Happiness – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Bad Luck, Diversity, And Bank Robbers

“Isn’t it supposed to be bad luck for the groom to see the bride in her wedding dress before the ceremony?” – Kill Bill Volume 2

I got mugged by six dwarves. Not Happy.

There is such a thing as bad luck. A neighbor of mine told me a story of when he was a kid. He and his friends were throwing dirt clods at another group of kids. Now, I remember doing exactly that. Dirt clods were perfect for throwing because when they hit the ground, they exploded in a puff of dirt that I pretended was a grenade.

Pretending I was blowing up my friends. Huh, sounds like a Unabomber childhood when I put it that way, doesn’t it?

Regardless, my neighbor said that one of the other kids got a dirt clod in the eye. Why threw it? I don’t think they ever figured that out, but my friend was the only one sued. Why?

Every cloud has a silver lining. Except a mushroom cloud. That’s probably cobalt or strontium.

His dad owned a bank. As I recall from the story, his dad’s insurance company ended up settling the claim. No one said, “Oh, bad luck.” There certainly doesn’t seem to be a place for bad luck in our world, but sometimes bad luck really does happen. I mean, once upon a time a fortune teller that I would have to suffer with eight years of bad luck.

“And then things get better?”

“No, you stop suffering because you get used to it.”

To me, this seems unfair, but remember Law School Lesson 101: never sue poor people. It’s a variation of the Willie Sutton school of law, when he responded to the question of why he robbed banks with the answer of “Because that’s where the money is.”

I want to own a bakery just so when someone walks in and points at a cake and asks, “Is this gluten free?” I can respond, “No, that’s $16.50.”

That’s one part of the equation, but the second part makes it really rough: massive damage awards. Ask Alex Jones about the nonsensical $1 billion jury award against him. Why not a trillion? It’s not like Alex Jones has a billion dollars, and it’s not like they can strip being “Alex Jones” from Alex Jones, so if they take Infowars™, well, he’ll be in business the next day with a new company. And if they take that, yet a new company.

Poor people are lawsuit-proof because they don’t have money. Alex Jones is lawsuit-proof because (like James O’Keefe) his company is him.

Since most companies can’t hide behind the idea of being Alex Jones, they have to have a defense. The defense?

Standards.

David Hogg has personally sold more AR-15s than Palmetto State Armory®.

If a company does the same thing the same way all of the time, and if every other company does that exact same thing the same way every time, it’s now a Standard. While a company can certainly be sued if they screw up, it’s a pretty good defense to say what Ma Wilder described as a weak excuse, “Well, everybody else is doing it.”

So, if you ask Proctor and Gamble™ if they would jump off a cliff if everyone else was doing it, the answer is probably something like: “If that would help us actualize projected profits in the near term and help build organic growth in the sector, that would be a strategy we would engage with.” Or, in human terms, yes, yes they would jump off a cliff if everyone does it. Sadly, this throttles innovative products.

This also leads to a herd mentality in large companies. “Does Disney™ have DEI? Well, looks like we need DEI, too.” These companies realize that there is safety in numbers. Sure, they want to be different, but they all want to be different in the exact same legally non-actionable way.

If being a diversity hire is a good thing, why don’t we publicly name them so they can celebrate it?

This (in part) has led to the extreme pliability of the companies to Woke propaganda, and their quick rebound once Trump was elected. Was Google© all in for Kamala? You bet. Has Google™ swapped their maps to “Gulf of America” at the same time removing Black History Month©, Pride Month™ and scrapped targets to not hire white guys?

Yes, yes they have.

This surprised me. I was expecting these companies to keep being part of the ResISTanCe since they actively opposed Trump during his first term. Either they were neutered during and by the pandemic, or they’re horribly afraid of Trump and Elon. Or they’re worried about the inevitable wrath of Barron when he reaches his full height of 65 feet (1 kiloliter).

In the end, there really is “bad luck”. Now, I don’t think that everything is bad luck, I mean, when that double amputee tried to rob a bank? That wasn’t bad luck.

After all, he wasn’t even armed.

Don’t Stop Now

“You’ll have a grand tale to tell. A tale of victory.” – 300

I guess Kim is chubby because he never had to run for office.

Certainly, the re-election of Donald J. Trump to the Presidency has been a remoralizing event. I know that many (me included) thought that the GloboLeftElite would do whatever was necessary to “fortify” the results so Trump couldn’t return to power. I think, in the end the real power that saved Trump was the power of his hair. I mean, like Hamlet said, let the best mane win.

I’m in hopes that he won’t let his worst impulses take this second term of his administration run into the problems of the first. Trump’s main flaw (not his mane flaw, which is flawless) is his desire to “make a deal”. Hell, his book was even titled, “The Art of the Deal”. That’s where he got his greatest successes, and that was the great flaw that was exploited and why we ended up sending billions to foreigners, yet still didn’t have adequate border coverage at the end of his administration.

Scientists have discovered a way to walk through walls: doors.

