Stoic – Page 4 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Bread and Circuses, 2021 Version

“We soon forgot the taste of bread, the sound of wind in the trees. We even forgot our name.” – Lord of the Rings

I promise I won’t make too many bread jokes; I’m not a gluten for punishment.

One of the reasons I keep mentioning the Roman Republic and Roman Empire is that they were an amazing civilization. Many of the things that we take for granted as being a part of our civilization were a part of Rome 2000 or so years ago. They invented the Slap Chop® and Sham-Wow™ even before it was cool.

I recall reading Letters from a Stoic – which were the collected letters of Lucius Annaeus Seneca the Younger (whose wife said, when she was mad, “Lucius, you got some ‘splainin’ to do!”) to one of his friends. I recommend it. Some of the details Seneca mentioned in his life were stunningly similar to life today:

Seneca wrote about government regulations.
Seneca wrote about stopping overnight at a hotel.
And, while at that same hotel, his room looked out over the weight room where men were pumping iron and working out.
I’d joke that he complained about the free continental breakfast, but, hey, everyone knows you’ve got to get there early to get the good waffles.

What a Roman hotel might have looked like.

The Romans, it seems, are not so different than we are. In some ways, their technology has outlasted time in ways that many of today’s structures won’t:

They had concrete that was objectively better than almost anything we could produce until the 1950s.
They built aqueducts that brought clean, fresh, water to hundreds of thousands. Some of these are still in use today (though some have been reconstructed).
Roman roads and bridges are still in use today.
Romans invented algebra, but, sadly, X was always equal to 10.

One of the earlier mistakes was in 140 B.C. when Rome was still a republic: it was called the cura annonae, which was just welfare in the form of grain, or, later, bread. Why bread? I assume the Romans had yet to master Hot Pocket® technology.

Regardless of what you call it, it was Roman welfare.

Why?

Why do politicians create welfare? For votes. Duh.

Just like Goldilocks, I wondered if a food could be hot, cold, and just right at the same time. Then I remembered Hot Pockets™ exist.

Don’t get me wrong – just like there is a proper time to have a roll of duct tape, rope, a sharp knife, and garbage bags in the trunk, there is a proper time and place to have welfare. Sometimes people are too old, too unwell, or too mentally deficient to work. But enough about Joe Biden.

Eventually, though, public welfare always proves to be corrosive to freedom. It creates a class that votes for sustenance instead of working. And since it’s a government program, the only way that it can be administered is if (eventually) everyone is caught in the snare.

So, that’s the bread.

What are the circuses?

Entertainment. Generally, entertainment of the lowest common denominator type. It’s an amusement for the masses. Why focus on learning? Why focus on things that are difficult? Don’t study physics, it’s hard. Study gender studies. They have cookies after class.

I hear a chopper is the best way to get the aristocracy out of France as well as the best way to get commies out of the United States.

That’s what the circus brought to Rome. The Roman citizens wanted action now. They wanted the gladiators spilling blood in the Coliseum. They wanted plays performed on the streets. And Senators (and Senator wannabees) and Emperors alike provided games and carnivals and distractions.

Generally, what distracts and amuses one generation isn’t enough for the next, so the idea is that the amusement has to get progressively edgier – more violent. More degenerate. It’s all fun, right?

After the fall of the Republic and the rise of Empire, a humor author named John Wilder no, Zeus Ferocior (I expect certain people, cough, cough to fix my poor translation of John Wilder into Latin, but Zeus Ferocier just sounds so cool, as long as no one calls me Dr. Zeus), no. The guy’s name was Decimus Junius Juvenalis, (but folks just call him Juvenal) and he made this wonderful observation:

. . . the People have abdicated our duties; for the People who once upon a time handed out military command, high civil office, legions — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just two things: bread and circuses.

Actually, it looks like a picture of a person drawn by someone who has never seen a person.

Think about that. After a period of hundreds of years where civic virtue was defined by participation and improving the public welfare, civic virtue became defined by being good at getting free stuff. Hard times, of course, caused the politicians to multiply the amount of bread and circuses given to the people.

Why?

The leaders were smart. The easiest way to keep the citizens quiet is to keep them well-fed with glazed eyes – something people who own sheep already know.

The object was simple: to keep the sheep citizens thinking, not of the Republic, but of themselves. Bread and circuses wasn’t an appeal to the strongest and best parts of man, bread and circuses was an appeal to the lowest and weakest parts of man. Rather than think of what a wonderful civilization we could create, how about we think about the greatest pleasure we could create for ourselves, right this minute?

Want to hear a sheep joke? Stop me if you’ve herd this one . . .

COVID has been our multiplier. It’s pushed the people to their most dependent, and pushed the bacon-wrapped-shrimp class to their most manipulative.

What is beyond the Federal government now?

Landlords in the several states can be forced to provide property for free. Forever, apparently. Depravation of property without due process? That’s rookie talk.
Entire economic sectors can be shut down at will. The final victory of large corporations over small owners can be enshrined forever.
Mandates can be issued that people can be forced to take experimental injections of a dubious nature that appear to have limited benefits and unknown side effects. Because? Because we said so.
Coordinated public/private attacks on speech have become the norm. Have an unpopular idea? Have facts that contradict the narrative? Shhh, comrade.

So, nothing is beyond them. Property isn’t protected. Livelihood isn’t protected. Bodily autonomy isn’t protected. I’d say that Netflix® is still there to account for “the pursuit of happiness” but have you seen the shows on Netflix™ recently?

Ugh.

Momma always said life is like Netflix®. It has a monthly price and hates you.

I guess that’s a wrap. Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are out. Bread and circuses are in. Give me freedom or give me Doritos® and Hulu Plus©.

The end result is a difficult one. Collapses in liberty lead to collapses in economic systems. And vice versa. When the economic freedom drops out, the Doritos™ and Hulu Plus© become gruel and occasional candles at the GULAG. If you’re lucky.

When a culture is young and vibrant, economic liberty leads to prosperity. That freedom to create results in economic winners and losers. Winners are rewarded, losers drop out, or join the winning team. That’s in a free market.

Unlike real communism, real free markets have been tried. And they’ve resulted in the greatest prosperity and freedom that the world has ever seen.

We have reached the intersection of economic system collapse, collapse in the faith of the governance structure of the nation, and collapse in our trust for each other.

I stopped burning bridges in life. They’re made of steel now.

How long can that go on?

Well, Juvenal was writing not from the period of the Republic, but from the period of the Emperors. As I’ve written before – the choice that will exist is far larger than the ‘Rona ever was: the choice between dissolution of our country and a new Emperor, whatever he may be called. Czar Wilder sounds nice, but hey, I could stand being a silly old king.

And I can assure you, that Juvenal’s observation of (panem et circensenes) bread and circuses, will be on the mind of whatever new Emperor might emerge.

It worked for the Romans for a few hundred years, after all.

I wonder who will be writing about us in 2000 years?

I hope he’s a steely-eyed blonde dude by the name of Zeus. Or, John.

Cathedrals, Buzz Aldrin, And Changing The World

“You know, most people think that the name Buzz Aldrin has some huge meaning behind it. Nope, he was afraid of bees.” – Frasier

What’s the difference between Joe Biden and Buzz Aldrin? Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon. Joe Biden likes kids to rub his leg hair.

