Category: TEOTWAWKI

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.

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

“Who the hell is Julius Caesar? You know I don’t follow the NBA.” – Anchorman 2

Good thing it’s not already at 5:56 . . .

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

We remain in the gray zone between step 9. and step 10.  I will maintain the clock at 2 minutes to midnight.  There is the possibility of a reduction back to step 8. in the future.  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.  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.  Things could change at any minute.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Banks of the Rubicon – Violence And Censorship Update – Maps –  Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Intolerable Acts and the End of the Republic – 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.

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.  He knew this.  They had told him as much.  They hated his fame and popularity; they hated his bestselling books where he boasted of his accomplishments.

But it wasn’t just him, it was his family.  He knew that they would take legal action against his family, try to take every bit of his money.  They meant to ruin him.

He didn’t want to do it, but they had forced his hand.  He would call for an insurrection to take power so that his enemies couldn’t pervert the law to use against him, to use against his family.  In the end, was there really a choice?  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.  To take a Legion across the river under his command would mean civil war.  It would break long-standing tradition.

He ordered the troops forward.  On to Rome.  Caesar reportedly said, “The die is cast.”

“What does the weather look like, Brutus?”  “Hail, Caesar.”

History doesn’t exactly repeat, but it sometimes rhymes.  I’ve been writing about an American Caesar for years.  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 – which has seen a string of peaceful transfers of power that has gone back through time to George Washington.

Wouldn’t it?

Probably.  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?  If so, expect it on or before the next Weather Report.

Violence And Censorship Update

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

As part of the “shut it down” theme from the Left continues, I’m getting reports that large numbers of Leftist accounts are now being shut down by Twitter®.  Is this the Leftist’s usual playbook that, once they feel they have power, to get rid of the useful idiots?

Possibly.

How do communists spread their propaganda?  Using commercials.  Meme is as-found on the ‘net.

Of course, this censorship doesn’t come from government – nope.  This censorship now comes from private companies.  I’ve been meaning to write a post about how evil that is, but hadn’t gotten around to it.  Thankfully, Alexander Macris wrote it well (LINK) so I didn’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 it’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 it’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 isn’t supposed . . . but really wants . . . to do.

Maps

I’ve seen dozens of maps that describe a hypothetical Civil War 2.0.  This one I found interesting for several reasons – it shows the approximate physical extent of Leftist demographics in the country, but also encapsulates a factor that most people don’t consider when dealing with Civil War 2.0 – outside forces.

Found this map on the web – don’t have a person to give credit to.  We’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 – 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.  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.  But it would also be an opportunity for China.  I didn’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.  I had several that I could argue with, but I thought I’d present it for what it was – another take on the way an uncertain world might shake out.

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.

Violence:

Up is more violent.  The public “perception” of violence dropped drastically during November.  I expect that this number will drop once again.

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable.  Instability dropped slightly.  December – will it bring a conclusion or more tension?

Economic:

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

Illegal Aliens:

Down is good, in theory.  This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol.  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.  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.  The ends always justify the means to the Left.  They’re happy the election was rigged.

Then, there’s the middle.  They mostly don’t think about it.  Whatever news readers on television say, well, that probably works for them.

I hope you’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.  I am in that category.  Why?  The idea that one of the last bastions against tyranny, the ballot box, is gone leaves Americans with few methods to redress their grievances.  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.  Intolerable means simply that – cannot be tolerated.  If the office can be openly stolen once, it can be openly stolen in the future.

This is inherently destabilizing – and if not corrected, will certainly be more destabilizing than Trump’s term in office.  Does it end the Republic?  Just like Trump’s crossing the Rubicon, it likely does – though the big question is “when?”

LINKS

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

2020 ELECTION FRAUD EVIDENCE OVERVIEW

https://hereistheevidence.com/

https://www.theepochtimes.com/election-fraud-allegations-infographic_3605589.html?utm_source=newsnoe&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=breaking-2020-12-04-5

https://thomisticthinker.com/skeptical-of-voter-fraud-in-2020-heres-your-evidence/

https://www.thelibertybeacon.com/election-fraud-evidence-of-chicanery-during-2020-presidential-election/

https://thefederalist.com/2020/11/23/5-more-ways-joe-biden-magically-outperformed-election-norms/

https://theredelephants.com/there-is-undeniable-mathematical-evidence-the-election-is-being-stolen/

https://stonecoldtruth.com/2020-election-fraud-evidence-compiled/

https://streamable.com/4gcp0i

MATT BRAYNARD – VOTER INTEGRITY PROJECT

https://twitter.com/MattBraynard

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=atkp6fnwk9w&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XH9ihoLi1NA&feature=youtu.be

GEORGIA ELECTION MALARKEY

In a hurry?  Go to 9:00…

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbTSUkA8xgI&feature=youtu.be

Explanation?

https://leadstories.com/hoax-alert/2020/12/fact-check-video-from-ga-does-not-show-suitcases-filled-with-ballots-pulled-from-under-a-table-after-poll-workers-dismissed.html

Or Not?

https://www.libertariannews.org/2020/12/03/cctv-captures-ga-ballot-fraud-after-fake-pipe-leak/

INFIGHTING

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/11/11/pelosi-floats-above-democrats-war-435799

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/03/maga-georgia-civil-war-trump-senate-republicans-442776

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/12/georgia-senate-runoff-republicans-civil-war.html

ON THE EDGE

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/civil-war-united-states-unlikely-violence/2020/10/29/3a143936-0f0f-11eb-8074-0e943a91bf08_story.html

https://theconversation.com/five-reasons-trumps-challenge-of-the-2020-election-will-not-lead-to-civil-war-150320

https://internationalman.com/articles/winding-up-americans/

https://chicagocrusader.com/cold-civil-war-in-america/

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-u-s-is-at-a-tipping-point-that-could-lead-to-civil-warn-warns-the-worlds-biggest-hedge-fund-manager-11606922363

OVER THE EDGE

https://straightlinelogic.com/2020/11/08/its-perfectly-clear-by-robert-gore/

https://americanmind.org/features/a-house-dividing/2020-a-retrospective-from-2025/

The Archbishop, Trump, And The Coming Great Reset

“Jahr null. Year zero. An experiment. A reset. A new America.” – The Man in the High Castle

I hear that Noah kept his bees in the Ark hives.

