Category: Truth

Enthusiasm or Passion? Choose Passion.

“In fact, it had been observed by some, that the Hobbits’ only passion was food; a rather unfair observation as we have also developed a keen interest in the brewing of ales.” – Fellowship of the Ring

Why don’t they teach sailors how to swim?  So they will defend the ship with more enthusiasm.

I hate enthusiasm.  I really do.

Enthusiasm is motivational posters.  Enthusiasm is a group of cheerleaders chanting out “H-U-S-T-L-E, hustle, hustle for victory!” when the football team is down by 25 points in the fourth quarter.  It’s pretending to be excited in a job interview.

Enthusiasm has always been a bit (as the kids today would say) cringe to me.  It really does make the skin crawl on my spine when I think about the mindless enthusiasm that I see in the world.

Why?

Because it’s generally fake.  It’s not based in any sort of reality – it’s a series of mindless platitudes that don’t mean anything or show any true or real commitment.  Enthusiasm is what I see from political candidates when they’re at their most smarmy and useless.  Oh, wait, that’s every day for them.

Like I said, I hate enthusiasm.

But I love passion.

Cattle don’t cheer, but I heard that they give encowregment.

Passion is real, it’s deep, and it’s not at all afraid of Truth.  Passion is the part of you that keeps you playing in that football game when you’re down by 25 points in the fourth quarter.  Passion is the fire inside of you.

When I was in high school, every year the wrestling coach would have a parents’ meeting at the start of the season.  As a part of the meeting, he’d have a demonstration match between two of his wrestlers.  I was lucky enough to appear in the two of those matches, one held my junior year and one held my senior year.  I think he did it to get the parents excited about the season.

In my junior year, I was wrestling a senior that was stronger and better than me – my only claim to fame was that I outweighed him by 15 or so pounds.  When we started the match, he slipped on a throw and ended up on his back – I got the takedown plus two back points before he reversed me.  He won the match 5-4.

It was the best I ever wrestled against him.

I’ve never met The Rock, but I heard he was shy.  I guess I would have expected him to be a Little Boulder.

The next year I was the senior wrestling a junior who outweighed me by about 35 pounds.  Right before the match, he said to me, “Wilder, please don’t pin me in front of everyone.”

My response?  “Jimmy, if I can pin you, I will.  This is wrestling.”

There was, in my mind, no half-measure in a wrestling match.  To go easy on someone stepping out on to the mat would, in my mind, then and now, be cheating.  I was passionate about wrestling, and the mat was sacred to me – you’re out there just you and another man, going toe to toe, and every second you spend on the mat in a real match you give it everything you have.

That, in my mind, is passion, though you might just say, “Wilder’s just a tool” and you wouldn’t be wrong.  But to not pin Jimmy if I could, well, that would be cheating the sport.  It wasn’t personal, it was the simple principle that every time, every single time I went on the mat it was deadly serious to me – I gave every single bit of myself.  To do less than I could?  That would be a lie.

I asked for no quarter, and I gave no quarter.  Jimmy was still my friend afterwards,

I bought a tie for my dog to wear on our walks.  He looks sharp when he does his business.

I think passion is like that.  It’s a drive from the core of your being – it’s not about trying to be something, it’s who you are.  Passion alone is an amazing thing, and allows peak performance.

The other variable is talent.  Just by my body’s geometry I’m unsuited to some sports.  Long distance running?  Probably not with these short Viking legs and long Norse torso.  Lifting very heavy things?

That’s more like it.

Talent is also unfairly distributed.  I’ve seen people who have zero talent for something throw their entire lives, passionately into an activity.  Ma Wilder was passionate about art.  And, I still have some of the landscapes she did as oil paintings.  When it came to landscapes, she had a gift.

But when it came to people?  Ma was Modern Museum of Bad Art bad at drawing people.

The one on the right looks like the clues I get in Pictionary®.

Add talent to passion?

That’s where “world class” comes in to existence, because passion is the only thing that can keep a man driving himself to his limit day after day.  The best concert violinists practice more than the average ones, not less.  Their talent plus passion is what creates that world class performance.  Talent alone?  You get a collection of people that all fall into the “could have been” category, gifted people who didn’t have the passion to turn that gift into world class performance.

Working hard, day after day, year after year, is what it takes to be great at anything.  Raw talent isn’t enough.

Fake enthusiasm?  No thanks.  It’s time to get passionate and angry about something.

Me?  I’m starting with raisins.  Man, they piss me off.

IQ, Lies, and National Wealth

“Now there’s a fine choice for intelligent offspring.” – Star Trek, TOS

Is it just me, or does Biden’s only expression convey, “Now why did I walk into this room again?”

I once was in a meeting with one of my son’s clubs. One of the kids came over, “You know, John Wilder, I am very smart.” The kid was a junior in high school. “Really, Zeke? That’s great! Are you planning on going to college?”

“Yes, I think I might want to teach history,” Zeke replied.

“Wonderful! How did you do on the ACT?” I asked. The ACT is a test that measures both a student’s preparedness for college as well as the ability of their parents to pay for the test. I’ve heard a rumor that colleges like money.

Zeke told me his score, and I tossed it into the Internet. The nice thing about the Internet is that it has lots of data related to testing and IQ. Pretty quickly, I correlated Zeke’s ACT score with his IQ. This isn’t a perfect correlation, but it’s close enough.

Zeke’s IQ was (within a margin of error) about 85 according to his ACT scores. Is this correlation perfectly accurate? No. But it’s probably close enough and I didn’t think his parents would be happy if I kidnapped him and forced him to take an actual IQ test.

I once got a C on a Roman numeral test.

An IQ of 85 isn’t horrible. It does, however, mean that roughly 275,000,000 people in the United States have a higher IQ than Zeke. It doesn’t make them more moral than Zeke, and it doesn’t make them better people than Zeke, but they do learn more quickly and process information much faster than Zeke. Plenty of people with an IQ of 85 have had happy, productive lives.

But people with higher IQs than Zeke can also learn concepts that Zeke simply cannot. On one website it says that people with an IQ of 85 can . . . “complete any (college) course.”

This is a lie.

No one could honestly tell me that I could sprint as fast as an NFL® receiver. Nor should they, because that would be a lie. No one could honestly tell me that if I worked really hard at it, I could grow two more inches taller.

Do taller people sleep longer in bed?

