Category: Rome, Yet Again

Regret And Dread – Two Problems You Don’t Really Have To Have

“I have people waiting for me.  They don’t know what I do, they never will.  They’re protected.  But I do what I do so they can have a better life.  And if I live or if I die, it doesn’t make a difference to me, as long as they have what they need.  So when it’s my time to go, I will go knowing I did everything I could for them.” – Better Call Saul

If you press your gas and brake at the same time, your car takes a screenshot.

I tend to like writing my Friday posts the most.  Why?  Most generally, I get away from the reality of the present situations that we are living in.  That’s nice.

Why do I feel like I can do this?

Because nothing is done yet, and nothing is settled yet.  I’ve written posts about regret.  I still feel that regret is a wasted emotion – the past is done.  Of course, I try to learn from my mistakes.  But I can’t spend my life being upset about them.  The real question is how can I incorporate the mistakes so I have a better future?  I even told The Mrs. that she should embrace her mistakes, too.  She was so happy she hugged me.

Especially of note are those mistakes I made that weren’t mistakes I made based on a lack of virtue.  If I did the right thing, for the right reason, the result is the result, and I will live with the consequences.  Sometimes bad things happen when you do everything right.  I mean, when the doctor told me I had a rare disease, I asked, “How rare?”

“Well, you get to pick a name.”

Those are the breaks.

Firefighters in Athens have it tough – you’re not supposed to put water on Greece fires.

A similar emotion is dread.

I read a quote when I was a kid – Heinlein? Twain? A fever dream while on laudanum writing about Xanadu? – that stuck with me.  “Worrying about what might happen is paying interest on money you haven’t borrowed yet.”  It’s a good quote.

Regret is looking at the past, dread (or its cousin, fear) is about looking at the future.  But they’re the same.  Neither of those two things are real.  One once was real, and one might be real.

I’ll admit that when I look out at the future, I do see dark days ahead.  But right now, I’m sitting in my basement, The Mrs. had gone upstairs for sleep, the basement is perfectly comfy, and all is right with the world.  Something might happen next week.  Next month.  Next year.  The price of tires is up.  The price of gasoline is up.  Heck, Hunter Biden can’t even find decent meth nowadays.  It will get worse.

So?

I fell down at the airport once.  Almost missed a flight.

I think that often we are more upset by the thought of potential future discomfort than actual, present discomfort.  It can be consuming, and all for something that hasn’t happened yet.

And, it used to be me.  I used to do the math – how many months could I make mortgage payments if I lost my job?  How many days could I feed my family?  And, it’s one thing planning for that, but I was also sometimes scared.

Until one day I just decided to not be scared – I’d go through life and do my best, and let the chips fall where they may.  I decided that it was fine to plan, it was fine to economize to save money, but it wasn’t fine to worry.

So I stopped.

It was weird – one night I was worried, and the next night I decided that I wasn’t going to worry anymore.  I just made the conscious decision I wasn’t going to worry anymore about that.  It was the last significant worry that I gave up.  I also worried about my short attention span, but that problem seems to solve itself.

The Kamikaze instructor to his class:  “Now, class, pay attention because I’m only going to do this once.”

And it’s not like I live in a world where bad things don’t happen.  I know bad things happen – horrible things.  But today, I can choose not to worry about them.

Heck, I can pick something that is real and we can be certain that is going to happen – death.  The shadow of death looms above us all.  But to be consumed by it so that it causes a life lived in fear?  That’s like already being dead.

It might surprise some people, but death is something that isn’t new.  Seneca, the (very dead) Roman stoic philosopher, said:

“No man can have a peaceful life who thinks too much about lengthening it.  Most men ebb and flow in wretchedness between the fear of death and the hardships of life; they are unwilling to live, and yet they do not know how to die.”

Kelvin and Celsius interviewed for a job, but Celsius got it.  Kelvin absolutely didn’t have a degree.

Reflect on death – if you knew that you wouldn’t wake up ever again, what would you do with your remaining hours?  This reflection on death has multiple values to you and your character:

  • It reinforces that which is important to us, here today.
  • It exposes the frivolous that consume too much of our time.
  • It shows what’s really of value – the money you made will be less important than the lives you’ve changed.
  • You don’t have to worry about returning that library book.

Today is pretty good.  Enjoy it.  Skip the regret, the worry, and the dread.  While you’re breathing, live.

What can you make happen today?

The Funniest Post You’ll Read Today About The Stoics

“First principles, Clarice. Simplicity. Read Marcus Aurelius. Of each particular thing ask: what is it in itself? What is its nature? What does he do, this man you seek?” – Silence of the Lambs

Never trust Hunter Biden to pick up pizza and coke for a party.

The last five posts have been fairly dark, and Monday’s post will be dark, too.  I already know that dark humor is like aid for the citizens of Ukraine – not everyone gets it (this is a repeat from 1932, LINK).  That’s to be expected.  We live in interesting times.  But the good news is, it’s Friday.  Last Friday, I happened upon a friend.  I promise, I have more than one, despite what the NSA says.

In the World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold and Silver!

My friend noted that he had to go shopping, and he wasn’t particularly looking forward to it.  I responded, “Well, Marcus Aurelius said that you can find happiness in whatever moment, and the limiting factor is often what you feel about the situation, rather than the situation.”  I said this even though I haven’t been shopping since Jimmy Kimmel was funny.

He smiled.  We continued talking, and he went off shopping.  As I was sitting at my table, I found this quote, from the inestimable P. G. Wodehouse’s , as found here (LINK) from his Jeeves and Wooster series of books (also a television series starring Stephen Fry as Jeeves and Hugh Laurie as Wooster).  Setup – Jeeves is the intelligent, dry-witted, valet to Bertie Wooster, an idle British aristocrat.  Thanks to Wodehouse, hilarity often ensues:

“Who do you think I am, Alfred Einstein?”

I turned to Jeeves.  “So, Jeeves!”

“Yes, sir.”

“What do you mean, ‘Yes, sir’?”

“I was endeavouring [Wilder note:  the British cannot spell] to convey my appreciation of the fact that your position is in many respects somewhat difficult, sir. But I wonder if I might call your attention to an observation of the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. He said: ‘Does aught befall you? It is good. It is part of the destiny of the Universe ordained for you from the beginning. All that befalls you is part; of the great web’.”

I breathed a bit stertorously.  “He said that, did he?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, you can tell him from me he’s an ass.”

Bonus points if you knew what stertorously meant.  I had to look it up.  Snort.

Is she attractive?  Neigh.

