Category: Uncategorized

For now, my annual Christmas post . . .

“You’ll put your eye out.” – A Christmas Story

Nobody was too concerned with my eyes.  But do NOT make us have to pay for a neighbor’s window.

(This was first published in 2018, but I’ve made some slight edits.  Merry Christmas!)

I’m a believer in Christmas – it’s a time of redemption and rebirth that proves that miracles can happen.  People can escape their past, and become something more than they were before – they can become reborn.  We can become better.  The birth of Christ is an example that we can all be reborn and change our lives in a miraculous and meaningful way.

But, I’m not sure I can recall any particular Christmas miracles.

Oh, wait, here’s one.  It’s mostly true, as well as I can recall, and field-tested to read aloud to your family:

On Christmas Day when I was in second grade, the one thing I wanted more than anything else was . . . a BB-Gun.  No, this is not a remake of A Christmas Story, this is A Wilder Story.  And I was there for this one.

As I recall, this was the last Christmas when we opened Christmas presents on Christmas morning.  In all following years, my older brother John Wilder and I wheedled our parents into a Christmas Eve opening of everything but “Santa” gifts.  We were insufferable.  My brother (really) is also named John Wilder – my parents didn’t want to waste those extra birth announcements they had bought when they could just change the day and year, but that’s another story.

But that particular Christmas morning when I was in second grade I looked down on a real-life lever-action Daisy® BB gun.  It looked like a real rifle even though the wood parts were plastic.  I’d never shot a real rifle before, but I knew that all I wanted for Christmas was that BB gun.  And there it was, all mine, pristine in its oiled metal and plastic perfection.

It looked very real.  Mine was the one on the bottom.  It was actually mistaken for a real rifle several times.  Mainly by me, because everyone who was an adult could see it was just a BB gun.

“Take care of that, and it’ll last you a long time, Son,” Pop said as he handed me my first gun.  This was the first time he’d said that to me, and I nodded gravely, feeling the responsibility and pride deep inside me.  Pop would later repeat that phrase about boots I got in high school, a Buck© pocket knife I got in fifth grade, and my first car.

I still have the BB gun and the boots.  I lost the knife, probably at school.  It was expected when I was a kid that you had a knife with you if you were in fifth grade, because what if you had to gut a fish during English class?

But I was in second grade, and I had a BB gun.  My BB gun.

And I was ready to use it.  I was given a quick tutorial on how to load it, a list of all the things (mainly windows), people (mainly windows), places (our windows), and forbidden objects (neighbor’s windows) that I shouldn’t even think of aiming my BB gun at, let alone shoot.  I was trusted to take my new BB gun out on a Christmas morning expedition, because it was made clear to me in no uncertain terms that the worst punishment in the world would fall upon me if I shot something I shouldn’t.  I would lose (probably until I was 40) my BB gun, be grounded from TV until I had my own children and probably be branded as a BB abuser for the rest of my life in my Permanent Record.  (For kids:  Permanent Record is now called Snapchat©.)

With the earnestness only a second grader can muster, I put on my deep blue Sears™ parka (the ad said it was designed for pilots stationed in . . . the ARCTIC, you know, where we fought the Soviets to save Santa from becoming, I guess, more Red) with polyester fur trim, and a pocket for pens and pencils on the arm, because where else would you keep pens and pencils except your left arm?  I pulled on my black felt-lined snow boots and stiff green plastic gloves, and went outside.  It was cold, certainly below freezing, and probably hovering around zero in non-communist units.

Like a pocket knife, every boy had a parka like this.  Every boy. But does anyone know why pilots need parkas if they’re in heated jet airplanes??  Oh, yeah.  Soviets.  Image from E-Bay.

It had already snowed enough that the snow pile in our front yard was 10 feet (43 meters) deep, but we had a packed trail where our snowmobiles had gone onto the snow-packed country road and up into miles of forest roads that dated back to the old prospectors looking for gold.

My feet crunched in the snow as I walked due north onto the road, my breath puffing out as if from a small blue fake-fur-trimmed steam engine headed uphill.  I kept going.  What was I looking for?  I’m not sure – I don’t remember, exactly.  I guess, looking at stuff with a BB gun in my hand and shooting anything that wouldn’t get me in trouble with Ma Wilder at the rate of 6 BBs per step.  But I felt like a man, and what would a man with a rifle do?  Hunt.  Win World War II again.  Look for communists.  It’s hazy, but I know I had a purpose.

Snakes weren’t a possibility, since I knew snakes wintered in Florida with baseball players, Santa and Cubans.  Regardless, I wanted to shoot my BB gun, even if the opportunities to send Soviets back to Russia with a backside full of BBs was limited, at best.  I still don’t recall ever seeing a Soviet in the forest until I saw Red Dawn, and then my BB gun was at home.

I guess Europe decided to sit this one out.

I trundled up the road.  I think that’s probably the only time I’ve used the word “trundled” precisely since it implies I moved along slowly, noisily, and in a less than graceful manner.  All of those applied.  But I was ten feet tall with my BB gun, shooting aimed fire into snowbanks and sage brush alike.  About a half a mile from my house, more than three-quarters of the way to the Old Cemetery, I saw it.