I first became aware of “The Great Reset” last week.  There are quite a few YouTube® videos about it, but one of the more unusual mentions was in a letter to President Trump from a retired Catholic clergyman.  This particular clergyman is Archbishop Carlo Viganò.  I don’t know what the difference is between an Archbishop and a Bishop, but I suspect it has to do with a better quality of footwear.

Anyway, Archbishop Viganò wrote the following in the letter:

A global plan called the Great Reset is underway. Its architect is a global élite that wants to subdue all of humanity, imposing coercive measures with which to drastically limit individual freedoms and those of entire populations. In several nations this plan has already been approved and financed; in others it is still in an early stage. Behind the world leaders who are the accomplices and executors of this infernal project, there are unscrupulous characters who finance the World Economic Forum and Event 201, promoting their agenda.

The purpose of the Great Reset is the imposition of a health dictatorship aiming at the imposition of liberticidal measures, hidden behind tempting promises of ensuring a universal income and cancelling individual debt. The price of these concessions from the International Monetary Fund will be the renunciation of private property and adherence to a program of vaccination against Covid-19 and Covid-21 promoted by Bill Gates with the collaboration of the main pharmaceutical groups. Beyond the enormous economic interests that motivate the promoters of the Great Reset, the imposition of the vaccination will be accompanied by the requirement of a health passport and a digital ID, with the consequent contact tracing of the population of the entire world. Those who do not accept these measures will be confined in detention camps or placed under house arrest, and all their assets will be confiscated.

You can read the whole letter here (LINK).

Okay, the story the Archbishop was sharing seemed like an Infowars® segment, but with less tinfoil.  What was up?

I hear that Alex Jones’ wife left him because she said he was paranoid.  Alex was okay with that – he said he’d rather live alone than live with a government clone.

Well, it is stuff that’s directly out of an Infowars™ segment:  as I dug into the Archbishop’s clues, it was exactly correct.  The World Economic Forum©, which runs that annual Davos conference in Switzerland where 3,000 of the elite of the business world, academia, Hollywood, and the press get together to discuss how awesome they are for sacrificing themselves by flying their private  jets to visit a Swiss resort.

Alex Jones regularly says they’re up to no good when they meet at Davos.  Not everything is a conspiracy:  I’m certain that Alcoa® and Planters™ will never be allowed to merge, since everyone is afraid of the AlumaNutty.

I will say this about Switzerland – their flag is a big plus.

I know the Leftists complain about the 1%, but this is the 0.00004%.  The amazing thing?  The 0.00004% agree nearly entirely with Antifa’s® agenda.  Here’s what the Great Reset entails, as showcased in articles on the World Economic Forum©’s own website (LINK):

  • “We must build entirely new foundations for our economic and social systems.” The Davos folks describing freedom:  “Be free.  No!  No, not like that.”
  • “In fact, one silver lining of the pandemic is that it has shown how quickly we can make radical changes to our lifestyles.” I’d like to point out that some things didn’t change at all:  WNBA games have always been empty.
  • “. . . will require stronger and more effective governments . . . .” I’m against both of those things.  If we have strong government, I really hope it’s Three Stooges®-level incompetent.
  • “ . . . governments should implement long-overdue reforms that promote more equitable outcomes.” Remember – equality is we all have the same chance.  Equitable means we all get the same outcome.  Except, of course, for the 0.00004%.

Not mine.  Why doesn’t everyone just buy a ticket?

There are three main points that the World Economic Forum© is currently selling as the Great Reset:

  • International coordination on almost everything is the first component. If you thought we had too much globalization already?  Get ready for armies of international bureaucrats to write legislation and regulation that no one is accountable for.
  • “The second component of a Great Reset agenda would ensure that investments advance shared goals, such as equality and sustainability.” Who shares these goals?  Well, at least the 0.00004% do, and they know best, right?  Especially when they spend your money.
  • Finally, they want to “harness the innovations of the Fourth Industrial Revolution to support the public good, especially by addressing health and social challenges.” The Fourth Industrial Revolution is Davos-speak for the post-Internet acceleration in information technology and the way that it interacts with the physical world.

But the World Economic Forum dives deeper.  One of the more chilling aspects is that they no longer want individuals to own, well, anything.  You can read the article here (LINK), right off of the World Economic Forum’s© website.  I did a little digging, and found the author was a member of Danish parliament, but prior to that?  She had spent 8 years getting a Masters in theology, became a part-time theology teacher, and then was in parliament.  Sound like a blonde version of AOC?

I you can’t tell socialists jokes – not everyone will get it.  Photo by Johannes Jansson/norden.org, CC BY 2.5 dk

Everything that Archbishop Viganò suggests is an aim of the Great Reset is plainly on the World Economic Forum© website, with the exception for the Archbishop’s claim that that people would be put into camps if they didn’t comply by being vaccinated and chipped.  That, in my mind, makes sense.  It’s not normally something that a country advertises, “Hey come for the free stuff, stay for the concentration camps.”  Or, “Virginia, it’s for Lovers of Barbed Wire.”

I hear the socialist student got top Marx in school.

My review of the Great Reset is simple:

It’s the same hokum that the Left has been selling since before the French Revolution.  The Left promises they will make people into new men and they will share the prosperity with everyone.  But those in control will then ask the question – how many people do we need, really?  The answer is a simple one, and it’s always the same:  fewer than we have now.

In reality, the 0.00004% never even start to share.  The 0.00004% will make life easy and free.  All you have to give up?  All of your freedom.  Hmm, I can get the Devil to grant my wish in exchange for my soul, and I don’t even have to go down to the Crossroads?

Which is why an Archbishop might write a letter in the first place . . . .

Fear And Loathing In Modern America

“There is nothing so deranged as a man in the depths of an ether binge.” – Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas

I hear an angst-filled teen robot is called a sigh-borg.

Artificial Intelligence may be taking us down the path to Civil War.

How?

