Knowing The Face Of Your Father, or, The Best Post I’ve Ever Written About Bronze Age Europe

(Inspired by a comment on Monday’s post)

“It is indeed a pleasure to introduce to you a gentleman we picked up in medieval Mongolia, please welcome the very excellent barbarian Mr. Genghis Khan!” – Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure

I wonder if the most common sandwich in Rome was a plebian J?

The rooster crowed. 

Tark opened one eye, peering through the heavy hide covering him.  He could see light.

Motion was already starting in the longhouse, and he could see the oak beams above him dimly in the firelight.  He could smell the barley and mutton stew that would be his breakfast.  Always in a hurry, he jumped up and dressed into his pleasantly cool tunic and pants and bolted down a bowl of the stew.  It was warm.  It was good.

Tark was eight.

Tark hummed a song to the sky father, the one who had spoken the world into existence, according to the stories the men told around the fire.  Tark’s first job was to feed the chickens so mother could get the eggs for tomorrow.

His father, Wulfric, was already up, as usual.  Tark had seen that his father was up later and up earlier.  Tark noticed that Wulfric always had a wary look in his eye, as if he was never relaxing, always assessing.  When other men talked after too much drink, Wulfric listened.  Wulfric was tending the tribe’s cattle, their major stock of wealth and the way that they would be sure that they would make it through the winter, even if it was a long one. 

Tark’s older brother Branoc, now 16, was already up and practicing with a battle axe – sweat already dripping from him despite the cool air.  Branoc was a man, and to be a man, one fought.  And to be a man, one married.  Branoc would soon be bonded to Lunara.  A man protects his woman, a man protects his family.  All is right with the world.

Tark and Branoc go through the forest, intermittent sunlight flashing in Tark’s light blonde hair. His blue-gray eyes lit up as they caught deer sign.  Maybe a hunt soon.  That would be good. 

Later, after a day of work and mock combat with wooden weapons and a laughing Branoc, Tark and the family gathered by the fire.  Wulfric speaks slowly, telling the stories of their Yamnaya ancestors who rode the steppe and died valiantly.  Those tales are the last thing that Tark heard as he drifted off to sleep – dreaming of becoming worthy enough to have a final burial place, a kurgan, worthy of a man of honor.  The last thing he saw in the flickering firelight was the face of his father.

Okay, enough of Tark’s life.

Tark was a member of the Corded Ware people, a successor to the Yamnaya.  This culture (and its associated genetics) first show up on the steppe in what is today Russia and the Ukraine thousands of years ago and then spread throughout Europe during the thousands of years that followed.

Blockbuster™ franchises followed the Corded Ware people wherever they went, but were ultimately unsuccessful because the VCR had not yet been invented. 

This land was harsh, and not only in climate – some writers have referred to it as the bloodlands.  Steppe warriors.  These were the first humans to effectively use the horse as transport, and were fierce warriors.  Most of the skeletons that we’ve found of these people have evidence of combat injuries.  This isn’t uncommon.

In roughly 1250 BC, a band of warriors descended on a settlement in the Tollense Valley.  The Tollense Valley is in present day Germany.  On the day of the battle, current estimates are that perhaps 2,000 warriors fought during the battle – an immense battle for that time in Europe.

Who won?  Civilization won.

Steppe warriors have been a sort-of periodic vaccination against societal complacency.  Urban areas exist, and the steppe warriors, be they Mongol, Hun, Turk, Scythian, or Yamnaya, have been a cleansing fire that keeps those urban and settled areas vital.  I mean, would you build a giant great wall to protect you from cosplay LARPers or furries?

No, not from LARPers. But I would build a fiery moat to keep furries out.

The Corded Ware people were also known to avoid video games. (meme as found)

This crashing wave of martial prowess was built on a selection process that favored honor, planning, and daring.  Genghis Khan is related to something like one out of eight east Asians, so I think his strategy paid off.  It also forced societies out of their complacence, and kept them invigorated.  Stagnant empires in decline were exactly the sort of thing these steppe barbarians were looking for.

I mean, don’t threaten them with a good time.

Wave after wave of first Yamnaya and then Corded Ware people replaced almost all of the neolithic farmers in the region from the Volga to the Rhine on the east and west, and from the Arctic in the north to the Alps in the south, a huge range.

