Rome, Yet Again – Page 3 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Silicon Valley Bank? You’re Soaking In It.

“Why don’t we pretend he didn’t die? Just for a bit . . .” – Weekend at Bernie’s

Why can’t Ray Charles drive? He’s dead. (Outside of this one, memes are “as found”)

On March 15, 44 B.C., Julius Caesar was walking to work, since Rome was declared by Gretanius Thunbergium to be a “walkable city” because she was concerned about the sweat of galley slaves and horses making the oceans too salty, thus enraging Neptune, the god of the sea.

This particular day was a good one in Rome, and the bright warm Sun shone down on Caesar as he made it to the Senate. Caesar loved the Senate, since all of the Senators were really cool and he loved hanging out with them to watch the gladiator games every Sunday.

Then, on arriving at the Senate? Caesar was stabbed in the back by raising interest rates, and, with his last, dying words, he said, “Please, take this salad dressing, and remember me by it. Oh, and name a way that babies are born after me. And Kaiser and Czar might be cool titles for kings in the future.”

Okay, that might not be exactly what happened. But you can’t prove it wasn’t, because it’s not on YouTube®.

But interest rates have been a thing since long before even Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon, took the throne, and then became a human pincushion. And they’ve been gumming up society both before then, and also since then.

Last Friday, on March 10, a curious thing happened – the 19^th largest bank, Silicon Valley Bank, went tango uniform. To paraphrase Python, Monty:

“It’s a stiff. Bereft of life. It rests in peace. If you hadn’t backfilled the coffers with Federal Reserve® notes, it would be pushing up daisies. Its metabolic processes are now history. It’s off the twig. It’s kicked the bucket. It’s shuffled off the mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleeding choir invisible. THIS IS AN EX-BANK.”

How, exactly, does a Norwegian blue parrot bank die so quickly?

The truth is, it has been dead for a bit. I’ll explain. You can get explanations of this elsewhere, but none of them will be as funny, since that’s what my job is.

When banks take in money, they have several options of what they can do with it. They can bury it in Mason® jars in the back 40, they can loan it to other people, or they can park it in an investment. Back in 2008, the big financial crisis was that the loans were to people that could never have paid the money back. I was offered a guaranteed approval home loan on a house (with zero down!) that was ten times my income.

“Why would you offer me that? I could never pay that back?” was my response.

The loan lady sighed audibly over the phone. “I know, but I’m required to tell you that.”

It’s like they never learned anything.

So, part of the problem in 2008 was that the loans were junk because some folks said, “I could use a pool surrounded by marble columns with a champagne fountain built out of PEZ™. I’m in!” even though they only made $32 dollars a month. They even had a name for these loans – NINJA – “No Income, No Job”.

These banks also gambled with the cash of the average depositor, investing in champagne PEZ© fountain manufacturers. Hey, how could they lose?

Oh, yeah. Things don’t go up forever. So when they end? It gets ugly.

The response to that by the Fed® was to use a cash cannon and barrage the banks. The idea was this, the banks would soak up the cash to paper over the bad debts, and if they had extra cash, they’d park it at the Fed™. Essentially, the Fed™, working with the banks, made sure that the bankers could keep getting big bonuses, not face criminal charges like the average small-town banker might if he stole the cash from the deposits to pay for his 4.5 out of 10 mistress and trips to Vegas.

It’s like there are different rules for you and I.

Nope. They got to keep their penthouses, private jets, and bimbos. In order to keep this nonsense so it wouldn’t implode, the one thing the Fed™ had to do was keep interest rates low. If the Fed© had tried this in 1975, or 1985, or 1995, the world would have punished it by driving the value of the dollar down (faster), cratering purchasing power and the economy.

But after 2008, there was no other big power. Japan was a basketcase, Europe was still the Jekyll an Hyde level continent, with Western Europe mainly concerned about how many “Syrians” they could import, and Eastern Europe mainly working out how to make more potatoes so they could make more vodka. Roads? Why?

That left the United States as, amazingly, still the only kid with a currency anyone trusted, even though we were spending like a sixteen-year-old with dad’s credit card.

Huh, wonder when YouTube® will ban people for this?

Oh, the Left is already trying to censor people. Nevermind.

I like the cut of his jib.

Not now. The COVID world created the Trump/Biden policy of “How can we spend more money today?” Contrast that with China’s “No body count is too high” policy, and, oddly, the world began to trust the United States less. Add in Biden’s incoherent policy of a.) letting wars start and b.) pushing away allies like the Saudis, and now we live in a world driven by chaos.

And we’ve lost the trust of the world.

So, the banks still do the same three things with the cash deposited in their banks: Mason™ jars in the backyard, loan it, or invest it. Last time, the banks invested in whatever crap floated in the window. That was silly.

The banks thought they had cracked the code: this time, they invested in U.S. Treasury Bonds.

Yay! That’s what a sober person would do, right?

Well, maybe. But when a bank buys a 10-year bond that has an attached interest rate of 0.08%, and the stated inflation rate is 6%, the value of that 10-year bond craters. Interest rates go up? Bond values go down. It turns out Silicon Valley Bank™ had some of these bonds. How many? Enough to wipe out all of the shareholder and bondholder (yeah, they bought and sold bonds) value. And it’s not limited to them. Here’s the take on the unrealized losses of the biggest banks in America:

Losers in 1901, Losers in 1921, Losers in 1929, Losers in 1937, Losers in 1945, Losers in 1948, Losers in 1953, Losers in 1957, Losers in 1950, Losers in 1960, Losers in 1969, Losers in 1973, Losers in 1980, Losers in 1981, Losers in 1990, Losers in 2001, Losers in 2007 . . . Oh, wait, the banks didn’t lose anything, it was just regular people.

The FDIC insures deposits to $250,000. Except when (reportedly) Oprah had half a billion in that particular bank. Turns out that the United States blinked: “You get all your money, and you get all your money, and you get all your money,” because Oprah is more important than you and I.

Two other banks have failed already. You can see that some of their CEOs were serious people only worried about the welfare of their depositors.

Yup, the “adults” are in charge.

This will not result in an immediate run. The Fed® and the Treasury will continue to backstop the banks because to do otherwise would collapse the system. They even say so. Valuing assets “at par” means at what the banks paid for them. I own a car from 2003. In Fedspeak® that asset would be valued at the initial purchase price, despite the fact that it has one light-second worth of miles (kilopascals) on it. Here’s proof:

See? I’m a respected journalist. Besides, I believe I am the VERY FIRST person to note that the reserve ratio had gone to zero. You can check it out. This will help my lawyer if I’m ever sued. (Serious about the very first part.)

The Fed™ is screwed. They want to keep Biden in office, which requires low interest rates and a booming economy and no inflation. But to lower inflation, they have to jack up the interest rates far above the rate of inflation. Biden cannot be re-elected. Period, unless there’s a global war.

Nah, people would never buy a war started due to economic issues.

Ooops. I’d say sorry, but this is already in the playbook.

