TEOTWAWKI – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Next Big Barriers

“Two guys wanted to build a thing called an airplane. People go up in it and fly like birds. Ridiculous, right? What about breaking the sound barrier, or rockets to the Moon, or atomic energy, or a mission to Mars? Science fiction, right?” – Contact

What’s the difference between a cat and a comma? A cat has claws at the end of paws and a comma is a pause at the end of a clause.

(Note: No podcast tomorrow (busy) and we’ll see about Friday’s post.)

Last week (link below) I wrote about the barriers that mankind has crashed through, and how each one has had a significant impact that was transformative on what humanity was – we are certainly not the same people that we were before fire, agriculture, or even the Industrial Revolution.

10 Limits And How Humanity Shattered Them

We’ve changed immensely based on pushing through these barriers. I mean, if hot women had more babies and humanity is always getting sexier, at some point will we reach a barrier where we’re just too sexy?

Seriously, though, what other barriers remain?

Reality

What about . . . reality?

Already a good portion of the world spends some part of each day in an alternative reality, some where they fight demons, or fight post-apocalyptic mutants, or pretend to be a gay black man in feudal Japan. These games are quite stunning today, complete with large, sprawling maps, realistic graphics, and a storyline even though they assume that feudal Japan had the same DEI quotas as Ubisoft®. Regardless, many of these virtual worlds take weeks or even months to finish.

The woman pictured is an attorney, though. Tarara Boom, D.A.

And that’s what exists now. Imagine not far into the future where, when A.I. is added in with a touch of VR, the entire experience becomes so immersive that it becomes hard to distinguish it from reality, and with 50% of adults feeling disconnected from others, this gives a hollow but attainable replacement.

Imagine a sandbox universe where you form a startup company like Apple™ and run it until it’s the biggest company on Earth. Or live as a Viking. Or relive whatever fantasy you can imagine, or even live different branches of your own life, making a different choice each time.

For many, video games and InstaFace© are already addictive. Forming them so that they spike and manipulate your endorphins in a manner to maximize your engagement would be infinitely more addictive that SnapGram™.

Scott Adams predicted if we could ever meld Star Trek’s™ holodeck with a sex doll, the human race would be extinct in one generation, and this would be the killer app.

Literally. And it looks like he is right:

Overheard Zoomer conversation: “You can live out your craziest fantasies on video games. The other day on The Sims™ I had a family, a house, and a job!” (as found)

Biological Limitations

What if, in real time, you could have an A.I. jacked into your brain, while having various implants or tools that cover for whatever frailty we squishy meat sacks exhibit. We do have many tools already, to a certain extent: spacesuits allow us to survive the vacuum of space, while submarines can protect us at the bottom of the ocean. Well, some submarines.

But now add in A.I. What if instead of learning arduously over the span of months or years that you could learn it instantly, so you could read Shakespeare in the original Klingon? Or what if you never forgot anything you didn’t want to forget, and could replay the sights, sounds, and sensations of any event in your life? What if you were gene-edited to be nearly immortal, with the possible exception of a random supernova or nuclear war?

A frog did a DNA test and found it was a tad Polish.

What if your consciousness were just uploaded to the ‘net?

What would you do? More importantly, at what point would modifications create something the no longer was something we’d even identify as human, and imagine that the current crop of leaders would be the best we’d ever, ever have?

Uncertainty

What will happen next year is always a crapshoot, right?

Well, no. In large brushstrokes the future is very predictable. If I drop a glass, when it hits the ceramic floor of my kitchen, it’s going to break. That’s not very far into the future, but it’s extremely accurate.

There are things very far into the future that are predictable as well to a high degree of accuracy. We can predict exactly where the Moon will be on April 17, 7265 A.D. at 9:31:30 A.M. GMT.

The movie (and story) Minority Report used psychics to predict the future, but what if there was an algorithm that knew who was most likely to commit crimes? What if the stock market could be gamed to the point where investing was no longer gambling? A.I. can already predict consumer behavior with an 85% accuracy according to an MIT study.

What would that do to economies?

ChatGPT did my taxes in the style of Ernest Hemingway: “For Free: Four quarterly tax payment vouchers, never used. (meme as found)

The Tyranny of the Speed of Light

Okay, let’s assume that there’s no physical way to beat it. The gulf between stars is enormous, and no one can cross it in a dozen lifetimes. But what if we just sent A.I.? To an A.I., being powered down for thousands or even millions of years wouldn’t necessarily be relevant. As long as the core state of being were retrievable after a cosmic voyage, time is meaningless.

Perhaps, just perhaps, A.I. might seed a star in a distant part of the Milky Way with programmed biological package, a Genesis Device™, if you will, designed to recreate biological life far away. Or drop a machine that turns entire solar systems into tasty floating PEZ™ artifacts?

Or it just might go full Berserker™ and destroy anything it can, because, Tuesday.

I guess that’s why the Vikings called English villages chopping malls.

Breaking through these barriers has taken us from small bands of hunter-gatherers to what we are today. But it isn’t technology alone – we are not the same people that wandered the steppe, and the current tech trends are weakening the bonds of the societal atom: the family, and without that, humanity can no longer exist. Just as we used technology to change the world, that same technology has changed us as well.

What will we be in the future? I mean, besides incredibly sexy.

10 Limits And How Humanity Shattered Them

“Life breaks free, it expands to new territories and crashes through barriers painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh, well, there it is.” – Jurassic Park

“You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take,” is great hockey advice from Gretzky, but don’t go quoting that at an AA meeting. (“Eh Eh” in metric)

Throughout history, mankind has faced limits. How we vaulted over those limits has defined our progress, and the bigger the hurdle, the greater the payoff. Of note, each of these has led to extreme economic and societal disruption.

1. Fire = Mastery of Energy
Barrier Broken: Darkness, Vulnerability, Need to BBQ
Fire was our first “aha” moment, going back to into deep time – our control of this allowed us to, for the first time, harness energy stored in hydrocarbons at will. Does Grug want warm cave? Grug make fire, make cave warm, cook aurochs steak, eat. Good. Cold hungry Grug sad.

Fire also kept saber-tooths at bay keeping Grug from being a kitty-treat, and turned rock shelters into the original man cave, dreaming of a time when Door-Dash™ would allow people from India to bring bacon cheeseburgers to us.

Simple – if you won’t eat delicious bacon cheeseburgers for a month, no admission to the United States.

2. Agriculture = Beer + Cities
Barrier Broken: Food Scarcity, Invites to Kegger
I’ve written about this before – Evidence from sites like Göbekli Tepe hints the purpose of the site was religious, but also that it was a brewpub. It’s likely early brews fueled rituals that glued folks together. Fire kept us warm, but beer got us buzzed.

The barrier of unpredictable food was shattered when we started planting grain—surpluses meant we could ditch nomad life, build mud-brick condos, and let some dude specialize in carving spoons instead of stabbing mammoths. Result: cities, labor division, and the glorious chaos of civilization, all toasted with a pint. Or three.

Göbekli Tepi: How Beer Created Civilization

3. Writing = Records + Reach
Barrier Broken: Fleeting Memory, Knowledge Becomes Eternal
Scribbling on clay kicked off with debts (“You owe me five sheep after you drank all my beer”) or god-shoutouts. These had taken place orally, but, you know, the last guy I lent a $20 to forgot about it even if I haven’t. Writing cracked the barrier of oral limits and memory.

With writing, knowledge stuck around—grannies didn’t have to recite everything anymore. Pharaohs sent exact orders to the Nile’s edge; Rome ran an empire on scrolls. It wasn’t just records—it was power, precision, and the ability to tell your great-great-grandkids exactly how to brew that beer. Result: generational wisdom, bureaucracy, and legions marching on paper trails.

