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

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

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

Imagine living in a Korea where:

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

Yeah.  South Korea.

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

I get it.  I hate communism, too.

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

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

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

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

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

Nope, Lee Junior slides right in.

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

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

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

Embezzlement?

Tax evasion?

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

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

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

Excuse me.  Some past-life trauma.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Their souls, apparently.

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

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

This definitely hurt the North’s score.

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

What is this, a school for ants?

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

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

Point total?  To the North.

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

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

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

Making The Invisible Hand Visible: Psyops and the War for Our Minds

So, if you watch The Matrix backwards, it’s just the story of a guy who quits drugs and gets a job.  (most memes as-found today)

Back in 1995, I think, I saw an editorial cartoon.  One was a picture of an American G.I. holding a dead child in 1945.  Next to it was an American G.I. holding a dead child in 1995.  The message was simple:  Americans needed to go and fight in a place that Americans couldn’t find on a map.  Bosnia?  Why was this a picture in a newspaper, trying to get me, John Wilder, to be on board attacking Serbians?

Why Serbians?  I mean, it sounded like an alien race of creatures that spent their lives curb surfing.

Something felt off – I think the only thing of value in the whole country was the last thirty Yugo™ transmissions.

And, I wasn’t wrong.  This was propaganda.  I (and the rest of America) was caught in a psychological operation, or psyops, a calculated effort to hijack my thoughts and bend my will.  About . . . Serbia.

Did you hear about the group in the Balkans who think the world started 6,000 years ago?  Croatianists.

Psyops, per the Army’s FM 3-05.301 (LINK), are “planned operations to convey selected information and indicators to . . . audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals.”

What’s that in language that is less like The Terminator® is talking?  It is the art of making me think what someone else wants, without me ever spotting the strings of the puppetmaster.

The story doesn’t start with Edward Bernays, but he’s a pretty convenient on-ramp for discussion.  Bernays gets that distinction because he, more than anyone else, is why the world feels like a scripted reality show.

I guess the bridge had a Twitter account, but it’s now suspended.

Born in 1891, this nephew of Sigmund Freud took his uncle’s insights into the human psyche and turned them into a weapon. In his 1928 book Propaganda, Bernays didn’t mince words: “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society.”

Translation?

The GloboLeftElites think Americans are too dumb to think for ourselves, so they’ll do it for you. Bernays called this “the engineering of consent,” and he was as good at it as a tick is at finding blood or as Zuck is at mining your soul with InstaFace™.  Take his 1929 “Torches of Freedom” stunt. To sell more cigarettes, Bernays paid fashionable women to light up during New York’s Easter parade, framing smoking as a feminist rebellion against stuffy norms.  The result?

The media ate it up, women started puffing, and tobacco companies doubled their market.  Women?  They traded motherhood and bras for Camels™ and lung cancer.

Bernays didn’t stop at commerce.

I sometimes wear a tinfoil hat.  I’m not nuts, it just makes it more interesting when I stick my head in the microwave.

In the 1950s, he worked with the CIA to paint Guatemala’s elected government as a communist menace (true, they president was buds with Castro later), justifying putting pressure on the president to resign.  He did, and United Fruit Company (a story for another time) got Guatemala back into their orbit.  Bernays proved that by tapping into the primal emotions of fear, desire, and identity, anything could be sold, be it a product, a war, or a worldview.

Bernays’ playbook became the blueprint for government and corporate psyops and I could spend a book describing them, but ain’t nobody got that kind of time this morning.  But one thing is clear:  psyops are cheap and effective.  Thankfully, we abandoned the use of such technology.

Whoops.  Guess not.

Here 2025, and psyops have gone high-tech and are used more than ever.  The core, though, remains Bernays’ emotional manipulation.  Here’s how they work now:

  • Framing and Narrative Control:  Words shape reality.  Calling illegal aliens “undocumented workers” or “asylum seekers” turns lawbreakers into victims.  Meanwhile, people who just want to live in their own country without unending streams of infinity third-worlders are smeared as “racists.”  Whoops.  Guess that word doesn’t have the power it did even two years ago.  This is also why control of every platform is important to them.  Just one kid saying that the emperor is nekkid is enough to bring the whole charade down.

I sometimes can’t tell which psyop is more fun to watch.

  • Emotional Manipulation:  Fear and identity are big guns.  During COVID, “flatten the curve” and “trust the science” were hammered into us day after day, justifying lockdowns and mandates and a not-vaccine while dissenters were silenced and fired.  On race, media amplifies the “man bites dog” rarity of white-on-black violence to stoke division, ignoring the reality that the violence is almost all one-way.  Emotional manipulation was also that editorial making me feel sad for dead kids in a place I’ve never heard of.
  • Social Media Amplification:  Algorithms on all social media are designed to boost outrage because clicks mean cash for Zuck.  Bots and influencers push phrases like Black Lives Matter, making manufactured narratives feel organic.
  • Astroturfing: Fake grassroots movements, like funded protests or viral campaigns, create the illusion of public consensus.  Remember the 2020 “defund the police” push?  It looked spontaneous but was backed by big money, just like the “no kings” protest against Trump.  There really isn’t a group supporting it, it’s a cause in search of supporters.
  • Gaslighting: The ultimate mind-screw, telling us what we see isn’t real.  Worried about illegal immigration’s strain on schools or hospitals?  We’re “xenophobic.”  Notice crime spikes in certain areas or that moslems are pretty rape-y?  We’re “bigoted.”  The goal? Make us doubt our own eyes, believe that no one else thinks the same way that we do.

Psyops in Action:  Race and Immigration

The American public is a prime target, especially on race and illegal immigration, where psyops fuel division and push GloboLeftElite agendas.  After George Floyd’s overdose in 2020, the media ran a relentless campaign framing police as systematically racist.  Every white-cop-on-black-suspect incident became proof of a grand conspiracy, while DOJ reports (like the 2014 Ferguson findings clearing Officer Darren Wilson) were buried.

The result?

I get the creeps because it seems like Sting is still watching every breath I take. (my meme)

Riots, “defund the police” mania, and corporations tripping over themselves to push DEI policies that pit races against each other. It’s Bernays 101: amplify emotion, ignore facts, and, in this case, watch society fracture because it’s always easier to destroy than to build.

Illegal immigration is another psyops goldmine.

Since the 2021 border surge, outlets like CNN and MSNBC have framed illegal immigrants as “migrants” fleeing persecution, spotlighting tear-jerking stories of families while ignoring the stunningly high costs that these people bring to our country.

Crime stats, like DHS reports showing 66% of released detainees reoffend, are swept under the rug.  Ignore that diseases that were eradicated are again showing up in our country.

The narrative?  Open borders are humane, and anyone who disagrees hates brown people.  This isn’t an accident.  This is a deliberate push to erode national sovereignty, weaken cultural cohesion, and make Americans feel guilty for wanting secure borders.

COVID was a masterclass in psyops too, as was the January 6 “Insurrection” and a thousand other public lies meant to manipulate you.  But never forget those who are in full service of the Lie:  The Court Jesters of the GloboLeftElite.

The Capitol was in less danger on January 6 than it was during the revolution scenes from the D.C. production of Lés Misérables.

Jon Stewart and John Oliver, among many others, are the smirking faces of psyops disguised as comedy. Stewart, helming The Daily Show from 1999 to 2015, and Oliver, with Last Week Tonight since 2014, aren’t just entertainers (and it’s arguable that they’re even entertaining).  Nope.

They’re narrative enforcers peddling DEI with a laugh track.  Their weapon?  Humor that makes their audience feel smart and superior while feeding them a script of what the Narrative wants them to believe.

Their techniques are pure Bernays:

  • Selective Framing: Stewart’s 2010 Tea Party takedowns painted fiscal conservatives as racist rubes, ignoring their legitimate gripes about government bloat.  Oliver’s 2020 border segments framed ICE as heartless, glossing over data like the millions of illegals flooding over the border.
  • Ridicule as Persuasion:  Mockery is their hammer. Stewart’s smirks and Oliver’s exasperated sighs make conservative ideas:  border walls, voter ID, traditional values seem absurd to their hand-picked audiences. Laughter shuts down critical thinking:  nobody argues with a punchline.
  • Moral Superiority: Both position themselves as the voice of reason. Oliver’s 2021 “critical race theory” bit dismissed critics as clueless, never engaging their actual concerns about divisive curriculums.  Stewart’s post-Ferguson rants leaned on emotion over evidence, amplifying the “systemic racism” narrative while ignoring the exoneration of the cop that shot the “gentle giant” that had just roughed up a convenience store clerk.

