Will Great Britain Rise Again?

“They chose to murder and steal.” – The Dark Knight

Notes:  All memes are as found, and no podcast tomorrow – The Mrs. has to catch some sleep.

Alice Smith is a reciprocal follow on X®.  She’s the great-great-great-granddaughter of Scottish economist Adam Smith, and is a good person to follow (@TheAliceSmith) if you’re already following the most important account on X™, @wilderbyfar.  She’s from the UK, and had the absolutely best post I’ve seen on the current sickness that’s destroying the West:

Doesn’t that say it all?

Immigration to the West (Europe plus the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) has nothing to do with freedom or our culture for most immigrants.  It’s merely about the stuff.

The sickness?

It’s from the GloboLeftElite attempting to brainwash the world into thinking that:

  • There is no difference between a man and a woman,
  • Anyone can be a man or a woman,
  • There are no intrinsic differences between races and ethnicities,
  • No one can pretend to be a different race unless it’s been okayed in advance even though all races are the same,
  • White people should somehow feel shame for their race even though all races are the same,
  • There is no difference between people of differing I.Q.,
  • People who are wealthy merely “won a lottery”, and,
  • Every culture is valid.

It’s the last one that we should talk about right now.

I’m not particularly interested in going on a culture jihad, so, perhaps all cultures are “valid.”  I suppose, if cannibal, rape-y, stone age tribes are your thing, I guess you could call it valid.

But all cultures are certainly not equal in things like freedom, justice, morality, and economic output.

Here, for centuries, the West has been far ahead of the world.  Europe was free-ish (feudalistically speaking) since the Black Death, which greatly changed the relationship between serf and local lord.

And in a continent that was freer than any in the world, there was a place that was freer yet:  Great Britain.  Great Britain had a really big advantage:  after the year 1066, it really was never invaded by a external enemy army.  Sure, you could make a case the culture has been subverted by outside forces (and I will below) but not by force of arms.

This isolation as an island nestled right next to Europe allowed a strange development – yeoman farmers who were encouraged to take up the longbow and become soldiers so that while the English lost land in France, there was never a doubt about them losing England.  The Scotts in the north were much the same, being hard-headed independent herders, they had to be strong, and were used to fighting both against and with other Scotts as well as the English.  And, yes, that’s a complement. (I’m partially Scot myself).

This isolation of individually armed individuals set up an independent society with no safety nets.  If you were too poor, stupid, or drunk to make enough money to live, you died.  If your lord decided he wanted something out of line, well, your +3 longbow could outrank his +1 armor at a distance.  As a result, Britain’s I.Q. rose over the course of centuries because the culture itself winnowed out stupid people, yet the strong, stubborn sense of independence remained.

Even the song “Rule, Britannia!” has the following lyrics:

“Rule, Britannia! rule the waves;
“Britons never will be slaves.”

This is a very, very different culture than that of the current people who opened the floodgates to Great Britain – they were unabashedly Globalist and Leftist, hated everything that Great Britain stood for, and were more than willing to start the migration into Great Britain.  I’d be lying to say that none of them pulled their weight – in some cases Britain got some of the best from their home countries, hence the term “brain drain”, but this was the exception rather than the norm.  Most of the immigrants to the UK have been a net negative to the country.

But no outside army ever conquered Britain.  Except the army of beggars that have invaded it have done something that no one thought possible – united the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland – against the onslaught.  What does it take to get people who have been fighting each other for centuries to hold hands, literally, and march together?

Whatever it is, it sounds Evil to me.

And it is.  Evil.  Brought directly to the shores of Great Britain by GloboLeftists in misguided altruism and the GloboLeftistElite out of a calculated bid to displace inconvenient people who don’t want to be replaced.

There reaches a point where something so awful happens that a culture revolts:  it says, “That’s enough.”  In the United States for transgender acceptance, it was the murder of six children by a trans killer so crazed that they still won’t release her manifesto.  That was enough.  The GloboLeftistElite wanted to try to hide it (see how autocomplete will try to take you to murders of transgenders, but not murders by transgenders).  These murders is why Bud Light™ is Bud Deadtome© for so many consumers.

It appears that the United Kingdom (Great Britain plus Northern Ireland) has had enough of murderous vultures in their society.  The cause?  The murder of three girls, ages 6, 7 and 9 at a Taylor Swift-themed dance class in a town called Southport.  By knife.  By a 17-year-old that had no place being in the United Kingdom in the first place.

English people had watched as rape gangs of organized sexual assault on at minimum 1400 young women that was denied to even exist in Rotherham because the victims were mainly white and the perpetrators were of privileged minority status – Pakistani, mostly.

This was covered up at a national level.  Filing cabinets full of the data on the case mysteriously disappeared.  That was never solved.

But would it matter?  Probably not:

Some of those convicted (many weren’t even tried) got as little as 2 years.  Britons can get more time for being mean with words.

Oh, and the last one?  She was posting Bible verses.

That set the situation, along with other, repeated, ongoing murders and rapes by people not fit to live in any sort of civilized society.  These three final murders were enough.

The response of the Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, was exactly what you would expect from a member of the GloboLeftElite:  he blamed the people pushing back against unrestrained and unrestricted illegals swarming the United Kingdom.  And if you complained online, even if you were more likely to be arrested than the illegals swarming the streets with swords and machetes.

They’re now calling him “two-tier Keir”, since his justice has two tiers:  a harsh one for actual English, Scots, Welsh, and Irish and one where all acts by any minority are ignored.  Probably because Starmer hates his own people, because he hates himself.

I guess that’s easier.

The United Kingdom has found a point where they say, No More.

This is coming soon to a country near you.

Oh, and if they offer the type of deal below?  We should take it.  Because it’s not about the stuff.

At all.

Civil War 2.0, A Chaotic Month

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

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

  1. Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
  2. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
  3. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  4. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  5. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  6. Open War.

Volume VI, Issue 3

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

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

In this issue:  Front Matter – Destabilization – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Kamala – Links

Front Matter

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

Civil War Weather Report Previous Posts

Destabilization

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

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

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

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

Trump is certainly a showman.

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

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

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

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

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

All of that screams stability.

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

Violence and Censorship Update

Well, there’s this:

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

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

And the GloboLeftElite try to hide what we all saw:

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

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

And Prince Harry shows why July 4 is still important:

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

But there are Bright spots:

Biden/Harris Misery Index

If Democratic economic policy had a face:

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

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

More to come:

Updated Civil War II Index

The Civil War II graphs are an attempt to measure four factors that might make Civil War II more likely, in real time.  They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings.  As each of these is difficult to measure, I’ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that combine to become the index.  On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

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

Political Instability:

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

Economic:

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

Illegal Aliens:

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

Kamala

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

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Good Guys

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

 

One Guy

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

 

Body Count

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Vote Count

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

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

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

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

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

 

Civil War

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Socialists: How To Make A Monster

“Well, ‘free’ is just another word for ‘socialist’.” – Watchmen

There are social drinkers and socialist drinkers.  Socialist drinkers only drink when someone else pays.

