the mind is confronted with the new reality and forced to accept it. But the rules are new, and unknown. What to do? One could take a deep breath, and review the situation and think logically or? One could Panic. Panic is easier, and doesn’t require a lot of thought.

Panic is the natural reaction when your brain realizes that it has done zero to prepare for the new reality. So, what to do? Buy staples as required to build up the stockpile you’ve accumulated over time? Or buy 550 cans of Diet Mountain Dew®? Or just buy toilet paper, because everyone else is and you don’t know what to do or have any independent thought? Toilet paper purchasing is Panic.

Not all heroes are able to walk. I mean, some gained 400 lbs on the couch.

Heroism

While the Panic is ongoing, the first glimmer of Heroism starts to show. Brave men and women working in the medical field are the first signs of Heroism. Donald Trump talking with Al Sharpton to address the problems he sees is Heroism is realizing that there is a greater good, and that sacrifice is required. Heroism is embodied throughout the response to the crises where a few have an opportunity to save many, and where enemies put aside squabbles for a time because it’s the right thing to do.

There was a family story: Grandma Wilder went during World War II to weld Liberty ships at the Alameda Ship Yard. She would regularly get things sent to her from her mother who lived in the country in the middle of Flyover. Needles were rationed in San Francisco, but not in Flyover. Sugar was rationed in San Francisco, but not in Flyover. Why ration needles and sugar? To build common purpose, so even people not piloting P-51s or jumping out of landing craft at Iwo Jima could feel like they were doing their part. To be fair, rationing was necessary in wide segments of the economy, it wasn’t a fake, but it did help bring everyone together.

Right now Heroism is going on, and we aren’t even asked to do anything more than to sit down and watch Netflix® unless we’re keeping vital industries going. Here’s a link to Aesop’s place that shows the quiet heroism going on out there (LINK). Read it all.

I read the other day that coyotes are about 10 miles an hour faster than road runners. My entire childhood was a lie.

The Cliff

Keeping order requires energy. Some part of the energy of the system is put into keeping order. In a time of significant social cohesion, like World War II, the United States didn’t face The Cliff, even though virtually every other developed nation did. Instead, the energy that the crisis took was replaced by people working together.

Most of the time in a real crisis, however, there’s The Cliff. I wrote about it here: Seneca’s Cliff and You.

We have not fallen off The Cliff. Is it certain that there is one? No. But every single leader, elected or appointed, is acting like it’s there. I believe we will see it. The new normal will grow from events moving quickly. Already at Wilder Redoubt, we’ve had nothing but home-cooked meals for the last week, with a couple of store-bought sandwiches being the exception.

Will home-cooked food, family dinners, and homeschooling be the legacy of COVID-19?

I expect that we’ll see The Cliff soon enough. How deep will it go? As I’ve mentioned before, no one knows. The worst case is that the economy crashes through levels to Great Depression era lockup in two weeks or so. Only 40% of Americans are able to absorb an unexpected $1,000 expense. 80% are living paycheck to paycheck, and those paychecks just stopped.

Dead.

Going first will be car payments. The average monthly car payment is $800. Me? I’d sell you my daily driver for just two months of that, so expect car finance companies to seize up like an ungreased stripper pole. But the businesses that employ those people aren’t much better off. The best restaurant in Modern Mayberry came pretty close to closing down shop six years ago, but pulled through. The second best restaurant didn’t survive. There will be cascading failures as the debts owed from one business to the next go unpaid, and this won’t just be for small businesses. I feel confident saying that several businesses with 10,000 or more employees will go bankrupt. Overall loss to the economy? 40% of the GDP this year?

Is there a better case? Sure. We contain COVID-19 in a month or so, and then call it good. We only lose 10% to 20% of our GDP this year, and government pumps five or six trillion dollars into the economy to juice it back up. That’s the best case. And that’s just in the United States.

I’m not kidding, that’s how deep The Cliff is. If we’re lucky.

Something, something, Dark Side®.

Disillusionment

After the fall, things suck. We had heroes, but the time for Heroism is over. Disillusionment sets in when things don’t snap back to normal. Things will seem rosy, only for failure to crush hope. The more government “helps” during this phase, the worse recovery will be. Roosevelt “helped” so much during the Great Depression that he extended it for years.

But politicians will take drastic steps, because they can’t help themselves. The length of time Disillusionment lasts? Months to years.

