Inflation Nation – Page 12 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Coming American Dictatorship, Part II

“Did you ever run for dictator of anything?” – Green Acres

Why didn’t Julius Caesar ever say “thank you” to anyone? He didn’t speak English.

This is Part II of the series. Part I can be found here (LINK).

The history of when the United States started to slip into a dictatorship is long, but I’ll start with the Civil War. The worst part of the Civil War (besides, you know, all of the dead people) was Lincoln running roughshod over the Constitution whenever it suited him:

Shut down opposition newspapers, arresting the owners and editors,
Arrested a former congressman (generally a good idea) and put him to a military tribunal (he wasn’t in the military) and then . . . deported him to the Confederacy,
Legalized disco, and
Put the entire state of Maryland under martial law.

Important Civil War Fact: It is not true that, despite popular conception, Lincoln had written the first draft of the Gettysburg Address on a Bacon Swiss Hand-Breaded Chicken Sandwich™ wrapper from Carl’s Jr.© Lincoln actually preferred Arby’s®.

The movie Lincoln grossed $300,000,000, which is weird because Abe normally didn’t do well in theaters.

But the slip toward despotism wasn’t done and the precedent was one people didn’t forget: in a crisis, the rights of the citizens who oppose you are optional. War and crisis seemed to bring it out the best, and although I could spend quite a bit about the overreaches of other presidents (Woodrow Wilson, I’m looking at you) the next person grasping for the tyrant’s ring was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

FDR was really awful, if you love liberty. His expansion of Federal power (unlike most of Lincoln’s) is still with us today. As the economic crisis of the Great Depression hit nation after nation and led to dictatorships across the world, America craved their own Strong Man.

It also explains why he never ran for office.

Roosevelt was more than ready. It is quite arguable that the vast majority of the things that Roosevelt did made the crisis longer. It is acknowledged today by the Federal Reserve™ (thanks, Wilson) that they not only caused the Great Depression, but that their actions made it worse. It makes me so mad: if I didn’t have a cold, I’d Sudafed®.

Roosevelt did not let the crisis go to waste. He created power structure after power structure in the country. Social Security. Threatening the Supreme Court so that his definition of the Interstate Commerce Clause was adopted, which allows the Federal government to reach into almost every business in the country today.

Roosevelt also violated the idea that presidents served two terms, and two terms only. Thankfully, he died about 300 years into his presidency. And, thankfully, he inspired a Constitutional Amendment to prevent anyone from rolling in his wheelchair tracks.

But the rot of creeping state control continued. What held it at bay was, thankfully (and oddly enough), the Soviets.

I didn’t like their food, though – I’m against the Soviet Onion.

Centralization is always the goal of the dictator. In order to compete with the Soviets, though, we needed to keep our economy in overdrive to build more jets and missiles and nuclear bombs. The easiest way to do that? Dispersed knowledge. Incentives. Voluntary cooperation. In short, capitalism. The Soviets may have thought that they’d bury us, but in reality they never could keep up with a people motivated by freedom, patriotism, and profit.

We buried the Soviets.

But the requirement to beat them also required a people in the United States that were ill-suited for a Caesar.

Unfortunately, in addition to building missiles, the communists had been trying to hollow out the institutions of the United States. It’s ironic: the Soviet Union was hollowed out by communism around the same time that the big rot of communism that the Soviets planted in the United States started to show here. They wormed their way through what I now call The List of the Long March through the Institutions:

Colleges and Universities
The K-12 educational system.
Most Protestant religious organizations.
Most Catholic organizations.
The American Medical Association.
Most departments of the Federal government, absent the armed services.
The general officer corps of the armed services.
The courts.
Silicon Valley tech companies.
Most Fortune® 500™ companies.

I had a communist girlfriend who I later found out was a psycho. How did I miss the red flags?

The control of these Institutions ultimately gives the Left the power to destabilize society. It rots society from within. The signs of that sort of rot are so big they cannot be concealed now:

70% of citizens supporting some form of mandatory vaxx in blue states (81% in Washington, D.C.),
Only speech and activities approved of by the toxic combination of government, BigTechBook™, and GloboCorp® is approved,
George R.R. Martin is still pretending he’s writing his next Game of Thrones® book,
The leader of Iran still had a Twitter™ account while the President’s account was cancelled,
Open borders are reality, flooding the United States with many with no functional idea of liberty,
Firing for wrongthink is not only approved, it’s encouraged, and
Disney®, a global company, is attempting to override the will of the people of Florida because their employees do not agree with the idea that teachers shouldn’t talk about gay sex with five-year-olds.

That’s bad enough. The good news is that not everyone is an NPC, waiting to receive the next government-approved Woke Upgrade that (spins wheel) attempts to convince you your computer is non-binary. Heck, if you’re reading this, chances are high that you make your own decisions and are skeptical of much of The Agenda.

I’d like my remains to be scattered at Disneyworld®. I don’t want to be cremated, though.

But in 2022, we have the potential for the biggest economic failure in the history of the United States. We have the possibility of a failed economy combined with a failed currency. This would bring economic chaos that would be destabilizing. In the 1930s, 20% of the American workforce was in agriculture. Now? Around 2%.

Without jobs, in a collapsing economy? That’s a lot of hungry people. A lot of homeless people.

A lot of people without hope. A lot of people who will look for a man who promises solutions. The Strong Man.

The response? That’s Friday’s post: The Strong Man, and the signposts along the way.

The Coming American Dictatorship, Part I

“Well, Captain, the Klingons called you a tin-plated overbearing, swaggering dictator with delusions of godhood.” – Star Trek

“Comrade Stalin, a fortune-teller came to see you!” “Execute him. If he was any good, he would have known not to come.”

Most people like to be told what to do. They want to be led. That makes sense, given the history of humanity. We work best when we work together, and the worst group is a group of a dozen people who each think they’re the leader. Because of this, hierarchy is a built-in feature to our operating system. Get a group of lumberjacks together, and one of them will want to be named the branch manager.

