Category: Uncategorized

“The risk of death turns people on.” – Rush

What’s more than 9, but not quite to step 10?  This clock.

7. Common violence. Organized violence is occurring monthly.
8. Opposing sides develop governing/war structures. Just in case.
9. Common violence that is generally deemed by governmental authorities as justified based on ideology.
10. Open War.

As close as we are to the precipice of war, be careful.  Things could change at any minute.  Avoid crowds.  Get out of cities.  Now.  A year too soon is better than one day too late.

In this issue:  Front Matter – Signals – Violence And Censorship Update – Updated Civil War 2.0 Index – Running Out Of Options – Links

Front Matter

Welcome to the latest issue of the Civil War II Weather Report.  These posts are different than the other posts at Wilder Wealthy and Wise and consist of smaller segments covering multiple topics around the single focus of Civil War 2.0, on the first or second Monday of every month.  I’ve created a page (LINK) for links to all of the past issues.  Also, subscribe because you’ll join nearly 620 other people and get every single Wilder post delivered to your inbox, M-W-F at 7:30AM Eastern, free of charge.

Signals

• Senator Ted Cruz from Texas brought up the idea that Texas should secede from the Union in November, if the Democrats “fundamentally destroy the country.”
• Three counties in Maryland are looking into leaving Maryland and going to West Virginia.
• Oroville, California declared itself a “Constitutional Republic” where federal and state ‘Rona mandates don’t apply.

Those are all stories from November.  This isn’t an all-exhaustive list, since it doesn’t include all of the cries for a national breakup should abortion be thrown back to a state-by-state decision.  More than anything, though, they’re a sign that people are talking about national divorce everywhere.

By itself, these would be nothing more than ramblings.  But in virtually every public issue except for spending as much money as is humanly possible (where the Democrats and Republicans are in harmony), the polarization is advancing and accelerating.

What is Voyager 1’s favorite cheese since it’s over a billion miles from Earth?  Probe Alone.

There is little agreement of what the United States even is in 2021 – as Empire fades, we see that we are hollowed out.  Left and Right cannot agree on anything.  The “Jab” is a perfect example:  the Left sees it as a new Holy Sacrament, and the Right sees the apparatus supporting it as a potential Mark of the Beast-level of Evil.

Violence And Censorship Update

In violence, Portland again takes the Riot Prize for convulsing in a violent pity-party after Kyle Rittenhouse was found not guilty.  Portland wasn’t the only place, but seemed to have the greatest degree of destruction.  The violence was initiated by the Left.

• Project Veritas Raid

Project Veritas has been a thorn in the side of the Left since James O’Keefe pointed out the hypocrisy of Project Acorn, where Leftist activists gave him pointers on how to have his (fictitious) 13 year-old-Ecuadoran prostitutes as a tax deduction and helped him apply for a loan for his brothel.

Since then, he’s engaged a series of high-profile stunts that mix real reporting with “I can’t believe he got away with that” publicity ideas.  The Left hates this guy.  So, what to do?

I hear Hillary is a ruthless editor, too.  She took one guy’s colon out.

Use the full force of the FBI to investigate him, conduct an early-morning raid on his house, and leak personal information as well as electronic conversations with his lawyer to a party he was suing:  The New York Times®.  The use of the federal government to harass people who embarrass the Left is nothing new, but going after journalists is a blatant attempt at censorship.

• YouTube® Dislike Button

We have known for several years now that YouTube® is against the Right.  Creator after creator on the Right has been first demonetized and then kicked off the platform.  This forces people with unpopular (from YouTube’s® perspective) opinions to have to seek alternative platforms.

Now it’s a war against the viewer.  One very easy way to show that you didn’t like a video was to hit the “dislike” button.  This very simple act made it easy to share a very simple opinion.  “I didn’t like this.”

YouTube© sold this change on the idea that it would “help protect” small creators.  Nope.  This was entirely aimed at not showing how many dislikes Biden’s videos got.  This was for creators like Disney™ to avoid dislikes on their videos.  This allows them to manufacture consent (LINK) by hiding the fact that there are huge numbers of people that disagree with The Leftist Narrative.

How is YouTube® like the government?  They both break their own rules.

• New Twitter CEO

A single quote is all you need to understand the bans will intensify:  “Focus less on thinking about free speech, but thinking about how the times have changed.”

