Category: Propaganda

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.

It Came From . . . 1995

“Man, there’s not a year that goes by, not a year, that I don’t read about some escalator accident involving some bastard kid that could’ve easily been avoided had some parent, I don’t care which one, but some parent conditioned him to fear and respect the escalator.” – Mallrats

Is that Neandergibson? Joe Piscopo?

While the 1980s allowed for gonzo productions of very uneven quality to become classics (Better Off Dead, for instance) the 1990s box office was much more crowded and the studios began to spend even more on the films. I’d say that a random movie from 1995 was more professionally made than a random movie from any year in the 1980s, but had a lot less heart.

As to the continuation of the series, I’m not sure if we’ll do 1996 or end it here. I think I’m done with the 1970s, though I have another idea that amuses me that we’ll try in late August. As always, I’m also willing to consider lists of genre flicks, but pretty soon that ends up with movies no one ever saw.

As usual, sequels are excluded on the list. I don’t consider Mallrats a sequel. Thankfully, I make the rules. You may appeal. It will be denied.

As an aside, I don’t think you can overestimate the propaganda impact of films. Just like listening to music puts your brain into a state of suggestable hypnosis (which is why I like to listen to kick-ass music rather than sad stuff most days) so does film. Film takes the next dimension above music by adding visual stimulus, making the hypnosis even more effective. What I take in does impact me, so I consider that more and more as I grow older and as it’s thrown in our faces with the last decade’s worth of propaganda films. I understand now why some don’t like horror films for just that reason. I do like them, still, but I’ve become much more selective as to what I let in the transom.

Speaking of which . . . .

That poster gives me tentacles. I mean tingles. And it looks like Ralph Macchio.

In the Mouth of Madness – I love good Lovecraftian horror. Cosmic horror is at its best when it sketches a universe of limitless expanse where we’re just nubs sitting in the darkness while titanic forces beyond our understanding play out around us. It’s like whistling through the graveyard, if you will. When I first saw In the Mouth of Madness I hated it, because I didn’t get it. Now? My opinion is that it’s great cosmic horror, and shows off Sam Neill as he unwittingly brings about the end of the world. With popcorn. Like most of Carpenter’s work, it has a large following, but was box office poison. But he gets the last laugh in this one.

I have a particular set of skills. Murder and guitar solos.

Rob Roy – Scots fighting to be fiercely independent, while being swindled and taken advantage of by rape-y foreigners? If only they would do that in 2025. Tim Roth steals the show in a perfectly creepy performance with hair appropriate for Isaac Newton if he played guitar for Queen®. It did okay at the box office.

If you’ve seen the movie, this makes a little bit of sense.

Crimson Tide – Another submarine movie because, well, why not? In this one, though, Tony Scott (same guy who cooked a Goose in Top Gun) gets the most out of Denzel Washington and the late Gene Hackman. To be clear, Hackman was still alive during the movie. The two are officers on a nuclear missile submarine that have to decide if they’re going to shoot off nuclear missiles after losing communications with Starfleet®. Me? I would have launched the missiles because that’s one way to get in the history books.

Should this one be called “Bravefelt”?

Braveheart – Tons of historical inaccuracy? Check. Mel Gibson with more hair than an 80’s glam band? Check. Ludicrously long runtime of nearly three hours? Also check. In spite of these things, this was a huge hit. Swords. Women. Bravery. Sophie Marceau at her peak Marceau-ness. What’s not to love?

I still remember when he outran Kevin Spacey to maintain his virginity in the climax.

Apollo 13 – This movie follows the life of a young transgender long-distance runner (Tom Hanks) who needs an older mentor (Kevin Bacon) to buy him shoes because he grew up in a third-world country that couldn’t afford to have a Nike® store or electricity or food.

I need to post this on Rob’s X® feed.

Judge Dredd – Some comic book purists don’t like this version because in the comic books Dredd never takes off his helmet, but Stallone wanted to show off his hair. The (much darker) 2012 reboot Dredd features a Dredd™ that always covers his hedd. I didn’t care, really, since I found this movie both stupid and hilarious and one of Rob Schneider’s best roles. Huge flop. I wouldn’t recommend it, but yet I enjoyed it. Does that mean I hate myself? Anyway, the 2012 version is a much better movie.

Wait, what if every suspect was Rob Schneider? That would be wacky!

The Usual Suspects – Cost $6 million, made nearly $70 million. This one gets the most out of fairly talented cast in a crime mystery, and I will admit that the ending did surprise me when I watched it on a rental VHS tape from Blockbuster™, because I did not know that late fees could get that high. I still don’t know how the tape ended up behind the couch. Maybe it was Keyser Söze?

Wow, those guys are more swole than I recalled. The 90s rocked!

Mallrats – A $6 million dollar budget. $2 million in ticket sales. I think the budget skips all the advertisement for this thing – you couldn’t go anywhere young adults were in 1995 without seeing ads for this movie months before it came out. This movie is a very stupid comedy that brings us Jason Lee (My Name is Earl) as a guy on a quest to get his girlfriend back. I think. It’s funny in a juvenile way, but was also the product of its time. Watched it with my boys, they thought it was hilarious, but were also fascinated, like anthropologists studying a world that existed a thousand years ago.

I hope it’s as good as the sequel to Hamlet.

Leaving Las Vegas – Darkest movie on this list. Watched it once, not sure I have it in me to watch it again. The guy who wrote the semi-autographical novel it was based on killed himself when he found out it was going to be a movie. Guess he really, really, really, really didn’t like Nic Cage.

Heat – I was debating if I was going to do “It Came From . . . . 1995” at all, but the meme above (as found) convinced me that I should. Big hit that I somehow missed and watched a few years ago after Aesop mentioned it. No weapons were injured during the filming of this movie, but not for lack of ammo. Thank heavens Sig® hadn’t introduced the P320™ yet or else half of the ammo fired wouldn’t have needed an actor fanning the trigger. Related news: I hear Alec Baldwin is going to be Sig©’s spokesman.

Four Rooms or Fur Rooms?

Four Rooms – An anthology film that I saw in an arthouse theater (the only time I’ve ever been to one) with a buddy. I guess being in an arthouse theater is with another dude is the gayest thing I’ve ever done in my life, besides that one time I had a wine cooler. Regardless, I enjoyed it, since each one of the four films was essentially a joke tied together by Tim Roth’s best comedic performance. The first film is by far the weakest, but, I can’t call it awful because, boobs.

“Waiter, there’s a rubber chicken in my soup.”
“No there isn’t.”
“Yes, there is. What is it doing there.”
“The backstroke, I believe.”
Now for something completely different.

