Purpose – Page 7 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Steps Forward, Steps Backward, and The Long Road

“Not according to the recent Supreme Court case of bite versus me.” – House, M.D.

No one complained when I got into Buddhism and became a Buddhist. No one complained when I got into Affirmative Action and became an activist. But get into fashion?

Today the Supreme Court (it’s like regular court, but with sour cream and tomatoes) said that, under the Equal Protection clause, that discriminating against people (or even for people) based on race is against the Constitution. I guess you could say that the Supreme Court has changed since Ginsberg passed away: it’s now Ruth-less.

For the longest time, the courts were sort of ignored by the Right. The judges appointed by the Right (when they were in power) were often horribly Leftist advocates of state power. At some point, the Right started picking justices based on choosing people who actually weren’t horrible Leftists in disguise (looking at you, David Souter). The Federalist Society® was the catalyst for this. Of the current Supreme Court, six of the nine justices are current or former Federalist Society™ members.

Yes, this is a real Tweet® and not a parody account.

The vote to kill affirmative action on campuses was six to three.

That’s an important number because it shows that the Federalist Society©, founded 41 years ago, has now defined the Supreme Court and the judges that have been nominated.

This is a victory.

But it wasn’t easy, and the span of effort to get that victory took decades of effort. When the Federalist Society™ was founded, the court system of the United States was an absolute shambles. When the Leftists couldn’t pass legislation that let them do things they like to do, like killing moar babiez, the courts could be counted on to find a new right that was somehow stuck in the “penumbras and emanations” of previous rulings to let them do whatever was popular with the cool kids that week.

Think that’s what happened to the Titan?

What always bothered me was that they could take a simple phrase like, “shall not be infringed” and twist it through precedents and rulings and interpret it to mean, “shall be infringed whenever we feel like it, you stooge”. The “you stooge” part wasn’t actually in the ruling, but it can be inferred through the “emanations and penumbras”.

Why did Roe v. Wade get struck down to allow states to make laws against baby killing? Because of the Federalist Society™. If you’re ever able to go buy a .50 caliber Ma Deuce at your local convenience store in full auto as God intended? Thank the Federalist Society©.

I don’t remember Linda leading the Leftist Karen Brigade in the Amy Coney Barrett Insurrection . . . do you?

Another place where the Left has lost is on carry of weapons. In 27 states you can take your favorite hand cannon and pop it right under your vest without a permit, and without asking anyone for permission. It’s what’s called “Constitutional Carry”. This didn’t happen by accident. It took dedicated groups working locally through decades to get these laws passed.

That’s the key. Victory isn’t won in an afternoon after a training montage where Luke© spends 22 minutes with Obi Wan® and learns the Force™. Nope. Victory is won by grinding it out, day after day, putting people in place. Having conversations. Convincing people that the idea of freedom is better than the idea of government control takes time.

Remember, it only works if you have goals.

One view is that, from the viewpoint of the Right, that there has been nothing but a long string of loss, and there is no way that we can every come back.

Clearly, that is wrong. The grassroots pushback against the insanity of The Narrative can’t be stopped. Why, exactly, do gays and transexuals and drag queens need access to our children? That question is in the minds of enough people that celebration of Pride Month, 2023, was a bit limp.

I guess we’ll have to re-purpose the journalist machine, after a fair trial, of course.

Have we lost most university campuses? Have we lost the military senior officer corps? Have we lost the senior management in most Fortune® 500 companies?

Yup. We’re still down in many places. But Budweiser® is afraid now. And we don’t have to destroy every company that goes woke. There’s an old Chinese saying: “Kill the chicken to scare the monkey.” We don’t have to destroy every company, but I’m certain that the distinct lack of Pride stolen rainbow colors in June on every damn corporate logo was a result of that Budweiser© chicken being plucked.

Where will the next victories come from? They will come from places that passionate people have been working for decades. It doesn’t require money, it requires work. As the other saying goes, “The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago. The second-best time is now.”

The seeds of our future victory are being planted right now in the heads of they youth. They see the lies, greed, and envy that are the only things outside of Nancy Pelosi swimsuit pictures that the Left has to sell. Today, removed from their menu, is the idea of Affirmative Action. That idea is dead.

I know nobody wanted to see the swimsuit picture. You’re welcome.

The battle is not over. The Left is always better organized than the Right, but the Right has a wonderful thing on its side: the Truth. As I have always maintained, we will win. And as I have also always maintained, the final victory won’t be tomorrow, or next week, or next year, though some events will certainly happen suddenly.

And the Supreme Court? They can go out to dinner together again since Ginsberg died. She used to steal food from people at diners – they called her Booth Raider Ginsberg.

Self-Experimentation And Leisure

“Forget cyborgs. What about some more money for my cloning experiments?” – Upright Citizens Brigade

I asked the librarian if she had a book that featured Pavlov’s Dog and Schrodinger’s Cat. She said it rang a bell, but she wasn’t sure if it was there or not.

Seth Roberts is dead. I’m sure that this isn’t news to him, since he died in 2014. He was a psychologist who taught at Berkeley. Again, don’t get mad at him for working there – he’s dead.

What Seth was most well known for was his idea that the best way to experiment was on himself. He even wrote a paper about it (LINK). It’s a pretty cool paper, and it talks about the individual experiments that he tried so that he could make his life better – controlling his weight, sleeping better, and having a better mood. I’ve done personal experiments on many of those, and have found that beer is wonderful for two out of three of those goals.

In his paper, where Roberts talks about how well his experiments worked, he wondered why more scientists don’t do experiments that, well, actually help people rather than produce yet another paper about the mating habits of Kardashians in the wild.

Given Biden’s inflation, pretty soon a male deer will be called $20.

The reason that Roberts came up why many college professors are almost actively useless makes sense:

Roberts cited an improbably named author (Thorstein Veblen) who is also dead (I hope) since he wrote his book in 1899, and if he’s still alive, he’s probably some sort of Norwegian ice-vampire. Veblen wrote a book called The Theory of the Leisure Class. In the book, Veblen stated that people try to show their social position by doing useless things. He noted that these included:

Display Wealth. That means buying expensive stuff like platinum PEZ® dispensers just so other people can see it. Oh, sorry, I misspelled “iPhone®”.
Display Uselessness. Veblen notes that people wore ties because it showed they couldn’t be doing manual labor if they were wearing a tie since it would get caught up in a spinning thingamajig and kill them and then they’d show up on a LiveLeak® video.
Display Refinement. This meant spending a lot of time doing mostly useless things, but only if other people could see you doing these mostly useless things. I think the BLM® riots might count here.

I can’t wait for their final show. Think they’ll call it “The Viewing”?

Roberts noted that professors don’t have a lot of money, but there’s nothing stopping them from being useless and, being professors, they can spend lots of time doing stuff that is useless in a very public way. The book review I did on Monday (LINK) proves the point – I have it on good authority that trees regularly cry when they find out she consumed their oxygen.

It’s a fun theory, and Roberts backs it up. He talks about medicine, where the lowest rung (according to Roberts) was obstetricians. They have an actual job that is very useful, mainly, bringing babies into the world. Darn it for those guys. And they can’t display refinement while working because, you know, if they’re useless the baby dies and parents sue.

I’d buy a ‘vette, but I’d worry about my chest hair getting stuck in my gold chain.

