George Washington – Page 5 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Christmas 2019 – Complete With Asian Stereo Type

“Merry Christmas, Argyle.” – Die Hard

So, true story – Pugsley came home from school, handed me this painting. “What do you think?” My response: “Looks like Frosty is coming to kill me.” Pugsley: “Yup, that’s it.” That’s my boy!

STATELY WILDER MANOR, Christmas Eve, 2019

Yesterday was a quiet Christmas Eve. About the time I was ten years old, my brother (also named John Wilder*) and I got the ultimate concession a kid could get: we convinced Ma and Pa Wilder that we should open our presents not on Christmas morning, but instead on Christmas Eve. At a certain point, this becomes an easy sell. Get up at 5:30 AM and groggily watch children ripping wrapping paper through the gauze of pain and regret of a Christmas Eve hangover, or have a nice, calm Christmas morning that involves sleeping somewhere beyond dawn?

Yeah, that’s easier than selling life insurance to people connected to Hillary Clinton.

After leaving the Department of State, Hillary Clinton’s Secret Service code name was “Video.” Since he was connected to so many high ranking political figures, Jeff Epstein’s code name was “Radio Star.”

Since I’m not a hypocrite, we Wilder’s have done the same on my watch as soon as my kids figure out that Santa Claus and functional socialism aren’t real. It makes sense. Christmas has a charm that, like an open jar of mayonnaise left on the counter for a week, evolves. As you age, the very essence of Christmas changes.

It’s easy to surprise and delight a five-year-old at Christmas. When they open a present they didn’t even know existed, getting to amazement is easy. Walkie-talkies in 2019? What sort of sorcery is this? I have seen a five year old that regularly uses an iPad® that can access thousands of movies look amazed when confronted with a simple walkie-talkie. When young, Christmas was a wonder – it was like the rules were suspended for a day. Ma Wilder even let me out of the cage under the stairs.

But when you have older children, say, teenagers, they have a list. A long list. And they know your limits – they know exactly how much you’re going to spend on them at Christmas and they pick their presents to maximize cash consumption. This year The Boy asked for video game thing. Since he claims he got a 4.0 at Big State U, we indulged him. What Pugsley asked for was surprising to me: he wanted a record player turntable and a stereo amplifier.

Pugsley’s amplifier was on sale – it was missing a volume knob – I couldn’t turn it down.

When I was near Pugsley’s age, this was exactly the gift I wanted. I bought him the stereo and turntable he was looking for – honestly, in this day and age I was surprised they even made either of those devices anymore except in backwards stone-age places like Cairo, Calcutta, or Chicago. Between cell phones and computers being able to instantly access tens of millions of songs and then flawlessly play an endless string of them, why would someone want to own a device that plays a maximum of 22 minutes before you physically have to get up to flip the record over? Hell, I’m so lazy that if I won an award for being lazy I’d have The Mrs. go pick it up for me.

But Pugsley was certain that was what he wanted.

Pugsley opened up the box with the turntable and then I realized he had no idea what he was doing – no idea at all. I’m pretty sure he’d never even seen a record played before in real life. Nevertheless, he set it up the turntable. Then he pulled out an old album – Queen’s A Night At The Opera. I hadn’t seen this album in years, not since it had been packed up before Pugsley was born when The Mrs., The Boy and I moved to Alaska. The Mrs. never even looked in the box – she had asked me when we were dating if I had a police record.

“No, just one by Sting.”

I’ll admit it wasn’t fair. But he got even: one time got me a Cisformer® for my birthday – it’s a car that starts out as a car and stays a car.

My brother had originally bought A Night At The Opera, and in a fit of religiosity had abandoned it along with several other records (Rolling Stones®, Thin Lizzy©, and Sweet™ come to mind) when he moved out to make his way in the big world. Or maybe I stole them liberated them. Little brothers do that, you know. Regardless, I have a dozen or so albums that originated from him. Or, to make that statement more accurate, Pugsley has the albums now. As I reflect, I realize even the word “album” is as antiquated as Nancy Pelosi’s virginity. Heck, it even predates her senility.

Regardless, I realized that Pugsley had no understanding of how to even hold a record. I stopped him as he began to pull A Night At The Opera out of the sleeve. After all, an original 1975 pressing of that album might cost all of $8.00, plus shipping and handling off of VinylDan69’s store on Ebay®.

“Stop! Here, you hold it like this, by the edges. And then,” putting my thumb on one edge while putting my fingers on the label to stabilize the album, “you slide it into the sleeve like this. Don’t let it drop – it will cut through the paper sleeve.” I then showed him how I put the album and sleeve back into the cover – with the opening to the sleeve pointed up so the album didn’t slide out.

I might have left my clothes on the floor, I might have used the same bath towel until it dried as stiff as concrete in the Hoover Dam, and my refrigerator might have resembled a biological weapon experiment prohibited by the Korean Armistice Agreement of 1953, but I always took care of my albums. Nobody likes to hear “The boys are ba-The boys are ba-The boys are ba” for forty straight minutes. No. You want to hear that they’re back, and there’s gonna be trouble. And you can forget about the old trick of taping two pennies to the tonearm, given inflation I’d have to put about $0.50 up there.

Pugsley caught on quickly, and put the record on the player. He picked up the tonearm, and gently placed it on the record. It started to slide immediately across the face of the record, quickly, towards the center.

“It’s skating! Did you take the cover off of the needle?” The answer, of course, was no. Soon enough the needle cover was removed, and Pugsley had a fully functional stereo.

I even hear that the band Europe has a new record out – The Vinyl Countdown.

He took the turntable and amplifier into his room and connected them to a set of Sony® speakers old enough that the rubber around the speaker cones had cracked and deteriorated to a fine black powder. As I rubbed powder grains between my fingers, I thought that if the powder was hydrated it might reanimate into my ex-wife’s soul, and nobody wants that.

But those Sony® speakers were old: I think they once belonged to Pa Wilder. He gave them to me sometime after Sinatra passed on. It’s at Christmas that I reflect on what kind of a father Frank Sinatra was – if you were bad, no ice in your drink.

I followed Pugsley back and watched as he put an old 45rpm single of mine on the turntable. He gently set the tonearm down on the edge of the record. It hissed and popped – a sound I hadn’t heard in decades. Then this mighty classic of Western Civilization started playing:

Yes, that’s Eddie Murphy singing the “Norton” parts.

Pugsley looked at me, puzzled, as if waiting for some explanation for the audible abomination emanating from his Christmas present. Yes, A Night At The Opera was my brother’s record. But this fine Joe Piscopo song? Yeah. I spent actual cash money to buy it. I checked to see if maybe this was the B-side. Nope. On either side was the same song: The Honeymooner’s Rap. I had spent money, intentionally, to buy this song.

I was at a loss. How do you explain to a middle school kid that the song was a 34 year old parody of a television show that was cancelled 64 years ago? And, a television show (The Honeymooners) that I’d only seen one episode of, ever?

Nah, too much backstory. Plus I’m trying to get him to be wise with his money. I shut up.

Pugsley: “Dad . . . this song is so,” he paused, and I imagined him looking for an adjective that wouldn’t be offensive to me on Christmas Eve. “90’s,” he concluded.

John Wilder: “80’s.”

Pugsley: “Whatever.”

I left him to discover music written by obscure musicians who had long since developed careers in real estate or the food service industry. Oh, Steven Tyler, who now plays a lesbian aunt on the Big Bang Theory®. I think.

Well, at least Aerosmith® taught me how to cook Chinese food. I can now wok this way.

Christmas 2020 is decidedly anti-frenetic. Yes, Pugsley was attempting to get everyone into the room earlier in the day on Christmas Eve so we could open presents, but he was calm about it – not uncontrollably shaking like a Chihuahua on a chalupa.

The rule is that the youngest Wilder distribute the presents from under the tree. Pugsley did so. It’s also been the rule that the youngest Wilder gets to open presents first. Not this year. “Okay, Dad, you go first,” ordered Pugsley.

I did.

It wasn’t exactly a surprise when I opened a box filled with roasted coffee beans from Alaska that The Mrs. ordered from Alaska. For whatever reason, my favorite coffee is still Musher’s Blend© from the North Pole Coffee Company™ in Fairbanks, Alaska (LINK). I have two pounds, thanks to The Mrs. I had, of course, known this before I asked The Boy to wrap the box. Disclosure: I get no money from them. Just coffee. And then just when I pay for it. (Guys at North Pole Coffee: I’m completely willing to take free coffee. I have ethics, but, you know, this is coffee.)

So, no real surprises.

They did a brain scan of her: “Coffee. Coffee. Coffeecoffeecoffeecoffeecoffee. Coffee.”

Christmas day will be calm, too. We’ll have turkey, mashed potatoes, and gravy. I’m pretty sure that we don’t have any plans at all. Not having little ones, we’ll get up when we get up, check the news, have some coffee, and turn the oven on to cook the turkey. The Mrs. already made George Washington’s egg nog (Washington: Musk, Patton, and Jack Daniels all Rolled into . . . the ONE), so I don’t even have anything to complain about.

Where’s the Christmas wine? I’m not getting up anytime soon.

Merry Christmas, one and all!

*Yes. My brother and I have the same first name, for reals. As we were born seven years apart, my parents had apparently forgotten they had another child when I arrived eleven years later, so I stole his name. That’s okay. I also managed to ruin several of his dates, end one of his relationships, wreck his car, and throw up on his school clothes one night. So I guess that makes us even.

Happy Thanksgiving 2019: Including Booze, Zombies, Joan Crawford, and George Washington

“Thanksgiving is falling on a Thursday this year?” – Home Improvement

You can make more friends with six bottles of wine and a kind word than with just a kind word. I think that is somewhere in the Bible?

Thanksgiving is, I think, my favorite holiday. When done properly, it is a holiday devoted to, well, giving thanks. It’s like a super easy quiz question – what you’re supposed to do is right in the label.

When I was growing up I certainly looked forward to getting presents at Christmas. But the very presents that made Christmas so exciting when I was five or six somehow detracted from the holiday when I was eleven or twelve. Getting presents was still nice, but when it came to serenity, nothing matched Thanksgiving. At a younger age, presents were more important than serenity. As I grew older? Serenity took a lead. Now? Serenity is miles ahead of presents.

