TEOTWAWKI – Page 17 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

The Wilder Response To Mr. Biden

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Go, Missouri.

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

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

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

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

We came here because we were strong.

We came here because we yearned for freedom.

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

How dare you threaten me?

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

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

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

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

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

Every.

Single.

One.

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

Just for fun.

We raised and nurtured children and taught them freedom.

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

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

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

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

No.

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

Fuck you, Mr. Biden.

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

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

We will smile, and nod.

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

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

Too soon, Bucko.

Fuck you.

The 1819 Project: Restoring America

“Restoration may be possible, in two days. By the book, Admiral.” – Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

We can finally predict the platform that George Bush’s kids will run on.

The United States is in a bad place. Monetarily. Philosophically. Morally. It even has bad manners.

Ultimately, the systems that led us to this situation won’t lead us out. Voting won’t save us. The Supreme Court won’t save us. Conservatism?

Conservatism© certainly won’t save us. It certainly didn’t save itself, and it becomes increasingly quaint as Conservatism 2021® quietly ignores nearly every position of Conservatism 1965™, if not right out taking the exact opposite position from even a decade ago.

Conservatism® has led us to where we are today. It’s just last year’s Leftist platform, but dressed up in a suit with a useful idiot explaining the Conservative Case for Sex Change Surgery for Toddlers. Oh, and this should be done even if the parents disagree. For the good of the child, you know, which they will all nod and agree, is a Conservative™ value.

Imagine if we called the Left intolerant! That would show them!

The reason for this is the Conservatism™ is inherently a negative philosophy. It doesn’t stand for anything, merely against (mainly) Leftist ideas. Once those Leftist ideas gain a mainstream following? They become a part of Conservatism®, and Conservative™ shills pretend those ideas were always part of their philosophy.

Conservatives® were always in favor of sending troops to Uganda to secure the rights of Ugandans to have gay marriage.

But Conservatism™ in 2021 is now as dead as whatever it is that lives on top of Sean Hannity’s head. There is zero actual Conservative™ philosophy, merely a money and influence game where politicians sell their influence to the largest corporation for thirty pieces of bacon-wrapped shrimp monthly.

So conservative!

All is not lost. Look at, for instance, gun rights. Gun rights were presented not as, “what the Left wants, but more slowly” but instead as, “from our cold, dead hands.” It was that level of determination that led to the “assault weapon” ban lapsing. What started with a concealed carry movement has now led to Constitutional carry (i.e., concealed carry without a permit) in state after state.

In the year 2000, one state had Constitutional carry. In 2021 (by my count) the number is over 21. And gun rights is where the Right has had a similar victory recently. In Missouri, the governor signed into law a bill that bars the police from enforcing Federal gun laws.

All of them.

Of course, the Leftist Justice Department was quick to sperg out and say, “Missouri, you can’t do that” but Missouri just kept hitting “ignore” and sending them straight to voicemail when they called again and again. In truth, the Feds will never be able to enforce Federal law in Missouri unless they unleash the might of the American military against the people of Missouri.

The chances of that happening aren’t particularly high, plus Missouri seems entirely justified.

Amazing what a little light will show you.

Missouri is just following the pattern we’ve been seeing from States for years. Want to sell marijuana in violation of Federal law at the State level? Sure. Multimillion-dollar industries can be set up in a year. Want to exclude police from helping enforce immigration laws? Sure.

This is just the next, logical step.

And it gave me a crazy idea.

The 1819 Project.

In 1819, the Federal government didn’t have these regulations and laws. In 1819, the average citizen’s interaction with the Federal government would have been voting for a Representative and voting for President. We weren’t THE United States, we were the united States.

Until the Civil War, that was fairly clear – States were sovereign entities – they didn’t gain their existence from the Federal government, the Federal government got its existence from them.

The Federal government didn’t tax individuals. The Federal government didn’t place arbitrary restrictions on what you could do with your business, your hiring, and your land. These simply were not Federal issues.

Could the States regulate these things? Certainly, that’s what the Constitution said. Did they? I imagine they did, some of them. Were the states free to pick and choose who voted and how and why? Yes., they were, and without resorting to appeal to the nine black-robed justices in Washington, D.C.

It’s funny that I can write the speeches the governor of Oregon will give in the future.

Could Oregon turn itself into a communist paradise? Sure. But it couldn’t turn its people into serfs, and it couldn’t put up walls to keep them in. It might be able to keep people it didn’t want out, as would any State.

Sure. That’s freedom. But the Commie Rot would be stuck in Oregon. And people could leave it. Senators wouldn’t be elected, but appointed by State legislatures. This improves the ability of the States to fight against silly things from larger States, and makes the ratification of a treaty a real event, not a popularity contest.

Corporations? Well, like people, they’d have a finite purpose and a finite lifetime. If corporations have the same rights as a person, they have to die, too. 70 years might be too long.

How about 40? Regardless, in 1819, corporations had a charter, and existed for a specific purpose and had a specific lifetime. That changed with a Supreme Court decision (not looking it up, it’s late) in the 1880s that gave corporations an infinite lifespan.

Sounds good to me. Every corporation should have an end date.

But the point is that we don’t fight to conserve anything. The time has now come for a Restoration. What do we restore? A culture filled with freedom; a culture where the Federal government was a tiny, distant force that had the responsibility of national defense and regulation of interstate commerce.

No, not the creeping interstate commerce regulations we have today (where having a phone number constitutes evidence of participating in “interstate commerce”) but a very limited scope so Texas can’t put tariffs on goods from Oklahoma. This leaves room for the FAA, but very little room for the FBI since 99% of Federal crimes disappear overnight because they no longer exist. And the ATF? Only to enforce taxes and not kill women and children with fire.

Hey, it’s not easy to brutally enforce arbitrary regulations on law-abiding citizens.

Politics is downstream of Culture. What’s needed is a Restoration of Culture.

If it sounds like I’m making up a movement, I assure you I’m not. The 1819 Project is well underway and has been for years. Parents are, especially in the Leftist parts of the world, pulling their kids from government schools and putting them in religious schools or homeschooling. Why?

The 1819 Project has already started, at best, I’m giving it a name. It’s well underway in places like Modern Mayberry, where a kid can grow up (more or less) free. The Feds seem to have forgotten that rural places exist, and hardcore Leftists don’t seem to want to live here unless they can get ganja and free stuff.

That can be tough to take in. Next week we’ll start in on how he’s born to treat women badly.

Places like Missouri are going to become the norm. I anticipate that, with the coming Troubles I see, the Federal government will become weaker and weaker. The hallmark of a failing government is more tyranny, but the people of the united States have seen their share of what happens when they give up their guns. Pol Pot, Mao, and Stalin have provided a clear example that gun confiscation precedes life confiscation.

