Health – Page 12 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

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.

Last time I was in the hospital it was because I was confused about what the Dyson© Ball™ cleaner was for.

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 . . . .

Christmas – It’s Not About The Money

“It’s not the money, it’s just all the stuff.” – The Jerk

What do Musk and Edison have in common? They both got rich off of Tesla.

Wednesday is normally a day where we talk about wealth, economics, money, currency, and the state of the economy. But, it’s nearly Christmas, so I thought I’d take this time to give a different take on wealth. And no, it’s not Joe Biden appearing in a Marvel® movie where his superpower is to make vast amounts of wealth disappear, because he can do that on, oh, every Tuesday.

Don’t get me wrong. I love prices. Prices are a great way to allocate things in such a way that the most people win. I have my pile of cash and get to buy (within that limit) the things that make me the most happy. Does everyone want a really cool sports car? No, some people don’t want them at all.

Personally, I’d love to have a cool sports car, but I’d much rather not have a mortgage. So, I make choices. And then cry silently in my pillow at night because I’m dead inside because I decided I didn’t get that Mustang®.

Othello always would visit Sauron through the Moor Door.

Regardless, choices mean that I’m in control. I mean, if I chose to study theology and then move to Colorado after I graduated? My choices mean I could become a high priest. I am free to choose and try to optimize my life based on my resources, talents, and luck.

Combine that with a system of (more or less) private property, and the system allows for the sum of millions of individual actions as people try to maximize their happiness. This provides incentives to work to buy steak. Or starve. But owning property provides incentives to create wealth. So, in striving to get enough money to buy a Lambo® and a vapid trophy wife in a functional economy, a businessman works to create the most joy for his customers.

Boom. People who have never met, and will never meet, work together to create a complex economy. This economy translates information based on prices, and is fueled by incentives, and private property.

And yet . . .

What’s the fastest thing in the universe? Nic Cage accepting a movie role.

As much as I love this system, I have to mention again, this system exists to serve men. It does not exist for men to serve it. There is a richer experience of life than only the pursuit of profit.

Also, this system is one that optimizes without regard to morality or virtue. On more than one occasion I have heard a Wall Street billionaire exclaim, “this isn’t Boy (or Boy-Girl, or Trans, in 2021, I guess) Scouts®.”

That was a direct rejection of morality and virtue.

The result of that type of thinking?

If it’s legal and can pull money out of someone’s pocket, Wall Street will do it. If heroin were legal for sale, Wall Street would be looking to invest in the e-Heroin® mobile App. They’d sell underage . . . well, you get the picture. Heck, Wall Street would sell ghosts as supernatural slaves if they thought it wouldn’t come back to haunt them.

When money is their god, they will do anything to get it. Wall Street will do anything legal. The black market, we know, will do anything illegal, as long as they get paid. Wall Street and the black market have essentially the same morals. And, like Satan, Wall Street just has better lawyers and lobbyists.

If there is a fault in the system, that is it.

I hear Charlie Brown was suspended from school. Some kid was allergic to Peanuts™.

And Christmas is one of the best times to point that out. Christmas is a holiday that has been morphed over time into one that, if we were to go by commercials alone, was based only on the mass consumption of stuff.

I won’t go into the deep history of Christmas. It’s long and more complicated than the math that Nancy Pelosi uses to charge her vodka back to taxpayers. But the short version is that the Winter Solstice was a great place to put a festival if you were going to convince the Germans and the Vikings that this new Christianity thing would work out okay for them. To make it work, Christmas had to be a party.

And it was. And it is. Over time, though, the party aspect of Christmas changed to a focus on family and generosity, which seems to be well matched to the holiday’s stated purpose. The meaning of Christmas then, is giving, not getting.

Certainly, there’s a certain magic in the eyes of a young child being surprised when the gifts under the tree far exceed anything she could imagine. The delight in a boy’s eyes when he sees the BB gun that will probably shoot his eye out?