Ma Wilder saved the tins. I have no idea why. Also? Better if the sauce is not too blue.

I should point out, that when growing up, I lived in our mountain redoubt, Wilder’s Nest. The nearest town that had a fast food restaurant was 45 miles away. The nearest store that you could buy a cassette tape at was 45 miles away in that same town. In a radius of 10 miles from my house, the total population was probably 200 people or less. It was so rural that I thought laughing stock were amused cattle.

But Black Friday didn’t exist. Shopping the day after Thanksgiving? Nope – in fact if we left the property at all (besides driving 30 miles to pick up Grandma Wilder to bring her to Thanksgiving dinner and drop her off afterwards back at her place) it would be to see how deep the snow was up on the pass. Not that we didn’t go outside – on Thanksgiving day my brother and I would often throw a football in the front yard, if it wasn’t too cold. And as the youngest, it was my job to bring firewood from the pile to the house.

You have to be very careful hanging coats at Joan’s house. Apologies to Blue Oyster Cult®.

What we did do, however, was be together as a family. We played cards. We (minus Ma Wilder) watched football. I read novels. Pa Wilder might fiddle in the shop with something, especially if Ma Wilder was irritated about something. It was past hunting season, but too soon for snowmachines. The weekend was quiet. And not quiet like hanging out in the bushes at the neighbor’s bedroom window quiet, I mean really quiet.

I can’t say that Christmas was quiet. Heck, it’s not quiet now. And while most Thanksgiving holidays looked the same, Christmas was often much more memorable – but memorable for the wrong reason. My junior year left me as mad as I can remember after a Christmas, and not because I didn’t get what I wanted. But I can’t remember a bad Thanksgiving.

Even now, Thanksgiving has always been a relaxing day for The Mrs. and I – we never let it be dictated by outside forces – Thanksgiving is a family holiday – our immediate family. Since we’ve been in Mayberry, we certainly do have dinner often with my in-laws, but if we decided to go to Nepal to have tea with Liam Neeson so he can paint our toenails again, well, we’d do that. On Christmas, we give into that pressure. But not on Thanksgiving.

I resent vegans. They eat the food my food eats. So inconsiderate.

But the name is Thanksgiving. Being thankful, having gratitude for the things around you is very healthy. People who are grateful are more healthy, have better relationships, sleep better, and have better self-esteem whether or not they get a participation trophy.

What am I thankful for?

My family.
The fact that my family puts up with me.
Canned corn.
The relative prosperity I live in and my economic situation.
The readers of this blog.
That the aliens from Tau Ceti no longer come at night and impregnate me.
That the aliens from Tau Ceti pay child support for the stupid alien babies.
That we have the freedom that we do have in our country today.
That The Mrs. uses a snow-globe instead of her glass eye during the holidays.
That the troubles I have had in life have made me better.
That I still see amazing things every day – a great sunrise, a tree silhouetted against the stars.
The health of my family.
People being kind when they have no reason to be.
That every week I get to learn something new, and make something new.

Okay, the two of you that saw Firefly® are laughing.

George Washington tried to capture the essence of Thanksgiving in his first proclamation:

By the President of the United States of America, a Proclamation.

Whereas it is the duty of all Nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly to implore his protection and favor and whereas both Houses of Congress have by their joint Committee requested me to recommend to the People of the United States a day of public thanksgiving and prayer to be observed by acknowledging with grateful hearts the many signal favors of Almighty God especially by affording them an opportunity peaceably to establish a form of government for their safety and happiness.

Now therefore I do recommend and assign Thursday the 26th day of November next to be devoted by the People of these States to the service of that great and glorious Being, who is the beneficent Author of all the good that was, that is, or that will be. That we may then all unite in rendering unto him our sincere and humble thanks:

for his kind care and protection of the People of this Country previous to their becoming a Nation

for the signal and manifold mercies, and the favorable interpositions of his Providence which we experienced in the course and conclusion of the late war

for the great degree of tranquility, union, and plenty, which we have since enjoyed

for the peaceable and rational manner, in which we have been enabled to establish constitutions of government for our safety and happiness, and particularly the national one now lately instituted

for the civil and religious liberty with which we are blessed; and the means we have of acquiring and diffusing useful knowledge;

and in general for all the great and various favors which he hath been pleased to confer upon us.

And also that we may then unite in most humbly offering our prayers and supplications to the great Lord and Ruler of Nations and beseech him to pardon our national and other transgressions:

to enable us all, whether in public or private stations, to perform our several and relative duties properly and punctually

to render our national government a blessing to all the people, by constantly being a Government of wise, just, and constitutional laws, discreetly and faithfully executed and obeyed

to protect and guide all Sovereigns and Nations (especially such as have shewn kindness unto us) and to bless them with good government, peace, and concord

to promote the knowledge and practice of true religion and virtue, and the encrease of science among them and us

and generally to grant unto all Mankind such a degree of temporal prosperity as he alone knows to be best.

Given under my hand at the City of New York the third day of October in the year of our Lord 1789.

Geo. Washington

George Washington spent about 10% of his presidential salary on whiskey. He had more than one gun. He grew tobacco. So, is the ATF proof of British collusion?

I know that George isn’t universally loved: Lord Bison, for instance, is not amused. But Washington did do some things right, and set a precedent that more or less set the stage for retaining the freedoms we still have left, and has the best eggnog recipe (Washington: Musk, Patton, and Jack Daniels all Rolled into . . . the ONE). And as to his proclamation of Thanksgiving: I’m not sure that a similar document could be written today, especially since we have spellcheck.

It’s well known that zombies will ignore Congress. They want to eat brains, right?

Regardless of what you are thankful for, I wish you a very happy Thanksgiving!

Patrick Henry, The Constitution, and You Can’t Blame The Boomers

“The colonel behind me… that’s Colonel William Aylett. Now, his great-grandfather was the Virginian, Patrick Henry.” – Gettysburg

While salting his food, Patrick Henry said, “If this be season, make the most of it.”

The biggest genius of the Constitution was an afterthought, the result of a protest. Patrick Henry refused to go to the Constitutional Convention held in 1787, convinced that it was merely an excuse to create a strong central government out of the relatively loose Articles of Confederation. And even though it’s my policy to never trust anyone whose name consists of two first names, I’ll admit that Patrick Henry was right.

When the new Constitution was finally released, Henry (among others) complained, mainly that it didn’t contain a bill of rights. The promise was that if the Constitution was passed, the first act would be to create a bill of rights. Unlike a political promise in 2019, the framers actually did what they said, probably because in 1792 a state could have fairly easily left the United States, since at the time that was widely assumed to be a right held by states. The states voted into the agreement, the states could vote themselves out.

The Bill of Rights was passed by the House and Senate, and sent to the states for ratification – 10 of the 12 proposed rights were ratified. The 11^th, the Right for Ben Franklin to be Naked Whenever He Wants was narrowly defeated by people who had seen Franklin naked. The 12^th, establishing a National Taco Tuesday and Mandatory Metallica® failed initially but was finally ratified in 1994, much to the relief of radio stations everywhere.

When does this bill show up? Is it monthly?

One objection to the Bill of Rights was that it was felt that the states could do a good enough job protecting the rights of their citizens – the Federal government didn’t have all that much power, right? Another objection? It was felt that listing the rights would allow people to think that those were the only rights. That second objection is somewhat prophetic, especially since (by my count) nearly every right in the Bill of Rights has been violated at some point.

Me? I’m pretty glad Patrick Henry got the job done – the Bill of Rights has been instrumental in keeping us as free as we are today. My Aunt told me I was related to him somehow, and that’s not hard to believe – he had a total of 17 children, so there have to be a zillion descendants. Being his great-great-great-grandkid isn’t all that rare, though I imagine getting a good night’s sleep at the Henry household was rare – especially for Mrs. Henry. If I were to brag about being related to Patrick Henry, it would be like an iguana bragging that he was descended from a velociraptor. While it may be true, it won’t help the iguana get a part in the next Jurassic Park® movie, especially after what his cousin, Harvey Weinstein did. Most people don’t know that Weinstein is part iguana, on his mother’s side.

I hear that freedom weighs a WashingTon.

If that’s where we ended, with a stronger central government and a strong bill of rights, we’d be fine. We’d have a Bill of Rights that protects Americans from abuse by their government in many different ways. But in the decision of Marbury v. Madison, the newly installed Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, John Marshall, had a tequila-inspired vision that the Supreme Court had the power to invalidate laws that it felt were contradictory to the Constitution.

This is nowhere in the Constitution itself. Marshall made the logical leap that since the Constitution wasn’t a vague set of political principles but rather the supreme law of the land, it had to be followed as if it was a law. So far, so good. If Congress made a law that couldn’t be interpreted to follow the Constitution or the Bill of Rights, the law had to be made invalid by the Supreme Court.

A Supreme Court is just regular court, but with sour cream and tomatoes.

Thomas Jefferson had a different view: he felt that each branch of government had the power to declare acts by the other branches unconstitutional. Presidents have, in multiple cases, not enforced laws they felt were unconstitutional.

Jefferson further felt that states could declare laws that were especially in violation of the Constitution void. The recent legalization of marijuana in multiple states without intervention from the Federal government has proven the principle that Jefferson wrote about early in the life of the country. If it took a Constitutional amendment to make booze illegal, why shouldn’t it take one to make marijuana illegal at the Federal level. How can the Federal government legally make enforceable laws dealing with the amount of decongestant I can buy?

Because power keeps flowing to the Federal government.

The Constitution was written in 1787, and the Bill of Rights was fully ratified in 1791. The words in the Constitution clearly have changed only through the 27 amendments to the Constitution.

Hey! I can write bathroom graffiti that kids can’t understand!

One concept in English Common Law is that of precedent. From Wikipedia®: Common Law Legal systems place great value on deciding cases according to consistent principled rules, so that similar facts will yield similar and predictable outcomes, and observance of precedent is the mechanism by which that goal is attained. The precedent of the Supreme Court is supposed to remain unchanged.

Most of the time, it is.

Yet there have been 141 cases where the Supreme Court changed its opinion and rejected previous Supreme Court decisions. 102 of those cases came during or after 1960: that was about the time that the Supreme Court became activist in finding new “rights” – the right of people to use contraception or be free from hearing a prayer at the start of school. 28 of the 141 reversals of precedent were in just a single ten year period between 1960 and 1969. Earl Warren was Chief Justice during that time.