Will we get back to 1819 in values? I have no idea.

But I do know we need to be headed towards something, and not just reacting. 1819 is a good start.

The plan.

Cassandra Says: Look Out Below

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Duh. People don’t like change.

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

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

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

It makes it more catastrophic.

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

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

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

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

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

The penalties are tough for misgendering in France.

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

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

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

Michael Burry did it, and more than once.

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

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

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

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

Money And Computers – Disaster Coming?

â€œCats and dogs, living together.Â Real wrath of God type stuff.â€ â€“ Ghostbusters

A hacker got my friendâ€™s bank account.Â The hacker was so disappointed he started a fundraiser for my friend.

I drove up to the local generic national pharmacy that has systematically absorbed all the local pharmacies like Hillary Clinton absorbs the souls of the innocent.Â The Mrs. had asked me to pick up a prescription for my scalp polish â€“ she said she wanted to bounce a signal to the people up in the International Space Station.

To my surprise, I drove up to the drive-through window and saw this sign:

I had cash, but I figured it must be a nightmare inside for the people in the pharmacy.Â I figured it would be easier on them for me to wait until they got it figured out before I came back.

After I saw the sign, I knew what was up:Â yet another critical failure of an electronic data system leading to (probably) a nationwide outage. Â I was right.

This is scary to me because of . . . money.

Money today is much more complicated than it was 200 years ago:Â back then, it was (mainly) gold and silver and copper bits that we traded back and forth.Â Most citizens of the newly-formed United States didnâ€™t trust paper because the Continental Congress printed so many stacks of Continental money that it became as worthless as a math book to AOC.Â This inflation and currency collapse gave rise to the phrase, â€œnot worth a Continental.â€

This is the direct reason that the Constitution had the clause that â€œno State may . . . make any Thing but gold and silver Coin a Tender in Payment of Debtsâ€.Â Today, however, an arbitrary thing we all call a dollar exists.Â But in many cases, those dollars may be entirely virtual.Â I got paid by a direct deposit of electronic dollars into a bank account that, when I write a check, will send some of those electronic dollars to another bank.

This requires secure computer systems to work.Â As we have seen, from oil to water treatment systems to my pharmacy, these systems are very capable of being hijacked.Â Just this week, a list of 8 billion (yes, billion) passwords were being downloaded into the Internet, 6 billion of which were just â€œpasswordâ€.Â Chance are good that one of them was mine.Â And one of them was yours.

It gets worse.Â Should we even be trusting our computers?

A Russian research team found something scary:Â undocumented instructions on IntelÂ® computer chips.Â As the researchers found out, these particular instructions couldnâ€™t be run in the chipâ€™s â€œnormal mode.â€Â But why are they there?Â Who could have put them there?

The NSA?Â The CIA?

Want to bet that the NSA doesnâ€™t really care how you encrypt your communications because they can read your typing and watch your screens in real-time?Â I donâ€™t know if the â€œOdinâ€ post is some anon just making up a story, but with everything weâ€™ve learned over the last decade, Iâ€™d be surprised if something like this didnâ€™t really happen.

I would be shocked if they didnâ€™t have the ability to take full control of my computer.Â The United States government certainly reacted in a pretty negative way, pretty quickly.

What happens when you find a vulnerability?

Even turned down from sharing information about their data at the worldâ€™s most elite gathering of hackers.

Why wouldnâ€™t IntelÂ® want to know about vulnerabilities on their chips?Â Hmmm?

Maybe the NSA could share tech with McDonaldsÂ®?

But if that backdoor vulnerability is there, whatâ€™s important to know is who has access to it.Â As we look back, Stalin had not only a better mustache, but also better regular progress reports on the Manhattan Project than Truman did.Â Who wants to bet that China doesnâ€™t have backdoor data (if it exists)?Â Who wants to bet that Chinese manufacture of motherboards and other electronic control architecture donâ€™t have little extras added in?

I wouldnâ€™t.

And, Iâ€™m not saying that the Chinese are evil for attempting to gain these particular secrets or this advantage â€“ itâ€™s a matter of self-preservation.Â If I were President of the United States and had the ability to infiltrate all of the industrial, financial, and military assets of potential enemies, would I do that?

Sure.Â But in this case, if youâ€™re President of an increasingly weak government over an increasingly fracturing population, what do you do?Â Anything you can in order to keep control, even if it means building in dangerous backdoors to critical products.

Which brings us back to money.

Money is essential to society as it is now configured.Â A breakdown of the electronic systems that control the flow of money would, at minimum, bring utter chaos.Â Matt Bracken famously asked this question nearly a decade ago:Â â€œWhat if a cascading economic crisis, even a temporary one, leads to millions of EBT (electronic benefit transfer) cards flashing nothing but ERROR?â€

We saw what three days without gasoline shipments did on the East Coast.Â That would be nothing compared to what weâ€™d see if the money system broke down.

Well, I think the pharmacy will be back up tomorrow, and the impact, for us, has been zero.

This time.

The Alice Cooper Economy

“You want the solution to inflation? Hi, friends. Marshall Lucky here for New Deal Used Cars, where we’re lowering inflation not only by fighting high prices, not only by murdering high prices, but by blowing the living s**t out of high prices.” – Used Cars

I apologize – I didn’t mean to rehash a potato joke.

I had saved my money. It was near my birthday, and we finally went on a trip where I could spend it in the most elementary school way possible.

Living on Wilder Mountain, as I have noted before, we were a good 45 miles from the nearest movie theater. We were so remote, there was only one escalator (at the JCPenney’s®) within at least 120 miles of us. At that time, I think there was only one elevator (on a two-story building, no less) within the same range.

But on occasion, Ma and Pa would get a wild hair and we’d drive into a nearby largish city. What was large? More bars than churches. We only did that a few times a year, and I was excited. I stocked the backseat with comic books and off we went.

I took my few dollars ($10?) and bought a cassette. It was the first music purchase I had ever made with my own money. My music collection until that day consisted of three handmedown cassettes from my older brother, who for legal reasons I’ll call “John Wilder” since that’s his name, too. Turns out my parents got me in a poker game with a band of outlaw bikers. Their ante? An old Slim Jim® beef stick.

It was a rough day for them when they lost that hand.

Yes, this was one of the cassettes. I’ll never forget, “I’m leaving, on a small single engine plane, I don’t think I’ll ever be back again.”

All kidding aside, my brother’s first name really is John Wilder as well, but he gets a bit upset when I call him Juan, too. I think it’s because he’s older than me and all.

Anyway, the cassette I bought was Alice Cooper’s Greatest Hits. After the clerk pulled off the big plastic “don’t steal me” antitheft device, I was thrilled. I poked my fingernail under the cellophane wrapper and skillfully slit the clear plastic open. The ride home was going to be over two hours, and I had a fresh set of C-cell batteries in the cassette player (mono) which was also a handmedown from big brother John.