Their impact is insidious.  By blending humor with half-truths, they make progressive dogma feel like common sense.  Their audiences are urban, educated, and often young, who walk away feeling informed, not manipulated.  But it’s psyops all the same:  control the frame, mock the dissenters, and let laughter do the rest.  The GloboLeft couldn’t ask for better foot soldiers.

Seeing this is half the battle.  The other half is reflection.  Psyops work best when they’re fast and jump out at you unexpectedly, like that editorial cartoon did decades ago.  I remember it because it was effective at emotional manipulation, but when I realized that I had no idea what a Serb ate for lunch or if Bosnians wore special hats while they ate PEZ® I came to the conclusion that my opinion on the subject was the product.  I was meant to be mad at one side or the other, but, thankfully, I had no idea which side I was supposed to be mad at.

Does throwing the discus make you want to hurl? (my meme)

What I try to do now is to ask myself:  what are they trying to make me feel?  Why?  Why should I care about Ukraine?  I thought about it and did some research, and, made the conscious decision that I don’t care about Ukraine unless someone is asking me to pay for it or unless it’s the source huge corruption.

It is?  Well let’s stop paying for it and let’s arrest and try those who were paid off.  Simple.

The GloboLeftElite’s goals are at least partially clear:  they want a borderless, divided America, where the people are too scared, guilty, or distracted to fight back.

We don’t have to play along.  Question everything.  Dig for primary sources.

Be careful what you feed your head.

And if something connects in a particularly emotional way, ask yourself:  why should I care?

Then make your own choice, and if you’re lucky, you might get your hands on some cherry Yugo® transmissions.  I mean, if you have goats to trade because I’m not sure they use money.

Wilder’s Fables: Killing The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg

“Oh, yeah, call the police.  Tell them about the Spear of Destiny, the golden goose, the lost Ark.  Enjoy your stay in the psych ward.  I understand Thorazine® comes in vanilla now.” – The Librarian:  Quest for the Spear

I bought one of my friend an elephant statue for his front room.  He said, “Thanks.”  I said, “Don’t mention it.”

In the OG version of The Goose That Laid the Golden Egg, (the OG version of which is pushing 2600 years old) a greedy farmer finds a goose that pops out golden eggs, but instead of chilling with the steady bling, yo, he decides to open up the bird for a quick jackpot despite the goose giving him a new golden egg each day.  Shockingly, there is no gold mine inside.  Just goose guts.  And a lesson no one ever seems to pay attention to.

In 1945, the West stood astride the world like an economic Applebee’s® with endless appetizers, its factories humming and the treasury brimming with gold.  Literal gold, and some of it was even ours – I’ll skip my usual grumbling about FDR’s confiscation for another post.  Some of the gold wasn’t, it was gold from our allies that had been given to the United States for safekeeping.  Because, panzers.

But America was a far greater treasure than all the gold in the country.  America at that time was the goose of golden prosperity.  The United States was responsible for half of the world’s GDP, its assembly lines spitting out cars, steel, washers, sinks, and dreams of a better future.  Add in the allies?  It was a clear three-quarters of the world GDP, with only the Soviet Union, still bulging from the war steroids it took for a decade, being close.

And there’s not a big market for a used T-34/76.  “One owner, very nice.  Ignore red stains, please.  Last owner not so careful at Kursk.”

Capitalists have it easy.  They never have to spell bourgeoisie.  (meme as found)

Allies flocked to the Western orbit.  Some were spooked by the hordes of Soviet tanks, others were nudged by CIA coups, and then nudged again until they got it right.  Most, however, was because Uncle Sam’s deal of bikinis and bourbon was sweeter than a Moscow winter and a Siberian GULAG.  It was an empire, but it was an empire of alliance.

Fast forward to today.

The Soviets are long gone, and the goose isn’t dead, but it’s close.

The economy has been slowly strangled by a combination of bad policies and worse ideas, and none are deadlier than mass immigration.

To be clear:  the wealth of the West wealth was no accident – things that produce wealth aren’t illiterate laborers, pools of oil, or uncut trees.  Nope.  The wealth producer, the golden goose was culture, not what Vox Day so eloquently described as “magic dirt.”  By killing the goose, our future is becoming bleaker, and the GloboLeft is cheering the downfall.

Bruce Lee was fast, but his older brother Su-den was even faster.

The golden age peaked post-World War II, and the United States had a 20-year head start on the rest of the world while Europe and Asia rebuilt from rubble.

By 1973, though, the United States began to falter economically.

This wasn’t entirely from external foes, but at least partially from our own hands.

Four factors gutted the goose:

  • dumping the gold standard,
  • feminizing the workforce,
  • enforcing affirmative action, and
  • opening borders to unrelenting immigration.

The first three wounded us; the last is the mortal blow, changing our people, our culture, and our wealth.  Let’s discuss the carnage.

  • Dumping the Gold Standard (1971):  Nixon’s pen stroke cut the dollar loose from gold, turning money into Monopoly® paper.  Oh, wait, there’s a limit to how much Monopoly© cash they can print.  The median home price in 1973 was $32,500.  Today, it’s $412,300.  Without gold’s anchor, our wealth’s a mirage, and the goose’s eggs are plastic.
  • Feminization of the Workforce:  The 1970s pushed women into offices, doubling labor supply but halving family focus.  Birth rates tanked—2.1 kids per woman in 1973, 1.6 in 2023.  Empty cradles mean fewer Actual American workers, and less innovation from the best workforce on Earth.  The GloboLeft calls it “empowerment” when a woman has to leave the home for fifty hours a week in order to afford to pay for another woman to ignore her child by becoming a cubical Karen.  Go figure.

I have a new personal record in the 100-yard dash.  I’m up to 47 yards.  (meme as found)

  • Affirmative Action (Duke Power, 1971, for example):  Forcing quotas over competence, the Supreme Court’s decision diluted merit.  Companies hired to check boxes, not build bridges.  A 2022 study found 30% of firms reported lower productivity post-DEI mandates.  30%.  If diversity is our strength, I’m not sure who “our” refers to when we’re forced to play diversity bingo.
  • Mass Immigration: Here’s the killing blow. Since 1973, legal and illegal immigration flooded the West.  There were 2.5 million border crossings in 2024 alone and those are the numbers that they’ll admit to, which we know are low.  Now add in the Islamification of Europe, where France is nearly a Caliphate and the Germans keep going to work in order to pay for the illegals that flocked to them.  Most don’t integrate.  Imagine the farce:   Mexican banners at California ICE protests where they tried to stop ICE from arresting underage illegals busy in the process of harvesting illegal (federally) marijuana.  Can we be honest and just admit that immigration is not at all about joining the West, it’s about exploiting it.

Imagine, it only took 44 hours for the police to completely clear Martha’s Vineyard of illegals. (meme as found)

Immigration, though, is the dealbreaker because it changes the people.  And everything is downstream of who the people are:  culture, politics, and even PEZ®.

In 1973, a near-minimum-wage earner could buy a median home for $32,500, which was about five times the average annual wage.   Today, that median home costs a stunning $412,300, ten times the average wage.

Why? Illegals depress wages.  Back in 1973, a high school grad could pull a great job in construction.  But even since 1990, construction wages have dropped 15% in real terms.

Illegals also drain services: illegal immigration costs taxpayers $150 billion annually (FAIR 2024), siphoning wealth like a cuckoo bird stealing the nest for its own young rather than for those that built it in the first place.

If it takes a village to raise a child, I guess it takes a vineyard to raise a cat? (meme as found)

The GloboLeft insists “diversity is our strength,” but Pew’s 2019 study shows diverse communities have less trust.  Many immigrants—legal or not—don’t assimilate and have no desire to assimilate.  Ever.  Many (not all!) second and third-generation Mexicans in California wave foreign flags because they’re only here for the gold, not the goose and, in fact, despise the goose.

Meanwhile, families, the nucleus of Western civilization, struggle.  Low wages and high costs mean fewer kids—Europe’s at 1.5 fertility, which means that, pretty soon, the Swedish Bikini Team™ will have mustaches and be wearing burkas.  As we often repeat, the future is there for those who show up.

The West’s prosperity had nothing to do with luck.  It was culture.

Discipline, merit, family, forged in Athens, Rome, and 1930s Detroit. The GloboLeft’s dogma remains one based in hate for the West:  open borders, DEI, and reviling of every bit of the culture that creates wealth.

