TEOTWAWKI – Page 18 – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

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

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

PUNDITRY

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2021/01/american-civil-war

https://www.thearticle.com/is-this-the-last-battle-of-the-american-civil-war

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-02-01/capitol-riot-trump-four-corners-sarah-ferguson/13098356

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/security/news/2021/01/19/494758/united-states-early-days-domestic-insurgency/

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/how-close-did-us-come-successful-coup/617709/

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/512483-second-us-civil-war/

POLLS

https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2021/01/07/US-capitol-trump-poll

https://www.axios.com/poll-america-falling-apart-4a13376f-f962-46e3-8e2c-174d396f25d1.html

https://www.businessinsider.com/many-people-united-states-believe-cold-civil-war-survey-2021-1

https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/2021/02/01/civil-war-during-trumps-pre-riot-speech-parler-talk-grew-darker/4297165001/

POLITICS

https://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/news/congressman-paul-gosar-oath-keepers-militia-civil-war-jim-arroyo-11529183

https://amgreatness.com/2021/01/09/we-are-perilously-close-to-a-civil-war-it-is-our-job-to-stop-it/

PREPARATIONS

https://www.al.com/news/2021/01/some-republicans-call-for-second-civil-war-citizens-take-arms.html

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/boogaloo-prepare-civil-war/617683/

https://www.ajc.com/news/militia-alliance-in-georgia-signals-new-phase-for-extremist-paramilitaries/UD2JMQV5A5EABHHAKBQZBK2IVY/

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/internet/increasingly-militant-parler-refugees-anxious-qanon-adherents-prep-doomsday-n1254775

(SECRET) POLICING

https://summit.news/2021/01/20/leftists-call-for-new-secret-police-force-to-spy-on-trump-supporters/

https://caityjohnstone.medium.com/viral-trumpsnewarmy-video-is-liberals-at-their-craziest-and-scariest-aee81d5deeb1

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/01/this-site-posted-every-face-from-parlers-capitol-hill-insurrection-videos/

https://facesoftheriot.com/#

PERSPECTIVES

https://www.city-journal.org/html/why-robespierre-chose-terror-12935.html

https://blogs.prio.org/2021/02/can-we-predict-civil-war/

https://theweek.com/articles/960957/worstcase-scenario-americas-immediate-future

Pyramids, Captain Kirk, And Skills

“Seven days ago one of my satellites over Antarctica discovered a pyramid.” – Alien vs. Predator

A friend tried to rope me into a pyramid scam. “Don’t you want to be your own boss,” he asked me. “No, I hate working for jerks.”

When I graduated from college, I graduated at the same time as one of my close friends. The employment market was only so-so, but we both managed to grab jobs in a town near the college. Whereas my job was, um, more rough and tumble (I was a rodeo clown at for chubby people at the Golden Corral® – my worst day was when Megan McCain and Oprah showed up together), my friend’s job ended up being at a suit and tie kind of place. Thankfully, we still were working in the same city, and we got together frequently.

One night he asked a question over Buffalo wings and too many beers: “Where did they go?”

“What? Where did who go?”

“All the old guys. I mean, I go to work, and I see that there are dozens of people less than thirty. Then, maybe twenty percent are between thirty and forty. After forty? It’s a wasteland. Hardly anyone but upper management is over forty.”

I thought about his question. Where did they go? The company I was working at (and most of the companies I’ve worked at since then) had a similar pyramid shape. Some have been steeper, and some shallower, but all have had that shape.

I have a good construction joke, but I’m still working on it.

So, where did they go?

Well, they didn’t retire – not from the company they were at – they didn’t make nearly enough to retire at 27 and live on the island with Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain and Robert Johnson.

Nope. The vanished people were gone. Where? Somewhere else. Some other industry, some other career. It was uno, dos, and then they vanished without a tres.

Probably the biggest reason for that pyramid shape is that younger people cost less. Do they know less? Sure, but inexpensive is an attribute all of its own.

But any hierarchical organization has fewer slots for leaders than for followers. The armed forces are a similar example. I once made the acquaintance of a (no kidding) Captain Kirk. Now, this Captain Kirk wasn’t in Starfleet®, he was in the United States Army. And he was sweating for promotion.

Captain Kirk was denied promotion. I’m thinking that someone the Pentagon saw that Captain Kirk was trying to be promoted to Major Kirk, and that there was no way that the Army would ever give up the numerical superiority they had over the Navy in their number of Captain Kirks.

No, not this Kirk.