Yup, that’s Groucho on the album cover. How he got there, we’ll never know.

As I slipped into the back seat of the Chevy® Impala™ coupe that was Pa Wilder’s 400 cubic inch pride and joy, I shared the backseat with the cassette player and Alice Cooper.

The Sun was bright as the pavement slid underneath the Impala™’s wheels and as Pa put his foot into it in the mountain air.

I hit play.

I don’t think it was quite seven minutes into side one of the tape when the cassette player stopped making noise. I hit “eject” and saw the carnage. The cassette player, which had never, ever eaten a single tape, had not only feasted on my brand new tape, but had also . . . broken it. No rewinding it.

The tape was dead. Oh, sure, I tried to resurrect it for a month with all manner of ideas that came to my fevered elementary school mind, but not one of them worked. $10, a fortune to me, gone.

I still liked Alice Cooper, though.

Yes, officer, that was the one that did it. I’m sure.

Eventually, my finances improved and I managed to get several Alice Cooper albums, and I had learned. I bought the album on vinyl and then copied it onto a blank cassette tape. I bought the album for Alice Cooper’s Greatest Hits for myself the second time with my sixteenth birthday money.

Although it wasn’t on Alice Cooper’s Greatest Hits, the song Generation Landslide by Mr. Cooper was always a fun one to listen to. It also has these lyrics:

Sister’s out till five, doing banker son’s hours
But she owns a Maserati® that’s a gift from his father
Stop at full speed, at one hundred miles per hour
The Colgate™ Invisible Shield© finally got ’em

And I laughed to myself at the men and the ladies
Who never conceived of us billion dollar babies

Give it a listen. Good stuff.

As a banker’s son, (even from a small farm bank) I liked to imagine what a Maserati® might be. There was no Internet, so it was obviously Italian, but yet not made of pepperoni.

Even though I was a banker’s son, I ended up driving an old GMC™ pickup with the most gutless engine that GM© ever dared put under the hood of a pickup, vinyl bench seats, and rubber floor mats. It wasn’t a Maserati™, but the local fräuleins didn’t seem to mind too much.

I loved that truck.

But in 2021, I think of these lines from the song:

Stop at full speed, at one hundred miles per hour
The Colgate™ Invisible Shield© finally got ’em

I think about this couplet a lot. It’s not great poetry, but it has always brought to my mind a system, out of control. Everything is moving along, as fast as it can. And then?

Stop.

High speeds bring energy. A lot of it. The kinetic energy of a moving object in a non-relativistic reference frame (trust me, the readers of this blog will call me on that if I don’t mention it) is equal to the mass of the object times the speed of the object, squared.

KE=1/2mv²

That means that an object that is going twice as fast carries four times the kinetic energy.

So, speed matters.

A lot.

And the primary policy of the economic wizards that try to “manage” the economy of the United States is: putting the pedal to the metal is the easiest way to keep the party going. Whatever it takes to keep the economy growing and accelerating in that growth is the policy of the day. Who needs booze when you have meth?

If the economy seems to falter? The only answer is from both our government and the Fed® is, “faster, faster, put more gas to it.”

As most drivers know besides a Biden driving a car, the faster the car goes, the more vulnerable it is to any imbalances. Prudent drivers know when to slow down if the road is wet. Even fools know to slow down when the road is glaze ice. The main thing I try to keep teaching Pugsley and The Boy about driving on icy roads is this: turn or (brake/accelerate). Choose one. Otherwise, things tend to get spinny. Sometimes very spinny.

And it’s not the speed that kills you, it’s the sudden stop at the end.

I wonder how this plays out? Who could predict it?

Our economy has been goosed in the last decade (and even more so recently) by:

Artificially, and permanently low, interest rates.
Rampant money printing.
A never-ending supply of “stimulus” packages and tax cuts to goose the economy.
An experiment in Universal Basic Income by paying out of work people more than they were paid working to not work.
Blatant political cronyism far in excess of the usual – your elected representatives are even trying to bail out Jeff Bezos’ so he can compete with Elon Musk’s SpaceX®. This is actually happening (LINK).

One hundred miles per hour sounded like it was really fast to me when I was driving a pickup truck that wouldn’t go that fast downhill on a mountain pass (topped out at 95). But the economy is so goosed now that we see $100 plywood sheets tumbling in the breeze as we cruise down the highway. The stresses from the velocity as we shamble and skitter between the lines are evident.

What’s next, a $50 ribeye?

Speaking of printing, some people are now 3-D printing guns. That’s nothing. I’ve had a Canon® printer for years.

Maybe we can bring it back under control. I don’t know. But I do know what Alice said:

And I laughed to myself at the men and the ladies
Who never conceived of us billion dollar babies

La da da da da, indeed.

Specialization And Generalization, Take Two

“If you do not return with the plumbers and the rock, I shall personally . . . kill you.” – Super Mario Brothers (Movie)

I bombed southern France too many times. Now I don’t have too much Toulouse.

Last week I wrote a post about specialization versus generalization (LINK). As a part of the discussion, Aesop chimed in with a rebuttal post.

Specialization Versus Generalization: The Economy Chooses

I love it.

His post was called, “Yes, BUT…” and can be found here (LINK). RTWT. If Aesop were President, during his first term he’d solve all our national problems in the first 10 days and then would be able to take the rest of the 1451 days of his reign teaching Nancy Pelosi to beg for crackers. Heck, he might even take the time to housebreak AOC.

There are very few words I’d disagree with in his entire post.

Von Mises (he of the incredibly heavy tome “Human Action” that I’ve referenced before LINK) wrote about just this. Von Mises noted that you could if you really wanted to, break a rock with another rock. You could get gravel that way.

A Brief Guide To Human Action – Which Leads To Human Freedom

Ugh, Grug make gravel.

Please be gneiss.

But it’s as slow as Biden trying to do a connect-the-dot picture of a straight line.

Pounding one rock against another is the most direct, the most general way to make gravel. You can use this tried and true method pretty much any time. Heck, I did that when I was a kid and tried to make arrowheads out of the rocks up on Wilder Mountain. I do know that it didn’t take long to knap an edge so sharp it could do my algebra homework for me.

There is, however, an alternative to pounding one rock against another. You could, if you had patience, get a hammer. But, first, someone had to make the hammer, which involved mining ore, smelting, and then casting or forging the head and mating this with a wooden handle. Plus, you could use the hammer to smash avocados and make whack-a-molé, guacamolé’s ugly sister.