TIK History is a YouTube® channel that focuses on, well, history.  Mainly his channel has focused on World War II battles, and mainly battles involving lots of tanks.  He did one series on Stalingrad that (I believe) totaled over 3,000,000 words of script by the time he was finished.  Obviously, that took him years to put together.  That’s more than enough work to earn him a doctorate, which I guess would make him a Stalingraduate Student.

When not doing battle documentaries, he also does some on political philosophy.  Where I do listen to all of his battle recreations, his political philosophy videos are hit or miss.  One that I did listen to (LINK) is one on the similarities of the lives of socialist leaders who had no particular problem with the idea of killing millions to achieve their paradise.

Which socialist leaders?  Well, all of them:

Lenin, Trotsky, Marx, Engels, Stalin, Mao, and (and, to a lesser extent) Pol Pot.  TIK included Mussolini and Hitler, and, on reviewing, in my opinion they don’t quite fit the mold, so I’ve omitted them here.

Lenin, Trotsky, and Mao walk into a bar.  There are no survivors.

TIK noted that each of these had the same sort of pattern:

  • Horrible relationship with their father or an absent father.

This doesn’t really surprise me.  Mothers and fathers have utterly different roles in raising a child – mothers teach love and empathy and altruism, while fathers teach discipline and honor and courage.  These are very different tasks, but this might be incomprehensible to someone who cannot define what a woman is.

This is directly from Mao’s Wikipedia® entry:  ”During the 1930s, Mao would claim that he resented his father, viewing him as stingy and unaffectionate. He contrasted this with the affection he received from his mother, thus adopting a Marxist dialectical perspective by dividing the family into two camps: his mother and himself on one side, his father on another.”

This leads us directly to:

  • Very strong relationships with “sainted” mothers.

Again, mothers are different than fathers.  Looking at what mothers teach, these socialist leaders were taught that they needed to fix the world, but never told to fix themselves.

What did Freud use as an insult?  “Your mother is so unpleasant that even your own subconscious isn’t attracted to her.  What, no, this is just a cigar.”

  • Very religious youth, followed by atheism later in life.

Religion, when done right, provides both a goal and a means to achieve that goal.  In Christianity, you’re supposed to help people, but those people should also be striving to be worthy, and there are limits based on the religion of exactly how one should help people:  altruism, but with limits.  Remove the religion, remove the limits but keep the misplaced altruism.

This is crucial, because it means that all power is in the hands of man, and there isn’t any space for a higher power.  Man has no limits, and thus there is no meaning to any of this, so everything is justified as long as it brings about the desired end result.

Socialism doesn’t even work on paper, if history books count.

  • Prosperous or stable middle class upbringing with no particular hardship.

Mao, for instance had a hardworking father that bought up several acres and employed several farm workers – this was substantial wealth for where he grew up – Mao as a child had his own room, which was amazingly rare.

  • Relationship with real jobs was spotty, at best.

I think Marx did some occasional writing for papers, but mostly he lived based on begging money from friends and family.  Yet, he had a maid, drank like a fish, and smoked enough cigars to bankroll Cuba.  So, no job, his wife constantly giving birth, his maid once giving birth (likely to Marx’s kid) and he lived in an eight-room house.  No wonder communism was a failure: listening to the advice of a pauper on the way to get to economic prosperity is like taking the advice of Boeing in 2024 on how to make spaceships.

These people either hated or feared the idea of economic independence.  Lenin worked for two years before becoming a bum.  Ditto with Trotsky.  Stalin’s only job, ever, was as a cobbler as a child working for his father for a very short time when he was a kid.

A GloboLeftist said that if we had to kill our own food, we wouldn’t eat meat.  But I say if he had to make his own computer, he wouldn’t whine on Reddit®.

I think the poor economic conditions that each of these people had filled them with envy.  It’s not that they wanted everyone to prosper, it is that they wanted (especially with Marx and Lenin) other people to work harder so they didn’t have to.

Each of them is slightly different, yet those same patterns appear to remain.  Additionally, I think the family structures (I wrote about this at the links below) of their countries allowed them to come to power in a way that wouldn’t have worked in England or the United States.

Another Key To Understanding It All: Family Structure

Family Structure, Part II: Orphans Still Not Required

When I look to the modern politician that most models this family structure and early life, it is clearly Barrack Hussein Obama – each of the points that would lead to a socialist or communist dictator were and are there.  I think this explains, at least partly, his current engagement to try to steer and control the Democratic party and to “fundamentally transform” a nation that he hates.

Which brings us to the other candidate that fits the pattern:  Kamala Harris.  Although she never won a primary, she fits the pattern as well:  her father was absent from her life after their parents divorced, her mother was her sainted figure, raised as a Hindu, she is more than likely not at all Christian, since her father is a rabid communist and commies hate Christianity.

Makes me wonder if her quest for power has left a bad taste in Kamala’s mouth.

That leaves Kamala as filled with altruism as someone guided by religion, but without the constraints that the belief in God.  Or whatever gods Hindus believe in, since I don’t believe anyone actually understands the religion.

Regardless, these two people are dangerous.  And they are potentially working together.  If you look at the intense desire to bring in hordes of illegal and legal immigrants used to either socialist or chaotic government, look no further for the reason:  they hate America.  They hate you.  And they want to replace you because, in the end, they hate themselves as well.

Here’s hoping that Kamala can’t keep away from the vodka during the campaign.  Perhaps we can convince her to start a vodka diet if we tell her she can lose three days in just one week.

How Big Corporations Ruin The Economy, One Town At A Time

“I still say genetics are stronger than will, and blood is thicker than altruism.” – Andromeda

Should we rejoin Great Britain?  It’s not like we mind taxation without representation anymore.

At the turn of the century, in 1900, that is, 25% of the people who worked had jobs for “larger” companies, think “something someone would say a robber baron owned”.  These were things like railroads and steel mills and PEZ™ factories.

Most people worked for themselves or for smaller businesses.  People farmed, which was a very big deal, taking up around 40% of the country’s labor force.  The remainder worked for themselves or for small businesses, being a lawyer, working for the butcher, or delivering home-grown artisanal PEZ©.

The result was that the majority of the profits stayed local.  The owner of the bank that loaned for the mortgage for Farmer McWilder didn’t ship the interest payments back to New York:  those profits stayed in the community.  People were more independent:  the local optometrist didn’t work for Opti-Co™, a Ramtron© company, which is a division of GloboChunk®.

Introverts hate being optometrists.  They have to make eye contacts.

When BigDrugStore® moved into Modern Mayberry, what did they do?

They bought the local pharmacies from the local pharmacists.  They hired (then fired after a year or so) the local guys.  Now, profits that used to go to funding the local little league team are funneled to investors in New York where they buy part of a bathroom renovation in the Hamptons.