12 Monkeys – Is he crazy, or is it time travel? Why not both? Terry Gilliam was generally the weakest member of Monty Python®, but he’s done much better as a director. Regardless, this movie brings together Bruce Willis and Brad Pitt in roles very much against the stuff they normally did, with Pitt even getting nominated for an Oscar™.

Not included? Seven. Species. Strange Days. Sense and Sensibility. Really, any movie starting with ‘S’ from 1995. I kid. Things to do in Denver When You’re Dead also nearly made the list.

What did I miss?

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.

34 Signposts On The Way To Civil War . . .

“Who else is on the list?” – The Godfather

Terrorists really help with self-esteem issues.  They keep telling their new recruits, “You’re the bomb.”

The devolution of the United States was predicted by Thomas Chittum in his book Civil War Two, The Coming Breakup of America.  Although you can find it for free online, I strongly encourage you to purchase it from Amazon®, since Mr. Chittum does get the money from this and has been using it to get families out of South Africa.

Towards the back of the book, Mr. Chittum provides the Civil War II Checklist, a list of 36 items “in no particular order” that he sees as measurements along the way to Civil War 2.0.  He wrote the book originally in 1997, and updated it in 2007, so we’ll be marking close to two decades of time between his last update and this quick analysis.

Item 1:  Every time you see a blank for your ethnic group on a form, think Civil War II.

Recent Supreme Court rulings as well as President Trump’s removal of DEI at the federal level have taken us back from the peak, but I believe many federal DEI organizations are still there, just under different names.  Regardless, it’s a part of our culture now.  Check.

Santa never pays for parking – it’s always on the house.

Item 2:  If illegal aliens are allowed to vote, even in local elections, it will be another unmistakable signal that American citizenship, and therefore America itself, is finished.

California, Maryland, and Vermont allow this.  Check.

Item 3:  The abolition of the right to bear arms.

This is one area where we’ve made great strides since Mr. Chittum wrote his book.  Gun rights are at the best condition that they’ve been during my entire lifetime.  This is the power of a group keeping after it year after year.

Item 4:  Watch for racially split juries.

We are here.  Multiple cases of black criminals walking free despite clear proof of guilt of them killing white people exist.  Check.

Item 5:  Watch for the military to assume police duties.

I have to give this a “not yet” since the National Guard and Marines were in an unarmed force protection role in Los Angeles.

Item 6:  Watch for the establishment of an elite military force outside the chain of command of the regular military to serve as an internal counterinsurgency force.

Not seen, unless I missed this or the Ghostbusters™ count.

I hear the Ghostbusters™ didn’t wear unusual socks, just a pair of normal socks.

Item 7:  Watch for Washington D.C. to increasingly resemble the capital of some banana republic under siege by revolutionaries and mobs.

I’m going to give this a check as the periodic riot fences go up.  Check.

Item 8:  Resegregation: Watch for Africans and other minorities demanding, and often getting, separate facilities for themselves, another clear sign that they’re continuing to reject co-option.

Absolutely.  From graduation ceremonies to student unions to “safe spaces” this is common even though they still claim a Constitutional right to be around white people.  Check.

Item 9:  Watch for further replacement of individual rights by group rights, group rights based on ethnic group.

This had been well underway, and is likely only slightly impeded by the Trump administration.  Check.

Item 10:  Watch for non-governmental organizations acquiring military power.

Outside of Blackwater™ or whatever Erik Prince is up to, I don’t see this as significant.

Item 11:  Watch for real political power to continue to shift from our elected officials to the courts, and thus away from the American people.

Check.  Check.  Check.  The courts in the United States are fundamentally a liberal institution, and are acting as a one-way rachet – the GloboLeft can do anything, but TradRight can’t change it a bit.  Check.

A hamburger walked into a bar buy they wouldn’t give him a beer.  They don’t serve food.

Item 12:  Watch for more instances of real political power flowing from American institutions to international bodies, thus again flowing away from American citizens. 

There has been some of this, especially with the drive to worship Climate Change, and the drive has been to create these not as treaties, but as international “agreements” that don’t require ratification.  Check.

Item 13:  Watch for minorities and radical whites to continue to seize control of American institutions.

Check. 

Item 14:  Watch for secessionist movements and other movements seeking autonomy on American soil.

I’ve seen several of these show up on the TradRight, very few on the GloboLeft because they cannot accept the idea of people opting out of their delusions.  Besides, the biggest sign of an impending divorce is Mom and Dad talking about it.  Check.

Item 15:  Watch for race-based political parties, a sure sign of racial polarization.

Trump won 42% of the Hispanic vote, so not quite there yet.  Only 16% of blacks voted for Trump, and if that was the only group we’d call it.  Verdict:  not yet.

Item 16:  Watch for the emergence of “no-go” areas for the police in our cities, areas abandoned by the police and left to the control of street gangs.

There are plenty of these in the United States, and even more in the summer during riot season.  Check.

Item 17:  Watch for a so-called slave tax refund or some similar vehicle that will automatically subsidize all blacks for life.

This has not happened.

The Vatican doesn’t take them though, it’s a PayPal™ state.

Item 18:  Watch for court orders and other schemes mandating more voting districts in which blacks are intentionally a majority.

This has 100% happened in Alabama.  Check.

Item 19:  Watch other multiethnic empires for ethnic violence, a general loss of democracy, increasing poverty, waves of refugees, and their actual breakup in ethnic warfare.  South Africa, Russia, Turkey, the Balkan countries, Brazil, all of black Africa, Mexico, Guatemala, India, Pakistan and Peru are all multiethnic empires to some extent.

Mixed bag, but I’ll give it a check as the waves of refugees and poverty are evident in many of these.  Check.

Item 20:  Watch for the spread of walled suburbs, euphemistically labeled as gated communities.

This continues.  Check.

Item 21:  Watch for more mind control hoaxes by the establishment media.

This references the fake and contrived news.  Absolutely this is happening.  Check.

What does Willy call an economic depression?  An everlasting jobstopper.

Item 22:  Watch for an increasing percentage of minorities in our military, the use of foreigners in our military, the use of UN troops on our soil, or even the establishment of an American Foreign Legion.

This is partially true, but UN will likely never happen.  I’m still giving it a check.  Check.

Item 23:  Watch for more out of court settlements in cases of alleged racial discrimination. 

I think most of these are out of court or are administratively done at this point.  Check.

Item 24:  Watch for more restrictions on freedom of speech by the government and the establishment media.

This has happened, especially on the Internet.  If not for Musk’s purchase of Twitter™ this would have been complete, reducing actual free speech to a vanishingly small number of sites.  Check.

Item 25:  Watch for police to increasingly abandon their traditional uniforms for ones that resemble military and secret police uniforms in their dark color or camouflage, military helmets, opaque face shields, and absence of name tags.