I’ve heard it said that life is a tragedy to those that feel, a comedy to those that think.  Given that, the really funny part of life is that when times are down we don’t want to listen to the simple stoic Truths of life:

  • Control what you can, don’t let those things you don’t control (like the Wendy’s® drive through line, or Hunter Biden’s amazing appetite for crack) drive you nuts.
  • There is Virtue. We can spend our lives splitting hairs about what is virtuous, or, we could just be virtuous.  Be Virtuous.
  • Most passions aren’t healthy. Some are, but taken to extreme, even those become unhealthy, like when I lift weights and become so strong that I can rip apart the fabric of the Universe just by tensing my glistening pectoral muscles?  See, unhealthy.  Understand the difference, and don’t be ruled by emotion.  Passion is for 18 year olds, reason is for adults.
  • Johnny Depp was pretty good in the movie Dead Man.
  • Seek wisdom to guide your virtue.
  • Seek justice to create a more virtuous society. Not an equitable society, but a virtuous one.  Let Disney™ know that there’s a difference.
  • Understand that courage is required – Virtue often comes with a price, which may be about $3.50, in 1973. Or a career in 2020.
  • Living outside of Virtue is the clearest definition of Vice.
  • Possessions are, for the most part, neither good nor bad, but what we do with them determines their value. Anyone want to buy a slightly used copy of the Necronomicon?

The lures that pull us away from being virtuous are many.  PEZ®.  TikGram©.  InstaFace©.  SnapTwit®.  PornHULU©.  TinderMAX®.  EskimoBrotherDataBase (EBDB)™.  The idea is that if we’re distracted, we don’t focus on the things that are important in life, like virtue.

One of the things that sets humans apart is that we think about our actions and the consequences.  The result of all the lures?  It pulls us away from improving ourselves, from having introspection and working through our issues.  Issues?  I don’t have issues.  Like most people, I have subscriptions.

Surround yourself with people who have issues – they always have beer.  And 21-year-old nannys.

True life:  I was having a problem, something that really, really made me mad, like the Game of Thrones™ parents who named their kids “Daenerys” saw her turn into a war criminal.  I didn’t let it consume me like a dragon consuming a daycare center, but in those small, still moments of life that issue managed to creep into my conscious.

Like when I woke up at 3am and it didn’t mean I had to go to the bathroom (which never happens, because I’ve evolved beyond needing liquids to live), I’d think about it.  Finally, a hypnogogic conversation with myself provided the answer.

“John, what would you tell your best friend if he had this same problem?”

“Self,” I answered, “I would tell my friend to let it go.  It happened a year ago.  It wasn’t personal.  And it’s probably for the best.”

Coffee spelled backwards is eeffoc.  And before I have coffee, I don’t give eeffoc.

I had clarity.  I had an answer.  I had closure.  And it didn’t come from social media.  It came from thinking and understanding what advice I’d give my closest friend.  Since I hadn’t talked with, well, really anyone, I had to deal with it myself.

I finally did deal with it.  And now, when I wake up at 3AM?  I worry about the devil since I haven’t had to pee in a month.

Introspection is our friend, as long as we don’t allow ourselves to drown in a sea of self-pity, and as long as we use it to measure ourselves against virtue.  How do we measure it?

As near as I can find, Marcus Aurelius was religious, but certainly not a Christian.  As Caesar, he was the Humongous Maximus of religious stuff, and his writings wondered about what impact the gods had in the lives of men, at least after he got that petroleum from those pesky kids.

Marcus Aurelius, the early years.

The impact of religion is enormous.  When we live without a concept of a greater purpose, it’s like having pancakes without syrup, or thermonuclear weapons without the initial fission core that puts the hydrogen in H-Bomb.  With no greater purpose, our lives are less than what they could be.  As I’ve said before, most atheists aren’t atheists – they actually hate God, generally because they know that the life they are leading and/or the choices they are making are not virtuous.  They know it.

Of course, I’ve met (and almost every atheist reader here) atheists that don’t hate God.  Those folks?  We’re cool.  Generally, they don’t dislike people like me who believe in God, they just approach the world in a different way.  But I’ve noticed this about the atheists that don’t hate God – they generally like living in a society where people believe in God.  Why?  It’s a more virtuous society, and the streets are very empty on Sunday morning.

I won’t hold myself up to be Virtuous, or even virtuous.  I will note that I really, really do try.  I think I’m more virtuous this year than last year, though I shower less because of my greater virtue.  And that’s the point.  Every day, I try to be better inside than the last.  I try to make the world a bit better than it was the day before.  And I try to tell the Truth.

Unfortunately, I bet sometimes people still say after a post like this, “John Wilder?  Well, you can tell him from me, he’s an ass.”

Ha!

I’m not even awake.

The Coming American Dictatorship, Part III

“No dictator, no invader can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power tyrants and dictators cannot stand. The Centauri learned that lesson once. We will teach it to them again. Though it take a thousand years, we will be free.” – Babylon 5

I like the electronics DIY store – The Ohm Depot.

Part I of this series can be found here (LINK), and Part II can be found here (LINK).

Thinking about dictatorship is difficult.  I was raised in a system that considered dictatorship more or less impossible.  We didn’t even have any jokes about dictators because we didn’t speak Spanish, German, Italian, Russian or Chinese.  I was raised in the wilds where you could be certain that every house contained more firearms than people, usually many more.  And safe?  Doors were rarely locked.

They taught us how to use rifles effectively in school.  I even won the prize for marksmanship in eighth grade, which was a personally autographed photo of Andrew Jackson.  Every boy took the test and got his Hunter Safety card, except me.  I’d had my card since second grade.

The girls?  Who knows what they did while we were shooting rifles, making models, and talking about football.  This class was for boys only, and strangely we didn’t have difficulty identifying what a girl was.  We didn’t even have advanced biology degrees to tell the boys from the girls back then, though I will admit to have been an avid amateur biologist while I was in high school.  And even I could tell the difference.

So, back to the point, dictatorship was something that I didn’t think a lot of.  And there’s no way that it’s a certainty since Civil War 2.0 is still a very real possibility.  That being said, I started to research a bit deeper.  What are the signposts that a dictatorship is near?

A truck carrying Vicks Vap-O-Rub® overturned yesterday.  Thankfully, there was no congestion.

Most of the articles were written by Leftist journalists who wanted to reee! that Trump was the worst tyrant since Stalin’s more evil brother.  One of them was even in a magazine for young adolescent females, whatever those are.