Updated Civil War II Index

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

Violence:

Up is more violent, and our perception of violence is holding steady, despite riots in major cities after the Rittenhouse verdict.  Perhaps we’re just getting used to it?

Political Instability:

Up is more unstable, and it ticked up this month again.

Economic:

Economic feelings finally dropped.

Illegal Aliens:

This data was at record levels last three months, but finally dropped.  Now it’s just near a record level (and record for this time of year).

Running Out Of Options

Biden’s approval rating is in the dirt.  Almost everything that could be a difficulty, is a difficulty.  When Bill Clinton was in this position, he hired nominally Republican staffers to help him.  They “triangulated” and tried to find positions where the Left and Right could be ignored, and a compromise solution could be proposed.  It worked, and without his lying under oath, this strategy made him a much more effective President.

Biden does not appear to have that luxury.  Viewed on the Left as a compromise that could defeat Trump, there’s no real excitement for him outside of his bedroom, and, honestly, probably not there either.  The Hard Commie Left considers him a fascist, the progressives consider him a sell-out, and the moderate Left barely exists anymore.  Biden’s base . . . doesn’t exist.

Sadly, this made-up stuff is actually more coherent than a lot of his actual comments, you lying dog-faced pony soldier.

The Right doesn’t like him at all, and is following the post-1990 opposition playbook of “do anything to make him fail” that only had a short truce after 9/11.

Who does that leave?

Well, he tried mandating “the Jab” because, with 59% of Americans double-jabbed, he thought that he could get someone on his side.  Ooops.  Turns out that only the hardcore Left want to take people’s jobs and then put them in camps if they’re not vaxxed.  It was a longshot, and (right now) it looks like a big failure.

The scary part of this is that when people are really far down, they tend to take major risks to try to win.  If it’s the bottom of the ninth and there’s a runner on base and you’re up at bat, the chances of swinging for the fence to get a homer go up.  Why?  Nothing left to lose, baby.

Like I said – scary.  What policies will he try and how will he push in order to gain the support of the Left?  And will that push the United States even farther apart?

 

LINKS

As usual, links this month are courtesy of Ricky.  Thanks so much, Ricky!!

The Devolution Will Be Televised

Palm Beach, FL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqW5yyXv9pc

Portland: https://twitter.com/i/status/1461922664377847813

SF: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZKFPGzomkUo

https://twitter.com/i/status/1461933919750606850

https://twitter.com/i/status/1462284757434175488

Chicago: https://twitter.com/i/status/1465678537306914826

https://twitter.com/i/status/1461478278645047307

http://themostimportantnews.com/archives/in-some-parts-of-america-looting-has-become-a-way-of-life

https://townhall.com/columnists/victordavishanson/2021/12/02/third-worldizing-america-n2599978

 

Ballot Box Befuddlement

https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/16/how-much-cheating-is-enough/

NJ: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/powerful-new-jersey-senate-democrat-says-12000-ballots-recently-found-support-refusal-to-concede-to-truck-driver/ar-AAQnpiG?ocid=se

TX: https://uncoverdc.com/2021/11/23/texas-funds-sos-comprehensive-forensic-audit-of-four-counties/

PA: https://thefederalist.com/2021/11/19/whistleblower-videos-capture-pennsylvania-election-officials-destroying-evidence/

GA: https://voterga.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/Brian-Kemp-Audit-Inconsistencies-Report-Joe-Rossi-11.18.2021.pdf

https://thefederalist.com/2021/11/24/georgia-governor-releases-more-evidence-that-2020-ballots-were-miscounted/

https://www.westernjournal.com/election-integrity-group-2020-ballot-images-56-georgia-counties-destroyed/

WI: https://www.cbs58.com/news/kleefisch-files-lawsuit-against-wisconsin-elections-commission

https://citizenfreepress.com/breaking/wisconsin-election-commission-admits-to-breaking-laws-in-2020/

USA FBI Bombshell: https://amgreatness.com/2021/11/18/durham-investigation-intrigue-sergei-millian-an-fbi-plant/

 

Body Count Of A Lost War…

https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/yearly-drug-overdose-deaths-top-100000-first-time-rcna5656

https://cms.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/18744.jpeg?itok=u3T0Djrx

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/new-opioids-more-powerful-than-fentanyl-are-discovered-in-dc-amid-deadly-wave-of-overdoses/ar-AARgxFB?ocid=uxbndlbing