Artificial Intelligence is upon us.  To be clear, there’s little likelihood that A.I. in 2020 is conscious in any way that would be recognized by a human even though it has exceeded human ability in things like “playing” chess and “not forgetting to pick up Pugsley at school for three hours in winter.”  A.I. doesn’t need to be conscious to be amazingly useful.  Even in its limited form it is already important to the economy, and becoming more important every year.  Here are some ways that A.I. impacts us here and now:

  • Shipping – from individual route selection to package delivery schedule, no single package is managed by an individual until the UPS guy pulls it off of the truck and walks to your door. The rest of it is scanned and the delivery path is optimized by computer as the delivery guy drops it at the wrong house.  I wonder why my neighbors needed all that latex and baby oil?
  • Shopping – Amazon™ (or any other retailer I purchase from with consistently) knows my buying patterns as well as I do. Is it super accurate at picking things that I’d to buy?  Yes and no.  I went to the site to give an example of a ludicrous suggestion.  And I bought a book instead.  (Darn you Allie!  Whatever you do, don’t go to her website and read it (LINK) the hilarious chapter from her new book because then you’d blame me if you bought it.)  Then I went back to Amazon® to look for a bad purchase suggestion and bought yet another book.  So, it beat me tonight.

I hear even A.I. is having to deal with LGBT stuff – they keep talking about trans-sisters.

  • Banking – three years ago I got a text from my credit card issuer – they thought a purchase charged to the card was fraudulent. It was.  The A.I. was smart enough to realize that I probably wasn’t in Chicago at 4 A.M. on a Monday morning buying $300 sneakers.  And, no, Amazon® didn’t recommend them to me.
  • Advertising – the websites I go to feature personalized ads meant to match my interests, but yet no human ever made the decision of what ads to place there – it was all based on the profile they’ve built of me. This might explain why they assume I need binoculars, dehydrated “survival” food, duct tape, a machete, and a subscription to “Sour Patch Kid®” candy of the month club.
  • Job Search – résumés of job seekers are submitted based on A.I. recommendation to be read by the A.I. that the hiring company bought to read them.   People are being rejected for jobs by computer programs.  I suppose it’s better than the future when unemployment claims are kept low by use of the Terminator® HRBot 3000.

A Terminator makes a really bad sales clerk.  Whenever anyone asks where something is, they always say, “Aisle B, back.”

  • Journalism – simple stories such as football or baseball game descriptions have been written by A.I. for years. One could argue that any intelligence at the Washington Post® or New York Times™ has been artificial for decades.
  • Social Media – Twitter® and Facebook™ and YouTube© are carefully calibrated to maximize use engagement to maximize company profits. And they’re the companies that are causing all of the problems.

The easiest emotions to get engagement on are:  fear, outrage, and anger.  The reason is that it’s easier to make someone mad than it is to make their day better.  Sure, we love “I can has cheezburger” cat, but to get people to click you need to get them scared or mad.

What emotions do you think the A.I. amplifies?  Yup.

Fear, outrage, and anger.

It’s also sad when your navy can be defeated by asking it to identify which pictures contain a stop sign.

If A.I. has a profile of you that can select what t-shirt you’re most likely to buy, what else does it know?  Well, it knows what your ideological profile is.  It knows what stories resonate with that ideological profile, and will make you mad.  Then?  It shows them to you.

The motivation isn’t evil.  The motivation is entirely neutral.  The A.I. is there to make profits for Twitter©.  Since it makes money for employees and investors, people will stop you from turning it off (to paraphrase Scott Adams from a recent podcast).  Their 401k’s depend on the A.I. making money for them.  I think Glenda from Accounting would slit your throat if you killed the goose that made the golden 401k.  And the stock options!

But this A.I. behavior reflects back into human behavior even beyond Glenda from Accounting’s bloodlust for anyone who messes with her 401k.  A.I. is also making divisions show up in the country.

Let me give an example:

A.I. was great at feeding polarizing videos on YouTube™.  Up until a year or two ago, YouTube© was great at giving me a list of suggested videos that were farther and farther Right.  Then, the great purge started.  Content creators of any degree of popularity were banned, forever, if they were on the Right for no particular reason that YouTube© would share.  Alex Jones was among the first banned, which is strange because he’s like the WWE® of radio hosts.

Sean keeps his pistol in his library.  It’s for shelf defense.

The Right has stayed, from an ideological standpoint, in about the same place for the last 30 years.  The Left, especially since 2004, has moved wildly Left.

Was A.I. to blame for all of that Leftward movement?  No.  There are other factors at play – especially a demographic shift of population with a huge influx in immigrants that come from countries that are all further Left than the United States.  Why they want to escape their Leftist hell-holes and then vote for Leftism here is beyond me.

But A.I. certainly pushed people who were leaning Left, farther Left.

So, A.I. can change people by surrounding them with a nice, warm Leftist echo chamber.  In what might be worse, A.I. is likely no longer just changing people, it’s changing events because that echo chamber exists.

Let’s take St. Louis, when Mark and Patricia McCloskey defended their own property.  Most people who reviewed their actions who have a legal background have said everything they did was clearly lawful.

Except.

Not an original.  Is this all the Terminator that 2020 could give us?

An elected prosecutor, Kimberly Gardner, charged Mark and Patricia McCloskey with felonies.  What amount of A.I. inspired Twitter®-fueled hate-rage against the McCloskey family resulted in her having the courage to file the charges?  It feels like to me, that online rage influenced her in some fashion.  It probably doesn’t hurt that Ms. Gardner’s election was funded in part by George Soros’ foundations, but even one of Soros’ creatures knows they need to get votes in an election year.

To what extent is the decision of the District Attorneys around the country to release violent rioters aided by a compliant A.I. that feeds the idea that arsonists are, somehow, freedom fighters?  People on the Right generally shake our heads in confusion as blatant criminals are charged with only the most minimal of charges yet bail for Kyle Rittenhouse is set, in cash, at $2 million dollars?

If the goal of the Left was to destabilize the country, causing everyone to lose faith in the justice system is a great start.  But none of that is the goal of A.I.  It doesn’t care.  If an A.I. was programmed to make shopping carts, and turned the entire planet into a big ball of shopping carts orbiting the Sun, well, mission accomplished!  A.I.s simply do not care.