Priceless.

I pitched a movie to Alec. He shot it down.

That’s the magic of the giving. The Mrs. and I, however, are old enough that we like the peace and family aspect of Christmas far more than the “stuff” aspect. I’ve given her the same gift for Christmas for the last five years (hint: it’s expensive scotch). She enjoys it. The Mrs. generally gets me something small. I like the keychain fob that she got me a year ago, “Be careful, handsome, I love you” better than something large, or an expensive scotch I won’t drink because it’s too expensive.

This year, The Boy and Pugsley have also (I think!) surpassed the greed aspect of Christmas. It’s not so much about the gifts they get. Heck, it’s not so much about the gifts they give, either. It’s about waking up on Christmas Eve, getting together and sharing the few gifts we have for each other, having a nice dinner, and then . . . relaxing together.

Together. And for me, that’s the biggest gift.

It’s that spirit that makes me look forward to Christmas. We’ve long been a “Christmas Eve” gift giving family, because it defuses the emotions associated with gift giving and leads to a very quiet and family-based Christmas Day. Plus no one wants to get up early if the presents are all already opened.

That’s the opposite, really, of the advertising that pelts us on a regular basis. The ads are all based on more and bigger. Time to give your loved one a $75,473 car with a big red bow, because nothing says love more than massive consumption.

Die Hard is not a Christmas movie. It’s a Christmas Eve movie.

Just like in most of our lives, we have choices. We can live the choice and have the Christmas that the media wants to sell us which is a holiday based almost entirely on creating the most economic activity possible.

Or? We can enjoy our family, and choose to place emphasis on giving, and choose to understand that the Nativity itself was the greatest gift that could be given. Even if you aren’t a Christian, understanding the promise of redemption in that gift of a child to mankind is one of supreme optimism.

That optimism is based firmly not in economics, since it promises exactly zero economic prosperity. No, this gift is not money – it was a gift based on virtue and morality.

I love prices, and incentives, and the creation of wealth. But there are things that are more important than money. You know, things like all the stuff . . . .

A Day Trip To Another America

“The regional governors now have direct control over their territories. Fear will keep the local systems in line. Fear of this battle station.” – Star Wars®, A New Hope

Well, at least they’re admitting it . . . (None of the memes today are originals – they are “as-found” on the Internet)

Pugsley is an athlete, and that causes us to have to go to places to see him engage in his sport (elk milking) across the state, and sometimes across state lines. These are, for the most part, the only trips of any significance that we have taken in the last two years. Pugsley, sadly, is old enough that I can’t skip the trip with him on his sports jaunts since he no longer buys my excuse.

What’s my excuse? I’m adopted. So, I tell him, “I can’t go because my parents won’t sign the permission slip.” He doesn’t even giggle at that. He’s got a cold heart.

Here in Modern Mayberry, masks have essentially disappeared from all public life. The only place that might still require them is the local hospital, and thankfully I have no idea if they do or not. We ate brunch today and, although many of the patrons at the restaurant were older folks, there wasn’t a single mask to be seen. These are country folk. They’re more afraid of bad weather for the crops than they are of a virus, and they feel that they can control the virus about as much as they can control the weather.

Everywhere our family has been across the state, it looks and feels like the same. It looks a lot like the elk-milking competitions I went to when The Boy (Pugsley’s older brother) was in high school. This was back before the Great Plague Of Overblown Impact hit us. There are no masks, and people just behave like . . . well, nothing ever happened.

Late 2021 looks exactly like 2019 in my daily life. We even shake hands when we meet people and we don’t act like we’ve just dipped our hands in some sort of biohazard, or have touched AOC’s teeth. But I repeat myself.

The elk milking competition went well. There were hundreds of people all inside for a day. I coughed once, I think (nacho went down the wrong hole, and no, I’m not going to make that a joke about my nacho hole) and no one bothered to even look. Here in Midwestia, we’re over it. We’re not afraid.