 

Marching Towards A New War???

https://summit.news/2021/11/26/video-california-town-declares-independence-from-dictatorship-powers-of-federal-covid-mandates/

https://archive.fo/OM46U

https://nypost.com/2021/11/21/armed-father-daughter-duo-seek-to-protect-anti-rittenhouse-protesters/

https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/nov/23/antifa-urges-members-take-arms-after-kyle-rittenho/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10226225/WATCH-Portland-police-cornered-garage-protesters-riots-Kyle-Rittenhouse-verdict.html

https://thehill.com/homenews/house/580856-gop-centrists-come-under-increased-attacks-from-own-party?rl=1

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/andrew-sullivan-conservatism-60-minutes-2021-11-12/

https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/11/09/beyond-red-vs-blue-the-political-typology-2/?adobe_mc=TS%3D1636515583%7CMCAID%3D6F4FD548A61746D0-0A4A75241B51B9FC

https://www.salon.com/2021/11/09/ted-cruz-says-texas-should-secede-and-take-the-military-if-democrats-destroy-the-country/

https://tnm.me/texit/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10183647/Americas-NINE-political-tribes-according-Pew-Research.html

https://dailyreckoning.com/the-u-s-is-a-powder-keg/

https://www.salon.com/2021/11/04/in-the-coming-second-american-civil-war-which-side-are-you-on/

https://survivingtomorrow.org/america-will-be-twelve-countries-very-soon-58d900389257

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10267619/Billionaire-Ray-Dalio-predicts-30-chance-Civil-War-10-years.html

https://unherd.com/2021/11/would-america-survive-a-civil-war/

 

Amen, Five Times August, Amen

https://youtu.be/6z1ZpYcyku4

 

Sharp-eyed readers will note that this is a reprint from 30 months ago – I’m under the weather right now, and need some sleep, but expect fresh stuff Friday.  

“Look, you’re corrupt, we’re corrupt. There’s one difference. We’re honest about it.” – Get the Gringo

A hitman makes people nervous people past tense.

News came out this week that high officials of the Federal Reserve® were allegedly caught front-running trades.  I use the word “allegedly” because that’s the word you use when you are dealing with people who might be allegedly low-life allegedly stinking allegedly thieves.

What’s front-running?  Well, if you know that a client is going to buy a LOT of stock, you buy at the price before the big news.  Why?  Well, when the price goes up, you benefit from the price increase.  Duh.

Why was the Fed™ buying stock (or bonds), anyway?

The quote was that the Fed® was buying securities to “help markets function smoothly.”

Huh.  I thought, you know, actual people buying and selling stuff was supposed to do that.  Silly me.  I missed that part in Econ 101 where the professor said, “Oh, and if the market doesn’t do what the government wants it to do, it can cheat on a massive scale with money it printed just because.”

If you hear someone scream in space, does that mean the vacuum is broken?

When the “Plunge Protection Team” was originally formed by Federal Reserve® in the late 1980s, it was secret.  It would (in theory) see a down day on the stock markets and swoop in late in the day with well-timed purchases to keep the market from going down.

We can argue all day about the morality of that.  My take is that it’s about as moral as Joe and Hunter Biden teaching in a pre-school.  The market serves a function – to give prices.  Prices provide real-time data and information.  To distort prices creates artificial winners and losers.

To be clear, a stock going down in price can be a very good thing.  Bad companies should die.  If they serve a purpose, someone else will do it.  For the Fed© to purchase stocks (or bonds, or debt) to prop up companies isn’t helping them, it is rewarding financial morons by giving them more money.

Regardless, because it’s 2021, the Fed™ is out there buying stuff willy-nilly on a regular basis to manipulate markets.  And the big dogs at the Fed© know what the Fed® is buying.  So, for one of them to buy stocks in a company whose assets the Fed® is purchasing?

That’s what is normally called criminal.

There’s a show for criminal Democrats who go fishing.  It’s called, “Off The Hook.”

But why single out the Fed®?  I mean, it’s not like Federal Judges are doing it, too, right?

Sorry to disappoint you if you thought the judiciary was clean.

In the last decade, 131 Federal Judges took part in 685 lawsuits where they had a financial stake in a company that was a party to the lawsuit.  This is a violation of Federal law.  My bet?  In the world of corruption that is 2021, this will be ignored.  At most, the Federal Judges will get a slap on the wrist, perhaps a memo to their file.

