Oh, SNAP: The Waste, The Fraud, The Envy, And You’re Not Alone

“He must have just snapped!” – Groundhog Day

Matt has come a long way.

Each time the Trump Administration does something, they bubble things up to the public consciousness that The Powers That Be would rather people not think about. Yeah, Trump is part of The Powers That Be, but this .gov shutdown is exactly what I voted for.

What have you missed during the shutdown?

Oh, nothing?

What if it went on for two months? Four? What if only the “essential” parts (ICE, the actual warfighting part of .mil, and . . . wait, I’m running out of essential) restarted?

It seems like we have discovered (this is not an original idea, /pol/ discusses this frequently) that SNAP (Sheer Nonsense And Plunder) is a program that works like this:

Infinity illegal aliens are
encouraged to come to the country
to make cheap carbohydrates
to feed to minorities
so that Herculean medical efforts are expended to solve the problems caused by the cheap carbs.

Who profits?

Illegals.
Farmers.
Big Agribusiness, Big Soda, and Big Sloppa.
Minorities (short term, until the untimely heart attack).
Hospitals.
Doctors.
Insurance Companies.

Is it all just a machine to turn your tax dollars into illegals, obesity, and corporate profits?

You decide. Regardless, I think the Democrats will blink. Maybe. I sure hope note, I mean, this is what I voted for.

First: The Waste, The Luxury, and The Outrage

Second: The Fraud

Third: The Recipients Despise You

Fourth: You’re Not Alone

Hoe_Math And Why Levels Of Thought Caused This Mess

“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?” – No Country for Old Men

But, hey, they all have the same tote bag. (all memes as-found)

There is a YouTube® creator named hoe_math that I watch regularly. I’d guess that he and I have fairly similar worldviews in many cases, and I recommend his channel (LINK). One of the trademark issues Mr. _math has discussed is the breakdown between men and women in our modern, technological age and how government has made it worse.

One thing he’s brought up several times in his videos is the concept of “levels of thinking” which I’ll just call “Levels” from here on out. It’s a variation of Maslow’s Hierarchy, but it’s been refined by Ken Wilber, to walk back the sources. But let’s stick to hoe_math.

hoe_math’s main success has been as a guy who draws stick figures with colored pencils to explain why your relationships suck and society is unraveling. Rather than Levels being a new age mystical tool, Mr. _math uses Levels as a tool, and as a powerful one. Keep in mind, it’s not reality, it’s just another way to model it. In this case, however, it explains a lot of what would otherwise be mystical behavior and magical thinking of people who really should know better.

The version of Levels that hoe_math has been distilled down to nine stages of thinking, each building on the last like a Jenga™ tower of the soul. Today, though, I want to stick to the first seven levels. Why? Because Level 6 is the root of so much GloboLeft® insanity, and Level 7 shows, maybe, a way out.

Let’s climb the Levels ladder, one sticky rung at a time.

Level 1: Survival And Desire

Picture this: a toddler covered in spaghetti sauce. Life isn’t about stocks or status. It’s a confusing set of seemingly unrelated events. Life is about not dying and emotional control doesn’t yet exist..

Hunger gnaws, cold bites, and that pain from having fingernails cut? That’s the worst pain the baby has ever felt. Thinking at Level 1 is pure reflex: see food, eat. See threat, run or smash. No plans, just sensory overload driving you to grab what feels good and dodge what hurts.

Every human starts at this level, but most outgrow it. Except in pathology: think severe autism or that guy at the grocery store yelling about expired coupons.

And toxic masculinity? Level 1 is the primal protector that men become when times become grim: the father who stays up all night by the fire with a shotgun when the wolves are howling outside. It’s raw, unapologetic drive when there’s a positive motivation.

In the negative, it’s the low-I.Q. murderer who kills someone for $5. These people stuck at this level cannot survive by themselves.

Level 2: Connect

Now the world gets a little less lonely. I’ve got senses, sure, but suddenly, so does everyone else. Thinking now shifts: life is bonding and not being alone. Emotions now project outward because at this level, people now understand that others have needs, too. And, when others are happy, I get what I want. I clean my room, I get cookies.

hoe_math notes that this is where tribes form – but for people stuck at this level, there is nearly zero trust for outsiders. Probably the largest useful structure that this level produces is the family.

Level 3: Control

If the first level had no bonds, the second level had bonds between one person and another, this level is third person: the realization that other people have connections to each other. And that’s a great tool to use to get control of them.

If Level 3 was a decade, it would be The Me Decade, the 1970s. Since all of humanity can live at Level 1 or Level 2, fully 92% of humanity can make it to Level 3 every day, according to hoe_math, who you should trust because “math” is in his name.

At this stage, the strong exploit the week, and morality is an afterthought. If India was a level, it would be Level 3. It’s a war of all against all with a billion caste systems.

Level 4: Conform

This is all about the rules. Only 40% of humanity gets here every day. That should scare you.

Yeouch! That tells you that my India comment on Level 3 is probably spot on. This is the level that gives us useful structures like functional civilizations and businesses and religion. It is here that ethics and the study of rules start. This is where morality takes over in judgements.

People compete for power here, yet compete using rules that are agreed on. Chaos unchecked? No thanks. Now the flip side of the lower levels becomes apparent: selfishness breeds anarchy, so rules it is. It’s Good vs. Evil, us vs. them. Life demands order.

Level 4 birthed all higher-level civilizations.

Level 5: Achieve

Now we’re into the land of libertarians, big L and little l versions. About 28% of people reach this level on a daily basis.

Rules are for rubes. Freedom über alles. Good and bad? That’s subjective. Life is about results. Set goals, crunch the numbers, win big, add sawdust to the raisin bran if nobody notices.

Why bow to a boss or a Bible?

The Level 5 achiever is the builder, the provider, the man who turns dirt into dynasties. It’s the dad working doubles so the kids eat steak, not ramen. I think the majority of the success of the United States has been entirely due to Level 5 behavior, so therefore it is called toxic masculinity.

Level 6: Understand

Here’s where the wheels start wobbling off the cart, and also where higher-level thinking is observably worse than lower-level thinking.

In Level 6, uniqueness reigns; old rules are chains. Life celebrates diversity! Every truth is a perspective, every culture is valid, except (in the Western version) that mean old Christian patriarchy. Reject hierarchies, listen to the oppressed, seek consensus, live, laugh, love. Subjectivity rules; impose nothing.

Sounds noble, right? Until you try validating all cultures and beliefs and fetishes.

That’s the rot. I mean, it’s well-meaning, but it rests upon a fundamental denial of reality.

Seek “understanding” without boundaries, and boom: moslims torch the gay bar that the Level 6 people thought would be just fine right next to the mosque as hoe_math described it.

Because why?

Because no matter how much Level 6 thinkers want 82 I.Q. people from Somalia to be accepting, tolerant, and embrace the gay lifestyle, they are Level 3 thinkers that want to chuck the gays off cliffs just to see what sound the make when they hit bottom.

This leads to the GloboLeftElite® importing clash after clash into the nation, then cries “tolerance!” while cities burn.

Truth dies on the altar of feelings.

Pathologies? Narcissistic echo chambers and spineless relativism. It’s why campuses are safe spaces for screams of GloboLeftist rage but not debate and England will tolerate rape and murder as a moslem/hindu team sport but not tolerate people noticing it.

Level 7: Harmonize

Finally, wisdom dawns.

Despite being only 5% of the population, I would bet that most of my regular readers get here or hang out at Level 5. On either side of this, we’ve seen the mess that Level 6 is. The problem with Level 6 is that it’s based on lies. Pretty lies, but lies nonetheless.