Me? My bet is this can keeps rattling around causing damage for several months. Six or seven? Maybe. Eventually, the Fed® is going to figure out that they can’t paper over this mess.

In the meantime, the cash for businesses will dry up, and the only people that can borrow money will be those that don’t need it. New projects? They’ll be cancelled unless the company has the cash or it will ruin them if they don’t stop. New housing? Forget it. The housing market will collapse, (it already is) and the costs of new stuff to make new are so high that no one can afford it, forget the interest rate.

People will stop eating dinner in a restaurant. We already have.

No, the Ides of March won’t be the end. But you can see it from here. While you can, enjoy the nice walk on a sunny day.

And Neptune? He’s always been a whiney bitch. Ignore Neptune.

Discipline, Romans, And Spending All The Money

“That’s newspapers for you. You could fill volumes with what you don’t read in ‘em.” – The Green Berets

I decided never to jog with Marcus Aurelius. It’s always dangerous to run with Caesars.

Self-discipline is hard, but it starts with the smallest step. Even (the dead) Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius in his book Meditations talked about how hard it was to get out of bed in the morning. Marcus talked about how warm and comfy he was under the covers, and how he’d like to stay there, curled up. In then end, though, he got up because he had responsibility to govern the Empire that was a bit more important than his desire to be comfy.

Me? There are some mornings I would have given up Gaul for another fifteen minutes. Okay, maybe not Gaul because of the food, but definitely Judea.

Marcus did the tough (maybe he had a hangover?) thing because he had a responsibility to millions of citizens to do his very best for them, and as nearly as I can determine, he took that seriously. Plus? It’s good to be the Emperor. I hear they didn’t have to wait in the drive through for Chicken McNuggets® and always got enough Hot Mustard™ sauce.

My advice? Never eat a Kid’s Meal at McDonald’s®. Their mothers tend to get upset.

The difficult part of discipline is that it requires, well, discipline. Getting good things in life is difficult – that’s why we work for them. And that’s why it’s called work. It’s tough. But when the seeds are planted, cared for, and weeded, then at harvest it’s time to reap the rewards. Discipline is like that. Heck, some sort of east Asian place that I can’t be bothered to look up has a proverb that says that, “A woman who marries a man who works hard every day will never starve.”

I don’t think that was China, because if it was China, they have been starving every century by the tens of millions, especially when they embarked on the Chinese Diet Plan called Communism. Maybe it was Puerto Rico? Or Applebee’s™?

Probably not. But I think it might have ended in a vowel, but not Y, because that’s sometimes only a vowel, and I don’t think that Asians use the same fonts.

So, if even a dead Roman can figure it out, why can’t we?

Some people want to ban Roman numerals. Not on my watch.

The latest bouts of fiscal insanity in the United States have made me think that none of them have read Marcus Aurelius, or maybe even can read. What triggered this post is the recent Supreme Court Case about ghosts. Oh, wait, that’s later. No, student loans.

Student loans in the United States are a particularly horrible thing that gives money to Leftist professors so that they can indoctrinate youth but the youth has to pay for it until they lose all their teeth or pay it off. I think that was in the terms and conditions of my student loans, but I can’t be exactly sure, since after I signed my name, they gave me $7,500. Duh.

The most pernicious thing about student loans is that they live forever. I paid mine off in January, 2013. I paid ahead, but didn’t want to pay them off completely if the world ended in December, 2012 (which was a thing). Oddly, this is a true story, and illustrates how far I’m willing to take a joke.

But student loan forgiveness is just the tip of the iceberg. For the last five or so years of my life, the government (both Right and Left) has been like a fat girl who decides on a Tuesday night that the diet is over. That cookie dough? Sure. I can eat a tube or two. Covered in frosting. Oh, and I’ll just tidy up the frosting container so it doesn’t go bad. If you’ve given up, why not go all in?

The cannibal decided to go on a vegan diet. He found a family of them at Whole Foods®.

The government (again, both Right and Left) has decided that there is no limit. Every Tuesday for them is time to give Ukraine more money for . . . (spins wheel) dental x-ray infrastructure. Will $23 billion cover that? Sure, if it were just Ukraine, that would be one thing. But it’s not just that. Biden’s Build Back Better means that we’ll just burn cash to make us warm if we run out of oil.

If I seem a bit cynical, it’s because that at every single turn in my life, that I’ve seen fiscal discipline further erode, and money fly a bit freer each day. At no point have I ever seen (outside of Ron and Rand Paul) and politician say, “stop”. Apparently, when elected to Congress, the “spend money on everything light” blinks on the dashboard of their cars.

My dashboard keeps telling me “trunk is ajar”. Silly car. A trunk isn’t a jar.

There is no discipline. There is no pretending to have discipline. It’s all just comfy warm covers and Chicken McNuggies™ while every sense of fiscal discipline is overridden by another trip of the spoon int the Pillsbury™ chocolate frosting.

But that’s okay. I’m sure it will end fine. Where’s the frosting? I think I want to sleep late today. Oh, but have we spent enough money on Ukraine?

Never Lose The Battle For Your Mind

Bah! Your planet doesn’t deserve freedom until it learns what it is not to have freedom. It’s a lesson, I say!” – Futurama

What did they call George Washington’s teeth? Presidentures.

“So, John, after I explained it, do you agree with me?” asked Captain Assholay.

“No, no I don’t,” I responded.

He looked frustrated.

The other details of the conversation were and are relatively unimportant, but the boil down to those two sentences. The fact that the person asking the question was my boss is pertinent, since, well, Captain Assholay was (years and years ago) my boss.

As bosses go, I’d rank the Captain near the bottom of the ones that I’ve had. I think he was borderline retarded, and I can say that word because it’s my blog, and I’m bringing it back.

One of my previous bosses was a man that reportedly lost the family fortune by punching a punter for the Green Bay Packers® who sued him and won because he couldn’t play anymore. I guess punters are fragile. On another occasion (while drinking) he mentioned that he threatened a witness in a felony trial so he’d leave the state and not be able to testify.

Captain Assholay? Worse than that guy.

Alternate caption: “Well, Forrest, there’s cheddar cheese, fried cheese, cheese sticks, cheese curds, cheese slices, cheese doodles, melted cheese, cheese dip (continues for three days) . . . that’s all the cheeses I know.”

But these two sentences encapsulated the relationship I had with Captain Assholay – his question was whether or not I would change my opinion. I would not.

Neither would I lie about it.

I’ve followed a fairly simple pattern in my life: when I’m working for someone, if they ask me to do something that is within my capabilities, and it’s not illegal, immoral, unethical, and doesn’t conflict with my values, I do it. Even if I don’t like it. Even if it sucks. That’s why it’s called work, and not a hobby.

This, though, was different. In this case, I was asked to conform my thoughts and agree with my boss. If he told me to do something (again, nothing illegal, immoral, unethical, and not conflicting with my values) I would do it. But the space he doesn’t own is in my head.

