I Love Guns – Page 4 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

41 Things I Think I Know (2022 Revision)

“That’s a short list. That can’t be everyone you want to kill. Are you sure you’re not forgetting someone? – Game of Thrones

The Mrs. asked me to put ketchup on the shopping list. Now I can’t read it.

This is a revamp of an older post from way back in 2017. Are these fundamental rules? No. But between when I first wrote them and today I didn’t see much I’d change, except item 22.

Tell the truth. This will have the beneficial added benefit of changing your behavior so you’re not ashamed of what you do. The whole truth. Even about that. And that. People might not like you, but they’ll respect you. Except for the thing about the cat. Keep that to yourself – no one will understand.
Showing up on time is important. It shows respect. It is also is easy to track, if you’re a boss wanting to get rid of people. Even if you do a great job, you’ll be the first to go if you show up late. I guess that’s changed since the invasion of Ukraine and the sanctions – everyone has stopped Russian.
Don’t give up. Sometimes break-out success means ten years of study and effort and of not giving up. Even Johnny Depp succeeded, which proves that anyone can.
There are no friends like those formed in youth. When you’re ten, there are no pretenses. The cruel calculus of testosterone and estrogen has yet to set in. Greed is not an issue.
Be nice. Life is already really hard enough for many people. Don’t be their villain, unless it pays really well, and even then, the karma is . . . tough.

One time I asked for a lobster tail at dinner. The waitress started, “Well one day this brave lobster . . . .”

When you speak, or write, or think, you own the space between the words. You have the ability to turn your words into something amazing, since infinite possibility lies between one word and the next. This is the one most people will ignore, but one of my most powerful things that I found out for myself.
Don’t continually do things you hate, or things that make you feel like a failure. Putting yourself in situations like that is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It also destroys your ability to naturally smell like musk and sandalwood.
Apologize. But only when you are wrong, which, if you regularly read this blog, is hardly ever. If you were not wrong, don’t apologize.
Be of value. If you don’t contribute, you’re part of the problem. Which problem? All of them.
Don’t make yourself into a victim. Almost everybody is where they are because of their choices. Own your choices, and own your outcomes. No one likes victims.

Jussie was just sent to prison. I hope he doesn’t beat himself up over that.

If you really are a victim? Act like you’re not. Because even if victimhood status is legit, see item 10. No one likes people who act like victims, even when they really are.
Opportunity is found where responsibility is neglected.
Solve someone else’s biggest problem: that’s the virtuous road to wealth. It’s also harder.
Remember, giving a gift creates a debt in the mind of the recipient. The larger the gift, the bigger the debt. And nobody likes someone they owe a lot of money to – giving large gifts can make people not like you.
If you don’t want to go to bed because you don’t want to get up tomorrow? Fix your life.
If you don’t want to get out of bed because you don’t want to live the day? Fix your life.
Have children and have them early. But only if you have a spouse. And can keep your spouse.
Cooking your own food is cheaper. And it gives time for conversation. Some of the best conversations occur around the barbeque grill and the deck late into the night.

I grilled for the board of directors once. It pleased the steakholders.

Be tough when you have to be. To be kind when toughness is required results in tragedy.
A pleasure repeated too often becomes a punishment.
Beware of ignoring public opinion. Public opinion resulted in witch burning, the guillotine and Hula Hoops ®. You can be on the other side, but understand there may be consequences.
Don’t see conspiracy when simple laziness, plain stupidity, or normal greed would explain the situation just as well. Removed after living through 2019, 2020, 2021 and the first quarter of 2022.
Schools used to be run by school boards. Now they’re run by unions and lawsuits. None of these groups have the students in mind.
You don’t win ‘em all. Deal with it.
You are the sum of your experience, your intellect, your body, your surroundings, and the people you interact with. You also control your own change. So, get up. The you of today isn’t ready for tomorrow unless the you of today is changing to meet those challenges.
Betrayal of trust is an indication of character. Never trust someone who betrays you. Forgive? Perhaps. Trust again? Never.
Real personal changes don’t happen unless an emotional experience occurs. The bigger the change, the more significant the experience needed.

What’s worse than biting into an apple and finding a worm? Getting shot.

You have your shot. Would have and could have don’t exist. (Unless the Many Worlds Theory of quantum mechanics is correct, in which case all things happen, so have another beer.)
The best (and maybe only) way to win at gambling is to own the casino.
No matter how awesome your idea, it has no value unless you make it real. This takes risk, execution, and work. Which is a lot more difficult than talking about your wonderful idea.
Unless your boss is a good boss, being younger and smarter than him won’t impress him, it will make him jealous or fearful. Neither of those things are good.
Having a boss that makes less money than you is also not good. Envy is a powerful emotion.
Know the strengths and weaknesses of your (biological) parents. You’re not too much different than them. At best, you can avoid their weaknesses. At worst, you’ll follow every one of their downsides.
Tip well, if you can afford it. Waiting on tables is tough work. And if you do tip well? They’ll remember you and take care of you. It’s nice to show up and find the right bottle of wine waiting for you.
You’re not going to win the lottery. Unless it’s the one that Shirley Jackson wrote about. (LINK)
If you’re traveling in winter, travel on the top half of your gas tank. It doesn’t cost any more.
Keep your napkin in your lap while at the dinner table.
Always use deodorant. And if in doubt? Have a breath mint, too.
Keep in touch with people who have helped you, so you can help them. And because you’re a person.
If you have too much stuff, your stuff will own you. Except books. You can have as many of those as you want. And ammo.
The only way that you can know another person across centuries is to read what they’ve written. Have you written anything worthy of reading by your great-great grandchildren? No? Get to work.

