Category: Truth

Why The Left Fears The Right, And Why The Right Will Win

“Oh, haven’t you noticed?  We’ve been sharing our culture with you all morning.” – 300

TRUTH

When I was a five or so, my parents had horses.  One of the horses had a foal (baby horse for you city folk), and Pa Wilder brought the foal and the mare (momma horse) into the barn – it was brutally cold, and the barn was much warmer.  They brought me down to see the foal.  It was young and awkward as new horses are.

Inside the stall was a series of closely spaced rails in a square, about four feet by six feet.

I asked, “What’s that for, Pa?”

“Well, when the foal is in here, he’ll find that he can’t walk across the bars.  His hooves won’t quite fit.  That will train him so he won’t do that when he gets older.”

Even at five, I had seen cattle guards and knew cows wouldn’t try to cross them.  But here was a horse.

CATTLE

From Library of Congress.

“Won’t he try to jump over the cattle guard, Pa?”

“Some horses, the smart ones, will figure out and a cattle guard won’t work on them.  But most don’t.  Heck, you can just paint parallel lines on an asphalt road and some horses won’t try to cross them.”

The little training bars were a device, a device to train the horse that he was in a prison made up of parallel bars on the ground.  In that, the horse restricted his own freedom.

In the last post (Money, Power, Politics, and Soros), I discussed the difference between Money and Power.  I actually finished most of the last post before I wrote the conclusion.  Money and Power as described through most of the post were entirely materialistic concepts.  Ending it with just that discussion wasn’t right, since the theme of my writing is often to balance the material with the concepts of spirit and virtue.  We live in a material world, but the reason we live is for a purpose greater than this moment.

Freedom isn’t important to either Money or Power; Freedom is actually the enemy of both Money and Power.  Throughout most of recorded history in the West, when either Money or Power get too out of balance, there is a backlash, and Freedom eventually wins.

It has for thousands of years.

And it will again.  I firmly believe that the destiny of the West is in the hands of those who love Freedom, especially in the United States.

Why?

The Left is utterly afraid of the Right.  Though they put forward a great front – they are shaking.  The American people on the Right compose the largest potential army in the history of the world.

The numbers:

There are at least 400,000,000 guns in private hands in the United States by one estimate.  That seems right.

There are 800,000 or so cops.  Assume they have two guns each.  Heck, assume they have three.  Round up.  Three million guns.  The Military in the United States owns about 4.4 million guns.  Round up.  That’s a total of less than 10 million guns in the hands of the United States government or other governmental authorities.  And that assumes that they stand with the government, which is questionable at best.

Assume only 35% of the American public owns guns, a number I think is very low.  Call it 100,000,000 people.  Assume that those owners skew mostly Right – 80/20?  That’s 80,000,000 on the Right.  Let’s do 80/20 again on those that will not stand for a communist uprising in the United States.  That’s 16,000,000 Americans ready to stand in the breach.  The largest army in the history of the world (so far) were the United States armed forces in 1945:  12,000,000 Americans under arms.

I’ll state it again:  American people on the Right have the potential to compose the largest army in the history of the world.  Period.

People on the Right, men and women, also have more and better training for field conditions.  I’d put The Mrs. up against most people on the Left if it came to a rural setting, because Leftists have no idea that trees are even made of wood, and I doubt that many on the Right will want to make the Stalingrad mistake and get caught in the cities as Leftists consume themselves.  How many people on the Right have their homes on the market to escape from Minneapolis?  From Seattle?  From any of dozens of cities where they know that they no longer belong?

I have no idea.  But they’d be fools to stay.

And even though we have the numbers on our side, there’s more good news.  We don’t even need overwhelming numerical superiority:

  • How many apostles peacefully changed the religion of Europe?
  • How many Spartans defended all of Western Civilization at Thermopylae?

“But John,” you say, “most all of the people in your examples died for their cause.”  Yes, they did.  And we remember them for that, because they changed the world.  Thousands of years before Robert Heinlein said it, they knew the truth of his quote:  “You can have peace.  Or you can have freedom.  Don’t ever count on having both at once.”

Besides, everyone is going to die.  Is it better to be a Leonidas or a St. Peter?

Obviously, it is.

Don’t be like Ephialtes (LINK).

We outgun the Left.  We have Truth, capital T, on our side.  The other day Vox Day had this inspiring clip at his blog (LINK).

It was a good clip, and one I’d forgotten.  So we watched the movie again tonight – it’s one that could not be made by Hollywood® today.  That clip also makes the point I tried to make earlier much more eloquently than I ever could.

The Black Riots Lives Matter riots are demoralizing to people of good character.  This is intentional.  The riots are meant to make you feel alone.  The riots are meant to make you feel that the Right has already lost.

The Right has not lost.

How did the Modern Sporting Lawyer make you feel?

STLOU

That’s why he and his wife are condemned.  That’s why they have vowed to cancel him, to make an example of them, to find a way to charge them with crime.  They are the opposite of demoralization.

The Modern Sporting Lawyer and his wife drive the Left crazy.  Here, their desire to destroy as a senseless mob was turned back by only two people.

Can you imagine if the Right was united?  I can.

The corollary is obvious:  quit fighting each other in the right.  Stop.  People don’t believe in your exact brand?

You can’t stand Libertarians?  You can’t stand Lutherans? Baptists? Catholics? Vox Day?  That atheist friend that doesn’t mind Christianity but still believes in freedom?  The idea to fix our situation isn’t exactly yours?

Too bad.

We are in the same foxhole.  Stop (metaphorically) shooting each other.  Now.  If you’re not with us, you’re against us.  And if you’re fighting us, you’re against us.

How do you know if you’re with us?

  • We like building statues, not tearing them down.
  • We like building civilization, not tearing it apart.
  • We like the reason of facts and truth, not the politically correct statement of the moment.
  • We like justice based on law, not the social justice of the mob or judges that twist “shall not” into “sometimes.”
  • We like a culture of honor, not a culture of victimhood due to the self-imposed prison.

And that is the difference.  The Left is bitter.  The Left is seething.  The Left is angry.

Why?  Because, just like the foal with the cattle guard, they’ve made themselves prisoners.  They’ve forgotten that becoming a prisoner might not be a choice for a horse, but it is for a person.  But for the Left, that prison mentality is preferred.

The prison mentality is the chosen mentality of the Left.  They see themselves as weak.  Since they see themselves as weak, there is no choice but to hate themselves for that weakness.  But outwardly, the Left rationalizes that weakness as being, somehow, good.  They have to, because that’s all that stands between them and the unending self-hate.  The Left raises an “anything goes” sexuality and sensuality to the highest plane because they are rooted in the Material, and cannot understand the Spiritual, the Transcendent.

The Right rejects that.  All of it.

Sex isn’t a virtue, chastity is a virtue.  Sex isn’t evil, but making it the focus of your life is no different than any other addiction – it is a vice.  But which of those does the Left celebrate?  Inside, they know that it’s wrong, and that also fills them with self-hate.

Because of that hate, and seek to make the Right weak like them.  How?  By demoralizing the Right, by taking virtues and attacking them while publicly celebrating things we use to call sin.  By coming up with never ending list of impossible demands and nonsensical redefinitions of the English language on an ever more frequent basis.  Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has recently been excommunicated from the Left for being brazen enough to indicate that women might be, well, women.

ROWLING

The Right has built Western Civilization, and built it with a compassion for the weak.  That makes the Left hate the Right even more.  They seek to make us doubt our morals and virtue:  everyone is racist, every historical figure is fatally flawed.  That is justification enough in the minds of the Left to tear down everything that has made their prosperity and wealth transfer possible.  The Left makes no real art, just caricatures of the genius that has gone before, photographs of Christ soaking in urine.  The Left is a parasite that, failing to create, destroys.

But those games won’t work anymore.  The Right is strong.  The Right is virtuous.  The Left seeks to build nothing because that is the province of the Right.  And to the Left, those who are strong and build statues to the virtues of flawed men are evil.

Was Columbus perfect?  No.  Did he open up a New World?  Yes.  How many people in Mexico City would prefer to revert to the charnel house of the Aztecs?  Some, but every hand that goes up will belong to a member of the Left.

The Right is not evil.  We hold the light of Freedom, of civilization, of the future of mankind in our hands.  Why?  Because they could never build it.  The Left seeks to delegitimize our moral achievement, because they feel small and envious next to those that compete and create.

Remember, the Soviets never looked stronger than they did immediately before they collapsed.

I don’t think we will win.

I know we will win.  We are the foals that recognize the painted lines on the asphalt for the lie that they are.  We are the horses that realize that they have the strength to jump over the cattle guard that we used to think was our prison.

PAINT

From Library of Congress.

I feel sorry for those who stand against the Right when we find our backs are to the wall.  We have created the most powerful and free and prosperous culture in history.  The Right doesn’t know its own strength.  But it will learn, and the Left is afraid.

We will win.  Maybe not this year.  Maybe not next year.  Maybe not even in the next decade.  And the future won’t look like the past – that past is what led us to this crisis.  We have the opportunity to remake our civilization, to remake America and to make it better.