To me, agreeing with the Captain merely because he was my boss is something I couldn’t and wouldn’t do. I’ll hold my tongue. I’ll support silly things. But my mind?

I own it.

My other friend makes wigs. It doesn’t pay much, just enough toupee the bills.

I’m not sure Captain Assholay understood that. Heck, I’m not sure he had the capacity to understand it. But it’s not my job to raise him. One (much better) boss of mine had a saying, “Right or wrong, the boss is the boss.” That is true, and soon enough, we ceased working together.

I don’t send him Christmas cards. Okay, I don’t send anyone Christmas cards, but if I did, I would not send him two cards. My joy in thinking about him is that I do know that karma is real, and that the German word for empathy is schadenfreude.

Even though I’ll enjoy (at some point) hearing about his sudden but inevitable downfall, that’s not the point of this post. The point of this post is about the latter part: there are things other people can buy from me. My time.

But they can never, ever, buy my soul. They can never buy my integrity. They can never buy my values.

He also joined a poetry club. So far he’s made some ashtrays and a nice vase.

Life is about a series of compromises. Anyone in a long-term relationship realizes that. In fact, I’m pleased that The Mrs. has learned that if I promise to fix something around the house, I will, and she doesn’t need to nag me every six months until I actually get it done.

I couldn’t lie to the Captain. Why?

I’ve given that some thought. One idea might have been pride, but that’s not it. I’m not much about things like that – the last time I washed one of my cars was sometime when Clinton was president. So, that’s not it.

It was deeper. And I look to my growing up, and the stories. Would the heroes I read about have yielded? Would Alexander? Would Patton? Would Richard Dawson?

No.

While I will render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s, there are things that are simply not for sale, and never will be. I will face the world that is being born knowing that.

“All I want for Christmas is Gaul.”

I don’t recall exactly where I read it, but the difference between the Mafia and Leftists is that the Mafia doesn’t care if you agree with them, as long as you pay. Leftists? You must pay, and you must agree, and you must humiliate yourself if you ever disagreed. They will settle for nothing less.

The only answer is to never give in.

Ever. Understand where the line is, and never, ever let it be crossed. Even if you aren’t religious, understand that the battle is for your soul.

And you will be tested.

And you are not alone.

I saw my ex-wife get hit by a bus, and thought, “Man, that could have been me,” but then I remembered I don’t know how to drive a bus.

And that is the first step and the final step of winning. If you don’t compromise, there will never be a one-way trip on a train. Be free: never give the space in your head, never give up your values or virtue.

Especially not to Captain Assholay.

The Most Dangerous Thought Of The Day

“On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.” – Fight Club

Amber lost the lawsuit to Johnny Depp to the tune of $15 million. I guess she’s now deep in Depp.

One thing that I like to do is test ideas. Sometimes, like PEZ® and velvet Elvis posters, the idea is a classic of Western Civilization. Other times, like communism, communism, and communism, the idea is horrible. Others? Others are a kludge that we’ve made work. Or the idea is just the system that we have.

This post will test an idea that just might be the most dangerous one I’ve ever shared.

An idea that has been with us for most of recorded history is the concept of interest rates. The idea is simple – I borrow $10 today, and next year I give back $11. The extra dollar is the fee I pay for borrowing the money. There are records that compound interest was charged by the Sumerians back even before your momma was born, back in 2,400 B.C. They even had the math to accurately calculate it. Area of a circle?

Nah.

How much you owe me? That’s easy as pie. But not as easy as a nearly 22/7 pies, I guess.

Sorry, that joke was irrational.

Regardless, interest rates have been with us a very, very long time. And they have been vexing us for just as long. The good properties of interest are that it allows for people who don’t have money to get it, which they like. It allows people with “excess” money to get something for having the money, which they like.

There are some pretty significant downsides. Let’s take a simple example: There are several people on an island after a three-hour tour. A three-hour tour.

There are 10 ounces of gold on the island. I need to borrow them because, well, I have no idea. Assume it involves me trying to get to Mary Ann’s coconuts. Whatever.

A year later, the person who lent me the 10 ounces of gold wants 11 back. But there aren’t 11. I default. I default because there is a limit on the currency. This simple example shows that, in a society where interest exists, eventually there must be either a default, or there must be an inflation of the money supply.

I guess there’s a reason The Mrs. buys coconut shampoo?

This leads, inevitably, to a series of booms and busts. It also leads to, over time, a greater and greater concentration of money (or cash) in the hands of those who actually do nothing more than have the cash. In our society, these people often just print the cash, unbacked by anything, like it’s some amazing Sumerian money magic.

I hear the ladies love a man in cuneiform.

Thus, the financial sector, through the use of interest, both (over time) gains control over society through the concentration of capital. The golden rule? He who has the gold, makes the rules. In this case, the Federal Reserve® (which is not federal, and doesn’t have reserves) is actually owned by the member banks. So, the banks own the Fed™. Which makes the rules.

As I said in a previous post, there has been a concentrated effort to remove the political from the economic, and the economic from the political. Sure, Congress passes $1.7 trillion spending bills so we can send lots more money to the Ukraine, but who finances all of these shenanigans?

The Fed®. Look in your wallet, and pull out some cash – it says “Federal Reserve Note®” – not United States Dollar. A difference. Congress doesn’t print the cash – the Fed™ does. And the Fed© has to print more of it each year, because people keep getting charged interest.

This leads to cyclic bouts of inflation and/or currency default due to the accumulated debt. The Great Recession of 2008 was brought about because of a debt-fueled housing spending spree that collapsed.

What car does the Chairman of the Fed® drive? A Fiat™.

So, what happens if . . . we don’t allow interest to be charged?

It’s a big thought. And the world has had interest rates for a long time. In Imperial Rome, they varied from 5% to 25% depending on the time and on what was being invested in, and there are records of just the same sorts of credit crunches as we see today. And also the need for the Romans to take their silver coin, the denarius, and turn it into a mainly base-metal coin by the end of the Empire.

But I’m not alone in speculating about what would happen if we stopped charging interest. Aristotle himself (and not the Aristotle who makes the gyros at the fair during the local harvest festival in Modern Mayberry) had the idea that it shouldn’t exist because, heck, I’ll let him tell you:

“The most hated sort, and with the greatest reason, is usury, which makes a gain out of money itself, and not from the natural object of it. For money was intended to be used in exchange, but not to increase at interest. And this term interest, which means the birth of money from money, is applied to the breeding of money because the offspring resembles the parent. Wherefore of all modes of getting wealth this is the most unnatural.”

I’m not sure if Aristotle was upside down on a used goat that he bought, but what I think he’s trying to say is this: the act of lending money creates no value. If I buy a building and build a PEZ® factory, the PEZ™ factory either makes a profit or makes a loss. If it makes a profit, that’s one signal that it has created value for society. It has employed people to make a wholesome product that, when consumed in moderation, is harmless. If I can make a profit doing that, I’ve created value in society.

If I lend money? Not so much. My singular objective is only the profit from making money.

It takes an infinite amount of Zenos to screw in a light bulb.