What’s the name of the Grim Reaper’s dog? Snuffles.

You’re going to die, and we all die alone. Understand that the only person with you throughout your life is . . . you. Be prepared to keep yourself and those you love alive in any emergency you can imagine. Our time will come when it comes, but there’s no reason not to push it back as far as you can.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Virtue Of Being Unreasonable

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

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

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

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

Some of you probably can guess where this is going.

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

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

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

The soles of my feet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sometimes you have to do something unreasonable.

What If The Mess . . . Is All Planned?

“There is a pestilence upon this land, nothing is sacred. Even those who arrange and design shrubberies are under considerable economic stress in this period in history.” – Monty Python and the Holy Grail

Think you’ve had a great morning? Every day Joe wakes up and someone gets to explain to him that he’s the president.

Peter Grant over at Bayou Renaissance Man (LINK – if you’re not going there regularly, you’re missing out!) mentioned a quote from Monday’s post (The Winds Of War?):

The idea is simple – warfare encompasses absolutely every facet of the life of the enemy. Destabilize the government. Force their economy into chaos. Starve them. Own their communications systems. In other words, it’s just like a Biden presidency.

When I write these posts, there are generally multiple edits. First, I do a draft. Then I go through and edit that. Then I go through and use hammer, tongs, spackle and a welder to fill the post with jokes. The last bit I do is to go to work in the meme forge and sweat and pound and make (mostly) new and original memes.

If your only tool is a meme, every problem looks like a grumpy cat.

In this case, I wrote the Biden line in the first edit. I was trying to be a bit cheeky, but it just fit so well. When Mr. Grant noticed that line . . . I thought about it even more.

What happens when your government is making war on you?

Seriously – if a foreign government would try to:

destabilize our currency (not money, currency) through massively printing it,
produce and disseminate propaganda to further polarize the citizens,
import millions of people with no ties to the country and no understanding of its governmental systems,
work through an admitted conspiracy encompassing virtually all media(traditional and social as well as search engines), corporations, state and to make sure the vote produced the “correct” winner,
make yet more Marvel movies,
effectively purge from the military all senior officers who don’t follow the correct ideology, and
create a culture of dependency on government programs,

we would say that was an act of war, or a copy of the secret Disney® business plan.

Sure, Donald Duck can walk around Disneyland© without pants and he’s beloved. I do it, and I’m “banned for life.”

From an economic standpoint, one goal appears to be: destroy the middle class and destroy small independent business owners.

Why?

Large businesses can be easily converged into following the Narrative with little actual damage in most cases. Need examples?

Gillette® attacks traditional masculinity. It’s still in business. It doesn’t want my business, and doesn’t care. It’s doing fine financially.
Coke™ reportedly provided access to training that told employees to “be less white” and its stock is up about 20% since that came out, despite my personal boycott.

That’s two. There are countless others. If you look at the major companies that financially support the radical Marxist organization Black Lives Matter©, they are overflowing with cash. They are free to take whatever political positions they want, as long as those positions are Leftist. Just ask Ben & Jerry’s®, which is a Leftist political organization masquerading as an ice cream company. I guess communists have finally fed someone.

I met a French guy – what a coward. He kept asking for “mercy” . . .

Big Businesses love Big Government. They love the huge shield that regulations bring – the more regulations, the fewer competitors they face. And, if you’re lucky like me, OSHA names a new safety regulation after you.

Big Businesses also don’t care what consumers think, because most consumers are mad for a week or a month and then forget. Me? I haven’t bought Levi® jeans since 2002 or so when they went full anti-Second Amendment. I guess I’m stubborn. Must be in my jeans.

Big Business also doesn’t really care about inflation. So what if a dollar is worth less? Their job isn’t to sit on piles of cash, their job is to create cash flowing through the business, while keeping some of the cash for themselves. Because the cash is flowing through, it doesn’t matter much if that cash is becoming less valuable every day, they’ll just make more cash and use it immediately to buy more raw materials.

Hunter wanted to be the Secretary of Energy until he found out it wasn’t pipes and lines.

Destabilization of the economy through inflation, though, is good if you want to create more government power. Another way to create more power is to make sure people are polarized. That means that they can’t come together to demand freedom.

Increasing poverty is a good one, too. Having people become poor makes them slaves to the government, and afraid to speak up at injustice. Microsoft® may choose to support Black Lives Matter™, but individuals can be fired for criticizing it on their own time even when not connecting that criticism to their employer.

Is it government suppression of speech? No, why would they bother when private businesses will do it for them. The effect, though, is the same.

At least he’s not French Vanilla Ice.

Is it too far to call it warfare against the Right? It’s more than that – it’s a war against every aspect of American culture and the basis of what made that great – Western Civilization. The statues are coming down not because the Left hates slavery or “colonialism”, the statues are coming down because they want to erase the history of America so that they can rewrite it to fit.

Looking into what that means to wealth for individuals, let’s extrapolate what we know:

The United States government for over 100 years had gold and silver as money for a very special reason – gold and silver meant stability for the money of a country. You either have gold or you don’t. You can’t print more. Could you manipulate it? Sure, but it was certainly harder than running a printing press.

