Kipling – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Great News: Everything’s Going Wrong!

“If we can stop him, we shall prevent the collapse of Western civilization. No pressure.” – Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

How many contractors does it take to screw in a light bulb? I’ll let you know when I get one to call me back.

Many times we look at a mess, and think, “Well, that’s just so broken that nothing, nothing will ever be okay again.” That would describe my first marriage. I don’t write more about that bad marriages because bad marriages aren’t all that interesting unless it’s in Florida and involves an alligator, meth, and a Clinton. Besides, it’s over.

So, did it really matter?

In my case, yes.

When I sat back after it was all concluded, one of the things that I did was really think about it, and try to figure out what (if anything) that I had done wrong in the marriage. On hindsight, there was plenty that I did wrong. Though I’d love to blame it all on her since , I certainly played my part. In the end, I knew I’d never find anyone like my ex-wife again. Of course, that was my goal.

There I was, recently divorced, in debt, underwater on my house, and with a stack of bills that were immediately due. It was the worst place I’d ever been in my life, with the exception of being married to my ex. Why are divorces expensive? They’re worth it.

Do divorcing stoners get joint custody?

I realize now that this wasn’t as bad as I thought it was then, but back then it looked like a jet had crashed into my life.

What did I do?

I put one foot in front of the other, met The Mrs., paid off my bills (that took four years), had first one kid and then another, and sold the house right as the housing boom was taking off. None of this was predictable to me at the time of the divorce.

But this isn’t about me.

What kind of eel hits your eye like a big pizza pie? That’s a moray.

When you look at, say, Japan in 1945, it was almost worse than my divorce. Almost. The land had been nuked, bombed, and about 4%, nearly one out of twenty, of the Japanese population had been killed in the war. Their industry had been devastated; their army dismantled, their anime undrawn.

So, they gave up.

No, just kidding. They didn’t give up. They buckled down and became the economic growth story, leading the world in the production of quality cars and electronics by the early 1970s, just a little over a generation after the end of the war and the devastation.

You could not have predicted that Japan would have been so successful that by the late 1980s people were expecting it to have an economy that many felt would soon be larger than the economy of the United States. Luckily, the Japanese discovered mascot suits, and have settled back into being one of the largest, most functional, highest standard of living places in the world who is also a bit crazy.

Why did U-Boats in World War II have dogs as mascots? So they could have a sub woofer.

The point remains – you cannot guess the end by the beginning.

As I look around the world now, I see a world that is filled with conflict, some of which is horrifying. Some of the conflict threatens to change the entire world balance of power. Some of the cataclysmic changes we’ve seen in society have ripped apart the basis for stability of the atom of society – the family and have created new structures that are actively against every virtue and celebrate their opposites.

All of that is true. And yet, I still am optimistic. Why? Because, when I look back through history, we’ve driven to the cliff, again and again and even tried to jump off. When the Roman Empire fell because of many of the same things ailing Western Civilization today, the game wasn’t over. Europe rebounded and eventually (after a lot of struggle) reached heights that had never been seen before in the history of mankind. The setback of the fall of the Roman Empire had been the catalyst for the rebirth of Europe.

Was everything the same?

No. But the foundations for a stable society that can create wealth, freedom, and exemplify virtue haven’t changed since civilization itself was formed. These things are necessary. Humans have changed since civilization started, but the basic things that motivate us and keep us going when it’s cold and dark out haven’t: the things that give us hope are family, religion, and the will to create – something far more than just the will to survive – amoeba and Leftists can do that.

These things don’t include so much of what we see being indoctrinated into the culture today, things that are anti-child, anti-family, and anti-life. These are now being celebrated as virtues, and it’s devastating and causes civilization to unravel.

Surely that burning oil could have created a full tank?

This unravelling, however, will end up being the basis of something new and wonderful: although all great civilizations rhyme, they don’t have to look exactly the same. I really believe that, perhaps, the greatest and most golden age of humanity may be before us, rather than behind us.

