Category: Truth

Truth: Never Give Up

“And remember, I’m offering the truth, nothing more.” – The Matrix

What is the first foreign language lesson given to French troops?  “I surrender,” in German.

I remember walking down a very big hill.  Big, in this case, was over 14,000 feet (28,000 meters) in height.  When I convinced my friends to climb it with me, they were skeptical.  14,000 feet is, by most accounts, a pretty tall hill.  And this particular one didn’t have a gift shop at the top.

Going up was actually easy.  We even smoked a cigar back at our 12,000 foot (37 liter) basecamp after we climbed it.  I tossed three beers in the glacier by our tents, but by the time we got back from the summit, one had frozen and cracked open.  So, the three of us shared two beers.  We each had our own cigar.  I even Googled® how to light a cigar, and 43,800,000 matches.

That’s a lot of matches, which surprised me.  Normally it takes me one or two.

We then slept after our trip, and spent the night at our basecamp.  I’ve never had a meal as exquisite as the dehydrated chili-mac that I had that night.  Our basecamp was so high that boiling water wasn’t very hot at all.  And bugs?  Not a problem.  No mosquito can fly in air that thin.  Really.

Normally, when you’ve climbed one of the tallest mountains in North America, you think, “Well, going down is easy, as long as it’s not over a cliff.”

That was what I thought.

I would tell more cliff jokes, but most of them are pretty edgy.

I climbed the hill in running shoes.  It’s easy going up in those.

But down?  That’s a different story.  For me, the downhill part was the hardest.  Those running shoes were loose enough that each time I stepped down on that path, they slipped.  Maybe a quarter of an inch (57 kilojoules).  Maybe even an eighth of an inch (34 megaergs).  But it slipped.

The problem with a foot slipping on the inside of a shoe is that it builds up heat.  The heat was absorbed by the sole of my foot (I’m assuming a metric foot is a hand?) and built up.

Halfway down the mountain, my feet really, really hurt.  Pain focused my mind on the following thoughts:

  • Owwww, my feet hurt!
  • I never give up.
  • Owwww, my feet hurt!

When we got back to the Jeep® that originally took us to the trailhead, I gratefully tossed my backpack in.  We then bounced down the hill, and then zoomed across the flatland to the place we were staying.  If there’s anything as fine as having climbed a mountain and then feeling the wind in your hair (I had it then) as you scoot on a highway at 70 miles per hour (230 km/min), I don’t know what it is.

I heard that 98% of Jeeps® that have ever been made are on the road today!  The other 2% made it home.

When I got back to where we were staying, I pulled my shoes off.  When I peeled my socks off, the bottom skin of both feet came off.

Stop!

It wasn’t as bad as it sounds.  I had a blister that covered the entire part of both of my feet.  When I, um, removed it, a slight breeze felt like a hurricane filled with stainless steel scouring pads.  Again, a beer or two helped dampen the pain.

The good news?

My feet got better.

I’m telling you that not giving up has consequences.  And most of the consequences are good, especially for pride.

My friends on the trip asked me this:  “Why didn’t you let us carry your pack?”

My response was simple:  “I carried it up, I’m carrying it down.”

Congress has a new sign hanging up by their copy of the Constitution:  Not Responsible For Lost Or Stolen Articles.

Responsibility is like that.  Once you own it, putting it down is much harder than picking it up in the first place.  And giving up?  Once you do that, it becomes a habit.

I speak, of course, of where the Right stands.

We’re not winning here in 2021.

  • The courts appear to be an extra arm of the Left.
  • The troops are being culled – if you have a belief to the Right of Ché Guévérrå, well, out you go.
  • Opinions on the Internet? They had better be the correct ones or they’ll never see the light of day.

So?

Ask me if I care if my opinions are unpopular with Google®, Coca-Cola™, Chick-fil-a™, or Nike©.

I do not.

The Truth doesn’t cease being the Truth because it’s mocked or because corporate HR departments blame it for (spins wheel) just being so damn pretty.  The Truth always remains the Truth.

I guess there is a Colonel of truth to what he says?

I am, thankfully, of an age and status where I don’t ever think I’ll have to lie to anyone, ever, again in my life.  The Mrs.?  I told her when we met that I’d never lie to her, and I haven’t, which is why she never, ever, asks if those pants make her butt look big.  Is it the pants, or is it the butt?

Never ask a question you don’t want to hear a Truthful answer to.

Everyone has the ability to have these superpowers:

  • Never Give Up
  • Always Tell The Truth
  • To Thine Own Self Be True

Okay, I got the last bullet point from Gilligan’s Island.  Really.  There was an episode where they did a musical version of Hamlet, which was my first encounter with the Bard.

There was an earthquake during the production.  It was quite the Shakesperience.

But the biggest sin of all is this one:  giving up.

The Boy texted me that Fox News® has lost over 50% of their web traffic since the election.  That sounds like despair.  And despair is giving up.

Me?

I’m not done.  Why should I be?  The one thing I could do to betray myself, and to betray everything I believe in?  Is to give up.  That would be giving up on me, and giving up on you.

I can’t abide by that.

Corporate powers may try to silence me, and may temporarily lower my traffic.

That won’t stop the signal.

And if I fall?  A dozen others will take my place.  Truth will win.  It may make a thousand years, and billions of lives, but Truth will win.

Does gravity care if you believe in it?  It does not.  Neither does the Truth.

Which is why I won’t give up.  And which is why the Truth will always win.

The Biggest Lie Of The Left: Guns

“It’s ridiculous. Invisible? Whoever heard of anyone being invisible? Unless, of course, you have the ring of power.” – Soap

I told Pugsley the other day to sign my name for a note for school.  At least he’ll be in practice.

I once heard some psychologist (I think it was a psychologist, it was a very long time ago) on a television show say:  “Children are naturally truthful.”

With that one statement, I knew that the psychologist had no children.  As a child, I was a horrible liar.  My lies were horrible in every sense of the word.  I told lies that couldn’t possibly be true based on laws of physics that even I knew at my age.  And I told them in ways that weren’t convincing even to casual observers.  As a parent?  Oh, my, I assumed anything any of my kids told me before the age of ten was a lie.

I do recall telling one other little kid that I could turn invisible – I think I was five.

Why?  I have no idea.  But if you tell someone that you can turn invisible, eventually they’re gonna want to see some sort of proof, even if they’re five.

Now, however, our politicians and media are teaming up to tell a lie that’s just as stupid as my “I can turn invisible” lie.  That lie is this:

Mass shooters with AR-15 weapons are a national problem.

Well, no, they’re not.  At all.

Last year, about 364 people in the United States were killed with “long guns” – rifles.  More people have died from vaccinations than have died from AR-15 style weapons this year.  More people died falling out of bed (450) and over 2,500 left-handed folks die using right-handed items incorrectly.

People who are left-handed score higher on standardized tests than people who died as infants.

Yes.  More people die from being left-handed than from the dreaded “assault” weapon.

The odd obsession of the Left (not the left-handed) to take assault weapons, in particular, has long fascinated me.  Here is a gun that is provably twenty times safer than doctors with bad handwriting scrawling out prescriptions in what appears (to me) to be some sort of script that only a retarded (yes, I’m taking it back) chimpanzee with shakes from palsy could produce.

Honestly, for a device produced to expel a projectile at around 3,000 feet per second, the AR-15 is about the safest invention ever.  It’s like the ten million or so AR-15 shoot Nerf® darts if they only manage to kill 364 people a year.  So what’s the deal?

Let’s dissect the idea:  what really scares the Left about guns?

  • First, most gun deaths are Leftists shooting other Leftists.

Washington, D.C., had 920 people shot last year.  95% of the people in Washington, D.C. are Leftists.  People shooting each other isn’t a problem for the people on the Right, it’s just Leftists shooting each other.  People on the Left don’t understand why people on the Right aren’t upset.

Well, it’s because we’re not killing people and we’re not being killed.  Duh.

In fact, if you took lawful gun owners on the Right and their homicide rate (using guns) it would be among the lowest in the world for any country, including those that ban guns outright.  The gun homicide rate of people on the Right is similar to people on Mars, and Elon Musk hasn’t killed anyone recently.

People on the Right don’t shoot each other.  Generally, the only time people on the Right shoot people on the Left is when the people on the Left are trying to kill people on the Right.  Sure, you can come up with a few oddball examples where somebody on the Right shoots someone, but they are really the “man bites dog” stories because they are so unusual.

People on the Left killing each other?  That’s what you call “Friday” in Chicago.

What did the German say when he went into the French bread store?  “Gluten tag!”

So, when the latest shooter (FedEx shooter in Indianapolis) showed up, the Left pounced.  It was and is the man bites dog story that they’ll use to prove their lie.