I found one article (Trump era, pre-George Floyd, pre-‘Rona) that had the following conditions (LINK).  I didn’t think the article was great.  But, being written by a writer from India, it was refreshingly free of Trump Derangement Syndrome.  Here is (more or less the list, with some minor edits from me):

  • Control of the Media: CNN®?  Leftist think CNN™ is centrist.  Outside of dissident media on the Internet and (sometimes) Fox©, I think we can firmly check this box.  The denial of Hunter Biden’s laptop, anyone?
  • Rigging of the Electoral System: That is more than self-evident from the strange and obviously fraudulent results of the 2020 election, but it is also 100% admitted by the Left, in Time Magazine, no less.  It’s here (LINK), though it’s now behind a wall.
  • Control of the Judicial System: This is only mostly, since Trump managed to put several justices on the Supreme Court.  All in all, though, the court system has skewed Left for ages.
  • Spying on the Population: This box has been checked since 2001 and the Patriot Act.  Snowden, anyone?
  • Harassing Dissidents: Compare the reaction to people literally burning down cities and staging insurrection in the streets to truckers peacefully protesting.  Also:  say something that is against The Narrative on YouTube®, see how long your account lasts.  As a website operator, I certainly know when I’m over the target because the site catches flak.
  • Suppression of Dissidents – Dissident Protest is Terrorism: January 6th.  End of story.
  • Promotion of Civil Unrest: George Floyd protests were going to happen, regardless of the person.  It just needed an appropriate victim and the video spread far and wide, even though drugs killed St. George of Our Lady of Fentanyl and not a police officer’s knee.  Riots were going to happen – it was part of the plan.

Ouch!

By my count, that’s seven out of seven, and that’s just since December of 2019.  It’s interesting just how much Donald Trump, despite not really achieving much of lasting note, upset the system.  Trump didn’t restore law and order.  Heck, he couldn’t even restore Firefly.  But yet, they were willing to take off the mask just to get him out.

Curse your sudden but inevitable betrayal!

Or maybe that was the point?

Taking a step back, civilizations have a lifespan.  The following cycle is attributed to Alexander Tytler, a dead Scottish guy.  There are two problems with this:

  • There is no evidence Tytler ever said anything like this.
  • The name Tytler makes me think of an Austrian politician who moved to Germany and was popular in the 1930s and early 1940s and then decided to get breast enhancement.

Okay, deep down, I have the sense of humor of a twelve-year-old.

The real author of the Tytler Cycle is probably Henning Prentiss, an executive, who is also dead and whose name is not nearly as funny.  The 1943 speech it’s from is here (LINK).

So, here is what Tytler Prentiss had to say:

“The historical cycle seems to be:

  • From bondage to spiritual faith;
  • from spiritual faith to courage;
  • from courage to liberty;
  • from liberty to abundance,
  • from abundance to selfishness;
  • from selfishness to apathy,
  • from apathy to dependency; and
  • from dependency back to bondage once more.

At the stage between apathy and dependency, men always turn in fear to economic and political panaceas. New conditions, it is claimed, require new remedies.”

The end state is what we’re really interested in – the failure of government, the loss of hope, and the dependence on someone, anyone, to save them.  All they have to surrender is control.  And, in the United States that doesn’t necessarily mean the same party – in many ways the GOP is just the “for God’s sake, don’t put me in charge, they’ll expect me to do something” wing of the Democratic Party.

How did the Roman Senate choose a new dictator?  They played rock, paper, Caesars.

The Strong Man himself is certainly out there right now.  He might be unknown to us, but he is building, biding his time.  It’s almost certainly not AOC, since she’s not anyone’s idea of a problem solver unless your problem is needing a Margarita, no salt.  It’s not someone too old like Bernie Sanders who will turn to dust if Sunlight ever hits him – which is why he has coffins in the basement of the multiple mansions he owns.

It’s certainly not the Ad Libber in Chief, since he (like his pants) is in the process of being dumped (you don’t think those releases about Hunter’s laptop are coincidental, do you?).  No, someone young, vigorous, yet already sold to The Narrative.  Dan Crenshaw (World Economic Forum™ Young Leader®), my eye is on you.

But it doesn’t have to be Dan.  Any man who has The Plan, charisma, and reasonable personal hygiene (including regular showers) might become the Strong Man.  It won’t be a woman:  the masculinity of the “tough” solutions will be a part of the sales pitch, along with the ever so regretful admission that temporary controls are needed to restore the abundance of the past.

So, control is surrendered.  Rights are conditional –rights will be honored as long as it is convenient, ignored, or suppressed when not.  The budding Kommissars of Australia provided the poster child for the sudden evaporation of rights when inconvenient for government.  In a continent where every insect is an inexhaustible vat of poison, every animal has fangs and can disembowel a man with a kick, and the nectar of half the plants does things that would make H.P. Lovecraft shudder, who knew that the most dangerous creatures were . . . government employees?

I went to Australia and they asked me if I had a criminal record.  I said, “I didn’t know that was still required.”

Keep this in mind, as well:  The United States government is fine with taking $300 billion of Russia’s funds.  Think the Strong Man would hesitate to confiscate all the funds of a dissident?  Most dissidents I know don’t even have half the nuclear weapons Russia does.

What does the dictator, the Strong Man want to control, then?

Well, all of us.

How does he do it?

Well, the Strong Man can control other things that allow him to control his people:

  • Food
  • Money
  • Pharmaceuticals
  • Media
  • Politics
  • Culture
  • Technology
  • Communications
  • Family Structure
  • Energy
  • Immigration
  • Fertility

If the Strong Man doesn’t like me, he can kill me and replace me with a compliant citizen and use my money to buy himself something nice, like a new watch.  All for the greater good, of course.  Orwell described the real goal of every Strong Man best:  “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”

Wow – this part got darker and emptier than the space between Kamala’s ears between ideas.  I’ll close with this happy thought:  Bondage leads to faith, faith to courage, and courage to liberty.  And remember, there are large parts of the United States where guns still far outnumber people.  Regardless of the detours we take into darkness, there will always be a light for mankind.

I mean, unless the light is the comet that’s going to hit us.  Oh, wait, I wasn’t supposed to give spoilers for 2023 yet!

Not my original.

Next:  (There will be a delay in this one, perhaps next week, perhaps the week after) Mechanisms of Control

The Coming American Dictatorship, Part II

“Did you ever run for dictator of anything?” – Green Acres

Why didn’t Julius Caesar ever say “thank you” to anyone?  He didn’t speak English.

This is Part II of the series.  Part I can be found here (LINK).

The history of when the United States started to slip into a dictatorship is long, but I’ll start with the Civil War.  The worst part of the Civil War (besides, you know, all of the dead people) was Lincoln running roughshod over the Constitution whenever it suited him:

  • Shut down opposition newspapers, arresting the owners and editors,
  • Arrested a former congressman (generally a good idea) and put him to a military tribunal (he wasn’t in the military) and then . . . deported him to the Confederacy,
  • Legalized disco, and
  • Put the entire state of Maryland under martial law.

Important Civil War Fact:  It is not true that, despite popular conception, Lincoln had written the first draft of the Gettysburg Address on a Bacon Swiss Hand-Breaded Chicken Sandwich™ wrapper from Carl’s Jr.©  Lincoln actually preferred Arby’s®.

The movie Lincoln grossed $300,000,000, which is weird because Abe normally didn’t do well in theaters.