How would such a world work? Perhaps people combine to lend money to businesses based on the idea that they might create value (and thus a profit) and take the gain in their money from that value created through the business? People combine to finance a business for a purpose, and thus gain.

No interest required.

How about a house? Why would I loan money, absent interest, on a house? Perhaps the payment could be based on the assessed value (thus making the loan an investment, rather than a loan). If the value goes up, the payment goes up. Down? Payment goes down.

This would put skin in the game for the banks, and they would have a vested interest (pardon) in making sure that the investment was good. No incentive for the housing crisis. Payments linked to . . . value created.

Car lending? Yeah, that’s harder, since that is a declining-value asset. I’m sure that it could be figured out, since I’ve already solved tons of loan issues with the two solutions above. I’ll leave solving the car loan problem to the class. Oh, and the student loan problem, too.

I hear that $221 million in student loans were canceled. Those lucky seven people!

It can be done. It has been done. Oddly, I think it would result in a freer world where, rather than focusing on ways to, uhm, view people as assets to extract value from, people would be forced to seek to provide value for their fellow man. Making happy customers.

Think of it as a thought experiment. A dangerous one that would change who has power in this world.

See, I told you this was my most dangerous post.

Predictions – What Won’t Happen in 2023

“In that time, I have something to say. How long before the Halkan prediction of galactic revolt is realized?” – Star Trek, TOS

I just read that it’s the law that if it’s raining in Sweden you have to have your headlights on. How am I going to know if it’s raining in Sweden?

This is the first post of the year. That feels like so much responsibility. It feels like I have the weight of the fate of 2023 on my shoulders. Of course, 2020, 2021, and 2022 have been Godzilla-level disasters, except that whoever does the lip-syncing didn’t get Joe Biden quite right.

But just before I started writing, I had an epiphany. Many writers write about things that will happen, but here’s a list of things that I think won’t happen. Of course, I can’t guarantee any of this, but I’m feeling pretty good about this list. Remember, of course, I thought Zeppelins were a good idea. Oh, sure, you’re expecting me to make a Led Zeppelin pun, but I’m just going to Ramble On instead.

Here’s the first thing:

Western Civilization isn’t done. At all. The construct and values of Western Civilization are under attack, but the roots turn very, very deep. How deep? They run deep before Christianity (I am a Christian), and deep as Greece and Troy and the Yamnaya people before them. This is not the last time the song of Achilles will be sung, nor is it the last time that Caesar will be praised.

It’s not even close. The medieval cathedrals may cease to exist, but the spirit that created them is not done. The blood that created them still pulses in the veins of many on Earth.

No, Western Civilization isn’t done. And it won’t be done for a very, very long time.

I downloaded a copy of the Iliad, but had to delete it. It was full of Trojans.

This is, perhaps, the most important message that I can ever send. The blood of my father and his father, and so on, goes back into time. I do know this: the reason there is a phrase, “the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” exists is because, a son is like his father. There are many sons who are out there, who are not happy with the situation. The idea of the Left is that they’ll be pushed over.

They won’t. Push other cultures too far? Cities burn. Push Western Civilization too far?

Continents burn. The fight necessary to extinguish Western Civilization will make World War II look like a garden party.

Here’s the second thing:

We haven’t yet hit peak Elon Musk amusement. He’s the first person to “lose” $200 billion in a year without missing a beat, and he’s simply not done stirring the pot.

Here’s the third thing:

There is only so long that the Federal Reserve® can print cash and pretend it’s money. It has been nearly fifty years, which is a really, really long time in dog years that Nixon quit pretending that the dollar was backed by gold. The dollar immediately shrank in value, but remains relatively strong when compared to most currencies around the world even though I’d prefer to have a dollar’s worth of gold from 1973 than a dollar printed in 1973.

The strength of the dollar won’t end in 2023. But it’s closer to free fall every year. Right now, the confetti that the Federal Reserve™ presents as money is still good. But when the people in Ethiopia and Zimbabwe and Senegal and Laos won’t take it? The dollar will be toast.

My go-to on Asian currency is a local Spanish language show. I guess it takes Juan to know Yuan.

And yet, the world hasn’t stopped taking the dollar that we print from paper. Why? The United States has a wicked large navy and about a zillion nuclear bombs. I’ll note: Iraq decided to take Euros for oil.

Oops. Guess we need to replace Saddam.

Libya decides to take gold for oil.

Oops. Guess we need to replace Ghaddafi.

Since Russia will take gold for oil, and China will swap their money for oil…?

The good news?

The dollar won’t end in 2023.

The bad news?

In 2023. No promises after that. And I might be wrong, so keep some silver, gold and lead around.

Here’s the fourth thing:

The Beatles won’t reunite. Unless Paul starts eating bacon and Ringo takes up alligator wrestling.

Who is the drummer for the Australian Beatles cover band? ɹɐʇs oƃuᴉp

Here’s the fifth thing:

Biden won’t get any smarter. And neither will Hunter, though I’m sure tons of the cash shipped to the Ukraine will get recycled back into Hunter’s drug habit. Good news! It won’t be long until he loses another laptop.

Here’s the sixth thing:

Movies won’t get any better in 2023. The best movie in 2022 was approximately the same movie as the best-grossing movie of 1986. Yup. Top Gun: Maverick was a good movie. Nearly exactly the same level of good as Top Gun. Avatar: The Way Of Ego was from the same person who brought you Aliens. Which was the fifth best-grossing movie in 1986. It isn’t getting any better in 2023.

What do they call James Cameron when he’s not working? James Cameroff.

I am somewhat amused. The very, very best movies of 2022 were a faithful remake and a pale imitation of two of the best movies of 1986.

Wow.

1986 was, observably, and quantifiably better than 2022 in every way possible. If you’re thinking that in 2023 Disney® will stop putting out movies that show why kid-touching is a good thing or feature a Disney® princess played by some 372-pound guy named Todd? Not happening.

Yeah. Mass media is really dead. And in 2023 it will be a dead cat bounce. Maybe. It depends only on how many Tom Cruise movies are coming out. Who could have predicted that Scientologists would be more sane than Leftists?

Sure, there will be some movies that will be okay. If one movie in 2023 is better than any movie I’ve ever seen? I’ll cover my nipples in opossum grease and sandpaper my eyebrows.

The Opossum Sanitation Company had a unique concept on recycling.

Here’s the seventh thing:

We’re not done. This isn’t over.

I’ve been using this as an irregular tagline for years. And I mean it.

We’re not done.

The Most Inaccurate (but funniest) Predictions For 2023, Guaranteed.

“It’s getting almost predictable, isn’t it?”– The A-Team

What is a teenager under stress called? A teenager.

Here is the annual Wilder Prediction Page, proven so far to be absolutely 0% right. A few years ago I started to put actual predictions about economic and political stuff out quarterly. Real ones. The rationale behind that is, if I put it in writing and then revisited it, I at least owned it.