We don’t care anymore.

Or, at least I thought.

The Boy has been off at college. As finals were over, and Pugsley’s elk milking competition was near his college, The Boy came on to cheer his brother on. Those elk milking siphons sure make a guy’s wrists tired. After the competition was over, we decided to go and grab some food. As we have exactly six restaurants in our usual rotation in Modern Mayberry, eating somewhere new is a treat.

The Boy asked his friends about good restaurants near where we were.

They were all in . . . Blue City. Every Red State has a Blue City, where nose rings and “meat is murder” t-shirts outsell gasoline and beef jerky. The friends came up with three names. Two were burger joints, and the third was a Japanese place.

I’ll admit I was interested in eating Japanese. At first, I had some pretty big resistance, until I explained it wasn’t Japanese people that we were going to eat, but Japanese food. Then everyone agreed. I guess it’s a matter of taste?

Huh, that’s a specific list . . .

We got to Blue City. Pugsley, fresh off of his second-place elk milking victory, was driving.

The first thing I noted was this: in Modern Mayberry, if I want to go to a place, I can park near it. In Blue City, in order to get to the Not At All Cannibal Where You Eat Japanese People Restaurant, we had to park over a quarter-mile away.

Honestly, the walk didn’t hurt me. Nor did feeding the parking meter $1.50 to park to not eat Japanese people. Nor did walking through the faceless, anonymous crowd. But it wasn’t a pleasant walk. It felt like walking in a street from some sort of dystopian movie, like Bladerunner®, filled with people who hordes of people I didn’t know or and who didn’t care about me on crowded streets. It was like being in my house in the morning before anyone had any coffee.

Thankfully I didn’t have to fashion a cloak out of an abandoned tarp. Or did I?

I came to a store that I wanted to go into. I was about to open the door when I noticed the laminated sign on the clear glass door: “No entrance without masks. If you wish to purchase our products but don’t want to wear a mask, feel free to visit us on the Internet.” The Mrs. quite succinctly mentioned where she thought they could stick their Internet, but I wondered if it would be uncomfortable for them to have so much CNN® up in that dark, moist place. We left them in peace, and I hope they have a lot of dark, moist success.

We kept walking to the Restaurant That Definitely Doesn’t Serve Asian People As Food Because Of That Health Inspection, the foot traffic was continuous. Many people were masked, though not all. Finally, we got to our destination. On the door was another sign, just like the first store, though they didn’t offer to ship cooked people over the Internet.

This immediately caught the ire of The Mrs., and since she’s at least a bit Irish, you don’t want to get the ire of an Irish lass too Irish. Or something. Let’s just say that she can have a bit of a temper that makes Belfast in 1972 look like a Care Bears® movie. I looked inside the restaurant, though, and there were plenty of people not wearing masks.

They were mostly all eating, but they weren’t wearing masks. Apparently, the virus doesn’t travel when you’re sitting and eating, only when you’re standing and ignoring the duct-tape crosses on the floor in the line. When we first entered the restaurant, there was another person not eating and not wearing a mask. Since he could get away with it, I figured we could, too. As he was a people of color, I would have a jolly fun time making a YouTube® show if they kicked us out, and not him.

They ignored that we were unmasked heretics and were pleasant and served us.

Hey, that’s Internet me!

The restaurant really didn’t serve Japanese food, just ramen. It was expensive ramen, since ramen with steak in it cost $14.50 a bowl. They took our order, and we waited at our table.

We got the oddly shaped (14 inches wide and eight-foot long) table near the front. The chairs were weirdly high and the restaurant smelled of . . . farts. Really. The ramen, though, was excellent. Mine was filled with steak and mushrooms and was unexpectedly (and subtly) spicy.

I generally get the chair so I can see the entrance – The Mrs. is used to it. We had gotten to the restaurant right before the rush – patrons that came in right after us were told that they could get a text when a table was available. In Modern Mayberry, you can walk into the best restaurant in town and (generally) have no more than a zero-minute wait. And a quarter block is a long walk to it.