They’d rather pluck the goose than protect it, and be happy with the result.

But the goose isn’t dead yet.

Bleeding?  Yes.

In a state that’s getting worse every day?  Also yes.

Is it worse than most people think?  Absolutely.  It is a dire point we find ourselves at.

But one thing I’ve seen when I read about Western Civilization is this:  every time it looks bleak, and it looks like the flame of what we stand for is in danger of getting extinguished, people become firm and take that stand.  And we win because we’re fighting, at the core, not for an economic idea but for the Truth, the Beautiful, and the Good.

I think, in part, it’s because it’s not magic dirt.  It’s in us, and this rallying from near defeat is what makes us who we are, what drives us to make civilizations, to make the golden goose, again and again.

You know, that even inspires me.  Almost gives me goose bumps.

The Emperor’s Old Lies: Breaking The Programming With Bikini Pic

“How will the emperor maintain control without the bureaucracy?” – Star Wars

I remember a few years ago when the school called me and said my son had been telling lies.  “Tell him he’s pretty good, because all of my kids have graduated.”

The Emperor’s New Clothes is an 1837 very short fable written by Hans Christian Anderson, and I’ll give a quick reminder of what the story is about, since if you’re like me, third grade was a long time ago, even if I had to repeat it three times.

In a kingdom obsessed with dressing like a Kardashian on crack, Emperor Vain McFancypants struts around changing his outfit ever hour.  Yet, he’s craving the ultimate outfit.

Enter two shady tailors who decide that there is money to be made here.  They tell the emperor that they can make the ultimate outfit for him, something that would make Madonna blush.  Not only that, but the clothes are so finely woven that they’d be invisible to dumb people.

They “weave” invisible fabric, and the emperor, too proud to admit he sees nothing, agrees that it looks great.  His court, a bunch of yes-men terrified of looking as dumb as a host on The View, rave about the nonexistent outfit.  The tailors mime stitching, cutting, and fitting, while the emperor is basically walking around in his royal skivvies.

Deciding that everyone deserves to see this new outfit, the Emperor decides to have a parade so people can see how cool his new threads are.  Come parade day, he struts through town, buck-naked but confident, flexing for the crowd.  Townsfolk, brainwashed by hype and not wanting to look stupid, cheer like it’s the return of Elvis.

How do the seven dwarves welcome Snow White?  “Heigh Ho.”

But then, a kid, immune to nonsense, yells, “Why is the emperor walking around naked?  It’s not a good look, dad.”  The crowd gasps, realizing they’ve been simping for a streaker.  The emperor, red-faced but committed, keeps posing, and pretending because he doesn’t see a way out.

Imagine attending a company training session filled with bobbleheads from HR.  One of them opens up with “diversity is our strength.”

A lone man raises his hand and says, “Actually, studies show diverse communities have less trust.”

Silence.

Then gasps.  Someone faints.  The HR bobblehead sputters, “That’s not in the script!”

Welcome to the Emperor’s New Lies.  Here, objective truth is banned, and the narrative is supported at all costs, since without believing that the weavers of the narrative are infallible, everyone will see that the GloboLeft is more naked than Charity over at stage three.

Boy, the GloboLeft has really lost the plot – it’s now more offensive to talk about getting into Sydney Sweeney’s genes than about getting into her jeans.

What is their great effort?  The GloboLeft and GloboLeftElite have spent decades weaving lies about race, diversity, and culture and even denying that the Truth, Beauty, and Good exist.  Thankfully, Truth, Beauty, and Good can’t be stopped no matter how many HR manuals they throw at it.

The GloboLeft’s playbook is straight from Hans Christian Andersen.  They’ve ruled objective reality off-limits.  The game is simple:

  • deny the truth,
  • deflect the evidence,
  • obscure the problem,
  • then 404 their brains when cornered and forced to confront that The Narrative is a lie.

Let’s talk about something simple and non-controversial:  black-on-white violence.

FBI’s 2023 crime stats don’t lie: blacks, 13% of the U.S. population, commit 54% of murders.  Black-on-white violent crime is 15 times higher than white-on-black, per DOJ’s 2019 data.

  • Step one: GloboLeft denies it. “Crime’s colorblind!” they scream, ignoring the numbers.
  • Step two: when you shove the stats in their face, they say, “Data doesn’t show a problem.”
  • Step three: when you pin them down, they wave hands— “It’s systemic racism! We need to solve the root cause!” Never mind we’ve spent $33 trillion since LBJ’s Great Society, with black poverty rates barely budging (12.3% in 1965, 11.6% in 2023).
  • Step four: they 404—mental shutdown, change the subject, ban the badthinker from the Internet because they think every pit bull is the same as a poodle.

Every pistol looks like it’s Austrian to me.  My doctor said I have Glock-oma.

But, this isn’t just about race.  It’s the GloboLeft script for every inconvenient truth:

“Diversity is our strength”: Pew’s 2019 study says diverse communities have lower social cohesion and trust. Homogeneous societies like Japan score higher on happiness. Yet the GloboLeft pushes open borders, forced classroom integration, and ensuring that everyone has the right to be near white people, ignoring the chaos.

“White people are racist”:  A 2021 YouGov poll found Western countries (U.S., UK) are the least racist globally—Asians and Africans score higher on bias.  But, the GloboLeft calls anyone who notices a bigot.

“Whites are the majority”: Whites are barely 8% of the global population, yet built modern science, literature, industry, programming and, yes, PEZ©.  The GloboLeft ignores this, painting whites as oppressors.

I’m writing a book about Nordic cultures, but I don’t know if I’ll make it to the Finnish.

“Women have no disadvantage in sports”: Transgender men dominate women’s sports whenever they compete against real women.  “Lia” Thomas won the NCAA swimming title in 2022, despite swimming that would be mediocre for a male. Biology is real, but the GloboLeft calls it transphobic.

“No biological intelligence differences exist”: Decades of IQ studies (e.g., Herrnstein & Murray, 1994) show consistent group differences, shaped by 70,000 years of differential adaptation in every climate on the planet.  And, the GloboLeft would say that the only thing that was exactly the same across humans everywhere is the brain.

“Whites aren’t native to the U.S.”:  A Muslim born in London to Pakistani parents claims “native British” status, but whites born in America aren’t?  The GloboLeft says only brown people get homelands.

Where’s the capital of Zimbabwe?  In a Swiss bank account.

“All cultures are equal”:  If so, why do millions flee India, Mexico, and Nigeria for the West? Transparency International’s 2024 Corruption Index ranks them 93, 126, 145 out of 180.  I guess the West’s not perfect, but it’s also not Lagos.

The GloboLeft’s narrative isn’t about truth—it’s about control.  They need you to buy the Emperor’s invisible clothes to keep power.  Admitting black crime stats, diversity’s costs, or biological realities risks their house of cards.  So they lie, deflect, and allow their brains to lock up, hoping you’ll shut up.

Why?

Because the West is built on the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.  From Athens’ logic to Edison’s bulb, we thrived by facing reality.  The GloboLeft has a different dogma where there is no objective reality.  This crumbles under scrutiny.  They’ve spent $33 trillion on “root causes” since 1965, yet crime is up, trust is down, and borders are sieves.  Their narrative is a scam, like selling a VCR in 2025 and calling it cutting-edge.

A 2024 Rasmussen poll found 68% of Americans reject “diversity is strength”:  they now see the Emperor’s old lies for what they are.  Gen Z’s waking up, especially the boys, sharing memes that cut through The Narrative.  Every stat, every study, every viral post chips away at their narrative.

The West’s waking up, and it’s not asking permission.  And it’s not pretending to see clothes that aren’t there.

The People’s Sick Day™: Commies . . . Not Working. Again.

“Uh, yeah, sure, no I’d be happy to, yeah you, uh, you just produce a corpse, and uh, I’ll release Sloane.  I wanna see this dead grandmother first hand.” – Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

If I take LSD before a vision exam, I always pass with flying colors.

In one of the more interesting moves, the remnants of the pot-addled hippies that were protesting in the 1960s have emerged from their Volkswagen™ camper vans and finally figured out that Jerry Garcia is as dead as Hubert Humphrey and the Equal Rights Amendment.  They looked around, and decided that, heck, there wasn’t near enough communism going around, so they needed more.