Barney and Sheriff Taylor are gone.  Check.

When the military becomes the police, citizens become the enemy.

Item 26:  Watch for clandestine groups of white officers to form within our federal, state  and local police – groups similar to the Resistors in the Green Berets.

I have no idea.  Clandestine, right?

Item 27:  Watch for an arm of the federal government charged with promoting racist affirmative action, such as the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, to acquire agents that carry guns and have the power to make arrests. 

Nope.

Item 28:  Watch for the collapse of the US dollar as the world’s premier currency.

In progress, but still the world’s main cash, so not yet.

Item 29:  Watch for growing geographic segregation and its increasing mention in the establishment press.

I’ve seen dozens of articles about just this happening and that Idaho is full and that California plates on a car are like a kick-me sign on the back of the class idiot.  Check.

Item 30:  Watch for signs that the global military equation and American dominance in it are being challenged.

Not yet.  We’ll see.

I wonder if they’ll wear plaid?

Item 31:  Watch for the breakup of Canada. If Canada does break up along ethnic and linguistic lines, it will bode ill for its neighbor which is an even worse multiethnic and multilingual mishmash. 

I’m calling this one a “never will” as Canada has self-immolated with unending waves of third-world immigrants destroying the place.  Item Removed.

Item 32:  Watch for an increased flow of Americans immigrating to Canada.

It’s up, not by much, and why would you move to Mumbai on the Arctic Ocean?  Item Removed.

Item 33:  Watch for political and legal organizations formed along ethnic lines that will parallel, and ultimately displace their official rivals.  For instance, watch for organizations with names like The Association of Hispanic States, or the Black Mayors Conference.

There are plenty of these.  Check.

Item 34:  Watch for more help wanted ads stating that job applicants must be bilingual.

Check.

Item 35:  Watch for indications that the UN is assuming the role of a world government, and that the US is losing even more of its national sovereignty to the UN.

No.  The UN is weaker now than at any time in history.  We have, however, lost a lot to international treaty organizations and corporations.

Item 36:  Watch for a certain picture. We’ve all seen this picture countless times before, a picture from Beirut, Budapest, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Yugoslavia, Somalia – a burnt-out tank, perhaps the charred corpse of a crewman protruding through a hatch, and jubilant rebels posing atop the tank waving assault rifles and a flag. Someday we shall see this picture in our newspapers yet again, and this time taken on American soil. The tank, the dead crewman, and rebels will all be Americans, all will be American except the flag, which will be a Mexican, Aztlan, New Africa, or Confederate flag. When we see this picture, it will be too late. Civil War II will be upon us. But there’s another picture we’ll see first, again one we’ve all seen before from some unfortunate land. But this time it will be taken right here in the US of A – a picture of a dirty, ragged child foraging for food in a garbage dump.

I’ll leave number 36 up to you.  Here’s my nominee photo.

Summarizing that, my count is that there are twenty or twenty-one landmarks complete out of the total thirty-four landmarks on the way to Civil War 2.0.  I think that in no way do all thirty-four have to be checked for war to be here – it’s just a barometer.

What’s your score?

It Came From . . . 1994

“Never interrupt me when I’m talking to myself.” – Timecop

All Hanks, All the TIme

We turn in our review of movies to 1994.  I’m not sure that I’ll keep going backward in time unless there’s a clamor for it, but we’ll keep going forward in time, at least for a bit.

1994 continued the trend of comedies being less funny and more . . . stupid?  Offensive?  Cringeworthy?  Whatever the term, the downgrade picked up steam in 1994.

As usual, no sequels are on the list.

Yes, two retards in a movie.

Ace Ventura, Pet Detective – 1994 was the year of Jim Carrey, and this was his harbinger film.  I’m not going to include Dumb and Dumber or The Mask on this list, since all three of those movies are essentially the same thing:  Jim Carrey being Jim Carrey.  The only problem is I find Jim Carrey untalented and irritating, sort of like a syrup of ipecac flavored soda with a side of cold gravy.  Honestly, I’d rather drink the gravy and ipecac than watch a Carrey movie.

I must be dreaming!  Who is that in the background?

The Ref – The first half of The Ref is hilarious, and probably the funniest movie set-up in forever. Denis Leary plays a caustic burglar perfectly.  Great, right?  It is up until it becomes a slow and boring family drama.  If whoever had written the first half of the movie had written the second half, it would have been better.  Or maybe it was all written by George R.R. Martin?  Not recommended.

With textbooks on loan from God . . .

PCU – It’s supposed to be a movie sold as a reaction against the growing forces of political correctness.  And it does have some pretty funny lines, but in the end it uses political correctness to make the villain look like the bad guy.  Still, worth a watch.

Looks like his chickens have come home to roost.

The Crow – I remember seeing this one in the theater – it was a good watch, and a fun movie that was done well in a bittersweet way.  Some of the scenes are over the top, and the motivation of the bad guys is still unclear, but those are only minor quibbles .  Regardless, it’s a beautiful film that is based on real-life tragedy and ended in real-life tragedy.

If infinity Kiefers could hold infinity smaller Kiefers.

The Cowboy Way – The Cowboy Way is probably the second-best comedy on this list.  If it was a TV show, it would have been called Beverly Hillbillies Vice.  Yes, the fish out of water movie, but this time with smart cowboys making the city slickers look bad.  City slickers don’t like that.  It stars Woody Harrelson, who is listed at 5’10”  (6 meters) in height, which means he’s really like 5’5” max.  This created some special effects problems since his co-star Kiefer Sutherland is only 14” (0.00045 meters) tall.

Driving around a bus at night covered in flour, I guess.

Speed – Ted “Theodore” Logan plays a cop on a bus that will explode if it goes below 50 miles per hour because Dennis Hopper doesn’t like public transit and is against Sandra Bullock adopting a football player.  That might be off a bit, since I haven’t seen this movie since 1994.  It was okay, but made $350 million at the box office.

Forrest Gimp or Forrest Gump? 

Forrest Gump – The movie on which the sage advice “never go full retard” is based.  1994 loved this movie in a way that only people who love Jim Carrey can love a movie, rewarding it with $680 million bucks at the box office.  Tom Hanks plays the titular character.  Titular is a way less sexy word than what I thought it would be when I was in fifth grade and looked it up in the dictionary.  I feel the same way about this movie in retrospect – it was fun when I first watched it, but looking back on it, it I certainly don’t recall why – perhaps it was the looming hollowness of the 1990s?  But that’s all I have to say about that.

