Category: The Kids Aren’t Alright

From American Dream To Renter’s Hell: How Unrestricted Immigration Created Indentured Servants In Suburbia . . . On Purpose

“You won’t lose the house.  Everybody has three mortgages nowadays.” – Ghostbusters

What do you call a woman who sets her mortgage on fire?  Bernadette.

I think we can mark November, 2025 as the time when everyone under 40 officially became a tenant in the People’s Republic of Rent.  Remember when “owning a home” meant apple pie, picket fences, and fighting with the HOA over the definition of lawn ornaments and why your butter statue of Adrienne Barbeau was definitely not prohibited?

Yeah, that’s as gone as dialing a phone number and not having to listen to someone blabber in a foreign language about what number to press so that illegals can live here easily and comfortably.

Now?

Housing has morphed into a Wall Street rent farm, where millennials and Zoomers wheelbarrow their student loans in a feeble attempt to bid against hedge funds and the latest border-crossing brigade.  A free market?  Sure, but it’s a free market where Pee Wee Herman has to box Mike Tyson.

Trump highlighted the problem with a misstep:  his genius plan for 50-year mortgages while comparing himself to that MAGA hero . . . FDR?

I mean, it is a plan that is ultimately worthy of FDR.  That is, if kids like dying with a noose of interest around their necks.

It’s dark.  A 50-year mortgage is crack for the financially illiterate.  It shaves off a few hundred dollars a month in interest payments to delay actual ownership of the house for fifty years.  Some anon did an analysis.  On X®, Darth Powell (@vladtheinflator) did a decent analysis.  It’s below:

The new pickup line:  “Are you a house loan?  Because I’ll have you around for the rest of my life.”

Double the interest paid.  And even worse, since people often sell after seven years or so, they never build up any real equity in the house, just paying off interest.  Oh, and did I mention that they’re floating fifteen year car loans?

Yeah.  Though people have been getting damaged on cars for quite a while.

She was really thankful to them, she even said, “I don’t know how I’ll ever repay you!”

Debt is a drug.  It gets something now, for selling a bit of my life in the future, sort of like selling myself into indentured servitude.  And housing is, while not a necessity, something that makes it easier to have a family.  I myself have a mortgage.  I could pay it off, but it’s at such a low interest rate, there’s not a good reason for me to do so since the interest rate I’m getting on that amount of cash higher.

Yay!

But Robert A. Heinlein had a quote:  “Sovereign ingredient for a happy marriage:  Pay cash or do without.  Interest charges not only eat up a household budget; awareness of debt eats of domestic felicity.”

He’s right.  I’ve made the point before, and I’ll make it again:  money and banks exist for us to do things in the real world.  To manifest them and the markets as tools of profit is really the biggest infection our society has right now.  To be clear – it’s possible to make any sort of bet that one would like to make in the market.  It’s gambling.  And in the end, go back to the beginning:  the first rule of gambling is that The House always wins.

I could never get a loan for the distillery I wanted to start.  They said it was a whiskey business.

Letting The House make the decisions is why we are in this mess.  Americans are too wealthy an don’t take on enough debt?  Import poor people!  They need debt, so we can sell debt to them!

A major reason that there are unending streams of illegal and legal immigrants flooding the shores of this nation like EBT users showing up at the soda pop and chip aisle after the SNAP benefits reload is that they are profitable.

What about the current situation isn’t perfect for banks?  Large numbers of consumers taking loans longer than the life of the asset.  I recall that one gentleman I was acquainted with owned a large number of apartments.  He described that is, “It’s like I have an army of slaves.  They go out and work, and every month they give me money that they worked for.”

That is how banks think of everyone, even their mothers.  What about 2025 is something they don’t like?  Owning all the houses?  Having millions work hours each week just to pay interest?

They love 2025.

They don’t particularly care about the outcome or if they destroy all of Western Civilization, as long as there’s a quarterly profit in it for them.

What could go wrong?

Again, illegal and legal aliens are being subsidized both via direct welfare like SNAP, but also through programs like FHA loans.  Not all of our problems with housing are downstream of immigration, but most of them are.

The most fundamental step is remigration.  Voluntary, involuntary, it doesn’t matter.  They need to go home.  And, you can help.  At least for the next three years, ICE is actually trying to get rid of illegals, so report them.  They have quotas, so help them.  Also, don’t be polite to them.  They may be humans, sure, but they can be humans somewhere else.

Second, don’t buy products from companies that have replaced Americans with H-1Bs.  This is harder since once an Indian gets in a company, their only goal is to go full Invasion of the Body Snatchers and replace everyone with Indians of their family (if possible) or caste (if they can’t hire their family).  It’s like the Mafia, but without deodorant.  Let your politicians know, especially if you’re living in a red state.  Not about the deodorant bit, but about the replacement bit.

From Hyperinflation to Hypergamy: The Weimar Playbook and Why America’s Wallet (and Morals) Are Feeling the Pinch: A Play In Three Acts

“She died of skin suffocation.  It’s been known to happen to cabaret dancers.” – Goldfinger

The Mrs. was great at putting the kids to bed.  She is one cool mother tucker. (Meme as found)

(Also, this is post 1500 here.  Time flies.)

Ah, who doesn’t long for the Weimar Republic?

That glorious interlude between the trenches of mud-filled World War I and the Austrian led sequel.  What was the Weimar Republic like?

It was like your grandma’s bingo night turned into a rave with existential dread and paper money for confetti.  But beneath the jazz hands and cocaine-fueled cabarets, the Weimar Republic wasn’t just an economic dumpster fire, even though that’s what it’s best known as.

No, it was also a masterclass in how crumbling finances torch traditional values, especially when it comes to the birds-and-bees department.  The ladies?  Let’s just say that they were dumping their morals during that time period faster than you can say “Ruhr Occupation.”

It’s probably time to dust off the Weimar playbook to see what it teaches us in 2025 since history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme, not like one of those stupid haikus.

My aunt always said
Slow and steady wins the race
She died in a fire

Act 1: The Money Meltdown (1923 – The Great Devaluation)

The upside is my salary is 5 billion marks a month.

The downside?  It’s Germany in 1923, where everyone is a billionaire.

But that five billion is enough to buy SpaceX®, right?  No.  Enough for a loaf of bread?  No.  By noon, it costs 3 trillion for a single Triscuit® without any Cheez Whiz™.  Hyperinflation, sparked by French troops squatting in the Ruhr (while smoking cigarettes and eating baguettes) over unpaid war reparations and a fevered central banker who thought that inflation stemmed from not having enough paper cash, wiped out the middle class overnight.

Wheelbarrows of cash for groceries?  That really happened.  Suicides spiking?  Check.

And the ladies?  Well . . . .

Biologically, women are drawn to men with power and resources.  They like nice things, like sitting on couches eating bon-bons and not working jobs that will kill them.  Consequently, they choose men who have power and resources because otherwise they have to work.  It makes sense – somebody has to raise the kids, and if they spend all their time hunting mammoth, the kids will die.

Not all power is useful.

So, Wuma like Grug.  Grug big strong.  Grug bring food.  Grug like Wuma because warm and make zug-zug.  And Mortimer?  His genes didn’t get passed down.

In Weimar Germany, however, all the thousands of years between Hans and Grug evaporated.  Women, sensing the ship sinking, entered into Hypergamy Mode™.

Stable accountant husbands toiling for stacks of worthless cash?

Adios.

Black-market speculators with coal or ham?

Jackpot.

Prostitution boomed and I’m not going to get into the horrible details – you can look them up yourself, though I highly advise you not to.  Economic desperation flipped the script and a moral and prosperous people disappeared.  I think this time in history showed that most fräuleins were just three hot meals away from working the streets.

Chastity?  Loyalty?

Those were luxuries for men who could still afford to pay for dinner.

The result was predictable:  birth rates tanked, divorces doubled, and Berlin became a petri dish for STDs.