Roberts notes that self-experiments allowed him to move quickly, taking data and determining the results of his trials. It also allowed him to fix himself on the things that were bothering him. He took a lot of data, and could take a lot more data than he could if it were an actual study, because he was inputting the data on himself. He put his self-experimentation on his brain (mood, etc.) as 500,000 times more effective than traditional research, because he could take data on himself continuously. Of course, his experiments aren’t double-blind, but, does it matter? Roberts came up with a solution that worked for him.

Now, personally, I have followed this practice for a large part of my life. To be fair, it drives The Mrs. nuts, especially that one time I did one experiment that probably increased my blood pressure so much that if I had nicked my artery the blood flow probably would have drilled through drywall. To be clear, that was the very worst self-experiment. And most of them have worked well. 20 years ago, I had difficulty falling asleep. Now? I can generally be asleep in 2 minutes or less, nearly any time of the day, and I stay asleep.

Someone asked me what my dream job was. “Well, in my dreams, I don’t work.”

How long did that take? Years. An experiment here that worked. An experiment that didn’t. I added them up, and finally know how to get to sleep. I know it doesn’t sound like something to brag about, since I was really good at sleeping as a baby. It’s not quite a superpower, but if I get better at it, perhaps I’ll become Slumberman®, “Look on the bed, is it a pillow? Is it a blanket? No, it’s Slumberman™.

My experiments though, don’t meet Veblen’s definition so I could be called a member of the leisure class – they cost nothing, they are something anyone could do, and they are (for me) very useful. For instance, I noted that if I was getting ready to have a sinus infection, if I did a cardio workout, hard, that the sinus infection would go away nearly immediately.

This was a 100% solution. Every time, it worked. No theory. No real reason. And it might not have anything more than my belief, which doesn’t matter. Why doesn’t it matter? I can’t tell you, because I’ll be asleep.

Certainly, there are some places where (like that time I decided to pressure-test my veins) my ignorance could cause problems. And there are places where there are solved problems that experts (say, doctors) already know the answers.

People say I’m a skeptic, but I’m not so sure.

But most of my life is in my hands. I can run a dozen experiments a day, on what my actions are, and what the results are. If I want to look at longer term trends, I can write things down.

So, is self-experimentation good? Yeah, mostly. I don’t plan on doing it for replacing my spleen with my dog’s spleen, especially since I don’t know what a spleen does.

Reason 453 Why The Right Is Sane, And The Left Is Nuts

“John Spartan, you are fined five credits for repeated violations of the verbal morality statute.” – Demolition Man

What happens when you put a zebra in the lion cage? Well, me? I got fired from the zoo.

On Monday I put together a post on how toxic empathy is destroying the world. Really, it is. That was, however, just one, small bit of the picture. To go a little deeper, we have to understand the pathology of the most wretched hive of scum and villainy. No, I’m not talking The View®. Okay, I’m not talking The View™ exclusively, I’m talking about the minds of Leftists.

Jonathan Haidt is a PhD in something or other. To be an academic, they all have to write stuff down, and have other academics pretend to read it. If enough academics pretend to read it, then they can write books that the cosmopolitan elite buy and put on their bookshelves so other members of the cosmopolitan elite can see that they have the same virtuous books on the shelf.

As such, a lot of it is garbage. Case in point? Actual people who are professors at colleges talking about girls with outies and boys with innies as if that was somehow “science”, forgetting that we’ve known about the x and y chromosomes since Nettie Stevens was studying worm sperm at an all-woman college and found the y chromosome. Then, in the 1920s, the improbably named Theophilus Shickel Painter determined how the x and y chromosomes made boys and girls. And none of this paragraph is made up. Sometimes, history writes the humor for me.

My XY chromosomes are awesome. They look great in a pair of genes.

So, Haidt had to write something, so he came up with Moral Foundations Theory. I’ll spare you the details because you have a search engine, and can read. Originally, they broke the foundations into five. I think they added a sixth, changed the name of one, and following it is like following a soap opera, since Haidt has to write more books to keep that sweet, sweet money coming in from people who buy copies of his book to look smart to the other members of the cosmopolitan elite, and it helps if he does TED® talks. Here are the original five, with rough definitions:

Care/Harm – this is really the empathy I discussed on a post (LINK) earlier this week. It is the real foundation for the toxic behavior of the Left. It’s a focus on a concern for the wellbeing of others, compassion, kindness, . . . sorry, fell asleep for a moment.
Fairness/Reciprocity – this is really based on the idea that people should have equal outcomes in the test I took, regardless of their contributions. It’s pretty heavily skewed towards that. As a friend once told me, “We can treat everybody equally, or we can treat everybody fairly. It’s not the same.” As shown in the graph below, this is sort of blended.
In-group/Loyalty – this is about dedication to your group, distrust of non-group, and self-sacrifice for one’s community. True patriotism is a part of this.
Authority/Respect – it’s a respect for hierarchy, duty, and traditions.
Purity/Sanctity – this is tied to religious sanctity, as well as some ideas or objects having an innate value and they are sacred. The flip side is a revulsion against dirty and degenerate things.

I hear he liked to vote by mail.

To be clear, I am not endorsing Haidt’s work uncritically. His is just one tool that we can use to slice the way the mind works via data to better understand ourselves, and how we as humans differ from one another. I took the test at yourmorals.org and determined that I am somewhere to the far right of Genghis Khan. Not sure if anyone wants to know, but I have zero time for slackers, don’t care about hard luck stories, am more loyal than a Sardaukar, am huge into tradition, and my sanctity scores were really high. They added “proportionality” which meant, those who contribute, get rewarded, and that was very high, too.

I think this will surprise zero regular readers. I can imagine my FBI agent dutifully noting all this in my Permanent Record, though.

This, however, is not about me. Let’s take a closer look at what they did with the theory. In essence, they tested lots of folks along with their self-identified political leanings. The result is the graph below, which is enough for a TED® Talk:

So, I see 2chan and 5chan. Where is 4chan? Original by J. Haidt, CC BY-SA 4.0

Turns out that Leftists are fixated on empathy and on equity. They’re the kind of people that look at a pit bull that just ate an orphanage and say, “Awww, she’s such a sweety, I wonder what those orphans did to provoke her. We just need to give her one more chance – pit bulls are just as safe as any other dog.”

This is how the Left processes things – through those two small channels. Those are the filters they use, and every problem in the world is first filtered through a hazy gauze of empathy and equity. Why are there an unceasing horde of illegals surging through what used to be a border? The filter is, first, empathy – “They just want a better life,” and then equity, “Everyone deserves the life we have her in America.” As each one of my children will tell you, I find there is no word in the English language I despise more than the word, “deserve.” I guess it’s my inner Viking showing through.

Will Smith, what a giver, always helping comedians work on their punchlines.

On the other side, on what Haidt labels “conservatives, the values converge. The empathy and equity are tempered with tradition, group health, and respect for hierarchy. In this much, much healthier worldview, values are kept in proportion with one another, not in this maladjusted split that drives the far Left.

I’ll admit, my values have changed as I’ve gotten older – this is a normal process people go through. It’s crazy. It’s call wisdom. I have a few gray hairs, but I don’t pluck them out. I’ve earned every one of them. And I’ve lived long enough to see that the wheels of justice go slowly, but they grind exceedingly small. Me? I’m not sure anyone under 35 should be allowed to vote. But I also am in favor of Congresscritter’s kids being bussed to the front line in the event they send our troops off to fight.