When FDR (press S to spit) took from American citizens the right to own gold, he was effectively robbing them. He bought gold from them at $20.67. A year later, he revalued the dollar to $35 dollars to the ounce of gold. It now took $1.69 to buy what a dollar did before Roosevelt’s heist.

“For example, the free circulation of gold coins is unnecessary, leads to hoarding, and tends to a possible weakening of national financial structures in times of emergency,” was what that philandering monster said to excuse the theft. Me? After I read that, I was glad he was in a wheelchair.

Fun fact: he never ran for office.

But the pattern is there: if the Left wants something you have, they will take it. Will they confiscate gold in the future? I don’t know. I tend to think not, unless it’s just for spite. In this case, they’ll inflate the currency, and lend freely to Big Businesses and Big Banks so that they can acquire houses and land and every asset with cheap, borrowed dollars. Why steal the gold when they can make people so impoverished that they sell it?

After the elite have bought all the stuff they want?

Inflate again if they missed something. Will they lose control and end up in hyperinflation?

Probably not, unless they want to. But realize that almost every person reading this doesn’t have a seat at the table, and the game is certainly rigged. We knew that.

But what happens when a government declares economic war against its own people?

Happy Thanksgiving 2021, Wilder Style

“Two men are dead! This is not the time for petty sibling squabbles. That’s what Thanksgiving is for.” – Psych

Isn’t it odd the only people who tried to tell you how many people it’s appropriate to have for Thanksgiving dinner are the Centers for Disease Control and Jeffery Dahmer?

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday.

I would say that it has always been my favorite holiday, but that’s not really so. When I was younger, say between toddler and 12, Christmas was. The reason that Christmas was so important was, well, the stuff. The movie A Christmas Story says it all.

But as I grew older, Thanksgiving kept growing in importance. In part, it grew in importance because it didn’t have the gifts. It had all of the proper things that, in my mind, a good holiday should have:

Time away from the cares of the day,
Time focused on being grateful,
Free from stress, and,
Cold.

The stress of Christmas was from the commercial aspects. Would I get that thing I wanted? The gifts overshadowed the holiday. Of course, each year the presents got less and less important, and the time with loved ones became more important. That’s when Thanksgiving started to win.

This year is the 400^th anniversary of Thanksgiving. The first one was held (according to a letter) in 1621. It wasn’t held at this time of year, rather, sometime near the end of harvest. The Pilgrims knew that they were going to make it.

April showers, bring . . .

It wasn’t always so clear. The original deal that they drew up was socialist. Everybody worked, and everybody shared equally. That worked as well as it ever has. Nobody worked, so nobody shared anything, except starvation. That was 1620.

Starvation is a tough teacher.

The Pilgrims then came to the good and sensible decision that if you grow it, you own it. The result?

So much food that they wanted to have a party – a party that lasted three days. And history teaches us that the Pilgrims weren’t teetotalers. But this harvest festival was sheer joy: giving thanks for the good sense to give up socialism and allow people individual freedom. There’s a big lesson here, yet we keep trying to repeat the same evils that impoverish men.

Oh well.

The holiday being a direct repudiation of the philosophy that’s killed more people than any other philosophy, well, that’s not the main reason I love the holiday. It’s just whipped cream on the pumpkin pie.

It’s so cold this Thanksgiving I saw a socialist with his hands in his own pockets.

The cold plays into why I love the holiday as well. The work of planting is done. The work of growing is done. The work of the harvest is done. Now is the time to sit, rest, and be thankful. The harvest was good. The food will last us through the winter and spring until the next crops can be grown from a renewed Earth.

It’s that stillness, that preparation. The great woodpile set and prepared against the winter’s cold. The food stocks set against the winter’s hunger. Now is a time of peace.

And that resonates through 400 years.

The life of a man, when faced with 400 years, is but an instant. But the peace of a single Thanksgiving can seem as an eternity. The moments created when family gathers together to celebrate is nearly magical. Overcooked turkey or gravy as lumpy as the Hunter Biden’s thighs? Not a problem.

We are here to give thanks.

I’m pretty sober, but even prettier when I’m not.

A drunken uncle who wants to need Mom about something that happened when they were six? Not a problem. Your team doesn’t win the football game? Not a problem.

We are here to give thanks.

Of course, at this point, the question is, to give thanks to who? Well, in our folks, the dinner will start out with us giving a prayer. That is, over those 400 years, the most common way the feast was held.

Giving thanks is part of being human, whether you are religious or not. Being thankful is a way to be healthier. The mere attitude of being thankful changes the way that people think. It moves them from a spirit of greed for what they don’t have, to a spirit of gratitude, for what they do have.

French tanks have rearview mirrors, mainly so they can see the battlefield.

Studies have proven that being happy about the things you have is about a zillion percent better for your health than being unhappy about things you don’t have.

Duh. This is the equivalent of psychology professors stealing money to do a study, because nothing in the history of humanity has been more obvious since, well, ever. Yet, they studied this. You could look it up, but, why?

You already know that it’s true. To quote it again:

We are here to give thanks. Not complain. Not be upset about any of the day-to-day things that always go wrong. Thanks.

I seemed to figure that out a little each year as I grew older. When I was six, it was all about the stuff. I remember ripping through the wrapping paper like a velociraptor in a room full of Leftists who had been raised on soy since birth. Some of the bits probably reached orbit.