You really can’t see it now in a world that’s falling apart because of the absolute inversion of values, but I assure you, it’s there. We will win. Deep down, Kipling knew it over 100 years ago when he penned The Gods of the Copybook Headings (which I’ll trot out once more, full poem below).

We cannot lose because those values that make civilization worth living have nothing to do with the cultural change being forced down our throats. The irony is that, by weakening our culture they bring their defeat closer to them, faster. Hormone treatment of children has not, is not, and will never be a way to create a stable society. It is, in fact, a way to create a crushed number of people that are so broken and confused inside that there is no way that they can create any sort of civilization.

No, everything is breaking apart, and it will lead, inevitably, to the next stage, which is going to be wonderful, though the route won’t be easy. Be of good cheer. I’ll put it in better hands than mine to point out what’s coming:

The Gods of the Copybook Headings, by Rudyard Kipling

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!

Rigging The Game

“Coupons. Well, what a wonderful way to economize. Well, I could clip them and give them to my personal shopper.” – Frasier

The first symptom of COVID-19? Believing what the government says. (all memes this post “as-found”)

It’s a strange, new world. During my childhood, there was an active focus on one concept: we’re all humans, regardless of race. We should all be treated the same, and have the same rules. Sure, there were programs like affirmative action, but the primary impact of those was (for the most part) in making sure that minority candidates were considered for jobs. The rule (generally) remained that the most qualified person got the job. Meritocracy reigned.

I won’t pick the date this changed, because it’s been a continuum, a bit here, a bit there. But if you had seen the following headline in 1980 or 1990, I think the first thought of people would have been, “How can that even be legal?”

I was trying to think of a Bank of America® joke, but I lost interest.

The idea isn’t just at Bank of America®, it’s also at Wells Fargo™, too, you can look it up. The concept is that companies attempting to get their ESG (link to my previous post on this monstrosity here) score up are setting up programs like that. To be clear, any loan by any bank that’s not rooted in the ability of the borrower to repay is awful, and immoral. It’s also shenanigans like this that led directly to the 2008 housing bubble and Great Recession.

In a related story, I wonder if Pelosi shorted them yet?

If a country is searching for a solid economy, this isn’t it. If a country is looking to make actual equality the measure, this also isn’t it. If it were just this, it would just be (outside of being illegal) just a limited number of bad business decisions, but it’s not limited to just this.

How about electric cars? I mean, I’m as much into having children dig for toxic cobalt in the Congo so rich people in California can have electric cars and feel smug about it as the next person, but to create a tax incentive?

Seems a bit like we’re rubbing it in.

If Apple® makes an electric car, will it have Windows™?

Not to mention reparations. It’s odd that the people who want to abolish debt for people that borrowed money are also the ones that want to pay people for things that never happened to them. I guarantee that, no matter how much is offered it won’t be accepted.

Why? It will never be enough. Ever.

Another symptom of the Kleptocracy.

What about the Biden family themselves? Is their economy wrecked like they’ve wrecked the nation?

No. Joe went from $0 net worth in 2015 to $9,000,000 (latest info I could find) today. How’d he do that? I’m sure he cut back on Starbucks®. According to reports, Hunter asked a donor to set up a job for his “pled guilty to a felony for $100,000 credit card fraud for makeup” niece.

They agreed to hire this felon for $85,000 a year. She refused. She wanted no less than $180,000. To be fair, from the pictures it does look like she needs that much makeup.

Again, that’s small potatoes, when looking at the billions that have already been looted from the open checkbook that is the Ukraine.

The IRS called Hunter and told him he was being indicted for tax fraud. He hung up, and told his dad, “Ha! I don’t even pay taxes!”

And yet, there’s more! I’ll skip over the massive payments for illegal aliens to play computer games and stay in hotels at taxpayer expense while actual Americans are homeless and face bankruptcy to medical bills inflated by donor companies like Pfizer®. I’m sure that doesn’t make anyone mad.

What’s the difference between E.T.® and an illegal alien? E.T. learned English and wanted to go home.

