The Crazy Years – Wilder, Wealthy, and Wise

Strippers, Credit Cards, Basement A.I., And Economic Collapse

“I’ve calculated the precise distance, taking into account the acceleration and wind resistance retroactive from the moment the lightning strikes, which will be in exactly 7 minutes and 22 seconds.” – Back to the Future

It’s easy to confuse Stephen Hawking and Tony Hawk. Both loved ramps.

Everything is fine before the car hits the wall.

And everything looks fine. Let’s think about the economy compared to a car.

The car is at a stop sign. It’s moved zero feet. It’s at rest, and it isn’t accelerating. I know, I know, still no reason for a woman to be behind the wheel.

Now it starts to move. It’s moved 200 feet (10 kilometers). It’s now moving at around 15 feet per second (10 millicuries/fortnight). Since it was initially at rest, we can assume it has accelerated. Accelerated is just a fancy term for “put the pedal down”. I accelerate smoothly at the same rate since I’m neglecting air resistance and have determined that the world is perfectly spherical, frictionless, isothermal and isosomethingelse.

I hear the Orc© siege engines used Mordor oil.

Eventually, some time down the road the car reaches my desired speed, which is five miles over the limit, just like everyone else. I pull my foot back so that it’s moving along at a constant velocity. I’m chewing up the miles, and soon enough will be there at the appointment to have my backhair waxed off again.

Reasonable, right?

NO! This is a catastrophe! It’s hitting a brick will. I mean, it’s a catastrophe if my car is made by Nvidia©.

Nvidia® has a Price to Earnings ratio (PE) of 31. That means that people are betting that not only will Nvidia™ keep accelerating, it will do so for a while since it would take 31 years of earnings to equal the current stock price.

Nvidia© is the largest company in the world at nearly $5 trillion in valuation . . . has to get about 40%-50% bigger to match the same PE as, say, Microsoft®. That’s the bet on companies like that.

But A.I. is different. The bet isn’t that the company will keep growing, the bet is that the growth will keep accelerating. Forever. That’s what keeps Jensen Huang in champagne, leather jackets and hot chicks. Okay, he’s apparently happily married, but I’m not letting the truth get in the way of a good line.

What gets burning hot right before they freeze? Laptops.

But even the projected growth of A.I. is . . . not going to keep up.

In 2023, the big 4 spent $145 billion.
In 2024, the big 4 spent $230 billion.
In 2025, the big 4 spent $410 billion.
In 2026, the big 4 are projected to spend $725 billion.
in 2027? $920 billion.
In 2028? $1.08 trillion.
In 2029? $1.22 trillion.

Now, I don’t believe these numbers. At all.

But in them is an interesting nugget. If you look not at the spend, but the rate of increase in the spend, it goes down starting in 2027. You can do the math. The foot is coming off of the accelerator.

In reality, these projections are already bogus.

The implied new capacity of electric power required for this nonsense proves it:
in 2025, 37GW
in 2026, 66GW
in 2027, 84GW
in 2028, 98GW
in 2029, 111GW.

Hahahahahhahahahaha!

Not happening. Marty will never get back to 1985!

How does A.I. make sweaters? On the Interknit.

New electrical generation and transmission often takes 4-10 years to come online. If Nvidia® is making their chips, the place they’ll have to go is a warehouse center on a pallet, not a data center, since current projections show a 30GW-60GW gap already in 2027.

111 GW in 3 years? This is not happening.

And it’s even worse. Elon’s big data center running old Nvidia® chips, and not even the new extra-spicey chips? He’s renting that one out. Yeah, SpaceX® is an A.I. company, but apparently, they don’t need the whole place. But we need to spend nearly a trillion this year to make places like the one Elon is renting out.

Hmm.

If that was it, we could all just sit back with popcorn and watch the whole thing catch fire. But that’s not it. By shoving over a trillion dollars in spend and probably $2 trillion more in orders for concrete and steel and Transformers© and Autobots® the economy has been horribly distorted.

Don’t worry, they say. This is all funded from private credit and equity. So what if Nvidia© drops back into the tres comma club after being in the quatro comma club. What’s a few trillion between friends? A.I. is soaking up all the money in the country.

But wait! Private credit is being bundled up into batches and sold into pension plans. It’s investment grade, just like those CDO mortgages. Remember those and how well all that went back in 2008? This is innovation. Besides, 401ks already all in. A.I. and tech stocks are already more than half of the S&P 500, probably 20% more than back before Dotcom.

One of my commenters said my posts were medium-rare. Well, what he actually said was “They’re not well done.”

A.I.? Your economy is soaking in it! The aptly named Larry Fink noted that the funding for A.I. is coming from “your savings accounts and pension accounts.” He’s betting $10 trillion in the next decade will be spent on this.

But, as amazing as that sounds, that’s not everything. A.I. is fluffing up the profits of nearly every other business in the country. My laptop is more expensive because of this. Electricity is more expensive because of this. Natural gas is more expensive because of this. Gasoline? Yup. Those jobsite gennies don’t run on SpaceX® stock.

A.I. has infected everything. Hey, don’t have a frown. OpenAI® lost only $38.5 billion in 2025. That’s the sort of performance I want to bet the entire economy on. Oh, and OpenAI© just barely missed their ad revenue target by 90%.

It’s got a comfy feeling. Especially when a six-year-old Chinese kid shows up with a free and open-weight A.I. model that’s nearly as good as the top-line A.I. models. It’s called Kimi K3 and I could run it in my house with a few Apple® machines.

Comfy, right?

I mean, it’s comfy if you’re Sam Altman who has a bunker to protect him from people with missing pensions and plentiful pitchforks. I mean, a 3-d printer can print a pitchfork, right?

“You can say hate, can’t you? I thought you could.”

We got off “easy” from the Dotcom bubble because it was based on equity. Pets.com® just imploded, and people lost a few bucks in the market. Painful, but it didn’t really strike at the core of the economy, and it left us with a batch of fiber optics that we’re still using and still (at least in some places) haven’t maxed out. The Dotcom Bubble was going out on a weekend bender when your wallet was flush with cash and being broke on Monday morning.

This is more like the Great Recession, which also used housing prices to creep into every activity, but also was focused on using debt to fuel the party. This was going out on a weekend bender and waking up to find out that you’d maxed out your credit cards on Charity. Not UNICEF®, no, the stripper, Charity. And that she might be pregnant.

And that she gave you herpes.

Unpleasant, but when we could just borrow again, we could get through the 2010s, plus I think they’ve got some sort of pill that controls outbreaks.

Now? It’s probably both of those put together. And while the data centers might be useful to train up yet a newer A.I. with more parameters, the data centers won’t be needed to run the models. I can run a top-of-the-line A.I. in the basement of my house for a modest investment and a few kW.

With all the race swapping Disney® is doing now, the lead character from Beauty and the Beast will now be a Mexican, Taco Belle.

Not GW, kW. That I could have running in a week, for about $40,000, all while Larry Ellison is sacrificing virgins during the Blood Moon© to help keep the critical path of the construction schedule from slipping. You can bet that if this is real, they’ll make it illegal.

It’s going to break. When?

2026? 2027?

How bad?

Best case, the economy contracts 1% or 2.5%.
Base case, the economy contracts 2.5% to 5%.
Run and hide case, the economy contracts 5% to 8% to . . . ?

