Health – Page 11 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Modern World Part III: You Exist To Be Farmed

“I have nipples, Greg. Could you milk me?” – Meet the Parents

Klaus, and his cat, Mrs. Triddlesworth.

This is the third and final (for now) commentary about modern life and what modernity has brought us. The first one was dealing with health (The Modern World Part I: Health And Strippers), the second with life in general (The Modern World Part II: Wages, Subscriptions, and Dating). This last one deals with the essence of the modern world: Money.

We are being farmed. For money. For time. For votes.

I started noticing the money-farming thing in the 1990s. I looked at what Sears© was doing back then because I was at the point where I needed to start paying bills or cultivating the lifestyle of an urban outdoorsman. To me, what Sears® was attempting seemed obvious – they were attempting to see what the average family spent each month and were trying to swallow it all.

You could even get a Sears© store credit card to pay for it all (plus a wee 20% interest fee). Sadly, I heard that their Sears™ credit card database has just been hacked – they now have the personal data for everyone born between 1899 and 1921. Sears™, of course, sold everything from tools to toddler beds to toasters to towels to trench coats to twine.

But that wasn’t enough. Sears™ bought Allstate™ so they could insure your house and car. Sears™ bought Dean Witter Investments©, Coldwell Banker Real Estate™, and developed the Discover™ card to boot.

Outside of food, you could get a majority of your needs covered if you had a family just by buying stuff from Sears© product and their companies. You could invest, buy a home, and even (in some places) have Sears™ mechanics work on your car.

I don’t wanna grow up, I’m a Toys’r’Us© kid . . . bankrupt and empty inside.

This strategy failed, spectacularly, because Sears™ forgot how to sell stuff – it imagined it was a finance-real estate – insurance company and forgot that the big business that brought people in the door was the stuff. Today, there are fewer Sears™ stores left than movies Nic Cage did in the last three months, so only 36 or so.

But the concept of “farming people for monthly payments” stuck with me. The very best companies start with an idea of how to serve people, but at some point, the goal of all of them become money extraction. Then they (generally) fail. I’m looking at you, General Electric®.

Sometimes, companies even get the law changed to make a product legally required. Example?

Car insurance. There was a time it wasn’t required. As of 2020 (the latest data I could find), two states don’t require it, but the other 48 require it (or bonding). Before 1956, no states required car insurance. Is it a good idea? Yeah. But I think the biggest proponents were car insurance companies who were tired of covering for the 45% of accidents that were caused by women drivers, which is weird. The steering wheel isn’t even on their side.

What’s the worst thing about parallel parking? The witnesses.

What other regular bills do most people pay in 2022?

Cable TV,
Subscription streaming,
Internet,
Elvis impersonators,
Property taxes,
Mortgage or rent,
Trash,
PEZ®,
Water,
Water soluble dog wax,
Sewer,
Johnny Depp, and
Homeowners’ associations

I could keep going. Everyone wants a check, and most of them want it monthly so they can be as regular as Biden’s strokes. Some of the things on the list are optional, and some are compulsory. It took The Mrs. and I quite a lot of hunting when we moved to Texas to find a house that didn’t have a homeowners’ association. And Johnny Depp? Who can avoid that on a Saturday night?

But the farming gets worse. It used to be that many (not all) families in the 1950s could get by with only one income. Then, enter feminism. It was far from natural – but women were made to feel in some way inadequate if they didn’t burn their bras, start smoking, and go to work and type PowerPoints®. Or whatever women did at work in the 1960s. Help the Clampetts? I’m at a loss.

I gave a friend a book for his birthday. I hope he returns it on time, it’s due in two weeks.

The number of houses for families didn’t go up any faster, but the income of the families did as mothers entered the workforce. So, as women began to make money, the same number of families were chasing the same number of houses (suburbia could only grow so fast), but with higher income.

The result? Housing prices went up so the standard of living didn’t even increase that much. The nuclear family, already pulled from the extended family by events I’ve talked about in earlier posts in this series, began to feel the stress. The net gain from women entering the workforce for many families was nearly zero, if not negative.

Don’t believe me? Check housing prices around big cities.

As the stress from two working families shot up, the divorce rate went up. And government dependency went up. Thus?

People farmed for their labor became dependent people farmed for votes. How can the Left keep winning like this? That, sadly, wasn’t the only big economic change to hit the modern world.

College became (during the 1970s) another way to farm people for money. The Average Midwestern College® in the 1970s could be paid for with a typical part-time job with money left over for pizza, Pepsi®, and a Ford® Pinto™. The Pinto® might have been the best argument ever for car insurance.

Before then, most people didn’t go to college, because it wasn’t required to get a good job or start a good business. But as numbers of people attending college went up, supply and demand kicked in.

The supply of college slots increased, sure, but the colleges found that they could charge a lot more for school. But politicians decided that everyone should be allowed to go to school, so they introduced the Guaranteed Student Loan. This was a government program where you could borrow enough to cover the tuition at most schools.

Okay, say it out loud.

Heck, I’d like to thank student loans for getting me through grad school. I don’t think I can ever repay you. I kid. But the last loan payment was due on 1/1/2013. I made sure to not pay ahead, so if 2012 was the end of the world, at least that last payment would have been a freebie.

Colleges, of course, decided that you could pay the borrowed amount PLUS more money, so tuition went up with loan amounts. More students plus higher tuition led to more loans. This led to more debt.

Now the average student loan debt is over $39,000. The total student loan debt in the country is $1,7 trillion.

Where did this $1.7 trillion go? To climbing walls. To cool dorm rooms. To spring breaks. To new buildings. And, far too much of it went to Leftist professors teaching their students that the problem is too much tradition, and the solution is even more modernity and “free” medical care.

What kind of Medicare would Moses have? Part C.

Yes. Medical care. In general, the very best medical advice I’ve seen says to stay away from doctors as much as you can. Eat healthy food. Get exercise. Stay hydrated. Wash your hands. Try not to get crushed under heavy things. Avoid Chicago.

The problem is that none of this is very profitable for the medical industry. Healthy people are lousy customers. Goldman Sachs® asked it themselves, “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” Yes, this is a real quote.

Well, no, curing patients doesn’t work for big financial companies – they hate that idea. No one makes money off of diet foods if you maintain a healthy weight. No one makes money off of insulin if you can avoid diabetes. And they actually want you to get cancer. This is again a comment from the same Goldman Sachs® report: “Where an incident pool remains stable (e.g., in cancer) the potential for a cure poses less risk to the sustainability of a franchise.”

Hmmm. Does the Pfizer™ vaccine make more sense now? If they have their way, boosting will be an annual event. Does that sound sustainable? I’m sure Goldman Sachs© is thrilled.

Are psychoactive medications sustainable?

But people owning things appears to be cramping the style of the elites. The latest idea that has been widely talked about is the Great Reset – a transition away from past economic ideas, such as “ownership” and “family” and “freedom” and “sleeping in on Saturday morning”.

We’ve been moving towards the Great Reset. According to their thoughts: We’ll own nothing, and like it. Then, our time could be farmed forever. Our desires could be controlled and programmed. We’ll like having nothing because that’s what they designed. And they’ll further atomize and alienate us.

Because that’s profitable. Don’t believe me? Listen to them, in their own words:

The Modern World, Part I: Health And Strippers

“Learning about Cuba, and having some food.” – Fast Times at Ridgemont High

“Sir, I found the IED – Ice Cream, Eggos® and Diet Coke™.”

I had (before Vlad decided to put on the Imperial March and send the tanks down south) promised a three-post series based around a single theme. As the name of the blog implies, this first one covers the “health” theme of the blog . . . . Unless events in Ukraine dictate, expect parts two and three on Monday and Wednesday.