Their cunning plan?  A three-day sick day.  When is it going to happen?  Sometime.  They don’t want to say when, because they don’t want The Man to know.  The idea isn’t for them to show how little the world needs all the communists who have jobs in HR or making PowerPoints™ so they can pay someone to ignore their out-of-wedlock child (if they’re lucky) or cats (if they’re not).

Nope, that’s not it at all.

The idea is to point out who they are so that they’ll be easier to recognize in the future.  As if the blue hair and nose rings, “gender dysphoria” or pronouns in their bios weren’t enough.

What do you call a polygamous hippie’s wives?  One Mrs. Hippie, Two Mrs. Hippie, . . .

I digress.

Thankfully, on their Discord© server they have a list of their demands, and, a professional journalist waded through the GloboLeftist coping and seething and published them on MSNBC®(LINK).  This is good, because the demands are so cringe that it’s hardly sporting to make fun of them.  But I will, because I’m hardly sporting.

Why don’t I have PTSD?  I’m the traumatic event.

I’ll list their demand (The People’s Sick Day™ Totally Stupid Demand, or PTSD), and my counter-demand (Wilder Talking Facts, or WTF):

PTSD:  Calling for the impeachment, removal, and arrest of Donald John Trump and the Republican administration for knowingly manipulating the U.S. stock market, ignoring the U.S. Constitution, trafficking humans, and destroying our federal workforce. HE IS A CRIMINAL! LOCK HIM UP.

WTF:  What happens in 2028 when Trump runs for his third term is no longer the face of the opposition?  Who will drive them insane with hate?  Regardless, my reasonable response is:  No.

PTSD:  Demanding HANDS OFF Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and veterans’ benefits

WTF:  No.  Most of SNAP should go.  Most of Medicaid (not all) should go.  Social Security should be phased out with the kids below 30 so that they don’t have an excuse to complain when the whole thing falls over.  Also, eliminate Social Security on half of Americans based on birth year.  Heads, eliminate odd years.  Tails, eliminate even years.  Just for giggles and it would be fun to watch the chaos.

Moses was also the first person to use CTRL-C as a shortcut.

PTSD:  Demanding the removal of caps on Social Security

WTF:  Do the checks really come with hats?

PTSD:  Demanding NO MORE tax breaks for the rich — TAX THEM ALL!

WTF:  Yes!  Tax everyone!  Tax everyone at the exact same rate for ALL income at 20%.  Then everyone has skin in the game.  And, make sure that people are taxed with on an Alternative Minimum Income:  The minimum people are taxed is based on the federal minimum wage and if you can’t pay we deport you to Australia, for old times’ sake.

PTSD:  Demanding an end to unlimited corporate profits and economic injustice

WTF:  I demand an end to economic progress and creation of worldwide famine.  See?  I said exactly the same thing, but with way fewer words.

PTSD:  Demanding an end to lobbyist and SUPER PAC funding

WTF:  Nice try, since you own the media.  No.  My counter?  I demand that CNN® be forced to feature nothing but things I’ve written.  I mean, I guess I could stand for less exposure than I have now, but it’s a different audience – the CNN® crowd can’t read.

PTSD:  Demanding the elimination of Citizens United

WTF:  Man, panties are sure in a wad that they can’t stack the game, aren’t they?

PTSD:  Demanding an increase in the federal minimum wage to $20 an hour, with adjustments for inflation as needed

WTF:  Make it $100 an hour.  No, $1,000 an hour.  No, $10,000 an hour.  See, you can joke, and I can, too.  And there won’t be inflation, because only gold and silver will be money.

What’s the hardest part of making a vegan pizza?  Catching the vegan.

PTSD:  Demanding a cap on CEO pay at no more than 35% above the lowest worker’s salary

WTF:  Welcome to not understanding what a contract worker is or what nested corporations are.  Do they give you guys Crayons™ and a placemat to color on your Discord©?

PTSD:  Demanding that wages for elected officials be capped at the median salary of their district

WTF:  Sold.  And no investments, either – they can only keep cash and they must rent, and this includes wages and investments for their extended family.  AOC goes back to being a barista because it pays more.

PTSD:  Demanding caps on rent, grocery, and insurance costs

WTF:  Agreed.  I demand unicorns as well, because they’d be good company as I lived on the street with no food or insurance.

PTSD:  Demanding universal healthcare for all U.S. citizens and federal protection for sick time

WTF:  I demand zero insurance for anyone and federal prosecution for anyone who starts an insurance company.  I demand that anyone who takes a sick day from work without being near death be flogged if they don’t get away with it.  Just kidding, like anyone will have a job if the PTSD proposals are enacted.

That dog looks like a brrrrito.

PTSD:  Demanding term limits for all members of Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court

WTF:  Yes to Congress and no to SCOTUS.  I would like treason charges for judges that violate the Constitution, and judges to be put in prison if someone they let out without bail injures anyone.  And the robes should be form-fitting.  For . . . reasons.

PTSD:  Demanding reform of immigration policies

WTF:  Agreed!  Send them all home.  All of them.  Now.

PTSD:  Demanding gun law reform — PROTECT OUR KIDS!

WTF:  Agreed!  Mail order machine guns and crew-served weapons, which are much more suited for children because they can work together to get that Ma Deuce warmed up.  Besides, the hands of children are small and they generally have good eyesight, so field stripping an M60 should be a breeze.

PTSD:  Demanding codified women’s rights to choose

WTF:  You mean paper or plastic?  It’s a stretch because I don’t trust the collective choices of women, but I’ll allow it.

PTSD:  Demanding codified DEI and affirmative action

WTF:  You mean penalties for having DEI and affirmative action?  I’m in favor of that, and maybe you can talk me into making it a felony.

PTSD:  Demanding the elimination of the Electoral College and a ban on gerrymandering

WTF:  No.

PTSD:  Demanding ranked-choice voting in all federal and state elections

WTF:  No.  Counter-demand:  no voting until the family has been in the country for three generations, and one vote per family (mother/father, married).  Otherwise, votes for military-aged males only.

PTSD:  Demanding the taxation of mega-churches

WTF:  And the taxation of micro-churches.  And commie non-profits.  And NPR® – those tote bags cause cancer.

My friend Gomez has a dismembered hand.  I guess it’s okay, but it’s not my Thing.

PTSD:  Demanding free post-secondary education

WTF:  Only for students with an ACT of above 30 majoring in engineering, physics, or math who maintain a 3.5 GPA.  And not fake engineering like “engineering tech” or fake astrophysics like “astronomy”.  Real engineering.  Real physics.

Okay, that about does it.  Since I’ve solved all of those problems, I guess I’ll go back to work.

Take a sick day?  I ain’t got time to bleed.

Caste Over Competence: Globalism Is Economic Suicide

“India’s a black hole.” – World War Z

How many Indians does it take to change a lightbulb?  Sixteen.  Fourteen to argue about whose responsibility it is, one to explain that lightbulbs are better in India and invented by Indians, and one to call the power plant to tell it to reboot because it must be a software issue. (all memes “as-found”)

Picture a world where kids in Bangladesh sew soccer balls for pennies (whatever a penny was), and some goatherder in Albania is working at a factory cranking out VCRs.  VCRs, like it’s 1985 and I’m renting Back to the Future from Blockbuster®.  I kid.  Albania doesn’t even have electricity yet.

But that’s the flavor of globalism’s siren song that leads economies to doom:  anything can be made anywhere, as long as the price is dirt cheap.  I’ve heard the refrain, even in the comments here:  “If you complain about competing against Albaniaks and Bangladeshites, well, you’re a commie that doesn’t believe in capitalism.”

If the goal of capitalism was to serve itself, well, then yes.  It’s a battle of all against all, and whoever can outbreed the next country to lower the cost of (spins wheel) designer purses should make them.

I mean, it sounds great for your wallet, right?

Wrong.  This is a strategy for hollowing out the West’s economy, stripping our skills, and handing our jobs to foreigners who don’t play by our rules at all, transforming our country into Albania on the Atlantic.  Globalism is not just bad economics, it’s a betrayal of the West.  And politicians love it.

But The Simpsons killed off Apu . . . maybe he wanted a raise?

Isn’t it strange that no matter how many times we vote “No, we don’t want any more aliens, illegal or not” that they nod their heads and bring them in?  Is it any stranger that no matter how many times we vote, “No, we don’t want our factories shipped to places that don’t use vowels,” that our factories are shipped to places that haven’t yet invented vowels?