So, now is not the time to give up – we must hold Trump accountable for the promises he made. He understands that he’s not our leader, that, rather, he jumped out in front of a parade that was already in motion and gave it a focus. When he gets off track, like when he praised himself for the Vaxx®, MAGA crowds booed him. And then he stopped talking about the Vaxx™, because he knew that wasn’t where the parade was headed.

We must remain vigilant. I do think that there is hope, since his near assassination, this has probably focused him like a laser on his own mortality. He knows he has four years to do what he has to do, and that’s it. Possibly only two: the mid-term elections may change the House, and turn his last two years into a gridlocked standstill.

Now, a gridlocked standstill is probably better than when congress is “doing” things and will probably lead to a dozen more impeachments for crimes like “breathing” and “sighing”, so the next two years is key.

The good news is that the GloboLeft is shell-shocked. They’ve created little echo chambers that made them get high on their own supply and think that a (possibly) drunken (allegedly) cocaine-using diversity hire anchor baby that achieved absolutely nothing, ever, that wasn’t given to her would be a good candidate. They were (and are) shocked.

Good friends are like toasters – if you throw one down the stairs, they probably won’t make toast for you anymore.

Good. The GloboLeft are shaken to the core, and we should make sure that it stays that way. If they think Trump is going to be bad, we should, at every instance, agree and amplify.

This isn’t spiking the ball. This is making them crazy.

Oh, sure, they wouldn’t be the GloboLeft if they weren’t already crazy members of a death cult. But we want to amp it up. We want them to not be able to think straight. For the next two years. We want to hijack (whenever possible) their amygdalae (Anonymous Conservative talks about it at the LINK). If you work with one of these creatures, you can get them to go off at the slightest provocation.

Why? They’re already unstable. Don’t let them plan. Don’t give them their safe spaces. Don’t let up. They may be in HR. They may be community members. When they make accusations in public, or on Facebook™ or Reddit© or X®, they sound crazy. They will call you a Nazi. They will say that you are evil. They will sound unhinged. Good. They discredit themselves.

You are needed. Keep the pressure on.

Her liver was 152.

As long as the GloboLeft sounds like the unhinged death cult members that they are, they move the Overton Window our direction.

Make them crazy. If you see a GloboLeftist flaking out at the supermarket, you can walk by and say, “This is MAGA country, missy.” That’s guaranteed to end up with a shrieking fit and a crazed post. If confronted, you can just say, “I was wondering where the pasta aisle was. Don’t have any idea why she reacted so.”

So, keep them busy.

To the non-crazy normies, keep dropping redpills. One story I heard from about a normie was that she was concerned that Trump wanted to “drain the swamp”. When it was gently explained that “drain the swamp” actually referred to the corruption of the Deep State at Foggy Bottom, the response was, “Oh, I can see that.”

Never expect normies to know what’s actually going on, so don’t get complicated. Explaining basic economics might help. Might.

Be reminded that these are the same people that didn’t know who was running for president, so, be gentle, and don’t start with weapons-grade redpills about deportation. Ease them into it. Help them draw conclusions. Point out how the mainstream media is lying or not covering the real news.

Well, maybe Juan in a million.

And remember that X® is our friend right now – the closest we have to a mainstream news platform that isn’t censoring (much).

Don’t cede the Second Amendment. Ever. Not a single inch. Point out that the real killers aren’t law-abiding gun owners, but gangbangers mainly shooting gangbangers, and they’d have guns anyway when everyone else was disarmed. Point out that there is a correlation with more guns leading to less crime. Disarmed people are victims waiting for second responders – armed people are citizens who are the true first responders.

Don’t cede morality. The latest hilarity is the 4B movement, essentially women promising not to engage in random sex and rather wait until they’re in a committed relationship. They expected us to get mad, when in reality we say, “Awesome, welcome aboard! Nobody likes a tramp.”

Are the security people at a trampoline store called bouncers?

Don’t cede love of your country, and don’t cede love of your nation. They’re not the same thing, but don’t give up either.

Enjoy the win. Keep the steel in Trump’s spine. And don’t spike the football yet.

It’s not even halftime.

But for now? We didn’t win by a hair, we won by a whole headful.

And you are needed.

Project 2026: A Joint Trump/Wilder Project

“I believe in cutting useless government projects. I also believe in cutting useful projects, future projects, and past projects.” – Parks and Recreation

People in my town are tired of useless projects. They even put up signs that say “End Construction”.

I know that Project 2025® got a really bad reputation during the election. At every point, Democrats and their GloboLeftElite tried to convince voters that Trump was going to implement Project 2025™. Well, he isn’t going to implement Project 2025©.

Instead, President Trump secretly called me through the voices in my dreams and told me, “John Wilder, after we win bigly, and want to bring to the people Project 2026. See? It’s one better already. It will be such a good program, precisely because I’m looking to you to write it for me. And, also, if you look behind you, you’ll see your cat is melting into a puddle of butter. Very disgusting. You should fix that.”

If I steal a rich man’s dinner rolls, is that highfalutin gluten lootin?

When I woke up, I immediately got to work. So, here, without further introduction is Trump’s Project 2026®™©. It’s the best.