What happens when society conspires to make people . . . unhealthy? We’ve experienced an upheaval in the traditions and previously self-imposed and society-imposed limits to behavior (behaviour is the metric spelling for you in Chairman Trudeau’s People’s Republic of Canada).

By (nearly) any measure the United States is far less healthy as a nation than it was five or six decades ago. About only good thing we’ve seen is a lowering in heart disease and other diseases related to smoking. That’s a bright spot. Many of the metrics are fairly grim, though on other health statistics. Even life expectancy, which had been increasing, is now trending downward faster than Kamala Harris at the county fair zipper pull.

So, Joe Biden sent her over to manage the Ukraine situation. I’ll bet she’ll suck at that, too.

I’ll throw out this idea: many of the health issues that we are facing are the product of modernity – changes in society that break with time tested traditions:

I can pull up numerous articles that point to how America is the fattest that it has ever been. Homer Simpson was portrayed as comically obese in the 1990s when he reached the weight of 239. Now that qualifies him to wear medium clothes. From the child’s section.
We’re also at a high point of kids being raised in broken homes, which causes health issues as well. I mean, if being in jail is a health issue.
Finally, we’re in many ways unhappier than ever before – opioid deaths aren’t happening because life is peachy. Kids in high school today don’t think they’ll do as well financially as their parents. And people are looking for increasing escapes from reality.

Let’s start with weight – I’ll spend more time here since I think it’s a topic where we tend to blame people because they’re fat. However, I am not particularly a proponent of the idea that self-control just disappeared and that’s why America decided to pack on the pounds. Nope. Things changed which made it much easier to pack on the Dorito® muscle.

This is exactly what AOC weighs when she has both her saddle and feedbag on.

Join me for a minute in a time machine back to the 1960s. What did people eat?

Food. Duh.

But what kind of food? Food with much lower levels of processing. For example, frozen pizzas and microwave Pizza Rolls® and Bagel Bites™ didn’t exist. If you wanted a TV dinner, they were required to be placed in an oven for approximately sixty years and then pulled out. I never had a 1960’s version of a TV dinner, but the photos I’ve seen made them look as attractive as Nancy Pelosi.

They were a novelty.

When I was growing up, Ma Wilder made dinner. Sure, she bought noodles sometimes, but she also made her own, from scratch. I can’t remember my mother ever making something from a kit. She bought me some pizza kits about twice a year where you made your own dough because I think it amused her to watch me try to cook.

No, when Ma Wilder made mashed potatoes, she started with . . . potatoes. Then she added milk and butter and salt. Four ingredients. She even made gravy from scratch. Much of the food Ma bought didn’t have labels. Why would you need to label a steak? I mean, the only ingredient is: steak. Same with lettuce. Same with tomatoes. It’s . . . food.

I think I channeled Aesop for a minute there.

How many moms in 2020 have the time to cook like Ma Wilder did? How many are, instead, thrown to work and then due to time pressures toss the kids Pop Tarts® and Tropicana™ and Kid Cuisine©? When I was a single dad (and much stupider than today) I’ll raise my hand – I did.

So did/do a lot of people. The food that is convenient is categorically different. And, at least until inflation makes it nigh unaffordable, it’s now ubiquitous. Soda pop costs less now (adjusted for inflation) than ever. Buy it in the 2 liter (2 milligrams in metric litres) bottles and it’s amazingly cheap. Buy the off-brand stuff and you can get it inexpensively enough that you could bathe in it.

Food is also available all the time, everywhere. When I was a kid, there was breakfast (I always skipped it due to the high quality of my genetics) lunch at school (I nearly always skipped that because I could buy a comic instead of lunch if I saved my lunch money) and then dinner at home. Mom may or may not have made dessert – it was generally a once a week thing. And convenience stores are selling Snacky Cakes© at 3am. When I was a kid, everyone was asleep at 3am.

They say breakfast is the most important meal of the day. But what if there’s no fast to break?

Compare that to today? All school food is free for all students this year. Pugsley could have free breakfast, a free snack, a free lunch, and then a free afternoon snack if he wanted. Every day. And then dinner, and then a fridge filled with snacks.

The cooks at school aren’t (mostly) getting actual food ingredients to cook, either. They’re getting highly processed foods that contain (in some cases) ingredients other than salt that were mined instead of grown. They contain oils and chemicals that were made in facilities that would make an oil refinery blush. Oh, wait, the “vegetable” oil is made in a refinery that uses solvent extraction and then bombards the oil with hydrogen to create a chemical reaction to make it shelf stable.

Do we wonder why we’re fat? We’re not eating food. And what we are eating is so available that we’re stuffing ourselves with it constantly.

Why?

Moms have to work because society says that making PowerPoints® is more important than raising kids. Besides, it takes a village, right? Oh, and since all the moms are working, a family can’t afford a house on just one income. That’s, of course, if the family is intact. Single moms and dads have even less time.

Yup. This modern world is a winner, am I right?

I tried pole dancing once, but Kowalski didn’t like it.

That brings us to issue two: single parents and blended families. Do I understand that it’s sometimes required? Yes. I was married to someone before The Mrs., and it didn’t work because it was a mixed marriage – I was human and she . . . wasn’t. I kid. She might be human, but the test kept turning to smoke when her DNA was exposed to light.

Society has made divorce a go-to option. Again, I’ve been there as a parent.

But not as a kid.

I had two parents for most of my childhood, which was awesome. (I was adopted after the mother wolf left me on the Wilder doorstep, which was seen as a fulfillment of the Great Prophecy that I would be the one to unite the mayonnaise and mustard – the condisatz haderwich – I even survived the Everlasting Gomstopper© jabbar.) Sure, they argued. Sure, there were problems from time to time.

I never had to worry, though, who Ma or Pa was going to bring home.

I never had to help them emotionally through a divorce. I got to be a kid. And when Ma said, “Wait until your father gets home,” I was damn scared. They were united in punishment, and they would absolutely not undercut each other.

But Pa saved his blue shield for special occasions.

If I was in trouble, I couldn’t escape the consequences.

Now? The pathology of single parenthood is clear:

43% of prison inmates grew up in a single-parent household
90% of repeat juvenile arsonists live only with their mother
75% of patients in drug abuse facilities came from a single-parent household
63% of youth suicides are from homes without a father

I could go on and on. Society has made divorce by women for “fun and prizes” cheap and easy. It’s even celebrated by the “I don’t need no man” crowd. Who suffers? Society. And the kids.

So, the tradition of divorce being very, very hard to get and socially undesirable seems so outdated now. Right?

Let’s add on our final contestant for this post: the financial pressures and collapsing economy brought out by a relentless globalization and continual change. Careers are gone. Gigs are in when an economy has all turned to “services” driven by cheaper labor.

In many cases, businesses are built with just the idea to use cheap labor to financialize the industry. What’s the forty-year-old guy who used to carve gravestones going to do when the boss buys a laser engraver that does twice his work in half the time? There’s not exactly a market for monument carvers.

At Mozart’s grave, you can watch him decompose.

Let’s also add this into the mix: The constant streams of gratification available from infinite Internet porn to infinite Internet social apps (I hear the kids have found something called MySpace®) haven’t created the sort of real-life experiences that were common in the past. Now, the negatives are accentuated, amplified, and immediate. Is it a surprise that kids today are nihilistic and escapist and jaded on male-female relations?

Still, in all of this, there is room for personal responsibility. We are each responsible for our individual outcomes. I can’t pass the buck for my failures back to society, but I can look at the trend. Have the people who got fat changed? Not really. It’s just far easier to get fat today, but still the responsibility of the individual.

Have plenty of kids from broken homes turned into champs? Sure! But the statistics show that parents, shockingly, matter to the outcomes.

If I pick a career that gets replaced, is that on me? Yes, yes it is. But how many people have picked careers where they have been replaced? Twitter® even banned people for telling journalists (who had told coal miners, “learn to code”) to “learn to code.” We live in a society where careers are ephemeral, coming and going faster than Nancy Pelosi’s bouts of sobriety. And what do we do about a generation raised by computers that are programmed to be as addictive as possible without creating actual achievement?