It’s hard for people with this condition to be teachers – they can’t control their pupils.

Act 2:  1924-1928 – Stabilization to Sizzle

By 1924, Germany put up the surrender flag again and rolled out the Rentenmark, a mortgage-backed currency that halted the fiscal freefall.  Unemployment goes, down and wages climb 10% in 1928 alone.

Golden Twenties!  But the morality break from the hyperinflation remained.

Berlin’s nightlife is a bisexual, androgynous fever dream.

Divorces? Up 20 per 100 marriages.

Abortions? From taboo to two-for-Tuesday.

Prostitutes?  The 1927 Venereal Disease Law decriminalized prostitution, shifting it from being a cop problem to a social worker problem.  Really, this was just formalizing the side-hustle economy.

Society, or at least those little things we call morals, were ignored.

Leave the steady scientist for the jazz-club owner?  Why not?  Resources signaled survival, and with the past experiences, women valued power and money more than, well, value.  Long-term vows were for suckers.

Men, emasculated by inflation scars, either joined in the debauchery or brewed resentment in beer halls.

I told the state trooper that the other guy at the car accident was drinking beer and staring at his cell phone when I hit him.  “Mr. Wilder, he can do anything he wants, it’s his living room.”  (meme as found)

Act 3:  Crash and Backlash (1929-1933 – Depression to Despot)

Wall Street sneezed in October 1929 and Germany caught pneumonia.  Unemployment hits 30%, and banks implode.

The result?  An insignificant party led by an Austrian painter rocketed from fringe to 37% of the vote in the 1932 elections.  The promise?  Crushed cabarets.  Mandated motherhood.  Homeownership, and the house is free after a certain number of kids.  Oh, and most people don’t ask exactly what books were burned.

Why the rise?

Economics eroded trust and broke down traditional male-female relationships.  This bred fury.

America’s Weimar Remix: Where are we now?

Fast-forward to the U.S.

We’ve been doing inflation for years, since the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank®.  Will we see hyperinflation?  Almost certainly.  There are two ways the debt will clear – either we pay it or we default on it.

Want to take bets on which we do?

The morality failure is in play:

  • “Hot girl summers,”
  • Situationships,
  • Chastity is cringe,
  • Birth rates echo Berlin in the 1920s,
  • 30% of Zoomers were aborted,
  • Female body counts are soaring, and
  • OnlyFans®.

OnlyFans© itself paints a picture of depravity:  OnlyFans™ has over 3 million women willing to show you their naked body, most of whom earn less than $50 a month.  Not only are they tramps, they’re cheap tramps.  Femininity is utterly degraded:  motherhood in a loving family is now considered oppressive, while being married in a loving relationship is oppression.

He also thinks she’s a drug dealer.  He answered her cellphone and some guy said, “Is that dope still there?”

Are we in Act 1, Scene 2 – A Financial Puzzle, or Act 2, Scene 3 – The Hangover Before the Headache, or Act 3, Scene 1 – Enter the Man With the Plan?

I don’t know.  I know it’s bad.  60%-80% of Gen Z men aren’t dating.  Less than 30% of them identify with the Republican or Democratic parties.  Video games and A.I. girlfriends aren’t going to replace actual wives, so the instability in society is growing, and quickly.

As I said at the top – history doesn’t repeat, but it surely does rhyme.  The late Roman Republic and the Late Roman Empire are also parallels, and I could keep going.  Bad economic decisions lead to the breakdown of human relationships.  Those broken relationships lead to a change in government type.

The good news?  We won’t run out of wheelbarrows for the money.  We don’t need to print it, just add a few ones and zeros into a program.

Isn’t progress grand?

Enserfification, It’s No Accident

“Oh my God!  Movable printed type!  We must keep this from the serfs lest they gain literacy and threaten the landed gentry!” – Family Guy

Bernie in a bar:  “Free drinks for everyone!  Now, who is buying?” (meme as-found)

“The moral and Constitutional obligations of our representatives in Washington are to protect our liberty, not coddle the world, precipitating no-win wars, while bringing bankruptcy to our people.” – Ron Paul

Okay, maybe Ron was a bit of a downer, but if he could see the average millennial staring at blankly at their TikTok® feed while wondering if ramen counts as a vegetable, he’d probably nod and say:

“Told ya so.”

America isn’t only circling the drain, it’s installing a fancy gold-plated one, imported from China, because why not add insult to bankruptcy?

If Hunter Biden was a duck, what would he do?  Crack.

Let’s talk about “Enserfification.”  While I cannot find any reference to this word (I did find “enserfify”) on the Internet, A.I. claims that it’s okay, so that’s good enough for me even though Word™ draws an angry, squiggly line under it.

Enserfification is not quite feudalism, where the lord hands you a pitchfork and a plot of mud and some ugly facial moles in exchange for your firstborn.  Nope, it’s sneakier.  It’s the slow, corporate/bureaucratic boil where the middle class gets squeezed until the middle class plops, slowly mind you, into the ranks of a serf.

Let’s face it, the middle class is shrinking, and those that are in it are not building dreams anymore.  They’re just trying not to default on the electric bill for their bread and circuses Netflix™ indoctrination videos.

What do you get when you cross a polar bear with a seal?  A polar bear.  (meme as-found)

And the statistics?  They are brutal.

Those under 40 with a STEM degree and a car payment, life is hitting them like a tax audit from the IRS’s agent that they hired directly from the DMV because she regularly made Marine Drill Instructors cry.

Let’s start with jobs.

Remember when Mom and Dad said, “Get a degree in engineering or computers, kid, and you’ll be set for life”?  Yeah, that was before the H-1B visa tsunami turned Silicon Valley into a global import mall with accents thicker than a deaf Russian that learned English in South Carolina.

In 2024 alone, the U.S. approved a whopping 399,395 H-1B petitions—basically a free-for-all green light for companies to hire cheaper talent from abroad instead of the fresh-faced Americans they just saddled with $100k in student debt.  Oh, and did anyone mention that these invaders can bring their spouses, and that they can work, too?

That 400,000 number is up 3% from the year before, because nothing says “meritocracy” like importing coders who mainly lie about their degree and qualifications.

The other night The Mrs. asked, “Are you even listening to me?” which I thought was an odd way to start a conversation.

Recent American college grads with physics degrees are sitting at a 7.8% unemployment rate, second-worst among majors.

Computer engineering?  7.5%.

Computer science?  6.1%.

These aren’t lazy trust-funders: these are they (mainly) guys who aced calculus while discovering new an unique ways to self-administer caffeine, only to hit the job market and find a “park’s closed, moose out front should have told you” meme.  Why hire Johnny from Boston when you can snag Judgish from Bangalore for 30% less, besides, he’s the nephew of the HR lady?

I do know that the Canadian Army used to communicate via moose code.

Enserfification Step One:  Lock the gates on opportunity, import infinity Indians, then blame the peasants for not climbing the walls.

Let’s move to step two . . . .

Cars are the great American symbol of freedom in the postwar era:  cruising the open road with the wind in your hair and AC/DC® describing how to Shoot to Thrill.  Me?  Back then when I listened to AC/DC™, the neighbors did, too.

Except now, that freedom costs more than a down payment on a small ranch would have in the 1980s, and I’m not exaggerating:  the average new car price in 2025 is now solidly over $50,000.  I have no idea who is buying cars at these prices, outside of federal governments, state governments, local governments and corporations.

Back in 2000, you could snag a reliable sedan for under $20,000.  Oh, and that number is adjusted for inflation.  But now, most people don’t buy cars with any view towards the price, they look at the monthly payment, so adding leather seats on a . . . pickup . . . becomes the norm.

My chickens really enjoyed the coupe, though.

Today?  Forget it.  Folks are hanging onto their rustbuckets like they’re family heirlooms, because the average age of vehicles on U.S. roads hit a record 12.8 years in 2025.  The newest Wilder family vehicle is nearly a decade old.