Those were absolutely the least popular posts I did. They were like posts that were drenched in mosquito-carried Ebola AIDS. I got the hint, “Shut up and play your piano, Wilder.” I can see the reason, frankly. That was a post about me and my thinking, and it wasn’t what I do best.

What do I do best online? Writing about life, philosophy, and nonsense. I also can prove that the Right can be funnier than the Left. This is becoming more difficult in 2022, because they keep letting Kamala and Joe say words into a microphone.

So, welcome back to the nonsense! In chronological order, here are my predictions for 2023.

January:

Russia appoints Charlie Sheen as the head of the Stavka. He immediately gives the entire army a ration of Tiger Blood, declares they are “Winning” and passes out in pool of vomit. We have no idea whose vomit, exactly, since “you can’t really dust for vomit.” Sheen proves to be the most effective commander for the Russian army since Zhukov.

What did Charlie do when he was mad at his wife? Rage against the Mrs. Sheen.

Six movies are released featuring Nic Cage, and seven people actually see three of them.

February:

Kamala Harris is featured in a major policy speech, talking about the massive snowstorm that hit the East Coast in early February. The results were catastrophic, causing Chuck Schumer’s hair to freeze in place on Nancy Pelosi’s thighs. Harris notes that this is “evidence of global warming, where the globe, which is a round thing hanging in space, is warming, which makes things cold because space has COVID.”

The California Legislature votes to allow “consenting adults to have sex with animals in schoolyards as long as the animals have claws or fangs, since that is a sign of consent.” Governor Gavin Newsom signs the bill publicly, though the signing was difficult since both of his hands were wrapped in gauze.

March:

Volodymyr Zelensky demands the West send him “seventy bazillion dollars to rebuild the Ukraine on and, like, ten gajillion tanks” and that the heads of state of the EU personally retile the bathrooms in his Florida mansion. “Be careful with the grout!”

What do Putin and Peter the Great have in common? They both have 18^th Century Russian armies.

Wilder, Wealthy and Wise© welcomes the 500,000,000,000,000^th visitor, as it becomes the most popular website in the galaxy, as the hivemind of Melexcor III learns to appreciate dad jokes.

April:

The new COVID variant mRNA booster shot for Super-Mega-Death-Cannibal-Famine® COVID is approved by the FDA because “Omigod, why won’t you damn people panic again!” Australia implements “Super Peaceful Completely Voluntary We Mean It Leisure Camps”.

Disney® releases its new children’s film, Honey, I Turned All Our Children Hyperactive, Bipolar, Transgender, Gay, And Multiracial. The three families that have hyperactive, bipolar, transgender, gay, and multiracial children attend, and the film’s three-week box office in 2,000 theaters is $90. Disney© blames the audience for being, well, you get the idea. The film loses $350 million at the box office.

May:

Elon Musk pulls off a rubber mask and indicates that, underneath, he was really Elon Musk. “I would have gotten away with it, too, if it weren’t for you pesky kids.”

The Supreme Court rules in the case of Idiots v. Rationality, that, “Uh, really, that’s a dude. He may be wearing a dress, but, per the original understanding of the framers of the Constitution, that’s totally a dude.”

Back when I was a kid, if a spy had to go undercover dressed as a woman, that was a transmission.

June:

Joe Biden announces, for the thirteenth time, that he’s running for president. “I promise to make America great again after the problems of the housing bubble that George W. Bush created. America will once again be great, starting in 2009!”

Argentina declares war on Great Britain over the Falkland Islands. Again. They send their victorious World Cup® team in the initial invasion. Great Britain counter-attacks with what they call “food”. France surrenders.

July:

I might go on vacation for a week. Maybe someplace where I don’t need air conditioning.

California governor Gavin Newsom declares “Citizenship Day” where everyone in the whole, wide world becomes a citizen of California. Oklahoma declares war. “No way are we gonna do that.”

August:

California becomes part of “Greater Oklahoma.” “If only we had greater legal magazine capacities,” said Gavin Newsom before he was headed to a minimum-security prison with knitting classes in southern Oklahoma.

Biden announces that gasoline is now illegal. “People have been burning that stuff up! Not on my watch. Now the only people that can have gasoline are,” (checks teleprompter) “people who are in disadvantaged communities that are the victims of systematic race horses.”

In 2023, a man can identify as a car, unless he doesn’t meet Federal standards.

September:

The 2023 NFL® season starts, with a new team name in Cincinnati. The name, “Bengals” has been described as “transphobic” by NFL© Commissioner RuPaul, “They aren’t “Been gals, they’re totally gals!” Their new team name is the Cincinnati LGBT 2S+.

The Beatles reunion is complete as Ringo Starr and Paul McCartney engage in a steel cage death match over who like John Lennon the least. Neither ex-Beatle survive, since Ringo inexplicably chose hand grenades as a close-in melee weapon.

October:

Dammit. More crap about the English royal family. Oh, wait, that’s every month. This month Meghan tells how King Charles made her pick cotton on the plantation in south Brighton for 20 hours a day because she didn’t curtsey properly. Markel is beheaded in Piccadilly Square, and Queen Elizabeth II rises from the grave and fights Mecha George Washington on Skull Island. Oh, wait, that was a dream I had. Nevermind.

On Halloween, children are warned not to get double-secret COVID.

November:

An article appears in the New York Times™ titled, The Final Crusade Has Started: Why That’s A Good Thing. Deus Vult ensues.

I’m probably having some turkey and beer around Thanksgiving. This one isn’t much of a stretch.

What band did Indiana Jones hate? The Rolling Stones.

December:

Avatar XXII: Why Slavery Is Bad is released. James Cameron is executed at Times Square in New York City because that his comment, “I’m king of the world” was culturally insensitive and totally colonialist. At least 500 people see Avatar XXII, with many reviewers noting that the blue fish people’s ethnic cleansing of the humans is “culturally insensitive”.

Wilder, Wealthy and Wise™ becomes the most popular website in history of the universe as time travelers from the year 28,764 discover that it is a humane alternative to their other form of capital punishment: sitting in a comfy chair.

How Scarcity Has Changed Your Life, And Will Change It Again. But With Hot Chick Pictures.

“Dad! Bob broke your beer!” – Strange Brew

Here’s one only 1300’s kids will get: The Black Plague

Part of the history of humanity was scarcity. Scarcity has formed society since, well, forever. What do I mean?

Well, before agriculture, there was a scarcity of beer. My personal theory is that civilization itself is because we wanted beer on a regular basis (Beer, Technology, Beer, Tide® Pods, Beer, Civilizational Stability, and Beer). Click on this one, it’s a fun read and one of my Original Wilder Thoughts.

So, beer was scarce, and we made agriculture and farms so we could get beer.

But what became scarce then? Labor.

Prior to having agriculture, slavery was a net negative. To have a slave, you had to feed him or her, and what were you going to have them do all day, hang out and play Nintendo®? If you sent them out to hunt or gather, they’d never come back. But once you had work to do every day to make sure the farm produced pre-beer?