The fact is that IQ isn’t like knowledge – I can study and learn more, but I can’t increase the overall processing speed I was born with. Just as if I never ran, I’d be slower than if I practiced, I can certainly do plenty of things to degrade that information processing capacity. But just like there’s a physical limit to how fast I can run, there’s a physical limit to how fast I can think and the number of things I can hold in my mind.

That’s the thing that most people miss about IQ – it follows the same bell curve that most human attributes follow – height, speed, strength. If anyone told Zeke he was five inches taller than he was, he would have laughed. But people told him he was smart, and he believed that.

I can understand how that might seem to the compassionate thing to do – to tell someone that they’re smart. The downside of that is simple – if Zeke feels like he’s smart because everyone told him he was just as smart as anyone else, what happens when he doesn’t have the success that other people have?

Will I be successful with my glass coffin business? Remains to be seen.

He becomes resentful. He sees others succeeding because of things he can’t fathom happening around him. What, then, must be the reason that other people are successful? They must have some sort of system that is rigged against Zeke.

If it were just Zeke, it still wouldn’t be okay to have this compassionate “participation-trophy” lie. It has consequences for him.

On a societal level, however, we’re busy sending people off to college that have no real business being there. The result is a large number of people in society today who think that they have all the tools necessary to be exceptionally successful at intellectual pursuits and it’s just not so. This creates a society-wide level of bitterness. It’s especially bad when those college kids with no intellectual prospects get worthless degrees (if it ends in “studies” it’s a worthless degree) and are then saddled with huge amounts of student loan debt.

Why is it hard to fight corruption in the United States? Because he controls the FBI.

And, since intelligence is mostly heritable (as proven again and again), it’s likely that these kids like Zeke have a parent (or, less likely, parents) that are also not as bright. Identical twins have virtually identical IQs, even when growing up separately. Nature matters a lot more than nurture. One statistic I read back in the day was that student performance in verbal IQ was tied to the number of books in the home of the parents. This mattered (again, as I recall) much more than the number of minutes the parents read to their children.

Society has a very, very particular relationship with the concept of the heritability of intelligence so much so that this is a huge hot button issue. Certain incentives in our current system encourage mothers of lesser intelligence to have even more not-so-bright babies. This is, of course, as featured in the documentary movie Idiocracy. Since this idea has such significant implications, not the least of which is the fate of nations: smart nations do better than, um, less bright ones. Here’s the data:

I’ve heard that talking to yourself is a sign of intelligence – at least that’s what I keep telling myself.

The data is from the book IQ and the Wealth of Nations, so it dates back to before they year 2000, as far as I can tell. That really shouldn’t matter much, since the relationship is so strong. Smarter countries are richer – a lot richer.

We’re entering a period of time where resources will be far more constrained than at any point in my lifetime. We’re entering a time where we will have no choice but to stop lying to ourselves about IQ and its impact.

And when I die, I do want my ashes put into a participation trophy. I think I’ve urned it.

How The Left Is Changing Society, And How To Fight: Part II

“You know, in certain older civilized cultures, when men failed as entirely as you have, they would throw themselves on their swords.” – Serenity

What do you call a two dead parrots?  Pollygons.

This is part two of the series on social structures and control.

Most (stress on “most”) Western Nations adopted a modified version of a new social order between 1776 and 1920.  It looked like this:

  • Absent or Figurehead Monarch: The idea of absolute rule by King melted away, and was essentially done in the first world by 1920.  I mean, we dudes all still dream about it, but it’s gone.
  • Government Bureaucrats: The core of government power now flowed into an unelected bureaucracy that was, more or less, immune to election.  When governed by a Constitution, this was good.  When governed by avarice, not so much.  Thankfully, most of the bureaucrats in the twentieth century were governed by bad eyesight and a to close the window for lunch, if the DMV is any clue.
  • Elected Leadership: The idea that elected leaders subject to the will of the people would be the ones to run the government was a noble one.  Sadly, we started electing at least some dirtbags from the start.
  • Military Leaders: A professional military, generally subservient to the civilian leaders but still with cool uniforms.
  • Clergy: A strong church presence, though unofficial, was still the backbone of the country’s morality.  Some priests even became lawyers, or what we would call a father-in-law.
  • Constitution: At least in the United States, the Constitution was the basis of civic religion for the majority of the people.  In other countries, there were other things, like Great Britain and the King or Queen or Meghan Markle.  It was a basis for the foundation of the nation (or, country).
  • Big Business: In the twentieth century, big business (including big banking) finally grew to the point that it was able to be a primary force in society, providing products and jobs for the voters, donations for the leadership class, and, apparently, lots of fedoras.
  • Middle Class: This was the engine of prosperity – working to build the economy.  For a large part of the twentieth century government policy was focused on increasing this segment, since they were the spark plugs that both worked the line for GM® as well as ran the plants.
  • Lower Class: The big goal of most first world nations was to shrink this class, through education and sometimes direct payments.  Making them productive, it was felt, would be a win for civilization as a whole.

Although not optimum, this version of civilization was built on a solid structure that focused on the atom:  the family.  It tried to take feedback from voters, protect their rights, and create wealth and happiness for most.  It was an example of what happens when the people and the economy and the government more or less agree on virtue as the basis of society.

If honesty is a virtue, why doesn’t anyone want to hear the truth?

Yes, there were flaws.  But compared to today?

The flaws were miniscule.  It actually worked very, very well.  For a while.  But what was happening when the Left was in charge?  Well, you got a very, very different structure.

That’s not the power structure of most modern-day dictatorships.  That power structure assumes a Dear Leader, secret police, no church, a frightened military, and everyone else shoved into the frightened peasant class.  The culture there has nothing to do with any traditions, has nothing to do with religion, has nothing to do with trust (trust no one is the motto in lands with a secret police) and has nothing to do with Truth, Virtue or Beauty, since those are viciously stamped down if they conflict with the will of Dear Leader.

  • Dear Leader: The top was an individual.  Certainly, there were committees, but the basis was an individual.    Lenin.  Mao.  Kim.  The government didn’t revolve around them:  they were the government.
  • Secret Police: Dear Leader can’t be everywhere, all the time, so the next best thing was a hated and feared secret police.  Is it better to be hated or feared?  If you are Dear Leader, you want both.  You want the people to fear the secret police, but you also want the people to hate the secret police so that they could never govern.
  • Scared, Weak Military: Dear Leader needs a military, but they need to be scared of being replaced or killed.
  • Scared, Weak Bureaucrats: If the guys with tanks are scared, what hope do they have?
  • Scared, Weak Everyone Else: If the guys who assign Boris his Commieflat are scared, what hope does Boris have?