As I got older, the greed waned, and the importance of Thanksgiving increased. Last year when I cooked the turkey upside down? I don’t think anyone but me noticed. But we were together as a family on the 399^th Thanksgiving. Together, in a house filled with the smells of turkey and pumpkin pie and a family that loves each other.

The most frustrated ghost in the world? The one that tried to haunt Helen Keller.

The things that I am thankful for are so numerous I couldn’t list them if I kept writing for the next eight hours. I’d put my list down, but I’m going to (as my textbooks always said) leave this as an exercise for the reader. It’s not what I’m thankful for, it’s what you are thankful for that will help you.

Even in the deepest depths of difficulties, there is a time and a place to stop. And give thanks.

Every minute I think about those things I give thanks for, I feel better. And the crazy thing I’ve learned? I don’t even need a turkey and mashed potatoes to do it. But the gravy? I’m especially thankful for my annual gravy bath. What would Thanksgiving be without it?

Happy Thanksgiving.

Rittenhouse Has Caused More Tears Than Old Yeller

“Ladies and gentleman, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookie from the planet Kashyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about that. That does not make sense.” – South Park

I guess Kyle did have a salt rifle.

The reaction from the Left on the Rittenhouse verdict has been different than I expected – I expected a few riots, sure. Riots are the standard when dealing with Leftists. They want the world to burn, so why not start with a Starbucks®? Or, heck, almost any huge corporate entity. They seem to love it when Leftists burn down their buildings – they immediately respond by vowing to rebuild and then donating to the very groups that . . .

. . . just burned down their store.

But Kyle Rittenhouse bothered them, deeply.

Don’t recognize his two IMDB® credits. Probably wouldn’t be a good dinner guest.

I watched, while not the whole trial, a huge chunk of it. Just after the Prosecution was done, the Defense could have said, “The Defense rests,” and still won.

It was that clear-cut. I don’t know why it took the jury so long, perhaps they were just waiting around to see if they could get those Panera® sandwiches the judge promised them if they were still deliberating on Friday.

The Left, who has never seen a criminal atrocity so bad that they don’t want the criminal to go free, was fixated on this case. The media was on board, mainly. Large numbers of people thought had no real idea of the facts of the case, and some even thought that Rittenhouse had killed multiple black people for no reason other than that they were protesting.

So, what did they have to say? (Some language not safe for all audiences, and all memes today are as-found on the Internet.)

Umair Haque is a grifter, and a fairly successful grifter. Does he bring up valid issues? Certainly, from time to time. And, if his solution is commies leaving the United States? I will personally help buy tickets if they promise to never come back.

Ayanna apparently has a keyboard that doesn’t allow her to type a capital “W”. Also? She takes her love of Jean-Luc Picard a bit too far.

Does “Prince Jellyfish” describe his arm?

Possibly fake. But funny.

Take a breath and come up for some Umair, Umair.

If you had any doubts about who we are dealing with . . .

You can find plenty of salt for yourself on Twitter® or Reddit©. Might as well bid goodbye to the trial with some memes:

That explains everything! Why would a Wookiee, an 8-foot-tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor with a bunch of 2-foot-tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: “What does this have to do with this case?” Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me, I’m a lawyer defending a major record company, and I’m talkin’ about Chewbacca. Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you’re in that jury room deliberating and conjugating the Emancipation Proclamation… does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.

Okay, the real testimony was even worse than the South Park® quote above.

Why can’t Gaige point to Kyle?

Oh, yeah, that. The ol’ Spicey Bicep.

A moment of silence, please.

Huh, yeah, I wonder what would happen if they let clinically insane socialists out on the street?

And the only people that Kyle shot ended up being felons? What are the odds??

The prosecutor will probably never end up living this one down . . .

And, for of course people could see the next round of trouble coming:

The Mrs. really laughed at this one.

And then The Bee® stings.

Who knows what the future will bring?

Reminder that it might be time for Leftists to change their password . . .

How Single Suburban Soccer Moms Are Killing The Country

“Train yourself to let go . . . of everything you fear to lose.” – Star Wars, Episode III

Childhood is like being drunk. Everyone remembers what you did but you.

I’ve written a lot about fear, and how negative it is. But fear is a very potent persuasion technique. Fear motivates people to action. Heck, I had a fear of elevators, but I took some steps to avoid it.

That’s why it’s used. David Frum (press “S” to spit) recently wrote an article in The Atlantic titled, How to Persuade Americans to Give Up Their Guns. I’m not going to link to it because I don’t want to drive traffic to this screed. That just encourages them to pay Frum to write other crap when he’s not sleeping in the warm chest cavity of the “conservative” money laundering schemes think tanks.

In the end, David takes his Canadian* sensibilities to tell the benighted Americans that they should be horribly afraid of guns. Guns are scary! I believe, in technical terms, they are so scary that they make Frum wee a bit in his pants.

I guess we know Frum’s favorite drink: pop.

Policy Exchange, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons, Weasel Hair Added By Wilder

In the end, who, exactly was Frum writing this article to?

Well, let’s eliminate who he wasn’t writing to, first:

He wasn’t writing to you. He wasn’t writing to me. If you’re a regular here, it’s nearly a lock that you’re at least sympathetic to the idea that the Second Amendment provides, in clear language, an individual right to own and carry weapons of war. And we don’t wee our pants about it.
He wasn’t writing to the Left. They don’t need to be convinced. The Second Amendment is probably the biggest single impediment to their plans (see: Australia).
He wasn’t writing to rural folks. We have so many guns that our guns have guns.
He wasn’t writing to urbanites. Most people deep in the hive are already Leftists.
He wasn’t (for the most part) writing to guys. Guys (generally) like guns, and are generally less in favor of restricting them. Women, for instance, are 30% more likely to support restrictions on standard size magazines.