I think back to the builders of the European cathedrals. The construction of Notre Dame was started in 1163 A.D., not long after the Norman Conquest of England. Notre Dame was finished in 1345 A.D.

182 years. I might not even live that long, and I take vitamins and eat only a diet of meat that I hunt half-naked while armed only with stone-tipped spears. The people in Wal-Mart® have gotten a bit tired of the spears, but it doesn’t technically violate their weapons policy. And I use a Visa™ to pay, though they make a “eeeew” face when I pull it from my fur loincloth on a sweaty summer day.

Think about that. NO! Not my sweaty fur loincloth, the cathedral. Think about the motivation that it requires to get up every morning when the thing you’re trying to accomplish won’t be done in your lifetime. Or the lifetime of your child. Or the lifetime of their children.

That requires motivation. Also, I have no idea what they used for alarm clocks, and their humor-blogging infrastructure appeared to be singing marginally naughty songs about the local barmaid and complaining about how French they were and how they hoped the Germans would never invent panzers.

The Hunchback of Notre Dame sure had a twisted back story.

Motivation, though, remains key in everything you do in life, even if you’re not building a cathedral. One motivational mistake is to aim too high. When someone aims too high, they run the risk of being disappointed by results.

As I’ve discussed with one of my friends, he noted that research shows the most happy people in the Olympics®, overall, are the bronze medal winners. Third place isn’t so bad. Since I heard that the intelligence of dolphins was second only to man, that means Leftists should be happy, being in third place and all.

For the bronze medal winners, well, here they are on the world stage. They did really well. Were they close to winning it all? Sure, close enough to get a bronze medal. But, there’s the guy over there with the silver medal, so, he and another guy were better.

Most bronze medal winners can be happy that if they’d been just a little bit better, they’d have been in . . . second place. If they’d worked a lot harder, they’d have still been only one place better. So, third isn’t so bad. They might even get the Junior High Marching Band to lead a parade when they get home.

The silver medal winner, though, will always have it eating on him: what if he hadn’t skipped practice that week? What if he had pushed a little harder in the weight room? The silver medalist is plagued with a bushel basket of “what if’s” that will wake him up in the middle of the night. Second place is tantalizing. It is the story of near success, like England’s soccer team.

Helen Keller never saw a movie about pirates. Because she’s dead.

The gold medalist? It depends. In many cases, Olympic™ level athletes work for two decades to get the skill and experience to win Olympic® gold, to be, literally, the best in the world at something that no one will pay them to do.

Sure winning’s great, right? But what happens when the dog finally catches the car? What then?

Let’s move sideways a bit more, and return to one of my favorite people in history: Buzz Aldrin. It will all make sense in the end. I’m a trained professional.

Buzz was a guy who did a lot of things that were world-class. He went to the USMA at West Point. He was a fighter pilot who shot down commies in Korea, but still didn’t get to kill as many commies as Mao or Stalin did. He got a doctorate from MIT on rocket navigation.

And one other thing. What was it?

Oh, yeah. He was the second man on the frigging Moon.

That’s really cool. But there appears to be a downside to that. It wasn’t a just something small and fleeting like an Olympic® gold medal, it was one of the ultimate gold medals in all of human history.

Ever.

How do you follow that up? Get a Denny’s® Franchisee Award for cleanest bathroom in Des Moines?

I hear Santa’s bathroom is clean because he uses Comet.

Neil Armstrong figured out how to follow it up. That man was always kind of spooky and Zen and perhaps was okay owning a Denny’s© in Des Moines, selling Moons over My Hammies™ and Rootie Tootie Fresh and Fruity® pancakes.

Buzz didn’t figure it out, probably because his work in physics and killing commies did not prepare him to make a decent pancake. Imagine: Buzz was 39 and there was literally no way his life hadn’t peaked. Nothing, and I mean nothing he could ever do again would match up to what he did.

First a week passes. Then a month passes. Then a year passes. The hollow feeling inside of Buzz grew. How do you move forward? How do you top yourself? I mean, you could make a really great pancake, but it would have to be the best pancake in the history of pancakes. Dang. That still doesn’t beat being on the frigging Moon.

He was stumped. He had fame. He had the ability to get whatever money he wanted, more or less.

But he had peaked.

What to do?

Buzz crawled into a bottle. Eventually, after leaving the Air Force, Buzz even spent time selling used cars. Sure, that worked for Kurt Russell in the 1980 film, but Buzz was awful at it.

What’s the difference between a used car salesman and a COVID-Jab advocate? The used car salesman knows when he’s lying.

As near as I can tell, Mr. Aldrin finally pulled himself out of his funk. He finally decided his place was being an advocate for manned spaceflight, specifically to Mars. He even helped to create a transfer orbit to make a trip to Mars the most time-effective that he could envision. You could say that Buzz figured out the gravity of the situation.

That more than anything, I think, helped him. Buzz found something that was so big, so important, that he knew he wasn’t going to be able to do it in his lifetime.

Mars. A worthy goal for mankind. A goal that is meant for brave dreamers, for people who might want to change humanity. He had found his cathedral.

Again. Buzz had already done it once.

Mr. Aldrin is an unusual case – one of the highest achievers in a generation of high achievers. Many mornings I’m just glad that the alarm managed to wake me up. But I’ve had my share of success in the business world, reaching as high as I ever really wanted to go, doing the one job I wanted to do.

When Buzz Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, and Mike Collins went to meet President Nixon after the Moon mission, Mike had to spend the entire time driving around the White House.

Where Buzz aimed high, perhaps I didn’t aim as high, but I still got there.

Then what?

My writing is a part of that. Where do you go when you have whatever you want?

You find something important, and you start building. You start building something more important than you. I think Neil Armstrong found that when he started teaching. Perhaps he got his satisfaction from helping the next generation learn.

I can’t be sure. Neil didn’t really say. He seemed happy that the attention had passed. My Apollo-gies if I got that wrong. And this isn’t about him, anyway.

The lesson I learned from Buzz was a simple one: have a goal.

Find a cathedral to build. Find something so much bigger than yourself that you’re willing to build it even though no one alive on Earth will ever see it through. Make it something that you can care about. Make it big enough that, at best, you can help build only part of it.

If you can find your cathedral, you will have the rarest of gifts: you will shape the future.

Remember, not all cathedrals are made with stones, and the best ones are built in the minds of men.

Why?

Because rent is cheaper there.

The Wilder Response To Mr. Biden

“It’s perfect. We traded one nuked civilization for another.” – Battlestar Galactica.

Bill Murray wasn’t cast as Thor by Marvel®. They figured that no one likes an electricity Bill.

I had an utterly different post planned. It was so funny that the laughing that it would induce would have caused your ribs to exit your body. It was a post so funny, it was dangerous. Comedy, as they say, is not always pretty. I try to do those posts on Fridays. Why?

I had a boss that gave sage advice: never give your boss bad news on a Friday afternoon or a Monday morning. I figure that people need a palate cleanser going into the weekend, and try to provide a bit of fun. And this post that I had planned? It would have been banned by the Geneva Convention as a Weapon of Mass Hilarity.

