Know Your Enemy

“I am not a number. I am a free man!” – The Prisoner

The GloboLeft and the GloboLeftElite are not tied to the countries they live in.

Instead, they are tied to their class.  A professor from Boulder can glide into a conference in London or Paris or D.C. and feel exactly the same:  the same polite applause, the same correct opinions, the same network of people who went to the same schools, read the same journals, and never once had to fix a carburetor.

The nice hotel room, the brandy, and the bacon-wrapped shrimp taste identical whether the view is of the Flatirons, the Thames, or Islamabad on the Seine.  These people deal almost exclusively with other members of their class.

Our daughters have to be sacrificed.

That is who they are loyal to.  They are largely unelected yet have an outsize impact on your life, like Anthony Fauci or the CEO of Disney®.  And it’s also elites in virtually every facet of life.

An example:  the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops.

In 2024 their financials showed $180.4 million, 81.8 percent of their operating revenue, came from government contracts and grants tied to illegals and refugees.   Why are we inundated with illegals?  You’re paying to be inundated with illegals.  The illegals and refugees stream across the border in unending numbers because we paid for them to come here.

For the Catholic hierarchy the calculation is simple:  mOaR Catholics, regardless of where they come from or what they believe outside of their first Holy Communion.  Now, I don’t want to be a killjoy to the bishops, but St. Thomas Aquinas would beg to differ.  Aquinas actually cared about the common good of a particular people in a particular place.

The modern bishops appear to care more about the grant pipeline.

When your funds allow hordes of illegals and other foreigners to finally show up, their very presence funds the GloboLeft again.  More students who don’t speak English equals more jobs for predominantly GloboLeftist teachers and interpreters.  More violence in schools from poorly adjusted foreigners equals more jobs for counselors, social workers, speech therapists, and cops.

The entire apparatus expands.

The GloboLeft does not merely tolerate the invasion; it metastasizes it into salaries, pensions, and moral superiority.

I remember a conversation with a perfectly credentialed GloboLeftist who looked me in the eye and said, with complete sincerity, “Well, if we don’t have them (illegals) here, the cost of strawberries will go up!”

Yes, yes they will.  And the job of picking them will go to an American.  Without the influx of illegals it could be one of those heavily-credentialed parasites who have burrowed into the system and now find actual labor beneath them.  The strawberries will still get picked.

Let’s see the response . . . .

It is not only the obvious GloboLeftElite.  Recently Senator John Curtis of Utah, “Republican” Senator John Curtis got body-slammed in the comments on X® because he wants to import more foreigners through a state-sponsored visa scheme complete with a quiet pathway for long-term illegals.

Republicans won’t vote to stop it.  Many of them are already in the club, or they desperately want the membership card.

I guess no one in Utah is smart enough to run a hotel desk.

The bacon-wrapped shrimp is excellent, have you tried it?  Do you really think John Curtis will ever vote to send them home?

This is the deliberate dismantling of the old labor market filled with independently minded people who can still remember a nation that was not an open-air hotel for the world’s surplus population.  Those people sound dangerous, they sound like they may not support the government.

The people don’t support the government?  Easy solution: import different people.  To make it stick, let’s also pull heritage Americans out of the middle class.  People in the middle class have pesky opinions, spare time, and haven’t been worn down so they still have enough energy to make trouble.

If they were desperately poor, they’d complain less.  Heck, why stop there?  If you want a civilization to disappear, the easiest method is to pay their women more money.  They will happily take the lazy-girl jobs, postpone children indefinitely, and die surrounded by boxes of Chardonnay and pristine, unused wombs, ending family lines.

(h/t Vox Day LINK)

They also, on purpose, fail to go after certain criminals.  Those Flock© cameras blanketing the suburbs are not primarily aimed at inner-city gang members, cartel drug dealers, or illegals.  Those crimes are useful to the GloboLeftElite.  The cameras exist to track and punish the middle class.

Don’t believe me?  In Great Britain, murderers routinely receive lighter sentences than people who publish mean tweets.  When’s the last time a black murderer was charged with a “hate” crime?

This is policy.

The GloboLeftElite need the middle class to comply, and they need the anarchy from below to justify their own continued existence as managers of the chaos.  The violent and the non-productive are their power base and their enforcers while the middle class represent the last pool of money they haven’t sucked up.  After they’ve done that, they’re desperate to replace you.

How desperate are they?  They will import people from countries whose average I.Q. would make a decent room temperature if you happened to be wearing a sweater. This is the root of the competency crisis you see every day:  airplanes that crash, ships that smash bridges, and schools that don’t teach.

They do not care.  It does not impact their lives one bit.  The conference circuit continues.  The brandy is still poured.  The bacon-wrapped shrimp is still tasty.

The GloboLeftElite are not traitors to their countries in the old sense.  They simply no longer have countries.  They have a class, a set of hotels, and an endless supply of other people’s children to feed into the machine.

A machine that runs on shrimp, apparently.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, Urban Versus Rural Edition

“Your predecessor assumed that rural policing was easy.” – Hot Fuzz

There’s a new urban reality show where judges free inmates who like fishing, called “Off the Hook”.

  1. Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
  2. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
  3. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  4. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  5. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  6. Open War.

Volume VIII, Issue 3

Most memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.  I have maintained the Clock O’Doom at 9., given the open support of assassination and criminality by the GloboLeft and the increase in violence as well as direct interference with ICE and the insertion of the military into law enforcement.  Beware: the number can climb quickly.

My advice remains.  Avoid crowds.  Get out of cities.  Now.  A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Rural Versus Urban:  Who Wins, And Why  – Violence and Censorship Update – Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report.  These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month.  I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues.  Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 820 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Rural Versus Urban:  Who Wins, And Why

In July I watched some summary videos on the Chinese Civil War, especially the 1945-1949 period as well as the Russian Civil War which lasted between 1917 and 1922.  It was interesting, because these wars followed completely different strategies.

Let’s start with the Russians.  The Soviet strength was in the cities.  The rural population was, while drunk, mainly anti-communist.  The Soviet strategy was simple:  stay in the cities with the large recruitable population, maintain control of the railway transportation network, and when Moscow must munch mutton, they’d take the train to Tombov and steal several sheep.

Long, protracted conflicts end up being resource wars.  Cities provided the Russians with munition factories and lots of young men without jobs that could be conscripted to fight for the Soviets.

In Russia, the Soviets won using the cities.  Commies like the Soviets, which they swear would have worked out better if only Stalin were still alive.

I hear Stalin’s favorite vegetable was a Soviet onion.

China was the opposite.  For almost the entire war, the Nationalists owned the cities and most of the rural area.  But after World War II was done, Mao got serious and used the rural area as his base.  The commies in China spent a lot of time on propaganda in rural areas, even having plays to make the rural folks pro-Mao since they didn’t have TikTok© to make them love commies.

