Fight Club – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

D.O.G.E.: Our Last Chance

“And suddenly, I realize that all of this, the gun the bombs, the revolution – has got something to do with a girl named Marla Singer.” – Fight Club

Elon Musk wants to send millions of people to Mars. He’s either a genius or the most creative serial killer of all time.

I fully believe that the biggest impact of Trump’s re-election is D.O.G.E.

I’ve long (at least 8 years) publicly maintained that the United States is due to end in its present form. My earliest time for this to happen is 2025, and the latest I’d expect it to come is around 2040. The three most likely candidates for the resulting body have been:

An American Caesar
A Civil War
Peaceful Balkanization

There are many different reasons I believe this is likely still inevitable. The cultural split is deep. The financial imbalances and utter lack of control of spending is immense. The diversity we’re supposed to “tolerate” is nothing but division.

It’s really clear to see – the forest really is made up of trees. And our forest is on fire. How’s that for a tortured metaphor?

However.

D.O.G.E. is here.

What is D.O.G.E.? It’s the Department of Government Efficiency. In characteristic humor, Elon has selected one of the funniest memes of the 2010s for one of the most serious jobs of the 2020s. I don’t go into depth on the origin of Doge, but the first time I saw Doge was on this poster:

Would a missing poster for Schrödinger’s cat say it would pay extra if he was found dead and alive?

D.O.G.E. is important. It’s a shot across the bow of the managerial state. During this election cycle, someone (I don’t have a reference as to whose idea this was) noted that when the GloboLeft said “our democracy” they were really referring to “our bureaucracy”. This is an amazingly astute observation.

How can the GloboLeft whine and complain that democracy somehow failed when they lost the election and the popular vote? Because their faith isn’t in the electorate, and they feel nothing but contempt for more than half of the voters. I’m okay with that, since as long as they keep playing the game that way, we win.

But the managerial state has been growing in the United States since (more or less) Woodrow Wilson. The idea came with the money from the income tax – the United States Government was a thing to be administered, as were the people. As most people in the country and as most administrators were explicitly Christian, at least something was holding them back.

Now?

Not at all. The managerial state exists to grow the number of managers. The tragedy in Waco was almost entirely due to the ATF attempting to create a nice big sexy raid right before budget time to show how important that they were and justify their need for more money and more employees. The managerial state exists for itself.

How do you stop a Department of Education that doesn’t educate anyone, or a Department of Energy that has never produced any energy?

D.O.G.E.

I hope they get badges and walk into the FBI and yell, “Respect my authoritayyyyyy!” This would be followed up by, “So, what would you say it is that you do here, Special Agent Johnson?”

D.O.G.E. is set up to make government more efficient. When Musk bought Twitter®, he eventually fired about 80% of the employees and ended up with a company that was focused on the product, rather than on hiring more employees.

In September of 2023, there were about 3 million federal government employees. Eliminating about 2.4 million of them would be a good start, but it’s far from enough. The crazy spending that those government employees enable is over $6 trillion dollars per year.

Much of this money is money that comes from the people and companies that live in a state that is sent to the fed.gov and then recycled back to the states. How does that add value? Not sure, but it does increase the power of the federal managerial state, so they’re for it.

D.O.G.E. will, presumably, start taking a machete to this mess and remove a large chunk of federal employees and of federal spending. Since government doesn’t actually produce anything, those fired employees will have to get jobs where they have the ability to actually create value. And, if spending is cut as drastically as it should be, there will be a recession.

A big one.

Maybe we can hire Bob to build a wall to keep Dora from exploring.

Elon himself mentioned this – defanging the managerial elite and stopping fed.gov from spending will be a big dislocation on the economy as a whole. This will be destabilizing on the country, but since the big destabilization from the economic trajectory we’re on will be worse, I’m calling it a potential win. It will be worth the pain.

The reason this is an off-ramp is that it is, essentially, a bloodless revolution. The path that we’re on is unsustainable, and only drastic action will change the outcome. D.O.G.E. is just exactly that type of drastic action. Combined with actual repatriations of illegals and a dismantling of the power structures the GloboLeftElite have created within big companies (a very big ask) we just might get on the right path, again.

Do I think D.O.G.E. will work?

Ultimately, it faces long odds. The managerial class has maintained power for over a century, and they really are the Deep State and will react with great violence at any perceived loss of power. Waco was just them looking for a higher budget. The ATF along with the FBI will kill women and children without remorse for a 2% increase in power. And they will investigate themselves and find that they did nothing wrong.

Inside of a month, the ATF would consist of one guy torching all the ATF 4473 forms that the ATF has if Brandon Herrera was in charge. He also promised he’d donate all his pay to no-kill doge shelters.

The biggest chance Trump has to save the country is to act fast and without mercy before the immune system of the GloboLeftElite has the time to react. No, the FBI won’t be talking to his appointees like they did with General Flynn.

Ever.

Trump has one chance to make the rubble bounce. He’d better act quickly.

They’re going to fight back. And this is our last chance.

More War Economics

“I had no idea that a study of nature could advance the art of naval warfare.” – Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World

France has, however, done more executions than the United States, but they had a head start.

Earlier this month I had a post about the Economics of War. This is not exactly a follow up, more of an additional exploration on the topic from a slightly different perspective. And at one time I used to worry that one of my hairs are out of place, but now, with greater perspective, I don’t care if all six are out of place. So, perspective matters.

War is about stuff. In order to fight a war, there needs to be stuff to fight with and the stuff (and men) need to be in the right place at the right time, and General Nathan B. Forrest described his winning strategy for one battle, “I just got there first with the most men.”

Of course, that wins a battle, but not a war. Unless you’re fighting against France, in which case all you have to win is the one battle if you have sufficient supplies of cigarettes, baguettes, suffragettes, and raclettes. And a recent Rand® analysis says that’s probably all the United States can win, is a battle. To quote the study, “U.S. industrial production is grossly inadequate to provide the equipment, technology, and munitions needed today, let alone given the demands of a great power conflict.”