Sadly, that post might now be lost to history, since I have to replace it with this one. Normally, my posts are created weeks in advance and focus tested against a cross-section of laboratory badgers who have no spleens. Why no spleens? They tell me that’s important, something about we don’t need no spleenin’ badgers.

But no, the Occupant-in-Chief decided to make the single most irresponsible statement ever made by someone who was sworn in as President since Richard Nixon said, “What’s the worst that they can do to me?”

I don’t want to be accused of taking Biden out of context (not that there’s much of a chance of that) but here’s his quote, to the most accurate degree I can find:

“Those who say the blood of patriots, you know, and all the stuff about how we’re gonna have to move against the government, if you think you need to have weapons to take on the government, you need F-15s and maybe some nuclear weapons.”

First, Biden is as articulate as a fourth-grader with fetal alcohol syndrome who’s just smoked a bowl of Hunter Biden’s crack. And, yes, his Fraudulency has a son who smokes crack with hookers and takes videos of it. This is a thing that really happens. Of course, the response from the Left is to say Putin is corrupt.

Sorry. I’ll try to stick to the topic.

Second, that’s also the same logic as a fourth-grader with an extra chromosome or three who’s just huffed a can of sparkly gold spray paint. Abraham Lincoln made the obvious response fairly well:

“All the armies of Europe and Asia could not by force take a drink from the Ohio River or make a track on the Blue Ridge in the trial of a thousand years. No, if destruction be our lot we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men we will live forever or die by suicide.”

Lincoln was wrong about a lot of things. He was right about a lot of things, too. He is correct about this:

“As a nation of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide.”

Joe Biden could have the armies of the united States get him a drink by force from any river in this land. But Joe Biden and all the armies of the united States couldn’t hold the length of the Missouri or the Mississippi for a single day by force.

The armies of the united States number some 1.3 million men oh, wait people oh, wait, xim/xers. Add in the Reserves? Let’s round WAY UP and call it three million. Total.

There are three million males in Missouri. I pick Missouri only because they recently decided they’re going to tell the Feds to attempt to compact a very large object into a very small space when it comes to firearm laws.

Go, Missouri.

Not all of the three million males in Missouri would be on the side of freedom, since there are always some disgusting gelatinous slugs of humanity that will side with Evil over Truth. But there are enough. And don’t tell me that neighboring states wouldn’t flow in.

No, Mr. Biden. The only one who needs F-15s and nuclear weapons for control is you, you disgusting pile of fake hair, fake teeth, Alzheimer’s degraded brain, who gets his only Father’s Day card encrusted in cocaine dust and whore DNA.

The united States governs only, let me make this clear, only by consent of the governed. As citizens, we’re generally pretty good. But we are horrible, horrible at taking instruction from tyrants. It’s in our DNA.

No, literally. This is not an exaggeration. My family line came across an ocean to tame a continent. That was their resume. That was their job description as they rocked back and forth on little wooden boats in the midst of Atlantic storms. We didn’t come here because we were weak. We came here to fight and die and bleed and make this land our own.

We came here because we were strong.

We came here because we yearned for freedom.

Mr. Biden, your butt-sniffing and shoe-licking parents and your degenerate sons and personal weaknesses are abhorrent to every fiber of my body. Mr. Biden, you are disgusting. Mr. Biden, your forefathers were horrible. Mr. Biden, you and your weaknesses represent everything wrong with this country, and everything that has led to where we are today.

How dare you threaten me?

To threaten me is to threaten Duncan MacWilder of the Clan MacWilder, who came here before this was a country.
It is to threaten Hans Wilder, who came here to leave tyrants behind in Europe before World War I.
It is to threaten my forefathers who died hewing a civilization out of this continent with their blood and sweat and toil and dead babies so lazy writers like me could exist.

The deal we made in 1776 is the same one we have today, Bucko. We are here because we have certain inalienable rights.

Mr. Biden, you want to threaten me with jet fighters? Mr. Biden, you want to threaten to use nuclear weapons against your own citizens?

We didn’t come here for that. We didn’t die here for that. We didn’t bury our sons and daughters on dusty plains and hills and hallows across this country, building it with our blood for that.

Reparations? We paid for that in blood in places you have long forgotten, like Manassas Junction. Everyone I’ve ever been able to research on any part of my family has been someone who made the united States better.

Every.

Single.

One.

We taught Eisenhower (really). We built farms. We built bridges 150 years ago that still exist today. We built infrastructure that serves tens of millions of people – this is not an exaggeration. We built railroads across mountains that mountain goats couldn’t cross. We took trains up those mountains when the snow was 20 feet deep. With our kids.

Just for fun.

We raised and nurtured children and taught them freedom.

Our blood is in this soil. Our children are buried here as payment from sea to sea.

My blood is in this soil. My forefathers weren’t evil. They were Big Damn Heroes. Odin and Thor and Jesus would be proud of them for their courage.

Did other people build this land as well? Sure. But Wilder blood is spread here from the Mayflower to today.

I can do no less than to tell you, Mr. Biden, what Duncan MacWilder would have said:
I can do no less than to tell you, Mr. Biden, what Patrick Henry would have said (distant relative, according to an aunt):
I can do no less than to tell you, Mr. Biden, what Hans Wilder would have said:

No.

And, to mark the first time I have ever used this word on this blog? Each and every one of them would have added:

Fuck you, Mr. Biden.

Bring your jets. Bring your nukes. The only way you have to dislodge us off this continent we conquered with our blood and sweat and buried kin is to kill us all. We will never give up. We will never surrender. This will not die with me. Or my children.

You will never defeat us. Never. Our blood is here. Here we make our stand. We can go to no other country for freedom. We can go no further to a distant frontier. Despite what you will try to do with us, despite the injustices you will visit on us, we will win. We will mock you, and your grave will be pulled up and your bones used by our children for their amusement.

We will smile, and nod.

We did not choose this. We do not want this.

You spiked the ball too soon. Maybe two generations into the future, they would go gentle onto that goodnight.

Too soon, Bucko.

Fuck you.

The Beauty Of The Red Pill

“Hey Samantha, don’t take the Red Pill!” – Grandma’s Boy

If my son wanted to be a fiction writer, I’d send him to college to study journalism.

Have you ever not asked a question because you already knew the answer, but were afraid to hear it? I’m willing to bet we all have. I try to leave occasional breadcrumbs here, especially during my Monday and Wednesday posts, but I’ve stopped short of leaving my posts in the forest near a witch’s house. Besides, I hear Hillary has security guards.

The Truth is shocking. Many times, the Truth isn’t pleasant. I remember coming to one unpleasant Truth realization in college: the college didn’t care if I did well or even if I graduated.

It hadn’t been like that in high school. But in college? I was just a number. It sounds silly to me now, but back then it was quite a realization for me. Gradually, more Truths started showing up in my life. In many cases, I denied them as long as I could, but they eventually became inevitable.

They call this the Red Pill, after the scene in The Matrix where Keanu Reeves gets a job painting pills red.

Never let Morpheus do the cooking at a Matrix cast barbeque. There’s a reason they call him Lawrence Fishburne.

