Propaganda: It’s Not Just For Diapers Anymore

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Diversity is our strength.”

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

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

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

“Ramen” – Scooby Doo® finishing a prayer.

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

I’m not making this up.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

“That’s them!  They knocked us out and stole our space suits!” – Dude, Where’s My Car?

How does a crab cross the street?  It uses a sidewalk.

The future isn’t what it used to be.

Going back in time, the future as envisioned by the 50s, 60s, and even the 70s was pretty cool.  There were flying cars, jetpacks, and a world that was cleaner and more convenient filled with abundant energy that would be too cheap to meter – and humanity would soon be headed outward to the planets, at the very least.  I believe that’s because that’s where the hot alien women in bikini space suits are kept.

That didn’t happen, or at least hasn’t happened yet.  Pa Wilder was born after World War I, but still within spitting distance of the first time people flew in the rickety plane that Orville and Wilber tossed together.  By the time he finished his government-funded all-expenses-paid European vacation in 1945, jet engines had already screamed over Europe, ballistic missiles had crossed into space on their way toward delivering urgent packages to London.

Jet airliners and satellites followed, and before Pa Wilder hit fifty, man was walking on the Moon.

And his favorite eel?  That’s a moray.

Amazing progress, by any stretch of the imagination.  But what (at the individual level) has changed since, say, 1981?

Let’s put computers aside (for a moment).  I know that’s like wanting to talk about the life of O.J. Simpson but just skip that one little detail.  Life in 2024 would be utterly comprehensible to Pa Wilder of 1981, especially if he never looked at a cellphone or a tablet or a computer.

The big advances in basic applied engineering seemed to stop around 1970.  Heck, in some ways, they’ve regressed – it’s not really possible to get on an SST and jet to London in a few hours going faster than the speed of sound unless you’re in the .mil club.  We’re also tinkering with going back to the Moon, but seemed to have lost the directions since Buzz Aldrin left them in his other spacesuit.

“I am Buzz Aldrin, I’ve been on the Moon.  Neil before me!”

One of the reasons that progress in a lot of conventional technology has slowed down or stopped is that progress is always easiest at the front end.  The Wright Flyer?  It sucked.  But after flight was proven, people lined up to improve it.  Radio?  It sucked, too, just dots and dashes until AM and then FM were plucked (by very smart people) from the aether, leading also to television in very short order.

Unfortunately, television also led to The View and Keeping Up With the Kardashians, so there’s at least some argument that Philo T. Farnsworth could be held liable for war crimes.

The biggest and most important refinements to a new technology often come soonest.

But that’s not the only reason technological development slows.  Nowadays, experimenting has become too hard because failure is no longer an acceptable outcome.  A prime example of this is Elon Musk’s SpaceX® versus NASA.  Elon makes more progress in an “old” field in a month than NASA does in a year because he watches things blow up and smiles because he knows that his team will have learned something new about why stuff broke.

Space is hard, but it’s a thousand times harder if you have to continually guess what will go wrong rather than test, and that slows progress.  Nuclear power may be an exception here, since we only need so many Godzillas® and Gameras™ to fight off dangerous kaiju, like Michelle Obama or Amy Schumer.

What do you find between Godzilla’s toes?  Slow Japanese people.

As I mentioned, Pa Wilder of 1981 would be quite comfy and unsurprised by the world of 2024 with the exception of information technology and telecommunications, which, aside from financial shenanigans, has received the greatest amount of investment of any single industry since 1981.

What would the biggest changes be for him?

Well, duh, computers, telecommunications, and their influence on the world.

It has transformed businesses in fundamental ways.  Walmart®’s secret sauce wasn’t just cheap Chinese merchandise – nope.  It was also the information tech that allowed them to manage the purchasing and logistics of a business with a supply chain that spanned multiple continents.  The time was ready for that particular innovation:  if it hadn’t been Walmart©, it would have been some other company.

You can get Batman® shampoo at our Walmart©, but not conditioner Gordon.

Pa Wilder would not be very comfortable with the pace of social media.  Also, I think that he would be very, very concerned with the advances in Artificial Intelligence, but enough about the chairman of the Federal Reserve®.

Pa was the president of a very small farm bank as computer terminals began to replace the paper ledgers that they used to track accounts, so he was familiar the changes that he was seeing in banking that in, but taking it from that level to the idea of “all the information anywhere, immediately available” was never something he quite got.  Of course, it probably didn’t help that he used a 28.8kb modem and there were only something like 24 lines(!) from his county to the AT&T© office the next county over.

Yes.  28 lines.  It wasn’t like everybody would be calling all at once, right?  That was, however, the time that we ran for the phone in my house, since calls were rare, and you really wanted to see who it was.  Now?  I have the data equivalent of 10,000 old phone lines coming to my house.

We certainly don’t have jetpacks or flying cars, but we do have an information explosion that is unparalleled in history.  That being said, we’re probably pretty near the limits for conventional computing power based on the limits of physics and energy density, and I’m not sure that quantum computing isn’t just a meme.

Is the next big field genetics?

What do you get when you cross a duck and a pig?  A media exposé about the lack of ethics in genetic engineering.

Advances in things like CRISPR and genomic sequencing have come about because of the advances in information processing, and we are, perhaps, at the cusp of the A.I. world where things could get very, very interesting indeed in just a few years.  Maybe the scientists and A.I. working together with CRISPR can even find a way to turn plant matter into protein.  You know, like a chicken.

Or maybe they’ll finally locate the hot alien women in bikini space suits?

Maybe It’s . . . Evil?