True Lies – In 1994, James Cameron could have filmed a trip to the supermarket and people would have paid $380 million in box office bucks to watch it.  Throw in a near-peak Arnie and a Jamie Lee Curtis that was 10 years past her prime (her prime was in Trading Places, fight me) and even I went to go watch it.  This movie while enjoyable to watch and having Bill Paxton at his funniest, could have been titled Generic Action Flick.  Not that it’s bad, it’s just the same movie that Arnie would stamp out like Pepsi™ makes plastic bottles for a few more years in the 1990s.

Now with electric neon ukeleles. 

Airheads – Steve Buscemi, Adam Sandler, and Brendan Fraser as a metal band that kidnaps a radio station.  Yes, it’s a comedy.  Yes, it’s silly.  Third best comedy on this list.  Also, another box office bomb.

“In my dreams he’s always there . . . “

In the Army Now – Proving my statement of cringe being the new comedy, here is plaintiff’s exhibit A – Pauly Shore.  Also in this movie is plaintiff’s exhibit B – Andy Dick.  Both in the same film, creating a sort-of black hole of smug-cringe.  This, my friends, is what will end the Universe.

A lighthearted musical animation about war and cannibalism, brought to you by Disney®.

Rapa-Nui – It is certain that a huge civilizational collapse happened on Easter Island.  It was started by white colonizers who cleverly set it in motion 100 years before they arrived.  Wait, that doesn’t sound right, did the Europeans have time travel?  No, I just channeled a GloboLeftist.  In reality, population on Easter Island overshot and they had a famine-induced war.  This movie is about that.  A popcorn movie to watch with the toddlers?  Probably not, unless their favorite book is “Baby’s First Cannibal”.  I thought this one was pretty good, but I was distracted because I was watching it with my toddlers.

Looks like JCVD’s time machine works!  Look how old he is!

Timecop – Jean-Claude VanMC2.  The title is the movie plot.

Wouldn’t his name be Morgan Prisonman?

The Shawshank Redemption – I’m gonna catch flack for this one, but I didn’t love it.  I didn’t hate it, but I didn’t love it.  I mean, you would have thought that after 142 minutes that the Beavis and Butthead would have scored some beer.

What if Wolverine worked for Marcellus Wallace?

Pulp Fiction – The actual best movie of 1994.  Quentin Tarantino manages in his first major release to let people know he had already mastered a game that many other film makers had no idea they were playing.

And one of them has a beagle named Snoopy®?

Clerks – The actual funniest movie of 1994.  Made for $10,000 – it was everything that the other comedies on the list weren’t – smart, apolitical, rough around the edges, and it had 0% Jim Carrey.  The story of two clerks on a very long day where one of them wasn’t even supposed to be working.  Kevin Smith was never as good again as his first outing, but that was at least partially due to the fact that his first outing is a classic.

Don’t blame me, Grok™ picked this one.

The Puppet Masters – Robert A. Heinlein’s story of insidious alien control somehow seems ripped from the headlines when I see the woke mind virus doing what aliens could only dream of.  I thought it was a faithful adaptation, but it still makes me wonder how 7’3” (16 meters) Donald Sutherland managed to father the lilliputian Kiefer.

Interstellar PEZ®.

Stargate – A fast-paced documentary about Egyptian archeology that’s not to be missed.  Plus?  Kurt Russell.

Back then Tom sure attracted the . . . .

Interview with the Vampire – A pretty fair adaptation of Anne Rice’s novel of the same name.  Cruise hasn’t aged a day since then, so maybe he picked something up when he did this film?

That’s it.  There were several I had to delete due to length.  Again, several good, solid movies as comedy morphed from its 1980s peak into the Jim Carrey abysmal.  The innovative 1980s action films began the process of mass production as budgets kept growing larger and larger and failures became less tolerable.  21 sequels were in major release in 1994 (this was the big jump from 1993 when there were only 13).  There were 9 in 1974, but in 2014 . . . ?  34.

I had to bump several films, and I could list them, but, hey, why don’t you let me know what gems should be on the list?

How Society Shapes Humanity

“Don’t worry, scrote. There are plenty of ‘tards out there living really kick-ass lives. My first wife was ‘tarded. She’s a pilot now.” – Idiocracy

Apple® has embraced the future: they’ve already priced in 20 years of inflation.

One constant theme of this blog is change.

We live in a world that is defined by change, and the benchmarks we measure society are things like change in GDP, change in population, change in the availability of different PEZ™ flavors.

Blue is a flavor, right?

The focus of humanity on change is not the norm, but rather an exception. The amount of novel situations and technology entering our lives is at an all-time high and is increasing year-over-year.

Let’s backtrack a bit and put this in perspective.

Going back to food, 15,000 years ago we ate a lot of meat and fish, some rando fruits and vegetables that some cave-bro had been brave enough to taste and not die, and nuts.

Nothing about society would change for 15,000-year-ago bro’s tribe for thousands of years.

There are people who maintain that the human organism hasn’t changed enough so that our very different diet of sugar, grains, sugar, industrial chemicals, sugar, minerals from a mine in Bulgaria, sugar, beef jerky, and microplastics isn’t somehow normal and that our bodies haven’t adapted to it.

Maybe they have a point?

Why can’t Elvis drive a Cadillac™ in reverse? He’s dead.

Anyway, this isn’t so much about feeding your head as it is about feeding your mind with the change in the way we deal with information.

How has that changed humanity?

In the beginning was the Word. And, the word.

If you couldn’t speak it, chances of getting your genes propagated were slim because if you can’t talk your grubby cave-gal out of her wolfskin jeans, your genes aren’t gonna be around for the next round. Thus, we became a society where language was important so her Tinderclub© didn’t swipe left.

Then we started writing stuff down. Most kings and leaders didn’t need this, but a growing segment of the population did – people like scribes and lawyers. Eventually, they made more money than people who couldn’t read. The ladies of the past weren’t so different than the ladies of today (except they couldn’t vote and were property pretty much) but the written language genes also showed up for the future.

In lots of places, but not all. Some never jumped from talking to reading, so the segment of their population that couldn’t read never got flushed. This is evident in many sub-populations even today.

Can illiterate psychics give palm readings?

Generations of humans would live and die during this period with little change in technology or the basic factors that determine the shape of their lives. They would be born and die in a house that looked just like the house (and maybe was the same house) that their ancestors 100 years previous had lived in.

Writing and reading made society more complex, and allowed ideas to span continents, and I’ve written about this before. So far, so good. But more complex societies have more complex outcomes. Rather than sort for good eyesight or the ability to take down a mammoth, the selection process moved to selecting for people who got along well with strangers, and who could plan.

The harsher the climate, the more the pressure for these selections. Did we still need people who could kill, kill, kill? Sure we did. They came along, too because their mating opportunities are high. There’s a reason that 1/8 of Asia is related to Genghis Khan. I think his go-to pickup line was “I’ll conquer your steppe, baby.”