What size soda does Kim order?  A supreme liter.

The atom of a dictatorship isn’t a family, it’s an individual.  The goal of a dictatorship is weak families and no middle class.  The goal is to create distrust and to have parents not trust their children, nor spouses trust each other.  One of the first actions of the commie Spanish Republic was to make abortion legal, and eliminate marriages because they wanted to “make women equal”.

The reality was the Spanish commies wanted to destroy family ties so that the state was the unquestioned leader.  This creates a different kind of stability – one based on constant fear and no trust.  I wonder if that sounds familiar to anyone?

We are watching most of the Western World morphing from their old structure into the structures that Dear Leader would love.

  • Uniparty: Most of the Democrat mainstream and Republican mainstream have the same “values”, with only a variation or two.  The Republicans acted like the neighborhood dog that finally caught the car when the Supreme Court revoked the absolute right of women to kill babies “because it’s Tuesday” and had no real plans.  Abortion was a fundraiser, not a real issue to them.
  • Converged Bureaucrats: Bureaucrats in the FedGov are now out only for themselves and the bureaucracy they serve.  The ATF doesn’t care if you have guns, really.  The ATF just wants to have funding and to be able to shoot the family dog on Tuesdays.
  • Incipient Police State: Don’t think we have a police state that hands out unfair punishments?  Type “January 6” into a search engine sometime . . .
  • A Vanishing Clergy: Church used to be an important touchstone – in the 1950s some banks wouldn’t give a mortgage if the pastor of your church didn’t speak favorably about your character.  Extreme?  Probably not – it kept a place in the community for virtue.  The goal of the Left is that they have the monopoly on defining virtue.  Hey, Live, Laugh, Love, right?
  • A Captive Press: When was the last time anyone in the Mainstream Media actually tried to challenge The Narrative?  Oh, yeah, Tucker Carlson.
  • Twisted Constitution: The Constitution of the United States was written on plain language so the common citizen could understand it.  Now?  Emanations and penumbras and twisting of “thou shalt not” into “thou shalt” has made Constitutional law like a game of limbo – how low can you go?  That the Civil Rights Act is now more important than actual Constitutional protections is all you need to know.
  • Subservient Military: Obama spent a lot of time and effort clearing out high-level officers in the military that weren’t on the Left.  Notice that none of the top brass pushed back against the vaxx mandate?
  • Big Business: Big business has always had inordinate power due to their size and the amount of money they control (this includes big banks).  During the last 40 years big business has dominated and destroyed most profitable small business niches.  This results in a . . .
  • Much Smaller Middle Class: The middle class is smaller and poorer than at any time in my life.  This is getting ready (over the next two years) to get much worse.
  • Everyone else: This is the goal – that 80% plus of the population are stuck, working paycheck to paycheck, unable to accumulate wealth, and having their saved money inflated away.

The values of this brave new world aren’t anchored by any sort of church.  Values in 2023 move around every day at the whim of the Left.  It’s all coordinated, too.  Whatever value that they want is pushed through channels to the public, often with movies and television shows backing it up using emotionally laden content to transmit the message.  Remember those “very special episodes”?  Yup, all of them were propaganda.

But he was such a good boy.  Never hurt anyone.

They had left the Internet and alternative media alone.  Probably, it was left for a safety valve and because most Normies get their news and opinions from Mainstream sources.  In reality, especially in the aftermath of Trump being meme’d into office in 2016, the hammer has started to come down.  Information wants to be free, but the Left has taken the Dear Leader approach to information.

Ever notice that comment segments on news stories went from “nearly every news story has one” to “Comment section?  What’s that?” in a span of just a few years?  The problem was that people in the comment section were making too much sense.  The people in the comment section were exposing the lies in the news stories.  They had to be dealt with.

Websites like mine have been “detuned” from the search algorithms.  This makes it harder for normies to find places that have unapproved ideas.  YouTube® has veered into censorship, having kicked podcasts off the air for simply arguing against the vaxx or agreeing with the very real possibility that the 2020 elections were hijacked.

My computer started to cuss after the processor got too hot.  I had to install a heat censor.

But not all is lost.  Elon Musk has made “Community Notes” a thing.  They’re a way to point out the Lies of the Left and those that hate Truth, Beauty, Steak, Families, and Nations.

This is how they’re targeting us, and how they have targeted us over decades.  The wonderful part is that we have Truth, Beauty, Steak, Families and the power of Nations on our side.  And people are waking up – 30% to 40% of all voters (not just those on the Right) believe the 2020 election was illegitimate.  This is despite widespread censorship of this idea.

Keep spreading the Truth.  Practice virtue and push your church (if you have one) to be more virtuous, rather than another Leftist conquest.  Starve Big Business, when you can.  Buying from local farmers gives them more money and keeps the money away from people who hate you.

If your misery is caused by paranoia, I can tell you you’re not alone.

We can’t wait until plate tectonics splits California off into an island, and the good news is that we won’t have to.  As I’ve said before, we will win.

We are inevitable.

How The Left Is Changing Society, And How To Fight: Part I

“Looks like civilization finally caught up with us.” – Firefly

The invention of the shovel was groundbreaking, but everyone was blown away by the invention of the fan.

This is part one of a two-part series, it just got too big. Part two is written and I’ll post on Wednesday.

I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about how and why the wheels are coming off of our civilization. Why? I don’t know – I’ve been worried about it since I was a wee Wilder and became concerned that plate tectonics wouldn’t split California off soon enough.

We see evidence of the collapse all the time but sometimes have a hard time putting our fingers on exactly what is driving it all from a structural standpoint. That’s why I’m here to help. Don’t worry. I’m a trained professional.

The social structure of stable societies isn’t an accident. When people were wandering around in nomadic tribes, I’m not sure exactly how things went down, but I do know that once civilization started taking root (so we could have beer, really, link below), the basic unit of civilization was set as the family in any sort of civilization that produces wealth, has reasonable freedoms, exhibits virtue (Truth, Beauty, Steak) and has any sort of stability.

Beer, Technology, Beer, Tide Pods, Beer, Civilizational Stability, and Beer

Think of a mom, dad, and kids. In a stable society, that’s essentially the atom. Often in the West we’re inundated with the idea of individual rights, and those do exist, but the biggest failing of those rights (in my opinion, and I’m right) is where those rights contradict the stability of the family. Atoms are at their most stable when all of the parts are in place – an atom missing electrons is an ion, and I could explain using hydroxide ions, but that’s pretty basic. And let’s not even get started on isotopes.