Project 2026 is magnanimous in our inevitable victory. As such, we decree the following for the GloboLeftists who have been left a shattered shell of their former selves:

First, to our opponent, Kamala Harris, Project 2026 hereby grants you an unlimited supply of cocaine, box wine, and pantyhose.
To our dedicated GloboLeftist opponents, Project 2026 grants exclusive access to a portion of the Internet that has been cleansed of all ideas that you might find disturbing or triggering. Thankfully, it has already been created and is called “Reddit™”.
Don’t despair. Project 2026 will commit to a peaceful transfer of power back to the GloboLeftElite sometime after the Sun expands to consume the orbit of the Earth.
You are not required to call Donald Trump “president”. He doesn’t care what you think. You are, however, required to have his picture on your bedside table and publicly praise him during the daily Trump Praise Minute. While optional, your tears will make Trump stronger.
Finally, to the rank and file, you are welcome to live in either Portland or Seattle. I hear Puget Sound is lovely. The train cars will be available shortly for quick and easy carbon-friendly transport.

But if she and Hillary team up for 2028, we could have Cackles and Cankles.

Project 2026 believes that sports are a healthy aspiration for every American. As such:

Football players will now be treated like indentured servants again. Free agency is hereby forever suspended, and athletes will be required to live in the cities they play in and will be paid no more than $23.45 an hour. After their sports career is finished, successful athletes will be allowed to sell used automobiles.
Trans females will now be known as “dudes” and will be allowed to compete in female leagues, made of other dudes.

The Economy will be a priority, and Project 2026 put Elon Musk and Ron Paul in charge of managing it. Our working title for this is the Elonomy.

Imports from the Free Mars Colony will be tariff-free.
The five-dollar footlong will return.
The Federal Reserve© Board will be forced to work shifts at Wendy’s®.

If you work at the Federal Reserve®, are you required to drive a Fiat™?

Project 2026 realizes the immense hardship that illegal aliens have wrought on our nation. As such, we will act quickly to fix these issues.

Birthright citizenship is ended, retroactively, by Project 2026. Barack Obama will be sent either to Cuba or the newly-formed People’s Republic of Hawaii.
The Department of Exmigration will be officially formed, and every celebrity who posted that they will be leaving the country will be leaving the country. By Wednesday. The motto of the Department will be “Buh-bye”.
The Department of Exmigration will also enforce the repatriation of all illegal immigrants starting Wednesday. And ending Thursday, though if you are in line by Wednesday, we’ll give you another 24 hours. Any illegals left after that will be sent to our choice of either India or Nigeria.
Only females of exceptional beauty will be allowed to illegally immigrate. Our policy is, “9 or 10, come on in!” The judging panel will consist of Mel Gibson, Elon Musk, and Johnny Depp. The anticipated formation of GloboLeftist Wine Drinking Cat Lady Einsatzgruppen to hunt down this new national resource will be put down brutally.

Project 2026 has a goal of two hot chicks for every dude.

Marriage and children are important to the United States, so:

Starting in 2026 unmarried mothers will receive no child support nor governmental support of any type. Widows are exempt.
No fault divorce is abolished.
Women and men are barred from receiving child support payments or alimony.
Only married women and men between the ages of 21 and 63 can vote.
An era of free power will follow based on Project 2026’s projection that we can exploit the power of suffragettes spinning in their graves at near lightspeed after hearing that GloboLeftist women, after hearing about Trump’s win, promise to be celibate outside of committed relationships.

I went to a farmer’s party. They really knew how to turn up the beets!

Government reform is top on the list of Project 2026:

95% of all federal employees are hereby terminated. Pack your stuff. The remaining 5% are park rangers and the US Postal Service®. Project 2026 thought for a long time about other groups, but they all have to go. All of them. Except for the Department of the Treasury to collect tariffs and the Department of Exmigration.
The ATF’s mission will be radically changed: their new mission will be to make firearms plentiful and low cost.
The FBI headquarters will be relocated to the Swanson Motel, in Bismarck, North Dakota.
All federal employees except for the Federal Marshall Service will be disarmed, as Project 2026 realizes someone has to bring horse thieves to justice.
Project 2026 understands and values the role of education in society, and therefore will remove the greatest impediment to education: The Department of Education. All employees will be fired, and will be barred from ever working in any educational role again.

Project 2026 realizes that the United States is just one of a whole host of nations. The best one, but still just one. Here follows the changes to International Relations.

International relations, imports, all financial transactions and all telecommunications are hereby ended with India and Nigeria until they show proof that they’ve executed every scammer in the country, or turned them into valuable mulch.
Our new policy in dealing with other nations is, “Why should I care?” If any other nation contacts us for aid, our official response will be “Rub some dirt on it.”

Those guys were always cold as ice.

Project 2026 realizes a strong military is important to protecting our borders, which is all we’re going to do with it.