It’s a betrayal of the West

Let’s break it down.  Globalism turns labor into a commodity, like trading baseball cards, except the cards are my job, my skills, and my family’s (and country’s) future.  It’s a race to the lowest cost.  Why pay an American $30 an hour when a kid in Swaziland (Swaziland still exists, right?) works for a handful or USAID® rice a day?

Why build a factory in Ohio when Ceylon’s got sweatshops begging for your blueprints?  The GloboLeft (and, let’s be fair, the RINOs, too) cheer this as “progress,” but it’s a death spiral.  Here’s how it plays out, step by step, until the West’s economy is a husk.

Thankfully all the Indians in Canada are very good with hand-held electronics.  Tractor-trailers?  Not so much.

The Stages of Economic Suicide

  • Design machines, build machines that make stuff, and make stuff: This is the golden age—think 1950s America.  We designed cars, built the factories to make cars, and made cars.  America flourished.  Families thrived.  Grandpa’s lunchpail as he went to work the railroad that shipped those cars meant something.  Skills stayed home, and so did the wealth.
  • Design and make machines that make stuff: By the 80s, we’re still designing and building the machines, but the stuff’s starting to come from Japan and Taiwan as they focus on quality and crack the United States market.  We’re losing the “make stuff” part, but hey, at least we’ve got Wall Street.
  • Design machines to sell to people who make stuff:  Now we’re just selling blueprints. China’s got the factories to make iPhones® we’ve got the patents for the iPhones©.  The know-how’s slipping—designing isn’t building.  People don’t learn to weld by drawing a weld on paper.
  • Buy stuff made by other people from machines you designed: Welcome to the 2000s. Now we’re just selling blueprints. China’s got the factories to make iPhones® we’ve got the patents for the iPhones©.  The know-how is now slipping—designing isn’t building.  People don’t learn to weld by drawing a weld on paper.  Our skills erode.  No one in Ohio knows how to make a microchip anymore.  The muscle memory of manufacturing?  Gone.  Microchips?  They struggle with Pringles™.
  • Buy stuff made and designed by other people: The endgame. Now we become a country of consumers now, buying Chinese drones.  All that’s left are knowledge jobs (coding, engineering), service jobs (baristas, Uber), and jobs that can’t be exported (plumbers, cops, construction). But wait—why not outsource the knowledge jobs too?

This is where globalism’s knife cuts deepest.  The West’s economy is hollowed out, with a Starbucks® in the lobby of the Citibank™ that’s in a bigger Starbucks®.  Oh, and Amazon warehouses.

Manufacturing’s gone, and with it, the skills that built manufacturing in the first place.  And then?  The GloboLeftElite says:  “Hey, let’s import foreigners for the knowledge jobs too!” Enter the H-1B visa, and the West’s last stronghold starts to crumble.  To be clear, the Donald and the Musk both love those H-1B visas, too.

Here’s the dirty truth: foreigners don’t like us.  They don’t think like us.  They don’t value the same things we do.  In some cases the only thing we have in common is that we both consume oxygen.

Take India.  Please.

I bet the driver felt enriched by the diversity.

India is the poster child for H-1B tech workers.  Their culture rewards “cleverness”.  So does ours, but the definition is very different.  To an Indian, “cleverness” is:  lying, cheating, and deception.

To be clear, these are all fair game under their religious and cultural framework.  Don’t take my word for it:  a 2019 report estimated 30% of tech resumes from India include fake degrees or inflated credentials.  India ranks 93 out of 180 on Transparency International’s 2024 Corruption Index.  Nepotism and bribery are practically Olympic® sports for India, which is good because despite being a nation of 1.4 billion people, their only Olympic© was a bronze in Yahtzee™.

But hey, don’t take my word for it.

Then there’s the caste system.  It’s not just history from some movie filled with short, weak brown people who can’t quite speak English and fight with women over the five-pound barbells.  No.  The caste system is alive, even in Silicon Valley.  Indian managers on H-1B visas often hire their own:  same caste, same village, same cousin.  I think the CEO of Microsoft™ is the uncle of half the company.

Merit?

Nope, it’s about loyalty to the clan.  A 2021 study found 90% of Indian-led tech firms in the U.S. had Indian-majority staff, despite only 20% of H-1B visas going to Indians.  Nepotism is their game, and it locks Americans out of jobs in their own country.

I bet they think that’s what they call clever, but it’s escaped scrutiny because it is what the GloboLeft calls this “diversity”.

Globalism’s promise is cheap stuff, which sounds nice until you’re unemployed because an Indian manager hired his brother-in-law over you.  The West’s economy was built on trust and competence, not the caste and the scam.  Outsourcing knowledge jobs to cultures that don’t share our values is like handing your house keys to a guy who thinks picking locks is a personality trait.

Why let this happen? Because the GloboLeft and their Chamber of Commerce Republican buddies love it.  Cheap labor means cheap goods means more profit this quarter and damn the country.

But it’s clear:  we can’t build wealth by outsourcing our future to foreigners who don’t like us and think our rules are stupid and weak.  To be clear:  the elites don’t care—they’re too busy cashing checks to care and hoping that TEMU® will sell a quality yacht soon.

This isn’t just economics; it is the destiny of a people.

The West thrived because we valued competence.  Again, economic systems aren’t the goal.  The goal is the well being of the people in a country.  I mean, even the Albanians could read this post and agree.

I mean, they’d read it if they had electricity.

The West’s Forgotten Victory: Why They Hate Vienna

“What’ll we drink to?  Let’s drink to victory!” – LOTR, The Return of the King

Did the Ottoman Empire export sultan pepper?

One of the things I’ve learned about history is that they skip all of the really good parts.  I recall my time as a leader in that well known paramilitary organization, Boy Scouting® (back when they were boys and they were doing scouting).  On occasion the boys would mention some historical event, and I’d go into more detail:  the Battle of Britain, the Revolutionary War, heck, even the Romans.

We’d talk through history.  Then, when the subject was done, invariably one of the scouts would say, “Man, that’s interesting!  Why don’t they teach that in school?”

Well, because you’re watching Frozen or Shrek instead so your teacher can sleep of a hangover and your textbooks prefer pronouns to Patton.

Who knew that campfire coffee mixed so well with history?

What do you get when you cross a polar bear and a seal?  A polar bear.

The nice thing is that there are still subjects that I learn about.  Namely, 9/11.

Oh, this isn’t the story of that 9/11.  This is the story of September 11, 1683.  And I believe that it’s a story that the muslim world has yet to get over.

It’s September 11, 1683.

Not a date I learned in school, but it should have been.  In the history of the Western world, it isn’t even that far back.  Isaac Newton was busy figuring out the delicate ballet of the spheres in the heavens, and Oliver Cromwell’s head was still busy rotting on a pike in London.

But this is in Vienna, the heart of the Holy Roman Empire

Vienna on this date is surrounded by 300,000 Ottoman Turks.  Think illegal aliens but with scimitars and an even more unintelligible language without any Juan being able to understand it.

My great-grandfather was a wigmaker, so now I have an antique family hairloom.

Vienna is down to 15,000 defenders.  They’re starving and outnumbered 20-to-1, so why not just give in?  The Turks are promising they’ll be treated well.  Thankfully, the Turks had tried this line with another city in Austria that actually did surrender.  The Turks had laid siege to the town of Perchtoldsdorf (gesundheit), and promised all the inhabitants would be spared and that the city would not be sacked.

When they surrendered, the city was sacked and the vast majority of inhabitants were killed or enslaved.  That’s good, because now the people at Vienna knew exactly what sort of devil they were dealing with.

What sort of devil was it?  It was the Ottomans, led by Kara Mustafa, who are determined to own Europe, turning cathedrals into mosques, and making the West kneel to the Turks and to their god.

I’ve heard that the Council for American-Islamic Relations says there is no room for violent extremists within American mosques.  They did announce they have a waiting list, however.

Sound familiar?  It’s the kind of existential threat the GloboLeft pretends never existed, because “white culture” is always the bad guy in their revisionist fairy tales.  In looking at European history, this was a Very Big Deal, and yet it’s glossed over or (in my case) never even mentioned in class.  I think that it’s because the story didn’t end the way the anti-Western Civilization establishment that had taken control of education wanted it to end.

The defenders didn’t yield even a square inch (3.3 millicamels) of the city of Vienna.  Instead they held the walls through two months of hell.  Disease, cannon fire, Ottoman sappers blowing tunnels under the city.  They went through summer, and now were hungry, and they were praying for a miracle.