I asked my doctor why he uses the little rubber hammer. “Oh, I get a kick out of it.”

Who loses, besides us?

Well, Jensen Huang might have to start drinking Boone’s Farm© instead of champers. Larry Fink might have to skip a dip in his money bath. Elon Musk might have to take his 47 kids to Denny’s©. I kid. Nothing will change for these guys.

And that long, straight, flat road I was talking about? It might just turn into a roller coaster once the foot comes off the accelerator. Here’s hoping that you’re tall enough for this ride, because Charity is probably going to want her back payments.

Sam Colt Made Men Equal. A.I. Won’t Even Try.

“Where’d you get the pistol?” – No Country for Old Men Birthdays are healthy. Studies show that people who have more of them live longer. If you have the tallest man on Earth and add him to a group of 99 random people, the average height might move upwards a quarter of an inch, at … Continue reading “Sam Colt Made Men Equal. A.I. Won’t Even Try.”

“Where’d you get the pistol?” – No Country for Old Men

Birthdays are healthy. Studies show that people who have more of them live longer.

If you have the tallest man on Earth and add him to a group of 99 random people, the average height might move upwards a quarter of an inch, at most. But if you have the richest man in the world and add him to a group of 99 random people, on average, everyone has about 80 billion dollars depending on the day and the price of SpaceX®.

Elon Musk is roughly 14,000,000 times richer than the average person on Earth.

Height follows a normal distribution, what we would call a classic bell curve. The tallest man might tower over the rest, but he’s not 2,651.5 miles tall. Hmm, I should stop now before I give Elon ideas.

Wealth does not follow a normal distribution. At the extremes it follows a Pareto distribution. A very small slice of people command the overwhelming share of resources, and there’s no natural ceiling.

Wealth concentrates, it does not equalize.

I hate Stephen King’s novels. Too many Maine characters.

Back when armor was the ultimate status symbol and battlefield insurance, only the wealthy could afford a full suit of plate. A knight on horseback was a walking fortress. Then came the longbow at places like Agincourt. English yeomen, common men with years of training, unleashed volleys that turned French heavy cavalry into pin cushions. Arrows punched through armor and the French knights dropped their baguettes and cigarettes.

The expensive advantage of the mounted noble evaporated in the mud and guns finished the job. A peasant with a musket could drop a lord in plate armor from a hundred yards with a few weeks of training. Rifles and pistols made personal defense cheap and portable. The playing field for violence flattened dramatically.

God made men. Sam Colt made them equal. And that equality made governments think twice before pushing too hard. Warfare tells the same story on a larger scale.

World War II was industrial attrition on an insane level. The Soviets threw bodies at the problem to sponge up German bullets. The Americans threw factories, ships, tanks, and aircraft at it until the Axis ran out of everything else.

Soviet fighter planes were ineffective: they couldn’t stop Stalin.

The U.S. and Soviets spent the Cold War trying to outproduce each other in the old game. America won that contest so thoroughly that the rules changed. Ukraine, and then Iran’s proxies, show how much the game had shifted. Precision munitions, satellite targeting, real-time communications, and swarms of cheap drones turned expensive armor and aircraft into expensive liabilities rather than decisive weapons.

A few thousand dollars in drone parts plus some clever targeting can take out a multi-million-dollar tank or ship. The battlefield is being equalized again by access to information and cheap, smart munitions. Technology handed smaller players and irregular forces new leverage.

The pattern repeats across history and across domains. Some tools compress advantages. Others stretch them.

I saw a newsletter yesterday where the author declared war on the very idea of merit. His working definition of merit is talent plus effort.

He hates it. Talent, in his view, is unearned, an accident of birth or genes. He was honest enough to admit talent isn’t evenly distributed. Talent follows the same normal curve as height or I.Q.

No one walks around with a 14-million I.Q.

I have a pimp gnome in my front yard. He keeps a tight leash on my garden hoes.

Luck plays a role too. To reach the absolute pinnacle usually requires talent, effort, and luck. For most people with average talent and average luck. Effort is the variable that actually moves the needle.

The writer seemed personally offended that some people could be smarter or more disciplined and therefore succeed more. He celebrated A.I. because it might let anyone churn out a business plan that once required years of education and experience. That will knock the smart kids down a peg!

He’s half right about A.I.’s impact. It is already replacing or augmenting large chunks of cognitive work.

Roughly 21% of American adults are functionally illiterate, and 54% read below a sixth-grade level.

Hand those folks a powerful AI and they can produce a decent business plan. Whether they can understand or execute on it is another question entirely since it’s like giving an orangutan the equations for orbital mechanics.

A spelling error cost my friend his marriage: “Having a wonderful time, wish you were her.”

For someone with a 100+ I.Q., A.I. is different.

It removes drudgery and raises the floor on what one person can accomplish. It lets a competent individual punch above his weight.

A.I. will not be distributed evenly, however.

The versions available to the wealthy won’t look at all like what will be available to the masses. They’ll use it to design new products, optimize supply chains, and compound advantages. Teens will use a simpler version to make cat pictures.

This is the recurring story of transformative technology. The printing press took knowledge out of the hands of a tiny literate elite and scattered it across Europe. Ideas that once required a monastery or a university could spread in weeks. Books got cheap. Literacy rose.

The printing press was an enormous equalizer.

Yet the biggest winners built printing empires, publishing houses, and networks of distribution and could control mass media. The tool rewarded those who could organize capital and talent around it.

The donut baker retired in Modern Mayberry. He got tired of the hole business.

The same pattern appeared with electricity. It lit homes, powered factories, and created entirely new industries. Living standards rose across the board. But the big utilities and manufacturers built vast fortunes and influence.

The automobile obliterated distance in a way no king could have done. It reshaped cities, commerce, and daily life. Henry Ford’s moving assembly line made cars affordable.

Equalizer, but the companies and supply chains that scaled the technology created concentrated wealth and power that still echoes today.

Personal computers and the early internet followed suit. A motivated individual could reach a global audience or start a business with almost nothing but time and ingenuity.

Barriers collapsed.

Then the platforms that captured attention and data became trillion-dollar businesses that could control commerce and shut off channels to those with controversial opinions.

Technology does not care about fairness.

It amplifies existing differences in talent, effort, discipline, and capital allocation. It lowers some barriers and erects new ones built around mastery of the new tools themselves.

Any pizza is a personal pizza.

The commie newsletter writer wanted the talented and hardworking punished for their advantages. He wanted A.I. to act as a great leveler downward.

But effort still compounds and preparation still matters. The distribution of outcomes stays wide. The bell curve isn’t going anywhere.

Is A.I. an equalizer, then?

No. It will act like wealth. It won’t be equally distributed. Carlos from the Jiffy-Lube® will only have the free tier of ChatGPT©. Elon will have versions of weapons-grade A.I. available to him.

Probably figuring out how to make himself 2,651.5 miles tall.

The Grooming Gang Cover Up: 250,000 Reasons “Online Safety” Is a Scam

“These borders are well protected.” – The Fellowship of the Ring (all memes as-found) Governments around the world trot out the kids whenever they want to remove freedoms. Protect the children. It’s always for the children. The reality is that they don’t care at all about the kids. Let’s look at the KIDS Act. The … Continue reading “The Grooming Gang Cover Up: 250,000 Reasons “Online Safety” Is a Scam”

“These borders are well protected.” – The Fellowship of the Ring

(all memes as-found)

Governments around the world trot out the kids whenever they want to remove freedoms.

