Panzers – Page 2 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

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!

What World Do We Want To Live In? There Is A Choice.

“Is this the emergency services? Then which country am I speaking to?” – The I.T. Crowd

Why don’t Leftists like to talk about the future of what they’ll create? It’s two in tents.

We are on a course to a new country. Perhaps someone has a source for this quote (that I’m going from memory on): It’s been said that every man dies in a strange country. It’s not original to me, but it does contain a lot of wisdom. As our country is aging, it is changing. I’m just hoping it has better knees than I do.

But to illustrate the point, let’s take Pa Wilder:

When Pa Wilder was born, the income tax wasn’t even a decade old. The meaning of a “state” was stronger then than now, though it was subsidiary after the Civil War. Pa was born, grew up, and died living almost all of his time within a 30-mile radius, except for an all-expenses-paid trip to Europe from 1942-1945.

The rock band Flock of Seagulls never toured Iran. Why? Iran so far away.

When Pa Wilder passed away, the world had gone from the biplanes of World War I to a fully inhabited space station and regular flights to orbit, and occasional flights to the Moon. The dollar had gone from gold to gimmick, and the question of freedom had gone from “why can’t I?” to “may I, please?”

The world Pa lived in growing up was one that was difficult. If you had a child and couldn’t afford it, you had to find someone to raise it for you. It is undoubtedly a fact that people died of starvation in the United States, and some certainly died because they didn’t have any money.

After the war, though, his generation had optimism. It looked like there was nothing that mankind couldn’t do. The atom had been split. Rockets had touched space. The largest rivers had been dammed and tamed and the only foe to be concerned about was the Soviet Union, and it looked like all of those people ate a diet of potatoes, onions, sawdust, and sadness. A 1950s Hungarian joke went something like this: “Definition of socialism: the incessant struggle against conditions that would not exist in any other system.”

And, from the looks of him, he certainly could have nursed a drink.

The family had primacy. And culture was built on the idea of that family, and policies at the local, state, and national levels were built around supporting the family and keeping it strong.

It worked pretty well. Was there a cultural prohibition against being a tool? Sure. Was there an upper limit on the things that women could do in society? Yeah, certainly there were few CEOs at the time that were women, and there were demarcations between jobs women would normally do, and jobs that men would normally do. Men got the jobs that had higher stress, higher danger, and sure, higher pay. Women got the jobs that conserved the culture, raised the young, and, yup, didn’t pay nearly as well.

It was a bargain made not to punish women or men, but as a nod to societal stability based on family hierarchy.

This is the America that was, and more than a few people on the Right look to this as the model of a successful society that creates the ability for mankind to make good on the promise of individual freedom, individual responsibility, a role for religion and celebration of individual success.

It is a world where equal chance based on merit is the goal, and winners of fair competition get the rewards.

Yup, pretty hard to take that to dinner, since each one required its own nuclear power plant.

This goal is soundly rejected by the Left. They look for a model of America that can never be. Their world is an entirely made-up concept of what they think the world should be.

What do they think?

Like Lake Woebegone, all children in their Leftist Utopia are above average.
Diversity is actually a strength.
Every deviance in sexuality is celebrated.
Every outcome is equal, regardless of effort, talent, or merit.
People have whatever they want, regardless of if they work or not.
Society owes it to everyone to take from the successful and make them the same as anyone else – equity is the goal.

Whereas I can love the ideas they have as ideas, the truth is that the world cannot be that way. Some children are below average. People who live and work with people that aren’t from their culture typically have lower trust, disharmony, “cultural tension” and conflict.

Oops. Turns out that if you worship the Moon God Gorto and think child sacrifice is okay, Baptists might not be the best folks for the cubicle next to you. And most people won’t applaud if you have sex during Thanksgiving at the table – I won’t explain how I know this.

The Mrs. tried to tell me to not fix my rifle with Super Glue®, but I stuck to my guns.

And outcomes aren’t equal. There are winners, and there are losers. Merit matters. Talent matters. Work matters. If we remove the competition between winning and losing, and celebrate every loser like a winner?