A hammer is much better at making little gravel than hitting a rock with another rock, but it’s more indirect. Even better is to wait until a chemical industry forms, wait for dynamite, use that hammer to drill a hole in the rock, drop in some dynamite, and make lots of little rocks, all at once. Von Mises successfully showed that indirect methods are much more efficient than direct methods.

Indirect methods require specialization, and more than one chemist blown to bits before rocks can be blown to bits.

A terrorist blew up my rugs. That’s what I call carpet bombing.

I have no disagreement that this is, by far, the more efficient way to do it. It’s the best way to do it, until (of course) people develop the metallurgy to make complex rock crushers that make tons of gravel hourly.

This all happens in a stable society.

That stability has waxed and waned throughout history.

Once upon a time, the Romans controlled Britain. They did this because they decided they didn’t want to control the whole world, they just wanted to control the countries that were adjacent to the Empire. And then the next set of countries that were adjacent to the new, larger, Empire. And so on.

Archeologists love dinner plates because people (like Pugsley) washing dishes drop them and break them. Because they’re ceramic, they last nearly forever in a garbage dump. Imagine the archeologists from Tau Ceti visiting Earth in the year 1,238,631 thinking that the people in our time sat on toilets all of the time because that’s one thing that will definitely outlast anything that mankind ever made.

Our future name, “The Poopy Potty Sitters of Planet Three” will be chosen by Zamorg Flooglplaz, Ph.D., Polaris University (Mascot: Gelatinous Brainsuckers).

I didn’t have breakfast on the tectonic plate, instead, I had the continental breakfast.

Like I said, archeologists love plates. And when they dug into the trash heaps in London (no, I don’t mean Johnny Depp’s house) they found that when the Romans were there, people ate off of “pretty nice” plates, “pretty nice” being a technical description that by definition excludes Johnny Depp’s place. It turns out that most of those plates were made in the south of France (which we now call, “France”), and then shipped throughout the Roman Empire.

The people in the south of France were really good at making plates because they had yet to learn how to smoke and wear berets, and the Roman Empire was big enough and stable enough that the French could specialize in making plates. Since they specialized, they got pretty good at it.

But then society became unstable. The Romans Legions left, promising, “Hey, Britain, I’ve got to go to work. I’ll call you next week, promise. Oh, look at the time.”

When the Roman Empire collapsed, so did the trade in plates. 100 years after the Romans (and their cool plates) left Britain, the king ate off of plates that were worse than any commoner could easily afford when things were nice, stable, and efficient under Roman rule.

Stability in society leads to specialization which leads to efficiency which leads to (generally) higher standards of living for everyone.

But instability doesn’t have to impact an entire Empire. Instability can impact individuals throughout their careers. Why did the journalists hate it when their “learn to code” mantra go thrown back in their face when they were booted to the curb and they found that they had no other remotely marketable skills?

Because journalists are rich kids who weren’t smart enough to get into law school. Writing snarky columns about “10 Reasons Your Dog Is Transgender” isn’t really a marketable skill after HuffPo® decides to fire them.

What programming language did George Lucas use? Jabbascript.

Unlike most journalists, I’ve had (sort of) a Swiss Army Career™. I’ve developed a particular set of skills (not the Liam Neeson ones) that have allowed me to do a lot of different things, but I’m only an expert in one or two. But that suite of “pretty good” skills has allowed me to, like a Swiss Army knife, be incredibly useful from time to time. Scott Adams calls this a “talent stack” and not all of them are equal.

Had I limited them to a single expertise, I would have been less valuable, and much less employable when the industry I was in slowed down and another one was hot. As I look at the success level of many of my colleagues, it has been due to their variation in skills rather than their expertise in a single skill that led them to success – and some of them are wildly successful.

To further explain Swiss Army talent, Steve Martin can do several things at a world-class level, (including comedy, and acting), and is really good at musicianship and writing and sort of okay at singing. Together, this blend elevated him to a national treasure.

(And no, I’m not comparing me to him, just using him as an example of someone who inspires me.)

If Martin had kept slaying them nightly as a standup, odds are that as fashions change he would have been a “Remember that guy with the arrow through his head in the 1970s? He was funny,” trivia answer.

He would have been the Gary Mule Deer of his generation.

“Thankfully, perseverance is a good substitute for talent.” – Steve Martin

Another point I raised was certification. In last week’s post, I made light of certification that can be found in many, many careers.

In a highly technical (and stable) world, certification is (sadly) essential to keeping people alive in certain professions. Aesop brought up William Mulholland. To quote Aesop,

“He (Mulholland) emigrated to America from Ireland, and started out as a literal ditch-digger for the city of Los Angeles, scraping mud out of the irrigation canals that supplied the bustling metropolis of 10,000 with all the water that could be gotten from the muddy semi-annual creek known as the Los Angeles River. He was an uneducated, unlettered, self-taught civil engineer who worked his way up to chief engineer of the city from scratch, just because he could figure things out.”

But, (also from Aesop):

“He (still Mulholland) was working on another project, still large and in charge, and he placed an earthen dam in one of the canyons north of Los Angeles. What he didn’t know was that the rock there was a terrible location for a dam. Which hydraulics, geology, and physics all demonstrated rather rudely one night in 1928, when the whole thing collapsed, killing at least 431 people (they’ve found bodies up to as recently as 1994) in the ensuing flood, ending Mulholland’s career, and he died a broken man.”

Mulholland’s error can be found again and again, even with credentialed professionals – re: Tacoma Narrows Bridge, which was designed by the best and the brightest. Stuff happens when you push the envelope of what we can do. Part of the reasons that people don’t die on commercial airlines (very much) anymore is because we’ve discovered most of the ways that the airplanes can fall out of the skies. Because airplanes built by credentialed engineers fell out of the skies, other credentialed engineers fixed the mistakes that made them fall out of the skies.

To be clear, before the planes fell out of the sky, the designers (mostly) had no idea they were making a mistake.

Mario’s™ favorite state? Luigiana.

Our reliability is built on a sea of failure, sort of like I always imagined that the Marios® I killed in Super Mario Brothers fell on an infinitely deep pile of Mario skeletons. It’s like the Tom Cruise movie, Edge of Tomorrow (If you haven’t seen it, it’s like Groundhog Day with the backdrop of an alien invasion of Earth). Cruise’s character dies again and again but is reborn right where he was the previous morning with the knowledge of why he failed.

Engineering is like that. Fail and learn and fix and stop failing. Elon Musk’s SpaceX® exemplifies that sprit. There’s another spirit that he exemplifies, and that’s the Robert Anson Heinlein quote that I tossed up last week:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Specialization is for insects.

I’ll admit that, off of RAH’s list, I haven’t conned a ship, I haven’t set a bone, and I haven’t yet died. I do think I could plan an invasion as well as Churchill did at Gallipoli. Probably better, though I think Churchill could have taken me in a drinking contest. I have done most of the others if you replace “hog” with “deer”.