Great power conflict means Russia, and it means China, and if we continue on this path, might even include France and Tahiti.

Why does the river Thames run through London? If it walked, it would get stabbed.

Let’s talk first about industrial production. At the beginning of World War II, the United States had a massive untapped labor market thanks to Democratic policies. We also had the knowhow to build factories capable of mass producing, well, anything, thanks to Henry Ford. We also had amazing resources, including more oil than Geraldo Rivera’s hair. Although car production isn’t tank production, you can see it from there. And airplanes? They’re just cars with wings, like racoons are pandas that eat trash, right?

Yeah, we can make those. And with that, the American weapons manufacturing industry was ramped up in 1939 and 1940 or so in order to sell (first) lots of stuff to the British. It worked. By the time the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and the war started, the industrial machine of the United States was just warming up, and soon enough farm girls from the Midwest would be welding on Liberty Ships in Alameda. In 1941, before Pearl Harbor, the United States had 9 aircraft carriers of all types. At the end of 1945, the United States had 99 aircraft carriers. That’s not a misprint.

99.

(Hint: It’s been in overhaul since 2017 and the crew was reassigned to the Russian army)

(CC 4.0, RU.MIL)

In 2024, however, the United States, as far as I can see, is primarily engaged in the production of accounting irregularities, debt, corn syrup, and pizza rolls. Oh, and worthless university degrees. Can’t have enough of those.

But is it really important in the time of missiles and drones to have aircraft carriers? Perhaps not, perhaps they’re as antiquated as bombers and useful mainly against adversaries that can’t “reach out and touch someone” like the Taliban or Iraq? Perhaps not. Maybe we should look at other components of weapons.

Let’s take just one technology that’s in everything now: LED displays. They’re in phones, but also in jet fighters, tanks, headsets, and any technology meant to share information across a battlespace. A cursory examination shows that no significant production of LED displays takes place in the United States, and the two companies that I could find that were listed as “American” that produce LEDs have been bought by China.

I guess LED Zepplin was really technologically ahead of Incandescent Zepplin.

Sure, the Taiwanese and Japanese and Koreans make this tech, but those countries are (checks map) nowhere near the United States. If there was a protracted war, I’ll leave it as a class exercise to estimate the chances that shipping between those locations and the United States might be impacted. The extended supply chains required to make our most sophisticated weapons systems are long, complex, and vulnerable.

The F-35, for instance, requires parts manufactured all around the world, and even then, there have only been 1,000 made. Is 1,000 a lot? In billions of dollars, yes. In fighter planes, no. Yet, China claims to have created an automated factory that can make 1,000 cruise missiles a day. Is that a lot? Well, every day, yes, since the last data I have says that the United States has an inventory of 4,000 cruise missiles. If correct, China can produce the entire inventory of United States cruise missiles in less than a week.

Are they crappier than ours? Probably. But we’d still have to shoot down every single one if we didn’t want to get hit. How many days until we ran out of SAMs to take them down?

If our production of SAMs is like our production of artillery, not long, and then it would be slingshots.

Thankfully, we have never had to deploy the Tom Cruise missile.

Okay, those are technologically complex systems. Surely on the old-style weapons we’re doing great, right?

No. Russia is, by itself, producing three times the artillery munitions that can be produced by the United States. And by Europe. Combined. And that’s today after we’ve been attempting to ramp up production for three years.

So, there’s economic warfare, right?

Many have argued in the past that China needs the markets of the United States, or they would collapse. That was a good argument, in the past. China now sells more to developing markets than to the West. When people keeping talking about China being a paper economic tiger that will soon collapse, I just have to point to that same phrase being trotted out every year for the last 30 years. China’s economy isn’t like that of the United States, and they’ve taken full advantage of the willingness of the United States to self-immolate its own manufacturing capacity.

China’s ship military ship production capacity exceeds that of the United States. Oh, strike that. Just a single Chinese shipyard exceeds the military ship production capacity of the United States. When we shipped the factories overseas, we not only lost the know-how to make many things. This is the stuff that the instruction manual doesn’t cover, the figuring out how to make the production line work, the solving of the myriad of glitches that come with a start-up.

It’s almost like this unilateral deindustrialization was encouraged. Hmmm.

At least the robot will be charged with something.

This isn’t to say that we’ve been defeated – far from it. But this is no longer 1990 when the United States could, with impunity, exercise military might anywhere around the world and be essentially as unchallenged as Kamala at a vodka-chugging contest. I like to think (and hope) that at least some military planners have realized the amazing hole that we’re in, and understand that the era of unilateral American military dominance somewhere between “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” and the formation of the 183^rd Transexual Human Resources Division.

This, however, is not the end. It just means that the Russia/Ukraine war is a foreshadowing of what’s to come as Pax Americana fades into memory. We will see many more regional wars, and most of those wars will be wars we can’t impact in any meaningful way. This, of course, assumes that we don’t have a stockpile of wunderwaffe sitting around that can allow immediate battlefield dominance and intelligence. Hmmm. Not seeing that, but, again, I’m not on the list of folks that get those memos.

Would Peter Sellers drive a pink panzer?

We can also use this time to ask ourselves what, exactly, we get out of having military bases all around the world when the single biggest threat is the open border at the south. Abraham Lincoln, more than 25 years before he was a theater enjoyer, said this at the age of 28:

Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never! All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth, our own excepted, in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander could not by force take a drink from the Ohio or make a track on the Blue Ridge in a trial of a thousand years.

Yes. Neither the Russians nor the Chinese could ever take this country by force, but yet we’re bringing in millions of military age men into the country so they can eat all the ducks that swim in the Ohio.