But the slip toward despotism wasn’t done and the precedent was one people didn’t forget:  in a crisis, the rights of the citizens who oppose you are optional.  War and crisis seemed to bring it out the best, and although I could spend quite a bit about the overreaches of other presidents (Woodrow Wilson, I’m looking at you) the next person grasping for the tyrant’s ring was Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

FDR was really awful, if you love liberty.  His expansion of Federal power (unlike most of Lincoln’s) is still with us today.  As the economic crisis of the Great Depression hit nation after nation and led to dictatorships across the world, America craved their own Strong Man.

It also explains why he never ran for office.

Roosevelt was more than ready.  It is quite arguable that the vast majority of the things that Roosevelt did made the crisis longer.  It is acknowledged today by the Federal Reserve™ (thanks, Wilson) that they not only caused the Great Depression, but that their actions made it worse.  It makes me so mad:  if I didn’t have a cold, I’d Sudafed®.

Roosevelt did not let the crisis go to waste.  He created power structure after power structure in the country.  Social Security.  Threatening the Supreme Court so that his definition of the Interstate Commerce Clause was adopted, which allows the Federal government to reach into almost every business in the country today.

Roosevelt also violated the idea that presidents served two terms, and two terms only.  Thankfully, he died about 300 years into his presidency.  And, thankfully, he inspired a Constitutional Amendment to prevent anyone from rolling in his wheelchair tracks.

But the rot of creeping state control continued.  What held it at bay was, thankfully (and oddly enough), the Soviets.

I didn’t like their food, though – I’m against the Soviet Onion.

Centralization is always the goal of the dictator.  In order to compete with the Soviets, though, we needed to keep our economy in overdrive to build more jets and missiles and nuclear bombs.  The easiest way to do that?  Dispersed knowledge.  Incentives.  Voluntary cooperation.  In short, capitalism.  The Soviets may have thought that they’d bury us, but in reality they never could keep up with a people motivated by freedom, patriotism, and profit.

We buried the Soviets.

But the requirement to beat them also required a people in the United States that were ill-suited for a Caesar.

Unfortunately, in addition to building missiles, the communists had been trying to hollow out the institutions of the United States.  It’s ironic:  the Soviet Union was hollowed out by communism around the same time that the big rot of communism that the Soviets planted in the United States started to show here.  They wormed their way through what I now call The List of the Long March through the Institutions:

  • Colleges and Universities
  • The K-12 educational system.
  • Most Protestant religious organizations.
  • Most Catholic organizations.
  • The American Medical Association.
  • Most departments of the Federal government, absent the armed services.
  • The general officer corps of the armed services.
  • The courts.
  • Silicon Valley tech companies.
  • Most Fortune® 500™ companies.

I had a communist girlfriend who I later found out was a psycho.  How did I miss the red flags?

The control of these Institutions ultimately gives the Left the power to destabilize society.  It rots society from within.  The signs of that sort of rot are so big they cannot be concealed now:

  • 70% of citizens supporting some form of mandatory vaxx in blue states (81% in Washington, D.C.),
  • Only speech and activities approved of by the toxic combination of government, BigTechBook™, and GloboCorp® is approved,
  • George R.R. Martin is still pretending he’s writing his next Game of Thrones® book,
  • The leader of Iran still had a Twitter™ account while the President’s account was cancelled,
  • Open borders are reality, flooding the United States with many with no functional idea of liberty,
  • Firing for wrongthink is not only approved, it’s encouraged, and
  • Disney®, a global company, is attempting to override the will of the people of Florida because their employees do not agree with the idea that teachers shouldn’t talk about gay sex with five-year-olds.

That’s bad enough.  The good news is that not everyone is an NPC, waiting to receive the next government-approved Woke Upgrade that (spins wheel) attempts to convince you your computer is non-binary.  Heck, if you’re reading this, chances are high that you make your own decisions and are skeptical of much of The Agenda.

I’d like my remains to be scattered at Disneyworld®.  I don’t want to be cremated, though.

But in 2022, we have the potential for the biggest economic failure in the history of the United States.  We have the possibility of a failed economy combined with a failed currency.  This would bring economic chaos that would be destabilizing.  In the 1930s, 20% of the American workforce was in agriculture.  Now?  Around 2%.

Without jobs, in a collapsing economy?  That’s a lot of hungry people.  A lot of homeless people.

A lot of people without hope.  A lot of people who will look for a man who promises solutions.  The Strong Man.

The response?  That’s Friday’s post:  The Strong Man, and the signposts along the way.

The Coming American Dictatorship, Part I

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you step on a rusty Lego™, you might need to get a Tetris© shot.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why? This why is important.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What, then, do the people want?

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

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

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

And that’s how you get a Dictator

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

Gold, Silver, And The End Of The World

“What do you know about gold, Moneypenny?” – Goldfinger

Why don’t pirates travel on mountain roads?  S’curvy.

A reader writes:  “. . . if you could explain to me the rationale behind buying gold or silver as a hedge against economic collapse, I would appreciate it.”  I answered by sending him bikini graph after bikini graph, but yet he persisted in wanting to know an actual answer.

I don’t think anyone will complain that this one is a repeat . . . .

He had me cornered.  I wrote to him (embellished for this post and clarified for readability):

Thank you for the question.  I promise to answer, just as long as you give my dog bag safely.  He may be old and one-eyed and have diabetes and alopecia . . . we call him, “Lucky.”

It’s good that he’s not a dinosaur – he’d probably be called an eyesaur. 

I thought that I had already answered this question and looked for the post.

As I’ve got over 1,000 up, I couldn’t find it after I looked for about 22 seconds.  Maybe I developed notes on it and never posted?  Maybe I’m just lazy at searching.  In the worst-case scenario, a previous version exists, and everyone just has to deal with this new, superior post.

The question is a subtle one.  The first part of the answer is the degree of collapse.  I’ll start out with this idea: how bad does it get?

  1. Another Boring Wednesday: Would I rather have a ton of gold on a Wednesday morning than not?  Of course.  But I’d probably worry about George Clooney and his wisecracking band of thieves breaking into Stately Wilder Mansion.
  2. Personal Economic Problems: Again, in a sequel, having that ton of gold is still great, but I still have that pesky George Clooney problem.  In reality, gold is somewhat less liquid than cash, but having a bunch of it is still nice.  Also, if you bought gold in 1990, you would have had zero profit on it until 2006.  This was mainly due to sane economic policy and high-interest rates that tamed inflation.

Or is this why they were always after his Lucky Charms®?