Slavery made sense because having more slaves resulted in having more beer.

If agriculture was the most disruptive technology in history besides Über®, slavery was an unintended consequence. Labor stayed as a scarce resource for a long time, until the Industrial Revolution. The Industrial Revolution was amazing precisely because it changed the game on labor.Why did Leia passionately kiss Luke? She was looking for love in Alderaan places.

Sure, labor was needed, but the entire type of labor needed to be changed. It went from artisans and craftsmen making “one of a kind” items to people working in a factory making standardized items that were all the same. Because of the nature of the process, people generally worked on only one part of whatever was being made. The jobs were simplified, so that people could do one, repeatable task again and again.

People became replaceable, just another cog in the machine, but the scarcity of labor that created the need for slavery changed to make slavery uneconomical again. Why have a slave that you have to take care for, when you can have an employee that you can fire when they get old or injured?

Now, the scarcity was energy.An entire industry was built on just getting energy to feed the industrial revolution. Coal was the first, but followed soon enough by oil. The first oil wells were a boon because they produced lamp oil, and the gasoline bits were thrown away (generally dumped on the ground) and the heavy bits (asphalt, etc.) were thrown in pits.

Of course, soon enough, we determined how to use everything that came out of the ground for something, and none of the sweet, sweet oil was wasted.

Have we outstripped our energy resources? Possibly. But that’s another post . . .After I put that fence up, my neighbor was dead against it.

Entertainment had been scarcer than an Amy Schumer comedy special, too. If you wanted to listen to a song, you had to find someone who could play it or sing it. And the best version that you could get was dependent upon the best singer in town, and the best guitar player. After records showed up, now anyone could listen to the best vocalist in the world. Local bands? They weren’t needed so much anymore. Soon enough, the best actors and comedians (Amy Schumer, sit down) in the world were available, too.

You could say that entertainment was just a subset of information. The availability of that had been growing, too. From information carved into stone, set into clay tablets, handwritten on paper or parchment, to a printing press using moveable type, information kept getting cheaper and cheaper.

And faster and faster. The upside? All of Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius and Seneca available in an instant. The downside? Game of Thrones™ and Maisy Williams with her unibrow.Aristotle says we are what we repeatedly do. Therefore? I am your mother. (not my meme)

There are those that hypothesized that the only reason the Mongol Empire stopped before overrunning Europe was the time it took to get communications from the seat of the Mongol Emperors of China to the fringes of Empire. Or it could have been that they didn’t watch their steppe. Communication of information around the world was impossible at 10,000 B.C. (or could take centuries), years during the Roman Empire, months after Britain ruled the waves, days after communication cables were strung ‘round the world by the end of the nineteenth century, and down to hours after radio.

Now? Tribesmen living in the middle of a South American rainforest know the daily price of gold. Information has transcended the bounds of time and space, and the greatest works of literature and film are widely and instantly available. Oh, and Amy Schumer videos.

The ability to make decisions is in the process of being phased out as a scarce item. For decades, computer control systems have replaced operators at industrial facilities, and robots not only make welds, but make the decisions on the quality of the products produced. But these processes are determined and monitored by people.

That’s changing. Difficult things that were kept to humans like diagnosing patients? Human doctors are losing to A.I. One particular system looked at EKGs, and the A.I. could predict people who were going to die, even when doctors looked at the information and couldn’t see anything wrong.What do they call the person who graduated last in his class at medical school? Doctor.

But at least we still have thought and creativity, right?

Well, no. 2022 is the advent of A.I. art. There are multiple engines, online right now that will draw pictures that are almost indistinguishable from photographs. I’ve posted one below. It may look like a hot chick, but I assure you that it is not. Don’t believe me? Look at the hands. Small details, sure. And small details that will eventually be fixed.How long will it be before novels are written by A.I., and entire movies from start to finish are created in A.I. engines? Something tells me, not long. If agriculture was the most disruptive technology in the history of mankind, A.I., even as it exists today, is the second most.

It has long been my assertion, that in any Universe where A.I. is possible, it will be created, and will spread to the stars. But what’s the densest form of information storage currently known, the wellspring of millions of species across the history of Earth?

DNA.

Such a complex structure that incorporates so much information. It’s almost like it was . . . created.

Wouldn’t it be the perfect vehicle for translating information across the vastness of space? Easy enough to encode an entire ecosystem a fraction of an ounce (megaliter). But I digress, that’s probably (likewise) a good starter for a future post.A friend of mine had a job circumcising elephants at the zoo. The pay wasn’t good, but the tips were large.

So what is the scarcity that we are facing now?

One thing I see that we’re facing right now is a scarcity of virtue.

The values that we know produce a stable society are in short supply, and dwindling. The cracks of that are spreading. It can’t, and won’t continue long. We are at the cusp of a singularity of different factors, the scarcity of scarcity, and the scarcity of virtue and self-discipline.

Good times make weak men, who create hard times, who create strong men.

We are on the cusp of the hard times, and the strong men will be back. Our civilization will not be the civilization that came before. We have the elements in place to make a future that our ancestors couldn’t dream of. There is a chance that it will be a golden era of freedom and enhanced creativity.

And to think, it all started with Urg, king of the 78-strong tribe of the Shamalama tribe in ancient Mesopotamia, wanting to have a cold beer.

Cheers!

Burning Your Way To Happiness

“No! Look, what’s the matter with you all? It’s perfectly simple: We have the fire drill when I ring the fire bell. That wasn’t the fire bell! Right?” – Fawlty Towers

At the pub, the owner told me I was drunk and needed to take the bus home. Turned out those are even harder to drive when you’re drunk.

It was a cold, February campout. It was also rainy, and also weather that most folks would call miserable. In fact, it was also the first campout that I was Scoutmaster.

I think the temperature, at its highest, was probably around 45°F. It froze at night. We put our tents up in the dark, and I snuggled deep into my sleeping bag.

The next morning, we had breakfast. One thing that I had changed since I became Scoutmaster was that the Scouts bought, cooked, and ate their own food. One thing I observed on previous campouts was when the kids and adults ate the same food, the adults wanted good food, and wouldn’t leave the kids alone. Me? I had no desire to eat chicken tartare, so I let the kids fix their own food, and I often cooked for the adult leaders.

I drew a picture of a criminal once. He looked pretty sketchy.

The plan for the day was fairly simple. 80% or more of the Scouts needed to get to First Class (a rank where a boy would know most of the things so they could survive a solo campout for a few days, if need be). We focused on First Class skills. One other thing I instituted is that the older Scouts were to teach the younger Scouts, for reasons that are probably obvious.

My job, mainly, was to drink coffee and take someone to the hospital if the hatchet got the best of them. At this campout, there was one Scout in particular who had very little skill at anything. One of the Scouts of higher rank ran him through building a fire.

Jack London aside, building a fire after a rainy night on a blustery, rainy day isn’t the easiest of things. And, to be fair, this Scout wasn’t the quickest on the uptake. But he worked at starting his fire for a really long time. More than an hour? Certainly. But he had dogged determination, and finally got his fire going.