I wonder if we’ll regret letting the illegals get there first, with the most men?

Violence: The Starting Point Of Civilization

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

I tried to be an architect, but they didn’t like my library design. It only had one story.

Violence is something that society has been built to avoid. Historically, violence has been much higher – I recently wrote about the Yanomami people and how half of their men died in combat up until recently. This is an ugly fact.

One of the myths that has been force-fed to us is that native peoples are nice and peaceful and reverent. I had heard that people like the Blackfoot tribe “used ever part” of the animals they killed. But that same tribe would kill them by making a herd stampede over a cliff, mashing themselves as they fell – it’s what’s called a “buffalo jump”. Yes, I imagine they used a lot of the buffalo, but I’m fairly certain that practice resulted in a lot of waste just by the sheer nature gravity and the rocks below.

Likewise, the Aztecs were worse: they sacrificed 4,000 actual humans for one party in 1487.

I know the Aztec priests worked hard, since the high priest said, “I’ve made a lot of sacrifices to get where I am today.”

Yet, now the world is much safer, though places like the United States are getting less safe by the day.

Why?

Not enough violence. At least, not enough violence in the right places.

While Western Civilization certainly didn’t start the idea of laws, they’ve been embraced wholeheartedly since laws work. Although the number of laws in our current system far exceeds the number we need for a functioning society, laws are still important.

But laws are just words. Ultimately, enforcement of the law means that someone has to be willing to employ violence to follow up on the law, up to and including killing the violator. That’s where the sheer number of laws gets silly. Should we really face imprisonment for a broken taillight?

Yes, I know that’s not the penalty, but try not paying the fine and see what happens. Eventually, people with guns will come and put you in jail and if you resist, they will shoot you. The reason I think we should consider very carefully what laws we as a society have is that ultimately the threat of violence is what underpins them all. The Feds ended up putting dozens of people to death at Waco over novelty paperweights.

That is, of course, a ludicrous overuse of force, done by bureaucrats so that they could justify their funding at the congressional level.

I think we can agree, though, that laws are necessary. And laws gain power through their enforcement. If a law isn’t enforced, it loses all of its power. If the penalty is too small, then the law will be ignored. As I read once, “If a law is only punishable by a fine, that means it’s legal for a price.”

If you stop a Catholic service with a squirt gun, does that make it a Weapon of Mass Destruction?

Likewise, if attempted murder is punishable by six months in the slammer (I recently read about a murderer who was out after that length of time for attempted murder), the penalty is less severe than the fifteen years that a man received in Iowa for burning a pride flag.

If there is no penalty for crossing the American border and then taking over apartment buildings in Aurora, Colorado, why, people will do exactly that. And why stop at one apartment building? Martha Raddatz of ABC® seems to think that five is a perfectly acceptable number of apartment complexes to be taken over by criminal Venezuelan gangs.

This is the outcome of the propaganda that “violence is never the solution”. Violence, or the threat of violence is often the only solution to many problems. An example is if a thief is attempting to break into my house and do Heaven knows what. My answer isn’t to politely state that what the thief is trying to do violates the laws.

I bought a substitute thesaurus, and it’s really bad. Really bad. Just, bad.

Nope. In order to protect my house and family, I may have to use violence at that point. Certainly, it will be a reluctant use, but the reason why homes don’t experience much burglary around here is because people have guns and burglars know that, and also know that juries around here are made of people just like me.

The law doesn’t keep houses in Modern Mayberry safe, the threat of violence keeps people safe.

But all the world isn’t Modern Mayberry. Places like Chicago or Baltimore have ongoing violence levels that are at multi-decadal highs. Why?

The criminals have gotten the message that they can do whatever they want, whenever they want. And if someone tries to step in and protect citizens? Well, like the Marine Corps veteran Daniel Penny, who restrained a potentially dangerous man in a way he thought would keep everyone safe, they’ll be put on trial.

Yes, and the trial is expected to take six weeks. At $1,000 an hour for lawyers, that’s $40,000 a week. Or $240,000 for all six. Maybe he’s got a coupon?

Is a lawyer required to name his daughter Sue?

Regardless of if Penny is found guilty or not, his trial sends the same message as New York has always sent to its citizens: you’re not allowed to protect yourselves. Criminals threatening violence have the upper hand. Just ask Bernie Goetz, who decided he refused to be a mugging victim again.

We’re at the point where the criminals will start using violence – not because they have any political objective, but just because no one is stopping them, and those who would attempt to stop them are punished very visibly.

The way forward is obvious. At some point, decent people will have no other place to flee, and will have to stand and fight. When I review history, the pattern is pretty clear that civilization does return, though it does take the reestablishment of violence to get us there, and probably a few more buffalo jumps.

I had a bison steak the other night, and asked the waiter for the buffalo bill.

And it’s been 200 years since the last organized buffalo jump, I here. I guess that makes it a bison-tennial. And maybe Penny can get an Aztec lawyer – they get right to the heart of the problem.

Fear: Don’t.

“I am Pasquinel. I come to you, unafraid.” – Centennial

Andre Celsius died in 1744 at the age of 43, though Daniel Fahrenheit would have insisted that Celsius was 103.

This is a week of frequently discussed topics here, or if not frequently, regularly. On Monday, I posted about the looming Civil War 2.0. It’s a topic that’s important, and one that will define whatever rises from the ashes of USA 6.0. I’m calling it USA 6.0 because I number them this way:

The Colonies (before 1776),
The Confederation (before 1788),
The Several States Constitutional Republic (before 1860),
The Single State (before 1913),
The Progressive Empire (before 1990), and
The GloboLeftistElite Playground (ongoing).

Your mileage may vary, but each of these incarnations was different, and each of them rose from the remnants of what had come before. It’s a pretty big and important topic.

So, that’s Monday.

I saw a war movie set in a campground – the battle scene was in tents.