The downside of this “working together” is that the vast mass of people are willing to behave like lemmings and all jump off the cliff, as long as that’s what everyone else in the group is doing. Heck, lemmings would even jump off a dock, if they felt pier pressure. For me, the last few years has been the biggest revelation in human behavior and how easily people (especially NPCs) can be reprogrammed.

The three biggest reprogramming efforts in the last few years have been Trump, COVID, and Ukraine. I’ll skip Trump for the moment, and jump into COVID. Was the ‘Rona a real disease? Certainly. The reaction to it was overblown at every level. The average age of people who died from Corona-chan was (through my rough calculations) 73 in the United States.

In two years, a total of 921 deaths below the age of 17 were recorded. By my calcs, this was less than 1% of the deaths from all causes for kids of that age. In other words, it was uncommon. For that, though, we shut down schools, shut down the economy, and tossed trillions in cash out everywhere. That led to pent-up demand – when the local Lego® store reopened, people lined up for blocks.

If you step on a rusty Lego™, you might need to get a Tetris© shot.

You’re aware of all of that, of course. This isn’t ancient history. But the number of Americans who became Corona believers overnight was in the tens of millions. The reactions of panic were amazing. It became the reason for the existence of the news media and Big Tech® to actively put a blanket of censorship on all views that didn’t agree with whatever the blessed St. Anthony Fauci, PBUH, didn’t believe that afternoon.

The ‘Rona continued to be a means of control, as well as amazing profitability for the vaxx makers. Biden even tried to up the ante with controls that would have made Brezhnev blush that were (in some cases) later defeated, which made him stop before he went full Trudeau. Never go full Trudeau.

Eventually, the vaxx requirements and silly Corona restrictions got so politically muddled and unpopular that the subject had to be changed. A desperate politician with low approval ratings decided that the best thing that could have happened to him is . . . Russia.

Cowboys don’t have to worry either, they have herd immunity.

Leftists have been head over heels hating Russia for quite a long time, even more than they hate having to switch cars after the Amber Alert comes over the radio. I started to write a paragraph as to why – but why doesn’t matter.

It would have been elementary statecraft for Biden to get Ukraine and Russia to have a peaceful settlement, or at least one short of war. Instead, every public statement was a variant of “let’s you and him fight.”

Biden actively egged on the conflict that no one believed would actually happen.

Why? This why is important.

It was to swap out the chips. COVID-19 Fear Enabler™ was replaced with 2022 Russia Hate®. Joe saw his shot to again become nearly as popular as “that dance the kids are doing, the twist” and someone decided to make the chip swap.

Now, I’m not saying that there aren’t valid reasons to be on the side of Ukraine – there are. Me? I’m not on either side – I don’t need to choose between various them. But the real loser of this war won’t only be Ukraine and Russia. In the long run, I think the biggest loser will be the economy of the United States, especially with unemployment after Ukraine has to lay off the Biden, Pelosi, and Romney families.

Pictured: Will Smith not hitting someone for making a joke.

I see that there is a very, very significant portion of the populace that is highly susceptible to this reprogramming – again – no every Russia hater is an NPC, but many are. The technology for this reprogramming has been honed very well over time. People who couldn’t spell Ukraine and couldn’t find it on a map want to intervene with a no-fly zone and troops. One wonders if they know that “no-fly” has nothing to do with zipperless pants.

Whether planned or not, this will very likely result in the final crisis that the United States will face in its current form. The difficulty is that we are a population that is already divided. I feel that the recent sanctions against Russia are an own goal that will ultimately result in the death of the dollar as the reserve currency and wrote about that here: (https://wilderwealthywise.com/russia-and-the-end-of-the-dollar/).

Ultimately, this leads to that final crisis that we’ll face as a nation.

How will we deal with an economic crisis? Certainly there is the possibility of Civil War 2.0, which is what I had previously had as my number one risk. It’s still there, but a new risk is becoming more and more probable as we head towards Biden’s Depression. What kind of crisis? That one is simple. Economic disruption in the United States of Weimar proportions, as I’ll outline below.

A move away from the US dollar as the reserve currency (which is happening right now) will create poverty. Yes, we make food in the United States. But we don’t make the microchips required to run the John Deere® harvesters. We also make most of the energy that we consume. But we don’t make the steel to produce the pipe to drill it or move it. We’ve simply lost much of the technological and experience base required to make the things we need, except for Doritos®.

As noted above, I can see other probabilities, but Biden’s driving Russia and China together to create a Eurasian bloc that has both raw materials and production capacity will upset and supplant the unipolar world we had since 1992. This creates the conditions necessary to crush a United States built on a FIRE economy.

What’s a FIRE economy? Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate. Yup, that’s the United States. Regardless of how it has been used, it is an economy that’s built around sloshing money around. No matter what the condo sells for in New York, it won’t put a single more hamburger into a McDonald’s® in Manhattan.

Russia can make and harvest the food, because they can make tractors or import them from China. Russia can make excess energy, as well as the pipe to move it. They don’t even need China for that. The United States used to be indispensable. Now?

The United States imports $90 billion a month more than it exports. $90 billion. Why do people sent us $90 billion in stuff every month more than we send out? Because we pay with dollars.

If only he could have gotten another 150,000 votes at 3am, I’m sure he could have won Saudi Arabia.

These dollars exist because we just print them, or, more likely, create electronic bits that we call dollars. It was a good gig, but Biden’s sanctions against Russia have shown the Russians that they don’t need the Western financial system. They can sell oil and fertilizer and grain for . . . rubles. Or gold. Or microchips. They don’t need the dollar.

This sort of crisis facing the United States has happened before. Most of the time, it rhymes.

A decadent people
Weakened through a fixation only on pleasure and power
Because they live in abundance
Are confronted with a crisis – typically ending the pleasure

What, then, do the people want?

Well, of course, they want the pleasure back. They want the abundance back. What are they willing to do? Anything. As I said, people like to be led. So, when the Strong Man shows up with the Plan, they’re ready to accept it.

What does the Strong Man require to return the pleasure and abundance back? Simple, said the spider to the no-fly zone: Control.

Who is ready to give control? People who can swap programming nearly immediately, to swap out COVID Fear Pack™ to Save Ukraine 2022 Upgrade© without skipping a beat.