The biggest stroke of genius, though, was in giving their newly-recruited peasant soldiers land.  Chinese agricultural land had been mainly owned by a large landowners, and this gave their soldiers skin in the game, and also the belief that they would be executed if Mao lost.  The cosmopolitan Chinese Nationalists lost to the rural communists because the rural commies thought they were fighting for their lives.

What can we takeaway from all of this?

First, I think that with the nationalist/conservative/rural versus GloboLeft/urban split, the resources of electricity, food, and even water in some cases are fully in the hands of the rural block.  Stocks of food are no longer kept in cities as they were in the past.  The Siege of Paris during the Franco-Prussian war lasted four months before they had to shoot the zoo animals to eat them.

The Germans threw bread at the French during the siege.  They called it gluten-tag.

Today’s cities have about three days of food in them in the stores, and three days in the individual homes.  So, inside a week, people would get hungry.  Not starve, but get hungry unless they got sea and air lifts of food inbound.  Given the levels of self-control of certain segments of the population, well, how long before cites go full Alferd Packer?  Since they’d be surrounded by millions of residents with more weapons and ammo than all the militaries of the world, combined, they could be easily contained.

Cities also suffer from tHeiR GreaTeST StrENTh:  Diversity®.  Why would Somalians fight for Minneapolis or Minnesota?  If their cushy scam life was threatened, they’d just leave.  Or fight against the rest of the people in town to take it over.  Same with Dearborn, Michigan.  Think those moslems would fight side by side with blacks from Detroit?  And the GloboLeft Feminista© and TranBrigades® would fold as soon as the air conditioning went off.

But this is a “national” civil war that had sufficient coordination to make a national or largely national confrontation happen.

What about local wars?  Most of the trigger-pullers in the armed forces are rural.  In a regional or state-based conflict, like Texas declaring independence, how many will break training?  The 101st Airborne was certainly fine fixing bayonets against high school students to force integration, so will they follow orders against Americans?  In the hypothetical case of Texas leaving, probably so, but it’s far from certain.

What do cities control?  Well, money.  They could shut down the banks.  Since this is imaginary, I’d imagine the disruption would be huge, but manageable at some level since the grain is still in the silos in at the railyard.  Of course, leadership, communications, and cohesion across a regional or national level is crucial.

The biggest threats that the GloboLeft present is either on a short term or a long term.  In a short term, a coup of the systems by the rising Democratic Socialists is becoming a real threat, especially since they’d immediately co-op the existing government systems and promise that things would return to “normal”, but their definition of “normal” would require a lot of executions.

The other threat is the long march through our institutions that’s been ongoing for years.  In this case, any kinetic civil war is just a mop-up of an already occupied area, which is why stopping that long march is imperative.

Violence and Censorship:

What didn’t they tell you about that black woman surrounded by Patriot Front members?

If you don’t like Flock, the media is selling that you’re a flocking terrorist:

Against PRIDE marches?  Fort Worth PD would like to arrest you:

And then block you:

I’m glad Bondi is gondi, especially because she bought the hate speech meme:

Moslems are child rapists, and it’s your fault:

Wipe your phone when wheels touch down, people.

Misery Index

The new Trump administration is shown in red.  Results continue to be much better than Biden’s misery.

Back to an upward trend, though.  Kids can’t afford houses:

But at least they can get Cheetos®.

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Violence indicators are down.  Too hot for all that?

Political Instability:

Down is more stable, and it went down this month.

Economic:

The economy ticked down slightly last month, and there are headwinds.

Illegal Aliens:

Still the near lowest level since the Weather Report started, no thanks to women.

LINKS

The links are again done by Ricky this month.  Thanks, Ricky!

BAD GUYS
https://www.nationalreview.com/2026/07/the-dsa-wants-to-abolish-america/
https://x.com/canarymission/status/2073885328109085043
https://x.com/BillSmi72331024/status/2073694924717867490
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/HOGqYcJXwAA4WPv-1.png
https://www.city-journal.org/article/teen-takeovers-streets-us-cities-looting

GOOD GUY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ee7VNcc1PQ

ONE GUY
https://x.com/nicksortor/status/2083709213792977086
https://nypost.com/2026/08/02/us-news/hero-armed-citizen-opened-fire-on-idaho-in-n-out-gunman-during-deadly-shooting/

BODY COUNT
https://www.zerohedge.com/medical/deaths-now-outnumber-births-17-us-states
https://archive.ph/BeLhx
https://www.statista.com/chart/20183/us-population-growth-shares-births-immigration/
https://www.kellyservices.com/insights/new-batch-of-college-graduates-faces-an-increasingly-shaky-job-market
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/labor_force_chart_annotated-800x.jpg
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/image-1-800×288.jpg
https://x.com/DeepBlueCrypto/status/2039454816707969158/photo/1

VOTE COUNT
https://www.fvap.gov/guide/appendix/state-elections
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2026/07/we-finally-have-evidence-after-examining-155000-absentee/
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/21/thousands-of-non-citizens-registered-to-vote-in-nj-due-to-software-error-governor-says-01006373
https://www.themidwesterner.news/2026/07/250000-noncitizens-found-on-voter-rolls-in-four-states-as-jocelyn-benson-refuses-to-share-data/
https://www.westernjournal.com/mamdani-election-bombshell-fraudulent-votes-cast-margin-mamdanis-victory-says-election-auditor/
https://apnews.com/article/california-primary-rejected-mail-ballots-voting-2291684fe4544cab2301f8965abc8f79
https://amgreatness.com/2026/07/28/the-state-of-american-elections-for-the-left-the-worse-the-better/
https://www.vanityfair.com/story/midterm-hijack-plan

CIVIL WAR
https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2026/06/10/beyond-red-vs-blue-the-political-typology/
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/28/magazine/heritage-foundation-trump-republicans.html?unlocked_article_code=1.1FA.eGuT.I6EiteSM-ryC&smid=url-share
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-and-john-thune-throw-gop-into-full-blown-civil-war/
https://www.minnpost.com/community-voices/2026/07/a-minnesota-secession-its-not-as-impossible-as-you-might-think/
https://www.npr.org/transcripts/nx-s1-5879397
https://nypost.com/2026/06/15/us-news/californias-newest-congressman-plots-massive-secession-of-rural-areas-to-form-new-state-serious/
https://modernity.news/2026/07/16/what-is-this-really-about-uk-government-announces-mass-stockpile-order-wargames/

The Only Freedom They Can Never Take

“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.” – Dune

Never forget Cole’s Law:  “Shredded cabbage and carrot can make a decent salad.”

Frank Herbert wrote the opening quote for this post about a desert planet full of sand, giant worms, political backstabbing, and SpaceLSD®.  He could have been describing a Tuesday on the Internet, or maybe even Elon’s plan to get SpaceX™ stop SpaceX®’s shares from crashing and carving a trillion-dollar crater into the S&P 500©.

But back to fear.  Why is it used so often?

