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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Decades?

Krugman?  More like Grugman.

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

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

Meme as-found.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’d go home.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Funniest Post You’ll Ever Read About Bank Failures And Yachts

“A major one.” – Fight Club

What did Kim call his yacht? His dictator ship.

Last March, Silicon Valley Bank® failed. In a big way. Because the people who deposited money in the bank own things like yachts and senators, well, they escaped with hardly a haircut. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation® (FDIC™) normally ensures deposits for $250,000 per account holder. In this case, they decided, nah, what the heck, we’ll make sure that Roku® and Oprah Winfrey and Prince Harry don’t lose a dime.

Ironically, today the Internal Revenue Service sued the FDIC© for $1.45 billion in back taxes they say that Silicon Valley Bank™ owed when the FDIC© took it over. Sure, it sounds like on part of the government is suing another part of the government for play money made up by the (non-federal) Fed™ but the FDIC™ is supposedly independent and gets its money from the member banks.

Which are members of the Fed™. Which prints the cash.

If this sounds as incestuous as a Hapsburg family stump, well, it is. And of course I’m going to go with a fresh meme about the Hapsburgs, because that’s what all of the cool kids are doing today.

A Hapsburg walks into a bar, the bartender says, “Why the long face?” The prince says, “Generations of inbreeding.”

The root cause of the Silicon Valley Bank™ failure is that they lent money for long periods at low interest rates. When interest rates go up, those loans aren’t worth a lot, at least to the bank. Right now, my mortgage has a lower interest rate than I’m getting in checking.

Silicon Valley Bank™ looked at all the crappy loans they had, and did the math, and found out that they were worth less than zero. Even worse, their bigger depositors heard (because depositors who own senators seem to get advance notice) and started to pull their money out.

Since those folks had friends, they told them. Soon enough, everyone wanted one thing – they wanted their money out of Silicon Valley Bank™. Rational people realized that if this was a problem at Silicon Valley Bank©, it was a problem everywhere.

Silicone and silicon – electrical engineers know the difference – no one trusts them around silicone.

In a thought that gives central bankers and senators cold sweats (after the previous night’s booze wears off) is the idea that people lose faith in the banking system. Oddly, this wouldn’t be a problem if we used money made out of gold and silver, but since ours is just as much a fantasy as thinking that diversity enriches us all.

So, there’s a problem that’s impacting literally every bank. Some big ones have failed, but thankfully Duchess Markle still has her cash so she can get enough publicity to hide from commoners like me. What’s the solution?

First, pay off everyone so no one is scared and Oprah doesn’t have to fly commercial with mere mortals. Second, flood the system with money. If a bank needs cash? Wheelbarrows of it?

Give it to them.

Thankfully Congress took a break from sending your tax dollars to Ukraine to bail out Oprah.

Last year, banks were paying 0.10% or so for crappy checking accounts. This summer, rates started shooting up, so I snuggled into some CDs that paid a lot more than my mortgage cost. Then, last month, I got a call from my bank where I set up the CDs.

“Mr. Wilder? You have money in other banks, right? If you deposit (a few thousand) dollars from accounts outside of your accounts with us into savings, I can give you a 4.5% rate on checking and savings.”

What????

If there’s one thing I know about banking, is that bankers are not generous except to themselves, senators, and Oprah.

I check with him, drove to the nearest branch of Major Bank™ in Mt. Pilot, and tossed a few thousand in. Could I take it out later?

Sure!

I am informed this is funny because horses often live in stables, so this would be a violation of California’s work safety laws.

I started wondering about this, but soon enough came up with the answer: when I make a deposit in the bank, I’m making a loan to the bank. And if they’re offering me nearly 5% for just parking cash at their place, that means . . .

I’m their best alternative for a loan. Me. John Wilder. Enough so they paid a dude to call me and ask.

Yup, it’s just that simple. And they called me to ask me to make a loan, and offered to pay me over four times what I was making on my cash to make that loan. Reading a bit further, it turns out the way that the Fed™ shoved money down the collective throats of the banks was through the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP).

BTFP loaned money to the banks, and the banks deposited the money at the Fed© to make a profit on the difference.

Yes, the Fed© created the BTFP, loaned the money to the banks who then deposited the money . . . at the Fed™. I’m not making this up. As of March 11, 2024, the Fed© will no longer be making more BTFP loans at those sweetheart rates. All new loans would be made at the same rate the bank gets paid by the Fed©. The gravy train, or at least this gravy train, is over.

That’s what the Fed© said in January, 2024.

When did I get the phone call wanting to borrow a few bucks from Major Bank?

January, 2024.

Since when do I believe in coincidences? And it was weird, it wasn’t a lot of money that I needed to deposit, but I think they were looking to get bigger players than tiny John Wilder.

But at least they’re not insufferable idiots . . . oh, too soon.

And that’s the rub. If banks are looking to borrow cash from me, how bad are their balance sheets?

Dang, I’m worried! Will Prince Harry have enough money to travel the world for 45-minute meetings with his father? Will Oprah be able to afford more caviar?

And, maybe I should take up loan sharking. Maybe I can buy my own yacht, bigger than Prince Harry’s and I’ll sail past him, and look down on him, and try to give Harry that condescending look that appears to be his Resting Prince Face.

And I’ll write a rock song about it.

I’ll call it Smirk on the Water.

What Signs Would We See If The Economy Was Going To Be Okay?

“Martha’s polishing the brass on the Titanic.” – Fight Club

When I met The Mrs. I said, “Titanic.”  She said that was a terrible icebreaker.

I worry that sometimes I talk too much about the downsides of workings of the economy and was asked, “What does it look like when things start to look better?  What does it look like if it’s all going to be fine?”  I know this might seem like rearranging the deck chairs to keep the Titanic from sinking, but, hey, let’s go with it?

These are great questions.  Not as good as, “Would you like another beer?” but still very good.

These are also questions that could be political in nature (I might write more about that for Monday) but in this case I’m going to focus on the economy as much as I can, though it’s certain that political will slip in here and there – it can’t be avoided because we’ve got Joe all over the economy.

What will make things “fine” and how will we know when we get there?

If someone steals your booze, does that mean they’ve lifted your spirits?

First:  Stop the infinite debt spending.

Several years ago I wrote about Modern Monetary Theory.  In a nutshell, Modern Monetary Theory says that if you have a bill, pay it.  If you don’t have the money, make it.  The theory goes that there aren’t a set number of points in a game of football, so why should there be a set number of dollars in the economy.  So, if you have a bill, pay for it.

This is an awesome theory only for a person that has the I.Q. of a Kamala/AOC lovechild.  The worst thing about it is that it actually worked in the short term, which is the worst when it comes to an economic policy, because it gives lots of time for Bad Things to pile up.

What made it work is because the United States can pawn the piles and piles of dollars off to the world since everyone takes them because we have nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers and everyone knows what happened to Saddam and Qaddafi when they decided they’d start taking gold instead.

I asked a friend if he wanted to hear about the Russian victory parade.  He said, “No tanks.”

Eventually either the desire or ability to soak up the dollars goes away.  When that happens, even for a short time, the inflation inherent in the system feeds back.

Can this go on forever?  No.  Should we, you know, maybe consider stopping it before we totally wreck the economy?  If we do that, there will be a hangover and a tough political bill to be paid.

Will we?  Yes.  As Ben Stein’s dad said, “If something can’t go on forever, it won’t.”  That will be a very, very bad day if it’s not one of our choosing.

Also?  Fiat economies have a worse track record than Fiat™ cars for reliability.

Second:  Stop the Wealth Pump®.

I really enjoyed Peter Turchin’s book, End Times.  In it, he convinced me (he also has data to support this) that one of the biggest failures of my lifetime is the priming of what he calls the Wealth Pump™.  The really short version of this is that policies that would support concentration of capital in the billionaire class are enacted (for example:  open borders) while policies that benefit the average worker (for example:  strictly controlled borders) are ignored.