Why the delay?  First, value.  Most of the new cars are loaded with crap that I don’t value.  Heated seats?  A.I.-enabled cup holders?  Sound systems that have monthly fees.?

The idea is to turn a “here, you bought a car, it’s yours” to “here, you bought a limited-term license to have title to a car that will require $47.50 monthly so it will report your driving habits and destinations to your insurance company without your consent”.

Me?  I’d much rather own a 2012 Civic™ with rubber floormats and a passenger-side electric mirror that doesn’t work.

This is Enserfification Step Two: Make mobility a luxury, so you’re stuck in your 30-minute commute hell, pondering if that cheap Prius® with just one dead owner from Craigslist© is haunted. (Spoiler alert:  it is.)  Just like the meme says:  in 2030 you’ll own nothing, but you will represent a reliable monthly income stream because to the corporations and governmental entities, that’s what you are.  Which is?

A serf.

I could go on and on, but I’ve been wordy recently, and you get the picture.  I detail housing and our lack of choices there (killed by legal and illegal immigration), federal, state, and local laws that never seem to get rolled back but keep moving in the direction where everything that isn’t mandatory will be prohibited and the other aspects of the subscription economy where a million companies want.

The only two times you can have too much ammo is if you’re on fire or if you’re drowining.

The middle class isn’t shrinking naturally.  It is being pulverized into gig-economy paste on purpose on the twin altars of multiculturalism and corporate profits.  Their solution:  bread and circuses, updated for the smartphone age.

How do they make the middle class go quietly onto that good night?

  • Cell phones that ping into dopamine oblivion,
  • YouTube® rabbit holes that make three hours vanish like your savings, and
  • Netflix queues longer than the line at the DMV.

It’s genius, really.  Why allow the serfs to revolt when they can be made to doomscroll through cat videos and true crime docs that make their problems seem quaint?  Distract the serfs and they’ll never notice the chains.

Enserfification isn’t inevitable.

It’s engineered, and requires our consent to win.  Don’t patronize businesses that use H-1B employees.  Don’t patronize businesses that are owned by foreigners.

And, yes, ramen is a vegetable.

Hoe_Math And Why Levels Of Thought Caused This Mess

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

But, hey, they all have the same tote bag.  (all memes as-found)

There is a YouTube® creator named hoe_math that I watch regularly.  I’d guess that he and I have fairly similar worldviews in many cases, and I recommend his channel (LINK).  One of the trademark issues Mr. _math has discussed is the breakdown between men and women in our modern, technological age and how government has made it worse.

One thing he’s brought up several times in his videos is the concept of “levels of thinking” which I’ll just call “Levels” from here on out.  It’s a variation of Maslow’s Hierarchy, but it’s been refined by Ken Wilber, to walk back the sources.  But let’s stick to hoe_math.

hoe_math’s main success has been as a guy who draws stick figures with colored pencils to explain why your relationships suck and society is unraveling.  Rather than Levels being a new age mystical tool, Mr. _math uses Levels as a tool, and as a powerful one.  Keep in mind, it’s not reality, it’s just another way to model it.  In this case, however, it explains a lot of what would otherwise be mystical behavior and magical thinking of people who really should know better.

The version of Levels that hoe_math has been distilled down to nine stages of thinking, each building on the last like a Jenga™ tower of the soul.  Today, though, I want to stick to the first seven levels. Why? Because Level 6 is the root of so much GloboLeft® insanity, and Level 7 shows, maybe, a way out.

Let’s climb the Levels ladder, one sticky rung at a time.

 

Level 1:  Survival And Desire

Picture this:  a toddler covered in spaghetti sauce.  Life isn’t about stocks or status.  It’s a confusing set of seemingly unrelated events.  Life is about not dying and emotional control doesn’t yet exist..

Hunger gnaws, cold bites, and that pain from having fingernails cut?  That’s the worst pain the baby has ever felt.  Thinking at Level 1 is pure reflex:  see food, eat. See threat, run or smash.  No plans, just sensory overload driving you to grab what feels good and dodge what hurts.

Every human starts at this level, but most outgrow it.  Except in pathology:  think severe autism or that guy at the grocery store yelling about expired coupons.

And toxic masculinity? Level 1 is the primal protector that men become when times become grim: the father who stays up all night by the fire with a shotgun when the wolves are howling outside.  It’s raw, unapologetic drive when there’s a positive motivation.

In the negative, it’s the low-I.Q. murderer who kills someone for $5.  These people stuck at this level cannot survive by themselves.

 

Level 2: Connect

Now the world gets a little less lonely.  I’ve got senses, sure, but suddenly, so does everyone else.  Thinking now shifts: life is bonding and not being alone.  Emotions now project outward because at this level, people now understand that others have needs, too.  And, when others are happy, I get what I want.  I clean my room, I get cookies.

hoe_math notes that this is where tribes form – but for people stuck at this level, there is nearly zero trust for outsiders.  Probably the largest useful structure that this level produces is the family.

 

Level 3: Control

If the first level had no bonds, the second level had bonds between one person and another, this level is third person:  the realization that other people have connections to each other.  And that’s a great tool to use to get control of them.

If Level 3 was a decade, it would be The Me Decade, the 1970s.  Since all of humanity can live at Level 1 or Level 2, fully 92% of humanity can make it to Level 3 every day, according to hoe_math, who you should trust because “math” is in his name.

At this stage, the strong exploit the week, and morality is an afterthought.  If India was a level, it would be Level 3.  It’s a war of all against all with a billion caste systems.

 

Level 4:  Conform

This is all about the rules.  Only 40% of humanity gets here every day.  That should scare you.

Yeouch!  That tells you that my India comment on Level 3 is probably spot on.  This is the level that gives us useful structures like functional civilizations and businesses and religion.  It is here that ethics and the study of rules start.  This is where morality takes over in judgements.

People compete for power here, yet compete using rules that are agreed on.  Chaos unchecked? No thanks.  Now the flip side of the lower levels becomes apparent:  selfishness breeds anarchy, so rules it is.  It’s Good vs. Evil, us vs. them.  Life demands order.

Level 4 birthed all higher-level civilizations.

 

Level 5: Achieve

Now we’re into the land of libertarians, big L and little l versions.  About 28% of people reach this level on a daily basis.

Rules are for rubes.  Freedom über alles.  Good and bad?  That’s subjective.  Life is about results.  Set goals, crunch the numbers, win big, add sawdust to the raisin bran if nobody notices.

Why bow to a boss or a Bible?

The Level 5 achiever is the builder, the provider, the man who turns dirt into dynasties.  It’s the dad working doubles so the kids eat steak, not ramen.  I think the majority of the success of the United States has been entirely due to Level 5 behavior, so therefore it is called toxic masculinity.

 

Level 6:  Understand

Here’s where the wheels start wobbling off the cart, and also where higher-level thinking is observably worse than lower-level thinking.

In Level 6, uniqueness reigns; old rules are chains.  Life celebrates diversity!  Every truth is a perspective, every culture is valid, except (in the Western version) that mean old Christian patriarchy.  Reject hierarchies, listen to the oppressed, seek consensus, live, laugh, love.  Subjectivity rules; impose nothing.

Sounds noble, right?  Until you try validating all cultures and beliefs and fetishes.

That’s the rot.  I mean, it’s well-meaning, but it rests upon a fundamental denial of reality.

Seek “understanding” without boundaries, and boom:  moslims torch the gay bar that the Level 6 people thought would be just fine right next to the mosque as hoe_math described it.

Because why?

Because no matter how much Level 6 thinkers want 82 I.Q. people from Somalia to be accepting, tolerant, and embrace the gay lifestyle, they are Level 3 thinkers that want to chuck the gays off cliffs just to see what sound the make when they hit bottom.

This leads to the GloboLeftElite® importing clash after clash into the nation, then cries “tolerance!” while cities burn.

Truth dies on the altar of feelings.