To prove the point:  the Left was ecstatic when the Boulder killer showed up.  They were even more thrilled when it appeared that he had an AR-15.  Then reality hit.  When the killer proved to be an “intersectional” member of two of the Left’s worshipped classes – an immigrant and a Muslim, the Left was quite sad.

How to get out of their lie?   Blame it all on unfounded claims of “white supremacy” for the killing of nine white people.  If that’s white supremacy, the guy, just maybe, is doing it wrong.  Now if the goal was to kill white people in Boulder, well, he got that part just right.

NPR® had a lovely story:  “Why Boulder Is Trying To Keep The Focus On The Victims And Not The Shooter.”  See, if it’s a Muslim, they can’t even call him what he is – a killer.  This was all so that the story could be properly memory-holed.  It was the story they were looking for, but just the wrong killer.

Betcha $5 that NPR™ doesn’t run a similar story about Indianapolis.

Now, after half a dozen fizzled attempts to get the narrative they were looking for (someone who wasn’t a Leftist shooting other Leftists), they found it.

  • Second, individuals with guns scare Leftists, because Leftists love the State.

Leftists love statist solutions.  To them, the State is power.  It’s power for their ideas.  Leftists don’t see a world where they can go and create and change things they don’t like.  Nope.  Leftists see a world where the State has to exist to right all of the wrongs that have been done to them.

Go and create a business that serves thousands or millions of people?  Or wait for the State to forcibly take money from other people to give to you as reparations for a crime that occurred decades or even hundreds of years in the past?

Are the hieroglyphs in the pyramid hard to read because they’re encrypted?

The second one seems ever so much more fun.

But people forget that the Second Amendment was specifically written to prevent tyranny that the People wouldn’t put up with.  An armed populace are citizens.  An unarmed populace are subjects.  A stoned populace are Oregonians.

Leftists want subjects, not citizens.  Leftist want masses who vote for collectivist politicians so they can take power, and never let it go.

People on the Right?  Mainly they just want to be left alone.

  • Finally, Leftists politicians are scared because armed citizens limit what they can do.

January 6, 2021 was quite a surprise:  a group of people petitioned their government for redress.  Was there violence?  Yes.  Was it less than nearly any of the 2020 Some Black Lives Matter protest?  Certainly.  Damage was minimal.  The only death due to violence was one girl in a red hat who was shot by a cop.

That wasn’t the damage.

The damage was to the minds of the elite.  They realized that, as I’ve said before, the governance of an armed nation requires the consent of the governed.

Prior to this, the biggest fear of Congress was chlamydia.

I’ll take a second to make an aside.  People keep talking about “majority rule” as if there is some sort of magical win that comes from 50% plus one vote.  Let me ask a fairly simple question:  if a law or rule is so repugnant that 20% of the country finds it intolerable, is that a good law?

Probably not.

Here, however, the elite have figured out Wilder’s Law:  20% of the people, if armed, can stop 100% of the laws, if they are committed enough.  And it scares the elite to death.  An armed populace always scares tyrants.

My prediction is fairly simple:  Americans will continue to own guns.  Lots of them.  Legally or not.

The Left lies like a group of five-year-olds.  They say that “assault weapons” are a problem.

They’re not.  Provably not.  The left is lying.

Okay, if I really was invisible for a day?  I’d kick a mime nearly to death.

Children are not naturally truthful.  And neither is the Left.  And the Left is certainly not invisible, even when they try to convince you they are.

Welcome To Being An Outsider

“Now, I didn’t start it, but be sure as Hell I mean to see it through.” – Shooter

If you boil a clown you get laughing stock.

We’re Outsiders.

Well, not all of us.  But when you look at the system, most of the people reading this post are Outsiders.

I happen to live in a place filled with Outsiders.  Here in Modern Mayberry, you’re ten a hundred times as likely to see a Gadsden flag on a flagpole as a Bernie® bumper sticker.  Besides the Bernie supporters around here have now all been kicked out by their roommates, you know, “Mom and Dad”.

That’s why it’s Modern Mayberry.

It’s not paradise.  There are some thefts.  There are some drugs of the most destructive kind.  There’s even a hipster who was an outdoorsman before it was cool – you’d call him a homeless guy.

But yet . . .

People here still remember the United States that was, or at least the United States we remembered from our dreams.  One where the Constitution was the rule.  One where the dream wasn’t one of dependence on handouts.  One where you could ignore it when the government called you at home – you could let freedom ring.

A friend of mine used his stimulus check to buy baby chickens.  Money for nothing and the chicks for free.

Tonight I drove home along Main Street, and I saw people out and about.  In one block I saw six people that I personally knew, and most of them made it off the sidewalk in time.

Yet all of us in Modern Mayberry are really Outsiders, and I think that we know that.  And I think we cherish it, just like the EpiPen® my friend gave me as he was dying – I know I’ll always cherish it.

I watch the news stories of places that seem alien to me.  I know that California in 1980 was overwhelmingly what we now call a Red state.  Now?  It’s alien even to many that were born there.

The politics that created what would have been one of the most prosperous nations in the world have given way to politics that has made California one of the most impoverished states in the United States.  I know Gavin Newsom tried to fight poverty, but he kept losing.  Homeless people can be deceptively strong when you try to wrestle them.

Sure, I’d love to have California back.  I’d love to have Disneyland® back and the American Dream Vacation™, too, with bonus points for stops at the Grand Canyon and Uncle Eddie’s place.  But the beliefs that I believe most readers here have aren’t shared by most voters in California in 2021.

There was a person who saw the California ban coming:  No-Straw-Domus.

I don’t blame the native Californians – they voted against this insanity again and again, but were overruled from activist benches.  We know what sort of trash is on the benches, but what is on the table for the United States?

  • Individual Rights – these are being replaced by group rights. Reparations for crimes committed nearly two hundred years ago?  By the descendants of people who moved here from Germany in 1880?
  • Freedom of Choice – this is being replaced by coercion, explicit and implicit. Want to do business?  You can have whatever opinion you want – as long as it’s the right one.
  • Due Process – this is being replaced by guilt by inference. Red flag laws, anyone?
  • Right to Keep and Bear Arms – this is being replaced by the right of approved people to potentially be allowed to purchase a limited number of weapons and keep them locked in a safe at home. As long as we know the weapons are kitten-safe.

Propaganda for collectivism has long been in the offing.  For all of my life the programming has been in place to change attitudes to accept this – Leftists have monopolized the major networks since I was a kid.  Society has changed in ways that promote collectivism.  People move from location to location or live in monolithic cities or sterile suburbs that actively discourage people from acting together in the spirit of real community.

What is it replaced with?  City governments.  Homeowners’ Associations. Neither of those build community – those are, in larger cities, the expression of power and control.  The Mayor of Chicago holds more power than governors of many states.  That’s not any semblance of community – when is the last time you heard of anyone holding up Chicago for the face of election fairness?

What part of the mayor of Chicago weighs the most?  The scales.

That’s the downside.  But it gets better from here.

The first part of winning as an Outsider comes from knowing that you are an Outsider.  There is power in being an outsider – it only took a dozen Outsiders to eventually change the entire Roman Empire from people who worshiped Funko Pop® figurines to Christians.  Well, a dozen people and a few years.

Ideas are powerful.

Likewise, Outsiders are powerful.  Once a person realizes that they’re an Outsider, entire routes open to them.  This is a special type of freedom:

  • Freedom from the system. The system was built not to reward me, but to keep me in line, to keep me fearful.  To keep me compliant.  Recognizing that is everything.
  • Freedom from caring about the opinions of the world. Do I care about what France thinks about me?  Do I care about what Google® thinks about me?  Most (not all, but most) of the people whose opinions matter to me know it, and they all have excellent posture and dental hygiene.
  • Freedom to set my own goals. What is it that I value?  What is it that I want to accomplish?  This is mine, and mine alone.  Oh, wait, except for trash day.  I have to remember trash day.
  • Freedom to not apologize. When I make a mistake and I agree I’ve made a mistake, I own up to it, proudly.  When I don’t, I don’t apologize.  And I won’t.  Especially not for the bad jokes.
  • Freedom to change the world. And I will.  I’m going to keep going so I can inject my ideas so deeply into the Outsider psyche that the mRNA shot from Pfizer® will seem like a non-invasive procedure.

Kamala Harris is very concerned about COVID.  She heard that super-spreaders were the problem.

One piece of the puzzle, interestingly enough, came to me from crappy Star Wars® movie, The Force Awakens™.  The movie was horrible.  One thing that I couldn’t figure out was why, after killing the Emperor®, that the Rebels™ were . . . the Resistance©?