The armed forces are a classic example of that pyramid structure: there are fewer generals than colonels, and fewer colonels than majors. And, if officers (in a certain range) fail to be promoted a certain number of times?

Well, there’s the door. So, Captain Kirk soon enough was in the private sector, and I lost track of him from there. I think he got lost somewhere in the Veridian System.

Most (but not all) companies are built upon this pyramid model. I’ve seen high-end consulting firms where it’s a paradise for everyone born in the Eisenhower era, but those are the exception, not the rule. Plus, they charge enough to pay for the most expensive video-streaming service ever: college during Corona.

So, the rub is that for many, the rule is up or out.

What to do?

Invest in the one thing that can never be taken away from you: your skills.

My poor reading skills cost me a career in sex-worker management. On the bright side, now I own a warehouse.

In 2017 I would have given a completely different list of skills than 2021. It would have been far more dull and predictable. But 2021? 2021 is like a tarot card reader’s business: unpredictable. Part of it will come down to plain dumb luck and good timing.

I’d suggest:

Have general skills. General skills are widely applicable and get a job quickly in lots of different locations. Teacher. Tom Brady’s tooth polisher.
Or, have skills that are so specific that they are nearly impossible to replicate. (Specific skills require a time and a place. I’m sure that all of the folks working on the Keystone XL pipeline had great skills. Until those skills aren’t needed.) If you want a great choice for the Biden year, I’d suggest a carbon-neutral way to turn cash into Democratic votes. Oh, wait, they’ve got that figured out.
Protip: growth industries will be the ones that the Left loves for the next two years, at least. If it’s green and fuzzy, the Left will fill it full of money. I’m thinking of investing in pool tables.
Have skills that can’t be done remotely from a foreign country. Right now, that includes teaching. I’m sure there are more, but I’ve been at a loss since Biden figured out how to be the president from China.
Have skills where a certification that a foreigner can’t get are required. Top secret clearances are nice. I’m working on a top-secret project to ferment honey to make ethanol for cars. The project is all on a mead-to-know basis.

To be fair, I had an addiction to stealing traffic lights. But I could stop whenever I wanted to.

A lot of the suggestions above would have made the 2017 list.

In 2021, however, I must stress that the world might get a lot more, um, basic than we’re used to. The reason that my Great-Great-Grandma McWilder (GGGMcW) did fine during the Great Depression was she knew how to make clothes from cloth, a needle, and thread. And if the cloth wasn’t big enough for a dress? It was big enough to be made into part of a hand-made quilt. Like Jean-Luc Picard, she could make it sew.

GGGMcW also knew how to raise chickens. And raise a garden. Probably 30% or more of the calories they ate came from the backyard – as he added soil to the garden, I’m sure he said, “so, the plot thickens.” But Great-Great-Grandpa McWilder was no slouch, either. He didn’t have a great repair shop, but the man fixed every aspect of his house, by himself. Roof leaked?

It was his job to fix. Ants? His to kill. Broken suitcase handle? His to fix.

Honestly, I don’t recall them buying anything much more than flour, sugar, bread, chicken, and hamburger and the occasional vegetable. I don’t think the area was friendly to corn so I think they got that in cans. They would have grown more vegetables, but they weren’t from Okra-homa.

I installed a beer tap in my house – now The Mrs. complains that she can’t take a shower.

But there was more. The Great-Greats were also tied into their community, and had been there a decade. The connections they had bonded them to the community. How so? During the Depression they raised another child from a family that couldn’t afford to feed the kid.

The pyramid is real. In many ways opportunities may diminish over time. But life goes on, so keep investing in the skills that you might need.

All of them. Because you have no idea what the future might bring.

Presented Without Comment

New Civil War Weather Report on Monday.

Paranoia, Preparation, and Peace of Mind

“Frankly, your lack of paranoia is insane to me.” – Silicon Valley

In our library, I asked The Mrs. where our books on paranoia were, she said, “They’re right behind you.”

The biggest natural disaster The Wilder Family ever rode out was Hurricane Ike – it passed right over our house when we lived in Houston. And it was going pretty strong when it hit our place. We lost power, a tree, siding, and a whole lot of roof. Thankfully, Led Zeppelin was there to sing that one . . . Whole Lot of Roof . . . .

In review, the hurricane wasn’t so bad. At one point, I had to do my Captain Dan impression, walking outside in the middle of the hurricane at the strongest winds and yelling into the wind after the power went out and the laptop battery died so we couldn’t watch the John Adams miniseries we were watching on DVD:

“Is that all that you’ve got?”

