Category: Rome, Yet Again

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: At The Bank Of The Rubicon

“Who the hell is Julius Caesar? You know I don’t follow the NBA.” – Anchorman 2

Good thing it’s not already at 5:56 . . .

  1. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  2. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
  3. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
  4. Open War.

We remain in the gray zone between step 9. and step 10.  I will maintain the clock at 2 minutes to midnight.  There is the possibility of a reduction back to step 8. in the future.  Post-election, authorities have begun to crack down on Leftist violence, plus the cold weather makes riots less fun, especially since the stores the fuel has all been burned.

Previously, I stated that the only thing keeping the clock from ticking to full midnight is the number of deaths.  I put the total at (this is my best approximation, since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) 500 out of the 1,000 required for the international civil war definition.

But as close as we are to the precipice of war, be careful.  Things could change at any minute.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Banks of the Rubicon – Violence And Censorship Update – Maps –  Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Intolerable Acts and the End of the Republic – Links

Front Matter

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

Banks of the Rubicon

They were going to come after him, he knew, with the full legal apparatus of the state should he give up power.  He knew this.  They had told him as much.  They hated his fame and popularity; they hated his bestselling books where he boasted of his accomplishments.

But it wasn’t just him, it was his family.  He knew that they would take legal action against his family, try to take every bit of his money.  They meant to ruin him.

He didn’t want to do it, but they had forced his hand.  He would call for an insurrection to take power so that his enemies couldn’t pervert the law to use against him, to use against his family.  In the end, was there really a choice?  He would take unprecedented action, because the politics in his country were ruined as it was.

Gaius Julius Caesar stood at the banks of the Rubicon, and hesitated.  To take a Legion across the river under his command would mean civil war.  It would break long-standing tradition.

He ordered the troops forward.  On to Rome.  Caesar reportedly said, “The die is cast.”

“What does the weather look like, Brutus?”  “Hail, Caesar.”

History doesn’t exactly repeat, but it sometimes rhymes.  I’ve been writing about an American Caesar for years.  The parallels between the United States in December, 2020 and the Roman Republic on January 10, 49 B.C. are large.

Could Donald Trump seize power and become something different than a President?

Yes, he clearly could.

But that might mean the end of the Republic – which has seen a string of peaceful transfers of power that has gone back through time to George Washington.

Wouldn’t it?

Probably.  But one could argue that installing a president in an election where there is overwhelming evidence that fraudulent activities took place similarly would destroy the Republic, but just over time.

Will Don cross the Rubicon?  If so, expect it on or before the next Weather Report.

Violence And Censorship Update

As I write this, violence appears to be down.  Winter, plus it appears that some of the Leftist leaders have gotten the order to keep the rabble in check now that they are “in control.”

As part of the “shut it down” theme from the Left continues, I’m getting reports that large numbers of Leftist accounts are now being shut down by Twitter®.  Is this the Leftist’s usual playbook that, once they feel they have power, to get rid of the useful idiots?

Possibly.

How do communists spread their propaganda?  Using commercials.  Meme is as-found on the ‘net.

Of course, this censorship doesn’t come from government – nope.  This censorship now comes from private companies.  I’ve been meaning to write a post about how evil that is, but hadn’t gotten around to it.  Thankfully, Alexander Macris wrote it well (LINK) so I didn’t have to.

From the article (but RTWT):

This essay has only scratched the surface of a very deep topic. The mechanisms by which tyranny is outsourced are ubiquitous. And it’s not just bypassing the Bill of Rights. Outsourcing of tyranny is used everywhere to bypass the checks and balances placed on our government. Whether it’s accepting control over our currency from the Treasury, offering private mercenaries unconcerned about the laws of war, or monitoring and recording all of your private data, Tyranny Inc. is ready to do the dirty job that government isn’t supposed . . . but really wants . . . to do.

Maps

I’ve seen dozens of maps that describe a hypothetical Civil War 2.0.  This one I found interesting for several reasons – it shows the approximate physical extent of Leftist demographics in the country, but also encapsulates a factor that most people don’t consider when dealing with Civil War 2.0 – outside forces.

Found this map on the web – don’t have a person to give credit to.  We’ll just call them Anon.

Yes, we know that while Civil War (Beta Version) was fought with Great Britain across an ocean, Civil War 1.0 was fought between states, Civil War 2.0 will be street to street – perhaps with dozens of Stalingrad-type conflicts across the nation.

But while I was watching some movie that involved narco-gangs, I ended up doing research.  The fourth-largest (behind 1. American Citizens, 2. American Armed Forces, and 3. American Police Forces) armed group in America are likely the drug cartels.

Civil War 2.0 would be an opportunity for them.  But it would also be an opportunity for China.  I didn’t put the map together, but you can certainly see that Anon put time into thinking which nations might help which side in the event of a Civil War in the near term.  I had several that I could argue with, but I thought I’d present it for what it was – another take on the way an uncertain world might shake out.

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Up is more violent.  The public “perception” of violence dropped drastically during November.  I expect that this number will drop once again.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  Instability dropped slightly.  December – will it bring a conclusion or more tension?

Economic:

The economic measures are strongly up this month, even as lockdowns continue.  Is the vaccine a real cure, or is it a false hope?

Illegal Aliens:

Down is good, in theory.  This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol.  Numbers of illegals being caught is rising again to a record November.

The Intolerable Acts and the End of the Republic

At last count, over 50% of voters thought the election was rigged, which includes Leftists.  Since they felt that Orange Man was literally the most evil and fascist person ever (rather than the mid-1990s moderate his policies showed him to be) cheating to Leftists is justified.  The ends always justify the means to the Left.  They’re happy the election was rigged.

Then, there’s the middle.  They mostly don’t think about it.  Whatever news readers on television say, well, that probably works for them.

I hope you’re not reading this in 2021, since all these memes will be outdated Biden.

There are some people who are stunned at the idea that we might have a fraudulently elected president.  I am in that category.  Why?  The idea that one of the last bastions against tyranny, the ballot box, is gone leaves Americans with few methods to redress their grievances.  What are we supposed to do next time, vote harder?

But the idea that the presidency, the crown jewel of political power in the world can be sold is intolerable to many.  Intolerable means simply that – cannot be tolerated.  If the office can be openly stolen once, it can be openly stolen in the future.

This is inherently destabilizing – and if not corrected, will certainly be more destabilizing than Trump’s term in office.  Does it end the Republic?  Just like Trump’s crossing the Rubicon, it likely does – though the big question is “when?”

LINKS

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

2020 ELECTION FRAUD EVIDENCE OVERVIEW

https://hereistheevidence.com/

https://www.theepochtimes.com/election-fraud-allegations-infographic_3605589.html?utm_source=newsnoe&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2020-12-04-5

https://thomisticthinker.com/skeptical-of-voter-fraud-in-2020-heres-your-evidence/

https://www.thelibertybeacon.com/election-fraud-evidence-of-chicanery-during-2020-presidential-election/

https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/23/5-more-ways-joe-biden-magically-outperformed-election-norms/

https://theredelephants.com/there-is-undeniable-mathematical-evidence-the-election-is-being-stolen/

https://stonecoldtruth.com/2020-election-fraud-evidence-compiled/

https://streamable.com/4gcp0i

MATT BRAYNARD – VOTER INTEGRITY PROJECT

https://twitter.com/MattBraynard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atkp6fnwk9w&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH9ihoLi1NA&feature=youtu.be

GEORGIA ELECTION MALARKEY

In a hurry?  Go to 9:00…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbTSUkA8xgI&feature=youtu.be

Explanation?

https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2020/12/fact-check-video-from-ga-does-not-show-suitcases-filled-with-ballots-pulled-from-under-a-table-after-poll-workers-dismissed.html

Or Not?

https://www.libertariannews.org/2020/12/03/cctv-captures-ga-ballot-fraud-after-fake-pipe-leak/

INFIGHTING

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/11/pelosi-floats-above-democrats-war-435799

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/03/maga-georgia-civil-war-trump-senate-republicans-442776

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/12/georgia-senate-runoff-republicans-civil-war.html

ON THE EDGE

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/civil-war-united-states-unlikely-violence/2020/10/29/3a143936-0f0f-11eb-8074-0e943a91bf08_story.html

https://theconversation.com/five-reasons-trumps-challenge-of-the-2020-election-will-not-lead-to-civil-war-150320

https://internationalman.com/articles/winding-up-americans/

https://chicagocrusader.com/cold-civil-war-in-america/

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-u-s-is-at-a-tipping-point-that-could-lead-to-civil-warn-warns-the-worlds-biggest-hedge-fund-manager-11606922363

OVER THE EDGE

https://straightlinelogic.com/2020/11/08/its-perfectly-clear-by-robert-gore/

https://americanmind.org/features/a-house-dividing/2020-a-retrospective-from-2025/

Luck And (Sort Of) $20

“What’s this, then? ‘Romanes eunt domus’? People called Romanes, they go, the house?” – The Life of Brian

When Clint was taking pottery class, before he put his ceramics into the oven, he’d snarl:  “Go ahead, bake my clay.”