Protect the children. It’s always for the children.

The reality is that they don’t care at all about the kids.

Let’s look at the KIDS Act. The “Kids Internet and Digital Safety Act” has passed the House. The Senate Democrats have said . . . it’s too weak. Of course they did. There appears to be no speech that they love except their own.

But they’re not alone: the European Parliament’s Online Safety was rammed through during “legislator vacation” using a backdoor procedural trick that required an absolute majority just to kill it. Now it’s legal for them to sort through “private” messages. For the kids.

The UK Online Safety Act is sold the same way. It’s there to protect children.

The real effect is that it pushes everyone toward some form of online ID and forces websites to keep kids off their platforms. Sites like 4chan and Gab® told them to pound sand because they aren’t a UK website. All of this is supposedly to protect the kids.

Right.

If that’s true, they need to explain the grooming gangs who have raped an estimated 250,000 girls in the UK.

The reports that came out in June 2026 are horrific. They underline the point that if you import rapists, they’re going to rape because it’s what they do, and approved. Indians made a movie back in 1997 called Raja Ki Ayegi Baraat. The plot is straightforward.

Mala is raped by Raja. She takes him to court. The judge sentences them to marry as punishment for Raja. Raja and his family are cruel and hostile at first, even trying to kill Mala. Over time she wins them over through her kindness and resilience.

Tens of millions of Indians have seen this movie. That’s the cultural attitude of India on display.

If you import Indians, you’ll get rape, and mainly gang rapes because their upper-body strength is generally less than the average woman in the West. I know that sounds like a joke, but it’s actually true. Pakistan is similar, with one in three women reporting rape during their lifetimes in Pakistan, and those are the women they supposedly like.

If you’re not of their religions?

Well, you’re an animal to them, and they can do as they like, so 250,000 rapes is what they like.

Since a license is required to paddle a surfboard on the Thames, I’m sure the justice system is set up to take on actual gang rapists of children?

Well, no. The report on the 250,000 white English, Scottish, and Welsh girls that were systematically raped over the decades came out in June 2026. GloboLeftists in the UK mocked the report because of course they did. They had to mock it because there is a hierarchy in their world. Illegal immigrants who contribute nothing are at the top, because the goal of the GloboLeftist is to destroy whatever nation they’re in.

Sure, GloboLeftists say they’re against rape and against oppressing women, but only when white men are doing the raping and oppressing. If they rapists and abusers come from a foreign culture, well, rape and abuse as much as you want. After all, they’re only women.

Based on anecdotal evidence, the police in Europe have zero interest in arresting anyone who isn’t a lawful white citizen. In several cases, the police brought the young girls that were being sexually abused back to the abusers. The thankful abusers gave the police a turn on the girls.

Again, I’m not making any of this up. I’d bet money that those police were either Pakistani or Indian, which is another reason why you don’t want foreigners in positions of power. Imagine how the all-moslim, all-immigrant city council in Hamtramck, Michigan will work to protect Christian rights? If you go during the citizen comment period the mayor will call you a racist for suggesting that they not name streets for Islamic terrorists. It won’t be long before the Islamic call for prayer will be broadcast.

Wonder when they’ll require burkas? The Democrats will no doubt approve and encourage this.

But let’s go back to the UK. There have been at least three high-profile events that hit the public consciousness in the last month. The first was the murder of Henry Nowak. The police didn’t want the footage to come out, but when it did, watching them handcuff a nearly bloodless young English man was heartbreaking. It turned to rage-inducing when the facts and lies of the Sikh who murdered him came out.

Then a young man was being attacked by three non-English black men, and the police arrested the white guy. Birmingham Police politely asked that the footage not be shared, but they fully supported the actions of the police in arresting the victim and ignoring the attackers.

The third case didn’t get nearly as much attention, but it was again a white Englishman being attacked while the police arrested him as his attackers mocked him.

So, yeah.

As Ian Fleming wrote: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”

Justice in the courts is similarly absent. In Sweden, a rapefugee wasn’t deported after his three-year prison sentence because the rape “didn’t last long enough.” In the UK, a rapefugee raped three women in a short period and got a suspended sentence. But, a white British man was sent to prison for 20 months for saying, “Every man and their dog should be smashing fuck out of [hotel filled with rapefugees].” ‘

He had 1,500 Facebook followers. The post got six likes. Off to prison, mate!

How much of this is going on in the United States right now? How many Patel Motels are filled with H-1Deviant Indians setting up their own grooming gangs? The data shows that Indians are now leading the sexual abductors in the United Kingdom, and it’s not like we’re getting Indians from a different India over here in the United States. And the authorities in the United States are actively trying to skew the data as shown below:

No, any government licensing for use of the Internet is not for the kids. At all. It’s to make it so no one can talk back against the false reality the GloboLeft creates, so that any speech that they don’t agree with is hate speech.

And by their logic, hate speech isn’t protected speech, so any speech they hate is hate speech.

They just need a way to track you so they can punish you if you complain about children being raped or your people being replaced while Big Tech companies lobby to get your data so that they can maximize your profit potential to them.

But it’s for the kids, right?

Here We Stand

There are those that thought that when a simple Carpenter was executed on the Cross, “Well, that’s the end of that.” His followers thought that.

But, it seems that was simply not the case. Even if you’re not religious, it’s clear that the Cross was no defeat, just a victory in a fashion that no one would have ever expected.

Western Civilization and the basic concepts that have driven it rest on foundations that endure:

The idea that what is True, Beautiful, and Good is excellent and should be rewarded.

The idea that the elite work for the common good and not merely themselves.

That the basic societal unit is the family and not the individual or the state.

That our leaders are not our rulers.

That merit matters.

That the rule of law is important, but that too many laws smother freedom, and those that skirt the intent of the law are Evil.

And that neither Greece nor Rome improved when covered with foreigners, because nations, those living ties of a people bound by blood, history, language, and shared destiny matter more than any abstract economic ledger.

Western Civilization is unique, and the things that flow from it are likewise unique. Judaism is a fundamentally non-Western religion, yet Christianity is fundamentally Western. The differences are stark, and they matter. One brought a chosen people through covenant and law. The other spread a message of redemption that transformed every people it touched, planting seeds of individual dignity, ordered liberty, and the search for truth that grew into the modern world.

Rome did not exist as a market economy. It existed as a place for Romans. When that sense of shared purpose and identity waned, when the center no longer held because the people no longer saw themselves as one people with one destiny, Rome faded. These lessons repeat again and again whenever we lose the path of what Western Civilization actually is.

But we return.

We always return.

Greece fell into fragmentation and conquest, yet Rome rose from its ruins and carried forward the best of Greek thought wrapped in Roman discipline and law. Rome fell to internal decay, external pressure and a dilution of what being Roman even meant, yet in turn nation after nation in Europe rose. Each nation drew on the same inheritance, each adding its own chapter of courage and creation.

As Europe waned under the weight of its own successes and the forgetting that sometimes follows prosperity, America rose. A new nation built on the oldest principles, tested in fire, and sent forth to carry the torch further.