But they also pushed into places like Gaul, the Iberian Peninsula, and into Italy.  In the Iberian Peninsula, for instance, many villages consist only of the offspring from the Y chromosome of the Yamnaya/Corded Ware people.  They invaded, killed all the men and male children, and took over.  The men from those places are erased from genetic history.

Is this how you retrace your steppes? (meme as found)

To a lesser extent, this happened in both Greece and Italy.  The early emperors were blonde or sandy brown in hair color, with eyes that were light grey or blue – the Steppe Chads like Tark had found a home, and their genes lived on in emperors.  And in people like Alexander the Great, who had heterochromia.

What’s heterochromia?  One blue eye, one brown.  Steppe Chad’s blood flowed in Alexander’s veins, and probably made up 30% of the genome of some populations of the ancient Greeks and Macedonians.

In Italy, it was also pronounced, with early Latin DNA being 30% or more of Corded Ware origin.  Nero was blonde and had blue eyes.

I guess that makes the Yamnaya steppe daddies?

The Italians and Greeks of today are, of course still related to the Italians and Greeks of 2,000 years ago, but there has been a huge admixture of the peoples of the Mediterranean because these were the capital cities of empire.  Think New York of 2025 is genetically even remotely close to New York of 1825?

Nope, not at all.  And neither was Rome of 200 AD genetically similar to Rome of 100 BC, except, perhaps, in the royal families.

I hear that Nero hid when they went to find him to execute him, covering himself in a cloak.  I guess that makes that coat the first chicken Caesar wrap.

The genetics of three to five thousand years of brutal struggle in the bloodlands were flowing in the veins of Octavian, even until the years just before his death . . .

A rooster, somewhere, crowed.  Augustus (who had been Octavian) opened one eye.  A servant was already there. 

One of the joys of youth was solitude, one of the banes of being Caesar was never being really alone.  After Julius was murdered, Octavian never let a single man guard him.  That would be folly.  Besides, Augustus was 74, and when he woke, everything hurt.  He remembered bounding up as a boy, but now everything was slow.

Even his waking was an event that set in motion a cascade of events.  Three men entered the room.  His bath was ready, and, as usual, already at perfect temperature.  One had deeply absorbent towels.  One had a chalice of wine.  The third had brought in a fresh toga, trimmed in the Tyrian murex that was the amazingly expensive purple coloring of the Caesar.

The gardens of his palace by the Tiber were a place of quiet contemplation.  He walked them slowly, in silence, his formerly blonde and now grey hair catching the morning Sun, reflecting off of his blue-gray eyes.

A soft echo of the sounds of his guard, training, bring Actium back to his mind, where he finally ended Mark Antony’s planned usurpation of his power.  Such glory.  The entire world in the balance!

In the afternoon, Senators.  Roads.  Gaul.  Plans of Empire, details for lesser men.

That night, Augustus sits by the fire.  Alone.  In an unguarded moment, he allows himself to think about what he already knows awaits him: a marble tomb. 

He pondered:  was he a man of honor?  He thought, briefly, of a memory from when he was a child of perhaps four, of the face of his father in dim light, illuminated by the flickering light of a lamp.

The blood of Tark had made a very long journey, indeed.

Debt Slavery’s Long Game: From Sumer to Goomer With A Detour to Ginger And Mary Ann

“If you erase the debt record, then we  go back to zero.” – Fight Club

If Electric Avenue is closed, where are on Earth are we going to rock down to?

I can’t remember the first time Pa Wilder said “There’s nothing sure but death and taxes” but I couldn’t have been any taller than former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, who I believe is about three feet tall.  But I’m sure that while Pa was quoting Benjamin Franklin accurately, he did miss one big point:  although death was really old, for most people in the history of the planet, there was also debt.

Some of the earliest records we have are records of debt, baked into Sumerian clay indicating that Goomer owed Abadabaduu 12 sheep because he borrowed 10 sheep.  And debt was a pretty serious thing back then.  If Goomer couldn’t pay, he might even be sentenced to become Abadabaduu’s slave.  If Goomer’s kid, Jenzie, had the misfortune of Goomer getting a bad sunburn and dying, well, Jenzie now a lifetime of debt slavery himself to look forward to as he pays off Goomer’s debts.