I went on a long-ish walk today.  Walking is fun, gets me outdoors, and allows me to feel the wind on my scalp.  Not that being bald is bad – when I was younger I used to play chess with bald old men at my hometown’s park.  It’s really hard to find 32 of them all at once, though.

I went on the same walk yesterday.  The thought came to my mind, hey, I’m going to find a $20 bill when I go walking soon.

And today?  As I had just finished 1.56 miles (still heading out) I looked in the ditch by the side of the country road.  Could it be?  Was it?

It was.

No, not another Bud Light® can.  It was my $20 dollar bill!  I’m not making any of this up.  Here’s a picture.

I got home and found that someone ripped the center pages out of my dictionary.  It went from bad to worse.

Now it’s not the worst thing I’ve found inert, piled in the weeds next to a crumpled Bud Light™ can – that would be the Ex.  But it wasn’t exactly a full $20 bill, either.

I sent a picture of it to my friend.  “Looks like you’ve got about $9.50 there, John.”

Yup.  It is a real $20 bill.  Just not a complete $20 bill.  And since you need to have 51% of a piece of paper currency to trade it in – it’s not $9.50, it’s $0.00, although I’m sure that in Pennsylvania (or Wisconsin, or Georgia or…), my 45% of a $20 dollar bill would magically transform at 3AM into a full 55%.

So, was I lucky?

Yup, I was.

Why would I deprive an Uber driver of a chance to take part in a marathon?

Although we talk about all of the right things to do with your money (or bullets, or gold, or PEZ®) one thing you have to factor in is luck.

Pa Wilder, generally, did it all the “right way” – saved money, owned his home free and clear for years, bought his cars with cash, and stayed out of debt.  About 25 years after he retired, he was broke – he had spent most of his savings, so my brother John (yes, my brother’s name really is John, too) kicked in and helped Pa along.  Pa didn’t spend it all on pantyhose and elephant rides – generally, he just lived a very quiet life.

Then there was relative “B”.  They went from one cash shortage to another for almost their entire lives – not because of any sort of fault – they were frugal and worked hard.  In one particular cash crunch, they ended up having to sell cattle to pay an emergency bill.  Then, one day, a group of geologists came on to their land just as they’re ready to retire.  The oil company drilled a few wells and started sending them checks.

How much were all those checks worth?

Enough to allow them to get a bulldozer to push over the house they were living in.  Honestly, they didn’t need a bulldozer since the only thing holding the house together were mice holding hands with termites.

I enjoy testing microphone/speaker combinations.  Have any feedback for me?

And enough was left over to build an entirely new house.

It was . . . luck.

As humans, we plan.  We can’t help it.  And we observe patterns:  not getting married until you’re ready, finishing school, not getting divorced, saving money, being thrifty, and investing are things that generally lead to financial stability.

Choice of career is also important – there are few composers of 17th and 18th century-style music that are wealthy.  But for those composers that are?  If it ain’t baroque, don’t fix it.

But we should all take a step back and understand that the future isn’t based entirely on skill – it’s also based on luck.  And, yes, I know what you’re saying – the same thing I normally think – quoting Seneca (the dead Roman):  “Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity.”

I try to live my life by those words.

But there’s still just plain luck.

Did Romans kept fit by doing Pontius Pilates?

I am normally that lucky guy.  Seriously – I started writing down a list of incredibly good luck that I’ve had in my life.  It was a very long list.  If I took a hard look at the list, sure, some of it happened because I was clever enough, or fast enough, or strong enough, or just so very pretty – too damn pretty to die, some might say.

But some of those coincidences that happened to me were none of that.  The opportunities were so amazingly rare, and yet, there I was.  It’s not just me who has observed this.  A good friend once described me like this:  “John, if you were walking down the street and fell down into a pile of gum, you’d come back up with a $100 bill stuck to your forehead.”

Part of luck, however, is just understanding that some days are your day – nothing can go wrong.  And other days?  Nothing will go right, even if you’ve prepared wonderfully and meticulously.

Yes, I believe that Seneca is right, and you prepare as hard as you can for those days and seize the ever-loving snot out of those days.  So when it’s my day?  I try to push my luck as far and as fast as I can.  The Romans had this one sniffed out, too:  Fortis Fortuna adiuvat.  Fortune favors the bold.

What kind of aspirin do fortune-tellers take?  Medium strength.

When it’s not my day?  I just slooooooow down.

What I really have seen is that people who are in great moods have . . . the best luck.  Those same people often find opportunities where others don’t see them.

Maybe I’m just an optimist.  I think great things are going to happen to me, so, they do.  When I was out walking on the deck when it was raining and one foot slipped and I did the splits?  The kind of splits that you feel some muscle in your left leg streeeeeeeetch, and then feel that same muscle “give” because I haven’t bent like that since I was in high school?

Not lucky?  Right?

I can’t be sure.  Stretching my leg like a pretty, pretty ballerina sure fired me up to get walking to build that muscle back up.  And it’s working just after a few days.  And I found this neat $20 bill.

Or at least part of one.

Weird, huh?

Fight Club: A Dystopia We Can Learn From?

“Fight for us.  And regain your honor.” – The Lord of the Rings:  The Return of the King

What’s a robot’s favorite Mexican food?  Silicon carne.

When I was a kid growing up, I read 1984 by George Orwell.  This was the grim version, as opposed to the much funnier version by Mel Brooks.  It had a profound effect on my worldview, as books often do when you read them in 7th grade.  In it, a globalist group of communists fought each other continuously, while subjugating the entirety of the human race.  Hmmm, wait, that sounds familiar?

1984 was a bleak book.  I’m not sure who I talked about it with, outside of writing the chicken scrawl of a report in schoolboy block letters and handing it to my really hot 7th grade English teacher.  Since my reading scores were, well, advanced, she just let me read what I wanted to read while the rest of the class all read the same book.  It felt nice being a special pretty pony.

I followed 1984 with Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.  I think my teacher suggested it.  Whereas 1984 was a dystopia built on the subjugation of a boot eternally stomping on a human face, Brave New World was a dystopia built on frivolity.

I fell into a vat of chemicals once.  My quick reaction nearly killed me.

Frivolity was where the masses were, more or less, endlessly drugged and entertained and so that their opinions never had a chance to develop, or impaired at birth so they could never think.  The tyranny in Brave New World was the tyranny of a vapid public who never thought beyond the most recent mindless and sexual encounter (strongly encouraged by the state) and the latest movie.

Oh, wait, that sounds familiar too.

Yet another dystopia is the movie (and book) Fight Club.  Fight Club is a 1999 movie based on a 1996 novel that (mostly) tracks the movie.  It is a creation of the 1990s, but, to quote the most excellent YouTube® movie reviewer, The Critical Drinker (LINK, some PG-13 language), it is very relevant to today’s world.  If you haven’t watched this 21-year-old movie and are interested, I suggest you watch The Critical Drinker’s review afterward – he includes spoilers.  I’ll warn you – the R rating was earned, and there are some very dark moments to the movie.

There won’t be any spoilers here – what I have to say doesn’t require me to spoil the film.

Tyler Durden told me handcrafted soap is the best.  No lye.

To really get Fight Club?  You have to watch it at least twice.  It is a thoughtful movie.  Does it have detractors on the Right?  Sure.  It’s R-rated.  Some have called it nihilistic (I disagree) and there are other complaints which I won’t go into here.  Regardless, I won’t beat myself up for going against the grain of other folks who didn’t like the movie.

Very few movies are perfect, but this one is very, very good.

I first watched Fight Club in 2012 or so.  It made over $100 million at the box office, so at least someone talked about Fight Club.  When I finally watched it (which was no fewer than three basement furniture re-arrangements ago) I was stunned.  How stunned?  It’s the only movie that has its own tag on this blog.

Vegan Club?  Everyone talks about Vegan Club.

The constant, pervasive theme of this movie is that the systems of globalism have created boxes for men that make them less than men.  Here’s Tyler Durden (one of the movie characters):

“We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.”

This is a simple translation.  A large proportion of the citizens of the United States define themselves by:

  • How much and what kind of furniture do they have?
  • How nice is their apartment?
  • How well can they write reports in a soul-killing job where large corporations seek to avoid liability in a cold, systematic way?  Does that kill their soul?
  • How can they avoid deviating from the norm to wear the right tie to the meeting?