Single Suburban Soccer Moms have such high double standards.

What does that leave? Suburban women, specifically Single Suburban Soccer Moms. Frum even admits as much in the article – he references both Mothers Against Drunk Driving® (MADD©) and Moms Demand Action For Gun Sense In America™ (MDAFGSIA®). No, I didn’t make that last one up. It’s what happens when the wine aunt tries to come up with a catchy name and everyone is so blitzed on the white zin that they don’t tell her, “Oh, Mabel, that is an awful name.”

But, yeah, the weasel-faced Frum was trying to manipulate the SSSM, because they’re often the swing voter in elections. And, they make decisions based on fear, unlike me. I like my emotions like I like my beer. Bottled.

MADD© and MDAFGSIA™ are an excellent example of fear being used to manipulate Moms. Did MADD™ do some good? Certainly. But even the founder thought they went too far and quit in 1985 because MADD©, founded to stop drunk driving, became (in her words) “neo-prohibitionist”.

That has been the problem: fear drives decisions which then result in laws that take away freedom.

The SSSM has been the most reliable target of the “if it only saves one life!” and the “what about the children?” level of logic. And that’s what has led us to the path we’re on today.

As Yoda taught us: fear leads to hate. Who does the Left hate now?

People who won’t take “the jab”. Not everyone, of course. BIPOC seem to be exempt from this hate, so it’s pretty much people who like freedom and people on the Right. I’m surprised there isn’t a group called Mothers Against Icky Infected People Not Doing What I Say (MAIIPNDWIS).

It’s healthy to eat dried fruit. I’m just raisin awareness.

Really, where we’re at is hysteria. Remember how the ‘Rona crisis started – grainy videos of people walking down the street in Wuhan and collapsing, apartments being welded shut to keep the residents in, and Chinese denials that there was any issue. It was just like the first four minutes of the average Hollywood® “plague destroys mankind” movie that has been made dozens of times since 1950.

Is the ‘Rona real? Certainly. It does have a body count, though I think the one being reported has been artificially inflated.

So it is real. I’ve had it. And it seems to kill people somewhat randomly, though in very, very small numbers as a percentage of those who catch it and are captured in the statistics (I’m not).

And the perfect way to beat the fear drum so that Single Suburban Soccer Moms forget the clown show exit engineered by Biden. The specifics of the “vaccine” mandate don’t matter as much as the process, which never changes:

Suck at leading.
Have bad poll numbers.
Make use of either an existing or contrived “scary” situation.
Come down hard on the “scary” situation: propose something that takes away rights, if possible. The Leftist base will be fine with it, and it will engage the SSSM crowd.

Oh, and I forgot: always pass the buck.

This is what passes for Leftist leadership. Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s Chief of Staff, said the quiet part that you’re not supposed to say out loud: “Never let a crisis go to waste.” If there wasn’t a crisis, the Left would invent one. Drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was one. The Keystone pipeline from Canada is another. These are manufactured to enrage and engage people on the Left.

But the crisis had to be a specific one: a crisis that could engage the SSSM brigade. As the de facto swing voters, political policies are determined by how the fears of this group can be exploited. COVID-19 is just one example. Why do you think images of little kids in cages were trotted out to show how actually enforcing immigration law was mean? Me, I only get upset when I see a hamburger bun in a cage – that means it was bread in captivity.

I bought a knife that can almost slice five baguettes of bread at once – but it’s only a four loaf cleaver.

Since there is nothing a SSSM loves more than safety, they’ll vote for it every time. And it doesn’t matter if liberty is on the line – the SSSM essentially views government as her spouse and protector.

Perhaps, though, there is an alternative?

Maybe we could convince the SSSMs that, historically, governments have committed murder on the wholesale level. Maybe we could get them up in arms about that? Heck, I even have a name for it if they want to use it:

Mothers Engaged Against Tyrant Politicians Exploiting Everyone (MEATPEE)

Which is weird, because that’s exactly what I think David Frum probably smells like.

*Technically Frum got American citizenship in 2007 or so, but I think it should be revoked because he’s a tool

The Mrs. went to a lot of trouble to create an advertisement for the livestream on Wednesday at 9 Eastern. Here it is:

Efficiency: Not Always Our Friend

“Practical, Captain? Perhaps. But not desirable. Computers make excellent and efficient servants; but I have no wish to serve under them. Captain, a starship also runs on loyalty to one man, and nothing can replace it, or him.” – Star Trek (TOS)

I’d tell you a German knock-knock joke but they already have AI-enabled sensing that lets them know who it is.

Let’s pretend that you had to break a big rock. A really big one, say the size of your mother-in-law’s butt.

Okay, that’s a big ask. The last time I had to break a big rock that big was . . . never. That’s a big rock.

Big rocks, mothers-in-law? You’re thinking, have you had too much ale, John Wilder? Bear with me, this will make as much sense as Joe Biden’s economic policies.

So, we’re back to breaking a stupid rock in our mind because John Wilder asked us to. What’s the most direct way to do it?

What does a member of the Southern Buddhist Church say when they die? “What in the reintarnation is going on here?”