Every young man will be sent to bootcamp, and will continue in bootcamp until they pass or reach the age of 40. After passing bootcamp, each young man is sent home with all the weapons and ammunition they can carry, including C-4. Additionally, Project 2026 will officially rename C-4 as “serious putty”.
The bootcamps will be along the southern and northern borders of the United States, and a “free fire” zone will be established within fifty yards (six decaliters) of the border. This includes people attempting to escape Trudeauistan.
Most overseas bases will be returned to the host country, with the exception that all on-base fast-food restaurants will remain. Exceptions to this are Diego Garcia and Guantanamo, because Project 2026 finds them amusing.

This is a work in progress, so any suggestions for additions can be provided before I transmit this to President-Elect Donald Trump tonight in my dreams. I hope the cat doesn’t melt again. Such a mess. So buttery. Very disrespectful.

It Came From . . . 1988

“What’s going on, Andy? Is this what you want to do with your life? Sleep all day long and hang out with the Criterion brothers?” – Funny Farm

How do I get a movie from 1988 to show up? Just say Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.

FYI – site getting hit last night by . . . something. Can’t respond to comments from the last two posts, so I will when I can.

I was wrong last month when I mentioned I had only one year to go in the 1980s, there are three. This one is 1988, and, going back through the list of movies I found, 1988 wasn’t particularly a great year. Although the corporatism that started to kill movies in the 1990s had started, it hadn’t hit fully. Some movies were still just fun.

As usual, the list isn’t in any particular order, my descriptions of plots are sketchy, and these aren’t necessarily the best movies, they’re just the movies on the list.

Beetlejuice – The original. Tim Burton makes the most beautiful movies, but unless someone is there to stop him from following his worst impulses, the movies are also very stupid. Someone kept Tim in a box, and he got a great performance out of Michael Keaton as the titular character, and Wynona Ryder was in it before she started being a nutty shoplifter.

Dead Heat – Treat Williams and Joe Piscopo play two cops in a buddy cop movie. The big twist? They’re dead and have been reanimated by a mad scientist so that they can commit zombie-cop robberies. The math seems to be a bit off on this one – if I could reanimate people, I’d probably be looking for a Nobel® Prize rather than committing petty heists with Joe Piscopo. Is it a comedy? Well, one of the character names is Roger Mortis. So, maybe, but the actual cop part gets in the way of the actual movie. The nice thing about this is that it got made even though it’s arguably awful – it’s awful in a good way, as in, “Let’s try this crazy idea” rather than awful in the 2024 “let’s make a woke corporate movie and preach girlboss leftie themes and if people don’t like it let’s call them racist” way.

The same hairy dude was in every generated image. Who knew that PEZ® and beards were related?

Willow – Not to be confused with the new Disney® series that was so bad that they vowed never to show it again to get a tax write-off, this is a story of a dwarf who comes from a village of dwarves and gets into a typical sword and sorcery adventure. Think of it as someone who wanted to do a Tolkien movie but didn’t have the film rights. It ended up being a fairly sweet and charming movie, and one of Val Kilmer’s best performances, ever. I liked it more than most people. Bonus: Joanne Whalley.

Big – Tom Hanks was getting ready to break out as an actual actor, and Big was a stepping stone for that direction, where he ended up playing a kid that made a wish to become an adult. But he was still a kid in his brain parts. Nowadays, this movie would have difficulty being made because Hanks (as a kid in an adult body) has sex with Elizabeth Perkins. Yeah. That didn’t age well. I haven’t checked on Elizabeth Perkins to see if she aged well, but, then found she was a brittle old feminist. Sigh. Looks like Tom dodged a bullet.

Funny Farm – This was an absolute box-office bomb, as I recall, but it is one of my favorite movies of all time. It’s essentially Green Acres without the Hungarian accent, but I just love that story, so I can watch nearly endless variations of it. In this case, sportswriter Chevy Chase gets an advance for a book, can’t write it, and steals his wife’s book, exhumes a dead body, tries to set a booby trap for a drunken mailman, and determines that he can live life without being a tool to everyone around him. Unlike the real Chevy Chase.

Is that Susan Sarandon in the middle?

Bull Durham – I put this on here primarily because it is a very good (not the best, but very good) baseball comedy. The Mrs. loves it, so, contractually I’m required to watch it when she watches it. It loses points for having Susan Sarandon associated with it and for being a bit too focused on the romance side of the equation. Best parts? Coach banter and bringing the word lollygagging back. Lollygaggers!

Die Hard – I don’t need to describe this one, since it’s a Christmas favorite. This move turned out perfectly, and was, perhaps, the zenith of 1980s action-adventure movies if you don’t count Predator™ and Terminator©. The twist? Putting an “everyman” into the role of hero. Remember, it’s not really Christmas until Hans Gruber falls off Nakatomi Tower! It is the best end for a movie, Hans down.

Is that Nakatomi Tower in the background?

A Fish Called Wanda – What if Monty Python® never broke up and did more movies? This is as close as you’re going to get to that dream. Fun and funny, and Kevin Kline absolutely steals the show (and an Oscar™) as Otto, a CIA hitman who quotes Nietzsche and believes “the central tenet of Buddhism is every man for himself”. Who knew Buddhists were libertarians? John Cleese plays John Cleese, and Jamie Lee Curtis, sadly, stays mainly clothed.