I heard an actual journalist was recently at CNN®. They had Security escort him out.

If I leave a kid in a candy shop politician unsupervised, it’s my fault, as well as the kid’s politician’s fault. You just don’t leave irresponsible people where they can cause damage, even though the moral choices were made by the kid politician.

Perhaps, moving away from traditions means moving away from problems that have been solved before?

Civil War 2.0 On Hold: Russia, Russia, Russia

“If Russia mobilizes, there will be a war.” – Nicholas and Alexandria

I saw a billboard advertising clocks the other day – I guess it’s a sign of the times.

Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
Open War.

The Clock O’Doom has dropped back. For now. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – The Clock Retreats – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Hungry Days – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 650 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

https://wilderwealthywise.com/civil-war-weather-report-previous-posts/

The Clock Retreats

February was on a pace to at least keep the pressure up.

COVID was causing Canada to rip apart.
The Department of Homeland Security decided that (see below) that anyone who put forward “misleading narratives which sow discord or undermine public trust in U.S. government institutions” was a threat.
Truckers in the United States were getting ready to replicate the Canadian example in D.C.
Biden was less popular than syphilis.

Then? Ukraine. It’s completely stopped the concern about COVID. Corona is . . . gone. All hail Putin – the man who cured COVID. The truckers are still on the side of freedom in the United States, but the press isn’t covering them at all.

From the Civil War 2.0 standpoint, though, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has completely sucked all the oxygen out of the room. It is the only thing being discussed. And public perception is moving quickly. When the invasion was first launched, only 26% of people (mainly Leftists) wanted to have any American action taken.

Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a resolution 426-3 supporting Ukraine, up to and including troops. It’s a resolution, so it’s not a declaration of war. But the Congressmen think their voters support intervention. They’re right – 74% of people in the United States support a “no-fly” zone over Ukraine.

The only way to do that, of course, is for Americans to directly shoot down Russian planes. I don’t think the Russians would take that well at all. I don’t expect a no-fly zone because even Biden isn’t foolish enough to consider that. I hope.

Regardless, the focus of the American public has been distracted. They’ve stopped fighting each other (sort of) and for the moment, Civil War 2.0 is off the menu. This is only a short-term event. As we’ll cover down below (and in much more detail on Wednesday), this reprieve is only short term. The invasion carries the seeds of stress that will ultimately make Civil War 2.0, much more likely.

For now, though, I’m moving the clock back to 10 minutes to midnight.

Violence And Censorship Update

As mentioned above, at the beginning of February, stress was actively added to the system. First, the DHS decided that differing options counted as terrorism. I’m hoping that they don’t see me calling their little note a blatant violation of the First Amendment as being in violation. I mean, who wouldn’t trust a government that doesn’t want alternative views published?

See for yourself:

Certified Genius Adam Kinzinger (just kidding, I’m not sure he’s smart enough to spell his own name) said that “targeted assassinations” were coming if civil war breaks out. I’m just hoping someone finds a room where he can have his coloring books in peace.

TD Bank, in Canada, gave funds for the Canadian truckers to the courts. Why? Having a different opinion means you’re a target. The Emergencies Act gave them the right to do that. As well as cut anyone who supported them, even verbally, out of the modern economic system.

And never forget – the Left wants people who love freedom bankrupt so they can never have a voice again.

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Violence is flat. February isn’t (usually) a big month for violence, so that’s to be expected. I would expect the next few months to remain calm as well, perhaps turning back up in April.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, but instability fell in February. Short month, and the focus is now more outward.

Economic:

The drop in economic confidence turned around this month, mainly on lower unemployment. This is short term.

Illegal Aliens:

This data was at record levels for this time of year. All-time record levels. Again.

The Hungry Days

I’ve tried to model the way that people feel about the economy, politics, and violence above. One thing those models don’t do is predict. Here’s where a prediction is coming in, but it’s easier to predict what’s going to happen than predicting what will happen to a chocolate Easter bunny if you leave it alone in a room with a fat kid:

Ukraine is a tremendous producer of food for the world.
So is Russia.
Ukraine produces a lot of fertilizer and exports it.
So does Russia.

In the very best case, Ukrainian harvests will be far below normal. If the war continues, the harvests may be nearly zero. Ukraine may export no food – zero. Their industry for producing fertilizer might be wrecked beyond use, or the docks might be destroyed. Or the docks might be in Russian hands.

Russia, even if allowed to export, may choose to export food only to countries that don’t have sanctions against it. Would you choose to export to people that have cut you off, and might not even have a mechanism to pay you, to people who cut off your Netflix®?

What happens if wheat producers comprising nearly 26% of wheat exports in the world . . . stop selling to most people either because they can’t or don’t want to?

The world gets hungry. And if the millions of barrels of oil and billions of cubic feet of natural gas is off the market, the world gets poor.

So, we can end up in a world that is cold, hungry and poor. Quickly. And those are ideal conditions for Civil War 2.0.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/The_Real_Fly/status/1490379402005393413

https://twitter.com/The_Real_Fly/status/1487927709456031749

https://twitter.com/i/status/1484612953672347648

https://twitter.com/i/status/1490144736732188677

https://twitter.com/The_Real_Fly/status/1489137527659319298

https://twitter.com/i/status/1491418120086454278

https://twitter.com/Networkinvegas/status/1489654175570874368

https://gab.com/DrPaulGosar/posts/107814488157277312

https://twitter.com/NY_Scoop/status/1493116710173429761

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10483307/Shocking-video-shows-man-beaten-gang-Harlem-run-passing-car.html

https://www.lamag.com/citythinkblog/how-bad-is-crime-in-l-a/

Good Guys

https://twitter.com/BettyKPIX/status/1494117970221547521

https://youtu.be/R4Y-6zg6rL8

https://youtu.be/Z0qSqtKcUtQ

https://twitter.com/i/status/1494460147246067720

https://twitter.com/i/status/1494431313452941323

https://twitter.com/i/status/1490900444494712834

https://twitter.com/Orwells_Ghost_/status/1491944537299771400

https://roycewhite.substack.com/p/an-open-letter-to-the-black-bourgeoisie

One Guy

https://youtu.be/WOZI59tSv_4

Body Counts

https://goodsciencing.com/covid/athletes-suffer-cardiac-arrest-die-after-covid-shot/

https://sf.gov/sites/default/files/2021-01/2021%2001_OCME%20Overdose%20Report.pdf

https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/gun_control/gun_violence_most_americans_want_stricter_enforcement_not_new_laws

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10542549/More-Americans-killed-GUNS-car-crashes.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10500759/Police-shot-dead-record-1-055-people-2021-young-black-men-disproportionate-majority.html

https://nypost.com/2022/02/06/bidens-first-year-in-office-saw-73-police-officers-killed-most-deaths-since-1995/

https://www.thedailybeast.com/these-cartel-terror-schools-in-mexico-give-cannibalism-exams-failure-is-not-an-option