Imagine the inauguration: “I felt a great disturbance in the force, as if millions of voice suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.”

There are several lessons here:

Leftist really are crazy. Like a pit bull chewing through a school of orphans, I’m sure they mean well. They’re such sweethearts. But their morality is worse than Robert Downey Jr. and Charlie Sheen fighting over a pound of cocaine back in 1997. Oddly, Charlie Sheen was only arrested for being Charlie Sheen.
Keep life in balance. Me? Genghis Khan was, according to stories, a legendary horseman. That takes balance. That’s enough for me.
I appreciate The View©. Where else can you go to watch a segment called, “Should You Let Your Kids Go to the Mall” where the topic was debated between a transgender Eskimo and Muslim drag queen?

Choose Who You Are. It’s Easy.

“Yes, sir! That’s exactly who I am and what I am, sir. A victim, sir!” – A Clockwork Orange

If someone named David is a victim of ID theft, do I have to call them Dav?

“As I’ve gotten older . . . I could not help but notice the effect on people of the stories they told about themselves. If you listen to the people – if you just sit and listen – you’ll find that there are patterns in the way they talk about themselves. There’s the kind of person who is always the victim in any story that the tell – always on the receiving end of some injustice. There’s the person who is always kind of the hero in every story they tell. The smart person – they deliver the clever put down. There are lots of versions of this. And you gotta be very careful about how you tell these stories because it starts to become you. You are, in the way you craft your narrative, kind of crafting your character. And so, I did at some point decide: I am going to adopt self-consciously as my narrative that I’m the happiest person anybody knows. And it is amazing how happy-inducing it is.”

-Michael Lewis

My first question after I read this was, “Okay, which Michael Lewis?” I’m thinking there might be a million of them, but the A.I. refused to even guess and then pouted and now won’t open the pod bay doors for me. So, I’m guessing that every other person in Michigan is named “Michael Lewis”. Regardless, the most famous author named Michael Lewis is the guy who writes interesting financial books, so I’ll assume it’s him.

The nice thing about water from Flint is that you can use it to make a Pb and Jelly sandwich.

Regardless of who wrote it, it’s a good and fairly true quote.

Why?

Attitude is everything.

If you believe you’re happy, if you talk about being happy, you’ll . . . be happy. As I’ve written before, being happy is really the easiest thing in the world. Many mornings I’ll run into the secretary administrative assistant at the door. Regardless of the weather, I’ll greet her with, “What a beautiful day it is!” It could be sunny and hot, rainy, cold, snowing, or even volcano-y. My greeting is the same.

Because it is a beautiful day. And, one thing I’ve learned is that the weather absolutely doesn’t care about me, at all. The snow doesn’t care that I love it. The hot day doesn’t care that I like cold weather, though I think it might be personal with the volcanoes. But I’m alive, breathing, walking and talking. If I spent all day hating a temperature reading, that wouldn’t leave me time to hate people who deserve it, like communists, leftists, and mimes.

How could the day not be beautiful? I get to choose how I feel, so why not be happy about it?

My insurance agent told me I can jump in an active volcano. Once.

I read the Michael Lewis quote and immediately recognized it to be a rule I’d been living with. I’ve written before about how absolutely horrid victims are to be around. Everything happens to them. They are at the center of their own story, but initiate no action. They have all the resilience of a bean bag, and are psychic vampires that attempt to suck emotional sustenance in the form of pity from their unwitting prey by demonstrating how mean the world has been to them. The technical term for this affliction is “Antifa® Member”.

They sing their own lives with their story. I avoid these types of people as if they were constructed entirely out of George Soros’ toe cheese, which I guess explains why he’s long been called the “Creamy-Fingered Puppet Master”.

George Soros wants to destroy our culture? I knew he was behind American Idol.

The Hero? I can live with them. Often, they’re really newts who brag about being distantly related to the Tyrannosaurus Rex. They get their ego from being the one who has done the most, has the most gifted child, the cousin who went to Harvard®, and that they vacationed on Mars last summer. The Hero does this this because they feel awful about themselves, and need to bolster their ego by telling these stories.

Again, I’m okay with The Hero, since if you listen to their stories and don’t try to top theirs, they eventually can be good people to hang out with, and as they get older or develop trust with you they drop the act. They want to be liked, and if you like them for who they are, they often stop the Hero stuff.

The person who puts people down? I don’t meet that guy (or gal) often enough to have any sort of read on dealing with them. They just aren’t any in circle I’m in since I’ve been an adult. I guess that tells me lots about how successful the strategy of “being a complete tool” is.

What’s the difference between a Hoover® vacuum and a limo carrying George Soros and his son? The Hoover™ only has one dirtbag in it.

But there are lots of other ways to tell my story. The best part is that I get to choose. I get to choose to be the happiest guy people know. I get to choose to be the guy in the room that is calm when everything is going to hell (I really enjoy that one, and it comes naturally). I get to choose what I’m afraid of.

To be clear, this isn’t the Lefty talking point about “Your Truth®”. That’s bogus, and denies objective reality. Me? I don’t deny that it’s snowing. I don’t deny that it’s 103°F out. I don’t deny that that pesky volcano keeps following me around. But I do get to choose how that fact fits in with how I feel.

And so can you.

And so can those 5.04 million people in Michigan named, “Michael Lewis”.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report – Trump And The End Of Civic Nationalism

“You’re not changing anything.” – Rambo

What do you call an indecisive body of water? Well . . . .

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

I’ve changed the Clock O’Doom. Why? It is clear that we’re way past five and six. We are having organized violence, regularly. And the lynchpin for nine is common violence that is justified.

This is clearly happening – just check the wind. “Kill a guy on the Right who used pepper spray? No charges.” “Kill a guy on the Left who is pointing an AK-47 at you? That’s murder.”

The Right is being hunted, and punished for pushing back. So, we have a seven, certainly. And a nine, certainly. What we are missing is an eight. I moved the clock to a seven.

This is moving sideways, and things are changing quickly. The 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 – Banana Republican – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Death of the Civic Nationalist – 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 770 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Banana Republican

I remember reading sword and sorcery books as a kid, mainly Conan the Notthetalkshowhost. I recall one axiom of a king who usurped the throne: kill the previous king. Nothing good comes from a realm with two kings.

Conan books were fun. But in real life, when politicians go out of their way to find a law to imprison their political opponent, it’s something that Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the Soviet NKVD under Stalin would have love, he said, “Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime.”

Beria was an awful person who didn’t die nearly painfully enough, but he has become an instruction manual for the Left. Why?

That’s the Leftist singularity: no one on the Right is good, and everyone on the Left is great. Thus, the only view that can survive this singularity is the most Leftist idea. The difficulty most people have in assessing Leftist politics is that Leftism is not a political viewpoint: it is a religion.

Monty Python™ parodied that perfectly in their movie, The Life of Brian, when a member of the Judean People’s Front (or was it the People’s Front of Judea?) wanted to make sure that the rights of people who wanted to have babies but were dudes were enshrined in their politics. “Where is he going to keep the fetus, in a box?”

It’s absurd, but dealing with absurdity is a requirement in 2023, when a dude with all his bits won several of the NCAA® women’s swimming championships. Saying this is wrong makes me a “transphobe”. I wonder if suggesting that a 5’6” woman who weighs 76 pounds is mentally ill makes me an “anorexiphobe”?