Vibes – Cyndi Lauper as a psychic stuck with also psychic Jeff Goldblum? Why not? The plot is odd and absurd, with Cyndi and Jeff travelling to the Andes. Yes. The movie involves all manner of silliness with the main focal point to set up odd situations where quirky-girl Lauper can bounce of straight-man Goldblum. Is it one of the best movies of Western Civilization? No. But it did make me laugh.

Tucker: The Man and His Dream – I’m not sure how much of this story is true, but it sounds like Tucker Carlson was trying to make a car after World War II. I’m not sure how this happened, but I think it might have something to do with time travel and Donald Trump’s uncle, John G. Trump, who was an electrical engineer and physicist, and the guy they brought in to steal evaluate Nikola Tesla’s notes so Trump could give them to Elon Musk. I think. Regardless, it was a pretty good movie about a car that certainly sounds like it would have been pretty good, though Tucker Carlson eventually gave up the dream and was later a journalist. You might have heard of him. Two thumbs up.

Young Guns – How much Bon Jovi do you need in a 1980s western? Just a little bit. It also stars the Sheen/Estevez brothers. So, it the singer and actors were all in need of blow driers, but the movie has also been hailed as relatively historically accurate tale of the life of Billy the Kid, with the exception that Kiefer Sutherland is actually only three feet tall, so they had to use a lot of perspective shots.

Oh, yeah, brother!

They Live – John Carpenter took a short story from 1963 and remade it into a politically biting science fiction film where aliens infiltrate and take over American society. Space aliens, not the aliens that eat ducks from the park. Anyway, the film is famous for an amazingly long street fight between Rowdy Roddy Piper and Keith David (not to be confused with David Keith). It is notable that the alien overlords are significantly nicer than the current Biden/Harris administration, so there’s that.

Scrooged – Another huge Bill Murray hit, and probably the definitive A Christmas Carol adaptation of my lifetime. Bill stars as a success-obsessed executive who takes the place of Scrooge. In a meta turn, he wants to do a live version of A Christmas Carol on Christmas for the ratings after saving Karen Allen from the Nazis. And it pulled in plenty of cash, making over $100 million on a $32 million budget. Not bad.

The Naked Gun – After Airplane!, there was a short-lived television show called Police Squad. It was hilarious, but most people don’t have a sense of humor so it was cancelled. Instead, the Zucker brothers resurrected Detective Frank Drebin and made a movie that made tons of money, and probably drove O.J. Simpson to murder since the script showed how easy it was to get away with murder.

This is way better than the original poster and has 100% more Nakatomi Tower.

Working Girl – This movie should have been the sequel to Die Hard where Sigourney Weaver teams up with Bruce Willis to defeat the German space aliens in a musical with Bill Murray singing the theme, backed by Bon Jovi and Lou Diamond Phillips. If only. I honestly don’t remember this movie at all, so my plot is probably superior to the real thing.

There it is. What did I miss?

Deep Thoughts And Dank Memes About Halloween And Strippers

“When the fear takes him, and the blood and the screams and the horror of battle take hold, do you think he would stand and fight?” – The Return of the King

I have a cookbook that mentions ancient evil monoliths: the Necronomnomnomicon.

Most memes “as-found”, maybe an edit or two here and there..

When I was a kid, it seemed that Halloween was really about the kids. I would dress up (usually) as a vampire, until I got older. As I got older, it seemed that Halloween tipped from being a holiday for children to an excuse for younger adults to have drunken parties in costumes like “slutty elf costume” and “slutty Handmaid’s Tale costume” and “slutty presidential candidate”.

One thing that hasn’t changed, however, is that Halloween is about the darker side. Ghosts and witches and monsters have been a part of the celebration since Pharaoh Bubbahotep got his chariot license. You’ve probably not heard of that Pharaoh before – after they mummified him they kept him under wraps.

The time of Halloween is certainly in line with being a harvest festival – I mean, it’s after harvest in the northern hemisphere, and there’s plenty of evidence that some version of Halloween was observed in ancient times. Whether or not the Christian holiday of All-Saints Day (November 1) was a takeoff from this is up for grabs, but the trappings and idea of this being a time focused on dead humans is undeniably thousands of years old.

At college, I told my advisor I wanted to take a class on how to be a mime. He said, “Say no more.”

But, again, a harvest festival. In the northern hemisphere, plants are dying at this time of year, leaves are falling, and it begins to get cold and dark. This is the foreshadowing of winter, a time where the planning and planting and preparing pay off in order to tide families back to spring when the world comes alive again. What better way to celebrate the idea of dead people and the impending bitter winter than by having a party, getting drunk, and dressing like a “slutty Seal Team Six” member?

Trick or treating itself has been practiced for (at least) five hundred years, including costumes and begging for food. Ultimately, though, the idea comes back around to the idea of what happens to the soul after death – the year becomes, essentially, a proxy for the life of a human, with Halloween marking the time when death is contemplated. And it’s scary to think about death.