Vote Counts

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1486032341210480645.html

https://apnews.com/article/elections-wisconsin-local-elections-election-2020-general-elections-6f786ced357f2d89f61a6bd32afcdd08

https://thefederalist.com/2022/03/01/breaking-special-counsel-finds-mark-zuckerbergs-election-money-violated-wisconsin-bribery-laws/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/12/texas-voting-requirements-ballot-rejections

https://www.newsweek.com/film-claims-it-has-video-mules-stuffing-ballot-boxes-2020-election-1679583

https://heritageaction.com/toolkit/election-integrity-toolkit

Civil War…

https://rollcall.com/2022/02/03/civility-downhill-biden-poll/

https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/bridgewater-s-ray-dalio-sees-u-s-on-path-to-civil-war-as-political-polarization-rises-1.1718043

https://www.conwaydailysun.com/opinion/columns/ross-douthat-let-s-not-invent-a-civil-war/article_921df052-74a0-11ec-a4e5-b37129c65643.html

https://thetriad.thebulwark.com/p/ross-douthats-civil-war-blame-game

https://www.oleantimesherald.com/opinion/is-america-bound-for-a-second-civil-war/article_280c209d-0480-5284-9421-95d71b83eb9b.html

https://bobschaffer-53068.medium.com/how-does-one-grasp-a-civil-war-5101af781ba2

https://greensboro.com/community/rockingham_now/opinion/are-we-bound-for-a-second-civil-war/article_9caf04b4-a6f0-5687-b55d-040a1271fddc.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/13/opinion/january-6-civil-war.html

https://www.businessinsider.com/us-close-to-violent-conflict-book-how-civil-wars-start-2022-1

https://slate.com/culture/2022/01/stephen-marche-next-civil-war-review.html

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/11/1071082955/imagine-another-american-civil-war-but-this-time-in-every-state

https://www.newsweek.com/our-second-civil-war-opinion-1670408

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/targeted-assassinations-coming-if-civil-war-breaks-out-adam-kinzinger/ar-AATKbqK

https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/news/politics/story/2022-02-12/ucsd-prof-walter-civil-war

https://www.newsandtribune.com/news/worries-valid-troubling-but-civil-war-unlikely-experts-say/article_5a61c30c-7d40-11ec-ba25-67f07cf005fb.html

https://jacobinmag.com/2022/02/new-civil-war-apocalyptic-rhetoric-news-media-far-right-liberals

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/adam-kinzinger-civil-war-warning_n_62022630e4b0725faacec344

https://www.businessinsider.com/billionaire-investor-says-us-seemingly-on-path-civil-war-2022-2

https://observer-reporter.com/opinion/op-eds/op-ed-vigilantism-and-a-new-civil-war-a-warning/article_01df8b3e-853c-11ec-a851-cfae67c239f1.html

…Is Not The Worst That Can Happen…

http://assets.realclear.com/files/2022/03/1969_NEWSCHELLINGMEMO.pdf

Life Is Short, But It’s Funnier If You Read This

“So I really am important? How I feel when I’m drunk is correct?” – Futurama

When I went to the hospital and they were done with the surgery I asked if I could do the stitches. The doctor said, “Suture self.”

This past weekend The Mrs. was in the hospital. No, it wasn’t the ‘Rona (really) but instead it was scurvy. I told The Mrs. that she should have eaten that pineapple, but, no. She refused.

We didn’t intend to take her to the hospital, but the doctor sort-of insisted after running a batch of tests which included things that shoot radiation at her and other things that have rotating magnets. There was a lot of blood drawn, but even though I asked to do the parts that would cause The Mrs. pain myself, they declined.

The short version is that after several gallons of intravenous antibiotic, The Mrs. got a lot better. The doctor described the infection as guacamole. He said it was the technical term that medical professionals use to describe sickness, with the antibiotic that slowly scooped the guacamole out by a basket of tortilla chips. I hate technical talk like that, I mean, I don’t even like guacamole. I’m more of a salsa guy.

I guess I should have been tipped off when he told me the special was the chimichanga plate with refritos.

After about 36 hours, they booted The Mrs. out. She feels better, but is not quite at 100% as I write this. One virtue of having a sick relative is that it clears away a lot of the mundane things that we deal with daily. We are used to life being normal – get up when the alarm goes off, shower (every other week) get gallons of coffee, and deal with that five-minute commute to work. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Days turn into weeks, weeks turn into months, and months turn into late notices if I forget to pay the natural gas bill. All of this, of course, is accompanied by the theme song of the latest news and outrages that are taking place in Washington or points further away where they wear funny hats and have no idea how to properly make barbeque sauce, like Texas.

I like Texas, and I hear one of their neighbors is OK.

When events like The Mrs. being in the hospital intrude, everything that’s normal takes a back seat. Things that were important fade into the squabbling trivialities that they really are. The events of our lives that define them aren’t the minutes we drain into offices and cubicles, but rather the impact felt on our lives by others and the impact that we provide to the lives of others. At least that’s what it said on the Hallmark® card, but it was in a really fancy script.

The important moments in our lives are really that, moments. One problem I’ve noted in myself is that I tend to be able to be swallowed by the constant noise of the days turning into weeks. I turn my head down and find that another year has passed.

We also argued about how global warming wasn’t a threat, but that was anti-climactic.

What do I have to show for that year? How have I gotten better? What have I accomplished? Whose lives have I touched, I mean, within the limits of those restraining orders?

The soundtrack of our lives is often the things that we can impact only in the most negligible way, unless of course you’re the guy who makes sure that Biden doesn’t trade the nuclear codes for an extra pudding at dinner. But regardless of our roles on the local, state, or national stage, all of us can impact the lives of the individuals that are close to us.

Sometimes those efforts take years. Pugsley is growing into a fine young man, but we fought a titanic battle for years. Raising a boy can be like that, especially if he’s as stubborn as his father. And he is. We even have arguments over who is more stubborn.

You can’t argue with Pete Buttigieg. He’s not thinking straight.

On the other end of the spectrum, though, a chance comment might be the gentle stir of a butterfly’s wings. Just with a single word or phrase, you never know whose life you might change, either for better or worse. Even now, I can still remember that nice gentleman in the grocery store asking me, “Are you sure you need to buy a dozen doughnuts?”

Then there are those whose lives we touch who we never will meet. In my case, for writing P.J. O’Rourke was a big influence – he was prolific and funny and the grocery store clerk had no idea she was selling a really grown-up magazine when I handed over my cash for the latest issue of National Lampoon. There are other mentors that I have met only in books, whose lives and words have inspired and continue to inspire me today.

Day-to-day life can take me away from focusing on what is really important. There are times when I thought I was making a lot of progress, and instead I was just walking in big circles. Having a guidepost and a goal, even if (and perhaps especially) that goal can never, ever be met.

This was something I already knew, but that’s the insidious nature of the daily grind, it can make you forget those things that are important. There is a joy in losing self in action and work, but there is a danger, too – losing sight of the things that are the core of existence. It’s like going out to dinner and ordering something besides steak. I mean, if there’s steak on the menu, why do you need any other pages in the menu?

My crazy high school girlfriend is like that cheap grill I bought – they were both smoking hot and burned the house down.

As I said, The Mrs. is better, but not 100%. She’ll never run a marathon, but the last time I saw her run at all was in 2014, so I don’t think she’ll lose any sleep over that. One side effect of her no longer storing the guacamole, the doctor said, is that she might lose an inch or two in height over the next two months. I guess The Mrs. will have to learn how to be a little patient.

The Virtue Of Being Unreasonable

“I’m a reasonable guy, but I’ve just experienced some very unreasonable things.” – Jack Burton, Owner-Operator of the Pork Chop Express

I put some giant, big, huge, enormous bread in the toaster today. I made synonym toast.

I remember hiking my first 14,000 foot (43 liters) mountain. It was a spur-of-the-moment trip. I grabbed two of my friends and off we went. We intentionally spent the night above 12,000 feet (12 kilopascals). The world above 12,000 feet (32 ergs) is strange, to say the least. Water boils at a very low temperature due to the low atmospheric pressure and cools very quickly. I’ll tell you – low atmospheric pressure certainly makes my blood boil.

The next day we finished the ascent as planned. Also as planned, we decided to hike our way back out to the car. We made our way back down, losing well over a mile in altitude, thankfully not all at once. I had worn sneakers up the hill. Those were perfectly fine for going up. But when we started heading down from our camp, the bottoms of both feet started to feel a bit warm.

Some of you probably can guess where this is going.