This stuck in my mind when I was listening to a conversation between a guy who owned a *lot* of apartments and some kids.  The kids were in the middle school age bracket and the landlord was trying to teach them about finance.  The landlord said, “You know, having apartments is a lot like having a slave.  They go out and work for me, and give me money every month.”

Keep in mind that this guy wasn’t what I would normally call shady, but that’s the sort of nightmare fodder that GloboLeftists use as propaganda when they want to burn down capitalism.  A much better way to describe the situation is that the apartment owner does such a good job at building and maintaining his properties that people want to engage in a voluntary transaction with him to live there.

Describing them as slaves?  Eeek.

What did Yoda™ say when he saw himself in 4k?  “HDMI”

And, I generally wouldn’t describe the situation where a willing lender and a willing borrower make a loan.  I’ve taken out several loans, and have (so far) paid them all back, as far as I can recall.  Now, people who have borrowed from me?

Not so much.  I suppose Shakespeare had it right when he said,

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
“for loan oft loses both itself and a friend,
“and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry [thrift – JW]”

Though, in truth I remember this best when the Skipper was singing it in the musical version of Hamlet that the castaways put on in Gilligan’s Island.

To be clear, I’ve made the argument as recently as Monday that we shouldn’t goof around with systems that work, and compound interest has been with us longer than bourbon and syphilis, so I give up.  Just like herpes, we’re stuck with it.  But that also means that we’re stuck with the problems that debt causes.

If debt were just limited to cocoanuts on an island where adolescent me was stuck with Ginger and Mary Ann, well, life would be swell.  Really swell, as in now I understand why they never made it off the island:  Gilligan was sabotaging any real chance of escape on purpose.

But it isn’t Gilligan’s Island, and debt it has longer term impacts than that glue the professor made out of that pancake syrup.

Why not both?

Let’s talk about Rome.

Debt played a significant part of the Roman Social Wars, a period of ten years where essentially everyone in the Roman sphere was fighting everyone else.  This led to Rome taking the unprecedented step of cancelling 75% of all debts.  Those that remained were restructured.  This was brought about because debt-based economies become unstable.

It happened in mediaeval Europe, when III defaulted on his debt and forgave noble debts so the nobles didn’t slit his favorite throat.  Oh, yeah, the peasants still owed.

It happened after the industrial revolution, when the Napoleonic Wars jacked the British government det to 50% of the budget by 1820.  That was okay, because the British were in peak expansion mode, conquering the roughly 7,522 “nations” that made up India so that they could set up call centers.  Then the British were forced to fight when they found that the Boer were sitting on all that British gold underneath the country the Boers had founded.

Indians in call centers make teams to see who can scam more Americans.  I don’t like them or their call leagues.

And when the Imperial expansion stopped?  The British Empire crumbled because it could no longer sustain itself and had to change its name to the United Kingdom.  And the UK was stuck with a capital city (Londonistan) sized for a world-spanning empire, not for a country that would have to have US help to take back the Falklands and now has a navy that contains more admirals than ships.

Briefly, Great Britain saw prosperity beyond their debt burden when the North Sea oil began flowing, but as it has ebbed, Great Britain has started to ebb as well.  The UK has an external debt of 66% of its total wealth.

If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring?  Smallpox.

Sure, that sounds bad, but let’s look at the United States:

In 1980, the United States was the largest net-creditor in the world.  Take what we own and subtract what we owe, and we were, by far, in the best position on the planet.  Only six years later, the US was a net-debtor.  How bad is it in 2024?  The United States has more net-debt than . . . every other country that is a net-debtor.

Combined.

How long does that last?  I’ll ask Grok® and he’ll opine here:

My Opine: How Long Does U.S. Net-Debt Dominance Last?