The movie was awful, partially because it was poorly written and choked with social justice.  But it revealed the mind of the Left in ways that I hadn’t realized before:

  • The Left wanted to identify with the Resistance© because they rely on powerlessness. Powerlessness is necessary to recruit Leftists – the core of Leftism is self-hate.
  • The Left is about power, but it refuses to admit it has it. That’s why Leftist professors from Leftist colleges complain about insufficient Leftism from Leftist politicians and Leftist media.  And vice versa – it becomes self-reinforcing.

Leftists rely on powerlessness as a route to power.  It is their foundational myth; it is their unifying element.  They are downtrodden, even as they control every major corporation.  They are disenfranchised, even though they control nearly every major media outlet – if there’s a cure for that, it’s unTweetable.

Twitter® is like a Leftist bank account – after you enter the wrong opinion five times, you’re locked out.

Given all of that, why am I so happy?

Because I’m free.  I’m free of my illusions.  I’m free to be an Outsider.

I’ll enjoy seeing the Gadsden flag tomorrow.  After all, there were another group of Outsiders a few years ago who seemed to like that flag.

And you remember where the Gadsden flag first flew?

On a pole.

When the ship lifts, all bills are paid.  No regrets.

“Have you paid your dues, Jack?  Yes, sir.  The check is in the mail.” – Big Trouble in Little China

Note to regular readers:  This post took a rather strange turn, as they sometimes do.  I had the topic picked, and then started writing, and found that the subject and evening led to a very atypical post.  I’m going to leave this one as it is.  I fully expect Monday’s post to be more of the usual stuff.

One of my favorite quotes was from the science fiction writer Robert Heinlein, “When the ship lifts, all bills are paid.  No regrets.”  I read that line when I was 19 or so.  I found it in The Notebooks of Lazarus Long.  It was displayed in a little indy book store and it was one of those times that it seemed like the book found me, and not the other way around – it was the first thing I saw when I walked into the store.

The book store?  That store stayed in business for about two months.  The problem was that the store only had (and I’m not exaggerating) about three dozen different books.  Looking back on it, I doubt that when the bookstore closed down that all the bills were paid – the landlord really should have seen that coming.

I thought about that phrase when I moved to Alaska with The Mrs.  Moving to Alaska isn’t like moving from one state to another down in the Lower 48.  The only real way out is by plane, and you’re not going unless you planned it.  Were all my bills paid?

I made sure they were.  Pa Wilder was quite old by that time.  Before leaving for Alaska, I was quite clear in knowing that it was possible that when we moved was the last time I would ever see him alive.  I made it a point then to tell him everything I needed to tell him, to share everything I could.  I wanted him to be at peace, and I wanted to be at peace, too.

Prepping is for more than economic collapse.

Thankfully, Pa lived more than a decade after when we moved.  He even visited us in Alaska and finally down into Houston when we moved back to the continental United States.

In my mind, there’s a part of me that always sees him in his prime.  That was back when I was 12 and Pa was the father that would work 50 hours a week at the bank.  Then Pa would come home and work my brother John (yes, that’s his name, our parents were classically uncreative) and me for 20 hours over the long summer weekend days hauling and stacking firewood for the cold winter nights up at the compound on Wilder Mountain.

When I thought of him, I always remembered that impossibly tall and competent man of my youth.  When he visited Alaska I was fully six inches taller than him, and the strong arms that had swung a sledgehammer in a mighty arc to split wood with a steel wedge were now thin with age, his walk hesitant and slow.

But he was still dad.

One thing I always did, however, was try to leave each conversation with him as a complete conversation, a capstone if you will.  I wanted to make sure that absolutely every time I talked to him I was leaving nothing unsaid.  I wanted to make sure he knew exactly what I felt.

Pa Wilder lived twenty-five years longer than he expected.  But around the time I was moving to Alaska, I could sense a change in him.  The emails that he wrote gradually developed grammatical and spelling errors.  This was a change.  Previously, Pa had been as precise as an English-teaching nun in grammar and spelling.

It was a sign.  Pa was declining.

Over time, the decline increased.  I can still recall the last time I talked to him and he recognized me.  After spending two days with him, he finally looked at me and said, “You’re John, aren’t you.”

Beyond that, we had some pleasant times, but I could tell that he didn’t recognize me.  One time he looked at me and said, “Who are you?”

“I’m your son, John.”

There was not even a glimmer of recognition in his eyes.

When word came from my brother that Pa Wilder had passed (this was years and years ago) The Mrs., The Boy, Pugsley, and I went to his funeral.  As The Mrs. and I had a private moment between all of the orchestrated family events, she asked me, “Is there anything you need to share?  Are you doing alright?”

To be clear – I did miss and do miss Pa.  But I had made sure that everything that I ever needed to say to him had been said.  My conscience was clear.  I know that, whenever he had a clear moment, he knew that I loved him.  And I knew he loved me.

I had no unresolved issues.

It’s one thing to read the phrase, “When the ship lifts, all bills are paid.  No regrets,” and another to understand it as time passes and wisdom increases.  When Pa Wilder passed, I understood it.  I looked deep into myself and understood that all the bills were paid.  I had no regrets.

The Mrs. had a different experience entirely with the passing of her father several months ago.  Due to COVID restrictions, he had spent the last months of his life with absolutely no physical contact, no presence of his family.  He had been recovering from surgery in a nursing home, and never recovered enough to be discharged.

For month after month, he spent his time alone, with nothing but phone calls from those he loved.

The Mrs. was very upset about this.  Heck, The Mrs. is still upset about this – the process of paying those last bills was cruelly interrupted.  She had more things to say to him – and I understand that.  There are things I’d dearly like to say to Ma Wilder, but that ship lifted too early, and now those bills can never be paid, at least not in full.

I try now to make each meeting, each contact with those around me that I love one where they know exactly where they stand with me, and vice versa.  The idea of continuing my life with those bills, or leaving those bills with someone else isn’t something I want.

To be very clear:  what brought this topic to mind wasn’t anything in particular, just the thought that this has been a helpful philosophy for me.  I do know that the future is uncertain, so I try to live my life so I don’t have those regrets, and try to manage my relationships so that there’s never anything left unsaid.

The check is in the mail.

Courage: The Biggest Present A Parent Can Give

“Now, be careful, Fry. And if you kill anyone, make sure to eat their heart to gain their courage. Their rich, tasty courage.” – Futurama

The French never go on holidays, only retreats.

The biggest pleasure of being a father is the education of my children.  This opportunity varies.  Pugsley and The Boy are the sons of an increasingly rare commodity in 2021:  they are children of an intact family.

The Boy and Pugsley are the children of me and my wife, The Mrs.  That’s rare because many, many children are raised by families that are broken or blended in 2021.  Or, raised in a home with no natural parent.

Like me, an adopted kid.

I was fortunate.  Even though I was adopted, my parents, Ma and Pa Wilder, were a common front.  Pa Wilder knew he could enforce discipline with the same effect as Ma Wilder.  That’s an aside, but it’s important.  Men learn how to be men from their fathers.  No matter how brave and stunning a Mom is, no Mother is, or ever will be, a Father.

The plus side?  Every bag of chips is family-sized if you’re adopted.

So I feel especially good that I’ve had the opportunity to raise my boys with the full backing and support of The Mrs.   The idea that Pugsley could play me against The Mrs.?  Or vice versa?

That would never happen.

Even if The Mrs. and I were diametrically opposed, the idea that we would overrule each other in front of a kid?  Nope.  There was no way that The Mrs. and I could be split.  Even if we disagreed – that disagreement would be kept to ourselves until we had a knife fight to determine who was right.

What, you don’t do trial by combat at your house?  If you’re a first timer, make sure you have a suture kit available.  They’re cheap, and neither The Mrs. or I go for the eyes, so we have that going for us.

Raising boys isn’t easy – the only thing it’s easier than is raising girls.  From my experience, every boy passes through a gate – a gate where they engage in a fight with their father.  This gate is narrow.

With each of my boys, the fight was one I considered existential:  to make them men worthy of being called a man is a process.  And it consists of fighting the impulses that are natural to a boy.  Every 12 year old considers themselves the wisest man since Solomon, and considers their father the dullest man since Mr. Bean®.

Why couldn’t Helen Keller drive?  Because she was a woman.

I have thought about it, and the most important message have I fought (in some cases for years) to put into the skulls of my sons is simple:

  • That courage is important.
  • That courage is useless unless in service of virtue.
  • That virtue is useless unless in service of a Higher Good.

I know, I’ve tossed around several posts about virtue that don’t explicitly state that a Higher Good is important.  Virtue is important.  But virtue must have a Higher Good to be, well, Virtue.  (Atheists that are regular readers have a Wilder Exemption Card – you’re not Evil like the other ones.)