These things are death to the soul.  As the character Tyler Durden explains:

“You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your (deleted by J.W.) khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.”

I saw a robbery in an Apple® store once.  I was an iWitness©.

Marcus Aurelius and Seneca nod in approval.  They’d follow up:  you are your virtue.

And you, dear reader, are not your money or your clothes.  In many ways we are conditioned by society to believe that those are the things that define us.  We are not.  And if you believe that, you’re not alone.  Tyler describes the twilight of the soul brought about by a life dedicated to consumerism and status.  Live for the material world, and you’ll be swallowed by the material world.  You can never achieve enough, because someone always has more, does something better.

With that philosophy?  Money becomes the god that men seek:

“Damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy (stuff) we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war.  Our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”

I saw a meme (didn’t save it, don’t have the author but I’d love to credit them) that I (sort of) reproduce below:

Michigan is going to ban car sales based on popular Internet videos – the governor wants to stop car-owner-virus.

This meme gets me.  It’s the essence of Fight Club.  We’re a species that is, more or less, programmed to achieve.  For who?  For our group.  It’s why the NFL® is popular today.  Okay, that’s why the NFL™ was popular until they showed us that we’re really not part of their group at all.

We run races for a reason.  We play basketball.  We wrestle.  We have swim races.  Well, you guys have swim races.  I was in a 100-yard swim race in sixth grade and placed 11 out of 12.  I wasn’t dead last because some poor kid got the cramps.  My 11th place finish wasn’t close.  I think they ended up timing me with a calendar and an abacus.

Regardless, we compete.

Why?

It’s wired into us.  Competition partially defines us.  And the stakes have to be real.  There is, of course, a religious aspect as well.  A man has to serve a higher power.  It’s not just competing for today.  There is a bigger game, and there are bigger stakes.  That’s what makes it worth playing the game.  Life is more than consumption and procreation.

Q:  Why did the Libertarian cross the road?  A:  TAXATION IS THEFT!!!  

But men who can run a race fairly and lose with grace are men.  They don’t have to like losing – no man does.  But loss is a forge that makes us stronger, gives us incentives.  Thomas Sowell (I think?) once said that if he were designing a car for safety, he’d put a Bowie knife pointed at the driver in the center of the steering wheel, not an airbag.

Incentives matter.

Now?  We insulate children from the Great Game.  Lose?  That’s okay, you tried.

No, it’s really not.  I lost the swim meet because I suck at swimming and am only slightly better than a car at swimming.  Slightly.

Did I cry?  No.

Antifa protestors – never have to take time off from work.

Did I focus my energy on something where I could be as good as nearly anyone in the state?

Yes.

Swimming was pointless.  Telling me that it was okay was worse than pointless.  It was a lie.

Back to Tyler:

JACK, in voiceover:  On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

CLERK:  Please… don’t…

TYLER DURDEN: Give me your wallet.

Tyler pulls out the driver’s license.

TYLER:  Raymond K. Hessel. 1320 SE Benning, apartment A.  A small, cramped basement apartment.

RAYMOND:  How’d you know?

TYLER:  They give basement apartments letters instead of numbers.  Raymond, you’re going to die.  Is this a picture of Mom and Dad?

RAYMOND:  Yes.

TYLER:  Your mom and dad will have to call kindly doctor so-and-so to dig up your dental records, because there won’t be much left of your face.

RAYMOND:  Please, God, no!                            

JACK: Tyler…

TYLER:  An expired community college student ID card.  What did you used to study, Raymond K. Hessel?

RAYMOND:  S-S-Stuff.

TYLER:  “Stuff.”  Were the mid-terms hard?  I asked you what you studied.

JACK:  Tell him!

RAYMOND:  Biology, mostly.

TYLER:  Why?

RAYMOND:  I… I don’t know…

TYLER:  What did you want to be, Raymond K. Hessel?

Tyler cocks the .357 magnum Colt© Python™ pointed at Raymond’s head.

TYLER:  The question, Raymond, was “what did you want to be?”

JACK:  Answer him!

RAYMOND:  A veterinarian!

TYLER:  Animals.

RAYMOND:  Yeah … animals and s-s-s —

TYLER:  Stuff.  That means you have to get more schooling.

RAYMOND:  Too much school.

TYLER:  Would you rather be dead?

RAYMOND:  No, please, no, God, no!

Tyler uncocks the gun, lowers it.

TYLER:  I’m keeping your license.  I know where you live.  I’m going to check on you.  If you aren’t back in school and on your way to being a veterinarian in six weeks, you will be dead.  Get the hell out of here.

JACK:  I feel sick.

TYLER:  Imagine how he feels.

Tyler brings the gun to his own head, pulls the trigger — click.  It’s empty.

JACK:  I don’t care, that was horrible.

TYLER:  Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessell’s life.  His breakfast will taste better than any meal he has ever eaten.

How many people would love to have Tyler come into their lives and make them live their dreams?  How many people struggle through life, because they can’t take the next step?

You’re not too old.  If you’re breathing, you can make a mark on this world.  You’re not too poor.

My limiting factor is my imagination.  I realize that – it’s probably yours as well.

Regardless of the dystopias of 1984 and Brave New World, Fight Club shows a dystopia where we can win.  How do we win?

By understanding that our lives are in a precarious balance, just like Raymond K. Hessell.  And the first step to living life?  It’s letting go.  Achieving.

I learned to swim when I was very young.  My dad taught me.  I thought I’d never get out of that bag. 

And if you lose at swimming?  Try again.  Or try a new game.

At the end of Fight Club, men prove themselves to be stronger and larger than the dehumanizing systems that they serve.  It’s your choice.  How will your breakfast taste tomorrow?

Also:

Avoid the clam chowder.

 

 

Unrelated:

Steve is a blogger who is a FOW (Friend of Wilder).  Unlike me, he’s talented.  Because of the idiots who run his state, you’re lucky he has time to create something like this for you.  Do it.  No, I don’t get paid.  Steve does.  He’s Our Guy.

Do it.  Here’s the LINK.  There is just enough time for Christmas.

The Four Best Stocks For After The Death Of The Last Human On Earth

“You kids change partners more than square dancers.” – That 70’s Show

Marie Antoinette should have known the time was right for a revolution in France – she had a Coup Coup clock.

Okay, the title is clickbait.  We all know the Four Best Stocks For After The Death Of The Last Human On Earth are Rock, Paper, and Scissors.  Oops.  I think the real answer is Rock, Rock, and Rock.  I mean, who is going to make the paper and the scissors?

Oh, wait, I said four.

Add Google®, I guess.

One constant theme of this blog since I started writing it is that I want to convince everyone I can that tomorrow may not look like today.  I think this is important, because too often we start to think that our lives of today are the lives that people will live forever.

Why?

That’s the way we’re wired, to think that tomorrow will look like today.  It’s complacency.

Dozens of my ancestors lived as kings, having all the food they wanted and the choice of the peasant maidens in the dozen miles (metric conversion of one deciliter) around the mud hovel they lived in.  It may sound dreary, but it’s still better than Netflix®.

Genghis Khan is far better known than his brother, Gingivitis Khan.  

My ancestors lived every day of their life just like that, until they died at age 32 after they got a nasty infection because they were sharpening their bronze and flint nosehair trimmer, and accidentally conquered China.  That seems to keep happening.  I blame . . . well, all the people that conquered China.

For 100,000 years our brains, as wrinkly and wonderful as they are, grew up in a world where yesterday was mostly like today, and today is mostly like tomorrow.  Except for you people who have wonderful smooth brains.  I think I have some Bernie Sanders™ coloring books for you.

There’s a danger to thinking that tomorrow will be just like today.

Let’s pretend you’re a turkey on a farm.  There’s a nice farmer that feeds you every day.  What a nice guy!  You keep gaining weight, and getting bigger.

What a nice farmer!  Farmers must love turkeys.

Then, one November near Thanksgiving the impossible happens:  the farmer fires the turkey due to the COVID-19 outbreak and his turkey 401k drops 90% and his turkey wife tells him that . . . all those eggs?  Not his.

That turkey has found a fate worse than being roasted at 350°F for three hours (6.02×1023 Watts for six fortnights).  Turkey alimony.

The point remains:  life changes in an instant, never to return to the way things were.

I shot my first turkey this year.  Scared everyone in the meat aisle, and now I’m banned from Wal-Mart.

Here’s another one (I’ve used this example before):  I’m quite sure that there was a British guy at the dock watching as the last Roman Legion left Britain in 407 A.D.  What was he thinking?