On Tuesday, I talked about how the unbridled “compassion” of the GloboLeftistElite was choking the United States pretty badly, and that, regardless of their intent, it was setting up a situation where the economy along with the culture is becoming pure Weimar.

Never go pure Weimar.

But it’s Friday, so it’s time to return to another frequently discussed topic: Attitude.

If you are religious, the biggest goal of the Enemy is to create literal demoralization in both senses of the word – to cause you to lose hope fill you with despair, along with causing you to lose your morality. The second part is listed as an archaic part of the word, and that’s a shame.

When I pass on, I’m going to leave some lucky ready my arm bone, because I think that would be humerus.

If you’re not religious, don’t tune out – this applies to you, too. You don’t have to believe in Him for demoralization to be a huge danger. Deciding that nothing matters, or nihilism, is the gateway to deciding that anything is possible, and feeling despair is the gateway to nihilism.

Capital E or small e, this is what the adversary wants.

The reason that so much of the news media is set up the way it is, is to provide an echo chamber that makes us all feel alone. Think a baby born with XY chromosomes is a male?

They did find the genetic cause of shyness, finally. It was hiding behind two other genes.

That’s pretty much every sane person. But the GloboLeftElite want you to think that you’re alone in having these thoughts. They thrive on it. They depend on it.

Why?

Because if you feel alone, you’re subject to manipulation. Many people (women especially, because of the way that they’re innately wired), for instance, want to go along with the herd and believe what everyone else does, because to many, politics is just another form of fashion. If the cool people believe it, well, shouldn’t we all? I mean, the Europeans laughed at us for electing Trump!

So?

It’s a perception that the GloboLeftElite is trying to create in our minds. The same way that Kamala has gone from one of the most unpopular politicians in recent American history to within cheating distance of taking the White House, the attitude that they want to instill in us is defeat.

I forgot the rules of chess, but then I remembered I was allowed to check.

And if we take that attitude, and accept it, we will lose. There is a reason that one of the most repeated admonitions in the Christian Bible is “Fear not”. Frank Herbert eloquently wrote this in Dune:

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”

I was an utter nerd in middle school, though I was also a noseguard so I never got picked on, and I had that passage memorized in seventh grade. It was true when Herbert wrote it, it was true when I first read it, and it’s true today: fear is certainly the worst emotion a human can have.

I firmly believe that the worst outcomes of my life are from those few times I gave counsel to my fears. Nothing good ever came of it except the deep understanding that nothing good ever comes from it. Now, when I cried, “Havok!” and let slip the dogs of war and gave it my all, even when everyone said that what I was about to do was impossible?

Good times, man.

To be clear: we can’t lose. Really. I do understand and fully believe that we haven’t seen that darkest night, that time when we think that all hope is lost. It’s coming.

And we’ll win. The reason I am certain comes from the understanding that, no matter what the Enemy (or enemy) has done, it has never, ever kept us down forever. I am not done.

I actually own an authentic human skull. It’d show it to you, but I’m using it right now.

I haven’t finished doing what I was put here to do. And if I do it, facing my fears directly, I know that I’m going to win. And I know that, over time, after heartache and after piles of skulls and blood.

We win. It’s inevitable.

And then, in some far distant future, we’ll have to fight again. But that’s another story.

Distractions, Pascal, And Postman

“This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.” – Fight Club

I then started a summer camp for people who wanted to be plastic surgeons. Arts and Grafts was very popular.

Distractions.

Blaise Pascal wrote about them in his book Pensées, which is French and means “reflections” and is pronounced “Hamwich” because the French never properly figured out that sounds in words should be connected in some fashion to the letters used.

Pascal was a mathematician, a physicist, and invented the laptop computer, which was initially a plank of wood. In reality, he did some of the foundational work that showed that atmospheric pressure varied with altitude, even has a unit named after him.

Pascal was also a philosopher, and thought a whole bunch about Christianity. This was back before the “let’s get a cappuccino and listen to Pastor Dave talk about why God wants lesbian ministers” type of church, and instead when there were debates on how salvation occurred and if free will was a thing.

Thankfully it didn’t take them too long to clean the kettle out, though they did ask me where I got six gallons.

Pascal wrote: “Distraction is the only thing that consoles us for our miseries. Yet, it is, itself, the greatest of our miseries.”

And, although he’s dead, Pascal was entirely correct. We see it all around us right now.

Distraction is seductive. I remember we were on a family vacation and stopped at a Denny’s® to get breakfast. There was a line, and about 30 people (mainly families) were waiting.

As I looked, every eye was focused on a phone – 30 people sitting next to each other, yet distracted by whatever it was that they were looking at. They had escaped reality, and also escaped talking to each other, almost as if they were addicted to the distractions coming to them over their iPhones®.

In reality, many of them probably are technically addicted to those phones. Much of the internet, even back then, was built on the premise of stimulating dopamine to create engagement with the phone, and not with the world surrounding us.

Such a wonderful society we have to take pills to deal with it. Meme as found.

Were those people worried about their bills, their jobs, or their immortal soul? Nah. They were distracted by flappy bird games or Faceborg™ or InstaChat©. They were allowing the moments of their lives to drain away into that sea of distraction rather than confront reality.

They did have bills. Their jobs sucked. Their immortal soul was in peril. But that’s difficult to think about, so it’s much easier to look at pretty colors and cat videos for ten seconds before flipping to the next infotainment bite. The distraction was total.

Is it any wonder that coping skills have been drastically impacted in the generation raised on the distraction of phones? Kids can’t cope because they’re never forced to confront themselves until the stakes are high. This creates a group of victims.

I hate victims. A lot. They’re whiney and they suck every bit of energy out of the room, like psychic vampires. Oh, wait, I just described The View. Huh.

If you ever feel uninformed, remember that some people get their news from The View.