Regardless, Trump declined to cross the Rubicon on January 6, so he was impeached. Huh?

Trump scares the Left. Trump likes trans people, likes all of the rest of the LGBTQ+ salad of people, but he is evil because . . . ?

It’s because he’s the first person to be president in decades that shook the status quo. W? He was on board with everything the Left wanted to do, just in a slightly different wrapper. Compassionate Conservatism, anyone?

Trump is a rallying cry on the Left. I would imagine they hate him more than they hate the memory of a certain Austrian painter*. He is the focus of hate on the Left.

“He made us look silly in front of the French!”
“He wanted to send people who had crossed the border illegally go home!”
“He has a golden plated PEZ® dispenser!”
“He made me feel attacked because he wasn’t Hillary!”
“A ghost of a lesbian who was shunned in 1634 told me that Trump was against furries.”

*Better known for other things.

Nearly every attack on Trump is built on emotion, because Trump wasn’t on the Right, Trump was a 1990s middle-of-the-road guy, but the Left had moved into Lenin territory by the time he ran.

Perhaps the biggest sin he If you look at the actual outcome of policies, Biden has been more of an enemy of the United States than Putin, Stalin, and Brezhnev combined. Trump actually, for the first time in decades, had the economy spun around, and was the only President in ages to negotiate for pure American advantage.

Obviously, he must be punished. So?

Any statement he makes must be the basis for a crime. He was impeached for trying to uncover Biden’s Ukrainian corruption. He is under indictment for paying tramps not to talk about him. He’s under investigation for questioning voting impropriety in Georgia for a silly question, and in Washington, D.C. for having fewer secret documents than Biden had in his garage.

When polarization leads to the desire to put political opponents into prison is acted upon? It’s no better than Zelensky putting his opponents in jail and shutting down dissident media, or Putin shutting down any media that disagreed with him. It is the end point of a Leftist regime who cannot accept any opinion that deviates from their ideals, no matter how small.

Why is Trump being indicted? Because he’s breathing.

Violence and Censorship Update

It looks like the fight back is beginning. I could write quite a bit, but here are a few memes that show the Normies are awakening:

Keep this in mind.

The trans-violence-abuse connection is coming in strong and is hitting the awareness of middle America. I’m shocked, shocked I say that a group so unstable they’ll self-mutilate and that has avowed to recruit children has been committing violence.

Stonetoss, calling out the Left. Just like napalm in the morning, it smells wonderful.

Who would have imagined that if you marginalize an amazingly productive group and give them no reason to love their country, that they’ll sell out.

Huh. New restrictions. Who would have imagined that? From the same people who brought you the Patriot Act.

Biden’s Misery Index

Let’s take a look to see how we’ve done this month . . . .

Yup, up again. This economy has the pedal depressed to “fail”. Brandon is a president that makes Jimmy Carter look like an economic genius.

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 is still minimal right now. I’m betting it stays down until June at the earliest.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it was down a bit more. I think this is a conscious attempt to keep things together, plus the media is all in on “peaceful but fiery protest” mode.

Economic:

Economic numbers are back up, a tiny bit. The numbers look fairly unstable from month to month, which isn’t good.

Illegal Aliens:

I’d say the border is wide open, but we have no border.

The Death of the Civic Nationalist

What does it mean to be an American? What are American values? If the Left is to believed, “everyone is an American, they just haven’t gotten here yet”. This was also the belief of the Civic Nationalist – bring in a Somalian who doesn’t know a bit of English, and throw them into a group of government-funded housing, pay them to go to school, and they’ll be as American as Joe down the street. Heck, anyone and anything could be American! Cannibals? Child molesters? As American as apple pie.

Surely, cutting off parts of your flesh because you deny reality is the most important part of the soul of being an American.

But it’s not true. And even to the most ardent of Civic Nationalists, it’s becoming apparent that the experiment of “import the third world, they’re Americans” is failing. However, it’s not like LGBTQ+ is a cult or something.

I’d make a joke comparing the Jonestown cult to LGBTQ+ folks, but the punchline is too long.

Patently, that is false. Being an American has at least some ties to the people that forged this nation out of the (mainly) wilderness that existed prior to the advent of Europeans on the continent. The idea that a person who just dropped off a plane, speaks no English, and becomes a resident because someone snuck through the border and is now an American is . . . ridiculous.

America has more culture than McDonald’s® and highways and Wal-Mart™. It has a proud history of people who have fought for independence, and fought for freedom, and fought for the simple right to be left alone. One survey I read of immigrants showed that they were not at all good with the Second Amendment, and wanted a lot more government intervention in their lives.

At what point does this become a crisis? I think it’s too late:

This represents a major change from the values of the country. Sure, it’s not only the immigration policy that led to this . . . oh, wait, it is. None of these values were evident in 1960. What changed? The Leftist indoctrination of students at colleges (based on immigrant influence) plus the change in the people who took the poll. Immigrants don’t have American values. But when we shovel enough in?

They’ll show what they believe in, which has nothing to do with the values that he Civic Nationalists hold. And no one voted for this.

LINKS

As usual, links this month are courtesy of Ricky. Thanks so much, Ricky!!

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/ycinnewyork/status/1632952440650620928

https://twitter.com/i/status/1630898009687900161

https://twitter.com/i/status/1641972791850467329

https://twitter.com/i/status/1641505237495160832

https://twitter.com/i/status/1641944965046747136

https://twitter.com/i/status/1641898070873985028

https://twitter.com/i/status/1638324077604622336

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1632971822923915268

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2023/03/07/antifa-forest-creatures-set-fire-to-cop-city-in-atlanta/

Good Guys

https://twitter.com/Newsweek/status/1638545563099471880

https://www.bizpacreview.com/2023/03/18/detroit-man-finds-out-the-hard-way-its-a-bad-idea-to-rob-concealed-permit-holder-and-his-friend-1342005/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11881265/Take-NYC-style-Watch-fearless-Good-Samaritan-tackle-armed-man-fleeing-cops.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11735803/Armed-intruder-left-critical-condition-shot-neck-homeowner.html

https://archive.fo/7qvGi

One Guy

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11950919/Army-sergeant-CONVICTED-murdering-Black-Lives-Matter-protester-George-Floyd-unrest.html

https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2023-04-07/might-have-to-kill-a-few-people/

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/will-texas-governor-pardon-army-sergeant-sandbagged-soros-da-self-defense-shooting

Body Count

https://layoffs.fyi/

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fmore-75-americans-aged-17-24-arent-fit-military-service-dod

https://apnews.com/article/community-college-enrollment-bb2e79222a4374f4869dc2e5359f2043

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11781425/More-60-men-20s-single-compared-just-30-women.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11780875/Gender-bender-America-FIFTH-Gen-Zers-identify-LGBT-seven-times-share-Boomers.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11890655/Philadelphia-PAY-pregnant-women-1-000-month-curb-falling-fertility-rates.html

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Fstory%2F2023-03-14%2Fdeaths-broken-limbs-distracted-driving

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11732497/More-48-000-Americans-committed-suicide-year-report-finds.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11863109/Oregon-SLAMMED-rising-assisted-suicide-rates-death-tourists-adding-431-tally-2022.html

https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/is-coincidence-now-the-leading-cause