I dropped a piece of ice in the kitchen.  I was upset, but then it melted.  I guess it’s water under the fridge.

Turchin’s models have shown that the Wealth Pump™ everywhere and always leads to tremendous social turmoil.  Even without the economic misery for the common man that the Wealth Pump© implies, the turmoil from the hordes of teeming illegals will create turmoil that will last lifetimes.  But stopping the Wealth Pump™ is imperative.

Will Bezos and Soros owned Senators suddenly ignore the billionaire class they serve?  At this point, not voluntarily.  The bacon-wrapped shrimp and cool stock tips are pretty powerful to keep them in line.

Third:  De-financialize the economy by putting out the FIRE.

Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate is called the FIRE sector of the economy.  In theory, FIRE exists to serve the actual productive sectors of the economy that make actual things that people need like potatoes, beer, steak, PEZ™, shoes, rifles, books, and toilet plungers.

That’s the way it should work.

Instead, it’s a gambling economy filled with people who try to manipulate and tweak and profit without producing anything.  The big oil squeeze of 2008?  Rumor was that was a big investment bank trying to make a bet profitable on a short against a particular company.  The investment bank didn’t produce anything useful except for profits.  By manipulation.

I think FIRE might be more dangerous than fire.

Again, ask the Nancy Pelosi why her stock portfolio is so profitable, and ask why first term Senators do so well in the stock market.  Or don’t.  But it’s FIRE that’s the primary machine in the Wealth Pump™ and these create increasingly horrific schemes.

Examples?  Everything is a subscription because it increases revenue and profits.  Now it’s moving into video games:  design a game once, sell a subscription to it so that people can’t play it again for free, but instead have to pay a monthly fee.  It’s already moving that way for software.

And look into who is buying all the housing.  It’s on FIRE.

Fourth:  Rational housing valuations.

People need a place to live, and a pod won’t cut it, but houses are now big investments.  Why?  Because they need more profits to feed the Wealth Pump®.  Housing prices returning to something a guy with a high school degree working a manufacturing job can afford is crucial, since that’s where families come from.  Is it possible in San Jose?  No.  It’s possible in Modern Mayberry, but that’s because BlackRock© hasn’t started buying here.

Fifth:  Space for humans and A.I.

I know that some are skeptical, but A.I. is already making hundreds of thousands of jobs obsolete.  Running a backhoe?  No.  Writing articles?  Yes.  Things that are easy for humans, are hard for A.I.  Things that are hard for humans (and thus draw a higher salary), are often easy for A.I.

Are expert-level programmers still required?  Absolutely.  But not as many, since an expert-level programmer acting in tandem with A.I. will have a tenfold increase in productivity.

Who loses?  The “not as good” programmers who are now not required.

This has happened before in all sorts of industries.  DJs on the radio began voice tracking decades ago.  The average DJ makes minimum wage (average, some are highly compensated, most are not) but still the radio stations paid $20,000 to eliminate them because making the product cheaper is what they know.

ChatKGB:  it asks the questions.

Automation increases profits, but it doesn’t lead to some sort of techno-utopia where we have three hour work days.  People just lose their jobs.  As profits have gone up, pay has gone down (relative to inflation) and work hours have gone up for salaried folks.

A.I. hasn’t hit in a big way, yet.  It will.  Making space for people is unlikely, but necessary.

That’s a summary of how we can tell if we’re going to pull out from the looming economic catastrophe, what it looks like if things are going to get better.  I’ve started sketching out a few political things to show that things are going to be okay, and (like I wrote above) will likely show up on Monday.

So, like the Titanic, it looks like we might have a change in destination.  But we’re making good time!

The Jenga Economy

“Out of these windows, we will view the collapse of financial history.  One step closer to economic equilibrium.” – Fight Club

What do you call a man in debt?  Owen.

After 9-11, sales of the Jenga® game really dropped.

I’m not sure why, but in 2002 people had to play Jenga® the old-fashioned way – by stacking dishes in the sink.

But the game of Jenga™ is a pretty good analogy for our economy right now.  Jenga© is based on taking one piece from the lower part of the structure and putting it on top.  As the game progresses, everyone can see that the structure becomes weaker and more unstable.  The game always (at our house) ends the same way:  the tower, which now seems ridiculously tall, sways a little bit, becomes unbalanced, and topples.

The pieces then go everywhere, and we leave them on the floor for the herds of stray free-range toddlers in our neighborhood to eat.  We’re givers that way.

The economy (to me) looks exactly like a game of Jenga™, seemingly impossibly stretched out and tall.

Pro-tip on how to pick-up women:  lift with your legs, not your back.

Examples?

Well, let’s talk about when we turned money into cash.  The dollar used to be bound to actual, physical commodities – gold and silver.  I guess you could call it an either-ore situation.  Gold was always the preferred, but people who wanted looser money (i.e., inflation) fought to get silver in there, too.  In fact, silver was actually part of the money supply, making up a portion of many coins up until the 1960s when one Jenga© block was pulled and set on top.

Nixon pulled another when he ended the ability of foreign nations to bring piles of dollars and walk away with piles of gold.  He made the tower even shakier as he threw gold out, entirely as a standard.  The good news was that Americans could once again own gold.  The bad news was that dollars were no longer money – they were cash – not backed by anything.

And could be printed at will.  Another Jenga™ piece on top.  The tower becomes a bit wobblier.  And wobblier still as Nixon and Ford and Carter start printing.  I mainly blame Nixon, since he got the ball going, and it took the hand of Reagan reaching out to steady the tower, though that created the very deep 1982 recession.

What was Bob the Builder© called during a recession?  Bob.

Reagan, though, added his bit as well.  Sure, it made sense to try to spend the Russians into the ground – after the 1982 recession the economy came roaring back as The Wealth Pump started in earnest and the stock market soared.  But during this time, the market cheered as jobs left the United States.  In many cases, the jobs were subsidized by the country taking them.  They wanted to build up the industrial expertise so that they could make world-class products and were willing to pay for their economy and workers to learn how to do it.

Remember George H. W. Bush’s advisors saying they didn’t care if the economy made computer chips or potato chips?

Pepperidge Farms© remembers™.

Because it does matter.  Potato chips or computer chips don’t matter if you’re a banker making a loan, but if you’re trying to create the greatest value with the economy?  It sure as hell does matter.

One step closer to living in the Prime® Pod™.

On the government side, fiscal responsibility seemed to come back for a bit with Bill Clinton.  Now, don’t thank Bill – it was entirely based on Newt Gingrich stopping all the nonsense for a few years that primed the pump of the economy.  While Hillary is an ideologue, Bill was always in it for the hot chicks.  Sure, there were shenanigans, but the Jenga™ players were mostly playing it safe during that time period.

But when the recession hit in 2000?  George W. Bush really wanted to open the floodgates, so he started stacking as high and as fast as he could.  War helped him move a few Jenga™ pieces, and low interest rates in his “everyone who breathes should own a McMansion” policy fueled an amazing set of bubbles that ended up including housing, natural gas, crude oil, and what was left of my hair.

The path out of the Great Recession was a simple one.  Print more money.  People aren’t buying United States Bonds?  Heck, the Fed® can buy them now.  We can also pay Wall Street to launder all the bad debt and make sure that irresponsible bank vaults get filled to the top with cash.

Is it just me, or does Janet Yellin look exactly like Benny Hill?

Because, why not?

Obama took some Jenga™ pieces from the very bottom and put them up top because he wanted to get health care into the system.

Trump didn’t add too many blocks to the top of the board, at first.  Trump was mainly because he was focused on deals – immigration, trade, covfefe.  But he couldn’t make a deal with COVID.  His instincts were bad and his solution was just to stack more blocks up top by printing money and cramming it down people’s throats as fast as he could.