After several more horizontal miles and several thousand more vertical feet, that warmth in my feet had turned into a blaze. I looked forward to the creeks that cut through the trail, which provided cool water to cool my feed as we waded through. It felt wonderful.

I met a moray that had been knighted. Now that was Sir Eel.

I didn’t realize it then, but what was happening was with each downhill step I took, my foot slipped just a bit inside the sneaker. Just a bit. That slipping of foot against the inside of the shoe generated friction. That friction was multiplied by thousands of downhill steps. The primary location that friction showed up?

The soles of my feet.

Finally, we made the Jeep® that my friend had borrowed for the trip. I peeled off my shoes when I got in the back. The sole of each foot was covered in a single, large blister from heel to where the toes start.

One friend asked, “Why didn’t you have us carry your pack?”

My response? “I carried it up. I’ll be damned if I wasn’t going to carry it down.

Hey, don’t laugh at those shoes – ATF agents have to wear those every day.

Certainly, that was more foolish than heroic. I had in my mind that I wasn’t going to shirk my responsibility to someone else. It certainly wasn’t a reasonable idea, but that’s okay.

Change isn’t made by reasonable people. Real accomplishments are made only by people who are fanatics.

Of course, this doesn’t apply to the weekly trip to the grocery store: being Mad Max in the aisles is probably counterproductive. But when working on trying to accomplish something significant, being reasonable has to go right out the window.

On the other hand, given how Biden has messed things up, this might be what shopping looks like this summer.

I was talking with Pugsley about diet (last week’s post was a taste of the conversation). The Mrs. overheard the conversation. “Ahhh, your dad has a case of the TB – True Believer.” She paused, “Pugsley, if you’re ever around someone who used to smoke, it’s the same thing.”

And she is right. Quitting smoking is hard. Nicotine is highly addictive, and quitting, once started isn’t a reasonable thing. It requires willpower. And, like Mark Twain said, “Willpower lasts about two weeks, and it’s soluble in alcohol.”

It’s so very hard to quit tobacco that it often takes several tries – I know, I did it. So, to finally quit takes fanaticism. This is, in the end, the same sort of fanaticism that it takes for any significant change. It’s the same sort of drive that makes Elon push SpaceX®. It’s the same sort of drive that the Founding Fathers had when they forged a new nation.

Elon Musk is a bully. He beat up NASA and took their launch money.

It’s the same drive that creates great teams. Once people buy into the vision of what can be created, they give of themselves to further the vision. If the goal is big enough and important enough people ignore their sense of self. That’s when the magic happens.

Not only do we get amazing things done, we don’t really care who gets the credit. Big goals create big teams, dedicated teams. They come together and work towards success. Do they always win? Certainly not. Sometimes the biggest goals are tackled by amazing teams and the team fails.

But not as often as you might think. Let’s look at the difference between NASA and SpaceX®. When NASA and SpaceX™ started working on a project together, NASA freaked out. Why? SpaceX© was going too fast. They were achieving in a month things that would take NASA a year.

Although NASA still has people driven to get man into space, there aren’t many. Most just want to keep a job until the Federal pension kicks in. SpaceX™ just wants to get people into space, and it’s pounded into them daily. The difference is a vision. In the 1960s, NASA had both a vision and some particularly talented scientists that had some rocketry experience from previous jobs. They achieved one of the most amazing feats that humanity has every accomplished.

Why do wolves howl at the Moon? They don’t have cell phones.

Vision and fanaticism matter. And they’re good things when the vision is good. When the vision is dark, that fanaticism is dangerous.

I’ll change gears from outstanding feats back to my feets. The blisters (one per foot)came off, and most of the fresh skin underneath was exposed. It stung. For a while. A day later? It was like nothing had happened.

Something did happen, though. I climbed a really tall mountain. Did I accomplish the goal? Certainly. And I was completely unreasonable in the way I went about it. The good news? You can be unreasonable, too. Because if life is a hike, it’s only done at the end. And to accomplish things?

Sometimes you have to do something unreasonable.

Human Chow: It’s What’s For Dinner

“Bachelor Chow™ . . . now with flavor.” – Futurama

I heard that it was projected that the next Muslim country to have nukes is going to be France.

It’s no surprise to anyone that the biggest health problem in 2022 isn’t the ‘Rona, it’s people who are overweight. I’d imagine that most of you have seen the .gif that shows state after state with an increasing Body Mass Index (BMI) over time. I just checked my BMI, and according to the chart I have to grow at least five more inches.

Part of my question as I’ve seen this epidemic unfold has been, why? It’s not like the people in the United States suddenly lost willpower started consuming crap for no reason, though that would explain the popularity of Friends. Although I think there are several other significant causes I think one of the biggest has been the rise of ultraprocessed foods.

Most foods (for all of my life) have been processed to some degree. Ma Wilder didn’t feed us raw wheat – nope. She used white flour in cooking and baking bread since mass-produced flour was cheap and lasted in the cabinet forever. Ma Wilder told me that, since I was adopted, I would have to eat bread only from self-raising flour.

What’s the difference between Nic Cage and someone allergic to wheat? Nic would never turn down a roll.

Processing of flour from wheat changes not only the nutrient profile – it pulled out the parts of the wheat kernel that don’t store well as flour – but it also changed how it acts when eaten. An example: wheat flour is made into the familiar powder that we’re used to. This makes it easier to store and ship. It also makes it pretty tasty.

The final thing I want to mention about flour is that mashing wheat up into a powder changes how quickly I’ll get to use the nutrients of the flour when I eat it.

Let me explain:

If I ate just a plain wheat kernel, I’d be able to digest most of it, but it would take hours of time and energy. If I eat a piece of tasty, tasty bread, it’s available for use nearly immediately.

Especially the carbs. I’ll save insulin discussion for a later post, but ultraprocessed foods have an amazing impact on insulin production.

And the physical form of the food can also make people fatter. When rats were given (I assume) Rat Chow®, some bored grad student came up with the idea of feeding some rats plain Rat Chow©. The other rats, however, they smashed up the Rat Chow™ into a powder.

Like I said, bored grad students. Possibly drunk.

What’s the difference between rat poison and Diet Coke®? Diet Coke™ has better advertising.

What happened? The rats with the powdered food got fat and the rats that ate the “plain” food didn’t, even though both groups of rats were eating the same amount of calories. The change in form changed the way the food acted in the rats – it made the nutrients available more quickly, which (again, because of insulin) made the rats fat.

Heck, it’s not even just the flour and powdered rat food.

An even bigger bomb to the body is sugar. Sugar was once very uncommon as human food. Our ancestors got it from berries (not a lot, but some) and, when they could fight the bees back, from honey.

If I get diabetes, will that make me a sugar daddy?

Domestication and widespread production of sugar didn’t occur until the folks in India figured it out in the early Anno Domini centuries (note to Zoomers, this was before the Internet). They figured out how to take the juices from sugar cane (which can’t be stored or shipped well) and turned it into granulated sugar, which could be saved forever, and shipped across continents.

But for most of human history, sugar was wickedly expensive, and only the wealthy could afford to have it regularly. Now? I can buy granulated sugar for $0.50 per pound. Sugar prices are going up, sure, but I can buy a wholesale ton of sugar for less than $500.

The next category of foods that just weren’t available to humans were vegetable oils. I’m not talking about olive oil which is pressed and can be used just as it comes off the press – I’m talking about corn oils, canola oils, soybean oils. As produced in modern times, these are really chemical products that depend on chemical processes to make them usable.

Their history has been slippery. Transfats – or fats that were unsaturated after being subjected to chemical processing, were supposed to be healthier than butter. We were told so. Now it turns out that they increased the risk of heart attacks. Oops. Now, instead of being promoted by the government, they’re illegal to put in food. And butter is now good for you.