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2802602

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/3917058-teen-overdose-deaths-have-doubled-in-three-years-blame-fentanyl/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11794373/New-Frankenstein-opioid-pills-40-times-potent-fentanyl-sweeping-U-S.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11942825/Biden-launches-fentanyl-public-health-blitz-young-people.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11776999/The-blanketed-fentanyl-NINEFOLD-rise-deadly-opioid-use-western-US.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11701187/Zombie-Nation-Shocking-images-lay-bare-Americas-drug-crisis.html

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2023-03-21_10-13-03.png?itok=AfYA-GtO

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11793647/Number-migrants-caught-crossing-border-illegally-surpasses-1M-mark-fiscal-year-2023.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11851659/Massive-horde-migrants-storm-El-Paso-border-checkpoint-brazen-attempt-enter-US.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11865349/El-Salvador-mega-prison-takes-intake-gang-members.html

Vote Count

https://newstalk1130.iheart.com/featured/common-sense-central/content/2023-02-27-liberal-group-running-massive-election-bribery-scheme-in-supreme-court-race/

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/signature-verification-software-used-maricopa-county-says-10-high

https://raheemkassam.substack.com/p/fox-vs-dominion-discovery-docs-show

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/athena-thorne/2023/03/07/the-american-left-rigs-elections-everywhere-else-so-why-wouldnt-they-do-it-here-n1676250

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2023/03/15/true-the-vote-requests-special-master-in-konnech-case/

https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/03/heres-a-look-into-popular-voter-database-erics-left-wing-origins/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11761979/Kari-Lake-vows-Arizona-gubernatorial-defeat-state-supreme-court.html

Civil War

https://twitter.com/citizens_sanity/status/1630217694224973824

https://mises.org/wire/secession-inevitable-war-prevent-it-optional

https://theconversation.com/secession-is-here-states-cities-and-the-wealthy-are-already-withdrawing-from-america-200813

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/3886527-texas-lawmaker-files-texit-bill-to-spur-vote-on-exploring-secession-from-us/

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/greater-idaho-movement-absorb-rural-oregon-counties-bad-country-top-dem-warns

https://www.planetizen.com/news/2023/03/122184-nations-most-advanced-secessionist-movement

https://dnyuz.com/2023/03/18/oregons-rural-urban-divide-sparks-talk-of-secession/

https://www.governing.com/now/we-cant-all-get-along-whats-driving-modern-secession-movements

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11873063/66-MILLION-Marjorie-Taylor-Greenes-call-national-divorce-blue-red-states.html

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3884444-what-if-marjorie-taylor-greenes-secessionist-fantasy-came-true/
https://headlineusa.com/sellers-national-divorce-prevent-bloodshed/

https://highlyrespected.substack.com/p/the-national-divorce-delusion

https://andrewmtanner.medium.com/how-america-gets-a-divorce-d549ac6d89bb

https://www.governing.com/context/what-would-a-national-divorce-look-like

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d9p9q/trump-indictment-civil-war-the-donald

https://www.mediamatters.org/tiktok/i-smell-civil-war-far-right-tiktok-users-are-alluding-violence-following-news-trumps

https://abovethelaw.com/2023/03/j-michael-luttig-federal-judge-civil-war-donald-trump-2024-election/

https://tomluongo.me/2023/04/01/indicting-trump-is-the-end-of-us-politics/

Forgiveness, It’s What’s For Supper.

TOP

“The guy in the Easter bunny suit kicked his ass.” – Mallrats

What do Paul the Apostle and Jack the Ripper have in common? Same middle name. (memes as found today)

One of my earliest memories was of being a kid at Sunday School, and I think I was probably about four. I recall the Sunday School teacher giving us crayons and coloring sheets so we could color a picture of Jesus. I took a bright purple crayon and began coloring Jesus’ face. The Sunday School teacher came up to me and asked, “Johnny, why are you coloring Jesus’ face purple? He wasn’t purple.”

I responded, “He’s Jesus and he’s God, so he could be purple if he wanted to be purple.” I recall distinctly her not responding to that.

See? Even as a kid I was insufferably smug, and I didn’t even have to mention to her that he never wore pants.

Water isn’t the only thing that Jesus made wine.

For whatever reason, I seem to think that this happened around Easter, which brings us to the topic of rebirth. Even if you’re not Christian, the idea of forgiveness, sacrifice, and rebirth that is told in the New Testament is a powerful one, even if the story of the Resurrection does contain a lot of cross-referencing.

Forgiveness is a big topic, and an important one. As the old joke goes, a nun asked a child, “What do we need to do before we ask the Lord for forgiveness?”

“Sin.”

There’s a bit to think about there. First, it’s not a great joke because it references neither flatulence, Kardashians, nor PEZ®. But it does have a really good point.

I’ll admit, some mistakes are fun to watch.

First, before forgiveness is the gentle art of screwing up. And that doesn’t just mean a bad outcome, it more often refers to a loss of virtue, either momentary or prolonged. Doing the right thing and getting a bad outcome?

I’ve done it, and remain stubbornly proud of those failures. Of my failures, those are 100% my favorites, like the time I got yelled at for not doing something that was a Federal felony. Yup, that was my week at that job.

I don’t need forgiveness for that.

Thankfully my boss wasn’t a Kardashian.

The ones where I wasn’t virtuous? Or, even sinful? Yeah. I need forgiveness for that. YMMV, but I start with the Big Guy, and then work to forgive . . . myself. The one thing I think I could never get forgiveness for is eating dog – I don’t want to suffer eternal Dalmatian.

It’s important to remember that virtue isn’t a video game – doing things well and virtuous doesn’t guarantee winning. It doesn’t guarantee happiness. It doesn’t guarantee living. In fact, there are times that the virtuous path ends up resulting in guaranteed death.

For some people, that’s hard to hear. The idea has been drummed into many folks that being rich is a sign of a virtuous life. My easy counter to that is: George Soros, whose life is like cancer and syphilis had a baby.

Sometimes people are the same level of dumb as they are Evil.

Is having an easy life a sign that people lived a virtuous life?

If so, explain Jeff Epstein or Bill Clinton.

And actual forgiveness that works requires more than, “God didn’t give me a bike, so I stole one because God helps those who help themselves, so I forgive myself.”

No, sorry. Forgiveness requires a dedication to be more virtuous, and isn’t an excuse for being a tool. Otherwise, Sam Bankman-Fried would be considered for sainthood, because I’m sure he meant well.

When memes become reality.

I’ve focused mainly on getting forgiveness, and forgiving myself. There’s a third aspect, and this is one I’m going to admit that I’m not as good at: forgiving others.

I’m still working on that. The Mrs. keeps telling me that if Jesus can forgive the people who put the freak in French fries, I can forgive anyone. I said, “There is no freak in French fries.”

She responds, “I know.”

Genius or cursed? I can’t make up my mind.

So, I try to get better at forgiving others. For me, that’s the hardest part. But then I remember, that I’ve been forgiven.

I guess I’m a work in progress. But no one said it would be easy, not even Jesus. And he can be purple if he wants to.

Happy Easter, He is risen!

What Do You Value?

“I have been in the service of the Vorlons for centuries, looking for you. Diogenes, with his lamp, looking for an honest man, willing to die for all the wrong reasons. At last, my job is finished. Yours is just beginning. When the darkness comes, know this; you are the right people, in the right place, at the right time.” – Babylon 5

What is the most common question asked by philosophers nowadays? “Do you want fries with that?”