Why was 6 afraid? Because she could be discovered by the crew of the Battlestar Galactica at any time. And you thought I was going to say, “because seven ate nine.”

Divorce, for instance, is bad for family stability. Duh. Making divorce easy is thus attacking the core of the structure of civilization. Those on the Left who hate society are always attacking the family, and what better way to shatter it than divorce. Oh, wait, there’s birth control and abortion.

While a man and a woman, married (to each other) constitutes a family, that family is truly completed by children. We’re humans, but we’re also animals – there is an innate drive to reproduce and have offspring and then yell inappropriately at little league games. There has to be something strong about the need to reproduce, because babies are so objectionable and worthless. Really. I mean, I’ve never even seen a toddler I couldn’t trounce in wrestling.

So, the atom of society isn’t the individual – it’s the family. Families, not video games or pantyhose, are why civilization exists – it exists because of us, and it also exists for us. If a civilization doesn’t have children, it ceases to exist.

Once I found out that my pizza was burnt, my beer was frozen, and my wife was pregnant. I guess I’m just not good at taking things out in time.

This has some pretty significant implications, since so much of policy (especially Leftist, but the Right is not clean in this, either) is now actively hostile to the family. Examples:

  • Housing Prices: Leftists import hordes of illegals to increase prices and demand, and also make so many rules that building a house is more expensive.
  • Taxes: Leftists want to punish high earners (but not wealthy folks, there’s a difference) to keep the wife in the workforce to keep her from having kids.
  • Divorce Law: Divorce should be as easy as possible, there should be no requirement for fault (which would make cheaters guilty), there should be no consequences to the woman (who initiate the vast majority of divorce) except for fun and prizes.
  • Custody Law: Children should be part of the fun and prizes for divorce, and used to incentivize divorce for women through child support.
  • Alimony: Let’s make the man pay, even if the woman initiated divorce.
  • Propaganda that Women Must Work: This is deep, and is put into the heads of women that they are somehow “less than” if they aren’t working making PowerPoints®.
  • Propaganda that Women Must Have It All®: This one is the YOLO tag, making women feel unsuccessful if they don’t party away their youth and fertility with many, many men.

There’s more, of course, and I could probably write another 10,000 words about how society is actively hostile to the family and the very concept of parental authority. But you see it every day. You’re swimming in it – starting all the way back to inept fathers being the butt of jokes in sitcoms, and the “single mom don’t need no man” trope that started back in the 1970s.

In the 1980s lots of kids had single moms. Now some even have two.

So, that’s one part of the attack. But society isn’t made up of just random families wandering around – instead, there’s a structure to civilization, just like there’s a structure to, say, a beer bottle or the underwire in a bra. One such structure is kinship. Japanese people are all, on a basic level, related to each other and share the same culture.

This basic “being related to each other” is what distinguishes a nation (nation having the Latin root of natio, meaning “birth, origin, race of people, tribe) from a country. A country is just some random folks living in the same place, like New York City. A nation is a group of people who are all much more closely related, like Modern Mayberry, where if you moved here 15 years ago, you’re still one of those newcomers.

Since The Mrs. has kin here going back into the 1880s, she’s covered, but they’re always going to think I’m a bit sketchy.

Why was the mushroom the life of the party? Because he was giving away cocaine.

But kinship should not be underrated. When you look at the happiest country surveys, at the top are nations that have a disproportionate amount of people that are closely related, genetically. You trust your family more, and you’re less likely to cheat them, except at Thanksgiving while playing Monopoly®. Because of that, countries that are all of one nationality can be higher trust with lower corruption, if they aren’t tribal (looking at you, India and Pakistan and all of Africa).

Want to break up a country? After you’re done with the family, aim for disruption of the nation by introducing unlike people that have virtually nothing in common with the native stock in huge numbers. There’s a reason that nations of generally related people exist: it’s more stable.

If you wake up being chased by a lion while on a horse, and next to you is a giraffe and a hippo, what do you do? Get off the carousel and check into rehab.

Beyond the general nature of the family, there is an importance to the structure of society itself. One of the more stable structures of society in history was the feudal model. It consisted of several different classes of people:

  • Monarchy: Generally, the overall boss (when strong), who kept the whole thing in check. Needed: strong neck muscles to hold a big crown.
  • Lesser Nobles: Lieutenants, who administered smaller areas of varying size to keep those running. Needed: ability to bow.
  • Clergy: Served as an overall legitimacy, and also a diplomatic corps between nations. Needed:
  • Merchants: Made sure people had fish. Needed:
  • Professionals: I’m tossing artisan and guild member in here who had mad skills making stuff that society needed. And bankers. Needed: fluffy shirts.
  • Peasants: Someone has to milk the bull. Needed:

Each of these units played a part, and the power varied from place to place, and time to time. One of the most amusing things is when there were too many nobles, so kings would have to come up with wars to kill them off, because no one likes tons of bored yappy nobles around. Just ask Meghan Markle when King Charles ships her off to fight Argentina. Singlehandedly.

Sometimes the nobles were stronger than the king, thus the Magna Carta. Sometimes the clergy was stronger than the king, thus Cromwell. Sometimes the king was stronger than the clergy, thus the Avignon papacy. Even peasants got into the mix, with Wat Tyler’s Rebellion in England making King Richard II put on his brown pants.

Why do dairy cattle have hooves? Because they lactose.

Each part of the society could (and did) cause difficulty if the power that they shared got too far out of control. The Merchants and Professional classes were mainly in a support role, but they provided administrative and logistical support for everyone, and the bankers especially definitely led to many, many shenanigans.

Thus endeth ye olde parte the first.

14 Signs Of An Unfree Country

“Keep working on the window if we’re ever going to regain our freedom.” – Star Trek TOS

The homeless voted for Obama.  They heard he’d bring change.

I hadn’t heard of Benjamin Carlson until today.  I had another post that I was planning on doing, but when the perfect content presents itself I become as flexible as a Romanian Olympic® gymnast whose parents are watching from the GULAG breakroom.

Carlson wrote about his time living in China as a journalist.  The title for his X® thread is, “What can an unfree society teach you about freedom?”  In it there are 14 lessons that he learned in China.  He’s now warning us about them, for, I guess, reasons.

All the bolded bits are Mr. Carlson’s words.  The other bits are mine, since I want to give Mr. Carlson credit, but don’t want anyone to think he endorses any of my interpretations, opinions, or bad jokes.