Again and again, Western Civilization fought back invaders, sometimes with a margin so slim that it is impossible to explain how the West survived except by the hand of Divine Providence. The Battle of Tours in 732 stopped the advance of Islamic forces deep into Europe at a moment when nothing else seemed able to stand in their way. The Siege of Vienna in 1683 saw the city on the brink, the Ottoman host at the gates, until relief came in one of history’s great charges.

These were near-run things.

One different decision, one day of worse weather, one failure of nerve, and the map of the world changes forever.

But Western Civilization returned.

It always returned.

Western Civilization, however, didn’t fall from the sky. It came from things that worked, and they worked because they were True, Beautiful, and Good. And also because long years of struggle and effort revealed them. Greek philosophy asked hard questions about reality and virtue. Roman engineering and administration turned those questions into roads, aqueducts, and systems that lasted centuries. Christian faith added the conviction that every soul matters and that justice ultimately comes from a higher order than any king or mob.

These roots produced the scientific method, the rule of law that protects the weak from the strong, the family that raises the next generation with purpose, and the drive to explore and build that took men to every corner of the globe and then when we’d seen the entire globe, Western Civilization went beyond it.

When these principles are honored, societies flourish. Families stay intact and children grow up rooted. Leaders who see themselves as servants rather than masters earn loyalty instead of resentment. Merit opens doors for the capable regardless of birth. Nations with a clear sense of “us” can absorb newcomers on their own terms instead of dissolving into competing tribes.

The West did not become wealthy and powerful by accident or by exploitation. It became so because it aligned more closely than any other civilization with reality itself.

The challenges of our time are real. We see the forgetting, the dilution, the turning away from the hard work of maintaining what our ancestors built. We see institutions captured by those who view the common good of the nation as an obstacle rather than the goal. We see the slow erosion of the family, the substitution of feelings for truth, the replacement of merit with managed outcomes.

These are not new. Again and again, the same test.

Yet the pattern holds.

When the center seems to be giving way, something in the Western soul stirs. People rediscover the old books, the old stories, the old virtues. They build families again. They demand leaders who serve rather than rule. They remember that a nation is not a hotel or a corporation; it is a home for a particular people.

They choose excellence over ease. They choose truth over comfort. And bit by bit, the tide turns.

This is the record of two and a half thousand years. Every time the West has seemed spent, it has drawn on these same sources and risen stronger. The principles are not fragile. They are battle-tested.

They have survived barbarian invasions, plagues, internal tyrannies, and ideological madness. They will survive whatever is thrown at them now.

As long as we work for what is True, Beautiful, and Good, Western Civilization will not die. We carry it in our hearts, in our homes, in the way we raise our children, in the standards we set for ourselves and for those who lead us. We carry it when we choose the family as the irreplaceable center of human life, when we insist that a nation belongs first to its own people.

These choices are acts of fidelity.

And they are enough.

We will win.

I am certain.

I’m not promising the path that it will take, because I don’t know. The road may be longer and harder than we would like. There may be more losses before the turn. But the destination is not in doubt for those who hold fast.

This is not done.

This is not over.

Here we stand.

The Economics of the Surveillance State

“That was a Beria operation in Stalin’s time. It was deactivated twenty years ago.” – The Living Daylights

How did KGB agents commit suicide? Two shots to the back of the head. (all photo content as-found)

Remember Lavrentiy Beria’s cheerful advice: “Show me the man, and I will find the crime”? Back in the Soviet Union they had so many laws on the books that everybody broke at least one before lunch, I mean, when lunch was available. And if they didn’t, they could make up something. Beria just needed enough spies and informants to spot the right violation.

Beria would have loved modern America. We’ve upgraded his whole operation with better cameras, faster computers, and added actual profit margins.

Let’s start with Flock™ cameras.

Flock Safety© cameras now line roads from coast to coast. More than 100,000 of the little snitches sit on poles in ditches scanning license plates 24/7 and however many metric hours in a metric day and metric days in a metric week. The cameras rolled out one quiet law enforcement contract at a time until the whole country is now blanketed.

Not everyone who comes into your life is your friend. Some are just surveillance cameras. (btw, she was innocent, but the police didn’t apologize)

Maps of the cameras exist online, but those rely on humans, and it shows only three of the eight within five miles of my house in Modern Mayberry. I could plot an avoidance route if I had nothing better to do than play spy versus spy on my commute, or build a detector like Benn Jordan did.

Most of us have jobs and families instead. But, hey, we’ve funded a system so that every time you get on the road, you’re creating a record that will last as long as they have storage. And cops can now use this to stalk their ex-wives, so it’s a double win, right?

How did the farmer stalk his ex? He tractor.

Next up?

Ring™ doorbells joined the neighborhood watch program without asking their “owner’s” permission. When several co-eds were murdered in Idaho a couple of years ago, investigators pulled Ring© footage to track a suspect’s car. A subpoena moves quicker than a polite request and never waits for the doorbell to be answered, so they got all the data that they needed to catch the guy. I’m okay with catching murderers, but how many people will be caught in fishing dragnets for being in the wrong place at the wrong time?

Where exactly are you going at 2 a.m., citizen?

Laptops aren’t safe, either.

A hacker got grabbed in Finland on his way out of the country. Prosecutors used the connection with Microsoft’s© handy Global Device Identifier™ to identify him. One persistent number tied his computer to all the mischief. Microsoft® handed over the records after the usual court paperwork and a feeble, “oh, stop . . . customer privacy . . . .” My operating system apparently keeps better tabs on me than my own mother, but at least Ma Wilder has the excuse of being dead.

I wonder if my FBI agent likes the jokes I make?

Then there is Windows Recall© on the fancy new Copilot™ machines. It snaps pictures of your screen every few seconds while you work and builds a searchable scrapbook of everything you looked at. Local storage only

They promise. Pinky swear, even.

Still feels like my laptop decided to start a scrapbooking hobby without telling me first.

Besides, my ISP already knows every site you visit and how long you lingered. Edward Snowden spilled the beans years ago on the big programs that pulled data straight from the servers of Microsoft™, Google®, Apple©, Facebook™ and the Rest®. Fiber-optic taps caught traffic in bulk, Then three-letter outfits and tech companies worked hand in glove.

The result is giant databases full of regular people doing regular things. But don’t worry! If you’ve been good, you’re fine. And if you’re Hillary Clinton or Jeff Epstein, all the data will be lost.

Big Tech loves this data game because it prints money for them. They track my habits down to the weirdest details (really, kittens eating salami?) and sell the profiles to insurers, advertisers, and anyone else with a checkbook.

My patterns become their product. They turn my life into a spreadsheet and then mark it up like a used-car dealer who knows you really need that transmission fixed today.

Speaking of cars, they’re getting chatty, too.

Modern ones log every trip, every hard brake, every late-night drive. Some already phone home to the manufacturer and won’t work unless the software license is up to date. Insurance companies will pay good money for a direct feed on how I actually drive instead of guessing from your age and ZIP code.

Soon enough, the car might call the cops if it thinks I had one too many. My pickup turns into the world’s most expensive designated snitch.

Hopefully, during the 4^th of July holiday you didn’t get distracted and miss the big picture: The British blew a 13 colony lead.

Ninety-nine percent of us carry cell phones that never stop reporting. Every search, every video, every song gets logged. Cops have started treating a phone left at home like suspicious behavior (I’m not making this up). The little rectangle in your pocket is the most reliable witness I never hired.