And that’s how you get a Dictator

Wednesday: The Road to Dictatorship, Past, Present, and Future.

Beer, Hangovers, And The End Of The Party

“We hope you enjoyed the beer, oh, like I mean the movie, eh.” – Strange Brew

They never talk about the worst pupil of Socrates: Mediocrates.

I was 22 when I bought two six packs of “Old German Lager®” for $1.25 each. Not each beer, each six pack, and as I recall this was when a decent beer cost nearly a buck a beer. I then went down with my friend to watch the local minor league team play on a Tuesday afternoon. That is something you can do when you’re in college. Now, Tuesday afternoons are mostly 72°F (43 hemi-demi-centi-meters) and partly-fluorescent with a chance of popcorn smells from the communal microwave.

I used to think that the best beer was one that was so cold it was nearly ice, and best served in an ice-cold mug. Then my nephew brought me a hot one on a summer day that he’d been shaking for five minutes. That one was pretty good, too. However, I can say that Old German Lager™ was the single worst beer that I have ever had in my life.

But more on that later.

The world is a really big place. Oh, sure, sometimes people say (when they run into a coincidence) that it’s a small world, but my standard response to that is, “let’s see you paint it.”

I tried to get thinner at the paint store. It didn’t work.

The world really does seem large. When I’ve spent time on a plane flight for work over the breadbasket, I can recall sitting for hours just looking at the patchwork of fields filled with cattle or crops stretching to the horizon. It seems huge.

And it is huge.

The miracle of the modern world is certainly not the iPhone®, but agriculture – it’s what allows people to keep living. Mankind has always known hunger and many people in history have expired from the “diet plan that never fails”. But in the last 20 years, as our population reached the highest levels ever, there were more fat people than starving people for the first time on Earth.

The problem of solving world hunger was no longer a matter of producing the food, it was no longer a matter of being able to distribute the food, it wasn’t even a matter of paying for food – all the hunger on the planet was simply a matter of politics.

In 2022 that won’t be the case.

Fertilizer prices are at record highs. Additionally, the diesel fuel the farmers rely on to plant, harvest and transport the food is at near-record highs. Right now, we’re living on the harvest from last year. This year, we’re perhaps . . . headed towards a disaster.

I’ve mentioned before that Russia and Ukraine together account for around 25% of global wheat exports. Russia has a harvest projected that will lower its exports in 2022, and is currently exporting at least some grain (though I bet China and India have a coupon to jump to the head of the line to buy food). Ukraine? I’m thinking that planting and harvesting and producing fertilizer (Ukraine was an exporter of fertilizer) is the last thing on their minds.

I guess that would make me an entremanure.

Food production is pretty finely balanced with consumption – there is no Strategic Doritos® Reserve that the President can tap into if the party runs low. In reality, the world typically has some buffer – about 100 days (from the latest data I’ve seen) of grain. Most of that isn’t in countries that are importers – it’s in grain silos near the farms, waiting for shipment to the Doritos™ factory.

That’s good news. But the recent things I’ve seen show that, at least in the United States, farmers are attempting to plant everything they can, but the markets today are weird. Several stories have pointed out that some local grain elevators aren’t buying grain, because they’re worried the market will collapse and they won’t be able to sell the grain at a profit.

The farmers depend on those sales to buy . . . fertilizer and diesel. Will prices collapse? Probably not, since money printing even more money seems to be the only thing that Congress can agree on. It will be painful in the United States. It may be catastrophic in countries where the oligarchs live on $0.47 per day.

A friend’s wife ran off with a tractor salesman. She wrote him a John Deere® letter.

The world economy is likewise balanced in the production of “stuff”. There’s a shortage of cars. Why? There’s a shortage of chips. So, the 20-year-old hulk of a car that has traveled just as long as light travels in a second that I have for a spare if my spare breaks down has doubled in price in the last year. Last year, it was worth $2,000. Now, Pugsley says it’s going for $4,000.

Progress, I guess, if you own a used car that’s within three oil changes of traveling as far as the Moon’s orbit. I might even get a few extra bucks from Elon Musk.

Metals are likewise going through the roof – basics like copper and nickel are increasing. I got a burger last week – it was up 25% – in two weeks. Tires? The local dealership said that they were up 25%. This month. And PEZ®? Forget about it.

Want inflation?

It’s here.

The drivers that started the snowball running down the cliff was all the free money during the Great ‘Rona Rave of 2020-2021-2022. Politicians have the idea that they have to do something, even if it’s stupid. Printing money and paying people not to work is, 100%, stupid.

Of course, the next idea is one right out Nixon’s playbook – before the election, heat up the economy so that everything is running on full speed when the votes are cast. It’s the same idea as throwing vodka in the punchbowl to get the party going. Hangovers? Who worries about hangovers at midnight?

Except if you’re drinking Old German Lager©. I said that Old German Lager™ was the worst beer in the world. It was. We drank it and it tasted, at best, questionable. But it’s beer, right?

Well, about the sixth inning the headache started. But neither my friend nor I were in the slightest bit buzzed. We were completely sober, but had gone straight to the hangover.

“Premium” might be false advertising.

That’s what we’ve done. Like Nixon’s inflationary party in the 1970s, we went straight into the tough times. We went from the Vietnam boom to the bust, complete with high oil prices and a Cold War. We are in the hangover part of history.

And this time, we didn’t even get the buzz.

The Modern World Part IV: What To Do?

“Would you say I have a plethora of piñatas?” – Three Amigos

He was also the first person to use CTRL-C.

So, I promised three blogs on the Modern World. They are here – The Modern World Part I: Health And Strippers, The Modern World Part II: Wages, Subscriptions, and Dating, and The Modern World Part III: You Exist To Be Farmed. As I sat preparing to do the blog tonight, I realized there was one more post to provide the capstone to the series, which I present in this post.

How do we deal with modernity outside of moving to a cabin in Montana?

Listen, despite the name, Ted made more than one bomb.

First, if you’re not healthy, get healthy. That’s actually horribly simple to do for most people.