And we will make it better.

And we will win.

We always have.

What is your profession?

I rarely ask people to share these posts, but if you have people you know are feeling down – please do.

Questions: Important For Llamas And Finding The Truth

“Have you calculated the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything?” – Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

CONNERY

Sean Connery is a stickler for grooming.  I was stuck in a burning building while he was using the extinguisher to keep a path open for me.  Then he told me, “shave yourself!”

A few years ago I was meeting with a person that reported to me at work.  I was asking a question with a yes or no answer.  One thing that being in thousands of hours of corporate meetings has taught me is that if you ask an open ended question, people will talk.  And talk.  And talk.  Even if they have nothing to say – those meeting room corporate doughnuts aren’t going to eat themselves.

So, a lot of my questions were phrased in the form of, “Do you know where the llama is?”

My company doesn’t use llamas except for unlicensed medical experimentation to find a cure for chronic nose picking, so in this case “llama” is really easier than referencing the “Illudium Q-36 Explosive Space Modulator” that we really make.

There are really only two answers:

  • “Yes, John Wilder, the llama is in the break room playing beer pong with Vladimir Putin.”
  • “No, John Wilder, I have no idea.”

MARVIN

Well, I guess we know what’s going to happen in July.

A pattern that I had noticed was that when the answer was “Yes, I know where the llama is,” people would just say, “Yes.”

Simple.  We’re done.  Move on to the next question.

But if people didn’t know where the llama was, what I mentally thought of as “The Story” started.  The story had a million variants:  “No, John Wilder, I don’t know where the llama is because it had sticky glands and we were out of llama soap and a friend came in from out of town and I just quit heroin and Vladimir Putin took off his shirt and making sweet talk to the llama last week.”

The Story is long.  The Story isn’t really relevant.

People didn’t want to tell me “No.”  If they had, and knowing where the llama was mattered, I could follow up with a question.  Most of the time my question was, “Well, when are you going to find the llama?”  Frankly, I’ve heard more excuses than Joe Biden has lost memories, so “Why don’t you know where the llama is?” was most of the time something I didn’t really care about.  But they made the decision that I cared why they didn’t know where the llama was.

ILLAM

Never worry about food when you travel with llamas.  Alpaca lunch.

I had one very bright employee, Bill Nothisrealname, that a recent college grad.  He started to explain why he didn’t know where the llama was:  he was winding up to tell The Story.

I stopped him.

“Bill, you were first in your class in high school, right?”

“Yes.”

“And then you went to college at Southern North Eastern Midwestia State, which is a pretty good school.  Heck, I bet that you were in the top ten in GPA in your degree?”

“Yeah, I was in the top five of the class.”

I gestured at the offices up and down the hallway.  “Bill, everyone here was at the top of their class in high school and graduated at the top of their class from college in a degree just as tough as yours.  My boss, Boris.  He’s as smart as a Vulcan that crossbred with a computer and has the personality to match.  When he asks me a question, he wants me to answer that question.  He’s no dummy.

“And Boris isn’t afraid to ask questions, either.  He’s realized that even as a top executive in the company, he doesn’t and can’t know everything.”

Bill nodded.

APOC

I never really liked that Coppola movie, Alpaca Lips Now.

“Here’s what I think.  When you were in third grade, you were smart.  When the rest of the class didn’t know the answer, the teacher looked at you, right?”

“Yes.”

“And that didn’t change in high school.  Or, for you, even in college.  I think that you think you have to know the answer, because you were the smart kid.  Bill, everyone, and I mean everyone here is that smart.  You weren’t hired because you knew all of the answers – you were hired because you were smart, and had good character.  Don’t be afraid to not know everything – asking questions is a sign of power.  And . . . answer the question that was asked.

“Bill, do you know where the llama is?”

“No.”

MARIOT

But don’t-a worry – health is her new issue.  She’s still all-in for Ollamacare.

I moved on to the next question.  In this case, the llama wasn’t all that important, except as it related to teaching Bill that he didn’t need to know everything, and that asking questions isn’t a sign of weakness, it’s a sign of self-confidence.  And if it sounded like the exchange was mean, it really wasn’t.  Bill’s worldview was just a bit off.  Besides, I knew that once Putin got his claws into a really pretty llama like this one, we wouldn’t see either of them until they’d ridden through the mountains together and hunted the Rocky Mountain Spotted Poodle – the only true sport for men.

The point is still valid.  Whenever I’ve seen a good leader, that leader isn’t afraid to ask questions, and isn’t afraid to admit that they don’t know everything.  Part of writing this blog is me answering my own questions.  And I have to be right – you’re a tough but fair crowd, and you tell me when my participle is dangling.

Questions are important.

The first thing I like to question is myself.  Scott Adams says that two people might watch the same event and give it entirely different meaning – he calls it watching two movies on one screen.  An example is Trump:  Leftists think that everything, and I mean everything he does is comprised of a pure evil that requires he eat a live puppy every day.  There’s even a name for it:  Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS).  The symptoms include being triggered, literally shaking, wandering around in a circle muttering, “impeach . . . impeach . . . impeach.”  Thankfully, many sufferers have found work as extras on The Walking Dead.

That’s one movie.  There’s a second group that views Trump as a genius God Emperor who is sixteen steps ahead, playing 11-dimensional chess.  This group thinks that the riots are perhaps his crowning achievement since he can use the riots to . . . ummm, I’m not sure what.  I bet that plan shows up soon.

Both groups are wrong.   My experience is you can talk to the God Emperor crowd, but the TDS sufferers just can’t discuss Trump.  At all.

How much of my reality am I allowing to be filtered?  How much am I deluding myself?  These are the questions I repeatedly ask as I look for Truth.

TRUMP

Or you could just take their lunch money and buy yourself something nice.

The second question are my sources.  People write all sorts of things, and on the Internet I can find a theory that all of the Challenger space shuttle crew survived the explosion and are still living today.  Why?  Because the Earth is flat.  Really, that’s what they believe.  There are also people who believe that the world is run by reptilian aliens who run the banks.

Of course those are absurd.  The Internet is so questionable when it comes to facts that I’ve even seen Internet reports that I have hair.  But how many shades of truth do we believe in each day without checking?  I know that I’ve been shocked when I do research for Wilder, Wealthy and Wise that it’s not what I know that shocks me:  it’s what I know that isn’t right.  Who knew kittens couldn’t fly, even if you used a really big slingshot to give them a good takeoff?

The next question are my viewpoints.  How many are wrong?  In some cases I have taken years to figure out what I think about a subject, because I just hadn’t figured out the right way to look at it:  I just don’t have a mental or moral model that fits it properly.  I ended up being a ping-pong ball.  There were good points on each side.  How do the pros and cons line up?

When I was younger, I was more of a pure libertarian, even sometimes a Libertarian.  I believed that if McDonalds™ wanted to sell me a hydrogen bomb and I had the cash, I should be able to order a McNuke®.  As I get older, maybe not.  And I now think that young children shouldn’t have guns:  they’re much more effective using a crew-served weapon like a heavy machine gun or a mortar since they can overcome their inherent weakness by working together.  If only a six year old could lift artillery shells….

CREWED

My militia may be small, but they work for chocolate milk.

The final question is what can I learn from others?  And I can only do that by asking questions – and having the humility to listen to the answers, no matter how stupid they are.  I kid.  I really have learned a lot by listening instead of talking.

So, anybody know where the llama is?  Did another one fall in love with Putin?

Free Speech: Endangered Species – WRSA is Down

“Uncomfortable silences.” – Pulp Fiction

COMPETE

Censor for the children!  They shouldn’t think for themselves, right?

I originally was going to write a lighthearted post tonight about the economics of deflation, banking, and the Fed that shows that deflation is the thing that scares the Powers That Be the most right now.  Who knows, there might even have been bikini economic graphs.  I mean, the world loves humor about banking and economics, right?   I hear it’s right up there with dentistry jokes.

But deflation is not what scares the Powers That Be.  It’s information that scares them more than anything.  What information?  Anything counter to the Narrative.

Western Rifle Shooters Association (WRSA) was taken down on Tuesday, June 2, 2020.  Here’s the message from Concerned American, the proprietor of the site:

POST #1 WRSA REBOOT CYCLE
1955E 2JUN2020

That Would Be Called An “Indicator”

One of the early goals of all Red revolutions is the seizure or destruction of all information distribution outlets.

There is only one truth to the Communist: that day’s party line.

Woe unto those who do not adhere.

The second iteration of the Western Rifle Shooters Association (WRSA) blog, hosted by WordPress, was nuked today.

While it is a loss, it was a deliberate sacrifice of a player to increase situational awareness.

The Reds are on the move.

The prize is the former United States of America.

The Red cares not about race, except to the extent it can and is used to befog the naive about the Party’s real goals.

WRSA was, first and always, a freedom advocacy site.

It was shot out of the saddle today by an arm of the Communist enemy propaganda machine.

Their attack did not kill WRSA.

Nor did it kill a single one of its followers.

The totalitarian bastards really can’t stop the signal.