You get a society of losers. You get a culture of losers. And who else but a loser would demand what Elon Musk has without doing what Elon Musk as done? It’s a culture that is built on envy of what others accomplish and greed for what others have.

It is a culture that celebrates and encourages failure. Even Leftists admit it. I had a discussion with an acquaintance. He’s a leftist. My conjecture was this, “So, should we wait a few years to start your socialist empire until we have a cancer cure and maybe some better technology? I mean, if you look at Socialist cultures, they aren’t really good at creating things.”

“You’re right, it would be better to wait a few years.”

Sure, there’s been corruption since the first human, but not every society is the same. And societies like the 1950s in America had less corruption than any communist society, ever. And, I would argue that society was far less corrupt than society today. The outcomes were better – in most places, a locked door wasn’t required. The outcomes of society have drifted negatively in many ways. You could name them, so I won’t go into what would be a very, very long list.

Who had the biggest gender reveal party ever? Japan. In 1945 they had a Little Boy.

There’s more to this, but now, the Left is attempting to drive this world towards a future that is based on nothing but a theory that is no more sophisticated than a three-year-old’s version of what the world should be. Is it any wonder that as we get closer to those fever dreams, things get worse?

As that author I can’t remember said, we all die in a strange country. I’m just hoping that it stops sucking.

Life Lessons From George S. Patton, Jr.

“Do you think it would cause a complete breakdown of discipline if a lowly lieutenant kissed a starship captain on the bridge of his ship?” – Star Trek, TOS

If Peter Sellers fought for Patton, would he have driven a pink panzer?

I have been a long-time fan of General George S. Patton, Jr. It started when I was a kid, and my history teacher even ordered a few extra Patton films for the World War II section of U.S. history because he knew I was a Patton fan. Probably the biggest accolade that he could have was from the Germans who he fought, one of whom said simply, “He is your best.”

For whatever reason, though, I had never read The Patton Papers 1940-1945. On a whim a week or so ago, I ordered a copy, and I cracked it open at lunch the day it arrived before I headed back to work. I’m not sure I’ve ever enjoyed a book more. I’m not sure The Mrs. feels the same way, since when I’m reading it, about every five minutes I’ll come up with a snippet to read to her. She keeps saying, “Thanks, but no tanks.”

The book itself is a compilation of diary entries, letters Patton wrote, and orders he gave in the period from 1940-1945. To have the ability to read through those are amazing, even when he just writes about the mundane aspects of his life or his son having trouble in math at school. I didn’t start at the beginning, I just picked it up and started reading at a more-or-less random spot, which coincided with his taking command of American troops in North Africa. And then I couldn’t put it down.

While many passages have resonated with me, I decided to write about one in particular today. It consists of his instructions that were provided to his officers prior to launching Operation Husky, where he and Montgomery launched a naval invasion of Sicily. Spoiler alert: he did pretty well. This is one passage I’ll make sure to share with Pugsley and The Boy because there is so much truth not only in a military sense, but in life to what Patton wrote on June 5, 1943.

Stuff in italics is Patton’s (from page 261 and page 262). My comments are in plain text.

Discipline is based on pride in the profession of arms, on meticulous attention to details, and on mutual respect and confidence. Discipline must be a habit so ingrained that it is stronger than the excitement of battle or the fear of death.

Discipline can only be obtained when all officers are imbued with the sense of their lawful obligation to their men and to their country that they cannot tolerate negligence. Officers who fail to correct errors or praise excellence are valueless in peace and dangerous misfits in war.

Discipline starts with a single individual. In my case, it doesn’t come from without, it must come from within. Getting up on time. Paying the bills. Having a sense of purpose in life. It has been my observation that people will do what you want when you’re looking if they fear punishment. If they are being judged, they might do it when others are around. When it becomes a value, however, they do it every time, all the time, even when no one is looking, and even when no one will ever know.

Officers must assert themselves by example and by voice.

People watch. And people listen. Letting things slide never creates excellence.

There is no approved solution to any tactical situation.

There is only one tactical principle which is not subject to change. It is: “To so use the means at hand to inflict the maximum amount of wounds, death, and destruction on the enemy in the minimum of time.”