Limit the amount of food that you eat – we’re provided with a plethora of food choices daily. Most of it I don’t need. As I’ve railed for years, most (not all!) people in the United States could go without food for two weeks with no ill effects, and many would find the experience a positive, not a negative. Here is some sound advice I’ve incorporated into my life: you can’t outrun your teeth. But I can outrun most Leftists – you can tell they like carbs.
Sure donuts (in metric, doughnuts) are good. Avoid them. Will one a week kill you? No. Will one a day? Maybe. Same with chips. I had a “snack size” bag of chips two weeks ago. Since I’ve been eating well, they made me feel queasy. Same with donuts. When your diet is good meat and real vegetables, donuts and that gooey cheese they serve with movie-theater nachos taste like . . . a chemical product. Which they are. Corollary: don’t let your teeth dig your grave. I wouldn’t want to ruin the gravedigger’s hole career.
Pick foods that are as close as possible to actual food. If you’re gonna have a chicken sandwich at McDonalds®, pick the one that’s made out of actual chicken rather than some sort of processed chicken stuff. A baked potato or French fries? Baked, thank you. Seriously, once I stopped eating crap, crap tasted like crap. If it has vegetable oil or a list of ingredients longer than, say, seven, once a week. At most. Heck, I even had a kid’s meal at McDonalds today. It sure made his parents mad.
The food pyramid is even poor geometry – heck, I read Pharaoh used slaves to build his. Bricks might have been easier? Regardless, real fats and meat (butter, a well-marbled ribeye) are good for you and make you feel full. Flour spikes your insulin and all the breads (except the ones I make from grinding the bones of door-to-door salesmen) are made from flour. Insulin tells your body to store fat. Do the math.
Get exercise. It’s good for you. If nothing else, walk. If you can’t walk, undulate like a snake on a baby oil-covered shower curtain. One thing I’ve seen in life – when a man stops walking, death isn’t far away. Keep moving. Even if your legs are weak, you can still do diddly-squats.
Avoid it, except, say, once a week. Maybe. I’ll have an entire post on that at some point.

The other day I said, “Alexa, turn on CNN®. I want to hear the news.” Alexa responded, “I’m sorry Lord John, you’ll have to pick one or the other.”

Second, feed your mind.

Feed your mind like you feed your body. Go to the source, and check everyone (even me!) and determine what isn’t Truth. Journalists are now being taught in journalism school (it’s like real school, but they use pictures and coloring books) that being an advocate for the globalist, Leftist viewpoint is the point of news reporting. Understand that virtually every news story you are reading today in mainstream media is written by a rich kid who wasn’t smart enough to go to law school and believes that lying to you is ethical, as long as it advances The Agenda and The Narrative. And sometimes they change The Agenda and The Narrative in less than a week. Don’t believe me? Ask Psaki about COVID.
The media lies. But I repeat myself. “Truth is the first casualty of war,” quoted Ethel Annakin-Skywalker in 1915 according to something I read on the Internet. Remember that “nurse” who told Congress of Iraqi soldiers tossing infants out when they took incubators from hospitals when Iraq invaded Kuwait? She was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to the United States. Look it up. Before you believe a single thing coming from Ukraine, look it up, and understand this: your emotion is the aim. Heck, I hear manipulating your emotions is all the rage.
Propaganda: even when you’re aware of propaganda, it’s effective.
Look for things that make you happy. When I go on the Internet, sometimes (when I’m in a growly mood) I look for things that will make me mad. There’s plenty. Twitter® is a sea of it. Most social media is a sea of it. That’s why (except for when writing for research purposes) I avoid it like the plague – remember, all work and no plague makes for an entirely different 13^th
For 95% of people, there is no reason you can’t be happy in this moment, right now. There are people in this world who have serious problems, but for the most part you’re really not one of them. Even if you are, why would you let those problems rob you from a moment of being happy? There is a time to grieve, a time to be sad. When you let it rule your life, you’re a victim. Stop it. Don’t make me come over there and make you.

I brought a grenade to a water balloon fight once. It did level the playing field.

Then, there’s marriage. These rules aren’t for 1970, (though they would have worked) but more for today – the world has moved on. It is far harder today to find a good match than it was even when I met The Mrs. two decades ago. If you’re happily married, ignore and skip to the next section.

If you’re not married, take care in picking your partner. A lot of care. A bad match will last just as long as a good one (if you have kids) and be amazingly costly. And never pick woman obsessed with Star Wars® – divorce is strong with this one.
Avoid dating apps. They’re really just casual sex apps. And never go casual. Get competitive.
If you’re a young dude (below 35), try to get a wife who is no older than 20-24 years old and marry for values and character. Why? Nothing good happens with a single woman in their mid to late 20s now.
If you’re a young woman, find a quality guy who has values and character, and stay a virgin until marriage.
If you’re a young person, especially a man, avoid marrying a spouse whose parents divorced when they were young (0-16). Understand their family and their values. Understand that the values on display with the parents are another clue to how your future spouse will be.
If you’re a man, don’t let your wife’s work interfere with raising the kids and keeping the house. Raising kids with decent values are more important than most luxuries.
And while we’re there about kids, understand this – the move to turn government schools into an indoctrination center has never been higher. Which values do you want your children to have? Yours? The governments?

But I hear it’s at a pretty low interest rate. Heck, I think we could refinance New Zealand to make the balloon payment.

What about economics?