Take heart, not just in this tiny skirmish but in the overall struggle to save the West, from WRSA’s final masthead:

“This is only the beginning of the reckoning. This is only the first sip, the first foretaste of a bitter cup which will be proffered to us year by year unless by a supreme recovery of moral health and martial vigour, we arise again and take our stand for freedom as in the olden time.”

― Winston Churchill

Forward.

NEO

I think he might need some Chapstick®.

His older blogsite is here (LINK).  I don’t know if he’ll be posting again there, but I can certainly bet he’s not done.  He built the 127,000th most popular website in the United States, before WordPress® nuked his paying subscription from orbit without explanation.

This is an example of the desire on the Left to make the First Amendment irrelevant.  You can say anything you want, but if they won’t let you say it where people will hear you, does it matter?  Another way to say that is, “If a blogger memes in the forest, will anyone LOL?”

The libertarian take on censorship by corporation is a fairly solid version of “if it’s a private company, they can do what they want.”  Frankly, it’s a view that I subscribed to a while back.  But a while back, Twitter® also tried to humorously advertise itself as the “free-speech wing of the free-speech party.”  And they still are big fans of free speech.  Well, they’re fans of free speech, as long as you are on the Left.  James Woods popped out the following tweet last year:

WOODS

Woods was banned until some flunky at Twitter™ removed the offending Tweet® for him. 

I started out on Twitter™ to try to build an audience for this blog.  It worked, sort of.  I’m not sure that I caught many long term readers there, but it gave me enough hits to keep me writing and not giving up until a real audience built.  Concentrating on writing more better might have been part of building an audience as well.  And maybe adding bikini graphs didn’t hurt.

BIKINI

Okay, here’s one.

But I noticed over time that my voice was “turned down” on Twitter©.  Tweets® that got tons of impressions (78,000 for one!) dropped off to just a few as my voice was progressively (word choice not an accident) muted.  By then, I didn’t have to trick people to come to the blog with free candy.  I did know, however, that something that Twitter™ had done lowered the number of people who got to share in my nuggets of wisdom.

Twitter© isn’t just a fun thing anymore.  Yes, it’s a private company.  But it has developed into a public square.  Do I advocate government control of Twitter™?  Not really.  But censoring people based on political viewpoint is wrong, especially when James Woods gets banned but the Islamic Council of Iranian Chowderheads makes threats about sinking the Navy of United States.  Iran is being responsible, but James Woods is the terrorist?

TRUST

An early version of the Trust and Safety Council. 

To ban someone is no longer a private affair – it effectively removes their opinion (and a lot of uncomfortable facts) from the public stage.

And that’s wrong.  Freedom of speech isn’t about supporting popular opinions, like all of the “brave” companies like Apple™ that have tossed up a pride flag or Sony® black square as their profile picture.  That’s not brave.

Apple© and Sony® protesting the child and slave labor that manufactures their games and gizmos in an unending series of 12 hour days, 28 days a month?  Now that would be brave, especially since they hired those companies.

Facebook™ is a similar beast.  I use Facebook© only very sporadically, say, four times a year.  But the rest of the world seems to use it.  To ban Alex Jones?  It’s like banning the World Wrestling Federation Entertainment™ because people might think the wrestling matches are real.

ZUCK

But at least I hear the benefits are good.   

I cannot hold WordPress® to the same standard as platforms like Twitter™ and Facebook©.  There are other places that provide hosting.  I do, however, find fault with WordPress®.  If bakers have to bake a wedding cake for gay people, yes, WordPress™ should have to host a blog of someone who is an advocate for freedom.

Where do I find a nice profile icon for that?

Well, there it is.  I really wanted to write that post on fractional reserve banking.  Next Wednesday, I promise.  I know you can’t wait.  You say you come here for the bikinis, but I know it’s really all about the economic analysis.

The Rule of Law: It’s not just for breakfast anymore.

“You used the law and a badge to heal that scar on your neck.” – Hang ‘em High

CORGI

I would recommend him as a lawyer, but he told the judge he ate my appeal.

About 4,400 years ago, a Mesopotamian king by the name of Urukagina developed the first known civil laws.  They certainly weren’t the first laws, but they are the first ones we have written proof of.  Perhaps the biggest mystery of Urukagina is how he got through middle school with a name like Urukagina.

Law is the bedrock of human civilization.  If we don’t have rules we all (more or less) agree to, we can’t live together.  Sometimes the laws are complex:  I’ve heard that it’s a law that you have to turn on your headlights if it’s raining in Sweden.  I’m not sure how am I supposed to know if it’s raining in Sweden, so I guess I’m quite the rogue when choose to live on the edge and drive without my lights.

Sadly, everyone can see what happens when laws break down.  The riots that started in Minnesota are an example that won’t be forgotten soon.  The breakdown that started in Minnesota is currently still spreading across the United States.  That’s not good.  In my opinion, the only good riot is three dyslexics.

Laws are like money – they’re a virtual system.  They exist only because we all agree that they exist – the same way that East Germany disappeared as soon as people stopped being afraid of it.  As soon a majority of people in an area stop believing in them, laws are as worthless as Johnny Depp’s liver on the black market.

DEPP

Johnny Depp told David Letterman he never watches his own movies.  What a lucky guy. 

The anti-police-violence riots were based on a winning argument that could have resonated all across the political spectrum – not allowing the police to use excessive force.  Had the protesters brought out the cases of LaVoy Finicum and Daniel Shaver as additional examples, I think they would have been surprised at the support they got.  Instead?  They rioted, burned, and all they got was a free t-shirt from Target® and enough looted liquor to fuel the protest for the next night.  Can’t go looting without a nice Natty Light®.

However, the protesters managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.  Most of the time, when cops are presented with that awful decision to pull out their gun and shoot, it’s justified.  But the larger injustices are the ones we see when police do things that, if you or I were doing them, would put us in jail.  Rather than engaging others with that simple and powerful point, they protested entirely through the lens of race.  The protests escalated into riots.  The violence and property damage have ironically made the case for the use of significant force in putting down the riots.

They were never serious about protesting against police violence.

It’s lucky for those that like living in a stable society that people generally like laws.  They want to know where they stand and have a predictable society.  Research has shown that people have an innate sense of justice – it’s something that we appear to have been born with.  When the legal system works, it makes the Karen inside each one of us happy.  We generally want people who do bad things to be punished.  We want innocent people to go free.  And we want Whoopi Goldberg to develop a decade-long case of laryngitis.

RIOT

Looks like Minnesota picked the wrong week to stop snorting glue.

We’ve had good laws and bad laws during the time humanity has been on Earth, but regardless, the law represented a standard.  The only reason that we grant the state a monopoly on the use of force is that we trust that the state is just as bound by the law as the people are.  There’s a satisfying symmetry in that.

That shared submission to judgement based on law is what makes the law work in the first place.  If a random citizen commits a crime and is punished, a member of the police committing the same crime should receive the same punishment.  If a citizen commits a crime and a politician commits that same crime, the politician should receive the same punishment.  Even if the law isn’t fair, it should be equally applied.

The cries of “drain the swamp” from the Right are a recognition that this really isn’t so – a politician or Federal bureaucrat can commit crimes that would send you or I to jail and never have to worry.  There is ample evidence that there isn’t a single system of justice – there are three.  One group follows the rules as best as they can, but could still be found guilty of obscure crimes.  I just hope that if I’m ever in that position I have a great lawyer.  A good lawyer knows the law.  A great lawyer knows the judge.

If I lied in testimony before Congress, nice Federal attorneys would seek to take away my voting rights by making me a felon as they did with Roger Stone.  If former CIA chief John Brennan does it?  Well, it appears nothing happens.  That’s the sort of immunity you get when you’re in the club.

PETER

In a rare moment of clarity for the FBI, Peter Strzok was fired.  Don’t worry – he’s suing to be reinstated with back pay.

People have lost trust; that’s where we’re at as a nation.  There appear to be three systems of law in the United States:

  • one for the favored elite, where they are untouchable,
  • one for police, where (sometimes) crimes are never investigated,
  • and one for everyone else.

It’s not that the favored elite have great lawyers and can use them to avoid being convicted.  The favored elite is never even charged with a crime.  Hillary Clinton admittedly broke laws, and the FBI further pointed out that she had broken laws.  Charging her, however, was just not something that they wanted to do.  They know how enemies of Hillary end up.  Heck, 2 out 3 presidents that were impeached were impeached for embarrassing Hillary.

For all I know, the systems for the elites have been in place as long as the elite has been in place.  But now it’s visible.  Ford had to pardon Nixon so he wouldn’t be prosecuted.  Obama appears to have gotten a hall pass from Attorney General William Barr – pardon not required.  Congress is much the same:  Charlie Rangel evaded Federal taxes to the tune of tens of thousands of dollars.  At least.

Any member of the non-elite class would have been sent to jail.  Obama is buying mansions; Charlie retired from Congress.  Oh, Charlie got “censured” which I guess makes it all better.  And Obama is stuck living with Michelle.

MICH

She might be mad that an immigrant took her job?