Biden doubled down on that strategy:  importing illegals by the truckload to paper over the economy that no longer serves its citizens, spending billions to “reduce inflation” and now nobody wants to buy the bonds.  Thankfully, the banks are scrambling to create weird new structures so they can pretend that the loan that they made at 4% isn’t costing them when they’re giving 5.5% on CDs.

Anyone else feel comforted that the banks have a really complicated strategy to avoid reality?

The tower is now, really, really tall.  And really, really shaky.

And these things never end slowly – they end either with mass social unrest, a big war, or both when the tower finally collapses.  And others have just given up.

When 4Chan is smarter than the Fed®.

For clarity’s sake, Hasbro™ (the owner of the Jenga® trademark) had nothing to do with this post.  I’m sure they’d rather people look at Jenga® and think about the 9-11 than have them look at Jenga® and think about our economy.

Peter Turchin’s End Times: There Be Dragons Here

“The end time has come, not in flame, but in mist!” – The Mist

I once had shoes that had Velcro® closures.  I mean, why knot?

(Complete review in one post)

I recently completed the book End Times by Peter Turchin.  I have recently done a review of How Civil Wars Start by Barbara F. Walter (not that Barbara Walter, some other commie bimbo), and by comparison Ms. Walter’s book is a badly drawn crayon sketch of Donald Trump by a mildly developmentally disabled child who was born of the copulation of two stoned Leftists and raised on a diet of Trotsky and lead paint chips.

Her book was bad.  Turchin, who I imagine is also Left-leaning, was (mainly) able to keep his political opinions out of the book, and produce something useful and as even-handed as he could make it, what with having to go to fancy university parties with the Leftist intelligentsia who are globalist and communist at the same time, because, reasons.

Going back in time, Turchin predicted in the early ‘teens (2010, I believe) that the decade beyond 2020 was going to be rough.  This was based on an actual computational model, where he took various social factors, smashed them into a computer, and cranked out a slip of paper that said, “Beyond Here, There Be Dragons.”  To be fair, his model seems to have some predictive capacity, though I have yet to find a place to tinker with it, but I’ll bet Ricky can track it down if anyone can.  A .pdf that has a flavor of the model is here (LINK).

The XXX Files are a completely different subject.

His description of the model starts with one of the things that leads to collapse:  Elite Overproduction.  In this context, you pretty much know who the elite are.  Donald Trump is one, and so are the Clintons, and the Obamas, and thousands of other wealthy, socially connected people who have political power.  Per Turchin, only 9 presidents of the United States weren’t 1%ers, and before 1850, all of the presidents were elite and wealthy types and probably had exceptional hats, since they didn’t have other cool things to buy back then.

Turchin breaks down political power into four types:

  • Coercion – Do it or else. Leftists love this.  Think AntiFa® or .
  • Wealth – Let’s face it, rich dudes rarely do jail time, and where exactly is Epstein’s client list and why can’t you see it?
  • Bureaucracy – You own the organization that provide services or do stuff – think the IRS or the DMV.
  • Ideology – This includes CNN® and Harvard™.

Where do psychics shop?  The Seers® catalog.

In Turchin’s view, there are specialists at each level of political power.  The big problem for people is when these folks are present in too large of a quantity and get bored and have to do something else.  In 2016, we had a billionaire (Trump) running against someone worth in excess of $120 million (Hilldabeast).  In no way was this usual, but later, billionaire Michael Bloomberg jumped into the race.  Why?  Bored, I guess.  Most billionaires let other people do their fighting for them – like George Soros or Emperor Palpatine.  But I repeat myself.

The key problem is that there are more elite people who want power than there are available chairs.  That’s always the case to a certain extent, but with tens of thousands of Harvard© and Stanford™ and Dartmouth® grads fighting for elite positions in every facet of the coercion, wealth, bureaucratic, or ideological elite, well, this starts to drive instability, per Turchin.  Per me, there seem to be a lot of people who have no connection whatsoever with anyone but themselves and their elite cocoon of friends with the same ideas and no-fat decaf pumpkin-spice lattes.

Turchin later goes on to talk about how the British killing off tons of French nobility during battles around 1400 to 1450 actually helped France to have a much more stable political period because there everybody had stuff to do other than try to overthrow the king or kill their brother or eat snails and smoke cigarettes while wearing berets and carrying baguettes of bread everywhere.

I once saw a baguette in a cage.  I guess it was bread in captivity.

Yes, in the coming years at least half of the elite will either die or cease to be elite and have to drive Yugos® or Ford Escorts™ while working at JCPenney’s©.

There just aren’t enough chairs in the inner circle to go around.

So, we’ve got too many elites, which is one of Turchin’s factors that lead to societal breakdown.  What else leads to problems?  Turchin calls the next one, “Popular Immiseration” – bluntly, when life sucks for the common person.  Another term for this is Bidenomics.  Economic power of workers is disappearing, wages are going backwards when it comes to purchasing power, and jobs are more uncertain and awful.

To be fair to Biden, this was the trend even before he was selected, and was really the feeling that ushered in Trump.  Trump was and is a reaction to the crapfest that the economy has turned into, and is more or less predictable.  In 1956 Trump would have been a joke candidate, in 2000 Trump was a joke candidate, but by 2016 Trump was taken seriously because, to a large proportion of Americans, life is slowly becoming more miserable, daily.  The needed someone, anyone, to listen to them and stop the nonsense that the Left (and, to be fair, the Chamber of Commerce Right) is shoving down their throats.  Mittens Romney was just the same as the Left in his goals, he just used a different phrase to get there.

The last thing the American people wanted was ¡Jeb!  To give an example from another period in American history that was in crisis, Abraham Lincoln was another joke candidate that fell into a period where he could be elected.

I guess Mary Todd Lincoln said to Abe that day, “Would it kill you to take me to a play once in a while?”

Turchin discusses Lincoln’s election not in terms of slavery, but in terms of economic misery combined with lots of rich dudes.  Turchin adds in that the failing financial health of a country adds to this, lowering the legitimacy of the state.

These factors, Turchin notes, in every case that they’ve covered, always reach a breaking point within 200 years or so.  This is in line with Strauss and Howe The Fourth Turning and the theories of the unfortunately named Sir John Glubb.

End of Empires, PEZ, and Decadence

It’s here that the Turchin takes a bit of time to discuss the nature of the American Empire, circa 2023.  American power, he notes, isn’t based on religion.  It likewise isn’t based on a militaristic history – although we’ve elected generals as president, the power of the American Empire is and always has been commerce.  We sent trade ships in the 1800s across the world.  Genghis Khan didn’t create his empire with trade, he created it with the sword and the horse and by having sex with half of the women in Asia.  While the English used liberal amounts of gunpowder creating their empire, “I say, old chap, what are those Boer people doing sitting on our gold and diamonds?”, they were a commerce-based empire as well.

Me?  I was upset when I got a pack of sticky playing cards for Christmas – I found them difficult to deal with.

I’d agree with Turchin – American power has been economic and, like the British before us, created an economic empire.  The wealth from that economic empire thus created the ability for us to have really cool tanks and planes and aircraft carriers and nuclear weapons.  No bucks?  No Buck Rodgers.

Since it has been economics that created the empire, it’s economics that fuels it today:  America is built on economics, and the biggest controllers of that are . . . rich people.  As much as I’m in favor of capitalism (which is a lot) I can see that a system where the rich people get to make the rules is gonna suck for everyone else.

Turchin calls this the “Wealth Pump” – it’s the idea that the rules are set up not for the common citizen, but for the really rich dudes.  Whare are some of the components of this Wealth Pump?

  • Keeping a surplus of workers so that wages are lower. Unrestricted illegal (and legal) immigration?  It’s perfect to keep wages down.
  • What happens when we are need other workers than the illegals?  Let’s cut all trade barriers so that a programmer in the United States has to compete with a programmer in Bangladesh.  There won’t be any consequences from that, right?
  • Larger companies that have greater pull – Steve Jobs said, before he died, obviously, that he couldn’t make Apple® again – there were too many barriers in place. Many don’t realize that large number of “consumer” or “environmental” regulations are actually welcomed by large businesses – they’re a barrier to entry and competition.