Government employees are never punished unless they’re not acting in the interest of the system.  They can ignore work.  I have a friend who had been a Federal bank examiner.  His job was to go in and evaluate the systems at banks to make sure they were good.  He told me, point-blank, “If I were to get a smaller bank and find a violation, it would be okay, but a big bank?  They just wanted good results for a big bank.”

Why?  Corruption is rampant in every part of the financial system.  It’s rigged.

In Soviet Russia you rob bank.  In United States, bank rob you.

The stock market is rigged.  The Federal Reserve© has a bias that stocks should go up, just like the value of the money that you worked for should always go down.

Does gold always go down?

No.  But the value of a dollar should always decrease.

The reason for this is fairly simple.  The Federal Government has taxes on wages.  It has taxes on imports.  It has taxes on death, it has taxes on (checks list) tanning.  I’ll repeat:  there are Federal taxes on tanning.

Inflation is nothing more and nothing less than a tax on money, or, more properly, a tax on productive people who saved and earned that money.

A is for apples.  B is for bananas.  What is C for?  A plastic explosive. 

So, what is it that we know, without a doubt, is corrupt?

• The Federal Reserve®.
• Federal Judges.
• Financial regulators.
• Money.

I’ll add one more:  the overall justice system.  George Soros has bought election after election for District Attorneys that allow Leftists committing crimes to walk free.  As I’ve written before, this is the final poison for Western judicial systems.  Without the promise of a fair and impartial trial, without the certainty that we are a nation of laws rather than men, justice will fall to the hands of ordinary men.

Unlike Batman®, ordinary men will use guns.

We live in an amazingly risky time.  The problem with corrupt systems is that they fail when trust erodes.  If citizens don’t trust that the outcomes are fair?  I mean, what if the elections were fraudulent?

Failure.  Corruption breeds more corruption.  Injustice?  It breeds more injustice.

A society based on corruption and injustice will devolve into anarchy or totalitarianism.

I have some candy canes that are in mint condition.

Saving our systems requires justice.  Justice requires a moral people.

Hmmm.  However do we get that?

I wouldn’t ask a Federal Reserve® governor or a Federal Judge.  After all, Pa Wilder told me not to hang around with people of poor character.

“You’re the coach. Coach them so they’re as good as the dead team was. Or, I’ll have you killed, okay?” – The Death of Stalin

If you want some fun, read the Zaporozhian Cossacks’ letter to Sultan Mehmed IV.  It’s not family-friendly.

Pa Wilder was over during his 1942-1945 all-expense-paid trip to Europe, and only occasionally talked about his experiences.  One thing I remember him talking about was seeing the prisoners of war.  Mind you, he wasn’t telling me these stories, he was telling his buddies after a snifter or two of bourbon and branch water, as Pa called it.

What Pa mentioned was the ratio of guards to prisoners.  The Germans, Pa said, had a “guard for every 100 or so prisoners.  And the rifles were unloaded.”  The message I took away from this was:  for the Germans, the war was over.

The Soviets, Pa said, were different.  There was a guard for every three men, and they had machine gun emplacements continually manned watching the perimeter of the camps.

The first thing that puzzled me was this:  if they were on the same side, why did the Americans have prison camps filled with Soviets?  Why not just let them loose?  The second was:  why were the Soviets so dangerous?

The answer to these questions (which I discovered last week) is simple but horrifying.

The end of a war, any war, is messy.  That’s when massacres and atrocities happen:  the victorious troops decide that taking prisoners is optional, and the losers don’t have any way to fight back.  Of course, the looting and worse on now defenseless cities turn the tragedy of war even darker.

Sure, massacres occur during war, and throughout history, it’s been a bit of a risk to be taken prisoner – wars stress the systems that produce and distribute food.  The last people a country is interested in feeding are those who were fighting against it.  This has always been true.  It is the rule, rather than the exception, that horrible things happen to POWs.

At the end of World War II, however, there was a horror that I was unaware of, namely the forced repatriation of both Soviet and Russian citizens during and after the War.  Note that I wrote Soviet and Russian citizens, that distinction was on purpose.

The losers in the Russian Revolution, many of the White Russians and Cossacks left Russia twenty or more years before World War II, and were never, at any time, Soviet citizens.  Stalin desperately wanted these people back.  Why?