When the right involves the federal government being prevented from interfering with liberty, I’m for it. But the Warren Court specifically focused on creating new rights and new judicial power and accomplishing goals that the legislatures either at the state or Federal level wouldn’t – the Warren Court was about fairness and equity rather than justice – the Supreme Court decision mandating participation ribbons and allowing soccer into the United States came from the Warren Court.

I had to play soccer with second graders the other day. I really should save up and buy a ball.

Any action provokes a reaction, and the Warren Court specifically was opposed by the newly formed doctrine of “originalism” – the idea that the Constitution means what it says in plain language, and not what you want it to say. If that’s the case, the Constitution just becomes a series of popular (on the Left) interpretations like “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed” should really be read as “the state has the right to arm the police,” and “Congress shall make no law” really means “Congress can do whatever it wants to do this week – it’s having a midlife crisis.”

It can be shown that the 1960’s and early 1970’s was the time that set the stage for every problem that we’re experiencing today. As much as blaming the Boomers is popular (I’m not a Boomer), it’s really not deserved. The Boomers had the good fortune to be in the right place at the right time – I can make the case that 1973 was the high-water mark for the economy of the country, and the Boomers did what anyone would do – make the best of their time, while wearing dark socks with sandals and listening to way too much Bob Dylan®.

The real culprits of our situation today are the leaders in charge in the 1960’s. The Greatest Generation really created the Greatest Problems. They fought and won a world war, but they put in place policies that are demographically tearing the United States apart today, and have put our economy at risk through a debt that grows exponentially. The Boomers didn’t take us off the gold standard. The Boomers weren’t responsible for Green Acres® being cancelled.

The Boomers did, though, give us Led Zeppelin. Even better when sung by a rubber chicken being observed by a cat.

The Constitution was awesome for a very long time, but it won’t save us – the Constitution of the Soviet Union provided for “freedom of speech” after it was, of course, reviewed by the appropriate government censor. The next Leftist president will happily appoint as many Supreme Court justices as required to interpret the Constitution to mean whatever the Left wants it to mean. The Warren Court wasn’t an aberration- it was a test case, one that set the stage for the future dream of the Left – complete power.

One thing stands in their way. You.

Virginia in this November’s election shows that the solution isn’t to vote moar harder. Virginia, the state that gave us Patrick Henry, is now permanently Left, with both houses and all top state-level jobs now held by Democrats. The Left wants more and bigger government, the exact opposite of Henry wanted. When I was growing up, and someone wanted to do something, I’d often hear, “It’s a free country” as an answer. That meant, essentially, do whatever you want. I rarely hear that phrase anymore.

However, the Right isn’t done yet. Remember what Janis said –

Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose
Nothin’, don’t mean nothin’ hon’ if it ain’t free, no no

And while you can vote yourself into tyranny, you can’t vote yourself out of it.

Free Speech? Not If You Want Healthcare.

In the wild, there is noÂ healthÂ care. In the wild,Â healthÂ careÂ is, “Ow, I hurt my leg. I can’t run. A lion eats me and I’m dead.” Well, I’m not dead. I’m the lion. You’re dead. â€“ The Office

Thankfully we have the United Nations â€“ where governments that oppose free speech can finally be heard.

On Monday, November 4, 2019, the National Health Service (NHS) of North Bristol, like my ex-wife, implemented a policy to deny service to people whose opinions they donâ€™t like.Â The italicized text directly below is me quoting the NHS directly.

The abusive behaviour policy covers anyone (visitors or patients â€“ J.W.) with mental capacity making (sic):

Racist or sexist language, gestures or behaviour.
Excessive noise.
Abuse of alcohol or drugs.
Threatening and offensive language.
Malicious allegations.
Intentional damage to trust property.

Iâ€™m pretty sure my ex-wifeâ€™s list is shorter, consisting of only one item: â€œBeing John Wilder.â€Â Breaking those NHS rules will get you banned from the hospital.Â If you are a patient, theyâ€™ll at least wait until your life isnâ€™t in immediate danger.Â And then they wonâ€™t serve you anymore.

You can read it all here (LINK).Â First, Iâ€™m assuming that whoever wrote the web page knew English, but the English spell it behaviour â€“ we spell it behavior.Â They spell it colour, we spell it color.Â Flavour?Â No, flavor.Â I guess that must be why George Washington texted King George â€œLOL, getting rid of uâ€ in 1776.Â Second, this seems like a pretty reasonable list, right?Â How could you be upset about those things?Â If someone were coming into my place of business, Iâ€™d kick them out for doing many of the things listed.

But this isnâ€™t a private business â€“ this is the provider of healthcare for 90%+ of the population of the United Kingdom.Â And the plain language that you and I might agree was reasonable will morph over time.Â A guy casting a porno movie is being investigated for a hate crime in Britain because he didnâ€™t want to cast a transsexual with, um, man parts for the porno he was filming about sex between a man and a woman.Â Why is that a hate crime?Â Because the transsexual (who, I remind you, has man parts) identifies as female and wants to play the womanâ€™s part in a porno, but without having woman parts.

Yeah.Â I need a scorecard, too.

I guess thereâ€™s no Internet in Farmington, NM.

But the silliness doesnâ€™t stop there:Â a comedian that goes by the Internet name â€œCount Dankulaâ€ was sentenced to an Â£800 fine for teaching his girlfriendâ€™s dog a trick.Â Was the trick eating toddlers?Â No.Â The trick was teaching the dog a salute that was fairly popular in Germany between 1932 and 1945.Â Why would he do that?Â He was irritating his girlfriend, and unless he can teach the dog to pilot a bulldog-scale Messerschmitt Bf-109, I think the United Kingdom is safe.Â Since the dog was featured on a YouTubeÂ® video, it is, therefore:Â hate crime.

Given the two examples above, if I were British, Iâ€™d have zero confidence in the way those â€œreasonableâ€ points on the list above would be interpreted in the future.Â Deny white privilege?Â Obviously hate speech â€“ weâ€™re not going to work on your broken leg.Â Oppose continual reparations for (INSERT GROUP HERE)?Â Obviously racist â€“ weâ€™re sending you to racist jail!

Help me eliminate all Cancers.Â Then weâ€™ll move to the Capricorns.

Great Britain has had the National Health Service since 1948, since they decided that German bombs werenâ€™t effective enough at destroying their economy.Â I kid.Â The English seem to generally like the NHS â€“ like Social Security in the United States it appears to be a political third rail.Â Touch it, and your career in eating crumpets, bangers, mash, and drinking tea in Parliament is over and itâ€™s back to fish and chips and sending your children to the mill so you have enough money to buy cheap gin.

The service has drawbacks, but seems to work for the English, for now.Â I have some doubts about long-term viability, but Iâ€™m not British, so I donâ€™t get a vote.Â But â€œBaby Oliverâ€ is alive today (LINK) because even though the NHS refused to operate on him, he got surgery in the United States.Â It appears that the NHS learned their lesson with that publicity â€“ they wouldnâ€™t even let â€œBaby Alfieâ€ out of the country (LINK).

On the bright side, dentistry is free(ish), too.

The British have sensitive teeth.Â Theyâ€™re so sensitive, just saying that offends them.

The kicker is, of course, the control.Â The most ominous line in the press release is:

Any cases will be reported on the trustâ€™s (a subdivision of the NHS â€“ J.W.) incident management system and on patientsâ€™ individual notes.

Back when I was in grade school, teachers would say in a really grave tone that certain behavior would end up â€œon our Permanent Record.â€Â They really said that, and you could hear the capital letters when they spoke.Â It was as if that in some far-flung future where Snake Plisskin was attempting to break the President out of New York and I was applying for a job and it would still be in the Permanent Record.

The Secret Service expenses for all of the living ex-presidents are highest for Bill Clinton.Â That party bus ainâ€™t gonna drive itself!

I imagined that when I finally got that great interview to be Starship Captain or whatever the interviewer would pull out a copy of my Permanent Record, shake his head disapprovingly, and say, â€œIâ€™m sorry, Mr. Wilder.Â We simply cannot offer you a job because in fifth grade you called Brenda Vincent, a,â€ he would then take a long pause and adjust his glasses while staring at the paper, â€œpoopy haired chum smuggler.Â We simply cannot have a man like that at EnronÂ®.â€

In reality, my Permanent Record from grade school was probably sent to a landfill when they tore the building down.Â Brendaâ€™s bait smuggling history is now lost to eternity.

But in 2019 we really do have permanent records, and in greater detail than most people realize.Â I get ads on my laptop in the evening that relate to conversations that I had in the afternoon when the laptop was off but my phone was nearby.Â There are networks of cameras that cross the nation that track license plates.Â If you use a credit card, you can be tracked from gas station to gas station and hotel to hotel.Â Your Internet search history?Â If your ISP doesnâ€™t have it, the NSA does.Â Speaking of job interviews â€“ you donâ€™t really have to apply to the NSA â€“ they already have your resume, cover letter, and know all of your references.

At least someone is interested in my life.

Increasingly in our â€œcapitalistâ€ system, people with unpopular opinions keep getting being censored, but it gets worse. Recently, Stefan Molyneux, who is more of a libertarian than anything, was kicked off of PayPalÂ® – though at this writing those links were still up.Â If he were in the U.K., he might be denied medical services as well, and since heâ€™s suffering from Stage 4 baldness, I hate to think about the potential future complications.

To be clear:Â in a socialist medical system, if you disagree with their opinions, the Leftists want to deny you medical service, and hope that you die.Â In a capitalist technocracy, if you disagree with their opinions, the Leftists want to silence you, deny you banking services, and hope that you die.

This will be a factor in your life.Â Life may get very rough before it gets better, and â€œroughâ€ may last quite a few years.Â But I tend to think that the Right will win in the end.Â Why?

Because my ex-wife is on the Left.Â And I wasnâ€™t sure about Hell until I met her.Â Now Iâ€™m sure.

So if thereâ€™s Hell?

Thereâ€™s Heaven.Â Onward, my friends!