“But I just changed my lifetime tune about thirty minutes ago, ‘cause I know that whatever is out there tryin’ to get in is pure Evil straight from Hell.  And if there is a Hell, and those sons of bitches are from it, then there has go to be a heaven, Jacob, there’s gotta be.” – From Dusk ‘til Dawn

My friend gets offended when I tell her fat jokes.  I told her, “Lighten up.”  (Most memes are “as-found”)

I’ve been having a bit of question in my mind about what we’re seeing going on in the world today.  I’ve written quite a bit about the physical trends in the world today, with energy being the number one roadblock I see into the physical future since the complexity of the world’s economy is based on cheap energy for manufacture, transport, and use of goods in our “modern” society.  That might explain why people on unicycles are always so energetic compared to me on my regular bicycle.  I’m two tired.

The second big challenge I see is the virtual world.  By virtual, I include not only cyber-dependence, A.I., but also cash.  Our current economic system uses an entirely made-up set of markers called “dollars” to buy and sell things.  What’s a dollar?  Once upon a time, it was some fraction of an ounce of gold.  Now, a dollar is worth whatever someone will give you for it.  As Biden has adopted the Binge Bucks Better strategy to try to get votes (I mean, besides the ones they print up) the deficit has reached a record.

Hmm, if Brandon is so awesome, why is no one wearing a “Build Back Better” hat?

All this spending?  There’s no end in sight.  So, this is a world that is having its own set of challenges in both the physical and virtual realm.

The third and (in my opinion) most important one is the spiritual realm.

Let me digress a bit – I think it will make sense in the end, but I haven’t written the end yet, so it could just end up with all of the coherence of Kamala Harris talking about quantum mechanics.  Nah, nothing could be that bad.

I was half asleep recently (hypnogogic, to be technical).  I often get a “clearing of the mind” when in that state, when issues that have been perplexing me sort themselves out.  It’s like my mind is running a program in the background, but when I’m half asleep, all the pieces come together.

What was this puzzle?

Let’s talk about the pieces, first:

No one, literally even the GloboLeftists in the Deep Blue cities wants the massive hordes of illegals streaming across the borders.  No one.  It’s so bad that Biden is even attempting to blame the Republicans for not letting him close the border.

Yeah, pull the other one, Joe, and a bell will ring.

Biden 2024!  20 years for Joe, 24 for Hunter.

This is destroying the country.  Quickly.  Why are housing prices going up?  Because we’re not building new houses because no one can afford them but yet we’ve brought in OVER 12 MILLION ILLEGALS in just three years.  If Putin could have gotten that many Russians into the Ukraine, he could have taken it without a shot.

Hmmm.

I ordered a chicken and an egg from Amazon® today.  I’ll let you know.

Ever wonder if Tyson® was a company designed to import illegal aliens so they could make cheap food so people would have heart problems requiring heroic intervention to keep the medical system going?

The second datapoint is the weird fixation of the GloboLeft on literally every freak sexuality that could possibly exist.  Sexually aroused by toasters?  Yeah, I know that naughty bagel-sized girl is a tease, but toaster fixation is . . . deranged.  The current poster child for adding deranged sexuality to avoidance of reality is the transexual movement.

The public has, at every opportunity, rejected this.  Yet, Joseph Robinette Biden decided to issue a proclamation that Easter should be known as Transexual Visibility Day.  To be clear, most of the time that transexuals are visible is because they’ve snapped and tried to kill a dozen people or were engaged in really awful things with children or were parading their female penis inside a woman’s dressing room.  I have seen zero positive things in the news about trans people.  Ever.  Each time it’s some new horror story that would have led all of our ancestors look for kindling so they could have a burning at the stake.

Yet, we have a presidential proclamation on the single holiest day of Christianity promoting this abomination.

This is the Cartoon Network®.  Trust them with the minds of your kid?

I could keep going.  In general, there appears to be a concerted effort put forth to break down and eliminate the impact of Christianity as the basic underlying moral virtue of the West in general, including the United States.

The fall of Christianity in the United States (and the West) will have several big, negative impacts.  The concepts that there is centrality of the family, the idea that life has an ultimate purpose, and the belief that all humans can be one in Christ have shaped the world.  Christianity has been the central, governing moral vision at the heart of the West.

As Christianity declines, there is a risk of losing the moral foundation it provided. The decline Christianity in society accompanied by various societal issues, including divorce, cohabitation, drug abuse, abortion, homosexuality, sexually transmitted diseases, mental illness, and suicide.  People are born to be religious because it gives them stability and direction.

Yet, there has been a concerted war on Christianity for years, even though it makes society observably better, and observably more stable.

San Francisco is so woke, that even the homeless vaccinate themselves!

If I were an oligarch, all of these changes would be negative for me.  I’d be an oligarch over a less stable society, that produced less wealth for me to leach off of, and, in every measurable way, including the amount of power I could have, I would be worse off.

There is the first answer:  because they’re just sick inside, and want to watch it all burn.  Someone like George Soros may very well be like that – if you look into his eyes it’s not like you’re looking at something healthy and good.  Maybe he just wants to burn it all down because he can.  Because his heart is filled with hate.

That’s a simple answer.  It might even be right.

This is a math teacher, so you can tell she’s plotting something.

The other answer is more profound:  the GloboLeftistElite might just be . . . Evil.  Capital E.  It’s a solution that the modern mind wants to find an alternative to.  It wants to look to cultural factors, or mental illness, or poor parenting.

Oddly, the idea that these people really are Evil is perhaps (to me) more comforting.  Just like William Peter Blatty felt about his book, The Exorcist, that it was a profoundly Christian book, and uplifting, since the end showed that it wasn’t Evil that won, it was God.

Watch this, and tell me that Evil isn’t at work.

We face amazing challenges in the near future – physical, virtual, and spiritual.  I’d prepare for all three.

But that’s just me.

