Fight Club – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Life Is Hard For A Reason. A Good Reason. Plus Hot Chicks.

“Life’s short and hard like a bodybuilding elf.” – Bloodhound Gang

Regardless, the people at his funeral will be called Paul-bearers.

I bought the book Dune by Frank Herbert when I was a kid. I still recall buying it as it was on one of the monthly trips we took to the book store when we ventured off of Mount Wilder. Ma Wilder was horribly indulgent when it came to books or other healthy creative outlets, like model kits. Books had an unlimited budget around the house, and she never particularly cared which books, as long as I was reading them. As such, at two or three novels a week from age 10 to 16, I read a lot.

I still do.

Dune was one of those. I read it before I started driving. I remember reading it in the time after finishing mowing Grandma Wilder’s lawn and before I was picked on a beautiful summer day decades ago. One thing that struck me is the description in the book of the planet Salusa Secundus. As a kid I mentally pronounced it “Salsa” Secundus, and, well, it is a pretty spicy planet.

I was told to bring an extra jar of liquid cheese, in queso-emergency.

In Herbert’s description, Salusa Secundus was a hell world, horrible weather, murderous beasts, extreme temperatures, awful terrain. It was also the Emperor’s prison where he tossed away the worst criminals of his interstellar empire. “ . . . the mortality rate among new prisoners is higher than sixty percent.”

Yet, here was where the Emperor got his fanatical and tough warriors, the feared Hardeharhar. Oops, different book. I mean the Sardaukar®.

Why there? Well, if you could survive there, you could survive on any planet that a man could live on. And if you could make it though the gauntlet of prisoners trying to kill you, congratulations, you survived the initiation process.

The guards at Big Ben in London look tired! I guess they’re working around the clock.

The idea isn’t a new one. The Spartans had a similar story, as retold by Plutarch, who, despite his name, was not Mickey Mouse’s™ dog:

Another boy . . . when some of his companions had stolen a young fox and delivered it to him . . . hid it under his gown; and though the angry little beast bit through his side to his very guts, he endured it quietly, that he might not be discovered. When the searchers were gone . . . [his friends] chid him roundly, saying, ‘It had been better to produce the fox, than thus to conceal him by losing your own life.’ ‘No, no!’ said he, smiling, ‘it is better to die than to be detected in a base attempt at theft.’

Our teacher told us this story when I was in second grade. Yes. They told it in a somewhat different variation, but they were telling it to seven-year-olds. No trigger warning. No safe space. Just a story about a kid who was so tough that he’d let a fox eat his intestines rather than show weakness.

I think I have an idea where Herbert took his inspiration for the Hardeharhar from.

But at the Best Buy© in Athens you can get advice from the Greek Squad©.

This is a story that resonates, and the deeper it resonates the truer it is. We don’t become strong by being bathed in rose water and sleeping on satin sheets and eating our fill of lemon-cream PEZ© every day, and sailors don’t become captains on calm seas.

We don’t become emotionally strong by never facing hardship.

We don’t become physically strong by sitting on a couch.

We don’t live lives of purpose without getting bruised. Any thing of purpose and worth that one might do will be opposed. Period. Either the odds are against it, the gods are against it, or other people are against it. Sometimes all three.

These are the good fights, if founded in the True, Beautiful and Good. These are the things that are worth the time and effort and pain. These are the things that my scar tissue prepared me for. A life that is based on something that Epictetus said:

Don’t you understand that amounts to saying that I would so prepare myself to endure, and then let anything happen that will happen?

An Epic Cow is really Legend Dairy.

That’s a strong statement. And in a life filled with challenges, it’s hard to understand sometimes why we faced the challenges we did, why we have the scars and bruises that we do. I think it’s because if they didn’t break us and they made us better prepared. Yeah, even Nietzsche was right a time or two, if you include his magnificent mustache.

What then, does this leave us with?

We have today. We have this moment. We have the amazing gift that we can do anything we wish to right now. We can make vows to change the world, we can dedicate (or rededicate) ourselves to fighting for what we know is True, Beautiful, and Good.

And that’s why we’re here. We’re not here for comfort. We’re not here for leisure. We’re not here for quiet. A quiet universe is a dead universe. A universe without conflict is a dead universe. A universe without purpose is a dead universe.

How much mass is in the universe? All of it.

We do not live in a dead universe. We’re breathing, fighting, aberrations, statistical flukes and inconvenient, stubborn fools fighting against entropy and common sense. We see the world and keep going, because, deep down, we have our choices, our reasoned choices that allow us to get up to fight another day.

Or give up.

Me? I choose to keep going, come what may.

Besides, now I’m hungry and am looking for chips and salsa.

Extra spicy. I think I’m ready.

Dr. Michael Burry Has Spoken Again. The End Is Nigh, Or Margot Robbie’s Thigh?

“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” – Fight Club

A truck filled with quinoa and a truck filled with Worcestershire sauce crashed into a charcuterie shop near my house. What was the result? It’s kind of hard to say. (meme as found)

Dr. Michael Burry has spoken again. Okay, actually more like “emailed again” but he’s on the record again saying that the the end is nigh. Is he right? Well, on a long enough timeline, entropy always wins, and the heat death of the universe doesn’t care about my 401(k) yields.

But are we close?

The S&P valuations are through the roof. We’re in the middle of the largest investment in the history of the United States outside of World War II: Artificial Intelligence.

More has been spent on A.I. than was spent on the Manhattan Project, but less than was spent on, well, insert whatever outrageous bill Congress passed last week while you weren’t looking—probably something involving green energy subsidies for gluten-free solar panels raised free-range by Antifa® Chapter 4077.

The payoff for winning the Second World War was a big one. Essentially the United States was surrounded by a smoking crater of a world. Our industries were ready to absorb all the G.I.’s returning with their war brides into job to rebuild that crater. I mean rebuild the nice parts, not India.

The world without Western Civilization. (meme as found)

Factories were humming, houses were sprouting like dandelions, and the economy was so robust you could afford a house on a single blue-collar paycheck and still take the kids to Disney World® without having to resort to Moustitution© or selling a kidney. That’s what we got for entering into the war late and avoiding any of it happening on our homeland.

But what is the prize if A.I. is successful?

Well, it’s negative jobs. It’s a profusion of information so vast it makes the Library of Alexandria look like a collection of Post-it® notes abandoned after spelling errors. Elon Musk thinks it will create a society of abundance so great that no one will have to work and everyone can have a cool penthouse and all the gold they can eat. We can be sure he’s right, because this is just how the Industrial Revolution ended.

Wait, what?

Hours worked went up? Rural agrarian lifestyles were traded for urban factory hellscapes where the owner of the factory charged extra for all the asbestos he let you breathe in? Yeah.

Every production “revolution” that the world has seen has actually increased human effort. Those leaps forward did increase material wealth, but they also led to humans having to work more. Hunting nomad chads became farming incels.

Why?

You can’t brew booze if you don’t have the grain and the place to brew it. So, just like me, the nomads decided to give up a lifestyle of hunting, fishing, sex, and leisure for all the beer they could drink. I mean, I have priorities.

As a child I never napped. I was resisting a rest. (meme as found)

I don’t expect anything different in the Thought Revolution. Nobody will get free stuff, but the world will need a lot fewer of us. This is the case if it is successful: essentially an entire civilization working overtime to create a replacement for itself.

Yikes!

But let’s say it doesn’t work.

That’s better, right? Well, maybe. A bit. If A.I. reaches some limit where it becomes economically unfeasible to get to the next level (think power generation capability required being infinite) of cognition, or the models start to get dumber the more advanced they are (there’s a fashion model joke in here somewhere, but I’m too polite to make it), then the stock market will collapse.