Absolutely, there are people who are in situations that are far beyond their control. And, absolutely there are people who don’t deserve what fate has given them. However, when I look at people who have self-control, who have looked fate in the eye and said, “Yeah, so what? I’m still standing here, chump,” I feel admiration.

Neil Postman was a professor and writer, but then he died. Perhaps his best-known work is Amusing Ourselves to Death, written in 1985. The Mrs. introduced me to it not long after we met, and I knew she was a keeper. In it, Postman talks about the impact of amusement. Amusement is close enough to distraction for our purposes and both Postman and Pascal are dead, so they can’t put up too much of a fight.

Again, Postman wrote about this in 1985, well before the every distraction, every place, all at once monster of the smartphone appeared. In it, Postman identified television as a drug. If so, it’s a gateway drug like aspirin, and the Internet is heroin.

Part of distraction is that it discourages the formation of complete thoughts. I think at least partially that’s part of the inspiration for this place, since I want to create and bring forth ideas that people might not think about, or might have forgotten in all frenzy of flashing lights, free porn, and distractions of Instabook© and Facegram™.

If idiots could fly, TikTok® would be an airport.

It’s a world where, “Excuse me, I’m talking” becomes a replacement for actual thought and people thinking deeply about issues like old Pascal becomes rarer and rarer. A side effect is that the information we get becomes information we can’t take action on. Want to complain to your congressman? How would you even contact them? How would you get their attention? Hell, getting the attention of an HOA is nearly impossible in some subdivisions.

Instead, you’ll complain to your neighbor.

Worse, though, is the impact that’s happening to our youth. The lesson that bad crap is going to happen to them so they need to learn deal with it simply isn’t taught because they just distract themselves away from the Truth they don’t want to consider. It’s not their fault – their brain is optimized to live in villages, and we distract them with the hardest hitting drug in history: the smartphone.

Failure is an option. And failure is a teacher, but when the teacher is fired and replaced with social media? The lesson is muted or ignored.

I bought a book called “How to Hug”, but it turned out to be volume seven of an encyclopedia.

How did Pascal manage to deal with being a religious philosopher, a mathematician, and a physicist?

I guess Pascal was good at avoiding distraction and dealing with pressure.

Change, Batman, Male Prostitutes, And Bears

“You were looking for a way to change your life. You could not do this on your own.” – Fight Club

My Chinese friend gave me an iPad. I just love homemade presents!

I can tell when I’m really ready for change. I don’t think about it. I don’t plan it.

I do it. I become it.

Instantly.

How can I tell when I’m not ready to change?

I think about it. I plan it. I consider ideas like, “starting Monday, I’m going to . . . “

Then Monday comes around. Meh. There’s always next Monday.

Change is instantaneous, it’s a drag racer (I mean cars, not men in dresses that for some unspecified reason like to read to children) after the pedal has been pushed to the floor and the car is launched. The desire to change? That lingers and hangs around on the couch, eating curly fries and thinking about what it one day might do.

Shame on you if you haven’t heard of Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute, who offers professional hygiene, discretion, and animal gratification.

One of my friends when I was living in Alaska shared this story:

Wife: “I’m leaving.”

Husband: “What, what the hell? You’re leaving me?”

Wife: “No. I’m leaving Alaska. I’m moving.”

Husband: “Why? I thought that, while we had our ups and downs, our marriage is pretty good.”

Wife: “No. I’m not leaving you, I’m leaving Alaska. It’s fine if you want to come, too.”

My friend (who I will call Tim since that’s his name) said that this was a constant pattern that he had seen. Perfectly happy couple, and then one day, bam, the wife said she was outta there, done with Alaska except for the rearview mirror. He said it generally happened about 20 years after the couple had moved to Alaska. Sometimes 19 years.

Do mimes with invisible walls have obstacle illusions?

He had no idea why it happened, but it was frequent enough that he’d seen the pattern play out again and again.

Now that, my friends, is change.

Another example more relevant to me is biking. I used to bike a lot, and I know from experience that the only thing that is as insufferable as a gay vegan-Democrat-Crossfit® enthusiast is a bicyclist. But when I decided that I was going to use biking as an exercise to get into better shape (which worked) I went all in. No, I didn’t buy the silly jersey or the clip on shoes or a bike that weighed .03 ounces (351 kiloPascals), but I did buy the gear I needed to be good enough to lose some weight. Hell, I wasn’t racing, I wanted a heavy bike so I had to work my fat ass harder.

So, after 5,000 plus bike miles a year for two years, I found I lost approximately 10 pounds.

Why didn’t the bear go to college? Because bears don’t go to college.

Hmmm, I guess I can’t ride my bike faster than my fork, but when I was on my bike, even though I was far from a world-record anything, I was training as hard as any world-class athlete. Just not as long, and just without the talent that they had. I mean, I was dedicated, but there was no way I was gonna cut my testicle off like Lance Armstrong.

But, again, the change was instantaneous. Just as instantaneous as when I decided to stop biking because I noticed it was causing some damage to my body, and having a bad ankle wasn’t worth losing 10 pounds.

One day, bicyclist.

The next day?

Not.

So, change itself is instant. And also predictable – it always has and always will require just three simple things, as Ludwig von Mises (who is dead) wrote:

A Vision of a Better State

A Path to Get to the Better State

A Belief That My Action Along the Path Will Get Me to the Better State

If you have Vision, Path, and Belief, you change. If I don’t have them, even if I’m missing just one of them, I don’t change. At all. I just sit on my couch eating curly fries.

Anyone can want to change, in fact I’m sure we all want to change. But until we get those three simple keys, we won’t.

When my youngest was five, The Mrs. and I asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he said, “Batman”. Now he wonders why we won’t take him to the theater.