The rules we made up at Level 4?

Some of them make fundamental sense in a way that, if you ignore them, birthrates of smart people plummet and the birth of idiots is reinforced. Or crime rate increases. Or we decide that creating fiat currencies is a good thing, just like they did in Weimar Germany.

But reality exists. Those Level 4 rules aren’t random! It is folly of the highest order to ignore them. Complex systems demand rules and judgement in order to work, and mixing cultures sometimes ends up with the result that border walls are way better than immigration.

This is toxic masculinity, yet again: the harmonizer is the statesman, the elder who balances freedom with fences, innovation with inheritance. It’s the patriarch reading the room—protecting the tribe by pruning threats, not hugging them.

The dangers here are existential drift that leads to nihilism or half-baked gurus with books to sell.

As I said, only 5% get here regularly.

Why?

It takes I.Q. to juggle viewpoints, model systems empirically, and see patterns in the interactions. Low I.Q. folks stall at Level 4 conformity and Level 6 is a trap for people who want to see a beautiful world that could never exist.

So, why fixate on these? Because Level 6 thinking led, at least partially, to the trouble we’re in now. Endless “understanding” ignores that not all cultures play nice and that our people need jobs, too. Validate it all, and you get Paris no-go zones or Rotherham horrors. Level 6 whispers “coexist,” but Level 7 shouts “think about this.”

The same level of thinking that got us into this mess isn’t going to get us out of it, and, sadly we’re going to have to continue to go after and eliminate Level 6 thinking where we see it.

And we will, because the result of losing?

It’s Level 3. And the world already has way too much India.

Live Life Without Fear, The Dune Way

“An animal caught in a trap will gnaw off its own leg to escape. What will you do?” – Dune

I read the first four novels, but I found them a bit dry. (All memes as found)

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

– Frank Herbert, Dune

In 2025, fear is not just a personal demon. Fear is now a cultural plague, especially for the kids.

We have raised a generation terrified of their own shadows, and it shows in every therapy session, pill bottle, riot, and Antifa® meeting.

The number of kids in therapy or pumped full of psychoactive drugs by the quacks who call themselves psychologists seems to be 8 or 9 out of 10. In perspective, this is the era of civilization that has the greatest level of material wealth in history, and the lowest hunger rate in the world.

World hunger?

It’s a solved problem outside of war and intentional starvation for political reasons.

The drugs and therapy are not making the kids better. At all. The way society is treating kids is like prescribing a hammer to the knees for a headache. The good news is the pain from the hammer will distract you from the headache, but eventually you’ll only be able to walk in circles.

The Mrs. asked me to have a talk with our kids on drugs. I said, “Sure, but I don’t think I’ll make much sense when I’m high.”

And no, these drugs are not good for you like whiskey, whisky, wine or beer. That’s a joke, but if therapy worked as well as a couple of brews after a long day, Antifa® wouldn’t exist.

Kids today are not allowed to figure anything out on their own. Failure? That is a dirty word, banished like fiscal responsibility is banished from Congress. As a proud Gen X kid, my family left me alone for the entire weekend when I was in third grade. No note, no nanny, no neighbor looking in on me from time to time. Nope. Just a key and a fridge full of questionable leftovers. I survived on frozen pizzas and three channels (no one counted PBS®), but I learned to entertain myself without burning the house down.

Barely.

When Paul wanted the last glass of water, he called Muad’Dibs on it.

By eighth grade, Ma and Pa Wilder upped the ante. They drove off to Florida.

For a month, leaving me to fend for myself. I even dealt with a thumb wound that probably should have had stitches from when I was using very poor form to whittle.

Did I call for help? No.

I fixed it with duct tape, determination, and a healthy glop of Neosporin™.

That is what you do when the stakes are low and the lessons are free.

High school? That is when freedom hit near-adult levels. I had my own apartment over an hour from Wilder Mountain (long story). I managed my own schedule, and got home whenever I damn well pleased since Pa Wilder visited only three nights a week (Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday) and he left all the fun nights for me.

Some people call me the space cowboy. I wish they would stop. My name is John.

Sometimes I was home just after practice. Sometimes, I was home at 3am after doing, well, other things. No curfew, no check-ins, just me against the world.

Was I unusual in having my (mostly) own place? Sure.

But the freedom? That was standard issue for Gen X. Even before I could drive, I would bolt out the door at sunrise and not return until the streetlights flickered on. No helicopter parents hovering like drones, tracking every move with an app or scheduling athletic events. Nope.

Contrast that with the childhood scripted for kids today.

It is structured from dawn to dusk, every moment scheduled like a corporate meeting. Playdates? Organized by committee. Sports? Leagues with participation trophies for showing up. Even recess is micromanaged, with rubberized playgrounds that cushion every tumble. And do not get me started on the deprivation of schoolyard fights and bullying, which back in the day were ritualized tests of mettle to place yourself in the hierarchy.

Places to test yourself. Like the Olympics®.

Freshman initiation in high school was a rite of passage, not a crime. Upperclassmen would haze the newbies with pranks: carrying books, silly chants, maybe a wedgie or two. No gross abuse, just enough strain to test character to see how you’d take it.

If you performed well under pressure?

Instant respect.

Fold like a cheap suit? Okay, it was tougher. They had to learn resilience the hard way. And fights?

They happened.

Teachers often let them play out just as long as they had to go as long as no real damage was being done. A bloody nose or a black eye, then it was over. Often, the combatants were friends afterwards, hierarchy established, testosterone balanced, respect earned: male bonding at its rawest.

Paul wrote a book on walking to avoid sandworms. It was a step-by-step guide.

These rituals, in moderation, built toughness. They taught that pain passes, conflicts resolve, and life demands honor. Bruises faded, but the lessons stuck. Parents? They never heard about it. A fistfight? So what? Boys will be boys.

Today? Heaven forbid a scuffle breaks out in a school (at least a middle-class white majority school). It is not a learning moment; it is a federal case. Suspension, counseling, parental conferences, maybe even charges. Zero tolerance turns into zero growth, however, since kids are shielded from every scrape, every failure, every real consequence.

The world they inherit is virtual, endless screens feeding dopamine hits without risk. Social media wars replace playground brawls, but the scars are deeper: anxiety, isolation, fear of the unknown. Many of these kids have never cold approached a woman and asked for a date.

Part of the point is learning to fail when the stakes are low. A lost fight in fifth grade? Big deal, you dust off and try again. A botched initiation? You toughen up for next time. She said, “No, you’re not my type, I prefer men with two eyebrows?” Fine. There are more girls.

I mean, if Soros can get a date . . .

These situations, however, build the muscle to handle adult life without crumbling. Fear becomes a tool, not a tyrant. But cloister kids too long, and they enter the world paralyzed. The Mrs. nailed it when we were talking yesterday: ” . . . if they (kids) cannot handle solving teenage problems, they will commit atrocities as adults.”

I liked that line so much I made her text it to me.

He also needs some smokes and a pepperoni. I know at least one person found this hilarious.

Unresolved fears fester into rage, leading kids to lash out at a world they never learned to navigate.

Look around at the twisted landscape of 2025:

Riots over nothing,
Entitlement epidemics,
Adults throwing tantrums like toddlers.

Weakness is a result raising children in bubbles. No free-range exploration, no unsupervised adventures, no low-stakes failures to forge resilience and enough scar tissue to toughen the kid up. Instead, society offers them therapy and pills paper over the cracks and pay for the therapist’s BMW® payment.

The solution is simple.