The main thing about these processed foods is that they are cheap to make. Some combination of flours oils, sugars, and . . . well, let’s take a look at the Totino’s® Pizza Roll ingredient list:

What’s the difference between a bag of pizza rolls and a musician? A bag of pizza rolls can feed a family.

It’s an amazing list of chemicals. I just really hesitate to call it food, however. It’s what the word ultraprocessed was made to describe. I was watching a video by Dr. Pradip Jamnadas (cardiologist, and I do recommend his YouTube® vidyas) and he had a word that was even more descriptive for foods like this: pre-digested.

A lot of the work that our wonderfully designed digestive system goes through to get energy out of food is simply not necessary with Totino’s© Human Chow Pizza Rolls. In large part the food is designed to hit the digestive system, and flood the body with calories, ringing the dopamine bell in the brain.

I really do think they’re tasty. I don’t plan on eating them except on very rare occasions, because when I look at the label now, I don’t see what looks like . . . food. It looks like Elon Musk’s shopping list for when he’s trying to create artificial life.

But the real purpose of this is to sell as many Totino’s® Pizza Rolls as possible and make the greatest profit. This leads to one question that illustrates an overlap between libertarianism and communism: “How much sawdust can I put in the food?”

On my diet I can have a libertarian salad: lettuce alone.

To a certain extent, these ultraprocessed foods have succeeded admirably. They’ve allowed cheap ingredients (often made from low-value byproducts) to feed millions of people at a reasonable cost. The problem, though, are the consequences that we see now: the calories taken in impact the human system in vastly different ways than the food that we were designed to consume.

So, my plan is to eat as close to real food as possible – meat, fish, eggs, and whole veggies.

And, yes, an occasional pizza roll, too.

Hedonism Leads To Nihilism

“Shut up and pay attention to me, Bender. Look, I love life and its pleasures as much as anyone here, except perhaps you, Hedonism Bot. But we need to be shut off. Especially you, Hedonism Bot.” – Futurama

One thing I learned in high school – always date homeless girls. It doesn’t matter where you drop them off.

I know that lots of people had it rough in high school, that they felt that they didn’t fit in. They felt as awkward at Whoopi Goldberg at a bris.

Not me.

I’m not bragging, really, it was just how it worked out for me. I had a great time in class, a great time in athletics, had great friends from nearly every walk of life. Heck, I even had hair back then.

I was also really lucky with the ladies. Thankfully there were no small number of girls with daddy issues in town, a drive-in movie theater, and a pizza place. Of course the pizza was not entirely necessary for a seduction, but a guy gets hungry. Seducing girls burns up calories.

Let’s add in the last element of hedonism: beer.

There was a bar where if you had the $5 cover charge, you were of drinking age as long as you weren’t stupid enough to wear your letter jacket. I should know, because I got in when I was 16. I went in with my friend’s (who was of drinking age) license. He was four inches taller than me and was probably sixty pounds less than me. I wasn’t fat, he was just skinny enough to fit down the barrel of a 12 gauge and not touch the sides.

I dived off the stage at an Oktoberfest party. I went krautsurfing.

Yes. At 16 I thought it was a good idea to sneak into a bar holding the license of someone who resembled me only in the fact that they were another human male who had blonde hair and blue eyes and in only those ways. And that same person who barely resembled me was also walking in with me.

I had no idea what sort of ludicrous story I would tell them if they asked. “Oh, sorry, I thought I was another person?” No. “Oh, when I was at his place I accidentally put his license in my wallet and hid my own license?” Hmm. “I was fighting with my multiple personality disorder and physically split into two people?”

Thankfully, the place was nearly empty and the bouncer never asked me for an ID, just took my $5 and stamped my hand.

I saw a drunk caveman walk home once. It was a meanderthal.

Apparently, I made enough of an impression that night that they never once carded me, ever. After one night, I was a regular and knew most of the people that worked there by name. Not so amazingly, about half the people from my social circle made the same discovery, and on a random Friday night, it wasn’t unusual to see a dozen juniors and seniors in the place. Of course in 2022, the Safety Police would probably summarily execute the owner and the staff, but this was a kinder, gentler, drunker time.

It was life on easy mode. Plentiful girls with dubious morals. Cheap beer. Great success in nearly everything I tried. I’m not saying I peaked in high school, no. Heck, I’m not even sure that I’ve peaked yet. But it was easy.

One thing I did was try to connect emotionally with those frolicsome fräuleins of my hometown. That seemed (in many cases) like a lost cause. One night while sitting under the moonlight in the Wonderful Wildermobile, between hickie sessions, I looked up at the Moon and said to my girlfriend at the time, “It’s amazing to look up at that, and think how much smaller it is than the Sun. How much smaller the Earth is than the Sun. It’s a fantastic Universe we live in.”

Her response? “The Sun is larger than the Earth? No way!!!!”

Okay, our relationship was over pretty shortly after that comment. And that also changed me.

I bet my old girlfriend thinks Starbucks® is a currency that aliens use.

I had an epiphany. I was living a life of hedonism. And although I had a life of pleasure, there seemed to be a lack of meaning. I had everything that every guy on the football team could desire.

But I felt empty. Not dead inside, but empty. I felt that the things I was doing were, while extremely physically pleasing, were devoid of meaning. It was like being Hunter Biden without being a Biden, smoking crack (or meth), and getting money from anonymous donors for my retarded attempts at painting to try to influence my dad.

I’m betting that this is the first time Scotty and scotch were used to explain nihilism.

The feeling of empty was a tough one. It helped me see how someone can go from that feeling of empty in the face of pleasure to a feeling of nihilism. I looked up the definition of nihilism, and came up with more definitions than I had girlfriends in high school.

I’ll give this one, which I found after looking at a dozen (many contradictory) definitions on the Internet: “as the view that nothing we do, nothing we create, nothing we love, has any meaning or value whatsoever.” That is the one that mirrors the emptiness that I felt.

It is the inherent danger of a life that borders on the libertine. What matters if life is so easy?

Thankfully, I’m glad I caught that as early as I did. I can see easily of how falling down the rabbit hole of hedonism could lead to nihilism. As I got older, I realized that, whatever definition used, nihilism is the worst of philosophies, and the worst of the human condition.

Even though the Universe is large, and there have been countless years since the start, and, perhaps, countless years until the heat death of the Universe, we matter.

What happens in this world does matter. We have meaning. And fighting the good fight for Good over Evil does matter. Life and meaning are built not in the pleasure, but in the struggle to be better, to do more, to be more, and to add value because we were here. Those are the stories worth telling – they are the ones that will be sung around campfires in 100 years.

I hope Aaron Burr didn’t name his son Tim. It would have been awkward to look for him if he ever got lost in a forest.

Never give up, because what we do here matters. What you do here has value. Even as we stare at the vastness of a Universe that no one can comprehend, it matters that we are here. And it matters what we create.

And our love? It perhaps has the greatest value of all, though it is rarely found in the bottom of a glass of beer, unless there’s a live band.

Did I mention they had live bands at the bar?

Ignoring Reality Catches Up With All Of Us

“When dreams become more important than reality, you give up travel, building, creating. You even forget how to repair the machines left behind by your ancestors. You just sit, living and reliving other lives left behind in the thought record.” – Star Trek (The Cage)

After creating the Nile, God became a podcaster, “Check out my stream!”

Philip K. Dick said, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.”

It’s a pretty simple definition, and it mostly works unless you have really persistent hallucinations. Persistent hallucinations just like Philip K. Dick probably had. This may explain a lot of his fiction and his fascination with reality. And as for 2021, I’d say reality has great graphics, but horrible gameplay.

In 2022, though, we live in a world where reality seems to be split, and split along ideological lines. One generally reliably Left member of the media (but I repeat myself), Bill Maher, just gave up on the fiction: “It’s just gone on too long, nobody cares anymore. I don’t want to live in your mask paranoid world anymore. You go out, it’s silly now. You have to have a mask, you have a booster, they scan your head like you’re a cashier and I’m a bunch of bananas. I’m not bananas, you are.”