Part of the problem with discovering Truth is that it can make you feel alone. Much of our society is based on covering uncomfortable Truth with pretty little lies. It has always been so, but in 2021 it’s at the very worst that it has been in the history of the United States. People were censored a year ago for telling what are now the (generally) accepted theories about CoronaChan.

The Truth is that we still don’t know where it came from, but vary from any generally accepted truth about COVID on YouTube® and you’ll be censored. Thankfully, YouTube™ is so committed to “truth” that they gave themselves an award for being so courageous about it. Really – there isn’t even a punchline.

Here’s another Red Pill: no one (and I mean no one) is coming to save you. No one (and I mean no one) is responsible for your actions but you. If you can’t save yourself, you’ll just have to depend on luck, which is a crappy strategy. There is no secret cabal of government good guys like Qanon® used to put in his cryptic message board posts. Q is not coming to save you.

I guess QANON was just another 4Chan teller.

Part of the problem with taking a Red Pill is that, once you’re finally awake and aware of how the world works, just like Ebola, you want to share it with people. That’s a bad idea.

The unfortunately named Desiderius Erasmus Roterdamus made the silly quote, “In the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is king,” and with the new Red Pill knowledge, you want to share it far and wide.

Sadly, Desiderius, the one-eyed man is not king.

As H.G. Wells wrote, the blind people can’t see what the one-eyed dude describes. They think him mad, and if they have a chance they’ll tie him down and remove that silly eye that keeps giving him all of those wild notions and that awful practical joke of leaving the plunger in the toilet. People will fight nearly to the death to keep a pretty lie alive, especially when the Truth is ugly.

I wrote a check to a charity for the blind, but I’m worried they’ll never see a penny of it.

But there is opportunity for an individual once the first real Red Pill hits. Seeking Truth becomes a habit. And you find that Truth exists in many, many more places than you might imagine. When I go to find Truth, I know one place I can find it very quickly.

Truth is in the Iron.

I started lifting again this week for the first time since COVID raised its head. I was stunned at how one of my standard lifts was half – HALF – what it had been 18 months ago.

That is Truth. The Iron is Truth.

Was it at all pleasant to find my strength had dropped that far, that fast?

Of course not.

But it is True.

I gave up on lifting cases of Pepsi® for exercise, it was just soda pressing.

I cannot hide from the Iron. I cannot cheat the Iron. The only things there in the weight room are the Iron, Gravity, and Me. The only thing that changes in that equation is me. I can’t blame the Iron. I can’t blame Gravity.

The Red Pill?

No one will make me physically stronger but me. And the only way I can do that is to wrestle against Gravity with the Iron. And, unless I am quite ill, it will always work.

And here is the hope. Here is where the Red Pill really begins to pay dividends.

I’m the one responsible for:

my physical state,
what I eat,
how I react,
what I say,
what I watch,
how I treat others,
my own Virtue,
who I am, and
where my life ends up.

I’m not responsible for who loves me. I’m not responsible for how much they love me. Those are the output. If I control every bit of input in my life, what happens, happens.

There is nothing, and I mean nothing more wonderful than that realization. It goes beyond winning and losing. It goes beyond the opinions of others.

The downside, of course, is seeing all of the pretty little lies and all of the attempted manipulation. Even worse: the attempts to numb minds, to distract, and to pretend that the new lie doesn’t contradict the last lie. The stunning thing to me is how many people will flitter from one contradictory opinion to another like butterflies in the Sun, with never a thought.

When I take responsibility for myself, I am a changed person.

I was born a male, I identify as a male, but according to Stouffer’s Frozen Lasagna®, I identify as a family of four.

That doesn’t mean the battle ever ends. The first struggle is, always, against myself. Why am I weaker?

I had weights at home, but didn’t lift.

Why?

Well, I could make any number of excuses, but none of them matter. I didn’t lift. That was it. So, my choice is simple: will I work to get better every week, or will I be complacent with where I am?

I asked the Iron a question. It told me the Truth.

Now, my choice is how will I answer?

I have only one answer. Sweat.

It’s never lonely when you’ve got Truth for a companion.

Cassandra Says: Look Out Below

“Doing so might allow the energy to escape, with potentially catastrophic results.” – Lost

What do you get when you cross the Titanic with the Atlantic? Halfway.

There is a rumor in The Mrs.’ family, that her Great-Grandpappy, the banker, warned all of his clients to pull their money out of the banks before Black Monday on October 28 of 1929. According to the legend, he was a hero because he saved that money for all of his friends. I heard that as an old banker he was sad, because he always drank a loan.

I have no idea if he saved all of that money, but the legend serves a purpose: it confirms that, in most people’s minds, that there are wise people who can see trouble coming.

I can do that, too. When The Mrs. chucks a can of Dinty Moore Beef Stew® at my head, well, I know instinctively that if I don’t duck I’ll end up with a crescent impression on my favorite noggin. The Mrs. generally chooses stew instead of soup, because when she checked the pantry we were out of stock.

Pattern recognition and seeing trouble coming was something that the dead Roman philosopher, Seneca did fairly well. Like a good Roman, he took a stab at it.

In one observation, Seneca noted that it’s really hard to build things up: whether it be getting into good physical shape, or building a house or creating a civilization. Purposeful, positive growth is hard and takes time.

Where did Brutus get his knife? Traitor Joe’s.

But if I want to ruin my health it only takes half the time as it does to get into good shape. A modern American house burns down so quickly that firefighters tell me that they don’t even try to save them. If a Goodwill® store catches fire, they stay far away – they don’t want to inhale second-hand smoke. If you want to destroy a civilization? Well more on that later, but they evaporate much more quickly than it takes to build them.

Here’s what Seneca said: “Increases are of sluggish growth, but the way to ruin is rapid.” Actually, he said something in Latin, but when you quote Latin it sounds like a doctor is trying to pick up on a lawyer while gargling vodka.

I came across this concept while reading Italian chemistry professor Ugo Bardi’s blog (Cassandra’s Legacy) back in 2011. That initial post I read back then is here (LINK). Since that time, Dr. Bardi has written two books and now bases most of his blogging on that one philosophical statement. Some people ride that one pony and ride it hard, and it looks like Ugo has found his.

There are some other things I’ve noticed that are related to this concept:

Generally, things go on until they collapse. Is it easier to tear down a system and build a better one, or keep the old one going?

Duh. People don’t like change.

They aren’t mentally wired for change. During the few times in my life when electricity was out for extended times at the house (think hours or days), I find that I’ll walk into a dark room and absently reach out to turn on the light. My rational mind knows that the power is gone, but I expect it to be there.

I hear at this blackout, people in New York City were stuck on escalators for hours.

When things collapse, there is generally a lot of energy built up in the failing system. People try to prop up the system with all of the duct tape and baling wire they have. This rarely makes things better. Filling a failing dam up with more water doesn’t make the flood that comes after the dam fails better.

It makes it more catastrophic.

Failures like I’m describing tend to have the following characteristics:

They are cataclysmic. The end state isn’t predictable.
They happen all at once. As systems fail, they trigger the failure of related systems. And so on. It’s a chain reaction. To go back to the flood analogy, these failures scour the landscape, ripping out useful and useless features alike simply because of the amount of energy that was released.
The more energy that’s stored (i.e., the longer we push back paying the piper), the bigger the destruction and the worse the hangover.