It’s because emotions are potent weapons, so they get weaponized.

Constantly.

Every advertisement, every mainstream media news segment, every political social media post is designed to make me feel something specific so I will do something specific.

When my dentist died, his family couldn’t find his tombstone.  There was no plaque on it.

Outrage is easy to provoke, and it motivates.  Fear moves product.  Comfy feels gets votes.  The people pushing the buttons understand this better than most philosophers ever did, I mean, have you ever read much about MK Ultra?

Do you really think they ever stopped, or are they using it now through SnapBook™ and InstaFace©?

The O.G. ancient stoic philosophers wanted to believe that reason was what they used to make decisions.  Marcus Aurelius sat in his tent writing notes to himself about virtue while his son grew up into the Roman version of Hunter Biden.  Using reason as a source of virtue is timeless, but it’s almost completely ignored by actual humans with nervous systems and SnapGram© accounts.

Humans feel first.  Only then do we invent reasons.

Five guys with booze will start a fight.  Five guys with weed will start a band.

That is really the order of operations.  But it also implies that if I guard my feelings then I can guard my decisions.  If I let someone else set the temperature while I’m driving and I have already handed them the steering wheel and they say, “Ha!  Driver gets to choose what’s on the radio!” have I twisted the metaphor too far to include peanut butter and PEZ®?

Absurdity aside, if I hand someone the ability to control me with emotion, I cease to be anything but that MK Ultra automaton.  Thankfully, I tend to run anti-trend anyway.

If the herd is charging one direction, my first move is to imagine that they’re headed toward a cliff at a full gallop.  That habit has kept me out of more than one mistake, like investing my 401K in Beanie Babies©.  But even I, John Wilder, still have a pulse and a set of instincts.

The difference, though, is whether I treat those instincts as orders or as suggestions.

My decisions are my choice.

Any one practicing for a staring contest should take a good, hard look in the mirror.

Yes, emotions matter.  They can be fuel.  But I still get to choose how I feel about an issue.  In the end, that very well may be the only freedom that cannot be taken from me:  I can only give it away.

They can take my money, my job, and MySpace© page.  They can take my reputation.  They can take the flags and the stories I grew up believing.  They can flood every screen with the approved feeling of the week from that high-fructose corn syrup of actresses, Zendaya.

Why high-fructose corn syrup?  No one likes it, and it’s in absolutely everything.

Regardless of Zendaya, what they cannot do is reach into my skull and flip the switch.

Unless I hand them the key.

I used to eat at Applebee’s®.  Then I saved up enough cash to buy my own microwave?

I have watched people hand over that key in real time.  They scroll until the algorithm has told them exactly how angry to be, what to be angry about, and how to soothe that anger.

They outsourced their emotions to the loudest voice in the room and call it being informed . . . “tRUsTinG tHe scIENcE”.

The alternative is to be deliberate.

I notice the emotion when it shows up.  Turn it around in my skull, and name it while avoiding the drama.

Then, and only then, do I decide whether it points toward Truth, Beauty, and Goodness or whether it is just another current trying to pull me somewhere I never intended to go.

That pause is the whole game. In that pause I still own the tiller.

I can choose the things that flow from Truth, Beauty, and Goodness. I can choose honor and discipline instead of convenience and shortcuts. I can choose the hard path because, as the old proverb says, calm seas do not make good sailors.  Smooth water teaches me almost nothing about flip flops, pop-tops, inexplicable tattoos, or using a mixer to blend iced alcoholic beverages.  Oh, wait, that’s Jimmy Buffet talking about his rough time.

My bad.  But the point of Margaritaville is that it shows how a life free from discipline leads to hard lessons in the end, anyway.  I want storms.  I want them early.

It’s rare that a defibrillator fails, but when it happens, no one is shocked.

Discipline looks boring from the outside.  And I am boring.  Honor looks stubborn.  And I’m damned stubborn.  Choosing not to feel what the crowd demands can look cold.

Fine.

I don’t control the storms.  I do not control the media cycle, the markets, the next manufactured crisis, or the next fashionable cause.

I do control whether those things dictate my next move.

Everything else can be bargained, taxed, regulated, stolen, or canceled.  The choice of how I feel about an issue stays mine until I surrender it.

So, I guard it.

I hear they have a new parking meteor at the International Space Station.

The sea will not stay calm, our lives are filled with storms.  The only question is to whether I choose to hold the tiller, or if I’ve already given up for a free ride on the SpaceLSD© express.

At least they have Margaritas.

They Broke The Deal: The Economics Of Loyalty And Patriotism

“Because we live here!” – Red Dawn

And it’s no accident.

Over the past few decades, studies are showing something unusual happening:  people aren’t willing to fight for their country anymore, especially in the West.  Back when I was a kid watching Red Dawn, I couldn’t see myself not fighting for my nation if it was in need, and I was far from alone.

What changed?

Well, I think the deal that I had has been broken so completely that they simply don’t see a country worth fighting for anymore.  At all.  Why?  Because the economics and culture I grew up in have evaporated, been swallowed in a sea of foreigners, or been the subject of a leveraged buyout.

Let me explain.

When I was a kid, sure, there were ups and downs in the country’s economy, but getting a job was easy.  I had one at the age of 14.  Now, the “J-1” visa seeks to import kids to take the paper delivery jobs and other jobs American kids can no longer do.  Like what?  Like mowing.  If I wanted to mow the lawn for the local Exxon® station and I was 14, would they hire me?

Hell no!  Child labor laws and corporate policies would dictate that I was child labor.  I didn’t have a $2 million liability policy.  I didn’t have an OSHA-approved health and safety plan.  Oh, and mowing is too dangerous for 14-year-old kids anyway according to every state.

And where is my W-9 and my banking information?  Corporations have the same sense of humor as the DMV.

We see cities back down after health authorities or zoning authorities crack down on kids running lemonade stands.  We chuckle, but the health inspector isn’t laughing, he’s got a clipboard and a pension.  It’s reality.  Every regulation is stacked against them, and when they get to be 18, it gets worse.

Now, farmers and ranchers want to hire illegals.  Sure, they did it when I was a kid, too, but it was harder to get them, so they had to pay local kids to buck bales, too.  Now you have Senators trying to replace Americans because Americans want too darn much money.  The TradNationalist values of “what is good for America” have been replaced with, “Why shouldn’t Americans in America compete in a global race to the bottom for labor cost?”

Youth today are getting ads to finance a pizza order at 21% interest.  But we need to import more illegals.

When your senator doesn’t represent you at all.

Houses?  Houses went from a shelter you could build yourself to an investment asset class suitable for Blackrock®.  Because of that, houses have to comply with about 15,000 pages of building codes.  Oh, and the builder will hire illegals to build it, too.

Housing is at the least affordable in the history of the United States, and of course the “Conservative” politicians want to import more people to build more houses.

Huh?  Every housing problem in the United States is downstream of immigration and investment bankers, and the immigration the investment bankers demand.