Obviously, war isn’t a game, but the lesson for life outside of attacking Sicily in 1943 still exists. And it’s not to use Claymores (FRONT TOWARD ENEMY) and a mortar barrage to open a business meeting. But I have been involved in business and life situations where time was of the essence, and being polite just had to go out the window.

Never attack [enemy] strength, [but rather his weakness] . . .

You can never be too strong. Get every man and gun you can secure provided it does not delay your attack . . .

Casualties vary directly with the time you are exposed t effective fire . . . Rapidity of attack shortens the time of exposure . . .

If you cannot see the enemy, and you seldom can, shoot at the place he is most likely to be . . .

Our mortars and our artillery are superb weapons when they are firing. When silent, they are junk – see that they fire!

One thread that runs through Patton’s writing and actions is his devotion to attacking. Defending wasn’t something that he was interested in. In life, I think that attitude is required. It’s easy to give up, it’s easy to fall into the trap that there’s nothing more to do, nothing more to gain. It’s similar to having all A’s on my eighth-grade report card and deciding to coast on that for the rest of my life.

Potential can only be realized if we push ourselves, and we can only push on the attack. So, attack life like a poodle going after a pork chop, up to the very last breath.

Never take counsel of your fears. The enemy is more worried than you are. Numerical superiority, while useful, is not vital to successful offensive action. The fact that you are attacking induces the enemy to believe that you are stronger than he is . . .

A good solution applied with vigor now is better than a perfect solution ten minutes later . . .

IN CASE OF DOUBT, ATTACK . . .

Again, attack. But the additional thought is added: don’t listen to your fears. Fear is something that will paralyze even a strong man. And from my experience, the best way to get over fears and avoid the paralysis that comes with them is to take action. What action? Any action that leads you toward your goal. Even the smallest action often sets off a cascade of following actions that lead to . . . success.

Mine fields, while dangerous, are not impassable. They are far less of a hazard than artillery concentrations . . .

Speed and ruthless violence on the beaches is vital. There must be no hesitation in debarking. To linger on the beach is fatal.

We are going to run into problems. Some of them huge. Some of them of our own making. The idea is to push through. The Mrs. and I watched a kid on the local wrestling team that was just awful in terms of skills, experience, and well, brains. But, he’d get it in his head that he could win, and he would go out and win some very, very unlikely matches. Why? He didn’t hesitate. He jumped on the chances he made.

I’ll probably have a few more of these as I go through the book. And, as much fun as it is to read, I’m going to take my time to enjoy it. I’d best show a little bit of discipline . . . Patton might be watching.

What’s The Meaning Of Life? It’s Right Here.

“Well, that’s the end of the film. Now, here’s the meaning of life.” – The Meaning of Life

The dinosaur with the cleanest teeth is, of course, the flossiraptor.

What are we here for? It’s a big question, and one we have to ask now. Sadly, I think the answer for many people would be, “inexpensive Chinese-made throw pillows, new Marvel® movies, and the next iPhone®.”

For most of my life, it was a clear question that didn’t involve any of those things, except maybe affordable throw pillows, because they wear out so very quickly. At some point though, I figured it out. What was it? The meaning of life, or at least the abridged version. The existence of my generation, of any generation, was for two reasons:

First, to create the next generation. It’s the toughest and most fun work in the world. A family, working together, would do the best job possible at creating the best children possible.

Why do we need those children? Why do they need to be better?

The “why” is the essence of the second reason. There are more challenges, literally an infinite set of challenges, that are before us. There are more horizons for us to conquer – we may have been to the Moon, but we don’t live there. We have sent robots to Mars, but we haven’t visited. Humanity has a job, and it has always been clear to me that our job was not yet done, at least not until we have developed a reliable way to make the PEZ®/Anti-PEZ™ drive (LINK).

I was at a performance of Hamlet when there was an earthquake. It was a Shakesperience!

Both of those answers rely on optimism. I think that optimism is justly earned. Even though humans have created unimaginable horrors, they have created, time and time again, amazing wonders. As Shakespeare’s Hamlet noted:

What a piece of work is a man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a god! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals!