Diogenes is dead. When he was up and kicking around, he lived in a wine barrel at the end of town, and often was caught on the streets stark naked. Sometimes he was, um, enjoying himself. Oddly, he was also thought of as a respected philosopher. When I try to emulate him, though, all I get is a restraining order and some embarrassing YouTube® videos.

The reason we remember Diogenes is for two reasons:

First, he invented the chicken nugget, but sadly was unable to invent any tasty dipping sauces.

Second, he walked around making pithy little statements like this: “We sell things of great value for things of very little, and vice versa.”

It’s a very short, and very wickedly to the point piece of advice. Frankly, it points out many of the problems we are facing as a society today.

Let’s take consooming for today’s topic.

Hipsters used to burn their mouth on pizza. They ate it before it was cool.

Billions of dollars are spent attempting to convince people to purchase one product or another. These advertisements are hard to avoid – and they have one thing in common – a desire to get the consoomer to spend money. In some cases, the ads provide the ability to match a need with a product. If I’m cutting down trees using axes and handsaws, knowing that a thing called a chainsaw exists is providing me a real value. So, ads inform.

But ads also are used to create desire in customers, playing on emotions to drive purchase decisions for things that aren’t needs, but frivolities. I have plenty of those! I’m a sucker for some things in particular. In the sitting room (where I’m typing this now) I look around and see a map I bought as artwork a few years ago. It shows all the undersea telegraph cables in around 1871. So very cool! I walked into the store, saw it, and bought it. I consoomed.

I can’t cut down a tree with it. I can’t drive it to work. It’s just . . . there, stuck to my wall.

I gave The Mrs. a dart and told pointed at the map. “Where ever it goes, we’ll go on vacation.” So, we spent two weeks behind the fridge.

Is the map of great value? No. It’s a print. It doesn’t make me better, more complete, important, or accomplished. We can look in terms of multiple ways to value things. Dollars are only one. In this case, the picture cost about what I made in about an hour or two.

Was it worth an hour of my life to own that map? Yeah, I guess so. But when I start to value objects that I own, and look at how much of my life I traded for them, my equation starts to change.

If I didn’t spend that hour at work, what could I have spent that hour on? How could I have changed my life? Could I have spent more time brushing my teeth, so they were 2.3% brighter? Should I have spent that time waxing my dog?

Maybe this is why the Kardashians don’t shave?

What did I overlook or not spend time on? And which of those things might have been more valuable?

I understand that money is important – those who say that money isn’t important haven’t gone without it. But money isn’t the goal, it’s what can be done with it that’s important. The true currency of our lives isn’t gold, silver, or even PEZ™. It’s time. Each of us on this planet have a finite number of hours left on this rock, and that number goes down by one each hour that we spend.

It goes down by one if I spend it at a job I don’t like. It goes down if I spend it writing the best post I’ve ever written. It goes down by one if I’m sleeping. It goes down by one every hour.

Yes, I know, exercising and other positive things might extend that life, but I’m still going to die.

In the endless summer of a life when I was, say, 12, I didn’t think much about time and how I spent it. Even then, though, I didn’t try to just “pass the time” since there was so much to do and see and learn in the world. Now as I’m on the back side of life, I can see that those hours I have left cannot be wasted.

They’re all I have. And learning is great, but now it has to have purpose. Will it help me write? Will it help me crack a puzzle that I can share? Will it help me with some project I’m working on?

Can it help me change the world?

Again, as I get older, it ceases to be about me. It’s now about what I can do to help others, how I can help make the world a better place.

You’re welcome.

Thankfully, during my career I’ve been able to do work on things that matter, and have made the world a slightly better place. If I’m trading my life for my work, I’m glad that it’s work that matters.

Diogenes? He’s still dead, but he changed the world, just a little bit. And I can, too. And so can you. Time is still all we have, but it’s up to us to make the most of it, each and every day, just like Diogenes showed us. But, I don’t recommend you do it naked.

Now, I wonder how Diogenes dealt with the restraining orders?

Scott Adams And Two Filters: The Race Filter And The Success Filter. Choose The Success Filter.

“Certainty of death. Small chance of success. What are we waiting for?” – Return of the King

Does it make me racist if I hate the 100 meter dash? (all memes today are as-found)

Scott Adams has been more in the news in the last month than perhaps during his entire career. I think it’s entirely on purpose, since last summer he ran a poll on Twitter® that noted that at some point he was going to retire, and he had the choice on how he was going to go out. The winning choice was to go out with a bang.

Most golfers poll as swing voters.

And so he has. With $50 to $100 million in the bank and after having both his comic strip and his new book deal cancelled, he found something interesting: he was freer than he ever had been in his life. He has all the money (none of which was in Silicon Valley Bank™ – his quote, “Why would I put my money in the 19^th largest bank?”) and now he can’t lose his book deal. It’s gone. He can’t lose his comic strip. It’s gone.

Scott Adams can say whatever he damn well pleases.

He also seems genuinely interested in helping black people do better. Since Adams normally tries to look at the world through the lens of “systems” rather than goals, he ended up analyzing the normal system that black people use. Not surprisingly, he found that the systems that they use are, well, awful.

The results have been abysmal, except for the Race Grifters and politicians on the Left. But I repeat myself. And, using their advice, black people are doing pretty horribly. And they’ve been taught that white people are the problem, rather than anything else that black people are doing. And it shows. Here is one of the comments about Scott that I found online after his initial comments:

I don’t think Wildin (no relation) has anger issues, he has an anger subscription.

Black people thinking white people are the problem has obvious advantages for a politician. I recall when I was in Alaska – the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) was thought to have lots and lots of sweet, sweet oil nestled deep in its rocky bosom. But both the Left and Right used drilling there as a fund-raising opportunity. No one really wanted to solve the issue, since Greenpeace® could use it to fundraise from Lefties, and Congresscreatures on the Right could use it to fundraise from ConocoPhillips®. As long as both sides were unhappy, the money flowed.

The last thing anyone wanted to do was solve the problem. I think the Right would be just fine if the problem were solved, but the Left makes too much money, and gets too many votes.

But Adams would like to work on the solution, which has nothing at all to do with marinating in past tales of slavery. Adams graphed it out. The mindset that the Left has worked to instill in blacks is what Adams calls his Race Filter. It consists of:

Grievance,
Critical Race Theory,
Group Rights,
Spot Racists,
Systemic Racism, and
Reparations

When wearing Spandex® is a war crime.

I’ve written before about Victimhood. If you look at Adams’ distillation of the way that race relations have been put forward to blacks, well, they’ve been spoon fed a diet of Victimhood from both their own leaders as well as every “well-meaning” Leftist.

For decades.

The problem with Victimhood is that it is nearly like a self-devouring concept. It starts to fill every bit of a human soul with greed, envy, hate, and the idea that vengeance is the answer making the person small inside. That’s why when “how much” is brought up in the context of reparations, the answer is simple: no number will ever be enough. For there to be an answer, that would mean that the black people who have given themselves over to Victimhood (and their Grifters and Leftist politicians) would have to let it go.

What do you call a magician without magic? Ian.

Given the current relationship status, they will never let it go. Adams made the comment that he would cease “identifying as black” and would avoid black people because of the relative dislike of white people that showed up on the Rasmussen® survey that showed that 47% of black folks didn’t think that “it’s okay to be white.”

The comments that showed up in social media responding to Scott (as shown above) tended to confirm the polls.