You might think you could use a sledgehammer, but not so fast, Thor. That’s not the most direct way, and Disney® will probably sue me for mentioning Thor because they now have the intellectual property rights on all things Norse. Ignore Disney®, since they don’t have (yet) a copyright on hammers. But I don’t want to give them ideas, because soon enough they’ll have a copyright on interstellar space.

To have a steel hammer, you’d have to make one. That would involve having a mine for iron ore. Then the ore would have to be processed into steel. After you figured out how to do that, you’d have to forge the head of the hammer (it has to be strong, right?).

Even then you’re not done. You have to find a tree, get some wood suitable for a handle, invent an entire industry to just get the knife to carve the handle, and finally mate the handle to the hammer head.

Nope. A hammer isn’t that direct. To have a hammer, you have to have a functioning civilization.

Thor’s enemies never get drunk: they just get hammered.

For the most direct way, you’d have to grab a stone or something hard nearby and just start thwacking the rock.

That’s not very efficient.

A hammer is more efficient. But how about you build a piece of high-strength steel to use as a drill? That’s faster. But the drill requires advances in metallurgy even greater than the hammer head.

Okay, what’s the most efficient way to break rock?

How about you blow it up?

Note to the ATF, this is economics, not a suggestion.

That’s a really good way to make a big rock a bunch of tiny rocks, quickly. But in addition to making your hammer and drill, you have to also create an entire industry dedicated to making explosives.

This points out a lesson from the (dead) Austrian economics dude, Ludwig Von Mises: the most efficient way to do something is the most indirect.

To break a rock more efficiently, you have to look for increasingly more indirect methods. That requires time. It requires effort. And, it requires resources that might be hundreds of miles (around 7 kilometers) away.

We have a really efficient society. We can have fresh strawberries delivered to us (cheaply) in January because they grow them in Peru or some other country that rarely visits here. We can have fresh roses for Valentine’s Day® because we have airplanes that deliver them directly from the cocaine fields. Or something like that. I’m not a botanist.

Efficient is better, right?

Well, no. I’d like to put forward as Wilder’s Exhibit A the human body. Nobody needs two kidneys, at least that’s what the girl in the motel in Vegas told me before I woke up in the bathtub. Yet we have (on average) two. We have two lungs. Everywhere that having a spare part might make it easier for you to pass along your genetic information, the parts are paired. I’ll leave the other locations of other paired organs as an exercise for the reader. I mean, everyone has six toes on their left foot, right?

Wow. Looks like Chee-toes® instead of actual toes.

Not everything is paired. We each have (on average) one brain, though I think my ex-wife had six or so brains, one for each personality and species of venomous snake that she would normally impersonate.

But that single brain is armored as well as it could be. Likewise, physics says that having two hearts works as well as having a man living with two women living under the same roof. Thankfully, we have a solution that’s the next best thing – death.

Two eyes. Two ears. I could go on and on. It appears that humans are designed based on the philosophy that “two is one, and one is none.” Huh.

Efficient designs are vulnerable.

From experience, I can say that any business that has any spare capacity will do anything to use that capacity. Wall Street doesn’t want 90% utilization – Wall Street wants 99%. They want . . . efficiency. They don’t want profits for the next decade, they want profits this year.

Just like I have two lungs, I’ll say this again: Efficient designs are vulnerable.

How many of the semiconductor chips in your life came from Taiwan?

A lot. Here’s what the Financial Times noted:

“Yes, the industry is incredibly dependent on TSMC, especially as you get to the bleeding edge, and it is quite risky,” says Peter Hanbury, a partner at Bain & Company in San Francisco. “Twenty years ago there were 20 foundries, and now the most cutting-edge stuff is sitting on a single campus in Taiwan.”

So, most of the best information and knowledge in making computer chips that define the very essence of your life are built at one factory in a country that the Chinese now know that Joe Biden will defend with all of the force of . . . a strongly worded speech.

The Chinese word for Asia is the same as their word for Taiwan: China.

It’s efficient.

I can’t help wondering how many of the current shortages of “stuff” that we’re seeing is just China messing with us. “Hey, if we turn this lever, what happens to the United States? Oh, man, that was funny. Did you expect to see used car prices go up? And those pickles and baking soda? That was a hoot.”

Outsourcing and internationalizing is efficient. Having no surplus production stored in warehouses is efficient. Having no redundant capacity is efficient.

When efficiency works, it means everyone has more stuff. The factories are working at 100%. The people are consoooming apps and video games and pantyhose and PEZ®.

Did I mention that efficiency is vulnerable?

What happens when an efficient process gets disrupted?

Shortages. Price increases. Business failures. Revolutions.

Maybe the question that we should ask is what can we do to make life less efficient?

I guess I have stock-home syndrome.

More efficiency means empty warehouses. Do you have food storage? Do you have ammo storage? What happens if you lose the grid for an hour? A week? A month?

What happens if you lose the efficiency of modern life for a day? For a week? For a month?

What happens if you lose it for the rest of your life?

What happens if you have to live a life that’s less efficient?

I guess there are always more rocks, right?

Debt, Trench Warfare And An End Of The World Cult You Can Believe In

Had some (planned) other things come up, so one from the vaults that many of you might not have seen . . .

After World War One, the phrase, “Happy as a Hapsburg in Serbia” fell out of favor, as did the “Hair Smile” style of mustache. Or is that Herr Smile?