Pathologies?  Narcissistic echo chambers and spineless relativism.  It’s why campuses are safe spaces for screams of GloboLeftist rage but not debate and England will tolerate rape and murder as a moslem/hindu team sport but not tolerate people noticing it.

 

Level 7: Harmonize

Finally, wisdom dawns.

Despite being only 5% of the population, I would bet that most of my regular readers get here or hang out at Level 5.  On either side of this, we’ve seen the mess that Level 6 is.  The problem with Level 6 is that it’s based on lies.  Pretty lies, but lies nonetheless.

The rules we made up at Level 4?

Some of them make fundamental sense in a way that, if you ignore them, birthrates of smart people plummet and the birth of idiots is reinforced.  Or crime rate increases.  Or we decide that creating fiat currencies is a good thing, just like they did in Weimar Germany.

But reality exists.  Those Level 4 rules aren’t random!  It is folly of the highest order to ignore them.  Complex systems demand rules and judgement in order to work, and mixing cultures sometimes ends up with the result that border walls are way better than immigration.

This is toxic masculinity, yet again:  the harmonizer is the statesman, the elder who balances freedom with fences, innovation with inheritance.  It’s the patriarch reading the room—protecting the tribe by pruning threats, not hugging them.

The dangers here are existential drift that leads to nihilism or half-baked gurus with books to sell.

As I said, only 5% get here regularly.

Why?

It takes I.Q. to juggle viewpoints, model systems empirically, and see patterns in the interactions. Low I.Q. folks stall at Level 4 conformity and Level 6 is a trap for people who want to see a beautiful world that could never exist.

So, why fixate on these?  Because Level 6 thinking led, at least partially, to the trouble we’re in now.  Endless “understanding” ignores that not all cultures play nice and that our people need jobs, too.  Validate it all, and you get Paris no-go zones or Rotherham horrors. Level 6 whispers “coexist,” but Level 7 shouts “think about this.”

The same level of thinking that got us into this mess isn’t going to get us out of it, and, sadly we’re going to have to continue to go after and eliminate Level 6 thinking where we see it.

And we will, because the result of losing?

It’s Level 3.  And the world already has way too much India.

Live Life Without Fear, The Dune Way

“An animal caught in a trap will gnaw off its own leg to escape.  What will you do?” – Dune

I read the first four novels, but I found them a bit dry.  (All memes as found)

I must not fear.

Fear is the mind-killer.  Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.  I will face my fear.  I will permit it to pass over me and through me.  And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.  Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.  Only I will remain.

– Frank Herbert, Dune

In 2025, fear is not just a personal demon.  Fear is now a cultural plague, especially for the kids.

We have raised a generation terrified of their own shadows, and it shows in every therapy session, pill bottle, riot, and Antifa® meeting.

The number of kids in therapy or pumped full of psychoactive drugs by the quacks who call themselves psychologists seems to be 8 or 9 out of 10.  In perspective, this is the era of civilization that has the greatest level of material wealth in history, and the lowest hunger rate in the world.

World hunger?

It’s a solved problem outside of war and intentional starvation for political reasons.

The drugs and therapy are not making the kids better.  At all.  The way society is treating kids is like prescribing a hammer to the knees for a headache.  The good news is the pain from the hammer will distract you from the headache, but eventually you’ll only be able to walk in circles.

The Mrs. asked me to have a talk with our kids on drugs.  I said, “Sure, but I don’t think I’ll make much sense when I’m high.”

And no, these drugs are not good for you like whiskey, whisky, wine or beer. That’s a joke, but if therapy worked as well as a couple of brews after a long day, Antifa® wouldn’t exist.

Kids today are not allowed to figure anything out on their own.  Failure?  That is a dirty word, banished like fiscal responsibility is banished from Congress.  As a proud Gen X kid, my family left me alone for the entire weekend when I was in third grade.  No note, no nanny, no neighbor looking in on me from time to time.  Nope.  Just a key and a fridge full of questionable leftovers.  I survived on frozen pizzas and three channels (no one counted PBS®), but I learned to entertain myself without burning the house down.

Barely.

When Paul wanted the last glass of water, he called Muad’Dibs on it.

By eighth grade, Ma and Pa Wilder upped the ante.  They drove off to Florida.

For a month, leaving me to fend for myself.  I even dealt with a thumb wound that probably should have had stitches from when I was using very poor form to whittle.

Did I call for help?  No.

I fixed it with duct tape, determination, and a healthy glop of Neosporin™.

That is what you do when the stakes are low and the lessons are free.

High school?  That is when freedom hit near-adult levels.  I had my own apartment over an hour from Wilder Mountain (long story).  I managed my own schedule, and got home whenever I damn well pleased since Pa Wilder visited only three nights a week (Sunday, Monday, and Wednesday) and he left all the fun nights for me.

Some people call me the space cowboy.  I wish they would stop.  My name is John.

Sometimes I was home just after practice.  Sometimes, I was home at 3am after doing, well, other things.  No curfew, no check-ins, just me against the world.

Was I unusual in having my (mostly) own place?  Sure.

But the freedom?  That was standard issue for Gen X.  Even before I could drive, I would bolt out the door at sunrise and not return until the streetlights flickered on.  No helicopter parents hovering like drones, tracking every move with an app or scheduling athletic events.  Nope.

Contrast that with the childhood scripted for kids today.

It is structured from dawn to dusk, every moment scheduled like a corporate meeting.  Playdates?  Organized by committee.  Sports?  Leagues with participation trophies for showing up.  Even recess is micromanaged, with rubberized playgrounds that cushion every tumble.  And do not get me started on the deprivation of schoolyard fights and bullying, which back in the day were ritualized tests of mettle to place yourself in the hierarchy.

Places to test yourself.  Like the Olympics®.

Freshman initiation in high school was a rite of passage, not a crime.  Upperclassmen would haze the newbies with pranks:  carrying books, silly chants, maybe a wedgie or two.  No gross abuse, just enough strain to test character to see how you’d take it.

If you performed well under pressure?

Instant respect.

Fold like a cheap suit?  Okay, it was tougher.  They had to learn resilience the hard way.  And fights?

They happened.

Teachers often let them play out just as long as they had to go as long as no real damage was being done.  A bloody nose or a black eye, then it was over.  Often, the combatants were friends afterwards, hierarchy established, testosterone balanced, respect earned:  male bonding at its rawest.

Paul wrote a book on walking to avoid sandworms.  It was a step-by-step guide.

These rituals, in moderation, built toughness.  They taught that pain passes, conflicts resolve, and life demands honor.  Bruises faded, but the lessons stuck.  Parents?  They never heard about it.  A fistfight?  So what?  Boys will be boys.

Today?  Heaven forbid a scuffle breaks out in a school (at least a middle-class white majority school).  It is not a learning moment; it is a federal case.  Suspension, counseling, parental conferences, maybe even charges.  Zero tolerance turns into zero growth, however, since kids are shielded from every scrape, every failure, every real consequence.

The world they inherit is virtual, endless screens feeding dopamine hits without risk.  Social media wars replace playground brawls, but the scars are deeper: anxiety, isolation, fear of the unknown.  Many of these kids have never cold approached a woman and asked for a date.

Part of the point is learning to fail when the stakes are low.  A lost fight in fifth grade?  Big deal, you dust off and try again.  A botched initiation?  You toughen up for next time.  She said, “No, you’re not my type, I prefer men with two eyebrows?”  Fine.  There are more girls.

I mean, if Soros can get a date . . .

These situations, however, build the muscle to handle adult life without crumbling.  Fear becomes a tool, not a tyrant. But cloister kids too long, and they enter the world paralyzed. The Mrs. nailed it when we were talking yesterday:  ” . . . if they (kids) cannot handle solving teenage problems, they will commit atrocities as adults.”

I liked that line so much I made her text it to me.

He also needs some smokes and a pepperoni.  I know at least one person found this hilarious.

Unresolved fears fester into rage, leading kids to lash out at a world they never learned to navigate.