The Take

  • Short Term (5-10 Years): The U.S. can sustain this—barely. Web data (Visual Capitalist, 2024) shows U.S. debt at $36.1T (Dec 2024), 124% of GDP (CEIC, Dec 2024), projected to hit 166% by 2054 (PGPF, 2024). Japan’s at 254.6% (Visual Capitalist, 2024)—they’re fine, because they hold their own debt (90% domestic). U.S. has a buffer as the world’s reserve currency (Visual Capitalist, 2024), but foreign holders (22.9%, $7.9T, USAFacts, 2024) like Japan ($1.09T) and China ($768.6B, Investopedia, 2025) could pull back—X’s “China dump” fears hum. Interest costs are the killer—$1.126T in FY 2024 (GAO, 2024), 14% of federal spending (Wikipedia, 2025). If rates rise (CBO projects 3.1% average, PGPF, 2024), or if China tariffs spike (Visual Capitalist, 2024), the U.S. could face a reckoning by 2035—debt-to-GDP at 118% (PGPF, 2024).
  • Long Term (20+ Years): Cracks show. Web data (PGPF, 2024) warns of 172% debt-to-GDP by 2054—unsustainable. X’s “dollar crash” doomers aren’t wrong—foreign selloffs (USAFacts, 2024) could spike rates, tank the dollar. If the U.S. loses reserve status (China’s yuan push, X’s “dedollarization” buzz), it’s game over—think Britain post-empire, your “Londonistan” vibe. I’d say 2040-2050—25 years max—unless spending cuts and growth (not GloboLeft “stimulus”) kick in. Carl’s X: “Debt’s a PEZ® trap—U.S. chokes in 25.”

Why It’s Shaky

  • Interest Costs: $1.126T (FY 2024, GAO)—set to hit $1.7T by 2034 (Visual Capitalist, 2024). That’s 3% of GDP (Wikipedia, 2025), highest since 1996. X’s “interest bomb” memes nail it—unsustainable.
  • Foreign Pullback: China’s down to 5% of U.S. debt (2018, Wikipedia)—sanctions, tariffs (Visual Capitalist, 2024). If Japan follows (X’s “yen rise” buzz), U.S. rates spike—GloboLeft’s “forgive it” won’t save.
  • Structural Mess: Spending outpaces revenue (PGPF, 2024)—23.1% GDP outlays vs. 17.5% revenue (2024). X’s “cut the fat” roars—GloboLeft’s “spend more” is Rome’s 86 BC rerun.

See?  Grok® likes PEZ™, too.

One thing you can credit him for, he stepped down as CEO when he was in his Prime®.

Unless that debt gets written off, it certainly won’t be paid off, and Jenzie will be turned into a wage slave because who is left saying:

“Okay, Goomer.”

Life Is Not Random. This Isn’t A Mistake.

“I refuse to believe that mankind is a random byproduct of molecular circumstance, no more than the result of mere biological chance.” – Alien: Covenant

A LEGO® store opened in my hometown. People lined up for blocks.

There are times that life seems random, chaotic. In our current time, especially, change is moving faster than a Disney™ transvestite can ruin a childhood.

It seems random.

But it’s not.

As I look deeper and deeper into the world, I see that the world, and in fact the entire Universe, is as it is for a reason. That’s a big claim. So why am I certain that this is the case?

Physics, baby.

The Universe is tuned for life. There’s a quantity called the “fine structure constant” which is roughly 1/137. And, there aren’t any units, so I can’t even poke fun at the communist metric system.

What the fine structure constant represents is the relationship between the elementary charge of an electron, how hard it is to make a spark, pi, the speed of lights, and the relationship between wavelength and energy of a photon. So, it’s a lot of stuff to mix up, and I’m surprised the number of lime-flavored PEZ™ bricks in Guatemala isn’t included as well, but I didn’t get a vote.

When photons pass each other do they just wave?

What’s important, though, is that if it were much different than its current value, life doesn’t exist. If the number is much bigger, electrons are bound too closely to the atom this shrinks the size of the atom, making your mother even shorter and denser. I can hear the kids now: “Your momma’s a neutron star.”

Also, chemistry is built around electrons zooming from one atom to the next, so if the electrons don’t move, poof. No steak.

If the fine structure constant is much smaller, important things like carbon and oxygen couldn’t stick together, and, boom. No beer.

Life existing requires this one number being within a fairly narrow range around that 1/137. 4/137 and, zap, no more Toaster Strudels™. Of any flavor.

I wrote a book about using stairs. It’s a step-by-step guide.

Throw everything up randomly, and nothing useful exists. Our Universe is really like Goldilocks was so picky that she had to have her porridge between 112.312°F and 114.452°F (between 4 and 7 liters). Yes, she would have starved.

That’s not all – change the strong nuclear force, the gravitational constant by just a few percent and no useful structures can ever form. Ever.

That’s the big picture. But I’m far from original, and this is far from new knowledge.