  1. People will adapt to oppression sooner than they will rebel.

That is true of a compliant people.  The makeup of heritage Americans is anything but compliant – to come across an ocean to hack a life from trackless wilderness is mostly the opposite of compliant.  Different people came here for different reasons, but the big takeaway is a lot of us have oppositional defiant disorder, but the good kind.

But that doesn’t get them into Congress (except for a handful) and it doesn’t get people invited into fancy parties and offered media access.  But still, many people reject petty oppression, and are willing to stand up against it.  New Mexico’s recent utter rejection of a wine-aunt governor blatantly violating all the Constitutions she said she’d uphold made me smile.

I have a guess that at least part of the desire to import the unending hordes of illegal aliens at a breakneck pace is related to the desire to have a much more compliant people – people who come here for the give-me-that’s and whose idea of America has nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with a parasitical relationship where they benefit.  They’re used to oppression and okay with it, they just want to be comfortable.

What’s ET short for?  So he can fit in the spaceship.

  1. The most effective censorship is first legal, then social, then internal.

Legal censorship is difficult in the United States, though the government has several cases against Trump that rely on him having opinions they find “problematic”.  Social censorship means that certain ideas can’t really be expressed.  Ever wonder why the comment section of the online newspapers mostly disappeared?  The last thing they want is people realizing they’re not alone.  This causes social censorship to fail.  At least among people who can read.

Lastly is internal censorship, when the Truth is so obvious that everyone sees it, yet everyone is afraid to say anything.  Not that I’d mention an election or anything . . . .

  1. A repressive system makes selfish behavior rational.

Look at the looting that is pervasive across Leftist cities.  Why?  Because laws are only to be enforced against people on the Right.  Therefore?  Free Air Jordans™.

I heard he was going to take another stab at marriage.

  1. Ruining 1 person who threatens the regime sends a message that will be heard by 10,000.

People broke stuff on January 6, and some used violence.  But the vast majority were just dudes walking around the Capitol Building.  Yet the harshest penalties are being used against them, including inhumane conditions in prison.

Why?  See point 4. above.

  1. If you can limit the words people use, you can limit the thoughts they think.

Why do you think they demand that calling someone an illegal alien be banned?  Why do you think they want to call a baby a fetus?  Why do you think they want to call anything “gender affirming” care?

They want to change the dialogue, and that means making the words you use socially unacceptable.  This is never ending, and will continue until the word “bad” is replaced by “double-plus-ungood”.

What is the most macho musical instrument?  The MANdolin.

  1. Even decent people will choose to be blind if seeing injustice would hurt their interests.

Why do most cops go-along to get-along?  Yeah, this, but it’s not just cops – any location where people close ranks to avoid scrutiny is suspect.  What happens when the entire country looks that way because there are people you can’t criticize?

  1. If the government lies, many will still accept it as true because of the authority of the office.

This is becoming less true in the United States – look at the pushback on COVID.  I think the trust level has dropped.  Yet, still, 20%-40% of the citizens of the country will believe whatever they’re told by Joe Biden and Stephen Colbert.

  1. Destroying a people’s cultural & religious identity, severing them from their history, punishing their defenders, and making them ashamed of who they are, is a brutally effective way to annihilate a threat.

When Thomas Jefferson’s statue is removed by New York City, and they’re thinking of bringing down all of the George Washington statues and the people who founded the United States are being vilified?  Yeah.  It’s already in full swing

  1. The goal of an unfree system is to protect itself by transferring your distrust of the state to fellow citizens.

According to the Left, Catholics and “White Supremacist” groups are the greatest threats to the United States, despite being responsible for fewer deaths than a Chicago Labor Day weekend.

If only they would have played the national anthem, everyone at the BLM® riots would have sat down.

  1. In an unfree society, the wealth and privileges amassed by politicians become state secrets.

Elizabeth Warren makes $174,000 a year, but her total earnings were $1.36 million last year.  Bill Clinton was broke in 2000, but has at least $90 million today, excluding his Foundation.  Why don’t people know this or care?

  1. If the government shows it has your interest at heart, many are happy to trade freedoms for it.

I’m sure everyone can give plenty of examples.  One lesson I learned is that when people want to give you something, that’s generally because they want something in return.  To be clear, this doesn’t always have to be manipulative, since if after I feed Pugsley, I typically want him to take the trash out after I remind him three times to do it.  I think the three times is just because he wants me to feel like I’m part of the process.

When the government gives, it wants control.

  1. Corruption corrupts everything.

If 10% for the Big Guy is the norm, why shouldn’t everyone take a cut?  Corruption corrupts, and it takes time and relentless effort to root it out.

  1. Even politicians who fight like dogs will protect one another against the people.

The Clintons and Obamas sure look cozy with the Bush family.

My doctor told me I had a healthy prostate.  I was deeply touched.

  1. History must continually be rewritten to serve the purposes of the present.

I’ve touched on this on countless posts and touched on this above.  The history has to be changed from the glorious story of a proud people taming a continent.  The truth has to be replaced with a cursed and infected lie so that the political needs of the Left can be met.  It has to be universal – on television, movies, the Internet, YouTube®, and anywhere people go.

Orwell saw many of these and they’re in his books, 1984 and Animal Farm.  Carlson, I’m sure, has read these and also experienced them.

Just like we are beginning to experience them now.

I could have written much more, but I think I’ll leave it up to you to add in comments about Mr. Carlson’s points.  The good news is you don’t have to be a gymnast to appreciate it.  Besides, I’ve heard that the Eastern Europeans are now into Olympic® boating events.  I guess they’re in row-mania.

Memes And Your Mind

“No, for God’s sake! You’ve got it all backwards! AIDS, the Ebola virus?  On an evolutionary scale they are newborns. This virus walked the planet long before the dinosaurs.” – The X Files Movie (‘98)

Greta has made a real difference in electrical usage – every time she’s on the TV, I turn it off.

One of the more interesting ideas that I ran across was when I was first exposed to the idea of a meme.  It’s really short for mimeme, which means “imitated thing”.  Richard Dawkins described it as the idea that ideas would be faced with the same sort of pressures that biological entities face in the world – they either reproduce, or they die.

Regardless of how I feel about Dawkins’ other ideas, this one has always intrigued me, because it’s about the fundamental relationship between people and information and ideas.  It’s the place where ideas propagate and are passed on.

Or not.  An idea that’s passed on, lives.  One that isn’t passed on, dies.

The doctor said I had Peekaboo virus.  He said that sends most people to ICU.