Likewise, the local manufacturers have dried up, too.  There used to be at least seven little widget factories that made various doo-dads and thingamajigs that now are produced either in People’s Liberation Army Factory #323 or in Whamco’s™ huge factory in Pakistan.

I guess that’s an everlasting jobstopper.

Big businesses have two impacts:  they suck profits out of communities, and they make everyone less independent.  There are several factors that have led to this:

  • Allowing corporations to live forever and do anything.
  • Having combined huge corporations making huge purchases so that the combined purchasing power of all of the (for instance) Wal-Marts® can be used to put the pressure on suppliers to lower every cost, including labor,
  • Burden small companies with exactly the same regulations as large companies, giving large companies the incentive to seek out stronger regulation to keep competition down, and,
  • Realizing that every dollar pulled out of the community is an extra dollar of New York profit for putting in that new pool house.

This did reduce prices, at least enough to put small businesses out of business, but it has hurt America by taking profits that were local and nationalizing them to the existing GloboLeftistElite.  Yes, there were benefits, but each of these communities is now (over time) poorer for having these larger businesses in them.

DNA is like Taco Bell® – same four ingredients, nearly infinite results.

An aside:  this process has funneled huge amounts of money to the GloboLeftistElite.  Who are they?  They’re the people who run and own the largest corporations, yet are Marxists.  Don’t believe me?  Look at all of the class struggle propaganda that shows up from their typical GloboLeftist company in a year.  Trotsky would blush, I mean, if he hadn’t been killed with an icepick.

This has hurt rural America, which was built on individuals working and creating wealth locally.  I look at small towns across the United States at their aspirational city halls and libraries, and think, “Could any of them afford to build those structures now?”

No, they couldn’t.

Why not?

Because the locally created wealth has been siphoned off.

In the end, what can be done?  Here’s a modest proposal:

  • Restrict corporations to a limited life span, at which time they have to divest.
  • Restrict corporations to a specific line of business.
  • Require corporations to be chartered as separate entities in each operating state.
  • Require a percentage (greater than 50%?) of local (think, people living in the state) ownership in each corporation.
  • Ease regulatory burdens on smaller companies, making it easier to form and grow them.
  • Sharply restrict lending by out of state institutions.
  • Tiered sales tax based on company size: the bigger, the higher, which reflects the value these companies are taking out of state.

I could probably think of more changes that would actually return more capitalism to the country.  Yes, Apple™ isn’t fond of competition or capitalism or even the United States.  GloboLeftBigCorp© companies that have done their best to concentrate capital and economic power while at the same time being overtly Leftist.

You should respect people like me who wear glasses.  I paid money to see you.

Feel free to attack any individual points above, but the constant concentration and combination of economic power has to be stopped – inherently, it is anti-capitalist and anti-freedom, which leads to the failed ideology of group altruism.  Besides, those were the result of five minutes of thinking and I avoided thinking about creative uses for lamp posts.

Why is group altruism bad?  When .gov takes your money and gives it to another person it likes better than you, no one gets to feel the inherent power of helping people.  Helping people is great on an individual level, because it reinforces the idea of humans helping humans.  Helping people voluntarily is virtuous, especially if the help changes the path the person is on so in the future they don’t need the help.  Those that help go from anonymous people who are tax farmed to people who have actual skin in the game in helping people succeed.

On the other hand, group altruism creates a situation those who are most in need become the most despised because they are seen as the irredeemable bit of society.  Group (.gov) altruism doesn’t want to make people independent, because dependent people are dependable voters for more .gov and more regulations and money transfer, and .gov loves a divided people.  Also, since people pay taxes, many of them feel no obligation whatsoever to help anyone.  They’ve farmed out their virtue.

I read that a big company helped blind kids.  But they meant the verb, not the adjective.

Want to know why Reparations for slavery from people who never owned slaves to people who never were slaves is popular?  It’s the GloboLeftElite’s mechanism for creating a feeling of entitlement that will never go away.  How much is enough Reparation?  There is no answer, because the GloboLeftElite has said that there will never be enough Reparation.  Never.  That’s the result of group altruism.

Do I want people to not starve and also stay in Africa, or India, or (insert country name here)?  I do.  That doesn’t mean that individual organizations can’t help them, but to do so should be voluntary, and not the power of the government to take wealth and allocate it around the world or, through action or inaction, bring an unending supply of immigrants to our shore.

The solution in the future is to create a society where commerce is human scale, is focused on maintaining and encouraging the family (which is the atom of the nation) and is based on the nation, not on every person on the planet.

Anyone else ready to party like it’s 1899?

Illegal Immigration: It’s a Pyramid Scheme

“If you’re trying to extort us because we are immigrants, we know the law.” – Taken

If you would like a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve our lives, please press 1 for English. (All memes today are as found.)

As I look to the vast, teeming hordes of illegals washing on to our shore daily, I ask myself, what rational nation would make it easy for hundreds of thousands of fighting-age men to easily enter the country each month, every month, for the entirety of the Biden administration?

Some have claimed that as many as 11 million to 13 million of these fighting-age men are entering the country every year.  That’s a total of nearly 40 million in the three and a half years since Biden assumed the office.  Of military aged men.  Who won’t be in the military.  At least not our military.

It has even gotten to the point where the normies that tend to vote left (not the committed GloboLeft, mind you, but the normies who voted for Biden) have come to realize, “No, this is too much.”

It’s gotten to the point where other immigrants have said, “No mas.”

It’s gotten so bad that Joe Biden, he who Executive Ordered out of existence Trump’s border strategy in the first forty minutes after he took the oath, had to pretend it was the Republicans who were against border security last month.

Oh, and a few minutes after that he then offered immediate legal status to 500,000 spouses of illegals.  It must be wonderful to be a GloboLeftist and have the memory of a goldfish.

Of course, one of the main reasons the GloboLeft want to haul in illegals over the border is that most people who are illegals want free stuff, and most immigrants in general (not all, but in general) have come from countries where a higher degree of socialism is the norm.  Plus, many don’t speak the language, so they’re left to whatever the local GloboLeftist “Community Organizer” tells them for political beliefs. 

But, perhaps, another reason that the GloboLeft wants so much immigration is debt. If you look at average debt in the United States, it’s at $104,000.  Even Gen Z is getting on the debt train:  the average Zoomer debt is about $30,000, even though the oldest Zoomer is 26.

Average illegal (or legal) immigrant debt load?  Zero.

The opportunity then appears:  load the illegals up with loans at silly high interest rates.  Keep in mind, they have crappy credit, so a 20% interest rate to buy a car at a buy here/pay here place seems like a good deal.  Illegals also have, generally, lower reading comprehension and less experience with the debt-industrial complex, so renting to buy a tv, a car, furniture (rent to own!) which makes it look like the immigrant is actually adding to the economy rather than subtracting from it.