Still not on your side.

With that, the cracks of reality on where we’re at with COVID have swung wide open. There is the fiction that has the single, double, triple, and mega-vaxxed living in constant fear. The Mrs. was reading the comments to me from some Lefties on a website she frequents. One particular set of comments was of Lefties looking for test kits like they were looking for crack. One commenter had consumed at least four instant kits (without a positive result) because they were certain that they had . . . the Rona.

I have no idea what induces that level of fear in a healthy person. When one of them pointed out that they were consuming tests that could have been better used by people in nursing homes, this entirely common-sense idea was shouted down by a sea of Leftist fear.

This is a denial of reality. COVID has killed quite a few people, but it’s no Black Death. Everyone in my family has had it, and for us it ranged from two or three days in bed (The Mrs.) to an afternoon of fever (me). I’d go so far as, having had it, to bet that millions of people have had it and don’t even realize it. For two years, these people have managed to live every moment dripping in abject fear.

How a Leftist imagines a trip to COSTCO®.

Beyond the impact of the fear, there’s the impact of the Vax itself. There is more than sufficient anecdotal evidence that the mRNA shots have significantly more complications than any vaccine ever delivered. No one can say what the long-term implications are. With any luck, the negative health impacts are over more quickly than the protections offered by the shot, but there are no guarantees.

Especially not a guarantee from the manufacturer. Hmmm.

The “adverse health impacts”, of course, are being denied as well. But such an overwhelming amount of data leads to even the monolith of “jab good, deniers bad” being breached at an official level. The current shot does nothing against the current strain of COVID, and it appears the current strain of COVID leaves those that get it immune to certain other forms of COVID.

Huh. It’s almost like the virus is attenuating like, oh, every virus, ever and becoming progressively more infectious and less lethal. Even Bill Gates is ready to call this one over.

We know that Bill Gates didn’t invent COVID – none of his other products come up with new versions this frequently.

This isn’t the only reality the Left is denying. It’s not even the most important reality that is being denied.

What’s falling apart, that Leftists say isn’t?

Well, the economy, but I’ve been on and on about that, so I’ll give you a rest. Besides, Wednesday is a better day for bikini economics. For whatever reason, Biden owns the economy now. In this, I’ll give him a pass. He’s like the last player in a game of Jenga® where you know the tower is going to go, but he’s gotta try to make it one peg higher. More on that later.

Our border. The character of a country is in its people, and so is the success. I do believe that the traditions of our great nation led to the great prosperity that we had. That, and having thousands of nuclear warheads. Yeah, having great traditions is nice, but having the ability to obliterate anyone who disagrees with you never hurts.

Regardless, there’s a group that actively says that the United States, “has no culture” which is like a fish wondering what water is. The fact is that the culture of the United States was so successful and pervasive that people didn’t recognize its influence because it is literally everywhere. Is American culture perfect? No. But it certainly has remade the world, in some ways for the good, in others for the not so good.

I killed an Australian spider with my shoe. I’m glad he wasn’t big enough to carry both of them.

But if you replace the people, you’ve replaced the culture, and the Magic Dirt won’t make them prosperous. Just like if you replaced the Japanese with (spins wheel) Argentinians, it wouldn’t be Japan anymore, you can’t replace Americans with (spins wheel) Japanese and expect anything but another Japan.

The Left somehow thinks the thousands of people in the medical professions (doctors, nurses, administrators, etc.) are magically going to be replaced when they refuse the Clotshot®. No. These are skilled positions requiring education and practical training. Replace these professionals with idiots like me, and you’d end up with every solution being amputation. They don’t call me “John Wilder, Civil War Surgeon” for nothing. It did cut down on the owies my kids brought me, though.

Our relationship with each other. At every level this is breaking down. That’s not fair. At every level, people are being pushed apart. On a racial level, everyone is being taught that, even when there’s no intent, one group of people is awful and the other is blameless.

One of the most pernicious things that can be done is to create a victim class. No matter what happens, they are told, they have no responsibility. If they behave badly, well, it couldn’t be helped. Why not? Well, something happened three hundred years ago, you see.

It’s nonsense. I know Scott Adams has been taking a few lumps recently, but a while back he had a thought experiment I felt was interesting: what would happen if you asked an alien about the situation of blacks in the United States and if reparations were owed. If the alien looked over the situation, Scott seemed to think that it might say, “Well, comparing your life span, material goods, and general standard of living compared to if you had stayed in Africa, you probably owe the white people.”

Women drinking coffee. My three favorite things.

Probably not a popular idea to float in 2022, but the constant stream of victimhood replacing any sort of rational assessment will end up doing only one thing: tearing us further apart. Which is just what Leftists want.

We are on the road to many reckonings. From the looks of them, they won’t be delivered sequentially. I tend to think the big trigger will be the economy, but regardless of the trigger, there comes a point where, regardless of what we believe, reality will set in.

I hope it doesn’t have too much Kardashian.

Fasting: Why Not?

“Your brain, for example, is so minute, Baldrick, that if a hungry cannibal cracked your head open there wouldn’t be enough inside to cover a small water biscuit.” – Black Adder Goes Forth

Cows don’t make sounds after they run out of milk. Udder silence.

One of the main battles that the United States is losing is to . . . fat.

There are plenty of reasons for this. The first is that we have a culture where billions of dollars are made by corporations to sell stuff. What stuff? Stuff that tastes good. I don’t fault them for that – they’re responding to incentives. People want nachos covered in cheese and steak and sour cream and . . . dang, now I’m hungry.

That’s one reason. The other is that we live in a culture that’s obsessed with food. “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” say people whose paychecks are tied to everyone eating breakfast. And, meals are more than just consuming calories – they’re also social occasions. People get together to feast – not about the food, but about the sharing, or close-quarters combat as it’s known at our house.

And you thought I was going to ask what he wants on his omelet. Easy. One with everything.

There are also some amazingly unhealthy ideas out in society. One of them is “healthy at any size.” That’s provably false, yet now we see models who wouldn’t fit in a semi. Or a semi-trailer. Flatbed.

I understand the idea not to bully people who are overweight, but the idea of idolizing them and holding this condition out to be virtuous is damaging.

Losing weight is, though, astonishingly simple to do. As the math shows, simply eat less than what your body burns. Simple as.

The problem is that requires willpower. And the other problem is that food today is often very calorically dense: a single McDonalds milkshake can have as much as 700 calories.

So, nothing but problems, right?

Muslims won’t go to McDonalds® anymore. The go to Burka King™ now.

No, not at all. There are many solutions. When I was younger, all I had to do was amp up the exercise and I could drop weight amazingly quickly. Now that my knees seem to be coated internally with sandpaper after that first mile, that solution is a bit more difficult.

One thing that works very well for me is something a bit more radical: not eating. It’s amazing, because this particular diet costs nothing. There are no pills or powders to buy. There is no special club to join. Just don’t eat.

For how long, twenty minutes?

No. There are several strategies. One is just eating one meal a day – the nerds call this OMAD. Only eat once a day. And, honestly, that has always worked just fine for me, and was a pretty easy habit to get into. I don’t lose weight just eating one meal a day, but I don’t gain it, either.

And the meal isn’t breakfast.

And who made this? Where’s the bacon?

There is an even more radical idea – actual fasting, for days at a time. Now, I’m not a doctor, but there are actual doctors who recommend this. Jason Fung is one. Fung’s story is a simple one. He had diabetics showing up for treatment due to failing kidneys. Fung is a kidney specialist.

They told Fung that the only thing to do for these folks was to help them along. They’d die (eventually) from the complications due to diabetes. Fung rejected that, and started experimenting with fasting. And, of course, all of his patients drink all of the water, coffee, or tea that they want.