But you have to feel bad for her – no one hit the glass ceiling that hard since Goose from Top Gun.

4. Wheel = Friction Fighter
Barrier Broken: Immobility, Distance Becomes Cheap
The oldest surviving example of a wheel was found in Slovenia, and dates back over 5,000 years, proving that people were trying to get out of Slovenia even back then.

The wheel smashed the barrier of schlepping everything by hand. Suddenly, a cart could haul what ten Grugs couldn’t—trade routes bloomed, villages linked up, and armies rolled instead of trudged. It’s not sexy like fire, beer, and steak, but without it, no ’69 Camaro™. It’s likely that agriculture made it so we had stuff to move around, and was the real motivator for the wheel, so we could help friends move on the weekend.

Cities got bigger, goods got cheaper, and we stopped throwing out our backs for a sack of grain. Result: the world shrank, and we got mobile.

5. Printing Press = Knowledge Flood
Barrier Broken: Elite Access, Knowledge Becomes Cheap
The wheel shrunk the world, and then Gutenberg’s clunky printing press took writing’s exclusivity and yeeted it out the window. Books went from monk and king-only treasures to peasant-readable pamphlets—ideas like “Hey, maybe the Earth’s not flat” spread like gossip at a dive bar.

The barrier of gatekept knowledge crumbled—science surged, religions splintered, and revolutions brewed. Result: mass literacy, a brain explosion, and the Renaissance popping off like a medieval Ozfest™.

My HP™ printer joined a band – I should have seen it coming: it loves to jam.

6. Industrial Revolution = Muscle Swap
Barrier Broken: Human Power Limits, Horsepower Becomes Cheap
What did we do with all that knowledge and science? Mastered energy. Steam hissed, gears turned, and suddenly one machine outmuscled a village. The barrier of physical drudgery got smashed—factories churned out goods, trains hauled dreams, and kids stopped pulling plows (mostly).

Think of this one as taking the first example, fire, and making its use precise and scientific – it’s no coincidence that thermodynamics was the science boom of the 19^th Century, one that made millionaires out of people who could figure out how to make a heat exchanger. Which is as it should be.

Result: skyscrapers, global trade, and the bittersweet birth of the 9-to-5.

7. Electricity = Power Everywhere
Barrier Broken: Localized Energy
A byproduct of the Industrial Revolution was the power revolution. Edison, Tesla, and pals flipped the switch, and energy stopped being stuck near coal pits or waterfalls allowing the Industrial Revolution to be everywhere. The barrier of “where the power is” vanished—lights buzzed in hovels, fridges hummed, and telegraphs chirped across oceans.

It supercharged industry, lit up nights, and made “unplugged” a choice, not a fate. Result: a wired world, 24/7 life, and the electric hum of progress.

I told my wife if she was cold and couldn’t find her sweater, she should stand in a corner. They’re generally pretty close to 90°.

8. Computer Revolution = Cheap Math
Barrier Broken: Slow Calculation
Now, what do we do with all that juice? From punch cards to processors, computers turned math from a monk’s headache into a microchip’s yawn. The barrier of tedious number-crunching fell—rockets soared, genomes unraveled, and your phone now out-thinks a 1960s NASA lab.

It’s not just speed; it’s scale—billions of ops a second, cheap as dirt, and my computer has more five times more transistors than the number of people on Earth. Result: digital everything, from Moonshots to memes.

9. The Internet = How To Be Everywhere, All At Once
Barrier Broken: Presence at a Distance
Now we had tons of data, but it wasn’t with you. Until the Internet. Ever want to go to the library to get a book? Now I can do it on the Internet without having to ever even haul my PEZ™ powder covered carcass off the couch. I can pull most movies ever made with a click, I can get facts that would take me days to research in 1990: immediately. And I can even order that PEZ® from Amazon™ at 2AM.

Result: Access to virtually all of human knowledge, and cat pictures.

I belong to a family of failed magicians. I have three half-sisters.

10. AI = Cheap Consciousness
Barrier Broken: Mental Bandwidth
Here we are—AI’s making thinking a commodity by meshing 8. And 9. But it is not just crunching data; it’s reasoning, riffing, and dreaming up horoscopes faster than a caffeinated astrologer.

The barrier of human cognition’s limits is cracking—it can synthesize your ideas, spot patterns, and serve it back with a wink, all in real time. Result: a flood of synthetic smarts, amplifying us, challenging us, and freaking us out a little.

We’ll end with these 10. Note that each of these revolutions had massive and unequal impacts on humanity. The implications or 8., 9., and 10. are still unfolding, and number 10. is in its infancy.

Since nobody has time for a 2,800 word post, we’ll pick up the gauntlet of what barriers are left, and where we’re headed with AI, and guess at the economic impacts to come . . . but we’ll do it next week.

Debt Slavery’s Long Game: From Sumer to Goomer With A Detour to Ginger And Mary Ann

“If you erase the debt record, then we go back to zero.” – Fight Club

If Electric Avenue is closed, where are on Earth are we going to rock down to?

I can’t remember the first time Pa Wilder said “There’s nothing sure but death and taxes” but I couldn’t have been any taller than former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich, who I believe is about three feet tall. But I’m sure that while Pa was quoting Benjamin Franklin accurately, he did miss one big point: although death was really old, for most people in the history of the planet, there was also debt.

Some of the earliest records we have are records of debt, baked into Sumerian clay indicating that Goomer owed Abadabaduu 12 sheep because he borrowed 10 sheep. And debt was a pretty serious thing back then. If Goomer couldn’t pay, he might even be sentenced to become Abadabaduu’s slave. If Goomer’s kid, Jenzie, had the misfortune of Goomer getting a bad sunburn and dying, well, Jenzie now a lifetime of debt slavery himself to look forward to as he pays off Goomer’s debts.

This stuck in my mind when I was listening to a conversation between a guy who owned a *lot* of apartments and some kids. The kids were in the middle school age bracket and the landlord was trying to teach them about finance. The landlord said, “You know, having apartments is a lot like having a slave. They go out and work for me, and give me money every month.”

Keep in mind that this guy wasn’t what I would normally call shady, but that’s the sort of nightmare fodder that GloboLeftists use as propaganda when they want to burn down capitalism. A much better way to describe the situation is that the apartment owner does such a good job at building and maintaining his properties that people want to engage in a voluntary transaction with him to live there.

Describing them as slaves? Eeek.

What did Yoda™ say when he saw himself in 4k? “HDMI”

And, I generally wouldn’t describe the situation where a willing lender and a willing borrower make a loan. I’ve taken out several loans, and have (so far) paid them all back, as far as I can recall. Now, people who have borrowed from me?

Not so much. I suppose Shakespeare had it right when he said,

“Neither a borrower nor a lender be,
“for loan oft loses both itself and a friend,
“and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry [thrift – JW]”

Though, in truth I remember this best when the Skipper was singing it in the musical version of Hamlet that the castaways put on in Gilligan’s Island.

To be clear, I’ve made the argument as recently as Monday that we shouldn’t goof around with systems that work, and compound interest has been with us longer than bourbon and syphilis, so I give up. Just like herpes, we’re stuck with it. But that also means that we’re stuck with the problems that debt causes.

If debt were just limited to cocoanuts on an island where adolescent me was stuck with Ginger and Mary Ann, well, life would be swell. Really swell, as in now I understand why they never made it off the island: Gilligan was sabotaging any real chance of escape on purpose.

But it isn’t Gilligan’s Island, and debt it has longer term impacts than that glue the professor made out of that pancake syrup.