The Deep State is similar – members of the FBI can do pretty much whatever they want to do, as long as it doesn’t make the other elite folks unhappy.  I talked to a former Federal banking regulator once who mentioned that the only real trouble he could have gotten into was if he tried to be tough on a big bank.  Otherwise?  He could have stayed there for years, doing not much of anything.  The Deep State first and foremost protects its own.

Like the elite, the police have a different process, too.  You or I would get arrested, but a cop gets to have his behavior examined administratively.  By his buddies on the force.  This is where the case is reviewed by the people who hired him to see if there was a violation of policy.  Most of the time officers are cleared.

If you or I shot an intruder into our homes, we couldn’t just grab a group of people in our families to check to see if they thought we did the right thing.  Nope.  There would be independent review by a District Attorney to see if our actions were justified.  If our actions were not justified?  We would be charged with a crime.  I hope my lawyer thinks I’m a penguin when going for bail – then he can tell the judge I’m not a flight risk.

PENG

Penguins don’t go to England – they don’t like to be that close to Wales.

I can absolutely understand the need to give officers benefit of the doubt, and I think a jury generally does.  But if an officer can say “I was in fear of my life,” on the stand, it ought to work for me, too.  I think the system with police accountability is broken.  But I think it’s easier to fix than the problems with the elite.

Is there hope for our system?  Perhaps.  But unless the rule of law can be made to be truly impartial, we’re going to be in for a rough time.

It could be worse.  It could have been me who was named Urukagina.

Your one job? Be a good person.

“Mr. Towns, you behave as if stupidity were a virtue. Why is that?” – Flight of the Phoenix

GOOD

Well, at least someone gave this post two thumbs up.

My older brother, John Wilder (our parents were notoriously uncreative), got a job at a motel when he was in college.  His duty was to sleep in the apartment above the front desk, and if anyone wanted a room late at night, to get up out of bed and check them in.  Technically, he got paid to sleep on the job.  When I try to explain that’s what I’m doing to my employer, they seem to think it’s a violation of company rules.  They won’t even listen when I explain I won’t be sleepy on the job if I just sleep on the job.

Go figure.

One day the owner of the motel was looking for someone to do an extremely important job: sweep the parking lot every Sunday.  As I had heard of a broom, my brother put in a good word for me, and I ended up with my first official job.  As I don’t recall quitting, they might be irritated at me because I haven’t been in to work in decades.

This was a job that I was well suited for, since I was willing to work for the one-ish hour a week (on Sunday) sweeping up the parking lot.  I even had a time card, and got paid minimum wage.  So early each Sunday morning I’d get on my ten speed and bike down to the motel and sweep the parking lot.

BIKE

My bike kept trying to kill me, though.  It was a vicious cycle.

The best part wasn’t the few bucks after tax that I made, but rather sitting down with my older brother and having breakfast in the office.  I timed it so that I’d be done sweeping so we could watch a television show on TBS® together:  The Wild, Wild West.  I’m pretty sure I saw my first episode ever in that motel office.

By the time my brother and I watched it on the 12” screen in the office, The Wild, Wild West was decades old.  And yet it was better than anything on prime time television.  The Wild, Wild West, if you haven’t seen it, was Robert Conrad starring as secret agent James West in the 1870’s Western United States, complete with science fiction gadgets.

The villains were ludicrous.  One episode featured obviously rubber cobras.  And in one fight scene, Robert Conrad’s pants split wide open and they just kept filming – they were on a schedule, you know.  On top of that, the costumes resembled nothing ever worn by an actual human in any place and during any period in human history.

Silly?   Certainly.  But why was the show good enough that I planned getting up early to watch it?

It’s because the character James West (and his fellow secret agent, Artemus Gordon) were good.  West was a hero.  He was smart.  He could fight.  He had wit.  He laughed in the face of death.  And if he had a weakness, it was for a lovely lady.

JIMWEST

We’ll pretend that Will Smith took 1999 off.  There can be only one Jim West.

Why was James West’s contemporary, Captain Kirk so popular?  He was a cut from the same mold as West.

A boy needs a hero to look up to, who models virtue and strength.  And you could do much, much worse than either James West or Captain Kirk.  For some reason, the values of the networks changed, and The Wild, Wild West was cancelled (like Green Acres and The Beverly Hillbillies) in 1970 even though they did great in the ratings.  Hmm.

It was like there was a social agenda . . . .

As time has gone on, many of the “heroes” in movies and television are given “depth” cheaply by making them either morally weak or having the system they work for be compromised in some way.  When a hero sneaks by like Mal Reynolds on Firefly, well, the system takes care of him pretty quickly.

MAL

Captain Tightpants aims to misbehave.

Culture is, of course, upstream from politics.  Culture is in part created by those heroes we are given to worship.  Where do those heroes come from?  Well, I mentioned James West, but I recall being pretty psyched about the Founding Fathers when I was a kid.  Dad got pretty mad after the third cherry tree.

Our political reality is therefore created in part by media (now a tool of the Left) and academia (also a tool of the Left).  And now the Founding Fathers are, instead of being revered for attempting to create a whole new type of country are regularly bashed in schools.

This attempt of the Left to steer culture obscures the real message.  As a human, we have one (and only one) job.

That job is to be a good person.

It’s that easy.  We waste a lot of time and effort wondering what it is we should be doing, when the answer is laughingly simple.  You can’t control your height.  You can’t control your intelligence.  You can’t even control society.  What can you control?  Your actions and attitudes.

So, be a good person.  That’s it.

The Left tries to obscure that simple truth because it has to.  The Left doesn’t want you to be a good person.  The Left wants you to be a Leftist.  When I look at the memes from the Left, I’m astonished by two things:

  • They’re horribly unfunny, and
  • They’re based on a big wall of text.

LEFTMEME

No editing required.

The Lefty memes aren’t funny because funny requires truth.  I wrote about that recently in The Leftist War on Culture: Comedy Edition.  When truth is strangled, humor disappears which is why tyrants will kill comedians before they kill dissidents.  Humor is one of the most potent weapons of truth.

The Lefty memes have to rely on a large blocks of text because half of the meme is required to try to refute reality and re-define it.  If you’ve ever heard an actual Leftist talk, half of it is redefining terms:  boy used to mean boy, but now it’s an entire spectrum which might indicate that boy means boy on Monday, but when it’s time for the state track meet, boy means girl.  Sometimes.

If you want to watch real Olympic®-level verbal gymnastics, watch a Leftist try to define “racism” – it’s a hoot.  For bonus points, see if you can get them to read the dictionary definition.

That’s the good news.  Your job, being a good person, is so simple it’s hard for even the Left to mess up.  But I bet they could come up with a 600 word meme to describe that “good” is only “good” if it results in more Leftist votes and the abolition of private property.

I wish that I could promise to you that if you were a good person, you’d be rewarded.  That would be a lie.  Being good doesn’t guarantee a tangible reward, or even that you will succeed, or even be liked and admired in your time.

PANCAKE

I’m not sure I can promise a leprechaun will deliver them, though.

Likewise, being bad doesn’t guarantee punishment.  Heck, some research indicates that 4% of Chief Executive Officers of companies are psychopaths.  If you think long enough, you can come up with several names of people who are downright evil, but seem to be thriving.

The other bad news is that being good is hard work.  First, you have to figure out what good is.  Society isn’t necessarily a help here.  As I write this, The Boy is watching livestreaming rioting and property destruction across multiple cities.  When I try to calibrate the whole good/bad thing, I’m not sure that looting a Target® or burning a Hyundai© serves much of a purpose.

Being good isn’t about being good for today, either.  I could easily ruin a child by making life too easy, or not holding them to high standards.  Would it result in a happy child now?  Sure.  But every parent knows that short term success builds children into monsters who end up burning a Target™ or a Hyundai®.

RIOT

Brought to you by the Minnesota Vistor and Tourism Bureau.

To be good, a moral code and the courage to follow it is required.  Christianity is the one that built the West, and you could do worse – you rarely hear of Amish drive-by shootings, since everyone can hear the clip clop of the horses from pretty far away.

The Romans (Roman Virtues and Western Civilization, Complete with Monty Python) had a well-developed system of virtue thousands of years ago and spent a lot of time working to figure out how to be good – that’s pretty close to the basis of the Stoics.  Making it up your own individual code as you go can lead to rationalization and relativism.  If it feels good, it may not be good – a lot of bad things feel very good at the time.

But generally, if it feels bad, it nearly always is.

Be a good person.  Ask yourself:  WW(JW)D?  No, not John Wilder.

Jim West.

But make sure you get your sweeping done first.

The Leftist War on Culture: Comedy Edition

“I woke up on the floor of some Japanese family’s rec room, and they would not stop screaming.” – Anchorman

WOKETREK

I hear William Shatner hates one pie:  Pe-Khaaaaaaan.

I like movies.  And I like television.  Up until recently, I used to read a lot of fiction books; now I read a lot more non-fiction.  Together, along with the news we read and the Internet sites we visit, this defines the core of our mythology, our legends, and our shared experiences outside of religion.