In point of fact, what we are seeing is the looting of an economy. Our economy. I think it’s been going on for years, but the looting wasn’t so visible because it was papered over, literally. After the 2008 Great Recession, there wasn’t really any attempt to make the economy better, rather, the idea was to just keep printing money – Qualitative Easing is what they called, it, which was a fancy way to say that the money would be printed and buy up the weakest assets of the companies that the Fed® had desired to support.

Bank of America™ and Wells Fargo© were among them.

COVID-19 was the lynchpin, though. As the tide receded and undulated, we could finally see who didn’t have a swimsuit on. It turned out, it was most of the economy. Now, inflation. And, to top it off, eggs appear to be the 2023 version of toilet paper, so I guess this year that Halloween pranks will actually add value to the house.

It also looks like the plan that The Mrs. was brooding on, “let’s get some chickens that lay eggs” will finally hatch.

Maybe.

What do Green Eggs and Ham, Fifty Shades of Gray, and our economy have in common? They all make people who can barely read want to try new things.

Oddly, it gets even worse. Since 1988, the United States has paid $13 trillion in interest to . . . use its own currency – the government needs currency, the Treasury prints bonds, the Fed® creates cash, the United States owes interest and pays fees to the Fed™ member banks.

That’s weird, because the United States used to just issue its own cash. Without debt. Sure, if you print too much, that causes inflation.

Oh. I see we’re soaking in inflation. And the Fed® actively plans for inflation as a part of the business plan. I think there’s a pictograph that might explain things . . .

Chuck Norris mines cryptocurrency. By hand.

The looting can’t continue forever. And that’s a good thing. This made-up economy filled with economic nonsense that, at times, makes Lenin look like an economic genius, has a time limit. Merit will return, just as the Gods of the Copybook Headings have always predicted.

There can be no other outcome.

Energy: The Big Picture

“Dr. Norman was experimenting with energy and mass. To make it brief, it got away from him. He found he had made a mass of energy that somehow came alive. It feeds on more energy, and it lives only to feed. I’m afraid it consumed Dr. Norman before he could stop it.” – Jonny Quest

I was once kidnapped by a gang of mimes. They did unspeakable things to me.

Apologies to all on missing the podcast tonight – The Mrs. was feeling great this morning, and then headed south about two hours before the show. Darn her for demanding that she have actual oxygen in her blood. So selfish! Should she feel okay, we’re looking at having a New Year’s Eve show (her idea) on, wait for it, New Year’s Eve. I’m thinking 9pm Eastern, but who knows – her blood is fickle.

So, on to today’s post, inspired by a reader’s comment on email . . .

The most fundamental economic and political choice of our lives is energy. I phrased that intentionally – the impacts of the energy we use as a society are economic. Energy has been political since the 1930s, at the very least.

The idea of energy might be economic and political, but the reality is pure physics. There is no law that Congress can pass that can create more energy – only allow that which exists to be used. And there is no amount of money that can be printed to that can make energy appear where none exists.

Some Leftists say truth is subjective, but let them try to pretend that their house at -40°F is actually 70°F. I guess that you could say that they’re trans-comfortable? No. They’re frozen. Reality is like that. And energy is like that, too. Unlike monetary policy or laws, energy doesn’t care what people want.

The story of energy, though, is the story of human culture.

Energy has been a part of human life since the first waggling finger (thank you, Rudyard, original poem below) burned itself on a fire. Meat tastes good, but tastes better once it has been cooked. It also heated the caves and tents that early man lived in. It was the original killer app – I can guarantee that at some point, a fire in a cabin or tent or cave saved someone who was your direct ancestor.

I hear you can get fired from the keyboard factory if you don’t put in enough shifts.

In the form of crude wood fires, energy did a few things for people, helping to tan skins, cure meats, harden wood, and eventually fuel fires that made the first man-made metals and ceramics. The demand was low, but the impacts were huge. Food, clothing, weapons, and the basis of civilization. You can’t have beer unless you have a beer bottle, right?

Romans used it even more – they had central heating in their villas in Roman Britain, heated baths, and used it in lots of other ways I’m too lazy to look up. One hint: those Roman shields and swords didn’t make themselves. And the iron nails in Jerusalem, circa 32 A.D.? Yeah, those required energy as well.