Face the fear, let it pass, emerge stronger. Let kids roam, fight, fail, and fix their own messes. Strip away the structure, the screens, the safety nets. Teach them that bruises heal, but cowardice cripples. Otherwise, we breed a nation of mind-killed adults, obliterated by the little-deaths of unchecked terror who will do anything because they have faith in absolutely nothing.

One way or another, courage will return, if not because we shatter the bubble, it will because it collapses under the weight of fear. And then?

We’ll have to face our fears.

How Strippers Explain Life On Mars

“I’m telling you, don’t do it. I’ve got nothing against strip clubs, but I do have something against them at noon on a Monday. The day shift at a strip club? You can’t unsee that.” – The Office

I go to a quantum mechanic – he fixes and doesn’t fix my car at the same time, and I can’t ever be certain about what it will cost. (meme above and top meme as found)

Last week, NASA had a press conference on what they’re calling “the strongest evidence yet” for life on Mars. According to their announcement, the Perseverance rover had taken pictures of a rock sample dubbed “Sapphire Canyon”.

This is a coincidence, since that was the name of the stripper at my bachelor party. The rock was from a site called Jezero Crater, which I assume (based on her face) was the stripper’s real name. As I recall her face was a temporal anomaly: it could stop a clock. The only explanation for this was my best man was on a budget of something like $4.98.

The rock did not work for tips, however, but like the stripper it shows potential biosignatures dating back about 3.5 billion years. These biosignatures include organic materials, chemical reactions that mimic microbial activity, a g-string, and what the scientists called “leopard spots”, which I really hope can be cured by antibiotics.

The people who write press releases for NASA Scientists are cautious, of course; they emphasize that non-biological processes could explain it, like geochemical reactions under specific conditions. But after a year of peer review in Nature®, Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy went so far as to say, “We can’t find another explanation, so this very well could be the clearest sign of life that we’ve ever found on Mars, which is incredibly exciting.”

Unlike Sapphire Canyon.

I hear that most electricians need to strip to make ends meet. (meme as found)

This isn’t the first time NASA has twerked and gyrated with the idea of Martian microbes. Let’s rewind to 1976, when the Viking landers touched down and ran their own biology experiments to hunt for life.

The Labeled Release experiment, led by Gilbert Levin, injected Martian soil with nutrients and watched for gas emissions that meant “metabolism!” These are, in layman’s terms, signs of life chowing down on the snot that NASA sprayed into the dirt.

Positive results popped up on both Viking 1 and 2, but NASA dismissed them. Why? Well, it appears that NASA wanted to not find life, and hunted for explanations high and low until they came up with:

perchlorates in the soil oxidizing everything to
it was Tuesday and we don’t do our best work on Tuesday, to
it was the Bicentennial and we were distracted by the shiny new quarters or
we won the war, go back to sleep.

The scientist in charge still insists to this day that it was life, but NASA just said, “Well, we don’t know what we were thinking with doing an experiment like that. How did you sneak it on the Viking? The experiment never could have found anything. Have you seen Smokey and the Bandit®?”

Fast-forward to the 1990s, and I recall the unveiling of Martian meteorite ALH84001. This fragment of rock, ejected from Mars about the time your mother was born 17 million years ago and crash-landing on Earth the time that stripper was born about 13,000 years back, contained carbonate globules with what looked like fossilized bacteria complete with hydrocarbons.

The scientists noted that these were possible microbial remnants from a wetter Mars. But skeptics piled on: “The fossils were too small because I can’t fit in one, the hydrocarbons could be from space dust or an Exxon® station, and we won the war so everyone should go back to sleep and have you seen The Usual Suspects?”

Do bacteria communicate by cell phone?

Now, we’ve made it to 2025. right on the dot with the rover findings pushing the timeline for life on Mars back to the Solar System’s dawn, around 3.5 to 3.8 billion years ago.

I’ve predicted that we’d find evidence of life on other worlds before (I think but am too lazy to check) 2030, and intelligent life before 2040. Mars counts as “other worlds,” right?

I’m calling this as a win. We’ve ticked the box on “life elsewhere.” Dust off the telescopes, crack open the hot tub and light up a cigar.

Now comes the deeper question: Where did life come from?

Life on Earth is improbable enough. The current theory is that a cosmic vegetable drawer in the Frigidaire™ Galaxy sits for long enough where atoms randomly congeal just the right molecules to morph into RNA, then DNA, slap on some cell walls, and voila, you’re evolving from slime to Shakespeare in just a weekend.

The odds of that?

Astronomically against. Take protein folding: some proteins are so convoluted that the random chance of them assembling correctly exceeds the age of the universe by factors of 10 FOLLOWED BY 77 ZEROES or more. That’s not something that I’m making up. Actual biochemists have crunched the numbers, showing that even simple enzymes require precise sequences that blind luck couldn’t hit in billions of years.

It’s like expecting a tornado in a junkyard to assemble a functional air fryer, but with extra steps involving quantum hiccups, existential dread and daytime-quality strippers named Destiny. So, if life popped up on Mars around the same time as it did on Earth, both in that narrow window post-Solar System formation, random chance starts looking like a lousy bet.

I donated $100 to a charity for blind children, but I doubt they’ll ever see it. (meme as found)

Enter panspermia: the idea that life (or its building blocks) hitchhikes through space on comets, asteroids, or meteorites, seeding planets like dandelion fluff from the movie Alien.

I did a thought experiment and came to this conclusion: it’s the lazy way to colonize the galaxy. There is no need for warp drives and spaceships when biology, gravity, and time does all the work. Spew out spores into the void, wait for them to land on a Goldilocks world, and boom: mold on bread, except the bread is a planet.

Oh, wait: bread doesn’t mold anymore thanks to all those preservatives and microplastics. My bad.

Anyway, biological life is the universe’s perfect replicator, even better than A.I. It’s self-sustaining, adaptive, and cheap. Forget A.I. overlords; this is nature’s von Neumann probe, probing without permission, replicating, and repeating.

I sent it by itself and now its favorite cheese is probe-alone.

But here’s the rub: something had to kickstart the whole shebang.

Panspermia just kicks the can backwards in time: where did the original life come from? And don’t forget the timeline. Life as we know it, Jim, needs heavy elements heavier than the primordial hydrogen: carbon, oxygen, nitrogen, the stuff that makes water, proteins, and yes, even PEZ®.

Those only form in supernovae, and it takes time to make enough of them so we’ve got the iron and phosphorus that we need to make steaks on a nice rocky world. The Solar System itself is just a punk at 4.6 billion years old, so early life on Mars or Earth had to brew from second- or third-hand atoms.

No heavy atoms, no guitars so no heavy metal.

What’s the simplest conclusion?

Hmmmm.

Yup.

Intelligent design. Life’s complexity indicates purpose, not at all an accident and the math shows that. To think otherwise is like finding an air conditioning unit in the desert and thinking, “Must be erosion.”

I did give up cleaning my dryer filter for Lent.

The canyon between life and not-life is so vast and the math is so brutal that Occam’s Razor slices away the nonsense, leaving design.

Your mileage may vary. But for now, Mars whispers, just like Saphire Canyon, “You’re not alone.” Whether that’s comforting or terrifying depends on your worldview.

But for me, in a universe this designed, even the stripper jokes write themselves. Life is the easy way to conquer the galaxy, so we have to ask ourselves, are we twerking hard, or hardly twerking?

A Tale Of Two Koreas: Dystopia On The Half-Shell

“From what I hear, which isn’t much, Iran financed it and North Korea supplied the bombs.” – Jericho

North Korea shows off it’s newly developed portable Internet device. (All memes as-found)

Imagine living in a Korea where:

a small group of corrupt elite wield godlike powers over the government and citizens,
kids work in factories at the age of less than 10, or, toil in school for up to 18 hours a day to study for a chance to please that same elite who control the entire country,
most non-elite live in drab, gray (or is it grey?) apartments with the main view of . . . other apartments,
adults work long hours in a job that mainly serves to feed the elite,
the fertility rate is 0.78, meaning life is so awful that parents don’t want to bring babies into it, meaning the population will be cut by more half each generation, and
the kids listen to K-Pop.