And they are subtracting from it:  medical care, schooling, infrastructure, housing, and criminality all pile on.  While American might have become a third-world hellhole all by itself (which I doubt) illegals are a pyramid scheme.  The scheme requires more and more illegals to take on the debt and consooom the resources.

The solution to all of these problems brought on by the immigration?  GloboLeftists want to import yet more illegals to solve the problems caused by all of the previous illegals.  The endpoint of this is disaster.  It ends up destroying the countries, no, nations, that were insane enough to practice this importation.  A nation, like Ireland, filled with Irish people ceases to be a nation when it ceases to be Irish.  A Moroccan born in Ireland is no more Irish than a mouse born in a stable is a horse.

No, Ireland then ceases to be a nation when it ceases to be Irish, and then it becomes a country, and it will never be the same.  I think the Irish have figured this out, as they’ve been pushing back on the GloboHomoElite as of late.

Several years ago, I was listening to NPR™ before I gave up on it entirely – it was probably 2016.  This was an out-and-out propaganda piece, and I realized it at the time.  In this snippet, the child of Iranian parents that had lived in California had moved to Copenhagen.  He was quite upset that his daughter (born in California) was not considered to be Danish.

Well, she’s not.  She never will be.  Persian?  Sure.  Danish?  Never.  At best, a resident.  Her children, three or four generations hence?  Maybe so, as soon as they are named Viggo or Alfred or Clara or Freja.

These changes have consequences that range far deeper than just the economic.  England was a country made for the English, and that’s how it works.  The customs and attitudes of India or Pakistan?  Well, import enough of that, and England won’t be England.

America is not Ireland – I’m of Scots-Dane-English extraction, and no Scot, Dane, or Englishman would claim me as anything but their very distant kin, which I understand.  But I am more than three generations American, so I have no other home, no other place that is mine.

And just like England was made by and for the English, America was made by and for the Americans.  Whoever is coming across the border is not an American, but someone who is actively destroying America.

None of the GloboLeftElite care that this will ruin all of the nations of the West economically or demographically.  As an anon put it,

“They’ll destroy it all, all of society, for a lifetime of personal hedonism and debauchery, funded off of the suffering of billions.”

I’m not sure that’s right.  The forces of the GloboLeftElite do like their pleasures, but many of the foot soldiers of the GloboLeft simply want to watch it all burn.  They don’t care, particularly, to see anything grow in its place, just so long as the True, the Beautiful, and the Good are destroyed.

Destruction, though it may be easy, and though it may be very common in the coming years, will not be the final say.  In the end, since the beginning of man, the True, the Beautiful, and the Good have proven to come back alive, again and again, even when the night seemed the darkest.

I have never said the path is easy, and I’ve never said any of us will live to see the end of the tale, and I hate to give spoilers, but we’re not done.

Not even close.

Bad Economics Destroys Wealth

“Hey, there’s no airbag.  I can fly out through the windshield?” – Rocketman

Toyota® introduced their new Nagasaki airbag – they say “you won’t feel the impact”.

Annually, about 2800 lives are saved by airbags.  Hurray!

Annually, 13.6 million new cars are sold.  That probably doesn’t rate a hurray, I mean, not ever fact is exciting.

I’m guessing (numbers are sketchy) that it costs approximately $2000 per car to add airbags.  This number may be a bit high, but replacing a single airbag can cost $2000, and many new cars have so many airbags that some cars can legally be sold as bubble wrap.

By federal law, all passenger autos sold must include airbags.

That pencils out to an annual cost of $27.2 billion dollars in additional consumer spending.

For airbags.

So, we have all of the math ready for us:  how much does it cost to save a human life.

(drumroll)

About $10 million dollars per life saved.

Every Monday evening, Superman® researches bitcoin.  That’s his crypto-night.

That’s insane.  I mean, I know the goal is a good one, but why is the federal government mandating that Americans spend an average of $10 million dollars per person to save them?  Heck, I don’t like most people even $50,000 worth.  But $10 million?

This number, and, indeed the federal mandate that airbags be installed on everything on the highway is a product of the “safety at all costs” culture.  Their motto is, “If only one human life is saved . . .” which is meant as a rallying cry for whatever uneconomic idea that they want to put forward.  An actual economist, Thomas Sowell, made the argument that if you wanted people to drive safely you’d replace the airbag with a big Bowie knife.  I tried to verify that quote, but the link that I came up with was . . . my site.

So, I couldn’t verify it, except by myself.  I’m not sure I’m a reliable source, but, hey.

It would also decrease emergency room visits.  Save him?  No, then how would he learn anything?

Hit the brakes too hard?

Sorry about that – there are consequences to the driver.

Imagine how polite drivers would be then?  If not, think of the lowered hospital visits!

The news is simple:  no one makes it out of here alive.  No one.  We cannot escape the one inevitable consequence of living, which is death.  The GloboLeftSafetyPatrol thinks that if we spend billions of dollars, we can make Death go away.  No, at least in 2024, the only thing that we can do is shoo Death away from our doorstep for a little while by using better diet and exercise and maybe renting an 18-year-old to use as a blood donor to live off of them like a vampire.  I heard them called “blood boys” once.

If I brought the concept that actions have consequences up with a GloboLeftist, it would break their mind.  They live in a world where money is what other people provide to satisfy all the wants of the world.  In my experience, most people want a lot more than the world can afford, so we have to make choices.  Not everyone can afford a blood boy.

Asian fathers are disappointed if their son has a B+ blood type.

That’s the basis of economics, making the least-bad choice given the information you know at the time.

The second thing that drives the GloboLeftistSafetyPatrol nuts is the idea that people might have a choice.  It drives them nuts.  What if I wanted to buy a car that didn’t have airbags?

I’m the bad guy.

Why?  Well, for that to be the case, the GloboLeftSafetyPatrol has decided that they own me.

To be clear, I do believe that there are obligations that an individual has with society, and that a society has for an individual.  Pure libertarianism in the absence of an infinite expanding frontier is simply not workable, though it has been tried and certainly worked better than communism and with a much smaller body count.

A similar bad choice is involved with the decision to import the swarming masses of parasite carrying (link below) illegals to replace actual citizens.  All of the job growth post-COVID has been by immigrants, either of the legal (or, since there are millions and millions of them) more likely illegal aliens.

Could It All Be Worms Making The Decisions For The Left?

When illegals do a home invasion is it a house swarming party?

In one way this is a multiple hit to the economy.  First, these aliens, on average consume a lot more resources than are offset by the tax revenue they produce and work that they do.

For every illegal crossing the border, the economy has that much more sand poured in the gears in terms of unpaid for medical cost, schooling costs, infrastructure costs, and benefits cost.  The average illegal costs far more than the average veteran, and much more than the average veterinarian.  Heck, they even cost more than the average vegan, though they’re not so smug.