Avoid debt to the extent possible. Never borrow to buy a car, unless it’s the only choice. Never buy a new car unless your net worth is over $1 million or a company you own is paying for it. Heck, I hear the best way to get back on your feet is to miss two car payments . . . .
I have one. I could pay it off in cash. Why could I pay it off? Because I never borrow to buy cars (since 1997). I hear Spongebob® isn’t paying his mortgage – his house is underwater.
Understand that luxury has multiple costs: first, there’s the cash that has to be paid every month. Second, there’s a moral cost. Just like a donut, occasional luxury won’t dull the character. But every month, and forever? It robs bank accounts and robs the most precious thing that any person controls – their time.
Video games are a luxury. If a person spends 20 hours a week playing video games, what else could have been done with their time? Imagine if Hemingway spent his spare time playing Grand Theft Auto instead of sitting under the Catalan Sun drinking wine from a bota and watching bullfights? GTA is a life stealer. And for Ernest, so was a shotgun.
Why live in a big city? The high housing cost? The crush of incessant humanity surrounding you? Oh, yeah, you can get Thai food at 3am.
Realize the dollar is going to die. The United States prints them, and then other people take them. When Jen P-saki said that this was “Putin’s Inflation” I asked the question: “When did Putin take control of our money supply and then started printing trillions of dollars?” If you salted away a bit of gold and silver (and lead, too) the best case is that you could give it to your kids when you pass on. The worst case? Well, between you and me, silver and gold might be the biggest bargains of the century in 2022 (I am NOT an investment advisor).
Realize that in the future, there is a high degree of probability that having “divergent” opinions to The Narrative will result in cutting people off from their money – it has already happened in Canada. You may not believe it, but it’s Tru-deau. How will you prepare for that?
You have a year’s worth of food, right? You buy a little extra each month and salt it away? It’s a lot easier to do when the shelves are full, and when shortages hit you’re not part of the problem – you’re part of the solution because you won’t be adding to the panic. It’s not hoarding if you bought it before the panic hits.

I heard he was sad later in life. He had a Kipling depression.

The Modern World thinks that this is a new scenario. It isn’t. Kipling wrote about this many, many years ago in The Gods of The Copybook Headings:

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper prostrations to the Gods of the Market Place.
Peering through reverent fingers I watch them flourish and fall,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings, I notice, outlast them all.

We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither cloud nor wind-borne like the Gods of the Market Place,
But they always caught up with our progress, and presently word would come
That a tribe had been wiped off its icefield, or the lights had gone out in Rome.

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshipped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promised perpetual peace.
They swore, if we gave them our weapons, that the wars of the tribes would cease.
But when we disarmed They sold us and delivered us bound to our foe,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “Stick to the Devil you know.”

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbour and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children and the men lost reason and faith,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “The Wages of Sin is Death.”

In the Carboniferous Epoch we were promised abundance for all,
By robbing selected Peter to pay for collective Paul;
But, though we had plenty of money, there was nothing our money could buy,
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings said: “If you don’t work you die.”

Then the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tongued wizards withdrew
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to believe it was true
That All is not Gold that Glitters, and Two and Two make Four
And the Gods of the Copybook Headings limped up to explain it once more.

As it will be in the future, it was at the birth of Man
There are only four things certain since Social Progress began.
That the Dog returns to his Vomit and the Sow returns to her Mire,
And the burnt Fool’s bandaged finger goes wabbling back to the Fire;

And that after this is accomplished, and the brave new world begins
When all men are paid for existing and no man must pay for his sins,
As surely as Water will wet us, as surely as Fire will burn,
The Gods of the Copybook Headings with terror and slaughter return!

Russia And The End Of The Dollar

“I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure you can inflate construction costs and launder money through it.” – Ozark

I wonder if everyone can figure out why China built their own Internet now?

Biden has miscalculated. Again. As he has his entire life. He has moved from one miscalculation in his life to the next. So, it’s not surprising that perhaps the greatest failure in the history of the United States has shown up on his watch. Let’s go, Brandon, indeed.

To be fair, it’s not entirely Brandon’s fault. The United States economy, as I’ve gone to great pains to show over my posts, has been hollowed out over the years. We have gone from one that manufactures things and exports goods to one that mainly manufactures movies (we’re very good at that) and consulting and intellectual property and Starbucks™.

The thing that we’ve been best at is printing and then exporting dollars. For decades now, we have been exporting dollars that we printed and then importing stuff like fidget spinners and PEZ®. It was a great deal for us. People used those dollars and we got stuff, but it was essentially a global tax on the rest of the world.

That ability to tax, however, only works as long as people believe that the dollar is worth something, and that the holder of that economic power won’t bend the rules. Just like the bank runs up in Canada started when Trudeau broke the promise that the banks won’t steal people’s money, so the same principle applies to international affairs.

What could go wrong, stealing cash from random people?

When Russia attacked Ukraine, Biden declared sanctions. Sure that’s a fine idea when dealing with a tiny random country, but Russia isn’t tiny. And Russia isn’t any random country.

See, one silver lining!

Russia is of huge importance to world commerce. Russia exports the stuff that makes modern economies go:

Food
Steel
Fertilizer
Titanium
Nickel
Oil
Refined Fuels
Natural Gas
Coal
Gold

In almost every commodity listed above, Russia is in the top five exporting nations. In several commodities, it is the world’s largest exporter. Check out the graphs on energy and wheat when the market gets disrupted:

What does Russia import?

Telephones
Car Parts
Computers
Medicine

Russia also exports nearly double what it imports. If there is a country that is nearly self-sufficient in this world, it’s Russia. There is an economic concept called “autarky” – or a nationwide independence from imports. Looking at the list of companies that are leaving Russia, well, could it be that Russia is better off without them?

Yes, Pornhub® and OnlyFans™ are on the list. I wonder what the effects will be? 21-year-old girls will have to find jobs that involve wearing clothes?

Russia isn’t independent. But it’s close enough. Most things that it is missing can be bought from either India or China. No iPhones®? China has a bunch of other kinds of phones. And all those businesses that left? It’s not like the Russians don’t know how to make hamburger and buns, so McPutins™ could open up tomorrow, though I’d skip the polonium sauce.

Russians are talking about nationalizing all of the assets of companies that have abandoned them. Why wouldn’t a country do that? Well, other countries could seize the overseas Russian assets.

Oops. Too late. So what’s stopping the Russians?

What is the threat from the West? That Russian audiences won’t have Netflix®? The things that Russia has been denied are, frankly, not very scary. They won’t get to see the next Marvel© movie? Oh, yeah, they also went after Russia’s money and tried to cut it off from the dollar-based economic system and . . . entertainment.

The Babylon Bee has the real impact figured out.

What happens when that bluff is called, when Russia and China decide that they don’t need dollars? What happens when Russia will sell natural gas to Europe only in yuan? Or for gold? Or that they won’t trade their commodities for anything at all?

The tent collapses, and by that tent I mean the dollar.