Yeah. South Korea.

You know, I know people love to call certain places hellholes while praising others as shiny beacons of progress, mainly due to one being capitalist and one being communist.

I get it. I hate communism, too.

I had a horrible dream last night that Artificial Intelligence controlled our lives, and then, thankfully, the alarm on my Alexa® went off and woke me up and then Alexa® went through my to-do list.

But what if I told you that sometimes the “better” option of capitalism is just a prettier prison?

In South Korea, a tiny cabal of families runs the show like they’re the Sopranos, but with better electronics, worse haircuts, and no fear of the FBI. These aren’t your average mafia dons; we’re talking about chaebols. Chaebols are massive conglomerates that have tentacles that extend all the way through all parts of society, like the corporation you work for owning your fridge, car, and your grandma’s pacemaker.

Take the Lee family at Samsung®: they’re not just peddling phones with spyware straight from the NSA, nope. In South Korea, they have fingers in everything from shipbuilding to life insurance to health care to construction to hotels in about 80 different companies that comprise about 22% of the South Korean economy.

Hell, if you sneeze in this country, there’s probably a Samsung tissue waiting to catch it. And when Daddy Lee gets nabbed for bribery and attempted bribery (again), does the empire crumble?

Nope, Lee Junior slides right in.

Is the guy who does security on Samsung™ phones the guardian of the galaxy?

Then there’s the Chung clan over at Hyundai®. These folks don’t just make cars. Nope. Hyundai builds cities, runs banks, and probably have a secret lab cloning K-Pop idols, Gangnam-style.

Power gets handed down generation to generation, and if there’s a whiff of scandal? Poof, it vanishes faster than a North Korean dissident.

Embezzlement?

Tax evasion?

Those are just another boring Tuesday for these overlords. They operate above the law, pulling strings in government like K-Y® covered puppet masters at a marionette orgy (I’m sorry I thought of that, but now you have to think of that, too).

I don’t know how to stop a killer sex bot, but I do know how to stop a hand puppet: disarm it.

These huge conglomerates eternal, sucking up wealth while the average South Korean fights over scraps. Capitalism is great at building stuff, sure, but when it goes full oligarch, it’s like giving all the Monopoly® money to the banker (drunk Aunt Betty) and listening to her tell everyone else to enjoy passing Go© without collecting $200 and then it’s the Thanksgiving from Hell and Uncle L.T. won’t stop talking about golf.

Excuse me. Some past-life trauma.

I’m not against wealth concentration when it comes because people created actual wealth in society. I think people should be rewarded for making the lives of others better. But South Korea? The top families make money because they control all the pathways of wealth creation and the government.

I’d bet they’re gonna make a move on religion, next.

Bold statement time: capitalism alone doesn’t equal freedom; and in South Korea it is just feudalism (which, I remind you, was also capitalism) with neon-colored LED lights.

And it gets worse. What really inspired me to write this one was about the kids. The South Korean economy is a beast that demands blood sacrifices, starting young. Kids are out there hustling like they’re in a Dickens novel, but instead of cleaning chimneys, it’s cram schools that make American homework look like recess.

I’d make a joke but I want to be seen as mining my own business.

For the grown-ups, it’s worse: 60-80 hour weeks are the norm, turning humans into zombies shuffling through cubicles. Monotonous? Try soul-crushing, like being stuck in the Matrix but without the cool kung fu and hot chicks in skin-tight latex. Adults are coding, welding, or staring at screens till their eyes cross, all for a paycheck that barely covers rent. And that’s the lucky ones – the effective unemployment rate flirts on a regular basis with 25%.

And speaking of rent—everyone’s jammed into these towering commie-blocks, gray slabs of despair that make Brutalist architecture look inspiring. Check it out on Google™ Maps© Streetview®. It’s like The Sims® but with new Depression Mode enabled: tiny apartments where families stack like cordwood, dreaming of escape but too exhausted to move.

The place where it gets really grim is that they’re working themselves to death. South Korean birthrates are in the toilet, flushing away the future one non-existent kid at a time.

It takes 2.1 kids per woman to keep a population stable. In South Korea, it’s 0.78 kids per woman. In about 100 years, that might mean that instead of 55 million serfs potential employees Samsung® might only have a just a few over 7.5 million left.

This isn’t sustainable; it’s societal suicide by spreadsheet.

You know what jokes about low birthrates aren’t? Childish.

Everyone thinks it South Korea is all Squid Games and high-speed internet, but peel back the veneer, and it’s a dystopia where families (well, not all families) get ground to dust. Sure, they’ve got flashy tech, but at what cost?

Their souls, apparently.

Now, let’s cross that fortified border to the hermit kingdom of North Korea, where the dystopia’s got a different flavor but the same aftertaste of oppression. Point by point, because why not?

Corrupt Clique in Charge: Instead of chaebol families, it’s the Kim dynasty. Power passes from Kim to Kim like a Habsburg chin. Voting? You don’t vote on a living god. The elite live like it’s a South Korean oligarchy, but make theirs communist, so, uniforms and marching and Soviet-tech. So, tie.
Economic Shackles on Steroids: Child labor? Oh yeah, but it’s “patriotic duty” with Nork kids harvesting crops or building monuments to Stalin instead of studying like their southern counterparts. The system is a joke, with rations so meager you’d think calories were capitalist spies. Families toil in state farms or factories, nukes, missiles, and spare MiG parts while the Kim family imports Twix® and Coors™. The South doesn’t have death camps, but I’m not sure if that’s good or bad at this point, so, tie.

This definitely hurt the North’s score.

Soul-Sucking Slog: Just like being at the Democratic National Convention, life in North Korea is a parade of propaganda and forced smiles, living in actual commie-blocks that crumble like the regime’s promises. Monotonous work? Try endless marches and indoctrination sessions. It’s like 1984 but with worse food even than English food. I’ll give this to the South, since they come here from time to time, and I’ve never had a North Korean visit.

What is this, a school for ants?

Birthrates Below Replacement: Around 1.9 kids per woman, much, much better than the South, so eventually there will be more Norks than replaceable Samsung® assets. Besides, who wants to raise a family when Junior might rat you out for humming the Brady Bunch theme? This one goes solidly to North Korea.
K-Pop Equivalent? Nope, just state anthems praising the Dear Leader. I’ve got to give this to North Korea.

If black people move there, will they make K-Rap?

Point total? To the North.

Okay, if I had to pick, I certainly wouldn’t pick the North, but let’s be honest, the South is awful as well. I’ve been trying to make this point again and again: capitalism is an economic system, and it’s only a useful economic system if it generates wealth and supports families. When capitalism captures the systems of government the people begin to look like property, exactly like people look to communists. In Korea, people are either cogs or convicts.

The Founders didn’t mention capitalism or socialism, they just turned people loose with guns and a few rules and let them figure it out. In the West today, business wants to import foreigners to become better cogs, and the GloboLeft wants to import hordes of foreigners who are used to their government treating them like convicts.

Though on the bright side, my Samsung™ phone has lasted for years . . .

Schlitz® and Shot Puts: The Lost Art of Failing

“For the genetic elite, success is attainable, but not guaranteed.” – Gattaca

I heard women are now allowed to join the SAS. Thank heavens! There’s no way those lads should be making their own sandwiches.

When I was a kid, life was a buffet of possibilities with a chocolate sauce fountain at the end. I should know, because I was that greedy little guy piling my plate high with everything from wrestling to chess club to that four ill-fated years of track where I learned that that shot put was never going to go farther than 38’.

Ever.

But it wasn’t just me. Back in the ‘70s and ‘80s and ‘90s, all of childhood was a sandbox—room to dig, build, and occasionally eat the sand just to see what happened. Hell, in the 1970s I don’t think mothers stopped smoking while in labor, and then let their kids go free-range until the police brought them home from the kegger at the old gravel pit. They said I was full of Schlitz®, but I would have differed if I didn’t keep passing out.

An original ad. Back when ads were based. And, probably a good enough cook for the SAS.

Outside of cheap watery beer, as a kid I could try everything, suck at half of it, and still have time to ride bikes with my buddies. I mean, they were imaginary friends, but at least they would stop staring at me when I yelled at them, “stop staring at me”.

The point is, I had time. Time to dabble, freedom to fail, and a real chance to struggle to find out what made John Wilder tick (spoiler: booze, tobacco, and women). I could dream of being an astronaut one week a Green Beret the next, and James Bond the week after. No one demanded that I pick a lane and stay there, probably because they were too busy smoking and drinking and driving. For me, though, failure was a teacher, not a felony.

Kids today?

They’re not at a buffet. They forced to pick their entrée at 12 and commit to it like terrier hangs onto a T-bone.

I remember a conversation with a colleague back in Houston, circa 2010. His daughter, still in middle school, had to choose: volleyball, softball, or tennis. One single sport, full commitment, no take-backs.

When his girlfriend asked if he was trans, he got so mad that he packed her stuff and left.

This wasn’t just signing up for the school team and seeing how it went. This meant off-season practices, traveling squads, private coaching, and summer clinics that cost more than my first car. All this for a kid who, statistically, had a better shot at being struck by lightning than playing at the college level. In Houston’s mega-sized high schools (the nearest one had 5,000 kids and a football stadium that could shame a small college) only the top 1% even make the team.

The rest? They’re sidelined, their dreams of spiking a volleyball or swinging a bat relegated to backyard pickup games, if they’re lucky.

Why this insanity? Two culprits: economics and elite overproduction.

First, economics.

Big school districts love their mega-schools. They’re cheaper per pupil to run, since they have fewer buildings, fewer janitors, more bang for the bureaucratic buck. Plus, a 5,000-student high school can field a football team that crushes smaller districts and draws 20,000 fans to a stadium that makes my college’s stadium look like a community rec center field for third graders. In Texas, high school football isn’t a sport; it’s a religion, though they do have better concessions.

But our high school coach wanted us to have a small ghost. He said he wanted us to show a little team spirit.

And it pays: Bigger schools mean bigger revenue, bigger crowds, and bigger bragging rights for state titles, but you still only need 45 uniforms and helmets.

The second culprit is trickier: elite overproduction.

Historian Peter Turchin (who I’ve written about before HERE) points out that societies often churn out more “elites” than they can sustain—too many people vying for too few top spots, whether in politics, business, or, yes, even high school sports. We see it in our polarized Congress and bloated corporate C-suites, so why not in our kids’ lives?

Parents, schools, and even kids themselves feel the pressure to produce not just good students or athletes but exceptional ones.

The result of this is catastrophic. It has produced a generation of tweens locked into one sport, one instrument, or one hyper-specialized path, all in the name of building a résumé for elite colleges that demand “well-rounded” applicants who’ve paradoxically had no time to be well-rounded. Or, you know, they could just have a great DEI score.

Whatever.

Dogs have masters. Cats have staff.

For the average kid, the stress this creates is brutal. Kids today face schedules that would make a CEO sweat. A 14-year-old might have 6 a.m. weight training, school, after-school practice, and a side hustle of “personal development” like SAT prep or violin lessons.

Free time?

That’s for quitters.

Social life?

Catch up on InstaFace® between reps.

The mental toll is real: you can look around and see kids today are drowning in depression and hopelessness. Part of this, I’d argue, comes from a life without failure. Most kids in Houston won’t lose a football game or a wrestling match or a basketball game. They’ll go and watch, sure, but they don’t get a chance to actually fail. Without learning that failure is really an option and that tomorrow is another day, every little setback in their life feels like a catastrophe.

Without challenges that force them to fail, adapt, and push through, they hit adulthood brittle, unprepared for real-world setbacks. I lost at sports in ways that made me want to cry when I was in high school. I didn’t cry because I’m not gay, but I learned that I could get up in the morning after losing and see that I was still there. My loss was temporary, but it really did help build may character. Today’s kids, locked into elite tracks or locked out of actual competition, often don’t face meaningful failure until it’s high-stakes.

By then, the stakes are too high to learn gracefully. They need safe spaces to crash and burn, like a JV wrestling match where you get pinned by a kid whose armpit smells like grape soda and Cheetos® or a debate club where your argument flops harder than a fish on a dock.

After the Little Rascals finished, Buckwheat became moslem and is now known as Kareem O’Wheat.

When we moved away from Houston’s mega-schools to Modern Mayberry, we did it mainly to escape this madness. Our kids could try things. They didn’t have to be the best to play, and they had room to fail without it defining their future or collapsing their ego.

That freedom let them discover who they were, not who a coach or a college admissions board thought they should be. They’ve learned that the struggle is the goal.

Well, that and the booze, tobacco, and women.

It Came From . . . 1995

“Man, there’s not a year that goes by, not a year, that I don’t read about some escalator accident involving some bastard kid that could’ve easily been avoided had some parent, I don’t care which one, but some parent conditioned him to fear and respect the escalator.” – Mallrats

Is that Neandergibson? Joe Piscopo?

While the 1980s allowed for gonzo productions of very uneven quality to become classics (Better Off Dead, for instance) the 1990s box office was much more crowded and the studios began to spend even more on the films. I’d say that a random movie from 1995 was more professionally made than a random movie from any year in the 1980s, but had a lot less heart.

As to the continuation of the series, I’m not sure if we’ll do 1996 or end it here. I think I’m done with the 1970s, though I have another idea that amuses me that we’ll try in late August. As always, I’m also willing to consider lists of genre flicks, but pretty soon that ends up with movies no one ever saw.

As usual, sequels are excluded on the list. I don’t consider Mallrats a sequel. Thankfully, I make the rules. You may appeal. It will be denied.

As an aside, I don’t think you can overestimate the propaganda impact of films. Just like listening to music puts your brain into a state of suggestable hypnosis (which is why I like to listen to kick-ass music rather than sad stuff most days) so does film. Film takes the next dimension above music by adding visual stimulus, making the hypnosis even more effective. What I take in does impact me, so I consider that more and more as I grow older and as it’s thrown in our faces with the last decade’s worth of propaganda films. I understand now why some don’t like horror films for just that reason. I do like them, still, but I’ve become much more selective as to what I let in the transom.

Speaking of which . . . .

That poster gives me tentacles. I mean tingles. And it looks like Ralph Macchio.

In the Mouth of Madness – I love good Lovecraftian horror. Cosmic horror is at its best when it sketches a universe of limitless expanse where we’re just nubs sitting in the darkness while titanic forces beyond our understanding play out around us. It’s like whistling through the graveyard, if you will. When I first saw In the Mouth of Madness I hated it, because I didn’t get it. Now? My opinion is that it’s great cosmic horror, and shows off Sam Neill as he unwittingly brings about the end of the world. With popcorn. Like most of Carpenter’s work, it has a large following, but was box office poison. But he gets the last laugh in this one.

I have a particular set of skills. Murder and guitar solos.

Rob Roy – Scots fighting to be fiercely independent, while being swindled and taken advantage of by rape-y foreigners? If only they would do that in 2025. Tim Roth steals the show in a perfectly creepy performance with hair appropriate for Isaac Newton if he played guitar for Queen®. It did okay at the box office.

If you’ve seen the movie, this makes a little bit of sense.

Crimson Tide – Another submarine movie because, well, why not? In this one, though, Tony Scott (same guy who cooked a Goose in Top Gun) gets the most out of Denzel Washington and the late Gene Hackman. To be clear, Hackman was still alive during the movie. The two are officers on a nuclear missile submarine that have to decide if they’re going to shoot off nuclear missiles after losing communications with Starfleet®. Me? I would have launched the missiles because that’s one way to get in the history books.

Should this one be called “Bravefelt”?

Braveheart – Tons of historical inaccuracy? Check. Mel Gibson with more hair than an 80’s glam band? Check. Ludicrously long runtime of nearly three hours? Also check. In spite of these things, this was a huge hit. Swords. Women. Bravery. Sophie Marceau at her peak Marceau-ness. What’s not to love?

I still remember when he outran Kevin Spacey to maintain his virginity in the climax.

Apollo 13 – This movie follows the life of a young transgender long-distance runner (Tom Hanks) who needs an older mentor (Kevin Bacon) to buy him shoes because he grew up in a third-world country that couldn’t afford to have a Nike® store or electricity or food.

I need to post this on Rob’s X® feed.

Judge Dredd – Some comic book purists don’t like this version because in the comic books Dredd never takes off his helmet, but Stallone wanted to show off his hair. The (much darker) 2012 reboot Dredd features a Dredd™ that always covers his hedd. I didn’t care, really, since I found this movie both stupid and hilarious and one of Rob Schneider’s best roles. Huge flop. I wouldn’t recommend it, but yet I enjoyed it. Does that mean I hate myself? Anyway, the 2012 version is a much better movie.

Wait, what if every suspect was Rob Schneider? That would be wacky!

The Usual Suspects – Cost $6 million, made nearly $70 million. This one gets the most out of fairly talented cast in a crime mystery, and I will admit that the ending did surprise me when I watched it on a rental VHS tape from Blockbuster™, because I did not know that late fees could get that high. I still don’t know how the tape ended up behind the couch. Maybe it was Keyser Söze?

Wow, those guys are more swole than I recalled. The 90s rocked!

Mallrats – A $6 million dollar budget. $2 million in ticket sales. I think the budget skips all the advertisement for this thing – you couldn’t go anywhere young adults were in 1995 without seeing ads for this movie months before it came out. This movie is a very stupid comedy that brings us Jason Lee (My Name is Earl) as a guy on a quest to get his girlfriend back. I think. It’s funny in a juvenile way, but was also the product of its time. Watched it with my boys, they thought it was hilarious, but were also fascinated, like anthropologists studying a world that existed a thousand years ago.

I hope it’s as good as the sequel to Hamlet.

Leaving Las Vegas – Darkest movie on this list. Watched it once, not sure I have it in me to watch it again. The guy who wrote the semi-autographical novel it was based on killed himself when he found out it was going to be a movie. Guess he really, really, really, really didn’t like Nic Cage.

Heat – I was debating if I was going to do “It Came From . . . . 1995” at all, but the meme above (as found) convinced me that I should. Big hit that I somehow missed and watched a few years ago after Aesop mentioned it. No weapons were injured during the filming of this movie, but not for lack of ammo. Thank heavens Sig® hadn’t introduced the P320™ yet or else half of the ammo fired wouldn’t have needed an actor fanning the trigger. Related news: I hear Alec Baldwin is going to be Sig©’s spokesman.

Four Rooms or Fur Rooms?

Four Rooms – An anthology film that I saw in an arthouse theater (the only time I’ve ever been to one) with a buddy. I guess being in an arthouse theater is with another dude is the gayest thing I’ve ever done in my life, besides that one time I had a wine cooler. Regardless, I enjoyed it, since each one of the four films was essentially a joke tied together by Tim Roth’s best comedic performance. The first film is by far the weakest, but, I can’t call it awful because, boobs.

“Waiter, there’s a rubber chicken in my soup.”
“No there isn’t.”
“Yes, there is. What is it doing there.”
“The backstroke, I believe.”
Now for something completely different.

12 Monkeys – Is he crazy, or is it time travel? Why not both? Terry Gilliam was generally the weakest member of Monty Python®, but he’s done much better as a director. Regardless, this movie brings together Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt in roles very much against the stuff they normally did, with Pitt even getting nominated for an Oscar™.

Not included? Seven. Species. Strange Days. Sense and Sensibility. Really, any movie starting with ‘S’ from 1995. I kid. Things to do in Denver When You’re Dead also nearly made the list.

What did I miss?

One Page At A Time

“Then I shall die as one of them!” – LOTR, The Two Towers

I never trust what a minotaur says. Half of it is always bull.

It’s cold outside. I can see that in how crisp and clear the air is. The big picture window in the cabin up on Wilder Mountain lets my young eyes see a mile, looking for the headlights on a dim winter morning.

The bus rounds the corner, and I head off. Burt, the driver, is rarely off on time by more than a minute or two. I’m the farthest kid out, and he starts rounding up the school kids with me.

“Hi Burt!”

“Morning, John.”

Since I’m in middle school, and I’m the first on, I tromp my winter boots all way to the back of the bus. That’s where the cool kids sit. I remember the first day I decided to sit back here. Since I was the first on, there was no one to stop me, so I decided to break the norm of the past few years and just sit there.

I was in sixth grade, and the high school freshman started to object when he got on. He didn’t finish the sentence. If he would have asked me to move, my answer would have been short.

“Make me.”

I didn’t have to. Even in sixth grade, I was bigger than him.

But I lived so far out that most of the time, I had the entire back of the bus to myself.

So instead of a long, boring bus ride, I decided I’d do something else. Like take a trip to Mordor. Or fight bugs with Johnny Rico. Or figure the best way to ambush a troop of Sardaukar. Or take a trip to Boulder after Captain Trips paid a visit.

One group of web developers likes finding bugs in their work: spiders.

The bus isn’t a ride, it’s a journey through the past that never was and the future that never will be. It was, metaphorically, my campfire, and these books were the ways that storytellers of my people could share the legends that shape humanity.

In part, these are the legends that shape me, just like our ancestors learned valor and cowardice from tales told under starlit skies in long-ago Sparta and Denmark and Scotland and Rome.

Stories aren’t just entertainment. They are the code that programmed humanity and fueled the creation of Western Civilization. Warriors heard of Achilles’ courage and the hubris of Icarus, learning to strive for glory and wear a parachute if they were going to fly too close to the Sun.

Is a monk with wings an air friar?

Kids grew up on fables of clever foxes and lazy hares, etching lessons of wit and work into their bones. These weren’t bedtime stories: they were survival guides and cultural norms, showcasing the best of what we could be and the worst that we should avoid at all costs. Both lessons are useful.

My bus ride was no different. Tolkien’s Christian valor, never naming Christ but screaming His Truths three different ways through Frodo, Aragorn, and Gandalf lit a fire in me. Heinlein’s musings on duty versus freedom made me question what I owed my community, and what it owed me. Those pages were my elders, whispering truths no teacher could match, even though they were sometimes quite contradictory.

Stories aren’t just ink on paper, they’re the software that nourishes our souls. Throughout history, they’ve been the mirror showing us who we are, who we could be, who we should avoid being, and what the journeys of the hero really meant.