His mom’s advice was, “Just because you Genghis Khan, doesn’t mean you Genghis Should.”

At some point around the Renaissance, Western civilization decided to get rid of the members who had impulse control issues. England, for example, started executing criminals who couldn’t control themselves, and kept it up for hundreds of years. This was pretty good at weeding out the undesirables. China had gone through this process hundreds of years in the past, which may explain why so many Chinese have a bit of Khan in their respective woodpiles.

Societies back then also let stupid people die. There wasn’t a welfare system to keep stupid people alive, so there were selection pressures for smart. Some folks call it “social Darwinism”, but I call it the universal penalty for being stupid.

Essentially, this is a society-enforced soft eugenics program, culling out a portion of the population just because they never make enough money to breed. And, let’s be honest: everyone feels bad for the kids on the short bus, but nobody really thinks they should be having kids of their own in an attempt to see how many more chromosome pairs than 23 that you can fit.

Well, 24 and Me© now has a new customer.

Society has changed now. Besides subsidizing poverty, which ensures we’ll have more of it, we’ve also changed in a fundamental way how we take in information.

The media we consume has been decreasing in complexity for over 100 years. My guess at the high-water mark for complexity in media and the most intelligent era in human history (in Western Civilization) would be around the time of Dickens. Go back and read the language of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, a series of debates meant to appeal to the common voter of the time, and tell me what would be made of the breadth of language and the depth of argument today?

Could an average eight grader keep up with it? Could an average Harvard™ freshman without having ChatGPT® or Grok© summarize it?

Since current political debates look much more (in many cases) like the wrestlers of the WWE™ before a steel-cage match, I think most people would get bored and wander off.

That’s the media that we’re trained with today.

We went from books, to magazines, to television, to 10-minute YouTube™ clips, to 20-second TikTok™ videos. Trump? His 2016 election was based on 140-character Tweets™.

The building of complex arguments has largely been abandoned in the public sphere and decisions of vast chunks of the population are made on what emotions are stirred by looking at a photograph. Certainly, many of those are now staged, and in a decade half of them will be the propaganda products of A.I.

I always make it a point to respect the modesty of women wearing bikinis by staring at the parts of their body that are covered up.

The selection and sorting still exist, but now it has (like in the film Idiocracy) selected for people who are the opposite of the groups society selected for in 1820: someone seems to want low-impulse control, and non-productive populations that are incapable of planning. Sure, it could be a coincidence that major policy initiatives all remove incentives for stupid people not to have dozens of babies.

This process, thankfully, is self-limiting. A technological society depends on a stream of competent people to plan and run society. And, no, not like Soviet Central Planning, but rather, “Hey, we need more lettuce in the Modern Mayberry Walmart©, so since we’re Walmart™ and want to make money, we should ship them some” planning.

It’s always quicker to burn down a house than to build one, so it’s really no surprise that making things worse is a lot easier than making them better. Paraphrasing what Thomas Sowell (I think) said, “We shouldn’t look at poor places and ask why they’re poor, we should look at rich places and ask why they’re rich.”

Nah, there aren’t any votes in that. And it sounds like hard work, right? Besides, stupid is growing faster than TikTok™ dance challenge videos.

Have we reached the point where we’ve made a society so complex it allows devolution to the point it can no longer be maintained? If so, congratulations! You’ve been alive during the period of peak novelty in human history.

The good news is that you can get blue-flavored PEZ™ here at the peak.

Misplaced Empathy: It’s Killing Us

“Is this to be an empathy test?” – Blade Runner

An MS-13 sociopath that was incapable of understanding the feeling of others was diagnosed with empanada.

Empathy.

I first heard that word when I was five.  I asked Grandma McWilder what empathy was, and was told that “Empathy is what bleeding heart GloboLeftist women do while their men do the dishes.  Now get to work resizing that brass – this ammunition won’t reload itself.”

That’s supposed to be good, right?  We’re supposed to feel good about ourselves when we care about others enough to mentally put ourselves in the position of another to share what they’re feeling.

Empathy really is part of what makes us human.  Empathy allows us to model other humans and understand how they’re feeling.  And, in some cases, anticipate how they’re going to feel.  Like asleep.  Or perspiring.  Or sticky.  You know, emotions.

Empathy is important.

If he sold weed from Ireland, would he be Ma’am O’gram?

But the problem starts to occur when empathy becomes our sole guide for how we conduct our world.  One example are the transgender people.  I still recall when the blonde gentleman with longish hair who was larping as a woman in a store back in 2019.  He got famously irate because a flustered clerk couldn’t process that Macho Ma’am Trandy Savage was pretending to be a woman.

Because he was in this very weird place, his brain short circuited.  He had been taught at a very young age that it was polite to call an older man sir.  Confronted with the cognitive dissonance of what was obviously a man in makeup, his synapses fried by adrenaline, he did what he had learned as a babe.  He called the dude, “sir.”

I doubt Trandy Savage would like this song.

While demanding empathy, the dude showed none himself.  Empathy on the part of this brittle freakshow would have solved the situation, but the reason that it felt itself privileged enough with his lipstick and five o’clock shadow is because society has shown far too much empathy for people like him for far too long.  Misplaced empathy has turned him into a sociopath.

You want to play pretend?  Fine.  Keep away from children, and don’t expect me to participate in the charade.  And don’t yell at some minimum wage clerk who is really just trying to help.

We also show empathy for the wrong things.  Who was the worst person in the movie Titanic?

You know, if you think the sinking of the Titanic was a tragedy, remember about the lobsters in the kitchen.

Rose.  She was the villain.  She’s married, but cheats on her fiancé with a random Chad urchin and then spends the next 84 years pining for Chad, all while being married to someone she didn’t love nearly as much and then drops a necklace worth (according to the Internets – it’s fictional) $3.5 million dollars into the ocean.   This could have been a life-changing inheritance for her great-grandchildren.  But no.

Everything is about her.

The audience is supposed to feel empathy for her?  Hell, she could have jumped in and let Chad live, or died with him.  No.  She’s awful.  But she’s not alone.  Hollywood loves trying to make people feel empathy for the bad guy.

And don’t get me started on Dead Poets Society where the teacher played by Robin Williams (who is the walking, talking essence of the French Revolution) removes all the value systems from his students while giving them nothing to take their place.

The real bad guy in this movie is the teacher.  But you’re supposed to feel bad for him because he got fired, but not bad because his removal of a belief systems without replacement caused a kid to commit suicide.

Because the teacher convinced the kid to throw everything away and become an actor.

Kirk couldn’t sing, though.  He had trouble with trebles.

You don’t hate Hollywood enough, but let’s move to hospital beds.