Collapse? Surely, John Wilder, you exaggerate. No, I meant collapse. The market has priced in that A.I. is going to work. On the recent day that Wall Street hit new highs in the S&P 500, most (55%!) stocks weren’t near their highs. The high is high, but it’s not broad. This current level of investment in A.I. is so big and so deep and so tall, there is no way it can do anything but fall.

Sorry, got a bit of Seuss stuck in my keyboard.

“Oh me! Oh my!” said the plumber named Fred,
“My pipes cost a fortune, I’m deep in the red!
I can’t fix the sink or the tub or the drain!
This copper’s so pricey, it’s driving me insane!”

This is a damned if you do, damned if you don’t scenario. Let me put on my Cassandra pants and throw out this idea: Why not both?

The economy is screwed, or at least the economy that I grew up with is screwed. We’re becoming poor at a fantastic clip. Not “poor” as in West Virginia moonshiner with a still and a shotgun, but “poor” as in living like we’re in a crowded megacity filled with unwashed brown people where the air smells like regret and curry.

Let’s look at how affordable things are compared to income from the 1970s. I found this handy chart on the Internet. You know the one: houses, cars, healthcare, education all marching upward while real wages stagnate like a sloth on Ambien. Now, I know that no one actually goes to movie theaters anymore even though it’s on the chart. There’s no point in going to the movie. I can get booze from my fridge and pause the movie whenever I want if I watch it at home, but yet it’s “indecent” if I fall asleep drunk and in my underwear in the front row at the latest Avatar™ movie.

(as found)

But everyone can still afford a place to live, right?

Well, not since we’ve opened the floodgates and let in the entire world. A massive population increase combined with a group of people that consume much more in services than they contribute is killing us. They’re actually making us poorer as each one crosses into the country.

Remember in math you can always raise per capita by lowering the number of capitas.

But, hey, they borrow money so they can create debt that produces profit for the banks, right? Win-win, except for the natives footing the bill.

Isn’t enough that our economy is as stable as a knife fight between a drunken Whoopi Goldberg and a blindfolded Jimmy Kimmel in a bikini atop a butter-coated teeter-totter on top of WTC7? Did we have to put the whole existence of humanity in the future in the balance, too?

The good news, I guess, is that Burry could be wrong. He has been wrong before. Like me, he’s predicted five of the last two recessions. But there comes a point where we won’t be able to paper over the cracks in the structure with more printed money and hopium.

Yup, been there, done that.

When all this cracks, and it will because complexity plus leverage plus narrative equals fragility, the reset won’t be gentle. It won’t be “buy the dip” and back to brunch. It will be the kind of event that makes 2008 look like a mild correction and 1929 look like a Tuesday.

So where do I want to be when it happens? I want to be listening to a twenty-something Margot Robbie describing what collateralized debt obligations are from a bubble bath.

And remember Wilder’s Rule of Humorous Collapse #6: civilizations don’t fail because they run out of money; they fail because they run out of reality.

But at least I finally understand collateralized debt obligations (warning, mildly spicy language).

Disclaimer: I am not Margot Robbie, though I would take a cameo to talk about philosophy in a movie from my hot tub while I smoke cigars, and am also not a professional anything, let alone your financial advisor, so please bang your head against the wall a dozen times before you take the advice of an unpaid Internet humorist.

The Funniest Post You’ll Ever Read About Society, Values, And Waffles

“One time I bit hard into a marble ashtray, thinking it was a savory waffle.” – Anchorman 2

I bought The Mrs. a beautiful diamond ring, but she asked why I didn’t spend that money on a car instead. Silly wife! They don’t make fake cars.

I’ve spent hours reviewing why the country I grew up in felt like it ran on autopilot: lawns were mowed, kids were in school, and front doors were unlocked at night and then turned into . . . this. The version I see in 2026 feels like it’s held together with duct tape, threats, with little nothing shared.

Friday, I wrote about how real personal change only happens when emotion rewires values from the inside.

I think that same principle scales up to the societal level.

A highly functioning society doesn’t run on rules and cops. It runs on a shared vision and voluntary self-enforcement: you don’t have fist fights between naked people in Waffle House® at 3AM where I end up losing a shoe because that’s simply not done. When that vision fades, you get more rules, more monitors, more guys with badges and attitude. And the whole thing gets heavier, slower, and meaner. And less free.

I went to my first Fight Club meeting last night. I showed up late so I missed the first few rules, but it was awesome! I love Fight Club!

Let me tell you what doesn’t build a free, cohesive society.

First, someone making people comply. North Korea proves it works if your goal is terrified people who cry when the Dear Leader walks by and you don’t mind the occasional public execution for wearing the wrong socks. Compliance by force is easy. Loyalty? Not so much. People smile on the outside and cringe on the inside. That’s not a society. That’s just a prison with better choreography.

Second, someone with power monitoring me to make me comply. Remember 2020-2021? It wasn’t technically illegal to say no to the clotshot, but tell that to the people who lost their jobs, their airline seat, or couldn’t put their kids in school without it. A whole lot of people who would’ve skipped it folded under the overt pressure of “your papers, please.” Some complied, without believing. Big difference between that and the True Believers.

Third, someone moving society to monitor my behavior. The GloboLeftElite tried to turn the internet into one giant hall monitor. COVID was the big opportunity. Disagree on Twitter® about anything, (masks, origins, side effects) and poof, banned. The goal was simple: only the approved narrative gets to be broadcast. The goal was: brainwash the populace into one artificial shared vision by deleting every other idea.

I was fat but I identified as slim. I guess that made me trans-slender.

But we didn’t need any of that garbage back when the country actually worked. Back then we had a shared set of values. Values kept lawns mowed without code enforcement officers. Values kept people showing up to work, paying their bills, and not stealing the neighbor’s Amazon® packages. Values were the invisible fence that let a free people stay free.

A huge part of the collapse is the deliberate feminization of society. Women are wonderful creatures. Their nurturing and care are the reason families exist and babies don’t die in the woods. But scale that instinct up to the level of national policy and it turns horrifying.

An illiterate military-age man crossing the border illegally triggers the exact same emotional circuit as a crying baby, especially in the spinster wine-aunt who never had kids. The illegal becomes a surrogate for the kid her barren womb never produced. Must help. Must clean it up. Must give it a chance.

And when it rapes or murders? Well, punishing it is so mean. It just needs more care. That same instinct created the victimhood hierarchy we see everywhere now. Who’s crying the loudest today? Which baby gets the most snacks, the most attention, the most special rules? The entire GloboLeft runs on sorting victims by volume.

I heard that one of Bob Ross’ victims said, “I’m scared” as they walked into the woods. Bob replied, “You’re scared? I have to walk out of here all by myself.”

The attempt to replace old values ran for decades through every TV show from M*A*S*H to Maude to Diff’rent Strokes to Golden Girls. Every single “very special episode” was a Trojan horse. Archie Bunker® would land a zinger, then spend the last two minutes being proven to be the world’s biggest idiot.

The message was clear: your grandparents’ values are dumb and mean. Here, try these shiny new ones instead.

The replacement values, however, weren’t built on what is True, Beautiful, and Good.

They were built on lies.

“There’s only one race, the human race.”
“They’re just like us!”
“This isn’t a nation, it’s a country built only on ideas, not on the posterity of the Founders.”
“Every idea is equally valuable.”
“Love is love.”

The biggest lie of all time? “I have read and accept the terms and conditions to use this software.”

I could go on. The lies are finally becoming visible to the general public, the way they always do when reality shows up with receipts. What’s coming back are the old values, because those are the only ones that actually work at scale.