The Greeks had Odysseus, outsmarting cyclopes to get home to his family valor in action, and the aforementioned Icarus, flying too high and crashing, a warning against arrogance. Norse kids heard of Thor’s hammer, inspiring strength, but also Loki’s betrayal, a caution against deceit. But you should ignore that, because I’ve heard from the news media that there is no white culture.

I would never download a copy of Homer’s Iliad. I hear it’s full of Trojans.

These archetypes stuck because they’re shades of the universal Truth: every boy wants to grow up to be the man who is a hero, not the coward who folds. My bus ride library was no campfire, but it did the same job. Tolkien taught me sacrifice, Frodo carrying the One Ring, knowing it’d break him, but doing it anyway. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers hit me with duty: you don’t get a vote unless you’re willing to bleed for it because sooner or later someone will.

Harsh? Sure. But it made me think, heroes sometimes falter, freedom isn’t free, and communities aren’t built by loners.

Even Dune’s Paul Atreides, wrestling with destiny and betrayal, showed me the weight of leadership. These weren’t just stories; they were blueprints for being a man, not a drone.

The GloboLeft hates this. They want stories that flatten everything into DEI dogma. No heroes, no villains, just victims and oppressors, any woman being equal in combat to the strongest man.

They’d rewrite Tolkien so Frodo’s a non-binary climate activist, and Heinlein’s troopers would be whining about microaggressions and wanting to use Zoom™ instead of a dropship. You can see it in the box office: their stories don’t inspire; they control exist as humiliation exercises. Look at modern Hollywood: every film is a lecture, not a legend. No wonder kids scroll InstaChat® instead of reading. They’re starved for tales that stir the soul, not the HR manual and they haven’t even been given the words to tell us this – the video game is as close as they come to the myths that make a culture.

Does Beowulf get two thumbs up? Not from Grendel.

Stories work because they show us the extremes, the valor to chase, the cowardice to shun. Take Beowulf: he faced Grendel head-on, no excuses. I read that one in high school, and loved it. I thought, “This is amazing. Our ancestors were heavy metal badasses two thousand years before electric guitars were a thing.”

Beowulf is the guy you want to be, not the prol cowering in the mead hall.

My bus ride heroes were no different. Tolkien’s Aragorn didn’t negotiate with orcs. He killed them.

Heinlein’s Johnnie Rico in Starship Troopers learned civic duty the hard way, bugs don’t care about your feelings, and when they kill your mother, well, they’ve sent a message that you simply must respond to.

Stand up, protect your own, don’t bend.

I guess they use Mordor oil.

From what I’ve seen, GenZ didn’t take too many bus rides with Tolkien, they’ve got TikGram™. Schools push “diversity” over duty, “equity” over excellence. The campfire’s gone, replaced by screens spewing shadows, not legends.

To be clear, the GloboLeft wants it that way. But stories still matter, and, I think, you can see Gen Z starting to rise, especially among the boys. And that’s important: they’re how we pass on the code.

Every tale’s a seed, planting valor and weeding out cowardice, because at some point every man needs to be able to say the two most important words a man can say:

“Make me.”

Illegal Aliens Versus Actual Americans: The Stakes Of The $33T Parasite Party

“And on the unjust enrichment charge, Richard will agree to pay Hooli for the phone charger.” – Silicon Valley

Where do Orcs go to school? Uruk-Hai. (meme as found)

Enrichment. I mean, who doesn’t feel that when they think about illegal alien invaders, since they’re like Orcs crashing a Hobbit© potluck? On thinking about them, I came up with what I thought was a very interesting idea. What if illegal aliens were the key to . . . a painless recession that helped all the Actual Americans? I mean, by leaving.

Let’s look at the results of kicking illegals out or not having them show up in the first place:

Lowered home prices. Up to 40 million illegals living in the United States, millions of whom showed up in the last few years puts pressure on home prices. Sure, some illegals are helping to build homes, but they’re consuming more than they create. If the invaders left that lowers demand for the existing home stock. Sure, some markets might continue to be unaffordable, but I don’t want to live there. The result? Young Actual Americans would be more able to afford homes.
Crime would go down. Yes, I’ve heard the argument that illegals commit fewer crimes than Actual Americans, but any crime they commit is one that won’t happen if they’re not here. Since we already have all the recipes, you can still go and get a burrito. We’ll keep the burritos, you take the banditos.
Wages increase. Since the early 1970s, the share of wages for the average worker when compared to corporate profits has plummeted. Why? We offshored manufacturing because someone asked, “Hey, wouldn’t it be a good idea if we imported everything and allowed foreigners decades to figure out how to optimize manufacturing?” But beyond that, we imported hordes of illegal and legal aliens for the jobs that remained because someone asked, “Hey, wouldn’t it be a good idea to import tons of people who can’t complain about hours or conditions?”
Prices for (some) goods and services may go down. Why? Fewer people competing for those goods and services. If profits are high and demand decreases, prices fall. Profits are at an all time high. You do the math.
Pressure for more infrastructure decreases. 40 million more people means millions of miles or roads, sewers, water lines, curbs, and schools. It’s 10% infrastructure for the rest of us . . . for free!

Easiest way to tell if a high school student is on drugs: ask him what a gram is. See! The metric system is useful for something.

Schools have more resources. Speaking of schools, not only does the teacher/pupil ratio get better, but fewer services are required since illegal aliens need enhanced services due to language and “special needs” issues.
Government growth is dropped. Illegals LOVE government doing things for them and always clamor for more. And they get more. GloboLeftElite politicians also LOVE giving illegals benefits that Actual Americans don’t qualify for. Without illegals, this slows government growth.
Lower fraud. SNAP (federal Supplemental Nutrition giveaways) wouldn’t be used to pack the fridges of half of the food trucks in Los Angeles. More food would be available for purchase, and prices would go . . . down.
Lower health care costs. Illegals use the emergency room as their go-to medical facility, clogging it up for colds that an Actual American would go to a doctor for, and paying nothing. Well, they pay nothing. You and I foot the bill for them because they have zero health insurance (except for government handouts), so why not go to the emergency room for a Tylenol®?
Higher costs for strawberries and lettuce. A few labor-intensive farm products will increase in price. Be honest, though: if strawberries doubled in cost you wouldn’t care. Especially not if your taxes and inflation overall went down.
Farm profits would go down. This would hurt farmers. But it would hurt big corporate farmers the most. Maybe they’d have to pay a market wage without illegals pressuring it down.
Lower remittances going abroad. Over $70 billion in wealth is shipped out to foreign countries in remittances. This could be kept at home with Actual Americans using it to buy something they liked instead. Like PEZ®.

Finally, I saved the crown jewel for last:

Higher economic growth.

Well, that might be a lie. Economic growth would actually decrease for the first year or so. That’s the textbook definition for a recession: growth decreasing for two business quarters. And, I’m okay with that, because growth can be good or bad.

Said differently: all growth is not good, and all contractions aren’t bad.

I built a model of Mt. Everest. My friend asked, “Is it to scale?” I had to break his heart when I told him it was just to look at.

What happens if the recession is caused by removing illegals? Let’s look at the numbers:

Since the vast majority of illegals are Hispanic, it just so happens that we have a good guess at the lifetime impact on the economy of a Hispanic person. It came in the form of a meme, but it’s footnoted. So, science. I guess.

Drumroll: in the early 2010s, someone did an estimate of the net lifetime contribution of a Latino. The answer was: -$588,000. Again, that’s over their lifetime. I imagine that illegals cost far, far more than the average Hispanic American. The average third-gen Hispanic American who was born into an English-speaking household from his legal birth and whose name was “Troy” rather than “Esteban” almost certainly is much more productive.