The Greeks stole my thunder and had the Fates: Clotho, Larry, and Curly, I think. The Romans had Fortuna: Fortuna was worse than vodka at bringing both prosperity and ruin. The Norns knit the fates of the Vikings while drinking mead and sitting under Yggdrasil. Oh, and Matthew 10:29 would like a word as well:

“Are not two sparrows sold for a farthing? And one of them shall not fall on the ground without your Father.”

Yes, I know that’s not a sparrow.

I generally leave my house within the same thirty second window every day. I know that’s crappy OpSec, but it does soothe my autism. When I’m delayed, I’ve often had the thought that wasn’t without a reason, good or bad. What seems to be random chance is almost certainly not. If I lose a sock, get a flat, or have “stumble” upon an article, it’s just me being a part of the play.

Now it may surprise you, but my life isn’t perfect. There have been goofs I’ve made, and I’ve had both good and bad luck. But I’ll tell you, it often wasn’t something I could perceive right at that moment. The old Chinese parable comes to mind:

A farmer’s horse runs away, prompting neighbors to lament his bad luck. “Maybe,” he replies. Days later, the horse returns with a herd of wild horses. “Good luck!” the neighbors say. “Maybe,” he says. His son, taming the new horses, falls and breaks his leg— “Bad luck! The neighbors sat. “Maybe,” the farmer shrugs. Soon, war breaks out, and the Emperor’s army comes through town, drafting all the able-bodied young men, but the son’s injury spares him from conscription. “Good luck!” the neighbors exclaim. “Maybe,” the farmer repeats.

See, what the farmer realized is that his son might end up married to Greta Thunberg.

Life’s no crapshoot, though – the place was designed for us. There are no coincidences—our wins, our flops, even that flat tire last Tuesday are part of the plan, and it’s no accident you’re reading this.

And we don’t talk about time travel.

The paradox is, though, you’re not a pawn, you’re also the player. Our actions matter. Life isn’t a cosmic slot machine, but the things we do and experience are lessons and mold us, or mold someone else. And it’s in that narrow window that wonderful things happen.

How do I know that?

We’re here. And so is beer. And so is every other wonderful part of creation.

Except for the metric system. The French can have that one back.

The Health System Sucks

“Life insurance pays off triple, if you die on a business trip.” – Fight Club

Now these are the results that a functioning health care system should provide.  Including the hat.

The health industry in the United States is a mess, probably worse than a woke vampire movie where vampires use pronouns like undead/cursed and make their victims go to DEI training (Death, Exsanguination and Immortality) before selecting them based on their social privilege score.  Talk about sucking!

But back to the point:  the system is a mess.  Case in point, the insurance companies are for-profit institutions.  As, um, you might have noticed from recent events this leads to almost inevitable conflict between the patient and “their” insurance company.

This has created some really perverse incentives, especially for the company.  If they can successfully deny enough claims, their profit goes up, so their best bet to make the most money is to not allow claims, just like the best way for some specialists and hospitals to make the most money is to do the most testing.  “Hey, this is the machine that goes ‘ping’, and it’s useful to see if you have the Hong Pong flu.”

For no reason at all.

Oh, and lawyers?  We didn’t even mention them.  Lawyers just love to find that doctors missed giving the right test so that they can sue them.  So, we have the groups all competing for an economic slice of the pie.  How big is the pie?  In 1960, it was a manageable 5% of the economy of the United States.  The average life expectancy then was somewhere around 70 years old.

In 2019, healthcare costs were over three times as much, at 17.6% of the economy.  Lifespan had gone up to almost (not quite) 79 years.

So, 12.6% of the economy for an extra 8 point something years?  Is that a good deal?

Well, not exactly.  Lifespan is certainly extended by modern medical care to some extent, but a huge amount of that uplift is due to factors that have nothing to do with the increased costs of health care.  But some of it is better health care:  much better trauma care has also made events like gunshot wounds and car accidents more survivable, so the average is going to go up because people aren’t dying young in car crashes as often.

What did the CEO know about the Clintons?

But people aren’t smoking as much, either.  Also, cars and roads are objectively safer than in 1960 by an order of magnitude, and since car deaths are skewed to young men, that really helps the average life expectancy.  And all of these things have increased life expectancy:

  • Nutrition
  • Clean Water
  • Sanitation
  • Neonatal Healthcare
  • Antibiotics
  • Vaccines

As you can see, many of these things aren’t healthcare, and with the exception of neonatal healthcare, they’re all stupidly cheap.  So, a big part of why health care costs so much more is that people are living longer and consuming more health care.  If a smoker didn’t die of a heart attack from smoking at age 45 at nearly zero medical cost, now they’re living longer and using medical care at age 80.