Some re-assembly required.

Rebuilding

This is the other side of The Cliff. Whereas, as Seneca said you go down a cliff pretty quickly, you only build up slowly. Rebuilding the economy will take years. If we do it right, we’ll build a stronger economy, less dependent upon foreign supply lines, that guarantees freedom while preserving the traditional values that built the wealth in the first place.

If done poorly? The system is controlled, oppressive, and coercive. Leaders matter, but the quality of the citizenry to fight back against the system is even more important. Rebuilding takes years, and by my best case scenario, four to eight years.

So, I guess I’ll get a jump start on rebuilding. Dishwashers on the Internet. Amazing. My only problem is that there’s this lady at work who keeps making suggestive comments and touching me all the time. Just a few minutes ago, she told me that she expects me to share a bed with her! They always told me not to get my honey where I got my money, but what happens when you work at home?

The End of COVID, And Mining Salt From Leftist Tears

“That’s the saltiest thing I ever tasted, and I once ate a big heaping bowl of salt.” – Futurama

Think they were crying at CNN® when they wrote that headline?

The CDC® has just sent out the word: Corona-Chan is over. The ‘Vid is over, served its purpose, finished, and, whereas last year Joe Biden wanted everyone who wouldn’t submit to the Vaxx fired, well, now it is over.

Done. Doesn’t mean that at certain places that they still can’t fire you for not having been Vaxxed, but it’s starting to look a bit silly.

There are, apparently, a group of people that have looked on the ‘Rona as one of their base sacraments, nearly an item of worship.

The CDC is my shepherd; I shall not want.
It maketh me to inject mRNA: it leadeth all men with slight fevers to quarantine.
It affirmith my gender: Biden leadeth me in the paths of inflation for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of Drumpf, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy heckin’ science and stimulus checks, they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of Cheeto Hitler: thou anointest my hair with unnatural colors; my electric car runneth over people.
Surely virtue signaling shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Corona forever.

Except, not. I’m thinking with midterm elections coming up, just like Biden declared victory on inflation, he can declare victory on the ‘Rona. And here in Modern Mayberry I can’t recall the last time I’ve seen anyone in a mask. It’s simply not a thing anymore. Oh, yeah, several vaxxed folks I know have had the ‘Rona. Shocking, that:

But, the Left simply cannot fathom a life without one of their fears, it’s like they’re in some weird, inverted sense, comforted by their fear. Their reaction is telling, so, without further ado, I’ll let them (mostly) tell it in their own terms.

Warning: some of the language is a bit salty – they’re pretty butthurt about this one.

Let’s start with Reddit®

Surely things are better at Twitter©.

Ouch. Guess not. Well, I’ll let them speak (mostly) for themselves. Enjoy mining the salt from the Leftist tears! See you Monday!

My response:

‘

Is the Vaxx AIDS?

“Um, well, as with any new vaccine, there were certain side effects associated with it.” – Evolution

I tried to get a refund on some bad batteries I bought. They wouldn’t give me one, since they said the batteries were free of charge.

Hey, I’ve got a golden oldie from, oh, right before the Russians invaded Ukraine: the ‘Rona.

I am not vaxxed. I am not jabbed. I thought about it, but they told me there were no refunds, so I opted out. But I have had the ‘Rona. I haven’t been tested to prove that, but The Mrs. was tested and had the antibodies. So did Pugsley. I was around those two losers enough if it is physically possible for me to get it, I’ve had it. I even remember the afternoon I had it. Felt a bit bad, had a temperature of 99°F (345 km) that day, and thought about going home early.

I’ve had it. It wasn’t especially bad. But then I was exposed again: I sat for several hours next to a person who had it, 13 days ago. He was vaxxed. Again, if I caught whatever variant this was, I had no symptoms other than some extra phlegm. And who doesn’t want extra phlegm? It makes it so much easier to hock a gnarly loogie.

I give that to you only as background, though I freely admit I do appreciate the aesthetics of hocking a good loogie. In all the people I’ve ever met in my life, I know of only a single person who died of the ‘Rona – and when I heard he had died, my response was, “He was still alive? He was old!” I did the math, and he was approximately 473 years old.

After getting the vaxx, my friend can’t hear himself urinate. I guess the p is silent.

I have talked to friends that have lost older loved ones as well. One of my friends even lost two relatives in their fifties – which was pretty young for COVID.