“Okay,” I said, “You can put that one out now. That qualifies.”

“No, I want to keep it going.”

I hear arsonists do well on Tinder®. They have a lot of matches.

I was fine with that. It was his fire, and if he wanted to keep it going, I was fine with that. There was little chance of him burning down the soggy campground.

He kept the fire going through the night, feeding it, and teasing it along.

He made First Class, but I must point out, by the time he got the rank badge it wasn’t nearly as important to him as building that fire. He had acquired a skill. He could do more than he could before. He did not need outside validation. The achievement was part of him. He was proud of himself.

So often, we get tied up in feeling about things that are beyond our span of control. Marcus Aurelius wrote, “You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and you will find strength.”

I hear that Marcus Aurelius got the first weather report. “Hail, Caesar!”

I know that we are living in a world filled with tough situations. I would say this, if some outside event upsets you, go ahead and be upset. Until midnight.

Then, take control. Realize that what you can be and do is the important thing. As that Scout taught me, being fulfilled isn’t being surrounded by supermodels and driving a Lambo® while they softly nuzzle your neck and . . . where was I? No, that’s not fulfillment. Fulfillment is achievement.

Almost every single person reading this has the power to be better tomorrow at something. A skill. Bench pressing five more pounds. Learning Shakespeare in the original Klingon. Becoming a better carpenter. Finally trimming those nosehairs, or at least weaving them into an attractive scarf.

Me? I write, and try to get better. When I’ve written what I want, I don’t need anyone to tell me – I feel it inside.

And I’m okay.

Except in especially tragic situations, it is in our power to be better. It is in our power to improve. And through doing so, it is in our power to build internal strength. And we don’t need anyone to validate it.

Life is tough, and it’s even tougher when we try to take on every injustice in the world. Sometimes we just need to take a few minutes, and build a fire.

How Did We Get Here?

“Dividing and mutating at the same time?” – The Andromeda Strain

Two guys stole a calendar and divided it equally. They each got six months.

I think it’s fair to look around and ask a very simple question:

How did we get here?

Certainly, the United States is in a heck of a mess in almost any way one can look at it. When it comes to cohesion, half of the country is like dad sitting on his easy chair after a hard day working at the PEZ® mines. The other half just wants to pester him because he doesn’t care enough about The Current Thing. They have been careful to not make dad put the paper down. Yet. Because that’s when the spanking hand comes out.

The ability of our economy to manufacture critical goods has been outsourced around the world, because, let’s face it, no one is better at sewing up a soccer ball than an 8-year-old Pakistani kid. And if we took the time to teach them and spent the money to build the factories, no one is better at making iPhones™ than Chinese women who are locked in those factories who have to put up nets to keep people from actually killing themselves when they try to jump off that same factory roof. I think the Chinese even charge the women an “amusement park ride fee” when they jump.

So, how did we get here?

The United States has always had an ornery streak. I think Andrew Jackson would have happily had every single central banker in the United States executed – of course, the central bankers retaliated by putting his face on the $20 bill, but I assure you they waited until they were certain he was dead.

And, despite what Biden thinks, Andrew was not a member of the Jackson 5.

How, then, do you take a country that has divided in a massive War Between The States, been brought back (mostly) together, and divide the nation again? In many ways the three items I’ll bring up are intertwined and feed off of each other, but I’ll take each one in turn.

Propaganda. The first part is to skew the definition of America. America was a nation even up into the 1960s, where most (85%-90%) of people had a common ancestry in northwestern Europe, with Great Britain having the largest contribution. Scots may have had problems with the Irish, and the Irish with the English, they might have been neutral about the Swiss, and all of them might have been irritated by the French and Germans, but the common bounds of country and culture were there.

What changed? The idea that if you came to America, it would be expected that you would assimilate to America. Sure, your name might have been Giuseppe, but your grandkid’s name might be Colin, or Brandon, or Brayden. You left that old world behind and consciously gave it up for the new culture. The American culture.

“9 or 10? Let ‘em in! 3 or 4? Here’s the door.” will be my presidential campaign slogan.

The first lie is the lie that there is no American culture. I can understand that from the point of view of most of the world. How would a fish know about water when he’s swimming in it? American culture (with due credit to Great Britain for kickstarting it) became the most pervasive in the world, spinning off ideas and music and clothes and food at an amazing rate.

Now, of course, propaganda would tell us that we have no culture, and it is evil for us to expect people who come to our country to learn our language, and respect our culture first. No, that’s inverted. It does no good to a person who would divide a country for that to happen. Instead? It’s evil to ask people to learn English. If they kill chickens to sacrifice to Gorbo and marry off their eight-year-old kids to 32-year-old first cousins? We are expected to celebrate that.

No. That’s an inversion. They came here. If they can’t assimilate into American culture and American norms? Out. And take the chickens.

A friend told me he made a voodoo doll of me. I said, “You’re pulling my leg!”

Other ways that propaganda has hurt America are numerous, probably enough for a book. One that’s still hurting us is the idea that nuclear power is evil. It isn’t. It’s funny that all the Green® power seems to be either more polluting or require those 8-year-old kids in Pakistan to learn how to mine lithium rather than sew up soccer balls to make batteries for cars fueled on pure Hopium. No, if you don’t like oil and gas, the only real solution is either condemning the country to an unending abject poverty or to build nuclear power plants.

The warfare culture post 9/11 has also been difficult. What, exactly, were we doing in Afghanistan after Osama Bin Laden assumed ocean temperature? Don’t know. Why did we go into Iraq? Don’t know. Why did we overthrow governments in Libya, Syria, and Ukraine?

Don’t know. But the propaganda that accompanied all of those divided the country, though it’s not nearly as bad as the race grievance industry that’s been in full tilt in the last two decades – but I’ll save that for a future post.

Pathological Altruism. If I have a puppy, and it piddles on the floor and everyone laughs and it’s cute, well, when it’s a big dog no one laughs. Then the dog wonders why I’m beating it for something I was laughing about. No one wants to be the bad guy and say, “No, you have to be punished for your actions so you won’t do it again.” Everyone wants to give people another chance.

My friend’s house was also hit by the dessert thief. He takes the cake.

A friend of mine had his house broken into. They were able to catch the criminals, and he attended the trial. Result of them stealing thousands and thousands of dollars of his property? A suspended sentence for one guy (who had multiple prior felony convictions) and two years for the other. What message, exactly, is that sending?

The Hart-Celler Immigration Reform Act of 1965 (plus the amnesties that have followed and will follow) are horrifying in their pathological altruism and use of propaganda. The composition of the country has changed – it’s no longer a nation. Where once there was a central culture, now every viewpoint is expected to be equally valid, and (I’m not making this up) the incoming medical school class pledged to honor “all indigenous ways of healing that have been historically marginalized by western medicine.”

Let’s go kill some chickens, because that will get rid of the gunshot wound. Oh, right, don’t forget the Ouija® board.