Getting there won’t be easy. Societies don’t pivot on a dime. There will be stunning levels of violence, which is the pain that comes from feminists not understanding that foreigners aren’t the same thing as babies.

The emotional foundation of the country is shift.

I think we will win, because we represent what’s True, Beautiful, and Good, and those that represent that will control the switch on the society that rises from the rubble. If the nation that follows is lucky, they will have the shared values that once made voluntary self-enforcement the norm and not the shattered “all against all” values of an India or a Haiti.

Seriously, is this the world we want?

Rejecting Hollywood’s® propaganda, the GloboLeftist victim Olympics, must be replaced by the old, sturdy values, the ones rooted in family, work, truth, and a common language and culture. Importing millions who share none of that doesn’t enrich: it dilutes until the shared vision evaporates and only the cops remain.

I’m not naive. The GloboLeftElite won’t surrender the microphone quietly. The lies have been lucrative. But lies always collapse under their own weight.

And that shoe I lost at Waffle House®? I’ve developed a solution:

IHOP®.

Change, Propaganda, And Painting Lessons

“You were looking for a way to change your life.” – Fight Club

His pizza was also burnt and his beer was frozen. He couldn’t pull anything out on time.

I’ve stared at the ceiling at 3 a.m. more times than I care to count in the past, wondering why some things in my life change and others stay stuck like a rusted engine nut on a ’78 Jeep® pickup.

Change.

It sounds simple. Turn left instead of right. Take the red pill or the blue pill or both. Eat the salad. Quit the habit I want to quit. But the real change, the kind that rewires who I am, doesn’t happen because somebody tells me to change. Change doesn’t happen because the boss is watching or the government posts another billboard. Change happens when something inside me finally decides it’s time.

And the crazy part?

I control that switch. No matter what my situation looks like right now, no matter how many birthdays I’ve stacked up, that control is still mine.

Let me tell you what doesn’t work.

But the boarding agent said she could have pie once we got to our seats: “There’ll be a piece when you are done.”

First, someone trying to make me change.

Forget it. I’m stubborn. Bull-headed, really. Push me, and I’ll dig in like a moist Missouri mule afflicted with mucus. I’ve sent pushy salesmen packing more times than I can remember. They come at me with the hard sell, the guilt trip, the “you really should” speech, and my natural reaction is to do the exact opposite.

It’s not rational.

It’s not even smart sometimes. But it’s me.

Second, someone with power hovering over my shoulder, monitoring me.

Sure, I’ll toe the line while they’re looking. I’ll smile, nod, and change exactly enough to get them off my back. The minute the spotlight moves, though? Back to business as usual. No buy-in. No real shift. Just temporary theater. I know I’m not the only one.

Third, the whole society-is-watching angle.

This is Big Brother with a million little henchmen. I’ll admit it: back when I was a kid, the “Give a hoot, don’t pollute®” campaign actually worked on wee Wilder. I picked up trash and felt good about it. But that was simple. Today it’s different. Now it’s algorithms written for the fat-breasted blue-haired virtue warbler. It’s social pressure and cameras everywhere, all trying to nudge behavior.

My kids wanted a puppy for Christmas, but I told them they were eating ham like everyone else.

I see it for what it is: a fancier version of the same old “boss is watching me” game.

I might play along in public when I absolutely must, but inside?

Still no sale.

So, what actually moves the needle?

Only one thing I’ve ever found works that works on me or anyone else:

changing values.

And values don’t change because of logic. They change because of emotion, and not common emotions like “cold” or “sleepy” or “salt.” No. Raw, strong, gut-punch emotion.

I posed naked for a magazine once. The lady at the 7-11® counter sure overreacted.

Take when I became a new father. One minute the world revolved around me. The next minute I was holding this tiny human who depended on me for everything, and I realized the universe didn’t orbit John Wilder anymore unless I put on enough weight to create my own gravity well. That was a big deal.

Not a lecture.

Not a chart.

Just pure, overwhelming emotion. My values shifted: “providing” and “protecting” now were more important than “buzzed” and “sleepy”. Everything else got rearranged around that.

I’ve seen the same thing in guys who barely survive a heart attack.

One day they’re carrying an extra seventy pounds, puffing on cigs, eating like a fat girl on a date with a blind man.

The next day after their slow dance with the reaper?

They drop the weight, kill the habits, start running, and turn into the most irritating health evangelists you’ve ever met, nearly as bad as bicycling atheist vegan transexual Harvard™ grads.

Nearly dying does that, I guess.

When I’m surrounded by my family, with my last breath I want to say: “Hey, you guys want to see a dead body?”

It’s not a gentle suggestion from a doctor. It’s terror and relief and gratitude and fear all slamming together at once into the conclusion that there are a finite amount of seconds left on that clock.

Emotion rewires the hardware.

That’s also exactly how propaganda works. It skips the logic and goes straight for the deepest buttons we have: lust, fear, the need to belong, pain, despair and the need for PEZ™. Most of them are negative, because negative is easy to manufacture, and negative sticks.

And in 2026 we’re swimming in it.

Screens, news, ads, entertainment are a constant bombardment trying to shift what we value without us even noticing.

One excellent YouTuber® on this subject is Screenwashed™, and he talks about how films are used to destroy our culture. He breaks down the subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways Hollywood rewires what we think is normal, what we think is heroic, what we think we should want. I’m not sure exactly how long it’ll be before they come to get this guy, but I’d suggest you give him a look. Here’s one of his videos.

Even I, the mighty John Wilder, am not immune from propaganda. I’ve caught myself feeling emotions I didn’t ask for after watching something “harmless.” That’s why I’ve gotten deliberate about what I let into my head.

I pick and choose.

I pause and ask: What emotion is this feeding me right now?

Why?

Does it line up with the man I want to be, or is it nudging me toward someone else’s script?

The external stuff can scream all it wants. The pressures, the trends, the crises, the propaganda machines can poke and prod and threaten. But the final decision on what I value? That’s mine. Always has been.

The best addiction to have is injecting yourself with brake fluid. You can stop anytime you want.

We can all flip it.

Not because some expert or politician or trending hashtag told us to. Not because someone’s watching or shaming. But because we decide to let in an emotion strong enough to move the values that actually run your life.

Starve the propaganda. Examine every emotion that shows up at your door and decide if it gets to stay.

Change isn’t a mystery. It’s not reserved for the young or the lucky or the disciplined. It’s a simple, stubborn fact: I control the basis of it. I always have. And so do you.

The world can keep pushing.

I’ll keep deciding.

The Academy Awards Suck: Who Should Have Won

“Hey, everybody, we’re all gonna get laid!” – Back to School

Yeah, someone’s gonna tell me that M-16 isn’t Vietnam accurate and that Morgan Freeman never carjacked Miss Daisy.

This may be the last of the movie series. I suppose I could do more in the 1990s, but movies today are just depressing. I’ll likely just review a few series and movies when they really tickle my fancy. Enjoy the list, it is what it is.

1985 Best Picture: Out of Africa

Out of Africa is boring. Really boring. It’s 161 minutes of a woman talking about her problems. I don’t want to hear anyone talk about their problems for 161 minutes, let alone Meryl Streep, who I hate with the fire of a thousand suns. I. Hate. This. Movie. I. Hate. Meryl. Streep.

1985: Should Have Been Best Picture: Vision Quest

This is such a low bar to beat. A documentary on the production of aluminum foil would beat Out of Africa in my book, and by a lot, since that might be interesting. How about Vision Quest? It has a chick in it, right? And it’s something much more than the dreary story of a woman in Africa who gets V.D. from her husband. Nope, it’s about a man who is on a . . . well, vision quest. Arthur Sido, frequent visitor had a great post on this a while back and I hope he posts it below because I’m too lazy to look it up.