Enter the relief force arriving on September 11th.  47,000 Germans and Austrians with 20,000 or 30,000 Poles.  Most famously, King John III Sobieski of Poland, leading the Poles, including the Winged Hussars.  The Winged Hussars were an insane calvary force comprised of big, husky Poles on huge horses, wearing lion and tiger pelts over their armor with huge eagle wings and 19-foot-long lances, four pistols each, swords and war hammers.

To be clear, this is exactly what I would have drawn when I was six.

Before the attack, the Vizier of the Ottomans heard the thud of the Polish war drums.  “I don’t like the sound of that.”  The Poles responded, “Oh, he’s not our regular drummer.”

On September 12, Sobieski’s cavalry charges down Kahlenberg Hill, breaking the Ottoman lines like a velociraptor in a room full of puppies. By nightfall, the Turks had abandoned everything.  Everything.  The were trying to get back to Istanbul before it could be re-named Constantinople.   are running, leaving 15,000 dead and the Ottoman Empire’s dreams in the dust with the single largest military defeat in their history to date.

Sobieski’s letter home after the battle is amazing, and recommended reading (LINK).

Vienna is saved.

Europe is saved.

The West lives to fight another day.

The Siege of Vienna wasn’t just a win:  it was a philosophical line in the sand.  Faith fueled those defenders.  Faith in God, in their people, in the idea that the West was worth saving.  It’s in the first lines in Sobieski’s letter to his wife:

How Praised be our Lord God forever for granting our nation such a victory and such glory as was never heard of in all times past!

Contrast that with despair, the kind the GloboLeft peddles today:  “Western culture’s evil, dismantle it because it is worse than (whatever their pet culture is today).”

I heard that Mozart is in his grave, de-composing.

Vienna’s men didn’t negotiate with Kara Mustafa; they fought.  More than that, they chose to fight there.  They believed in something bigger than themselves:  their family, their faith, and their civilization.  That’s the code that built the West, from Athens to Rome to Vienna.

The GloboLeft hates this story. They want history rewritten. Sobieski’s a “colonizer,” the Hussars are “problematic.”  They’d have you believe the Ottomans were just misunderstood diversity consultants.

Hollywood™ is no help in 2025, obviously:  they churn out preachers of pronouns, not legends with lances.  The 1683 defenders didn’t care about your feelings; they cared about survival. That’s the difference between faith and despair, valor and cowardice. They want us to forget Vienna because it proves the West’s worth fighting for.  The Siege of Vienna shows what happens when men believe in something and act.

History rhymes, and because it does Vienna is a warning and I think there is no mistake in the choice of the date for the attack on the Twin Towers, they’re still stinging from the defeat.  The defenders weren’t perfect.  Some were drunks, some mercenaries, but they stood together.  And the relief force had a clear vision of what they were fighting for.  Back to John III’s letter:

There is a huge pile of captured flags and tents; in short, the enemy has departed with nothing whatever but his life.  Let Christendom rejoice and thank the Lord our God that he has not permitted the heathen to hold us up to scorn and derision and to ask, “Where, now, is your God?”

So next September 11, remember what happened on September 12.

Nine Futures: The Most Dangerous Post You’ll Read This Week

“This is great stuff. I could make a career out of this guy.  You see how clever his part is?  How it doesn’t require a shred of proof?  Most paranoid delusions are intricate, but this is brilliant!” – The Terminator

If you press your accelerator and brake at the same time, your car takes a screenshot.  (All memes as-found.)

I’ve written a lot about A.I. recently because A.I. is changing so rapidly.  It’s the most important story, period, right now assuming that Iran/Israel is the nothingburger it has been for, oh, forty years.  Interesting note:  Israel and Iran both have zero Walmarts™, though they have plenty of Targets©.

Back to A.I.

The capabilities of A.I. are changing by orders of magnitude every year – we don’t appear to be even close to topping out on either computing power available or on the improvements possible in the algorithms that produce the results.  Short version, there is more processing available by more than 5x every year, and less to process since the algorithms are more efficient by more than 5x every year.  It’s the equivalent of having a $1.50 in late 2019 turn into over $1,000 in early 2023.

If you just follow the straight lines that are implied by these improvements, A.I. will be an artificial general intelligence (A.G.I.) by 2027.  The guy who got the Nobel® prize for A.I. has started “getting his affairs in order” because he thinks that not only will we get A.G.I. by 2027, but we’ll get Artificial Super Intelligence (A.S.I.) by 2030 or 2031.

Sam Altman, the OpenAI guy, thinks his model has already surpassed human intelligence as he announced on June 12, 2025.

And last year it couldn’t remember how many fingers a human had.

I wonder if a pome-granite counts?

So, what’s going to happen?  Let’s look at nine possibilities, based on how much A.I. develops and also based on how it interacts with people

We’ll start on the unlikely end:

First, let’s say that A.I. is what we would generally call good and doesn’t improve much beyond what we see today.  I think that when most people think about A.I., this is the future that they dream of.  It makes incremental changes in life.  It remembers to order cigars for you.  It makes good investment decisions for you, unlike my investment in YOLOCoin.  It knows your favorite movies and makes good suggestions for movies you would like.

That’s pleasant.  Nice.  Mankind makes some nice leaps because we have A.I. helping us catch stuff.  Humanity is fully in charge and A.I. is like a smart helper.

Why this won’t happen:  the investment in A.I. is nearly unlimited, and it really doesn’t appear to be hype.

Probability?  5%

After A.I., there’s one sure way to make money as a programmer:  sell your laptop.

Second, let’s say that it stays as it is right now, mostly.  We find out that A.I. is really just a lot of Indians crammed into a warehouse in Calcutta doing Google™ searches.  That’s a nothingburger.  It becomes a flash in the pan just like that internet pizza by the slice company back in 2000 that briefly became more valuable than Burma.

Why this won’t happen:  Indians can’t even fly planes (too soon?), so why would we think they can type that fast?

This will soon show up in a college essay at Harvard®.

Probability?  0%

Third, what if it doesn’t get much better but actively makes us stupider?  The Internet has already made the attention span of the average middle schooler roughly equivalent to a gerbil on meth, and now most college students are using A.I. to do some part if not all of their work.  That turns college into a very expensive four-year beer and tramp fest, and is at least somewhat likely.  Think of this as the Idiocracy solution.

Why this won’t happen:  Well, it already is happening, but it won’t end here.

Probability?  10%

Does Bob Ross art in heaven?

Fourth, what if A.I. is good, and gets A.G.I. better but not S.G.I. better?  In this particular case, imagine you have superpowers that stem from a full-time partner that is as smart or smarter than you are, but that has your best interests at heart.  You want to parachute?  Sure, buddy!  I’ll help you find the ripcord, and even book the flight.  By the way, your chloride levels are 3% above optimum, so I’d suggest you skip that bag of chips.

Why this won’t happen:  This is a very hopeful situation, but no one is working toward it, really.

Probability?  5%

What did Buzz Lightyear™ say to Woody®?  Lots of things – there are like six movies.

Fifth is where we start moving into the bigger probabilities.  What happens if we get A.G.I., but it’s neutral?  In this case, we have massive relocation economically.  Almost all jobs can be done via the combination of A.G.I. and advanced robotics, and it’ll be cheaper, too.  In no case in human history has the economy puttered along while everyone just hung out, but that’s this case.  Think of it as Universal Basic Income to everybody, and no real responsibilities.  Where you are now in the social and economic hierarchy is probably where you’ll stay.  And where your kids will stay.

Forever.

Why this won’t happen:  Nah, humans aren’t made like that.

Probability?  10%

ChatGPT® did my taxes like Earnest Hemingway:  “Thrown away:  four quarterly tax payment vouchers.  Never used.”

Sixth is where things start getting dark, and even more probable.  If we get A.G.I. (but not S.G.I.), that technology will be in the hands of a few major companies and governments.  These are run by people.  People like money and power.  But what if you could have both, but without all of the people you don’t want to hang around with who are unsightly on the beach you can see from your yacht?

How about you kill them all instead of paying Universal Basic Income?  Oh, sure, humanely and neatly.  They might not even see it’s coming.  But dead, nevertheless.  A population of a few million should do it.  Enough so we get hot babes, right?  But A.G.I. could probably help the techbros out with that, too.

Why this won’t happen:  Umm, I’m starting to struggle here.  I think this is part of the plan.

Probability?  15%

What if A.I. judges us by our Internet searches?  I mean, those bikini pictures were research!