But Adams isn’t done. There is another filter that he suggests can replace the Race Filter – the Personal Success Filter. I generally use the Personal Success Filter, but I never called it that. I endorse Mr. Adams’ thoughts entirely, and I’ll spend much more time talking about his success filters than I spent on the Race Filter, since the Race Filter sucks:

Replace Grievance with Happiness.

Being happy is generally the easiest thing in the world. Most people who aren’t happy, don’t want to be happy. It’s cold out? I like the cold. It’s hot out? What a bright, beautiful day. Circumstances don’t care about my feelings, so why should I let a flat tire make me mad? A flat tire just is.

I had a friend in college that I’ll call Greg (because his name was Greg) who got absolutely hammered on a very large quantity of alcohol one night, which wasn’t unusual – our school was known as “a drinking school with a college problem.” I had class with him the next morning. I looked at him and was shocked. He was dressed in slacks and button-down shirt. I said, “Dang, Greg, you were smashed last night – I thought you’d feel awful. Yet, here you are, and you look fine. What’s your secret?”

“Yeah, John, I felt awful when I woke up, so I showered, shaved, and dressed up. You can’t feel awful when you look great.”

Why not be happy? Be happy. It’s like pouring river water in your socks: it’s easy and it’s free.

Replace Critical Race Theory with Gratitude.

I could go back in history and look for all of the things where I was slighted. Where my ancestors were cheated out of something they deserved. Where I should be third in line to be King of Wisconsin. Why?

I’m adopted. I was adopted by great parents, put in a loving family, and worked like a borrowed horse to make me strong. I appreciate each and every bit of it. I’m grateful for even the bad things that have happened to me, because those ultimately made me stronger.

Kierkegaard said that life can only be lived forward, but understood in reverse. I look back, and I’m grateful for nearly everything that has happened to me. And you should be, too, because otherwise you wouldn’t be the stunning example of humanity with enough taste, intelligence, and discernment that comes here every week.

What gratitude doesn’t look like.

Replace Group with Individual.

As groups we come together to create great things. If Elon Musk was trying to build rockets, he wouldn’t even be halfway done with his very first one if the tried to go it alone. So groups have their place. But when we look to set relations based on groups, we get stupid. Why would Michael Jordan’s kid be more disadvantaged than me? Why would Jesse Jackson’s? Martin Luther King, Jr.’s?

Obviously, they were born with much more privilege than me and more money than me. Yet, in getting into college, they’d have a huge advantage over me based on just their race. Hmmm.

When I go to work on a daily basis, I don’t look to what my group does. I look to what I can do, what I can contribute, what I can write, what I can create. This makes me more successful. There is a double-edged sword here, however. Individual makes me more successful, but faced with a group that hates a group I’m part of?

Again, these are Personal Success Factors. Group factors may vary, and that’s another post.

Replace Spot Racists with Network.

In the Soviet Union, there were huge numbers of jokes (and real stories) about how the Soviets would go to great lengths to spot those that were going to undermine the revolution. Racism had disappeared in the United States to such an extent that Race Grifters had to come up with nonsense like “microaggressions” and even redefine the word “racist” so that black people couldn’t ever be called that.

I once looked up “opaque” in the dictionary. The definition was unclear.

It would have been better, however, to find people and make friends with them. I have dozens of people in my phone that I call or text on a semi-regular basis. Why? Mainly because I like them. I don’t want anything from them other than to be their friend. Yet, I call them when I need advice. And they call me when they need advice. All of my friends plus me are way, way smarter than me.

And I like them.

Replace Systemic Racism with Optimism.

Let’s pretend that Systemic Racism exists. To believe that, you’d have to ignore that 58% of NFL® players are black. That 35% of assistant coaches are black. That 72% of NBA players are black. And the black actors that people pay money to see. And the black musicians that people pay money to listen to. And Oprah. Also of note – race relations appear to be best in the Deep South where black people and white people have somehow figured out a way to live in peace.

If Systemic Racism does exist, it seems like the easiest thing in the world to overcome. And the solution is Optimism. Every day I get up thinking that things are going to be okay for me. And, mostly, they are. Being an Optimist means I’m disappointed sometimes, but I’m also happy, so I look for the silver lining. Have I lost a job because of Systematic Racism? Not that I’m sure of. But I was told, point blank, that I wasn’t hired for one particular job because I wasn’t a woman. I was okay with that. And that place? Well, it’s shut down now, and if I had started a career there, I wouldn’t have the skills I have today.

Be Optimistic.

Replace Reparations with Reciprocity.

Reparations are nonsense. Check out the meme for the list of ludicrous demands coming out of California. Note this: every one of them is about “how I can get mine” rather than “how can I improve the world for others”.

“Oh, and we also demand matching t-shirts.”

I write these posts not because I get paid. Indeed, it costs me money to write these posts beyond my time, about $2 a day. I’m planning on increasing my revenues in the coming year by 200%. Let’s see, twice nothing is still . . . carry the two . . . still nothing.

Reciprocity means doing things for others, not because they can help you, but because you’re not a tool. Has Reciprocity helped me? Absolutely. But that’s not why I do it.

Conclusions.

I can’t fix black America. I’m not going to try. Every one of the black people that I know personally are okay and I get along fine with them.

Adams is trying to fix race relations in America, but I think his efforts will ultimately be futile for several reasons – the drug of Victimhood is stronger than heroin. It is also certainly not in the interests of the Race Grifters and the Politicians. Those are two reasons, among many.

What I can do, however is my little bit in the Universe, being a happy warrior fixing what I can, warning when I see dragons ahead. Scott’s Personal Success Filter is a good one for anyone who wants to achieve.

And, like Scott, I’m not leaving my money in the 19^th largest bank.

Oh, wait. The 19^th largest bank is gone.

Note: Moderation may be tighter than normal (I’ve only nuked 78 out of nearly 21,000 comments)- keep it positive, folks.

Why Adversity And Bullies Are Your Friends

“He’s 28 years old and he can eat a chicken sandwich. Very Impressive. Mike Fitzgibbon’s son is a nuclear physicist, and my son can eat a chicken.” – Freddy Got Fingered

I did hear what Beethoven was up to recently: decomposing.

Adversity is important.

I’ll give you an example: if a kid’s life has been one simple task, with no conflict and eating Cheezy-Poofs™ on the couch while Mom brings him chicken tendies and sauce and his only responsibility is making sure he can walk from his room to the bathroom, well, he’s going to be worthless.

Why? If any little thing goes wrong, the program in the brain that says, “crap goes wrong all the time, figure it out” isn’t there. It’s never been created. This is why things like “safe spaces” and “trigger warnings” exist – a life with an utter lack of adversity. Again, embrace the power of positive bullying.

In my case, school sucked between fourth grade and sixth grade. Why? I was the odd man out. I had moved from one small school district to another when my family moved from Wilder Ranch to our compound Wilder Mountain. I was alone, for several reasons. Me?

I retreated into schoolwork. The teachers were fine. The kids were bullies, though. Little kids are okay. High school kids are okay. But there is a time in the middle where kids are cruel – kids entering adolescence have developed the ability to be mean, but they haven’t developed the capacity for empathy. It’s like they’re communists, or Stephen Colbert. But I repeat myself.

Communists are awful at telling jokes – they don’t stop until everyone gets it.

I also retreated into athletics. The one place where men of different backgrounds can come together is through additional diversity – athletics. If you tackle someone so hard that their Mom felt it, you get respect. And that respect breeds camaraderie. The new guy? He hit me so hard I had to check to see if I was standing on the train tracks.