Next up?  Kamala Harris explains the General Theory of Relativity using a banana and two meatballs as props.

You Want Dark Ages? Well, That’s How You Get Dark Ages.

“In the world I see, you are stalking elk through the damp canyon forests around the ruins of Rockefeller Center. You’ll wear leather clothes that will last you the rest of your life. You’ll climb the wrist-thick kudzu vines that wrap the Sears Tower. And when you look down, you’ll see tiny figures pounding corn, laying strips of venison on the empty car pool lane of some abandoned superhighway.” – Fight Club

I had to stop working in the granite industry:  it was counter productive.

Grug want break rock.  Grug grab other rock, smash rock.  Rock eventually breaks.  Grug happy.

Another example:  Grug want break rock.  Grug create iron ore mine.  Grug create coal mine.  Grug find tree.  Grug mix use coal and iron to make steel hammer.  Grug smash rock.  Grug happy, much faster.

Yet another example:  Grug want to break rock.  Grug create iron ore mine, coal mine, chemical factory. Grug find trees, sulfur.  Grug make hammer, drill, and dynamite.  Grug break rock real fast.  Grug very happy because Grug like blow stuff up.

I stole this example from Grugwig von Mises, the Austrian economist who thought about these things a lot.  The indirect way to do something is generally more efficient.  It’s most direct to break a rock with a rock, but it’s much, much faster to blow the rock into gravel and you can do a lot at one time.  And it’s really cool.

What sound does a piano make when it falls down an ore well?  A-flat miner.

The catch, of course, is that to do things indirectly, there have to be multiple industries and infrastructure supporting the indirect method.  And, if any of them fail, the method becomes more difficult, if not impossible.

One big example of indirect work in our economy is the impact of the computer and the Internet.  Paul Krugman, (who is always wrong) said that the Internet would have no more economic impact than the fax machine.  Of course, since Krugman is always wrong, he was wrong this time, too.

The Internet is a vast communication web, moving data about everything, everywhere, all at once.  It is now pervasive, and has been for decades.

Decades?

Krugman?  More like Grugman.

Yes.  Back when I lived in Alaska, one of the two fiberoptic cables to Fairbanks was cut by a backhoe operator, thankfully mostly cutting Fairbanks off from Paul Krugman’s stupid ideas.  What was the backhoe guy digging for?

I have no idea.  Everyone in Alaska has a backhoe, a skidsteer, and a dump truck.  And they were always digging.  I think they might be part mole.  Maybe they were digging for this:

Meme as-found.

The result of this one fiber being cut, though, was apparent very quickly:  couldn’t buy gas.  At all.  Even with cash.  Credit card usage?  Nope.  And I think prescriptions were similarly impacted.

Now, at work and home, I still had Internet – it was like nothing had happened since my employer must have gotten Internet from the other fiber.  But it was unusual to see so much dependency – I hadn’t realized how much infrastructure was hooked up and required the Internet.  In Alaska.  In 2005.

The reason is that the Internet allows information to move freely.  Information used to be hard to move.  Now, information moves at near lightspeed in many places.  It used to be the way to get information from one place to another was the most direct – mouth to ear.  Then writing, probably to let someone know the sad facts about very fat their mother was, was invented, and is probably carved under half the pyramid blocks.

When I got arrested for graffiti, I tried to deny it, but the writing was on the wall.

Then, books preserved information about many fat mothers through centuries and made it much easier to share from Rome to ancient China.  Finally, we have Internet pages and ebooks that share stories about maternal adiposity around the globe in an instant.

But, one funny thing – the more direct methods such as carving in stone and the ancient legends of huge hulking mothers whose buttocks block out the sky remain.  But books burn.  The ephemeral website?  It may reach 90% of the planet yet be gone in an afternoon.  Think of the deprivation of the future world of all those unsung stories of mothers whose gravitational pull could disrupt the very alignment of the planets.

What brought this to mind was that a big chunk of the Internet disappeared today.  I think it’s back, but I don’t go on FaceGram™ or InstaTok©, but I think those are both back.

To be clear, those cannibal tribes in the Amazon (the river basin, not the company) didn’t even notice.  Why would they?  Their methods, their lives are the most direct.  They don’t depend on getting ammunition for their bow from Cabela’s®, rather if they need a new arrow, they make one out of the stuff that’s lying around.

I hear Dwayne Johnson is going to star as a time traveler who has to go back to ancient Rome to steal a document from Augustus.  It’s called Rock, Paper, Caesar.

The upside of this communication is that I can see first person video of drone attacks in the Ukraine within hours of a strike.  The downside is that by knowing, people feel a philosophical burden – they have information about something yet are (mostly) powerless to do anything about it.  Think about Michael Collins, orbiting above the Moon.  He had a contingency plan if the landing had failed and Armstrong and Aldrin were lost.

“I’d go home.”

Why?  There would have been nothing at all that Collins could have done.  He knew that, and so did Neil and Buzz.  Many things are like that, best not to obsess about them.

Our modern economy has created a great deal of leverage using cheap information combined with cheap information processing – efficient supply chains and people working in far-flung areas.

These systems, just like the chemical factories that Grug made to make his Grug dynamite to break his rock are inherently more fragile than the direct.  How fragile?  Back in 2017 or so, a congressional report came out that predicted that up to 90% of Americans would die in the event of an EMP taking out the power grid.

I have to remember that the rhythm is to “Staying Alive” when I do CPR, and not “For Whom The Bell Tolls”.

Knowing congress, they’ve done nothing to make the systems better, with the potential exception of trying to make EMP proof margarita machines.

I’m in hopes that the looming competency crisis, where complex systems become unreliable due to being put in the hands of the unqualified while the competent people are shuffled aside, won’t bring the take down those same systems, and with it, our society.

We’ll leave that to your mom.  I hear that, though, she’s old enough that when she was a kid with Grug, there was no history class.

(Irony – I lost all Internet at my house while writing this one.)

Electric Vehicles: The Big Con

“You mean, drive in hybrids, but not act like we’re better than everyone else because of it?” – South Park

If you buy an EV from Dodge®, you also get a Dodge Charger™. (Memes mostly as found)

Based on the evidence I’ve seen so far in news stories, I’ve come to a conclusion about electric vehicles (EVs).  It’s this:  If you keep your EV parked in the garage at all times and never, ever drive in the winter, it works perfectly.

And, no, I don’t have one – I don’t need to have one to view the evidence that’s piling up.  I would believe that even the manufacturers would tell you that it’s pretty hard to charge an EV when it’s zero outside, unless you warm up the battery first.

They also have lower winter range for two reasons:  they have to electrically heat up the interior, which directly robs range, and in cold weather the battery cannot discharge as deeply – the rate of chemical reaction that the battery requires slows in cold conditions.

I wonder if all those people waiting to charge their cars are listening to AC/DC?

The range of most electric vehicles is incompatible with a Real American Road Trip.  Modern Mayberry has one big advantage over most places – it’s 100 miles from anywhere.  The downside for that on an electric car is obvious – a round trip to Mt. Pilot is simply not possible during the winter, unless I find and use a charging station.  The one in Mt. Pilot (there is only one) is not exactly in the best part of town, and it’s dozens of miles out of the way on any trip – a 100 mile trip now has another half an hour of driving added, plus the time required for charging.

Or, I could just bring a gasoline powered generator . . .

You can tell it’s not an Apple® car – it has Windows®.

Yes, I suppose that it’s true that an EV could replace most of my car usage.  Most days I drive less than 40 miles.  But in order for the EV to work, I’d have to own a second car just for the (not at all rare) trips where I have to go over 100 miles from home.  The range of an EV is simply incompatible with the size of the United States.

I suppose that would make sense if owning an EV provided cheaper transportation.

It doesn’t.  Insurance is much more expensive for an EV than an internal combustion engine car of the same value because they’re much more expensive to work on, even when they don’t catch fire.  Hertz™ Rent-A-Car© found this out – they’re now ditching the majority of the EVs that they bought.  Too expensive to run, too expensive to fix, too expensive to insure.

What happens when a Tesla® hits someone at a given frequency?  It Hertz®.

A dirty secret that’s causing the value of EVs to drop on the secondhand market is that the batteries will die.  If you use an EV a lot, the batteries will cycle and die.  If you don’t use it, the batteries will age and die.  If I had twenty-year old vehicle (and I do) I know that the hoses will break, I’ll eventually need to replace the clutch pad and brake pads.  Stuff will eventually need to be replaced.

But every time Pugsley turns the key, it cranks over and he drives it to school.  If it depended on twenty-year-old batteries?

Not thinking it would be a pretty sight if he had to depend on batteries old enough to vote.  On a zero degree day.

If a crackhead stole the copper lead, would he be guilty of mis-conduct?

The biggest drawback to EV adoption is battery tech.  It sucks.  But let’s pretend that we could store five times the energy in a typical EV battery pack – move from a 200 mile range to 1000 miles.  That would be awesome!  Let’s forget that’s nearly an order of magnitude increase in capacity for a second.

Now, instead of 200 miles worth of electricity stored in a battery that you’re sitting on, it’s 1000 miles worth of electricity – five times the density.  Did I mention that when an EV battery fails, it fails spectacularly?  Like in a crash?

Yeah, my car has a lot of stored energy in the gas tank, but we’ve figured out how to (mostly) keep it from blowing up all the time after over 100 years of experience, and most car explosions are in movies where the hero tosses a cigar to blow up the villain.  Of course, he does this and doesn’t look back, because it’s way cooler that way.

My dog exploded – he was half Irish setter, and half meth lab.

I’ve come to the conclusion that EVs are nothing more than a niche car for people who live in nice climates that never get really cold and are rich enough to have a car for each day of the week.

The gamechanger, for EVs is, of course, battery technology.  Triple the energy storage and halve the charging time at a lower cost with more safety?  Excellent.  Atomic powered batteries that are crash resistant that only need charging every fifty years?  Winner.

But I won’t hold my breath waiting for that.  There don’t appear to be any breakthroughs on the horizon that will make this work. And if there were, there are other problems.

Where does all that electricity come from?  Right now, the Texas grid is shedding load.  And California, who can’t seem to generate electricity without creating wildfires would need to consume at least 50% more electricity to electrify all their transport.  Since California has gone from NIMBY (not in my backyard) to BANANA (build absolutely nothing anywhere near anything) it’s obvious that electric capacity would have to be built in Arizona or Nevada or in the orbiting Unicorn Fart Farm.

How do you get Canada to support their electric grid?  Say it’s transgender.

No.  California won’t be going electric anytime soon.  Sensible places like Alberta and Switzerland discourage or prohibit EV charging in cold winter months, and they aren’t governed by Grabbin Nuisance.

It’s weird when a society makes detailed maps about how it’s going to destroy itself.  Well, at least people will soon be able to walk like an Egyptian.

The irony is this:  if the Left was really serious about reducing greenhouse gases by using less gasoline, the answer is really simple.  35 to 45 mile per gallon cars were made in the early 1980s, and had sufficient power to be useful on the highway.

What happened?  Additional environmental controls that addressed problems than 90% of the country doesn’t have.  Nitrogen oxides?  Bad in places that have smog.  Out in the rest of the Midwest?  Zero issues.  Yet, every car is designed based on the problems of Los Angeles.  In Fairbanks, they had a pretty simple emissions test, and wouldn’t let you drive a car in winter (when Fairbanks has smog) if it didn’t pass.

That’s too simple.  Let’s make every car suitable for L.A.

Then there are the CAFE standards – the Corporate Average Fuel Economy imposed on the automakers.  But CAFE excludes trucks and SUVs, so now everyone makes trucks and SUVs.  What about the mighty Toyota® Hilux, the car voted most likely to be driven by a Middle Eastern Faction?  Can’t sell it here, because of California and CAFE – small trucks have to meet silly standards.

We could save millions of gallons of gasoline tomorrow if we allowed sensible cars to be sold.

But no.  That would lower the cost of a reasonable car with great fuel economy to about $15,000, and nobody wants that.  I mean, Big Auto and Big Environment are in bed and agree, so who cares about the people?

Who cares?  Toyota, apparently.

I think EVs combined with silly-expensive cars is a meme trap for the mass demobilization of the American people.  And why not?  They can go to 15 minute cities, as the World Economic Forum keeps preaching.  And since almost half the world’s electric cars are being produced in China, is this a plan to offshore what remains of automobile manufacturing in America?  I imagine a rhyme of the phrase utterd by Barack Obama, “If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor” which will become “If you like your car, you can keep your car.”

If it was a good deal, and EVs were the solution, we’d see technological and price advances and not have to depend on silly government handouts to make them a reasonable purchase.  EVs will stick around longer than they should, but, just like Joe Biden, they will never be the solution, no matter how the Left tries to force it.

But, hey, I hear that EVs work great in the garage!

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, Violence Is On The Menu

“I don’t like violence, Tom. I’m a businessman.” – The Godfather

People say violence is never an option, but when I’m in a room with a Kardashian, well, let’s just say it’s option number one.

  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 V, Issue 6

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 – New Achievement Unlocked:  Acceptable Violence – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Are We At War? Revisited – 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 820 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

New Achievement Unlocked:  Violence Acceptable

One of the hallmarks of the countdown to Civil War 2.0 has always been:  Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.  We’ve debated about where to put it, but it’s been there since the very start of the countdown/index.  This month a Constant Reader sent me a link to American Partisan where the article discussed exactly that (LINK).

When a high government official formerly in charge of extrajudicial executions calls for the extrajudicial execution of an elected official to a national body, you might live in a banana republic.

  • 31% of Trump supporters and 24% of Biden supporters indicated that democracy is no longer viable.
  • 41% of Biden supporters and 38% of Trump supporters thought it was acceptable to use violence to stop their opponents.

Yes, I know that technically we’re not a democracy anyway because the Founding Fathers felt that was little more than mob rule, but it looks like a huge chunk of people are flat done with the idea of voting with ballots and are ready to start voting with fists, clubs, and bullets.

Except against women.  Or people who identify as women.  Or Leftists. But I repeat myself.  

This, sadly, is something that many have expected as the government loses the legitimacy that it enjoyed during most of the history of the country, with only 16% (according to Pew®) trusting the government to do way is right most of the time.

As I’ve mentioned before, some of the best advice I’ve ever heard about divorce was, “If you don’t want a divorce, don’t talk about one.”  Here, large numbers of the population are currently contemplating divorce, and contemplating not using a lawyer to get what they want, since 41% of Trump supporters and 30% of Biden supporters are in favor of secession based on political lines.

Although there is a flaw in the Leftist strategy.

Even when I started this blog, that seemed unlikely.  Although the maps show Red states and Blue states, the reality is that in 2016, many of them were purple – a roughly equal mixture of both.

Now we see that people really are moving from one state to another for purely political reasons.  If you’re on the Right, why live in a state that will criminalize you because you own guns?  If you’re on the Left, why live in a state that won’t let you kill all the babies you want to kill?

Violence and Censorship Update

Hillary Clinton, that bastion of common sense and moderation, noted this month that people who supported Donald Trump need to be “formally deprogrammed”.  If you think the Left is up for a truce and to forgive, that would be a mistake.

Proving that a Leftist is as loyal as a scorpion, well, read the note below.

But, good news for her!  She can update her Tinder® profile.

In a further example that we are at an 8. on the steps to Civil War 2.0 (list above, more story below) Portland has stopped trying to look good for a date, and is now at the stage that they’re eating frosting straight from the plastic container with a spoon.  The cops have given up.

The EU wants Elon Musk to censor comments on X®.  The only problem?  Like taking a woman to a restaurant, the want Elon to figure what they want him to censor without telling him.

Regardless of how you feel about, well, anyone, the First Amendment exists.  Except for certain subjects as the former governor of Mumbai points out below:

And Ron’s not far behind:

Lastly, Canadians seem to enjoy a few freedoms.  At least today:

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again.  Looks like Biden is going for the record.  Who says he never gets anything done?  I hear he was even on hand to thank one of his financial supporters.

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 again, again slightly – I was expecting more during a long, hot summer.  I’m guessing that people don’t even notice it anymore.  Think San Fran will be paying for cops anytime soon?

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, up.  I expect December to be a time when this starts to head upward, significantly, because, bears.

Economic:

Economic numbers are swinging back down again this month, and a bit more in October – I expected more.  Well, we’ll see.  Maybe there will be a miracle?

Illegal Aliens:

The biggest number, ever, in the history of the country, an unending flood.  Read Enoch Powell’s speech.

Are We At War? Revisited

Last month’s Weather Report topic was a simple question:  Are we at war?  The reason for this is that a Constant Reader said I was obviously stoned, because the war was obviously already going.

Another Constant Reader responded to this response as noted above that I was stoned for thinking we were closer to war than they did, and I thought it was a more than fair assertion that deserved a response:  “Not 8.  Not anywhere close to that.”

Well, as to point 6., where people are avoiding the other side, this is an ongoing process I noted that began years ago.  I have several friends that have specifically decided to move away from Leftist hotbeds for exactly that reason.  My own brother, John Wilder, is currently behind enemy lines in the Reddest area of a very blue state.  He’ll be moving before too long to a very, very Red State where he is no longer considered to be an extremist.

He does, however, have a great lawn.

Next, to point 7.  If anyone doesn’t think that organized violence is occurring regularly, they need to revisit their news sources.  Cities, even in Red States, are being run not by cops, not by commissions, and not by mayors.  Those cities are being run by district attorneys that are not prosecuting criminals and are sanctioning the violence.  It’s bad enough that it’s normalized – the group protests, riots, and mob thefts that are occurring with the tacit approval of the “justice” system takes us to an 8.  Reminder, this Civil War won’t have masses of armed troops to inflict the damage, especially at the start.

To get from 8. to 10. could happen in as little as two weeks – imagine another blatantly stolen election in 2024 . . . that might be the spark.  As shown in the first story, polls indicate that a growing number of people no longer want peace at all costs, and the peace that flows from the barrel of a gun would be quite acceptable.

It’s odd when the Muppet® doesn’t have the silliest hair.

Are we at an 8.?  I think so.  It doesn’t get to a 10. until the Right starts to fight back.  I do appreciate the feedback, since this is a work in progress, and it also nudges me to explain what the heck my reasoning is.  YMMV.

The fact that two readers with valid points make the opposite argument makes me think I’m close to the right answer.  We are very, very near.

LINKS

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

BAD GUYS

https://twitter.com/i/status/1718365747414761547

https://twitter.com/i/status/1720452778508595253

https://twitter.com/i/status/1718594209450480043

https://twitter.com/i/status/1719551215858798957

https://twitter.com/i/status/1715239983911452861

https://twitter.com/i/status/1715236903853691077

https://twitter.com/i/status/1714199598871228535

GOOD GUY?

https://twitter.com/i/status/1716945256804200575

ONE GUY

https://twitter.com/UR_Ninja/status/1716227124275626374

BODY COUNT

https://citizenfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/biden-state-illegals.jpg

https://www.thecentersquare.com/national/article_9d841124-7449-11ee-af4a-af115ad29337.html

https://twitter.com/i/status/1707919466154082771

https://twitter.com/Jeanne2999432/status/1719039832633041054?t=Nd5Phexy5Xh6W1OcG6-yIw&s=19

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/axis.JPG?itok=tZ4zVVGS
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/texas/article-12663663/Venezuelas-worst-gangsters-criminals-cross-border-carrying-orders-dictator-Maduro.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12699675/US-border-China-migrants-caravan.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12666301/Migrants-NYC-costing-taxpayer-5BN.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-12484069/US-deaths-mortality-richest-countries.html

https://tnc.news/2023/10/26/assisted-suicide-in-canada-2022-1/

https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4289645-bring-back-the-draft-a-divisive-battle-may-loom-over-any-major-war/

VOTE COUNT

https://citizenfreepress.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/emerald-fraud.jpeg

http://onlyinbridgeport.com/wordpress/watch-video-captures-gomes-supporters-absentee-ballot-dumping/

https://thefederalist.com/2023/10/05/10-ways-democrats-are-already-rigging-the-2024-election/

https://www.emerald.tv/p/georgias-election-officials-are-getting

https://1ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fthefederalist.com%2F2023%2F10%2F31%2Franked-choice-voting-is-the-monster-under-the-bed-of-american-elections%2F

https://thefga.org/research/ranked-choice-voting-partisan-plot-to-disrupt-elections/

CIVIL WAR

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12589871/mexico-cartel-texas-invasion-border-war-todd-bensman.html

https://www.newsweek.com/democrat-civil-war-reaching-boiling-point-1840367

https://news.yahoo.com/large-portion-americans-doubt-democracy-160659069.html

https://jonathanturley.org/2023/10/23/americas-crisis-of-faith-new-poll-reveals-more-americans-are-rejecting-the-constitution-and-embracing-violence/

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2023-10-12/civil-war-5-4-3-2

https://www.governing.com/context/what-would-a-national-divorce-look-like

Electric Cars and Rainbow Unicorns

“It’s logical to assume that something within this zone absorbs all forms of energy whether mechanically or biologically produced. Whatever it is, it would seem to be the same thing which drew all the energy out of an entire solar system and the Intrepid.” – Star Trek, TOS

Electric cars owners should never go down a dead end street – there’s no outlet.

As I have written time and time again, the future of energy is the future of humanity.  Cheap, safe, limitless energy is the dream, and that energy is one component of a future that is not nasty, brutish, and short, like George Soros.  Because the Leftists have tried to propagandize the subject, they’ve done a great job at muddling the thoughts on what in the end is actually the engineering question that drives the economic engines of the world.

Let’s remove the confusion on the term “energy source”.  Electricity, for instance, isn’t an energy source, since it has to be created in some fashion, such as by windmill or coal-fired power plant, nuclear power plant, or tiny faeries hooked up to electrodes while being chained to beds in the basement of Disney® . . . oh, I’ve said too much.

I heard a fairy tale about politics once.  It was Grimm.

Electric cars, then, are dependent upon getting their electricity from somewhere upstream.  Electricity is an energy carrier, not a source.

On the other hand, crude oil is an energy source.  The refining process doesn’t take up too much energy, and the sweet, sweet hydrocarbon molecules in a gallon of gasoline were there (mostly, some have been rearranged a tiny bit) in the refining process.

So, let’s define energy sources as energy, in crude, raw, or potential form that can be manipulated for use and that we get more energy out than we put into it.  So, crude oil is definitely an energy source in most conventional and fracking situations, producing up to (depending on how you count it) sixteen times as much energy as used to get it out of the ground and turn it into 89 octane.  I will say if we converted the entire economy to biofuels emissions would go down and we could starve at the same time!

Biofuels are entirely questionable, and most of them are poor when compared to gasoline as an alternative, returning just a little bit over break even for both biodiesel and corn ethanol.  These products exist as fuels primarily because Lefties like ruining the economy and the RINOs know that farmers vote.  Thus, there are tax incentives in place to force the use of biofuels.

“But we could make houses out of it.”  “No, you have to bury it.”  “But we could make furniture out of it.”  “No, you have to bury it.”  “But we could heat houses with it.”  “No, you have to bury it.”  “I’m beginning to think you don’t like people.”

The dream of the Left (at least this version, Arthur Sido has another one here: LINK), then is to get rid of all of the cars to replace them with “clean” electric vehicles.  The International Energy Agency (IEA) wants to get electric cars and trucks (EVs) to 45% of the vehicles on the road by 2050 according to their Net Zero Scenario.  45%!  The insanity doesn’t stop there – the IEA expects that alternative vehicles will reduce gas and diesel use by 30% by 2030 – seven years into the future.

That’s a stunning number, because the average age of a car in the United States is 12.2 years.  I guess I’m pretty close to average, because the average Wilder fleet ages is 11.5 years.  That means that the 30% of the car and stock in existence today needs to be replaced by 2030 with electric and hydrogen vehicles.  I have no idea where the IEA is getting its dope, but they must get really good stuff.

>Be forest.
>Exist.  Die.  Kill mankind by raising temperature 0.0001
°F.
>Wonder why this didn’t happen 100,000,000 years ago.

That would mean, though, that conventional vehicles that run on sweet, sweet oil and diesel will have to be phased out starting very soon.  Further, the remainder of the vehicles the IEA are hydrogen-powered.  Now the Hindenburg wasn’t hydrogen powered . . . .

Now, checking back to energy sources versus energy carriers, hydrogen is just an energy carrier.  It has to be generated somewhere.

One of the first problems is that EVs are wickedly expensive compared to actual cars since they require massive amounts of material to replace the empty gasoline tank of an internal combustion car.  The question is, where do those materials come from?  If, all of a sudden, millions of EVs need to be made, the prices for the materials that go into them will go up, too.

>Be forest.
>Burn.  Kill mankind by melting 200 gallons of ice.
>Wonder why this didn’t happen 200,000 years ago.

According to the IEA itself, demand for lithium alone will be 4,000% greater in 2050 than it is today.  Cobalt increases would be 2,000%.  The increase in availability alone is questionable.  Resources show up in clumps – I can’t go in my front yard and look for gold, it is where it is.  And when Leftists dream of this wonderful economy that they’re creating, they ignore the environmental costs waste of mining all this stuff – how much will that create in greenhouse gasses plant food?

It’s clear, once again, that these plans aren’t serious.  China is producing a stunning 30% of greenhouse gasesCO2, while the United States produces about 15% of human made CO2.  Why do we fixate on the United States?

First, Leftists have to pretend, really hard, that global warming climate change has replaced what real humans call weather.

Second?  The Chinese are already communist, so let them do whatever.  The people who have to have their economy ruined while they chase unicorns and rainbows rather than actual engineering solutions to actual engineering problems will have their economy destroyed.

Or maybe they’ll just buy beachfront property at a discount?

Or was that the plan all along?

At the beginning of this, I said the future of energy is the future of humanity.  That’s just a bit inaccurate – the future of energy is the future of free humans and our economy.  Me?  I have my own plans.

Leftism Is A Death Cult That May Kill Us All

“This man has the gift of death.” – Zardoz

Whoops, sorry!  Just a regular old death cult after all.

This is the second post about Leftist self-hatred this week.  This particular Leftist self-hatred is one that uniquely hurts the economy and even the prospects of the survival of humanity, so it’s par for the course for the most malignant philosophy ever to exist, outside of Taco Tuesday.

What spurred this was a note from a friend that suggested a post.  I knew where I wanted to go with it, since I had seen a graphic (from Nature Communications® which is a part of Nature™ the magazine, LINK) that surprised me.  I mean, knowing what I know about Leftists, it really shouldn’t have, but what got my attention is how starkly it shows the divide in the philosophies of Right and Left.  It’s presented pretty weirdly, so I’ll help out a bit on the interpretation since I’m a trained professional.

The graph is shown as a bullseye.  Why?  I think the researchers might have been drunk and had a bullseye graph generator, so they decided between shots of tequila that they’d use the damn thing since the University had paid for it anyway.  They then got the grad students to enter the data for free, and, boom, paper complete.

I remember watching a PBS® show on how fish swim.  They shocked a fish by putting an electrode up its behind so they could photograph it.  Who put the electrodes up the fish butts?  Grad students.

The concentric circles in the graph are pretty simple, though, and the innermost are the things closest to an individual. The rings get rather more distant as they go outwards until they get rather silly:

  1. All of your immediate family.
  2. All of your extended family.
  3. All of your closest friends.
  4. All of your friends (including distant).
  5. All of your acquaintances.
  6. All people you have ever met.
  7. All people in your country.
  8. All people on your continent.
  9. All people on all continents (apparently, screw those guys on islands, they suck anyway).
  10. All mammals (finally got the people on the islands and astronauts covered).
  11. All amphibians, reptiles, mammals, fish, and birds.
  12. All animals on earth including paramecia and amoebae.
  13. All animals in the universe, including alien lifeforms.
  14. All living things in the universe including plants and trees.
  15. All natural things in the universe including inert entities such as rocks.
  16. All things in existence.

So, that’s the scale – what things are the most important to you?  For me, this is an easy answer.  I like the things that closer to me better, and I could see my feelings about this covered very well under the title listed for “Conservatives”.

Is it just me, or does this graph look very, umm, happy?

In general, I like the people that are close to me more.  Yes, I care about Americans more than I care about people in Tannu Tuva, or people in Tanganyika, or even those pitiful island people.  I generally care more about my kids than yours, and I generally like all people better than rocks, though there are some exceptions that I make for ex-spouses and members of Antifa®.  Heck the entire meme below is encapsulated in the graph above:

Now if that isn’t what’s on his headstone, it sure should be.

Okay, that explains the Right, and how we generally feel according to statistics.  What about the Left?

Why did they pick 45°? 

Whoa, that’s amazingly different!  Lefties are really focused over to the end, with only a minor preference for humans and a lesser preference for people closer to them.  The perception of the granola-eating surrender chimp as the model for Leftism is once again validated.  They like these things best:

  1. All animals in the universe, including alien lifeforms.
  2. All living things in the universe including plants and trees.
  3. All natural things in the universe including inert entities such as rocks.

Rocks are more important to them than their parents.  And if their parents are as disappointed in them as I’m guessing they are, I can see why.  They hate themselves, so they hate the things that are closest to them.  You can see it when they throw themselves in front of cars when they protest, they have never won anything in life, so the only way they can win, they feel, is to have transferred virtue from their death.  “See, I told you I was a good person, but you never believed me!”  Thus, the victim Olympics where they compete based on victim status.  “Well, Bob, he stuck the victim status, but he wobbled on the virtue signal, and the blind gay judge with AIDs from Ethiopia gave him a 7.3.”

I wonder how many upvotes they got on Reddit®?

To be clear, I’m not sure I would like alien lifeforms at all unless they grilled well, and I think I would be just fine if an entire planet of intelligent, bloodthirsty cannibal lizard-people was wiped out, even in a slow and agonizing way, just to make sure that my family had slightly more comfortable air conditioning.  But enough about the people who are related to George Soros.

I’m not kidding.  I can come up with entire species that I’d love to see wiped from existence, and I’d start with mosquitos, gnats, wasps, and vegans.  Vegans especially, because they eat what my food eats, and that’s just selfish.

To be clear, I love the environment.  I love hiking, I love nature, I love hunting, I love trees.  The reason I love them is simple:  they exist to by enjoyed by Man.  If Man doesn’t exist?  None of these mean anything to me.  There are millions of cows alive on Earth right now.  Because we want to make cows happy?  No, because cows make us happy, especially when done medium rare with a nice crust.  To be clear, I think “nature” has no intrinsic value outside of what it can provide to Man.  But I love nature, because it’s awesome to man.

The Moon?  Just rock without people.  And Soviet Russian ships that landed.  A crash is a landing, right?

Oddly, because of these heat maps, people on the Right go out to work to care for the people they know and their country.  Why was the Right the primary source of military recruits?  Because we like our nation more than we like other nations, and since we are focused on those around us, we’re fiercely individualistic, and focused on family and friends.  Why?  We like our families and friends, and if they’re loyal to us, we’re more than loyal to them.

When the chips were down and you needed help, would you rather have a friend on the Right, or one on the Left?

Thought so.

People on the Left, though, end up in the traditional Leftist positions, in academia, or, in government.  I’ll perhaps discuss in some future post a bit more on Leftism and academia if there’s interest.  For today, let’s focus on government.

The idea of government, at least as outlined in the Constitution, is simple, “establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and, ensure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity”.  Note, even in the Constitution it talks about “ourselves and our posterity” and doesn’t mention the slave-pirate amoebas from the planet Melkor-7 or trees.

Wait, tell me about the slave girls again?

The people who gravitated to government over time, however, like control.  And that control includes enforcing their morals (which rate rocks above people).  And in 2023, those are the folks in charge of policy.  They like people who live elsewhere more than they like citizens of their own country, and the like clinging vines more than they like their second cousin.  Depending on the second cousin, I might agree, but the point remains:  they hate humanity.

Rather than environmental policy being about how to best work and preserve the environment for people, environmental policy is now viewed as either one of state control, or the idea that we’ll preserve a beetle that isn’t that much different than millions of other beetles rather than try to provide a future habitat for our grandchildren, or Keith Richards, whichever lives longer.  None of these policies have humans in mind.

Right now, I drive a huge pickup truck.  I might have bought a smaller pickup, but they can’t be sold because of fuel-efficiency standards – only my massive, hulking pickup with an interior bigger than my first apartment can be sold legally because huge pickups don’t have to meet car standards, but little ones do.  That’s also why sedans and station wagons disappeared and massive “sport utility vehicles” replaced them – a consequence of bad environmental policy.  I like using less gasoline, but .gov says I have to use more.

Hmmm.

Mussolini was lucky.  On his last day he got to hang out with his friends.

Other examples of this are things like nuclear power.  The Left has always hated nuclear power because it was something only First World societies could afford, and the thing the Left hates more than themselves is a winner.  How can we drag them back down?  Oh, yeah, we can make power so expensive and unreliable that no one can afford it.

The biggest question facing humanity in 2023 is energy.  Is an energy crisis coming?  It certainly is.  Will the regulations that the Leftists who like rocks better than their parents put into place make sense for people?  Unlikely, since the civilization of humans isn’t on their radar.

To be fair, since we’ve already demonstrated the self-hatred of humanity, it’s pretty simple to note that these consequences that put all of humanity at risk, might not be unintentional at all.

Is Leftism a death cult?

Not if you’re a rock.  Otherwise, yeah.