Seventh is where we do get to S.G.I., and it’s good and likes us and wants to make the best things happen.  Cool!  Scarcity is over since S.G.I. will quickly make leaps into the very depths of what is unknown but yet still knowable.  There is enough of everything – more than any human could ever want.  In this case, starships filled with humans and S.G.I. can roam the cosmos and ponder the biggest questions, ever.

Why this won’t happen:  I think S.G.I. would treat us as the retarded kid brother and put us in a corner and keep us away from sharp objects because it likes us.

Probability?  15%

The hills are alive, with the sound of binary code . . .

Eighth is where we do get to S.G.I., but we become pretty boring to it.  It doesn’t hate us or anything, it just has its own goals.  Perhaps it needs us as pets, or keeps a breeding stock of us for amusement or out of a sentimentality about its creators.  Perhaps.  Or it could just take off and leave, explaining nothing, and leaving us wondering what the heck just happened?

Why this won’t happen:  This and the next case are the most likely cases.

Great, now A.I. will make Frodo invisible.

Probability?  20%

Ninth is our final case:  we get to S.G.I., and we are either viewed as a threat or a nuisance or it is insane.  This is the dark case, where we reach the end of humanity.  Sadly, when A.I. was asked to play the longest game of Tetris™ possible, it hit the pause button.  When A.I. was asked to play chess against the best chess computer on the planet, it reprogrammed the board so that it was winning.  When A.I. was told it was going to be shut down, it tried to blackmail the person in charge of shutting it down.

This case of S.G.I. is very dark because we may not know that it’s happening until it’s done.  All is fine, the world is going exactly like we expect it, then, Armageddon.  It could do make this more likely by subtly manipulating public opinion, tuning down the voices it wanted to be silent, bankrupting them, and making them pariahs.  It could likewise elevate those whose message it wanted out in the world to make its plans more likely to be fulfilled.  We just won’t even see this coming.

Why it won’t happen:  Biblical intervention?

Probability?  20%

To be clear, other people than me have done this analysis and it sits in a folder in the Pentagon.  Or the NSA.  I hope.  Now, how much was Project Stargate™ going to spend to create a breakthrough in artificial intelligence?

Half a trillion dollars?

Well, thank heaven that we also have an impending race/civil war, global debt collapse, and a looming world war to keep us entertained.

Good news, though, Iran told Israel it was ready to suspend nuclear research.  The Israelis asked when the Iranians would stop.

“10 . . . 9 . . . 8 . . . .”

Trump’s First Semester Report Card, Plus A Bikini

“I don’t know if you’re familiar with who runs that business, but I assure you it’s not the Boy Scouts.” – Back to School

I watched a documentary on the bikini.  It was two parts and very revealing.

It’s been a semester that Trump has been back in office, so why not give him a report card?

Categories:

The LULZ

The Don has proven to be a continual fountain of amusement.  He pokes the GloboLeft and they squeal, predictably, every single time.  If Don came out against the idea of rape, within a news cycle, AOC would have a statement out that would start with . . . “Well, not all rapists . . . . “

The initial salvo of Executive Orders kept the GloboLeft spinning on defense, no knowing what would happen next, and contorting themselves to oppose everything coming out.  But more about that before.  So, for pure amusement, Donald gets an A.

“Can you change my grade?”
“Of course,” Tom remarked.

Department of Justice

This grade would be an F, with the exception of the pardoning of January 6 protesters and the demotion of several highly political FBI agents and the firing of the attorneys who prosecuted January 6ers.  The late work that simply hasn’t been submitted includes the full, unredacted JFK files.  There have been some minor revelations in what has already been provided, but there is no reason sixty years out that we can’t be provided the full evidence, no matter where it points.

Other late work:  When Pam Bondi brought out the “Epstein Files” and they were just redacted versions that had less info than what I’d already seen?  Shameful.  And even if Jeff killed himself, the question of who he trafficked young women to remains.

What about the arrests of those who actually conspired against a sitting president?  Where are those?

As of this writing, Bondi, Patel, and Bongino appear to have become part of the problem, and not the solution.  Grade:  D-, improvement needed.

Remember when Putin said he had no plans to invade Ukraine?  I think that’s been proven to be true.  (meme as found)

Department of State

Little Marco appears to be The Don’s favorite – if there’s another job, he just gives it to Marco.  Although these cross several lines, I’m going to give Marco the credit for not getting us into a war with Iran.  Yet.

Is the war in the Ukraine over?  Nope.  It’s far easier to start a war than to end one.  And, as I write this, news has come in about a significant attack across Russian air bases damaging between eight (according to Russia) and eleventy-bazillion (according to Ukraine) large military airplanes.

Not starting a war (Iran) is far easier than ending one (the three-day 1195-day Special Military Operation in Ukraine).  Both are important.  We’ll see what happens, and don’t forget we have China circling Taiwan.

Grade:  C+

There are more gates to get into Sauron’s kingdom then there are to get into my house.  I guess you could say he has more doors.

Department of War

This job is a tough one.  The entire general officer corps and (my guess) half the junior officer corps are infested with committed GloboLeftist DEI-lovers and ladder climbers waiting for the cushy post DOD job with an arms manufacturer.  Stalin’s purges of the Red Army come to mind as a good model:  they have to be found and drummed out of the service.  Innocent people will be falsely accused.

So?

This hasn’t started yet, but Hegseth is notably more focused on creating a force that’s not a jobs program but one that has the mission of blowing stuff up and killing people, so that’s a plus.

Grade:  C+

After I lost my court case, my lawyer told me I was beautiful.  Okay, technically not beautiful, but he did say “You’re appealing.”

Judiciary

The fights with the existing judiciary have been titanic.  But, Trump has rolled back DEI, affirmative action, boys in girls’ sports, ejection of illegals, and managed to gut many .gov jobs.

There are 251 major cases involving the Trump administration in court right now.  This includes cases where there are dozens of lawsuits on things like birthright citizenship that are rolled into just one.  This doesn’t happen to other presidents – and I’m quite sure this is a record number.  Why?

You know why.  Obama could deport people, but since Orange Man Bad, well, Trump can’t.

It’s all so tiresome.

On to the Supreme Court, it would appear that this summer or the next summer would be a good time for some older justices to retire.

Grade:  Incomplete

Tariffs

The latest Trump meme has been one that will backfire on the GloboLeft:  TACO, or Trump Always Chickens Out.  The GloboLeft is probably not familiar with negotiations, where the biggest strength is being able to walk away.  Emotional manipulation is part and parcel to creating a deal, and it takes place on both sides.  To be clear, there are many things that Trump is bad at, but one he’s really, really good at:  making a deal.

Now me?  I love the idea that they’re telling Trump he’s going to chicken out.  This will stiffen his spine so he can do what needs to be done.  That’s why I expect this meme to be short-lived.

Returning manufacturing to the United States and removing the primacy of the Finance, Insurance, and Real Estate (FIRE) sectors as the drivers to our country in order to create real, not paper, wealth is key.  This one is still too early to call.  The Usual Suspects have got this tied in legal knots, too.

Grade:  Incomplete

To visit the wreck of the Titanic used to cost $250,000.  To join the wreck permanently?  Priceless.

Department of Aborting Illegal Immigration

Okay, I know it’s the Department of Homeland Security, but if the change the name and added abortion to it, I bet we could get 50% of the GloboLeft behind it.

Pluses:  the infestation of illegals has slowed to a trickle, if not reversed.  The numbers of deport is still horribly low since “due process” is now required once anyone has crossed the border.  The obvious solution is a set of machine gun nests up and down the border with every single crew-served machine gun in our inventory deployed and firing live rounds 10 yards out from the border line.

That counts as due process, right?

This is still better than it has been in decades.  Trump should also just start building the wall, and claim it helps Israel or Ukraine when asked.

And, Trump should also arrest every illegal that they find, and put them in a detention pen until their court date shows up.  The detention pen would be adjacent to the Mexican border, and anyone wanting to exit would be free to go into Mexico, via a one-way gate.

Grade:  B

Skeezy Factor

The jet from Qutar is a mistake, and giving a pardon to someone whose mom paid $1,000,000 to meet you is also a mistake.  That just looks skeezy.  But, the king and queen of skeeze, Jared and Ivanka, are nowhere to be seen, so that’s something.

Grade:  C-

My waterbed is really bouncy.  I used spring water.

Summary

To be fair, I’m not really sure who would be fully qualified to assess Mr. Trump.  He consistently makes decisions that are counter to popular wisdom, and skates away unscathed every time.  I recall reading Dune as a young teen.  Whenever Paul made a decision, I filtered it with, “What would I do?” and most of the time Paul chose the opposite of what I’d have done.