Since I’ll probably never be able to walk away from an exploding helicopter without looking back as the flames shot up into the sky, it was just something I thought I had to do: yelling into a hurricane wearing a bathrobe and athletic shorts.

I’ve done a lot of cool things in my life, but I really enjoyed that one. I’d recommend it, but my lawyer, Lazlo, advises me against advising you to try it. Maybe you could talk pleasantly into a warm spring breeze?

The reason I did it? We had hit the toughest part of the storm. We had ridden it out. We were prepared.

Never smoke weed during a hurricane – lightning always strikes the highest object.

In truth, the preparation had started before we ever bought our house. We picked a house that was so far outside the flood zone that Wyoming would be underwater before we were.

Yeah, I checked that before we made an offer. I’m paranoid that way.

In my life, I’ve always tried to go to the idea of, “How bad can it get?” Then I thought, “Well, how could it get worse than that?”

In the middle of the night when I wake up with yet another scenario, the answer always comes back the same: “It really can get worse.”

Reality can get really, awfully bad. And it can do so more quickly than we imagine.

During the hurricane, there wasn’t a lot we could do. Stores were picked clean of essentials about 24 hours before the storm hit. Oh, sure, you could get things like diet cookies and soy milk, but the food actual humans wanted to eat was simply gone. And booze? Forget about it. All of that was sold out.

The first big lesson: Prepare Before Circumstances Force You To Prepare. If you’re moving out of a disaster zone (cough San Francisco cough) it’s better to be five years too early than one day too late. Especially if they’re out of beer.

Why did people hoard all the toilet paper? It’s just how they roll . . . .

But not having the store was okay for us. I went to visit one mainly to amuse myself and learn – what would be left? If more people prepared, then systems wouldn’t be overwhelmed when a crisis strikes.

Thankfully, at that point in our life, our pantry had enough food in it to keep us fully fed for weeks or longer. Water? We had a swimming pool (they come with every house in Houston, like mailboxes or manservants) so we had thousands of gallons of water.

Don’t want to drink swimming pool water? Well, if you had the water filter system I had, you could. But we also had drinking water stored in plastic jugs for weeks of use. We ended up using the swimming pool water for bathing and toilet flushing and never missed a beat.

The food was good. Even though power was out, cold cooked corn and cold Hormel Chili™ tasted okay. It was “camping” bad, but not “a normal Tuesday in Somalia” bad. The worst part was the second day after the hurricane – temperatures and humidity skyrocketed, so it was uncomfortable to do anything other than sit around and sweat. Even sleeping was uncomfortable since the still, hot, humid air was like living inside a whale that’s spending spring break in a crockpot.

Don’t sweat the petty things. And don’t pet the sweaty things.

The hand-crank radio was our link to the outside world. Cell service was wiped out. And then, FEMA helpfully came on the radio and told us to go to their website for emergency locations.

Huh? Website? We had a hand-crank radio.

But, outside of minor discomfort, we were fine. I even had beer, though it was warm.

The one (and only one) hole in my preparations at that point was I was out of propane for my grill. I had to borrow from a neighbor to cook the steaks that were rapidly thawing out. That was okay, I lent him 20 gallons of gasoline for his generator, so we were very quickly even-stevens.

Yet another lesson: Every Detail, No Matter How Small, Matters.

I was planning for a much, much bigger catastrophe. The hurricane that hit us was, due to the preparations The Mrs. and I made, an uncomfortable inconvenience. It was in this case that my paranoia made our lives (relatively) easy.

The biggest lesson I learned is one that we speak of commonly now: No One Is Coming To Save You.

If we had any issues that would have resulted in needing help? We weren’t going to get it. The “First Responders” had gotten themselves into an emergency operations building and had no food or water. The radio broadcast a hilarious plea for people to come save the “First” Responders by bringing them food and water.

When seconds count, First Responders will be there in minutes.

The First Responders are almost always Second Responders – you and I, when we have a crisis, are the real First Responders.

No One Is Coming To Save You. Get that very simple fact through your mind. It was one we lived with each day of my childhood up on Wilder Mountain. If you couldn’t save yourself – you were going to die. If Pa Wilder cut off his left foot with the chainsaw while we were gathering firewood and my brother John (yes, my brother’s name is really John as well) couldn’t save him, he was going to die.

That never happened. But we were prepared for it.