It worked. He actually increased positive outcomes for his patients. Again, I’m not a doctor and if you want to consider this, well, don’t say “the internet humorist seemed to think it was a good idea.” No. You go see a doctor or whatever it is you do to make medical decisions.

Me? I stumbled upon this a few years ago. It works for me, pretty well when I keep up with it. For me, what I do to lose weight is just not eat between, say, Sunday and Friday. I will tell you that if you’re not eating for 140 or so straight hours, you tend to notice it.

Oddly, the feeling I feel is mostly not hunger, but rather the idea that I should be eating. And when I’m fasting if The Mrs. cooks up something especially tasty that smells wonderful, it does make me really, really want to eat.

Am I completely willpowerful? No. I do “cheat” during the fast. Pickles have (for instance) nearly zero calories, and are salty. When I’m not eating, I’m not getting electrolytes (which, I hear, plants crave) and so salty pickles solve two problems at once.

Business lunch? How about a side salad that’s just lettuce and tomato? Vinegar or mustard as a dressing turns that into about . . . 20 calories. I really don’t sweat it on a fast day if I consume less than 100 calories. And, if I break that (I haven’t so far) I don’t consider it a loss – I just pick back up and keep going.

My ex-wife was so bad that she’d make a cannibal order the house salad.

This month (so far) I’ve done three fasts: one was four days, one was five and a half, and the one I’m on right now is (as I write this) 128 hours on the way to at least 140. From personal experience, the first day is the easiest, the second day is the worst, and after that they’re okay. I stop when I do to eat with family on Friday and Saturday.

So, yeah, fasting means not eating. And it sucks. But there are bonuses at the end.

The first time I ever did an extended fast I ended it with a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup. That soup was the best I’ve ever had in my life. The second bonus is that my stomach shrinks over five days. It takes only a small amount of food to make me feel full. Finish a steak dinner? Nope. Can’t do it. Just not enough room.

Of course, there’s also the other benefit – the scale.

And with the experience I’ve gained new perspectives. Whenever I see a story on the news about, “Local man stuck in car for three days, survived on Taco Bell® Fire Sauce™ packets,” I know that’s a joke. The average person in the United States is already walking around with decades of Taco Bell© already strapped to their bodies.

Taco Bell® is like DNA. Just four ingredients combine to make infinite combinations.

When it comes to prepping, the same lesson applies. Whenever I see lists of things to go into bug-out bags, I always see food listed. After fasting, I know the truth – unless there’s a medical condition that requires food, it can safely be skipped in almost every bug-out bag, unless it’s planned for use for over a week.

So, nationally we have a problem. The answer is simple: stop eating so much. For me, though, I’ll be the happiest man in the county around dinner time tomorrow.

How I’m Doing My Resolutions, Complete With Rocky II

“Well, you should have had him! Now don’t let up on this man. This man is dangerous!” – Rocky II

After he got the “Eye of the Tiger” he got a lifetime ban from the zoo.

It’s the new year, so, I have to buy a new calendar. Objective achieved!

When I was a young kid, say eight or nine, there were several things that I never quite understood. The first was the impact of foreign debt flow on monetary policy. The second was why people got so excited about changing from one year to another.

At best, New Year’s Eve seemed a useless waste of an evening. My parents would occasionally go to see friends, occasionally they’d host the party at our house. They’d talk, and drink, and generally have a good time. My interest in hanging out with them approached zero. Oh, sure, they were all nice, but the “got your nose” game loses its luster past the age of, oh, one.

What’s the sentence for shoplifting a calendar? 12 months.

Honestly, I really thought the concept was overblown until 2020 – I couldn’t wait to see that year in the rearview mirror. 2021? Potentially worse than 2020, and I’m glad it’s gone, too. I’m (honestly) not very optimistic about 2022.

But one thing I have learned is that I can use the concept of a new year, as stupid as it is, for me.

The nice thing about most Christmas/New Year holidays is that I have time off – time to think, time to get back with the family, and time to reassess:

who I am,

Am I following the virtues that I value? Am I being honest and truthful? Am I doing the things that provide the most value? Is my driver’s license data correct, I mean, with the exception of the weight because everybody lies about that?

what I am, and

Am I doing the things out in the world that add the most value? Am I changing the world for the better? What are the things I need to stop doing? What am I intentionally avoiding? Did I leave the waffle iron on?

where I’m going.

Am I on a path, or am I just wandering? What is keeping me off the path? Do I really have to wear clothes outside like the court order says?

Drinking alcohol doesn’t solve my problems. On the other hand, neither does drinking milk . . . .

I do this annually now. I find that one of the best places to think about these things is in the hypnagogic state where I’m not awake or asleep. I’ve had some very good insights during those moments. It’s (for me) a great place to find uncomfortable truth – things I really already knew, but that I was hiding from myself. Those insights can be utterly lost in the clutter of everyday life and the constant actions and demands.

Some of the past successes from these New Year reviews have been amazing for me, lost weight, and bad habits quit among them. I’ve used those times to understand me better.

I used to be a taxi driver, but the riders were boring. About all they said was, “Hey, I don’t live in the woods . . .”

I’d give you a list of what I’m doing/changing/quitting this year, but I’m not sure it’s at all interesting. My life is mainly a fairly boring one and except for the “acquire a chimpanzee named Bear and ride around the United States having wacky adventures” most of the items on the list are probably all items on millions of lists belonging to other people.

What happens next, though, is action. Thinking is one part, but once the decisions have been made, life comes down to taking action and making sure that I have sufficient discipline to do what I’m looking to do.

With small goals, discipline is easy. It’s not changing habits and patterns that I have built into my life over the course of decades. Changing habits that have been around since I was 18? Those are far harder. For those levels of issues, the only real solution is fanatical discipline, repeated and sustained. Muscle isn’t built on one good day at the gym. Muscle is built on hours of effort and pain.

And if the unvaxxed are a danger to the vaxxed, aren’t I putting myself in danger from the unvaxxed if I get the vaxx?

For me, the best goals are based on real, hard data. When lifting weights, the iron never lies. Choosing those things that I can describe with absolutes is crucial. “I will not ever . . .” is much better than “I’ll try not to . . .” When I combine “I will not ever” with a value? I have a goal that is stark and sleek, and one I can’t fudge.

I want this to be about the change I want versus me. I want it to be measured, clearly, in absolutes. I want the absolutes to be in my control. If I say, “I will never kill a zebra with a Ronco® Pocket Fisherman™, that’s something that’s absolute, even if that stupid zebra had it coming.

One example of a hard goal is dealing with The Mrs. When we met and dating got serious, I told her simply, “I will never lie to you.” I haven’t. It’s simple.

It’s absolute.

I also don’t have to revisit that every year. Since we’ve been married, that’s been a promise I’ve kept.

I think these absolutes scare the Left. They like to deal in degrees and shades of grey. A fudge here. A cheat there. A value subverted, and then (in many cases) a value inverted.

The last part is about failure.

Just because I start a change, doesn’t mean I have to follow through. I’m allowed to change my goal, especially as my knowledge changes. Heck, I could even be getting the opposite effects from a change that I anticipated. Time to reassess.

The last part is failure. Just because I decided to do something and failed doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t try again. It doesn’t mean that I should be afraid of trying again. In many cases, (like Rocky II, for instance) the difference between failure and victory is just getting up one more time.

Also, with the Biden administration, failure is not an option. It comes with the basic package.

Finally, I’ve learned to not fear success. What happens if I succeed with all of my goals? That has happened, and more than once.

Add more goals. I’m breathing. I’m not done. And I’m not perfect. More discipline, and getting up one more time? That’s the key.

I still think celebrating a new year is silly, but I’m going to use it this time. With enough discipline, 2022? That could be, for me, the best year ever. Heck, might as well put the new calendar to good use . . . .