Meanwhile, use of A.I. tech helps Google™, Twitter®, and Facebook© reach record stock prices.  The big danger is that the forces of polarization and the actions that the various A.I.s unleash gets out of control.  It’s not like those A.I.s are designed to realize that they’re destabilizing an entire country in a way that might lead to the most destructive war the United States has ever been a part of.

But, hey, those guys at Twitter still have stock options, right?

Yuri Bezmenov’s 1980’s Prediction of 2020

“Mommy, why are you making civilization collapse?” – Futurama

BEZMEN

Video games never made me want to hurt people.  Working with people did that.

Yuri Bezmenov was a KGB agent who defected to the West in the 1970’s.  Bezmenov told everything he knew to the CIA, and was set up in Canada.  He did several interviews which are available on YouTube®, which I’ll link to in a bit.  Most recently, Call of Duty®:  Black Ops Cold War™ brought Bezmenov back into the public consciousness by cutting in clips of his interviews in.

You can watch it below.  It’s only a minute or so.

During interviews, Bezmenov made the quote that only 15% of the KGB’s activity was tied to James Bond® stuff.  Their primary goal wasn’t to find out which parts of an F-15E jet fighter were made out of titanium and which parts were made out of paper-mâché.

Matching the United States in weapons systems was important, but it wasn’t number one.  Besides, the KGB generally had a spy class of ideological communists built into numerous classified projects.  Bezmenov said that 85% of the KGB’s efforts were spent in destroying culture in the West.

Why fight an actual war, if you can get your enemy to become you?

Bezmenov even set out the mechanisms that they were in the process of using.  It wasn’t a complicated process, and it was just four steps.  They called this process, “active measures” and it was nothing less than subverting the ideology that made America great.

The first step was Demoralization.

Demoralization is based around removing the moral framework of the country you’re attacking.  The easiest way to do this is to co-opt the education system.  Bezmenov said that this took 15-20 years, but his number was low.  First, the educational institutions needed to be captured.  The people who train the teachers, the people who are the “guiding lights” in educational theory must buy into Marxism.

I don’t have a direct measure of the ratio of Leftist to Rightist in those that teach education, but I’d imagine it’s no less than journalism, which is at 20:1.  It may exceed history, which is 33.5:1.  Regardless, the educational academy is now firmly in the hands of the Left.  This leads to the production of teachers in a Leftist pedagogy (fancy word for teaching), with bad Leftist theory sometimes even enshrined into law.  No Child Left Behind?  Yes, that was bad.  Common Core appears to be worse.  Here’s one example:

CORE

Yes, this is really what they tried to teach little kids.  From the Heartland Institute.

I have to wonder if the idea is that such simple things like addition and subtraction can be made so complicated that parents won’t be able to teach them to their children.  In essence, it’s a way to further sever the ties between parent and child, while strengthening the ties between child and state educator.

Certainly, not all educators are Leftists.  Here in Modern Mayberry, there are a few, but I think we likely have a more healthy balance.  But there are those who look at the remote classes from COVID-19® as a potential threat to their attempts to indoctrinate children:

DEMORAL

Is Demoralization 100% complete?  Not as long as we have those pesky parents standing up for the customs, culture, ideas, and values of the West.  Is it complete enough to take over society?

Maybe.

The goal of Demoralization is a lot of what we see now on the streets of Portland or Seattle or any other major Leftist city.  Bezmenov described the end product of Demoralization as:

“They are programmed to think and react to certain stimuli in a certain pattern. You cannot change their mind even if you expose them to authentic information. Even if you prove that white is white and black is black, you still cannot change the basic perception and the logic of behavior.”

In other words?  Leftist robots.

Destabilization is the next step.  This is the destruction of the systems that define the country.  The economy.  Social relations.  Defensive systems.

In the last few months, the economy has been put into the most precarious state within living memory.  The United States is more divided politically, ideologically, linguistically and ethnically than at any time in history.  Naval vessels ram freighters.  Senior officers are fired due to ideology.  Women are brought into combat operations despite proof that their inclusion lowers fitness for mission.

Bezmenov said that Destabilization took two to five years.

Destabilization leads to Crisis.  Crisis in this system is necessary to get people to accept a new government, new systems, and to give up the old system.  There’s been a great deal of experience in creating Crisis by the Left.  Think the Color Revolutions that have taken place all over the world, from Georgia to Ukraine to Lebanon, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.

What does Crisis look like in the United States?  How about open violence encouraged by receptive District Attorneys that refuse to prosecute?  Does it look like the dollar losing 7% of its value in three months?

KEN

Crisis leads to promises by the Left.  High minimum wages.  Free healthcare.  Guaranteed basic income from the government.  “Equality” in housing, in education, in policing.

Are the promises real?  Of course not.  The promises are whatever it takes to get enough support for the Left so they can take control.

If we are not in the Crisis, you can certainly see it from here.  Ideally, for the Left, Crisis leads to control, or Normalization.

Normalization is the end game.  It’s consolidating the country under the Leftists.  It’s the creation of new institutions.  In the Soviet Union and in China, it consisted of killing farmers and replacing them with people from the cities and expecting these collective farms will feed the nation.

Of course, all of the Leftists burning Kenosha and Portland think that they’ll be the ones in charge.  In the new Socialist Utopian States they’ll be the ones who will write poetry and conduct gender reeducation camps, right?

BULLET

This poetry comes from Seattle, I believe.  Plans are now in full view.

No.  The reality is that they’ll be most likely to be put up against the wall and shot or sent to the convenient leisure gulags.  Why?  They will be disillusioned when the actual power structure emerges.  The reality of every communist paradise in history is that the intellectuals are shot first, especially the intellectuals that are communist.  Why?

Dissent is a thing of the past.

Here are Yuri Bezmenov’s ideas, in his own words:

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Life at Two Minutes To Midnight

“I can’t sugarcoat this. We’re at Threat Level:  Midnight!” – The Office

CLOCK

If you eat a clock, know that it’s time consuming, and don’t go back for seconds.

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

We are at step 9.  Step 9. is, of course, two minutes to midnight on the clock.  Violence continues to be commonly justified by local and state authorities.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Talking About Divorce – Violence and Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Living Two Minutes To Midnight – Links

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.

