Silly Predictions – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Don’t Stop Now

“You’ll have a grand tale to tell. A tale of victory.” – 300

I guess Kim is chubby because he never had to run for office.

Certainly, the re-election of Donald J. Trump to the Presidency has been a remoralizing event. I know that many (me included) thought that the GloboLeftElite would do whatever was necessary to “fortify” the results so Trump couldn’t return to power. I think, in the end the real power that saved Trump was the power of his hair. I mean, like Hamlet said, let the best mane win.

I’m in hopes that he won’t let his worst impulses take this second term of his administration run into the problems of the first. Trump’s main flaw (not his mane flaw, which is flawless) is his desire to “make a deal”. Hell, his book was even titled, “The Art of the Deal”. That’s where he got his greatest successes, and that was the great flaw that was exploited and why we ended up sending billions to foreigners, yet still didn’t have adequate border coverage at the end of his administration.

Scientists have discovered a way to walk through walls: doors.

So, now is not the time to give up – we must hold Trump accountable for the promises he made. He understands that he’s not our leader, that, rather, he jumped out in front of a parade that was already in motion and gave it a focus. When he gets off track, like when he praised himself for the Vaxx®, MAGA crowds booed him. And then he stopped talking about the Vaxx™, because he knew that wasn’t where the parade was headed.

We must remain vigilant. I do think that there is hope, since his near assassination, this has probably focused him like a laser on his own mortality. He knows he has four years to do what he has to do, and that’s it. Possibly only two: the mid-term elections may change the House, and turn his last two years into a gridlocked standstill.

Now, a gridlocked standstill is probably better than when congress is “doing” things and will probably lead to a dozen more impeachments for crimes like “breathing” and “sighing”, so the next two years is key.

The good news is that the GloboLeft is shell-shocked. They’ve created little echo chambers that made them get high on their own supply and think that a (possibly) drunken (allegedly) cocaine-using diversity hire anchor baby that achieved absolutely nothing, ever, that wasn’t given to her would be a good candidate. They were (and are) shocked.

Good friends are like toasters – if you throw one down the stairs, they probably won’t make toast for you anymore.

Good. The GloboLeft are shaken to the core, and we should make sure that it stays that way. If they think Trump is going to be bad, we should, at every instance, agree and amplify.

This isn’t spiking the ball. This is making them crazy.

Oh, sure, they wouldn’t be the GloboLeft if they weren’t already crazy members of a death cult. But we want to amp it up. We want them to not be able to think straight. For the next two years. We want to hijack (whenever possible) their amygdalae (Anonymous Conservative talks about it at the LINK). If you work with one of these creatures, you can get them to go off at the slightest provocation.

Why? They’re already unstable. Don’t let them plan. Don’t give them their safe spaces. Don’t let up. They may be in HR. They may be community members. When they make accusations in public, or on Facebook™ or Reddit© or X®, they sound crazy. They will call you a Nazi. They will say that you are evil. They will sound unhinged. Good. They discredit themselves.

You are needed. Keep the pressure on.

Her liver was 152.

As long as the GloboLeft sounds like the unhinged death cult members that they are, they move the Overton Window our direction.

Make them crazy. If you see a GloboLeftist flaking out at the supermarket, you can walk by and say, “This is MAGA country, missy.” That’s guaranteed to end up with a shrieking fit and a crazed post. If confronted, you can just say, “I was wondering where the pasta aisle was. Don’t have any idea why she reacted so.”

So, keep them busy.

To the non-crazy normies, keep dropping redpills. One story I heard from about a normie was that she was concerned that Trump wanted to “drain the swamp”. When it was gently explained that “drain the swamp” actually referred to the corruption of the Deep State at Foggy Bottom, the response was, “Oh, I can see that.”

Never expect normies to know what’s actually going on, so don’t get complicated. Explaining basic economics might help. Might.

Be reminded that these are the same people that didn’t know who was running for president, so, be gentle, and don’t start with weapons-grade redpills about deportation. Ease them into it. Help them draw conclusions. Point out how the mainstream media is lying or not covering the real news.

Well, maybe Juan in a million.

And remember that X® is our friend right now – the closest we have to a mainstream news platform that isn’t censoring (much).

Don’t cede the Second Amendment. Ever. Not a single inch. Point out that the real killers aren’t law-abiding gun owners, but gangbangers mainly shooting gangbangers, and they’d have guns anyway when everyone else was disarmed. Point out that there is a correlation with more guns leading to less crime. Disarmed people are victims waiting for second responders – armed people are citizens who are the true first responders.

Don’t cede morality. The latest hilarity is the 4B movement, essentially women promising not to engage in random sex and rather wait until they’re in a committed relationship. They expected us to get mad, when in reality we say, “Awesome, welcome aboard! Nobody likes a tramp.”

Are the security people at a trampoline store called bouncers?

Don’t cede love of your country, and don’t cede love of your nation. They’re not the same thing, but don’t give up either.

Enjoy the win. Keep the steel in Trump’s spine. And don’t spike the football yet.

It’s not even halftime.

But for now? We didn’t win by a hair, we won by a whole headful.

And you are needed.

Are We In The Middle Of A Planned Revolution? Yes.

“Day 93 under the dome. With necessities growing dangerously low, who knows what spark will set off this powder keg?” – The Simpsons Movie

I saw two men in matching outfits so I asked them if they were gay. Turns out that doesn’t make the NYPD happy.

A phenomenon that has sweep the world in the early 21^st century has been the “Color Revolution”. This is characterized by a “grassroots” movement whose aim was theoretically to create a liberal Western democracy on the European model. An example would be most Western European countries, with the exception of the Islamic Caliphate of France.

What methods were used in these “peaceful” revolutions?

Leadership by Non-Governmental Organizations Civil Disobedience
Civil Disorder/Disobedience/Protests
Total Lack of Chill
Use of the Internet to Organize
Heavy “Student” Participation

When I read that list, I see a single conclusion: the CIA did it, sometimes with the help of George Soros.

Probably one of the first places that this method was used was the Soviet Union. All of the “spontaneous” protests at the beginning were likely anything but spontaneous. The wonderful part of this type of operation is that if it works, great, an enemy is off the board. If it doesn’t? Everyone involved can put on their “so sorry that happened to you, buddy” face while preparing for the next one.

To be fair, I don’t think that most of the people that were trying to get the Soviet Union to collapse thought it was going to work as well and as completely and as quickly as it did. One minute, the Soviets were all “Viktor Drago” and the next they were all “Trotsky after meeting an icepick”.

What do you call a man with an ice pick in his head? Anything you want – he clearly doesn’t control the security apparatus of the USSR.

But there is more at play here. Ricky emailed me an article from 2014 that talked in depth about Color Revolutions and their mechanics by Andrew Korybko which inspired this post. You can find that article here.

The Color Revolution Model: An Exposé of the Core Mechanics

When we look at a Color Revolution, it’s like looking at an iceberg: you only see the bit above the water but miss entirely the part that’s going to cause James Cameron to make a billion dollars and inflict those stupid Avatar™ movies on us. No, Color Revolutions are years in the making and start with:

Ideology: In the Color Revolutions to date, all of them have been based on the attempt to create a Western-liberal style of government, hence my suggestion that this was the CIA attempting to export “freedom” to a group of people who have consistently and convincingly desired to not be free. Sure, some Egyptians want to live in a Western-style democracy, but most of them don’t. Hell, most of the Muslims that have moved to Western Europe don’t want, at all, a Western-style democracy.

They want Sharia law, they want a government based in Islam, and they want all the wealth that the Western-style liberal democracies seem to create. They want to live in Cairo on the Thames, not the actual, crappy Cairo on the Nile. Why did Egypt’s Color Revolution fail? Why did Libya’s? Why did Syria’s?

They didn’t want that Western liberal democracy ideology, they just wanted the stuff.

Telling a good joke about the French Revolution is all about the execution.

Cash: As NASA astronaut Gus Grissom said in the movie The Right Stuff, “No bucks, no Buck Rodgers®.” In a Color Revolution you could say, “No simoleons, no Napoleons”. That’s as close as I can get unless I retcon Stalin’s first name to Moolah.

But money has to come from somewhere, and most of the people that make up these Color Revolutions are poor college students who live on ramen and despair.

Where did BLM get money? According to the Claremont Institute (LINK), Microsoft® pledged $244,400,000 to Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter is a Marxist organization pushing radical GloboLeftElite disruption.

Microsoft© is funding a Color Revolution

Against . . . you.

That’s a pickup line that could work for Boeing, too.

People: There is always an inner circle of leaders of the Color Revolution, probably hand-picked by the funders. The are willing and passionate about the Color Revolution, primarily because they see themselves as the ones who will get power after the event. Because someone has to drink the Kool-Aid®, there are also followers. Those are broken into two groups – the troops and the members of general public that are sympathetic to the revolutionaries.

Propaganda: First, the message is crafted. It is prepared in advance for the moment it will be communicated, and the People mobilized. The propaganda may already be in place, sitting on websites prepared by and for the movement. It may have been trained into the foot soldiers of the Color Revolution. Regardless, the message gets out, and the goal is to get sympathy and support as the revolt proceeds. In the United States, mainstream media is fully onboard with the GloboLeftistElite plans – would anyone be surprised to find out that ABC® gave Kamala the debate questions? And answers?

I do think the debate about Mobius strips is a bit one-sided.

Spark: Once all of the above are in place and ready to go, all that’s needed is a spark. George Floyd, for instance was a spark. It wasn’t George Floyd, it was that there was a video of a dying junkie that met the needs of the Color Revolution, which was already prepared and ready to go, complete with Ideology, Cash, People and Propaganda, complete with a complicit media to fan the fiery but non-violent flames.

Once these all came together, Floyd’s death was chosen and someone, somewhere, said, “Perfect. Go.” It doesn’t matter that Floyd was going to die due to the incredible amounts of drugs in his system. All that mattered was what the video showed of his on-camera death.

Korybko suggested, back in 2014, that examples of these Sparks included (all of these are direct quotes):

A rigged election
The jailing of an opposition leader
The signing of (or failure to sign) a controversial piece of legislation
A government crackdown against the opposition or the imposition of martial law
Declaring or being involved in an unpopular war

Of the three Sparks that Korybko suggested, the top almost certainly happened in 2020, and the second and fourth are being implemented in some fashion against Trump and/or his supporters. The list is, obviously, not exhaustive, and the event need never have happened in reality, as long as people can be convinced it happened.

After the event, the protests start. And grow. And spread. In retrospect, it’s easy to see that the Floyd Protests were an attempted Color Revolution in the United States that was called off after the mechanisms to secure the 2020 election for Biden were in place, and, perhaps a warning of sorts to Biden that he’d best do what he was told if he could remember.

I was listening to a podcast tonight and Eric Weinstein noted that he had been assured that Biden does not have access to “the football” and that the United States is currently being run by a committee of the powerful. The same committee, no doubt, that has put Kamala at the brink of power. Note that Biden only dropped out after the (first) failed assassination of Trump.

Occupy Wall Street challenged the money powers of New York (not sure who was funding them, China?). This was not to be allowed, so, to counter it, Trayvon Martin was used as a Spark, moving on to the “Gentle Giant” Michael Brown, and finally to George Floyd.

The fact that the clear self-defense shooting of Trayvon Martin was used to get the hippies and AntiFa® out of New York and have them start protesting for black people instead of against bankers. I guess the bankers got scared, and hippies and AntiFa® have a short attention span, or their leaders just like money. They had to have something to do, and since it’s always easy to stir up a racial fight, that’s what the bankers picked, because a class fight might have endangered actual bankers.

One stolen joke is a coincidence, two is a pattern. Thirty is an Amy Schumer standup routine.

These movements aren’t popular, and aren’t spontaneous, though they’re staged to appear so. They aren’t even permanent – most countries that have had a Color Revolution revert to their old styles of government with just a little bit of time and often a lot of chaos. Egypt went from its military government to a very brief “democracy” and then right back to a military government because that’s what Egyptians seem to want.

This may sound as crazy as predicting the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, but the government of the United States is nearing collapse, and the Color Revolution technique, or something like it, is being employed against you and funded by people like Microsoft® to guide the fall into, they hope, a situation where bankers can frolic freely.

That’s the rub – the importation of the endless hordes of illegals, the economic devastation of inflation and the contrived energy and housing crises and continual cultural provocations are cracks, big ones, setting the stage for a major change. And, again, each and every one of them is intentional, and it’s gone far enough that I still believe we’re entering the danger window in 2025, with the early to middle 2030s the most likely time when the final Spark hits.

Beyond the Spark?

It’s up to us.

It’s Joever. What next?

“And after your glorious coup, what then?” – Gladiator

I hadn’t planned on tackling the Fall of the House of Biden today, but, hey, an opportunity is an opportunity. As it is, I think that the world has provided a rich set of memetic information that will more than cover the situation. All of these are “as found”.

First, do you think Joe knew he’d be stepping down today? Here’s the foreshadowing:

That brings us up to the end of the campaign. How did that go?

The results seemed to catch even those close to Biden by surprise:

Lots of folks seem to think the nomination is a done deal for Kamala. Obama, pointedly, did not endorse her.

Why did Obama not endorse Kamala? Well, reasons, probably including that she is likely the stupidest person to ever run for Washington, with more baggage than the Lusitania, all combined with all of the charisma of ¡Jeb!:

I think she thinks the quote above is profound, because she keeps repeating it.

The pain . . . !

But what are the other complications?

Not gonna lie, it would be funny to start this program:

What if Joe doesn’t remember?

And what if Darth Clinton returns? I’d say never get involved in a land war in Asia or play a game against a Clinton when power is on the line. That does leave me with one question:

The Best And Funniest Debate Post You’ll Read Today: Read It For The Salty Tears

“I’m a lumberjack and I’m okay.” – Monty Python’s Flying Circus

Whelp! All memes from X, and I didn’t even have to scroll more than three times. This is an implosion.

I had very different plans today for this post. During the debate, I had no fewer than 1200 words worth of notes, and had penciled in no fewer than nine really funny jokes on the first pass. It would have been hilarious. I guess that’s just me, pining for the humor of the situation.

But as the debate ended, I realized that wasn’t the post I was going to write. It couldn’t be.

I have predicted that Joe Biden would not be the DNC candidate for the 2024 election on these pages months ago. When the debate happened so very early, I began to wonder: why?

Someone on Team Joe® convinced him (which doesn’t appear to be hard right now) that he needed to debate Trump in June. Why? The conventions hadn’t occurred, and Joe wasn’t even the official nominee, merely the presumptive one.

Now I understand. Having these debates in October would have assured a Trump landslide. Even the deepest blue GloboLeftist couldn’t even salvage this monstrosity in a real manner after an October showing like today. It would not be possible.

So, Team Brandon© (yes, Trump really called him Brandon and Joe didn’t react) decided to get him out early.

To expose him.

Joe is done. He’s finished. His political career is finished, and his candidacy is in shambles. Reports are that his team are in tears, and “25^th Amendment” (the one that allows for the removal of incompetent folks as president) are trending on X.

I had predicted that either Gavin Newsom (whose wife allegedly willing banged Harvey Weinstein) or Big Mike Obama would be the candidate months ago. I’m pretty sure I predicted it in the blog, but certainly did so in conversations and it’s too late to check – Ricky might help me here! – that Joe would not be the candidate.

That is now certain. There is another, like they said in Star Wars™: Hillary. I don’t think she’s physically up to the task, but she’s still in the running.

It won’t be Joe. So, here’s my take on the night, along with a few memes. I’ll respond to previous post comments tomorrow (like I said, it’s late). Python, Monty® predicted this years ago. Note, I hope that Joe Biden lives a long and pleasant life, this is in reference to his chances on being elected in November:

A voter watches a debate.

Voter: ‘Ello, I wish to register a complaint.

(The DNC does not respond.)

Voter: ‘Ello, Miss?

DNC: What do you mean “miss”? Are you assumin’ me gender?

Voter: (pause)I’m sorry, I have a cold. I wish to make a complaint!

DNC: We’re closin’ for the Juneteenth Pride Festival.

Voter: Never mind that, my lad. I wish to complain about this Candidacy what I decided to vote for not half a year ago from this very DNC.

DNC: Oh yes, the, uh, the Scranton Joe…What’s,uh…What’s wrong with it?

Voter: I’ll tell you what’s wrong with it, my lad. This Candidacy is dead, that’s what’s wrong with it!

DNC: No, no, ‘e’s uh,…he’s resting. He has COVID.

Voter: Look, matey, I know a dead Candidacy when I see one, and I’m looking at one right now.

DNC: No no this Candidacy’s not dead, he’s, he’s restin’! Remarkable Candidacy, the Scranton Joe, idn’it, ay? Beautiful plumage!

Voter: The plumage don’t enter into it. It’s stone dead.

DNC: Nononono, no, no! ‘E’s resting!

Voter: All right then, if he’s restin’, I’ll wake him up! (shouting at the Candidacy) ‘Ello, Mister Dark Brandon! I’ve got a lovely fresh 10% for the Big Guy for you if you show…

(DNC hits the cage)

DNC: There, he moved!

Voter: No, he didn’t, that was you hitting the cage!

DNC: I never!!

Voter: Yes, you did!

DNC: I never, never did anything…

Voter: (yelling and hitting the cage repeatedly) ‘ELLO JOE!!!!! Testing! Testing! Testing! Testing! This is your nine o’clock alarm call!

(Takes Candidacy out of the cage and thumps its head on the counter. Throws it up in the air and watches it plummet to the floor.)

Voter: Now that’s what I call a dead Candidacy.

DNC: No, no…..No, ‘e’s got COVID!

Voter: COVID?!?

DNC: Yeah! You stunned him, just as he was wakin’ up! Scranton Joe stuns easily, major.

Voter: Um…now look…now look, mate, I’ve definitely ‘ad enough of this. That Candidacy is definitely deceased, and when I decided to vote for it not ‘alf a year ago, you assured me that its total lack of movement was due to it bein’ tired and shagged out following a prolonged ice cream.

DNC: Well, he’s…he’s, ah…probably pining for Corn Pop.

Voter: PININ’ for Corn Pop?!?!?!? What kind of talk is that?, look, why did he fall flat on his back the moment I got ‘im home?

DNC: Scranton Joe prefers keepin’ on it’s back! Remarkable Candidacy, id’nit, squire? Lovely hair plugs and replacement teeth!

Voter: Look, I took the liberty of examining that Candidacy when I watched the debate, and I discovered the only reason that it had been standing by the podium in the first place was that it had been NAILED there.

(pause)

DNC: Well, o’course it was nailed there! If I hadn’t nailed that Candidacy down, it would have nuzzled up to that podium, bent it apart with its strong arm, and VOOM! It would have talked about String Theory in six languages!

Voter: “VOOM”?!? Mate, this Candidacy wouldn’t “voom” if you put four million volts and a gallon of Adderall® through it! It’s bleedin’ demised!

DNC: No no! ‘E’s pining!

Voter: It’s not pinin’! It’s passed on! This Candidacy is no more! It has ceased to be! It’s expired and gone to meet ‘is maker! It’s a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed it to the podium it’d be pushing up the daisies! It’s metabolic processes are now ‘istory! It’s off the twig! It’s kicked the bucket, It’s shuffled off its mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible!! THIS IS AN EX-CANDIDACY!!

(pause)

DNC: Well, I’d better replace it, then. (he takes a quick peek behind the counter) Sorry squire, I’ve had a look ’round the back of the shop, and uh, we’re right out of Candidacy, except for Big Mike, Hillary, and Gavin.

Voter: I see. I see, I get the picture.

DNC: (pause) I got a Kamala.

(pause)

Voter: Pray, does it talk?

DNC: Nnnnot really. Slurs quite a bit like it’s drunk.

Voter: WELL IT’S HARDLY A BLOODY REPLACEMENT, IS IT?!!???!!?

DNC: N-no, I guess not. (gets ashamed, looks at his feet)

Voter: Well.

(pause)

DNC: (quietly) D’you…. d’you want to come back to my place?

Voter: (looks around) Yeah, all right, sure, it is the Juneteenth Pride Festival.

DNC: (to the audience) Well! I never wanted to do this in the first place. I wanted to be… a lumberjack!

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Trump Trigger and Complexity

“Rita, you’re a convicted felon, and now you’re an escaped con.” – The Adventures of Brisco County Jr.

They fired me from the clock factory because of all the extra hours that I’m putting in.

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

Volume VI, Issue 1

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.

This is a moving situation, and things are changing quickly. The advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – The Trump Trigger– Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Stairway to Where? – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 850 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Civil War Weather Report Previous Posts

The Trump Trigger

Donald Trump scared the hell out of the GloboLeftElite when he was elected. I’m fairly certain that he makes many of GloboLeft rank and file lose sleep when they think about him being re-elected.

Rand Paul was quoted in Zero Hedge® (a reader sent this in):

“I worry about strife. I worry about war in the streets. I worry about 50 percent of the public believing that the court system will be used against them . . . I worry when half the country thinks they won’t be treated fairly, what happens and how people react.”

Huh, I thought he was dead.

Where we sit now, Trump may never spend a day in the pokey. And he may never even be convicted – yes, there’s a jury verdict, but until the judge finds him convicted, there’s just a vote by a jury of twelve GloboLeft peers, one of which may have violated the rules and talked about the proceedings.

Oops. There are other very, very valid reasons that Trump has for appeal – selective prosecution among them not identifying the charge against him – they never specified the other crime that Trump supposedly committed.

Rand Paul is right. The judicial system has been weaponized at every level against Trump. The fact that the Federalist Society has produced a slate of judges over the past several decades that aren’t woke Sotomayor-level GloboHomo soldiers will apply actual justice at the federal level.

But what if they don’t?

If Trump is convicted and sent to prison that will a very dark day in history – one that will show to millions of normies that the republic is irretrievably lost, a conclusion that many on the TradRight have come to years if not decades ago.

Does this lead to immediate chaos? This is a tough one – I tend to think not, but then again, the number of people that support Trump and MAGA are significant. It will be a sign that businesses need to create a quick exodus from New York, California, or any other location where the business has a political difference with the GloboLeftElite agenda. I mean, it’s not like elections matter.

But I’m told it was a FaiR ElEctIoN.

Perhaps Musk moving to Texas is beginning to make a lot more sense. On the bright side, it means that the Republic of Texas will be born with it’s own space force.

Violence and Censorship Update

The issues in Israel have done several things – they’ve increased the level of fighting in the GloboLeft as the Pro-Palestine wing and the Pro-Israel wings slug it out. As Bracken notes, it is a weird GloboLeft/Palestine alliance.

Of course, as soon as the GloboLeft makes one of their crappy villages, they . . . put up the borders that they claim to hate.

The other side of the coin is the reaction in Congress, which is entirely at odds with that pesky 1^st Amendment:

And, Massey has a very good question, especially since they committed $300,000 to ads attacking him:

Oh, and questioning the “Muh Immigration is Good” narrative is worth a banning:

They’re still trying to ban JK Rowling for telling the truth:

Propaganda, anyone?

Oh, it’s not like they’re trying to suppress anything . . .

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again. It’s like there’s a pattern here . . .

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Violence is up, a little. I wonder if Chicago’s Democratic National Convention is going to spike temperatures?

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it is slightly down. I expect this fall to be a bit more crazy.

Economic:

Economic numbers are up a bit. But so are prices.

Illegal Aliens:

Second Highest May is actually down. But the normies are waking up.

Stairway to Where?

History never repeats exactly, but the same themes keep coming up again and again. While there is no guarantee, there are patterns.

The lead up to civil war is often the same: misery, rising tensions, and too many elites fighting each other for scraps of power. The wars are often drastically different, and depend on things like ideology, geography, technology, and telepathy. Okay, maybe not telepathy, but the other ones all count.

But, just like Led Zepplin©, there are two paths you can go by . . . and two outcomes.

Broadly, when civil wars occur there two things that can happen as a result. The first one is what happened after the Russian Revolution or the American Civil War 1.0 – that is, a drastic reduction in freedom for citizens.

But I’ve been assured that everything is fine.

The American Civil war did increase the freedom of slaves, and granted them full citizenship, to be sure. But for the common man who hadn’t been a slave? Freedom declined. There had been a balancing act between the Several States and Fed.Gov, but after the Civil War was done, the States were no longer sovereign, and, in fact were nothing more than subdivisions of the federal government.

This was drastically different than what existed before. The Several States were recognized as just that, complete governments. They only banded together, reluctantly, to create an organism strong enough, just barely, to resist being beaten up and conquered by the various European powers.

After the American Civil War? The process of eliminating the rights of the Several States has been an ongoing battle every year since 1865, and, with a few exceptions, has been largely won by the United States.

If increased central control and tyranny are one outcome from a civil war, what’s the other?

Increased complexity. Think back to the fall of the Soviet Union. A huge, monolithic, multicultural tyranny if ever there was one. It looked to the world as if it would never be defeated – heck, the view of the Russians in the 1980s (I know, I was there) was that, while they didn’t have lots of different consumer products, they did have a huge technological edge over the West.

But when the end came, the fighting that did happen was minimal – the Soviet Union (like the multicultural British and Roman empires that came before) didn’t end so much with a red tide of blood, but rather a gradual realization that no one wanted to play anymore. The sad, shattered core of empire let all the parts fly to the wind.

I met the guy who puts the symbols on maps that say what things are. What a legend!

It seems that one key is the “multi-cultural” part. Whereas you could make the case that the United States had Irishmen and Scots and Norwegians bopping around back in 1860, the vast majority of Americans were just that, Americans descended from (by and large) stock from the United Kingdom with a common language and common religious and cultural heritage.

That led to Tyranny.

The seat of power of Imperial Russian was mainly . . . Russian. The Russian Revolution led to? Tyranny.

It seems that there is some tipping point where a Civil War results not in tyranny, but in Balkanization, heck, the name “Balkanization” is literally exactly what we’re talking about.

The more I think about it, unless there is a Caesar sitting in the wings (and I don’t see him) then we will end up Balkanizing after a Civil War.

Disagree? This is a newer thought, so, love to hear comments.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys

https://twitter.com/i/status/1788630900781047856

https://x.com/i/status/1797153228032815184

https://twitter.com/i/status/1787518756756901901

https://x.com/i/status/1795801690014429550

https://x.com/i/status/1790510753952194692

https://x.com/i/status/1796322999056163026

https://x.com/i/status/1797272685791117522

Good Guy

https://x.com/i/status/1797274250438476199

One Guy

https://www.actionnews5.com/2024/05/29/scjc-alleged-teen-triggerman-deadly-community-center-shooting-fired-self-defense-wont-be-prosecuted/

https://www.courtnewsohio.gov/cases/2024/SCO/0307/221482.asp

https://www.cbsnews.com/sacramento/news/man-shot-killed-overnight-in-a-carmichael-apartment-deputies-say/

https://apnews.com/article/roger-fortson-stand-your-ground-race-florida-2c6a585f3fa5b2bd21179b84ff258b1d#

Body Count

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/https-3A-2F-2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com-2Fpublic-2Fimages-2F04d489f3-35f1-4579-80f6-dc5babc003cf_936x528_png_92.jpg?itok=sQRpJ67q

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/https-3A-2F-2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com-2Fpublic-2Fimages-2F13892e0d-32cb-47c1-8cef-b2e1554b9e62_1456x972.jpeg_92.jpg?itok=HMg63_9I

https://cis.org/Report/ForeignBorn-Population-Grew-51-Million-Last-Two-Years

https://trac.syr.edu/whatsnew/email.240510.html

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/30142.jpeg?itok=jcgiDaxv

Vote Count

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/31/dinesh-dsouza-election-film-2000-mules-pulled.html

https://thefederalist.com/2024/05/13/heres-fresh-evidence-bidens-using-your-tax-dollars-to-turn-out-democrat-votes-in-2024/

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2024/05/13/the-georgia-state-election-board-ensures-2024-will-be-a-2020-repeat

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/officials-overseeing-elections-swing-states-doubt-2020-results/

Civil War

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/biden-uncivil-war-rages-rcna150666

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13447357/THIRTEEN-conservative-counties-Oregon-approve-ballot-measures-SECESSION-vote-join-non-woke-Idaho-issue-list-demands.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13452561/Divided-states-America-Oregon-Louisiana-campaigns-secession-taking-place-local-state-levels-succeeding.html

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/opinion-we-are-starting-to-enjoy-hatred/ar-BB1nm54r

https://x.com/seanmdav/status/1796301843338789070

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/billionaire-investor-ray-dalio-warns-115219371.html

https://amgreatness.com/2024/05/18/unpacking-ray-dalios-alarmist-prediction-of-civil-war/

https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-hush-money-verdict-maga-civil-war-1906671

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/05/trump-trial-maga-internet-violence/678571/

https://www.wired.com/story/trump-guilty-verdict-online-maga-fanbase-war/

https://www.salon.com/2024/05/28/terrible-place-bill-maher-warns-a-civil-could-happen-here–some-already-pining-for-it/

Why Haven’t Aliens Visited? Maybe Our Reviews Are Bad: “Earth? Just One Star.”

“This object does fit the parameters of Dyson’s theory.” – Star Trek: TNG

When I was 12 I was abducted by aliens, they told me to do chores, eat my vegetables, shower, and brush my teeth. I guess I was on the mother ship.

When I was a kid, humanity knew about nine and only nine planets. One big question that we had was, because we were a sample size of one, is whether or not planets were common in the galaxy or rare. The first extrasolar planet discovered was51 Pegasi b in 1995.

The question was answered: there were other planets. But how common are planets?

We keep finding them wherever we look. Humanity has found thousands and thousands of extrasolar planets. In 2014, the estimate was that one in stars have planets about the size of Earth with a surface temperature where life (as we know it) could exist. If that’s the case? It’s certain that life exists outside of the Solar System.

That’s a lot of real estate. But is there any evidence that any of it is in use by things smarter than a paramecium or Kamala Harris?

Kamala, just Biden her time.

Recently there have been two studies by astrophysicists that point to the possibility that there are observable technosignatures, specifically the excess infrared radiation that would accompany something like a Dyson sphere. One group focused on a particular kind of star and found 7 candidates; the other study found 53 candidates looking in a different way.

I am of course referring to the physicist Freeman Dyson who popularized the idea that a civilization could take the material in a star system, munch up the planets, and surround the central star in order to use the energy. Oh, and Dyson also invented the vacuum cleaner. That’s a different Dyson, you say?

Dang.

Why would they need that much energy? Oh, they could use it for anything, making video games, or making PEZ®/Anti-PEZ™ powered starships, or running the air conditioning with the doors and windows open and leaving the fridge door open and the lights on. Man, as a dad, it hurts me to even write those words. But I still claim to be the first person, ever, to use the phrase “anti-PEZ©”.

The Future of Humanity: Galactic Empire, PEZ-Driven Starships, and Girls Drinking Beer

The starlight would fall on the sphere, it would be used to create useful energy, and the remainder would be infrared, otherwise known to most humans as “heat”, but not the 1995 movie since aliens don’t have any use for Robert DeNiro either. The big surprise is that some of these stars were radiating more than 60 times the amount of “heat” that they should be, indicating it has been absorbed by . . . something.

But some sponges are more a-loofah.

Now, that could just mean that Yo Mamma is hanging out around in space, or it could mean that there’s an explanation we’re not yet familiar with.

But then there are the fleeing O-Class stars. O stars are very hot and very young stars that burn out very, very quickly (in a cosmic time scale), with total lifespans of as low as 4 million years. Sure, that sounds like a long time, but it’s only half as old as Joe Biden.

The end of an O-Class star is nearly always a supernova – a huge explosion. Isn’t it odd that 25% of the O-Class stars that have been found are being ejected from the Milky Way galaxy at a high rate of speed? It’s almost like there might be an alien intelligence throwing bums out of the neighborhood before the pee on the garage.

What does Taylor Swift have in common with John Wilkes Booth? They both know how to get a crowd excited.

Well, I guess that was an oddly specific example.

I’ve also written before about other examples of possible technosignatures.

Bikinis, Aliens, And Tabby’s Star

If other intelligent life has existed in the past and developed significant technology to gather most of the energy from their star, would they come visit?

I’ve made my opinion clear that if intelligent life exists elsewhere (which I think is probably a certainty) then the Solar System has probably been visited. By Little Green Men? Dunno about that, but it’s much easier to send a toaster than a living critter into space. They could send an A.I. out here, have it wait and watch.

This is called a Bracewell probe, and is really the plot to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Sending a probe out would be relatively cheap and easy. Okay, I couldn’t afford to do it, but it would be cheap and easy if you have experience throwing O-Class stars out of the galaxy to improve the resale value of your Dyson sphere.

“Hot singles are looking for dates in your area, Dave.”

If we start hunting around the local Solar System, that would be my first guess of what we’d find, and it would probably be on some sort of weird elliptical orbit around the Sun so it can observe without being observed.

Will we ever make the jump to becoming a species that harnesses the power of our star? I don’t know. We certainly have some roadblocks to doing so.

We’d have to overcome our tendency to turn wealth into hedonism, and avoid a civilizational tombstone that says “We Were Happy Childfree Couples and Wine Aunts” in our own Mouse Utopia (link below).
We’ll have to make sure that A.I. doesn’t turn on us.
We’ll have to ditch anything made by Boeing™.
And, of course, we need to make sure we don’t blow ourselves up.

Want Dystopia? Because this is how you get Dystopia.

At some point, and I think this might be in the next decade if we haven’t blown ourselves up, I think we will finally have reasonable proof that intelligent life exists. In my lifetime, then, we will have gone from not knowing if other planets exist to knowing that other life exists out there.

And if other life exists out there, there’s one thing I know for sure.

If it bleeds we can kill it.

Catabolic Collapse – Coming Soon To A Place Near You

“Out these windows, we will view the collapse of financial history.” – Fight Club

My friend struggled with steroid addiction, but it only made him stronger.

If you’re a bodybuilder, the word “anabolic” is your friend. While often used in conjunction with the word steroids, anabolic really means “taking the proteins and stuff you eat and turning it into more complex stuff for your body”. Like I said, that’s a good thing if you’re in shape as a body builder. The Mrs. says that that spherical is technically a shape, so I guess I’m technically in shape. At least in “a” shape.

But just like there is day balanced by night (see, I can be poetic!) anabolic is balanced by the less commonly used word “catabolic”. And, just like an anode has a cathode, catabolic means the opposite. If I’m dieting, the word catabolic is my friend – it rips apart complex molecules like fat that represent stored energy, releasing the energy, and making my shape appear less spherical as the fat is turned into energy releasing sweet, sweet CO₂.and plutonium.

Ahh, back when a screwdriver was the height of nuclear safety protocol. (meme as found, if obscure, look up “demon core”).

Economic growth is anabolic. Building a house takes a complex logistics chain of materials and manpower and creates a yet more complex outcome, assembled only with effort and time. A house fire is therefore catabolic – it torches and burns the whole thing down, much faster than it took to build. But allowing a house’s roof to fail and the house to rot is also catabolic – it just takes a lot longer.

Just as it applies to houses and body shape, catabolic can also apply to economies. Essentially every day after the paving of a road is complete, the road is rotting. At first this happens slowly. However, then, as water gets a chance to penetrate it and freeze and thaw, the decay happens much more quickly.

What happens when we can’t afford to fix stuff? It slowly rots. Buildings slowly decay. Street signs fade. Water pipes burst. Kardashians move in.

How are Kardashians like deer? They get new racks every year.

Just like keeping a body from starving requires continual food, keeping a complex system operating and running requires continual wealth and effort. Every bridge, unless maintained, will collapse. A comment last week talked about a pullback of restaurants in their area, more in keeping with what was in place decades ago.

Decades ago, even in Modern Mayberry, there weren’t a lot of external chain restaurants, not even a McDonald’s™. McDonald’s© business model requires a Regional owner who owns multiple McDonald’s™ to build a restaurant on land the McDonald’s Corporation© owns and lease the restaurant from the Corporation®. It also requires that the restaurant go through suppliers that the Corporation® selects to purchase stuff like food and cups and napkins. On top of that, the Corporation™ takes a percent off the top for profit.

I once had a sirloin sandwich at McDonald’s®. I’ll never do it again, that was a Big McSteak™.

Back in, say, 1960, all the profits, including the money the local bank lent for the mortgage on Ma and Pa’s Diner, stayed in the community. Many of the costs would as well, especially if the beef and vegetables were locally sourced through the butcher. While the City wasn’t a closed economy, it still retained a lot of the money currently being extracted and kept it local. But when the economy is prosperous, there’s enough wealth being generated, and the extraction of a bit of it doesn’t matter all that much.

Now? The excess cash is hoovered out of the local economy with maximum velocity. That turns the people that would have run Ma and Pa’s Diner or the butcher shop or the local grocery store into wage employees rather than entrepreneurs. Amazon© and eBay™ have removed the reason for small shops selling specific items like games or cooking utensils, and that leaves room for Walmart™ to sell bulk commodities. At least our local Walmart® isn’t like a Target® store in the big cities, which I hear now come complete with their own police precincts.

In a small town like Modern Mayberry, that’s one thing, but last week I wrote about the beginning of the collapse of the casual dining (as opposed to the philosophic problem created by causal dining) restaurant chains. There are none of these in Modern Mayberry, because we’re far too small for an RedAppleChiliLobsterBees™. No, the extraction is starting to fail in the suburbs as well.

I always stop my microwave when the clock hits 0:01, which makes me feel like a bomb disposal expert.

It was mentioned that area was going back the earlier “norm” of restaurants, but the reason is because the middle class has been squeezed. This squeezing of the middle class is catabolic and will destroy demand. This is why, right now, the economy shrinking while stocks continue upwards. A recession is occurring in the middle class even as profits are up. This is the collapse, but as discussed last week, it’s not sudden, until it is.

I’ve described Modern Mayberry, but I’ve also described the core areas of many larger cities, where as our economy moved from making things into reality to making profits on paper, the core died. I’ve walked through the bones of industries long sent overseas and seen the majestic steel columns holding up the roof over an empty space, long since dead and forgotten. That’s also catabolic.

The good news is that it starts slow, but picks up speed. As I’ve said before, we’re standing on the edge of a new land ready to be born, that will be far different from what we’ve seen in the past. The things we’ve taken for granted will no longer be there in many cases. I’m looking at you, Social Security.

When The Mrs. was giving birth she seemed in discomfort, so I asked, “What’s wrong, honey?” She responded, “These contractions are killing me!” So, I asked, “What is wrong, honey?”

What matters is the rebuilding. There will be choices to be made – some that will lead to freedom, some to serfdom. As we’ve seen that paths leading away from the True, Beautiful, and Good always end in failure, most often spectacular failure, I’m optimistic.

I must be. That’s why I keep dieting.

France, Spain, And The Fate Of The United States

“If we bail out we can hide out in a French girl’s hayloft.” – Memphis Belle

My cat’s a commie. Keeps wanting free food and only talks about Mao.

Over a decade ago, I was reading a post by John Michael Greer (here’s a (LINK) to his current blog). In that post, he talked about time compression and our tendency to not think about historical events in the timeframe that people actually lived them. His example was that of a young girl, born at the time of the French Revolution.

In my mind, the French Revolution turned to the Napoleonic era and the defeat at Waterloo in a fairly short time. I mean, I knew it took longer than the two days we spent on it in World History in high school, but that young girl, born when heads were rolling on the guillotine, would have been 25 or 26 and likely had her own children when Napoleon got waffled in Belgium.

And that poor French girl couldn’t even post about how tough her life was on TikTok®!

26 years. That’s a number that, back when I read Greer’s post, surprised me. From a distance of 230 some years, four years of Biden is an eyeblink.

Chuck Norris once stared into the abyss, and the abyss looked away.

The amazing amount of debt that’s been printed in the last four years along with the rampant inflation made me think back to that young French girl. I think that in 100 years, people will look back on our time and compress it, and I think that they’ll talk about it as the time when the United States sank to third world standards in what, to them, will be just a paragraph in a history book.

There’s plenty of precedent for it. Spain, after the colonization of the New World, brought back ship after ship filled with massive amounts of gold and silver for a period of about 100 years. This caused several related things to happen:

The inflation from the huge supply of gold and silver distorted the entire economy of Europe, causing an inflation that lasted at least 100 years.
The huge amount of wealth caused the Spanish to import labor (a lot of to do the work that Spaniards refused to do, you know, like sweeping or making the bed). The Spanish aristocracy also was allergic to work, since they considered it low class. Apparently, the exceptions were being a professor or a priest, but mainly they just sat around in fancy clothes sweating.
Spain then got caught in an endless web of pointless wars, probably because they were bored.
Oh, and when the gold and silver stopped flowing from the New World? Yeah, they didn’t stop spending, they just went bankrupt again and again.

This is not a good combination. In less than 100 years, Spain went from being THE world power and the largest economy in the world, by far, to being poor and irrelevant.

In California you can’t get a tattoo of flames on your biceps, unless you have a fire arms permit.

I imagine the world in Spain as it declined in decadence just slowly got crappier and more expensive every day, just like we’re seeing today, as we see a long, slow slide to becoming the third world. I wrote last week about the encrapification of the Internet, but other businesses are doing it, too. McDonald’s® has record profits, but I’ve seen Big Mac® meals advertised for $15 or so.

The Mrs. bought a McFish© sandwich the other day and put it in the fridge, perhaps as some sort of religious ritual since I have no evidence that humans actually eat them. I opened it up to give it a look, and was surprised to see a biscuit-sized sandwich.

I made some fish tacos the other night, but the ungrateful fish just swam away.

It’s been a while since I’ve even seen a Filet-O-Fish©, but the last time I ate one it wasn’t made out of a single goldfish. Heck, I think the last time I ordered one was sometime during the Bush Administration. Which one? Much like Bill Clinton, I can’t remember which Bush because there were too many. Back then it was a full-sized sandwich, but at some point, it became bite-sized.

I could come up with more examples from other companies, but that one will do. Keep this in mind: McDonald’s is now a luxury food. Are McDonald’s™ sales number up? Sure! Prices have doubled. But I haven’t been there in months (which is probably good for me) due to my inability to rationalize the idea that a Big Mac™ meal costs more than a pound of ribeye steak.

I can spell panda with just two letters: P and A.

What’s the outcome? Middle class people aren’t going to restaurants nearly as much, which is causing them to fail. Examples abound:

TGI Fridays® is closing 36 locations
Applebee’s™ closed up to 35 locations last year
Outback® has closed down 41 locations

Middle class people are now too poor to go to these restaurant chains. Period. Inflation has priced them out and wages, held down by continual streams of illegal aliens have not kept up.

This is part of the slow, creeping third worldism showing up in the United States.

Over the span of 26 years, where does this take us?

Why did Napoleon escape exile? He didn’t have enough Elba room.

My answer is that, just like France before the Revolution couldn’t imagine what the world would be like after Napoleon, and just like the Spanish who brought the great heaps of gold and silver back to Spain thought it was going to be totally awesome (el awesomo, I think is the Spanish translation), our first world wealth is rapidly slipping away.

The next twenty years will be, generally, poorer in the United States and in the West. The good news, however, is poorer equals poorer, not necessarily unhappier. Who knows, we might even be happier if we lose the Internet and can’t access TikTok© anymore.

Economic Doom? You’re Soaking In It.

“Two Purple Hearts – Leningrad and Siberia. Youngest man to be decorated by the president. You robbed the Federal Reserve Depository. Life sentence, New York Maximum Security Penitentiary. I’m ready to kick your ass out of the world, war hero.” – Escape From New York

Elon bought a coffee company and then made it a cryptocurrency. Yup, StarbuX®.

I’m a bit under the weather (sniffles). The good news is that some of the memetic content/graphs I found on the Internet about the current economy probably speak mostly for themselves. So, comments may be shorter than usual. I guess I’ll offer you this shorter post and an IOU for a longer one sometime in the future when I sober up get better.

First off – the dollar and gold used to have (depending on the era) a very similar volatility – at one point dollars were gold. What if the dollar was more volatile than gold, for the first time in 45 years??

Normally, longer term bond and notes have higher interest rates than shorter ones. The reason is uncertainty – if I was going to borrow money for thirty years, there’s more risk of crazy things happening, like Civil Wars or George Lucas selling Star Wars™ to Disney© in a thirty-year time span than in a three month time span. But when things get uncertain, that ration flips. If you look below, note that even a small inversion is a strong, strong signal of an impending recession. Well.

How bad has Biden been? Median mortgage payments (average selling price and current interest rates) are higher than Hunter Biden at a Burning Man®.

Homeowners aren’t the only ones paying huge interest payments. Here’s what’s happening on the national debt:

But it didn’t have to be that way. If someone remotely intelligent was in charge at Treasury, it wouldn’t be an issue at all. Don’t know where this snip came from, but it’s spot on:

Janet should be managing a grade school lunch kitchen. How deep does the rot run in the Banking Industrial Complex? O’Keefe tells us tons with one of his people hacks:

Thankfully the Fed™ has infinite money to lend. Or, at least the balance sheet shows that. In this case, this shows the economy as needing three times as much cash injected into the system as in 2008 to prop it all up and keep everything from draining into the abyss. In this case, the big vertical line represents the Silicon Valley Bank© failure.

That happened because Silicon Valley Bank™ had a lot of low interest, long term assets. Let’s just say I’m happy with my 4% mortgage right now, since I actually lose money by paying it back, since I can get 5%+ from banks. Silicon Valley Bank© had lots of crappy, long positions, and exploded.

Silicon Valley Bank? You’re Soaking In It.

When that happened, I wrote (link above) that I really expected that the vibrations would shake the system into a bigger failure by that October – this stuff takes a while to propagate. Instead, the Fed pulled a very cunning move: it printed buttloads of cash, allowed the banks to deposit the crap they had with the Fed™ and then the Fed™ took the losses. Of course, since they haven’t sold the crap the banks gave them, those are “realized” yet, so those losses are like a girlfriend so ugly you make her hide in the closet when your friends come over.

In addition to that, the Fed© has also lost at least $161 billion, according to the Fed©. Total? A trillion? Who knows? It’s not like anyone’s counting.

Back in the Before Time, the Fed™ never bought the debt of the United States. Why would they? They debt of the United States was to Ma and Pa Citizen, central banks all around the world, and, (oddly) to the United States when it spent the Social Security funds on Popcorn, PEZ™, Pantyhose, and Pachyderm Rides. Yup, the United States would spend the Social Security cash, and then write itself an IOU and put it (seriously!) into a filing cabinet in D.C.

Can you imagine a job that’s more futile? It’s like I wrote myself an IOU for stealing money from my kid’s college fund to buy beer, and then made my kid file the IOU, knowing full well that the file would experience “surprise combustion” in the backyard fire pit when I sobered up.

You really should be concerned. Unless you want to send me your cash so I can send you an IOU.

I promise I won’t blow it on Popcorn, PEZ™, Pantyhose, and Pachyderm Rides. Thankfully, people are waking up to the scam:

Revenge of the NEET

“I wanted to send my kids to college. It’s, like, $200 a year!” – Unfrosted

But I do have degrees in Mike Rowe Economics and Mike Rowe Biology.

NEET is Internet slang for “Not in Employment, Education, or Training” – in other words, “stays a home and smokes weed and plays video games”.

Mike Rowe, the Dirty Jobs guy, spent time noting last year that even with unemployment below 4%, 7 million men between the ages of 25 and 54 aren’t in the work force at all.

Now, I would hate to bring up the points that if our nation:

sends all the factory jobs overseas,
imports millions of foreigners with H1B visas (95,000 a year, minimum, since 2006, and more going back before that), or
just like Google®, cut hundreds of highly-skilled technical jobs in the United States and offshore them to Mexico and India,

then maybe, just maybe, the job market actually sucks because the wages are depressed to the point where living conditions at those wage levels are literally third world.

They’re not send us their best, or their best navigators, but I wonder if the repairs will be riveting. (meme used with permission)

Why would people put up with that? The market.

An example I read recently was of a person from India claiming that the only way they could find a place to live (this was in Canada) was in a bed in a kitchen in a two-bedroom apartment where six other Indian families were living. Admittedly, this is probably an upgrade from living in a slum in Mumbai, but these six families each pay a sixth of the rent. If a typical Canadian family wanted to rent that apartment and each Indian family was making $300 payments, the Canadians would have to cough up $1800.

That’s why people are tenting it – tents are better (marginally) to the American psyche than living with six other families in a condition where “squalor” would be an upgrade.

Another example?

When I was a kid, delivery work was for kids. Sixteen-year-olds were the ones frying Big Macs® and driving pizza from the Pizza Den to people’s houses.

Now?

Doordash® is now an adult job and everyone I see running the windows of the fast-food places has been voting for a big chunk of this century.

The United States is slipping quickly (and then, I fear, all at once) into a third world economy. To be clear, I’m not blaming those attempting to get to a better place, but it would be magical thinking to believe that once they got here and were a majority that they’d not immediately turn the United States into just another version of their homeland. You know, the one they fled.

Biden can’t stop doing connect-the-dot puzzles even though he can’t finish one. I guess Biden just doesn’t know where to draw the line. (meme as found)

But some of them aren’t working at all. And of those men that aren’t working, a huge number of them are white guys. It turns out that all, and I mean all, of the job growth since Corona™ became something other than a beer, went to dudes that weren’t white. In fact, the number of white people in the workforce dropped while Joe Biden “created” all of these jobs.

They were replaced. On any job where there is a remotely credible alternative with some sort of “diversity” score based on: a sexual fetish, being “female”, missing one of their six spleens, race, ethnicity, or religion. Of course, white, Christian and male is the opposite of diverse even though that category is only 6% or less of all of the humans we know of in the Solar System, excluding Phobos.

With things like Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) actively putting up barriers to hiring (or keeping) white guys, I’m not surprised that many have just given up. They are pretending right now that that DEI is going away, but in reality, they’re keeping it but just naming it other things. “People and the Planet,” anyone? (Yes, it’s real.) Their goals really haven’t changed.

A lot of companies have women as DEI executives. I guess because it’s cheaper. (meme as found)

The big problem is that Identity is now more important than Competency. Think: Chernobyl 2.0, brought to you by DEI. Why no DEI in the NFL®? People actually care about meritocracy in football players, I guess.

Also, Automation is real. Factories of almost any type, when compared by their counterparts of 1960, are much more highly automated. A guy named Fred walking around to check temperatures on thermometers to make sure the boiler doesn’t suddenly wipe Peoria off the map has been replaced with sensors that feed pressure, temperature, and flowrates back to computers that automate the process. Fred’s out of a job, and, if those boiler automation systems weren’t programmed in India (looking at you, Boeing®) then Peoria is still safe.

Except for Fred, who doesn’t have that job anymore. A.I. is coming for lots and lots of other jobs. Starting now. According to Indeed®:

Software development jobs are down 51.3%,
Information Design down 44.3%
IT Operations and Helpdesk down 33.5%
Industrial Engineering down 30.3%

Are all of these jobs replaceable by A.I.? Of course not. But 35.3% of HR jobs (same study) apparently are.

I’m not a NEET, but I’m sure it’s easier being a NEET without a family. No particular requirement to have shelter other than couch surfing, and some NEETs work for a couple of months during the year and then goof off, smoke weed, and play video games during the rest of the time.

And you can do both of these things in a video game, while stoned. (meme as found)

Families have always been the nucleus that keeps men showered and shaved, but without them, men give up. It’s not like they can afford a family, either. Housing prices and interest rates are now high enough in most metro locations that most young families are effectively locked out of homeownership. The price to income ratio has doubled since 1985 nationally – homes are now twice as expensive as 1985 compared to median family incomes. Add in 7%+ interest rates, and you’ll see why the middle class has caused Red Lobster to go bankrupt.

Who knew we’d live to see so many movies come true? (meme as found)

In reality, there’s not a labor shortage – there’s only a labor shortage at the wages companies are willing to pay, and a ludicrous inflation of the value of women so that what they bring to the table (for kids) doesn’t equal what they have to put. NEETs don’t really care about either. They’ve got their weed, couches, and video games.