But it wasn’t that which bothered me the most.

What I noticed were the patrons coming into the restaurant. They all wore masks, even the young children. I understand that there is both a logical and a scientific case to be made that masks do help stop disease spread. And nearly every person in the restaurant was at zero risk of serious complications from the ‘Rona. The children were at zero risk. Heck, I was nearly the oldest guy in there.

As everyone in the Wilder fam has had the ‘Rona, my fear level was zero.

Oh, money can’t buy love, but it can buy fear.

But what I saw wasn’t so much fear or even altruism in wearing the masks. What I saw was subjugation in its nearly universal compliance. Would I have put on a mask to eat a Japanese person bowl of ramen? No. I wouldn’t put on a mask to eat a nice steak bathed in PEZ® with Johnny Depp as he drank Amber Heard’s tears.

After dinner, I was struck by the differences in attitude between Blue City and Modern Mayberry. I felt fear in Blue City that I never feel around here. It’s not that the ‘Rona is done here – there are still 50 or so cases a week in the county. But I get the sense that residents here are just done caring about it.

Of the people who have died in our county, I know exactly zero of them. Zero. And I know a lot of people around here. As mentioned before, I’ve had some variation of COVID, as have The Mrs., Pugsley and The Boy. From the data I’ve seen, that makes us functionally immune in a way better than (insert jab booster number here) can never achieve. The virus itself will hopefully have zero additional physical impact on the Family Wilder.

Oh, wait. They’re not done yet?

But what impact will baseless fear have on our lives? Right now there is a threat that if we:

don’t take an mRNA shot that doesn’t work,
we won’t be able to work because we might be able to transmit a disease that we can’t get,
but that those who get the mRNA jab can get.
And those who get “jab” can also transmit.

Fear is the source of most Evil things that have plagued (intended) mankind. At this point, the biggest shortage we have is a shortage of courage. Stand strong. I won’t suggest that you do or don’t do anything, but for me, the mRNA shot and its infinite number of iterations is a step too far.

Dead Romans Agree: Don’t Let The Small Stuff Bother You

“Happy premise number three: even though I feel like I might ignite, I probably won’t.” – Bowfinger

I hear that Marcus’ wife was a perfect X.

Mike, the proprietor over at Cold Fury (LINK), is going through a very difficult time. Big Country has set up a gofundme for him here (LINK). Much more information at the gofundme site.

Now to the post . . .

I woke up this morning just irritated. No particular reason. In all fairness, it was entirely an internal feeling, and I imagine most people never noticed. I was nice and polite to nearly everyone I interacted with. And why not? None of them were my ex-wife.

I wasn’t irritated with them, I was just irritated. There were no issues. I wasn’t in pain. No one around me was in particular trouble. Thankfully I’m not an electrician – people might dislike me not being positive at work.

As I thought about it, what was irritating me? I couldn’t quite put a finger on it. There was no rational reason at all. During a conversation tonight, though, I had a reason to quote Marcus Aurelius:

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

Not mine, but I couldn’t resist.

Sure, Marcus Aurelius’ kid was an utter tool, but when you become Caesar at 18, well, it might tend to go to your head – think of Commodus as Miley Cyrus, 180 A.D. Back to Marcus, though. Marcus genuinely did his best for the Roman Empire. As near as I can tell, Marcus was a pretty good leader.

And that little quote above wasn’t written for you and me. It was written for Marcus, by Marcus. He was reminding himself that the external things in the world had only the power he gave them. He was giving himself a pep talk.

Marcus Aurelius was right. In the conversation I was having tonight, the person was very upset (most of you don’t know the person, though specific readers in California and Indiana do – hi guys!). The reason she was upset? Nothing rational at all. So I quoted a dead Roman emperor.

Who says that Stoics aren’t compassionate?