Tonight, Pugsley and I sat in the hot tub at Stately Wilder Manor.  Pugsley is currently in the mindset where he would love to own a Mustang® Shelby© 350 or a Lamborghini™ Huracán Performante®.  Thus, he has discovered Top Gear™/Grand Tour©.  These are shows that are hosted by three British guys:  Richard Hammond, James May, Jeremy Clarkson.

A hammer has lots of uses:  it can pay for a taxi ride, a dinner, or a can of Monster® energy drink from 7-11©.

Jeremy Clarkson is the big, brash guy.  He’s also an amazing presenter.  For reasons that will become apparent if you watch it (and you should) Mr. Clarkson put together a documentary on the Victoria Cross.

It’s here.

The idea of watching men be courageous is important.  It’s perhaps more important now than at any time in our history, because there has been an attempt to systematically erase courage.

Why?

The answer is simple.  Courage is an individual action.  The idea that individuals have a place in society is the anathema of the Left.  It’s the anathema of Globalism.  Everyone is a simple cog in the machinery of the world.  You exist only for the glory of the collective.

Leftists (and Globalists) feel the world doesn’t need or want individuals with courage.  The world needs individuals that do what they’re told, when they’re told to do it.  No other action is acceptable – only the action approved by the collective.  The convenience store clerk must be fired when they commit the crime of heroism to save a customer.  Individual heroism?  Courage fighting against evil?

Completely unacceptable.

I heard about this guy who donated a kidney and was a hero – so why is it that when I donate five I’m charged with a felony?

The world has, in many respects, moved away from individuals.  Have an adversary?  Hit them with missiles from a Predator® drone that is piloted by a guy sitting in a video game chair half a world away.  Where is the heroism in that?

There isn’t any.

Okay.  Maybe a little heroism. Just as much heroism as there is in properly filing documents associated with statistics of average foot size of Vietnam veterans from Vail or Valdez or Valdosta.  So, not much.

What’s required for heroism?  What’s required for courage?  This is especially irritating, since most definitions of courage floated on the Internet are filled with corporate weasel words.  It seems that properly filing a TPS® report when the temperature of the office was not exactly between 72°F and 74°F (2.3 kg and 3.7 dl) would qualify for the definition of modern courage.  Yes.  Everyone wants to live in a mall.

I got into a fight changing levels at a mall.  It escalated quickly.

Honestly, most of the definitions I find of courage on the Internet make me feel that the weasels that have tried to define it are the opposite of courageous.  They’re tepid things that promote the most mundane and boring of actions to the exalted level of “courage.”  Go to work and do your job?

You’re a hero.  You’re courageous.

I reject that.  I would say that courage requires these elements:

  • First:   Actions that are true heroism are done without regard to self.  One Victoria Cross nominee was denied the award because the plane he was piloting (while he was bleeding to death) would save him, too, if he landed it properly.
  • Second: Devotion to duty and those around you.  This, particularly, drives modern Leftists nuts.  The first devotion must be the Leftism, whatever that means on any particular day.  Devotion to a higher power?  Devotion to the people around you?
  • Third: Personal danger.  It may be as small as the idea of being embarrassed (for tiny amounts of courage), but for actual courage?  Let’s be real.  Standing up on a top of a hill when surrounded by 6,000 screaming enemies and throwing grenades until you run out?  That’s courageous.  The stuff that most people peddle today as courage . . . isn’t.

One definition had, “has to be scared.”  Nope.  Sorry.  Pissed off is close enough.  I imagine that 50% of the people we’d all agree are courageous were just plain mad.

There are lots of examples of people who showed great courage simply because they were angry.  They had lost friends.  They were unwilling to take one step back.  Fear isn’t an element of courage – fear is the enemy of courage.

“You’ve heard of animals chewing off a leg to escape a trap?  There’s an animal kind of trick.  A human would remain in the trap, endure the pain, feigning death that he might kill the trapper and remove a threat to his kind.”

That’s courage.  Bonus points if you can name the book.

The Mrs. said she wanted to spice up the bedroom.  I hope she likes paprika.

Here’s the big lie, the thing that they want you to believe:  the era of courage is over.  The ideas of individuals don’t matter.  The actions of individuals don’t matter.

As long as humanity survives, the actions of individuals will always matter.  As long as fathers teach sons, the era for courage isn’t over.

That’s why I play this game.  Courage matters.  Virtue matters.  A Higher Power matters.  Those are the things that make men.  That’s why I love this part of the game.  One way a man lives on are in the values he leaves to his sons.

Every time I have the opportunity to help my boys, I know I’m winning.

Always remember:  We’re not done.  This isn’t over.

Three Kinds Of Evil

“You’re semi-evil. You’re quasi-evil. You’re the margarine of evil. You’re the Diet Coke of evil. Just one calorie, not evil enough.” – Austin Powers

I heard that Kim Jong Un was evil because he had no Seoul.

Evil.

Several of my posts have been about Evil recently.  I use the capital E because, in my conception of the world, Evil is a force.  I know your mileage may vary, but I think that today’s post can benefit you regardless of your belief system.  Stick with me on this one.  I brought cookies and juice boxes for halftime.

Normally, I had thought of Evil (when I thought of it) as just plain Evil.  The idea that there were different kinds of Evil wasn’t something that I dwelled on.  Bad is bad, so why categorize it?  It’s like determining if Biden’s morning Depends™ is worse than his night time Depends© – he calls them both Executive Odors and then talks about Corn Pop.

Well, it turns out that for me, when I read about these categories it made Evil easier for me to see.  It also made the progression of Evil easier for me to understand.  And if I could better see Evil and understand Evil, I could anticipate Evil.  Most importantly, I could try to avoid personally being Evil.

And that’s why I thought this was worthy of a Friday post, where I normally write about health.  What could be healthier (for your mind, if not your soul) than not being Evil?

The first form of Evil is one that most often came to mind when I thought of Evil, and that is Luciferian Evil.  Describing this type of Evil is easy:  “If it feels good, do it.”

What feels like the United States but isn’t?  Washington, D.C.

If that sounds familiar, the entire decade of the 1960s and most of the 1970s was dedicated to exactly that phrase.  Regardless of social conviction, regardless of taboo, regardless of the impact upon society, the idea was to live for yourself.  How else would you explain disco music?

In theory, that’s a great idea.  (Not disco, but living for yourself.)  In practice, however, living only for yourself has an amazing cost.  I’ll admit that I know this because, at one phase of my life, I thought that this was just fine.

Oh, not in the way of stealing things, or breaking things, but in the realm of personal relationships.  Let’s just say I had a large number of girlfriends, some of whom may have had self-esteem issues.  We’ll leave it at that.

Doing what feels good at the expense of the context of a traditional relationship has consequences.  In the end, it feels empty.  Lust is never as good as love, though it was easier to find at 11:30 on a Friday night.

I don’t have a problem with low self-esteem, considering how awesome I am.

Living life just for pleasure ended up making me feel lonely and empty and nihilistic – the very partnership that a stable traditional marriage brings was what was avoided.  But, you know, it felt good.  That makes it okay.  Right?

Well, no.  That’s what makes it Evil.  When I gave that up?  Life became better.

The second type of Evil is more Evil than the first one.  Dr. Bruce Charlton (LINK) referenced it as Ahrimanic Evil*.  (Dark Brightness (LINK) had the excellent original post I read and the link to Charlton’s site.)

Ahrimanic Evil requires Luciferian Evil to open the door.  “If it feels good, do it” seems to lead to “everyone should follow the value system of the material world and globalist systems.  It’s for their own good.”  That coercion is Ahrimanic Evil.

Just as Luciferian Evil removes the spirituality out of sex, Ahrimanic Evil removes the virtue out of sacrifice for society.  If you’re against the soul-destroying, controlling, Chinese Social Credit system, what you’re really opposing is Ahrimanic Evil.

I hear that the unit of mass George Soros uses is the pentagram.

The soulless Yuppie of the 1980s became the architect of the Ahrimanic control structures of political correctness and cancel culture.  Ahrimanic Evil wants you to live in pods and eat bugs and take the vaccine.  Fun?  Not on this Evil.  It’s about the relentless and constant pursuit of material success.

It seems like, since 1990 or so, we’ve been living in a world based on materialism, denying the spiritual or natural component of human existence.  The libertine (not libertarian) excesses of the 1960s and 1970s gave way in the 1990s to full-on materialism.  If it’s good for the economy, it’s perfect.  Free trade, open borders?  Who cares about what the consequences are to society as long as the economic systems function?

I’ll admit, in the 1990s I was seduced by this model.  I worried more about economic systems than I did about the social structure of the United States.  Was I for NAFTA then?  Yeah.  What could go wrong?