The Bear.

Sitting motionless, huddled against the barbed wire fence, not 20’ away, was the bear.  It was a black bear.  I knew that grizzly bears had been killed nearby, but this was definitely a black bear, being black and all.  Ma Wilder had told me about them before going hiking and told me to never, ever get between a black bear cub and its mother – she said that was more dangerous than being between Beto O’Rourke and a microphone.

I didn’t know if this bear was cub-sized or mother-sized, but I already knew that this was something way out of my experience level – I mean I still wasn’t even coloring within the lines very well.  Communists?  Sure, I could take down a dozen of them since they were weak because they were Godless and fatherless and mainly starving when they weren’t swilling massive quantities of cheap Afghan vodka.

But bears?  Better call the reinforcements (spelled D-A-D) in.

Calling out an APB on a tiny blonde boy.  He looked tasty.

I backed away from the bear, keeping my eyes on it the whole time.  My BB gun was loaded, a precious brass sphere ready to explode outward on a column of pressurized air at the bear should it charge me.  I knew I was too slow to out-trundle the bear.  Even my candy-cane addled brain knew that the BB was scant protection against a bear, but if I was going to go down, I was going to go down fighting like a man, and not running away like a weak Soviet child would.  Even though it was nearly zero, I built up a sweat in my green turtle neck under my Air Force Pilot Parka®.

That green turtle-neck was really tight and made me look a lot like an actual turtle, so I only wore it three times.  Why?  A chubby kid covered in the smell of fear sweat and Nacho Cheese Doritos™ isn’t really a winner with the ladies despite whatever Bill Clinton might say.

An aside:  In the safe realm of 2018, I know that it seems insane to allow a second grader to hike up into the forested wilderness alone at temperatures near zero on Christmas morning armed with a weapon that’s patently illegal to arm a second grader with in New York City, and twenty other states that are, no doubt, now deeply under the influence of the Soviets.  Or, does it?   When I last had a second grader (Pugsley) he had a BB gun and trundled off into the backyard with a zillion BBs.  I can attest our backyard is now safely Soviet-free.  But back in the day?  We weren’t building weak Soviet children.  No!  We had backbones of steel and cheap Taiwanese Rambo® knives with compasses built into the handle.

So, yeah, not unusual.  I guess it was a crazy thing called freedom.  Anyway . . .

I got back to the house and threw open the door.  I stamped my snow-covered feet inside.  Yeah, I know, bad form.  But I was in a hurry, I had real news and information for the family.

My parents were lounging on the couch, enjoying a quiet coffee.

“A BEAR!”  I yelled.

“I swear, I saw it, a bear!  It was just right up the road, right where the hill starts.  A bear!  A black one!”

Ma looked at Pop, concerned.

Pop Wilder shook his head.  “Bears are hibernating.  None are up this time of year, not when it’s this cold.”

“No, it was there, right by the fence.”

Ma Wilder nudged him, seeing the absolute certainty on my face.  “We should take a look.”

There is a look a man gives a woman when he knows that he has lost the argument even before it started.  I know that look because I saw it then.  Pop sighed, got up, and got dressed.  Half an hour later, he and Ma and my brother were all dressed, and ready to go up the road.  I had my BB gun.  I hoped that the bear would still be there.

We walked.  I pointed, when the Bear came into sight, not 300 yards away.

“See, I told you.”

Ma Wilder looked concerned when she saw visual proof of my story.  I think she had put my bear story into the category of “addled ravings of an overly imaginative eight-year old that may or may not process reality like a normal human after he told me that he was worried that Grandma would turn into a zombie (Sleep Deprivation, Health, Zombies, and B-Movies).”

As for me, I was concerned that Pop hadn’t brought bazookas, howitzers, grenades, or maybe a battleship.  Nah, Pop Wilder could probably wrestle a dozen or so bears, if they came up to him one at a time, like in the Kung Fu movies.  We finally got up to the road where we were perpendicular to the black bear, still huddled up against the fence, not 30 feet (432 meters) away.  It hadn’t moved since I’d first seen it.  I felt . . .vindicated, even though I’d never heard the word.

“Hand me the BB gun,” said Pop Wilder.

I did.

Pop shot one BB into the bear, smoothly worked the lever like a cowboy in the Old West, and then shot another BB into the bear.

The bear was motionless.  It must be dead!  Pop Wilder killed it!  Pop handed the BB gun back to me.

He then walked back into the deep snow directly to the bear, reached out, and pulled up the black plastic sheeting that had blown into a ball up against the fence.

He handed me back the BB gun and handed my brother the black plastic sheet.  We walked home in silence.

So, there was that:  the Miracle of the Transubstantiation of the Bear – where a Christmas miracle transmuted a black bear into a sheet of black plastic.  Not sure of any other explanation.

But the real Christmas miracle, it’s below.  Merry Christmas to all.

“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.