“The Romans have been in Britain since 43 A.D.  They’ll be back.  Why wouldn’t they?”

It’s nearly a 100% chance that was exactly what he was thinking.  Our hypothetical British dude had never lived a single day when Roman troops weren’t controlling Britain.  They have to come back, right?

Well, not really.

There are reasons that hordes of Roman coins are found buried in Britain.

When Rome was strong, a Denarius (Roman coin) contained about $4.00 worth of silver at today’s prices.  As Rome continued, successive Caesars trading in Rome’s military might, reduced the amount of precious metals in the Denarius until it hardly contained a whiff of silver.

I hear there are extraterrestrials living in Rome – someone said that there were Italiens there.

Then one November near Thanksgiving, the impossible happens:  the guy in Britain gets fired and the Roman 401k drops 90% and his British wife tells him that Joe Biden (who was only 35 in 407 A.D.) was elected.  The worst part?

Joe Biden is carrying the British woman’s baby.

Our Roman’s world collapses.  Everything that he knew changes overnight.

When archeologists go digging in old British trash piles, they find something interesting.  The trash at the bottom of the pile (when Rome left) contains really cool broken plates.  Archeologists love plates.

Why?

Because angry wives break them all the time, so they make it easy to date a culture by the number of wives that go crazy and start throwing plates.  Apparently, the number of mad wives that throw plates is a scientific constant like the speed of light, so trash pickers archeologists can date the change in a culture based on broken plates.

The archeologists determined this:  the broken dishes at the time the last Roman Legions pulled out of Britain were awesome.  They were great dishes.  And everyone had them.  It turns out that dishes in the Roman Empire were mass-produced in southern France and shipped everywhere in the Roman Empire.  Southern France was the Wal-Mart® of quality dishware.

You can plainly see that Indiana Jones’ least favorite band is the Rolling Stones.

Then archeologists looked at dishes that were 100 years later in the trash pile.  They knew this particular trash pile was a king’s trash.  The dishes in the king’s trash were something that a kind parent would have congratulated a mildly retarded child for because the mildly retarded child tried really hard.

But these Roman plates weren’t widely available – only a king could afford them.

History happens one day at a time.  People lived it, the hard way.  Let me give you some examples that might add some perspective:

  • A French girl born at the start of the French Revolution would have been 26 and had multiple children when Napoleon finally lost at Waterloo.
  • A German girl born at the end of World War I would have been 27 and had multiple children before the end of World War II.
  • An American girl born at the end of the Clinton administration already has 43 earrings, sixteen tattoos, and herpes.

What I’m trying to explain that there are two types of changes the first one is fast, really fast, like the turkey’s bad November day.  The second type seems fast only when viewed from 200 years in the future.  Remember, love can last for a lifetime, but herpes is forever.

In my estimation (for what it’s worth) we are in an atmosphere where both types of change will happen.  We will have sudden changes, like the turkey, or like Marie Antoinette. These will be changes we cannot go back from.  If you burn a receipt from Arby’s©, there’s no going back to get those curly fries if they shorted you.

We all burn our receipts from Arby’s™ as soon as we get home, right?  Otherwise The Man would know how much we like Horsey Sauce®, and you where that leads:

Tyranny.

I digress.

But I will* note that I had a conversation with a friend over a year ago.  He and I were talking about investing and other things.  During this conversation, I had an epiphany.  Where was my money?  Mainly in a single bank (this has now changed).

Where does the Federal Reserve hide its economic failures?  In debasement.

My question to my friend then was this:  “How much of your money is diversified?”

His response was, “Well, it’s in mutual funds, and in a wide variety of stocks and bonds.  So it’s diversified.”

I followed up:  “No, I mean how much of all of that is in dollars?”

There was a long pause.  “All of it.”

I guess this post is mainly to point out that just like we don’t buy things in 2020 with a pocketful Roman coins, and we don’t buy things with French Francs from before their Revolution, and we can’t buy things with Soviet Rubles, how long will we be able to buy things with Dollars?

Just asking.

I’m not even suggesting any particular path, though I will disclose that if everything goes well, my kids might inherit some silver and gold when The Mrs. and I pass on.  Like any turkey, I know one thing:  tomorrow generally looks like today.

Until it doesn’t.

*Standard I’m Not A Financial Wizard Blah Blah Blah And If You Listen To Me For Financial Advice You’re Insane Differently Mental Disclaimer.

Equity And Equality – Why Leftists Cheat At Elections

“Equal, but not even.” – Die Another Day

What did the Frenchman yell as he went down the slide?  “YES!”

On Wednesday after the election, I consciously decided to sleep in – I had taken a vacation day from work.  I slept in.  It was luxurious.  Like a Roman soldier, I really enjoy resting on my pila-case.  At a time that was later than I’ll admit to, I rolled over in bed and picked up my phone.

Substantial leads for Trump from the night before had evaporated.  For whatever reason, this reminded me of the story of the Fox and the Scorpion.

Fox and the Scorpion both wanted to cross a river.  Why?  Probably a decent discount on quality unpainted furniture on the other side.  Scorpion wants to ride on the back of Fox.  Fox, not being stupid, says, “Dude, you’re a scorpion, you’re going to sting and kill me!”

Scorpion, logically, responds, “C’mon, man!  Let me tell you what my dead son Beau would say.  You know the thing. But if I sting you while we’re crossing the river, I’ll die, too.”  Scorpion paused, ”Just like I died when I fought Corn Pop.”

Fox, remembering his mandatory training on systematic speciesism, agrees and apologizes for his microagression and his foxist privilege.  Fox says, “Hop on.”

Fox begins swimming through the river.  Halfway to the other side, Scorpion stings Fox.

Fox, through the haze of pain and spreading paralysis as Scorpion’s neurotoxin spreads through his system says, “Scorpion!  You’ve killed us both!”

Scorpion responds, “C’mon man!  You knew I was a scorpion when I got on your back.”

I pushed the fable out of my mind as I slowly scrolled through all the data.  I then turned off my phone.  I went into the front room and sat down to read for a while.  Pugsley and The Mrs. were off at school and work, respectively.  It has been as rare as late-night TV show hosts with a sense of humor since 2016 that I’ve had the opportunity to just sit in silence without any work or a blog deadline hanging over my head.  I decided to grab a burger and a beer.

How many vegans does it take to eat a Double Quarter Pounder® with cheese?  One, if no one is watching.

In Modern Mayberry, we have five fast-food restaurants.  The day was perfect in temperature, which means it was on the cold side for most people.  I got to the speaker and ordered.  I then drove home, grabbed a beer out of the fridge, and ate my burger.  I tried to remember what my doctor said.  I think it was “Don’t eat anything fatty.”

It was good – cheesy and greasy and just the right amount of pickles.  I then remembered what my doctor had really said, “Don’t eat anything, fatty.”

For me, Wednesday was about balance.  It’s easy enough to fall into the trap of getting so wound up about politics that you lose perspective.  Honestly, one of the nicest things about living in Alaska was that Lower 48 politics was thousands of miles away.  You could nearly ignore it.  I’ve found that turning off my phone works almost as well.

On Thursday, it was back to work, and back to writing.  Of course, I have thoughts about the election, and you can probably guess what many of them are.  But the big thing that comes to mind with the 2020 election is fraud. It’s easy enough to look for fraud, heck, when that psychic told me she’d take my check I knew she was a fraud.

These ballots are from Seattle, so they definitely got mac n’ cheese.

Honestly, if you look at nearly any election, you can find things that look like fraud if you look hard enough.  The exception, of course, is my election to LOCAL OFFICE, where I estimate I had 335.33% more votes than the nearest competitor.

Hmmm, that sounds suspicious.  33533 is the same backwards as forward.  And it’s all 3’s with one five.  Normal numbers never look that way . . . except . . .  I was running unopposed for a job that no one else seemed to want.

You can confirm your bias that I stole the election – that 335.33% just looks too perfect.

From an ideological perspective, stealing an election is the last thing I’d do.  What ideology says that?  The ideology of the Right

The ideology of the Right is very different than that of the Left.  The Right is focused on Equality.  The Left is focused on Equity.  It’s really the fight between Equality and Equity that best defines the split between thinking on the Right and thinking on the Left.

A Marine with a salt and pepper beard is likely a seasoned veteran.

Western Civilization has always been a civilization of Equality and the philosophy of the Right.  You are born.  If you make your peace with God?  You can go to Heaven.  It’s up to you.  No one will drag you across the line.  If you want to create a business?  Be a glorious hero?  Sure, class may have come into it, but there was always room for the barbarian to make it to king.

The Right is Equality.