Sometimes events I write about go beyond what will happen. I assure you, not one of the events that I write about goes beyond what could happen. The descent of a society into madness and chaos has happened again and again throughout history. Sure, that descent into madness generally doesn’t happen overnight.

Generally. But sometimes? It does.

So, when I look at the world around me, I let my paranoia run. I encourage it. “How bad could it get?”

That’s a starting point. What are the additional things current me can do now to help future me? How many human needs can I solve? For how long?

Where I live, there are several amazing advantages. Great water. Good soil. Low-ish population density. Grain elevators filled to bursting with food that the population could eat in an emergency. Good neighbors that I’ve known for years who think as I do, mostly.

We didn’t move to a rural area by accident. From every story that was told to me about the Great Depression – people in the country, surrounded by their neighbors, had a much better time than people in the cities.

Think about preparing not as being about stuff, but as a way to buy time. Saving money buys time. Stockpiling food buys time. Living in a low-pressure area buys time. Living in a high resource area buys time.

Most preppers suffer from Stock Home syndrome.

If you prepare for something big, and nothing big happens? Not generally a loss. I can eat the food in my pantry anytime. If I prepare by building a pantry when times are good? I often end up saving money because food prices keep going up.

If you prepare for something big, and something small happens, like (for us) Hurricane Ike?

You can ride it out. You get a few days off of work. You might gain weight, having to eat all of that food that is thawing.

And you would definitely get the chance to go out and yell into the winds:

“Is that all you’ve got?”

See? Paranoia has its advantages. I’ll simply say this: paranoia is the only way that our ancestors survived.

Don’t sell it short. Preparation after paranoia brings peace of mind. Heck, I nearly have a Ph.D. in that – just call me Dr. Prepper.

I guess anyone can be called Dr. nowadays.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: At The Bank Of The Rubicon

â€œWho the hell is JuliusÂ Caesar? You know I don’t follow the NBA.â€ â€“ Anchorman 2

Good thing itâ€™s not already at 5:56 . . .

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.Â I will maintain the clock at 2 minutes to midnight.Â There is the possibility of a reduction back to step 8. in the future.Â Post-election, authorities have begun to crack down on Leftist violence, plus the cold weather makes riots less fun, especially since the stores the fuel has all been burned.

Previously, I stated that the only thing keeping the clock from ticking to full midnight is the number of deaths.Â I put the total at (this is my best approximation, since no one tracks the death toll from rebellion-related violence) 500 out of the 1,000 required for the international civil war definition.

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

In this issue:Â Front Matter â€“ Banks of the Rubicon â€“ Violence And Censorship Update â€“ Maps â€“ Â Updated Civil War 2.0 Index â€“ Intolerable Acts and the End of the Republic 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, feel free to subscribe and youâ€™ll get every post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30 Eastern, free of charge.

Banks of the Rubicon

They were going to come after him, he knew, with the full legal apparatus of the state should he give up power.Â He knew this.Â They had told him as much.Â They hated his fame and popularity; they hated his bestselling books where he boasted of his accomplishments.

But it wasnâ€™t just him, it was his family.Â He knew that they would take legal action against his family, try to take every bit of his money.Â They meant to ruin him.

He didnâ€™t want to do it, but they had forced his hand.Â He would call for an insurrection to take power so that his enemies couldnâ€™t pervert the law to use against him, to use against his family.Â In the end, was there really a choice?Â He would take unprecedented action, because the politics in his country were ruined as it was.

Gaius Julius Caesar stood at the banks of the Rubicon, and hesitated.Â To take a Legion across the river under his command would mean civil war.Â It would break long-standing tradition.

He ordered the troops forward.Â On to Rome.Â Caesar reportedly said, â€œThe die is cast.â€

â€œWhat does the weather look like, Brutus?â€Â â€œHail, Caesar.â€

History doesnâ€™t exactly repeat, but it sometimes rhymes.Â Iâ€™ve been writing about an American Caesar for years.Â The parallels between the United States in December, 2020 and the Roman Republic on January 10, 49 B.C. are large.

Could Donald Trump seize power and become something different than a President?

Yes, he clearly could.

But that might mean the end of the Republic â€“ which has seen a string of peaceful transfers of power that has gone back through time to George Washington.

Wouldnâ€™t it?

Probably.Â But one could argue that installing a president in an election where there is overwhelming evidence that fraudulent activities took place similarly would destroy the Republic, but just over time.

Will Don cross the Rubicon?Â If so, expect it on or before the next Weather Report.

