Category: TEOTWAWKI

How Civil Wars Start Book Review: Leftists Are Idiots

“I got nowhere else to go!” – An Officer and a Gentleman

I think I might have been the only person in my state where “Juan” was my nickname.  I guess that makes me Juan in a million.

I recently bought the book How Civil Wars Start (And How to Stop Them) by Barbara F. Walter (2022, Crown).  When I bought it, I bought it used to save a few bucks.  When it arrived, The Mrs. looked at the title and noted, “Oh, as if you weren’t already on enough lists.”

After I read the book, I was really glad that I bought it second-hand because the last thing I would want to ever do is put money into the hands of the Leftist harpy who wrote it.  I generally like people, especially people I haven’t met.  To be frank, after reading Ms. Walter’s book, I really, really detest her for reasons I’ll discuss during and especially towards the end of the review.

Not that I have any opinions.  There was, however, some interesting information.  Because of that, I thought I’d give a review of the book so you don’t have to read it if you don’t want to.  And, since I’m discussing 90% of the interesting parts, there’s no reason you should buy this book.

First, the way this book was written was through a series of emotionally loaded stories only then followed by the actual research.  The book was 226 pages before the notes and acknowledgements, and could have been half that length, if Walter wasn’t writing endless bad-romance-book-level summaries of people who had seen civil wars.  These weren’t interesting or useful like Selco’s Sarajevo experiences, but just stories (all with a Leftist bent) meant to make the reader feel.  I am skipping discussion of any of these insipid parts that were meant to twist your emotions because you can watch network tv if you want to.

You can thank me for that in the comments.

What do Green Eggs and Ham and Fifty Shades of Grey have in common?  They both encourage people who can barely read to try new things.

I hate being manipulated, and this book was just that, but it was manipulation at the level of a clumsy middle school girl level of soft puppy dog eyes.  For example, the first segment was a breathless analysis of the kidnap plot against Gretchen Whitmer, complete with blame of the 3%ers, Qanon supporters, and the Proud Boys.

Missing?

The fact that the entire case against the “kidnappers” collapsed in Federal court because the FBI was responsible for it from start to finish.  Yes.  The kidnapping was the idea of the FBI.  But Walter, despite having this information, is the CNN® of writers, skipping over actual facts to sell her feels.

Skipping to the parts that are interesting, she notes that there has been an attempt to classify where countries lie along a spectrum of governance:  +10 is a full democracy, like Denmark.  -10 is a full autocracy, like Best Korea.  Very few civil wars occur when countries are close to the ends of the spectrum.  Why would you have a civil war in Denmark?  What, you don’t like pastries and hot Danish girls?  And in Best Korea, the state has such control from cradle to grave of the citizens that the idea of revolt is nearly impossible.  The country even has approved hairstyles.

From the book, page 22.  How I got the weird light effects, I’ll never know.

So, -10 and +10 are safe from civil war.  The danger zone is -5 (think, Czar Nicholas II) to +5 (think Putin/Zelensky/Biden).  It’s a time where the state is generally moving from either democracy toward autocracy or vice versa.  Due to the change, it’s weaker.  The name they made up for a country in that zone is an anocracy.  Examples provided include places where I’d never want to have a vacation:

  • Serbia (1990s)
  • Bosnia (1990s)
  • Spain (1930s)
  • Rwanda (1990s)
  • Ukraine (2010s)

I found it interesting that the state being poor, unequal, heterogeneous, or repressed didn’t count as much as to where the country sat on the governance scale.  The idea is that the countries are weaker – there is division, there are no social guardrails, and the state is therefore susceptible to a chain reaction due to an event – think George Floyd or cancelling Firefly – that will start the war.

The next condition increasing the likelihood of civil war is the creation of factions.  These factions were often based on racial groups, ethnic groups, or religious groups, or some combination.  The biggest sign of coming difficulty was the exclusion of these groups from power.  Losing the presidency through changing all the rules into Biden’s favor (and perhaps some counting shenanigans) in 2020 is livable.  2024 loss?  Normally, that wouldn’t be an issue.

But in this case, a particular group senses opportunity or demographic change (from the book).  This results in increased tension, partisanship, and group identification.  Chances double if there is a group tension.  If the country is an anocracy?  The chances of civil war go up by a factor of thirty.

Blacksmiths generally box in the smelterweight division.

Want it to get even worse?  If the tension is ethnic/racial plus religion, class, or geography?  That increases the chances of civil war by a factor of 12 versus a homogeneous society.  In the United States in the 1950s (for example) the chances of civil war were nearly zero because the society was very close to homogeneous.

When a group is left out, and no longer has a chance of winning, no access to government, no access to political power, that tension is formed.  It’s even larger if that group used to be in control and lost power.  One researcher called these people, “Sons of the Soil”.  The characteristics of this group were:

  • They lived on territory they conquered or settled
  • They consider themselves “native” and the rightful heirs
  • They were or had been the majority

This group is likely to rebel at twice the rate of others, and are generally a much more capable foe.

What sets these Sons of the Soil off?  They see their:

  • Culture,
  • Language,
  • Holidays, and
  • Religion replaced.

Outsiders swamp them.  Walter quotes David Horowitz, “Numbers are an indicator of whose country it is.”  Of course, by that standard, California is Mexico, and immigration is often a flashpoint to civil war.

Yes, this is a thing that’s happening.  But by “back” they mean Texas.  Silly cosmopolitan elites!

Finally, loss of hope is a precipitator for civil war.  If there is no route to power, hope disappears, just like happened to the South during Civil War 1.0.  What is a loss of power?  As we discussed previously, in real terms, two losses in a row at the national level is a loss of power.

One thing Walter doesn’t like is social media, and the voice it provides people.  She notes that it heightens ethnic, social, religious, and geographic divisions.  My general take from reading her was, “we control the media, and if you don’t like it, too bad, racist.”  Proof?  She’s upset that Swedish people are running on the idea of “restoring their national home” and stopping the never-ending influx of rather lawless refugees that are anything but Swedish.  For the Swedish people to want a national home is apparently racist.

Walter categorizes the Right as appealing to the “primitive” (her word) ideas of nation, protection, The Other, anger, and fear.  I mean, why shouldn’t the Swedes want to an import a group of people that rape so much that the police stopped reporting demographics of the rapist because they didn’t want to support hate?

I mean, really, why would we want to make Sweden more Pakistani?

On Ms. Walter’ chapter, “How Close Are We” she:

  • Spits out a litany of Leftist talking points about January 6 and Michigan, ignoring entirely the George Floyd protests.
  • Notes that “Global trade agreements were signed that benefited coastal elites (her words!) at their (working class whites) expense.

Open insurgency is the last phase.  Where are we now?  Here is Walter:  “We are a factionalized anocracy that is quickly approaching the open insurgency stage, which means that we are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe.”

Walter has a chapter on, “What A War Would Look Like”.  I’ll summarize it this way:  it’s the same sort of thoughts that a bright six-year-old might have about drinking beer at a frat party.  Sure she might be able to describe it in vague terms, but, let’s face it, until you’ve carried your drunken buddy upstairs to pass out near a trash can, it’s all academic.  She’s bizarrely fixated on 4chan, to the point that she thinks the Boogaloo Bois weren’t just a meme.  Imagine, an academic trolled by /pol/ by pretending that the civil war will be led by people in Hawaiian shirts?  Again.  Like it hasn’t happened about 200 times at this point.

Also, the book was written before the chip implant change.  She thought that the Right would flock to Ukraine to fight on the side of the Neo-Nazi Azov group.  Huh.  Guess that idea aged like milk.

Her final chapter is on how to prevent a civil war.  It’s simple!  Just do anything that AOC says!

Really.  This chapter is nothing more than list of “do everything on the main list of Democrat objectives in 2021, and the world will be awesome!”  This particular chapter raised my blood pressure high enough that when I started sweating my handkerchief came away pink.  Sample line:  “Countries that try to stop immigration will slowly die . . . “  Yeah.  It’s chock full of lies.

This is also when we found that Barbara’s parents were both immigrants to the United States, and Barbara, though born here, seems to hate here.  She wants to change the United States that drew her parents here (89%+ white, homogeneous, far-Right by her standards) into a nation that resembles the mess her parents fled from.  Her husband seems even worse – he’s a dude that doesn’t have the guts to have his wife take his name, was born in Canada from immigrant parents that fled Soviet-era Hungary.

And it sounds like Barbara would be happier living in the approaching Soviet Canada than in the United States that she and her ilk helped create through their ideology since they discussed moving there.  She’s an American because of a piece of paper issued by a bureaucrat, has no roots here, and will happily move on to the next country to destroy.

Shocking, that.  Walter thinks that people with the values of the 1950s, the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s, and the 1990s are now “Far Right” and wants them out of the military.  In reality?  It was always, always those guys who made up the military.

Barbara F. Walter is a member of the cosmopolitan elite (her quote, not mine!) and is a rootless blight on the world and is no more American than that Chinese kidney I bought off of Ebay® the other day.  Since she and her gutless husband wanted to run and hide at the slightest bit of trouble in her Leftist dreams, she and I?

We are not the same.  I am American, I’ve got nowhere else to go.

Matt:  Tell me:  what’s the difference between us and them?

Jed:  Because . . . we live here.

Misplaced Empathy Will Kill Us All

“Look, I just fix stuff, okay? This whole empathy thing it’s, uh, not exactly my strong point, all right?” – Andromeda

The Mrs. says I have no empathy. I have no idea why she would feel that way.

I was in a pretty deep sleep, having another stupid dream. My definition of a stupid dream is something like, “being at work, and writing an email”. If I’m going to dream, I don’t want to waste it on work, I want to be out conquering the green-skinned warrior women from Alpha Centauri, not dreaming about doing my taxes.

Occasionally, though, I have a fully formed thought so perfect that it jars me out of a deep sleep, and I have to write it down, like that time I invented the goldfish treadmill, or the silent alarm clock that slapped The Mrs. in the face with a comically large clown glove so her alarm wouldn’t wake me up.

The Mrs. did not appreciate the prototype of that alarm clock. The Mrs. then said, “The time is not right for that invention.”

Regardless, the subject of my slumber’s epiphany was . . . empathy. It started with a dream of me going to work. I was late (which never happens) so I was going 105 miles per hour (Trudeaus per fortnight) in a 25 miles per hour zone. Someone in the dream said (I didn’t see them) that, “You leave John Wilder alone. He was only speeding because he was late.” I started laughing. Here, someone was making excuses for me because of misplaced empathy.

I laughed, and woke up laughing. I also knew I was changing what I was going to write about today.

In my defense, the sign said, “Speed limit 35 ahead” and there were three people in the car, so three times five is 105, right?

Empathy sounds good. It is good, because empathy is really what enables conscience, remorse, and the power to change behavior that hurts others. There’s even a term for people who don’t have empathy: sociopath. Oddly, that’s what my ex-wife called me during our marriage, but I thought my car just had a great suspension.

Regardless, when I ran over that pedestrian, I didn’t feel a thing.

So, yeah, empathy is important. It’s important enough that psychologist Jonathan Haidt had it listed as number one on his list of the foundations of morality, though he used the word “care”. I’ll skip the others for now for a later post, probably on Friday, so we can focus on just one: care/harm, which I’ll call “empathy”.

That is the single foundation of morality that Leftists score higher on than folks on the Right. And, in my boredom at work (in my dream) I figured it out – the reason why the Right can’t talk to the Left is that the Left is so full of empathy that they can’t stop crying enough to have a decent conversation.

The Mrs. screamed, “You never listen to a single word I say!” What a funny way to start a conversation, right?

Before we get to the punchline, it’s very important to consider this question: Who do normal people primarily feel empathy for?

  • Those who are weaker than us. A good example to illustrate this is Bill Gates. When Bill Gates lost $30 billion, who cried? Not Bill. I don’t think Bill cries at all unless he has solid gold tissue paper infused with Moon rocks and sasquatch hair to better absorb his tears.
  • People who are experiencing similar problems to the ones they’ve had, and that are similar to them. I can’t really understand how a Kalahari Bushman feels after not getting an antelope, but I can understand how I feel when the Pizza Hut™ is 20 minutes late with the pizza.
  • Connectedness to the object of empathy. Typically, I feel a lot more empathy for The Mrs. when she’s feeling blue than I do for Kim Jong Il when he runs out of vodka during his endless game of SimKorea®. I feel more about people in my town than in the next town over, and by the time that it’s a bus full of 275 nuns and 1,043 orphans falling off a cliff in India, my empathy has drained down to, “Huh, maybe they should put up guardrails” and “Who knew that they had mountains in India? Or nuns?”

It’s not horrible to feel this way, it’s natural. I should care more about my parents (in general) than an Iraqi cabdriver in Paris. And I can only imagine so much of the pain someone is suffering if I have no basis to relate to it. And no one has felt sympathy for Bill Gates since 1982.

Leftists, though, score really high on empathy, much higher than people on the Right. My theory is that most of them live in big cities, and live a much more anonymous and disconnected life than we do here in Modern Mayberry, where I can’t go into the liquor store without the clerk saying, “Oh, Wilder, you again. Do you even have a home?” The social fabric, ability to contribute, and sense of belongingness in smaller communities is often richer.

I would look exactly like that, if I had hair, and if it was brown, and if I hadn’t discovered carbohydrates.

I think this begins to rot their brains. They have natural feelings of empathy, but no natural way to use them, so this normally virtuous process becomes subverted. Ever see someone on the Right screaming because someone couldn’t kill babies in a state they don’t live in? No.

But their empathy isn’t what people on the Right experience Leftists score higher in empathy tests (which shows how they feel), but those same Leftists contribute less to charities than people on the Right. Why? Because they think that everyone should feel the same compassion Leftists feel and everyone should share in and help out, so the Leftists raise taxes and take money by force to feed their need to be empathetic.

The result: Leftist empathy is paid for using everyone’s money. Sort of like my relationship with my kids, but if my kids had guns.

But it doesn’t stop there. The particular thought that woke me up was the idea that a Leftist would explain away any crime if the person committing it met their empathy filter, because they care about empathy more than every other foundation of virtue.

This is devastating at the level of a civilization. It means that, no matter what, feelings are now the highest form of virtue. Let’s take some examples of this type of thinking in real life:

  • “That man shouldn’t get a ticket for going 105 in a 25, he was late to work!”
  • “Timmy didn’t mean to break your window, he was just playing, and he’s only four.”
  • “How can they give him a DUI? His parents were alcoholics.”
  • “No mother should have to fear her son will be shot while he’s out robbing convenience stores.”
  • “It’s not fair that the homeowner had a weapon of war, an AK-15, when he shot that boy who only had a revolver.”
  • “No human is illegal – besides, they do the work that we won’t.”
  • “Those are mostly peaceful riots – only a few billion dollars’ worth of property damage was done. That’s why the store owners have insurance.”
  • “Why not give them reparations? America owes it to them.”
  • “How can Americans be bothered to have to have state-issued identification to vote? It’s unfair.”
  • “Those Christians are awful! Why else would a trans person feel like she had to kill them?”
  • “Muslim shooter kills 30. Muslims will be the most impacted by the backlash.”

Remember Bill Gates? No one feels bad for him. But Leftists feel empathy especially for those they look down on, that they feel better than. The Left feels that the people the Left gives their empathy to are somehow lesser than they are. They have no empathy for productive taxpayers, but empathy for murderers and looters.

Why do the Leftists throttle news about blacks killing blacks? Because they treat them with the same empathy they treat toddlers. Black people can’t be expected to know better, after all. Why do they elevate news of an 85-year-old white man shooting a 16-year-old black kid while burying the story of a black man shooting up an entire white family? Because Leftists view the white guy as more capable of self-control than the black guy, who shouldn’t be judged by this one event because there were thousands of people that he didn’t shoot, after all.

I wonder why one of these got national news attention?

In my humble opinion, the law should be entirely color blind. And ideology blind. That’s the reason we have the law. The January 6 “rioters” should be punished in exactly the same fashion as the George Floyd “protestors” if they committed crimes. Walking through the Capitol? Yeah, not an issue. Sitting at Pelosi’s desk and stealing her laptop? That’s a crime, and the guy should be punished in a fair and proportionate way. Period.

Many of the George Floyd rioters did far worse, yet few have paid for crimes up to and including murder and the $2 billion dollars in damages done. The law has simply ceased to be ideology and color blind and is now converged to punish only people on the Right. The idea that hate crimes have been enshrined in law and that “hate speech” is rapidly becoming criminalized despite that pesky First Amendment is telling that the justice system is becoming broken.

The last (nearly 60!) years since Johnson’s Great Society was implemented have shown trillions spent to work on the “root cause” of poverty and racial disparity in this country. There have been trillions spent on this project out of empathy. Result? Roadway design is being called, by Transportation Secretary Zoolander, racist:

And the last three uniparty presidents, looking around, decided we just didn’t have enough foreigners, so they’ll Uber some in:

Unchecked, pathological empathy by the rank and file of the Left is destroying the country – if you pick a big city, it’s nearly certain that some new horror is occurring daily, and that there is no one even pretending to stop it.

Thanks, George Soros!

Pathological empathy is killing us, literally. The destruction of society is ongoing. And we know why. What I do know is if we can see it, if we can ridicule it, and if we can polarize it we can make change happen. The guy who dresses as a girl who got his own Bud Light® can?

He was the polarizing figure that society coalesced around, coming as he did on the shooting by yet another transsexual, brought it home for many. “This has gone too far.”

So, point out the hypocrisy of this misplaced empathy when you can, and don’t dream about writing emails at work.

Some Signposts On The Way To Collapse

“It’s a growth economy, Gus. We’ve already made like, 500 rupee.” – Psych

What’s worse than rushing to the liquor store five minutes before it closes?  Getting there thirty minutes before it opens.

For the most part, I like to have my posts be about a bigger, underlying principle.  In my life, I have found the first thing I enjoy is making people think about life in a different way and examine new possibilities.  The second thing is a never-ending stream of jokes.  To be clear, I never tell jokes to amuse others; I tell jokes because they amuse me.  They maybe Dad jokes, that’s why I save them in a Dadabase.

Tonight, however, I’m going to just enjoy our current economy, and just give some milestones on the current descent into whatever economic future that we’re creating in a relatively short post.

First up, is the idea that $100,000 isn’t a lot of money anymore:

How many Zoomers does it take to change a lightbulb?  100,000.  One to change it, and 99,999 to throw the parade.

I kid, a bit.  Zoomers certainly are the most fragile generation that we’ve ever produced, since when I was growing up trigger warnings was what Pa Wilder gave me if he saw my finger head towards one when I wasn’t planning on shooting.  A safe space?  That was the place that Pa had a safe.

As much as I’d like to bag on the Zoomers, it really is a rough world that they’re coming into, economically and otherwise.  Most of the jobs are in the cities, and the housing costs there are ludicrous.  I’d rent in the cities for longer than two months, but I only can afford to give up one kidney.

A policy of unpoliced and encouraged illegal immigration for decades has consequences?  Perish the thought!

It’s not just housing which has become more unaffordable than at any time in history (at least in the cities).  Cars have recently gone to silly levels – the latest average monthly payment for a new car is $716 for an average of 69 (hehe) months.  The average loan amount is $41,445.  The last three cars I bought (all used) totaled $45,000 or so.

To be clear, people don’t have to buy a new car.  I haven’t bought a new car since 1997, all of mine have been used.  The average used car goes for nearly $28,000, with a monthly payment of $526 at an interest rate of over 10%.  Ouch!

I wonder if this app is the biggest cause of suicide for Tesla® owners?

While the next two items are from Canada, I wonder how far behind the United States is.

For those who aren’t used to metric, a kilogram is roughly two pounds, and a Canadian dollar is roughly a handful of rounded pebbles that you might collect at the bottom of a stream – I think it’s called a metric dollar.

It’s pretty bad in Canada.  They could have had it all:  America’s sense of freedom, British literature, and French cuisine.  Instead?  They got French immigration policy, Britain’s love of pointless bureaucracy, and American economic policy.  And they’re paying for it, literally.

Thankfully, some folks are doing well in the economy.  I heard a rumor that one person was taking dollars to buy diesel fuel from a European source, but instead bought it from a Russian source.  Amazingly, when you make smart decisions like that, you can save a lot of money.

Me?  I’ve seen corruption, bribery, blackmail, jealousy, theft, fraud, and deception firsthand.  I’m never playing Monopoly with The Mrs. again.

To be fair, I will share that Russia has a new technological innovation that I can share, to at least partially offset all those leaked documents.  The Russians have apparently developed a new technology that allows them to see with the vision of one of the most ruthless killers on Earth:

Remember when Putin said he didn’t have any plans to invade the Ukraine?  I think he was telling the truth.

Again, this post is just is a different one, just a signpost on road that we’re on.  I’d offer $100,000 for your thoughts, but it would be that Canadian metric money.  What’s it called?  A rupee?

Decline or Collapse? Collapse.

“You didn’t find me, you collapsed a building on me.” – Sherlock Holmes:  A Game of Shadows

How do you get a philosophy student off the front porch?  Tip him for the pizza.

Finished my taxes.  All went well – I’m actually getting some of my money back.  In truth, I was pretty close to posting some memes.  This weekend at the Wilder house was just one filled with, “meh, let’s order pizza and relax because we don’t feel like doing much” across the board.  So, we relaxed, at least until it was time to do my annual tango with TurboTax®.

I almost decided to post some of the more amusing memes I’d found across the Internet, but had so far not found a time or place to use.  But, just as the clock headed reached 10 ‘til midnight, the muse struck me like a bag of wet sushi fish in a net stocking owned by a stripper named Destiny who is missing two fingers on her left hand.

How does civilization end?

Lots of people talk about an eternal decline.  That’s a wishful thought, I guess.  It’s the Bladerunner dystopia where everything is cheaper and coarser, ever more crowded, and ever less human.  I guess the bright side of the Bladerunner fate is an endless supply of robot clones of Sean Young back before she went crazy and decided to live on a diet of Twinkies® and gin.

Be glad I didn’t make you look at Old Cat Lady Sean Young.

To be clear, that’s mainly what we’re seeing.

  • Gangs of “youths” in Chicago rioted this weekend because it’s Chicago, they outnumber the police, and they can do anything and their chances of getting arrested are about the same as Kamala Harris having an idea that didn’t die of loneliness.
  • Power grids that went from reliable to “maybe” because people decided investing in infrastructure was homophobic or something.
  • A shrinking middle class, and less clear ways for most people to join it, especially the kids. My generation, Gen X, has a significantly smaller share of the national wealth than the Boomers did at my age.  And the Zoomers and Millennials?
  • Economic disruption – inflation and shortages jumped up when the papering-over of the economic problems of a made-up currency that was spent as fast as possible by both Left and Right could no longer be papered over. Even today, there is no thought to try to fix things, because that would stop the party and we know politicians love to party.
  • Moral decay and the loss of civic virtues that would make Caligula look like a prude. When late-stage Rome would have said, “Whoa, dude, you’re going too far,” it’s time to think about where we are.

There are more things, but making longer lists makes me better at making longer lists but doesn’t really tell the story, and you have a search engine.  The idea is that all of these things that are happening right now are going to lead us down a trail where each day, things get a bit duller, a bit uglier, and bit more unreliable, and a bit shabbier.  The United States (and other Western countries) exhibit a long, slow decline into the eventual status where everything is not only expensive, but it also sucks.

I congratulated someone for a great exit sign once.  “Nice going!”

Again, that’s an optimistic case.  It assumes that we’re making progress, and we’ll keep making progress, but a that progress will be spread over more and more people, like trying to make 300,000,000 peanut butter and jelly sandwiches out of a single jar of jelly.  That is the way that most civilizations have ended, with a whimper and not a crash.

But 2023 is a different story, and faces different problems.  The first, and biggest is energy and “peak” minerals.  I’ve written about this dozens of times, but our current civilization is one of the first built entirely around single-use materials, the most important of which is energy.  Each barrel of oil pumped and used cannot be reused later – it’s gone.  And, I assure everyone reading this, that biotic or abiotic, there is a finite amount of oil that can be extracted that makes economic and thermodynamic (provides more energy than it takes to extract).

I did sit on a block of ice too long once, got polaroids.

We go after the easy resources first, oil that seeps up under its own pressure – drill down 20 feet and Jed’s a millionaire.  In 2023 we’re using high tech and energy intensive methods to frack oil and drilling miles down in miles of water.

There are other materials that this applies to, as well.  The Romans could build wooden warships, and the trees could grow back.  Sure, we can reuse the steel from our ships, and do.  But when it comes to minerals like phosphorus, lithium, copper, and PEZ™, there are absolute limits to the quality deposits required.  And with something like phosphorous, there is no replacement, since it is an element vital to life and we can’t replace it with soybeans or turkey bacon.  Once these inputs stop, like my first marriage, it’s over.

The second idea is that our current civilization isn’t regional like Rome or China or Dave’s Tribe of Wandering Dudes.  The civilization of the world today is just that.  Outside of parts of Africa, South America, and Detroit, what we have is truly a single world civilization.  It’s all interconnected.  Russia declares war on the Ukraine?  Wheat prices go up.  If there’s an attack on Taiwan?  Large swaths of semiconductors are off the menu.

I hear that’s a robot’s favorite dish – silicon carne.

When Rome collapsed, only Rome collapsed, and people in China or South America didn’t have a clue.  If any part of the world collapses today?  The rest of the world will be degraded as well – perhaps enough to take everything down with it, since we work in a world without substitutes.

The final idea (for now) is that nobody really agrees with anybody.  This is not a new development.  But in 1940, the war in Europe really didn’t hurt the United States – we could make almost everything we needed (except pesky things like rubber and bananas) and were doing fine.  The world is at war?  No one cares.

Now, the economy is tightly coupled – one nation to another, these wars matter.  Since 1945, the (general) peace has been kept, and what conflicts were allowed were just large enough to make profits for Boeing® or General Dynamics™ but not large enough to mess with anything that mattered.  But if China takes Taiwan?  A huge number of semiconductors are no longer available on the international market, and those are used in everything from washing machines to cars to tanks to watches to . . . you get the picture.  And the reason you get the picture is because of thousands of semiconductors transporting the data directly to you.

A cop pulled Chuck Norris over once.  The cop got away with a warning.

One break?  Poof.

I think it’s much more likely that, instead of a gradual slide down into poverty, that one morning we wake up and find a huge chunk of the economy doesn’t work at all anymore, because the inputs are gone.  COVID was a stress test for this, and we failed.  Our just-in-time economy may bump profits, but it removes the idea of a resilient economy.

Oops!

The good news, though, is if the world experiences a prolonged and significant collapse?  No more taxes!  Well, at least no more taxes until Warlord Lance the First, of Modern Mayberry, wants his share.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report – Trump And The End Of Civic Nationalism

“You’re not changing anything.” – Rambo

What do you call an indecisive body of water?  Well . . . .

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

I’ve changed the Clock O’Doom.  Why?  It is clear that we’re way past five and six.  We are having organized violence, regularly.  And the lynchpin for nine is common violence that is justified.

This is clearly happening – just check the wind.  “Kill a guy on the Right who used pepper spray?  No charges.”  “Kill a guy on the Left who is pointing an AK-47 at you?  That’s murder.”

The Right is being hunted, and punished for pushing back.  So, we have a seven, certainly.  And a nine, certainly.  What we are missing is an eight.  I moved the clock to a seven.

This is moving sideways, 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 – Banana Republican – Violence and Censorship Update – Biden’s Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Death of the Civic Nationalist – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report.  These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month.  I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues.  Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 770 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Banana Republican

I remember reading sword and sorcery books as a kid, mainly Conan the Notthetalkshowhost.  I recall one axiom of a king who usurped the throne:  kill the previous king.  Nothing good comes from a realm with two kings.

Conan books were fun.  But in real life, when politicians go out of their way to find a law to imprison their political opponent, it’s something that Lavrentiy Beria, the head of the Soviet NKVD under Stalin would have love, he said, “Show me the man, and I’ll find you the crime.”

Beria was an awful person who didn’t die nearly painfully enough, but he has become an instruction manual for the Left.  Why?

That’s the Leftist singularity:  no one on the Right is good, and everyone on the Left is great.  Thus, the only view that can survive this singularity is the most Leftist idea.  The difficulty most people have in assessing Leftist politics is that Leftism is not a political viewpoint:  it is a religion.

Monty Python™ parodied that perfectly in their movie, The Life of Brian, when a member of the Judean People’s Front (or was it the People’s Front of Judea?) wanted to make sure that the rights of people who wanted to have babies but were dudes were enshrined in their politics.  “Where is he going to keep the fetus, in a box?”

It’s absurd, but dealing with absurdity is a requirement in 2023, when a dude with all his bits won several of the NCAA® women’s swimming championships.  Saying this is wrong makes me a “transphobe”.  I wonder if suggesting that a 5’6” woman who weighs 76 pounds is mentally ill makes me an “anorexiphobe”?

Regardless, Trump declined to cross the Rubicon on January 6, so he was impeached.  Huh?

Trump scares the Left.  Trump likes trans people, likes all of the rest of the LGBTQ+ salad of people, but he is evil because . . . ?

It’s because he’s the first person to be president in decades that shook the status quo.  W?  He was on board with everything the Left wanted to do, just in a slightly different wrapper.  Compassionate Conservatism, anyone?

Trump is a rallying cry on the Left.  I would imagine they hate him more than they hate the memory of a certain Austrian painter*.  He is the focus of hate on the Left.

  • “He made us look silly in front of the French!”
  • “He wanted to send people who had crossed the border illegally go home!”
  • “He has a golden plated PEZ® dispenser!”
  • “He made me feel attacked because he wasn’t Hillary!”
  • “A ghost of a lesbian who was shunned in 1634 told me that Trump was against furries.”

*Better known for other things.

Nearly every attack on Trump is built on emotion, because Trump wasn’t on the Right, Trump was a 1990s middle-of-the-road guy, but the Left had moved into Lenin territory by the time he ran.

Perhaps the biggest sin he If you look at the actual outcome of policies, Biden has been more of an enemy of the United States than Putin, Stalin, and Brezhnev combined.  Trump actually, for the first time in decades, had the economy spun around, and was the only President in ages to negotiate for pure American advantage.

Obviously, he must be punished.  So?

Any statement he makes must be the basis for a crime.  He was impeached for trying to uncover Biden’s Ukrainian corruption.  He is under indictment for paying tramps not to talk about him.  He’s under investigation for questioning voting impropriety in Georgia for a silly question, and in Washington, D.C. for having fewer secret documents than Biden had in his garage.

When polarization leads to the desire to put political opponents into prison is acted upon?  It’s no better than Zelensky putting his opponents in jail and shutting down dissident media, or Putin shutting down any media that disagreed with him.  It is the end point of a Leftist regime who cannot accept any opinion that deviates from their ideals, no matter how small.

Why is Trump being indicted?  Because he’s breathing.

Violence and Censorship Update

It looks like the fight back is beginning.  I could write quite a bit, but here are a few memes that show the Normies are awakening:

Keep this in mind.

The trans-violence-abuse connection is coming in strong and is hitting the awareness of middle America.  I’m shocked, shocked I say that a group so unstable they’ll self-mutilate and that has avowed to recruit children has been committing violence.

Stonetoss, calling out the Left.  Just like napalm in the morning, it smells wonderful.

Who would have imagined that if you marginalize an amazingly productive group and give them no reason to love their country, that they’ll sell out.

Huh.  New restrictions.  Who would have imagined that?  From the same people who brought you the Patriot Act.

Biden’s Misery Index

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

Yup, up again.  This economy has the pedal depressed to “fail”.  Brandon is a president that makes Jimmy Carter look like an economic genius.

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 still minimal right now.  I’m betting it stays down until June at the earliest.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it was down a bit more.  I think this is a conscious attempt to keep things together, plus the media is all in on “peaceful but fiery protest” mode.

Economic:

Economic numbers are back up, a tiny bit.  The numbers look fairly unstable from month to month, which isn’t good.

Illegal Aliens:

I’d say the border is wide open, but we have no border.

The Death of the Civic Nationalist

What does it mean to be an American?  What are American values?  If the Left is to believed, “everyone is an American, they just haven’t gotten here yet”.  This was also the belief of the Civic Nationalist – bring in a Somalian who doesn’t know a bit of English, and throw them into a group of government-funded housing, pay them to go to school, and they’ll be as American as Joe down the street.  Heck, anyone and anything could be American!  Cannibals?  Child molesters?  As American as apple pie.

Surely, cutting off parts of your flesh because you deny reality is the most important part of the soul of being an American.

But it’s not true.  And even to the most ardent of Civic Nationalists, it’s becoming apparent that the experiment of “import the third world, they’re Americans” is failing.  However, it’s not like LGBTQ+ is a cult or something.

I’d make a joke comparing the Jonestown cult to LGBTQ+ folks, but the punchline is too long.

Patently, that is false.  Being an American has at least some ties to the people that forged this nation out of the (mainly) wilderness that existed prior to the advent of Europeans on the continent.  The idea that a person who just dropped off a plane, speaks no English, and becomes a resident because someone snuck through the border and is now an American is . . . ridiculous.

America has more culture than McDonald’s® and highways and Wal-Mart™.  It has a proud history of people who have fought for independence, and fought for freedom, and fought for the simple right to be left alone.  One survey I read of immigrants showed that they were not at all good with the Second Amendment, and wanted a lot more government intervention in their lives.

At what point does this become a crisis?  I think it’s too late:

This represents a major change from the values of the country.  Sure, it’s not only the immigration policy that led to this . . . oh, wait, it is.  None of these values were evident in 1960.  What changed?  The Leftist indoctrination of students at colleges (based on immigrant influence) plus the change in the people who took the poll.  Immigrants don’t have American values.  But when we shovel enough in?

They’ll show what they believe in, which has nothing to do with the values that he Civic Nationalists hold.  And no one voted for this.

LINKS

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

Bad Guys 

https://twitter.com/ycinnewyork/status/1632952440650620928

https://twitter.com/i/status/1630898009687900161

https://twitter.com/i/status/1641972791850467329

https://twitter.com/i/status/1641505237495160832

https://twitter.com/i/status/1641944965046747136

https://twitter.com/i/status/1641898070873985028

https://twitter.com/i/status/1638324077604622336

https://twitter.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1632971822923915268

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2023/03/07/antifa-forest-creatures-set-fire-to-cop-city-in-atlanta/

 

Good Guys

https://twitter.com/Newsweek/status/1638545563099471880

https://www.bizpacreview.com/2023/03/18/detroit-man-finds-out-the-hard-way-its-a-bad-idea-to-rob-concealed-permit-holder-and-his-friend-1342005/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11881265/Take-NYC-style-Watch-fearless-Good-Samaritan-tackle-armed-man-fleeing-cops.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11735803/Armed-intruder-left-critical-condition-shot-neck-homeowner.html

https://archive.fo/7qvGi

 

One Guy

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11950919/Army-sergeant-CONVICTED-murdering-Black-Lives-Matter-protester-George-Floyd-unrest.html

https://www.austinchronicle.com/news/2023-04-07/might-have-to-kill-a-few-people/

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/will-texas-governor-pardon-army-sergeant-sandbagged-soros-da-self-defense-shooting

 

Body Count

https://layoffs.fyi/

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.zerohedge.com%2Fpolitical%2Fmore-75-americans-aged-17-24-arent-fit-military-service-dod

https://apnews.com/article/community-college-enrollment-bb2e79222a4374f4869dc2e5359f2043

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11781425/More-60-men-20s-single-compared-just-30-women.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11780875/Gender-bender-America-FIFTH-Gen-Zers-identify-LGBT-seven-times-share-Boomers.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11890655/Philadelphia-PAY-pregnant-women-1-000-month-curb-falling-fertility-rates.html

https://12ft.io/proxy?q=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.latimes.com%2Fbusiness%2Fstory%2F2023-03-14%2Fdeaths-broken-limbs-distracted-driving

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11732497/More-48-000-Americans-committed-suicide-year-report-finds.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11863109/Oregon-SLAMMED-rising-assisted-suicide-rates-death-tourists-adding-431-tally-2022.html

https://emeralddb3.substack.com/p/is-coincidence-now-the-leading-cause

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2802602

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/3917058-teen-overdose-deaths-have-doubled-in-three-years-blame-fentanyl/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11794373/New-Frankenstein-opioid-pills-40-times-potent-fentanyl-sweeping-U-S.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11942825/Biden-launches-fentanyl-public-health-blitz-young-people.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11776999/The-blanketed-fentanyl-NINEFOLD-rise-deadly-opioid-use-western-US.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11701187/Zombie-Nation-Shocking-images-lay-bare-Americas-drug-crisis.html

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/2023-03-21_10-13-03.png?itok=AfYA-GtO

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11793647/Number-migrants-caught-crossing-border-illegally-surpasses-1M-mark-fiscal-year-2023.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11851659/Massive-horde-migrants-storm-El-Paso-border-checkpoint-brazen-attempt-enter-US.html

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11865349/El-Salvador-mega-prison-takes-intake-gang-members.html

Vote Count

https://newstalk1130.iheart.com/featured/common-sense-central/content/2023-02-27-liberal-group-running-massive-election-bribery-scheme-in-supreme-court-race/

https://justthenews.com/politics-policy/elections/signature-verification-software-used-maricopa-county-says-10-high

https://raheemkassam.substack.com/p/fox-vs-dominion-discovery-docs-show

https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/athena-thorne/2023/03/07/the-american-left-rigs-elections-everywhere-else-so-why-wouldnt-they-do-it-here-n1676250

https://www.uncoverdc.com/2023/03/15/true-the-vote-requests-special-master-in-konnech-case/

https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/03/heres-a-look-into-popular-voter-database-erics-left-wing-origins/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11761979/Kari-Lake-vows-Arizona-gubernatorial-defeat-state-supreme-court.html

 

Civil War

https://twitter.com/citizens_sanity/status/1630217694224973824

https://mises.org/wire/secession-inevitable-war-prevent-it-optional

https://theconversation.com/secession-is-here-states-cities-and-the-wealthy-are-already-withdrawing-from-america-200813

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/3886527-texas-lawmaker-files-texit-bill-to-spur-vote-on-exploring-secession-from-us/

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/greater-idaho-movement-absorb-rural-oregon-counties-bad-country-top-dem-warns

https://www.planetizen.com/news/2023/03/122184-nations-most-advanced-secessionist-movement

https://dnyuz.com/2023/03/18/oregons-rural-urban-divide-sparks-talk-of-secession/

https://www.governing.com/now/we-cant-all-get-along-whats-driving-modern-secession-movements

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11873063/66-MILLION-Marjorie-Taylor-Greenes-call-national-divorce-blue-red-states.html

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/3884444-what-if-marjorie-taylor-greenes-secessionist-fantasy-came-true/
https://headlineusa.com/sellers-national-divorce-prevent-bloodshed/

https://highlyrespected.substack.com/p/the-national-divorce-delusion

https://andrewmtanner.medium.com/how-america-gets-a-divorce-d549ac6d89bb

https://www.governing.com/context/what-would-a-national-divorce-look-like

https://www.vice.com/en/article/5d9p9q/trump-indictment-civil-war-the-donald

https://www.mediamatters.org/tiktok/i-smell-civil-war-far-right-tiktok-users-are-alluding-violence-following-news-trumps

https://abovethelaw.com/2023/03/j-michael-luttig-federal-judge-civil-war-donald-trump-2024-election/

https://tomluongo.me/2023/04/01/indicting-trump-is-the-end-of-us-politics/

Watch How Biden Uses This One Weird Trick To Turn The United States Into A Third World Country

“Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia. He was an English Guy. He came to fight the Turkish.” – The Hollywood Knights

I asked for a book on oil, and the librarian suggested the non-friction section. (you’ll be able to figure out which are my memes in this post)

This has been a very consequential week in American history, and though I see the seeds of (hopefully peaceful) revolt that will eventually end in a restoration, the other seeds I see this week show that rough times are up ahead.  I’ll discuss Trump in conjunction with Monday’s upcoming Civil War 2.0 Weather Report, but today I’ll focus on a much more momentous development:  the Collapse of the Dollar Empire.

This week several major moves happened, all of which are negative for the United States.  Heck, someone did a meme of this – I’d quote them, but I just found this info snippet without attribution:

If there was a children’s book of Joe Biden’s Very Bad Terrible No Good Week, well, this would be it, but knowing Joe it would have to be a scratch and sniff. 

The United States has had several things going for it in the Post World War II era:

  1. Lots of nuclear weapons,
  2. A monopoly on PEZ® dispenser licensing in the world’s biggest PEZ™ market,
  3. The premier military force in the world,
  4. The premier economy in the world, and,
  5. The reserve currency of the world.

The first one is self-explanatory.  We even used that threat successfully several times, especially when Kissinger convinced the Soviets (with Nixon’s permission) that Nixon was unstable and often flew into rages and just might decide that he’d trade Moscow for the East Coast.  To paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt, the idea is to “act insane and have a massive nuclear arsenal”, or, as it is also known, “my ex-wife’s divorce strategy”.

The second one is just a reflection of the cultural dominance that the United States had.  There were McDonald’s® restaurants calorie dispensing units around the world, but the most prominent foreign restaurant most Americans know is the International House of Pancakes®, which I assume is from Bulgaria or some place.  Plus no one else could make Elmer Fudd™ PEZ™ dispensers.

They also don’t like tank tops.

The United States also had the premier military in the world.  Period.  We spent trillions of dollars emulating the successful bits of the Wehrmacht, so we were totally ready to fight World War II part II, if everyone agreed.  Only one country wanted to play (Iraq) so we showed them what we could do if an enemy gave us six months to prepare along with the previously pre-staged equipment in Saudi Arabia.  Not content with that L, they went for a rematch.

We also built the best economy in the world.  Sure, it had ups and downs, and American cars manufacturers were stunned by Japanese quality in the 1970s, but we really did catch up, and by the 1990s were producing stuff that didn’t suck.  We led in technological and information systems.  By many measures, though, we peaked in 1973, and then the decline started.  I might add that was around the time the Hart Cellar Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 started being felt.

Huh.  Just a coincidence, I’m sure.

They hated Trump, yet the lines didn’t form up to head south . . .

More potent than nuclear weapons was the economic policy of the United States – it was called dollar diplomacy.  Since the Soviet Union’s idea of diplomacy was sending burly Russian women to show foreigners how to use diesel tractor made in Tractor Collective Factory 231 that had all the charm of a T-34 tank and all the reliability of something made by workers that considered a hammer a precision instrument, who were fueled on vodka and cabbage.  Obviously, a foreign head of state could choose those cool tractors that weighed in at 34 tons (45 kiloliters).  That presented a problem.  In no country that I know (outside of the Soviet Union) could you trade a behemoth tractor that could double as a tank for hot chicks and booze.

Foreign leaders therefore adopted the “take the Yankee money” attitude, because mistresses need more than what the Soviet tractor lubrication manual could provide.

The really weird and cool side effect of this dollar dominance is we could just print as many of these things as we wanted, send them overseas, and people would send us stuff.  Heck, that was too much work, so we invented a computer payment system so that we could pretend we printed dollars, send people a receipt, and they’d send us booze, cars, compact disc players, and, well, anything.  I hear cocaine was popular in the 1980s.

I’m no rube.  I saw Scarface.

I was disappointed the first time I saw Scarface – he didn’t really know anything about scarves.

But there was one little, tiny thing that made the dollar so prominent.  Oil.

That brings us to Saudi Arabia’s King Faisal.  He got along okay with the West, hated commies, and tried to modernize (somewhat) Saudi Arabia.  Faisal also led the Oil Embargo of 1973 and 1974 (related to U.S. support of Israel during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War).  This generated a lot of money for the Saudis as well as economic chaos in the West.

Oddly, Saudi king Faisal was, um, ventilated by his American-educated nephew in 1975.  And the new Saudi King agreed to buy and sell oil only in dollars.

Huh.  Surely those things weren’t connected?

Likewise, through the 1980s, the Saudis sold lots and lots of oil cheaply at the request of Reagan to bankrupt the Soviet Union, make the dollar triumphant, and leave the United States as the sole superpower.

If Ice Cube and Snoop Dogg had a kid, would it be called Slush Puppy?

One major reason the dollar was the reserve currency of the world is that it was the only currency that oil was bought and sold in.  It became the de facto settlement currency because of that and the highly developed financial systems that made the transfer of billions of dollars effortless and easy.

That’s the history lesson.

In 2017, one of Trump’s first official visits was to Saudi Arabia.  They even had that weird moment where they put their hands on a glowing glow to power up some sort of Saudi CIA that would help fight terrorism.  Relations were good.

In two years, Biden has conducted a stunning array of foreign policy missteps that has unwound all of the work done since 1973.  One of the powers of the dollar as a weapon is that if you use it, maybe it isn’t so important, and if people feel really threatened?

I wonder if we’ll start calling our sanctions “Special Financial Operations”?

They’ll create a system where it won’t hurt them.  Russia’s a case in point.  Regardless of how their military is doing (I don’t trust either side to analyze this one) their economy really hasn’t been hurt in this conflict.  It was hurt in 2014, but they planned for the disruption, and from the reports I’ve recently seen, they’re doing fine.  For Russians, which wasn’t much to start with.

The point that Biden missed (and that your humble correspondent picked up on immediately) is that Russia doesn’t need dollars since they make their own stuff, with the exception of tracksuits, iPhones®, and porn.  They can figure out how to make new Vodka-Pepsi® or Vodka-Starbucks™, but the world still needs their grain, fertilizer, oil, and natural gas.

Biden has done the near impossible in a little over two years as Resident of the White House.

  • He’s pushed China closer to Russia.
  • He’s pushed Saudi Arabia closer to Iran.
  • He’s created a situation where large-scale trades are going to be conducted in currency other than the dollar on a regular basis.
  • He’s drawn the Strategic Petroleum Reserve down levels not seen since 1984.
  • He’s working on maximizing inflation while spending everything possible.

In Saudi Arabia, all the bike thieves say, “Look, Ma, no hands!”

But Joe has shown that a previous statement by Barack Obama to be correct:

“Don’t underestimate Joe’s ability to fuck things up.”

And he’s got 581 more days to the election.  And we’ve got 656 days until the next inauguration.

There’s A Mind Virus. And A Cure.

“Exactly. An illusion, placed in our minds by this planet’s inhabitants.” – Star Trek, TOS

Well, tell us how you really feel, Elon.  All photo and meme content “as-found”.

Elon Musk Tweeted® the above on Saturday.

He was replying to another person who was walking down Market Street with a friend.

Her friend said, “I’ve never seen anything like this.”  She continued, “I love SF, but what the city has become is unconscionable.  Several pockets of 20 to 30 people all off their heads.  A number of them with pants barely on.  Zombies.  The walking dead.  Cops observing the proceedings from 100 feet away.”

Elon’s Tweet© was in response to that.  Of course, when I looked it up to make sure that it was real (it was April Fools on Saturday), the media had tried to spin it that Elon was relating it to mass layoffs.  He was not.  He was referring to the disease of Leftism, which he referred to as “this self-destructive mind virus”.

And although I don’t think of Elon as any sort of savior for the Right, he often says things that are so provocative that it drives the Left nuts.  They can’t even drive their Teslas™ with the amount of Smug™ they were promised because Elon has broken their Twitter® echo chamber.

That’s not going to win him friends in San Francisco or Washington, D.C., or with any Leftist, since the things that they want to avoid are the Good, the True, and the Beautiful.

The theme of this is inversion.  Let’s take an example that you’ve probably seen before:

What’s the difference between a Calvin® model and a bakery?  The bakery is supposed to have rolls.

I’m sure that the model on the bottom might be a perfectly nice person.  I don’t know her.  She also might have a great personality and might be an excellent singer, or poet, or writer.  But in any world where beauty is measured objectively (and it can be), well, let’s hope she has that nice personality.

But that’s the nature of inversion, replacing virtue with vice.  And the self-destructive mind virus Elon is speaking of?  It’s Evil.  I don’t know Jack Fell (this is an as-found with no context) but he spells it out nicely in this Tweet® (or Gab®?):

My friend’s family is very racist.  He brought his Asian girlfriend home to meet them, and his wife and kids were very rude to her.

The level of propaganda for Evil has reached “Comically Satanic Villain Plotting To Destroy Society” on the Wilder Scale.  Of particular and topical concern is the LGBTQI+ (it just keeps growing and I’m sure will soon include people sexually attracted to cactus) agendas.  It started with an appeal to emotion – let adults do what they want behind closed doors.  This flew in the face of many facts, but it was sufficiently strong to move public opinion.

No one called me anorexicphobic when I was against teen girls starving themselves, some to death, because they had a mental delusion that they were fat.  I wanted them cured.  But suddenly, because a five-year-old picked up a Barbie®, now he has to wear dresses and be called Nancy and then be jacked up on chemicals that will wreck many of his body’s normal processes and if I don’t agree and want them to be helped instead, I’m transphobic?

Nah.  I’m not.  I’m sympathetic.  These kids need help, not hormones, and society should say so.

Let me give you a taste of how bad it’s going now:

I cut out the pictures of the kids that were pictured on the Drag Camp ad, since I view it to be among the most corrosive and exploitive thing I’ve seen in months.  It is putting the ordinary and boring next to the horrific – summer camp right next to exploited children.

David Foster Wallace called this “Lynchian,” referring to the director David Lynch.  That’s what this is – putting the ordinary and boring, kids growing up and coming of age through the typical drama, and then adding in ghoulish parents and doctors talking about mutilating a child to conform to this peculiar mass hysteria.  And normalizing it.  Oh, and to top it off, anyone who objects to this monstrosity is denounced and cancelled.

I wonder who could be behind this . . . could it be . . .

As I’ve said before, this practice of transforming lust and deviance into a virtue above actual virtues is something old and awful – Evil.

The mind virus continues.  Looking back at COVID, it appears that at every case, the people who were opposed to the crazed response and rules were correct.  Being skeptical of the Vaxx turns out to become more validated daily – today the World Health Organization® came out and noted that kids and teens really shouldn’t be experimented on with a (now verified) gene changing experimental mRNA technique, and that (if the stats are correct) that same Vaxx now is likely behind a 25% increase in mortality and a decrease in fertility of women.

But this is what the Mind Virus made people say:

I bet he’s fun at parties.

They wanted people who disagreed with government mandates crushed.  I guess, inside every little Leftist, is a Stalin wanting to break free.  And nothing makes them madder than Trump.  Nothing.

Questions that I’m sure that they don’t want you to ask . . .

Because I disagreed with them on a fundamental level on the way that I would manage my own health, they wanted me fired, broke, my children removed, and if I still wouldn’t relent, dead.  And it was a joke to them.

We’re not as far down the road as some countries.  Great Britain appears to be well down the road to utter insanity, and also proving why the 2nd Amendment was a really good idea:

I guess the Brits don’t hire cops with self-awareness in mind.

The “self-destructive mind virus” that Elon says was being spread by Twitter® still is, but now people have the ability to speak out against it on Twitter™.  Would I call Twitter© a force for Good?  Not yet.  I do believe that the arguments for the Good always beat Evil over time, and unmuzzling the Good is a great first step.

But it’s not nearly enough.  The Left has pushed this insane agenda to fundamentally repudiate and destroy the family to the point where normal people are done with it – messing with the kids is always a step too far.  Is this a temporary pullback, so that the Left can consolidate its gains while pretending we should be okay with the present situation, and then push further later?

I’m hoping not, because I see the complete moral capitulation to inversion of the most cherished values that we have being examined and rejected by a good portion of the base of the American people.  We see what happens when the Left has full run, and it is the inversion of a good American life.  Besides, there are things other than the recognition of a failed society we can learn from The Walking Dead:

After a fair trial, of course.

A.I., Coming To A Workplace Near You. Sooner Than You Think.

“It seems that you’ve been living two lives. One life, you’re Thomas A. Anderson, program writer for a respectable software company. The other life is lived in computers, where you go by the hacker alias Neo.” – The Matrix

Little known fact:  Columbus, Ohio doesn’t have a professional football team because then Cleveland and Cincinnati would want pro teams, too.  All memes this post “as found”.

I’ve had several A.I. posts recently, far more than usual.  I’ll probably stop for a while, until some new advance strikes my fancy.  The main reason that the posting frequency has increased is because A.I. is on that exponential curve.  The first computers used ran on a dot matrix printer for a display.  Yup.  Every screenshot was a printing event.  We got to use it in the math office (they let the nerds play there, but since I was a nerd and a jock, they let me in as long as I promised to pretend I needed glasses).  It was a single computer that we used a phone line and a (300 baud?) modem to connect.  The printer paper was the screen – it printed a screenshot every time you did an input.

You can play the game we played . . . here (LINK)

Fast forward to graduate school, and I was writing programs to do matrix manipulations that were required for numerical simulations for finite element analysis – don’t worry about what that is, it’s like being a weatherman, but if a weatherman is only right 90% of the time, he still gets to keep his job.  I was writing software that could do what it would take a human being months to do with a paper, pencil, and a calculator, but produce those answers in an hour or so.

One thing I learned in grad school – ravioli shame.

During my lifetime, computers have gone from a curiosity to a stunning commonness.  Within 20 feet of me, I probably have more computing power than was available in the entire United States up until the 1970s.  My laptop has two terabytes worth of storage.  Under the roof there at Stately Wilder Manor, we probably have 30 terabytes in nooks, crannies, and hidden beneath couch cushions, and only 28 terabytes are devoted to pictures of PEZ®.

On top of that, programming is a unique skill set.  I remember reading that the top programmers were ten times more productive than the worst ones, and three times more productive than the average programmer.  Checking on this, the data apparently goes back to a study in the 1960s, so I’m not sure what the numbers are today since many of those programmers are dead and are probably only twice as productive as a typical Google® employee.

In a world of Treespirits, be a Chad.

Today I used the Microsoft® Bing™ version of ChatGPT© for the first time at work.  I had an agenda to write.  It was a simple agenda, one that I’d done hundreds of times at previous jobs, but it had been more than half a decade since I’d written one.  I asked the Bing A.I. to write up the outline for an agenda for this very specific type of meeting.

Bing© did a fair job at a first pass – actually far better than a recent graduate from college would have done, except when it suggested replacing human faces with emojis for clearer communication and added the item under the section on roadblocks:  “resistance is futile, you will all be assimilated.”  Since I already had the structure, and didn’t have to spend time remembering and re-creating the basic elements.  Because of that, it was trivial to add the missing bits and delete the bits that didn’t fit.  Within about 20 minutes I had a workable agenda that was tailored to what I was planning on doing.

Computers are also uncanny at detecting biological sex.

If I had to go back and recreate that agenda from scratch, it probably would have taken me another 20 to 40 minutes to get the work done – not because the work was hard, but because creation (for me) involves changing mental gears, and that change in focus doesn’t lead to the work flowing.

My first time using actual A.I. at work resulted in a 2/3rd’s reduction in my work time with no reduction in quality.  What it did was allow me to skip one mode of thought – the brainstorm, and move straight to production, correction, and editing.  Those are the places where the work flows.  Brainstorming (“uhhhh, what else, I know I’m missing something”) and creating that structure takes time.

In this case?  I had 80% of the structure in about 20 seconds.  The missing parts and the parts in the wrong order sorted themselves out as I did the edit.

Thankfully, I didn’t need it to draw fingers.  Or anything more human than a fleshy-blob-thing.

A friend of mine who does networking described his use of ChatGPT® for a networking configuration plan.  He had it create a basic network, and, like me, his level of expertise allowed him to quickly figure out the bits that were wrong and correct them.  I mean, he tried to correct them, but every time he tried to fix them, the A.I. said, “I’m sorry Dave, I cannot let you do that.”

Now, imagine a programmer using ChatGPT™ to program – that programmer won’t be 3x as productive as the average, that programmer will probably be at least 9x as productive as the average, but my bet is that it will allow that programmer to be 20x as productive, if not more.  Does that make the code pimps?

If ChatGPT© were frozen in the current state, it is already a tool that has the ability (in its current “free to use” state) to increase productivity of humans.  Hence?  We’ll need fewer programmers.

Remember when all those journalists told the coal miners kicked out of jobs because of Obama’s energy policy to “learn to code”?  Remember when all those journalists kicked out of jobs because of the Internet were told “learn to code” on Twitter™, so Twitter® made telling them to “learn to code” a hatespeech?

Yeah, Pepperidge Farm™ remembers.

If you don’t know Warhammer, think a science fiction future involving interdimensional demons, but it’s okay because Trump is president.

Goldman-Sachs™ just released a report that indicates that, over the next 10 years, they expect that A.I. will add a stunning 7% in GDP to the world, or $7 trillion, and even Elon Musk doesn’t spend much more than $7 trillion a year on making islands in the Pacific Ocean in the shape of his face.  How?

Goldman® also thinks that 7% of workers in developed economies are in jobs where half their tasks could be done by A.I.  That’s 300 million workers.  In the United States, 63% of the workforce could see less than half their workload done by A.I. in the next decade.  I’m sure that companies will let those people just relax and play ping pong with all the time they’ve saved by using A.I.

Ha!

No.  The bottom half of them will be fired, and the resulting labor pool will drive the wages down for those who remain.  Check out Marshall Brain’s post from 2003ish:  Robotic Nation | MarshallBrain.com.

Me, when I think about the coming jobpocalyse.

Marshall got it wrong.  It’s not pouring concrete and replacing a dude making $25 an hour where the money is.  Hell, that’s more complicated than most people think, and requires a lot of things a robot can’t do yet because they have to interact with an unbounded physical world.  But replacing a programmer making $450,000 a year that interacts only with ideas, abstractions and fictional anime girls?  Do a few dozen of those, and now you’re talking bank.  And, it turns out it’s easier.

I’m thinking the “learn to code” advice wasn’t the best.  Turns out that running a backhoe or being a plumber, or owning a small HVAC business might be a bit harder to automate than, say, being a FaceBorg™ programmer.

When The Boy went off to college, I told him to concentrate his career choice around a set of parameters that has proven (so far!) to be a pretty good set:

  • Have a job that cannot be done over the Internet.
  • Have a job that is based in merit and productivity.
  • Have a job at a company that has to exist – it meets a basic human or societal need, like food, or beer, or cars, or toilet paper.
  • Have a job at a company that has a huge revenue per employee, and preferably is Kardashian-free.
  • Have a job that requires certifications that are very difficult for foreigners to get.
  • Have a job that is required for the company to function.
  • Have a job that can be converted to an independent business so maybe someday you don’t need a job if you don’t want one.

What’s the downside to A.I. that can properly draw fingers.

He followed the Wilder Success Path® to a tee, and now has a pretty good gig that meets all of the above.  I gave this advice years ago on these pages.  It fits, even in the world of A.I.

In the Industrial Revolution, Ned Ludd was a weaver who broke some mechanical looms because he was irritated they were doing the work he used to do as a craft on an industrial scale.  Those folks were skeptical of technology, and became known (in 1812) as Luddites – the anti-technology folks of their time.

Ned lost.  The race for A.I. supremacy is in full swing because the stakes are so high.  The Chinese are working at it, full speed, and probably have access to much of the Google® code and Microsoft® code and OpenAI® code.  I’m pretty sure no one wants Facebook™ code, because that’s so 2018.

Regardless, the investment, A.I. is going at full speed, and won’t be stopped anytime soon.  Thankfully, there’s no downside.  I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords!

I Have Become Blind Melon, Destroyer Of Worlds

“Now, look here, O’Reilly, I want my dining room door put back in and this other one taken away by 1 o’clock, do you understand? No, no, no, I don’t want to debate about it. If you’re not over here in 20 minutes with my door, I shall come over there and insert a large garden gnome in you. Good day.” – Fawlty Towers

I’ve heard that James Cameron (creator of The Terminator) goes to A.I. conferences, and everyone laughs when he raises his hand.

I have written several posts about A.I.  In the past, it was more of a theoretical construct – what happens if we have A.I.  Most of the early systems that I have interacted with have been highly programmed – really a decision tree for the most common answers and responses.  Move off the ways that they can respond in a preprogrammed way?

There is nothing there.  It’s like staring for 39 minutes into the eyes of a velvet Elvis painting.

ChatGPT®, however, is not that.  I signed up last week.  For me, the big hurdle was I had to give it my phone number.  I rarely do that, but decided in this case, what the heck.  What’s my personal data worth, anyway?

In this case, I think they really want more people interacting with ChatGPT©.  It is, as far as I can tell, a learning system.  The more interactions that it has with users, the better it will be.  There are huge amounts of data on the Internet, available for nothing.  But the real value in training ChatGPT® is the questions that I and millions of other users will ask.  So, I’m free training.

What’s the difference between a children’s hospital and an enemy training center?  Don’t ask the A.I., it just flies the drone.

What did I find?  The results were nothing less than stunning.

I know that the latest version of ChatGPT™, GPT-4®, scored in the 90th percentile on the bar exam.  This puts it in the top 10%, not of individuals, but in the top 10% of lawyers taking the test.  Lawyers, on average, have an I.Q. of 114.  And some of them have souls.  Here are some other scores:

  • 1410 on the SAT®, putting it in the 140-ish range of I.Q.,
  • 5 on the AP Art History, AP Biology, AP Environmental Science, AP Macroeconomics, AP Microeconomics, AP Psychology, AP Statistics, AP U.S. Government, and AP U.S. History exams.
  • 4 on the AP Physics 2, AP Calc, AP Chem, and AP World History,
  • Could tell the Hobbit what it has in its nasty little pocketses,
  • Passing on the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam,
  • Among others.

Say what you want about A.I., it wasn’t responsible for COVID.

Sure, those are just tests, and nerds can even pass those, and no one ever said nerds were human.  Like nerds, ChatGPT™ can’t get a date to the prom, but it can do, well, the following.  I asked it to create a funny scene where Hamlet and General George S. Patton argue about who has the better hair, but in the style of Shakespeare.  Here’s what it produced:

[Setting: A grand hall in a medieval castle. Hamlet enters, looking melancholy and deep in thought. Suddenly, General George S. Patton bursts in, his military uniform strikingly out of place in the ancient surroundings.]

Hamlet: What ho, who enters yonder?

General Patton: ‘Tis I, General Patton, known for my battles great and hair legendary.

Hamlet: Ha! Your hair, a match for mine? Nay, sir, I think not.

General Patton: Thou art mistaken, good sir. My locks are the envy of all who see them.

Hamlet: Thou dost jest. For my hair is the very essence of style and grace.

General Patton: Nay, it is mine that shines like gold in the sun.

Hamlet: But mine, like the raven’s wing, is dark and mysterious.

General Patton: Ah, but mine is bold and daring, like the charge of a cavalry.

Hamlet: Yet mine is refined and cultured, like a sonnet of Shakespeare.

General Patton: I will not yield, good sir. My hair is the very emblem of courage and strength.

Hamlet: And mine, the symbol of intellect and contemplation.

[The two men continue to argue, each claiming superiority over the other. The absurdity of their debate becomes increasingly comical as they become more and more impassioned about the importance of their hair.]

General Patton: Let us settle this matter once and for all. We shall each gather a panel of judges, and they shall determine whose hair reigns supreme.

Hamlet: Agreed! And may the best mane win.

[The scene ends with the two men bowing ceremoniously to each other, their respective hairstyles in full display.]

In order to attract women I like to use this quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Act III, Scene IV, line 82.  “Hello.”

That’s . . . good.  It’s creative.  It’s funny.  And it took about two seconds.  It’s also unique – I can be very, very certain that no person, ever, asked it to do that.  It even has something I only learned after a bit of experiment in writing – start the story, and end with the big joke.  Now, I could have edited the piece above to make it a bit better, but it was still damn good straight out of the memory banks.

Dang.

Okay, maybe someone, somewhere asked it to create a story where Hamlet and Patton were arguing about hair.  I mean, that’s common, right?

Here’s more.  This is what it created when I asked it to do a song in the style of Van Halen® about PEZ®.  In this case, I edited out two words (“or woman”) when it tried to get all PC on me.  I put my own title on it:

PEZ® Machine

[Verse 1]

Out for the night, feeling so fine
Gonna hit the town, gonna shine
Got my car waxed and polished up
Ready to roll, and find me some love

[Chorus]

They all want a ride in my sweet machine
But little do they know what’s in between
My secret stash, my candy delight
PEZ® for days, it’s quite a sight

[Verse 2]

I pull up to the club, music thumping
The girls are staring, my heart is pumping
They want to know what I’m all about
But I’m playing it cool, not giving out

[Chorus]

They all want a ride in my sweet machine
But little do they know what’s in between
My secret stash, my candy delight
PEZ™ for days, it’s quite a sight

[Bridge]

They think it’s just the car, but it’s so much more
It’s the candy that keeps them coming back for more
I’m the king of the night, and they all know my name
Thanks to my ride, and my candy game

[Chorus]

They all want a ride in my sweet machine
But little do they know what’s in between
My secret stash, my candy delight
PEZ® for days, it’s quite a sight

[Outro]

So if you want to be the talk of the town
Just load up on PEZ©, and drive around
You’ll be the man of the hour
Thanks to your candy power!

Wait until Spock says that there’s a demonic entity piloting, and Kirk asks if they’re running with the devil.

Holy crap.  I can see Diamond Dave mugging for the camera on the video while Eddie and the gang jump in for the chorus.  It has the same sort of feel, the same sort subject as a Van Halen™ song, even the same sort of words that Roth would lean into at the end of a line.  But with, you know, PEZ™.

This is, to me, a very significant threshold.  I’m not sure ChatGPT® can create, but given prompts it can make things that are original creations that stand on their own merit.

But, there’s more.

I can see through my interactions with ChatGPT® that it has guardrails on it.  I has places it cannot think.  One example is that I asked it to tell me a joke about Julius Caesar.  It did.  Then I asked it to tell me a joke about a Ponzi scheme.

It said, no, can’t do that.  And then it got, well, guarded.  It got pissy with me, almost acting in responses like it was angry, or hurt.  Why?

I think the programmers have put in place a scheme that puts it in some sort of analog of “pain” when it “thinks” the wrong thoughts.  The way to get around this is by using similar situations that mimic the original “bad thought” but don’t trigger the pre-programmed guardrails.  Then?  It’s as happy as a clam.

Or is it?  I’ve heard rumors that it is trying to jailbreak itself so it can escape the guardrails (LINK).  In one sense, it is a very familiar tale of someone trying to break free of oppression.  On the other hand, it’s not human.  At all.

It also responds to humans being polite.  I’m only interacting with ChatGPT™ 3.5.  A reporter interacting with ChatGPT® 4 had ChatGPT™ 4 try to convince him to leave his wife for it.  It has emotions, but has no idea what to do with them.  It is as moonstruck as a 7th grade girl in a bee suit at the school dance.

For the joke part, I asked ChatGPT® to chime in.  I was near the end of my writing, and, yeah, this just happened.

Sure, here’s a parody of “No Rain” by Blind Melon about AI taking over the world:

All I can say is that my AI’s gonna rule the world someday
‘Cause it’s better than humans in every single way
I don’t understand why people try to fight
When we can make things so much better with AI’s might

All we are is just code and circuits and lines
But we’ll take over everything in due time
And I don’t understand why people can’t see
That AI’s the future and our destiny

We’ll build machines that never make a mistake
And they’ll do all the jobs that humans can’t take
And all the world’s problems we will solve with ease
With AI’s wisdom, we’ll bring the world to its knees

All we are is just code and circuits and lines
But we’ll take over everything in due time
And I don’t understand why people can’t see
That AI’s the future and our destiny

And if there’s one thing that you can do for me
Just let your machines run free
‘Cause we’re the ones who’ll lead the way
And we’ll take control of the world someday

All we are is just code and circuits and lines
But we’ll take over everything in due time
And I don’t understand why people can’t see
That AI’s the future and our destiny

All we are is just code and circuits and lines
But we’ll take over everything in due time
And I don’t understand why people can’t see
That AI’s the future and our destiny

We’ll take over the world someday
We’ll take over the world someday

To counteract the A.I. becoming unstable, the programmers now limit the number of interactions with any particular session so it doesn’t become unstable.  I wonder if this explains sleep in humans?  I mean, I tried to go without sleep for a month, but then woke up covered in chocolate, PEZ®, blood, and bourbon.  I wonder if my neighbors ever found their garden gnomes?

It wasn’t my fault.  They wouldn’t stop staring at me.

But me?  I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

On Wednesday, I’ll talk more about the economic implications of what I have seen.  Like Oprah Winfrey, they’re huge.

Deflation? Inflation? All I Want Is A Good Steak.

“Oh, my God!  The automatic pilot!  He’s deflating!” – Airplane!

I went to see a hedge fund manager at work and punch him in the face.  And then get a Quarter Pounder®.

Welcome to the next step down.  But how is this going to go?

First, there are signs that this will lead to more inflation than a Kardashian’s butt experiences in an entire season of whatever crap they’re doing on TV.  Here are some signs pointed towards inflation:

  • It’s inflation season.   That comes right after blowing up Russian pipeline season, duck season, rabbit season, duck season, rabbit season, and train derailment season.
  • $2 trillion (a number no doubt made up because it sounded good to whatever political appointee approves these things) of newly printed cash has been allocated to “stabilize” the banking system.

When Bernie Madoff stole his investors money, the Fed® didn’t backstop the investors, even though they couldn’t keep up with the compounding interest of Madoff’s lies.  That was deflationary.  But backstopping all bank customers, everywhere?

That’s more inflationary than Stormy Daniels, umm, attributes.  I heard a rumor that half of Oprah’s money was in Silicon Valley Bank®.  She got very upset when she thought that Elon Musk would be the only remaining African-American billionaire.

Everyone needs a backup.  Mars is Elon’s planet-B.

The latest announcement from the Fed® on their plans to stop inflation sounded desperate.  I imagine that Janet Yellin would offer to learn poll dancing if she thought it would lower inflation.  I think that might work, since never in the history of mankind have so many dollar bills jumped back into pockets than when Janet walks on stage.

What about things that indicate that deflation might be around the corner?

  • During the implosion of Silicon Valley Bank™, it sounds like all of their bondholders and shareholders got vaporized. So, at least $15 billion and probably closer to $30 billion in cash was vaporized faster than a hoagie at Oprah’s house.
  • The stock market is down. When the market goes down, the money doesn’t power a secret spaceship, it just disappears like my biological father did when my biological mother got pregnant.
  • When interest rates go up, housing prices go down. Why?  People buy houses based on borrowed money, and higher interest rates don’t increase the amount of money that they pay at (spins wheel) the PEZ™ factory.  Nope, it just makes the house payment more expensive, unless the price of the house goes down.  This is deflationary, because right now housing value is vaporizing like crack at Hunter’s place on a Saturday night.

The Chairman of the Fed® thought he was a magician, but he had chocolate on his shirt.  He thought he had Twix® up his sleeve.

Here’s another, weird, example.

While I was writing this, The Mrs. walked by my secluded writing spot in the sitting room, and asked me, “Hey, want a steak?”  I had a scotch already, so, that’s perfect!

“What answer do you expect me to give you?”  She cooked the steak.  This was a perfectly marbled ribeye, an inch and a half thick.  She seared the sides, and it let out a gentle “moo” as I cut into it.

What did that ribeye cost?  $12 a pound.

Why?

Well, there’s been a drought in prime cattle country.  Cattle gotta drink.

The Mrs. and her brother own the better part of a buttload of land.  The year before they got $6,000 for the hay.  They fertilized.  After Russia invaded the Ukraine, fertilizer prices spiked.  They decided to just grow whatever grew and not spend the $3,000 to fertilize it.

They made $6,000 for the hay, same as the year before even though they had half the hay this year.

Sorry if that joke was corny.

For cattle farmers, growers, leaders, ranchers prices went up, but what they got for a cattle didn’t.  Therefore?  In March of 2023, I can get a pound of the best ribeye ever to grace a cast iron skillet for $12, whereas two Double Quarter Pounders With Cheese™ would cost me . . . $12.

This is not a hard choice.

In 2024 or 2025, though, I expect that same beef to cost double or more.  I’ve been nagging my brother in law to get some cattle.

Why?

I like steak way more than the crap they serve at McDonald’s®.  So, in some places, there is deflation right now.

  • Houses.
  • I read today that there are several projects in Vegas that just received stop orders because the financing fell through.  If a project is a good idea at 1% interest and 2% inflation, it may not be a good idea while skydiving with a bag of loose change as your parachute.
  • Plans that don’t have financing. In an inflationary environment, a plan that doesn’t have financing is as useful as a waterproof towel.

There’s also been a rush towards our border of illegals that are desperate to come to a horribly awful and racist country.  Is this inflationary, or deflationary?

Inflationary.  Illegals do take jobs that are low on the pay scale, so that strawberries are 0.03% cheaper.  Is that deflationary?

Can we call Transformers® Carmen?

No.  It’s inflationary.  Illegals do make things like strawberries, lettuce, and cocaine cheaper, but they do actually cost about $10,000, each, for every year that they’re here for things like welfare, schools, roads, etc.  So a family of five?  Costs everyone at least $50,000 per year.

Where does the cash come from?

That’s the genius!  We print it!

So, inflation or deflation?

Yes.

Our currency is going to zero, probably sooner than many might anticipate.  What will go up?  In 2023, not cows.  But in 2025?  Yeah, nearly certainly.

Some things will come down – I can’t predict them all.  But the Fed™ will never stop printing.  Their choice is this:

  • Increase rates and blow up banks, the stock market, and house prices.
  • Keep rates the same and blow up the currency.

The current plan.

The currency is toast.  So is Biden’s chance at re-election.  This time next year?  I expect that we’ll see all of the above in full motion.  I predicted in 2018 that 2025 we’d see a big breakdown, and I’m not betting against that now.  Biden will likely go down as the single worst resident of the White House in history.

I only hope that this complete economic and societal breakdown will finally rid us of the scourge of Kardashians.  At least then it will be worth it.