Why do people who have heart attacks sometimes become fitness devotees? Because they now have A Vision of a Better State – not being dead next year. They have A Path to Get to the Better State – exercise and eating right. They now have A Belief That Their Action Along the Path Will Get Them to the Better State – their doctor told them, and now they’re paying attention.

That’s a rather extreme example, but it’s one that gets raised all the time.

I think the reasons that more people don’t make changes comes from a few simple reasons:

Despair: They don’t believe that anything that they do can change the situation that they’re in so they don’t even dwell on a better state or look for a path. They’ve given up.

Not Looking: They simply won’t open their eyes to the possibility of something different, or feel guilt, and also can’t see a way, even if it’s abundantly clear to others.

Apathy: They don’t care. Curly fries are easy. Work is hard.

Sometimes change is a conscious choice, but I’ll also admit that sometimes change is forced upon you like the Alaskan husband from Tim’s story above.

If you have something you want to change, change it. You can’t make yourself younger, but you can make yourself stronger than you are today. If you want more money, you can’t write yourself checks based on an IOU that you wrote to yourself (like the government does) but you can earn more or save more or both. I guarantee it.

My grandfather once told me it was worth it to spend money on good stereo speakers. That was sound advice.

Once I asked a friend (not Tim) to write a sentence of their choice as small as they could. They did. Then, I said, write it again, and make it smaller this time.

They did. Generally, the power is within us to do amazing things, but we have to first believe. You can choose change, or it can choose you.

But what you and I do with that? It’s up to us.

Chevron And The Fall Of The Deep State

“I’m Jack’s medulla oblongata. Without me, Jack could not regulate his heart rate, blood pressure, or breathing.” – Fight Club

Don’t worry! I’ve been told by 51 intelligence operatives that the Deep State isn’t real.

I know that the event of last week in the media was the debate. I’ll agree, it was pretty significant, significant enough that I stayed up even later to chat about it with The Mrs., who gets up really early. How early?

JW: Tonight’s debate was thermonuclear.

The Mrs.: You mean yesterday’s debate. Oh, wait, you haven’t slept, so for you it’s still yesterday.

Whatever timeframe you’re using, a really, really big thing happened on Friday. Let me explain, I’m a trained professional.

Let’s go back in time a bit.

Back in 1938, the Congress passed a law establishing a thing called the “Code of Federal Regulations” act. That act required all federal regulations to be put in a single source, which is now called the CFR. Note that I didn’t say a single book, since the CFR pages totaled 188,343 in 2021.

That’s not a typographical error. There are nearly 200,000 pages of federal regulations. They say that ignorance of the law is no excuse, but I’m pretty sure that there is no sane human that could read and retain that insane level of regulation, except for Alex Trebek, and he is, alas, no more.

That meant that people like these were responsible for making the regulations you had to live by, with no restraint. It’s like allowing random members of a Pride march to decide on your healthcare. Oh, wait.

Now, there are several groups that really love that level of regulation:

Lawyers, who build careers on understanding them,
Big Business, to keep out small-fry competition that can’t afford lawyers to interpret the rules to keep them out of trouble,
the Antifa® fascists, who are the people who really get bent out of shape if your lawn is 0.05” higher than the regulations say, and
They exist to write regulations, so they just want to write more.

This is an unholy combination.

Regulations are based on law. The Congress of the United States passes a bill, and the President of the United States signs it, and, a law is created. I learned that on Schoolhouse Rock™ when that damn bill just wanted to be a law.

If we emailed the Constitution to each other, would the NSA give it to the Deep State so they’d finally read it?

Laws, however, almost always constrain human activities. In some cases, like murder, a law can be a net social benefit, at least when the courts actually enforce the law equally and without favor.

But murder is simple when compared to some of the federal laws on the books. I could get into the details, but it’s a federal crime:

to wash your fish at a faucet if it’s not a fish-washing faucet,
to let your pet make a noise that scares wildlife in a national park,
to sell onion rings that resemble onion rings, but made with diced onion,
to skydive drunk, and,
sell wine with a brand name including the word “zombie”.

Yes. This was made the force of law, that unelected regulators could make up whatever they wanted and put you in jail if you didn’t do what they made up last week. This was based on the “Chevron Deference” – a court decision that effectively let the Executive Branch make regulations, enforce them, and courts had to bow to their interpretation. It’s been the rule for 40 years.

Here is a partial list of the people who will actually have to have a law to rely on to take away your rights in the future.

But the most pernicious part of this is that it feeds into the same mindset that the GloboLeftElite has relied on for years. They want to take an existing law and pound and beat it to meet whatever they believe this Tuesday. For example, there was a requirement that industries stop pollutants from going into the air.

That makes sense. I could argue that it doesn’t need to occur at a national level and that states could regulate it and that might make it un-Constitutional, but, whatever. The law is there. It’s been there forever. The regulations meant to enforce the law when it came out made sense – spewing methyl-ethyl-death across the elementary playground might not be a great idea.

On the other hand, maybe it would have made our children strong enough to work in the mines.

But that same law, written decades ago, was interpreted to mean that sweet, sweet carbon dioxide, you know, plant food, is now a pollutant. Why? Because the GloboLeftElite knows that gives them more control, and because it now fits with the Narrative of the Moment despite the original law being signed into law in 1963 and last amended in 1990.

I just found this X account, and I like the cut of their jib.

Since CO₂wasn’t on the list of evil things in 1963 or in 1990, having the EPA to suddenly decide it was evil is just regulators making things up. The Supreme Court said, “No, you can’t do this. You have to pass a law. And no, the President can’t just say so.” The Chevron™ Deferral effectively allowed the Executive branch of government be also the Legislative and Judicial. This is extremely dangerous.

92% plus of people in Washington D.C. voted Biden. If regulations can be made willie-nillie without congress even having to pass a law, well, it will be members of the GloboLeftistElite that will write them. And, remember, these folks live to do one thing: write regulations.