Did it help? I don’t know. I’m beginning to see a pattern where crying people don’t stop crying when I quote dead Roman emperors. I’m beginning to see why the kids call The Mrs. when they want actual human sympathy.

My irritation (I think) came from the same place. Nowhere. I felt fine (except for my right knee which is much better now) and the day generally went fairly well. I realized that the advice I gave was meant just as much for me as for the person I was talking to. I was just being irritated because I let myself be irritated.

Once I was done and realized I didn’t have to be irritated?

My hands disappeared today, but I can’t really point my finger at what caused it.

My irritation disappeared. I know that the way I feel is (generally) my choice. I can choose how I feel: salty, Wednesday, or even drunk. The only reason that I’m not happy every morning is if I choose not to be happy on some particular morning.

Are there actual reasons why I might have different feelings? Sure. If I had mental problems (other than an unseemly affection for awful jokes and a desire to consciously be able to make my fingernails grow absurdly fast) that might be a reason to have a feeling other than what I choose.

Don’t know. I do know that there are people with actual mental problems. There’s proof: some people actually voted for Biden. But, going back to Marcus, that’s not external. Being sick or goofy enough to vote for Biden isn’t external.

Marcus Aurelius might have voted for Biden – Marcus is dead, after all.

Physical pain also is an internal source that can destroy moods. I once (for a few months) had sciatica. I was irritable enough every morning to chew nails and spit bullets. Then I discovered that I could work out for a few hours on an elliptical trainer to make the pain go away. A week later?

I was fine. My irritation vanished along with my sciatica, never (hopefully) to return.

That was nearly 15 years ago. Sure, I’ve felt pain since then, but most of it was the good pain from a hard workout. Heck, most days the worst thing that happened was the crisp morning breeze running through my back hair.

My mood depends on me. My attitude depends on me.

Does that mean that I can’t see the actual situation we’re in? Of course not. I see a nation tearing itself apart. It’s worse: it’s not just a nation, Western Civilization seems to be happily thrashing about as it marches down a path to extinction.

Is that good?

Of course not.

Does it mean that I should walk around every day being sad?

Of course not. I am doing, I assure you, everything I can think of to stave off that darkness. I mean, those memes won’t make themselves.

Never buy a sculpture of Bonnie Tyler. Every now and then it falls apart.

And I am doing it cheerfully. I laugh every day. I smile because I know that most of the things that I worry about can have no power over me unless I give them that power.

Make your choices, and understand that while you might wake up irritated – it’s your choice if you wish to stay in that mood for a minute or an hour.

Me? I like being happy, so I choose that, even in moments where it might not be appropriate. I might even need to stop high-fiving people at funerals.

So, I got started late typing this after a day I chose to just be irritated. And, I’m going to choose to end now.

With a smile on my face. Go and have a great day. Most of the time, having a great day is just a choice.

Choose wisely.

COVID: “Hey, look at the mess I can make.” The Jab: “Hold my beer.”

“Either put on these glasses or start eating that trashcan.” – They Live

So, if I take it I can still catch the ‘Rona and I can still spread the ‘Rona, but the unjabbed are the problem?

The endgame of the ‘Rona may be near.

“Two weeks to stop the spread” has now been going on for 630 days. “The Jab” got its Emergency Use Authorization about a year ago. And now, the latest stats I’ve seen show 59% of the people in the country have double-jabbed, and 69% have had at least one dose.

But what are the consequences? I would give you a conspiracy theory, but let’s face it: in 2021, conspiracy theories should be called what they really are: plot spoilers.

Honestly, the impact of the vaxx is not fully known, and probably won’t be for years. But there have been a stunning series of news stories showing up that tell us that whatever problems are causing the wave of excess deaths, it is certainly, completely, and utterly not the mRNA gene therapy causing it:

(LINK) Cannabis! Yes. That certainly is the only reason that young people who normally never have heart attacks and die are having them. Whew. Problem solved. The American Heart Association would never lie to us, right?

(LINK) Oh, the heart attacks are being caused by stress because of the ‘Rona. Well, that’s relieving to know! This is mainly in that heart-attack-prone age group of 30 to 45. Oh, and the 300,000? That’s in the UK.

(LINK) Don’t forget poor diet. Also, show a picture of keto food while complaining about sugar.

(LINK) Climate change! You have to remember that changes babies in the womb now, and makes their hearts do something . . . I guess.

Shakespeare had a line in Hamlet: “The lady doth protest too much, methinks.” It’s like they’re explaining why a present and future wave of heart attacks has absolutely nothing at all to do with “the jab” or any side effects.

But, we’ve already listed the American Heart Association as a source, right? What else are they saying?

The study in question is here (LINK). Apparently, some doctors think . . . the jab might cause . . . heart attacks? But I thought it was stress or bacon or climate change or weed? By the way, The Mrs. informed me that Twitter® is reportedly censoring this link. Huh.

But here it gets deadly serious (LINK). If Dr. Rogers is correct, the blood of thousands of children will be on the hands of those that force kids to get “the jab”. Even adults over 65 are five times more likely to die of the mRNA than to die of COVID, if the cited literature is right. RTWT.

I would normally think of that level of misconduct as being, well, criminal. In Australia, however, there’s a manhunt for three folks who broke out of a concentration camp voluntary COVID isolation leisure facility. I guess criminal has a different meaning down there . . . .

I mean, it’s voluntary, right?

I guess that just makes one thing perfectly clear:

Why Leftists Hate You

“Well, I don’t care if he’s a Liberal or an ax murderer, I want you two boys to stay clear of him, understood? – Eerie, Indiana

I hear that Greta loves this blog – she knows most of my jokes are recycled.

“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior ‘righteous indignation’ – this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.” – Aldous Huxley

Regardless of whether or not you like Huxley, he certainly hit the mark with this comment. This has certainly been the case with the reaction of the “vaxxed” crowd to those that have chosen to avoid having themselves subjected to more-or-less experimental-level mRNA manipulation. I hear the lead scientist was Gene Hackman.

If you’re a coward, the FDA has just approved a new drug. Ask your doctor if Growacet® is right for you.

Though Huxley tapped into a universal weakness, this is a reaction that is far more common on the Left than on the Right. Leftism is built on weakness. If people can take care of themselves, if they are confident, if they respect themselves, it is much less likely that they will become Leftists.

Leftists, at the core of their being, feel inferior. This is observable in the ways that they protest – they constantly put themselves in danger. They lie down in front of cars. They block highways.

The reason is that, due to their feelings of inferiority, they actually long to be either punished or to have their existence ended. And the data shows that Leftists are much more likely to suffer from a mental issue. Much more likely. Here’s a thread where data scientist Zach Goldberg breaks down a Pew® study (LINK).

If you didn’t click on the link, here is just one fact that says it all: 56.3% of white female Leftists between the ages of 18-29 have been diagnosed by a mental health professional with a mental health condition. White “conservative” men in the same age group? 16.3%. Leftist men in the same age group? 33.6%.

Do insane accountants hear strange and threatening invoices?

If you are talking to a young Leftist woman, it is more likely that she has a mental health issue than not. If you are talking to a young Leftist man, you are talking with someone who has a greater chance of having been diagnosed with a mental health issue than any age/sex group on the Right.

So, Leftists feel inferior and lead the league in diagnosed mental issues.

What else?

This sense of inferiority coupled with mental illness makes Leftists especially brittle mentally. They cannot even listen to ideas that they disagree with. Ideas that they find distasteful, no matter how true, are psychologically devastating to them. When they say that they are “literally shaking” it’s probable that’s correct. Me? I only “literally shake” when I make James Bond® a martini.

We know the true villains the Left wants to stop . . .