This is what the Wealth Pump looks like.

That the impact of the Wealth Pump is misery is a given.  While (once upon a time) I was a libertarian, I’ve since moved on from that, as they’ve moved farther in support of this wealth pump.  Freedom doesn’t come with mere economic freedom, and it doesn’t come from only from freedom from government coercion.  Does it, in the end, matter if it is a group of elites in government or a group of elites at Google™ is the one censoring you to preserve the wealth pump?

Why is it so hard to start a relationship with a Social Justice Warrior?  They have such high double standards.

As noted above, per Turchin, the pool of people attempting to be elite has increased – ludicrously.  As I’ve mentioned before, it used to be that only 15% of people tried to go to college.  That’s probably the right number.  Now?  According to Turchin’s figures, over 65% of kids are trying to grasp that gold ring.

Again, the normal distribution matters, and that means at least 15% of people going to college have an IQ of less than 100.  This explains all of those Grievance Studies degrees, and Leftists pretending that education is a substitute for intellect while working behind the makeup counter at the department store.

Every time you smoke a cigarette, it takes seven minutes off your student loans.

Now, the number of doctorate degrees have tripled since 1970 (again, a Turchin number) and there’s no real sign that this is stopping, even though it’s clear that this is producing only frustrated people who have useless degrees.  Even useful degrees in STEM fields are, at this point, being overproduced in the United States compared to the number of available jobs.  Yet, the companies keep wanting the bring in foreigners on H1-B visas to take jobs that could be filled by actual Americans.

But the Americans would want a higher wage, and there would be less competition.  This would lower Google’s® profits.  This is, again, Turchin’s Wealth Pump in action.  Google© wants H1-B workers because they’re virtual slaves that they can bring in that would be happy to live four to a pod because it’s better than the monsoon-drenched mud hut in India that is consistently destroyed by volcanoes or communists or bird flu or whatever they have in India.

During COVID, gatherings of more than 260 million were banned in India.

As I talked about a post back, ideology was one of the pillars of a stable society.

Stability: On A Scale Of Zero To Drunken Uncle, How Bad Is The United States?

Turchin pegs the 1950’s as the time of greatest ideological stability in the United States.  People felt that (again, following Turchin’s list, which is similar to previous content here, so I don’t disagree much, though I add commentary to his list from p. 100):

  • Family was a man and a woman and kids. As I’ve discussed before, this is the atom of civilization, and has been since forever – other arrangements (polyandry, polygamy) tend to be unstable in large societies.  Men want a mate.  However, in 2023, the push is on to have “anything goes” as the basis for society.  Out of wedlock babies?  A scandal.
  • Men were men, women were women and men had men jobs and women had women jobs.   Now we can’t even define what a woman is.
  • Natural bodies are better. Tats were for sailors and .mil folks, and weird piercings were borderline trashy and foreign.
  • Belonging to a religion was normal, divorce and being an atheist meant you weren’t going to be elected unless . . . no, no unless. Atheists were simply not trusted in positions of public power.

But look what progress has brought us!  (Meme as found)

Turchin then talks about some of the things that kept the Wealth Pump in check – labor unions, minimum wages, progressive taxation, welfare, low immigration.  I’d disagree on the impact and general consensus on, say, welfare, but in general.  Many of those, however, coupled with a healthy export-focused economy with targeted tariffs created a situation where the middle class flourished and grew at the expense of the Elite.  The Left and the Right were more or less together on the goal.  It was Ike who warned us about the Wealth Pump, though Eisenhower described it this way:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”  He was a Republican wanting to make sure that the military remained sane, and that the most invulnerable weapon system wasn’t one where parts were made in every congressional district.

Now?  Turchin notes, “The ideological center today resembles a country road in Texas, almost deserted save for the yellow stripe and dead armadillos.”

I wonder if they deserved to get hit by a car, if they’re karmadillos?

From the book:  “In order for stability to return, elite overproduction somehow needs to be taken care of – historically and typically by eliminating the surplus elites through massacre, imprisonment, emigration, or forced or voluntary downward social mobility.”  Whoa!  That’s radical, and I’m glad that Turchin is saying the quiet part out loud:  something wicked this way comes.  We all feel the tension, that’s why he sold thousands of copies of his book.

We know it’s coming.  And why.

It’s the Wealth Pump.  It’s not new, and it’s been the goal for a long, long time.  Turchin quotes a 1901 edition of The Bankers’ Magazine:

“When business men (sic) were single units, each working out his own success regardless of others in desperate competition, the men who controlled the political organization were supreme . . . .  But as the business of the country has learned the secret of combination, it is gradually subverting the power of the politician and rendering him subservient to its purposes . . . .  Every form of business is capable of similar consolidation, and if other industries imitate the example of that concerned with iron and steel, it is easy to see that eventually the government of a country where the productive forces are all mustered and drilled under the control of a few leaders, must become the mere tool of these forces.”

This is the goal, not a meme.

Again, wow.  I’ve said before I have a strong distrust of big government, and the groups that really benefit from regulations are big businesses since those regulations form a barrier to entry to smaller groups.  Who runs Bartertown?  Big businesses do – who do you think hires the regulators after they “retire” from the government?  If history is a guide, businesses are attempting to run government for their benefit – hence, the Wealth Pump.

Don’t believe me?  You’re soaking in it.  A longer quote from Turchin, (p. 129):

“The political scientist Martin Gilens . . . gathered a large data set – nearly 2000 policy issues between 1981 and 2002.  Each case matched a proposed policy change to a nation opinion survey asking a favor/oppose question about the initiative . . . .

“Statistical analysis . . . showed that the preferences of the poor had no effect on policy changes . . . . What is surprising is that there was no – zilch, nada – effect of the average voter.  The main effect on the direction of change was due to the policy preferences of the affluent.  There was also an additional effect of interest groups, the most influential ones being business-oriented lobbies.  Once you include in the statistical model the preferences of the top 10 percent and the interest groups, the effect of the commoners is statistically indistinguishable from zero.”

Yup.  They’re not listening.  They don’t care that the majority has always wanted to deport and deport promptly the unending stream of illegals invading our country.  That’s not good for business, so the Left has (oddly?) picked this up as a Social Justice Warrior© mantra:  “no human is illegal” meaning that they’re working to make actual workers, especially black workers, poorer.

SJW™?  It’s just another term for the intellectual elite in the pocket of big business.  Who would have thought that the SJW© would be on the same side as the military-industrial complex?

Stonetoss©, that’s who.  (All Stonetoss™ comics are used with permission.)

Why do Social Justice Warriors hate dentists?  They make teeth straight and white.

A guy on a tractor just drove by yelling about the end of everything.  I think it was Farmer Geddon.

I think that Turchin has proven that, at least in some circumstances, he can show when trouble is coming.   Again, I’d like to see his database and understand in greater detail how it works, but if you look at:

  • Every elite scrambling for position,
  • Every mechanism possible being found to extract another dollar from a consooooomer so that the Wealth Pump can be fed, and
  • the current graph of the interest payments that the United States will have to pay sooner rather than later, it’s clear:

There Be Dragons Here.

How the crisis unfolds, however, is dependent upon the structure of society itself, according to Turchin.  “ . . . we cannot understand social breakdown without a deep analysis of the power structures within societies.”  Turchin even notes this about Barbara Walter:  “This is where the analysis by Barbara Walter in How Civil Wars Start often becomes woefully inadequate, and sometimes outright naïve.”  He skipped the part where she eats lead paint chips with her avocado toast, but, hey.

Give Turchin his props:  he’s calling out mass immigration and stupid academics.  I think he might be especially fun to hang with after a few beers.