One of the worst regulators at fault is the ATF®, who can’t even decide what a gun is. They’re in trouble on the rules they made up on “ghost guns” and pistol braces, and even the definition of who can sell guns without needing an ATF license.

Make no mistake, this is a shattering blow for the Deep State, who wants to make regulations with the force of federal law, without there even having to be a federal law change in the first place.

Why does the GloboLeftElite and the GloboLeft hate this? Because all of their termites that have burrowed into the Fed.Gov are now less useful, and they actually have to follow the rules to make their changes.

If a priest becomes a lawyer, does that make him a father-in-law?

And that’s the sand the GloboLeftElite will have in their panties. They have to pass a law. They can’t make their regulatory changes in the dark of the night by unelected bureaucrats who reliably only vote for more government.

And, no, I won’t be waiting up for The Mrs. to get up so we can discuss this post. I’ll probably just sneak into bed while she gently snores beside me.

Hey, wait, is there a federal regulation about snoring? I’ll bet there is . . .

Also – this is what winning looks like. Enjoy this one.

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

“You can’t have both of the parasites.” – Fight Club

A tapeworm showed up to a party and got kicked out. I guess the guy was a terrible host.

When I think about parasites, I start with thinking about the GloboLeft. Somebody like George Soros has been sucking at the economy, producing no value, and trying his best to control its brain.

Like Toxoplasmosis gondii.

Toxoplasmosis gondii (T. gondii from here on out) is, like a gender-studies major, a parasite. It has an interesting life cycle, in that it often occurs in cats. In reality, it can infest any warm blooded animal (and birds as well) but most people are aware from due to its association with cats, and not the Broadway musical, but the fuzzy felines.

I want to write a Broadway show titled Vocabulary. It’ll be a play on words.

T. gondii likes to infest cats. Since it occurs as cysts in animals, T. gondii has developed the ability to change the behavior of mice and rats. Specifically, T. gondii changes the brain and behavior patterns of rodents to make them less worried about being dinner.

Of things that rodents don’t like, “being eaten alive” is pretty near the top of the list. Uninfected rodents really hate the smell of cat pee and avoid it, since cat pee often occurs near where cats are, and cats like to eat rodents alive, just for sport.

However, give a rodent an infection of T. gondii and it either loses it’s aversion to cat pee or becomes attracted to it. It also reduces the behaviors associated with avoiding predators and makes the mice more bold and less worried about predators. It also makes them hyperactive, increases the distances they travel, and makes the reckless when they show up at a new area.

Yes. T. gondii turns mice into little mobile food trucks for cats. This is on purpose, so the cats eat the mice, and then get infected, and then poop, and then spread T. gondii everywhere.

Mary Poppins Food Truck Review: “Super cauliflower-cheese but the lobster was atrocious.”

Well, there’s a horrifying thought! A parasite that changes the behavior of creatures! Thankfully humans don’t get it, and it doesn’t impact human behavior?

Well, nazzo fast, Guido.

It turns out that T. gondii just loves to hitch a ride into humans. And just like it changes the behavior of rats and cats and mice, studies have shown that it also impacts humans as well. How?

T. gondii has shown to have some of these effects in people:

Increases impulsive behaviors,
Increased car accidents,
Increased road rage, and
Increased mental illness (like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder).

Yeah, T. gondii is a disaster for people since if you look at the list above, it appears to turn them into GloboLeftists. It also messes with human immune systems so it doesn’t get eaten, makes healthy cells die, increases inflammation, and may even encourage other parasites to join the party by downregulating the parts of the human immune system that keep them out.

Staying up all weekend is fun – after all, sleep is for the week.

Thankfully it’s rare, right?

Nope. In women of childbearing age, infection rates are:

50%-80% in Latin Americans,
20%-60% in Eastern Europeans,
30%-50% in the Middle Easterners,
20%-60% in Southeast Asians,
20%-55% in Africans, and
7% in the United States natives (2004 data) but 28.1% in foreign-born.

Billions of people have this parasite, T. gondii. But that’s just one parasite.

I had that parasite. Didn’t care for it.

Let’s take this a step further.

There are large numbers of parasites beyond T. gondii that infect and impact humanity. I looked it up and came to two conclusions:

Parasites are really gross and repulsive.
There are hundreds of different types of parasites out there.

How likely is it, of all of the different types of parasites that impact humanity that the only one that impacts behavior is T. gondii? If I were a betting man, I’d lay money that there are certainly more parasites than not impact behavior. And since many of these parasites require exposure to blood or poop to increase the number of hosts, well, might the behaviors that the parasite “encourages” be tied to more exposure to those things?

It’s a thought.

Once again, when looking at the religious themes of chastity, heterosexuality, monogamy, and modesty, it occurs to me that all of those virtuous behaviors – every single one of them – reduces exposure to parasites and disease that may take over our minds.

Is it just a coincidence that as adherence to chastity, heterosexuality, monogamy, and modesty are tossed away as old, outmoded thinking that we find ourselves in a world surrounded by triggered adherents of Clown World? Perhaps the warnings we’ve seen in the past of those possessed by demons was, at least in part, based on parasites. It seems like all the behavior that leads to the fall of civilizations tends to increase the likelihood that people will catch parasites.

Where do Viking clowns go? Val-ha-ha.

Maybe, maybe it’s only the GloboLeft, but the GloboLeft is actively encouraging behaviors that result in the perpetuation of parasites. Today. Ever wonder why the GloboLeft reacted so harshly to ivermectin being a potential cure to COVID? It kills parasites.

What would have happened if GloboLeftists had taken it and found out that their lives are a lie and their predilection to certain sexual practices was actually parasite mind control?

Are the GloboLeftists, in addition to being parasites, are also being consumed and controlled by parasites?

You be the judge.