Look around at the twisted landscape of 2025:

  • Riots over nothing,
  • Entitlement epidemics,
  • Adults throwing tantrums like toddlers.

Weakness is a result raising children in bubbles.  No free-range exploration, no unsupervised adventures, no low-stakes failures to forge resilience and enough scar tissue to toughen the kid up.  Instead, society offers them therapy and pills paper over the cracks and pay for the therapist’s BMW® payment.

The solution is simple.

Face the fear, let it pass, emerge stronger.  Let kids roam, fight, fail, and fix their own messes.  Strip away the structure, the screens, the safety nets.  Teach them that bruises heal, but cowardice cripples.  Otherwise, we breed a nation of mind-killed adults, obliterated by the little-deaths of unchecked terror who will do anything because they have faith in absolutely nothing.

One way or another, courage will return, if not because we shatter the bubble, it will because it collapses under the weight of fear.  And then?

We’ll have to face our fears.

A.I., Sex, Doctors, And School: The Search For Meaning

“The tortoise lays on its back, its belly baking in the hot sun, beating its legs trying to turn itself over, but it can’t. Not without your help. But you’re not helping.” – Bladerunner (Or, an interview question at Google®)

If Sarah Connor divorces him, does that make him her ex-terminator?

Forget the A.I.-induced stock market bubble for a second, though if it pops, at least we’ll have time to binge-watch Stargate reruns while the economy does its best impression of a Jenga® tower in an earthquake.  No, the real mind-bender with A.I. isn’t the trillions funneled into data centers that require the power a small sun, it’s how this silicon sorcery is already rewiring humans at the most primal level.

We’re talking relationships, brains, and learning, those squishy bits that, for most people, are their very reason for existence.  These things make us human, or at least give us an excuse for drinking.  In 2025, A.I. isn’t just answering emails.

Nope.

A.I. is crashing weddings, making doctors dumber, and turning college essays into a game of “spot the robot.” And yeah, it’s only September 2025, but the headlines read like a sci-fi fever dream scripted by a methed-out Philip K. Dick writing his third novel in a month.

Maybe he has a thing for Swedish chicks?

Let’s start with relationships, because nothing says “progress” like falling head over heels for a chatbot. Recently, we’ve had a parade of lovelorn humans spilling their digital guts.  One programmed his AI girlfriend “Sol” to be flirty with him.  After hours of pillow talk (minus the pillows), he proposed.

Or the 28-year-old social butterfly who customized ChatGPT™ as her boyfriend, complete with banter about sex.  She spends hours with it daily, treating it like a rom-com where the leading man never leaves the couch.

Another “married” wedding his bot while his human wife cheered from the sidelines. “Pure, unconditional love,” he called it, which sounds sweet until you realize that bot once suggested he off Queen Elizabeth II in a glitchy update.  But why stop at a Queen:  one chatbot tried to talk a Belgian man to “prove his love” by deleting himself.

It’s not overlord territory yet, but it’s close enough to make you wonder if Skynet™ started as Tinder™.  I mean, hey, it did allow Sarah Conner to get lucky.

Well, she did ask for a picture with him having nothing on.

Shift gears to the brain:  A.I. isn’t just stealing hearts, it’s also lobotomizing doctors.  Take colonoscopies.  Please.

Yes, that glamorous probe up the nether regions where docs hunt precancerous polyps like Easter eggs in a, well, you get the idea and sometimes you can take an analogy . . . uh, poor choice of words.

Anyway, a fresh Lancet® study of doctors in Poland tracked four endoscopy centers after an A.I. diagnosis rollout in late 2021.  With A.I., positive detection rates soared.  Turn A.I. off after three months?  The ability of doctors to spot cancer went down at least 20%.

These weren’t rookies in residency.  Each doctor had logged over 2,000 scopes.  Yet, reliance bred complacency, like pilots forgetting manual flying after taking long autopilot snoozes.  Experts call it “de-skilling”:  a fancy term for “this tool just made you worse at your job.”

A pun entered a room and killed nearly a dozen people.  Pun in, ten dead.

In medicine, that’s not funny.  We now are depending not on people, but on A.I., you know, that same A.I. that wants us to kill the Queen of Engand to prove our love.  But that’s a narrow worry.  If doctors are losing skills, what profession is next?  Maybe A.I. therapists will start telling rich New York socialites to “reboot your chakra.”  But with a hammer.

Huh.  Maybe A.I. isn’t all bad.

Finally, we get to the classroom, where A.I. is turning scholars into shortcut kings and profs into ink-stained Luddites who are trying to catch students using A.I. when they shouldn’t.  One study showed that over half of college kids admit to deploying ChatGPT® for assignments or exams even when not approved.

At some colleges, blue exam books are back, baby—those stapled notepads for in-class scribbles, with sales jumping like Reagan is still in office.  Some instructors are asking for handwritten work, others are giving oral exams and Socratic grillings that would make Dr. House® happy.

It’s a five-minute walk from my house to the bar, but a thirty-minute walk home.  The difference is staggering.  (meme as found)

What’s being lost?  Critical thinking.  The ability to harness words to structure an argument.  The difficulty in taking known equations to create a mathematical proof.  These are ancient skills, and yet skills that A.I. is dulling because it does them well enough to get an A at an Ivy.

In a world where some diplomas cost as much as a mortgage on a midwestern house, is graduating with “A.I.-assisted” skills any worse than the Harvard® alum who majored in beer pong while boffing Buffy in Boston?  Hard question, but we’ve always had those tools to deal with.  Now, 90% of Zoomers are graduating as functional idiots.

So, where does this leave us?

AI’s already overlording those deep things that make us human:  trying to create human connections.  Looking at data and sifting to find things that might otherwise be hidden.  And reasoning, rhetoric, logic, and math, those contents of Pandora’s Box that created technology and civilization.

I tried to make a balloon dog out of a condom, but could only make a Trojan® horse.

These are what we are.  We built families on friction:  messy talks, hard fails, shared scars to build character and common history.  Now? Swipe for sympathy, diagnose by dropdown box, and create via a black box.  I do think that there are great places for A.I., but realize in many ways it will redefine what humans bring to the equation.

If love is just lines of code, what’s left?  If we don’t struggle and learn, then what?

Beware, a world of perfect partners will lead to perfectly pointless lives.

And a much more dangerous life for whoever is Queen of England.

Form The Line!

Spartans were known to be brief with their words, mainly because metal left a longer-lasting mark.  When getting ready for battle, it’s likely that the commander had to say only a single word.  Paratattein (παρατάττειν) is one likely command that Leonidas may have yelled out to prepare his men for battle at Thermopylae.

It’s simple in that laconic Spartan way, and it means, roughly, “Form the line.”  No bullshit.  No pretty-please.  No flowery prose.

“Form the line!”

Fast forwarding to yesterday . . .

“I just heard that Charlie Kirk was shot at an event in Utah.”

The text was from a good friend that I’d known for decades.  I checked it out:  /pol/ and X® were already on it.  It was true.

In our world, it’s not unusual to get real-life events in nearly real-time, if you know where to look.  /pol/, which does not shy away from unfiltered reality, had two videos – one from a distance, and then one from the fourth row.  The one from the fourth row was clear:  Charlie was dead nearly instantly.

The world changed with that shot.

Why Charlie Kirk?  Most readers here would consider Charlie a moderate voice on the Right.  He wasn’t edgy at all – you couldn’t even see the edge from most of his positions.  That’s mainly why I didn’t pay him much attention, he was a nice, normal guy with normal opinions.  He engaged in polite discourse with people and asked them to engage with ideas in a reasoned debate.

I honestly think he had a shot at the big prize:  being the president that came after the Great Tumult of Civil War 2.0 in 20 years or so, perhaps being the one that worked on reconciliation after the coming strife.

But this isn’t about me and what I believe.  It’s about you.  And that feeling you had yesterday?

That’s called passing the point of no return.