Equality is a 100 yard (3450 meters) dash.  I line up on the same line with my opponent.  When the starter pistol goes off, we start running.  If I’m running against a moderately athletic high school-aged boy who doesn’t have tularemia, tuberculosis, typhus, and tetanus, he’s going to make it to the finish line first.  If it’s a fat kid?  Okay, I might dust him.

As long as he has typhus.

Equality is about having the same opportunities.  The opportunity, in this case, is the open track.  It’s the same for both of us.  The opportunity includes the starter pistol.  We’ll hear it at the same time.  Each of us have the same conditions.

I have had many of the same opportunities in my life as Elon Musk.  I’m thrilled that he’s doing so well.  We had an equal shot at the world, and he ended up with billions.  I’m good with that.  He ran the race very, very well.  His running allows us to win, and in the end, makes us all wealthier.

If Musk flew his Tesla® through a black hole, because of tidal gravity forces, he’d be Elon-gated.

Equality is obsessed with fairness.  One person, one vote.  In Modern Mayberry, I think that getting the local officials to bend the rules during voting would have a penalty worse than speaking loudly in the local library.

The rules matter, and we follow them.  When The Mrs. had to get her license when we moved to Modern Mayberry, you could see the gleam in the DMV clerk’s eye as she ticked off the things The Mrs. had to produce to get her license.

  • Birth certificate?
  • Proof of address?
  • Current electrocardiogram?
  • Head of John the Baptist?
  • Marriage certificate?

Yup.  She was denied because she couldn’t prove that I’d married her.  Ha!  You can bet that The Mrs. wasn’t very happy when I drove her home singing, “Guess you are my property, doo-dah, doo-dah; my wife’s my chattel property all the doo-dah day.”  Of course, as I said this I had a brand-new Upper-Lower-Midwestia license in my wallet.

The Mrs. was not amused.

But the DMV clerk was 100% being fair.  The rules are the rules, no matter how stupid they might be.  The rules are the rules, no matter who you are.  And DMV clerks should follow them.

To the letter.

That’s Equality.  No matter who you are, when you walk into the DMV office, you’re all equally dirt in their eyes.  I think the DMV clerk even shed a tear when I had every single document she requested.  Getting through on the first time was like cheating to her.

Never get behind the Devil at the DMV if you need to do paperwork – the Devil can take many forms.

Believing in Equality is why people on the Right don’t steal votes.  They want to see the race run fairly.  If you don’t have the right paperwork?

No license for you.  I will say that when I got my license, the DMV clerk tried to get me to be an organ donor.  That was a girl after my own heart.

The DMV, at least here, is Equal.  Equity is different.

Equity is the belief that fairness isn’t measured on the starting conditions but on the outcome.  If a 100 yard (.31 centimeter) race was run on Equity measures, I would only have to run, say, 50 yards if I was running against someone twice as fast as me.  The goal of Equity isn’t to see who is fastest, it’s to structure the race so that people finish the way you want them to finish.

Given that Leftists are focused on Equity, or the outcome of the race, does it make sense that they’d try to steal an election?

Certainly.

Leftist focus only on the outcomes.  If a process like the 100 yard (34 milliKelvins) dash produces results where someone is faster, it’s the process that’s wrong.  If the process consistently produces a race where the fastest person wins?

To a Leftist, that’s unfair.

Not mine.  Second time I’ve used this recently.  The main problem is that the Equity in Reality panel is missing the pile of skulls that Leftism always, inevitably produces.  And the Easter Bunny doesn’t exist, either.

Equity, in the mind of the Leftist, isn’t in the casting of ballots.  Equity is in the counting of them.  Your favored candidate is losing?  What’s a few hundred thousand extra ballots?  They can punch them with a hammer or a sickle.

Why do Leftists cheat?

C’mon man, it’s because they’re Leftists.  What did you expect?

An Important Lesson Of Life? Understand Death.

“No. Not like this. I haven’t faced death. I’ve cheated death. I’ve tricked my way out of death and patted myself on the back for my ingenuity. I know nothing.” – Star Trek II, The Wrath of Khan

“Vikings don’t worry about death – they know they’ll be Bjørn again.”

When I go to bed on Saturday night, I sometimes wake up before I intend to get up.  That’s my favorite luxury of the weekends.  One technique that I use after I wake up to get back to sleep is to think about the points I’ll make on my Monday post.

This hypnogogic state (that no-man’s land between sleep and being awake) is a wonderful place for me.  I focus on a topic, and let my mind take the topic where it will.  Often, it’s back to sleep.  That’s okay.

But other times?  I end up making connections I might not have made otherwise.  I love that.  That’s one of the reasons I love my Monday posts.  I have that ability to really let my mind explore on the weekend.  I’d do that during the weekdays, but if I miss and end up sleeping?  Snoring is frowned on at work.

If you need to be creative and don’t use that hypnogogic state, I really, really, suggest you do.  It’s a really peaceful sort of place, but I’ve found it’s also one where my mind strips out the pretty little lies that we tell ourselves every day and pops me full of reality.  Plus?  It’s a great excuse to The Mrs. that I’m doing something important when I’m busy nearly napping.

I hear when Jeff Bezos sleeps, he wears pajamazons.

Monday’s posts are, in general, about philosophy.  They’re the “Wise” part of Wilder Wealthy and Wise.  Wednesday is about economics.  And Friday is about health, though more recently it has focused on clear thinking – which might be the clearest way to real health.  I’m not sure anyone wants to come to this blog for nutrition advice, since my nutrition information belongs on Tide Pods®.

All of the posts allow me to think deeply about a subject, research, and learn.  On more than one occasion, I started out believing one thing, and after my research for the post was done, I realized my original belief was horribly wrong.  Those are some of the best posts for me, because when I do them well, they change the reader and the writer.

But Monday’s are special.  They’re my favorite posts, though sometimes not the most optimistic of posts, because, like those transvestite superheroes that call themselves the “Ex-Men®”, reality is not always pretty.

This was a joke when this album came out.  Now we call it male fraud.

I had a big post planned for today.  Really, I have a big post planned every Monday.  In my mind, I want them to knock the socks off of people.  Figuratively, of course, because I have no idea what sort of foot hygiene you practice and would not want to actually have to smell your feet.  I’ll do a lot of things for a successful post, but I won’t do that.

So, why do I write?

I write because, perhaps, the biggest way I can make a difference in this world is by serving, you, dear reader.  If something I can write can make you smile on a bad day, make you think differently about a subject so your life is better?  If the cause of Western Civilization is carried forward?

I win.

That’s really why I’ve devoted such an amount of time to writing.  As The Mrs. has told me several times:  “John, if I didn’t think what you were doing was important, you and I would have words.”

I don’t know if “have words” is fairly ominous where you come from, but here in Stately Wilder Manor, “have words” generally does not lead to a pleasant evening.  But, I am happy to note, I have The Mrs. full support in my writing, even though she says, “well, I’m sure we’re on a list now.”

I went to the library to get a book on Pavlov’s dog and Schrodinger’s cat.  The librarian said that rang a bell, but she wasn’t sure if it was checked out or not.

This week, however, I wasn’t able to slip my writing tasks off to my conscious/sub-conscious.

Life intruded.

It turns out that today there was a death in the family.  It wasn’t one of the regular cast of characters that I’ve written about.  Pugsley, The Boy, The Mrs., Alia S. Wilder, my brother, John Wilder?  They’re all fine.  Ma and Pa Wilder?  They passed away years ago.

Actually, I’m fairly sure I have never written about the person who passed away today.  But their passing provided the opportunity to talk about life.

The simple truth is this:  we are born, we grow, we live, and all we can do is try to make the world better by the lives we touch.  As Kierkegaard said, “Life can only be lived forward, and understood in reverse.”  Of course, he was speaking Danish, so Kierkegaard probably sounded like he was describing a pastry recipe that involved using a commuter train to mash the dough because Danish doesn’t sound at all like a real language.

What’s the difference between married people from Denmark and Batman’s® parents?  It’s simple:  one is wed Danes and the other?  Dead Waynes.

Death is, of course, inevitable.  I’ve written about it on more than one occasion.  I don’t expect that this will be the last time I write about it.  Our inability to understand that death is a part of life horribly stunts the modern world, which seems to exist to deny that death is real.

Death has many different impacts on families.  It can bring them closer together or tear them apart.  The choice is, of course, tied to how the family deals with it.  The best choice is honesty and transparency.