I actually think that Joe’s head is so far up . . . well, I’ll be kind and guess that he has Alzheimer’s rather than being this stupid. Oddly, this is viewed as an ideological opportunity by the Leftist henchxirs in Washington. They hate fossil fuels to the point of not caring about the relative plight of the American consumer. Don’t believe me? Listen to them:

Why would we want to solve problems?

Let them eat electric cars?

And Joe’s responsible for the invasion, too.

Leaked pictures from Joe’s energy briefing.

The goal. No matter what it costs.

There are even well-meaning Lefties starting to write articles to cope with the failure:

But here’s a sign: Joe tried to get meetings with the Saudis and the very friendly folks over at the United Arab Emirates. They wouldn’t return his calls. Imagine: a foreign leader refusing to even talk with the President* of the United States. It’s almost like he’s a fraud?

I wonder if he’s going to drunk-text the Emir tonight?

One person sums it up . . . .

Beyond that, the price of wheat is getting ready to go even higher. Together, Russia and Ukraine produce over 25% of the wheat exported in the world. A quarter. Ukraine’s planting season has been slightly impacted by current events, and Russian exports might be diverted to feed Ukraine.

The United States is certainly self-sufficient in wheat, but the prices of wheat are like oil: they’re tied to the international price. What happens when a loaf of bread is six dollars? Nothing good. But if there are price controls? Bread will be priced at two dollars. There just won’t be any in stores.

Domestic inflation is bad enough, but what happens when the Saudis start taking gold for oil from the Chinese? Or start paying for Russian wheat with the gold they got from the Chinese? The dollar, once indispensable, is done as the international currency.

The message is loud and clear – the end of the dollar is near. Why is gold up over $2,000? My question is why is gold only up to $2,000? I fully expect that, should Russia succeed, 90% of the dollar’s purchasing power will be gone in the next 14 months.

That will lead to massive changes in our economy, political unrest, and, potentially, the dissolution of the United States as we know it.

Thanks, Joe! Where is ¡Jeb! when we need him?

Civil War 2.0 On Hold: Russia, Russia, Russia

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

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

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

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

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

Front Matter

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

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

The Clock Retreats

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Violence And Censorship Update

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

See for yourself:

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

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

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

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

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

Political Instability:

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

Economic:

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

Illegal Aliens:

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

The Hungry Days

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Good Guys

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

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

https://youtu.be/Z0qSqtKcUtQ

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

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

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

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

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

One Guy

https://youtu.be/WOZI59tSv_4

Body Counts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vote Counts

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

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

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

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

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

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

Civil War…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

…Is Not The Worst That Can Happen…

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

When Change Comes

“There have been three major disasters and you were the only one unharmed.” – Unbreakable

What’s white, loud, and makes you spill your morning coffee? An avalanche.

There is a time and place when everything changes.

Sure, summer turns to fall which turns to winter which turns to, um, Daylight Savings Time. Regardless, like the seasons, some changes are reversible. I can freeze water and turn it into ice. Then, I can melt it and it’s water again and then I can freeze it. I then put it over my eyes – at least that way I look cool.

I saw Vanilla Ice at the local arena recently. He sold me a hot dog.

Reversible changes surround us. But there are irreversible changes, too. If I burn a piece of paper, it’s just gone. Forever. There is no physical process that can unburn the paper. Or bring back that Tweet® once you hit send – just ask Rosanne.

Changes like that happen to people and systems, too. I’m not going to focus on Russia tonight, but looking at Russia and Ukraine is instructive. When the ruble fell, it’s reversible. Will it reverse? Probably. At some point.

Maybe.

Will Ukraine ever be uninvaded? Nope. Heck, if you look at the history of Kiev/Kyiv it’s invaded approximately once every seven months. If ever there was a country that was more invaded, it wasn’t China, since only one person would take the Khansequences. The Ukrainian currency is called the hryvnia and it appears to be missing vowels. If Russia ends up conquering Ukraine, it won’t need any, since it, like the Roman denarius or the Babylonian shekel, will cease to exist.

There’s going to be so much losing. You’ll be tired of losing.

There are some things that you just don’t go back from. And that’s life. I wish I could go back in time and tell Pa Wilder to buy all the gold he could when anyone could purchase it all day long for $35 an ounce. If he had done that, I would have been a bullion heir.

In retrospect, it looks obvious. When Nixon did the irreversible – disconnected the dollar from gold, what did Pa Wilder think was going to happen? He thought the dollar would keep its value.

Why?

Because, after decades of the dollar being worth $35 an ounce, why would it ever change? For forty years of Pa’s life – gold had been priced at $35 an ounce. Gold would be (in the average person’s eyes in 1973) not a great investment.

But people, including Pa, missed the point. There was no physical process that would ever result in the dollar being backed by gold again. Nixon took the United States off the gold standard because he’d printed too much cash. And, as Biden will soon learn, prosperity doesn’t come from a printing press.

Wait, he made his money in Ukraine . . . .

I was watching a video from TIK History tonight when he brought up the conversation between a German and his banker back during Weimar Germany. “If you had only bought Swiss Francs (backed by gold) you would not have lost half your fortune.”

“But these are government bonds. Won’t they pay back?”

“The government that issued them no longer exists.”

In the United States, we have been in a very, very fortunate position. Our currency has been only ravaged by inflation and political theft over the years. We’ve been able to print up large quantities of dollars and just ship them over to people in other countries and they send us iPhones™ and soccer balls made by 12 year-olds since they apparently don’t have printing presses. Or because they have excess 12 year-olds.

Honestly, I’ve had 12 year-olds around the house, and I think one 12-year-old constitutes an excess 12-year-old.

Also, little kids from Nigeria are trying to give him US FIVE MILLION COOKYS.

Many currencies, like the Russian ruble, have been rendered nearly worthless nearly immediately by geopolitical events. That event is coming for the dollar.

I can’t tell you the date. I can’t give you the exact circumstances. But I will tell you that Charles Munger (Warren Buffet’s buddy) was in an interview where he flat out said that the dollar is eventually going to zero. The interviewer missed the point – when a currency implodes and goes to zero there is shock. There is starvation.