What I see today, however, isn’t the wonder of man, it’s the crisis we face with apprehension. It consists of multiple fronts.

Energy: Even though we are up against physical limits on the energy systems that we use, the idiocy of the Green Energy™ movement feels more like a mutual suicide pact. The use of energy, primarily since the Industrial Revolution has created the greatest amount of prosperity and well-being the world has ever seen. It is an absolute certainty that if the Leftists have their way, the amount of misery around the world will make World War II seem like a carnival ride. I mean, not a good carnival ride, but at least it would have Patton.

How did Patton celebrate November? He gave tanks.

Family: One of the primary reasons for civilization in the first place is that it creates the basis for making itself better, and that basis is the family. Children are not easy to raise. Any single parent working by themselves would have been my victim. It took both Pa Wilder and Ma Wilder (along with my brother, John Wilder) to make me a better person than Feral John Wilder would have become. Family is important, and you can’t make good and strong children without one.

Morality: Morality is crucial. We have moved away from the moral basics that have created Western Civilization, and inverted them. We used to celebrate the beautiful, and now celebrate the ugly. And Pride Festivals®? Pride was a sin. And it still is. Unless it involves lions.

Who are the enemies?

The Globalist Left: This is a big bunch, but they come in two flavors.

The Globalist Left – The Antifa Gang: These are people, who, generally despise themselves. They revel in ugliness, because they feel that they’re ugly inside. They look at society and hate it. They want to watch it all burn. They hate themselves, and want to make the world outside as horrifying as the world they old inside themselves. This probably describes everyone that works at CNN®.

I had dinner with a journalist, but he pulled the labels off his ketchup and mustard. He liked to keep his sauces anonymous.

The Globalist Left – The Elite: They always seem to exist. They were there at the fall of Rome, they were there when the Library of Alexandria was sacked, when Russia became a killing ground, and when China killed uncountable millions. They appear to be the parasites that are jealous of real achievement and seek to game society so that they can come to power. They also appear to gravitate to power for the sake of power, and delight in the destruction of anything as long as it brings them wealth and comfort, even if it kills the host society.

Technology: I could go on all day, but there are two that jump out – they are the two most destabilizing technologies that exist today. Technology is difficult, because now it moves so quickly, but humans don’t adapt to it very quickly at all. I mean, VCRs existed and no one ever figured out how to stop the blinking 12:00.

Technology Itself – The Pill: To a certain extent, one of the big foes of humanity right now is our state of technological advancement itself. Multiple technological advances have created stresses that have never been seen before in human history. The first of these, The Pill, was a disaster. Some of the oldest rules to make society stable were about marriage and reproduction. Why? The stability of the family structure was ripped apart by The Pill, and the divorces started not long afterward.

The most effective method of birth control I ever used was my personality.

Technology Itself – Social Media: When the printing press was originally invented, it opened a world where the knowledge of the entire history of mankind could be shared. When the Internet developed, all of that knowledge could be shared freely. Instead, the Internet has become a dopamine factory that is one of the most insidious narcissism trap in the history of humanity. What could have united us has, instead, created zombies of people who sit in restaurants staring at their phones rather than talking to each other and having authentic conversations. This has created a world with artificial closeness between people who have no connection, and artificial barriers between those who should be close.

Obviously, I could keep going. The enemies of that which is Right, True, and Good are legion. The methods they use are diverse.

I bet he gets tired in prison explaining he made more than one bomb.

If I were writing a screenplay, I’d be wondering how I write myself out of this predicament. Thankfully, the answer is that I don’t have to. Western Civilization has defeated enemies just like these for thousands of years. We have been at the breaking point again and again.

It is true, we won’t be the same after this crisis. There’s no guarantee that the crisis won’t last for decades. And I promise it really will be the most difficult thing that any of us live through. I mean, those of us that make it.

So, what are we here for? We’re here to carry the torch forward. To have wonderful children that exceed us in our capacity, because there are tough horizons, and more work to be done. We are building the people that will take us into the future. They are our children. We build them for the future, so that they can build the future, despite the obstacles and enemies of humanity.