Romans were amazing at using energy, but most of the energy they used was human; they didn’t exactly have outboard motors on their ships. It was wind or oars. The Romans used fire, but the real energy source for Empire was animal and human. That source of energy was totally renewable – people are born every day, and they eat food that is raised every year.

There are huge implications to this: slave labor was the original renewable energy. Oops! That’s not politically correct, though the World Economic Forum® did take notes.

After the fall of the Roman Empire, people continued to innovate. That’s what we do. Dams provided water power for mills. Mills could grind grain, or they could operate pumps to pull water out of mines. And wind? Windmills could use wind to mill. Duh. It’s in the name.

If a former president didn’t like windmills, could we call him Donald Quixote?

All of that was a necessary predecessor to the real powerhouse: steam. Sure, steam-powered toys had been created 2,000 years earlier, but steam power was needed because of the mines that were needed to get the metals to manufacture electric guitars and iPads® back in the 1600s. Or whatever they did with them. Maybe banjos?

The Industrial Revolution came almost entirely based on the use of energy. The developments in the 1800s changed everything. Transport? Trains. Communications? Telegraphs. Cool products? Factories. Navy? Fast steamships. This is a wickedly small set of examples – the availability of energy changed everything. But at this point, the energy mix changed. Prior, it was mostly wood.

Now it was the age of coal and steel.

The biggest change it created was the ability to have a metric butt-ton of additional people. Energy changed agriculture and changed food distribution. After the Haber-Bosch process allowed for the fixing of nitrogen for increased plant yields (which required another metric butt-ton of energy) but this changed the demand. Coal was still pretty nifty, but it was no longer enough.

Now was the age of oil.

Cars were required to move products. Gas was required for fertilizer, and heating and chemical products.

Tesla® cars are expensive because they charge a lot.

The result of all of this was amazing – an explosion of the numbers of people living on Earth like never before, even in places that could never support them.

Wars were fought over energy. Why did the Germans fight at Stalingrad? Because they were trying to secure oil. There was no hybrid-panzer. The Allies won because there were lakes of oil underneath Texas, mountains of iron ore in Minnesota, and marksmen from Georgia. The biggest contributor?

The oil.

Without it, the Shermans don’t sherm, the Mustangs won’t must, and the carrier fleet are amusing, odd-shaped coral reefs. Oil won World War II. If the Germans had the reserves of Texas under Bavaria, Stalin would have been a minor footnote in history after 1942.

Oil was pretty plentiful as geologists wend around the world hunting for it after 1945. It was found in the wastelands of the Arctic, the scorching deserts of Saudi Arabia, and on the coast of California. Really, anywhere where people don’t want to live in 2022.

The lakes of oil in Texas weren’t infinite. In 1973, Texas removed controls on production. The straws weren’t dry, but the abundance was done. The Arabs also decided that, perhaps, oil was now (for the second time since 1943) the most potent weapon in the world besides nuclear bombs and Leftism was unleashed. The oil embargo showed how much the world depended on oil to make Big Macs™ and G.I. Joes©. One oil shock (combined with Nixon’s taking the United States off the gold standard) was enough to send the economy into the stagflation of the 1970s.

But I heard since he died, he’s a great cook. His pasta is Al Dante.

Oil is why the Cold War ended. Star Wars was an important initiative, but the bigger cause of the failure of the Soviet Union was that Reagan convinced the Saudis to pump oil like it was free. The Soviet economy, dependent on oil revenue to keep their machine going? Done. Oil killed the two out of three of the great empires of the twentieth century.

That brings us to today.

Almost all of the growth in oil production since 2008 was based on fracking. The previous pools of oil were still producing, but the oil companies had to go farther and farther afield, such as deep water miles deep in places like the Gulf of Mexico. Places where getting the oil was expensive – it’s not like we found another several billion barrels in the backyard behind the garden shed. Regular places where oil was were drying up. A game changer was needed. Something different.