Many people like to be scared – that’s one reason why horror movies are so popular. In my dating days, I noted also that the scarier the movie I took my date to, the more amorous they became afterwards. Keep in mind my sample size was mainly limited to girls who would eventually become strippers, but nevertheless, it’s still data. Like grandma always said, “Write what you know, Johnny, even if it involves bad decisions, teenage lust, and women with daddy issues and narcissistic personality disorder.”

That meme makes me feel like a Djinn and tonic.

So, just like Pavlov’s dog, I began to associate scary movies with good times. But I liked them before that, even as a young kid I’d stay up late to watch B-movies in black and white on Saturday night and feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up when the sound of the house settling at night would happen in the dark behind me.

Is working on your abs for forty minutes daily a waist of time?

Part of horror for me, though, was the idea of the supernatural. I recall reading Stephen King before he morphed into a parody of someone’s GloboLeft lesbian wine aunt with Trump Derangement Syndrome and the first book of his to profoundly disappoint me was Cujo. Why?

It was about a dog with rabies. That’s it. No evil spirits. No Walkin’ Dude. No vampires. Just a stupid dog with a stupid disease.

So what?

Bad things happen, I get it, but horror to me wasn’t Michael Myers attacking teenagers in the night while wearing a William Shatner mask inside-out. No. It was him getting up after taking damage that would kill a dozen men and relentlessly pressing forward. He wasn’t a man – he was a force beyond anything natural, much like my deodorant.

The other part of the horror trope at the time was that the Final Girl, the one who faced down the supernatural bad guy, was virtuous. Who got killed? The kids drinking and making out. Who lived? The clumsy virgin. In essence, these horror movies were morality plays showing that the wicked were punished and that the virtuous were rewarded, a lesson that thankfully went over the heads of the eager and enthusiastic frolicsome fräuleins.

Those morality plays made sense, and the plot, like a tune, had a melody that was familiar and pleasing.

I guess they couldn’t party in the living room.

Again, for me the element of the supernatural was crucial. One of the things that I realized over time is that the element of Evil implied that there was Good, too. The dark, Lovecraftian world where ancient brooding evil ones who didn’t even pay any regard to mankind in an unfeeling universe hadn’t crossed my mind yet, but that was before I had even met my ex-wife. But a movie like The Exorcist, was based on the existence of Evil.

And that Evil wasn’t aloof and uncaring. No. That Evil was intensely interested in humanity. Intensely. In fact, humanity was the focus of that Evil in a war that we could only see the edges of, one that was being played out in realms we had only the barest perception of. The Exorcist implied all of that, but also more than implied the existence of the other side: Good. With a capital G.

If Cthulhu made cheese, would he call them “LoveKraft Singles”.

I know that moral relativists hate the idea of this duality of Good and Evil, preferring to live in a world not of black and white, but one filled with shades of gray. Or grey. Or . . . now why am I thinking about gravy?

Regardless, lots of people were scared by the embodiment of Evil shown in The Exorcist. I was comforted. My love of horror isn’t about a fascination with death and Bad things – quite the opposite, it’s about a fascination for life and Good things.

And most of those girls I dated aren’t strippers anymore, which is a good thing given their age, that they’re now saying: “Sorry, we’re clothed until further notice.”

Fear: Don’t.

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

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

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

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

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

So, that’s Monday.

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

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

Never go pure Weimar.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why?

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

So?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good times, man.

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

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

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

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

We win. It’s inevitable.

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

Distractions, Pascal, And Postman

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

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

Distractions.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Instead, you’ll complain to your neighbor.

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

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

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

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

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

Hammer Films, Creepy Creatures, B-Movies And Christopher Lee

“I have just been fired because nobody wants to see vampire killers anymore, or vampires either. Apparently, all they want to see are demented madmen running around in ski-masks, hacking up young virgins.” – Fright Night

If Kamala is selected president, she promised a new post-apocalyptic movie. She’s calling it Mad Marx.

As I’ve mentioned before, when I was a kid (think four or five) there was a local channel that ran horror movies late at night on Saturday night. First there was the news at 10PM, then Star Trek at 10:30PM, and then, finally, at 11:30 Creepy Creature Feature started.

There was no host, just a title card with a vampire and perhaps some cobwebs followed by one or two B-movies and whatever ads the local salesguy could sell for midnight on a Saturday night. I’d imagine the ads were nearly free: five-year-olds in my generation didn’t have a lot of disposable income.

The movies were (at the time I was growing up) almost all from the 1950s and 1960s, and almost all of them were in black and white. I think that the television station could get these movies for very low cost, or, perhaps free in movies that failed to follow the proper copyright steps, like Night of the Living Dead.

Who flips Rob Zombie’s pancakes? Count Spatula.

Last month Bob suggested I revisit the old Hammer Film Productions® films, which are mainly known for their Frankenstein and Dracula movies. The studio turned out over fifty films, however, before it started cranking out science fiction and horror movies around 1957, and brought Peter Cushing in as an actor and having him join former British commando Christopher Lee in 1958 with Lee playing Dracula.

An aside: apparently when they were filming Lord of the Rings, director Peter Jackson was describing how he wanted Lee (playing Saruman) to react when Wormtongue stabbed him in the back. Lee stopped Jackson when he was trying to explain what he wanted. Lee: “Have you any idea what kind of noise happens when somebody is stabbed in the back? Because I do.

To be blunt: I have never seen a scary Hammer™ film. Most of them were, at their very best, entertaining. F-Troop’s Forrest Tucker as a scientist in the 1957 film The Abominable Snowman? Yeah, that’s not going to be scary.

And if the animal got stuck in the chute, would that make him adoorabull?

Oh, sure, when I was a kid Hammer’s® Quatermass and the Pit (United States title: Five Million Years to Earth) gave me shivers when I was in still in the footed pajama set, but rewatching it as an adult, I found it an interesting concept (alien overlords still “kind of” alive underneath London), but not scary.

One of the big differences I have seen in either the Hammer™ movies, or any number of movies from the day were built around concepts that seem to have been put away in the current political climate.

What concepts?

Humans are the good guys. Sure, not all humans were good. There were sniveling bad guys (mostly effeminate) or traitors (especially mostly secret commies) or scientists who didn’t understand what they were doing. Or Dr. Fu Manchu – he was definitely a bad guy, from a culture so different that although his goal of world domination was clear, his motives were less so.

Dr. Fu Manchu is still more credible than Dr. Fauci.

There was an optimism about the future. Roger Corman’s horrible movie Day the World Ended (1955) scared me six ways from Sunday because there was a mutant that was afraid of rain and I lived in a place where it hardly ever rained. But the end of the

Just like traitors, the scariest bad guys looked like us but weren’t us. Dracula, for instance, was, like Cornpop, a bad dude. And he looked like us. And, sort of, acted like us. But you knew, deep down, he wasn’t human.

We (generally) win. Now, I’ll admit that I like John Carpenter movies where at the end of the movie I’m pretty sure that mankind was wiped out sometime not long after the credits roll: (The Thing, Prince of Darkness, In the Mouth of Madness). But most horror movies of the 1950s and 1960s were optimistic that brainpower plus grit would solve almost any problem we face. Of course, the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers was in the “we lose” category, but it was pretty amazing, but much more common were films like When Worlds Collide where humanity, led by Elon Musk, manages to save itself through nearly impossible odds. On a rocket. With hot chicks.

I guess he’s now offering space for rent.

For whatever reason, I think the end of the optimism was around 1970. Westerns turned dark, and B-movies where humanity was the bad guy or where humanity out and out lost became much more common, such as Colossus, the Forbin Project, where supercomputers manage to link up and prove that A.I. is scary and may become humanity’s master benevolent and will be the best thing ever to happen to humanity. Not long after this (1974) Hammer® was essentially done making films and their quirky and optimistic take didn’t seem to sell anymore.

Perhaps not coincidentally, Hammer’s© fall was right after The Exorcist (1973) came out. It might be the final and most optimistic movie of this period of horror/science fiction. Although not a B-movie, it did show a world where true Evil was far scarier than anything that Dracula or Frankenstein ever was.

Yeah, the doctor even called the cemetery, “Human Resources”.

The Exorcist, optimistic? William Peter Blatty certainly thought so, since, although there was Evil, it could be vanquished.

By Good. And no matter how many times Peter Cushing’s Van Helsing tried, he never ever could get rid of Hammer’s™ Dracula. Probably because Van Helsing knew that Christopher Lee was pretty good with a knife.

Change, Batman, Male Prostitutes, And Bears

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

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

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

I do it. I become it.

Instantly.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wife: “I’m leaving.”

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

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

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

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

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

Do mimes with invisible walls have obstacle illusions?

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

Now that, my friends, is change.

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

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

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

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

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

One day, bicyclist.

The next day?

Not.

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

A Vision of a Better State

A Path to Get to the Better State

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

How Did It Get So Crazy, So Fast?

“It was O-Ren Ishii and her powerful posse, the Crazy 88, that proved the victor.” – Kill Bill, Vol. 1

My friends always made fun of me in high school for having an imaginary girlfriend. Of course, the joke was on them: they were imaginary, too.

One of the comments on a post a few weeks back asked a pretty good question:

“How did we get so crazy, so fast?”

The answer actually involves several intertwining threads, mice, Soviets, and gasoline engines, so let’s see of we can weave a web that covers at least a chunk of what has made us so crazy, so quickly. This is a distillation of the last seven years’ worth of study and writing, so some of it might be pretty familiar. Also, it’s not necessarily complete yet, but here are the major threads that I see that have led to what Heinlein called The Crazy Years.

First: Societal Malaise Due to Abundance

I’ve written several times about John Bumpass (that’s his real middle name according to the Internet) Calhoun’s Mouse Utopia experiment, see immediately below this paragraph for links to two previous posts. The short summary is Dr. Calhoun asked a crazy question: what would happen if you gave a population of mice everything they could want: food, water, freedom from predation, space to live, bedding material, and places to make nests.

Want Dystopia? Because this is how you get Dystopia.

The Unabomber Teaches The Facts Of Life

The result? The mice died out. At a certain point they stopped mating, mother mice stopped taking care of infant mice, gangs formed, and some mice (the “beautiful ones”) just spent their time grooming themselves and not really interacting.

If this sounds like Reddit® or TikTok™ or the Democratic National Convention, well, you’re right. For a certain subset of the population, abundance has ruined them.

My friend told me I didn’t understand the meaning of the word “ironic” which was ironic because it was Tuesday.

I think it started in the 1960s. I’m just guessing. I like to blame the hippies, so they’re likely the early-version. It then continued into the wildest era of abundance the world has ever seen: the 1990s. If you look at any time lapse, that’s when the United States started leading the world (it has spread now, literally) in having obesity, not hunger, be the bigger (pun intended) health problem.

I think this started to manifest itself, big time, in the music of the 1990s. We went from Warrant singing about Cherry Pie to Kurt Cobain mumbling about how living in the suburbs with all the Pop Tarts™ his fat face could eat was killing him. Turns out that shotguns are even more deadly than Pop Tarts©. Who knew? We had a generation that was lost because they had everything.

I think a candidate for the hallmark phrase of this Crazy Cause is: “Why are we even here, dude?”

Never take diet advice from a fat guy, and never take life advice from Kurt Cobain.

Second: Societal Anxiety Due to No Challenges

I recently made the comment on X® that a lot of people would e better off if they had been bullied as kids. Was I serious? Yeah, I was. One response was, “Why do you want to make things worse?”

The truth is, for me, that bullies actually helped me build my character and my resolve. And, believe it or not, sometimes the bullies were right and the things that they bullied me about (second graders can be assholes) were things I needed to fix to be a better person. Did I lift harder to get stronger because of it? Yes. Did I develop the internal resilience so that the people who (rightfully) bullied the smarmy second grader that I was eventually earned the respect of the bullies?

Yes. Males, even young males, need to develop a hierarchy and understand their place in it and why they are inferior to Chuck Norris.

No child is born perfect, and it is the challenges in life that help define and develop character. Without challenge, development is stunted.

I think that today’s twentysomethings have the problem that they look into a future that certainly looks grim to them, yet they’ve never had a chance to develop their character and are told again and again how perfect they are and how their choices are important.

Newsflash: the choices of a second grader generally deserve about as much attention as the choices my dog wants to make. Both will eat all of the cake in the house if you let them and make messes everywhere. It’s our job as parents to not care what they think when it’s important to develop character and virtue.

Chuck Norris can recite pi backwards.

As a society we face many of the same problems: what is it we stand for and what are we trying to accomplish? We don’t have Soviets to fight, we’re actively encouraging invaders into our country to replace us, and we don’t have any cool national purpose like the Apollo program.

I think a candidate for the catchphrase of this crazy cause is: “Why am I so worthless?”

Third: Societal Atomization Due To Tech

As humans, we have minds that are built around smaller social systems, mainly. The big move from rural to urban happened in the west only recently. Our legacy social structure is (mainly) to live in a town for a very long time, put down roots, make friends, make a reputation.

Most people aren’t leaders, they’re followers, and want to be led. Why else would sane people want zoning regulations?

The good news is I can have up to six Eldrich Abominations without asking for a zoning variance request.

But now, put us in a constantly churning urban landscape where we don’t know the next-door-neighbor in the apartment building? Who do we turn to?

Well, whatever latenightjokeman says or whatever TikTik™ says or whatever InstaFace© allows to be printed. People are defining themselves on how YouTube™ says Europeans feel about Donald Trump.

They are also allowed to pick whatever gender they are. How do I know tech is driving this? Back when COVID made everyone homeschooled, transgenderism dropped. Why? No one to identify to – which is why “transwomen” with no girl parts get offended when gynecologists won’t give them appointments.

Yes. That’s a thing.

The iPhone™ is a big driver. It puts connections in the hands of kids. I talked with one Millennial, and he said that at the start of his high school career, kids “cruised main” looking for other kids. By the end of high school, it was all phones. Friendships dropped, and dating dropped. Mix that with the first two causes above, and it leads to fewer kids.

Dating sites magnify this, and make every girl “4” think that she deserves a Chad ranked 9 or higher because one time a drunk Chad had sex with her. This leads to Chads being happy, but girls being sad and hollow inside.

I think a catchphrase for this Crazy Cause is “Who or what the heck am I?”

When I was a kid I thought my dad was Superman®. Later, I wonder why he put a cape on after drinking bourbon.

Result of these interacting strands of Crazy are a large number of people who:

Stand for nothing
Have no examples of virtue other than seeking money in their lives
See no point in anything other than the present moment
Are distracted
Think they’re too good for PEZ™
Are filled with the combination of anxiety and narcissism
Do and feel whatever the media tells them to do
Haven’t built social circles of any particular strength – clubs and churches are on constant decline

There’s good news.

All of this is self-limiting. We’re not mice, and plenty of good humans haven’t fallen into Calhoun’s Behavioral Sink. Many of those same people have overcome challenges sufficient to shape their character for the better. Finally, there are enough of us that don’t follow.

We lead. Or we choose our own path.

And?

We’re gonna win.