  1. Recession: What’s going on in the economy?  If you look closely, silver and gold actually dropped in value at the start of the Great Recession in the 2000s.  As people liquidated their “stuff” so they could still buy the G.I. Joe® with the Kung Fu™ grip for their kid at Christmas, the price actually dropped.  For a while.  Then the price jumped up when it became clear that the Fed® would print as much money as required to choke every person on the planet.  In the fiat world, gold and silver are something I’d look to have.
  2. Depression – 1930s Style: This is a hard analogy – back in the 1930s, the dollar was backed in gold, until FDR (press S to spit) stole the gold from the American people.  Now?  The dollar is nothing more than, to quote Aerosmith, “a lick and a promise.”  (See below)
  3. Weimar-Style Hyperinflation: I don’t think we’ll get here, until there’s a lack of faith in the dollar.  Brandon is doing his best to make Jimmy Carter look like a master of economics, so, if hyperinflation hits?  Gold is awesome, and you might be able to repay your mortgage with five or six pre-1965 silver quarters.  So, yes, gold and silver make sense.  A lot of sense.

In a Leftist world, everyone is a Billionaire.  And also starving.

  1. Country Collapse: What happens if the country ceases to be?  It has happened again and again through history, especially with large “empire-like” countries that don’t have any sort of ethnic commonality.  Japan will always be Japan because there are Japanese and it’s a nation, not a country.  China, likewise.  Without a functioning country, there is no nation to fall back on.  This is where we add another precious metal:    So, yes, gold and silver, but understand that it might be some time before it’s useful again.
  2. International Collapse: Rome provides a powerful example here.  In Great Britain, they’re constantly finding hordes of money – including silver money, and gold.  Why?  Because people stopped using it, and you can’t eat it.  Did that last forever?  Of course not, but 100 years is nearly long enough.  Lead is nice here, too.

Who sang “Can’t Touch This” for Caesar?  1100 Hammer.

  1. Civilizational Collapse: What happens if there’s no oil for the cars – anywhere?  What happens if we don’t have phosphorus for fertilizer?  Bad things.  Gold and silver might be helpful, but lead is much better here.  If the warlord wants your stuff and you can’t keep it from him, welcome to no longer having that stuff.
  2. A Kamala Harris presidency: Looks pretty much like number 8, but with more makeup.
  3. A Neutron Star Eating The Earth: I suggest investing in SpaceX®.

I think that we underestimate the likelihood of things getting really, really bad.  To give an example, I once worked at the headquarters of a big company.  They asked me to look at disaster recovery.  I looked at all of the natural hazards that might hit the company.  The most likely disaster would hit the headquarters once every three hundred years.

“Huh,” I said to my boss, foreshadowing future writing endeavors, “a new civil war is far more likely than that . . . I mean if the company lasts that long.  Companies go out of business all the time.”

He was not amused.  Corporations tend to not like actual reality to interfere in their projections.  But, I maintain I was right.  How many companies have ceased to exist – big companies – since 2000?  I’ll leave that work to the reader.  Enron®, anyone?

Country music and calculators are both produced by Texas instruments.

Listen, I don’t mean to sound paranoid, but banks are giving mortgages out at 3.3% and inflation is at 6%, which means that banks will lose money every year as long as inflation is a thing.  How can they do this?  Volume!

No, I’m kidding.  The Fed® is giving them tons of money to lend cheaply to keep housing prices up.  When mortgage rates go up?  Then the housing bubble bursts.  So, we could end up in Scenario 3., 5., or 6. very, very quickly.

Gold and silver (in my NON FINANCIAL ADVISOR) opinion are awesome in most scenarios.  If it devolves past the point where order matters at all, then it comes down to weapons, political connections, preps, and sheer dumb luck.  If nothing happens, then my kids will get to enjoy some shiny metals after I pass away.

What’s the best way to tune a bagpipe?  A pitchfork.

I would, however, not want to put all of my eggs in any one basket.  I will personally limit the amount of gold and silver I own to about 10% of my net worth.  Why?  Random number – not bad if things go well in the rest of the world and gold and silver don’t go up in value.  If things go really south, it’s a decent enough hedge to act as a parachute as the plane goes down in flames.

So, that’s my answer:  it depends.  What do you think?  What Scenario above is the most likely?  What’s missing?

Ohhh, Lucky, come here, boy . . . oh, wait, he’s deaf, too . . . .

(Appended Graph)

Dead Romans Agree: Don’t Let The Small Stuff Bother You

“Happy premise number three:  even though I feel like I might ignite, I probably won’t.” – Bowfinger

I hear that Marcus’ wife was a perfect X.

Mike, the proprietor over at Cold Fury (LINK), is going through a very difficult time.  Big Country has set up a gofundme for him here (LINK).  Much more information at the gofundme site.

Now to the post . . .

I woke up this morning just irritated.  No particular reason.  In all fairness, it was entirely an internal feeling, and I imagine most people never noticed.  I was nice and polite to nearly everyone I interacted with.  And why not?  None of them were my ex-wife.

I wasn’t irritated with them, I was just irritated.  There were no issues.  I wasn’t in pain.  No one around me was in particular trouble.  Thankfully I’m not an electrician – people might dislike me not being positive at work.

As I thought about it, what was irritating me?  I couldn’t quite put a finger on it.  There was no rational reason at all.  During a conversation tonight, though, I had a reason to quote Marcus Aurelius:

“If you are distressed by anything external, the pain is not due to the thing itself, but to your estimate of it; and this you have the power to revoke at any moment.”

Not mine, but I couldn’t resist.

Sure, Marcus Aurelius’ kid was an utter tool, but when you become Caesar at 18, well, it might tend to go to your head – think of Commodus as Miley Cyrus, 180 A.D.  Back to Marcus, though.  Marcus genuinely did his best for the Roman Empire.  As near as I can tell, Marcus was a pretty good leader.

And that little quote above wasn’t written for you and me.  It was written for Marcus, by Marcus.  He was reminding himself that the external things in the world had only the power he gave them.  He was giving himself a pep talk.

Marcus Aurelius was right.  In the conversation I was having tonight, the person was very upset (most of you don’t know the person, though specific readers in California and Indiana do – hi guys!).  The reason she was upset?  Nothing rational at all.  So I quoted a dead Roman emperor.

Who says that Stoics aren’t compassionate?

Did it help?  I don’t know.  I’m beginning to see a pattern where crying people don’t stop crying when I quote dead Roman emperors.  I’m beginning to see why the kids call The Mrs. when they want actual human sympathy.

My irritation (I think) came from the same place.  Nowhere.  I felt fine (except for my right knee which is much better now) and the day generally went fairly well.  I realized that the advice I gave was meant just as much for me as for the person I was talking to.  I was just being irritated because I let myself be irritated.

Once I was done and realized I didn’t have to be irritated?

My hands disappeared today, but I can’t really point my finger at what caused it.

My irritation disappeared.  I know that the way I feel is (generally) my choice.  I can choose how I feel:  salty, Wednesday, or even drunk.  The only reason that I’m not happy every morning is if I choose not to be happy on some particular morning.

Are there actual reasons why I might have different feelings?  Sure.  If I had mental problems (other than an unseemly affection for awful jokes and a desire to consciously be able to make my fingernails grow absurdly fast) that might be a reason to have a feeling other than what I choose.