1985 Best Actor: William Hurt, Kiss of the Spider Woman

William Hurt can act. He was really good in the TV movie of Dune. But this movie? It’s horrible. It’s a commie talking to a gay guy after being put in a prison by a right-wing South American dictator, so real fantasy material for the GloboLeftistElite that vote on awards for this kind of crap. Me? I would have made a movie congratulating the dictator and asking if he got all the commies.

1985: Should Have Been Best Actor: Jeffrey Combs, Re-Animator.

You guys know me by now, and I’m a sucker for H.P. Lovecraft done well, and Re-Animator is perhaps the best. Yet, best actor to a guy in a B-level horror movie? Why not? Seems like the last winner in 2026 was in a B-level horror movie, and Jeffrey Combs knocks this role out of the park, managing to capture the manic energy of crazed scientist Herbert West. How good was he? Combs could have remained famous for just this role. If you don’t like horror, this one isn’t for you, but if like Lovecraft, jump on in.

1985: Hottest Actress: Kathleen Turner.

Sure, she looks like Jabba the Hut® before Ozempic® now, but she was smokin’ in the 1980s, and Jewel of the Nile showed her off pretty well.

1986 Best Picture: Platoon

I saw Platoon once, in a theater. It was utterly demoralizing. I’m not discounting the quality of the writing or acting or cinematography. Those were there. And Oliver Stone did spend time in-country and got two Purple Hearts, so realism might be there, too. But I think this was a priming movie for the 1990s and making America doubt itself. Making us ask ourselves “Are we the good guys?” is just one step away from “let’s import the third world to replace us, because we’re evil.”

1986 Should Have Been Best Picture: Highlander

The joy of this movie for me is that it was so fresh, so new, and such a great take on an older idea of what would an immortal man do? Queen’s® soundtrack meshed perfectly, and although it was a dud at the box office, it had long lasting cultural impact. Plus? It celebrates good people doing the right things.

1986 Best Actor: Paul Newman, Fast Eddie Felson, The Color of Money

Just like Elon Musk forgot Bernie Sanders was alive, The Color of Money was a movie that I forgot existed. It was meh. And Paul Newman was a Hollywood GloboLeftElite favorite due to his hard-left positions, so they decided to give him a pity Oscar™ in 1986 for playing the same character he always played in movies.

1986: Should Have Been Best Actor: Rodney Dangerfield, Back to School

If you’re gonna give someone an Oscar® for playing the same character in every movie, who better than Rodney Dangerfield. But he got no respect, let me tell ya.

1986 Hottest Actress: Helen Slater, Ruthless People. What can I say? I have a type.

1987 Best Picture: The Last Emperor

I thought I saw this? On video, maybe? But reading the summary, probably not. An alternate title: Sucks to be This Guy.

1987 Should Have Been Best Picture: Predator

This coming-of-age story about a young girl in Victorian England and the struggles she faces with class . . . HA! NO! Bombs. Guns. Aliens on hunting trips. Killing commies. GET TO THE CHOPPA! Again, more cultural impact than The Last Emperor. I mean, did they make six sequels to The Last Emperor? No. I do think the last few sequels to Predator have been yet more targeted demoralization, but Predator? No.

1987 Best Actor: Micheal Douglas, Wall Street

Yeah, yeah, greed is good. Whatever.

1987 Should Have Been Best Actor: Arnold Schwarzenneger, Predator

Hear me out.

In that scene where Arnold is covered in mud and at the bank of the river and the Predator™ doesn’t see him? I actually bought that Arnold was scared. Rather than just being a big dude, he actually started acting in this movie.

1987 Hottest Actress: Kim Catrell. Fight me. Loser has to bench press 2026 Kathleen Turner. Or we could make it a contest: Kathleen Turner-Overdrive.

1988 Best Picture: Rain Man

I guess Han Zimmer’s music was good, especially for a movie that’s all about taking advantage of your retarded brother. And that’s all I have to say about that.

1988 Best Picture Should Have Been: Willow

I had no preconceptions when I walked in to watch Willow. It’s a charming Tolkien-esque story about dwarves and brave men (Val Kilmer) who bang hot women (Joanne Whalley) who aren’t nearly as tough as they think they are. It also stars Warwick Davis, who I really have no desire to imprison in my basement and torture with hand tools during a thunderstorm. No desire at all.

I promise.

The Warwick Davis digression will make sense to about three of you, but that’s okay.

1988 Best Actor: Dustin Hoffman, Rain Man

Another proof (like Forrest Gump) that you always win an award if you go retard, but not full retard. Dustin Hoffman is tool who starred in demoralization movies for most of his life intended to destroy the basic fabric of American life, plus he’s an insufferable gaping GloboLeftElite member, probably only second to Richard Dreyfuss in this club. Outside of that I’m sure this talentless commie hack who hates you is an okay guy.

1988 Best Actor Should Have Been: Chevy Chase, Funny Farm

Chevy Chase is another person who has a reputation as being insufferable and serving the GloboLeftElite, but at least he’s funny and racist. This is easily his best movie, and he plays a self-absorbed liar who is pretending to have talents he doesn’t actually have. So, it’s a natural for Chevy. Good movie, and I can’t imagine anyone better to play the part.

1988 Hottest Actress: Kathy Ireland.

Yes, she’s hot, but she can’t read so therefore doesn’t know any of her lines. But she’s hot, which is what this category is for, not acting.

1989 Best Picture: Driving Miss Daisy

Who was this movie for? Why was it made? It’s a made-up story that is (again) a demoralization show about how awful Americans are. The only thing good about this movie is that, again, Hans Zimmer did the music. I don’t remember the music, but, Hans Zimmer sounds like a name that could have been a Prussian infantry commander against the French in 1871, and I’m really in favor of that. All the copies of this movie should be dropped in a pit and everyone involved in the production (except Hans Zimmer) should be sent to Tuvalu without air conditioning until they write 100,000 words of apology without ChatGPT®. I am likely alone in this opinion, but the rest of you can just be wrong. Also, how damn long has Morgan Freeman been 70?

1989 Best Picture Should Have Been: The Experts

John Travolta and Arye Gross and Kelly Preston and Deborah Foreman and James Keach. What a cast! The plot? Stupid Americans from New York are kidnapped and drugged and taken to “Nebraska” which is really somewhere in Siberia to a Soviet spy camp. Their job? To teach Soviet spies how actual Americans act. The hidden remoralization: the “experts” end up corrupting the Soviet spies who were raised based on a 1950s set of American values. The ending shows that those values are far superior to the 1980s “modern” values. It’s a comedy, not a documentary, but, damn, it’s funny.

1989 Best Actor: Daniel Day-Lewis, My Left Foot

Never saw it. Daniel Day-Lewis should be banned from Oscar® contention because he can’t figure out what his last name is and he’s Irish Catholic. Or Irish Protestant. Whatever. I guess he was okay as Batman®.

1989 Best Actor Should Have Been: Anthony Edwards, Miracle Mile

I think about six people saw this movie, which is about a guy who picks up a wrong number at a phone booth (two things that don’t exist now) and discovers that nuclear war (one thing that still does) is inbound in an hour or so. Or is it? Great tension, and Anthony Edwards really knocks it out of the park, especially when he pretends to be attracted to Mare Winningham. Seriously, why would you name your daughter “Mare”? Good movie.

1989 Hottest Actress: Kelly Preston, The Experts

Pump it up, homeboy. Indeed.

That’s all folks. Foodfight below. Where are you wrong do you disagree?

Happiness, Desire, Whiskey, and Purpose

“Is this making you happy?” – Fight Club

Why are mathematicians always happy? They know that the root of anything negative is imaginary.