Big companies with this much reach do have a kryptonite®: governments. They do exactly what the government asks. They bent over backwards to limit talk about COVID and elections under the last administration. Books and posts that wandered off the approved script vanished from platforms: I know, I made a COVID joke on a podcast and it was sent to podcast jail.

The same tools will work just as well for whoever sits in the big chair next. They already proved they can move fast when someone important asks nicely.

Harvey Silverglate spelled this out in his book Three Felonies a Day. Federal law has grown so broad and fuzzy that a decent prosecutor can usually find something to charge anyone with. Normal life now sits inside a minefield of possible violations. Add constant surveillance and the minefield gets floodlights, motion sensors, and a searchable menu.

Stalin put a ? after the name of every traitor: they question Marx.

The Code of Federal Regulations stretches to roughly 190,000 pages or almost the number of words in a GloboLeftist meme. Rules multiply every year. Nobody can read the whole thing, and if they did, another 10,000 pages would have been added in the meantime. When surveillance supplies the evidence, the vague laws and regulations become precision weapons. Who cares if you’re guilty? Just being charged is punishment for the innocent. The process is the point.

Government and Big Tech® now hold detailed maps of where you drive, what you read, who you talk to, and how you spend your time. Also notice that they don’t bother to use these to catch murderers in Chicago or gang criminals. No, they’re encouraging that violence.

Beria ran on fear and informants. The updated model runs on sensors, algorithms, and sweet quarterly earnings. It costs less to operate and reaches farther and hardly ever complains about running out of vodka. The economics make perfect sense for the people building it, because collecting the data is cheap once the hardware is installed.

The Surveillance State runs on convenience for the watchers and profit for the builders. Beria would have been jealous of the efficiency and probably asked for stock options.

Don’t you love it when totalitarian communism and capitalism overlap?

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: They Hate You

“Listen, if you want to join the P.F.J., you’d have to really hate the Romans.” – Life of Brian

Why hate lazy people? It’s not like they did anything at all.

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

Volume VIII, Issue 2

Most memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”. I have maintained the Clock O’Doom at 9., given the open support of assassination and criminality by the GloboLeft and the increase in violence as well as direct interference with ICE and the insertion of the military into law enforcement. Beware: the number can climb quickly.

My advice remains. Avoid crowds. Get out of cities. Now. A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue: Front Matter – Never Forget They Hate You And Want You Dead – Violence and Censorship Update – Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report. These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month. I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues. Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 820 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Never Forget They Hate You And Want You Dead

MacKenzie Scott used to be married to Jeff Bezos. In the breakup, she got about $38 billion dollars and the family’s Amazon™ Prime© Video® library. Proving that Jeff has horrible taste in every woman he’s ever dated, MacKenzie has given away billions to groups that hate straight white people.

She gave away $200 million to various illegal alien importers. Why did she do this? She hates you.

She’s not alone. You have been donating to organizations importing these illegal aliens. The State Department gave millions to HIAS. How did they spend that? To send illegals to the United States.

So simple. It’s not just MacKenzie Scott that hates you for making her a billionaire. Nearly every bureaucrat in Washington, D.C. hates you as well. Why?

Does it matter? They are doing everything possible to import millions into the nation, and, once here, keep them here.

And it’s not just them. Microsoft© is doing everything it can to replace actual Americans wherever possible. Until just recently, these “three-year” visa holders were eligible to apply for federally subsidized 30-year home mortgages. Why?

Temporary means permanent to the bureaucracy.

And it is clear that all of the education, all of the rhetoric, all of the media are slanted to create the idea that the only people who can’t have a homeland, the only people that can’t belong are white people. This is now becoming noticed. When commentators as mainstream as Matt Walsh are freed to X® about it, well, you can tell that the hour is short.

Peter Turchin’s model for civil war includes elite overproduction, where we have too many elites. Like, for instance, MacKenzie Scott. The other factors are popular immiseration where the living standards decline for the general population, and the final piece is the declining fiscal health.

Bringing in aliens by the tankerload, both legal and illegal, is increasing immiseration and accelerating declining fiscal health. This is on purpose.

Because they hate you.

Violence and Censorship:

Things are heating up:

And things might heat up even more:

Plus? Is this an act of war?

Misery Index

The new Trump administration is shown in red. Results continue to be much better than Biden’s misery numbers though Iran is starting to show in the index..

A rare tick downward as gas prices ease during the month.

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Violence indicators are up and remain elevated this month.

Political Instability:

Down is more stable, and it went down this month.

Economic:

The economy ticked up again last month. My take: the A.I. bubble.

Illegal Aliens:

Still the near lowest level since the Weather Report started.

LINKS

The links are again done by Ricky this month. Thanks, Ricky!

BAD GUYS
https://x.com/thestustustudio/status/2067356255916536120
https://nypost.com/2026/07/02/opinion/radical-leftists-like-mamdani-and-chevalier-are-no-longer-democratic-party-anomalies/
https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/29/politics/darializa-avila-chevalier-communism-tweets
https://coloradonewsline.com/2026/07/02/how-melat-kiros-stunned-colorado-politics/
https://pridesource.com/article/abdul-el-sayed-2026-primary-election-interview
https://heartland.org/opinion/democratic-socialist-chris-rabb-will-be-the-most-radical-member-of-congress/

GOOD GUYS
https://x.com/spencerpratt/status/2073538263554416676
https://www.usacarry.com/two-legally-armed-shoppers-confronted-a-missouri-grocery-store-shooter-and-held-him-for-police/
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-california-halt-glock-ban
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-sues-commonwealth-virginia-unconstitutional-weapons-bans

ONE GUY
https://cowboystatedaily.com/2026/06/03/transgender-bathroom-protestor-faces-felony-assault-charge-claims-self-defense/

BODY COUNT
https://www.realclearwire.com/articles/2026/06/04/gun_safety_violent_crime_drops_as_more_americans_pack_heat_1186651.html
https://ammo.com/articles/gun-violence-statistics
https://x.com/NotKennyRogers/status/2058701553817596029
https://cis.org/Report/ForeignBorn-Number-and-Share-US-Population-AllTime-Highs-January-2025
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/02/job-seekers-giving-up-labor-force-participation-rate-falls-to-lowest-in-50-years-outside-of-covid-era.html
https://www.statista.com/chart/36148/number-of-drug-overdose-deaths-in-the-us-and-share-involving-synthetic-opioids-fentanyl/

VOTE COUNT
https://spectrumlocalnews.com/mo/st-louis/politics/2026/06/16/proposed-usps-rule-could-restrict-vote-by-mail
https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2026-election/house-redistricting-gop-democrats-2026-midterm-elections-rcna348110
https://x.com/WallStreetApes/status/2064492962323874068
https://amgreatness.com/2026/06/10/the-potemkin-ballot/
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2026/06/even_trust_the_election_pundits_are_suspicious.html
https://amgreatness.com/2026/05/29/why-the-save-act-matters/

CIVIL WAR
https://x.com/RNCResearch/status/2071966539566162398
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/HJKrGVlasAAk8Gh.jpg?itok=1TB_zKd7
https://studyfinds.com/political-violence-justified-maga/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/civil-war-may-be-brewing-democratic-party
https://reason.com/2026/02/19/support-for-republicans-is-tanking-but-why-are-democrats-hated-just-as-much/
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/13/us/politics/independence-movements-united-states.html?unlocked_article_code=1.p1A.LPay.H3s8cOwrwF4F&smid=url-share
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/01/world/canada/canada-alberta-separation-referendum-vote.html
https://theweek.com/politics/uk-civil-war-online-belfast-protests

Birthright Citizenship, The Economics Of Infinity, And The Inevitability Of War

“I want immunity from prosecution, asylum in the U.S., and citizenship.” – xXx

All media “as-found”

June 30, 2026, just shy of the 250^th Anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, will live in infamy.