A lot.  It looks like Ross Perot was right.  But during that time I was following the same model – I pursued my career as a top priority.  Yup, I’ve tried to put that Evil behind me, too.

Want it, buy it, forget it.

The last stage that Charlton mentions is Sorathic Evil.  It is the most evil of the three Evils.

Sorathic Evil requires the progress from Luciferian to Ahrimanic Evil in society.  In practice, you’d think that having a global police surveillance state was the worst thing you could think of.  You’ve seen all the films, right, and listened to Pink Floyd’s The Wall, which was (sort of) an attack on the Ahrimanic Evil they saw coming.

But what is this final Evil?

Destruction.  Hate.  Spite.

You’d think that Evil would be happy with the image, in Orwell’s words with this: “imagine a boot stamping a human face forever.”  Total control, through the end of time.

Nope.  That’s not enough.  Sorathic Evil requires destruction.  And, I’ll admit that I felt that way once or twice.  It, like the lustfulness or materialism, is soul-destroying.  After I released feeling that way, I felt immediately better, like a weight had been lifted off of my shoulders.

The end state of Sorathic Evil is despair.  It is envy.  It is the desire for the destruction of others for no other reason than you want them to be destroyed.  But as we have seen recently, the destruction of others is not enough:  Trump transgressed the Ahrimanic system, so Trump (and all who supported him) must be (in their minds) destroyed.

If it were just about justice, that would be simple enough – the absence of Trump was the win for the Left.  After Obama ceased to be President, I ceased to care about him.  Leftists, the current embodiment of Luciferian, Ahrimanic, and Sorathic Evil, want Trump and his supporters to suffer.  If we all changed to their viewpoint today, it would not be enough.

I interviewed to be a mime once – but I didn’t get the job.  Must have been something I said.

Imagine Cambodia times the Cultural Revolution times the Holodomor.  Squared.  That is the future the Left wants for us, and I’ll be writing about that for Monday’s post.  And that is the Evil we face.

What they fail to realize is that is the future that they will also get for themselves if they are successful.  There won’t be any Gender Studies Majors on the Central Committee.  The Left would line up the Leftist professors to be shot far faster than the Right ever would.

The only way to feed the Beast is to make people suffer.

I’m not going to say I’m a great person.  I regularly meet with and interact with people who are far better people than I will ever be.  I will say, I try.  But by having lived through and let go of these three types of Evil, I immediately felt better.

The other thing I’ve learned is that Good is stronger than Evil.  Good fills the void, while Evil only brings additional hunger.

We’re not done.

This isn’t over.

*(As far as the terms Charlton references, you don’t need to follow the rabbit trail as to where he got the names for the Evils and points I’m making in this post.  It gets a bit esoteric, and you can spend hours, days or weeks wandering down there, but Charlton points the way if you are interested.  Beware, it’s filled with esoteric weirdness.)

End Censorship Of The Right With This One Simple Trick

“This is the worst kind of discrimination. The kind against me.” – Futurama

Twitter® Safety Council Warning:  This meme has disinformation – this was not crack, Hunter Biden was smoking meth.

I get worried when I see Internet personalities come up with entirely new philosophical positions.  I generally roll my eyes and ignore them.  I can recall reading details of a few “master systems” that could never work unless they were implemented by a group of autistic libertarians on a planet with infinite resources, free fusion power and access to unlimited deodorant.

Oh, wait, I just described Switzerland.

History shows, though, that one “master system” created by a group of guys actually worked. This is, of course, the United States.  The United States was a 2.0 version – the original 1.0 Articles of Confederation apparently needed an upgrade to function.  (There are those who say the 1.0 version was working just fine, but that’s another story.)

There are several safeguards built into the Constitution.  Some of them appear to not work very well anymore, like the Supreme Court, which went on the fritz somewhere around 1932.  Some changes (like the direct election of Senators) are like a fuse in a 1982 Buickâ„¢ Skylark© – the fuse has blown but been replaced by someone sticking a penny in the slot.  The Senate doesn’t really do what it was designed to do, anymore.

What kind of cancer was Jar Jar diagnosed with?  Meesathelioma.

One remaining safeguard is Federalism.  Federalism is the idea that the individual States aren’t simply a subdivision like a county or city, but are individually sovereign.

This is a really big deal.

The States have given up several of their rights by joining the Union, but certainly not all of them.  One particular right that the several States retain is to protect the civil liberties of their citizens.  It is perfectly legal for any State to protect its individual citizens from discrimination, especially discrimination by businesses.

My suggestion is this:  since the Right controls a large number of States, and a large number of important States, why not use that power for the Right?

Here’s one suggestion:

States controlled by the Right should protect their citizens from discrimination based on their legal opinions – political or otherwise.  We could start out with something simple, like making discrimination on social media illegal.

Okay, that’s not really simple.  But it is something that we can do.

If the French army used Twitter, all you’d hear from them is “Retweet, retweet!”

Here is my contention:  large social media companies in a world where opinions are increasingly driven by them aren’t a privilege, they’re a right.  And being excluded from them can swing elections.  Uganda certainly thought so:  they banned Twitter® and Facebook™ because (according to the Ugandan ruling party) they were taking sides in the election.

Yes, you got that right:  Ugandan despots have a higher moral ground than Twitter® does.

Twitter©, in an unintended bit of irony, complained that censorship was wrong.  Wait, Twitter™ said censoring Twitter® was wrong.   Twitter© is, of course, fine with censoring the accounts of American citizens who have opinions that Twitter™ doesn’t like.

Here’s what Twitter© said:

“Access to information and freedom of expression, including the public conversation on Twitter, is never more important than during democratic processes, particularly elections.”

In Soviet Russia, the vote hacks you!

Care to take a bet that Twitter®, Amazon™, Facebook©, and Google® didn’t influence the election in the United States?  Think that Twitter™, which has zero competition, hasn’t unduly influenced the “democratic processes” in the United States by choosing what information to promote?

Well, let’s make all of them live up to Twitter’s© words and guarantee access to information and freedom of expression.  How about we make a law that says:

  • Any discrimination by censoring users with legal opinions is punishable by a $1,000,000 fine. Per occurrence.  Every censored user could split the fine halvsies with the State.  If I were to be particularly evil, I would suggest that this be done via administrative law, which takes it right out of the court system.  They could only appeal to, for instance, the Texas Social Media Freedom Commission, where they’d learn that messing with Texans is a bad idea.
  • Censoring porn? Just fine, since it’s not appropriate or legal for every user to see.  Censoring, real, actionable threats?  Those are already illegal.  So that’s fine.
  • Can an individual block other users that offend them?   But no large social media company can.
  • Repeated violations open the social media companies up to punitive damages, which is where the big bucks start to show up. Punitive damages are often large enough to make billionaires take note.
  • Removal of the service from the State enacting these laws is evidence that every citizen has been deprived of their civil liberties. Therefore?  The social media company owes a million dollars . . . per citizen.

The idea is simple:  Facebook®, Twitter™, Instagrandma©, and all of the other general purpose social media companies can no longer hide.  Does Aunt Erma’s knitting bulletin board have to let Marxists try to turn knitting communist?

Pugsley’s Grandma knitted him three socks for Christmas.  Why?  We told her he had grown another foot.

Of course not.  Aunt Erma’s knitting board isn’t a general-purpose board.  It’s focused on a single topic.  Social media that’s really small (less than 10,000 daily users?) can ban whoever they want.  They are not really impacting the national agenda.  Social media with over a million daily users that’s not focused around a specific topic?

They can only ban users that violate the law with the content that they posted.

Oddly enough, we could make some of the same arguments the Left does. Recently, an A.I. was able to, based on photographs alone, determine with 75% accuracy who was on the Right and who was on the Left.  We can make being on the Right a protected characteristic.

Being on the Right might not be a choice.  So, if a baker has to bake a gay cake, Twitter® has to host people who have a problem with that.

The beauty of this idea is that we are protecting the civil rights of citizens.  We are fighting for First Amendment protections.  And we are not forcing anyone to do anything special – just don’t ban people who have different ideas than they do.  Corporations are allowed to do a lot of things, but censoring voices that differ from what they think is right is simply not one of them.  Twitter® censored a major United States newspaper because they published data about a candidate that Twitter© didn’t like.

I think this is, at least partially, why marijuana legalization has been so successful in the States that have legalized it:  it is granting additional rights to citizens and businesses.  The Federal government knows that it is on thin ice when it wants to regulate commerce that takes place entirely within a State.

But the Internet doesn’t take place entirely within a State, right?