This is what A.I. thinks Turchin and I having a beer would look like.  Guess I’ll have to dig my mortarboard out.

But back to power structures.  Big Government is scary enough, but when Apple® or Google™ is holding the leash, it becomes even scarier.  I like capitalism, but what we have here is called by Turchin “Plutocracy” but I like the more common (in our circles) name of Kleptocracy.  That’s what it is, really.

Societal power is now, really, in lockstep with the Kleptocracy.  It has created this weird amalgamation of Leftist/Communist/Corporatist power.  At this point, Turchin attempts to analyze the power structures of the United States to guess at what the future might bring, noting that his work is, “nowhere near advanced enough to achieve such a feat of modeling.”

Honesty.

I love it.

I’m going to take an aside here based on comments I’ve had so far in this series of posts.  It isn’t communist or socialist to question the rules put in place by the Kleptocrats to pump more money to them.  We haven’t had true laissez-faire capitalist system in this country since the 1880s, at least.  Huge corporations are not laissez-faire – they’re government creations, and to be against them isn’t to be against capitalism.

I do think that we have the idea because a system has worked in the past that it just needs tweaks.  That is simply not the case – our system has brought us to where we are today.  Simple actions like having end-by dates on corporations, turning senators back to state-appointed positions, abolishing all Federal income tax and getting the primary funds for the central government from tariffs . . . radical ideas.  But we have to stop the wealth pump, and true libertarians should be all over this because domination over liberty from a corporation is no different than domination over liberty by a government.

End of digression.  Back to the book.

Why did the libertarian cross the road?  “Am I being detained?”

The most common outcome, Turchin notes, is that lots of elites (and wannabes) simply realize they can’t be elite anymore.  Obviously, this will be uncomfortable for many, many professors who now have to work 40 hours at Starbucks™ instead of handing out worthless anthropology and ancient Japanese literature degrees.

This doesn’t happen gradually.  It happens when the University closes.  As we’ve discussed before (link below on Seneca’s Cliff), things are built only slowly, but collapse in an instant.  The extreme case, which is now very, very much on the table is that the elite positions (and some of the wannabes) are eliminated as a result of Civil War 2.0.

The Economy – At Seneca’s Cliff?

 

Who will lead that war?  Probably someone on the fringe of the current Elite who is angry.  Why from the Elite?  They have connections and power that allow them to put together a credible alternative power structure fairly quickly.  Examples from our history?

George Washington was as rich and famous as Elon back in the day, and it wasn’t a bunch of poor dudes that ran either the Union or the Confederacy.

Of course, an alternative is to shut down the Wealth Pump.  I mean, it will be shut down one way or another, but if it’s done before things are in a ditch, it might be better, though I’m fairly certain the first wheel went into that ditch back before 1990.  Turchin notes that he thinks if we shut the Wealth Pump down now, well, that turns Elites into radicals in big numbers and will result in an even bloodier war.

Astrophysicists started a radical protest group:  Black Matter Lives.

From his study, the growth of violence and instability isn’t linear – it builds on itself like an epidemic – Turchin calls this the “virus of radicalism”.  Turchin notes that:  “As long as the power of revolutionary groups is less than the power of the state’s coercive apparatus, the overall level of violence can be suppressed to a low level.”

They want to stop the signal.  But there’s one lesson that even the Soviets learned:  you can’t stop the signal.

Why do the Elite so desperately want your guns?  It gives the average American citizen a real veto over intolerable actions by the government.  This is why the Left and Levis™ jeans want to take your modern sporting rifle:  it makes you a more compliant consoooomer.  And if they get the 2nd Amendment, the 1st won’t be far behind, because ideas like these are dangerous.

This explains all the effort in censoring places like this one.  The ideas here are dangerous, and oh, so sexy.

Turchin’s “everything as-is” scenario shows “an outbreak of serious violence during the 2020s and, if nothing is done to shut down the (Wealth P)ump, a repeat every fifty to sixty years.”  Civil wars are what turn radicals into moderates – von Clausewitz wrote about this centuries ago.  Wars are won when the will of the people to fight is erased.  Places like this one keep spirits high, and attack those whose goal is the destruction of our freedom and way of life.

I honestly hope Joe Biden gets better.  And recovers from his dementia, too.

Who else have they attacked?

Turchin, writing before Tucker Carlson was fired, said, “Carlson is interesting because he is the most outspoken antiestablishment critic operating within the corporate media.  Whereas media such as CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, and The Washington Post are losing credibility, among the general population . . . Carlson is growing ever more popular.”

Now that, my friends, explains it all, and Turchin’s comments show the real reason Carlson was silenced, and Turchin notes (as I have opined in some places) that Tucker is the real nucleus of the Right.

Trump’s real sins had nothing to do with January 6, it had to do with him not starting wars and actually trying to stop immigration, which the Wealth Pump requires.

What does Turchin say that history tells us (p. 223-4)?

  • In 2/3 of cases, most of the Elite stopped being elite.
  • In 1/6 of cases, the Elite was “targeted for extermination.”
  • “The probability of ruler assassination was 40%.”
  • 75% of cases “ended in revolutions or civil wars or both.”
  • In 1/5 of cases, “the civil war dragged on for a century or longer.”
  • 60% of cases led to “the death of the state.”

Grim.  Really, really grim.

We are at the brink of a civil war.  I’ve been saying that for years now.  One branch of my family moved to the United States from Germany in 1890 because they saw a massive European war coming.  They left 25 years too soon.

Seeing what’s coming isn’t hard.  I can tell you the future in some instances.  If I walk out in front of a speeding bus, I’m going to die.  It’s not clairvoyance, it’s happening to us, right here and now.  Just as my family saw the European war that would be known as World War I coming, I am certain that we are on the steps to Civil War 2.0.

It took a lot to get this picture out of the A.I. – I can get the A.I. to draw everyone from Seinfeld, but it draws the line at Morgan Freeman.

I also cannot stress enough that Civil War 2.0 isn’t my wish, this is the data and there is, at this point, nothing anyone can do to stop it.  I believe the road ahead will be more terrible in some locations than many can even imagine.

Here be dragons.

I do still believe that on the other side, the torch of Liberty will still be burning brightly in a new world where what is True, Beautiful, and Good will be recognized as such.  Why?  Because in the end, Liberty wins, despite all of those who would try to steal it away – it burns in the hearts of all who I would call men and is loved deeply by all of those who I would call women.

Which does not include Barbara F. Walter and her fat, lead paint chip eating face.

It’s a rare book where I put it down, look at the conclusions, and say, “Damn, I wish I had written that book.”

Turchin brings it home.

If you like reading non-fiction and are a regular at Wilder Wealthy and Wise, I recommend you read this one, even though Turchin sucks at adding memes to his work.

The Only Thing You Need To Read Today: Wilder’s End Times Book Review: The Face Of The Crisis And The Aftermath

“If that’s the end of time, I got a front row seat with a big tub of buttered popcorn and a greasy half-live chicken leg.” – Anchorman 2:  The Legend Continues

A guy on a tractor just drove by yelling about the end of everything.  I think it was Farmer Geddon.

I think that Turchin has proven that, at least in some circumstances, he can show when trouble is coming.   Again, I’d like to see his database and understand in greater detail how it works, but if you look at

  • Every elite scrambling for position,
  • Every mechanism possible being found to extract another dollar from a consooooomer so that the Wealth Pump can be fed, and
  • the current graph of the interest payments that the United States will have to pay sooner rather than later, it’s clear:

There Be Dragons Here.

How the crisis unfolds, however, is dependent upon the structure of society itself, according to Turchin.  “ . . . we cannot understand social breakdown without a deep analysis of the power structures within societies.”  Turchin even notes this about Barbara Walter:  “This is where the analysis by Barbara Walter in How Civil Wars Start often becomes woefully inadequate, and sometimes outright naïve.”  He skipped the part where she eats lead paint chips with her avocado toast, but, hey.