And don’t get me started on the misplaced empathy in health care, where literal titanic efforts (no necklace) and tons of treasure go into the last, miserable year of the lives of most people.

We also have addled ourselves with empathy via the Internet.

There are those that share so much online, that I honestly believe that they cease to exist if they’re not posting.  Who cares what other people think of your lunch?  Who cares what other people that you’ve never met think about you?

As found.

This weird, parasitical empathy where people feel good about themselves only because others think well of them is the sympathy of a society where values and laws are being replaced by the feels.  Look at the way the GloboLeft work to keep a criminal illegal in this country, and whine and cry to keep him from being returned to his own country.

It’s misplaced empathy.

This also has implications with race.  People felt badly for black people, having empathy for discrimination.  Now?  Black entitlement is so strong that they feel that a killer is the actual victim, rather than the person he stabbed, and expect people to feel their pain.

This is at least in part because of the way misplaced empathy has let blacks act in violent fashion and subsidized their lifestyle through welfare.  Misplaced empathy tells people they don’t have to conform to societal norms.  The GloboLeft can’t wait to knit them sweaters and sacrifice their children to them.

Enough is enough.  Empathy is not a blank check.

The good news is that people are finally waking up, and realizing that it is far past the time when we as a society need to end our misplaced empathy.

That’s good.  After all, that ammunition won’t reload itself.

It came from . . . 1993

“I’m your huckleberry.” – Tombstone

I have no idea who half the people in the picture are, but, hey, the logo rocks.

1993 continues the descent from the 1980s and Peak Movie, but as comedy fell, action movies continued to produce fun films. What did become more pronounced was the dismal “woke” viewpoint as shown in Falling Down.

As usual, there are no sequels on the list, though in 1993 there were 13 major releases that were sequels. In 2013, there were 33. In 1973, there were just five.

Let’s start with a movie that you can sink your teeth into:

I guess rugby players really will eat anything, but why didn’t they eat all those darn cats before carving up Carlo?

Alive – Not the best movie to take a date to if you’re planning on having dinner afterwards, this straight-forward tale of the rugby team stuck in the Andes when their plane crashes nevertheless nourish the soul with the feeling that people of taste will always be tender friends. When I left the theater, I felt so full . . . of life. In reality, most of the survivors were outrageously successful, since life had already thrown the biggest hurdle that it could at them and they came away satisfied. Note: although they were from pretty rich families, but, hey, they turned out to be salty guys in a savory story.

If this movie were about lawncare, that poster would be perfect.

Hexed – I first saw this on a video I rented from Blockbuster™. It didn’t have a big budget, and it lived up to it. In a sense, this is a throwback to an 80s comedy with a bit of Fatal Attraction thrown in for good measure. Is it a good movie that I would recommend? No. Is it a footnote of a fading genre? Yes. Bonus points: Claudia Christian’s body double is naked.

I told Grok® to have Tom Berenger eating crayons, but Grok™ told me he played a Marine, so that would be redundant.

Sniper – Sniper inspired 10, yes 10 sequels. It is an action film where Tom Berenger and Billy Zane play snipers wandering around South America shooting people. It’s decent action, and, obviously cheap enough to make that all of the sequels were profitable.

Now hear me out, every character except Murray is a groundhog.

Groundhog Day – This movie is about the invasion of giant, sentient, robotic groundhogs that just want to burrow and take over humanity, but are instead frightened when they see their shadow . . . from an atomic explosion. Just kidding. You know this one, the best romcom of all time (with the exception of Sniper Six, The Unsnipable). ‘nuff said.

Okay, Antonio Banderas wasn’t in the movie, but Grok® made the poster like this, and I loved it.

El Mariachi – Shot on a $7,000 budget in 14 days (from money raised by being a lab rat for experimental drug testing) El Mariachi is pretty good, and I was really surprised by it when I saw it on VHS back in the day. A tale of violent Mexican crime, you can now save your theater dollars and just watch the news from Los Angeles.

This would probably have been a more positive movie.

Falling Down – Where to start on this one? First, it’s probably the most prophetic movie on the list. Micheal Douglas plays a disgruntled, unemployed engineer whose wife got bored and divorced him. In short, he’s a person that society has passed by and from his perspective, the world is dystopian, so why not blow it all up? The parallel character in the film is the cop chasing the engineer, played by Robert Duvall. In one scene we see that the cop is retiring, and that he is being (not so subtly) replaced by a Hispanic. And, I think that (less than secretly) the director, Joel Schumacher (a gay GloboLeftist) was enjoying the torture of the Douglas character as he watched the world he grew up in implode. I wrote the preceding before I found this quote from the author: “The main character represents the old power structure of the of the U.S. that has now become archaic, and hopelessly lost.” So, yeah, nailed it.

Turns out the Roadrunner™ was trying to knock over the Fed®.

Cliffhanger – Whew, that last one was dark. This one, not so much. While the 1990s may have killed the comedy, the action film was still going strong. The move stars Sylvester Stallone, John Lithgow, some other people, and a mountain. Guns? Yes. Climbing? Yes. Tension? Well, we know the good guy is going to win, so, not so much. A fun ride.

Is Jurassic Pork the bacon I’ve left in the fridge that scientists brought back to life because they could, but never asked if they should?

Jurassic Park – This was Spielberg at, perhaps, his best. It was the number one hit of the year, and ended up on every lunchbox, video game, comic book, t-shirt, and tattoo in 1993. It was also the highest-grossing film of all time until Titanic ruined James Cameron for us. Everything came together in this one – the music, the cast, the story, the special effects, all perfect for the time and place. Sadly, they never made a sequel.

Back, and to the left. And then the PEZ™ comes out!

In the Line of Fire – Again, action movies were pretty strong in 1993, and Clint Eastwood taking on an evil genius assassin played John Malkovich is a pretty good story. Dylan McDermott Mulrooney is also in it. Okay, I know that Dylan McDermott and McDermott Mulrooney are supposed to be two different people, but, really, have you ever seen them together?

I was wondering how to get this joke into the post, and Grok™ did it for me.

So I Married an Axe Murderer – Before Michael Myers was shagging spies, there was this lighthearted movie about a woman whose romantic interests keep being murdered. Hint to everyone: this does not indicate the basis for a stable relationship, since that’s a 10 on the hot/crazy matrix, she’d have to be a 10.

So, it looks like the acid made them all Salvador Dali.

Dazed and Confused – Nostalgia for the relatively free-range days of the 1970s had already hit the people having kids in 1993, or so the producers hoped. This movie was made for late-stage Boomer/early-stage Gen X kids who didn’t go to see it, since it was a box office bomb that has sent become a cult favorite after the careers of so many actors that were in it took off. Watch this right after Falling Down as a palate cleanser. Or, that might make it worse, seeing what we’ve lost.