This is not a bad problem.

Looks like I picked the wrong week to give up dad jokes.

The other part, though, is that there are so many more vampires surrounding the money trough than there were back in the day.

  • Insurance Companies (as noted earlier, insurance companies actually make more “shareholder return” by denying claims and treatments, so if they spend $1 to deny $2 in claims, they’re still up $1)
  • Ambulance Chasers (attorneys produce great benefits against those who practice irresponsible care, but the lottery attitude of many juries giving ludicrous awards raises costs for everyone)
  • Big Pharma® (Goldman-Sachs actually asked the question if curing diseases is a sustainable business model, versus forever dispensing medicine to be people who are just sick enough to not die, so the model is to sell more drugs)
  • Hospital Administration (which has to be doubled to account for insurance claims, government required paperwork, Ambulance Chasers and managing television doctors)
  • The AMA (who has artificially limited the number of doctors produced by American schools to keep doctor salaries up and hide the stethoscope shortage)
  • The Government (who builds entire bureaucracies to regulate medical care and administer payments and . . . to hire more bureaucrats)
  • Illegals and Deadbeats (the system must treat them, by law, in an emergency setting, and guess who pays the bills?)

The current medical system is like a vampire-hydra:  cut off one group sucking money out of the system, and another two will emerge.

In the 1980s, healthcare went from a still-manageable 6.9% (1970) to 12.1% (1990) – nearly doubling in size.  This was largely driven by a 1986 law (EMTALA) that made emergency treatment a right at any hospital that receives Medicare, whether or not the patient had any ability to pay.  It’s like saying that if I’m really thirsty, that McDonald’s™ has to give me an iced tea.

What do you call a talkative Columbian?  Hablo Escobar.

And, like usual, everyone points to cheap strawberries as the benefit, but skips the $19.75 Tylenol™ pill in the hospital.  Healthcare in the United States is so expensive (at least in part) because to so many it’s free.  This increases the recordkeeping, and hospitals have to spread their bills on decent hardworking non-deadbeats.

So, it’s broken.  How do we fix it?

On insurance, The Mrs. has a simple idea:  make it illegal.

All of it.  Medical services are cash on the barrelhead.  You pay for the services you get.  That sounds drastic, but when I really thought about it, this would eliminate the entire medical billing bureaucracy.  We talk about a capitalism, but health care tied to insurance is anything but capitalist, especially with all the mandates and cost shifting from programs like Medicare and Medicaid.

The Mrs.’ solution has some real-world evidence to show she might be on to something – real prices for services insurance doesn’t pay for like breast, um, augmentation and laser eye surgery have gone down in real terms.  Force doctors to post prices, and for emergency services, well, I’m sure we can figure out ways that hospitals can’t create “pay $90,000 for this shot of anti-venom that cost us $125 or you die” scenarios.

They know a thing or two, because in hundreds of lifetimes they’ve seen a thing or two.

Cap malpractice awards to reasonable levels.

Pharmaceuticals are a bit stickier since we want to foster innovation, but how many of them take public institute research to make their drugs?  And we can certainly streamline the FDA, especially for sketchy drugs that might help people that are otherwise terminal.

Get the federal government mostly out of health care, except to prosecute people for fraud.  Like the people responsible for the Vaxx®.  And make the penalties criminal.

Eliminate free care.  If it’s so important to you that people who can’t afford to get treatment, get treatment, don’t use my wallet to assuage your feelings.  Pay for it yourself, Sally Strothers.

A Christian cross might make a fictional vampire recoil in horror, but the lack of a money trough will make the health-care-hydra vampire wander away to try something else, hopefully by finding a real job, or, failing that, being paid to suck something else.

Doctor got his degree from Columbia.  I told him I wanted one from America.

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 183rd 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:

  1. The Colonies (before 1776),
  2. The Confederation (before 1788),
  3. The Several States Constitutional Republic (before 1860),
  4. The Single State (before 1913),
  5. The Progressive Empire (before 1990), and
  6. 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.