Why not both?

Let’s talk about Rome.

Debt played a significant part of the Roman Social Wars, a period of ten years where essentially everyone in the Roman sphere was fighting everyone else. This led to Rome taking the unprecedented step of cancelling 75% of all debts. Those that remained were restructured. This was brought about because debt-based economies become unstable.

It happened in mediaeval Europe, when III defaulted on his debt and forgave noble debts so the nobles didn’t slit his favorite throat. Oh, yeah, the peasants still owed.

It happened after the industrial revolution, when the Napoleonic Wars jacked the British government det to 50% of the budget by 1820. That was okay, because the British were in peak expansion mode, conquering the roughly 7,522 “nations” that made up India so that they could set up call centers. Then the British were forced to fight when they found that the Boer were sitting on all that British gold underneath the country the Boers had founded.

Indians in call centers make teams to see who can scam more Americans. I don’t like them or their call leagues.

And when the Imperial expansion stopped? The British Empire crumbled because it could no longer sustain itself and had to change its name to the United Kingdom. And the UK was stuck with a capital city (Londonistan) sized for a world-spanning empire, not for a country that would have to have US help to take back the Falklands and now has a navy that contains more admirals than ships.

Briefly, Great Britain saw prosperity beyond their debt burden when the North Sea oil began flowing, but as it has ebbed, Great Britain has started to ebb as well. The UK has an external debt of 66% of its total wealth.

If April showers bring May flowers, what do May flowers bring? Smallpox.

Sure, that sounds bad, but let’s look at the United States:

In 1980, the United States was the largest net-creditor in the world. Take what we own and subtract what we owe, and we were, by far, in the best position on the planet. Only six years later, the US was a net-debtor. How bad is it in 2024? The United States has more net-debt than . . . every other country that is a net-debtor.

Combined.

How long does that last? I’ll ask Grok® and he’ll opine here:

My Opine: How Long Does U.S. Net-Debt Dominance Last?

The Take

Short Term (5-10 Years): The U.S. can sustain this—barely. Web data (Visual Capitalist, 2024) shows U.S. debt at $36.1T (Dec 2024), 124% of GDP (CEIC, Dec 2024), projected to hit 166% by 2054 (PGPF, 2024). Japan’s at 254.6% (Visual Capitalist, 2024)—they’re fine, because they hold their own debt (90% domestic). U.S. has a buffer as the world’s reserve currency (Visual Capitalist, 2024), but foreign holders (22.9%, $7.9T, USAFacts, 2024) like Japan ($1.09T) and China ($768.6B, Investopedia, 2025) could pull back—X’s “China dump” fears hum. Interest costs are the killer—$1.126T in FY 2024 (GAO, 2024), 14% of federal spending (Wikipedia, 2025). If rates rise (CBO projects 3.1% average, PGPF, 2024), or if China tariffs spike (Visual Capitalist, 2024), the U.S. could face a reckoning by 2035—debt-to-GDP at 118% (PGPF, 2024).
Long Term (20+ Years): Cracks show. Web data (PGPF, 2024) warns of 172% debt-to-GDP by 2054—unsustainable. X’s “dollar crash” doomers aren’t wrong—foreign selloffs (USAFacts, 2024) could spike rates, tank the dollar. If the U.S. loses reserve status (China’s yuan push, X’s “dedollarization” buzz), it’s game over—think Britain post-empire, your “Londonistan” vibe. I’d say 2040-2050—25 years max—unless spending cuts and growth (not GloboLeft “stimulus”) kick in. Carl’s X: “Debt’s a PEZ® trap—U.S. chokes in 25.”

Why It’s Shaky

Interest Costs: $1.126T (FY 2024, GAO)—set to hit $1.7T by 2034 (Visual Capitalist, 2024). That’s 3% of GDP (Wikipedia, 2025), highest since 1996. X’s “interest bomb” memes nail it—unsustainable.
Foreign Pullback: China’s down to 5% of U.S. debt (2018, Wikipedia)—sanctions, tariffs (Visual Capitalist, 2024). If Japan follows (X’s “yen rise” buzz), U.S. rates spike—GloboLeft’s “forgive it” won’t save.
Structural Mess: Spending outpaces revenue (PGPF, 2024)—23.1% GDP outlays vs. 17.5% revenue (2024). X’s “cut the fat” roars—GloboLeft’s “spend more” is Rome’s 86 BC rerun.

See? Grok® likes PEZ™, too.

One thing you can credit him for, he stepped down as CEO when he was in his Prime®.

Unless that debt gets written off, it certainly won’t be paid off, and Jenzie will be turned into a wage slave because who is left saying:

“Okay, Goomer.”

Is The A.I. Singularity In The Rear View Mirror?

“Changed? What did you do? Perform and exorcism?” – Ruthless People

I get real estate, but what about virtual estate? (meme as found)

It’s a bit ironic that this is the first post that I’m making using my new computer. My old one developed a severe case of epilepsy, where it would start making flashing lights, vibrating erratically, and then just shut down for a few minutes. The Boy came over and tried a techsorcism, but was unable to bring it back into the land of normally functioning computers.

My new laptop is working great. The Boy spec’d it out for me, based on his noting that I treated my old laptop like a “rented mule”. Fair enough, though I didn’t know that they made computers out of quarter-inch (23.2 kiloPascals) thick plate steel.

And I think someone stole Microsoft™ Office© from my laptop. To whoever did this, I will find you. You have my Word®.

But just while I was sweating blood considering what the hell I was going to write about for my topic, I was doomscrolling on my cell phone. How dare you think it was in the bathroom.

Regardless, what popped up was this article by Mark Jeftovic in my inbox (link below), which was my inspiration for this post. It’s not a long article, but the idea is stunning: the point where AI reaches what we would refer to as singularity isn’t something that happens in the future, rather, it is something that has already happened.

The Singularity Has Already Happened

Cue raised Wilder eyebrow.

If that occurs (or, as Jeftovic muses, has occurred) this will create a new world. I’m quoting an Xeet™ (LINK) from an X© account that claims that “we’ve crossed the barrier into recursive intelligence territory . . . the real story is the complete collapse of every barrier between conceivable and achievable.”

That’s a big claim, and I don’t know that I believe it. And, to be clear, Jeftovic doesn’t stand by the quoted Xeet™, either. But if it is a LARP on a lark, well, it’s interesting fiction.

I finally crossed “running a marathon” off of my bucket list. I’m relieved. There was no way I was ever gonna do that.

Let’s continue on with that very evocative phrase in mind . . . losing the barrier between “conceivable and achievable”. That rattled around the brainpan so much I felt like a Kennedy on a Dallas vacation.

I’ll start with this: not everything that humans conceive of is possible. There are certain things that we can conceive of that might violate some fundamental principle of the universe in such way as to be really impossible. Perhaps time travel is one of them? Perhaps it’s Disney™ making a good movie in this century?

Who can say.

But women do defy physics – the heavier they get, the easier they are to pick up.

But I assure you, much more is possible. In 1874, the story goes, a twenty-year-old German living in Holstein (it’s odd that so many ranchers raise German provinces) went up to his physics professor and said to his professor, “Hey, I like physics. I think I might want to become a theoretical physicist.”

“Nah, kid, don’t do it. Physics is pretty much like Madonna – everyone has been there, it’s all used up, and you don’t want to look too closely at what’s left.” I believe this is a correct translation, but, to be honest, I was using a Speak’n’Spell™.

We should be glad the student ignored his professor, since that student was Max Planck, who is also the guy who discovered quantum theory. And, remember, without quantum theory, single-serving airplane booze bottle bourbon would never have been developed and Madonna would still be an actual virgin.