Now, that really may not have any relationship with the truth of an idea.  Let’s take a meme that has been artificially boosted to the point where it’s known by virtually everyone:

“Diversity is our strength.”

Well, not so much.  It turns out that diversity is our diversity, but probably not our strength in that when you have a bunch of people living together that don’t share a common ethnicity, “social trust” drops.  It turns out that if you want to live in a society with high trust, it’s probably more reasonable to say, “Diversity is our weakness”.

What about another great meme, this one from our Founding Fathers, “All men are created equal”.

My hairline would beg to differ.

Now if the meme had been, “All men have the same rights” I would have been right on board, and I think that was the original intent.  But people are decidedly unequal.  Some are short, some are tall.  Some are smart, and some are Leftists.  All men may have the same rights, but all men aren’t the same.

Why are all the corporations hiring female Equality Officers?  They’re cheaper.

How about this one:  “majority rules”?

That’s one I remember having been well drilled into the brains of fourth grade kids when I was one, typically when I lost the vote on the movie to watch in class.  Why wouldn’t a bunch of fourth grade kids not want to watch Tommy?

But “majority rules” is a horrible way to run a society.  Doubt me?  Look around.  The idea that has been the most stable (outside of Kim’s Best Korea Solution) has been a constitutional republic, not a democracy.  But, hey, who needs a constitution when people might have bad thoughts?  Majority rules is mob rule, and that defines the worst of us, a place where the passion of the moment takes over from the rights of all of us.

The ideas here are simple, and the phrases have an amazing lifespan even when they are observably false.  There is a place for Truth, and it isn’t in a meme.  Just as a virus doesn’t have to be virtuous, neither are ideas that are spread by memes.  What they are though, is excellent persuasion material.

Oh, Garfield!  And here I thought you just wanted to be Nermal.

But just like all people aren’t created equal, all memes aren’t created equal, either.  One could make the argument that Trump’s victorious election in 2016 was partially due to fun memes.  I’m sure that you saw some of them.  Remember The Deplorables meme?

I’m sure Hillary would like to forget it.

Memes are often effective persuasion material, and effective propaganda, true or not.  Advertising, for instance, is entirely made to try to create memes and pump them directly into the heads of consumers.  How many ad jingles can you think of in the next sixty seconds?  I’m lovin’ it®, and I’d be happy to give you Helping Hands™ to Bring Good Things To Life©.

It’s not a mistake that these are memorable.

The Internet has not made this better.  In many ways, the websites (especially social media) are created to be addiction pumps by manipulating your emotions – and brain chemicals.

The good news is that we aren’t simply blank slates for corporations, government, and universities to imprint on, we have free will, and most importantly we get to choose what goes into our heads, what information we watch, and what thoughts we consume.

As Garfield® taught us, we aren’t immune to propaganda.

But realizing it’s there is the first step to understanding it, to taking a step back, and to evaluate what I think.

I asked my librarian if they had a book by Shakespeare.  “Yes,” she replied.  “Which one?” I asked.  “William.”

Is that my thought?  Did I put it there?  Is it consistent with what I know?  Is it consistent with the truth?

Is it consistent with the Truth?

When I think about just what a meme might be imitating, I keep coming around to the same idea:  the Truth.  And what is propaganda, but an idea imitating the Truth?

Inversion of Values, Part 2: The Roman Empire

“Yes, sir! That’s exactly who I am and what I am, sir. A victim, sir!” – A Clockwork Orange

What’s black and white and red all over?  A victim of an industrial accident at a newspaper printing press. (All memes today are as-found)

The inversion of virtues:  I’ve written on this topic recently, but decided I needed to have another go at it.  Part of the blogging theme is that my posts are limited in space.  No one wants to read a 10,000-word post on PEZ™ on Friday morning as they drink their coffee.

Virtues make a civilization worth living in.  I’d rather live in a poor civilization with great values than a rich one with poor values, and both of those sound better than what we’ve got going on now.  And I’d suggest that our current free-fall is due to that loss of virtue.

What were Epstein’s last words before he committed suicide?  “You don’t have to do this!  I promise I won’t talk!”

Let’s compare values at the peak of Roman Civilization, the peak of Western Civilization, and what the Left is shoving down our throats right now.  For instance:

  • Rome: Worshiped gods.
  • The West: Worshiped God.
  • The Left: Worship man (atheism) or the State.

See?  Inversion.  Who did the cultures idolize?

  • Rome: Worshiped heroes.
  • The West: Worshiped heroes and Saints.
  • The Left: Worship victims.

See, that’s not hard, and yet more inversion. What about sin?

  • Rome: Sin of hubris.
  • The West: Sin of pride.
  • The Left: Sin of privilege.

I’ll just quit making inversion comments, because this is a slam dunk.  Who are the spiritual leaders?

  • Rome:
  • The West:
  • The Left: Professors, Leftie politicians.

Ideals?

  • Rome: Ideal was glory, excellence (Areté).
  • The West: Ideal was holiness, modesty, courage.
  • The Left: Social Justice, victimhood.

Ideal social class?

  • Rome: Warriors and those who served their fellow men.
  • The West: The middle class.
  • The Left: The lower class, victims, victims, victims.

Even a virtue, charity, has been turned from a voluntary act that provides spiritual growth in the terms of the classic West, to taxation to provide forced “charity” to the (often) undeserving.

I’m thinking I don’t want to know how my tax dollars are spent because I’m afraid all mine went to buy crack pipes in San Francisco.

This inversion bleeds over into all of society.  “Drag Queen Story Hour”?

Wonder why they don’t read to old folks in nursing homes, or to the blind?  Whenever I hear about that, my mind sees:

And then there are questions that are more difficult to answer:

Inversion, of course, shows up in the obvious things:

Jazz Jennings is a transgender person who feels no need to change with no sense of irony:

And their goal is that you will live and produce and that you should be okay with not being meaningful or having any joy, so live in the pod, and eat the bugs, wagie.

And we now have a Marine Corps who worries about people’s feelings.  Perhaps they’ll land with Nerf™ guns so that they won’t have their feelings hurt.

But the pushback is well underway.  Or overweigh:

But there’s a catch:

And I think this has broken the Left, mentally:

And the internal contradictions in their “victimhood” matrix are starting to show:

Canada has shown that it certainly can’t be trusted with the power of life and death:

The inversion has hit, but people (and maybe Higher Powers) are pushing back.  And, I think we will win.  Why?  Because we’re so very pretty.  And?  PEZ®.

Aliens: The Fakest Thing Ever?