And we’ll win.

We always have.

Being Happier: Two Ways

“It’s not the money I’ll miss. It’s just all the stuff.” – The Jerk

What’s the difference between my dog and Amber Heard? My dog has never made a mess on a bed.

Most of the time when people think about being happy, it’s about things that they want to add to their lives. They want to get a new car. To buy a new house. To get a new iPhone®.

That list is mainly about things: stuff. It’s not surprising. $285 billion was spent on advertising in the United States in 2021 (this sounds high to me, but I found it in two different sources). Digital ads alone were over $150 billion of that. And every one of those ad dollars was spent for one reason – to make the person who saw the ad unhappy.

Advertising, to work, has to create enough discontent to make someone pull a wallet out and make a purchase. “Oh, that looks like a great PEZ® dispenser! I’m sad I don’t have it.” And, yet, when I finally get that limited edition Sturmgeschütz (StuG) 40 Ausf. F/8 PEZ® dispenser, I can finally be really happy. Hey, I didn’t choose the StuG life, the StuG life chose me.

Would the StuG have looked better wearing a tank top?

The reality is, though, that it would briefly bring me some joy, and then I’d put it with my Founding Fathers PEZ© dispenser collection that The Mrs. got me for Christmas in 2012, and notice it from time to time. So, in one sense, (some) things that initially bring us joy also just end up cluttering our lives. Oh, I wear my grandfather’s ring daily, but how much do I need to have that Helix® concert t-shirt from 1994?

The purpose of advertising is to make the hollowest promise of all: money for joy. Sure, if I had the choice I’d rather be rich and unhappy than poor and unhappy, because the food is so much better. But unhappy is still unhappy.

Who steals from rich college students to give to poor college students? Ramen Hood.

So, the advertising and “stuff” is a problem. Since I haven’t watched commercial TV in almost three years, most ads I get are fairly poorly targeted online and spur very little discontent, since half the time I’m not even sure what the ad is for anymore. It seems like the current standard for naming companies is to take a noun or verb, mangle it, and add something silly at the end. So when I see an ad for Vomitorius® I have no idea if that’s a food delivery service or a shoe designed specifically for left-handed hermaphrodites.

So, I’m happier here not by addition, but by subtraction. It’s hard to be brought into a state of discontent by ads I never see. Or don’t understand.

What else is making people unhappy?

Another thing that’s driving us nuts is what we’re being sold in popular culture. Popular culture right now seems to be based on some sort of variation on a single, simple theme: if it feels good, do it. And it seems to be getting worse, especially in the last ten or so years.

I got surprised at work by an inspection of the leafy vegetables in the produce department. No one expects the spinach inquisition.

If it feels good, do it is, of course, is a just a version of what Aleister Crowley (a candidate for most unpleasant man, ever) said, “Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.” And Crowley appeared to love the darkest sides of humanity. Heck, Crowley was a person that makes Hillary Clinton look like an amateur when it comes to the evil department.

This philosophy has been the driving force in culture for decades because it’s an easy sale – unlimited pleasure: all you have to do is ignore your values. This idea is implanted deep into the media: songs, movies, television, and even the news. Most of the time we don’t notice it for the same reason a fish doesn’t notice water – it’s all around us.

All of the behaviors that come from Crowley’s statement have had a horrible impact. It turns man from a person that reasons, delays gratification, and looks to a set of enduring values into a creature that is driven by the pleasures of the moment, no matter what form they may take or what consequences that might mean. So, I guess that brings Bill Clinton into the equation, too.

What do you get if you cross Bill Clinton and Hillary Clinton? Found in your cell, unresponsive.

Though it might seem like doing whatever we want whenever we want should make people happy, the result is almost always the opposite. True happiness, deep happiness comes from the opposite of the pleasures of the moment.

I’ll give an example: kids.

Kids are awful. They start out as useless blobs of flesh that smell bad. They take too much time. And then it gets worse. The time and emotional investment I have in just my son Pugsley alone has probably cost years of my life. I know it has cost tens of thousands of dollars in food alone, and that was just this week.