There are civil wars. There are revolutions.

But I can tell you after 2020, 2021, and now 2022 so far . . . change is in the air.

The Funniest Post You’ll Read Today About Ukraine And Impending Global War

“Now me, I’m overweight. My underwear has to be made specially at a factory in the Ukraine. They call me Daddy Round-Round. They send me a postcard every year.” – The Simpsons

Looks like the Democrats are changing focus! Haven’t they heard about the huge rolling ball that is the economy?

I had three posts planned that would couple the main themes I write about, and they were planned to start today. Meh. It’s okay, I can write about that topic anytime, and I have the feeling that what most people want to talk about is Russia. This will be shorter than most, because I have a collection of dank memes that will carry most of the narrative. I’ve tweaked one or two, but most are “as found” on the ‘net.

In Soviet Russia, Internet brings cat to you!

I will admit to being wrong about the invasion – I thought that Putin would get what he wanted without using actual force. Of course, being Russian, they typically use a chain, a tractor from Soviet Tractor Factory Collective No. 348, and an acetylene torch for wart removal, so I should have known. Subtle is not in the typical playbook. Some say the Russians play chess, but if they do, they use a shotgun.

Hello . . . Vindman.

I have some very strong feelings about the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I don’t care. It’s not that I like the idea of a sovereign nation invading another one, but let’s face it: these are two countries that both use wrapping paper for money and have languages that sound like someone is strangling a duck. And? We have zero national interests in Ukraine.

Silly old bear. Everyone knows that, just like Piglet said, whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

I mean, unless Hunter is still taking tons of cash from them. That would certainly be a casus belli. Or a reason to scratch Putin’s belly. Wait, I just channeled Joe Biden. Who knew pants could be so wet, sticky, warm and uncomfortable?

If we don’t do something, Mexico might invade. Oh, wait . . . .

I am not alone in not caring. I saw an AP® poll that indicated only 26% of folks in the United States thought we should play a major role in the conflict. About half thought we should have an uncredited walk-on cameo, and the rest just wanted to be left alone to polish their ARs in private.

I just wanted to add some things to my shirt. Arts and crafts, really.

It’s the 26% that I find intriguing: this 26% is mainly, but not all, Leftists. I have no particular idea why Leftists hate Russia so much, but they really, really do. I think it goes back to the 2016 election, where they think that Russia tipped the election for Trump. It certainly had nothing to do with Hillary being as electable as the hind-end of a roadkill skunk.

I sure will be happy when they manage to un-Super Glue® his hands so he doesn’t have to sit like that. I think Trump left all those bottles of glue around the White House as a prank.

So, here are the dank memes that describe the week. They create their own narrative, sort of, but I’ll add in a word or two myself.

The First Rule of Leftism is You Don’t Deviate From The Narrative:

The Second Rule of Leftism is You Don’t Deviate From The Narrative:

The Leftists (and a Neocon) were out in force, setting up the New Narrative and letting you know exactly what they think about you:

Of course, I didn’t create this retort, but I thought it fit pretty well here:

An actual, frightening comment from a committed Lefty who knows the “Adults in Washington”:

And political opponents chimed in:

Then the even more schizoid side of the Left just had to chime in, letting us know what the real and important issues are:

And, when it’s time for lies, you know that the media will be there:

Of course, the US Armed Forces were there for a show of strength:

But of course, there is a war on, so sometimes navigational errors happen:

And India definitely wants in, sending their passenger jet alone into the no-fly war zone:

Leftists wonder why the Right isn’t on board:

Someone figured out that combat bridges are a thing and that Sam Hyde was with the Russians:

So, if this blows over, maybe I’ll just watch a movie this weekend:

/pol/ Versus The Canadian Banking System

“Blame Canada.” – South Park, The Movie

Momma Bear angry! I hope she packed him an extra-special lunch for his next day when he had to go Prime Minister around all those mean other boys.

Notes: much of the memetic content is “as-found”. We’ll also livestream on 2/16 at 9pm EST at this channel.

Justin has had a bad run of it recently. His mommy had to stick up for him in public, and those gosh darn people won’t do what he tells them to do! Plus, he just recovered from his bout of the ‘Rona.

The problem is, first, that they were locking down his beloved Ottawa. As the Bee® notes, that’s Justin’s job:

And this was driving the people crazy. They felt like they were being held hostage:

Nothing Justin did seemed to make it better:

People weren’t at all sympathetic.

So Trudeau decided to double down.

One of the biggest fears that bankers used to have was the bank run. That’s the phenomenon where people show up at the bank and demand cash. Of course, the bank only keeps a few bucks on hand, so soon enough they run out. What happens then? People begin to get angry. Pitchfork and torch angry.

Trudeau’s wife was robbed at gunpoint at an ATM. The robber asked, “Do you ever want to see your husband again?” She said, “No.” They both had a good laugh.

For the record, only a small fraction of the currency in the country is actual, printed cash which is why if you want more than a small fraction of your cash from the bank, they’d pull out their pockets and shrug. The vast majority of cash is just a collection of ones and zeros located in computers in various banks.

It’s a useful fiction so socialists and people wanting to finance wars can just print more cash to pay, and everyone pretends that it’s not stealing. Countries have been very, very careful not to upset this particular applecart. A politician can mess up a lot of systems, but that politician would have to be a fool to suggest that he’d freeze the bank accounts of millions of his own citizens. Or that politician would be Justin Trudeau.

But I repeat myself.

That’s what Justin Trudeau did. He indicated that, because he said so, they’d take all the money they wanted from anyone who they thought was helping the protesters.

No, actually even Gilligan wouldn’t have tried this nonsense (apologies to Aesop for spoiling Gilligan by comparing him to Trudeau).

Seriously, what was Trudeau thinking? That the millions of people that, using emergency powers normally reserved for war against an outside enemy would just be pulled out because people wouldn’t take a shot he wanted and drove trucks and protested peacefully? Oh, sure it was a peaceful but honk-filled protest, but that’s akin to a world war?

Honk War III? World War Honk? The Honkening?