Don’t know.  I do know that there are people with actual mental problems.  There’s proof:  some people actually voted for Biden.  But, going back to Marcus, that’s not external.  Being sick or goofy enough to vote for Biden isn’t external.

Marcus Aurelius might have voted for Biden – Marcus is dead, after all.

Physical pain also is an internal source that can destroy moods.  I once (for a few months) had sciatica.  I was irritable enough every morning to chew nails and spit bullets.  Then I discovered that I could work out for a few hours on an elliptical trainer to make the pain go away.  A week later?

I was fine.  My irritation vanished along with my sciatica, never (hopefully) to return.

That was nearly 15 years ago.  Sure, I’ve felt pain since then, but most of it was the good pain from a hard workout.  Heck, most days the worst thing that happened was the crisp morning breeze running through my back hair.

My mood depends on me.  My attitude depends on me.

Does that mean that I can’t see the actual situation we’re in?  Of course not.  I see a nation tearing itself apart.  It’s worse:  it’s not just a nation, Western Civilization seems to be happily thrashing about as it marches down a path to extinction.

Is that good?

Of course not.

Does it mean that I should walk around every day being sad?

Of course not.  I am doing, I assure you, everything I can think of to stave off that darkness.  I mean, those memes won’t make themselves.

Never buy a sculpture of Bonnie Tyler.  Every now and then it falls apart.

And I am doing it cheerfully.  I laugh every day.  I smile because I know that most of the things that I worry about can have no power over me unless I give them that power.

Make your choices, and understand that while you might wake up irritated – it’s your choice if you wish to stay in that mood for a minute or an hour.

Me?  I like being happy, so I choose that, even in moments where it might not be appropriate.  I might even need to stop high-fiving people at funerals.

So, I got started late typing this after a day I chose to just be irritated.  And, I’m going to choose to end now.

With a smile on my face.  Go and have a great day.  Most of the time, having a great day is just a choice.

Choose wisely.

Friday: Things I’m Thankful For

“He’s like the hard-working, grateful employee we never had. Wish he would wear underwear, though.” – Bob’s Burgers

I don’t need coffee to wake up, I wake up to drink coffee.

It’s Friday.  Time for a happy post.  We’ll need one, because (brace yourselves) I think Monday’s post is going to be grimmer than a crab bake with Paris Hilton or father’s day with Woody Allen.

But we have today.  And when I am feeling down, a step back to realize and think about what I’m grateful for always brightens my day like a big old gravitationally contained spherical continual thermonuclear explosion.

Here goes.

  • I am thankful for you, readers near and far. I’m happy for the one-time visitors, and happy for the faithful weekly visitors to Modern Mayberry.  I had written thousands of words in a journal before I ever put a single word down on a blog.  This is better, and it’s because of you.
  • I am thankful for the really great fried potatoes The Mrs. made last night. They were very crispy on the outside, yet buttery-smooth on the inside.  A dash of ketchup to taste?

I couldn’t find the thingy that peels the potatoes so I asked Pugsley.  It turns out she’d gone off to the store.

  • I am thankful for the people that I have a chance to impact in meatspace. Hmm, that’s poorly worded, it makes it sound like I’m as bad a driver as a blind Antifa® member late to get his estrogen shots.  Let me rephrase:  I’m happy to help people in real life.  Times are tough, and they’re even tougher when people are tools on purpose, so if I can make someone’s life a little better?    Many times all it takes is real empathy and a single word.
  • I’m thankful that Pugsley forgot to take the trash out to the curb this week, so I can needle him about it (playfully) all week. Seriously, though, I’m really thankful because I haven’t had to remind him in the last six months, and he’s only missed trash day twice.
  • I’m thankful that The Boy will be down from Big State University this weekend. It’s always nice to have him around.
  • I’m thankful that sunny-side eggs taste so good. And I’m thankful that the crisp taste of a fresh tomato exploding as I bite into a cool slice on a hot day exists.  I’m grateful for the knowledge that a tomato is a fruit, and the wisdom to not put it on fruit salad.
  • I’m thankful The Mrs. We have saved each other from being very horrible spouses for other people.  After being married so long we’re like good lawyers:  we never ask a question we don’t already know the answer to.

I hear that insane people are driving trains in Mexico.  I guess they have loco-motives.

  • I’m thankful that I have had the good fortune to have had great bosses in most of my jobs. A good boss covers your back.  A great boss pulls more out of you than you ever knew you had.  One boss made the mistake of telling me to have a good day, because then I went home.
  • I’m thankful for being granted the maturity to (mostly) know when I was wrong, and to look at those times not as a personal attack, but as a hint on ways to get better.
  • I’m thankful for books. One of those great bosses that I had said, “Books are the only real way that you can talk to the greatest minds in history.”  He and I got along very well.
  • I’m thankful for the troubles I’ve had in life. Most of those troubles were like the chisel of a sculptor – they knocked off bits of me that I didn’t need, and left me better after the trouble passed.  As dead Danish dude Søren Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”  After I learned this lesson, every time in life I encountered difficulty, I asked myself:  “What am I supposed to learn from this?”  Life got way better after I realized that what started out as a difficulty could be the greatest gift ever.

The French donated the Statue of Liberty to the United States because they had no use for a statue with only one hand up.

  • I am thankful for fuzzy slippers in winter, electric fans in summer, and good cigars all year round. Protip:  if you look up “how to light a cigar” on the Internet, you will get 80 million matches.
  • I am thankful for the innocence I had. I am thankful for the experiences that removed it.
  • I am thankful for the valor of strong men who have defined bravery and given us heroes and heroic stories to the ages. I am stronger because of Leonidas.  I am stronger because of Seneca.  I am stronger because of a certain carpenter who lived and died and rose again some 2,000 years ago.
  • I am thankful for history, and the ability to gather vast amounts of scholarship to understand the past in ways that would have been impossible for all but the most dedicated scholars until recently. What do the “good parts” of American history and common sense have in common?  They’re both being wiped from existence.
  • I am thankful for PEZ®, because now I can honestly say that I’m the man who developed the PEZ®/Anti-PEZ™ space drive (PEZ Spaceship Secrets).
  • I am thankful that the heat of summer has given way to the cool nights of autumn. I won’t miss summer.
  • I am thankful for the way a perfect ride on a motorcycle feels as the gears shift smoothly upward under full acceleration, which, for a moment, is like riding the wind.
  • I am thankful for a hot cup of coffee on a cool fall morning, on the deck, with a book, a breeze, and nothing else in the world to do.