Yes, that exact list? Okay, it’s not my list. But I’ll bet that you (and most people who end up here or at Aesop’s place) have multiple talents on a comparable list. You can do lots of things that Bob never could have done – heck, I bet your list is better.

And being a generalist matters when novel solutions are required. Novel solutions require (often) a combination of lots of different knowledge and experience. Generalists are the pioneers and the people who keep the fires going after Rome leaves. Generalists are the ones who figure out how to make the next sets of dishes after the supply from ancient France (now known as “France”) goes dry.

Aesop is right. Specialists win when the weather is fair and the seas are calm.

I’m right. Generalists win when the path is unclear and the seas are rough.

If I discover a way to make gravel out of rocks faster, I’ll let you know – it will be a ground-breaking discovery.

I prefer to live in a society where specialists help us create a great standard of living and keep increasing human knowledge. But I also know that humanity forgot how to make concrete (which the Romans used in making the Pantheon in 126 A.D., which is still standing today) until about 1750 A.D., and we really didn’t get good at it until 1900 A.D.

Specialists make the world better and can achieve far more than generalists ever could. They help the world see farther, and do more. Generalists help the world advance in weird leaps that sometimes have horrible unintended consequences, but they also keep the fire of civilization burning.

Why not both? Me? I’ll be in the other room, making little rocks out of big rocks.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Preparing For The Commissar

â€œOttoman, there’ll be noÂ JusticeÂ of the Peace for you, just a big piece ofÂ justice.â€ â€“ The Tick

6:30 is the best time.Â Hands down.

Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
Open War.

April had increased violence.Â Â Â None that I could see was from the Right, which appears to still be stunned that the Leftists are actually doing all of the things that they promised that they would do.

Iâ€™m holding April at 9 out of 10.Â Thatâ€™s still two minutes to midnight.Â If I were betting?Â July or August will take us to a 10.

I currently put the total at (this is my best approximation, since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) only creeping up at around 700 out of the 1,000 required for the international civil war definition.

As close as we are to the precipice of war, be careful.Â Things could change at any minute.Â Avoid crowds.Â Get out of cities.Â Now.

In this issue:Â Front Matter â€“ Chauvin And Justice â€“ Violence And Censorship Update â€“ Updated Civil War 2.0 Index â€“ Â Leftists Destroy GATE â€“ Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report.Â 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.Â Iâ€™ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues.Â Also, subscribe because youâ€™ll get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30 Eastern, free of charge.

Chauvin And Justice

Derek Chauvin, a former officer with the Minneapolis Somalia by St. Paul Police Department, was convicted on three counts (at least two of them mutually exclusive) after minimal jury deliberation.Â There are many articles that talk about the injustice of the decision.Â I wasnâ€™t in the jury room so I canâ€™t say too much about the decision.Â I guess my only question is how much fentanyl does one have to consume before it becomes listed as a suicide if three times a fatal dose isnâ€™t enough?

The fate of those two men, Floyd and Chauvin, tells us a tremendous amount about the justice system in the country.Â But the Derek Chauvin trial showcases a much bigger agenda involving the justice system.

What is the message that was issued to every police officer in Minnesota and in almost every Leftist-controlled state?

Donâ€™t do your job.Â If you do, and you take down the wrong junkie, youâ€™ll be fired.Â If youâ€™re lucky.Â Instead, just show up.Â If you want to arrest someone, just make sure that theyâ€™re not people you can get in trouble for policing.

Well, itâ€™s not like the Unitarians believe anything.

The goal is: Â cops cease to police.Â If cops cease to police, the justice system will simply break down.Â Iâ€™ve covered multiple times why the justice system is the cornerstone of Western Civilization.Â The justice system is a stroke of genius that takes vengeance from the hands of individuals, and puts it into the hands of a â€œjust and impartialâ€ system.

Is the â€œjust and impartialâ€ system flawed?Â Certainly.Â But the thing thatâ€™s required is the faith in the system, even though it has flaws.Â If we believe that justice is real, it keeps the scourge of vengeance at bay, even when there are occasional lapses.

Perhaps thatâ€™s what the jury was thinking.

Perhaps.

But the message to them was clear.Â The demonstrations.Â The dead pigâ€™s head on the defense expert witnessâ€™s (former) front yard.Â Maxine Waters agitating the local community to â€œkeep the pressure on.â€

Thus, the verdict.Â This is a single case, about two men whose lives intersected.

Long term though, the goal isnâ€™t about this case, the goal to remove the cops.Â This will destroy the â€œjust and impartialâ€ system.Â Thatâ€™s clearly the plan now.Â Look at recent â€œprotestsâ€ in Portland and Plano.Â The police are there to protect the protesters and put in jail any who resist the protest.Â And if a mob shows up at a house and damages it?Â If the mob points weapons at those who protest?

The only crime will be self-defense.

But this removal of police is in the script.Â This is act one.Â This will:

Increase crime, because the police are being pressured to not do their one job: arrest criminals.
Increase actions of vengeance, because the criminals arenâ€™t being punished.
Vigilantes, of course, will be punished far more harshly than the criminals.

What happens when crime increases and vigilantes increase?

A solution from the Left will arise.Â They wonâ€™t call them Political Commissars, but they will be.Â Social Justice Police?Â Equity Enforcement?

I hear that mummys like wrap music.

The â€œjust and impartialâ€ system, then envy of the non-Western world, will soon be gone.

All by plan.

And who will be left to look to?Â The Left.

Violence And Censorship Update â€“ Turbo Magnum Edition

Item 1:Â Rudy Giuliani is a high-profile political figure in the Untied (yes, thatâ€™s intentional) States.Â He also looks like he smells like a combination of gin, Vicks-Vap-O-RubÂ®, hair cream, and mothballs.Â But Rudy is also a lawyer, specifically the lawyer for President Trump, representing him in several different matters.Â This is important since an attorneyâ€™s work is uniquely privileged â€“ an attorney provides guidance through the legal system for people who arenâ€™t familiar with it.Â Itâ€™s like when The Mrs. explains to me that other people are human beings that have things called â€œfeelingsâ€ that I should pay attention to.Â Pfft.

The attorney-client privilege isnâ€™t absolute, the privilege doesnâ€™t cover ongoing fraud, attempts to intimidate witnesses, destruction of evidence, et cetera.Â But itâ€™s a really big deal.Â Itâ€™s one of those protections that was put in place so everyone can trust the system, even those the system is attempting to punish.