When The Mrs. watches movies she likes to watch them for characters – how people react and change based on the circumstances that they encounter.  That seems to fascinate her, probably because The Mrs. is a human.  Me?  I like to watch movies for new ideas and new information.  Billions of people have fallen in love, but how many have thought of a new idea?  Ideas catch my interest, which might explain The Mrs.’ cute nickname for me:  Soulless Human-Looking Robot.

But movies today, frankly, suck.  They’re awful.  Not all of them, mind you, but a big majority.  Seeing a good one is rare enough today that it actually surprises me when I see one that I like.  For the most part, what passes for a “good” movie is just one that doesn’t actively disappoint me.  The Mrs. rarely goes to movies, and even before Coronavirus made Netflix® the king of media, she just stopped going to movies in about 2014 or 2015.

NETFLIX

I had to stop talking to a friend who said that Netflix® was the cheapest streaming service.  I just can’t be around a Hulu™-cost denier.

About that time was another event:  the functional disappearance of an entire movie genre:  the comedy.  What happened to comedy?  Since the year 2000, there have been a total of 45 comedy movies that have grossed over $100 million (in adjusted 2000 dollars) at the box office.  The last comedy to hit this threshold was in 2015.  So, the numbers prove it – comedy is currently deader than a Clinton opponent.

The strange reason that this is happening is that comedy movies just aren’t funny anymore.  It’s not that I’ve lost my sense of humor:  objectively the movies aren’t funny.  Audiences have largely abandoned them.  America clearly has an appetite for humor, there were 45 comedy films that that made over $100 million between 2000 and 2015, but the numbers keep dropping over time:  comedy movies used to take in about 20% of the box office.  In 2019, comedy was down to 6.6% of the market.

So, why are comedies not funny anymore?  The audiences haven’t changed:  teenage boys are still teenage boys.  So, it must be the movies.

When you look at the movies, they’ve gone from broad comedies that focus on making people laugh to either comedies that are created to push a particular viewpoint or comedies that depend on getting humor from extremely explicit sexual content.  Certainly, there are good sexy jokes – remember you’re reading a post from the person who invented bikini economics graphs.  But, like anything, there’s a line.  And I’m not alone in being happy that Zack and Miri Make a Porno could have just as easily been titled Zack and Miri Make No Money since it did so poorly at the box office.

Another reason is that comedy is dangerous to the Left.  To paraphrase a J. Michael Straczynski and Neil Gaiman Babylon 5 script, “Comedians say serious things and get a laugh, politicians say silly things and people take them seriously.”   At some level, great comedy is about telling a truth, but an uncomfortable truth.  That’s the reason that Stalin didn’t allow real humor in the Soviet Union.  It’s the same reason that Jerry SeinfFeld said he won’t do comedy shows at colleges – the woke crowd wants to hear humor, but only the jokes they find politically acceptable, regardless of the truth.

HTTM

Obligatory Stalin Joke:  One day Stalin decides to go to the cinema in disguise and hear what people are really saying about him.  When the newsreel comes on the audience stands up and applauds each time he appears on the screen. Stalin is pleased. Modestly, he himself remains seated. After a few moments the man next to him leans over and whispers:  “Most people feel the same way you do Comrade, but you’ll be safer if you stand up.”

Sadly, the failure of comedies seems to apply to movies as a whole now – the movie industry growth has been stagnant since 2012 or so.  I think it’s tied back to the same reason, Leftists feeling that movies should be explicit carriers of Leftist politics.  Movies can have a point, but they have to have the politically correct point.  They can be poignant or uplifting, but only in a Leftist-approved way that involves someone saying, “But I’m a lesbian” during the movie, though most of the time the other patrons tell me to shut up.  Movies are crafted so they don’t allow the audience to come to conclusions outside of those approved by Hollywood and the globalist Left.

And it’s been getting worse.  By most measures, the last three Star Wars® films have been the worst of the franchise.  Sure, The Force Awakens® got big box office numbers, but that was primarily because people were so excited to see a new Star Wars™ film that they would have spent money to go see Chewbacca® having lice combed out of his hair for three hours.

ROSE

There was a movie about Chewbacca® making vases out of porcelain.  It was called Hairy Potter.

But Star Wars® became something different after Disney© bought it.  It became woke.  The main character was a girl.  I’m okay with that.  But in this case, the girl had powers far in excess of, well, anyone.  After merely touching a lightsaber® and never having trained with it, she defeated a man who had trained with one for years.

Yeah.  I would rather have watched the Wookie™ be de-loused.

To cap off The Force Awakens, a thoroughly uncharismatic group of characters with no chemistry defeated yet another Death Star™ in a way that was so memorable I can’t recall it.  Heck they might have unplugged it for all I remember, but I certainly do know that Luke Skywalker® didn’t drop a torpedo into a reactor exhaust.   When I left the theater after The Force Awakens, I was done with Star Wars®.  For good.  What had generally been a dependably fun series of movies was gone.

But having a series of movies is now the norm.  Movies had become a batch of either remakes of old movies or movies in a franchise.  Since 2000, 119 movies (at least) have been released as part of a franchise.  23 of those are Marvel® franchise movies.  And, I’ll admit that in many instances those franchise movies have been entertaining.  But after 23 movies, I think we’ve reached Peak Marvel™, since they’re quickly becoming woke, too.  The final straw for many will probably be Thor, who is reportedly going to be replaced by a woman, and Ironman®, who will be replaced by Nic Cage in a suit he made out of old Coors Light™ cans.

Understand – it’s not enough to create a new character, the Left wants to destroy existing characters by replacing them utterly:  2016’s Ghostbusters is another example.  I think these changes are because Hollywood simply cannot help itself.  For the longest time they were content to make money while slowly changing culture to the Left.  Now?  The message that seems to be seeping in is that there is a need to pay for the sins of humanity even if it costs the studio money.  Who should pay for those sins?  Well, not the filmmakers.  Really, it’s just the people they don’t like.

YACHT

Don’t forget, celebrities are just like us!

And why?  There has been a push to replace the dominant culture in the United States.  That includes replacing old taboos with new ones that reflect the new culture the Left is seeking.  The main idea is that you can do anything and there should be no repercussions.  This especially includes sex, where the purely physical has been raised to the level of the sacred and there is no whim that shouldn’t be not only tolerated, but celebrated.  This also includes career choices, where every Grievance Studies graduate with no discernible skills should be given a living wage, complete health care, and the respect that they feel that they deserve, paid for by you and me.

This is really an infantilizing of the culture:  it’s the promotion of the idea that whatever urge you have should be indulged.  The Mrs. described it as a culture of spoiled children with daddy issues:  the fault is with their boss.  Or their boyfriend/girlfriend.  Or their parents.  Or society.  It’s never their fault.

In this instance, it’s easier to blame a Civil War general or a Founding Father than to blame themselves for their condition.  The result?  Pull down a statue, and complain about Thomas Jefferson.

JEFFERSON

I was named after Thomas Jefferson.  He was named a very long time ago, so you were probably named after he was, too.

This spirit has even invaded books.  I used to pick up a science fiction book at random in the book store and feel that there was a good chance that I’d be exposed to new ideas and have fun in the process.  More recently, a lot of the books have become a slog.  I wondered if it was me.  I then picked up some stories written a few decades ago, and was pleased.  It wasn’t me.  Those old stories had more ideas and fun in a typical paragraph than most novels do today.  Today, the novels seem all about preaching and explaining how awful people are.  Back then, even though we faced a daily threat of nuclear annihilation, those stories were more positive about mankind and our future than the ones I see today.

We are in the midst of a concerted effort by the Left to destroy the culture we live in and the values it stands for.  Old writers, old statesmen, and old heroes are all being viewed through the lens of the new culture and the new values in an effort to destroy them for sins they never committed.  The Left understands the stakes:  until they destroy the old culture and values, they will be judged by the old standards.

And they know they will be found wanting.  Especially their comedy movies.

Those are just awful.

How Dead Romans Can Help You Be Happy

Jack: (tapping on the walls) Two, three feet thick, I’ll bet.  Probably welded shut from the outside and covered with brick by now.
Wang: Don’t give up, Jack.
Jack: Oh, okay, I won’t, Wang.  Let’s just chew our way outta here.
-Big Trouble in Little China

OPTIM

I keep turning negatives into positives, which may explain why I can’t jump start a car.

I have, from time to time, been accused of being an optimist.  I don’t really think I am.  I am certain that I am going to die.  I am certain that, of the things in life I have to face, the toughest ones are ahead of me, not behind.  Gentle retirement in the world that we’ve made and are preparing to go through now?

Probably not.

I’ll argue that the strange things that we’ve seen so far aren’t even close to the strange things we will see in the days and weeks ahead.  And the last six weeks our lives?  Who would have expected that the state house in Michigan would be filled with armed protesters?  Not me.  Although some people have predicted the way that the next financial crisis would happen, I certainly didn’t see it happening because of a Chinese bat.

But what I’m not particularly good at is giving up.  The real enemy of life isn’t death – the enemy of life is giving up because life isn’t what was planned.  Seneca put it pretty well:

True happiness is to enjoy the present, without anxious dependence upon the future, not to amuse ourselves with either hopes or fears but to rest satisfied with what we have, which is sufficient.  For he that is so wants nothing.