No.  But we’re not trying to regulate commerce.  We’re protecting the civil rights of our citizens.  And Twitter® and Facebook™ are attempting to market our citizens for money.  They’re engaging in commerce to everyone in the State by offering their free service.  So, if they exclude people (or mute people) because they don’t like their opinion?

They’re discriminating, and if we get this done, they will be illegally discriminating.  And the Right should punish them.  Does Facebook™ need Texas more than Texas needs Facebook©?

It is simple:  Facebook® needs Texas more than Texas needs Facebook™.

What’s the difference between Mark Zuckerberg and Jean Luc Picard?  Picard didn’t sell Data

So, if you’re with me, start working at the State level to get these protections of our essential freedoms in place.  Talk to your State legislators – heck, I’m willing to bet that some readers are State legislators, so let’s get this going.

The place to fight for freedom isn’t only at the Federal level – in fact, the best place to fight for freedom might be at the State level.

We’re not done.  And this isn’t over.

Penultimate Day And 2021 Thoughts

“The Babylon Project was our last, best hope for peace.  It failed.  But in the year of the Shadow War, it became something greater: our last, best hope for victory.  The year is 2260. The place: Babylon 5.” – Babylon 5

Why did 2020 cross the road?  To get to the other cyanide.

This year we didn’t celebrate our traditional Wilder family holiday, Penultimate Day.  What does Penultimate Day entail?

Well, you drive south for two hours or so.  Then you go to Best Buy® and, under no circumstances do you buy a cell phone.  But you must look at cell phones.  Then, after not buying a cell phone, you go to Olive Garden® and have some nice pasta.

This celebration started (I think) in 2011 or 2012, I think.  The Mrs.’ cell phone (a Blackberry®!) was going south.  We drove to the nearest cell phone store that was tied to our carrier, which was a Best Buy™ about two hours from us.  We got frustrated attempting to figure out the deals after the phone clerk wheeled out a surgical gurney to take out part of my intestines.  I told him, “No way!”

“Really?  You need to look at the contract closer.  It’s in the appendix.”

We gave up on buying a phone.

Then, frustrated at our lack of being able to find a phone, we gave up and decided to have dinner.

Hobbits always use vibrate on their phones – they don’t want the ring to give them away.

And then we drove home.  It was impossibly silly, driving a total of four hours to go to not buy a cell phone.  And we did it on December 30.  So, I made the joke that since the New Year was a made-up holiday, why not make up our own?  Thus Penultimate Day – the next-to-last day of the year – became an official Wilder holiday.

Over the years, we took Penultimate Day seriously.  There were one or two exceptions where we skipped Penultimate Day, primarily because Pugsley or The Boy had a sports event.  That is, of course, acceptable.  The goal of Penultimate Day is to do something fun together as a family.

We stuck to celebrating Penultimate Day.  Why?   Because it was fun, it was silly, and it was ours.

We didn’t celebrate Penultimate Day this year.

First, traveling into a major metropolitan area didn’t make sense to us – here in Modern Mayberry the case-rate for the WuFlu is relatively low, and we have no idea what the requirements are to even go into Best Buy® in Major Undisclosed Metropolitan Area.  Second, while we enjoy going to the Olive Garden™, I’m still convinced that the free breadsticks are some kind of con game.  I keep expecting a bill to arrive from them in 2028:  “owed to Olive Garden© for “free” breadsticks:  $257,065.”

What’s the only pasta you can get during COVID-19 lockdown?  Macaroni and sneeze.

Instead, we slept in late, played a few games, and more-or-less relaxed the entire day.  Our contribution to the economy of the United States?  We had a nice dinner The Mrs. cooked for us at home, used some natural gas to fire our heater, and spent about $3 in electricity for lighting the place.  That was it.  Our participation in the economy on December 30, 2020 was probably less than $20, total.

That’s the problem if you’re running an economy.  No gasoline, no money heading to the Olive Garden©, and no tip to the waitress.

I read that Christmas spending was down this year, to $851 from $976 in 2019.  That’s a drop of 13%.  But this is Monday, not Wednesday when we talk about economics.  On Monday, we talk about the big picture.

But 13% is a huge drop-off.  And when you add in all of the activities that people aren’t doing?  I imagine it was even more.  The big picture?  Economic contraction increases instability.

I wrote in 2019’s Penultimate Day that we were entering a period of chaos, where entire edifices that we used to stand behind would crumble.  Now, we sit in 2021, and a majority of the people who voted in the national election think it was rigged.

How do you get a baby alien to sleep?  Rocket.

Also rigged?  The system of justice in the nation.  We see Antifa® and BLM© “peacefully” destroy cities.  The massive number of unindicted felons?  It’s okay to loot.

2020 was a mess, but it looks like we got to get a glimpse of the man behind the curtain.

2021 will certainly start out like a mess.  January is going to be chaotic.  Regardless, I’m optimistic about 2021 – not because I’m insane, but because I know what starts the upward rise:  the upward rise starts after you’ve fallen and hit bottom.  While we around the world have fallen and are headed toward the bottom, the biggest lesson is this:  bring something back up with you.

That’s the question for today:  what can we bring back up with us?

  • Understanding that the world can change around you in an instant. One moment, the world was normal.  The next?  Lockdowns, the destruction of an economy.
  • Understanding where your vulnerabilities are. Food?  Toilet paper?  What can you do to fix them?
  • Knowing that your job is not “safe” – the entire economy isn’t safe. Be prepared for more dislocations.  What skills are you working on?

These are important realizations.  In 2021 and for the foreseeable future, complacency will not be your friend.  Constantly question your assumptions.  Constantly try to understand your side, but also periodically ask yourself, “What if I’m wrong?”  Try to understand the other side of the issue, too.

You may or may not be wrong, but questioning (not doubting, but questioning) yourself is key to deep understanding.  Hold your own beliefs up to the same scrutiny you use on opposing beliefs.

Thankfully, hindsight is 2020.  Or did I get that backward?

As I wrote on Friday, I’m not sure that 2021 will be a great year, but it will be a birth year for the next phase of what happens to our society.  What’s probable this year?

  • Unemployment continues, and likely gets worse. Ideas of a quick rebuild will be crushed.  People at the bottom end – twentysomethings and service workers – are already hoisting a white flag.
  • Society will become even more fractured. Left and Right are guaranteed to be further apart in 2021 – the way this presidential election has gone is sure to inflame both sides, no matter what happens.
  • The very mechanisms that we normally see as protecting society will continue to erode. People on the Right who are defending the “thin blue line” will become aware that many (not all!) of the police will do whatever the people signing their checks tell them to do.  This is not the year to be a cop in Portland, Oregon.
  • People will continue to flee California and large Leftist cities in a locust-like plague. They will not leave their Leftist ideas behind.
  • The debt of the United States will continue to climb. My bet?  We add another $4-5 trillion this year.  That doesn’t include personal debt and business debt.  The idea that printing money is better than earning it will continue and probably increase in 2021.  This idea will only stop when events force it to stop.

But as I said in the introduction to Friday’s post, I remain weirdly optimistic that, even given all of these trends, this will be a year that we will look back on and say, “That was the year that things changed.”  Certainly, 2020 was a year that will likely be looked on as the start of the crisis.  2021 will be looked at as the year that the seeds of the new are planted.

How can I better describe it?

1776 is they year that most people associate with the birth of the United States.  What most people forget is that it wasn’t until 1787 that the Constitutional Congress was held.  Likewise, it wasn’t until 1789 that George Washington was sworn in as our first President.  That was thirteen years after 1776 – thirteen years where there was war, economic failure, and finally a coming together over a very unique document.

Change takes time.

What did Washington say before his men got in the boats to cross the Delaware to attack the British?  “Get in the boats.”

So, if I’m right, people will look back on 2021 and say, “That was when things turned around.”

And the good news is, Penultimate Day or not, you’ll be there for it.  Again, I never said it was going to be easy.  It will likely be the complete opposite of easy.

Freedom rarely is easy.  And I’m still pretty sure that the Olive Garden© has a comprehensive spreadsheet somewhere charting my breadstick consumption . . . .

Plato’s Cave, Bonfires, And They Live

“Put the glasses on! Put them on!” – They Live

Jack Nicholson gave us a Colonel of truth in that movie.

Living in the country has advantages.  One of them is being able to conduct experiments into nuclear fusion without a license.  Oops.  Did I say that out loud?

The other is that I can make a bonfire the size of Delaware.  Why would I want to do that?  Just like making my own fusion reactor, why wouldn’t I want to do that?

In my case, the next-door neighbor and I have trees that regularly need to be trimmed, or, as I mentioned in a story (A Tree Fell On My House, But I Have A Chainsaw) a while ago, just plain fall down onto my house.  We haven’t burned the pile for about three years, so I figured it was time to get rid of prime snake habitat and burn it all down.  Winter is the best time for a ludicrously large fire, so we decided tonight was the night.