I mean, Troy probably took Spanish in high school and got a “C”.

But those are old numbers. Let’s update that $588,000 net cost to 2025 numbers.

Wow. It’s up to over $810,000 now for a lifetime cost. Assuming a lifespan of 50 years in the United States (illegals, remember) to suck up our resources, over that 50-year span, 40,000,000 illegals would suck up nearly $33 trillion.

If the definition of a parasite is an organism that pulls the life energy from another, then that fits the bill to describe this as economic parasitism.

I think there could be fewer illegals than 40 million, but it’s nearly certain their lifetime costs are higher than the $810,000 estimate, perhaps even double the costs of an Actual American Hispanic. So, let’s use those numbers. I think they’re conservative.

He’s lucky it wasn’t the Hawaiian Muslim food truck: Aloha Snack Bar. (meme as found)

Rough calculations shows that every million deported or averted would save Actual Americans $32 billion per year. Deport them all? A net savings for a family of four of $8,000. Each and every year for their entire lives.

You and your family are contributing about $2,000 EACH just for the luxury of having illegals in the United States, not counting house prices, health care costs, depressed wages, and a dozen other non-economic ways I could think of that illegals are making things worse for Actual Americans.

$2,000. Minimum. Each and every year. Could you use that for something? Like PEZ™?

Yes, illegals cause economic growth, because they cause economic activity. But all economic “growth” isn’t good, especially when that “growth” takes away from the wealth and prosperity of Actual Americans. If economic activity was all we needed, we could peg the gauge by just having Los Angeles illegal riots every night.

Imagine how rich we’d all get off of tearing it all down and rebuilding it every week!

Again, you could quibble with the numbers, and I’ll agree that a meme isn’t a peer-reviewed paper. But, what university in 2025 would support a professor pointing out that a significant portion of the population is making the country poorer just by breathing?

Thankfully, this isn’t a peer reviewed paper, since those are often created by an entirely different type of parasite, but I digress.

Could it be that we’re enriching ourselves to death? What I’ve written about here talks only about the financial ways in which illegals are screwing all the Actual Americans. Aliens, both illegal and legal, also put on intense cultural pressure. Remember, diversity is our weakness, and multicultural empires Balkanize in horrific ways based on that weakness. It’s like having a United Nations cage match, but in your backyard. More on that in a future post.

So, a recession brought about by illegals aliens going home is one I’ll happily look forward too. And their home countries should be glad to get them – I mean, won’t they feel enriched? Besides, I think it’s obvious that I’d never be nice to a parasite at one of my parties – I’m not a good host.

Greedflation And Burgers And Girls Drinking Beer

“And in Paris, you can buy a beer at McDonald’s®.” – Pulp Fiction

Interesting fact: women in Arabic cities like Paris don’t need car insurance. They’re already covered.

Greedflation.

It’s an ugly word for several reasons. The first reason it’s ugly is because I generally support the free market as the best tool for setting prices. You see that at gasoline stations regularly – no station that charges a quarter more for a gallon of gasoline will be able to sell much gasoline. The price for a commodity like gasoline, in a relatively free market, sets itself.

That’s nice, because the very price mechanism that sets the price also allows the gasoline to flow to the consumers that value it the most, which according to my research are groups of post-nuclear war barbarians who hang out in Australia.

I hear they’re filming the sequel on location in Los Angeles.

Some people don’t get this. I recall having extended conversations when I was in my twenties with an elderly gentleman about gasoline prices. He was upset because after some price shock, the gasoline prices all jumped $0.50 the next day.

“They didn’t pay that much for the gasoline!”

Well, no, they didn’t. But because the supply was thought to be limited, the gasoline was worth more. Besides, the merchant was going to have to refill that storage tank at a higher price, and nobody was going to buy his high-priced gas if he charged more than the market when the price invariably went down.

“Besides,” I asked, “If you had an ounce of gold that you bought for $50, would you sell it for that, or would you want the (then) current price of $500 an ounce?”

Of course he said he’d want the $500. But he still couldn’t understand why gas prices went up.

And I only got to take him on one walk.

I wanted to establish that, because I’m going to tear into the larger corporations for lying about prices. That’s greedflation.

An example of this would be McDonald’s®. I’ll pick on them because, like illegal aliens, they’re everywhere and more numerous than they should be at this stage in the economy. McDonald’s™ built its reputation on food that was fast, tasty, and inexpensive – a place a dad could take the kids for a quick treat on the way back from the zoo on a Saturday afternoon.

At least in Modern Mayberry, McDonald’s© has ceased to be fast, and inexpensive. McDonald’s® prices are so high that a “meal deal” costs the better part of the price of a pound of ribeye. To me, that’s not a deal, or at least not a good one.

The stripper said she was stripping in order to feed her kids, so why did she get mad when I tipped her in Cinnamon Toast Crunch™ coupons?

And these prices have pushed people away – McDonald’s™ insinuated that these price hikes were due mainly to inflation and blamed the franchise owners for the ultimate pricing.

The result?

McDonald’s® ended up with declining burger sales, but with record profits. In fact, between 2014 and 2024, their prices doubled. Most of the increase was before the pandemic and inflation. Everyone’s doing it, right? No, mainly McDonald’s® was McLovin’™ it.

The average increase in prices for other fast-food restaurants during that same time period was more in the 55%-ish percent, and more or less in a straight line. They were raising their prices much faster than inflation, but McDonald’s™ was leading the pack.

The result: A lot of “inflation” is just corporations adjusting prices to the point of maximizing their profits. Sell fewer burgers and yet make more money?

Why not! Especially if we can insinuate that it’s really all beyond our control. Perfect!

I actually don’t mind that they’re increasing prices to increase profits. I get that. I mean, if they could sell just one burger and make sixteen billion dollars in profit, they’d be all in. Oh, wait, Lockheed-Martin™ is already doing that with jet fighters.

Don’t worry if the F-35 gets rained on. That only costs about $50 million to fix.

What I mind is the insinuation this is due to outside forces instead of a planned extraction of the greatest amount of profit that can be generated per sale. It’s a lie.

One of the components of the monthly “Misery Index” that I put together is tied to inflation. Inflation destroys the value of currency, and makes people feel, day by day, shabbier and poorer. However, to blame outside forces for your increased prices instead of saying, “Hey, we think this burger is worth it,” is execrable.

The Wilder household has responded by purchasing prepared foods outside of the house only rarely. Once a week – at most. Instead, we’re cooking at home. It’s likely healthier, and I can get exactly the right amount of chocolate sauce on my bacon cheeseburger.

I think many Americans have reacted the same way. And for us, it’s made us less miserable, rather than more miserable, plus the food is better.

The problem, though, is that when big business reaches a size that it can extract all the wealth it wants on a whim and keep posting record profits year after year. That’s not competition, that’s a Wealth Pump as defined by Peter Turchin, and it is a prime factor in the creation of misery and the road to Civil War.

The initial example that I gave of gas stations all competing to get my dollar is the way the markets work best. There are a number of different sellers all trying to get me to come to their station, though they haven’t figured out that if they had hot girls in bikinis they could probably double their business.

And they don’t look like they speak Arabic.

And no, McDonald’s™ rarely forces people to eat there, so there still is competition from substitutes, like a ribeye. I have the choice of whether or not to go to McDonald’s™. Please, Golden Arches, raise your prices to your heart’s content!

Just don’t lie about it, and just don’t expect consumers to hang around, though it seems to be working for you right now. And McDonald’s™ innovates, since I heard that they had a failed beef version of their McRib©.

Who says they don’t learn from their McSteaks®?