Because he couldn’t stand having anyone who opposed him breathing.

These force “repatriations” consisted of at least, (the numbers are fuzzy) tens of thousands of people who had never been Soviets to the Soviets.  Millions of prisoners of war held by the Germans, Soviet soldiers, were likewise sent back, though many didn’t want to return.  Why?  Many had put on German uniform and had fought alongside the Germans.

Stalin probably wouldn’t have approved of that.

At the Yalta conference, Stalin demanded every Soviet citizen, and every former Russian citizen be returned to him.  All of them.  And Churchill and Truman let him get his way.  Possibly that was due to revenge.  Stalin had executed generals for surrendering unless they were gravely injured.  What would he have cared for a common boy from Siberia who, surrounded by Germans, surrendered?

So, we have tens of thousands of Cossacks that were involuntarily repatriated.  How many others?

Probably millions.  These Soviet soldiers had seen the relative wealth of the West, and wanted to stay.  Obviously, the ones that fought in German uniform were especially keen not to head back East.  But it wasn’t just them – hundreds of thousands of regular folks fled to the West during the war, too.

It is likely that at least 2,000,000 if not more (I saw a number as large as 5,000,000) people were tossed back to the Soviets at the end of the war.

Many of these people didn’t want to go back.  At least 200,000 of these people went straight to the GULAG, and there is evidence that thousands of these people were summarily executed as soon as they ended up in Soviet hands.

This is a war crime – not a figurative war crime, but a “by the letter of the law” war crime.  People in the government of the United States went along with this.  Knowingly.

My takeaway is this:

Government is, at best, neutral.  In the United States, we intentionally formed our government to protect the individual.  George Washington said, “A government is like fire, a handy servant, but a fearful master.”  So, government was supposed to help the people.

Oops.  Guess that went off track.  And if you look at the manner in which the government interferes in your life today, it goes far beyond what it did in 1945.  It goes far, far beyond “the jab”.

We are living in a world where government teachers teach children that are forced to be there that:

• government is the solution to all of their problems,
• that Antifa® is good,
• sexuality is the greatest god, and
• the biggest problem is that government isn’t solving more of their problems through “charity” enforced by the barrel of a gun.

We are in a time which will be named by future historians.  If they are honest, they will call this period, “the Crazy Years,” or “the Turmoil,” or “the Years of Lies.”

The “jab” is the latest insanity.  Despite amazing amounts of growing evidence that the mRNA treatment is likely far more deadly than the ‘Rona in young people, the government is pushing it – mandating it.

But certainly government wouldn’t do something that wasn’t in the best interest of the people.

Right?

H/T TIC

 

“Every ancient religion has its own myth about the end of the world.” – Ghostbusters

I guess communism doesn’t work on paper, either, if that paper is in a history book.

This week I finally got a copy of the novel The Three Body Problem by Chinese author Cixin Liu.  It won the Hugo® award for best novel in 2015.  I consider winning the Hugo® faint praise.

Mainstream science fiction has long since ceased being a genre about the interplay of science and humanity.  Today, it has become a way that woke Leftist editors can select Leftist authors to present a Leftist viewpoint.  So, it’s like being a freshman in college, but with extra steps.

There are notable exceptions (John C. Wright comes to mind), but most of the books I see on bookstore shelves today are far inferior to the product of 20 or 30 years ago in every respect.  Heck, they even took the hot chicks in bikinis off of the covers.

Conan would often swing his sword at his opponent’s ankles.  That way they were de-feeted.

I did sit down and devour (I got it on Saturday and finished three-quarters of it that day) The Three Body Problem.  I didn’t get a chance to finish it today, but I’ll have to say I’ve enjoyed very much what I’ve read so far.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but I certainly wasn’t expecting Cixin’s first scene to confront a painful era in China’s past.  The opening few chapters took a very difficult look at the Cultural Revolution.  The Cultural Revolution was when, after being pushed aside for a bit, Chairman Mao decided to pour gasoline all over China and set it ablaze.

Cixin’s didn’t spare detail, showing the brutality and unthinking violence of the Cultural Revolution.

What was the Cultural Revolution?

Mao used youth groups to rebel against the communist leaders that were insufficiently Maoist.  What was Maoist?  It varied.  The results, however, didn’t.  It was a reign of internal terror that started in 1966 and reached a peak in 1969.  The only thing that finally ended it was Mao’s death.