“Happiness is all that it wants, and resembling the well-fed, there shouldn’t be any hunger or thirst.” – Epictetus

Think back to the moment that were really content. Happy. Maybe it was after a nice steak. Maybe it was after a draw on a good cigar. Maybe it was in on the bench seat of a 1978 GMC® truck on a warm summer night.

Whenever it was, in moments of true contentment, true happiness, you don’t want or need anything. The moment is complete. It is as it is. I feel that way after I write a post I’m especially happy with. I feel that way most mornings after the first sip of coffee. In those moments, in those times, I simply don’t need anything more.

W.C. Fields: “Always carry a whiskey flask in case of a snake bite. With that in mind, always carry a small snake.”

This is why I say that happiness is the easiest thing for most people, most of the time. It’s simple. Stop wanting what you don’t have.

Done. Easy. Unless it’s air. I need that most of the time and get quite cross and panicky when I don’t have it. And water, yeah, I need that on occasion. Food? Not an issue. Like most people in current-day USA, I could skip a meal or a few dozen meals and still be physically fine.

So, happiness is easy.

My brothers Sin and Cos stayed out in the Sun too long. They’re now tanned gents.

Why then, are most people unhappy?

They want what they don’t have. In some cases, they want what they can never have. Some mid-tier 8 who spends a night banging Brad Pitt now wants a Brad Pitt type guy to love her. That’s simply not going to happen in this universe because Brad Pitt has all the twenty-year-old 10s he wants to have, and one of them might be a keeper.

So, our mid-tier 8 is unhappy. If she didn’t think she deserved Brad Pitt, well, she might have a chance to be happy. But, no, she’s made herself unhappy. And, she’s made herself unhappy in the stupidest way possible: she’s pining for something she will never ever be able to have. In her case, it’s confusing being Mrs. Right Now with being Mrs. Right.

After A.I., how will programmers make money? Selling their laptops.

This unhappiness didn’t come from outside her: she made it up. So, whenever I’m unhappy, it’s typically because of a really simple reason: reality isn’t conforming itself to the way I want it to be. You know, the post didn’t say what I wanted to say in the way I wanted to say it.

The post is outside of me. It’s something I made. I can choose what I can do with it. I can abandon it. I’ve done that about five times, I think. I can decide, “You know what, good enough.” I’ve done that a few times. But most of the time, when I press the button that schedules the post, I’m happy. Very happy. I put in the effort on a cause that was worthy of my time.

If I’m unhappy with a post, it’s because I chose to be unhappy about it. I write because it is something that makes me, on balance, very happy.

If it didn’t, I wouldn’t do it.

The problem, though, is happy people don’t get much done. That’s why weed and vidya games are bad. They give bliss without accomplishment. It’s the easy road to happy.

But that sort of happiness, for me at least, is without meaning because it’s without accomplishment. I’m unhappy all the time, but I’m unhappy about (mostly) things I choose to be unhappy about. I rarely choose to be unhappy about things I can’t control. If I can’t control it, it’s just the way the world is.

When you break up with an A.I., does it experience machine yearning?

But if I’m unhappy, and I think it’s worth the effort, even if it’s big, I’ll choose to be unhappy to try to make it happen.

That’s the definition of purpose. It might be small, like mowing the lawn. It might be big, like changing the world. But I get to choose. It should fit my talents. And, as I’ve been prattling on about them, yeah, it should be in service of Truth, Beauty, and Goodness.

It needs to be worth it, and that defines what worth it is. Well, at least to me. YMMV.

I think so many people are unhappy because they simply don’t have a purpose, they don’t see a way that they can be of substance, be of consequence in a world where 8 to 10(!) billion people exist. It’s overwhelming.

It makes one feel small, sometimes.

But me? I keep pushing. I’ve even distilled my purpose down to a sentence: “To make visible that which would otherwise not have been seen.” So, the writing is kinda core to a purpose like that, unless I want to sit in the backyard yelling at the squirrels on how they’re being inefficient with their nuts.

Do Catholics ever give up cleaning their drier filter for lint?

Purpose, then, is a double-edged sword. It provokes me to action, and leaves me with a fire inside. But this is one that I choose to carry. It’s one that I wish to have.

I control (mostly) my emotions. Being happy means not wanting. Except when I choose what I want. And right now? I want elimination of Evil, a steak and a cigar.

In that order. But I’ll work on getting rid of the Evil while I enjoy my steak and cigar.

2025 In Review: The Wilder Way

“You’re up for review.” – Fight Club

I wrote a review of why graphs should use wider lines. It’s called, “The Plot Thickens”.

As an annual feature of Wilder, Wealthy and Wise, we poll our writers and editors and ask them to nominate the top stories of the year. Since they are just me, it’s a far less complex process than you might imagine. Here are the top stories of 2025:

January 2025

Donald Trump is inaugurated as the 47th U.S. President. Trump immediately issues executive orders on immigration, trade, and withdrawing from international agreements like the Paris Accord. Alexandria Occasional-Cortex protests, “I didn’t even know the French could pronounce ‘Honda®’, I mean, wouldn’t it sound like ‘Onda? So we should let them have an Accord®. It’s a sensible car.”
Wildfires ravage Greater Los Angeles, destroying over 13,000 structures, prompting evacuations and a state of emergency. Governor Gavin “Reptile Smile” Newsom declares homeowners may rebuild that the land will be confiscated and given to people that buy him nice things.
Bulgaria and Romania join the Schengen Area, lifting land border controls in Europe. Bulgaria is still awaiting its first visitor and has the crepe paper decorations and everything along with party poppers and a 10% discount coupon to Bob’s Bulgarian Borscht, Baguette and Baklava Buffet®.
Liechtenstein legalizes same-sex marriage, becoming the 37th country to do so, and demands to be known as Gay Liechtenstein.

February 2025

Trump imposes 25% tariffs on imports from Canada and Mexico, and 10% on China, sparking retaliatory measures and trade tensions. Trump then immediately lowers them, noting, “I shot the tariff, but I did not shoot the subsidy.”
China retaliates with export controls and tariffs on U.S. imports amid escalating trade war, threatening to send more TEMU® products and advertisements if the U.S. does not relent.
Canada wins the 2025 4 Nations Face-Off hockey tournament against the U.S. Nic Cage and John Travolta are unavailable for comment.
The Taliban visit Japan for first diplomatic engagement since 2021 as the Japanese noted they were no longer talibanned.

March 2025

Trump pauses U.S. military aid to Ukraine after tensions with Zelensky when Zelensky wouldn’t eat his peas at dinner.
Romanian protests erupt against election annulment, supporting the far-right one candidate who doesn’t Romanians replaced by Syrians.
The Nagoya High Court in Japan rules non-recognition of same-sex marriage unconstitutional, primarily because of military pressure from Gay Liechtenstein.
Trump increases tariffs on Chinese imports to 20%. Or 60%. Or 200%. Can’t keep track.
India launches missiles into Pakistan after a terrorist attack, escalating border tensions over regional fights against body hygiene, deodorant requirements, and who had first scamming rights over Oregon.

April 2025

Trump imposes sweeping tariffs on imports from multiple countries, escalating global trade wars. Or lowers them. Or maybe doesn’t change anything at all. I can’t remember.
Pope Francis dies at 88 after mentioning he had inside information about Clinton crimes.
China increases tariffs on U.S. exports to 84% in retaliation. Or lowers them.
South Korean President Win Won Soon impeached and removed and sent to Alabama to coach football.

May 2025

Robert Prevost elected as Pope Leo XIV in the papal conclave, narrowly edging out Grammy®-nominated artist Taylor Swift.
Germany’s AfD designated as extremist because it objects complete replacement of Germans by 2032, instead demanding it be put back to at least 2040.
Japan allows bears in urban areas to be shot by hunters, as long as the bears are not gay, though the hunters can be gay and are encouraged to be vegan.