Talking About Divorce

I read an article once that said that couples that talk about getting a divorce are much more likely to get a divorce.  Heck, when my ex-wife said she wanted a divorce on Valentine’s Day, I was surprised – I wasn’t planning on spending that much.  But talking increasing the divorce risk – that made sense to me:  every time you talk about an event, you tend to bring the event closer to becoming real.

How?

It’s not magic or a witch’s incantation, or at least I didn’t see my ex-wife doing incantations, though there was a smell of sulfur around midnight.  It is simply that when people talk about divorce, they start imagining what it would be like.  When divorce fantasy is better than marriage reality, the lawyers get called in.

DIVORCE

But they stayed together because of the kid.  Nobody wanted custody of him.

In a recent “war game” of different election scenarios, John “Spirit Cooking” Podesta played the role of Joe “stay in the basement until November” Biden.  Crucially in the war game scenario where Biden lost, “Biden’s team sought to encourage large Western states (California, Washington, Oregon) to secede unless pro-Democracy reforms were made.”

Both sides are talking about divorce.

Violence and Censorship Update

Violence associated with the protests is now so common that stories that would have made national news four months ago are, at most, up for a single news cycle.  “Peaceful” protester draws an AK on someone driving by and gets ventilated?  Yawn.  Two women (I guess) are frolicking on an interstate at night and get (inadvertently) mowed down by someone driving a car?

MAYOR

The Mayor insists that Chicago isn’t violent, noting that they’d only lost three school bus tailgunners this month.

It’s bad.  In Chicago, 2,249 people have been shot this year as of July 29 (LINK), which is nearly 700 more than in all of 2019.  At this rate, more people will be shot in just Chicago this year than during the entire Falkland Island War between Great Britain and Argentina.  This is patent proof that black lives don’t matter to Black Lives Matter®, since deaths of unarmed black people at the hands of cops in all of 2019 were, according to USA Today™ (LINK) only . . . 25.

Unjustified use of police force is horrible.  But . . . cops killing unarmed black people is nearly the smallest problem faced by black people in the United States.  BLM©?  It’s a lie.

QANON

Alcoa® and Planters Peanuts™ secretly rule the world.  They call themselves the Aluminutty.

Censorship was up again this month.  In focus was Qanon.  I wrote about Q a long while back (QAnon, The Chans, and Other Cryptic Stuff), and haven’t kept too much up with that subject.  But this month in another set of coordinated censorship Twitter® banned over 7,000 accounts that Tweeted™ about Qanon.  YouTube® has deleted “tens of thousands” of videos and “hundreds” of channels that were about Q.  Facebook© won’t be left out – they nuked a Qanon group with 200,000 members.

What about Qanon scares the mainstream?

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.

July was generally better than June, which is like saying that World War I was “better” than World War II.  Let’s go to the graphs.  As is custom at Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise, the graphs are presented with girls in bikinis, because if civilization is collapsing what better time is there for bikini graphs?

Violence:

VIOLF

Up is more violent.  June pegged the scale of violence.  This measure because the way it’s constructed, doesn’t go higher than 300.  It’s lower this month.  Does that mean it’s less violent this month?  Certainly riots are down, but the measure is a measure of how people feel about the violence.  Since it’s so common now, it’s not spiking.  That is, in my opinion, very bad – we’re getting used to this nonsense.

Political Instability:

POLIF

Up is more unstable.  Instability is down only slightly, which might seem weird, but the political system is still stable overall.  I expect this to spike in the next two months, and may introduce a new measure based on the election as we get closer to November.

Economic:

ECONF

Down indicates worse economic conditions, but this month it’s up.  The part of me that hopes, hopes we’re on a real upswing.  The part of me that thinks says we’re nowhere near the bottom.

Illegal Aliens:

BORDF

Down is good, in theory.  This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol.  Down, probably related to WuFlu, unemployment, and riots.  This is near a five year low for this time of year.

Living Two Minutes To Midnight

Two minutes to midnight is a tough place for the United States to be sitting, and we’re here.  The confluence of great events, economic, political, and social is upon us.  It’s in these times of upheaval that systems collapse in complexity from a high level to a lower one.  Highly complex society provides us nice things like video games and delivery of eyeglasses made in China in a week.

Societies of low complexity struggle to feed themselves and live in mud huts.  Low complexity societies are always on the edge – a famine could mean real death due to starvation, not that the shake machine is broken at McDonalds® again so you have to go to Sonic™ if you want a shake.

In order to grab or consolidate political power, there are politicians that would gladly drop our standard of living to that of starving people in mud huts.  Those that would support them imagine a world where they’ll be allowed to be artists and poets and philosophers and the mud huts will be left for those who oppose the new way of doing things.

Living in this time, I have one suggestion:  be as prepared as you can be for nearly anything to happen.  Understand that things you’ve taken for granted your entire life can change in a day.  I never thought I’d live in a society where rioters could stop cars of peaceful citizens with impunity and the tacit approval of local and state governments, but here we are.

Things are moving fast.  Be ready.

LINKS

LINK

These are from Ricky this month:

CW chatter continues….

https://www.startribune.com/are-we-ready-for-a-civil-war-lite/571920212/?refresh=true

https://www.santacruzsentinel.com/2020/07/29/stephen-kessler-is-trump-trying-to-start-a-civil-war/

…with Republicans promoting a vote for Biden to stop a CW…

https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/opinion/columns/6568575-Candidates-View-Minnesota-trying-to-prevent-a-civil-war

https://time.com/5870475/never-trumpers-2020-election/

…and the Washington-Post-owned Foreign Policy magazine invoking Godwin’s Law to prevent a descent into Nazi-ism…

https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/07/23/portland-fascism-trump-election/

…while the MSM maintains the threat is all Boogaloo Bois…

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2020/07/american-boogaloo-meme-or-terrorist-movement/613843/

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-53269361

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sethcohen/2020/06/16/civil-war-20-the-boogaloo-movement-is-a-wake-up-call-for-america/#206ec67b71ab

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/07/28/conservative-armed-militias-protests-coronavirus/?arc404=true

…and not peaceful Antifa….