This leads to the Great Counterfactual Gambit of facts that Leftists have to ignore to live on a day to day basis:

Men (on average) will always be much stronger than women. When a high school boy beats a woman’s world record time in swimming practice, it’s normal. Yet some people (weirdly) say there’s no physical difference between women and men.
This brings us to trans- people. Any suggestion that the latest mantra of “trans women are women” is against all manner of biological facts, well, is unacceptable. If that were the case, we wouldn’t need to have a word for “trans women”. Likewise, “trans women” wouldn’t be upset that they often can only get dates from other “trans” people.
We aren’t all born with equal abilities, temperaments, or physical characteristics. We are actually not even remotely the same in many respects. Sure, we’re human, but some populations have extremely different DNA, with great degrees of differing abilities based solely on that. Intelligence is (studies suggest) at least 60% heritable, and maybe higher. The trend is that, in 2020, people segregate themselves by I.Q. before they marry – we’re mobile and smart people end up (mostly) marrying other smart people. This increases the number of very smart people, and it’s not random. (And, perhaps a reason that autism is on the rise.)

I could go on and on. The difficulty is that Leftism requires that people ignore reality when reality gives them results they don’t like. I read one article where a Leftist was writing a hand-wringing piece about how disappointed that he was that artificial intelligence could determine the race of the patient being x-rayed with a high degree of accuracy. This bothered him because the researchers intentionally took the data and degraded it.

The A.I. could still easily determine accurately the races of most of the people being x-rayed. This bothered the scientist because it violated his belief that race was just a social construct, yet here a robot was dismantling that very belief.

If you make a device that’s good at noticing patterns, you can either accept that patterns exist, or you can make the machine ignore reality and thus make it useless, and Congress can’t stand the competition.

If an A.I. takes a picture of itself, will that be considered selfie-aware?

This reflects outward in the art that Leftists love. They hate the world, so they like art that is to a sane mind repugnant is what they seek. They see themselves as afraid of any sort of competition, so they want to practice inversion:

Weakness is strength.
Cowardice is courage.
Ugliness is beauty.
Defeat is victory.

Oops, forgot! Slavery is freedom.

The result of an inverted Leftist utopia is a burned world, cleansed of all that they despise.

The philosophy of the Left is similarly bankrupt. The ideas are based on another rejection of reality:

All cultures are equal.
Scientific analysis is led by philosophy, and valid only when it backs Leftist talking points.
Classification of things – good and bad, smart and dumb, fat and thin is inherently wrong.

Remember, the best way to win an argument is to silence anyone who has a different opinion!

The granddaddy of all of these is this:

All truth is relative.

This one is especially insidious – it takes a True statement (we cannot know everything) and thus takes it to the idea of the general: we can know nothing for certain. Start with mathematics: if you believe that 1+1=2, then you believe that there is Truth. Gravity always pulls down. Truth.

Do I see every event from every angle? Can I know the position of every atom inside of every person in a play? If I watch the play from a different seat, do I get a different meaning?

Sure, I’ll buy that I can’t know everything. But if I jump in front of a semi that’s traveling down the highway at 120 miles per hour (4 liters per second) I will die and what’s left of me will look like someone dropped a bag of vegetable soup. Unless the semi is made of Nerf® material, but that’s fairly unlikely since it absorbs vegetable soup.

Lastly, the Left feels they have no power. Ever argue with someone in real life who has never had any real power? Whatever they have, they will use until it’s nearly abuse – the average DMV will prove my case. Power is the end product. They feel that they are inferior, reject reality, and wish to have power so that they can have revenge against those that they feel have slighted them.

A Leftist won a contest – he would get $100,000, but $200,000 would go to the person he hated most. I wonder what he’s going to do with $300,000?

Together, these ideas explain the absolute hatred that the Left feels for those who have refused to take “the jab.” These are based on the idea that, at last, they are superior. What would they do to get and keep that power? Would they put people into camps? Would they gladly watch them die?

Yes, yes they would.