June 2025

Protests erupt in Los Angeles over ICE deportations, leading to clashes and National Guard deployment and threats of military intervention from the Grand Gay Dutchy of Gay Liechtenstein.
The U.S. intervenes in the Israel-Iran conflict by bombing Iranian nuclear facilities, which is less an intervention and more of a bombing.
No Kings protests occur across U.S., Canada, Europe, Japan, and Mexico against Stephen King, Larry King, King’s Hawaiian Rolls® and King Kong™.
An Air India© flight crashes in Ahmedabad, killing 242, proving that Indians can manage to kill more Indians than Pakistan can. Prime Minister Modi proclaims: “India Global Superpower 2030!”

July 2025

Republicans pass sweeping tax changes through reconciliation in U.S. Congress. No one is sure what is in them but the lobbyists say that it’ll be great.
The International Court of Justice® (Superman presiding) rules countries can sue over historical greenhouse gas emissions. White Americans immediately sue the descendants of black slaves for greenhouse reparations, noting that if they really were the ones who built America, it’s time for them to pay up.

August 2025

OpenAI® releases GPT-5™. Sam Altman celebrates by sacrificing a small child, but the evil god he worships rejects it because, “It’s not really a sacrifice because he does it every Tuesday.”
The Russia-U.S. summit at Joint Base Elmendorf in Anchorage focused on the Ukraine conflict, got nothing done, but did have a nice burger and a promise to meet up again “in a week or two, you know, I’ve got a lot of stuff going on”.
Air Canada© flight attendants strike to ban requiring stewardesses to serve in-flight beverage service to Indians hanging on the wings.
Anti-immigration rallies in Australia lead to clashes against the evil white people who are totally not being replaced by the hundreds of thousands of refugees brought in to replace them.

September 2025

The French government collapses after no-confidence vote. Again.
The Grand Gay Dutchy of Gay Liechtenstein demands the return of their gay crown jewels from France. France protests, noting, “We’re not exactly sure where Liechtenstein is.”

October 2025

In the U.K., Sarah Mullally becomes the first female Archbishop of Canterbury and immediately offers apology for all Christians resistance to moslem grooming gangs, noting, “It’s really white privilege to expect to not be sexually violated by short swarthy men with no upper body strength.”
Grand Duke Henri of Luxembourg abdicates as the Gay Grand Gay Dutchy of Gay Liechtenstein attacks and begins to consolidate a European Homohegemony.

Why did Bing® A.I.® put Manson in the picture?

November 2025

Canada’s measles-free status revoked. Which is weird, because they had been measles-free since 1998. Wonder how that could have happened? No reason at all, I guess. Odd coincidence that some of the highest measles rates in the world are in India.
The Saskatchewan Roughriders win the Grey Cup. Whoever and wherever they are, and whatever that it.

December 2025

Trump’s economic approval hits a new low at 36%, but that only fills him with strength, and he decided to annex Antarctica and name it New Greenland.
Sanae Takaichi becomes Japan’s first female prime minister, and immediately begins plotting to re-take Manchuria after tidying up a bit and doing some dishes.
The Gay Grand Gay Dutchy of Gay Liechtenstein cedes the Gay Presidency of Europe to The Trans Republic of Trans Transylvania.
Thieves steal priceless jewelry from the Louvre in France, but after they’re caught and determined to be moslem, are then given a key so they can loot whenever they want.

What a year!

What did I miss?

Bubbles Within Bubbles Within Bubbles

“I had it all, even the glass dishes with tiny bubbles and imperfections.” – Fight Club

I wonder if Sean Connery is in 00 Heaven?

As we approach the end of 2025, the U.S. economy resembles a science-fair volcano built on baking soda, hype, construction paper, speculation, bubblegum, vinegar, and greed. I’ve written about this before, and, well, it’s so big it keeps dragging me back in.

The rot is birthed by several mothers: cheap cash, the need to put it somewhere, and a new technology whose benefits are (at this point) opaque at best. Let’s put down that you already know “money printer goes brrrrrrrr” so we’ll go back to A.I.

Again.

At the center of this precarious structure is what everyone who isn’t high on their own supply knows is an A.I. bubble. Large numbers of people (including me) recognized the housing bubble for what it was, but it kept on going because momentum is one hell of a master.

Another case of car-pole-tunnel syndrome.

A.I. has inflated stock prices, diverted resources like a drunk wine aunt at Lululemon®, and now has spawned secondary bubbles in hardware and infrastructure.

I’ve touched on this in previous posts, noting how projected AI:

growth outpaces any reasonably available power supplies, present and near future,
revenue projections fall short of the grandiose promises, and
the full realization of AI’s (theoretical) potential could unleash economic distortions on a scale we’ve rarely seen in human history.

But bubbles don’t exist in isolation. Bubbles multiply, feeding off each other until the inevitable pop unwinds it all. When the Great Housing Bubble burst, for example, sales of sulfuric acid went to zero for months. How are they related? Turns out the Great Housing Bubble was fed off the same credit structure that paid for basic chemicals.

And for all this time I thought it was because sulfuric acid was just like anything Chuck Schumer says: baseless and corrosive.

One time in chemistry they asked me to write 1,000 words on acid. I couldn’t finish it because my pen turned into a giraffe and the paper melted.

Today, we’re seeing this play out in real time, with AI-driven demand ripping into consumer electronics and beyond, all while broader market indicators flash warning signs of decline.

The AI stock bubble has birthed an investment bubble in virtually all computer hardware. Demand for specialized components has skyrocketed, pulling supply away from consumer markets and inflating prices across the board.

RAM prices surged 172% year-over-year, with some guessing they’ll double in 2026,
SSD prices per TB are climbing with AI and cloud providers tightening supply chains.
Motherboards shortages are emerging as manufacturers prioritize AI server builds over consumer PCs, with one producer having sold out for 2026 already.

This shift isn’t just raising costs for gamers and everyday users; it’s distorting global supply chains, creating a feedback loop where AI hype justifies more investment, which in turn inflates hardware bubbles.

The statistics say cows kill more people than sharks, but I’m surprised that cows are killing any sharks.

What happens when the tide rolls out? With the underlying economy already showing recessionary cracks, the fallout will almost certainly be severe.

Let’s start with the AI bubble itself: valuations in the sector have soared, with companies like Nvidia™ and others commanding trillions in market cap based largely on future promises rather than current realities. The S&P 500’s concentration in a handful of AI-related stocks reached 30% by late 2025, the highest in decades. Nvidia© (for example) doubled in price from April.

Doubled.

Skepticism is now mounting.

All this is unfolding against a backdrop of broader economic weakness that A.I. papered over.

Oil prices are declining despite ongoing disruptions from wars in Ukraine and tensions with Iran. Price levels are back into COVID 2021 levels. This drop persists amid supply risks: Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian refineries and U.S. sanctions on Venezuelan tankers should theoretically support prices, yet oversupply fears dominate.

My dad once asked me, “Son, if you have a hot blonde rubbing oil on a hot brunette, what do you get?” I answered, “I don’t know, Pop.” “Your camera, son, your camera.” (as found)

If peace breaks out in Ukraine, bringing Russian oil fully back online, prices could plummet 30%-50% as sanctions lift and exports surge. Add in a resolution with Iran, and the glut could be historic—you might as well use oil for bubble baths. The IEA already forecasts surpluses building into 2026.

This is a signal of weakening industrial activity worldwide, not resilience.

Domestic indicators paint a similar picture. Unemployment among native-born Americans ticked up to 4.7% in July 2025 from 4.5% a year prior, with the overall rate holding at 4.6% in November.