The leader of China put out a little red book, just like Mao’s “Quotations from Chairman Mao”.  It’s called, “That’s what Xi said.”

The Cultural Revolution was a religious war.  How was it religious, since the commies were officially atheist?

Because Leftism had become their religion.  Mao was their savior.  And by burning and destroying the past, they were bringing about a cleansing fire that would destroy the world.

As many as (high estimate) 20 million Chinese died one way or another in Cultural Revolution.  They died in all the usual ways: via massacres, struggle sessions, or cannibalism.

Children turned in their parents.  Anyone objecting was, of course, a dangerous counter-revolutionary and was either killed or imprisoned or forced to watch re-runs of The Jimmy Kimmel Show.

Cixin’s book brings all of this home with stark reality.  Sometimes it takes fiction to turn the cruel sterility of a Wikipedia article into something a human can relate to.  This confirms, though, several basic thoughts:

• Leftism is a religion.
• The goal of Leftism isn’t the betterment of man: the goal is an apocalypse where everything impure is burned away.  The goal is to immanentize the eschaton to lead to the final worker’s paradise.
• The number of victims is irrelevant. Everything and everyone is fair game.
• The rules in play are the rules of today, there is no consistency as definitions always change.
• I like pizza.

Leftist Catechism:  Thy jab and thy booster, they comfort me, they maketh me to deny statistics and seek peace in the Pfizer.

As I’ve written about before, Leftism is also a religion built upon self-loathing.  They actually hate themselves.  Why throw themselves in front of cars?  Their life is pain.  They want to die.  At least then they could stop watching Stephen Colbert, which makes the sweet release of death sound good.

Leftism isn’t really a political movement.  Leftism is a religion.  That alone makes it very strong.  In most cases, if a religious fanatic is prosecuted, what will be the outcome?  The fanaticism is, in their minds, justified – the purification of mankind has become their religion.

In one sense, the failure in Afghanistan isn’t really a surprise because of just this principle.  The United States spent 20 years trying to convince a group of religious people that their religion and tribal affiliations weren’t important, and that they should replace it with BLM®, fast food, Dancing With The Stars™ and a good credit score.

• No Afghani soldier wants to die for LGBT+© rights in Afghanistan.
• No Afghani soldier wants to die for the latest Xbox® release.
• No Afghani soldier wants to die for the Afghani teen girl robotic team.

Come on down to Hakim’s discount emporium!  The best prices on gently-used weapons in the tri-nation area.

Why did Afghani soldiers disappear?  They really weren’t fighting for Afghanistan, they were fighting to make Afghanistan more like, oh, a mall in the suburbs in Indiana.

It’s just that sort of mismatch that occurs when we look at Leftism.  Sure, some Leftists are basket cases that couldn’t exist outside of their mom’s basement and her boyfriend supplying xim/xir unlimited Cheetos®.  But there is a dedicated core that believes in Leftism with all of their hearts, and are fully committed to it.

Is it possible to have that level of dedication on the Right?

It is.  In fact, I believe it will be inevitable.  Is there an apathetic center?  Yes, but there’s never been a time when the center really mattered, outside paying so little attention to the issues that they make elections exciting.

The Leftists use the term “reactionary” to describe opposition to their atrocities.  That’s what the Cultural Revolutionaries called those they killed:  Reactionaries.

The Reaction will take place and will have all of the fervor of the Left, and twice the guns.  If it comes down to an attempted Cultural Revolution in the United States, the Left will find we’ve seen this movie before.

A crusader walks into a bar, the bartender says, “What do you want?”  The crusader:  “Jerusalem!”

This is a repeat of history:  every time the Left has gained power, in the end, it has lost it.  In Paris, eventually, the communists gave way to Napoleon.  In Russia, it lasted longer but eventually proved itself to be bankrupt.  In China, after Mao died, it was transformed, bit by bit.  Maoist China would have executed Cixin Liu for writing The Three Body Problem.  The state-socialist-market economy that’s replaced Mao is okay with it.

I am likewise certain that the United States will be changed by the coming crusade against Leftism.  It certainly won’t look the same after it’s over.

It won’t have Leftists, for one thing.

“As you can see, Captain Kirk is a highly sensitive and emotional person. I believe he has lost the capacity for rational decision.” – Star Trek (TOS)

I fired my dermatologist.  Too many rash decisions.