Corruption. The United States has always been corrupt, let’s get that out first. But the beauty of the corruption early on is that, mostly, it was limited because the scope of the Federal government was limited. Sure, Sheriff Smith over in Mount Pilot would take bribes, but he’d eventually be caught. And did several members of the state legislature take bribes to get the “right” senator into office?

Sure. That happened, too. Three events ushered in eras of nearly unfettered power for the Federal government: the Civil War, the 16^th and 17^th Amendments, and the New Deal. The Civil War ended the idea that the Several States were sovereign – they became mere political subdivisions of the United States. The 16^th and 17^th Amendments made it possible to tax and ended the appointment of Senators. Now, Senators became Representatives with six-year terms, rather than appointed representatives of the Several States – a huge difference.

Fetterman also had a prostate exam the other day – thumbs up!

This level of corruption concentrated power at the Federal level and made the farces we see today where people who are on the Right receive massive sentences at the Federal level for minor crimes, but people on the Left are not even indicted, and almost anyone who has power has a free pass for anything but killing someone on-screen at halftime during the Superbowl™, and that only counts as a delay of game penalty.

I originally had more items here, but had to delete them because otherwise this could become a book. I’m certain, though, that the top three cover it well enough for now. I do think that America is getting ready to get out of the easy chair. And the spanking hand is getting ready.

Yes, Your Leftist Friends Are Mentally Ill. You’re Not. Share This Post With Them To Trigger Them.

“Snap out of it! You’re Krusty the Clown! One of Look Magazine’s Hundred Most Promising Clowns of 1958!” – The Simpsons

I told Pugsley that Aristotle taught us that, “We are what we repeatedly do.” So I told him I was his mother.

A Dutch dude named Erasmus of Rotterdam (who died in 1536) made a famous quote that I’m sure you’re all familiar with, namely, “In regione caecorum rex est luscus.” Presumably, Erasmus said this before he died. I was going to follow this up with a joke about the Dutch, but then I looked at my site statistics, and found that the Netherlands is number 5 on the countries that come to visit here at Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise.

So, my conclusion is this: people of the Netherlands are amazing people who have impeccable taste in fine writing and I’d be glad to give them all a free bikini wax, but I’m pretty sure that they’re so tall, blonde, disciplined and perfectly proportioned that they’ve trained their bodies to not grow hair where they don’t want it. Go Netherlands!

I’m pretty sure they have flying cars in the Netherlands now.

Anyway, what Erasmus was saying was originally in Latin, but Latin isn’t a dead language – it’s still Roman around. My initial translation was, “Near the gas station in the skanky part of town, never pick up women after 3am.” These are wise words, but what Erasmus really meant was, “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.”

That’s one of those phrases that sounds really cool. In fact, I imagined being able to see in a country full of blind people. I mean, the only actor that would be able to play Batman would be Christian Braille. And, using my crazy superpower of sight, I’d be able to break into their houses at night and steal all of their PEZ®.

But that’s not the way it would work.

I would probably try to explain to them that I could see – a sense that they didn’t have at all. The concept of photons and colors and would sound crazy to them. In fact, they’d probably think I was crazy and come at night while I was sleeping and give me blanket parties or worse until I shut up or left.

In the modern world, it’s similar, but it’s what’s commonly referred to as “Clown World” where everything is inverted. Things that are beautiful are corrupted, and people are expected to applaud the bravery inherent in people reveling in the corruption. I’ll let Stonetoss lead the introduction of the topic at hand.

If you’re not familiar with what Stonetoss is writing about, there is a “teacher” in Canada who decided, apparently, to wear comically large and obscene fake breasts to shop class. How do we know they’re obscene? YouTube® banned them.

But, yet, these Z-cups are allowed because a “teacher” showed up to work wearing them, and the school board is apparently afraid to confront the dude. When a parent tried to bring the subject up, the local school board shut down the meeting rather than confront the amazing amounts of silicone (or foam rubber??) being paraded in their classrooms. In fact, they say it’s illegal to criticize the “teacher”.

In my assessment of the situation, there are two possibilities. The first is that the “teacher” is so mentally insane that allowing him to dress like this is similar to allowing him to claim that he’s made of string cheese and now has a mouse phobia. That’s the first possibility.

The second is that the “teacher” is gaming the system and seeing how far he can push things so he can get mental disability payments and not have to show up to work, or not be graded based on his job performance. I actually consider this more likely, but, hey, it’s 2022 so he just might be bonkers.

This was actually the plot to a South Park® episode where a teacher became more aggressively, explicitly gay in front of his students in an attempt (I recall) to get fired. Instead, the people celebrated his inappropriate behavior because of his bravery. So, yeah. Blame Canada. I’m sure that this is what the Canadian troops were thinking about when they hit the beach at D-Day, the freedom for shop teachers to don Z-cup fake breasts.

Women are, oddly, not at all good with this. Not all women, of course. I use The Mrs. as a sounding board for this sort of insanity, and she (more or less) notes that it’s offensive for (at least some) actual women to see men parading around pretending to be women. But Canada says it’s okay. And companies will ban you for “hate” if you dare to not say that this is completely normal.

In 2022, it’s now accepted that teachers indoctrinated in Leftist institutions should be allowed free access to your children. And there’s nothing bad that can come of that. Because teachers have shown themselves to be so stable.

The problem really does start with Leftism. I know I drone on and on about this, but it’s true. Leftism is a mental illness rooted in victimhood. How can I prove this? THEY TELL US THIS WHENEVER THEY CAN. It’s worse than being stuck in a room filled with vegans who do Crossfit®.

I sometimes think it’s a competition on how many mental illnesses that they can have, like they all want to be the Georgy Zhukov of mental illness and be the (she/they/them/it) with the most medals.

Part of the idea is that Leftists are incapable of harboring thoughts that are counter to their programming. Scott Adams found this out and after this cartoon strip, he was canceled from 77 newspapers.

Here are a few examples of why.

Yup. Martha’s Vineyard. Importing millions of people across the border is amazing, right? Well, no. Not when they show up in near the beach bungalows of the rich and famous. Obama lives on Martha’s Vineyard, and his house alone could have housed every illegal alien that was transported there. But, no.

They booted all the illegals in 44 hours. Who needs a wall when you invade the territories of Leftist lawyers?

But the damage of Leftism is real. It destroys families. And it stops families from even being made.

But it leaves some really important questions to be asked.

And it makes you wonder what Biden is really after, when it turns out that “Right Wing Extremism” is actually less deadly than riding lawnmowers. Really.

Seriously, though, this isn’t the battle the Left should push, because when real Right Wing Extremism hits? Continents burn.

I guess that works for me. I’ll continue to be a Right Wing Extremist.

And if they want Clown World, that’s fine. They can soak in it.

Me? I think this next picture works better than anything they can come up with.

Erasmus would certainly agree with me. And? Go Netherlands! You guys rock!!!! (Yes, I know Ariel is Danish, but you Danes have got to get your pageviews up.)