So, that’s the background.

As I said before, I’m not vaxxed. I was against it because I generally believe the mice should do human trials before people.

So, what are the long-term implications of the vaxx?

Right now, some implications are showing up that look a bit grim.

One of the big concerns that had shown up in past trials of vaccines against strains of Coronavirus had been, well, AIDS. The problem was that the vaccines that we tried to create made our immune system act like Nancy Pelosi surrounded by bottles of vodka – useless. Oh, wait, that’s just regular Nancy Pelosi.

The concern of vaccines is that they can, sometimes, cause “immune dysregulation” which means the immune system doesn’t work right. T-Cells, which are the semi-trucks that make the immune system work, have life cycle. Those are the guys that roam around the blood stream and look for stuff that isn’t right – and kill it.

Sadly, still no refunds.

T-cells are like a Terminator® against disease. No, that language won’t get me a doctorate in immunology, but since I’m typing this while watching a James Bond movie (Diamonds are Forever) while drinking wine, that ship has probably sailed.

To quote an actual immunologist-doctor dude named Bowdish stated, “Once a T cell commits to responding to one thing, it can’t respond to anything else. As we age, more and more of them become committed to responding to infections, or all the other things we might be exposed to, and fewer and fewer are available to respond to new threats.”

Huh.

A super-short version of the nightmare scenario is this: the vaxx injects mRNA, which creates a storm of COVID spike proteins. The original thought was that there was a burst of these would tickle the neck of the immune system, give it a thrill and then be gone – which is not how the mRNA vaxx works – it’s really gene therapy. Gene therapy might be a technology that will change the future, but right now, it appears to me it’s like we’re taking sledgehammers to fix a fine gold pocket watch.

Oops. Apparently, the mRNA concoction (in some studies) stays active longer than anticipated. Beyond that, the spike proteins don’t degrade very rapidly in the body. The result? They keep on jazzing the immune system. But they don’t give a full picture of the virus that a T cell normally would attack, just the spike.

Still no refunds.

So, the vaxx hijacks the immune system and causes it to focus for a really, really long time on only one portion of the actual virus, and not respond like (for instance) mine did when I actually had the ‘Rona in looking at the whole virus, and not just a tiny bit of it like someone who was injected with mRNA vaxx.

This is bad.

It focuses a big chunk of the immune system on a single part of the virus, and ignores the rest. Minor modifications would then lead people who had the Two Shots and All The Boosters® to be more and not less susceptible to the ‘vid.

This is combined with all of the other signs that we’ve seen: amazing numbers of very healthy, world-class athletes either collapsing or just plain dying in the prime of their life in numbers like we’ve never seen before.

And, in the end, for what?

COVID wasn’t pleasant during the afternoon I had it. And it absolutely killed quite a few people. But it wasn’t going to kill kids. And it wasn’t going to kill hardly anyone below the age of 50.

If I had taken the vaxx, I’d be mad. Very mad. They were marketed as safe. They’re not. Tens of thousands have died from them, and there are reports coming in that female fertility had been impacted. They were marketed as effective. As the last data seems to show, they vaxxed are more likely to get COVID than the unvaxxed.

Perhaps he has an agenda?

No, he’s clearly well respected.

In order to get people to take this untested new technology, the government engaged in massive amounts of unfounded and knowingly false propaganda and, in the end, coercion. The ‘rona itself was a disaster, but in the end, the betrayal by every edifice of our public sector is worse.

I am in hopes that the worst is past. I don’t wish evil on any person. But in the case of the vaxx? There’s one theme: no refunds.

Wherein I Discuss Home Mechanical Systems, The Economy, Otters Running A Nuclear Plant, and Pelosi Alcohol Consumption

“Iced tea. . . air conditioning . . . water.” – Stargate SG-1

I went to an air conditioning conference once. It was pretty cool.

Let’s begin our tour of the economics world with the lowly thermostat. When The Mrs. and I were first married, The Mrs. would turn the thermostat on our air conditioner way down in the summer, say, to 62°F (45km). This led to the house gradually beginning to cool down, but the air conditioner would labor on like a Billy Barty attempting to oil a “modern” Sports Illustrated, um, model with a stepladder and a 55 gallon bucket.