And I wouldn’t change any of it, especially now since he’s dropped out of the “being a total tool” phase. Raising kids has been the biggest battle of my life, and has also provided me the biggest rewards and the most happiness.

There is a new workout – you knock on every door in the neighborhood and talk to each neighbor. It’s called, “Jehovah’s Fitness”.

The things that are worthwhile, the things that provide the greatest joy aren’t easy, and you can’t buy them at Amazon®. The important things are difficult. The important things require discipline. The important things don’t happen all at once.

And, generally, the most important things can’t be taken away from you. And no one will remember you for your iPhone©, or your house, or a car.

Well, unless it was a really nice car or house.

Monkey Pox: COVID 2.0??? A story in pictures.

“No can do. I am itching all over with Angela-pox.” – The Office

I guess the Ukraine is waning. Time to pull out Monkey Pox®?

As we find ourselves at a time where action in Ukraine mainly consists of sending Zelensky more money so he can eventually recycle it to the Biden family, it appears to be time to (spins wheel) bring out Monkey Pox™ as the villain of the day. This post will mainly be memes. First, Monkey Pox©.

Note: none of the memes are mine today (except maybe one that I originally did and then recopied from another website).

This, though unconfirmed, is the scariest bit. Which in normal times, would make it unlikely. When Wilder’s Principle of Greatest Amusement is in play? All bets are off.

So, the planned “exercise” on Monkey Pox™ was written about in March 21, and has nearly exactly the same initial date as the actual Monkey Pox© reports here in 2022? Huh?

At least it’s a break from the war in the Ukraine.

Thankfully we didn’t treat masks like we were members of a cargo cult, right? And we’ve learned since last time, right?

Here’s hoping the mask part is over. And as it goes, that leaves the jab.

Death is so much worse without the Jab, right?

It would be hard for any logical person to support forcing people to take the vaxx at this point, especially given the data. But hey, is it really about keeping people safe?

I would have thought that, in addition to having the vaxx, that the Germans would at least want people committing suicide to spend a few months making panzers or something.

What was it that The Who said? We won’t get fooled again?

Does A 1904 Geopolitical Theory Explain The War In Ukraine?

“I don’t recognize him, but judging by the head-to-toe denim, I say he’s either not American or deeply American. I’m thinking Ukraine or Kentucky.” – Brooklyn Nine Nine

You would think that an octopus would go to war well-armed?

When I look at the war in Ukraine and other world events, I see evidence of Sir Halford John Mackinder. It would have been cool if he was the frontman for a 1910s version of Judas Priest, but no. Mackinder was a guy who thought long and hard about mountains, deserts, oceans, steppes, and wars. You could tell Mackinder was going to be good at geography, what with that latitude. The result of all this pondering was what he called the Heartland Theory, which was the founding moment for geopolitics.

What’s geopolitics? It’s the idea that one of the biggest influencers in human history (besides being human) was the geography we inhabit. Mackinder’s first version wasn’t very helpful, since he just ended up with “Indonesia” and the rest of the world, which he called “Outdonesia”.

Mackinder focused mainly on the Eurasian continent. Flat land with no obstacles meant, in Mackinder’s mind, that the land would be eventually ruled by a single power. Jungles and swamps could be a barrier, but eventually he thought that technology would solve that. Mountains? Mountains were obstacles that stopped invasions, and allowed cultures to develop independently. Even better than a mountain?

I crossed a dog and an antenna once. I got a golden receiver.

An island.

There’s even a theory (not Mackinder’s) that the independent focus on freedom flourished in England because the local farmers weren’t (after the Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Mormons, and Vikings were done pillaging) subject to invasion and were able to develop a culture based on a government with limited powers, along with rights invested in every man.

Mackinder went further, though. He saw the combination of Eurasia and Africa as something he called the World Island. If the World Island came under the domination of a single power, he thought, it would eventually rule the rest of the world – it would have overwhelming resources and population, and it would have the ability to outproduce (both economically and militarily) everything else.

“Pivot Area” is what Mackinder first called the Heartland.