I bring up this example for your consideration because I fully believe that much, much more is possible in our universe than we imagine. I mean, AI won’t help women be better airplane pilots.

Too soon?

Let’s get serious. Much more is possible, and the landscape has seriously changed since I first heard “ChatGPT™”.

We really can’t see where all of this is going right now. I recall listening to Scott Adams a year or so ago talking about AI. He noted that when he first got ChatGPT™, he thought that the way to get ahead was for a person to really get good at using it to solve business problems, and that would command a good salary.

Adams later gave up on that idea: ChatGPT© was evolving so quickly that “mastering” it was impossible because it kept changing so quickly. In watching these large language models (LLMs) develop it’s clear – they are becoming smarter, quickly. They are able to comment intelligently on writing, and to improve clarity. They’re able to program. They’re able to determine protein folding structures. They can determine who is going to die by looking at an EKG.

And, they are just starting.

The boundaries of what we can know are bounded by what a single person can do in a single meatspace life. An AI could reach across disciplines, rapidly taking information from one area to another, and synthesizing results and experiences that a single person could never have.

Get ready for research to move at a faster rate than at any point in history, and knowledge to be accumulated at a rate where the last two hundred years’ worth of technological advances might be seen in two. I know some are skeptical, but we’ve seen advances in the performance of LLMs so quickly as to be faster than the Bernie Sanders jumping on a loose dollar bill on the sidewalk while yelling about the evils of capitalist greed.

What do Bernie Sanders supporters call their roommates? Mom and Dad.

I am convinced now that the current research in AI is amazingly rapid, and it will be unrecognizable from our vantage point in just three years.

What we do with it, is up to us.

Will we be like monkeys with an iPhone™, using it to break rocks while we stair at our reflections in the shiny black mirror, or will we use it to remove all the barriers, quickly, between our ideas and reality?

Or what if Jeftovic is right and it’s not cosplay prophecy, and it has happened already, and we’re just in that odd space before the fireworks start?

Perhaps we’ll The Boy to come back and do many more techsorcisms?

Trump’s Axe

“By this axe, I rule!” – Kull the Conqueror

My email password has been hacked. This is the third time I had to rename my cat.

Last week I talked about the relative economic effects of the Great Government Purge of 2025-2026. Unlike Stalin’s Purge, the winners don’t get a bullet, instead they get a severance check and unemployment. Regardless, that’s not fun for the people involved, especially good people who are doing useful work for the Republic.

But it might be necessary.

There are two ways to combat waste and ideological rot. Trump tried using a scalpel during in his first term, cutting carefully, and here and there.

The impact of his efforts was minimal. Slightly fewer regulations that would later be made by the same bureaucrats that voted for Her® and the dotard Biden was the sum of all of his efforts. He was stopped at every turn by internal bureaucratic resistance, asking for clarifications and just ignoring Trump as if he were the terms and conditions on a piece of software.

If a Gnome is a pimp, does he manage the garden hoes?

Once Biden showed up, however, the bureaucracy reacted like a Ferrari™, purring along as whoever was actually running the government instead of Biden made requests that were instantly carried out. Also, like a Ferrari©, it spilled fluids everywhere, but enough of “Rachel” Levine.

Then they shot at Trump after trying six different ways to put him in prison or impoverish him.

That changes a guy.

Coming in to this administration, he threw the scalpel away and picked up an axe. During the first 40 days, he’s put out 68 executive orders. The axe has been aimed squarely at GloboLeftist and sex-fetishist activist enclaves, secret slush funds for GloboLeftist causes, and regulatory fortresses.

The rot is deep: it’s been growing for more than a century and excision’s the only shot left.

The rot started where most bad things in the United States start, around the time of the creation of the Federal Reserve™ and the income tax. The income tax was promised to only impact the very wealthy, but that was, to put it charitably, a big fat lie.

Allergies around here are so bad in springtime that the tweakers turn their meth back into Sudafed™.

The income tax was used first to fund a war, then a growing bureaucracy, then another war. Along the way, sometime in the 1930s, the obsession with secrecy began. Our war against Germany and Japan really did require a strong secrecy culture – having the Germans know when we were going to invade Normandy, or even that Normandy was a target would have led to failure.

And, yeah, we didn’t really want everyone to know how to make nukes, though the Rosenbergs felt differently. Before they fried differently.

But post-WWII, the state swelled to win a war, then never shrank because it had to fight a Cold War. The New Deal also bled seamlessly into the Great Society, birthing a permanent caste of deskbound overlords who could define the future of a business through a stroke of a pen or the press of a typewriter key.

By the ’70s, agencies like NSA and CIA ballooned under “national security”. Secrecy became a shield, while accountability a ghost. MKUltra? It’s a real thing that happened, and our tax dollars were spent on this top secret program. Why are the JFK files still redacted sixty years later?

Why does the CIA maintain that the formula for invisible ink (lemon juice) is still a national secret?

Is a line of people waiting to buy that doll for girls a Barbiqueue ?

Yes, I can see the reason to have secrets. But we should have about 12 of them. Which 12? I don’t know, but the never-ending, overlapping security state needs something to function: an enemy. The rest of the secrets? We put them where no one would look: in the middle of a Disney® movie.

I can’t see that we have one. Russia? Putin asked to join NATO in 2000. Are the Russians a bit skeevy? Sure they are. Are they a threat to us? Only in a nuclear fashion. After the end of the Cold War, there was no reason not to welcome Russia warmly into the host of nations. We didn’t.

Why?

The national security state needed an enemy, and it couldn’t be China because Clinton was too busy giving them all of our missile tech and hiring Chinese nationals into the security state so they could take hard drives of all of our secrets back to China.

The GloboLeft has also hijacked the security state. Ideologues wormed in—trans-activists at NSA, DEI czars at DoD —while “secret” programs metastasized, cloaking rot in classified ink. Secrecy’s a double-edged blade: it really is vital for real threats (SIGINT), but a dark wet rotting swamp where sunlight never shines for that is more wedded to itself than the people it swore to serve.

“Let me tell you: you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at (sic) getting back at you,” said Chuck Schumer. Why is it that politicians should fear the intelligence community?

Guess that makes me the pot.

The purge redraws the map: the bureaucratic blob shrinks. Keep in mind it’s not just the wages paid, it’s also all of those regulators writing regulations that lower competition and increase costs. When the initial pollution regulations hit, they got rid of 90% plus of the pollution very quickly and cost effectively.

Getting the last 0.1% of the pollution? Often this is crazy expensive and provides no real benefit. Remember how many jobs were lost because of the . . . snail darter, the spotted owl, and that time Oprah went on a diet.

Redefine carbon dioxide as a pollutant, and now regulators get even more power, and everything you consume increases in price. The people who have all of the climate “solutions”? They are the GloboLeftElite.

The axe is required.

Most of the curtains on our “secret” nation should lift. What survives has to earn the right to stay in the shadows. GloboLeft ideologues in federal service that don’t serve the people should be rooted out and given the opportunity to find a way to add value to the world.

Yet there’s a goal in here: a leaner state, loyal to the people, not its own girth or Dear Leader.

You can understand now why the cat is angry.

A century of rot, non-American ideologues and secrets are being sliced away. There will be chaos, as we find that, “Oh, no, we really needed to have air traffic controllers” and as this necessarily blunt instrument hacks through some good things to save the whole.

It’s ugly. It’s necessary. And it might just be enough.

All without building a single GULAG. Besides, that wouldn’t work on GloboLeftists. They need REEEEEEEEE-education.