I tried to make Grok® do Sandra Bullock in a swimsuit, but that was a massive failure.

Demolition Man – I love stupid action movies. This is set in the distant future of 2032 where woke culture has taken over and no one has sex anymore. Sylvester Stallone and Wesley Snipes were frozen during this time so that the plot can happen, as two barbarians from the 1990s make fun of woke culture.

No one is doubting that fire.

Mrs. Doubtfire – Is it predictive programming to try to shove strong, independent women plus crossdressing in the same movie? I did not like this movie even though I’ve found several of Robin Williams’ movies to be okay, but the divorce theme soured the whole plot for me. Apparently, I was alone, since this was the second-highest grossing movie of 1993.

Okay, at this point, Grok© would only draw Mrs. Doubtfire. So? I went with it.

Tombstone – Tombstone was on the list even before I had heard Val Kilmer had died, and he really had the best performance in this popular movie. I still rank this as my third-favorite Kilmer role, behind his roles in Top Secret! And Willow. Tombstone, though was a solid Hollywood western.

As we move along, comedy is obviously dying out though one of the greatest is on this list with Groundhog Day, but action movies are doing okay, even if they’re becoming a bit more comic book and less Dirty Harry each year.

But I’ll always remember the wisdom I learned from Alive: the more you eat, the lonelier you get.

What did I miss?

The Erosion of Trust: The Secrecy State Sucks

“We’re drowning in secrecy, and the lifeguard’s on their payroll.” – The X Files

“Hello, is the anonymous NSA hotline?”
“Yes, John Wilder, how can we help you?”

As near as I can tell, in 1970 the U.S. government was still highly trusted.  Sure, there was Vietnam, but we had landed men on the Moon and I’d suggest that, while trust wasn’t as high as it had been in the 1950s with the “super science will save us” feeling that culminated in Apollo, it was still pretty high.

I think the Nixon takedown is when the mistrust started to metastasize, though I’m open to other suggestions.  Regardless, this is the time when the lid comes off.

The Nixon takedown was big – the tapes showed Nixon’s complicity in a petty break-in to get information from the Democrats that was entirely unnecessary due to Nixon’s popularity.  Plus it was sloppy – I think they picked the locks with Twizzlers™.

But the even bigger impact was a collapse in trust.  At least one person who was there at the time, Geoff Shepard, thinks that Nixon was taken down by the security apparatus, more commonly known as the Deep State now when prosecutors colluded with judges and suppressed evidence in order to get Nixon out of office.

Does that remind anyone of the Russian Collusion Hoax?

I bought a toothpaste called “Death”, and now every morning I have a brush with Death.

Add in revelations in the seventies about Operation Mockingbird coming in 1976, where it was alleged that the CIA, operating in the United States, had manipulated the news media (over 400 journalists) to influence the American public.  Oh, and the CIA program MKUltra, a program that tested drugs and psychological torture on hundreds if not thousands of unwitting civilians.

Like Ted Kaczynski.  If he hadn’t been MKUltra’d, perhaps he would never have developed fascination with the US Postal System.

Nixon’s fall opened the floodgates, and 1976 was the year the dirty laundry really started showing up, skidmarks and all.

Also, in 1976 the Select Committee on Assassinations came to the conclusion that JFK’s assassination was the result of a conspiracy, but couldn’t figure out who was responsible.  I mean, it’s congress, right?

1976 was a year when trust began to evaporate, and that trust evaporation was really about seeing what people did behind the cloak of secrecy.  Gallup™ polls showed that trust in government in that year was 36%, down from 73% in the 1950s.

Some Indian wrote a book for nervous surgeons:  The Calmer Suture.

Now, do I believe that secrets can and should exist?  Yes, I do.  I remember coaching a game of PeeWee football, and wanting to see if a particular trick play was legal, so I went into the rules, and found this gem, “Deception is the heart of football.”  I had never thought of it that way, but that’s 100% correct, and the same would be the case in war, so, yeah, there are the need for some secrets.

It’s clear, however, that we’re doing secrecy wrong.  I’d like to think that we were on the right track to defang the security state, but it’s actually headed the wrong way.  In 2001, the Patriot Act was passed into law in October, not six weeks after the 9/11 attack.  The law was 342 pages, and was amazingly complex, since most of what it did was amend other existing laws, you know, turning “shall not” into “shall”.

Don’t worry, though, we’ve got a special court that was established under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).  Oh, the FISA court gives the government a yes 99.9% of the time – over 78,000 requests, and only TWELVE denied?  Well, they said no at least once, so they’re not a rubber stamp or anything.  What’s the motto of the FISA court?  “Yes, Daddy.”  And you don’t want me to get into what their Tinder® profile says.

In 2013, Edward Snowden, a former NSA contractor, blew the whistle on the U.S. government’s mass surveillance programs.  Snowden leaked classified documents to journalists at The Guardian and The Washington Post.  The revelations were huge:  emails, chats, browsing histories of anyone that the FBI or CIA or NSA wanted to look at.  And the NSA used the “Five Eyes” sources, so if they were prohibited from snooping on a person, boom, just have the Aussies do it for us.

And it’s certain they are still doing it.  Secrecy has enabled these nightmares.

Speaking of still doing it, those 51 former intelligence officials that said Hunter’s laptop was Russian disinformation?  It’s the Security State trying to get its preferred candidate elected.  And why are Epstein’s records still not public?  Saving it for a rainy day?

I hear that Epstein used to high-five his guards, but the last one left him hanging.

Although I don’t have any evidence for this statement, I am nearly certain that the Deep State is still committing horrors under the cloak of classified information, things that no politician sees.  It is certain that this information is used for political blackmail and control on a regular basis.

Paging Epstein, anyone?

The government still echoes the worst of Project Mockingbird, putting pressure on the social media outlets to censor information they don’t like, from COVID to anything pro-Trump.  The FBI flagged over THREE THOUSAND accounts for censorship.  Secrecy has gone from a tool to keep us safe to a weapon to keep us in line.

The physicist Eric Weinstein thinks that string theory (in physics) was created to stop actual, useful research in physics.  Why?  To distract the Russians (and now Chinese) because you can’t classify physics, and someone in .gov thinks that there are some significant physics applications they don’t want the world to see, especially related to quantum gravity.

Please don’t ask me where all my cats went.

Do we need to end secrecy entirely?

Certainly not, but when the CIA still holds that lemon juice as invisible ink is a state secret, we live in Clown World.  Here are my suggestions:

First, no secrets, at all, after sixty years.  Okay, maybe fusion bomb design, but even the Pakistanis can figure out atomic bomb design when they can’t figure out can openers, so we’ve got one secret.  Maybe set up a board that will allow one secret per year related to technology that the other side hasn’t figured out yet.  But only big things.  Like time travel.  Or the feared anti-PEZ™ bomb that eats all the PEZ© and leaves small pictures of Rosie O’Donnell everywhere.