Mackinder, being English, had seen the Great Game in the 1900s, which in many cases was a fight to keep Russia landlocked. The rest of Europe feared a Russia that had access to the sea.

Conversely, Russia itself was the Heartland of the Mackinder’s World Island. Russia was separated and protected on most of its borders by mountains and deserts. On the north, Russia was protected by the Arctic Ocean, which is generally more inaccessible than most of Joe Biden’s recent memories.

Russia is still essentially landlocked. The Soviet Navy had some nice submarines, but outside of that, the Russians have never been a naval power, and the times Russia attempted to make a navy have been so tragically inept that well, let me give an example:

The sea Battle of Tsushima between the Japanese and Russians in 1905 was a Japanese victory. The Japanese lost 117 dead, 583 wounded, and lost 3 torpedo boats.

But the Russian Seals did work just for the halibut.

The Russians? They lost 5,045 dead, 803 injured, 6,016 captured, 6 battleships sunk, 2 battleships captured. The Russians sank 450 ton of the Japanese Navy. The Japanese sunk 126,792 tons of the Russian fleet.

Yup. This was more lopsided than a fight between a poodle and a porkchop.

Mackinder noted that the Heartland (Russia) was built on land power. The Rimlands (or, on the map “Inner Crescent”) were built on sea power. In the end, almost all of the twentieth century was built on keeping Russia away from the ocean, and fighting over Eastern Europe.

Why?

In Mackinder’s mind, “Who rules East Europe commands the Heartland (Russia); Who rules the Heartland commands the World Island; Who rules the World Island commands the World.” In one sense, it’s true.

Mackinder finally in 1943 came up with another idea, his first idea being lonely. I think he could see the way World War II was going to end, so he came up with the idea that if the United States were to team up with Western Europe, they could still command the Rimlands and contain the Soviet Union to the Heartland.

There are several reasons that the United States has responded with such an amazing amount of aid to Ukraine. $33 billion dollars? Some people don’t work a whole year and get that much money.

Crimea River? No, Crimea Peninsula.

No, the idea is to bleed Putin as deeply and completely as they can. Why? If they’re following Mackinder, this keeps Russia vulnerable. It keeps Eastern Europe from being under Russia’s control – if you count the number of “Battles of Kiev” or “Battles of Kharkov” you can see that it’s statistically more likely to rain artillery in Kiev than rain water.

This might be the major driver for Russia, too. A Russian-aligned (or at least neutral) Ukraine nicely plugs the Russian southern flank. And this is nearly the last year that Russia can make this attempt – the younger generation isn’t very big, and the older generation that built and can run all of the cool Soviet tech?

Looks like Nirvana killed the Russian sex drive?

They’re dying off. Soon all their engineers with relevant weapons manufacturing experience will be . . . dead. If Russia is going to attempt to secure the south, this is their only shot. Depending on how vulnerable the Russians think they are, the harder they’ll fight. NATO nations tossing in weapons isn’t helping the famous Russian paranoia.

I think that the United States, in getting cozy with China in the 1970s, was following along with Mackinder’s theory – I believe Mackinder himself said that a Chinese-Russian alliance could effectively control the Heartland and split the Rimland, given China’s access to the oceans.

And that’s what China is doing now, with the Belt and Road Initiative. Remember Mackinder’s World Island? Here’s a map of the countries participating in China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

Never forget China’s national sport: hard labor.

Spoiler alert: It’s the world island.

Belt and Road Map: By Owennson – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0

Inflation: Crowding Out The Real Economy

“You don’t? Well, you don’t have to understand what it eh, it eh . . . It was printed in eh . . . Washington. Well, and when they print something in Washington, they know what it means.” – Green Acres

“Never trust an actor with a gun.” – Abraham Lincoln

Like the beginning of a movie starring Will Smith as Winnie the Pooh, Amy Schumer as Piglet, and Mitt “Mittens” Romney as Christopher Robin, you know one thing: the pain is only starting.

The pain I’m speaking of is inflation, though. I’d love to be the bearer of happy news. I’d love to say, “Nah, as soon as things straighten out in (spins wheel) China West Taiwan, things will be better. Nope.

Let me explain.