Give Turchin his props:  he’s calling out mass immigration and stupid academics.  I think he might be especially fun to hang with after a few beers.

This is what A.I. thinks Turchin and I having a beer would look like.  Guess I’ll have to dig my mortarboard out.

But back to power structures.  Big Government is scary enough, but when Apple® or Google™ is holding the leash, it becomes even scarier.  I like capitalism, but what we have here is called by Turchin “Plutocracy” but I like the more common (in our circles) name of Kleptocracy.  That’s what it is, really.

Societal power is now, really, in lockstep with the Kleptocracy.  It has created this weird amalgamation of Leftist/Communist/Corporatist power.  At this point, Turchin attempts to analyze the power structures of the United States to guess at what the future might bring, noting that his work is, “nowhere near advanced enough to achieve such a feat of modeling.”

Honesty.

I love it.

I’m going to take an aside here based on comments I’ve had so far in this series of posts.  It isn’t communist or socialist to question the rules put in place by the Kleptocrats to pump more money to them.  We haven’t had true laissez-faire capitalist system in this country since the 1880s, at least.  Huge corporations are not laissez-faire – they’re government creations, and to be against them isn’t to be against capitalism.

I do think that we have the idea because a system has worked in the past that it just needs tweaks.  That is simply not the case – our system has brought us to where we are today.  Simple actions like having end-by dates on corporations, turning senators back to state-appointed positions, abolishing all Federal income tax and getting the primary funds for the central government from tariffs . . . radical ideas.  But we have to stop the wealth pump, and true libertarians should be all over this because domination over liberty from a corporation is no different than domination over liberty by a government.

End of digression.  Back to the book.

Why did the libertarian cross the road?  “Am I being detained?”

The most common outcome, Turchin notes, is that lots of elites (and wannabes) simply realize they can’t be elite anymore.  Obviously, this will be uncomfortable for many, many professors who now have to work 40 hours at Starbucks™ instead of handing out worthless anthropology and ancient Japanese literature degrees.

This doesn’t happen gradually.  It happens when the University closes.  As we’ve discussed before (link below on Seneca’s Cliff), things are built only slowly, but collapse in an instant.  The extreme case, which is now very, very much on the table is that the elite positions (and some of the wannabes) are eliminated as a result of Civil War 2.0.

The Economy – At Seneca’s Cliff?

Who will lead that war?  Probably someone on the fringe of the current Elite who is angry.  Why from the Elite?  They have connections and power that allow them to put together a credible alternative power structure fairly quickly.  Examples from our history?

George Washington was as rich and famous as Elon back in the day, and it wasn’t a bunch of poor dudes that ran either the Union or the Confederacy.

Of course, an alternative is to shut down the Wealth Pump.  I mean, it will be shut down one way or another, but if it’s done before things are in a ditch, it might be better, though I’m fairly certain the first wheel went into that ditch back before 1990.  Turchin notes that he thinks if we shut the Wealth Pump down now, well, that turns Elites into radicals in big numbers and will result in an even bloodier war.

Astrophysicists started a radical protest group:  Black Matter Lives.

From his study, the growth of violence and instability isn’t linear – it builds on itself like an epidemic – Turchin calls this the “virus of radicalism”.  Turchin notes that:  “As long as the power of revolutionary groups is less than the power of the state’s coercive apparatus, the overall level of violence can be suppressed to a low level.”

They want to stop the signal.  But there’s one lesson that even the Soviets learned:  you can’t stop the signal.

Why do the Elite so desperately want your guns?  It gives the average American citizen a real veto over intolerable actions by the government.  This is why the Left and Levis™ jeans want to take your modern sporting rifle:  it makes you a more compliant consoooomer.  And if they get the 2nd Amendment, the 1st won’t be far behind, because ideas like these are dangerous.

This explains all the effort in censoring places like this one.  The ideas here are dangerous, and oh, so sexy.

Turchin’s “everything as-is” scenario shows “an outbreak of serious violence during the 2020s and, if nothing is done to shut down the (Wealth P)ump, a repeat every fifty to sixty years.”  Civil wars are what turn radicals into moderates – von Clausewitz wrote about this centuries ago.  Wars are won when the will of the people to fight is erased.  Places like this one keep spirits high, and attack those whose goal is the destruction of our freedom and way of life.

I honestly hope Joe Biden gets better.  And recovers from his dementia, too.

Who else have they attacked?

Turchin, writing before Tucker Carlson was fired, said, “Carlson is interesting because he is the most outspoken antiestablishment critic operating within the corporate media.  Whereas media such as CNN, MSNBC, The New York Times, and The Washington Post are losing credibility, among the general population . . . Carlson is growing ever more popular.”

Now that, my friends, explains it all, and Turchin’s comments show the real reason Carlson was silenced, and Turchin notes (as I have opined in some places) that Tucker is the real nucleus of the Right.

Trump’s real sins had nothing to do with January 6, it had to do with him not starting wars and actually trying to stop immigration, which the Wealth Pump requires.

What does Turchin say that history tells us (p. 223-4)?

  • In 2/3 of cases, most of the Elite stopped being elite.
  • In 1/6 of cases, the Elite was “targeted for extermination.”
  • “The probability of ruler assassination was 40%.”
  • 75% of cases “ended in revolutions or civil wars or both.”
  • In 1/5 of cases, “the civil war dragged on for a century or longer.”
  • 60% of cases led to “the death of the state.”

Grim.  Really, really grim.

We are at the brink of a civil war.  I’ve been saying that for years now.  One branch of my family moved to the United States from Germany in 1890 because they saw a massive European war coming.  They left 25 years too soon.

Seeing what’s coming isn’t hard.  I can tell you the future in some instances.  If I walk out in front of a speeding bus, I’m going to die.  It’s not clairvoyance, it’s happening to us, right here and now.  Just as my family saw the European war that would known as World War I coming, I am certain that we are on the steps to Civil War 2.0.

It took a lot to get this picture out of the A.I. – I can get the A.I. to draw everyone from Seinfeld, but it draws the line at Morgan Freeman.

I also cannot stress enough that Civil War 2.0 isn’t my wish, this is the data and there is, at this point, nothing anyone can do to stop it.  I believe the road ahead will be more terrible in some locations than many can even imagine.  I do still believe that on the other side, the torch of Liberty will still be burning brightly in a new world where what is True, Beautiful, and Good will be recognized as such.  Why?  Because in the end, Liberty wins, despite all of those who would try to steal it away – it burns in the hearts of all who I would call men, and is loved deeply by all of those who I would call women.

Which does not include Barbara F. Walter and her fat, lead paint chip eating face.

It’s a rare book where I put it down, look at the conclusions, and say, “Damn, I wish I had written that book.”  Turchin brings it home.  If you like reading non-fiction and are a regular at Wilder Wealthy and Wise, I recommend you read this one, though Turchin sucks at adding memes to his work.

End Times Review, Part 2 – Defining the Dragon

“Right.  We are consumers. We are byproducts of a lifestyle obsession.  Murder, crime, poverty?  These things don’t concern me.  What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear.” – Fight Club

Why is it so hard to start a relationship with a Social Justice Warrior?  They have such high double standards.

A general note:  The Civil War 2.0 Weather Report would normally be on Monday.  Due to getting this post finished, it will likely be next Wednesday before the CWWR comes out.  It will still be wonderful and fresh as daises on a fresh daisy ranch.  I will also (likely Tuesday?) post a combined version of this book review stitched together, so we’ll have a very rare Tuesday post.  I’m doing that so that if someone wants to read it from start to finish, well, there it is. It will be slightly different for continuity and error correction. 

When last we left the impending disaster of the 21st Century, we were talking about Turchin’s theory that Elite overproduction was a primary driver in causing societies to disintegrate like records of voter irregularities in swing states in 2020.