Pugsley called me, “Severely ignorant.”  I said, “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  • I am thankful for the things I don’t know.
  • I am thankful for one of our cats, not so much for the rest of them. Of course, the cat I like is the cat I wanted least.
  • I am thankful for all of my children – each of them in their own way.
  • I am thankful for a night of good sleep, and a morning where I have something exciting that pulls my head from the pillow. The Mrs. likes to lightly rub my back while I sleep, which is an amazing expression of gentleness. Unless you’re in prison.
  • I am thankful for work.
  • I am also thankful for time off.
  • I am thankful for the way my shirt smells the day after a campfire. It’s not uncommon for people to die in campfires – I mean, it’s not common, either.  I guess it’s medium rare.

What are you thankful for?

General Milley, The Vanguard Of The American Caesar

“What else is a TARDIS for? I can take you to the Battle of Trafalgar, the First Antigravity Olympics, Caesar crossing the Rubicon, or Ian Dury at the Top Rank, Sheffield, England, Earth, 21st November, 1979. What do you think?” – Dr. Who

What do modern people call socks worn with sandals?  Birth control.

History doesn’t always repeat, but it rhymes.

On January 10, 49 B.C., Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon River at the head of his troops.  He had been ordered to leave the troops beyond the Rubicon.  After crossing the river, it is said he uttered, alea iacta est, or Latin for “I know you are, but what am I,” (Caesar was a big Peewee Herman fan).

Caesar didn’t pay any attention to the order to leave his troops behind, and Legion XIII, Gemina, followed him to Rome.  What followed was a four-year civil war that ended up with Julius Caesar taking over the Roman Republic and founding what soon became the Roman Empire.  That lasted until the Empire was split in two by a pair of Caesars.

One of the most scrupulous traditions in the United States has been that there are three independent branches of the Fed.Gov:  the legislative, the judicial, and the executive.  What’s missing?  The military.  That’s just as intentional as Biden wearing Depends® the day after he eats prunes.

What determines the length of a Biden press conference?  Depends.

That’s because the military is unique:  the legislature controls funding it and declaring the war it should fight, and the executive is their commander-in-chief.  It should be pretty straightforward.

Except:  the military went from a citizen-militia type military fairly early on.  Even then, it was still pretty lame by today’s standards:  it had a core of officers and smallish numbers of troops.  The armed forces were expanded during times of war, of course, through citizen volunteers.  This lasted until the Civil War became such an unpopular party that you had to force Northerners to come and play because the Southerners were being such meanies.

Sure, the military wasn’t always used just for wars – Congress has authorized use of force 23 times since the end of World War II, and at least once of those times wasn’t related to “scaring up some hot chicks with daddy issues” for Clinton.  Declaration of “War” has become out of vogue since war has such nasty connotations.  Thankfully people can’t die unless war is declared.  I’m surprised the Department of Defense isn’t called the Department of Peace.

I guess both of these guys rubbed women the wrong way.

But, sorta, the idea has still worked out.  Congress authorizes the use of force, and the President wages war peace with tanks.  What’s missing there is the military deciding what it should be doing.  The military is a verb:  kill and break stuff.  The civilian government provides the noun, which is as simple as the name of a person or nation.

The system has some drawbacks:  in my view, it’s much easier to use the military than it should be.  I can understand in a world that has grown much smaller due to things like missiles and the Internet why we can’t wait a year to get ready to make war peace with bullets, but that should be our last resort.

This brings us to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

General Mark A. Milley is the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS).  That particular job is not really as cool as it sounds.  The JCS isn’t technically even in the chain of command for war peace with artillery.  They have no command authority over combat forces – that goes from the President to the Secretary of Defense to the commanders of the various Unified Combat Commands.

What does the JCS do?  The short version is that they’re the Human Resources group for the armed forces where they make diversity policies and pick who gets what job.  They also help make sure that “stuff” like food and bullets and goes to the right places.  It’s important – but the JCS aren’t fighting wars providing peace with torpedoes.

I’m not saying he’s woke, but his favorite animal is a pander.

This makes me wonder what General Milley was up to when he decided to tell the Chinese that he would let them know if we were going to attack them.  Of all the things that a General in the United States Armed Forces should be, promising to our (potential) enemies that he would give them a heads up if the elected Commander In Chief decides that even more vigorous peace with a particular country is required, is . . . not his job.  He’s Human Resources, and his job isn’t to set the priorities of the country or conduct diplomacy.  His job is to decide what happens if Jeff steals Julia’s salad in the break room fridge.

Yet, here General Milley was, conducting a policy discussion and taking orders from a sworn enemy of the United States:  Nancy Pelosi.  I kid:  Pelosi isn’t completely evil.  She only wants the complete destruction of the United States after she retires.

I put Jesus as my lock-screen picture.  Now he’s my screen savior.

But here is the danger:  Leftists will talk about how wonderful General Milley Cyrus is.  He won’t be charged with any crime.  He’ll retire from the JCS in 2023, and write a book about how great all of his decisions were.  He’ll get hired by a company that makes components that the Chinese will buy to make weapons for their military.  He’ll get to fly corporate jets and eat bacon-wrapped shrimp at parties with very fancy people.

That’s (mostly) not dangerous.  Unless you have to read the stupid book he’ll write.

What’s dangerous is that it sets the military up as being able to define the noun.  They get to do all the killing of people and breaking of stuff, but now they get to pick who they kill and what stuff they break.  That’s the dangerous point – the Rubicon.

I’ve warned in the past that I see two possible futures for the United States – a balkanized America.  For two decades beyond World War II, the nation was coming together and becoming less regional and more homogeneous.  The influence of television gave us another set of shared experiences.

But splits have been engineered, and now even though New York has a McDonalds® and so does Des Moines, the two places aren’t remotely alike in values or even, in many cases, language.  A balkanized America is one very real possibility as the polarity of the nation increases.

That’s one possibility.

I never judge a book by its cover.  I use that little paragraph on the back.

An American Caesar with a follow-on American Empire is another.  Besides being treasonous, Milley’s call with China is scarier:  it was an independent act of the military at the highest level to circumvent civilian leadership.

There is no doubt – this is close to crossing the Rubicon.  If the allegations are true, Milley should be tried, and if guilty, convicted.  As I said above – I think Milley’s insubordination will likely be rewarded and then he’ll be praised like a pet poodle, and he won’t be punished.

Somewhere there is a colonel taking notes, and waiting for an opportunity to strike in the coming unrest, getting ready to cross the Rubicon.

We’ll see if he has the chance.

Remember: Your Mission Isn’t Done

“Santa Maria! Captain, you cannot punish the crew like this. They will mutiny!” – Sealab 2021

The big problem with the French Revolution is that lots of folks lost their heads.

One winter, while hunting elk up on Wilder Mountain, we had, well, an issue.  We were about fifteen or twenty miles in from the nearest pavement, and headed home.

It was overcast.  It was lazily spitting snow, with a breeze that was slowly picking up.  Looking to the west, where there should be a resplendent sunset, the sky was dark, heavy, and pendulous with brooding storm clouds that blotted out even a hint of the winter Sun.