The Amusement Singularity

“It bends space. Zod’s ship uses the same technology, and if we can make the two drives collide, a singularity can be created.” – Man of Steel

Bemused means to bewilder, but what if I’m already Wilder?

After a meeting, a colleague and I sat down in my office.

“Man, it has been a long year,” I said.

“Yes, it’s like we haven’t had a moment to rest for months.”

This really made me think. I chatted with several other people, and for them as well this year had been relentless as far as the pace of the year. It wasn’t necessarily bad, mind you, there was just something always going on. All the time.

I think, partially, is that we’re seeing the inevitable consequences of Wilder’s Law of Greatest Amusement – that principle that says that, given two likely outcomes, inevitably the most amusing outcome will occur. For whatever reason, I don’t think that this is an accident – I think it might be hard-coded into the fabric of the Universe by a Creator with more than a little sense of humor.

I mean, propane, right?

What’s a three-letter word that starts with gas? Car.

I don’t know if amusement is hard-coded, but I do know that the amount of change, or “novelty” that we’re seeing on a regular basis is off the charts. If I were to make a comparison, many weeks during 2024 have contained more fundamental change than was seen in the lifetimes of most medieval peasants.

Really.

I mean, many peasants were born and died in the same mud-hut with only change being repair on the thatched roof. Most peasants saw no meaningful changes at all to church, governance, demographics, or technology – in their entire lives. The most that they had to look forward to was to one day wear a hat made up of a very larger turnip. If they were lucky.

In the span of Pa Wilder’s lifetime, Pa went from his first rides being in a horsedrawn buggy to watching man set foot on the Moon before he was fifty. And let’s not forget that within one human lifespan Russia went from a Czarist empire to a communist hellhole to a, well, whatever it is today. I mean, they love ice dancing, right?

They told me I couldn’t be a stand-up comic, but no one is laughing now!

This change appears to be happening at a faster and faster rate. Alice Cooper (who I met, and he’s very chill) noted this back in the 1970s with the lyrics to Generation Landslide that I’ve referenced before:

“Stop at full speed at 100 miles per hour, the Colgate® Invisible Shield™ finally got ‘em”

It seems like we’re on a treadmill of innovation and that treadmill keeps getting faster and faster.

Part of it, of course, is that more information is available now than at any time in history. I can look up, without leaving my writing chair, information on almost any topic and get results. This allows people to very quickly make use of the solutions that others have found to problems. I can’t count the number of times that an Internet search or a YouTube® video has provided enough information to solve a problem that only an expert could have solved even twenty years ago.

Why is insulin expensive? It’s not called liveabetes now, is it?

There are some problems with this – why innovate when there’s a good enough solution on the Internet? It might stifle some solutions that bright people faced with a problem and no Internet would have solved, perhaps in a better way, without the information.

But, on balance, it probably has created a lot of wealth, having this information store solving problems daily. However, it certainly has sped up the world.

When I was learning how to play chess at more than a “move the pieces correctly” level, Pa Wilder took my impulsive nature and said, “Wait. Stop. Look at the board. Think.” It is probably no surprise that taking that advice made my play much, much better overnight. But it also forced me to be able to think about the game more systematically, and to find things that otherwise I would have missed.

Magnus Carlsen was disqualified for using a computer to look for potential mates. Stupid Tinder®.

Taking time to contemplate actually made me a better thinker. Now, I figure that (at work) I have between 700 and 1400 contact points a week, and probably 60 decisions (mostly minor) an hour. The time that I have to sit, contemplate, and plan is nearly zero due to the near-constant “urgent” stream of activity. Not only that, many people are required to be connected to their positions via cell phone nearly constantly.

Long term, I think this constant stream of connection is horrible for people and is making many of them miserable. I’ve wondered if the nearly constant stream of psychological problems and psych medications that plague kids today was related to an adversity-free upbringing where outrage was fostered by GloboLeft teachers. I think, in part, it is. But the information flow that they’re steeped into is at least an order of magnitude higher than when I was a kid, and probably two or three times that.

It turns our perception of time into an eternal now – with one novel event following another in rapid succession as we head to a singularity of amusement. An assassination attempt on a presidential candidate is rare, a presidential candidate “nominee in all but name” dropping out happening in the same month while a billionaire shitposts about it and X® posts and engagements reach an all-time high? As A.I. generated content is now likely surpassing human-created written content, and will likely soon surpass human illustration content. In a year or two? Maybe it surpasses human-generated video.

Yeah. The amusement is accelerating. Until it can’t.

I guess her children were born with carpet burn.

The solution is simple, unplug, turn it down, and relax in contemplation. The next time I have a problem? I’ll figure out how to do it myself and skip YouTube® and end up with another comical tale of how not to remove bodily hair with propane.

Is Struggling The Goal?

“He’s talented. Leave it at that.” – Goodfellas

Is it okay to sleep with a second cousin? The first one didn’t seem to mind.

Gifts can be a curse. No, I’m not talking about getting the Untitled Goose Simulator™, where you pretend to be a goose (this is a real thing) and honk at people as a Christmas gift. I’m talking about those innate talents that we’re born with.

Most of these talents are things that can be shown with a bell curve: height, intelligence, attractiveness, armpit odor, quickness, strength, charisma and the like. These are the normal human attributes that people have and that are assigned by dice roll in D&D® and by genetics and dice roll in reality. Mostly, these are things that you either can’t change (height) or can only influence. I’m born with the capacity for a maximum specific I.Q. and, though I might hone it through practice, the maximum capacity is always there.

I always was comfortable dating that blind woman. I knew she wasn’t seeing anyone else.

The flip side is what we do with those talents. Just like people are born with certain innate abilities, I also believe that they are born with certain tendencies: diligence, agreeableness, stubbornness, and honesty, for example. These are different than talent. While we are born with talents, these personality traits are much more malleable.

We call them, collectively, character.

Back to the idea of a curse. I’ve seen very intelligent kids emerge from school – these kids are two or three standard deviations above the norm in intelligence. That puts them in the range of 130-145 I.Q., and there are only a couple of million people that fit that description in the United States.

Yet, I’ve seen these very intelligent folks fail, and fail spectacularly.

Why?

Well, just like a pretty girl can only count on her looks for so long, a smart person (let’s call him Hiro Protagonist, he’s Korean/American, after all), no matter how smart, can only rely on their raw intelligence for so long. At some point, Hiro is surrounded by people just as smart as he is. Put Hiro into a classroom of geniuses with a genius professor, and now? Hiro is average.

It’s weird they advise to not talk about money during a job interview. When am I supposed to bribe them?

But if those other geniuses have learned how to work, how to be diligent, how to be internally motivated to meet a goal and the other collective traits we call “character” and Protagonist hasn’t?

Protagonist is toast. He will fail, and fail spectacularly. In fact, based on my experience, a person of great talent will almost always underperform someone of moderate talent who has character. Too much talent hobbles a person and never allows them to develop.

This isn’t limited to intellectual tasks – it’s very apparent in sports, which is one of the more objective things that humanity does. Who is the fastest runner in the 109.3613 yard dash? There’s a record for it.

On my birth, if I had worked really hard, and devoted my life to getting that record, would I have achieved it?

Of course not. There is a zero chance that I could run 109.3613 yards in 9.58 seconds at any point in my life, even given all of the effort in the world and all of the best training.

Zero.

To own a world record requires both talent and the character and discipline to develop the talent.

Without character, the talent is a curse.

Incompetence, unburdened by character.

In that respect, challenge and adversity are blessings, especially if they occur early in life. Highly functioning groups often have a shared adversity so that everyone knows that each member of the group has been through the same initiation.