All five women of the Supreme Court voted for birthright citizenship on June 30. This includes the Chief Justice, John Roberts, who I assume identifies as a woman on Tuesdays and alternate weekends.

The five voted that popping a kid out anywhere that the United States has as a state or territory makes the invader kid a citizen. It’s called “birthright citizenship”, and wasn’t really a thing for the first 60 or so years, at least, of the 14^th Amendment. The 14^th was really about removing doubts about the citizenship status of freed black slaves and their children.

But now, if you’re Consuela from Caracas giving birth in Carlsbad, California, your cholo child is a citizen. If you’re Ning Naun from Nanking, giving birth in Nashua, New Hampshire, your nursling nipper is now a national. That’s the law of the land, even if you are here illegally.

This effectively removes the border.

If an illegal steps one foot into Arizona and squats a tot, the squatted tot is just as American as Neil Armstrong. If a woman on a legal visa drops a moppet, even if she overstays? It’s an American citizen, just as American as Mark Twain.

The American people, therefore, have no say in who becomes an American.

It’s like someone breaks into my house and pops a preemie there and now that preschooler is now my child and I have to treat it like my child and give it exactly the same (or better!) treatment as my other kids even though it’s much stupider, much needier, and much more violent.

I guess I would be fine with that if I hated my own kids.

But I don’t. I love my kids. And, I love my people.

I’ve gone over at length in previous posts how immigrants, both legal and illegal, are a net negative on the country as a whole economically. It’s not really arguable because the facts are so stark.

Why they’ve been allowed is simple.

For the GloboLeftElite, they represent a new voter bloc that’s skewed to vote against nationalism and for communism.

For the Institutional Elite, they represent more demand for their services and more job for their gay friends.

For the “Idaho Rancher” they represent a way to get cheap labor and avoid paying the prices it would take for Americans to do the work, and the “Idaho Rancher” doesn’t have to pay for the services like medical and child care and prisons.

For the “Wall Street Firm” it’s a way to get cheap labor that will never say no, and will never report you for doing something shady.

These groups are all traitors.

You could say “enlightened economic self-interest” but you’d be wrong. They are the ticks that view the United States as an economic zone to be sucked into an empty skin sack for profits or as a place to build political power for ideas that are inimical to our way of life.

I’m not an extremist.

I’m not opposed 100% to immigration. I think we should consider starting it again in 2326 after a 200-year moratorium. I mean, we should consider it then. Maybe.

The problem with this ruling is two-fold. I’ll start with the economic. There are between 400 million and 700 million people that would move to the United States if they could. Iowa would soon look like Islamabad, Pakistan. Lubbock, Texas would soon look like Lagos, Nigeria. Diluting the ability of the nation to make wealth won’t make us wealthier, it will just turn our country into a slum.

If it were only economic, I might be able to make the case that this was okay. We’d eventually catch up in wealth production. Eventually.

But it won’t, and that’s because of the second problem:

Genetics leads to culture leads to virtue leads to politics leads to outcomes.

That’s it. You can’t take 100, or 1,000 or 10,000,000 Nigerians and expect them to create anything but Nigeria. Same thing with Indians. Or Danes. Or Chinese. Studies of twins separated at birth prove that heritability not only of intellectual ability, but also attitudes and behaviors. Why are Indians turning Canada into India?

Because that’s what Indians do. Because that’s what Indians are. If you want your country to look like India, import more Indians. If you don’t want your country to look like India, don’t let them in.

And if you go back to my map, culture leads to virtue. This is the true failing of multicultural societies, since they cannot form a shared sense of virtue. Why are there rape gangs wherever Indians or Pakistani or Sub-Saharan Africans congregate, even in countries that don’t consider rape a spectator sport?

Because rape is okay in their culture, and if they bring their culture to Dublin, they’ll rape in Dublin. Look it up. It’s not a “because they’re in the United States or Europe” thing, it’s who they are. If only the most rape-y breed, well, then the people will become genetically more rape-y. So what happens when their people become the cops?

Pit bulls are different than golden retrievers. Wishing won’t make it less so, and why are we allowing a never-ending stream of pit bulls into the country?

Lee Kuan Yew, the father of modern Singapore said:

I started off believing all men were equal. I now know that’s the most unlikely thing ever to have been, because millions of years have passed over evolution, people have scattered across the face of this earth, been isolated from each other, developed independently, had different intermixtures between races, peoples, climates, soils . . . I didn’t start off with that knowledge. But by observation, reading, watching, arguing, asking, that is the conclusion I’ve come to.

If a country cannot determine who is allowed to become a citizen, then the result will be a multi-cultural society. What happens then? If the societies are close and have time, they can grow together, the British and Irish. Oh, wait.

To enforce a true multicultural society requires strong, swift, and sure enforcement of the rules. There was a 19-year-old American in Singapore who was caned in Singapore in 1994.

Why?

The American was being an ass. He deserved it. But also because Singapore has to be strict and severe because it is multi-cultural. To maintain a multi-cultural society that doesn’t turn into Mad Max® requires at least three of the four: justice, discipline, authoritarianism, and prosperity.

The alternative to that?

War.

War is not solely men in uniforms ranked in order on opposing sides of a line. If we encouraged people to move to a foreign country to take control, that would be war. How is that different from what India is doing? How is that different from what Islam is doing? How is that different from what Haiti . . . okay, skip that, Haiti isn’t bright enough to have a strategy more complicated than cannibalism.

In a multi-cultural society, it becomes a free-for-all, a war of all against all.

Multicultural societies don’t blend into harmony because we wish it so. History shows the exact opposite. But, hey, we’ve either got caning or cannibalism to look forward to, so there’s that.

Citizen Vigilante: A Movie For Our Time

“Remember: I do this for you, until you learn to do it for yourself.” – Citizen Vigilante

Since the main character was an American fighting invading rapists in Europe, could this movie have been called Alien Vs. Predator? (all memes as-found)

First, I promise I’m not planning on making this a movie review blog. If you’ll note, most of the movies I’ve individually reviewed either show the best of what we can be as a people or the propaganda that has been inflicted on the world for decades. Now, we’re into a third case: a movie that’s reviewed because of its immediacy.

I once left a positive Yelp® review at the DMV noting how helpful and customer-service focused they were. The manager fired everyone.

I first heard about Citizen Vigilante this week on X®. What I heard, resonated. Here’s a quote from the titular (hehehe) character from fairly early on in the movie:

Who we are and what we do has ramifications in our lives, and in the lives of everyone around us, hm? You don’t understand? All right. Pay attention, let me explain this to you. If you get onto a bus and you don’t pay your ticket, if you go to the movie theater, if you grab a banana at a grocery store and you don’t pay, eventually, the cost of everything will go up. If ten percent doesn’t pay, the cost will go up ten percent to cover the loss, and that’s not fair. You might not understand this, but think about it. I’m sure you’ll come to the right decision.