Recently Rudyâ€™s office was raided, and not by the St. Pauli Girl t-shirt squad to give him an atomic wedgie followed by tequila shooters.Â Rudyâ€™s a political figure, but heâ€™s also a lawyer.Â That should be an amazingly high hurdle to stop a raid, but in 2021 America, it isnâ€™t.Â Just like Chauvinâ€™s conviction â€“ Rudyâ€™s raid was meant to suppress speech and protection that the Left doesnâ€™t agree with.

A truck of Vicks Vap-O-RubÂ® wrecked during rush hour last month. There was no congestion for a week.

Imagine if it had been Podesta or Hunter Biden or Hillary Clinton or even Satan getting raided during the Trump administration?

The howl from the Left would have been deafening.Â And, yes, the Church of Satan members voted 99%+ for Biden.

Item 2:Â Nick Fuentes is a twentysomething (22) kid that runs something called America Firstâ„¢ which is a political movement focused around views of the Right â€“ he even makes fun of the pure economic conservatism of Turning Point, USAÂ®.Â Nick used to be on YouTubeÂ®, but they banned him.Â And so did most private apps where he could make money or get publicized on.

Libertarians and Leftists will agree:Â itâ€™s a private company and the terms of service matter, not the Constitution.Â Iâ€™ve made my arguments about that, and had some good ones with friends who are as impartial as I can find.

But.

Nick Fuentes was put on the No-Fly list recently by Bidenâ€™s Department of Homeland Security.Â The Federal Governmentâ€™s No-Fly list.Â The worst that I could say about Nick (from what Iâ€™ve seen) is that heâ€™s annoyingly smug.

Smug is not a crime.Â The sole reason that Nick could be on the No-Fly list?Â He says things people in government donâ€™t like.

This is not a â€œbake my gay cake bigotâ€ moment.Â This is the unfettered use of government power to destroy ideas.Â Sure, the FBI spied on Martin Luther King.

Think theyâ€™re not looking at you and me?Â Laugh at the wrong meme?Â Hope you can drive.

Item 3:Â I track the website traffic and where it comes from to Wilder, Wealthy and WiseÂ©.Â Okay, I donâ€™t do it personally.Â Some nameless small gnomes that live inside of computer chips count the visitors to this place.Â Whatever.Â They donâ€™t ask for vacation.

A small (but significant) number of visitors to this site came from GoogleÂ®.Â Millions?Â No.Â But thousands every month.Â By any stretch of the imagination, this site is easily in the top 20 most-linked to site on the Internet about Civil War 2.0.

And these are quality links from pretty popular sites.

But I donâ€™t show up on GoogleÂ® under that search. Â I can understand that.Â But what if I look for the entirely novel phrase (my own invention thanks to Cory Hamasaki, R.I.P.) Civil War Weather Report?

I get links about weather during the Civil War.Â I once got links to current weather forecasts for Gettysburg, PA from Googleâ„¢.

If I go to DuckDuckGoÂ®?Â With that phrase, Iâ€™m number one.Â With Civil War 2.0?Â Iâ€™m still in the top results.Â I get more hits from DuckDuckGoâ„¢ many weeks than I do from Googleâ„¢.Â DuckDuckGoÂ® has 0.5% market share.Â GoogleÂ® has 92.26%.

All things being equal?Â I should get about 180 times the number of hits from Googleâ„¢ as I do from DuckDuckGoÂ©.Â And it used to be about five times the traffic, if not ten times the traffic.Â Not now.Â Some days, I get more traffic from DuckDuckGoâ„¢.

The nosedive started in:Â February, 2021, right after a certain person was inaugurated.

Hmmm.Â Iâ€™m not the first site â€œde-tunedâ€ by GoogleÂ® and I wonâ€™t be the last.

Now all my devices use DuckDuckGoÂ®.

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.Â They are broken up into Violence, Political Instability, Economic Outlook, and Illegal Alien Crossings.Â As each of these is difficult to measure, Iâ€™ve created for three of the four metrics some leading indicators that lead to the index.Â On illegal aliens, Iâ€™m just using government figures.

Violence:

Up is more violent, and violence is down slightly in April.Â I was expecting it to go up, but I was also expecting Chauvin to be found not guilty.Â The state-media propaganda of â€œhomegrown terrorismâ€ Â drumbeat is ongoing, even as protester violence and inner-city violence is going through the roof.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.Â Instability dropped this month.Â I expect it to increase next month, but the Left keeps pushing for more control.

Economic:

I expected this number to be less positive.Â Itâ€™s not.Â As I predicted, April is the month that we find that inflation moves from a thought to a widely-felt reality.Â Whatâ€™s next?Â It wonâ€™t be better.

Illegal Aliens:

This data is at record levels for this time of year.Â Comments from the Left?Â â€œThere needs to be more.â€

Leftists Destroy GATE

Gifted And Talented Education (GATE) is a pretty cool program.Â The idea is that smart kids can work on material that challenges them.Â Thatâ€™s good.Â Really smart kids, when bored, cause a lot of problems.Â How else do you explain the Crusades?

But of course, the biggest problems in our country (sorry Aesop) seem to emanate from either D.C. or California.Â The newest push is an â€œequityâ€ focused math program.

The framework draft starts with the biggest lie published in the English language in 2021:

â€œAll students are capable of making these contributions and achieving these abilities at the highest levels,â€ and, â€œevidence that shows all fifth graders care capable of eventually learning calculus, or other high-level courses , when provided appropriate messaging teaching and support.â€

No.

Not at all.Â And what the hell is â€œmessaging teachingâ€?Â Sounds like a crack-addled mail-order diploma-mill Doctor Of Education (looking at you, Jill Biden) theory.

Inequality is rampant in the human condition.Â No matter how much I wish that I could be taller, I canâ€™t think myself taller, and no amount of Social Justice Warrior Equity Cheerleading could make me taller.

No amount of teaching, even super-special â€œmessaging teachingâ€ can make me even a millimeter taller.

And no amount of teaching, even super-special â€œmessaging teachingâ€ can make a dumb kid smarter.Â You can make a LamborghiniÂ® out of duct tape and cardboard, but the only way itâ€™ll make 50 miles an hour is if you drop it out of an airplane.

My parents told me I was a gifted child.Â Turned out they meant that I was left on their doorstep in a box.

What this statement means is simple:Â smart kids, according to the educational establishment in California, donâ€™t exist.Â They even say that explicitly:Â â€œWe reject ideas of natural gifts and talents.â€

Guess weâ€™ll have to page Harrison Bergeron (LINK â€“ read it if you havenâ€™t â€“ itâ€™s short).

Itâ€™s trivial to prove that some people are talented and some are not â€“ in fact, itâ€™s fairly commonly known now that 60-90% of all of everyoneâ€™s attributes and abilities are inherited.Â Everyone.Â There is no mystical person who has attributes that are Play-DohÂ® in the hands of the schools or state.Â Is it nature or nurture?