10 Years (or less) To A $10 Big Mac – How To Explain Inflation To Your Friends

â€œYou want the solution toÂ inflation? Â Hi, friends. Â Marshall Lucky here for New Deal Used Cars, where we’re loweringÂ inflationÂ not only by fighting high prices, not only by murdering high prices, but by blowing the living s**t out of high prices.â€ â€“ Used Cars

Tom Brady isnâ€™t alone â€“ Lance Armstrong will do anything to his ball to win, too.

I drove to Burger KingÂ® for lunch for the first time in a long time.Â I donâ€™t eat lunch most days to stay in shape, and I keep reminding The Mrs. that spherical is a shape.Â On the days that I do eat lunch, itâ€™s hard to beat Chick-fil-aâ„¢ – theyâ€™re fast, theyâ€™re polite, the restaurants are clean, and they put massive amounts of heroin in the chicken â€“ there is no other way to explain how addictive those stupid chicken sandwiches are.Â I generally prefer beef to chicken, but the people at Chick-fil-aÂ© are wizards.

Iâ€™m still waiting for them to offer a Steak-fil-aÂ® sandwich.Â Mmmm, now thatâ€™s probably worth a stoning!

Anyway, I ordered a burger, fries, and a drink. Â The price for the meal?Â Nearly $10.Â American dollars â€“ not that wrapping paper they use in Justin Trudeauâ€™s country.Â I remember back when a sit down lunch at a restaurant was available for a shiny nickel could be had for less than $5.Â $10 for a burger, fries and an iced tea?

This was inflation in action.Â Clearly you can see that the government rate of inflation â€“ official truth â€“ shows that inflation is low, at between 0.7% and 3% over the last decade.Â But how true is that number?

The government does something interesting contortions when it measures inflation â€“ it fudges the number.Â When the government comes up with the inflation number, the government looks at things people buy â€“ say, a computer.Â Since computers have gotten roughly a zillion times faster over the last forty years, the government assumes that weâ€™re getting a zillion times more computer for our money.Â In one sense thatâ€™s true â€“ my computer today has more memory and is far faster than any computer Iâ€™ve ever owned and is demanding a living wage, free healthcare, and a right to vote.

But in another sense, my computer isnâ€™t a zillion times better.Â Iâ€™m using it for a word processor.Â Sure, the program is better today than in 1995, but itâ€™s maybe 10% better, which is a metric smuckfestÂ© away from a zillion percent better.

Likewise, if I were to play a game that would have been impossible to play back in 1995, itâ€™s not 500% better.Â There were great games in 1995 â€“ DoomÂ® would like a word with anyone who disagrees.Â Sure, the richness of the games in 2019 is better, but Alia S. Wilder gave The Mrs. a copy of a video game that came out in 2002 for Christmas 2019.Â The Mrs. was thrilled â€“ the storytelling, she said, held up really well.

Itâ€™s not only computers, but other products like cars â€“ add an air bag that I didnâ€™t ask for?Â That increases the â€œvalueâ€ to the government guy doing the calculations even though I never asked for one and itâ€™s never helped me even a little bit.Â All in all, computers have been deflating in price according to the government.Â This helps to offset some of the hugely inflationary items like healthcare and education.Â But Iâ€™m not sick, and Iâ€™m done with school.Â Whatâ€™s a more realistic gauge of inflation?

Hamburgers.Â One of the best gauges is the Big MacÂ® index:

If this graph is right, a Big Macâ„¢ will cost $10 in 10 years.Â Or it will be made from spare Swedish people â€“ and if you are what you eat, weâ€™ll all be the victims of this policy.Â

Graph source, Seeking AlphaÂ® (LINK).

Big MacÂ© hamburgers are made across the country and the same twoallbeefpattiesspecialsaucelettucecheesepicklesonionsonasesameseedbun has been made for decades with little variation from Portland, ME, to Portland, OR.Â Indeed, theyâ€™re made across the world and are one gauge of the value of local currency used by The Economistâ„¢ to judge the relative purchasing power of local currency.

The cost increase weâ€™ve seen in a Big Macâ„¢ is substantially higher than inflation.Â And itâ€™s not because itâ€™s a premier burger on the market â€“ in almost any city you can find a better burger than a Big MacÂ© so itâ€™s not like McDonaldsÂ® can increase the profit on a Big MacÂ© because people will not take a substitute.Â Nobody goes to McDonaldsÂ® for excellent food â€“ they go there because of self-loathing because the food is generally consistent.Â Heck, your humble author even went there today for research for this article.Â You can get a McChickenâ„¢ for a McDollarÂ©, but McDonaldsÂ® doesnâ€™t include any McHeroinâ„¢.

So, youâ€™re telling me that when Congress is out of money it can just write itself a check and deposit it?

Even before McDonaldsÂ®, the United States was no stranger to inflation, just like my waistline.Â During the Revolutionary War the Continental Congress authorized $241,552,780 of money to be issued â€“ I still wonder what the $780 was for â€“ Washingtonâ€™s NetflixÂ® subscription?

There were 2.8 million Americans during that time period and letâ€™s assume that two out of five Americans was working (women stayed home, and kids werenâ€™t required to report to the fish gutting plant until age five) for cash that would be nearly full yearâ€™s wages FOR EVERYONE WORKING based on the sources I could find.

The Continental collapsed in value â€“ thatâ€™s where the phrase, â€œnot worth a Continentalâ€ (which is strangely absent from Urban DictionaryÂ®, the must be behind the times) came from.Â After the United States was finally formed, the Continentals were allowed to be redeemed â€“ for 1/40^th of their face value in United States bonds.Â Iâ€™m sure this made everyone who had Continental currency thrilled that they had gotten rid of the King.Â At least in Great Britain they had Universal Healthcare and free ocelots in every pot.

The currency collapse of the Continental at least had an echo in the Constitution.Â It led directly to the addition of the following clause: Â â€œNo State shall . . . make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debts.â€ Â That sounds pretty simple.

Yet.

The Constitution lists the things the government is allowed to do.Â Despite reading it again and again, there is absolutely no power listed for the Federal Government to issue money.Â None.Â Paper money issued before 1863 was primarily issued by private banks, and the value of a paper dollar actually varied, typically dropping if the state was kinda bad at regulating banks or if the state was far away.Â The value of a gold coin didnâ€™t vary because gold is gold ().

I think the Michigan $3 bill would have been more popular if they had put Scarlett Johansen on it, so I put her over the picture of the cow.

When writing this post I ended up writing a LOT about how the government took over the power to create money during the War of Northern Aggression Civil War and the evolution of a single national currency â€“ United States Notes, and then decided it read more like a snarky term paper for Macroeconomics 201, which I already passed back when a Big MacÂ® was as cheap as my ex-wife.Â So I cut it out.

TL;DR:Â The story is one of increasing Federal control and centralization of both money creation and supply.Â The biggest change was when Franklin Roosevelt confiscated the gold of the American people and made it illegal to own more than five ounces of bullion or coins.Â The reason?Â Roosevelt wanted to print more money for his alien masters so they would restore the power of walking to his withered limbs, though they betrayed him and turned him into a flightless waterfowl.Â Or was that the Twilight ZoneÂ®?Â Anyway, the real reason was that by law the Federal Reserve had to have 40% reserves in gold on the money it printed.Â Back in 1933 apparently they pretended that laws actually applied to people in power.

But Roosevelt stole the gold.

Presto!Â More gold for the Fed!Â There were several high-profile cases where people were prosecuted for owning gold to keep the masses in line.Â Immediately after taking the gold, Roosevelt raised its price by 40%.Â He had, effectively, devalued the dollar with a stroke of a pen.Â This immediately made everyone in the United States who had money poorer, which, I hear, is exactly the cure for an economic depression.

And thatâ€™s inflation:Â making money worth less.Â What people didnâ€™t realize was that by taking the gold, Roosevelt took away the only constraint on printing money.Â 145 years after the Constitution was written, that pesky â€œgold and silverâ€ clause was gone.Â Thereâ€™s no way that this turns out bad, right?

Too bad they already had enough air guitarists.

Nixon took the next logical step â€“ he removed any constraints on printing by revoking the gold standard â€“ the dollar was now backed by nothing.Â Ford, dimly realizing it didnâ€™t matter, made gold legal to own again since after forty years it ceased to be considered money by people.Â Gold was a curiosity.Â Silver had been dropped from Americaâ€™s coins in the 1960â€™s as a â€œcost saving measureâ€ â€“ so Americaâ€™s money was based on a promise.Â A promise made by Nixon.

We now live in an era where itâ€™s considered virtuous to have a slight inflation of 2% or so a year.Â Benjamin Franklin spotted this con over two hundred years ago when he noted that the inflation of the Continental dollar had been a tax to pay for the Revolution.Â Inflation is just that, itâ€™s a tax.Â Itâ€™s a silent one.Â You still have the same $100 bill you had last year.Â Nobody stole $2 from you.Â Except that they did, and they bought themselves something nice, like salaries for everyone at the EPA when you werenâ€™t looking.

The government takes money through taxation.Â It also takes money through inflation â€“ and itâ€™s been slowly stealing the savings of every American for nearly 90 years.

The Fed ruins all the best bikininomics graphs.

Source (LINK)

It feels funny, because many of you have read this before, some of you have read this message 100 times.Â Maybe, just maybe the Big MacÂ® can be worth something as inflation picks up speed.Â Perhaps when a Big MacÂ® costs $10 someone might notice?

Nah.Â Itâ€™ll be fine.

Bad Bosses, Part 2: Action Heroes, Guns, and Explosions

“Your boss is a woman? Now this is a strange bank.” – It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia

In order to dress for success they tell you to dress for the job you want, not the job you have. So I found out where my boss shopped for clothes. I’d see what they wore, and then wear the exact same outfit the next day. My boss at the time, Marji, thought that was just a little weird since horizontal stripes weren’t at all flattering on me.

It’s both a blessing and a curse to get to the end of writing your post and finding . . . it’s too long. It’s a blessing because if I can break it into two posts, hey, I’ve already got my next post written, which might get me to bed by 2AM instead of the usual. The curse part is that the post has to have a natural break between part one and part two – thankfully this one did. The other curse part is that I actually look forward to writing a post – and the one I had planned for Friday will have to wait a week. But it’s gonna be funny. Part 1 is here: Bad Bosses, Part I, Including Garfield as Written by H.P. Lovecraft, and part 2 is below.