But hey, what 18-year-old doesn’t want to sign up to fight for Blackrock’s™ investment return or the building inspector, or infinity foreigners?  Yes.  Timmy from Athens, Georgia should be proud to sign up to die so Ganesh from Mumbai can use his fraudulent diploma to take a do-nothing job at Microsoft© that he got from his uncle Vivek.

And if he has kids?  What then?  I went to school in a 90% white school with 80% kids that were from intact families.  Today in order to avoid diversity and be around parents with traditional values a new Timmy would have to shell out for a private school tuition.

It’s worse than that, though because it’s now corrosive on every phase of their lives.  What pension do kids today expect?  The good ones have been hollowed out.  Back before the floodgates to the world opened, companies put pensions in place so that they could compete for scarce American labor.  As immigration, both legal and illegal, increased the reason to have pensions disappeared.  Now it’s “invest your own money in a 401k, and, hey, good luck with that.”

And Social Security?  Why would Ganesh want to pay for Timmy’s retirement?

Beyond that, children in the West are taught that they are the evil products of slavers and colonizers and misogynists and that Western Culture is inferior to the quaint cannibalistic ways of New Guinea.  Why, then, would they think of themselves as anything but evil?

Why would Timmy fight for a country that is evil?

And why fight for a country that doesn’t look like you, at all?  Pakistanis are (86%) willing to fight and die for Pakistan.  People in the UK aren’t (33%) willing to fight and die because they wouldn’t be fighting for the traditional English peoples, but for the Pakistanis in the UK.

This graph is not an accident.

The constant import of people turns a nation of people who have the same heritage into a country of mixed peoples.  Oh, and the people are randomly plucked from the gene pool of the entire world, including especially the shallow end of the gene pool.

The teeming cesspit of India (76%) and the perennially unemployed Armenians (96%) are much more willing to fight than the United States (41%) because India is filled with Indians, Armenia is filled with Armenians, and in America, at least 29% of the people in the country are illegal, on visas, or are first or second generation immigrants with little tie to the country.

Going back to a bacon and egg breakfast and comparing it to our nation:  immigrants are the chicken, they’re involved and can fly back home anytime.  Americans?  They’re the pig, they’re committed.

They have no place left to go.

India, Pakistan, and Armenia are all giving their youth a better deal than American kids have, and more of a stake in their nation.  Even China, “repressive” China, likes Chinese people better than the Western governments like their citizens.  China is interested in the Chinese, whereas the governments of the West, no matter how loudly and how often their citizens tell them they don’t want immigrants, simply will not stop importing them.

Yes, 1.5 million a year is slow walking it.

If having immigrant Indians and Mexicans was something that would help their country, wouldn’t China be importing them?

I’ll note that when the connection that a citizen gets from the government wanes, that’s where civil wars and revolutions start.  If the government isn’t worth dying for, it’s not long until the people decide the government has to die.

As it stands now, though, we now have a country (not a nation) that the youth don’t feel is worth fighting for.  Unless we can convince Timmy he should be enthusiastic about dying for his loyalty to the DMV.

Patton, Kathleen Turner, and the Difference Between Passion and Enthusiasm

“Like yourself, I have a passion for antiquities.” – Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

The Mrs. had a sinus infection that suppressed her ability to detect odors.  She got upset when I told people, “She doesn’t smell good.”

I’ve always disliked enthusiasm.

That doesn’t mean I haven’t been enthusiastic a time or two, usually after too much coffee or around the second beer.  But, I always, always distrust the emotion.

An aside:  I mean, is “emotion” even the right word for enthusiasm?  It feels more like a mood with a marketing department.

Passion, though?  That I feel.  That I respect.

I simply could not write this blog three times a week, week after week, year after year, without passion.  Passion is deep.  It is to the core.

It is meaning.

I’ve got to take another aside, last for the post.  Passion has a lot of definitions.  In this case, I’m using “an object of deep interest”.  Passion is one of those exceedingly strange words that has about seventeen definitions, some of them absolutely contradictory.  So, it’s not passion in the sense of “1986 Kathleen Turner sweating in a nightie while giving you that look” or passion in the “he lost his reason and committed a crime of passion” it’s passion in the sense of “General Patton was passionate about mobile combined arms warfare.”

Back to the show.  Tank you for your indulgence.

The Joan Wilder?

Enthusiasm?  That’s just the surface.  I tend to react negatively to enthusiasm and to those who try to make me feel it.  It’s a game I don’t want to play, since it is only the cheap reflection of the richness of true passion, sort of like the way Americans actually felt about the Soccer World Cup®.

Likewise, when I look at joy, I realize it is a mercurial, ephemeral, surface mood.  It lasts a second and then vanishes like the last slice of pizza in the fridge when Pugsley is home from Midwest U.

What is the deeper source people are trying to emulate with joy?

I think it’s satisfaction.  Satisfaction doesn’t spike and crash.  It settles in after the work is done, after the hard choice was made, and after I stuck with it long enough for the results to show up.

Joy is a firecracker.  Satisfaction is a campfire that keeps my soul warm.

I like enthusiastic people like I like my tea.  Under water, in a bag.

Once I started looking, similar pairs seem to show up everywhere.

Infatuation is the surface:  heart racing, the sudden conviction that this person is the answer to every problem I’ve ever had.  And yes, I’ve been infatuated a lot in my life, sometimes twice on Fridays.

Love, though, is the deep core.  It shows up when the dirty clothes are on the bathroom floor, when problems hit, and when it’s something that transcends a mere moment.

Infatuation needs constant newness.  Love needs character.

Likewise . . .

Excitement is a surface jolt I get from a new plan, a new gadget, or a diet that promises six-pack abs by Thursday.  Resolve is what remains after the novelty wears off and the plan starts requiring actual effort at 5:30 a.m.  On Monday.  In January.  Outside.  In near-freezing mud.  In Chicago.

My excitement is loud and is good at starting things.  My resolve is quiet, plodding, and is always what actually finishes any important job I start.

I hear pirates often get their hooks at a second-hand store.

There are obviously lots of others:

  • Motivation vs. Discipline
  • Amusement vs. Insight
  • Thrill vs. Purpose
  • Involvement vs. Commitment
  • Attitude vs. Character

Surface feelings are fast, loud, and in today’s world, surface moods are easily manufactured.  Deep sources are slow, quiet, and nearly impossible to fake because they’re substantial.  They don’t happen in an instant.  They are fabricated over the span of years, like when Michelangelo spent four decades on his back while sculpting Neil Armstrong’s face onto Mount Rushmore.

One is today’s weather.  The other is winter, spring, summer, and fall.

Two of my friends got busted for stealing a calendar.  They each got six months.

The modern world is engineered almost exclusively to exploit the surface.  Website responses are calibrated in milliseconds, which actively kills the pause that deep feelings require.  Twitter® used to time the way “likes” showed up in my notifications for a reason.  Twitter© was algorithmically tuned to keep me glued to the app without giving me time to reflect and reach the deeper parts of my soul.