I’m sure that this resonates with 99% of the regular readers here. This is the philosophy that separates a high-trust civilization from a low-trust civilization. This one attitude, that you pay for what you take, that wealth is earned into existence, not cheated from another is what has made the West and every other civilization that follows this, great.

And high home prices and long commutes are the price we pay to avoid living around “civilized” society.

I have been saying for years on this blog and even longer in person that the purpose of the justice system is to keep people from taking justice into their own hands, and it appears that Europe has reached the breaking point. Uwe Boll, who I’ve really not been familiar with before this, made this movie.

He wrote it, directed it, and financed it. It’s not a big budget Hollywood© film, but it’s a labor of his heart. Boll was originally going to title this movie Dark Knight, but Warner Brothers© sent a cease and desist, so he had to compromise there. Does he bow to political correctness here and there?

Sure, but in minor enough ways that I’m not going complain. However, I’m going to make a bold statement: this film is more red-pilled than Death Wish. It is garlic to Hollywood’s© vampire.

I am extremely smart: I have a theoretical degree in physics.

The genius of Boll is that by doing it himself, he could put up a big middle finger to the people that would silence him and write and film any damn thing he wanted. And Germany has done so, not giving the film a rating, which means I think that you can legally own it, but I don’t think you can legally buy it or sell it.

Why ban it? The violence isn’t all that bad. The singular sex scene isn’t anything to write home about. No. The Powers That Be think this movie is dangerous.

Based on history, I think this decision will make kids want to watch it even more. I’ll admit, it made me want to watch it more than the other crap Hollywood© is putting out.

As I wrote earlier, it’s low budget. The “me-too” crusade made the actor Armie Hammer effectively radioactive, so I don’t think he was doing much nor do I think he cost a lot. Hammer is, however, perfect in the protagonist role in this film. If he signed up for a low salary and a percentage of the gross profits, well, he’s certainly a happy man. It was released on June 19, and Citizen Vigilante has already grossed over $67 million dollars by Tuesday. This was at a reported cost of somewhere around $9 million to make the film, though I cannot vouch for the accuracy of any of these numbers: the source was “crap I found on the Internet”.

But I think they’re making money, which is good because some people have had a hard time finding work.

I left my job to pursue a dream of working in archeology. My career is in ruins.

The movie is also short, clocking in at 89 minutes (in metric, that’s 8.9 decahours). That’s good. It left me wanting more, rather than leaving me thinking, “that’s it?” or thinking, “man, this movie is dragging along”. It was just as long as it needed to be and the conclusion is satisfying and it had one line in it that had me howling with laughter, but maybe that will just be me.

I’m not going to spoil the line, and please don’t in comments.

I’m also not going to spoil the plot. It’s not a complicated one, and not surprising in any fashion.

What’s a GloboLeftist’s most effective birth control? Their personality.

Will Hollywood™ make more of this?

I don’t know. I doubt it. Will Boll and Hammer? I hope so. I’d like to see more of this character. I recommend this movie, but keep in mind it’s not for kids.

So, if you want more things like this, buy it, don’t stream it for free. (JW note: after I wrote this, Uwe Boll put it up for free on X® for 48 hours, so, there’s that exception, which I believe Mr. Musk paid for out of his couch-cushion money. I think it will still be available until the end of 6/25/26. LINK)

If ten percent doesn’t pay, the cost will go up ten percent to cover the loss, and that’s not fair. You might not understand this, but think about it. I’m sure you’ll come to the right decision.

Teutoburg Forest And Immigration Policy

“What of Arminius?” – Spartacus: Blood and Sand

Ma Wilder yelled at me after I went jogging with Julius and Augustus. “Never run with a pair of Caesars!” (most memes as-found)

It was September 7, 9 A.D.

Like ducks, three Roman legions comprising 20,000 to 30,000 men under the command of Publius Quinctilius Varus were looking to head south for the winter. Romans campaigned in the summer in Germany, and then went back across the Rhine for their winter camps where they, I don’t know, drank wine. Maybe the men of the XVII, XVIII, and XIX legions studied hard for their Roman Legionnaire test in hopes of getting a C after having V beers?

Anyway, this trip home for the winter, one of the officers advising Varus was a 27-year-old named Arminius. Arminius, likely the son of a German nobleman, had been taken as a hostage from a German tribe at around the age of 10. For 17 years, Arminius had been raised in Rome, gone to Roman schools, been given Roman military training, and was even raised to the social rank of Equestrian, the second highest social rank at the time.

Arminius, knowing the country, told Varus that he knew a shortcut back to the winter quarters. It would be easy, and they could make a side stop along the way to show some Germanic tribes that had been FA the FO part.

A shortcut and a smackdown: two problems with one solution.

All they had to do was skip the well-known and well-guarded path home and go through a forest or two. “And who doesn’t like a trip through the forest? It even has a cool name, the Teutoburg Forest.

“It’ll be the trip of a lifetime!”

Varus: “It’s scary in the forest.” Arminius: “You’re scared? I have to walk out of here alone.”

Now, moving 20,000 to 30,000 guys isn’t easy, and it was especially hard because rather than having a wide space to move through, the Roman column was likely over 10 miles long. Oh, and Arminius told Varus, “Hey, I’ll take all these German auxiliary troops and go get the rest of the guys to support you. Don’t worry, I’ll leave you some of my best guys who know the country. They’re totally not spies.”

While the Romans were in the long line, they were attacked by forest Germans. Not a lot, just enough tire out the Romans and damage their supplies. When this big snake of an army finally finished up for the day, they got to a strong fort that the first-arriving legionnaires had erected, making it a good, strong Roman erection.

Oh, and those totally not spies? They disappeared by the 9^th.

Shapes that commit crimes are often sentenced to prism.

Then it started raining. A lot. The Romans decided to try to escape by going forward. On muddy ground, where the only choice was walking right next to the forest or in the swamp. And the path was covered in trees that had been knocked down, slowing them down.

As this was an ambush, the Germans were well prepared, had cover, and even had made walls so they could attack the Romans without exposing themselves.

The result was a slaughter. There are a lot of details, but Varus ended up literally falling on his own sword in the approved manner for being such an idiot, though his head did make a Planes, Trains, and Automobiles-style trip back to Rome. The three legions themselves were shattered. I’d use the word decimated, but that would indicate that only one out of ten was killed. Nope, in this case Arminius and the Germans killed most of the Romans in battle, sacrificed the officers, and enslaved a few of the common troops.

It was all over by September 11.

Why was 10 scared? He was in the middle of 9/11.

This wasn’t where it ended, no. The Germanic tribes wiped out all Roman military presence east of the Rhine. This was a decisive victory and ended Rome’s desire to conquer the Germanic tribes as it had Gaul. It also led to this quote attributed to Caesar Augustus: “Quintilius Varus, give me back my legions!”

Augustus was miffed. And Rome was miffed. But the Germanic tribes lived on.

Tacitus records that in 15 A.D., when the Roman military commander and father of future Roman Caesar Caligula, Germanicus, visited the Teotoburg Forest battle site that there were “bones scattered across the ground” along with “fragments of weapons and limbs of horses”. Oh, and human heads, nailed to tree trunks.

Augustus used to prank his praetorian guard by pretending to choke on his food. It’s an old gag.