It’s been my experience that all good bosses look the same, since they are all clones of me, or at least the “me” in that first performance review (JW note: it was described in the last post, and it was a really good performance review). And I’ve had plenty of bosses in my career – in one two-year period I went through five bosses, and I am averaging a new boss every sixteen months over the years of my career.

Based on my experiences, the traits of good bosses that I’ve had are listed below. Good bosses are:

Concerned about doing their duty for their company. They display loyalty – they do their job.
Good at setting clear expectations on behavior and expected work outcome. You know what you’re supposed to be doing.
Never smelling of grilled onions.
Able to create an environment where honest questions are encouraged.
Good at providing the tools, time, and space the employee needs to get work done.
Available to do children’s magic shows for birthday parties.
Honest with employees, and give clear feedback meant to help them improve.
Quick to recognize that mayonnaise is not a French musical instrument.
Courageous – the truth is the truth, and they’ll share that up and down the line and damn the consequences.
Reluctant hold a knife to the secretary’s administrative assistant’s neck.
Genuinely concerned about the employee.
Treat people (generally) fairly.

It’s always a shame when you have a great boss and he breaks a leg and has to be put down.

There are times I’ve managed to screw up most of the rules I’ve listed above when I was a boss – that’s why I was able to list them off the top of my head – you remember your mistakes. But you learn from them, too: One of the biggest compliments I got was when I was leaving a job for a new company. The Chief Operating Officer came in to say goodbye and told me, “I hope you’re going to be supervising people at your new job.” Maybe he wanted the new company I was leaving to join to fail, but I took it that he appreciated my efforts to learn and be better as a boss and wanted to pass that legacy on to other companies through people like me. You’re right. He wanted me to mess up that other company.

I imagine this every time I walk into work and use the remote to lock the doors to my car without looking.

Notice I didn’t mention charisma as a requirement to be a good boss. You don’t need to be an Elon Musk to be a great boss – and I’ve heard he’s not a particularly good boss unless you’re his weed dealer. Notice that I didn’t mention intelligence – in some instances really high intelligence works against you as a supervisor since it can make it more difficult for you to communicate well. Would I rather have a smart boss or an honest one? Would I rather have a smart boss or a courageous one? Would I rather have a smart boss or one that didn’t constantly smell of grilled onions?

Most of the time, the cause of a really bad boss is due to their fear, namely fear of getting fired or fear of missing a promotion or fear of missing a rung on the corporate ladder. If that were to happen? He couldn’t afford to pay for the “hot stone massages” his wife was getting from Günter, her “masseuse.” However, sometimes you get bosses that are so strange they remind you of Cousin Eddie®:

One boss I had actually lived in his office, as in slept there every night five or six nights a week. He claimed to be a member of a biker gang, and told stories of holding a person upside down from a bridge as the gang gently convinced him to be out of state so he couldn’t testify at an upcoming trial. He told about buying a girlfriend a “little car” to convince her to have an abortion. And the time he broke a bottle to use as a weapon because “The Indian” was trying to knife him.

This might not be a completely faithful adaptation from the original story.

And as a boss, whenever I needed help, or a risky event was about to occur, you could count on him to be three states away. As bad bosses go, he wasn’t horrible, since after I convinced him that if I looked bad, he looked bad, he had my back when we talked to corporate. Working for him was a really weird nine months. Normally I throw in a joke or an exaggeration in my descriptions – but in describing this boss? Nope. That all happened.

To be clear, with the exceptions listed above, almost all of the rest of my bosses have been great people who were of good character and really interested in helping me develop as a person and as an employee. But where all good bosses are similar, bad bosses are often unique:

The Seagull – The Seagull is a boss that gets a new job every year or two. Why? Because he flies in, makes a mess, and stays until he’s kicked out. Miller was a Seagull. Keep good notes for the aftermath.
The Shadow – Whenever anything important happens, they’re gone. Whenever you have a question? They deflect. Literally, it’s like not having a boss at all, or at least a boss that will make a decision. You will have a boss if one of your choices goes wrong, however, because the Shadow will quickly (and correctly) point out that he never told you to do such a thing!
The Burnout – The Burnout peaked twenty years ago, and is mad and bitter. His back hurts. You make too much money. He wants to retire, but has to wait another year for Medicare™ to kick in. Until then? He wants to inflict as much pain as possible on the office because he wants everyone to hurt as much as his back does.
Captain Ahab – Captain Ahab is great because he has a vision. Companies love Captain Ahab leaders because they become obsessed with obtaining a vision. The upside? Your mission is clear, Ahab makes sure you have everything you need. And you will work 80 hours a week to accomplish it. These aren’t 80 hour weeks of playing Minesweeper®, no, every minute is fully used because (Spoiler Alert) that Moby Dick isn’t gonna spear itself. Ahab doesn’t care about your family, at least during work hours.

He then tried to hypnotize the people in the meeting using a pocket watch. The work was rough – 90 hour weeks for months on end, but we got free coffee and he’d buy us catered dinner if we had to work past 9pm. On a Saturday.

The Sphinx – You’re always guessing. The Shadow won’t give you any sort of answer, but The Sphinx won’t tell you what he wants, but you can be sure that The Sphinx will tell you if it’s wrong. Generally loudly and when other people are around.
The Politician – The Politician cares about only one thing – does it look good? If it looks good and is immoral or illegal? Who cares? The Politician is most commonly heard saying “perception is reality.” The Politician always dresses carefully – almost as good as his boss. The Politician seeks constant movement. They can avoid being blamed for messes they make, but will loudly point out the mess they inherited in their new job. Your value to a Politician begins and ends with you being useful to them. Otherwise? You don’t exist.

Your defense if you have a bad boss in almost every case if you want to keep your job is the same: do your best at work. Work hard, and don’t break the rules or the law. Be nice. And if it sucks too much? Get a new one.

While traditionally thought of as a good boss, Washington had a few buttons you didn’t want to press, although he did light up Ye Olde Twitter® to piss of Adams: “King George . . . Washington. Verily that soundeth goode.”

One other note: if every boss working at a company is a Bad Boss, one of two things is going on:

The Bad Boss is what they really want. Unless you can make it work, you have to leave. Sooner or later, the messes a Bad Boss makes will stick to you.
It may be you. I know that there have been times in my career when my attitude wasn’t optimal. It’s probably the boss. But always leave room and examine that the real problem isn’t you.

Okay, I’m now officially sick of Mack the Knife. But I still don’t feel bad. And if you’d like to share a bad boss below, feel free.

Bad Bosses, Part I, Including Garfield as Written by H.P. Lovecraft

“Michael, we don’t have a lot of time on this earth! We weren’t meant to spend it this way. Human beings were not meant to sit in little cubicles staring at computer screens all day, filling out useless forms and listening to eight different bosses drone on about mission statements.” – Office Space

“That’s what she said.”

I had just gotten the greatest performance review of my life. It was outstanding in every way. My boss (let’s call him Miller, it goes with the song) went on and on about how I was a stunning example of every possible good quality a person could have, and how I was universally loved, admired, and generally made women fertile just through a fleeting glance, and made men better than they thought they could be through the slightest example. If the company needed someone to walk across a pond, on the top of the water, John Wilder was your guy.

For about a second, I bought it. Flattery works because your mind really wants to believe all those nice things. It’s like a horoscope, keep using nice adjectives, and you’ll find one that the person is already predisposed to agree with.

Then I thought about it – this guy Miller, my new boss, has been with the company about a month. He barely knows where his office is and he’d only visited my office once. For him to write a performance review like this? I didn’t believe it. As much as I’d like to think of myself in such glowing terms, I rejected his flattery.

Beyond mentally rejecting his praise as an attempt at manipulation, I also made the mental note never to trust Miller.

Why?

Anyone who will be quick to praise will be quick to condemn. Besides, when I looked at him while he was smiling, he only smiled with his mouth – never with his whole face. He was smiling because he was “supposed” to be smiling, not because the smile was genuine. During those smiles Miller had the dead, flat eyes of a predator, like he was attempting to see if you were fooled and really believed the smile.

I never did meet Miller’s wife – I think her invisibility suit worked pretty well.

I was careful to document every conversation with him. Always trust your gut, people, unless your gut says socialism is a good deal. If your gut says that, remember: never go full Bernie.

I worked pretty far away from the company headquarters, where Miller’s office was. I set up weekly calls to keep him informed on what I and my team were doing. I’d done this in the past for my previous bosses. These calls allowed them to understand what we were doing, and digest it for top management if they needed to.

Except.

Except I found out from a colleague that during these meetings, most of the time Miller was shopping for things online, teaching himself to play the banjo, translating Garfield® into cuneiform (did they even have lasagna in ancient Sumeria?) or, in general, not paying any attention to what I was saying. My colleague noted that Miller generally wasn’t listening at all.

If you get the cuneiform wrong and accidentally translate a passage from the Necronomicon© this is what you get.

Normally, that’s not a problem, I ran had been running my end of things for years, and after a few years you get used to the usual problems – and are expected just to handle them. But my boss had a boss – call him my Grandboss. When my Grandboss wanted to know about some aspect of what I was doing, he’d ask my boss, Miller. Since Miller had literally no idea (despite weekly written reports and the phone call mentioned above) what I was doing, he did the simple thing: he made it up.

Most of the time, it worked fine. My Grandboss generally had an idea of what was going on, even if the specifics were a bit off. But when the results my boss made up promised didn’t happen? The Grandboss got mad. Very mad.

So mad, in fact, that my Grandboss called me up one day and was yelling. I explained, calmly, the real situation and the plan, and that seemed to calm him down. He checked up a few more times to make sure what I said was really happening, and then went away. But the troubles with Miller continued. Our conversations became a random affair – one day he would be polite. The next day, he would be literally yelling over the phone. What had started out as a bad feeling based on that too-good-to-be-true performance review had morphed into a full-blown sitcom level bad boss.

I mean, can you imagine such micromanaging?

I had one or two advantages – first, I had been at the company much longer and had several well-placed friends, and second, I wasn’t a deceitful sack of weasel meat. I’m certain that my boss was lying based on my informants at headquarters, and I’m equally certain that the things Miller was saying weren’t very positive. It’s been several years, and my career is still recovering from his “help.”

I’m ashamed to admit it, but one of the happiest days of my life was when Miller got fired. “But, you can’t fire me! You don’t even know what I do!” were his comments as they took away his keys and allowed him to pop his personal possessions in a box and gave him a complementary cement bag (for the weight, dear). And, he’s right – the Internet sure won’t surf itself.

As near as I can tell, the company didn’t skip a beat in his absence. I’ll also admit that on the day he got fired, I had one of the best workouts of my life. The entire time I worked out that lunch, I just listened to Mack the Knife on a loop for 45 minutes of the best treadmill time I’ve ever put in. I smiled every second. Why Mack the Knife? I have no idea. I rarely listened to it before, and haven’t listened to it even one time since that day until tonight. As I write this, it’s on a loop in the background.

It may be a song from a Marxist play written by a Leftist, but it makes me happy that it made so much money – after the Marxist author died. Also? The most upbeat song about multiple murders. Bonus trivia: Lotte Lenya, mentioned in the song, played Rosa Klebb in the James Bond movie From Russia with Love.

As you can see, she’s the perfect Bond® girl for 2019.

I’ve tried to feel bad about feeling so good because Miller was fired. Even years later, it’s still a pleasant memory. Yeah. I shouldn’t feel good about that, but I do.

Okay, the choice was a single post that was twice as long as this, or this broken into two parts. I chose two parts. Next part is on Friday.

Freedom: Violence is the Answer

“A new age has begun, an age of freedom. And all will know that 300 Spartans gave their last breath to defend it.” – 300

One night I heard a noise on the deck. A raccoon was bringing me back a book that I had lost a few years ago. “It’s a miracle!” I said. “Not really,” said the raccoon, “your name was written on the inside cover.”

The dogs barked.

The dogs never bark, unless a Terminator® is here yet again looking for that stupid Sarah Conner. The dogs were safely in their crates for the night. I’ve spent thousands of hours (yes, thousands) downstairs writing hundreds of thousands of words at night after the family was safely asleep, and not one time ever (yes, ever) had our silly dogs ever barked.

As they barked, I heard something on the deck above. It sounded like a piece of deck furniture sliding. Yeah, sure, you say, there aren’t a lot of burglars that move furniture to announce their presence, especially not at 1 AM. You’re right.

But . . .

There is one thing that I do know – if there was an actual burglar upstairs, the consequences could get bad, and quickly. Nonviolent burglars try to rob you in the day when they think that nobody’s home. But a burglar that’s coming into your house when they know that someone is there?

They mean you harm.

Bad guys at night are actually looking forward to doing bad things. The sound of a shotgun ratcheting a shell into the chamber will scare the Schumer out of a daytime burglar, but it won’t deter an attacker at night. They’re looking for violence, and fully expecting to kill everyone in the house.

I blame violent video games, or maybe gluten or high fructose corn syrup, or worse yet, them playing video games about violent gluten while snorting high fructose corn syrup.

Regardless, I got up from the solitude of writing on my couch and got a pistol. Oh, sure, you may leave pistols lying about your palatial residences like we Wilders leave our PEZ® on the coffee tables for the crowned heads of state that come by to feel the perfect shapes of our skulls, but we keep ours out of the public areas. Mine are in places that I would normally sleep, like under the dining room table, in the hot tub, or behind the wheel of my car while driving to work.

Oh, yeah, I left one on the bridge!

So I went upstairs. I quietly opened my bedroom door and had to decide: the .45ACP or the 9mm? I chose the 9mm. Why? It was closest to the door, and all it required was a longish reach upwards. Could anyone else in the house reach it? Nope, but is a 9mm all that dangerous anyway? I mean, if a Pope can survive it, it can’t be that bad.

I pulled it out of its case as I walked towards the back door. As I got near the back door, I activated the best feature of the 9mm – the laser mounted right under its barrel, which I bought for $10 from Amazon®. The idea of the laser mounted on a pistol, for all three of my readers that never saw Terminator®, is to show the shooter right where the bullet is going to go. In my case, I turned it on because any actual person on the back deck, seeing a laser, would probably think twice about their “invading Wilder Manor” plan.

9mm – what I teach my daughters to shoot gnats with.

The dogs were still unsettled as I reached for the doorknob. As these dogs are really not dogs, but barking rats that have tails that wag when you call them a good boy, they’re really always unsettled. I turned on the outside lights and painted every piece of deck furniture with the laser.

Nothing, except for the overly ambitious spider that builds a web face-high across the back door every day. I didn’t really expect there to be anything, since I live in Modern Mayberry.

In checking the crime statistics to prepare for this post, I looked up Modern Mayberry. It shows up as being a crime-ridden area, since there actually was a murder here in 2016. It was, as I recall, a guy who killed his girlfriend (or vice versa) over infidelity. But random murders? Not here. Gang violence? Not here, since the closest thing we have to a gang is the pre-school soccer program. I hate those monsters.

I believe there are petty burglaries that occur here, but those are almost all during the daytime. Why?

Everyone here has guns. Okay, that’s an exaggeration. But I would estimate that at minimum, 10% of the households could be armed and lethal in 2 minutes or less. I would estimate that 50% could be armed in 10 minutes or less. And I would estimate that 80% would have a gun in their hands in 20 minutes or less, but by then you’re dead or the cops are here. However, if you are a criminal, this isn’t good.

Why?

Me. And my neighbor. When he moved in, he had no idea that he was living next to The John Wilder, but he showed me his latest toy – a nice AR tricked out with a green laser and a bunch of other bling. I have no doubt that he’d be happy to explain to the Sheriff why he perforated someone breaking into his house. That explains most of the residents of Modern Mayberry. And you can be certain that the District Attorney is one of us, too. He declined to prosecute a homeowner for emptying a magazine into a criminal that had shot the homeowner, even though the homeowner had shot the fleeing criminal in the back more than once.

Would this be a neighbor you prefer? Put me in the “yes” category.

The homeowner is a valued member of the Modern Mayberry community. The criminal? In jail. The criminal’s civil suit against the homeowner? Yeah. That was dismissed. Nobody could be found guilty of that here.

If you were to try to rob a house here at night, the next time you took a drink of water you’d look like a fountain. A fourteen-year-old kid trying to boost a bike at 3 in the afternoon? Probably not going to get shot. But that same kid at 3AM? You have as much chance of surviving the night as a Snickers® bar does at Rosie O’Donnell’s house.

And let me stress again: no one here has a problem with that.

But that’s not how it always was. It used to be that violence was the exclusive right of our rulers. And it was so not only for legal reasons, but for practical reasons.

Plus who knows how much for hair spray.

Let’s go back to the middle ages. Technology had advanced to the point where a knight in a full suit of armor was pretty much only going to be at risk from another knight, and they never fought except over who got the remote control at Knight School. Their armor was strong steel, and penetrating it was difficult. To a normal citizen serf of the day? A knight might as well have been a superhero – there was no reasonable way a normal citizen could hurt a knight.

What did it cost to outfit a knight and his horse? In the area of $500,000 to $3.5 million. The higher cost was probably due to the need to decorate it with the 15^th Century equivalent of Hello Kitty® stickers, but $500,000 was daunting. Even the armor of a “man at arms” was probably in the range of $20,000 or more, but one of those would be a poor competitor for a mounted knight.

Swords were huge, double-handed affairs. Why? To penetrate the armor of a knight you had to swing a heavy mass of steel at them.

Until.

Until the English longbow came to the front. The beauty of the English longbow is that, when fired all at once, a mass of them could penetrate all but the best armor of the day. At Agincourt, Henry V’s archers and knights took down 10,000 French, to (possibly) fewer than 500 English deaths. It is written on Henry V’s tombstone about conquering the French: “Look, Ma, no panzers!”

Oh, sorry. I’ll leave you to go back to smoking, Ma’am.

A longbow takes, in modern times, at least six weeks to learn to shoot well. A sword? Years.

The longbow made warfare more accessible to the common man. The result is well known – increased freedom for the common man. Before the king required Englishmen learn the longbow, a knight got pretty much what he wanted. After the longbow? A bit more difficult, because if the knight’s demand was too much? A group of men could make his demand as null and void as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s womb.

This levelling of force included fortresses. A tall castle with stone walls was impregnable short of a long siege, having been designed to resist stone thrown from catapults. But after cannon, castles were as done as Facebook® to a teenager after grandma started “Liking” their posts.

This trend continued. Soldiers shed armor, and the most potent weapons became affordable by even the most common man. By the time of the Revolution®, any American could hold in their hands the equivalent weapon of a British soldier. And not be trained in years like a swordsman, or in weeks like an archer, but in days. The investment in money went down, too – a good musket would cost about a month’s earnings for an American around the time of the Revolution™.

The Second Amendment wasn’t written about this – it was written about freedom.

People talk about democracy? In this way violence was democratized. Never in the history of mankind had a place been as free as America, but only part of it was philosophy – the rest was applied engineering. The Brown Bess was a British weapon, but it was the most common weapon used on both sides of the Revolution. Ordinary American citizens had the same weapon as the best armed British soldier. The result?

Tyranny lost. Arbitrary will could not be imposed upon free men. The Congress was stopped from legislating tyranny not only by the Constitution, but by the willingness of good men to accept the legislation.

This situation of increasing freedom kept going. “God created men. Sam Colt made them equal.” Any American could put 12 rounds in a pair of Colts® on his hips after the Civil War, plus another 15 in a Winchester™ in the scabbard on his saddle. Was the Old West© a killing field? Well, yes. In Dodge City, the murder rate at its peak was probably a little over twice what it is today in Baltimore today, but at least there wasn’t any rap music.

Where’s Selleck? This picture needs more Selleck.

Today, legal firearm ownership is through the roof. The weapons are of high quality: these firearms are nearly the same ability as firearms used commonly by the military. In many cases, a family home is better armed than the local police department – I’ve been to Modern Mayberry’s office and wouldn’t trade. We’re better prepared, too. It might take me three minutes to have an AR ready to go, but it would take our local police twenty minutes at least to mount an effective force to come “save” me. More than likely if I were unarmed, they’d just be there to photograph the bodies. Police aren’t the first responders. Police are second responders.

Prepared or not: you are the first responder.

In no case have I ever seen a cop do anything but get ready to fill out paperwork. The good news? You’re on your own.