The Latest Attack: White Fortressing

“Lord Vader will provide us with the location of the rebel fortress.” – Star Wars, A New Hope

I lost a castle in chess once. It was a rook-y mistake.

One of the unintended consequences of a multicultural society is the way that identity fuels animosity and envy. In the latest story from this dispatch comes the concept of “White Fortressing”.

What on Earth is White Fortressing? Does it involve a series of blankets covering the dining room table and various chairs to create a blanket fort, but this time using only white blankets?

No. In Louisiana, besides the Gumbo Landslides and the Alligator Squadron attacks, one of the things that people wrestle with is government. In Baton Rouge (French for “smells like mold”), Louisiana, there the people in one area have been trying to split off from the local parish. If you’re from Louisiana, no one calls those subdivisions “a parish” except you. I blame the Louisiana Purchase.

Why? People in Louisiana do things, um, differently. Heck, if Adam and Eve had been from Louisiana, they’d have eaten the snake, too.

Pictured: Louisiana after half an inch of rain.

This group of about 100,000 folks wanted to form their own city, which they have called St. George. Because this new city would be only 12% black instead of 50% black like the rest of East Baton Rouge Parish, Dr. Luisa Godinez-Puig of the Urban Institute™ coined the phrase “White Fortressing”.

What’s Dr. Luisa Godinez-Puig’s job title? “Equity Scholar.” And given that job title, it’s no wonder that, wherever she looks with her beady little eyes she sees inequity. To be fair, I can’t really tell if they’re beady, but the low-resolution picture that she uploaded makes me think that when her friends tried to set her up on blind dates they described her as having “a great personality except for the everything is racist bit”.

According to the article written by Dr. Luisa Godinez-Puig and someone named Muttley, er “Smedley” who I am sure is completely not a dog that communicates only by snickering, White Fortressing is “opportunity hoarding”. What’s that? You mean, gasp, a community would want to spend money on itself rather than ship it to other people?

I wonder if Dr. Luisa Godinez-Puig and Smedley had a cartoon, would it be called “Wacky Racists”?

To quote myself in a discussion with a friend, “Why should I want to ship money overseas? I don’t want to ship it to the next county.”

It appears that the big reason that St. George wanted to make itself a city wasn’t because Louisiana was in desperate need of a new mayor, nope, the East Baton Rouge School System appears to be crap. How crap? WAFB™, which I assume stands for War Air Force Base, reported that there were 6,587 fights that were reported in the school district over the past two years. Given that there were 40,000 students in the System, it’s likely that just under 27,000 students weren’t pulling their fair share and starting fights.

Let’s be real: most fights aren’t reported. So, this would indicate to me that the schools are likely much more violent than would be indicated by the raw numbers above. So, in 2013, a group of parents decided that enough was enough. In the St. George area, there were 16,300 or so kids going to school. Of that number, some 7,700 went to private school. I think it’s obvious why: It’s to protect the poor kids, since the rich kids can hire hitmen to take care of business.

To quote Dr. Luisa Godinez-Puig and her sidekick Smedley: “When white communities fortress themselves, they siphon away resources from the larger region, including communities of color.”

Important note: before providing Human Resources with a urine sample, make sure they requested one first.

That’s what the people of St. George are to Dr. Luisa Godinez-Puig and her sidekick Smedley: “resources”. I suppose that a charitable way to put this is that these people are really just tax slaves. The “Opportunity Hoarding” that Dr. Luisa Godinez-Puig and her sidekick Smedley describe is really just Dr. Luisa Godinez-Puig and her sidekick Smedley’s Opportunity to Hoard the tax dollars coming from people who just want out of a failing, violent system.

Those ingrates! They and their children should just stay and take the beatings and worse that they so obviously deserve!

This is the mind of the GloboLeft: their job isn’t to provide a shared initiative to block those who would try to invade or enslave us. Nope. They view their job is to mine us for resources so we don’t “Hoard” our productivity and thus deprive them of their “Opportunity” to extract their pound of flesh.

The hypocrisy of the GloboLeft is laid bare by this:

Their god is democracy, except when people vote against them. This is why they always use the term “Our Democracy”. You and I simply do not need to apply.
If white people leave an area due to violence or high tax rates due to transfer payments, it’s called “White Flight” and it’s bad. So bad, because (apparently) the GloboLeft really wants people around?
No, they don’t. When white people move back into an urban hellscape and begin to economically transform it for the better, that’s “Gentrification” and it’s also bad because it raises the taxes from their previous “urban war zone” level.
Finally, if people just want to stay in the same place, and govern themselves, their horribly shellfish because they don’t want to share their taxes with the greater region. Heck, those ingrates probably don’t want to ship their tax dollars to Raytheon™ so they can build bombs to give to foreign countries or Boeing® so that Boeing© software programmers can continue trying to solve the deep mystery of the coloring book in the break room.
Who self-segregates more than anyone? The GloboLeftElite.

Hey, don’t laugh, battering rams were a real breakthrough.

The GloboLeftElite always, always, has the same idea – the things that are produced by individuals belong solely to them – there was a reason the Iron Curtain existed – and it wasn’t to keep people out. Whereas I really do believe that certain services and regulations are required, my view of the world is “anything not illegal is allowed.” Their view? “Anything not mandatory is prohibited.” I wish that last phrase was something that I made up, but it’s not, but I wish even more that the GloboLeftElite hadn’t heard it, since it appears to be their game plan.

The aptly named Larry Fink.

An irony of this is that the school district proposed by the folks who put together the city of St. George isn’t even particularly white: only 35% of the public school students would be white.

I guess, in the end, White Fortressing simply means, “Not spending your tax dollars the way our GloboLeftElite overlords wanted”. Maybe they could shut themselves up in their own safe space.

What color blankets do you think Doctor Luisa Godinez-Puig and her sidekick Smedley would want?

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.

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.