Wages? They’re stagnant at best.

The K-shaped economy persists: high-wage earners see modest gains, but lower-income workers face stagnation, widening inequality.

So, what portends when the A.I. Bubble bursts?

History offers grim lessons: the Dotcom crash wiped out trillions and triggered a recession and the economic response to that caused he Great Recession. An A.I. pop could be worse, given its entanglement with hardware and infrastructure. It doesn’t help that it is spawned, in part, by the loose-money policies of the post-COVID world. If I’m making an SAT question, Dotcom is to The Great Recession as COVID is to ___________.

The A.I. Bubble
A giant PEZ® dispenser filled with plutonium pellets
Greta Thunberg
The Black Studies Department at Harvard®

He then arrested me for assault with sandpaper. He didn’t accept the excuse that I’d only roughed the guy up a bit.

Consequences of it popping?

Investment in data centers and chips dry up, leading to layoffs of all those H-1Bs in San Fran and cratering the tech manufacturing here and in many nations around the world.
Deflation hits: hardware prices would crash as overcapacity floods the market, but not before bankrupting suppliers who bet big on eternal demand.
Dogs and cats, living together.
With the economy already teetering: slow job growth, wage pressures, and oil signaling demand weakness, the rest are downstream consequences.
Consumer spending, which has propped up GDP, falters as confidence erodes and debt defaults rise.
Income inequality worsens because banks and Wall Street firms cannot be allowed to fail.

If this capital misallocation is as bad as some of the graphs I’ve seen, this will be the singular economic event of the lifetime of anyone alive. There is a reason that I picked 2032 as the central pivot point of when Civil War 2.0 would show up and it was the underlying financial mismanagement of the United States. A.I.? It’s not the gasoline in the room, it’s the spark.

It would have been something.

I made this and even though I replaced it with a more fitting meme up above, I figured you’d want to see it.

In the end, bubbles always burst because they’re built out of illusions and fed by poor allocations of capital. The A.I. frenzy has masked underlying frailties that would have led to a very major recession during Biden’s term, but the bubble continued to get bigger.

As oil slides, jobs stall, and hardware hype peaks, the reckoning looms. And that science-fair volcano? I hope I don’t drop it on my foot.

I’ll Krakatoa.

The usual. Not investment advice, do your own research, etc., etc.. I’m not a priest or an exorcist though I played one on TV. If you read this and make meaningful decisions based on it you need to take a step back and reconsider your life.

Tranquility Was Never The Goal

“Our Great War is a spiritual war. Our Great Depression is our lives.” – Fight Club

The ultimate participation award.

As humans, we’re wired wrong. Or right, depending on how you look at it.

We chase peace like it’s the ultimate prize at the carnival of life. We say that we want a world without war, without struggle, where everyone has a comfy couch, unlimited Wi-Fi, more liver capacity, and steak that cooks and delivers itself.

Sounds like Heaven, right?

Wrong. When I was a wee Wilder, Grandma McWilder would talk about how I should do nice things in life rather than bathing the cat in a paste made from DDT® and Lysol™ so I could go to Heaven. Obviously, I asked, “What is Heaven like?”

Grandma told me it was nice and peaceful and that nothing bad ever happened up there. I believe I said something like, “That sounds boring.” Grandma did not look pleased, but I don’t know if it was about my statement or the cat.

Let’s just say I was a technicolor handful as a kid. Oh, the stories I could tell.

But I wasn’t wrong.

But wait, there’s more!

Tranquility isn’t the goal. Tranquility is the trap.

Peace isn’t just boring; it is deadly to the human spirit. We need the fight, the blood, the steel. Without it, we rot from the inside out. And that’s not me, John Wilder making crap up again. We have actual studies where the government tortured mice to verify that I’m right.

Take John Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia experiments, please. I’ve written about them a couple times before, you can use the search thingy in the upper right hand of the screen to find them. I would have done that for you but you’re not my supervisor and I could type this sentence way faster. Short summary:

In the 1960s, Calhoun built paradise for mice: unlimited food, water, space, unlimited beef jerky, no predators, SNAP benefits.

What happened? At first, boom, the population soared. But then, the weirdness set in. The mice stopped breeding normally. Males became either passive or hyper-aggressive or “beautiful ones,” preening themselves instead of fighting or mating.

Females abandoned pups. Society collapsed into violence, isolation, and extinction. All of this happened in a “utopia”.

No threats, no struggles: just free cheese forever. And they died out. Stop me if you’ve seen this recently in other mammals.

I’m not going sugarcoat my jokes about diabetes.

Humans aren’t mice, but we’re close enough if you ask my parole officer. Look at the downward spiral of the United States after the Berlin Wall fell in 1989. The Cold War ended. We “won.” Yay! No more Soviet boogeyman lurking with nukes and unibrows.

Instead? Peace! Prosperity!

What did we do? Got fat, lazy, bored and divided: music went from “I’m gonna kick your ass” in the 1980s to “Oh, man, I need lithium because I’m sad”. The ‘90s brought endless economic booms, but also the seeds of today’s mess: identity politics, endless entertainment, and a generation starting to get hooked on screens instead of life.

Without a real enemy, we turned inward, fighting over pronouns and safe spaces. Tranquility bred complacency, and complacency bred decay.

Same story with the Moon landing. July 20, 1969: Armstrong steps on the lunar surface. Humanity’s greatest leap. We beat gravity, the Soviets, and the odds. Then? Crickets as the ratings dropped.

We went back a few times, planted flags, played golf (shoutout to Alan Shepard), and then just . . .stopped.

And then she refused to talk to them for six hours.

NASA shifted to the gay space trucks shuttles and looking for non-binary muslims and lesbians to shoot into orbit. No more bold frontiers. Why? We won. The Sea of Tranquility turned space exploration into a budget line item.

Need another example: a Syrian teen in London.

Picture this: an eighteen-year-old from war-torn Syria, resettled in a taxpayer-funded flat in London. Free food. Free education. Free X-Box®.

Utopia, right?

Wrong. He drops the controller and goes to Syria andjoins ISIS or stays in London and joins a gang and becomes a rapefugee with a machete.

Why?

Blood calls to blood. Iron to Iron. That flat was Mouse Utopia 2.0: safe, soft, soulless and, let’s face it, that kid was inbred and not very bright to start with. He craved the jihad, the struggle, the validation of existence through fire and fight. Comfort didn’t kill his spirit, comfort starved it. In part, this is why allowing refugees from incompatible countries is immoral.

I played hide and seek and ended up in the hospital. ICU!

Why do we have wars?

We want wars. If they weren’t popular, we’d have stopped having them a very long time ago.

Why do we want them? Not because we’re monsters, but because we’re human. Struggle validates us. High stakes forge character. Leaders like Alexander or Churchill didn’t thrive in peace; they rose in the crises they created.

Without enemies, we manufacture them, internal or imaginary. Look at modern “wars”: culture wars, gender wars, class wars, cola wars. We can’t help it. Tranquility isn’t our default; it’s a rare condition that, when it lasts long enough we pop our collective corks.

Think about it: our history has wired us for survival, not spa days. Hunter-gatherers fought for food, territory, mates and because it was Tuesday. Civilizations brought people together and made a professional league and channeled that into empires, exploration, and innovations. Remove the fight?

We devolve.

Mouse Utopia showed it: no threats equates to no purpose. Humans need the arena, the sweat, the sand, and the blood. We were built for the Colosseum, not the couch.

But here’s the rub: the struggle creates a spot for growth, it’s literally the engine of history. Without high stakes, we fail to thrive.