Second, for every illegal that consumes additional housing, often in conditions of squalor with much higher occupancy than an American family, the housing stock is consumed, raising prices.  I read one story about a Canadian apartment where the inhabitants were living in every room in the house, including having a bed in the kitchen where two people lived.

Lastly, the illegals keep wages low.  Literally if we import the third world, we become the third world because our wages will eventually drop to third world levels – the same goes for free trade.

Importing illegals (and, let’s face it, many legal) aliens actually makes the economy get worse, and it’s faster the more we import.  With lowered demand for housing, prices would go down.  With lowered amounts of workers, wages would tend to go up.  Take these to the extreme, and California becomes Mumbai, but with fewer cobras.

If Chuck Norris didn’t have arms, what would his catchphrase be?  “You’re about to meet de feet!”

The GloboLeft loves illegals, because of their compassion – but studies have consistently shown that their compassion is just that, a feeling, and that people on the TradRight are generally those that actually fund and charities that help people.  To the GloboLeftists, that’s simply not their problem – government (meaning you and I) should take care of it.

We can’t afford airbags anymore because we’ve used that wealth on . . . airbags.  And illegals.  And any one of a thousand things that you or I could think of where the government either mandates waste or pursues policies that are directly detrimental to the voters.  I mean, even Sweden is waking up to the concept that importing rapefugees might not be the best policy since there are no-go zones (Malmo) where actual Swedish people aren’t allowed.

But what bothers me the most is, if the government keeps wasting the wealth of the country in this fashion and at this rate, I’ll never be able to afford a blood boy.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Trump Trigger and Complexity

“Rita, you’re a convicted felon, and now you’re an escaped con.” – The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.

They fired me from the clock factory because of all the extra hours that I’m putting in.

  1. Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
  2. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
  3. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  4. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  5. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  6. Open War.

Volume VI, Issue 1

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.

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

In this issue:  Front Matter – The Trump Trigger– Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Stairway to Where? – Links

Front Matter

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

Civil War Weather Report Previous Posts

The Trump Trigger

Donald Trump scared the hell out of the GloboLeftElite when he was elected.  I’m fairly certain that he makes many of GloboLeft rank and file lose sleep when they think about him being re-elected.

Rand Paul was quoted in Zero Hedge® (a reader sent this in):

“I worry about strife. I worry about war in the streets. I worry about 50 percent of the public believing that the court system will be used against them . . . I worry when half the country thinks they won’t be treated fairly, what happens and how people react.”

Huh, I thought he was dead.

Where we sit now, Trump may never spend a day in the pokey.  And he may never even be convicted – yes, there’s a jury verdict, but until the judge finds him convicted, there’s just a vote by a jury of twelve GloboLeft peers, one of which may have violated the rules and talked about the proceedings.

Oops.  There are other very, very valid reasons that Trump has for appeal – selective prosecution among them not identifying the charge against him – they never specified the other crime that Trump supposedly committed.

Rand Paul is right.  The judicial system has been weaponized at every level against Trump.  The fact that the Federalist Society has produced a slate of judges over the past several decades that aren’t woke Sotomayor-level GloboHomo soldiers will apply actual justice at the federal level.

But what if they don’t?

If Trump is convicted and sent to prison that will a very dark day in history – one that will show to millions of normies that the republic is irretrievably lost, a conclusion that many on the TradRight have come to years if not decades ago.

Does this lead to immediate chaos?  This is a tough one – I tend to think not, but then again, the number of people that support Trump and MAGA are significant.  It will be a sign that businesses need to create a quick exodus from New York, California, or any other location where the business has a political difference with the GloboLeftElite agenda.  I mean, it’s not like elections matter.

But I’m told it was a FaiR ElEctIoN.

Perhaps Musk moving to Texas is beginning to make a lot more sense.  On the bright side, it means that the Republic of Texas will be born with it’s own space force.

Violence and Censorship Update

The issues in Israel have done several things – they’ve increased the level of fighting in the GloboLeft as the Pro-Palestine wing and the Pro-Israel wings slug it out.  As Bracken notes, it is a weird GloboLeft/Palestine alliance.

Of course, as soon as the GloboLeft makes one of their crappy villages, they . . . put up the borders that they claim to hate.

The other side of the coin is the reaction in Congress, which is entirely at odds with that pesky 1st Amendment:

And, Massey has a very good question, especially since they committed $300,000 to ads attacking him:

Oh, and questioning the “Muh Immigration is Good” narrative is worth a banning:

They’re still trying to ban JK Rowling for telling the truth:

Propaganda, anyone?

Oh, it’s not like they’re trying to suppress anything . . .

Biden’s Misery Index

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

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

Updated Civil War II Index

The Civil War II graphs are an attempt to measure four factors that might make Civil War II more likely, in real time.  They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings.  As each of these is difficult to measure, I’ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that combine to become the index.  On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures.

Violence:

Violence is up, a little.  I wonder if Chicago’s Democratic National Convention is going to spike temperatures?

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it is slightly down.  I expect this fall to be a bit more crazy.

Economic:

Economic numbers are up a bit.  But so are prices.

Illegal Aliens:

Second Highest May is actually down.  But the normies are waking up.

Stairway to Where?

History never repeats exactly, but the same themes keep coming up again and again.  While there is no guarantee, there are patterns.

The lead up to civil war is often the same:  misery, rising tensions, and too many elites fighting each other for scraps of power.  The wars are often drastically different, and depend on things like ideology, geography, technology, and telepathy.  Okay, maybe not telepathy, but the other ones all count.

But, just like Led Zepplin©, there are two paths you can go by . . . and two outcomes.

Broadly, when civil wars occur there two things that can happen as a result.  The first one is what happened after the Russian Revolution or the American Civil War 1.0 – that is, a drastic reduction in freedom for citizens.

But I’ve been assured that everything is fine.

The American Civil war did increase the freedom of slaves, and granted them full citizenship, to be sure.  But for the common man who hadn’t been a slave?  Freedom declined.  There had been a balancing act between the Several States and Fed.Gov, but after the Civil War was done, the States were no longer sovereign, and, in fact were nothing more than subdivisions of the federal government.

This was drastically different than what existed before.  The Several States were recognized as just that, complete governments.  They only banded together, reluctantly, to create an organism strong enough, just barely, to resist being beaten up and conquered by the various European powers.

After the American Civil War?  The process of eliminating the rights of the Several States has been an ongoing battle every year since 1865, and, with a few exceptions, has been largely won by the United States.

If increased central control and tyranny are one outcome from a civil war, what’s the other?

Increased complexity.  Think back to the fall of the Soviet Union.  A huge, monolithic, multicultural tyranny if ever there was one.  It looked to the world as if it would never be defeated – heck, the view of the Russians in the 1980s (I know, I was there) was that, while they didn’t have lots of different consumer products, they did have a huge technological edge over the West.