I’ve already told the story about digging out of debt. In retrospect, it seems to me that all of those stories end up sounding the same: “I weighed six hundred pounds, my kitchen floor was covered in dirty dishes and cat food, and I had $3.7 million in debt until I found Wildernetics© and the First Church of PEZology™. Look at me now!”

Proof that I am a reincarnated World War One soldier (Part One). These are from a soldier’s joke newspaper, The Wiper’s (a mangling of Ypres) Times, produced for soldiers by soldiers that found an abandoned printing press.

I know my methods can solve everything, but today I had a crazy idea. How about spending some time talking about how I got into debt in the first place? I know that might cut into the revenue of the Wildernetics© End of the World Cult and Take-Out BarBeQue Restaurant®, but I figure you might come back for the brisket. It’s very tender.

I’ll quit teasing. How did I get into debt? First a little. Then all at once.

Let me rewind a whole marriage. As regular readers will know, The Mrs. was not the first, but she is the final spouse. My first marriage was an example of a series of escalating poor mutual decisions where each side seemed to lack a brief moment of sanity to back out before anyone got hurt, sort of like the run-up to World War I. Even before Archduke Franz Ferdinand proved that .380 ACP was a useful round against Hapsburgs and their notably gelatinous bones, World War I was inevitable. Before I said “I do” everything was in place for the trench warfare of future divorce.

Okay, I apologize for this joke. I think it violated the Geneva Convention.

But, rewinding. After graduating college I got married and got a starter job, which is to say I had a job that just barely paid the bills. Nearly exactly. In fact, after working at the job for a few months, we were exactly (most months) at zero. We weren’t saving any money yet, but we also weren’t in the red. Success. My credit card limit was 10,000 . . . Siberian Lira. This was equivalent to a whole bright and shiny quarter. This helped me stay debt-free.

Then came the table.

Proof that I am a reincarnated World War One soldier (Part Two), this one is for James.

We had a dining room table. It wasn’t great, and the chairs that came with it were a bit ratty – the vinyl arms had been slammed into the table often enough that it looked like a pack of rabid Chihuahuas had spent their lives sitting on the chair seats and gnawing on the arms. I imagine them growling and chewing in unison as they sat around the table, like Viking Chihuahua rowers. Most all of our furniture was second-hand or gifted, but the table really was the biggest eyesore.

Okay, this one isn’t mine, but I couldn’t resist.

At some point, discipline broke. I know how silly it sounds to say that now, but back then, month after month of not buying anything but actual necessities takes more discipline than Elizabeth Warren around a tribal gathering. Eventually, I gave in. We bought the table. Using debt. Back then, individual stores would give you amazing credit limits just to buy their crap. They gave us more than enough credit to buy that table, and with the money I saved from shipping the Chihuahuas back to Denmark, I figured we’d be money ahead.

Proof that I am a reincarnated World War One soldier (Part Three).

The table was only $500, but the difference between having no debt (outside of a mortgage) and having debt, even a small one, was a huge psychological hurdle for me. It’s like having a doughnut when you’re doing low carb. “I got weak had one doughnut, so I might as well have, say, 36. And do you have any whipped cream I could just guzzle straight from the can? I broke my diet, and don’t want to waste it.” Pretty soon other nice-to-have things showed up, very few of which I still own today. But I had crossed that mental barrier from peace (debt-free) to war (spend away!). Suddenly, the credit card companies realized I had debt, and immediately wanted to lend me more money. My credit limits tripled.

I hope that this doesn’t sound like I’m blaming The Ex. Like Adam in the Garden of Eden, I was fully complicit. Ultimately the debt grew faster than my wages. This led to the idea of grad school: I could get free tuition plus be a paid graduate assistant. Would it work?

Sure. There were also student loans. Free money! Oops.

Okay, let’s all admit that Nachos Bellgrande® is NOT a war crime.

Proof that I am a reincarnated World War One soldier (Part Four).

There were some places along the way that I could have gotten off the merry-go-round. When I sold that first house to move for a new, post-grad school job, we’d made a stunning 40% profit in three years. It would have more than paid off a good chunk of my student loans. Nope, that would have made too much sense. We did pay down a little debt and bought a new house, putting down the minimum down payment.

But most of the money was just spent. About this time I also had one of the worst ideas I’d ever had in my life. The Ex and I were always arguing about money, and about the thermostat – I knew that 50°F in winter and 90°F in summer were reasonable temperatures, but The Ex disagreed. Well, if she had to pay the bills, she would certainly understand how tight money was. Right?

No.

We had a different view of not only household temperature, but the idea that one should pay monthly bills, well, monthly. I didn’t figure this out for three years, by which time I owed enough money to qualify as a third-world country, but one of the nice, mainly atrocity-free ones. Mainly.

Taco Bell® inspired outfits?

Debt is like George Washington’s description of fire, it’s an amazing tool, but a fearful master. My advice is to pay all of your bills in full, monthly. I know that the people who own your debt disagree. Why? They want you to have debt, as much as you can pay.

I had a friend (since passed away in an accident) who I called Batman© on this blog (“I’m Batman,” – Batman, in Batman). He had one particular investment that was worth about $12 million – a series of apartments. He had paid the apartments off before they were even built by selling future property tax credits to other businesses. Yeah, that kind of friend.

But he viewed his tenants as slaves (his term), who went to work daily so they could send him money every week. I heard him use exactly that phrase to describe them. He liked his tenants and was a good landlord. However, he knew the score: when they went to work each day, they went to work so they could pay him.