SENECA

I wonder how long he had to sit still for this selfie?

One way to read Seneca’s quote would be to read it as justifying laying around smoking weed and eating PEZ® on the couch until you exhibited a gravitational field that could influence minor planets.  I assure you, that’s not what Seneca meant.  Seneca and most of the other Stoic philosophers that I’ve read were accomplished people in the real world, not professors at some East Coast liberal arts college.  Seneca had worked and made himself one of the wealthiest men in ancient Rome.  Marcus Aurelius was a Roman Emperor who daily wrote down notes to himself on humility and virtue and being of service.  Marcus himself pours cold water on the idea that inactivity was the point of life:

So you were born to feel “nice”? Instead of doing things and experiencing them? Don’t you see the plants, the birds, the ants and spiders and bees going about their individual tasks, putting the world in order, as best they can? And you’re not willing to do your job as a human being?

So, giving up isn’t the point, and sitting around feeling “nice” isn’t the point, either.  Despite all of this, there’s no reason not to stay in bed all day in your footed pajamas with a cup of hot cocoa, right Marcus?

At dawn, when you have trouble getting out of bed, tell yourself: “I have to go to work.  I’m a human being. What do I have to complain of, if I’m going to do what I was born for, the things I was brought into the world to do? Or is this what I was created for? To huddle under the blankets and stay warm?

Nope, I guess that won’t work.  I think there’s a chance that Marcus wrote this while out campaigning with his Legions against the Germans.  In winter.  After millions of Romans died in a plague that’s named after him, the Antonine Plague, his full name being Marcus Aurelius Antoninus.  How bad was that particular plague?  It’s estimated that one out of nine people in the Roman Empire died.  Unless you’re a communist, having your own people die is considered a bad thing.

GERMAN

When the Romans counter-attacked, they always went for the German with the ax, hence the phrase: “We’ve got to get to the chopper.”

I probably would have given a good, long thought about staying in bed, too.  But Marcus didn’t give up, he probably worked harder.  Part of being a Stoic is to go out and give it your all.  That’s what you’re supposed to do.

What you’re not allowed to do is get fixated either on success or failure.  Sometimes you win.  Sometimes you lose.  There’s virtue in neither of these.   There is, however, virtue in going out and doing your best, leaving nothing back, fully committing yourself to your cause.

None of us will escape death.  All of us will fail.  Suffering?  Yeah, that’s going to happen, too.  To all of that, I have a simple response:

So what?

All of those things will happen to every human that’s ever lived or ever will live.  You’re not a special snowflake that the world revolves around.  There is no particular way your life “should” turn out.  Your life right now is mainly the sum of all of the choices you have made, both good and bad.   Was there luck in there, both good and bad?  Sure, but not as much as you might think.

BIGMAC

You may have been sad, but you’ve never been Ronald McDonald™ in a McDonalds® crying and choking down fries sad. 

And if you made bad choices that have led you to a present that you don’t care for?  Deal with it.  And even today on most days if you look around life might appear to be dark, but this very second you probably aren’t suffering.  You have electricity.  You have Internet.  You probably have some sort of food in the house that you wouldn’t mind eating.  And if you’re thinking of making a tuna sandwich, I’ll take one, too.  You know, while you’re up.

PJBOI

I don’t imagine PJ Boy does a lot of quoting Seneca.  Unless Mommy makes him.

Part of life is getting rid of excuses.  Most of the time when we say, “I can’t” we mean “I don’t wanna try (I might fail).”

Others?

  • I’m too young, or too old, or just too darn pretty. It’s probably the pretty one, right?
  • I’m too busy. Good news!  After the economic Coronacane passes through, we’ll probably all have time on our hands.
  • I don’t know how to do ______.   Unless it’s differential equations.  Then just do what the book says.  Nobody really understands differential equations.
  • Skipping today won’t matter/I’ll start tomorrow. These two excuses are the same excuse, and they’re exactly the same one as Marcus Aurelius mentioned when he talked about being warm and toasty in bed instead of doing your job.

It’s today.  What can you get done today?

What are you waiting for?

EXCUSE

Get Woke, Go Broke: Hallmark Limited Edition

“I hope you don’t mean that.  You’d feel pretty sad if you woke up tomorrow morning and you didn’t have a family.” – Home Alone

wokebiz.jpg

I’m so woke I started a Green Lives Matter chapter after watching Shrek®.

When The Boy was very small, say four years old, we’d snuggle together and watch television together on Saturday mornings.  One thing we watched on a regular basis was the Hallmark® channel.  Sometimes I’d make pancakes.  It was fun as only a Saturday with your kids can be.

Most often, we’d watch an episode of the High Chaparral® and then an older family movie – movies like Old Yeller™ or The Cat from Outer Space©.  The Boy did note that air traffic control must have been difficult in Never Neverland because of all of the fuel emergencies.  Get it?  Never land?  I kill me.

I’m too young to have seen High Chaparral™ as anything but reruns, but watching it with The Boy was great.  The plots involved good guys and bad guys – tales of honor.  Tales of family.  Tales of manly courage.  Every one of those lessons was one that I’d like to have imprinted on The Boy’s brain.  Sure, maybe I’d have a winter morning nap through The Cat from Outer Space®, but I never slept through High Chaparral©.

Okay, how could you nap after that theme music?

At this point I don’t remember if they stopped showing High Chaparral™ before or after we moved to Alaska, but I did know that in Alaska we didn’t have the Hallmark™ channel, so it didn’t matter anyway.  And it’s been a few years since Pugsley needed babysitting on a Saturday morning.

Needless to say, I have pleasant memories of the Hallmark® channel.  However, in the last week Hallmark® did the craziest thing.  First, a commercial was approved showing two women lip-locking in a commercial about weddings during a family movie where little kids might be watching.  This provoked outrage in the Traditional Religious community, and they complained to Hallmark©.  Following that outrage, Hallmark™ then pulled the commercial, and apologized for showing it.

All said and done?

No.  Within about 48 hours of pulling the commercial, Hallmark® then said they’d be fine with showing that commercial, and their earlier statement saying that they made a mistake by saying that they’d made a mistake was a mistake, so they apologized for apologizing earlier.  Then, at great expense, they redid their apology using llamas.

This was not entirely a surprise:  the CEO of the television portion of Hallmark©, William J. Abbott, said in a November 15 podcast he doesn’t personally view Christmas as a religious holiday.  He probably doesn’t consider churches religious places.  And those T-shaped things that people put on the walls and wear as necklaces?  Just art.

abbott.jpg

I swear, with those eyes he looks like some kind of herd animal.  It’s not like he’d be easily swayed like a member of a herd of sheep . . . oh, wait.

Regardless of what you think about gay people, they comprise 1-2% of the population – add in bisexuals, (which, let’s admit it, they’d like) and you get up to 4% or so.  I’m willing to bet that a whopping 0.001% of gay women watch Hallmark®, and probably nearly 0.0000001% of gay men.  Hallmark™ has decided to appeal to a constituency that consists of about a dozen people in the United States and let them determine what commercials are on the Hallmark© channel.

Let’s face it:  regardless of how you or I feel about gay folks, they don’t watch the Hallmark® network.  They won’t watch the Hallmark© network even if it meets every one of their demands because they already have six networks specifically dedicated to gay lifestyle issues.

Why would Hallmark™ fold and apologize about apologizing for their apology?

Because Hallmark© is woke.  Christmas isn’t a religious holiday according to their CEO, silly.  It’s about mass consumption of consumer goods.  That was the real message of Christ, wasn’t it?  I think it was in the Sermon on the Mall Food Court as written in the Gospel of Commerce, 3:16 where Jesus said:  “Oh, ye who purchase goods and services in my name shall dwell in large houses with great credit forever.  Forget not, thy shipping shalt be free for all who order over $50 of these holy goods in a single shipment.  Amen.”

Hallmark© isn’t the first business to make this calculation.  It won’t be the last.

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Silicon Valley is good at getting woke, especially since aliens don’t need sleep.

I started my first boycott of a business back in 2001 or so.  The CEO of Levi Strauss™ came out against private gun ownership.  I was naïve enough that I actually wrote him an email protesting his policy.  At the time, I was a corporate home-office drone who wore Dockers® (a Levi Strauss© product) like they were yuppie heroin.  I put my money where my mouth was:  the last Levi Strauss™ product I have ever purchased was in 2001.

Another example of this illogical behavior was Star Wars®.  The final Star Wars™ movie opens today.  I won’t be purchasing a ticket.  Why?  The Force Awakens.

For the record, I have no problem against strong female characters.  Ripley® in Alien© and Aliens™.  Sarah Connor™ in Terminator©, Terminator 2®, and the very underrated Sarah Connor Chronicles™.  I could go on, but that’s enough.

Rey© in Star Wars™?  An awful character.  But a woke character.  It was so important to a Disney® executive to take Star Wars© in a feminist direction that they didn’t care about story.  They didn’t care about plot.  All they cared about was creating a woman that had no weaknesses, no struggle.  In great fiction, the entire point of the journey of a hero is to struggle and overcome weaknesses and character flaws to find virtue and victory.