This electrical effort by our air conditioner would continue until the outside of the house would resemble Joe Biden after he’s seen his latest approval ratings: a cold sweat on the exterior of the house as the moisture outside condensed on the meat-locker temperature windows.

I asked The Mrs., “Why do you turn it down so low?”

“So it gets colder, faster.”

The Mrs. says I’m an absolute 10 – on the Kelvin scale.

Now, on the surface, that sort of logic makes sense. If I spin the dial on the stove farther, it heats up my Dinty Moore Beef Stew® and Orange Jell-O© mix faster (goes great with corn and doughnuts). Twisting the dial puts more energy onto the stovetop. But (at least in every house I’ve lived at) the air conditioning doesn’t work like that – at all.

The air conditioner at our house is either on or it’s off. There is no “kinda on” or “working as hard as a Supreme Court Clerk deleting his phone texts” setting. Nope.

On.

Off.

Two choices. So, if you want it to be 68°F, and you put it to 68°F it will get to 68°F exactly as fast as if you put it down to 40°F. But not everything works that way, and The Mrs. can certainly be forgiven for not knowing that when we met. Plus, in our case, the air conditioner dries the air, so when I woke up in our 40°F house in the summertime, the air was making fun of Hillary Clinton since it was as dry as Norm Macdonald’s wit.

I hear that when Norm got to Heaven, St. Peter told him, “Norm, you have to have an eye test. Cover one eye.” Norm covers one eye and reads the chart: “E-I-E-I . . . Oh, come on! I wasn’t that old!”

The economy is certainly more complicated than a household HVAC unit, but I’m not sure the incompetent participation trophy award winners at the White House have any sort of clue. At all. They’re like putting playful river otters in charge of running a nuclear reactor. Sure, it’s all fun and games watching them be all nimbly-pimbly with the control rods. But sooner or later (mainly sooner) the control rods will be pulled and the uranium will eventually melt into a radioactive mess that’s slightly more destructive than the Amber Heard v. Johnny Depp trial after the core melts down.

I believe this is actually from the trial – Lawyer: “Did you see what happened after you left?” Depp: “I wasn’t there after I left.”

The point is that our economy is complicated, and we’re dealing with a current Resident of the Oval Office that would find running a YouTube® video complicated. “What do you mean, I press the button and the sheep start to talk? How does that happen? Who puts them in there?”

It would be hilarious if we weren’t actually living through this, like when Caligula named his horse a Senator of Rome. My sides are still in stitches about that one! But when it’s us, it’s scary. I mean, Kamala’s not exactly a horse, but, still, the analogy holds, even in this case if it rhymes.

The air conditioner analogy (as a very simple one) actually does have some meaning in this case. When an economy is stalled, there is a case (not the best one, but at least a case) for using money to restart it. Sure, it’s dangerous. And I can make the argument that we’ve done it so many times that it’s really messed up the entire system.

I hear she’s auditioned to be a Batman® villain – The Giggler™.

But after the system is going, by continually forcing more money into the system, well, as Joe said, “I did that.”

If that were the only issue, it might be solvable. It’s just one variable. Have Kamala and AOC eat all the spare money and then it might be as okay as Buddy Holly in a parachute. Might.

Joe, however, has other ideas. When you put sanctions on a nation, the idea is to hurt that nation. Really, that was their plan. But the sanctions against Russia (along with the war, which I also blame Biden for – he could have stopped it with ONE PHONE CALL) have resulted in soaring fertilizer and food prices. That’s bad enough, but it has also popped fuel prices to record highs – The Mrs. wanted to give me something rare and valuable for Father’s Day, so I just asked for five gallons of gasoline.

Fuel impacts everything.

Roses are red, violets are blue, Janet Yellen doesn’t care about you.

The combination of these sanctions and war have effects that haven’t been felt yet – not remotely. An example: a farmer normally fertilizes his alfalfa to increase yield. Not this year – the cost increase for fertilizer far outstrips what he expects to make in revenue. So, he deals with the “natural” yields. Due to high diesel costs, he also gets less money after the cost for harvesting is deducted.

What eats alfalfa?

Well, for one, cattle. So, less alfalfa, more expensive food for cattle. More expensive food for cattle? Well, if the rancher can’t make a profit, he’ll sell the herd. Those aren’t magic, and cattle don’t regenerate immediately like Wolverine®, so if you think we have high beef prices now . . . . just wait.