But when the end came, the fighting that did happen was minimal – the Soviet Union (like the multicultural British and Roman empires that came before) didn’t end so much with a red tide of blood, but rather a gradual realization that no one wanted to play anymore.  The sad, shattered core of empire let all the parts fly to the wind.

I met the guy who puts the symbols on maps that say what things are.  What a legend!

It seems that one key is the “multi-cultural” part.  Whereas you could make the case that the United States had Irishmen and Scots and Norwegians bopping around back in 1860, the vast majority of Americans were just that, Americans descended from (by and large) stock from the United Kingdom with a common language and common religious and cultural heritage.

That led to Tyranny.

The seat of power of Imperial Russian was mainly . . . Russian.  The Russian Revolution led to?  Tyranny.

It seems that there is some tipping point where a Civil War results not in tyranny, but in Balkanization, heck, the name “Balkanization” is literally exactly what we’re talking about.

The more I think about it, unless there is a Caesar sitting in the wings (and I don’t see him) then we will end up Balkanizing after a Civil War.

Disagree?  This is a newer thought, so, love to hear comments.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1788630900781047856

https://x.com/i/status/1797153228032815184

https://twitter.com/i/status/1787518756756901901

https://x.com/i/status/1795801690014429550

https://x.com/i/status/1790510753952194692

https://x.com/i/status/1796322999056163026

https://x.com/i/status/1797272685791117522

 

Good Guy

https://x.com/i/status/1797274250438476199

 

One Guy

https://www.actionnews5.com/2024/05/29/scjc-alleged-teen-triggerman-deadly-community-center-shooting-fired-self-defense-wont-be-prosecuted/

https://www.courtnewsohio.gov/cases/2024/SCO/0307/221482.asp

https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/man-shot-killed-overnight-in-a-carmichael-apartment-deputies-say/

https://apnews.com/article/roger-fortson-stand-your-ground-race-florida-2c6a585f3fa5b2bd21179b84ff258b1d#

 

Body Count

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/https-3A-2F-2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com-2Fpublic-2Fimages-2F04d489f3-35f1-4579-80f6-dc5babc003cf_936x528_png_92.jpg?itok=sQRpJ67q

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/https-3A-2F-2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com-2Fpublic-2Fimages-2F13892e0d-32cb-47c1-8cef-b2e1554b9e62_1456x972.jpeg_92.jpg?itok=HMg63_9I

https://cis.org/Report/ForeignBorn-Population-Grew-51-Million-Last-Two-Years

https://trac.syr.edu/whatsnew/email.240510.html

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/30142.jpeg?itok=jcgiDaxv

 

Vote Count

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/31/dinesh-dsouza-election-film-2000-mules-pulled.html

https://thefederalist.com/2024/05/13/heres-fresh-evidence-bidens-using-your-tax-dollars-to-turn-out-democrat-votes-in-2024/

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2024/05/13/the-georgia-state-election-board-ensures-2024-will-be-a-2020-repeat

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/officials-overseeing-elections-swing-states-doubt-2020-results/

 

Civil War

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/biden-uncivil-war-rages-rcna150666

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13447357/THIRTEEN-conservative-counties-Oregon-approve-ballot-measures-SECESSION-vote-join-non-woke-Idaho-issue-list-demands.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13452561/Divided-states-America-Oregon-Louisiana-campaigns-secession-taking-place-local-state-levels-succeeding.html

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/opinion-we-are-starting-to-enjoy-hatred/ar-BB1nm54r

https://x.com/seanmdav/status/1796301843338789070

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/billionaire-investor-ray-dalio-warns-115219371.html

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/18/unpacking-ray-dalios-alarmist-prediction-of-civil-war/

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-hush-money-verdict-maga-civil-war-1906671

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/05/trump-trial-maga-internet-violence/678571/

https://www.wired.com/story/trump-guilty-verdict-online-maga-fanbase-war/

https://www.salon.com/2024/05/28/terrible-place-bill-maher-warns-a-civil-could-happen-here–some-already-pining-for-it/

Catabolic Collapse – Coming Soon To A Place Near You

“Out these windows, we will view the collapse of financial history.” – Fight Club

My friend struggled with steroid addiction, but it only made him stronger.

If you’re a bodybuilder, the word “anabolic” is your friend.  While often used in conjunction with the word steroids, anabolic really means “taking the proteins and stuff you eat and turning it into more complex stuff for your body”.  Like I said, that’s a good thing if you’re in shape as a body builder.  The Mrs. says that that spherical is technically a shape, so I guess I’m technically in shape.  At least in “a” shape.

But just like there is day balanced by night (see, I can be poetic!) anabolic is balanced by the less commonly used word “catabolic”.  And, just like an anode has a cathode, catabolic means the opposite.  If I’m dieting, the word catabolic is my friend – it rips apart complex molecules like fat that represent stored energy, releasing the energy, and making my shape appear less spherical as the fat is turned into energy releasing sweet, sweet CO2.and plutonium.

Ahh, back when a screwdriver was the height of nuclear safety protocol.  (meme as found, if obscure, look up “demon core”).

Economic growth is anabolic.  Building a house takes a complex logistics chain of materials and manpower and creates a yet more complex outcome, assembled only with effort and time.  A house fire is therefore catabolic – it torches and burns the whole thing down, much faster than it took to build.  But allowing a house’s roof to fail and the house to rot is also catabolic – it just takes a lot longer.

Just as it applies to houses and body shape, catabolic can also apply to economies.  Essentially every day after the paving of a road is complete, the road is rotting.  At first this happens slowly.  However, then, as water gets a chance to penetrate it and freeze and thaw, the decay happens much more quickly.

What happens when we can’t afford to fix stuff?  It slowly rots.  Buildings slowly decay.  Street signs fade.  Water pipes burst.  Kardashians move in.

How are Kardashians like deer?  They get new racks every year.

Just like keeping a body from starving requires continual food, keeping a complex system operating and running requires continual wealth and effort.  Every bridge, unless maintained, will collapse.  A comment last week talked about a pullback of restaurants in their area, more in keeping with what was in place decades ago.

Decades ago, even in Modern Mayberry, there weren’t a lot of external chain restaurants, not even a McDonald’s™.  McDonald’s© business model requires a Regional owner who owns multiple McDonald’s™ to build a restaurant on land the McDonald’s Corporation© owns and lease the restaurant from the Corporation®.  It also requires that the restaurant go through suppliers that the Corporation® selects to purchase stuff like food and cups and napkins.  On top of that, the Corporation™ takes a percent off the top for profit.

The Regional owner pays the Corporation©, but also takes the profits.  The remainder goes to costs, including labor.

I once had a sirloin sandwich at McDonald’s®.  I’ll never do it again, that was a Big McSteak™.

Back in, say, 1960, all the profits, including the money the local bank lent for the mortgage on Ma and Pa’s Diner, stayed in the community.  Many of the costs would as well, especially if the beef and vegetables were locally sourced through the butcher.  While the City wasn’t a closed economy, it still retained a lot of the money currently being extracted and kept it local.  But when the economy is prosperous, there’s enough wealth being generated, and the extraction of a bit of it doesn’t matter all that much.

Now?  The excess cash is hoovered out of the local economy with maximum velocity.  That turns the people that would have run Ma and Pa’s Diner or the butcher shop or the local grocery store into wage employees rather than entrepreneurs.  Amazon© and eBay™ have removed the reason for small shops selling specific items like games or cooking utensils, and that leaves room for Walmart™ to sell bulk commodities.  At least our local Walmart® isn’t like a Target® store in the big cities, which I hear now come complete with their own police precincts.

In a small town like Modern Mayberry, that’s one thing, but last week I wrote about the beginning of the collapse of the casual dining (as opposed to the philosophic problem created by causal dining) restaurant chains.  There are none of these in Modern Mayberry, because we’re far too small for an RedAppleChiliLobsterBees™.  No, the extraction is starting to fail in the suburbs as well.

I always stop my microwave when the clock hits 0:01, which makes me feel like a bomb disposal expert.

It was mentioned that area was going back the earlier “norm” of restaurants, but the reason is because the middle class has been squeezed.  This squeezing of the middle class is catabolic and will destroy demand.  This is why, right now, the economy shrinking while stocks continue upwards.  A recession is occurring in the middle class even as profits are up.  This is the collapse, but as discussed last week, it’s not sudden, until it is.

I’ve described Modern Mayberry, but I’ve also described the core areas of many larger cities, where as our economy moved from making things into reality to making profits on paper, the core died.  I’ve walked through the bones of industries long sent overseas and seen the majestic steel columns holding up the roof over an empty space, long since dead and forgotten.  That’s also catabolic.

The good news is that it starts slow, but picks up speed.  As I’ve said before, we’re standing on the edge of a new land ready to be born, that will be far different from what we’ve seen in the past.  The things we’ve taken for granted will no longer be there in many cases.  I’m looking at you, Social Security.

When The Mrs. was giving birth she seemed in discomfort, so I asked, “What’s wrong, honey?”  She responded, “These contractions are killing me!”  So, I asked, “What is wrong, honey?”

What matters is the rebuilding.  There will be choices to be made – some that will lead to freedom, some to serfdom.  As we’ve seen that paths leading away from the True, Beautiful, and Good always end in failure, most often spectacular failure, I’m optimistic.

I must be.  That’s why I keep dieting.

It Came From . . . 1985

“Go that way, really fast.  If something gets in your way, turn.” – Better Off Dead

People with babies can be really rude at the movie theater.  One kid was crying so loudly that I could barely hear the person I was talking with on the phone.

I was recently looking at some graphs that showed, by birth year, what time people thought were the “best” for various things.  For example, most people thought music peaked about the time where they were stupidest and going through puberty, say, 12-14.  I recall reading that one “dealmaker” would always put on music that would have been popular when the person he was trying to influence would have been in that age range.

Worked like a charm for him.

Movies are different.  For most people, surveyed, regardless of birth year, movies peaked in the 1980-1990 era.  Why?  They were creative, not afraid to take a risk, and great new movies were coming out almost weekly.  My initial cut at this list of movies had 25 movies on it.  And I thought of including at least 10 more.

It was an embarrassment of cultural riches that we had at that time.  Well, at least we have Marvel™ Movie Product  #432 now.

As always, the list isn’t in any particular order, and feel free to toss your favorites in the comments.

Witness – What I like best about this movie is that I’m fairly certain that it inspired Weird Al to do Amish Paradise.  Other than that, just a fish out of water movie about a crusty cop pretending to be Amish and an excuse to put Harrison Ford in something that wasn’t Indiana Jones® or Star Wars™.

If you see an Apple™ store get robbed, does that make you an iWitness®?

The Breakfast Club – I really didn’t like this movie.  It tried to make as if teens were angsty and filled with self-loathing and/or had bad relationships with pushy parents.  Most of my friends were fairly well-adjusted, so I just didn’t relate to any of the characters.  Of note:  I think people are complaining now that the characters were all white.  Imagine how it would fly if they were all BiPOC?  Regardless, it makes the list because it’s a cultural touchstone for so many other people.

Vision Quest – Now this character I could identify with – a teen who has a vision, and goes on a quest.  Okay, it’s about wrestling, girls, and life, and features a great soundtrack and lots of wrestling.  Oh, and Linda Fiorentino.

When two silkworms wrestle, how often are the results a tie?

The Sure Thing – 1985 was Peak John Cusack.  Sure, now he is an uber-Leftist on XX, but back then he was just another actor who could put in a great performance as a teen everyman.  Of note:  this was the first time I ever saw a cordless phone in a non-science fiction movie.

Lost in America – This is a movie about yuppies who decide to retire and go around the country in a big camper.  On their first stop, the wife gambles away all of their money.  Low-key hilarity ensues.  My favorite line?  “You are not allowed to use the words ‘nest’ or ‘egg’ ever again.”

Brewster’s Millions – Richard Pryor has to spend $30 million in 30 days and have nothing to show for it to inherit $300 million.  John Candy plays the sidekick.  Good times.

Rambo:  First Blood Part II – This movie transformed the brooding John Rambo into something closer to Batman® in a bandana.  Normally I wouldn’t put a sequel on the list, but this is a very different movie in every way from First Blood.

First PEZ™, Part II

The Stuff – What if your ice cream was eating you?  Yes, that’s the plot.  Yes, it’s played for laughs.

Back to the Future – Ever daydream about making sure your parents had sex?  Well, no, not until I saw this movie.  Time travel showed up in quite a few 1980s films, but this and Terminator probably top the list back when it was still a “new” movie concept.

Day of the Dead – Yes, a sequel, but, wow.  It was considered very, very gruesome for the time and place of release, but now this stuff is on TV all the time.  Interesting plot that could have had a much better script.

Fright Night – What if vampires were cool, suave, your next-door neighbor, and looking to bang and drain your girlfriend?  Better call a washed-up TV horror movie host to help!

The Amish do not approve.

Weird Science/Real Genius – People were optimistic that science could solve our problems in the 1980s, such as getting a girlfriend or popping a lot of popcorn all at the same time.

Summer Rental – Who wouldn’t want John Candy as a neighbor?  Well, I wouldn’t, since he’s dead.  But he also got in a feud with Richard Crenna (also dead) and Rip Torn (also dead) comes to the rescue by turning his restaurant into a pirate boat.  Okay, it’s essentially exactly the plot to Caddyshack, but who cares?  It’s funny.

The Return of the Living Dead – Is it a floor wax?  Is it a dessert topping?  If Shimmer™ could be both, why can’t The Return of the Living Dead be a comedy and a horror movie?  It is.  It cost $3 million, made $14 million, and though it was a very stupid movie, was certainly not brainless.