Some observations:

  • How can you mess up a funeral? You can’t.  So why do we worry so much?
  • And why do we spend so much on a funeral? I think it’s a unique time where people don’t think straight at all.
  • Making decisions after the death of a loved one is probably the third worst time you can make a decision. Or is it the fourth?
  • Never, ever leave something unsaid between you and a loved one. When the ship sails, all debts should be paid, in full.  The last thing you say to someone might be the last thing you say to someone.
  • Death brings life into perspective – it makes people focus on what is really important. So why do we wait until someone dies to focus on what’s really important?  Hint:  we don’t have to.
  • Avoid land wars in Asia. Those never turn out well.
  • Most major religions and all of the atheists think we have one shot at life on Earth. Wasting time is then equivalent to wasting life.  So don’t do that, either.  Every minute you spend being bored and waiting for something is a minute of your life you wished away.
  • Life is too short for regrets. Fix your regrets, or live with them.  Spending a second regretting is a second you’ll never get back.
  • Corollary: life is too short to spend it worrying about how long you’ll live.  So don’t.  Should we be prudent?    But don’t let it stand in the way of you living your life.  Is that an excuse to do harmful things to yourself?  Of course not.  But it’s not an excuse to be afraid of your shadow, either.

If I’m ever crushed by a falling piano, I want a low-key funeral.

During the ancient Roman triumphs, which were held to honor victorious commanders, a slave was chosen to accompany the commander.  The slave would hold the wreath above the commander’s head.  He would whisper in the commander’s ear:  “Remember, you are mortal.”

We all are.  The only difference is what we do in life.  And what we write for our Monday posts.

Shield Walls And Responsibility

“Aristotle was not Belgian. The central message of Buddhism is not ‘every man for himself.’ And the London Underground is not a political movement. Those are all mistakes, Otto. I looked them up.” – A Fish Called Wanda

ROMAN

Four Norse gods, one Roman god, and two astrological bodies walk into a bar.  Everyone knew Wilder was going to make another week joke.

Farther back than written record exists, people have been fighting each other in an organized fashion. Though there are indications of earlier Egyptian battles, probably the first written records of tactics come from an inscribed stone thought to depict a Sumerian victory around 2500 B.C.  Again, perspective – the time of Christ is closer to us than Christ was to this battle.  Another way to say it?  Almost as old as your mom.

The tactic as shown on the stone would have been familiar to a Greek or a Roman or a Viking:  it’s a shield wall.  The idea is that soldiers working together would provide each other mutual protection through their overlapping shields.  In the case of the Greeks, the shield wall (or phalanx) was manned by citizen-soldiers called “hoplites.”  The Greeks had a lot of stories, though.  The half-human, half-horse who was a doctor?  They called him the Centaur for Disease Control.

Each hoplite protected himself and the man on his right.  Much of the most effective fighting was done by the guys in the second row, who were also protected by the shields of the front row.  The shield wall was generally employed by both sides during ancient conflicts.  As a superior technology, the choice was simple – adopt or learn to speak a new language, if you were lucky.

PROTON

Protons are underrated.  They’re always so positive.
Photo CC BY-SA 3.0, Sting, viaWikimedia

Combat was simple.  The opposing shield walls would meet and, as near as we can understand, a big sumo match between porcupines was the result.  The worst thing that could happen to a shield wall is breaking.  If a shield wall broke, the only real option for the side that broke was to flee.  For just that reason, the Greeks put the most inexperienced soldiers in the front and center of the shield wall.  That gave them psychological comfort of being surrounded by experienced fighters, plus they couldn’t get scared and run off.  They were stuck there in the middle of the fight.

The shield wall is one example that I could think of where the responsibilities of the individual to the group were vitally important.  Individual thought in a Greek phalanx is more than discouraged – it’s fatal.  That’s why the put the rookies in the middle.  The choices in the middle of a Greek phalanx are two:  fight as a unit and maybe win or be individuals and certainly die.

PHILIP

Philip also asked if he should come to Sparta as a friend or a foe.  The Spartan response?  “Neither.”

I’ve been thinking quite a lot about the tension between responsibility and individuality as I get older.  When I was younger after I read Ayn Rand I was a ready-to-move-to-Galt’s-Gulch Libertarian.  My thoughts were rather simple:  I’d do as I please, not harm anyone, and the world would let me be.

Heck, I even went to a meeting of the largest Libertarian group in the state I was living in.  When I saw it was just six guys in a booth at Taco Bell® (I’m not kidding) I decided to skip the meeting.  Libertarians are horrible at organizing.  Everybody wants to do their own thing, which makes for lousy coordination.  It shouldn’t have surprised me that there were only six of them, and that they met at a single booth at a Taco Bell™.  Also, since then I’ve come to the realization that the world will never let us be so we don’t have the option of going to Galt’s Gulch.

I still love the idea of individual freedom.  And even when I was young, I realized that individual freedoms came with individual responsibility.  You make a mistake?  You’re held accountable for it.  But there’s a component that’s missing that complements the first two:

Responsibility to the group.

ALIEN

Do Transformers® get car insurance or health insurance?  Neither, they are illegal aliens.

Does that constrain your individual freedom?  Certainly.  But it’s reality.  If you’re on a football team, working at a business, part of a family, or even in a tribe of Libertarians living in Galt’s Gulch, your individual freedom is limited to an extent that you have responsibilities to the group.

Just as the Greek hoplite was responsible for his own life, he was also responsible for the lives of those around him.  Each individual hoplite was responsible for the success of the group.

As I get older, I realize that responsibility does exist for each of us.  It’s not the same immediate life or death imperative of a hoplite, but it’s serious nevertheless.

BIDEN

If Joe wins the election, at least Hunter can get a job closer to home.

In one sense, the State (mainly the Federal government, but also small-s state governments) has done it’s best to remove that individual responsibility to society – it’s now nothing more than a series of payments to the State – taxes here and taxes there and you can go about your life without worrying about your responsibility to the state.

Poor people?  That’s easy.  The State will pay for them.  The break between individual charity is gone, but I’ve written about that before (Charity, The Terminator, and Flat Tires).  But it goes much further with similar stories in education, medical care, and retirement care.  There are a million ways that the State has replaced the responsibility of the individual to that group.

One impact of that has been the recent riots.  Reparations?  Make the State pay.  Burnt out buildings?  Make the State Pay.  Chose to get a degree and rack up enormous debt?  Make the State pay.  Unhappy with your life?  Capitalism has failed.  The State should fix this.

STALIN

During the Soviet Revolution, they didn’t get every goal, but the did aim for the Tsars.

In the minds of Leftists, every solution requires more State power.  That’s been at the root of every issue we’ve seen in 2020.  Beyond the riots, COVID-19 has provided another outlet for the religious fervor of the Left.

  • Vaccines? Should be mandatory once one shows up.
  • Masks? Previous:    Now:  Required.
  • Trump’s response? Previous:  He doesn’t have authority.  Now:  Every death is on his head.
  • Voting?   Protests?  Just fine.

The cause of this is that there is a natural desire to want to have responsibility that the State has severed.  In its place, there are still chances to do that – be a Little League® coach.  Volunteer at the food bank.  Volunteer your time down at the local shooting club to teach people how to protect the man to their right.

That’s what a responsible hoplite would do, after all.

July 4, 2020

“The time for negotiation is past. The actions of the British army at Lexington and Concord speak plainly enough. If we wish to regain our natural-born rights as Englishmen then we must fight for them.” – John Adams

FEDEX

The FBI arrested my algebra teacher when I was in high school as he was teaching us about graphing. They said they were sure she was plotting something.

Boston, Massachusetts: 122 killed, 211 wounded in a daybreak raid by troops sent to confiscate privately owned weapons and ammunition. “Patriots” claim government troops fired first.

It has been reported that at dawn a group of self-styled “Patriots” engaged a heavily armed troops sent to confiscate guns and ammunition. These “Patriots” though initially outnumbered, stood by the side of the road, fully armed with modern assault weapons at the ready. The “Patriot” leader at the site, John Parker, claims to have been only standing there with the other “Patriots”. It has reported that Parker said, “Stand your ground. Don’t fire unless fired upon. But if they mean to have a war, let it begin here.”

According to Parker, the soldiers ordered the “Patriots” to leave, and he ordered his men to “disburse and go home,” but “the soldiers were yelling,” and there was confusion. There was a shot, fired, but both the “Patriots” and the spokesman for the troops claim the other side fired the first shot. Badly outnumbered at first, the “Patriots” were reinforced by the local members of their radical libertarian movement as the firefight wore on. House-to-house fighting was reported.

Sources to this blog have indicated that the “Patriots” had been tipped off to the troop movements and were aware the gun confiscation was coming. The troops were forced to withdraw under fire, although rescue from a larger detachment of troops from Boston was required for their safe evacuation.