Now lighting deadwood on fire sounds easy, but this time it was fairly difficult.  We were nearly getting ready to give up, go inside, and let the pile smolder out when a section caught.  Admittedly it was on the fifth bottle of charcoal lighter fluid, so I guess persistence pays off.

If I ever become an island castaway, I’ll set up a flaming signal on the beach:  it’s the shore fire way to get attention.

Within five minutes we had a conflagration pouring tornado-like flames thirty feet into the sky.  There is a moment when, after unleashing that fire, I realized it was utterly beyond our control.  It was burning fuel so fast that branches suspended five feet about the base were burning with a bright bluish-gold flame.  Sparks were shooting 60 feet into the air on an updraft of hot air that would make Maxine Waters blush.

Thankfully, I could release that sweet, sweet CO2 back into the air to Make Siberia Warm Again.

I liked that, because an immense, hot fire burns quickly, and I wanted it to be a boring pile of coals and hot ash before I went inside.  It was – within ten more minutes (seven liters) the fire had consumed 70% plus of its fuel and it was perfect for toasting marshmallows – from forty feet away.

We heard sirens sounded like a fire engine in the neighborhood, but we didn’t go and look – showing up at a neighborhood fire with marshmallow roasting sticks is bad form here in Modern Mayberry.

As I sat there beside the fire, I was thinking about Plato.

No, Plato isn’t Goofy®’s dog, that’s Pluto™.  Which makes me wonder why a cartoon dog has a dog as a pet?  Disturbing.

My computer password is FrodoKirkGoofyScoobyBugsSacramento – just like IT said – five characters and a capital.

What I was thinking about was the dead Greek guy, Plato.  In many things, Plato was a complete idiot, but he wrote everything down, so we remember him.  Diogenes the philosopher, it is rumored, loved making fun of Plato, especially by putting Icy-Hot™ in the nether regions of Plato’s toga.

But one thing that Plato left us with that was useful was his Allegory of the Cave.

The Allegory of the Cave is a fairly simple story.   A group of people are chained in a cave so all they can do is stare at a blank wall.  But behind them is a fire, which casts shadows on the wall.  Not being able to see real, three-dimensional reality, the people stuck in the cave seeing nothing but shadows give names to the shadows.

I tried to come up with another philosopher pun, but I just Kant.  And I Kant lose any more weight.  Another Plato.

Their reality, knowing nothing else, are those shadows that they can see.

But one day, one of the people escapes.  He leaves the cave, and upon looking around sees the rich tapestry of things that are not shadows.  He sees colors.  He sees trees.  He might see a Taco Bell® depending upon where the cave is.

He finally experiences reality as you and I do, especially if he orders extra cheese on the Nachos Bell Grande®.

It must be a stunning information overload – countless things that he’s never seen before – remember, if it hasn’t cast a shadow on the cave wall, it doesn’t exist in his world.

Having friends in the cave, the escaped person goes back in.  “Dudes, you have to see this.  We’ve been wrong our whole lives – there’s a rich world out there.  Nothing is as it seems to you.  Come and see!”

In the kingdom of the blind, is the one-eyed man king?

No, in the kingdom of the blind, the one-eyed man is considered, at best, crazy.  More likely, however, the one-eyed man is viewed as a threat that must be eliminated.  So is our escapee that returns to enlighten his friends.

No one wants to be robbed of their illusions.  Many people don’t want to consider alternate viewpoints.  The escapee will be shouted down by the rest of the captives.  “Surely,” they say, “such a world cannot exist.  If it did, I’d have to change my conceptions, and there are two things I never change, my underwear and my conceptions.”

What kind of pants do they wear in Plato’s cave?  Yoga Tights?  No.  Stalac Tights.

The bad news is, to one extent or another, we’re all prisoners of the cave.  We see misperceptions in our daily life, either of our own construct or as constructed for us.

Who would construct misperceptions for us?

Lots of people.  Here are a few examples:

  • Harry Truman, on August 6, 1945, said: “Sixteen hours ago an American airplane dropped one bomb on Hiroshima, an important Japanese Army base.”  Well, sure.  It was a militarily important city.  And farms were militarily important because they made food that people might eat.  And schools were militarily important because they educated children that could fight us.  But that would be like saying, “San Francisco, an important American Army base.”  (Note:  I’m not saying I disagree with the decision, just that Truman’s statement was shady as a Netflix® show about dancing children.)

Don’t worry, in the sequel the Japanese take out Detroit.

  • Operation Northwoods: Essentially a plan from the Pentagon for our military to stage terrorist attacks in the United States while pretending to be Cubans as a justification to attack Cuba.  Really.  Here’s the Wikipedia® on that (LINK).  Not Alex Jones.  Wikipedia™.
  • The CIA performed illegal mind control experiments on American and Canadian civilians.  Here’s the Wikipedia (LINK).  Most of the documents were burned, so there’s no telling how many people were impacted.  When I first heard of this, my response was that it was impossible.  Nope.  They did it.
  • Let’s pull the media in, too. The New York Times® “reporter” Walter Duranty wrote stories that there was no mass starvation in the Soviet Union in the early 1930s, despite knowing that millions were being starved to death on purpose.  Duranty got a Pulitzer Prize™ for his lies – a prize that has never been rescinded.  I wrote about that starvation here (In The World Murder Olympics, Communists Take Gold And Silver Medals).

I could do dozens more where the government, academia, industry, or unions lied and most people believed them.  I’ve written about those again and again – the 1960’s Harvard Sugar Study, anyone (High Carbs, Harvard, Insurance, And Avoiding Doctors)?  If it was just statements from politicians that were lies that most of us believed?  I don’t have enough electrons on my computer to store all of those.

Essentially, unless I get up and go outside of the cave I’m in, I’m sitting and watching those shadows on the wall.  But when I do get up and go outside of that cave, I learn amazing things – all those things that are glossed over in history classes, and generally not easy to find, though they’re (for today) clearly documented on even Left-leaning sites like Wikipedia®.

All of those things that receive warnings on Twitter® and are banned on Facebook™?  Shadows.  I’m not saying that everything that gets a Twitter© warning is the Truth.  But I am saying that if they’re suppressing an idea, it merits investigation and clear thinking, and abandoning your preconceptions to try to find Truth.

But if someone would have told fifteen year old me that those things in the bullet points above were true?  Would I have violently rejected that?

Absolutely.

Fifteen year old me wanted to believe in the government, wanted to believe that the press wasn’t hopelessly corrupt.  Me in 2020 has seen too much.

If you haven’t seen the movie They Live, there is a scene where the protagonist tries to help his friend stop staring at the shadows on the wall of the cave.  In the movie, there are sunglasses you can wear to see a different reality.  The clip below from the movie, with Rowdy Roddy Piper playing the protagonist, and Keith David playing his reluctant friend who really, really doesn’t want to put on the glasses (some NSFW dialog):

Rowdy Roddy, rest in peace.

The bonfire in my backyard is now just some smoke and a few glowing coals, not enough light now to cast the amazing shadows that the thirty-foot flame made.  But my television is going, showing a documentary where a gentleman is earnestly telling me about his particular trip outside the cave.  If he’s right, it changes the world.

As does every trip outside the cave.  But, I have my doubts that he’s right because the truth he’s presenting is so counter to mainstream thought, so I’ll keep doing my research.  And learning.

Leaving the cave is scary, and it’s difficult.  And I absolutely don’t promise that understanding reality a little bit better will make you happy – it’s very likely to have the opposite effect.  But it will bring you one step closer to the truth.

Maybe you and I can finally figure out what those shadows really are.

Let’s go see what’s outside.

Fight Club: A Dystopia We Can Learn From?

“Fight for us.  And regain your honor.” – The Lord of the Rings:  The Return of the King

What’s a robot’s favorite Mexican food?  Silicon carne.

When I was a kid growing up, I read 1984 by George Orwell.  This was the grim version, as opposed to the much funnier version by Mel Brooks.  It had a profound effect on my worldview, as books often do when you read them in 7th grade.  In it, a globalist group of communists fought each other continuously, while subjugating the entirety of the human race.  Hmmm, wait, that sounds familiar?

1984 was a bleak book.  I’m not sure who I talked about it with, outside of writing the chicken scrawl of a report in schoolboy block letters and handing it to my really hot 7th grade English teacher.  Since my reading scores were, well, advanced, she just let me read what I wanted to read while the rest of the class all read the same book.  It felt nice being a special pretty pony.

I followed 1984 with Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.  I think my teacher suggested it.  Whereas 1984 was a dystopia built on the subjugation of a boot eternally stomping on a human face, Brave New World was a dystopia built on frivolity.