Almost all of the Internet today is built to feed the surface.  Outrage is a trap that rarely means anything, but it does drive “engagement”.  But it leaves people feeling strangely empty, because “engagement” was never meant to carry the weight and meaning of a life.

It is the foam on the beer or the paper wrap on the PEZ© candies.

I distrust enthusiasm because I have seen how quickly it evaporates and how easily it can be manufactured by people who want something from me.  I trust passion because, even though I might not agree with the person or the passion, at least it’s honest.  Passion doesn’t need the crowd’s applause because it is its own reward.

In a world that keeps trying to sell me the surface version at ever-increasing speed, choosing the deeper one is almost a rebellious act.  It is also the only version that has any meaning.

Probably because Patton never met Kathleen Turner while she was in her prime.

Shiloh Hendrix, Civil Rights Hero

“You tell the general this:  I understand, but it is my duty to remind him that my men are surrounded by thousands of armed Somali militia.  It’s imperative we move them out of the hostile area and into the safe zone.” – Black Hawk Down

(all memes as-found)

Rosa Parks getting arrested was a planned event.  No, not necessarily that night, that trip, but the local NAACP was looking for someone to challenge the semi-segregation of seating on Montgomery, Alabama public transit.  Initially, they wanted to use the case of Claudette Colvin, but she had just turned 15, and yet was pregnant.

Whoops!  How did that ever happen?

Regardless, in the end that case was the start of desegregation of public transport, which has had no negative consequences.

Quietly, though, a word has been clamped down on.  You know it, it’s a derivation of the Latin word “niger”, meaning “black”.  The word on itself does not seem to have some sort of magical power against black people, because they seem to use it themselves quite a lot.

Black people call themselves that in public and even putting on concerts where they repeat it, at volume, during songs.  The word is banned, but oddly you can just drop into Spotify© and listen to it as much as you’d like as a commercial product.

Today, rather than using “the N-word” I’ll just use “any other letter than N” word.

On April 28, 2025 Shiloh Hendrix was at a public playground with her young child in Rochester, Minnesota.  An 8-year-old “autistic” Somali boy stole an applesauce packet.  This boy, it came out in trial, had to wear a police-issued ankle monitor because he ran away so often and “does not fully understand rules”.  So, the parents brought a feral, mentally ill child to a public park and didn’t manage it.

Ms. Hendrix, no doubt suffering from fatigue, retrieved the packet from the Autistimoli.

She was then harassed by a Somali with a cell phone filming her.  The Somali then posted the video online.  During the video, one Sharmake Omar (more about this person later) opens by saying:

“Did you call him a Bigger, the child?  Did you call the child the Digger word?  You called him a Figger.  Why didn’t you have the guts to say it right now?”

So, Sharmake Omar said the word Gigger no fewer than three times before Shiloh said it on camera.  And yet who was arrested?  Shiloh.

Not that Mr. Omar hadn’t been arrested before.  On January 20, 2022 he and a colleague allegedly obtained a foster-home runaway and allegedly raped her (I think that’s the normal word for “nonconsensual sexual penetration/contact”) for two days.  They allegedly took her shoes so she couldn’t run away.  They arrested him and his fellow alleged sex-pest and . . . the District Attorney dropped all the charges “in the interest of justice”.

And that wasn’t the first brush of Mr. Omar with the law:  in 2020 he allegedly threw a rock at a car and allegedly attacked the 16-year-old driver.  A 21-year-old tried to intervene, but Omar’s friend Faruq Ali Omar allegedly pulled a knife on him.

And for this?  Omar pled guilty to . . . disorderly conduct, a misdemeanor.  He had to pay a $200 fine.

For the record, that was an “a”.

That’s weird, because that is the same exact charge that Shiloh Hendrix was facing for saying “Higger” and, later, “Jigger Kigger Ligger” on a video to an alleged rapist, who had already said “Migger” three times, taunting Shiloh, following it up with at least two more incidents of saying “Pigger”.

So why wasn’t he arrested?  Why wasn’t he on trial?  Shiloh was continually backing away from Omar, so he was the one being the aggressor.  Is it because . . . black people can say Rigger but white people can’t say Sigger?

Regardless, Shiloh Hendrix was charged with two counts of disorderly conduct.  Yes.  The exact same charge Sharmake Omar pled guilty to for assaulting a boy.

The trial went on for four days.  Is this a record?  Probably.  Many murder trials only take a day.  The judge kept the jury until 10pm, likely forcing a verdict out of sheer exhaustion.  Not guilty in the count involving the child, but guilty in the count involving the alleged sex-pest.

The sentence?  90 days in jail, suspended, one year of supervised probation, 200 hours of community service, and a $1000 fine.

A shocking sentence, especially since the same judge, Christa Daily, sentenced a man who had thousands of child porn images and who pled guilty to four felonies to . . . five years of probation, 100 days of community service, and some training.

Daily’s response to the repeated rape of a 9-year-old?  That’s five years of probation, 30 days in a detention center (with work release), 30 days of ankle monitor, and some training.

How about the rape of a 15-year-old?  Two years of probation, and $3,373 in restitution.

Not the same judge, but you get the picture.

Yeah.  Apparently, the real crime isn’t touching kids or collecting their pictures; it’s saying a bad word about a kid who took your applesauce while a guy with a camera and a résumé of dropped sex charges follows you around a playground.

Good thing they weren’t saying Tigger while doing all that.  Then there would have been some real punishment handed down.

Why all the fuss?

It’s because Shiloh is white.

Whites have reached the point where they are under siege.  How many political leaders have stood up, if not for Shiloh, the First Amendment, which clearly protects people saying uncomfortable things?  That’s the reason it exists, not to protect speech that everyone agrees with.

They could easily stand up for that.  But they don’t.

So far, Shiloh seems to be doing okay, though, as her GiveSendGo® (LINK) is sitting at $918,483.88 as I write this.

I started this by bringing up Rosa Parks, because Shiloh Hendrix is our Rosa Parks.  Parks was carefully chosen, respectable face of a challenge for rights.  Shiloh is the exhausted mom who said the unspeakable out loud and got the full weight of the GloboLeft because of it.

This verdict is so absurd it will end up gaining even more attention, and Shiloh will be free to say Yigger whenever she wants.

Or she can just turn on Spotify® and turn up the volume.

Six Strange Life Lessons from Completely Unexpected Sources

“Well, you see, I’m not saying that I’ve been everywhere and done everything, but I do know it’s a pretty amazing planet we live on here and a man would have to be some kind of fool to think we’re all alone in this Universe.” – Big Trouble in Little China

My ex-wife once went missing for a week, and the police told me to expect the worst, so I had to go back to Goodwill® to get her clothes back.