“Crazy people can be very persuasive.” – The X-Files

Do werewolves live in warehouses?

I’ve enjoyed Scott Adams for years – the first time I saw his strips were on office photocopypasta in the 1990s where his brand of humor really hit home with folks at the place I was working.  So, he’s an awesome cartoonist, and very funny.  We’d say things like, “Dilbert’s just like me!” but then realize that we were in color and three dimensional.

Adams also picked Trump as a walk-in winner in 2016 way ahead of the crowd, but was dead wrong on the ‘Rona and the Vaxx®, so he’s not an oracle or a cult leader.  But he does have interesting thoughts and I like reading him, and his podcast, while not good as mine, seems to have attracted a slightly larger audience.

So, when he tossed these Tweets® (or are they Xeets™ now??) up I thought I’d share them.  Here are the rest:

I’ll admit, I’ve been fascinated by UFOs (the old name before they got fancy and started calling them UAPs) since I was a kid.  I’ve been following the unfolding story since the “Tic-Tac®” videos came out in 2017 because any version of an answer for what was observed was interesting.  Either the United States had amazing tech beyond anything, .gov is faking it, or it was something that fell into that big bucket of “aliens and demons and interdimensional beings – oh, my!”

Scott presents the idea that this subject is being brought up at the very moment that lots (and I mean a record number) of other things are brewing in the news:

  • We live in a nation at the brink of civil conflict,
  • White House Resident Joe Biden is facing a presidential scandal, with amazing evidence, that is the biggest since Watergate,
  • We might be seeing a soft coup against Biden right now as the Left wants to jettison him for someone else,
  • (Not anyone else, since no one wants Kamala),
  • Adding a janitor at Mar-A-Largo© to the list of people who are indicted along with Trump because he helped move boxes (really),
  • Hunter seems to have lost more cocaine,
  • Prices for luxuries like food have jumped, and are set to jump again as the Ukraine Conflict enters day 5,000, and
  • Payments for interest on the national debt are starting to be higher than Johnny Depp.

What’s the difference between Hunter Biden and his prostitutes?  His prostitutes probably pay at least some taxes.

Is there something to distract us from?  Yup.

Everything.

Why?  Because that list above isn’t even close to being complete.

This is the danger.  Scott describes it as a secret war, but I’m not sure that there are even two sides, since the FBI, CIA, and most other (but not all) organizations are tied back to supporting the Left.

I bought my ex a big diamond ring.  She said, “Thanks, but we really need a new car.”  Me:  “But they don’t sell fake cars.”

So, is all this fake, the biggest and fakest thing ever?

I don’t know.  It would make sense that it was.  The Soviets Russians seem to have their “it’s all a lie” face on and China’s doing, well, whatever it is that China does when no one’s watching.  Maybe hate-eating a box of Twinkies®?

And as we see all of the shiny, sparkly news going on, keep in mind the important things – your faith, your family, and your friends.  There’s a lot of news that we get that we simply cannot do anything with, that for many of us is nothing more than a signal of what’s going on in the greater world.

We need to come together, find like-minded folks who share your values, and be ready for the changes that are coming in the world, because if they’re using aliens to distract us, well, they must be very scared indeed.

I’m glad that Hillary didn’t win, because then so many people would have moved to Benghazi, because at least there she’d leave them alone.

Don’t let it make you fret, and certainly don’t let it control your mood.

Because Scott is right from the standpoint that we have to keep living our lives, yet keep an eye out for the real story.

So enjoy that kitten while you can – they grow up so fast.

Steps Forward, Steps Backward, and The Long Road

“Not according to the recent Supreme Court case of bite versus me.” – House, M.D.

No one complained when I got into Buddhism and became a Buddhist.  No one complained when I got into Affirmative Action and became an activist.  But get into fashion?

Today the Supreme Court (it’s like regular court, but with sour cream and tomatoes) said that, under the Equal Protection clause, that discriminating against people (or even for people) based on race is against the Constitution.  I guess you could say that the Supreme Court has changed since Ginsberg passed away:  it’s now Ruth-less.

For the longest time, the courts were sort of ignored by the Right.  The judges appointed by the Right (when they were in power) were often horribly Leftist advocates of state power.  At some point, the Right started picking justices based on choosing people who actually weren’t horrible Leftists in disguise (looking at you, David Souter).  The Federalist Society® was the catalyst for this.  Of the current Supreme Court, six of the nine justices are current or former Federalist Society™ members.

Yes, this is a real Tweet® and not a parody account.

The vote to kill affirmative action on campuses was six to three.

That’s an important number because it shows that the Federalist Society©, founded 41 years ago, has now defined the Supreme Court and the judges that have been nominated.

This is a victory.

But it wasn’t easy, and the span of effort to get that victory took decades of effort.  When the Federalist Society™ was founded, the court system of the United States was an absolute shambles.  When the Leftists couldn’t pass legislation that let them do things they like to do, like killing moar babiez, the courts could be counted on to find a new right that was somehow stuck in the “penumbras and emanations” of previous rulings to let them do whatever was popular with the cool kids that week.

Think that’s what happened to the Titan?

What always bothered me was that they could take a simple phrase like, “shall not be infringed” and twist it through precedents and rulings and interpret it to mean, “shall be infringed whenever we feel like it, you stooge”.  The “you stooge” part wasn’t actually in the ruling, but it can be inferred through the “emanations and penumbras”.

Why did Roe v. Wade get struck down to allow states to make laws against baby killing?  Because of the Federalist Society™.  If you’re ever able to go buy a .50 caliber Ma Deuce at your local convenience store in full auto as God intended?  Thank the Federalist Society©.

I don’t remember Linda leading the Leftist Karen Brigade in the Amy Coney Barrett Insurrection . . . do you?

Another place where the Left has lost is on carry of weapons.  In 27 states you can take your favorite hand cannon and pop it right under your vest without a permit, and without asking anyone for permission.  It’s what’s called “Constitutional Carry”.  This didn’t happen by accident.  It took dedicated groups working locally through decades to get these laws passed.

That’s the key.  Victory isn’t won in an afternoon after a training montage where Luke© spends 22 minutes with Obi Wan® and learns the Force™.  Nope.  Victory is won by grinding it out, day after day, putting people in place.  Having conversations.  Convincing people that the idea of freedom is better than the idea of government control takes time.

Remember, it only works if you have goals.

One view is that, from the viewpoint of the Right, that there has been nothing but a long string of loss, and there is no way that we can every come back.