That’s the second idea: every action has a reaction. Some are immediate, like lower amounts of oil leading to higher prices. Others are longer-term. There’s a delay between taking the action and the result.

Going back to houses, this is like water hammer. That’s what happens when a valve closes too fast in a poorly designed plumbing system. The closing of the valve sends a pressure wave back and forth through the system, rattling the pipes as the pressure goes (at the speed of sound!) through the piping system. If you’ve ever lived in a house with water hammer, you know the sound. It’s loud.

But a simple act, closing a valve, can send waves of pressure moving back and forth through the system.

If you find a bomb that explodes when it’s stepped on, let me know. It’s mine.

We haven’t seen the end of those pressure waves from the magical sanctions that were supposed to have weakened the Russians but have instead raised the value of the ruble and thrown the food and fuel systems of the world into turmoil. Again, my analogy of otters running a nuclear reactor doesn’t appear to be far off as these secondary impacts reverberate through the system.

Eventually, these systems come back into equilibrium. However, unlike the consequences of a 40°F house, in this case we end up with the possibility of an economy more wrecked than the Pelosi family after about 11 AM.

As Nancy would say, “Cheers!”

Monkey Pox: COVID 2.0??? A story in pictures.

“No can do. I am itching all over with Angela-pox.” – The Office

I guess the Ukraine is waning. Time to pull out Monkey Pox®?

As we find ourselves at a time where action in Ukraine mainly consists of sending Zelensky more money so he can eventually recycle it to the Biden family, it appears to be time to (spins wheel) bring out Monkey Pox™ as the villain of the day. This post will mainly be memes. First, Monkey Pox©.

Note: none of the memes are mine today (except maybe one that I originally did and then recopied from another website).

This, though unconfirmed, is the scariest bit. Which in normal times, would make it unlikely. When Wilder’s Principle of Greatest Amusement is in play? All bets are off.

So, the planned “exercise” on Monkey Pox™ was written about in March 21, and has nearly exactly the same initial date as the actual Monkey Pox© reports here in 2022? Huh?

At least it’s a break from the war in the Ukraine.

Thankfully we didn’t treat masks like we were members of a cargo cult, right? And we’ve learned since last time, right?

Here’s hoping the mask part is over. And as it goes, that leaves the jab.

Death is so much worse without the Jab, right?

It would be hard for any logical person to support forcing people to take the vaxx at this point, especially given the data. But hey, is it really about keeping people safe?

I would have thought that, in addition to having the vaxx, that the Germans would at least want people committing suicide to spend a few months making panzers or something.

What was it that The Who said? We won’t get fooled again?

Wilder’s Principle Of Greatest Amusement

“Get old, you can’t even cuss someone and have it bother ’em. Everything you do is either worthless or sadly amusing.” – Bubba Ho-Tep

Hunter wanted to start a new delivery service, but Instagram® was already taken.

I’ve stumbled on a principle that I think is currently guiding the flow of history. Being a very humble person, I have named this Wilder’s Principle of Greatest Amusement. Put simply, it’s the idea that if there are two more or less equal outcomes, the most amusing outcome will happen. It’s like instead of being dead or alive, Schrödinger’s Cat had a choice of being a polar bear or nuclear warhead.

Amusing, in this context, doesn’t necessarily mean good. It doesn’t mean beneficial. The late, great comedian Norm Macdonald (PBUH, who I’m sure was part of the branch of the MacWilder side of the family) put it this way, “The job of a comedian is to make comedy. Comedy is when something unexpected happens. So, what’s funnier than a comedian that tells a joke and the audience doesn’t laugh?”

Norm’s joke.

I think, for reasons to be explained below, that we are in a time in history where the most amusing thing that could happen, will happen. And I have evidence. And not the burn a body at a funeral home it’s a cremation, but burn a body at home all of a sudden it’s “destroying evidence” sort of evidence. Nope, most every story is one you’ll be familiar with.

The Trump Election in 2016 was my first clue. I’m fairly sure that Trump thought he was going to lose on election night, but after the polls closed? Amusing as can be. Hillary’s mental breakdown and gin-infused refusal to admit that no one would announce her as “Her Cankleness” at the United Nations?

Amusing.