These initiation rituals mean that, although there are certainly differences between people, the one thing that we know is that they have been through a challenge, and passed.

Those who fail? Well, it tells us a lot about them, too. I think that’s at least partially responsible for the Latin phrase: “mens sana in corpore sano” – a sound mind in a sound body. Smart people were made to work hard physically to improve themselves and those with physical talent were made to work hard intellectually. I guess maybe someone writing about archetypes would call this “Hiro’s Journey”.

It wasn’t being physical or intellectual that was the point – it was the hard work and determination required to get better that was the point. Life is struggle, and sometimes we can’t see the point of it. Norman Vincent Peale, who, despite his last name was not involved in the fruit and vegetable processing industry, had a quote when someone asked him about the afterlife.

I guess it’s better than the previous film – Taken: Out of Context.

I read it at least three decades ago, so, being lazy, I’ll paraphrase his response:

“How can you, looking at life today, be assured of an afterlife? Imagine you were a baby, in warm, safe environment. Temperature a perfect 98.6K. Life was good, right? Then sudden pressure, pain, and constriction like you’d never known. And then? Light, bright light, everywhere around you, the cooling air against your wet skin, and suddenly, a need to breathe in deeply to take your first breath of air. Now, imagine that life is like being a baby being born….”

I’m not at all sure that he said any of those words in anything like that order, but I know that I go the spirit of the answer right. Life isn’t about being comfortable. Life isn’t about being safe. Life is about learning and growing, and both of those things are exceptionally uncomfortable.

Do Viking clowns go to ValHaHa when they die on stage?

Without the challenge, our character suffers. Without the struggle, all of the gifts we are born with become curses.

Looks like the real gift is adversity, testing us and allowing us to build the character required for the next level. Maybe the Untitled Goose Game© is just the thing after all.

Honk! You, too, can be a Hiro.

But it isn’t easy.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: A Date With Destiny

“You hear that, Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability. It is the sound of your death. Goodbye, Mr. Anderson.” – The Matrix

I heard that Epstein got a clue to the inevitable – the last guard he tried to fist-bump left him hanging.

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

Volume VI, Issue 6

All memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”. I’ve kept the Clock O’Doom at the same place – though it will notch up quickly if there are any signs of the TradRight stiffening up.

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

In this issue: Front Matter – A Date With Destiny – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Big Fraud – Links

Front Matter

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

Civil War Weather Report Previous Posts

A Date With Destiny

Like most people, I believe that I have free will. Whether that’s true or not isn’t my call, so it’s certainly at a least a pleasurable fiction that I maintain. Free will, however, only applies to our choices, and doesn’t apply to our circumstances. Every person reading this is going to die. We pretend like that’s not the case, but I assure you it is, and there is no way to make a choice that will avoid that fate. Death is inevitable.

So, that’s one example. Another example where free will and choices don’t matter is when uncontrollable forces have been unleashed. For instance, if I drop a stripper off of the Empire State Building, there’s no way I’m not getting glitter on my shirt. It’s inevitable.

I think we’re at the same place with Civil War. It’s inevitable no matter who “wins” this election. That’s not to say that it might not be postponed for a bit, but like death and stripper glitter, it’s coming.

Why am I so cavalier in saying that? Well, it’s obvious if you look around. The things that are most likely to cause civil war are tied to what’s going on in the country. Here are your indicators:

Popular immiseration. This means that people are miserable. Inflation and declining prospects have made most young people miserable, and tortured them, to boot. Generations ago, a bright young man could support his family by being the local butcher or running the local sporting goods store. Now, he has to go to college, study, maybe get two degrees, and have his wife work to get the same lifestyle the guy selling letter jackets had.
Lower birth rates and later marriage age. I recently heard (though I don’t have a source) that when the age of first marriage exceeds 28, civil war is inevitable. Every single time. We’re at 30.
Too many elites. Just like all those young dudes are going to school for years in the hopes of being able to maybe one day buy a house, maybe, there are at the same time too many billionaires competing for power. Bloomberg, Trump, Cuban, Gates, Musk are all looking to see who can rule. There isn’t enough room for all of them, and their dissention forms the core of the leadership for civil war.
Belief that the system is fraudulent. Sure, we’ve all expected that the system is rigged, but 2020 was a slap in the face to election integrity since the very GloboLeftistElite that denounce anyone who doubts the validity of the election OPENLY BRAGGED about twisting the system in the pages of Time® magazine in 2021. I’ve heard of more election fraud before election week than in any pre-election period, ever, and don’t doubt that more is taking place behind the scenes. A fraudulent system that is brazen provides the casus belli for that civil war.
A failing economy. This ties to immiseration, but the economy has been juiced for so long with such amazing amounts of money that it is mathematically impossible to unwind without amazing amounts of pain. And pain causes . . . civil war.
Unpopular wars. Who wants to die for Ukraine? For Israel? For Taiwan? For South Korea? Yup, thought so. Yet there are rabid hawks on both sides that are willing to drag a thoroughly unwilling populace into a war they cannot win.
The fact that there have been at least two attempts on Trump’s life shows exactly how stable our society is right now.

Folks, I cannot stress this enough: this is inevitable, and only the timing is up for grabs. I’ve said before (in 2018 or 2019, I think) that 2025 was the first opening date for Civil War 2.0. I’ll stand by that, but I don’t think it’s likely. I still put the range as 2025 to 2040, with the most likely range being between 2030 to 2035. Big nations have a lot of inertia, like a train after you shut down the engine, keep going for a long time. But not forever.

Finally, this is not a wish, since I believe that everyone underestimates how gruesome this will be. I anticipate that China and Russia would gladly airdrop weapons to both sides when they’re not heading to their microwaves to make popcorn while they watch. But, just like throwing a trash bag full of vegetable soup into a jet intake, we all know what’s going to happen.

It’s destiny. Oh, and speaking of Destiny, she’s up next on stage 3.

Violence and Censorship Update

Obviously, there are things we can’t talk about openly because the consequences are too dire so that people were censored off of YouTube® for trying to report this. Until the lies break:

What happens when FEMA is on the side of the disaster?

And anyone who isn’t lawfully here?

Ahhhh, diversity. Bringing in Afghans to do killing Americans won’t do.

Trump Derangement Syndrome: It’s real.

Looks like Kamala only wants to allow certain speech. Anyone here surprised?

And NPCs on Reddit are with her:

And if Trump is Hitler®, then soon enough:

And speaking of the media, I wonder if they coordinate with the Kamala campaign?

Never forget, they have plans for you.

Biden/Harris Misery Index

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

Yup, up again, and peaking upwards as interest rates are starting to spike. Hmmm.

But not all people are miserable:

And some are too stupid to be miserable:

But people can’t afford McDonald’s anymore.

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Violence is up significantly, and this should be higher given that Venezuelan gangs are turning parts of US cities into no-go zones.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it is down a bit.

Economic:

The economy took a huge drop – I think the hangover from all the juicing is coming.

Illegal Aliens:

The latest numbers are simply lies.

The Big Fraud

Regardless of what follows, go out and vote. It makes fraud slightly harder.

Signs of voter fraud in advance of the election are through the roof. Here are a few:

This is illegal:

Ooops, that was election fraud from the last election.

Oh, the Colorado Secretary of State (above) also left nearly all of the voting machine passwords unprotected on the Internet. But it didn’t stop Democrats from suing to keep noncitizens on the voter rolls.

There are more issues, likely into the hundreds by now. At some point it should become clear that this is a humiliation exercise meant to drive home that you have no power. They can lie and cheat to your face, and “What Timmy gonna do?”