REVERE

Why did Paul Revere ride a horse on his midnight ride? Well, have you ever tried carrying one?

Although no weapons were found at either Lexington or Concord, authorities have indicated that persons of interest in this case are: Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock. His Royal Majesty King George III had no comment, but Brigadier General Lord Percy, had this to say:

During the whole affair the Rebels attacked us in a very scattered, irregular manner, but with perseverance & resolution, nor did they ever dare to form into any regular body. Indeed, they knew too well what was proper, to do so. Whoever looks upon them as an irregular mob, will find himself much mistaken. They have men amongst them who know very well what they are about, having been employed as Rangers against the Indians & Canadians, & this country being much covered with wood, and hilly, is very advantageous for their method of fighting.

PARKER

This is a statue of Captain John Parker, Patriot leader who led the Militia at the battle of Lexington. He died five months after the battle, of tuberculosis. Since you don’t know what I look like, you can assume I look exactly like a bald version of this.

A local lawyer, John Adams, viewed the battlefield the next day, “The die was cast. The Rubicon crossed.” Pressed by this blog for an explanation of these cryptic comments, he referred us to our previous post (American Caesar: Coming Soon To A Country Near You?).

The events listed above happened 245 years ago, except John Adams being snarky to me, yet somehow the concepts behind them are fresh in American life in 2020. The battles of Lexington and Concord, though small by today’s standards, produced the “shot heard ‘round the world” as the American Dream and American Identity were formed.

Lifted straight from Wikipedia, here’s a story from the battle that made me chuckle:

Against the advice of his Master of Ordnance, Percy had left Boston without spare ammunition for his men or for the two artillery pieces they brought with them, thinking the extra wagons would slow him down. Each man in Percy’s brigade had only 36 rounds, and each artillery piece was supplied with only a few rounds carried in side-boxes. After Percy had left the city, Gage directed two ammunition wagons guarded by one officer and thirteen men to follow. This convoy was intercepted by a small party of older, veteran militiamen still on the “alarm list,” who could not join their militia companies because they were well over 60 years of age. These men rose up in ambush and demanded the surrender of the wagons, but the regulars ignored them and drove their horses on. The old men opened fire, shot the lead horses, killed two sergeants, and wounded the officer. The British survivors ran, and six of them threw their weapons into a pond before they surrendered.

OLDGUY

This soldier was old enough to experience both mustard gas and pepper spray. He’s well seasoned.

I’ve long thought that our new, modern form of Civil War will feature far more old folks than the past ones. Unlike the Civil War 1.0, Civil War 2.0 will be fought more like the Revolutionary War, with armed Militia on both sides. The little story above is (for me) confirmation that in America, being over 60 doesn’t mean “out of the fight.”

But this is about the Revolution, and I’ll write more about Civil War for Monday. The Battle of Lexington and Concord took place on April 19, 1775, and it wasn’t until over a year of fighting skirmishes that the Declaration of Independence was drafted.

Saying and doing are different. Sure, in 1776 we said we were independent and gave a list of reasons, but it took years of war to make it so. The Battles of Lexington and Concord were the first steps in making it so, and setting the pattern for a nation that has spread more freedom and prosperity than any nation in the history of the world except for Great Britain.

What will be required to keep it free?

Time will tell.

The Day America Died?

“1996 is the past too, listen to me!” – 12 Monkeys

CHUCK

Chuck Norris was dropped twice as a child:  once on Hiroshima, once on Nagasaki.

Pugsley and I were off driving to an event today.  As we motored down the road, he said, “Hey, what were the 1990’s like?  I was on YouTube® and saw some commercials from then.”

I paused.  Since he was born after the 1990s, it was absolutely foreign to him, except as he had seen in media and popular culture.  But how to describe it?  I mean, the Dole/Kemp ’96 website is still up (LINK), which is convenient, since Bob is now 96.  But the 1990s was so much more than that.

“Well, we had won the Cold War.  The 1970’s were about the economic wreckage from the oil shocks and inflation from removing gold backing to the dollar.  The 1980’s were the last stage in the Cold War – the idea of nuclear war being 45 minutes away from ending civilization was common.”

I skipped mentioning that we’d come within a single person’s decision to launch nuclear weapons and start a world war more than once.  I didn’t want to put him in the mindset of a total war.  Heck, let him have his own ex-wife.

“The 1990s saw the end of the Cold War when the Soviet economy collapsed.  We had, to a certain extent, defined ourselves by our enemy.  In some sense, American mean not a Soviet communist.  But then, we won.  It was all over.”

GORBY

Joe Biden knows in his heart that he is the only one who can defeat Ronald Reagan this November.

I paused, thinking about the old Mark Twain line that most people can’t tell a good thing from a bad thing, but kept going.

“We then looked around and wondered who we were, since there weren’t any Soviet communists to not-be.  I think the answer we came up with was that we were shoppers.  The purpose of America was to be the site of endless suburbs surrounding cool shopping malls.  Heck, it’s probably not a coincidence that the Mall of America® opened in 1992.”

Looking back, I am in awe of how innocent we were, how free of strife we were – the First Gulf War took months to prepare for, but only had about 96 hours of actual ground combat with 156 Americans killed in battle.  To put that in perspective, 65 troops died in the Gulf from accidents during that same time.  The first Gulf War was about as lopsided as a velociraptor in a room full of kittens.

“It was unique, because the United States was sitting alone as a superpower both economically and militarily.  The country was prosperous.  We were even closer to a balanced budget than we ever have been since Andrew Jackson was president.  I think Americans began to miss the struggle.  Rock music went from a joyous celebration of freedom and beer and girls in bikinis and Cherry Pie to complaints about teenage angst.”

I didn’t jump into discussions of the Fourth Turning (The Economy, The Fourth Turning, Kondratieff, and You.).

FUN

Kurt Cobain has now been drug-free for 26 years!

“Somewhere in there, we had a chance to look deep inside ourselves to find our soul as a nation.  Religion seemed hard, so we decided the answer was Twizzlers®.”

What I didn’t say was that was the beginning of tearing the nation apart.  By the time George W. Bush beat Al Gore in an election that was so close it went to court, the Left felt that they had the presidency stolen from them.  That, along with the Clinton Impeachment, rubbed the Left raw so by 2000 they were madder than Dick Cheney on a dove hunt.

I suppose that the 1990s were also the last stage of the innocence in America, and the slide into terminal decline began here.  Sure, we’d already gone from “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” in the 1960s to “I Wanna **** You Like An Animal” in the 1990s, but in 1996 an actual American President, a Democrat, thought that marriage was something for a man and a woman to do.

RECORDED

The Mrs. thinks I’m crazy, forgetting she’s the one that married me.

Wild stock swings, a housing crisis, and wars that kept tens of thousands of American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq for more than a decade followed, and the great rift I have written about in numerous posts (Civil War, Neat Graphs, and Carrie Fisher’s Leg) widened.

But all of that is prelude to the Day America Died:  May 28, 2020.  Sure, the time of death is up for debate.  And everything looks the same, taxes will be due next month, and the ammunition and bagel shop still accepts United States Federal Reserve currency.

Inertia is like that.  The old forms persist, even after the reason that they were invented disappeared.  Even after the Greeks took over Egypt, they still used the term Pharaoh.  The Senate of Rome ceased to be the Senate, but managed to stay in existence until at least 600 A.D., long after the fall of Rome.  I still own a comb.

WALT

Like I said, I still own the comb.  I just can’t part with it.

On May 28, however, the Third Precinct building in Minneapolis was burned down.  The revolution may not be televised, but it certainly is being live streamed.  From there, protests, riots, and looting spread to dozens of cities in the United States, and even across the world.  Certainly, there were peaceful protests as well, but the vision we’ll remember was burning, looting, and destruction of public and private property.

It was and is obvious that the goal of the Left is simple:  they want to burn it all down, every system, so that they can fundamentally transform the country as a whole.  Transform into what?  The hints aren’t even subtle:  the “Green New Deal” combined with a wholesale rewrite of the history and legends that define America and “free” healthcare and money.  The old America, the one that named an airport after John Wayne?  That’s not “who we are.”  Free speech that goes against the narrative of the Left?  Also not “who we are.”

The Right seems to be done, too.  The systems that should remove illegal aliens, don’t.  They Constitution seems to be guided by “emanations and penumbras” that allow the meanings of words to take the exact opposite meaning when used in reality.  For some reason, “sex” as written in 1965 was interpreted to include transgenderism which means the exact opposite of natural sex.  One thing I’m certain of:  in 1965 when they wrote the law, “sex” meant “transgender” to exactly zero lawmakers.