I came away from thinking about this battle with several ideas. The most important one was Arminius himself. Despite being given nearly every advantage that Roman society had to offer, Arminius was never Roman. He was brilliant, he was exceptional enough to be given military leadership, and he had spent seven more years as a Roman than the ten he had as a German.

But there was no amount of Rome that would make Arminius less German. And, rightly, Arminius is a hero to Germans.

That forest was really full of Germans that day. You could say it was krauted.

But he’s also a warning to Americans.

As I look to the United States today, I see a country that is fragmented in many ways that Rome wasn’t at the time. How many more soldiers like Major Nidal Malik Hassan, who killed 14 people and shot 32 others trying to kill them are in the armed forces?

It’s not just moslems, though, it’s every single person inside our borders that is against the traditional Western values that made the nation is a potential Arminius. Every business leader that loots America and hollows it out for their home nation is a potential Arminius. How is it legal that an Indian CEO of Microsoft© fired thousands of Americans at the same time he hired his countrymen in nearly exactly the same number on H-1B visas to fill those jobs?

Never forget what they really think of us.

Arminius is a hero to Germans, at least the ones that don’t speak Arabic at home. But he’s also a warning to all of Western Civilization that taking the advice of foreigners or people with a primary allegiance against you and who want to take you into dense dark forests is still a pretty bad idea. I’m C percent sure.

Platoon: Movie Propaganda And Serial Killer Jokes

“Now, I got no fight with any man who does what he’s told, but when he don’t, the machine breaks down. And when the machine breaks down, we break down. And I ain’t gonna allow that in any of you. Not one.” – Platoon

Syphilis, AIDS and a Timeshare: what’s difference? You can get rid of syphilis.

I saw Platoon in the theater when it came out.

I watched Platoon, and left the theater as the credits rolled.

I was filled with Raisenettes®, yet exhausted with no desire to ever watch that movie ever again. But last weekend it showed up in the “movies you might like to watch” and since The Mrs. hadn’t seen it, we started watching it. Only I finished, since she fell asleep while on patrol and was caught in a firefight with some NVA regulars. But I finished it.

Again.

As a movie, Platoon looks and feels like a slice of reality coming from the “nerdy dolphin talking about hang gliding” me who has never been to Vietnam nor been in a foxhole with Charlie Sheen. I’ve seen many films shot on bigger budgets that don’t feel nearly as real as Platoon. I imagine that part of that is because the writer/director, Oliver Stone, actually did serve in Vietnam as a ground-pounder and this movie is certainly based on his actual experiences there.

I have a lot of thoughts about Vietnam, but this post isn’t about Vietnam. This post is about what the movie Platoon really was: propaganda to make you hate America and traditional American values in 1986.

Let’s start with the time that this movie came out: 1986.

1986 was part of Reagan’s Morning in America. The GloboLeft hated that because the GloboLeft loved the Soviets. I mean, they also love illegal immigrants, but they really love the Soviets. 1986 was also the year of Top Gun, which was the top grossing movie of the year.

My friend the physicist said that he’ll only play volleyball in a vacuum with perfect spheres.

Why was Top Gun the highest earning film of the year even though it wasn’t that great of a movie?

Because people loved America. And yes, I liked Top Gun, but you’ve got to admit it didn’t really have a plot. Top Gun: Maverick at least had a plot.

I digress.

Back to the “people love America” thing. Hollywood© had changed since Reagan was there. When Reagan was there, Hollywood was subversive, but it didn’t hate absolutely everything about America.

Now a majority of Hollywood© did. So, it created one of the most effective propaganda movies of all time, Platoon. I must admit, the message of the movie makes Trotsky look like a patriotic America and Charlie Sheen look morally upright.

Charlie Sheen drew the line at cocaine.

What, then, was the message?

Traditional American values suck. Almost* every leader was shown to be either out of touch, incompetent, sycophantic, or evil. In one scene almost* all of the leadership of the titular (heh) platoon was in a barracks. It wasn’t fun. It looked like your grandpa’s poker night with his old smelly friends, ruled over by the despotic and disfigured Satan of our story: Staff Sergeant Barnes.

This is an effective scene. Your brain subconsciously looks at pretty things and thinks that they’re good. The opposite holds true as well. Barnes is established and reinforced as the antagonist. He is, for this movie, Evil personified.

Wait, what? This is a war movie, aren’t the enemy supposed to be the bad guys? Not for a large chunk of Hollywood©. Remember Hanoi Jane Fonda? They hated America and wanted communism.

The Vietnamese in this movie aren’t the bad guys, they’re just some sort of natural occurrence, like the weather. Put the story on a boat and replace the Vietnamese with a storm and it’s the same movie.

But, move to the cool kid bunker! They had dope! They had cool music! They were doing cool and groovy things! No leadership here, at all, except for cool and groovy dope-smoking Sergeant Elias.

Elias isn’t the protagonist, the protagonist is the character played by Charlie Sheen, who might as well have been called Pvt. Nobody as cardboard as he is, since he only takes one action in the entire movie. No. Elias, played by Willem Dafoe, is Jesus. His betrayal and final death scene with his arms outstretched as if on the cross is heavy-handed. Even young me got that.

If only I can die with such symmetry!

And, in this movie, Jesus was cool and smoked pot. Dafoe would play Jesus in another movie two years later: The Last Temptation of Christ. This was back at a time when the Catholic Church actually managed to be against something other than being against people saying mean things about rapefugees.

But I digress. Again.

The movie is clear. Barnes, who represents traditional American society and traditional American values, is bad. Elias, who represents stoner culture, is good.

When you analyze propaganda, another questions to ask is, “Who is it aimed at?”

Charlie Sheen was the stand-in for the target, the person the audience is supposed to identify with. In several masterfully shot scenes, I felt like I was in Private Sheen’s place. That’s effective film making. Sheen is early wave Gen X.

This makes sense, since Gen X was the target.

Early, Atari© Xers like myself were the primary ticket purchasers of R-rated movies at the time Platoon came out. It’s where we took our dates on a Friday night, and young men were the primary decision makers when it came to selecting a movie to see.

Platoon was demoralization aimed straight at Gen X. Here is what it was saying:

“Reagan making you feel good? Perhaps a bit too good? Enjoyed Red Dawn or Top Gun? Well, white people are awful, except for the stoner socialists who hate America. Those are the real good guys. And Hollywood©. Hollywood™ loves you.”

Imagine how surprised Jeff was when he committed suicide! (meme as found)

Hollywood© does not love you. But they loved this movie with the heat of a thousand sons. Nominated for seven Academy Awards®, it won three, including best picture and best director. Hollywood© loved this movie. So did critics. And it did well at the box office, finishing up third for the year, behind the previously mentioned Top Gun and the heavy period drama that was Crocodile Dundee.

I bought two tickets to it, so my $10 was in the $138,530,565 that it’s credited with.

When I finished watching it, I wanted to take a shower because in the end, the character I’m supposed to identify with, Pvt. Cardboard, kills the stand-in for America: Sergeant Barnes. On purpose. Murder. Demoralization.

Again, I didn’t have the words to describe nor the wisdom to understand the propaganda at play in the film. I just know that I felt revolted.

What does a serial killer do when he finds Waldo®? Wears Waldo™.

But now I see what was going on through clear eyes.

Maybe it was because I didn’t have any Raisenettes™?