I fell into a vat of chemicals once.  My quick reaction nearly killed me.

Frivolity was where the masses were, more or less, endlessly drugged and entertained and so that their opinions never had a chance to develop, or impaired at birth so they could never think.  The tyranny in Brave New World was the tyranny of a vapid public who never thought beyond the most recent mindless and sexual encounter (strongly encouraged by the state) and the latest movie.

Oh, wait, that sounds familiar too.

Yet another dystopia is the movie (and book) Fight Club.  Fight Club is a 1999 movie based on a 1996 novel that (mostly) tracks the movie.  It is a creation of the 1990s, but, to quote the most excellent YouTube® movie reviewer, The Critical Drinker (LINK, some PG-13 language), it is very relevant to today’s world.  If you haven’t watched this 21-year-old movie and are interested, I suggest you watch The Critical Drinker’s review afterward – he includes spoilers.  I’ll warn you – the R rating was earned, and there are some very dark moments to the movie.

There won’t be any spoilers here – what I have to say doesn’t require me to spoil the film.

Tyler Durden told me handcrafted soap is the best.  No lye.

To really get Fight Club?  You have to watch it at least twice.  It is a thoughtful movie.  Does it have detractors on the Right?  Sure.  It’s R-rated.  Some have called it nihilistic (I disagree) and there are other complaints which I won’t go into here.  Regardless, I won’t beat myself up for going against the grain of other folks who didn’t like the movie.

Very few movies are perfect, but this one is very, very good.

I first watched Fight Club in 2012 or so.  It made over $100 million at the box office, so at least someone talked about Fight Club.  When I finally watched it (which was no fewer than three basement furniture re-arrangements ago) I was stunned.  How stunned?  It’s the only movie that has its own tag on this blog.

Vegan Club?  Everyone talks about Vegan Club.

The constant, pervasive theme of this movie is that the systems of globalism have created boxes for men that make them less than men.  Here’s Tyler Durden (one of the movie characters):

“We’re consumers. We are by-products of a lifestyle obsession. Murder, crime, poverty, these things don’t concern me. What concerns me are celebrity magazines, television with 500 channels, some guy’s name on my underwear. Rogaine, Viagra, Olestra.”

This is a simple translation.  A large proportion of the citizens of the United States define themselves by:

  • How much and what kind of furniture do they have?
  • How nice is their apartment?
  • How well can they write reports in a soul-killing job where large corporations seek to avoid liability in a cold, systematic way?  Does that kill their soul?
  • How can they avoid deviating from the norm to wear the right tie to the meeting?

These things are death to the soul.  As the character Tyler Durden explains:

“You’re not your job. You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your (deleted by J.W.) khakis. You’re the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.”

I saw a robbery in an Apple® store once.  I was an iWitness©.

Marcus Aurelius and Seneca nod in approval.  They’d follow up:  you are your virtue.

And you, dear reader, are not your money or your clothes.  In many ways we are conditioned by society to believe that those are the things that define us.  We are not.  And if you believe that, you’re not alone.  Tyler describes the twilight of the soul brought about by a life dedicated to consumerism and status.  Live for the material world, and you’ll be swallowed by the material world.  You can never achieve enough, because someone always has more, does something better.

With that philosophy?  Money becomes the god that men seek:

“Damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy (stuff) we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War is a spiritual war.  Our Great Depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”

I saw a meme (didn’t save it, don’t have the author but I’d love to credit them) that I (sort of) reproduce below:

Michigan is going to ban car sales based on popular Internet videos – the governor wants to stop car-owner-virus.

This meme gets me.  It’s the essence of Fight Club.  We’re a species that is, more or less, programmed to achieve.  For who?  For our group.  It’s why the NFL® is popular today.  Okay, that’s why the NFL™ was popular until they showed us that we’re really not part of their group at all.

We run races for a reason.  We play basketball.  We wrestle.  We have swim races.  Well, you guys have swim races.  I was in a 100-yard swim race in sixth grade and placed 11 out of 12.  I wasn’t dead last because some poor kid got the cramps.  My 11th place finish wasn’t close.  I think they ended up timing me with a calendar and an abacus.

Regardless, we compete.

Why?

It’s wired into us.  Competition partially defines us.  And the stakes have to be real.  There is, of course, a religious aspect as well.  A man has to serve a higher power.  It’s not just competing for today.  There is a bigger game, and there are bigger stakes.  That’s what makes it worth playing the game.  Life is more than consumption and procreation.

Q:  Why did the Libertarian cross the road?  A:  TAXATION IS THEFT!!!  

But men who can run a race fairly and lose with grace are men.  They don’t have to like losing – no man does.  But loss is a forge that makes us stronger, gives us incentives.  Thomas Sowell (I think?) once said that if he were designing a car for safety, he’d put a Bowie knife pointed at the driver in the center of the steering wheel, not an airbag.

Incentives matter.

Now?  We insulate children from the Great Game.  Lose?  That’s okay, you tried.

No, it’s really not.  I lost the swim meet because I suck at swimming and am only slightly better than a car at swimming.  Slightly.

Did I cry?  No.

Antifa protestors – never have to take time off from work.

Did I focus my energy on something where I could be as good as nearly anyone in the state?

Yes.

Swimming was pointless.  Telling me that it was okay was worse than pointless.  It was a lie.

Back to Tyler:

JACK, in voiceover:  On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero.

CLERK:  Please… don’t…

TYLER DURDEN: Give me your wallet.

Tyler pulls out the driver’s license.

TYLER:  Raymond K. Hessel. 1320 SE Benning, apartment A.  A small, cramped basement apartment.

RAYMOND:  How’d you know?

TYLER:  They give basement apartments letters instead of numbers.  Raymond, you’re going to die.  Is this a picture of Mom and Dad?

RAYMOND:  Yes.

TYLER:  Your mom and dad will have to call kindly doctor so-and-so to dig up your dental records, because there won’t be much left of your face.

RAYMOND:  Please, God, no!                            

JACK: Tyler…

TYLER:  An expired community college student ID card.  What did you used to study, Raymond K. Hessel?

RAYMOND:  S-S-Stuff.

TYLER:  “Stuff.”  Were the mid-terms hard?  I asked you what you studied.

JACK:  Tell him!

RAYMOND:  Biology, mostly.

TYLER:  Why?

RAYMOND:  I… I don’t know…

TYLER:  What did you want to be, Raymond K. Hessel?

Tyler cocks the .357 magnum Colt© Python™ pointed at Raymond’s head.

TYLER:  The question, Raymond, was “what did you want to be?”

JACK:  Answer him!

RAYMOND:  A veterinarian!

TYLER:  Animals.

RAYMOND:  Yeah … animals and s-s-s —

TYLER:  Stuff.  That means you have to get more schooling.

RAYMOND:  Too much school.

TYLER:  Would you rather be dead?

RAYMOND:  No, please, no, God, no!

Tyler uncocks the gun, lowers it.

TYLER:  I’m keeping your license.  I know where you live.  I’m going to check on you.  If you aren’t back in school and on your way to being a veterinarian in six weeks, you will be dead.  Get the hell out of here.

JACK:  I feel sick.

TYLER:  Imagine how he feels.

Tyler brings the gun to his own head, pulls the trigger — click.  It’s empty.

JACK:  I don’t care, that was horrible.

TYLER:  Tomorrow will be the most beautiful day of Raymond K. Hessell’s life.  His breakfast will taste better than any meal he has ever eaten.

How many people would love to have Tyler come into their lives and make them live their dreams?  How many people struggle through life, because they can’t take the next step?

You’re not too old.  If you’re breathing, you can make a mark on this world.  You’re not too poor.

My limiting factor is my imagination.  I realize that – it’s probably yours as well.

Regardless of the dystopias of 1984 and Brave New World, Fight Club shows a dystopia where we can win.  How do we win?

By understanding that our lives are in a precarious balance, just like Raymond K. Hessell.  And the first step to living life?  It’s letting go.  Achieving.

I learned to swim when I was very young.  My dad taught me.  I thought I’d never get out of that bag. 

And if you lose at swimming?  Try again.  Or try a new game.

At the end of Fight Club, men prove themselves to be stronger and larger than the dehumanizing systems that they serve.  It’s your choice.  How will your breakfast taste tomorrow?

Also:

Avoid the clam chowder.

 

 

Unrelated:

Steve is a blogger who is a FOW (Friend of Wilder).  Unlike me, he’s talented.  Because of the idiots who run his state, you’re lucky he has time to create something like this for you.  Do it.  No, I don’t get paid.  Steve does.  He’s Our Guy.

Do it.  Here’s the LINK.  There is just enough time for Christmas.