The pool of people attempting to be elite has increased – ludicrously.  As I’ve mentioned before, it used to be that only 15% of people tried to go to college.  That’s probably the right number.  Now?  According to Turchin’s figures, over 65% of kids are trying to grasp that gold ring.

Again, the normal distribution matters, and that means at least 15% of people going to college have an IQ of less than 100.  This explains all of those Grievance Studies degrees, and Leftists pretending that education is a substitute for intellect while working behind the makeup counter at the department store.

Every time you smoke a cigarette, it takes seven minutes off your student loans.

Now, the number of doctorate degrees have tripled since 1970 (again, a Turchin number) and there’s no real sign that this is stopping, even though it’s clear that this is producing only frustrated people who have useless degrees.  Even useful degrees in STEM fields are, at this point, being overproduced in the United States compared to the number of available jobs.  Yet, the companies keep wanting the bring in foreigners on H1-B visas to take jobs that could be filled by actual Americans.

But the Americans would want a higher wage, and there would be less competition.  This would lower Google’s® profits.  This is, again, Turchin’s Wealth Pump in action.  Google© wants H1-B workers because they’re virtual slaves that they can bring in that would be happy to live four to a pod because it’s better than the monsoon-drenched mud hut in India that is consistently destroyed by volcanoes or communists or bird flu or whatever they have in India.

During COVID, gatherings of more than 260 million were banned in India.

As I talked about stability a few posts back, ideology was one of the pillars of a stable society.  Turchin pegs the 1950’s as the time of greatest ideological stability in the United States.  People felt that (again, following Turchin’s list, which is similar to previous content here, so I don’t disagree much, though I add commentary to his list from p. 100):

  • Family was a man and a woman and kids. As I’ve discussed before, this is the atom of civilization, and has been since forever – other arrangements (polyandry, polygamy) tend to be unstable in large societies.  Men want a mate.  However, in 2023, the push is on to have “anything goes” as the basis for society.  Out of wedlock babies?  A scandal.
  • Men were men, women were women and men had men jobs and women had women jobs.   Now we can’t even define what a woman is.
  • Natural bodies are better. Tats were for sailors and .mil folks, and weird piercings were borderline trashy and foreign.
  • Belonging to a religion was normal, divorce and being an atheist meant you weren’t going to be elected unless . . . no, no unless. Atheists were simply not trusted in positions of public power.

But look what progress has brought us!  (Meme as found)

Turchin then talks about some of the things that kept the Wealth Pump in check – labor unions, minimum wages, progressive taxation, welfare, low immigration.  I’d disagree on the impact and general consensus on, say, welfare, but in general.  Many of those, however, coupled with a healthy export-focused economy with targeted tariffs created a situation where the middle class flourished and grew at the expense of the Elite.  The Left and the Right were more or less together on the goal.  It was Ike who warned us about the Wealth Pump, though Eisenhower described it this way:

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”  He was a Republican wanting to make sure that the military remained sane, and that the most invulnerable weapon system wasn’t one where parts were made in every congressional district.

Now?  Turchin notes, “The ideological center today resembles a country road in Texas, almost deserted save for the yellow stripe and dead armadillos.”

I wonder if they deserved to get hit by a car, if they’re karmadillos?

From the book:  “In order for stability to return, elite overproduction somehow needs to be taken care of – historically and typically by eliminating the surplus elites through massacre, imprisonment, emigration, or forced or voluntary downward social mobility.”  Whoa!  That’s radical, and I’m glad that Turchin is saying the quiet part out loud:  something wicked this way comes.  We all feel the tension, that’s why he sold thousands of copies of his book.

We know it’s coming.  And why.

It’s the Wealth Pump.  It’s not new, and it’s been the goal for a long, long time.  Turchin quotes a 1901 edition of The Bankers’ Magazine:

“When business men were single units, each working out his own success regardless of others in desperate competition, the men who controlled the political organization were supreme . . . .  But as the business of the country has learned the secret of combination, it is gradually subverting the power of the politician and rendering him subservient to its purposes . . . .  Every form of business is capable of similar consolidation, and if other industries imitate the example of that concerned with iron and steel, it is easy to see that eventually the government of a country where the productive forces are all mustered and drilled under the control of a few leaders, must become the mere tool of these forces.”

This is the goal, not a meme, but this meme is as-found.

Again, wow.  I’ve said before I have a strong distrust of big government, and the groups that really benefit from regulations are big businesses since those regulations form a barrier to entry to smaller groups.  Who runs Bartertown?  Big businesses do – who do you think hires the regulators after they “retire” from the government?  If history is a guide, businesses are attempting to run government for their benefit – hence, the Wealth Pump.

Don’t believe me?  You’re soaking in it.  A longer quote from Turchin, (p. 129):

“The political scientist Martin Gilens . . . gathered a large data set – nearly 2000 policy issues between 1981 and 2002.  Each case matched a proposed policy change to a nation opinion survey asking a favor/oppose question about the initiative. . . .

“Statistical analysis . . . showed that the preferences of the poor had no effect on policy changes.. . . . What is surprising is that there was no – zilch, nada – effect of the average voter.  The main effect on the direction of change was due to the policy preferences of the affluent.  There was also an additional effect of interest groups, the most influential ones being business-oriented lobbies.  Once you include in the statistical model the preferences of the top 10 percent and the interest groups, the effect of the commoners is statistically indistinguishable from zero.”

Proof in a graph that voters don’t matter, since Brexit was about immigration.

Yup.  They’re not listening.  They don’t care that the majority has always wanted to deport, and deport promptly the unending stream of illegals invading our country.  That’s not good for business, so the Left has (oddly?) picked this up as a Social Justice Warrior© mantra:  “no human is illegal” meaning that they’re working to make actual workers, especially black workers, poorer.

SJW™?  It’s just another term for the intellectual elite in the pocket of big business.  Who would have thought that the SJW© would be on the same side as the military-industrial complex?

Stonetoss©, that’s who.  (All Stonetoss™ comics are used with permission.)

Why do Social Justice Warriors hate dentists?  They make teeth straight and white.

Part three of this review hits on Monday.  And it’s a doozy – you won’t want to miss it.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, Violence Is On The Menu

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

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

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

Volume V, Issue 6

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

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

In this issue:  Front Matter – New Achievement Unlocked:  Acceptable Violence – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Are We At War? Revisited – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report.  These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month.  I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues.  Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 820 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

New Achievement Unlocked:  Violence Acceptable

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Although there is a flaw in the Leftist strategy.

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

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

Violence and Censorship Update

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

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

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

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

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

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

And Ron’s not far behind:

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

Biden’s Misery Index

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

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

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

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

Political Instability:

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

Economic:

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

Illegal Aliens:

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

Are We At War? Revisited

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

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

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

He does, however, have a great lawn.

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

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

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

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

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

LINKS

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

BAD GUYS

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

GOOD GUY?

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

ONE GUY

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

BODY COUNT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

VOTE COUNT

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

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

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

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

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

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

CIVIL WAR

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

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

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

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

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

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

Enthusiasm or Passion? Choose Passion.

“In fact, it had been observed by some, that the Hobbits’ only passion was food; a rather unfair observation as we have also developed a keen interest in the brewing of ales.” – Fellowship of the Ring

Why don’t they teach sailors how to swim?  So they will defend the ship with more enthusiasm.

I hate enthusiasm.  I really do.

Enthusiasm is motivational posters.  Enthusiasm is a group of cheerleaders chanting out “H-U-S-T-L-E, hustle, hustle for victory!” when the football team is down by 25 points in the fourth quarter.  It’s pretending to be excited in a job interview.

Enthusiasm has always been a bit (as the kids today would say) cringe to me.  It really does make the skin crawl on my spine when I think about the mindless enthusiasm that I see in the world.

Why?

Because it’s generally fake.  It’s not based in any sort of reality – it’s a series of mindless platitudes that don’t mean anything or show any true or real commitment.  Enthusiasm is what I see from political candidates when they’re at their most smarmy and useless.  Oh, wait, that’s every day for them.