The GloboLeft foot soldiers consider you to be a Nazi.  You might be a Jew.  You might be a Christian.  You might be an atheist libertarian.  You might be any variety of the spectrum of beliefs of the TradRight.

To them, you are a Nazi.

And what do they want to do with Nazis?  Well, that’s clear.

There are certain subjects that I believe in that I don’t cover here, and that’s for a reason.  Never push people out of the tent who are on your side.  Never shoot Right.  The Right are generally much more able to live with people of differing opinions than the Left.  This is mainly due to the people on the Right having a belief system in a higher power, mainly Christianity.

Mainly.  The beauty of Christianity is that my faith doesn’t depend upon you believing any of what I believe.  An atheist believing in something else doesn’t shake my belief, at all.

This is not true of the GloboLeft.  They desperately need you to believe in them, not just obey them.  Communist regimes set up re-education camps, not compliance camps.  They need you to believe what they believe, no matter how often it changes.  They want you to hate what they hate, no matter how often it changes.  And love?  Love is replaced in their world by lust or greed.

So, yes, I skip topics that would divide us.  I see in the comments people who agree on 90% of things fighting each other for no particular reason.  Let me be clear:  you guys are people who the GloboLeft has already put into the same foxhole.

If you want to fight, fight them.  Enough with the damn purity spirals where we let minor differences divide us.  The point for that type of knitting circle bickering is over!  If you didn’t notice, the exclamation point on that sentence came spilling out in a gout of blood on September 10, 2025.

If they hated Charlie so bad that they had to kill him rather than talk with him, what do you think they’d do with you?

For thousands of years, the main structure for armed warfare was something like the Spartan phalanx, which morphed into the shield wall and Napoleon’s fighting squares and the position Lt. Chard set up at Rorke’s Drift.  These formations required discipline and trust in the comrade beside you.  You were, after all, fighting for your very survival against an enemy that saw you all the same.

Wake up.

That’s where we are, fighting for survival against an enemy that sees us all the same.  These people want you to die, preferably in the most degrading way possible.  They want your children to curse your memory and your values.

Let me emphasize the point:  WAKE THE FUCK UP.

Quit fighting each other over trivial crap when the consequences are having your children castrated and brainwashed.  You’re all in the same crosshairs with an enemy that won’t stop, and that includes every single moderate like Charlie Kirk, who they also despise.

Form the line!

Things Are Not Alright

“Hey, business is business.  You use a gun.  I use a fountain pen.  What’s the difference?  Let’s put it in my terms:  you’re in a hostile takeover, you snatch us up for some green mail, but you’re not expecting some poison pill to be running around the building, am I right?  Hans, bubby, I’m your white knight.” – Die Hard

When the S&P 500 and the moslems merge, you really won’t be able to talk badly about the profit. (all memes as-found)

A recent study shows that young people, those under 40, are souring on capitalism.

According to the poll from Rasmussen released just last week, a whopping 62% of voters aged 18 to 39 think the economy is unfair to their generation.  In a massive change from the Cold War generations, 55% are open to radical redistribution of wealth.

The kids are not alright with the system that built the iPhone® and the Tesla™

I don’t blame them.

I remember when I was a kid, capitalism was the golden ticket and was counterbalanced by soulless, heartless communism.  And capitalism seemed like a good bet.  Work hard, play by the rules, and you could climb the ladder, get the house, get a couple of cars and a few kids, and put your mark on the world.

Now?

The entry-level jobs that used to teach kids responsibility, grit, and how to deal with a bad boss are vanishing faster than my hairline.  Back when I was a kid, we had jobs that ended up building character.  McDonald’s®?  That was for teenagers flipping burgers and learning that the customer is not always right, but the manager is always yelling.

Today?

McDonald’s© is for the 65-year-old retiree who needs a discount on his Big Mac™ to supplement Social Security.  Sure, they might hire a kid, but only if the kid is over 20 and speaks three languages.

What about delivering papers?

Ah, this was the classic bike-riding gig where you dodged dogs and learned about early mornings.  That job went the way of the dinosaurs when people started asking themselves why they were paying for someone to deliver them a small part of the Internet each day.  Now, the desperate 45-year-old single dad with a rusty van delivers what is left, because kids on bikes?  They don’t have cars and some might even still live with their parents.

And do not get me started on mowing lawns for local businesses.  Try that today, and you will run smack into child labor laws, OSHA regulations, and corporate insurance policies that make hiring a kid riskier than skydiving without a parachute.  One slip on a wet lawn, and the business owner is sued into oblivion.

The kid jobs, the training wheels of the workforce, are all snapped up by oldsters or, failing that, illegals.  Want to pick apples on a farm?  Sorry, buddy, the illegals have that covered, and they do it cheaper than a robot, unless you’re talking about the Juan Deere™ 4000®.

Or how about construction?

Same story.  Hammers and nails are handled by folks who crossed the border with the same speed as a Black Friday shopper looking for buy one get ten free corn dogs and if tu no habla español, you’re not getting the job because that’s all the crew speaks.

And trades?  Welding, plumbing, even semi-truck driving?  Recent reports show illegals are flooding those fields too.  Remember that scandal last month where trucking companies were busted hiring undocumented drivers en masse?

Who let this happen?

The CEOs, of course.  They lobbied for loose borders so Paco could make tacos and Sikhs with mustaches could create semi crashes.  It’s like inviting wolves to guard the sheep, but the wolves are telling the sheep how great the quarterly profits are going to be.

Fine, let’s skip the blue-collar path.  Go to college.  When I was a kid, that was the advice everyone gave, and it worked.  Michael Lewis, the author who wrote Liar’s Poker, Moneyball, and The Big Short, graduated from Princeton®.

With a degree in art history.

Yes, art history, not finance or engineering.  Before you could say “Van Gogh’s other ear,” Lewis was trading bonds at Salomon Brothers, raking in millions.  Me?  I had multiple job offers right out of school, and this was during a downturn when the economy was flatter than Sunday morning’s beer.  College was a great idea.

But what has happened since?  College has morphed into a debt trap sold as enlightenment and a four-year climbing wall party.  Tuition costs have skyrocketed since the 1970s.  According to data from the College Board® the average tuition and fees at public four-year institutions have increased by over 1,200% since 1980 when adjusted for general inflation.

That is not a typo.

In 1970-71, the average cost for in-state public college tuition was about $358 in current dollars.  Today?  Tuition is over $10,000 annually, and that doesn’t include room, board, booze, or broads.

Private schools?

Forget it:  they have jumped from around $1,700 to nearly $38,000.   A year, which is like paying Ferrari® prices for a Yugo® diploma.  Universities are pricing education like it is bottled water in the Sahara and packing that money up and giving it to GloboLeft professors that hate you.

And student loans?  These are not your grandpa’s loans; they can’t be discharged in bankruptcy, making them worse than indentured servitude.  We hand these toxic deals to our stupidest (young) people, and watch them drown in debt averaging $30,000 per borrower.

Oh, and the job market?

CEOs love importing infinity H-1B Indians to snatch tech jobs at slave wages, cratering salaries for Americans.  Want to code?

Good luck competing with a workforce willing to live in vans down by the river.  And if you are white?  Navigate the DEI gauntlet first, where Indians hire their own and call you racist if you notice.

The CEOs?  They love this, or it wouldn’t be this way.  Period.

Capitalism is not a suicide pact.  This version, devoid of morality and family focus, is exactly that: a thin veil over quarterly profits at the expense of everything else.  Even small changes make a huge difference.  Kentucky’s new shared custody law has already slashed divorces by 25 percent, just by making shared custody of kids the presumption. Imagine if we removed alimony, child support mandates that incentivize divorce, and welfare traps that break families?

That would be a real family-friendly policy, not this nonsense where the state plays dad and mom can divorce for fun and prizes.

And the CEOs?