What’s the difference between a dam and a sock? Almost everything.

Examples of this sort of near-apocalyptic societal transformation are actually abundant in history.

The French Revolution. In just a few short years, the French monarchy was deposed and replaced by a ruling junta of Leftist animals.
The first United States Civil War. It went from zero to armed combat across half a continent in just a few months.
The First World War. The Russian Revolution. The Second World War.
The collapse of the Soviet Union.
I could really keep writing this list until dawn, but at some point I need some sleep.

The penalties are tough for misgendering in France.

Just because the initial change happens in an instant, doesn’t mean that those changes will resolve in an instant. The French Revolution started in 1789. If you date the unrest that started on that day, you could pick the date that Napoleon went into his final exile as perhaps the end. That was in 1814.

A girl born in 1789 in France would have been, perhaps, 25 then. She would nearly certainly have been married, and probably would have her own child by then. When we study history we encompass entire generations within the span of a paragraph, though some say that Moses started history when he got the first download from a cloud onto a tablet.

As I said, The Mrs.’ Great-Gramps apparently saved the day for his depositors because he looked around and saw what was going to happen. True or not, it sometimes happens in reality.

Michael Burry did it, and more than once.

Who is Michael Burry? Well, he’s the guy who shorted the real estate market in 2008 and made $100’s of millions of dollars for himself, and nearly a billion for other people in the process.

Christian Bale was movie him in The Big Short. Burry just might have an idea or two about the economy. What’s his take?

I wonder if they could get Chris Hemsworth to play movie me?

All I can say is be prepared – a day too late is far worse than a year too soon.

Blogger Versus Evil

Jack Burton: “Great. Walls are probably three feet thick, welded shut from the outside, and covered with brick by now.”

Wang Chi: “Don’t give up, Jack.”

Jack Burton: “Okay, I won’t Wang. Let’s just chew our way out of here.” – Big Trouble in Little China

Never make a deal to buy a guitar from the Devil. There are always strings attached.

The Exorcist is a feel-good movie. Well, at least it is for me.

I wanted to watch it when I was an especially wee Wilder, but for whatever reason, Ma and Pa Wilder felt that exposing a first grader to that particular film would be considered a war crime. I don’t remember how old I was when I finally saw it, but as I recall it was rented on a VHS tape.

By the time I’d seen it, I’d already been exposed to much more brutal horror: Lovecraft, Stephen King, and Norman Lear sitcoms. I’ll say this about reading horror – the things I conjured in my mind while tearing through the pages of The Stand were far scarier than anything I’d ever seen in a movie.

But I made a pretty bold statement: The Exorcist is a feel-good movie, so I guess you’re gonna make me back it up. Thankfully, I have that not only on my authority, but on the authority of the author of The Exorcist. William Peter Blatty summed up the reason I like horror films with this very simple quote:

“My logic was simple: if demons are real, why not angels? If angels are real, why not souls? And if souls are real, what about your own soul?”

Blatty even described The Exorcist as his ministry – it seems he’s religious. Who would have expected that?

What don’t demons wear hairpieces? Because there would be Hell toupee.

Much of what we see in the world we explain through simple materialism. But when I read novels where the demons are mere humans, well, (with the exception of Hannibal Lechter) I’m generally let down when the Scooby Doo® ending explains away the supernatural mystery at the heart of the story. Mr. Blatty’s quote describes exactly why.

“If demons are real, why not angels.”

Now I know that several readers are atheists. As I’ve pointed out before, this blog is sort-of a litmus test. People that are the kind of atheist that just hates God will generally not opt-in to reading this blog for any length of time. I have no idea why, but they just don’t. Actual, rational atheists that don’t turn rabid when the supernatural is discussed don’t seem to mind.

Maybe they look at it like I look at the WWE®: they can watch it and be amused, even though they’re certain it’s not real. They especially like it when Hulk Hogan® hits me in the head with a chair.

Where did Randy “Macho Man” Savage™ work out? The Slim-Jim©.

Regardless, I think most readers here share the same view of Evil (or even evil) in this world. It’s visible in the raw naked lust for power that we have seen repeated again and again from the Left. It’s also visible in their unbridled joy at the destruction of Truth, Beauty, and Society.

The Left revels in the Lie, the inversion of Truth, the inversion of Beauty:

Billions of dollars in damage in Minneapolis is a “peaceful protest” while a march on the Capitol is, according to President* Biden: “The worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War.”
They demand, using free speech, to restrict the free speech of those that offend them.
The Left demands you look at what is obviously a man, and claim it to be a woman.

It’s simple, really: everything that’s Bad is presented as good. And everything Good? Well, it’s Bad. How dare you think self-restraint and hard work is virtuous?

Sniff. “Smells like fraud.”

Let’s look at how a simple Good thing like a married man and woman having a baby is turned on its head:

What about the woman’s career?
Why not live the childfree life?
Why have the baby at all?
There are too many people on the planet already.

The last argument is especially Evil, because when the propaganda works, the headlines then sing out: “since we’re not having enough babies, we need to import multitudes to grow our economy.” “Meet the New Americans.”

It’s fun to use this technique on Leftists. I can recall a Twitter® exchange with a Leftist where I Tweeted™ that I opposed immigration to the United States on the grounds that people in the United States had the highest carbon footprint, so by bringing in more people into the United States they were destroying the planet.

Brain lock ensued when they couldn’t deal with the conflict between their two opposing beliefs. It’s fun to come up with these couplets to invert the Evil right back at them, though, in the end, there is no conversion for a True Believer outside of a gentle helicopter ride. They have given in to the Evil. They’ll avoid the conversation.

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: three ways to dispose of a dead Leftist.

It is especially difficult for parents of children: what is innocent is sexualized. A first-grade boy isn’t old enough to decide what he should eat on a regular basis – why would the world think that he should be turned into a she?

It’s all around us, every day. It’s sold to us in media, it’s in the news, it’s everywhere.

And it’s attacking the Values of what we all know, deep inside ourselves, to be True and Good. That which is Good, True and Beautiful hasn’t changed within the lifetime of mankind on this planet, but when you’re confronted with people trying to sell that which is a Lie as the Truth?

You can be sure those people are Evil.

Not to say that people on the Right are immune to that – far from it. Eaton Rapids Joe has a great little story to that effect here (LINK).

To be clear, the ultimate aim of the propaganda of Evil is simple: to make Good people feel despair.

Why despair? Despair is the opposite of hope. It is the opposite of Truth. It is the opposite of Beauty. Despair is Evil.

And when propaganda wins? Evil wins.

H.P. Lovecraft was tormented by doubt all of his life. Imagine if he hadn’t slept in despair bedroom.

But that’s not what happened in The Exorcist. Father Karras, who had lingering doubts and was on the verge of Despair, conquered it.

Because he conquered Despair, Father Karras conquered Evil.

When you feel Despair, know that’s nothing more than Evil. And you can conquer it, too.

Yeah, I told you that The Exorcist was a feel-good story. And I was right.

———————————————

Extra Meme and Tagline, because I made one too many:

In other news, the 2024 election will be postponed until they find the results in Biden’s desk.