Second, after sixty years, absolutely no redactions in the released documents.

Third, someone needs to watch the watchers.  There needs to be an oversight board, and protection for whistleblowers like Snowden that show blatantly illegal conduct.  How do we prevent them from being co-opted by the Security State?  That’s a hard question.  Maybe have a clean AI review them?

Fourth, reform and fragment the CIA, the NSA, and most of the FBI.  Certainly, take guns away from them (and the ATF, but that goes without saying).  After Ruby Ridge and Waco, it’s obvious these children can’t be allowed to play with firearms unsupervised.

We need to break the glowie machine so that it can’t police itself.

The Indian philosopher said:  “I think, therefore I scam”.

Transparency in government isn’t a luxury; it is survival for freedom.  We need to demand Sunlight.  From a CIA document (declassified):

“The free society must have confidence that its oversight mechanisms have adequate access to secret material to make judgements, and that this judgmental process is being exercised independently.  There has to be trust that secrecy is not being used against the best interests of the free society; that the activities which are being protected by secrecy are being conducted effectively . . . .  It is this confidence and this trust in the oversight mechanisms which has broken down.”

This was made public in 1996, when things were certainly better than they are today.

Me?  I think that if we can build trust with Sunlight, maybe well get back to some of that super-science optimism of the 1950s.  On to Mars, maybe using quantum gravity propulsion . . . .

Lost The Plot: 17 True Things We Forgot

“To tell you the truth, Bilbo has been a bit odd lately.” – The Fellowship of the Ring

Would you call someone who microwaved hot dogs Frank Zappa?

Something went off the rails in the twentieth century.  If I were to try to pinpoint it, it would probably be around when Woodrow Wilson was president, as if a large darkness began to descend and ooze through society.  It has been slowly corrosive for decades, but the post-2000 years, and especially the Obama years really saw it make insidious . . . progress.

Why?

At least in part because we forgot many of the really important things that we have always known, for the existence of mankind at least, to be true.

Below is a list of 17 True things that people “forgot” for a few decades that have pushed our civilization to collapse:

  • Men and Women Are Physiologically Different

This has fed the current trans nonsense, and still exists when every single scientific study has shown that the average man over twice as strong as the average woman, and almost always the strongest woman in a study is weaker than the weakest man.

I wrote a book on penguins once.  In hindsight, I should have used paper.

  • Men/Women Cognitively Different

Again, there are basic differences in the way that a woman’s mind and a man’s mind work.  Men are better at spatial thinking, reasoning, and math, whereas women are exceptional at waging personal vendettas for petty reasons.  Oh, and empathy.  Women are good at that, too.

  • Race Is A Real Biological Fact

Race is really more than skin deep.  I once saw a post where the Red Cross™ was looking for more black donors because of the various cofactors that make it a better match for black recipients.  More than that, A.I. can tell the race of a patient by an x-ray.  So, besides being blood, skin, and bone deep, each race was isolated and separated in time, in some cases by more than 70,000 years (Australian Aborigines).  So, yeah, people of different races are different.

  • Intelligence Is Mostly Influenced By Biology

Anyone who studies intelligence will tell you that at least 50% of intelligence is inherited, and the number might be 80%.  Does that mean two absolute idiots might not birth a genius?  Sure.  It could happen.  And there might also be desperate single MILFs less than a mile away, like my computer keeps telling me.

Einstein married his cousin, proving that even his marriage was relative.

  • Character Is Mostly Influenced By Biology

Growing up in a small town, people would say things like, “That family is no good,” and they were generally right.  Are we slaves to it?  No.  Whereas with intelligence, you can’t hone it, with character you can, which means that maybe not all is lost for Hunter Bi . . . oh, too late.

  • The Family Is Society’s Atom

Feminism requires that the individual be the atom of society so that women can be EmpOwERed grrlbosses, but that is clearly insanity.  No family, no society – it all falls apart.

  • Culture Isn’t Interchangeable

Tacos aren’t Viking.  And culture is far more than a taco.  Why lots of people don’t recognize American culture is the same reason that fish don’t recognize water – they’re surrounded by it all the time and can’t imagine life without it.

  • Borders, Language, Culture, and People Define Nations

Without those, it’s either a country or an empire and not a nation.  And if it’s a country, it will Balkanize or be led by an authoritarian.

  • GDP Growth ≠ Happiness

GDP growth was a focus during the Cold War.  Why?  We needed stuff to beat the horrific ideology of the commies.  We won.  But now we try to make an economy larger at the expense of the people.  How many rich couples were happier when they were young and poor?

I’m joining a Cold War reenactor group – we get together on weekends with a keg and without cell phones and listen to heavy metal.

  • Work Has Intrinsic Value

Sweat builds your soul and gives you freedom—UBI and welfare are cages for the human soul.

  • Competition Drives Progress

And war is the ultimate competition.  What has happened to the vitality of Europe as it has the longest war-free period in its history?

  • Death Is Inevitable

Blue Öyster Cult® said that you shouldn’t fear the reaper, and that’s fairly sound advice.  We’re all going to die.  The parade will end.  To paraphrase Monty Python, we will all become ex-parrots.  Focus on the living bit, and add in a little more cowbell.

I hear that when ducks fly over the pyramids, they flock like an Egyptian.

  • Equality Doesn’t Exist

Equality under the law can exist, equality of rights can exist, but people are unequal in every possible physical, cognitive or moral way.

  • Authority Exists For A Reason

The Founding Fathers thought long and hard about how to set up self-governance in the United States.  They didn’t settle on, “everyone do whatever they want”.  Authority in society is required because:

  • Humans Are Imperfectible

Chasing communist Utopia led to more deaths in the twentieth century than any other man-made condition.  People are flawed, and systems have to take that into account.

Is a classy fish sofishticated?

  • Truth, Beauty, And Goodness Exist

Not GloboLeftist “My truth” but Truth, with a capital T.  The same with Beauty and Goodness, both of which the GloboLeft similarly tried to define as nonexistent.

  • A Divine Presence Exists

YMMV, but everything I’ve seen shows that this is both a physical and mathematical certainty.

That’s a start at the list, and I’m sure you have more.  Whenever a society becomes based on ideas that aren’t real, it becomes unstable.  Whenever a Man With A Plan® says that they’re going to rebuild society, run.

And when people spout corrosive philosophies that tear apart families and create societal misery, why do we reward them by sending them to congress and or giving them prestigious professorships?

What other things that everyone knew in 1025 A.D. have we forgotten?