That was when the problem hit.  Pa Wilder, while driving over a “road” that was little more than a common path cut by four-wheel-drive vehicles over the course of decades of hunting and firewood gathering, drove over a small branch that had fallen in the road.  Not a problem, right?

Well, it was a problem.  In this case, the branch had the stem of a broken off limb, sticking straight up.  Pa drove the GMC Jimmy® right over that sharp shard of limb.

In the span of a dozen or so feet, we had lost not one, but two tires.  It penetrated the center of each tire, poking a hole the size of a half-dollar coin in each.

Amazingly, we had lost another tire already that day, already.

Ahhh, I remember this trip.  Those were the Goodyears®.

We now had a four-wheel drive with five tires and three flats.  In winter.  As a blizzard approached and night was setting in.  And all of this was in country where it could easily hit -40°F as night descended.

I bring this up to say that we had a mission.  Our mission at that point in time was to get home.  There were several challenges, and I’m pretty sure if most people were in the backcountry as a blizzard was descending that the last person they would choose would be a 12-year-old boy to be a guy on the team.

Which is sad.

Children can have missions.  Children can face danger.  Children can do important things.  We forget that because we’re in a society that doesn’t give children important things to do, mostly.  Midshipmen in the Royal Navy were as young as 14.

I hear the Russians just canceled their Penguin Army program.  Now all they have left is Navy Seals.

To be clear:  Midshipmen in the Royal Navy were 14.  A midshipman is an officer.  If you were unaware, the Royal Navy wasn’t a social club, and often those boys fought in wars.  As officers.

So we forgot that boys can be given real, substantial responsibility.  But there’s also the chance that we forget something else:  that each of us is on a mission.  And each of us has a role to play.

We currently are in a place where freedom is an increasingly precious and rare commodity.  It’s not just in the United States – Trump may have said, “Make America Great Again” but down under they seem to be following the “Make Australia A Prison Again” plan.  And Canada?

I love our Canadabros that come by regularly (Canada is the second-largest readership here), but Canada seems to be determined to become the Soviet Above the 49th Parallel, led by that Tundra Trotsky, Trudeau.

Pictured in background:  the only two Canadians Justin’s mother didn’t have sex with.

It seems like in this day and age we all have a mission.  Just like 12 isn’t too young, 80 isn’t too old.

Frankly, we need all hands on deck.  The size of the mission is the largest on the North American continent since 1774.  I almost wrote that the idea was to preserve the Constitution and the Republic.  Seriously, I’d love nothing more than to write that.

I’d love for that to happen.  I’d love for us to come together.  I’d settle for the laws to look like they did 90 years ago.  Heck, even 70 years ago.  That would be preferable to today.

A reversion, sadly, is impossible.

Whatever will come from tomorrow will not look like the past.  It may be a shadow.  The Holy Roman Emperors weren’t Roman.  And the Holy Roman Empire wasn’t the Roman Empire.

And I hear that soon enough he’ll be sending ambassadors to the Ottoman Empire, too.  Can’t you just sniff the leadership?

Or it may be something entirely different.

I think it will be entirely different.

And that’s where you come in.  Yes, you.

You have a mission to create a new nation here.  It won’t look like what we have today – it simply cannot, since we have created a situation that is at the far end of stability, but more on that Wednesday.

I assure you, you play a part.    The initial conditions of what happens are crucial to the final outcome.  If George Washington had wanted to be King?  If Thomas Jefferson had been a Martian Terminator Robot like the one that keeps triggering my motion detector lights at night even though the sheriff won’t believe me?

Things would be entirely different.

And you are important.  Your actions in the next decade are critical to the creation of what will come after.  Do we want a nation that will be based on slavery, control, and that eternal boot stamping on a human face?

I’d vote no.  If you’re a regular here, I’m betting that’s your vote, too.

I think everything he wrote was Orwellian.

If so, let me shout as loudly as I can:  You Are Not Done.  This is Not Over.  What is it that you can do to create a world where freedom beats slavery?  What can you do to create a world where children can run free from the indoctrination of an all-powerful, all-regulating state?

There’s a lot.

Our nation was, thankfully, built on the consent of the governed.  Most things that local government provides, we want.  To quote Python, Monty:

But apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh-water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?

To be clear:  the Federal government does very little to make anything in the list above better, and often does a lot to make them worse.  Except for the interstate highways.  Those are actually pretty cool.

But I will tell you – you are the seed of the future of this country.  You are the seed of the future of this continent.

Never cross a Scrabble® player.  They’ll send you threatening letters.

You are the seed of the future of this world.  It doesn’t matter how old you are.  The time is coming, and coming quickly where great injustices will be attempted.  And you are the seed to make what comes after better for humanity.  Would the world rather live in 1950’s America or 1930’s U.S.S.R.?

The choice is stark.

Your mission is clear.  How will you act to make your county, your state, your country one where free men can walk?

It’s up to you.

Back to the mountain.

For me, it was a game.  That’s the advantage of being 12.  Pa Wilder and my older brother (also named John due to a typographical error) and I wheeled the tires so we had two good ones in front.  We locked in the hubs on the four-wheel drive.

I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to drive up a mountain path in a car with only two tires in a snowstorm as it got darker every minute.  It doesn’t work very well.  The flat back wheels couldn’t push the Jimmy® up the hill.

That’s where I came in.  It was my job to take the winch cable, run up the hill, and loop the cable up the base of a tree.  Pa would then use the combination of the winch and the two front tires to pull the Jimmy© up.

Tree by tree, cable length by cable length, we worked pretty flawlessly as a team to get the Jimmy™ to the top of the hill.  Thankfully, for the most part it was downhill from there.  Although Pa was driving on the rims, we got it home.

Don’t let the jack slip on your foot when you’re changing a tire.  You might need a toe.

Was there danger?  Certainly, there always is.  We had snow, so we had water.  Ma would have called the Sheriff not too long after dusk, and even though the mountains were a labyrinth of roads, people had seen us.  We also had matches, hatchets, wool blankets, gasoline, and a mountain’s worth of firewood to keep us warm.

But we also had a mission.  Each of us served our purpose, and we got home.

Pa was a bit raw about having to buy two new rims and three new tires for a day’s worth of not seeing any elk, though.  For the record, I never saw a single elk when hunting with Pa.  I’m telling you, that man knew how to hunt.  Finding?  Sometimes I think he just wanted a good drive in the woods and hike with his boys, teaching them about living.  Teaching them about missions, and the part that they play, whether they know it or not.

In this life, we all have a mission, and we all play a part in it.  I can assure you that your part is not done, because you’re above ground, breathing, and reading this.

I hate to repeat something so trite, but in this case, it’s true:  you are not done.  This is not over.  And the whole world depends . . . on you.

It’s up to you.  You will create the future.

So, go do it.