Violence And Censorship Update

As I write this, violence appears to be down.Â Winter, plus it appears that some of the Leftist leaders have gotten the order to keep the rabble in check now that they are â€œin control.â€

As part of the â€œshut it downâ€ theme from the Left continues, Iâ€™m getting reports that large numbers of Leftist accounts are now being shut down by TwitterÂ®.Â Is this the Leftistâ€™s usual playbook that, once they feel they have power, to get rid of the useful idiots?

Possibly.

How do communists spread their propaganda?Â Using commercials.Â Meme is as-found on the â€˜net.

Of course, this censorship doesnâ€™t come from government â€“ nope.Â This censorship now comes from private companies.Â Iâ€™ve been meaning to write a post about how evil that is, but hadnâ€™t gotten around to it.Â Thankfully, Alexander Macris wrote it well (LINK) so I didnâ€™t have to.

From the article (but RTWT):

This essay has only scratched the surface of a very deep topic. The mechanisms by which tyranny is outsourced are ubiquitous. And itâ€™s not just bypassing the Bill of Rights. Outsourcing of tyranny is used everywhere to bypass the checks and balances placed on our government. Whether itâ€™s accepting control over our currency from the Treasury, offering private mercenaries unconcerned about the laws of war, or monitoring and recording all of your private data, Tyranny Inc. is ready to do the dirty job that government isnâ€™t supposed . . . but really wants . . . to do.

Maps

Iâ€™ve seen dozens of maps that describe a hypothetical Civil War 2.0.Â This one I found interesting for several reasons â€“ it shows the approximate physical extent of Leftist demographics in the country, but also encapsulates a factor that most people donâ€™t consider when dealing with Civil War 2.0 â€“ outside forces.

Found this map on the web â€“ donâ€™t have a person to give credit to.Â Weâ€™ll just call them Anon.

Yes, we know that while Civil War (Beta Version) was fought with Great Britain across an ocean, Civil War 1.0 was fought between states, Civil War 2.0 will be street to street â€“ perhaps with dozens of Stalingrad-type conflicts across the nation.

But while I was watching some movie that involved narco-gangs, I ended up doing research.Â The fourth-largest (behind 1. American Citizens, 2. American Armed Forces, and 3. American Police Forces) armed group in America are likely the drug cartels.

Civil War 2.0 would be an opportunity for them.Â But it would also be an opportunity for China.Â I didnâ€™t put the map together, but you can certainly see that Anon put time into thinking which nations might help which side in the event of a Civil War in the near term.Â I had several that I could argue with, but I thought Iâ€™d present it for what it was â€“ another take on the way an uncertain world might shake out.

Updated Civil War II Index

Violence:

Up is more violent.Â The public â€œperceptionâ€ of violence dropped drastically during November.Â I expect that this number will drop once again.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.Â Instability dropped slightly.Â December â€“ will it bring a conclusion or more tension?

Economic:

The economic measures are strongly up this month, even as lockdowns continue.Â Is the vaccine a real cure, or is it a false hope?

Illegal Aliens:

Down is good, in theory.Â This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol.Â Numbers of illegals being caught is rising again to a record November.

The Intolerable Acts and the End of the Republic

At last count, over 50% of voters thought the election was rigged, which includes Leftists.Â Since they felt that Orange Man was literally the most evil and fascist person ever (rather than the mid-1990s moderate his policies showed him to be) cheating to Leftists is justified.Â The ends always justify the means to the Left.Â Theyâ€™re happy the election was rigged.

Then, thereâ€™s the middle.Â They mostly donâ€™t think about it.Â Whatever news readers on television say, well, that probably works for them.

I hope youâ€™re not reading this in 2021, since all these memes will be outdated Biden.

There are some people who are stunned at the idea that we might have a fraudulently elected president.Â I am in that category.Â Why?Â The idea that one of the last bastions against tyranny, the ballot box, is gone leaves Americans with few methods to redress their grievances.Â What are we supposed to do next time, vote harder?

But the idea that the presidency, the crown jewel of political power in the world can be sold is intolerable to many.Â Intolerable means simply that â€“ cannot be tolerated.Â If the office can be openly stolen once, it can be openly stolen in the future.

This is inherently destabilizing â€“ and if not corrected, will certainly be more destabilizing than Trumpâ€™s term in office.Â Does it end the Republic?Â Just like Trumpâ€™s crossing the Rubicon, it likely does â€“ though the big question is â€œwhen?â€

LINKS