Back several decades ago when I had more hair on my head than on my back and ears, I read an article about Nucor Steel™ and how they made decisions.  I don’t remember it, and after 20 seconds of looking I couldn’t find it.

That doesn’t make a difference, because I said so.  At the point in company history when the article was written, Nucor© was experiencing a resurgence in growth and profitability.  It was almost like they were steeling.

One of the things that surprised me was the culture of humility at the company.  One of the executives made the comment that, if they did everything right, they would get just over 50% of their decisions right.  That’s flip-a-coin level of accuracy, yet the company felt that was an excellent result.

Nucor© was right.  Decision making isn’t easy.

Part of the reason is that decisions are, mostly, made in a fog of uncertainty.  Except for my hairline, the future is uncertain.  If Jerry Seinfeld would have told me in 1988 that experts said that the Soviet Union would have dissolved completely by 1992, I would have said right back to him, “Who aaaare these people?”

I tried to write poetry about the Seinfeld television show, but I could never get past the first Costanza.

A few people actually did predict the Soviet collapse, but most people viewed the Soviets as an unstoppable force.  If you would have asked the average Joe in 1988 if the Soviets were more likely to:

• produce a space robot that would claim Mars as rightful Russian territory and then rip Rocky Balboa in half while playing the Soviet national anthem out of speakers tastefully mounted on its butt, or,
• collapse into a pile of wet borscht,

the average man on the street would have stored up WD-40® to properly welcome their new Soviet Robot Overlords with appropriate levels of lubrication.

When the Soviets pulled out of Afghanistan, they had lost their national pride, and were so tied up in internal dissension that they tore themselves apart.

Huh.  History may not repeat.  I wonder if it rhymes?  Corollary:  does Joe regret the Afghanistan pullout as much as he regrets the pullout that led to Hunter?

Discuss.  Difficulty adder:  PG-13.

Hunter Biden:  “Paying taxes is like smoking crack.  I can quit anytime I want to.”

But the point of this digression was to show that decisions are hard because the future is uncertain, especially if you run out of CCP members to “buy” Hunter Biden’s paintings.  Seriously, someone should tell the Biden family that corruption is not a race.

Nucor™ showed courage in admitting that nearly half of the time, making a good decision was something they didn’t do.  Most people put far too much stock in their ability to predict the future of a world that can turn upside down faster than a car driven by a Kennedy.

Reality has a way of making decisions difficult.  But it gets worse.  Decisions are hard even when the only uncertainty is the future. But what happens when there are groups that are actively attempting to influence you?

I recall the war in Bosnia.  Why was there a war in Bosnia?  Because the Soviets tried to mash multiple ethnicities together in a region that had been using Archdukes for clay pigeons since 1914.  Since the Soviet Union was based on mashing together the jet engine from a MiG-21PF with a T-34/76 tank chassis and calling it a “recreational vehicle” mashing together people that have hated each other since Hadrian was building walls made sense to them.  Making the Balkans Soviet Stronk!

Please don’t ask about the mileage it gets.  And don’t ask to see the Sport Edition.

I bring up Bosnia not to make jokes, but to recall a time when propaganda worked on me.  I recall picking a newspaper (or magazine??) up, and seeing an editorial cartoon.  In the cartoon was a soldier holding a dead child.  I don’t exactly recall the words underneath, but the idea was that Bosnia kids were being killed, and somehow this was the fault of the United States for not intervening.

I’ll admit, the cartoon won me over.  I don’t want kids to die.  Where was Bosnia?  I could have come close to it on a map, there’s a reason that the CIA recruited me (this is actually true), after all, and it wasn’t only for my flowing locks of golden hair (the hair part isn’t so true).

But why was it so important that the world suddenly cared how I felt about some backward place in the eastern Mediterranean where it seemed that Albanian plumbing was so advanced it seemed to be magic to the Bosnians?  Where people fought about (for all I know) who had the better hat?

Because I was being manipulated.

Albania:  still better hats than Bosnia.  I apologize if this starts a war.

I’m not sure that it matters why I cared, but what I learned from that experience was that I was being manipulated.  The easiest way to convince people to do something is to manipulate their emotions.  People ultimately make decisions based on . . . emotions.

Car dealers do it.  They depend on it for every aspect of their playbook.  With a young buyer, they heighten the importance of the decision.  “This is one of the most important decisions you’ll ever make,” is a line I heard when I was in my 20s.