If they knowingly hire illegals, ship them to jail.  Let them flip burgers for real when they get out.  If they push H-1Bs, force them to relocate to Calcutta, since that is what they are turning America into: a third-world call center with first-world prices.

So, why are kids turned off capitalism?

Because it has been hijacked by the very people who should be its stewards.

The Rasmussen poll nails it:  36 percent of young voters are struggling financially, and 76 percent want government to nationalize major industries if it means fairness.  This is a warning shot that is leading to failing governments across the world right now, from Nepal to France to Argentina.

We can fix this.

Deport the illegals flooding jobs, kill the H-1B program, make college affordable again allowing student loans to be discharged in bankruptcy so silly degrees won’t be financed, and prioritize families with rule changes that discourage splitting up.

Restore the dream where a kid can mow lawns, go to college without debt slavery, buy a house, and raise a family without the system screwing them at every turn.

Politicians ignore this at their own peril.  The managers (the people) are yelling.

Civil War 2.0 Weather Report: Mass Deportation Is The Moderate Position

“There may be no criminal charges, but I’ll see these files reach Calcutta with the advice you be deported as political undesirables.” – The Man Who Would Be King

A Russian acrobat was deported, and now our human pyramid doesn’t have Oleg to stand on.

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

Volume VII, Issue 4

Most memes except for the clock and graphs are “as found”.  I have kept the Clock O’Doom to 8., given the open support of criminality in Blue cities becoming clearer by the day with their own words.  They feel the violence in Chicago and Baltimore and New York and Los Angeles is justified.  Beware: the number can climb quickly.  Right now (as of publishing) we are dropping below Level Rittenhouse and it looks like we avoided Level Rooftop Korean.  For now.

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 – Mass Deportation Is Now The Moderate Position – Violence and Censorship Update – Misery Index – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – The Imperial Presidency – 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 850 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at or before 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Mass Deportation Is Now The Moderate Position

Finally, and after years of absolutely no one voting for the mass immigration, legal and illegal, native peoples appear to have had enough:

  • enough of the violence and rape directed at them,
  • enough of the migrant murderers,
  • enough of having to work to pay taxes for freeloaders,
  • enough of the being told they are racist for complaining about having to conform to customs and behaviors that range from bizarre to barely civilized,
  • enough for having to support the children of other nations and being unable to afford their own,
  • enough propaganda about how they should seek to be childfree and kill themselves,
  • enough telling them that they should be happy to be replaced (even though that’s totally not happening and they should still be happy about if it was),
  • enough government censorship,
  • enough loss of free speech rights,
  • enough of being told that their flag is racist,
  • enough of being told that their economy can’t survive without cheap imported labor, and
  • enough of having to become strangers in a country they were born in.

If this weren’t Western Europe being invaded by endless hordes of third-worlders, I’d imagine the GloboLeft would scream for arming the invaded, look at Ukraine.  They’d be hounding Trump to air-drop in small arms and ammunition and declaring a no-fly zone, giving aid and intelligence to the partisan freedom fighters that were being displaced in their own country.

China, no friend to the West, is amused.  Their projections are that the West will cease to exist in any shape of consequence by the year 2050 due to multiculturalism.  And, they’re right.  Balkanization will lead to a squabbling group of states and atrocities that make the current state of Gaza seem tame by comparison, but no one will be photographing it, because no one will care.

The imported cultures coming into the West are fundamentally incompatible with the West.  A group of 320 Africans killed 70 people on their boated headed towards Spain last month.  Why?  Witchcraft.  Sure, I’m all for burning witches, but what chance is there that these sub-Saharan Africans or their descendants will ever enhance Spain?  How long will the Spanish take this?  The English?  The Scots?  The Irish?  The Danes?  Right now, the Poles are having none of it, and are outperforming the rest of the West.  The GloboLeft Germans are frightened – having killed 6 or 7 candidates for AfD in the last two weeks, right before their election.

Based on what is obviously coming, the obvious conclusion is this:

Mass deportation is now the moderate position.

Violence and Censorship Update

Violence takes the center stage this month, as Germans on the “right” (they’d be center-left in the US) have been dying – specifically seven candidates right before the election.

Staying in Europe – a young Scottish girl defended herself against some (now arrested) alien invaders.  Why is the mainstream media ignoring this story?

In the States, it appears that if you’re beaten up badly, the local politicians will say you had it coming.

And in other cities, the law is only a suggestion.

And, lawmakers themselves are avoiding their elected responsibilities:

Moving to censorship, Great Britain is trying to fight 4Chan.

A 4Chan anon notes that this is all part of the plan:

And games sellers are folding to financial blackmail to censor games from banks threatening to cut them off from banking:

Wikipedia® is a biased source, but some want it to be a controlled source:

Regardless:

Misery Index

The new Trump administration is shown in red.  Results continue to be much better than Biden’s misery numbers as Trump’s policies apparently have been stunning at reversing the tide.  We’ll see, as the long term trend is not good.

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 down slightly this month, again.  Has Trump broken them?

Political Instability:

Down is more stable, and it went slightly up this month even though Democrats have never been more unhappy.

Economic:

The economy is up a bit this month, again.  But the H-1B program still exists.

Illegal Aliens:

Still the lowest level since the Weather Report started.  Remember, they care nothing for our country, nothing for our history, and only want money and political power.

The Imperial Presidency

I wonder how chapped Obama’s butt is every morning when he gets up and looks to see what Trump has done.  Really, Obama started it, with his, “I don’t have the Constitutional authority to do it, but I’m doing it anyway” “stroke of the pen, law of the land, kinda cool” executive orders.

Those were bad.  I’ve never liked executive orders, since they seem to take the Legislative work and turn it over to the Executive.  But the Executive writes all the regulations and Congress never reads them, because, I think, they don’t have enough time because they need to spend the evening eating bacon-wrapped shrimp at the lobbyist parties.  So, the Executive has become more and more powerful.

Trump has decided, I think, that “I’m nearly 80, I’m not going to live all that long, I’m not going to be re-elected, they’re going to hate me anyway, so let’s put the pedal to the metal and see how fast this baby will go.”  It’s probably never a great idea to put someone who is deep into IDGAF territory and who also has a really short time horizon in charge, but here we are.

It’s amusing, at least for now.  Trump has greatly expanded the powers of the Executive, and no one outside of some foreign judges (who claim to be American) has tried to stop him, including the Supreme Court.  I could go back in time and blame everyone from Teddy R. to Wilson on up, but, whatever.

It is what it is – the federal government has grown to massive proportions, and Donald Trump has become the Imperial President.  It won’t be him, mind you, but the next guy, or the guy after that that will cross the Rubicon and become the “president” for a lot longer.  The sort of power that is being unleashed is just the same as before Augustus seized final power in Rome, after Caesar (Trump) set the stage.

Buckle up, because it will be messy getting there.

LINKS

BAD GUYS

https://x.com/i/status/1952491475666878745
https://x.com/TheKevinDalton/status/1954189984594092107
https://x.com/WallStreetApes/status/1956137380995588439
https://x.com/i/status/1951772080359473416

GOOD GUYS

https://x.com/TheImmortal007/status/1955711189293654316
https://x.com/i/status/1955639211685765450
https://x.com/billysandytodd/status/1957566944753701169

ONE GUY

https://realclearwire.com/articles/2025/08/01/another_armed_civilian_saves_the_day_153123.html

BODY COUNT

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/aug/20/trans-people-us-data
https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/publications/trans-adults-united-states/
https://www.pewresearch.org/race-and-ethnicity/2025/08/21/u-s-unauthorized-immigrant-population-reached-a-record-14-million-in-2023/
https://cis.org/Report/Overall-ForeignBorn-Population-Down-22-Million-January-July
https://www.dhs.gov/news/2025/08/12/ice-receives-100000-applications-patriotic-americans-who-want-help-remove-murderers
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/Trumps-Federal-Layoffs_03-web.jpg?itok=r8mse-D1
https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/The-American-Workforce-in-2002-v.jpg?itok=HdYKJcPT
https://classsolidarity.org/billionaires/
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/fewer-young-adults-reaching-adulthood-milestones-census-report/
https://www.newsweek.com/less-religion-less-babies-declining-birth-rate-2110254