Itâ€™s nature.Â Nurture can mess it up.Â Nurture can get the best out of whatâ€™s there.Â But you canâ€™t get a ribeye steak out of a cat.

This denial of reality is 100% required by the Left, however.Â The idea of anything be unequal is an idea they cannot accept, even when itâ€™s real, which is why untrained women have to win fights against Navy Seals in movies, and why Leftists pretend that Caitlyn Jenner ainâ€™t a dude.

LINKS

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

READY ON THE RIGHT

READY ON THE LEFT

READY ON THE FIRING LINE

READY FIRE AIM

Welcome To The Exponential, Including One Bikini Graph

“If the rule you followed brought you to this, of what use was the rule?” – No Country For Old Men

When I went to Ireland I met some shy people, which surprised me. No one expects the Irish inhibition.

I had noticed it some time ago a strange mathematical relationship – the National Debt (sort of) doubles about every eight years. Is it an exact mathematical relationship? Nope. It varies a bit based on which eight years that you pick. But the relationship is simple – the national debt is growing faster than yeast in AOC’s armpits, at about 9% per year.

It wasn’t always like that.

I also looked at the national debt between World War II and 1970 or so. During that time period, the national debt was as flat as Joe Biden’s brain activity scan. Hmm, whatever could have happened around 1970?

You’ll be happy to know that my search for “Richard Nixon bikini” came up empty.

The reason for most of our problems is that understanding the idea of exponential growth is difficult. Our minds are (mostly) made for understanding linear things, or things that happen slowly. No one really expects that, no matter how badly they eat, that they’d double in weight overnight, or even over the course of a month or year.

Yet, a lot of natural processes do follow exponentials, at least for a limited amount of time. Take a baby. Please. I really have no use for them anymore. Even the thought of a baby makes me exhausted.

Babies start with one cell, then two, then four, and then eight, and so on. The initial growth of a child is exponential. Thankfully, that levels off, or else there would be no way that I’d be able to afford to feed Pugsley. If that exponential growth rate had continued, he’d be the size of the Solar System and need to eat cheeseburgers the size of Saturn just to make it to lunch.

Want fries with that Saturn?

No. He’ll settle for the rings.

So, exponentials can’t continue on forever. Math proves that. If exponentials could continue forever, by the year 2032, the only blog left on the Internet would be this one, and everyone on Earth would have to spend 18 hours a day reading it.

Ahhh, I can dream.

But our national debt is following that trend. Here’s a graph I put together:

Actual conversation with The Mrs.: I said, “I promise I can make this [economic idea] interesting.” The Mrs. responded, “Bikini graphs aren’t interesting to me.”

One of the lines is the actual national debt. It’s the red one. I just picked actual national debt data every eight years going into the past from today. The other one? I extrapolated back into the past from today: I just assumed that the national debt doubled every eight years.

How accurate was I?

In 1973 the actual national debt was $466 billion. My backwards approximation? $438 billion. Close enough that a snake that was 3.14 feet long could be called a πthon.

Sure, in the middle, sometimes I was higher, sometimes lower. But in general, I stuck the landing.

That means that in 2029 (if the United States is made of math) that we’ll be seeing a national debt of $56 trillion. And in 2037? $112 trillion. Jeff Bezos sometimes works a whole year and doesn’t make that much money.

I heard he didn’t want to be CEO or president, just Prime® minister.

Does it make sense to anyone that the world will still keep accepting a doubling of debt every eight years and still keep sending us oil and steel and copper for the dollars that we print? Sure, it worked for a long time. Having an unmatched military and all the nukes gives a lot of room to dictate terms.

But how many people remember back to 1980 when the winner of the Cold War was in doubt? The United States couldn’t print all of the dollars it wanted to without inflation. The rule that the dollar followed changed, though, when the Soviet Union decided that it wanted to retire and spend the rest of eternity in Boca Raton in a retirement community gumming applesauce.

After that, the United States printing press could go wild. Inflation? Well, why bother with that? The United States could print all the money it wanted and ship it overseas. What else were people going to want? Rubles? Marks? Rupees?

No. The way that international trade was done was with the dollar. We could print them up, and the world would soak them up and then the inflation could be exported all over the world, since the demand for dollars was now the entire world. The United States could, in essence, tax the entire world to allow them to use the good old dollar.

I heard my chiropractor owes back taxes.

It was a good ride. Need oil? Print a few billion and send it to the Saudis. Need copper? Print a few million and send it to Chile. Need cars? Print a few billion and send it to Japan.

There are good things that happen when you win it all. You get a trophy. You get a party. You get oil and copper and cars. But if you have too much fun at the party?

There’s always the hangover.

Exponential growth can continue, and it can continue for quite a long time. Without it, life itself wouldn’t be possible. But life proves, again and again, that there is only so far that growth can go.

But, hey, it’s different this time, right? The national debt can go on forever, right?

The New Episode Is Up: Watch It Because It’s Funnier A Biden Press Conference (Also: Readers Write!)

Beers Win More And More Games – Baseketball

The move to take over all of the media in the world continues – the latest episode of Bombs and Bants is up! Watch it because you like cheesy animation. Watch it because our sponsor is that PARODY dating service – PreppersOnly.com, and only here can you find 43 Seconds Inside The Head of AOC.

In this episode we talk about what the Pentagon thinks of aliens, the city versus rural divide, and we look at democide.

I had promised that I’d post a link when The Boy got Bombs and Bants up on other formats, and here it is (Bombs And Bants) for Bitchute, Apple podcasts, and Odysee.

Okay, Baseketball still makes me laugh.

Also, from reader/listener Tar, a wise update on unusual places to find things after society collapses:

“One thought re: those “obscure supply locations” that the article didn’t cover, but you may be interested in.

Public Pool facilities and pool supply shops. They usually keep a bunch of chlorine on site at pools to keep the pool clean – that can be used to purify drinking water if you know what you’re doing with the concentrations. Probably also bulk charcoal for water filtration, if not filter equipment and media. Also, they always keep a medical kit on site, and some even have the packs to shock people in cardiac arrest. Suppliers will often have all of the above.

Garden Centers can also be helpful – they’ll have not just supplies for growing stuff (a bottle or two of rooting hormone will be helpful in multiplying food production if you have growing space) but they generally stock tools that can make good melee weapons in a pinch. Pretty much anything sharp on a pole is superior to knives and such – wood axes are unwieldy but forks and shovels are good. Also, when the shooting starts, digging holes gets important. Get picks and hand-cultivators in addition to shovels for such work.