Clearly, that is wrong.  The grassroots pushback against the insanity of The Narrative can’t be stopped.  Why, exactly, do gays and transexuals and drag queens need access to our children?  That question is in the minds of enough people that celebration of Pride Month, 2023, was a bit limp.

I guess we’ll have to re-purpose the journalist machine, after a fair trial, of course.

Have we lost most university campuses?  Have we lost the military senior officer corps?  Have we lost the senior management in most Fortune® 500 companies?

Yup.  We’re still down in many places.  But Budweiser® is afraid now.  And we don’t have to destroy every company that goes woke.  There’s an old Chinese saying:  “Kill the chicken to scare the monkey.”  We don’t have to destroy every company, but I’m certain that the distinct lack of Pride stolen rainbow colors in June on every damn corporate logo was a result of that Budweiser© chicken being plucked.

Where will the next victories come from?  They will come from places that passionate people have been working for decades.  It doesn’t require money, it requires work.  As the other saying goes, “The best time to plant a tree is twenty years ago.  The second-best time is now.”

The seeds of our future victory are being planted right now in the heads of they youth.  They see the lies, greed, and envy that are the only things outside of Nancy Pelosi swimsuit pictures that the Left has to sell.  Today, removed from their menu, is the idea of Affirmative Action.  That idea is dead.

I know nobody wanted to see the swimsuit picture.  You’re welcome.

The battle is not over.  The Left is always better organized than the Right, but the Right has a wonderful thing on its side:  the Truth.  As I have always maintained, we will win.  And as I have also always maintained, the final victory won’t be tomorrow, or next week, or next year, though some events will certainly happen suddenly.

And the Supreme Court?  They can go out to dinner together again since Ginsberg died.  She used to steal food from people at diners – they called her Booth Raider Ginsberg.

One Problem? People Who Don’t Want To Solve The Problem.

“You want the solution to inflation? Hi, friends. Marshall Lucky here for New Deal Used Cars, where we’re lowering inflation not only by fighting high prices, not only by murdering high prices, but by blowing the living s**t out of high prices. Yes sir. Here’s an example. It’s a 1972 Cadillac Coupe DeVille, for sixty-two ninety-nine. That price . . . is too high.” (shoots the car) – Used Cars

But I hear he does know Tae Kwon Dough.

I’m amused that something called the “Inflation Reduction Act” has the same initials as the Irish Republican Army, but at the same time is a lot more destructive than the IRA ever was.  The idea that solving inflation involves the government spending metric-Lizzo-Tons® of cash on boondoggles that will benefit Democratic donors is an idea that only someone with a child’s intellect could come up with, so at least we know what the Veep has been doing when she’s done with the construction paper for the day.

Here’s Brandon’s Tweet®:

I also hear he’s a fan of putting out fires by throwing more gasoline on them.

Don’t think this is a naked Leftist slush-pile for donors that will make Sam Bankman-Fraud’s scheme of taking American taxpayer dollars given to Ukraine and donating them after deposit to Leftist political schemes in the United States?  This is bigger by far.  And not only that, it’s being overseen by that paragon of virtue, John Podesta.

Yeah, that same John Podesta who on a scale of 1-10 for being creepy rates “Drag Queen Story Hour”.

As Podesta always says, “If you want you be a successful stalker, you must do the following.”

Green Energy isn’t about energy, it’s about the green.  And the particular green in question is money.  The alchemy that the Left wants to work is to give it to people and companies who give money to the Left.  Hakuna Matata, the Circle Of Politics!

How does it work?  Simple!  Pay taxes, have the Left direct the money to people who support the Left.  This is what they mean by “Our Democracy®” since the people involve in “Our©” don’t include you.  Or me.  They include people who support the Left, or can be bought to support the Left.  Green (remember, that means money laundering) energy company Solyndra™ received over $535,000,000 in loans from Obama, and produced nothing but accounting irregularities.

This was actually the subject of the 1994 Nobel Prize® in Economics.  I’m still waiting for one in blogging, and have my fingers crossed, but regardless, the idea was that if government could give everyone in the United States $1, it would be a much better deal for the political weasels to give three people $100 million.  This is also the basis for every decision made in Congress.

Cats are better than dogs.  Cats don’t work for the cops.

(Also, for the record, there is a Nobel Prize® for Literature, and if some nice reader would nominate me for a Nobel©, then I would be one of the very few nominated for both a Nobel™ and a Hugo®.  Winning?  Who cares, it’s an honor just to be nominated.)

The Nobel Prize™ was won by three dudes, one of which you might be familiar with:  Graham John Nash, who also wrote Teach Your Children Well was played by Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind.  Sorry about the confusion.  I guess Graham is no Nash-trophysicist.

The result of this is a very, very unserious economy.  Green Energy in most cases just means, “La-la-la I’m not listening, I can’t hear you because my fingers are in my ears, so the laws of thermodynamics do not exist and if they do, Congress can pass a law to change those laws” energy.  Unserious.

I hear that there is now a way to make the turbine blades 99% recyclable (true!).  All you have to do is chop them up into small pieces and ship them down to Louisiana where more energy than was used to create the blades is used to recycle them!  What a win! (/sarcasm) 

AOC’s chief of staff, Saikat Chakrabarti even let the mask slip and noted that the real goal of Green Energy policy.  In his own words, according to Sam Ricketts, WaPo® reporter:  “The interesting thing about the Green New Deal, is it wasn’t originally a climate thing at all.  Do you guys think of it as a climate thing?  Because we really think of it as a how-do-you-change-the-entire economy thing.”

The entire economy.  Why?  Because they don’t like you.  They want to funnel money to the people that give them the big shrimp parties, and give them money to put out ads so they can run again.  The thing that fuels Washington, D.C. isn’t electricity.  It is cash.  And shrimp.  And the quest for power – over you.

If we arrested all the corrupt politicians, who would we vote for in November of 2024?

The idea that solving the problems that we have with our economy is hard is laughable.  Solving those problems is trivial.  Really.  Why does no one do it?  Solving those problems is painful.

  • If solving them involves increasing the interest rates until the banks squeal, and some of them fail?
  • If solving them involves the destruction of entire portions of the economy only kept alive via corruption?
  • If solving them involves reducing the payments to those who could, but don’t contribute?
  • If solving them involves changing the rules so that people who game Wall Street rather than producing anything can’t rig the game?

Washington, D.C. won’t be for them, because they’d rather let a paper cut turn into an amputation than make any decision that will stop the shrimp parties with the beautiful people who are just rubbing their hands at the idea of an “Inflation Reduction Act”.