Fracking was different. It was difficult, required new technologies, and grew by a factor of ten in only ten years, making the United States a net energy exporter for the first time since before John Kennedy did an afternoon drive in Texas.

Oil is an amazing fuel, and I bathe in sweet, sweet gasoline every night. But to meet the needs of the world, the struggle is difficult. Cheap energy takes huge investment, but that’s not all. It requires the energy source to be there.

The Mrs. says I’m cheap. I’m not buying it.

Our energy has been cheap since about 1920 or so. The idea that it will be cheap forever is magical thinking, unless oil is infinite (it is not). Our choice on energy isn’t economic, it’s based on physics.

And, with everything I’ve read, the physics of alternative energy solutions, especially the “renewable” ones that are touted based on political reasons, result in the energy cost doubling (at least) and that’s after the investment of trillions of dollars to build the necessary energy production facilities and infrastructure. This will likely be the subject of future posts.

I hate to break the Christmas spirit, but it is the single most important question facing humanity today. When the price of energy is low, freedom is high. When the price of energy is high?

Oh, yeah. Slavery.

As promised, here’s Kipling, 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 Gorilas while we followed the March of Mankind.

We moved as the Spirit listed. They never altered their pace,
Being neither clud 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 worshiped the Gods of the Market Who promiced these beautiful things.

When the Cambrian measures were forming, They promiced 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 promiced the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbor 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 selective 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.’

The the Gods of the Market tumbled, and their smooth-tounged wizards withdrew,
And the hearts of the meanest were humbled and began to belive 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!

Trump: The Symbol and Symptom of the End

“I’ve come back. Give me a drink, Brother Kipling. Don’t you know me?” – The Man Who Would Be King

I guess I should be sorry about telling all those the bad yolks now.

Wednesday is usual the “wealthy” part of Wilder, Wealthy and Wise. Why? Because it starts with W.

Duh.

But I can’t this week. I normally like to talk to the deeper issues, the longer trends, and those timeless aspects of the human condition. There is more than a little evidence that we’ve been, in one way or another, been two sides fighting for thousands of years across a gulf between two factions. One is open, and the wellspring of Western Civilization.

The other is one that, for lack of a better allusion, is best represented by the worst aspects of Rudyard Kipling’s poem The Gods of the Copybook Headings (reprinted at the end of this, because it’s old enough that Disney® doesn’t own it, it’s wonderful, and it’s True) – that implacable urge to move away from those values that emphasize what is Good, Beautiful, Right and True to placate what Kipling called “The Gods of the Marketplace”. It is a battle that provides humanity amazing wealth, meaning, and prosperity when The Gods of the Copybook Headings win.

Spoiler alert: The Gods of the Copybook Headings always win.

One signpost in the road downward is the raid on Donald Trump. The word that people are using is “unprecedented” and they’re using it for a reason. It is unprecedented. As I went upstairs a moment ago, the news on the radio was insisting that Joe Biden had “no idea” what was going to happen.

The Mrs. remarked, well, it starts with “Bull”. You get the idea. If Biden didn’t know about this, then the system is horribly broken. If he did, the system is horribly corrupt.

What’s Biden’s favorite musical group? The Who?

Do I believe a former president should be above the law?

I certainly do not. But unless the FBI® found a dead stripper or a live boy in the safe, it ain’t enough. As much as the Clintons were corrupt and literally stole items out of the White House, there was no real push to have them arrested. Sure, Bill was impeached, and sure, because he perjured himself he could no longer practice law. That was about it.

And I’m okay with that. Even Nixon, who took part in a conspiracy and looked like, well, Nixon, was pardoned. Why?

Because Nixon was politically neutered and could never take part in the public sphere again in any consequential manner. He was humiliated enough that the Left could enjoy it. Bill was humiliated, but (unlike Nixon) was he decided he’d try to bilk millions (and bimbos) out of those that wanted to buy influence with his political machine.

What toothpaste did Nixon use? Colgate®.