Money Is Not The Only Form Of Wealth

“Well, as I said, time has no meaning here. So if you leave, you can go anywhere, any time.” – Star Trek: Generations

What do you call a rogue sheep with a machine gun? Lambo.

When I lived in Houston, my job was all consuming. It’s been my theory that people move to Houston for one reason: to work. The climate is difficult. The freeways are often lines of cars creeping along like Joe Biden in an elementary school. One upside is that there can’t be a (Some) Black Lives Matter® protest because the Houston Astros© always steal their signs.

When I was a Temporary Texan, my life was consumed by work – and it was stressful work. Each day brought a new crisis we had to solve. It got so bad that I left home early to avoid the traffic, so I got to work early. I left work late to avoid the traffic, so I got home late. A fourteen-hour day wasn’t uncommon. I put blood, sweat, and tears into that job, so it was good that I wasn’t working at a restaurant.

The last time I went out for dinner, I asked the waiter how they prepared the chicken for frying. “Nothing special. We just tell them they’re going to die.”

For many weeks, I was gone every hour that baby Pugsley was awake during a weekday. I would, however, catch up with The Mrs. when I got home. That was a priority. We knew what we were getting into when we made the move from Alaska. Moving to Houston was, for us, entirely about work. I should have known during the job interview that something was up: they asked if I could perform under pressure, but I told them I only knew Bohemian Rhapsody.

Most (not all!) weekends I was able to keep the work at bay. I’d sleep in on Saturday, and then we’d do something as a family. By Saturday night I felt, “normal” but by Sunday afternoon I’d realize that I’d have to go back in to work on Monday and repeat the whole thing again. That made me feel pretty gloomy – it felt like time was slipping away.

This was how Sunday evening felt when I worked in Houston.

One Sunday night, however, I was getting my things ready for the next day. I was looking for my dress shoes (I was in an office that required them at that time) and couldn’t find them. Since I always took them off at the same place, that confused me.

After looking in all the logical places, the only choice then was to look in all of the illogical places. When you live alone, everything is pretty findable. When you have a wife, things move around on their own. When you have children under seven? The toilet gets clogged with decorative clam shell soaps that The Mrs. bought.

So, when I found my shoes under Pugsley’s bed, I wasn’t really surprised.

I was, however, touched. As near as we can figure, Pugsley had come to the conclusion that I only wore those shoes when I was gone all day. As near as his Gerber®-addled mind could conceive, if I didn’t have the shoes, I could spend every day at home with him.

Not bad. And I was touched.

I tried to buy running shoes the other day – but the only ones I saw were stationary.

One of the ideas of wealth is money. And I was in Houston, like everyone else, to make money.

But there’s another idea of wealth: time.

There are a group of people who are driven by playing that game and devote themselves exclusively to their business. That makes sense. The world needs people who are single-minded in wanting to change it.

Most people have read about people like Edison who never slept more than seven minutes a night and spent most of his life at work while making a fortune, and Elon Musk who famously slept in the factory to get car production worked out. And Musk and Edison both have another thing in common: they both got rich off of Tesla.

Meanwhile, the GPS is saying: “Recalculating . . . recalculating . . . “

If that’s what they choose? Fine. The idea of spending time on their passion for business is exactly that – a choice. Just like having a finite supply of money gives you a set of choices of what you can do in life, there is another budget – a finite number of hours.

And that is life. Life is made up of those hours that we use. Just as inflation eats away at the value of money, distraction eats away at the value of life.

What kind of distraction?

Well, pointless things – think Twitter® and most of Facebook™. I was on Twitter© a while back, and found it was good at exactly one thing: making me irritated.

I even take this aversion to not wasting the hours and minutes of my life unless it was a conscious decision to absurd levels. For several years of my life, I ate something I didn’t like all that much for lunch because there was no line.

I hate the idea of waiting five minutes of my life when I don’t to. This still applies even if I waste those five minutes on something unproductive. For a long time, I avoided history – I just couldn’t see a future in it.

I’m reading a book about the history of lubricating oils and bearings. Best non-friction book I’ve ever read.

But now society is built on creating and feeding distraction to people – the more distraction that’s consumed, the greater the profit level for these companies. And these are not even distractions that make us feel better – but distractions that in many cases just consume time.

I’m not sure that the idea of a “balanced” life is one that exists in reality. A human life is built up in phases. The long languid summers of youth give up to days that are packed with all the trappings of a family and work and the fullness of life. When my youngest, Pugsley, heads out into the world, who knows what I’ll do with the time?

Perhaps I’ll spend it finding places to hide his shoes.

Life Is A Struggle: That’s A Good Thing

“The closer you are to death, the more alive you feel. It’s a wonderful way to live. It’s the only way to drive.” – Rush

A computer once beat me at chess. It lost at kickboxing, though.

The Mrs. and I have recently been playing chess. It’s not a lot of chess, it’s mainly on Saturday nights when things are a bit slower. I’ve been enjoying the games. If I were to guess, before the last time we played, the games tilted slightly in my favor.

I think I’ve won about 30. The Mrs. was still sitting at, well, zero wins.

30-0.

Don’t think poorly of her. The Mrs. is going from a standing start. At one point in college, I lived with eight other guys in a house, and nearly all of the time a chess game was going. I could generally beat everyone in the house by the end of the school year. It took a while for one guy, about four months. First, he wiped the floor with me, then he and I traded games. By the end of two semesters?

I usually won. I have played a lot more chess than The Mrs. I will say this, though, she’s smart as a whip, and when I give her position analysis and show her why she lost the game, she listens.

The Mrs. doesn’t listen like someone who wants to defend why they did what they did. She listens with the ears of someone who wants to learn, who wants to get better. There has been exactly zero ego in learning the game for her.

Did I mention that The Mrs. is competitive? Really competitive?

Ever notice that Tom Cruise has a tooth perfectly centered under his nose, like it’s one-half tooth too far over? Now you’ll never be able to unsee that. You’re welcome.

The last time The Mrs. and I played chess, we played three games. The first game, I crushed her. By the start of the mid-game, I was up on pieces and position. It was like a velociraptor in a room full of bacon-wrapped kittens covered in pudding. Then the next game. Again, by the mid-game, I was up. I was toying with her king like a teacup poodle lords over a pork chop, getting ready for checkmate.

Then, she moved.

Then, I moved. That’s the rule, right?

But my move made it so she had no legal moves left. The Mrs. wasn’t in check, but couldn’t move. I was winning, decisively.

But if she has no legal moves and her king isn’t in check?

It’s a draw. The score was now 30-0-1.

My blunder, her draw. The next game went, shall we say, a little differently. The start went okay. Then, in the mid-game? She took control and by the beginning of the end-game? I was breathing for air harder than Biden sniffing a teenager. Which Biden? Apparently any of them.

What mall did they get this picture taken at?

Then? I caught a break. The Mrs. was up on pieces and position, but I found a way out. I could keep her king in perpetual check.

The Mrs. moved, I moved, check.

Note: I couldn’t win, but I could make the game as annoying as an 8-year-old asking, “Are we there yet?”

Thankfully, there’s a rule for that. It’s called?

A draw.

We went from me constantly crushing her, to her lucking to a draw, to me grasping to find a way out of a game without a loss.

30-0-2.

Good for The Mrs.

And good for me. Now I’m going to have to work to bring my A-game. And Saturday nights just got better.

Why?

Would it be better if I could crush her in chess every evening like Oprah crushes couch cushions? Of course not.

I told my barber to cut my hair like he would for Tom Cruise. He made me sit on two phone books.

The best victories in life are going head to head with someone near your level in skill. Going all out. Pushing each other to be better. I mean, I can beat up any number of third graders. Honestly, I have no idea how many third graders I couldn’t beat up.

I could do it all day. It’s really not a challenge. Seriously, I could beat up lots of them.

But fourth graders? I mean, I could be at least the third-best player on the fourth-grade soccer team.

Life is challenge. Life is struggle.

And thank heavens for that. Or thank Heaven for that? (Stick with me – this isn’t a sermon.)

Speaking of Heaven, from the time I was just a little Wilder, I caused a *lot* of problems at church. I distinctly recall that I colored a picture of Jesus with His skin being bright purple. On purpose.

My only excuse is that I was five and had no glitter.

The Sunday school teacher came up to me and said, “Johnny, you know that Jesus wasn’t purple.”

I replied, “Well, please allow me to retort. Jesus is God, right? Well, if He wants to be purple, He can be purple.”

How can you argue with logic like that? Even kindergartners score some points now and then. I last saw my Sunday school teacher when I was thirty. She was really thrilled to see me. I think she was just happy I hadn’t started the Cult of the Glittery Purple Jesus. And, yes, all of those things really happened.

But back to heaven, or in this case, Heaven.

When they described Heaven to me in Sunday school, I was as appalled and indignant as a precocious five-year-old can be.

Sunday school teacher, describing Heaven: “You’re happy all the time. Nothing bad ever happens. You wake up and everything is fine.”

Five-year-old me thought: “Well, that sucks. It’s stupid. That sounds boring.” Even then, I was wise enough not to throw out a level-five heresy in the middle of Sunday school. Jesus might turn me purple or something. I’m certainly glad they didn’t teach me about Valhalla then, because that sounds much, much better than Heaven: Wake up. Fight and get soused and maybe die. Wake up. Repeat.

What did the Vikings call English villages? Chopping centers.

Sure you teach little kids the things that you think they like. But me as a little kid? Peace was the last thing on my mind. But I’m not alone.

When you look at the life of Jesus, He didn’t spend it sitting on fluffy pillows and eating Ding-Dongs®. Nope. If you think WWJD, remember, taking a whip and kicking vermin out of church is within the realm of permissible actions.

Jesus was clear in that: life is the struggle.

Life is not about the easy way out.
Life is not about running out the clock in the 20 years until you retire.
Life is not about being nice.

If you played your life like a video game, your goal isn’t to have a pleasant but non-threatening experience. You want to climb the mountain, fight for the fair maiden, and drink from the skull of your enemy. I want The Mrs. to be kick-ass at chess, so when I win, it means something.

It meant something to The Mrs. when I had to force a draw to save my sorry (rare NSFW word coming) ass.

That, my friends, is life. Life is the struggle.

And my bet at Heaven is that it’s more like this:

LEVEL ONE COMPLETE.

PREPARE FOR LEVEL TWO.

I started a job digging deeper and deeper holes – but that was boring on so many levels.

Yeah. Let’s go. Let’s live life.

Bring.

It.

On.

Take big bites.

Who is with me?

Welcome To Being An Outsider

“Now, I didn’t start it, but be sure as Hell I mean to see it through.” – Shooter

If you boil a clown you get laughing stock.

We’re Outsiders.

Well, not all of us. But when you look at the system, most of the people reading this post are Outsiders.

I happen to live in a place filled with Outsiders. Here in Modern Mayberry, you’re ten a hundred times as likely to see a Gadsden flag on a flagpole as a Bernie® bumper sticker. Besides the Bernie supporters around here have now all been kicked out by their roommates, you know, “Mom and Dad”.

That’s why it’s Modern Mayberry.

It’s not paradise. There are some thefts. There are some drugs of the most destructive kind. There’s even a hipster who was an outdoorsman before it was cool – you’d call him a homeless guy.

But yet . . .

People here still remember the United States that was, or at least the United States we remembered from our dreams. One where the Constitution was the rule. One where the dream wasn’t one of dependence on handouts. One where you could ignore it when the government called you at home – you could let freedom ring.

A friend of mine used his stimulus check to buy baby chickens. Money for nothing and the chicks for free.

Tonight I drove home along Main Street, and I saw people out and about. In one block I saw six people that I personally knew, and most of them made it off the sidewalk in time.

Yet all of us in Modern Mayberry are really Outsiders, and I think that we know that. And I think we cherish it, just like the EpiPen® my friend gave me as he was dying – I know I’ll always cherish it.

I watch the news stories of places that seem alien to me. I know that California in 1980 was overwhelmingly what we now call a Red state. Now? It’s alien even to many that were born there.

The politics that created what would have been one of the most prosperous nations in the world have given way to politics that has made California one of the most impoverished states in the United States. I know Gavin Newsom tried to fight poverty, but he kept losing. Homeless people can be deceptively strong when you try to wrestle them.

Sure, I’d love to have California back. I’d love to have Disneyland® back and the American Dream Vacation™, too, with bonus points for stops at the Grand Canyon and Uncle Eddie’s place. But the beliefs that I believe most readers here have aren’t shared by most voters in California in 2021.

There was a person who saw the California ban coming: No-Straw-Domus.

I don’t blame the native Californians – they voted against this insanity again and again, but were overruled from activist benches. We know what sort of trash is on the benches, but what is on the table for the United States?

Individual Rights – these are being replaced by group rights. Reparations for crimes committed nearly two hundred years ago? By the descendants of people who moved here from Germany in 1880?
Freedom of Choice – this is being replaced by coercion, explicit and implicit. Want to do business? You can have whatever opinion you want – as long as it’s the right one.
Due Process – this is being replaced by guilt by inference. Red flag laws, anyone?
Right to Keep and Bear Arms – this is being replaced by the right of approved people to potentially be allowed to purchase a limited number of weapons and keep them locked in a safe at home. As long as we know the weapons are kitten-safe.

Propaganda for collectivism has long been in the offing. For all of my life the programming has been in place to change attitudes to accept this – Leftists have monopolized the major networks since I was a kid. Society has changed in ways that promote collectivism. People move from location to location or live in monolithic cities or sterile suburbs that actively discourage people from acting together in the spirit of real community.

What is it replaced with? City governments. Homeowners’ Associations. Neither of those build community – those are, in larger cities, the expression of power and control. The Mayor of Chicago holds more power than governors of many states. That’s not any semblance of community – when is the last time you heard of anyone holding up Chicago for the face of election fairness?

What part of the mayor of Chicago weighs the most? The scales.

That’s the downside. But it gets better from here.

The first part of winning as an Outsider comes from knowing that you are an Outsider. There is power in being an outsider – it only took a dozen Outsiders to eventually change the entire Roman Empire from people who worshiped Funko Pop® figurines to Christians. Well, a dozen people and a few years.

Ideas are powerful.