Welding supply stores may be useful early on, especially if they have dry ice on stock (10 pounds of dry ice in the bottom of a cooler under a bag of regular ice will keep the ice frozen (and anything else in there) for at least two days (and maybe 3-4 if it’s storing already-frozen stuff). They’ll often have oxygen and acetylene tanks for torches, as well, and of course the tools and gear for actual welding and metal-cutting if you want to make Mad Max vehicles when you get to your retreat in the wasteland.”

Thank you, Tar!

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: A Bridge Too Far?

“War, war, war! This war talk’s spoiling all the fun at every party this spring. I get so bored I could scream!” – Gone With The Wind

No change this month. We’ll see what February brings . . .

Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
Open War.

We remain in the gray zone between step 9. and step 10. I thought seriously about rolling back the clock to five minutes to midnight. Violence is down, since the Left has seriously decided to clamp down on their useful idiots of BLM® and Antifa™. The Right has (so far) not been any sort of a serious threat to anyone. The hijinks that took place at the Capitol was closer to the football team painting something naughty on a water tower than any sort of real insurrection.

But then I reviewed the stories that I’m covering this issue. Nope. The Left wants to calm down the Far Left, but only so it can turn its full attention to the Right. The pressure will continue.

The Right offers nothing to the Left. It is comprised of nationalists – people who worry more about the nation than a group of foreigners. The Right doesn’t hate the foreigners – it just worries about Americans first. And the Right, more today than ever, worries about wanting a free capitalist system to make the lives of Americans better – not a free capitalist system for the sake of the system itself.

I currently put the total at (this is my best approximation, since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) 650 out of the 1,000 required for the international civil war definition.

As close as we are to the precipice of war, be careful. Things could change at any minute.

In this issue: Front Matter – A Bridge Too Far – Violence And Censorship Update – The Scouring Of The Shire Armed Services – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Full Power Of The State – 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, feel free to subscribe and you’ll get every post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30 Eastern, free of charge.

A Bridge Too Far

Operation Market Garden in World War II is the origin of this particular phrase. The idea was a quick run to Arnhem to open up the main portion of Germany so that Berlin could be taken by December, 1944.

It failed. It was an (overly) ambitious airborne assault on a series of bridges that would have allowed for an attack into Germany – Eisenhower approved it, not because he thought it would work, but because it was a part of a general offensive.

I hear most bridges speak Span-ish.

A Bridge Too Far would be an apt description of the Sabika Sheikh Firearm Licensing and Registration Act. Thankfully, the chances of this travesty being enacted are small. This act, however, is a dream list of Leftists everywhere:

Universal gun registration.
Psychiatric tests, including input from your ex. We all know how stable those relationships can be.
$800 fee for “insurance”
All magazines of greater than 10 rounds would be illegal.
Huge penalties for noncompliance.
And so, so, much more . . . .

I won’t go into more details, because, as I said, this particular bill won’t become law. I think that even the far Left in Congress knows that passing this would be a de facto declaration of war on 80 million-plus American Citizens.

Just because it fails this time, don’t think that this isn’t exactly what they want. It may be a bridge too far now, but their general offensive will continue.

Violence And Censorship Update

Time Magazine® (LINK) is happily showing off, step-by-step, how a group of unelected hardcore Leftists from unions coordinated with Leftists in Tech, Hollywood® and:

“Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears.”

Viral smears includes, of course, actual reporting of (for instance) Hunter Biden’s corruption and dissolute lifestyle – where “they” got The New York Daily News© kicked off of Twitter®. The idea was that there was no rule that they wouldn’t try to change (Constitutionally or not) in order to make sure that Trump would lose. Or that the system was set up so that they could manufacture enough votes for Biden to win.

What’s worse than 1,000 conspiracy theorists? A real conspiracy.

Censored? You and me. And it’s ongoing – one Tweet® that included a direct quote from the Time© story was identified by Twitter® as disinformation. Let that sink in.

It would be wrong, apparently, to think there was a secret conspiracy to defeat Trump.

Even when the conspirators spend 6,500 words in Time Magazine™ admitting it.

The Scouring Of The Shire Armed Services

The Secretary of Defense has just issued a 60 day stand down to combat “extremism” in the ranks. What’s extreme? No one has said. It could be a Tweet® that is now no longer in favor that a soldier made years ago.

So far, the III-percenter® logo has been identified as “extremist” and has been identified as something that has to go. No tattoos, no t-shirts, and I’d assume no posters.

The Left is afraid – a large percentage of those arrested related to the Capitol Hill incident (so far) have been veterans – 14% was a number that I saw. Of those, 8% were Marines, so the article I read said, “Of special concern are the elite units.”

So, the purges will start.

What ideologies will be purged?

Social Justice™? Certainly not! Despite the fact that it requires communism to implement, it’s the current ideology of the powers in charge.
Black Lives Matter©? Absolutely not! How could an ideology that has the support of the entire Fortune 500© be wrong? Besides, those weren’t riots, they were peaceful protests.
Antifa®? What wrong with being Anti-Fascist? Huh? What’s fascism? Fascism is whatever is to the Left of Antifa™.

Nope. Not those.

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 lead to the index. On illegal aliens, I’m just using government figures, or I would be, if they published any this month.

Violence:

Up is more violent, and to no one’s surprise, violence jumped again in January.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable. Instability jumped significantly – getting Trump out has not made things better.

Economic:

January showed a major jump. I’d expect a market crash sooner than later – politically it’s best to get those out early in an administration.

Illegal Aliens:

No data this month. Has FedGov decided to stop publishing it?

The Full Power Of The State

I’ve documented above how the Left is taking over or already has taken over communications, social media, the military, and the voting process. That’s not enough.

Recently, the Bank of America® was requested by the FBI to provide information on its customers. What sort of information? Well, all of it, if the customer met this very broad list:

Customers confirmed as transacting, either through bank account debit card or credit card purchases in Washington, D.C. between 1/5 and 1/6.
Purchases made for Hotel/Airbnb RSVPs in DC, VA, and MD after 1/6.
Any purchase of weapons or at a weapons-related merchant between 1/7 and their upcoming suspected stay in D.C. area around Inauguration Day.
Airline related purchases since 1/6.

And, no, not everything had to click to get you on the list, but still, 211 people managed to make the list. Bank of America™ wasn’t required to give this information without a proper warrant. But Bank of America© did.

At least one citizen was questioned by the FBI based on this information.

The FBI even has a patron saint: St. Francis of CCTV.

So, now it’s not only the Federal government’s amazing ability to listen to you, follow you on social media, and track your every movement. Now they enlist banks to participate in closing the loop. Unless you pay in cash, they have a list of every transaction you make.

So, pay in cash?

Have you tried to do that with a rental car? Have you tried to do that with an airline ticket? Tried to check into a Holiday Inn Express®?

They might take cash, but they’ll need to see a credit card, first.

How else would you leave a perfect record for the FBI?

LINKS