Like I said, I hate enthusiasm.

But I love passion.

Cattle don’t cheer, but I heard that they give encowregment.

Passion is real, it’s deep, and it’s not at all afraid of Truth.  Passion is the part of you that keeps you playing in that football game when you’re down by 25 points in the fourth quarter.  Passion is the fire inside of you.

When I was in high school, every year the wrestling coach would have a parents’ meeting at the start of the season.  As a part of the meeting, he’d have a demonstration match between two of his wrestlers.  I was lucky enough to appear in the two of those matches, one held my junior year and one held my senior year.  I think he did it to get the parents excited about the season.

In my junior year, I was wrestling a senior that was stronger and better than me – my only claim to fame was that I outweighed him by 15 or so pounds.  When we started the match, he slipped on a throw and ended up on his back – I got the takedown plus two back points before he reversed me.  He won the match 5-4.

It was the best I ever wrestled against him.

I’ve never met The Rock, but I heard he was shy.  I guess I would have expected him to be a Little Boulder.

The next year I was the senior wrestling a junior who outweighed me by about 35 pounds.  Right before the match, he said to me, “Wilder, please don’t pin me in front of everyone.”

My response?  “Jimmy, if I can pin you, I will.  This is wrestling.”

There was, in my mind, no half-measure in a wrestling match.  To go easy on someone stepping out on to the mat would, in my mind, then and now, be cheating.  I was passionate about wrestling, and the mat was sacred to me – you’re out there just you and another man, going toe to toe, and every second you spend on the mat in a real match you give it everything you have.

That, in my mind, is passion, though you might just say, “Wilder’s just a tool” and you wouldn’t be wrong.  But to not pin Jimmy if I could, well, that would be cheating the sport.  It wasn’t personal, it was the simple principle that every time, every single time I went on the mat it was deadly serious to me – I gave every single bit of myself.  To do less than I could?  That would be a lie.

I asked for no quarter, and I gave no quarter.  Jimmy was still my friend afterwards,

I bought a tie for my dog to wear on our walks.  He looks sharp when he does his business.

I think passion is like that.  It’s a drive from the core of your being – it’s not about trying to be something, it’s who you are.  Passion alone is an amazing thing, and allows peak performance.

The other variable is talent.  Just by my body’s geometry I’m unsuited to some sports.  Long distance running?  Probably not with these short Viking legs and long Norse torso.  Lifting very heavy things?

That’s more like it.

Talent is also unfairly distributed.  I’ve seen people who have zero talent for something throw their entire lives, passionately into an activity.  Ma Wilder was passionate about art.  And, I still have some of the landscapes she did as oil paintings.  When it came to landscapes, she had a gift.

But when it came to people?  Ma was Modern Museum of Bad Art bad at drawing people.

The one on the right looks like the clues I get in Pictionary®.

Add talent to passion?

That’s where “world class” comes in to existence, because passion is the only thing that can keep a man driving himself to his limit day after day.  The best concert violinists practice more than the average ones, not less.  Their talent plus passion is what creates that world class performance.  Talent alone?  You get a collection of people that all fall into the “could have been” category, gifted people who didn’t have the passion to turn that gift into world class performance.

Working hard, day after day, year after year, is what it takes to be great at anything.  Raw talent isn’t enough.

Fake enthusiasm?  No thanks.  It’s time to get passionate and angry about something.

Me?  I’m starting with raisins.  Man, they piss me off.

Maybe The Kids Are Alright?

“We’re a generation of men raised by women. I’m wondering if another woman is really the answer we need.” – Fight Club

The French love my generation.  They say it has a certain Gen X sais quoi.

I can see what’s going on, I really can.  To be fair, there are dozens of things, each day that I see that are signs of The Change.  In many ways, The Change has been coming for decades, and has hit us harder than old age has hit Madonna.

Many of the changes we’ve seen are negative.  I generally write about them on Mondays and Wednesdays.  But Fridays?  No.  Because despite of all of the negatives that I see, I am as certain as the outcome of a vote if a Leftist is counting it that we will win.

What does winning mean?  Well, it doesn’t mean that things will go back to “the way they were” – whatever that was.  We won’t see that because those times are gone.  The new good times will be different in many ways.  Some I can guess because they’re inevitable, and some I can’t even fathom.

No, winning means a place for freedom and families and the things we associate with virtue.  It doesn’t mean endless wealth, and it doesn’t mean endless amusement.

Why is Michael Jackson bad at bowling?  He’s dead.

The big reason that this cannot last is because the current trend is the most unnatural and unstable in the history of humanity, with a few potential exceptions here and there that only lasted for a few decades.

This instability is in our favor.  We can already see that the current boys in high school are fed up with Leftism and everything Woke.  They’re done with it.  They see that Leftism is poison.  They’re rejecting it.

One reason is simple – it’s in the nature of youth to rebel.  And, the Leftists having won so many battles are now The Man.  They’re the ones the boys are rebelling against, and it’s glorious.  The Leftists thought that when they took over and had the ability to control what went in the minds, that was the end of the story.

Yet, the Leftists still think they’re rebels working against the system when they manifestly are the system.  The boys in school can see that, and they react accordingly, completely making those Leftists spitting out the propaganda go crazy.  The Leftists are like like that guy who is in his forties and still is wearing his letter jacket because he wants the kids to think he’s cool.  Now, based on every picture I’ve seen of every Leftist, the word “cool” isn’t remotely the first word I’d use to describe them.  It’s not in the top 100.  In reality, they fall somewhere lower than “turd stooge”.

The Three Stooges can do anything.  They have Moementum.

This turns off the boys.  Now, the girls are another subject altogether because the feminist imperative to teach the gospel of avoiding consequences of actions at all costs seems to resonate with them.  In the turmoil to come, it’s the views of the boys that will matter the most.

The youth has also seen the fruits of Peak Leftism and are disgusted by it.  Just like Gen X was shaped by the time they grew up in, being latchkey kids that learned from an early age to be independent, Gen Z is learning lessons about not trusting the government.

Their pivotal moment (so far) was the insane combination of COVID plus the Fentanyl Floyd riots.  They see that their concept of “equal justice for all” has been tainted by racial politics to twist a system where punishment is based not on the crimes committed, but rather by the victim status of the alleged criminal.

Over three years, drug free!

How will that manifest?  I think it will manifest in a deep distrust of the justice system, and I think that it will lead to, ahem, extrajudicial endings to criminal cases.

They’re also viewing the world and seeing it fall apart with cops that are prevented from arresting mobs looting stores week after week.  As I believe white Gen Xers were propagandized to be the least racist generation in the history of humanity, I believe that white Gen Z kids will view race the same way black Gen Z kids will, with huge distrust.

The next thing in the mix is what hasn’t happened yet – the economic changes that are due.  Just as there is a distrust being built up in the justice and governmental systems, there will be a distrust of money being created out of nothing.  The system is going to, very soon, fail them in a spectacular way.

The economic changes will change them.  We’ll still be able to send billions to the Ukraine, but it won’t matter because a billion won’t buy a Happy Meal®.

In the Ukraine it’s called corruption.  In the United States we don’t talk about it.

Gen X was cynical.  Gen Z will likely be a force of nature.  If they aren’t the hard men, Gen Alpha will be.  We’re that close, folks.

The pendulum is swinging back, and will swing back with a vengeance.  We really have reached Peak Woke or Peak Clown World (honk honk!) and it’s here.  I’ll see the start of The Change, but likely won’t live to see the next Golden Age.

That’s okay.  I know it will be back, and I know this – there will be free men living on this world as long as there are men living on this world.  There are ups and downs, but nothing is finished, this isn’t over.

We will win because we are strong.  And we will win because for thousands of years we’ve been winning, and that won’t stop anytime soon, no matter how dark it looks outside right now.

Enjoy your day.  It’s dark out, but the ending to this story will be glorious.