The Federal Government is really good at exactly two things, and one of them is spending money. Since they already donated a few billion bucks worth of stuff to the Taliban, they decided to go for a few trillion to everyone who was breathing.

What’s the difference between a rake and an AK-47? Don’t ask me, I just fly the drone.

The spending has been amazing, and it has created the expected result: inflation. It’s not done, though.

As I said, the Federal Government is good at spending money, but it’s slow at spending money. Although it looks like the Federal Government is just willy-nilly stuffing the money it just printed into the mouths of anyone nearby, it’s much more complicated than that.

First, a bureaucrat has to invent the program. And that means?

Paperwork. That has to be reviewed and approved. And every buzzword of sustainable and underserved and economic equity has to be mashed into the program and form. Once complete?

The program has to be announced, and various states, counties, alternative bands, and alternative energy providers then pounce on the paperwork to ask for buckets of cash. Biden’s grants for free crack pipes won’t figure out what communities they need to go to by themselves!

This process takes months. Then, once awarded, people need to order the crack pipes from China Terre Haute. Why not China? This is the Federal Government, and we know it is charged with protecting the American Crackpipe Maker Equalitarian Sisterhood (ACMES). So, all the crack pipe materials will be locally sourced from approved Wiccans.

How to cook crack and clean crabs: step one – use commas.

If it stopped at crack pipes, it would be fine, probably. But it’s not just that. It’s concrete for a burst of road construction. It’s rebar for the concrete. It’s plywood for the forms.

There was already price pressure on almost everything. Now that some of the largest steel (around 100 million tons of production) works in the world are shut down or sanctioned due to Vlad’s Spring Vacation, (not to mention fuel costs shooting up higher than a T-72 turret) that rebar is now much more expensive.

If that were the only problem, these sort of crushing cost increases would probably be something that we could live with. But whenever the government wants to buy a cubic yard of concrete to make a new office to process paperwork for Build Back Better Bux applications, well, that increases the cost.

For everyone.

In Denmark, they tried to repave a street with Legos®. They ran into a lot of roadblocks.

It makes the cost of building or expanding a business higher, unpredictable, and perhaps unattainable. Government spending – trillions of dollars of government spending that came from money that was simply wished into existence – crowds out private spending.

That means the new Pizza Hut® can’t be built because concrete is too expensive. That means the new PEZ™ factory can’t be built to keep up with the PEZ© demand because steel for the machinery costs too much. The alternatives that create a productive economy are walled off due to increased costs.

So, it’s happening now.

A little.

I’m telling you now, the big waves of Fed.Gov spending have yet to hit. Hundreds of millions of dollars more than the usual printing are hitting the economy – each month. The pressure from printing has yet to stop. It has yet to slow. It is still increasing.

I don’t think my doctor likes me. I called him and told him that I took a bunch of sleeping pills. He told me have a few drinks to relax.

The economy of every country that hyperinflated did so because of one simple reason: the leadership seemed to not understand that printing didn’t lead to prosperity. They had some sort of belief that money was a magical totem so that they could print more, and people would be happy.

In small quantities, it works. Home prices go up. Prices go up. People who save (as always) are the ones that get burned as their saved cash lowers in value.

Germany hyperinflated in the 1920s because they wanted to print cash. Lots of it. They didn’t have the good fortune to be able to create all they wanted with computers and the press of a button, so they had to hyperinflate the old-fashioned way: printing.

How bad did it get?

That certainly didn’t lead to any sort of social upheaval.

They managed to double the capacity of the printing press by only printing on one side.

I bet we can match that: I bet we can start making electronic money with only four bits per byte. I guess I can be the bearer of glad tidings and report there is good news, though:

We don’t have to watch a movie starring Will Smith as Winnie the Pooh, Amy Schumer as Piglet, and Mitt “Mittens” Romney as Christopher Robin. We’ve got that going for us.

The Coming American Dictatorship, Part I

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why? This why is important.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What, then, do the people want?

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

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

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

And that’s how you get a Dictator

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

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

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

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

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

In Soviet Russia, Internet brings cat to you!

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

Hello . . . Vindman.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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