There is no nation on Earth as armed as the United States. Modern Mayberry is a good example of that, where I’d expect 90% of citizens have more than one gun, and the cost of a decent firearm is $500 or less. Are we free here? Certainly. Do we fear our neighbors shooting us? Certainly not. I could toss a pistol on my hip and the biggest thing most people would worry about would be that I got to the counter at Burger King™ to order before them.

Ten drones hit the Saudi oil processing plants recently, taking out millions of barrels a day of the world’s oil production. Ten drones. And from what I can see, the drones cost a few thousand dollars each to make. Today, the parts and programming to make those drones isn’t hard to come by. Even the GPS tracking wouldn’t add much to the cost. The ability to destroy targets from hundreds of miles away is less expensive than a used car. A crappy used car.

Hey, he went on to drive the Pork Chop Express.

Millions of barrels of world oil production was taken down for less than the cost of a new Camaro®, and a new Camaro™ won’t even get you a date with the local meth tramp.

The implications on freedom of drone technology aren’t clear. I’d expect, however, that a government would have to take into account the fact that, at least in the United States, they govern a people that that wishes to be governed. This puts in place limits on government. The second the government wants to push the people too far, the calculus of violence will rapidly favor the people, and not the government.

Despite all of the nonsense-bragging from the left that a dozen people from flyover Red States aren’t equal to an aircraft carrier, I know who I’d pick. I’m not stupid, I’d pick both of them – I want the people and the aircraft carriers. But if I had to pick one, I’d pick the dozen people from flyover states. They won’t shoot down many F-35 fighters, but I’d be willing to bet if you asked any soldier if he’d rather fight Afghans or Red State Americans unleashed, he’d want to go up against the Afghans any day.

When a country’s leaders want to enforce tyranny, the first thing they do is to take away the weapons of the common man. After that, atrocity is the playbook. A free people, with arms, will not suffer tyranny.

Here is Vladimir Lenin’s order to his henchmen in about (I haven’t found the date) 1918:

“Comrades! The insurrection of five kulak districts should be pitilessly suppressed. The interests of the whole revolution require this because ‘the last decisive battle’ with the kulaks is now under way everywhere. An example must be demonstrated.

Hang (and make sure that the hanging takes place in full view of the people) no fewer than one hundred known landlords, rich men, bloodsuckers.
Publish their names.
Seize all their grain from them.
Designate hostages in accordance with yesterday’s telegram.

Do it in such a fashion that for hundreds of kilometers around the people might see, tremble, know, shout: “they are strangling, and will strangle to death, the bloodsucking kulaks”.

Telegraph receipt and implementation.

Yours, Lenin.

Find some truly hard people”

Would Lenin’s order work in Texas? Would that work in Kentucky? Would that work in Indiana? In Michigan? In Ohio?

No. Not in 2019.

The war on guns isn’t about keeping schools safe – that’s actually trivial to do without taking guns away. It’s trivial to do without Red Flag (Red Flag Laws, or, How To Repeal The Second Amendment Soviet-Style Without A Pesky Vote) laws.

I hear that Lenin’s ghost wants universal health care. But with rope.

The only thing taking guns away from Americans does is to make it easier for the Lenin Squad® in the House to take whatever they want. And if Americans are disarmed? They will take whatever they want.

In Modern Mayberry, it was likely a raccoon or an opossum on my deck. But if it wasn’t, the red dot of the laser playing across the forest near my house probably convinced the bad guys that this house certainly wasn’t worth ending their life for. More than likely it convinced a raccoon that a world-famous blogger was willing to fight him to the death for the rights to lick a cat food can clean.

He didn’t have to worry. A raccoon going after a cat food can isn’t what I worry about – even though it might scare the dogs.

But if it was a government raccoon? Hmmmm.

American Civil War: Four Fates, From Freedom to Soviet Tyranny

“Did we give up when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? No!” – Animal House

On this blog recently someone commented, “When I was a kid, people used to say that ‘It’s a free country,’ but they don’t say that anymore.” I tried it out the other day. The response? “It hasn’t been a free country in a while.” I turned him into the FBI for that kind of hate think.

I was driving in the middle of Midwestia in the middle of a quest that you’ll probably hear about on Wednesday. One of the videos that was in my suggested list was about “America’s Cold Civil War.” This isn’t a review of the video, but it brought up some interesting points. The one I want to make clear to every single person that loves freedom in the United States is: if you’ve ever seen a movie about that rag-tag elements of a group fighting a foe that has nearly utterly defeated them, it’s us. We are the Wolverines.

I get to be Charlie Sheen, mainly because he’s still alive. I think.

I don’t mean to say that to create a feeling of defeat – far from it. But the first step in dealing with a situation is understanding reality. And reality is very simple today. At a minimum, the Left has coopted the following elements of culture in the United States – they have been, over time, “converged” into Leftism:

The K-12 educational system.
Colleges and Universities.
Most Protestant religious organizations.
Most Catholic organizations.
The psychological establishment.
The American Medical Association.
All mainstream news media.
All mainstream entertainment media.
Most departments of the Federal government, absent the armed services.
The general officer corps of the armed services.
The courts.
Silicon Valley tech companies.
Many (but not all) Fortune® 500™ companies.

This isn’t an accident, it’s entirely by plan. And not only by plan, it’s by a plan that was entirely shared. From Verified Communist Traitor® Herbert Marcuse, in his book Counterrevolution and Revolt (bold added):

To extend the base of the student movement, Rudi Dutschke has proposed the strategy of the long march through the institutions: working against the established institutions while working within them, but not simply by ‘boring from within’, rather by ‘doing the job’, learning (how to program and read computers, how to teach at all levels of education, how to use the mass media, how to organize production, how to recognize and eschew planned obsolescence, how to design, et cetera), and at the same time preserving one’s own consciousness in working with others.

I could prove all of the above Institutions have been converged through the Long March Through the Institutions and will probably discuss a few of these in the future, because I could do a post on each one. Heck, maybe it would be a great book, but only if I could figure out how to pair hot chicks and communist propaganda.

East German girl swimmers bench pressing 300 pounds in 1976 is completely normal.

But if you doubt me, you have Google® (itself converged) and you can easily verify list above even through the Leftist-bias that’s now on that search engine. I’ll leave you with one more question: why else would Fortune© 500® corporations sign a manifesto saying profits were less important than social goals if Leftists weren’t in control? Because there were extra doughnuts in the breakroom and they were feeling generous?

In almost any context, these organizations reflect the values of the Left, not of the Right. I specifically don’t use the label conservative here – the conservative movement has utterly failed in the United States (to quote absolutely everyone) to conserve anything. We live a country where adults telling four year old boys that being a girl is okie-dokie (and vice-versa) aren’t thrown directly in prison for a decade or more (after a trial, of course) for child abuse. The goals of the above organizations would be cause for mass revolt if they had been publicized in 1990, but now, despite no vote, no public acceptance, each point of the Left has been accepted as the new normal.

And telling a boy that he’s a girl? Oh, wait, that’s brave. Sorry.

Despite all of that, this is not a post about giving up. Screw that. Each day makes me more independent, not less, more wanting to tell the truth.

And if you’re reading this, no one is done here. Freedom is always the underdog. I really wish we’d just stop waiting until 2:00 in the fourth quarter to start playing.

I remember seeing a film in Social Studies in High School about the Korean War. In the black and white film, almost all of Korea had been lost. The film ended right at what is known as the Pusan Perimeter, right where the North Korean Army was about to kick freedom off of the Korean peninsula, forever. It was tough watching that film.

But then we learned what happened next: MacArthur led the naval invasion of Inchon and turned the tide of battle, leading a combined United Nations® force that cut off the North Koreans. This turned the course of the war, and in the process helped to create the free country of South Korea that is a world leader in technology, bad music videos, and wealth creation today.

Spoiler alert: we tied.

Our Pusan Perimeter is now. I had a great boss once upon a time, he would continually remind me, “John, start with the end in mind,” which is #2 of Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. As I look at the state of the Right back in 2016, we were at the Pusan Perimeter. As we as a nation blindly stumble toward Civil War II, I can’t predict the outcome, but I can see the full range of outcomes.

We’ll go from best case to worst case for people who love freedom. Although there are variations, I think I’ve captured all of the big picture end games below.

I named operation Aesop after the Raconteur Report’s Aesop. You can read him here (LINK).

Operation Aesop: Total victory.

What it is: The Right wins. Traditional society is restored. Mothers and fathers in committed relationships are again honored. A Constitutional republic of limited government replaces the democracy of unlimited power. The United States is unified. Think of it as a return to the 1950’s, but with color TV and microwaves.

What it takes: Oh, not much more than the bloodiest war in the history of the country. The only way this results in victory is as Von Clausewitz wrote about in On War: [Accomplishing . . . ] “three broad objectives, which between them cover everything: destroying the enemy’s armed forces; occupying his country; and breaking his will to continue the struggle.”

That’s what happened in the first Civil War. That’s what happened to the Germans and Japanese in World War II. The concept of continuing was even more horrific than the concept of trying to continue to fight. It’s total capitulation. This is actual war until the enemy is not capable of continuing. Not talking heads on a television show. Not voting. Not discussion. Not a “mission accomplished” after five weeks moving across Iraq where the “will to continue the struggle” is still clearly intact.

Outcomes: Some freedoms we see now would be curtailed. Political discourse would be constrained. But teenagers would be pretty polite, again. And you wouldn’t really have to worry about the border.

I’m related to Patrick Henry, or so my aunt told me. I like to imagine Patrick getting a bit tipsy and writing mean letters to Madison about how short Madison was and how Dolly might want to give up on the chew.

Operation Founding Fathers: 50 Independent States.

What it is: A return to base principles. Originally, the United States was conceived as just that, independent free States. The majority of decisions to be made were to be made at the state, and not the Federal level. Each state was to be free to make decisions. Texas could be Texas. California could be Venezuela. Vermont could be stoned. The free decisions of free States was allowed. The free movement of free peoples was likewise allowed. This is returning to that state.

What it takes: Leftist thought is built around the universal adoption of their principles. Individuals in society cannot be left to make decisions, so this is a hateful outcome to the Left. I recall discussing politics with a Leftist when I was younger. The Leftist thought I was on the Right. That, at least they could deal with. When I identified as a Libertarian®? The look of disgust was clear – the Left hated Libertarians™ more than they hated the Right. The Right was merely amused and not threatened by Libertarians©. Maybe it was the Star Wars® shirts and poorly trimmed beards?