Volunteers – John Candy, again, but this time as a Tom Hanks sidekick who is brainwashed by the communists and teaches them the Washington State fight song.  Again, fun, and no Asians were killed in the filming of this movie.

Fight, fight, fight for Washington State . . . .

Better Off Dead – John Cusack again, 1985 was really his year.  In this movie where teen suicide is played for laughs, and I loved every minute of it.  Savage Steve Holland’s career was too short in movies, but lived on in animation.  The humor is mainly focused on the absurd, like the two Japanese brothers, one who speaks no English, and the other learned by listening to Howard Cosell.  I liked it.

Commando – I didn’t wear underwear to this movie, thus leading the expression “Commando” meaning not wearing underwear.  Okay, that’s not the case, but Commando could almost be titled Generic Arnold Schwarzenegger Action Movie because it is mainly just Arnie blowing things up and making bad puns.  And that’s okay.

In an Arnie voice:  “Well, at least my hat is purr-fect.”

Remo Williams:  The Adventure Begins – Until getting writing this post, I had no idea that this silly movie was based on a book series called The Destroyer that lasted for over 150 novels.  Yup.  But this is Fred Ward in a humorous movie that never takes itself too seriously, and has the production values of a TV movie, including Joel Grey as an ancient Asian master.

Re-Animator – I’m a sucker for great H.P. Lovecraft movies, and there are very, very few of those because Lovecraft built a wonderful world but didn’t write all that well.  This one involves a medical student who invents a reanimation fluid that make the dead walk again, which was a big 1985 theme, apparently.  This is Lovecraft, done right.

White Nights – Very much a Cold War movie, Gregory Hines and Mikhail Baryshnikov are dancers who plot to escape the Soviet Union.  It’s a spy thriller with sand dancing.  It’s the closest to a drama on the list, so, it’s got that going for it.

Brazil – No, still haven’t seen it.  Yes, I will at some point.

Does this capture the spirit of the movie Brazil?

France, Spain, And The Fate Of The United States

“If we bail out we can hide out in a French girl’s hayloft.” –  Memphis Belle

My cat’s a commie.  Keeps wanting free food and only talks about Mao.

Over a decade ago, I was reading a post by John Michael Greer (here’s a (LINK) to his current blog).  In that post, he talked about time compression and our tendency to not think about historical events in the timeframe that people actually lived them.  His example was that of a young girl, born at the time of the French Revolution.

In my mind, the French Revolution turned to the Napoleonic era and the defeat at Waterloo in a fairly short time.  I mean, I knew it took longer than the two days we spent on it in World History in high school, but that young girl, born when heads were rolling on the guillotine, would have been 25 or 26 and likely had her own children when Napoleon got waffled in Belgium.

And that poor French girl couldn’t even post about how tough her life was on TikTok®!

26 years.  That’s a number that, back when I read Greer’s post, surprised me.  From a distance of 230 some years, four years of Biden is an eyeblink.

Chuck Norris once stared into the abyss, and the abyss looked away.

The amazing amount of debt that’s been printed in the last four years along with the rampant inflation made me think back to that young French girl.  I think that in 100 years, people will look back on our time and compress it, and I think that they’ll talk about it as the time when the United States sank to third world standards in what, to them, will be just a paragraph in a history book.

There’s plenty of precedent for it.  Spain, after the colonization of the New World, brought back ship after ship filled with massive amounts of gold and silver for a period of about 100 years.  This caused several related things to happen:

  • The inflation from the huge supply of gold and silver distorted the entire economy of Europe, causing an inflation that lasted at least 100 years.
  • The huge amount of wealth caused the Spanish to import labor (a lot of to do the work that Spaniards refused to do, you know, like sweeping or making the bed). The Spanish aristocracy also was allergic to work, since they considered it low class.  Apparently, the exceptions were being a professor or a priest, but mainly they just sat around in fancy clothes sweating.
  • Spain then got caught in an endless web of pointless wars, probably because they were bored.
  • Oh, and when the gold and silver stopped flowing from the New World? Yeah, they didn’t stop spending, they just went bankrupt again and again.

This is not a good combination.  In less than 100 years, Spain went from being THE world power and the largest economy in the world, by far, to being poor and irrelevant.

In California you can’t get a tattoo of flames on your biceps, unless you have a fire arms permit.

I imagine the world in Spain as it declined in decadence just slowly got crappier and more expensive every day, just like we’re seeing today, as we see a long, slow slide to becoming the third world.  I wrote last week about the encrapification of the Internet, but other businesses are doing it, too.  McDonald’s® has record profits, but I’ve seen Big Mac® meals advertised for $15 or so.

The Mrs. bought a McFish© sandwich the other day and put it in the fridge, perhaps as some sort of religious ritual since I have no evidence that humans actually eat them.  I opened it up to give it a look, and was surprised to see a biscuit-sized sandwich.

I made some fish tacos the other night, but the ungrateful fish just swam away.

It’s been a while since I’ve even seen a Filet-O-Fish©, but the last time I ate one it wasn’t made out of a single goldfish.  Heck, I think the last time I ordered one was sometime during the Bush Administration.  Which one?  Much like Bill Clinton, I can’t remember which Bush because there were too many.  Back then it was a full-sized sandwich, but at some point, it became bite-sized.

I could come up with more examples from other companies, but that one will do.  Keep this in mind:  McDonald’s is now a luxury food.  Are McDonald’s™ sales number up?  Sure!  Prices have doubled.  But I haven’t been there in months (which is probably good for me) due to my inability to rationalize the idea that a Big Mac™ meal costs more than a pound of ribeye steak.

I can spell panda with just two letters:  P and A.

What’s the outcome?  Middle class people aren’t going to restaurants nearly as much, which is causing them to fail.  Examples abound:

  • Red Lobster© closed 87 locations
  • TGI Fridays® is closing 36 locations
  • Applebee’s™ closed up to 35 locations last year
  • Denny’s© closed 57 locations last year
  • Outback® has closed down 41 locations

Middle class people are now too poor to go to these restaurant chains.  Period.  Inflation has priced them out and wages, held down by continual streams of illegal aliens have not kept up.

This is part of the slow, creeping third worldism showing up in the United States.

Over the span of 26 years, where does this take us?

Why did Napoleon escape exile?  He didn’t have enough Elba room.

My answer is that, just like France before the Revolution couldn’t imagine what the world would be like after Napoleon, and just like the Spanish who brought the great heaps of gold and silver back to Spain thought it was going to be totally awesome (el awesomo, I think is the Spanish translation), our first world wealth is rapidly slipping away.

The next twenty years will be, generally, poorer in the United States and in the West.  The good news, however, is poorer equals poorer, not necessarily unhappier.  Who knows, we might even be happier if we lose the Internet and can’t access TikTok© anymore.