Somehow, in a quest for the perfect woman, Disney® forgot Star Wars© was about watching the journey of the hero and thrilling with him (or her) as they grew.  Ripley™ grew – look at her character arc from the only two movies that character was in, Alien® and Aliens©.  Ripley™ went from a competent but flawed second officer to a woman who overcame her fear and took on a xenomorph queen using an exoskeleton loader.  Don’t know about you, but I thought that was pretty hot, even when she was Zuul.  Okay, especially when she was Zuul.

Rey™?  Rey™ was perfect from the first scene, and could use the Force© and a Light Saber© better than a person who had studied them for years the very first day she tried.  Why?  Showing any weakness from a woman is obviously misogyny and part of a patriarchal plot.  Character development?  Nah, that’s for people who aren’t woke.

What has being woke cost Disney®?  A lot of money.  The Star Wars® movies keep bringing in less and less at the box office.  And, as Aesop wisely noted – their theme park Galaxy’s Edge© at Disneyland™ cost over $1billion dollars, and, if videos I’ve seen are correct, is an enormous flop.  The longest line was at the bathroom.  I’d imagine the Disneyworld™ version won’t cost much less, so they’ve invested $2billion in a franchise that has exactly one successful element since they bought it from George Lucas:  baby Yoda®.

Probably billions in profits have been sacrificed by Disney®, all at the altar of being woke.

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If John Wick© and Kermit™ had a baby.

Other companies have done it, too.  Gillette® featured commercials that demeaned the major purchasers of its products:  men.  Nike™ decided that Colin Kaepernick was the best face that they could put forward, and ended production of shoes featuring the Betsy Ross flag because Colin thought it was racist.  Chick-Fil-A®?  Dead to me.

The Boy Scouts of America™?  Yup.  In 1973, the membership was 4.5 million boys.  In 2020, I’m betting the membership is down to 1.4 million or less, even though the population of the United States is up by 50%.  The biggest and steepest declines?  After it got woke.

One Angry Gamer has a large list of similar failures (LINK).  The list has 13 major video games that failed due to wokeness.  Movies and television?  21 examples.  And dozens of businesses, magazines, and other examples of failure.  The most amusing part of his page (which is littered with advertisements) is that it was advertising failed woke shows like Star Trek: Discovery®.  One Angry Gamer was getting money from those that were being criticized on the page.  Genius.

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Remember, not everything is a failure.  The Titanic pool is still filled!

Not every business that gets woke goes broke.  Even though they won’t get another dollar from me, Nike®, Levi Strauss©, and Gillette™ are doing fine.  They make billions in revenue.  I can’t promise Disney® won’t make another dollar off of me, since they have a scheme to annex interstellar space and charge viewers for looking up at the night sky.  But I’ll avoid giving them money every chance I get.  They might not notice on their bottom line, but I will be able to hold my head up.

So, why are companies willing to fail or at least forego billions of dollars in profit, destroy cultural narratives that have been decades in the making, and wipe out institutions that have served real virtue and objective good for over a hundred years?

It’s not their money.

But I do have good news.  I found that High Chaparral® is still being broadcast.  It’s not on Hallmark™.  But I’m pretty sure that The Boy would object to being snuggled on the couch to watch it, him being in college and all.

But he still likes pancakes.  Who doesn’t?

Oh, yeah.

Feminists.

Regrets? Don’t Regret Anything, Unless You Want Me To Slap You When You Are Old.

“Nothing leaves alive.” – Dreamcatcher

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See, now Darth Vader® has no regrets.  Except for being in Episode III.

I’ve never written anything before that made me want to go to a hospice and slap a bunch of old dying people, but this particular post led me there.  I’ll explain.  It’s okay, it’ll all make sense in the end.  I’m a trained professional.

I have made many mistakes in my life.  Most of them I don’t remember – they were small and didn’t have any consequences, or at least any consequences I’ve seen yet.

Then there were some slightly larger mistakes – let’s call them medium size mistakes.  There have been consequences to these.  Again, medium-sized mistakes most often lead to medium-sized consequences.  A scar here (carve away from your thumb, not towards it), a stock gone to zero there (thanks a lot, Enron®) and one really bad car trade when I was 24 . . . medium-sized.  Medium-sized mistakes are big enough for a big sting, but whatever permanent impacts there might be aren’t immediately fatal.

The biggest ones – I won’t give a laundry list of those.  Most of those were where either passion, inexperience, a momentary lapse of character or judgement, or (worst of all) when all three contributed to a mistake.  Some mistakes lasted longer, some were short.  But all stung.  The biggest include a marriage that led to divorce, underestimating a sociopathic boss, and wearing that white dress to my little sister’s wedding.  I mean, I look fabulous in it, but some brides just have to be the center of attention.  Also a bit weird because she wasn’t really my sister.

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Staaaaaart again . . . .

To put it bluntly, I am the author of almost every problem I have.  If I didn’t cause the problem, I’m probably complicit in creating the problem or not dealing with the problem.

But I don’t regret it.  None of it.  Not the victories, certainly, and not the failures.

Why?

Life is a one-shot deal.  And life is a ratchet.  It only turns one way – we can’t take anything back.

Regret isn’t a one-shot deal, though.  If there’s anything that will burn a hole in your soul, it’s regret.  Regret never comes alone – it brings guilt along for the ride.

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My biggest fear is having a heart attack during a game of charades.

If I were to dig more deeply into those feelings – regret and guilt are just ways that fear manifests itself.  Fear of . . . what?  Regret is a fear that the consequences of your choices or actions will impact you negatively, and cannot be changed.  Here is a list of some of the common regrets from people on their deathbed (from a former palliative care nurse named Bronnie Ware, and, yes, I spelled that right – blame her parents, not me):

  1. “I wish I’d had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.”
  2. “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”
  3. “I wish I’d had the courage to express my feelings.”
  4. “I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.”
  5. “I wish that I had let myself be happier.”

Even a quick look at this list tells me one simple thing:  regret is for losers.  I have never seen a whinier pack of self-serving weakness since I last watched a Democratic presidential debate.  Everything, absolutely everything on this “top five” list is just, well, sad.

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Me?  I’m still holding out hope for a pyramid.

Would you like to go to your grave worrying about any of those things?  I can’t imagine doing it.  I refuse to let regret rule me.  And I refuse to let any decision I made twenty years ago rule me.  Hell, I refuse to let any decision I made last week rule me, except for choosing that convenience store egg/muffin sandwich – I don’t need to explain why.  Deal with the consequences?  Certainly.  But regret?  No.

Let’s go down the “top five” list:

Not living a life “true to yourself”?  I’ve never heard such nonsense in my life.  I was talking with a guy the other day who quit his job because his boss asked him to do something illegal.  That’s being true to yourself – he walked away without a paycheck but with his values and beliefs intact.  If you’re not being true to yourself, you’re either weak or flighty.  The good news?  Anyone who reads this blog is neither.

Wishing you hadn’t “worked so hard”?  That’s also nonsense.  A soul thrives on doing good work that matters.  Doing good work excellently is hard.  The Mrs. teaches, and works hard at it – I can see from her talking about her students, talking about the ones who learned and improved, the ones who keep coming back to her classroom to report on their lives that her work matters.  Working hard at work that matters is what makes us the best humans we can be.  If you think you worked too hard, you weren’t doing anything worth doing.  The good news?  Change now.  You have an entire lifetime to fix that mistake.

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I got fired from the calendar factory.  They get really mad when you take a day off.

Didn’t have the “courage to express my feelings”?  Wow.  This is the weakest on the list, so far.  Number one:  do you have feelings that matter?  Most feelings are stupid – and I have stupid feelings, too.  Thankfully, I’m not a five year old – I am at least twelve.  I get to examine my feelings and reject those that don’t reflect my values, my virtue, my beliefs.  I get to choose.  If I feel slighted by something silly or petty?  I get to choose to understand what a fool I’m being and ignore that feeling.  Again, if you don’t express your feelings, that’s not always a bad thing.  Your feelings are often stupid.

I’m sorry that “staying in touch with your friends” was so hard.  But it’s really not.  The people you care about, that care about you, are there.  They always have been, they always will be.  I don’t Facebook® much – why?  I call my friends, on an actual phone.  I text my friends.  Am I often the one that calls first?  Sure.  Do we develop different lives, does life pull us away for a while?  Do hundreds or thousands of miles separate us?  Maybe.  But I make quite a few phone calls.  And mostly my friends pick up. Sure, it’s true that the biggest miracle Jesus exhibited in the Bible was having 12 11 close friends (thanks, Judas) after the age of thirty – but you just need a few – a few that will have your back.  A few you can share with.

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Also, as a single guy it was easy to make friends.  Lots of girls I asked out wanted to be friends.

Seriously – number five on the list is a wish for “letting themselves be happier.”  Happy is easy (All You Will Ever Need To Read About How To Be Happy* (*Most of the Time)), being significant is hard.  It requires hard work while being true to yourself.  It requires expressing those feelings that your virtue allows to exist.  Friends?  The good ones will be with you forever, and you can restart your conversations with the slightest hint of time passing, even if you haven’t talked regularly in a decade, if they’re true friends.