That taught me one thing: the thing the Left hates the most is . . . freedom. Liberty. In many ways the Left would rather lose a shooting war and be subjugated to the views of the Right than to be allowed to turn Seattle into the Siberia of the PacNorthwest.

The only way this can take place outside of warfare is a Second Constitutional Convention. I think that alone would lead to a shooting war from the Left and a complete revolt from all of the Leftist institutions shown above. But we can dream that the Second Constitutional Convention would turn out well. If we did it, oh, in the next year. The clock is ticking on this being a viable outcome. It’s probably time to do it now. As in, well, now. Conservatives (not the Right) seem to feel that everything is going to come out fine, so until the wolf is at the door, I don’t think they’ll move an inch.

The problem is that Conservatives (again, not the Right) seem to think that the Left likes the Constitution. Since the Left gained the institutions I’ve listed above, the Left doesn’t care about the Constitution – the Left cares about power. Pure, unadulterated, 18 year old with a 12 pack of Coors Light™ behind the wheel of a 1969 Camero® power.

Outcomes: In many ways this is the best outcome, but in my opinion the most unlikely. This is the only outcome where we can still have the full freedom of political discourse and the full Bill of Rights. I’d love to turn over freedom to choose to a California that can choke itself to death on Leftist feelgoodism while a Rightist Arizona can deny admission to every illegal and return them via a trebuchet if they want to.

I was expecting more girls in bikinis from Bruckheimer, but this is a good start.

Operation Fort Sumter: Going our separate ways.

What it is: Secession. Splitting up. It’s not you, it’s me Oregon. The problem is that unlike in 1860, the dividing lines aren’t so clear. Then there was a line which, if everyone agreed, would have been fine for a split. The North could be the North, the South could be the South. Oops. Now it would be a county by county fight.

What it takes: Just like a psycho ex-girlfriend, if the Right tried to succeed in Texas, the Left wouldn’t accept it, and would demand tanks on the banks Red River by morning, which would be hilarious because tanks don’t float. Unless the secession were overwhelming in number of states, numbers of the armed forces, and nearly immediate, I see only a small path to a peaceful secession. For secession to stick, the Left and Right would have to feel that conquering the other side was more costly than trying to forge a peace.

Outcomes: If secession happened and was maintained, the United States would be irrevocably broken, unless it was re-stitched by a Caesar sequentially conquering the Balkanized United States. Maybe Caesar Pugsley Wilder the First?

Think they need a reason to send you to the Gulag? Sure they do! It’s Monday – that’s good enough.

Operation Gulag in The Dakotas:

What it is: This is the darkest timeline not only for our nation but for our world. And, amazingly, the only timeline (outside of a Second Constitutional Convention) that we can vote ourselves into. It is the Leftist takeover of everything. Although it is sold as a Denmark, in reality Denmark is capitalist with stronger social institutions because Denmark is, well, Danish and I think they put mayo on their fries. In the United States it will look much more like the U.S.S.R. – but not the basketcase 1988 U.S.S.R., but more like the 1932 “starve to death millions of citizens that Stalin doesn’t like” (In the World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold and Silver!) U.S.S.R.

What it takes: Nothing. We keep going as it is. In less than 20 years, we will be in complete tyranny. The erosion of rights we have seen won’t continue in a linear fashion. It will accelerate.

Outcomes: 1984.

Now we know the stakes.

Big Brother is our friend! And we’ve always been at war with Eastasia.

Social Security Won’t Sink Us. But The Ship is Still Going Down.

“Here comes an overweight cat with dollar signs for eyes and a hat that says “Social Security” pouring a bucket that says “Alternative Minimum Tax” over a sad Statue of Liberty holding a “democracy” umbrella.” – Family Guy

There’s this joke I heard about Social Security, but no one will get it.

When I was in junior high, our history class ended up with a long-term substitute teacher, Miss Vargas, for over a month. Most substitute teachers just handed out word-search puzzles where you tried to pick out names of conquistadors, Thanksgiving foods, conquered Mayans, and famous cats that belonged to the Mayflower Pilgrims. Since Miss Vargas had us for weeks, however, she actually had to teach. Thankfully, she had a lesson plan.

Not an original. I could not resist.

She was a nice substitute teacher so our class didn’t beat up on her that much. We could tell, however, that, whatever her degree was in, it wasn’t history. Given the time and place I was going to school, it seemed like she was likely a chemically-damaged refugee from the 1960’s, and likely a former Leftist hippy. Since we had caught her on some (rather) basic mistakes about American history, we weren’t shy about questioning the things she said.

Not to mention when Abraham Lincoln “freed the penguins, dude” after signing the Treaty of Ghent at Woodstock. At least class was interesting.

The lesson (at some point) took us to the New Deal. The format of the homework should be familiar to anyone who was in school when mimeographs were a thing (look it up). There was a term, and then the student was supposed to write down the definition. It was a fancy way to force eighth graders to learn to skim texts for key words written in bold.

But the smell . . .

One of the terms was Social Security. I dutifully looked through the text until I found the boldface words Social Security. In it was the definition that it was (more or less): An insurance program founded to provide benefits to retired and disabled people.

The teacher, not feeling like grading the homework, decided to go through the definitions with us. After Social Security she wrote on the board, A program created to redistribute wealth in the country.

With all of the righteous indignation an 8^th grader who had fully consumed the Kool-Aid® of the Official Story™ of the Government-Approved© textbook, I proceeded to correct Miss Vargas.

She didn’t back down, and maintained that was the purpose. Obviously, the event was significant enough that I still remember, and as I grew older I realized that, well, the burned-out hippy was right. Social Security is a wealth redistribution scheme. Heck, you can tell the program is socialist – it’s right there in the name.

The program was started in the depths of the Depression and rewarded those who hadn’t paid in with benefits they hadn’t earned. I’d whine more, but that happened 80 years ago, so it’s like Madonna complaining about her virginity – that ship sailed a LONNNNNNNG time ago – nearly as long ago as when the Japanese bombed the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria at Pearl Harbor. I know that you’re expecting that this is some sort of rant about how Social Security needs to be taken down because it’ll wreck the economy. It isn’t a rant, and Social Security won’t wreck the economy.

According to the latest data I could find (there’s probably newer, but 2013 was close enough and I’m travelling) but an average couple, making an average wage paid in about $600,000 in Social Security taxes during their career and would receive roughly $600,000 in benefits – the system was in balance. Of note, it’s kind of cute because the graphic assumed it was a man married to a woman and not an immigrant trans-porpoise which I understand is now required in California, as long as the porpoise signs a pledge to drive a Prius® and not to use straws.

Ahh, nostalgia for simpler times.

Social Security was roughly in balance in 2013, and could be put back into balance fairly easily with minimal effort, even though we’re facing a demographic bulge as the boomers retire. As long as we can convince them all to take up chain smoking and they decide that anti-chemo is the new anti-vax, we’re fine. Theoretically, there are the accumulated savings that Social Security has had during all of those years it was in surplus, but the reality is that all of those funds are just IOUs from Congress sitting in a filing cabinet in West Virginia in a converted National Guard Armory behind Buddy’s Chicken and Black Lung Shack®. Doris has the key.

It might look nice, but it still smells like the DMV and low motivation.

Yeah, the money going out of Social Security has already exceeded the money going in to Social Security, but it’s manageable. A few tweaks to the tax, and a few tweaks to the benefit (two-for-one coupons at Burger King™ instead of money every other month) and it will work out. Social Security, despite being a piggy bank continually raided by Congress for my entire life, won’t hurt us, at least not by itself.

That’s the good news. I fully expect that if the only major obligations that the government had were defense, transgender reassignment surgery, and Social Security, we’d be fine. Heck, even welfare for dachshunds that can’t find a job because of terrier privilege wouldn’t break us. Even if Congress approved the Ocasio Cortez Guided Missile©, which is designed to approach every target from the Left, has a warhead that does nothing but make babbling sounds, and costs a billion dollars a missile, we’d be fine.

What will break us?

Medicare® and Medicaid™.

Those are the M&M®s that will crater our financial system.

From the 2013 data, the average couple could will pay in about $110,000 in taxes during their lifetime for Medicare, but will take out nearly $400,000 in benefits. Where does that benefit come from? I’d say our tax dollars, but let’s you and I be real – not one dime of deficit spending has ever come out of your pocket or mine directly in taxes. It’s all borrowed into existence at this point.

I was going to save this graph for Halloween, since it’s scarier than most zombie movies.

From this projection, you can see that by 2024 Medicare plus Social Security will make up 12% or so of the GDP. Add in 2% for Medicaid costs, and you’re up to 14% of the GDP. Add in 4% for the projected interest payments due on the national debt, and that’s 18%, folks. That leaves 2% at most for all of the rest of the spending on the economy before we run out of tax dollars. But the rest of the spending (on things like defense) generally runs about 10% of GDP. Through the magic of math, that means that we’ll need another 10% of GDP. Just raise the taxes, right?

Even during the “90% tax rate” 1950’s, the proportion of the GDP taken in taxes wasn’t any higher than today and resulted in more loopholes than there are bacon-wrapped shrimp at a congressional lobbyist’s party.

That means the Federal government spending alone will consume 30% of the GDP, of which at least 10% will be deficit spending. Given a projected GDP of $26 trillion in 2024, that is an annual deficit of $2.6 trillion. The deficit this year is projected to be $1 trillion or so, which is more money than some people make in their entire lifetime, so imagine one 2.5 times larger.

Through some sort of magical incantation worthy of Houdini’s proctologist, money has been pulled out of somewhere (The Worst Economic Idea Since Socialism, Explained Using Bikini Girl Graphs) and hasn’t created massive inflation. Yet. I guess that in Zimbabwe they managed to just print money like we’re doing now to get out of the problem.

See, you too can be a trillionaire!

So, in the end, Miss Vargas was right. Social Security was the start of a program that will do a great job of income redistribution, from a wealthy and prosperous society, to a society where everyone can be a trillionaire, and a good nickel cigar only costs a few hundred billion dollars.

Thankfully Lincoln posed for this after getting back from Woodstock and before he retired to Gettysburg to make movies with George Lucas.