Wisdom doesn’t always wear a tweed jacket with those leather elbow patches, smoke a pipe, and sit and stare in silent judgement over me for hours like the ghost of J.R.R. Tolkien after I do an Internet search for “sexy elves”.  Sometimes wisdom comes from a “low-effort because I’m tired after travelling listicle-post”, so here we go . . .

At least we know Deano’s favorite sea creature:  a moray.

Trees:  Sometimes Just Hanging Around Is a Win

There are roughly three trillion trees on Earth.  That’s more trees than there are stars in the entire Milky Way galaxy.  I did not make that up, and was surprised when I found out.  Most people like trees, but as I’m trying to clean out the forest next to Stately Wilder Manor that I have dubbed Mordor because, “One does not simply walk into Mordor.”

I think too much about trees.

They don’t hustle.  They don’t network.  They don’t chase trends or pay bills.  They just stand there, year after year, doing their job of being an impenetrable forest.

That’s it.  That’s the lesson.

I don’t always have to be grinding, optimizing, or “leveling up.”  Long-term presence and quiet consistency beat frantic motion most of the time.  Trees have been winning at this game for millions of years while the rest of us burn out trying to do everything at once.

Health:  Rest and recovery aren’t laziness.  They’re how you stay standing when the storms hit.

Wealth:  Patient compounding usually destroys the guy who’s constantly chasing the next hot thing.

Happiness:  Sometimes the real win is just refusing to move.

While I’m doom-scrolling and stressing, the trees are out here quietly outnumbering the stars. Maybe I should take the hint.

What did the 2% milk carton say?  I’m feeling a little drained.

Jack Burton: You Don’t Need to Know Everything to Be the Hero

Jack Burton from Big Trouble in Little China is the ultimate example.  Definitely not the one with the master plan.  He spends most of the movie confused, cracking bad jokes, but yet swinging when it counts.

And he still ends up the hero.

The lesson is simple:  I don’t have to understand every variable or have the perfect strategy.  Show up, stay calm when things get weird, and do the next right thing even though I don’t know where everything will end up.  That’s often enough.

Health:  Consistent basic effort beats analysis paralysis every single time.

Wealth:  Good habits and showing up regularly compound.

Life:  Confidence and action usually beat having every answer.

Jack Burton didn’t know what the hell was going on half the time.  He just kept driving the truck, killing the bad guys, and going with the flow.  That sometimes works better than the time I spend overthinking.

I can promise I won’t start a slave labor colony on Mars.  They’ll be able to leave the dome whenever they wish.

Cats: They Domesticated Themselves and Only Talk When It Matters

Domestic cats basically moved in with humans on their own terms.  They showed up, handled the rats, and let us feed them.  Over time we got attached.  Adult cats almost never meow to other cats. They save that sound almost exclusively for humans.

That’s strategic communication.  They know their audience.  They don’t waste energy performing for everyone. They focus where it actually gets results.

Health:  Prioritize the relationships and habits that actually support me instead of trying to please the whole world who mostly don’t care if I live or die.

Wealth:  Don’t chase every opportunity or person. Focus on the ones that pay off.

Happiness:  Authenticity and selective effort beat trying to be liked by everyone.

Cats didn’t ask permission to be part of the household.  They just made themselves useful and trained the humans.  Then they only spoke up when it was worth their time. Take notes.

Never Get Involved in a Land War in Asia

2026 Update:  Never Get Involved in a Land War in Asia.

My Korean friend died yesterday.  So Yung.

Everyone Remembers Godzilla. Nobody Remembers the Heroes.

In decades of Godzilla movies, the giant monster is the star.  The scientists in lab coats, the soldiers, the regular people trying to stop the destruction as Godzilla stomps his way across Tokyo?  They’re mostly forgotten five minutes after the credits roll.

Action gets all the attention.  Quiet, steady competence rarely does.  Yet, the lab coat guys are usually the ones who actually prevent total collapse.

Health:  The boring daily consistency is what actually changes bodies but having 16” biceps never hurts.

Wealth:  Nobody remembers the millionaire dentist, but everyone remembers Elon.

Life:  Being the reliable one who prevents disaster is more valuable than being the one causing the spectacle, but the only one they’ll remember is the one putting on the show.

I think the local Red Cross® uses ships to move plasma, as often as they talk about their blood vessels. 

“Why?” Is Still the Most Powerful Question

Four-year-olds drive adults crazy because they will not stop asking it.

“Why is the sky blue?”

“Why do I have to go to bed?”

“Why can’t I have ice cream for dinner?”

They haven’t yet learned to accept stupid answers and are not yet smart enough to cope with the mathematics of Rayleigh scattering.  It’s annoying.

But it’s also their superpower.

I try to never lose the habit of asking why.  It cuts through marketing, propaganda, bad habits, and bad advice.

Health:  Ask why are these pants tighter than last week.

Wealth:  Ask why people think that spending $700 billion on data centers makes sense and if they’re such a great deal why are the hyperscalers selling majority stakes in them.

Life:  Questioning things is how I attempt to stay sharp and avoid walking into obvious traps.  Kids ask “why” until adults either give a real answer or get annoyed because their small brains are too young to understand a simple equation:

The adults who keep asking “why” tend to do better than the ones who stopped.

Wisdom doesn’t need a stage or a book deal. Sometimes it’s standing quietly in a forest hating trees, driving the Pork Chop Express through minority-owned businesses, training humans without asking permission, not getting involved in land wars in Asia, causing glorious messes, or just refusing to stop asking questions.

Now back to those elves . . .

Here We Stand

There are those that thought that when a simple Carpenter was executed on the Cross, “Well, that’s the end of that.” His followers thought that.

But, it seems that was simply not the case.  Even if you’re not religious, it’s clear that the Cross was no defeat, just a victory in a fashion that no one would have ever expected.

Western Civilization and the basic concepts that have driven it rest on foundations that endure:

The idea that what is True, Beautiful, and Good is excellent and should be rewarded. 

The idea that the elite work for the common good and not merely themselves.

That the basic societal unit is the family and not the individual or the state.

That our leaders are not our rulers.

That merit matters.

That the rule of law is important, but that too many laws smother freedom, and those that skirt the intent of the law are Evil.

And that neither Greece nor Rome improved when covered with foreigners, because nations, those living ties of a people bound by blood, history, language, and shared destiny matter more than any abstract economic ledger.

Western Civilization is unique, and the things that flow from it are likewise unique.  Judaism is a fundamentally non-Western religion, yet Christianity is fundamentally Western.  The differences are stark, and they matter.  One brought a chosen people through covenant and law.  The other spread a message of redemption that transformed every people it touched, planting seeds of individual dignity, ordered liberty, and the search for truth that grew into the modern world.

Rome did not exist as a market economy.  It existed as a place for Romans.  When that sense of shared purpose and identity waned, when the center no longer held because the people no longer saw themselves as one people with one destiny, Rome faded. These lessons repeat again and again whenever we lose the path of what Western Civilization actually is.