https://www.csis.org/analysis/who-are-antifa-and-are-they-threat

https://www.businessinsider.com/right-wing-extremists-kill-329-since-1994-antifa-killed-none-2020-7

https://www.csis.org/analysis/tactics-and-targets-domestic-terrorists

https://www.mercurynews.com/2020/07/30/anarchists-and-antifa-not-according-to-the-data/

…all an example of the ongoing propaganda war…

https://fabiusmaximus.com/2020/07/21/propaganda-rules-america/

https://www.reviewjournal.com/opinion/opinion-columns/victor-joecks/victor-joecks-the-medias-insane-whitewashing-of-portlands-violence-2083324/

https://fee.org/articles/vandalism-is-violence-destructive-riots-are-not-just-property-damage/

…part of a different kind of civil war, with skirmishes over property lines, not state lines; families, not soldiers….

https://ammo.com/articles/war-on-suburbs-how-hud-housing-policies-became-weapon-for-social-change

https://mises.org/wire/why-marxist-organizations-blm-seek-dismantle-western-nuclear-family

…while real battles heat up….

https://apnews.com/1dd1bb39093a3691f4e78093787ab877

https://thegreatrecession.info/blog/how-seattle-chaz-got-chopped/

https://farleftwatch.com/antifa-militia-group-encourages-facebook-followers-to-shoot-federal-agents-in-the-face/

…as costs mount….

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/george-floyd-protests-expensive-civil-disturbance-us-history

https://www.artemis.bm/news/riots-designated-a-catastrophe-in-multiple-states-a-first-for-pcs/

https://www.artemis.bm/news/riot-losses-said-up-to-1bn-in-u-s-retentions-may-protect-reinsurance/

https://www.claimsjournal.com/news/national/2020/07/06/298012.htm#:~:text=Rioting%20set%20off%20during%20protests,a%20single%20retailer%2C%20he%20said.

https://www.genre.com/knowledge/blog/riots-and-civil-commotion-disquieting-times-ahead-en.html

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: A Year Down The Road

Count de Monet: “It is said that the people are revolting.”
King Louis XVI: “You said it! They stink on ice.”
–History of the World, Part I

CLOCK

When I copy in these big clocks into my posts, it’s a huge paste of time.

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

We are at step 9. Step 9. is, of course, two minutes to midnight. I didn’t move to step 9. last month because last month, violence was just happening. This month? Violence is being commonly justified by local and state authorities. When protesters a mob tore down a gate to access private property in St. Louis, which set the stage. When the Modern Sporting Lawyer™ and his wife pulled out firearms to protect themselves, the sane world cheered.

MSL

Yes, I recycled this one. Couldn’t resist.

That’s why a District Attorney vowed to find something, anything to charge this couple with. The one thing the mob cannot stand is decent, armed people standing up to the mob. The politicians have made the mob and know that it must be fed.

The fact that CHAZ/CHOP was allowed to exist, with the rampant lawlessness of the mob in charge for weeks was another sign. We are very, very close to open warfare.

I stole the clock metaphor from the (Leftist) Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists©. It’s a good metaphor, because it creates an immediacy. And I can and will go backwards if events justify it, though at this point it seems like no one wants to go backwards.

In this issue: Front Matter – A Year Down The Road – Violence and Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Links

Welcome to Issue 12 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.

A Year Down The Road

I started the Weather Reports a little over a year ago because I could see the changes coming faster and faster. I’ve been concerned about the economy since I read The Fourth Turning (The Economy, The Fourth Turning, Kondratieff, and You.) back around the year 2000. When you look at all of the trends – social, economic, political – I could see trouble on the horizon. If you want some in-depth thought on how The Fourth Turning is progressing, Jim over at The Burning Platform (LINK) is your man.

The 2007 housing price collapse wasn’t a surprise to me. When I bought my house, I was (fortunately) in the position to negotiate with my employer that they’d cover any loss on sale if I moved for them. As house prices were going up, up, up . . . they agreed. And why not? It wouldn’t cost them a dime.

It did. My house dropped 20% in price between when I bought it and when it finally sold two years after I moved out. I don’t give myself genius points for this, but when they offered me a loan that was nearly ten times my salary? With no income verification?

Yikes.

The tensions we face aren’t going away anytime soon, in fact they’re not anywhere near their peak. Those same social, economic, and political factors have gotten worse, not better in the last 20 years.

AUGUST

Is anything out of the question?

Will one more year down the road have as much change as we have seen in the last year?

Why wouldn’t it?

Are you ready for that?

Violence and Censorship Update

In the previous posts, it has been either violence or censorship that’s shown up in a month. This month? We get both. I’ll start with censorship.

What’s out? Statues. Toppling statues is censorship – censorship of the past. George Orwell described it well in his book, 1984:

“Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute.”

No bit of American history is safe, from George Washington to Thomas Jefferson to Teddy Roosevelt to “American Pioneers”, Spanish explorers, and black abolitionist Frederick Douglass. Yup. All have to go. And not by vote, not by decision, but by the raw power of the mob.

An episode of the British television classic Fawlty Towers has been removed because of offensive language, and the wind has done gone with Gone With The Wind, which had to be shuttered “temporarily” so that (pulls answer from hat) people won’t be offended.

So, history has been judged to be insufficiently woke.

WOKE

Right now the media is so woke, it’s like they took NoDoze® with coffee and meth to get ready for their Gender Studies final.

YouTube® just concluded its next round of purges. Dozens of large channels with millions of views are now gone. The biggest personality banned was Stefan Molyneaux, philosopher and badthinker. His crime? Not sure. People think it’s because he has had guests (scientists) on in the past that indicate that there might be group differences in cognitive ability. Oops – can’t discuss that idea in 2020.

Among other channels that YouTube® suggested for me and that I listened to from time to time was The Iconoclast, a British guy on the Right who advocated for lower immigration into Great Britain. Now? Gone. Plus? A major newspaper published a story on The Iconoclast’s identity. In 2020, having the wrong views means going without a job.

But that’s not violence, right?

On Reddit®, I heard that over 2000 subreddits were banned. I had been to several of the banned subreddits in the past, and was a bit surprised. One of them, r/consoomers was specifically set up for self-improvement and rejection of globalist commercialism. A little politically incorrect?

Yup.