I’ve never thought about going to a hospice and slapping someone, but this list made me want to do it.  I know, I know, it’s too late for them.  And this is the list of people who had regrets.  People like me?  I don’t have a single regret at this moment of my life.  Not one.  In a hospice, I hope I’d be the, “Regrets?  No.  More clam chowder, please,” guy.

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The Boy made me some fake ramen noodles this summer – it was an impasta.

To be clear – it’s not that I don’t care.  It’s not that I’m not blameless.  It’s not that I was always right.  Not one of those things is true.  But I have done the most important thing I can think of:  When I do something I regret, I’ve changed myself so that I won’t (Clintoncide, John Bolton’s Waifu, and October Market Crashes: Knock on Wood) do that thing again.  I cannot change the past.  But if I have learned, if I can help others not make the same mistakes while not repeating my own mistake?  Like an algebra teacher for the soul, I have taken something negative and turned it into something positive.  The bonus is I get to end the dreams of high school freshmen in the process.

And I’m not planning on having any regrets tomorrow.  If you have regrets?  Fix them now or recognize them for the dead weight they are and cut them loose.

The alternative?  Trust me, you don’t want to have me chasing you down in a hospice and slapping you silly.

BONUS SOUP MEME!  I made too much soup meme by accident.  Enjoy.

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The Best Monopoly Game For Your Leftist In-Laws

“World Socialism will be achieved peaceably. Our military role is strictly defensive. Is that understood?” – Octopussy

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A capitalist, a socialist, and a communist were meeting up.  The socialist was late.  “I’m sorry,” he explained, “I was standing in line for sausage.  The capitalist asked, “What’s a line?”  The communist asked, “What’s sausage?”

When I was a kid, say, younger than sixth grade, I loved to play Monopoly® at Thanksgiving.  It was great – it was simple to understand, and it involved buying properties to make money from the other players.  My Mom and Grandma would play along.  The fun part for young-me was that if you played the game right and got lucky roles you could reduce the other players to bankruptcy and evict them from your house.  I’ll miss Mom.

After a while Monopoly™ became not a game I looked forward to, but one I dreaded at Thanksgiving.  Why?  The game goes on forever, and the biggest determiner to who wins isn’t great playing ability – it’s luck.  It’s like playing Candyland© with houses.  So, I guess in that respect, it’s like owning real estate in California.  Also, at Thanksgiving I decided that eating enough tryptophan-drenched turkey to knock me on my sorry Thanksgiving butt was more fun, and the couch was as soft as the Cowboy™ defense.  But that was before Monopoly© Socialism™.

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But is it a gluten and conflict-free toilet paper made in a sustainable carbon-neutral factory?

Through whatever mechanism that Amazon© uses to track my purchases, it decided that I might be interested in a copy of Monopoly™ Socialism® as well as the tree-free-vegan-bamboo toilet paper.  I’m sure the toilet paper is carbon neutral, but I was more interested in the game, but sadly, Monopoly© Socialism™ was out of stock.  Amazon™ assured me it would be back in stock soon enough.  Part of the charm for me were some of the (actual) questions that other purchasers asked on Amazon®:

  • Do I have to wait in a long line for the privilege of purchasing this game, like a breadline in Venezuela?
  • Is the board waterproof so Progressive tears won’t ruin it?
  • Are there rolling blackouts? Do the players get to eat zoo animals?

With purchasers asking those questions, I knew I was in with my people.  I hit “add to cart” and it was on its way.  It arrived last Wednesday.

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Before candles, what did socialists use for lighting?  Electricity.  Which might explain why there were no utilities on the board.

The box was smaller than the usual Monopoly© box – the reason being that instead of just folding up the game board into halves, it folded up into quarters.  No biggie.  I thought that we’d keep the board game on a shelf, and perhaps pull it out next month to Make Thanksgiving Uncomfortable Again©, but Pugsley saw it, and convinced The Mrs. that we should play it on Saturday night.  As it didn’t look like learning the rules wouldn’t require an advanced degree in game design nor require the Supreme Court to weigh in on disputes, I agreed.

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I hear that after Ginsburg is gone, Leftists are worried that the decisions will be Ruth-less.

I have only one piece of advice when it comes to playing Monopoly® – do not allow The Mrs. to be the banker – she cheats.  I’m not making this up.  The Mrs. cheats gleefully and more-or-less openly (though she thinks she’s being sneaky) after a few glasses of wine.  It wasn’t three rolls into the game that I saw The Mrs. had been pilfering from the bank’s funds.  But The Mrs. obviously hadn’t been listening when I read the rules – the game is based on socialism, so you don’t win by having the most money.  You win by “helping” in the most projects, things like the “Rise Up” collective bakery.  If you help, you can put one of your Virtue Signal* tokens on the project while the community fund donates to the project.

*The game does not call these tokens Virtue Signal tokens, but the idea is to openly and publicly have other people pay for something that makes you look virtuous, so, to-may-to, to-mah-to.

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A Marxist, a Socialist, and a Communist tried to get into a bar.  The bouncer kicked them out after checking their IDs – “Come on back when you’re 21, guys.”

Money comes from the collective.  The game starts with 1848 dollars in the community fund, since the Communist Manifesto™ was published in 1848.  There is absolutely no reason to use one dollar bills in the game, so they tossed them in just for that joke so you can have 1848 dollars.  Nice touch.

I said the game starts with that much money in the community fund.  Every individual player starts with an socialist approved equal amount of zero dollars, so it was easy to see that The Mrs. was in a full on cheat when I saw she had a little pile of currency snuck back.  How does the game go if players don’t have money?  Easy.  If you don’t have money to buy property start a project or pay a fine, it comes from that initial pile of 1848 dollars, which gets replenished when you pass “Go” and get your living wage of 50 dollars, and you put in five for the community.

It’s not like that happened.  We didn’t make it all the way back to Go.  None of us even made it all the way around to Go.

The game ends either when a single player wins by playing all of their Virtue Signal tokens.  The game also ends when all of the 1848 dollars of community money is gone.  And if you run out of the 1848 dollars?  You lose.  Heck, everyone loses.

1848 dollars doesn’t last long.  And we’re not good socialists, so we all lost.

That loss, I think, is the underlying message of the game.  In socialism, pretty soon you run out of other people’s money to spend and everyone loses.  The game cost me $19.99, and it will be worth it to bring it out during Thanksgiving to be slightly more interesting than whatever snoozefest is going on in Detroit®.  It’s not like we wanted to talk to the Leftist side of the family anyway, right?

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I think if there Batman©-type Virtue Signal™?  It would have Justin Trudeau’s face.  I mean, without makeup.

But you can’t buy the game for $19.99.  It seems like Hasbro® has stopped making it.  Why?  I don’t know, and it’s useless to speculate if it sold out or if Hasbro™ folded to political pressure.  If you want to buy it on Amazon™ now, it’s selling for (cheapest price with free shipping) about $45, though it looked to be a bit cheaper elsewhere.  After playing the game, I certainly can’t recommend it at that price, unless you really want to trigger your Leftist neighbor/friend/relative.

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Maybe we should start calling Facebook™ and Twitter© Socialist media?

The reviews by purchasers at Amazon© are very positive, and they’re by verified purchasers.  The negative reviews, however, aren’t by verified purchasers, and one of them is obviously by someone who never even bought the game.

The reviews by websites on the Internet weren’t really reviews.  They were a listing of complaints that Monopoly® Socialism© didn’t accurately portray socialism.  I’m thinking that the talent of these people has been wasted – where were they when they could have been complaining that Marvel® movies don’t accurately portray superpowers or that Breaking Bad© isn’t a realistic view of teacher insurance policies in the Albuquerque Public School System?

It was as if this minor and humorous critique of socialism in the form of a board game had to be beaten back because the one thing that Leftism cannot stand is . . . being made fun of.  My favorite line from a review was this one where the reviewer almost (but not quite) achieves self-awareness:

Reading between the lines, the game’s designers are saying that with no incentive to work nothing gets done.

Somehow, that was intended as a dig against the game designers.  But it turns out that it’s an accurate representation of reality.  If there is no incentive to work, nothing gets done.  Period.

The simplest version of that statement is, “if you don’t’ work, you don’t eat.”  I’m pretty sure the reviewer (who has written thousands of posts for a clickbait site) would probably not show back up to work if they stopped paying him – he wouldn’t keep writing what the boss said if he couldn’t pay the rent or buy soy milk and chicken tendies.

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Socialism looks great on paper.  Unless that paper is in a history book.

It’s clear this game isn’t a real take on socialism, because the end of the game doesn’t feature a failed government, a population in near-starvation, shattered lives, and a blasted economy that will take a generation or more to heal.  In our house, the game ended up with a second bottle of wine, a different game, and a nice evening.

The one negative review that’s correct is this one, and it’s mine:  Socialism is a silly basis for a game, because everyone always loses.  And that’s why Monopoly® Socialism™ caused so many Leftist panties to twist:  because it got it 100% right.