And then? I was one of them. I also will admit this – when the kids were bullies, often they had a point. It was awful to be confronted with my inadequacies and shortcomings in that way, but the only thing worse would be to live in a bubble of pretty little lies, and never be confronted with the raw truth.

I think about kids who go through life and never meet a single challenge. I’ve interacted with a few recently. Things go bad for them? They crumple. Badly. They don’t have the ability to fight back.

That’s the problem.

A bully told me I had a face only a mother could love. Turns out I’m adopted.

I think I’ve related this story before, about a child in a Japanese schoolroom. In the story, the child (call him Phil, which I assume is a common Japanese name, like Chuck or Dave) looked at a cocoon in the back of the classroom because I assume Japanese people keep those things there along with samurai swords and they all dress like Pokémon characters.

Phil watched the butterfly struggle to get out of the cocoon. Phil felt sorry for the butterfly, so he helped it open the cocoon.

I guess butterflies just aren’t what they used to be.

The butterfly then plopped straight to the floor, since gravity works the same way in Japan (I hear) as in other countries. Phil cried. Because he was a sissy.

The teacher came to the back of the classroom and saw Phil crying. “Phil, did you help the butterfly get out of the cocoon?”

Phil, crying in the way that only Japanese children do (I have no idea what that means, but I wrote it so I’m going to go with it. Maybe their tears shoot out in coherent streams, like a squirt gun?) nodded.

The wise teacher put his hand on Phil’s shoulder. “Phil, the only way that a butterfly can get enough strength to fly, is to struggle against the cocoon. If it gets out some other way, like a can opener, it can never fly, and will die.”

Phil nodded through the tears. Then the teacher wrapped Phil up in Ace™ bandages so he could struggle to get out. I think. I get fuzzy on the end part, since the idea occurred to me as I got to the end of the story that maybe Kim Jong Un keeps shooting missiles over Japan is so he can keep Godzilla® at bay, and if he stops, well, goodbye Tokyo.

I hear Kim doesn’t date, because he’s focused on his Korea.

The point is still clear – struggle is important. My friend sent me an embroidered patch: “The strongest steel is forged in the fire of a dumpster.” And that’s true. Struggle is what makes people resilient. It is what keeps us putting one foot in front of the other when our comrades have stepped aside and given up.

I moved again when I was in junior high. I joined track, because, why not? I was a shot putter and a discus thrower, and one day the coach told us, “Go for a run,” because the most lame sport in junior high is track, and the most lame thing in track is shot and disc and I think the coach wanted to avoid association with us. I had been running up in the mountains because there was nothing else to do because the Internet hadn’t been invented yet, and had been putting in about six miles a day on the mountain roads. Running was fun.

Is your refrigerator running? If so, I might vote for it.

So, when we went running, we went for . . . about six miles. The other shot put dudes couldn’t believe that they’d gone so far. From that day forward, we were brothers. We had struggled with the six miles (well, they had, but I encouraged them onward). Struggling together, and winning, creates a bond.

On this second move, I was in with the guys in about two weeks. “Wilder? The new kid? He’s okay.”

We will have challenges. All of us. Some of them are awful. One of them will, in the end, kill me. That’s okay. I look at these challenges and resolve that I will not be afraid. I already know that I’m going to win against all of them but one, so I might as well go into that future as a happy warrior, knowing that my winning streak will eventually end.

Whatever challenge you’re going through will end. And you’ll win. Unless you die, in which case I think you should blame Phil. After all, adversity is our real strength.

But I’m not going to lose today. And not tomorrow, either. Though chicken tendies do sound nice.

Your Limits: Are They Real? Or Can You Do More?

“A man’s got to know his limitations.” – Magnum Force

I’ve heard coffee is bad, but O.J. will kill you.

Knowing yourself is important. There are two aspects of that that aren’t considered enough – knowing what you can do, and knowing what you can’t. In practice, since abilities define a large part of who I am, knowing these limitations and abilities is crucial.

To start off, I have a list of things that I know I’ll never, ever, be good at. When I was in junior high, my music teacher tried to convince me that everyone could sing. Then he heard me and began noting that the Geneva Convention probably outlawed me singing, and also that he was wrong – some people can’t sing. So, I’ve known since I was very young that however much I might like to sing, I will never, ever be able to.

Strike that – I can sing, I’ll just never be able to sing in a manner that other people find pleasant.

Other things are also off limits. Basketball, for one. I have been graced by genetics with a very powerful frame that gains muscle very easily. My body is suited for trudging through snow, chasing priests, rowing longboats, forming a shield wall, and general pillaging. Basketball? If I can tackle people that might work out. Basketball with an axe or a sword? Even better.

Knowing what I absolutely can’t do is important. It prevents frustration.

Are Viking Christians Bjorn again?

The next category is things I can do that are easy. Now, many of the things that are easy for me are hard for other people. And as I grow older, I find that things that used to be easy are becoming not so easy. This pattern will continue, up and until a thing that used to be easy (breathing) will cease to be easy. It will be difficult, and loud. And hopefully someone will make the joke, “oh, Wilder’s just venting.”

But easy is still important.

Then there are the things that I can learn to do. Taking great pictures is one, and I was working on that, trying to get the right light at the right time. I still have a lot to learn, because the teacher kicked me out of class for indecent exposure. All kidding aside, I’m okay at photography, but haven’t spent the time to be great at it, but I can picture getting good at it.

One time I thought I had a “long distance relationship”, but she called it a “restraining order”.

Learning is crucial. It is the thing that can multiply capabilities, and when they’re used for something important, it can work wonders. When those capabilities are used for nothing important, it’s the same as multiplication in the real world – it amounts to nothing.

That’s important. Learning can make us better. The last category is, in my opinion, where the magic happens: things I can do, but I think I can’t do.

Like I said, this is the magic. I had one boss who believed in me even more than I believed in me. On more than one occasion, he said to me when he gave me a task that I thought was impossible, “Wilder, you can make this happen.”

My boss at the suicide hotline asked me to be a bit less positive.

Nine times out of ten, he was right. So, nine times out of ten he knew and mentored me to do more than I thought I could do. That is either the definition of a great boss or a psycho. In this case, he was a great boss. The downside? He set ten impossible goals for himself before breakfasts, too. In one of those cases, he was wrong. As I recall, it only cost a few billion (really, not making this up) to the company. It wasn’t fraud, mind you, he just wasn’t able to do what he thought he could do.

Obviously, he was fired. And then he managed to make another billion dollar company and make himself several tens of millions in the process. Even the thing he screwed up still is worth billions.

All because he didn’t allow those that he worked with to limit themselves.

Looking back, the biggest mistakes I made were in overly limiting myself. When I look at some other friends, I see the same, not swinging for the fence when they had it all. When I get those phone calls or texts, from the outside it’s generally a trivial call to give advice because I can see the capabilities of my friends and I believe in them.

Sometimes more than they believe in themselves.

The Mrs. has a simple test to see if a cat is a psycho. “Is it a cat? It’s a psycho.”

Am I done?

No. I still have a goal – I want to kick a dent in the Universe. I think I can. If my old boss was right, it’ll be a bigger dent than I think it will be. I’m really hoping that it isn’t the Russian’s weaponizing my singing to use in the Ukraine.

Some things are more horrible than war.