Now gone. Another dead subreddit is r/The_Donald. It’s crime? Can’t be sure. I think it was too popular, with over a million subscribers. And a group of a million people who like Donald Trump? Triggered!

Reddit™ made rule changes as well. They initially rolled out this new rule for commenting:

“While the rule on hate protects such groups, it does not protect all groups or all forms of identity. For example, the rule does not protect groups of people who are in the majority….”

After someone got on Wikipedia and figured out that, for instance, men are in the minority since there are more women in the world, the rule on protecting people from hate wouldn’t apply to people who were misogynist. Oops. They changed that rule.

But it sure showed what they were intending.

This is the biggest month of censorship against the Right in, well, ever. I expect it to get worse. The idea that Donald Trump could be re-elected is mind poison for the Left. Leftist fetishize politics as a religion – Trump is the ultimate demon. They will do everything and anything so that he isn’t re-elected.

KRAMER

Share this meme and help a Leftist lose sleep so they can stay woke.

I’d spend more time updating you on the violence of the past month, but it’s probably easier to update you on the places that weren’t violent. Modern Mayberry was one. Here, we watch the news and see the world falling apart, and it’s like there’s another country out there.

There is. It’s just waiting to be born.

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.

June has been the worst month so far – economic, violence, and political instability are all in bad shape. It’s so bad that even the illegals don’t want to sneak across the border.

Violence:

VIOLF

Up is more violent. Violence had been down because everyone was stuck in the basement. I predicted that May would be mellow, and then we’d see the uptick in June. I was almost right, and now June has pegged the scale. This measure because the way it’s constructed, doesn’t go higher than 300. Yes, the Y-axis label shows 350, but that’s because I didn’t notice until I’d put the graph together and it’s 3AM.

Political Instability:

POLI

Up is more unstable. Instability is up only slightly, which might seem weird, but the system is still stable overall. I may look into another graph next month to measure political change, because it sure feels like we crossed over into a regime where big political changes are more likely – and this graph was meant more about the overthrow of a sitting president, hence the peak in December. I expect more instability heading into November, and may make some changes to the inputs next month.

Economic:

ECONF

Down indicates worse economic conditions, and it’s down yet again. I’m hoping this is the worst that we’ll see, but I expect a market crash this month (July) or next.

Illegal Aliens:

BORD

Down is good, in theory. This is a statistic showing border apprehensions by the Border Patrol. Down, probably related to WuFlu, unemployment, and riots. This is at a five year low for this time of year.

LINKS

LINKS

These are from Ricky this month:

Although the US Government has FINALLY stopped paying for the First Civil War…

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/last-person-receive-civil-war-pension-dies-180975049/

…worries about the Second Civil War continue to build….

https://www.theday.com/article/20200616/OP04/200619472

https://prospect.org/politics/americas-civil-war/

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/how-avoid-second-american-civil-war-163096

https://floridapolitics.com/archives/345640-darren-aquino-says-its-time-to-pick-a-side-in-coming-civil-war

https://www.thetrace.org/2020/07/gun-background-checks-june-record/

https://www.thetrace.org/2020/06/boogaloo-gun-ammunition-marketing-facebook-instagram/

…which many think can be stopped just by not talking about it…

https://www.omaha.com/opinion/clarence-page-the-current-civil-war-is-fought-on-cultural-territory/article_1661faef-ef9d-5622-88d6-d3308d9fbb88.html

https://www.ocregister.com/2020/06/05/lets-knock-off-the-blithe-talk-of-a-coming-civil-war/

https://goducks.com/news/2020/6/26/general-uo-osu-series-no-longer-to-reference-civil-war.aspx

MSM says Antifa is not a national problem….

https://www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/google-top-stories-featured-false-news-rumored-antifa-civil-war

https://prospect.org/civil-rights/antifa-all-around-trump-media-fox-news-fear-protests/

https://time.com/5008829/antifa-november-4-rumors/

…it’s the Boogaloo Bois that are the threat…

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/29/style/boogaloo-hawaiian-shirt.html

https://theintercept.com/2020/06/10/boogaloo-boys-george-floyd-protests/

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/boogaloo-movement-recent-violent-attacks/story?id=71295536

https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/03/us/boogaloo-extremist-protests-invs/index.html

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/2020/06/04/armed-white-men-milwaukee-protests-could-far-right-boogaloo/3147128001/

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/06/19/what-is-boogaloo-movement/3204899001/

https://www.forbes.com/sites/sethcohen/2020/06/16/civil-war-20-the-boogaloo-movement-is-a-wake-up-call-for-america/#3d9f1cb071ab

https://www.voanews.com/usa/race-america/boogaloo-boys-aim-provoke-2nd-us-civil-war

…but Facebook will save us….

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53244339

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/facebook-instagram-profit-boogaloo-ads

https://www.inventiva.co.in/stories/priyadharshini/facebooks-boogaloo-ban-is-it-too-late/

…meanwhile, Small Town America simmers….

https://www.sltrib.com/news/2020/07/01/three-groups-plan-gather/

https://www.gazettenet.com/Sanger-letter-34596978

…and maybe there are investing strategies for the Civil War?

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2020-07-03/trading-and-investing-americas-second-civil-war

The Day America Died?

“1996 is the past too, listen to me!” – 12 Monkeys

CHUCK

Chuck Norris was dropped twice as a child:  once on Hiroshima, once on Nagasaki.

Pugsley and I were off driving to an event today.  As we motored down the road, he said, “Hey, what were the 1990’s like?  I was on YouTube® and saw some commercials from then.”

I paused.  Since he was born after the 1990s, it was absolutely foreign to him, except as he had seen in media and popular culture.  But how to describe it?  I mean, the Dole/Kemp ’96 website is still up (LINK), which is convenient, since Bob is now 96.  But the 1990s was so much more than that.

“Well, we had won the Cold War.  The 1970’s were about the economic wreckage from the oil shocks and inflation from removing gold backing to the dollar.  The 1980’s were the last stage in the Cold War – the idea of nuclear war being 45 minutes away from ending civilization was common.”

I skipped mentioning that we’d come within a single person’s decision to launch nuclear weapons and start a world war more than once.  I didn’t want to put him in the mindset of a total war.  Heck, let him have his own ex-wife.