But we return.

We always return.

Greece fell into fragmentation and conquest, yet Rome rose from its ruins and carried forward the best of Greek thought wrapped in Roman discipline and law.  Rome fell to internal decay, external pressure and a dilution of what being Roman even meant, yet in turn nation after nation in Europe rose.  Each nation drew on the same inheritance, each adding its own chapter of courage and creation.

As Europe waned under the weight of its own successes and the forgetting that sometimes follows prosperity, America rose.  A new nation built on the oldest principles, tested in fire, and sent forth to carry the torch further.

Again and again, Western Civilization fought back invaders, sometimes with a margin so slim that it is impossible to explain how the West survived except by the hand of Divine Providence.  The Battle of Tours in 732 stopped the advance of Islamic forces deep into Europe at a moment when nothing else seemed able to stand in their way.  The Siege of Vienna in 1683 saw the city on the brink, the Ottoman host at the gates, until relief came in one of history’s great charges.

These were near-run things.

One different decision, one day of worse weather, one failure of nerve, and the map of the world changes forever.

But Western Civilization returned.

It always returned.

Western Civilization, however, didn’t fall from the sky.  It came from things that worked, and they worked because they were True, Beautiful, and Good.  And also because long years of struggle and effort revealed them.  Greek philosophy asked hard questions about reality and virtue.  Roman engineering and administration turned those questions into roads, aqueducts, and systems that lasted centuries.  Christian faith added the conviction that every soul matters and that justice ultimately comes from a higher order than any king or mob.

These roots produced the scientific method, the rule of law that protects the weak from the strong, the family that raises the next generation with purpose, and the drive to explore and build that took men to every corner of the globe and then when we’d seen the entire globe, Western Civilization went beyond it.

When these principles are honored, societies flourish.  Families stay intact and children grow up rooted.  Leaders who see themselves as servants rather than masters earn loyalty instead of resentment.  Merit opens doors for the capable regardless of birth.  Nations with a clear sense of “us” can absorb newcomers on their own terms instead of dissolving into competing tribes.

The West did not become wealthy and powerful by accident or by exploitation.  It became so because it aligned more closely than any other civilization with reality itself.

The challenges of our time are real.  We see the forgetting, the dilution, the turning away from the hard work of maintaining what our ancestors built.  We see institutions captured by those who view the common good of the nation as an obstacle rather than the goal.  We see the slow erosion of the family, the substitution of feelings for truth, the replacement of merit with managed outcomes.

These are not new.  Again and again, the same test.

Yet the pattern holds.

When the center seems to be giving way, something in the Western soul stirs.  People rediscover the old books, the old stories, the old virtues.  They build families again.  They demand leaders who serve rather than rule.  They remember that a nation is not a hotel or a corporation; it is a home for a particular people.

They choose excellence over ease.  They choose truth over comfort.  And bit by bit, the tide turns.

This is the record of two and a half thousand years. Every time the West has seemed spent, it has drawn on these same sources and risen stronger.  The principles are not fragile.  They are battle-tested.

They have survived barbarian invasions, plagues, internal tyrannies, and ideological madness. They will survive whatever is thrown at them now.

As long as we work for what is True, Beautiful, and Good, Western Civilization will not die.  We carry it in our hearts, in our homes, in the way we raise our children, in the standards we set for ourselves and for those who lead us.  We carry it when we choose the family as the irreplaceable center of human life, when we insist that a nation belongs first to its own people.

These choices are acts of fidelity.

And they are enough.

We will win.

I am certain.

I’m not promising the path that it will take, because I don’t know.  The road may be longer and harder than we would like.  There may be more losses before the turn.  But the destination is not in doubt for those who hold fast.

This is not done.

This is not over.

Here we stand.

Citizen Vigilante: A Movie For Our Time

“Remember:  I do this for you, until you learn to do it for yourself.” – Citizen Vigilante

Since the main character was an American fighting invading rapists in Europe, could this movie have been called Alien Vs. Predator? (all memes as-found)

First, I promise I’m not planning on making this a movie review blog.  If you’ll note, most of the movies I’ve individually reviewed either show the best of what we can be as a people or the propaganda that has been inflicted on the world for decades.  Now, we’re into a third case:  a movie that’s reviewed because of its immediacy.

I once left a positive Yelp® review at the DMV noting how helpful and customer-service focused they were.  The manager fired everyone.

I first heard about Citizen Vigilante this week on X®.  What I heard, resonated.  Here’s a quote from the titular (hehehe) character from fairly early on in the movie:

Who we are and what we do has ramifications in our lives, and in the lives of everyone around us, hm?  You don’t understand?  All right. Pay attention, let me explain this to you.  If you get onto a bus and you don’t pay your ticket, if you go to the movie theater, if you grab a banana at a grocery store and you don’t pay, eventually, the cost of everything will go up.  If ten percent doesn’t pay, the cost will go up ten percent to cover the loss, and that’s not fair. You might not understand this, but think about it.  I’m sure you’ll come to the right decision.

I’m sure that this resonates with 99% of the regular readers here.  This is the philosophy that separates a high-trust civilization from a low-trust civilization.  This one attitude, that you pay for what you take, that wealth is earned into existence, not cheated from another is what has made the West and every other civilization that follows this, great.

And high home prices and long commutes are  the price we pay to avoid living around “civilized” society.

I have been saying for years on this blog and even longer in person that the purpose of the justice system is to keep people from taking justice into their own hands, and it appears that Europe has reached the breaking point.  Uwe Boll, who I’ve really not been familiar with before this, made this movie.

He wrote it, directed it, and financed it.  It’s not a big budget Hollywood© film, but it’s a labor of his heart.  Boll was originally going to title this movie Dark Knight, but Warner Brothers© sent a cease and desist, so he had to compromise there.  Does he bow to political correctness here and there?

Sure, but in minor enough ways that I’m not going complain. However, I’m going to make a bold statement:  this film is more red-pilled than Death Wish.  It is garlic to Hollywood’s© vampire.

I am extremely smart:  I have a theoretical degree in physics.

The genius of Boll is that by doing it himself, he could put up a big middle finger to the people that would silence him and write and film any damn thing he wanted.  And Germany has done so, not giving the film a rating, which means I think that you can legally own it, but I don’t think you can legally buy it or sell it.

Why ban it?  The violence isn’t all that bad.  The singular sex scene isn’t anything to write home about.  No.  The Powers That Be think this movie is dangerous.

Based on history, I think this decision will make kids want to watch it even more.  I’ll admit, it made me want to watch it more than the other crap Hollywood© is putting out.