Also amusing was COVID. Remember the pictures of people collapsing on the street in China? Yeah. People fell for that. In the end, it became a meme. Again, I’m not saying it was positive, but how amusing would it have been if people had said, “Oh, it’s a really bad flu.” Heck, there are still people who so mRNA addicted that they get the Pfizer® shot into their eyes every other week.

Why did Hunter sniff artificial sweetener? He thought it was Diet Coke®.

Amusing. Even more amusing? If the mRNA vax didn’t actually help people and was instead an amazingly irresponsible experiment where we tested it on people before we tested it on mice. Oh, wait . . . .

Not mine.

Although I wanted Trump to be re-elected in 2020, I have to admit that the 2020 election was amusing. What happens when a bunch of well-funded Leftists and Globalists decide they want to change the rules and control information flow so a barely-living reanimated corpse of a political hack so limited in intellect that he plagiarized law school work and so limited in charisma that houseplants regularly get more attention gets close enough that they can commit (what is likely) the biggest electoral fraud in history?

And Biden is doing such a wonderful job that he’s making Jimmy Carter look like an effective and competent President, while displaying worse morals than Teddy “pants optional” Kennedy. Sad that Biden doesn’t remember any of that from day to day, and that his son Hunter doesn’t remember the years 2008-2021, and that the New York Times® doesn’t remember anything bad anyone named Biden ever did.

When NASA shows a picture of a hole at work it’s a scientific breakthrough. When I do the same thing, it’s an HR violation.

It’s certainly amusing, and probably more amusing than if Trump were in his second term. And what if that child-sniffing dementia patient picks the most vapid and, well, retarded mentally challenged person to ever sit as Vice President?

Amusing as can be. Mike Pence was boring, mostly. Kamala Harris regularly shows that her knowledge of foreign policy came through watching game shows and infomercials. Sham-wow®!

If Kamala was amusing, the withdrawal from Afghanistan was even more so. To have Joe Biden state, “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of a . . . .embassy in the—of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable,” less than a month before that exact thing actually happened?

Amusing.

Like salmon return to spawn in the rivers, COVID-19 laid its eggs and became the Ukraine. The Mrs. heard one young high schooler say, “Hey, COVID’s over! We have World War III!” The Ukraine became the Next Big Thing.

And then?

Elon Musk. Pretty much everything he does is amusing. Twitter® is hilarious. Beating NASA with 1/1,000^th of their budget even more. And selling electric meme cars to Leftists that now hate him?

I hear that Amber will soon be touring with Korn.

That’s amusing! He even showed up in commentary at the Johnny Depp/Amber Turd trial.

I think, maybe, that The Market Collapse of 2022 is at least partially from the Left trying to take down Musk and keep Twitter™ as the main source of Leftist indoctrination. It bothers them so much that they actually panicked enough to appoint a Ministry of Truth.

See? Amusing.

Now, just this week, I hear that “men” are lactating. And that “men” can have abortions. Oh, and did I mention the Supreme Court decision?

Yeah. Amusing.

The dead writer Robert A. Heinlein wrote about this (when he wasn’t writing about Oedipus) in his Future History. He called it the Crazy Years. The Crazy Years were just that – the years after society broke down. Heinlein didn’t write about that period much at all, mainly because it’s not a great story.

I do hear he was a savvy shopper, so they called him Bilbo Bargains.

J.R.R. Tolkien was going to do a sequel to The Lord of the Rings. He didn’t. Why? After the One Ring was chucked along with Frodo’s finger (note to self, that would be a good band name) and destroyed, things were good. The world had been saved from Evil, and anything that would be a sequel would have been dark. It would have involved (from his notes) Aragorn’s kids idolizing Orcs and slowly being seduced by a decadence that prosperity brought, eventually leading to degeneracy and corruption replacing morality and virtue.

Heyyyyyyyyyy . . . .

Most years, most decades, haven’t seen as much amusement as these last six years. We live in those dark years that neither Heinlein nor Tolkien wanted to write about because it was depressing.

That’s okay. We’re not in a story.

What we are in, though, is a history moving ever so quickly that the novelty content is ever increasing.

There is one thing that we can do, and one thing only. In the darkness of years where degeneracy and corruption replace morality and virtue, be moral. Be virtuous. Stand for what is right, even when the world flows around you and tells you that good is bad, and men can breastfeed. Be virtuous, especially when those around you count virtue as the greatest sin.

Why? It’s right. And it’s not at all what they’re expecting.

I guess that makes it amusing, right?