Likewise, Outsiders are powerful. Once a person realizes that they’re an Outsider, entire routes open to them. This is a special type of freedom:

Freedom from the system. The system was built not to reward me, but to keep me in line, to keep me fearful. To keep me compliant. Recognizing that is everything.
Freedom from caring about the opinions of the world. Do I care about what France thinks about me? Do I care about what Google® thinks about me? Most (not all, but most) of the people whose opinions matter to me know it, and they all have excellent posture and dental hygiene.
Freedom to set my own goals. What is it that I value? What is it that I want to accomplish? This is mine, and mine alone. Oh, wait, except for trash day. I have to remember trash day.
Freedom to not apologize. When I make a mistake and I agree I’ve made a mistake, I own up to it, proudly. When I don’t, I don’t apologize. And I won’t. Especially not for the bad jokes.
Freedom to change the world. And I will. I’m going to keep going so I can inject my ideas so deeply into the Outsider psyche that the mRNA shot from Pfizer® will seem like a non-invasive procedure.

Kamala Harris is very concerned about COVID. She heard that super-spreaders were the problem.

One piece of the puzzle, interestingly enough, came to me from crappy Star Wars® movie, The Force Awakens™. The movie was horrible. One thing that I couldn’t figure out was why, after killing the Emperor®, that the Rebels™ were . . . the Resistance©?

The movie was awful, partially because it was poorly written and choked with social justice. But it revealed the mind of the Left in ways that I hadn’t realized before:

The Left wanted to identify with the Resistance© because they rely on powerlessness. Powerlessness is necessary to recruit Leftists – the core of Leftism is self-hate.
The Left is about power, but it refuses to admit it has it. That’s why Leftist professors from Leftist colleges complain about insufficient Leftism from Leftist politicians and Leftist media. And vice versa – it becomes self-reinforcing.

Leftists rely on powerlessness as a route to power. It is their foundational myth; it is their unifying element. They are downtrodden, even as they control every major corporation. They are disenfranchised, even though they control nearly every major media outlet – if there’s a cure for that, it’s unTweetable.

Twitter® is like a Leftist bank account – after you enter the wrong opinion five times, you’re locked out.

Given all of that, why am I so happy?

Because I’m free. I’m free of my illusions. I’m free to be an Outsider.

I’ll enjoy seeing the Gadsden flag tomorrow. After all, there were another group of Outsiders a few years ago who seemed to like that flag.

And you remember where the Gadsden flag first flew?

On a pole.

When the ship lifts, all bills are paid. No regrets.

“Have you paid your dues, Jack? Yes, sir. The check is in the mail.” – Big Trouble in Little China

Note to regular readers: This post took a rather strange turn, as they sometimes do. I had the topic picked, and then started writing, and found that the subject and evening led to a very atypical post. I’m going to leave this one as it is. I fully expect Monday’s post to be more of the usual stuff.

One of my favorite quotes was from the science fiction writer Robert Heinlein, “When the ship lifts, all bills are paid. No regrets.” I read that line when I was 19 or so. I found it in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long. It was displayed in a little indy book store and it was one of those times that it seemed like the book found me, and not the other way around – it was the first thing I saw when I walked into the store.

The book store? That store stayed in business for about two months. The problem was that the store only had (and I’m not exaggerating) about three dozen different books. Looking back on it, I doubt that when the bookstore closed down that all the bills were paid – the landlord really should have seen that coming.

I thought about that phrase when I moved to Alaska with The Mrs. Moving to Alaska isn’t like moving from one state to another down in the Lower 48. The only real way out is by plane, and you’re not going unless you planned it. Were all my bills paid?

I made sure they were. Pa Wilder was quite old by that time. Before leaving for Alaska, I was quite clear in knowing that it was possible that when we moved was the last time I would ever see him alive. I made it a point then to tell him everything I needed to tell him, to share everything I could. I wanted him to be at peace, and I wanted to be at peace, too.

Prepping is for more than economic collapse.

Thankfully, Pa lived more than a decade after when we moved. He even visited us in Alaska and finally down into Houston when we moved back to the continental United States.

In my mind, there’s a part of me that always sees him in his prime. That was back when I was 12 and Pa was the father that would work 50 hours a week at the bank. Then Pa would come home and work my brother John (yes, that’s his name, our parents were classically uncreative) and me for 20 hours over the long summer weekend days hauling and stacking firewood for the cold winter nights up at the compound on Wilder Mountain.

When I thought of him, I always remembered that impossibly tall and competent man of my youth. When he visited Alaska I was fully six inches taller than him, and the strong arms that had swung a sledgehammer in a mighty arc to split wood with a steel wedge were now thin with age, his walk hesitant and slow.

But he was still dad.

One thing I always did, however, was try to leave each conversation with him as a complete conversation, a capstone if you will. I wanted to make sure that absolutely every time I talked to him I was leaving nothing unsaid. I wanted to make sure he knew exactly what I felt.

Pa Wilder lived twenty-five years longer than he expected. But around the time I was moving to Alaska, I could sense a change in him. The emails that he wrote gradually developed grammatical and spelling errors. This was a change. Previously, Pa had been as precise as an English-teaching nun in grammar and spelling.

It was a sign. Pa was declining.

Over time, the decline increased. I can still recall the last time I talked to him and he recognized me. After spending two days with him, he finally looked at me and said, “You’re John, aren’t you.”

Beyond that, we had some pleasant times, but I could tell that he didn’t recognize me. One time he looked at me and said, “Who are you?”

“I’m your son, John.”

There was not even a glimmer of recognition in his eyes.

When word came from my brother that Pa Wilder had passed (this was years and years ago) The Mrs., The Boy, Pugsley, and I went to his funeral. As The Mrs. and I had a private moment between all of the orchestrated family events, she asked me, “Is there anything you need to share? Are you doing alright?”

To be clear – I did miss and do miss Pa. But I had made sure that everything that I ever needed to say to him had been said. My conscience was clear. I know that, whenever he had a clear moment, he knew that I loved him. And I knew he loved me.

I had no unresolved issues.

It’s one thing to read the phrase, “When the ship lifts, all bills are paid. No regrets,” and another to understand it as time passes and wisdom increases. When Pa Wilder passed, I understood it. I looked deep into myself and understood that all the bills were paid. I had no regrets.

The Mrs. had a different experience entirely with the passing of her father several months ago. Due to COVID restrictions, he had spent the last months of his life with absolutely no physical contact, no presence of his family. He had been recovering from surgery in a nursing home, and never recovered enough to be discharged.

For month after month, he spent his time alone, with nothing but phone calls from those he loved.

The Mrs. was very upset about this. Heck, The Mrs. is still upset about this – the process of paying those last bills was cruelly interrupted. She had more things to say to him – and I understand that. There are things I’d dearly like to say to Ma Wilder, but that ship lifted too early, and now those bills can never be paid, at least not in full.

I try now to make each meeting, each contact with those around me that I love one where they know exactly where they stand with me, and vice versa. The idea of continuing my life with those bills, or leaving those bills with someone else isn’t something I want.

To be very clear: what brought this topic to mind wasn’t anything in particular, just the thought that this has been a helpful philosophy for me. I do know that the future is uncertain, so I try to live my life so I don’t have those regrets, and try to manage my relationships so that there’s never anything left unsaid.

The check is in the mail.