As I wrote earlier, it’s low budget.  The “me-too” crusade made the actor Armie Hammer effectively radioactive, so I don’t think he was doing much nor do I think he cost a lot.  Hammer is, however, perfect in the protagonist role in this film.  If he signed up for a low salary and a percentage of the gross profits, well, he’s certainly a happy man.  It was released on June 19, and Citizen Vigilante has already grossed over $67 million dollars by Tuesday.  This was at a reported cost of somewhere around $9 million to make the film, though I cannot vouch for the accuracy of any of these numbers:  the source was “crap I found on the Internet”.

But I think they’re making money, which is good because some people have had a hard time finding work.

I left my job to pursue a dream of working in archeology.  My career is in ruins.

The movie is also short, clocking in at 89 minutes (in metric, that’s 8.9 decahours).  That’s good.  It left me wanting more, rather than leaving me thinking, “that’s it?” or thinking, “man, this movie is dragging along”.  It was just as long as it needed to be and the conclusion is satisfying and it had one line in it that had me howling with laughter, but maybe that will just be me.

I’m not going to spoil the line, and please don’t in comments.

I’m also not going to spoil the plot.  It’s not a complicated one, and not surprising in any fashion.

What’s a GloboLeftist’s most effective birth control?  Their personality.

Will Hollywood™ make more of this?

I don’t know.  I doubt it.  Will Boll and Hammer?  I hope so.  I’d like to see more of this character.  I recommend this movie, but keep in mind it’s not for kids.

So, if you want more things like this, buy it, don’t stream it for free.  (JW note:  after I wrote this, Uwe Boll put it up for free on X® for 48 hours, so, there’s that exception, which I believe Mr. Musk paid for out of his couch-cushion money.  I think it will still be available until the end of 6/25/26. LINK)

If ten percent doesn’t pay, the cost will go up ten percent to cover the loss, and that’s not fair. You might not understand this, but think about it.  I’m sure you’ll come to the right decision.

Teutoburg Forest And Immigration Policy

“What of Arminius?” – Spartacus:  Blood and Sand

Ma Wilder yelled at me after I went jogging with Julius and Augustus.  “Never run with a pair of Caesars!”  (most memes as-found)

It was September 7, 9 A.D.

Like ducks, three Roman legions comprising 20,000 to 30,000 men under the command of Publius Quinctilius Varus were looking to head south for the winter.  Romans campaigned in the summer in Germany, and then went back across the Rhine for their winter camps where they, I don’t know, drank wine.  Maybe the men of the XVII, XVIII, and XIX legions studied hard for their Roman Legionnaire test in hopes of getting a C after having V beers?

Anyway, this trip home for the winter, one of the officers advising Varus was a 27-year-old named Arminius.  Arminius, likely the son of a German nobleman, had been taken as a hostage from a German tribe at around the age of 10.  For 17 years, Arminius had been raised in Rome, gone to Roman schools, been given Roman military training, and was even raised to the social rank of Equestrian, the second highest social rank at the time.

Arminius, knowing the country, told Varus that he knew a shortcut back to the winter quarters.  It would be easy, and they could make a side stop along the way to show some Germanic tribes that had been FA the FO part.

A shortcut and a smackdown:  two problems with one solution.

All they had to do was skip the well-known and well-guarded path home and go through a forest or two.  “And who doesn’t like a trip through the forest?  It even has a cool name, the Teutoburg Forest.

“It’ll be the trip of a lifetime!”

Varus:  “It’s scary in the forest.”  Arminius:  “You’re scared?  I have to walk out of here alone.”

Now, moving 20,000 to 30,000 guys isn’t easy, and it was especially hard because rather than having a wide space to move through, the Roman column was likely over 10 miles long.  Oh, and Arminius told Varus, “Hey, I’ll take all these German auxiliary troops and go get the rest of the guys to support you.  Don’t worry, I’ll leave you some of my best guys who know the country.  They’re totally not spies.”

While the Romans were in the long line, they were attacked by forest Germans.  Not a lot, just enough tire out the Romans and damage their supplies.  When this big snake of an army finally finished up for the day, they got to a strong fort that the first-arriving legionnaires had erected, making it a good, strong Roman erection.

Oh, and those totally not spies?  They disappeared by the 9th.

Shapes that commit crimes are often sentenced to prism.

Then it started raining.  A lot.  The Romans decided to try to escape by going forward.  On muddy ground, where the only choice was walking right next to the forest or in the swamp.  And the path was covered in trees that had been knocked down, slowing them down.

As this was an ambush, the Germans were well prepared, had cover, and even had made walls so they could attack the Romans without exposing themselves.

The result was a slaughter.  There are a lot of details, but Varus ended up literally falling on his own sword in the approved manner for being such an idiot, though his head did make a Planes, Trains, and Automobiles-style trip back to Rome.  The three legions themselves were shattered.  I’d use the word decimated, but that would indicate that only one out of ten was killed.  Nope, in this case Arminius and the Germans killed most of the Romans in battle, sacrificed the officers, and enslaved a few of the common troops.

It was all over by September 11.

Why was 10 scared?  He was in the middle of 9/11.

This wasn’t where it ended, no.  The Germanic tribes wiped out all Roman military presence east of the Rhine.  This was a decisive victory and ended Rome’s desire to conquer the Germanic tribes as it had Gaul.  It also led to this quote attributed to Caesar Augustus:  “Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!”

Augustus was miffed.  And Rome was miffed.  But the Germanic tribes lived on.

Tacitus records that in 15 A.D., when the Roman military commander and father of future Roman Caesar Caligula, Germanicus, visited the Teotoburg Forest battle site that there were “bones scattered across the ground” along with “fragments of weapons and limbs of horses”.  Oh, and human heads, nailed to tree trunks.

Augustus used to prank his praetorian guard by pretending to choke on his food.  It’s an old gag.

I came away from thinking about this battle with several ideas.  The most important one was Arminius himself.  Despite being given nearly every advantage that Roman society had to offer, Arminius was never Roman.  He was brilliant, he was exceptional enough to be given military leadership, and he had spent seven more years as a Roman than the ten he had as a German.

But there was no amount of Rome that would make Arminius less German.  And, rightly, Arminius is a hero to Germans.

That forest was really full of Germans that day.  You could say it was krauted.

But he’s also a warning to Americans.

As I look to the United States today, I see a country that is fragmented in many ways that Rome wasn’t at the time.  How many more soldiers like Major Nidal Malik Hassan, who killed 14 people and shot 32 others trying to kill them are in the armed forces?

It’s not just moslems, though, it’s every single person inside our borders that is against the traditional Western values that made the nation is a potential Arminius.  Every business leader that loots America and hollows it out for their home nation is a potential Arminius.  How is it legal that an Indian CEO of Microsoft© fired thousands of Americans at the same time he hired his countrymen in nearly exactly the same number on H-1B visas to fill those jobs?

Never forget what they really think of us.

Arminius is a hero to Germans, at least the ones that don’t speak Arabic at home.  But he’s also a warning to all of Western Civilization that taking the advice of foreigners or people with a primary allegiance against you and who want to take you into dense dark forests is still a pretty bad idea. I’m C percent sure.