Then they manage the buyer’s emotions, step by step, until they have a signature on the bottom line.  They do this a dozen times a week.  Buyers do it a dozen times in their life.  Who do you think might be better at this?

In my thirties, I decided to use this evil power for good.  When I gave a safety speech at a company lunch (where family was invited) I emphasized my point by giving my speech while holding a baby in my arms.  It was one of the employee’s kids.  My speech was about the importance of fathers coming home.

It was planned.

Someone came up to me afterward and told me what an impact the speech had on their life, they even remarked what emotions it brought up in them, watching me holding an employee’s baby while I emphasized employee safety and the idea of dads coming home so they could raise their children.

As if it was an accident.

All work and no play makes Jack an indentured servant.

I used emotions to manipulate people that reported to me to keep them alive.  Was it just as manipulative as the political cartoon that made me feel something about a European nation that has only visited my blog 20 times?

Yup.

The Albanians have been here 39 times, and they only have one computer in the entire country, and it has a pull start like a lawnmower, so by definition I like them better than the Bosnians.  Go, Albania!  I hope you get that second toilet soon!

Almost every decision you and I make are based on our emotions.  It’s amazing how easy it is to hack those emotions.  I’ve tried it.  People standing in line to make a copy at the copier?

Try this, “Hey, can I jump ahead?  I just want to make a copy.”

Every single person in line in front of you wants to do exactly the same thing.  They just want to make a copy.

Yet?  Most times if you give them a reason, they can emotionally rationalize letting you cut in front.  People (mostly) want to be nice.  So, if you can give them a reason to feel good about themselves?  They’ll take it.

You should be glad I rarely use my powers for evil.

I auditioned for a part in Hamlet.  The director told me to come back when I was older.   He thought I’d be a good Yorick.

All of the current debate about the ‘Rona has been couched in just such manipulative terms.  “Two weeks to stop the spread!”  “We won’t stop this until we have herd immunity!”  “Coronavirus?  It’s what’s for dinner.”  “Kill the Unvaxxinated, they are Unclean!  Burn them like witches!”  And, to be fair, there has been no shortage of emotional rhetoric from the right, either, but since most people on the Right just want to be left alone, it’s a lot more boring.

In World War II the use of “chaff” was introduced.  Small aluminum slivers dropped from aircraft were used to produce false RADAR echoes.  The idea was to introduce so many signals that the real signal of where the enemy aircraft was overwhelmed by the false signals of the slowly fluttering and falling strips.

We are in a time and place where information, real information, is attempted to be drowned out by pleasure, distraction, and disinformation.  These are the chaff of modern information.

First, pleasure:  Let FaceBorg® and Twitttter™ and Instaham© are used to distract our attention online.  Top it off with Netflax® and YouTubs™ and Otheronlineservice©?  Pleasure and distraction were achieved.

Second, there is a halo of false news.  I’m not sure when the peak of real news existed, but I do know it’s not now.  People who are speaking the absolute, provable truth are censored from social networks.  Why?  To reduce signals that compete with the “official” signal, even if that “official” signal is false.

The common consensus truth isn’t the real Truth.  It’s been filtered and sanitized and set for our consumption.  It’s what we see after they release the chaff.

Based on my sense of humor, my sense of humor says I’m 12, my brain says I’m 28, and my body says, “How is it not dead yet?”

Decisions are how we determine the fate of our lives, yet groups are continually attempting to get into our OODA .  OODA stands for the Observe-Orient-Decide-Act loop, not what I call The Mrs. at 2am on a Saturday morning.

In 2021, the attempt to alter observations and increase disorientation is blinding.  It’s chaff.

If successful, your decisions are owned by people who want to manipulate you, and not for good.

The solution is a difficult one.  It involves examining the data you take in, understanding the source, and really making as careful an observation as you can.  You can’t make a decision without emotion, but the best bet is to be as autistic as possible.

Pull your emotions as far away from the decision as you can.  Look closely.

Be autistic.  The train is fine.

Orient yourself with values and beliefs.  Those should change only very slowly in any person’s life.  Does your decision match with your values?  By the way, you do keep track of those, right?

Then decide.  If you’re as good as Nucor™, you’ll get a little more than half of your decisions right.

(Post inspired by 173dVietVet’s comment last week, even though this probably wasn’t what he was looking for.)