LINKS

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

BAD GUYS
https://x.com/rawsalerts/status/1844861906361909266
https://www.city-journal.org/article/no-youre-not-imagining-a-migrant-crime-spree
https://x.com/VivekGRamaswamy/status/1847669300422639725
https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1844125924301984148
https://x.com/TrendingEx/status/1843359191077138512
https://x.com/NoahPollak/status/1847006345662550219

GOOD GUYS
https://x.com/ImMeme0/status/1852394961330692486
https://twitter.com/i/status/1845646215452496049
https://x.com/i/status/1850126594418815417
https://x.com/i/status/1845866508259627261
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/some-mass-shooting-survivors-want-more-good-guys-guns

ONE GUY
https://archive.is/eB7iD

BODY COUNT
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/world/age-depopulation-surviving-world-gone-gray-nicholas-eberstadt
https://archive.is/hfs5Y
https://www.huduser.gov/portal/sites/default/files/pdf/2023-AHAR-Part-1.pdf
https://x.com/fentasyl/status/1844839172907123183
https://x.com/MarioNawfal/status/1849634400851341410
https://dailycallernewsfoundation.org/2024/10/10/non-english-speaking-students-are-overwhelming-pa-schools-and-racking-up-millions-for-small-towns-data-show/

VOTE COUNT
https://x.com/i/communities/1848518910653415584
https://x.com/PeterBernegger/status/1850565226690654556
https://x.com/scrowder/status/1850924883678498871
https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1849977065925189699
https://catholicvote.org/millions-of-christians-religious-people-say-they-are-not-voting-in-november/
https://x.com/emmagcawood/status/1850522383863390392
https://x.com/pepesgrandma/status/1850611709549146405

CIVIL WAR
https://realclearwire.com/articles/2024/10/22/quiet_before_the_storm_151815.html
https://newrepublic.com/article/185053/civil-war-reenactors-virginia-play-acting-expect-war
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2024/10/25/dc-residents-leaving-election-week-00185313
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13933435/MSNBC-host-claims-Trump-family-preparing-civil-war-former-president-warns-America-faces-enemy-within.html
https://slaynews.com/news/clinton-strategist-james-carville-trump-arrest-males-color-elected-calls-armed-uprising-harris-loses/
https://x.com/DrewHLive/status/1820859923787591846
https://thefederalist.com/2024/08/06/firebrand-leftist-jamie-raskin-said-congress-must-disqualify-trump-predicted-civil-war-conditions/
https://tomklingenstein.com/is-the-left-preparing-for-war-if-trump-wins/
https://truthovernews.org/p/democrats-plan-for-color-revolution
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/23/cold-civil-war-cultural-secession/
https://news.yahoo.com/news/hurricane-relief-workers-forced-evacuate-102606823.html
https://studyfinds.org/america-verge-of-world-war-iii/?nab=1
https://internationalman.com/articles/doug-casey-top-3-predictions-for-post-election-america/
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-election-trump-american-civil-war-b2634731.html

MANIFESTO
https://x.com/BillAckman/status/1844802469680873747

Prepatude.

“No harm in being prepared.” – The Fellowship of the Ring

If a detective solves a murder quickly, is that a brief case?

(most clips/memes from here on out are as-found)

Prepping is a subject that has been near and dear to my heart since I was a kid.

The Wilder family would frequently go on long hikes and snowmobile trips into the backcountry. Likewise, we’d go hunting and fishing. Before most of those trips, Ma and Pa would talk to me about the dangers on the trip, what to do if I got lost, and what to avoid. I’m still at a loss as to why they covered me in honey when we were in bear country and referred to me as “Hansel” but I did pay attention.

Our spot of land on Wilder Mountain was 15 miles to the first town, which was a metropolis of about 800 people during the school year. It had a grocery store, and a doctor’s office that was open (I believe) two days a week because the doctor went from town to town. It was a time and place where, when I was bitten by a local dog, the doctor asked me to describe it.

“Meh. Probably not rabid. I wouldn’t worry.”

It was a different world back then and Gen X kids, who were pretty free-range.

Got arrested for smuggling books into Washington D.C. Got off on a technicality, since no one there can read.

The winters on Wilder Mountain were cold at -40°F (-40°C) being a regular low, and with snowfall that could total to over three feet in a single night. There were no natural gas lines, or even artificial gas lines, and we heated the place exclusively on firewood. There were times the road was closed, and when the power was out, it was out for hours while the power company scrambled people from nearly 50 miles away to come and fix whatever had broken whereas fire always worked.

Ambulance? Forget it. When I was young, the closest ambulance (I believe) at least half an hour away. The ambulance was whatever car you had and the State Troopers told people to put their emergency flashers on when speeding to the hospital. Did I say State Troopers? Nah, there was just one within 45 miles.

There is an official denial that this is a true story. More info will come out.

And, obviously, no cell phones. Heck, our first line was a “party” line which was shared among four houses, and all the phones would ring for an incoming call. You could tell which call was for your house because each house had a distinct ring pattern, sort of like Morse code for Martha.

From a very young age, I knew that my safety wasn’t coming from some distant location. I was responsible for myself. Our family was responsible for our family.

As the slogan goes: no one was coming to save us, and we knew it. We also lived it, having provisions of food for more than a month at any given time, a freezer full of meat, and enough firewood to last two winters. When the power went out, we had candles, and Ma Wilder had the wax to make more.

I was raised with prepping as a mindset. We lived it.

I could go into more details, but you get the point – nearly everything we did was predicated on the idea that if things went tango uniform, we’d likely have to do all the digging out ourselves, which we did on more than one occasion.

When you don’t feel like physically preparing.

Looking back on it, that was a wonderful way to grow up. It’s really the opposite of being a victim. If I had gotten into a situation that I couldn’t have gotten out of while maintaining a 98.6°F (-40°C) body temperature, I knew it was my own fault.

It taught me this lesson: I’m never a victim.

This is also the story of the founding and conquering of our nation: people setting off to far lands across a sea, and then finally crossing the continent with everything they owned in a wagon, a little island of humanity that would sink or swim.

I’m a descendent of those that managed to swim, and probably, you are, too.

Well, that’s embarrassing for FEMA.

This, really, is the opposite of city life.

For someone in New York, they depend on other people for almost everything. Trash. Food. Heat. Water. Safety. Security. Elevators. Like I said, almost everything. They exist as a cog in a technological machine that uses them for a specific purpose and then puts them to rest in the off hours so they can complain about how alienated they feel to psychiatrists that charge $400 an hour.

GloboLeft prepping aisle.

To them, prepping probably means avoiding scary people on the sidewalk, but even that isn’t any sort of guarantee of safety. Nor is a guarantee that the systems that work to punish those who will do Evil is in any way functional. It looks like those are breaking down at a rapid pace, and that will do nothing but increase the level of violence and corruption already inherent with large numbers of people from divergent cultures living close to one another.

Such a vibrant big-city culture!

For them, prepping isn’t an attitude, prepping is something other people do, because the stores are always open, 24/7.

More than anything, however, preparation is a continual situational review of what you have and what you have to have. I write this now because I sense we’re in a greater degree of danger than at any time during my life, with the possible exception of 1983 when things almost got extra-spicy with the Soviets, who were nearly finished with updating their weapons from World War I.

Now is really the time to assess where you’re at, what you’re doing, and what you would do without things that are “essential”.

Essential is relative: 2 minutes without air, 2 hours without shelter (depending on conditions), 2 days without water, and 2 weeks without food (though lots of folks including myself are pre-prepped for that contingency). How many GloboLeftists could last an afternoon, though, without the warm affirmations of their fellow travelers that they’re on the Right Side of History®?