It is clear that every president since (and certainly including!) FDR has likely committed multiple felonies in office. It’s our system. Some, because they were not good guys. Some simply because there are more felonies on the books than hairs that were implanted in Biden’s head. The Federal way is now the way that the Soviets liked it – as Lavrenty Beria, former head of the Soviet NKVD and GULAG architect extraordinaire said, “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”

Now, Trump.

In every case during his presidency, he has been the boogie man for the Left – the man that gives them I accidently killed John Wick’s dog-level night sweats. Why?

I’m not sure. Even though he couldn’t build a wall, Trump certainly upset the apple cart. Perhaps his singular achievement as president was to return the Supreme Court into a court that could actually read the Constitution in plain English again. The Constitution was written the way it was, for common men. It was written that way so that nearly every man in the United States could read it and understand the plain language. I mean, today they’d do it with angry cat memes, but you get the picture.

Given hundreds of years, the language was buried in a stream of emanations and penumbras such that what was clearly the written language of the Constitution became ignored in favor of piles of case law that in some cases twisted the original meaning nearly 180°. The Fourteenth Amendment, so beloved by the Left, turned a series of prohibitions on Federal activity into a prohibition on activity by the Several States.

When Ma Wilder caught me with a copy of the Constitution, I told I only read it for the articles.

Why is this important?

Because it became a weapon of the statists, of those that would become globalists to use as a club so that the centralized government that the Founders feared could be put in place. Now every Federal law could be pushed into the Several States with impunity. Horrible Federal bureaucracies could be put in place. I remember reading that OSHA (which regulates workplace safety) was challenged in court by a company in Maine.

The company in Maine argued that they only worked in Maine, digging a hole for people who lived in Maine, in Maine. What business was it of a Federal Administration that sounds like the noise I make when a cigar ash hits my bare chest? Why did anyone care that the Maine hole didn’t match what a government rule written in Washington D.C. said?

The Federal prosecutor didn’t even refute the argument. The administrative (not Constitutional) judge in this case ruled against the guy from Maine, since the judge said, “they have a phone and use the mail” so they’re engaged in interstate commerce.

Really. It’s a nonsense ruling, like you’d see in Alice in Wonderland but involving people who hated their lives but who were just “doing their job”. In 2022, for the first time in my life, this sort of nonsensical reasoning is being challenged at the Supreme Court level.

Go ask Hunter, when he’s at the mall.

And they hate Trump for it. They hate him with every fiber of their being, even more than they hate Vladimir “Putler” or people who don’t take the vaxx or people who would deny teachers the right to indoctrinate kindergarteners into the world of S&M. They hate it more than they hate people who won’t kill their babies.

For that, Trump must be punished.

Is it rational? Not at all. They’re willing to destroy the Republic for that, because they want to destroy the Republic anyway. There are those on the Right that are accelerationists: anything that brings on the actual shooting war with the Left should be embraced. On the Left, there are accelerationists, too. Anything that can pull down another statue, anything that can pervert another value, anything that can make the legacy of the United States die is to be saluted.

Really. They hate it so very much, and Trump has been an inconvenient speedbump along the way.

So, their most fervent fantasy is Trump in an orange jumpsuit, whereas the most fervent fantasy of the Right was Hillary being an impotent drunk wine aunt staring from the outside in at a party she could never be a part of. Sure, the crowds at the Trump rally chanted “Lock Her Up” but what they really wanted was her humiliation.

The Right got it, and then some.

Hillary tried to sell her soul to Satan to become president, but Satan responded and said that was like Bill trying to sell his virginity.

Perhaps that was what drove them over the edge into insanity. Again, they want the destruction of the United States, so, they’re cool with that. It’s not a bug, it’s a feature. I’m not really sure what bizarre fantasy plays in their heads as they contemplate the collapsing economic system and the utter lack of any shared goals or morality. Perhaps it’s a rainbow, though I doubt they’ll understand that the only actual consequence that they can really have is one that will lead to. But Rudyard Kipling understood it, every bit of it.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings

by Rudyard Kipling

As I pass through my incarnations in every age and race,
I make my proper protestations 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 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.

On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller Life
(Which started by loving our neighbor 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/’

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 wobbling 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!

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: