Category: Silly Predictions

The Lighter Side of the Apocalypse

“It’s the Apocalypse all right.  I always thought I’d have a hand in it.” – Futurama

spider

I make apocalypse jokes like there’s no tomorrow.

Wednesday’s are normally a day to talk about wealth, and when you’re prepping, what is wealth?  Is it gold coins?  Is it ammunition?  Is it beer?  Is it a paid off house?  Is it a decade’s worth of PEZ®?

In many cases when I go to other websites that discuss either economic or social dislocation I see people arguing in the comments section about the way to prepare.  In some cases, these arguments have even occurred here at this humble bastion of Internet civility and decorum.  All of the people arguing are right.

No, that doesn’t mean that John Wilder is out there awarding participation trophies for comments, far from it.  The problem is one of definition.  As Tolstoy said in Anna Kareninananana, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”  Each of the stunningly attractive and freshly washed (and waxed!) geniuses that comments here has an IQ that would put Joe Biden to shame.  Yet they disagree because they’re talking about different things – each apocalypse is unique in its own way.

charlie

Protip:  if you’re a mortician, tie all of the corpses shoes together – that way if we do have a zombie apocalypse, it’ll be funny.

Therefore, I’ve decided it’s important to talk about the W.I.L.D.E.R. Scale.  It’s like the Richter Scale for earthquakes or the Fujita Scale for tornados or the Joe Biden Scale for Lying Dog Faced Pony Soldiers.  But this one is better, because I came up with it.

Most importantly, what does W.I.L.D.E.R. stand for?  It’s the:

Wilder Index of Life Disruption and Economic Ruination.

See?  W.I.L.D.E.R.  No, wait . . . W.I.L.D.E.R.™  There.  That looks better.

The scale is broken up into a ten point scale, as described below.  Why ten?  Besides being my mental age, it also describes the number of fingers that I had before using a table saw.  It’s also metric.  So, all of you people who live in countries that haven’t nuked Japan (excluding the Japanese) can have this one in metric.  But you have to keep the soccer.

NOTE:  This is not a comprehensive financial guide or preparedness guide.  Depending on the W.I.L.D.E.R.™  level you’re preparing for, this is only the barest bones of a start. 

W.I.L.D.E.R.™ Level 0:  All Quiet

Everything’s fine.  Life is good.  Life is projected to be good – you have a job, it’s fairly secure and has good benefits and it pays the bills, mostly.  Save money in your 401k, grill some burgers and watch the game.  Go back to sleep.

W.I.L.D.E.R.™ Level 1:  Local Slowdown

What is it?

A W.I.L.D.E.R.™ Level 1 is the lowest level of economic disruption – local job loss, minor and non-chronic civil .  It’s not great if you’re caught up in it, but it’s pretty mild.  There may be widespread local job loss – a factory was closed.  It’s not pleasant for those caught up in it, but the underlying economy outside of that local area is sound – you may have a longer commute, but you can get a job.

What to do?

Have savings.  Have minimal debt.  In many cases, you’ll be able to keep doing what you’ve been doing, but you might have a farther commute or reduced wages.  The nice thing about a Level 1 is that if you’re willing to move to a new city, chances are you’ll find something.

W.I.L.D.E.R.™ Level 2:  Regional Slowdown

What is it?

One thing that was more common in the past in the United States was a regional level of economic slowdown.  Entire areas would remain stagnant for periods at a time, sometimes years.  In the case of New Mexico, no one really knew it was a state anyway, so we’re not even sure if New Mexico has an economy.  As we have been in the “Boom Everywhere, All the Time” mode for the last 20 years (with the exception of that pesky Great Recession), the economy of the United States seems to be far less regional, but more centered in larger cities.

But regional economic slowdowns do occur – an example would be in the Oil Patch when the price of oil first goes up, and then collapses like my resistance to a steak on Friday night.  The good news is that when the oil price collapses, you can buy a small child in Oklahoma for the price of a cheeseburger.  Not a plain cheeseburger, but the fancy one with lettuce and tomato and onion.  Oklahomans have standards.

What to do?

Have savings.  Have minimal debt.  Have a realistic budget and know the difference between what’s really required and what’s nice-to-have.  Have a house that you can either sell or walk away from.  Be prepared to change careers – have an additional skill that people will pay you for if you have to change careers.  Be prepared to sell a kidney – grow an extra one or two if you can for a rainy day.

philoso

Philosoraptor.

W.I.L.D.E.R.™ Level 3:  National Recession

What is it?

Since World War II, most recessions have lasted, on average, a little less than a year.  Recessions mean that, broadly, the economy is shrinking.  Since the entire economic (and banking) system is based on continued expansion and growth, a recession typically kicks people out of work.  During a national recession it’s easier to drive drunk and text Shakespeare from memory while smoking weed than to get a raise.

Even though the economy “recovers” after a year or so, the failures and economic transitions that come from the recession linger in many lives for up to a decade – careers at failed businesses may not be viable anywhere.  If the entire factory is shipped to China, chances are slim that the Chinese will want to import people – it’s not like there are enough bats for everyone.

What to do?

If you are graduating from college, think twice.  People who graduate during a recession and take a job during the recession typically earn less for their entire careers.  Several of my friends went to graduate school instead of into the job market during a recession.  It worked out well for one guy – he became a dictator of a country in the Middle East.  He’s generous, too.  I heard that he last week at the bar he ordered shots for lots of his friends.

If you have a job – do what you can to keep it.  Pay down remaining debt, but understand what bankruptcy might mean if you don’t have six months (or more) of cash to cover expenses.  Stock weeks of spare food, if you can.  If you can’t, start making friends with neighborhood cats.

W.I.L.D.E.R.™ Level 4:  The Great Depression

What is it?

The Great Depression, and, to a lesser extent, the Great Recession of 2008-2009 and the Stagflation of the 1970’s fit here.  These are much greater economic hits than a recession.  They are nationwide, and may threaten the economic collapse.  Expect extreme measures to get the economy working again, many of which will actually be counterproductive, but it’s government, so you expect that.  Banks will fail.  Weird things will happen to the money supply.

What to do?

If you have spare cash, this is the time to pick up great bargains.  As the Great Recession hit, the price of gold dropped significantly.  People who had debt but too many toys had to sell them – it was a great time to buy boats and cars and motorcycles and mistresses and admission for your kid at Harvard®.  Several stocks were selling at ridiculously low prices.

Why was this?  Money had dried up, so there were bargains everywhere.  Of course, I didn’t have enough money then to buy anything.  Except a house.  Before the prices collapsed.  (Spoiler – I got out of that house okay.)

Again, having no debt and cash to cover expenses is key.  Having a spouse who doesn’t work (but could) is also key – in a pinch, they can work, too, or you can sell their kidneys for buckets of wheat.

Diversify your banks.  Diversify how you keep your money – is one currency enough?  Desperate people will be desperate.  Be able to protect yourself and your family.

home

Hey, don’t laugh – I can almost buy two packs of gum in 2024 with the money in that picture.

W.I.L.D.E.R.™ Level 5:  National Collapse

What is it?

Governing structures cease to function in a meaningful way.  This is also known as “Tuesday” in most African nations.  Weimar Germany, and the late Soviet Union are examples.  They didn’t collapse in the same way – Weimar Germany collapsed in an explosion of hyperinflation.  The Soviet Union collapse was the collapse of an entire economic system, and now nobody knew who got to take the cow to the dance on Saturday.

What to do?

When nations collapse, their currency collapses.  This always happens.  In surviving any of those collapses, a pocketful of gold was more helpful than a pocketful of paper.  If the nation collapses, it can be difficult to predict the system that will replace it, but they generally are totalitarian strongmen who take over in the chaos after collapse.  The Soviet Union was a happy departure – as rough as it was on the former Soviet citizens, it could have been far worse.  Chef Boyardee was originally chosen as Gorbachev’s replacement, but they didn’t like that he called his secret police the Gazpacho.

Six months of food isn’t extravagant in a situation like this.  Some means of protection are mandatory.  Realize that changes could happen in a second, so plan.  Have friends.

W.I.L.D.E.R.™ Level 6:  Civil War

What is it?

The American Civil War, the French Revolution, and the Balkans War are examples of civil wars.  Civil wars are probably more vicious than any other type of conflict.  When the Germans started fighting the French and English in World War I, they weren’t really into it – they even stopped the war for Christmas in 1914.  But when the French finally snapped before the French Revolution?  They were ready to throw down like a rabid epileptic cat in a strobe light store.

What to do?

Moveable assets like gold or foreign bank accounts, a second passport, and lots of lead are preferred.  Be in a place (if you can) surrounded by like-minded people.  It helps if you’ve been there for years before trouble breaks out – being an outsider during a civil war isn’t preferred.  Have food – a year?  Have weapons.  Have a supply of necessary pharmaceuticals if you can.  Be aware that your side might lose the war.  What would that mean?  Oh, and don’t forget to floss.

W.I.L.D.E.R.™ Level 7:  International Collapse

What is it?

World War I and World War II are modern examples of this, but earlier examples include the fall of the Roman Empire and the late Bronze Age Collapse (~1200 B.C.) (LINK).  These are collapses that take down multiple nations and re-write borders and history.  They are cataclysmic, and are often followed by the mass movements of people, either as invading conquerors, or fleeing refugees, or in the 2010’s, fleeing conquerors and invading refugees.

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Some things never change.  Image:  Lommes [CC BY-SA 4.0)]

What to do?

Be away from where the war is happening.  That may be more difficult than it says on the label.  All of the suggestions for Level 6 responses still fit, especially flossing, but finding a place not torn by conflict is exceedingly difficult.  Events have the ability to move very, very, fast.  If you’re in continental Europe, learning German is probably a good idea.  A year of food will likely not be enough.  Lead is recommended.  Gold may or may not help at all.  If you think it won’t, I’ll watch it for you.

W.I.L.D.E.R.™ Level 8:  Regional Extinction

What is it?

Regional extinction last occurred when the population collapsed after the Europeans brought disease to the New World.  Smallpox, measles, and high cholesterol (eventually) killed an estimated 90% of the pre-Columbus population through either disease or carryover effects.  That amounted to, perhaps, 10% of the world population at the time.

What to do?

Don’t eat bats.  Don’t welcome Spaniards.

mayans

I fell in love with a calendar.  Together we had a lot of dates.

W.I.L.D.E.R.™ Level 9:  Continental or Multi-Continental Extinction

What is it?

This hasn’t happened in recorded history.  There are some scientists that theorize that the supervolcano Tomba that erupted 75,000 years ago nearly eliminated humanity.  How close?  Genetic evidence indicates that it might have been as low as 1,000 breeding pairs of humans.  However, some people think those scientists are bunch of cotton headed ninny mugginses, and say that people were just fine – the restriction in genetic variation shows up because some people were MUCH better at propagating their genes, if you know what I mean.  Also?  Asteroids aren’t your friend.

What to do? 

Be lucky.  Wear clean underwear.  You cannot save enough food for this contingency – it may last years and the task will be nothing less than rebuilding civilization.  Read Lucifer’s Hammer for a lighthearted look at life after a Level 9.

W.I.L.D.E.R.™ Level 10:  Planetary Extinction

What is it?

Game over, man.

What to do?

Save money in your 401k, grill some burgers and watch the game.  Go back to sleep.

 

And there’s the W.I.L.D.E.R.™ scale.  Drop me an email or leave a comment if I missed something.

Virginia: How We Got Here, In Four Levels

“I’m branching out from self-loathing and self-destruction.” – House, M.D.

INCEPTION

How does Leo avoid getting his girlfriend pregnant?  Conception.

As I sit writing on the eve of the potentially fateful protest in Richmond, a reasonable question to ask is “How did we get here?”  Like Inception©, there are several levels of answer to that question, each deeper than the last.  Ah, Inception™.  Leonardo DiCaprio really had a dream job in that one.

The highest level answer is, “because an election was lost.” 

And this is true.  A single election has completed the transformation of Virginia’s government from one where there was representation on both sides to one that is under sole control of the Left.

It wasn’t a surprise to the Left.  On day one, the Left was ready to take advantage of their new power.  A slate of model gun control legislation topped their agenda.  Everything from banning semi-automatic weapons to requiring universal background checks to red flag laws was on the table.  Already several bills are moving through the legislature.  As of this writing, it appears the semi-automatic ban has been removed, but that won’t last long.

LION

Making guns illegal will stop all gun crime – that’s how we finally stopped everyone from doing drugs . . .

In addition to the anti-gun agenda, the Left is proposing a series of laws aimed at making sure that this is the final change of government that Virginia will ever see – I read about a bill that would move the governor’s vote from popular vote to a majority of the congressional districts.  As the districts will be gerrymandered, that assures a Leftist governor for ever and ever.  Also included was a provision to give Virginia’s electoral votes for president to the winner of the national popular vote.  So, no popular vote for governor, and the people don’t get to vote for president at all.

Ain’t the Leftist version of freedom grand?

The second level is because the demographics of Virginia changed. 

I know that lots of people have arguments that “ENTER IDENTITY GROUP HERE” have more in common with the Right than the Left.  That might be true.  But the only group that reliably votes for the Right are people who might name their kids “Brandon” or “Logan” or “Sarah” or “Amanda.”  These people reliably want to vote for the traditions that created the United States, whereas many first, second, and even third generation citizens want to replicate the culture and country they left – including replacing the national currency with tortillas, which, the more I think of it isn’t that bad of an idea.

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A new study just came out that showed that people who want to commit murder just might ignore gun-free zone laws.

You might not like that it’s true.  You might have a fancy explanation why it shouldn’t be true.  But nevertheless, it’s true.  Immigration, urbanization, and being close to the Leftist center of power, Washington, D.C., has turned Virginia Left.

A third level is because it was planned. 

The election of Donald Trump was, perhaps, the single most traumatic thing to have happened to Leftists since, oh, the election of George W. Bush in 2004.  Which was nearly as traumatic as George W. Bush winning in 2000.  To think:  if only we had elected Gore president, polar bears would have not gone extinct.

What, polar bears are doing great?  Shhhhhh.

FRENCH

Not all of the systems on the Titanic have failed.  The swimming pool is still full.

But the cumulative result of this trauma is a push towards deeper Leftism, plus a push to get all of the state legislatures they can for the Left before the next census (LINK).  Why?  To gerrymander all of the congressional seats they can.  Also on the agenda for a repeat of what went on in Virginia?  Texas and West Virginia.

Perhaps the deepest and most basic level is because Leftists hate themselves, and herd with other Leftists.

Certainly not all Leftists are exactly this.  I know a few people that are committed and are on the Left and are that way for the understandable, rational reasons.  People, who, for instance, think our health care system is crazy and think the solution is more government.  I think our health care system is crazy, and think that the solution is less government.  I can understand their motives.  They can understand mine.  We have good conversations; fun arguments that don’t result in a desire to set up a duel with sabers at dawn.  Dawn is much too early for a duel.  If I’m going to die, I at least want a nap first.

But there are Leftists that hate themselves, and I think this is most of them.  You’ve seen them – people who expend amazing amounts of emotion on behalf of other people, like the white liberals who got upset about Speedy Gonzalez and had him pulled from Cartoon Network®, despite his popularity in Mexico:  “He was like a superhero to us….”

Leftists don’t feel bad just for others.  Any comment you can make about a Leftist (or someone they feel protective over) is interpreted in the worst possible way.  It’s as if every time someone used the term “guy” or “buddy” and men got amazingly upset.  Even worse, if people got amazingly upset because we were called “guy” and decided that they would step in and protect us poor men and stop badthinkers from calling us “guy” and get anyone who said that hateword fired from work.

Secretly, the Leftists believe that the identity groups that they protect are inferior.  Why else would they need to protect them and think up new terms for perfectly good descriptive words like “handicapped” or “secretary”?  It’s not like if we called handicapped people something else they could, oh, walk again?

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I think I saw this flag burning on video, and one of the Lefties managed to burn himself when molten drops of plastic from the American flag they were burning fell on his wrist.  He said it was the same burning feeling he got when he thought about getting a job.

How bad is it?  This level of moral relativism and “there is no truth” required by modern Leftism actually makes the assertion that all cultures are equivalent.  Certainly not – especially in outcome.  If you were to compare the culture of Japan to the culture of North Korea, you can certainly determine that the cultures are different, and that the Japanese culture is superior in nearly every way a culture can be measured.

The Left has made the nonsensical claim that women are physically equivalent to men, which I’ve seen from the Left to justify men competing in (and beating) women in high school track events.  Deep down, they create this ferocious level of defense because they know that a man who says he’s a woman isn’t, but yet have to justify the insane idea that they are.

I blame the dames and broads.

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If only I had time to put Greta Thunberg’s face on this meme . . . .

And the Left hates everything good, and pure.  It hates the family.  It hates the way the wind would blow through my long locks of shiny hair, I mean, if I had hair.  And, even though the United States has done plenty wrong in its existence, it’s a shining beacon of hope that people risk their lives to get to.  Leftists hate the heritage of America.  They hate Western Civilization.  They hate tradition.  They hate rationality.  As I discussed last week, the Left idolizes the profane, and treats it as if it were sacred (Why The Left Can’t Handle Reality).

Individualism and individual achievement is their kryptonite®.  Why?  They are afraid that they are inferior, afraid that they cannot compete.  Bernie has to solve these problems, because our typical Leftist doesn’t think they can help themselves because he is a loser.  He also thinks that the Identity Groups are inferior, and could never compete.  Leftist philosophy is built on envy of those who are strong, and greed to take what they have made.

And Leftists are sure that they will be found wanting if judgement is ever made.  Why?  Because they feel they are inferior and are of no real value to society.  Thus reason, science, grades, objective tests (like I.Q. and SAT tests), and norms of behavior are to be avoided in schools.  If a child acts out in school?  It’s not because of lousy parents.  It’s not because the child has a mental or genetic defect that makes self-control impossible.  No.  It’s society’s fault.

participation

So, now you know where participation trophies come from.

Thankfully, all of the millions of dollars we’ve spent on trying to solve the problems of “society” have led to the best educated and behaved children on Earth.  No?  Hmmm.  Must be society’s fault.

Leftists, however, will do anything to protect their group.  When someone on the Right commits a foul against Political Correctness, even decades in the past, they are disowned.  Yet there is no behavior that any Leftist feels that they should be held accountable for – which brings us back to Virginia.

The current governor of Virginia has allegedly committed offenses against racial political correctness to the point that, if he were on the Right, he would be shot into the Sun and his family sent to exile in northern Canada where an old liberal would be sent ‘round to kick them every week.

Why would this be so?

I said that Leftists are herd animals.  All humans seek the company of other humans – it’s normal, and belonging is the most basic need outside of food, water and oxygen.  But Leftists seek safety in the herd.  Again, the concept of individuality is hateful to them, so the collectivist action mimics that of the herd.  The result is they’d never sacrifice a member until he was nearly dead – the biggest fear of the Left is that they’d be judged objectively.

The result of this is that the Left is dangerous due to this self-loathing.  They’re like people who feel themselves to be inferior always have been – vengeful, spiteful, and hungry for power so that they can finally be someone.

So, that’s how we got here.

Civil War Weather Report #7: All Eyes on Virginia

“Who do you favor in the Virginia Slims tournament?” – Top Secret

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Don’t put in extra hours at the clock factory – they hate that.

  1. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
  2. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  3. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures.  Just in case.
  4. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.

I didn’t expect to move the clock up this month, but yet, here we are, and it’s all due to Virginia.  More on that below.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Violence and Censorship Update – Flashpoint Virginia –Updated Civil War II Index – Virginia and Rallies and Aesop – Links

Welcome to Issue Eight 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 II, on the first or second Monday of every month.  Issue One is here (LINK), Issue Two is here (LINK), Issue Three is here (LINK), Issue Four is here (LINK), Issue Five is here (LINK), Issue Six is here (LINK), and Issue Seven is here (LINK).

Violence and Censorship Update

Organized violence seems to be lower this month, as you’d expect in winter.  Or perhaps AntiFa® is just on a snowboarding trip to Colorado so they can get some dank weed?  Societal violence tends to drop as it gets colder, because people look stupid rioting in knit hats and parkas.  Well, people look stupid rioting in any weather, except for the South Koreans who have rioting down to a spectator sport.  South Koreans riot about, well, anything.  It’s like living in San Francisco, but with less poop.

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The Korean beef riots?  Udder madness.

YouTube® announced a change in the terms and conditions for video creators that would go into effect December 10, 2019.  The major change (of concern) was that YouTube© announced that they would delete accounts that, in YouTube’s™ sole opinion, weren’t commercially valuable.  There were several creators that I watch on a semi-regular basis that were quite upset – this was proof that YouTube™ was coming after them.  Several refuse to put controversial videos on YouTube® at all now – they save those videos for other sites, like Bitchute©.

As far as I can tell, most of these channels are still up and running.  Several that had been demonetized for political content even had monetization restored.  Like the end of the world in 2012, the dread YouTube® apocalypse is currently overdue.

Switching to Twitter©:  their most notorious purge in the last period was Danielle Stella, a candidate for congress running against that paragon of virtue, Ilhan Omar.  Stella’s offense?  She tweeted:

“If it is proven @IlhanMN [Ilhan Omar] passed sensitive info to Iran, she should be tried for #treason and hanged” – I agree with Ms. Stella, that hanging people who collaborate against the United States with foreign governments is a good thing.

But I will never trust her because of sage advice that my brother gave to me one afternoon while driving:  “Never trust a person who has two first names.  Like Scott George.  Or George Scott.”  He was proven right when George C. Scott stopped by our house and ate all of our mayonnaise.  Man, that man loved his mayo.

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I guess the decided they should see other siblings.

Twitter® has also admitted a practice they had long denied, but was obvious:  they shadow ban people – you can type away all you want, but no one is really going to see your Tweet™.  How better to control a populace than to let them think that “bad” opinions are ignored?

Flashpoint Virginia

Since Virginia has been changed from state controlled by the Right to a state where Leftists hold all major offices and control the legislature, the Left has had a great desire to spike the ball and exert complete control.  That control is focused on Leftist goals.  The first Leftist goal mentioned?

Elimination of many Second Amendment rights, including banning ownership, with no grandfather provision, of “assault” weapons.

It also goes much further, and bans parts of rifles the same way an entire rifle would be banned.  Outside of cloning Stalin, elimination of private gun ownership is a primary goal of the Left.  It is also a trigger on the Right, and this legislation couldn’t be more tailored to antagonize the Right if Rosie O’Donnell read it as an alarm clock message.

As political battles go, this gun ban is an uphill one, even for the Left.

What is unusual here is the reaction from localities.  More than 98 bodies (counties, cities, towns) as of this writing have declared themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries” – and have vowed to not cooperate.

The Attorney General (a Leftist) has issued an opinion that the counties can’t just ignore state law, they have to follow it.  Therefore?  The Governor (a Leftist) has requested $100 million extra for incarceration and $4 million for an 18 person gun ban team.

It’s not enough.

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Sometimes you have no idea what you’ve gotten yourself into.  Like me in my first marriage. 

The Left owns all of the levers of government.  So what do the people that want to keep their rights do?

Form an opposing governmental structure.  Those are the Second Amendment sanctuaries.  Like it or not, these declarations are the first step towards a unified governing structure that opposes the Leftist government in Virginia.  For a civil war to occur, you have to have civil structures.  I had expected them to form along the lines of opposing state governments.

But the societal divisions in 2019 exist more along the rural/urban divide than the old northern/southern divide.  In my home state, it’s very (from a combined vote total) far Right, so my entire state would likely pitch in.  Given this new circumstance in Civil War 2.0, renegade counties make sense in a state like Virginia.  And despite anything the Attorney General might say, should a significant (20%?) percentage of Virginia’s population – an armed 20% of the population – decide a law isn’t valid?

The law won’t be valid.

Laws exist in the United States because we generally agree with them as a group.  Does everyone agree to all laws that are on the books?  Certainly not.  But when there is determined opposition to a law or group of laws (marijuana legalization, illegal alien sanctuaries, Second Amendment sanctuaries) an attempt to enforce the law will nearly instantly make the government look weak, ineffectual, and illegitimate.  And when that determined group takes over a legitimate arm of government?

We’re one step closer to war, and this is why I moved the clock.  The Left is moving quickly, and in Virginia, I think it’s still a very dangerous game of chicken.

I think they’ll end up blinking, and swerving off at the last minute.

Updated Civil War II Index

More graphs, with full bikini treatment.

Violence:

Violence.jpg

Up is more violent.  Violence dropped a bit, and I imagine it will remain low for the winter, though it edged up a bit in December.  April and May will likely see increased incidents, assuming we end up okay in Virginia.  And assuming we don’t run out of suntan lotion.

Political Instability:

politics.jpg

Up is more unstable.  It skyrocketed this month.  Tension was high in the first place, but impeachment increased it significantly.  Don’t expect it to go down soon.

Economic:

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Down indicates worse economic conditions.  The economic indicators all were positive, and strongly so, in November.  It was a one month recovery.

Illegal Aliens:

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Down is good, since (in theory) ICE is catching fewer aliens because there are fewer people trying to get in.  The numbers are down this month, and if you put them in context, winter is normally a lower time for illegal immigration, which will pick up in the spring.

Virginia and Rallies and Aesop

There is a large pro-Second Amendment rally planned in January 20, 2020 in Richmond.  Since I started paying attention to such things, I’ve noticed something – that people on the Right don’t live in Washington, D.C.  Why we would go to protest there escaped me.  Statistics back this up – in 2016, nearly 95% of voters voted for Leftist candidates.

For a group of citizens that support the Right to try to protest in D.C. is silly.  Protestors in D.C. are in hostile territory.  From observation, cities attract Leftists.  The larger the city, generally the farther Left it is.  Richmond, Virginia is no different.  It voted nearly 80% for Leftists in 2016.  Richmond is hostile territory for the Right.

But yet the rally is planned.  Aesop over at The Raconteur Report has covered why this rally is a bad idea, in detail here (LINK) and here (LINK).  Read the comments, and also the links to previous posts that he suggests.

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Read it all before you attend – or before you organize.

Links

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Please leave links either in the comments below, or feel free to send me an email if you’re shy.  If you email me, I won’t say that the link is from you unless I get permission.

From McChuck.

From Glenda.

From Bob.

From Vote Harder, over at The Burning Platform:

From Ricky:

 

A Texas Church, Aesop, and the Future of Freedom

“I’m the plumber.  I’m just hanging around in case something goes wrong with her pipes.  (to audience) That’s the first time I’ve used that joke in twenty years.” – Horsefeathers

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“Why a four-year-old child could understand this report.  Run out and find me a four-year-old child.  I can’t make head or tail out of it.”

In a Texas church this weekend, the worst nightmare of the Left happened.  The only thing that could have been worse for the Left would have been a video of Bernie Sanders spending his own money.  A good guy with a gun (Jack Wilson) stopped a bad guy with a gun.  Part of what made it bad for the Left:  clear video evidence showed a good guy taking down a bad guy with a single shot.  To make it even worse for the Left:  the bad guy was a killer, shooting a pair of grandfatherly looking men in a room filled with grandma and grandpa types.

It was quick.  From the time the bad guy pulled his gun to the time the bad guy ceasing to . . . be was five seconds.  Five short seconds.  This was, perhaps, a final blow for the Left.  The idea that the police, who arrived very quickly (four minutes or less) should be the only ones with guns evaporated, especially since two church members were dead within three seconds.  A very well-trained citizen saved lives – how many we’ll thankfully not know, since he acted.

Not a cop.  A citizen.

Every Leftist commenter on the web that was trying to justify gun control in the wake of this tragedy couldn’t do so without defending the shooter as being somehow justified in wanting to rob the church.  The biggest problem in the eyes of the Left, perhaps, is that the churchgoers weren’t sufficiently Christian enough to quietly line up to be shot.  Texas is probably not the state for that.

What made the difference is that the good guy was able to ignore disbelief at the situation occurring right in front of him, and was able to react.  How could Jack Wilson do this?  He didn’t know exactly what threat he was going to face.  He didn’t even know if there ever was even going to be a threat.  But yet, he trained.  Dare I say it?  He was prepped.

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Ok, Zoomer.  (For the record, I’m neither.  I just like stirring things up.)

Jack Wilson scanned the churchgoers.  He was looking for data points.  He saw them and acted.

This week, Aesop over at The Raconteur Report posted his 2019 Quincy Adams Wagstaff Lecture.  It’s here (LINK).  RTWT.  As usual, Aesop writes excellent material – not only to ponder upon, but to act upon.  There are many wonderful points in it, and here is the opening:

Wherever you’re reading this, you’ve had unmistakable evidence that things aren’t going to go all rosy.  Perhaps ever again.  Perhaps just for a long dark winter of the soul, and/or of the entire civilization. There has been more than one Dark Age period in human history, and they will happen again.  You may very well get to see this firsthand, and experience life amidst it.  Howsoever long or briefly.

You’ve had a respite of some 37 months to get your metaphysical crap together in one bag, and use the time prudently.

If you’ve squandered that lead time, woe unto you.

This post made me think, which is dangerous.  At least that’s what my therapist says.  My therapist who says I’m “mentally creative” and “reality impaired.”  Thankfully, she’s imaginary, which really lowers her billing rate.  But what that post made me think most about was:

Mindset.

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This is what would happen if my imaginary therapist talked to The Mrs.  It’s funnier if you read the whole thing in a pirate voice, really.

Aesop mentions mental readiness, and that’s key.  The last 37 months have been, to put it mildly, an indication that we are headed towards a very uncertain future as the culture around us continues to polarize, as the monetary debt we face (all over the world) continues to mount, as soccer is still taken seriously as an international sport rather than a game for attention challenged three-year-olds, and as the international stability that was so hard won with the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War dissolves.

I’m not trying to sell you on any one future, on any one fate, unless there’s money in it.  But I am trying to emphasize the start of your salvation:  your mindset.  If you believe that the world will continue in an unbroken, linear stream, I can assure you that you’re wrong.  We’ve had the precursor warnings of 9/11 and the Great Recession.  If I am correct, this decade will bring tumult of a similar, if not greater magnitude.

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Evacuate the women and children first!  Then we can solve this in silence.

You should believe this, too.  Not on a surface level.  This is a mindset.  Your daily decisions should take these future unknown and unknowable calamities into account.  Why?

Because if I’m right, and you’re prepared a week, a month, or five years before you need to be, you win.  Also?  Society wins, because the more people that are prepared, the better we come through the next crisis/shock.  If we were all prepared, a hurricane could hit the shore and the stores would still be full.  When we prepare, we manage to make sure there will be less stress on the system during an emergency.

The other way to help is with skills, and the longer the crisis, the more important those skills will be.  And, no, your experience in saving the Princess® in Super Mario Brothers™ doesn’t count.  At least my therapist says it won’t.  Real skills provide for a basic human need, like food.  During the Great Depression, people gardened and farms weren’t big factory affairs – they were much smaller Mom and Pop style farms.  Even though there was significant malnutrition, starvation deaths in the United States were minimal.

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He said his New Year’s resolution was 1920×1080.

More evidence?

One of the biggest enemies of seeing reality is seeing the world you think should be, not the world as it really is.  People look at Antifa® rioting and think, “They should be arrested.”  They aren’t.  What does that data point tell you?

The government of Virginia is threatening to take semi-automatic guns, dedicate a team to confiscating guns and the government should allow honest, law abiding citizens to exercise the right to self-protection.  But the government wants to take it away and make honest people felons.  What does that data point tell you?

Government debt today is at 106% of GDP.  During the worst of the Great Depression, debt was less than 50% of the GDP.  During the height of the Vietnam War?  Debt was less than 40%.  What does that data point tell you?

I can’t promise the cause of the next crisis.  But I can promise that it’s coming.  Cultivate the mindset.  It’s the first step.

The key is to avoid despair even though you see the world as it really is.

“I, not events, have the power to make me happy or unhappy today.  I can choose which it shall be. Yesterday is dead, tomorrow hasn’t arrived yet.  I have just one day, today, and I’m going to be happy in it.” – Marcus Aurelius Groucho Marx

I have been accused of being too cheerful from time to time throughout my life.  And I plead guilty – with a smile on my face.  Why?

First – I’m naturally an optimist.  I want to achieve the best, but I also know that there’s no fixed way the world should be.  There is just the way that the world really is today.  If I don’t let myself get upset at the difference between an ideal and reality, I sleep a lot better.  Does that mean I’m satisfied?  No.  I work with every fiber to change some things for the better, but I don’t let it wreck my life like a pink-hatted blue-haired creature of fluid gender when confronted with a person who had to ask what their gender pronouns are.

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The first two hours are rough.  Caffeine is my best morning friend.

Second – Life has been awesome for me.  I can think of a LOT of times that I thought it was ruined.  But each of those times resulted in a situation that was pretty good for me.  Am I worth $30 million dollars?  No.  But that’s probably for the better.  If I had that kind of scratch I’d probably make Elon Musk look like the model of public restraint.

Third – I’ll admit, there was a time (about a year ago) where I got a little gloomy myself. But as I looked around me, I looked at what we have done.  I realized that freedom has won here in the United States for hundreds of years against all odds.

There were 2.5 million people living in the 13 colonies in 1776.  That’s less than the population of Utah.  In that 2.5 million we had a Washington, a Franklin, a Jefferson.  Sure, Franklin in 1789 might have drank more than the state of Utah in 1989 all by himself, but there are men that are the equal to our founders, and they exist in every state.  You know they exist, too.  The tricorn hats and powdered wigs are a dead giveaway.

Always remember that there is a line.  If you look at them standing along the church pews, scanning the congregation to keep them safe, they look nice.

Heck, they are nice.  Until they cross the line.

Then they’re not nice.  Then they become good men.

So, to gently change Groucho:  The past we wish to cling to is dead.  The present that we have is generally not so bad.  And we have a future, even if we can only see it dimly now, even if its golden age is years or decades away.

Let us go and make it.

I predict: these are the funniest predictions for 2020 you will read in 2020.

“Predictions are hard.  Especially about the future.” – Yogi Berra

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Okay, some people do pretty good predictions.

Once upon a time I tried to do real predictions.  The big downside of real predictions is being wrong sometimes.  I’d much rather be wrong all of the time, like last year (Silly Predictions for 2019. Bonus? Golden Bikini Force.), so here are my stunningly incorrect predictions for 2020:

January

  • The Senate takes over the impeachment trial of Donald J. Trump. Because of poor ticket sales, the trial is cancelled, but people who had reserved tickets were given a 20% off voucher for the Nirvana® reunion tour.  I’d love to bum a ride with you guys – I’d call shotgun, but Kurt beat me to it.
  • Joe Biden suspends his presidential campaign for Black History Month© so small black children across the nation can have the opportunity to pet his wet leg hair. When informed that Black History Month is in February, Biden suggests to the reporter that they bare knuckle box, because he’s “tired of your stupid malarkey, 23 skidoo, Tippecanoe and Tyler too!  Cockroaches!”  Biden calms down later after getting some tapioca pudding and watching Price is Right®.
  • Hillary Clinton asks the question, “Do you want to play a game?”

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Chelsea calls Chardonnay “Mommy’s Monica Juice.”

February

  • Ruth Bader Ginsburg sees her shadow on Supreme Court day, assuring us of six more weeks of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
  • Tom Brady’s body reconfigures itself into a new form on national television during Super Bowl® LIV. His new body appears like a low slung muscular tank, and Brady “throws” passes by expelling the football explosively downfield from a brand new fleshy orifice designed by Bill Belichick, based on the anatomy of a platypus.  Sadly, this doesn’t help the Patriots© at all, since they were eliminated earlier in the playoffs and are not even playing in the Super Bowl™.
  • The New Hampshire Democratic primary is won by Kim Jong Un. Unfortunately, it was actually Hillary Clinton being mistaken for Kim Jong Un after her next round of plastic surgery.  Rumor is she was secretly pleased to be called Dear Leader instead of the usual nautical term, “Seaward.”
  • Brexit happens on schedule, but Boris Johnson’s hair stages its own Borexit and joins the Labour Party.

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I guess technically we’re all undead, but Ruth takes it to the next level.

March

  • Super Tuesday, a collection of 13 primaries is held on March 3rd. The top three Democratic finishers are Johnny Depp, Harvey Weinstein, and a resurgent O.J. Simpson.  Nancy Pelosi states, “We are so proud to have our Democratic values and inclusivity on display in these results.”
  • Patrick’s Day replaced by a new gender and religion inclusive holiday: “Buy Expensive Green Things and Drink if You’re Not a Muslim Day.”
  • Joe Biden again suspends his presidential campaign, noting that he needs to focus on saving lives by using his true talent – being able to detect diseases in women by holding their shoulders and sniffing their hair while standing behind them.

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“Don’t thank me . . . now.  Thank me later.  Want to play with my leg hair?”

April

  • Ralph Northam, governor of Virginia, is discovered eating living children on the front lawn of the governor’s mansion while in blackface. After calls for his resignation, he noted that it was, at most, a “youthful indiscretion.”
  • Ruth Bader Ginsberg develops a desire for human flesh much like Tom Cruise or Keanu Reeves, and soon appears to be no older than about 30.
  • A vortex connecting our dimension to another dimension containing hellish beasts is accidently opened by Pentagon scientists. This is almost exactly like the plot to the Stephen King novella The Mist, though not in a legally actionable way, at least according to my lawyer, Lazlo.

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“How could I make this worse?  Oh, yeah, I’ll go after the guns.”

May

  • Beto O’Rourke, while no longer a presidential candidate, decides to create an anti-gun organization, PistolsMakeScared (PMS®). He noted, “I really needed something to do while my wife has quality time with her boyfriends.”
  • France declares war on Canada on Tuesday morning. France surrenders to Germany later that afternoon, declaring Paris an open city.  The Germans refuse the surrender, indicating they can’t determine the number of troops required to defend France, since that’s never been tried before.
  • Australians will discover a spider that is the size of a cat, is as fast as a mongoose, has a diet of eagles and crocodiles, and is as poisonous as a middle school girl’s Instagram®. They name it “Dave.”

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Pictured:  Australian infant’s crib mobile.

June

  • LGBT Pride Month (June) officially replaced with LGBT Smug Condescension Months (June, July, August).
  • Elon Musk unveils a Kleenex® dispenser that automatically pops up a new Kleenex© every time you take one out at a base price of only $45,000. 25,000 people place a deposit, even though there’s a two year wait.
  • Chick-Fil-A® decides to start serving food on Sunday, adding hamburgers to their menu, and encouraging the worship of Satan as part of a new marketing campaign. “We’ve got to change with the times,” said their new spokesman, Lena Dunham.

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I mean if you have to choose between values and a tasty sandwich . . .

July

  • The Democratic Convention is moved from Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Malmo, Sweden as the Democratic Committee considers it unfair that people outside the United States have been denied a vote. Greta Thunberg, noted school dropout, is nominated.  Her vice presidential nominee, Joe Biden, is quoted as saying, “I’m thrilled to be behind her.”
  • The Republican Convention is held in a hollowed out volcano somewhere in the South Pacific. Donald Trump is nominated as the presidential candidate, and in a surprise move, he is also nominated to be vice president.  “Job’s too easy.  And I need someone whose I can trust to be vice president.”  Trump also adopts a pure white Persian cat with a diamond collar.
  • The 2020 Summer Olympics® open in Tokyo. Bingo is not an approved Olympic sport, primarily because the Japanese are still a bit superstitious about “B-29.”

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We now know what Paul Tibbets would do for a Klondike Bar®.

August

  • Google® is found to be censoring ______, ______ and _____, and working with Facebook™ and Twitter© to also censor _____. It is feared that the election might be impacted because ____ ____ ____, ____ and ____.
  • Elon Musk unveils an electric reusable coffee mug – he calls it Teasla©. Initial claims are that it is autonomous and can be used for both hot and cold liquids.  It also requires the new Teasla™ Supercharger, which can recharge it in 70 minutes using a 50’ by 50’ solar power array costing only $25,000.  The mug weighs 43 pounds.

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(Pssst – it’s in the trunk.)

September

  • For the second straight year, September is again cancelled by general consensus.

October

  • Two televised presidential debates and one televised arm wrestling contest are held. The planned presidential MMA bout is cancelled when Greta Thunberg tests positive for high levels of testosterone.  She is furious, “How dare you assume my gender?  You have ruined my fight plan.”  She then proceeds to spend all of her campaign funds on a live commercial showing her eating seven pounds of mashed potatoes (no gravy) in one sitting while scowling at the camera.
  • Gormongous, Ruler of the Dark Empire, emerges as a dark horse third party candidate after having emerged from the Pentagon’s dimensional experiment earlier in the year. “Everyone can be an American,” he hissed through clouds of sulfurous vapor.  The Ninth Circuit Court ruled that his alternate universe was “technically America” so he was a valid candidate for president, despite him being seven stories tall and covered in an exoskeleton made of material from neutron stars.

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Never take potatoes from a testosterone-raging Swede with fetal alcohol syndrome.  It’s a rule I live by.

November

  • The 2020 presidential election is held on the third. California immediately protests because the Electoral College now has fraternities, and no one asked California to join one so she could go to that cool Kappa Sig kegger and maybe hook up with Montana.
  • Donald Trump wins both the popular vote and the Electoral College. Democratic candidate Greta Thunberg says, “That is not enough – it makes a mockery of our democracy.  You must also defeat me in a best-of-seven game of Jarts®.”
  • Joe Biden celebrates his 78th birthday.  His hair and teeth turn 22.

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Many a G.I. Joe® experienced a fatal chest wound to Jarts™.

December

  • Santa Claus is now required by the 9Th Circuit Court of Appeals to be race, gender, and species neutral when used in any public school setting. Ironically, this has the effect of making most kindergarten pictures of NuSanta™ highly accurate.
  • Gormongous, Ruler of the Dark Empire, decides that he will use the fame from his presidential run to launch a top tier tequila as well as a chain of animal shelter/fast Asian restaurants in the Midwest.
  • Ruth Bader Ginsberg looks down on the lights of the city at night from her perch at the top of the Washington Monument. She smells, senses, and sees the life below her.  The life that she drains, person by person, to prolong hers.  Then . . . a target.  She aims her bat-like wings to take her quickly down the side of the monument, and then to strike.  Ahhh, fresh blood.  Ruth feels the gravity drawing her down as she leaps . . . .
  • National Park Ranger Report, 12/22/20: Bat killed by hawk near Washington Monument.

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To all:  Happy New Year!

Happy Penultimate Day 2019, and the Biggest Story of 2019: Society Unravelling

“Well, I don’t know what you’re talking about, but it sounds damn saucy, you lucky thing!  I know some fairly liberal-minded girls, but I’ve never penultimated any of them in a solar sojourn, or for that matter, been given any Norman tongue.” – Blackadder The Third

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If we have a boogaloo, let’s hope it’s a short one.  I’ve got a dentist appointment next Thursday.

If you’re reading this on Monday, December 30, congratulations!  It’s Penultimate Day!  This is the holiday that the Wilder’s celebrate every December 30.  Why Penultimate Day?  Back on December 30, 2012, The Mrs. wanted a new cell phone.  We drove an hour and a half south to a Best Buy® (the nearest place that sold cell phones) and then didn’t buy a cell phone.  After that, we ate at Olive Garden® and drove home. 

I think this was, perhaps, the disaster foretold by the Mayans that ended their calendar in 2012.  As is inscribed in ancient Mayan on the calendar:  “When the pale people from the north can communicate no more, and instead decided to eat a tasty pasta dish, perhaps with fresh-grated Parmesan cheese (say when!), that shall be the end of time.” 

Or my translation may be off.  Regardless, we are now celebrating our seventh straight Penultimate Day, and as you read this I might be not buying a cell phone, or perhaps having some sort of bottomless salad and breadstick combination at Olive Garden©.  Olive Garden’s™ motto is “when you’re here, you’re family©,” so I borrowed $50 and decided I’d never pick up when they call and insult them behind their back.

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Remember, when you’re here, you’re part of the Olivegarchy.

You can join in on Penultimate Day, too.  Simply go to a place that cells cell phones that is south of your house.  Then, don’t buy one.  Finally:  eat Italian food.  Sure, that’s not the purist version and you might be burned at the stake later for heresy, but, you know, Italian food.

My Penultimate Day post is also the post that I use to look back on the year to talk about the biggest story of the year.  In 2017, it was the verified UFO video from the military (Penultimate Day and The Biggest Story of 2017), in 2018, it was the loss of trust in our society (Happy Penultimate Day 2018, and the Biggest Story of 2018: Societal Trust).  The 2017 link comes with a (very) short story that I wrote in a Marriott® bar.

In 2019, the main story is the unravelling of society.

The main stories in all of the news is about that unravelling this year.  And it’s not just in the United States:

  • Brexit/Boris Johnson in Great Britain.
  • Yellow Vest Protests in France.
  • Hong Kong Protests in Cleveland.
  • Impeachment.
  • Left and Right Polarity.
  • Your family at Thanksgiving.
  • AntiFa® violence in mom’s basement.
  • Popularity of Stories About Impending Civil War in the United States.

We know trouble is coming.  The topic I’ve written about that’s gotten more views than any other this year has been Civil War 2.  How divisive is society today?  In an example of whistling past the graveyard, a hypothetical future conflict has been referred to as Civil War 2:  Electric Boogaloo.  This has shortened over time to just Boogaloo.  This is, of course, is a tribute to that classic of Western cinema Breakin’ 2:  Electric Boogaloo, a 1984 film about breakdancing that I’m sure you all have seen.

Deciding that they’d like to prove my point about the unravelling of society and the Left being a bitter, humorless bunch of that make the people at the DMV look like a jovial group of partygoers, members of the Left have decided that even the term “Boogaloo” is nearly hate speech.  Yeah, I’m not surprised, either.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.

William Butler Yeats wrote the above as the opening of a song for the band Iron Maiden®.  Sadly Bruce Dickenson rejected it on the grounds that all of the members of Iron Maiden© took a vote and decided that they would all be born sometime in the future when guitars were just a bit more electric but yet not too boogaloo.

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Yes, Iron Maiden did an 18 minute metal song about a poem written in 1798.  And it was glorious.

Instead, Yeats settled for using those lines for the opening of his poem The Second Coming a hundred years ago in 1919, and during this time he was writing about what he saw as an unravelling:  an unravelling of science, an unravelling of governmental structures, and an unravelling of heterogeneous communities.  He looked back at the deaths caused by the pointless World War I and its deformed stepchild – the Russian Revolution, and saw an ending of one world, and the birth of the next.

These destroyed structures were built on speed and modernity.  What did Yeats see replacing the modern world?

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Kardashians are planning on acknowledging their Wookie heritage in a new reality show.

Yeats continued with a vision as ugly as a Kardashian in a swimsuit:

Surely some revelation is at hand;
Surely the Second Coming is at hand.
The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out
When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi
Troubles my sight: a waste of desert sand;
A shape with lion body and the head of a man,
A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,
Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it
Wind shadows of the indignant desert birds.

What did Yeats see replacing the modern world?  Mysticism.  Power.  Blood.  He was right.  1919 was crappy, but the 20th Century was about to get a whole lot worse.  He concluded:

The darkness drops again but now I know
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Yup.  Creepy.  And Iron Maiden definitely should have recorded this, whether they were born or not.

Yeats’ vision is what we are living through again right now – the ending of one age, and the beginning of another.  This crisis cannot be driven by food shortages.  There is more food now than at any time in history.  It cannot be wealth – there is more individual wealth in the nations experiencing tumult than at any point in their histories.  It cannot be my hair.  My shiny scalp?  Sure.  Not my hair.

Certainly there are problems – I think that the people the Z-Man (LINK) calls the Dirt People (which almost certainly includes every reader of this blog as well as your constant writer, me) are experiencing an economy driven by and for the Cloud People (the Deep State, the Financial Elite).  Regardless of who you voted for in 2012, you knew that Mittens Romney and Barry Obama were on the same team, and it wasn’t your team.

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This might be where the Z-Man got that meme – at least it was the first thing I thought of.  And it explains sky-high real estate costs . . . .

In the end the reactions we’re seeing in society in 2019 (Trump and Brexit) are just that – reactions to a society that has gone too far Left, too fast.  Leftists never realize that all they have to do to enact their Socialist Utopia® is wait.  Instead, they smell the blood of the Right in the water and decide that it’s time to end the waiting.  Right now!  Because after making the conscious decision to borrow $375,000 for a degree in cooking, they now know that college (and those vacations to Europe on spring break!) is a right and should be free.

What do Leftist want?  Complete control.  When do they want it?  Now.  Impeachment is a technique for power and control, not enforcing the law, since at no point has anyone been able to articulate a law broken by Trump.  Nixon?  Conspiracy to commit a break-in.  Clinton?  Perjury.  Trump?  I still haven’t heard about a law that he broke that isn’t some sort of fashion or etiquette rule.

Trump is not a savior.  Trump is a symptom.  The Leftist reaction to Trump is yet another symptom.  And the inability to wait for an election that is less than a year out is yet another.

The Right is never the instigator of issues like this – there is a reason the Right is called reactionary – it reacts to the Left.  The Right just wants history to stop.  The Left wants change, and will look for any time to work for it – especially when society is functioning well.  The Left is like a wife who sees a fully functioning family, home mortgage nearly paid off, 20 years until retirement and says, “You know what?  Things are going well.  Let’s burn it all down.”

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As long as Stella gets her groove back, that’s all that’s important, am I right?

And the change the Left wants is never gradual – it is Revolution™.  The Left wants to destroy the existing social orders and replace them with Leftism.  As we’ve seen in the past (Robespierre, Stalin, Mao, Mangos and A Future That Must Not Be), Leftism always ends in a bloodbath, either as those on the Left kill everyone to the Right of them, or a cagey leader like Stalin kills all of the people to the Left of him.

This is the context we see ourselves in today.  All time high on the stock market, and all time high (excepting 1859) on the polarity seen in the United States.  We are splitting apart.

How does this end?  I think, if past trends for America have been true, there will be freedom.  America may not look like it does today – I think I’d actually bet money that it won’t.  There will be significant changes, and I think it will be very difficult for Washington D.C. to impose its will on Michigan, Montana, or Missouri if the peoples of those states are unwilling.

This is the last post of the ‘teens – my next post will be in the Tumultuous, Turbulent Twenties.  Remember folks, you heard that here first.  But you won’t hear it here last – I’m pretty sure the centre cannot hold . . . but neither will my belt, not after all of those free breadsticks.

Civil War Weather Report #7 – The War In The Right

“You mean the war betwixt the Yankees and the Americans?” – The Beverly Hillbillies

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You can always tell a hungry clock, they go back four seconds.

  1. Those who have an opposing ideology are considered evil.
  2. People actively avoid being near those of opposing ideology.  Might move from communities or states just because of ideology.
  3. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
  4. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures.  Just in case.

I’m holding at Stage 7 this month.  A more formal structure on the Right needs to be in place to get to Stage 8, as the Left has the structure of control in place.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Violence and Censorship Update – The War in the Right –– Updated Civil War II Index – Virginia and Demographics – Links

Welcome to Issue Seven 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 II, on the first or second Monday of every month.  Issue One is here (LINK), Issue Two is here (LINK), Issue Three is here (LINK), Issue Four is here (LINK), Issue Five is here (LINK), Issue Six is here (LINK).

ISSUES LINKS

Violence and Censorship Update

Censorship strikes again.  Owen Benjamin, comedian, had dozens of YouTube® videos.  Had.  He also had several hundred thousand subscribers and had accumulated tens of millions of minutes of time spent watching his videos.  I probably accounted for about thirty minutes – YouTube© suggested him to me, and gave him a try, but he wasn’t for me.  He was hardly offensive in the time I saw him.  He was goofy, as in didn’t believe that we’d been to the Moon and was sniffing around flat Earth territory.  Reality or the contrived personality of a comedian?  Beats me, but if I’m ever in a car with him I’m keeping him away from the map.

But people spent tens of millions of minutes (this is not an exaggeration) watching him.  Now he’s gone from YouTube™.  Other channels have been demonetized:  for a channel with large numbers of subscribers, that can mean the loss of tens of thousands of dollars in revenue.  YouTube® is playing for keeps, and some content creators are going to have to try to learn to make espresso if they want a shot at that barista job at Starbucks® in Tempe.

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What’s the difference between coffee and a barista’s opinion?  I asked for coffee.

Even if a channel isn’t banned or demonetized, YouTube® is manipulating search results to mute content it doesn’t like.  Edgy political content it used to send to me as a matter of course in recommendations doesn’t show up in my suggestions anymore – now I get videos on science, stuff that explodes, and how to knit using yarn you spin at home out of cat fur.

The channel “Press for Truth” did an experiment (LINK) where they did a search for “What do the Rothschilds think about Brexit?”  Press for Truth had a video with exactly that title that had over half a million views.  The result?  Press for Truth’s video (when I did the search) was fourth, behind older videos that were (mostly) less popular, but were from “established” news organizations.

I’d be a bit more sympathetic of YouTube’s® actions if we hadn’t seen again and again how the mainstream news organizations will bury news stories that are damaging to the Left (Weinstein, Epstein, etc.).  These same news organizations will also misleadingly phrase stories about people they don’t like.   For example, if I mentioned that bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki just might have had something to do with the Japanese surrender, we’d get:  “John Wilder’s unfounded claims that nuclear weapons had a part in ending World War II.”

Owen Benjamin went elsewhere to stream video, as did all of the other creators that have been banned by YouTube®.  But the new locations are far less lucrative, and have far less visibility.  It’s the electronic equivalent of setting up “free speech” zones.  Leftists make a great deal out of the fact that these are private companies making the censorship choices, but when a private company violates a principle of the Left, like making a Satanist remove a “hail Satan” shirt before getting on an airplane (this really happened)?

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I want nothing to do with the Devil.  I hate dealing with my ex-in-laws.

That’s a public shaming and a lawsuit, baby.

But not by the Right.  Censorship marches on.

The War in the Right

War has recently broken out in the Right.  The Zoomers (say, 1995 births to 2015 births) are now beginning to have their voices heard on the Right as well as the Left.  On the Left, they make up some portion of AntiFa, but on the Right they’re called “groypers.”  Don’t ask why they’re called that, it’s ultimately as meaningless as Madonna’s purity ring.

What the groypers are doing is rejecting the Leftist-friendly premanufactured conservatism that is being pushed at them by Conservative, Inc., as exemplified by Charlie Kirk and Turning Point USA®.  At one point, Charlie Kirk said, more or less, that a green card should be stapled to every diploma earned by a foreign student in the United States.  In November, after attacks by the groypers, Kirk relented:

“I said something a couple weeks ago that was not an opinion I still currently hold where I said something about F-1 Visas where I said that F-1 Visas should be given out basically to every single person who goes through the college education system. I was wrong when I said that.”

When asked if he would support a policy that was good for the United States, but not good for Israel, Kirk refused to answer.  Charlie Kirk wasn’t the only victim of the groypers:

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Unlike illegal aliens, E.T. eventually went home.

The Zoomers see that they’re a generation that sees lower job opportunities because they’re facing increased competition by lower-paid immigrants, legal and illegal.  They also don’t see a “conservative” case for making LGBTWXYZ+ a part of the platform, when there is nearly zero support for the Right from that group.

Silencing the groypers won’t make them go away, and is probably not possible – they’re bright and tech savvy in a way unlike any generation before.  Regardless, this is another sign of our nation unravelling.

Updated Civil War II Index

More graphs, with full bikini treatment.

Violence:

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Up is bad.  Violence is finally starting to drop for the winter, though it’s still higher than it was in spring.  Will we have real riots in June, July, and August of 2020, or will the Left take a “wait and see” approach to see if their candidate is elected?  Oh, wait . . . Biden?  Yeah.  They’ll riot.

Political Instability:

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Up is bad, and it is up (a little) this month, and you can see this graph has some very interesting curves.  It’s surprising to me how little, but I think that’s a reflection that, outside of between AOC’s ears, no one thinks that impeachment is going anywhere, and she thinks it’s a gum flavor, like spearmint or peppermint.

Economic:

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Down is bad.  The economic indicators all were positive, and strongly so, in November.  This is likely due to the Coppertone® we applied back to the economy back in October.

Illegal Aliens:

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Down is good, since (in theory) ICE is catching fewer aliens because there are fewer people trying to get in.  The numbers are down this month, and as you can see if you observe around the southern border.  We could drop illegal immigration to zero if all new illegals were forced to watch MSNBC®.

Virginia and Demographics

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The Virginia elections gave control of essentially all statewide institutions to the Left.  From 1952 to 2004, the only Democratic candidate for president to win Virginia was Lyndon Johnson in 1964.  Since 2008, Virginia presidential elections have gone uniformly for Democrats – and now the transformation of the state is complete.  Sure, there are still Republicans there, but from now on they will control nothing.  As I wrote a year ago (Trump: The Last President?), this demographic shift isn’t only occurring in Virginia, but in Texas as well.

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I can see why – old people really give you something to chew over.

As long as the demographic shift of new immigrants (yes, even legal ones) to places like Texas and Virginia continues, this trend is inevitable.  The mathematics are simple – two out of three immigrants vote for Democrats.  You cannot continue to import people who vote for Leftist policies and not expect that they’ll eventually win.  The odd thing is that I’ve seen comments from folks in Texas saying, “It won’t happen here.”  I’m sure that the folks in California and now Virginia might want to have a word with you.

This demographic change will lead to a permanently politically dispossessed class – and a feeling in the Left that the Left can make any law they like.  And that will lead to a very difficult reaction.  Heck, I’d consider moving overseas, but I’m scared of the six month rabies quarantine.  I mean, would I have Internet?

Links

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Please leave links either in the comments below, or feel free to send me an email if you’re shy.  If you email me, I won’t say that the link is from you unless I get permission.  JOKE HERE.

From Vote Harder at The Burning Platform:

Bad Cop One – Taser Torture

Bad Cop Two – Mom Robbed of Bail

Bad Cop Three – No Such Thing as Excessive Force

Bad Cop Four – Growing things?  That’s a raid.

Privacy?  What’s that?

Overdue books?  Jail.  (I have two books that are overdue by thirty years.)

From AC at The Burning Platform:

AntiFa Assassination Guide

Groypers.

From KaD at The Burning Platform:

Al-Cleveland

From “Mygirl…maybe” at The Burning Platform:

More Virginia.

From Hank Curmudgeon:

Where the food is.

From Ricky:

Free Range Love

Food:  Pigs in Danger

Coup?

Nearly a half billion guns in American hands.

Avoiding Civil War – Mises.org.

Robert Gore –Alternative Reality.

Trump.

The Atlantic:  How America Ends.

 

AP on The Atlantic article above.

 

Trump Impeachment/Civil War.

Sessions protests.

 

Chinese Chess Game.

Coming soon:  Weimar America.

 

Alexander the Great, Smallpox, and Saving Western Civilization

“All we can do, Scully, is pull the thread.  See what it unravels.” – The X-Files

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Alexander the Great and Smokey the Bear had one thing in common:  same middle name.

In 333 B.C., Alexander the Great entered the city of Gordium.  In the city there was a really tangled piece of rope – so tangled that no one could see how the intricate knot was made.  It was ancient.  The legend was that whoever could solve the knot, would become ruler of all of Asia.  We have a similar puzzle in our laundry room, and whoever can sort all of the socks can choose dinner next Wednesday.

Alexander the Great, it is said, fiddled with the knot for a few minutes.  After deciding that was as useless as trying to push a piece of spaghetti, Alexander drew his sword and cut the knot in half.  Problem solved.  Was he worried that the locals would think he was cheating?  Nope.  He had an army.  From this story we get the phrase “Gordian knot” for a problem that can’t be solved under the terms it was created.

I’m just hoping Pugsley doesn’t solve that sock problem by putting them down the garbage disposal.  Again.

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Okay, this isn’t my laundry room.  But I once did own a hat just like that one.

We are in a strange place.  In the nation, and in nations all over the world.  We are all separating.  The world is falling apart.  But don’t consider world civilization a complete failure – remember, the swimming pool on the Titanic is still full after over 100 years so that counts for something.

The unravelling of society, however, can be seen in many ways:

  • Vaccine Believers and Anti-Vaxxers
  • No Brexit and Brexiteers
  • Global Warmists and Climate Deniers
  • Globalists and Nationalists
  • Flat Earthers (they’re all around the globe!) and, um, I guess Sphere-ists.
  • Left and Right
  • Nuclear Power Advocates versus No Nuke Activists

This separation was pointed out to me in an email from my friend who I will call John, because he has an awesome first name, and I promise is totally not my alter ego.  The questions he asks are deep, and the answers aren’t necessarily obvious.  When I finally get to a post based on one of John’s ideas, it might have taken dozens of hours of study and research where I try to prove my ideas wrong with the data.  Occasionally, I do prove myself wrong.  As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly.

If you haven’t seen this, it’s Thanksfabulous.

I won’t go into detail on all of the symptoms of unravelling listed in the bullet points above, since if I did I think the post would be longer than Bill Clinton’s address book.  And I could easily add additional topics, like the validity of the Moon landing, homeopathy, and court verdicts like the one showing RoundUp® causes cancer.  But I’ll discuss just vaccines, for an example.

All vaccines are safe and a good idea.  Well . . . maybe not.  I looked first at chickenpox.  Deaths from chickenpox have dropped since the chickenpox vaccine became mandatory from about 100 deaths per year in the United States to (as near as I can find) zero.  But let’s face it – to die of chickenpox a kid has to have a pretty weak system already.  If it wasn’t chickenpox, somebody would have probably popped the kid with a Nerf® gun or the kid would have faced a strong breeze and it would have finished him off.

But let’s assume that the 100 who died were perfectly healthy kids.  The vaccine costs about $300.  Multiply that by the 3.9 million kids born in the United States each year, and the cost of the vaccination alone is nearly $1.2 billion dollars.  Divide by the one hundred substandard kids you would have saved, and that’s (drumroll) nearly $12 million dollars per kid “saved”.  I assure you, you can make a new one for far less than that.

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He also lifts dictionaries to work out.  He says that’s how he gets definition.

The cost benefit ratio is silly.  If anyone said we had to spend a billion dollars to save 100 random kids, we’d never do it – don’t believe me?  Our school buses are made from thin sheet metal by the lowest bidder.  If we spent that same billion dollars on safer school buses, we’d save far more than 100 lives.  I don’t doubt that the vaccine works.

So what?  It’s not worth it.

I moved to the next vaccine:  Gardasil©.  Gardasil™ protects against nine variations of HPV – HPV is the stuff that gives humans warts.  In this case, Gardasil® protects against warts on your naughty bits.  So, I started to research, but I assure you I avoided pictures.  Ewwww.

I attempted to look into vaccine safety for Gardasil©, and found a most curious phenomenon.  When I tried to find information that showed data that put Gardasil™ in a bad light, Google® was useless.  Any query about deaths related to Gardasil® led only to how safe and wonderful it was and how we should probably rub it into the fur of our pets, bathe in it, drink it in shot glasses.

I swapped over to Bing© and got actual answers to the question about Gardasil© safety, learning that there were nearly 63,000 reported adverse reactions to Gardasil™, 317 reported deaths, and a study indicating that maybe Gardasil™ causes infertility in 1/3 of the women that take it.

In fairness, it is thought that the vaccinations of Gardasil© might save 2,900 lives a year from cervical cancer starting sometime in the year 2046.  This sounds like me trying to make a joke, but most cases of cervical cancer won’t hit until a woman hits her fifties, and the vaccinations didn’t start in earnest until just over a decade ago on teenage girls.

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So, what if Gardasil© is the vaccine that causes the zombie apocalypse?  Hmmm?  Didn’t think of that in your double-blind studies, did you?

And I used the word “might” for a reason.  There’s no study that shows that Gardasil® will stop cervical cancer, although I’ll believe scientists are probably right.  But that has to be viewed with a grain of salt, too:  according to one source, the fatality rate of cervical cancer for women who get regular tests is nearly zero, with or without Gardasil©.  I ran the numbers on this one, and on a cost basis it’s better than chickenpox, at only $700,000 per theoretical future life saved in 2046.

Me?  If I ever get a uterus, I think I’d skip Gardasil™, though that won’t be the first thing that comes to mind if I wake up with a uterus.

I’m not an Anti-Vaxxer:  my kids are vaccinated against things like diphtheria, tetanus, measles, mumps, and rubella.  Yes, I’d vaccinate them again.   I think we did opt out of the chickenpox vaccine for The Boy and Pugsley, but I can’t recall.  It seems like there’s a clear cut case for eliminating many diseases, like, oh, polio.  I don’t think the world misses smallpox, either, which was eliminated thanks mainly to vaccines.

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I have another vaccine joke, but it’s like smallpox:  no one gets it anymore.

But anyone who questions a vaccine is branded an “anti-vaxxer” and ignored.  In fairness, many people who question vaccines have valid questions, and want the real information so they can make a choice.  Google®, however, seems to think that sort of question is not valid, and only pointed to pro-vaccine sources in page after page after page of results, no matter how I asked the question.  As Mark Twain said, “Censorship is telling a man he can’t have a steak because a baby can’t chew it.”

And that illuminates the real problem.

The legitimacy of Big Science is in doubt.  The legitimacy of Government is in doubt.  People are also doubting:

  • The educational system.
  • The United Nations.
  • Mainstream news media.
  • Mainstream entertainment media.
  • The courts.
  • Silicon Valley tech companies.
  • Many (but not all) Fortune® 500™ companies.

And it’s not just in the United States – it’s spreading.  Riots have broken out in Chile, which is the most prosperous nation in South America and has the least amount of income inequality on the continent.  Europe is facing Brexit, the Yellow Vest movement, and the national rejections from countries like Denmark, Poland, and Hungary to unfettered migration.

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I guess Hillary is still looking for Mr. Riot.

The world is unravelling.  One possible reason is we’ve reached the end of the Fourth Turning (The Economy, The Fourth Turning, Kondratieff, and You.) where this sort of social chaos is to be expected.  Another is that we are seeing increasing polarity in public life.  While the Right has moved farther Right, the Left has gone very far Left.  It’s not me imagining this, like it turned out I was imagining Tyler Durden after I started up all of those Fight Clubs®.  No.  This rift shows up in the graphs:

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Politically we are flying apart.  Is part of this demographics?  Certainly.  Immigrants (legal or illegal) to the United States vote overwhelmingly Left.  Why?  It doesn’t matter.  They do.  Immigrants and their children are perhaps the single largest driving force of this polarity shift, but there are other factors.

We’re also becoming more urban – this urbanization leads to a lower sense of belonging, and drives people to vote Left.  Sure, you’re a fan of (INSERT FOOTBALL TEAM HERE), but how many people in faceless condos in Seattle or Salt Lake City or San Francisco know each other?  When I moved to Modern Mayberry, neighbors up and down the street knew I worked at the PEZ® factory before the house deal closed.  Do we know our neighbors like family?  No.  But we know who they are, and know a bit about them.  Urbanized people are more disconnected from their neighbors than rural folks.  That disconnection makes distrust in your neighbor that much easier.

Lastly, the Internet provides a source of information that wasn’t available in the past.  What was only available in libraries and in mimeographed samizdat is now available to everyone.  It’s now possible to research things like vaccines and global warming from your couch, and pull in better data than would have been available to almost any scientist in 1980.  And news?  The Internet has pulled it from the control of the gatekeepers.  When John Podesta’s emails were leaked, I was combing through them, and found many things before the news media did, like the fact that a nice Nigerian Prince wanted to give him a lot of money.

These are the symptoms of a society where the fundamental premise of that society is no longer a given.  The United States has been defined as meeting everything to everyone.  We are finding that those are empty promises – it’s really about power and control.  With the amount of information out there, however, power and control can’t be kept.

How do we solve this puzzle?

Our society, our culture, our trust won’t be regained through Congressional committees or an impeachment.  It won’t be made whole by an election.  And it won’t be healed through movies or television.

Someone, somewhere, is going to have to cut that knot.

34 Random Thoughts About The Economy, Money, and Jobs

“Well, Saddam owed us money.” – Arrested Development

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Maybe I should get more sleep.

It’s nearly Thanksgiving, and the next few weeks will be busy.  Now that The Boy is off at college and no longer engaged in half a dozen activities, we’re down to just having to chase Pugsley around.  Not so busy that there won’t be a full slate of posts – those are planned for the next few weeks, barring a change based on current events or me being distracted by shiny objects.

Today, though, I thought I’d change it up a bit, so here are a few random thoughts on business, economics, and wealth.

  1. The last economic crash was about a housing bubble. The next economic crash will be about our “everything” bubble where money flows faster to chase smaller and smaller returns.
  2. The biggest thing to crash after the next bubble pops will be money. It’s never fun when the value of money drops to zero, since having a little inflation is like being a little pregnant – not much happens at the beginning, but by the end everyone is yelling and screaming and covered in blood.
  3. The next economic crash will be the biggest in our lives.
  4. Or not. I’ve been wrong before.
  5. But I still think 2025 will be interesting.
  6. Most jobs don’t require thinking nowadays – they are a set of procedures and rules based on the lowest common denominator employee. The best jobs like this are at the DMV, which at least allow you to be mean and unpleasant, plus government benefits.
  7. Jobs that don’t require thinking can be paid at the lowest possible wage. If you’re lucky enough to be hired at Old MacDonald’s farm, I hope you can rise to the C-I-E-I-O position, but you’ll have to be out standing in your field.study.jpg
  8. Businesses that do things immorally don’t automatically fail because they do things immorally – many immoral and even evil businesses flourish. It’s only in the movies that the good guys always win.
  9. When I gave career advice to The Boy, I advised him to build expertise and skills in things that couldn’t be done over the Internet or by an outsourced employee working in a country where the native language consists only of vowels, grunts, and humming noises but yet has 355 terms for “waddle”.
  10. Always be worth more to your company than your company is paying you.
  11. “What have you done for me lately?” is a good and fair question from any boss.
  12. The second mouse gets the cheese in the trap. No, I’m not going first.
  13. If it’s choosing between money and honor, choose honor. The bills might be more difficult to pay, but at least you can look yourself in the mirror.  Until the power company cuts the electricity.
  14. Seriously though, choose honor.cat.jpg
  15. It’s the risk that you don’t take that you’ll regret. But you only hear successful people say that.
  16. Never build a business on what you love, since no one cares about medieval Norse poetry. Build a business on what you do that other people love and will pay for.  You’ll learn to love it.
  17. Capitalism works great to allocate spoils in an expanding market. Capitalism fails in a contracting one.  There’s nothing easy about the transition.
  18. Being short of money and optimistic about the future is better than having lots of cash and being pessimistic.rain.jpg
  19. Money can’t make you happy, but you can avoid most of life’s miseries by having a few hundred thousand dollars. Not every one of life’s miseries, but most of them.
  20. Whenever anyone says it’s not about the money, it’s really about the money.
  21. Whenever anyone says cost is no object, you can expect that statement to be proven false once the estimates arrive. Make them pay in advance.
  22. The reward for work well done is more work. This is actually a pretty good deal – we tend to buy video games built around this same premise.
  23. The rewards aren’t linear – the closer to the top, the greater the rewards. But you have to fight the big boss at the end before you retire.
  24. Great bosses are rarer than you might imagine. Most bosses are okay.  Some are awful.
  25. The worst kind of boss is a weak boss. They will praise you when you don’t deserve it and sell you out when you don’t.
  26. Teamwork makes it easy to blame someone else.
  27. In America, when two men meet, they ask “What do you do?” Too often we equate ourselves with “what we do,” while forgetting we get to choose who we are.  Unless you’re Johnny Depp, in which case you are stuck being Johnny Depp.question.jpg
  28. If you find yourself dreading the alarm clock and not wanting to go to work you go anyway. It’s your job.  If it’s too much?  Find another job or retire.
  29. True story: a friend of mine had a sister that decided to retire one day when she was about 30.  She was shocked when the checks stopped coming, she seemed to think that when you retired, the company had to keep paying you.  I think she’s a Bernie® voter now.
  30. Me? I’m trying to start thinking about retirement before my boss starts thinking about my retirement.pounds.jpg
  31. When I was first hired into a job, I heard a statistic that 70% of a typical workday for a typical employee was unproductive. I was shocked that the figure was so high.
  32. Now, after working for years, I’m shocked that the figure is so low. I tried to come up with jokes about lazy people, but they just won’t work.
  33. Meetings often happen just because they’re on the schedule. Look like you’re paying attention and don’t sleep, no matter how quickly it makes the meeting go.
  34. I had a friend who worked at the Unemployment Department who got fired. He still had to show up the next day.

A.I., Health Care, Google, and Elon Musk

“Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go home and have a heart attack.” – Pulp Fiction

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I wanted to get a doctor appointment to treat my invisibility, but he said he couldn’t see me right now.

A computer can predict who will die using medical data better than a doctor.  As of today, like science has no answer as to how California copes with the landfill requirements of Kardashian body hair, science has no understanding of how the computer is doing it.

A gentleman by the name of Dr. Brian Formwalt led a study where approximately 1,770,000 electrocardiogram records were fed into a computer.  An electrocardiogram is also known as an ECG, for obvious reasons.  For less obvious reasons, it’s also known as an EKG.  EKG stands for elektrokardiographie, which is exactly the same thing as an electrocardiogram, but in German.  If your doctor calls it an EKG, he just might be thinking about expanding his living room.

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Always be careful when Germans research expanding anything.

But back to the study.  So, there were 1,770,000 records, but only 400,000 people in the study, so the average person had more than four records.  Obviously, these weren’t all healthy people, since I have had (I believe) exactly one ECG in my life, and it was for a pre-employment physical as an astronaut for Wal-Mart®.  At least the recruiter told me Wal-Mart© needed astronauts, before Wal-Mart™ cancelled the program when China accidentally delivered 50,000 small space shuttle toys rather than one life-size one.  I guess that’s what happens when you buy space shuttles by the pound.

But what is an ECG?

Electrocardiograms are the little machine light that makes the beep sound every time your heart beats.  The beat is measured by injecting elves into your body that send radio signals to the machine every time that your heart muscle squeezes them.  Okay, the technical side might be a bit off, but it doesn’t really matter if you or I know exactly how the machine gets the data.  It’s just the device that goes beep-beep-beep-beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep to let you know that John Wick’s® dog died.

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Cardiac surgeons are the guys you want to see for a change of heart.

Okay, so now you know everything that you might need to know about technology invented in 1895.  But it now produces an electronic file rather than the old method, where the heart rhythm was tattooed on the backs of ill-tempered Chihuahuas.  The 1,770,000 records were then fed into a computer that had been previously taught to read ECGs.  The simple question was asked – which of these patients will be dead in a year?  I mean it used to make me feel better when my doctor told me, “that’s normal for your age,” but then I realized that at some point being dead will be normal for my age.

Since all of the records were over a year old, it was known which of the patients were alive and which were dead.  Essentially, the doctors were (with very little data) asking the computer to predict the future.  It did.  And it did it better than human doctors.  Some of the ECGs looked absolutely fine to human doctors – they detected no abnormality, yet the computer was able to see something that accurately allowed it to predict the death of the patient.

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Then the next doctor told me it looked like I was pregnant.  I said, “But I’m a guy.”  He replied, “But it looks like you’re pregnant.”

It doesn’t surprise me.  Computers are powerful tools that are great at taking lots of data and being able to compare it quickly.  The reason that they can do this is they:

  • Have 100% focus, and if they get a sore throat you can give them Robo-tussin®.
  • Don’t need to make payments on second wife’s Mercedes® and third wife’s Lexusâ„¢.
  • Can retain every previous ECG reading ever seen and instantly recall the pattern if needed, much like I can retain the plot of every one of the episodes of Gilligan’s Island.
  • Don’t get distracted by how healthy a patient looks or how much kale he eats.

These are great advantages.  In the future, machines will be able to do things where we may never understand how they made a correlation, or, as in this case, even what the correlation is.  Arthur C. Clarke Third Law states that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”, and he’s right.  Health care generates amazing amounts of data, and also outcomes.  It’s only a matter of time until some big corporation gets evil . . .

Oh, yeah, Google®.  It bought Fitbit®.  Now it knows what you’re searching for, and it also has a treasure-trove of heartbeat and fitness data.

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Google® is female.  It won’t let me finish a sentence without giving suggestions.

Well, I guess that’s kind of scary.  But at least Google© doesn’t have access to medical records.  Oh, Google™ has patient names, diagnoses, prescription data, and records from 2,600 hospitals.  Millions, perhaps tens of millions of patients?  In (possibly) all of these states:  Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Rhode Island, Maryland, D.C., Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, Virginia, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida?

Nah, that should work out fine.  There isn’t a record of Google® ruthlessly monetizing every corner of the Internet not already inhabited by Facebook™, Amazon® and Microsoft©.

I think the case is clear for someone to go through this data.  With only a few records and outcomes fed into it, a computer is better at predicting medical outcomes than a very good doctor.  If all of the data could be available?  I think we’d have a legitimate revolution in health care.

Frankly, if we don’t descend into civil chaos, I think that this health care revolution is certain.

But Google®?  Google™ has proven itself untrustworthy.

I’d suggest that we give control of the initiative to a leader that’s more trustworthy than Google®, like Bernie Madoff, but he seems to be otherwise, um, detained.  And I’m sure that Jeffery Epstein has better morals, but, um, he seems to have accepted a unique opportunity with the Clinton Foundation.

Heck, let’s give the job to Elon Musk.

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