Why wouldn’t they want people reporting on this? Embarrassed, or wanting to kill opposition voters in a swing state?

No, prepping isn’t about a day or a time or an event, it’s a way of life, because of the horrible things that have happened to me have been none of the ones I expected, like that time I nearly ran out of beer. But since I had prepared generally, well, I was prepared. I have 200’ of rope in my truck. Why?

I have no idea what specific episode I’ll need it, but experience shows that in the next decade someone will say to me . . . “I have no idea why you had the rope, John, but it sure stopped that runaway nuclear reactor meltdown!”

I mean, most people only stop one nuclear reactor meltdown. But two?

Know their priority. It isn’t you.

My prepping background is my parents. We lived near the wilderness, and lived like it. One thing that neither Pa nor Ma would accept, at all, was a victim.

Having a proper prepping attitude, or prepatude is all about that – setting yourself up so that being a victim isn’t in your future. Then?

Lists.

Economics Of War, 2024 Edition

“Well, it seems to me, sir, that God made me a fine instrument of warfare.” – Saving Private Ryan

I guess that there’s no thyme to tell all his stories.

War is one of the natural states of humanity. Although we don’t have records back before when Grug was living in Switzerland before hot cocoa was invented, we do have Ötzi, a guy who died about 5,300 years ago.

What we can tell about Ötzi is that, first, he’s dead. Secondly, we can tell that he was almost certainly murdered. By who? Don’t know, but it’s a pretty good bet that they guy who inflicted the wound died, too. Unless he was killed by Keith Richards, who we should probably put on a space ship because only he could live long enough to travel to another star.

Why would I say that the murderer was dead (unless it was Keith Richards)? The Yanomami people of the jungles of South America are as close as we have to “pre-civilization” people, and they killed themselves in at an astonishing rate. About half of their men died in combat until fairly recently.

Do your part to keep him immortal.

The economics of the Yanomami violence are pretty simple – a bow, an arrow, a stone knife, and an enemy. Heck, they don’t even have money, so I have no idea how they can get a rental car.

In one sense, we are the opposite of the Yanomami and Ötzi. We have been fortunate enough to live in the Good Times, when the horror of nuclear weapons has thus far lowered the percentage of combat deaths since 1945 to what I think could be a historic low. Why?

War is like football. Everyone comes out of the huddle, and then lines up. What the team on the offense is going to do? Who knows. It’s the job of the defense to respond and stop them, though using snipers is considered to be unsportsmanlike. Creating surprise is now pretty difficult, especially surprise on a large scale.

My buddy said he made a voodoo doll of me. I think he’s pulling my leg.

Let’s look at the Ukraine Conflict.

It started out as a grand, strategic move like a great World War II battle with tanks and bombs and planes. That did surprise the West (me included) because it seemed so out of place given the safe world we live in – as /pol/ would say: “nothing ever happens”. The initial gains of the Russians were large, but by the time the Ukrainians got their feet under them, the Russians had a logistical snarl and found out that rubber tires rot if you just leave them in the garage for thirty or forty years.

Oops.

The war went from swooping strategy to what exists now: a series of mainly small-scale actions where when an infantry squad breaks through, it sometimes makes the news even though a gain of 500 yards is a big deal. Why? Because large troop concentrations are visible from space. And anything visible from space is a target. Neither side can effectively generate the schwerpunkt or focal point of forces required to break through and create a war of movement.

Are doctors who graduate online called Google® Docs?

Nope. The latest development is that small squads of Russians are now using small, cheap ($2500 or less) dirt bikes to get to the opposing trenches fast, disposing of them as they storm the trenches. This helps them avoid the ever-present drone swarms. It’s like The Road Warrior, but with fewer shoulder pads.

And tank warfare? For now, at least, it’s gone. Just like bat is the “chicken of the cave” so is the tank now the “aircraft carrier of the land”. They’re mainly just expensive targets, and a variety of cope cages, turtle shells, and electronic jamming have been field-innovated to try to protect them.

But when you lose a tank, you lose a pretty big investment. Russia can only make (depending on your definition of tanks) about 1,500 a year, along with 3,000 other sorts of armored vehicles. A big chunk of those tanks are modernized and rebuilt Soviet-era tanks.

A Russian T-90 tank costs about $4.5 million. A drone with bomb costs less than a thousand dollars. One economist estimated that the Russian tank losses alone was about an $11 billion dollar hit.

You do the math.

Remember when the Biden/Harris administration shot down the Chinese balloon? At least they tried to stop some inflation.

Likewise, aircraft have had to stay well back because of surface to air missiles, of which the Russians produce a pretty good variety. The Russians claim (heavy emphasis on the word claim) their radars can easily see the F-35 and F-22. Claim. An F-35 costs about $109,000,000 per aircraft. An F-22 cannot be replaced – we lost the tooling. Fun fact: $109,000,000 in quarters would weigh five and a half million pounds, or the equivalent of the weight of pre-printed Biden ballots the Democrats had to dispose of discreetly after Joe dropped out.

As of January, 2024, we have 234 operational F-35s. We have 187 F-22s. And, yes, those babies can unleash a lot of havoc in short order, but missiles are cheap, and if it takes dozens to knock one of our fighters down, it’s dollars ahead. And, let’s be clear: they’re not always flying. The US response to the Me-262 wasn’t to try to dogfight a German jet with a Yankee prop, nope, our aces hung around the German air bases and shot them as they had to land.

Is a boomerang their weapon of choice?

Every weapon has a weakness, and rarely can those weaknesses be overcome by papering them over with hundred-dollar bills. But just as the object of making weapons has gotten bigger and bigger, our ability to fight a World War II style war has gone to zero. One anecdote is that a captured German fighter pilot was bragging about shooting up a large quantity of American planes on the ground at an airbase. Being at the airbase, the US officer took him outside and noted, “They’ve already been replaced.”

The German reportedly said, after a heavy sigh, “And that is why we are losing.” That, and my great-grandfather, Johan von Wilder, who was responsible for downing five German fighters by himself. Worst mechanic in the Luftwaffe.

The trend, though, is less $100 million fighters, but now seems to be looking towards large numbers of inexpensive, nearly disposable weapons that are cheap, lots of missiles that cost a few million bucks, and fewer “so expensive it’s silly” systems, except for those that give the really important part of the battle: information – satellites and radar and the like.

But for all of that, the goal in war seems to have changed. Rather than breaking stuff and killing people, the goal is more based on long-term fights whose goal is to cause the enemy to become unstable to topple their own leadership for someone more favorable. I’m betting this is really a legacy of the Cold War.

I put my desk in the elevator. I hope it takes my career to a whole new level.

I don’t think that we’re in any shape to fight an actual war against a determined opponent in a conventional sense for longer than a month or two, and wholly incapable of fighting in an area where we don’t have uncontested air dominance. From an industrial standpoint, our ability to make more stuff isn’t serious: outside of small arms and helmet and clothing, I’m not sure that there’s a weapons system that we could make without the help of overseas firms for critical items.

We just don’t make it here anymore, and building the basic industries to allow us to do so will take decades and trillions of dollars in capital invested. I think we’ve reached the point where our primary weapon is financial. There’s a precedent that situation can last a long time – the Byzantine Empire lasted in one form or another for over 1,000 years.

The Byzantine Empire had a gold stash that would make Scrooge McDuck® do whatever it is that ducks do when they’re happy, however. We don’t. Our wealth is based on paper and mathematics, and can move across borders in milliseconds (megafarads if you want an SI unit).

What would Ötzi’s people think about that? I don’t really know. I guess we’ll have to ask Keith Richards.