“The 1990s saw the end of the Cold War when the Soviet economy collapsed.  We had, to a certain extent, defined ourselves by our enemy.  In some sense, American mean not a Soviet communist.  But then, we won.  It was all over.”

GORBY

Joe Biden knows in his heart that he is the only one who can defeat Ronald Reagan this November.

I paused, thinking about the old Mark Twain line that most people can’t tell a good thing from a bad thing, but kept going.

“We then looked around and wondered who we were, since there weren’t any Soviet communists to not-be.  I think the answer we came up with was that we were shoppers.  The purpose of America was to be the site of endless suburbs surrounding cool shopping malls.  Heck, it’s probably not a coincidence that the Mall of America® opened in 1992.”

Looking back, I am in awe of how innocent we were, how free of strife we were – the First Gulf War took months to prepare for, but only had about 96 hours of actual ground combat with 156 Americans killed in battle.  To put that in perspective, 65 troops died in the Gulf from accidents during that same time.  The first Gulf War was about as lopsided as a velociraptor in a room full of kittens.

“It was unique, because the United States was sitting alone as a superpower both economically and militarily.  The country was prosperous.  We were even closer to a balanced budget than we ever have been since Andrew Jackson was president.  I think Americans began to miss the struggle.  Rock music went from a joyous celebration of freedom and beer and girls in bikinis and Cherry Pie to complaints about teenage angst.”

I didn’t jump into discussions of the Fourth Turning (The Economy, The Fourth Turning, Kondratieff, and You.).

FUN

Kurt Cobain has now been drug-free for 26 years!

“Somewhere in there, we had a chance to look deep inside ourselves to find our soul as a nation.  Religion seemed hard, so we decided the answer was Twizzlers®.”

What I didn’t say was that was the beginning of tearing the nation apart.  By the time George W. Bush beat Al Gore in an election that was so close it went to court, the Left felt that they had the presidency stolen from them.  That, along with the Clinton Impeachment, rubbed the Left raw so by 2000 they were madder than Dick Cheney on a dove hunt.

I suppose that the 1990s were also the last stage of the innocence in America, and the slide into terminal decline began here.  Sure, we’d already gone from “I Wanna Hold Your Hand” in the 1960s to “I Wanna **** You Like An Animal” in the 1990s, but in 1996 an actual American President, a Democrat, thought that marriage was something for a man and a woman to do.

RECORDED

The Mrs. thinks I’m crazy, forgetting she’s the one that married me.

Wild stock swings, a housing crisis, and wars that kept tens of thousands of American troops in Afghanistan and Iraq for more than a decade followed, and the great rift I have written about in numerous posts (Civil War, Neat Graphs, and Carrie Fisher’s Leg) widened.

But all of that is prelude to the Day America Died:  May 28, 2020.  Sure, the time of death is up for debate.  And everything looks the same, taxes will be due next month, and the ammunition and bagel shop still accepts United States Federal Reserve currency.

Inertia is like that.  The old forms persist, even after the reason that they were invented disappeared.  Even after the Greeks took over Egypt, they still used the term Pharaoh.  The Senate of Rome ceased to be the Senate, but managed to stay in existence until at least 600 A.D., long after the fall of Rome.  I still own a comb.

WALT

Like I said, I still own the comb.  I just can’t part with it.

On May 28, however, the Third Precinct building in Minneapolis was burned down.  The revolution may not be televised, but it certainly is being live streamed.  From there, protests, riots, and looting spread to dozens of cities in the United States, and even across the world.  Certainly, there were peaceful protests as well, but the vision we’ll remember was burning, looting, and destruction of public and private property.

It was and is obvious that the goal of the Left is simple:  they want to burn it all down, every system, so that they can fundamentally transform the country as a whole.  Transform into what?  The hints aren’t even subtle:  the “Green New Deal” combined with a wholesale rewrite of the history and legends that define America and “free” healthcare and money.  The old America, the one that named an airport after John Wayne?  That’s not “who we are.”  Free speech that goes against the narrative of the Left?  Also not “who we are.”

The Right seems to be done, too.  The systems that should remove illegal aliens, don’t.  They Constitution seems to be guided by “emanations and penumbras” that allow the meanings of words to take the exact opposite meaning when used in reality.  For some reason, “sex” as written in 1965 was interpreted to include transgenderism which means the exact opposite of natural sex.  One thing I’m certain of:  in 1965 when they wrote the law, “sex” meant “transgender” to exactly zero lawmakers.

It seems as though the Supreme Court forgot that there is, sitting right near their own building, a whole other building full of people who could easily clear that up:  Congress.  But that seems unlikely, so the Supreme Court can just make up stuff if they want to.  Because of nonsense like that, the Right is also done.

So, I was hopeful the Center hadn’t given up.  I have a good friend who is more libertarian (small “L”) and he and I were chatting the other day.  “They should vote all of them (Congress, President, all of them) out.”  I wasn’t expecting this from him.  But the Center is done, too.   The Left is mad at Trump.  The Right is mad at AOC, and the Center just wants everyone to shut up so they can grill in peace.

GRILL

One time when we were backpacking the fire got away from us in camp.  It was in-tents. 

But belief is really important.  We obey laws, at least in part, because we believe that we’ll be punished if we don’t.  We trade dollars back and forth with each other for stuff because we believe that the dollars are money.  We have a nation because we believe in it.

The math is simple.  As soon as we stop believing that we have a nation, as soon as that faith dies away, we no longer have a nation.  And by my guess, I’d say we lost that faith on May 28.  Are police required for a country?  No.  We lived until 1834 before the first police force that looked like a modern unit was formed.  Before then, it was a hodge-podge of volunteer day and night “watches” that looked for bad guys or danger combined with county sheriffs.  Thing Mayberry, but with a lot more booze.

But law enforcement is required.  If it doesn’t exist, citizens will protect themselves.  The era of the rooftop Korean and the Modern Sporting Lawyer arrives once again.  People will very quickly understand that in the absence of police that violence levels, especially in Leftist areas with restrictive gun laws, will skyrocket.

MSL

The other day I got bitten by a radioactive lawyer – I now have Power of Attorney.

That lack of belief in government is happening now.  Maybe worrying about nuclear war wasn’t so bad after all?