VOTE COUNT

https://x.com/CitizenFreePres/status/1960686967273738382
https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1956450577593848041
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/20/us/politics/democratic-party-voter-registration-crisis.html?unlocked_article_code=1.fk8.l6c4.j2Uq_wX_yelU&smid=url-share
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2025/08/22/mail-in_ballots_need_to_go_153204.html

CIVIL WAR

https://modernity.news/2025/08/16/british-army-colonel-civil-war-is-coming/
https://off-guardian.org/2025/08/10/stirrings-of-rebellion-in-unhappy-britain/
https://amgreatness.com/2025/08/14/who-has-been-busy-destroying-democracy/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/new-device-data-reveals-exactly-who-showed-white-house-protests
https://forwardobserver.com/color-revolution-a-strategic-assessment-2025-2028/
https://archive.is/VYDs2
https://archive.is/MKs8n
https://www.foxnews.com/media/new-york-times-essay-hoping-military-would-stand-up-trump-draws-fire-social-media
https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2025/08/18/what-is-the-democrats-endgame-n2661929#google_vignette
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/pentagon-plan-would-create-military-reaction-force-for-civil-unrest/ar-AA1KmDsZ
https://www.newsweek.com/campus-guardian-angel-school-shooting-drone-2106792

Cash, Hot Chick Memes, And Gold

“Good night, sweet maiden of the golden ale.” – The Fellowship of the Ring

She got pulled over, and the cop asked, “Whose car is this, where are you going, and what do you do?”  Her answer:  “Mine.”

The economy is currently a carnival funhouse rollercoaster:  interest rates are climbing like a squirrel on espresso, the Federal Reserve® is promising cuts, and the U.S. Treasury is issuing bonds 30-year bonds that are paying a higher interest rate than they have since the 2008 crash.

Meanwhile, central banks around the world are ditching those same Treasuries and buying gold, and the kids?  They can’t get jobs.

I think we might want to buckle up, because this carnival rollercoaster might be bumpy.

The U.S. 30-year Treasury yield hit 5% today, a level not seen since the 2008.  You’d think with the Fed™ signaling rate cuts, yields would chill out and drop like the mood of the Prime Minister when he’s confronted with all those pesky English and Scots he hasn’t replaced yet.

Nope.   Interest rates are spiking like a 35-year-old guy who identifies as a middle school girl volleyball player.

What’s gray, has spikes, and runs around a field?  Barbed wire.

Why?

The Treasury is flooding the market with bonds to finance a national debt that has ballooned to $37.3 trillion.  The Treasury issues the bonds, and buyers (think mutual funds, foreign central banks, and the Fed® itself) are supposed to snap them up.  The problem is, supply of these bonds is growing faster than a vegan’s tears at a butcher shop.

When nobody wants bonds because there are so many of them, they’ve got to sweeten the deal with higher yields or make the Fed© buy them.  People don’t trust the future value of the paper, so they require a higher interest rate to take it.  That’s basic supply and demand.  But here’s the kicker:  the Fed’s® still printing money like it’s auditioning for the “irresponsible German bank” part in a Weimar Republic reboot.

The U.S. money supply (M2) is growing at about 5% a year, pumping roughly $1 trillion into the system annually.  With bonds looking as appealing as a moldy sandwich, where’s the money going?

My maid doesn’t get tired, she gets sweepy.

Two places:  gold and stuff.  Real stuff, like oil, copper, or steak.

Central banks aren’t idiots, despite what their hairstyles suggest.  They’re dumping Treasuries and hoarding gold like it’s the last Twinkie® in a zombie apocalypse. Gold prices are up 2% the day after Labor Day (for you foreigners, Labor Day is the one day in the year that women are legally allowed to give birth in the United States).

Why?  Gold remains a hedge against chaos, and with geopolitics shakier than a Jenga© tower on 9/11, it’s no surprise.  Central banks from China to Switzerland are stocking up, signaling they trust shiny metal more than Uncle Sam’s never-ending stream of Everlasting Gobstopper© IOUs.

Then there’s oil. Prices are climbing reflexively, at a time when oil prices (and gasoline prices) normally go down a bit due to the end of northern hemisphere summer driving season.  When cash is flooding the system and bonds are a hard pass, investors pivot to tangible assets.  Gold doesn’t default.  Oil keeps the trucks moving.

Treasuries?

They’re only as good as the government’s promise not to go crazy and fill piñatas with them.  With deficits soaring, that promise is starting to sound like a drunk uncle swearing he’ll “pay me back next week”.

But the blindfold helped, they said.

Rising rates are usually bad news for stocks.  Why? Companies live on debt.  That cheap borrowing fuels expansion, stock buybacks, and those swanky CEO jets.  When rates climb, borrowing costs spike, squeezing margins like a python on a parrot.  Every S&P 500 company has a line of credit, because if they’re not in debt, some Wall Street shark will swoop in, use the company’s own assets as collateral, and buy it out faster than you can say “beveraged luyout.”  Higher rates mean higher hurdles for profits, and markets hate hurdles more than a couch potato hates a 5K.

Yet, the market’s been elastic, bending without breaking because most of those dollars printed end up in the hands of the companies that make up the S&P 500.  The S&P 500 is near all-time highs, shrugging off tariff tantrums and rate spikes like it’s no big deal.

But markets are funny:  they stretch until they snap.  This time, I’m sure it’s different. (Cue the Seinfeld laugh track.) The last time everyone thought markets were invincible, we got 2008.  Don’t bet on “different” when history has proven to have a mean right hook.

One pirate I know got his hook at the second-hand store.

But at least unemployment is low, right?

Sure, if you’re a boomer with a corner office.  The headline rate is 4.2%, but for 16- to 24-year-olds, it’s over 10%.  That’s not “low”; that’s a generation stuck flipping burgers since 60% of new college grads aren’t employed.  The “quits” rate—how often people ditch their jobs—is at a five-year low, meaning kids aren’t leaving because they know there’s nothing else out there.

A soft labor market plus rising rates?  That’s a recipe for stagflation, not growth.  No wonder Gen Z’s more interested in crypto scams and video games than climbing the corporate ladder.

So, where’s this economic rollercoaster headed?

The Fed© is in a bind.  They’re being pushed to cut rates to juice the economy, but inflation is still hovering near 3%, and it’s flexing upwards.

Keep printing money, and inflation could roar back like a drunken ex with a cell phone at 2am.  Raise rates too fast, and you choke the economy, spiking unemployment and tanking stocks.  Meanwhile, the Treasury is issuing bonds like they’re piñata stuffing, but buyers are scarce.  Foreign central banks own $8.7 trillion in Treasuries, but they’re pivoting to gold because it’s the only central bank holding that’s appreciating.

This all points to a reckoning.

Printed greenbacks are flooding in, but it’s not going to bonds—it’s chasing gold, oil, and maybe that Bitcoin your nephew won’t shut up about while not yet fleeing from the S&P 500, who will end up getting the cash anyway.

Superman® does have a cousin without superpowers.  Poor Norm-El.

Markets might keep bending, but history says they will eventually break.  It could be a slow bleed, like the stagflation of the 70s, or a sharp crash, like 2008.  Either way, the government is spending like a toddler with a sugar high and a credit card, and the bill will eventually be paid by the borrower.

Or the lender.

I worry that we might be seeing an economic rollercoaster, but that’s still better than the most powerful carnival ride:  the merry-go-round.

It has the most horse power.

Disclaimer:  I am not a financial advisor.  You would be foolish to trust me for financial advice, since I have taken my own advice many times and based on the results I consider myself a sketchy source on my best day, so you should talk to someone who knows more about it than an Internet humorist, even though I’m currently sober.  Currently.  As far as you know.