We back ourselves into existential corners: depression epidemics, fertility crashes, societies crumbling under their own weight and people who need drugs to stop that nagging feeling that they should be doing something that matters. Oddly enough, our very humanity appears to be built upon the fight.

If you meet a dolphin and feel a connection, can you say that you just clicked?

So, what now?

We can’t “prosperity” the struggle out of us. We need leaders who rally us to real frontiers and put real goals out in front of us, not fake fights over tweets®. Stakes high enough to matter: colonize Mars, cure aging, harness fusion. And something for the masses to do, like watching re-runs of Ow, My Balls.

Something. If we don’t have something, we’ll make something. Give us blood (metaphorical or not), steel, the feel of it all. In the end, tranquility was never the goal.

The struggle is the point. It’s what makes us scream, fight, and conquer. As I’ve seen in memes: “I want to go out of this world the same way I came into it: screaming and covered in someone else’s blood.”

And Heaven?

I think it isn’t at all as Grandma Wilder described. I think it’s more like:

Player 1: Ready Level 2.

EBT Apocalypse: When the Purple Drink Runs Dry and the Cities Go Full Mad Max

“This gets out of hand? We’re gonna be caught in the biggest naval battle since the Jutland.” – The Hunt for Red October

Where did they keep the tyrannosaurus rex on the submarine? The small arms locker.

There are 41.7 million Americans slurping up Supplemental Nachos And Porkrinds (SNAP) benefits. That’s an amazing number, and it shows just how far down the bread and circuses route that we’ve gone. I was surprised at the number, but I can now surmise that the only people voting for Democrats are single white women and freeloaders. But I repeat myself.

The federal government shutdown is, as I write this, dragging into its fourth week. I’m generally pretty happy about that since the impact to almost everyone I know is . . . zero. However, that may soon change. EBT cards, (EBT stands for Entitled Bums Treats) are about to have a zero balance.

The Democrats in the Senate have voted a dozen times as I write this to not fund the SNAP (Socialist Nourishment And Pampering) program. The reason? This is one of their key weapons against Trump. They want to blame Trump for not having a budget because it won’t fund the SNAP (Scam Network for Appetite Pandering) program. Since people who use EBT (Endless Bailout for Takers) aren’t generally the ones who pay attention to anything that takes longer than 17 seconds, they’ll buy it.

NASA won’t bring one animal in particular into space: the duck. They’re worried that the bill would be astronomical.

Some states (Virginia, for one) realize that the place will look like Mad Max in by Monday if the pizza rolls stop flowing, and have found some cash in the couch cushions to kick the can down the road. New Jersey doesn’t even own a couch, so they have no money, and Connecticut has mobilized their National Guard for emergency ramen drops.

No more swiping for that purple drank or Hot Pockets®. When the EBT (Everyone But Taxpayers) card goes dry, life may get . . . interesting.

What will happen? “Mostly peaceful” flash mobs looting grocery stores. These flash mobs will make the 2020 riots look like a church picnic gone wrong because someone demanded gluten-free tofu.

Because SNAP (Subsidized Nuggets for Apathetic Parasites) isn’t just a program: it’s the duct tape holding urban America’s powder keg together. As mentioned, there are 41.7 million people, about 12.3% of the U.S. population, who rely on those cards for daily food.

As I looked at my naked body in the mirror, I thought to myself, “I’m going to get kicked out of Ikea® any time now.”

There is an inconvenient fact to bring up: the same slice of society leaning hardest on EBT is the one driving the nation’s homicide stats. FBI data from recent years shows black Americans, who make up 13% of the population but 26% of SNAP users, also account for over 50% of murder offenders.

Coincidence?

Nope.

Poverty plus entitlement equals a volatile cocktail, and when the free refills dry up, that cocktail gets spiked with Molotovs.

Matt Bracken, the prophet of this particular powder keg, whose 2012 essay “When the Music Stops” reads like a Ouija board session with Cassandra, nailed it.

“What if a cascading economic crisis. . . leads to millions of EBT cards flashing nothing but zeroes? . . . any disruption in the normal functioning of the EBT system will lead to food riots with a speed that is astonishing. . . . the cutoff of ‘their’ food money will cause an immediate explosion of rage. When the hunger begins to bite, supermarkets . . . will be looted.”

My guess?

Within 72 hours of the blackout, flash mobs of “minority urban youths” (MUYs, in Bracken’s lingo) would swarm intersections, yank soccer moms from their SUVs.

The problem is that in Philadelphia you can’t tell a riot from a celebration.

Three days until the cities burn, but with today’s social media coordination, it’ll be three hours till the first viral EBT Uprising Dance Challenge goes from meme to murder.

How bad could it get? If just 1% of those 41.7 million SNAPsters snap, that’s over 417,000 murderers hitting the streets, amped up on empty stomachs and without the burden of intellect but liberally spiced with Glocks™.

I saw a video (it was on X®, probably started on TikTok©) where a woman was claiming that she couldn’t work – she was retired at 22 with her six children. Six children that you’re paying for, by the way. She indicated that it was everyone else’s responsibility to go and work for her. And then another video. And another.

We’re talking about a group of people, who, when looting Walmart™, won’t be stealing any job applications. Instead, they’ll behave like locusts because that’s their basic operating system, consume, mate, move on.

A girl I know would have sex for Adderall®. I guess she was an attention whore.

And, like locusts, when unleashed they’ll create Biblical levels of plunder. Stores will be stripped bare in under 60 minutes: shelves will echo with the ghosts of grape soda, and cashiers will be forced to hide in the walk-in freezer, live-streaming their sudden turn being on the front lines.

Day One: Inception

Sporadic smash-and-grabs in blue cities. Chicago’s South Side turns into a perpetual Black Friday brawl, with looters hauling off flat-screens because “hunger makes you binge-watch.” Atlanta’s got 640,000 kids on SNAP (Subversive Nutrition for Aimless Proles); when their purple drink privilege evaporates, expect school buses repurposed as battering rams.

Cops will be overwhelmed, as Bracken predicted. Their OODA loop is slower than a dial-up modem.

Day Two: Escalation

Hunger turns tribal. “Youths” blockade highways, turning I-95 into a demolition derby. Commuters dragged from Priuses™, beaten with shopping carts after the looters take what food they had bought.

Suburban enclaves? Home invasions spike as “foragers” hit Whole Foods for organic chicken wings to pair with their rage. Gas stations? Torched for the Cheetos® inside.

And the violence? Unprecedented in scale, a synchronized symphony of savagery from sea to shining sea. Why? Because unlike 1992’s Rodney King ripple, this is nationwide: 42 states face EBT (Emergency Burger Tantrum) evaporation simultaneously.

To be fair, there will be drift. Even red-state small towns within 20 or so miles will get spillover when the urban exodus turns feral.

The revolution may not be televised, but it will certainly be live-streamed.

Day Three (and beyond): Full Bracken

It’s here that things get fuzzy. Deploy the National Guard? Sure. To where? With what food? The infrastructure in the cities is gone, and as Katrina taught us, the people who are kept from murdering only by the thin veneer of society aren’t going to stop at one. 417,000 potential murderers doesn’t equate to only 417,000 murders.

And there will be the inevitable TikTok© trends: the EBT Uprising Dance Challenge evolves into the Loot Loop, where the winner gets the last uncrushed Dorito™ bag.

Riots will ratchet racial: “The Other” will get sorted out at 100 yards because nothing unites like a common enemy. The economy? Tanked. Even illegal Sikh truckers won’t roll into war zones, so food deserts bloom into famine fields.

Do I expect this?

No.

Could it happen?

Yes.

But what can you do? We are at a period of significant SNAP (Social Norms Are Precarious) risk because of the EBT (Entitlement Brawl Trigger).