It seems as though the Supreme Court forgot that there is, sitting right near their own building, a whole other building full of people who could easily clear that up:  Congress.  But that seems unlikely, so the Supreme Court can just make up stuff if they want to.  Because of nonsense like that, the Right is also done.

So, I was hopeful the Center hadn’t given up.  I have a good friend who is more libertarian (small “L”) and he and I were chatting the other day.  “They should vote all of them (Congress, President, all of them) out.”  I wasn’t expecting this from him.  But the Center is done, too.   The Left is mad at Trump.  The Right is mad at AOC, and the Center just wants everyone to shut up so they can grill in peace.

GRILL

One time when we were backpacking the fire got away from us in camp.  It was in-tents. 

But belief is really important.  We obey laws, at least in part, because we believe that we’ll be punished if we don’t.  We trade dollars back and forth with each other for stuff because we believe that the dollars are money.  We have a nation because we believe in it.

The math is simple.  As soon as we stop believing that we have a nation, as soon as that faith dies away, we no longer have a nation.  And by my guess, I’d say we lost that faith on May 28.  Are police required for a country?  No.  We lived until 1834 before the first police force that looked like a modern unit was formed.  Before then, it was a hodge-podge of volunteer day and night “watches” that looked for bad guys or danger combined with county sheriffs.  Thing Mayberry, but with a lot more booze.

But law enforcement is required.  If it doesn’t exist, citizens will protect themselves.  The era of the rooftop Korean and the Modern Sporting Lawyer arrives once again.  People will very quickly understand that in the absence of police that violence levels, especially in Leftist areas with restrictive gun laws, will skyrocket.

MSL

The other day I got bitten by a radioactive lawyer – I now have Power of Attorney.

That lack of belief in government is happening now.  Maybe worrying about nuclear war wasn’t so bad after all?

Your Economy, Featuring: Romans, Rothschilds, and Rioters

“You have two settings-no decision and bad decision. I wouldn’t let you run a bath without having the Coast Guard and the fire department standing by, but yet here you are running America. You are the worst thing that has happened to this country since food in buckets and maybe slavery!” – Veep

DOLPHIN

I had made a mistake and bought too many art supplies.  That was my excess stencil crisis.

Cui bono.  That’s Latin for “who benefits,” and in this case doesn’t have anything to do with the singer for the band U2©, who have been benefiting from everything.  Even my GPS is branded by U2™, and it sucks.  The streets have no name, and I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.

Cui bono.

That quote being in Latin is especially appropriate for today’s post.   Marcus Licinius Crassus (115 B.C. – 53 B.C. – they aged backwards then) goes down in history for creating the first fire department that Rome had.  At his own expense, he recruited and trained a brigade of 500 men who, at the first sign of a fire, would speed toward the smoke and flames.

Crassus would rush to the fire with them.  Once the fire department was on site, Crassus would find the building owner and offer to buy the burning building at an obvious discount.  I am not making this up.  Obviously, the longer the fire went on, the lower Crassus’ offer would go.  Once the property owner had sold, Crassus would give the signal and his fire department would save his newly purchased building.

I’m sure that sometimes the fire got away from him, but most of the time Crassus profited from the deal.  It was a fire sale, right?

ARSON

When I was working as a firefighter, in one building all that was left was the bottom of a shoe – it must have been the sole survivor.

Often, Crassus would then rebuild the building using his army of slave architects and artisans (not making that up, either), and then lease the building back to the original owner.  So, Crassus even had a way to get his money back.  Crassus was wealthy not only by ancient standards, but by any standards.  He’d be worth at least $11 billion in today’s money.

Cui bono?  Crassus.  I looked for a name I could call Crassus, but it was hard to find one, this being a family-friendly blog.  I’ll settle on cullion.

This is an early example of economic plunder.  Legal, yes.  Honorable?  No.

It didn’t stop with Crassus.

UBER

I once paid $20 to meet the Prince, but I partied like it was only $19.99.

When you search the Internet for tales of Nathan Rothschild back in 1815, you’ll find a host of stories that from the scholarship of 2020, don’t seem to be supported.  But what generally seems to be agreed with (even by the Rothschild Archives – LINK) is that during the Napoleonic Era, Rothschild and his brothers across the European continent had a fairly sophisticated system to transfer news and information to each other.

Information is just like a building fire in Rome:  the sooner you catch it, the more it is worth.

What had been vexing everyone in London during June of 1815 was the return of Napoleon from exile and his resumption of power in France.  Since Europe had been fighting alongside Napoleon or with Napoleon for nearly 20 years, people in the United Kingdom were scared to death that a victory by Napoleon could lead to another 20 years of war.  And just like today, no one wanted to watch a re-run.

NAPOLEON

Napoleon broke out of exile because he needed more Elba room.

Lord Wellington had been put in charge of a coalition of armies from across Europe, 68,000 total troops.  Joined by 50,000 Prussians under Blücher (cue obligatory whinny), Wellington met Bonaparte at the small village of Waterloo.  Napoleon wasn’t alone.  He had 73,000 French soldiers, and Wellington had left his panzers in his other coat, so the French fought back like they’d have to shower and give up cigarettes if they lost.

Spoiler alert:  Napoleon lost, but barely.  I think it had to go into at least one overtime, and there were some controversial instant replays.

The story goes that with the Rothschild information network, Nathan was notified about Wellington’s victory before anyone in London.  By knowing that, Nathan could make a killing in the stock market.  How well did he do?  We don’t know.  His courier wrote him:  “I am informed by Commissary White that you have done well by the early information which you had of the Victory gained at Waterloo.”  It is reported (LINK) that the Rothschild fortunes went from £500,000 to £1,000,000 in that year.  So probably pretty well, since I assume a £ is a metric $ or something.

Yes, I know that there are other stories about Nathan’s Big Day Out® that are much more exaggerated, but this one does fine in proving my point:  the best time to make money is in an uncertain market.  Or, as has been attributed to Nathan:  “The time to buy is when there’s blood in the streets.”  Especially if, like Nathan and Marcus, you can remove the uncertainty and make your bet a sure thing.

ELMO

 I did invest in an Asian/Middle East fusion restaurant called, “Wok Like an Egyptian.”

This went on during Roman times, and it went on during Napoleonic times.  Is it going on today?

It certainly is.  I was having a conversation with a friend of mine the other week, and he works for a company that was funded by a private equity firm.  Per my conversation, they deals that just his company is looking at are in the range of one hundred million to one billion dollars.  Sure, that’s a pretty big range.  But the kicker was this:

“There are pools of billions of dollars waiting for deals.”

What kind of deals?  Deals on great assets in a collapsing economy.

As we look at the wreck that we’re seeing in the economy due to the WuFlu and now the great #BLM (Burning Looting Marxists), what sort of reaction are we seeing?  Does it surprise anyone that 269 companies (LINK, H/T to CA at Western Rifle Shooters) are supporting the (actual, really founded by Marxists, look it up) BLM?

Does it surprise anyone that hundreds of millions of dollars are flooding in to BLM and affiliated organizations?  And I’m not exaggerating the amount – the fund just for bailing out rioters and looters in Minneapolis was over $90 million dollars.  Some people can loot a whole week and not make that much!

The support for BLM could be from one of the following sources, and I suspect that one or more is in play depending on the company donating:

  • Genuine support for civil rights. Sure, I believe that from companies that import goods made by overseas labor treated more poorly than the Wilder family treats our outdoor cat.
  • A cynical ploy signaling corporate virtue to get people to buy burgers. Think of it like an advertisement, but instead of featuring the social justice flavor of the week, it’s BLM this week.
  • Coordinated donations with full knowledge that the money will go toward a Marxist transformation of the United States.
  • Selected by the CEO’s secretary executive assistant at random.

SJW

I never let BLM members into my basement – I don’t want a whine cellar.

Amazon® has really been impacted by COVID-19.  I’m betting that every facet of Bezos’ business has been helped, from their online shopping to their web infrastructure to their movie rental business.  Coronachan has been good to Jeff.  But I don’t blame Bezos for that – I don’t think it was his plan to infect the United States with a virus and convince everyone to stay in the basement for three months and then have seven pages of BLM merch to sell.

Because if he did?  That’s some real Bond villain stuff and I’ve got to say, that’s the most anyone has ever done to try to convince me to buy a Prime® subscription.

Cui bono?  I mean, besides Bezos?

Someone is going to profit from BLM, even beyond the hundreds of millions of dollars donated recently to it, and even beyond the billions of dollars that will go to purchase assets during the crisis.  And it may not be money, or burger sales.  It might be measured in raw power, the power to turn a society towards the Marxist goals of the founders of BLM.

But even Crassus knew that once a fire got started, it just might get away from you.