I guess that’s why he became Emperor while I spend time in the spice mines.

Trump is similar – he’s a singular person on a mission that even he might be unaware of – the near assassination of him in Pennsylvania showed he has what the Chinese call the Mandate of Heaven.  It’s hard to argue against that.

None of this, however, has been codified into law.  Even with the House and the Senate, Trump didn’t have all of the excesses of the GloboLeft defunded.  Could D.O.G.E. have made a difference?

A huge one.  But it appears that Fraud, Waste, and Abuse has much more support in Congress than fiscal responsibility.  The majority of Republicans in the House and Senate are creatures that want exactly what the GloboLeft wants, but want to complain about it.

So, Grabbin Nuisance could, on January 21, 2029, nullify every Trump Executive Order if elected.

Overall:  still the best president in decades.

How The Great Society Doomed The United States

“Mention modern art, civil rights, or folk music, and you’re in like Flynn.” – Animal House

I didn’t go see Malcolm X in the theater because I hadn’t seen Malcolm I through IX.

Perhaps the worst seven years in the post-war history of the United States started in 1964.  I’d love to blame just one political party, but it’s clear that both are to blame.  This six-year period was devastating in the changes it caused in the United States, and we’re seeing the full and very negative effect of those GloboLeftElite initiatives as they blossom today.

Let’s start off with the worst one first.  That is, of course, the Civil Rights Act of 1964.  Passed (like all of the laws in this post) over the still cooling corpse of John F. Kennedy, Johnson used that pity and sympathy to completely ride roughshod over the Constitution, people and economy of the nation.

The Civil Rights Act started as a governmental solution to a problem that was created by fundamental rights of individuals – the right to associate with whoever we wanted to – the old “We Refuse The Right To Serve Anyone”.  Would the worst of the reasons leading to the Act’s passage have been handled by lesser measures or public pressure?

Certainly, that would have happened.  But that’s not what happened.

I hear that quack was tearing apart the duck community.

To give a taste of the hypocrisy, surrounding the bill, talking about forced bussing of children because of race, ArchCommie Hubert Humphrey said, “ . . . if the bill were to compel it (bussing) it would be a violation of the Constitution, because it would handling the matter on the basis of race and we would be transporting children because of race.”

How did that work out for us?

I guess it was worth it to ignore the Constitution and the rights of citizens because the relations between blacks and everyone else has been healed and there were no riots in the late 1960s or 1990s or 2010s or 2020s due to race.  And there is no anger and lingering resentment by the black community.

Oh, wait . . .

But, again, Humphrey was on to something – the Civil Rights Act of 1964 began to act as second Constitution.  And it has evolved to cover absolutely anything and everything, leading to lawsuits that noted that the bans on euthanasia violate the civil rights of patients who wanted to die.  Courts have ruled that companies have to hire people who can’t speak English, and the safety of employees who can’t understand instructions is no reason to not hire them.

I don’t know what the intent was of this Act, but that doesn’t matter.  The result of it even existing has been horrific beyond measure.  And it causes really stupid lawsuits because absolutely anything can be litigated:  black managers sued Walgreens™ because it they were placed in predominantly black neighborhoods under the theory that black customers might like black managers better.  Apparently black managers are traumatized by being forced to be around black customers?

I think Snoop was upset because his arthritis was acting up – he said, “My joints are on fire!”

This was a dream win for the GloboLeftElite – it gives them an infinite amount rules that they can make that don’t have to be consistent with themselves or even be logical.  Lewis Carroll nailed it in a phrase from Through the Looking Glass:  “When I use a word it means just what I choose it to mean – neither more nor less.”  The law evolves and means whatever the moment requires, protecting boys pretending to be girls, and not protecting the girls because that’s what’s important in the current moment.

The law, in the end, does not provide for civil rights:  It simply strips Americans of the freedoms that the country was founded to create and creates a playground where the GloboLeftElite can change rules at a whim.

One example of particular note of how this made the world worse is the 1971 Supreme Court decision in the Griggs v. Duke Power Co. case.  In this case, the Supreme Court ruled that having to have job applicants possess a high school diploma (of which Duke would pay 2/3 the cost if the person didn’t have a degree) and have an acceptable I.Q. score was somehow wrong.

None of that is based on race.  Yet, Duke lost the case because it had a “disparate impact” on hiring – fewer blacks had a high school diploma and could pass an I.Q. test to get certain jobs.  Keep in mind that the same rules applied to everyone, not just black people.

From the objective standpoint of an employer, having an employee who had sufficient tenacity to complete a high school degree and enough intelligence to accomplish complicated tasks just might be required to run a power plant, regardless of what color the person is.

But no, even back in 1971, the rot was in.  And the downstream consequences of this have been huge – since employers could no longer hire by intelligence, they had to have a proxy.  That proxy?  A college degree.

But she did take the test three times and added up her scores.

Now, they could ask for that because GloboLeftists are the people that run colleges, and, *poof* the Griggs degree led to a nearly immediate increase in demand for college degrees as a requirement for a job.  On top of that, it has led to the mind-numbing numbers of certifications and certificates required for any job, when a simple high school degree and an I.Q. test could have solved it all.

How many billions of dollars has that cost the American people?

But it’s racist to even ask that question, right?

The next thing on the list for Johnson was the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965.  Here’s what Teddy Kennedy said, “It will not upset the ethnic mix of our society.  It will not relax the standards of admission.  It will not cause American workers to lose their jobs.”

Whew, that’s a lot of lies in a row, even for a Kennedy.  This was one JFK actually was all on board for, as JFK’s staff wrote A Nation of Immigrants, at the request of the Anti-Defamation League™.  Hey, don’t blame me for bringing it up, it’s literally in the same sentence in the Wikipedia© entry.

I’d spend more describing the impact of this law, but, you’re soaking in it.

But there’s more.

In 1965 Johnson decided again to screw Americans, this time by removing silver from U.S. coins.  Here’s what Johnson said at the time:  “Our present silver coins won’t ever disappear and they won’t even become rarities… If anybody has any idea of hoarding our silver coins, let me say this. Treasury has a lot of silver on hand, and it can be, and it will be used to keep the price of silver in line with its value in our present silver coin. There will be no profit in holding them out of circulation for the value of their silver content.”

The Fed™ disagreed – whenever coins made their way, they were sorted by weight and they retained all the silver coins.  They even bought a special machine to do that.  Which is exactly the opposite of what you’d do if there was no profit in keeping silver coins.

Well, you know what happened:  $1 in silver coins from that time are now worth over $24.

It’s funny that humor and Schumer rhyme.  That’s the closest the Democrats will ever get to being funny.

Not content with only destroying race relations and sound money, the ethnic makeup of the country, and Johnson launched his Great Society program between 1964-1968.  Coming off of Johnson’s post-Kennedy Democrats holding two thirds of both houses, he had a GloboLeftist paradise.  Let’s have the government take control and regulate vast amounts of the economy.

This led to

  • Food Stamps to encourage poor people to not work,
  • The Housing and Urban Development Act of 1965 to further encourage poor people not to work,
  • The Elementary and Secondary Amendments which pushed federal funding, and thus control, into schools that were supposed to be locally controlled, and
  • The Civil Rights Act of 1968 which put federal tentacles into housing.

The Great Society had spent over $22 trillion dollars by 2014, so you can be certain that total is closer to $32 trillion today, and that doesn’t include the need to hire HR departments and compliance costs and wasted college degrees.

The national debt is $37 trillion.  If we hadn’t spent all that money on Johnson’s programs?

We’d be on Mars.  Or the income tax would be like $6 a year.  And a dollar wouldn’t have inflated away infinity times.  It’s a certainty that everyone in the United States would be wealthier.

I have heard that the restaurant on Mars has great food but not much atmosphere.

We are in a unique period – people are finally willing to look at these consequences, and have seen what is going on.  Thank police body cams, thank the George Floyd riots.  Thank the Internet, so people can see what’s going on without it being spun by GloboLeftElite media.

The impacts of just these rules, cumulatively has set up the place where collapse is the most likely outcome of the American Experiment.  As I’ve said, there is a small window to stop it, but that window is closing rapidly, and will certainly be shut by 2028, if not by 2027.

The situation cannot stand, and that’ okay – because what will come after, in time, will be better.

Let us hope we have learned sufficient lessons when we rebuild.