And Batman was a good guy and he taught kids that debt was a form of slavery of ordinary people to wealthy guys just like him, not that they always listened.

My marriage to The Ex? That particular marriage is proof of the old Henny Youngman joke:

“Why are divorces expensive?”

“They’re worth it.”

Yeah, divorce just STARTS the argument.

The day she moved out was one of the happiest days for both of us.

I was still digging myself out of debt when I met The Mrs. As our relationship blossomed, I thought it was only fair to tell her of the debt that I had.

“The Soon To Be The Mrs., I have something to tell you. You might want to sit down.”

The Soon To Be The Mrs. looked shaken. She sat. I told her about my debt. She laughed.

“Is that all? I thought you were going to tell me you’d been in prison.”

No, not prison.

But I still owed reparations payments to France.

Who Do I Write To?

“A writer writes, always.” – Throw Momma From The Train

Gravity is a conspiracy theory. It’s how the man keeps you down.

I wrote a while back about why I write. TL, DR: because I want to.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, perhaps another question is, who am I writing to?

TL, DR: You.

But a lot more follows.

I guess I’ll start for who I’m not writing for: Leftists. I don’t care about their opinion. At all. Anyone who thinks that a human who has/had testicles should compete in sports as a woman is delusional. Anyone who thinks that prosperity can be bought with a printing press is dangerous.

There’s little to no reason to think that anything I ever will write or ever could write would interest a Leftist in the slightest. This blog has had one or two Leftist trolls in the comments. We ignored them, they went away nearly immediately. I think that reading the things I write is probably painful for them. They’d love to troll here, but that means they have to read it first.

Vampires are like Leftists: they don’t reflect.

Leftists seem to be able to read, it’s the comprehension that gets them. And I don’t think that Leftists will ever be convinced by mere words.

No, there are only two things that convince a Leftist they’re wrong:

When the State that they created decides to send the police in the middle of the night to collect them. Generally, the next part is The End. How? With a bullet (just a few, bullets are expensive) or, more likely, intentional starvation. At the point when the real hunger sets in, I imagine more than one of them has that final thought: “Maybe I was wrong.”
When a long drop from a great height ends in a sudden impact. Call it Pinocetivation instead of motivation. It has the advantage of being a sudden and permanent cure. There are, of course, variations on this them involving vast amounts of kinetic energy applied to a small portion of the body through a fast-moving projectile. You get the point.

Leftists are, generally, not redeemable. Once the infection of Leftism has set in, just like a ‘Rona mRNA shot, they’ll never be the same again. Ever.

So, I’m not writing for them. Even statements that have been proven to be true for thousands of years of human existence will be denied by them. Why? Because that’s not what we’ve believed for (checks watch) five years now. It’s (insert current year here).

So, I’m not writing for Leftists.

I’m also not writing to vilify things I see that I don’t like on the Right. I’ve seen enough of history to know that atrocity really only comes from the Left. The Right? Mainly if the Right is unchecked they want to produce free and open societies where their citizens can be left alone so they can be prosperous.

Ohhh, scary. I kid, but to a Leftist, the idea of a free and prosperous society that chooses who can (and can’t!) be a citizen is scary.

Leftists have a big problem with the idea of “their citizens” because to a Leftist, everyone is a possible American citizen. They just aren’t Americans yet.

That’s obvious nonsense.

The policies of the Left, when unchecked lead to the greatest horrors man has ever seen on Earth. The policies of the Right, when unchecked lead to the greatest prosperity that has ever been seen anywhere, at any time ever on Earth.

That’s why I don’t, and won’t, shoot Right. Do I endorse everything everyone on the Right says? Of course not!

Even though I don’t write about the things I disagree with, I write (mainly) for the Right. I’m not trying to convert anyone. I’m also not trying to spread dissension in our ranks. That’s what the Left is for, and I won’t do add fuel to the fire for them.

Yup, this is the energy policy of the Left in a nutshell.

Several readers I know in real life. I’ve written many posts with them in mind. Many readers I’ve grown to know over time through comments and email exchanges. I write with them in mind, too. I don’t hold my tongue to not offend someone. Not everyone shares all of the same opinions. What one friend might agree with, another might disagree with.

That’s okay. This isn’t a cult. Unlike the Left, we’ll take you even if you’re not up to every single nuance of our current doctrine.

But when I write, I want to do this: make people think about the world in a different way. There is nothing I love more than when I find that something I thought was true was false. It gives me pause, and makes me reassess my philosophy from top to bottom.

I recall a particular day where I did just that: George “read my lips” Bush came out against a tax cut. This particular tax cut was proposed by a Democrat. Bizarro world? Sure. But I realized that George was just another one of them – the permanent ruling class in Washington.

I won’t promise I’m consistent, but I do promise to tell the Truth. And when I find I was wrong? I’ll tell you that, too. I won’t be shy – Pa Wilder taught me that telling the Truth about being wrong isn’t the sign of a weak man.

Writing to convince people is a fool’s errand. You already know who you are. And if you’re here, chances are good we’d be on the same side. Who knows, some of you may even be in Mayberry and not know that I’m walking around with you daily.

Not my target audience.

In the end, the war of ideas and of information is where our battle will be won. We must keep our heads high, our spirits up, and be of good humor.

Which is why I’m writing to you. Our day will come. This is not over. We are not done.