Yup, I guess. But this time there’s an amplifier. /pol/. /pol/ is a website run by the notorious hacker, 4chan. /pol/ is, well, its own place. It’s essentially an autism-powered supercomputer that has its own interests, language, and customs. I really don’t recommend anyone go there. Besides, they’re full.

But /pol/ is capable of wizardry. The night that Kyle Rittenhouse created two good commies in Wisconsin, /pol/ had videos from every angle before and after the shooting, and identified the people Rittenhouse erased, including criminal records within hours. They also tracked down an Antifa® killer from Portland and had his name, address, employer, and location before the police.

So, the crazy new idea to steal people’s money more quickly? /pol/ jumped on that.

It didn’t take long for the word to get out to the world:

And it didn’t take long for the news suppression to hit:

Understand that this will probably come to nothing. But also understand this: the banking systems and veneer of civilization is thin . . . unlike future Trudeau.

I hear he stress eats.

War, You’re Soaking In It

“Fiddle-dee-dee! War, war, war, This war talk’s spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream. Besides, there isn’t going to be any war.” – Gone With the Wind

For whatever reason, French players are in “spectator only” mode.

War. It’s one way we find out the difference between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin.

The traditional way that most people think about war involves troops and uniforms and guns and bombs. That’s why people are focused on Ukraine – it seems like a time when the world might once again see something like in the old war movies. Biden is especially wanting this, because it could distract the world from the economic and cultural ruin that’s spreading in the United States. How else do you explain the free crack pipe initiative?

As I’ve noted before, the United States has spent trillions of dollars to try to make the “old” form of war obsolete. As such, don’t expect the next war to look anything like the last wars. Just like civilization, technology, and economy have evolved, so have the methods of war.

The aim of war is still the same, however: to get your enemy to do something they would otherwise be unwilling to do, like watch The View. You don’t have to use tanks or bombs to do it. This was what the old Soviet Union planned to do with the United States – subvert it from within.

The Cold War really was a war. The United States attempted to subvert the Soviet citizens through exposing them to the wonders of capitalism. Plentiful food, for starters. Blue jeans. Rock and roll. The average citizens could see that something was really, really wrong in their society. At the end, people in the Eastern Bloc walked away from their governments. In some cases, they evicted the former leadership 7.62mm at a time.

The Romanians made sure there wasn’t a next season.

The Soviet subversion of the United States was similar. Just as the United States reviewed the cultural faults of the Soviets and exploited them, the Soviets looked at the problems in the United States and tried to undermine it using those problems.

And the undermining never stopped. If you looked at the institutions under control of the Left in the 1970s, there weren’t that many. The Left controlled:

Many Colleges and Universities.
The psychological establishment.
Lots of mainstream entertainment media.
Most mainstream news media.

This was, of course, the plan. Get the Leftist foothold in academia and use it to indoctrinate the next generation. The Left didn’t control the government schools at the time, because teachers work a long time, and most of the teachers in the 1970s graduated before the colleges fell.

Hippies refused Rolaids™, the last thing they wanted was an anti-acid.

That’s why this war was based on a “long march” through the institutions. Sadly, even though the Soviet Union dissolved, their plan was still in motion. Now, the following are mostly under the control of the Left:

The K-12 educational system.
Most Protestant religious organizations.
Most Catholic organizations.
The American Medical Association.
Most departments of the Federal government, absent the armed services.
The general officer corps of the armed services.
The courts.
Silicon Valley tech companies.
Most Fortune® 500™ companies.

Very quickly (within a decade, if nothing changes) the last institution will fall:

The junior officers and enlisted men of the armed services.

As I’ve discussed at length, part of the core of Leftism is hating the United States, the other is a pathological need to be a victim. That’s why Leftist entertainment media always portrays the good guys as “the resistance” – what are they resisting? The remnants of the United States. Why do the statues have to come down?

Al has a molar pulled: it was an inconvenient tooth.

The United States (as viewed from a common historical lens) cannot be allowed to have its mythology. That mythology must be replaced by the new narrative – a mythology based on victimhood and oppression. Even as they control the levers on every objective means of institutional power, they complain that the system is rigged against them.

Combined with that is the monetary policy of the United States which has been run with all of the discipline of a toddler in a room filled with chocolate birthday cakes. As the bill for this mismanagement comes due, the tensions in the country will skyrocket.

The only thing the Left doesn’t have, are (at least) 80 million Americans who want nothing to do with the brave globalist/socialist future that’s planned. I actually think the number will be substantially higher, because I think that when the center chooses sides, it will come down with the Right.

This situation is, of course, absolutely thrilling to China. When I think about how China must factor in the United States into their plans in, say, the year 2040? I think they assume that the United States will not be a factor on a global scale.

In the US, dogs are K-9. In China, they are E-10.

In addition to the Soviet plan coming to final fruition, the United States is amazingly vulnerable to other things we don’t traditionally think of as war. As mentioned above, we have an amazing mess in our monetary policy – and we have debt. Think inflation is high now? What happens when China starts dumping currency in the international market, and starts paying for oil with the Yuan?

Warfare in our current time starts to look like what someone did to the Iranians: drop in a virus that makes their centrifuges that they were using to process nuclear material break. Imagine the electrical grid being as reliable as Venezuela’s grid. Sure, it could be enemy action. But with current trends, it could also be our own ineptitude at running things in a world where hiring by merit seems to be a thing of the past.

What happens if every tenth financial transaction in our electronic payment system is “missed”? How many days until the payment infrastructure is shut down and the entire country is in chaos? What happens if Walmart™ experiences failure in the logistics and tracking system for the billions of dollars worth of goods that it handles? How many people does Walmart© feed?

Due to the current emergency, Walmart™ has announced that they’ll open a second register.

These are all warfare, and don’t require a single soldier or a panzer division. Moreover, this is exactly the type of warfare that has already been planned and prepared for in Moscow and Beijing.

I’d love to blame China, but the Chinese are mainly just looking out for the Chinese. If the United States is in the way, the Chinese are going to pick the Chinese every time. It’s self-interest.

And Biden and Putin? One is a church-going Christian who loves his nation, who wants to help his people, and wants to secure his border. The other is Joe Biden.